Poll Nuclear Power

[DanM]

What does everyone here think of nuclear power? Personally, I think that it's a safe, clean, and efficient way to generate electricity in spite of past disasters. I know quite a bit about it, since my dad has a degree in physics, works at a nuclear plant, and used to be a reactor operator.

In all honesty, Chernobyl was not caused by the dangers of nuclear energy, but the poor management due to communism. Three Mile Island was a non-disaster, while the Japanese should have built Fukushima somewhere else and stronger.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

I'm a senior instrument mechanic at a nuclear power station. As much as there are things I don't like (mounds and mounds of paperwork due to the 'special and unique' nature of the beast), nuclear power is safe.
That said, there are some nasty things that can happen when procedures are not followed.

 

[fireballs619]

I'm a senior instrument mechanic at a nuclear power station. As much as there are things I don't like (mounds and mounds of paperwork due to the 'special and unique' nature of the beast), nuclear power is safe.
That said, there are some nasty things that can happen when procedures are not followed.

Well ladies and gentlemen, we've heard it from an expert; Nuclear power is safe :thumbup:

In all seriousness, I agree. 99% of the time, dangers that happen with regards to nuclear power aren't inherent with nuclear power, but rather they arise from human error.

 

[RichWall]

Time for Nuclear Power and............ forget oil ......except when it comes to plastics, lubrication, and my favorite..Baloons. w/ helium and you can play w/ your voice...........Ha Ha................

---------- Post added at 08:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:53 PM ----------

Seriously, Nuclear Power plants in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and western Texas...Not on a fault line, plus electric commuter cars... no need for wars!!!!

 

[pbn]

"while the Japanese should have built Fukushima somewhere else and stronger"

How far away from eath quake zones is safe ?

Moving large amounts of electric energy over large distances is problematic with todays tech. You can only use AC distribution systems for relative short distances and using DC for power distribution on that scale is not without problems either. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that transporting electric energy on a large scale, often gets rather impractial.

I don't know enough about nuclear power plants, to be sure, but.. allmost all nuclear plants i Europe are base load plants. I guess cost is one reason, but I'm not sure it's the only reason. If we were to use nuclear power for producing most of the worlds electricity, will the nuclear power plants be able to scale the production ( fast ) enough. ( The last part is an honest question, I simply don't know )

Another potential problem is fuel availibility, if nuclear power plants were to supply the majority of energy for the world. again an honest question, I have no idea of how large the known reserves are, but I do know minning companies are looking at mining uranium is quite remote areas, where they face a lot of problems. I guess they wouldn't if, there was vast amounts readily availible..

For the record, I'm generally in favour of using nuclear power and believe it's quite safe, but.. I do see some challenges ahead

 

[Urwumpe]

I think nuclear power isn't safe. If all works properly, and all procedures are followed, in a perfect world, yes, it would be safe. But the world isn't perfect.

First of all, the nuclear reactions in a reactor are pretty chaotic, a small change in the parameters can result in a strong change in the power output and the neutron flux. Currently, this is controlled by means of computers and many sensors, but these are just as safe as the people who programmed them. A failed sensor or a failed actuator is nothing uncommon as well.

Then you have the operators, which are just human as well. You have many historic examples how one shift of operators simply did not realize how bad the situation actually was, until a new shift with a new set of eyes looked over the instruments and realized that the indications had a mismatch.

Next, you have the solid rocket motor problem. All modern nuclear reactors operate by the idea of having all the fuel inside their pressure vessel. If something goes wrong, you can't just stop the fuel supply and the energy production will cease instantly. You can only catch the neutrons away so the reactions cease. And this isn't as easy as it sounds, such shutdown systems are pretty complicated devices that are designed to operate under all bad conditions that can be imagined. But such complexity also comes with new unimaginable ways to fail.

Finally, for the record: Fukushima was not caused by the Earthquake, or the following Tsunami. If you believe it, quickly forget this. The Earthquake was just the "tiny" drop of water that made the tub overflow. The real problem had been decades of mismanagement. Most critical safety items had only seen inspections on the paper - in reality nobody examined them. Also, it had been a BWR of the very first generations, which had been really build by the lowest bidders. Safety had to stand back for economy, even if scientists already knew that such designs are badly unsafe and the emergency cooling system inadequate. Also, somebody thought it was smarter to have the Diesel tanks for the emergency power supply at the most endangered place new the shore, so it is cheaper to resupply it by barges. Also the cold water pumps had been unprotected, resulting in many of them being damaged by the wave.

