Safe Nuclear Power

[Acme]

 

...

Ooooooo scary!! Bunker busters, piercing, kinetic energy weapons, oh my!! Phhhhhhh. Pop a major hydroelectric dam and get similar results to attacking a nuclear power plant. Thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in property damage right off the bat. Land rendered unusable for decades, billions for cleanup, & the secondary damages related to the loss of generating capacity. Damn dams! Unsafe I tell ya. Much better that we burn fossil fuels and slowly choke everyone to death than build safer nuclear power plants. Muahahahahah....

When the arguments fail, try style?

...

It is my opinion that the proposed travelling wave reactor doesn't work. I don't need other sources for that. ...

 

Touché.

Edited April 18, 2014 by Acme

[Airbrush]

Did anyone see the anti-nuke documentary "The Atomic States of America"? It is on Netflix.

 

It is very critical of nuclear power, but they never mentioned anything about how vulnerable reactors are to bunker buster bombs. I wonder why people who are trying to discourage the use of nuclear energy would not have thought of that one? Can you figure that out Enthalpy? Maybe you should enlighten them.

 

The documentary's major complaint is that many people are dying of cancers that live near reactors. In the final analysis, they believe we are not ready for nuclear power yet, but in the future we may learn how to handle it safely. They believe the nuclear industry is not accountable to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but rather the NRC is accountable to the very wealthy nuclear industry.

Edited April 20, 2014 by Airbrush

[Enthalpy]

I'm not interested about how other people supposedly got to right or wrong conclusions, what their supposed hidden motivations may be, and so on. Such pseudo-reasonings have nothing to do with science.

 

Hard fact is that bunker busters are much stronger than needed to pierce any buclear reactor, present or even future, as a target of that size cannot be hardened economically.

 

The other hard fact is that power plants are among the very first targets in any war.

[Danijel Gorupec]

If we are talking about terrorism, it would be easier to hijack a nuclear plant and then blow it away by pushing right buttons, than to hijack an armed military plane and then attack the plant. So, I don't think that the existence of bunker busters changes that much.

 

Generally speaking, compared to other possible safety problems with nuclear plants (inherently bad designs, sloppy maintenance, saving money when one should not, untrained personnel...), terrorism issues seem to me as an "overpriced" argument. Whenever I hear someone is pushing terrorism issues in front of his/her argument list, I get worried that his/her motivation is to produce irrational fear instead to provide rational arguments.

[Airbrush]

Anyone heard of a "dirty nuke"? If a state-sponsored attack involved placing a nuclear bomb close enough to a nuclear power plant, what would the effect be? Spent fuel is stored on site, so all of that would be vaporized, along with whatever fuel is inside the operating reactor.

[Danijel Gorupec]

Anyone heard of a "dirty nuke"? If a state-sponsored attack involved placing a nuclear bomb close enough to a nuclear power plant, what would the effect be? Spent fuel is stored on site, so all of that would be vaporized, along with whatever fuel is inside the operating reactor.

But why would anyone spend a perfectly good bomb such way when there are cities around?

[Delbert]

The FOURTH generation of nuclear power plants are designed to be very safe. In fact they are impossible to melt down, no matter what happens. Does anyone else believe that nuclear power is a great potential for safe, clean energy?

 

...I cannot copy and paste links any longer. Does anyone else have that problem?

My dictionary defines safe as: affording security or protection from harm and free from danger. I don't think a nuclear reactor can provide security or protection from harm. And as for free from danger, I don't think so.

 

I think these things - like just about any manmade gismo - is designed within an acceptable level of risk.

[Enthalpy]

If we are talking about terrorism [...]

 

NO, I am not.

 

I speak about a military attack on nuclear power plants by armed forces, that can use conventional weapons to quickly make a country uninhabitable.

 

That's so remarkable, there's always someone who tries to shift the discussion to terrorism on this topic.

[Delbert]

I speak about a military attack on nuclear power plants by armed forces, that can use conventional weapons to quickly make a country uninhabitable..

Any general would be failing in his or her duty not consider such a target. Just think of the disruption and chaos the enemy will encounter - they'll probably be the first identified targets.

[Airbrush]

It is one thing to destroy an enemy's cities, but to make the entire city (or entire country for that matter) UNINHABITABLE seems like WAY beyond the pale of acceptable human conduct. Any nation that makes another nation UNINHABITABLE for TENS OF THOUSANDS of years is a Crime Against Humanity. Such a country would probably face severe international punishment. New laws would be created and leaders of such countries would probably be tortured to death slowly in public, while a record-breaking international audience cheered it on.

 

This is unprecedented and goes way beyond Rome sewing the soil of Carthage with salt.

 

So it seems unlikely to me that a state would sponsor such an attach, and it would be more likely used by terrorists who believe they could maintain anonymity. In fact, terrorists may have SOME morals and would not see a need to make an area uninhabitable for tens of thousands of years. What good will it do them? Allah would probably disapprove especially if the land was in the middle east.

