Is world safe enough for more nuclear reactors?

POSTED BY: Niki2
UPDATED: Tuesday, June 2, 2026 18:16
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SKYDIVELIFE

Wednesday, June 15, 2011 7:50 PM

I would still like to hear an alternative to fossil fuels, and nuclear power.

BYTEMITE

Wednesday, June 15, 2011 8:15 PM

I didn't say it was dangerously radioactive, I said it wasn't inert. Whether it's dangerous or not really varies depending on circumstances and person.

The thing is about half-life, is that even long half lives can have an appreciable impact if there is enough concentration or exposure, or if a person already has sensitivity or susceptibility. It's not so much that the stuff is not dangerous, but rather that the government has deemed the stuff "safe enough" from some acceptable baseline of risk, usually 1:1 million chance of a negative exposure effect such as cancer.

BYTEMITE

Wednesday, June 15, 2011 8:27 PM

Quote:
I would still like to hear an alternative to fossil fuels, and nuclear power.

The problem isn't that there's no alternatives, the problem is all the existing infrastructure is geared towards obtaining, processing, or using one or the other. We're already invested, so to speak, and the existing infrastructure tends to make this all cheaper than the alternatives.

But, for me, it goes Fossil Fuels < Nuclear Power < Individualized Energy. You don't need huge wattage and outputs from ginormous government monopolies and powerplants with half the funding embezzled out of them if you're not directing the electricity over long distances. As such, I believe the efforts to force citizens to choose between fuels is a false dilemma. None of the given or expected answers truly benefits the citizenry, or solves the problem. Eventually, the citizenry may have to take the solutions into their own hands.

FREMDFIRMA

Wednesday, June 15, 2011 9:19 PM

Hmm, regarding "hot" spent fuels - here's a notion that occured to me last night, just food for thought.

Grind to rough powder, and employ a catalytic reaction of some kind that produces useable energy while it also eventually renders the "hot' material inert, or close to it.

There's GOT to be a way, Nature and Physics all but demand it, unless Newton which wrong, which I highly doubt - anyhow, we need to think, wonder, and investigate possibilities other than just shove it somewhere and forget about it, yanno ?

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

FREMDFIRMA

Wednesday, June 15, 2011 9:24 PM

On a personal amusement note - I COULD go ask Davey the Radboy if he has any ideas, hehehe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn

Admittedly, the guy is brilliant, quite Sparky in fact, problem is the idea of even the most basic safety precautions never seems to occur to him - genius idiocy at it's very finest.

-F

RIONAEIRE

Wednesday, June 15, 2011 11:35 PM

I hope Frem's idea would work, then we could get rid of the spent stuff while still using nuclear for a little while to get everyone used to the idea of no longer using it for power, it would also give us more time to come up with a new plan, because we can't keep using nuclear power forever in my opinion, dangerous dark force etc.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

SIGNYM

Thursday, June 16, 2011 3:09 AM

Quote:
I would still like to hear an alternative to fossil fuels, and nuclear power.

HEY! I have a really new idea! It's called conservation!

SIGNYM

Thursday, June 16, 2011 1:13 PM

HW, I misread your post since mostly I only have time for drive-bys. OTOH, there is a lot of evidence piling up that DU is harmful. Among other things, even without residual radioactive contamination it is a heavy toxic metal which binds to DNA and mimics estrogen in the body. When it is used as a round, it aerosolizes into micron-sized particles that are easily inhaled and (of course) ingested. That's just off the top of my head- I'm sure I'll find more when I do some research. So before YOU go puffing up the 1000 wonderful uses of DU, you might want to research its safety.

AFA fuel reprocessing... it's not the panacea you seem to think because it creates as much waste as the fuel that was reprocessed. So there is still a huge amount of radioactive waste, which is a witches brew of radioactive elements, some of which are worse than the original fuel.

Finally, you never addressed the SHIT HAPPENS part of my post. I note for the record that Germany is committed to shutting down its nuclear reactors, and this is a nation with a rational and successful approach to nuclear safety and nuclear waste. Why? Because of the "shit happens" problem, one which humans can NEVER avoid entirely.

HARDWARE

Thursday, June 16, 2011 2:19 PM

First, I did mention DU's danger when vaporized and as a heavy metal. But since the most common way for DU to become vaporized is to be in a vehicle that is hit by a DU long rod penetrator fired from an M1 Abrams, I think the recipients probably have more pressing worries than heavy metal poisoning.

Second, I hope Germany enjoys their rolling blackouts. You can't take 25% of your power plants offline without replacing them with something else. So, their choices are;
A) Build coal or natural gas plants to replace their nuclear plants.
B) Buy electricity from someone else, which is just a shell game. Either the nuclear capacity or the pollution goes somewhere else.

Third, fuel reprocessing cannot create as much waste as it takes in because the output process is new nuclear fuel. This would be a violation of the conservation of energy principle. (OTOH, it would be great if it did, we'd have transporters and replicators pretty soon!) So the products are new fuel, DU and intermediate level waste. Intermediate level waste is better than high level waste any day of the week.

But weren't you all for leaving radioactive waste laying all over?

The more I get to know people the more I like my dogs.

...and he that has no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. Luke 22:36

SIGNYM

Sunday, June 19, 2011 7:43 AM

I wanted to get back to this.

Quote:
the most common way for DU to become vaporized is to be in a vehicle that is hit by a DU long rod penetrator

DU isn't just harmful to combatants. It contaminates every battlefield where it has been used including places like Fallujah. Funny you should forget that.

Quote:
I hope Germany enjoys their rolling blackouts.

Germany has been steadily building out its alternate energy sources for more than a decade. They seem to think they're ready for the transition, but I'm sure you know much more about their situation than they do!

In the other thread about tree-huggers, you asked for examples of a planned economy being cleaner than a "free market" one. Well, here is one example.

Quote:
fuel reprocessing cannot create as much waste as it takes in

Reprocessing creates a huge amount of liquid waste contaminated with stuff that is even more harmful than uranium. Hanford is a great example of a reprocessing site.

Quote:
But weren't you all for leaving radioactive waste laying all over?

I'm for not creating it in the first place.

And son (May I call you son? You seem very young to me.) we have Sellafield (Windscale), Chernobyl, and Fukushima as vivid lessons of the "SHIT HAPPENS" principle, which you still have failed to address.

So, let's get back to the original question: Is the world safe enough for more nuclear reactors? The answer is: The world isn't safe enough for ANY nuclear reactors.

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