McCain Backs Nuclear Power

bagsc writes "Senator John McCain set out another branch of his energy policy agenda today, with a key point: 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030." So it finally appears that this discussion is back on the table. I'm curious how Nevada feels about this, as well as the Obama campaign. All it took was $4/gallon gas I guess. When it hits $5, I figure one of the campaigns will start to promote Perpetual Motion.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[oodaloop]

There's plenty of fissionable material, especially if you include the recyclable secondary material, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 years' worth I once heard. I'd hate to strip mine half the planet to get it, but I suppose it's a better choice in the near term than burning all our oil.

Re:no American power plants burn Oil

[halivar]

Yeah, and Mexico's ban on private capital investment in oil production is why Mexico imports 25% of its gas from the US, even though it's the world's 5th largest producer.

You know why?

Economics 101: Price controls create shortages. Every. Time.

Re:Obama better support this too

[SatanicPuppy]

More likely he will say that, "Nuclear is an important part of our national ongoing energy strategy, along with clean, renewable energy in the form of wind and solar and whatever."

Means the same thing really; McCain pushed so-called "clean coal" at the same time as he pushed Nuclear, [washingtonpost.com] which is a bit more Republican of him, since coal states are red states, and big electric has no desire to stop building coal plants.

Nuclear is the best of a lot of bad options, and regardless of presidents, the return to nuclear power has already begun, as witnessed by the resurge in permit applications since last year. [msn.com]

Re:$4 for gas, come on

[JustKidding]

I don't know the current gas prizes in the UK are, but here in the Netherlands, the current price is 1.62 euros per litre, which Google calc converts to...

9.50 USD per gallon.

I can't recall when we had gas for 0.68 per litre (=4 USD per gallon), that must have been like 10 years ago. Quit whining.

Re:Nuclear is a great idea.

[Lumpy]

Hell I WANT it in my back yard. I have a Coal plant within 30 miles and it is an eyesore of the comunity. the piles of coal and the huge ships coming and going are ugly ugly ugly. and the days when the scrubbers fail or are offline you can see the crud going up in the air.

No Republican Nukes

[jollyreaper]

I have nothing against nuclear power, I just do not trust deregulation-happy business criminals to run them. With proper designs, regular inspections, and a safety-first mentality, nuclear power is clean and safe. With Enron-style profit-raping and criminal evasion of government regulation, we'd be fucked and glowing in the dark. I wouldn't put it past them to try and build crappy Chernobyl-style reactors just to give the finger to the Greenies, the same way they have the hard-on for drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.

In addition to Carter, here's who to blame...

[Muad'Dave]

...for our current backwater nuclear power status. From Wikipedia: [wikipedia.org]

With the election of President Bill Clinton in 1992, and the appointment of Hazel O'Leary as the Secretary of Energy, there was pressure from the top to cancel the IFR. Sen. John Kerry (D, MA) and O'Leary led the opposition to the reactor, arguing that it would be a threat to non-proliferation efforts, and that it was a continuation of the Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project that had been canceled by Congress. Despite support for the reactor by then-Rep. Richard Durbin (D, IL) and U.S. Senators Carol Mosley Braun (D, IL) and Paul Simon (D, IL), funding for the reactor was slashed, and it was ultimately canceled in 1994. [Just 3 years before completion.]

Emphasis mine. See all those bold 'D's for Democrat? Uh huh.

Re:$4 for gas, come on

[k_187]

Yeah, doubling in 10 years. The price has doubled in 1 year in the US. How would you feel if it went up to 3.24 euros/litre over the course of the next few months?

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[FireFury03]

There's plenty of U238 around anyway (thousands of years' worth) - it is only U235 which *may* be in short supply.

It's not the emissions it's the management

[uberotto]

For those of us who remember the 70's and early 80's which was sort of the Nuclear Power heyday, it wasn't the dangers of Nuclear energy that caused people to turn against the technology. It was the poor construction and management of the Nuclear Power Plants that was the problem. With Three Mile Island, there was the faulty sensor, at Browns Ferry it was discovered that many of the fail-safe provisions had been left out of the construction to save costs. I remember watching the news and seeing Nuclear Waste being stored in leaky, rusty barrels in a parking lot covered by a tarp. It's not Nuclear Energy most of us are against, it's the fact that too many companies were insisting that it cost too much to build safe Nuclear Power Plants. That's what killed Nuclear Power in the 70's and 80's. It wasn't the technology, it was the management of the technology.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

With effective breeder reactors, thorium utilization, and REPROCESSING the number is closer 100,000 years.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[Muad'Dave]

Patently false, unless you limit yourself to the retarded design we currently use. Using IFR [nationalcenter.org] technology [wikipedia.org], there is enough fuel for 100,000 years [berkeley.edu].