Edited April 24, 2014 by Airbrush

[Delbert]

It is one thing to destroy an enemy's cities, but to make the entire city (or entire country for that matter) UNINHABITABLE seems like WAY beyond the pale of acceptable human conduct. Any nation that makes another nation UNINHABITABLE for TENS OF THOUSANDS of years is a Crime Against Humanity.

Don't think any such concerns have stopped anyone up to now. Just look around at what's been going on. As for crimes against humanity, I'm sorry but in the great big world that is irrelevant and means nothing. I read the other day about N. K. having recently executed a previous member of the administration with a flame thrower - they don't mess about with simple firing squads!

 

Anyway, I think that's off subject. But then again if it's considered a valid danger of nuclear power, maybe not.

[Danijel Gorupec]

 

I speak about a military attack on nuclear power plants by armed forces, that can use conventional weapons to quickly make a country uninhabitable.

 

The three assumptions in the above statement might be questionable.

 

“Nuclear plants make a country more vulnerable to a military attack.” However the opposite might also be true - a country that fails to adopt the nuclear energy might eventually become weaker and thus become an easy target. Adopting this energy source might not be a matter of choice, but a must under competition pressure. The Pandora box might already be open and whoever wants to win will need to adapt, not ignore.

 

“Nuclear plants are valuable military targets.” For an attacker with limited military resources it might be better to first disable target’s abilities to fight back - the radiation pollution bleeds a victim too slowly. Radiation spread might also affect neighbor countries that might not show much sympathy. Finally, if an invasion is planned, attacker’s foot soldiers might suffer too.

 

“It is known what the uninhabitable radiation level is.” In fact, a country will define the uninhabitable radiation level as the lowest figure the country can afford. In a crisis event, the country will simply redefine the uninhabitable radiation level to a higher figure. The real uninhabitable level at which human society cannot progress any more is not known because humans are adaptable creatures. It might be much larger than that of the Pripyat city… In parallel, Lesotho population and GDP numbers can still grow despite the fact that the average life expectancy decreased significantly due to the disease.

 

My personal opinion is that arguments that start like “Peaceful usage of nuclear energy is too dangerous because in the case of war…” sound just weird.

[Dekan]

Couldn't we build massive nuclear power stations on remote islands in the Pacific Ocean. Then all the nuclear waste could be tipped over the side into the Ocean, where it would sink to the bottom, and cause no trouble?

[hypervalent_iodine]

No trouble, except probably to all of the things that live in the ocean.

[Dekan]

Do we really care about the "things" that live in the ocean. We trawl millions of tons of them out of the water and eat them all the time. Have you ever had a tuna sandwich? I suppose the tuna was quite troubled, but you swallowed it easily enough.

 

On the serious point about nuclear power. Pending the development of fusion-power, which seems to be like chasing the rainbow, fission reactors are the best we can do so far. They provide carbon-free power generation. Their only drawback is the radioactive waste that comes out of them. But such waste can be safely disposed in the ocean. The oceans have an average depth of 12,000 feet, that's over two miles of radiation shielding. Which is quite enough to protect all surface-dwelling creatures from harm.

 

So, like I said, we could just tip all the waste into the ocean, and forget about it. It wouldn't do any harm to anyone, and our energy problems would be solved.

 

That's so obvious, that it's hard to understand why there's such resistance to nuclear power. Is there a rational motive?

[HRS]

Do we really care about the "things" that live in the ocean. We trawl millions of tons of them out of the water and eat them all the time. Have you ever had a tuna sandwich? I suppose the tuna was quite troubled, but you swallowed it easily enough.

 

On the serious point about nuclear power. Pending the development of fusion-power, which seems to be like chasing the rainbow, fission reactors are the best we can do so far. They provide carbon-free power generation. Their only drawback is the radioactive waste that comes out of them. But such waste can be safely disposed in the ocean. The oceans have an average depth of 12,000 feet, that's over two miles of radiation shielding. Which is quite enough to protect all surface-dwelling creatures from harm.

 

So, like I said, we could just tip all the waste into the ocean, and forget about it. It wouldn't do any harm to anyone, and our energy problems would be solved.

 

That's so obvious, that it's hard to understand why there's such resistance to nuclear power. Is there a rational motive?

