Why is nuclear power not widely used?

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storm rider

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For all of the hyperbole about "climate change" and the doom saying about coal/oil/natural gas as "evil fossil fuels" that are killing the planet.Why oh why is nuclear power the go to thing.It is clean and reliable.Funny enough Canada builds and exports the CANDU nuclear reactor but it is not in widespread use in Canada.Seems really stupid to me especially since we have the uranium feedstocks to fuel the reactors mined right here in Canada which is as a country laden with uranium resources....in fact I think we have the largest deposits of uranium on the planet.

You cant look at failures and judge something such as the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown as it was caused by human error.You have or should look at the success.The US navy has had a fleet of nuclear attack submarines for decades same goes for the fleet of BMS subarines bot to mention the 12 aircraft carriers that are nuclear powered and ALL without a single problem flawlessly.

The widespread use of nuclear power should be embraced for the good of mankind FFS.

Of course then you get the enviro-nuts spewing crapulence about nuclear waste.....yes there is going to be something to deal with in all forms of energy but for them it is like a bleating goat repeatedly saying "wind and solar ONLY" and with no idea of even starting a conversation of how to do it......it must just happen by 2025 or the planet and all life on it is DEAD.

If the "planet" is going to "die" then lets fucking save it with the energy source that has been the most destructive in terms or warfare....nuclear power.

SR
 
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froggyfroggy

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Never thought I’d ever say this, but I agree with Storm Rider! Pigs must be flying out there somewhere!
 

westwoody

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My father was one of the CANDU designers. Growing up I saw more nuclear reactors than most people ever do. The three at CRNL, Pickering, even Brookhaven. This is all political.

Public image is a huge factor. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl pretty much killed off the chances of nuclear power generation in Canada. There were several plants in existence but no more were built.

The US Navy (and many other navies) have a good safety record because they are military installations. Fuck up, fall asleep at the wheel, and you are in big trouble. In private industry labour costs are always being cut. In the USN you will see guys with Masters degrees on a nuclear vessel, guys with Bachelor's operating the system. At Ontario Hydro, it starts out that way. But soon they have one guy on shift with qualifications and a bunch of idiots out of high school who work for peanuts. My brother told me about seeing guys hiding and sleeping at Pickering who were supposed to be monitoring things.

Nuclear is great as long as EVERY single component in the system is working exactly as designed. That's what happens in the navy. In private industry it all goes to hell. Every nuclear accident I have read about has been caused by someone fucking up badly, from the insane mess at Chernobyl to the negligence at Three Mile, to the careless overconfidence at Fukashima.

Finally Harper destroyed Canada's nuclear industry because it competed with his corporate backers (General Electric, Westinghouse, Babcock and Wilcox). He ordered the restart of a reactor at Chalk River against the advice of the scientists there, and fired the nuclear regulator when she sided with them. He then muzzled the scientists who complained. My father (published scientist who did peer review) retired after being threatened with losing his pension. Harper is a fucking piece of shit for doing that and I will hate him forever personally. Harper also lied about the safety protocols and why the reactor was shut down in the first place. It's a bit too technical to explain here but there was a serious safety issue that he over ruled the operators on, just because he was playing politics and wanted to flaunt his power.. Next thing you know the whole facility, NRX, NRU, ZEEP is all shut down and privatised. Oh yeah there's that MAPLE thing but that's just a fantasy.

As a result Canada lost hundreds of highly respected scientists and nuclear engineers, mostly to the USA. I don't think Canada could produce a nuclear generating station any more than we could whip up another Avro Arrow. None of the stuff I say corresponds to the official accounts or what you might read on Wikipedia, but I don't give a shit, it is what really happened.
 
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westwoody

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FWIW Rolls Royce and a few other companies are designing and testing small portable nuclear power generators.
Bill Gates is investing in them, and he is no fool.
I have no doubt they will become a significant source of electricity in the future, maybe fifteen years.
 

sybian

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Dec 23, 2014
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Here in BC, and perhaps in other parts of Canada, we have an abundance of flowing water.
Harness the flow, create energy, put it back....that winter the water replenishes itself for free, by dropping itself from the sky, and it's environmental impact is incredibly low.
The only hurdles are terrain, and distance..the technology has come so far they don't need great drops in elevation, they can harness energy from a river that drops only a few feet....they are doing it all over the place up here.
I've even looked into a micro-hydro plant for my place...and BC Hydro was pretty receptive to the idea...which is a change of attitude compared to twenty years ago, when they would do almost anything to prevent you from producing power.
 

