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I've always been an advocate of nuclear power, but an incident like this certainly shakes my resolve.

Nuclear is a cheap and efficient source of energy, but the slight risk to a nuclear meltdown is unparalleled to most other sources of energy, especially renewable and natural gas.

Would you support your country to rely more on nuclear power than other forms of energy renewal?

If you believe in Global Warming or just want to get off oil and coal, what other form of energy is viable besides nuclear?

According to a book I once read by a top physicist, Britain's only option away from conventional power sources is nuclear.

Perhaps that's different in sunny Australia that also has a low population density and plenty of desert, especially with recent advances in more efficient solar technology and organic photovoltaic cells that are much cheaper than the traditional solar cell.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia- ... 22667.html

I don't know wheter this is a WIN or a FAIL.

Win in the sense that all other fail safe measures worked in all other Nuclear plants, they went into automatic shutdown and cooling seconds after the quake hit

or

Fail that even one malfunction is one too many in this situation ? The plant had back up diesel generators to start pumping coolant to cool down the core but apprently all of the fail to kick in, maybe underwater now ?

Japanese govt still saying that there is no chance of a melt down and that they are now pumping seawater into the reactor.

EH i thought the tsunami was created by us "muslims" detonating a nuclear bomb in the pacific ocean!!!

Come on people, we all know the Aliens did it , the americans have been hiding their secret marriages to them for ages now

I am far from an expert in this field, but the world's dependency on oil is the biggest curse in modern day life. The sooner it ends with vialable alternatives the better.

^^ agreed ! , I look forward to compact fusion reactors coming on store shelves soon

the world's dependency on oil is the biggest curse in modern day life. The sooner it ends with vialable alternatives the better.

well i don't know if this would be relevant but I already heard of this hydrogen energy...
http://www.iahe.org/

-- Sun Mar 13, 2011 8:52 pm --

Come on people, we all know the Aliens did it , the americans have been hiding their secret marriages to them for ages now

I see what you mean now ..I just heard about this..
http://www.allnewsweb.com/page1199999510.php

There are a number of problems with substituting hydrogen for gasoline.

One is that the amount of hydrogen you can store per cubic meter is less than any other gas, such as methan/ethane/propane. Hydrogen is also costly to produce. Any mass production of hydrogen will probably be through electrophoresis. But the problem is that the amount of energy you put in to separating hydrogen from water is more than the energy you get from the dihydrogen molecule you would get in return.

I would personally like to see nuclear power gradually replace all other forms of electrical generation in the United States with the exception of hydro-electric and natural gas power stations.

Solar and wind power seems like the biggest scam since ethanol. There are too many problems with these two options that it would fill a book discussing. In fact, one physicist does write a book on the perceived benefits of green power.

I'm not sure what we could do about gasoline. I don't think we can - or that it would be a good idea - replace oil consumption but the next option is limit the amount of oil we consume. Switching over to more diesel vehicles for cars and the government providing tax breaks to car manufacturers to produce high mile per gallon vehicles in favor of the SUV, as opposed to hybrids, is the most practical alternative.

You can watch a great episode exploring both Nuclear power and hybrid vehicles:

http://www.freeonlineepisodes.net/bulls ... -lesbians/

event horizon wrote:Solar and wind power seems like the biggest scam since ethanol. There are too many problems with these two options that it would fill a book discussing. In fact, one physicist does write a book on the perceived benefits of green power.

Good point but it contradicts with your previous one.

Perhaps that's different in sunny Australia that also has a low population density and plenty of desert, especially with recent advances in more efficient solar technology and organic photovoltaic cells that are much cheaper than the traditional solar cell.

How about efficiency? The much cheaper cells reminds me pomp around amorphous silicon 25 years ago. It's much cheaper than crystalline one material (like paint) and so attracted a lot of money for researches. Scientists were absolutely happy and wrote tons of Ph. D. theses but even an undergraduate student, who I was at that time, understood that it was a scum.
It's an example how easy scientists can have funds from a government or local industry promising cheap energy in the end.

By the way, I have no idea why automative industry is so reluctant to migrate to natural gas as an alternative to petrol as gas deposits are much larger than oil ones.

