THE Nuclear Power Thread pt 5 (merged)

[SeaGypsy]

So you're concerned about resource constraints and die-off, and you think it would be a good idea to shut down a reliable 20% (baseload) of our electricity supply?

Under what scenario do you think it would be impossible to de-commission plants in the future? Even if we deplete oil down to 10 million barrels per day, there would be more than adequate energy and transportation fuel for critical infrastructure and services like that. Under a bad-case scenario the govt. could still organize a manhattan project to decommission plants. Only under the mad max scenario would this not be possible. If we start decommissioning now wouldn't that kind of make it a self-fulfilling prophecy? Would that be good for our "future generations"?

If you read what I've suggested there are 2 scenarios.

1/Rapid phase out, decommissioning& clean up.

2/At least put universally understood DANGER symbols on the stuff.

I don't disagree with other posters on the logistics/ etc.
But my other suggestion here seems to have been overlooked.

[alokin]

Nuclear energy is the most expensive form of energy. Imagine if you put only one person at each nuclear waste site during the time it is a danger imagine the amount of salary! Not event to take into account a decent management of the waste sites. There is no way of protecting a waste site for several thousand years, you must only look back in history.

Nuclear energy makes only electricity and only a part of our electricity. There is no problem and no suffering cutting the electricity use in the Western World by half. Without fancy technologies, only no or less air conditioning, the hot water a bit cooler, turn that light off etc.. Our family uses 4.3 kWh a day, admittedly we have solar hot water, but we live in a region where air conditioning is common. Most of our electricity use is maybe the electric stove. If we should cut back from this level it would be a bit difficult, but, not impossible.

There is no mad Max scenario in using less electricity.

[outcast]

1/Rapid phase out, decommissioning& clean up.

Replace them with what? There's nothing that is as environmentally friendly that is as dependable. The only country in Europe last year that had no potential electricity shortages was France, because 85% of their electricity comes from nukes.

2/At least put universally understood DANGER symbols on the stuff.

What do you think this means?

[SeaGypsy]

If I just showed up& were somehow alienated form the time space/ culture continuum; this means BLOODY NOTHING!!!

[outcast]

If I just showed up& were somehow alienated form the time space/ culture continuum; this means BLOODY NOTHING!!!

Skull and cross bones wouldn't mean anything in that situation either. You still didn't answer the other question.

[alokin]

replace them with saving.

[SeaGypsy]

I want to keep this debate aside from the general energy picture for 1 reason;
The extremely long lived extremely dangerous POISON involved at all stages of use.

[outcast]

I want to keep this debate aside from the general energy picture for 1 reason;
The extremely long lived extremely dangerous POISON involved at all stages of use.

Then you shouldn't have included it in your post.

[SeaGypsy]

I want to keep this debate aside from the general energy picture for 1 reason;
The extremely long lived extremely dangerous POISON involved at all stages of use.

Then you shouldn't have included it in your post.

WTF?

I know all the bullshit tricks pulled by you guys; come on it's carbon free 'almost' part of the new energy mix blah blah blah ad infinitum.

Anyone who buys this crap is either a shareholder of a Nuke plant or a sucker for a bum steer which will destroy millions of lives millions of years into the future.

"They killed Kenny!" "Screw you guys, I'm outa here!"

[Tanada]

I want to keep this debate aside from the general energy picture for 1 reason;
The extremely long lived extremely dangerous POISON involved at all stages of use.

Then you shouldn't have included it in your post.

WTF?

I know all the bullshit tricks pulled by you guys; come on it's carbon free 'almost' part of the new energy mix blah blah blah ad infinitum.

Anyone who buys this crap is either a shareholder of a Nuke plant or a sucker for a bum steer which will destroy millions of lives millions of years into the future.

"They killed Kenny!" "Screw you guys, I'm outa here!"

Anyone who ingnores the laws of physics and chooses to live as a Luddite gets exactly what they deserve, and they are welcome to it.

[Dezakin]

I want to keep this debate aside from the general energy picture for 1 reason;
The extremely long lived extremely dangerous POISON involved at all stages of use.

Then you shouldn't have included it in your post.

WTF?

I know all the bullshit tricks pulled by you guys; come on it's carbon free 'almost' part of the new energy mix blah blah blah ad infinitum.

Anyone who buys this crap is either a shareholder of a Nuke plant or a sucker for a bum steer which will destroy millions of lives millions of years into the future.

Oh, right. Its a much better policy to close operating power stations and replace them with coal, so we can remove mountains even faster.

[yeahbut]

Oh, right. Its a much better policy to close operating power stations and replace them with coal, so we can remove mountains even faster.

