Nuclear power
Nuclear power is safe! I spent most of my time in the Navy on a ship with a nuclear reactor! …you’ve been treated for cancer like 4 times. Srsly?
(Barack Obama & John McCain)
picture: Huffingtonpost.com. lol caption: StriderEnder
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BEST. LOL. EVER !!!!!
*masturbates*
thanks lol
Pretty ignorant, really.
Nuclear superstitions are silly.
And regular superstitions aren’t?
*knocks wood*
EP FTW.
(Worked as a Reactor Operator in the Navy for 6 years and in civilian nuclear power for 8 more – total COMBINED occupational exposure for those 14 years was slightly more than you get from ONE CHEST X-RAY. Glow-in-the-dark? Not so much…)
And would you want a nuclear power plant in your town? There is a reason why Long Island has the highest rate of Breast Cancer than anywhere else, and it is probably a combination of the now “CLOSED” Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant and Brookhaven Lab….. Both of which dumped Nuclear and radioactive waste in the ground contaminating the ground water….. So in conclusion, I’d say Obama is a much more cautious LEADER, than McSenile…. Why dump all our money in Nuclear which gives terrorists another target which will take out multiple states with one hit, instead of investing in renewable energy like wind, solar and current??
Come back and see us when you can get a gigawatt per unit, RELIABLY, out of those sources, on a property footprint measuring something less than county-sized…
PS – I lived under 10 miles from the nuclear plant I worked at for 8 years, up until I moved to be with the woman I married this year. I wouldn’t have a particular problem with living close to a nuke plant – well, I wouldn’t care to live close enough to hear the plant PA system or the trucks driving in and out of the site. Wouldn’t want to live next door to a Walmart distribution center for the same reason, the noise. Radiation? Not a huge concern, based on my knowledge of the industry. But then, I didn’t get MY information about the nuclear industry from watching “The Simpsons”.
“…Nuclear which gives terrorists another target which will take out multiple states with one hit…” – Seriously? You ARE aware that the containment domes all commercial nuclear power reactors are built inside of can withstand a direct hit from pretty much anything a terrorist can get their hands on, right? You can crash a loaded 747 into it and you’ll spall some concrete off the 4.5 FOOT thick reinforced wall (and, probably, trip the reactor into automatic shutdown due to seismic vibrations from the impact, or loss of secondary equipment depending on where the impact was). Each piece of REBAR is thicker than my arm – and there are multiple layers of it inside all that concrete. They MIGHT be able to take out auxiliary equipment, and sure they could force a plant shutdown. More than that? Well, sure it’s POSSIBLE – in the same sense that damn near ANYTHING is statistically “possible”. If you let that sort of possibility keep you up at night, well, that sort of continual sleep deprivation CAN’T be good for you. Might be scientifically-useful, I suppose…
Eric is completely right. They have tested the walls that they build around plants by crashing a plane into it. The plane completely disintegrated. As for Chernobyl. Hello people that was in Russia before they had the standards that they have today. If you want to complain about something at least get some background first. Go to You Tube and watch the Penn and Teller Video about Nuclear Power. It’s funny and has valid facts. People that work in Nuclear Power Plants can walk right into the reactor of the plant and be exposed to less radiation then everyone is on one single airplane flight….
…Chernobyl is in Ukraine…
chernobyl ???!
*HAHAHHAHA* That’s EXACTLY what I thought!
I lol’d…
Meh?
A lol of Obama showing his ignorance with regards to nuclear energy? Could it be was have an unintentional anti-Obama LOL?
Just as much ignorance as McCain saying he knows nuclear energy by being on a boat with a reactor.
Either way, I lol’d despite the painful inaccuracies.
Well, he has been closer to nuclear power…
Besides, radiation doesn’t cause cancer, it causes death. They use radiation to cure cancer.
Science fail. In addition to killing you by pretty much burning you in high doses, chronic exposure to lower doses of high-energy radiation can do you in by damaging your chromosomes, which can cause their cells to become cancerous.
Damn, it ate my post. I guess I will see it later today…
Ok, I researched, and I will admit you are right.
Lengthy exposure to radiation can cause cancer, but since it disrupts cell division, a concentrated dose can kill off cancer cells because they multiply quicker than the healthy cells around them.
But for my counter point: What doesn’t cause cancer?
Puppies
kittens
Unless they’ve been smoking and you eat them. Yummm eating kitties…
:masturbates:
Mmmm, smoked kittens!
Lots and lots of things don’t cause cancer.
Actually, prolonged exposure to most everything will give you cancer.
Dying young
… I was unaware that physical proximity to something automatically made you educated in something. Can I get citation of how osmosis education works? Because I have been wasting my time when I could just live by a library and let it seep in.
