Well not always. Some plants use their CTs only when discharge temperatures start reaching EPA limits. But that doesn't take away from your statement.

Here's one problem. Groundwater. You gotta build near rivers or lakes (or the ocean for that matter). The bigger the facility, the more you're going to have to worry about in-leakage. Especially following a seismic event. But that'll mainly be for the service type facilities. If underground components are kept to a minimum, with multiple barriers and sumps, that shouldn't be too much of an issue. After all, there's no need to bury the turbine building. Especially for a PWR plant where it's clean steam running the turbines.

OK, but what about bunker busters? How far should paranoia preventive design go? And there is a "too far." "Whatever it takes" can quickly lead to a cost prohibitive design.

So, in closing, an underground design is feasible, especially if you're building in foothill or mountainous regions. Florida might be a bit of an issue though, crazy sandy soil they have, you'd probably have to build deep anchors to keep the structure from floating to the surface. It's just going to be an expensive thing to do on top of an already expensive project.

But, a buried plant will bring cries of contaminating ground water (*cough*Braidwood*cough*) and then the doomsayers will start crying about "what if they're hit with a bunker buster". Of course nuclear plant safety, along with almost everything else, will probably be out the window if something like that were to ever occur.

Now if they only had some nuclear plant cooling towers with their elegant white clouds of water vapor . . . and nothing else, it would be perfect.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Well, we don't know that to be true. Oil will be getting more expensive, certainly, and it does make sense to move over to nuclear earlier for environmental as well as economic reasons, but it isn't what you've shown there.

Methane hydrates have the potential of being a major energy source, and certainly we would be getting substantial coal and synfuel production, but I would really like to avoid the additional environmental load. That's actually my biggest beef with Greenpeace and similar: I think many of their actions (in so far as they have an effect) are as bad or worse for the environment as many of those they complain about.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

They are? What are your references?

This study (note, this is a PDF) considered the 767-400 at full takeoff weight:

http://www.nei.org/documents/eprinuc...tudy200212.pdf

and the containment would handle it fine. Sure, there does come a point where a big enough attack could penetrate both the containment shell and the reactor wall. However, that would require a massive attack, and what do you get out of it? Probably just a messed up reactor and a modest radiation release. Putting a hole in a reactor is not the same thing as a Chernobyl accident.

Meanwhile, similar (or smaller) levels of effort could kill thousands by breaching dams, blowing up oil and gas depots, poisoning water, destroying buildings, and so on.

There are ways to hurt people if you want to. This one is very unlikely precisely because it would require massive and obvious resources.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Well, actually, yes we do.

But that's been examined to death. Fortunately, the government finally looked at the math and came to the right conclusion: http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/....ap/index.html

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"Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold-bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief." - James Russell Lowell

Scores of articles on the subject over the last couple of decades. Google "nuclear" and "power plant" and "Boeing 707" and you'll get at least a couple of them.

True.

Not really, and flying an airplane into it, as the article you provided clearly demonstrates, isn't very effective.

Although much more effective means exist (requiring minimal resources), the question remains, "why?" Too little would be accomplished. It's just not a worthwile target.

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"Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold-bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief." - James Russell Lowell

Uh, yeah. And while there will certainly be a shift to more and more heavy oil, tar sands, oil shale, along with coal and other hydrocarbon resources, it is incorrect to say "we will be out of oil by 2050." That ignores economics, among other things.


Gee, I don't see anything about 2050 there. And that isn't anything new. Hydrogen is an energy transport medium. It has to be produced. One option would be from methane, and there is potentially a very great deal of that as a primary energy source.

By the way, I live in the Sacramento area. I kinda noticed the visit.

__________________
I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

The closest I found was from here:

http://www.bellona.no/en/energy/nucl...eld/27116.html

"The Three Mile Island NPP facility in the USA was designed to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707, although it might be vulnerable to a full speed, direct hit from larger commercial airliners, such as a 767."

(the date on that article is about a month before the study I referenced that showed that a containment building could handle a 767 just fine. Of course, it still would have to get through the reactor wall).

Do you have anything else? I have some questions about how that article was written. Here's my issue: There have been various studies on what level of impact containment buildings can handle, and the studies show they can handle big, heavy, more than fully loaded modern jets, but my understanding was that, in general, it wasn't because they were specifically designed with aircraft impact in mind, but because design requirements for containment mean they are easily strong enough to handle it.

