Posted on 03/07/2013 5:57:08 PM PST by neverdem
If energy companies could build new plants the obsolete plants like Fukushima would be gone, and the meltdown likely would not have happened.
What do you want for polution, CO2 that only lasts till a plant breaths it, or radio-active crap that kills everything for a hundred thousand years. For some strange reason, the enviro-weenies always end up wrong side up.
Could you explain the issue with Fukushima in real terms. Meltdown and all? what were the actual results as you see them? Just curious.
Results of the meltdowns? As I understand it there is a slightly elevated amount of radiation in the area surrounding the plant. Up to about 10 miles out. Some reports that incidents of cancer will increase but so far no real data.
In other words a fraction of what the anti-nuke people have been claiming would happen.
Molton Salt Thorium reactors are a very big deal in some sectors.
Modern-design reactors, i.e. those that the Watermelons so vehemently oppose, are far cleaner than the old designs. Thorium/molten-salt reactors not only don’t produce much long-life radioactive waste, they can be used to process such waste from older reactors into much more benign substances. The half-life of thorium reactors is measured in decades or less, instead of centuries or millennia.
I guess that would be my point there was no real problem. But somehow we should spend Billions, upon Billion to replace functional plants with unproven "safe plants" or additional Billions on "Green Energy" plant that are proven failures in terms of sustainable energy production. just saying
“Some environmentalists see atomic energy as the answer to global warming.”
Two things.
1. It’s about time.
2. Man made global warming is a farce.
Who wrote this article, an energy company heavily invested in nuke plants? What propaganda. The only thing an environmentalist would consider green about a nuke plant is the glow from the spent fuel containment ponds.
Don’t believe this article. Enviros do not support nuclear power plants. They support measures like conservation and solar, mostly distributed solar generation as opposed to large utility scale solar.
Hey, how is that brand new equipment at San Onofre working out?
Its a great idea, but it will never happen, because the ultimate goal of the Greenies is to thwart the progress that the industrialized nations have made over the last couple of centuries.
Very cool, have not kept up on reactors since my military days.
I had an acquaintance make a good point about nuclear energy the other day: who will be building the plants? The same people who build new homes? Who will work at the plants? The same people working in government now? Scary thought.
That said, i am all for nuclear energy sources.
Thorium or bust!!!
The chumps think that after they build billions of dollars of infrastructure that relies on a large 24x7 supply of natural gas that they'll just be able to snap their fingers when the price of gas hits $20 instead of $3.50.
Something is only “pollution” if it is released into the environment.
Submarines are designed to run for twenty-five years on one load of fuel that could fit under your desk, and the sailors aboard, breathing air created by the power from that reactor, get less exposure to radiation than the average surface-dweller. You want “zero emissions?” That’s the very definition of submarine warfare.
Let's look at reality: How many were hurt or killed by radioactive attributes of the Fukushima meltdowns? Answer; none. How many were hurt or killed at the Three Mile Island meltdown? None.
Chernobyl was not a commercial reactor, and not just because it was built in Communist country. Westinghouse was building boiling water reactors, the basis for the Fukushima and Three Mile Island designs, when Chernobyl was built. Chernobyl was a graphite core reactor, not much different from the Fermi pile at Chicago. It's objective was to produce plutonium for weapons; its excess energy drove steam turbines and provided heat for nurseries in the vicinity. It had no pressure vessel and no six foot thick reinforced containment. Still it killed only three men outright. The range of excess leukemia deaths ranged from 20 to 60 deaths over five years.
The epidemiology remains in doubt because the average death rates in Chernobyl were lower than the average in most of Ukraine, and much lower than those in major cities. By being off line the Chenobyl reactor's power was replaced by importing coal generated electricity, which, according to US EPA estimates, results in 200 premature deaths each year. In other words Chernobyl was saving 967 lives over the five years of measuring the injuries resulting from the meltdown.
The author's assumptions about costs may have been naïve, and some of the assumptions about hazards certainly were. Natural gas is a source of radionuclides in the atomosphere. Natural gas, like coal and uranium comes from deep underground where nuclear activation occurs naturally. When natural gas is burned radionuclides are simply release into the atmosphere, along with minor waste products and CO2, which the plants love. When nuclear fuel is consumed by fission the radioactive atoms give up some of their energy as heat, are concentrated, shielded, and later, chemically bound for storage or, if we ever get back to it, reprocessing. It is alpha emitters in the air we breath that the small risk of inhalation is known to increase cancer risks. Neither coal nor natural gas plants would meet, if they were tested as nuclear plants are, NRC emissions standards.
