

The Lesser Evil: Nuclear or Coal? - tokenadult
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_lesser_evil_nuclear_or_coal/

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JunkDNA
This really struck me: "One low-enriched fuel pellet weighing the same as
three pennies contains the energy equivalent of 1,780 pounds of coal"

I knew nuclear had a higher density, but wow, that's a pretty striking way to
put that information into perspective. I understand all the fears of
accidents, terrorist attacks, etc... but if your goal is to curb CO2, it
certainly looks like an option worth considering.

Increasing nuclear plant safety seems like a more tractable engineering
problem than figuring out how to keep CO2 out of the environment after you've
liberated it from tons and tons of coal.

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yan
I don't understand treating nuclear waste as such. If it's radioactive, it
means it can still be fuel. Am I missing something? As far as I remember, the
plants in France reuse their waste until it's almost completely non-
radioactive and then purpose it to industry.

~~~
radu_floricica
Lots and lots of waste is contaminated stuff, not spent fuel. For example the
regulations may (and probably do) require that used protection suits be
treated as radioactive waste.

This way you end up with huge quantities of waste that may indeed be slightly
harmful, but are in no way radioactive enough to be reused as fuel. This is
mostly where the "tons" of waste come from.

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yummyfajitas
The low level waste you describe is not strongly radioactive.

Although obviously a political impossibility, a safe way to deal with it would
be to pulverize it and spread it _evenly_ throughout our national parks. This
would not even measurably increase the radiation level above the background
level.

~~~
radu_floricica
Or build schools with it :) I know the statistics.

Steven Chu sounds like an interesting guy. We'll see what happens.

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Retric
There is no need to build a large number of Nuclear or Coal plants any time
soon so the question is almost irelevent.

As a side note: Why do they feel it's nessisary or even reasonable to find
people with strong vested intrests when looking at these topics?

    
    
      researches capture and storage of flue gas CO2 and other fugitive gases
      studies clean coal at the University of Queensland.
    

Not that finding people who don't understand the toppic is all that much
better.

    
    
      is a novelist, writer, and former fiction editor at The New Yorker.

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quickpost
I haven't read the article, but I learned everything I need to know from John
McCarthy (Creator of Lisp).

He's got a great FAQ on Nuclear Power, and it's incredibly convincing:

<http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html>

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jacquesm
wind, solar, tides etc!

The article shoves these aside with an 'we currently can not make the required
quantities using these technologies so we have to choose between coal and
nuclear'.

The problem is not to switch to coal or nuclear today though. So let's keep
those windfarms coming, better and lower priced solar cells and let's see what
other truely renewable energy sources we can find.

Then let's solve the remainder as much as we can by burning waste rather than
nuclear power or coal.

~~~
ErrantX
the solar technology is here. households could have good efficient solar
systems to provide a good portion of the electricity they need. There could
also be policy that every new house has to have solar panels (less cost if
they are built in in large numbers)

However just like when the oil companies researched, patented and never sold
oil additives that would have made petrol (gas) go further (not a conspiracy
:) my Aunt was a research chemist for one company) purely to secure their
market they are doing similar things with solar tech; lobbying and hiding it
:) we worked on a small project at the end of my degree for an energy company
I shall not name - they were actively patenting advances in solar tech "for a
rainy day" :)

Fair play - no one else bothered to beat them too it. But it does suck.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
IP laws are not fair play. Most especially in cases that obvious where the
patent filer has no intention of doing anything with the patent/.

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biohacker42
It's a shame that's such a great discussion of experts only has 3 points in 2
hours.

~~~
radu_floricica
They don't seem like experts in this particular field... and it's not really a
discussion. More like a very good indicator of what people with both brains
and influence think - but even so it is deeply flawed by the selection.

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mati
See another interesting article about the general topic (Wind or Nuclear?)
<http://mises.org/story/3536>