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[netwiz]

No, it's not "very limited." Additionally, reprocessing waste (using breeder reactors, like every other nuclear-power-using nation on earth) expands the current supply by a factor of a million, given that you get ~1000x the fissionable Pu239, out of which the products can also be re-burned. Hell, if you have to, we can use those same breeders to transmute and burn thorium. There's plenty of fission power to go around.

Re:Now all we need...

[Cutie Pi]

Ah yes, TMI.

The amazing thing about TMI is that, had everyone left things alone and let the automated safety systems do their job, a normal shutdown would have occurred. Instead, the human operators intervened and basically did everything they could to cause a meltdown. Nonetheless, the whole thing went out with a fizzle, with essentially zero radiation being emitted to the outside. You'd probably receive more radiation smoking a pack of cigarettes or flying across country than you would have sitting in TMI's backyard.

Nonetheless I'm sure when the general population hears TMI they think (OMFG! Meltdown!!!!!111)

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[SatanicPuppy]

PoTAYto PoTAHto, the point is geothermal is where it is, not where you want it to be, and the costs of transporting power from where it is to where it is needed is prohibitive.

Also, especially the case with active volcanos, you don't want to build a lot of power generation infrastructure right next to something that is intrinsically dangerous and unpredictable.

Even in Iceland, the world leader in geothermal, there is a lot of concern that their attempts to harness the power could accidentally set off some sort of event (earthquake, eruption, explosion) that could put people in danger.

Clarifying

[misterjava66]

I'm a Nuclear Engineer.

Let me help clarify a few things.

1. In the 70's, our technology was not sufficient for reprocessing. It is arguably that we might have the ability to develop the tech now.

2. The HLW (high level waste) from reprocessing is hotter longer after final use than once through methods.

3. 10,000y is a design specification for HLW storage facilities. HLW is less radioactive than the materials dug up to make it after only 700y.

4. Furthermore, since HLW is loaded with rare earths and lanthanides, and our knowledge of their special and sometimes unique chemistry grows every day, and HLW is actually the only reasonable source for some of these elements, its possible that HLW would enter its own reprocessing cycle after just 200y.

Regards,

Jerry

What percentage of that is taxes?

[biolysis]

Well?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_tax#Netherlands [wikipedia.org]

"The 2007 fuel tax was 0.684 per litre or $ 3.5 per gallon. On top of that is 19% VAT over the entire fuel price, making the Dutch taxes one of the highest in the world."

Fiscal reality FTW.

Re:$4 for gas, come on

[netwiz]

You guys also pay a 60% tax on your fuel, as opposed to the 12% tax here in the US.

Re:Obama better support this too

[Colonel Korn]

Obama was the one major candidate back in the silly Youtube debate early in the Democratic primary race who was interested in nuclear power.

Japan holds keys to nuclear plant construction

[AeroSC]

I'm all for building more nuclear plants and think they, along with fuel reprocessing, are a key element in reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. McCain's plan, however, ignores the realities of what it would take to physically build 45 plants in the US by 2030.

There was an article covered a while back (http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/14/1238233 [slashdot.org]) talking about the 600-ton steel forgings required for a reactor containment vessel and the fact that on one company in Japan can, currently, make them. Given that their production rate is only 5 per year and their first open slot is in ~2015, the US would need 80% of their output from 2015 to 2027 to hope to meet that goal.

Unless the rest of the world stops building nuclear plants or someone else starts making containment vessels, all this is just talk.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[russotto]

There's plenty of fissionable material, especially if you include the recyclable secondary material

And there's the key. The US stopped reprocessing under Carter, which greatly reduces the magnitude of fuel available while simultaneously massively increasing the waste stream.

Re:Obama better support this too

[Colonel Korn]

You make a big deal about how Obama is generally a bad guy and thus won't support this, but it's just a troll post. Obama specifically has stated that he supports nuclear power during his campaign. One of his biggest campaign donors is Excelon, a nuclear power company. The only anti-nuclear power thing he's done isn't really anti-nuclear power: he introduced legislation to force nuclear power plants to report leaks.

