Eight new nuclear power stations planned for England

By Robert Winnett, Deputy Political Editor, telegraph.co.uk

Ministers are to build eight new nuclear power stations across England, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.

The new nuclear plants will mainly be based alongside existing facilities and are expected to be constructed over the next decade.

New planning laws will be used to fast-track approval for the nuclear plants which Gordon Brown believes are crucial in reducing Britain's dependency on fossil fuels.

However, the plans are likely to anger people living close to the new sites whose properties will now be close to nuclear plants for much of the century. Many environmentalists are also opposed to the plans. Earlier this year, the Government announced that it was committed to building a new generation of nuclear power stations to replace the existing facilities.



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/07/13/eanuclear113.xml">Complete article

northern Ireland?

Wouldn't even fill a semi trailer, so its not that big of a deal.

Nuclear solves the following problems:
-Carbon emissions
-fossil fuel dependence
-foreign oil dependence
-pollution

In exchance, reactors produce less than a five gallon bucket of radioactive material annually.

Progressives had better wake up and start supporting Nuclear like other western progressive nations (britain, France) or we are gonna get screwed.

It seems to be heating up the Hudson River, killing plants and animals. Sure the water is warmer to swim in, but it seems to be killing the river.

I'm a liberal. I doubt I am a progressive. I sure ain't sold on nuclear power and I am in outright opposition to ENTERGY 'running' (they barely seem to be able to 'manage', let alone 'operate' the site) a nuke plant 30 miles from NYC.

In your opinion, what would have happened if the 9-11-01 NYC attack planes had hit Indian Point instead of the twin towers?

One is that they need water supplies, where populations usually are highest. Second, and just as important, is the fact that you can't just jam a bunch of coal burners in a metropolitan area, or you get Victorian-esque yellow air. Nuclear plants do not give off anything but steam, so their positioning close to densely populated areas is less threatening to your ability to breathe there.

As for terrorism, there are a number of things to consider. For one thing, hijackings are rare. Terrorism itself is rare here. For another, basically any which way a terrorist goes at a nuclear plant, they fail. In a plane, you're talking about a relatively small building to hit (as only hitting the containment building with the reactor is of concern here). Not the Pentagon or WTC. And even if they managed to do so, you're still talking about a thing primarily made of aluminum crashing into something made of feet upon feet of steel-reinforced concrete engineered--indeed over-engineered--to withstand explosions from within. Most experts contend that a plane would be quite hard pressed to get very far with this sort of wall:

See: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9503EFDA1130F933A1575AC0A9649C8B63

As for actually hijacking a plant, assuming they got past the gates, guards, and doors and more guards, there isn't a whole lot they could do. Everything in a plant is designed to shut down if things are abnormal, whether they happen to become so by accident or design. In most realistic scenarios, nuclear plants are just not good targets for terrorists who, like water, seek easy paths and weak spots.

Hint, it isn't just the depleted fuel rods. No, it is everything from paper swipes used by the HP's to activated host cans, to the containment vessel itself. Hell, the little reactor I worked at generated a few tons of hot waste every year.

Oh, and while nuclear may eliminate our dependence on foreign oil and fossil fuels, we will still be held hostages to the whims of foreign countries, since our own deposits of uranium are quite low, and we would be forced to buy a vital fuel product from a foreign country who can hold us hostage over the price. Sound familiar, except for the country names change from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to Canada and South Africa.

The other problem that needs to be eliminated is human error. Until we do, nuclear power is a disaster waiting to happen.

Rather than going for nuclear, we should be going for much safer, cleaner alternatives like solar, wind and geothermal.

I know in the case of wind and solar they take up a huge footprint. This causes a problem when you have to have more room for people, and more room for the methods of getting them energy.

Seriously how big would the field of solar cells or windmills have to be to power NYC? I'm guessing we would pretty much have to cover an area the size of Texas.

In 1991(and remember, wind tech has advanced a great deal since then) the US Dept. of Energy did a survey of our domestic, harvestable wind resources. In their report, the DOE found that the US has enough harvestable wind resources in three states(N. Dakota, Kansas, and Texas) to fill all of our electrical needs, including factoring in growth, through the year 2030. This isn't to say that we should pave over those states with wind turbines(OK, well maybe Texas;)), but rather this shows that we have abundant, harvestable wind energy throughout the country, and we should be putting it to use. Instead, we continue to subsidize nuclear, coal and other conventional energy sources.

