Nuclear Energy
Hawkeye
Join Date: 2002-10-31 Member: 1855Members
Join Date: 2002-10-31 Member: 1855Members
in Discussions
<div class="IPBDescription">Good source of power?</div> Sort of a sideshoot off of the Human Population thread in regards to forms of energy. Nuclear energy.. is it a good source of power?
People don't seem to realize what a tremendous source of power nuclear energy can be. It is powerful, it is unlimited (okay, for several million years only), it can power many cities, and it can be put anywhere.
However the problems include:
Terrorist targets - Agreed. Higher security is a must, and I believe measures should be taken to place the core in a bunker, making it impossible to touch without the right authority. Plus by keeping it underground, if worst comes to worst, hey at least it will be contained.
Waste product - Anything used to cool off the core must eventually be released. So that product is heavily radiated and dangerous to the environment. I think they need to do research on re-useable ways to cool off the core.
Chance of meltdown - Common misconception. It has happened before, yes, but now they have failsafes for failsafes for saveguards against problems. The computer in addition to the failsafes, has safety measures that will be done automatically if anything should happen to anyone monitoring in the control towers. It is self-sufficient, and does not need human interaction, though of course it is allowed to be overriden.
Lack of faith - Most people despise the prospects of nuclear power because of the horror stories heard of meltdowns. They are worried about something they cannot see, and so it makes people panick and rather go without power than have to worry about the chance of a meltdown. It is absurd, and the people should be re-educated about the capabilities of computers nowadays. It is a wonder the astronauts ever made it to the moon. They literally flew a tube into space and back. Nowadays, there are so many computers, these things can fly themselves. Nuclear power plants are no different.
What do you think?
People don't seem to realize what a tremendous source of power nuclear energy can be. It is powerful, it is unlimited (okay, for several million years only), it can power many cities, and it can be put anywhere.
However the problems include:
Terrorist targets - Agreed. Higher security is a must, and I believe measures should be taken to place the core in a bunker, making it impossible to touch without the right authority. Plus by keeping it underground, if worst comes to worst, hey at least it will be contained.
Waste product - Anything used to cool off the core must eventually be released. So that product is heavily radiated and dangerous to the environment. I think they need to do research on re-useable ways to cool off the core.
Chance of meltdown - Common misconception. It has happened before, yes, but now they have failsafes for failsafes for saveguards against problems. The computer in addition to the failsafes, has safety measures that will be done automatically if anything should happen to anyone monitoring in the control towers. It is self-sufficient, and does not need human interaction, though of course it is allowed to be overriden.
Lack of faith - Most people despise the prospects of nuclear power because of the horror stories heard of meltdowns. They are worried about something they cannot see, and so it makes people panick and rather go without power than have to worry about the chance of a meltdown. It is absurd, and the people should be re-educated about the capabilities of computers nowadays. It is a wonder the astronauts ever made it to the moon. They literally flew a tube into space and back. Nowadays, there are so many computers, these things can fly themselves. Nuclear power plants are no different.
What do you think?
Comments
<a href='http://www.world-nuclear.org/sym/2001/delfrari.htm' target='_blank'>http://www.world-nuclear.org/sym/2001/delfrari.htm</a>
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Known world reserves of uranium are more than adequate to satisfy reactor requirements to well beyond 2020, the period covered by this report. The WNA has not conducted its own survey of reserves since 1997. The 1999 joint OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "Red Book" indicates reserves of over 1.2 million tU recoverable at less than US $40 per kg U and over 3 million tU at less than US $80 per kgU. At current rates of consumption, assuming constant secondary supplies, this would represent nearly 100 years' supply. Further, based on forecasted requirements over the next 20 years of between 60 000 to 80 000 tonnes per year, this represents over 40 years of supply. There has been little exploration in recent years. Experience in other commodities would suggest that spending on exploration will lead to the discovery of additional reserves.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It would seem that proponents of nuclear energy favor it because it can meet demand for a lot of power while we transfer to truly renewable sources of energy.
