In celebration of my 1500th post, and browsing the Politics threads, I thought we should debate this topic.

What's your view on the Applications of Nuclear Technology?
Do you think we should stay Nuclear-Free? Why?

A few other points...
i) Australia has a fairly large uranium extraction industry, IIRC.
ii) Radioactivity is a natural occurence.
iii) Nuclear power does not "create" radiation, it just uses something that is already happening, hence why they've discovered natural reactors in the crust.
iv) France has something like 80% of its domestic power from nuclear reactors. Total number of accidents = 0.
v) All major reactor accidents were caused by human error (three IIRC: Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and that one in Britain).
vi) You do know that that smoke detector in your kitchen has Am-241 in it? Radioactive alpha-particle emitter.

oob'll love me for the potential in this thread.

Ok the microwave is radioactive too, lots of things are! I am anti-nuclear but I frear we may end up with nuclear plants in the far future as they are a very good idea. I will post some more but im in an angsty mood atm. So ill put more in later

well being in science, I tend to like the idea of nuclear power. The main problem associated with nuclear power isn't the risk of an accident, its the problem with what to do with the waste products.
There are some suggestions of making new kinds of power plants which can use these wastes products, and produce something less radioactive themselves, but its all speculation at the moment.

Cold fusion power plants (converting hydrogen into helium) are said to be the wave of the future. They have existed in an experimental stage for some time now, but the main problem is that the fuel is a gas, rather than a solid rod so it is much harder to contain. The experimental plants contain ionised hydrogen gas (which is basically floating protons) in a magnetic field. The problem is that the power required to produce the magnetic field is in excess of the power produced by the fusion. Of course when we get room temperature superconductors, we won't need much power at all.

If we stay in the Kyoto Protocol and abstain from nuclear power, we are morons. If you want to reduce carbon emissions, nuclear power is an obvious solution. As Dr Steve has said, much of the waste can be reused, and that which hasn't can be easily ditched somewhere (eg. Invercargill, where mutants will go unnoticed) until we know how to deal with it.

Every other method of power generation that I can think of is shit:

hydro: fucks up rivers
solar: weak
wind: weak
fuel burning: smelly

Have to admit, I'm pro nuclear power.

Vehemently anti nukes though.

While I am against having nuclear weapons in NZ territory, I am divided on the concept of nuclear weapons in general. On the one hand, it puts us at a slight risk of complete annihilation. On the other hand, nuclear weapons have probably saved more lives than any other innovation of the twentieth century. So far, nuclear weapons have done more good than harm in this world, as strange as it may seem.

We've only had them for sixty years though... early days yet!

The sooner we can turn the human body into a battery, the better. After national is elected, there's going to be a whole lot Maori activists out of a job.


This post is intentionally awful.

This is the sort of "Nuclear" power that I could accept being on NZ shores.

I also wouldn't mind Nuclear powered ships visiting NZ, but don't like the idea of us housing/building nuclear powered ships. And Nuclear arms are definitely a no-go as I'd prefer we maintained our relatively pacifist stance.

The scary shit is once they develop a 'clean' nuclear bomb. The US really needs these as bunker busters.

A 'clean' nuke'd be 100% efficient.

That's 8kg of U-235. Do the maths with teh Famous Einstein Equation, you get something like 7.2 x 10^16 Joules.

That's a lot. That's 7.2 x 10^7 Gigajoules.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the future is going to have some fucking sweet ass weapons. :flame:

Hell, the present probably has these weapons... the US military is usually about a decade ahead than they make public (and this isn't tin foil hat bullshit, stealth is an example of this).

Myself, I don't like the thought of nuclear fission being in this country, but I think the nuclear free policy is pretty stupid. Removing the policy doesn't mean we have to build a nuclear power plant, it just means that other nuclear nations can send their nuclear ships into our ports and would improve relations with them at the same time.

As to the waste problem, we can just pawn it off onto the japanese to dispose of like everyone else does.

I hope you do realise that the bash.org quote is inaccurate as to when the idea fails:

http://www.jet.efda.org/pages/content/fusion1.html

It's a joke man, have a laugh.

Oh yeah I had a laugh, but also felt that it was important to note that the basis for the joke wasn't true (doesn't stop it from being a good joke though), incase some people decided to derive some facts from it in the process.

There have been two near meltdowns in the past decade. That scares the shit out of me, and should scare the shit out of most reasonable people.

A well maintained nuclear plant, especially one built today with todays technology, is pretty damn safe. We're not going to get anywhere if we puss out because of slight risks... hell if you're going to take that attitude, I wouldn't ever get in a car.

And if there is a meltdown, we could use something like these.

^ awesome 5.40am post

Do the microbes actually reduce the radiation level somehow? Or do they simply change the form of the nuclear waste?

And we all know that conventional time means nothing to you oob. :P

Well from what I know it's like a paper towel- you soak up the spill, then dump the towel somewhere.

There have been 22 major accidents in nuclear power stations since 1986, with 15 of these involving external radiological leaks.

A Davis-Besse plant in the United States had a near meltdown in 2002 and there was a major leak in a reactor in Forsmark in Sweden in June this year (not a meltdown as such, however in addition to these, you had a near meltdown in Germany in 1989 and a turbine fire in Narora in India in 1993).

