Why is everyone so afraid of nuclear power??

Question

Nuclear power plants always get a bad rap, but they are one of the cleanest sources of energy. I'm sure there are a lot of environmental nuts on here...just wondering what your takes are on this. Solar and wind power are still in there infancies, so why support nuclear power. It's highly regulated, there's virtually no chance of a nuclear 'spill' and it could replace coal burning electrical plants.

Answer 1

The problem with nuclear power plants is 1) what to do with the spent fuel, which remains highly radioactive for thousands of years and 2) no one wants a Chernobyl in their backyard. They're also expensive to build and maintain. Just getting the permits takes about ten years. Nuclear isn't really the answer. Statistically, the more of them we have and the longer we have them, the more likely we'll have a catastrophic accident.

Answer 2

I was on a train that passed by Three Mile Island 4 days after the accident. A partial meltdown released radioactive material and forced the evacuation of thousands of nearby residents.

Operator errors in dealing with a pump that had shut down caused the Unit 2 pressurized-water reactor to lose coolant and overheat. Homer Simpson maybe?

Coolant was not restored to the reactor core until more than six hours after the accident, by which time enough hydrogen had accumulated in the building to pose the treat of a low-level explosion.

Four hours were allowed to elapse before the building was sealed, during which time radioactive gases escaped into the atmosphere.

Other than that -- the possibility of an accident or a terrorist attack or sabotage -- there is the U.S. policy that translates into a disposal problem. Do you know what the half life is for the material being stashed? An awful lot of lifetimes, an awful lot.

Why am I afraid? Why aren't you? I'm about 25 miles from a nuclear facility. Where's your nearest nuclear power plant?

Answer 3

Well I have worked both as a Nuclear Operator and in Waste Management and agree with the other posters that there are still many environmental issues with nuclear, not the least of which is since it is a ten thousand year issue controlled by governments with a 4 year mandate you can never develop a long term vision.

Just because we control emissions better does not make it safer.

It is not a renewable resource, so even if we come to depend on it we can't depend on it forever.

And of course the original reason people don't like it is the reason for which it was first developed, as an American Weapon of Mass Destruction.

Why am I afraid of nuclear energy? I'm not, but I have a healthy respect for it because the human body can only sense a narrow band of energy which includes heat and light radiation, nothing else. You can cook yourself alive standing next to an irradiated fuel bundle and never feel it.

Besides, at a time when we have over a billion atom bombs worth of excess energy in the biosphere do we really need to burn rocks to make more?

Answer 4

I don't know about "everyone", but I'm concerned that Iran could launch one crude nuclear missile from a nondescript freighter off either America's East or West coast that will explode 300 miles over Kansas. The resulting EMP (ElectroMagnetic Pulse) would render inoperable everything that contains any solid state electronics from coast to coast. No computers because they would all be fried. No electricity because the entire electrical grid would be damaged beyond repair. No cars that were built after about 1970 would work anymore, but even those cars could only go so far because there would be no electricity to pump gas. The country would run out of food in about three days. Food in freezers would likely rot because they now have no power. Virtually nobody in the entire country would know what was happening because even their battery operated radios wouldn't work. Even if they had a real old radio that would not be affected by EMP, it probably wouldn't work because the older technology required more power than batteries can provide. TV and radio stations wouldn't be able to broadcast because their modern equipment would be fried. All commercial jet traffic would immediately fall out of the sky and crash. Aside from some cat and mouse games in the Persian Gulf, technically, no Iran has never attacked us. But they have held Americans hostage and supported the insurgents in Iraq that have killed Americans and Iraqis. Some would consider these things acts of war. To say that they have never threatened anyone indicates that you don't keep up with the news, or don't consider their leader saying that another country "must be erased from the page of time" a threat. The phrase in quotes is the Persian equivalent to the English phrase: "wipe off the map."

Answer 5

Nuclear power would be OK if the Russians and Chinese build an extra 200 nuclear reactors in their countries and install transmission lines across the Bering Straits to the United States and then we won't see the waste and any more Chernobyl accidents.

Oh! I forgot that is what we are doing with oil right now.

