Nuclear vs Fossil Fuel

D_Davy_Downspout

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Drill here, drill NOW!

Don't pretend to know what you're talking about, you sucker for big oil. The US has 3% of the world's reserves, but 25% of it's consumption. If we got all our oil pumping now, it wouldn't make much of a difference. Of course, it would be years to get all of that oil online if we pumped today, and we don't have the refining capacity to deal with it even if we did.

Oh...and while you're at it...throw up a couple nuke plants as well. Forget all of those half-baked ideas like wind mills and solar power...those types of fairy tale sources of power have no future.

They have plenty of future. The technology isn't there yet, but promising. Odds are you need all of those to make an intelligent modern power grid.
 

B_nyvin

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The plant that malfunctioned was made in the 1960's. If it takes a 9.0 (or 8.9 depending on source) earthquake to cause an incident at a 50 year old plant than Maybe the real answer is to stop extending the life of the plants indefinately.
 

Industrialsize

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The plant that malfunctioned was made in the 1960's. If it takes a 9.0 (or 8.9 depending on source) earthquake to cause an incident at a 50 year old plant than Maybe the real answer is to stop extending the life of the plants indefinately.
All Nuclear Facilities in the United States are 40 years old or MORE>
 

B_crackoff

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All Nuclear Facilities in the United States are 40 years old or MORE>

And the new ones they're considering are planned to run up to 60 years.

Seriously, the fact that no one seems to know what's happening - 3 reactors in possible meltdown, & no real clue what will ultimately actually happen - its got to make anyone pretty cautious.

It doesn't help when you read some of the myths listed here from the nuclear energy institute. I'd always think that a Japanese nuclear plant was better constructed than a US built one, & yet it says the risk of a core meltdown is once in 100,000 years for an individual plant.

We've got 3 in one plant now.

If they can't get their probabilities right on this, what the hell else is cock-eyed?

Nuclear Energy Institute - Myths & Facts About Safety
 

TheScotsman

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At least 3 reactors somewhere between partial and total meltdown=REALLY BAD SHIT

I get that, it's developed a little since I posted that, but there's a lot of reasons why it's a different scenario. I didn't mean to come across like I was downplaying how horrific it's all been.


How do you expect people to feel after seeing what 2 Nuclear bombs did to a country of people? That should strike fear into anyone regardless of when it happened.

I get your point, but these aren't nuclear bombs at all.
 

_Jonesy

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Nuclear disasters are rare. I think it should be used but only as a temporary measure until better sources of energy are found. We should be putting loads of money into developing new sources of energy, maybe plasma or something.

Could have more applications too.
 

Jason

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The Japanese story is still unfolding, so in a way it is too early to draw conclusions. But here goes anyway!

Around the world there are going to be renewed concerns about nuclear power making it harder for governments to comit to building more. Of course there will demands for more windmills and better insulation, but this really isn't a solution. For the UK it is hard to see how else we will get our power in the future, and France (on our doorstep) has shown that it can be done safely. But I cannot really see any Conservative MP supporting a nuclear power station in their constituency, so I imagine the idea is being kicked into the long grass of post 2015. Or maybe we build nuclear power-stations in safe Labour seats that the Conservatives have no hope of winning!

I think we are looking for increased demand for oil and gas, and therefore increased prices. And this makes marginal wells viable. For the UK there is yet more incentive to drill both in the North Atlantic (west of Shetland) and in the South Atlantic (around Falkland) and to do deals with the wild east (Siberia).
 

helgaleena

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We could have had ethanol cars and electric cars a lot faster if it weren't for the corporations wanting to make certain every last bit of 'black gold' gets burnt up first. :frown:
 

B_crackoff

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We could have had ethanol cars and electric cars a lot faster if it weren't for the corporations wanting to make certain every last bit of 'black gold' gets burnt up first. :frown:

Not sure that ethanol is any kind of answer unless we have a stable, or better, a rapidly declining world population.

It's not always that more efficient, it's better used as electricity, it uses fossil fuel to farm & convert it, it takes about a century to recover the carbon emitted converting non arable land to ethanol production, soil erosion, fresh water depletion, food vs fuel dilemma etc etc.

I'm not sure that the world wouldn't be a better place if we all just use/consumed less, & let ourselves take a few decades breather to consider & reflect.

There's a nasty consequence from any form of power generation.
 

Industrialsize

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Not true, STP was the first nuclear power plant in Texas, beginning operation in 1988. In 1996, the two South Texas units were two of the top 20 electricity-generating nuclear units worldwide.
I stand corrected.......I heard it on the news. here's some moe accurate info:
Half of U.S. nuclear reactors over 30 years old

Half of the nation's 104 nuclear reactors are over 30 years old, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Most of the remaining reactors are at least 20 years old.

Originally granted licenses to operate for 40 years, most of the country's reactors have applied for a 20-year extension. Sixty-two extensions have been granted so far, and 20 are still pending, according to the industry group the Nuclear Energy Institute.
Nuclear reactors in U.S. are aging - half over 30 years old - Mar. 15, 2011
 
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Cuddler

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Not sure that ethanol is any kind of answer unless we have a stable, or better, a rapidly declining world population.

It's not always that more efficient, it's better used as electricity, it uses fossil fuel to farm & convert it, it takes about a century to recover the carbon emitted converting non arable land to ethanol production, soil erosion, fresh water depletion, food vs fuel dilemma etc etc.

It's just bad the way the US is making it: from corn. Not only does the process use more petroleum than it replaces, but since humans eat corn, diverting it to fuel creates other problems.

In Brazil, the sun is much more intense than in the US, and they make it from sugar cane. Ethanol farms / factories there can be self sufficient, requiring no petroleum. The needed electricity is produced by burning the crushed cane, and the farm vehicles run on ethanol.

