Thread: Nuclear Power - debate / poll

Originally Posted by shorty943

Tank, we had family friends worked at Mary K, Von Doussa. gone now. My old man worked in mining supplying NASA and the Aerospace industry. Ores for rocket bodies, for the Moon shots, etc. He died at 60.
Former Governor of SA. Sir Mark Oliphant was one of the physicists who put the bombs together, won the Nobel Peace Prize. In the Navy in the Early 70's, NBCD (Nuclear Biological and Chemical Defence) was taught in the Oliphant Building.
All of my instructors where actually at Maralinga and Montebello during the tests. All gone. All died, mostly before 60, some as young as 50. Yeah, it makes a big mess in so many ways. During the 50's, the French were testing in North Africa. Underground tests, a bomb got stuck half way down. They couldn't get it up or down, so they poured concrete in the hole and blew it anyway. Almost 1,000 people, boffins, foriegn legion guards, the lot, and half of the Jebel Mountains just blown away. Still hot today. During the 60's, the yanks lost a nuclear sub, somewhere near the Bermuda Triangle, never have found it. During the 80's or early 90's the US Navy did a fleet audit. They came up 1 Nuclear capable 4,000 ton destroyer short in the stocktake.

You tell me, where we can be safe, and free to eat burned dead animals, drink beer, and wake up unwell the next day, and I'll meet you there with my big esky.

Shorty.

Gee mate, you got me worried now, I tuned 60 on the 18 Feb. Anyway I got Prostate Cancer and listened to the Quacks who said Radiation was the way to go, so 7 weeks of Radiotherapy and the damage from the radiation is worse than the bloody cancer, been over 10 years now, if you end up with Prostate cancer, have it out, no bullsh!t Radiation, mine came back after 5 years and they cant operate on an irradiated Prostate, got me on some drugs and keeping it under control. I think the only place you can be safe nowadays is in your own head, things are bad enough, I hope the all seeing all knowing powers that be (who for f##K sake lost a 4000 tonne ship) will see commonsense and not pass on a nuclear waste legacy to our kin, Regards Frank.

Originally Posted by Tank

....... When the Yanks were developing the Atomic bomb during the second world war, they knew that the explosion was caused by a chain reaction of the radioactive material used, WHAT THE BASTARDS DIDN'T KNOW was that the chain reaction they were inducing may have continued on and on and destroyed the entire world, YET THEY STILL WENT AHEAD AND DID IT, now that's what I call arrogance, they were willing to destroy a planet to develop the bomb, you gotta remeber NO ONE back then knew anything about nuclear chain reaction,........

Frank, your points would be a lot better made if you did not repeat stuff like this. While there were very few people knew anything about nuclear chain reactions in the early 1940s, to say no one knew about them is rubbish. Nuclear chain reactions are very difficult to start - you have to have a reaction that produces on average in excess of one neutron of suitable energy to induce the same energy in another nucleus, and for that nucleus to have an adequate capture cross section. This is very difficult to achieve, as was known in 1940 not only in Los Alamos but in Berlin. The only reason the atomic bomb was developed by the US not Germany was that Germany and Italy expelled nearly all their atomic scientists in the 1930s (and caused the flight of others from occupied territories) - people like Enrico Fermi (designed the first nuclear reactor), Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Otto Hahn, and dozens of others, all of whom gathered in Los Alamos as the result of a petition led by Einstein to the US president to develop the bomb before Germany did. (There is some suggestion that the German atomic scientists did not try very hard because they did not support the government, but evidence for this is hard to find, possibly because not supporting the government was unhealthy in Nazi Germany).

There was never any possibility of a chain reaction that would have "destroyed the whole world" and everyone in the US at the time that understood the physics knew that. Of course, as with anything technical, the politicians did not understand the physics - but they did trust the advice of people who did - like Einstein, who (unlike most other nuclear scientists in the 1940s) was already famous - even the politicians knew who he was.

John

Originally Posted by HangOver

.......

I still don't see why we can't cover a few square k's with solar pannels in the out back somewhere. It's not as if we are short of land mass!

