For the immediate future of world energy needs (next 40-50 or so years), you have a choice. You can use natural gas or you can use nuclear. Those are basically your two choices. Worldwide energy demand will rise faster than new technology (biofuels, solar, wind) can keep up to cover the new demand. If you are anti natural gas and anti nuclear, you are pro black out.
That's probably rational. I was speaking to popular reactions to particular proposed new plants. It might not actually be a good target, but concern over a "low-probablity, high-impact event" is going to be fed by uncertainties like that.
We should send Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck to space and then nuke the comet with Ben Affleck taking one for the team. I think there's extra cargo room for all physical copies of Gigli.
Seeing as its been over four days since the cooling systems failed, its safe to say (as well as happily and luckily) that Denton was wrong. Though it would have been alot simpler, safer and ever so fortuitous had these older reactors been scheduled to decommissioned last year, instead of next year.
It's ridiculous, the reactors in Japan shouldn't have been in operation, they are a design from the 1960's and should have been decomissioned by now. Modern reactors are so far superior and safer - even in a meltdown the release of radiation would be minimal. People need to understand that what happens in Japan doesn't necessarily mean it happens everywhere. Yes, nuclear power has it's risks, but so does everything. And if you use a reactor that is built right those risks are gone. These plants were not suppose to be in operation.
With the eco weenies shutting down the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, there is no sustainable future for nuclear energy in the US.
^According to Beavis, the Yucca gunna go down in September. Turns out the plant design not so good, as we've seen when the water supply goes out the window. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16contain.html Reactor Design in Japan Has Long Been Questioned By TOM ZELLER Jr. Published: March 15, 2011 The warnings were stark and issued repeatedly as far back as 1972: If the cooling systems ever failed at a Mark 1 nuclear reactor, the primary containment vessel surrounding the reactor would probably burst as the fuel rods inside overheated. Dangerous radiation would spew into the environment. Now, with one Mark 1 containment vessel damaged at the embattled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and other vessels there under severe strain, the weaknesses of the design — developed in the 1960s by General Electric — could be contributing to the unfolding catastrophe. When the ability to cool a reactor is compromised, the containment vessel is the last line of defense. Typically made of steel and concrete, it is designed to prevent — for a time — melting fuel rods from spewing radiation into the environment if cooling efforts completely fail. In some reactors, known as pressurized water reactors, the system is sealed inside a thick, steel-and-cement tomb. Most nuclear reactors around the world are of this type. But the type of containment vessel and pressure suppression system used in the failing reactors at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant — and in 23 American reactors at 16 plants — is physically less robust, and it has long been thought to be more susceptible to failure in an emergency than competing designs. G.E. began making the Mark 1 boiling water reactors in the 1960s, marketing them as cheaper and easier to build — in part because they used a comparatively smaller and less expensive containment structure. American regulators began identifying weaknesses very early on..... More here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16contain.html
As I mentioned in the Hangout thread, I didn't really know much about this. Started researching it out of curiosity, and found this to be a very interesting topic. Until the situation in Japan gets completely resolved (hopefully with minimal damage to human life and the environment), probably hard to say exactly what this will do I think. If you asked a couple of days ago, I might have been a bit more confident in the response. This already mentioned, but we had a 9.0 earthquake coupled with a horrible tsunami. All that against a reactor that was built 40+ years ago. And after pretty much all back-up systems failed, things still seemed relatively contained. That's REALLY good, and should actually be a testament to how "safe" nuclear power can be. Unfortunately, I think things have taken a turn for the worse in the last 24-48 hours. I actually think the reactors are probably still holding on pretty well, but starting to get the sense that something wasn't done quite right. I feel like giving the company a pass for their lack of preparation. Probably shouldn't have placed the diesel tanks in a location where a tsunami could take them away. But I could possibly overlook that to some degree. But the situation at reactor #4 bothers me, at least given what I know (certainly not an expert, so maybe not as bad as it seems). There seems like a huge risk with that