@Supernova122:
That doesn't make it wrong. Add on the nuclear fuel cycle amount, and it's a tenth of the Chernobyl amount. You still get .1 …
I don't understand. Did you decide not to check what I actually said and just assume I was wrong and look for tangential evidence to your advantage? You used exactly the same table as me to try and contradict me ...
OK, so you didn't actually read this table, either. It specifically says that nuclear fuel cycle exposures are up to 0.02 mSv near sites. That's ten times Chernobyl, not one tenth. If you can't see how this additional radiation (even if people are kept away from it) is harmful for the environment, then I think that the blinded one is you.
And that's a small amount … I don't understand how you think it will give such a large dosage to anyone. There is just no evidence to suggest that it adds up to anything so significant.
Do you understand that the radiation from the nuclear fuel cycle will continue to exist essentially forever? That it will elevate the amount of radiation in the soil and water nearby slowly over time… FOREVER??? This means that even the 0.29 mSv that we get from our food and water is going to increase over time, simply because IT is being exposed to our nuclear waste AS WELL.
This brings us back to the chance of a serious incident at a fission reactor. Which is really low …
Is your opposition to fission really so strongly driven by paranoid fear?
You want to rehash old arguments, so here we go: It doesn't matter how unlikely an accident is. Accidents are inevitable. Fission accidents are more costly than any of you seem to understand, as I've been trying so painstakingly hard to explain. Don't ask me to explain myself again, alright?
I don't know where these mysterious un-electrified places who will have a huge and significant power draw are …
How about lots of Africa, Asia, Indonesia, and South America?
There're pretty significant populations in these continents (I know that Indonesia isn't a continent), and they will probably only continue to increase as they get access to more electricity and medicine.
Even given we are talking about areas which already do have electricity, and accounting for growth, it's still only a small slice of global energy consumption.
I do not see how this is significant enough to say that because of them, it is not possible to curb CO2 emissions.
It does not make logical sense.
Well, that's because you're completely ignoring what I'm saying about how these areas are going to develop their power sources. You can encourage people to use alternative energy as much as you want, but that's not going to prevent people from doing what they already are, which is building carbon plants.
Just so we're on the same page, Biofuels, Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas are all hydrocarbon energy sources.
Why do you think that?
Who do you think would be building such reactors? People who have no idea what they're doing?
Or maybe big energy firms from abroad …
Surely big energy firms will be doing the construction, but they won't necessarily be from abroad.
Here's another map for ya (hidden because it's huge):
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Notice anything about the names of these big energy firms? They're all from Africa.
Yes, it's the Africans who will be building and operating the African power plants. But do they have as much experience with it as we do? I don't think so…
I'm not saying that the people in less developed parts of the world are stupider or anything like that. What I'm saying is that they don't even currently have the infrastructure in place for nuclear energy production. You really think that you can just build a new fission plant in place of an old carbon one? That may be true in countries where disposing of radioactive waste is already commonplace, but for countries that don't do it yet, they've got a lot of infrastructure yet to build.
I am not trying to convince you that this is the case though.
I am trying to convince you that it is possible, and that it is desirable.
You appear to disagree, saying you'd much rather we continue to burn fossil fuels and continue to invest in future energy technologies.
Of course it's desirable! How many times do I have to say that I'm all for reducing carbon emissions before you people hear me?
I just think it's fucking brain-dead stupid for us to do so by switching to existing nuclear energy schemes.
Which is daft because surely you realise that renewables are better. Even if you're blinded to fission by some imagined drastic increase in irradiation levels in the medium-to-long term.
Please define how you are using the word "better". Better how? They're better for the environment, sure (except fission)! But can they actually supply the power that we need? Except for fission, no! But I still think that we shouldn't do fission.
I was most certainly not actually asking you that question. What my point is, is that it doesn't really matter. Just saying "Oh look, I've studied a lot of stuff related to this so trust me, I must be right about this specific thing" is not convincing. It is specific points and specific arguments that are convincing. By all means draw upon your significantly greater pools of knowledge, but don't just vaguely refer to them as if they make you right. Like about a few µSv extra radiation being way worse than climate change.
You seem very keen on making me say that I know a lot less than you.
I know a lot less than you.
So you were trying to take a jab, then? Nice to know.
I have been drawing on my (significantly greater) pools of knowledge, and I have been refuting all of your points, one by one. There's really no need for me to go into the numbers more than I already have. My points have all been pretty clear.
Man, I wish I could tell everyone they're stupid if they were going to disagree with me too.
I went back and edited that post (before you replied, actually) because I felt bad for being so rude to you. Sorry about that.
