/sci/ - Science & Math

1) yes, except when something goes wrong
2) no, except when something goes wrong
3)no
4)no, except when something goes wrong
5) yes, in 2000 years

1. nuclear energy is safe, there being not many major accidents despite the fact that the fucking hippie treehugger movement similar to your picture made it illegal to make new reactors, so old ones from the 70s and 80s are usually used (in the US).
2.nuclear energy is actually much much much cleaner than coal, leaving no emissions behind but there lies the problem of nuclear waste

3.nuclear energy shouldn't be abandoned in favour of solar and wind, but coal should.

4.Nuclear waste is a minor problem, there's lots of space to store it

5.Nuclear energy is in fact non-renewable and we will eventually run out of resources needed to create it, but we have enough that it would get a fair bit out of reactors built today

1. No
2. No
3. No
4. No
5. Yes,but wel'll have found another source of energy by then

1) It's safer than most other energy production methods. Oil refineries and gas plants are exploding all the time.
2) It's perfectly "green", the ONLY problem is the radioactive byproduct that is produced. I don't understand why we don't just launch that shit into the sun, though.
3) Just no.
4) Not really; and I'm sure as the waste increases, so will our ways of storing it, so, again, not really.
5) Yeah, but it solves the problem FOR NOW. Isn't that how humanity works? Fix it with something better, until something better bests the better?

>>2724911
1 Everything is unsafe, just when things go wrong at a nuclear plant a shitstorm ensues.
2 Everything is harmful to the environment. Nuclear energy is surprisingly "clean"
3 Fuck no.
4 Nuclear waste isn't a huge problem, 98% of nuclear fuel isn't radioactive and the other 2% is useful.
5 Solar energy is ultimately non-renewable, but nuclear energy won't run out for an extremely long time.

The more we use nuclear material for peaceful purposes the less there will be for war. Lennon would be proud.

Why are you feeding the troll?

>>2724962
>Can you please answer/refute the following claims?
>claims
How is he a troll?

1. Nuclear Power is safer than coal, oil, etc. It took the largest earthquake in japanese history and a tsunami to create a problem that still has had no fatalities. Meanwhile, 20,000 people die mining coal every year in China alone. If anything, they are safer than every alternative.

2. Nuclear Power plants typically release less radioactive material into the environment than a coal plant (coal is naturally radioactive, and burning it releases these isotopes in the plant exhaust). If anything, they are better for the environment.

3. This is silly. Wind and Solar are very expensive and produce far less energy for the investment in both money and land than nuclear energy.

4. Nuclear waste is a concern--however, more modern plant designs recycle their waste and can be almost self-sustaining for years.

5. The ocean contains about 500x the known, mineable reserves of uranium, that can be relatively easily diluted out and used. Even if all energy production was shifted over to nuclear power tomorrow (and continued to grow), we'd still have enough reserves for roughly 1,000 years. Maybe more, I forget.

Source: I'm a senior nuclear engineering student roughly 3 months from graduating :3

>3. Nuclear energy should be abandoned in favor of solar and wind power.
Both solar and wind power are not a stable source of power.
You do not want blackouts when the sun isn't shining (or shining to brightly) and there is no (or too much) wind. If, like some country, you have some artificial lakes, with some hydro-electric generators, such that you can use hydro for those times, it can never be a complete solution for power generation.

>>2724962
I'm sorry, but how am I trolling? I simply asked for people here to refute a couple of statements that seemed to be pretty popular among the laymen.

1. Japan's oil refineries are burning completely out of control right now, they're completely in control of 3 reactors and mostly in control of the one that the wrath of the universe thrown against it.

2. This equivalent to saying the sun is harmful to the environment, it's all radiation man.

3. Abandoned? No. Though in 50 to 100 years solar will likely be able to work together with nuclear quite effectively. As for wind... I'd place more confidence in tidal or wave power.

4. Idiots are a huge problem and that's not just related to understanding nuclear power.

5. Not for the foreseeable future, just because it will run out hundreds of years from now doesn't mean we shouldn't use it when we need it.

>>2724980

>I simply asked for people here to refute a couple of statements that seemed to be pretty popular among people who don't know shit about the subject and are too stupid and/or lazy to educate themselves.

