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[Sergarr]

The process of mining the nuclear fuel produces much more radiation in the atmosphere than the nuclear stations themselves.

[10ebbor10]

The process of mining the nuclear fuel produces much more radiation in the atmosphere than the nuclear stations themselves.

Source?

[Sergarr]

The process of mining the nuclear fuel produces much more radiation in the atmosphere than the nuclear stations themselves.

Source?

Ecology lectures at our nuclear-oriented university. Sadly they've not yet evolved into Internet, and a cursory Internet search hasn't found definite figures for that stuff. I'll continue the search.

[martinuzz]

The process of mining the nuclear fuel produces much more radiation in the atmosphere than the nuclear stations themselves.

That sounds very reasonable and logical indeed. I suppose mining uranium is about the only link in the whole chain, perhaps accompanied by transport of fuel rods, that is not easily housed in a contained, secure facility, to keep radiation creeping into the environment to a minimum.

[10ebbor10]

Uranium transport is rather easy to contain. Thanks to the high energy density of Nuclear fuel, you can easily afford to stuff it in a hermetically sealed container.

I think reprocessing has a tendency to cause some radiation release, but most of those installations are sealed as well.

[miauw62]

Isn't the radioactivity of Uranium ore very low?
Can't find a source on this, just curious.

[10ebbor10]

Uranium isn't very radioactive to begin with (half life of about 4.5 billion years.), and emits relatively weak alpha radiation. Dangerous if ingested, but nothing more. The more apparent radiation danger from Uranium ore is radon which might be released, and can accumulate in covered structures. (Ie, underground mines.)

Besides, Uranium ore grade isn't particularly high. The lowest commercially mined bodies (atm) are only 0.02%.

[MonkeyHead]

Oxides of Uranium are often way more toxic than they are a radiological hazard.

[Sergarr]

Good efficient electricity accumulators would make solar panels much more viable than they are today.

[GavJ]

Here's a simple [solution to storage]: Solar Thermal

Notsomuch.

1) Thermal solar is about 2-3x more expensive than PV cell solar, and more importantly, has not been lowering in cost anything like PV cells, since it's basically just mirrors and salt containers. So the huge disadvantage over nuclear is PRICE -- much much higher for thermal solar, and no signs of getting lower faster than nuclear.

2) Your thermal storage towers only work near-ish to the equator. Unless you plan on storing heat for several WEEKS or even months far north or south, in between chargings. This wouldn't be a geographically global solution, even if it weren't several times more expensive than nuclear.

You seem to want to argue based on the lowering costs of PV solar, but at the same time argue the grid advantages of thermal solar. These are NOT the same thing, and are not interchangeable. You either get one advantage, or you get the other, and both lose to nuclear, since it beats either of them on their respective huge disadvantages: PV solar loses based on the huge storage failure, and thermal loses based on the huge cost increase.




Regarding "millions of years" BS on radiation fallout: No. Chernobyl, for instance, has a major gamma producer with a halflife of only 30 years (cesium 137). It's already down to half the original radioactivity. It has longer lived alpha emitters, but there are not dangerous to people unless ingested, which means only farming and such is a threat. However, once gamma radiation reduces, then people can safely work there again, and can simply go in and replace the topsoil or plant a few seasons of biofiltering species to filter out alpha emitters. Presumably not too difficult with 23rd or 24th century technology.  The bottleneck is gamma only, for the most part, which is why it is estimated habitable again in about 200 years. (a fraction of 1% of original gamma radiation).

[LordBucket]

I think I might choose to simply not participate in this thread anymore. I'm being accused of lying and misrepresenting things when I'm extensively citing sources. Meanwhile we have people responding with "I imagine that" and "I suspect that" and making claims with no corroboration of them at all.

Exhibit A: Deliberately misrepresenting facts.

There are no million people affected. It's a risk increase solely small girls living in a select few villages in Fukushima. I'd be surprised if it were more than a few thousand people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima,_Fukushima

"Population (May 1, 2011[1])
 • Total   290,064"

And yet I can already hear the cries of "oh, but not all of those are small girls." Which is obviously true. But there's a massive shortage of common sense in this thread. If an example is given that young girls 30 miles away from an event were shows to have increased risks of cancer...it's ridiculous to conclude from that that exclusively young girls 30 miles away are at risk. Conveniently ignoring that the same study also concluded that boys were at risk. Conveniently ignoring the possibility of effect in areas other than the one being discussed. That's the kind of thinking a couple of you are using here.

I provide studies and I get "oh, well those don't count." I point out massive events that shut down thousands of square miles and I hear "oh, well that only happens sometimes." I show studies that show real cancer increases, and I get "oh, well, somebody disputed that, so I'm going to ignore it."

And yet somebody points out that the chinese are dumping chemicals and some of you leap to the conclusion that "therefore" those chemicals are worse than nuclear waste without providing any information or evidence of the risks at all.  Deaths and cancers due to nuclear "aren't that much?" Are "lower than some studies claim?"Ok. Find me a single correlation at all between solar cell waste and cancer. At all. And hey, while we're at it: find me a single one of those reports in any country other than china. If you guys can dismiss Chernobyl because the russians are careless, I can dismiss china for the same reason. Try applying one tenth the amount of skepticism and sheer dismissal to your own arguments as you are to mine.

Chinese dumping chemical waste from solar cell production?

Siicon tetrachloride?

http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/a?dbs+hsdb:@term+@DOCNO+683

"no definite etiologic relationship could be established."

"NO EVIDENCE OF SILICOSIS-TYPE LESIONS IN PERSONS HANDLING CHLOROSILANES."

