Talk:Nuclear power

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Advantages

Please give us some advantages of Nuclear Power! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.108.120.248 (talk) 02:37, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

No global warming? No more sending our money to the middle east to buy oil? Energy independence? That's just for starters. 129.2.106.74 (talk) 17:23, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Before Chernobyl, it was accounted that burning coal to produce electrical energy released more radiation into the atmosphere than nuclear power (coal contains small but significant amounts of radioactive material). Since Chernobyl, nuclear power's record is much worse.... but I am not sure if coal is cleaner in this way.Edwardspat (talk) 18:45, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Possibly entry into article, modified or not: "Nuclear power is key to increasing productivity. The reason has to do with energy flux density. This is the density of energy flux over an area. In the case of nuclear power, it is land area, on which human activity is based. Nuclear energy delivers more energy per unit mass of fuel. Hence, the development of nuclear energy delivers more energy per unit area of land. This means the specific use of nuclear power delivers higher energy flux per land area than other forms of power. That same land, thus electrified, can be used for other purposes. This turn leads to increased productivity of the electrically powered machines and hence the personel that use them in that area. This is turn increases the productivity of a nuclear plant into societal productivity. More can be done with less. However, the overall result is not just productivity. Nuclear electrification of productive machines increases the capability of economic association between people on a given land. This is the physical quality that leads to the general formula of productivity per capita per land area, of "power of the people"". At the very least, somewhere there ought to be a list of economic advantages and reasons. 74.195.16.39 (talk) 23:07, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Breaking out the Debate section into a Nuclear Debate article

It's premature to do this, but Nuclear Power has gotten to be very long and the Debate section is about half of it (and about to get longer as I/we do the merges). How would everyone feel about taking the Nuclear debate redirect and making it a separate article? Please discuss before doing. Simesa (talk) 02:55, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone see anything wrong with doing the above? After all, Global warming controversy has its own article. Simesa (talk) 03:15, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm just going to go ahead and do the move to Nuclear power debate and change the pointers (especially Nuclear debate) to point to that article. Simesa (talk) 04:14, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the changes you've been making. The debate article helps keep this article concise, and I think the split was done about as POV neutral as possible. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:42, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Definition of fusion power

I am Aggrevated that you want to talk about "Fusion Power" in a so called Nuclear Power article but you dont want to include a definition of what fusion energy and/or power is in that article. Yet when you go to Nuclear Energy they refer you to Nuclear Power. Where does an alien go to register? WFPMWFPM (talk) 15:32, 1 October 2008 (UTC).WFPMWFPM (talk) 16:04, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I think that Fusion Energy should be dedfined in the article as follows

That Mechanical and/or electrical power that can be extracted from the increased kinetic energy of motion of achieved by the combining of small atoms into an atomic configurations having less stored free energy. This differs it form Fission energy in kind and I think that the definition of fission energy could be improved as I also attempted to do in the article. WFPMWFPM (talk) 16:04, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

In summary, Your Nuclear Power is looking like a Wall Street Business Report in the shouffle of which the subject matter, (Nuclear Energy) is being neglected in favor of historic and current and potential future events. But if you are going to do that, you shouldn't eleminate the Nuclear energy subject matter article. WFPMWFPM (talk) 17:21, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

The thing about Nuclear fusion in the Nuclear Power article it that we've done fusion power. We just haven't got it under control yet. And we're bogged down in interests that are unrelated to solving the problem, And I guess that it is the NPOV requirement that prevents us from getting the priorities straight. WFPMWFPM (talk) 19:55, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

While I would agree that "nuclear power" includes fusion, fusion is not commercially used at present. This article... well, I'll just quote the italicized text at the top of the page:

"This article is about applications of nuclear reactors as power sources. For the underlying energy itself, see Nuclear energy. For the nuclear power debate, see Nuclear debate. For countries which possess nuclear weapons, see List of states with nuclear weapons."

Given an extensive fission industry and that fusion is still experimental/in-development I think it appropriate to mention fusion in proportion to it's use (not that much) and then refer users to the main article on fusion.