__________________
I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Hmm, 777Geek, I like the way you ignored my Happy Earth Day! but I just happened on this old thread, a good one for sure, and as an aside I'm wondering how you think you've progressed with your arguments over the year since you chopped, chopped your web page. Yes, it appears to be a constant work in progress, but it might be good for people to be reminded of something in these arguments (and I'm really trying not to sound pedantic).

---> Germany's new nuclear policies


Small notes:

• I miss Mopc, the linguist extraordinaire!
• I wish you would go back to "Glom," which means "to steal, catch, seize."
• I have reasons to believe my electric company Green Mountain has scatalogical characteristics, and are being disengenous. Since it's the same price as Reliant Energy/CenterPoint, I might switch back to those corporate thieves. ~wink, wink~
• I would ride on a nuclear-powered or ion-powered (however that really works) rocket to the Moon. Can someone explain the fuel difference--I know what the Saturn V rockets used, so how would the weight, cost, atmospheric effects, and waste work? Yeah, I could Google, but I would just like someone to spell it out in a concise, clear manner for me. I do live in Houston, ya know.

Thanks. Today, as a mild joke, I took all those environmental group stickers I get in the mail, such as WWF, Defenders of Wildlife, Audobon Society, Don't Mess With Texas, et al and plastered them all over the two small triangular back-windows on my Jetta. I normally despise stickers on a car, but this is temporary; however, amidst those are my STS-114, KSC and some glow-in-the-dark Saturns, stars and moons. Lol, somebody gets this, but it sure looks a bit silly.

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Sunset

Die Sonne scheidet hinter dem Gebirge. In alle Täler steigt der Abend nieder
mit seinen Schatten, die voll Kühlung sind.

Whew. That's actually a pretty big request, since there are many different theoretical nuclear rocket designs, and ion drives may or may not use a nuclear reactor for power.

Short answer: You probably don't want a nuclear rocket to take you to the moon. Mars may be a different story. That's where mass ratio advantages could be worth the trouble. (Actually, in the medium to long run, I expect interplanetary human transport will be nuclear of one form or another.)

Most theoretical nuclear rocket designs that have enough thrust to possibly be launched from the earth will also spread copious amounts of radioactive material, and I wouldn't want that. I may be pro-nuclear, but I don't want to throw radioactive stuff around the landscape! In space, that isn't a big deal (what's a few more atoms in the solar wind?), but for getting to the moon (perhaps an earth-orbit to lunar-orbit transport) it is probably more trouble than it is worth, unless it is a really big transport (hundreds of passengers, that sort of thing).

The types of possible near-term nuclear rockets people usually talk about are Orion and solid-core nuclear thermal. You'll also hear about the nuclear powered ion rocket.

Orion amounts to throwing nuclear bombs out the back end of a spacecraft and blowing them up. Yes, I'm serious. You have a hemispherical plate (the "pusher plate) and shock absorbers behind your rather robust spacecraft. It might actually work, though there are some serious engineering questions. It might be able to get you off the earth, though neighbors would not be happy. Using it in space runs into treaty limitations.

Solid core nuclear thermal amounts to a nuclear fission reactor with tubes in it. You run hydrogen through the tubes, heating it and sending it out the back end. The U.S. had the NERVA program and tested real nuclear rocket engines. However, a NERVA rocket is quite massive and there are limitations to how much hydrogen you can shove through before you melt or destroy the reactor, so it can't produce enough thrust to get off the earth. There would be minimal radioactive release, though not zero.

By the way, there was a solid core nuclear rocket that just might be able to produce enough thrust, but it was abandoned early on. It was called DUMBO. See here:

http://www.dunnspace.com/dumbo.htm

The design was quite different from NERVA. It did some tricks to increase heat transfer beyond what a "conventional" solid-core design could manage.

An ion drive is a particle accelerator, essentially charged plates, and it takes a lot of power. It is useful if you want to build up velocity slowly and can't use a lot of reaction mass. One way to power it is with a nuclear reactor. For earth-moon, it doesn't make much sense for people, since it would take so long to build up the velocity change. Waste release depends on reactor design, but is trivial, and in deep space.