These contrast to fusion energy, which <i>will</i> have lifetime supplies measured in thousands and millions of years, since they use deuterium, a heavy form of hydrogen found in trace amounts in the world's oceans. Fusion processes should be able to extract this fuel and leave a lot of energy left over for our use. Like a lot of people say though, hot fusion is a huge engineering and scientific problem - working with plasma, containment, and making the process efficient is horribly expensive and difficult. Current reactors almost break even in energy input to output though. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
As for cold fusion - I don't think that's really a reputable field of study at the moment. It seems a lot of reputations have been ruined by it, and a lot of false hopes remain. Current theory doesn't allow for fusion to occur at room temperature, and of couse the theory could be wrong on that. But there hasn't been a convincing experiment conducted so far to suggest otherwise.
They are both equally controversial. Anything associated with radiation is automatically feared as a power source.
Nuclear fusion won't be an avaible source anytime soon... it's pretty dangerous also , uncontrollable core would cause a nuclear explosion , so power plants would have to be built deep underground : they'd be holding a miniature star , and stars don't have a particulary smooth and regular behavior... even when containment is affordable , the fusion reactors would be kept to a minimal size. Again , the infrastructure is going to be expensive.
Nuclear energy brings unneeded worries , we should stick to the unlimited energy provided by solar pannels. They aren't cost effective right now , but if bigger quantities were ordered they would be cheap enough once processed en masse. Orbital pannels sending the collected energy through microwaves will probably suffice our needs.
That reminds me of this time a group of acuaintances and I debated wether or not a giant guass gun hurling barrels of toxic waste into space would consume more energy than was produced in the process of making said waste. Yeah, I'm a real geek sometimes.
...but what your describing sounds exactly like hot fusion, they heat it to a plasma by various means and use magnets to compress the plasma and keep it away from the walls of the torus...
They can't get cold fusion, so they are trying to find out ways to make hot fusion work.
I don't think that there is that much of a concern for a terrorist attack on the core of the structure, since it is really reinforced. It would take a lot to break it. I think even in a lrage explosion the core would remain intact in Western-style reactors.
And it is nearly a renewable resource. They can use breeder reactors to refine fuel from highly available, originally poorly fissionable materials. Plus, the oceans are full of Uranium. I've heard that they can merely sift it out of the ocean water!
yes I've heard about this to, but haven't found anything to read on the topic yet. :-\
<a href='http://www.nucleartourist.com/' target='_blank'>http://www.nucleartourist.com/</a>
A wide analysis of the process and cases for and against the use of Nuclear Power.
Cold fusion is actually the form of fusion they're developing to use as a power source. Hot fusion is at far higher temperatures and a possible source of propulsion for spacecraft.
The type your going on about does 'occur' at room temperatures. I use occur loosely, as theres a great deal of doubt as to why the perculiar results happened. The low temp is the reason its being called 'cold fusion', and its kinda stuck.
Most of this is half remembered from New Scientist articles, so don't quote me on it.
The reason why fusion hasn't been available yet is that it is terribly inefficient due to the power requirements of the magnetic fields. They're researching different magnetic field shapes to improve efficiency but as far as I know they've only managed to attain positive energy output a few times and only few a few seconds at best.
The problem I feel with nuclear power is that people have the misconception that meltdown=huge nuclear explosion and NIMBY syndrome (Not In My Back Yard). Nuclear power is incredibly safe and none polluting, and that message is not being actively put across by nuclear organisations. They need to advertise themselves better and try and improve the public's opinion.
I work at a nuclear plant in canada. The concrete around the reactors is so thick a 747 could hit it and the concrete would be left standing. There are a gazillion failsafes.... including, but certainly only one of maybe 20 different failsafes:
Electromagnets on the roof of the reactors, holding rods which, if dropped in the heavy water, stop the reaction. Terrorists mission would fail if they cut power to the building.
There are also armed guards with mp5's and body armor patrolling the area.
The place I work at has eight reactors..... It only takes ONE flatbed full of fuel to fuel each reactor. compare that to the amount of fossil fuel it would take to produce the same energy.
And again, If one flatbed of fuel goes in... Thats only one flatbed full of waste. YES if it escapes it will cause more environmental damage, but so much money, care and emphasis is put on safe handling of nuclear waste, that it would never happen to escape.
Wind and solar power are absolutely useless, beyond remote or portable power... they cost way to much and produce little energy.. and solar panels have a low lifespan, and the chemicals in them are very nasty for the environment too...
