Nuclear power

[clown_phobia]

this is an issue that has recieved a lot of media attention in Australia in the last month or so...

what is your view on nuclear power? Should it be used? What do you think of the dangers and advantages? What about the trade in uranium?

[free_thinkers_are_dangerous]

I think people should hurry the hell up and start using it instead of coal power plants, at the very least. It's also preferable to pretty much any other form of electricity except hydroelectric and wind/solar.

[AKid2]

One of the most outstanding issues surrounding nuclear power is the waste. Nobody wants to deal with it. The spent fuel will remain radioactive for millions of years. It's almost impossible to gurantee a container can safely contain the fuel for such a period of time. It could leak into water, contaminate the ground etc etc. In America, we're not too dependent on nuclear power and we're really having a problem dealing with what relatively little leftovers we've produced. So this'll have to be overcome before we can go all out nuclear.

Also when you say nuclear people immediately associate it with meltdown bomb chernobyl etc. I don't think its an accurate portrayal of the risks but you know those things are hard to shake from the public. We've talked about this before, I think.

[LittlePound]

the answer is obvious....dump it in space...

[Amit]

Originally Posted by LittlePound

the answer is obvious....dump it in space...

If you're being serious, there have been plenty of studies done on the dangers of all the crap we have in orbit already.

[LittlePound]

no, i was being sarcastic. That would be completely stupid.

[Atomic Rain]

Nuclear power is our friend, and at the moment the benefits outweigh thie disadvantages; global warming has gone so far already, and nuclear is more carbon neutral than they are by a long way.

However, once we've got fusion going we'll be all set.

[PerpetualBurn]

That would be completely stupid.

Seemed a lot like your "serious" posts then.

[YouGottaBeCrazy]

Originally Posted by Atman

If you're being serious, there have been plenty of studies done on the dangers of all the crap we have in orbit already.

links?

[tumples]

people who are anti nuclear here use the argument 'what if a terrorist flies a plane into the station, we'd have a chernobyl!'

am i the only one who thinks this is ridiculous

[Atomic Rain]

Originally Posted by tumples

people who are anti nuclear here use the argument 'what if a terrorist flies a plane into the station, we'd have a chernobyl!'

am i the only one who thinks this is ridiculous

of course not

especially since nuclear plants are easily plane proof

They're designed to keep a nuclear explosion in and people don't think they can keep a plane out?

Plus unless they want us to have zero nuclear power plants then having 1 and having 100 gives just as much risk of terrorist attack, since terrorists will PICK ONE

[Riva]

Originally Posted by AKid2

One of the most outstanding issues surrounding nuclear power is the waste. Nobody wants to deal with it. The spent fuel will remain radioactive for millions of years. It's almost impossible to gurantee a container can safely contain the fuel for such a period of time. It could leak into water, contaminate the ground etc etc. In America, we're not too dependent on nuclear power and we're really having a problem dealing with what relatively little leftovers we've produced. So this'll have to be overcome before we can go all out nuclear.

Just some information from my lecture notes:

Nuclear Waste Disposal

One of the major problems with the disposal of radioactive waste is that some of the radioactive elements, or radionuclides, have very long half lives. This means that the deposits must either be kept in isolation from the hydrosphere and biosphere a very long time until its radiation has dissipated to a safe level, or that release from the disposal site extremely slow, such that the levels of radioactivity are not greatly above natural background levels.

The main components of a radioactive waste disposal site are the waste, the canisters that contain the waste, the filling and lining of the tunnels in which the waste is buried and the rocks in which the repository is built. The entire site should remain intact until it is uncovered by the slow processes of erosion. The main threat is water, which will almost inevitably flow through the repository and breach its defensive barriers.

The rate at which radionuclides escape depends on how quickly the water reaches them, how fast they dissolve and how much they interact with their surroundings, a process known as sorption. The surrounding rock should have low permeability, so that water movement through cracks, fissures and pores is very slow. The large volume of rock compared to the small quantities of waste means that sorption can be an important factor in controlling the rate of escape.