I’ve found a Illegal Alien whorehouse in my townhouse area across the way from me. I’ve lived near drug addicts. Are you saying that I automatically know how a brothel works or how controlled substances are made because my proximity to such things?
Radiation can cause mutation in cells but that mutation usually is fatal. Yes, radiation is used in cancer.
So to sound so annoyed but seriously now… He has been closer to nuclear power?
Osmosis education.. hmm, okay: Serving with hundreds of Navy personnel who have gone through 2 year navy nuke school. You probably learn a thing or two!
Assuming you ever talked shop with them. What was McCain’s designation again? I’ve spent years around people who know tons about computers, doesn’t mean I can build a computer. I went to college with hundreds of people, doesn’t mean I know their majors.
You’re point?
*Your
He wasn’t claiming to be an engineer. He only claimed to know they are safe. Thats all he ever said on the subject in the debate. Anyone who serves on a nuclear powered vessel knows what is safe and what isn’t, and anyone who didn’t go to nuke school probably picks up even more than that just from talkin with people.
If you are suggesting nuclear reactors ARENT safe, or that a naval aviator wouldn’t know one way or the other, I just have to point out that just isn’t the case.
Wow, you’re dense when you want to be. All I am saying is that proximity does not equal education. Nothing more or less. You would know this if you actually read what I had responded to in the first place instead of going for another attempt to prove your supposed awesomeness. You haven’t even fully grasped what I was responding to, you seem to be completely concerned with being right.
Well, you’re right about nuclear power being safe. If you had read items below or simply read what I was actually debating, you would know that I think nuclear power is safe.
Proximity does help with education. If you have been driving a car for a long time, it’s easier to tell the mechanic what might be going wrong. Sure, you won’t be able to diagnose it yourself, but if you can tell the shop that “it makes noise going into reverse,” it makes troubleshooting much, much easier on the mechanic.
The fact that he’s spent however long in a boat (READ: giant metal box) that’s powered by nuclear fuel does mean that he’s had first hand experience with the safety of nuclear power.
Cancer could be caused by long exposure to radiation, but it could also be coincidental, depending on when he was exposed, for how long and when he first was diagnosed with cancer.
Besides, what doesn’t give you cancer these days?
Ah but you are driving the car. McCain isn’t operating the nuclear reactor. As for nuclear energy being safe, that’s true. It is the waste that is dangerous.
Your initial statement justifying his experience by saying it was closer just set off my inaccuracy radar. People used to live by Chernobyl. Same difference They can’t vouch for safety just by being there.
I am not mechanically inclined and my fiancee’ does the driving in our relationship. I ride in that car all the time but she drives. I can’t vouch for what is exactly wrong in the vehicle despite my proximity.
I guess my initial statement was a little broad, but in the terms of proximity to a nuclear reactor and the possible health effects involved, he has better knowledge than me, because he has played the part of the lab rat in that instance.
I suppose the better analogy would be you testifying to the safety of traveling in a vehicle. You don’t know of all the engineering and systems that go into making that car safe, but you do have first hand experience of traveling safely while in that car, even if you were not driving.
That I can dig. Now I can stop bickering semantics like a petulant grandmother.
Petulant? Why must you bring race into this? :p
Nah, I grew up fixing things, got educated as an engineer, so now I like to explain things to people who do not quite understand all the workings of mechanical things like I do.
It doesn’t happen often, but I love proving people stupid
(disclaimer: you were not proven stupid, just a friendly discussion)
No worries, I tend to be a stickler for clarity so I pushed the matter. I do enjoy friendly discussion.
Nuclear reactors *aren’t* safe. If they were, they wouldn’t require so much containment and so much high security. And while we’re on the subject, how about all the fossil fuels we need to burn to keep them going, the fact that they get built in unsafe places (like on fault lines), and all the waste we have to get rid of afterward? Not to mention the increased risk of nuclear terrorism?
I don’t understand the pro-nukes. We can agree that just about any other form of energy has certain levels of unsafeness. Even a wood fire can burn you. And coal is slightly radioactive on top of the pollution it puts off. We can agree about all these other things but let’s trot out how unsafe nuclear is and all of a sudden that’s a lie. Why? Ask the people who used to live near Chernobyl just how “safe” that crap is.
Not to mention OMFG the taxpayer boondoggle. Nuke reactors have to be heavily subsidized by the government because otherwise they are too expensive to build.
We should have started putting solar on people’s roofs thirty years ago. It wouldn’t have covered all our power needs but would have seriously cut them back. It’s not too late, either.
Y’know France supplies like 80% of their power w/nuclear, right? Also, besides 3-mile and Chernobyl, can you name a major meltdown ever? Also, both of those were caused by a lack of proper maintenance, not any inherant problem with the reactors. Finally, solar works fine in areas of low population density, but in areas of higher numbers of inhabitants, like LA or SF, it is woefully inadequate to the task of providing power.
