EPA Carbon Emission Reduction Proposal gimps Nuclear Energy-HELP CHANGE IT BY DEC. 1st - Polidicks

[QUOTE=Geikkamir;46583696]Jesus, I don't have anything against nuclear energy but you're acting like a real asshole. This is not how you facilitate an informative discussion.[/QUOTE] I wouldn't act like an asshole if his ability to "facilitate an informative discussion" didn't stop at denying everyone's credibility because we're not "scientists," all while not providing any actual substance to a real argument. There's no point "facilitating an informative discussion" with someone who's argument consists entirely of a non-argument.

As much as we seem to love promoting nuclear, let me remind the thread: this isn't about nuclear technology, its about policy. Regardless of what the state of nuclear power is, the Clean Power Rule needs to be fixed so it can serve its purpose. PLEASE make a comment of any length at the EPA website. [url]http://www.ans.org/epa/[/url] Remember, comments close by December 1st (THIS SUNDAY!)

[QUOTE=draugur;46583564]What's it feel like, you know, functioning on an intellectual level lower than that of sand?[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=draugur;46583737]I wouldn't act like an asshole if his ability to "facilitate an informative discussion" didn't stop at denying everyone's credibility because we're not "scientists," all while not providing any actual substance to a real argument. There's no point "facilitating an informative discussion" with someone who's argument consists entirely of a non-argument.[/QUOTE] I get the feeling you missed the point of my post and think im making an argument im not. I suggest that you don't be such an asshole, just maybe you misunderstand and attack someone who was on your side, i think? Or is criticizing the EPA for needing to be chaperoned by the internet not an agreeable thing to do, in your opinion? Our government really is pretty shit when citizen outrage is required to get the EPA to actually look at the verified facts of the situation. If citizen outrage is taken as a reason to change something, then idiots who are outraged enough can just change it back if they get enough voice behind them. Edit: A more tangible suggestion i'd like to make is, instead of emailing/commenting to them about nuclear power specifically, email them about actually recognizing the underlying science and use nuclear power as an example. Or this will just keep happening.

Public consensus only feeds into strengthening and gaining momentum for atrocious policies like this. People in the states are rather ignorant of the death per kilowatt hour and other statistics when we do the nuclear vs fossil fuels comparison. Once you look to countries like China, you're literally [URL="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/19/china-uranium-nuclear-plants-smog-thorium"]breathing in the proof[/URL] of why China has been garnering alot of interest into nuclear power (Especially our designs like [URL="http://energyfromthorium.com/2014/03/21/the-molten-salt-reactor-race-will-america-join-the-race/"]Thorium/LFTR/etc.[/URL] )

[QUOTE=draugur;46583564]What's it feel like, you know, functioning on an intellectual level lower than that of sand?[/QUOTE] What's it feel like, you know, being a vitriolic ass that functions on an maturity level lower than that of an infant?

[QUOTE=Solo Wing;46583735]You mean that majestic fuck Snowmew? Its a nuclear related thread, he'll be in here before long.[/QUOTE] Hi. [QUOTE=space1;46582311]My point is that nuclear waste takes up space, and so do radioactive accidents. If we upscale it more, there is more room for error to occur and we'll have large amounts of unusable land due to carelessness. I'd rather have a bit of smog than warehouses full of very dangerous materials that can be made into mini atomic bombs. There is a lot of potential for bad stuff to happen because of it, but hey, you can all completely ignore the risks entirely. Right now it's a lot easier to manage, just hide it in a small mountain vault in Utah, but with widespread facilities, IT WILL NOT BE THAT EASY. Cost is probably another limitation. As soon as someone even begins to suggest disagreement on Facepunch, they're rated dumb. No debate. I never said either is better, I'm just saying it isn't as perfect as you're all chalking it up to be.[/QUOTE] Don't.

