On Mon, 2001-11-26 at 01:00, larry a price wrote: > Jim, > I understand your arguments for nuclear power, but you leave out a side > effect that is in my opinion a deal-killer namely that nuclear power is > not without waste. When you factor in life cycle costs for power > production nuclear power is not the best deal because it imposes recurring > costs of waste management that will have to be borne for orders of > magnitude longer than the productive life of even the most well engineered > plant.
Newer plants are being designed to reduce the waste factor. We are working on the problem, and most of the time the waste can be stored on site with few problems. Only about 20% of the actual uranium 235 is actually burned before the rods are replaced. Expended fuel (remember, 80% still in the rods) is placed in water pools, usually on site, while they "cool" or decay to low levels. It does not take 100,000 years for them to be considered low level. I don;t have the exact numbers in my head, but I seem to remember something like 50 years. And as we become more dependant on nuclear power, we will see advances in reclamation so that these expended fuel rods can be recycled. But right now, there is plenty of U235, way more than we will need for several decades. And there are mines all over the place. > I saw one study that estimated the $/kwh ratio of the hanford reservation > as being twice that of the equivalent capacity coal generating > facilities; counting only money already expended. Meanwhile the AEC claims > that it is half that of coal (or thereabouts) discounting WPPS and all > expenditures prior to 1946. Who to believe? > That is not correct. The real problem with Hanford is that it is a high-level radioactive storage site. THAT's what costs money. > Besides which Nuclear power is socialist in the worst ways. No one but a > government can afford to finance, insure, run and deal with the > aftereffects of a power producing plant. (Yes, I know pebble bed and gas > turbine models can be built that are much smaller in footprint , safer > etc. but they are at the same stage as solar was ten years ago). > Not to mention the whole thorny issue of weapons grade materiel. > Too true. Bear in mind that U235 can be used for weapons as well as for power reactors, but Plutonium is the more sought after choice for fission weapons. Our nuclear weapons are Hydrogen Bombs which use an isotope called Tritium (h3 I think). Easy to produce. Lots of bang, and no radioactive waste to speak of. The real side effect of nuclear weapons of this type is neutron activation of common materials. > And this has to do with linux because none of us are going to get rich > writing linux based apps to control nuclear power plants. But, some of us > might make a living working on bit's and pieces of a decentralised network > of mixed mode generation and consumption where any given site might both > produce and consume power in differing amounts at different times of > the day and year and there will need to be some smarts keeping track of > who's putting in to the grid and who's drawing out of it. And penguins > love power meters ;-) This is fun. I will stop if you guys want me to do so, but I have quite a lot of training in this field and think I can intelligently answer questions. Or refer people to non-anti-nuclear sites that tell the real story. I would like to point out that our society has become used to Hollywood's portrayals fo the government as heinous, criminal folks who want to control the average guy, and will do things they KNOW are wrong or may have long-lasting deletorious effects. I do not believe that is the case, and I think it is groups like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club who help to keep an eye on our legislators. I don't always agree with them, but I sure as heck appreciate their efforts. Anyway, I'll shut up now. Regards, Jim
