Nuclear Energy

TesticleMilkshake

TesticleMilkshake

pewpewlazrz
Oct 24, 2010
670
0
16
New York
Today I went to go see Chernobyl Diaries with a friend who works as a manager in the control room of a nuclear power plant. As expected, the film was a waste of money, but lead to entertaining discussion afterwards. Having known my buddy and his girlfriend (a physicist) for the past two years, they've really changed my outlook on the use of nuclear power and the future of nuclear energy as a whole (studies on fusion, NIF etc.) For one, there is a lot of misinformation regarding the safety of nuclear reactors and radiation, which I am learning through the book, "Wormwood Forest," an observation of the environmental changes which occurred in the Ukraine, Belarus in the two decades following Chernobyl. However, I've also done a fair amount of research on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a little reading on the biological impact of weapons testing in Central Asia, Middle East, etc., all of which contradicts the ethical motives of my earlier points.

Just wanted to hear to some opinions about the usage of nuclear power, nuclear weapons, anything related. I'm hoping for diverse opinions and perspectives, especially because we have a lot of international posters here.


Oh, and if we can safely achieve nuclear fusion in an economical fashion, it'll completely change the dynamics of the energy crisis, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility and https://lasers.llnl.gov/
 
This topic has been debated before, but I'm pretty much against all nuclear power because it is not cost effective as a method of power (the easy answer) and my family has a history of radioactive exposure and the results are not pleasant; they can be carried genetically through the generations to great devastation. My grandfather was exposed to the radioactive aftermath of a nuclear explosion for the UK navy to test the effect "of radiation on human specimens" in a t-shirt and shorts back in the fifties under the gloriously ironic name "Operation Mosaic" (Because it truely has enriched my family tapestry - my aunt was born with half her jaw missing and the effects are said to permeate down for up to ten generations - I have a greatly elevated risk of developing leukemia amongst various other cancers for example). In effect the UK military fucked up my whole family genetically and paid no compensation for it (because you cannot sue for damages developed more than 15 years after something has happened) due to Nuclear exposure. I count this sort of first hand experience as entirely relevant moving onto my next point...

People are going to come in and rant about the effectiveness and high stability of modern reactors but I think that one only needs to look at Fukushima, which was a year ago and is still extremely high risk, to see that this is not always the case and these systems are still fallible and highly dangerous when they do fail - you play with fire and you get burned, you play with nuclear and your whole genetic line feels the consequences. In the most recent Fukushima example you are talking about not only the directly effected (which is what reports are going to be able to list) but the indirectly effected ie the thousands or potentially millions of genetically exposed after the fact - that's more than just dangerous, its crazy to attempt to justify a type of energy which can do that and at the heart of it is no more effective than traditional methods.
 
Öwen;10309534 said:
This topic has been debated before, but I'm pretty much against all nuclear power because it is not cost effective as a method of power (the easy answer) and my family has a history of radioactive exposure and the results are not pleasant...
Click to expand...

Didn't realize this topic has been brought up in the past, but I understand where you are coming from. Similar circumstances have occurred in the Southwestern United States (Downwinders, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downwinders and http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/05/national/05nuke.html) I'm sure it's probably very difficult too prove eligibility for monetary restitution from the state, as you would have to DIRECTLY link cancer to fallout. Also, another similar situation occurred close to my hometown: http://articles.latimes.com/1986-07-20/news/mn-17096_1_appalachian-trail

Interestingly enough there are cancer clusters surrounding the site.

Lastly, Belarus got completely fucked by Chernobyl. My friend and I today were talking about the long term impact of meltdowns and radioactive releases, and I suggested that the people of Fukushima will most likely be better off in the long term compared to former the citizens of former Soviet states as the plant design at Fukushima was better suited to deal with the realities of a meltdown. In addition, the Japanese government addressed their nuclear disaster almost immediately following the first detections of leaked radiation. Adding to their benefit, the standard of living in Japan is much higher than that of 1980s Ukraine, Poland and Belarus. The Japanese, from what I've observed, may have been better educated as well as better fit to deal with a nuclear disaster on this level (better shelter, stronger knowledge of the effects of exposure to radioactive fallout.) Even in terms of health and lifestyle, the Japanese diet, which would much better prevent the absorption of cesium-137 and strontium-90 (same atomic weight as calcium, I believe) or radioactive iodine. Mineral deficiencies increase the likelihood of taking in these elements and developing cancer later in life. It still doesn't downsize the situation or the fact that thousands of people are displaced as a result of this catastrophe. Regarding diet though, this is just an observation I've found reading about radiation sickness in the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I don't know if there's necessarily any validity to it.

