Keep burning fuel, or go Nuclear?

oscarBravo

piraka wrote:

What report did this information come from.

I'd like to know this too. Never mind alarmist, frankly it seems beyond the realms of physical possibility.

bk

Lou.m wrote:

Actually i happen to think the number of people injured is not the point. They are still people.

Oh, I see, so your only worried when it is Irish people under threat.

How about the 6,000 or so Chinese people who die in coal mining accidents every year to ensure you have electricity?

Or the estimated 10,000 people who die every year due to coal pollution?

You do know that coal contains radioactive and other toxic materials and that a coal burning power plant releases far more reactive material into the atmosphere then a nuclear power plant, right?

Do you know how many people where killed in nuclear accidents last year? Exactly zero.

In fact you need to go back to 1999 when two nuclear power plant workers were killed in Japan. And yet despite that it is actually safer to work in a nuclear power plant then a standard power plant as statistically there are less fatal accidents in Nuclear plants.

BTW You do know that a report in 2005 by the Chernobyl Forum (made up of the WHO, UN, Ukraine, etc.) put the number of expected deaths from Chernobyl at 4,000?

Mostly people who worked directly at the site after the accident trying to clean it up without any protective gear.

That is certainly a terrible number of dead and many more will suffer from thyroid cancer and not die. However it is still far less then the number of people who die from coal every single year.

You do know that even if you live close to a Nuclear power plant, you are far, far more likely to be killed in a car accident then you are in a Nuclear power plant accident?

bk

piraka wrote:

What report did this information come from.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6171053.stm

RedPlanet

bk wrote:

You do know that coal contains radioactive and other toxic materials and that a coal burning power plant releases far more reactive material into the atmosphere then a nuclear power plant, right?

Not to pick on you bk but it's a common theme among the pro-nuke crowd that our energy future is Nuclear vs Coal.
SeanW in fact goes so far as to state that if somebody is anti-nuclear power then they are automatically pro coal.
This propaganda deserves closer scrutiny.
According to this article at the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4466040.stm

The latest figures from the International Energy Agency (IEA) project coal use to steadily increase each year until 2030, when annual demand will reach nearly 7.3 billion tonnes - almost one billion tonnes more than present levels

This article too. http://eeru.open.ac.uk/natta/renewonline/rol41/9.htm

It appears coal use is increasing in the UK, where also nuclear power is increasing.

So whatabout this nuclear vs coal?

I'd hazard a guess and say that the energy sector will sell us oil til we stop buying it; they'll also sell us coal til we stop buying it. Nuclear power doesnt appear to change that.

Lou.m

bk wrote:

Oh, I see, so your only worried when it is Irish people under threat.

How about the 6,000 or so Chinese people who die in coal mining accidents every year to ensure you have electricity?

Or the estimated 10,000 people who die every year due to coal pollution?

You do know that coal contains radioactive and other toxic materials and that a coal burning power plant releases far more reactive material into the atmosphere then a nuclear power plant, right?

Do you know how many people where killed in nuclear accidents last year? Exactly zero.

In fact you need to go back to 1999 when two nuclear power plant workers were killed in Japan. And yet despite that it is actually safer to work in a nuclear power plant then a standard power plant as statistically there are less fatal accidents in Nuclear plants.

BTW You do know that a report in 2005 by the Chernobyl Forum (made up of the WHO, UN, Ukraine, etc.) put the number of expected deaths from Chernobyl at 4,000?

Mostly people who worked directly at the site after the accident trying to clean it up without any protective gear.

That is certainly a terrible number of dead and many more will suffer from thyroid cancer and not die. However it is still far less then the number of people who die from coal every single year.

You do know that even if you live close to a Nuclear power plant, you are far, far more likely to be killed in a car accident then you are in a Nuclear power plant accident?

