Chernobyl - 20 years later...and nuclear power

[Makalakumu]

On April 26th, the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl was compromised and the subsequent fires spread radiation across the world. In Belarus, directly downwind, the effects were recorded in a recent documentary...

WARNING GRAPHIC PHOTOS

These birth defects and cancers were a direct result of the radiation. Please take a moment to remember the victims of this disaster and then contemplate the consequences of nuclear power.

This, according to the new energy policy in this country, is going to become widely used in the future...despite the risks. I think putting faces to the risks is important.

upnorthkyosa

PS - Mods, if this belongs in the premium club, feel free to move it.

 

[beau_safken]

...Damn...That's insane. I wish I could look at them more but opened just for a second and didn't feel like looking anymore(at work). That is truly sad...

 

[elder999]

Putting the very real hazards of nuclear power aside for a moment, it's important to emphasize that the Chernobyl incident is of a type that would be-with the exception of the tragi-comedy of operations and administrative decisions that led to it-almost exclusive to that type of reactor-a type of design which has never been utilized commercially om the U.S., nor would it ever be. Indeed, the chief reason for utilizing such a design is the ease with which weapons grade material can be extracted from its fuel, and one could almost think of electrical production as a byproduct.

In short, while there are many reasons to argue against the development of nuclear power in the U.S., "Chernobyl" type incidents are not one of them.

 

[Makalakumu]

In short, while there are many reasons to argue against the development of nuclear power in the U.S., "Chernobyl" type incidents are not one of them.

Very true. "Chernobyl incidents" are something we really should worry about. Other types of incidents could happen, though, depending on design. The effects from chernobyl could be caused by some of these "other" incidents.

And then there is Yucca Mountain. Don't get me started...

 

[elder999]

. The effects from chernobyl could be caused by some of these "other" incidents.

Without going into too much detail about "whys" and "why nots," most probably not.

And then there is Yucca Mountain. Don't get me started...

Having been there several times (ugh!) I mostly have to agree with you-however, being completely familiar with the problem, I have to say that it beats most of the current ways of handling things, hands down......

 

[Marginal]

This, according to the new energy policy in this country, is going to become widely used in the future...despite the risks. I think putting faces to the risks is important.

Quite a few European nations use nuclear power extensively. How many meltdowns hace occured over there? Chernobyls? Three Mile Islands? A lot of the fears surrounding nuclear power aren't well grounded.

 

[Henderson]

I remember living throught the Three Mile Island scare when I was a kid. Currently, I live less than 60 miles from TMI, and work about 15 miles from the Berwick,PA nuclear plant.

 

[Makalakumu]

Quite a few European nations use nuclear power extensively. How many meltdowns hace occured over there? Chernobyls? Three Mile Islands? A lot of the fears surrounding nuclear power aren't well grounded.

All it takes is one...

 

[Marginal]

All it takes is one...

That's not an especially rational response.

 

[Makalakumu]

That's not an especially rational response.

When you consider that the effects of "an incident" last "forever", it makes perfect sense.

As it stands now, our current nuke plants are dinosaurs. They are so terribly unclean that it is shameful to keep them running. Upgrading them would be a good thing, IMO. New technology produces much less waste and it is much less dangerous.

The problem is that it also produces heaps of fissible also. It's not like we have that already, but it certainly would allow for some serious proliferation issues...

Elder999 what do you think? You've got the inside track on this stuff...

 

[ginshun]

What exactly is your plan to power our nation?

Its easy to say oil is bad, and coal is bad, and nuclear is bad, and natural gas is bad, and blah blah blah.

What are the alternatives out there that are actaully practical? Do you plan on running all the power plants in the country using wind or hydro?


I'm more than willing to use solar for my power needs. When is the government (or whoever) going to write me a check for 50 G's to outfit my house? Not anytime soon I am betting.

 

[Makalakumu]

What exactly is your plan to power our nation?

Well, if it were up to me, I'd do every possible thing that we could do to conserve power and then I'd research renewables and get them online.

 

[elder999]

When you consider that the effects of "an incident" last "forever", it makes perfect sense.

As it stands now, our current nuke plants are dinosaurs. They are so terribly unclean that it is shameful to keep them running. Upgrading them would be a good thing, IMO. New technology produces much less waste and it is much less dangerous.