Natural analogues of nuclear waste disposal sites.

Due to the immensity of geological processes, particularly time, experiments that simulate geological processes may not valid, or at least, not able to be tested. To overcome this problem, analogues are sought that mimic known conditions over long time scales. The Oklo natural reactor sites is an example of such an analogue for a repository, although its original environment, being deeply buried and with free circulation of water, is quite different from the environments being sought for the disposal of spent fuel.

Laboratory experiments on corrosion over months or years, provide data for models of corrosion lasting thousands of years. These models can be tested against achaeological artefacts. Metal artefacts, such as cannons and armour, can indicate how metal canisters could corrode. Volcanic glass may mimic glasses in which waste is stored. Thick clay deposits simulate the lining of tunnels and shafts, and so on.

Roman nails

In the year 86 AD, the departing Roman army buried 12 tonnes of iron nails at a fort in Scotland. Archaeologists have recovered 875,000 nails from the site. Although the nails in the outermost few centimetres were heavily corroded, those inside were almost intact. It could therefore be reasonably expected that massive steel containers up to 25 cm thick, in deep repositories, should last well over 2000 years.

The Kronan

In 1676, the Swedish warship Kronan sank in the Baltic Sea. Archaeologists recovered a bronze cannon, made of more than 95% copper. The muds that surrounded the cannon excluded oxygen, and, based on the average loss of copper from the cannon in this anaerobic environment over the past 300 years, it was calculated that a leyer 5 cm thick would take a million years to corrode. Furthermore, the copper that leached from the cannon had only migrated about 4 cm, showing the very low mobility of metals in clay rich environments.

Loch Lomond

Between 5400 and 6900 years ago, a layer of silty clay was deposited in Loch Lomond, Scotland, when the loch was connected to the sea. This marine layer differs from the freshwater deposits above and below it, containing higher levels of uranium, radium, iodine and bromine. The deposits have been undisturbed since their formation. Iodine is a key element in assessing the safety of a disposal method, as iodine-129 appears to move freely in groundwater and is common in radioactive waste. In the Loch Lomond marine bed, however, iodine and bromine appear to have stayed where they were originally deposited, probably due to the interaction with carbon in the organic matter in the mud.

Jordan

The chemistry within waste repository sites can be complicated, due to the variety of materials in the wastes and barriers. Even so, analogues can often be found for diverse chemistries. A repository of waste encapsulated in bitumen and surounded by concrete, for example, would be highly alkaline. In Jordon, however, there are spring waters that percolate through limestones that contain bitumen. The springs have a pH of over 12.5. Research on these springs could show how elements move through analogous repositories.

Morro de Ferro

Morro de Ferro (Iron Hill) is one of the most naturally radioactive places on Earth. At the head of a small valley drained by a stream, there is an ore body containing 30,000 tonnes of thorium and its daughter products such as radium and rare-earth elements. Gamma radiation levels at the surface are so high that someone living there would receive an annual dose of 250 mSv. The average worldwide annual gamma radiation dose is 0.46 mSv. Plants have absorbed so much radium-228 that they produce images when placed on photographic film. The site allows researchers to model the release and migration of thorium and radium in groundwater.

Thorium is sometimes used as an analogue for plutonium when dissolved in water, as they are in the same section of the periodic table, the actinide series, and their ions behave in similar ways. It has been found that the mobilisation of thorium from the deposit is only one part per 1000 million per year. If thorium is a realistic analogue of plutonium, then the concentration of plutonium in the streams draining this highly weathered radioactive hotspot would be less than that permissable by the US government for drinking water by a factor of 20.

Options for permanent disposal sites

High level radioactive waste is currently stored in temporary storage facilities.