I think that some portions of the article are biased towards fission in their description, but any inclusion of fusion in the descriptions should make clear that fission is widely used, and not give undue weight to fusion. "How it works" for example, makes the assumption that fission is being discussed (and I wrote that section). It wouldn't hurt to explain that the same process could be accomplished with a fusion heat source, but that fission technology is more developed is actually in use.

Similar problems exist with descriptions throughout nuclear articles that tend to focus on the workings of pressurized water reactors without giving the reader clear indication that not *all* reactors work like this.

In any case, further treatment of fusion in this article should be minor. Mishlai (talk) 23:57, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree until you included Nuclear Energy under the subject matter for this article. Now I think you should at least have some reasonable definitions and distinctions about the different kinds of Nuclear Energy in order to get away from the miss mash of undifferentiation of information that you are accumulating. As an Engineer I make a distinction between feasabilities and design problems and try to keep the basic principles straight and wonder what you are trying to do in the subject matter of the article. Personally, I think that Nuclear fusion is an important part of Nuclear Power development but unutilized due to a lack of present applications. Now if we just had a new Nuclear War, or needed a new Panama Canal or needed tunnels or something like that it would become a more important and noticeable subject matter. It's like trying to get important information by reading the local newspaper. But it doesn't sound like the way to create an encyclopedia of subject matter. WFPMWFPM (talk) 01:13, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't think our disagreements are large. Nuclear energy and nuclear power both include fusion, which is why fusion is mentioned in this article. Some of the early discussion should be modified to clarify that the nuclear heat source could, at least in theory, be fission or fusion (or indeed decay heat) but that in practice only fission is used commercially, blah blah blah.

Clarity and readability are of concern, too. I would suggest that the definition you've suggested is too technical and not very explanatory. "Wikipedia is not a dictionary." It's common for articles to briefly address a sub-issue and then refer the reader to the main article for more information. That has been done in this article for several things - including fission, fusion, nuclear reactor technology, and so on.

Is your main problem with the article simply that a definition of fusion has not been included? Mishlai (talk) 02:04, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

It's more that I'm interested in Nuclear Science and technology and I think you have a good article about Nuclear Power but a poor one about Nuclear Science which you'vge mixed in by eliminating the Science of Nuclear Energy, which I'm really really interested in. If you'll look at my [[ Talk:Nuclear model}} you'll see that this science involves correct basic concepts, which are getting lost in the mileau of Newspaper type reporting; as aren't practically all scientific type subject matters. But you're supposed to be building an ongoing encyclopedia of knowledge, and I cant see why it shouldn't be as accurate as possible. I think that Einstein said that Science is not malicious, but very meticulous. But it appears that progress in basic physical and chemical principals but rather Mathematical explanations is the main goal in determining what is tried and accomplished. Incidently, I hope that you have read Richard Rhodes "The making of the Atomic Bomb", Which shows what can when somebody in authority can call in an Engineer and tell him "I want you to develope an Atomic Weapon" and what went on after that. Well thank you for the reply. WFPMWFPM (talk) 03:39, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

It appears that nuclear science is considered synonymous with the article on the atomic nucleus. Perhaps there would be a good place to start? Often information is distributed among articles in a way that may not be immediately obvious, so I encourage you to follow the links around, try to sort out where the best place to make a change or addition would be, and then either make it or suggest it in the talk page.

You can properly indent your posts on the talk page by adding one more colon than the post in front of yours. This makes it easier to see who said what.

You'll also find that the article on nuclear fission is far more technical than this one. Fusion may be the same, I haven't looked.

Newspaper reporting is often distorted where science is concerned. If you have a peer-reviewed journal that describes the information more accurately, then that is a good source to use. Just be sure that you have a source of some kind, and that the material is not WP:OR Mishlai (talk) 03:55, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

The strangest thing about this discussion is that the original definition in question (posted in the article on October 1, 2008) seems to be a somewhat confused description of fission, not fusion. HowardMorland (talk) 02:16, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

add INL to External Links section

{{editsemiprotected}} The Idaho National Laboratory is DOE's lead nuclear laboratory. Can someone please add the link to the lab's Web site www.inl.gov in the 'External Links" section.

