Good pro-nuclear arguements?

[Zixinus]

I find myself more and more arguing in favour of nuclear power.

However, while I'm familiar to how a reactor essentially works, I feel that I don't know enough.

Can someone point me to a good source regarding nuclear power (yes, I've checked Wikipedia)?

One other thing, is that I've read a great article regarding Union of Concerned Scientist and how biased they are. I also recall that it was on Sikon's site. Can anybody link me that, please?

[Eulogy]

How about the argument that in a few decades (give or take a few) nuclear is basically going to be the only thing that will suppy power to the vast majority of the world's infrastructure?

[Patrick Degan]

The best way to describe a nuclear reactor is that it's essentially a heat engine —generated by the fission reaction. You can point out that a nuclear power plant releases miniscule amounts of pollution (and that mostly heat) into the surrounding environment as opposed to conventional power plants and certainly far less radioactive contamination than the bulk burning of coal, which is a carrier of Radon-219 (as well as selenium and mercury).

A nuke plant's waste is self-contained and fuel reprocessing offers the solution to the longterm storage problem by recovering a high percentage of burnable fuel from the waste mass. Also that fuel reprocessing essentially means a fuel source which will last possibly hundreds of millenia. So while nuclear may be a high-end investment in the short term, it will provide energy to run this civilisation for just about any term in the forseeable future without the supply and pollution problems inherent in fossil fuels, or the geographical limitations on the greener alternatives.

[Zixinus]

Thank you both, but I'm looking for more specifics, such as science papers and serious, multi-page articles regarding this topic.

The best way to describe a nuclear reactor is that it's essentially a heat engine —generated by the fission reaction.

And electric energy is gained by the Promethean cycle? That is, water boiling, spinning a turbine and the turbine spinning a generator? Does the Promethean cycle specifically refers to water-based power generation, or other other mediums?

[Ted C]

More...

For each kilowatt hour of electricty generated, a nuclear reactor produces a tiny fraction of the waste that a coal furnace produces.

Nuclear reactor waste is contained in the facility where it can be sealed up for safe storage; coal waste is simply released into the atmosphere.

Nuclear waste does not include any greenhouse gases, so there is no risk of it contributing to climate change.

Nuclear waste does not contribute to acid rain, smog, etc.

A nuclear power plant has a far smaller "footprint" (acres of land used) per kilowatt of capacity than a solar or wind facility.

[Vendetta]

We're fucked without it?

Seriously, renewable energy sources can't be brought onstream fast enough to stop the energy crisis which is going to happen, they're expensive and inefficient and need years of refinement.

[Uraniun235]

More to the point, renewables lack the energy density of fission, and are not as effective or reliable in some parts of the world as in others. They make an excellent complementary source of power, but without a drastic reduction in human population they cannot be our sole sources of electrical power.


Anti-nuclear advocates will typically hammer on safety (i.e. risk of catastrophic incident) and waste. Safety and waste are pretty easily dismissed, seeing as nuclear reactors will only be safer and safer as the designs and technologies improve (plus if you take into account the negative health impact of fossil fuel plants, someone once said the equivalent for nuclear power would be a meltdown every few years) and nuclear waste takes up a relatively small amount of space on what is a very big planet.

Some of the smarter ones try to trip you up with numbers which supposedly show that nuclear is only cost-effective (and, in pure economic terms, competitive with fossil fuel plants) in the presence of massive government subsidies. Personally, I'd be most interested in seeing a rebuttal of those cost claims.

[Nephtys]

I thought a massive, massive amount of the expenses of starting a nuclear plant is due to the extremely redundant and encompassing safety/standards, inspections, government checks and so on that have been passed over the last three decades as a 'just in case' against massive disaster.

I remember a previous thread. Going to try to search for it, which had numbers on how much of a plant's costs in startup and operation are for oversight and exacting safety regulations. There was talk about it being excessively regulated.

[Scottish Ninja]

The best response to safety concerns I've heard is, as people usually bring up Chernobyl in such a case, is "using Chernobyl as an example of the unsafe nature of nuclear reactors is like using the Titanic as an example of the unsafe nature of modern ocean liners". Safety equipment and procedures have developed since then.

