actually this is the link

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/categories/j.html

PicoDelSol: That all sounds rational, but unfortunately, that is not how the site selection was made.

"Argument: 'Yucca Mountain is a scientifically sound site in which to dispose of spent nuclear fuel. That's why it was chosen.'

"Counter: Yucca Mountain is not a scientifically sound solution for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel. The decision to site Yucca Mountain as a waste repository was based on politics, not science.

"It is common sense, and sound science, to site and build a nuclear waste repository to isolate radioactive waste as completely as possible from the human environment for the hazardous lifetime of the waste. But even some of the U.S. government's own assessments indicate that Yucca Mountain is not capable of isolating radioactive waste from the environment for this long.1 The geology of Yucca Mountain, volcanic tuff, is not expected to provide an adequate barrier in the long term. Also, serious questions have been raised about the integrity of the canisters that would hold the spent fuel. U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) assessments assume that the engineered barriers, notably the metal canisters, will provide adequate containment. Yet these canisters are made of an alloy that has been in existence for only about two decades and studied very briefly. Like all metals in an oxidizing environment, the canisters could corrode under certain conditions of moisture and temperature. DOE's models of canister performance are based on relatively scant data and contain large uncertainties.

"Yucca Mountain is in the desert, but there is evidence that water has welled up into the region in the geologic past according to a study published in 1999 by an independent technical group. This issue is an important one because water is expected to be the main pathway by which radioactive materials from repository spent fuel would reach the human environment. The issue of how long ago the water may have risen to the repository level is still a matter of scientific controversy. Water is also a principal means by which the containment of the wastes may become compromised. Yet the DOE's plans assume the underground area will remain relatively dry for hundreds of centuries.

"History illustrates that Yucca was chosen based on politics, not science. In 1982, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, a law which designated deep geologic disposal as the preferred technical solution for nuclear waste disposal, essentially curtailing or terminating serious research and development on other methods like deep borehole or sub-seabed disposal. The law stipulated that explicit site selection and environmental criteria be adopted, and that a final site be selected from among numerous sites examined on the basis of detailed characterization studies. However, the Dept. of Energy's problem-ridden site selection process, flaws in law and in federal regulations, and vigorous citizen opposition led to a more politically convenient solution. Congress amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1987, overriding many of the original site selection and characterization provisions. Congress voted to eliminate other contenders and concentrate on Yucca Mountain as the sole site to be examined as a candidate for the first high-level waste repository, even before scientific studies were completed. Thus the final selection of Yucca Mountain came about as a result of a process in which politics overwhelmed science."

http://www.ieer.org/fctsheet/yuccaalt.html

THE YUCCA MOUNTAIN CANDIDATE REPOSITORY SITE
In 1987, with political difficulties from affected states, schedule slippages, and rapidly escalating costs overwhelming the DOE's site investigation process, Congress was reconsidering the effectiveness of the 1982 Act. A Senate bill under consideration required only one, rather than three candidate sites to be characterized, and halted the screening for a second repository site. In a June, 1987 Senate hearing the DOE manager for the Yucca Mountain Project was asked about his level of confidence that the Yucca Mountain site would be found suitable for development as a repository. His response was the following:

"If one takes the information we have now, and tries to project the kinds of things that are liable to be discovered in the next five or six years of site characterization, it is inconceivable to me that we would discover something of a major nature that would cause us to change our mind about it...The process of doing the modeling and the calculations that estimate the radioactive releases from the repository tells us that we may be five orders of magnitude below a very conservative EPA standard."

The confidence expressed in this testimony, in part, was what led Congress, in 1987, to name Yucca Mountain as the only site to be characterized for a repository and to defer considering the need for a second repository until late in the first decade of the 21st century.

However, by 1992, it was widely apparent that the Yucca Mountain site could not meet the EPA standard's release limit for carbon-14. This radionuclide would be transported and released to the atmosphere above the site in the form of carbon dioxide gas because the proposed waste emplacement location is in fractured rock above the water table, and there are connected fractures in which air circulates into and out of Yucca Mountain. This finding should have resulted in the Energy Secretary's disqualification of the Yucca Mountain site under the provisions of DOE's site recommendation guidelines (10 CFR Part 960).

http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/yucca/nuctome2.htm
************************************************************
And so on. The selection of Yucca Mountain was based on political expediency, not on the best science and risk evaluation.