As far as solar, while it can't supply all of our needs, it is a great way to supply much of them. The latest thin film photovoltaic solar panels are approaching forty percent efficiency(a car on the other hand is only aprox. ninety percent efficient), and the panels can be rolled out and applied like shingles on houses. Yes, price right now is a problem, but with a bit of government encouragement we can put the market to work to bring down those prices.

Geothermal is a great source for power gobbling industries like smelting and such. Iceland is using this fact and is building the energy infrastructure to get into heavy industry, using geothermal. They've already built the generators, and ALCOA is building a smelting plant up there that will use geothermal. True, we don't have the tectonics throughout the US to put geothermal to use in the manner that Iceland does, but we do have a substantial amount of geothermal energy we could tap into in the Mountain and Northwest areas of this country.

A question for you, what is the footprint of an area contaminated by a nuclear disaster. Looking at Chernobyl, it appears to be tens of thousands of square miles:shrug:

We can power this country with clean, renewable alternatives, it simply requires our govenrment, corporations and our economy to stop thinking and moving in the same tired, outmoded circles and embrace the new. Some corporations will lose, some will win, but as a whole our country would prosper.

I just question how well the energy can be stored for times of higher need. For instance in Oklahoma the days I really put the air conditioner to work are the days with no breeze.

But wind isn't all bad, T. Boone Pickens is behind it and what is good for him is good for my beloved OSU.

And Chernobyl is a nothing but a boogyman. It was a terrible event, but we would be operating much closer to the French model. France has operated primarily on nuclear for what two decades with nothing anywhere near that level? We operate a navy that is nuclear with no major accidents. And I have to assume those reactors are under much more stress as are the people manning them than the ones that would be used for civilian purposes.

All those megawatts generated by a nuclear or coal fired plant aren't stored, they are transmitted over the grid to places that need the electricity. The same would apply with any alternative source. That extra electrical that you're using now for your AC is simply bought from some other source, and quite possibly has traveled hundreds of miles or more to power your AC.

Pickens is backing wind and solar because he realizes that our current energy infrastructure needs to be reworked, and that wind and solar are two of the energy sources that can do just that.

Chernobyl isn't a boogyman, it is a real event that happened, one that simply shows up the inability to eliminate human error from the nuclear industry, something that can never happen. While France hasn't had anything remotely like Chernobyl, it too has had its share of accidents and incidents, leaks of radioactive water, etc. etc. The effect from these aren't being monitored now, but rest assured, they will show up in increased cancers and such. Besides, one large accident like Chernobyl can devestate hundreds of square miles for a very long time. We've had two such incidents in the sixty year old nuclear power industry, are you willing to give up a few thousand lives, a few thousand square miles to nuclear disaster every few decades? I'm not, especially when we have viable alternatives in wind and solar.

Another thing to consider is what do you do with the waste. There is no safe place to store it(Yucca is a disaster waiting to happen), do you want to do like the French have done, and simply dump it in the ocean? Water is another problem in these days of global climate change. A couple of years back, reactors in both France and the US had to shut down for the summer due to the fact that the rivers they got their cooling water from became so low it wasn't possible to get anymore water. Hmm, a whole bunch of reactors going offline during the summer, just when you need them the most. The wind never stops blowing across the US, and the sun doesn't stop shining.

As far as the safety record of nuke powered ships, nothing there is for certain, since the Navy regularly covers up any incident or accident. It is almost certain that during the history of nuclear powered ships, there has been at least one major accident and possibly two or more. Granted, these were at sea where the ship had the ability to jettison the reactor core, but since we're talking about land based power, we wouldn't have that option now, would we. I used to work with several ex-Navy folks who worked in Navy nukes, and they speak, in hushed terms, of dozens upon dozens of "minor" accidents in those ships, most with some sort of contamination factor. This is one of the major reasons that New Zealand refuses and nuclear ship docking in their ports.

Sorry, but we don't need nuclear, and we really should let it go the way of other obsolete technologies.

because the soviets running the plant were completely incompetent, and turned off all of their substandard safety devices at the same time. It isn't hard to avoid incidents like that, provided people actually follow procedure.

Yeah, you would think that would be an easy thing to do, but unfortunately people fail to follow procedures in nuclear plants all the time, and frankly it is sheer luck that we haven't had more major accidents in this country or elsewhere. Time and again, tagged out switches are thrown, vents opened, pipes or opened or closed when they clearly shouldn't be, etc. etc. What happens instead is that we have small incidents, a little radioactive water in the ground here, a little radiation released into the air there, nothing major, but over time(and radioactive material has all the time in the world) this all adds up, and you start seeing clusters of unusual cancers here, tumors there, deaths all around.

