Chalk up another accident for "safe" nuclear power. . .

[Porsche-O-Phile]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/07/16/japan.quake.ap/index.html

Yep. This is the solution to all our energy needs. NOT!

[MotoSook]

I don't see an arguement against nuclear energy here.

This was a natural disaster and the plant did not release any radioactive material.

[Moneyguy1]

Oil refineries have accidents. Coal fires underground have led to the abandonment of whole towns. Oil spills cause massive damage. Is any power generation method really foolproof?

[Jim Richards]

solar?

[bob tilton]

Godzilla 1954 all over again.

[rammstein]

Originally posted by Moneyguy1
Oil refineries have accidents. Coal fires underground have led to the abandonment of whole towns. Oil spills cause massive damage. Is any power generation method really foolproof?

Hey- stop thinking! You might come to a rational conclusion, be careful.

[cstreit]

Originally posted by bob tilton
Godzilla 1954 all over again.

Godzilla on a GIANT hamster wheel with a gererator? What could go wrong?

[djmcmath]

Yeah, I'm not seeing the anti-nuclear power argument here. The plant lost about a gallon of water, contaminated (possibly) at 1/1000000000th the legal limit into the nearby body of water. The worst damage was suffered in the power distribution gear -- gear that's common across all plants, not just nuke plants.

Even better, the plant automatically shut itself down. My suspicion is that it relied on the laws of physics inherent in the reactor design to do that, rather than on some auto-shutdown electronic feature, but I only have US nuclear design to base that on. While the electronic features are neat (and almost certainly tripped), plants are also built in such a way that losing coolant will make the plant stop working. It may never work again, but it also won't continue to produce a nuclear reaction. Imagine a car engine, for example, that required some small amount of oil to run, not just for lubrication. If the oil loses pressure, the engine stops running -- and may never run again.

(shrug) I'd go ahead and chalk this up as a win for nuclear power. Massive earthquake kills bunches of people, destroys a small city, and the nuke plant only loses a gallon of not-really-contaminated water.

[HardDrive]

Wow. Thats a real Three Mile Island you got there .

[David]

Sounds like it was a transformer fire which can happen at a fossil plant just as easily and has nothing to do with nuclear safety. They are usually big fires and often make the local news.

The containment building for the fuel rods is the most overbuilt building you can imagine. They're designed to withstand a direct 747 hit.

[URY914]

I fail to see the problem here.

[nostatic]

Originally posted by cstreit
Godzilla on a GIANT hamster wheel with a gererator? What could go wrong?

We've been going about this all wrong, this Mr. Stay Puft's okay, he's a sailor, he's in New York, we get this guy laid we won't have any trouble.

[Joeaksa]

Nuke energy is only as safe as the people designing, building and running the plants, with Mother Nature thrown in the mix.

While not a big lover of France, they have about 70% nuke power and no issues or accidents. It can and will be done in the future. Will just take oil getting a bit more expensive to force us into opening our eyes. We either retreat to the caves to live or find alternative energy.

Personally I wish we all had solar and wind energy production ramped up. Europe has done this on a large scale and we are light years behind them here.

[MRM]

There is no good argument against nuclear power. If built well nuclear power plants are not foolproof, but the risks are lower than other fuels. Do you know how many Americans die in coal mining accidents every year? Or how many die mining coal world wide? Not to mention the millions who die prematurely because of coal pollution, the mercury poisoning caused by coal fired plants, etc. Natural gas is slightly safer and cleaner, oil is probably worse on both counts. Solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, all have potential but still carry risks.

Any country driven purely by rational argument would have turned to nukes as the primary power generating scheme decades ago with the appropriate regulatory framework in place and harsh criminal penalties for anyone who broke the safety regulations - deliberately or not. Make it a strict liability offense to have a nonconforming safety item in your nuclear power plant, establish a permanent repository for the waste, and our energy problem is solved. Electric cars would be the transportation device of choice. Zero emissions. The only issue would be getting the power out onto the grid so people could use it. Almost endless power at almost no additional incremental cost.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

One word: SUSTAINABILITY.

This ain't it.

[Joeaksa]

Originally posted by Porsche-O-Phile
One word: SUSTAINABILITY.

This ain't it.

Totally correct, oil and petro-energy is not sustainable.

Thats why we have to find other options like Nuke, solar and wind.

[futuresoptions]

Solar power I think would be the way to go right now, Nuclear power has too many side effects and wind farms are just plain ugly. Cost has come down in my opinion enough for everyone to have a couple solar panels and batteries to run all of their low amp apllications in their houses i.e. lights, tv's etc.. you would just need the grid for power tools, water heaters, A/C units etc... if thousand dollart grants were given out, everyone could do this and I think there would be a serious decrease in the amount of energy required to run the country. But try and sell that one to the Govt or big business, it won't happen... as always it is left to indiviuals to do the right thing.... I don't think the government started itself... (but it sure has mutated on it own LOL)

[alf]

There is no silver bullet. We'd need a portfolio of solar, wind, nuclear and others to replace fossil fuels.

And as pointed out by many above, what is the case against nukes here or are you being sacarstic?

[widebody911]

Originally posted by futuresoptions
Solar power I think would be the way to go right now

Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how many people get sunburn each year?

[MRM]

I hate to give the Carter Administration credit for any good idea, but I recently heard an idea on solar power that dates to then and whose time has come.

Solar technology does exist, for the most part, but it is too expensive to be cost effective. The cost to produce a single unit is expensive now because the industry has not established production on an industrial scale, so the cost per unit is being absorbed by a limited number of units rather thana being spread out over millions of units, like cars. This is caused by a catch-22: prices are high because production is low; production is low because there is little demand.

The solution is to develop a market for solar panels that industry can respond to by producing solar panels on an industrial scale, bringing product improvements and reduced per unit costs as production ramps up. Think cars and computers.

There is an easy way to create a market-based demand for solar power. The federal government controls billions of square feet of office space through the GSA. Every square foot needs to be heated, cooled and lit. The GSA's electricity bill is astronomical. If the GSA put out requests for proposals for solar power for its office space, it would create a demand for solar panels that would justify industrial scale production, spreading the cost per unit over millions of panels, nringing the cost of solar power down to cost-effective levels.

You'd have to direct the program so it didn't turn into a pork barrel black hole, but it wouldn't be hard to devise a market driven program that would create competition for solar power genrating devices and reduce the cost for all of us.