why dont we build 100 new atomic powerplants?

I have nothing against "Environmentalists" in general. It is the granola eating, Luddite, "we need to return to the 15th century" environmentalists that I detest. Especially the types that only enjoy the forrest as they drive through it in their SUV enroute to the next protest to save the Pointy-Eared Pineapple Slug.

I know that growing up and living in Idaho, I grew to hate that type of crowd. These people would come up (generally from California) and protest almost anything we wanted to do, saying that we had to "save nature". Never mind how badly they jacked up their own state, or that we provided a major amount of power to them.

That is the type of people that caused me to drive my mom's car whenever I went to go visit her. I kid you not, I have had cars licensed from Oregon, Texas, and North Carolina, and never had a bit of problem. But drive around Central Idaho with California plates, and I was pulled over almost every time by some Deputy, wondering what I was doing in the area (telling them who my mother was - a local real estate broker - and showing my Idaho license always made them leave me alone).

Personally, for myself I prefer the term "Conservationist".

 

Oh absolutely, in fact pollution control is one of the few things I would still relegate to the government alone. But those tree-hugging types are basically today's hippies - idealistic, completely convinced they're right and blind to the shortcomings. And you can't ever convince them to stop, they're on a crusade or something.

In a university, you have no idea the number of those kind of people I have to argue with.

 

They balance the right wing nutcases on the other side of the see-saw.

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Dude, pick up your elbows, you're knuckles are scraping.

 

Yeah but there aren't a whole lot of those where I am.

Remember, it's a university. IN CANADA. How many right-wing nutcases do you expect there?

 

Errr, yea, right.

If you don't agree and have nothing to rebut with, insult. Works every time.

Of course, I am sure this is what most trees think of tree huggers:

 

Tell that to this kid.

Nuclear Fusion, long-terrm, is the future. It is the most efficient energy source known to science, second only to anti-matter.

Lockheed Martin is throwing their hat into the ring, building a prototype for what they plan on to evolve into becoming a commercial model.

If they succeed, nothing can, nor should stop it.

By the time we develop a battery that can give us parity on energy density for these sources compared to fossil fuels, Nuclear Fusion will already be a reality.

All the pros of Nuclear power with almost none of the cons? I'd say it's pretty clear which way the market will bend.

 

Build Nuclear Fusion plants. It's then not a problem as Nuclear fusion can't melt down. If something happens, the reaction just shuts off.

 

I know Bush was a Nucular physicist... who was the Nuclear Physicist?

 

I think he was thinking about Jimmie Carter who was a power systems guy aboard a nuclear carrier.

By the way 80% of the power In france is generated by nuclear plants they haven't had problem yet other than scraping the occassional green weenie of the railroad tracks when they are transporting the waste.

 

Exactly. I never said "nuclear physicist", I said "nuclear physics". He was trained as one of the first officers in the Navy's Nuclear Power Program, and had intended upon a career in the Navy and Submarines until the death of his father and need to run the family business forced him to resign his commission. He has an undergraduate degree in Nuclear Physics and Reactor Technology.

And he did not serve aboard a "Nuclear Carrier", he left the Navy 9 years before the first Nuclear Carrier (USS Enterprise) was commissioned. However, he was expected to serve on a Submarine if he had not left the service (his last 3 years were spent in the R&D section for Naval nuclear power).

 

Wouldn't the BP disaster be an example of short cuts taken for more profits? I think so. Everybody knows corporations do what they do best. Profit, above all other considerations. Not such a stretch as you seem to indicate.