Answer 6

Nuclear power is something that we should be using more of, but public opinion and NIMBYism are making it difficult to implement. The biggest reasons that most people give for not wanting nuclear reactors are spent fuel storage, supply of uranium, proliferation, transport of fuel and waste, cost to build a reactor, and risk of an accident. The reality is that these reasons are more from ignorance than facts.
The first issue, storage of spent fuel, is much ado about nothing. Yucca Mountain is more than stable and deep enough to last for 1000 years, and even though some of the products in spent fuel have half lives of hundred of thousands of years, current research should yield new techniques for long-term storage within the next 50 years. Even if that doesn't work out, by the time Yucca is mature, we will have more options for dealing with the waste.

The second issue, supply of uranium is not an issue either. In the 70's the DOE did a study that estimated proven reserves at roughly 50 years and that has put a lot of people off. If you actually read the study, though, or any subsequent studies, it is clear that the 50 year reserve was based on incredibly conservative figures and an assumption that worldwide prices would remain low. The fact is that uranium is an abundant element on earth and as price increases and more money goes into uranium exploration instead of oil and gas the recoverable amount will sky rocket. Current recoverable deposits would last about 500 years powering the entire planet. Also, if we were to allow breeder reactors that timeline would increase to hundreds of thousands of years and dramatically expand the time before Yucca Mtn would fill up. Another benefit is that a large percentage of these reserves are in the
US, Canada, and Australia. I, personally, would feel better about depending on these countries for energy instead of countries like Russia, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia.

The next issue is proliferation. The worry that rogue states will create reactors and use them to breed plutonium and enriched uranium is a concern, but world support and control can prevent problems.

The next issue, transport is again based on fear and little else. The NRC and DOT have created the most over enginereed casks imaginable. The test casks were subjected to 2 years of continous testing at Los Alamos and even though some were damaged, not a single one leaked. The minimum standards for the casks are:
A 9 meter (30-foot) free fall on to an unyielding surface
A puncture test allowing the container to free-fall 1 meter (about 37 inches) onto a steel rod 15 centimeters (about 6 inches) in diameter
A 30-minute, all-engulfing fire at 800 degrees Celsius (1475 degrees Fahrenheit)
An 8-hour immersion under 0.9 meter (3 feet) of water.
Further, an undamaged package must be subjected to a one-hour immersion under 200 meters (655 feet) of water.
Since the 60's over 3000 casks have been moved around the US and there have been no spills or leaks. To give you an idea about how solid the casks are, if you stood next to a railroad track for one week and the entire time nuclear casks rolled by, the radiation you would recieve would be less than that from eating 1 banana. The radition that escapes from a cask over 100 years is less that the radiation we are exposed to on a 2 hour flight.

The cost to build a reactor is huge, but over the entire life cycle of a reactor it is not much more expensive than a natural gas plant. Also, as carbon based fuels rise in price, reactors will become more cost efficient, because fuel costs are a minor expense. If the price of Uranium went from $75 to $500 the price of power generated would only go up by around 1-2 cents/kW-hr.

The risk of an accident is blown out of proportion. Current 4+generation reactors cannot have a Chernobyl type accident without some outside force, like a bomb. The risk is minimal, especially compared to the obvious damage cause by carbon based energy sources.

Basically due to unfounded fears we are turning our back on a reliable, safe power source and continuing to use the worst possible sources, such as coal. The best way to sum it up is a quote from a nuclear scientist that I heard, usually scientist have more fear regarding new science or technology than everybody else because they have more understanding of how dangerous it could be, nuclear power is the opposite though, as lay people have much more fear than scientists.

Answer 7

Because the KGB infiltrated the environmental movement during the "Cold War" and convinced enough people that "nuclear power and research into nuclear power" was dangerous to the environment. It worked pretty well too.

Don't believe me; do your own research.

I guess fighting wars over oil and fossil fuels is a safer alternative. LOL

Answer 8

'Everyone' is afraid of it because we remember Long Island and/or Chernobyl. I agree it's safe nowadays,

On the downside there are limited resources of Uranium, It would reduce investment into other cleaner, longer term energy sources that won't leave a legacy of vast piles of radioactive sludge. It also makes it difficult to say that 'rogue' states can't have nuclear when we are reliant on it, What are they supposed to do for clean energy?

Can't you find a less offensive word than 'nut'?

Answer 9

Because radiation is mysterious and scary and truly dangerous sometimes. But regular people cannot tell when it is safe and when it isn't.

Answer 10

makes are electricity expensive. I mean boiling water,who are we fooling. We already have electrical grids and positrons to jump start them, what are you saying? ii