A ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ Stumbles Forward

[Chuck]

General Electric and Westinghouse have submitted plans

Matthew L. Wald - BLOGS - Sept 9, 2009

Is the hazards of nuclear overstated? --Ed.

General Electric on Wednesday claimed a significant step toward getting one of its advanced reactor designs, the Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor, approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission — although the model has recently lost most of its customers.

Westinghouse, in contrast, has customers lined up for its new reactor model, the AP1000, but it was recently told by the N.R.C. that certification would be delayed because the company has been slow in answering the regulators’ questions..... [Read More]

[WriConsult]

I'm not too concerned about the safety of the reactors themselves (at least in the most developed countries), but waste disposal is still a huge problem, and needs to be included when the cost/kWh is alleged to be so much lower than other sources.

I don't think shipping all of it to a fault-ridden mountain in Nevada is the solution, either. I do think reprocessing IS.

[Taliesin]

The only reason I have a concern at all about terrorist attack in this issue is that I don't know anything about the on-site security at the plants.

If I knew about that, I probably wouldn't have that concern and would have voted for Rogue states.

That scares the beejeebees out of me.

[Chuck]

I voted rogue states.

My next greatest concern is disposal, but if it was not a problem when it was first in the ground, why can't it be safe reburied? This seems more of a NIMBY issue.

I've favored plants in the Southwest buried and away from populated areas to deal with concerns with terrorism and accidents.

[phoebeisis]

I'm not a bit concerned about nuclear power.It produces very little CO2, and NUKES- all NUKES even the two bombs, have killed far fewer folks that mining and burning coal.Of course we have been using coal for 100's of years.

I'm not too worried about storing the waste.Some folks are concerned that as a culture we'll forget where we buried it, and primitive cave man types will dig it up 10,000 years from now.If we have devolved to that degree, them there really won't be that many people exposed. Besides, if they are heavily exposed, they'll be dead in days and our "cave men" will figure that one out and stay away!

We need nukes.
Do you want NUKES or CO2? Affluent greenies want to have no CO2 and no NUKES, but we can't afford both. Coal or NUKES+ wind etc is our choice.

Charlie

[Shiba3420]

Originally Posted by phoebeisis

NUKES- all NUKES even the two bombs, have killed far fewer folks that mining and burning coal.

I'm sure that mining has probably killed thousands, and maybe 10's of thousands, but that's still a bit short of the bombs did. What numbers are you using to suggest deaths from burning coal? I'm not disagreeing, but I do have doubts that the difference is so clear cut.


----------------------

On a whole seperate issue, I can't believe that one of the permit applications was for a place called "Nine Mile Point".

Being so named so close to "ten mile island", I'd think the fear of the name could be far worse than any legit concerns over nuclear.

[Chuck]

If this was a poll with the reach of CNN, I'd probably add the choice "the power plant might have a nuclear explosion" and someone would actually click it.

Don't think anyone here would think that.

[worthywads]

Funny you mention that Chuck, as I heard the news reporting about how Barack was trying to brainwash our children I remember some indoctrination from my grade school days.

There was a weekly reader kind of newspaper that we got sometimes in 7th grade '74 and I remember an article that described a nuclear plant disaster as possibly a huge explosion that could kill millions of people. I also remember nuclear energy commercials back then talking about how much energy was in just one small pellet of this shiny metal.

I trusted industry over the scare tactics of the weekly reader back then, and to this day. We had the tiny Genoa nuclear plant just south of La Crosse , Wi and I was always fascinated and proud of it as a boy. Good spot to see Bald Eagles too.

[phoebeisis]

Shiba,

I'm a bit lazy so I don't have any links for you.
I'm guessing that the bombs killed maybe 200,000 max,and nuclear power plant accidents have killed fewer than 1000-and they were all Cherynbl(sic).

Coal on the other hand has been mined heavily for 300+ years. It has killed miners two ways
1)Mining accidents-worldwide-.
Consider-there were more or less zero mining safety regs until about 100 years ago.
USA,Great Britain,China,USSR/Russia Japan (exploiting Korea and Manchuria), all had huge coal mining operations.
2)Black Lung-more or less like silicosis(sand blasters) but with coal.Just about EVERY minor got Black Lung until the regs in the last 40 years held down the dust. A very high percentage of coal minors died directly from black lung-emphysema/COPD- or from heart disease made worse by it-or from lung cancer,radon in the mines probably didn't help.

Coal also kills the rest of us. The famous London Pea Soup "fogs" weren't fog.They were smog caused by all the coal fires in London. One of their famous fogs killed 100's over just a few days.The nasty smog in Beijing-thank coal.

Still, I'm not giving you hard numbers-too lazy.Now, if it was a bet involving$$,I could be induced to find 200,000 deaths someone would attribute to coal mining and burning.
Burning the coal certainly killed more folks, since so many are exposed.

Charlie
PS I'm also cheating since in the developed world coal burning is much cleaner now.

[WriConsult]

Originally Posted by Chuck

My next greatest concern is disposal, but if it was not a problem when it was first in the ground, why can't it be safe reburied? This seems more of a NIMBY issue.

1. Lots of controversy around this, but many claim the Yucca site has a lot of problems, and it seems to be located where it can generate the smallest amount of political opposition rather than where it would be safest. I think the selection of this site is more PIISEBY (put it in someone else's backyard) than its opposition is NIMBY.

2. Transportation. All this stuff has to be shipped across the country, which carries very significant hazards. Nevada is nowhere near most of the nuke plants in this country, making it a particularly stupid choice from a safety perspective IMO. If we have to choose a single site, I'd rather it be somewhere in the Central or Eastern timezones where the nuclear plants actually are, so that it doesn't have to be shipped as far.

Even better than one site would be three regional sites, to minimize the total amount of shipping distance for the waste. Of course the political opposition to putting the waste near more of the American population, even in places far more geologically stable than Nevada, would be deafening.

Better yet, by far, would be to store the stuff onsite and reprocess it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm in favor of expanding nuclear power if it's done right. I completely agree that coal has killed a lot more people, and let's not forget one other less-deadly but still awful effect: all the mercury that was released by decades of burning the stuff before we cleaned up our act. Heck, I live near a rail yard and some of my neighbors still have high levels of Hg in their soil dating back to the coal+steam days.