Nuclear Power

New_Departure06

I'll be on the streets protesting with my placards if they try to build a nuclear-plant like they did in the 70's. No to a 3 billion euro cancer factory! They won't like me when I'm angry. :mad:

bonkey

New_Departure06 wrote:

I'll be on the streets protesting with my placards if they try to build a nuclear-plant like they did in the 70's. No to a 3 billion euro cancer factory! They won't like me when I'm angry. :mad:

I'm guessing that you objected to the decision to renovate and update Moneypoint as well then, given that a coal-burning thermal station emits more radiation than a correctly functioning nuclear plant of comparable (mega)wattage.

If you're old enough, I'd hope you were otu with your placard complaining its construction in the first place.

jc

New_Departure06

bonkey wrote:

I'm guessing that you objected to the decision to renovate and update Moneypoint as well then, given that a coal-burning thermal station emits more radiation than a correctly functioning nuclear plant of comparable (mega)wattage.

If you're old enough, I'd hope you were otu with your placard complaining its construction in the first place.

jc

Well if there's an accident or terror attack then I tell you a hell of a lot more radiation than that will be spewed out by a nuclear plant. Too risky.

Pa ElGrande

New_Departure06 wrote:

I'll be on the streets protesting with my placards if they try to build a nuclear-plant like they did in the 70's. No to a 3 billion euro cancer factory! :mad:

At the time Ardnacrusha was built, it was the largest hydroelectric station in the world. It was also subject to opposition (Ireland would need that much electricity, what would we do with it all?) and also protests from people who fished for salmon along its banks. If they had their way where would we be today?

Ireland needs energy in order to continue to prosper and grow, failure to plan for our future energy needs means we have to accept a lower standard of living and mass emmigration when our current energy sources (oil, gas) have become too expensive for us to obtain.

The case for nuclear power is not cut & dried, but looking at viable energy alternatives it is the premier contender at the moment. Whether a nuclear plant is located in Carnsore or Sellafield, the risks to is of something going wrong are exactly the same.

Remember protesting is what you do when you don't have a plan. In order to prevent the construction of a nuclear station in Ireland, you must provide a viable alternative.

New_Departure06

Pa ElGrande wrote:

At the time Ardnacrusha was built, it was the largest hydroelectric station in the world. It was also subject to opposition (Ireland would need that much electricity, what would we do with it all?) and also protests from people who fished for salmon along its banks. If they had their way where would we be today?

Ireland needs energy in order to continue to prosper and grow, failure to plan for our future energy needs means we have to accept a lower standard of living and mass emmigration when our current energy sources (oil, gas) have become too expensive for us to obtain.

The case for nuclear power is not cut & dried, but looking at viable energy alternatives it is the premier contender at the moment. Whether a nuclear plant is located in Carnsore or Sellafield, the risks to is of something going wrong are exactly the same.

Remember protesting is what you do when you don't have a plan. In order to prevent the construction of a nuclear station in Ireland, you must provide a viable alternative.

Viable alternatives exist. Wind, wave, biomass, biofuels, solar.

ApeXaviour

New_Departure06 wrote:

Well if there's an accident or terror attack then I tell you a hell of a lot more radiation than that will be spewed out by a nuclear plant. Too risky.

Do you not listen?

New_Departure06 wrote:

Viable alternatives exist. Wind, wave, biomass, biofuels, solar.

Not in reality, ie they are not practical for our entire energy needs though they do have their place.

Tidal hydro-electric plants actually slow the rotation of the earth, increasing the length of our days and hence disrupting the eco-system. Want to get all irrationally worked up about that too?

New_Departure06

ApeXaviour wrote:

Do you not listen?

Not in reality, ie they are not practical for our entire energy needs though they do have their place.

Tidal hydro-electric plants actually slow the rotation of the earth, increasing the length of our days and hence disrupting the eco-system. Want to get all irrationally worked up about that too?

They are not going to cause a Chernobyl style evacuation-imperative.

And I disagree that the said forms of renewable energy cannot constitute our entire energy needs.

blueshirt

Of course we will use nuclear power, so long as we don’t have to produce it. Like we use the UK abortion clinics and rely on the UK for our external defence. Don’t forget, this is still paddy me arce land, regardless of our new found “wealth”, which is very much an illusion anyway.

Pa ElGrande

New_Departure06 wrote:

Viable alternatives exist. Wind, wave, biomass, biofuels, solar.