Also, nuclear doesn’t have peak and off peak, it just produces energy, and the excess can be used to produce hydrogen, which could replace gasoline as a fuel for our cars. Oh, and both nuclear and hydrogen are zero-emission fuel options.
Windscale Fire. That nuclear incident was certainly deadlier than 3mile.
.
Nuclear is safe enough to use, but it poses other problems that are yet to be solved. In particular, storage. There is no long term storage facility for nuclear waste built, it is all in temporary storage at the moment.
Correcting your misconceptions, Dana:
A coal plant is MORE radioactive than a nuke plant, in terms of radionuclides released to the environment. Not to mention all the other stuff it puts out.
Chernobyl *COULD NOT HAPPEN IN THE US*. Period. PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE, given the reactor designs approved by NRC. Could people screw things up here? Sure – if they worked hard at it, they could even cause a pretty minor offsite release. Blow up the reactor and scatter highly-radioactive vessel internals all over the site? Mmmmm, no. Not to mention the far-higher levels of screening and training which every operator has to go through now, in part BECAUSE of Chernobyl and TMI.
Solar? Great for trickle-charge or incidental use. You SERIOUSLY think it’s going to provide even a useful fraction of what modern society needs, on a regular basis, without going to something like massive solar farms fed by collected beamed power from space? That’s almost as laughable as WIND being proposed as a valid (reliable) baseload source.
Nuclear shouldn’t be on the table, as far as you’re concerned? Fine – you and everyone who thinks like you can open the main breakers in your homes, and not make use of power anywhere ELSE either, NOW. Fridge, AC, lights, computer? Get rid of ‘em. Don’t hit the supermarket for your food, or a doctor’s office (let alone the hospital!) for illness or injury; get around using animal transport or foot, not cars or anything else manufactured by machine. That ought to get the rest of us to where we can get by without that much power.
Foolish comments like “Nuclear reactors AREN’T safe, OMG!!!1!1one!”, or proposals that we do without such a clean and abundant source of electrical power, make me wonder sometimes if everyone not connected to the nuclear industry gets their information on nukes from the frakking Simpsons. Get rid of nukes? Hell, we ought to build big nuke plants to satisfy baseload requirements ALL OVER THE COUNTRY – and supplement with little pebble-bed modular jobs on an area-by-area basis to supplement that as necessary! And nuclear waste? The incredibly-small amounts we have so far (considering we have over 100 plants which have been operating upwards of 50 years) are potentially INCREDIBLY useful – even if we continue to ignore the usefulness of spent-fuel reprocessing here in the US, the reason these fuel rods are still so “dangerous” is because they’re STILL GIVING OFF ENERGY. Something that, if we can’t make use of it right this second, still is something we might want 50 years down the road.
Yucca Mountain? Yeah, it’d be nice if .gov got off it’s butt and satisfied the legal requirements of the contract made with the power companies REQUIRING storage of spent fuel. After all, they’re only ten years overdue…
Yes, the no-nuke nuts are a hot-button issue for me – but then, I’ve WORKED in the field for 14 years, prior to my move and marriage; the only reason I’m not STILL in the field is that there are no plants close enough to work at, requiring me to take a different job to be with the woman I married. My total cumulative occupational exposure in those 14 years is something slightly more than what you get from ONE chest x-ray. Not exactly Blinky-the-three-eyed-fish levels, here.
Hey, it’s taught generations of Alaskans foreign policy
Of course he’d have to have actually been stationed on a nuke for a long time this to be even vaguely accurate.
USS Enterprise: Nuke, served for a little over a year. As a pilot. Surprsingly not in the reactor.
USS Forrestal: Not a Nuke
USS Oriskany: Still not a Nuke
USS Intrepid: If you don’t get the point by now…
So when might McCain have actually learned something about nukes? Possibly as a Senate Laison for the Navy. Ya know, when that sort of information would be important to him.
For pete’s sake folks, 5 seconds and google are all it takes.
But, to be fair, he never quite said that.
He did point out other navy vets that served on nuclear powered ships, but never referred to himself as one of those.
…..still more experience the obama has ever had….
in bed.
With a hot, beer distributing, car drifting, rich wife…
Sounds good in theory but Cindy does nothing for me. Neither does Michelle for that matter, just to be fair. I would bang Palin though but I am not sure if I want that much crazy.
Truthfully, the only thing that Cindy McCain does for me is her driving
skills (click my name), other than that, “She’s not my type.”
Palin would be fun… But I think crazy is fun!
Perhaps I am too picky over what level of crazy I will allow.
Hey, if finishing in the top three of Ms. Alaska beauty pageant is crazy, I’ll take all of it
I have no issue with the body or conservative get up. It is the rest that grate on me.