BobbyMcgee

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Here in BC, and perhaps in other parts of Canada, we have an abundance of flowing water.
Harness the flow, create energy, put it back....that winter the water replenishes itself for free, by dropping itself from the sky, and it's environmental impact is incredibly low.
The only hurdles are terrain, and distance..the technology has come so far they don't need great drops in elevation, they can harness energy from a river that drops only a few feet....they are doing it all over the place up here.
I've even looked into a micro-hydro plant for my place...and BC Hydro was pretty receptive to the idea...which is a change of attitude compared to twenty years ago, when they would do almost anything to prevent you from producing power.
hydro yes
solar yes
tidal yes
hydrogen yes
wind yes
portable nuclear outside of the free world’s Naval ships HARD NO!!!
 

80watts

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May 20, 2004
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Nuclear is a source of energy that can be safety used.
The Candu reactor uses Uranium, and its hard to make weapons out of the fuel and the left over from the reactor mass.
We know alot more about nuclear reaction now than in the 60s.
Bill Gate's Reactor was created in virtual silmulations and bugs worked out, it was due to be built in China, but the China/US trade war happened (something about technology transfers). The reactor is supposed to run off the left overs of the US reactors (which use enriched uranium), so all the radioactive waste can be used again. See Netflick story about bill gates.
There is a Thorium reactor built in the 60s that you can't melt down, but it was scrapped due to political reasons. (the other owners of the enriched plants).
The Fuk reactor in Japan had its emergency generators (which ran the emergency cooling pumps) low down in the facility, so when the reactor got swamped by seawater, it covered the emergency generators. And with no cooling the reactor went critical. Bad design by the designers. The emergency generators have to be placed higher, and given the ability to operate under water. Its kinda like that highrise in Halifax that has a pool ontop roof. The engineers forgot about the weight of the water in the pool, so the pool can't be used....

The problem with renewable is where do you store the energy when you have more of it. On a island in the Atlantic they have a hydroelectric dam and solar and wind. The island uses the wind/solar to pump water back up to the reservoir (thus storing the wind made electricity in the form of potential energy in the dam).

Bad press and a bunch of eco nuts raving about radiation etc has given nuclear a bad name (also the design of 3-mile and Chernobyl weren't the safest designs). But nuclear energy is safe, along as the proper safeguards are in place and no excuses are made to cut corners on safety.

Ontario's problem is they have alot (tons of it available) of hydro up north; and no way to transfer it south to southern Ontario.

And Ontario privatized the transmission lines so the people of Ontario are paying for the transmision of the energy (up to 25% of the hydro rate) and it dosen't go into the government coffers...
 

overdone

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and it's environmental impact is incredibly low
lol, sure

how many more rivers do you think we can damn up?

when there are none left? :noidea:

when we have 500 million people, which we would if the delusional Liberals and NDP get their way, after-all the more people the better right, more taxes, more votes

impact is low, hardly, like every other option it has problems, environmental ones, fish for one, land use of others, farming, ect....

never heard of Three Gorges Damn eh?

that one didn't do anything to the environment, lol

how about the one in Northern BC, yeah it ain't going to do anything to the surrounding area, people, animals, lol

changing the environment's natural ways, yeah, nothing to see there :flypig::flypig:

just like solar, wind, so called environmental solutions, they all have issues

it's only low when it doesn't affect you, make you change your ways, the Green handbook

when it's scaled, there are plenty of issues
 

sybian

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Dec 23, 2014
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lol, sure

how many more rivers do you think we can damn up?

when there are none left? :noidea:

when we have 500 million people, which we would if the delusional Liberals and NDP get their way, after-all the more people the better right, more taxes, more votes

impact is low, hardly, like every other option it has problems, environmental ones, fish for one, land use of others, farming, ect....

never heard of Three Gorges Damn eh?

that one didn't do anything to the environment, lol

how about the one in Northern BC, yeah it ain't going to do anything to the surrounding area, people, animals, lol

changing the environment's natural ways, yeah, nothing to see there :flypig::flypig:

just like solar, wind, so called environmental solutions, they all have issues

it's only low when it doesn't affect you, make you change your ways, the Green handbook

when it's scaled, there are plenty of issues
If you had paid attention to the rest of my post.....I said new technology.
They don't dam the rivers, they divert a portion of water, and run smaller turbines, that produce less power, but borrow the smaller amount of flow, and dump it back in a few hundred feet downstream.
No destroying fish habitat, no flooding of farmland...and they're doing it all over the Interior.
As a matter of fact there is a corkscrew micro hydro turbine, that can take in fish up to two feet long, and deposit it out the exit point....unharmed.
So yeah....no dams, no land or habitat loss..lower impact.

