What do you think about nuclear power?

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the production of solar panels is a very dirty industry and has many accidents, same with wind power. wind power also changes wind patterns and kills many flying animals like birds. they are both not very efficient or reliable. when you factor in everything that goes into it from manufacture to transport to construction to usage they are pretty bad. wind turbines are also very noisy. if you ever get to chance go near one there is a very loud hum of machinery and with the right cloud cover and land shape can be heard for miles if its quiet

also whenever theres an accident with nuclear power you hear about it for months on the news. they dont happen very often but accidents in other energy souces happen daily

Uhh yeah, the schematics of nuclear plant containment systems.



Uhh yeah, an earthquake destroyed the primary containment vessel, and they had to do *something* with the water they were using to cool the reactor. They chose to do the sensible thing, pump it into the ocean and let the water contain the radiation (water is an extremely good containment material for beta and gamma radiation).

Buildings containing nuclear material have multiple layers of containment, allowing 100% containment even when parts of the containment barrier are taken out of service for maintenance/repair.



Ok - I still don't see your point. Even if we increased our current nuclear load by 100 times (which, incidentally, would provide enough power to meet 100% of worldwide demand until 2050), you'd only need a space about the size of a distribution warehouse to house all of it. Or, put another way, a facility only slightly larger than two of the actual nuclear power plants. Not at all impossible, or even difficult.



You may have a hard time with it, but the math speaks for itself.

Largest solar power plant: 350MW
Largest wind power plant: 1320MW
Largest nuclear power plant: 7276MW

Solar and wind help - but they come nowhere close to nuclear in terms of energy density.

In fact, the very reactor design (RBMK) of the Chernobyl plant is still in common use.

Hmm that is all very interesting, it seems perhaps it can be fairly safe....though it would seem there are still some problems with current nuclear power in various places like the outdated technology and such or being built in locations more likely to suffer natural disasters. But its likely those problems could be solved.

double post.

Last edited by Sweetleaf on 02 Mar 2014, 5:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I thought maybe it had to do with the production aspect, but yeah I didn't know that about wind energy...I thought it just harnessed the already existing wind and collected energy that way, rather than doing anything that would change wind patterns its certainly not a good thing if screws with birds and such.

Necessary to provide power to current population densities.

As far as 'renewable' energy is concerned, where do you think the power used to gather the necessary rescources, as well as the power utilised to manufacture, deliver units, and build a renewable energy infrastructure comes from? --Not to mention the polymer compounds used for a lot of componentry?

When looking at it in that respect, is 'renewable energy' truly renewable?

Chris is slightly misstating. Nuclear power kills more people, but it also generates much more energy. If the renewable sources generated as much energy, we'd need a lot more of them. This would be very bad for the environment as they'd take up a lot of space.

Wind and solar principally kill people when they are being constructed. People fall off the roofs of buildings, for example.

We need renewables as well, to "top up" the baseline provided by nuclear- but if we don't use nuclear, we'll have to choose between increasing carbon emissions until we run out of fossil fuels (and then turning over much of our agriculture to biofuel production- I think I remember being told we'd need to dedicate 80% of our agricultural land to biofuel production in order to meet global fuel demands, but that could be wildly off), or living in energy poverty.

I'm okay with nuclear power with the expectation of lower electric bills.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3FvyrHOeB0[/youtube]

hears a video of the sound of different turbines
I certainly would not want to live near one

Absolutely not. The more of those things there are, the greater probability that there will be meltdowns. There are leaks all the time, and the cost saved in running them, is lost in waste disposal and decommission. The act of waste disposal also exposes more people to the cancerous substances, and makes the area surrounding the disposal area hazardous or thousands of years. The roads on which waste is taken also become potential areas of contamination. There is also the issue of terrorists potentially targeting these things.


CANCER is not fun. A little bit of self preservation would be great!



Anyone who thinks cancer is an acceptable price to pay for reduced noise pollution, lacks discernment, or is a paid industry lobbyist.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STSmFZeE50E[/youtube]

Maybe when scientists finally mastered fusion power will be more safe.

Nuclear power is both safe, clean, and inexpensive. It could replace coal (which is actually more expensive), which would mean that the major source of carbon dioxyde disappeared. Furthermore, we'd lose almost all of the manmade sources of mercury, carbon monoxyde, nitrous oxyde, and sulphuric dioxyde. Lastly, the waste generated by a nuclear power plant, can fit in the trunk of a compact estate car; if you encapsulate it and store it safely, it can do no harm whatsoever.

No, humans can't be trusted. Also, waste is a problem, bomb making is a problem, aging plants, fukushima, hanford, wipp, I can just go on and on. All it takes is one incident, and you'll end up trying to fix it until the end of time like chernobyl. And people will suffer for generations to come.

The Fukushima plant was placed in a very risky zone because of the danger of earthquakes. As far as the Chernobyl plant goes, the reactors were a piece of sh!t, the computers were a piece of sh!t, the reactors didn't have containment buildings (who said communism placed human lives above money?), and several crew members were sleep deprived.

The containment buildings of an american plant can take a fully loaded Jumbo Jet, and Three Mile Island is an example of how secure they are even if a severe accident were to occur.

Exactly my point, humans make mistakes, and when it comes to nuclear mistakes everyone pays.