So, Who Still Wants Nuclear Power??

[Diane Amberg]

I don't like the fact that nuclear power is necessary, but as long as we are so power hungry for some areas it should be an allowed option .All our plants are getting old now and will soon need major repairs or updates.  We need to do it now.The spent rod thing we should be taking advantage of  ourselves, taking in the rods from other countries to recycle here. Russia is doing just that now. We should too. If we have them, they don't and can't extract the bomb making parts.
The making of power has always had its dangers. Dams sometimes break, coal miners get terrible lung diseases. Gas explodes. Life has never been risk free. It just seems that the last two generations expect life with no risks. Previous generations accepted that bad things happen, dealt with it and moved on. Every family has stories of deaths by disease or industrial or farm accidents, fires, falls, drowning and on and on.
  Right out of the fire safety classes I teach...everybody has to decide what level of risk they are comfortable with. Some people just have to have their appliances that work on timers, yet we know that they occasionally fail and cause fires. So do clothes dryers and on and on. Some people refuse to install smoke detectors and every year some of them die in fires. Why? You all are comfortable with your tornado risk yet every year some people die. I'm comfortable with our hurricane risk because we know we can leave. I would be unhinged over an earthquake, yet people take the risk because they love where they live.
Our water supply could be at risk, but it already is. Copper mining, coal mining,( See Centralia PA.) gold extraction, uranium mining and many, many more things we do put our water at risk but if it isn't obvious we look the other way. The oceans are full of junk now, sewage sludge has lots of heavy metals. Every day problems. But since nuclear failures are invisible and rather science fictionish we are afraid. Unless we change our ways soon, something will have to give.   

[thatsMRSc2u]

 

[srkruzich]

I don't like the fact that nuclear power is necessary, but as long as we are so power hungry for some areas it should be an allowed option .All our plants are getting old now and will soon need major repairs or updates. 

I don't believe that its because everyone is power hungry. Lord knows i don't want to pay anymore than i do for electic.  It is just that there are about 100 million more people than back in the 70's.  These plants are nearing 40 years old and are being inspected and if found to be stable and in good condition, there is a new 20 year lease on them. Thats to be expected in that they didn't know for sure how long they would last to begin with.

I totally agree with the leasing extensions.  THat way we can start working on new plants and building them with a longer life expectancy.  We already know that the old design will last 60 years now so lets improve that design to last 100 years.
Secondly we need to set up various types of reactors. breeders, BWR's ect...  The issue here is keeping folks from extracting the plutonium.  It by itself isn't very radioactive. In fact i believe it can actually be handled.  But its danger is that it is one of the most powerful elements on earth if put into a bomb.  

We need to do it now.The spent rod thing we should be taking advantage of  ourselves, taking in the rods from other countries to recycle here. Russia is doing just that now. We should too. If we have them, they don't and can't extract the bomb making parts.

I totally agree with we should be reprocessing the worlds supply of rods.  That would control the plutonium.  Also pay for a lot of our own plants.  The more i have read the more i have learned that you can essentially use every bit of the rod til its used up which would give us thousands of years of power generation.  the last 5 % requires breeder reactors.
the issue of getting rid of the plutonium is solved in the fast breeder reactor.  It will burn up the plutonium 100%.  Fuel eficiency is extremely high. You get 75-80% power for the fuel consumed. Thats the most efficient form of power generation we have.  And with the new designs coming out, their looking and hoping to increase it into the 90% range.

The making of power has always had its dangers. Dams sometimes break, coal miners get terrible lung diseases. Gas explodes. Life has never been risk free. It just seems that the last two generations expect life with no risks. Previous generations accepted that bad things happen, dealt with it and moved on. Every family has stories of deaths by disease or industrial or farm accidents, fires, falls, drowning and on and on.

Damn Your right on on that!  (checking to see if hell froze over from me agreeing with ya....)

Right out of the fire safety classes I teach...everybody has to decide what level of risk they are comfortable with. Some people just have to have their appliances that work on timers,

I don't use timers except for maby lights for my seed shelves.

Some people refuse to install smoke detectors and every year some of them die in fires. Why?

I am guilty of this in that i can't ever find a smoke detector that doesn't go off every time the dog farts.

[mtcookson]

Power hungry... I hate that term. There are A LOT of people on this planet and that requires a lot of power. If we just completely stopped using petroleum and coal and tried surviving on solar and wind I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the world population dropped down to 1 to 2 billion, probably closer to 1 billion.

Just think how farming alone would be affected, not being able to use the big machines we have. Then of course transporting that food around the country and the world.

Heck, even pumps for our water supply wouldn't likely be on reliably enough for constant water like we have now if we tried going solely wind and solar (even hydroelectric thrown in there).

The simple fact is, we NEED huge amounts of energy to keep such a massive world population alive. If by some slim chance we run out of petroleum before Christ's return the world WILL NEED massive, reliable, efficient energy sources likes nuclear to even stay alive. If nuclear was embraced more strongly the technology would improve even faster and you could even start moving away from petroleum powered vehicles using the hydrogen the plant could generate. Nuclear batteries could power vehicles without requiring a recharge/replace for a long, long time.

Here's an interesting quote I found as far as safety goes:

Comparing the historical safety record of civilian nuclear energy with other forms of electrical generation, Ball, Roberts, and Simpson, the IAEA, and the Paul Scherrer Institute found in separate studies that during the period from 1970 to 1992, there were just 39 on-the-job deaths of nuclear power plant workers worldwide, while during the same time period, there were 6,400 on-the-job deaths of coal power plant workers, 1,200 on-the-job deaths of natural gas power plant workers and members of the general public caused by natural gas power plants, and 4,000 deaths of members of the general public caused by hydroelectric power plants.[11][12][13] In particular, coal power plants are estimated to kill 24,000 Americans per year, due to lung disease[14] as well as causing 40,000 heart attacks per year[15] in the United States. According to Scientific American, the average coal power plant emits more than 100 times as much radiation per year than a comparatively sized nuclear power plant in the form of toxic coal waste known as fly ash

Also, here's the story on how radiation can actually be good for you. Not a huge amount, of course, but more than the government says is good. A Glowing Report on Radiation