[QUOTE=RIPBILLYMAYS;46581571][url]http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1336387&p=43252922&highlight=#post43252922[/url] [img]http://facepunch.com/image.php?u=458276&dateline=1381624811[/img] Based Snowmew[/QUOTE] [quote="snowmew"]A grand total of zero people have died in the US (and most of the rest of the world) from nuclear accidents.[/quote] I'm not going to refute anything he said because it's all true with the exception of this. (and even them I'm not going to criticize him for being wrong because it's almost an unknown incident in a prototype reactor, which stretches his words.) The SL-1 incident killed all three operators and is the first known nuclear accident on US soil (the physical injuries killed them before the radiation could, just in case anyone asks) BUT post-accident management and site cleanup was followed completely to the letter (snowmew cites for two of the mentioned incidents how this was NOT followed). As a result the site was completely cleaned up within five years and annual emissions annually barely exceed ambient levels. A lot of the lessons learned form the accident went towards figuring out what happened at Chernobyl and TMI but the SL-1 itself was such an "uneventful incident" that it was almost forgotten by history and it's exactly that. THIS is what happens when you admit you fuck up and allocate your resources appropriately to clean it up. Do it right and you do not get any fearmongering or public attention, no matter how bad it is. Again, I'm just nitpicking a minor error. I'm not saying snowmew was completely wrong.

[QUOTE=pentium;46586974]I'm not going to refute anything he said because it's all true with the exception of this. (and even them I'm not going to criticize him for being wrong because it's almost an unknown incident in a prototype reactor, which stretches his words.) The SL-1 incident killed all three operators and is the first known nuclear accident on US soil (the physical injuries killed them before the radiation could, just in case anyone asks) BUT post-accident management and site cleanup was followed completely to the letter (snowmew cites for two of the mentioned incidents how this was NOT followed). As a result the site was completely cleaned up within five years and annual emissions annually barely exceed ambient levels. A lot of the lessons learned form the accident went towards figuring out what happened at Chernobyl and TMI but the SL-1 itself was such an "uneventful incident" that it was almost forgotten by history and it's exactly that. THIS is what happens when you admit you fuck up and allocate your resources appropriately to clean it up. Do it right and you do not get any fearmongering or public attention, no matter how bad it is. Again, I'm just nitpicking a minor error. I'm not saying snowmew was completely wrong.[/QUOTE] When people talk about nuclear energy they usually mean commercially. SL-1 was a low-power experimental military reactor, and the accident was caused more by human error than anything inherently wrong with the reactor (besides its bad design, but this was in the heyday of nuclear engineering). I believe there have also been a few other nuclear accidents (mainly on subs) in the military, Red October notwithstanding. I wrote an essay once on SL-1, actually. It's not well-known simply because it was handled so well. The reason they died is because of the steam explosion from the reactor going prompt critical when they accidentally yanked the control rods out; one person was skewered to the ceiling because of it. Nasty stuff. So you are technically correct, but there have also been other deaths through nuclear experimentation, which could qualify as accidents. The figure more accurately reflects deaths from commercial reactors (limiting nuclear energy would only limit those reactors, not experimental ones, anyway).

[QUOTE=space1;46582311] a bit of smog .[/QUOTE] More like 300,000 deaths a year at least

[QUOTE=bravehat;46582754]There's literally no argument against using modern nuclear plants, you'd have to be a cock smoking retard to think otherwise.[/QUOTE] I probably shouldn't get involved in this circlejerk, but when a country like France, with overwhelming public support for nuclear power and considered a prominent leader in nuclear energy, is [url=http://www.energypost.eu/french-disconnection-reduce-nuclear-share-frances-energy-mix/]planning to reduce reliance on nuclear power[/url] (a move supported by their own nuclear scientists, no less), [i]maybe[/i] it's not so black-and-white as 'nuclear is always good and only dumb people don't want more nuclear all the time'. I don't think there's another topic where people are so condescendingly sure their opinion is the only valid one. In my experience the argument is a lot less one-sided when the people discussing it are actually involved in relevant industries and not just basing their opinion on popsci articles they read online.