The economics of nuclear generated electricity are massively skewed by regulatory overhead. Regulation also raises the cost of money to pay the lawyers and pay the interest on loans while construction is stalled in the courts. Last I heard China was still on track to build 135 new nuclear plants in the 2 GW range before 2025. Anyone who has experience or knows of the air pollution in Beijing understands China's urgency. The world's largest manufacturer knows it must employ more and more, and to do it efficiently requires lots of power. The importance of having no air pollutants emitted while generating electricity is more obvious to the Chinese than to our bureaucrats and our naïve environmental elite.
If you live in Minnesota, or on granite, as I do, you probably have more background radiation coming from your basement than you would from a house built over nuclear waste storage tanks. Too bad Yucca Mountain lost to politicians, who only have a decade or so of cronyism to survive. But long half lives are associated with low radiation power. Grandpa's wristwatch with the radium dial was much more radioactive. Don't learn your physics from the Sierra Club, which, by the way, was a major supporter of nuclear power in the 60s, before some wealthy New Yorkers learned that the power lines from a new plant would be visible from their estates on the Hudson).
So let’s recap:
We’ll al pretend that Chernobyl isn’t still killing people today with cancer, leukemia, early dementia, birthdefects, and what is termed a ‘host of other illness’ and that it will continue to do so for countless generations. Let’s call it a success story.
We should also plan on pretending that Fukushima is NOT an ongoing disaster despite the evidence, with a lasting legacy of pain suffering and early death. I know, I know...you’d like to limit any discussion of nuclear disasters to ARS (accute radiation sickness) so that if a person doesn’t die within weeks of exposure it ‘just doesn’t count’, but it’s well known that cancer, dementia, leukemia etc. take some time and that radioactive waste is very very patient and will kill for countless generations.
So, you think three nuclear core melt throughs is ‘no harm no foul’? The fact that tons of radioactive fuel now sits in an uncovered, damaged pool in the open air, on a building foundation that went through an explosion and tsunami and can’t be approached too closely to conduct needed repairs is ‘good news’?
I remember the good old days when contemptuous nuclear engineers would ridicule members of the public who were concerned about containment of nuclear fuel - the nuclear engineers would sneer that nuke plants are designed to withstand a direct strike by a commercial jet. Rembmer that? Now that water washed away the capacity for the nuke plants to avoid explosive releases of nuclear fuel and catastrophic melt-throughs...it’s no longer a topic they want to discuss.
Nuclear engineers would like to turn the discusion toward how it’s all the public’s fault - if only we have given them MORE responsiblity and resources!!! I have never seen the nuclear pimps accept responsibility for their actions - and I never will.
The way that the Japanese government withheld it’s early warning system (SPEEDI) data from the populace so they “wouldn’t panic” and therefore the populace fled downwind into the radioctive plumes itself during the early aftermath is a “good move” in your opinion? And watching Japan compel school children to eat food known to be contaminated with radioactive waste is not the least bit disturbing?
Contaminated water, air and food is ...what....good for you? So let’s ignore the fact that the government has prohibited doctors from evaluating the health of Fukushima residents without obtaining explicit permission and with it, the nasty, depressing news that approx 50% of children living in Fukushima have numerous thyroid cysts.
Heck, while we are at it lets just praise the presence of 3 nuclear cores which have escaped containment and continue to emit radioative isotopes into the air we breathe with no end in sight...where the contaminated plume joins the radioative waste that Japan has decided to BURN (well how else to spread it around?) I’d think you’d be slightly concerned that there are radioactive hotspots in Tokyo but no...you seem pretty comfortable to me.
Gee...I wonder what the Japanese government would have done if the initial, dense plume of radioactive waste headed straight for Tokyo in the first hours? Would they have done what the Soviet government did in the aftermath of Chernobyl? Would they have brought the airborne waste to earth with cloud seeding (rain) in ‘less populated areas’ before the radiation could reach the metropolis? That’s what the Soviets did - of course the waste was so toxic that entire villages full of people died outright - but hey...they ‘saved’ the metropolis from heavy, unrecoverable contamination. Tough break living in low density areas, huh?
Now looking at the mismanagement, denial and lies and lets admit it...outright incompetence of those running our nuclear power plants (worldwide), you think we should give them thorium reactors...what...as a reward?
Those nuke people who come on to boards like FR and shriek that anyone who questions their decisions or deceptions is a tree hugger etc. Those nuclear experts who demand that the rest of us shut up or perform dosimetry calculations and “post our work” in order earn the right to participate in the public discourse around the disasterous, damaging history of nuclear power and yet who themselves do not understand the difference between bananas and radioactive cesium should just be given more nuclear power plants and never, ever be made to accept responsibility for their actions? The nuclear engineers who post dosimetry calculations which have no medical relevence...should be given a promotion?
I am suprised so see some FReepers join in the gutter with the propagandists (gee - three core melt-throughs in Japan and I feel GREAT! Now, that wasn’t so bad now was it?) I am surprised to see those who feel we should get comforatble to core melt-throughs because we have proven we can’t stop them from happening and we can’t clean them up!
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