China Goes Nuclear 1058
Rei writes "Wired reports that the People's Republic of China has announced plans to build 30 new nuclear reactors by the year 2020, and by 2050 have almost as much nuclear power as the entire world produces today. The reactors are to be pebble bed reactors, in which helium replaces radioactive, pressurized water. A Chinese research institution demonstrated the safety of their test reactor against meltdown by shutting off the coolant."
Couldn't be done in U.S. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:4, Insightful)
And we all know that rockets never blow up or otherwise fail on launch.
Excellent news (Score:5, Insightful)
China is showing that it is forward-thinking enough to look beyond fossil fuels for its electricity. This can only be good for the environment and global warming in particular.
I hope this reopens the nuclear power debate in the West. The USA and Europe should seriously consider comitting to new nuclear power plants for both economic and environmental reasons.
Hopefully they stay the course. (Score:5, Insightful)
Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
You think China -or- the US wants to duke it out over $100+ barrels of oil in the next few years?
Re:Seems much more of a threat to the US than Iraq (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:5, Insightful)
there are a number of clever idea's about how to deal with it including one which disposes of it in the giant fusion reaction that is our Sun.
except everyone is way too afraid to put anything radioactive on a rocket. what happens if it explodes and rains down radioactive waste upon a city? i agree however that fear of nuclear power is exaggerated. the only reason china is building plants and the US is not, is because no one wants one in their backyard. in china they dont have much choice in what the government determines for them.
Safety test (Score:3, Insightful)
And what would have happened (other than the obvious) had done had their safety system failed?
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:1, Insightful)
Bomb em... (Score:0, Insightful)
Communism is good for something (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:3, Insightful)
And in China, of course, there won't be any of those pesky worker protests, singing:
"Come gather round children
it's high time you learned
bout a hero named Homer
and a devil named Burns.
We'll march till we drop
the girls and the fellas
we'll fight till the death
or else fold like umbrellas.
So we'll march day and night
by the big cooling tower
they have the plant
but we have the power!"
The link for pebble bed reactors is a bit slow... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:4, Insightful)
It took Eastern Europe to alert the world that there might be problem at Cherynobl. Do you think the Chinese govnerment will be seeking public input on were and how to store the waste?
stop comparing these to Chernobyl (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a really great development, and I hope it gets presented accurately in the press. The Wired article is very well written, though the blurb on the cover about the relationship between these plants and hydrogen is completely bogus. There is no more relationship between these plants and hydrogen than there is between any other power source and hydrogen.
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:2, Insightful)
The worst nuclear disaster in history, Cherynobl, killed a total of 3,000 people. That includes long term deaths attributed to radiation poisoning and increased cancer rates. Coal mining on the other hand kills around 30,000 people every year in mining accidents alone.
If you are going to consider the mortality caused by mining the coal, then you should also consider the mortality caused by mining uranium. That stuff doesn't grow on trees, you know. More nuclear power will mean more mining accidents. Different mines, though.
Re:Communism is good for something (Score:4, Insightful)
At least in China people can't bitch about how dangerous nuclear energy is. I'm not saying communism is good, but in this case it is. Plus i'm sure oil lobbyists would play a role in the US, not so in China (I think).
I dont mind dumb people bitching about things they have at least a little knowledge of, but I hate ignorant people who bitch about things they have no clue about.
Re:Good! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Couldn't be done in U.S. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:3, Insightful)
There are plenty of things in this world which can cause far more than 3,000 deaths if the rules and procedures for operating them are not followed. Maybe you should educate yourself about what happened in Chernobyl [wikipedia.org].
Re:Excellent news (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good! (Score:3, Insightful)
Nuclear power is great(I'm a liberal, but I cringe when the hippies start protesting about it), but it's not an end all to all of our energy problems. THe world really needs to diversify, that way if something happens to one source of energy, there will still be other sources to tide humanity over till more alternatives are found.