Firstly actually i do know the expected number of deaths i also know that the genetic damage is permanent that means along the genetic line there will always be mutations and deformaties such as chernobyl heart. The descendants of those people will always have damaged genes and that suffering will nver end.A car accident harms the people in it and emotionally destroys their families and that is terrible and i do not wish it on any one. But the damage stops there. If you are exposed to radiation the damage goes on to your childrens childrens children. And of course i care about the lives of those who live abroad i do not support burning fossil fuels or nuclear power. I think the chinese coal mining industry has a disgusting safety record. Funnily enough though speaking of china, china syndrom is still affecting people there and will most probably continue to. I think it is time we realize we cannot keep living the way we have been. I also think coal miners all over the world from wales( although there is not much there now) to china should be able to lead a better quality of life. And it is not enviromentalists who are stopping that. The child miners in Latin America have a life expectancy that leaves them dead in their twenties. In wales men used to go in to hospital with black lungs. Mining destroys the enviroment and the people in it. Enviromentalists have been campaigning for years against this. But your solution is a way of making power that has already damaged the genentic line of the human race, that cannot be undone we can stop mining, but we cant stop that damage now it is to late. Ask anyone who is from a region where there is nuclear power they have higher rates of cancer and mutations as they do in sellafield. And ask anyone from chernobyl and they will tell you that even children born today have deformities and so will their children. In the area surrounding sellafield they have higher recorded rates of cancer and other health problems. Their are many many more people working an coal mines than live near power plants in the world as burning fuels provides most of the power and so the number of deaths reflects that. After TMI in America 51 plants that were going to be built were cancelled. If things were to reverse and we started to get more of our power from nuclear plants the numbers would rise. And you can be sure it will not be the richest of the rich neighbourhoods that they will be built in and you can be certain it will not be the rich who work there. IT will be the same pople who worked the mines in wales or the same people who go down the pits in china. Thats what happened in america. Most of the operators in nuclear power plants come from poorer backgrounds. And to say that hey you were dying before from lung disease thats if you were not killed in an accident first, so now have a job were you have to take nose blow tests every month to see if you are contaminated with radiation oh and by the way you have a much higher chance of being sterile then the average person but hey its not coal, that is missing the point. Neither is acceptable and human beings around the world deserve more. To say you have a choice of going down a pit or working in a plant is not really a choice i would not want my children doing either. Plus the disposal of depleted uranium and other toxic substances is not something i trust companies with very little respect for the earth with. And actually i do know that burning coal releases toxic substances but to burn the type you are talking about is suppose to be illegal it is supposed to be refined first. And as i said before i do not support the burning of fossil fuels or nuclear power. :eek: Oh no EEK i must be one of those HIPPIES everyone hates oh well.:) If every house in Ireland replaced one bulb with an energy saving one it would be the equivalent of taking 10,000 cars of the road. Renewable sources are the way to go. Uranium will run out too someday in the very distant furture and it has to be mined so workers will still be going down the pits perhaps in less numbers but they will still be there nevertheless. I would still prefer to give up a wasteful lifestyle

Lou.m

Excellent point redplanet.

oscarBravo

Lou.m - one word: paragraphs. Please.

Lou.m

Apologies, you are right.

piraka

bk wrote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6171053.stm

A little story on reporting by the beeb ( of course the beeb weren’t the only culprits.)

Letter
Nature 438, 655-657 (1 December 2005) | doi:10.1038/nature04385
Slowing of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation at 25° N
Harry L. Bryden1, Hannah R. Longworth1 and Stuart A. Cunningham1

The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation carries warm upper waters into far-northern latitudes and returns cold deep waters southward across the Equator1. Its heat transport makes a substantial contribution to the moderate climate of maritime and continental Europe, and any slowdown in the overturning circulation would have profound implications for climate change. A transatlantic section along latitude 25° N has been used as a baseline for estimating the overturning circulation and associated heat transport2, 3, 4. Here we analyse a new 25° N transatlantic section and compare it with four previous sections taken over the past five decades. The comparison suggests that the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation has slowed by about 30 per cent between 1957 and 2004. Whereas the northward transport in the Gulf Stream across 25° N has remained nearly constant, the slowing is evident both in a 50 per cent larger southward-moving mid-ocean recirculation of thermocline waters, and also in a 50 per cent decrease in the southward transport of lower North Atlantic Deep Water between 3,000 and 5,000 m in depth. In 2004, more of the northward Gulf Stream flow was recirculating back southward in the thermocline within the subtropical gyre, and less was returning southward at depth.

And


Nature 438, 565 - 566 (01 December 2005); doi:10.1038/438565a

Oceanography:The Atlantic heat conveyor slows
DETLEF QUADFASEL
Detlef Quadfasel is at the Zentrum für Meeres- und Klimaforschung, Institut für Meereskunde, Universität Hamburg, Bundesstrasse 53, D-20146 Hamburg, Germany.

Computer simulations predict that global warming will weaken the ocean circulation that transports heat from the tropics to higher latitudes in the North Atlantic. Such an effect has now been detected.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7068/abs/nature04385.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7068/abs/438565a.html

Reported By the beeb

Ocean changes 'will cool Europe'
By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News website
This more or less constitutes a smoking gun Michael Schlesinger
Changes to ocean currents in the Atlantic may cool European weather within a few decades, scientists say. Researchers from the UK's National Oceanography Centre say currents derived from the Gulf Stream are weakening, bringing less heat north. Their conclusions, reported in the scientific journal Nature, are based on 50 years of Atlantic observations. They say that European political leaders need to plan for a future which may be cooler rather than warmer. The findings come from a British research project called Rapid, which aims to gather evidence relating to potentially fast climatic change in Europe………………

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4485840.stm


But the the real findings were:

Science 17 November 2006:Vol. 314. no. 5802, p. 1064DOI: 10.1126/science.314.5802.1064a
News of the Week
GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE:
False Alarm: Atlantic Conveyor Belt Hasn't Slowed Down After All
Richard A. Kerr
A closer look at the Atlantic Ocean's currents has confirmed what many oceanographers suspected all along: There's no sign that the ocean's heat-laden "conveyor" is slowing. The lag reported late last year was a mere flicker in a system prone to natural slowdowns and speedups. Furthermore, researchers are finding that even if global warming were slowing the conveyor and reducing the supply of warmth to high latitudes, it would be decades before the change would be noticeable above the noise.