The problem is that it also produces heaps of fissible also. It's not like we have that already, but it certainly would allow for some serious proliferation issues...

Elder999 what do you think? You've got the inside track on this stuff...

The development of the nuclear power industry in this country is really fascinating: the utilities had to be dragged kicking and screaming into it by the government, and it became one of the best examples of what's wrong with free-enterprise (not saying that "free enterprise is wrong," just that this is one of its shortcomings...). Each utility has, ocer the course of the years, implemented a variety of designs from a variety of companies with a wide variety of vendors building them, resulting in plants that range from things that never should ahve been built to things that stand out as exemplars of the technology. In places like France, where the power industry is nationalized, they have a central training, one design and one company systemt that allows for far fewer mistakes and with a realistic profit margin. Here, that kind of thing isn't exactly possible, and it led to differing standards in training, design, operations, construction and implementation.

In what is our inevitable nuclear future (and there it is, deal with it or go back to burning tallow for light and wood for warmth) the best possible solution would be the licensing of a single design, limited to less than 700mw, pressurized water, with centralized training and one company construction to an over-engineered standard.

Three Mile Island, believe it or not, not only stands out as an example of what was wrong with the industry: weirdo design, inadequate training, inadequate procedural guidance for operations, but what was right about it. If the operators at Three Mile Island had been asleep when the incident began and kept their hands off the controls for the next six hours, we wouldn't all know what was meant when we said "Three Mile Island," because the engineered controls worked, and the operators defeated them, just as at Chrenobyl-the only difference being that Three Mile Island has a true containment building, so off site releases were minimized, while at Chrenobyl, which was basically in a building that was no moere sophisticated than my barn, off site releases resulted in permanently contaminated pasture as far away as England.

Believe it or not, it's entirely possible, and has been for close to twenty years, to build an emissions free coal burning power plant, it just hasn't become profitable or necessary to do so...dittto oil and natural gas.....

 

[Makalakumu]

In what is our inevitable nuclear future (and there it is, deal with it or go back to burning tallow for light and wood for warmth) the best possible solution would be the licensing of a single design, limited to less than 700mw, pressurized water, with centralized training and one company construction to an over-engineered standard.

I'm not so sure. When you think about the vast amounts of energy that our national infrastructure demands and the gargantuan amounts of energy our economy demands and the staggering amounts required to get food on our tables, there would have to be nuke plants everywhere. This, for one thing will be expensive as hell. And then it bumps up against NIMBY...big time. While I agree that in some ways nuclear power makes some sense, I do not think it is the "cure all" that it is being hyped.

Believe it or not, it's entirely possible, and has been for close to twenty years, to build an emissions free coal burning power plant, it just hasn't become profitable or necessary to do so...dittto oil and natural gas.....

Emission free? Depends on what is classified as emission. CO^2 is an emission according to some standards...

Of course this doesn't solve the problem regarding the non-renewable nature of these fuels.

 

[elder999]

I'm not so sure. When you think about the vast amounts of energy that our national infrastructure demands and the gargantuan amounts of energy our economy demands and the staggering amounts required to get food on our tables, there would have to be nuke plants everywhere. This, for one thing will be expensive as hell. And then it bumps up against NIMBY...big time. While I agree that in some ways nuclear power makes some sense, I do not think it is the "cure all" that it is being hyped.



Emission free? Depends on what is classified as emission. CO^2 is an emission according to some standards...

Of course this doesn't solve the problem regarding the non-renewable nature of these fuels.

I didn't say that they were a cure-all, merely that they're inevitable. While siting them everywhere simply isn't possible,we're going to see them cropping up near municipalities all around the country in the next 20 years, NIMBY be damned. New designs and already streamlined licensing procedures are going to make it cheaper to build them and less costly to run them, so it's only a matter of time-once the first one comes on line, the other utilities will follow suit, especially if the country repeals laws preventing fuel recycling....

Funnily enough, they're truly emission free, as long as they don't break.
..........and yes, emission free coal plants, see here .

As for "renewable" energy, it's hardly a profitable proposition for utilities-with the exception of wind, and possibly tidal generation. Like these two, solar generation is also limited by the climate/geography, so none of them have appeal to the mind set of most utilities. SUre, outfits like Xcel will exploit wind energy because it's bountiful in their areas of operation, and some people will try to build solar pilot plants in places like New Mexico and Arizona, but solar energy isn't going to make electricity for large scale production in your neck of the woods any time soon, though you will probably see nuke plants being built in "your back yard"....sorry.