A much weaker Earthquake could have had similar results already, and there had been already many paths for completely unexpected accidents caused by critical hardware being unreliable.

So, I am against nuclear power in its current form. A "perfectly safe" nuclear power plant in Germany means it has only over 100 reported anomalies in 25 years of operation. Not every anomaly has to be reported, the law is pretty nuclear power friendly there. What gets reported are only the anomalies that are impossible to hide because you suddenly need to order a replacement part for a critical valve.

I think nuclear fusion could be the better alternative, since it bypasses many problems that we get with current fission designs, but nuclear fusion is not available yet. We invested a lot of tax payers money into nuclear power, and got pretty much nothing in return. Not even cheap energy, even the cheapest nuclear power plants had been unable to produce electricity cheaper than coal power plants, and that despite the tax payer lowering the operation costs a lot. A modern, pretty safe nuclear power plant (Yes, technology does not stand still, but the main problems keep on existing), would already cost twice as much as a modern coal power plant per GWh and that without paying the storage of nuclear waste.

If nuclear power companies would have to pay for the correct disposal of their waste... they would stop using nuclear power instantly.

Also, I am convinced that regenerative power sources are able to provide more than enough electricity, if the power network is just large enough and agile enough to adapt to the changing weather conditions. The wind doesn't stop blowing everywhere at the same time, and somewhere the sun will shine. The tides keep on existing and travel twice around the planet every day. The energy is there.

 

[Artlav]

It's safe when handled with respect. That was not the case in Chernobyl and Fukusima.
In real world we have to consider such mismanagement in the face of reason, and that makes them less than perfectly safe.

One thing is - just how much worse the incident on Fukusima, for example, than other large industrial disasters?
Rocket fuel plants blow up in kiloton range, forests burn from careless people, oil gets spilled into the ocean, chemical refinery vats burst open over the neighbourhoods, dams crack and flood cities of the map, etc.

None of these things are banned because of their danger, but have something comparatively harmless like radiation leak on nuclear planet, and we have doomsday fear-scale disaster reports and mass hysteria.


About wind, tides and sun - sure, they can give you a fraction. But consider that our energy requirements are quickly growing, and would soon exceed solar input over planet's surface.

Pave the Earth with solar panels?
30% of solar input is our consumption, 14% of surface is land, rest is ocean. Efficiency of solar panels are 15-30%. We don't have the surface area to provide the power needed.

We can't have solar collectors in outer space without nuclear rockets, and these are feared away already.

Renewables are a trickle on the scale we can afford them.

 

[Urwumpe]

Well, take for example the disastrous PEPCON accident... how large had the same been compared to Fukushima? The explosions had been bigger, but the contamination almost not existing a few weeks afterwards (except the large amounts of ammonia, that had to be washed away, only a few really nasty chemicals that got produced by the fire consuming plastic insulation)

The explosions leveled the PEPCON plant and Kidd & Co marshmallow manufacturing facility (1180 Marshmallow Lane). Damage within a 1.5 mile (2.4 km) radius was severe, including destroyed cars, damage to buildings and downed power lines. Damage to windows and moderate structure damage was recorded within three miles (5 km) of the incident.

The damage reached a radius of up to 10 miles (16 km), including shattered windows, doors blown off their hinges, cracked windows and injuries from flying glass and debris. At McCarran International Airport, seven miles (11 km) away in Las Vegas, windows were cracked and doors were pushed open. The shock wave buffeted a Boeing 737 on final approach.[2]

An investigation estimated that the larger explosion was equivalent to about 1,000 tons of TNT.[7]

Nuclear and Chemical contamination is something that should not be taken lightly. Chemical contamination is already very nasty, but something that can be removed with lots of effort. Nuclear contamination is pretty much impossible to remove. You can try to carry away as much of the stuff as fast as possible, but you can never remove 100% of it, more likely is 90%.

Just imagine... in a few thousand years, alien archaeologists could take soil samples from a ruin on Earth and determine that a nuclear fission accident must have happened here. Regardless how well you worked on decontaminating the area.

Of course nuclear is another quality in terms of nastiness than chemical. I am no friend of the general fear of nuclear radiation there. When somebody excites himself on how gamma rays can pass through 90 meters of concrete, I will just remark that he can be lucky that he doesn't really exist for gamma rays. But nuclear isotopes and nuclear contamination is something that does worry me. Especially those isotopes that can easily blend into our everyday chemistry.

