Wow, I'm not going to be able to respond to some of this, nor do I think it would matter.
I've seen the recurring theme of shutting a reactor down, and how you can't do it.
The last refueling outage I was in, we shut down our reactor in less than 12 hours. And that was not a scram.
We are not running out of fuel for nuclear plants, I saw a figure that we only had 50 years left. A lot of nuclear power plants in the U.S. are burning old Soviet nuclear weapons. A section of fuel in a common 30-40 year old reactor lasts for 6 years. The newer design for plants would see refueling happening even less frequent. We're not going to be in danger of running out of fuel anytime soon, plants will be undergoing decommission long before there's a fuel shortage.
About two years ago I was able to look at some designs for a new Japanese reactor. They used a lake on top of a mountain for emergency cooling water. Had that design been used, in the current disaster, the reactor would of been much less of a threat of melting down. All the more evidence our aging nuclear plants (100 civilian in the USA) will not last forever, and we need a viable replacement soon.
Nuclear power plants produce very very little nuclear waste in the form of spent fuel. Every plant in the U.S. contains every ounce of nuclear fuel they have ever burned. I am only aware of a few plants who had to build new spent fuel pools to store excess. While we still don't have a single location to store all of our spent fuel, we haven't run out of room on plant properties yet. Although, I'd feel much better if all our of nuclear waste was in a central location, secured, and monitored, rather than located at 100 separate locations in this country alone. Spent fuel does not last forever, it only takes a few hundred years to reach the same radioactive level of soil. Non-spent fuel nuclear waste generally will reach background levels in a fraction of that time. Someone mentioned the Romans or something having not left us with a nuclear waste burden, even if they had, it would not be an issue anymore, no excess radiation would be emitted from their waste.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics...
Manipulating Public Health Research: The Nuclear and Radiation Health Establishments, RUDI H. NUSSBAUM, Professor Emeritus of Physics and Environmental
Sciences, Portland State University, Portland, OR
http://web.me.com/rdupuy/APLP/Dossier_Nucl%C3%A9aire/Entr%C3%A9es/2007/10/2_Nuclear_Radiation_Health_Manipulated_files/IJOEH_1303_Nussbaum.pdf
Nuclear Power and Public Health, Richard W. Clapp, Department of Environmental Health, Boston University
http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2005/113-11/editorial.html
What health effects? No one in the U.S. has died from radiation exposure at a plant. Not workers, not people living close to a nuke, no one. Where are all these horrible health effects? My own step father has been in reactors for close to 40 years. When he started, they barely monitored the radiation they took in, and literally walked around naked when working close to the reactor. I've been through 4 refueling outages now, the biggest doses you will receive during operation. I have yet to even come close to the limit the government gives me, and only once needed an extension for the limit the industry gives me. (5 Rem and 2 Rem a year respectively).
Also in the last article you linked, it mentions we need to build renewable resource power plants, there hasn't yet been a renewable resource that can come close to what nuclear power can output. It would take an area the size of Kentucky filled with wind farms to equal one or two nuclear plants. Not only that, our grid would not be capable of supporting that kind of infrastructure.
I am 100% solar, wind, and water, but they are not a viable replacement for nuclear or coal. So we are left with this, Coal plants pollute, Coal mines destroy water system, mountains, etc. They also need to be refueled constantly, they refuel as they burn fuel. A nuclear plant takes one truckload of fuel, and that lasts for 6 years.
The burning of nuclear fuel releases nothing but hot water into the environment. We don't leak radiation, we don't dump chemicals out to sea. The only reason most nuclear plants have cooling towers at all, is we were worried of the effect of dumping clean hot water into rivers and lakes. The best fishing in all of Lake Erie is a mile or so out in the lake, where we dump a large amount of hot water. Although, after 9\11 that area is now off limits
Agree or disagree, I can't change your minds, but nuclear plants are clean, safely run, and have a low impact to the environment. My proof? Compare our industry to any other power generation industry on Earth.