Not just that

[Moryath]

The newer designs of reactors have no CHANCE of doing what either Chernobyl or 3-Mile Island did. Pebble-Bed reactors fail "safe" (without guidance, they simply hit their equilibrium temperature which is well within the structural design limits and stay there). Plus, they cool by inert gas rather than water so there's no chance of a contaminated steam-cloud explosion (which was why Chernobyl was so nasty).

Nuclear Is The Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS FACT ALONE: France is far more leftist and "GREEN" than the US and they have a far greater threat of domestic Islamic terrorism, yet they are almost fully nuclear because:

*It is SAFE
Oh, the citizens of CHERNOBYL beg to differ!
Why hasn't there been a single incident in the last 22 years. Could it just be that Chernobyl was an old poorly designed, poorly maintained reactor that bears no comparisons to modern reactors?
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter7.html

*Has nearly ZERO pollution
But Its NUCULUR WASTE!!! GODZILLA!!!.
An average plant produces just 3 cubic meters of waste per year and 95% of that waste is re-usable:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing
As for the NIMBY's, store it in the desert where we used to test nuclear weapons. I'm guessing that's no one's back yard.

*Provides continuous power (unlike solar, wind)
Hey buddy, there are ways to store that power and supply continuous power.
Yeah, more expensive, less efficient ways.

*Provides CHEAP power (unlike solar, wind)
You'd put a price on protecting Mother Earth? We need a ZERO-RISK society!
Cost is actually important to the average person who can't afford to take their private jet around the country lecturing the unwashed masses about their evil polluting ways.

You can look up the facts about nuclear power yourself, or you can watch "The China Syndrome" and build the hundreds (thousands?) of windmills and square miles of solar panels it would take equate to one nuclear plant.

Sorry this was a little snarky. I know most anti-nuclear, pro-green people are just well intentioned and misinformed. So please do the research. Throw out any research you find from the Sierra Club and power companies and the answer will still be clear.
Again, why is the rest of the developed world going nuclear and we are tilting at windmills?
Are we that much smarter?

Re:Oil not equal to nuclear

[cayenne8]

"Pushing nuclear energy has relatively very little do with our dependence on gasoline via crude oil. Please lets not confuse the two."

Well, in the northern US, it would/could make a big difference. For some reason up there...they use heating OIL to heat their homes during the long, hard winters.

Perhaps if we had more nukes providing cheaper electricity...we could get the heating done up north without so much oil usage.

I mean, if you think gas prices are bad now...wait till you have to buy oil to heat your house...something you REALLY can't go without....and be prepared for sticker shock...

Re:Now all we need...

[PMuse]

Ah yes, TMI. . . . the whole thing went out with a fizzle, with essentially zero radiation being emitted to the outside. You'd probably receive more radiation smoking a pack of cigarettes or flying across country than you would have sitting in TMI's backyard.

Mod parent up.

Number of people dead due to TMI incident [wikipedia.org]: zero.
Number of health problems conclusively linked to TMI incident: zero.
Amount of radiation to residents: 8-100 millirem.
Improvements in power station design since 1979: lots [wikipedia.org].
Chance of same incident happening again: ~zero.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[drinkypoo]

PoTAYto PoTAHto, the point is geothermal is where it is, not where you want it to be, and the costs of transporting power from where it is to where it is needed is prohibitive.

Excuse me? We lose only 5% of our electricity in transmission in the USA, and it could be even lower if we just stepped the voltage up further.

Anyway, *I* live in the most geothermally active region in the world, just down the hill from "The Geysers" in California. (Iceland is the megawatt leader; this region is the leader in hotspots per square mile or something.) And the problem that they have here is that Arsenic (and other shit) collects on the turbine blades, then gets power-washed off, concentrated, and buried. If that stuff was dispersed into the air like it naturally is, it would be at background levels. But now we have a toxic dump site in the county thanks to the way in which we are implementing geothermal power.

The sad thing is that I can point at a ridge that has constant 25 MPH wind, and which has no wind turbines on it. Geothermal power as it is dealt with today is a big mistake, especially in the USA, and even more especially since wind and solar both work just fine.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[DaveV1.0]

You think that way because you are ignorant of nuclear technology.

