Why do people fear nuclear power?

SNAP is an acronym for Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power. Your friend is spot-on about their applications, although they are not as extensive as it may seem.

SNAP reactors are more commonly known as RTGs, or Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators. As the name (somewhat confusingly) implies, they generate electricity using the natural heat produced during the alpha decay of a radioactive element, usually Plutonium-238 oxide, to precipitate electron flow between two dissimilar metals.

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SNAP/RTGs are sealed once activated, upon insertion of their Plutonium cores, and from then on produce a steady amount of power without maintenance or moving parts. As such, they are highly desireable for space flight applications. Many of the larger commercial and military satellites have power demands that cannot be satisfied by solar power alone, so they carry one or two RTGs for supplemental or contingency power.

The first RTGs that the DOE ever kicked out produced around 2.7 watts of electricity. The most recently designed system, the GPHS-RTG, or General Purpose Heat Source RTG, generates about 290 watts of electric power. The first RTG system ever put up was a SNAP-3B unit, which provided only partial power for the Navy Transit 4 satellite. That was DOE provided three RTGs for NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn. The Cassini spacecraft, launched to Saturn on October 15, 1997, required three GPHS-RTGs (approximately 870 watts electric). The RTGs are the only source of onboard electric power, because they are plenty potent enough.

In spite of all these positives, RTG/SNAP systems are still niche technologies, suitable for only a few esoteric applications. Why? Because they don't scale to meet demand. Especially not in the practical sense. SNAP units, derived even of the technology available today, are still immensely expensive and have an output that is quite meager compared to the average home consumption of 15-something kilowatts - the largest SNAPs around will kick out a maximum of around 500 watts. Homeowners can neither afford, nor be satisfied by, SNAP/RTG power sources.

They're still pretty cool though. Oh, and a little bit of preemptive data pertaining to the safety of SNAP/RTGs in general, because it's always been a screeching point of the no-nukes weenies:

The DOE has conducted extensive safety testing to assure the power systems would be safe under all accident conditions, including accidents that occur on or near the launch pad, and reentry accidents. The fuel form has been changed from a Pu-238 metal to a more stable pressed oxide. During the three mission accidents that did occur, the RTGs performed as predicted. The Transit 5-BN-3 mission was aborted because of launch vehicle failure. The RTG burned up on reentry as designed with the plutonium dispersed in the upper atmosphere. The RTG design was changed shortly after that to accommodate intact reentry. The next accident was with the Nimbus-B-1 that was aborted shortly after launch by a range safety destruct. The RTG was recovered, with no release of plutonium, and the heat sources were reused in later missions. The Apollo 13 spacecraft carried an RTG to be used on the moon to power a seismic station. The Apollo 13 mission was aborted and the spacecraft returned to Earth. The RTG was attached to the lunar module that broke up on reentry. The RTG heat source reentered the Earth atmosphere intact, with no release of plutonium, and currently is located deep in the Tonga trench in the Pacific Ocean. Extensive testing of RTGs in sea water has been conducted, and there will be no release of plutonium over time from this unit.

 

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This site appears to detail a few more SNAP/RTG accidents than you report, Stoked.
http://www.skyrocket.de/space/doc_sat/nuclear.htm Appears that the majority of such accidents released radiation.

Well, gee, the Strontium 90 exposure to infants just seems to be increasing despite claims of the feds. Lets hope the further analysis of this data can disclose some major errors in testing or whatever rather than the idea that existing plants are leaking more pollutants than claimed: http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2004-01-02-babyteeth_x.htm It was probably just influenced by some "no-nuke weenie" "eco-nazis," right Stoked?

Them damned http://www.sierraclub.org/nuclearwaste/ Best to consider it all as hogwash. Shouldn't even put a link to it here as it is obviously not science, right? Science is what you find posted by interests who stand to gain a lot of money from an enterprise, not some ill-informed members of a non-profit, heh Stoked?

These weenies have the gall to call themselves scientists: http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/nuclear_safety/index.cfm
Their existence appears to be a direct contradiction of the main hypothesis of this thread. Since this evidence doesn't match the theory, they must be charlatans, heh Stoked?