Aluminum chlorohydrate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_chlorohydrate

"The Food and Drug Administration considers the use of aluminium chlorohydrate in antiperspirants to be safe and it is permitted in concentrations up to 25%"

"no evidence that certain chemicals used in underarm cosmetics increase the risk of breast cancer."

Sodium hydroxide
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hydroxide

"Sodium hydroxide is traditionally used in soap making. It was made in the nineteenth century for a hard surface rather than liquid product because it was easier to store and transport."

"Food uses of sodium hydroxide include washing or chemical peeling of fruits and vegetables, chocolate and cocoa processing, caramel coloring production, poultry scalding, soft drink processing, and thickening ice cream."

These are the chemicals that you guys are "imaginging" and "speculating" are worse than radioactive waste.

You're asserting conclusions, and giving more weight to your conclusions than my evidence, and dismissing my evidence because it doesn't support your conclusions. Yes, I agree it's probably not a good idea to dump this stuff in rivers. The chines are doing that. Bad idea. Dumb idea. I agree. But leaping from that to "oh, well it's probably worse than radioactive waste, and all those reports showing otherwise are probably exaggerated. Because I like nuclear. So obviously it's good."

And I'm seeing an awful lot of that here.

So I'm going to step out of this discussion. Congratulations bay12, you won this one against LordBucket. Kudos.

[GavJ]

Lordbucket, you aren't fooling anybody by cherrypicking the one least effective argument against you, throwing a dramatic hissy fit about it, and then using it as an excuse to avoid the other half dozen reasons solar isn't a global solution.

Chinese chemicals aren't the main reason, or even a very good reason why solar won't work as a general solution.
Storage is, though.
And cost is.
And northern and southern latitude infeasibility is.



Your answers so far to these have been, respectively:
* thermal solar
* guessing about PV solar's future costs
* no response

Thus, you have no consistent answer to all of the main, classic issues with solar versus nuclear, at once. One technology solves one but not the other two. The other technology solves a different one but not the other two.

[GavJ]

I think it's safe to say that thermal solar is safer than nuclear, and would be with scaling up as well. Although it being several times more expensive and still ineffective away from the equator are dealbreakers IMO.

Photovoltaic solar, however, is quite possibly just as dangerous as nuclear, when scaled up. Most plans would involve it being placed on every rooftop, which implies quite a lot of inevitable roof falling accidents. Compare the rate of existing roofing deaths:
http://ehstoday.com/construction/falls-roofs-account-one-third-construction-fall-fatalities
387/year in the united states. And you'd have to replace these probably about as often as your shingles, so double that number. Have 387 people died from nuclear per year? Almost certainly not. At best, it's a close race.

And if you start talking about worldwide cables, or space-beaming, then you're talking about a huge risk of single-point failure, causing hemispheric blackouts that would absolutely kill more people than nuclear.  Depends on yoru grid solution. 

PV farms/plants (not individual roofs) PLUS batteries? Yes, probably safer, BUT that just brings us right back to the major cost issue of thermal solar again. (As well as brings back the latitude issue, since batteries don't solve non-equatorial storage well enough). So again, we have a dealbreaker on logistics/cost, if not safety.

[MrWiggles]

Lord  Bucket, are you using relative or absolute risk?

[i2amroy]

"Average annual human exposure to ionizing radiation in millisieverts (mSv)"
USA: 3.10"

So .0031 sieverts from one year of average background radiation in the US. If living 50 miles from a nuclear plant for one is 90% of a banana...that works out to mean that average background radiation in the US is over thirty four thousand times higher than it is 50 miles from your nuclear plant.

Somebody is doing their math wrong.

That's in addition to the normal background radiation. As in the extra amount of radiation you are exposed to from living near a power plant is less then the amount you get by eating one extra banana a year. Things on the chart are cumulative.

I think you mean m sieverts not µ sieverts, but would you cite your sources? Also...the specification of dose per time is a little odd, given that I think all numbers on that front I've seen have specified actual dosage, not rate of dose being received.

The dose per time was taken by me using the figure from the chart (which lists approximate dose from the first two weeks at the town hall), and dividing it by the number of days in two weeks to get the average. As for the sources I was using the chart, which lists these: https://xkcd.com/radiation/sources.html, as well as the creator's discussions with Ellen, Senior Reactor Operator at the Reed Research Reactor.

I'm sure I could dig through those same sources, email Ellen, and rebuild the chart, but personally I don't have the time to spare recreating the work of a person who has access to better tools than I, has more education relating to the subject, has contacts with people deeply involved in the field, and has proven to be generally accurate in his calculations before. My experience with the calculations that I have reworked has shown that his disclaimer is more aimed at preventing someone from hurting themselves using his calculations when a more specific one would be required.

Another aspect is that nuclear reactors can be made fairly small. IIRC one current area of development is in the design of a low-maintenance, portable nuclear reactor, with the intent of being able to just fly it in on a plane and drop it in either a 3rd world or disaster area to provide a stable power supply.

While the Small Modular Reactor is a thing that is being developed, it's still a 300 ton piece of equipment. A portable Nuclear reactor is not on the design table anywhere. For one, in order get that kind of energy density you would need to forgo radiation shielding, and use weapons grade material.

One US version currently being worked on is the Hyperion Power Module (HPM). To quote wikipedia:
A commercial version of a Los Alamos National Laboratory project, the HPM is a LMR that uses a Pb-Bi coolant. It has an output of 25 MWe, and less than 20% ²³⁵U enrichment. The reactor is a sealed vessel, which is brought to the site intact and removed intact for refueling at the factory, reducing proliferation dangers. Each module weighs less than 50 tons. It has both active and passive safety features.

Something that light is easily transportable by a large airplane to places that lack power.