Nuclear power

Do you support nuclear power?

  • Yes.

    Votes: 7 21.2%

  • No.

    Votes: 17 51.5%

  • Not sure.

    Votes: 9 27.3%
  • Total voters
    33
R

rainforests1

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If terrorists melted down a nuclear power plant near a metropolitan area it could cost trillions of dollars, bankrupting the country effected. If it happened to a country with a large influence on the world economy, it's the kind of event that the world economy may never recover from.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis–Besse_Nuclear_Power_Station
The United States came close to having a nuclear accident.

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/the-staggering-costs-to-clean-up-fukushima/
Fukushima may cost close to $500 billion.

With the high costs and high risks involved with nuclear power, many still support it. This would apparently include Presidents George W. Bush, Obama, Eisenhower, and possibly others. Do you support nuclear power?
 
I clicked yes, but I don't know if support is the right word. In the wake of the Fukushima incident, a number of places have closed nuclear plants. The power they previously produced now comes from even more reliance on fossil fuels. The environment will suffer as a result. Not maybe, if an accident happens, but will, guaranteed.

Three is no perfect solution but, even with its risks, it's still the lesser of the evils in many ways.
 
Do I support nuclear power?

Well. It's a darned situation. Our civilization, with the direction it's taking, needs more and more power. It has to come from somewhere. Fossil fuels are sure to mess up the climate. Give it a few more decades, and we'll all be cursing it as the plague. Nuclear power on the other hand has this problem with waste. With the current generation of nuclear technology and reactors, they produce waste that will remain a hazard to Life for .... I don't even know? Tens of thousands of years? A million years? Suffice to say, we're completely fucked if there is an accident. And we are sure to have some kind of accident or deliberate spill (terrorism/madness, call it what you will). In the fullness of time, it will happen. The stuff is not safe. So there is fusion power (a not yet proven technology, probably a decade away from even a working prototype) or the promise of fourth generation, less hazardous, nuclear fission reactors. (2030 or later, by the nuclear lobby's own projections.)

I just don't know. I think we need to take a step back. Think again. Do we need all this power? We must cast off yesterday's thinking. We must take a leap, not only in technology, but in our whole attitude. We must become overmen - Übermenschen! This is about the survival of our civilization. A whole new paradigm is needed. The alternative? You can ask the Mayas. Or the Romans. Atlantis sank in a single day and night. Or so I was told. :)
 
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That's pretty much the way I look at it. I don't really like nuclear power and the problems it has the potential to bring, but the reality is that modern society is absolutely dependent on power. Those who consider themselves to be aware and proactive are, ironically, typically even more dependent than the conservative rednecks they have a tendency to vilify, but that's a whole other debate.

Increased dependence on fossil fuels is not an acceptable alternative to nuclear power. In that regards, the recent movements against nuclear power, though well intentioned, have been environmentally detrimental due to that fact that for every nuclear plant that is closed, a fuel burning plant must pick up its slack. No maybes or might happens here. Fuel burning plants cannot produce energy without trashing the environment.
 
http://climate.nasa.gov/news/903
Human-caused climate change and air pollution remain major global-scale problems and are both due mostly to fossil fuel burning. Mitigation efforts for both of these problems should be undertaken concurrently in order to maximize effectiveness. Such efforts can be accomplished largely with currently available low-carbon and carbon-free alternative energy sources like nuclear power and renewables, as well as energy efficiency improvements.
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That's the basics of it. Yeah, nuclear power has a lot of potential dangers. But the reality is that power produced from fossil fuels is the primary culprit in regards to climate change. Nuclear power is not. Right now is a very, very bad time to be waging a war against nuclear power. The problems produced by its alternatives are a much bigger threat to our survival.
 
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If terrorists destroyed a hydroelectric dam upriver from a population center, the death toll would be catastrophic.

But the actions of terrorists aren't a really good reason to be against an energy source. First off, terrorist groups tend not to engage in such behavior. Second, at least in the West, nuclear reactors tend to be pretty resistant against such attacks, due to the containment vessel.
 
Solar panels are petroleum based products, and the investment required to reach a point where they provide a significant portion of power is astronomical. They are an option worth pursuing in the long term, but do not provide a short term solution.