[QUOTE=Code3Response;46582469]I posted two above this and yet I never read it. Is GiGaBiTe still alive after that?[/QUOTE] The last I heard he had a bit of a meltdown. [sp]Sorry[/sp]

[QUOTE=catbarf;46590299]I probably shouldn't get involved in this circlejerk, but when a country like France, with overwhelming public support for nuclear power and considered a prominent leader in nuclear energy, is [url=http://www.energypost.eu/french-disconnection-reduce-nuclear-share-frances-energy-mix/]planning to reduce reliance on nuclear power[/url] (a move supported by their own nuclear scientists, no less), [i]maybe[/i] it's not so black-and-white as 'nuclear is always good and only dumb people don't want more nuclear all the time'. I don't think there's another topic where people are so condescendingly sure their opinion is the only valid one. In my experience the argument is a lot less one-sided when the people discussing it are actually involved in relevant industries and not just basing their opinion on popsci articles they read online.[/QUOTE] Mate this is science, not politics, it's not opinion based. Fundamentally if you are afraid of nuclear power it just means you don't understand the science.

[QUOTE=catbarf;46590299]I probably shouldn't get involved in this circlejerk, but when a country like France, with overwhelming public support for nuclear power and considered a prominent leader in nuclear energy, is [url=http://www.energypost.eu/french-disconnection-reduce-nuclear-share-frances-energy-mix/]planning to reduce reliance on nuclear power[/url] (a move supported by their own nuclear scientists, no less), [i]maybe[/i] it's not so black-and-white as 'nuclear is always good and only dumb people don't want more nuclear all the time'. I don't think there's another topic where people are so condescendingly sure their opinion is the only valid one. In my experience the argument is a lot less one-sided when the people discussing it are actually involved in relevant industries and not just basing their opinion on popsci articles they read online.[/QUOTE] The reason those scientists are skeptical is because of the construction costs, not any sense of danger. Ultimately it's cheaper to run coal plants, but at the risk of killing tons of people. Renewables are cheaper but output so little energy and take up so much land that it would be impossible to replace nuclear entirely; instead, they are proposing using renewables to offset the costs of nuclear, which is a totally rational reasoning in my book. The problem is that the loudest voices are not scientists, but misinformed, scaremongering morons. Greenpeace and the like tend not to focus on the whole "nuclear power is the safest energy source in history" part. Every so often there is a nuclear disaster that gets blown out of proportion because we, as a society, are still irrationally scared of nuclear anything. Anti-nuclear propaganda is almost always stupid scare tactic bullshit; I'll never forget them making a video of a plane flying into a nuke plant as they panned from a family enjoying a day on the beach. That was the whole video - just this misguided threat that terrorists would somehow manage to crash a plane through the containment building and that would be vaguely bad. Also they constantly troll on-site security by sneaking in; they love to inflate their actions and say "we broke into a nuke plant omg its so dangerous" when in reality they rarely make it past auxiliary outbuildings. Anti-nuclear folks go running to the government hysterical about this stupid bullshit, and politicians are too busy sucking their own cocks to think about it rationally. Keep in mind that US nuclear plant construction stopped entirely after TMI - an accident with zero deaths and zero increased rates of cancer. It was a non-emergency, yet the anti-nuclear idiots of the time got so hard over using it as the poster child for "big bad nuclear" that we've been stuck on outdated plants exhibiting serious safety flaws instead of moving forward with new designs.