Of course, we can't ignore Cherynobyl in April 1986 [Even if it is the fault of the engineers, which it was to a large extent, it proves that human error can fuck anything up]. And the earliest one of the 80's was a 'criticality incident' in Argentina in 1983.

Some other interesting facts: the EU spends 61% percent of ALL it's R&D funding for energy on nuclear energy even though it only generates 13% of all electricity in the EU.

Canada generates a bit under 20% of it's electricity through nuclear power, yet it has spent $CAN 14,500,000,000 on nuclear subsidies to the nuclear energy industrry between 1953 and 2002. between 1948 and 2002, the US spent nearly $US 67,000,000,000 on subsidies on the nuclear energy industry (the US generates about 25% of it's power through electricity).

I.e. Nuclear power is fucking expensive and has insanely huge costs, is potentially extremely dangerous (Don't tell me an oil plant could do what Cherynobyl did) and has a very short lifespan (75% of the reactors in Europe are going to be beyond their lifespan by 2030).

Are there any instances of a reactor built after, say, 1980 melting down? Otherwise we're comparing apples and oranges.

If the technology were still where it was with Chernobyl, I would agree with you that it's too dangerous. However, at this day and age I say the risk is small enough.

I don't think there have been any reactors built for a long time, altough I think that Japan or South Korea are developing new plants.

In regard to the oob-ment, there are other sources available. One which seems pretty plausible is using the underwater currents in the ocean to spin turbines. Pretty much like wind but more reliable. Also, if you have enough 'weak' generators from a wide range of sources, you will still be able to produce a large amount of power

It's good, but it only works well in very specific places.

Yes, every country should use those methods which are suited towards its environment and geography, as NZ does.

As Comrade von Cock pointed out, not many reactors have been built of late. If I recall correctly 30 nuclear reactors are planned for construction all over the world in the next decade, but the VAST majority of the worlds current reactors were built decades ago. Britain and the United States particularly are going to be in real trouble: a friend of mine who helped design Muldoon's beautiful refinery that supplies all our petrol here, and who also helps to maintain nuclear reactors in Britain, was telling me that all these reactors are going to have to be retired in Britain in the next decade and they couldn't 'renew' them or such like.

Plus most former second world (that is, Warsaw Pact/Eastern bloc nations) heavily rely on nuclear power from very shitty archaic reactors (places like Armenia and Slovenia).

Yeah, while I do think that reactors built later are quite safe, it is hard to be sure since so few of them had been built... China's building some now IIRC.

Might be a good idea to wait a decade or so till we have an idea about the safety of modern reactors.

or we could just do the logical thing and build it in the south island...that way if something goes wrong we don't have to worry as the sacred north island is still all good...and have you seen the visual polution those ugly wind farms create...

Something else I thought of: the fear of nuclear power is based on the possibility it might fuck up the environment if something bad happens. But existing fuel burning power stations, such as coal, do fuck up the environment. So the environmental side of the decision needs to made like this:

if (downside of coal generation) > ((downside of nuclear generation)x(possibility of nuclear generation actually having a downside)) then --> use nuclear
otherwise --> use coal

Or at least that's how I do risk analysis. For instance, if I were to buy a lottery ticket, I would multiply the amount I could win against the possibility of winning, and compare it to the cost of the ticket. Obviously the cost is higher, hence why I don't gamble, except fair bets such as poker.

but when you do the calculation for your lotto tickets worth do you include all the minor prize divisions or only the first division...

Well yes my explanation was simplified, but as you know the cost is higher even with all that taken into account. I haven't bothered to do the math on that one, but it seems obvious that Lotto isn't going to run at a loss, which they would have to do if the average return is higher than the average cost.

true which is why i dont often play...i actually did a f7 stats assignment where i figured out the probabilities of winning each division and how much the average return was etc...if you actually care just google it and you'll find hundreds...but even with that information i'm a sucker for the big money which is why when powerball gets over about 12 million i'll buy a ticket...

well I guess you're paying for the excitment of potentially winning, rather than the winning itself.


and just how did we end up talking lotto in the nuclear thread?

And the knowing that profits from the event go towards good causes?

Nah, that would just make me annoyed that the profits aren't being put into more prize money.

Is there a thread about nuclear weapons somewhere here?

I believe this is the thread you want. Here I amuse myself by arguing in favour of American hegemony and nuclear weapons as counter-intuitive means of securing peace.

I'm not surprised at all. There is no balance of power in this world.

And let's hope it remains that way. Remember what happened the last times there was something close to a balance of power? The Napoleonic Wars, World War I, World War II, the Cold War. I'd rather have the US kick the shit out of some crappy third world nation once in a while than have any more global wars.

There was a balance of power in Cold War and because of all the nukes it didn't go hot. India and Pakistan fought three wars until their both got nukes and decided not to escalate further.

I am anti nuclear because I like New Zealand having the image of being a clean green country. To me its what it symbolises. Regardless of whether or not nuclear energy is better/worse for the environment, if we allow it then we lose that symbolism and identity.