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The current nuclear industry has some serious downsides. The only reason established nuclear is presented as ecological is due to the discussion about climate i

The current nuclear industry has some serious downsides. The only reason established nuclear is presented as ecological is due to the discussion about climate impact. Without the CO2 blinkers on though, it is pretty fucking messy.

jessaustin 13y ago
True, and it's somewhat disturbing to see "environmentalists" tie themselves in rhetorical knots trying to argue for nuclear with a straight face.
- moocowduckquack 13y ago
  I'm not against nuclear power, per se, but the way we do it is seriously warped, mostly by its associations with the weaponry. A uranium mine isn't just a fuel source, it is also part of a military arsenal at the highest level, so really it isn't that surprising to see so little care given to the externalities. Personally I think that solar/storage is about to outcompete the pants off most everything else anyway, given the ever falling price of modules and the existence of companies like lightsail and gravitypower. http://www.lightsail.com/ http://www.lightsail.com/ http://www.gravitypower.net/ http://www.gravitypower.net/ hot gravel edit; oh, and Isentropic - http://www.isentropic.co.uk/ http://www.isentropic.co.uk/
  - zackmorris 13y ago
    I saw my first hybrid solar/natural gas (continually running) power plant commercial on TV the other night from a fossil fuel company (can't remember which one). I think you're right, that solar thermal storage (in hot oil for now and eventually salt) with trough reflectors instead of photovoltaics, will be the eventual winner, even against wind. My excitement for it is that it relies on 19th century technologies that anyone can implement and doesn't need a fab or another country to provide solid state solar panels.
- ars 13y ago
  Nuclear isn't perfect. It's simply better. Go see just how much toxic and radioactive waste coal mining produces. WAY WAY more than nuclear power.
  - schiffern 13y ago
    And solar is rapidly out-competing and out-innovating both.
    - ars 13y ago
      Maybe. Photovoltaic solar produces lots of waste, more than nuclear. And it requires lots of land. Solar thermal is much more efficient but it's expensive and no one seems to be doing it in scale. And it too requires lots of land. And don't say we have lots of land, we do, but it's remote, so you need a lot of infrastructure to make use of it. We can do that (we did for hydrocarbons), but it's not a slam dunk. Because of that, nuclear produces less waste and is better for the environment.
      - techdmn 13y ago
        I continue to be confused about how nuclear can be considered better / cheaper / cleaner without factoring the cost of storing the waste for 10,000 years. We seem to struggle with unintended consequences of waste management on the decade scale, let alone several millennia.
        saulrh 13y ago
        Plastic bags last longer in landfills than nuclear waste will last in a repository; plastic photodegrades in about 500 years, multiply by a two-hundred-meter-deep landfill and that plastic will finish going away in about a million years [1]. Nuclear waste is fundamentally static; unlike tailings, it pretty much stays where you put it. Coal plants actually produce titanic amounts of radiation, vastly more than nuke plants, thanks to impurities in coal, and that radioactivity is going straight into the atmosphere [2]. Nuke plants don't produce that much waste in the first place; thirty tons a year, compared to millions of tons of radioactive, caustic fly ash [3, 4]. And, finally, the kinds of nuclear reactors we can build these days simply don't produce waste that lasts that long; a good breeder reactor eats anything that's immediately dangerous (short half-life -> lots of radiation) or long-term dangerous (long half-life -> not much radiation) [5]. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2007/06/will_my_plastic_bag_still_be_here_in_2507.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_plant#Radioactive_trace_elements http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_plant#Radioactive_trace_el... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste#High-level_waste http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste#High-level_waste [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash#Environmental_problems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash#Environmental_problems [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reduction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reduction
- jessaustin 13y ago
  When I said "it's somewhat disturbing" I didn't mean that I desired forthwith to be somewhat disturbed.
rsync 13y ago
Three step process: 1) buy perrows book "normal accidents" 2) read the nuclear accident chapters 3) begin marching in the streets at the sign of any new old-style nuclear plants, or the continued operation of the existing ones. optional: 4) wonder in amazement how a chernobyl or fukushima isn't happening every year. That type of nuclear power generation really is that terrible. (note - I am actually pro-nuclear-power ... just not the way we do it now)
- pdonis 13y ago
  wonder in amazement how a chernobyl or fukushima isn't happening every year. Comparing Fukushima and Chernobyl is like comparing apples and turds. The debacle at Fukushima had nothing to do with the reactor design; it was due to the braindead siting of the backup diesel generators and their switchgear behind a seawall that got overrun by the tsunami. The reactor design itself was fine, and in fact has withstood loss of coolant conditions that, by any reasonable prior expectation, should have caused much more radiation release than they did. Chernobyl, on the other hand, had: * No secondary containment; * A Soviet-run staff that thought running badly controlled experiments at high power levels was just dandy; * A graphite moderator that ignited when exposed to air. Fukushima is not even in the same league from that perspective. That type of nuclear power generation really is that terrible. This is a serious overstatement. Many reactors designed along the same general lines have delivered decades of power with no problems. (Not to mention that the US Navy has run reactors of similar design on its ships for decades with no problems.) I'm all for improving reactor designs, but I also think there are existing designs that could have gotten plenty more use without significant added risk. The fact that we haven't done that is a bug, not a feature.
  - msandford 13y ago
    Yeah but the notion that you can have a power plant which requires outside power in order to not melt-down is -- frankly -- retarded. Imagine a coal plant that burns down 100,000 acres around it if the primary coal containment system (made up) loses power. Would anyone like that in their backyard? Or a hydro plant that if power isn't continuously supplied to, not only could the dam breach and flood downhill but also somehow miraculously uphill too (not realistic but comparative to nukes). That's what a nuclear power plant that can't slowly coast to a stop is like. I don't care how many backups and backups of backups you have, if physics isn't on your side if/when the plant loses power it's a horrible design. EDIT: a few changes for clarity

jessaustin 13y ago

True, and it's somewhat disturbing to see "environmentalists" tie themselves in rhetorical knots trying to argue for nuclear with a straight face.