Ah, here's a site I think I'll schedule to peruse on a regular basis. Need to keep myself misinformed: http://nucnews.net/nucnews/briefslv.htm Looks like they even cite sources that would definitely be on a "need to gas" list of eco-nazis.

Enough for now, I got a life (and hope to hold onto it for a good while too).

Oh shucks, I was just wondering, is it the characteristic of a scientific perspective to call people who have a specific point of view degrading names? Seems a bit infantile to me.

So, dogmatic, cantankerous, clueless, no-nuke weenie, eco-nazis, live long and prosper!

 

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I know, Stoked, you have admonished me for citing and referring to URLs, rather than depending on my own resources. Sorry, but in order to have a scientific perspective, which I still believe you are not doing, I do feel it is necessary to look at what people who should know more than myself profess.

Here's a paper that appears to be an official statement of another group that calls itself "Scientists" concerning nuclear power. They do not appear to paint the rosy picture you would have us believe. Seems this position of theirs is another instance that does not qualify the general hypothesis of this thread as true.

http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2000/ja00/ja00abrahamson.html

In this article the position is stated that keeping nuclear waste from the environment must look at more that two hundred thousand years of monitoring. Could you clarify what you meant by inferring that this time is only 300 years? That seems to be quite a difference. Could you be exagerating a wee bit to stretch the facts to fit your desired hypothesis rather than coming to a conclusion based on factual evidence?

You have stated that we have yet to know how to use sustained fusion and also that solar energy is only feasible for "esoteric" ends. Next time you eat some food, which will probably be today, thank your lucky stars these admonitions of yours are just ravings. Here you were in the belly of the beast, working as you did on nuclear ships for so long. Appears to me that your position as demonstrated in this thread and others is basically as one who wishes to rave, rave against the dying of the might (my apologies to Dylan Thomas).

 

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If you had read my post, you would have seen the part about how the contamination surveys covered only US programs, and not Soviet ones. The Soviet nuclear history is downright awful in general, and SNAP systems are no exception to the trend.

Sr-90 is not a daughter isotope of Plutonium decay.

I'm not going to get into a link war pissing contest, if that's all you can resort to. I can use google too, and for every damning article you can find, I can find a counter-argument. Now, if you really want to prove something to myself and others, get out and do some research. Learn about the core sciences first, then the engineering and technology involved. Go to the library, read some books and scientific journals, and most importantly GET OFF THE INTERNET. The internet will always agree with you regardless of what your position is.

I have absolutely no intention or inclination of addressing anything you post if you simply regurgitate the googled findings of others without doing any work for yourself. I'm affording the posters and viewers of this thread the courtesy of doing my own articulation. When river-wind asked about SNAPs, I assumed he/she was asking for a personalized summary, rather than a vaguely relevant link. So that's what I provided. The least you could do is reciprocate a bit.

The three byproducts of Uranium fission are Strontium 90, Cesium 137, and Iodine 131. I-131 is a very intense beta emitter, and consequently has a very short half life of seven days, so it's irrelevant to long-term storage. Sr-90 and Cs-137 both have half-lives of 30 years. That means that the amount of residual radioactivity will decrease in the following manner:

Code:

Year                     Activity Level
0                          100%
30                         50%
60                         25%
90                         12.5%
120                        6.25%
150                        3.125%
180                        1.5625%
210                        0.78125%
240                        0.390625%
270                        0.1953125%
[b]300                        0.09765625%[/b]

No-nukes activists love to talk about half lives of spent fuel isotopes and then use the time-span of 4.5 billion years. This is semantically correct, because U-238 is one of the byproducts of moderated Uranium fission, but it is entirely misleading. Of the isotopes contained within spent fuel assemblies, less than one one-hundredth of the activity exists after only 300 years at rest. That's not even enough to register much above background radiation count in most areas.

 

Yes, Sr 90 is not a daughter isotope of Plutonium. I was talking about the concept that "nuclear power is safe" not just SNAP. If you want to assume something that is easier for you to argue, be that way, but it is not conducive to anyone of any integrity retaining any trust in anything you say.

