Let's hear it for nuclear power

[Ark]

Maybe it has. How would you know?

I was the firstborn in my family. Not a problem for me.

 

[Ghostrider]

Then we all die here, killing each other over the dwindling scraps.

You say it like it were a bad thing.

 

[computerex]

Maybe it has. How would you know?

Well the solution is quite simple: Use birth control!
We know the solution, we just don't like using it.

On a more serious note:
It is going to be our generation that is going to have to solve these problems. Unfortunately the more you look at the rising leaders, the more you find out that we are, as simonpro puts it, getting closer and closer to the monkey end of the evolutionary spectrum. How are these problems going to be solved when the vast majority of the youth now a days have no interest in anything that you can't text with?

 

[Ark]

Well the solution is quite simple: Use birth control!
We know the solution, we just don't like using it.

Ding!

On a more serious note:
It is going to be our generation that is going to have to solve these problems. Unfortunately the more you look at the rising leaders, the more you find out that we are, as simonpro puts it, getting closer and closer to the monkey end of the evolutionary spectrum. How are these problems going to be solved when the vast majority of the youth now a days have no interest in anything that you can't text with?

I'm sure your parents said the same thing about kids who don't give a crap about anything but that durn rock and roll music. Young people grow up eventually, we're not sticking teenagers in charge of the country.

 

[mjessick]

Yes, look it up. Fertility rates (for example Total Fertility Rate, roughly births per woman) are dropping, both in the developed nations (to very low unsustainable levels in some), and also in the developing nations. Even in the Philippines, the only majority Catholic nation in Asia and hence with cultural impediments to "birth control," the rate has declined from over 6 in the early 1960's to a bit over 3. (From memory, but U.N. statistics are available online.)

A lot of potential chaos in the next few decades may derive from these statistics, as well as the lagging decline of fertility rates of certain troublesome cultures.

 

[T.Neo]

I don't see how population drop would be a problem. Just encourage people to have more children. It's when the environment becomes overstressed by too much resource use that problems occur.

 

[Urwumpe]

Well the solution is quite simple: Use birth control!

Did it, but still feel not very controlled:

 

[mjessick]

> I don't see how population drop would be a problem.

In the USA, and Europe and other places, the entire complex industrial economy is set up assuming that populations always increase (based on the experience of the last couple of thousand years.) There are always several young people working to support each retired person through their taxes. You always consume more of everything each year: This is called "Growth", and is the main thing politicians seem to care about. More schools, highways, pipelines, restaurants and banks just need to be constructed on every conceivable corner, and so on.

When you get down to fertility rates much less than 2 like some European countries all these faulty assumptions could conceivably cause the mother of all crashes and societal upheaval through lots of nasty changes required to redesign entire societies.

Maybe technological improvements can keep this "Growth" thing going even with severely declining populations, but it is a lot to ask. The information explosion has done wonders, for example, but actual population decline is just coming onto the horizon.

 

[pattersoncr]

every "good" argument against nuclear energy I've ever read essentially boils down to viewing the risks and downsides of nuclear energy in isolation from the alternatives.

Waste was mentioned pretty early in this thread. "What will we do with the waste?"
The way that question is always asked seems to presume that we have some idea what to do with the waste produced by other forms of energy.
We do of course; we dump it into the atmosphere where every single person reading this can breath it in.
Which would you rather have?
1. 200 tons per year of the most tightly controlled substance in the world. A substance that in the 50 years we've been producing it has not harmed a single person, a substance that consists of 95% FUEL and can be recycled over and over again.

or

2. 25000 tons PER DAY of toxic waste and green house gasses that are indiscriminately dumped into the environment and kill 24,000 people per year in the US alone?

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Speaking of nuclear power... Our unit outage begines tonight at midnight local time (EST). 1,200 megawatts off the grid for (scheduled) 27 days 11 hours. Refuel outages are (generally) scheduled during the times of the year when peak demands are low. Transient peak demands are met with "peaking" units such as combustion turbines.
Our spent fuel is currently stored on site inside the RCA (rad controlled area) in a spent fuel pool. Our unit is fairly new and the pool has plenty of room to spare (we are probably using less than 1/4 what it can hold. There has been some talk of a European firm purchasing our spent fuel for recycling, but as far as I know it's all just rumor-mill.
Population control? We are living longer, and developed nations are typically having less children. The problem will correct itself eventually (oversimplification, and I'l be long gone by then).
Just my two cents worth...

 

[Urwumpe]

1. 200 tons per year of the most tightly controlled substance in the world. A substance that in the 50 years we've been producing it has not harmed a single person, a substance that consists of 95% FUEL and can be recycled over and over again.

