what do you think of our nation being mostly run by nuclear power
you like it don't care or tree huger

me like nuclear

Edited for spelling

-mod

Nuclear.

The problem with nukes is the waste.
It's incredibly dangerous and you have to store it for a long, long time.
As in way longer than the power plant's life (which is maybe 30-40 years).
As in thousands of years (or tens of thousands).
You have to keep paying money for that storage to make sure nothing leaks out.
For thousands of years.

No nukes for me, thanks. Too freakin' expensive.

Indeed, the waste is too difficult to deal with, until we figure out how to make fusion commercially viable, I say we should steer clear of it.

If we were to have most of our nuclear power plants where life aint gonna happen anyway the environmental impact would be moot. There is an energy crisis, we do need to cut down our consumption however we should not need to reduce our output.

We could also launch our nuclear waste into the sun so NASA gets to feel like they are accomplishing something and possibly if they get to charge and the government makes it mandatory can stop costing tax dollars.

**The problem with nukes is the waste.
It's incredibly dangerous and you have to store it for a long, long time.
As in way longer than the power plant's life (which is maybe 30-40 years).
As in thousands of years (or tens of thousands).
You have to keep paying money for that storage to make sure nothing leaks out.
For thousands of years.

No nukes for me, thanks. Too freakin' expensive.**

that is the party line all the "waste" from past reactors is usable as fuel in the new ones and so does not need to be burried but reworked and used again

Souplex:
If we were to have most of our nuclear power plants where life aint gonna happen anyway the environmental impact would be moot. There is an energy crisis, we do need to cut down our consumption however we should not need to reduce our output.

nukes need a lot of water for cooling, pretty much guarantees you'll be putting them on a river somewhere near humans. But yeah, I'm all for nuclear power myself if the waste becomes a problem we could just shoot it into space.

I'm all for dumping it all on Venus. The planet is uninhabitable anyway.

No nukes for me, but saying that is pretty pointless since my government already decided that for me 21 years ago.

this goes to the tree huggers out there

your ides are gonna fail one day or not work at all

blieve it!

I think Nuclear Power is a very good way to power cities for many reasons, but I think Tesla Coils would be better, but that will never happen either because there's no way to make people pay. So either people give up Capitalism, people get over their fear of anything with the word nuclear in it, or people get over greed. Or some rich philanthropist starts building some to do something with his money and be famous.

Offsea solar and wind stations are a good idea but it is gonna take some time to set up and solar panels require frequent mantainance, nuke fuel is our best bet untill then.

Razzle Bathbone:
The problem with nukes is the waste.
It's incredibly dangerous and you have to store it for a long, long time.
As in way longer than the power plant's life (which is maybe 30-40 years).
As in thousands of years (or tens of thousands).
You have to keep paying money for that storage to make sure nothing leaks out.
For thousands of years.

No nukes for me, thanks. Too freakin' expensive.

You know, we have this wonderful little place called Yucca Mountain. It turns out to be a great place to store radioactive waste with very little upkeep.

I personally like the idea. It's clean, safe (if you store the waste properly), and not so expensive that it outweighs the environmental and practical benefits. Ideally, we should be moving toward solar power, but the technology on that front will take quite a while to develop to the level that we need. In the meantime, our best option is nuclear. Besides, in tens of thousands of years, we'll either be extinct or have the technology to do something better with the waste.

By the way, I also favor proper spelling.

Solar is the way to go. The earth gets more energy from the sun in one hour than humanity uses in a year.

howard_hughes:
[But yeah, I'm all for nuclear power myself if the waste becomes a problem we could just shoot it into space.

SilentHunter7:
I'm all for dumping it all on Venus. The planet is uninhabitable anyway.

Souplex:
We could also launch our nuclear waste into the sun so NASA gets to feel like they are accomplishing something and possibly if they get to charge and the government makes it mandatory can stop costing tax dollars.

Do you know how much it costs to send one ton of matter into space?
Do you know how many tons of waste you get from nuclear reactors?
Not viable.

DaruneAlbane:
all the "waste" from past reactors is usable as fuel in the new ones and so does not need to be burried but reworked and used again

And exactly what kind of reactor can use all the waste from fission?

Kids, I know you love your science-fiction. So do I. But we have to live in the real world where you can't just spend research points to magically do anything you want.

