Lampros, regarding your question about how much of the 'spent' nuclear material could be recycled but at the insistence of enviornmental group pressure is now stored instead (decided in the 70's I think)----

That info I posted was based on a documentary or news expose I watched some years ago. Perhaps someone here can point you in the right direction for more on that.

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Different point here; It's wise to point out that the Government run plants of eastern europe and Soviet Union use entirely different designs than the plants used by private profit seeking firms in the US and elsewhere. They did this because of lack of funds! The wealthier nations' rich private sector can afford to build a type of plant that is extremely safe. I don't know the technical details but Soviet style plants don't use a gravity protected core like western countries use. In the west the core will drop due to gravity in order to prevent a Chernobyl.

I'm sure someone with much more knowledge will come along and explain this better and with greater detail. To my knowledge there has also never been a death in the west due to actual radioactive contamination. There have been deaths from non-related workplace accidents etc. But it's estimated thousands die each year from the effects of pollution by coal plants not counting mining accidents. Coal mining is one of the most dangerous occupations in the world.

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Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

The long term anwser which should be viable in 40 years or less is fusion. The only waste you get is Helium and better yet, you can mix current nuclear waste in with the fuel which will get rid of that problem also.

This 40 years are the value for the breakthrough of fusion since 40 years, and will probably be in 40 years as well ;)

So the guess, that it will never work is not unlikely to be the proper one.

What's really there in abundance is to use the allready available fusion energy in the form of solar energy: photovoltaic, wind energy, bio-mass and whatever the future might bring here.

best bet for the short term is of course: stop the incredible waste of energy, especially the people in the US, followed by Europe. Energy is simply far to cheap to treat it in a proper way. And if I take a look at the fuss about "high" gas prices in the States, I can only laugh, as they are ridiculously cheap.

The energy consumption could easily be halfed without comfort loss, and comfort loss of us pampered people from the industrialised nations is nothing to talk about.

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Gruesse vom Saenger

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Different point here; It's wise to point out that the Government run plants of eastern europe and Soviet Union use entirely different designs than the plants used by private profit seeking firms in the US and elsewhere. They did this because of lack of funds! The wealthier nations' rich private sector can afford to build a type of plant that is extremely safe. I don't know the technical details but Soviet style plants don't use a gravity protected core like western countries use. In the west the core will drop due to gravity in order to prevent a Chernobyl.

The big dome thing at Chernobyl would have helped too ;-)

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Click here to join the #1 Aussie Alliance in SETI

Australia generates an extremely large proportion of its electricity requirements by burning coal - both brown and black. There is some hydro-electricity. Recently there has been a focus on wind generation and natural gas fired generation. Overall electricity wholesale pricing is around the A$30 to A$40 per MWhr level.

Australia has many different types and grades of coal. It's not limited to two, brown & black. The coal is really ancient and has had most impurities leached out. There is very little sulphur, etc. Burning a higher, cleaner grade of coal reduces pollutants considerably. I've never seen any figures, I don't think Greenies want us to know there is a difference. But the federal government has had most Coal Fired Power Generators use the cleaner coal through legislation. They still produce carbon based exhaust of course.

Not sure about Morwell but they use black coal anyway. Which is dug out of the hole next to the Power Station - Bloody BIG hole!

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Click here to join the #1 Aussie Alliance in SETI

Not sure about Morwell but they use black coal anyway. Which is dug out of the hole next to the Power Station - Bloody BIG hole!

Man alive. How lucky they are to have found all that coal right next to where they had built their power plant!! :-)

The Flying Spaghetti Monster sure does work in mysterious ways.....

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Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

Different point here; It's wise to point out that the Government run plants of eastern europe and Soviet Union use entirely different designs than the plants used by private profit seeking firms in the US and elsewhere. They did this because of lack of funds! The wealthier nations' rich private sector can afford to build a type of plant that is extremely safe. I don't know the technical details but Soviet style plants don't use a gravity protected core like western countries use. In the west the core will drop due to gravity in order to prevent a Chernobyl.