And really, I couldn't care less whether you recognize how much more I know about this than you. What's disturbing is how little you want to trust what I've got to say, when I'm clearly more experienced with the issue. You might be surprised, but this isn't the first time that I've had a discussion about the energy crisis with people. And I'll bet that the people I've talked to about it have a pretty good idea about what they're saying since, you know, they work in the industry.
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@Ubiq:
Are you just going to ignore the disastrous side-effects of using fossil fuels? Because I never claimed that nuclear waste isn't hazardous but mainly that nuclear power actually has a really good track record where safety is concerned. If I recall correctly, there's more radioactivity released from coal burning plants than there is from nuclear plants because of the presence of uranium and thorium in coal.
God knows that fly ash isn't good for anybody's health or the environment.
One of the reasons that the United States doesn't do a particularly good job managing its nuclear waste is because of opposition from people who don't understand nuclear power and just say "NO NUKES!". We don't reprocess fuel, we don't have a dedicated storage facility for nuclear waste because of political rather than scientific concerns, and there's no real move towards replacing older plants with better, more efficient ones that could reduce waste.
And how long is it going to take for nature to put us back to equilibrium exactly? Moreover, how does that address the problem that fossil fuels are a pretty lousy power source because of the amount of energy needed to extract and process them before they can be used? At least fission plants deliver a lot of energy relative to the amount of waste they create and, again, are readily available. That's not even going into the simple fact that those fossil fuels that can be relatively easily extracted are beginning to run out and those that remain are going to be even worse about creating pollution because of the more difficult extraction processes and lesser quality.
I don't know how long it'll take, Ubiq, but any amount of time is better than an effectively infinite amount of time.
Common sense says that even if we halt all our carbon emissions right now, the climate will continue to get warmer, probably for at least a similar amount of time as it's taken to start warming. Based off of this, I'd say that the Earth's climate would more or less reach its maximum temperature (assuming zero additional carbon emissions) in 100-200 years before turning around and starting to oscillate part way back to where it was before the industrial revolution. Eventually, we'd probably reach a final stable configuration in 1000 years or so, maybe 5000 years at a maximum.
If we keep burning carbon for another fifty years, constantly phasing out old and inefficient carbon plants with newer, cleaner, more efficient ones until we figure out fusion, then that increases this timeline by probably another 100-200 years or so.
Now, you can say that I'm totally pulling this out of my ass, which I am, but I don't think it sounds that crazy.
If I'm right, then whatever impact we're having on the climate now, we'll have to deal with it for the next couple thousand years, at least. Increased risk of carbon pollution in the meantime due to diminishing fossil fuel supplies is a very real problem, but again, all of that pollution can be processed by nature already. It'll be essentially gone after a couple thousand years.
But, nuclear waste, that stuff's going to be around forever. (I'm thinking that I should make a parody of the Diamonds are Forever advert)
edit: And, considering what you've got to say about the US and how we do our waste disposal, do you really think that this is an argument for why fission power is OK? What we should be realizing is this: Fission power is so dangerous that it takes an entire country working together to manage the radioactive waste properly. Since when can we expect people to work well together? Doesn't this make you a little worried about the future, considering how many new fission plants are being put into operation worldwide?
edit 2: You're right about carbon pollution being slightly radioactive. But vaporized thorium and uranium are extremely heavy compared to the rest of the atmosphere, and these pollutants will quickly deposit into the ground where they belong. It's unfortunate that they end up near the surface, but there's always going to be a little U-238 and Th-232 there, anyway. Also, these two substances are really not very radioactive. U-238 is nothing compared to U-235 and its random byproducts.
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@Dryish:
And as far as nuclear waste deposits go, the newest designs of bunkers that they are planning to dig deep in bedrock have been designed to last for tens of thousands of years, a time during which the radiation of all waste should have gone down to non-lethal levels. Whether they will actually last that long and not leak into the water aquifers is another matter entirely, and one that we can't know for sure right now, but if you truly believe that they will be sturdy enough there is way less danger in using fission energy than those of us who fear the risks think. And that's where people in this conversation are coming from. It's simply a matter of whether or not you think storing the waste away is risky or not.
Thanks for your input, Dryish.
There's more to nuclear pollution than just how we manage our waste, though. There's the very real possibility of a meltdown (you never can be sure what sort of natural disaster will get thrown your way next, and when it's coming). And what a lot of people don't realize is that there actually is radioactive gas produced by fission plants, even during normal operations. Not all of the random fission byproducts like to stay as solids, and so you've always got some small amount of radioactive gas leaking off of your fission reactor. There's no way to perfectly prevent the escape of these gasses into the environment, even if you've got your reactor in a good, solid containment wall.