>>2724971

Good luck, if you still haven't done your thesis. Also, don't forget about breeder reactors; with those we could make all the radioactive fuel we need, assuming something better doesn't come along.

>1. Nuclear energy is unsafe.
So is every other form of energy production. You should be asking if it's more unsafe than, say coal. (It isn't.)

>2. Nuclear energy is harmful to the environment.
So is every other form of energy production (yes, even solar and wind). Again, fossil fuels are worse.

>3. Nuclear energy should be abandoned in favor of solar and wind power.
Only in the case that we've already built a giant solar energy plant in Sahara or the orbit that provides us with all the energy we need, plus the necessary infrastructure to distribute the energy reliably all over the world.

>4. Nuclear waste is a huge problem.
Much less of a problem than fearmongers make it to be.

>5. Nuclear energy is non-renewable and we will eventually run out of resources needed to create it.
Eventually yes. That's why we should use it as a temporary solution while working on improving solar energy production & energy storage and distribution.

>>2724996
Luckily I don't have a thesis unless i go to grad school--I just need to do just a Senior design series that I'm halfway done with.

And yes, breeders are noted in point 4, I suppose I should have mentioned them by name, and again in point 5.

Hope this situation doesn't hurt my job prospects--might have to work in cryogenics or something for a few years until things...

*sunglasses*

cool off.

How are solar and wind power harmful to the environment?

>>2725018
Photovoltaic cells are toxic and need to be made and refined, and this production releases many unsafe chemicals into the air.

Wind plants are dirty and need to be constantly lubricated. Also I think they kill shitloads of birds because of how huge and noisy they are, and disrupt migration patterns.

>>2724991

Stop being a jerk ok, OP is probably having an argument with a friend or something.

>>2725018
Solar panels use some toxic components.
Wind power chops up birds.
They both require clearing large amounts of land which could be something's habitat.

>>2725018
You still need to build solar panels and wind turbines...
What do you think they're made of, grass?

>>2725018
they have to be built and deployed and maintained

>1. Nuclear energy is unsafe.
True, but so is every other method of generating energy.
>2. Nuclear energy is harmful to the environment.
True, but so is every other method of generating energy (even "clean" energy)
>3. Nuclear energy should be abandoned in favor of solar and wind power.
False, at least until those become more efficient.
>4. Nuclear waste is a huge problem.
False, it can be reused and stored safely in various places.
>5. Nuclear energy is non-renewable and we will eventually run out of resources needed to create it.
True, but it will be a long time and will outlast fossil fuels until we find something better.

>>2725031
Don't forget that wind turbines need a lot of generators, and those generators need a lot of refining to withstand the torque forces over several decades, and they each need a lot of refined components that are SEVERELY damaging to the environment to produce in the quantities needed.

I read somewhere that a single solar panel would take 70 years to make up for the amount of energy used to create it or something like that.

>>2725027

I'll be an asshole as long as there's morons running around like headless chickens shouting out bullshit like they just had it for breakfast.

Like we don't live in a time where information gathering takes mere seconds.

Low estimates say that conventional uranium will run out in 40 years with current consumption rate. You can scrape up more in other form but that's untested and questionable.
It's possible to run out of uranium before we run out of coal, oil and gas.

>4. Nuclear waste is a huge problem.
because greenies for some reason protest handling it, so instead of us recycling it or rendering it less active or inert, the greenies are happier to let it build up into piles and piles, one of which emitted radioactive smoke near Fukushima Daiichi #4

>>2725080
>Uranium will run out ohnoes
It's called thorium son.

1. Yes, when you have bureaucratic nonsense such that running a nuclear power plant takes x many years to start up, and x amount of regulations, you get companies trying to cut corners in retaliation.

2. Of course, but relative to the viable alternatives, it is the best. With improved technology, reusing waste / thorium can come into play. Current nuclear technology should be the bridge to the holy grail, fusion.

3. No, not viable.

4. Yes but see 2.

5. Yes eventually but hopefully by then we will be in starships run on the power of the sun.

I used to be very anti-nuclear in the sense of "don't build any more nuclear power plants, and disassemble the ones that exist".
I still believe that nuclear power is very dangerous. However I also recognize that the population is exploding, we seem to have an insatiable appetite for energy, other sources of power are running out or dangerous, and no clean, renewable source of energy has the capacity to satisfy the demand.
Whenever we walk across the street we are making a calculated risk. Similarly, we have to weigh the risk of nuclear power against what we want from it.
Basically, we either implement severe, drastic energy efficiency measures, or build wind, solar and hydro power plants covering a huge area and taking a huge amount of resources (and waste) to build, or we build nuclear power plants as safe as we can make them.
I think in 200 years a great deal of our power will be nuclear, the plants will be much safer, waste disposal will be much safer, and it will not be a real issue.