I'm all for it, we've discovered an ingenious way of not having to mine for oil and coal so much, and hell, if we could stop needing oil quite so much, that'd be a good thing!
*stops right there*

I do figure if space is infinite, surely we can load a rocket up with all the waste and just fire it away from the planet once every few years tho, sure its terribly irresponsible, but 1 ton of nuclear waste divided by infinity isnt much :D

Yes, I'm taking a simplistic view.

The main downside is the catastrophic results if terrorists target a plant, tho. There's only so much damage you can do to a mine, but a nuke power plant, that could be...bad.

Solar is the way of the future. They recently discovered a way to effectively store it, so expect that to be the direction we head towards.

Razzle Bathbone:

howard_hughes:
[But yeah, I'm all for nuclear power myself if the waste becomes a problem we could just shoot it into space.

SilentHunter7:
I'm all for dumping it all on Venus. The planet is uninhabitable anyway.

Souplex:
We could also launch our nuclear waste into the sun so NASA gets to feel like they are accomplishing something and possibly if they get to charge and the government makes it mandatory can stop costing tax dollars.

Do you know how much it costs to send one ton of matter into space?
Do you know how many tons of waste you get from nuclear reactors?
Not viable.

I'm talking 50-100 years down the road, after we build the space elevator.

I like nuclear power except for we have several of the same reactors used in Chernobyl O_O

Razzle Bathbone:
The problem with nukes is the waste.
It's incredibly dangerous and you have to store it for a long, long time.
As in way longer than the power plant's life (which is maybe 30-40 years).
As in thousands of years (or tens of thousands).
You have to keep paying money for that storage to make sure nothing leaks out.
For thousands of years.

No nukes for me, thanks. Too freakin' expensive.

That's not entirely true, there's just a lot of places that would make great storage sites that aren't being used to do red tape, such as yukkah (sp) mountain which is located in the desert away from any source of ground water. Contrary to popular belief, nuclear waste isn't extremely dangerous as long as it doesn't end up contaminating the ground water over a long period of time.

I'm glad somebody mentioned Tesla, few people actually know of his tower. I read about a group that will install Tesla towers for you when they get a million people to sign up. Not sure how that would work exactly though.
Could you PLEASE change the name of the thread? It's annoying enough when you hear Americans, especially Bush, pronounce it wrong without misspelling too.

I heard/read about a new technology that brings solar energy very close to the point where it becomes a viable economic alternative to fossil fuels, with the added benefit of being able to use the panels as regular windows.

There is also fusion power to consider, but I don't think that's going to be viable for a very long time, which is a shame really, as the way I understand it, the downsides of fusion power are fairly few in number

EDIT: Oh, and Toastmaster, please try harder with your opening posts in future please.

Souplex:
We could also launch our nuclear waste into the sun

NO! A star will collapse if an element heavier than (I think) iron forms in its core, as fusion of heavy elements absorb energy rather than release it.

I'm completely in favor of nuclear power. Sure, the waste it produces is a nasty mess but even if we just decided to find a "dead zone" (being from Nevada myself I'm plenty familiar with that debate) or shoot the stuff into space, it's carbon-neutral and what's the point of saving the planet from nuclear waste when we're just going to cook it with global warming?

Lesser of two evils, because it's either that or we just renounce the whole idea of civilization, and then who will Yahtzee have to rant at?

"I like nuclear power except for we have several of the same reactors used in Chernobyl O_O"

There wasn't actually a hardware problem with Chernobyl. The meltdown was caused by workers there pushing the limits of the security system to see how far it could go without breaking.

absinthe21:
"I like nuclear power except for we have several of the same reactors used in Chernobyl O_O"

There wasn't actually a hardware problem with Chernobyl. The meltdown was caused by workers there pushing the limits of the security system to see how far it could go without breaking.

I'd say mission accomplished :)

Actually, there were design flaws, like how the SCRAM process actually boosted the reaction for a few seconds before stopping it, and using a coolant that had to stay hot to keep liquid.

SilentHunter7:
Solar is the way to go. The earth gets more energy from the sun in one hour than humanity uses in a year.

But that would require coating the entire earth with solar panels.

Until we get solar panels on everyone's roof, Nuclear is defiantly the way to go. Or Telsa Coils, because I really like those things.

SilentHunter7:

Razzle Bathbone:

howard_hughes:
[But yeah, I'm all for nuclear power myself if the waste becomes a problem we could just shoot it into space.

SilentHunter7:
I'm all for dumping it all on Venus. The planet is uninhabitable anyway.

Souplex:
We could also launch our nuclear waste into the sun so NASA gets to feel like they are accomplishing something and possibly if they get to charge and the government makes it mandatory can stop costing tax dollars.