moocowduckquack 13y ago
I'm not against nuclear power, per se, but the way we do it is seriously warped, mostly by its associations with the weaponry. A uranium mine isn't just a fuel source, it is also part of a military arsenal at the highest level, so really it isn't that surprising to see so little care given to the externalities. Personally I think that solar/storage is about to outcompete the pants off most everything else anyway, given the ever falling price of modules and the existence of companies like lightsail and gravitypower. http://www.lightsail.com/ http://www.lightsail.com/ http://www.gravitypower.net/ http://www.gravitypower.net/ hot gravel edit; oh, and Isentropic - http://www.isentropic.co.uk/ http://www.isentropic.co.uk/
- zackmorris 13y ago
  I saw my first hybrid solar/natural gas (continually running) power plant commercial on TV the other night from a fossil fuel company (can't remember which one). I think you're right, that solar thermal storage (in hot oil for now and eventually salt) with trough reflectors instead of photovoltaics, will be the eventual winner, even against wind. My excitement for it is that it relies on 19th century technologies that anyone can implement and doesn't need a fab or another country to provide solid state solar panels.
ars 13y ago
Nuclear isn't perfect. It's simply better. Go see just how much toxic and radioactive waste coal mining produces. WAY WAY more than nuclear power.
- schiffern 13y ago
  And solar is rapidly out-competing and out-innovating both.
  - ars 13y ago
    Maybe. Photovoltaic solar produces lots of waste, more than nuclear. And it requires lots of land. Solar thermal is much more efficient but it's expensive and no one seems to be doing it in scale. And it too requires lots of land. And don't say we have lots of land, we do, but it's remote, so you need a lot of infrastructure to make use of it. We can do that (we did for hydrocarbons), but it's not a slam dunk. Because of that, nuclear produces less waste and is better for the environment.
    - techdmn 13y ago
      I continue to be confused about how nuclear can be considered better / cheaper / cleaner without factoring the cost of storing the waste for 10,000 years. We seem to struggle with unintended consequences of waste management on the decade scale, let alone several millennia.
      - saulrh 13y ago
        Plastic bags last longer in landfills than nuclear waste will last in a repository; plastic photodegrades in about 500 years, multiply by a two-hundred-meter-deep landfill and that plastic will finish going away in about a million years [1]. Nuclear waste is fundamentally static; unlike tailings, it pretty much stays where you put it. Coal plants actually produce titanic amounts of radiation, vastly more than nuke plants, thanks to impurities in coal, and that radioactivity is going straight into the atmosphere [2]. Nuke plants don't produce that much waste in the first place; thirty tons a year, compared to millions of tons of radioactive, caustic fly ash [3, 4]. And, finally, the kinds of nuclear reactors we can build these days simply don't produce waste that lasts that long; a good breeder reactor eats anything that's immediately dangerous (short half-life -> lots of radiation) or long-term dangerous (long half-life -> not much radiation) [5]. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2007/06/will_my_plastic_bag_still_be_here_in_2507.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_plant#Radioactive_trace_elements http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_plant#Radioactive_trace_el... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste#High-level_waste http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste#High-level_waste [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash#Environmental_problems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash#Environmental_problems [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reduction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reduction
jessaustin 13y ago
When I said "it's somewhat disturbing" I didn't mean that I desired forthwith to be somewhat disturbed.

rsync 13y ago

Three step process: 1) buy perrows book "normal accidents" 2) read the nuclear accident chapters 3) begin marching in the streets at the sign of any new old-style nuclear plants, or the continued operation of the existing ones. optional: 4) wonder in amazement how a chernobyl or fukushima isn't happening every year. That type of nuclear power generation really is that terrible. (note - I am actually pro-nuclear-power ... just not the way we do it now)

pdonis 13y ago
wonder in amazement how a chernobyl or fukushima isn't happening every year. Comparing Fukushima and Chernobyl is like comparing apples and turds. The debacle at Fukushima had nothing to do with the reactor design; it was due to the braindead siting of the backup diesel generators and their switchgear behind a seawall that got overrun by the tsunami. The reactor design itself was fine, and in fact has withstood loss of coolant conditions that, by any reasonable prior expectation, should have caused much more radiation release than they did. Chernobyl, on the other hand, had: * No secondary containment; * A Soviet-run staff that thought running badly controlled experiments at high power levels was just dandy; * A graphite moderator that ignited when exposed to air. Fukushima is not even in the same league from that perspective. That type of nuclear power generation really is that terrible. This is a serious overstatement. Many reactors designed along the same general lines have delivered decades of power with no problems. (Not to mention that the US Navy has run reactors of similar design on its ships for decades with no problems.) I'm all for improving reactor designs, but I also think there are existing designs that could have gotten plenty more use without significant added risk. The fact that we haven't done that is a bug, not a feature.
- msandford 13y ago
  Yeah but the notion that you can have a power plant which requires outside power in order to not melt-down is -- frankly -- retarded. Imagine a coal plant that burns down 100,000 acres around it if the primary coal containment system (made up) loses power. Would anyone like that in their backyard? Or a hydro plant that if power isn't continuously supplied to, not only could the dam breach and flood downhill but also somehow miraculously uphill too (not realistic but comparative to nukes). That's what a nuclear power plant that can't slowly coast to a stop is like. I don't care how many backups and backups of backups you have, if physics isn't on your side if/when the plant loses power it's a horrible design. EDIT: a few changes for clarity