From http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu
"At U.C. Berkeley, nuclear engineers are leading in research that will enable long-term sustainable and economic production of nuclear energy from fission and fusion...Today nuclear energy provides over 70% of all non-fossil electricity generation in the United States, and U.S. utilities are moving forward with license applications to build some 30 new, Generation III+ advanced light water reactors to further expand this contribution."
Per F. Peterson, Professor and Chair
Nuclear Engineering Department at UCB
It's not a matter of
It's not a matter of ignorance as Dr. Chivers suggests. The public perception that nuclear energy is dangerous is because IT IS. Several acclaimed and equally educated doctors, engineers and physicists know that it's dangerous and archaic technology and have said so countless times. It's been compared, rightly so, by prominent engineers and physicists to still using steam train locomotives for travel. The technology as well as the plants are old and falling apart. We have better means for sustaining energy now it's time to advance and progress.
By Whatever Means Necessary
By whatever means necessary, any more nuclear plants must be stopped.
The gamble is too great, and we've already lost the bet several times. If we keep playing, eventually, we'll lose everything.
The whole article
It's about more than just nuclear energy/power. The
entire range of careers and endeavours related to
nuclear engineering is mentioned:
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/20
Today nuclear engineering is a dynamic and expanding field, and today's nuclear engineers contribute across a myriad of nuclear applications that improve human heath and welfare. At U.C. Berkeley, nuclear engineers are leading in research that will enable long-term sustainable and economic production of nuclear energy from fission and fusion; provide for responsible recycle and disposal of nuclear wastes; develop advanced, radiation tolerant materials for high-temperature applications; assure security by detecting illicit transfers of nuclear materials; and advance applications of nuclear methods for medical imaging and therapy.
Today nuclear energy provides over 70% of all non-fossil electricity generation in the United States, and U.S. utilities are moving forward with license applications to build some 30 new, Generation III+ advanced light water reactors to further expand this contribution. Work is underway to develop advanced fuel cycle and Generation IV reactor technologies that can consume nuclear wastes while providing economic and secure supplies of electricity, low-carbon transportation fuels, and desalinated water. New approaches for geologic disposal of residual nuclear wastes are being considered, and Berkeley is active in studying how different options can be coupled to advanced, sustainable fuel cycles.
Students studying in nuclear engineering become true multi-disciplinary specialists, and many undergraduates choose to pursue joint major degrees with mechanical, materials science, chemical, or electrical engineering. Those who graduate today enter an expanding job market in industry, national laboratories, government and academia, where one can work on problems that will have large impact on our future environment, security, health and safety.
Welcome to our UCBNE web site, which contains a diverse range of information about the people and activities in our department.
Per F. Peterson, Professor and Chair
What a waste of time, money,
What a waste of time, money, and life. I think the nuclear industry has proven with out a shadow of a doubt, that nuclear energy is not clean. Nuclear waste is unnatural, and never decomposes. Every time there is a nuclear accident people have to abandon their land. Food turns to poison. Water turns to poison. Air turns to poison. Birth defects, cancer, death. They are using rocks to boil water. This is not efficient, in fact over 70% of energy is wasted at nuclear powerplants. They spend all of there money trying to build safer containment vessels. That tells you this is the most dangerous thing on the planet. They should be figuring out how to phase out nuclear power, not bring more death and misery to the world. I would rather live like the Amish than poison our world for a little electricity. Nukes had their chance and blew it. Carbon debate is bs, purely political. I've never seen a coal plant cause world wide panic. We need, solar, tidal, hydro, wind, geothermal, and zeropoint energy sources.
Idiots and the 2nd Law
This is not efficient, in fact over 70% of energy is wasted at nuclear powerplants.
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Once again we have a post by an idiot anti-nuke that evidently doesn't know about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
Although it is true that only about 30% to 40% of the reactor's energy output appears as the desired electrical energy, and 70% to 60% is dumped into the environment as "waste heat", the same can be said for ANY electrical power plant.
This is due to a fundamental Law of Physics called the "2nd Law of Thermodynamics". This fundamental physical law doesn't allow us to convert all or even most of the reactor's heat energy into rotary motion of the turbine and ultimately into electrical energy.
