Nuclear Power - Pros and Cons

I seem to recall someone from the DOE respond to a question about terrorist threats at a nuclear plant with something to the effect of a nuclear plant being more secure than most military sites — the effort and resources it would take to break into one could have been spent doing several times the damage elsewhere in far less time. If they wanted a nuclear weapon that badly they could make it themselves in that amount of time and effort.

relevant

edited 14th Mar '11 1:16:25 PM by Pykrete

I said at current consumption. Which would require a large amount of nuclear reactors to be decommissioned and new, fuel efficient ones be built in their stead.

...Good luck though, I can already hear the environmentalists screaming.

Remember that these were also forty year old reactors that were about to be decommissioned and there are modern reactor designs that are physically unable to melt down.

Isn't there something like how the rods can never be properly disposed of or something?

I don't like the idea of burying something like that in the ground. Assuming that is how it goes. Hopefully its not as bad as it sounds.

But what do I know, I'm just a Luddite, hypocrite, environmentalist pig

Also I'd prefer if we found alternative energy sources and had them really high as a priority.

Oil and Coal suck.

edited 14th Mar '11 1:46:29 PM by Thorn14

Exactly. What people seem to forget about stuff like Chernobyl is that , what with new reactors and safety techniques, it's pretty much physically impossible for it to happen again, save for deliberate sabotage.

As for Three Mile Island? The containment procedures actually worked there, and very little radiation was released to the outside world.

In my opinion, the biggest issues with nuclear power are a) How do we safely and environmentally consciously mine the fuel? and b) What do we do with the waste that's not going to be far too expensive?

edited 14th Mar '11 1:46:06 PM by OurGLORIOUSLeader

Make chairs for Kim Jong-Il!

Put it underground for temp. Then when we build an orbital elevator we can blast it into the sun.

:P

The nuclear waste fears are because the waste of the older reactors takes several millenia to decay to safe radiation levels. This is not an issue with newer reactors, where the output waste decays to negligibility within a few centuries.

Even with deliberate sabotage, AFAIK, it's not possible for the reactor to melt down. (At least, if the sabotage doesn't stop the reactor working immediatly.)

edited 14th Mar '11 2:04:04 PM by Yej

Perhaps we can do that with our garbage in the future too.

I mean who cares if it comes back to bite us in the ass 1000 years in the future?

Centuries is still a long ass time. Of course we have waste right now like that too I guess.

edited 14th Mar '11 2:05:25 PM by Thorn14

I'm just going to pop in and say that my family is all for having a Nuclear Power plant in our "backyard" and that these events suport that oppinion, not detract from it.

^^Why not thinking of it as buying time? We're not destroying the entirety of our biosphere today, so that we can figure out what to do with the waste tommorow.

Because I'm a cynic and I think each generation will simply have that opinion of "not our problem, let future generations handle it." until its too late.

I KNOW thats going to happen with oil.

^ Well, until we run short of it, anyway.

It's a lot more sensible than shutting down the power grid until we can set up enough windmills and solar plants to meet demand. To say nothing of the economics.

Part of what really drives me crazy about the whole, "OH NOES REACTORS CAN EXPLODE BECAUSE TEHY'RE NUCLEAR!?!?!?" scare is that people are ignorant of the fact that reactors CAN NOT EXPLODE. It is physically impossible.

"But why did Chernobyl explode"? They ask, "Because it totally did."

Here's the thing. Chernobyl had a bone-headed design. Not just in the containment, or the fact that it was a positive charge reactor, but because the water coolant was DIRECTLY BELOW THE CORE. When you have water directly below a core that reaches temperatures of 52,000F a steam explosion is what you're going to get if superheated Uranium is in contact with it. That's why it exploded, and it's also why reactors aren't built this way.

Pros:

• It surely provides a LOT of energy.
• It doesn't emit greenhouse gases.
• Barring natural disasters, acts of war or utter batshit lunacy on the part of the operators, nuclear plants are typically very safe.

Cons:

• Nuclear waste lastes, like, forever, and it's very harmful.
• Power plants are very expensive to build.
• Failures can be catastrophic.

edited 14th Mar '11 3:23:16 PM by SavageHeathen

Centuries is good. You don't want things to break down over decades if you can help it. There's a reason for this but it will probably disturb you if I explain it.

Edit:

No, no they can't. This was a catastrophic level failure.

edited 14th Mar '11 3:27:27 PM by Deboss

(ITER FTW!)

And yeah, what happened in Japan is a catastrophic failure. Chernobyl simply cannot happen.

edited 14th Mar '11 3:31:42 PM by Yej

^^I'm always up for being disturbed.

You can effectively consider it disposed of when it decays into a lump of metal less hazardous than the original radioactive uranium. Go ahead and make, I dunno, paperweights or hood ornaments out of it by that point.

As for length of time to do that, consider that a plastic milk jug or styrofoam cup takes hundreds of times longer than nuclear waste to decompose.

Not only that, but it was being run in a reckless way to switch cores during operation so they could breed bomb fuel, and ran unsafe tests late at night with the safeties off while the reactors were understaffed. Chernobyl was a confluence of about 400 different kinds of stupid.

edited 14th Mar '11 4:21:31 PM by Pykrete

Those can be recycled. True, a lot of Americans are not doing so, but they can be.

Oh, another pro:

• we use less oil, coal, and natural gas power plants

This is important because, not only are those going to be used up long before we would use up nuclear fuel, they are used in so many other things. Just look at the list of products just patrolium is used for (note the fact that plastics are on the list further down).

edited 14th Mar '11 4:30:45 PM by Belian

I have to say I'm hesitant to jump on this bandwagon of "fujisaki-1 and chernobyl proves nuclear power is 100% safe". Call me brainwashed by the liberal media, but it's not sinking in.

You know what's an even better alternative to coal, oil and natural gas? Wind and solar. So the majority of us are more eager to build a nuclear plant in our backyard than a couple windmills?

Wind is unreliable. It's nice to take a bit of a load off the main grid, but it's not a good backbone for it.

Solar is hideously expensive in all forms, only works for half the day given good weather, and you have to replace parts often, which in turn generates an assload of chemical waste. Photocells are particularly notorious for this, so feel free to give a slap upside the head to anyone who wants to install them on the roof of their building — but even concentrating arrays have to be put in places where they're likely to corrode fast.

edited 14th Mar '11 4:37:28 PM by Pykrete

With current efficiencies factored in? Yes.

Well, the nuclear power station will provide a hilariously larger quantity of power than that couple of windmills, or even an entire farm of windmills.

Not to mention that the nuclear power station will produce energy at pretty much all times, not just when it's windy. There are still mega problems with ensuring supply when it comes to wind and solar energy, and possibly tidal as well.

The only other solution is saying, "Oh well we won't have power some of the time." Which is ridiculous. (I've seen people argue this; they then tend to mention how man was faring well long before we were constantly generating power, how we don't need lights at night because we sleep in cycles and oh no I can't read any more because my head has caught fire◊)

edited 14th Mar '11 4:39:24 PM by EthZee