5,000 nuclear power reactors needed (Peak Oil Article)

[cthrumatrix]

5,000 nuclear power reactors needed: Ritch:

: Mumbai, Mar 13 : With global energy demand steadily increasing, a clean-energy future will require at least 5,000 nuclear power reactors by 2050, producing electricity as well as hydrogen and clean water, according to Director General of World Nuclear Association John Ritch.

"Currently there are around 440 nuclear power reactors in the world generating one-sixth of world's electricity, and promotion of such thousands of nuclear power plants is essential if we are to mount a concerted strategy to avert global warming and green-house catastrophe," Ritch said in the latest issue of Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited's (NPCIL) journal Nu-Power.

"Our planet's fragile biosphere is now at risk and history has reached a momentous point where the fate of humanity hinges on whether we can summon the will and the ingenuity to produce clean energy on a massive global scale --- a scale that nations can not realistically hope to attain without an expansive use of nuclear power," Ritch said.

snip

http://news.newkerala.com/india-news/?action=fullnews&id=85001

MSM media's job right now is to keep you focused on MJ and the shootings.... don't worry about $4/gallon gas.

[SHRED]

1. "...clean energy..."

BULLSHIT!
Radiation leaks/transport, strip mining, nuclear weapons, and waste storage are not "clean".

We need sustainable energy.
See my sig below.

[slor]

3. Maybe we need to start planting...

private hemp fields.

[xpat]

7. Why not learn some engineering, rather than screaming

"BULLSHIT!
Radiation leaks/transport, strip mining, nuclear weapons, and waste storage are not "clean"."

1) France produces 80-90% of its electricity with nuclear power. They do waste reprocessing and have no storage problems. Maybe we should look into what they are doing. France noticed that peakoil was coming during the 1973 oil crisis and decided to go nuclear. Boy, were we dumb!

2) Strip mining? What are you talking about? Uranium mining is so much more environmentally sound than coal mining that you aren't even talking about the same universe. How about ANWR?

3) Nuclear power plants are not bombs. They use fuel that has much lower concentrations of fissile material than bombs require.

4) Even Chernobyl had a minimal radiation emission, which blended into the ambient radiation levels within a few miles from the site. Radiation is only a health hazard in high concentrations. We live with it all the time, especially those of us who sit in front of computer screens.

If you really want to solve the environmental and economic problems of fossil fuels, you have to look at the engineering possibilities and weigh the pros and cons of different solutions. It is insufficient to merely sluff off one of the most promising technologies around.

BTW, what do you think of the environmental impact of the 25 square mile solar turbine generator that's under study in Australia? That's 25 square miles for (I think) a 200 KW generator.

[ConcernedCanuk]

9. " 25 square miles for (I think) a 200 KW generator - sumthing wrong there

.
.
.

My neighbor produces .6kw with about 100 square feet of panels - only "environmental" effect I can see would be the 8" steel tube that supports them in the ground

and IF it's 25 square miles

I suspect it is in a desert? :shrug:

I did find the following from 2001 however -
_______________________________________________

If built, a proposed 200-megawatt "solar chimney" for rural Australia would become the most daring application yet of a quirky form of generating alternative, renewable electricity. While the engineering would be biblical in scale, the concept itself is simple.

A circular greenhouse with an upward sloping roof toward the center would draw heated air through electricity-generating turbines before allowing it to escape through a central "chimney." The hitch? The greenhouse would cover six square miles, and the chimney would stand more than a half-mile tall.

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,46814,00.html
________________________________________________

Regardless,

I still see solar and wind energy, despite the cost, as a MUCH safer and environmentally friendly alternative to our electricity needs in the future.

THAT

and SERIOUS efforts on conservation and energy efficient devices.

Solar and wind will be here long past human survival,

Oil will not . .

and Depleted Uranium with a half-life of billions of years?

I don't think we should be creating this stuff . . :eyes:

[xpat]

20. You're right, it's not 25 sq miles, but 30+

According to information on the builder's site.

http://www.enviromission.com.au/

[xpat]

22. What does this statement mean to you?

"Depleted Uranium with a half-life of billions of years"

To me, and I must confess that I have a PhD in nuclear physics, it means that uranium, depleted or not, is relatively harmless stuff. It's been emitting radiation for billions of years, but here we are safe and sound.

Now, the stuff you have to watch out for will only be emitting radiation for a few seconds, hours, maybe even days or months. It's sort of like the difference between a slow drip (uranium) and a flashflood (the other stuff). Fortunately, the flashflood comes and goes pretty quickly. You just have to have your engineering geared up to contain it. We do. All this stuff is so 1950s.

As a general rule, don't believe half of what you hear and read in the MSM. They have been playing the nukular bogeyman story for decades, and you have swallowed it hook, line and sinker.

[bigtree]

24. What does this statement mean to you?

Native Americans Bear the Nuclear Waste Burden

Uranium Industry and Indigenous Peoples of North America
ftp://ftp.halcyon.com/pub/FWDP/Americas/four_dir.txt

"The most common health risk associated with uranium
mining is breathing radon-222 gas, which continues to seep
from the crushed ore and mill tailings for hundreds of
thousands of years. It is therefore essential to contain
this material, and prevent it from either blowing away or
spilling into water supplies. Responding to the widely
publicized discovery that more than 600 homes in Grand
Junction, Colorado, had been built on top of uranium mill
tailings (House Report No. 95-649 <1978>), Congress targeted
22 abandoned uranium mines and mills for remedial action. "

__________________________________

"The potential long-range health and environmental
hazards of uranium mining and milling, especially for
communities still dependent for a major part of their
subsistence on hunting or fishing, need to be fully and
publicly assessed before a project proceeds. Nowhere is
there a stronger case for participation by indigenous
peoples in the planning and supervision of development
activities, or for their right to determine whether such
activities will be permitted in their vicinity at all. In
none of the uranium-mining projects described above was
there a thorough advance assessment of risks, so far as we
can ascertain, and the wishes of the indigenous community
were taken into consideration only in those cases where the
mine was to be physically located on land recognized as
their property. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that
much of the human cost of North American uranium production
has been borne, unwittingly and mostly unwillingly, by
indigenous peoples. "

[ConcernedCanuk]

33. "It's been emitting radiation for billions of years" ? we just CREATED it!