Evidently the above poster didn't study elementary Physics in high school. For a remedial course, I suggest the following courtesy of Georgia State University:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/seclaw.html
The second law of thermodynamics is a general principle which places constraints upon the direction of heat transfer and the attainable efficiencies of heat engines....
Second Law of Thermodynamics: It is impossible to extract an amount of heat QH from a hot reservoir and use it all to do work W . Some amount of heat QC must be exhausted to a cold reservoir. This precludes a perfect heat engine.
The rotary motion of the turbine, and the electrical energy produced there from, are said to be "work" or "high quality energy" by physicists because neither rotary motion nor electrical energy contains "entropy".
Evidently, the idiot anti-nuke, who is uneducated in Physics, and who wrote the lame condemnation of nuclear power quoted above; doesn't realize that the inefficiency mentioned and the necessity to dump "waste heat" are just the bargain mankind has made with Mother Nature. If we want high quality energy with no entropy, like electricity; then we just have to pay the price for this commodity that Mother Nature decrees has to be exacted.
Mother Nature imposes these limitations on us, and we have to live with them if we want the energy. Some technologies are even more constrained than fossil-fuel and nuclear. If you want to see some really low efficiencies dictated by Mother Nature, then look at solar and wind.
Solar is limited by the "quantum efficiency" and by "charge-carrier recombination". Wind is limited by Betz's Law. Why isn't the idiot anti-nuke poster above complaining about those limits?
https://dspace.lasrworks.org/bitstream/handle/10349/145/fulltext.pdf?seq...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betz%27_law
Because some modern wind turbines approach this potential maximum efficiency, once practical engineering obstacles are considered, Betz' Law shows a limiting factor for this form of renewable energy. Engineering constraints, energy storage and transmission losses and other factors mean that even the best modern turbines may operate at efficiencies substantially below the Betz Limit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_efficiency_of_a_solar_cell
The losses of a solar cell may be broken down into reflectance losses, thermodynamic efficiency, recombination losses and resistive electrical loss. The overall efficiency is the product of each of these individual losses.
For the clueless poster above, "What are we to do?" ALL forms of electrical energy generation have their limits imposed by Mother Nature. So are we to just "give up" because we can't have our way and get 100% efficient electrical energy generation?
NO - we do what we've been doing for a century; we accept Mother Nature's limits and live within them. We have no other choice.
BRAVO! BRAVO!
Boy, you sure took that idiot to the woodshed.
It's amazing to see how uneducated many people are about basic physics and the "bargains with Mother Nature", as the previous poster calls them, that mankind has made.
We've been living with the constraints imposed by the 2nd law of thermodynamics in generating electricity ever since Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse built the first electrical power plants.
The antinukes have just discovered these universal limits and use them as a foil against nuclear power, and not telling the public that these constraints apply equally to other sources of electrical generation.
Such dishonesty from the antinukes, and those hypocrites are always decrying how the nuclear industry is lying. Shame on the antinukes.
============== Let's
============== Let's see...take a 7 month old comment, bully and badger the poster calling he/she an idiot and re posting a thank you to yourself for the bad manors...you give us in the industry a bad name.
It's this guy's M.O.
He bully and badgers a lot, my friend, often using sarcasm and name calling. I dread his posts - he's like a forum stalker.
And you can tell by the writing style that he then penned a congratulatory follow up post.
I wish he'd go away and leave the forum for the adults.
I call them as I see them.
I call them as I see them.
Also - I'm not the poster previous to me.
Internal & External 'Lightning'
Some electrical equipment internal failure is always blamed on 'lightning'. Lightning is MUCH cheaper than warranty work.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20111104p2a00m0na006000c.html
Lightning is nemesis of windmills, threatening Japan's renewable energy campaign
(Mainichi)SAPPORO -- As Japan moves to shift away from nuclear power, wind power, a potential key player among renewable energy sources, faces a stubborn foe: lightning.
Hokkaido hosts 266 windmills, the most among Japan's 47 prefectures, and about 90 percent of them are located along the Sea of Japan coast, where lightning frequently occurs between fall and winter.
Can't agree you any more.
Can't agree you any more. This industry has done more bad than good to this planet. It is not clean energy, it is producing more and more radioactive waste everyday which will pollute our land and ocean. Our kids have to clean these mess!
