Nuclear Power - A Solution To America's Energy Needs?

[Midway ®]

When Saturn enters Uranus, you'll know something's up.

[Midway ®]

Repeal the Price-Anderson Act. Stop geovrnment giveaways to the nuclear power industry.

[Lunican]

There have been no major nuclear accidents in the US since 1979 and even then (Three Mile Island) no one was killed.  

There have been no major nuclear accidents in France ever and they obtain a large majority of their energy from nuclear.

There have been no major incidents in western Europe since the 1960s and no one was killed in that accident either.  

Of course there have been scattered deaths among plant workers but this happens at any place of employment to varying degrees.  The bottom line is nuclear power is a safe and mature technology which should be considered IMO.

RG's track record is terrifying. He's like a prophet.

[simms3]

Well to give nuclear energy the benefit of the doubt, these reactors were not built to undergo an 8.9 magnitude earthquake, which just happened literally a few miles away from both plants.

Also, a Chernobyl will not happen because there are two barriers within another barrier separating the cores from the outside air.  A thick steel barrier and an 8 ft thick concrete barrier inside of that.  Chernobyl had neither (it was built cheaply by a bunch of communists after all).

This "disaster" will likely not be close to the disaster that the oil spill was in terms of human toll or  environmental toll.

Even if, God forbid, a few people die or become sick from this, nuclear energy will still have a much cleaner, much safer track record than coal or LNG.  This whole thing is a huge anomaly, and will result in one of two things: either all nuclear energy being put on hold (which has been discussed for a few years in Germany and Italy), or all new plants be built to withstand a 10.0 earthquake, a 200 mph hurricane, a 500 mph tornado, a nuclear bomb, a 100 ft tsunami, a volcano, etc etc.  I can tell you that nuclear plants already are built to such high standards (in other developed countries because it has been decades since we built them here) that it's a wonder nuclear energy is still one of the cheapest forms of energy for the consumer!

[thekillingwax]

I love Michiu Kaku, he's brilliant but he's also the Dr. Oz of science- instead of letting him stick to his area of expertise, they ask him to form opinions on things outside his scope and he comes off looking goofy.

Instead of constantly updating the post here, I'm going to link to the source thread on another forum where there's a lot of in-depth technical discussion of the events surrounding the reactors and a pretty good faq about the facts and myths of current nuclear power technology:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3396817

[danno]

snip

I love Michiu Kaku, he's brilliant but he's also the Dr. Oz of science- instead of letting him stick to his area of expertise, they ask him to form opinions on things outside his scope and he comes off looking goofy. I was going to type out a long explanation of void coefficients and all that but someone else that is an actual expert on nuclear power at a forum I use posted this- it's quite helpful against all the fearmongering the news agencies have been doing:

Speaking of looking goofy.... I swear, late last night CNN had Bill Nye the Science Guy on talking about nuclear meltdowns... Really? Bill Nye, what, Mr Wizzard was not available??

[thekillingwax]

He was! It's sad. There's so much misinformation out there and literally anyone can be an expert for these stupid news channels. Again- Bill Nye isn't a bad guy but professionally he's a mechanical engineer and has a bachelors in science, I think he worked in aeronautics before the TV gig. He's a good speaker and makes basic science topics interesting but it's like asking your plumber what kind of blood pressure medicine you should take.

[thekillingwax]

There was just another explosion at the site with reactor 3, AP is saying no breach. I know why they're trying to save these reactors but with the continuing aftershocks and other issues going on, I'd be drowning them at the first sign of trouble. That's easy for me to say, I'm sitting in an office on the other side of the globe with running water and electricity but with the amount of continuing seismic and (now) volcanic activity, it's just a really truly horrible thing they're going through over there and I'm still praying for them.

[cityimrov]

I think nuclear power can be safe.  Safety does come at a price though.  The Fukushima facility is a rather old facility built up to older standards.  I think it was designed for a magnitude 7 something.  We probably have the ability to produce a nuclear facility that can withstand a magnitude 9 earthquake.  If we're going for the end all, a magnitude 10.  For Jacksonville, it doesn't matter too much.  The federal government has already built a nuclear facility just north of us and who knows what will happen there if disaster strikes.

As for future power for America, that depends on a lot of questions.  If I just take safety and only safety, my guess is every for magnitude of disaster we shore up the plants, the more it will cost us.  I'm pretty sure if we shore up a nuke to a magnitude 10, electricity from there will be a whole lot more expensive then the $0.14 kwh that we pay JEA.