I’d rather play doctor with Tina Fey
But not Michelle Obama or Bidens wife ?
Oddly, the article you link to says ‘drifting originated in Japan in the 1990s.’ I recall reading a novel called “Four Wheel Drift” (c 1959) in the early 60s, and know that the technique originated MUCH earlier than that–probably in the 30s.
Be my kinda girl to drive that way, tho!
I think Michelle outclasses the other two for crazy. Notice how she’s just gone. They let her out a couple weeks ago, she said something stupid, and it was back into the closet, or cage, or wherever they’ve been keeping her.
And I’d do all three. But not at the same time…I lack the stamina for that.
It’s like the joke “I can see the moon from my house, so does that make me an astronaut?”
I can see the end of Palin’s political career from my house.
doesn’t nucler waste take like a REALLY long time to lose it’s radioactivness or something like that.
And they are figuring out how to use the waste for more energy……
Not to mention that the actual waste is extremely small.
According to the nuclear engineering department at Oregon State (link in my name):
Did You Know?
If you got all your electricity from nuclear power, you would produce 2 ounces of radioactive waste in a year.
If you got all your electricity from a coal burning plant, you would add 22,000 pounds of soot, CO2, sulfur, mercury, and other pollutants to the air every year.*
Which certainly explains all the waste we’ve got to go bury in a geologically unstable location on Indian land (Yucca Mountain), eh?
It doesn’t matter how big the amount is. Go stand near a tablespoon of unprotected nuclear waste and come back and tell us how healthy you are.
Nobody wants to use coal plants anymore if they know what’s good for them. But nuclear is not our only alternative, and certainly not the best one.
The latest Indian plants are designed to recycle the waste twice. This lets them use 95% of the radioactive material, but 5% waste is still waste that needs to be stored somewhere.
Yeah, but the fuel can be reprocessed now, which dramatically reduces the amount of hazardous material to be dealt with.
But it still does need to be dealt with. The 5% remaining radioactive material needs to be stored in long term facilities that currently don’t exist.
Ooooh, so now cancer is funny? That’ll go over well.
Everything can be funny within the right context.
History Fail. McCain flew off the USS Oriskany, which was conventionally powered. It’s now an artificial reef in Florida.
So was McCain, until they dug him up to throw him under the bus until America forgets Pres Bush.
LMAO.
Are you saying that McCain is conventionally powered, or that he is now an artificial reef?
Both.
I’m actually stationed aboard the oldest nuclear powered air craft carrier in the fleet and It’s actually quite safe. There’s an unimaginable amount of controls and safety procedures to prevent exposure and leaks of radiation.
My friend Fresnel works in a power plant. They are some of the safest places in terms of radiation since they are sealed up so tight. The picture does show ignorance on Obama’s part but McCain doesn’t win any points because proximity doesn’t equate education.
But Palin knows foreign policy due to her proximity to Russia.
And she’s near the North Pole, which means she has tea with Mrs. Claus every Sunday afternoon.
I lol’d, this one is equally disarming.
My brother-in-law worked at a nuclear power plant all his adult life, that is until he passed away due to pancreatic cancer in his 50s.
McCain’s melanoma is perhaps the by-product of being sooo lilly white and living in Arizona (they have sun there).
Electech, I hope you’re correct, as my son is currently on the USS Ronald Reagan.
He’s got more to worry about during a port call than he does underway.
. . . And I knew a young woman in Idaho in the early ’60s who worked at Arco (Navy nuclear training facility) and had had a hysterectomy and bilateral radical mastectomy by age 24.
And, my father in law suffers recurring skin cancer due to sun exposure during shipboard duty in the Pacific in WWII.
That said, how many other sailors and aviators aboard McCain’s ships also contracted cancer? I was going to dismiss this as typical Democrat logic fail (my bias, I know), but we really don’t have enough data to know one way or t’other.
Still not funny.
“typical democrat logic”…hmmm…⌐_⌐
Is he related to Buck Melanoma, Moley’s wart?
Here’s a quarter. Take a bus downtown and have a rat gnaw that thing off your face. Good day to you, Ma’am!
PWND!!!!
Naw, on the USS Ronald Reagan the radioactivity hits the commanding officers first, and trickles down to the ensigns bosigns and what not.
And yes, I know nuclear powered ships are safe.
Umm, Max, it’s spelled Boatswains. No the pronunciation doesn’t make any sense, just like the pronunciation of Forecastle (I can pronounce it but have no clue how I’d spell siad pronunciation) or Norfolk (Norfik)
NAW-fuk.
Actually his skin cancer is probably caused from being tied up naked and left out in the sun for weeks at a time while he was a P.O.W.