It is not really your fault. It is the fault of the hysteria-spreading, anti-nuclear, tree-huggers. They spent years spreading anti-nuclear disinformation and succeeded in stopping the building of nuclear reactors. More money was poured into coal and petroleum for energy production.

Iran is sitting on lots of uranium

[Anonymous Coward]

> here is a very limited supply of easily accessable fissable material on earth.

That's why they want to get after Iran, it's sitting on lots of uranium.

So it's kind of "I want that oil" warmongering on steroids.

Probably they could simply buy it, but want it cheaper and don't want to let Iran get all the profits.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[SatanicPuppy]

The worry is that they'll accidentally tap a high pressure area, and cause a blowout (e.g a small volcano). Or that the water that they inject into the ground (so they can harvest the energy from the steam) will "lubricate" a fault line, and cause a plate to shift. Or that some of the steam will come out where you don't want it to come out, or form pressure elsewhere, causing a rupture.

I don't know enough about it, but there are valid concerns. There was a deal a few years back in Indonesia where a gas company accidentally sparked a nasty mud volcano thru exploratory drilling [boston.com].

A lot of it though is that whole, "We've never done it before, so as far as we know it could do anything." There was a percentage of scientists, who, at the time of the detonation of the first atomic bomb, weren't quite sure that the bomb wouldn't ignite the atmosphere and end life on earth as we know it...Like the people at CERN who aren't quite sure we won't spark an Earth devouring Black Hole with the LHC.

Not to say that the geothermal concerns are that implausible, it's just that no one really knows.

Re:Oil not equal to nuclear

[sribe]

Much of your comments are accurate, especially how renewables do not eliminate the use of oil for transportation. But you're wrong about the state of renewables: wind is in large-scale deployment today (19% of electricity in Denmark, 9% in Spain & Portugal, 6% in Germany); solar is closer than 10+ years as the first large-scale installations are being built.

A little more about wind power in Germany: they're aiming for 20% in about the next 10 years. And their experience is interesting; it turns out that when you have large numbers of wind farms all across the country, the wind is always blowing somewhere, and the problem with intermittent output starts to go away. (Requires, of course, a power grid able to deal with shifting inputs, which may require expensive upgrades.)

WRONG

[DriedClexler]

Pushing nuclear energy has relatively very little do with our dependence on gasoline via crude oil. Please lets not confuse the two. There is no chance that there will be cars powered by "under the hood" nuclear reactors in the near future.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG. As long as you have an effectively unlimited energy source, you can use that energy to draw CO2 from the atmosphere, and store it in octane (i.e., what people already use, so no infrastructure changes), which the cars useas fuel. Basically, you just do the reverse of the combustion reaction:

C8H18 + O2 --> energy + H2O + CO2 (modulo a little balancing!)

Take energy from the nuclear plant, CO2 from the atmosphere, and every time a car burns that fuel, it's simply returning to the atmosphere, that which was taken from it. Carbon neutral octane!

This is NOT a crackpot idea, it's something that a federal lab [nytimes.com] has already worked out, and it can provide that fuel for $4.60 a gallon (before brilliant people optimize the process even further). That's not much more expensive than gasoline is today. To make it competitive, all you'd need is a $.60/gallon tax, and it's probably already competitive if introduced in the rest of the world which has higher fuel taxes.

I have no idea why this idea is not more widespead.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[networkconsultant]

Nuclear Information [world-nuclear.org] Generation IV reactors are horribly efficient, even the lest efficient CANDU's use about 8 to 10KG of fuel / day, most reactors are designed to used unprocessed fuel (U238 or Enriched Blackshale) or fuel that requires very little development, the nice thing about the new designs is that they all use light water or liquid sodium.

The best solution, for now

[Herger]

Nuclear is the best solution we have for now. To say that it's risky overlooks the hazards of coal: mining and moving 1 billion tons of coal, burning it and releasing particulates and heavy metals, acidifying the oceans by increasing atmospheric CO2 load. The relative risk of nuclear is probably overall lower than coal/oil/gas in terms of lives saved by reducing particulate and heavy metal emissions, and environmental benefit from reduced mining activity, reduced CO2 and metal emissions.

The first thing the incoming President will need to do to start the movement is rescind Carter's executive order against fuel reprocessing. Then, drive up the marginal cost of coal mining through changes in tax and land use policy. Third and most necessary, apply a sales tax to fossil and nuclear sources to fund development of the next energy source as well as improving efficiency of current consumers.

