Coal or Nuclear: which do you prefer

[Chemical Ollie]

Girl power

[Dinner]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


Yeah, those that have been decommissioned. How do you figure the rest of the plants have improved substantially, since the industry has been all but dead for close on 30 years?

He's talking about the plants built world wide over the last 30 years. Currently the world is experiencing a boom in the construction of nuclear plants especially in countries where the population is better educated about the actual science and methods of the process. Lastly, officially the plants in the US are the same however they have almost entirely been rebuilt over the last 30 years to the point that you can almost consider them to be all new plants.

That is the reason that although the total number of plants in the US is still falling but the total amount of power produced in those plants keeps going up year after year. Nuclear is the way to go.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Thue


So lets assume state of the art coal plant, without CO2 sequestation (which as I understand it has not been tried in practice yet).

And assume state of the art nuclear plant, with disposal of the higher-level waste in a cave in Yucca Mountain (or similar national repository) included in the price.

How is that in any way a fair proposition? You are claiming that we should ignore the dangerous emissions of the coal plant along with the extremely unpredictable and costly effects of global climate change however we must include similiar costs for nuclear power?

Besides the solution is not to bury the waste (though as a practical matter that works well) and instead it is to recycle it. The "spent" fuel rods still contain 95%+ of their usable energy but currently it is cheaper to enrich more fuel then to recycle used fuel rods. Much of this has to do with there being a well established mining and enrichment infastructure for nuclear material but almost no recycling infastructure though France does indeed have a national recycling program. The US hasn't made us of breeder reactors and reenrichment largely because of an ignorant and completely anti-science order by Jimmy Carter back in the 1970's. Recend that Presidential order, create a national recycling program, and then mandate that people must use the recycling program. Then there virtually is no waste other then a few tiny amounts of the worst actinides which could safely be stored away in a place like Yucca Mountain or even buried deep in a tectonic subduction zone where it would be on the fast track to the Earth's mantle where it will harm nothing.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Tell that to the folks who've contracted for power from Palo Verde and others.

Nukes in the US are, for all intents and purposes, non-financeable and non-insurable, which means the industry is dead in the US, except for those existing plants which are still running.

Power output from existing nukes also has regulatory and rate-case gaming overtones, rather than reflecting any sudden or progressive superiority in the resource.

[General Ludd]

As polluting as coal is, nuclear is probably much worse in the long-term.

[DRoseDARs]

Indeed, and to be clear I would choose all the cleaner and safer alternatives (wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, biofuel...) over nuclear any day of the week, but the poll was between nuclear and coal. And banana peals.

[General Ludd]

Wouldn't banana peals count as biofuel?

[DRoseDARs]

Technically yes, but have you smelled burning banana peals before? Ew, think I'll pass.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Nukes in the US are, for all intents and purposes, non-financeable and non-insurable, which means the industry is dead in the US, except for those existing plants which are still running.

Nationalization

[Chemical Ollie]

Communist nuke plants

[DRoseDARs]

Nuking Communist plants, then?

[Heresson]

Originally posted by Chemical Ollie
Communist nuke plants

communist nuke plants --> Tchernobyl --> greater diversity in life, evolution's pace increases

[LordShiva]

India's fast-breeder reactor program staying outside international safeguards

[Heresson]

Indian reactor gets damaged in a great train incident, explodes and kills half of India, while the other half gets conquered by Pakistan

[Proteus_MST]

DFepends on the security standards.

If we talk about a western (i.e. eurpoean or US) nuclear powerplant I would choose this over a coal plant.

but if the nuclear powerplant is of a russian design, I would always prefer the coal plant