 

[Korppi76]

The Chernobyl was huge disaster and spoiled lot of land. It also killed 50 persons and would propably kill upto 4000 persons who got too much radiation.
But then again nuclear power is only usable option if we want to lower usage of fossil fuels.
Wind, Solar, thermal etc are not yet efficient enough maybe in future but not yet.

 

[Makalakumu]

I didn't say that they were a cure-all, merely that they're inevitable. While siting them everywhere simply isn't possible,we're going to see them cropping up near municipalities all around the country in the next 20 years, NIMBY be damned. New designs and already streamlined licensing procedures are going to make it cheaper to build them and less costly to run them, so it's only a matter of time-once the first one comes on line, the other utilities will follow suit, especially if the country repeals laws preventing fuel recycling....

Weren't those laws put in place because of the fear of proliferation? That is really silly, when one thinks about it, we've already got the biggest stock of nukes on the planet...

Funnily enough, they're truly emission free, as long as they don't break...........and yes, emission free coal plants, see here .

Ah, yes, carbon sequestration. The major hurdles, getting it out of the emission column and putting it somewhere. The main strategies thus far include pumping the gas deep into the earth, dumping it into the oceans and hoping phytoplankton take it up in a bloom, "snowing" it out with liquid nitrogen, and/or converting the CO^2 to CaCO^3 and contructing vast beds of limestone. Heh, we could call them homostrata... The point is that gigatons of this stuff have got to be isolated and put somewhere.

As for "renewable" energy, it's hardly a profitable proposition for utilities-with the exception of wind, and possibly tidal generation. Like these two, solar generation is also limited by the climate/geography, so none of them have appeal to the mind set of most utilities. SUre, outfits like Xcel will exploit wind energy because it's bountiful in their areas of operation, and some people will try to build solar pilot plants in places like New Mexico and Arizona, but solar energy isn't going to make electricity for large scale production in your neck of the woods any time soon, though you will probably see nuke plants being built in "your back yard"....sorry.

It isn't possible to use renewables unless we start some measures to conserve energy. We need to reduce our usage first. Secondly, the centralized power grid scheme (that puts generation of power into the hands of a few) doesn't mesh well with alternatives because of the scales involved. A decentralized system would do it much better. If individuals were more responsible for generating their own electricity, then the system grows exponentially...and it becomes very economical, in fact.

 

[elder999]

..... the centralized power grid scheme (that puts generation of power into the hands of a few) doesn't mesh well with alternatives because of the scales involved. A decentralized system would do it much better. If individuals were more responsible for generating their own electricity, then the system grows exponentially...and it becomes very economical, in fact.

There's no profit in that scheme for utilities at all. I've done quite a bit in this direction myself, and I can say that while it is economical, the initial outlays-even for a person of my expertise and resources-are out of the reach of most of the middle class.

 

[Makalakumu]

There's no profit in that scheme for utilities at all. I've done quite a bit in this direction myself, and I can say that while it is economical, the initial outlays-even for a person of my expertise and resources-are out of the reach of most of the middle class.

I think that if the government subsidized alternatives as much as they do non-renawables, a scheme like that would become much more economical.

Also, I think that, as we contemplate our crappy delivery systems and all of the infrastructure that it would take to shore it up...Think Blackout 2004...it just makes more sense. With a decentralized grid where power is generated at many points, it is nearly impossible for it to fail on a massive scale. And from a Homeland Security standpoint, decentralized grid is well protected from attack.

Anyway, I've seen some pretty interesting shemes for alternatives that could make them very economical in the future. For instance, the UofM is working photovoltaic paint that could be applied to rooftops and other flat surfaces that just sit in the sun.

And then there are cool little gadgets like the one being worked at the University of Alberta...


It takes advantage of the electrostatic moments of water molecules by rushing them through micropores in a ceramic filter. Apparently, a syringe of water forced through this filter is enough to light a small light bulb. It's a pretty good amount of electricity from something so simple and so clean.

