so how long has work been done on yucca mountain? how much old fuel has been moved there? whats the ultimate price tag for yucca and moving, storing, and monitoring this hopefully forever tomb? who is paying for all this?
what about shipping danger?
The logical solution is to recycle as does the rest of the world. The only reason we're not is because during the Carter administration the NRC was commanded to not consider the licensing application for the GE-proposed recycling facility, effectively creating the problem of the open-end fuel cycle we're still having to deal with.
The only reason for that was Carter's inability to separate commercial nuclear fuel and reprocessing/recycling from weapons proliferation.
As in the comparison you keep trying to make between Chernobyl and other LWR reactor designs, the only real similarity is that they both use some of the same words.
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snipped-for-privacy@aol.com wrote: ...
No, a bomb would tend scatter stuff around, not put it in closer proximity to the small number of "hot" assemblies which would be required to heat up all the rest.
They have been funding it since the beginning of commercial nuclear power in the 60s...
And we've been extremely successful despite the irrational fears of folks like you who rant about stuff they have no idea of how it actually works...
Just like the Chernobyl/LWR comparison -- can you explain the difference between the two reactor designs or even the mechanism by which the Chernobyl accident caused the dispersion? If you understood anything about the reactor design and the accident scenario itself, you would have an understanding of why that type of accident can't physically occur at a LWR.
you know if it werent for 3 mile island, nuke power would be much more common today.
but building something that can in any degree create another chernobyl here in our country is folly.
your statement that things are safe there except for one city shows how little you know of the after effects.......
It wasn't for the all BS that surrounded it. TMI should have been a poster child for the safety of nuclear power since something went wrong, yet the safety systems all worked the way they were supposed to.
In any degree? You want 100% assurances that nothing will ever go wrong? Then we should pretty much sit back and contemplate our navels in the dark. But even that is fraught with dangers.
snipped-for-privacy@aol.com wrote: ...
True, but the reaction was hysteria from folks like you, not from any reasoned evaluation of the consequences.
There was no measurable offsite harm, no onsite injuries. Nothing but some damaged equipment. How many other industries can have that as their worst scenario after almost 40 years?
Again I repeat--the LWR designs and Chernobyl have _nothing_ in common other than sharing the word "nuclear".
If you had any idea of the differences, you would understand that.
And again, what was the accident mechanism in Chernobyl? Do you even know what actually happened?
I made no such statement. If you want to have a discussion, at least don't make stuff up and attempt to make me say things I didn't say. This is the second time you've done this--to another respondent previously I saw.
The real problem with the future of nuke power was the coincidence on TMI and a movie release that hyped up the danger unneccessarily simply to sell movie tickets. I bet if you looked you would find out more people have died falling off of wind turbines than died in US reactor accidents. There certainly have been many thousand times the number who have died in coal and oil related accidents.
As I previously pointed out, you could extend this fear mongering to many things. Imagine the airplane having just been invented. You could conjure up all kinds of images of impending doom. Planes falling from the sky and killing hundreds at a time. Yet, we have 3 major airports withing a few miles of NYC. People fly every day and it's recognized as the safest and most efficient means of transportation.
We keep hearing Chernobyl. How about Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Look on a map and they are completely rebuilt thriving cities today.
And the final hypocrisy with the fear mongers is this. The same extremists that rail against nuclear power rail against just about everything else. Global warming for example. We're suppose to believe that life on the whole planet is in jeopardy, yet we're not suppose to use nuclear power, which has close to zero green house emissions. They have no solutions, only extreme positions.
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I should also point out that the trend had already begun well before TMI and the conclusion was already foregone -- TMI simply was the final chapter in the story at the time.
The incessant harping on negatives by the anti-nuke activists and the antagonism in the Carter Administration combined with the ability of the environmentalists to wreak havoc in the licensing process by the misuse of EPA and other subterfuges were sufficient impediments to the economics to make the utilities look for either postponing expansion or more expedient-at-the-time alternatives. Add into the mix, of course, the cost of money owing to the out-of-control inflation at the time.
That short-sighted handling of circumstances led to where we are now -- massive reliance on what has now become very expensive natural-gas fired units, old coal-fired units still on line 20-30 years after they would have otherwise been retired in favor of cheaper and cleaner units (both fossil- and nuclear-powered) and no comprehensive energy policy to this day other than avoidance of the inevitable for the short-term.
All in all, not at all a good legacy for those on that side to look back on.
Irrational discussion of stuff as you posit here doesn't advance the cause, either, so in many respects we're no better off after 30 years.
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Heck, as the bumper sticker said, more people have died in Teddy Kennedy's car than from nuclear accidents. Sometimes I think Teddy poses the greater danger to the country (g).