>>2725087
Thorium will run out as well. And like uranium it's not equally distributed. It's also incompatible with current reactors.

>>2725087
How is Thorium superior to Uranium?

>>2725095
Yea well I'm sure we'll be real fucked when the heat death of the universe roles around but that's not this century.

>>2725100
There more of it and it's more common mainly.

>>2725100
It has a lower atomic number, showing that it's awesomer.

1. Current 7 billion people build lots of solar and wind turbines, ocean ducks, tide power, hydro power etc.
2. The One World Government institutes a one-child policy to get the population down to 500 million again
3. All people in the world enjoy peace, prosperity and clean renewable power
4. ???
5. Profit

Do thorium nuclear power plants already exist or is that merely a possible future scenario?

>>2725121

>implying a one-child policy won't just stabilise the population for a very long time

>>2725122
India is building some.

>>2725131
Which effectively will make India more advanced than the US in one of the major areas that matter.

>1. Nuclear energy is unsafe.
All methods of producing energy are unsafe. Nuclear is the least unsafe. Nuclear power plants have killed 205 people in 60 years. Bees are more dangerous.
>2. Nuclear energy is harmful to the environment.
All methods of producing energy are harmful to the environment. Nuclear power is the least harmful for volume of energy produced.
>3. Nuclear energy should be abandoned in favor of solar and wind power.
Solar power requires production of toxic materials in large quantities and is onyl good for about 8-12 hours of the day, and must be replaced costantly. Wind is innefficient and requires gigantic fields of open land and ideal wind conditions to produce less than 40% of the energy a single fission plant can.
>4. Nuclear waste is a huge problem.
No. It is easily stored, and can be recycled into new fuel for fission reactors. We don't do it currently because public opinion on breeder reactors to repurpose spent fuel is negative.
>5. Nuclear energy is non-renewable and we will eventually run out of resources needed to create it.
It is non renewable in that we can't "grow" more plutonium or uranium, but nuclear materials are abundant in such a way that we could sustain our population and growth trends for 500 years, by which time we will be mining celestial bodies for new material.

Also, once we run out of plutonium and uranium, we can use thorium, which is about 4 times more abundant.

Also, almost every element has a radioactive isotope that can be used in nuclear energy.

Our planet would cease to be capable of sustaining human populations long before we ran out of fuel.

1.http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
2.http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
3. No
4. No.
5. breeder reactors, seawater uranium extraction, thorium fuel cycle - NP becomes practically inexhaustible

1) The water moderated rather than graphite moderated reactors are safe. There is nothing that can actually catch on fire and be easily dispersed into the atmosphere. There is no way for a steam explosion to breach the reactor core because unlike Chernobyl there is no way to have a sudden 10000% increase in heat and pressure. As the water evaporates the amount of neutrons slowed decreases, meaning that the neutrons shoot right through the fuel rods rather than hitting them in initiating more fission. And if a meltdown(the melting of the the fuel rods) occurs they just have to clean it up afterward, there is not radiation released if the containment vessel is not broken.

The Japanese accident is basically just the same thing that happened at 3 mile island. They had to release some slightly irradiated steam from their circulatory cooling system because the pressure was too high. Here they actually didn't do it fast enough and one of their circulating systems exploded, but core material and core water are not in those circulating systems they are filled with water that is used to cool the core water by radiative heat transfer.

>>2725203
2. It doesn't release as much radioisotopes as a coal powered plant, and I am for coal. It gives of alot of hot water, but so does any thermal power source.

3. Solar is very expensive and is not suitable for non arid areas since cloud cover interferes with it. Wind is cheap and plentiful but cannot provide all the power we need.

