Whats the problem with nuclear power?

Sonic67

What do we do about all the pollution from coal fired stations? Oil fired stations? What do we do when there's no oil or coal left? What do we do when more people have to die for oil?

Sonic67

Electric aircraft - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wild Weasel

The US Airforce ran flight trials with nuclear propelled aircraft in the 1950s.

There were a couple of engine designs that were tested. Both used a reactor to heat the incoming air and blast it out the back. In the end, it was deemed too problematic for all sorts of reasons and President Eisenhower axed the project.

pragmatic

Weren't there really massive aeroplanes like the size of the titanic in the 70's that where nuclear powered? ... or wait that was on thunderbirds.

Seriously though two point on this, one that was 60 years ago, things move on so its possible that engineers could try a different techniques, or use modern materials.

The second is if there isn't a viable alternative to oil for air flight, then all the more reason to use something like nuclear to power our infrastructure, houses, business and move as many cars as possible from oil to use the grid.

Oil is used for practicaly everything in the modern world, everything from cloths to houses, to just burn it for (non aviation) fuel is really quite a waste when alternatives are avialible.

Wild Weasel

I'm sure it's possible, but you really wouldn't want a nuclear aircrash smeared all over the landscape.

Ancient economies like the Roman Empire essentially ran on olive oil. They used it for cooking, lighting, cosmetics, you name it.

DPinBucks

That was the point I made earlier.

In the short-to-medium term, there is no viable substitute for oil (fossil or biofuel) for aircraft.

BUT, if we stop burning it in cars and power stations, it will last a helluva lot longer for aircraft.

In the long term, it's possible to predict hydrogen-fuelled aircraft, using H2 electrolysed from water by nuclear-generated electricity.

In the end, we can use electricity to do nearly anything we want, but we're going to need lots and lots of it.

BISHI

I think you'll find it's economy was totally dependent on slaves !!!

deckingman

Getting back on track,

Construction costs, decommissioning costs, and long term (thousands of years) safe storage of waste costs are very, very, very expensive. From starting to build until start of pruduction takes years before any sort of income can be attained. The country is broke and has massive debts. Where is the money going to come from?

Energy companies (the French and German ones like EDF etc) might be able to fund the odd one or two here and there but not enough to make much difference.

So yes, great idea - add it to the wish list, as and when we've paid off the billions we owe and then have a few billions more to invest.

pragmatic

Moving over to a different part of the topic, cost, one that is very real, but maybe not as large as people think and certainly larger than it needs be, but a responsibility we should bear?

Construction costs may be expensive but so is any power plant, for the amount of energy produced in a concentrated location I don't think its too great, and it provides plenty of jobs for a skilled/semi skilled workforce (plenty of graduates would be glad of that, as well as people from the local areas).

The cost to our economy through the return to 3 day weeks due to lack of power or having our energy supply being controlled by foreign nations (economically and politically) is far greater than even the deficit in the medium term, energy security is an investment not a cost, but if foreign companies like EDF want to build them, then I'd let them.

Decommissioning and waste storage seems to be the big ones.  For decommissioning, some people have suggested simply encasing the place in lead lined concrete, place a large fence around the area with signs that indicate danger of death.  Would be very cheap, if its the best solution is another thing.
Official decommissioning is expensive due to a lot of agencies and talking shops, once decommissioning is done properly and around the world then I foresee price will fall to acceptable levels and price gouging by government organisations (as always seems to happen) will be negated, decommissioning prices will fall.

Storage of waste, the vast majority of waste is low level, and mid level which can be and currently is stored in the open air and is only dangerous if you say had it has a kitchen sink or as a steering wheel. If it had the security that an electric transformer enjoys the danger would be a lot less (no instant danger of death and I don't think anyone wants to build playgrounds out of the stuff).

High level waste is both a very small amount and is most likely to be recycled.  Even if we did not recycle this waste, there is more rubbish put in land fill every day than has ever been accumulated as nuclear waste, so the area to be put aside for containment would be a very small area indeed, an acceptable level to society and there are communities that would happy take responsibility for the waste as part of the deal in having a nuclear reactor (as they already do in fact).

As an aside commercial/civilian nuclear reactor are not so called 'breeder' reactor, they do not make nuclear weapons grade material, that's a different type of reactor with a different purpose and physical design.
Old military reactors that were originally tasked with making nuclear weapons are now actively being recycled into civilian use (physically modified as that's what it takes) to generate power using 'civilian fuel'.

I'm not saying the cost issues are nonsense rather that they can be managed and more so than just burring oil, gas or coal where we throw a load of crap in the atmosphere and forget about it, something that is almost impossible to manage and may cause a day of reckoning.   It is almost like with nuclear we have to carry the can of the by product of modern life and people don't like it, they'd rather throw the remnants of a chinesse take away in the bin and forget about  it (collectively we'd rather not have responsibility and look the other way).

I'd rather we took the responsible approach of a secure facility (or a few) containing the waste and nasty/toxic by-products of power generation and by proxy modern life.
Others would rather we adopted the dump it in the lake attitute that is a completly irresponsible approach (mainly through ignorane I'd hope). These, our toxins would spread around the planet in such a way that we would have very little control over any eventual outcome (co2/global warming) and those that live arround the generating plants (cloal in particular) suffer serious heath conditions from its by-products.

deckingman

Got no problem with that. Trouble is, there is no money to invest. It's costing about £30 billion a year just to service the debt on the money we owe. It's like an individual who has a huge mortgage, credit cards run up to the max and a at the limit of their overdraft. There is no money to invest - in anything - no matter how good it will be long term.