Reply #48: Point taken. but reality doesn't favor wind and solar

[StreetKnowledge]

They are not reliable. The sun doesn't always shine, and the wind doesn't always blow. As a result, those generators need backups - which at least here in Canada are usually natural-gas fueled generators. So, the net result is pretty obvious.

Nuclear waste isn't as ugly a problem as some make it out to be. You could fit all of the nuclear waste ever made by the world's 1500 civilian and military nuclear reactors onto a supertanker. And yes, it's highly radioactive and extremely dangerous, but if you do the smart thing and reprocess it, it reduces the half-life of the waste from 25,000 years to about 25. Even if you are very careful and wait out 20 half-lifes (which the nuclear industry gentleman above assumed 15 in his argument), that waste becomes largely harmless in about 500 years. Yes, that's still a long time, but there is no need to say "it'll be dangerous for 50,000 years!", but that's onyl true if one is stupid enough to neither irradiate, reprocess or both waste. Uranium is a finite resource, and Pressurized and Boiling Water reactors, which are the majority in the United States, can run on plutonium with minimal modifications. Larger isotopes of nuclear elements generally are more unstable but decay faster. Iodine for example, Iodine-131 has a half-life of a little more than eight days, so reactor-hot Iodine is dangerous for about five to six months. Iodine-133, by contrast, has a half-life of 21 hours, so its danger period is about two and a half weeks.

Plutonium-239, which is what is primarily used to make nuclear weapons, has a half-life of 24,100 years. But the heavier element, Plutonium-240, drops that number to about 6500 years, And Plutonium-241 drops that to 14 years.

Simply using additional reactors to run the dangerous elements through again to reduce half-life (if for a short period they become far more radioactive) is a way to make the nuclear waste problem much less of one.

As for the inevitable concern about terrorists, don't bother. Countries can't figure out how to enrich uranium enough to make bombs, and plutonium is extremely difficult to work with - denser than hell, the dust can very easily ignite, and you cannot machine it in the presence of oxygen (it oxidizes rapidly) and reacts violently to nitrogen, so trying to machine it for a weapon is a pain in the ass, as some researches at Los Alamos found out in the 1940s. (Some died as a result, it should be pointed out.)

Nuclear energy is portrayed as a boogeyman with extreme dangers, when the reality is far from the truth. Living near a modern reactor gives off less radiation than a transatlantic airplane flight and far less than a chest x-ray. Most modern reactors cannot meltdown, as they could only hit a certain level before either the temperature of the reaction kills it or in the case of heavy water reactors, the heavy water boils off, which deprives the fuel of a way to fission, thus killing the reaction. In the western world today, you cannot build an older-style reactor.

The costs are so high now because the reactors are very few in number with highly sophisticated components, and very advanced engineering that can only be done by people with many years of experience and education. Combined with regulatory hurdles and extensive site analysis, the price for a new station is stupidly high. But once the plant is built, it can operate for decades with few issues. Most modern designs can also refuel while in operation, and the uranium fuel itself is plentiful. Extensive deposits of uranium exist in much of the American West. Once the plant is built, the running costs are not so high as many think.

Even with plants in zones that are vulnerable to natural disasters - Turkey Point in Florida and San Onofre and Diablo Canyon in California, for example - the facilities are designed to take the hits. Turkey Point was hit head on by Category 5 Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and sustained minimal damage. And as Palo Verde in Arizona has proved, you don't need a major body of water right there to have such a plant operating.

Nuclear power plants are a good option for filling the energy needs of a nation with sufficient capital to build the plants. If you get a few plants going, economies of scale will reduce the price on later ones, and its far better than relying on fossil fuels, either in primary or in backup with wind turbines and solar cells. Don't get me wrong, the ideas are good, but one cannot rely on them for power needs, at least with current technology.