Return of Nuclear Power

Jaz, I agree with you about nukes being an unsettling alternate energy source. I've done several projects at nuclear reactors and I can tell you from first hand experience that it's not a place where I feel completely comfortable about the security and safety of the facility. I’ll spare you the details, but needless to say, I never liked going there.

Let me also apologize for the extremely long post that follows, but since you brought it up.... :) Living in the Boston area you may have heard about a year long test done on alternate energy involving a small Massachusetts town back in the 90's. The idea was to test a new form of hydro-electric power using the ocean as the activator. I can't remember the name of the town but you may be aware of the test.

The idea was to use the ocean tides to generate Kat-ricity (sorry I meant electricity ;) ) through the rotation of a turbine. This is hardly a new idea, but the way in which the turbine engaged the waves was very unique. A traditional hydro-electric generator uses a large opening located on the beach in which waves crash into paddles and turn a turbine. The forward thrust of the wave would push the top of the paddle and as the wave begins to recede, it pulls the bottom of the paddle, thus continuing the rotation action. The system works well but finding locations for it is problematic. It requires huge wells located at the edge of the water, and who wants to give up beach front for something so ugly? Because of this, this form of hydro power has never been fully utilized. A new system was developed and tested that sought a way to avoid this problem.

The new system uses a series of buoys that are located a mile or so off of the coast. As each buoy rises and falls with the ocean, it in turn drives a small piston. With enough pistons in motion it generates electrical power in a generator located on land. The generator can be placed in areas not used or under-used which makes it more feasible to find willing participants. The system appears to have been very successful in the articles I read. It was funded by the Dept. of Energy and from the information I saw it was claimed that an area equal to 1 acre of buoy driven pistons could generate enough power to serve the complete needs of a small town (thus the test size).

They extrapolated this into a 1 square mile area being enough to serve most of the North Eastern US. They went on to speculate that 4 one square mile areas from Boston to Georgia would be enough to power the entire Eastern seaboard. Locating two in the gulf, two in the great lake area and 4 along the Pacific coast could generate all of the power the US would need to completely give up fossil fuels. This output included changing from oil fuel to electric heat in buildings and allowing for electric cars in place of gasoline.

So what happened? No one ever really explained the demise of the program other than to say that salt water corrosion caused significant mechanical problems with the linkage and casing of the pistons. Sorry but I’m not buying this. We have had cables across the ocean floor for decades and there are enough ships and oil rigs out at sea that the idea that there’s no way to protect the working parts from corrosion just seems like a blatant lie. Since the Dept. of Energy funded the program it became the property of the government. Soon after our former oil company CEO President took office the program seemed to disappear. Is this a coincidence? I’ll eave it to you to decide. Sorry to start a rant here, but it really pisses me off that we appear to have a solution to our energy needs but the need to protect the investments of the oil companies is more important to our leadership than the welfare of the people they claim to serve.

Hi Jaz, I too have been reading a lot about this lately. In fact I read a very interesting article in the Sunday Times most recently about the need to come up with a new source of fuel. In the UK we are in the unhappy position of being dependant on some very unstable countries for a lot of our power needs and as a result we urgently need to look into new technologies.

Like you I don't think I will ever feel comfortable with nuclear power, well at least not in its current incarnation. And as you rightly point out we have no guarantees that plants will be built to high enough standards. That probably has a lot to do with the portrayel of NP in the media, especially in The Simspsons .

In all seriousness I think we should be concentrating on renewable energy such as wind and hydo powered generators. Currently even electricity is unsustainable in the long run as it is created using large quantities of gas. We need to harness resources that won't run out!