Nuclear Power - debate / poll

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Originally Posted by loanrangie

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 ?

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1. Uranium as mined is mildly radioactive and while not totally safe (what is?) is not particularly dangerous, certainly no more so than many common household chemicals.

2. Plutonium does not occur naturally, and is very dangerous even in small quantities - it is quite radioactive and readily absorbed into the body. The lethal dose is very small.

3. Reversing it is not even possible in theory.

Neutralising radioactive waste is not possible. It consists of a wide range of isotopes some of them very radioactive, some less so. The only thing that can be done with it is to contain it, preferably after separating it into useful and non-useful components. To do this safely means keeping the waste until the level of radioactivity has declined enough for it to be reasonably safe to do so, usually a decade or two.

But by far the majority of the "radioactive waste" is very slightly radioactive items that have been contaminated by contact with radioactive materials. This would include mainly protective clothing and tools and equipment.

Hope this helps.

John

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Originally Posted by Tank

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.

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Hi tank, although I agree whole heartedly with most of your posts, JDNSW is right on the money about the first A bomb test.

The story about not knowing if the chain reaction would just continue on and on until it destroyed the world is actually Hollywood hype for the benefit of adding drama to the original movie.

They had already carried out extensive test on a controlled pile reaction in New York way before they started work on the first bomb. BTW the name of the A bomb development, “ The Manhattan Project “ was a spinoff of the name of the location where the original tests were carried out, New York.

The reason the scientists threatened to resign was in an attempt to stop the bomb being dropped on Japan.

Cheers.

I chose to look at both sides of the issue,

Pros:Cleaner
Cons:toxic waste
Pros:Less pollution, Efficient
Cons:Chenobal(?)Meltdown if the radioactive core

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Originally Posted by Tank

so PLEASE take the time to investigate Nuclear and the alternatives, as it is abundantly clear that little thought has gone into these posts, Regards Frank.

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Oh ....I am not so sure about that.

It has taken nature millions of years to place the coal and oil in the earth and we are digging and pumping it out faster than it can be replaced. Unless we start to conserve our resources, in the not too distant future, and I mean in our lifetime, we are not going to have any left.

Think of the consequence of that.

Okay...cars can be made to run on electric power, planes can not, ships have moved around the globe before with out a propulsion system, but will take forever.

Yes we will survive....but it is going to take a major change in lifestyle.

I grew up with out electric power. Kero lamps, carbite lights and a water cooled safe for keeping butter, milk and meat cool, not frozen.

But no oil means no kero......We were probably a lot healthier and better read than the kids of to-day.

Coal and oil fired power stations are very inefficient, very wasteful. I believe we should be preserving our stocks whilst we still have them instead of selling it all to Japan and China.

We are going to need electric power and lots of it, days are getting hotter, more air cons are running........so where is the power going to come from, Wind, Solar and Wave generated power is limited by the nature of its operation......sure they can help. Lived for years on a property with a Windmill driven generator, charged the banks and banks of batteries to give a very limited supply of 32 volt power at night.


I have thought long and hard on this one and I also believe that a lot of other people have too, and this means nuclear power. Very efficient and cheap to produce once the initial outlay for the construction is discounted.

Waste produced...well only small compared to that produced by coal and oil......and there certainly is a market for it problem is a small amount goes such a long way....but given mankinds ability to overcome problems I would venture to say we will develop methods for the disposal that is safe eventually...short of shooting it all into space.

I am all for Nuclear power, do some reserch into oil and coal remaining stocks and start worrying now cos our kids are going to have a very bleak future unless we take action.

Thats my rant over with.:eek:

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Originally Posted by drivesafe

Here one more point of interest, there is a power source that is available almost everywhere on earth that could be producing electricity tomorrow but for some unknown reason ( to me ) is used very little and thats Thermal heat from the earth’s core, why not.

Cheers.

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We help the earth to cool alot more rapidly than what it is doing now, once the core is cool and solidified, we are dead in the water....have to go find another planet to polute.

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Originally Posted by JDNSW

2. Plutonium does not occur naturally, and is very dangerous even in small quantities - it is quite radioactive and readily absorbed into the body. The lethal dose is very small.

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In fact a carcinogenic dose is 1 millionth of a gram and it has a half life of 24,400 years.
1,500 tons of plutonium has already been produced by civilian nuclear power plants and that doesn't include military plutonium.
RobHay says only a small amount of waste is produced compared with coal and oil, but if you add up the number of carcinogenic doses in 1,500 tons, it begins to look like quite a bit of very dangerous waste.
Some people try to suggest that we have to choose between global warming or nuclear power. Such a gross oversimplification is either the result of a lack of understanding of the full picture or else is downright dishonest.