Wind power tech is also worth pursuing, but again the problem is limited output and lack of current infrastructure. We're in the middle of a recession. People aren't willing to make sacrifices right now to make that investment. Fossil fuel burning infrastructure and tech already exists.
 
Thorium has its own issues. It's not bad, but it's not a magic bullet.

I'm pretty agnostic when it comes to fuel, as long as it meets basic criteria of an advanced nuclear reactor - say at this point, we should really be on Gen III+ reactors. There's a lot to be said for passive safety features.
 
I've never understood why reactors don't have a manually activated fail safe (that doesn't need power) where the rods would fall down into separate containers. If the rods where separated and shielded from each other they would slowly cool on their own and we wouldn't have melt downs, as they would no longer be reacting with each other and generating more and more heat.

There must be something I don't understand about this as it seems to me that this solution is both simple and obvious.
 
rainforests1 said:
Could anyone explain why you would have to build the power plants near metropolitan areas?
Click to expand...
Workforce availability, availability of needed water for heating and cooling (usually found where people already live), the major cost of having to build a new electrical distribution system instead of using an existing system, plus other less serious problems that would add to the plants cost. All of these could be overcome but it would cost so much money that building the plant wouldn't be viable.
 
I think we need nuclear, but I'm also a big fan of tidal generators, and I don't understand why there hasn't been a major push to build more of these.

They're environmentally friendly (actually more-so than any other energy production method I've heard of), and they're dependable, as you know exactly how much they will produce and when they will produce it (as opposed to wind or sun).
 
Dropkick said:
I've never understood why reactors don't have a manually activated fail safe (that doesn't need power) where the rods would fall down into separate containers. If the rods where separated and shielded from each other they would slowly cool on their own and we wouldn't have melt downs, as they would no longer be reacting with each other and generating more and more heat.

There must be something I don't understand about this as it seems to me that this solution is both simple and obvious.
Click to expand...

That would be a form of what's called a "passive" safety feature.

I haven't heard of that exact idea, so I would believe there's some sort of technical reason why it isn't the best passive safety feature. Maybe difficulty in ensuring that the rods would be dropped, or sealing of the reactor vessel, or dealing with the waste heat.

There are so called "walk away" fail safe designs, but those are newer designs, and due to a bunch of reasons - both financial and NIMBY, most of the reactors in the US require active safety features. Off the top of my head, the only completely passive reactors operating in the US are the small research reactors, like you can find at some universities.
 
I am against nuclear power. You play with a snake long enough and you're going to get bit, so the eventual accidents involving nuclear energy are going to happen - it's just a matter of when.

I'm curious if those in support would have any objection to having a power plant in their backyard.
 
Dedalus said:
I am against nuclear power. You play with a snake long enough and you're going to get bit, so the eventual accidents involving nuclear energy are going to happen - it's just a matter of when.

I'm curious if those in support would have any objection to having a power plant in their backyard.
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If it were that or global warming, the catastrophic result of our current primary supply of power which is already in the process of biting us, and which is being made worse by the recent movement against nuclear power, then yes.
 
Dedalus said:
I am against nuclear power. You play with a snake long enough and you're going to get bit, so the eventual accidents involving nuclear energy are going to happen - it's just a matter of when.

I'm curious if those in support would have any objection to having a power plant in their backyard.
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If I had any kind of power plant in my backyard nuclear would be very high on my preferred list. Coal or oil (which the majority of plants in the U.S. are) would be so low as to be almost off the list (currently nuclear is the most viable replacement option for these).

Why are you against it?
 
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Dedalus said:
I'm curious if those in support would have any objection to having a power plant in their backyard.
Click to expand...

Nope.

I'm not sure I "support" nuclear power, but I'm definitely not against it. I think realistically a lot of renewables are unreliable, and if people want to maintain their current lifestyle, we need nuclear power once fossil fuels run out. I think it's naive to think that society would support an option that would require them using less energy. Storing waste is an issue, but not an insurmountable one. There are risks: but risks that should be controllable with good safety precautions.

:shrug: I'm kinda an optimist though, and I think the science behind nuclear power is brilliant. I think the biggest challage nuclear power faces is that people see words like "radiation" and "nuclear" very negatively, and think of them as dangerous, unreliable, scary.
 
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