New Nuclear power plants

[passengerfan]

Just reading an article in the papaere about three new Nuclear power plants proposed. People are sooner or later going to have to realize that Nuclear power plants are the wave of the future and the railroads should be lookin at electrifying there heavily traeled lines and Nuclear power is a cheap source of power. Since Three Mile Island their have been many additional safeguards put in place and their have been no additional accidents. With natural gas increasing in costs this leaves the Hydroelectric and Coal fired generating stations as the only other sources for electricity. It is definitly time to revisit Nuclear power and it is reaching a point where the railroads need to look at electrifying there heavy mainlines to save the fossil fuels for cars and home heating. There is a lot of opposition to Nuclear power plants but many will change their minds when gasoline is $7.00 or $8.00 a gallon.

[jeaton]

While nuclear power plants may have safety issues, the public perception of the danger is is way out of line with the actual risk. I am not an expert on this, but my guess is that the use of fossil fuels has a farther greater impact on human health and life than nuclear power generation.

I may be wrong on that point, but I know that if I can't get a supply of natural gas to take me through a Wisconsin winter, I and millions of people are going to be in a world of hurt. One might assume that concurrently, there will not be enough gasoline to get in a car and drive to a warmer climate. That is if one even wanted to put up with the others also trying to make such a migration.

Jay

Jay

[jchnhtfd]

Jay -- you are absolutely correct on the relative safety of nuclear power vs. fossil fuel, particularly coal. You are unfortunately absolutely correct on the irrational fears of a majority of the public, too, however. How this is going to be resolved I certainly can't figure out (but then, I'm just an engineer, so...!)

[DSchmitt]

Radiation, coal vs nuclear

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

ornl is Oak Ridge National Laboratory, US Dept of Energy http://www.ornl.gov/

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Nuclear electric generation could give a boost to rail electrification.

It also might be the only way to make electric cars (and probably hydrogen fueled cars too) a viable alternative to the gas buggy[8D]

[Anonymous]

This sounds like music to the heavy construction business. With the advancements in fuel usage, plant tech, desposal meathodology and operational and modular construction meathods there is going to be a crying need for both tradesmen and engineering types. Truth be told and from a Nuc. guy I know from Georgia Tech, with both a Clemson and an Auburn engineer agreeing " There is more radioactivity given off from one coal fired generating unit at full fire than from an entire nuclear plant running at full power." After having a hand in building a Nuc (Southern Company's Plant Voglte, Burke County GA) it is a great job to build and lots of rail traffic during construction and a bunch during the life of the plant (As long as 50 to 75 years!!!). In short, great news for energy independance, low cost electricty, improved savings for business users (inc profit margins), and savings to consumers. Great News for every one except Arab oil sheiks and head in the sand ________ types. ( I'm a gentleman and I just can't bring myself say that word.)

[kevarc]

The thing is, radiation something you cannot see, cannot smell, cannot taste, or cannot feel. This scares the hell out of people.

[CSXrules4eva]

QUOTE: Originally posted by kevarc

The thing is, radiation something you cannot see, cannot smell, cannot taste, or cannot feel. This scares the hell out of people.

Yes and it really scares the hell out of people when you start to see yourself glow in the dark!! LOL. One thing I do know is that you can't feel radation directly but, you can feel it indirectly. By this I mean you will start to feel like you have a cold then as you are exposed, if you are exposed to more radation other terrible symptoms will apper one of the common one's that I know of is the skin turns different colors.

[espeefoamer]

By using coal and nuclear power,we can,with today's technology,burn coal in a coal fired plant,then collect the residue,and process it so it can be used in a nuclear plant.The same fuel is used twice[:)]! This seems like a win-win situation.

[edblysard]

Actually, Sarah,
You can feel radation directly...go stand in the sun light.
There is a reason you start to feel warm....
There are several different wavelengths of radation...that just happens to be the most easy one to notice.

Jay and passengerfan...
No real issues with the safety of Nucs...after all, I live down wind from the South Texas Nuclear Project.!

My concern is what to do with the spent fuel....

Looks like the project to store it in salt caverns in New Mexico or Nevada, not sure which, isnt going as well as expected.

Once we figure out what to do with the stuff, and where to store it....


Ed

[Anonymous]

Fear is a terrible thing, especially to those that fear an unknown and are unwilling or incapable of learning to overcomming that fear. To them understanding is in order. HOWEVER to those that take advantage of those people all the while knowing the truth is to earn nothing short of contempt. My [2c] PL

[espeefoamer]

I read a number of years ago,that someone living in Denver gets more ambient radiation than someone living a couple hundred feet from a nuclear power plant at sea level.This is because the thinner air at Denver's altitude can't screen out the radiation coming from outer space.

