223
votes
Do solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear-power plants?
This study, by a nuclear advocacy group, is based on treating a cubic meter of used solar panels as being equivalent to a cubic meter of spent uranium.
Just digging around the links, I find the ...
- 3,647
91
votes
Accepted
Have 1.5% of all nuclear reactors ever built melted down?
The number claim is correct in the context of nuclear power stations.
The "440" reactors from the claim indicate, that we are talking about nuclear reactors for power generation in power ...
- 1,960
38
votes
Accepted
Did the wind power industry produce more radioactive waste than nuclear power plants?
While the numbers provided by the sources seem to be strictly correct, they are lacking a significant amount of context. Once this context is injected into the discussion, the manufacture of Wind ...
- 22.4k
35
votes
Accepted
Did Poland and Hungary withdraw from (i.e. fully denounce) the Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident?
I think the reference to withdrawal may have been a mistake.
treaties.un.org has a status table for this treaty. They show that Poland ratified the treaty in 1988 but with the following reservation:
...
- 9,325
26
votes
Accepted
Does nuclear power cause fewer deaths than other forms of electricity production, accidents included?
The New Scientist calculated the number of deaths per kilowatt-hour question based on the data from International Atomic Energy Agency in 2011.
According to the New Scientist:
The agency examined ...
- 10.8k
26
votes
Have 1.5% of all nuclear reactors ever built melted down?
In 2012, there were 437 nuclear reactors. From the World Nuclear Association:
Over 115 commercial power reactors, 48 experimental or prototype reactors, over 250 research reactors and several fuel ...
- 14.1k
21
votes
Did U.K. nuclear power plants of the '80s play a continuous sound and indicate emergency by stopping it?
Yes they absolutely did.
I know this because I've been in several of them. However it was only in the most dangerous places - the criticality labs, where there was enough nuclear materials that, if ...
- 57.5k
21
votes
Accepted
Has ITER stated that their nuclear fusion device will consume more energy than it produces?
There are two different statements, which seem to be contradictory, but are simply saying different things:
ITER aims to produce 10 times as much heat energy as put in
ITER will consume more total ...
- 8,469
21
votes
Accepted
Did chemist Glenn Seaborg claim the Oklo reactor was man-made?
The Instagram video is a snippet of a longer video from Beyond Science's Facebook page.
It appears that some genuine quotes from Glenn T. Seaborg explaining that the find was puzzling have been ...
- 141k
19
votes
Do solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear-power plants?
No. Nuclear energy produces far more toxic waste than solar.
Distribution of the fake news story
The fake news that began circulating at the end of June 2017 stems from a self-described "study" ...
- 291
17
votes
Did Poland and Hungary withdraw from (i.e. fully denounce) the Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident?
Same thing with Hungary actually; there's a UN table that instead of checkboxes (like IAEA) has a row entries for each event.
Hungary & Poland like many other countries from the Eastern block (at ...
- 59.8k
17
votes
Is new nuclear power cheap?
That claim cannot really be proven or disproven, because there is not clear (or objective) what "cheap" means.
Nuclear power is fairly cheap, but it is not the cheapest.
As already mentioned in a ...
- 1,960
15
votes
Did the wind power industry produce more radioactive waste than nuclear power plants?
This claim makes one very important and very obvious assumption: That all wind generators use rare earth magnets. Or, for that matter, that they even use permanent magnets at all.
They don't.
From ...
- 1,423
14
votes
Did a 16-year-old high-school girl in Iran produce nuclear energy at her home in 2007?
It depends on how you define "produced" and "nuclear energy". Without more details we can only speculate, but the possibilities are very limited.
The link you cite appears to be by someone who has ...
- 15.8k
12
votes
Did Galen Winsor swim in a spent fuel pool of a nuclear power plant?
If the claims of Mr. Winsor are true that he worked as a safety manager in a nuclear plant, it is highly unlikely that he was actually able to accomplish anything that would have legitimately given ...
- 22.4k
10
votes
Has first cancer case been directly confirmed to Fukushima cleanup?
No, at least according to the information presented in the source they reference, which just doesn't actually attempt to establish any correlation.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/...
- 814
10
votes
Accepted
Is most intermediate level radioactive waste according to UK regulations barely radioactive?
[intermediate level nuclear waste] is not radiologically dangerous in any realistic way
This is false to the point of being irresponsible.
If you put a completely legal luminous watch in a barrel ...
- 17.7k
9
votes
Accepted
Would a meltdown/explosion at Zaporizhia mean the "evacuation" of Europe?
Almost certainly not quite that. According to experts cited by the BBC:
Experts say that although the attack was dangerous, there are important differences between the Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia ...
- 59.8k
8
votes
Has Brilliant Light Power developed a new source of energy from water molecules?
No, the claims are completely untrue. The science of why is a little complicated.
The opinions of the users of Physics.SE are that it is:
improbable to the point of being gibberish.
The opinions ...
- 197
7
votes
Is the production of nuclear power very expensive?
The figures seem consistent with most sources:
A Lazard 2018 study puts nuclear firmly in that range.
A UK government study puts new nuclear construction at 95 GBP per megawatt hour, which sits ...
- 2,949
6
votes
Accepted
Is Belgium restarting a nuclear reactor that suffered a fire and explosion and contains 16,000 cracks, without safety checks?
According to FANC
In 2014, a further inspection was carried out based on the improved procedure and the modified settings of the machine, resulting in the detection of a greater number of flaw ...
- 106k
6
votes
Did the isolation condensors fail at Fukushima Daiichi? Was human error involved?
I paid close attention to the Fukushima investigation for years. I've lost my sources (I could use some help with that) but I can add some more detail as to exactly where it went wrong. If the lack ...
6
votes
Did Ahmadinejad say that enriching Uranium to 20% made no economic sense?
It might refer to this Charlie Rose interview from 23 Sep 2011. To summarize, in this interview, Ahmadinejad said it made no economic sense for Iran to produce 20%-enriched uranium domestically ...
- 59.8k
5
votes
Accepted
Does a coal plant "kill more in a few weeks than nuclear has ever killed"?
The claim as made in the original quote is fairly easy to debunk with sources from the comments because it compares deaths due to all nuclear power over all time with deaths of a single coal power ...
- 1,594
3
votes
Is new nuclear power cheap?
According to Cost of electricity by source (Wikipedia) estimated UK LCOE for projects starting in 2015 gives nuclear at 93 £/MWh. Onshore wind power is at 62 £/MWh.
A US study gives nuclear at 96.2 $/...
- 2,354
2
votes
Does radiation sensitivity decrease with age?
That's not quite the right interpretation
The reason that the effects are less detrimental is that older people simply have fewer years left of their lives in which to be effected by the radiation. ...
- 21
2
votes
Does radiation sensitivity decrease with age?
"Aging and radiation: bad companions" (open access), published in Aging Cell. 2015 Apr; 14(2): 153–161 seems to claim the opposite is true. Abstract, emphasis added:
Aging involves a deterioration ...
- 339
2
votes
Can a "second Chernobyl" happen at the nuclear reactors damaged by the tsunami in Japan?
No. Fundamentally they were different types of accidents.
The Chornobyl accident was an excursion. Power within the reactor increased, and this increase caused more increase,* in an exponential ...
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