Re:Now only if... (Score:5, Insightful)
These people protest and call this a "war for oil". Well when they fight like hell to prevent expansion for nuclear energy, it doesn't leave Bush many options. Remember how Bush wanted to drill in the frozen tundras of Alaska? The Alaskans were on television saying what a good idea this was and that the land they were going to drill was just a frozen tundra anyway.
Bush and his cabinet have been pushing for nuclear power and moving off foreign dependency for oil all along and people who just jump on the eco bandwagon don't know what they're talking about half the time.
More radiation has leaked into the environment from burning coal then nuclear waste. More people have died as a result of coal mining and oil drilling than from nuclear power. We spent all this money years ago to develop nuclear power and now no new plants are being built because of these enviro-nuts.
While we clang our cymbals.... (Score:1, Insightful)
While other countries install the latest and greatest nuclear reactors, the US blathers on about "deregulation" and "no nukes".
Sooner or later things will be different enough overseas that we'll look up and realize that the US has no vision except what we consume and how much government cash we can use to do the consumin'.
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nice (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:2, Insightful)
As far as terrorist attacks, good. We drastically over-reacted to the towers falling. Hell, I was living in NYC at the time and still think that. A bit under 3k people died once from the attack, oddly enough, more people in NYC die a little over each month in NYC (2000 figures from the NYC dept. of health) then were killed when the towers fell. Perhaps we're concentrating too much on the wrong enemy? Of course then again we still haven't caught the person who planned the attacks, we were diverted and deceived by our govt... Er, sorry. that slipped out. Anyways, the point is, with current energy needs we need to do something different then traditional means. If China is willing to be the test bed, then god bless them.
We'll see I suppose.
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:5, Insightful)
Any overclocker would know that the noise a fan makes is proportional to the rpm of the fan, or inversely proportional to the size of the fan if you keep airflow constant. Besides, the reason fans are loud, aside from the motors themselves, is because they are creating air motion, aka sound. Outside, there is already a hell of a lot more air motion than a fan could ever hope to make, we call it wind, and it's already loud.
Where does all this misinformation about wind power come from? (I'm from Alberta which is, from my anecdotal evidence, one of the most wind-power-friendly places in Canada)
It does, and as far as I know... (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the whole "yeah but you don't want to live next to one", true enough but on the whole I would rather live close to a nuclear power plant than close to a coal or oil one.
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:rediculous (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering all nuclear accidents so far, nuclear power probably has saved considerable number of lifes, as well as large ground areas. Damage from burning coal and oil is generally spread over larger areas, but total damage is by far bigger, even when pro-rated with energy production (that is, smaller amount of nuclear power compared to total of coal-based power).
Just as with 9/11, big single bangs get undeserved amount of attention as tragedies. It's almost as if no people ever died due to terror attacks in Belfast, Beirut or Tel Aviv; mostly because those were couple of deaths here, dozen there. They still add up to similar figures, and generally are as bad tragedies, just divided over longer time spans. Similarly, nuclear accidents while spectacular, are no worse than every-day problems coal (etc) burning causes, over time.
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an incredibly smart move by China. They can clearly see the problems our dependence on foreign oil has caused. When oil hits $75/barrel in several years, Americans are going to look at China's cheap nuclear power facilities and say "Why didn't we think of that?".
-B
Australia missing its mark (Score:5, Insightful)
For more than a decade, the federal government have been unable to create low or medium-sized respositories for nuclear waste anywhere in the country. Every time the issue comes up opposition parties (including of course so-called green parties) hammer it for all its worth from the most superficial angles imaginable. Even the South Australian Liberal government got in on the act a few years ago, chanting "Not in *our* back yard" despite the middle of the Australian desert being no closer to Adelaide than high-level nuclear stores in France are to Prague.
