Nuclear Power: Yay or Nay?

[Ducimus]

Im all for nuclear power because it gets us away from fossil fuels. But we must have the most strict regulations, management, and supervision of waste disposal. Not to mention powerplant operations. We don't want anymore long islands.

Theres only one problem with nuclear power. That problem being the banner that every American waves no matter where they live in the country, for this and many other issues or proposals:


"NIMBY"

[baggygreen]

nimby??

[baggygreen]

oh of course, not in my back yard.

sorry, not up with internet slang. or is it down?:hmm:

[Mush Martin]

of all the options that we have the chance to grossly mismanage

Nuclear power is the best option

assuming we are able to learn how not to mismanage whatever option
we choose.

MM

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by baggygreen

oh of course, not in my back yard.

sorry, not up with internet slang. or is it down?:hmm:

Nah, thats not internet slang. Real life term. Probably an old one though.

[The Noob]

Yes, the civilisation demands more power, this is the only realistic way to produce it. The problem is, if a meltdown occurs, the results are fatal, as chernobyl has shown. Also, the waste disposal method is retarded. Do they really think barrieing the waste below the earth so you cant see it wont cause long term problems?

If it would be like, shot into space, that would rule.

[fatty]

I think that acronym actually predates the internet as we know it

Of course, regarding waste disposal, we can always take a page from the Russians and fight fire with fire!

According to a report in Izvestiya on 6 May 1997, Minister of Atomic Energy Viktor Mikhailov, Minister of Defense General Pavel Grachev, and Chief Military Inspector General Konstantin Kobets wrote in a 4 July 1994 confidential letter to Russian President Boris Yeltsin that the accumulation of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear-powered submarines and naval surface vessels poses the main radioactive waste handling threat to Russia. As a solution, the Central Physical-Technical Institute of the Ministry of Defense and the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics (VNIIEF) in Sarov (Arzamas-16) proposed using an underground nuclear explosion technique to vitrify and bury the radioactive waste in tunnels at the Central Atomic Test Site at Novaya Zemlya.

I thought they actually did this in practice but I can't find any other mention of it.

[Ducimus]

I wonder how cost effecitve it would be to just shoot the s**t into space. Not like we'll ever set aside our differences and explore it anyway.

[ASWnut101]

very good idea, Noob and Ducimus, but there ARE drawbacks.

1. If the Rocket you use to launch it fails and crashes, you have a VERY bad problem.

2. That would require one heavy lifting rocket to launch the stuff, which is also pretty expensive.

[Ducimus]

Hey , you know.... dream a little dream

Reality is we'll probably never switch to using more nuclear power, we wont be shooting any waste into space (let alone explore it), and we'll continue using fossil fuels tell the wells dry up. Resistance to change is human nature. Im a gross offender of that myself.

[Sailor Steve]

I'm all for it. We already have gobs of it in our backyard. Not too long ago one of our local Indian tribes said "You'll pay us HOW much to take some? Sure!" and then state officials started in with "We'll close roads! We'll make it impossible to get it there!" And so on.

Originally Posted by Ducimus

I wonder how cost effecitve it would be to just shoot the s**t into space. Not like we'll ever set aside our differences and explore it anyway.

Shoot it into the sun. It's already a huge nuclear reactor.

Of course if I'm wrong...

[Oberon]

Either into the sun or a black hole....of course, if a black hole then turns out to be a way to another place then we've just shifted the problem to them, but hopefully they'll have a way of dealing with it that we don't currently have.
Throwing it into the sun is a good idea...but if it then decides to throw out a large flare or something, then it's gonna really screw things up if it hits Earth.
I live just down the road from two nuke plants, I've been in both, one of them has just been decomissioned, so eventually it's all going to get pulled down, but the reactor area itself is still going to be hot for another century, and since it'll probably be entombed in a concrete/lead shell ala Chernobyl that's no real concern.
Nuke stations, or at least Sizewell, has thousands of backups, readouts, procedures and everything else, so it's all pretty much safe....it still leaks every couple of months or so, but so far it's behaved itself.

However, nuke power is not the permenant future for earth power...powering engines for space vehicles? Great idea! (although Fusion reactors would be so much better) but for our daily needs, we need to find something just that little bit less catastrophic when it all goes wrong.

[The Noob]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Shoot it into the sun. It's already a huge nuclear reactor.

Of course if I'm wrong...

I wanted to say that... anyway, there are nuclear explosions on the sun every day, so one or 2 more from us will not make a difference.

Originally Posted by Ducimus

I wonder how cost effecitve it would be to just shoot the s**t into space.

Cost effective? In my way to think, we dont have another choice. Either run out of energy (the oil wells will be dry sooner than you think) or die on nuclear waste.

Originally Posted by ASWnut101

1. If the Rocket you use to launch it fails and crashes, you have a VERY bad problem.

If you burrie it and corrosion occours, you have a VERY bad problem. The difference is, you have it in 50 years, not now.

Originally Posted by Ducimus

Reality is we'll probably never switch to using more nuclear power, we wont be shooting any waste into space (let alone explore it), and we'll continue using fossil fuels tell the wells dry up.

In 1810, people said "reality is we'll porbably never fly in the sky, we wont be shooting man on moon, let alone on other stars."

Never say never!

[AJ!]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

I wonder how cost effecitve it would be to just shoot the s**t into space. Not like we'll ever set aside our differences and explore it anyway.

Bingo. We wont settle down and commit to space travel for a awful long time.... if ever.
If space is infinate we wont be seeing that waste ever again anyway.

The only problems with nuclear is the potential disaster that can be caused. I think if a whole new reactor design was used then maybe it would be a great solution but i dont think i need to remind anyone about the chernobyl incident

[Abraham]

As long as the waste problem of nuclear energy is not fully solved, it can't be considered a permanent solution of our energy problem.
It is essential as a temporary source of energy, but I hope fission techniques will in the future solve the energy problem, together with better use of solar, wind and aqua energy.

On aspect that was not yet given attention to in this thread is the dependence upon suppliers of uranium. Who wants an UPEC (Uranium Producing and Exporting Countries) with nations like Russia and Congo, to mention a few...