Alternative energy sources have been around for longer than some of us would care to remember, but in reality, (and this is my conspiracy theory ) none are ever likely to be developed into cost effective or cheaper alternatives to fossil fuels until fossil fuels are a lot closer to depletion than they currently are, or there is a greater need, let’s face it, the Governments of this world aren’t likely to abandon their investments and revenue streams until they are forced to do so, and with current estimates of “Peak Oil” having just passed, there’s still a lot more cheap fossil fuels out there to be burnt and the noxious gasses pumped into the atmosphere just yet.

When you consider the amount of investment already made in oil and gas exploration, infrastructure, extraction, refining and distribution, and then the taxes levied by the Governments, 15% in the USA, an average of 70% across the EU and the UK with a staggering 87% tax on every Litre sold, the developments made by Hesselman with their renewable ‘wood gas’ engine in 1939 that Volvo used during WWII are likely, as are other innovative technologies, to remain in mothballs.

You will always have isolated cases of alternative fuel exploitation such as Geothermal sources in New Zealand and Iceland, Biomass sources such as Bernard Matthews’ Turkey litter mountain and sugar cane waste from sugar refineries etc, where a waste product is freely available and in abundance, it all helps in the generation of sustainable power but still only accounts for a small percentage of the power demanded by consumers worldwide.

As for the question of Nuclear Power? Time will soon tell of adequate safety regulations and procedures to balance the risk against reward, of the three working reactors affected by the 9.0 Earthquake and ensuing 3m tsunami in Fukushima 1, two reactors have overheated and demolished all but their final safety envelopes and the situation is still developing. There still remains the controversial question of fuel rod recycling and the risk of nuclear material getting into the wrong hands and being used in terrorist objectives.

Well, no one here is an expert on nuclear energy, but I will say some of your reservations seem overblown. Last generation nuclear reactors are able to recycle something like 95% of nuclear waste. The reactors affected by the Tsunami/earthquake are 40 year old reactors.

The amount of nuclear waste produced by older model reactors sounds staggering due to their density but is less in terms of volume. The radioactivity of the waste greatly depreciates by 300 years (I'm not sure what the half life is, but I could easily calculate this to confirm for myself).

So, yes. It is said it would take 10,000 years for nuclear waste to completely decay, but it's not exactly impossible to find storage areas for the waste that will be off limits to the general public. I'm sure Europe has many areas that are off limits to the general population and it doesn't have a problem maintaining this separation.

Terrorist attacks using radioactive elements is overblown from what I understand. Using a chemical explosive to disperse radioactive material in a city center wouldn't cause the catastrophe I've recently watched in a BBC video. It would be relatively simple to clean up the radioactive fragments and the damage itself would come from the explosive more than the fissile material. But that's according to a far-left wing film that claimed al-Qaeda didn't exist, so I can't vouch for the veracity of the 'expert' interviewed in the film if I thought the rest of the film's claims were ridiculous.

On a side note, I'm sure we've all read that burning coal releases more radiation than nuclear power plants do. I personally think electricity from coal is the worst of the forms of electricity generation out there. Natural gas would be the best, (no pollutants except CO2) except natural gas isn't nearly abundant enough to power more than a fraction of our energy needs.

Some are developing photovoltaics that would be able to produce methane/ethane (natural gas) or pure hydrogen in similar ways that plants are able to produce carbon rings/break down water from sunlight.

Good point but it contradicts with your previous one.

What was the contradiction? Organic solar cells aren't even commercially available, though recent advancements put them at 8.5% energy efficiency, which was about as efficient as inorganic photovoltaics 30 years ago but for a fraction of the price.

Price isn't the major obstacle for photovoltaics and wind power in any event. From what I've read of Spain and their transition to green energy, they still require fossil fuel energy plants to run continuously on standby when energy from wind and solar can not meet the power demands on the country. Otherwise, it would create constant rolling blackouts. To avoid this, as I said, coal/oil plants are always operating. It's more wasteful than the previous system they had when they were just using coal and oil to generate all of their energy.

event horizon wrote: So, yes. It is said it would take 10,000 years for nuclear waste to completely decay, but it's not exactly impossible to find storage areas for the waste that will be off limits to the general public. I'm sure Europe has many areas that are off limits to the general population and it doesn't have a problem maintaining this separation.

