first??? Yves Massarde has a big time solar setup in the Saharan desert collecting solar energy, but he is using it to dispose of nuclear waste.

>> ^taranimator:

Thank you for posting this -- this renewed my positive energy about .. renewable energy.
I sincerely hope we are the laughing stock of our grandchildren's generation ..
"So... Grandma... tell us about how they blew up all the mountains in Virginia, dropped nuclear waste onto the ocean floor, and flooded entire valleys .. so you could turn on the lights, tee hee .. "

Pft. We're more likely to be a laughing stock of future generations because the previous generations insane response to nuclear power generation, that effectively set back fusion power by 50 years.

Thank you for posting this -- this renewed my positive energy about .. renewable energy.
I sincerely hope we are the laughing stock of our grandchildren's generation ..
"So... Grandma... tell us about how they blew up all the mountains in Virginia, dropped nuclear waste onto the ocean floor, and flooded entire valleys .. so you could turn on the lights, *tee hee*.. "

Nuclear (breeder) power plants and electric transportation is the most sensible solution. People whine about Uranium also being fossil, but there's enough to fuel many times our current consumption for thousands of years, that's not even including thorium.

Nuclear waste is an issue easily dealt with. Breeder plants need a lot less uranium and produce a lot less waste, they can even 'burn' up most of the waste produced until now. Sure there will always be some waste, but it pales in comparison to the fly ash ponds produced by coal burning, which are also slightly radioactive but not secured.

I'm not saying we shouldn't use solar and wind but it will take much too long, use up a lot of resources, and cost a bunch (especially reconfiguring the power grid and making energy storage solutions). Nuclear baseload with solar/wind dealing with peak power.

^Reading comprehension and selective quoting seem to be your strong suits.

The cbc article you link also includes mention that each 'bundle' is the size of a firelog. It mentions that the science for storage was sound, but public fears, like yours, made central storage impractical DESPITE the science being sound. It also mentions that after 500 years, you need to eat it to present a health threat. It also lists Canada's annual nuclear waste production at 1,200 tonnes a year, not exactly an unmanageable problem. In fact, it is a desirable problem considering how many more tonnes of coal ash is simply getting thrown into the atmosphere instead because people like you cry nuclear is scary.

Solar power isn't ready to replace our world's coal plants. Nuclear power is, and the only thing stopping it is irrational fear mongers like you who can't even read the articles you claim should scare us all.

@bcglorf

About 85,000 used nuclear fuel bundles are generated in Canada each year.

As of December 32, 2007, there were over 2,000,000 nuclear fuel bundles in Canada.

(source)

RADIOACTIVE WASTES
High Level Waste

Over 99 percent of the radioactivity created by a nuclear reactor is contained in the spent fuel. An unprotected individual standing one metre from a CANDU fuel bundle just out of the reactor would receive a lethal dose in seconds. This intensely radioactive material is called high level nuclear waste.

Spent fuel contains hundreds of radioactive substances created inside the reactors: (1) when uranium atoms split, the fragments are radioactive; these are the "fission products"; (2) when uranium atoms absorb neutrons without splitting, they are transmuted into "transuranium elements" such as plutonium, americium, and curium.

Due to the presence of these toxic materials, spent fuel remains extremely dangerous for millions of years.

RADIOACTIVE WASTES
Decommissioning Wastes

Structural materials in the core of an operating reactor become radioactive from neutron bombardment. The cost of dismantling such a radioactive structure approaches the cost of building it in the first place.

Current plans are to wait forty years, then use underwater cutting techniques to minimize radiation exposures to the workers. Hundreds of truckloads of radioactive rubble will result from each dismantled reactor.

(source)

And I'd like to see your work regarding the claim of how dirty or dangerous solar cells are.

And let's keep in mind cells are not the only form of solar energy.

And don't try to deny the fact that your solution to replace a dangerous, dirty energy technology (coal & oil) was to use an already existing dangerous and dirty energy technology (nuclear).

@bcglorf, here's some more reality for you to ignore:

There are two million high-level radioactive fuel bundles sitting at temporary storage sites in Canada, as the Nuclear Waste Management Organization wrestles with the mandate of finding a community to host a central storage facility for the waste for perhaps tens of thousands of years.

Throw in the fact that the cost of storing this nuclear waste could be up to $24 billion — a figure that will likely rise — and environmental groups are dead set against a central facility, and it shapes up to be a challenge of colossal proportions.

(CBC News)

Again, you just ignored the facts that I presented to you.


>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^rougy:
Okay, by the numbers:
"As of 1992, Canada had accumulated over 200 million tonnes of low-level radioactive tailings from uranium mining, over one million cubic metres of contaminated soil and 900,000 bundles of nuclear fuel wastes.
The dilemma about how to properly dispose of nuclear waste continues to plague Canada’s nuclear industry."
(source)
"The results prove that Canada has one of the poorest environmental records of the industrialized countries. The primary finding is that for the twenty-five environmental indicators examined, Canada's overall ranking among OECD nations is a dismal 28th out of 29."
(source)
This would seem to contradict much of what you claimed above. No?

No, it doesn't. It just demonstrates your selective ignorance.
The overwhelming majority of Canada's uranium mining was all for weapons production, only a very small fraction was actually for civilian power generation. The heavy metals used in solar panels don't grow on trees either, back to the mines!
Canada's environmental record is almost exclusively based on oil production, what Canada's environment needs is MORE reliance on uranium, not less.

As Max S. Power (an analyst who worked on nuclear cleanup issues for two decades ), points out, “...in the 1980s, (U.S.) Congress’ Office of Technology Assessment concluded ‘reprocessing’ which generates additional radioactive waste streams and involves operational risks of its own, does not offer advantages that are sufficient to justify its use for waste management reasons alone.’”