I feel the same. If only the
I feel the same. If only the time and money had been put into developing better ways to generate electricity. Amish doesn't sound so bad right now to me.
Agreed
We need to turn Amish if we cannot produce clean power. Much better way of life then what nuclear fallout brings.
There is only one reason Berkley Nuclear Engineering should continue, "to provide for responsible recycle and disposal of nuclear wastes". Period.
Nuclear is Dead. Sell your stocks now before the crash!
Couldn't DISAGREE more.
We need to turn Amish if we cannot produce clean power. Much better way of life then what nuclear fallout brings.
=================================
I think a lot of the debate with nuclear power is that many people don't like / understand the science and technology that modern society is built on.
Some seek a "simpler" and more "primitive" existence is what is needed.
It all sounds so "romantic" to live like the Amish. However, I bet if any of these romantics were actually forced to live like the Amish; they'd be crying for a more modern lifestyle in very short order.
As demonstrated by Fukushima, nuclear power isn't perfect. However, what technology is? However, even if you combine the actual 30+ deaths at Chernobyl with the "statistical" deaths due to Chernobyl and Fukushima, and the nonexistent death toll for Three Mile Island, the sum total of these pales when compared to the thousands that we have lost in airliner crashes, which pales compared to the tens of thousands of deaths each year due to automobile accidents.
By any intellectually honest accounting, nuclear power is the closest to a "perfectly safe" technology that mankind has produced in reality.
If we don't adopt an "air travel free" society, like the Amish, due to airliner crashes. If we don't adopt the "horse and buggy", like the Amish, and instead opt for our automobiles and the 40,000 to 50,000 each year death toll there from; why in Heaven's sake would we discontinue the use of nuclear power?
If you use your head and think about it, in lieu of your emotions; it just doesn't make sense to abandon nuclear power.
Or...
We could easily conserve the 8.5% of nuclear energy consumed AT SOURCE and close down every nuclear power plant in the U.S.
No more effluent releases polluting air and rivers; no more radioactive waste; no more threat of meltdowns.
...This could easily be
...This could easily be accomplished by improvements in capacitor design in electric motors and devices. Currently about 1/2 of the energy used in capacitors is lost as heat. Grid losses by excessive transmission can be reduced by up to 50% using existing Smart Grid technology. In addition, conservation has proven to work in California, reducing the need for new power plants. Just by replacing incandescent Holiday lighting with LED this season can reduce that load 90%.
I'm sorry to say that
I'm sorry to say that nuclear power is here to stay, in spite of what has occurred at Fukushima. The alternatives at this point are fossile fuels which provide the bulk of the air pollution health effects world wide and kill millions every year. Taking nuclear away from the equation right now will be detrimental to both our health and to the reduction of global warming. I am all for renewables and sustainable energy, but these sources are not ready for prime time. I'm still not sure why people are not up in arms due to the health effects from coal-fired plants. These are proven killers, and on the west coast we are being bombarded by increased particulates from Chinese coal plants at an alarming rate.
I am fascinated by the public risk perception to radiation even when numbers are placed in front of them. I don't think I am brainwashed,..., I am just educated more on the risks than others (my Ph.D. minor concentration was risk assessment). I tend to be rational in that I try not to weigh one risk over another of equal value due to some bias factor. In risk assessment, this is sometimes called the "dread factor", where people are psychologically predisposed to risk aversion due to some reason or another. This view is called the psychometric paradigm. I think we are all biased against nuclear power in one way or another due to the connection (right or wrong) to nuclear weapons. So, I propose a hypothetical question: Would the world be more acceptable to nuclear power, given the real risks to health and the environment balanced against other sources, if nuclear weapons never existed (i.e. no Hiroshima, no Nagasaki, no MAD, etc.)?
Proven killers..
I'm still not sure why people are not up in arms due to the health effects from coal-fired plants. These are proven killers,..
====================================================
Yes - and according to scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, coal is responsible for more radioactivity in the environment than nuclear power:
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html
Americans living near coal-fired power plants are exposed to higher radiation doses than those living near nuclear power plants that meet government regulations....
the population effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants.
