What do you think about the nuclear energy?

What do you think about the nuclear energy?

It is good and useful? Why?

It is dangerous? Why? What kind of alternatives you suggest?

 

Well - despite what people say - it's "renewable" because the rate of use is tiny to the amount of matter available. In real terms you can't really run out of it for millions of years, at which point new uranium is ready to be harvested.

I was amazed to find that it puts out less radiation than a coal burning power station. This is because a PROPERLY functioning nuclear power station should put out no radioactive material. Coal on the other hand, contains many elements from the periodic table, some of which are mildy radioactive. Worse, these are all belched up into the atmosphere when burned. Don't panic - it's not as bad as it sounds, but if you do a google search you will see that people local to a power station, and the workers themselves are at a slight risk. In real terms, pollution from other particulates are probably of more a worry. Of course - we all know that coal burning power stations are bad news anyway!

The problem with nuclear power is that sometimes and almost inevitably, they can and do go wrong. Thinking off the top of my head this is the only form of power that has a severe risk associated with it's malfunction. Much of where I live in Wales is still contaminated by caesium deposits from the Chernobyl disaster. There are grazing restrictions, although having done much research into it the personal risk to local inhabitats is much less than say, being run over! The contamination and grazing restrictions could ultimatly last the best part of 75-100 years, even though Chernobyl is a world away.

For this reason, I think nuclear energy is best left alone until it can be safe. It worries me that China intends to build so many nuclear power stations for it's rapidly expanding economy.

It's not all doom and gloom though. A nuclear fission plant is currently being built in France with the hope of generating clean energy from nuclear reactions without the associated dangers. Even China themselves, and also British scientists are currently researching a way to make regular nuclear energy safe and melt downs impossible. I wish I could find the article - it made fascinating reading and was qutie exciting if you worry about the future of the world and energy, etc. It had something to do with lot's of tiny nuclear power stations, but ones which could not possibly go into a meltdown state ???

 

1. fusion plant is being built in france, we've been using fission for years
2. it's all good as long as no one fucks up
3. the fuel is cheap
4. once we have a good way to deal with the waste we're golden

 

if you talk about fission nuclear power so am i a very against it, it to dangerus and make way to much pollution..

but i you talk about fusion nuclear power, i think The world is soon ready for it and hope sience make it work, there is so many better thing about fusion power, The best off all is if something wrong happend, the procrss just stop and nothing gonna blow up like in 1986.

 

Nuclear Power is a reasonable interim solution. While its true that it doesnt use much Uranium, we dont have much Uranium to use. Its quite a rare element and is unliekly to last more than a couple of centuries if used in any real quantity. A well maintained nuclear power station should be effectively pollution-less however post use Uranium becomes a significant pain. It has a decay path lasting thousnads of years finally settling at Lead, during much of this time its highly radioactive and without space travel storing it will be hard. That said its only a problem if people are careless which I guess is better than fossil fuels which is damaging whatever.

 

Out of interest, how does the radioactivity of post-use uranium compare with pre-use?

 

Elemental Uranium (238) isnt dangerously radioactive though there probably is a higher incidence of leukemia form people living near Uranium deposits but thats true for many deposits of the very heavy elements. When Uranium is blasted with neutrons the following (rather infamous) reaction occurs U(238) + n (a neutron) -> U(239) + energy. If you have enough neutrons and enough Uranium atoms then you get a lot of energy which can be used for good or evil. U(239) is higly unstable and breaks into Np(239) + some beta radiation withing a few minutes, this is also unstable and decays into Plutonium within a few days again emitting beta radiation in the process. Gamma radiation comes from excited particles in the nucleus loosing energy and returning to their ground state.

So in essence U(238) is stable, just, but it doesnt take a lot of energy to break it up. Once this process starts decay will continue until a new stable state is achieved, it just so happens that the path for Uranium is very long. I say thousands of years but after only a few years Uranium breaks into things with very long half lives, centuries in their own right in some cases so the intensity of the radioactivity tails off quie rapdily.

 

Highly radioactive waste. Hmm, "highly radioactive" sounds like there is energy in there that we don't yet have technology to get to.

My concern about nuclear power is that the people in charge are more interested in making money than in making electricity. Similarly, the people in charge of storage are more interested in money than in safe storage.

The continuing deregulation of public utilities suggests that we are unwilling to remove the money-seekers from their control of the industry.

 

Yeah, but the longer the half life, the less radiation the stuff gives off.

I mean, if it takes 500yr - that means we've got few of these things acutally giving off rads at any given time. Now, a half life of a few months, the thing is decaying rapidly and hurling out radiation.

 

Where is the waste stored? I read when I was kid it was stored deep underground in secure shelters designed to last 10,000 years and other "magical" places , but now I'm older than sounds nonsense!

 

Indeed highly radioactive does mean theres energy not being got but it has to be in a form that can be transferred into electricity. Some of that radiation is gamma rays which isnt easily absorbed so its very hard to capture. Alpah radiation doesnt travel very far. Radioactivity in general tends to warm things up as the radiation is absorbed. Given that geothermal energy uses the heat of the earth to generate electricity and the earth is warmed by radioactive elements deep underground I suppose you could say that geothermal is a way of utilizing this energy. However we dont produce anything like enough waste to generate significant amounts of heat from the decay alone. It is a key point to note that we dont use the radioactivity to genertate power, the radioactivity is a result of unstable products being generated.

To store waste they dig a big hole (preferably lined with concrete) and stick the barrels in and do their best to forget about them.

 

that shits crazy man it could kill us all!

 

ah - the voice of reasoned, measured debate!!! but yeah, i say don't use it until it's properly safe

 

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It's dangerous,because of the accidents, I think.
The easiest way to produce cheap energy is from the wind, but the people won't use it, because It's noisy...that's so stupid....

 

Another drawback of wind power is the visual impact. There are quite a few wind farms on the hills around here, and that's fine. I wouldn't be so keen if they were all over everywhere though. I havn't been close enough to one of the turbines yet to hear the noise, but I don't think it's as bad as some people say with the noise being carried for miles. They also don't produce a huge amount of electricity.

Offshore wind turbines don't have any of these problems, but I presume are more expensive. As I live in an island nation, I'm kind of surprised wave power and other systems are not used more.

 

It's a delicious energy drink!