It is the impact of radiation on humans and it's potential to screw with life for generations that disturbs me, too. Because radiation is something man has only been documenting with over the past 120 years, most extensively in the past 80 years, it can be incredibly difficult to pinpoint direct effects. I found this one paper that it will probably be another 20, maybe 30 or 40 years before we totally understand the genetic effects of radiation, though it seems extremely vague: http://ippnw.org/pdf/mgs/2-2-yamazaki.pdf

I guess I'm wondering if nuclear energy is worth studying and exploring given our limited understanding of its effects on life and what not. Do the potential benefits out weigh the given risks? Just curious, stuff I've started to think about.

Again, I hope I'm not coming off as an ass or downplaying your family's situation, it really upsets me when the government is completely at fault, downplaying responsibility for their actions and refusing compensation for the victims. Often is the case with corrupt politicians and bureaucrats who cut corners or leak funds which are supposed to be dedicated towards improving plant safety measures (this is the situation regarding Fukushima and TEPCO, similar circumstances were also suggested with regards to plant design at Chernobyl) Frustrating shit, man, and the common person is always the victim, case in point:

22_nyc15938.jpg
 
I've said it a bunch of times in this forum before and no one seems to give a shit: there is no such thing as Dark Energy, nor Dark Matter. What does that have to do with this thread? Everything.

Science is built on hundred year old experiments by people just like us. People who needed pay checks, just like us. People who sometimes had to turn a blind eye to the unusual and bend the rules just enough that they'd be able to get the results they were looking for so they could collect a pay check, just like us (to do this is to be human). People who inevitably used cheaper, faulty components in their experiments in order to save money, just like we do, disregarding there downstream impact, leaving it for others to worry about.

Don't argue with me; this is inevitable. This happens every day. Everyone cuts corners. You've done it. I've done it. Every day in one form or another. "That little thing you noticed...Ya, I don't think we should mention that."

Is it so hard to believe? Is it that difficult to picture the actions of a poor, overworked graduate student, struggling to pay his rent? You can't picture the graduate students' advisor saying: "There's a lot of pressure on this experiment, we need the correct results by Friday, or the project is closed and you'll have to do a new thesis." You honestly believe that the graduate student will do the "right" thing in this situation? What even is the right thing for him to do? Be honest? Get the project 100% accurate? Or fudge a number here or there and get 99.9% accuracy? "No one will notice if I ignore XXX theorem and get 99.9% accuracy. It doesn't even matter. My Made in Taiwan component works just as well as my Made in Silicon Valley component. I just need food on my table."

Of course it has happened. It happens everywhere, every day, all the time. It happens in the music industry, it happens in the corporate world, and all of our governments. Everywhere.

So when all our brilliant friends in the science industry tell us: "We understand how gravity works out in space and we understand how gravity works at the atomic level, but we have to use a different formula. Or we can use one formula in both scenarios but it requires eleven dimensions", it makes me think:

You fuckers do NOT understand gravity.

Let's rewind a bit. Who does understand gravity? Who made the groundbreaking discoveries in gravity?

Einstein wasn't even in the academic community when he shattered everything the academic world. Isaac Newton was probably autistic, and wouldn't even be given a second thought in today's scientific world. Yet they were the ones who made the big discoveries in gravity.

The truth about gravity is out there, probably so simple that we would laugh at it at first. But it likely does not involve Dark Matter, which will be the name of a ride at Disneyland before we ever prove it exists.

So you asked about nuclear technology. That shit is powerful. We shouldn't use it regularly until we understand gravity... I don't see any aliens flying around Earth to say hi. That's pretty scary if you think about the fact that ALL aliens probably killed themselves off. I prefer we not go that route. So no, I don't think we should use it for power. Not until we figure out gravity and we figure out what is really going on.

I am The Genius Gone Insane.
 
Genius Gone Insane said:
I've said it a bunch of times in this forum before and no one seems to give a shit: there is no such thing as Dark Energy, nor Dark Matter. What does that have to do with this thread? Everything.