Someone named “Fresnel” works in a power plant? Why not just say he’s Homer and we’ll all run screaming for the hills?
Hahaha… Just didn’t want to give away his real name as that would be impolite.
Proximity equals knowledge in this case, because proximity to nuclear power and the related health effects are what most people are worried about. Most people know that a nuclear power plant is not going to melt down, unless they really don’t look at the world around them.
Enterprise eh? Got a good ship there, not to mention a big one.
So, when the fuel is spent, what do you do with it?
They dont refuel nuclear carriers at sea. That’s handled back at their home port I’m almost 100% certain. Maybe electech can confirm?
So what you’re saying is that even if being on board a ship that uses nuclear fuel confers experience with nuclear energy, it still gives no experience relevant to the to disposal and storage of nuclear waste?
I was just saying that shipboard personnel might not be involved in the actual fuel disposal. I don’t know exactly who does it, just that it is done in port. Nuke guys on navy ships go through 2 years of extra schooling so I’m sure they know about storage and disposal, though.
Google.
http://www.nn.northropgrumman.com/capabilities/rco.html
3 years for refueling in a highly specialized environment by trained technicians.
So yeahm, he’s 100% right when he says that the guy running the reactor is probably not conversant with disposal and refueling.
Three years for refueling.
Done at a specialized drydock, and not by the guys who keep the plant running while it is at sea.
Google is your friend Greenbandit.
The Socratic method is also my friend.
Apparently not this time, since it made you look lazy and incapable of typing “refuel nuclear carrier” all by yourself.
That’s an interesting conclusion you came to about my mental processes. How did you arrive at it?
I am guessing because he didn’t realize your actual subject of debate.
Initial post: “So, when the fuel is spent, what do you do with it?”
Clear factual question. Answered. Now if he wanted to engage in proximity does not equal knowledge, I’d agree. But I’d also say he sure started this off incorrectly.
Because in this instance the follow up: “So what you’re saying is that even if being on board a ship that uses nuclear fuel confers experience with nuclear energy, it still gives no experience relevant to the to disposal and storage of nuclear waste?”
Doesn’t address that in terms of practical experience, yes that’s 100% percent correct. I have no doubt that the theory is part of nuclear engineering. The actuality of it is practiced by those who refuel the carrier, not the guys sailing on it.
My issue is that in trying to make a philosophical point, you’re stumbling over several factual ones, trying to pound a square peg in to a round hole.
Actually he was debating with one person and trying to get their thoughts before countering. Least that is what I gathered.
Simple, the Socratic method would have one of the participants responded to as if the question were the answer. Then, in the light of this new way of looking at the information, the other philosophical sides of the issue could be examined by the inital questioner.
Which is all well in good in philosophy.
But it does not in any way alter the easily referenced fact that is takes Northrup Grumman 3 years to refuel a carrier, and the ship’s crew isn’t the one to do it. There is no other side to that statment, it’s an absolute.
So my conclusion is either that you didn’t want to be bothered with actually finding the knowledge for yourself, or you’re not quite as firm on the definition of the Socratic Method as you think.
Which is fine really, it’s better than when I encounter people who think “hypothesis” and “theory” mean the same thing.
If you’re coming at Socratic Method from a pure philosophy perspective, you’re absolutely right, I did it wrong. I came to Socratic Method through law school, where the professors use it to get the students to answer their own questions rather than feeding them the answers, and then through actually litigation, where cross examination dictates that you should ask yes or no questions that you either already know the answer to, or that you can spin any answer the way you want it to go.
My method here, though somewhat clumsy, was to get the admission that the people who work on the ship (for instance, McCain) do not have any direct interaction with the eventual disposal of the waste, which I view as the more dangerous part of the nuclear power process.
I wanted someone other than myself to confirm that McCain would not have been involved in disposing of the waste because, even though I could have googled it, I’m not a credible expert on the topic.
Oooooh, I can see that being annoying.
Actually, he wasn’t questioning the process. He wasn’t even questioning the nuke guys. He was questioning the idea of proximity equals education.
Actually I would expect the nuke guys to know about disposal since it was their job to know about nuclear engineering. But that is the nuke guys. I wouldn’t expect the chef to know a reactor from a toaster since it isn’t his job nor do I think the chef would wander near the reactor anyway.
Depends.
On a sub, everyone has to know how the reactor works for sub quals. On a large Aircraft carrier like the Lincoln….some people never see more than half the ship during a four year enlistment. 5000 people on board….the things f’n huge.
However, flyboys have to know it because it’s the propulsion plant of the ship…you know, the moving target that they have to land on.
Fair enough, when you graduate fifth from the bottom I wonder how much you paid attention in nuke class?
And US Grant graduated 21st in a class of 39 from West Point. Didn’t seem to hurt him much.