So instead we have low-level nuclear waste scattered in sites all around the metropolitan area of several cities, which leads to situations like that of us having substantial waste stores sitting in the bottom of the university of Adelaide and Royal Adelaide Hospital, both of them right next to a river. This inconsistency is one of many that shows up scum political forces who harvest stupid people's irrational fears about nuclear issues.
If Australian green politicians were genuinely passionate about our global environmental responsponsibilities they'd be comfortable with the idea of Australia as a major player in nuclear power and as a site for waste disposal.
The above opinions guarantee I would have no hope of ever making it in politics.
Re:Good! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:While we clang our cymbals.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:rediculous (Score:1, Insightful)
Because we don't bother locking up protesters since we can simply control the mass media to the point where most people would feel too embarrassed to protest in the first place.
The only remaining so-called protesters are actors we hire to look like fools on TV--for example, we can hire ugly balding old men to wear a pink dress painted with the opposing side's favorite slogan (something different from the homeless-looking, dirty long-haired hippies we used to hire).
Better yet, we hired a news reporter that looks like a creepy undead zombie to voice fumbling opposition on the same show as our studly athletic news reporter voicing our views with supreme confidence and charisma. This way, we can claim to be fair & objective while making the general population too embarrassed to side with opposing views.
Image matters and that is why we'll control our rabble more effectively by using media than the Chinese control theirs using a stick. Best of all, we can constantly use the media we control to claim that all the media is biased against us so the inmates won't suspect us.
Our methods are far more superior. God bless America! We are the best at everything.
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:5, Insightful)
A few things worry me about it.
Firstly: It appears we have some of the stuff wrapped in aluminium foil and aren't entirely sure where it is.
Secondly: Some of this stuff will be dangerously radioactive for longer than any form of government has been in existence for. Realisticly this means there is no gurantee we can successfully pass the information on about where we have buried the stuff for the required length of time.
Possibly we are intentially hiding (read: losing) this information because the companies don't care or possibly to avoid terrorism. OR maybe both.
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you ever driven through Gary Indiana? Or downriver detroit? Or the Bronx? Or East LA? Or Washington DC east of the Capital? Or any number of smelly places near petroleum refineries? There's millions of people who live near things a whole lot worse than a nuke plant.
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:1, Insightful)
Instead of trying to plan for it to be stored in 1 million years, put the waste back where we got the material and store it for the next few hundred years. If we don't make extreme reductions to the amount of carbon we burn, we won't have to worry for more longer then we can store it.
Re:REALITY (Score:3, Insightful)
Too bad the current conservatives in power are hooked fossil fuel. Maybe if the nuclear power industry had better lobbyists and got members appointed to cabinet positions then they could compete with big oil and coal on an even footing
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:3, Insightful)
You gotta be kidding. You must go to the ostrich school of nuclear waste disposal, just bury it, out of sight out of mind, trust us it will be OK.
what about putting it back in the uranium mines that the fuel came from? it was just stitting there being radioactive before we mined it, so the land wasn't terribly useful. just put the unusable waste back where it came from.
See, the thing is (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:REALITY (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's people I distrust, not the technology (Score:1, Insightful)
The new reactors are safe because according to the physics of it, it is literally impossible for there to be a meltdown. Not because some guy is always going to be watching and fix things when they go wrong, but because it just CAN'T HAPPEN. I don't think it can be any clearer than that. If you don't believe the world-renowned physicists, then go take some physics classes.
So lets recap. Before, we relied on people's competence for safety. The new reactors rely on the laws of physics for safety. Unless God decides to fuck with our heads by making things not work they way they used to, I think the laws of physics are a pretty safe bet.
But of course, there is no reason to listen to logic and science, so screw that.
Re:The Canadian Shield (Score:5, Insightful)
But the point is, why put it in long term storage? We might want the stuff in a hundred or two hundred years. Just look at what happened with the "useless" oil - was useless two hundred years ago.
Re:REALITY (Score:4, Insightful)
When we have a permanent place to store nuclear waste, then I think that we can look to the future of Nuclear reactors in America, but until that point, it has to wait.