The big question is, how much $$$ are we willing to pay for our power.  From then, we can decide what the best options are.  The US is lucky, we have huge natural gas and coal reserves.  We can make choices.  Though remember, no matter what source we choose from, there will always a price to be paid and I don't just mean money.  

Japan?  Well, being an island nation does have it's disadvantages.  Natural resources is one.  So for the most part, they are pretty much stuck with nuclear and whatever alternatives energy technology they can come up with.  

[peestandingup]

Building to withstand earthquakes are one thing, but you'll never get rid of human error & other natural disasters.

Anytime you have a machine that could potentially kill hundreds of thousands (if not millions with radiating them & then dying young from cancer later in life) if things go wrong, then its safe to say that it probably doesn't need to exist. Eventually things always go wrong. Common sense tells you that if there were more of these in the world (and in our own country), the likelihood of this happening here would go way way up. It would have probably happened by now if we had continued building them over the last decades.

I'd rather put up with dirty coal plants in the meantime, while making great strides towards renewables. Better building practices coupled with great efficient public transportation, along with solar, wind, etc would put us damn close to total energy independence.

BUT, that would leave out the mega powerful energy corporations who'll likely stop at nothing to keep things the way they are & keep us sucking on that juice & coming back for more like a drug fiend. After all, they get no money from someone who's making their own power to run their home & who are taking public transportation that runs on super efficient batteries that were energized by the sun.

If there had been a real effort to push for these things, we would have been there long ago. Don't think we wouldn't have. This is why I really hate the world sometimes. Money, power & greed wins out over basic human compassion & wellbeing every time on this sick, twisted planet. And when you consider money is basically just worthless paper someone somewhere deemed to be worth something, it's even more of a joke. It really is the root of all evil.

[thekillingwax]

Yeah but I'd like to see a comparison of the radiation and pollution leaked from the nuclear facilities versus the burning oil refineries and chemical storage in Japan. Coal power is the easy solution and no one is making strides towards renewable energy.

[simms3]

Thank you thekillingwax!  I enjoyed reading that.  It's sad how much misinformation and scare hype there is about nuclear power.  Aside from Chernobyl, a Commie built crappy nuclear plant that blew because of human error, I can't think of any other incidents of people dying from nuclear power.

There are almost 500 nuclear power plants in the world, each with multiple reactors, and compared to any other major power source, nuclear energy is about as clean and safe as it gets, not to mention it is next to impossible to be any more efficient, especially with newer technology making used U-235 re-usable (from what I understand on a basic level).

The media is really succeeding at spreading enough misinformation about the disaster over there (especially having BILL NYE on of all people...I saw him during the day on another news site), it's no wonder people are freaked out.

peestandingup, I suggest you go back in time and review the human error safety record of modern day nuclear power in developed countries.  Forget about Chernobyl, I wouldn't have expected in less from the Soviets.  Also, the plant to the north of Jacksonville is near Augusta.  I have been there.  They are adding two reactors.  It's called Plant Vogtle.  An 8.9 magnitude earthquake is not going to hit there, nor is a cat 5 hurricane (it's pretty far inland).  One of my best friends went to Georgia Tech undergrad Nuclear and Radiological Engineering (we call it NRE) and he's in grad school there now.  As liberal as he is, if he is not worried about nuclear power and is in fact pursuing a career in it, then I'm not worried.  He's been going out with another friend of mine for a couple years whose sister was the chief engineer at the Port St. Lucie plant and is now working for Duke Energy in Charlotte.  My friend and her sister come from a super lib family and they are big proponents for nuclear power.  I'm not worried; we are in good hands.

Tons tons tons more people die every year for coal power, LNG, etc.  Coal power is dangerous.  Mining coal is dangerous.  The power plants are even more likely to suffer a steam/pressure explosion (and that happens often compared to the two times in history now that it has happened with nuclear power).  Liquified Natural Gas is dangerous to extract, fracking is bad for the environment and bad for drinking water, and LNG is dangerous to transport and very dangerous to use to heat up in power plants.  Coal and LNG plants aren't built to nearly the same standards as nuclear plants and oddly nobody gives a rat's behind.

[buckethead]

Easy there KW... Nuclear energy and it's proponents ARE THE DEVIL!

We are shipping plenty of taxpayer funded Green Jobs to China to solve our energy woes!

No need to critique the critique.