Starting flamewars is fun. In no particular order:

Roxtar & themeaningoflifeisnot:I've been trying to cut back on energy usage meself (saving money is good.) Changed out my bulbs to flurorescent, new appliances, 2000 Toyota Camry, live close to work, turn my A/C off during the day, and so on and so forth. Saving money (i.e. economic incentives) is a good way to get people to reduce consumption, far better than regulation. However, I am under no illusion that if everybody did this, the problem would be solved (see below). First, residential usage accounts for only 22% of all electricity used, while industrial/transportation sectors use 60%. Second, the problem is just too big.

dogfather: You want to reduce the amount of emissions? Replace all the coal and oil-fired power plants with nuclear, and find a practical alternative to gasoline. That will mean more of an emissions reduction than all of the veggieburgers and walking to work combined. But the real problem is not the carbon as Suzuki and the one-tonners say. It's the electricity shortage. (They're related, but not the same.) Barring a worldwide economic depression, electricity demand will keep rising, and the only practical solution is more and more efficient generating capacity. I'm not saying we need a single solution, but conservation physically cannot be anything but a small part of it. Conservation does not reduce consumption, it can only reduce the rate at which consumption increases (1.86% yearly projected through 2020). It's not that it can't be done, it's that it will not solve the underlying problem. As long as there are homes and factories being built, electricity demand will increase. And no, pointing out what won't help is not part of the problem, either. (BTW: Hybrids are practical, if a little pricey. Grain fuels like ethanol are nothing but jobs-creation pork barrel for farm states. "Alternative Energy" is a pipe dream.")

canyoneer: Yes, I like my lifestyle. I like having lights to read by, unspoiled food in the fridge, hot showers, and a computer to engage in flamewars on Fark. I'm sure, oh, the REST OF THE FARKING WORLD either likes these things or wishes they could have them. Like I said, I save electricity when I can to save money. But why should I or anybody else be forced by nanny-staters to cut electricity use down to bare minimum pursuing an impossibile solution and causing worldwide economic disruption, when there is a clean, efficient, scalable, and virtually foolproof power source out there just begging to be tapped?

Randki: Let them build nuclear plants, too. They already have nuclear programs, one's a democracy and the other likes money too much to cause trouble, and it sure as hell beats fighting another resource war in the Pacific Rim. (FYI, that's why China's so hot and bothered over the Spratley Islands...there's oil there.)

By the way, the reason that conservation alone is not a viable solution is the fact that by 2030, we will have roughly 100 million more Americans than we do right now. While I whole heartedly advocate conservation efforts, and the incorporation of common-sense energy savers like solar cells in houses (and even much more investment in household use of fuel-cells for power generation running off renewable methane), that still won't cut it with that number of people. Plus, in order to get rid of our oil dependency, we'll need to switch to something like hydrogen, which will take enormous amounts of energy to produce (well, if we used clean electrolysis, that is), on top of the consumer requirements. Add in a hopefully increased industrial base (cause if it isn't increased, we're hosed as a nation anyway), and that calls for more power.

So, would you rather have a huge number of coal plants polluting the atmosphere with thousands of tons of pollutants, or would you rather us adopt a sane nuclear policy, like the Japanese have, where we reprocess the waste that is generated into useful fuel, instead of dumping into the ground and wasting it.

Or, I guess you could go with the eco-freak's top solution (that might actually work and doesn't ignore the reality of an ever increasing human population like they normally do), and find someway to kill 80 to 90% of the human population on Earth without ruining the environment while doing so. So while the ever popular nuclear weapons are out, a nice little 99% fatal plague is just what the nutjobs ordred.

SantasBoot --
"She doesn't look too bad for someone who tooled around Chernobyl on a motorcycle."


Because she didn't. That's a hoax.

You_varmits:

Err, those WHO factsheets seem to disagree with your assertions about DU being fine and dandy.

MasterThief: What is this clean, efficient, scalable, and virtually foolproof power source out there just begging to be tapped that you speak of?