Thanks, Htomfields (talk) 20:11, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

 Done Mishlai (talk) 21:03, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I have reverted this addition. It was requested by a user whose only edits have been to create linkspam to INL. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 09:53, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Minor issue - not worthy of essays or insults on my limited vocabulary

Proponents of nuclear power aver that... Cool word and maybe even mainstream in some places. Is "Allege" or "claim" not sophisticated enough? --JimmyButler (talk) 15:27, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree on both counts - aver is an excellent word, and it's also rather obscure. However, I'm not a fan of "allege" or "claim", in that both of those words, to me at least, carry something of a negative connotation. In both cases I think it would make it sound like the writer was rather skeptical of the "alleged claims". I've therefore changed "aver" to "contend", which sounds better and more neutral to me. If anyone disagrees, by all means think of a better word - as we've seen already, English has a lot of near-synonyms for this. ~ mazca ^t|c 17:25, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Too much detail of technology?

A recent edit added a couple of paragraphs on Light water reactor and Heavy water reactor beneath the cooling water section. Would the material sit better in the "Nuclear reactor technology" paragraph, above? Indeed, is the subject already adequately dealt with there? There is a {{main}} tag to the "Nuclear reactor technology" article. --Old Moonraker (talk) 07:21, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I'll remove it and leave a note to the editor suggesting that the information be added to the Nuclear reactor technology article that you referenced or its many relatives. -- Tcncv (talk) 07:39, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. --Old Moonraker (talk) 09:58, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Baseload and France

I understand that nuclear power is baseload power, meaning that it can only cover the lowest power consumption level (at night) because once you start up a nuclear power plant, you have to keep it running. Is this correct? If so, that should be explained in the article. But this makes me wonder, how can it be that in France, 78% of the electricity is covered by nuclear power? Do they store the excess power at night and then use that stored energy during the day? Or do they maybe export power at night (and then maybe in exchange import during the day)? DirkvdM (talk) 19:08, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

It's not that nukes can't vary their output, but rather that their fuel cost is so low that they're about the last plants you'd want to cut back. There are issues if you want to change the power level rapidly, both on the reactor side and (as with coal) on the steam side of the plant, so it's good to have some hydro and/or natural gas in the system which can react rapidly to changing demand.

I know France sells power to neighboring countries; I don't know if they do much with storage.

—WWoods (talk) 23:09, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually France adjusts its nuclear output to the demand level (e.g. see EU-Energy Policy Blog), while promoting electric heating to increase the baseload at night (Economic Implications of Peak vs Base-Load Electric Costs on Nuclear Hydrogen Systems p.5).

See also this FAQ-Answer by Mycle Schneider. --zaphodia (talk) 02:13, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Another resource:: world-nuclear.org. It is worth distinguishing clearly between the fact that nukes will default to taking up base-load (as a consequence of being able to underbid other major electricity suppliers on spot markets) from the *claim* that nuclear stations can't vary their output. This claim is seen (at least by implication) in a lot of places -- for example Economics_of_new_nuclear_power_plants. France is proof to the contrary. AndrewBolt (talk) 13:35, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

The ability of a nuclear reactor to vary its output is based on design. CANDU and BWR derived reactors have no problem varying their output to follow load. Many other reactors can do it too, but lose some efficiency in doing so. Newer reactors generally have greater load-following capability. Nailedtooth (talk) 21:40, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Put it this way; its easier to stop feeding the coal plant than to turn off a wind generator (well...you can't even do that) or to lower the output of a nuke. However, it can be done, especially in countries that have virtually no alternative. The common misconception that nukes can't vary their power is based on ease of use. Annihilatron (talk) 14:35, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Plant or station?