Fission is, at best, a stopgap over current problems with energy. We cannot neglect fusion, solar, etc. as well as improving efficiency of major electric consumers such as lighting, data centers, HVAC climate control systems, etc. Hopefully something better will come along in the next 50 years to replace these plants as they retire.

Re:Oil not equal to nuclear

[OshMan]

If I had moderator points right now I'd dump them all here. With plugin hybrids only a couple of years away, reliable generation of electricity is the solution for supplanting oil. Not some new way to distribute energy requiring a whole new huge fueling infrastructure. While building new reactors will granted take years, it will also take years for cars to switch over to electric. While nuclear should not be the only means for increasing electrical generation, it should certainly be a part of the solution. Now if you want to moan about the dangers of nuclear energy think hard on this fact: the US Navy has been using nuclear powered vessels since 1955.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[hoggoth]

While watching that entertaining but mindless episode I thought to myself, "I'll bet there are people watching this right now that believe they are being educated by Dr. Who."
You didn't really watch someone go back in time.
The word volcano was coined from the island 'Vulcano' north of Sicily, not from someone rescued by Dr. Who at Pompei.
Yes, it was named after the god Vulcan; They though Vulcano island was the chimney for Vulcan's forges.
People certainly did know what a volcano was in AD 76. They just didn't know Vesuvius was quite so active.

I cringed during that sequence when all the actors made 'wow thats where the word came from' faces. Yes our home, village, friends and relative, entire life has just been destroyed but hey aint it cool that we just coined a new word!

Obama Supports Nuclear despite what Fox News says

[JustinKSU]

I recently watched a segment on Fox News where they stated that Obama was against Nuclear Power. I did some research and as the parent states, he is FOR using Nuclear Power as part of an overall solution. Here is the letter I sent to Fox News:

Very early this morning I was watching FOX & Friends' coverage of the Energy debate between Senator Obama and Senator McCain. There was a graphic that showed the differences between the two candidates. I saw a difference that was curious to me as I had not seen it mentioned on any other news networks. The graphic and following dialog suggested that Senator McCain was pro nuclear energy while Senator Obama was against it. Energy is obviously a hot topic this election year and I personally believe that Nuclear Power is part of the solution. I found it odd that Senator Obama would be against using Nuclear Energy. I decided to "Google" it to learn more. The top two links were YouTube videos of a primary debate and a round table discussion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDmyToTYBE [youtube.com] and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRxl2cVFTLw [youtube.com] In both cases it was made clear that Senator Obama is FOR using Nuclear Power as part of an energy solution. I would like to know what sources Fox News used to determine that Senator Obama is against the use of Nuclear Energy so that I may more clearly understand his position on the subject.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[blueg3]

GP mentions silly paranoia about breeder reactors. The reason people avoid those is fear that someone would get ahold of the materials used by them to make a nuclear weapon.

However, your comment is still paranoia, not justifiable fear. What exactly would terrorists do to holding areas at nuclear power stations to make the eastern US uninhabitable for 5000 years? Fly a plane into a holding site for nuclear material or waste? That wouldn't disperse the material much at all. The worse-case scenario is someone in the US stealing the material and using it to make a nuclear weapon -- something that's already possible using other sources. Even trying to blow up a nuclear reactor would cause limited damage, and they're not trivial to blow up.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[tfoss]

This [llnl.gov] is a pretty interesting & relevant graphic.

-Ted

Re:Oil not equal to nuclear

[Leomania]

That's dumb. As dirty as coal plants are, they are far cleaner than the equivalent power output from internal combustion engines.

To the best of my knowledge, the amount of mercury emitted by my car's exhaust is zero. Mercury is THE major problem with coal, and it receives far too little attention.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[mikeabbott420]

The years of engineering and construction required to turn a plant that exists into the doomsday device of your imagination would be difficult for the terrorists to achieve.

Re:$5 a gallon?

[justleavealonemmmkay]

Your geography knowledge sucks.

*Outside of Benelux, most countries CANNOT be crossed by road in an hour or two.
*Paris to Amsterdam is 504km. It's at best a 5h drive. 10h back and forth. How many people do that in the US?

Re:Oil not equal to nuclear

[LWATCDR]

In many places people use electricity for heating and it is efficient. We use heat pumps.

Cheap Electricity does NOT equal electric cars

[clonan]

Remember, right now the power it takes to drive an electric electric car (sedan) is between $7-$10. To fill a tank and drive 300 miles is $50.