There is no way to eliminate human error, and when you're dealing with forces as powerful as the splitting of an atom, human error has to be eliminated entirely. There really is no small mistake with nuclear material.

"Only" ninety percent efficient?

If you have a car capable of 90% efficiency, patent it. Right now. You'll make billions. The upper limit of thermodynamic efficiency on most internal combustion engines is below 40%. I've never heard of one breaking 60%. Your average car gets maybe 20%.

A 90% efficient IC engine that would be usable inside a car would be the automotive industry's equivalent of the Holy Grail.

90% inefficient was what I meant to say. The vast majority of the energy generated by a car engine is lost as heat.

Several sources indicate that the average electrical
consumption is about 5 gigawatts. This makes sense
since it suggests that NYC can be powered by five-ish
conventional 1 gigawatt (electric) power plants.

So let's make that electricity with photovoltaic cells.
Let's assume an abyssmal ligt-to-electricity conversion
efficiency of 10% and a day/night ratio of 40/60.

Insolation on the Earth's surface is about 1 kilowatt
per square meter so our abyssmal cells operating at
10% efficiency and only 40% of the time will put out
40 watts/square meter on average.

That means we need 5 GW/40W -> 125 million square meters
of solar cells. Let's turn that into square kilometers.
Ahh, 125 square kilometers.

Texas has an area of about 696,241 km², so our solar
array to power NYC needs about 0.018% of Texas.

In other words, your "guess" was tragically wrong,
even with enormously pessimistic assumptions.

Tesha

...you're concerned about being held hostage to fuel prices... by Canada?

Solar wind and geothermal are all good, but lack the necessary potential capacity to power national grids. They can supplement, they cannot fuel the grid on their own.

He said it. I asked him about it. What part of this exchange are you not following?

> Solar wind and geothermal are all good, but
> lack the necessary potential capacity to power
> national grids. They can supplement, they cannot
> fuel the grid on their own.

I was questioning this particular bit of foolishness.

Tesha

You don't think that it is a good thing for we, as a country, to control our own energy resources. Gee, at one time we did just that and the economy was a hell of a lot better off.

As far as solar and wind not being able to take up the load I really think that you had better recheck the new tech. Higher efficiency, lower tip speed, hell Denmark is currently generating one fifth of its electrical power using wind tech, and the US has much larger wind resources. Experts in the field have called the US the Saudi Arabia of wind resources.

Combine this with solar(thin film photovoltaics, yum, yum, roll them out like shingles), geothermal, tidal, etc. etc. and gee, we have a clean, renewable energy infrastructure.

In exchance, reactors produce less than a five gallon bucket of radioactive material annually. this is too much for me, sorry. After a statement like that how can one have a discussion with you about nuclear energy? :eyes:

I am a little off base. Waste from a reacor is equal to 3 cubic meters per year. Slightly larger than I had thought. Still not that much waste.

Sorry, but I worked in a nuclear plant for a number of years, and the amount of waste generated, both fuel waste and other radioactive waste is much larger than three cubic meters, by the order of a couple of magnitudes at least.

Please, inform yourself before making such statements. Otherwise all you're doing is making yourself look foolish.

can't be dealt with. it's very abundant, produces no greenhouse gases and produces relatively little pollution of any kind.

Remember, these are problems that can come back to haunt our children's children's children. Half lives for the most common isotopes found in waste range from thousands of years to hundreds of thousands of years.

Back in the ninties, the EPA did a dye test at Yucca and found that if water flooded the interior, a distinct possibility that has happened before, nuclear material would wind up in the groundwater of Las Vegas within two weeks.

Your typical nuclear power plant produces up to ten tons per year of radioactive waste. This isn't a minor problem, and until we can figure out a way to permanently and safely dispose of that waste, we shouldn't be building more plants, especially when we have so many clean, renewable alternatives that don't pose the problems that nuclear power does.

WIND AND SOLAR ENERGY ARE NOT VIABLE ALTERNATIVES AT THIS POINT.

End of story. It will be 50-75 years before the technology advances far enough to be viable alternatives to traditional electricity generating methods. End of story. Quit living in a pipe dream where we can just throw up a few more wind turbines and throw up a few more solar panels and make the world run on sunshine and the giggles of little children.