[QUOTE=Snowmew;46593379]The reason those scientists are skeptical is because of the construction costs, not any sense of danger. Ultimately it's cheaper to run coal plants, but at the risk of killing tons of people. Renewables are cheaper but output so little energy and take up so much land that it would be impossible to replace nuclear entirely; instead, they are proposing using renewables to offset the costs of nuclear, which is a totally rational reasoning in my book. The problem is that the loudest voices are not scientists, but misinformed, scaremongering morons. Greenpeace and the like tend not to focus on the whole "nuclear power is the safest energy source in history" part. Every so often there is a nuclear disaster that gets blown out of proportion because we, as a society, are still irrationally scared of nuclear anything. Anti-nuclear propaganda is almost always stupid scare tactic bullshit; I'll never forget them making a video of a plane flying into a nuke plant as they panned from a family enjoying a day on the beach. That was the whole video - just this misguided threat that terrorists would somehow manage to crash a plane through the containment building and that would be vaguely bad. Also they constantly troll on-site security by sneaking in; they love to inflate their actions and say "we broke into a nuke plant omg its so dangerous" when in reality they rarely make it past auxiliary outbuildings. Anti-nuclear folks go running to the government hysterical about this stupid bullshit, and politicians are too busy sucking their own cocks to think about it rationally. Keep in mind that US nuclear plant construction stopped entirely after TMI - an accident with zero deaths and zero increased rates of cancer. It was a non-emergency, yet the anti-nuclear idiots of the time got so hard over using it as the poster child for "big bad nuclear" that we've been stuck on outdated plants exhibiting serious safety flaws instead of moving forward with new designs.[/QUOTE] Yeah its really difficult to get the media to work with us. We once had a reporter come into our Nuclear Engineering department and they did an "action" shot of two professors walking and talking in a hallway. The professor then asked the reporter if she wanted to see the reactor or get some footage of the control room and she said she didn't care, she just needed a bit for her story. We're more picky about assisting reporters now...

[QUOTE=RIPBILLYMAYS;46595075]Yeah its really difficult to get the media to work with us. We once had a reporter come into our Nuclear Engineering department and they did an "action" shot of two professors walking and talking in a hallway. The professor then asked the reporter if she wanted to see the reactor or get some footage of the control room and she said she didn't care, she just needed a bit for her story. We're more picky about assisting reporters now...[/QUOTE] I can be a reporter. This camera is totally not a cardboard box with a plastic cup for a lens. Trust me.

[QUOTE=Snowmew;46587169]The reason they died is because of the steam explosion from the reactor going prompt critical when they accidentally yanked the control rods out; one person was skewered to the ceiling because of it. Nasty stuff. [/QUOTE] That's some final destination level shit.

[QUOTE=Matthew0505;46596449]Skewering probably beats being steamed to death[/QUOTE] Unfortunately one guy lived long enough to experience that. He was still alive when the emergency crew arrived, although was barely conscious. Also this is fitting, since i wrote an argument essay on why nuclear energy is safer and cleaner than most other energy sources for my college English class. It absolutely amazes me how the EPA is going to do this, since nuclear is proven to not have any emissions at all aside from steam.

[QUOTE=bravehat;46591494]Mate this is science, not politics, it's not opinion based. Fundamentally if you are afraid of nuclear power it just means you don't understand the science.[/QUOTE] It's not science that anyone in this thread is arguing. The issues of dealing with waste, the up-front and ongoing cost, and risk management, factors that have led to reduced plans for nuclear power in Germany and France, countries which as I noted support nuclear power in principle, are economic, political, and regulatory, not scientific. I support nuclear power but I understand why these countries are scaling back on their nuclear production and why no country wants to move to 100% nuclear, and it's not because every world leader is scientifically misinformed. Greenpeace propagates scaremongering bullshit, but they're not the ones making policy, and most European countries have a more pro-nuclear than anti-nuclear populace. Every time there's a SH thread about a country deciding not to go with nuclear power or reducing its use of nuclear power, it's inevitably full of comments saying some variation of 'they're just idiots who don't understand modern technology'. It's not that simple. You don't need to be afraid of nuclear power to realize that comments like: [quote]There's literally no argument against using modern nuclear plants, you'd have to be a cock smoking retard to think otherwise.[/quote] are generally not the sentiment of environmental engineers who need to design waste management plans, economists who have to design a budget plan to fund it, politicians who have to secure sources of fissile material and waste-transport agreements with other countries, or regulatory agencies who have to attempt the Herculean task of ensuring that nobody cuts corners in design or operation. To the people who have to deal with this on a daily basis, it's not a perfect solution, just a better one than the alternatives in many (but not all) circumstances. To boil that down to 'if you don't want more nuclear, you're an idiot' is downright condescending.