Sugarcane ethanol: Brazil's biofuel success - SciDev.Net


I'm not sure that the world wouldn't be a better place if we all just use/consumed less, & let ourselves take a few decades breather to consider & reflect.

Agreed.
 

hammer87

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It's just bad the way the US is making it: from corn. Not only does the process use more petroleum than it replaces, but since humans eat corn, diverting it to fuel creates other problems.

In Brazil, the sun is much more intense than in the US, and they make it from sugar cane. Ethanol farms / factories there can be self sufficient, requiring no petroleum. The needed electricity is produced by burning the crushed cane, and the farm vehicles run on ethanol.

Sugarcane ethanol: Brazil's biofuel success - SciDev.Net




Agreed.

Beat me to it. Not to mention that the reason that ethanol fuel is on the cheap would be from government subsidizing. They are researching using the refuse ( stalks, husks, grass) to generate the heat for the fermintation process, but that is not working as well as thought. The energy in-energy out process for corn based ethanol is not a viable replacement.

In my opinion, fusion is the answer. I think that is where we need to put our research funding. I know it sounds far reached, but the amount of energy there is unreal.
 
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Cuddler

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In my opinion, fusion is the answer. I think that is where we need to put our research funding. I know it sounds far reached, but the amount of energy there is unreal.

Bringing up Brazil again: Fusion is the answer of the future. And always will be.

Fusion power has been 20 years away since at least the 80s. Every time we make progress in one area, new obstacles arise.
Fusion's False Dawn: Scientific American
 

helgaleena

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rough_neck_9_1

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This is off a Cracked.com article, it's more related to statistical fears and why some of them are full of shit

It's hard to believe now, but nuclear energy was once a pretty promising and popular form of power. For a while in the 1950s, the design world was smitten with the atomic aesthetic, and everything kind of took on this spacey, futuristic look. Even toys got in on atomic energy fever:

Nuclear energy was literally all fun and games until a few meltdowns burst our atomic dream bubble. By the time Three Mile Island had its partial meltdown, most of the American public was terrified of powering even a toaster with something so insanely dangerous. From Three Mile on, it became so difficult to sell the public on nuclear energy that no new power plants have been built in the U.S. in 30 years.

Here's the thing, though. No one died as a result of the Three Mile Island disaster. No one even got injured or sick. The radiation released was the equivalent of one-sixth of a chest X-ray. In fact, even with nuclear power plants still in operation in the United States today, you and everyone who works in them still effectively have a 0 percent chance of dying from radiation poisoning.

While people did die at Chernobyl, and many people got sick, poor design and safety violations were so egregious and numerous that the International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group published a 148-page report in 1993 detailing every possible thing that went wrong and how it could have been easily fixed. That doesn't change the fact that everyone around the accident got massively screwed in a big way, of course, but it seems that our initial estimates of the long-term damage of a nuclear event may have been exaggerated.

What You Should be Afraid of you ask?

Every other source of energy; For example, coal kills more miners every few years than the initial blast at Chernobyl. This, of course, doesn't take into account air pollution from coal, which dwarfs those numbers yearly. But come on, that's not really surprising, is it? We know coal is bad for us -- that's why we're developing all these great green forms of energy. They're renewable and better for the environment.

Unfortunately, they're actually not necessarily safer than nuclear energy for those involved in producing them. A study found that in Europe alone, wind energy has killed more people than nuclear energy and, worldwide, hydroelectric energy has, too.

The leading cause of accidents involving wind energy farms is "blade failure," which is when a turbine blade breaks, sending shrapnel flying through the air.

With hydroelectric, of course, you get disasters and floods related to the dams.

Are we saying nuclear energy is the end-all, be-all next great power source? Is this article sponsored by a nuclear power conglomerate? Not as far as we know. We're just saying that sometimes it seems like we decide what we are going to be afraid of by drawing randomly from a hat.
======================================================

Speaking from a purely firsthand experience I can say I prefer the advent of nuclear power. You see I live just off the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, which is running twin reactors. Hell my father worked there as an engineer and I've seen just about everything inside and out of that place.

Despite some of the heaviest protest about the plant, which I think culminated into the largest arrest of nuclear protesters. Over a two-week period in 1981, 1,900 activists were arrested at Diablo Canyon Power Plant. It was the largest arrest in the history of the U.S. anti-nuclear movement

To my understanding the place went online with the first reactor in 85' and the second in 86', both of which are projected to be operational through to 2025 and 26' respectively.

Now from a personal standpoint I have suffered no negative medical effects from living near the plant, all my life I should add having been born here as well. I've never seen a reported case from the surrounding population and I've even personally fished off the mile marker along the sea, get to close and they you know shoot you. Anyway admittedly this is taking the most direct and non-scientific method of research, but I nor the surrounding community has had any negative effects from the plant.

Although admittedly in the plants history there have been two events in question, firstly during the plant’s construction someone flipped the blueprints around and so the plant was built to spec as a mirror image of the plans. Or in other words simply the place was built backwards. It was formally notified to the NRC that it was built the seismic supports in a "mirror image" of their proper positions.

And then the second event in which the second reactor was shut down due to a cooling failure when the intake system was jammed up with a sudden and large intake of Jellyfish in Oct. 22, 08. The event lasted two days before the reactor was deemed safe and turned back online.

And yes in fact the plant has been under the stress of actual earthquakes, and remains both safe and operational. I can testify to one good shake and a couple minor ones in 04'. Admitedly one could argue the Plant has not been under a quake on the magnitude related to Japan's recent turn of events, but that's like saying the plant isn't safe becasue we haven't tested it against the wrath of Zues's beard.
 
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