Of course, somebody will give me a friendly slap now, when I say "think of the children", but in this case, it has to be said: Children react much more sensible to nuclear contamination as adults.

And how do we deal with this problem? We raise the nuclear contamination limits so we don't exceed it in a wide area after every other nuclear anomaly.

That is all not what I call a "professional handling of a risky technology". It is foolish and strongly unprofessional. There is no "Tough and competent" on the blackboards of the politicians or the managers, that decide about the nuclear strategy. And only very few nuclear plant operators would have this on their boards as well, many of them are just quickly trained as much as needed - like not all airline pilots are spending parts of their free time for learning more about their aircraft and knowing better how to respond to unexpected situations.

 

[Mindblast]

Pave the Earth with solar panels?
30% of solar input is our consumption

May i ask where you take this number from?

I remember an article about plans for huge solar powerplants in the Sahara desert. It was said there that an area of 90000 km^2 of the Sahara filled with solar powerplants would be enough to produce all the electricity that is currently used worldwide.

 

[Urwumpe]

Another number: If you would just pave 2% of Germany's land surface with wind turbines, all electricity currently produced by nuclear power plants could be replaced by wind energy (including that wind energy is only available around 30% of the time). 8% of Germany's land surface is available for wind turbines (far enough away from settlements, not in national parks, with enough wind)

 

[C3PO]

I remember an article about plans for huge solar powerplants in the Sahara desert. It was said there that an area of 90000 km^2 of the Sahara filled with solar powerplants would be enough to produce all the electricity that is currently used worldwide.

I doubt that could be done with photovoltaic panels. It would require a huge leap in efficiency.

BTW nice to see you again

I voted "yes" but I don't think the poll asked the correct question. The important question is "Can nuclear power be safe". And do think you can operate nuclear power stations with acceptable safety margins.
I can't answer "yes" for every power station, because I don't have any data to base that on. So I guess I'll just stay on the fence for now.

 

[Wishbone]

I remember there were ideas to tap into the jet streams' energy...

 

[T.Neo]

Earth's energy budget;

- Nearly 173 petwatts (173 000 terawatts) of solar energy.

- 44 to 47 terawatts of geothermal energy.

- 3 terawatts of tidal energy.

This graph demonstrates the availability of different forms of energy in a graphical sense.

So the power is there, on a scale bigger than anything we could usefully use. The only problem is being able to use it effectively. If we can do that, then energy problems are effectively solved for us.

It does not produce contamination either by its operation or by accident. It does not run out, and it does not produce problematic waste. The only limit is the level of power consumption beyond which environments and/or global feedback loops are disrupted, but at low levels of consumption, there should not be much difference. A full 100 terawatts- still more than five times our current rate of energy consumption- is less than a thousandth of Earth's total energy budget.

 

[Artlav]

May i ask where you take this number from?

Out of the mix of confusion, it is off by an order of 1000.

So, the lack of energy input is not an immediate problem. We'll have to face it eventually, but by that time hopefully thee will be something new.


On similar topic - isn't wind energy a subset of solar, not a separate set?
Weather, and therefore winds, are driven largely by sun's heat, no?

 

[Wishbone]

Re: wind. Ultimately most of energy sources stem from the Sun, but wind has different diurnal and geographic patterns, as well as environmental impact, maintenance, running and capital costs.

 

[Zatnikitelman]

I'm curious Urwumpe, you keep saying that nuclear power is unsafe. Well how do you define "safety?" Are you privy to the details of what isn't being done that should be?
Since I'm not privy to the details, I can only define safety as what hasn't happened that would be very bad. Namely, the fact that out of the 104 reactors we've been operating at 65 plants over the past 40 years, we've had ONE, release of radiation, and ZERO direct deaths due to nuclear power in the United States. I'd call that pretty darn safe.

 

[Urwumpe]

I'm curious Urwumpe, you keep saying that nuclear power is unsafe. Well how do you define "safety?" Are you privy to the details of what isn't being done that should be?

First of all: Death is not the worst. I already consider it unbearable, if a failure results in serious adverse effects on the health of people. Which all nuclear power accidents had.

I define safety as "A system is in every situation controllable", even when a failure is on the way, it should not exceed defined safety limits. The less likely it is to exceed its design base accident, the better.