BTW, if all the world's electricity was generated using nuclear power, how long would it be until all the high grade uranium ore on Earth was used up? Does anyone know?

Our population has problems manufacturing simple things. I can't imagine putting morans like this:

in charge of a nuclear power plant. Can we say Chernobyl?

My $0.02.
I have lived with nuclear energy my entire life(53 years and counting). I was born less than five miles from the worlds first production reactor ( the Graphite Reactor at X-10 in Oak Ridge). I've lived within twenty miles of a working reactor almost my entire life. I majored in nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry in college thinking I could contribute to improving our knowledge and level of technology and make nuclear power safer. WRONG. I wound up teaching ecology to kids as penance instead.

The problem isn't our level of technology. It's the idiot people we elect to govern us and our own greed. We have the capability of producing safe( as in off planet ) nuclear power at absurdly low rates and getting it directly to the end user without going through the existing power distribution grid. But don't look for it to happen anytime soon. Why? Because it would eliminate the need for fossil fuel. Rich people would loose money. The simple fact of the matter is that the political power structure of this country doesn't want you to conserve energy and it doesn't want to find a long term solution to waste storage. It wants to sell more OIL.

BTW, if all the world's electricity was generated using nuclear power, how long would it be until all the high grade uranium ore on Earth was used up? Does anyone know?

I'm not sure, but I'm sure that the US would invade Brazil for "terror" reasons.

2004-12-13 02:18:28 PM RaoulDuke

i think the real question here is: Why do neocons fear solar energy?

Neocons remember their high school math, thats why.

104 nuclear ractors in the US with a total of 97400MW of generating capacity. Or, about 932MW for each plant.

Let's say your average nuke plant has a generation capacity of 600MW.

The average amount of sunlight (diurnal average, average for every spot in the US) hitting the US is 200W per square meter. Solar panels are about 20% efficient, max, so they collect 40W per square meter.

600,000,000 / 40 = 15,000,000

So, we would need 15,000,000 square meters of solar panels to equal the output of one average nuke plant.

15,000,000 square meters is 15 square kilometers (or ~5.75 square miles), or a field of solar panel 3 by 5 km.

5.75 square miles is 3,680 acres.

The largest nuclear power plant in the US is the Palo Verde Nuclear Generation Station which covers 4,000 acres and has an output of 1247MW

So, what this means is that solar panels are only a little more than half as efficient in terms of land use as a nuclear plant, costs more per megawatt hour and is no clearer due to the plethora of nasty chemicals needed to make solar panels in the first place.

Now you know why neocons are scared of solar power.

Why aren't we using more geothermal energy? I can see us running out of fossil fuels, but I can hardly imagine us ever running out of molten core... which I'm pretty sure isn't consumed by geothermal power plants.

Is it so hard to run a water pipe by a volcano? I'd think that relatively disposable plants could be set up by the more stable volcanoes.

MasterThief
dogfather: You want to reduce the amount of emissions? Replace all the coal and oil-fired power plants with nuclear, and find a practical alternative to gasoline.

Great ideas. We can look at solar, wind, hydro as well.

That will mean more of an emissions reduction than all of the veggieburgers and walking to work combined.

Okay. So, just because we can't immediately do those wonderful things, we shouldn't strive to do anything?

But the real problem is not the carbon as Suzuki and the one-tonners say. It's the electricity shortage. (They're related, but not the same.)

The real problem is absolutely no appreciation for the impact that we have on the environment, compounded by a lack of any sense of urgency to change.

Barring a worldwide economic depression, electricity demand will keep rising, and the only practical solution is more and more efficient generating capacity.

It appears that we're not going to agree. More efficient generation still means more waste, which I don't see as a good part of any solution.

I'm not saying we need a single solution, but conservation physically cannot be anything but a small part of it.

You seem to have made up your mind already. How small? How big does the part have to be before it should be pursued?

Conservation does not reduce consumption, it can only reduce the rate at which consumption increases (1.86% yearly projected through 2020).

What's your source for that?

It's not that it can't be done, it's that it will not solve the underlying problem.

There's only one underlying problem?

