Drill, drill drill, into the heart of nuclear. (Pittsburgh, Homer City: houses, to buy)

[ML North]

Originally Posted by sskink

Nuclear still scares the pants off me, especially after the Japan tsunami. Can there ever be enough redundancies to prevent a similar disaster? The only answer is to build them where there is no danger of a natural catastrophe. Unlike many of the ones already online.

A locally-relavant comment is that Westinghouse's AP1000 would have been unaffected by the tsunami that took down Fukushima Daiichi. And while perhaps counterintuituve, it's significantly more risky to avoid adding new capacity by extending the lifetimes of existing units.

[ML North]

Originally Posted by markson33

I find it ironic that people want electric cars when 68% of power plants are fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas).

There's a significant efficiency gain in burning fossil fuels at power plants rather than in millions of small internal combustion engines. Power plants themselves are more efficient than gasoline engines, and also transporting fossil fuels to plants by rail is more efficient than transporting gasoline by tanker truck.

[RyanR]

Originally Posted by sskink

Given the amount of fried stuff cooked around here, every restaurant should have one of these out back.

Too bad the government is anti-diesel.

There's millions of small, efficient diesel powered cars all over the world (except for the USA). They're regularly getting 40+ MPG's with very little emissions.

[WILWRadio]

My brother has a background in nuclear physics and is familiar with how power plants and nuke subs operate. We spoke about this last year a couple of weeks after the accident in Japan.

The real problem here is how to safely store the spent fuel rods. To date there is no genuinely safe way to dispose of these things and they remain radioactive for thousands of years depending upon the kind of fuel used. Uranium is one form of reactor and then there is another form that unfortunately that I cannot recall at this time. The un named fuel is very volatile and poses a real safety risk and needs thousands of years to degrade to the point that it is no longer a potential threat.

Spent nuclear fuel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[h_curtis]

Originally Posted by WILWRadio

My brother has a background in nuclear physics and is familiar with how power plants and nuke subs operate. We spoke about this last year a couple of weeks after the accident in Japan.

The real problem here is how to safely store the spent fuel rods. To date there is no genuinely safe way to dispose of these things and they remain radioactive for thousands of years depending upon the kind of fuel used. Uranium is one form of reactor and then there is another form that unfortunately that I cannot recall at this time. The un named fuel is very volatile and poses a real safety risk and needs thousands of years to degrade to the point that it is no longer a potential threat.

Spent nuclear fuel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Supposedly things can be broken down from nuclear wastes, but not sure if I buy into it. If true, why isn't this company making money?

Commodore Applied Technologies

I would be for nuclear power if they could do a better job with waste. It is much cleaner than coal as far as air quality, which is obviously a concern in our region.

[Scott2187]

Originally Posted by WILWRadio

My brother has a background in nuclear physics and is familiar with how power plants and nuke subs operate. We spoke about this last year a couple of weeks after the accident in Japan.

The real problem here is how to safely store the spent fuel rods. To date there is no genuinely safe way to dispose of these things and they remain radioactive for thousands of years depending upon the kind of fuel used. Uranium is one form of reactor and then there is another form that unfortunately that I cannot recall at this time. The un named fuel is very volatile and poses a real safety risk and needs thousands of years to degrade to the point that it is no longer a potential threat.

Spent nuclear fuel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The French and other European countries have been recycling their spent fuel rods. One of the by-products of doing this is 'weapons grade' uranium and plutonium, and what should be done with it?

I've always been a supporter of nuclear power, the waste just needs to be dealt with responsibly... and burying it is not a responsible method of disposal.

[ML North]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

Supposedly things can be broken down from nuclear wastes, but not sure if I buy into it. If true, why isn't this company making money?

Commodore Applied Technologies

The service provided by Commodore (the company you linked) is related to the preparation of spent fuel rods for dry cask storage. Basically, spent rods, composed mainly of Uranium-238 (and smaller mass concentrations of U-235, fission products, and Plutonium-239), are cooled for a few years in water before being packed into steel canisters.

What will ultimately happen with these canisters still remains to be decided, though right now they are stored at reactor sites. (The Navy transports its waste to Idaho where it's stored at the Idaho National Laboratory. Note however that naval reactors produce significantly less waste than commercial reactors due to their higher power-densities and use of highly enriched fuel).

Anyway, there's really not much to buy into. There are tons of different nuclear fuel cycles (natural uranium like the CANDU, low-enriched uranium (typical), Mixed-Oxide, thorium conversion, etc.) that can be processed in all types of different ways. There are certain cycles that actually produce more fuel than they consume (known as breeders). The point is that the problems with the most nuclear fuel cycles are related to safety, environmental protection, and economics, not physics or technology.

(I guess that may be a little TMI, but nonetheless it may be some interesting reading.)

[markson33]

I am not scared of nuclear power at all. I mean heck, Fukishima survived an earthquake and tsunami - what more can you do to a nuclear power plant! As far as I know there may have been one or two deaths related to Fukishima. It seems like the cleanest/safest form of power out there.

[airwave09]

Originally Posted by WILWRadio

My brother has a background in nuclear physics and is familiar with how power plants and nuke subs operate. We spoke about this last year a couple of weeks after the accident in Japan.

The real problem here is how to safely store the spent fuel rods. To date there is no genuinely safe way to dispose of these things and they remain radioactive for thousands of years depending upon the kind of fuel used. Uranium is one form of reactor and then there is another form that unfortunately that I cannot recall at this time. The un named fuel is very volatile and poses a real safety risk and needs thousands of years to degrade to the point that it is no longer a potential threat.

Spent nuclear fuel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here is the answer to all current nuclear power issues: Thorium Reactor.

[airwave09]

Originally Posted by markson33

I am not scared of nuclear power at all. I mean heck, Fukishima survived an earthquake and tsunami - what more can you do to a nuclear power plant! As far as I know there may have been one or two deaths related to Fukishima. It seems like the cleanest/safest form of power out there.

I'm sure that the government(s) are minimizing any of the details about the real effect that it is having on us.