Nuclear Energy?

[DarkSoldier84]

This all comes at a heavy price, as demonstrated at Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island - that when it goes bad, it goes really bad, and the effects can be horrendous and irreversible.

Fukushima was hit by a massive earthquake, Chernobyl was a cascade of human error, and nobody died at Three-Mile Island.

Had it not been for the Chernobyl disaster, the Cold War would have gone differently. Since ionizing radiation doesn't respect borders, the fallout spread across eastern Europe. Even as the Central Party hushed it up internally, people and organizations outside the Iron Curtain noticed that something had happened since radiation levels were shooting up. The party had to admit what had happened, opening up and allowing the gears of change to turn.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium#Thorium_as_a_nuclear_fuel

This should dissuade everyone of their nuclear fears. It is the best solution for long term energy.

I was going to bring up thorium. It looks like the reason why no government ever invested in thorium reactors was because they couldn't use them to make nuclear weapons.

I hope that the major powers get their acts together and start using this stuff. Clean, cheap energy with a smaller power plant footprint and minimal risk of being weaponized? Please!

 

[spectrenihlus]

the best we have until we invent Fusion.
allot of people say "they are dangerous look at Chernobyl!" that was a different type of reactor allot cruder then what we have now Fukushima happened because somebody thought it was a good idea TO BUILD A NUCLEAR REACTOR NEAR THE COAST LINE. Overall modern reactors are really safe yes you still have the waste but that can easily be stored in old mines. The problem with alternative energy is that it still doesn't provide enough power to sustain a large enough population. Allot of people still think the safety is done by a person whilst in reality it,s done by computer systems that have ALLOT of backup. Now I,m not saying we should stop developing stuff like windmills and solar panels what I am saying is that we should open more nuclear power plants if I remember correctly that last plant opened in the 90,s or 80,s.

Not only did no one die at TMI no one even got sick. TMI should be an example of how safe nuclear power is!

 

[IamQ]

100% in support. It only went bad in Japan last year because they had double bad luck with an earthquake (5th largest in the world at that) and a huge tsunami. That's not something that happens often you know.

In Sweden, sadly, not many are supporting it, even less after Japan. I just can't get why. We're Sweden for christ sake. We can't get tsunamis, we can't get earthquakes. Hell, we can barely muster a tornado, so what do we have to worry about?

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

As long as they have backup systems, and an emergency shutoff mechanism in case you get a gigantic earthquake AND a tsunami in one shot, I like nuclear power.

So yeah, if they can guarantee that if the worst should happen, there's a way to stop the thing from blowing up and irradiating everything, then heck yeah I'm for it.

It's pretty clean, provides ENORMOUS power, and doesn't waste tons of resources. I like.

EDIT: Oh, and once we get fusion nuclear plants that give out more energy than they take...We cannot switch fast enough for my liking. Fusion is apparently totally 100% safe.

 

[Rabid Toilet]

Traffic accidents do not make whole regions uninhabitable for decades.

Neither do nuclear reactors. All the studies and research I've seen on Chernobyl say that the area around the reactor was back down below background radiation levels by the next growing season. The only thing keeping people from moving back into the area was public paranoia about radiation.

And earthquakes and tsunami in Japan aren't freak accidents, but contingencies that must be planned for. Our very word for tidal wave in English, "tsunami," comes from the Japanese because tsunami are common in Japan. Why build a plant in an earthquake zone and in a place historically subject to tsunami, yet situate the back-up generators in a place where they will be flooded? BTW, the plant's physical structure didn't hold up-the quake cracked the containment vessel. That's why the reactors are still leaking radiation.

You're right, earthquakes and tsunamis aren't rare in Japan, which is why they did plan for them. I believe the reactor in question was capable of handling up to and including an 8.6 earthquake, which would make it safe for any and all earthquakes that Japan had ever had. The one that hit the Fukushima reactor was somewhere around five times that and is one of the biggest earthquakes in all of recorded history. This was a total stars-aligning incident, and is not something you realistically plan for. It also doesn't help that the reactor was using a design from about 40 years ago and was only a few weeks away from being decommissioned.

Even with all of this acting against it, the reactor suffered only a minor leak of radiation? I'd say this actually supports how safe nuclear power is.

 

[IamQ]

Hell, we can barely muster a tornado

Where in Sweden do you live, where Tornados are a possibility? We rarely, if ever, even get a hurricane.

Didn't know there was a difference between the words. 'Thought they were synonymous with each other. But yeah, we can't get any sort of spinny-roundy-windy-thingy, whatever their called, here in Sweden.

 

[ElPatron]

Fuck that unsafe bullshit.
Humans just need to get their shit together and start using geothermal power. There is more than enough sources for clean energy out there like geothermal, wind, solar, tidal, etc that we don't need to be fucking around with dangerous shit like nuclear energy.

You know that messing around with geological heat will cause destructive vibrations several kms deep.

By your logic we should just stop making cars because it's just too damn unsafe!

 

[Fox242]

The global community is so quick to throw away the potential of this energy source. It's efficient, reliable, and safe if handled properly. There aren't many other energy sources that work as well as nuclear energy does. We need to keep going with it so that we can find solutions to the negatives that still persist.

 

[Slayer_2]

If people base their entire view on something based off one freak accident, why on earth do we still fly planes, drive cars and travel in boats? They have all had accidents that have cost hundreds to thousands of lives yet we don't go demonising them the same way we demonise nuclear power.

Just answering because its quite simple:
Cause those nuclear accidents ruin the lives of people who didnt even have anything to do with them, maybe didnt even agree with them.
You sit in a plane or drive a car of you own, free will, knowing the risks. But even if you have concerns about nuclear power its hard to make yourself heard, cause a big industry and a lot of people depend on it and dont care much about you.

