Nuclear Energy??

[dedja]

Are you suggesting that if there is a nuclear meltdown somewhere due to a natural event, we should just say oh well, shit happens?

What do we do about he resultant radiation that will be around for years and years?

Is that a risk worth taking?

[Booney]

[Bully]

Are you suggesting that if there is a nuclear meltdown somewhere due to a natural event, we should just say oh well, shit happens?

What do we do about he resultant radiation that will be around for years and years?

Is that a risk worth taking?

no, never said that

[dedja]

Not having a go ... just playing Devil's advocate.

The points I made (rightly or wrongly) are the usual ones used to argue against nuclear power.

Until they are adequately answered by whoever wants to develop a nuclear power industry in Australia its dead in the water.

[MatteeG]

Its pronounced "Nucular"

[The Ash Man]

[Squids]

Built it in the middle of the desert.

[dedja]

good idea, plenty of water there ...

[Psyber]

Modern Uranium fission plants are reasonably safe if the backup generators are placed well and maintained so that controlled shut down in a crisis is assured.

Thorium fission plants cannot melt down, their waste is radioactive for only about 70 years, and you can't make bombs out of the by-products without re-processing them in a Uranium plant.
http://www.ensec.org/index.php?option=c ... Itemid=342

However, it looks like sub-fission heat generation by laser stimulation of fissile material may be an even more safe option.
Thorium is ideal for this because of its relatively lower radioactivity making it more easy to transport.
(You can carry it in your pocket if you wrap it in Alfoil.)
http://wardsauto.com/ar/thorium_power_car_110811

[Bully]

Interesting to see the poll votes so far, more think yes its safe .

[Bully]

From Wiki on Nuclear Power -

Nuclear power has caused far fewer accidental deaths per unit of energy generated than other major forms of power generation. Energy production from coal and natural gas has caused far more deaths due to accidents, In comparison, nuclear power plant accidents rank first in terms of their economic cost, accounting for 41 percent of all property damage attributed to energy accidents.[139]

[CENTURION]

Are you suggesting that if there is a nuclear meltdown somewhere due to a natural event, we should just say oh well, shit happens?

What do we do about he resultant radiation that will be around for years and years?

Is that a risk worth taking?

we're gonna die anyway, might as well go with a glow!

[dedja]

now you mention it, my Mazda 3 glows in the dark which made sense when I looked at the compliance plate one day ... made in Hiroshima

[Squids]

now you mention it, my Mazda 3 glows in the dark which made sense when I looked at the compliance plate one day ... made in Hiroshima

cool story but Hiroshima remained radioactive for only matter of days.

[Bully]

i guess a nuclear bomb would burn plutonium faster than it being released into the air and allowed to settle

[therisingblues]

Modern Uranium fission plants are reasonably safe if the backup generators are placed well and maintained so that controlled shut down in a crisis is assured.

Thorium fission plants cannot melt down, their waste is radioactive for only about 70 years, and you can't make bombs out of the by-products without re-processing them in a Uranium plant.
http://www.ensec.org/index.php?option=c ... Itemid=342

However, it looks like sub-fission heat generation by laser stimulation of fissile material may be an even more safe option.
Thorium is ideal for this because of its relatively lower radioactivity making it more easy to transport.
(You can carry it in your pocket if you wrap it in Alfoil.)
http://wardsauto.com/ar/thorium_power_car_110811

One "if" too many for me.
Thorium sounds good. I'd like to know more facts on it before agreeing to it though.
Sub-fission sounds even better, though I think it's still experimental if I remember an earlier post of yours correctly.

[therisingblues]

I know I will get dumped on over this but what the hell. I firmly agree we should have nuclear power stations. We have an infinite supply of raw fuel (is it called yellow cake, or maybe a chip butty) and so once the capital cost has been depreciated over several years then our power bills would be cheap which would give manufacturing a healthy leg up.
Base load power can't be delivered by current technologies in wind, solar and wave motion. I don't think so anyway.
Remove the hysteria from the Greens and other loons and it is a sound source of electricity.