Chernobyl resulted from a total disregard of safety. From the corner cutting design, lacking many safety provisions already common at the time. Through the substandard construction (built out of tolerences, with low grade concrete, and even more it was often dry poured). In the best of circumstances, this would have been manageable, but there was not a culture of safety among those operating the plant either.

More or less what happened is this. The reactor was being taken down for service. Somewhere at the plant level, it was decided that this was an ideal time to test the backup cooling systems. Now would be a good time to mention, this type of reactor becomes unstable below a certain threshold (several have this problem, but they have many provision in the design to account for it). The thing nearly went out, and in attempts to keep it going they pulled every control rod out. The reactor was still well under the threshold, steam built in the reactor. Now water is pretty good at absorbing neutrons, steam isn't. The reactor spiked, maybe as much as 1000x it's rated capacity. And we have the worst nuclear accident in the world.

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Still looking for something profound or inspirational to place here.

Different point here; It's wise to point out that the Government run plants of eastern europe and Soviet Union use entirely different designs than the plants used by private profit seeking firms in the US and elsewhere. They did this because of lack of funds! The wealthier nations' rich private sector can afford to build a type of plant that is extremely safe. I don't know the technical details but Soviet style plants don't use a gravity protected core like western countries use. In the west the core will drop due to gravity in order to prevent a Chernobyl.

Chernobyl resulted from a total disregard of safety. From the corner cutting design, lacking many safety provisions already common at the time. Through the substandard construction (built out of tolerences, with low grade concrete, and even more it was often dry poured). In the best of circumstances, this would have been manageable, but there was not a culture of safety among those operating the plant either.

More or less what happened is this. The reactor was being taken down for service. Somewhere at the plant level, it was decided that this was an ideal time to test the backup cooling systems. Now would be a good time to mention, this type of reactor becomes unstable below a certain threshold (several have this problem, but they have many provision in the design to account for it). The thing nearly went out, and in attempts to keep it going they pulled every control rod out. The reactor was still well under the threshold, steam built in the reactor. Now water is pretty good at absorbing neutrons, steam isn't. The reactor spiked, maybe as much as 1000x it's rated capacity. And we have the worst nuclear accident in the world.

The Chernoble reactor was of an obsolete design called a "graphite pile" reactor that used a vast amount of graphite as the neutron moderator (modern commercial reactors use water for the same purpose). When the spike hit the area near the core of the reactor got so hot that the graphite ignited. The burning graphite caused much of the damage and subsequent release of the huge cloud of radioactive dust.

Japan has 53 working nuclear reactors and is planning to build another 12.

Japan has 53 working nuclear reactors and is planning to build another 12.

And this in a country and culture that has more reason than most to be hesitant about nuclear power.

No, not the WWII bombings, the population density!

Japan has 53 working nuclear reactors and is planning to build another 12.

I don't mind that, we sell 60% of the fuel to them. I wonder if we have to take it back as waste?

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Click here to join the #1 Aussie Alliance in SETI

Japan has 53 working nuclear reactors and is planning to build another 12.

And this in a country and culture that has more reason than most to be hesitant about nuclear power.

No, not the WWII bombings, the population density!

Hey, let's put a reactor in Vatican City or Singapore. Higher national densities than Japan :-)

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

The typical reactor uses less than 1% of the fuel in the rods before it is no longer usable as reactor fuel. This leads to large quantities of highly radioactive waste. The unfortunate problem is that re-processing to use the wasted fuel is best done in a breeder reactor. The problem with breeder reactors is not that they are unstable, but that they can produce bomb grade fissiles. The products of a breeder reactor could just as easily be run through a more normal reactor to produce electricity again.

The total radiation released in the lifetime of TMI including the leak after the meltdown is less than the typical day downwind from a coal fired power plant.

The disaster at Chernobyle was indeed caused by a lack of safety mindedness. Another problem at the site was the sheet steel roofs coated with tar. The joints in the roof meter hot tar into the fire at a rate that makes the fire nearly impossible to put out. This design of roof has been banned in the US for 50 or more years on ALL buildings, not just nuclear facilities.

If asked what forms of power generation will we need to be using, the answer is probably all of them. Each form of generation has its drawbacks and advantages.

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