Do you know how much it costs to send one ton of matter into space?
Do you know how many tons of waste you get from nuclear reactors?
Not viable.

I'm talking 50-100 years down the road, after we build the space elevator.

Plus what happens when we get another challenger situation? Green rain. That's what.

Fineldar:

SilentHunter7:
Solar is the way to go. The earth gets more energy from the sun in one hour than humanity uses in a year.

But that would require coating the entire earth with solar panels.

Until we get solar panels on everyone's roof, Nuclear is defiantly the way to go. Or Telsa Coils, because I really like those things.

No it wouldn't. Note how I said the earth gets MORE energy in a SINGLE HOUR than all of mankind uses in A YEAR.

I'll do the math, just because I'm bored.

360 days a year x 24 hours a day = 8640 hours a year.

So judging by that figure (which I got from one of those modern marvels blubs they play before commercials, btw), we'd only need to capture 1/8640 of the total amount of the energy the earth gets from the sun. Or a little more than 0.01%.

That's definitely feasible, especially considering that improved manufacturing processes are estimated to be able to increase photovoltaic efficiency to near 60% or beyond. That's up from 10% today.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf40.html read a bit and actually get some facts...

Over 75% of France's electric generation comes from nuclear. France is also the worlds largest exporter of electricity due to the low cost. They use a closed fuel cycle with reprocessing of the used fuel in Normandy which recovers about 99.9% of the uranium and plutonium, leaving only 3% of the used fuel material as high level waste to be disposed.

If the US had gone in the nuclear direction back in the 70's as France did, we would be enjoying extremely low energy costs and be exporting electricity to Canada and Mexico

Razzle Bathbone:

Do you know how much it costs to send one ton of matter into space?
Do you know how many tons of waste you get from nuclear reactors?
Not viable.

There have been several research programs conducted on light gas guns. One of the most significant was led by John Hunter of the US Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Hunter is now promoting a commercial scheme for a light gas gun, appropriately named the Jules Verne Launcher, for delivering small payloads to orbit.

The techs been there since the 60's, it's not viable for humans since it exerts thousands of G's but it's perfect for sending up equipment and anything a base might need in the future.

http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/05/980500-bull.htm

Shivari:
Solar is the way of the future. They recently discovered a way to effectively store it, so expect that to be the direction we head towards.

I've seen that article, they use electrolysis to make hydrogen and then store that for later consumption. It's not that cost effective though if I remember.

Davinas:
If the US had gone in the nuclear direction back in the 70's as France did, we would be enjoying extremely low energy costs and be exporting electricity to Canada and Mexico

Oh delicious irony, are you're saying the anti-nuclear hippies are partly to blame for the climate and energy crisis today?

SilentHunter7:

Davinas:
If the US had gone in the nuclear direction back in the 70's as France did, we would be enjoying extremely low energy costs and be exporting electricity to Canada and Mexico

Oh delicious irony, are you're saying the anti-nuclear hippies are partly to blame for the climate and energy crisis today?

I think that's exactly what he's saying :D

Souplex:
If we were to have most of our nuclear power plants where life aint gonna happen anyway the environmental impact would be moot. There is an energy crisis, we do need to cut down our consumption however we should not need to reduce our output.

We could also launch our nuclear waste into the sun so NASA gets to feel like they are accomplishing something and possibly if they get to charge and the government makes it mandatory can stop costing tax dollars.

uhm. no. definitely not.

howard_hughes:

Razzle Bathbone:

Do you know how much it costs to send one ton of matter into space?
Do you know how many tons of waste you get from nuclear reactors?
Not viable.

There have been several research programs conducted on light gas guns. One of the most significant was led by John Hunter of the US Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Hunter is now promoting a commercial scheme for a light gas gun, appropriately named the Jules Verne Launcher, for delivering small payloads to orbit.

The techs been there since the 60's, it's not viable for humans since it exerts thousands of G's but it's perfect for sending up equipment and anything a base might need in the future.

http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/05/980500-bull.htm

Shivari:
Solar is the way of the future. They recently discovered a way to effectively store it, so expect that to be the direction we head towards.

I've seen that article, they use electrolysis to make hydrogen and then store that for later consumption. It's not that cost effective though if I remember.

i see someone else knows what their talking about thankyou. you saved me a few moments of typing. ^_^

dont say throwe it in to the sun
because if you get radio active matreal in to the sun. sun rays become nuclear and when you get sun tans you will mutate or die or both