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Nuclear power!

EDF

By EDF
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Guest GroundHOG-2010

Guest GroundHOG-2010

Posted
Posted

First, is this about nuclear fission or fusion. If you can\'t identify the to, eather look it up or don\'t post a random thread about it.

If its fusion, then I say that is isn\'t that dangiorous, and is a great idea.

If its fission, its ok I guess, but the current nuclear reactor is extremely inefficient in the power producing method, and is dangerous.

Second, I am as tired as hell, but can still post a decent post. If your that damn tired, then don\'t post and wait for tomorrow once you have slept.

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witeken

witeken

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Pro nuclear? You know that the Hiroshima nuke killed over 50.000 people within seconds after the explosion. Thousands of people didn\'t even know that a nuke was exploding. They burned just because of the light-heat. The shockwave destroyed the city within a radius of a few kilometers to the ground. The radiation made yet another thousands of people sick. Yet another few nukes on Japan made an end on the war of Japan VS the US.

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mincespy

mincespy

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Pro nuclear? You know that the Hiroshima nuke killed over 50.000 people within seconds after the explosion. Thousands of people didn\'t even know that a nuke was exploding. They burned just because of the light-heat. The shockwave destroyed the city within a radius of a few kilometers to the ground. The radiation made yet another thousands of people sick. Yet another few nukes on Japan made an end on the war of Japan VS the US.

He\'s not talking about nuclear bombs, but nuclear power.

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iamwearingpants

iamwearingpants

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There are two problems with nuclear power:

1.) It\'s not necessarily dangerous, nuclear plants have the lowest accident rates of any power source. But when something goes wrong, the effects to the environment and massive.

2.) Nuclear waste is radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. Although there are some rare isotopes/elements that we find inside the waste most of it is useless and needs to be stored away. The problem is there is no way of permanently keeping the waste safe from nature (and mixing with it eventually)

Coal power plants are constantly polluting the environment, probably doing more damage than we can imagine. There are thousands more of them too. In the long run, nuclear power is much better for civilization than most other conventional sources.

Therefore, I\'m totally pro nuclear.

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Neomex

Neomex

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Posted

I don\'t know about you, but I do not want to live near the nuclear bomb...

Think about nuclear reactor and tornado. Radioactive waste thrown everywhere.

Imagine nuclear reactors located in range of 500km of eachother. Now imagine disaster in one of them.

Ideal target for terrorrists or bored high-school people...

On the other hand, we will soon destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons anyway.

There always will be wars and sooner or later someone will use it.

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Kryten

Kryten

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Think about nuclear reactor and tornado. Radioactive waste thrown everywhere.

...Where do you hell do you live, where you\'ve got tornadoes that can tear through 5 or 6 metres of reinforced concrete? Venus?

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RedDwarfIV

RedDwarfIV

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Sellafield was made worse by the fact that they tried to put the fire out with fans.

Three Mile Island was a combination of damage to a release valve, human error, ambiguous control room interfaces, and a coolant failure, among other things.

Chernobyl was a safety test on a new backup generator to run off the turbines as they slowed down so there would be power whilst the diesel generators were started that went wrong, and a major factor was that the reactor itself was inherently built by an unsafe Soviet design. There was also some human error factored into it.

But seriously speaking, only around 100 people have died directly from radiation exposure from nuclear power plants. Yes, there was radiation poisoning, and yes there was cancer, and yes, a huge area around Chernobyl had to be abandoned. However, it is still safer than driving a car.

And Fukushima never devolved into an actual nuclear incident. The sea walls just weren\'t high enough - and guess what, it was built on the side of Japan that gets the least tsunamis.

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Johno

Johno

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With respect to the disaster potential:

Much of the problem is actually in human perception. Take the Fukushima accident for example. In the entire contaminated area (excluding the reactor compound itself) the level of radiation is so small that in practical terms it means little to a human organism. We are extremely conservative about radiation, perhaps more so than is warranted. Let\'s put it in perspective - your radiation-related increase to cancer risk from living in the Fukushima contaminated zone[1] is so slight that if you\'re a smoker it\'s not statistically significant. And if you were to take people from Tokyo (one of the more polluted places in Japan) and put them into the Fukushima area, their overall cancer rate would DECREASE.

Also, considering nuclear waste:

There is plenty of misunderstanding about the nature of nuclear waste. It is certainly true that some of it will be radioactive for upwards of 100,000 years. But it needs to be understood that this is not the same as saying it will be DANGEROUS for 100,000 years!

For perspective: You are radioactive. The potassium in your body is constantly emitting low levels of nuclear radiation. But people aren\'t dangerous. Or, at least, they\'re not a radiation hazard - they may be dangerous in other ways! :)

Okay, so high level radioactive waste won\'t decay to non-radioactive lead until 100,000+ years in the future. Okay. But it doesn\'t NEED to decay that much.

In 20 years (not 100,000 years!) the high-level isotopes have decayed sufficiently that the waste is safe to handle with established procedures. From there the danger decreases steadily.

Also, if governments around the world would approve Gen IV reactors, it would mean a sudden and complete end to much of the reactor waste problem - Generation IV nuclear reactors consume the waste of old reactors as fuel.

Hope this is some extra fuel for thought . . . .

[1] There are other reasons for problems in the Fukushima region, one of the biggest being that about a year ago a massive Tsunami came in and smashed the living daylights out of everything in sight. The towns and villages in the area will have to be entirely rebuilt before sending people there is a practical consideration, radiation or no radiation. However, let\'s concentrate on radiation hazards.

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RedDwarfIV

RedDwarfIV

Posted
Posted

O_O Bring in Nuclear Electricity!!!

Wat

Also, if governments around the world would approve Gen IV reactors, it would mean a sudden and complete end to much of the reactor waste problem - Generation IV nuclear reactors consume the waste of old reactors as fuel.

They don\'t like Gen IVs because they use waste products that would otherwise be securely locked down in a place like Sellafield, instead of housed in a place where apparently terrorists might be able to get their hands on it. Which is a silly excuse.

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Polecat Industries

Polecat Industries

Posted
Posted

I don\'t know about you, but I do not want to live near the nuclear bomb...

Think about nuclear reactor and tornado. Radioactive waste thrown everywhere.

Imagine nuclear reactors located in range of 500km of eachother. Now imagine disaster in one of them.

Ideal target for terrorrists or bored high-school people...

On the other hand, we will soon destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons anyway.

There always will be wars and sooner or later someone will use it.

Thank you for your sunny disposition.

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Herpderpsslerps

Herpderpsslerps

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Posted

Not a single post about Breeder reactors to help reduce nuclear waste.

Seriously, the only fault with breeders is the spent fuel rods that are breed back are being refined closer and closer to weapons grade. Which, when you think about it, you can make a hell of a lot of bombs for a Project Orion style ship!

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Misterspork

Misterspork

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Posted

People, we get more radiation from Radon in the air than any nuclear reactor. Radioactive material being dumped everywhere is still bad, as high level wastes do stay dangerous for thousands of years, but it\'s either this or dumping millions of tons of pollution into the air and water every year, and plus it\'s not like it\'s being dumped on your houses or into the middle of a rainforest. I just hope a method of fusion power generation is created soon that can be used everywhere. This will solve all our problems.

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Guest GroundHOG-2010

Guest GroundHOG-2010

Posted
Posted

Stop using the word Nuclear. Its fission. If you use the word Nuclear it includes fusion, which is much safer, reliues on water and is generally more powerful. But then... no one is going to listen to me, so ill just put this here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

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