Greenpeace Founder Supports Nuclear Power!

[Chuck]

Originally Posted by Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore

In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands.

Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change

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[philmcneal]

good article on nuclear power.

[Chuck]

Build nuclear reactors buried in remote areas, so they will be safe from accidents and terrorists attacks?

[tbaleno]

They need large bodies of water.

[philmcneal]

offer money to those who live near the reactor and support it. Besides the hard shell will protect it even from a nuclear bomb!

[Chuck]

Maybe a desert lake - but don't fish there.

The only way to protect anything from a direct nuclear hit is to bury it hundreds of feet below.

Originally Posted by tbaleno

They need large bodies of water.

They don't need to be natural though. Palo Verde is one of the largest nuclear power generating stations in North America and it's in the middle of the freaking desert, 50 miles west of Phoenix. Trust me, there's no natural bodies of water any where near there. I believe they just have a small man-made resovoir on the grounds supplied by regular county water, which comes mainly from the Colorado river and wells.

You can't put any type of power plant too far from the intended customer base or your transmission losses go up, although how much is acceptable I suppose is up for debate. Would most folks be willing to pay 5% more to have power plants another 50 - 100 miles away from them, and have that surcharge cover the cost of transmission losses? Yeah probably.

As for underground, this is one I've never heard of a technical reason why it shouldn't be possible. The reactor dome is already strong enough to stop just about anything shy of major military grade bombs modern full size airliners at Vmax, which tells me they are probably strong enough to put up with 20 feet of dirt above them. I imagine the only reason we're not doing it is because of cost. Again, will people pay another 5% more for added safety? Yeah probably.

EDIT: Ok, found the Wiki page for Palo Verde

The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, a nuclear power plant located in Wintersburg, Arizona, about 50 miles (80 km) west of central Phoenix, is currently the largest nuclear generation facility in the world, producing over 30,000 gigawatt hours of electricity annually to serve approximately 4 million people.

...

Due to its location in the Arizona desert, Palo Verde is the only nuclear generating facility in the world that is not located adjacent to a large body of water. Instead, it uses treated sewage from several nearby municipalities to meet its cooling water needs, recycling 20 billion US gallons (76,000,000 m³) of wastewater each year. At the nuclear plant site, the wastewater is further treated and stored in an 80 acre (324,000 m²) reservoir for use in the plant's cooling towers.