So much for the computer predictions!!

The beeb hasn’t come back to say otherwise.

Some reports on the Arctic can’t find any mention of disappearance of sea ice in 30 years.

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/PDF/rich2952/rich2952.pdf

http://www.acia.uaf.edu/pages/scientific.html

RedPlanet wrote:

It appears coal use is increasing in the UK, where also nuclear power is increasing.

So much for renewable energy generation mitigating these sources of power generation in the UK.

RedPlanet

piraka wrote:

So much for renewable energy generation mitigating these sources of power generation in the UK.

It's never been given a chance.
What with big energy corporations pushing their interests.
And media and politicians being what they are..

Lou.m

Unfortunately renewable sources are not making much of a dent in the use of fossil fuels, i dont think anyone said that they were doing at the momment did they? I think the consensus amognts enviromentalists is that they should. And even if our ice landscapes were not being destroyed ( which most scientists say is happening) there are many more reasons to change.

Intrestingly when scientists started to insist that smoking caused cancer companies started suggesting that what they had was not proof but a example of a co-relation, where there appeared to be a higher number of deaths amongst those who smoked but that this relationship in itself could not be taken as proof that smoking caused cancer in a court of law. There was a challenge to the idea of the government warnings on the packaging. Scientists could not give the kind of proof that companies challenged them to as that is not how science prooved things but how it explained them. The methodology of scince prooved things through falsifying them, if something is falsifiable then it is scientific.

As i understand it and i may be wrong please correct me if i am this is the way scince works in principle.

It was decided that that since science could not technically prove that smoking caused cancer that the law would accept the idea of common sense, it was accpeted since that there was a co-relation could be shown that commmon sense suggested that smoking caused cancer and governments where allowed to print warnings on the packageing for the first time.
They read as we all know.

SMOKING CAUSES CANCER.

Now there does appear to be a co-relation between global warming and the change in our climate and weather. ( A co-relation means one is not happening without the other by the way) So what might common sense tell you? If most mainstream experts are telling us this is happening and it is happening now, what warning do you think polluting fuels should have?

Lou.m

It is not profitable to use renewable sources as they are renewable they will never have the same value as other sources to profit making companies. Oil is valuable mostly for one reason there is only a limited amount. Renewable resources will not have that advantage in the business world. WE will never know what they can do until they are given the same push.

SeanW

RedPlanet wrote:

SeanW in fact goes so far as to state that if somebody is anti-nuclear power then they are automatically pro coal.
This propaganda deserves closer scrutiny.
According to this article at the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4466040.stm

So you're banking on clean coal, which kinda proves my point. And maybe you're right! Maybe in la-la-land, researches will find a way to make coal squeaky clean. But I'll believe it when I see it.

This article too.

is years old and its nuclear figures represent only a statistical fluctuation. The article predates Tony Blairs recent push for more nuclear power and in the time span it talks about, 2000-2002, no new nuclear plants were commissioned and AFAIK none were shut down.

So whatabout this nuclear vs coal?

I think you just answered your own question!

I'd hazard a guess and say that the energy sector will sell us oil til we stop buying it; they'll also sell us coal til we stop buying it. Nuclear power doesnt appear to change that.

Of course what we could really use is a continuous and inexorable rise in the cost of fossil fuels, that would do more to push all the alternatives than any talk here or wherever could in a million years.

Lemming wrote:

Two things ....

1. I don't see you, or anyone else, crowing over the amount of people injured or killed in the conventional fossil fuel industry on a yearly basis.

2. Your argument about "only being a waiting game" is the most nihilistic comment I've seen on this entire thread so far. Everything is potentially "only a waiting game". It's a total strawman argument.

But since you're harping on about environmental catastrophes, how about the significant amount of oil-spills that have occured in the last 20 or so years? Far more than any number of nuclear catastrophes.

"Hello Mr. Kettle. Meet Mr.Pot."

Hammer, Nail, Head.

Lou you clearly don't know what actually happened at Chernobyl or you would not hold the Soviet government blameless. A long string of government blunders caused Chernobyl catastrophe, and everyone involved from the operator-in-charge of the reactor that night, all the way up to Mikhail Gorbachev's office and his predecessors, shares the blame for the litany of mistakes.