You were doing so well until that final comment.
You want me to dump on you for it?
As someone who's surviving day to day in a highly infected radioactive nation I think I am somewhat qualified to answer.
We own a Geiger counter, never thought I'd need one of those bastards but hey I don't live in a nuclear free zone like you do. I am doing all I can to get out of here and the idea of just abandoning our customers and business has come up many times. Many of our friends ate jealous simply because we have a country to run to, the vast majority here cannot run.
The Japanese government has done all it can to quell hysteria and protect those industries directly affected by the disaster. For example the dairy industry: cows eat alot of grass and there are alot of cows in the Fukushima area, to protect farmers from a fearful public not wishing to buy radioactive milk, the government allowed cows from the area to be spread across the nation. Now cows from everywhere are potentially lethal. Make sense? Labeling practices have also been relaxed, milk that was once labelled Fukushima can now legally be labelled Kumamoto, the area least affected by radiation. Make sense?
Radioactve garbage from Fukushima is burnt across the nation to share the burden, pissy little local goverents eager for a payoff gladly allow waste to be burnt in their local area while claiming to their local constituents that they're helping the nation, if people find out.
Everything I buy for my family is checked for it's origins, even then we know it'll have higher than normal infection if it's from within japan. The least we can do is buy safer products, nothing is completely safe.
We spend every day dodging potential sources of high radiation. We've seen the documentaries on Chernobyl, all these years on. Shocking! You tube it!
In years to come there'll be documentaries on Fukushima and surrounding areas. I pray to God Kyushu will not be featured.
Remember, when they started these reactors they were touted as being safe, made by good companies etc. Truth is as time goes on people get slack and complacent and the government in power may not have the priorities of those that went before. This is what has happened in Japan, and before Fukushima there were grave fears by many in the know about safety standards at those plants. I read about one guy who quit working in protest about how slack safety was.
I used to be a firm believer in nuclear power, for the reasons you stated in your post, I think you'll find most greens love the idea. But having lived it and studied it for 2 years I am definitely anti nuke.

Well I can't add anything constructive to that comment.

Fair enough. I'm just wondering what part of my life has been hysteria these past two years. You worry about getting dumped on, yet in the same post dump on me.
How would you feel if your local government began to burn nuclear infected waste (to be sure, not nuclear waste exactly, but garbage from a high radiation zone)?
You'd probably assume that said waste had been tested and passed safely.
What then, if you found out, that the official "safe" level had been dramatically increased to ensure they could burn it? Or that the waste had been tested and found to be above even the increased official safe level, so the workers scoured the pile until they found a sample below the level and then used that as the official figure on the check sheet and pronounced the whole pile "safe for burning"?
Don't want to bore you, or others, with my hysteria though.

[therisingblues]

Yes there was, but due to mother nature, it caused the meltdown. No one forsees mother nature and what it can do.

I haven't heard the latest consensus, so you could be right, but last I heard they were saying that if the plant had been maintained properly the back-ups would not have failed.

just watched the 2 year anniversary on foxtel doco. The sea walls that were built when the plant was built were built to a height to prevent a 17 foot tsunami wave. The earth quake on the day this tsunami was caused, the tsunami was three times the height of the ocean wall. The sea water poored into the power plant, and flooded the backup diesel generators which are there to power the cooling for the reactors. These failed, they resorted to running out into the car parks of the power plant, and ripped car batteries out of cars and tried to use them for power.

I've checked a couple of sites quoting official investigations from last year, condemning TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) and the Japanese Government for gross negligence and failure to maintain safety at Fukushima. Apparently the reactor failed immediately when the earthquake hit. The wall of water provided them with an excuse later in that they could claim the plant withstood an earthquake, but no one could prepare for that tsunami.
An earlier report exonerated TEPCO from all blame, but later investigations revealed plant failure before the tsunami hit and a long history of poor safety maintenance.
It isn't just Fukushima, Chernobyl and 12 mile island, these reactors often leak, ever since I arrived in Japan there's been sporadic news about safety violations, leaks, cracks in these plants. They had been warned many times over but dollar signs (yen signs) make organisations do stupid things.
People in Australia would not live under high power lines, how'd you feel about living next to a leaky, cracked nuclear power plant?

[therisingblues]

.
More details here (July 2012):
http://rt.com/news/fukushima-nuclear-di ... eport-459/
And here
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18718057

[Bully]

im sure in that doco i watched it said that Japans nuclear plants are designed to shut down when an earth quake hits near japan or is a certain size earth quake, maybe i was dreaming as it was late when i watched it

Luck of the draw if i had to live next to a Nuclear power plant that leaked. Luck of the draw living next to a major highway or on one and a semi comes through your house and yeah.....luck of the draw if a pot/sink hole opens up (like the poor guy in florida just recent) and you sink in a 50 foot hole.

yes, its not nice, but not much you can do. If you move, and the government then builds another leaking plant next toyour house, then the cycle goes on