Which Cost More? Oil or ...

Yes, I think we should build many more nuclear power plants. Of course, they should be safe. In addition, they should all use the same technology, with groups of plants sharing the same design.

Jeff

The storage of nuclear waste is not a scientific problem, it is a political problem. Other counties made arrangements years ago to store their waste under the ground from which it came. Only the US is behind because the environuts do not want us to use nuclear power, the least expensive, safest and cleanest way to make electricity.

Few people realize storage of nuclear waste in the Yucca Mountain site is far safer than the storage any place else in the world or were all of our waste, for all of our nuclear power plants is currently stored, under six feet of water at the generating site . How many realize the nuclear fuel is taken TO the power station is by truck. By the way none of it shipped to, or currently stored at the power stations, has ever been a problem.

The fact is ALL of the nuclear waste for all of our nuclear activates since

1943 and ALL of our nuclear power stations, was held in one place it would not fill up the average high school gym.

Ask any sailor who is or has served, on any of our aircraft carriers or subs over the past thirty five or forty years, if they are afraid of nuclear power ;)

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The original source of my post is not an email, I saw it on the CNBC website.

Admittedly, some of the items on the list are farfetched (Channel No 5), but it is interesting to see how much it costs to produce and distribute things that are almost commodities like milk, soft drinks, and beer.

I live about 4 miles from work (8 miles roundtrip), and I get about 24 miles per gallon, so I spent about $1.33 today for gasoline (assuming $4.00 per gallon). I had a soft drink at lunch ($1.50) and another at dinner ($1.75), and had a coke from the machine at work during the day ($0.70). I figure I spent $3.95 for soft drinks (restaurants are charging outrageous prices for soft drinks these days, even if you do get free refills). This evening I had a beer at home, which I only paid $1.00 because I previously bought a 12 pack at a grocery store (would have been about $3.00 at a restaurant).

So for today, I spent $4.95 for beverages, and $1.33 for gas. I have no agenda and not trying to prove anything. But maybe gasoline is not the only overpriced things we consume.

Warren Buffet is the richest man on the planet (or close to it) and he made a big chunk of his money in Coca Cola stock. I don't recall that he has owned many energy related stocks (but I could be wrong about that).

It would fill up far more than a high-school gym. Not only does the nuclear waste include all of the waste at all of the nuclear power plants, waste from carriers and submarines, but it also includes waste from colleges, universities, research foundations and hospitals. If all it would fill up is a high-school gym, then when they dug the second Leigh tunnel on Route 9 (the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike), in addition to make an area for neutrino detectors, they could have made a safe nuclear repository. However, the amount of nuclear waste is huge, and would fill far more than just a gymnasium-sized who off a tunnel.

Note: The Northeast Turnpike Extension has since been renumber I476 from state route 9.

Jeff

It's still a stupid list, and you are a moron for attempting to assign any validity to it.

Turning off all the existing nukes would cause a serious shortage of electric power, and the newest commercial reactor in the US was built about 30 years ago. On the bright side, that plant, Palo Verde, has the NRC's worst safety rating and is one of only two US nuke plants on probation.

It may be better to store nuclear waste at the reactor sites, according to some nuclear scientists and engineers who believe better methods of longterm storage will be developed in the coming decades. BTW the contract for Yucca Mountain in Nevada was or is in the process of being awarded to a company that plans to simply stack the containers of nuclear waste and not secure them against earthquakes.

Nuclear power is not the cheapest, safest, and cleanest way to make electricity. That would be hydro power. In some places, hydro is so cheap that resistance electric heating of homes can cost less than natural gas heat.

It's later put into tanks made of 6" thick welded stainless steel tanks that sit upright in the open. The radiation level at the surface of the tanks is just double background level.

Actually a primary objection to Yucca Mountain is the shipment of the spent fuel. I'd worry more about the tanks simply being stacked unsecured because in the case of an earthquake that could injure nuclear workers.

The industry's example is a football field a few yards high.

