I am sorry gentlemen, I could not agree more with your comments on the nuclear power. I understand your comments on the gas emissions but what about the nuclear waste which takes around 100000 years to neutralize it.

I don't really see what is so "clean" about taking an element from nature, enriching it, making it 85% more radioactive and then dumping it back to the earth.

Yes, the need for electricity growing so fast. But maybe this is the part of the equation we should think about. What are the ways to increase the efficiency of our products, transmission lines, etc. How many of us really taking care of this.

The renewable power generation systems are not so efficient and productive today. However, rather then spending our R&D budgets on developing new generations of nuclear power plants, we can spend this budget on improving the solar cells, wind turbines, nano technologies,smart grid options, etc.

I am a fan of nuclear energy, but only the FUSION type not the fission. Pity that no plant exists yet....

I am not sure about that statement but i think you are correct about the "irrational fear of radioactivity" which you have to take it into account:
people do not want nuclear energy.

Forget about it. "Clean" energy is meaningless . It does not exist. Each, each source of energy pollutes the environment in its way, and it has advantages and disadvantages.

The discussion on energy policies would be so much easier and useful if we all forget the misconception of "clean" energy.

Why don't we forget about the environment all together, maybe it will be easier in that way!

when we take out the "clean" out of the equation, what do you want to focus on then; efficiency of power plants, availability of the fuel, profitability, energy security or else?

My humble opinion is that none of these issue are more important than the environmental impact of the energy source.

Good, it's nice that you see the sense in what we are saying.

It's not clean. It's just cleaner than flooding huge areas of land, causing massive underwater rotting and huge volumes of methane being released into the atmosphere.

It's not safe either. It's just safer than the danger caused by a rapidly warming planet, and the danger of a billion litres of water falling on your head.

It's not environmentally un-damaging. Just less damaging than other forms of energy generation.

Why not invest in highly efficient new nuclear power plants AND improve the other options as well? It's a false dichotomoy that it's one or the other.

There's enough thorium and U-238 in the ground to meet our energy needs for several thousand years. By the time it even begins to look like running out, we really should have fusion, which we can run off seawater. And there is a lot of that. If that starts to run out there's even more water in the asteroids, and of course, once free of the planet, you can really take advantage of solar power.

How green would that be? But to get there... we need nuclear power.

When it comes to a choice between keeping warm at night and having nuclear power, the people will start to want it.

Ok probably i have not explained myself clearly and you have misunderstood me. One of the focuses must be exactly the effect of energy sources on the environment. If you have that in mind you should realize that no energy source is "clean".

Quite right. That's why I'm in favour of nuclear power. The environmental impact is less (when done properly).

Ok but what have we done properly so far that we think we can easily risk our existence on this planet. As long as there is "profitability" concerns in it, I can not trust nuclear power for the future.


P.S: I apologize for my grammatical mistake earlier. I meant I could not agree less .

I still don't get how dumping all this nuclear waste in to earth is cleaner than other power generations systems. Even for coal power plants, the effective usage of carbon capture systems and environmental controlling systems reduces the flue gases significantly and makes it much cleaner than before.

Coal power actual emits more radioactivity through the smoke stacks and distributes those isotopes over a large area.

Of course greenies say you can scrub the smoke, and indeed such filters exist. But then you still need to dispose of the radioactive waste.

The building of the Three Gorges dam also caused quite a lot greenhouse gas. In fact any big construction project does.

And the power to kill quite a lot of people and animals when it blows up.

There's always profitability in it. There is with wind turbines and solar panels.

Nuclear power is no risk to our existence on this planet. That's just nonsense. Nuclear weapons could certainly have made our existence problematic, but power of itself -no. Greater risks are asteroids, super-volcanoes, snowball earth, global warming.

Coal, gas and HEP have damaged the planet far more than nuclear power. These are simple facts. Not opinion. Facts.

Yeah, I know.

The point is that there isn't "all this" nuclear waste, and it isn't "dumped in the earth". The amount of high-level waste is 12'000 tonnes per year worldwide. The amount of waste produced by a single 500MW coal power station is around 300'000 tonnes (ash and sludge from the scrubbers).

You see, if nuclear waste is 100x more dangerous than clean-coal-power waste, and clean-coal-power produces 1000x as much waste as nuclear power, then nuclear power is cleaner than clean-coal-power.

Interesting fact: in terms of radioactivity per MW, coal stations produce more than nuclear (Scientific American December 2007).

Actually, if you look where power in China is coming from, you'll see they don't have the luxury of chosing and they haven't chosen any mode over any other. They are investing massively and on a very large scale in hydro power, in nuclear, in coal, in wind, in anything basically that will provide electricity as they need an awful lot of it.

I have found this article on the subject if interested

http://www.epa.gov/ttn/caaa/t3/reports/eurtc1.pdf

However it does not state that the coal power plants are more emitting more radioactivity through smoke stacks.

Anyways, I am not saying that coal is the answer. what I am saying is that I do not think that we are ready to handle the dangers and risk of nuclear energy and we should be able to survive without it till we evolve into more conscious beings.

The problem is that because a tsunami hit Fukushima, many governments have gone into panic mode that similar catastrophes could be hitting their nuclear plants, even those that are hundreds of miles from the coast. This means that the consensus is that anything is better than nuclear and this means unless we wake up fast we are heading for a massive increase in coal power plants, aned hence a massive increase in radioactive pollution and global warming.

you don't get it because your assumption that nuclear waste is 'dumped' is not correct. nuclear waste is probably the most carefully managed waste of any power generation method.

Fukushima is just one incident. We have witnessed Three Mile Island, Chernobyl disasters as well. I think we have right to "panic".

How can we say we do things "right" when we don't really know what risks to expect.

P.S: as per definition all nuclear power plants need to be located next to water resource. This can be a river, a lake,sea or ocean. Other wise, it will not be possible to cool the reactors, also generate the steam used for the turbines.

Everyone's heard of these, because of the "panic", but how many people died, and how many were severely impacted by the radiation fallout? It's not actually that many.

Yes, they especially need it to produce all the cheap stuff we like to buy...

But for those who have not been to China: Lovely country, but in every aspect imaginable miles less developed and organized as Japan. I for one do not trust that even the Japanese are capable of managing nuclear power in a truly safe way. They did not manage to fight the temptation to save money on the cost of safety and Fukushima was nothing else, they were aware of the tsunami risk and actively decided to not invest in back-up power systems that could have kept the reactor powered till it shuts down safely... so if even the super organized and safety crazy Japanese cannot be trusted.... well, then I can only imagine how French power plants are managed. And I really don't want to imagine what reactors are still in operation in the former Eastern block... let alone China.

I do not agree that Fukushima really caused a panic - it only showed that shit happens. There will not be any Tsunami any time soon in Southern Germany or other places far away from any coast. But when it came out that TEPCO "forgot" some security reports that strongly suggested upgrades for over a decade... then some other governments turned to their energy companies and asked "what security reports are forgotten in your drawers and for how long?". I really do not like the idea of global warming... but I prefer it to a nuclear winter.