Like you, I wonder about the disparity between the rather severe reaction seen on this web site to the unfortunate release of some 10s of kilograms of radioactive material from Fukushima; while the fact that the coal power plants of the USA put thousands of TONS of Uranium and Thorium into our atmosphere for us to breathe, and that goes by relatively unheeded.
dchivers, It's a 'Catch-22'
dchivers,
It's a 'Catch-22' situation with respect to the energy resources used today and yes, the history of nuclear weapons and their long lasting effects have especially scarred the reputation! On one hand, a sizeable portion of the world relies largely on fossil fuels and others on combinations of fossil fuels and nuclear power; all not without incident or accident in their histories or release of materials deleterious to the environment and human health. It really is a matter of perception concerning nuclear power, it is also a matter of knowledge. Since the ills of nuclear accidents can be quick, persistent or show up around 20 years or so after exposure in the form of a horrific disease that destroys the patient the idea of particulates from Coal/fossil fuels causing harm is not as greatly feared since it is known that when a horrific nuclear accident such as Chernobyl happens, persistent contamination along with ill effects is right there too. And therein lies the bulk of the perception and reasoning behind the dissension that exists if anything goes wrong with nuclear materials.
Nuclear power IS the engine of rapid economic growth, if there was a way to use the natural energy harnessing methods of Nikola Tesla to power the world, surely we would not have hazardous nuclear waste that once released in the environment persists, some of it forever! Also, as any Dr. will tell you, there is no safe level of radiation and, it's cumulative. If mankind can accelerate the discovery and manufacture of energy production that would be the best. Unfortunately, the fact that the harnessing of nuclear energy is new in relation to mankind's existence and progress to highly technological societies means that it is not 'foolproof' and when accidents happen, they leave their legacy behind with permanent areas in the form of 'brownfields' that are not infrequently uninhabitable. Nuclear power plants have not been perfected either and ALL without exception release a small amount of radioactive material in the environment every year they operate which tells me that nuclear power is still very much in its infancy.
Show the world a nuclear power plant that is impervious to natural disaster, human error, does not release any radioactive material and produces no 'waste' possibly by highly efficient reprocessing methods and then you might see a public that is more receptive to nuclear power.
-Off my menu: All Seafood! Why? because the oceans have become the prime military and industrial sewer and the last thing I want is to inadvertently ingest enough nuclear material to invite some horrific terminal disease such as leukemia, lymphoma or other cancers known to be more common since 1946...
That's a hypothesis!
Also, as any Dr. will tell you, there is no safe level of radiation and, it's cumulative.
===========================
Sorry, but it's not that simple. The LNT - Linear No Threshold hypothesis is just a hypothesis. It has NOT been conclusively proven that there is no safe lower limit. We hypothesize it, and the National Academy in the BEIR report states that it is good simplification for the purpose of constructing regulations, but it is not conclusively proven.
From the Health Physics Society, courtesy of the University of Michigan:
http://www.umich.edu/~radinfo/introduction/risk.htm
At low doses, such as what we receive every day from background radiation, the cells repair the damage rapidly.
http://www.umich.edu/~radinfo/introduction/hprisk.htm
Epidemiological studies have not demonstrated adverse health effects in individuals exposed to small doses (less the 10 rem) delivered in a period of many years.
We get somatic illness when the radiation dose is more than what the body's repair mechanism can cope with. Because the body has a repair mechanism, there can be zero consequences for low dose exposure that the repair mechanism can fully repair.
Response...
>> Show the world a nuclear power plant that is impervious to natural disaster, human error, does not release any radioactive material and produces no 'waste' possibly by highly efficient reprocessing methods and then you might see a public that is more receptive to nuclear power.
I would agree with this statement and the Generation IV designs (Fukushima was Gen I and II) have pretty much these goals. However, your statement of "no waste" is flawed. There are no zero waste energy cycles...there will always be an impact. The question is always the amount of negative impact on the biosphere. We do have highly efficient reprocessing methods that have been designed and tested, but this runs head-on to the nuclear proliferation issues (weapons again). There are no easy answers, obviously. However, nuclear issues, both weapons and reactor, will be with us for at least our lifetimes and we need a new generation of nuclear "thinkers" to tackle these hard problems.
