Time to start reconsidering Nuclear Power

[kwame k]

Here's a great episode of Scientific American Frontier that deals with Hydrogen and renewable resources.

Notice the old couple from Livonia, MI that have perfected Hydrogen for cars and have a roofing shingle that is on the same principle of solar panels but the huge difference is......these look just like a normal roofing shingle, are bendable and are, for lack of a better word, just like your roof shingles but produce solar power! Roof your house and have generate solar power, too.

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[kwame k]

As far as all of America's infrastructure goes........we need to update date everything and haven't paid any attention to it in decades. We're 30+ years behind most other countries.

Nuclear power would be great if we could figure out a sane way of dealing with the waste, other than digging a really deep hole because at some point that will come back and bite us in the ass.

Kinda like the toxic shit of 50 years ago......at some point we'll have to deal with the stupidity/shortsightedness of burying it.

[knuckleboner]

i'm all for more nuclear plants.

wind, solar and hydro, too. but nuclear should definitely be an component.

[kwame k]

Done responsible and hardcore research for the prolonged effects of the waste and the maintenance/improvements of the new nuclear plants........

Too many times in our history we jump on an energy source and give no credence to the long term ramifications. I just don't want my kids to have to deal with another mess we created thinking it was a good idea at the time or a knee jerk reaction. Whatever direction we go for energy we need to do it sensibly and look at the long term impact. I'd rather spend the money wisely now and come up with a good direction. If we need to spend billions on our infrastructure, so be it but let's look at it like your own home. Investing x-amount of dollars will save you x-amount of dollars in the long run. Take those two numbers and find the break even point and decide what to do in the short term and what we need to do in the long run.

Heating your home with a geothermal heat source would be a great idea if you plan on living there for 30 years or so but to invest in it for a house you'll only live in 5 years makes no sense, kinda thing.

[Nitro Express]

So you're volunteering your back yard to store the nuclear waste, then?

The shit's not safe, and who the hell wants to trade oil wars for uranium wars?

I actually used to guard nuclear waste at Hanford. No shit. Everyone wants the power but nobody wants the waste. They were starting to convert weapons grade plutonium to reactor fuel. I was cleaning out my closet the other day and found all my security badges and my radiological training cards. There where places on the site that would give you as much radiation in the middle of the night as standing under the full sun at noon. Then you had the guys with the M-16's and machine guns that would fire blanks and scare the shit out of you in the middle of the night. All those guys were contractors and that was my first taste of the Blackwater thing. The DOE is just contractors feeding off the government. It's no different than the military. They have a lot of technology that could do the country a lot of good actually but it probably will never see the light of day.

[Nitro Express]

I also worked the Pit 9 project in Idaho for Lockheed/Maritn. In 1961 the military needed early warning bases in the arctic to send warning of Russian nuclear bombers advancing. The government decided the best way to power such bases was with small nuclear reactors. They pushed the envelope technology wise for the time and ended up with a small prototype reactor that if the fuel rods were pulled too fast the reactor would overheat, distort the rods so they couldn't be put back in. Well this happened unfortunately and the reactor overheated and blew. Three men were killed and one was pinned to the ceiling speared by a section of steam pipe through him. It took three days to get him down. Nuclear radiation was scattered over southeast Idaho, northern Utah, and western Wyoming. The three dead men were shipped home in lead lined coffins. The reactor and equipment was buried in a pit.

Lockheed built a facility to dig up the contaminated pit with robots and encase the radioactive contents in molten glass blocks. It was a huge project but then it was decided if something went wrong they could make the situation worse. All I know is the project came to a halt. The incident about the reactor accident in 1961 was still classified when I worked for Lockheed but now is apparently declassified since it was talked about on some show on Discovery or the History Channel ( I don't remember which). Anyways, it always made me think what else has the government not told us about. As far as I know there hasn't been any higher cases of cancer in those areas since the accident. It was far from being chernobyl but a dirt pit in Idaho has a melted down reactor from a big screw up in it sitting in the middle of nowhere on the DOE site. There is also a HUGE aircraft hanger left over from the US Air Force nuclear powered bomber program. Yes, they were designing a aircraft with nuclear propulsion on it! The hanger is still on the north end of the site. They store nuclear waste in it now.