He also lived a while back… in a time MUCH different from ours.
Ive never understood comparing past politicians to the present.
Times are different, therefore the correlations are irrelevant.
At least thats my opinion on the matter. You’re free to disagree.
Grant was a General in a won that he helped win. McCain was shot down and held prisoner for a few years.
He was also from a class of people over a hundred years ago. Different standards.
Please tell me you aren’t suggesting that the pilots refuel the carrier?
That there isn’t an entire multi-year procedure involving dry-docking and stringent procedures.
Please tell me that you’re not posting this to the internet and didn’t spend 5 lousy seconds to hit google first so that you wouldn’t look like a moron.
http://www.nn.northropgrumman.com/capabilities/rco.html
I was suggesting that the pilots do NOT refuel the carrier, and therefore have no experience with the disposal process. I’m not sure how I was unclear about this, but it seems to be a common source of confusion.
Although, on a Nuclear carrier (Which if I’m not mistaken, McCain was never on one) the pilots are actually exposed to more radiation than the people who work in the engine spaces. The reactor people stay below decks 90% of the time and the reactor is shielded beyond beleif. The pilots and flight deck crew spend most of their work day in the sun, being exposed to it’s radiation.
confirmed.
Doubly confrimed.
Just about all major non weapon related jobs onboard naval vessels are now handled by civilian contractors. Refit, reactor stuff inport, deisel repair, etc
There is a lengthy refueling process that takes place at the shipyards. It takes many years actually to safely and effectively refuel an aircraft carrier. The Enterprise (my ship) actually has 4x more nuclear reactors then a Nimitz class carrier so it takes a little more time. It’s all very controlled and their are ridiculous amounts of fail safes. Ask any carrier sailor that’s ever been in the yards, they’re a pain but the Navy takes nuclear security and environmental impact extremely serious.
Nuclear carriers are refueled every 20 or so years in port. It is like a 2-3 year process. The ships are in dry dock when this occurs. The carriers are refueled unrep at sea in a way because they have to restock fuel for the birds on board.
Fuel? You mean RODS? Your attempt to set someone up for a “nuclear waste kills dolphins” debate is FAIL.
Nuclear power is safe, and for the sub I drove for the USN, the half life was 30 years on the plant.
And to point out which is safer:
Cancer cases for those that live on southern Australia are about 300% greater than those that work around nuclear reactors.
Nuclear reactors create energy the same way a steam engine plant does, just instead of using fuel, it uses plutonium to superheat steam and send it across turbines creating elecricity. As long as the radiation never touches the steam directly it’s all good.
It’s a lot like guns…only people who have never fired them fear them.
I’ll start with the slogan at the bottom. I’ve fired a shot gun, a rifle, and a semi-automatic rifle (the guy at the shooting range next to me was in training for the SEALs, was home for Xmas, and had brought his civilian semi-automatic out for some extra practice time. Guns still scare me, especially when being held by anyone who isn’t me. It’s true, my fear may be irrational. But your slogan is also false.
As far as “nuclear power kills dolphins” I had no intention of starting that debate. I agree that using it as a power source tends to be safe and clean. Especially in the US. Remember that while Chernobyl was a meltdown, 3 Mile Island was a *near* meltdown, but our system worked.
It’s when we’re done that storage becomes a problem. So what happens around the reactor, when we’re creating energy, doesn’t really bother me. Yucca Mountain, though, does. Transport of nuclear waste does, too.
I think you need to read what people are actually asking before you assume they know nothing of the topic at hand. I am by no means a nuclear expert, but it turns out I can agree with everything you still say, and my concern is still valid.
I’ll apologize now for failing to close a parenthetical.
I have a few curiousity questions, and I hope you’ll take them at face value, as that’s how they’re intended. (And really, anyone with 2 cents should chime in as the answers to these questions always interest me)
Do you support the use of nuclear power?
Either way, what do you think we should be doing about the waste that is being generated? I’d agree that “Dig big hole” seems a bit specious, which is why I’m curious if you have some thoughts on this.
As far as civilian energy, what do you seen as the most likely viable alternative? Solar? Wind? Geo-thermal? Tidal? Something else entirely?
My view is that nuclear energy would be great, except for the disposal and storage issues. I’m a lawyer, not a scientist, so I don’t know how to make storage safe, I’ve just taken enough undergraduate courses to know that we don’t really have a safe method right now (short of shooting it into the Sun, which sits wrong for me on a gut level that I can’t really explain. If someone can show me that this would be safe, I’d probably be forced to agree with them).
The problem is that I’m with you on the “Dig a big hole” doesn’t work thing. But I don’t really know how to solve the problem otherwise, which is why I’m not running for president. Nuclear energy will continue to be something I’m uncomfortable with until this problem is solved.