My mind is already buzzing with uses for this technology. Small batteries powered by pressurized water for things like calculators, cell phones and watches are one example. Mass generation of electricity is another. It will not work in giant powerplants with running water going through them. The filter would be too big and inefficiant. On a smaller scale though, perhaps on a household scale, that is a different story. If every household in the US had a small cistern, ceramic micropore filter, and a release valve to let water in your house when the filter clogged, every time you used water in your house, you'd be generating electricity.

There is actually alot of things that could be done to decentralize power generation and I think our society would be better off for it. Right now, the system we have is stupid, bloated and corrupt. The energy companies are nothing but virtual clones of Enron and market manipulation via monopoly happens all of the time. It's not surprising, anytime that much power is put into the hands of the few, the end result is negative.

The funny thing is that Thomas Edison predicted this very thing would happen. It was one of the reasons why he argued for a DC based electrical system. Generation of power would have been forced to be local by the physics behind it. It would have naturally led to a decentralized power system. The main reason why Westinghouse "stole" Tesla's AC power schemes was to hatch the money grubbing schemes we see now. Physics be damned! That was all about control!

 

[elder999]

I think that if the government subsidized alternatives as much as they do non-renawables, a scheme like that would become much more economical.

Governments at the state and federal level offer a variety of subsidies for homeowners who wish to equip themselves with renewable energy resources, and homeowners can actually make a profit with their surplus-the utilities have to buy it from them if it’s possible (as in, the homeowner isn’t completely off-grid).

It is not the government’s job to heat and light my home, though; it is my job.

Also, I think that, as we contemplate our crappy delivery systems and all of the infrastructure that it would take to shore it up...Think Blackout 2004...it just makes more sense. With a decentralized grid where power is generated at many points, it is nearly impossible for it to fail on a massive scale. And from a Homeland Security standpoint, decentralized grid is well protected from attack.

Anyone who lives someplace like Chugach, Alaska, or on various islands in the South Pacific can tell you that localized grids are less reliable, and have no back-up capability. The failure of a decentralized grid could easwily cause people on life-support to die.

Anyway, I've seen some pretty interesting shemes for alternatives that could make them very economical in the future. For instance, the UofM is working photovoltaic paint that could be applied to rooftops and other flat surfaces that just sit in the sun.

And then there are cool little gadgets like the one being worked at the University of Alberta...


It takes advantage of the electrostatic moments of water molecules by rushing them through micropores in a ceramic filter. Apparently, a syringe of water forced through this filter is enough to light a small light bulb. It's a pretty good amount of electricity from something so simple and so clean.

My mind is already buzzing with uses for this technology. Small batteries powered by pressurized water for things like calculators, cell phones and watches are one example. Mass generation of electricity is another. It will not work in giant powerplants with running water going through them. The filter would be too big and inefficiant. On a smaller scale though, perhaps on a household scale, that is a different story. If every household in the US had a small cistern, ceramic micropore filter, and a release valve to let water in your house when the filter clogged, every time you used water in your house, you'd be generating electricity.

Yeah, I know Dan Kwok-he’s thinking it could be another form of hydropower with large bodies of water, like the Great Lakes….

The funny thing is that Thomas Edison predicted this very thing would happen. It was one of the reasons why he argued for a DC based electrical system. Generation of power would have been forced to be local by the physics behind it. It would have naturally led to a decentralized power system. The main reason why Westinghouse "stole" Tesla's AC power schemes was to hatch the money grubbing schemes we see now. Physics be damned! That was all about control!

Actually, it neither would have been forced to be local, nor was that the reason that Edison argued against it. Capacitor banks would have been utilized for a centralized DC system, with local generation coupled to a large distribution grid much like the one we have now, and Edison was chiefly against AC because it wasn’t his idea- what he predicted, and what you’re against, would have come to pass in either instance because of the monopoly inherent in the patent system. As for the corruption of the system, there are places in this country that weren’t wired for electricity until the 30’s and 40’s, and there are others that have been wired since, well, since Edison. The fact that the grid system itself has become so decentralized has led to failing infrastructure because utilities don’t want to pay to restore it, and neither does the government. Sooner or later, someone is going to have to bite the bullet and pay for it, and until they do we’ll continue to experience the problems inherent in the system…

Back on topic, though, one sure way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and technological contributions to global warming, while also reducing our dependence on oil is to build more nuclear power plants.