Tritium has been leaked/spilled into the groundwater on multiple occasions, at multiple sites, potentially since 1996 - most recently exposed in the county next door to mine and next door to that of more than 7 million other people.

Closer to home, quite literally in my backyard, a former NIKE surface to air missile launch battery (cum community park district) has leached trichloroethylene into the groundwater.

Note that IL nuke plants are within ~100 miles of the largest body of surface freshwater in the world…

ah, fun fun fun…

Lets not forget to include “healthy water” to the ingredient list for healthy soil, healthy food, healthy anything….

http://www.geocities.com/m_v_ramana/nucleararticles/breeders_dying.htm

(The writer is a research associate at the Program on Science and Global Security, Princeton University, U.S.)

I agree with your points completely.

While not an argument against yours (just to add up to the nuclear discussion) I saw that this fast breeder reactor (though only a small prototype) at India seems to be a success and already runs since 1985 :
http://www.kalpakkam.com/

They are now building a much bigger reactor there, ironically the building site was flooded by the tsunami, slowing the progress. But still the Indians believe it will be a success (breeder reactor with thorium)

Some interesting info about India’s program:
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/955/safeguarding-breeder-reactors

KALPAKKAM, INDIA–For more than 5 decades, India has followed its own path on nuclear power. After refusing to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and detonating a nuclear device in 1974, it was excluded from the international group that shares fission technology. In isolation, it launched an ambitious nuclear electric program that relies heavily on homegrown technology..

What makes India’s strategy unique is its plan to build commercial reactors that run not on uranium but on a lighter element, thorium-232. India has one of the world’s largest reserves of thorium — about 225,000 metric tons — but little uranium ore. Thorium does not fission; when irradiated with neutrons from a source material such as uranium-235, however, some of the thorium becomes uranium-233 (U-233), which does fission and can sustain a nuclear reaction.

In 1958, India announced that it was embarking on an ambitious, three-stage plan to exploit its thorium reserves. The first stage required building pressurized heavy-water reactors powered by natural uranium; they yield plutonium as a byproduct. Twelve are now operational. The plan called for stage two to kick in after sufficient plutonium had been extracted from spent cores; it would be used as a fuel in future fast-neutron reactors, which can irradiate thorium and produce U-233 as a byproduct. In the third stage, Advanced Heavy Water Reactors will burn a mixture of U-233 and thorium, generating about two-thirds of their power from thorium. Other nations–including the United States, Russia, Germany, and Israel–have studied the route but have not attempted to use it to generate electricity.

Stage two of this grand strategy began officially last October. In the sleepy southern township of Kalpakkam, a government-owned company began building a 500-megawatts-of-electricity (MWe) fast-breeder reactor that will use fast neutrons to produce U-233. In its core, the reactor will use a “seed” fuel containing uranium and plutonium oxide; this source will send neutrons into a surrounding thorium blanket.

Indian atomic energy officials are confident that this exotic fuel system can be scaled up from a smaller, 40-megawatt Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) that has been running in Kalpakkam without major problems since 1985. This reactor and other research projects at the Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research in Kalpakkam have demonstrated, IGCAR officials say, that India has mastered the new technology. In a “bold step forward,” says Anil Kakodkar, chair of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in Mumbai, researchers at IGCAR in May of this year successfully extracted plutonium in high purity from the unique plutonium-rich mixed carbide fuel discharged from FBTR.

AEC anticipates that the fast breeder at Kalpakkam will cost about $700 million and produce 500 MWe. The long-term goal, according to Kakodkar, is to increase nuclear electric output from 3360 MW today to “around 275 gigawatts” by the middle of this century.

Construction at Kalpakkam ran into trouble early this year: The 26 December 2004 tsunami flooded the foundations of the reactor building and set the schedule back by 4 months, says Baldev Raj, IGCAR’s director. But he says that the work is now on track and predicts that the reactor will go critical as planned in September 2010.

Mujid Kazimi, a nuclear engineer who studies thorium fuels at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, says India’s approach to breeding nuclear fuel from thorium is “slightly more complicated” than fuel breeding planned elsewhere in the world. But he adds, “everything they have reported to date indicates they are on track.”

India cannot go it entirely alone, however. It still requires uranium, including for two boiling water reactors it bought from General Electric in the 1960s, and that may be one reason it is interested in opening nuclear trade with other countries. At a meeting last month with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, President George W. Bush called India “a responsible state” with “advanced nuclear technology.” The opening could lead to future exchanges of personnel and technology–and possibly fuel. Singh reassured Parliament, however, that the deal would not undermine India’s nuclear self-sufficiency.

It seems that their thorium reactor technology isn’t that bad…

But ofcourse, all the arguments why nuclear energy won’t stop collapse or postpone it much still stand. It’s nice to have this article on anthropik, as it did first seem a bit like that Jason and others just were dismissing it (as real pessimists ) without adding much information as to why.. The only stuff I did find myself were strangely very optimistic discussions about nuclear energy on peak oil websites. But I did notice that those discussions are only optimistic because they talk about nuclear energy in specific and many times don’t tend to look at the problems facing civilization as a whole, like is done at this place (which I’m very pleased with). It’s probably our education which makes us think of stuff like they are in a vacuum alone. The perfect scientific situation (?).. which doesn’t exist and seems to cripple our thoughts a lot.

As I was discussing on a forum in a topic about “nuclear energy and it’s future” I couldn’t even mention the other things related to our energy problems and why nuclear energy wasn’t going to become so superb as some thought to be, before I was told to stay on topic (”we’re not talking about that, we talk about this”). With many people having this kind of attitude I’m even more certain that collapse is inevitable.

…noting that 50 more years of civilization is better for their selfish needs compared to the option of collapse in ten years

No, because 50 more years may make it entirely impossible to survive. Do you want to live 50 more years inside of civilization with a high probability of dying at the end of it, or survive 10 more years inside of civilization with a high probability of surviving another 50 years beyond it? 60 > 50.

Also, they’d make a counter-argument, that this stopgap will buy the civilization time to come up with an unexpected and more long-lasting solution, which we do not yet see.

Except that this stop-gap isn’t achievable.

We may fall from the peak only to be supported temporarely by alternatives and this might actually buy enough time for baby boomers to live out their retirement in relative comfort.

If the depletion rate is that modest, then there won’t be much threat of collapse from it. But we’re looking at a possible depletion rate of 18%, and that would mean collapse in the next ten years.

So, somehow you have (a) the political will, (b) the resources and (c) the energy to overall the entire grid.

Then comes Katrina or another cold snap or a heat wave, wind storm, tornado, mega-storm, earthquake — all of which are common.

Damn. That pushes construction back a little. Oh, and adds to the cost. And may make that piece of land you’re building the power plant on infeasible.

This makes building the pyramids look tame by comparison.

From what I have read one nuclear power plant costs around 3-5Billion dollars to build, and takes 3years+
so the investment would be HUGE with no short term time frame. Not too many Nuclear Power plant building companies around, in addition to the massive security issues during the building & of course ‘forever’ after.

Quite a few Nuclear Plants in OH, close by “downwind” of me, very few people even like that, and they are many miles away.