U.S. Navy Nuclear Power, on watch 24/7/365 around world in some of the most arduous conditions accident/incident free. Let's talk about Nuclear Power...
Posted on 07/07/2016 11:28:10 AM PDT by bananaman22
Let’s for a second imagine a world without nuclear energy. That’s a tough one but let’s try. No nuclear bombs, of course, no Chernobyl and Fukushima, no worries about Iran and North Korea. A wonderful world, maybe?
Probably not, because without nuclear energy we would have burned millions more tons of coal and billions more barrels of oil. This would have brought about climate change of such proportions that what we have today would have seemed negligible.
Nuclear energy and uranium, which feeds it, are controversial enough even without any actual accident happening. Radioactivity is dangerous. Nobody is arguing against it. When an accident does take place, the public backlash is understandably huge. What many opponents of uranium forget to mention, however, are the benefits of nuclear energy and the fact that the statistical probability of serious accidents is pretty low. They focus on the “What if?” and neglect the other side of the coin. But let’s try to see both sides of the issue.
(Excerpt) Read more at oilprice.com ...
There are far worse things for Bill Gates to use his reources on.
One needn’t knock fossil fuels as an argument for nuclear energy.
The big problem we face is powering private vehicles.
My home electricity use is way down, and will be going down more.
Nuclear power is not the way to go. No way, no how. When man can store it safely for hundreds of thousands of years isn’t reason enough to go nuclear. Two things need to be true, a way to safely store the waste for thousands of years, AND proof that civilization will be in a state where it will even remember that the stuff was stored. Hanford Washington, is storing nuclear materials that have been leaking for 60 years, they can’t even clean this up. Fukushima is leaking and is still so dangerous that they cannot attempt to get near it to make a plan to contain it.
I think we should go slowly with respect to nuclear power.
The new generation of reactors needs to prove itself.
We can store nuclear waste two miles underground using modern oil well drilling equipment.
Sacrificing a few square miles to nuclear waste is well worth it.
That argument can be used against anything. For example, solar cells produce lots Selenium & Cadmium waste and unlike nuclear waste which has a limited dangerous lifespan, Selenium and Cadmium waste will remain toxic forever.
Instead of taking on “noble” causes maybe Bill the bastard could pay market wages to Americans and not hustle congress for more H-1B visa slaves. I hope he rots in hell one day like all “globalists”.
I strongly disagree. New nuclear designs can consume ALL the fuel, leaving a residual that will drop to background radiation levels in less than 100 years. Further, these designs make it physically impossible for a meltdown to occur. Finally thorium based reactors are even safer still and can be made very small (think 2 standard shipping containers) which will allow for a distributed power generation grid of much finer granularity.
Illinois is closing two nuke plants as we speak.
I don’t think 2 miles would be enough.
That totally depends on where they were putting it. There are areas underground that have remained undisturbed geologically for thousands of years... that would work quite well.
U.S. Navy Nuclear Power, on watch 24/7/365 around world in some of the most arduous conditions accident/incident free. Let's talk about Nuclear Power...
Long term storage of nuclear waste is a political problem, not a technological problem.
Example is when Harry Reid dispatched “his guy” to chair the NRC for a few years to get Yucca Mountain de-railed. If it was the technology of isolation and multiple engineered barriers that would have proven failed, Harry wouldn’t have had to use his power of corruption to sack a duly-enacted law and technological approach.
Nuclear isn’t THE ONLY answer, but it is one of the energy sources that should be supported.
And if radiation is so dangerous, why are “you” sleeping next to a mate containing a fraction of a curie of Potassium-40 in a structure containing an unknown amount of Uranium daughter products?
“Illinois is closing two nuke plants as we speak”
Exelon (not “Illinois”) is threatening to close Clinton and/or Quad Cities plants in order to gain some leverage with “persuadable” state regulators.
Let it play out and see when they close for ... Decommissioning costs are high, they accrue funds toward that only while the plants operate.
Modern reactors, such as those Gates is supporting, use almost all the nuclear fuel and the remaining waste is only dangerous a few hundred years rather than thousands. There is at least one foolproof way to store any nuclear waste until it's inert, and that's depositing it, suitably packaged, at the mid-Pacific subduction zone to be pulled down into the Earth's mantle.
Even current and legacy reactors have a better safety track record than any other electric generation technology except perhaps solar. Fossil fuel generation is estimated to kill hundreds of thousands of people annually. How many has the radiation from Fukushima killed, exactly?
The propaganda campaign against nuclear power has been effective, all right.
Everything i read about THORIUM reactors sounds promising.
Elon Musk should set up a company- he seems to be the only one doing anything new and exciting
Yes, Exelon. My understanding is that they have begun to close both but some employees are still clinging to hope.
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