Map of electricity generation mix in United States

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by UFO

Sorry, no. Nuclear waste continues to build up and be hazardous to life for millenia to come. Direct solar in the form of wind, biomass, hydro, PV, concentration and tidal is the way to go if one is concerned with sustainability.

The hazardous life lasting thousands of years only happens when the fuel is used once, 5% to 16% of the fissile fuel is consumed and it is thrown away.
When the fuel is recycled and the waste isotopes are concentrated they lose 99.9% of their radioactivity after 40 years.

The raw waste is very unstable and requires continued cooling water. As a bonus the longer it sits around the more unstable it becomes. The sooner the waste and useable fissile fuel are separated the better it is for everyone.
The concentrated waste is actually more stable than the raw waste that is still loaded with uranium and plutonium.

The waste being left to be hazardous for thousands is the product of ignorant, reckless, careless, irresponsible, politically motivated people running our nuclear program. The only reason it is this way is because people chose to leave it this way.

Uranium/Plutonium fuel cycle will last up to 300 to 500 years, Thorium at least 1000 years. Sustainability is not an issue. Wind, solar, hydro, coal will hopefully all be obsolete by then.
The funky rare earth elements used to make solar panels and high strength rare earth magnets will be long gone or become very hard to find long before the thorium runs out.

Again on the subject of the horrible nuclear waste that everyone seems to be afraid of and/or not understand:
The weird thing with Thorium's main long lived "waste" isotope plutonium 248, is actually not really "waste". It is in demand for deep space exploration. Turns out its a pretty good nuclear fuel.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

The "waste" can mostly be recycled.

Not just mostly. Depending on the type of reactor it came from and how fresh the waste is, up to 95% of the "waste" can be recycled into fuel. This "recycled" fuel is loaded with plutonium and is better than new fuel.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by Ecky

Hydro-electric,,,,, the safest ways to make energy.

Search for how many people have been killed by hydro power dam failures.
One dam break killed something like 20,000 or 30,000 people.
I believe total estimates are as high as 250,000 to 300,000 people.
Hydro power is one of the more deadly methods of power production.

How many people have been killed by nuclear power plants?
Directly, up to 130, indirectly maybe up to 5,000 (pure speculation).

[IamIan]

My 2 bits .. not that it matters of course .. opinions are like __ .. everyone has one...

Fusion > Fission

We already have a Fusion Reactor built , installed, and operating , with a vast surplus output for several billion years more fuel than the sum of all possible fissionable fuels on the planet.

Fission at best is an intermediate / middle step available today ... It's a known dead end road.

I see diverting resources away from the better long term solutions .. Fusion .. and Fusion Harnessing (RE) .. to instead invest those resources in a known dead end road .. to be .. short sighted .. and ultimately less efficient use of net-resources.

[IamIan]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

It's also "interesting" to see all the reports showing that the so-called "Dead Zone" around Chernobyl actually hosts a thriving ecosystem. Seems like that deadly radioactive nuclear waste is less harmful to wildlife than humans :-(

'dead zone' is misleading .. it's an area of vastly increased risk of many disorders .. cancers , birth defects .. etc.

The question is which is the larger contributor to the 'thriving' ... reducing our other human negative presence there we had previously been making .. or the negative of the health effects of the mess we made before we left ??

-0 + 6 = 6
-2 + 10 = 8

The -2 is still a negative.
net 8 > net 6 even with the -2 included.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

It is quite true. The radioactive material used in power plants is mined from the earth. In other words, it's already in nature, we just concentrated it to make it useful for power generation.

No, that's not the way it works. If you didn't pay attention in high school physics, and haven't figured out how to use Google, Wikipedia, and other web resources (or your local public library), it goes something like this:

The U-235 used in power plants is actually not all that radioactive, with a half-life around 700 million years. In nature, it goes through a chain of alpha & beta decays, eventually winding up as lead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_...ctinium_series

However, it also has the property that if you hit it with a slow neutron, it breaks apart into (usually) two chunks plus some extra neutrons &c, releasing a bunch of energy. The chunks can be (and usually are) much more radioactive than the original U-235.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by IamIan

'dead zone' is misleading .. it's an area of vastly increased risk of many disorders .. cancers , birth defects .. etc.

No, it's an area where this is claimed to be the case, based on little or no actual evidence.

[IamIan]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

No, it's an area where this is claimed to be the case, based on little or no actual evidence.

I don't understand.

I claim 'dead zone' is misleading .. and you disagree.

Yet the rest of your post seems to agree with me that 'dead zone' is misleading.

Which is it?
Misleading or not?

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

No, that's not the way it works. If you didn't pay attention in high school physics, and haven't figured out how to use Google, Wikipedia, and other web resources (or your local public library), it goes something like this:

The U-235 used in power plants is actually not all that radioactive, with a half-life around 700 million years. In nature, it goes through a chain of alpha & beta decays, eventually winding up as lead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_...ctinium_series

However, it also has the property that if you hit it with a slow neutron, it breaks apart into (usually) two chunks plus some extra neutrons &c, releasing a bunch of energy. The chunks can be (and usually are) much more radioactive than the original U-235.

Precisely, which speeds up the half-life of naturally occurring U235, which speeds up the amount of time that the radioactive substance is radioactive. The stuff is going to decay naturally, why not exploit the energy released instead of leaving it in the environment?

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by IamIan

I don't understand.

I claim 'dead zone' is misleading .. and you disagree.

I agree that "dead zone" is misleading - that's where I came in. What I disagree on is the claim that it's an area of vastly increased risk of cancers, birth defects, &c. AFAIK, that claim is simply not supported by evidence.