Nuclear power is clean and safe

When, as a society, are we truly going to wake up to the reality that the days of "cheap energy" are over? Cheap energy has always come at an environmental cost that we pass on to future generations, be it dirty coal with the obvious issues to air and water, oil, with it's obvious issues with air an water, to natural gas, with it's issues with air and water, to Nukes?

Everybody wants some nice easy solution that won't cost them much money. Well folks,, it aint out there in the way you think. We can't drill baby drill our way out, we can't hydro frack our way out, we can't build more nukes our way out! Wake up folks, the bills are increasingly coming home to roost, and the sooner we do real investment on solar wind, and indeed reasonable conservation, the sooner we will arrive at our "cheap energy" future!

Icarus.

Ps I write this after producing most of my own power for the day. PV for electric, 100%, wood for heat, 100%, wood for cooking ~ 50% (warm day) a bit of propane for the stove.

 

Double efficiency and you cut cost by one-half. Increase building standards for homes, business, churches & schools. Architecture must be climate-appropriate. Do these sustainable things and you eliminate the need for expensive fission plants, while taking advantage of passive solar (fusion) power. We have a multitude of power, other than fission, available: geothermal, passive solar, hydro, wind, conservation and efficiency. These are far more cost effective than short term fission plants.

 

Ok, here a a proposition for any Nuke builder/opperator.

You can build a Nuke facility any where you like provided two things happen. The first is 100% of the financing, and I mean no gimmicks, 100% comes from the private sector with no tax breaks or credits of holidays, no what ever.

The second is buy enough insurance (once again 100% from the private sector, same conditions) to cover 100% of any potential loss,, lets just say a Chernoble size accident.

Do those two things and I say, go ahead!

Bet you can't do either, let alone both!

Icarus

 

Icarus, I admire your ability to generate you're own energy, especially in that many areas of your daily life. And by-and-large I agree with the points you make here.
That being said, I have a much more bleak view of our world's energy crisis. I dont think there is a way to power the earth's skyrocketing population without either a MAJOR technological breakthrough, or dire enviromental consequences.
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I don't disagree, especially the part about population and rising expectations amongst the have nots. The problem is that every one aspires to our level of luxury and despite the thoughts of "american exceptionalism" there just plain isn't enough to go around at our level of consumption, environmental costs not even being in the calculus.

That said, it is not nearly as hard to reduce demand, dramatically, without "going back to the stone age". As a family of 2 we use ~ 1/10 as much energy net/net as the average american family, with little effect on our life style. Through well thought out conservation and simple things like simple solar hot water, driving less, and driving the Prius when we can, our lives are pretty normal. We just don't wantonly waste energy!


Will that solve all the earths ills? Of course not but if we truly invested in alternatives, conservation instead of chasing phantom cheap energy, we would be that much further ahead.

I would posit, that if I did an energy audit of nearly any American household, I could cut their total energy use in 1/2 in 2 years, with little impact on their life style! It would require some investment in conservation and renewables, but the pay off would be quick, especially since we are seeing gas in the $4 range.

Gotta go for tonight,

Icarus

 

At Fukushima one, reactors 1 and 3 had previous hydrogen explosions, damaging their outer containment. Now reactor 2 also exploded. Not clear how similar this was? The news seems to be arriving slowly this time. One hour since explo.

Also I wish for a definite statement that units 4 5 6 (offline) are completely stable, even if no cooling water were available.

Clearly units 1 2 3 are in "cool or core melt" mode right now.

 

Scary stuff ....

 

NHK WORLD English confirms this.

 

Another good source

http://allthingsnuclear.org/tagged/Japan_nuclear

 

The most important variable is the past weeks power load history. A reactor that has been running at 100% capacity (and usually one is) for weeks, will have the largest decay heat load upon loss of cooling. One that has been running at 50% for the past week is in a much better, but still destructive condition.

I would expect the total loss of power to start the same sequence on all reactors. The most heavily loaded goes first, and then works it's way down the line depending on the power history. The only reactors not in this sequence are the ones that had been shutdown for weeks prior to this disaster.

 

See if you can buy auto insurance for any potential loss? Maybe you hitting a group of 10 people or setting a large building on fire with a collision in the lobby?

How about insurance for a coal plant for all of the lungs they destroy?

 

It is looking pretty bad....

What if one goes and then people can no longer stay around due to the radiation to keep the other two stable?

 

This is really good information. Lots of details here I did not know about cooling and MOX.

 

To me this seems like a good method for saying nuke power is actually pretty safe for what you get out of it...

Think about it. Multiple earthquakes, the biggest being beyond what anyone ever thought. Then a 7m tall tsunami shortly thereafter. Now they have contained 2 of 3 active cores, and the other is not gone yet. To top it all off, these building are 40years old.

Not too shabby...

 

the situation is getting worse by the minute. Toaster, what planet are you on?
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It was a 9.0 magnitude quake and waves 20ft+ high. These are not normal circumstances. Yes the situation is getting worse, but it is not catastrophic yet.

Very few things would survive such measures. As long as seawater is continuously pumped over the core everything will be ok. The problem is that the pumps and generators are failing, and so they are failing to bring in the water.

 

Well, technically, that may be true. But, there's a huge difference between fail safe and nuclear meltdown. The first two waves - seismic and tsunami - are already catastrophic, without the third wave of radioactivity.

 

Beware the Ides of March.

 

And Mussolini had the trains running on time!

"No worries folks, we're only stopping for a bit of ice" Edward John Smith 15 April, 1912

 

Then your solution is...to turn off all of the nuclear power plants? After all - they can't be safeguarded against any and all disasters that might befall them. No one can get insurance to cover all the potential damage a nuclear accident of biblical proportions might cause, it would bankrupt all but the largest insurance companies. Nevermind that technology is advancing all the time, and that the military has regularly used nuclear power generation safely for decades without massive incident.

Environmental regulations are already making it impossible to build new coal fired power generation plants, so they are a non-starter as a replacement. Of course, on the bright side is that we don't have to worry about air pollution from that source anymore. No more soot, ash, or nasty smelling smoke.

Of course, we can build wind turbine farms... except...we can't. NIMBYs scream, "They kill my precious birdies, and make a WUF WUF WUF WUF sound, I don't wanna see them or hear them!!" and no one can build a large wind turbine in a residential neighborhood in most states. If the wind doesn't blow, your not generating electricity. So they are out.

Solar power....isn't gonna work out... sorry. Might in the future, but not right now. The only plants that generate serious amounts of electricity are in the desert. We'd have to fill the Sahara with them in order to even come close to replacing the power generated conventionally. Forget PV panels, they generate a very small fraction of the power the sodium tower ones do, and the panels are expensive.

We won't even mention geothermal and the 'OMG it will cause a volcano to eat my home' crowd.

Use natural gas? Sure... we have a huge supply of it... until we start using it for mainstay power generation.... then it will cost us measly residential cusotmers thousands to heat our home a month.

The future is not looking very bright - in fact, it's looking like it will be very dark, cold, and miserable if we just turn our backs on every form of power generation we have available to us because of what -might- happen.