As to your comment about " it doesn't affect you"... Do you have any idea where it is I'm located? If they dam up entire canyons and flood it, it affects the Eco-system a great deal, but that's the exact opposite of what I was talking about.
 

masterblaster

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May 19, 2004
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Here in BC, and perhaps in other parts of Canada, we have an abundance of flowing water.
Harness the flow, create energy, put it back....that winter the water replenishes itself for free, by dropping itself from the sky, and it's environmental impact is incredibly low.
The only hurdles are terrain, and distance..the technology has come so far they don't need great drops in elevation, they can harness energy from a river that drops only a few feet....they are doing it all over the place up here.
I've even looked into a micro-hydro plant for my place...and BC Hydro was pretty receptive to the idea...which is a change of attitude compared to twenty years ago, when they would do almost anything to prevent you from producing power.
The Glen Canyon dam on the Colorado river has been called America’s worst ecological disaster.
 

sybian

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Dec 23, 2014
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Kamloops B.C.
The next time anyone that's interested drives towards Kamloops on the #1 Highway, and goes through Wallachin, there's a large yellow gate that has a sign that says BC Hydro....there's a few pull outs about 4 Klm past, going east. The Thompson River hooks around there.....and your way above it and about a Kilometre away, but you can see the new road.
And that's about all you see, is the road, you can clearly see there's no Dam, no spill gates,.... nothing.
They basically dump a tube, within a tube into a flowing river, and the inner tube has impellers, that turns a integrated turbine within the sleeve...of course there must be some environmental impact because you need transformers, and substations...but my point is, they don't need to flood entire valleys , or destroy ecosystems anymore to produce the power.
 

Cock Throppled

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Oct 1, 2003
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The next time anyone that's interested drives towards Kamloops on the #1 Highway, and goes through Wallachin, there's a large yellow gate that has a sign that says BC Hydro....there's a few pull outs about 4 Klm past, going east. The Thompson River hooks around there.....and your way above it and about a Kilometre away, but you can see the new road.
And that's about all you see, is the road, you can clearly see there's no Dam, no spill gates,.... nothing.
They basically dump a tube, within a tube into a flowing river, and the inner tube has impellers, that turns a integrated turbine within the sleeve...of course there must be some environmental impact because you need transformers, and substations...but my point is, they don't need to flood entire valleys , or destroy ecosystems anymore to produce the power.
So, what of the disaster-in-making of Site C?

Destroy farmland, change the ecology of the area, move millions of tons of earth, and create a massive dam on unstable gravel.
 

sybian

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Dec 23, 2014
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Kamloops B.C.
So, what of the disaster-in-making of Site C?

Destroy farmland, change the ecology of the area, move millions of tons of earth, and create a massive dam on unstable gravel.
Exactly....that's a wrong thing to do. Site C is a shitshow.
You don't honestly think I'm in agreement with destroying farmland?
 

Sphubby

Living the Life
Jan 21, 2015
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Exactly....that's a wrong thing to do. Site C is a shitshow.
You don't honestly think I'm in agreement with destroying farmland?
Give it up big guy, won't matter what you say they will twist it make a reason why not to use.

Watched this go back and forth multiple times but on deaf ears. I guess by their thoughts solar shouldn't be used because it takes away farm land, wind mills are out because they cause avian deaths, tidal is out because... well they should be able to think of something.

Guess stick with gas and coal, scrap all the new tech like the min impact hydro you are talking about.
 

Amerix

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Hydro and nuclear are the cleanest best sources of power we have.

Naturally that means the greens are opposed to both. Even though CO2 is the scariest thing in the world, we're only allowed to fix it with wind and solar, even though they are expensive and only work like 1/6 of the time (and in the case of solar, obviously, never at night. and rarely in the winter).

A suspicious person might think that their real agenda is to kill modern civilization by making electricity too expensive to use, not just address climate change.
 

sybian

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Dec 23, 2014
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Kamloops B.C.
Give it up big guy, won't matter what you say they will twist it make a reason why not to use.

Watched this go back and forth multiple times but on deaf ears. I guess by their thoughts solar shouldn't be used because it takes away farm land, wind mills are out because they cause avian deaths, tidal is out because... well they should be able to think of something.

Guess stick with gas and coal, scrap all the new tech like the min impact hydro you are talking about.
Yup.....I'm going to go flood my 140 acre hayfield with drift irrigation and not use my irrigation pump, and watch the water go to waste, instead of using my water saving low volume sprinklers out of pure frustration from this thread.
But hey...I won't be using any electricity....so at least we have that!
 

overdone

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Apr 26, 2007
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If you had paid attention to the rest of my post.....I said new technology.
They don't dam the rivers, they divert a portion of water, and run smaller turbines, that produce less power, but borrow the smaller amount of flow, and dump it back in a few hundred feet downstream.
No destroying fish habitat, no flooding of farmland...and they're doing it all over the Interior.
As a matter of fact there is a corkscrew micro hydro turbine, that can take in fish up to two feet long, and deposit it out the exit point....unharmed.
So yeah....no dams, no land or habitat loss..lower impact.