.
.
.

Correct me if I'm wrong, and I would like sources to verify what you claim

But Depleted Uranium DOESN'T EXIST until we use Uranium for our nuclear programmes

EVERYTHING I've read about DU says it's a BY_PRODUCT of human activity - so it's a brand new form of Uranium

"Depleted uranium (DU) is a waste product of non-nuclear enrichment processes (e.g., gaseous diffusion of uranium hexafluoride) in which the content of 235U in natural uranium is enriched, leaving the DU with a reduced content of the lower atomic weight isotopes." source
____________________________________________________

Depleted uranium is one of the heaviest metals on earth and easy to mould into shells which are dense enough to penetrate heavy armour. It does not exist in nature but is a byproduct of atomic power generation and is radioactive....with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. source
____________________________________________________



and no -

MSM did not contrtibute to my education on this matter,

Scientific reports from NGO's mostly

AS a matter of fact

DOES the MSM have any reporting on DU

I haven't seen any

Most of the info I get I have to search for

Heck - even Military Doctors are starting to report illnesses from DU

and cautions are given to the military involved in it's usage

it certainly is far from "harmless"


U.S. expert says use of DU munitions a "war crime"

Reuters, 1/30/01 (That's over FOUR YEARS AGO!!}

By Kate Kelland


LONDON, Jan 30 (Reuters) - The man who led the U.S. army's depleted uranium (DU) assessment team in the 1991 Gulf War said on Tuesday that the continued use of such weapons was a "war crime" which should be stopped immediately.

Speaking at a news conference at Britain's Parliament, Dr Doug Rokke, a major in the U.S. army reserves, said he told his government as far back as 1991 of the health hazards of depleted uranium but his warnings had been consistently ignored. source

_________________________________________________

makes me wonder of the value of a PhD :freak:

I think I'll stick to my googling and multiple sources . . .


OH

to answer your question directly

"What does this statement mean to you?"
Posted by xpat

"Depleted Uranium with a half-life of billions of years"

IT MEANS WE GOT BIG FUCKING PROBLEMS!!!

[NickB79]

46. You're right, we do create DU

By extracting the more radioactive uranium isotopes from uranium, leaving behind the LESS radioactive isotopes, ie depleted uranium. Depleted uranium is less radioactive than the naturally occuring uranium found in millions of tons of rock around the world.

If something is radioactive for 4.5 BILLION years, that means it is emitting very, very little radiation per year. Plutonium, for example, has a half-life of ~24,000 yrs, I believe, and is much more radioactive than depleted uranium. A general rule of thumb in physics is, the longer the half-life, the less radioactive the material. Radiation from DU is a non-issue for me, as long as it isn't ingested or inhaled, which is usually only caused when it is used as a projectile and burns on impact with vehicle armor. Even then, in your lungs and blood, it doesn't kill you via radiation. It kills via heavy-metal poisoning, like lead or mercury.

[ConcernedCanuk]

55. The Radioactivity may be only 60% - but Alpha particles increase!

.
.
.

And they'll kill you!

Read on . . .

you'll be surprised how many different weapons the US makes with this stuff
_________________________________________________

WHAT IS DU?

Depleted uranium (DU) which is 99.8% by mass U-238 is made from uranium hexaflouride, the byproduct of the uranium enrichment process. Recent documents released by the U.S. Department of Energy and the 1995 U..S. Army Environmental Policy Institute reports state that a small proportion of other toxic heavy metals and radioactive isotopes such as plutonium, neptunium, americium, and U-236 also are present. Although the 60 % of the ionizing radiation given off by gamma emissions from U-235 and U-234 was eliminated during the enrichment process, alpha particles at 4.2 Mev and 4.15 Mev that cause significant internal ionization with consequent cellular damage were proportionally increased and gamma and beta emissions from contaminants and daughter products still are present. The continuing incomplete statement that DU is 60% less radioactive than natural uranium simply ignores the serious internal damage caused by alpha particles that impact any cell! Alpha particle emission measurements show that the dose or exposure rate is in excess of 10000 counts per minute. DU is a serious internal hazard. Consequent inhalation, ingestion, and wound contamination pose significant and unacceptable health risks due to direct cell damage from alpha and beta particle and gamma ray emissions. Spent penetrators, DU fragments, and contaminated shrapnel emit beta particles and gamma rays at 300 mrem / hour and thus can not be touched or picked up without protection.

HOW IS DU USED BY THE MILITARY?

DU is used to manufacture kinetic energy penetrators- giant pencils or rods. Each kinetic penetrator consists of almost entirely uranium 238. The United States munitions industry produces the following DU munitions with the corresponding mass of uranium 238:
7.62 mm with unspecified mass
50 caliber with unspecified mass
20 mm with a mass of approximately 180 grams.
25 mm with a mass of approximately 200 grams.
30 mm with a mass of approximately 280 grams.
105 mm with a mass of approximately 3500 grams.
120 mm with a mass of approximately 4500 grams.
Sub-munitions / land mines such as the PDM and ADAM whose structural body contain a small proportion of DU.
Cruise missiles with unknown quantity of DU
Bunker buster bombs with unknown quantity of DU

/snip/

It is important to realize that DU penetrators are solid uranium 238. THEY ARE NOT TIPPED OR COATED! During an impact at least 40 % of the penetrator forms uranium oxides or fragments which are left on the terrain, within or on impacted equipment, or within impacted structures.

The remainder of the penetrator retains its initial shape. Thus we are left with a solid piece of uranium lying someplace which can be picked up by children. DU also ignites in the air during flight and upon impact. The resulting shower of burning DU and DU fragments causes secondary explosions, fires, injury, and death.

MORE

No one can convince me that the 7.62 and 50mm aren't designed to shoot PEOPLE

The United States of America is spreading deadly toxins around the world, NOT democracy

It make take decades for the average American to understand what their government has done

But it WILL come to light in generations to follow

Too bad so many millions have to die and suffer first

Hitler has been outdone

(sigh)

[xpat]

72. Depleted uranium

physically is simply uranium with low radioactive material content, too low to be used without enrichment in a reactor or a bomb. Uranium ore is, in a sense, depleted uranium. This stuff is not magic. Ask these question: What's the proportion of radioactive isotopes in depleted uranium? What is the level of radiation that it emits? How does this compare to acceptable standards?