As long as there are homes and factories being built, electricity demand will increase. And no, pointing out what won't help is not part of the problem, either.

No, but pointing out that nothing besides "more" will helpm is.

(BTW: Hybrids are practical, if a little pricey. Grain fuels like ethanol are nothing but jobs-creation pork barrel for farm states. "Alternative Energy" is a pipe dream.")

How do hybrids help with your looming 'electricity shortage'?

Well, here's a table of the world's uranium ore producers. Luckily, some of them are actually friendly countries:

http://www.uic.com.au/nip41.htm

And here is a good overview of the whole picture on uranium:

http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/index.html

Some obvious things get swept under the rug:

Recycling waste is only recycling the isotopes that relatively speaking, we don't really need to be worrying about in the first place. (People often talk about it as if it's reducing the nasty radioactive waste, it isn't, it's reducing the barely radioactive stuff, producing more of the really really nasty stuff in the process. If you're going to do fission, recycling the fuel is obviously the way to go, but it doesn't help reduce the nasitness of the waste, it just makes it less diluted, which is definitely useful, but often misrepresented or misunderstood.

Nuclear fission can't be called "clean" with a straight face unless it's only being compared to seriously dirty energy generation, which, unfortunately, usually isn't hard to find, (especially in the many countries like the USA which use mostly fossil fuels for power generation).

Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, could be the answer to everything. Genuinely clean (not spin-doctor "clean" like fission reactors) with every chance of being far cheaper and far safer (though much is still speculation). All hail the international fusion project! :)

Omega Ohm, I did some research and you're right, she did not ride a motorcycle around Chernobyl, they are not allowed, she did go there though, on the standard tour, and she or a member of her party took the photos.

So not a total hoax.

She is still hot! (but sadly, she is married)

Because people and the systems they build are fallible, and the consequences of nuclear power accidents -- which, with time, are guaranteed to eventually happen because of this fallability -- can be awful and far-reaching.

Also because nuclear waste is dangerous for several tens of thousands of years, and is stealable.

andyxc

What safer cleaner alternative are you thinking of pray tell? Hydoelectric power has PROVEN environmental consequences, large ones. Wind and solar aren't very efficient, and oh yeah, they don't work if there is no wind or sun that day anyway.

Yes, I mentioned solar and wind. There are places in the U.S. where the sun shines almost everyday, like the desert. There are places where the wind blows steadily almost all the time (like offshore). Put your solar panels and windmills there. Problem solved. Pricey? Yes. But imagine if we had taken the 250 billion that we blew on invading Iraq for their oil (or whatever the number stands at) and put it towards wind and solar? We'd be a lot closer to our goal.

Advantages of nuclear over solar / wind:
1) Cheaper
2) Doesn't take up as much space

Advantages of solar / wind over nuclear:
1) Won't kill thousands of people if something goes wrong.
2) No toxic waste that hangs around for thousands of years.
3) Won't run out of solar or wind power (God willing).
4) Danger from terrorist attack much less.

So hey. I'm for spending our tax dollars to buy us a heap of clean alternative energy. That's some money well spent in my book.

But like I said, nuclear is much better than burning oil, coal or natural gas to power our society.

That, and we need to start conserving more. A lot more.

Let's speculate and say that nuclear energy is accepted and widely used. Then we'd produce alot more waste, right. OK, then it is safe to assume that this waste may be stored/buried in mines or whatever safe waste disposal method we have.

Now lets say that in 500 years, the lands chosen for the disposal is used for a housing project...now 500 years from now the knowledge of the land being used as a nuclear waste site will very likely have been forgotten.
Love Canal anyone?

How about the overwhelming number of aging plants that become extremely expensive to maintain, but that we need and cannot go without. Its already a problem for it costs large amount of money, because we have to maintain russias old and faulty plants.

Call me a tree hugger if you want but there are alot of things we can do to reduce consumption and many ways to produce energy safely and enviromentally, the solar roof panel idea is good. most of the energy used is for heat/AC and hot water. To reduce these, use a water conserving shower head, take shorter showers, heat your house slightly less and put on a sweater, most summer days do not require AC. Use energystar appliances, make sure your windows are in good shape and use weatherstrips. Those are just small things that you get very easily used to.

