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[Dwarf]

If you're curious of my opinion, it's quite simple. Nuclear nuclear nuclear nuclear nuclear.

Erm. How do you propose to get rid of the depleted waste material?
So far, no storage has been found that can be guaranteed to last the dozens of thousands of years needed. Currently, we're basically dumping huge amounts of deadly material in "long term storage" where the stuff ought to, if predictions hold, last a few hundred or thousand years. If some tunnel-building campany drills into one of these some day, basically it's goodbye mankind.

Even the Germans, with their reputation for technical perfection, have more or less just dumped thousands of barrels of radioactive waste into former salt mines ... which now turn out to be a lot less stable than previously assumed.

Also, when I was young I was in the Chernobyl dust cloud when it drifted over Central Europe, but it's okay, it only increased my cancer risk by a couple of percent ...


I agree that the idea sounds great - safe, clean energy! - but that's only what they print in the nuclear power plant brochures. NO ONE can seriously claim to know the cost of keeping deadly material safe for the next 200.000 years; and if it's so bloody safe, why are there spectacular accidents so often?

I can't be bothered to search the whole topic to see if this guy's been corrected already.
1. Chernobyl was NOT an accident. It was an experiment. They tested how the plant would behave on high temparature (as in: near meltdown) conditions, and as they tried to stop, the graphite they were using as moderator burned. THIS CANNOT HAPPEN TODAY, as water is used as a moderator, which is much more efficient as graphite. Additionally, modern reactors are bunkered in multiple meters of concrete and earthquake proof.

2. Getting rid of the uranium is not so problematic as most would think. Even the more temporary stockpiles of today (most of them) are located below all ground water in a thick layer of clay (which is water-proof) or other stone. There's not really much that can happen. And of all the 'catastrophes' you've heard of, has anyone died of radiation sickness? I doubt it. And if it rots there for 20'000 years, how is going to accidentially dig into them killing humanity?

[PTTG??]

The biggest danger of nuclear storage isn't actually the storage, it's the transport. The trucks and trains carrying the waste, by necessity, with travel through towns and cities. These are venerable to attack and accident and can pollute an area permanently.

But the other problem is, Uranium is a pretty rare element, and difficult to refine. Most of it is located in geopolitically unstable parts of the world. I suppose I'm saying- won't that just be causing the same problems we've already been having?

[umiman]

The two largest deposits of uranium in the world are located in Canada and Australia. How are those places geopolitically unstable?

Also, there hasn't been any disruptions, both minor and major, in nuclear transport in the last 4 decades, which is difficult to say for any other power source, green power included. Also, uranium is the second most common element in the world, after silicone. Lastly, because of the sheer number of regulations, uranium transport and nuclear facilities are among the best guarded things known to man.

You know what's even better? Even with all this red tape, nuclear power can make a significant profit WITHOUT government subsidies, taxes, or anything of the sort. Modern CANDU reactors are practically impossible to disrupt as well, being automated to shut down at the smallest amount of trouble.

Also, how much damage do you think a couple of trucks carrying nuclear waste would do if they were hijacked and their contents sprayed across the landscape? What kind of terrorist has such small aims? The radioactive content of nuclear waste may be relatively high, but seriously, it's effects would be hardly noticeable (think a couple hundred x-rays) unless NO ONE did anything and let the radioactive waste sit there for years. They couldn't use it as weaponized nuclear arms either, because they aren't refined for that purpose.

Let me illustrate. Uranium is equivalent to 500 megawatts of energy per cubic meter. Only 3% of this becomes nuclear waste. As a comparison, 14 massive wind turbines located on a windy mountainside will generate 30 megawatts. To further illustrate, a uranium fuel pellet the size of your fingernail will generate more power than a sack of firewood. That entire sack of firewood becomes pollution whereas only 3% of that pellet becomes something we can effectively measure, control, and see. We can't control carbon dioxide emissions considering we don't even know with accuracy how much gets released.

[JoshuaFH]

anyone remember the episode of "I love Lucy" where Lucy and Ethel go out into the desert to look for Uranium and strike it rich?

[Il Palazzo]

post

I agree with everything except for the firewood part, as DJ pointed out:

(...)And forest growth takes CO2 out of the atmosphere. So as long as the forest you're harvesting has a constant volume of lumber (and all properly managed forests do), the net output of CO2 is zero.

and the Earth's composition part(Seriously, I don't know where did you get this from):
wikipedia's Abundance of elements in Earth's crust

edit: no, wait. Actually, I've not a clue if this is right or wrong:

Uranium is equivalent to 500 megawatts of energy per cubic meter. Only 3% of this becomes nuclear waste.

[umiman]

Brain fart. Meant to write 48th. Also, all that other data is true, you can check it out yourself.