[QUOTE=zombini;46596929]Unfortunately one guy lived long enough to experience that. He was still alive when the emergency crew arrived, although was barely conscious. Also this is fitting, since i wrote an argument essay on why nuclear energy is safer and cleaner than most other energy sources for my college English class. It absolutely amazes me how the EPA is going to do this, since nuclear is proven to not have any emissions at all aside from steam.[/QUOTE] The EPA is asking for comments on the bill to fix it. That's better than most legislative bodies. Also the EPA does realize that nuclear gives 0 carbon emissions during operation, its just that the one guy who wrote the nuclear part when full derp when stating that a 5.8% chance of a plant decommissioning should equate to 5.8% clean energy. There's about 40 minutes left if anyone hasn't made a comment yet. I will be following the plan alongside the ANS to see where it goes, and I'll either update this thread or post a new one based on the EPA's revision.

At this point I'm actually more afraid of global warming than nuclear waste. I mean, at least with nuclear we're pretty much forced to deal with the consequences of our power generation, and generally there's a great deal of respect paid to nuclear waste disposal. With fossil fuels we can just pump that shit into the atmosphere and pretend all is fine and dandy. It's not the ideal long-term solution, but until we get fusion power online (if that ever happens, heh) it's pretty much the only alternative we've got with high output that doesn't produce ludicrous amounts of greenhouse gases.

I don't necessarily oppose nuclear energy, I just don't think putting them right over or close to faultlines is a good idea at all. Nuclear power plants also happen to be a magnet for nuclear weapons targeting systems.

[QUOTE=Megadave;46597766]I don't necessarily oppose nuclear energy, I just don't think putting them right over or close to faultlines is a good idea at all. Nuclear power plants also happen to be a [B]magnet for nuclear weapons targeting systems.[/B][/QUOTE] If you mean that NPP's are targets for nuclear weapons, I don't think that's the case. A nuclear warhead wouldn spread enough radiation and I doubt that attacking a NPP would augment the strength of the bomb. Even if that were true, I think a more likely target would be one of our own nuclear warheads since they are designed for big booms. The main targets that the nation is concerned about relate to infrastructure, not population density. Think of any place that control's a state's or country's electricity grid. You don't need a nuclear bomb for that, maybe just a standard missile aimed at the right place. Now, if you were to attack the Hoover Dam or a similar water source, then the West dries up and collapses. No more Las Vegas, no more Los Angeles, nothing much is left. Something that got me hyped for Watch Dogs was that it talked about the severity of cyber security: we can get fucked real hard if someone messes with our networks. The Target security breach happened because someone in the Target parking lot accessed the network through an unsecured Air Conditioner. I do agree that one should be wary of natural disasters when it comes to infrastructure placement. I think that holds true for all things, not just nuclear. Hell if it were a coal mine there'd be an endless fire. Imagine putting a weapons silo along a fault line, that'd be one hell of an issue.

