Ciro Pabón wrote:
As nuclear energy does not produce global warming gases, it is better for the environment (I mean, for me and you). We already discussed this theme and it seemed to me that after reviewing the figures, the forum agreed that the way to go is nuclear.
If you want to understand Fly, Just a fan, X and Edis position, please, by all means, stop ranting and read.
FACTS:
A coal plant produces 100 times the amount of radioactive material produced by a nuclear plant.
Right, another blatant example how a moderator simply declares his opinion as
the truth, all based on manipulated factoids!
Of cause
Nuclear energy produces no global warming gases, but that doesn't mean at all that
the production of
nuclear energy,
the handling of
nuclear fuel and
the associated waste
is good for
the environment. Handling and reprocessing hundred thousands of tons of
Nuclear fuel and waste unless done with
the utmost care can cause huge environmental damage as
the history of
Nuclear in
the USSR and Russia has shown.
There are examples of
nuclear reactor accidents caused simply by their building collapsing from material fatigue.
The more we have
to be concerned that far more dangerous reactors like
the sodium cooled fast breeders can be hit by aircraft terrorist attacks, earth quakes or even plain stupidity in civil wars.
Countries with
the social stability of Iran are building reactors and who knows what dumb sh!t in possession of a tank or howitzer may decide
to blast some holes in a
nuclear facility? California, Japan and a bunch of other states with active volcanoes and regular earth quakes are building reactors happily without a thought of
the wider consequences.
The biggest and boldest distortion of
the truth
is the story of all coal plants producing 100 times
the nuclear material of a
nuclear plant. Coal plants do not produce radioactivity. Coal contains like other fossil fuels traces of low level radioactive materials that need
to be taken care of. If
the ashes are filtered by state of
the art emission protection equipment coal plants do not spread these radioactive materials, they can be safely deposited. Opposed
to this all
nuclear plants require high radioactive
nuclear fuel and produce even higher active and longer radiating
nuclear waste. Fast breeders specifically produce more high active material than
the nuclear fuel they are fed with.
The safe deposit of highly radioactive
nuclear waste for in some cases millions of years
is a big concern as many countries simply don't have
the geological facilities
to store
the waste safely forever.
Today's operating reactors are mainly big water cookers with temperatures of 200-300 °C and based on technology that
is fairly well understood. Nevertheless these rather simple plants can be effed up as Chernobyl shows.
The future reactors will mainly be breeders with design technologies that are unproven or undeveloped and on temperature levels of 800 °C.
The coolant will not be water that carries limited contamination and destructive potential but liquid sodium that ignites in contact with air and water and can easily blow up a
nuclear core in a case of ignition. All prototype breeders with sodium cooling have had coolant leaks (due
to high temp corrosion) and some even coolant fires. One dumb guy with a rocket propelled grenade can blow up
the secondary sodium circuit which isn't usually protected by
the containment and
the whole plant including
the core goes up in
the air. Future breeders will use some 6000 tons of liquid sodium. I leave it
to someone else
to figure
the equivalent of TNT but I tell you we are not talking fire crackers here. A breeder reactor can
go critical if
the grid power
is lost for some reason for half an hour and
the back up generators do not kick in.
The reactor relies on
the big sodium pumps running
to circulate thousands of tons of liquid metal through
the heat exchange circuits.
I wonder how good that will be for
the environment.
