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Tyyr wrote:Buying votes, spending more than they have, wasting lots of money on projects of little real benefit just to make their constituents happy.

Not to shift this to the health care debate. But on the note of waste I do find it interesting that they feel there is about a hundred billion of dollars being wasted in medicare and medicade annually, but not only can they eliminate all that "waste" but any new program they set up will be totally waste free this time.

As for infrastructure as far as roads and things go, like many things in the US, it's regional. New Jersey, apparently, has things pretty crappy, to no shock to the rest of the nation

Philly left much to be desired as well. But much of the country (Maryland, Iowa, New Mexico) have excellent roads. And they have a heck of a lot more of them than Eurpean nations/Japan which squish populations on the order of magnetude of the whole nation into an area the size of a state. Though another problem is funding things that look and outwardly seem fine, but in fact may have deep structural problems. Minnisota has some serious issues with that, and other places may as well.

As for the power grid, we seem to be trying to shoot ourselves in the foot there with some of the new policies coming out. California might not even have any toes left soon. Though if the "nuclear renaissance" actually comes around that could help a lot. They've taken a bit of a hit with Yucca, but I think Obama's plan from a while back puts some funding towards Thorium reactors, which could be much cleaner.

The only way nuclear would work is if the typical kneejerk reaction does not occur. Modern designs do not equal Chernobyl or Three Mile Island, our knowledge has taken great leaps since then. Idiots !

3 Mile Proved how safe nukes are. They slagged the core and there was no significant release of radiation. Turned it into a pile of molten metal.

Indeed. The western world has never had aq plant built like Chernobyl was built.

The problem is people not seeing the forest for the trees. I hate to beat a dead hedgehog, but Yucca Mountain is the perfect example. Tied up in legislation, due to be open over a decade ago, it's been sitting idle because of asylum escapees like The Sierra Club whining about it being built to house material with a half-life of 9999 years instead of 10,000, or some such nonsense. The fact that their solitary "expert" witness was derided and proved false by any number of uninvlolved actual experts doesn't seem to matter, nor does the fact that allowing nuclear to proceed would be one of the best things they could do for the environment in the 20 - 50 year short term.

And don't even get me started on the lack of investment in fast reactors and small-pellet reactors. Hmmm... a way to actually cleanly use the waste of other reactors? Why would we want to pursue that?

Mikey wrote:And don't even get me started on the lack of investment in fast reactors and small-pellet reactors. Hmmm... a way to actually cleanly use the waste of other reactors? Why would we want to pursue that?

Yeah, I read an article about that a few months ago, I think in the New York Times. It's shameful that they're just content to let the technology stagnate like that.

Lazar wrote:

Mikey wrote:And don't even get me started on the lack of investment in fast reactors and small-pellet reactors. Hmmm... a way to actually cleanly use the waste of other reactors? Why would we want to pursue that?

Yeah, I read an article about that a few months ago, I think in the New York Times. It's shameful that they're just content to let the technology stagnate like that.

It's orders of magnitude beyond shameful. Small-pellet reactors can literally be inserted anywhere in the grid and be functional - and clean - within months. Fast reactors aren't as flexible, but will actually use as fuel the strontium-doped waste of traditional reactors and themselves leave inert waste.

Indeed. Whenever I hear some moron blathering on about how a nuclear power plant could go up like Chernobyl I get a strong urge to beat his head in with a crowbar.

The simple fact is that oil is going to run out some time in the not too distant future. Solar, wind and hydro power is nowhere near good enough to take over. Nuclear power is the way of the future, and these idiots need to recognise this.

Sionnach Glic wrote:Indeed. Whenever I hear some moron blathering on about how a nuclear power plant could go up like Chernobyl I get a strong urge to beat his head in with a crowbar.

The simple fact is that oil is going to run out some time in the not too distant future. Solar, wind and hydro power is nowhere near good enough to take over. Nuclear power is the way of the future, and these idiots need to recognise this.

They could go up like Chernobyl... the likelihood is somewhere around like .002% or something like that, maybe a lil higher. But it's barely enough to be thought of. It's like saying solar power could cause your house to burn down... It could... But it's so unlikely why would anyone care...