As for other alternatives, it kind of depends where you are. All of them, of course, have drawbacks. I don’t know much about Tidal or Geo-thermal. I’ve heard that wind power can effect the migratory patterns of birds, but only through anecdotes, so I don’t know if it’s really true. Otherwise it seems a good source. Solar, of course, requires parts that are made of petroleum, which is somewhat problematic. All of them require an immense initial investment, and most of them are hard to profit from, since they don’t really rely on a scarce resource.
Personally, I like Solar and Wind, because I live in Arizona, so we have lots of sun and a good bit of wind, and not much in the way of tides. But I think a comprehensive approach is needed, including all of the above. Even nuclear, as soon as someone has a way of storing the waste that will not leech into the groundwater.
For all the talk of what we do with nuclear waste, people seem to ignore the fact that the amount of waste generated is FAR smaller than things like coal plants generate. It’s about equally toxic, it just lasts longer and is more of a hot button issue, psychologically, so people assume the worst for it. When you add in the fact that the current reactors we are using were made in the late 70s and early 80s and have such an astonishing safety record (one minor venting incident (TMI) in the US is doing a lot better than any other industry I can think of-I can drive you 45 minutes from my house and take you to a natural gas refinery that’s had a major fire twice in the 15 years) and look at what the new generation of nuclear reactors can offer in terms of further increased safety and efficiency and I think we’re actually being negligent in our duty to the environment by *not* building more nuclear power plants.
it is refreshing to read a comment that is not a personal attack, makes complete sense, and provides a good point. well done, sir.
I thought of the into-the-Sun thing myself. The problem is *getting* it there.
Go here for the fate of the launch of the first GPS satellite (and poke around on the site for lots of other cool blowie-uppy stuff) 8):
http://www.sonicbomb.com/v1.php?vid=aviation/D2mishap.wmv&id=37&ttitle=Delta2_Mishap
For base load power, I support geothermal and solar (in the form of solar towers). For peak load, I support wind, solar and hydroelectric (tidal is preferable to dams). I also support a solar panel on as many homes as possible.
agreed. but unfortunately ‘as many homes as possible’ is a small number – panels are expensive, difficult to service, and prone to failure when exposed to large temperature changes (anywhere that has ‘hot’ summers and ‘cold’ winters). i think privately operated solar farms are a more efficient solution – keep panels in the same area, and place them where they will operate most effectively.
Check out “amorphous crystalline” solar panels. Bit more expensive, but last longer, work better in high heat, and don’t lose initial efficiency like regular panels. It has been said that enough of these panels to cover the area of the state of Arizona would take care of the present electrical needs of the US.
Invented by Stan Ovshinski (sp?) and largely ignored by the technical community here, it became another technology we ‘gave’ to the Japanese.
I rather like the wisdom of your commentary. Thanks for the information.
“only people who have never fired them fear them.”
fucking bullshit, mate.
A gun has never frightened me.. They just sit there. Its the human hand attached to the gun that allows it to fire that I fear.
Those who have fired them respect them. Not fear them.
Max and Kurt beat me to it. I will simply second them both.
If it’s so safe, why do you need all those controls and safety procedures? What about if any of them fail–say, you come under attack or something?
burn!
Ah, that’s funny!
I think we should seriously consider nuclear energy. The only issues, though… What to do with the nuclear waste, and how to deal with paranoia. A significant amount of Americans seem to think we’ll be having nuclear explosions all the time. The biggest problem, though, is how to store the waste.
As a solution for that problem, I would advocate more research into the practice of nuclear fusion instead of fission. *insert paranoid rant about conspiracy theory by oil companies and The Government here*
Zig Ziglar once asked the rhetorical question of how we would regard using a toaster if the first use of electricity had been to power the electric chair.
Had we been using atomics to generate electricity first, this might not be the hot-button issue that it is. Instead, we introduced nuclear energy to the world by incinerating two Japanese cities.
That isn’t as rhetorical as you think. When they were first planning on connecting businesses and homes to power, they had to decide if the public would use DC or AC power. The argument against DC is that it declines in power over distance, while the argument against AC was that is was used in the electic chair, and is therefore deadly. The electric chair power won that battle.
In terms of nuclear power, (and I know a lot about it because I am from Australia, and we export uranium
) people are concerned about 2 things. The first is meltdown, which is increadibly rare, but when it does happen it is catastrophic.
The second is storage of waste. For storage, it doen’t matter if there are only a small amount for the energy, but that you have to keep it stored, undisturbed and away from everything (including groundwater) for thousands of years. We haven’t been storing nuclear waste for more than 60 years, and so far there has not been a single undisturbed and isolated storage system. If we can’t keep it for 60 years, how are we going to manage 100 000?
