[Andy44]

SF author James Hogan writes in support of nuclear power. Long, but very interesting.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/hogan3.1.1.html

LRC is a libertarian website, for the sake of full disclosure...

[willy88]

Shh! Don't say the N-word!

[Tommy]

I always get a bit annoyed when people keep saying that nuclear power is cleaner and safer. It is, until you consider the waste. We still don't know how to safely dispose of it. It's some of the most toxic stuff on the planet, and radioactive to boot. It will be for thousands of years. Nothing mankind has ever built has lasted as long as nuclear waste needs to be safely stored, and I doubt we can build a safe depository any time soon.

With Polywell reactors looking quite promising in the near future (~20 years by average prediction) it just doesn't make sense to make more Nuke plants. It's a "quick fix" that will cause more trouble down the road than it's worth. Just one dirty bomb made from nuclear waste will do it. Sure we've made the plants themselves much safer since Three Mile Island and Chernoble, but we still just stick the waste into barrels and stick it somewhere, figuring that "someday" we'll figure out what to do with it.

[Dig Gil]

I'm not going to read it...
We need to evolve our technology.

[Sky Captain]

Part of the problem is current commercial nuclear power reactors are very wasteful - they can use only U235 which is something like 0.7 % in the ore. There are much better reactor designs called breeders around that can use U238 which is much more abundant. 1 GW reactor of such design would need only 1 - 2 tons of uranium each year and waste produced would need special storage only few hundred years. Even waste from current reactors could be used as fuel.

[Urwumpe]

Also, the key question should be: For what do you need a nuclear reactor? What other kind of power station do you want to replace with it?

The biggest advantage of nuclear power plants is also their biggest disadvantage:They provide a constant stable large amount of electrical energy (and four times more thermal energy, which you can't use for something better as making electricity). When they drop out, you loose a lot of electricity.

Also, Hogan argues very very poorly. I might disappoint his fans now, but: When Hogan writes, that 95% of the nuclear waste can be reprocessed into nuclear fuel, he ignores (obviously willingly) that reprocessing nuclear waste produces also 20 times more nuclear waste - the many working liquids, machines and stuff are quickly also nuclear waste. Unless you want and need Plutonium for a nuclear weapon program or have problems getting the needed amounts of Uranium out of your mines, reprocessing is ecologically madness. And it is even more madness to claim that reprocessing reduces the amount of nuclear waste - it does exactly the opposite.

Most nuclear waste reaching the German not-permanent storage of Gorleben is waste produced during the reprocessing in France. Germany saves Uranium, France gets Plutonium, all are happy. Except those stupid farmers and citizens, who live around the waste storage.

Storing nuclear waste is BTW, not that easy as many proponents put it...

[garyw]

Originally Posted by Tommy

 it just doesn't make sense to make more Nuke plants. It's a "quick fix" that will cause more trouble down the road than it's worth.

So how do you feed a countries thirst for energy? Those requirements will only continue to go up? What do you want? more coal feed plants?

[Aviator]

The thing with nuclear waste is that it origionaly came from the ground, as long as we place it back there once were done with it while taking things like underground water into account it will be more or less a safe as any natural deposit of radioactives.

[doggie015]

Remember that FISSION is what we currently use, and it is the more dangerous. Once FUSION on earth becomes a commercial reality via ITER http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER then we can pretty much kiss the waste problem goodbye, and the safety problem too, not only is a runaway chain reaction impossible due to the conditions required for fusion to occur. Also the process of harnessing is several times more efficiant than fission. The only problem is getting enough heat to begin with...

[Urwumpe]

Originally Posted by garyw

 So how do you feed a countries thirst for energy? Those requirements will only continue to go up? What do you want? more coal feed plants?

Not with something as uneconomic than nuclear power. If you would remove tax payers money from nuclear energy production, the energy would cost between 50 and 200% more than coal or gas.

Also nuclear power plants lack the needed agility for modern power demands (large and slow) and fail too often. When a wind turbine fails, you loose 6 MW. When a nuclear reactor fails, you loose 500 MW at once, which you have to get from other sources that can react faster. Nuclear reactors can't be quickly increased in power output to compensate for other nuclear reactors, you effectively need a high proportion of coal and gas anyway. The fastest reacting power source is hydropower BTW.

[simonpro]

Originally Posted by Tommy

 Just one dirty bomb made from nuclear waste will do it.

Uh-oh, he's dropped the D-bomb. Damned media scare stories.
Unless I'm sitting on the bugger when it goes off then a dirty bomb isn't a particularly scary thing. the problem is that people (especially those journalists at the monkey end of the evolutionary spectrum) think that anything radioactive is instantly going to kill everyone.
Luckily a tin foil hat (or any other lid) will protect you from a fair bit of that nasty stuff.

[Ghostrider]

Originally Posted by Tommy

 Just one dirty bomb made from nuclear waste will do it.

In order to make a dirty bomb you need to steal the nuclear waste, which already isn't that easy to begin with, and then work with it which is another can of worm. Chemical weapons are much cheaper and you can make them with very little infrastructure.

[Notebook]

Originally Posted by simonpro

 Uh-oh, he's dropped the D-bomb. Damned media scare stories.
Unless I'm sitting on the bugger when it goes off then a dirty bomb isn't a particularly scary thing. the problem is that people (especially those journalists at the monkey end of the evolutionary spectrum) think that anything radioactive is instantly going to kill everyone.
Luckily a tin foil hat (or any other lid) will protect you from a fair bit of that nasty stuff.

There's been more dangerous accidents I think, didn't know about this one. Only found out when looking for UK incidents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire

N.

[Urwumpe]

It also depends on the material... the plutonium inside a nuclear bomb would be enough for contaminating a region by a Dirty bomb about 10 km across. If you use it as primitive nuclear bomb (without the many optimizations of classic nuclear powers), it could devastate a region 10 times larger and spread the fear of nuclear material a few thousand km further (As a dirty bomb does not reach the Stratosphere).

Chemical weapons are really cheaper. For producing a cheap chemical weapon, you just need to go shopping in a supermarket. Maybe not as terrible as modern chemical weapons can get, but you can easily produce something to injure and kill many thousand people. You just need enough criminal energy.

[Andy44]

Originally Posted by Tommy

 I always get a bit annoyed when people keep saying that nuclear power is cleaner and safer. It is, until you consider the waste. We still don't know how to safely dispose of it. It's some of the most toxic stuff on the planet, and radioactive to boot. It will be for thousands of years. Nothing mankind has ever built has lasted as long as nuclear waste needs to be safely stored, and I doubt we can build a safe depository any time soon.

With Polywell reactors looking quite promising in the near future (~20 years by average prediction) it just doesn't make sense to make more Nuke plants. It's a "quick fix" that will cause more trouble down the road than it's worth. Just one dirty bomb made from nuclear waste will do it. Sure we've made the plants themselves much safer since Three Mile Island and Chernoble, but we still just stick the waste into barrels and stick it somewhere, figuring that "someday" we'll figure out what to do with it.

Please read the whole article. He counters (nukes?) every one of your arguments.