According to the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, “Reprocessing is the fundamental link between a nuclear reactor and a plutonium bomb.” The Union of Concerned Scientists has noted that “reprocessing would increase the ease of nuclear proliferation.”

Reprocessing is also responsible for considerable radioactive land and water pollution; for example from the British and French reprocessing operations at Sellafield and La Hague respectively. Originating from Sellafield sources, the Irish sea merits the dubious distinction of being called the most radioactive body of water in the world. The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability says that “France's reprocessing plant at La Hague routinely discharges into the English Channel so-called low-level liquid radioactive waste which has contaminated seas as far away as the Arctic Circle.”

(source)

Looks like that whole "reprocessing" thing you talked about does nothing but create even more waste.

You're honest-to-god equating the "dangers" of solar cell production with nuclear waste.

Why am I not surprised?

>> ^rougy:

Okay, by the numbers:
"As of 1992, Canada had accumulated over 200 million tonnes of low-level radioactive tailings from uranium mining, over one million cubic metres of contaminated soil and 900,000 bundles of nuclear fuel wastes.
The dilemma about how to properly dispose of nuclear waste continues to plague Canada’s nuclear industry."
(source)
"The results prove that Canada has one of the poorest environmental records of the industrialized countries. The primary finding is that for the twenty-five environmental indicators examined, Canada's overall ranking among OECD nations is a dismal 28th out of 29."
(source)
This would seem to contradict much of what you claimed above. No?


No, it doesn't. It just demonstrates your selective ignorance.

The overwhelming majority of Canada's uranium mining was all for weapons production, only a very small fraction was actually for civilian power generation. The heavy metals used in solar panels don't grow on trees either, back to the mines!

Canada's environmental record is almost exclusively based on oil production, what Canada's environment needs is MORE reliance on uranium, not less.

Okay @bcglorf, by the numbers:

"As of 1992, Canada had accumulated over 200 million tonnes of low-level radioactive tailings from uranium mining, over one million cubic metres of contaminated soil and 900,000 bundles of nuclear fuel wastes.

The dilemma about how to properly dispose of nuclear waste continues to plague Canada’s nuclear industry."

(source)

"The results prove that Canada has one of the poorest environmental records of the industrialized countries. The primary finding is that for the twenty-five environmental indicators examined, Canada's overall ranking among OECD nations is a dismal 28th out of 29."

(source)

This would seem to contradict much of what you claimed above. No?

Your solution to any problem is no solution at all, just criticize anyone for offering an alternative.

Funny, I got the impression you were the one opposing nuclear power as a solution. It seems your criticism of every solution is to define it as part of the problem.

Solar panels are not more toxic than nuclear power, and their production would not cause ecologic disasters the likes of which we're seeing in the gulf.

And I never said any of that. I called you out for claiming that solar panels are clean and tidy compared to nuclear, and safe from systematic problems that come with major corporations cutting corners on a massive scale. The most efficient solar cells today contain heavy metals in them like cadmium. If you replace the world's current electric capacity with nothing but solar panels, the disposal of old panels will NOT be a problem one can ignore. The temptation to save costs by disposing of them cheaply and ignoring contamination will be as great as it is with any other industry you decry today. Sure, the disposal is a problem that can be easily handled, but so is the disposal of old nuclear fuel...

"One nuclear plant creates thirty to forty tons of waste per year. That waste is deadly for tens of thousands of years."

When you say 'deadly', I say 'useful'. Here in Canada we run our nuclear reactors on fuel rods made from American nuclear 'waste'. Simply put, any waste that still has high radioactivity is also still useful as a power source. It's not waste to be stored for eons, it's future fuel being stored for later use.

"Each house could have its own solar cells and supply its own energy."

Right, and your the one suggesting we trust Bubba not to dump his cadmium filled solar panels in his backyard somewhere to save a few bucks.

Both solar and nuclear have their own issues, but we have methods of handling those problems for nuclear already, today. For solar the biggest unsolved problem is that they just don't work well enough at a reasonable price. Maybe someday they'll improve enough to supplement the nuclear delivered base load, but until then nuclear is a very desirable replacement for coal and oil.

1. One point that was vastly un underlined, was that if this is a debate about how to combat global warming without reducing our electricity consumption, how long it would take for the coal-replacing energy source to go live is vitally important. If we indeed would have to wait close to 20 years for the nuclear plants to be built, that's too long. At the very least, we need both to be built immediately, and when the nukes go live, then we can decide if we still want the other.

2. A point that amazingly wasn't mentioned at all by the anti- side is the environmental damage caused by irresponsible uranium mining.

3. The most irresponsible point was when the pro- guy compared one person's lifetime nuclear emissions to a 1GW plant's daily carbon emissions. The three problems:

* a person's power consumption is not equal to a 1GW power plant's output
* a human lifetime is not one day
* the environmental damage of captured nuclear waste by mass is not the environmental damage of released CO2 by mass

So comparing a Coke can to a railway train is meaningless.

I love TED talks. One thing briefly touched on in the debate is how nuclear waste is now recycleable, and while there will always be some waste it is reassuring to know that existing stockpiles of waste are now beginning to be reprocessed.

>> ^lampishthing:

Does anyone else disagree with the characterisation of nuclear (fission) power as renewable?
I'm still for it but that annoys me.
Also, I'd like to see costs. I was always under the impression that nuclear power was cheaper.


Seeing as how much there is, it is quite renewable:

How long can Uranium last for nuclear power ? 5 billion years at double current world electricity usage.

Breeder reactors can transmute non-fissile Uranium to fissile Uranium. So that means you can burn up almost all the Uranium. This includes all the so called nuclear waste. This can also be burnt in a similar process, leaving you with virtually no waste.