Nuclear power, yay or nay?

[CriticalMiss]

I'm very much pro-nuclear. I would have no problem living next to a shiny new nuclear plant (even a fission one), but there is no way I would want to live next to a coal-burning power plant.

I'm also in favour of continuing to develop new alternative fuels and energy efficient technology. After all I think it would be even better if we didn't need nuclear power plants. Iceland is lucky enough to be sat on volcano city, so they can exploit geothermal energy to no end. Places with plenty of sunshine could have solar energy. And we weirdos who live away from tectonic faults under a blanket of clouds can stick to nuclear power subsidised with wind and maybe solar when it's not too cloudy.

And the longer we put off the inevitable, the harder the transition is going to be. One day the fossil fuels are going to either run out or become prohibitively expensive to find/use.

 

[TheEvilCheese]

It seems, to me, that it's not really a choice. We don't have the tech or infrastructure to deal with coal / gas being no longer economically viable and that's not far off. Another generation of nuclear power allowing for decades more R&D into renewable / fusion reactors seems like the only way forward. Fission is obviously not a long-term goal, but it's certainly a medium-term one.

 

[Quaxar]

Nay.

Besides green electricity (and it will take a long time until we power enough with it), we only have nuclear or coal. Coal may be horrible for the environment, but at least even the ozone layer CAN get better, even if it takes a thousand years.

The stuff that comes out of nuclear power plants? In german, they call the places to store that stuff "Endlagerstätte" ("Final storage area"), as if they could really store it there forever. Spoiler warning: you can't. And even if you could, that stuff will be radioactive longer than there will be humans on earth. On this overpopulated planet, contaminating an area irrevocably until the end of time seems... unwise.

Uh, the current German nuclear waste facility in Gorleben is a temporary storage, they just would like to establish a final storage right next to the place that already processes Germany's nuclear waste, but deep in a nigh-impenetrable salt dome instead of packing it and sending it back to the plants to be stored there like they do now. Even if the location was only a category three recommendation and more of a political choice in the end.
Morsleben, I give you, is a bit of a mess but then again it was a DDR project in the 60s, which really says it all.

So how do you think about the new generations of nuclear reactors that are able to process more of what a generation III reactor would already consider nuclear waste? Or even fusion-fission reactors? Also, is possible destruction of an atmospheric layer that protects the whole biosphere from UV-induced cell mutations really favorable to possible localised radiation spikes greatly shielded by billion tons of rock?

 

[SpAc3man]

I'm against it. When done right it may be clean and efficient but the complications of storing the waste and the health concerns related poorly managed and constructed plants as well as the fact that material for nuclear weapons comes from the same or similar sources as the fuel required to run these plants.. I just can't support that.

Being an electrical and computer engineering student has led to me actually doing some academic research on solar panel technology. The progress that has been made over the last 10-20 years has been astonishing. Efficiency and density as well as cost has been improved immensely. If there was greater demand for solar power we could have more money being put into the R&D of the technology as well as a huge reduction in cost as it develops into something that every new house has installed. Households that can afford to have solar panels installed are actually getting paid by their power companies for surplus power they generate and transfer onto their local grid. There is currently research into creating roofing tiles that are actually solar panels. Window glass with transparent solar cells generating power. These things actually exist as a working proof of concept.

We need to fund this shit more.

 

[WoW Killer]

There's a third nuclear option. Hybrid Fusion/Fission uses a combination of fusion and fission to create energy. The trick is that the fusion stage of the reaction can be an energy loss while the whole thing is still a net gain; the fusion stage is there to generate excess neutrons for the fission stage. That means it's technically possible with current technology, whereas pure fusion (which would need to generate energy all by itself) could still be decades away.

There's a lot of advantages over pure fission. Sub-critical means inherent safety. They can run on non-enriched fuels, so no need for centrifuge technology (proliferation concerns). The fission is near complete, so there's hardly any waste and it's highly efficient even if the fusion stage is losing energy.

And the coolest thing: it provides a commercially viable application for fusion. That means a massive increasing in funding for fusion research. Though the hybrid reaction doesn't need a perfect fusion stage, it still helps. So any commercially minded project is going to look into improving the efficiency of that stage. Give it a few years and you'd have efficient fusion technology pretty much guaranteed.

 

[IndomitableSam]

I'm against.

Basically, if most homes/business used solar panels on thier homes/offices, you could almost take care of yourself. THe minimal need for power otherwise could come from other renewable resources afterward. We already fucked up Manitoba's ecosystems 50+ years ago by hydro-damming everything, and now we sell out power to other provinces and the US and our environments are pretty stable and mostly recovered (albeit changed, which is not for the better) now... if everyone used solar panels, and actually were power-smart, we'd probably be able to go without most fossil fuel plants or nuclear power.

 

[Hoplon]

Depends, Uranium reactors? strictly for the birds, we only went with them in the first place to get weapons grade waste.

Liquid fluoride thorium reactors on the other had have few of the risks associated with uranium reactors and a much more plentiful resource.

 

[Haakmed]

If there is one thing Literature can tell us about this subject it is this. Just use antimatter! Its safe, reliable and if you need to break something with no remains you can easily convert it into a HUGE explosion!

But seriously, I don't mind nuclear power as long as it is controlled properly.

 

[rednose1]

I wasn't talking about the reactor, but the waste. As far as I know, pool storage is still the standard.

spent rods are stored in spent fuel pools for the first 3 years out of the core, then moved to dry casks, and just stored outside, getting cooled by ambient temperature. (Think giant coke can).

