Nuclear Energy??

[therisingblues]

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

You could be right. Sometimes what's thought to be correct turns out to be a lie and vice versa.
I put the date next to the links I found because they contrast with earlier opinions. It could also be that they have found evidence recently that proves human error was not a factor, but until I read your earlier post I hadn't heard of it.
My main concern is that the plant did meltdown. Whether it was mother nature to blame or not the fact is it's still spewing waste into the atmosphere to this day. That there were maintenance issues is also a fact as are the previous leaks.
It's true that there ate far fewer proven deaths due to nuclear power as vs other forms of power. But the effects are lingering, and far reaching. Chernobyl affected large parts of Europe, notably Norway and Italy, not just the Ukraine. Fukushima sent a large cloud of waste that affected radiation levels in California, there was a news report which stated milk from west coast dairies was too high in radiation for human consumption. The southern hemisphere is becoming a haven. We have a two year old son and I am doing my best to protect him and my family until we can relocate to that wonderful place called Australia.
I sincerely ask all Australians to keep our homeland nuke-free.

[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

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.

Yes it is.
The US company claim they'll have prototype car running in 2014.
As the weight of the steam turbine the heat generated is intended to drive is an issue I suspect their plan would work better in larger vehicles and would help us avoid the carcinogens in diesel exhaust.

Overall, I think the sub-fission idea has more potential for stationary power generation where weight doesn't matter much.
(And cheap electrical power could supply Hydrogen to run existing petrol engines on.)

[Interceptor]

Probably won't see a conventional (Uranium fission) reactor in Australia because it's political poison and also possibly unviable.
Thorium plants have some promise, but no one's built a commercial plant, although I think India and China were looking at them.

Various projects are still underway to achieve practical nuclear fusion, but it's proven extremely difficult to achieve.

[dedja]

Surely after 100 odd years someone would be able to work out how to generate base load electricity without having to boil water (other than hydro)?

[Psyber]

Probably won't see a conventional (Uranium fission) reactor in Australia because it's political poison and also possibly unviable. Thorium plants have some promise, but no one's built a commercial plant, although I think India and China were looking at them. Various projects are still under way to achieve practical nuclear fusion, but it's proven extremely difficult to achieve.

India has built what they call a semi-commercial Thorium Fission reactor just outside Mumbai.
Here is one article about China's interest: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comm ... orium.html
A more general article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampent ... -possibly/
Thorium itself: http://www.ga.gov.au/minerals/mineral-r ... orium.html
Projects are listed in this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium#Ex ... y_projects

Existing thorium energy projects

The German THTR-300 was the first commercial power station powered almost entirely with thorium.
India's 300 MWe AHWR (pressurized heavy water reactor) reactor began construction in 2011. The design envisages a start up with reactor grade plutonium which will breed U-233 from Th-232. After that the input will only be thorium for the rest of the reactor's design life.[42]

The primary fuel of the HT3R Project near Odessa, Texas, USA will be ceramic-coated thorium beads. The earliest date the reactor will become operational is in 2015.[43]

Best results occur with molten salt reactors (MSRs), such as ORNL's liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR), which have built-in negative-feedback reaction rates due to salt expansion and thus reactor throttling via load. This is a great safety advantage, since no emergency cooling system is needed, which is both expensive and adds thermal inefficiency. In fact, an MSR was chosen as the base design for the 1960s DoD nuclear aircraft largely because of its great safety advantages, even under aircraft maneuvering. In the basic design, an MSR generates heat at higher temperatures, continuously, and without refuelling shutdowns, so it can provide hot air to a more efficient (Brayton Cycle) turbine. An MSR run this way is about 30% better in thermal efficiency than common thermal plants, whether combustive or traditional solid-fuelled nuclear.[31]

In 2009, United States Congressman Joe Sestak unsuccessfully attempted to secure funding for research and development of a destroyer-sized reactor using thorium-based liquid fuel.[44][45]

CANDU reactors of Atomic Energy Canada Limited are capable of using thorium as a fuel source.[46][47]

At the 2011 annual conference of the Chinese Academy of Sciences it was announced that "China has initiated a research and development project in thorium molten-salt reactor technology."[48][49]
Projects combining uranium and thorium

Fort St. Vrain Generating Station, a demo HTGR in Colorado, USA, operating from 1977 until 1992, employed enriched uranium fuel that also contained thorium. This resulted in high fuel efficiency because the thorium was converted to uranium and then burnt.

[Sky Pilot]

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.

I can't see where I dumped on you and I didn't realise you lived in Japan where you obviously choose to. I can't answer your hypothetical either.

[therisingblues]

Not personally, but apparently anyone who disagrees with nuclear energy is hysterical and either green or a loon.
Lived in Japan over 12 years, built a successful business in that time, attempting to move to Australia to escape nuclear fallout now. Luckily we are some miles south of the worst areas, and the wind generally blows north/ west. I chose to do everything except make the nuclear fallout. You choose to live in Australia, nice choice, there's no fallout there.

[Dog_ger]

It may be safe, but it's the Homer Simpsons that are in control at the Power Plant.

No to Nuclear Power.

[Bully]

lol, i dont see how a safety inspector is in control of a Nuclear power plant....