Is Nuclear Power Green? part 1

Is Nuclear Power Green? How could it be with radioactive waste, mostly from nuclear power plants, continuing to be radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, during which time it can cause cancer & mutations & abortions of mutated fetuses over and over and over again? USA is the "Persian Gulf of Wind" with 2/3 of USA electricity able to be provided by the winds of the Dakotas alone. The other third could be provided by Texas' winds. Texas is now the Number One windpower state in the USA! And George Bush is pushing to improve the infrastructure of the electricity grid.
T. Boone Pickens is investing $10 billion in biggest windfarm in world in Texas. Area in Nevada 100 X 120 miles rectangle could provide all USA electricity via solar power (UCS). Germany phasing out nuclear power (most Americans unaware of this) because they lead world in windpower with nearly 21,000 megawatts of windpower, and adding over 1000 megawatts each year at an increasing rate, plus buying up lots of planet's solar power production and technology. Average nuclear plant: 1000 megawatts. Germany has 24 nuclear plants it is phasing out. With 21,000 megawatts of windpower = 21 nuclear plants, without the dangers of meltdowns, steam explosions (Chernobyl April 26, 1986 over 300,000 dead prematurely from cancer and other diseases, and numbers still growing) or daily leaks and ventings. Plume of radioactive strontium found heading toward Hudson River in NY, Westchester County, from Indian Point nuclear plant. Strontium received by human body like it is calcium, gets into bones and bone marrow, and thus, causes leukemia. Mercenary voices & lives of Patrick Moore and Christy Todd Whitman behoven to the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) for paying PR firms to pay them to pretend and say 'Nuclear Is Green.' Lie Lie Lie. Moore early Greenpeace activist has spent more time since 1986 being a lobbyist for logging, mining, and other vested interests than his 15 years with Greenpeace.

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[14cav]

We don't store the waste where people can stand next to it you moron!

[conradmillermd]

Spills. Nuclear spills from accidents. See above comments and reference to Nuclear Monitor 643 page 5. Please check that.

[dshct]

That is why they put the waste in a thick as fuck container.

[conradmillermd]

See above comments please and Nuclear Monitor #643 page 5.

[xcd48gtf3]

This argument is invalid; nuclear waste can be placed in heavily shielded interim storage caskets or reused as valuable fuel in a fast spectrum reactor such as PRISM. The waste from these reactors lasts only 300 years which is a reasonable containment period.

As for renewables, size is relative. When Vogtle reactors 3 and 4 are completed, they will be the equivalent of all wind and solar generation in the US combined. Do the math, nuclear is the only meaningful producer of green electricity.

[cheesebone82]

@conradmillermd

I just can't see any logic in this. And where do you get 20-70k shipments from? Do you know how much waste from nuclear energy actually exists right now? You're trying to protect people from the almost-impossible at this point... More people die every day due to normal lifestyle hazards like choking and falling over than could possibly ever be effected by this. By this logic, we should also outlaw electricity because there's constant potential for death via electrocution.

[conradmillermd]

@cheesebone82 These shipments have not started yet. Expect 20,000 to 70,000 shipments by mostly rail and truck to run through 43 states to get to the dump that might be designated to accept them - perhaps in Utah. High level waste can be 'small' in size but remember that it emits toxic levels of radiation. Also remember that radionuclides like plutonium can cause cancer with just one microgram being the lung-cancer causing dose, .

[cheesebone82]

@conradmillermd But what is the likelihood of these tragic events resulting in my potential 3 year old daughter being victimized by an accident or spill? The amount of waste created through nuclear energy is so small that transportation of this waste would happen infrequently already! I'd have a better chance of my daughter burning up because of a gasoline pump exploding due to ESD. I can find videos of that all over youtube... you see any footage of overturned nuclear waste trucks here?

[conradmillermd]

Wake up, grip, get one (a grip). USA put up 10,000 megawatts of wind in 2009. That's equal to 3 nuclear plants in one year without venting, leaks, radioactive accidents or radioactivity worries period. USA has been called 'The Persian Gulf Of Wind' & indeed is NOW the Number One windpower country on planet Earth. If we continue @ this rate by the time those 2 already NRC-rejected Westinghouse AP-1000 reactors the powers-that-be want to erect in Ga would be, 70,000 MW wind be erected=24 nukes

[conradmillermd]

See comment to your previous profane remark above, thank you. Be civil henceforth, please.

[conradmillermd]

See above. Also, with venting of the noble gases like krypton-90 and xenon-137 from nuclear power stacks, which constantly occurs, these go around the neighborhood and who knows how far away with the drift of the winds as they decay into strontium 90 (bone cancer and leukemia) and cesium-137. Radioactivity causes mutations and cancer if it strikes the DNA of humans, animals or plants. There is still no safe longterm containment known to main that will hold such radioactivity for 100,000 yrs.

[conradmillermd]

Containers are not adequately tested, sorry to say, my profane friend. Casks were tested to burn at 1475 degrees for half an hour. Unfortunately, diesel fires burn at 1800 degrees, and often burn for days. If there is an accident or a spill and your daughter comes riding up on her bicycle, yes, exposure of 10 seconds from 3 feet away would prove fatal within 2 weeks. See Nuclear Monitor, Issue 643, Page 5 for more info. Any more profane comments will be removed, so ease your hate and anger,