Electricity has been cheaper than oil for more than 50 years.

The problem is power storage and recharge times.

Currently it is impracticle to get much more than cummuter range on most electric cars. To get that range it can take 5-8 hours to charge. Now true this covers 80-90% of all driving but the problem is that Americans will only buy vehicles that fit 99.99% of the potential driving they will do.

We Americans will not buy a cummuter car than rent a long distance car as needed...

While I DO think electric cars are the next stage of transportation, reducing the price of electricity won't solve anything.

What is interesting are Ultracapacitors, flywheels and battery technology. These are increasing the power density EXTREMLY quickly and the recharge times are dropping almost as fast.

I am looking forward to this year and next year. Several plug in hybrids, the volt not to mention ZENN and EEstor.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Even trying to blow up a nuclear reactor would cause limited damage, and they're not trivial to blow up.

The only way to blow up a nuclear power plant is to pack it full of TNT.

Re:Here they go again

[tfoss]

And yet the enviro-nutjobs keep screaming for ethanol production and refuse to consider how wasteful it is.

Actually, I think you'll find that politicians (Iowa caucus and all) and corn-growing farmers/agribusiness are the ones screaming for ethanol, *not* the green types. It's been clear for a while that ethanol, particularly from corn is not a environmental win (other cellulose-based crops that don't need to displace cropland might be).

Wind farms are INCREDIBLY noisy and disruptive, the power is intermittent at best with very minimal generating capacity for the land area used, and a major killer of endangered birds already.

I'm sure the grazing cows are upset by noisy windmills. Most wind-farms are placed 1. on dual-use land (ie, ranching) 2. away from populated places (which is a downside, efficiency-wise). The land area used for wind is not then unavailable for other uses, *and* we have lots of land in this country...that is not our limiting factor. Bringing up the bird argument actually undermines your point, as it is known to be false. [awea.org] Nice point for a rant, but really divorced from reality.

Tidal power has the same problem, you can only do it on a shoreline,

Fortunately, a large percent of the population lives relatively near a shoreline.

Your use of "enviro-nutjob" and somewhat ODDLY placed caps also tends to UNDERMINE your argument by casting your comment as just a plain, old, non-enviro nutjob with an axe to grind.

-Ted

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[CrimsonAvenger]

I don't know the actual numbers and am too lazy to look, but is Plutonium (the waste) way more radioactive then the fuel (Uranium)?

Yes and no.

Plutonium is a small part of the waste. And is more radioactive than Uranium. But you can shield yourself from the radiation from plutonium by wrapping the plutonium in toilet paper - it's an alpha emitter. Note also that "more radioactive" than Uranium isn't really saying much - unless you eat the stuff, or otherwise metabolize something containing plutonium, it's pretty much harmless (IOW not very radioactive at all).

That said, most of the radioactive waste or a nuclear reactor isn't plutonium. It's a diverse mix of fission by-products and irradiated structural material. Half lives of "nuclear waste" vary from seconds to millenia, with the overwhelming majority being in the seconds part of that range. As an example, the nuclear power plants I worked on a few decades ago had radiation levels in the millions of REM per hour when operating. Shutdown, they dropped to less than 0.1 REM per hour within a day. And to trivial levels (less than a milli-REM per hour) after three days.

That's how quickly nuclear waste becomes inert. What's left after that point is the long half-life stuff. But "long half-life" is identical with "not very radioactive". So what goes into the holding tanks as "nuclear waste" isn't really much more radioactive than the average brick. And can be shielded quite effectively by the water in the tank (or your clothes).

Where you have problems with "nuclear waste" is when the (slightly) radioactive material is metabolized (mostly impossible - if you eat a chunk of plutonium, you'll shit it out unchanged in a day), or when it is chemically combined with something you CAN metabolize (not impossible, but difficult), or when you breathe the crap in (possible only when the radioactive waste has chemically combined with something that can produce airborne ash when burned). This last possibility isn't especially likely to be a problem, mostly because the stuff is much heavier than air - most of us don't keep our lungs around our ankles.

Note, by the way, that we've never had a person die of exposure to "nuclear waste". Not even at Chernobyl. And noone died at all, or was even exposed to much radioactivity, at TMI.

Nuclear Waste

[DesScorp]

"They all have at least one good point though: what do we do with the waste?"

