Why are there no commercial ships using nuclear energy? Those new, huge cruise ships must burn a tremendous amount of diesel fuel.

Sam

retired at 48:

Chang:

retired at 48:

BTW I am a little biased, because I was a Quality Assurance Manager involved with Naval Nuclear Powered Submarines, for which the USA submarines have never had a nuclear accident. 

retired at 48

Hey Retired@48 - There's a chance you know me or vice versa, since I'm three years younger than you and I was at Naval Reactors, from 1980-1985, Division 08-I (Reactor Engineering Division) under Dave Pye.   I've lost contact with most of my fellow nukes, though I still keep in touch with our old nuclear engineering prof. at Bettis.

Yes, I do know you.  I was closely associated with 08, but from a QC role.  Names like Lavish, Henke, etc.  I liked your subsequent post re military/nuclear power.  Guess I'm not alone in this post!

R48

I didn't think I gave you that many clues!

CaptMidnight:

Since nuclear power is not safe and cannot be made safe, the risks will always be borne by those who are not necessarily benefitting.  That the beneficiaries should include US corporations in addition to the US military, hardly changes that fact. 

What is "safe"?   Nothing in life is absolutely safe.

You should look at a PSA -- Probabilistic Safety Assessment -- for a third generation nuclear power plant like the Westinghouse AP-1400.   I am involved in the AP-1400s being constructed now in Korea.   Compared to anything else in life, these are safe.   They require no active systems, no operator actions, no motors, no electronics, no turbines, no compressed air, nothing to survive a worst case loss of coolant accident without release of radioactivity.

I would happily live next to one.   As I happily slept in the missile bay adjacent to the reactor compartment of the USS Nathan Hale. 

But if you are not actually interested in facts, then . . .
 

CaptMidnight:

When the Chinese govt announces that they will reduce the polution generation and energy consumption per unit of GDP, I believe that they will achieve that.

I don't cede an inch of the discussion to the so-called "experts."  They are not experts in what safety risk I find acceptable for me.

You trust the Chinese Government .... but you don't trust nuclear safety analyses by the NRC or IAEA?   Hmm.
 

To Mr Ed

You raise a legit safety issue, which I will discuss in next post.  But you specifically said "Forward thinking is renewable energy resources."  Like Chang said above, our country has actually tested out "breeder reactors"!  What can be more renewable than a fuel that generates more usable fuel as you burn it...and in completely enclosed systems.  The word "renewable" fits.

To Satori

You, too, raise legit safety questions.  But you have your doubts, because you ask, rightly, wonder where France stores its radioactive waste.  In a post below I'll try to mitigate your concern.

To Snray

No commercial ships use NucPwr because it is just not cost effective to build all the safety controls,etc for each individual ship. And one would have to train passengers. etc.  The navy benefitted because of long patrol capability, without need for fuel (goes about a decade) and it is well-hardened against blasts.  A full analysis would probably show is not even cost effective to do for submarines.  That is, on that small a scale, individually.

retired at 48

Actually the Russians built a couple of nuclear-powered ice breakers for Arctic use.

I agree with your Retired@48 - what could be a more "renewable" and "green" energy than a breeder?   Produces more fuel than it consumes, and emits no greenhouse gases!

CaptMidnight:

The downside risks of nuclear energy are just too large.  Not just due to accidents, but to storage and transport.  In fifty years of nuclear power, they haven't found a place to store the waste yet that is sufficiently stable given its long life.  The risks of oil and gas, hydro and wind (!? what risk is that exactly?) are just not of the same scale.  And scale matters.  Human beings are not careful enough to manage the operating risks even if the storage and transport problems were solvable, which they are not.

The main solution is to reduce consumption.  Penalize automobiles.  Develop public transportation.  Burn coal with scrubbing technology.  Push housing development and population into the cities where everything is more energy-efficient. 