As to cost, what I usually point out is that the government should be running power stations anyway; power stations should be there to provide electricity, not necessarily to make a profit. I don't know about the validity of this argument, as AFAIK much of America's power infrastructure has been privatized, but it seems to work most of the time.

[bilateralrope]

The best response to safety concerns I've heard is, as people usually bring up Chernobyl in such a case, is "using Chernobyl as an example of the unsafe nature of nuclear reactors is like using the Titanic as an example of the unsafe nature of modern ocean liners". Safety equipment and procedures have developed since then.

Didn't they deliberately turn Chernobyl's safety systems off before the meltdown ?

[Civil War Man]

The best response to safety concerns I've heard is, as people usually bring up Chernobyl in such a case, is "using Chernobyl as an example of the unsafe nature of nuclear reactors is like using the Titanic as an example of the unsafe nature of modern ocean liners". Safety equipment and procedures have developed since then.

Didn't they deliberately turn Chernobyl's safety systems off before the meltdown ?

I think they were doing a test at the time, which may have involved that. I'm not sure, though.

[Nephtys]

The best response to safety concerns I've heard is, as people usually bring up Chernobyl in such a case, is "using Chernobyl as an example of the unsafe nature of nuclear reactors is like using the Titanic as an example of the unsafe nature of modern ocean liners". Safety equipment and procedures have developed since then.

Didn't they deliberately turn Chernobyl's safety systems off before the meltdown ?

Using Chernobyl as an example of unsafe reactors is pretty much the same thing as cutting your own brake lines, headlights, horn and airbag before going on the highway as an example of why cars are unsafe. Anything is unsafe when you deliberately do a dozen things pretty much expressly disable dozens of otherwise completely reliable failsafes and control mechanisms.

[Singular Quartet]

The best response to safety concerns I've heard is, as people usually bring up Chernobyl in such a case, is "using Chernobyl as an example of the unsafe nature of nuclear reactors is like using the Titanic as an example of the unsafe nature of modern ocean liners". Safety equipment and procedures have developed since then.

Didn't they deliberately turn Chernobyl's safety systems off before the meltdown ?

The full book on Chernobyl would be "The Truth About Chernobyl" by Grigori Medvedev.

The major cause of the disaster was they disabled the safety systems to conduct a test when the other safety system was disabled for maintinence.

This is followed by the Soviet belief that the plant could not melt down and severe and endemic incompetence on the part of soviet officials in charge of their nuclear program.

[Spyder]

I remember reading something about their control rods actually speeding up the reaction rather then slowing it down.

[PeZook]

I remember reading something about their control rods actually speeding up the reaction rather then slowing it down.

There were several problems inherent with the reactor design ; One, it was a graphite-moderated reactor, which meant that the water inside the vessel served as a coolant, not a moderator - in a water-moderated design, as heat increases, steam bubbles appear in the water which don't moderate neutrons, and thus the reaction slows down on its own. In the RMBK reactor, bubbles appear, water doesn't absord neutrons (it always absorbs some) and thus the reaction speeds up as heat increases.

The second flaw was monitoring - the sensors only reached to a certain part of the reactor vessel, and thus do not monitor the most crucial areas - that is, the bottom, where heat increases most rapidly.

Third, the design of the control rods was retarded - they were actually tipped with graphite, which means that they temporarily accelerate the reaction when inserted, rather than stopping it right away.

Fourth, the containment building was...not there. Few people know that water-moderated reactors are actually supposed to explode when all other safety systems fail - because that scatters the nuclear material around, destroys the moderator and thus prevents a meltdown, which is much, much worse than a steam explosion.

Of course, they are supposed to explode within an idiotically resillient containment building - and Chernobyl didn't have containment bunkers, because building it without one saved 30% of the costs. Thus, all the results of the explosion got out into the atmosphere. The KGB actually generated a report pointing out all these flaws, but it was dismissed as scaremongering by the Party.

So, you can see that one of the primary reasons for the catastrophe were idiotic design decisions taken when building the reactor.

[Zixinus]

Do a search on this forum for all posts by Sikon. He gives rather long discussions and provides references to back up what he says; from those references, you can follow the links and usually find more info.