[edblysard]

Understand...
But I dont see anyone jumping up and down yelling "Store it Here!"

Granted, the NIMBYs are often un-informed, and just as often, victims of both side's propaganda...but basic high school science still leads one to wonder how safe is the place it will be stored?

After all, same bunch of bureaucrats run most federal projects, and they often do what is most benifical to themselves and their party, as opposed to what is good for the country and the populace...


Remember, these guys said Love Canal wasnt a health risk...right up until someone sued the holy crap out of them!

Ed

[Anonymous]

Actually the use of glassification as the French use for their spent fuel rods looks to be the safest and the most promising technology for nuc fuel disposal according to my friends that are still in that field. The idea of burying the stuff at Yuka Mtn. is sounding more and more like a political boondoggle resembling the Teapot Dome and Watergate scandals the more I hear about it. The very idea that inspectors not being accurate, honorable or forthright during construction inspection makes me as a reserve inspector want to _______, ________, and ________ them over the head. Enough said. - PL

[Overmod]

Sarah -- good point about the cold; it's the same basic mechanism (the cold virus and the 'wrong' kind of radiation both disable some of the cells in the body, and part of the body's reaction is the "typical" symptoms (e.g. leukotriene release). The chief problem with ionizing radiation is that parts of the DNA responsible for ongoing life become damaged beyond the capacity of the cell to repair them -- but the problem doesn't become apparent until the cell needs to use those parts, which may not be for a while. There are mechanisms built into cells that shut them down if something goes wrong (the technical name is "apoptosis" or programmed cell death) -- which is the same mechanism that defends against most developing cancers. Between cells that can't keep themselves running, and cells shutting themselves down, you get the typical effects of 'radiation poisoning'.

My own opinion about future nuclear cycles is that they ought to be HTGR, using a ceramic fuel, and that the plant have appropriate chemical capture/passivation of any volatile fission daughters that might evolve from working or spent fuel. In principle I'm a firm believer in breeders... but security issues alone make me think the idea is a non-starter for the next few years at least. Be interesting to see how much of the Fort St. Vrain experience was actually kept...

[edblysard]

Breeders?
You trust "them" that much?

Ed

[passengerfan]

And whats wrong with Yucca Mountain For years the Government detonated underground nukes nearby and the ground if nothing else is atable and certainly unusable for anything else. I didn't hear anyone complain when the reactor outside Portland was stored at Hanford in Washington State. I may not be around to see it personally, but nuclear power is the wave of the future and we all are going to have to learn to live with it.

[Overmod]

Ed, when I say "breeder" I am NOT referring to light-metal prompt-critical designs (like Fermi 1). Those are nifty things, if constructed and run perfectly in a world completely devoid of terrorists, politicos, and 'unmotivated' plant personnel. Unfortunately, we have to have Walgreen's... ;-}

There are several fuel cycles that should be able to accomplish useful amounts of fissile-fuel generation (from otherwise 'waste' irradiation or intermediate daughters). I would note that most of the proposed fusion reactors can do this in their sleep, as they need blankets for the neutron flux. (The big exception is the mirror-machine device using charged fission products, which was theoretically capable of something like 94% efficiency nuclear-to-DC, but AFAIK nobody in academe is currently working on buildable technology, just as nobody seems to remember rubidium-seeded coal MHD topping. Pity!) Use lithium species in the blanket, and look what pops out at appropriate power densities...

IIRC, there were some self-regulating fuel-breeder designs out of General Atomic in the glory days. I'll have to check on this, now that somebody apparently is thinking about reviving the GA design work.

Principal problem I have with the Yucca Mountain site is that the emphasis seems to be on getting the place opened up, rather than on precisely what will be done, technically, on a plant-by-plant basis, once the stuff gets there. You do NOT want to vitrify the stuff alone, and then plant it...

[edblysard]

Good,
Now its a little more clear!
Whew...was thinking there was a lot of "faith" there!

As for Yucca...agreed, too many fingers in one pot, way too many chiefs, not anywhere near enough braves...

Kinda like the space shuttle...
It really didnt matter to NASAif it worked the way they claimed it would...just build the thing and get it up there....

Mack truck to the stars, two week turnaround my fanny!

Ed

[jeaton]

OK, I don't quite catch it all, but am I correct that there are methods that don't have the problem of disposing of spent fuel?