Those alternatives are interesting, and most only become viable if you can solve the electricity storage problem [On demand power]
Currently our power usage in Summer shows a range of usage from a low of of 1200 megawatts rising to a high of 2600 megawatts while the same range for Winter months is 1700 megawatts to 3300 megawatts. Can those technologies deliver this and future needs at an economic cost?

wind energy

How many suitable sites are there in the country?
What is the cost of providing wind electricity over a 10 year period?
What is the environmental impact?
What happens if you depend on wind energy as a significant electricity supply get a cold snap in January, with a -10 frost accross the country?
How much power can wind energy provide and can it support a growing economy?

wave energy
How many suitable sites are there in the country?
What is the cost of providing wind electricity over a 10 year period?
What is the environmental impact?
How much power can wave energy provide and can it support a growing economy?
What happens when the country is battered by the 100 year storm event?

biomass
What crops will provide the energy required?
How many hectares can we grow?
What is the lead time to harvest?
What happens if supply is affected (poor weather)?
What is the environmental impact?

The British Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) has a good summary of these renewable energy sources.

Those are all blue sky technologies, while they should not be dismissed, there are a number of serious technological and logistical hurdles that have not been resolved yet to make them viable in the context of supplying the quantity and lowest cost energy. I.E. more research is needed.

Pa ElGrande

New_Departure06 wrote:

They are not going to cause a Chernobyl style evacuation-imperative.

When its done correctly with a proper safety culture then there is no danger of a Chernobyl style evacuation. Nuclear power is used extensively in France and they have a very good safety record.
For the record I would like to see transparency in Sellafield's operations.

And I disagree that the said forms of renewable energy cannot constitute our entire energy needs.

Can you put some numbers on this? How many watts of electricity can renewable energy provide and can it provide them at peak demand?

jd

New_Departure06 wrote:

And I disagree that the said forms of renewable energy cannot constitute our entire energy needs.

Go on....

oscarBravo

ApeXaviour wrote:

Tidal hydro-electric plants actually slow the rotation of the earth, increasing the length of our days and hence disrupting the eco-system.

Bwuh??

Pa ElGrande

oscarBravo wrote:

Bwuh??

France is the only country that successfully uses this power source. French engineers have noted that if the use of tidal power on a global level was brought to high enough levels, the Earth would slow its rotation by 24 hours every 2,000 years.

Tidal energy systems can have environmental impacts on tidal basins because of reduced tidal flow and silt buildup.

How Tidal Power Plants Work
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bltidalplants.htm

New_Departure06

When its done correctly with a proper safety culture then there is no danger of a Chernobyl style evacuation. Nuclear power is used extensively in France and they have a very good safety record.
For the record I would like to see transparency in Sellafield's operations.

But the risk of a terrorist attack is greater and that would give us Chernobylesque effects. Not worth the risk. I warn the politicians - my vote you will lose if you dare try to infest Ireland with cancer-factories/nuclear plants. And I am not alone!

oscarBravo

Pa ElGrande wrote:

French engineers have noted that if the use of tidal power on a global level was brought to high enough levels, the Earth would slow its rotation by 24 hours every 2,000 years.

Unless I'm misunderstanding you (and/or miscalculating), that will increase the length of an average day by 0.004928266 seconds.

Pa ElGrande

New_Departure06 wrote:

But the risk of a terrorist attack is greater and that would give us Chernobylesque effects. Not worth the risk. I warn the politicians - my vote you will lose if you dare try to infest Ireland with cancer-factories/nuclear plants. And I am not alone!

Can you quantify the odds of a terrorist attack?

I have observed that current terrorist attacks are aimed at killing people directly (maximum media publicity and create fear that everyone can relate to).
Blowing up a nuclear reactor is hard to do logistically and the chances of success are very low.

I want to know what you are going to do about the effects of radiation around the entrance to the your local pub?

Pa ElGrande

oscarBravo wrote:

Unless I'm misunderstanding you (and/or miscalculating), that will increase the length of an average day by 0.004928266 seconds.

and no overtime

ApeXaviour

New_Departure06 wrote:

But the risk of a terrorist attack is greater and that would give us Chernobylesque effects.

You realise a nuclear plant (say in france) is possibly the safest place to be the event of a terrorist attack. They're built like bunkers dude.

New_Departure06 wrote:

Not worth the risk. I warn the politicians - my vote you will lose if you dare try to infest Ireland with cancer-factories/nuclear plants.