There are other nuclear rocket designs you hear of now and then. There are various kinds of fusion rockets, but those will have to wait awhile for technological improvements (actually a lot of the proposed nuclear rockets would need substantial R&D, but fusion a much bigger leap than fission). You might also hear of fission based gas core and liquid core thermal rockets, both quite theoretical and likely to generate a lot of radoactive material in the exhaust. Then there is the nuclear salt water rocket (NSWR) which would throw radioactive material everywhere and might have a habit of blowing itself up.

__________________
I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

I'll see your long post and raise you one!

Much of the cost of a nuclear power plant is legal in nature. This isn't new science, and incredibly excellent (safe, effective, efficient) designs for reactors are being built overseas as I write this for far less than the cost of building plants in America.

Why?

Because the US legal system is adept at servicing those who file lawsuits, but is quite inept at balancing that requirement against the needs of the people at large.

As far as storage requirements go, all nuclear waste from now until kingdom come wouldn't even begin to fill in the center area of the Pentagon - that's a very small place indeed!

So, let's educate people as required and start building for our future, before the shortsighted ones and the lawyers eek us out of that future.

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"Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold-bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief." - James Russell Lowell

Well I've cut a lot of the old hyperbole and tried to maintain a more reasoned tone. There have been some large changes, mostly to the coding since I switched to cascading style sheets and started moving the site over to xhtml. I think it looks better now.

Its a little OT from the main flow of the thread but it does relate to the Freedom from fission site. Apologies for the long post by the way!
Ive been doing some further reading on the Greenpeace calendar. It seems to have a frustrating amount of guilt by either association or omission. In some cases the only record of an incident i can find are all the Greenpeace documents themselves. One of my interests is Military History etc so some of the nuclear weapon related dates intruiged me.
Ive listed some of the things i've seen so far where Greenpeace have noted a date but little other information along with anything ive dug up on the incidents:

Jan 11th
As a first stage motor was removed from its shipping container, a discharged of static
electricity within the rocket motor propellant caused the motor to ignite.
The incident was unrelated to the warhead.

Jan 13th
It seems the weapons were 'relatively intact' after the crash. I cant find any reports of
release of radioactive material or anything like it due to the crash.

Jan 17th
This B52 crash was caused by a mid air collision between it and the tanker it was refuelling
from. 4 nuclear weapons were lost. 3 recovered on land. 1750 tons of contaminated material from
the sea into which the 4th of the bombs fell was excavated and disposed of in the US. Again an
accident that wasn’t caused by the weapons and is irrelevant to nuclear power anyway.

Jan 29th
This crash was caused by a structural failure in the right wing of the plane. The crash was not
caused by the presence of nuclear weapons. Neither bomb detonated. The first bomb was intact
the second not. No detonation occurred, though some sources say the second bomb didn’t detonate
because the 6th and final safety interlock was intact. The uranium core of the bomb has not been
recovered. As a result of this incident The u.s. added more safety features to its nuclear
weapons to prevent detonation. Again irrelevant to nuclear power.

Feb12th
I can find no non-Greenpeace reports of any B52 crash on this date.

March 11th 1958
The crew accidentally jettisoned the weapon. Not a failure of the nuclear weapon but crew
error. The high explosive element detonated. The nuclear weapon did not. Not nuclear power
related.

March 14th
No contamination occurred as a result of this incident.

March 21st
The Kitty hawk released no nuclear material as a result of the collision with the sub. Kitty
Hawk remained at sea until August that year.

April 9 1981
The George Washington suffered minor damage to her sail.(Conning tower) The Japanese ship she
collided with sank. Not a result of nuclear power on the George Washington and no nuclear
material was reported released.

April 10th 1963
The salt water piping system onboard the USS Thresher failed causing power loss and ultimately
the loss of the boat. She lies in 8400 feet of water. Her nuclear portions are intact. The
concentration of fission products is at the expected background level for an ocean floor site.

April 11th 1950
This crash was caused by the B29 flying into a mountain not in anyway by its nuclear payload. The
bomb case was destroyed and some explosive material burned.

29th April 1986
USS Atlanta ran aground damaging her sonar gear and a ballast tank. Her reactor was in no way
involved.

17th May
The fire on board USS Guittarro was caused by excess heat from the battery well. It was under
control but still burning as the boat returned to port.

