Quote:
Originally Posted by Happy Monkey
A river is useful, if not necessary, for the cooling tower, though.
The biggest bonus of a nuclear reactor is that the pollution goes into barrels instead of the air. And the danger related to those barrels has a silver lining- unlike the toxic sludge from any number of other industries, many steps are taken to ensure they don't just get dumped in the river.
|
The cooling towers can run a closed loops, they are replacing the need for huge amounts of cooling water. They do, however, need a river or lake for an emergency supply of water that is instantly available. The lake can be man made though.
You bring up the waste problem that's constantly pointed out. Yes, the existing plants are up to their ears in barrels of waste with no place to send them because the Feds have been dragging their feet.
Some of the waste is highly contaminated or spent fuel, but most of those barrels are full of dirty laundry.
Seriously, the Boiling Water Reactors the General Electric builds, have the steam created in the reactor powering the turbines, so everything that steam/water touches is contaminated. Subsequently, the work clothes and small tools, rags, etc, have to be disposed of in barrels, constantly.
Every man, on every shift, of every day, for the last howmany years, has had to put everything in the barrels. That's a lot of damn barrels of very low grade contamination they don't know what to do with.
Seems to me the feds have all that property where they did A-bomb tests, above and below ground, for years. Now that property is contaminated for the next seventy eleven thousand years anyway, so put the shit there. OK, the high level spent fuel and such has to be handled more carefully but that's a fraction of the waste generated and it can still go there.
Building Pressurized Water Reactors, where the steam from the reactor transfers the heat to another closed steam loop for the turbines, keeps the contamination out of the turbines. That way the workers in most of the plant don't have to "suit up" and subsequently fill more barrels. PWRs are more expensive to build but cheaper to operate.
It can be done. It has been done. All over the world, nukes have been running successfully and safely for a long time. Ask the French.
The key is to design a plant that's acceptable and build them all the same. That way everybody knows the plan and it's cost, up front. No expensive delays for changes in the middle of construction and uniform, proven, control systems that are familiar to every operator.
OK, I'll get off my soap box now.
