What are the real dangers of Nuclear energy?

Beside the fact that nuclear energy can create huge explosions, is there more to nuclear energy dangers besides that?
All the governments control this knowledge very closely, but it seems there is more to it than just bombs. If a small amount of nuclear energy leaks in New Mexico can it cause physiological changes in humans thousands of miles away? Is there more to this because I am ignorant to the facts on nuclear energy.

Ever hear of Chernobyl or 3 mile island?

Nuclear Reactors have the potential to provide almost unlimited amounts of energy without the carbon emissions associated with fossil fuels. Unfortunately there are extreme dangers associated with attritional pollution from discharges, operational accidents and long-term cleanup after decommissioning.

www.envocare.co.uk...

Originally posted by TheBigD
If a small amount of nuclear energy leaks in New Mexico can it cause physiological changes in humans thousands of miles away?

Nuclear 'energy' isn't the problem, its nuclear waste. What to do with it eh? The Best site available, according to every study done, is Yucca Mountain. No other sites are better. unfortunately, Yucca Mountain isn't the perfect site. Also unfortunately, is that the waste will have to travel, by rail, from practically one end of the country to the other. Furthermore, the waste, its not processed to get plutonium out of it, which would be a good idea because it's waste products have shorter half lives, and it in itself is fuel for nuclear power plants. The bad part is that it would have to be refined and concentrated in processing plants, and, if stolen, could be used for making nuke weapons. On the other hand, the waste is being stored on site in the nuke plants, which were not built to hold them for any lenght of time and don't have even the capacity to hold larger and larger amounts.

Waste, explosions, its all "BS". We can produce energy w/o these issues if allowed to use even 60 year old technology. Current plants do have problems, but they do not need to be problems. Nukes can be self sustaining by recycling waste internally and can be 100% failsafe. Jimmy Carter screwed the course and direction of the technology up in the 70's.

Radiation sickness can kill you, but unless there's a meltdown it's contained in a plant. The nuclear waste though.. that's problematic.

If we could get our act together with ITER then we could solve the problems associated with nuke power.

Originally posted by horaciohornblower
Waste, explosions, its all "BS". We can produce energy w/o these issues if allowed to use even 60 year old technology. Current plants do have problems, but they do not need to be problems. Nukes can be self sustaining by recycling waste internally and can be 100% failsafe. Jimmy Carter screwed the course and direction of the technology up in the 70's.

Er, what? Care to elaborate on that. It seems to me that our problem is that we're still using and often extending the liscences of existing plants instead of using that money for more efficient systems and renewable energy. Nuclear power can never be self-sustaining... that violates not only common sense but basic physics. A machine can never be more than 67% efficient, ever, ever, ever. However, 4th generation reactors that are in development, such as thorium-salt, pebble bed and graphite-helium reactors offer the possibility of being much safer and energy efficient. Remember, according to some sources, we only have enough uranium to last us another 75yrs, which is why we need to implement these new techs along with MOX fuel NOW, before we move on to fusion or whatever. Oh, and nothing can ever be 100% failsafe, for obvious reasons. After all, the government is subsidizing these plants, so maybe it's all a great big conspiracy to release chemicals into the air that will make us easier to butt-probe by the greys. [/sarcasm]

Big D, I think you got some good, common-sense responses from most of out colleagues on this thread.

Nuclear fission is by no means the perfect solution, but that's because a perfect solution doesn't exist. The advantages to using N-power is that the engineering and safety methods are tried and true; all we need to do is to implement them; and the infrastructure is there (transmission lines distribution points, transformers, etc.) as well.

Nuclear energy is not great and wonderful, but when you factor in safety, health considerations, environmental considerations, cost, and geopolitical aspects, nuclear power is the very best thing we have.

Why aren't we using those breeder reactors? I guess this isn't my area of study, but I haven't heard of European countries having to find a massive nuke dump. Don't breeder reactors use most of the fuel?

Originally posted by horaciohornblower
Nukes can be self sustaining by recycling waste internally and can be 100% failsafe.

Uhm, this is entirely wrong. How can they be made to be absolutely immposible to have catastrophic errors, and what are you talking about, recycling the waste? Processing the normal waste to get plutonium yeilds a lot of energy, but it still results in waste at the end. There are lots of other countries that use nuclear power, their plants aren't '100% failsafe' and waste free. I'm certainly not nuclear engineer, but do you have anything to back up these statements?

ufo3
act together with ITER then we could solve the problems

Would you mind even trying to elaborate?

Originally posted by Nygdan
Processing the normal waste to get plutonium yeilds a lot of energy, but it still results in waste at the end.

Well, we can just use the plutonium to make 4th of July nukes that we launch into space and explode between the Earth and the Moon.

Ooooh, aaaaah, pretty!!

Taibunsuu, we are not using FBRs because people who don't know anything about physics and engineering believe that they are Bad Juju and put lots of political pressure on those thugs in Washington.

One of the best series of FBRs were the French Ph�nix and Superph�nix. Superph�nix produced 1.2 GW, but was shut down as a result of the Greens getting a cabinet post or two in the coalition government. Another byproduct of the Superph�nix shutdown was that now France is forced to kiss the backside of various Oil Thugs in the mideast, but you already knew that.