There was no safety culture in the Soviet nuclear sector, the reactor type, RBMK was only ever used in the Soviet Union, it was dual purpose for both weapons and electricity, the plant had a large positive void co-efficient, which means that an unexpected acclerating reaction will cause a loss of control and reaction surpression, was unstable at low output level, but the operators didnt know that, and like all RBMKs the plant itself was so physically huge that it was not practical to install the normal full primary and secondary containment vessels. Instead, the RBMK reactor uses only partial primary containment, in the form of an "Upper Biological Sheild." This only ever happened in the Soviet Union AFAIK.

But the bungling didn't stop there: the 4th reactor was rushed into service before it was ready and had undergone the neccessary safety test which were deferred for some time and had to be scheduled between commercial usage. This cotributed to the accident, as did a number of bad decisions by the director who decided to leave the test to a nightshift of newly trained electrical engineers while the only nuclear engineer on the Chernobyl site was off duty. The nightshift promptly screwed up the preperation for the test, but for fear of upsetting their superiors by cancelling the test because of the resultant dangerous condition, decided instead to turn off a number of safety systems and start the test.

Then, on 1:26 April 26th 1986, the inevitable happened. You can only get away with running a nuclear programme the way the Soviet Union did for so long before you blow something up.

Back in the real world, nuclear safety is such that it expects the unexpected. That's why TMI didn't wipe out Pennsylvania and half of the NorthEastern seaboard TMI had a proper containment system, and I assume that Forsmark does too. Obviously even with full containment vessels you dont want reactors melting down, becuase these containment vessels are a last line of defense, the final resort in a long list of safeguards that exists in most if not all modern nuclear power plants.

The hard truth for anti-nukes, like I once was, is this: Nuclear catastrophes do not just uncerimoniously and randomly happen. They must be preceeded by a complete disregard for safety by everyone involved.

piraka

Lou.m wrote:

Unfortunately renewable sources are not making much of a dent in the use of fossil fuels, i dont think anyone said that they were doing at the momment did they? I think the consensus amognts enviromentalists is that they should. And even if our ice landscapes were not being destroyed ( which most scientists say is happening) there are many more reasons to change.

How will renewable energy make a dent in the use of fossil fuels.

piraka

RedPlanet wrote:

It's never been given a chance.
What with big energy corporations pushing their interests.
And media and politicians being what they are..

How has renewable energy not be given a chance, given the way the renewable energy companies have being pushing their interests, noteably in the media (especially the wind energy sector)

RedPlanet

SeanW wrote:

So you're banking on clean coal, which kinda proves my point. And maybe you're right! Maybe in la-la-land, researches will find a way to make coal squeaky clean. But I'll believe it when I see it.

Naw, it's not that easy SeanW.
Nuclear vs Coal is your argument, not mine.
In my view, the corporations that run coal-fired power plants are the same as the corporations that run nuclear ones.
In fact, in certain countries they are the very same corporations.
Peak Oil is probably prompting them to sell another flavour of poison.
You think that nuclear is it, and what i am saying is that it doesn't appear to be the case. I believe they will sell us coal and nuclear, until we hit Peak Coal.
I don't believe in energy corporations commitment to protecting the environment.
To me, the energy industry looks like it's run by a cartel and local people are mostly powerless to create change. Paricularly when this notion of a centralized system is ingrained.

Akrasia

piraka wrote:

How has renewable energy not be given a chance, given the way the renewable energy companies have being pushing their interests, noteably in the media (especially the wind energy sector)

You have to be joking right?

The proportion of money spent on renewable energy or energy conservation measures as a proportion of total energy expenditure is a tiny tiny fraction of what they spend on hydrocarbons.

Look at the Irish budget last week? The minister spent 90% of his 'environmental' allocation on buying 'carbon credits' to allow us to pollute more using fossil fuels.

He gave less than a pittance towards what is required to actually reduce our own emissions.

Oil and nuclear Companies have profits measured in the hundreds of billions and revenues in the trillions, Wind and other forms of renewable energy probably has less than 1 percent of that money available to promote their industry.

As a case in point, how many of you had ever even heard of concentrating solar power before you saw it on this thread? Of this was a new nuclear technology you'd all know every detail about it

RedPlanet

Good point.
How many of you have heard of the oil industry idea of burying CO2 deep underground inside drained oil fields?
I'll bet loads have.
When in fact that concept is highly dubious and untested.
http://www.euractiv.com/en/sustainability/study-raises-new-doubts-carbon-storage/article-157057
and here http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/buried-carbon-dioxide-may-escape-scientists-warn/2006/07/04/1151778936655.html#http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19125605.300-carbon-dioxides-great-underground-escape-in-doubt.html

oscarBravo

Akrasia wrote:

As a case in point, how many of you had ever even heard of concentrating solar power before you saw it on this thread?

Assuming it's the technology where long mirrors with a parabolic cross-section focus sunlight on pipes to superheat steam, I had.¹ It's a good idea, but with limited application.



¹ Actually, now that I think of it - was the one in California featured in Gattaca? Or was that something else...?

SeanW

Naw, it's not that easy SeanW.
Nuclear vs Coal is your argument, not mine.

You accuse me of spreading nuclear insdustry Coal-V-Nuclear propoganda, then proceed to challenge said propoganda by linking to an article hyping up "clean" coal, and then follow that by asking me what this is about it being coal vs nuclear.

I think you already answered your own question, but I'll clarify anyway.

I am a pro-nuclear environmentalist, I believe that public transport, biofuels, renewables, conservation and nuclear should all work together. For example, if we invested massively in the railway network with Metros in Dublin, Luases in Cork and Limerick, and electrification of the IE network, you'd have a better system capable of taking large numbers of cars off the road. But you'd still have to provide a baseline load of juice to all those trains, what's the cleanest way of making baseline load electricity? Nuclear, and perhaps clean coal since YOU'RE the one who brought it up!

Nuclear plants cause no CO2 emissions or air pollution of any kind except perhaps a column of clean steam from the cooling towers. It's infinitely cleaner and safer than fossil fuels.

If you doubt my paralell committment to renewables, just look at the Eirgrid portal. That says it all about wind power - despite the fact that we haven't embraced it enough, the present fleet have been producing peak loads of 600MW which is a sizeable chunk of our demand, especially nighttime use, so we're clearly on to a winner here, but in todays figures you'll also see a drop of 300MW which is the output of a small standard power plant. I happen to believe that nuclear power should be second in line clean up what the renewables can't do whether that be through inadequate capacity or low output.

Of this was a new nuclear technology you'd all know every detail about it

You *ARE* joking, right?

RedPlanet

This is getting tiresome.
It has always been your assertion, that the choice we face is Nuclear or Coal.
And what i am saying is that that is bollocks because the same energy industry corporations that sell us Oil, also sell us Coal and also (will try) to sell us Nuclear.
They will sell us Coal until we reach Peak Coal and it comes untenable to continue.
Since it is your assertion that Nuclear can replace or stop Coal use, i'm asking you to prove it. The article i linked shows that despite increases in nuclear power in the UK, coal too has increased.
That situation should prove a hicup to your assertion that it's a Nuclear vs Coal choice.

bk

RedPlanet wrote:

This is getting tiresome.
It has always been your assertion, that the choice we face is Nuclear or Coal.
And what i am saying is that that is bollocks because the same energy industry corporations that sell us Oil, also sell us Coal and also (will try) to sell us Nuclear.
They will sell us Coal until we reach Peak Coal and it comes untenable to continue.
Since it is your assertion that Nuclear can replace or stop Coal use, i'm asking you to prove it. The article i linked shows that despite increases in nuclear power in the UK, coal too has increased.
That situation should prove a hicup to your assertion that it's a Nuclear vs Coal choice.

Hi RedPlanet, that is very funny as it makes both mine ans SeanW's points.

Ok let me tell you my background. I'm an environmentalist, I care about the environment a lot. I don't own a car and I cycle to work every day (despite being able to easily afford one) and I do a lot of other small things to try and reduce my impact on the environment.

A year ago I would have been just as anti-nuclear as you, purely out of emotional ignorance like many people, but then I started to study the whole area of energy generation and use and I quickly came to the realisation that the only solution to global warming is Nuclear power and that it really isn't as dangerous as I had thought it was.

We can all agree that we badly need to reduce the use of fossil fuels which are simply poisoning our environment.

Most greens say we can do this in two ways:

1) Reduce our energy usage.

An interesting report on the BBC recently showed a BBC reporter living a life style that matched the amount of energy reduction required, over a period of 6 months.

Well the reporter had to sell his car and then couldn't fly anywhere, not even once, plus did a lot of other minor things (energy saver bulbs, recycling, etc.) and with all this he just managed to meet the reduction required.

While he managed to do it and it didn't have a massive impact on his life style, I'm a realist and I know that the vast majority of people won't want to (or can't) give up their cars and won't stop flying (either to Spain or on business trips). And if they did it would probably have a massive negative impact on the world economy.

And even if we did it still wouldn't matter, the reality is that billions of poor people in China and Indian are starting to get richer and better educated and they will also want more cars and power. So the reality is that in ten years from now we are going to be using vastly more power then we are today.

2) Use renewable power

I've taken a long and hard look at renewable sources of energy and IMO non of them come even close to being able to supplement our massive energy needs. I really wish there was one as it would be preferable to Nuclear, however simply put non of them are suppliers of base load energy, which makes up about 80% of our energy needs. Yes we can and should use renewables for the other 20%, but the reality that many greens ignore is that renewables simply can not supply base load energy, they are simply to unpredictable.

So there really are only two forms of base load energy, burning fossil fuels and nuclear power. Given that the world will be using much more energy in the future, it basically does come down to which is better coal or Nuclear power?

So getting back to your point of the UK increasingly using coal. You are right, it proves our point, the UK, like the rest of the world is needing more and more power and that means either coal or Nuclear, since many of the UK's Nuclear power plants are fairly old and inefficient (you are wrong about the UK using more Nuclear power, their use of Nuclear power has been dropping dramatically over the last 20 years as they haven't built any more new plants) and the UK government hasn't decided to build any more yet, the UK will increasingly burn coal until they build enough Nuclear power plants to replace the coal plants and old Nuclear plants.

Just look at France, they produce 70% of all their energy via Nuclear power and produce very little CO2. Ironically when you hear of Ireland and the UK buying carbon credits, they are often buying them from France, because France has them to sell due to Nuclear power!!!

Lou.m

Lou you clearly don't know what actually happened at Chernobyl or you would not hold the Soviet government blameless. A long string of government blunders caused Chernobyl catastrophe, and everyone involved from the operator-in-charge of the reactor that night, all the way up to Mikhail Gorbachev's office and his predecessors, shares the blame for the litany of mistakes.

Actually I know full well what happened at chernobyl in fact i have read the INEA reports who are meant to be on your side. ANd they come to the conclusion that while the actions of officails enabled considerable mitigation of the negative conssequences of the accident that they were in no way responsible for it and that whilest the operators made mistakes that the blame lies with the design of the RBMK.

And i know all about its High positive void coefficient, i know that it did not have full containment. And the INEA Reports state that this was for financial reasons rather than practical ones.

Did you know that all the RBMks functionong today in the former soviet union still do not have full containment?
The one at Ignalina has
an inrease in fuel enrichment (GREAT)
manual control rod increase (GREAT)
80 additional absorbers (GREAT)
SCRAM (GREAT but it has been shown by forsmark that such systems can actually cause problems)
But all this does not change the fact that there is a reactor still functioning in the world without full containment. Which is crazy.

There was no safety culture in the Soviet nuclear sector, the reactor type, RBMK was only ever used in the Soviet Union, it was dual purpose for both weapons and electricity, the plant had a large positive void co-efficient, which means that an unexpected acclerating reaction will cause a loss of control and reaction surpression, was unstable at low output level, but the operators didnt know that, and like all RBMKs the plant itself was so physically huge that it was not practical to install the normal full primary and secondary containment vessels. Instead, the RBMK reactor uses only partial primary containment, in the form of an "Upper Biological Sheild." This only ever happened in the Soviet Union

Well if you read my post i mention all this and as for it only happened in the Soviet Union well guess what partial containment is still happening there!ANd actually the operators did knw that the RBMk's configuration meant that it had a high positive void coefficient and that this meant that the RBMK was was most unstable at low output was they did not know was that the boron control rods that they were supposed to insert had graphite tips which has a more poten nuetron than boron and increased the reactor rate rather than slowed it.
And what makes you think that human beings cannot make mistakes like this now. For gods sake if an inch of snow falls in Dublin our emergeny services can come to a standstill.

Back in the real world, nuclear safety is such that it expects the unexpected.

Expecting the unexpected is a contradiction in terms, if you can expect it is not unexpected. The point being you cannot expect the unexpected.

It is crazy to me that the same type of reactor that was in chernobyl is still functioning in eastern europe without full containment. And is still using boron control rods. EVEN at a lower void coefficient.
And even if the communist system was totally responsible what makes you think that present governments around the world would do any better, and there are some rather crazy ones looking into using nuclear power right now arent there?
And i would not trust the Irish government to rub two sticks together without getting us all blown up. With our corruption and gommbeen men in the Dail ?They made enough money out of the land re-zoneing scandals can you imagine what they would do with nuclear power?
Not that there is any chance of that happening it would be political suicide here and that will not change.

bk

Lou.m I'm glad to see that you have a good understanding of what happened in Chernobyl and therefore you should be able to understand why it can't be repeated in the West.

1) All Western power plants have full containment shields, so even if it does melt down, it won't leak out or explode like Chernobyl. It will only cause very costly damage to the reactor and containment building (TMI).

2) That the RBMK design was always known in the west to be dangerous and why that design has never been used and that all western plants have a low coefficient, giving you lots of time (as in days) to fix things if something starts to go wrong.

As for trusting if our government could build a reactor, that is irrelevant, There are only about three companies that built most of the reactors in the world (like Toshiba or the French) and have years of experience, you simply hire one of these companies to build the reactor and run it. France gets 78% of its power from it's Nuclear reactors, yet has never had an accident.

Also, do you know that their are a new generation of reactors coming which are passively safe. That means even if you remove the coolant, turn off the power and really try to mess up the reactor, due to physics, the reactor will shut itself down and can never melt down?

Would you be ok with us building one of those type of reactors?

Lemming

bk wrote:

Also, do you know that their are a new generation of reactors coming which are passively safe. That means even if you remove the coolant, turn off the power and really try to mess up the reactor, due to physics, the reactor will shut itself down and can never melt down?

The term you're looking for is 'Pebble-bed' reactors, judging by the description you've just given. If it is, another point to note is that the use of highly radioactive carbon rods is no longer needed, thus making containment significantly easier since you're using lots and lots of 'balls' about the size of tennis-balls.

In short, power is needed to sustain the reaction; "sustain" being the important word here. Remove that power constant and the reaction simply runs out of power and dies.

Lou.m

bk wrote:

Lou.m I'm glad to see that you have a good understanding of what happened in Chernobyl and therefore you should be able to understand why it can't be repeated in the West.

1) All Western power plants have full containment shields, so even if it does melt down, it won't leak out or explode like Chernobyl. It will only cause very costly damage to the reactor and containment building (TMI).

2) That the RBMK design was always known in the west to be dangerous and why that design has never been used and that all western plants have a low coefficient, giving you lots of time (as in days) to fix things if something starts to go wrong.

As for trusting if our government could build a reactor, that is irrelevant, There are only about three companies that built most of the reactors in the world (like Toshiba or the French) and have years of experience, you simply hire one of these companies to build the reactor and run it. France gets 78% of its power from it's Nuclear reactors, yet has never had an accident.

Also, do you know that their are a new generation of reactors coming which are passively safe. That means even if you remove the coolant, turn off the power and really try to mess up the reactor, due to physics, the reactor will shut itself down and can never melt down?

Would you be ok with us building one of those type of reactors?

Firstly the situation in france is a mess, one of the main proplems with nuclear power is where to dump the waste, they still do not have an underground site picked out. Another objection is that reprocessing leaves plutonium as a by product which may be used in nuclear weapons so french law states they may not treat waste without a permit which they have done so many times. French law also states that fuel may be imported from other countries but that all waste products must be accepted back by the original country recently they were ordered to reveal their contracts and it was discovered that the original countries have no intention of taking the waste back.
Officials have found that the plant was manged with such disregard for French law that EU countries have called for its shut down. THE french government has been critised for its inability to enforce its own laws and i imagine the Irish government would be worse.

Nuclear power is not a clean industry it has waste products to manage albeit they are more concentrated than the ones vented by fossil fuels.

But turning uranium ore into usable fuel must be done using electricity and is the single biggest user of electricity in the US as it needs a tremendous amount of energy. These companies use fossil fuels to do this.

Secondly, you talk of passively safe otherwise known as inherently safe reactors with the features you mentioned above.

Intrestingly it is those who are in the nuclear industry themselves who actually question the safety of these and the public's understanding of them.
In fact there are many in the industry who question if they are actually more dangerous than the previous light water and other designs.

Karlheinz Orth an officail of the nuclear division of siemens AG
Stated
" The importance of passivity is over estimated every reactor is based on inherent safety features and also depends on active and passive engineered safety features. Where reliance is placed soley on inherent safety features or on purely passive engineered safety features it would not be possible for an operator to select or even influence the final condition ot the plant. Preferences established by publicity can be no substitute for operational experiance"
He is an expert in the industry and vehemently against passively safe reactors on the grounds that they are less safe than previous and current reactors in a lot of ways.

Another official is quoted as saying
"Surprisingly it may well be the nuclear industry itself.. that rejects second generation reactors"
The Bristish Atomic Energy Agency
Has stated that passive reactors
"tend to concentrate on one particular aspect ( such as a loss of coolant accident) and replace all the systems for dealing with that with passive ones, such as the laws of physics. IN doing so they ignore other known transients or transient possibilities, possibly novel to their own design."
And the above experts are pro- nuke yet they are dead set against passive reactors on safety reasons.

These quotes are from independant and objective reports since the ones above came from your camp i thought it was only fair.
THe UCS which has considered several of the reactor designs stated about passively safe reactors
" as a general proposition, there is nothing completely inherently safe about nuclear reactors. Regardless of the attention to design , construction, operation and management of a nuclear reactor, there is always something that could be done or not be to render the reactor dangerous"
The oakridge national labortory states,
"A nuclear power plant can never be completely inherently safe because it contains large quanties of radioactive materials to generate heat energy, but nuclear reactors can be made inherently safe against some types of specified events"
The term passively SAFE very relative it appears and it seems there are experts in your own camp who think that these reactors are less safe than previous ones. Karlheinz Orth being the most prolific of these.

Why when experts IN the industry and the PRO NUKE CAMP are against these reactors would i be for them?

Besides it does not change the fact that the ionizing radiation on these plant has been linked to higher rates of lukeamia in the surrounding area when the plant is running 'SAFELY'

HANNES ALFEN a Nobel Laureate Physicist, has said
" The reactor constructors claim that they have devoted more effort to safety problems than any other technologists have. This is true. From the begining they have paid much attention to safety and they have been remarkably clever in divising safety precautions. This is not relevant. If a problem is to difficult to solve one cannot point at all the efforts mafe to solve it."

Lou.m

Lemming wrote:

The term you're looking for is 'Pebble-bed' reactors, judging by the description you've just given. If it is, another point to note is that the use of highly radioactive carbon rods is no longer needed, thus making containment significantly easier since you're using lots and lots of 'balls' about the size of tennis-balls.

In short, power is needed to sustain the reaction; "sustain" being the important word here. Remove that power constant and the reaction simply runs out of power and dies.

I did not think pebble bed reactors were what he was talking about as they have only some passively safe features.
Well one of the most common criticism of pebble bed reactors is that encasing the fuel in flammable graphite poses a hazard. Were ther graphite to burn fuel material could potentially be carried away in smoke byt the fire. Since burning graphite requires oxygen the fuel pebbles are coated with an impermeable layer of silicone carbide and the reaction vessel is purged of oxygen. BUT while silicon carbide is strong in abrasion and compression application it does not have the same strength against expansion and sheer forces.Some fission products such as xenon -113 have a lmited absorbance in carbon and fuel pebbles could accumulate enough gas to rupture the silicon carbide gas.

Also because of the passive cooling feature(it uses nature to let the heat escape) pebble bed reactors can have no containment building. This makes it vulnerable during accidents.

Also because the fuel is contained in graphite pebbles the volume of radioactive waste is greater (although not the level of radioactivity which is the same)this greater volume of waste produces disposal problems.
Problems with this reactor include

1 no containment building
2 flammable graphite as a moderator
3 higher level of nuclear wastes than current designs
4 It relies on every fuel pebble being perfect, a crack would ignite it require 100% quality control to prevent this which is impossible.
5 it relies on fuel handling as the pebbles are cycled through the reactor handling can lead to accidents as has already happened in germany when a fuel pebble became Jammed and radiation was leaked to the surrounding area.

The passive cooling feature requires that there be no containment building which i beleive is why many experts in the industry are against it. To create containment would nullify the passive cooling safety feature.
Also many experts believe the pebble fuel rather than rods is more dangerous.
There has already been an accident with this type of reactor in Germany for precisely this reason.
And as regards for the Passive shut down feature
One has to consider what might cause the worst scenario ie. core meltdown
(it is not considered completely impossible with this reactor by the way)lets say there must be some sort of accident that disrupts core geometry, The worst time would be after a full power operation after some long period the decay heat would be 0.6% of full power. Taking a step back this is when the reactor shuts itself down during the accident (although if this happens and core geometry is disrupted i think the lack of containment may be a problem although i am no expert)anyway the reactor shuts itself down during the accident, the problem of accident analysis usually involves trying to determine how much core and fuel material accumulates in undesirable places ie. at the bottom head of the pressure vessel, where passive cooling may make less of a difference.

bk

Lou.m let me simplify this, please tell me what is the alternative to nuclear power?

Lemming

bk wrote:

Lou.m let me simplify this, please tell me what is the realistic alternative to nuclear power as a baseline provider of power requirements?

I amended your question appropriately

piraka

You have to be joking right?

The proportion of money spent on renewable energy or energy conservation measures as a proportion of total energy expenditure is a tiny tiny fraction of what they spend on hydrocarbons.

Look at the Irish budget last week? The minister spent 90% of his 'environmental' allocation on buying 'carbon credits' to allow us to pollute more using fossil fuels.

He gave less than a pittance towards what is required to actually reduce our own emissions.

Oil and nuclear Companies have profits measured in the hundreds of billions and revenues in the trillions, Wind and other forms of renewable energy probably has less than 1 percent of that money available to promote their industry.

As a case in point, how many of you had ever even heard of concentrating solar power before you saw it on this thread? Of this was a new nuclear technology you'd all know every detail about it

In Ireland

Net capitalisation of Airtricty estimated, if floated €10 billion, company valued at €800 million.

http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2006/06/11/story14962.asp

SWS net worth over €100million investing €400million in wind energy projects.

http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2006/11/26/story19194.asp

There is no problem to get money to finance the schemes across the country, as where in industry would you get a cast iron 0.057cents/kwh guaranteed for 15 years index linked for supply of electricity irrespective if it used or not and 50% capital gains tax offset. Not to mention that part of PSO at the end of ESB bill which goes to wind generation.

The wind energy sector in Ireland is currently getting about €120 million a year for the electricity produced.

Wind energy is big business for such a paltry return on emissions savings.

The farmers and businesses of the country are queuing up to install wind turbines across the west coast. If any of you are serious environmentalist you should be concerned about the habitat destruction that this will cause, and the minister wants to increase penetration by 30%!!

Greenhouse gases are believed to be causing a major shift in our climate, one of the biggest polluters are fossil fuel power plants. The planet needs a zero emission agenda. This cannot be achieved by renewables.
Nuclear power is the way forward.