Calm your hysteria and learn a bit of engineering. It will be good for your soul, and it may help you make important decisions on a rational basis.

Remember, you can't trust the MSM, and they didn't a wonderful job of slandering nuclear power in the 70s. Why should you believe them if you don't believe what they have to say on Iraq, for example?

[Lindacooks]

41. Solar and wind do NOT cost nearly as much as nuclear

Because most of the cost of nuclear energy isn't included in the final tallies, including decommissioning costs and the cost to future generations of nuclear waste.

"From 1950 through 1990, US tax-payers, consumers and investors spent an estimated US $492 billion to develop and obtain nuclear power. Four-fifths of that, $396 billion, was spent by utilities, and most of it was passed on to, and paid by, utility customers except for a small portion of cancelled plant costs and construction cost overruns which was absorbed by utility investors.

It shows that atomic-generated electricity has cost consumers an average of at least 9.0 cents a kilo-watt-hour, far more than other readily available fuels. It also shows that without even counting liabilities such as accidents and waste, or including related health costs, nuclear power has failed on economic grounds.

Excluded costs could well total another $375 billion dollars in categories such as health effects of radiation, accidents, artificially low insurance costs and support for foreign rector development - even with-out counting the almost certain escalation in future waste and decommissioning costs.

The report further finds that during 1968-1990 alone, $160 billion more was spent on nuclear electric generation than would have been spent generating the same electricity with fossil fuels."

http://www.antenna.nl/wise/386/3779.html

If we had spent as much on wind and solar (which really are the same thing, since wind is caused by temperature variations, caused by the sun) as we had on nuclear we would probably be energy independent by now. With that money, and with large wind turbines costing about a million each, serving 5 to 10,000 homes, well, you do the math.

But no, asshole Reagan came into power and slashed renewable energy budgets, stopped it in its tracks.

[bigtree]

17. Why are the same corporations who produce most of our nuclear energy

the same corporations who are benefiting from the 60% of our tax dollars that we spend on 'defense', including the new generation of 'useable' nuclear bunker-buster bombs?

Lockheed leads the defense industry in lobbying expenditures. Lockheed Martin made over $10.6 million in campaign contributions to candidates and party committees from 1990 to 2000, including $3.4 million in donations in the run-up to the year 2000 elections.

The company actively lobbies for the need to retain substantial numbers of existing nuclear weapons while developing new ones. Lockheed Martin receives more than $1 billion per year from the Department of Energy - to operate the Sandia National Laboratories (involved in the design and production of nuclear warheads) and help run the Nevada Test Site for "sub-critical testing" of new nuclear weapons designs.

The ex-Lockheed Martin employees with the most direct connections to nuclear and missile defense policy are:

Former chief operating officer Peter B. Teets, who is now Under Secretary of the Air Force and Director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), a post that includes making decisions on the acquisition of everything from reconnaissance satellites to space-based elements of missile defense.

And, Everet Beckner, who served as the chief executive of Lockheed Martin's division that helped run the United Kingdom's Atomic Weapons Establishment.

Bechtel will benefit directly from efforts to expand testing and production of nuclear weapons. Bechtel is part of a partnership with Lockheed Martin that runs the Nevada Test Site for the U.S. 154

Bechtel runs the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge Tennessee, which makes critical components for nuclear warheads; and it is involved in the management of the Pantex nuclear weapons plant in Amarillo, Texas. 155

Bechtel's $1 billion-plus in annual contracts for "atomic energy defense activities" are likely to grow substantially under the Bush nuclear plan. In 2002 Bechtel earned $11.6 billion.

The company has built more than 40% of the United States' nuclear capacity and 50% of nuclear power plants in the developing world. That's 150 nuclear power plants.

Bechtel is also in charge of managing and cleaning up the toxic nuclear waste at the 52 reactors at the Idaho nuclear test site from our '50's nuclear program, as well as two million cubic feet of transuranic waste buried on the site, such as plutonium-covered shoes, gloves and other tools used at the nuclear lab in Rocky Flats.

The Bush administration's nuclear program is a shell game with their ambitions hidden within the Energy and Defense bills, most under the guise of research. Their proposals originated in a position paper which is referenced in the Energy Policy Act of 2003, entitled, "A Roadmap to Deploy New Nuclear Power Plants in the United States by 2010".

The nuclear industry, along with government supporters, developed a roadmap for the realization of these goals. They intend to portray nukes as a safe, clean alternative to CO2 based plants. The bill references the "Generation IV Nuclear Energy Systems Program."

This is a determined, deliberate hard sell to get the nation back in the nuclear game. The nuclear provisions in the Energy bill, now in congressional conference are a tough read but they are designed to confuse.

The legislation designates INEEL, The Idaho Engineering and Environmental Laboratories, as the lead facility for nuclear R&D. This has been the nation's primary lab for all of the nuclear madness since 1952. INEEL's primary function since the mid 70's was the clean-up of their own toxic waste. This clean-up is still going on. There is money allocated in this bill for that.

At the end of the decade support for nuclear energy was on the decline because of waste and safety issues and disarmament. Right before Bush II got in office, the industry, still fat from clean-up money sought to bolster their flagging industry. (INEEL gets 70% of their funding for waste disposal)

Waste storage had become so controversial that it had soured the public to the idea of more nukes and more nuke plants. (Yucca Mountain, storage sites in New Mexico, transportation, safety issues, etc.).

So, they began promoting the view that the 'spent' nuclear fuel from decommissioned weapons and nuclear power plants could be broken down and reconstituted for weapons (depleted uranium) and a new generation of nuclear plants which would accommodate (recycle) and use the waste instead of immobilizing it in glass and storing it.

The industry makes the dubious claim that the recycled waste keeps it out of the hands of terrorists and makes proliferation more difficult. It will more likely disperse the waste and create more opportunity for abuse or mishap.