[acme54321]

Anytime you have a machine that could potentially kill hundreds of thousands (if not millions with radiating them & then dying young from cancer later in life) if things go wrong, then its safe to say that it probably doesn't need to exist. Eventually things always go wrong. Common sense tells you that if there were more of these in the world (and in our own country), the likelihood of this happening here would go way way up. It would have probably happened by now if we had continued building them over the last decades.

Great logic. There are inherent risks in all great technological advances.  Look up the DeHavilland Comet, the first jetliner.  When it first came into service there were 6 crashes within two years, 5 of those 6 were because of design faults, 4 of those 5 killed everyone on board.  Do you have a problem flying today?  Valuable lessons were learned in those early years of the jet age, but were would we be without taking those risks?  

3 Mile Island, the worst nuclear accident in US history killed no one, and there isn't much evidence of any negative health effects to people in the area.  Obviously Chernobyl caused some serious issues,  I don't think we will ever know how many people were killed or got radiation poisoning from that disaster.  That number could have been lower if it weren't for some of the decisions made by the Soviets.  That one could very well be in the hundreds of thousands of health issues caused by the fallout.

[BridgeTroll]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,750810,00.html

Nuclear Disaster 'Will Have Political Impact as Great as 9/11'
The nuclear disaster in Fukushima makes it hard to ignore the vulnurabilities of the technology. It could spell the end of nuclear power, German commentators argue on Monday. The government in Berlin may now cave in to mounting pressure to suspend its 12-year extension of reactor lifetimes, they say.

The nuclear accident at Japan's Fukushima plant following Friday's earthquake and tsunami has led to anxious questions in Germany about the safety of its own nuclear reactors and is putting the government under intense pressure to rethink its decision to extend plant lifetimes by an average of 12 years.

German media commentators across the political spectrum are saying the accident in a highly developed nation such as Japan is further evidence that nuclear power isn't safe. One commentator in the conservative Die Welt went as far as to liken the global impact of the Fukushima explosions to that of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition of conservatives and the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) reversed the planned phaseout of the 17 nuclear reactors by 2021, amending a decision taken by a previous center-left government in 2002 to end nuclear power generation in Germany.

She argued that nuclear power was needed as "bridge technology" to ensure the supply of affordable power as Germany converts to renewable energy generation. She plans to increase the share of renewable generation to 80 percent by 2050, from a current level of only 16 percent.

A majority of Germans are opposed to nuclear power and the Fukushima accident is becoming a campaign issue ahead of state elections, the most important of which is being held in the conservative-ruled and wealthy state of Baden-Württemberg on March 27. Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party has held the state since 1953, and a defeat would be a major psychological blow to the chancellor and her party.

It would also make it harder for her to pass legislation because the opposition parties would gain power in the country's upper legislative chamber, the Bundesrat, which represents the interests of the states and has the right of co-determination on many important laws.

On Monday, support in Merkel's coalition for extending nuclear lifetimes started to crumble. Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, the leader of the FDP, called for a safety review at all German nuclear plants. Power stations whose cooling systems were found to lack multiple safety levels would have to be switched off "until the situation is totally clear."

Other members of the coalition have also been calling for a rethink.

German media commentators say Fukushima may force Merkel to shut German reactors down sooner.

Center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"The events in Japan, which geographically couldn't be much further from Germany, will influence politics in this country. They could soon start changing majorities and make governing even harder for the center-right coalition. The decision it made on nuclear power in September 2010 could be its undoing."

"There are few issues that can fire up people's emotions and mobilize them politically as much as nuclear power can. That's not good news for a government that supports nuclear power. Especially ahead of important regional elections, which won't affect the balance of power in national politics but which could well influence the morale of party workers to preserve that power."

"It's not good news because in the end, for example in Baden-Württemberg, it will only take a few percentage points more or less to determine the election outcome. Doubts among the supporters of the conservatives or the FDP could keep a few thousand voters from the ballot boxes -- or drive them into the arms of the center-left parties."

"For Merkel, it is hard to imagine a greater accident at present than the loss of a CDU governor in Baden-Württemberg."

"The safety precautions (at the Japanese nuclear plant) weren't just insufficient; the operating company TEPCO systematically breached them, as the government ascertained in 2002. TEPCO falsified security reports in more than 200 cases."

"Japan is a democracy, but so far the control of the government by the voters has hardly worked. Things only got a little better after the Democratic Party came to power two years ago. Before that, the often incompetent and corrupt governments were never voted out of office. The perestroika that Japan so urgently needs has scarcely begun."