Obviously that's an unacceptable result, but so is ever-increasing stockpiles of radioactive waste. The dirty old French(sorry, still haven't forgiven them for Muroroa, or the Rainbow Warrior- the only incident of terrorism in NZ, and it was carried out by the French govt) generate something like 75% of their electricity from nuclear, what do they do with all their waste? And how much waste would there be if other countries took a similar path?

[Dezakin]

Oh, right. Its a much better policy to close operating power stations and replace them with coal, so we can remove mountains even faster.

Obviously that's an unacceptable result, but so is ever-increasing stockpiles of radioactive waste. The dirty old French(sorry, still haven't forgiven them for Muroroa, or the Rainbow Warrior- the only incident of terrorism in NZ, and it was carried out by the French govt) generate something like 75% of their electricity from nuclear, what do they do with all their waste? And how much waste would there be if other countries took a similar path?

The easiest solution to nuclear waste is to bury it under the billions of tonnes of toxic chemical waste that no one cares about at all.

Or you could just do what we do now, and use dry cask storage. A spent fuel storage cask from several years of reactor operation would take up one space in the parking lot and retain its integrity for centuries. In several centuries we can revisit the issue.

[SeaGypsy]

Oh, right. Its a much better policy to close operating power stations and replace them with coal, so we can remove mountains even faster.

Obviously that's an unacceptable result, but so is ever-increasing stockpiles of radioactive waste. The dirty old French(sorry, still haven't forgiven them for Muroroa, or the Rainbow Warrior- the only incident of terrorism in NZ, and it was carried out by the French govt) generate something like 75% of their electricity from nuclear, what do they do with all their waste? And how much waste would there be if other countries took a similar path?

The easiest solution to nuclear waste is to bury it under the billions of tonnes of toxic chemical waste that no one cares about at all.

Or you could just do what we do now, and use dry cask storage. A spent fuel storage cask from several years of reactor operation would take up one space in the parking lot and retain its integrity for centuries. In several centuries we can revisit the issue.

Don't you get any of this at all?

WHO is 'WE' in several centuries?

OK so lets just add it to the Texas sized pile of crap in the North Pacific Ocean; perhaps in a semi submerged cargo container.

[Dezakin]

Don't you get any of this at all?

WHO is 'WE' in several centuries?

Who cares? In several centuries we'll either be able to reseal them, have a better solution, or civilization will have collapsed. If it collapses we'll have far bigger concerns than a few slabs of radioactive rock.

OK so lets just add it to the Texas sized pile of crap in the North Pacific Ocean; perhaps in a semi submerged cargo container.

What the hell are you talking about?

[yeahbut]

The easiest solution to nuclear waste is to bury it under the billions of tonnes of toxic chemical waste that no one cares about at all.

Everyone's a goddam comedian ...if I follow the logic underlying the wisecrack there, it comes down to 'we already make heaps of other sorts of nasty garbage, so what's a bit more', or maybe, 'people who are concerned about nuclear waste don't care about other forms of pollution'...actually on reflection I have no idea what you meant to convey by that

Or you could just do what we do now, and use dry cask storage. A spent fuel storage cask from several years of reactor operation would take up one space in the parking lot and retain its integrity for centuries. In several centuries we can revisit the issue.

Believe me, when a visionary like Lovelock says nuclear is the way forward, I sit up and listen. But movement and storage of radioactive waste is where nuclear power gets particularly worrisome, at least for me it does. Especially if it does become the major source of energy in the years to come- again, I wonder how much waste we would be talking about then? Would we just keep filling up car spaces?

And of course, your assumption that people will have the knowledge, skills and wealth to deal with the problem "in several centuries" is a mighty big one, and a lot to dump on them along with all our other generous legacies. I freely admit I don't know much about this subject, and await, other, less flip, responses with interest.

[Tanada]

The easiest solution to nuclear waste is to bury it under the billions of tonnes of toxic chemical waste that no one cares about at all.

Everyone's a goddam comedian ...if I follow the logic underlying the wisecrack there, it comes down to 'we already make heaps of other sorts of nasty garbage, so what's a bit more', or maybe, 'people who are concerned about nuclear waste don't care about other forms of pollution'...actually on reflection I have no idea what you meant to convey by that

Or you could just do what we do now, and use dry cask storage. A spent fuel storage cask from several years of reactor operation would take up one space in the parking lot and retain its integrity for centuries. In several centuries we can revisit the issue.