Hi,
I had the good fortune to work for a company that supplied parts for AECL many years ago. We got a tour of Bruce B, during its construction, and the then working Bruce A plant. We walked through what would be a reactor chamber, and really enjoyed the professionalism, and had the safety systems explained to us, including systems that were already in place, that had never been used. It was truly, and quietly, impressive.
The ignorant should have just a little >> snipped-for-privacy@aol.com wrote:
Kurt Ullman wrote in news:kurtullman- snipped-for-privacy@70-3-168-216.area.spcsdns.net:
He and his ilk;the greatest danger to the US.
France gets 70% of its electricity from nuclear power. France is also considered a very 'green' nation.
Jim Yanik wrote:
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Latest data I was able to find the last time the subject came up was IAEA for 2004 where they were still nearly 80%. I don't think their percentage has change that much since...
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I have one in my "back yard" and there are very close to being approved for the first new reactor in years. I really hope it goes through...
Dr. Hardcrab wrote: ...
You talking about the recent TVA/NuStart application for the Bellefonte site? While the application has been filed, it's probably at least four years before any approvals will wend their way through the licensing maze. It will, of course, be the acid test for the "streamlined" process...
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Probably ought to clarify that a bit--the LOCA (loss of coolant accident) part wasn't actually an operator error; it occurred when the PORVs (pilot-operated relief valves) did not automatically reseat after they opened.
The problem occurred on the operator response to the incident wherein they interceded w/ the HPI (High pressure injection) systems and later the RCPs (reactor coolant pumps) on the basis of their misinterpretation of the pressurizer level instrumentation indication and the fact they did not recognize they had a leak (stuck PORV).
This came about because the PORV location was close enough to the pressurizer outlet that the liquid-water interface became comingled owing to the flow disturbance. This confused the level indication which was a dP cell across the interface.
Consequently, they erroneously concluded that somehow they were in danger of filling the pressurizer solid w/ water which is a no-no, hence they turned off the HPI to avoid (they thought) doing that. Then, after a while as they continued to lose cooling water, the RCPs began to cavitate and they were turned off to prevent damage to them. At that point they then had a core becoming uncovered and no longer had forced circulation of what coolant they did have and things went downhill from there.
As I noted previously, the shift which came on next recognized the symptoms when they were going through the shift turnover meetings and began recovery operations immediately.
As a very brief synopsis, this leaves out a lot of detail, of course, but is a general description of what went wrong at TMI. There are a couple of obvious things here, the most obvious of which was the question of how, if the system were in danger of going solid, could there have been such low coolant level as to have caused RCP cavitation?
What went right, of course, was that HPI was incorporated in the system and once it was restarted to cover the core and the RCPS were again on to circulate flow, the accident was on its way towards mitigation.
Of course, the sad part is that if the operators had simply left the system alone, there would have been nothing but an operational incident of the stuck PORV (for which there was already a pending corrective action/notice in place) and after a short outage to repair/correct it, the plant would have been back in operation.
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snipped-for-privacy@aol.com wrote: ...
Well, ignoring CO2 and other emissions now, are you?
I'm fine w/ fossil-fired units as long as they're not wasting oil and natural gas as we currently are (both of which are far too valuable to be frittered away on central-station generation).
But, if the greenhouse gas argument has any legs at all, there's only one real alternative, and that is nuclear. (I know, there's solar/wind/geothermal/tidal/..., but none of those has the facility to replace large central-station generation 24/7 at anyways near the capacity required.)
If you think the Chernobyl pictures are a problem, look at the air pollution problems China and India are making from their fossil-fired generation and consider that impact as they continue to build at the rate they are. And, while considering, consider that whatever we do in the US isn't going to make any difference whatsoever in their governments' policies of what is in their best short term interests.
So, if you want to make any positive impact whatsoever, you had best get on the nuclear bandwagon--it's the only real alternative. What may happen in another 20-50 years for C sequestration and all is hard to guess, but my personal opinion is it is at least that long before there's any hope of any of the currently-proposed technologies being large-scale viable at anything close to competitive costs. Meanwhile, we already know how to build and operate safe, cost-competitive nuclear power plants -- all we need is to do it.
IF YOU"RE GOING TO KEEP CLAIMING THIS AT LEAST GO BACK AND FIND WHERE IT WAS AND DO THE COMPLAINING TO THE PERPETRATOR.
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The costs are paid by the fund the nuclear utilities contribute to -- this has been pointed out to you previously.
Yucca Mountain is no guarantee for what? It is what it is -- a temporary storage facility until the US finally gets off its duff and begins to reprocess fuel and make use of the vast resource we're now just sitting on.
This again is not a technical challenge, it's a political problem created by folks like you who have no solutions, only complaints, most of them as ludicrous as the arguments you've tried to make here.
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Hadn't seen that -- TVA Bellefonte was the only one I was aware of that had actually been filed...
Hopefully the process will at least be workable this go 'round, though.
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