There are more than 100 operating nuclear power plants in America and 16 non-operational power plants. The electricity produced by these plants provide the U.S. with only 20% of our electricity needs. That 20% could easily be made up by any combination of alternative sources.

I feel that the nuclear ambitions of the Bush administration are a foot in the door for those who would expand our existing nuclear program and would draw our nation into a new nuclear arm's race; exacerbating the problems of proliferation; threatening the safety and the health of workers, the community and the environment.

[jpak]

21. This is the leagcy of French uranium mining in Africa

http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/udec.html#GA

www.acdis.uiuc.edu/Research/OPs/Pederson/PedersonOP.pdf

(can we say neocolonialism????)

and uranium mining elsewhere...

http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/udec.html

[xpat]

23. Show us some information

about tailings from iron, copper and coal mining so we can compare the environmental impact.

You remarks about the French government shenanigans are of a political nature and apply to all resource extraction, including Iraqi oil. N'est-ce pas?

What is specifically horrific about your exhibits other than a MSM-instilled prejudice against all things nukular?

[jpak]

25. The claim was made that...

"Uranium mining is so much more environmentally sound than coal mining that you aren't even talking about the same universe."

It is not.

more here...

http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/uissr99.html

And we all know that uranium miners never get exposed to high concentrations of radon...

http://www.ccnr.org/bcma.html

and it never harms them...

http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/sview/1,3329,250010691,00.html

[xpat]

27. If you want to make claims like this

you have to provide comparative figures.

Every mining technology kills miners.

Questions you have to answer are:

1) How many tons of tailing per kW-hour of energy
2) How many miners injured/killed per kW-hour of energy

Compare your answers for coal and nuclear, then get back to me.

[jpak]

29. Not enough data exist to make these comparisons

There have been numerous studies of mortality and morbidity among uranium miners and workers.

However, only relatively small cohorts of miners/workers were used - and no one has extrapolated these studies to the entire population of U-miners.

...and much of this research is on-going. No one will no how much excess mortality and morbidity U-miners will experience until the entire cohort is deceased.

Here's some fun facts from a recent NIOSH report...

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/pgms/worknotify/uranium.html#study

and for French U-miners...

http://www.antenna.nl/wise/index.html?http://www.antenna.nl/wise/359/3556.html

and Bohemian U-miners...

http://oem.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/abstract/51/5/308

BTW: DU is not "harmless" and there are a lot of ongoing studies. The DOE recently studied the effects of DU on personnel at Oak Ridge. This led to a significant reduction in the allowable exposures of DU to DOE plant workers. Can't find the study, get a lot of "this page missing" messages when I tried googling it up...

Here's a good recent Truthout article though....

http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/E022405B.shtml

[BlueEyedSon]

2. Not renewable, total cost of ownership (per kW) very high.

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. What a load of crap

there are so many alternatives and even just cutting back on waste would go a long way to making a big dent in the problem.

See my sig line - we don't need no stinking nuke plants.

[cthrumatrix]

35. please ...educate us

share what forms of energy are abundant, don't use more energy to create energy and is cheap?

[madrchsod]

5. dam- i`m to old to shovel anymore shit

how about redesigning our homes,retrofitting existing homes,solar,wind,small nuke plants,better cars,rail,and a thousand other ideas...but we have to slaughter people while the rest of the world designs it`s way out of the peak oil problem.

[KharmaTrain]

6. NIBY This Number Waaaaaaaaay Down

They might vote the tax breaks and take the contributions from the nuclear lobby, but there's not many Repugnican politicians with the spine to invite someone to build a Homer Simpson reactor in their town or area. Short of some destitute nowhereland, any plans to construct a power plant will become radioactive the moment it's announced and politicians will steer clear.

What this report doesn't touch on is the existing condition the aging nuclear facilities (most are nearly 45 to 50 years old) and the increased cost of not only keeping them running, but what it will cost once they have to be shut down and dismantled.

Also, think of the security nightmares an additional 100 reactors have, yet that goofy number his assholiness made up.

[iconoclastNYC]

8. New pebble bed reactors are "walk away safe"

Read "Let a thousand reactors bloom" in Wired magazine if you want to know what lies in our future.

Until there is a huge advance in alternative energy (which hasn't been forthcoming in the past 40 years of research) the only thing that will help us deal with the carbon problem is Nuclear. Wind and solar isn't even providing for increases is energy demand, let alone replacing coal and gas fired plants, or making energy to take salt out of sea water when we start running out of fresh water supplies.

Not that anti-nuke people will ever grasp this. Burning fosils is fundamentally changing the climate of the earth, the only thing that can scale large enough to fix the problem is nuclear.

Even your beloved solar plans have problems....you have to mine that shit out of the ground too. And its nasty stuff too.

Wind power takes tons of tons of land, has a nasty problem of killing migratory birds, and faces local citizen opposition to noise and runinging the landscape.

New nuclear plans will be located on the grounds of existing plants.

Nuclear plant designs will be standardized, preapproved, and mass produced.

[MadHound]

10. Yeppers, just buying that spin, aren't you?

1991 UD DOE report on Renewable energy resources found that there is enough harvestable wind resources in the states of N. Dakota, S. Dakota, and Texas to provide for the entire country's electricity needs, including projected expansion, through 2030 at least, and even further if wind turbines continue to advance technologically. Gee, three states, and entire country's electricity. Now tell me again how badly we need reactors? In addition, with correct placing, out of the migratory bird paths, you don't kill birds. And quite frankly, they don't take up "tons of tons" of land. You can put a modern high tech turbine, three hundred feet high, on a quarter acre of land. And gee locating these suckers in out of the way places like the wilds of the Dakotas and other sparsely populated states will take care of the issues of noise and looks

Your assertions about nuclear are wrong. Decommissioning an old nuclear plant and cleaning the site to the point that a new plant can be built is prohibitively expensive. In fact so much so that old plants are now simply being shut down, decommissioned and made safe, but with a skeleton crew on duty to guard the place. Anymore and companies run into some steep costs.

