With the huge increase demand of Nuclear power in this country. Will someday Nuclear over run Coal fired power plants? What will this mean for the Railroads in the future? There is a HUGE demand to build new Nuclear power plants in this country. Then comes the thought of Terrorism. I for one thing do not like Nuclear power. And never will. I fully support Coal. Coal is cleaner. Nuclear clames to be clean. But it’s not. In a way it is. But…
What about the fuel rods when it is time to refuel. All of the used fuel waist is stored an large barrels to be put under ground. What are your thoughts. Do you sapport Nuclear or Coal. Allan.
No nuclear power plants have been built in this country fior a couple of decades now, and it has nothing to do with demand. Probably a scare made worse by the Three Mile Island and Chernobil (sp?) incidents. I used to live near a nuclear power plant in Limerick, and we now live near one at Berwick. They are less polluting in operation, but there still is the problem of disposal of the spent nuclear fuel. As far as a terrorism scare, I think that is extremely overblown. Have you ever seen how a reactor containment building is designed and built? Flying a plane into it would never penetrate the shell.
What I always found funny is the symbol the antinuke people use for the plants. It’s one of the cooling towers, which are the same type as would be used on a coal fired plant, if required by local conditions.
This is a loaded question.
I think coal will reign until it is too expensive to mine and transport. This won’t happen in our children’s lifetime. You say in your post that coal is cleaner than nuclear. In no way shape or form is coal cleaner than nuclear power. IIRC, coal releases more radioactive materials into the atmosphere than nuclear power plants. Because coal includes trace amounts of uranium and other elements naturally, with the sheer volume of coal burned, there is a lot of that stuff going up the stack. Scrubbers can only catch what they’re designed to catch and the rest is now in the air we breathe.
Even though Three Mile Island was caused by human error (closing a valve instead of opening and then turning on the secondary cooling pump, which of course stalled), not a faulty design, most suppliers of nuclear power plants (like GE) completely redesigned their cores and operating scheme to almost completely eliminate the possibility of a runaway reaction. Unfortunately, “public opinion” (led by the liberal press and nibys) was quickly turned against nuclear and no new plants of this improved design were built in the US and several of the older designed were abandoned during construction. For example, PSI in Indiana sunk a billion dollars into the Marble Hill Plant and quit before it was completed. Guess who paid for the environmentalist’s victory? The only problem with nuclear is what to do with spent fuel rods that potentially are radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. The newer plant’s fuel rods would “only” be radioactive for ten thousand years.
Will the call towards energy independance make “the public” rethink their position on nuclear? Only time will tell.
The fuel waste is a monument to our Government’s inability to place Yucca Mountain promptly into service as a final disposal site. Wasted years of effort and wheel spinning and we still aint shipping the waste straight to that salt lined hole in the earth.
Yet 5 seperate agencies can detonate the old Woodrow Wilson Bridge and turn it into a reef and slap a newer bigger better bridge in place within 15 years.
Dont ya love our way of Government.
I say load those cans of depleted fuel and shoot them into the sun on very big rockets.
I’ll take my power anyway I can get them but was pretty close to TMI as a child and understand that 24 hours or less was all that stood between a fertile and productive Northeast or a desolate wasteland that cannot be inhabitied for 10,000 years. The concrete containment of TMI did it’s job but the problem still remains at that location.
What about the transport of these used spent fuel rods? Is it by Truck? Or is it by Rail?
IIRC, there was a plan to build a rail line right up to Yucca Mountain so the rods in their practically indestructable casks would be shipped most of the way by rail.
Sssshhhh, don’t let the NIBYs know that, they don’t like trains as it is. Why give them something else to get upset about?[;)]
I just laugh when people talk about how dangerous it is to transport all the waste. How do they think the rods got to the plant in the first place. If a nuclear plant is built and maintained with the priority being safety it is a very clean source of power. If I am not mistaken the French are able to re-refine the used rods and use them again where as we just bury them. If we spent as much money on nuclear as we do on making coal plants cleaner I am sure solutions would present themselves.
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Dave
I have seen in the media where they did some shipping of the casks by truck and they cannot hardly turn a wheel without every little bitty town waving signs and shouting “NO NUCLEAR ENERGY!”
I look at Iceland with thier Geothermal Energy and boy do they have it good.
I recall during World War Two our Nation built whole cities that do nothing but Atomic/Nuclear related work and no one complained. I think somewhere in the last 60 years we lost our moxie as a collective people to actually work towards a energy solution that actually makes us strong and self sufficient.
I better shut up now, beginning to get rather strong with my opinions and dont want a flame war.
I think you might be talking about something that was called an ‘egg-beater’ type of reactor - they operated on nuclear waste from other plants. How they work is a good question for a physicist.
There is such a paranoia in this country when it comes to nuclear energy that we have tied our hands behind our back for the foreseeable future. Some of the fears are well-founded. Chenobyl is the worst example of what could happen - there are parts of the Ukraine that will be uninhabitable for 100’s of years at least. As much as I don’t like Greenpeace, they did go into some of the areas that were contaminated with radioactive materials and take some very interesting picutres of houses and buildings that were abandoned in the days following the accident in 1986. In a strange twist of irony one of the buildings was a communist party headquarters that still contained pictures of Gorbechev and Lennin. For those of you into history and the like, it is a great site to visit. http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter1.html
Chernobyl was the result of human error, made worse in that afterwards the communist government tried to cover up the incident. Thousands of soldiers conscripted to help clean up the mess after the accident died as a result of massive radiation exposure. Some estimates
We still build nuclear plants in this country. They just are not for domestic use. They are all destined to be exported to other countries. My wifes Uncle was here recently inspecting parts as a consultant to GE for a reactor that was being shipped overseas. We have no problem building reactors in other peoples countries just Not In My Back Yard.