Except that planes can crash into buildings and cars can hit pedestrians who have never been behind the wheel in their lives. The total tally of lives lost in a year, in the US alone, due to car crashes likely outweighs deaths, worldwide, by radiation exposure by 100x, likely more.

The fact is people fear things they don't understand, and most people don't understand nuclear energy. They do, however, somewhat understand cars and planes, and write the risk off with a casual "it won't happen to me". However, likely due to Chernobyl, and possibly the cold war, lots of people seem to think that nuclear reactors are all high-yield bombs waiting to go off at the slightest provocation. Now, after the events in Japan, people are freaking out again, even though the plant was ancient and was hit by two giant natural disasters in one day. Even going through all that crap, the reactor only had to vent, so it's not like it was a full-blown meltdown.

As you might be able to tell, I'm all for nuclear power, if we can ever get fusion reactors working, and if we change most internal combustion engine vehicles into electric, we could end up greatly reducing our impact on the world, and help protect our limited oil resources. If only the media will stop fear mongering whenever they get the chance to.

 

[IamQ]

Neither do nuclear reactors. All the studies and research I've seen on Chernobyl say that the area around the reactor was back down below background radiation levels by the next growing season. The only thing keeping people from moving back into the area was public paranoia about radiation.

Yeah, I'm not buying that. Are they meaning to tell us that the entire town is uninhabited just because of paranoia? Bullshit. If the studies you mention are true, then people would've started to move in ages ago.

 

[flare100]

Im completely against it. I don't care how safe some people make it out to be. Accidents can and do happen. The switch from fossil to nuclear is simply trading off one set of problems for another. Keep it out of my country.

 

[JeanLuc761]

Im completely against it. I don't care how safe some people make it out to be. Accidents can and do happen. The switch from fossil to nuclear is simply trading off one set of problems for another. Keep it out of my country.

There are 435 nuclear reactors, and two went catastrophically bad. That makes for a 0.00459% failure rate, and I'm not taking into account variables like modern reactor design. We should not avoid a new technology because something CAN go wrong. If we all operated on that, we should just stay inside all day and never do anything.

 

[Rabid Toilet]

Neither do nuclear reactors. All the studies and research I've seen on Chernobyl say that the area around the reactor was back down below background radiation levels by the next growing season. The only thing keeping people from moving back into the area was public paranoia about radiation.

Yeah, I'm not buying that. Are they meaning to tell us that the entire town is uninhabited just because of paranoia? Bullshit. If the studies you mention are true, then people would've started to move in ages ago.

It does seem a bit strange, but paranoia is a powerful thing. Part of it is probably to do with people who were exposed to the initial disaster dying over the next decade or two from cancer.

Some people point to the deformed and mutated animals that were born in the area afterwards. Again, this only affected animals who were around for the initial meltdown, and no mutations were recorded after that generation.

These events would have taken place for years after the Chernobyl incident, even though they were only caused by the initial wave of radiation. If people are still dying from the initial radiation exposure, I imagine others wouldn't be too keen on moving back into the site where it happened.

 

[Atmos Duality]

My father is a nuclear reactor engineer and designer, so I actually see the business side from the other perspective. It's a messed up business to be sure, not due to incompetence on the production side, but overdone regulation due to decades of fear-mongering and ignorance.

It's a subject I don't normally comment on beyond a shake of the head and a sigh due to the usually futile nature of arguing in the face of fear-mongers and idiots who don't know a damn thing about nuclear fission, but I'm actually glad to see more sensible people in this topic than I normally do.

 

[FalloutJack]

I don't have an actual problem with it overall. If we're making use of it without somehow screwing up our world, then fine. The only thing is that I know a very important geological fact, that half of what heats the world - as in, to generate this liveable atmosphere and weather - is the release of nuclear halflife. The elements release energy stored and thus there is so much heat underground, enough to make magma and ao on. Power plants probably do not consume it all at any massive rate, but it IS consumption faster than normal. It's a BIT like Final Fantasy 7, though it's more likely that nuclear weapons will kill us than nuclear power plants.

 

[Raven_Operative]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there a bit of an issue with dealing with the spent fuel rods? (Something along the lines of having no effective way to neutralize the radiation left in them or something...)

I'll support nuclear energy if that issue gets cleared up, but until then, consider me on the fence.

EDIT:

I'd like to support it, but every plan I've heard for disposing of nuclear waste is "Bury it out in a mountain in the middle of the desert! Who'll care?" Oh, just us who LIVE in desert states, is all. Yeah, the waste might not be too dangerous, but I'd rather not find out by having something go wrong at the nuclear slag pile.

^That's the problem I was talking about.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Well, maybe, or not really, but maybe. And since this is the Internet, I have a primitive urge to be a ponce about peoples spelling.

So Tornado = Spinny-round-twister-thingy, while Hurricane = Really fast and strong wind, like Gudrun.

Meteorologically speaking, a "tornado" (not to be confused with a Cyclone, which has ambiguous definitions depending on the context and location) is a relatively short-lived (usually less than 30 minutes, though there are exceptions) localized extremely-high-speed column (VERTICAL) of wind that ranges between 30 and 2.5 kilometers in diameter (up to roughly a mile in imperial/English system).

[In weather terms, Tornados are Local Events, embedded within Mesoscale systems. Think, local town = Local Event, vs county/providence for Mesoscale]

A "hurricane" is a VERY LARGE, rotating, powerful system of banded rain storms that forms over the oceans. They are usually several hundred kilometers in diameter. Quite a step up from a tornado to say the least. (hurricanes that make landfall can also spawn thunderstorms that in turn, spawn tornados).

(Incidentally, there is more equivalent potential/kinetic energy in a Category 1 hurricane than all the nuclear warheads in the world)