As to your comment about " it doesn't affect you"... Do you have any idea where it is I'm located? If they dam up entire canyons and flood it, it affects the Eco-system a great deal, but that's the exact opposite of what I was talking about.
and what you are talking about is pointless

because it wouldn't be able to be done on scale

which is why the green shit isn't working

look at the amount of land needed for solar, wind, hydro not to mention the mining for the metals, the concrete for the damns

just like batteries, Ford, didn't build hardly any electric mustangs, why, can't get enough batteries

for green shit to work, you need to be able to store electricity on scale, it ain't there yet, might never be


look into the cement plant and emissions from it, being built in Que, hypocrites again, where's the outrage?




SCALE, which is what is needed, which is why Nuclear, despite it's problems and the public's delusions of fear from the 70's and 80's

the "new tech" involved is something that could be part of the solution

you're talking about something that won't solve the problem


the delusional wannabe eco terrorists in Canada, they can't seem to grasp that to provide the amount of power needed for large amounts of people to live like fat Americans

not to mention the 3 billion in the world who aren't even at the level of a granola crunching off grid American, who need to catch up to basic poverty level

cause emissions aren't local remember

Green, green doesn't work ON SCALE, IF IT DID, WE'D HAVE IT ALREADY

here's the type of hypocrites we're dealing with

https://torontosun.com/opinion/colu...alberta-like-quebec-and-approve-teck-frontier

read the part about how Que doesn't have to follow the same rules, kinda like the Hypocrites in your province

or haven't you noticed how quick the RCMP were sent in to bust some heads so to speak when it's something John likes, lol

let's see how quick they are when they get near Burnaby with Trudeau's pipeline :lalala:

same with Que, Liberals turn a blind eye when it's something they benefit from

your solution is like the delusions of people not using plastic straws, not to mention our joke recycling programs, it's like spitting on forest fire

again, research, facts, virtually all the plastic in the oceans are coming from Asia, where we were sending most of our shit, where they don't have standards

like where the coal going thru your ports in BC is going, cause the west coast of the US won't let it go thru there

is it subject to the carbon tax? no

just think how much more Horgan could put into general revenue now that it isn't revenue neutral, not that it ever truly was :heh:

but that's not in their interest is it

your solution is like having a old individual water wheel to grind enough flour for you and 3 others

problem is, there are 7 billion plus

you still would have to install so many of them it wouldn't be practical

ON SCALE

Nuclear actually is, despite the problems
 

Sphubby

Living the Life
Jan 21, 2015
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and what you are talking about is pointless

because it wouldn't be able to be done on scale
In reference to the cowboy's point I don't think there was mention of scale. More of a individual person/property owner or maybe a small community taking advantage of this new hydro tech. Hey if I lived somewhere where I could put up some solar panels and have a small non impact hydro plant in my back 40 to get myself off grid I would go for it. It would like be a small drop in a lake for power savings for the country but what if a bunch of my friends did the same thing and then their friends also.

Its a small percentage but its going in the right direction and every bit helps. That new 1.28 gal flush toilet you put in replacing your 4 gal doesn't make a big difference by itself but when everyone does it makes a big difference and savings. Same with LED retrofit lighting. Small steps help and saves you some money to use for your hobby.

We have to start somewhere and if I could break even by the end of the service life of the equipment I would be happy, save some money and I'm ecstatic.

Nuclear actually is, despite the problems
Completely agree.
 

sybian

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Dec 23, 2014
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Kamloops B.C.
In reference to the cowboy's point I don't think there was mention of scale. More of a individual person/property owner or maybe a small community taking advantage of this new hydro tech. Hey if I lived somewhere where I could put up some solar panels and have a small non impact hydro plant in my back 40 to get myself off grid I would go for it. It would like be a small drop in a lake for power savings for the country but what if a bunch of my friends did the same thing and then their friends also.

Its a small percentage but its going in the right direction and every bit helps. That new 1.28 gal flush toilet you put in replacing your 4 gal doesn't make a big difference by itself but when everyone does it makes a big difference and savings. Same with LED retrofit lighting. Small steps help and saves you some money to use for your hobby.

We have to start somewhere and if I could break even by the end of the service life of the equipment I would be happy, save some money and I'm ecstatic.



Completely agree.
Yup....I can install a micro-hydro power plant and have it paid for in 8 years, sell the surplus to hydro that I don't use, and make a little.
The money is a trickle...but almost constant except for January and February.....if I could find some enhanced uranium on Craigslist, I might try to build a reactor.....but I've got a full head of hair and I'd prefer to keep it.
 
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