Notes on Nuclear Power [Citation Needed]

[athelind]

... This is just a quick note. No substance, no references, no citations.


A lot of people are up in arms about how the situation in Japan underscores the "dangers of nuclear power".

To this point, the radiation leaked into the environment is minimal. Things are Very Bad Indeed if you're within a certain radius of the plant, but my suspicion is that the increased health risks and hazards caused by this amount of radiation will still be substantially less than those caused by fossil fuel plants.

Let me emphasize this:

The environmental and human impact of a complex of nuclear reactors failing catastrophically after a major disaster is less than that of fossil fuel plants in the regular course of their operation.^{[Citation Needed]}

I will endeavor to find numbers to confirm or deny this next week, after I return home.

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Yes, I just used the Lorax as an icon in a possibly-pro-nuclear post.

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Comments

[moonfires.livejournal.com]

The biggest problem with nuclear reactors is spent fuel storage. Many reactors are reaching their limit of on-site storage, and the federal government is years late in opening up a national storage site due to lots of NIMBY and politicking.
We spent billions on a repository that might not even be used.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository

[hinoki.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

This is the product of the hysteria regarding nuclear power, though. Had the new designs of reactors been allowed to be constructed, a lot of that spent fuel could have been cycled through them.

But, since the anti-nuclear activists went bonkers... we're stuck with what we have.

A few good breeder reactors could use the spent fuel and cycle it back into something usable in a pebble bed, for example. Instead.. we're stuck with spent fuel pools.

Heck, we weren't even allowed to build the newer reactors that don't even REQUIRE spent fuel storage.

Yucca Mountain is just one symptom of an over-arching fear-based problem.