Nuclear Energy

I will quickly dive into mine now. 1) Effectiveness. My opponent has admitted to passing on the effectiveness argument, choosing to focus on different potential short comings. As to save space, I will leave this as is and also focus on the different potentail short comings. 2) Safety. With this, I will break this down into two subsections, technical safety (a), and political safety (b). a) Normally, we would dismiss the mentioning of TMI (Three Mile Island), Chernobyl, and Fukushima as cases of spotlighting fallacies rather than accurate representations of the technology. Such fallacies would be like saying cars should not be allowed because the Ford Pinto was unsafe. However, for any engineer, it is vital to learn from mistakes so that they cannot happen again (when there are actually mistakes). Just like they learned from the Pinto to make a better, safer car, we too can learn from these three incidents how to make a better reactor. So we will actually look at each of these individually, as well as the safety record in whole of nuclear reactors. Going by year, we will first look at TMI, 1979 [1][2]. This was an incident that started because a relief valve became stuck open, causing the cooling fluids to leave the reactor. This was compounded by the fact that an operator mistook the lack of cooling fluid as too much cooling fluid, thus opening more values to let more out. The reactor over heated and the core melted (refered to as a meltdown), however, the melted core never breached the containment walls and was cooled back down by the automated system (all people had evacuated by then). A follow up report, the Komeny report [3], showed that no one had died from the radation releases, and that the releases were of a quantity that they would not have any measurable effect on the people in ther area. What have we learned from TMI [4][5]? We learned many things from TMI that have allowed us to not have a repeat, even though the damage from TMI was actually rather minor (apart from damage to the reactor itself). From improved training, better communication, and better configuration of the control rooms to allow better understanding of issues and faster, more accurate reaction from personnel. Moving on to the next, Chernobyl, 1986 [6]. Chernobyl is a unique disaster, that given the secrecy of the USSR at the time (we didn't even know about the incident until we discovered radioactive material in the air in Sweden). Chernobyl was using an RBMK style reactor [7], which the US and most of the western world knew was unsafe because of the use of a void coefficient and their particular fuel rod set up. With the reactor styles we have now, a Chernobyl style incident is not physically possible, even if someone got into the reactor control and tried to make it happen [8]. The latest, Fukushima, 2011. Fukushima is most definiately a spotlight example. While most of the others we look at and say "what went wrong," which Fukushima, we can look at and say "Holy crude, why didn't more go wrong? " Fukushima reactors were all over 30 years old, with some over 40 years old. They we hit by a 9.0 earth quake followed shortly by a 50 foot tsunami. Yet somehow, they managed to hold out (about as well as Rocky did in his first movie). While most of the reactors ended up melting down from a disaster that would cripple any structure in the world, they've done a fair job contianing that material. While some radiation does escape, just like some did at TMI, there are no recorded deaths from the radiation, either on the plant, nor in the general public. And from this, we've been able to learn where the reactor had issues, and how to improve upon them going forward. Since accidents are learning opportunities, to see what you may have overlooked and places to do better, they can actually be very helpful to us. And in cases where the accident has no serious harm to society, the minor accidents can be viewed as possitives, so that we can get better at preventing the big accidents that do cause serious harm. Now I will look at the safety risks of aggressive nations having nuclear energy. My opponent points out that nations, such as Iran and North Korea, will hide their nuclear facilities, and as a result, may cut corners with them. This is not a good argument against nuclear energy, since it is the very prohibition of the nuclear energy that is causing them to be unsafe. By opening up, showing them the safe ways and the unsafe ways, and even helping them build them it has many benefits. 1) Safer power plants 2) Better relations between nations 3) More energy for the nation to help people get out of poverty and build their economy 4) More power to the people to fight against dicatorships Since electricity is needed to clean water, power hospitals, develop medicenes, run industry, and provide heat and air conditioning for people, it is vital to bettering the lives of the people in those nations, and thus bettering the relation between them and us. 3) Costs To answer my opponent's question regarding why more energy isn't done by nuclear energy, I have two responces. First, this isn't really a legitimate question. One could easly through this question upon his suggested alternatives, that since solar makes up so little energy, it must not be effective. In reality, better ideas, always take time to replace the status quo, and simply because something is being used used more commonly does not mean that it is more effective. The second part of the answer is a lack of knowledge, combined with false knowledge. In regards to nuclear energy, it is often called the China Syndrome, in reference to a 1979 movie (which came out only months before TMI), that showed nuclear reactors as bombs just waiting to go off. Since more people get their views from hollywood than from sciencewood, they are going to have opinions based on incorrect knowledge. While many African and Latin American nations are not wealthy enough to produce nuclear, by us generating more nuclear, that cuts the demand for natural gas and coal (and other fuels). This drop in demand, turns into a drop in cost of those materials, and the drop in cost will help the people in those poorer nations. Moving on to the alternatives that my opponent has listed, I will quickly address them one by one (1,500 characters left, sorry). Hydro - Hydro is limited by rivers, while many nations do have a lot of rivers, many do not, and so hydro is not adequate for them. Hydro also takes much longer to build, as it develops the entire ecosystem around it (turning a river into a lake). Solar - While solar is my ultimate energy fav, it too has its limits. Many northern nations are going to find solar to be less than ideal. Even here in Oregon, we find that it is only the edge. As only getting 5 sun hours a day (on average over a year), one would need 4,800 MW solar field to equal the same as a single 1,000 MW nuclear (or coal, or natural gas, or anything that can run 24 hours a day). Move up into Canada or other northern nations, and that can stretch into 8,000 MW of solar to match the single 1,000 MW of nuclear. Wind - similar to solar. Kenetic - The generators that are listed are standard fuel generators. I'm not sure what Kenetic Generators are and could not find them on a quick search. But those that you listed, show that the 15 kW model uses 1.36gal/hr. It doesn't say what the fuel is, but if it takes 1.36 gal to make 15 kW of energy, or 1 gal to make 11.03 kW, the fuel has to cost about $1.10 per gallon to be comparible. And even then, these only have 5 year warrenties, and so would need to be replaced and repaired more often [9]. Sources . http://www.debate.org...