How do you do it?

I work 10 hours a day and when I'm not at work I feel guilty for not spending any "free" time with my kids.

Fueling nuclear reactors with the element thorium instead of uranium could produce half as much radioactive waste and reduce the availability of weapons-grade plutonium by as much as 80 percent. But the nuclear power industry needs more incentives to make the switch, experts say.

Scientists have long considered using thorium as a reactor fuel -- and for good reason: The naturally occurring element is more abundant, more efficient and safer to use than uranium. Plus, thorium reactors leave behind very little plutonium, meaning that governments have access to less material for making nuclear weapons.

Have you told a veteran thank you today?

I believe that one of the drawbacks of nuclear power is not the energy source itself but rather the tremendous amount of misinformation about it that is circulated--sometimes by people who ought to know better, or do know better, but have an ideological agenda.

Or people fail to consider the big picture--the whole panorama of energy generation and the risks and drawbacks and external costs of each form.

People are superstitious about radiation and ignorant of the fact that even our own bones give off gamma rays and that coal-fired plants emit 100-400 times more radioactivity than nuclear plants, which shield and contain their waste.  People find medical radiation acceptable, and in the US we get the greatest amount of manmade radiation on average from nuclear medicine.  But Mother Nature outdoes humans in terms of level of radiation exposure--we get bombarded by radioactive materials in soil, rock, seawater and by cosmic radiation.  

People assume that exposure even to low-dose radiation causes cancer.  In fact about one-third of all deaths on the planet are due to cancer.  In societies where people live longer, we live long enough to develop cancers.  There have been no reliable studies correlating cancer increases to proximity to nuclear plants.  In fact in the US the National Cancer Institute did an extensive survey and found absolutely no increase of cancer around nuclear plants.

People believe nuclear plants can explode atomically.  This is impossible.

They believe terrorists can capture nuclear plants and nuclear waste.  Why would they bother to overcome more security obstacles than you would meet getting into Fort Knox or the Federal Reserve Bank or the White House when there are so many really easy ways to get radioactive materials (from the oil industry, for example).  Or why not just blow up a chemical plant--the risk and probability of that are much higher.

As for flying a plane into a nuclear plant--they're made the same way nuclear bunkers are, with thick concrete and steel.  The plane would crumple and the plant would remain intact, and the reactor would go into automatic shutdown.

The most serious risk to public health from energy generation is from burning fossil fuels.  

The most serious risk to the environment and to habitat is from burning fossil fuels.

As for Chernobyl, for a real-world analysis see the World Health Organization's report on the Chernobyl Forum 2005: http://www.jaeri.go.jp/english/ff/ff43/topics.html

In a word, "the national reserves" of nuclear fuel are much more bigger than those for oil.
For other countries, I must say that you are dead right.

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

http://www.jaeri.go.jp/english/ff/ff43/topics.html

But the best arrangement would be an international fuel consortium that would "loan" countries fuel and then take spent fuel back and reprocess it.  This kind of monitoring, under the supervision of IAEA, would permit developing countries to have nuclear plants instead of burning fossil fuels.  

It might also give assurance to countries without a uranium supply of their own.

Resulting plutonium could be blended down into mixed oxide fuel.

Alternatively, fast-neutron reactors could burn up the waste portion of the spent fuel while reconditioning the usable uranium for another trip through the reactor.

See Dec. 2005 Scientific American.

 you talk about bias, when it's citizens defending themselves from something no insurance company will touch with a ten-foot geiger counter?

worst things about going nuclear:

1. it ups the terrorism ante by an order of magnitude, in a world already half out of its collective gourd over the subject.