4. Nuclear waste could be reduced 70% by mass if they let us reprocess it back into fuel. This would let us use the Uranium which has a long half life for more fuel rods. Leaving only the Curium, Radium, and Strontium which all have short half lives of a few years. These short half lives make them very radioactive compared to the uranium, and thereby useful for radiometric batteries. And if we just used breeder reactors we could breed any non-fissile uranium waste into plutonium which can be used in reactors or bombs.

>>2725135
>>2725131
>>2725122
>>2725100

Every time a conversation comes up, I have to clarify a few issues of Thorium. First, though, I little background info.

The only current viable nuclear power option is through fission, which is the process by which heavy nuclei absorb neutrons and split due to the unstable amount of nucleons within its nucleus. This fissioning produces more neutrons that go on to produce more fissions, etc. That being said, there's a million different ways about this. All current power producing reactors rely on thermal fission that utilizes neutrons in a thermal range (very low energies). Most neutrons born from fission are fast neutrons (high energies, on the order of MeVs) and so, modern reactors use a moderator to scatter these neutrons down to thermal energies to fission fissile fuel.

Thorium reactors don't work this way. Only a handful of very specific nuclei are fissile and only one is naturally occuring (U-235, Pu-239 is man-made). Thorium is what is known as fissionable and use fast neutrons to fission. This eliminates the need for a moderator to slow neutrons down. But this also comes with a risk. Operating in the fast spectrum eliminates some convenient inherent safety features of thermal nuclear reactors (Doppler Broadening, and a handful of others).

Using thorium necessitates the total rethinking of nuclear reactors. India's working on some and luckily Obamashamallamadingdong and the pudding pops has allowed a great deal of funding into fast reactor research through INL. Until then, it will be a long hard road to have the same safety margins we enjoy currently on thermal reactors that we do on thorium or other fast reactors.

>>2725216
5. With nuclear breeder reactors U238 and Thorium can be breed into the nuclear fuels Pu239 and U237 respectfully. This will provide sufficient electrical generation capacity, assuming an 8.5% increase in the consumption of electricity compounded yearly for population of 10 billion for at least 30,000 years. Supplementing this with solar, wind, and water power will ensure our survival for the foreseeable future.

Sauce:
For the breeder reactors my main source was: Progress and its Sustainability. Choen's Breeder reactors: A renewable energy source, American Journal of Physics, vol. 51, (1), Jan. 1983. Cohen give a good description of the potential of Breeder Reactors. However I must warn you that Cohen is the Edison/Tesla of nuclear power, he is a shameless self-promoter, although with good reason. He often words his sentences to play up is inventions, note that every statement is factual but worded in a way that may be misleading to those unfamiliar with nuclear reactors. Example: Cohen would state that there is a 5 billion year supply of fissionable uranium assuming that all the U238 in the lithosphere was recovered and used in breeder reactors. However given estimated recoverable U238 reserves, an increase in electrical consumption of 10% compounded yearly, and the halflife of U238 there is only a 23,000 year supply. Of course even that assumes that all the 10% yearly increase will come from nuclear energy.

>>2725221
>Using thorium necessitates the total rethinking of nuclear reactors.

Not really, thorium wouldn't be used in the actual fuel system but be segregated in a seperate chamber within the reactor were it could undergo transmutation into U237. And U237 has similar neutron absorption to the U235 we use today.

>>2725222
The only people that truly used Breeder reactors to moderate success were the Russians. It's do-able, but sort of difficult with modern nuclear infrastructure in the US.

Also, Chernobyl was an RBMK breeder reactor...

>>2725242
>Chernobyl was an RBMK breeder reactor
Shielded with graphite.

>>2725237
Yes, but I was speaking of direct Throium fast reactors of the type that India is building.

But transmutation of Thorium into U-237 creates its own problems. 1. You're still going to be transmuting it using fast range neutrons (might as well fission it directly) and 2. U-237 has a half-life of 6.75 days. That would mean that you would have to have an incredibly high turn-around rate between neutron activation of thorium and sticking the product uranium into a thermal reactor. That would necessitate the changing of fuel assemblies/fuel rods every few days? At best...

>>2725242
>Also, Chernobyl was an RBMK breeder reactor

A poorly designed, poorly run breeder reactor, being run at low power. With graphite tips on the the control rods that caused moderation rather than poisoning of the neutron exchange for the first 3 seconds they were dropped into the reactor core. Which caused a steam explosion.

Don't put moderators on your control rods, lesson fucking learned.