Reprocess most of it. Bury the rest of it.

There's no technical or economic reason to ban reprocessing. Up to 92 percent of spent fuel can be re-used if reprocessed. Current law bans the practice. That's a political decision, made by the Carter Administration, because reprocessing spent fuel rods creates small amounts of Plutonium as a byproduct, and the argument was "but terrorists might get the Plutonium!". Well, they wouldn't if you secured the Plutonium. It's a silly argument. If that's the reason, then a President could solve the problem with a stroke of a pen; simply mandate that the military takes charge of the Plutonium and is responsible for guarding it. For those of you that have served in the military, you know how fanatical security forces are about the nuclear weapons in their charge. Recent USAF screwups aside, try and approach a nuclear weapons storage facility and see what happens to you. The security argument against reprocessing is simply farcical. France supplies nearly all of their power with Nuclear, and they reprocess their fuel to minimize waste. To date, Al Qaeda or Islamic Jihad doesn't seem to have been able to steal the French plutonium.

As for what to do with the remaining waste, just store it. There's several ways to do it. The easiest thing to do is simply store it in a secure facility. Do you know what highly technical mechanism is required to store spent fuel rods? A pool of water, 3 feet deep. France stores all their remaining nuclear waste in one single building, in a pool of water.

If you prefer to bury it, just encase the rods in glass, and bury it in a place where there's no water table. For the people going "Gasp! Radioactive materials! Underground!"... where do you think we got the uranium from the the first place? We dug it up. Underground.

The utter hysteria over nuclear technologies far, far outweighs the actual risks of nuclear technologies.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[torkus]

Well there's the containment vessel and then there's the holding pools.

But no, flying a fully loaded jet into a containment vessel would NOT breach it. They're specifically built and tested to exceed stresses just LIKE that.

Also - for those who don't "get it" - a nuclear *reactor* is not those huge white towers with steam coming out. Those are just heat exchangers for cooling the plant. The actual reactor is in a rather small (by comparison) boring building around the middle of the plant.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[networkconsultant]

Well, here's a comparison
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_of_combustion [wikipedia.org]
Gasolene - 47MJ/KG
Kerosene - 46.2MJ/KG
Diesel - 45MJ/KG
Atomic Fission (U235)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_dioxide [wikipedia.org]
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/nucene/u235chn.html [gsu.edu]
1KG of U235 has about 17.5KiloTons of Energy
17.5(4.184*10^12J) or
7.322*10^10MJ

Atomic Fusion p+B11 *now with less killing! (it's called Anutronic Fusion since it has no radiation) p +11Bâ'3(4He)+ 8.7 MeV (or 1KG of B11 can produce 17.7GWh of electricity)or 17.7(3.6*10^12J)which is about 63.7*10^10MJ

In terms of Energy:
1KG of U235 = 1.557*10^9KG of Gasolene

(that's 9 orders of magnitude better) 1KG of B11 = 13.55*10^9KG of Gasolene

So yes it's HORRIBLY efficent, not quite as efficent as Matter + Anti-matter however we haven't figured out how to build that kind of reactor yet, and we'd need a plentiful source of antimatter.

At $57/LB uranium is far cheaper than Gas. I'm pretty sure Borax is cheaper than Uranium.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[witherstaff]

You do realize plants are storing their waste onsight nowadays? Crack a spent fuel storage cask that's sitting on the shore of Lake Michigan and that might cause some very large problem.

Then again, the storage casks have been designed and upgraded to withstand a direct airplane hit so I'm not overly concerned. I have 2 plants within 50 miles and I still wish we'd start doing breeder reactors to help our energy needs.

Re:Nuclear very expensive

[slykens]

Nuclear power is far far more expensive than oil. Not only is it security risk, but the health hazards are enormous in obtaining the fuel, refining the fuel, using the fuel, and disposal of the spent fuel.

From the Nuclear Energy Institute (yes I know, industry hacks but i couldn't find concise data elsewhere...) nuclear is 1.72, coal is 2.21, and oil is 8 cents per kWh. There's no question that in an environment of standardized reactor design and streamlined regulation that nuclear would be less expensive. While security is a concern I don't really see it as any larger a concern than a conventional power plant should have. Both are critical infrastructure and should be guarded.

Inevitable accidents have world wide affects. To make it worse, nuclear power plants are not the most productive.