In terms of nuclear safety, the definition is pretty simple summarized as "Any release of nuclear material has to be prevented". There is no safe venting of gases from inside the reactor, that does not also contaminate the region a bit away from the reactor.

If you can't ensure this minimum requirement, you are already on a bad way. Germany installed a special type of vent valve into its BWRs after a series of accidents resulted in uncontrolled release of nuclear material (since the primary way to prevent the worst case in a BWR is reducing pressure so the ECCS can kick in). Didn't prevent additional releases afterwards by other paths.

Next, you should NEVER be in a situation where you don't know what goes on in your reactor. This happened in Chernobyl and TMI, but not in Fukushima, but still, it is a common problem that happens pretty often in smaller accidents.

So, by that talking: Is nuclear power safe? We have a strong relation between nuclear power plants and children with nasty bone cancer. Too strong to claim it is not related to the nuclear power plant. But by the politically dictated radiation limits, such cancer cases such not exist, the officially measured radiation is too small there.

We are not talking about children getting a tiny allergy there, such bone cancer is really nasty and usually means the death after a relatively long life with lots of pain and problems. Such cancer cases are also impossible to link directly to any nuclear accidents in such plants, since the outbreak and the death of the people is not easily put into causality there. But when many children are involved, you have a statistic, and no longer individual fates.

http://www.bfs.de/en/bfs/druck/strahlenthemen/stth_kinderkrebs.html

The only alternative theory there, why you have a twice higher risk of bone cancer and leukemia within 5 km of a nuclear power plant, is the existence of high power voltage lines there... but other regions also have them, without such cancer risks.

So nuclear power plants have a pretty strong adverse effect on the health of humans. 77 cases of bone cancer instead of 50 in the tested areas is not just statistic noise, that is a pretty strong measurement.

 

[N_Molson]

:goodposting:

Nuclear energy is about taking an acceptable risk. We need it for now, so we use it. But incidents like TMI, Chernobyl, & Fukushima make those risks less and less acceptable. And most of the plants in service all around the world are aging. For exemple, in France, the situation is very serious : we have 53 or more reactors in activity, and we are 80% dependant of the nuclear. Which is obviously a super-lobby (AREVA), a society from which the state holds most of the shares. But a lot of those reactors are nearing or are older than 30 years. Their service life is extended again and again. The risks are increasing with the age of the plants, undoubtly. :shrug:

Power plants in France

Correction : the exact number is 58 nuclear reactors on 19 sites.

 

[Coolhand]

Are they safe, or is it just that for the most part (since an accident in the US or anywhere has effects outside that country), the world has been fairly lucky? And what is the impact of just one serious accident? consequences that are with us for millennia, not to mention the gigantic clean up costs for that which you can actually deal with.

(thinking for one of certain areas of the UK, which only within the last year or two have been declared "safe" for livestock after chernobyl, in a completely different part of the world blew in '86)

Safe is a word that needs to be put into context, its a relative thing, nothing is "safe" as you might consider its idealised meaning. and its "safe" until something goes wrong, safe until something unexpected happens, safe while operating under normal parameters... Its just a word people use and means nothing.

So its not even really about how safe it is in terms of numbers of incidents - nearly every other thing you can think of to heat water or generate power carries far less consequences when something does go wrong (as it is bound to go wrong)

I don't think you can just compare numbers of accidents and declare something "safe" because it has fewer. Not to mention (accidents aside) the constant releases of radiation - gamma "shine", radioactive particles, nuclear weapons production.... etc.

Its insanity, really.

 

[T.Neo]

Safe is a relative issue. The use of a pencil can be fatal, but the series of events leading up to a pencil-induced fatality are very unlikely.

Can nuclear power be safe? Why not? If everything is operating correctly, you can get less radiation dosage from a nuclear powerplant than from a coal powerplant.

Of course, if things are not operating correctly, you can have bad results. How bad is bad? Must things be considered 'safe' if we have a Fukushima ever 20 years? Or small releases of radiation every three months? Must we have a legitimate worry of the entire planet self-destructing in a fury of nuclear fire?

Air travel is considered 'safe'- but aircraft still crash, and aircraft will still crash. People still fly on aircraft. If something like a 747 goes down- which they do, every so often- then hundreds of people die. But it isn't regarded as an unsafe deathtrap design.

There is no insanity with nuclear power, just ignorance.

If there was no ignorance, of course nuclear power would be perfect. But just as physics constrains the way a reactor works, human nature unfortunately constrains the way a reactor is- in practice- operated.