"The unpopular government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan has been on the brink of collapse in recent weeks. It seemed paralyzed, distracted, disoriented and divided. Now it has to lead the country through what may be its worst disaster since 1945. Can it? In the Soviet Union the Chernobyl disaster accelerated the downfall of a broken, paralyzed political system."

Left-wing Die Tageszeitung writes:

"It was always said that danger only came from rickety old reactors in former Eastern Bloc states -- while conveniently ignoring that Sweden, France or the United States kept on narrowly avoiding maximum credible accidents. The disaster of Fukushima has made clear: There are situations in which even triple safety systems fail."

"The weak argument offered by the nuclear lobby that Germany isn't prone to heavy earthquakes and tsunamis doesn't apply. If a chain of serious events and stupid coincidences cause prolonged power outages, if the access routes are blocked or if the control room is destroyed by a plane crash, German reactors too will overheat. "

Conservative Die Welt writes:

"The earthquake of March 11 was no terrorist attack. But its political and psychological consequences will be as great as 9/11 because it has shown what a terrorist attack on nuclear plants would look like."

"The photos of burning buildings being swept away are disturbing enough, but nuclear power makes the decisive difference. The shockwave that went out from Fukushima may have only reached three kilometers in physical terms. But in mental terms it went around the whole world."

"Chernobyl was a special case. Nuclear energy was viewed with suspicion but it was accepted as long as modern democracies harnessed it with security precautions."

"That is over now. Faith in redundant, coincidence-proof security precautions has been wiped out by Fukushima. The high-tech democracy Japan has shown what could happen if an Internet attack on German or French nuclear reactors were to happen as it did with the 'Stuxnet' program against the Iranian nuclear program. Or if a determined, technologically skilled terrorist group were to seize control of a power station. One knew it before. Seeing it has made the difference."

Conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

"It seems inappropriate to criticize the information policy of the Japanese government. Some of its statements may seem a bit overly reticent, but one should allow a government the right not to descend into speculation about all the theoretically possible scenarios. People are already being inundated by enough of such speculation."

"Japan has always been at the forefront of disaster relief efforts in other parts of the world. That is why the country now has at least a moral claim to assistance from its friends. People abroad may find it irritating that the country will probably have to keep on using nuclear power in the future. But this isn't the time for know-it-all advice. One should imagine what would have happened if a reactor in a country with less rigid safety standards had been subjected to such an earthquake."

The mass-circulation Bild tabloid writes:

"The nuclear accident is giving even firm supporters of nuclear power cause for thought, because the unthinkable happened in Fukushima. But even if we wanted to, we couldn't switch off all nuclear reactors overnight. Because the lights would literally go out. The maximum credible accident of Fukushima forces us to check the safety standards of our nuclear power stations. And to think harder about the quickest possible way to get out of nuclear power generation."

"The Japanese tragedy will dramatically change the debate over nuclear power. But the issue is too serious to start fanning people's fears in election campaigns. It may be tempting for campaigners to go out hunting for votes with the suffering of the Japanese. But that would be shabby, pitiful and repellent."

Left-wing Berliner Zeitung writes:

"This hasn't hit a run-down Soviet reactor, a badly constructed Russian plutonium machine which supplied the army with material for their nuclear weapons, as was the case with Chernobyl in 1986. Then and ever since, the builders of nuclear power stations in Europe, North America and Japan boasted that a serious accident could be virtually ruled out thanks to superior Western nuclear technology."

"Every country -- Germany, the US and Japan -- claimed to have the world's best reactors. Everything was secured several times over, all conceivable problems could be handled, all eventualities were prepared for, they said."

"The disaster at Fushima shows: It's simply not true."

"It is unlikely to be a coincidence that it was an old reactor with a design from the 1960s that got into trouble. The technology of this type of plant, which also operates in Germany, is outdated. Its safety level is significantly below that of modern nuclear plants, they wouldn't get construction approval these days. The accident has reinforced the lessons to be drawn from this: The plants that were originally intended for a lifespan of 40 years must not have their lifetimes extended, as is being done everywhere both in the West and the East -- because it yields major profits for the operators."

"On the contrary: the old reactors in particular must be taken off the grid as soon as possible. Germany realized that more than a decade ago, when the center-left government negotiated the nuclear phaseout with the power companies. For the center-right risk prolongers in Berlin, Fukushima is the writing on the wall, whether they're ready to realize that or not."

"The radioactive fallout from Fukushima won't hit Germany, but the political fallout has already arrived. People are alarmed and there is major uncertainty about 'peaceful' nuclear power, not just among diehard anti-nuclear campaigners."

-- David Crossland