"No-nukes activists" now, getting a little more respect in our learned old age, are we? I wasn't talking about your depiction of the straw men you like to beat down as proof of your tremendous wisdom. I was talking about that report, with Dean Abrahamson, professor at University of Minnesota and Chalmers University of Technology and Goteborg University in Sweden and Johan Swahn at Chalmers and Goteborg. They state that "The many problems involved in isolating dangerously radioactive high-level nuclear power waste for at least 200,000 years have been understood since the 1970s."

Okay, you can't handle the internet, HA! My first studies of nuclear fuels, types of reactors, fuel reprocessing, wastes, pollution and contamination were done at Oakridge Tenessee. I acquired a number of books from them in person when I toured the facilities. I studied those books quite intently for many years as the subject fascinated me. I once corrected a P.G. & E. spokesman when he claimed that a Breeder reactor creates more fuel than it consumes, as if we would never have to mine any new fuel (what a misleading name for a reactor). I know that what you are depicting as the waste from nuclear power is only part of the picture and quite misleading, again, favoring your obviously dearly held and desired hypothesis.

Nuclear wastes do not just consist of the "byproducts of Uranium fission."

Here is a quote from http://www.chemcases.com/2003version/nuclear/nc-13.htm
"Spent fuel from nuclear reactors contains considerable amounts of U-235 and Pu-239. After 3 years in a reactor, 1,000 lbs. of 3.3-percent-enriched uranium (967 lbs. U-238 and 33 lbs. U-235) contain 8 lbs. of U-235 and 8.9 lbs. of plutonium isotopes along with 943 lbs. of U-238 and assorted fission products. Separating the U-235 and Pu-239 from the other components of spent fuel significantly addresses two major concerns. It greatly reduces the long-lived radioactivity of the residue and it allows purified U-235 and Pu-239 to be used as reactor fuel. (Courtesy of the Uranium Information Center)"

We talked about U238 (main constituent of the spent fuel rods) before in a thread I started, http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=31911 It took quite a while but using the references you posted as arguments, I was able to show you that depleted uranium is not just an alpha emitter though it was awful difficult to finally get you to come around to admit that "To be completely fair I would say that we are both right as far as DU being a beta particle emitter goes. I'm right because DU is, in concept, the isotope U238, an alpha emitter. You're right because DU is, in practice, made up of trace amounts of other radioisotopes, some of which are beta emitters. Fair enough?"

Well my reply was based in the desire to not waste time bickering with a lackey of nuclear industries but now, I will answer your question. NO Not fair at all. Gamma radiation is also emitted from DU. U238 decay leads to shorter more radioactive elements coming into presence virtually all the time during the 10 half life periods, or about 45 million years.

As far as the wastes go other transuranium isotopes are present in various concentrations with both long and short half lives. You are absolutely wrong if you think the stuff will be near as safe as normal background radiation in 300 years. That is the case for U235 fission products but we also have the U238 and its continual release of daughter isotopes. There is also the little case of the Pu239,. besides being able to use it as fuel, it is also the main constituent of nuclear weapons. I guess, if we are to consider nuclear power as safe then we must also consider the production of bomb grade nuclear materials as safe. What, the more the merrier?

You showed the decay process for the daughter isotopes of U235, well, U235 is also present in those spent fuel rods so start with the half life of U235 for your little example, about 700 million years. The daughter radionuclides will be produced on a continual basis for its chart, including the Iodine 131 which you pass off as irrelevant.
I understand now that spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors in the US currently do not undergo reprocessing. I have also seen the estimate that some 500 tons per day are accumulating. Do you think none of them will make it into waste storage?

So, what is wrong with how Stoked depicts nuclear wastes? Why does his view point differ from that of many very well qualified individuals? Anybody other than me? There is something seriously wrong with this cat and if any one can throw more light on it, I would be appreciative because we need to figure out how to contain and repair these thoroughly convinced, strongly enmeshed cult-like followers of the so-called power-elite.

Here's another baby tooth analysis from 2001 and this time in Florida. http://www.radiation.org/floridateeth.html

 

500 tons per day? Now that sounds pretty specious. Let me see if I can find out more about that and whether or not there is any validity to that claim. I put that last post together late last night.

Concerning SNAP, all the talk about the plutonium dioxide, the hardened case materials and design I see only speak of lessening the danger, not removing it. I suppose it is still in accordance with the "Linear No Threshold" concept, that is, it all depends on how much risk is considered acceptable, not that anything using perhaps the most powerful toxin known could ever be totally safe.