-"I would agree with this
-"I would agree with this statement and the Generation IV designs (Fukushima was Gen I and II) have pretty much these goals. However, your statement of "no waste" is flawed. There are no zero waste energy cycles...there will always be an impact. The question is always the amount of negative impact on the biosphere. We do have highly efficient reprocessing methods"...
dchivers,
That's a fair statement considering our current level of technology. I have confidence that perhaps you might be the one able to devise previously unheard of methods to contain and recycle the products of nuclear energy generation to 100% non release into the immediate environment during operation provided some catastrophe nuclear or otherwise doesn't destroy humanity or set us back a few centuries first.
Have you ever read 'Surely you must be joking Mr. Feynman!'? In it, Richard Feynman who worked on the Manhattan project knew that even then vehicles that run practically forever on nuclear power could be created-we currently have nuclear powered submarines and, there are golf cart type vehicles used in underground installations related to me by the wife of a certain lab physicist and she hinted about other vehicles as well.
As the saying goes, what the mind can conceive of can be achieved, perhaps at some point in time and sometimes not within one's lifetime.
The triple catastrophes visited upon the Japanese who are the most technology oriented society saddens me since it proves the helplessness of humanity in the face of nature and the potentiality of one of its smallest parts. The atom when concentrated by man and released by it (nature)is more than a force to be reckoned with demanding so much if it is to remain safe and especially useful. Today while driving in downtown Reno, NV surprisingly there were two white rental cars jammed with Japanese men in suits. As they made a left turn in front of me while I waited at the stoplight a few of them really stared hard at my old but well maintained Nissan Frontier c.2000. Each one appeared to be exhausted and had a decidedly depressed or blank look. Hopefully they will spring back and continue despite it all and they deserve to be upheld as contributors to technology and will continue to do so as long as they have the drive to.
In closing, as long as you have the drive to strive for your goals and then some with respect to 100% containment during and after operation and remaining receptive to any other similarly powerful method of harnessing clean energy your mission will be a success.
Here's a link that those not within your field and visitors here can easily understand which was found here through the comments section of an article about Taylor Wilson a 16 year old University of Reno NV student involved in their nuclear science program at rgj.com (http://sciradioactive.com/Taylors_Nuke_Site/Welcome.html) about nuclear energy, reprocessing and that more than adequately explains the point you made about it and nuclear weapons-too bad politics is a major part of the development and implementation equation.
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/archivos_pdf/beauty_nuclear.pdf 'The Beauty of Completing the Nuclear Fuel Cycle'
-Off my menu: All Seafoods because the oceans really are a military and industrial sewer! Yes, I will miss Anchovies on my pizza, fishsticks, red snapper, tuna (even 'chicken of the sea' is no longer 'worthy,'crab, fake crab (made with Pollock, an ocean fish), clam chowder, Caviar etc... See: http://pstuph.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/can-ocean-currents-transport-radi...
>> Have you ever read
>> Have you ever read 'Surely you must be joking Mr. Feynman!'? In it, Richard Feynman who worked on the Manhattan project knew that even then vehicles that run practically forever on nuclear power could be created-we currently have nuclear powered submarines and, there are golf cart type vehicles used in underground installations related to me by the wife of a certain lab physicist and she hinted about other vehicles as well.
One of my favorite books...Richard Feynman was truly a genius as well as a communicator. A rare gem in the past 100 years of physics. I continue to use his three books from his lectures on physics at CalTech to gain insight and I own all of them in audio. Since I am an ex-navy nuclear guy, I am well aware of the power of nuclear reactors and yes there have been many projects over the years trying to apply nuclear power to different vehicles. I doubt we will see a nuclear powered car because, well,...the enrichment of U235 or Pu239 would be too high for anyone to allow. However, nuclear powered solar system and deep space travel reactor designs have been proposed by NASA for some time now. Now, we just have to find uranium on the moon as launching a heavy reactor (density of UO2 is 50% greater than lead) is quite hard from the surface of the Earth.
It's a Fair -- and Intriguing / Challenging -- Question.
Thanks for posing that -- a little perspective is probably warranted at this point, five weeks in.
...I'd like a little time to think about that one. Get back to you in a day or so.
Rick Cromack.
Allen, Texas
RichardFCromackJr@gmail.com