21st May 1968
Scorpion was likely lost when a torpedo armed itself and run in the tube detonating taking the
boat down. The nuclear portions of the sub are intact in 10000 feet of water. Nuclear material
from two torpedoes may or may not have been released but the are likely not soluble and will
have sunk to the bottom. Monitoring since the event has shown no measured release of radiation.

22nd May
Human error cause the release of this weapon. No radioactivity was found outside the 25ft crater
left by the impact of the bomb. No nuclear explosion was possible because an arming capsule was
not inserted in order to maintain safety of the weapon whilst in transit.

28th May 1970
USS Daniel Boone (SSBN629) collided with a Philippine Merchant ship. The Daniel Boone sustained
minor damage. The merchant ship lost part of its bow. There are no injuries or fatalities aboard
the Daniel Boone as a result of this incident.

6th July 1959
Crash on takeoff. Again not caused by the presence of nuclear material. One bomb was destroyed.
Reports claim limited contamination over a small area.

26th July 1956
The B47 crashed into a nuclear weapons storage bunker. The planes payload neither burned nor
detonated. The bombs in the storage areas were intact too though burning fuel flowed towards
them and several tonnes of TNT. The crash caused by a skid on landing. Not a nuclear power
issue. There would likely have been no risk had the weapons on the ground been stored
differently.

28th July 1957
The aircraft lost power to 2 engines and jettisoned its payload to reduce weight. The 2 bombs
fell in the ocean without detonation.

5th August 1950
B29 crashed on takeoff. The high explosive material aboard detonated. The nuclear payload did
not.

20th September 1977
USS Ray struck a coral mountain. This destroyed sonar equipment and damaged a diesel engine. A
conventionally powered sub could have had the same thing occur to it. No nuclear material
released as there was no damage to such a part of the boat.

Oct 1st 1957
B47 crash on takeoff. 2 explosive (non nuclear) detonations. Again nothing to suggest the
weapons were a factor in the event.

20th October not 31st
USS Augusta collides with a soviet sub. This is the most likely explanation for the collision
considering pictures of a dented Soviet submarine in port appeared immediately following the
event. Damage occurs to her sonar and bows. Not caused by the presence of nuclear power or
weapons.

26th November
B47 crash. The aircraft caught fire on the ground. Contamination to immediate vicinity only.

5th December 1965.
An A4 rolled off the deck of its carrier taking the plane, its payload and pilot to the
bottom. Again not caused due to the presence of a nuclear device and unrelated to nuclear power.

The way the calendar is presented in its intitally released form you'd think that the world was plastered with radioactive material from incompetant militaries. The actual events whilst they should not be ignored arent the sort of things that should be used to poison debate about nuclear power,especially given most of them are utterly irrelevant to nuclear power.

That's good stuff. I'll be sure to include it. The stuff about bombs probably not so much since I generally dismiss those points as irrelevant anyway, but definitely when it comes to nuclear powered ships.

The Greenpeace calendar needs some major improvements. There is too much repetitive evasion in some parts.

Yes the bombs are fairly irrelevant to a discussion on Nuclear power. I think that they appear on the calendar purely for the nuclear bogeyman effect. The ships are a different case as the ones mentioned tend to be nuclear powered so there is at least some relevance to the subject (though the events described are often unrelated to the propulsion of the boats involved)

Tell it my mum who lived 400 km from Chernobyl...

Using Chernobyl for an example of the safety of nuclear power is just a little biased. Couldnt happen here in the US in an approved reactor. I doubt it could happen anywhere if there was a responsable agency overlooking the industry. Chernobyl is a textbook example of how to do everything exactly wrong to get the reactor to go boom

My boss was around at the time of Piper Alpha. I still enjoy going offshore.

Has anyone seen the latest Comment is free. Such insane insanity! The comment thread is good. I'm surprised how the antis expect us to take Amory Lovins and especially SLS seriously. No mention of thorium though.

Eeck, pure garbage, for all of the usual reasons. A few that really irk me:
1) The assumption that money spent on nuclear energy somehow takes money away from renewables R&D and construction. Baloney—the inherent science and engineering challenges in wind towers and solar panels are quite sufficient on their own to account for the slow adoption of wind and solar power. Modern wind towers and solar PV cells are based on technologies that simply did not exist until the last few years. No amount of money can command a breakthrough. Plus, every decent wind turbine manufacturer in the world is already at peak capacity and expanding as fast as they can.

