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oste8minutes • 8 years ago

The old pro-nuclear talking points greatest hits package, yawn. Bored now. Let me know when YOU FIND A WAY TO DEAL WITH THE WASTE.

Satan - So they Say. • 8 years ago

They already have, but you seem not to want to research it.

oste8minutes • 8 years ago

Tell it to the people living near the #WestlakeLandfill, I'm sure they'd be interested.

relilly • 8 years ago

Nuclear energy may have safety risks, but the fossil fuel alternative will be more than a risk.

Fossil fuel WILL KILL THE PLANIT.

TimS • 8 years ago

Nuclear is proven to generate commercial quantities of electricity with fewer fatalities and less environmental impacts than renewables. Death/TWh: Solar 0.44 , Wind 0.15, Hydro 0.10, Nuclear 0.04; nuclear is safer than solar, wind and hydro.

Guest • 8 years ago
Satan - So they Say. • 8 years ago

You've never heard of LFTR have you? Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors? I recommend you research this kind of reactor and learn how it takes nuclear waste and destroy it.

Guest • 8 years ago
Satan - So they Say. • 8 years ago

So you'd rather keep the waste that stays radioactive for 10 million years? That's fine, that's not really radioactive. As a matter of fact you could hold something that radioactive in your hand for about a day before you started having any sort of genetic damage due to it. Which would be about as much as a light sunburn or less. Now the radioactive waste that has a half life of about 3000 years or less. Well that is the waste we need to be rid of. And LFTR does just that. Also you must not know about the MSR in Oak ridge that ran for 7 years until it was shutdown by Nixon. So do not say there is no 'track history' of an operational reactor of that kind.

TimS • 8 years ago

The erratic nature of wind/solar has to be compensated “real-time” by fossil-fuel power stations operating in back-up mode, consuming more fuel than they would otherwise.
Nuclear is our best carbon-free option.

Ed Smith • 8 years ago

OK Ron...how does the nuclear industry deal with spent fuel rods ?

And as for the statement: "A very major, probably insurmountable, problem for wind and solar is that they require power from traditional power sources in their assembly
and construction..."

Are you saying the construction of a nuke plant doesn't do the same ? You can mine uranium at no energy expense ? The hundreds of people that work at the plants FOREVER can drive to the plant energy free ? And so on and so on. Really ? That's your argument ?

And further: "and after installation they often draw power from the grid to maintain them."

Really ? How so ? My solar panels do nothing but pump electricity INTO the grid (and I will fully admit only when the sun shines)...what energy draw are they going to require in the future ?? Kindly educate me.

Satan - So they Say. • 8 years ago

How do we plan to reduce our nuclear waste by 99.9999%? LFTR's, or Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors. Thorium is much more abundant than uranium (7 PPM versus 2.4 PPM). Or my favorite saying, "Why burn platinum when you can burn silver instead." Also, world wide Thorium reserves could power the planet for close to 2 Billion years. And if that is not enough, Thorium deposits can be mined from the moon or other nearby planets.

Also, LFTR is meltdown proof. As it is already melted down and safety features allow for any material to drain into waiting tanks if anything goes wrong.

Worried about construction times? LFTR's can be manufactured on production lines (as there are already plans to do so) then shipped world wide. As sites could be set up and operational in less than a year after planning.

I can keep going but I think you get the idea.

Asteroid Miner • 8 years ago

Since solar “works” 15% of the time and wind “works” 20% of the time, we need either energy storage technology we don’t have or ambient temperature superconductors and we don’t have them either. Wind and solar are so intermittent that electric companies are forced to build new generator capacity that can load-follow very fast, and that means natural gas fired gas turbines. The gas turbines have to be kept spinning at full speed all the time to ramp up quickly enough. The result is that wind and solar not only double your electric bill, wind and solar also cause MORE CO2 to be produced.

We do not have battery or energy storage technology that could smooth out wind and solar at a price that would be possible to do. The energy storage would "cost" in the neighborhood of a QUADRILLION dollars for the US. That is an imaginary price because we could not get the materials to do it if we had that much money.

The only real way to reduce CO2 production from electricity generation is to replace all fossil fueled power plants with the newest available generation of nuclear; unless you live near Niagara Falls. Nuclear can load-follow fast enough as long as wind and solar power are not connected to the grid.

Asteroid Miner • 8 years ago

Summary of Wind Turbine Incidents (December 2008):

• 41 Worker Fatalities, 16 Public- Includes falling from turbine towers and transporting turbines on the highway.

• 39 Incidents of Blade Failure- Failed blades have been known to travel over a quarter mile, killing any unfortunate bystanders within its path of destruction.

• 110 Incidents of Fire- When a wind turbine fire occurs, local fire departments can do little but watch due to the 30-story height of these turbine units. The falling debris are then carried across the distance and cause new fires.

• 60 Incidents of Structural Failure- As turbines become more prevalent, these breakages will become more common in public areas, thereby causing more deaths and dismemberment’s from falling debris.

• 24 incidents of “hurling ice”- Ice forms on these giant blades and is reportedly hurled at deathly speeds in all directions. Author reports that some 880 ice incidents of this nature have occurred over Germany’s 13-years of harnessing wind power.

Source: Treehugger

DexterPTera • 8 years ago

You nailed it Asteroid. About the only thing you missed is the fact that these technologies require subsidies from the government in addition to any costs passed directly on to energy consumers. In other words, even if you don't want them; don't want to pay their environmental price in impacts (dead wildlife, excessive noise pollution, reduction of arable land to provide their infrastructure support-roads and high-power transmission lines) you're still going to pay for them through taxes.