Is a nuclear power place called a nuclear power station, or a nuclear power plant? Everyone who I know thinks it's called a plant mainly because of The Simpsons, but then again our teachers say that it's a station. In this article, I've seen it referred to as both. Is there a specific name you should call it, or as in this article, both names are correct? Wikiert (talk) 20:22, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

There's only a slight semantic difference between the two in english. 'Plant' refers to the buildings, grounds and equiptment while 'station' refers to both the 'plant' and the services it provides. So, very technically, 'station' is more correct, but that's really getting pedantic. Nailedtooth (talk) 21:52, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't aware there was even as clear a distinction as that: from my experience, the two phrases are exactly equivalent and are just regional variations. The primary American use seems to be "plant", the primary British use seems to be "station". In either case though (and elsewhere) both phrases tend to be understood to mean the same thing. ~ mazca ^t|c 22:42, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I was speaking about the meaning of the words 'plant' and 'station'. That's why I said the distinction between the two is really pedantic. You have to consult a dictionary to find any significant difference between the two terms and people usually invoke synecdoche with the term 'plant' to refer to the functions too. So, there really is no difference between the two unless you really, really, really want to make it an issue.Nailedtooth (talk) 00:50, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Yup, absolutely. Sorry if my statement sounded like I was trying to make an argument of it - I was just emphasising the point that the difference between the two is miniscule at best, so there's no use worrying. :) ~ mazca ^t|c 15:01, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

For whatever it's worth, non-nuclear central electric-power generating installations are also generally called "plants" in the US: eg, hydroelectric power plant, coal electric power plant, etc, seldom or never "station". I think British usage may favor "station" for these too, but I'm not sure. Wwheaton (talk) 02:45, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I believe you're correct. "Power station" is the standard use in the UK as far as I've encountered regardless of the power-generation method used, I live very near a disused coal-fired 'power station'. Certainly though (perhaps partially due to the Simpsons as mentioned above!) the term "power plant" is readily understood here as well. ~ mazca ^t|c 15:01, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

VBER-300

The Russian floating nuclear power station says a VBER-300 325-MWe reactor might be used on the ship/barge. Apparently this is a relatively new reactor design [1] [2] [3] [4]. I'm going to start work on a stub article on it now VBER-300, but I'd appreciate additions. Simesa (talk) 21:09, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Note: There's a really detailed and interesting discussion of small reactor technology in [5]. I haven't linked it anywere in Wikipedia because I don't know the policy on using other encyclopedias as external links. Simesa (talk) 21:51, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Made graph

I added this graph to the commons. I didn't exactly know where I would put it, so I figured I'd just post it here for now. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:52, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

If you go back quite a bit earlier there is another interesting, and related bit of information that could be graphed - the average capacity factor of nuclear reactors jumped from about 50% to the current 90% between the early years and the last decade, presumably because of the learning curve. Worldwide the capacity factor is much lower, about 80%. Delphi234 (talk) 19:53, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I think that this picture might be close to what you're talking about. Yes it did jump, but it wasn't exactly sudden. And now that we're talking about this, I think I'll post another graph that I made for Intermittent energy source that I thought was uber-cool. I love digging around EIA numbers and making graphs, so if there's anything else you want to see let me know. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:07, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Jumped wasn't necessarily the best word, because yes it was a slow long increase, but a very dramatic one. Delphi234 (talk) 18:27, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Total energy

This is a heads up, that there is an odd discrepancy between the electrical output of a nuclear reactor as measured by the U.S. and the IEA, in kWh and in BTU. If you ask the output in kWh, you get the right number. But heaven forbid you ask what it is in BTU, as instead of converting energy to energy (my calculator says that 1 kWh is 3412.141633 Btu), the number gets multiplied by from 2.9 to 3, making the odd assumption that you wanted to know the thermal output of the reactor before it made any electricity. For wind that would be like multiplying the output of a wind farm by 2, or 20, saying well, I thought you wanted to know the total energy in the wind that day... Only nuclear and geothermal are adjusted in this manner. The IEA multiplies nuclear by 3, using an assumed efficiency of 33%, and geothermal by 10, using an assumed efficiency of 10%. I would suggest a phone call to the DOE and the IEA is in order, asking them to use real numbers... Delphi234 (talk) 19:43, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

If you ask for BTUs it's not crazy to think you wanted to know about heat production. The heat isn't a trivial number, since it has to be dealt with one way or the other; it's also proportional to the amount of fissile material consumed. But, yeah, being clear that it's thermal rather than electrical energy would be good. And BTUs, rather some ~metric unit like MW-days, yuck.