I am not comfortable with the idea of burying fuel with a half life of what? 1000's of years? That's a long time to hope that nothing will happen. On the other hand, I'd guess there is the possibility that the dreaded astoroid impact or Yellowstone volcano explosion may come up before a bad event with the stored wastes. Anybody still upright at that point would be toast, and the problem, at least for humans, would be moot.

Gee, all of that line of thinking sort of makes the open access issue kind of trivial. Right?

Jay

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by passengerfan

And whats wrong with Yucca Mountain For years the Government detonated underground nukes nearby and the ground if nothing else is atable and certainly unusable for anything else. I didn't hear anyone complain when the reactor outside Portland was stored at Hanford in Washington State. I may not be around to see it personally, but nuclear power is the wave of the future and we all are going to have to learn to live with it.

The question is not about the suitablity of the site, it's more to do with its development and construction, that is the cause of the question.

[DSchmitt]

Ionizing Radiation Monster
Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D., and Robert J. Cihak, M.D.
Wednesday, March 31, 2004

The Geiger counter chatters. The glowing monster rises out of the greenish water. “It’s ... radioactive.” And everybody knows we’re in big trouble.
So went the Moment of Truth line from several hundred grade-B-and-worse sci-fi movies of the ’50s.

The image sticks even among those of us who’ve never seen such movies. It’s part of our cultural DNA, this notion that ionizing radiation in any amount is always and forever bad for you. Scientists call this the linear no-threshold hypothesis (LNT). Only problem is, it’s scientifically wrong, emotionally pernicious and economically damaging.

Every doctor knows, and common sense indicates, that nothing - and everything - is poisonous. It all depends on the dosage.

Further, your Medicine Men have long observed that most people don’t get enough radiation. Now comes a story that provides some remarkable additional corroboration.

In Taiwan, an estimated 10,000 Taiwanese people received low doses of radiation for up to 20 years. Many continue to do so in an “unintended experiment” which again demonstrates that supplemental low doses of radiation are indeed good for you.

These Taiwanese people lived in some 1,700 apartments that used construction steel accidentally mixed with discarded cobalt-60 radiation sources. Cobalt-60 is a radioactive isotope of cobalt used as a source of gamma rays for human radiation therapy treatment, preserving food freshness and making X-ray images of metal parts.

These apartment buildings were built between 1982 and 1984; the radioactivity was discovered over several years, starting in 1992. The radiation dosage has been steadily decreasing, due to the natural decay of radioactivity with time, a phenomenon called “half-life.”

The half-life of cobalt-60 is 5.3 years, which means that the radiation released drops by half every 5.3 years. After 10.6 years, the rate is one-quarter the original rate. After four half-lives, or 21.2 years for cobalt-60, the rate is one-sixteenth the original rate.

Had this discovery been made in America, the result would have been media histrionics, about three zillion lawsuits, extensive congressional posturing leading to more incomprehensible and unnecessary regulation, perhaps even a grade-B-or-worse movie in which the scientist heroine whispers ominous phrases such as “It’s radioactive.”

Fortunately, over in Taiwan, some scientists decided to take a look at what had actually happened to the people accidentally exposed.

In the Spring 2004 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, W.L. Chen, director of the Department of Medical Radiation Technology at National Yang-Ming University and Head of the Radiation Protection Department of the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) of Taiwan, plus more than a dozen co-author scientists describe this "serendipitous experiment" and report some preliminary findings in "Is Chronic Radiation an Effective Prophylaxis Against Cancer?" [http://www.jpands.org/vol9no1/chen.pdf] These preliminary observations are striking.

The authors estimate that these people received an average of 0.4 Sievert (Sv), a measure of absorbed ionizing radiation dose, over their years of exposure. This is more than 10 times the dose other Taiwanese receive from natural background radiation. Conventional wisdom and current regulatory precautions would suggest an epidemic of cancer and related diseases. In fact, rather the opposite occurred.

For example, during the 1983-2002 period, the average cancer mortality in Taiwan was 116 deaths per 100,000 person-years. But for the people receiving the supplemental radiation, the number was 3.5 deaths per 100,000 person-years – only 3 percent of the rate for the general Taiwanese population!

Further, the rate of significant birth deformities or congenital malformations, including conditions such as heart disease, Down syndrome and cerebral palsy, was 6.5 percent of the rate in the general population, also strikingly lower than expected – and also the opposite of what the linear no-threshold hypothesis (LNT) predicts.

The authors also report that the chromosome studies done for the AEC "indicated that groups that received higher doses seemed to have lower levels of chromosome aberrations."