I'm back after taking a Fark-break to study.

Here's a link that shows where the current reactors are in the US: http://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/reactor/ (sorry, no html goodness) I'm quite surprised that we have so many! Someone said we hadn't built any new ones since Three Mile Island, but that can't be true.. can it??

canyoneer: Mob rule? The NRC isn't protecting Nevada? You're kinda naive arn't you? The NRC looks to the ENTIRE country and decides, as best it can, what to do with such nasty stuff. It's decided the least populated place is the best -- meaning that we need to keep this junk as far away from as many people as possible. It has nothing to do with hating Nevada. You really can't think that storing the waste in downtown Los Angelos is better than some unpopulated area. If you do, I hope you never find yourself in charge of people lives.

Personally, I don't care where it's stored or where the facilities are. I'm not scared of the stuff, though sending to a place like Yucca Mountain that's not near anyone is just common sense. There seem to be four regions, so to me, each region should have it's own storage facility -- the more remote and secure, the better. If it happens to be in Virginia for Region 1, so be it.

Better still would be a way to make energy from the waste -- afterall, all that material is giving off radioactive rays and whatnot (I'm horribly unscientific) and I think someone mentioned earlier that such material can be "recycled" to make energy and reduce it's toxic halflife, right?

The problem is really about getting off of coal/oil/gas. If you think prices are high, just wait till China and India get serious with demanding the resources.

Either we need to find a new power source (nuclear is better that coal/oil/gas; hopefully there's even better to come) or we need to radically change how people live, put a cap on our population and ween folks of things like cars. Which do you really think will happen?

Ranting and raving about people picking on Nevada isn't helpful, it's pointless. You don't want it near you, the best thing would be show _why_ it should elsewhere and not blather about Virginia being the cause of wars and picking on folk for mislabeling a part of the country. You arn't offering up viable reason that I've seen as to why a deserted place is a good choice.. so to me, you're just a NIMBY whiner.

You_varmints

Neocons remember their high school math, thats why

In summary, you think Neoncons are afraid of solar because a solar plant equivalent in production to a nuclear plant takes up twice as much land?! The US is swimming in land. The cost of land for powerplants is hardly their limiting factor. Also, you're confusing solar with photo-voltaic.
I didn't even realise solar could take up so little land. You just made solar look a lot more attractive.
I'd probably go for the mirrors and steam-turbine method though - mirrors seem like they would be way cheaper than PV, and probably more efficient too.

Afraid, of nukes? how absurd, just the other day I read an article about making a lawnmower that runs off water and microwave parts. I was actually thinking about doing it, since it takes approx 5 bucks to mow the yard these days, and I have an extra microwave sitting around in the laundry room.

This just in: canyoneer is a troll.

There really should be a limit of 5-10 postings per message thread. It would prevent these (lots) threads where asshats go on pointlessly flaming each other, sometimes for 5 DAYS after the thread was posted.

Come on, canyoneer, I know you've done it before.

All your nuclear fallout are belong to the master...

Pfil

There really should be a limit of 5-10 postings per message thread.

That's an interesting idea :-)

I would also kill a lot of genuine discussion, but I'd still be interested in comparing threads that had that rule with ones that don't, seeing if there is much difference. Maybe it would just breed a new form of hit-&-run flaming :)

canyoneer:

BTW, if all the world's electricity was generated using nuclear power, how long would it be until all the high grade uranium ore on Earth was used up? Does anyone know?

Then you use Thorium

2004-12-13 03:24:36 PM Archvillain

In summary, you think Neoncons are afraid of solar because a solar plant equivalent in production to a nuclear plant takes up twice as much land?! The US is swimming in land. The cost of land for powerplants is hardly their limiting factor. Also, you're confusing solar with photo-voltaic.
I didn't even realise solar could take up so little land. You just made solar look a lot more attractive.
I'd probably go for the mirrors and steam-turbine method though - mirrors seem like they would be way cheaper than PV, and probably more efficient too.

Solar costs more than nuclear power per MWh and at least PV-cells arent eco-friendly since their production results in toxic waste.