A substance which was already killing people from the day of it's discovery on? 200 tons per year might not sound much, but it is 200 tons which are lethal for decades (and sometimes even thousands of years) and lethal at extreme tiny doses. It is pretty hard to get poisoned by CO2, if you would use the amount of CO2 needed for killing a person and get as much Plutonium, you could kill a whole city - and that rather easily.

 

[pattersoncr]

A substance which was already killing people from the day of it's discovery on? 200 tons per year might not sound much, but it is 200 tons which are lethal for decades (and sometimes even thousands of years) and lethal at extreme tiny doses. It is pretty hard to get poisoned by CO2, if you would use the amount of CO2 needed for killing a person and get as much Plutonium, you could kill a whole city - and that rather easily.

Name me one person ever killed by used nuclear fuel.
Name me one person ever killed by exposure to plutonium.

The 25000 tons refers to about 15000 tons of CO2 per day by a 1000MW coal plant and 10000 tons of ash some of which goes up the stack and into your lungs.
How long does coal ash remain poisonous? It doesn't have a halflife?

 

[Urwumpe]

Name me one person ever killed by used nuclear fuel.

Instead of naming them, do you believe my word that it had been 2 workers on a single incident?

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

Name me one person ever killed by exposure to plutonium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_K._Daghlian,_Jr.

 

[NukeET]

Chuck...doesn't SL-1 count?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1

 

[Moonwalker]

2. 25000 tons PER DAY of toxic waste and green house gasses that are indiscriminately dumped into the environment and kill 24,000 people per year in the US alone?

Sounds like green propaganda. Where did you get that info from? How/why die those allegedly 24,000 people in relation to green house gases?

I doubt that an increase of CO² by about 0,01% since industrialisation, or that 0,000175% of methane within the atmosphere causes thousands of deaths each year. It's trace gases. CO² is a natural and essential gas for life on this planet, which has just become a profitable bugaboo within science, the media and politics during the last 3 decades (before, it was used for ideas on how to stop global cooling). It's not dirty at all. You have four times as much CO² in your room, and more than 100 times as much within your breath when you exhale than within the atmosphere averagely. I'm not scared or concerned at all. Nor do I see "thousands" of deaths because of it. Just like I'm not at all concerned because of clouds or lets better say water vapor, which is the most important green house gas that influences the climate by about 70%.

Whenever people cry for abandon CO² emissions and nuclear power plants, I always think: at first stop driving cars, smoking and eating basically greasy food to make your life safer. Because this really does cause thousands of deaths each year.

 

[Urwumpe]

We should also stop using electricity...regarding how many thousand people die because of it every year.

 

[Moonwalker]

We should also stop using electricity...regarding how many thousand people die because of it every year.

Like I always say: we have to go back to hollows if we are afraid of progress, industry and wealth. But even then life will remain even more risky...

 

[Andy44]

Chuck...doesn't SL-1 count?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1

No. SL-1 was an Army reactor. This discussion is about civilian reactors built strictly for power generation, with no military side purposes.

 

[Urwumpe]

No. SL-1 was an Army reactor. This discussion is about civilian reactors built strictly for power generation, with no military side purposes.

SL-1 was meant as prototype for small reactors to power DEW line stations, it was strictly for power generation. It was just made too simplified.

 

[pattersoncr]

Sounds like green propaganda. Where did you get that info from? How/why die those allegedly 24,000 people in relation to green house gases?

I doubt that an increase of CO² by about 0,01% since industrialisation, or that 0,000175% of methane within the atmosphere causes thousands of deaths each year. It's trace gases. CO² is a natural and essential gas for life on this planet, which has just become a profitable bugaboo within science, the media and politics during the last 3 decades (before, it was used for ideas on how to stop global cooling). It's not dirty at all. You have four times as much CO² in your room, and more than 100 times as much within your breath when you exhale than within the atmosphere averagely. I'm not scared or concerned at all. Nor do I see "thousands" of deaths because of it. Just like I'm not at all concerned because of clouds or lets better say water vapor, which is the most important green house gas that influences the climate by about 70%.

Whenever people cry for abandon CO² emissions and nuclear power plants, I always think: at first stop driving cars, smoking and eating basically greasy food to make your life safer. Because this really does cause thousands of deaths each year.

I'm not talking about CO2 alone.
The fine particulates coal plant's putt up the stack kill.

Instead of naming them, do you believe my word that it had been 2 workers on a single incident?

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

Come on, you can do math. 24,000 > 2

[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_K._Daghlian,_Jr."]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_K._Daghlian,_Jr.[/URL]

I fail to see what a weapons accident has to do with commercial power generation.

---------- Post added at 09:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:04 PM ----------

We should also stop using electricity...regarding how many thousand people die because of it every year.

Of course we shouldn't stop using electricity. I've read the life expectancy of those without access to electricity is ~40.
We should simply produce our electricity in a safer, smarter, more environmentally friendly way.