Believe me, when a visionary like Lovelock says nuclear is the way forward, I sit up and listen. But movement and storage of radioactive waste is where nuclear power gets particularly worrisome, at least for me it does. Especially if it does become the major source of energy in the years to come- again, I wonder how much waste we would be talking about then? Would we just keep filling up car spaces?

And of course, your assumption that people will have the knowledge, skills and wealth to deal with the problem "in several centuries" is a mighty big one, and a lot to dump on them along with all our other generous legacies. I freely admit I don't know much about this subject, and await, other, less flip, responses with interest.

If you look at spent nuclear fuel, which is most of what the USA calls high level nuclear waste, just how much bulk are you talking about?
Answer not very darn much at all. A large currently operating nuclear fission plant produces about 25 tons of spent fuel per year. That might sound like a lot, but the fuel is so dense you are talking about a volume 12 cubic meters. IOW you can pack all that years worth of waste in 1 bathroom in a typical McMansion. 12 m^3 is ~~425 ft^3= 8 feet high by 7 feet wide by 8 feet long.

If you reprocess that waste you can reduce the volume by a factor of 4, France does this and turns your 12 m^3 into 3 m^3 plus Uranium which they can reuse.

But lets suppose you keep all your spent fuel in its orriginal form as the USA does today. You have 104 operating plants averaging 12 m^3 per year or 1248 m^3 per year.

Now compare that to any other form of industrial waste produced by the USA.

Typically 70 to 80 percent of coal ash is disposed of in dry landfills. (Sluiced ashes and sludges are first dewatered in ash ponds then landfilled.) A landfill for a typical coal fired power plant (500-1000 Megawatts) requires about 30 to 60 hectares (74 to 148 acres). These landfills range from
about 4 to 80 hectares (10 to 197 acres) and may be as much as 9 m (30 ft) deep.

The above is a YEARLY coal ash production from one powerplant and it contains thousands of times the volume of all USA nuclear powerplants combined. Coal ash contains thousands of tons of deadly poisens like Arsenic. I don't see anyone losing sleep over what our descendents 600 years from now will do about these millions of cubic meters of poisen ash in thousands of locations all over the country.

The truth is spent nuclear fuel has such a low volume that if you are just going to throw it away (which would be pretty darn stupid) you could drill wells in the middle of hard rock formations off shore, chop the waste into small pieces and drop it into the bottom half of the bore. Wells of 28000 feet or more have been drilled in the Gulf of Mexico far off shore, where our descendents would never be able to access them for example. Then you drop in a couple dozen tons of Cement to seal the bore, move your drill rig half a mile and do it again. If your well bore is one cubic foot per leangth for easy math and you leave 2000 feet at the top as a 'safety gap' then 20 wells a year would contain all the spent fuel the USA produces a year effectively forever.

IOW disposing of spent nuclear fuel is a POLLITICAL problem, and it always has been. Technologically there are dozens of ways of disposing of it because the volume is so small. The reason we do not use any of them is pure pollitics.

[SeaGypsy]

The easiest solution to nuclear waste is to bury it under the billions of tonnes of toxic chemical waste that no one cares about at all.

Everyone's a goddam comedian ...if I follow the logic underlying the wisecrack there, it comes down to 'we already make heaps of other sorts of nasty garbage, so what's a bit more', or maybe, 'people who are concerned about nuclear waste don't care about other forms of pollution'...actually on reflection I have no idea what you meant to convey by that

Or you could just do what we do now, and use dry cask storage. A spent fuel storage cask from several years of reactor operation would take up one space in the parking lot and retain its integrity for centuries. In several centuries we can revisit the issue.

Believe me, when a visionary like Lovelock says nuclear is the way forward, I sit up and listen. But movement and storage of radioactive waste is where nuclear power gets particularly worrisome, at least for me it does. Especially if it does become the major source of energy in the years to come- again, I wonder how much waste we would be talking about then? Would we just keep filling up car spaces?

And of course, your assumption that people will have the knowledge, skills and wealth to deal with the problem "in several centuries" is a mighty big one, and a lot to dump on them along with all our other generous legacies. I freely admit I don't know much about this subject, and await, other, less flip, responses with interest.

If you look at spent nuclear fuel, which is most of what the USA calls high level nuclear waste, just how much bulk are you talking about?
Answer not very darn much at all. A large currently operating nuclear fission plant produces about 25 tons of spent fuel per year. That might sound like a lot, but the fuel is so dense you are talking about a volume 12 cubic meters. IOW you can pack all that years worth of waste in 1 bathroom in a typical McMansion. 12 m^3 is ~~425 ft^3= 8 feet high by 7 feet wide by 8 feet long.

If you reprocess that waste you can reduce the volume by a factor of 4, France does this and turns your 12 m^3 into 3 m^3 plus Uranium which they can reuse.