...you do know that Chernobyl was a combination of horrific design and intentionally voiding safety protocols right? That the disaster was largely due to the design of the reactor, one that no one outside the old Soviet bloc have ever or would ever dream of making and even the old operators are shutting them down because of how awful they are? Without an RBMK style reactor you aren't going to have a similar event.

In fact with modern reactor design it's virtually impossible to slag a core baring active sabotage.

Major damage, total wreckage of the reactor, etc. are all possible though very unlikely. A true Chernobyl type explosion... it's just not going to happen without someone actively sabotaging things. I don't mean flicking the wrong switch either, I mean welding over massive pipes, blowing holes in meters thick concrete, or cutting power cords thicker than your thigh.

Well, there is still a small chance you could melt a core. It simply requires a number of highly unlikely things to happen at the same time.

The difference however is that in all US plants, unlike Chernobyl, that core is not just hanging out inside a building, but it's behind a massive containment structure.

As I understand it after 9/11 there was concern about terrorist flying a plane into a nuclear reactor to cause a major disaster. But it turned out that if you smack a 747 into one of those containment vessels what you get is a fully intact containment vessel with some schmutz on the side.

sunnyside wrote:As I understand it after 9/11 there was concern about terrorist flying a plane into a nuclear reactor to cause a major disaster. But it turned out that if you smack a 747 into one of those containment vessels what you get is a fully intact containment vessel with some schmutz on the side.

Yeah, it's like when a fly tries to take on a Uhaul truck...

Tyyr wrote:In fact with modern reactor design it's virtually impossible to slag a core baring active sabotage.

Major damage, total wreckage of the reactor, etc. are all possible though very unlikely. A true Chernobyl type explosion... it's just not going to happen without someone actively sabotaging things. I don't mean flicking the wrong switch either, I mean welding over massive pipes, blowing holes in meters thick concrete, or cutting power cords thicker than your thigh.

Heck, with pebble-bed reactors, you can even have the massive sabotage, and the reactor still won't fail. The water acts as the moderator and coolant meaning if the water boils off (from excess heat) the reaction actually slows down. You can literally turn off the coolant supply, watch the temperature rise a slight bit, then watch the radiation and temperature drop.

As for Chernobyl, it was a combination of 5 bad things:
1) night crew - aka fewer people
2) performing an experiment - aka outside normal operating procedures
3) deactivated the safeties - they got rid of the things that would keep them safe
4) on a bad reactor design - the tips of the cooling rods were actually transparent to radiation, meaning the temeprature would shoot up when first inserted
5) the reactor was not in any sort of safety building - even with all the above, if the reactor had been housed in a concrete shell, the disaster would not have happened. A few people migh thave gotten shipped to Siberia, but the disaster would not have happened.

I'm no expert on pebble bed reactors. But just because you stop the nuclear reaction doesn't mean you're in the clear. Decay heat from the nuclear products is, in other reactors anyway, enough to melt the core, which is than capable of melting through at least the initial layers of containment if not the main concrete structure. And it's tricky to reliably contain all of the released steam. Bleeding pressue off to maintain containment or the pipping leaving main containment may be neccessary, which means some degree of environmental contamination.

Of course once you're talking about environmental contamination you have to take a hard look at what burning all that coal does, not even just from the smog and greenhouse gasses, but they actually release substantial amounts of radiaion (remember radiation doesn't just come from nuclear power plants, you might have a fair bit of Radon in your basement).

sunnyside wrote:I'm no expert on pebble bed reactors. But just because you stop the nuclear reaction doesn't mean you're in the clear. Decay heat from the nuclear products is, in other reactors anyway, enough to melt the core, which is than capable of melting through at least the initial layers of containment if not the main concrete structure. And it's tricky to reliably contain all of the released steam. Bleeding pressue off to maintain containment or the pipping leaving main containment may be neccessary, which means some degree of environmental contamination.

Most pebble bed reactors are designed to already be at near-overload state as part of normal operations. This means that the reaction can barely get any hotter, even if the coolant gets turned off. So it literally cannot melt down.

Check it out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor