Keep burning fuel, or go Nuclear?

piraka

Rebeller wrote:

No No No!!!. Nuclear power will never be an acceptable source of energy. I have personally witnessed the devastation visited on Chernobyl.

As mentioned previously in another thread. Lets not forget the greatest industrial accident ever and it wasn’t nuclear.

http://www.bhopal.net/

http://www.bhopal.org/whathappened.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/bhopal/default.stm

http://web.amnesty.org/pages/ec-bhopal-eng

professore

Zynks wrote:

I knew this would come from somewhere

Actually they have a couple of mountains over 1000 feet, but what is important is the drop, not how high the water is stored.

Just about one .... hardly a mountain

Are you sure you didn't confuse it with Switzerland? I have lived down the road from the Netherlands in Flanders for 5 years and believe me, snooker table comes to mind. Especially since the Dutch are a very practical people, doesn't sound likely to me. Do you have any references?

From Wikipedia:

About half of its surface area is less than 1 metre (3.3 ft) above sea level, and much of it is actually below sea level. An extensive range of dykes and dunes protects these areas from flooding. Numerous massive pumping stations keep the ground water level in check. The highest point, the Vaalserberg, in the south-eastern most point of the country, is 321 metres (1,053 ft) above sea level. The Vaalserberg is a foothill of the Ardennes mountains. A substantial part of the Netherlands, for example, all of the province of Flevoland (contains the largest man-made island in the world) and large parts of Holland, has been reclaimed from the sea. These areas are known as polders. This has led to the saying "God created the world, but the Dutch created the Netherlands."

Zynks

professore wrote:

Are you sure you didn't confuse it with Switzerland? I have lived down the road from the Netherlands in Flanders for 5 years and believe me, snooker table comes to mind. Especially since the Dutch are a very practical people, doesn't sound likely to me. Do you have any references?

Nicely researched, I'm impressed.
The information I mentioned I got it from a Dutch civil servant who sat beside me in a flight to Amsterdam last month. Now I wish I had asked for more details...

MontgomeryClift

SeanW wrote:

no its not.

We look forward to your fuelless reactor.

Alun

piraka wrote:

We have one of them in Ireland, again an intermittent source of energy. What about the habitat loss, not very environmentally friendly.

It's called Turlough Hill in the Wicklow Mountains. Habitat loss? It covers an area of no more then 0.2 km2 (40 acres) so not a huge amount by any means, and the corresponding lake at the base (Lough Nahanagan) was there already before it was built. I walk every weekend in the Wicklow Mountains, and don't consider it to be an eyesore in any way. It was started in 1968 and built in six years. I don't know whether there was any hue and cry about it back then, but I'm pretty sure that despite it's merits it'd have a lot tougher time of it today.

piraka

Alun wrote:

It's called Turlough Hill in the Wicklow Mountains. Habitat loss? It covers an area of no more then 0.2 km2 (40 acres) so not a huge amount by any means, and the corresponding lake at the base (Lough Nahanagan) was there already before it was built. I walk every weekend in the Wicklow Mountains, and don't consider it to be an eyesore in any way. It was started in 1968 and built in six years. I don't know whether there was any hue and cry about it back then, but I'm pretty sure that despite it's merits it'd have a lot tougher time of it today.

I also do hillwalking every weekend during the winter months and I am quite familiar with Turlough Hill. I do find the fence around the artificial lake and tarmac road out of place on top of the mountain and as for the building debris still around after some many years. Then again that is just me.

You are quite right, this sort of project in that environment would have a tough time getting through planning. The upland peat areas are protected under the EU Habitats directive. Not sure what the merits of the station. I understand that it is required for backup due to unscheduled demands on the grid.

By the way, the British considered Dinorwig to be the first of its kind http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_power_station, but Turlough Hill predated it. (Great climbing is to be had on the slate.)

Alun

piraka wrote:

Not sure what the merits of the station. I understand that it is required for backup due to unscheduled demands on the grid.

It's not really for unscheduled demands on the grid, but to provide additional capacity during predictable peak demand periods, like everyone getting home at 5pm and putting the kettle and the telly on and cooking their dinner.

The reason is that traditional power stations produce power all the time whether you need it or not, even at night, and you can't just switch them off and start them the next day, so the excess power that's generated at night is used to pump water up to Turlough hill, and at peak demand times it's released back down again to generate power. View it if you like as a massive rechargeable battery (Excuses if you knew all this already). So environmentally speaking it has probably saved an extra, largely unused except for peak periods, power station having to be built.

In the future if we're going to be relying more on renewables like wind and wave power, which are inherently variable and unpredictable in the amount of power they generate, we'll maybe need many more such schemes to act as buffers.

Alun

piraka wrote:

I also do hillwalking every weekend during the winter months and I am quite familiar with Turlough Hill. I do find the fence around the artificial lake and tarmac road out of place on top of the mountain and as for the building debris still around after some many years. Then again that is just me.

It is a bit of a mess up there, I'll agree. I remember once getting to the top after having climbed up from the Glenealo River valley, covered in muck and coming across two Spanish tourists who had walked up the road and asked us where the cafe was! I think some friendly local had been playing tricks with them

SeanW

Akrasia wrote:

Are you serious?

Yes, I'm deadly serious. And the fact that you had to ask me this question proves beyond doubt your lack of enlightenment on the topic.

Electronic voting is an example of the supreme arrogance and incompetence of this government. Despite all of the evidence that they are unsafe, expensive, poorly designed and unnecessary, the government is still committed to using them because they are incapable of admitting when they made a mistake. And that is the kind of arrogance that leads to massive industrial accidents.

So, if our government is as bad and risky with a nuke project, where is the 14 year waiting list to buy a car? The people queuing for 2 weeks to buy a loaf of bread? You had to do that in the Soviet Union but here, we can just pop into Lidl and pick one up for 35c. Big difference between Mikhail Gorbachev/Nikita Kruschev and Bertie and co. BIG difference.

When Ireland's government gets anywhere close to Soviet levels of screwed-up-ness, or when a proposed nuclear plant relies on such diabolical technology as what was used at Chernobyl, then you can tell me an Irish nuclear reactor would be a disaster risk.

Until then, do some bloody research. Here I'll make it easy for you, see here http://www.pripyat.com/en/media/ and look for the BBC documentary. That won't tell you the whole story, but it will tell you the bulk of it in less than an hour.

Remember I used to be like you, a passionate anti-nuke. Until I got the facts. I understand how you could come to the above conclusions, I know first hand how ignorance screws up your ability to see the forest from the trees.

So I must stress this in the strongest possible terms.
Wake up, Go out, do some research, get the REAL facts about the Chernobyl accident, about how atomic chemical instability (radiation) works, and the various forms of power generation.

THEN come back and tell me you'd prefer more fossil fuels (which is the default alternative). If you can do THAT, I'd be very interested to know why.

Akrasia

You keep talking about the conditions that led up to Chernobyl as though those are the only conceivable conditions that might possibly lead to a nuclear accident.

What about 3 mile Island, in the good old U.S.A. they came very close to a full scale meltdown. Just because they avoided disaster on that occasion does not mean that nuclear power is perfectly safe.

And you don't need soviet era incompetence for there to be huge industrial accidents, Union Carbide was a capitalist corporation with a presumably professional management staff and they still made critical errors that led to the massive accident at Bhopal.

There are regular explosions in factories all around Ireland. My uncle was almost killed in an explosion at Roche's plant in Clarecastle a few years ago. These are plants that are supposed to have rigid safety procedures but they sometimes break down.

You might claim that those procedures would be more stringently adhered to in a nuclear plant, but how often have we seen reports of falsified safety reports at Sellafield?

If there are alternatives to Nuclear Power that have none of the risks, why would we want to choose Nuclear?

Akrasia

SeanW wrote:

THEN come back and tell me you'd prefer more fossil fuels (which is the default alternative). If you can do THAT, I'd be very interested to know why.

Nobody here has said they prefer 'more fossil fuels'
Your 'default alternative' is just propaganda by the nuclear industry. There are other options that we should exhaust before we commit long term to this industry.

Landfill was 'the default alternative' to an incinerator in Galway when the government wanted to push for that technology on ideological grounds, until the people of Galway got together and organised their own recycling facilities, and in less than 2 years, they achieved something like an 80% recycling rate and suddenly there was another 'default alternative' and no need for an incinerator.

piraka

Akrasia wrote:

Nobody here has said they prefer 'more fossil fuels'
Your 'default alternative' is just propaganda by the nuclear industry. There are other options that we should exhaust before we commit long term to this industry.

And what would these options be, to conventional fossil fuel power plants. Climate change is happening now and if we don't do something now to reduce our emissions it will only get worse.

Sparks

Akrasia wrote:

What about 3 mile Island, in the good old U.S.A. they came very close to a full scale meltdown.

Eh, what now? 3 mile was a release of mildly radioactive steam, not a full scale meltdown. Which, by the way, can't happen with modern reactors. In an all-up test a few years back, they shut off the coolant system to one and ran it for several days without ill effect.

axer

The best way forward for Ireland is not so much creating more power but using less power. If each household produced some power by solar cells or mini wind turbines and/or reduced the amount of needless power consumption then the overall reduction in power consumption would be enormous. That combined with renewable energy sources such as: onshore wind power, offshore wind power, photovoltaics, hydro power, wave power and tidal stream etc. Then you have waste disposal which has to be dealt with anyway and could be used as energy sources e.g. agricultural and forestry waste, municipal solid waste and landfill gas etc. I know all of this would not be easy to implement but it is possible and is a better alternative to Nuclear Power.

John_C

Akrasia wrote:

Nobody here has said they prefer 'more fossil fuels'
Your 'default alternative' is just propaganda by the nuclear industry. There are other options that we should exhaust before we commit long term to this industry.

Someone said that earlier in the thread and the alternative given was an interview with two German scientists who have a grand plan to turn the Sahara into a giant solar plant but don't seem to even have a working model of their idea. It's the same with the non-invented technologies of wave and tidal power mentioned above and we're all aware of the problems with wind power.

I think that it is correct to say that the only options at the moment are nuclear and fossel fuels. If you're in favour of anything else, you're really in favour of supporting research into something else.

Akrasia

John_C wrote:

Someone said that earlier in the thread and the alternative given was an interview with two German scientists who have a grand plan to turn the Sahara into a giant solar plant but don't seem to even have a working model of their idea.

It's nice to have a straw man to argue against isn't it.

This is from the U.S. Government
http://www.nrel.gov/csp/

according to a recent study on CSP (Concentrated solar power)

california has high-quality solar resources sufficient to support far more CSP than either the 2,100 MW or 4,000 MW scenarios analyzed.
#

Investment in CSP power plants delivers greater return to California in both economic activity and employment than corresponding investment in natural gas equipment:

* Each dollar spent on CSP contributes approximately $1.40 to California's Gross State Product; each dollar spent on natural gas plants contributes about $0.90 - $1.00 to Gross State Product.
* The 4,000 MW deployment scenario was estimated to create about 3,000 permanent jobs from the ongoing operation of the plants.

#

Operations period expenditures on operations and maintenance for CSP create more permanent jobs than alternative natural gas fueled generation. For each 100 MW of generating capacity, CSP was estimated to generate 94 permanent jobs compared to 56 jobs and 13 jobs for combined cycle and simple cycle plants, respectively.
#

Each CSP plant provides emissions reductions compared to its natural gas counterpart; the 4,000 MW scenario in this study offsets at least 300 tons per year of NOx emissions, 180 tons of CO emissions per year, and 7,600,000 tons per year of CO2.

yes, that's 7.6 million tonnes of C02 less than the natural gas alternative for a 4000mw plant.

That is before the other benefits of desalinated water water and free air conditioning for nearby cities are taken into account.

I think that it is correct to say that the only options at the moment are nuclear and fossel fuels. If you're in favour of anything else, you're really in favour of supporting research into something else.

you think wrong.

John_C

So back to my original question, if these solar plants are so brilliant, why hasn't anyone built one?

Also, a straw man argument is when I attack a misrepresentation of your views, not when you think my argument is weak.

Akrasia

John_C wrote:

So back to my original question, if these solar plants are so brilliant, why hasn't anyone built one?

America has built them, just not on a big enough scale. I suspect the answer is political.
Also, they could not compete with the artificially low prices of Oil and gas over the last 30 years, especially in America.

Also, a straw man argument is when I attack a misrepresentation of your views, not when you think my argument is weak.

You mean like when you said this? "two German scientists who have a grand plan to turn the Sahara into a giant solar plant but don't seem to even have a working model of their idea."

ninty9er

the_syco wrote:

I couldn't post in The Thunderdome, so I'm posting here...


Why Wexford? Because they had one before.


Oh, and for an added bonus: the price wouldn't go up every time the yanks went to war
[FONT=Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif][/FONT]

Do you honestly not know the difference between Wikipedia and the truth. Any gombeen can setup a wiki account and change a page. Wexford NEVER had a nuclear power plant. nor should it.

Biofuels and timber are the way to go as cleaner technologies are developed. They're certianly not going to be terrorist targets anyway, evn though we are a low risk country

John_C

Akrasia wrote:

You mean like when you said this? "two German scientists who have a grand plan to turn the Sahara into a giant solar plant but don't seem to even have a working model of their idea."

A bit like that, had you given the link to the working plant before I said that I'd be more in the wrong.

In any case, thanks for the link, it looks interesting. I'll read up more on it.

Akrasia

ninty9er wrote:

Do you honestly not know the difference between Wikipedia and the truth. Any gombeen can setup a wiki account and change a page. Wexford NEVER had a nuclear power plant. nor should it.

Actually, that wikipedia entry is highly accurate (like most wikipedia pages by the way) There was a proposed nuclear power station to be located at Carnsore point but it was defeated by huge public opposition.

It doesn't say anywhere that there was a nuclear plant in Ireland, but you wikipedia can't be held responsible for people who can't read.

Any gombeen can set up a wikipedia page, correct, but unless it has merit and is accurate, it will be swiftly edited or deleted by one of the thousands of volunteers who monitor all of the changes made to the site every day.

SeanW

Akrasia wrote:

You keep talking about the conditions that led up to Chernobyl as though those are the only conceivable conditions that might possibly lead to a nuclear accident.

The only environmental disaster ever to be caused by nuclear power was caused by a totally unimagineably incompetent Soviet governmet. They were essentially playing russian roulette (pun intended) with their nuclear programme, the accident was caused by an absurdly long string of blunders not repeatable anywhere in the 1st world, or possibly anywhere since then.

Those are the facts. Granted, a nuclear plant might always been hit by a giant comet or something but if that were to happen we'd have more to worry about than the nuclear plant.

What about 3 mile Island, in the good old U.S.A. they came very close to a full scale meltdown. Just because they avoided disaster on that occasion does not mean that nuclear power is perfectly safe.

Yeah, they came CLOSE! But it didn't happen, because TMI had a bunch of safeguards that Chernobyl didn't. That was also 30 years ago and nuclear technology has advanced in leaps and bounds since then.

You might claim that those procedures would be more stringently adhered to in a nuclear plant, but how often have we seen reports of falsified safety reports at Sellafield?

Fair enough, but that sounds like an argument for tighter regulation of the Sellafield operation. Which I support, because part and parcel of a safe, efficient nuclear programme is having a vicious nuclear regulator with lots of legal fangs. The American Nuclear Regulatory Commission comes to mind.

If there are alternatives to Nuclear Power that have none of the risks, why would we want to choose Nuclear?

Because nuclear power makes sense.

Nobody here has said they prefer 'more fossil fuels'

Again, look at the bloody facts. Coal presently accounts for 39% of global electricity production, contributing to a total share of 65% held by fossil fuels. The worlds population is expanding and our energy needs have and will continue to go in one direction. Up.
Source. Every respected projection of global energy usage predicts more and more use of fossil fuels.

Your 'default alternative' is just propaganda by the nuclear industry.

I could say your whole post is Greenpeace propoganda. Many so-called environmentalists seem more worried about nuclear power than they do about fossil fuels especially coal. Do none of you anti-nukes think about the humongous amounts of environmental caused by coal? Mercury/arsenic pollution? CO2? Acid rain? Particle matter? We have our own ongoing environmental catastrophe in Moneypoint and the British have a big coal burning deal. We subsidise Peat fired power which is the most ineffient thing possible and quite filthy.

Yet noone complains about this they way they do the imagined evils of nuclear power. Greenpeace doesn't call the coal industry PR people "evil" and accuse them of "spreading lies" about coal fired power.In fact if you go to Greenpeace's website frontpage, you'll find nothing about Carbon Dioxide emissions, Coal, Fossil fuels or anything else but you'll find "End the nuclear age" right there.

Realistically if we're to change the way we're heading, we need all the tools at our disposal to do it. That means including Nuclear power, alongside renewables, biofuels, conservation, urban planning and all the rest.

If you oppose nuclear power, or act more firmly against it than you do fossil fuels, you are by default supporting continued excessive reliance on fossil fuels and bear some responsibility for the consequences that result.

RedPlanet

SeanW wrote:

The only environmental disaster ever to be caused by nuclear power was caused by a totally unimagineably incompetent Soviet governmet.

Rubbish, that was the only urban disaster.
There are plenty of environmental disasters (radioactive hot spots) around the globe that are the result of nuclear power.

Dar

RedPlanet wrote:

Rubbish, that was the only urban disaster.
There are plenty of environmental disasters (radioactive hot spots) around the globe that are the result of nuclear power.

Name three.
Then point out any which used modern reactor designs.
Then point out any whose radioactive output came to within even a few orders of magnitude of the radioactive emissions of the world's coal power plants.

RedPlanet

I was just reading an article last week about a radiation contaminated beach in the UK where they've determined it's best not to try to clean it up because the action would result in the disturbing of contaminate material lying on the sea bed.
Can't find the article atm.
But here's a list of US Radiation Sites, state by state
http://prop1.org/prop1/radiated/states.htm
Take one state, then google the company/site name.
For example, i choose Kentucky.
Therein, one of the things it lists is:
# Maxey Flats **
contaminated site
Hillsboro, KY
Major 'low level' dump, sd1977
serious ongoing mismanagement
Googling Maxey Flats:
http://www.epa.gov/region4/waste/npl/nplky/maxfltky.htm
"EPA Emergency Response solidified 286,000 gallons of tanked leachate because of significant leakage"
Nice huh?

Maybe this is the beach in the UK.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/4974692.stm
But i distinctly remember the article stating that a clean-up process was being ruled out as it would exacaberate the radioactivity situation. So maybe this article is not it.

Dar

I'm not disputing the existance of radioactive hotspots - just there severity in relation to nuclear power plants. Browsing through that list the majority of hotspots lie within the catagories of:

* Nuclear weapons pruduction/storage sites
* R&D Sites
* Spent fuel storage sites

The first two are not directly related to nuclear power generation. The third is an obvious result of the very silly American policy of not reprocessing spent fuel.

RedPlanet

Dar wrote:

I'm not disputing the existance of radioactive hotspots - just there severity in relation to nuclear power plants. Browsing through that list the majority of hotspots lie within the catagories of:

* Nuclear weapons pruduction/storage sites
* R&D Sites
* Spent fuel storage sites

The first two are not directly related to nuclear power generation. The third is an obvious result of the very silly American policy of not reprocessing spent fuel.

I guess there are 4 beaches in Scotland contaminated with radioactive waste.
http://www.robedwards.com/2006/11/another_beach_t.html
According to this blog. Unfortunately even Google News searches don't link to the article within "The Sunday Herald".

But the point is, that it's up to proponents of nuclear power to demonstrate and prove it's efficiency and it's safety. The sceptical public has ever right to be just that. The track record of energy corporations and governements when it comes to nuclear power is poor as far as i am concerned. I will not be hoodwinked nor bullied by scarmongering tactics into supporting something that looks reckless and greedy (nuclear power).
Regardless i still feel that uranium is a finite resource and will also run out.
I am not convinced by arguements that we can process lower grades of uranium or mine it from sea water.
Supporting nuclear power will take away enthusiasm and precious resources from going green (100% renewables), ultimately that is exactly what we have to do.

Dar

RedPlanet wrote:

I guess there are 4 beaches in Scotland contaminated with radioactive waste.
http://www.robedwards.com/2006/11/another_beach_t.html
According to this blog. Unfortunately even Google News searches don't link to the article within "The Sunday Herald".

Only of two of those beaches were contaminated by nuclear power plants. Both plants were 60 year old designs and have since been decommisioned.

But the point is, that it's up to proponents of nuclear power to demonstrate and prove it's efficiency and it's safety. The sceptical public has ever right to be just that.

It's efficiency and relative safety have already been demonstrated. France generates most of its power with nuclear fission. Japan - the only country in history to have been attacked with nuclear weapons - generates a third of its power from fission plants.

The track record of energy corporations and governements when it comes to nuclear power is poor as far as i am concerned.

How hard you examined that track record?

I will not be hoodwinked nor bullied by scarmongering tactics into supporting something that looks reckless and greedy (nuclear power).

Nor should you. Examine the facts and make a decision, but for your own sake make it an informed decision.

Regardless i still feel that uranium is a finite resource and will also run out.
I am not convinced by arguements that we can process lower grades of uranium or mine it from sea water.

We have 50 years worth of U235 at the moment. The reason for that is that noone's been actively looking for the stuff for 30 years. Of course that 50 year figure assumes that fuel will not be reprocessed when spent. Considering less than 10% of fissionable material is actually used before the fuel is "spent", reprocessing stretches that figure out to 500 years or so at current levels. Of course thats assuming:

• Power demand remains constant (not gonna happen)
• No more U235 is discovered (highly unlikely)
• The tonnes of "spent" fuel is not used

But wait that's not all - we still have a few thousand years worth of U238 that can be used in breeder reactors. And hey - once thats gone we've got three times as much thorium which can also be used in breeder reactors. So conservatively thats over 10,000 years of energy production at current rates from nuclear fission ALONE.

Supporting nuclear power will take away enthusiasm and precious resources from going green (100% renewables), ultimately that is exactly what we have to do.

There is no magic bullet. People argue that nuclear should be developed as opposed to renewables, or that energy conservation should the priority, etc, etc.

Most people fail to spot that these ideas are not mutually-exclusive: they complement each other. Nuclear to provide the energy production backbone with tidal & wind providing extra capacity, combined with energy conservation policies to reduce the amount of energy we waste.

RedPlanet

Dar wrote:

Only of two of those beaches were contaminated by nuclear power plants. Both plants were 60 year old designs and have since been decommisioned.

Doesn't matter. Nuclear power and nuclear weapons are blood brothers.
As far as Japan: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3548192.stm
I linked a story earlier in this thread which stated that 17 of Japan's nuclear power plants were found to have doctored safety records.
Here it is: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/df4fa48a-bb19-11da-8f51-0000779e2340.html
"..shutdown of 17 nuclear reactors after safety data was fabricated."

Dar wrote:

How hard you examined that track record?

Not very hard and yet it seems fairly easy to debunk the pro-nuclear propaganda that going nuclear is both safe and environmental.

Dar wrote:

There is no magic bullet.

Indeed, however it is you that is trying to provide one (nuclear power)

piraka

RedPlanet wrote:

I will not be hoodwinked nor bullied by scarmongering tactics into supporting something that looks reckless and greedy (nuclear power).

Likewise I will not be hoodwinked nor bullied by scare mongering tactics into supporting something that looks reckless and greedy (renewable energy)

RedPlanet wrote:

Supporting nuclear power will take away enthusiasm and precious resources from going green (100% renewables), ultimately that is exactly what we have to do.

Can you please explain how renewables will be able to replace and at what cost, the current energy requirement in the country.

Wind has already being shown as a non-starter even as a back-up