—WWoods (talk) 23:55, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

It is if you didn't change the question - what is the output? Energy can be measured in many units, and the conversion factors are completely fixed. To get a different answer you have to ask a different question, such as what is the thermal output of the reactor core, which can be measured in any unit of energy, kWh, Btu, and yes even MW-days. It is important to be accurate about the actual output, and not adjust the answer depending on the units of energy used. Whoever came up with the idea of converting kWh to Btu using different conversion factors depending on what you were getting your electricity from had a really bad idea, and there is no reason for going along with it here. It inflates the output of the reactors of the world from 2.1% of total energy to a fictitious 6.3%, which may have been the idea - to make it look like more energy was being obtained from nuclear power than really is obtained. Why the same thing is done with geothermal is another question - is the geothermal lobby that big that they want their output to look 10 times bigger than it is? Delphi234 (talk) 04:03, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Now you're just getting the numbers wrong yourself. See [6], which gives the electricity production by source. Worldwide nuclear power is 14%. When you consider all forms of energy including transportation fuels and such that nuclear has no market share in, then the share decreases to around 6% by the method of your source. 6.3% is reasonable, not fictitious, the 2.1%, however, is simply something you made up. "Total energy" is a nonsense measure anyway. That sort of measure in no way takes into account the usability of the energy. So say we're using natural gas to heat a home, you're "using" all of the energy you burn, and you could replace it with a space heater powered by nuclear power for a much lower efficiency due to the efficiency of the nuclear plant. But you could also have installed a heat pump (that can only use electricity and not heat), which would be powered by nuclear-electric power and smash the efficiency of the natural gas.

IMO, the 6.3% kind of number is fictitious. Nuclear is 14% of electricity. You can make no other meaningful statement b/c it will be comparing apples and oranges. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:19, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

My numbers are not wrong, the IEA (and EIA) numbers are wrong, because they multiply them by 3. and they say so. Any property of apples and oranges can be compared, such as color, mass, size, shape, and oh yes calorie content, or energy. As much as 90% of the total energy we use is wasted, but there is no excuse for not using correct mathematics in converting one energy unit to another. If we got 6% of our energy from nuclear, and 14% of our electricity from nuclear, then that would mean that we got 0.06/0.14 or 43% of our energy from electricity. Oops, according to the very same IEA, Key World Energy Statistics 2008,[7] pg. 28, electricity is only 16.7% of total energy, so if nuclear is 14% of electricity, and electricity is 16.7% of total, then nuclear is 0.167*0.14 or 2.3% of total. Instead of fixing the problem, the U.S. has compounded the problem by using about 10,000 Btu/kWh for other energy sources as well (just for giggles, check out the tables of "Btu per Kilowatthour", which would be like a table of inches per foot year by year and ranging from 35 to 72, instead of just using 12).[8] For example, if you look at the graph that Frank Mierlo created for World energy resources and consumption, Image:World Energy consumption.png, and I do not know the exact reference he used in 2007, but it shows nuclear about three times hydro, although the reference given now shows nuclear and hydro both about the same, as they are, while the reference used originally evidently used the fictitious times 3 multiplier only for nuclear. The reference in the article today,[9] uses a fictitious multiplier for both nuclear and hydro, showing that hydro in 2006 was 29.728 Quads and nuclear 27.758 Quads, yet that would be 8,712 TWh, but pg. 19 of the Key Stats gives only 3,121 TWh for hydro, which is actually only 10.65 Quads (1 Quad = 1x10^15 Btu). What we have is not a case of comparing apples and oranges, but a case of comparing the energy content of apples and oranges and multiplying the calories by three for one because, what, it has more vitamin C? Makes no sense at all. If we were using the thermal energy output of a reactor for anything other than to heat up the ocean or river or evaporate water in a cooling tower, then nuclear reactors would have two energy outputs, one kWh, the other Btu, and either could be converted into the other (using the correct conversion factor of approx. 3412 Btu/kWh) and added together. As it is, the additional heat is not used for anything and should not be included in the total. Delphi234 (talk) 18:25, 21 April 2009 (UTC)