Pleased with all the positive-ish outlook for nuke power here. I'd love to see newer, better designs getting built as well.
As to the whole radioactive crowd, you do realize coal plants put out more radiation than nuke plants are allowed to, right?
Every nuke plant has NRC inspectors at them, coal plants don't. What they DO have, is coal ash.
Also, thanks to all the granite used, Grand Central Station in NYC releases more radiation to the public than a nuclear power plant is allowed to.

 

[Something Amyss]

Ditto. I'm pretty cool with it. It's got a better KwH/ deaths ratio than conventional fuels. And I'm not scared of any environmental stuff either. I wouldn't mind having to live near one (I do live in the city, so that'd be hard to do, but...) so I'm for it. It's not like it's any worse than strip mining the earth or nasty oil spills.

Until 2014, I am living near one. It's not that bad. And considering the reason VY is going down is the advent of fracking, so I think I'd take the nuclear plant over flammable tap water and burying my loved ones. Things that are actually happening.

So yeah....I agree.

 

[Heronblade]

I'm very much in the ''as long as we don't have anything better, it'll have to do''-camp. The ''something better'' would be nuclear fusion, but we are at least twenty years away from efficiently producing that on a commercial scale, so until then, I guess we are going to have to make do with the old fashioned nuclear powerplatnts.

unfortunately, we've been 20 years away from fusion power for the past five decades.

On top of that, our best shot at achieving efficient fusion relies on deuterium and tritium. The closest source of either large enough to power our society for any length of time is from within the moon's dusty surface.

OT: yay

A modern nuclear fusion plant is safer, more efficient, and has less impact on the environment than all other energy sources. On top of which, no other alternative energy source is anywhere near capable of taking up the slack of "traditional" fossil fuel facilities.

 

[Angie7F]

Yes Yes Yes all the way.
I live i Tokyo and it has been crazy hot, but our nuclear power plants have been turned off after the earthquake.
So electricity bils went up but with out the A/C you will die.
My bill this month for a one room apartment is about 200 USD.
So pleeeeeaaaase turn on the nuclear reactors. PLEASE!!!

 

[Heronblade]

Yes Yes Yes all the way.
I live i Tokyo and it has been crazy hot, but our nuclear power plants have been turned off after the earthquake.
So electricity bils went up but with out the A/C you will die.
My bill this month for a one room apartment is about 200 USD.
So pleeeeeaaaase turn on the nuclear reactors. PLEASE!!!

I have to ask, just who over there had the bright idea of putting a flood vulnerable facility on your east coast?

 

[Something Amyss]

Yes Yes Yes all the way.
I live i Tokyo and it has been crazy hot, but our nuclear power plants have been turned off after the earthquake.
So electricity bils went up but with out the A/C you will die.
My bill this month for a one room apartment is about 200 USD.
So pleeeeeaaaase turn on the nuclear reactors. PLEASE!!!

Aren't there ongoing safety concerns right now? As such, isn't it a little inane to say "screw safety, I demand comfort!"

 

[Something Amyss]

putting a flood vulnerable facility on your east coast?

Probably whoever designed New Orleans.

"Hey, let's take a major population and stick it in a poorly shored-up bowl!"

 

[Lightknight]

Relatively cheap and clean (if you don't count the waste facilities). I do know this, should we ever hit a doomsday scenario, you should know where your power plants are and stay well away from them (joke... mostly).

I'd like to see more efficient clean energy though. Solar power is just about there and is a lot more viable now that we can capture a broader spectrum of light (thanks quantum dots [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_dot_solar_cell#Other_issues]) we should get the ball rolling on commercializing and implementing since that's supposed to produce as much as 65% efficiency which is a game changer if true. We also have so many other clean renewable power sources that I'd really expect to see these pick up. The goal would be to get off of caustic sources like nuclear energy and dirty sources like coal. In the meantime though, Nuclear is as good as we can do while the truly clean energy picks up.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

AS long as they use the newer builds that prevent most leaks even from floods. But the problem is no one wants to they want to be as cheap as possible thus why its a bad idea half the time.

 

[loc978]

Jury's still out with me, waiting to see the results of ITER in practice. I do know that coal power is something we should've moved away from about 50 years ago, and fission is certainly a better option than that... but around here (Oregon [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Oregon]) we've had a whole lot more luck with hydroelectric dams than anything else.

Our nuke plant (which output only a little over half what our biggest dam does... two-thirds what our second biggest dam outputs, about the same as our third or fourth biggest dams) left a big ol' strip of land unusable, spotted with concrete storage bunkers for decaying spent fuel... before we shut it down in the 90s. That land is still unusable, though. Wind power takes up too much space for too little output (another thing we're a working example of), and solar is only really reliable as a primary power source on flatlands closer to the equator.

I might be biased, though... my area is powered entirely by one of our smallest dams. In a doomsday scenario, I could probably even keep the little guy running.

 

[Aurora Firestorm]

Yes, nuclear power. Stop being so damn terrified of it and just use it until we finally figure out fusion power. It's better than depending on coal and oil, and it's more cost-efficient than solar/wind/etc.

We really need to quit acting like every nuclear power plant is just a ticking bomb waiting to go off. Yes, Chernobyl happened, because the Russians did stupid shit with it. Yes, Fukushima was a thing. Yes, Three Mile Island. Even so, this is like people who won't fly because once in a while a plane crashes. The odds of it happening are astronomically low unless you're doing something really dumb.