Inevitable accidents? Interesting way of phrasing it. Are you familiar with pebble bed reactors? They are fail-safe by design, that is to say you could shut off all the associated machinery and cooling to the reactor and leave the building and the reactor will simply revert to a designed idle temperature, no meltdown, explosion, or radiation release. While true that hydro can produce the largest plants (China's 3 Gorges is 22.5 GW!) spreading out generation and decentralization of the grid has strategic advantages.

I can't recall the study, but the cost benefits of nuclear energy that are quoted never factor in disposal (storage actually) of the spent rods or cleanup of accidents.

Fast breeder reactors are the solution to this. As for cleanup of accidents, I wouldn't suggest one is impossible with properly designed equipment but I'll trade that risk to eliminate emissions from coal, oil, and gas fired plants.

Do we need a reminder of 3 mile island or chernobyl?

Yes, we do. We should keep in mind that Three Mile Island's safety measures contained the core and the only radiation released was from an intentional gas release to reduce pressure. Chernobyl was a terribly designed Soviet reactor lacking a complete containment building not to mention the poor procedures used by the employees there.

The earlier poster had it correct, you need to get some new propaganda that isn't 30 years old.

If I were a the dictator here I'd put nuclear plants next to desalinization plants and crack water to hydrogen all day long. All we need is a transport and storage system for hydrogen to replace gas for transport and we can stop importing oil and use what we produce for all of our other needs. Over time this would eliminate all emissions from cars and conventionally powered electricity generation.

But nuclear is only a stop-gap. I'd also throw a ton of money into solar research and work on decentralizing the grid that way.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[Firethorn]

The problem with using Chernobyl as an example for a nuclear disaster is that in a multitude of ways it wasn't built as safe as reactors elsewhere.

For example, you wouldn't get a Pripyat in the USA because all of our reactors are already contained in pre-constructed pressure buildings. Often it's a dome. It's designed to act as a second containment vessel in case the primary is breached.

Then there's the whole void coefficient thing.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[Teilo]

Thank you.

The ignorance on nuclear reactors tends to irk me. I remember reading an Iron Man comic once, where Iron Man goes into the cooling tower, pulls out the reactor core, and throws it up into space, where it blows up in a nuclear explosion.

Problems being, as you noted the nuclear core is not in the cooling tower, and nuclear cores can't blow up like a nuclear bomb. Nuclear Physics 101. It just can't happen.

Fission bombs are set off by the rapid forming of a critical mass, either by joining two halves of a critical mass together in a millisecond's time, or, as with plutonium, by rapid implosion, usually of a sphere, causing the material to rapidly condense into a critical mass. (roughly described - I am not a nuclear physicist, so don't go all picky on the fine details everyone). It's an incredibly precise thing to get right. It doesn't just happen. Form the critical mass too slowly, and you create a whole lot of heat and radiation, but no boom.

I imagine that most of the fearful public does not understand this, even on a rudimentary level, and equates nuclear reactors with nuclear bombs. How many people think that Chernobyl was a nuclear explosion? Most I talk to. The no-nukes zealots commonly exploit this fear and ignorance. They are not interested in science, but in their ideology.

The waste produced by a coal plant is more radioactive [sciam.com] than nuclear waste. We would have far less radioactive waste with nuclear power than with coal.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[squizzar]

Being English I appreciate a good jab at the French more than anyone, but I have to point out that the French produce something like 80% of their power from Nuclear Energy (they even sell it to us - and EDF are destined to build all the new nuclear reactors in the UK it seems). It stands to reason then that they would be unlikely to be sitting in their filth in the dark, but rather simply sitting in their filth.

And probably eating garlic...

while talking about onions...

moving hastily away from conflict...

and being mean to geese...

Ok I'm done

Good for McCain....

[ConceptJunkie]

I've read Obama's energy policy and it consists solely of biofuel and hopeful thinking.

Re:Seriously, WTF?

[CrimsonAvenger]

unlikely possibility of a plant going critical

This is an annoyingly common misuse of the word "critical". For those who care, in nuclear power "critical" is essentially the same as "turned on". It means that the reactor has begun a self-sustaining nuclear reaction.

"Super-critical" means that the power output of the reaction is increasing, by the way, and is also not, in and of itself, a bad thing.

"Sub-critical" means that the power output of the reaction is decreasing.

Note that a more precise definition uses the words "neutrons" more than it uses "power", but you get the idea, I trust.