The real something for nothing

[onlinebiker]

It is fucking unbelievable that someone is so concerned about the future environment because of the byproducts of burning fossil fuels and finds nuclear power as a suitable answer.

Jesus H Christ - you have 60 YEARS worth of reactor waste - and NONE OF IT has been moved to a " permanent safe storage facility" NONE OF IT. Got that? Promises we get - " Yeah don' t worry - we' ll take care of it" and NONE OF THE WASTE IS IN LONG TERM STORAGE. Hell - nobody has even figured out exactly what that is.... "We' re working on it"....

Yeah sure... The check is in the mail....

[Paleophyte]

There's exactly one form of alternative energy that we know is capable of providing the level of energy we've been consuming:


The pitfalls would be storing the waste (that said, given that petroleum and coal's waste tends to go straight into our atmosphere, literally anything else would be better) and making sure that the plant builders don't cut corners, since it looks like all the major incidents at nuclear plants have been due to corners being cut.

I support the use of nuclear fission.  The Fukushima and Chernobyl incidents weren't really about cost cutting, though.  Fukushima was due to a bad design, one which other plants also use, and Chernobyl was just plain human foolishness.  Blame it on the Ruskies being the Ruskies.

The 3-mile island incident was a combination of poor design and poor operating procedures.  Their backup systems were not sufficient and they didn't have adequate device status indications.  There are much, much higher standards for those things now than 30 years ago, even in places where there's no nuclear material.  Nuclear plant design and safety systems have come a very long way since these accidents and notably, we learn a great deal every time one occurs.

But nuclear fusion has far more potential to provide clean energy if we can ever get it past the vapor ware stage.

All three disasters had profit and cost-cutting as major contributors:
 - Three Mile Island had a poor design and poor training because the alternatives would have cost money.
 - Fukushima was built in where they knew tsunami was a serious risk because it offered cheap access to coolant water. Various design flaws were flagged decades before the incident but never fixed because it would have cost money. Both TEPCO and the Japanese government has admitted their failings in this respect.
 - Chernobyl is the epitome of cost-cutting leading to disaster. Corners were cut so ridiculously that the reactor lacked primary containment and had graphite moderators wed to the control rods. It was designed to fail.

Fission would work much better as a power source if we built some sensible 4th generation reactors and some nuclear incinerators to take care of the waste. Our current methods are dismally bad, largely because they were dreamt up in the 1950s and 1960s. Sadly, there is far too much opposition to make new reactors feasible, at least not in much of the developed world.

[vulcanlogician]

But nuclear fusion has far more potential to provide clean energy if we can ever get it past the vapor ware stage.

Probably not what you wanted to focus on in your thread, but if we can get fusion to work-- that's it. Our energy problems are solved for at least dozens of generations. It might even be solved indefinitely provided we keep an eye on the global population.

But fusion itself is a big "if"...

[onlinebiker]

Nuclear fusion power plant - the atheist version of "I'll pray for you".


....


Gee that' s nice - but I really don' t expect to see any results....

[vulcanlogician]

It's theoretically possible. So fusion is worth looking into.

[The Architect Of Fate]

What does the scientific principle of nuclear physics have to do with atheism? 

Nuclear power is a better option than either keeping on our current course or following already debunked neo-Malthusian bullshit. Now that's "ill pray for you"

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

It's theoretically possible. So fusion is worth looking into.

It certainly is. But until fusion becomes viable, a multi-energy system (fission, hydro, solar, geothermal, wind, etc) seems like our best bet. Anything that reduces the amount of carbon we pump into the atmosphere.

Boru

[The Architect Of Fate]

It's theoretically possible. So fusion is worth looking into.

It certainly is. But until fission becomes viable, a multi-energy system (fission, hydro, solar, geothermal, wind, etc) seems like our best bet. Anything that reduces the amount of carbon we pump into the atmosphere.

Boru

A diverse approach is best 

[Rev. Rye]

The Fukushima incident was because of a design that wasn’t suited to being in a geologically unstable part of Japan being exposed to a giant tsunami and the second-largest eqathquake to occur since I was born. IIRC, they were told they needed to update the design to account for such things, but they refused to do so. It’s not cost cutting, but it looks like they cut some corners to me.

[vulcanlogician]

It's theoretically possible. So fusion is worth looking into.

It certainly is. But until fusion becomes viable, a multi-energy system (fission, hydro, solar, geothermal, wind, etc) seems like our best bet. Anything that reduces the amount of carbon we pump into the atmosphere.

Boru

Oh yeah, we should certainly consider alternatives. It's unwise to rely on fusion coming to solve all our problems. That might not happen.

My post was aimed at onlinebiker post above my last post... shoulda quoted him...