reactor, and I could see that being a blow to the industry. Or at least, that is all under the assumption that people are fully aware of the events that have taken place. Unfortunately, the media is just doing an absolutely horrible job of reporting on this (partly why I decided to seek out information myself). Some of the more recent articles might be right to be concerned, but the earlier reports on this situation were just overblown, sensationalized crap. If a worker at a nuclear reactor in the US slipped and sprained his ankle, I'd half expect a front page headline of "Nuclear Accident in US! Meltdown Possible! Chernobyl II! RADIATION!!!!" That won't do Nuclear Power in favors. Meanwhile, there are fires and explosions going on all over Japan in non-nuclear plans (but have you seen any reports on them?). It is pretty clear to me that most people don't really understand a lot about what goes on in these plants. I certainly didn't. So when you see the words "meltdown", "radiation", "explosion", "uranium", "radioactive cloud over Tokyo", etc., all involved at a nuclear plant, you think the worst. When you see that "radiation levels are twice the normal levels", you think things must be pretty bad, even though those radiation levels are probably less than what you'd get if you were walking around Denver, Colorado. Not to mention those radiation levels might quickly drop back to normal since those particular radioactive elements might decay pretty quickly. You might think a meltdown will lead to a Hiroshima-esque explosion, which would be pretty unlikely (if not impossible). Then there's information like this (think I posted it in the other thread): http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4092 As I said in that thread, I'm not 100% sure how indisputable that is (hard to be fan of Skeptoid without being skeptical ). But I wouldn't doubt those numbers. As long as there is misinformation about nuclear power, I'm guessing it will be pretty hard to have much of a future. Prior to this all, I was a supporter of nuclear power, although not a strong supporter. I preferred using other sources of renewable energy, although I realized we had to have something that was much more efficient until we improved those methods dramatically. While I still more or less hold that opinion, I definitely support building more nuclear reactors. Preferably ones that use newer designs of course. Speaking of which, for those of you that are interested, there are some very interesting "next-gen" designs for nuclear reactors (as if the current designs weren't enough in terms of improvements). I was reading more about thorium-based reactors today, as well as a Molten-salt reactor. Some info about that from Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_reactor OK, guess I pretty much quoted the entire article. Still, interesting to read. Although I admit that a lot of that stuff is way too complicated to understand, unless you're maybe nuclear physicist. Some of the advantages seem pretty clear though. Some relevant videos I've checked out recently: Bill Gates Ted Talk 2010 (talks about energy in general, but also focuses on nuclear quite a bit) <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/JaF-fq2Zn7I" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Thorium reactor/LFTR vid: <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WWUeBSoEnRk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Of course, we'll only need to ride this out until we figure out nuclear fusion: <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/whWyuPOfzcI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> (maybe won't happen, at least for commercial use, but still hope we can accomplish it)
There’s coal as well, but it has the CO2 issue of course. Still, CCS could be an option, or perhaps one of the new scrubber technologies, like Global Thermostat, David Keith’s company, or Kilimanjaro Energy’s will prove to be a good option. http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/02/green-machine-sucking-co2-out.html
Will the Lakers be practicing in the Staples Center?:grin: Seriously, though, the United States needs nuclear power and should be building the 10 plants Obama authorized. Safe plants sites are limited because of seismic and water resource limitations, but we have the ability to transmit power from remote sites to where the product is needed.
how come Japan can build a robot that can play the violin but they can't build one that shoots water into a reactor?
First nuclear restart pushed further back. I wonder if they will ever go back to nuclear. Considering the way natural gas production in the US is going, I don't see why they should.
Whom is that gas going to, how much will be left after all the ISOs start demanding new gas pipelines so they can shutter all their coal generation? What's the frequency and volume for economic LNG exporting/importing and how big a share of that will go to Japan? I think an industrialized island nation with no resources of its own needs to draw on all sources, albeit with their engineering talent they could probably launch an Apollo program for solar and renewable generation and infrastructure.