[QUOTE=EcksDee;46581176]Someone find us that Facepunch post where a guy rips another guy's asshole open with like an 8 paragraph post when he mentions the nuclear disasters. Good motivation.[/QUOTE] Im a bit late but I just found it [URL]http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1336387&p=43252922&viewfull=1#post43252922[/URL] [QUOTE=Snowmew;43252922][QUOTE]History has repeated itself with three worldwide implicating nuclear accidents, and each time people say stuff like this and it wont happen again. Sorry, but three strikes, nuclear is out.[/QUOTE] [B]haha oh boy here we go again[/B] There were, as you say, 3 "worldwide implicating nuclear accidents". First of all, Chernobyl was considered dangerous and outdated while it was being built. It was condemned by both Russian and American nuclear scientists alike. They literally said "this will explode and kill thousands of people why are you doing this" but nobody listened. The design of the reactor was extremely unsafe and no reactor in the world would experience a similar disaster, ever. The reason that Chernobyl turned into such a massive disaster was the emergency management. No evacuation or public notification was done for 2 days after the incident. Had a proper evacuation taken place at the correct time, there would have been little or no deaths. That said, the main radioactive elements distributed in the Chernobyl accident - iodine, strontium, and caesium, with half-lives of 8 days, 29 years, and 30 years, respectively - decayed too quickly to have any significant ecological impact outside the exclusion zone. The second "worldwide implicating nuclear accident" was Three Mile Island. Oh, wait, nobody died. Nobody. There were no deaths as a direct result of the TMI accident. Let me just say that a fourth time - zero people died from radiation poisoning in the TMI accident. Now, that said, the main reason it was a disaster in the first place was repeated operator error, which is extremely unlikely with today's training and safety protocols. Regardless, studies have repeatedly shown no significant effects to humans or the environment. It was a non-disaster. That leaves us with the third "worldwide implicating nuclear accident" - Fukushima. Now, the reason Fukushima blew up was because TEPCO (the owner) failed to protect it against tsunamis. It SCRAMed properly during the earthquake, but the following tsunami flooded the underground backup generators which powered the coolant pumps while the plant was down. Since the reaction still generates some heat after being stopped, the cores overheated, hydrogen gas was formed, and it exploded. TEPCO was warned 3 years earlier that such a chain of events could happen and yet they failed to install any protective measures. In fact, reactors closer to the epicenter (owned by other companies, I might add) experienced insignificant to no damage. Oh, and by the way - no direct deaths. (It is not currently possible to estimate the number of cancer cases caused by Fukushima; it released several orders of magnitude less radiation than Chernobyl, which is the only accident with measurable impacts in worldwide history.) So out of the three "worldwide implicating nuclear accidents", only one actually caused any deaths, and the causes are practically impossible today without breaking the laws of physics. No other serious incident has occurred in a commercial plant in history. A grand total of zero people have died in the US (and most of the rest of the world) from nuclear accidents. To avoid quoting the rest of your misinformed, scaremonger replies, let me just knock these myths out right off the bat: The ALFRED project is a lead-cooled fast reactor, one of the few Gen IV reactor designs. It is designed to far more efficiently utilize the energy stored in uranium fuel - current reactors use 0.4%, Gen IV reactors generally use 90% or more. So we're already looking at 200x the efficiency. Because of this, they only need to be fueled once in their entire lifetime, with a block of uranium fuel about the size of a car. Nuclear waste is not some magic unknown thing. It is literally just unused fuel that can't be used in current reactor designs. The timeframe of dangerous radioactive decay in current waste is several million years - to compare, Gen IV reactors leave us with fuel that's only dangerous for around 300 years. An added bonus is that Gen IV reactors can use current "waste" directly as fuel, and doing so on our current reserves will be able to supply the worldwide energy needs entirely (eliminating all other generation methods and fuels) for several centuries without needing to mine any new uranium fuel and with no carbon output whatsoever. (By the way, nuclear power plants emit less radiation than coal and natural gas plants.) Because of their design, Gen IV reactors are also extremely difficult to melt down (doing so would require a deliberate, malicious, coordinated attack and immense knowledge of the control systems, something which is extremely difficult to accomplish without getting caught). Even if they did melt down, it would be contained entirely, far more efficiently than TMI, which would naturally result in less than zero deaths. Fukushima's fuel sinking into the ocean is not as big of a disaster as you make it out to be. You make up this vague assumption that it will suddenly irradiate the entire world and we'll all die. In fact, putting it in the water would likely make it less dangerous, since water "insulates" the radioactivity far better than air. By the way, the fuel rods from Chernobyl are kept in a pool of water because of this. In fact, swimming in the water is safer than being in the open air due to the latent radioactive substances outside, as long as you stay about a meter away from the rods themselves. The risks of transporting nuclear waste (which is actually not even performed yet - all waste is currently stored on-site) is less than it is to actually use the stuff. Be as paranoid as you want about the transportation methods, but the fact is, you being 3 states away makes you completely unharmed from whatever might happen. The only danger you would face is being maybe 15-30 miles away, and at that point it would be negligible. (Believe it or not, it is actually possible to research this stuff, which you clearly haven't bothered doing.) Your misinformed edit of Saber15's reply was also unwarranted and totally false. In terms of death per kWh generated, nuclear energy is literally the safest source of power (yes, even safer than solar and wind - keep in mind we are talking in relation to the energy produced, and solar/wind produce very little energy in comparison). In fact, here's the numbers: - Coal: >1000x more dangerous - Natural gas: 44x more dangerous - Solar: 5x more dangerous - Wind: 2x more dangerous (mostly from maintenance workers falling off turbines) This is taking into account the 30 radiation deaths from Chernobyl, the few thousand cancer deaths from Chernobyl and (unreliably) projected Fukushima, and the deaths from largely unrelated issues along the nuclear chain, such as uranium mining. Hundreds of thousands of people die from coal-fired plants and coal mining every year. Yeah, that's safer for everyone. Your totally incorrect comparison of nuclear containers to chlorine containers is exemplary of typical nuclear scaremongering. Chlorine gas is stored in a tank car, which is not as reinforced. Why they still use standard tank cars for chlorine is beyond me, but the structure of the container is entirely different and says absolutely nothing about the safety of nuclear containers. So, after all of that, let's recap with a simple analogy: As a whole, if all Facepunch users were to use coal-powered energy, we would kill around 1 person a week on average. If we were to all use nuclear energy, even if Chernobyl happened every 50 years, we would still statistically never kill a single person. Want to try again?[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=space1;46582311]I'd rather have a bit of smog [/QUOTE] I love how you understate the dangers of smog, something that has demonstrably killed millions of people, and then immediately ramp up the hyperbole with [quote]warehouses full of very dangerous materials that can be made into mini atomic bombs. There is a lot of potential for bad stuff to happen because of it, but hey, you can all completely ignore the risks entirely. Right now it's a lot easier to manage, just hide it in a small mountain vault in Utah, but with widespread facilities, IT WILL NOT BE THAT EASY. Cost is probably another limitation.[/quote] Great arguing skills there, chummy. [editline]30th November 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=Megadave;46597766]I don't necessarily oppose nuclear energy, I just don't think putting them right over or close to faultlines is a good idea at all. [b]Nuclear power plants also happen to be a magnet for nuclear weapons targeting systems.[/b][/QUOTE] I'm sorry, no. That's simply not true. And if it was, why would that matter? I think that if it came to nuclear strikes, our concern would less be about [I]what's[/I] being hit and more about the attack itself. The volume of a nuclear exchange would mean that targetting a nuclear plant would be the least of our worries. Not only that, but [I]cities[/I] and military bases tend to be the prime targets for nuclear strikes. The intent of almost all nuclear game-plans is to completely destroy the leadership and organization of the opposition primarily, with civil targets being secondary.