Honest question about Nuke Plants (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't have a strong opinion one way or another, but I do know that nothing is 100% safe, yet otherwise intelligent people are claiming that on this very thread.
What is it about this topic that is so attractive to techies that they choose to turn off all intelligent filtering.
Or is it just that they are so used to encountering strong resistance in others (about this subject) that they feel they must be extreme to get their point across?
Luddite?! BUZZWORD! (Score:1, Insightful)
That said, I'm all for research more efficient re-seeding nuclear fission plants. I'm not for nuclear fission as an end-all solution, rather a bridge between our current non-sustainable mode of energy production and whatever future technologies we figure out (fusion, hydrogren-based power infrastructure, etc). Keep in mind, nuclear fission is just as non-sustainable as coal, oil, or natural gas - there are finite supplies of fissionable material on earth.
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:3, Insightful)
First, an eight-mile-per-gallon improvement in the fleetwide CAFE is literally impossible with current technology, unless you go out and outlaw all vehicles that can have more than four passengers, and eliminate work trucks and the like . . . and unless you outlaw the ones on the roads already, it'd be years before that would even do it.
Second, we probably would import a greater percentage of our oil from the Middle East if fuel economy went up. The cheapest place in the world to extract oil is the Middle East, and the easiest oil in the world to refine is from the Middle East. Any reduction in oli consumption will reduce prices; any reduction in prices would shutter wells that produce the more expensive oil first, and increase the Middle East market share.
Third, since there's a world market for oil, the U.S. simply not importing any from the Middle East would in no way reduce the economic impact of oil shocks in the Middle East. Turmoil in the Middle East reducing the supply of oil to the rest of the world would cause a bid-up in the price of American, Canadian, Mexican, and Venezuelan oil, as the rest of the world tries to buy it in place of Middle Eastern oil.
If anyone today is telling you we can end our economic reliance on Middle Eastern oil in less than 20 years, one of the following four things is true:
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:3, Insightful)
Set metal containers full of toxic waste in salt water and you will have a pool of uncontained waste in no time.
The key problem with all long term storage sites is you are looking at them in terms of the current climate and a very short historical record. Yucca Mountain is dry now but probably wasn't in the past and may well not be dry in the future especially at the rate our climate is currently changing.
Re:The Canadian Shield (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How about supergun or space elevator? (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably cause it'd get shot right back up sooner or later (depending on where you dump it).
Some subduction zones move at roughly 4cm or so a year. The volcanic arcs near these zones are anywhere from 25 - 100 miles away (sometimes farther, sometimes closer). The radioactive waste can theoretically return in as little as a few million years. Depending on the half lives of the material, that is still a dangerous prospect, especially when a volcano explodes and sends all sorts of debris and particulate matter around the globe.
Granted, *we* probably won't ever have to worry about it again, but it's still quite a dangerous prospect (especially since the canisters would probably rupture/rust/corrode before they were ever fully subducted and spread friendly radioactive material all over the ocean floor).
Re:-5 Ludite on the MQR standard (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, perhaps some contractors needed work and the government "created" work for them.
Obvoiusly, there is a perceived threat. That being the potential for it to cause environmental impact, and most importantly that the 3v1L terrorists would get their grubby mits on it.
2) Plutonium, contrary to what you might believe is not especially toxic. It's hydride is pyrophoric (likes to burn in water), and that's the biggest danger, as far as I'm concerned. Compared to many things, it's downright benign from a psyological aspect. Radioactive potassium is far more worrysome--and boy does the body like to store that...
The thing you've got to worry about chiefly with Pu is inhalation of the dust. The body slowly transports it to the liver. And from there it goes to the bones and causes leukemia. Pu dosen't form solutions in water very well, and what does solute will most lilely be excreted by the body. You'd better worry about arsenic or mercury instead (of which ALOT MORE is dumped into our fresh water every year than there ever will be of Plutonium--think mines.)
