1. #11
    Airmail109's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally posted by VW-IceFire:
    I think the real trouble is that scares like this, although legitimate, get people to steer away from nuclear technologies completely. The types of reactors are in most cases decades old in design. I was reading that the reason that nuclear technologies have developed the way they did is because back when they were developing atomic weapons using uranium and plutonium were the ideal options. I'm no nuclear physicist but I've read lots of interesting things about other types of fuels and other types of reactor designs where these kinds of disasters are not possible.

    Nuclear isn't 100% safe and neither is any other energy generating technology. But I'd rather people not freak out and avoid nuclear again... It may be the mid-short term solution until we can come up with something better. Worst case scenario in my mind is that in 50 years crude oil is too expensive to drive modern economies so we'll have a greater need for electric everything to get around. Nuclear is the way to go here.

    Until we have a breakthrough somewhere else. Even then... nuclear may lead to the breakthrough. So I'd rather see it used and developed rather than stagnant.

    As for the Japanese ... again I'm not an expert but I was watching an interview tonight and the experts were saying that the Japanese facilities have survived a dual disaster and come through extremely well considering.

    The Japanese haven't placed their reactors on fault lines... except to say that the entire island is surrounded by faults and stress fractures. So no matter where you build in Japan... major earthquakes are a potential. It's a credit to their engineers that these reactors weren't totally destroyed in the first place.

    As for Canada... we've got plenty of nuclear power around here. Nobody seems to have brought it up much. Maybe next week if the media latches on to it.
    I think "OMFG No more Chernobyls" is the only reason we havn't stopped using oil/coal yet. ****ing Russians.
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  2. #12
    The only way it accounts as efficient is if you don't consider the waste.
    It depends what you define as waste.
    You have a biproduct of the core that needs to be changed or replaced.....how often?
    It probably depends on the size and demand of the reactor, but it is not as frequent as dumping the trash, and it is probably more similar to rotating or replacing tires on a car.
    The impending disaster still looms and despite its infrequency, the waste can be more troublesome to deal with than the reactor itself.
    That part always seems to slip the discussion when it comes to efficiency and safety. Sure the reactor is safe, what about the areas designated for storing/transporting the waste?
    The idea that it produces less waste has more to do with the amount of carbon emissions in pounds per cubed foot. It is way cleaner.
    That is the "cars to horse carriage" analogy I was making earlier.
    If that debate continues it should address newer energy sources and technology. Start comparing "cars to trains or planes"
    Why continue to make the same archaic claims on why a current method is better than older methods.
    ...Besides, drawing attention to newer methods might actually increase research and create jobs, particularly in solar energy.
    How do we create jobs? It makes too much sense.
    "No, No...I'd rather waste more tax payers money on policing foreign oil and campaigning that they hate us."
    Meanwhile, our economy stagnates and political attention shifts around on banking rates.

    Damn, I sound like a typical American in 2011, right when I thought I had something different and revealing to say about the world.



    Bill
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  3. #13
    Airmail109's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally posted by BillSwagger:
    <BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">The only way it accounts as efficient is if you don't consider the waste.
    It depends what you define as waste.
    You have a biproduct of the core that needs to be changed or replaced.....how often?
    It probably depends on the size and demand of the reactor, but it is not as frequent as dumping the trash, and it is probably more similar to rotating or replacing tires on a car.
    The impending disaster still looms and despite its infrequency, the waste can be more troublesome to deal with than the reactor itself.
    That part always seems to slip the discussion when it comes to efficiency and safety. Sure the reactor is safe, what about the areas designated for storing/transporting the waste?
    The idea that it produces less waste has more to do with the amount of carbon emissions in pounds per cubed foot. It is way cleaner.
    That is the "cars to horse carriage" analogy I was making earlier.
    If that debate continues it should address newer energy sources and technology. Start comparing "cars to trains or planes"
    Why continue to make the same archaic claims on why a current method is better than older methods.
    ...Besides, drawing attention to newer methods might actually increase research and create jobs, particularly in solar energy.
    How do we create jobs? It makes too much sense.
    "No, No...I'd rather waste more tax payers money on policing foreign oil and campaigning that they hate us."
    Meanwhile, our economy stagnates and political attention shifts around on banking rates.

    Damn, I sound like a typical American in 2011, right when I thought I had something different and revealing to say about the world.