Okay, I'll start looking. What I'm sad about is that Sikon had an excellent site which is down now.

As for Chernobyl, the more I learn about it, the more I hear about it, the more things I understand were wrong with it.

Also about graphite moderators: I recall that there was a safety measure that Western reactors used for a long time but Soviets didn't.

Also, is France's nuclear power plants have a perfect record or just a great one? I know that the USA Navy has one.

[PeZook]

As for Chernobyl, the more I learn about it, the more I hear about it, the more things I understand were wrong with it.

The critical flaw, I think, was the control rod design. Had they been solid neutron absorber, Chernobyl wouldn't have exploded - the control crew actually scrammed the reactor, and ironically, turning the shutdown switch caused the explosion - because the rods went down, the graphite tips accelerated the reaction temporarily, this caused steam to form much quicker for a split-second and...boom.

If the control rods (the fucking control rods, the most important piece of equipment next to coolant pumps) did not fall victim to retarded cost-cutting measures, Chernobyl would be perfectly safe.

Isn't it ironic how most incredibly epic catastrophes are a result of a series of easily avoidable errors, rather than a single one? Seriously, Chernobyl was designed like a car that automatically accelerates when driving at low speed and that belches flame from the engine when its being turned off - right over the fuel tank. You know, so that it's unsafe to turn off the engine after a crash.

Also about graphite moderators: I recall that there was a safety measure that Western reactors used for a long time but Soviets didn't.

I'm not sure what you mean - there was a whole bunch of safety measures that RMBK reactors lacked, and the West would not think about cutting just to save costs

[Zixinus]

Can someone give me a link about unrealistic assumptions and work of "Union of Concerned Scientists" and general criticism about their work?

[Zixinus]

Oh and another thing:

Here is a small handbook for children regarding nuclear power "Sugárözönben élünk" ("We live in a flood of radiation") by Zsigmond Makra. In it, he mentions reprocessing and that everything can be contained by chemical means, except kripton, that somehow escapes into the atmosphere.

Mr.Zsigmond's books are excellent and good sources (well, there is a hint of Soviet propaganda, but nothing very clear or what would obviously invalidate his writing).

Does anybody know about kripton escaping into the atmosphere during reprocessing?

[Mange]

The best response to safety concerns I've heard is, as people usually bring up Chernobyl in such a case, is "using Chernobyl as an example of the unsafe nature of nuclear reactors is like using the Titanic as an example of the unsafe nature of modern ocean liners". Safety equipment and procedures have developed since then.

Didn't they deliberately turn Chernobyl's safety systems off before the meltdown ?

Yes, for testing. Also, Chernobyl (and other reactors of the same kind) didn't have a containment structure. And one could ask what sort of moron designs such a reactor. Bringing up the Chernobyl as an argument that nuclear power is unsafe is, to put it mildly, ridiculous.

[PeZook]

Yes, for testing. Also, Chernobyl (and other reactors of the same kind) didn't have a containment structure. And one could ask what sort of moron designs such a reactor. Bringing up the Chernobyl as an argument that nuclear power is unsafe is, to put it mildly, ridiculous.

To expand a bit on that point: the reactor crew didn't actually "turn off" any safety systems. The reactor was simply badly designed and lacked some key elements (like a containment building - it's absolutely critical, since it can turn a fatal catastrophe into a localized incident, like at Three Mile Island), and in addition, the crew operating it was very inexperienced. The shift supervisor hasn't even worked at a nuke plant before - all he had was experience with small naval units.

The reactor test supposed to see if the main turbine (the one driven by steam generated with heat of the reactor) could power the support systems (like water pumps) under its own momentum, after being disconnected from pressurized steam, long enough for backup diesel generators to kick in. The test was actually carried out before on another reactor of the same type, and nothing bad happened at all.

The unexperienced crew first poisoned the reactor (they lowered power for the test too quickly, thus an isotope of xenon started forming in the core, which is a nuclear poison). Since power dropped, they simply raised the control rods.Then, when preparing for the experiment, they activated the water pumps that were supposed to be driven by the turbine - that increased the flow of water through the reactor. Water absorbs neutrons, thus - power dropped. They raised the control rods further out.