2) The assumption that nuclear advocates are “nuclear only” advocates. Total twaddle, that. A) a mix of generation types is good from a strategic diversity and grid management perspective, B) no single energy source can be developed fast enough to solely provide our energy needs, C) Wind power is now profitable in many situations, so it will be developed no matter what we do with nuclear power, and D) the enabling technologies for all new energy sources are interrelated.

3) The argument that energy efficiency can significantly reduce our energy consumption. IMO, the market will simply come up with new ways to consume energy. Only rising energy prices can produce a net drop in consumption. Besides, this does not solve the energy problem in developing nations.

4) The “no western reactor ever built on time” arguments. Well, there have been precious few western reactors built recently on which to base that. A better thing to look at is the construction of GE and Toshiba’s ABWRs in Japan. 40 months, start to fuel loading, compared to 90-130 months for the last few US reactors built. The ESBWR and AP1000 will improve on that.

5) “High cost” of nuclear. Well, this is complicated due to the nature of finance costs and fuel price predictions. This gives lots of room for both sides to stretch the truth. However, most good estimates (and they tend toward pessimism) put first-of-a-kind Gen III+ nuclear at about the same cost as Gas turbines and high CF wind farms, and slightly less than clean coal (and without the carbon sequester question mark). Subsequent reactors could wind up a lot cheaper. Solar PV, of course, is still 5-10 times more expensive, assuming it could be built on the same scale in the first place (nope, not with current manufacturing capacity).

Anyway, enough rambling from me…

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Do try not to take me too seriously.

Nice rambling. As my appreciation of economics grows (always has been my weakest point), I come to understand the key peril of nuclear as it goes up against gas. I talked about it here. I'm picking up more of this stuff now that I work in the energy industry.

Well, as fossil fuel prices rise (and they should go up faster in the UK and Europe than the US), nuclear will continue to be more and more competitive. That is one reason we really need to build Gen III+ reactors as early as possible, so we'll be ready for a building boom. An international carbon trading market might help also, as CO2 credits will provide another revenue stream for nuclear utilities and an additional cost to natural gas.

I forgot to mention: Nuclear has another subtle cost advantage, in where the money goes. With fossil fuels, much of the money goes overseas to the supplier nations. With nuclear, the money is all added to the local economy in construction jobs and services. The effect on the economy should really be taken into account.

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Do try not to take me too seriously.

This effect should be neutral. You can see this if you consider what happens to a currency spent overseas.

Then there is the point that my country would purchase much of the actual reactor and control equipment from overseas.

I love nuclear, cause we have most of the fuel!

Mwahahaha, now if only we would actually use it ourselves...

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There is no dark side of the moon really, as a matter of fact it's all dark - Pink Floyd, The Dark Side Of The Moon

Too pricey at the moment (particularly with our high for a developed country costs of capital) but it would become more attractive with a carbon tax. Of course a carbon tax would also make other low emission power souces attractive.

yes, too true, plus the anti nuclear lobby here actually has some clout

Still, here's hoping...

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There is no dark side of the moon really, as a matter of fact it's all dark - Pink Floyd, The Dark Side Of The Moon

We already have cheap nuclear fuel sitting around waiting to be used, not just the expensive stuff that would have to be mined first. It's just that some insist on calling it "waste" just because it's been in a reactor once before... and pondering how to get rid of it...

Which "We" would you be referring to?

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There is no dark side of the moon really, as a matter of fact it's all dark - Pink Floyd, The Dark Side Of The Moon

Well, this fuel might be cheap, but unfortunately the cost of altering and reprocessing it isn't. And even if ready to use nuclear fuel were available for free it wouldn't drastically change the economics of nuclear power as the cost of fuel is only a small portion of the cost of each kilowatt-hour produced.

Situations differ in other countries, but in the US we have a rather large stockpile of highly enriched uranium that is going to be reprocessed into less-enriched fuel for new Gen III and Gen III+ reactors. It is one of the incentives being used to spur new construction--the fuel is going to be given away free, basically, with just the reprocessing costs passed on to the utilities. Fuel is about 10% of the levelized cost of energy from nuclear power, so the savings could make a difference in profitability for the first few sites.

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Do try not to take me too seriously.

Really? I thought we did.

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Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?