The technology for packaging the wastes so that they pose no current hazard is relatively straightforward. The difficulty lies both in being adequately confident that future generations are well protected and in making the political decision on how and where to proceed with waste storage. Permanent but potentially retrievable storage in deep stable geologic formations seems the best.

In the U.S., the major facility planned for the long term storage of high level nuclear waste is a Yucca Mountains in Nevada. So much time, money and effort has gone into proving that the area is safe, that it is perceived as being a real deterrent in producing an official report that is negative. This also means that further positive reports about the region are taken as being somewhat less reliable than they otherwise may be.

A $2 billion repository built in underground salt caverns near Carlsbad, New Mexico, is designed to store radioactive waste from the manufacture of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. This repository, located 655 m underground, is designed to slowly collapse and encapsulate the plutonium-contaminated waste in the salt beds. The repository began receiving radioactive waste shipments in April 1999. Environmentalists plan to file a lawsuit to close the Carlsbad repository.

In Australia, the Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments have agreed that a national repository is the best way of safely managing Australia's small quantity of low level and short-lived intermediate level radioactive waste.

To identify a suitable region in which a National Radioactive Waste Repository could be located, the Bureau of Resource Sciences has undertaken a rigorous evaluation of the Australian continent against a set of technical and social criteria.

The central north region in South Australia has been selected for further investigation from eight previously identified regions. Comparatively, the region contains the largest area of land considered suitable for a repository site.

[tumples]

couldnt they make a site in the desert, i mean, thats got hardly any moisture in it at all, and if running water is one of the main problems, then it eliminates that

[coheneran]

Originally Posted by tumples

couldnt they make a site in the desert, i mean, thats got hardly any moisture in it at all, and if running water is one of the main problems, then it eliminates that

We have no right to contaminate deserts (or mountains or oceans or space) with our waste. The world-wide discussion about where to get energy after oil and gas deposits run out is fundamentally flawed. What we should be doing is minimizing our consumption, not trying to find something which will allow us to continue with the dangerous levels of waste we already produce.

[Kragen]

Originally Posted by AKid2

Also when you say nuclear people immediately associate it with meltdown bomb chernobyl etc. I don't think its an accurate portrayal of the risks but you know those things are hard to shake from the public. We've talked about this before, I think.

It always makes me laugh in films when someone blames a nuclear explosion from a nuclear weapon on an accident at a nuclear power plant :P

[Atomic Rain]

Originally Posted by coheneran

We have no right to contaminate deserts (or mountains or oceans or space) with our waste. The world-wide discussion about where to get energy after oil and gas deposits run out is fundamentally flawed. What we should be doing is minimizing our consumption, not trying to find something which will allow us to continue with the dangerous levels of waste we already produce.

Quick! get off the internet!

Your computer is using literally watts of power RIGHT NOW!

[Amit]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/solarsystem/earth/spacejunk.shtml

[Chrysostom]

I see no problem with using nuclear power as long as the problem of waste disposal is adequaltely solved beforehand. Hell, nuclear power might as well be used for something other than blowing Asians up.

[coheneran]

Originally Posted by Atomic Rain

Quick! get off the internet!

Your computer is using literally watts of power RIGHT NOW!

No smartarse, I was referring to industry, which creates more pollution and uses more energy than individual users.

[AKid2]

Originally Posted by coheneran

No smartarse, I was referring to industry, which creates more pollution and uses more energy than individual users.

This is by no means a personal attack, but this sort of thing is exactly why it'll be very difficult to decrease energy consumption: if everyone took the 'its not me its you' stance, we'd make zero progress in the conservation department.

Also, decreasing energy use in the home is the first step to a less consumptive society. Industry consumes a ton of energy only because we ask them to with our wants etc. You can't just ask industry to slow down for the sake of the environment when peoples' demands stay the same, they'll be bankrupt within a week's time. Sure you can make efficiency arguments but that only goes so far. Leading a less consumptive life is the first step to a less consumptive society. (duh)

But you are right really. The power debate treats the symptom not the cause.