The US Navy handles nuclear power more carefully than the commercial power industry does, as some some nuclear migratory workers can tell you. The largest commercial nuclear plant, Palo Verde, about 60 miles from here, has been on NRC probation for a few years and has apparently never been a particularly high-rated plant.

What will happen if there is an earthquake? Will the mountain cave in and cover up the stuff? LOL

Obviously the reference was to purchased fuels. Today the environuts would be apposing new hydro power sources because one would need to build a dam. They are currently fighting the erection of new transmission lines, needed to increase the available of electric power, to charge all those electric cars and produce all of the other "alternative" fuels LOL

Actually, what other nuclear countries do is to reprocess the spent fuel into new fuel rods. In the U.S., reprocessing is not permitted.

If it was a political problem, it would have been solved about 20 years ago. The truth is that it is an engineering problem. What you fail to understand is that a lot of this 'waste' is not made up of natural elements. Plutonium is only one of the products that does not exist in nature or if it does, then only in extremely small amounts. There are certain other isotopes that are 'unnatural' in that they do not occur in nature. Some of these isotopes have half lives of more than 10,000 years. One of Plutonium's isotopes has a half life of around 80,000,000 years.

There is not any place on earth that has been stable for 80 million years. Remember that the half life of a radioactive element is the length of time that it takes for half of the element to decay into something else. So at the end of 80 million years, half of the material will still be around. It will take another 80 million years for half of the remainder to decay. Plutonium is, in addition to being radioactive, a chemical poison. None of this means that the decay product is safe, only that it isn't what you had before.

The disposal problem is two-fold. What type of container do you put it in so that you can isolate it from the environment for over

160,000,000 years and where do you put it? Most of the Rocky Mountains will have eroded away in that length of time. No material made by man is both durable and strong enough to last for that length of time.

I don't see any solution to these problems. Yucca mountain is a political solution to an engineering problem that will only make things worse in the future. Heck, you can't even put a sign up that says "Keep Out" and expect it to be understood by people in 1,000 years much less 1,000,000 years.

You're wrong in that last statement. The nuclear waste isn't just the poisoned fuel, it also includes (or soon will include) the reactor vessels from power stations as well as nuclear powered navy and commercial ships, the 'hot' side of the heat exchangers and the machinery used to manufacture the fuel and fuel rods.

No one is saying that properly operating reactors are unsafe. But what happens when or if these ships are blown up and sunk in a wartime engagement? You can't guarantee that the reactor vessel(s) will remain undamaged.

Do you know where the used fuel rods are stored today? Do you know how used fuel rod pellet are treated for disposal? Search THAT, then get bask to us LOL

They have been burying the low level waste for years. The reactor vessels et al are not particularly "hot" and don't have a particularly long radioactive life. Of course we could take the Russian approach and just sink the old stuff in the ocean. Back in the late 70's / early 80's Westinghouse had to replace a lot of old steam generators. The ones they pulled out were mildly radioactive. I assume they are buried at Barnwell, SC. I haven't seen any consequences of that.....

The US has lost at least two nuclear subs (Thresher and Scorpion). The Russians have lost several others (not sure of the numbers). Any idea of the long term consequences of the loss of the Thresher - it is off the Atlantic coast and has been for 40 years. Multiple nuclear ships have been scrapped (Virginia Class Frigates, numerous subs, Long Beach, Savannah, etc.). Any idea of the consequences?

I live in Raleigh, NC. We have one nearby nuclear plant. I always thought it was funny when people in Raleigh worried about the nuclear plant 10 miles out of town operated by a major power company. Most of the worriers didn't know that NC State has/had a research / teaching reactor within 3/4 of a mile of the state capital building.....It is old and poorly monitored. Hopefully it has been decommissioned, but I don't really know. When I was in school there 30+ years ago, it was still hot.

Everything has consequenses - windmills kill birds, damns kill fish, tide generation will probably wreck the oceans, imainge covering 1000000s of acres with solar panels - think that will be enviromentally neutral? I'll bet not (even if you ignore production related pollution for the paneks and storage systems).

Ed

What has your answer got to do with what I said?

Why do you say that, did you forget what you said? ;)