The fact is that most of the stuff we'd ever bury isn't any worse than what's already out there. Yeah. Some of it needs to go underground. Like the potassium, among a few other truely nasty things. The rest of it is still potentially useful for power, industrial and medical use.
Why bury it? To make oil more valuable, naturally.
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry, wrong. We do have it and it's called "SynRoc" and has been around for 20 years.
It was developed at the ANU in Canberra, Australia, and is considered by many to be the "perfect" solution for disposal of Nuclear waste.
Read this [uic.com.au].
Re:Excellent news (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe if the Earth's population was at the level it was in 1850, there would be no environmental problems and no global warming.
It might be difficult to convince the rest of the world that this was the solution, however. It seems like the "solution" proposed by most is that "those guys" are using too many resources and need to be "scaled back", sometimes drastically. Sort of how Dresden was "scaled back" in WW II. We need to take the initiative and show the rest of the world that we are forward looking enough to address the problem unilaterally.
Of course, this means we need 75% of the US population to report to euthanasia centers, but what the heck, we are talking about the survival of the planet here.
Warmonger problem! (Score:5, Insightful)
if you look at the examples of "good" nuclear countries like Japan or France they have little or no MILIITARY interest involved in their nuclear programs...so they design to be easy and safe... and are very successful at it. kinda makes you wonder who the "real" good guys are in all this nuclear mess.
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:5, Insightful)
A Geiger counter might help there. If you can't detect it, you probably don't need to worry about it.
Secondly: Some of this stuff will be dangerously radioactive for longer than any form of government has been in existence for. Realisticly this means there is no gurantee we can successfully pass the information on about where we have buried the stuff for the required length of tim
So? Human-built structures have been around for longer than any form of government has been in existence for. The Egyptian pyramids, or Stonehenge, among others. Just build a pyramid on top of the stuff, with appropriate warnings about it being cursed.
Besides, there's an inverse relationship between the intensity of emitted radiation and how long that radiation lasts. Potassium (K40) is radioactive with a half-life in the billion year range, but the intensity is generally negligible. (I once read that you'll pick up more radiation from sleeping with somebody (from their K40) than you would living next to a nuclear plant, but I haven't done the math.)
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:1, Insightful)
If we can get to the magma, why not use that as an energy source instead?
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:3, Insightful)
So what would you wind up with if you dilute the waste by the same amount that the original uranium was?
And said plutonium can't itself be used in reactors to generate power?
If you can cause it to fission in a chain reaction (a requirement to build a bomb), you can use it to power a reactor, as long as you have an appropriate neutron moderator.
Sure. But that in itself isn't a problem. It's only a problem when it appears in food and water in concentrations high enough to matter. If the stuff is dilute enough, then that won't be a problem unless there's some sort of natural concentration process happening. Furthermore, it appears that the only toxicity danger of plutonium even worth talking about is that when the plutonium is inhaled. That can be prevented by using the proper method of processing said plutonium.
In any case, none of this is an issue if you use said plutonium as reactor fuel in a properly designed reactor, since at that point the plutonium in question would only present a danger to the people operating the plant or transporting the fuel.
That leaves the other exotic materials generated by the fission process, which obviously have to addressed on an individual basis.
Re:How about supergun or space elevator? (Score:5, Insightful)
We have recycling and reusable goods, but its more convient to throw it in the trash. All of this trash has to go somewhere, and nobody seems to care. There's many reasons to conserve: You save money, the environment, and feel good about it. I'm not anti-science, but I feel like 95% of the crap we manufacture today is complete crap. We live in huge houses, own 4 cars per family, several TV sets and multiple computers. We've gotten all this stuff within the past century. Before that, we didn't even have electricity. Its disappointing to see that because we can spend more, we feel that we must consume more. There's a direct correlation between the two and I would like to know why.