[Nitro Express]

There is a street in Boise Idaho called Warm Springs and the homes are heated with geothermal heat. Some of them are very cool victorian homes that people have fixed back up. One guy uses the natural hot water to culture sea coral and live rock for aquariums. He's got quit an operation going.

The coolest hot spring is in Utah. It's a salt water hot spring you can scuba dive into and the specific gravity is the same as parts of the ocean. Someone thew in some ocean reef fish like tangs and damsils and they survived so in Utah you can scuba a warm salty home with reef fish in it.

[Seshmeister]

Apparently if you used nuclear power for all your needs for your whole life the high grade waste at the end would be the size of a coke can.

That mounts up with 300 million people but still...

[Nitro Express]

My uncle is a nuclear physicist. He graduated in the top 1% of his class at MIT and spent most of his career before retirement at Los Alamos Labs. lt's interesting to talk to him and one of his main frustrations is what's in the way for a better world is not technological but political and economic. He said wind and solar are old technologies and nuclear technology is way more advanced since the US last built a nuclear power plant.

[Seshmeister]

People don't get the numbers. If we think in Gigawatts.

1.21 GW is what is needed for the DeLorean in Back to the Future.

The Hooover damn produces 2 GW at it's peak.

The biggest coal fired power station in the world produces 4 GW

The biggest nuclear reactor in the world is in Japan and produces 8 GW.

The US average usage from all sources is 3500 GW.

A good wind turbine produces 2 MW so you need 500 of these windmills to create a GW or assuming someone worked out a way to overcome the problems of non windy or too windy times you would need 3500 x 500 = 1.73 million wind turbines in the US.

[Mushroom]

Droughts affect hydroelectric dams. Look at Hoover Dam today, Lake Mead has dropped by ~150 feet or so. The power generated is a function of the distance the water falls.

If global warming proponents are so clearly focused on reducing carbon emissions, nuclear power needs to stay in the conversation.

[BigBadBrian]

He said wind and solar are old technologies and nuclear technology is way more advanced since the US last built a nuclear power plant.

Your uncle would also probably tell you it would take 180,000 wind turbines going non-stop 24/7/365 just to generate 20% of America's energy needs. Wind-generated power is clearly NOT the way to go.

[kwame k]

If you look at it objectively, solar and wind power is just too cost prohibitive and, for lack of a better word, bulky.

To have a city getting 100% of it's power from say solar energy would require miles of solar panels. We're not there yet and you can point fingers anywhere you want......lobbyists, big oil, and the like but it still doesn't get us a sensible plan to stop using coal, oil, and natural gas.

It seems obvious that we like to pay lip-service to the buzz words like renewable energy and carbon footprints but that's all we're really doing. The oil crisis of the 70's taught us nothing and by the 80's we were right back to making gas guzzling cars.......

Even if we started today, we wouldn't be off the teat of fossil fuels for years to come and Americans have yet to show the will to force our government to change. Other countries are going in the direction of drastically reducing their consumption of oil but it takes a concerted effort and money to change a nation's infrastructure.

If any President or politician came out and said they were going to raise taxes by 2% or whatever number, to invest in getting us off of fossil fuels by say 2020 (never gonna happen but it's an example)......the Teabagger's, talking heads and Joe six-pack would shit themselves over it.

Going back to my house example......if you could cut your heating/cooling bill in half by investing in energy efficient windows and adding blown-in insulation, for say, $10,000.00 and you plan on living in that house for the rest of your life, wouldn't you consider making the investment? Why can't it be that simple for us as a nation to realized this? All these sound bites about making us energy efficient and for the security of our nation, are wasted by lack of action.

Being in a constant state of war and wasting billions on a defense strategy that is so outdated doesn't help, either. To fight the war on terra do we really need all the toys in our arsenal when we're not dealing with a conventional enemy? Will building more ships, planes, and gadgets help defeat a relatively small group of people.......sure, the drones are helpful but do we need to spend 60% of our money a year on defense? Will having another battleship or fancy plane help "win" a war against an enemy hiding in cave?

[Seshmeister]

The two things are kind of related though.

Not that it can happen but would the US need an empire held together with a trillion dollar army if she didn't need oil. Nobody is likely to invade the US so it must be for something.

If you factor in the 'defence' spending is oil any cheaper than renewable or nuclear?

[Blaze]

If a home had solar panels shingles and one turbine wouldn't that be enough for that single home?
I ask honestly, because I do not know how much a shingle solar roof and a single turbine would produce for a home.