WE AREN'T THERE YET.

And apparently the ignorant one also. Sorry, but Denmark is providing twenty percent of its energy via wind, with Germany coming up quickly. The current technology in both solar and wind is quite advanced, and is fully capable of taking up a huge load of our energy demands. Hell, the DOE found that we have enough harvestable wind resources in just three states to provide for all of our electrical needs, including factoring in growth, through the year 2030. Thin film photovoltaic solar panels have reached that magic number of forty percent efficiency, are becoming increasingly cheaper, and can be rolled out on houses like shingles.

Iceland is putting a huge emphasis on geothermal energy, having already built the generating plant, and having ALCOA currently building an aluminum smelter in Iceland, powered by geothermal.

No, it isn't the case of just throwing up a few more wind turbines, stop trying to paint the industry with such simplistic shit. But with a combination of wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, biomass, etc. etc., yes, we can indeed power this country with clean renewable alternatives. Now, with the current tech we have now. No, this new model will not resemble the old, centralized power generating model, but it will still power our country. What, are you some sort of luddite, stuck in twentieth century energy generation fables. Wake up, do your research and realize that we do indeed have the capability to power our entire country via clean, renewable alternatives.

That someday we will be capable of doing without coal and gas fired electrical generators. But that is not tomorrow. That is not next week. That is not even likely in the next decade.

Your argument that Photo cells are now 40% efficient or that Denmark now has 20% of its grid from alternative energy just shows you are an out-of-touch fanatical that cannot see the truth.

There is no method by which we can move from fossil fuels to alternative energy. End of story. The technology is not here yet and if you think 40% efficiency is good enough, then I have nothing more to discuss with you.

I don't care if it is clean renewables or nuke plants, it is going to take at least a decade to even start to make that transition. Best we start now, OK.

And why is reporting the truth somehow fanatical. What, you think that I'm lying? Right, well then, since you seem to disbelieve what I say, go do the goddamn research yourself, the material is easily available.

Oh, and forty percent efficiency is actually a real good figure. Consider that your average car engine is only ten to twenty percent efficient, forty percent efficiency is astounding. But you dismiss this as somehow a paltry figure. Just goes to show that your knowledge, or rather lack of knowledge, is astounding, and you really need to educate yourself in this issue before continuing to make stupid statements.

I just love how anonymous, ill informed internet posters somehow think that they're greater experts in the field than people like myself who have actually been educated and worked in the field. Get back to me when you have a relevant college degree and a few years of work in the energy field, then perhaps we can have an intelligent discussion. Until then all you're doing is blowing ill informed hot air.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire

Tesha

....though it IS very lethal.

The amount of radioactive waste, outside of depleted fuel, is actually quite large. This waste ranges from paper swipes to activated host cans to the containment vessel itself. It amounts to a number of tons each year, all hot, all polluting.

nt

Let's hope the French don't strike oil or science doesn't find a way to run cars off cheese and wine.

Fire up the B-52s, boys - we've got a country to take over!

Let's get some built here in the US too.

Seriously.

If I get my electricity for free and get a free Chevy Volt.

under those terms.

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=10868

Date: Dec. 4, 2003
Contacts: Bill Kearney, Director of Media Relations
Heather McDonald, Media Relations Assistant
Office of News and Public Information
202-334-2138; e-mail <news@nas.edu>

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Potassium Iodide Should Be Available to People Living Near Nuclear Power Plants

WASHINGTON -- Potassium iodide pills should be available to everyone age 40 or younger -- especially children and pregnant and lactating women -- living near a nuclear power plant, says a new report from the National Academies' National Research Council. Potassium iodide can prevent thyroid cancer caused by exposure to radioactive iodine, a compound that could be released during a severe accident at a nuclear power plant. Potassium iodide will not protect the body against other types of radioactive isotopes released during nuclear-reactor incidents or those likely to be used in a so-called dirty bomb, added the committee that wrote the report.

For potassium iodide to be most effective, it must be taken within a few hours before or after exposure to radioactive iodine, the report says. Further protection from risk should be accomplished by evacuation and by control of contaminated milk and food. The report calls on states and municipalities to decide how to stockpile, distribute, and administer potassium iodide tablets. Federal agencies, however, should keep a backup supply and be prepared to distribute it to affected areas in the event of a nuclear incident. The U.S. government also should provide financial support to help states implement plans for distributing potassium iodide. And because potassium iodide pills keep for a long time if stored properly, the Food and Drug Administration should consider extending the allowable shelf life of tablets being amassed for an emergency.