Science is built on hundred year old experiments by people just like us. People who needed pay checks, just like us. People who sometimes had to turn a blind eye to the unusual and bend the rules just enough that they'd be able to get the results they were looking for so they could collect a pay check, just like us (to do this is to be human). People who inevitably used cheaper, faulty components in their experiments in order to save money, just like we do, disregarding there downstream impact, leaving it for others to worry about.

Don't argue with me; this is inevitable. This happens every day. Everyone cuts corners. You've done it. I've done it. Every day in one form or another. "That little thing you noticed...Ya, I don't think we should mention that."

Is it so hard to believe? Is it that difficult to picture the actions of a poor, overworked graduate student, struggling to pay his rent? You can't picture the graduate students' advisor saying: "There's a lot of pressure on this experiment, we need the correct results by Friday, or the project is closed and you'll have to do a new thesis." You honestly believe that the graduate student will do the "right" thing in this situation? What even is the right thing for him to do? Be honest? Get the project 100% accurate? Or fudge a number here or there and get 99.9% accuracy? "No one will notice if I ignore XXX theorem and get 99.9% accuracy. It doesn't even matter. My Made in Taiwan component works just as well as my Made in Silicon Valley component. I just need food on my table."

Of course it has happened. It happens everywhere, every day, all the time. It happens in the music industry, it happens in the corporate world, and all of our governments. Everywhere.

So when all our brilliant friends in the science industry tell us: "We understand how gravity works out in space and we understand how gravity works at the atomic level, but we have to use a different formula. Or we can use one formula in both scenarios but it requires eleven dimensions", it makes me think:

You fuckers do NOT understand gravity.

Let's rewind a bit. Who does understand gravity? Who made the groundbreaking discoveries in gravity?

Einstein wasn't even in the academic community when he shattered everything the academic world. Isaac Newton was probably autistic, and wouldn't even be given a second thought in today's scientific world. Yet they were the ones who made the big discoveries in gravity.

The truth about gravity is out there, probably so simple that we would laugh at it at first. But it likely does not involve Dark Matter, which will be the name of a ride at Disneyland before we ever prove it exists.

So you asked about nuclear technology. That shit is powerful. We shouldn't use it regularly until we understand gravity... I don't see any aliens flying around Earth to say hi. That's pretty scary if you think about the fact that ALL aliens probably killed themselves off. I prefer we not go that route. So no, I don't think we should use it for power. Not until we figure out gravity and we figure out what is really going on.

I am The Genius Gone Insane.
Click to expand...

You could replace nuclear with oil, coal and gas and it all the same issues apply. Oil causes environmental catastrophes and all three destroy the environment through their use. Solar and wind are great but not on the scale we need them. They don't conjur up the same power as nuclear but they are just as dangerous, albeit in different ways.

The leader of the Green Party was on Question Time recently saying how awful nuclear power is and how its subsidisation by the government was proof of its inadequacy and the foolishness of using it.

Nobody pointed out the subsidies paid to get wind turbines up in the UK, despite wind turbines being her silver bullet solution. What an inconsistent hypocritical moron. This is one issue I think the government actually has right - a balanced energy system that uses a little bit of everything, slowly shifting away from carbon burning is the most sensible and least liable to fail.
 
ITER is supposed to mark the next step with nuclear fusion reactors.

Inherently much safer, way cleaner, and a 'peaceful' power source, it will be like having small suns contained on Earth.
 
It still drives me crazy that there are that many nuclear power plants on this planet-not because of all the stuff that happens
to us or anything else, we're all going to die so fuck it-but I am actually interested what happens to this planet after humans
die-leave the planet or whatever.
All the nuclear powerplants need energy to work, if there's no energy (like in Fukushima after the Tsunami) there will be a nuclear
meltdown-but in a larger way as it happened in Fukushima because they tried to stop it and stuff.
So imagine the future-zombie apocalpyse or whatever-almost all humans die (I am pretty sure that 75% would be enough for this
scenario) and we're going to get nuclear meltdowns in almost every power plant on the whole planet, this would lead into a nuclear
winter that would kill almost everything.