Honestly, "cancer-factories"!!?? Man are you taking the urine? You need a shot of reason (or maybe CN will do), cos if you're worried about cancer you should really focus your attention elsewhere. That being just a thread in the greater fabric of what I like to call "reality".

New_Departure06 wrote:

And I am not alone!

On that unfortunately, I'm forced to agree with you. Absurdity is rife.

Albert Einstein wrote:

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.

oscarBravo wrote:

Unless I'm misunderstanding you (and/or miscalculating), that will increase the length of an average day by 0.004928266 seconds.

Which is about the percentage chance (i.e. never) of chernobyl happening again over the next 2000 years with properly regulated power plants. I thought I'd give him another irrational worry to blow out of proportion. :rolleyes:

SeanW

The Chernobyl accident was symbolic of the time and place in which it occured. Everything the Soviets did was crap, their economy and government was abysmal in equal measure.

Think about it this way: You wouldn't build another nuclear power plant like Chernobyl, but then again, at that time you wouldn't buy a Lada, Skoda or Trabant/Trabi (East German) car now would you? Of course not (not that you even could as prospective Trabi owners faced a 14 year waiting list! Yet, the disaster that was the average Communist-era car wouldn't stop you from painting the town red with your new Merc, would it? You would assume that all cars were always bad?

Not that that stopped the communist governments from spreading propoganda among their "comrades" about how great things were and crap in the West (including nuclear power).

To properly gauge the Chernobyl accident and what it means for nuclear power today, you have to step back for a second and think about the environment in which it was built.

With ultra-robust construction of a reactor and a good disposal system, nuclear could be a good last-ditch option for Ireland if energy became a serious problem. It would be foolish to say "let's not go nuclear ever" but it should definately be the option of final resort, but then done to the highest international standards.

pisslips

I didn't read the entire thread so I'm just gonna throw this out there but isn't there a nuclear reactor in U.C.C?I don't think it's powerfull or anything.

Vulpiner

pisslips wrote:

I didn't read the entire thread so I'm just gonna throw this out there but isn't there a nuclear reactor in U.C.C?I don't think it's powerfull or anything.

What???:eek:

pisslips

http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2003/07/14/story469306421.asp

Ahem, and you all thought I was a raving lunatic.I thought this was comman knowledge.

Vulpiner

It doesnt sound that reassuring, "guarded by a camera."

Moriarty

I may be mistaken but I think there is/was also a small reactor in one of the Dublin universitys. No idea as to it's current (in)activity though.

New_Departure06

Pa ElGrande wrote:

Can you quantify the odds of a terrorist attack?

I have observed that current terrorist attacks are aimed at killing people directly (maximum media publicity and create fear that everyone can relate to).
Blowing up a nuclear reactor is hard to do logistically and the chances of success are very low.

I want to know what you are going to do about the effects of radiation around the entrance to the your local pub?

There were arrests in Australia of suspected terrorists near a nuclear plant I understand last year. Regarding the odds, it only has to happen once for millions of people to be contaminated by radiation.

You realise a nuclear plant (say in france) is possibly the safest place to be the event of a terrorist attack. They're built like bunkers dude.

The World Trade Centre was also supposed to be proof against a collision with an aircraft and look what happened.

stereo_steve

New_Departure06 wrote:

There were arrests in Australia of suspected terrorists near a nuclear plant I understand last year.

Australia haven't gone nuclear. They do however mine alot of uranium for export


Nuclear FTW!!

zuma

Well back in the 50's, Australia had no problem letting the British blow a couple of nuclear bombs.

Yeah the nuclear Reactor in UCC is VERY small.
I know for a fact that UCC produced enough "material" for itself and CIT at the very least.

Anyone know if UL/NUIG have mini reactors as well?

pisslips

I think, despite people's enthusiam for other Irish reactors, ther is only one, don't question me....I live in Carlow...we know these things, we are the watchers......

bk

When I get interested in a subject I usually do a lot of research on both sides of the argument before forming a decision. While I still haven't formed a decision on this topic, during my research I have discovered some very interesting information.

Chernobyl
When most people think about nuclear power they think of Chernobyl, but there is a lot of misinformation surrounding this.

Chernobyl was a RBMK type reactor, these were only ever built in Russia. Even back when Chernobyl was built these type of reactors were known to be incredibly unstable and dangerous and importantly they are too large and powerful to have containment buildings!!!