Nuclear is definately the future, Its just too clean, powerful, and efficient to be beaten by anything else
I was once hot on the idea of orbital solar arrays; harness unlimited power with multispectrum panels to catch the sun's power on all wavelengths... until you figured the actual complexity of sending up a panel farm large enough to supply a large-scale demand, the logistics of maintaining it, transferring energy back to the earth (which in itself is a nightmare, because with that kind of microwave beam, you need a COMPLETELY unobstructed line-of-sight to a reciever station. And even with that, you have the slim chance that a beam misses the reciever... SimCity2000 would be the least of your concerns), and what to do with it in the event of a solar flare, micrometeor storm, or other disturbance.
Hydroelectric power sounds good, but the sheer construction costs behind building these dams make even the largest distributors balk. Fossil fuels already have their end in sight, and natural gas isn't going to be around for much longer after that.
I'm convinced that until we harness gravitational energy, fusion's gonna be what provides your power for a good while. Nuclear power is a must if we're going to survive past the fossil days, and even that won't last for many more decades. I heard somewhere that we've made numerous breakthroughs in superconductors, insulative materials, and field technology; it's just a matter of time before we get a Tokamak online that produces more power than it uses.
Really? I haven't seen that kind of security at any American plants. Crazy stuff esp. with the tight gun control laws Canada has. You would think there would be less of a threat.
Best example of this is hydropower. What is gravitational power?
If there is any kind of movement for clean power, I would imagine it would be for tidal or wind energy. They are already doing wonderful things with wind generation, though of course it is only viable in select locations.
Nuclear reactors take the isotope of uranium with atomic weight 235 (henceforth referred to as U-235) and fission it to produce power. In the case of a breeder reactor (referred to somewhere in this thread previously), U-238 is also put in; the idea is to make U-238 capture slow neutrons from U-235 to transform it into plutonium (Pu-239), which is also fissionable and can be used as reactor fuel. Thus this reactor makes fuel while it operates. (In case you ask, this is NOT a perpetual-motion machine etc. etc., because once you fission Pu-239 it's gone; you can't make a Pu-239/U-238 complete cycle).
Nuclear reactors (usually) three cooling loops. The first loop, which actually comes into contact with the nuclear fuel, is completely self-contained. This loop is used to heat a second loop, also self-contained, to produce steam to drive power turbines. The third loop is the one where they take outside water to cool down the second loop. Thus the discharged water is separated by two degrees from actual radioactive material; the main worry isn't radiation, but heat pollution.
Per wat/megawatt, nuclear reactors actually produce LESS radiation than conventional fossil-fuel reactors; radioactive C-14 (ever heard of carbon dating?) is released when you burn stuff.....
Dammit I wish this was slashdot, then I could karma-wh0re...
<a href='http://www.spiritofmaat.com/announce/newoil.htm' target='_blank'>http://www.spiritofmaat.com/announce/newoil.htm</a>
originally available at discover.com, but they make you register to read it now.
So here's a link right to Changing World Technologies talking about it...
<a href='http://www.changingworldtech.com/techfr.htm' target='_blank'>http://www.changingworldtech.com/techfr.htm</a>
Due to hippies, I fear that fission will never be as widespread as it should be. We're gonna be sitting around for a while in our current state and then fusion will take over.
We do that all the time, its called "orbit", when an object is traveling at a velocity such that its rate of descent is equal to the rate at which the earth's surface is curving way from them, that object is "in orbit". How could one use this to generate power? Got me.
We do that all the time, its called "orbit", when an object is traveling at a velocity such that its rate of descent is equal to the rate at which the earth's surface is curving way from them, that object is "in orbit". How could one use this to generate power? Got me. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's impossible to harness.
Even the practical example of Dam's is really only harnessing the end of a cycle that requires geothermal, tidal, and solar energy to start (clouds don't form on their own you know). Gravity+Water just lends itself to a specific method of harvesting.
Nuclear Plant: 2000 kg of nuclear waste created in 1.5 years which is easily contained.
Coal Plant: Over 350,000 tons of ash would be produced AND over 4 million tons of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides released into the environment.
What's amazing is that people criticized Bush for approving the repository in Yucca Mountain and advocating an increase in the use of Nuclear Power. For a guy with his hands in oil, this would be against his best interests no?
So Bush>Nuclear Power for Hippies? <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif' /><!--endemo-->