The efficency of solar is not affected much by the method. The best we can do with whatever type of solar is about 20-25% efficency depending on the method. Some experimental PV's get 36% efficency but they're just being developed for space craft at the moment.

And if you dont care about land use, I suppose you'll be along-side those who tell the environmentalists to shut up when they complain about the destruction of desert habitat to build power plants?

It's not so much the government fears "the enemy" will use them on us, the government just doesn't like the consequences of others having them. Nuclear Weapons = US cannot invade and take resources. The government only concentrates on making the public afraid of nuclear attack to gain public support. This is blatantly obvious when analyzing the Iraq war critically. From the beginning it was obvious to me that Iraq no longer possessed nuclear or even chemical weapons, because if we thought he did we would have never launched a full-scale ground invasion and occupation. Our army is tough, but WMDs, even when used by a poor ass country with little means of delivery, could easily take out 40% of our ground forces if used even haphazardly. The majority of Americans, as far as I can tell, supported the war mostly because they were afraid of UAV's crop dusting them with anthrax. A good reason to be afraid, had the threat been real, but as I stated above it was obvious from the outset that he didn't possess the weapons.

It's fun not being a junior pundit.

/wish nuclear weapons never existed... they will be the death of most of our species

Nuclear power is not a dangerous power. At all. It is one of the most studied and most safe forms of power. More precautions are taken for it then any other form of power. More people die each year from coal power then any of the nuclear mishaps that ever happened. There is radioactive dust in the air because of coal power. It causes cancer of the lungs all kinds of nasty ailments. Coal forms right next to a uranium source. People are scared of things that they do not know about. Most people don't care to know about it.

waiting4godot:

I would see living beyond my means on credit, and leaving the debts to my kids to deal with, as wrong. There are plenty of ways in life to inflate your standard of living beyond what you are actually earning, such that someone else is left with the bill, and to me the ethics don't really change when I scale this notion up to talk about the legacy of society. If my standard of living - the price of groceries, clothes, cars, etc, is being inflated by credit that someone else is going to have to pay for (in this case, generating long-term waste to get short-term cheap energy, where I get the cheap energy and someone else has to deal with the waste later on), then that's wrong. I feel it's right to pay my own way, and live within my means. Our society doesn't seem to agree.

Fakk

Advantages of nuclear over solar / wind: ...


One major disadvantage is the power loss over distance (i.e. the farther the electricity has to travel, the more power you need to get it there); this means that wind and solar only work around the area they generate the power at. And as you probably know, most of the areas that are best for generating from wind and solar are sparsely populated, so these methods don't cover the entire problem; this is where nuclear comes in to git rid of those pollution belching fossil fuel reactors.

i think the real question here is: Why do neocons fear solar energy?

Solar costs more than nuclear power per MWh and at least PV-cells arent eco-friendly since their production results in toxic waste.

Well there you have it...there's no solid return for the investors, either.

Which is bunk. Another necessity shoved aside because it doesn't make enough quick money for someone. Why not subsidize the fark out of the solar industry and count the savings ten years down the line?

Naw, we'd rather wait until the last minute, when the last barrel of oil is scheduled to come out of the ground.

waiting4godot : "Either we need to find a new power source (nuclear is better that coal/oil/gas; hopefully there's even better to come) or we need to radically change how people live, put a cap on our population and ween folks of things like cars. Which do you really think will happen?"

None of it will happen as you say.

Here is what will happen: We won't find a new power source. More nuclear will be used more sloppily. There will be more Chernobyls and Tomsk 7's and spills and poisonings. Meanwhile, all the hydrocarbon sources will peak in production and the cost of them will rise astronomically as more and more people compete over less and less coal and petroleum. As the world reaches 7 and 8 and 9 billion, fewer and fewer people will be able to afford cars or computers or even electricity. The number of people whose standard of living is falling will rise dramatically. Eventually, the population bubble caused by cheap hydrocarbon (principally petroleum) use will pop, and the Earth's population will drop dramatically in an orgy of war and cannibalism and starvation and disease. Meanwhile, considerable portions of the Earth's surface that have been poisoned by the industrial age will have been rendered uninhabitable for the survivors and other life by the poisonous by-products of industrialism. IOW, industrialism carries its own punishment, and humans are too stupid to see the handwriting on the wall.