3% of the mass consists of fission products of 235U (also indirect products in the decay chain), nuclear poisons considered radioactive waste or separated further for various industrial and medical uses. The fission products include every element from zinc through to the lanthanides, much of the fission yield is concentrated in two peaks, one in the second transition row (Zr, Mo, Tc, Ru, Rh, Pd, Ag) while the other is later in the periodic table (I, Xe, Cs, Ba, La, Ce, Nd). Many of the fission products are either non radioactive or only shortly lived radioisotopes. But a considerable number are medium to long lived radioisotopes such as 90Sr, 137Cs, 99Tc and 129I. Research has been conducted by several different countries into partitioning the rare isotopes in fission waste including the Fission Platinoids (Ru, Rh, Pd) and Silver (Ag) as a way of offsetting the cost of reprocessing, however this is not currently being done commercially.

Also, you are evidently not an economist if you think the net output of CO2 from wood is zero. You'd make a good accountant though... maybe... nah, I doubt it. It's not an insult. Accountants and economists have very different ways at looking at costs. An accountant would see "tree absorbs CO2, CO2 is emitted, therefore zero". An economist would see "transportation, production, usage, refinement, all create CO2 as well, making the end result have higher CO2 than is efficient.".

[codezero]

"transportation, production, usage, refinement, all create CO2 as well, making the end result have higher CO2 than is efficient.".

But if that wood was being used to generate power all those power sources would be C02 neutral, including electric transportation (or steam trains)

Whereas if all those were supplied by uranium, you would have 3% waste for all power generated, plus some C02 (perhaps?)

[umiman]

Then I ask you, where is the data that shows that the amount of emissions emitted from burning wood will be absorbed by an equivalent number of trees? In other words, you can't claim that

1 burnt tree + 1 planted tree = zero emissions

unless you know that

1 planted tree absorbs enough carbon equivalent to 1 burnt tree.

It's not like the fuel left over from burnt wood isn't waste in itself, remember? Dealing with ashes and dust is no less different from dealing with radioactive material. Both have significant health effects, both damage the environment. The way our technology is right now, you certainly get more ashes and dust than you would get radioactive waste. It's also a lot easier to deal with a few barrels of radioactive waste per month than whole truckloads of ashes per week.

So, using your logic:
But if that uranium was used to generate power, all those power sources would be CO2 neutral, including electric transportation, mining, and refinement.

I don't mean to sound harsh, but you have to face reality. I understand that some relatively small countries use wood-fueled powerplants as a primary source of energy, but the topic is about America's national energy program. You don't seriously expect them to announce that they're going to revert to burning wood to supply energy do you? EVEN if it were logical, it would be political suicide.

[JoshuaFH]

What about that microwave stuff you were talking about earlier?

You said that one of the downsides would be the possibility of it becoming an uncontrollable solar-powered deathray, but I'm not even sure how much research is put into microwave power at all.

I think, that if we had the technology and resources to put something like that into space, then we'd have the technology and resources to install a hundred little failsafes that would guarantee that their wouldn't be a horrible deathray-like failure. If we got something like that to work, wouldn't it be a massive source of free, zero pollution energy?

Once again though, i'm not an expert.

[codezero]

Then I ask you, where is the data that shows that the amount of emissions emitted from burning wood will be absorbed by an equivalent number of trees?

I don't have data, but logic. Any carbon that a tree is made up of is burnt, and it pulled that carbon out of the atmosphere. So you aren't burning any more carbon than was absorbed by the tree in it's lifetime( max couple thousand years).

With ore you're instantly releasing waste that's been built up over millenia.

It's not like the fuel left over from burnt wood isn't waste in itself, remember? Dealing with ashes and dust is no less different from dealing with radioactive material. Both have significant health effects, both damage the environment. The way our technology is right now, you certainly get more ashes and dust than you would get radioactive waste. It's also a lot easier to deal with a few barrels of radioactive waste per month than whole truckloads of ashes per week.

ashes are less than harmless, they're useful.

I don't mean to sound harsh, but you have to face reality. I understand that some relatively small countries use wood-fueled powerplants as a primary source of energy, but the topic is about America's national energy program. You don't seriously expect them to announce that they're going to revert to burning wood to supply energy do you? EVEN if it were logical, it would be political suicide.

Fair enough. I'm living in pipe realities, though I do think it's logical.

[umiman]

Uhh... the only microwave energy I know of is the Simcity one. That description basically fits the Simcity description of it.

I don't think there exists a way to turn microwaves into energy, though I know people have been experimenting with ways to use microwaves to transmit existing energy.

[JoshuaFH]

Oh, I thought you guys were talking about it seriously, as though it were theoretically possible.

[Aqizzar]

The "Microwave" part is a misnomer.  It's really just ordinary solar power, using a larger focus, up in space where the light is brighter.  It's a serious technology, SimCity just named it wrong.

Supposedly, the beam would still be hundreds of yards across, picked up by a giant wire-mesh collector, or something like that.  I still think it's a little too close to LAZER to build on Earth.

[JoshuaFH]

Well, I know elevators have something like 12 (who knows, maybe even more) failsafes to prevent the elevator from plummeting down the shaft. Something of that scale would have all sorts of crap to prevent total disaster. We could even probably have astronauts perform maintenance on it as necessary.

[umiman]

I support anything that involves giant beams from massive satellites hitting earth.