"Because conditions at nuclear power plants vary so much, it must be up to local planning agencies to determine the appropriate distribution strategy and areas in which to dispense potassium iodide," said committee chair David J. Tollerud, a professor at the University of Louisville, Louisville, Ky. Plans for pill distribution have mainly focused on a 10-mile-wide "emergency planning zone," but the report says a specific incident might call for a smaller or larger zone of distribution.

Potassium iodide pills work by quickly "filling" the thyroid with nonradioactive iodine, thereby blocking absorption of radioactive iodine. When absorption of radioactive iodine does occur, it can be passed from mother to fetus via the placenta, or to a nursing baby through breast milk. And fetuses, infants, and children are more biologically sensitive than adults to radioactive iodine. For these reasons, infants, children, and pregnant and lactating women are considered to have the most need for potassium iodide pills if exposure to radioactive iodine is likely. The pills are not recommended for people over 40 because epidemiological studies have not demonstrated a risk of radiation-induced thyroid cancer in this age group, while their risk of side effects from potassium iodide is higher.

expensive, wasteful, and it's extremely dangerous. But hey... the nuke market and those investing in it think it's a GREAT idea.

OK, we can't use coal, oil, natural gas, or nuclear.

Please tell me what we're supposed to use to run our country.

I think some people want us to go back into the dark ages.

but nice try at trying to label me a ludite. I guess the new meme is out huh?

:rofl:

let me guess... it's politically popular.

To evolve we need some sort of bridge between where we are and where we'll be in a few decades. Nuclear can fulfill that goal. I know it's "in" now to think that you can just pop up a solar, wind, or wave power plant anywhere and get magic energy that solves everything, but that's not the case. If it were the case, people would be doing it and getting very rich at the same time. T Boone Pickens is crazy if he thinks that wind power out in the rural midwest can be transmitted to the places that actually need the power. Maybe someday that will be possible, but it's not with the conductors we have today.

New thin film photovoltaics are now running at aprox. forty percent efficiency. The US DOE determined seventeen years ago that this country has enough harvestable wind resources to fulfill all of our electrical needs in the foreseeable future.

There is no need for a nuclear bridge, just the spine to stand up to the old guard fossil fuel energy corporations and the vision to lead us into a new energy future.

nuclear power plants are very expensive and take years before they can be useful. Their waste is extremely dangerous. Not only that, they are a great danger to everybody close by from possible fall-out.

As I said before, there are alternatives and nothing will be solved over night, but it's more than possible to change over to those alternatives without using nuclear.

Anyone beliving this BS about nuke plant being the only viable option are liars or lied to by DC politicians and the nuke lobby.

Time to really CHANGE and to evolve.


aufwiedersehen

Yet you seem to think we can't transmit power from
the American midwest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_-_New_England_Transmission

Tesha

How bout we build nuclear plants so we can get off the fossil fuels in the next decade, and at the same time parallel to that, we continue to work on harvesting wind power and solar power to replace the older nuclear reactors that go offline, so that we can be off fossil fuels inside 10 years, and off nuclear in 50?

Why not that?

We can move straight from fossil fuels to wind, solar, and other clean renewables if we have the political popular will. Wind and solar have made huge strides in the past three decades and are ready to step up to the plate. The trouble is the old energy corporations, coal, gas, etc. have a lot to lose by this move and have been fighting it tooth and nail for decades now.

We can't make the transition fast enough. IE we just don't have the right infrastructure in place among other things to make wind and solar viable for 100% of our energy needs in the next decade. if you have a link or article that explains how that's possible I'd love to read it and change my thinking. However, from what I understand we're looking at multiple decades of not only perfecting the green energy technologies but replacing our antiquated electrical grid with something capable of transmitting the power longer distances from the wind or geothermal, or solar locations to the people.

I understand that the political will isn't there. heck who knows what we could have done to improve our energy situation by spending every iraq war dime on improving our infrastructure. I don't know.

And putting it in place, even as a bridge, will take just as long putting in wind and solar, if not longer. The last nuclear plant completed in America took nearly a decade to build, and the construction time hasn't gotten any shorter in the interim.