 

Depends what type of reactor you're talking about. Modern, western, light water reactors barely breed any Plutonium at all. The Russian liquid metal or gas cooled piles are fast breeders by design. But anyway, the trace amounts of Plutonium isotopes contained in a depleted reactor core is hardly enough to be significant.

Still bitter about that? Alright, let's set things straight once and for all WRT the U-238 decay process, sans namecalling.

Any isotope has certain, very limited decay types that will emit a known type of radiation. It may be that an isotope could emite alpha, beta, and gamma through three different decays, but in the case of U-238 it emits only alpha or a gamma; there is no U-238 mode that allows a beta decay. U-238 is a gamma source because it does undergo spontaneous fission, however, the U-238 binding energy defecit is so high that the gamma rate is very low. In one mole of U-238, you can expect about 1 spontaneous fission per day releasing about 1.2KeV of gamma (before absorbtion and diffraction). That's why in most instances you see U-238's alpha mode listed as 100%; spontaneous fissions only 5.4x10^-5% of all decays and is too small to really acount for in any meaningful way.

By the same token, you were saying that it's a a beta source because U-238 isn't pure. Any U-238 is going to have some weirdo decay products that have a beta decay embedded it or some such. Those can have all the beta they want, but again, in the quantities they're present in DU it's not something that can be easily measured. One of those decays will happen about every 107 or 109 decays and you get less than 1KeV out of them (beta's not a very efficient decay in big atoms).

So the gamma/beta decay process of U-238 accounts for less than 1/100th of the aggregate ionizing radiation output. Utterly insignificant.

You really need to drop the kneejerk fear of anything that's OMG NUCLEAR.

Way to buy into the Greenpeace dogma. Yes, U-235's half life is extremely long. But that is why it's so innocuous. An element's half life is inversely proportional to its radiation output. This is why extremely short-lived isotopes with half-lives measured in days produce radiation levels that will kill in a short order. Medium-lived elements, such as Cobalt 60, have half-lives around 5-6 years, giving them enough longevity to be of nuisance, but still short-lived enough to be a radiological hazard. When people say that U-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, it elicits an alarmist reaction in some, but for absolutely no reason. That same 4.5 billion year half-life is exactly why U-238's radiological properties are a non-issue.

Ah yes, the good old Plutonium toxicity myth. I was waiting for that to come up. Glad to see you've been reading your pamphlets.

 

"hardly enough to be significant"
"there is no U-238 mode that allows a beta decay"
"too small to really acount for in any meaningful way".
"Any U-238 is going to have some weirdo decay products that have a beta decay embedded it or some such."
"So the gamma/beta decay process of U-238 accounts for less than 1/100th of the aggregate ionizing radiation output. Utterly insignificant."
"U-235's half life is extremely long. But that is why it's so innocuous."
"4.5 billion year half-life is exactly why U-238's radiological properties are a non-issue."
"the good old Plutonium toxicity myth."

I should of taken my clue when you stated that what kinds of radiation a substance emits is open to semantic interpretation.

I thank you for the opportunity to refresh my memory on these subjects and for the remindance of the persistence of irrationality.

 

Anytime, chief. My office is always open.

Class dismissed.

 

If you haven't learned to put aside science, stop worrying and love the bomb, you may find the folowing of interest:

LinkTV has about an hour long program with some experts talking about the dangers of nuclear energy and weapons. It doesn't get into details all that much though you can find more in the links given on the page http://www.worldlinktv.com/programming/programDescription.php4?code=active_nuclear

The following URLs are for the broadband and the dial-up version of the hour and a half Quicktime presentation, "The Nuclear Lullaby - What We Are Not Being Told"

Broadband: http://www.worldlinktv.com/pages/wl...30618_256kb.mov&description=Active Opposition

Dial-up: http://www.worldlinktv.com/pages/wl...030618_64kb.mov&description=Active Opposition

BTW, Stokey, ole buddy, you never did offer your explanation as to why the Union of Concerned Scientists do not share your reverence for the peaceful atom. I'd be interested to learn of your reasoning as to why experienced physicists appear to disagree with you.