Beyond that make it a mission of national emergency to find solutions.  When the Chinese govt announces that they will reduce the polution generation and energy consumption per unit of GDP, I believe that they will achieve that.  I don't believe America can solve any of its problems: health care, energy, loss of manufacturing, govt liabilities for underfunded military pensions and Medicare, etc.  There are too many vested interests making too much money on the status quo to engineer change.  The auto industry is a perfect example.  In the 50's and 60's they owned the world market.  They could have developed the next two generations of auto power systems.  Instead, they will probably just go out of business.

 It's only when you start from the assumption that the American suburban lifestyle is the goal that nuclear power looks like a solution.  That infrastructure was all developed on the premise of cheap oil, which is either gone or soon to be.

I don't cede an inch of the discussion to the so-called "experts."  They are not experts in what safety risk I find acceptable for me.
 

 

I don't know in which generation you fall, CaptMidnight, but I acknowledge there are surely thousands of people who share views similar to yours.  But it does give credence to my initial position that it will "take one more generation."  Although I must question that if we "make it (energy) a mission of national emergency" yet we exclude the types you distrust, namely, the military,  government types and the corporations (capitalists), I'm not sure who is left.  Outsource to India?  And since you won't, in your words,  "cede an inch", I'd like to discuss nuclear transportation and storage issues for the forum readers.

When a nuclear reactor is operating, the nuclear fuel, uranium, becomes radioactive and bombards surrounding enclosure materials.  These materials themselves become radioactive, emiting back some radiation.  When any reactor is refueled, or torn down, the spent fuel goes to a reprocessing plant where its volume is greatly reduced.  Adjacent parts/materials are simply retained. 

Now here's the technical deal regarding transport/storage.  The key technical aspect is that, even with exposure in air, these radioactive components are not dangerous as long as one keeps a small distance away, like hundred(s) of feet.  So if a transporting train wrecks, and the containers are breached, as long as one does not go touch these materials there is no harm.

Santori asked an insightful question: Where does France store its waste?  Probably like in the USA.  Since our country is still trying to select a burial ground, how has the waste been handled for the past fifty years?  Answer: it is stored on site at the power generating plants, in large swimming pools of water, just sitting there.  Why water? Because it absorbs the outgoing radiation better than air, such that a few feet away is very safe.  I, personally, have stood on walkways overlooking the swimming pools, looking down on top of a used (spent) nuclear reactor, about 20 feet above it.  My personal radiation monitoring device showed no increase above background.  Now when I went outside in the direct sunlight, the device registered higher readings!

There are enough very good storage sites, now known, as places to safely place these materials "to rest" and keeping rainwater off of them.  Nevada has the best ones.  But until a future generation gets over the fears involved here, and solves the "not in my back yard" issue, we will continue to have the higher risk storage as we have now: swimming pools throughout the country. 

Amazing, but in fifty years you have never heard a storage incident make the national news.  Perhaps what R48 says is remotely correct.  Storage is an education and political issue.  Reactor accident safety is a design, siting (keep them away from populated areas) and control issue. 

BTW radiation is in lots of places in the universe.  When volcanoes erupt, we spew some radioactive material.  Uranium is natural.  People get medical Xrays.  The sun is essentially thousands of nuclear bombs going off hourly--loads of radiation, which is why we get sunburned..  I am confident future generations will see radiation for what it is, and deal with it.  That is, unless fusion reactors are developed, which, would you believe, involve NO Radiation!

retired at 48

The challenge of nuclear energy is not just the danger of nuclear accident, but how to safely and effectively dispose of high-level radioactive waste. The best we seem to be able to do is bury it deep somewhere.

 
You don't have to dispose of it - you just use reactor designs that burn the fuel farther down the radioactive scale.  Check out some of the recent pebble bed reactor designs - when they're done with the radioactive waste/fuel from the traditional reactors, there's nothing left to build bombs out of and the disposal problem is much much easier since the stuff is no longer nearly as hot as the waste was originally.

It's also worth remembering that coal power puts out way more radioactive pollution in the US than our nuclear plants. We burn a whole lot of coal, so if you're worried about radioactive pollution problems, you should start there.  More nuclear plants would be cleaner than more coal plants and way better on the green house gases front too.