One design of fast neutron reactor, specifically designed to address the waste disposal and plutonium issues, was the Integral Fast Reactor (a.k.a. Integral Fast Breeder Reactor, although it would be possible to design an IFR to breed or not to breed a net surplus of fissile material). Developed by scientists from the Uinversity of California, it was designed to be fueled once, thereafter producing all its own fuel for operation by a similar process to a breeder reactor.

To solve the waste disposal problem, the IFR had an on site electrorefining fuel reprocessing unit that recycled the uranium and all the transuranics (not just plutonium) via electroplating, leaving just short half-life fission products in the waste. Some of these fission products could later be separated for industrial or medical uses and the rest sent to a waste repository (where they would not have to be stored for anywhere near as long as wastes containing long half-life transuranics). It is thought that it would not be possible to divert fuel from this reactor to make bombs, as several of the transuranics spontaneously fission rapidly enough that any assembly would melt before it could be completed.

The project was canceled in the late 1980s after all elements of the system had been tested, but before engineering designs could be completed for an operational power plant. Again, this was one of the first "victories" of the nascent Greens in the United States, and, in retrospect, is one of the reasons why we're trapped in our warfare/welfare relationship with the Oil Thugs in the Middle East and South America.

Thanks a lot, Greens.

Originally posted by taibunsuu
Ooooh, aaaaah, pretty!!

I think by the time that tech is available, they'll have changed the accepted language enough so that people will say 'ooh ahh, patrio-tastic'

Off_The_Street, very informative, nice post. I mean homelandefense-olicious!

[edit on 27-9-2004 by Nygdan]

www.iter.org... This is the next step in nuclear energy a fusion reactor.

I've heard that those pebbel reactors are pretty safe. Maybe they should start buliding some of those. Supposedly they can't have a meltdown.
Nice post off_the_street
The most danger with Nuclear reactors is that even though you try your best to keep them safe something eventually goes wrong.
Remember what happened in Japan a few weeks back...
Agreed that it wasn't anything major but this just shows that
Murphy's Law comes into action once again.

The answer to problem could be subcritical reactors (also called energy amplifiers).
Ordinary reactors have a lot more than a critical mass of isotopes in their cores. So they're just stabilized and decelerated nukes.
But in subcritical reactors there is less isotopes, so the chain reaction can not occur spontaneously. Nuclear reactions occur at a significant rate only when a neutron beam from a nearby particle accelerator is directed towards it.
There is no possibility thar the reactor could go out of control. It can only stop.

These reactors operate on thorium, but plutonium can be added also. This way we could get rid of plutonium deposits. Also the used fuel doesn't have to be removed so frequently, new fuel is just added to the core. This also makes handling the waste problem easier.
Plus one more important fact: there is no new technologies needed for this type of plant (ITER needs some).

But still human error can cause accidents, I don't deny that. Ie some environmentalists could try to sabotage a reactor or disrupt fuel/waste transports, causing a spill.

And the Japanese accident wasn't nuclear energy specific. This could happen in every plant that uses hot gasses as heat exchangers. This was probably just mentioned because the media likes to give information that the public would be more interested in.

[edit on 28/9/04 by tontsum]

There a "Hardly" any secrets about Nuclear Energy Danger.

I Will be looking at radiation first of all, as it is the most common from Power Plants.

Radiation, which I am sure all of you already know. This can be VERY HIGHLY dangerous.

Ways and Types of radiation:

Radiation travels as waves and is able to spread far, thus, causing a wide-scale outbreak. Possibly.

Materials that are radioactive are made up of atoms that contain excess energy. These materials give off their excess energy as radiation.

The three kinds of nuclear radiation that come from the radioactive materials are alpha, beta, and gamma radiation.

Alpha particles can be blocked by a sheet of paper.

Beta particles can be blocked by a thin sheet of aluminium.

Gamma rays can be blocked by several inches of lead, several feet of concrete, or a large amount of water.

Radiation, si one of the worlds most common and well known for Nuclear Power Plants, they are very dangerous.

A Nuclear Power Plant

Effects

The health effects of very high doses of radiation are serious.

The most well known effect of radiation is Cancer but this is only possible from a high exposure to radiation.

With background radiation that we have around us everyday it is very unlikely to get cancer.

The average person in the U.S receives around 360 Millirems per year. Most of this comes from the natural radiation in soil, water, rocks, building materials, and food.

The Risks Compared to Day to Day Life

The Chance of an airplane crash killing 10 people is 10,000 times more likely than the 100 nuclear plants in the US doing the same

It�s about 2,000 times more likely that 10 people are killed by an earthquake than nuclear power plant radiation

Its is 60,000 times more likely that 1,000 people will be killed by a hurricane that the 100 nuclear power plants in the U.S

Insider.

Ok children future nuke 101. Current reactor designs are based on heavy containment and are usually waste heat/water based (making steam to drive generators, blah, blah, blah). New design is magnetic contaiment caputre fields fed off the waste electronvolts produced in the intial reaction. As the reaction grows the field intensifies. Excess electronvolts are siphoned off. Direct conversion of matter decay into electricity. Experiment "Swiss". circa 1995. Fussion tokamak failed experiment.