 

Because a vast majority of science is, unfortunately, cloaked with agenda. My personal suspicion is that they're representative of the vestiges of the hippies, and will die a quiet death in the coming years as our energy needs grow and coal/oil power finally goes the way of the fossil. No pun intended.

 

Hmmm, you suspect it is their philosophical outlook that dictates how they see things and that this causes them to promote false understandings and unrealistic opinion? Do you realize that one could claim the same of you, not that your problem would be that you hold to a "hippie" perspective but that you don't and subsequently fail to find reason or motivation to value life very highly.

Here is my general take. Humanity appears to be a quite recent species, yet to find its niche whereby it enhances the life carrying capacity of the biosphere. Perhaps evolution is destined to create creatures that ultimately destroy life's diversity but in general it seems from the record that is seldom the case and such creatures usually tend to either find a variant of their expression that sustains and increases the diversity or go extinct. In general, species that destroy their environment tend to destroy themselves. I think the paleontological record tends to support this. So, the thing that I believe humanity lacks to make it rational in the big picture is a functioning society. All of these nation-state, corporation and what have you experiments, exemplify this disparity of human social acuity. I am of the same opinion that Buckminster Fuller shared before his passing away, that sociology (what he also termed "livingry") is the least developed science, being basically the opposite of weaponry, the main teleological thrust of human endeavor. I do realize that human society appears quite concretely as a second order cybernetic system, that is it can only be observed from within, social perspectives are more liable to be tainted by geographical, linguistic and culture bias than not. One has to take extraordinary effort to avoid prejudice. Few realize that they have been immersed in lies and propaganda for the greatest portion of their lives. Fewer still question the very validity of the institutions that foment the allegiance to power or strength over reason or science. Basically, our current governance system is nonexistent, anarchic, the law of the jungle, a convoluted and complicated gang-warfare or vying for power of various fleeting syndicates, "might makes right" (though wrong) with all of the potential for violence such a state condones.. I believe it takes a lot of strength, intelligence and plain luck to grasp this perspective though the evidence is quite overwhelming. Propaganda to create hard set defenders of the status quo has been hard and heavy and few escape its influence.

I believe from my own experience that the so-called hippie movement, though embracing some illusions and experimenting with some impractical ideas, nonetheless did provide the cultural conditions that facilitated the recognition of some scientifically valid and far reaching understanding, some things the non-thinking true believer has a tough time comprehending, some knowledge that is imminently practical and necessary for the welfare of individuals and humanity in general. The idea that we are all of one family, that the ecology is of fundamental importance, that human freedom and liberty as well as harmony should hold paramount value, these and more seem to have been launched within the vestiges of the "hippie" movement as I knew it. Guess that what such a thing seems to any one is quite subjective. From my life experiences, your invoking of this label, "hippie" gives the perspective of the Union of Concerned Scientists more validity than not. Actually I think you would be hard pressed to find any supporting information for your suspicion but still it is interesting for you to put your prejudice out there to see. I believe that the reason why you can not embrace the scientific perspective, (solar energy is not nuclear fusion, what radiation a substance emits is seen as being open to interpretation, your danger thresholds being higher in the face of the "linear no threshold" hypothesis by magnitudes over the greatest amount of credentialed and experienced scientists) is that you do not have much love within yourself, not much love for humanity, for truth, for peace and harmony, for sustained diversity, for life in general. You haven't been fortunate enough to see beyond the idea that life and existence is naught but a power struggle. So it goes. A post in an online forum will not set you right. Maybe nothing will. You'll just be one of those who will be most surprised when sociology becomes a science and most likely, one of the last to benefit from its florescence.

Thanks for sticking with me on this. I am learning ! In my high school government class, they put me in the back of the room and stopped selecting my raised hand to take my questions as they often couldn't give me any cognitive answers and found my queries too embarassing. They were not there to teach but to cajole and they liked to get me out of the way. Hope that is not the way with you, ole experienced ingrained indoctrinator you, teach away. I'm all tears.

 

(not reading the other posts or seeing the link) I think people fear nuclear power beacuse if something goes wrong, the heat from the nuclear power will burn us alive really fast.

