What is it about Physics...

Fission or fusion, I don't understand how nuclear energy could be considered clean. Maybe reactors don't belch as much black smoke as say, a coal plant, but there's still the inconvenient little problem of nuclear waste to deal with.

In a way, we already have all the nuclear power we need. It gives us more energy than we know what to do with, and the reactor is located a relatively safe 93 million miles away.

 

Well...its cleanER. We live in a world of bad energy choices, and as much as people want to look at solar or wind or even tidal power (or conservation) as the clean answer to our prayers, its just not realistic, the scales arent there. (and, there is evidence mounting that the tremendous use of wind off the shore of norway has altered the precipitations patterns in the country. Nobody knows what will happen if we blanket huge swaths of area in solar panels and collect light instead of letting most if it reflect into the atmosphere...etc etc. Now I know these arguments are weak, but my point is EVERY energy technology has a footprint of some sort).

Nuclear has the power density and the scaling ability to take over for a large chunk of what coal and oil produce now. Nuclear waste is terrible stuff, but a 100 MW nuclear plant produces something around a cubic meter of spent fuel rods a year, which has to be encapsulated and stored, so it ends up taking ten times that volume, but still...most nuclear plants in this country are currently storing all of their spent fuel from the past few decades on site (as they wait for yucca mountain to open). Terrible waste? YES. Something much much easier to deal with than the wastes pumping out in HUGE volumes from coal and oil (seriously, a similar size 'clean' coal plant produces truckloads of sulfur products a day).

Really, for nuclear, the waste isnt the most scary part. The mining of the uranium is. The mining is much more environmentally destructive and risks of seepage into the groundwater during mining is elevated.

I really feel people demonize nuclear even though its the cleanest energy alternative we have right now. People want clean energy and look to this 'holy grail' of clean energy off in the distant future but end up mortgaging the present by attacking the one technology that could have a significant effect now.

 

I guess it's a matter of defining 'clean'. Morally, whats higher up the ladder, us burning coal and having to breath the pollution ourselves, or producing a byproduct which (to my admittedly unscientific background) will emit toxins for thousands of years and which we 'hope' future generations can cure? How would we feel if, say, our cavemen ancestors had saddled US with such a poisonous legacy? I think we'd be pissing on their graves in anger. Call me old fashioned. Call me conservative. I just believe we should leave future generations in Better shape than we found, not worse.

 

People, calculate and visualize: fossil fuel use in 2005 released about 25 billion tons of CO2. That's 3000 cubic miles of gas! There is no hope that we could ever capture and sequester more than a tiny fraction of that much material. In contrast, all of the high-level waste ever created by the world's nuclear power reactors would fit inside a football stadium. The nuclear power waste problem is literally a million times smaller than the fossil fuel waste problem.

 

Hmmm... Isn't that a bit a simplistic way of putting it? You make it sound like the volume of something is the only relevant parameter.
I don't want to minimize the risk of global warming, but you are comparing apples to oranges. CO2 is not toxic by itself, and naturally already present in far greater quantities in the atmosphere. Nuclear waste really is a totally different story.

 

If nuclear waste is nothing to be concerned about and the volume of that waste is so small why not store the waste material permanently at the facility where it was created? Isn't that a great way for energy producers to pay for the storage of the material and allways be aware of the waste they produce?

In 10,000 years time when nuclear energy is something people read about in history books who will pay for the storage of the waste?

I really don't believe solar and wind aren't viable ways to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels to a minimum along with hydro and other power sources and it would be easily affordable if there was a 5% levy on the retail price of fossil fuel energy which was 100% spent on solar and wind instalations. Over 20 to 50 years all of our fixed energy needs could be met by renewable energy. Of course I have nothing to back this up it is just my thoughts on this matter.

 

Now let's consider the hot air that has emanated from the White House for the past 7+ years. I estimate it to be about 50 billion tons of global warming pollution. "There is no hope that we could ever capture and sequester more than a tiny fraction of that much material." The nuclear power waste problem is literally much smaller than the DC hot air pollution, BUT it will only take us about 5 generations to recover from 7.5 years of DC hot air, not 1000 generations like nuclear waste. DO NOT SADDLE FUTURE GENERATIONS WITH PROBLEMS YOU WOULD NOT HAVE LIKED PAST GENERATIONS TO LEAVE AT YOUR DOORSTEP.

 

Over time, I have found that asking a really good question can do wonders. Calling the uneducated names does not educate and arguing with someone determined to be obtuse is a waste of time.

A couple of years ago, we were having dinner with another couple. During the dinner, they told us that a FOX TV show revealed how the moon landings were faked. After biting my lip to not react rashly, I figured out the question to ask. It went along these lines:

"When in college, the astronomy department was using laser data to determine the distance to the moon. Key to this working was the "mirrored cat eye reflectors" placed at the Apollo landing sites. Those reflectors lit up beautifully at each Apollo landing site when illuminated. How did they get there if the moon landings were faked?"

I got much better results with that question than any negative comment would have produced.

 

First off, the "problem" of nuclear waste is more a general public fear of the unknown than an actual "problem". I'm not trivializing it. Nuclear waste disposal is an issue certainly worth dealing with, but far less than the problem of global warming caused by the emissions from burning petroleum chemicals. Nuclear waste disposal can be dealt with properly and safely by present society. And by doing so, we aren't handing it off to future generations. Sure, the material is still physically present, slowly undergoing radioactive decay. But it can be made safe. People who don't truly understand the science behind it think it isn't safe, that we are leaving it behind for future generations. OK - it isn't 100% safe. Everything has a certain risk, even walking across the street to get your mail. It would probably take a sizeable asteroid hitting the Earth or a catastrophic 10.0 earthquake to cause a release of the material, but then we would have other things to worry about, wouldn't we?

The disposal CAN be made safe. The public perception is quite the contrary, mostly due to fear of the unknown, and exacerbated by the media, who live off of controversy.

Again, if you say we must avoid saddling future generations with the nuclear waste problem, then you also need to say that we need to avoid handing off carbon and sulfur emissions to future generation.

If you read about and understand the many scientific comparisons of different forms of energy production, you will find that the environmental risks associated with nuclear power are millions of times less than the risks associated with carbon-based energy sources.

 

Easy to say. Impossible to prove. And this discounts the countries and organizations that may be motivated to dump, like N. Korea, Iran, etc. or the US 50 years from now that may not have the money or the government oversight to ensure it is not released. One of the most worrysome things about this line it that it assumes all the money will be available to do it right. Question-How are the Russians disposing of all the nuclear sub reactors and associated waste left over from the cold war?

Quite a good point.

Fair point. Now continue reading about all the viable solar technologies that make both coal and nuclear a poor energy solution. It took 9 months to built a 80MW Kramers Junction Plant and the 80MW was a legal limit, not the limitation of the plant. No investors are going to put money in an unbelivably expensive nuclear plant that will not show returns for over 8 years when they can get wind and solar plant investment returns in under a year.