The described scenario is one of the things I dislike the most about using nuclear energy-besides that, all the money that has to be
spent could be used to search for alternative ways, windcraft-we could build wave power plants and whatever-there are lots of ways
to use the money.

Edit:
A friend of mine is a physicist and his girlfriend studies nuclear safety engineering, they both want to work at a nuclear power plant,
their main reason: "we're going to use it for a long time-there's not that much money spent in other directions, due to working there,
we could try to make it at least a bit more safe"
In my opinion it's just too dangerous, not cost effective enough and not ethically acceptable-but who am I to judge humanity for this?
 
I am a fan of micro distributed energy production - when i see windy and sunny weather i get sad at the billions and billions and billions of dollars in energy that is wasted while it could be captured from the wind and light over an area of my whole country.

You could argue that this kind of energy can't be stored for nights and periods with no wind.

WRONG :)

Currently the best method seems to be storing the energy as heat.
In some northern countries they even capture heat during summer and store it until winter to heat their homes thats how effective that method is.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_axis_wind_turbine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage
 
imo with nuclear power it's the same as with animal experiments:

sadly without them our modern life wouldn't be possible the way it is.
now, if that is a good or a bad thing is a totally different story.

But imo on nuclear power I don't think it is worth the risk.
It's not even that much about the risk of plants exploding and stuff, more about the waste.

Plus, from what I understood nuclear material also isn't an endless resource, so at some point you have to look elsewere anyway.

I quit college (environment studies/management) because it greatly altered my view about these kind of things to the negative.
 
StefTD said:
It still drives me crazy that there are that many nuclear power plants on this planet-not because of all the stuff that happens
to us or anything else, we're all going to die so fuck it-but I am actually interested what happens to this planet after humans
die-leave the planet or whatever.
Click to expand...

you're giving us WAY too much credit and placing too much importance on us ... we all die off, leave the planet ... shits gonna fix itself right up. It always has.

Too many people say things about how we're destroying the planet. We're not. We're destroying it for ourselves.
 
Modern nuclear power is relatively safe. The biggest problem is the waste. I'm pretty sure the fukishima plant was leaking less radiation than we get from the sun and the earth anyway, the media just likes to blow it up into a world wide catastrophe. For a plant that old to go into meltdown on the year it was about to be taken out of commission was just unfortunate.

IT'S CHERNOBYL 2 WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE.
 
Skinny Viking said:
you're giving us WAY too much credit and placing too much importance on us ... we all die off, leave the planet ... shits gonna fix itself right up. It always has.

Too many people say things about how we're destroying the planet. We're not. We're destroying it for ourselves.
Click to expand...

that's right to a certain point, but I still think we're going to fuck up more than we think atm ;)
sure, it's going to heal sometime and so on, but imho there are ways to reduce that anyways
so why don't we use them instead and reduce our own level of risk?
 
^ let me clarify a little ... I seriously doubt there is anything we could do to this planet that could permanently fuck it up and make it a "dead" planet so to speak. The worst we could do would be to destroy our ability to live here, or just plain destroy ourselves. Even a full on nuclear war which would really just destroy us and a shit ton of other life, wouldn't destroy the earth. It would just make it uninhabitable for us and most other life ... for a time. It WILL fix itself because it always has, we just won't be around to see it. At that point whatever does survive will help begin the process of establishing the next dominant life forms through natural selection & evolution

All that being said, I like my planet :) I don't want to see it fucked up either, while I'm here or after so yes, there are a LOT of things everyone should be doing to preserve what we have as well as repairing (if possible) damage we have done already that in the short term is really only hurting ourselves and other species now
 
Genius Gone Insane said:
I am The Genius Gone Insane.
Click to expand...

Quite definitely gone insane. You don't seem to have much understanding of how science works, the psychology of the average science academic or the relationship between physics academia, engineering and industry.

I'm against nuclear power for the simple reason that politicians, technicians or the cleaning guy will at some point fuck something up. The science and design behind a modern nuclear reactor (note i did NOT say power plant...) is pretty bomb proof, but people will always fuck it up to save some cash/get home early/not disappoint their boss/get back at the world/gain political acceptance etc.....

I gave a short talk as part of my degree on this: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/910836/Nuclear power dangers.docx (best mark of the year, booyah!) The stat for the chance of fukashima being flooded is 1 in 25 if i remember correctly
 
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