As far as transmitting power long distances, that's the beauty of wind and solar, we don't need it to go over extraordinary distances. You can now roll out thin film photovotaic panels like shingles on a house, and voila, it is providing most of its own power. Wind is abundant in every state of the union, though the Midwest does seem to have the most. However we already transmit power over a thousand miles anyway, so we can get the power from here to there with no problems.

We have a whole new industry just waiting to be tapped into with renewable energy, and if we start now we can be energy self sufficient in a rapid period of time. But it takes vision and leadership, and a new energy model, one that is not as centralized as we currently are.

The green solutions are already "perfected", and more forward thinking countries are already utilizing them, such as Germany and Holland(and yes, my stocks in such companies are doing well, thank you very much). ALCOA is building an aluminum smelting plant in Iceland that will utilize only geothermal energy, Denmark is receiving twenty percent of it's power from wind, while Germany and much of the rest of Europe is receiving from six to ten percent of its power from wind, and these figures are growing.

These are technologies that can, and should supply all of our electrical needs, but getting from here to there is, like I said earlier, a matter of standing up to corporations and that isn't something that our current crop of politicians are willing to do.

It's because they boil everything, right? Also they don't fry their Thanksgiving turkeys--and that's just wrong.

Maine really needs a reactor to replace Maine Yankee, electric bills are going higher and higher because we send most of the energy we create off to the rest of new england on the cheap, when we should be using it to keep cost down for our own residents. Fuck massachussetts, they don't need any of our electricity and should put some of their money to work keeping their state self-sufficient.

And tides to generate power, Lord knows, Maine's got plenty of both.

in Mars Hill, and I'd love to see more of them crop up, along with some good tidal stations and dams. million miles of coastline could generate plenty of energy for us.

It may be best to continue learning as much as we can. By all means use some
shore winds if it's feasible, then let's not become luddites and learn all we can.

Are the ones who insist that we continue to use a dangerous and discredited source of energy, namely nuclear. Wind, solar, and other clean renewables are the energy of the future, not nuclear.

Tell me, can you provide a solution for the two big problems with nuclear energy, where to store the waste and how to eliminate human error? Neither can anybody else, and when we're talking about such a large scale hazard as nuclear power we need to solve those two problems before we build anymore nuclear power plants.

Wind, solar, and other renewables can provide for all of our energy needs, that has been shown by such eminent agencies as the DOE and others. Why take the nuclear option when we don't have to.

The problems with nuclear will be solved by research. It will take us to the stars and beyond someday.

We shouldn't be dotting the landscape with potential problems and creating ticking timebombs for our children's children's children. Especially since we have alternatives that will do the same job cleanly and are renewable.

Certainly not by that "eminent agency" the DOE. And, as you know, human error as well as mechanical error is taken out of the situation with appropriate redundancies in design and operation. Otherwise TMI goes from mess to tragedy, but it didn't.

It is the tritium leaks here, the radioactive steam leak there, jumping the cancer rate, birth defects, etc. etc. Hell, we've been bathing in a radioactive bath for over five decades now, don't you think it's time we stopped?

And while the DOE hasn't denounced nuclear power, it is a fine source for data concerning energy matters, nuclear and otherwise.

I tell you what, I will accept a nuke plant in my county when the entire nuclear industry is insured by private insurance.

Sorry, the not having anywhere to put the waste arguement doesn't hold ...

Wherever it is, dig a REALLY deep hole, build the proper containment areas and store it ...

It does not have to be either/or, that is what the right does ... I am ALL about developing wind, solar and other renewables, but there is no way you can get the immediate influx that nuclear can help with ... AND, it is a nod toward political concilliation ...

A winning approach that the country as a whole can get behind ...

And frankly it is becoming a disaster. Test have shown that a Yucca Mt. facility would threaten Las Vegas groundwater, especially since it sits in an earthquake zone.

As far as burying it elsewhere, you're still going to run into major problems. Remember, we're not talking about a time period of years or decades, we're talking about a period of thousands of years. Radioactive waste has half lives that range from thousands of years to hundreds of thousands of years, and if the waste isn't absolutely sealed up for this period of time, all you're doing is handing our children's children's children a huge problem.

But nuclear waste isn't sealed up for this sort of time period. Most non-fuel waste is simply sealed up in steel drums, which rust, even with the most mild of condensation. Rust through, and poof, isotopes start running around, soaking into the ground, getting into groundwater.