 

Ah, it's good to see that intelligent informed individuals are working hard to thwart the cavalier destruction of life the eco-nazis would have us swallow:

http://www.nirs.org/

 

I personally don't think there's any pronblem with fusion power. However, fission requires not only lots of care, but also space to store all the waste.

And where do we store the waste? In giant containers below the ocean, that might even happen to be on a sismic...

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serious?

Yucca Mountain Repository, for now. Sinking it isn't a bad idea though. Water is nature's best radiation shield.

 

Is it? Wouldn't it kill life below the ocean? Is it really a good shield!?!?

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Without grass roots organizations, citizen involvement, the wastes will just be dumped anywhere as the companies are always looking at the bottom line and adhering to their own propaganda that the stuff is "as safe as chocolate milk." Looks like the governmental organizations will just play lip service to action without the people demanding that the laws be given some enforcement.

http://www.enn.com/news/2004-03-05/s_12993.asp

Stokey is our token servile indoctrinator of the company line, much more qualifying for the label "eco-nazi" then those who attempt to protect life and the environment as Stoked first used the term in this thread, but then, confusing the issues is the major approach of such true believers.

 

The nuclear knowledgeable here seem to have this covered and I need not add much in that regard.

As ususal the unknowledgeable exaggerate the risks. This is not entirely their fault but the fault of an over politically correct and governmental system designed to create high paying administrative jobs. All that is required is to scare the hell out of people and then justify large budgets and offices to regulate it.

1 - The PWR at the beginning did refer to fission plants in that there are no other type of nuclear powered PWR's in existance.

2 - The only radioactive waste that is actually dangerous is the spent fuel which until the Carter Presidency and TMI was not so much of a problem in that we re processed it.

3 - Shutting down the re-processing plants in-of-itself made nuclear power only 3% as cost effective as it once was because nuke plants run on typically a 3% over critical mass initial fuel load. Once that 3% is gone you have to shut down and refuel. By not reprocessing that fuel you are throwing away 30 times the fuel you consumed producing power.

4 - I was a member of the TMI Recovery Team. We lost no lives there or even caused serious illness. I have forgotten the exact number but I believe there were 2-3 dozen lives lost at Chernobyl. We also lost three lives in 1961 in a plant that belongd to our organization. It was the SL-1 in Idaho.

5 - If you carry in a packet of "No Salt" that you can by at your health food store, you can set off the radiation alarms in a nuke plant. If you spill it on the floor you would create a major clean up and investigation for a nuclear spill. The same would be true if you took in mantels from Coleman Lanterns, which you buy in your local hardware store. Same as if you open most smoke detctor and removed the radioactive source that is used in them.

The hazard of radiation is grossly overblown.

6 - The radioactive decays with longer time (many zero's) is actually less dangerous than shorter ones in most cases. Why because the longer the decay the lower the magnitude of radiation.

I was Startup Coordinator of the Shoreham Nuclear Plant on Long Island, Ny. Lilco spent $4B building the plant. We got it up and running and tested but could never go online at full power due to never ending legal challenges by the unknowing protestors. The plant was ultimately sold to the state of NY for $1.00 and written off. Stupid, really stupid.

As has been pointed out here, coal plants release tons of radioactive material into the atmosphere, as well as many other detrimental materials. Then there is the affect of the acid rain killing our forests, black lung desease of the miners, ete, etc. Conventional power has killed thousands world wide. Nuclear power has killed a few dozen.

No nuclear power was a good thing until the unknowing and the politically correct screwed it up for everybody.

 

Besides PWR the first post also mentioned "anything radiologic."

So any other radioactive waste other than spent fuel is safe as candy, huh? Something tells me you are expressing an agenda here that has little to do with reality.

Long lived radioactive isotopes decay into short lived ones. That is why DU emits other than Stokey's imagined physics.

So I suppose another danger of shunning the solar nuclear power and only going for the use of nuclear materials from some star that went nova many billions of years ago is that the proponents are liable to become enemies of democracy. I was aware of that aspect. Using nuclear reactors on the planet do require a lot of top down authoritative management. Totalitarian regimes like to have power be from centralized locations with mass dependency. It is not conducive to retaining the police state to let and help people get their own power directly from the sun.

So, what you want is for the believers and the politically incorrect to dictate what everybody should do? That'll sure fix things.