And you quite frankly cannot standardize a plant. Each particular location has to take into account all of the possible scenarios of the area that it is located in. That means that plants out on the west coast have to account for earthquake potentials, and thus be built on shock absorbers. Plants out here in the midwest have to take into account tornadoes, and be built with thicker walls, and down in valleys. And with different locations and placements, you simply can't standardize a plant.

And even with all of the safety precautions that you take, the number one factor in plant problems always has been and always will be human error, and there is no way to build that out of existence. Therefore, there is always going to be that chance that shit will happen, and with nuclear, that risk, though slight, is simply unacceptable over the long run. A wind turbine, if if collapses, at the most takes out a very few people. If a nuke plant goes, it can take out thousands over a period of years.

Then there is thre problem of what to do with the waste. None of our current options are good ones. Storing it on site is becoming a security and ecological risk. Recycling can lessen, but not get rid of the waste problem. Dumping it in the ocean wreaks havoc on the enviroment, and creates a long term problem for future generations, and burying it on land threatens ground water(like Yucca Mt. does), and again, creates future problems for our children.

Sorry friend, but nukes aren't the way to go. With many other renewable energy sources available that are safe and clean, why build up an infrastructure that is just a problem waiting to happen. Besides, by all good estimates, uranium production is going to be going down within twenty years or sooner. So what good is a bunch of nuke plants be when they're idle? Better to go with something that is clean and abundantly available.

[KharmaTrain]

11. And This Is Gonna Be Paid For By Whom???

The utility companies? <Buzzer> Think again...they've got a nice deal going here...the government builds 'em, they crank out the watts, collect the money and pay off the politicians.

Retrofitting nuclear power plants assumes that you just take the old plant and make it vanish. The costs for decomissioning the existing reactors and making them "safe" is going to be a massive cost unto itself that hasn't yet been figured into any estimates on energy expenses...but someone's gonna have to pay for it.

OK, so you've spent several billions clearing out the old nuclear site (people have been living in caves and with flashlights in the meantime), then you need how many billion to build these new-fangled reactors? And you want to build how many close to which school or aquifer or grazing land. Yep, it's all so simple.

Finally, there's that little problem of both the transport and final storage of the spent nuclear rods. Want them in your landfill? All those new reactors are gonna be sending trucks with irradiated cargos constantly moving along the interstates. Yep, what a terrorist delight that concept would be.

This plan makes as much sense as Bunnypant's mission to Mars one.

Now if we took just a fraction of this money and brainpower and worked on existing alternative sources like hydrogen, wind and solar energy maybe there's be some hope.

[MadHound]

12. Please reread my post

I hope that it truly isn't me that your carrying on against, because it sounds like we're on the same side.

[KharmaTrain]

14. Adding To Your Comments

We're very much on the same page here, I just was "piling on".

Makes it easier on the eyes to see a follow up follow up a follow up.



Cheers!

[iconoclastNYC]

39. Nope.

Don't retrofit. Build right next door on the same plot of land. A new reactor.

Reactors don't take up much land. Many plants were build with extra land to bring new reactors online.

New plants don't use rods. They use billards sized pebbles.

You really need to look up some of the advances in reactor design.

[KharmaTrain]

45. Perception Is An Issue

I live near several aging reactors...and there's no way any additional lands near many of those sites as urban sprawl has reached many of these reactor areas. Even though the reactors were there before the people, any new construction would surely meet very stiff resistance.

Also I will admit I am no nuclear scientist and am sure a lot of progress has to have been made over the past 50 years, there's still the corporate image of nuclear power...3 mile island, chyrnobal and so on that are burned into people's minds and nothing has come out over the years to allay those fears.

I'm a proponent of hydrogen...specifically liquid hydrogen...and for decades have had to refute knocks on the "flamability" and stability issue despite reems of research that show it more efficient than oil.

These reactors sound best for a small developing country that could really appreciate the power and it's positive uses, rather than a country that squanders and takes its resources for granted.

Cheers

[iconoclastNYC]

52. You can't mine Hydrogen

It has to be made by splitting water and that takes energy.

All Hydrogen does is make energy portable. It does not create it. Hydrogen will have to be produced by Wind or Solar or more likely new generation walk-away safe nuclear plants.

And yes there is a peception issue but if you can sell a war based on lies, you can sell these new power plants. Just pointing out how nasty coal is will help sell nuclear plants I think.

Neccesity is the mother of invention.

[cthrumatrix]

36. you believe the DOE?

[MadHound]

37. Yes, I do

After all, I work with their stats and research every day, so why should I disbelieve them when it comes to wind energy? Besides, think about it, if the DOE is in the pockets of corporate America, don't you think that they would be publishing stats that would show wind energy to be less productive and less viable than our oil or nuclear capacity?

Sorry friend, but I've found over a long lifetime that government stats, outside political hot button issues, are generally reliable.

[bigtree]

18. perhaps I would be less inclined to oppose the pebble bed reactors

if Bechtel wasn't the company hawking it.

In both the Bush Administration and the Republican-dominated 108th Congress, NEI's expensive lobbying campaigns appear at last to be paying off. The controversial Bush energy policy specifically plugs "pebble bed modular reactors," a dubious design concept that Bechtel is involved in. Energy legislation currently before the U.S. Senate would promote the construction of new nuclear reactors and offset the prudent disinterest of investors by offering federal financing that could leave taxpayers liable for an estimated $30 billion. If this ill-conceived program is approved by the Congress, Bechtel would presumably be a leading candidate for design and construction contracts for new government-subsidized reactors.

Bechtel's Weapons of Mass Destruction-

With the future of the commercial nuclear industry uncertain, Bechtel has not left all its atomic eggs in one basket. The company is also a major government contractor on the military side of the nuclear coin. It is ironic, in fact, that Bechtel has been awarded a contract in connection with the Iraq war - fought ostensibly to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction; because back home in the U.S., Bechtel Nevada (a team consisting of Bechtel Nevada Corporation; Johnson Controls Nevada, Inc.; and Lockheed Martin Nevada Technologies, Inc.) has received $1.9 billion to date to manage the Nevada Test Site74, where the federal government has exploded 1,000 nuclear bombs.75 Now Bechtel Nevada is helping the government to conduct sub-critical nuclear tests (i.e. atomic explosions in which the detonation does not reach the climax of a self-sustaining chain reaction) and other nuclear weapons activities at the site. Opponents contend that these activities threaten global security, undermine the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and further contaminate the environment.