That's what's going to happen, fella.

Oh, I'm sorry! Did I interrupt your daydreams of flying cars and vacations on Mars? Tut tut.

And I'd be willing to pay MORE taxes if someone came up with a reasonable solar power implementation plan...

you_varmints
So, what this means is that solar panels are only a little more than half as efficient in terms of land use as a nuclear plant, costs more per megawatt hour and is no clearer due to the plethora of nasty chemicals needed to make solar panels in the first place.

Why are you totally neglecting to consider transmission losses in your calculations?

Why are you totally neglecting to consider the full costs of radioactive waste disposal in your calculations?

Why are you totally neglecting to consider the full costs of reactor decommissioning in your calculations?


For some reason, I am reminded of Edison's model for DC power generation and distribution.

Because of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

And maybe because of Ralph "If they don't close these reactors down, we'll have civil war in five years" Nader.

erewhon: And as this goes on, will we use electric tractors to mine the thorium ore (with really long extension cords), or is thorium a psychotropic drug?

Because they have been brainwashed into thinking its BAD (tm) by media and movies that they can no longer think beyond the word BAD, meanwhile the rest of the world lafs at our stupidity and merrily continues with their programs.

Great, panxerox...let's put a nuclear power plant in your town, with you downwind of it and see how much you like that.

you_varmints

Solar costs more than nuclear power per MWh and at least PV-cells arent eco-friendly since their production results in toxic waste.

Solar only appears to cost more than fission because 1. You are genuinely paying the full cost of the energy up front, not fobbing that cost onto others and sweeping other costs under the rug. And to probably a lesser extend 2. It has not benefitted from as much R&D.

Also, I think it's a little dodgy to claim that PV results in toxic waste, since most of that waste would be produced anyway even if global PV manufacture was halted tonight.

Furthermore, there are more important things in life than $$$. This is why SUVs outsell cheaper cars. The benefits to solar may be worth the higher price in the eyes of society. More expensive doesn't necessarily mean worse, most of the time more expensive means better. Anyone who judges a powerplant only on it's MW output is a poor judge of product.


And if you dont care about land use, I suppose you'll be along-side those who tell the environmentalists to shut up when they complain about the destruction of desert habitat to build power plants?

No, I'd ask them to put NIMBY aside and propose a habitat-friendlier power generation solution. If a better solution is found, everyone wins. But I don't think there would be many environmentalists complaining, just NIMBYs trying to claim a higher ground.

PicoDelSol: I thought evaluation was what WIPP was for.

"It's 'nukular' dummy. The 's' is silent."

I live about 15 minutes away from Three Mile Island. In one of my classes at Penn State, the physics professor explained to us that measured radiation levels in goats milk just minutes away from TMI went up more when Chernobyl happened than when the accident happened at TMI.

Here is a link for a picture of where Yucca Mountain is:

http://www.sandia.gov/tp/SAFE_RAM/IMAGES/YUCCA.JPG

(sorry, no HTML skills)

For those arguing about placement of waste. The reason Yucca was selected is because of the dry climate, the fact that the waste would have an exceptionally low probability, even with container rupture of seeping into the water table..and..wait for it...IT'S in the middle of no mans land with what looks like HUNDREDS of miles of desert between it and anything civilized.

I can understand the NIMBY mentality of people in Western states not wanting it in their backyard, but honestly..these types of sites aren't in ANYONE'S backyard..unless you call over a hundred miles of property your backyard..which I doubt..

But I can understand the concern...but look at it this way: You get more tax dollars for things in your state. :).

2004-12-13 04:05:32 PM PicoDelSol

If you're not being sarcastic, at least be realistic.

America.Is.Not.Going.to.go.full.nuclear.

1. Nuclear waste. You cannot address this. And you cannot just stuff it away in Nevada. Next.

2. You will not now, nor will you ever in the course of this thread address the safety questions. We do not have the technology to have 100% (yes that COMPLETE 100%) surety of any disasters occurring.

We've got to go solar...again: put every available penny in providing cheap solar power by region. Why gamble with the most DANGEROUS substance (and its byproducts) on earth?