The primary task of Chernobyl was not to generate nuclear power, that was just a convenient side effect, the primary task was to generate plutonium for the use in Nuclear weapons and this is why so much radioactive material was present.

That is why the Russians used this unsafe design, they could produce a lot of plutonium easily.

The designer of the Chernobyl reactors had very little experience in designing reactors, he had only designed small reactors for nuclear submarines previously.

Most of the management and staff at the plant had no experience with Nuclear power and had in fact come from a coal burning power plant and had little or no training.

Chernobyl was basically a disaster waiting to happen and reflected Russia at the time. It was a very dangerous type of reactor, badly designed by an inexperienced designer and run by inexperienced staff and had no containment building.

RBMK type reactors have never been used outside of Russia.

Most of the reactors in the rest of the world are of a type called Pressurized water reactors (PWR). These type of reactors are a much more stable design and are considered very reliable. In fact a Chernobyl type of explosive accident can't happen in these type of reactors, it is simply a completely different design. That isn't too say a meltdown can't happen, it has happened, but the consequences are far less devastating then Chernobyl.

An accident happened at a PWR in Three Mile Island in 1979. It had a semi meltdown. However there was no explosion and not a single person was killed in the accident. Controversially some steam was released from the station to reduce pressure, but the radiation from this equalled that of a chest X-Ray.

The radioactive material was contained by the containment building, exactly as was designed for this sort of worst case scenario.

It seems that in scientific and engineering circles there is no worry about these type of reactors having an accident that would effect anyone. The only worry seems to be that if a meltdown does occur, it costs hundreds of millions to fix and could bankrupt a company/government, there isn't much concern about it effecting anyone outside.

Interestingly there is a new generation of nuclear reactors coming called "Passively Safe" reactors. This means that if the reactors losses coolant, the reactor will automatically shut down safely without any interaction from an operator or Computer system. It is designed that if it isn't getting coolant, the reactors use the laws of physics to keep the nuclear reaction under control rather than engineered safety systems. That means that a meltdown would be impossible with these type of reactors.

You would still have the problem of dealing with nuclear waste, but they are safe. India and China is building these type of reactors, however at the moment they tend to be much more expensive then PWR reactors.

bk

Some answers to good questions asked by nurse_baz earlier:

How many nuclear plants are there worldwide?

As of 2005 441

How many major death causing, meltdown radiation leaking incidents have their been that we know of?

There have been two major accidents, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island (partial meltdown), only Chernobyl caused deaths, Three Mile Island caused no deaths and only leaked a very insignificant amount of radioactive material (about equal to a chest X-Ray).

Obviously some incidents may have been covered up but we should be able to get a general idea.....

It isn't possible to cover up major incidents, any leaks can easily be detected by many universities around the world. That was how the west first found out about Chernobyl.

zepp wrote:

The cost of nuclear is just too much. Even though initailly it is cheaper then wind for example. Over the lifetime of the plant and the life time of nuclear waste mointoring it comes cheaper. It is like a 30 year mortage it might be cheaper in the short term then a 20 year morgage. But in the end it is dearer

Really, a report done in the UK seems to disagree:

A UK Royal Academy of Engineering report in 2004 looked at electricity generation costs from new plants in the UK. In particular it aimed to develop "a robust approach to compare directly the costs of intermittent generation with more dependable sources of generation". This meant adding the cost of standby capacity for wind, as well as carbon values up to £30 (€45.44) per tonne CO2 for coal and gas. Wind power was calculated to be more than twice as expensive as nuclear power. Without a carbon tax, the cost of production through coal, nuclear and gas ranged £0.22-0.26/kWh and coal gasification was £0.32/kWh. When carbon tax was added (up to £0.25) coal came close to onshore wind (including back-up power) at £0.54/kWh - offshore wind is £0.72/kWh.

Nuclear power remained at £0.23/kWh either way, as it produces negligible amounts of CO2. Nuclear figures included decommissioning costs.

piraka wrote:

Would a reactor of design like Chernobyl prior to the accident allowed to have been built in the West at that time.

No, Even before it was built, it was known to be a highly unstable and dangerous design. The Russians just didn't care because they wanted to just build lots of Nucks.

piraka wrote:

How many nuclear accidents have occurred in France since they went nuclear in the mid seventies? I don't know off any that was made public.

There haven't been any. France is the poster child for Nuclear energy, it produces 78% of it's electricity needs with Nuclear and is therefore very self reliant and it's economy isn't badly effected by oil, gas, supply problems and prices.