Comments on: Can Nuclear Energy Save Our Earth?

By: neneSitalyday

neneSitalyday — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 03:09:53 +0000

Hi im new to this board, I have been floating around for sometime as a guest & thought i would pop in and say hello.

Thanks

By: coftUlcedecox

coftUlcedecox — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 08:40:06 +0000

Greetings…

Discussion about the earths temperature increase – or global warming are most often disregarded as too scientific – however, an earthquake shaking an entire country into disaster should not be disregarded as another statistic. Hundreds of thousads are dead and homeless

Please help the victims to Chile and Haiti
http://www.google.com/relief/chileearthquake/

By: mary-aloe

mary-aloe — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 23:31:35 +0000

I wanted to introduce myself – Thanks

Mary Aloe

By: MichaellaS

MichaellaS — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:01:47 +0000

tks for the effort you put in here I appreciate it!

By: LnddMiles

LnddMiles — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:33:46 +0000

Pretty cool post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say
that I have really liked reading your blog posts. Anyway
I’ll be subscribing to your blog and I hope you post again soon!

By: Illefly

Illefly — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:03:50 +0000

Great post!

By: Neil@Earthpulse

Neil@Earthpulse — Wed, 27 May 2009 22:43:40 +0000

Thanks James

I really appreciate your time to correct the information. I will definitely check out your blog. Best Regards

By: James Aach

James Aach — Wed, 27 May 2009 01:38:36 +0000

You’re a bit off on the term “efficiency”. A nuclear plant has the roughly the same efficiency as a standard fossil plant – 33% of the heat generated is converted into electricity. This is because the non-nuclear parts of a nuke and a fossil are roughly the same. (Some of the newer fossil designs do go higher.) What your 80% may be referring to is availability — how much of the time on average a reactor is producing full power. Traditional supplies run around 80 – 100%, windmills only about 25%, and so on. (So when they talk of 5 MW windmill, they often mean 5 MW max power, but don’t expect more than 25% of that on average.) One thing that is staggering about nuclear is the power per amount of fuel – one pellet of prepared nuclear fuel about the size of a marble is equivalent to 100 box cars of coal.

In a very general sense, you’re pretty much correct on everything else. Unfortunately, though, energy production isn’t something that lends itself to summarizing very well. It’s as complicated as everything else in life. If you’d like a entertaining lay person’s tour of the good and bad of the US electric and nuclear industry, see my blog at http://RadDecision.blogspot.com for my (free online) novel “Rad Decision”. It’s pretty much got everything else I’ve got to say on the topic. (Once in awhile I comment briefly on blogs like this just to let folks know this resource exists. Now its back into the ether. Good luck.)