The breeder nature of the reactor had nothing to do with the accident. It's like saying that a car crashed because it had a Fram oil filter rather than a Duralex.

1. It is only unsafe when something goes wrong. Otherwise it is quite safe in comparison to fossil fuels.
2. Once again, only harmful when a disaster strikes, but not as much so as fossil fuels (see Exxon Valdez, Deep Water Horizon)
3. Absolutely, however, there simply isn't enough money going into research for these and there are very very rich people that DON'T want these technologies coming into fruition and are spending lots of their money to stop it.
4. Once again, not as bad as fossil fuel waste.
5. Yes, but again, fossil fuels are worse.
The bottom line is, right now a lot of green energies aren't viable enough to power the world. Lots of money and research should be done to fix this problem but realistically Nuclear is less harmful than fossil fuels.
If a decline in Nuclear energy opens up for more fossil fuel energy then we may very well be dooming mankind over a fear of scary words like "meltdown" and "radiation".
It is the lesser of the two viable evils and should not be abandoned until we have a viable good.

>>2725252
Actually you would use the U237 as a alloy with U235 or Pu239 in the new fuel rods the rods would last a few months and undergo more total fission than a U235 rod would alone.

>>2725269
It doesn't matter. At the rate that U-237 decays, it won't be a particularly strong contributor to heat generation. And you talk about fissioning it with U-235 and Pu-239, both FISSILE materials. Remember, to create U-237 in the first place, your using fast neutrons to activate thorium. That's not going to happen in a thermal reactor...

>>2724911
Hai OP, i c you are also a harry potter fan.

He iz soooo hawt.

>>2725259
But most other breeder reactors are liquid sodium, which is potentially even worse than using graphite moderators. Either way you put it, there has not been a light water moderated breeder reactor ever built. The technology doesn't exist.

>>2725296
>>2725296
>That's not going to happen in a thermal reactor..

>Implying that the breeder and power production reactors have to be the same.

You wouldn't want them to be since as you said the breeder reactor is less controllable and has to have its thorium exchanged alot as it is breed into fissile material.

And yes you can have a thermal breeder reactor if you place thorium or U238 rods between rods of your fissile rods. Essentially they would act as a kind of half assed control rods that are always inserted into a quite hot reactor. Unfortunately you have to remove those rods once 20% of their mass is converted into fissile material and then process them so that you can get all that fissile material you breed out of them. Which is too expensive at the moment.

>Launch Radioactive Material Into The Sun

Are you fucking kidding? Are you really certain we need a giant radioactive ball of fire in the sky? Are you really that stupid?

>>2725369
Back in MY day, trolling MEANT something...

>>2724911
OP didn't specify Fission or Fusion, therefore, Troll Thread.

>>2725380
Fusion

Enjoying your pipe dreams there pal?

>>2724911
I can refute all your arguments in one fell swoop:
You are a troll.
/thread

>>2724958
Why send perfectly good "spent fuel" into the sun?
It's quite likely newer generation reactors will be able to use it.

Then there's the issue of payload, it'd be pretty costly to send this on a one way trip to the sun.

Aren't radioactive elements the heaviest elements?

>>2725369
I'm no scientist, but isn't the sun already radioactive?

I always thought of the sun as a giant fusion reactor.

1. It has been safe for a while, we have made some advancements in technology since chernobyl happened, and that power plant was already outdated. What happened in Tokyo was an example of the modern absolute worst case scenario, and it went pretty well if you ask me.
2. No, radioactive chemicals are harmful to the enviroment, but we don't exactly dump them into the nearest lake.
3. wind power is still very inefficient, it still needs work if it is to be widely used.
Solar has it's issues too, mainly that it is expencive and inefficient.
There is no conspiracy going on, a trip to wikipedia can explain these power sources in depth.
4. No it's not, we have perfectly safe dumping grounds for that stuff.
5. Not in your or your grandchildren's lifetime

>>2725346
You're not hearing what I'm saying. Thorium activation is by FAST neutrons. If you place a fuel rod made of thorium into a thermal reactor, most (if not all) fast neutrons will be moderated to thermal energies before they reach the thorium rod. You won't even be registering a high absorption with that thorium rod and only have very low scattering. It will act as a void in the reactor, screwing up your flux profile and generally wasting everyone's time.