Bush pushes for more nuclear power plants...

[BigCheeze]

Personally I believe Nuke power is safe. I honestly think people don't understand what it really is. They think it's some sort of nuke bomb or something??? All it really is, is radioactive material being used to heat water so that it turns to steam, and then the steam powers turbines that produce power.

When a plant melts down, it doesn't produce a nuclear explosion. It does however release a lot of radioactive water into the environment (hell personally I think having a tail would be cool).

Also for solar power, I know I looked into it when I lived in Sacramento. The power company there actually had a pretty cool deal. You could either buy the equipment out right, and then they would of course pay you for any power you feed into the grid, and you of course paid them for any power you had to suck from the grid. From my understanding in that area you would suck more in the winter (there was a fog/cloud layer that stayed over Sac for about 2 months.. yuck) but the rest of the year you would feed so much back in that you never ended up with a bill.

They also had an option where for 10 yrs you paid your normal electrical bill (i.e. they monitored the electricity you used just like it had come from them), but you pay nothing for the solar system. After that it's yours and you go to way above. I was going to do this when we bought a house in Sac... but we moved to Colorado and I haven't looked it up here yet.

[Busby]

Originally posted by wvjohn
I agree that we have to look at this seriously....people are right to be concerned about all the issues involving nuclear, but as FP said, a lot of countries have been doing this safely for a while...people never look at the safety issues on other energy sources...like coal mining and oil drilling don't kill lots of people.

I of course hope someday they will figure out the fusion stuff - free energy for everyone basically and it would sove many environmental issues completely


the russian reactors were notorious for their designs - the russians also used materials that were radioactive (can't remember exactly what was in them) put into containers as hat portable heaters hat in Siberia

in case anyone hasn't seen it, here's a link to what I consider the best piece of web journalism/whatever ever done - she also has more stuff on her site now - for awhile she was "off the air"

motorcycling through chernobyl

I've actually discussed the events around Chernobyl in multiple classes now and everytime its quite amazing. I've seen a video of basically the same thing as the motorcycling but its a group of scientists in a car and such. Quite amazing stuff.


Overall I think the idea of nuclear power is great and it needs to be explored. Supposedly there is a nuke reactor here at GA Tech and if there is I know where it would be (only area fenced in with barbed wire around the top and the looks of an electric fence system that once operated.

Here's a site I found that lists the worlds different reactors: http://www.world-nuclear.org/wgs/decom/ ... _index.php

If you go there it seems they have some FAQ type sections about nuclear power.

[FlyingPenguin]

I was watching a documentary just last night called "Boneyard" on either History or TLC. They discussed something I had no idea existed. We've had an arrangement with Russia that I think Clinton administration arranged where we buy the uranium and plutonium from their de-commisoned nuclear bombs and we re-process it into fuel that we sell to American reactor power plants.

The government agency that handles this actually makes a profit (amazing!).

We've processed thousands of nukes and the arrangement is scheduled to continue until 2010.

[TruckStuff]

The problem w/ nuclear power in this country is two fold: 1) Fear of the unknown and 2) $$$$. #1 has been addressed already (the only thing people know about nuclear power is what they see in disaster movies).

#2, however, is the real limiting factor in this day and age. In the 60s and 70s when the US was facing an energy crisis, nuclear power made economic sense. In the long run, it was a lot cheaper for power co.s to build a reactor and all the support systems to generate power than it was to buy the oil needed to produce the same amount of energy. Thus nuclear power plants took off. Some people fought it, but harnessing nuclear energy for commercial power generation was still a relatively new field and most of the data on nuclear physics as a whole belonged to the gov't. Then when TMI (a result of gross human error) and Chernobyl (gross negligence + poor reactor/support systems design) happened, everybody freaked out. The same group that had fought nucs in the beginning now had the proof they needed to instill fear in the general public. That public contacted their Reps and Senators complaining about nuclear power regulation, so the gov't acted. The "cost of regulation" (the economic term for all the crap that the government adds to the price of a given product) associated with running/building a nuclear reactor went through the roof in just a few years. This tipped the economics of nuclear reactors back the other way, and power co.s stopped building them b/c they were cost prohibitive.

If this new energy legislation works to remove some of this cost of regulation, or at least incent the power gernerators in this nation to build nucs, they will be built. Gentelemen (and lady), live so much else in this world, its all about the benjamins.

[Pugsley]

well the russians were basicly modding their reactor to see how slow (low) they could output power with the reactor. the reactor had safteys that when it reached low levels it would just totaly shut down. they bypassed all this for the experiment and at some point the reactor got away from them (ran too fast) and all the safteys that should have shut it down were disabled and there was no other way to shut it down and it just went boom cause too much steam built up and blew the lid off the core.

[FlyingPenguin]

For those interested, here's a nice FAQ on nuclear power technology:

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0, ... tw=rss.TOP

[Pugsley]

hmm.. yelowcake... and only 13 bux a pound! what a deal.