No reason at all - and I think this is one of the things we can and probably will do, although not in the way you suggest - see my post above. There are two problems with it - one, it does not supply base load power, as it only works when the sun is shining, and there is still no feasible way of storing it, and two, it is one of the most expensive forms of power - and I remind you that most of my power is from solar panels.

One of the reasons I don't think we will see many square kilometres of solar panels is the NIMBY syndrome - look at the fuss about wind power turbines, and imagine how both locals and city based greenies are going to feel about desecrating large areas of native vegetation and wildlife with a black patch several kilometres across. It is also likely that these would cause local weather disturbances.

John

Originally Posted by Tank

Moose did you check them all out or did you just Copy and Paste, Regards Frank.

I went a had a quick look, and still can't find the spot where you quote your sources

My thoughts!

Mankind is in the eleventh hour of their presence on earth.

I doubt mankind will ever make 12:01

Global warming is now very real and the science to underpin it is proven.

Our entire global economy is underpinned by a reliance on a finite resource, Fossil Fuels.

We passed peak oil production in the late 1990's

I doubt very much if in the next 150 years the global population will continue to grow without having some very dramatic effect on the climate and hence on the human race itself.

Exactly what is going to happen I don't know. I feel very sad for the future of the planet and our children and grandchildren.

I am going to try to minimise my footprint on the environment as much as possible.

I am going to attempt to set myself up to provide a safe haven for my children and grandchildren and to become self sufficient.

Originally Posted by shorty943

So to sum up, yes there are some concerns over reactor safety.

If this country must go with NP, then we had better demand nothing but the best, and let the government know, we are watching.

I would like to believe that we could do what you suggest, but the cynic in me says that the world is now so much in control of the bean counters that we have no hope of building reactors that we can rely on to be safe.
I understand that Westinhouse's AP-600 and AP-1000 were specifically designed to reduce capital costs and thereby improve the bottom line. They significantly reduce the size and strength of the containment because the saving in concrete and steel made them cheaper to build. The design also reduces or eliminates a number of other safety features.
I think that in a world where profits and return to shareholders are the driving force, that we are more likely to see a design of reactor being built because it maximises profit, not because it offers the assurance of safety that you and I would like.
Some of the reports of breaches of safety procedures, cost cutting measures and consequent narrowly avoided disasters such as the Davis-Besse reactor in Toledo, Ohio in 2002 make me think that the safety level necessary for nuclear power to be acceptable is just not going to be achieved.

Originally Posted by JDNSW

Frank, your points would be a lot better made if you did not repeat stuff like this. While there were very few people knew anything about nuclear chain reactions in the early 1940s, to say no one knew about them is rubbish. Nuclear chain reactions are very difficult to start - you have to have a reaction that produces on average in excess of one neutron of suitable energy to induce the same energy in another nucleus, and for that nucleus to have an adequate capture cross section. This is very difficult to achieve, as was known in 1940 not only in Los Alamos but in Berlin. The only reason the atomic bomb was developed by the US not Germany was that Germany and Italy expelled nearly all their atomic scientists in the 1930s (and caused the flight of others from occupied territories) - people like Enrico Fermi (designed the first nuclear reactor), Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Otto Hahn, and dozens of others, all of whom gathered in Los Alamos as the result of a petition led by Einstein to the US president to develop the bomb before Germany did. (There is some suggestion that the German atomic scientists did not try very hard because they did not support the government, but evidence for this is hard to find, possibly because not supporting the government was unhealthy in Nazi Germany).

There was never any possibility of a chain reaction that would have "destroyed the whole world" and everyone in the US at the time that understood the physics knew that. Of course, as with anything technical, the politicians did not understand the physics - but they did trust the advice of people who did - like Einstein, who (unlike most other nuclear scientists in the 1940s) was already famous - even the politicians knew who he was.

John

John, the statement about not knowing about whether the chain reaction might continue on and on was made by Oppenheimer some of the European Scientists threatened to resign because at that time it was impossible to predict what EXACTLY was going to happen, so if the statement is rubbish it was the man in charge of developing the bomb that said it, not me, Regards Frank.

I voted yes as i believe with all the technology we have now/ future surely we must be able to neutralise the spent radioactive waste and render it almost harmless .One question i have is is Uranium / Plutonium dangerous in the state it is mined or only after processing, surely we can reverse it ?