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Originally Posted by Tank

Lithgow, there is enough coal in Australia alone to supply the World's needs for thousands of years. Wood if managed properly and not mined like it is now is another alternative, Wood powered power stations and Sustainable Plantation wood supplies burnt in wood gasifier turbines are a viable alternative and add another form of income for the beleagured farming community, instead of wasting up to 12 million tonnes of wood in the worst pollution device in the world, the humble Domestic Wood Heater (DWH), 1 DWH emits more pollution in 1 x 24 hour period than a modern car does in 12 months and its emissions are 12 times more Carcinogenic than the same volume of Tobacco smoke, how many of you have a DWH, do your bit and stop polluting and poisoning yourself and your neighbours, get rid of it, a Coal fired power station per unit of heat is 10 times less polluting, that's my rave, Regards Frank.

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Frank, I would respectfully suggest you go and do some homework.....Australia does not have 1000s of years supply of coal left in the ground.....and certainly not enough to supply the world's demands for that period of time. Why do you think we have a petrol problem for....because there is only a finite supply...and commodities that are scarce attract a high price......oil is running out.....coal is running out....pretty soon petrol cars will be banned and we will all be driving diesels running on peanut oil or similar.

The world has a crissis. We are in the state we are in because of wood and carbon fired industrial plant. We do not want to add to the problem.

The time to take action was probably 30 years ago and we still have done nothing.

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Originally Posted by RobHay

I am all for Nuclear power, do some research into oil and coal remaining stocks and start worrying now cos our kids are going to have a very bleak future unless we take action.
.:eek:

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I think you are right that we should be worried about rapidly diminishing oil stocks, but very little electricity is generated using oil, about 2% in the US.
Your statement above reads to me (and I apologise in advance if I have misunderstood you) implies that nuclear power is the only way to save the planet.
It isn't.
It also seems to assume that we will continue to consume energy as wastefully as we do at present.
We don't have to.
Are you aware that a 2005 Rocky Mountains Institute study using industry and government data showed that globally, nuclear power was being outstripped by other decentralised low-carbon or no-carbon sources of electricity production? About one third comes from renewables (wind, biomass, solar) and about two thirds from co-generation which uses waste heat from industry.
Even though these decentralised sources have not attracted the subsidies the nuclear industry has enjoyed, by 2004 they provided three times the output and six times the capacity of nuclear power.
We need to do something to save the planet.
Nuclear power is not the way to do it.
It can be done with energy efficiencies, co-generation and renewables.

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Originally Posted by RobHay

I have thought long and hard on this one and I also believe that a lot of other people have too, and this means nuclear power. Very efficient and cheap to produce once the initial outlay for the construction is discounted.

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For the life of me, I don’t know where you all get that nuclear power is going to be cheaper.

Nuclear power is heaps dearer than coal power and Howard himself, has stated that nuclear power is going to cost the users, that’s you and me, 3 times what coal power costs.

So where do you get that nuclear power is cheaper.

Read the paper put out by the Australian government, on the potential use of nuclear power here in Australia.

Based on info from overseas use of nuclear power, it is NOT as efficient as coal fired power stations, will require huge amounts more of water per kilowatt of power produced compered to a coal fired power station and nuclear power stations release far more heat into the atmosphere than a conventional power station does and aren’t we supposed to be trying to REDUCE global warming?

As Tank has posted, try reading up on the subject because I have not seen one official statement that nuclear power is cheaper, quiet the reverse.

Cheers.

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Originally Posted by moose

here's the list of references quoted. Feel free to check up on them.
References

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• An entry to nuclear power through an educational discussion of reactors
• The Nuclear Energy Option, online book by Bernard L. Cohen. Pro nuclear power. Emphasis on risk estimates of nuclear.
• Oldberg, T. and R. Christensen (1995) "Erratic Measure," NDE for the Energy Industry 1995, pp. 1-6, The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, New York, NY
• Oldberg, T. (2005) "An Ethical Problem in the Statistics of Defect Detection Test Reliability," Address to the Golden Gate Chapter of the American Society for Nondestructive Testing, March 10, 2005
• Steve Thomas (2005), "The Economics of Nuclear Power: analysis of recent studies", PSIRU, University of Greenwich, UK
• Nuclear power information archives from ALSOS, the National Digital Science Library at Washington & Lee University.
• Nuclear Power: the Energy Balance A comprehensive yet controversial lifecycle assessment of nuclear power generation by Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith, update August 2005
• Critical Hour: Three Mile Island, The Nuclear Legacy, And National Security Online book by Albert J. Fritsch, Arthur H. Purcell, and Mary Byrd Davis (2005), Updated edition June 2006

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Okay...read all of that...now do you have any more.....still got 5 minutes left before I have to go to bed so I can get up in 7 minutes to go to work:D