These area are in Siberia and Ural Mountains, where Europe constanly push its radiactive waste, bribing some corrupted individuals in Russian government. The former chief of Russian Atomic Agency Mr. Adamov is the most notorious figure. One day he proclaimed that this waste would be very valuable raw material in the future but at time of speech Russian storages was overflown by the waste from the own power plants.
It's exactly how Europe decided its prolem so far. Recicling of the radiactive waste is a problem, that is difficalt to decide, especially for landlocked countries. UK and France eventually dumped the waste to the ocean as far as I know.

What was the contradiction? Organic solar cells aren't even commercially available, though recent advancements put them at 8.5% energy efficiency, which was about as efficient as inorganic photovoltaics 30 years ago but for a fraction of the price.

I would not compare the result from the research with commercial technology. On the initial stage this results was made by checking IV of 1000 samples and chosing the best one or two.
As for crystaline silicon its high cost is owing to rivalry from manufacturers of IC but due to long subsidies from German government the technology becomes at least commercialy viable only a few years ago.

Price isn't the major obstacle for photovoltaics and wind power in any event. From what I've read of Spain and their transition to green energy, they still require fossil fuel energy plants to run continuously on standby when energy from wind and solar can not meet the power demands on the country. Otherwise, it would create constant rolling blackouts. To avoid this, as I said, coal/oil plants are always operating. It's more wasteful than the previous system they had when they were just using coal and oil to generate all of their energy.

It's true. Problem of idle on power plant exists even without photovaltaic or wind power. That's why night tariff for electricity is much lower than day one. Of cause, the green power makes load on convensial power plant more chaotic and so makes the situation even worse.

Mining coal also kills far more people in the United States than nuclear power has:

http://frankwarner.typepad.com/free_fra ... ning_.html

1980: 133 deaths, .06 per 200,000 hours.

1990: 66 deaths, .04 per 200,000 hours.
1991: 61 deaths, .04.
1992: 55 deaths, .04.
1993: 47 deaths, .04.
1994: 45 deaths, .04.
1995: 47 deaths, .04.
1996: 39 deaths, .03.
1997: 30 deaths, .03.
1998: 29 deaths, .03.
1999: 35 deaths, .03.
2000: 38 deaths, .04.
2001: 42 deaths, .040.
2002: 27 deaths, .028.
2003: 30 deaths, .031.
2004: 28 deaths, .027.
2005: 23 deaths, .021.
2006: 47 deaths, .040.
2007: 28 deaths, .030.
2008: 30 deaths, .030.
2009: 18 deaths. .020.

For some comparison, check out China’s coal-mining death toll over the last several years:

2000: 5,300 deaths.
2001: 5,670 deaths.
2002: 5,791 deaths.
2003: 7,200 deaths.
2004: 6,027 deaths.
2005: 5,986 deaths.
2006: 4,746 deaths.
2007: 3,786 deaths.
2008: 3,215 deaths.
2009: 2,631 deaths.

Pokemon -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon

SOlar Power is the best way!

Imagine the moon filled up with the solar panels and sending power to us greedy buttocks on Earth wirelessly!!

I am suprised why us humans dont concentrate on finding ways of saving electricity rather than finding new ways of generating electricity!!

I was shocked when I passed Mirdiff City Center and saw so many car park lights on at 12 at night??

There should be a more massive gouvernamental investment in solar, wind, hydro energy resources. In how many forms you can exploit for exemple hydro sources (geothermal, waves, artificial lakes, rivers etc) ? There has to be an end to nuclear power even if it's massivle profitable when it goes well. I do believe Japan was the best prepared for when such tragic events occur and yet I pray they will save the situation, this is already a massive fail of nuclear energy. And it fails once, but then? Can you invest now after aprox 30 years in a real estate project in Cernobil?

Only reason why I would support nuclear energy it would be if human technology finds a way to temporarly become immune to radiations and to clean up the territory from radiation after it all goes wrong. Because whatever technology you will use for nuclear energy at one point it will all go wrong and then if your in the area you will definitely regret supporting it.

rudeboy wrote:Imagine the moon filled up with the solar panels and sending power to us greedy buttocks on Earth wirelessly!!

Not a bad idea, beaming power is being experimented for digital devices, this might be actually possible within a decade or two