What do you think about nuclear power?

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The coal powered electrical generators in the U.S. are responsible for 20,000 deaths a years from cardiopulmenary conditions

How many deaths are cause by our operating nuclear facilities? 0. Even TMI produced 0 casualties.

ruveyn

I think that nuclear could be a part of a nation's power economy, but I'd like to see two factors designed in that seem not to have been widely taken into account during the last wave of reactor building: first, don't build reactors on active fault zones (a la Diablo Canyon, Fukushima), and second, there should be a passive, gravity-fed system for cooling the rods in the case of a power failure (ie, open a valve and the water flows in automatically, rather than having to be pumped in). The latter would require either piping or canalling water from rivers upstream, but it would be worth it in the event of a serious power failure.

It's entirely possible to design containment vessels that can withstand even substantial earthquakes without issue. See: Kashiwazaki-Kariwa



A passive water cooling system wouldn't provide enough static pressure to make much of a difference. Plus, for radiation containment reasons, the cooling system for a nuclear reactor has to be a closed loop system. Allowing outside water to come in contact with nuclear materials is a big no-no.

Further still, it's possible to use the turbine itself to generate bridge power while spinning down in the event of a brief loss of backup power. Ironically enough, it was exactly this scenario the Chernobyl reactor was attempting to achieve when the disaster happened.

would you agree that a high-volume passive flow system would be better than this:
http://www.voanews.com/content/japan-tu ... 36644.html
wrt. fault zones being safe: five years ago, Fukushima would have been cited as an example as a reactor designed to be 'safe' for earthquakes and tsunamis.

No, I wouldn't - because a high-volume passive flow system can't cool a reactor. It *would* be better if it were technically possible, but it isn't.



No, it wouldn't have. The design of the Fukushima facility was determined to be insufficient for where it was placed, and there is some indication that this was known prior to the tsunami.

The example I gave is of a plant that actually did suffer an earthquake, was designed to maintain containment, *did* maintain containment, and allowed for a safe shutdown of the reactor for inspections.

Having said all that, even the Fukushima disaster was reasonably well contained because of good accident response procedures and better understanding of nuclear reactor accident response.

Correct. The difference is that nuclear power plants don't emit anything other than the steam while coal power plants do also have carbon emissions. In addition to the air pollution, coal also contains small amounts of radioactive material that is released with the fly ash. Now, my point was that even if you compare the radioactive material released into the atmosphere with the nuclear waste produced by nuclear power plants, you will find that the total amount of radiation released into the environment by the fly ash is 100 times more due to the shear quantity that is released into the atmosphere. The amount of nuclear waste that needs to be disposed of from a nuclear power facility is extremely low in comparison.

The way it is already done with new reactors in dozends of countries? Support of people owning their own small energy devices, buy as example tax-freeing and giving credits to house builders, for solar facilities. Wind energy parks, tide parks, in agrar-areas due to the agrar garbage you have anyway you can build smaller "waste-gas" reactors, waterdams, saison-reactors (=gathering of snow and snowwater in mountain areas on purpose and let them flow away through turbines, whenever you need it = benefit to normal waterdams, that you can control and safe it. Because of my country having rather no (or very few) fossil ressources on their own (and being depending on russia is rather sh***y, as can be actually seen in ucraine) my country is supporting alternative energies since the oil-crisis in the 70ies/80ies. That does not mean to built down working old reactors, but simply when building new ones, to built such that makes us indepent of fossil ressources we dont own. Actually we have a mix of 75% renewable energy forms (different forms of water power, many new houses already have solar panels due to them being supported, wind parks are increasing in numbers (They have been quiet lousy 15-20 years ago, but actually are now efficient.), 18% fossil energy supply (gas, coal, oil, ...) and 7% import. (And our one and only nuclear reactor is an museum, but thats another story. ^^)

Its simply myths and tales of the fossil-consortiums, that actual renewable energy forms, would still be totally inefficient. They are actually working alternatives for energy supply that are already experienced. Its as well not about being fanatic, so the fossil energy supplies have as well their own kind of benefits. When we have massive floods every 5 years, and the water dams turbines need to be shut down to protect them, you can simply use the old coal and gas facilities, as you can do with an small house emergency generator, that some people in lonely areas own. So they have their benefits as well.

But thinking of alternative energies as some kind of weird hippiestuff is outdated. Germany is as well definitly no weird hippie country, not caring for economics, but have started as well to exchange old reactors with an focus on renewable energy forms, they have actually 20% with the number increasing. When I was mentioning that Kurgan as scandinavian should know about renewable energy forms, then I did so, because of them having numbers of about 90% renewable energy supply.

Sure noone can afford to shut down working reactors, be it coal or atom, out of fun. But out of an economical perspective: When you are forced to shut them down, due to their age, or you simply need new reactors because of the increasing energy need, then by economics, new reactor forms are the way to go. Not out of hippie thinking, but economical reasons.

Renewable energy in its current iterations is quite insufficient to replace what we have. I am all in favor of pursuing technological advances in this area. Personally, I would like to see some sort of serious incentives for new homes being built to have solar panels incorporated into the design and construction process to power the home without relying entirely on outside power. This would eventually make a huge impact, with commercial power being primarily for large facilities (hospitals, factories, large corporate buildings, etc). The biggest hurdle to renewable energy is the cost/profit one. As most corporations have shifted from a long term focus to a next quarter focus, few of the companies that would be able to make the biggest impact would rather see massive profits for the next few quarters as opposed to accumulating the debt and expenses that would be incurred up front. It is not that I think nuclear power is ideal; just that it is currently the most realistic, least polluting, and safest option on the table that would adequately supply reliable power. I fully agree that many renewable energy options would be better, but the financial support needed is not going to be enough in the near term future. Renewable energy needs to happen at a smaller, more local level within the existing structures before it will be widely supported in countries where fossil fuels are readily available. If renewable energy begins to eat into larger energy company profits by depleting their customer base, you would start to see energy companies trying to adapt or begin to fail.

This has to happen, one way or another. Electricity can't be stored, it must be consumed as it is produced - which means that currently electric utilities have to design generating systems to meet peak demand. Solar installations with batteries allow the solar system to absorb some of those peaks, which ultimately enables grid operators to better utilize existing facilities - and hopefully decommission older, less-efficient plants only kept online to meet peak demand. But solar is never going to provide anywhere even remotely close to 100% of demand - even in a strictly residential environment.

Not quite the same as what I was thinking, but the same principle (and far from radical, apparently):
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publicatio ... 24_web.pdf

There was a study suggesting possible tsunami vulnerability, but TEPCO dismissed it and insisted that the plant was tsunami-safe due to its seawall.

Wrt. Solar, in California and other parts of the American south, the highest energy demand is for air conditioning and coincides with solar irradiation. Solar can't solve all problems, but it makes a hell of a lot of sense in some areas.

In our urban house we are 90% independent in our water usage and 70% of our electricity comes from our solar panels. Not 100% but our emissions are pretty low by comparison. I have no real issue with making water tanks and solar panels mandatory on home sales. If everyone managed that it would reduce emissions by a fairly large amount. Nuclear power makes sense for base load power but I still think the majority of savings will come from individual solutions and common sense.