2. all euro governents seem to have bought into the straussian line of 'lie, it's good for the little sheeple to be happy and not think too much' in the not-too-distant past, why the f*** would i or anyone trust them with such a responsibility over an issue like this?

please....people...this is ridiculous - as ridiculous as bush v.1 saying 'our way of life is not negotiable' and then bombing little brown folk into oblivion.

negotiating with nature should be done by leaders with the humility to realise what an intelligent organism nature is, and how willing it is for us to live peacefully with plenty of energy, instead thugs beat it out with destructive cudgels.....for what?

more landfill-to-be stuff, cheaper?

we've been ad-washed into believing we're special, when the only reason we're special is that by guile and historical accident we're in a catbird seat, global power-wise.

ho ho how great!

we're the lucky ones whose ancestors brought europe into a power position, we've lived off the colonial fat of the globe for centuries, and what if the shoe had been on the other foot and africa had ripped off all our resources and was now wondering if they should deign to stop screwing us with high interest as we paid back loans of the money generated by their military-backed middlemen from our own natural resources and the sweat of our enslaved backs?

that's the cognitive dissonance here and everywhere.... we just can't do the simple, right thing of putting ourselves in the shoes of the other 4/5 ths of the world, while we boost perfume and fast cars as 'value' in our slick, smugly mediated, medicated self-congratulation.

we don't want to be 'invaded' by their 'immigrants'; they are our shadow, and we know (but we don't admit it) they have revengeful reason to wish us pain, koran in hand or not. they're jealous of us, because we hoodwinked them with fine talk while we undermined them with corporate 'values' like fining them for keeping their own seedbanks alive, or selling them their own water, while 'educating' their politicians' sons at prestige universities and propping up pomp.

there are those who are grateful for our education facilities, the generosity of our charities, the warmheartedness of religious volunteers who in any number of ways do fantastically useful things, but where are our governments?

keeping secrets...about why our quality of life sucks for so many, and who pays big behind the curtain to keep us distracted with superstar soccer and baubles on the shopping channel, while our energy policies continue to avoid what's already staring us in the face so bad, any fool whose head hasn't been twisted off his gimbals can see we're gunning for trouble.

what kind of world would we have?
....if we devoted 1,000,000th of the money into clean energy we presently pour into fancy ways of killing people, militarizing space, grooming poodles and chasing celebrities to death, (especially of they actually wake up a few folks about what their tax-paid-for-landmines were doing for afghan kids while they discussed which brand of brie to serve at that important new client presentation).

my best friend's father died of thymus cancer when she was 12, working in a nuclear power station. her mother died in her 50's driving a 2 hour, 20 kilometre commute to work for amoco every day for 20 + years, of cancer.

every house on her street in n.w. germany had a family member with cancer.

this. is. not. supposed. to . be. like .this.

hello?

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

I have heard recently that a new plant could be built in 5 years at a cost of $1.5 billion.  The advanced reactor designs are simpler than the old dinosaurs and therefore more efficient and quicker to put together.  Standardization would also make everything cheaper and faster.

Utilities are considering six new plants for the US.  In the long run, once they earn out construction costs, they are profitable--even though, unlike other electricity sources, nuclear plants have to pay for security and to be responsible for their waste.

Here's what the Energy Information Agency, usually a reliable source, has to say about new construction:

A primary source of doubt regarding the potential of nuclear power, at least in the U.S., has been whether the recent nuclear technology has been too expensive to compete in the commercial marketplace. There have been no orders for new nuclear power plants during the last three decades in the United States and Canada. Finland's order for a new reactor in 2003 broke a similar extended hiatus in Western Europe, excepting France where orders tailed off later. France now looks likely to follow. Reactor vendors have not ignored the message that their product has recently involved high investment costs and long construction periods. Vendors now seek to position their product with promises of lower prices, shorter construction times, and specified financial arrangements. Most competitors are now offering fixed and historically low prices for at least the nuclear components of their designs.  These promises vary with the price of basic materials such as steel and concrete and as first of a kind engineering costs are allocated or eliminated.  Location, buyer specifications, and regulatory requirements can also alter anticipated costs.

Concerns regarding construction costs for new nuclear power plants contrast sharply with the comparatively low cost of operating commercial reactor designs. Overall operating costs for nuclear power plants, as reported to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), have been roughly the same as (most recently slightly less than) operating costs for coal-fired plants for about two decades. Such operating costs are considerably below the costs of operating most natural gas-fired generation units even when natural gas prices are relatively low. Moreover, the fuel cost component of operating a nuclear power plant is particularly low. This operating cost advantage has given existing nuclear power units a favored position in the provision of base load electric power. Nuclear plant designers hope to take advantage of such low operating costs in positioning their new designs.  Whether they will succeed has not yet been demonstrated.  http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/analysis/nucenviss2.html

For example German plants don't look like that anymore.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}