A safety inspection in 2002 uncovered several violations at the Bechtel Nevada-managed site. For instance, the inspection found improperly labeled explosives and combustible material dangerously stored next to high explosives. Inspectors also reported that Bechtel Nevada failed to conduct periodic tests of lightning monitors and protection for their storage facilities. http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=6975#76

Like Yucca Mountain (which is located on the edge of the Nevada Test Site) Bechtel's test site operations are on ancestral lands of the Western Shoshone, and Native Americans continue to be disproportionately impacted by radioactive contamination at the site.

In addition to its direct role in the U.S. nuclear weapons program at the Nevada Test Site, Bechtel Jacobs Company LLC (a joint venture of Bechtel National, Inc. and Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc.) is also a contractor at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee that, among other ventures, produces weapons components. http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=6975#77

[jpak]

34. That Wired article was written by a couple of snarky little pubs

that played fast-and-loose with a lot of their so-called "facts".

It was Bushie-speak from beginning to end.

[jpak]

38. Renewables not ready? Guess again...

Global wind generating capacity is currently >39,000 MW and growing (exponentially) at 27% per year.

www.awea.org/pubs/documents/globalmarket2004.pdf

Global photovoltaic (PV) module production in 2003 was 934 MW - equivalent to a large nuclear plant, and global installed PV capacity is >3 GW today. Global PV production is also growing exponentially at ~25% per year.

http://www.martinot.info/markets.htm

http://www.oja-services.nl/iea-pvps/isr/5.htm

The US currently produces ~100 MW of PV capacity per year - half of which is exported.

The US imports just about everything else (including 96% of our uranium and 66% of our oil), but we export PV modules - go figure.

PV is a $4 billion dollar business and global PV production is expected to rise to 200 GW per year by 2020.

(note: the generating capacity of a large nuclear power plant is ~1 GWe).

Nukes good / Solar bad??? I call bullshit.

[iconoclastNYC]

57. You raise my point

All of the currently installed solar equals one nuke power plant.

The think you anti-nuke people can't get thru your thick skulls is that the issue is SCALING.

[jpak]

60. No it's currently 3500 MW and increasing exponentially at ~1000MW per year

By 2020 global PV production capacity is projected to be 200GW

Furthermore, PV can be scaled for any application - micro-watts to mega-watts.

Again, the US currently produces >100MW of PV capacity per year with ~50MW of that installed in the US.

US wind turbine capacity in 2003 was 6374 MW with 3000MW to be installed over the next 5 years

How much new nuclear capacity was installed in the US last year?????

Zero.

How's that for scale.

[iconoclastNYC]

63. Pebble bed reactor potential

In the long term, by 2050, China may deploy as much as 300 gigawatts of reactors.

That's fifty times what we have installed in wind capacity right now.

Nuclear scales.

The reason we don't have new nuclear plants in the USA is because people have spread so much fear that energy manufacturers would rather spend money on increased coal and gas fired capacity.

[jpak]

64. No, the reason there have been no new nuclear reactors ordered

since 1973 is this...

The last few nuclear plants actually built in the US came in at $4950 per kW.

The FOB cost of new PV modules in the US is currently $3.38 per peak watt ($3380 per kW)

New coal and wind turbine capacity is currently $1-1400 per kW

New gas-fired capacity is ~$600 per kW.

and...

Three Mile Island was a Billion Dollar Accident.

Until those numbers change, there will be no new nuclear power plants built in the US.

[Lindacooks]

42. Wind power no longer kills migratory birds and there is NO NOISE

I live 1/4 of a mile from a new, $1 million dollar wind turbine, which supplies energy to at least 5,000 households in my small town. There is NO NOISE at all - it's totally silent. And it's on about a 100x100 square foot piece of land. The blades are very large, the turning very slow, and no birds are hurt by it at all.

Plus it looks very cool. We're building another one.

[Tace]

13. Thermal Depolymerization Is A Very Promising Technology

Check this out, if you don't know about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization

It's nothing short of miraculous.

I think we're still in for a very rough ride in the years and decades ahead, but this promises to be a green alternative to nukes, and it recycles virtually everything except nuclear waste. You can even build a small one on a flat-bed trailer.

[megatherium]

15. but no so promising that it will come anywhere near

to solving our energy problems.

[Vladimir]

28. It does look good

but it has the problem that at 20 million barrels consumed per day, the US would have a hard time getting a significant chunk of its energy from this source. The real problem is that even though there is plenty of waste, it seems that the plants are limited by the speed at which they can process this. But I agree it is definitely something that should recieve plenty of funding to see if it can be developed into a truly viable long-term solution.

[NickB79]

47. It is not miraculous

It can recycle products that used oil in their creation, and recapture some of that oil, but it does not create more oil than you put in.

For example, say you put in the turkey offal they refer to in the article. You use, say, 10 barrels of oil to raise X number of turkeys (heating, feed, transportation, etc). Then you slaughter them, sell the meat, and throw whats left into the thermal depolymerizer. Out comes 7 barrels of oil. You succeeded in recapturing a good deal of the oil, but you are still using more than you are putting in. It's basic thermodynamics: energy can't be created, only transferred, and no process is 100% efficient. It would be a very good way to conserve what oil we have left, but it won't solve our long-term energy problems.

On edit: I noticed they DO claim to create more energy than they put in. "Alternately, one could consider the energy efficiency of the process to be 560% (85 units of energy produced for 15 units of energy consumed)." It appears they only take into consideration the amount of fossil fuels needed to heat the turkey offal to catalyze the reaction, not the fossil fuels used to grow the turkeys to supply the offal. I find that somewhat disingenuous.

[Tace]

58. Understood -- But It Can Use ANY Kind Of Waste -- Even Manure

Not nuclear waste, though. Yet, the process also creates any number of useful materials that can be used as, say fertilizers, etc. It doesn't even have to be waste. I read a story where they put shredded cars through. Not all the feedstocks create as much oil, but they all create useful basic compounds that can be recycled. It also is more efficient than the more common bio-mass recycling process, the name of which escapes me right now. : )

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[jpak]

19. Global uranium demand is expected to outstrip supply by 2013

http://npc.sarov.ru/english/digest/142004/section4p1.html

(scroll down to Bloomberg article).

