Correct, people like you prevented IFR reactors from replacing our unclean, inefficient, potentially nuke building reactors because they hear radiation and their instant reaction is irrational fear, while your arguments don't really touch LWR and BWR as far as safety goes as well. There are a few breeder reactors in use. Their significant advantage is being able to use uranium 238 (99.3% of natural uranium) not to mention conceivably any other fissionable such as thorium (which in itself is 450% more common than uranium). There's many other generation IV and V reactor types that all have their advantages and draw backs but I'm not here to teach you how to design a nuclear reactor I'm refuting your arguments. What's key here is weighing our options. Can we afford to give up on the dream of replacing our enormously dirty coal, oil and natural gas energy production with nuclear energy? The answer to scientists is no.
First off for cost effectiveness. IFR reactors are economically feasible with uranium as soon as uranium costs less than $200 a kilo. As it is uranium costs around $100 per kg, they are feasible right now. This of course ignores thorium which is about $25 a kg. When all is said and done we get about 1.5TW of thermal power from oil, an normal sized nuclear reactor produces 1 MW of electrical energy and 3 MW of thermal energy. In order to sufficiently provide power for the entire world and completely replace oil (assuming battery technology is present) we'd only need 5,300 reactors copying the technology we already have. This is a estimation based on old technology of LWR and BWR reactors.
The biggest disaster that has ever happened was Chernobyl. An unauthorized test carried out by individuals trained to stop the reactor from going critical in the exact opposite way that this reactor was designed. Essentially they did the opposite that they were supposed to and the reactor didn't even go critical and explode but rather caught fire. Further the test was unapproved because it was taken to the plant manager and as stated did not include attempting to boost the reactor's output. The pressure exploded the core causing a fire which lofted radioactive materials into the smoke. 50 people died. If you want to get technical about it there might've been as many as 4,000 deaths due to long term radiation effects (cancer) however this is entirely a statistical projection.
Then we have the three mile island incident where no one was seriously injurred or hurt. In fact including the ambient background radiation of the populous from a year of operation the surrounding population had been dozed with less than 1 x-ray worth of radiation. More importantly a coal plant in the same area would've generated far more issues and problems both environmentally, radiation-wise and human-wise.
On the other hand lets look at coal. From 1970-1992 there were 6,400 coal worker deaths. There were over 1500 natural gas worker deaths. Hell hydroelectric had 4,000 deaths. Coal power that the US uses kills a projected 24,000 a year due to lung disease and causes upwards of 40,000 heart attacks per year. In fact, (this is absolutely hilarious considering your stance on this stuff) coal power generates 100 times MORE RADIATION than a comparatively sized nuclear reactor. This is due to toxic coal particles called fly ash. In just 8 years between 2000 and 2008 BP alone had 41 deaths and thousands of accidents including venting of toxic gases over inhabited texas weeks before the gulf oil spill. Even more hilarious given your vendetta against nuclear is that 1 ton of uranium produces as much electricity as 2,000 times the coal. At that difference the grey ash produced is of much greater radioactive worry than a nuclear reactor.
In 40 years there hasn't been a single fatality from a US operated nuclear facility. Lets compare against wind power since you seem to have an irrational erection for the concept. In 2010 there has been 41 worker fatalities. Most of these fatalities however occurred from obvious sources of falling while working on the turbines. 139 instances of blade failures including blades being cast up to a mile away from their wind turbines, this has prompted european countries to introduce a wind turbine rule that they can't be less than 2 KM from habited areas. There have been 110 incidents of fire. When a wind turbine catches fire there's really nothing a fire crew can do but watch. This is particularly irritating when the turbine is producing hot debris. 60 instances of structural failure including tower collapses. 24 instances of turbines throwing ice off of the turbine blade and injuring people. It's important to note that there were over 1000 potentially deadly icing incidents in germany alone.
Further it requires 2,000 typical wind turbines to account for the energy of one nuclear core which in total is about the size of your living room. Including the significantly overbuilt safety systems a nuclear facility has the footprint of about a square mile. This is over 100 times more dense than wind turbines which produce on average about 3.2 watts per square meter. This would be nice assuming that wind turbines could be built in the middle of nowhere without habitat destruction but they cannot be. As far as solar goes solar costs 3 times as much. Further the density of solar power production is about twice as great as wind but still requires much more space. Can you say habitat destruction?
As for your constant fallacious appeals to credability. My uncle is ph.d Leslie Backstrom (works at INL, you can call to check if you'd like), a world famous scientist on the spread of radioactive substances particularly radioactive gases. He monitors nuclear facilities around the country as a government watch dog. My aunt and uncle in law both work for the government labs at the Idaho National Laboratories as hazmat technicians. Not only am I inherently familiar with this stuff from my own studies, I possess insiders knowledge. Not only that but my uncle and aunts and entire extended family really are heavily liberal environmentalists.
So as much as your little fallacious anecdotes are designed to impress, they do not. Physicists do not reject the possibility of nuclear in fact 70% of scientists support nuclear power. These statistics are provided for us nicely by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Your constant appeals to fallacious what ifs (that can't even occur, but of course you know better!), doomsdaying and blatantly false information make your entire position seem disingenuous.
All I ask from you is to show me how I am wrong, that's all anyone asks from an intellectually honest debate. If you weren't prepared to do that, or (as it appears) you aren't capable of doing it then perhaps a debate forum isn't the best place for you.
Nuclear Energy Reactors
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by elfdude