It was a cascade failure from there. When they disconnected the turbine, pumps lost power, and thus - less coolant was flowing through the reactor. Bam, power increases. Coolant heats up then, and steam bubbles form inside the vessel - which means another jump in power. The xenon poison is burnt up...and then the experiment is finished, and the crew SCRAMs the reactor. Inserting graphite between the fuel rods. Graphite moderates neutrons, helping them split nuclear cores.

By that time, the cover of the reactor vessel was under immense steam pressure. When the control rods were inserted, they broke due to the immense heat, led to a runaway reaction and the forming of even more steam, and...

Boom. The steam blew a hole in the roof, because some idiot decided a containment building was too costly.

Oh, and then the graphite started burning.

As you can see, it were serious design flaws that doomed the reactor, not some inherent danger of nuclear power. Sensibly designed, reactors can be perfectly safe.

[Beowulf]

The best response to safety concerns I've heard is, as people usually bring up Chernobyl in such a case, is "using Chernobyl as an example of the unsafe nature of nuclear reactors is like using the Titanic as an example of the unsafe nature of modern ocean liners". Safety equipment and procedures have developed since then.

Didn't they deliberately turn Chernobyl's safety systems off before the meltdown ?

Using Chernobyl as an example of unsafe reactors is pretty much the same thing as cutting your own brake lines, headlights, horn and airbag before going on the highway as an example of why cars are unsafe. Anything is unsafe when you deliberately do a dozen things pretty much expressly disable dozens of otherwise completely reliable failsafes and control mechanisms.

Don't forget to mention that the car's a vintage Pinto. Or a Brilliance BS6 (Chinese car the spectacularly failed a European crash safety test).

[Ritterin Sophia]

See, this is one of those things that confuses me about my fellow Americans. Typically we want to be known as having the biggest, baddest, most powerful shit around, Hell if we tried we could probably become the worlds leading nuclear energy consumer and producer in no time, but we don't do it..

[K. A. Pital]

People already detailed why using Chernobyl as an argument against nuclear power is retarded.

A very good argument in favour of nuclear power is the fact that uranium is a longer-accessible resource than oil, thus it can meet the energy demands of the technological age and give us time to adapt to yet other sources of energy to keep our progress rolling.

Nuclear power is quite effective and a lot cleaner than coal, oil or gas.

In short, either you transit into the nuclear age (as Europe, Russia and Scandinavia would quite likely do in the next decades), or you're fucked.

The last option sounds very likely for countries which thrive on oil and ignore the power of the core.

[Prozac the Robert]

To expand a bit on that point: the reactor crew didn't actually "turn off" any safety systems.

Objection your honour!

This is a bit of a document called Chernobyl – A Canadian Perspective, which can be found here.

At any rate, the operator had struggled up
to 7% power by 1 a.m. on April 26, by violating
the procedure on the control rods. He had other
problems as well — all stemming from the fact
that the plant was never intended to operate at
such a low power. He had to take over manual
control of the flow of water returning from the
turbine, as the automatic controllers were not
operating well at the low power. This is a com-
plex task to do manually, and he never did
succeed in getting the flow correct. The reactor
was so unstable that it was close to being shut
down by the emergency rods. But since a shut-
down would abort the test, the operator disabled
a number of the emergency shutdown signals.
After about half an hour of trying to stabilize
the reactor, by 1:22 a.m. the operators felt that
things were as steady as they were going to be,
and decided to start the test. But first they dis-
abled one more signal for automatic shutdown.
Normally the reactor would shut down automati-
cally if the remaining turbine were disconnected,
as would occur in the test, but because the staff
wanted the chance to repeat the test, they dis-
abled this shutdown signal also. The remaining
automatic shutdown signals would go off on
abnormal power levels, but would not react
immediately to the test.

I'm just nitpicking really. You've summarised the accident well, but I think you are excusing the crew from a bit too much of the blame. The reactor was badly designed in such a way that it could become dangerous, but the crew still had to ignore a lot of procedure and warnings in order to get it to such a state.