But lets suppose you keep all your spent fuel in its orriginal form as the USA does today. You have 104 operating plants averaging 12 m^3 per year or 1248 m^3 per year.

Now compare that to any other form of industrial waste produced by the USA.

Typically 70 to 80 percent of coal ash is disposed of in dry landfills. (Sluiced ashes and sludges are first dewatered in ash ponds then landfilled.) A landfill for a typical coal fired power plant (500-1000 Megawatts) requires about 30 to 60 hectares (74 to 148 acres). These landfills range from
about 4 to 80 hectares (10 to 197 acres) and may be as much as 9 m (30 ft) deep.

The above is a YEARLY coal ash production from one powerplant and it contains thousands of times the volume of all USA nuclear powerplants combined. Coal ash contains thousands of tons of deadly poisens like Arsenic. I don't see anyone losing sleep over what our descendents 600 years from now will do about these millions of cubic meters of poisen ash in thousands of locations all over the country.

The truth is spent nuclear fuel has such a low volume that if you are just going to throw it away (which would be pretty darn stupid) you could drill wells in the middle of hard rock formations off shore, chop the waste into small pieces and drop it into the bottom half of the bore. Wells of 28000 feet or more have been drilled in the Gulf of Mexico far off shore, where our descendents would never be able to access them for example. Then you drop in a couple dozen tons of Cement to seal the bore, move your drill rig half a mile and do it again. If your well bore is one cubic foot per leangth for easy math and you leave 2000 feet at the top as a 'safety gap' then 20 wells a year would contain all the spent fuel the USA produces a year effectively forever.

IOW disposing of spent nuclear fuel is a POLLITICAL problem, and it always has been. Technologically there are dozens of ways of disposing of it because the volume is so small. The reason we do not use any of them is pure pollitics.

It is nice to get a poster who knows his stuff Tanada. I am in full concordance with you on the poisons listed & the sparse attention these other toxins get in the media as well as in legislature.

OK firstly, there are more problems with decommissioning plants than storing waste. the timelines& energy intensity of this activity is more important to my subject here than specific storage methods.

The other serious issue is this so called universal radioactive symbol (above)
It is not universal at all, it is dependent on a cultural continuum for multiple millions of years. these signs should be utterly universal not 'ad speak' universal.

[yeahbut]

Thanks Tanada, interesting stuff. One thing I wondered when reading your post was, why doesn't the US reprocess the waste in the way the French do? I spose it's expensive?

IOW disposing of spent nuclear fuel is a POLLITICAL problem, and it always has been. Technologically there are dozens of ways of disposing of it because the volume is so small. The reason we do not use any of them is pure pollitics.

And I guess the decision on Yucca mountain is the latest example of this, huh? The article I was just reading said that the waste stockpile is now at 60,000 tons, which according to the official Mcmansion conversion rate is about 2500 bathrooms, which is getting up there. It seems an extraordinary decision given the amount of radioactive waste that is piling up.

"We have no good Plan B for dealing with the problem of nuclear waste at this point," says Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D) of New Mexico, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

"My own view is that we should continue to keep Yucca Mountain as an option," including allowing the application process to continue, he says.

"The liability issue doesn't go away. The issue of where we store our waste doesn't go away," says Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) of Alaska, the top Republican on the Senate energy panel.

"The budget can be a pretty heavy-handed tool for eliminating programs, but I'm really troubled about the decisions made with Yucca," she says.

Since failing to complete a storage facility by 1998, as provided in the contract, the US Energy Department has faced open-ended court challenges over billions in liability payments to utilities now having to store toxic waste on site.

"The government is going to pay one way or another. You can get rid of Yucca, but you can't get rid of the government's contract obligations," says Jerry Stouck, a Washington attorney who represents several utilities in this dispute.

To date, courts have awarded utilities more than $1 billion, with appeals pending. But those suits typically cover costs through 2004; a second wave of lawsuits is already under way for subsequent costs.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0306/p02s01-usgn.html

The other thing I wondered about before was how much more nuclear waste would be generated if the US got most of it's electricity from nuclear energy. Currently in the US nuclear accounts for about 20%, coal for 50%, so in the most simplistic way, one could say the amount could triple or more. Of course, we'd all hope that solar, wind, tide, etc might take up some of the slack too, and that the US would start reprocessing it's waste so that volumes were reduced.

[Pops]

We are dirty:
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/c02d.html

Can't get around it, we shit in our nest and our nest will only get bigger.

The only real alternative is to put a tax - like the cigarette tax, on every Kw used to offset the true cost.