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  • Nuclear Power's Second Coming Will Lead to a Uranium Boom
    7-11-08: Leak closes French nuclear plant

    news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/eu...
    Jul 11 13:15 pm |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Nuclear Power's Second Coming Will Lead to a Uranium Boom
    Firs of all, I'm not saying I'm anit-nuke, but as someone who had a friend who was an inspector at at a nuclear power plant, let's just say things go bad a lot more often then is made public. All the motivation is to hide minor accidents, near catastrophes, etc.. The main problem, according to my friend, was using substandard replacement parts due to greed (kickbacks, etc.), and this is why problems often occurred, and where I fear might continue to occur in the future (even the best designed plants won't function right if someone decides to save a few bucks and use a few substandard parts).

    For the time being, plants in the U.S. are currently storing their spent rods in cooling pools within the nuclear facilities. These pools were never designed to store so many rods, meaning the pools need to be actively cooled with fervor in order to prevent a meltdown. This is just the cooling pools, not the reactor themselves! Something goes wrong just with the active cooling, and we have a problem (even after the plants no longer produce electricity). Can anyone really say if storing the radioactive waste in mines is going to harm all living things in the future? Are the risks worth taking? I just want people to be aware that nuclear has more risks than people seem to be aware of. Perhaps it is still the right way to go, but no one can make a good decision without knowing as much info as possible.
    Jul 10 11:07 am |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Uranium: Red Hot Yellow Cake
    Of course, the other incentive for replacing the fossil fuels powered vehicle fleet"\ is to stop sending so many Western dollars to countries who's populace wants to do harm to Western countries. Cutting our appetite for oil is important for so many reasons, it's amazing to me that very little has been done to make it happen. I won't say it has anything to do with the leaders of the united states being so involved in oil.
    May 23 09:11 am |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article
  • Uranium: Safely and Efficiently Powering the Future
    I cringe when I hear the words "safe" and "clean" always put before the words "nuclear energy" (as is often the case lately). I cringe that people are mixing marketing-speak with their intellectual arguments, which immediately minimizes my trust of a pro-nuke argument. I have a unique perspective as I used to be friends with someone who worked as a safety inspector at a nuclear power plant in California. He scared the crap out of me, telling me how many near-disasters at this plant that were never were publicized (perhaps there are a lot more minor accidents than we hear of). One of the biggest problems, according to my inspector friend, was that the maintenance and replacement of old parts were not always done to spec, often because different suppliers offered kickbacks to the plant buyers use their sub-standard replacement parts. Yes, as long as humans are involved, there are ways that perfectly designed plants can become dangerous -- you never know who might take a short cut to line their own pockets. The other scary thing for my inspector friend was seeing spent rods pile up in the cooling pool that was never designed to store so much radioactive material. These rods need to be actively cooled in the pool, or there will be a meltdown -- so you can't just stop the reactor and walk away. I'm not sure what the answer is to our energy needs, but I want to punch everyone who always adds the marketing buzzwords "safe" and "clean" as a prefix to the words "nuclear energy" as if it were a fact. BTW, on my fairly small roof I have 24 solar panels that produce more energy than my family and home-based business consume (on a year-over-year basis). I'm not saying solar is going to solve the world's energy problems tomorrow, but it most certainly can be a bigger part of our energy plan.
    May 09 14:39 pm |Rating: 0 0 |Link to Comment |View article

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