You have your electricity facts backwards. DC is actually the deadlier form of current, but Edison advocated AC for the electric chair in order to try to convince the public that DC was safer.
That’s a stupid thing to say. Our first experiences with fire would have been forest fires. So why are we using it now?
Nuclear is a hot-button issue because it’s so dangerous. Period. We’ve blown stuff up with dynamite too and it’s still used in mining and construction with no public outcry whatsoever. But dynamite is pretty straightforward. You get blown up and that’s the end of it. People can still live within fifty miles of where you died without any adverse health effects.
Three-Mile Island.
You only need one accident to wreak a hell of a lot of havoc and destroy one hell of a lot of lives. Stop thinking in terms of estimated numbers and start wondering how you’d feel if it was you. Or your family.
At least if a solar panel fails it just becomes an expensive roof tile.
Three Mile Island killed no-one directly, and is estimated to have killed no more than one person from radiation. For a real nuclear disaster outside Russia, try looking up the Windscale Fire in Britain 1957.
I think that the question of which type of energy production to use would be…All of them. It all depends on where you live, someone living in indiana like me wouldn’t benefit as much from solar energy as someone in Florida. Just like someone in Florida wouldn’t benefit from wind energy (unless there’s a hurricane, ha) like someone in Kansas might. If we customize the source to the resources at hand, and use them more efficiently, then we’re better off.
I also think nuclear power is a good and viable option, as long as it’s done right. We could use these types of plants, along with coal and the like, sparingly in the areas that don’t have the wind and water resources like other places.
I guess if I took the tie to read more, I would have seen Greenbandit’s post a couple above me…I still stick to what I say however.
hey guys, I live near a bank, can I use Palin logic to get a job as a financial expert?
vote this up and impede the future, folks.
“OMG NUKLEUR IS BAD IN MOUVEEZ, SO IZ BAD IN REEL LYF 2!”
idiots
OKAY, This may have been stated already, but I feel the need to point this out just in case it hasn’t been.
John McCain served aboard the USS Forrestal, The USS Forrestal (I may have misspelled that) is a diesel powered carrier, i.e. no nuklear reactor to cause his face cancer.
There are a whole lot of people who don’t know anything about nuclear power commenting here. It really is safe. It really is clean. Three mile island was a meltdown that didn’t kill anyone. Cheronbyl was bad and did kill a lot of people, and there were basically a million design errors and human errors that caused that. We actually can make a very good, safe reactor now. There is a design in the works that is literally impossible to melt down. 70% of our noncarbon emitting energy still comes from nuclear power and we haven’t built a plant in years. Both Obama and McCain support nuclear power. The long term risks, including storage of nuclear waste, pollution (which nuclear power has NONE, unless you count pure thermal) show nuclear power to be the safest renewable energy source possible.
I’m currently on a carrier in a refueling and complex overhaul, and am one of the reactor operators as part of ship’s force. The shipyard handled the de/refueling process, and the marines were there the entire time to guard the fuel as it arrived and left. And while Chernobyl and TMI are both in the forefront of everyone’s minds as to why nuclear power shouldn’t be an option, they’re the reason why the nuclear navy and the current civilian plants have so many regulations. I’m not claiming to be an expert on nuclear power, but I do know that I spend a lot more time in the plant that I did several months ago, which means I see a lot less sunlight. Incidentally, my exposure has actually been less. Boo. Yah.
Radiation is used to treat cancer. I have a degree in radiation biology and radiophysics, and yes, most of what people know about radiation is what they’ve heard or read on tv or in newspapers or magazines. Fear caused by ignorance. Do some research before you get all up in arms about nuclear power. It’s safe and clean as long as it’s well regulated.
All I have to say is, nuclear power….. not actually magic mutation rays. Funnily enough. Hell even in the simpsons (where most people get their understanding of nuclear power, no doubt) homer mistakenly gets a uranium rod stuck under his clothes in the intro. Funnily enough, he hasn’t died of cancer or grown mild psychic abilities or whatever else people seem to think power plants can do. Not that it matters, as it is fiction and probably satirical of what people think power plants are anyway…
Forgot to add: worst case scenario of chernobyl only has killed 50 something people with 4000 deaths predicted to be caused by it. Unless you’re one of “those” people. Then you’ll claim it killed 40,000 people, or some such fabricated number.
Personally, I think we need to do everything we can NOW about energy, if we only have 30-60 years left of oil in the ground. They say thirty, but you know how it is, its in the ground. We need to develop hydrogen on demand, you can build one now for your car and get 10mpg more in gas at the expense of water. We need to build nuclear reactors. We need to get into space based nrg cultivation. We need to get into batteries. IF we do all the above, we may be able to get over *it*, when *it* is all gone. If rely on a silver bullet, we will be using the led ones, against are heads in the last instances. Lets get real, lets get motivated.