Also, "Medical examinations did not reveal the presence of any harmful radiation sickness syndromes. ..." Hospital officials "had no evidence that the radiation had caused any harmful effects."

These findings will be refined over time. Future studies will review the age distribution, plus the overall health and mortality of these people in future years.

Other human populations exposed to ionizing radiation, for example nuclear shipyard workers in this country and radiologists in England, show decreased cancer deaths and increased longevity among those receiving supplemental radiation. So it's likely that further studies of this Taiwanese population will be at least as striking.

Why does this matter? One reason, obviously, is that government policy based on wrong – indeed, willfully wrong – junk science makes for lousy policy.

All of these findings contradict the outdated and superstitious idea that every little bit of radiation humans receive adds to the potential for cancer or other problems. Yet this disproven linear no-threshold hypothesis remains the basis for radiation protection standards, inflicting huge economic and health costs around the world.

Radiation, Science, and Health, Inc.(RSH), an international nonprofit organization of independent individuals knowledgeable about radiation health effects science, estimates "Public radiation protection costs/funds exceed U.S. $1 trillion that provide NO public health benefit." And this doesn't include the costs of the burgeoning civilian “radiation protection” industry, that feeds off phobias about things ranging from radioactive dirty bombs to basement radon to medical uses of radiation.

We humans already have more than enough real problems to worry about.

Editor's Note: Robert J. Cihak wrote this week's column. He has edited some of the publications on the Radiation, Science, and Health website.

Robert J. Cihak, M.D., is a Senior Fellow and Board Member of the Discovery Institute and a past president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D., is a multiple-award-winning writer who comments on medical-legal issues.

[Anonymous]

Folks, what's getting lost in all this is that nuclear power doesn't do squat for the rail industry. Coal is the one thing keeping the railroads relatively healthy.

DSchmitt: Great article. It reminds me of the story of the guy from the CDC who discovered a correlation between the ostensibly "high" levels of****nic found in Southwestern artesian wells (at up to 50 ppm, well above the new standard of 10 ppm as designated by the EPA), and a lower rate of pancreatic, prostate, and urinary tract cancers in these same Southwestern states. He made the mistake of going public with his findings. He no longer works at the CDC.

[daveklepper]

That Taiwanese experiment really should be publicized more. Ditto the French experience with nuclear generated electricity. (Note that practically all main line French railroads are electrified.)

[edblysard]

Yeah, but Dave,
Did you notice that France will fit inside Texas, with a little left over space to spare?
Size does matter ![:D]
What do you do with the other 47 states on the continent?

Ed

QUOTE: Originally posted by daveklepper

That Taiwanese experiment really should be publicized more. Ditto the French experience with nuclear generated electricity. (Note that practically all main line French railroads are electrified.)

[Overmod]

jeaton, imho ALL nuclear processes will produce spent fuel with high concentrations of radionuclides. Some processes use fuel with characteristics that make it more suitable for primary disposal (e.g. those ceramic "pebbles"), which is perhaps the most significant criterion in a part of the world that does not embrace reprocessing of spent fuel. Other processes optimize the fuel, and the fuel cycle, to make reprocessing and waste disposal most effective. (And, of course, some processes were founded on obsolete assumptions, which is why we had all the fun stuff at Hanford, and why there's all that Cerenkov radiation at the bottom of all those pools, to paraphrase the Private Idaho song.

Personally, I cannot imagine a nuclear fuel cycle that does not involve fairly extensive reprocessing and recovery of the 'important' radionuclides, then appropriate vitrification, dilution, and revitrification of the remaining waste. My opinion regarding the subsequent disposal is that you pack the waste back into the formations from which the original uranium was extracted... but there are plenty of state and Federal senators and representatives who would take issue with this ;-}

I have problems with an institutional culture that uses, say, "sunshine units" to characterize EM and particle radiation. I also have problems with reports (like this Taiwanese "study") that put an all-or-nothing interpretation on radiation exposure. I have seen other studies that appear to confirm that a low-level exposure to some types of 'artificial' radiation will reduce some forms of common health problem... but note that there isn't any effective way to categorize, let alone statistically analyze, the observed sample -- for all intents and purposes, it's a "cancer cluster" in reverse.

daveklepper, I think you're right in evaluating the French nuclear experience... but you'd also need to publicize Chooz B and discuss the French policy and experience with reprocessing. There is some bitter with the sweet.

[spbed]

What about Chernobyl & the surrounding communities? [:(][:(]

Originally posted by DSchmitt

Living nearby to MP 186 of the UPRR  Austin TX Sub

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