[quote user=“solzrules”]
I think you might be talking about something that was called an ‘egg-beater’ type of reactor - they operated on nuclear waste from other plants. How they work is a good question for a physicist.
There is such a paranoia in this country when it comes to nuclear energy that we have tied our hands behind our back for the foreseeable future. Some of the fears are well-founded. Chenobyl is the worst example of what could happen - there are parts of the Ukraine that will be uninhabitable for 100’s of years at least. As much as I don’t like Greenpeace, they did go into some of the areas that were contaminated with radioactive materials and take some very interesting picutres of houses and buildings that were abandoned in the days following the accident in 1986. In a strange twist of irony one of the buildings was a communist party headquarters that still contained pictures of Gorbechev and Lennin. For those of you into history and the like, it is a great site to visit. http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter1.html
Chernobyl was the result of human error, made worse in that afterwards the communist government tried to cover up the incident. Thousands of soldiers conscripted to help clean up the mess after the accident died as a result of massive radiation expo
…Of course it’s been some time now since our country has invested in building any power plants fueled by nuclear…We all understand why but perhaps it may be time to explore the situation again. I believe we have the complete knowledge and state of the art methods to construct and operate a safe unit now.
I personally would not be against constructing state of the art nuclear power plants now if all the up to date controls, construction inspections, and all that’s necessary to make it a safe unit with all the safety back up systems built into it. One more thing…Cost…If the cost would be out of sight than probably my opinion would change.
On the other hand most of us understand we have decades of coal reserves in our country…and the transportation system to get it to where it is needed…and I believe the knowledge now to build or renovate older systems…to most modern “clean burning” systems. I also believe it will never be perfect and of course nothing else will be either.
So let’s use what we have and reduce our support of importing fuel from OPEC, etc…and all the rest.
The coal system and the rail transportation system would continue to employ a quanity of our own in so doing.
Breeder reactor - part of the spent fuel is 238U that has been converted to 239Pu. A reprocessing plant separates the Plutonium from the rest of the spent fuel and mixes with 238U. The reason for using Plutonium is that when it is fissioned by a fast neutron, it typically produces almost three neutrons in return - one goes on to fission another plutonium atom and more than one goes to convert more 238U to 239Pu and a small fraction of one is abosorbed by tsructural materials or fission products.
The term “breeder” come from being able to produce more fissile fuel than it consumes.
Chernobyl was the result of a design error, which was compounded by human error. The design error was that the scram rods actually increased reactivity for a short time before decreasing reactivity, coupled with the reactor having a positive void coefficient and a graphite moderator that supported a chain reaction with no coolant present. One of the reactor operators saw the computer monitor say that the operating condition was unsafe and scrammed the reactor - the scram rods caused the reactor to increase power, which caused more cooling water to boil, which then caused the power to increase more and this process went on until the reactor was “prompt critical” which is something you NEVER want to see in a power reactor - worse than no water over the crownsheet (though TRIGA’s are designed for prompt critical).
That’s news to me. Could you cite me the basis for such assertions? Maybe there’s a clamor to build nuclear power plants in your state/neighborhood? Certainly in New York sentiment is mostly anti-nuclear. I’m unaware of any new construction being licensed for over two decades.
That’s a negative for nuclear power but personally I think it’s focuses at the wrong place. More than 20,000 megawatts of nuclear capacity has come online since 2000, all outside the U.S. Why should terrorists bother to travel to U.S. when there are targets much closer?
No way. Coal-fired power plants are major sources of air pollution, CO2, NOX, soot, acid rain, etc. The very justification for reviving nuclear power is that it doesn’t produce them and would be a part of a strategy for the U.S. to reduce air pollution and meet the Kyoto accords. Annually in the U.S. coal-burning plants emit 48 metric tons of mercury into the air, account for two thirds of sulfur dioxide, and one fifth of nitrogen dioxide. Particulate emissions cause thousands of premature deaths from lung diseases every year. Mercury enters the ecosystem as methyl mercury through fish.
You might look at the September 2006 issue of Scientific American, “Energy’s Future beyond Carbon,” for a good discussion of the issues of coal and nuclear.
TXU wants to build 13 new coal fired plants in Texas and people are having kittens there about dirty air and stuff. Several of these would replace older coal plants.
Georgia is one of the states going through the liscensing process to build a new nuclear plant.
I think some people would rather sit in the dark then have a new plant built near them. Thing is, there is probably a plant near them and they have no idea.
People love to fear the future. Especially the one they dream up in their head.
I say nukes are the only way to go.
Pity they couldn’t build one to run on hot air, there’s certainly enough of it about in the world.
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Put one of those on Capitol Hill and we’d have to lie awake at night thinking up ways to use all the electricity!
Think we could get a Sterling engine installed there?