Still, hydroelectric, fuel cells, solar, wind, geothermal, and fusion are the best options we have. All of these result in little or no pollution at all. Why the fuck would you argue that nuclear is the best option when clearly there are many other underfunded yet more beneficial research opportunities?

[QUOTE=Megadave;46597766]I don't necessarily oppose nuclear energy, I just don't think putting them right over or close to faultlines is a good idea at all.[/QUOTE] Those near faultlines are designed to withstand a mag-9 earthquake centered right under the containment building. An earthquake more powerful than that occurring at that exact location is exceedingly unlikely. Only 3 earthquakes worldwide have surpassed that number in recent history; anything higher is typically an estimate of events several thousands of years ago. Fukushima didn't fail because of the earthquake, remember - it failed because the resulting tsunami flooded the poorly-located backup generators powering the coolant pumps. [QUOTE=RIPBILLYMAYS;46597935]A nuclear warhead wouldn spread enough radiation and I doubt that attacking a NPP would augment the strength of the bomb. Even if that were true, I think a more likely target would be one of our own nuclear warheads since they are designed for big booms.[/QUOTE] An ICBM/MRBM's source of devastation is twofold - the thermal blast (targeting an NPP would not help this at all) and the fallout (NPP fuel is far less dangerous and would be several orders of magnitude less powerful). So targeting a nuke plant with a nuke is basically a waste of a nuke when the point is to use the thermal blast to your advantage by vaporizing/burning as many people as you can. Also, although nukes are targeted by enemy nukes, blowing them up wouldn't add to the size of the explosion. It is purely a tactical counterattack. [QUOTE=space1;46603620]Still, hydroelectric, fuel cells, solar, wind, geothermal, and fusion are the best options we have. All of these result in little or no pollution at all. Why the fuck would you argue that nuclear is the best option when clearly there are many other underfunded yet more beneficial research opportunities?[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]fusion best[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]nuclear dumb[/QUOTE] uh what