Peak Oil will be quickly followed by Peak Uranium....

[megatherium]

30. That's only proven reserves;

it is expected that there is a substantially greater amount of economic reserves waiting to be found. The nuclear industry hasn't had much growth in the last three decades, so there hasn't been a great deal of uranium prospecting. This will change. Also, waste reprocessing will extend fuel supplies, while breeder reactors may allow fission power to power our civilization for the indefinite future.

[jpak]

32. Spent fuel reprocessing will be enormously expensive

Japan's Rokkasho reprocessing plant will cost $20+ billion to build and billions more to operate. Moreover, it is just plain uneconomic....

http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=mj01burnie

http://www.n-base.org.uk/public/report_links/crisis.html

http://www.wise-paris.org/index.html?/english/othersnews/year_2001/othersnews010515.html&/english/frame/menu.html&/english/frame/band.html

and it's a dirty nasty business....

http://users.michiana.org/greens/editorial/nucnews.htm

and breeders have never lived up to their promises..

...and every sodium-cooled commercial prototype breeder ever built has suffered serious sodium fires that led to prolonged shut-downs and/or decomissioning...

http://www.nci.org/01NCI/12/FFTF.htm (note: I went to grad school with Tom Clements)

...and they're enormously expensive: $9-11,000 per installed kW (compared this to ~$5000 per installed kW for the last few US light-water reactors built and $1-1200 per kW for new coal and wind turbine capacity).

http://www.geocities.com/m_v_ramana/nucleararticles/breeders_dying.htm

http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=ma01makhijani

http://www.iaea.org/inis/aws/fnss/phenix/book/

...and the US would have to design, license and build a new generation of light-water reactors to effectively use MOX fuel.

Any way you look at it the Plutonium Economy sucks....

[iconoclastNYC]

40. Wow 20 BILLION. Break the bank.

20 Billion is nothing. JAPAN built a 100 BILLION airport.

[Lindacooks]

43. And how much money do we spend on schools??

It's amazing how nuke lovers think that money grows on trees; they don't mind spending billions of dollars on their forever-polluting, dangerous, expensive-to-store crap, but everything else is just too, too expensive.

[NickB79]

48. Without energy to power our economy, how many kids will be in schools?

When Peak Oil hits, a global Great Depression hits, and the unemployment rate shoots through the roof, do you expect to see many children in school? Without power to heat the schools up here in MN, or some fuel source to drive school buses, I expect my old high school will be pretty damn empty.

[Lindacooks]

66. Of course we need energy - but nuclear is the wrong way to go.

That's not the question here - the question is how we are going to replace oil, coal, and gas as our main energy sources. And nuclear is NOT the way to go - we're just creating more problems and spending too much money on insurance, health care costs, transportation of spent fuel, storage, etc. etc. etc.

Plus one thing not even mentioned is that nuclear power plants are a prime target for terrorism, with the potential to kill millions. Solar and wind power are safe in every respect, and much cheaper.

[iconoclastNYC]

51. How much do we spend on healthcare from pollution from coal power plants?

Nuclear power is the only non-polluting energy source that can scale large enuf to replace coal and gas / oil fired power plants.

I'm all for alternative energy as a replacement for nuclear when the technlogy can scane that high but we can't wait until then to fix the carbon/pollution problem from fossil fuels.

Electricity generation shouuld be nationalized and we should spend billions and billions on wind farms and expanding nuclear plants where they exist now with the new walk-away safe pebble bed reactors.

[jpak]

56. Nationalized????

You want Dick Cheney and the GOP Congress running our nation's electrical grid????

It would be a Field Day for big-GOP-donor energy companies and pork-loving pubs.

Red states and Friends-of-Dick would get the plum projects, contracts and jobs.

Blue states would get the nuke-waste and pay most of the taxes to fund this monstrosity.

Guess who would be the ultimate losers????

(clue: ratepayers and taxpayers)

Zeig Heil to that bullshit.

[iconoclastNYC]

59. Oh give me a break

No republican or big business person would be for nationalizing of the power system. It takes the profit they derive from owning the privately held powerplants and gives that profit to the ratepayers.

Every heard of community run power co-ops? The exist to provide a need of community and not to make profit. And they do it cheaper then privately owned power companies.

The notion that the marketplace handles power generation better than government owned utilities is false. California anyone?

[jpak]

61. SMUD has some of the lowest electricity rates in CA

They decommissioned their Rancho Seco nuclear power plant in favor of renewables and conservation.

Furthermore, Dick Cheney's Nuclear Power 2010 plan calls for 50% government funding of new nuclear power plants.

Why 50%????

Because any more government ownership would transform this scam from ordinary Republican-Kroney-Kapitalism into Evil French-like Socialism.

I always get a kick when Dick uses France as his model for nuclear power (i.e., a state-owned monopoly).

[Lindacooks]

65. There is no safe nuclear power.

Nuclear power is NOT safe, it is NOT cheap, and technology is that high now for alternative energy.

You're fooling yourself if you think that pebble bed reactors are 'walk away safe'.

[NickB79]

50. Indeed, when our country has spent 10X that amount in Iraq

In less than 2 years, attempting to take over impossible-to-secure oil fields. We could have built the nuclear fuel reprocessing plants, plus had $180 billion left over, all for the cost of this war to obtain more oil. How many decades would $180 billion maintain and run those reprocessing stations?

[jpak]

54. Who will foot the bill for this????

The private sector?????

They're not even purchasing light water reactors, let alone breeders, reprocessing plants, MOX fuel fabrication facilities, MOX fuel reactors, waste vitrification facilities, etc.

It is just too godamned expensive.

If the US were to build reprocessing capacity on the scale of Japan's plant, it would cost ~$40+ billion.

It would require another waste depository the size of Yucca Mountain (cost: $60 billion and rising).

The National Academy of Science estimates the cost of actinide burning at $50-100 or more. The also concluded that a once-through fuel cycle with no reprocessing or transmutation was the best way to deal with problem of spent reactor fuel.