On another topic, even nuclear power is at least a decade away, taking into consideration the time for site surveys, safety procedures and construction. You can put up a wind turbine in a couple of days:shrug:

Frankly I don't give a damn about political reconcilliation, I care about getting it right. And if that pisses off some RWers or nuke advocates, so be it. I'd rather see my ancestors living with safe drinking water and radiation free environments.

Chernobyl is a poor example of what to expect as a typical nuclear disaster. It was an outdated design when it was built. There was no containment building. Safety procedures were not followed. It took several broken safety rules in sequence to cause the disaster. There were four units built at the same site and the others continued to operate for several years and as far as I know some are still on line.

While it is true that human error will never go away, to say that it has to before any new nuclear plants are built is just a backhanded way of saying "never" to the idea of new nuclear power plants. If you mean never then say so.

The only power source that is essentially benign is geothermal, except for the footprint. Geothermal is my favorite choice for a new energy source. Wind farms take energy from weather systems thereby altering them. Photo voltaics take a much larger footprint and require conversion from DC current to AC current so it can be distributed. More efficiency loss on top of the poor conversion rate of the cells themselves. Tidal power interferes with currents by extracting energy.

Nuclear waste is an issue, but so is fossil fuel waste. Which one is having more of an impact globally?

It is not going to take ten years to build new plants if the legal challenges, (whose purpose is to delay and make them more expensive in the hopes of stopping them), are stopped. They would come on line faster than drilling in ANWR which would be another reason to promote nuclear.

Nuclear plants could provide enough electricity to power huge numbers of electric cars getting even more CO2 out of the atmosphere. It could be used to electrolyze water to provide a ready source of hydrogen as an alternative fuel.

New nuclear plants can be designed to be inherently safe. General Atomic in San Diego has a working example that could easily be scaled up. Some plants could be designed to "burn" spent fuel from other plants. It is not nearly as efficient as other plants but who cares? It reduces the amount of dangerous hot waste material.

This ain't the 70's, and it ain't a movie with Jack Lemmon.

We can do this.

We need to do this.

I spent a number of years in the nuclear industry, in the twenty first century even, and I know, probably better than you do, the complete list of what can go wrong with a nuclear reactor.

Actually it will take longer than ten years to build a new plant, perhaps as long as thirteen, and no, the reason for the delay isn't useless paper work. The paperwork and "hoops" that have to be jumped through are put in place not due to legal changes, but rather for the safety of the plant and the surrounding community. It deals in such things as surveys for where to locate the reactor so that it is safe as possible from tornadoes, fires, etc. Sure, we could just slap a nuke plant down on your block in seven or eight years without all "red tape" but I won't guarantee that it will continue functioning for the next decade. Get a grip, read the regs, and stop sounding like some rabid, conspiracy minded anti-government yokel.

Your objections to wind and tidal are ludicrous(stealing energy). Ooo, yeah, a fraction of a percent of the energy being brought into one particular area, either on the wind or the tides. Gee, if your objection was so serious, why doesn't bad weather get past large cities(with larger buildings) or past a port. Oh, wait, they both do. Never mind:eyes:

New plants can be designed to be inherently safe, true. But so far that technology seems out of the grasp of current technology, and thus we're still designing nuclear plants that are vulnerable to human error. Sure, we may not get a Chernobyl or TMI, but we don't need to, a leak of tritium here, a release of radioactive steam there, and voila, we're in deep shit.

As far as burning spent fuel, that's all fine and good, but the vast majority of hot waste doesn't come from spent fuel, but rather from the mundane, ordinary stuff, hot gloves, activated host cans(aluminum is a screamer that lasts for awhile), tools, oh, and the containment building itself.

We don't need nuclear. Wind, solar and other clean renewables can provide all the power we need. That is the direction we need to head, not resurrecting a dangerous and discredited energy technology.

The fervor of opposition to nuclear power reminded me of the debate back in the 60's and 70's. My view is that I find the arguments against nuclear are over blown in the sense that its always presented as a worst case scenario. I see far more damage being done by fossil fuel burning so the risk of nuclear is acceptable to me. Nuclear will not harm the planet's climate but rather it will help it recover. If I am to believe the IPCC reports the time has long since past to address the issue. Nuclear vs wind and solar? I will admit I have not penciled out the power and efficiency calculations, but even so I am not willing to exclude any alternative to fossil fuels. Even in light of these reports;

http://www.orau.org/ptp/Library/accidents/la-13638.pdf.

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/atomic/accident/critical.html