 

It is projected that we will have a large scale fully functional nuclear fusion reactor by the year 2027.

http://www.iter.org/

ITER (originally an acronym of International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor and Latin for the way or the road) is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering project, which is currently building the world's largest experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor at the Cadarache facility in the south of France.[1] The ITER project aims to make the long-awaited transition from experimental studies of plasma physics to full-scale electricity-producing fusion power plants. The project is funded and run by seven member entities — the European Union (EU), India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea and the United States. The EU, as host party for the ITER complex, is contributing 45% of the cost, with the other six parties contributing 9% each.[2][3][4]

The ITER fusion reactor itself has been designed to produce 500 megawatts of output power for 50 megawatts of input power, or ten times the amount of energy put in.[5] The machine is expected to demonstrate the principle of producing more energy from the fusion process than is used to initiate it, something that has not yet been achieved with previous fusion reactors. Construction of the facility began in 2007, and the first plasma is expected to be produced in 2020.[6] When ITER becomes operational, it will become the largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment in use, surpassing the Joint European Torus. The first commercial demonstration fusion power plant, named DEMO, is proposed to follow on from the ITER project to bring fusion energy to the commercial market.[7]

 

Yeah, get rid of the regulations for nuclear power stations!

 

One of the main problems is that we still don't understand how to safely rid ourselves and subsequent generations (for some 100,000 years) of the waste.

The Finns are currently digging a tunnel network 1KM into an area of bedrock to deal with their nuclear waste, it's an enormous project and will not be complete in the lifetime of the people currently working on it.

Problems include, how to warn humans (in whatever state they are in) not to try and dig it up. In 50,000 years, they probably won't speak any language we currently speak, they might have devolved instead of having evolved. Humans tend to be inquisitive and they might figure it's valuable and dig it up.

Nuclear is a good short term fix for energy, with which we hand over to the next 100,000 year of our offspring, a very dangerous legacy.

 

Carter. He studied under Admiral Rickover himself.

 

You assume a worst case scenario of a meltdown, how about the release of radioactive material into the water supply?

How about radioactive waste being lost and falling into the wrong hands?

 

I just wanted to make a nucular joke. I could have googled it, but didn't know that previously. So thanks to garyd, leftysergeant, and mushroom.

 

The Deepwater Horizon event was unavoidable. The extreme force of the pressure from the gas pocket completely sheared off the well head, destroyed the blowout preventer, and was so powerful that it still caused extensive damage on the rig, over 40,000 feet overhead (that is over 7.5 miles).

 

"...radioactive waste being lost and falling into the wrong hands?"

Taxcutter says:
Not possible at Yucca Mountain which is on the ultra-secure Nevada Test Site. Why does the US not open Yucca Mountain?

Better learn to love fracking.

 

Again what if the moon really was made green cheese? First thing you should ealize is that there really is a segment of the environmental lobby that thinks half the human race needs to die off tomorrow and the rest should go back to plowing with horses. These (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)s think all tech is bad and probably ought to be thrown in jail before they cause any more harm than they already have.
Tornados and hurricanes are easy don't build in flood planes and engineer the things to withstand a 400mph winds which is easy enough to do and it only takes money. Earth quakes are also easy don't put the things on the fault line Other than that it is a fairly simple trick to engineer. by the way we don't need a hundred of the things.

Some one has already mentioned fusion but that is at best ten to twenty eyars from prime time if we ever get it to work. The chief problem right now is that it still takes more energy to keep the magnetic bottle up and running than they produce.

Large scale solar is a waste of space and time. You are much better off to go small with solar and wind. Roof mounted units don't use up space that isn't already in use. It may even be possible to develope a small size water generator that could be inserted in to a cities sewer system a multiple locations to produce electricity the flow passing through the sewer..

 

Only an idiot would have built a nuclear plant on the coast of a seismically active/tsunami prone heavily populated island.

 

Jimmy Carter who pronounced it the same way was a nuclear physicists. Funny, Edward Teller, Bill Clinton, Eisenhower as well as Carter and GW Bush all pronunced it that way. If the father of the H bomb can do it......

 

Was meant to be funny, not partisan. I was, for the most part, a Bush II supporter.

 

I will give you the benefit of the doubt and avoid a "you're an idiot" flame war by pointing out that the Earth is rotating on its axis at 1,000 miles an hour.

Solved.

 

And we built one at San Onofre.