Furthermore, commercial spent fuel reprocessing in the US was a monstrous failure.

The now-defunct West Valley New York reprocessing plant produced ~$20 million worth of plutonium before it ceased operations.

http://www.osti.gov/osti/opennet/document/purecov/nfsrepo.html

It processed 640 metric tonnes of spent fuel and produced 600,000 gallons of high level waste.

The plant's operators turned the facility over the taxpayers of New York who then turned it over to the DOE (AKA federal income taxpayers).

DOE is spending ~$100 million a year to clean up West Valley. The ultimate cost of clean-up is estimated to be $4-8 billion.

All for $20 million worth of plutonium?????

Such a deal.

Again any way you look at it, the Plutonium Economy sucks...

[NickB79]

49. Use thorium

Thorium is a potential fissionable material for reactors, and is 3X as common as uranium.

[DrGonzoLives]

68. You'd need a lot more of it

And enrinching thorium so that you can get a sustainable, energetic enough reaction to run a power plant is very difficult and energy-consuming.

[jpak]

70. Not to mention there are no licensed thorium reactor

designs in existence anywhere and no thorium fuel cycle facilities to support these plants.

You can go on-line today and purchase a PV array, wind turbine or solar hot water heater that can provide a portion or all of you energy needs - you don't have to wait 50 years to do this.

[Blue_Tires]

26. ttt

[Taxloss]

31. Rather dismissive of biofuel.

Hey! Let's take the carbon out of the atmosphere and turn it back into fuel! it's almost free!

[queeg]

44. I agree and they can build it in my backyard.

If anyone wants the truth about how the American Nuclear power industry has F**Ked up what could have been a good thing I invite them to read a Book called "The Rickover Effect"

[Junkdrawer]

53. Harvard did a study in 1975 on the implications on Civil Liberties...

of a Plutonium Economy.

http://www.ccnr.org/harvard_on_mox.html

What a coincidence! Just when Cheap Oil peaks and the only centralized energy source on the horizon will depend on a Plutonium Economy, we are prepared to give up our civil liberties to fight terrorism.

Who'd have thunk it?

[jpak]

62. Excellent point!

I, for one, do not want to live in a Bush Confederate Nucular-Powered Theocracy.

[hunter]

67. Other nations will develop nuclear power.

I imagine they will then colonize whatever is left of the United States.

The level of corruption in our economy will not support either nuclear power or "green" power. Unlike cheap oil and coal, more sophisticated energy resources such as nuclear power and renewable energy require utterly ethical, honest, and competent management.

In the nuclear industry the penalty for mismanagement is disaster, and in the renewable energy business mismanagement results in the industry running at a net energy loss.

As United States citizens we don't see it when we look in mirror, but we are more like Mexico or Russia than other "first world" nations. We grew strong because we controlled great natural wealth. We could afford to be wasteful.

Our industry grew upon local resources.

For example, California became a significant fraction of the world economy because California had cheap water, cheap oil, cheap hydroelectricity, plenty of good agricultural land, and inexpensive labor.

Now that California has exceeded the capacity of these resources, things here do not look so rosy. Cracks are appearing in our facade, and the underlying corruption of the state's economic systems are revealed.

Arguments about the relative benifits and hazards of nuclear power are irrelevent here in the United States until we clean up our government.

Any nuclear power program endorsed by our corrupt political administration would certainly be a disaster. As our government currently exists, we do not have the capacity to run a safe or economically viable nuclear energy program.

[jpak]

69. A lot of "utterly ethical, honest, and competent" people have become

early adopters of renewables here in the US.

There are more than 220,000 US homes equipped with PV arrays and thousands more with solar hot water heaters, small wind turbines or passive solar designs.

They have managed their energy future pretty well without a centralized authority telling them what to do or how to spend their money.

...and I'm always amused when "Ownership Society" Republicans oppose tax beaks for homeowners who actually buy renewable energy technologies for their own homes.

Finally, renewables always have a positive net-energy return (and they are entirely recyclable) - don't see a problem there...

[hunter]

71. Renewables do not have the positive net-energy return that cheap oil did.

Before the early 'seventies, which was "peak oil" in the United States, a very small investment of capital and energy in the petroleum industry usually returned tremendous amounts of oil and gas. This windfall supported very wasteful lifestyles, and within these wasteful lifestyles various forms of political and economic corruption went unnoticed.

Renewable energy does not have that margin, and will not afford us that kind of waste. The political machines we have built cannot survive in such an environment.

I've mentioned before that I was an anti-nuclear researcher and activist in the late 'seventies and early 'eighties. I now think this sort of activism is moot.

The fact that the Bush Administration is pushing nuclear power doesn't make me want to go out and fight against nuclear power. It makes me want to fight the Bush Administration. The war in Iraq, and so many other disasters are proof that the political beasts raised on cheap oil are hungry and afraid. There isn't any way for us to develop nuclear power in the United States quickly enough to satiate these beasts.

I would very much like to see a future where renewable energy supports a comfortable low-energy lifestyle. I don't see a clear way to get there. The economic crunch is going to hurt a lot of people.

I think I'm mostly indifferent towards nuclear energy at this point.

I also believe that nuclear power is much less harmful to the environment than coal power, even "high technology" coal power systems. I would much rather live near a well-run nuclear power plant than a coal fired plant. Preferably I don't have to live near either.

Mostly this is because radioactive toxins no longer occupy any special place on my list of environmental pollutants. There is stuff in the air that I breathe every day that is just as scary to me as plutonium. Some of the stuff in everyday diesel soot can make you just as dead as a misplaced speck of plutonium.

Terrorism? There is plenty of bad stuff terrorists might do that does not involve radioactive materials. "Breeding" terrorists seems to be a much bigger problem than "breeding" plutonium.

If you put children into certain kinds of situations they grow up to be terrorists. How do you stop that? (As an aside, it is the arrogance of the United States that we think our reasons for having the bomb are so much better than any other nation's reason; like God Himself gave us our bombs, and that everyone else with a bomb is a second rate pretender.)

Where's my magic wand, my "technical fix?" It's gotta be around here somewhere...