First. Dumping all the nuclear waste from the process of nuclear power into the ocean would not be a proper answer. Of course we care about the "things" that live in our oceans. The radiation would not only poison the life in the oceans, but through the food chain would continually poison all creatures that consume those creatures and all the creatures that consume those creatures and so on. Humans are ultimately at the top, and we would lose one of the largest food sources in the world. This is just an immediate effect. The half-life of the isotopes from the byproduct of nuclear energy varies, but the effects would persist for decades (I am not a nuclear engineer or physicist, but this is just basic high school chem, bio and physics).Not to mention dumping radioactive material in the ocean would not result in it sinking, but just some sort of radiation soup of the ocean that would spread via the Coreolis Effect and the ocean currents, reaching America, Australia, Oceania, Asia, Africa, and in smaller effects, Europe, likely. Levels of radiation have been detected on the west coast of the United States due to the Fukushima Daichi disaster. That was just a single, isolated event. To continuously dump the amount of nuclear waste from the proposed massive nuclear power system on the Polynesian and Micronesian islands would be terrible.To say that dumping the waste in the ocean seems that it would be analogous to saying that dumping pollutants into the atmosphere doesn't affect us because we're on land. It would do immense harm to the ecosystem and would cause a massive collapse of the environment, likely. Not to mention the difficulty of transporting energy across the oceans to any of the continents. It would require an extreme amount of resources if you plan to send energy through electricity, because of the degredation of current and resistivity of wires, etc. Power plants are best organized as they are, I would guess, because they are more concentrated to areas where there is a greater demand for energy and a ready and easy supply of the resources to power it. The Pacific Islands have none of these things.

 

As for the reason for opposition to nuclear power, it could be driven by political and economic support for the all-mighty coal and gas power companies, but it also because of a more-likely-than-not "bad rap" for nuclear, with Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima Daichi. Public awareness of the possibilities of safe and extremely efficient energy would be helpful in their support. The original two disasters, on a basic level, were caused by a lack of knowledge on the technology, and all three because of insufficient safety regulations. If the regulations were more strictly enforced, then it might be a different story.

 

I have not heard of the previously mentioned reference to cancer incidents around nuclear power plants, but a similar public health violation can be thought of in coal and gas power plants, along with hydraulic fracturing. All of these problems could be fixed by tight regulation on emissions by the government in the respective areas such that it is both clean and profitable. Hopefully.

 

EDIT: Typo

Edited April 26, 2014 by HRS

[hypervalent_iodine]

Do we really care about the "things" that live in the ocean.

 

Yes "we" do and if you don't, then you definitely should start trying.

 

 

We trawl millions of tons of them out of the water and eat them all the time. Have you ever had a tuna sandwich? I suppose the tuna was quite troubled, but you swallowed it easily enough.

 

No, because tuna is disgusting (and this is completely irrelevant anyway).

 

So, like I said, we could just tip all the waste into the ocean, and forget about it. It wouldn't do any harm to anyone, and our energy problems would be solved.

No. Where do you even come up with your ideas about the world? As you so unnecessarily pointed out, we eat many of the things that come out of the ocean and subjecting food sources to potentially high levels of radiation by simply dumping waste into the water does not bode well for the health of the people who eat those things. There are also instances like this that could happen, perhaps more so as natural disasters become more and more commonplace. And that is totally ignoring the potential environmental impact on marine ecosystems, which may not seem relevant to your view except for the fact that we (and many other organisms) rely on marine life for a lot of things.

 

That's so obvious, that it's hard to understand why there's such resistance to nuclear power. Is there a rational motive?

The main argument of any specificity that I have heard is to do with how long it takes to decommission nuclear plants. I'm by no means an expert on the subject and I'm sure there are many more specific arguments from that side of the fence, but that aspect does appear to be quite costly. That in combination with the general fear of nuclear and popular perception that such plants have a high potential to do a lot of damage makes them a risky product to endorse. Personally, I don't have too much of a problem with the idea provided that the plants are designed, regulated and monitored appropriately, though I'd choose renewables over nuclear most days regardless.

[Delbert]

The main argument of any specificity that I have heard is to do with how long it takes to decommission nuclear plants.

The process, as far as I can understand, consists of taking the thing to bits (slowly), breaking the bits up and then spreading the broken bits about here and there to the point that they can't be distinguished, by those looking in a different direction, from the natural contamination. You know, like certain members of society get rid of the beer can or crisp packet by throwing it on to what appears to be waste land or over the fence.

[Enthalpy]

[i add labels]

 

 

(A)

 

“Nuclear plants make a country more vulnerable to a military attack.” However the opposite might also be true - a country that fails to adopt the nuclear energy might eventually become weaker and thus become an easy target. Adopting this energy source might not be a matter of choice, but a must under competition pressure. The Pandora box might already be open and whoever wants to win will need to adapt, not ignore.

 

(B)

 

“Nuclear plants are valuable military targets.” For an attacker with limited military resources it might be better to first disable target’s abilities to fight back - the radiation pollution bleeds a victim too slowly. Radiation spread might also affect neighbor countries that might not show much sympathy. Finally, if an invasion is planned, attacker’s foot soldiers might suffer too.