    Bill </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

    Make sure there's no risk of ground water contamination.....place the waste down a mine...located on site....seal. The End.
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  4. #14
    WTE_Galway's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally posted by Aimail101:

    Make sure there's no risk of ground water contamination.....place the waste down a mine...located on site....seal. The End.
    nah ... not cost effective, and far too "ethical" for a big multi-national anyway.

    Just put it on an old leaky Panama registered 5000 ton clinker and sale it around the world until eventually it sinks "accidentally" during a tropical storm

    Or use it as landfill for school sites in Eastern Europe.

    There are many far more economical ways to dispose of nuclear waste.
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  5. #15
    DrHerb's Avatar Senior Member
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    Look, if you build a nuclear power generator on a known area that one of these days will give away, something bad is gonna happen. It's the law of probability.

    That being said, i sincerely hope everyone in the affected area gets out safe, Japan has been through enough in recent years.
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  6. #16
    M_Gunz's Avatar Banned
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    Considerable 'trash' gets generated yearly. Those plants crank out enormous power. And the waste can't be kept in concentrated form buried or not unless you want it to dig its own hole and come back up later with a load of magma behind it. Half life of much of the waste is in 1000's to 10's of 1000's of years during which time not only heat is generated but anything wrapped around it turns radioactive (more than a little, granite is radioactive but on a 'safe' level) -- and becomes part of the problem.

    The glass log factory had not as of 12 years ago produced a single radioactive waste holding glass log. The bury it deep solutions... have any been used? There are fundamental problems with those 'solutions'.

    The 'shoot it into the sun' idea is the most preposterous of all. Assuming that every shot gets into orbit and none come crashing back down, who here has any idea of -how much energy resources- would be needed to slow a capsule with even a single ton of such waste enough to get it to reach the sun? Find out how fast the Earth is moving around the Sun, you'd need to make the capsule lose pretty much all that speed, AFTER spending enough to get it into orbit in the first place!

    Put it in strong containers buried into a plate subduction zone. Hey, that's real brilliant! Then when it gets a ways down it can come back up during an eruption!

    Fusion reactors might provide a clean energy solution IF they can be made to work and IF that can be done safely. Fission is dirty.

    My favorite is to put the waste into cast iron frying pans that self heat. But the only people who should have them are the ones who believe in "clean fission power".
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  7. #17
    Absolutely agree, there is up to now no safe disposal method for the wastes. The ones being used are more of the kind, well it is ok during my life time, who cares what happens later when I am not anymore around. In my view those plants are just big money makers for the energy companies, and the waste problem is left to the public.....a very loony way of thinking, as in every other case the people creating wastes are also responsible for there safe removeal.
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  8. #18
    Badsight-'s Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally posted by Aimail101:
    Make sure there's no risk of ground water contamination.....
    lol

    yeah , should be simple

    lol
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  9. #19
    Erkki_M's Avatar Senior Member
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    5 reactors here, 1 in medical use. 6th about to start in a year or two, 7th planned and has permission.

    Spent fuel disposal site, first in the world, being built, should be fully ready within 10 years. It helps to live in one of the the geologically most stable areas in the world where the crust is at its thickest, with access to the Baltic, shallow sea just narrowly connected to the Atlantic. No danger of tsunamis or earthquakes.

    There has been discussion, and anti nuclear energy lobbers managed to reduce the number of new reactors permitted from 2 to 1. Personally I dont think the fission energy is a good solution when it comes to ecology, safety or sustainable development, but sure as heck better than burning coal or oil.
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  10. #20
    csThor's Avatar Senior Member
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    One thing that fuels the nuclear energy debate in Germany is the fact that the lion's share of the nuclear power stations are in the rich southern federal states whereas the potential sites for a waste storage are so far only in the northern federal states. And, who would have guessed, the southern federal states do not want nuclear waste on their own soil. It's kinda "Wash my fur but don't make me wet". And of course the inhabitants of the northern states do not want to become the south's nuclear waste dump.

    The second emotional aspect is that the recent decision to allow for longer periods of operation for the nuclear power stations was a government gift to the large energy corporations whom the ordinary german considers little more than crime syndicates who milk the nation for more and more money. The strict security requirements were already used as a scapegoat to announce further rises of the energy prices here. So for the people it looks as if the government is handing out gifts to a small clique of tramps in suits who in turn raise prices for the common people. Little wonder that the nuclear power stations and their operators have such bad reputations here.
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