Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to Power generation death rates

Re: Re: As is sometimes the case

It is interesting

We can pull out information that serves our purpose from many sources, and each one of us has a bias towards what we think is correct.
Obviously, you think that nuclear power is safe and will be for as long as we need electricity.
I on the other hand do not like the large energy figures that are attributed to nuclear power, also I do not like the perpetual motion quality of breeder reactors. Although, if the breeder reactors were such that they were self contained and would not create any external pollution, either thermal or radioactive, then they might be ok to use; such is not the case right now; as explained in this web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

The information that I have obtained from the internet on the subject of nuclear power is as follows.

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20050428/
“Earth's Energy Out of Balance”
“Apr. 28, 2005
Ten years of observations show that Earth's oceans absorbed an average of 6.02 excess watt-years of energy per square meter (a watt-year is the total amount of energy supplied by 1 watt of power for a year.)”)

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20050428/
“The present planetary energy imbalance is large by standards of Earth's history. For example, an imbalance of 1 Watt per square meter maintained for the last 10,000 years is sufficient to melt ice equivalent to 1 kilometer of sea level (if there were that much ice), or raise the temperature of the ocean above the thermocline [the boundary layer between the warm, surface waters and the deep ocean] by more than 100°C”

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20050428/
“A kilogram of uranium-235 (U-235) converted via nuclear processes contains approximately three million times the energy of a kilogram of coal burned conventionally (7.2 × 1013 joules per kilogram of uranium-235 versus 2.4 × 107 joules per kilogram of coal.”

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/122432/20110314/japan-earthquake-nuclear-reactor-us-fukushima-daiichi-radiation-chernobyl-meltdown-explosion.htm
The information is that:
“--US is the world's largest producer of nuclear power-based electricity, producing 838 TWh (terawatt hour) which is 30.7 percent of the world total of 2731 TWh.

(8193 Twh = 2.949*10 to the 19th power of joules.)

In other words 2.949*10 to the 19th power of joules of energy divided by the number of tons of air 5*10 to the 15th power = 5898 joules of energy per ton of air per hour is inserted into the atmosphere.
If that amount of energy is not enough to increase the kinetic energy of the atmospheric molecules, then consider the following. From Scientific American January 26, 2009
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nuclear-waste-lethal-trash-or-renewable-energy-source&page=3

It states that:
“In fact, the U.S. nuclear industry has produced roughly 64,000 metric tons (one metric ton equals 1.1 U.S. tons) of radioactive used fuel rods in total “ and
“as much as 95 percent of the energy in fissile uranium remains in the waste.”

If the above figure of 8193 TWh is only 5% of the total energy that will convert to heat energy, then the total heat energy production from nuclear power plants alone is 163 860 TW per hour, and that is equivalent to 5.899*10^20 joules.

According to the web site: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+many+joules+are+in+163860+TWh

The quantity of 163 860 TWh is approximately 0.94 times the total energy from the sun that hits the Earth.

No wonder the Earth’s energy level is out of balance, we are adding almost another sun‘s worth of energy to it from breeding nuclear reactions.

So if this is true, and the trend continues, there will eventually be more than a few hundred thousand dead people on this planet.

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (8 posts)

Related discussions