 

[C]

 

“It is known what the uninhabitable radiation level is.” In fact, a country will define the uninhabitable radiation level as the lowest figure the country can afford. In a crisis event, the country will simply redefine the uninhabitable radiation level to a higher figure. The real uninhabitable level at which human society cannot progress any more is not known because humans are adaptable creatures. It might be much larger than that of the Pripyat city… In parallel, Lesotho population and GDP numbers can still grow despite the fact that the average life expectancy decreased significantly due to the disease.

 

(A) Nuclear electricity is presently more expensive than wind electricity, which in turn is much more expensive than gas and coal. As well, many uranium-consuming countries don't mine it locally. So nuclear electricity is an economic and a military weakness.

 

(B) Wars are of varied nature. Imagine when European and American countries attacked Libya to overthrow Ghaddafi: he wouldn't have cared about neighbour countries, didn't consider invading Europe - but had he had the proper weapons, he definitely would have threatened to burst a few reactors in Europe and would have won the action. This is an example where conventional weapons would deter a country that has nuclear reactors.

 

[C] So true, how much I agree with you! Legal limits are always raised by the government when a reactor leaks. When drought didn't permit to cool France's reactors properly, the gov just increased the acceptable river temperature rise by the reactors. After Fukushima, the UE increased the acceptable radioactivity in food. Liquidators at Fukushima must accept doses that were forbidden prior to the disaster.And so on.

 

Fact is that a gov has no choice in its reaction to a nuclear incident. Giving up electricity is no good option. Leaving the country neither. Stopping eating, of course not. So the gov raises the limits. It doesn't make the pollution safer. It just shows that legal limits protect nobody.

Edited May 5, 2014 by Enthalpy

[Moontanman]

[i add labels]

 

 

(A) Nuclear electricity is presently more expensive than wind electricity, which in turn is much more expensive than gas and coal. As well, many uranium-consuming countries don't mine it locally. So nuclear electricity is an economic and a military weakness.

 

(B) Wars are of varied nature. Imagine when European and American countries attacked Libya to overthrow Ghaddafi: he wouldn't have cared about neighbour countries, didn't consider invading Europe - but had he had the proper weapons, he definitely would have threatened to burst a few reactors in Europe and would have won the action. This is an example where conventional weapons would deter a country that has nuclear reactors.

 

[C] So true, how much I agree with you! Legal limits are always raised by the government when a reactor leaks. When drought didn't permit to cool France's reactors properly, the gov just increased the acceptable river temperature rise by the reactors. After Fukushima, the UE increased the acceptable radioactivity in food. Liquidators at Fukushima must accept doses that were forbidden prior to the disaster.And so on.

 

Fact is that a gov has no choice in its reaction to a nuclear incident. Giving up electricity is no good option. Leaving the country neither. Stopping eating, of course not. So the gov raises the limits. It doesn't make the pollution safer. It just shows that legal limits protect nobody.

 

 

You are aware of the coal sludge releases not to mention smoke and ash emitted by the coal fired power plants are quite heavily laden in radioactive waste and other heavy metals. I see no reason to assume the increased levels of pollution are primarily from nuclear power plants..

 

The three assumptions in the above statement might be questionable.

 

“Nuclear plants make a country more vulnerable to a military attack.” However the opposite might also be true - a country that fails to adopt the nuclear energy might eventually become weaker and thus become an easy target. Adopting this energy source might not be a matter of choice, but a must under competition pressure. The Pandora box might already be open and whoever wants to win will need to adapt, not ignore.

 

“Nuclear plants are valuable military targets.” For an attacker with limited military resources it might be better to first disable target’s abilities to fight back - the radiation pollution bleeds a victim too slowly. Radiation spread might also affect neighbor countries that might not show much sympathy. Finally, if an invasion is planned, attacker’s foot soldiers might suffer too.

 

“It is known what the uninhabitable radiation level is.” In fact, a country will define the uninhabitable radiation level as the lowest figure the country can afford. In a crisis event, the country will simply redefine the uninhabitable radiation level to a higher figure. The real uninhabitable level at which human society cannot progress any more is not known because humans are adaptable creatures. It might be much larger than that of the Pripyat city… In parallel, Lesotho population and GDP numbers can still grow despite the fact that the average life expectancy decreased significantly due to the disease.

 

My personal opinion is that arguments that start like “Peaceful usage of nuclear energy is too dangerous because in the case of war…” sound just weird.

 

 

Readers a region uninhabitable is a bit weird as well, Chernobyl was supposed to render the area uninhabitable but the wild life is doing great, some seem to be actually developing tolerance to the radiation but there is no doubt that uninhabitable is subject to subjective, humans could live there, cancer rates might go up but uninhabitable is "not entirely accurate".

 

Opps my bad this looks like i am disagreeing with the poster but I wasn't...

[Moontanman]

More on Chernobyl.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/science/nature-adapts-to-chernobyl.html