OK, you convinced me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh no shit Batman, do you mean countries that don't pollute will have to share any risks of nuclear waste as you propose, in spite of them not polluting?
Great solution that of yours...
Re:OK, you convinced me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Now tell me how do we ensure that your method is constrained to the territorial waters of the pollutant country.
Oh no shit Batman, do you mean countries that don't pollute will have to share any risks of nuclear waste as you propose, in spite of them not polluting?
Perhaps you don't understand the current system of power generation. Coal power plant exhaust is radioactive, as well as polluting in other ways, and, last time I checked, doesn't remain in the airspace of the country that generates it.
The infrastructure for wind power? Pollution. Water power? Pollution, and water resource issues. Solar? Pollution. Sorry, but all systems of power generation pollute.
As for non-nuclear countries, they already import from nuclear countries. They are using nuclear power, even if it is indirectly.
But hey, since you are so quick to criticize, show me a system, with working technology now, that will scale to power a world of 9.2 billion people (projected 2050 population) that is growing more and more developed, and thus requires more and more power.
Then show me how that working system will result in less disease and deaths then nuclear power.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Damn I sound like a tree-hugger.
Re:Nuclear energy works! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:in defense of socialism (Score:1, Insightful)
There are too many politicians trying to keep their jobs instead of doing their jobs.
Re:Bah! you think too hard (Score:3, Insightful)
Basic orbital physics. Were you educated in Kansas or something?
Re:Organic Nature Hippy Solution to Nuke Waste (Score:1, Insightful)
A nuclear reactor is basically, a compost pile. You heap up a bunch of the right isotopes, and they start to decay. Instead of turning it with a fork to aerate, you add neutron moderating substances to make sure there are enough nutritious thermal neutrons to keep the whole thing going.
Like any other compost pile that's working right, it gets warm, or even hot to the touch. By using that heat to drive a fluid through a turbine, we use it to generate electicity. Nuclear power is natural. It's just composting of isotopes.
When the first flush of decay is over, and the U235 is starting to be depleted, it leaves behind other shorter lived isotopes.
The compost pile has not finished decaying when new fuel is introduced. The half-decayed fuel rods are like half rotted tomatos and fish heads in your compost pile at home. They still stink, and they are no good for growing a garden.
In the case of breeder reactors and certain isotopes of plutonium, the continued composting can still produce enough heat to make electricity, but for the even shorter lived isotopes, that isn't yet done.
Now short lived isotopes are analogous to that moldy fish head. Producing high amounts of radiation, they are at the peak of stink. Because decay has totally set in on the fish head, it reaks, but because of that very decay, it will soon be completely gone, leaving perhaps an innoffensive skeleton behind, and nutritious soil for your garden. After 5 years, half of your Cobalt 60 is gone. What it leaves behind is either more or less radioactive than before. If it is less radioactive, it is less dangerous, if it is more radioactive, then IT will be gone even sooner. Radioactive waste wants to become less radioactive over time. Eventually it will not be much worse than the U235 fuel it started as.
But even if it is a little worse, so what? It's still neutronisious and full of vitamins. Properly diluted, it contributes helpfully to the natual random genetic mutations that have brought life up from plankton to mammals.
Once your grass clippings, and rotten tomatoes, and cow manure, and fish heads have finished composting, the soil is great for your garden. But while you might take a drink from a cool mountain stream you wouldn't drink from a puddle in your compost heap. There will be traces of the Cow Manure, and rotten fish head in the water. It is those traces that make the composted material more nutritious for your garden than the continually washed gravel comprising that mountain stream bed, but nutritious for plants is one thing, eating composted fish heads and manure is another. Better to let the plants make use of the nutrients and then eat the plants.
So spreading radioactive waste around the planet seems to be the solution. As it decays it's neutrative neutrons will fertilize natural selection with new mutations, and it will never become much of a problem because the stinkiest radioisoptopes decay away the fastest, leaving the wholesome longer lived radioisotopes behind.