[QUOTE=space1;46603620]Still, hydroelectric, fuel cells, solar, wind, geothermal, and fusion are the best options we have. All of these result in little or no pollution at all. Why the fuck would you argue that nuclear is the best option when clearly there are many other underfunded yet more beneficial research opportunities?[/QUOTE] Firstly, hydroelectric dams fuck up the environment by flooding massive areas of land, not to mention the extremely expensive and dangerous construction process, as well as the fact that failures can result in thousands of deaths. Fuel cells require fuel, the most common of which is hydrogen, of which the vast majority is from natural gas wells. Obviously this is counter-intuitive to getting away from fossil fuels. Solar energy, both PV and thermal, has immense resource draws for modest output(the Ivanpah facility in SoCal outputs just under 400MW over an area of 3500ish acres and cost around $2.2Bn) and photovoltaics have shitloads of toxic waste and solvents in their manufacturing process. Wind has similar resource draw and generation capacity issues to solar, but has the added issue of maintenance costs. Geothermal only works at a decent capacity in certain areas of the world, but overall is decent, but can't compete with a decent reactor. Fusion is 35 years away from a demo reactor, but may not even be necessary by the time Gen4 reactors come online. While it looks promising, it's not guaranteed that it will even work, and it's gonna be even longer before it will replace everything. People arguing about waste forget that new reactors burn it down to almost nothing and uranium is dense as fuck when arguing about tonnage of waste as a measure of how much. The amount of energy that 1 sq/m of land on earth gets from sunlight is only a couple hundred watts at best, while you can cram a few gigawatt reactors into a facility that only covers a few city blocks, including waste storage. 20% of the US power grid is running on nuclear power plants built in the 60s and 70s, and there's only 100 of them supplying all of that power. If other options are the best, then why haven't we just hopped on over to solar panels or wind power yet? It's because it's uneconomical in that it's a massive fucking resource draw, and it has so little return. Small scale is fine, as a backup source it's fine, but as the main generating sources for the power grid of the planet, it can't compete. Not trying to step on your toes snowmew, just wanted to iterate how shit renewables are compared to NPPs. I'd go through and cite this stuff, but it's late and i need sleep.

[QUOTE=Snowmew;46604447] Also, although nukes are targeted by enemy nukes, blowing them up wouldn't add to the size of the explosion. It is purely a tactical counterattack.[/QUOTE] This is a point that I think more people should realize. Nuclear weaponry doesn't just "go off" like conventional explosives. Very specific conditions need to be present to initiate a thermonuclear explosion. If you aren't blowing the nuke by way of its triggering mechanism or whatever it's called, you're basically just scrapping it. [i]maybe[/i] some of the explosive components will go off, but you won't get anything near a proper nuclear explosion out of it.

[QUOTE=zombini;46604765]... Fusion is 35 years away from a demo reactor, but may not even be necessary by the time Gen4 reactors come online. While it looks promising, it's not guaranteed that it will even work, and it's gonna be even longer before it will replace everything. ...[/QUOTE] We're actually much closer to demo reactors, whether they work is another matter. A German reactor project (Wendelstein 7-X) is aiming for operational testing by next year, the reactor itself was actually finished back in May.

Nuclear Fission is basically the antepenultimate source of energy known to physics (The other two being Fusion and Antimatter). Unless we want to skip straight to Fusion, it is inevitable that Nuclear Energy will be adopted. Solar and Wind are too unpredictable and localized to power whole nations. Coal, Oil and Natural Gas all contribute to the ever growing portion of CO2 in the atmosphere. Radioactive Waste is much easier to deal with than the Greenhouse Effect.