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Nuclear Power
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No
If you are claiming that the need to import vast quantities of fossil fuels (which they had to do because they took their nuclear plants offline) didn't have anything to do with the subsequent trade deficit, that would be quite an interesting claim.So in your view the Tsunami didn't affect Japan's economy as much as not having nuclear power on line or other events.
But its refreshing that you actually admit something else happened that day because the sense I've been getting is that environmental leftist boneheads like Greenpeace et. al. are writing tomorrows history books, the event will be recorded something like this:On the 11th of March 2011, there was a little earthquake and some flooding in Japan, after which the Fukushima 1 reactor just blew up for no reason, casting a big black scary cloak of radioactive DEATH over the countryside. 15,882 people died. It was the biggest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl which killed 500 million
Assuming for the sake of argument that this is true, try ro do the same job with wind tubines, or solar power, including your photovaltaic (sp) solar ballons.Capt'n Midnight wrote: »Lifetime costs BTW
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2013/04/powering-world-with-nuclear-would-cost-quadrillion-dollars-says-expert-are-renewables-only-option
Also there is the problem of how to fuel 10,000 plants when we aren't mining enough fuel for less than 500 at the moment.
For added challenge, assume that the Chinese get sick of trashing their environment with rare earth metal processing to support boneheaded Western renewables programmes. Or that they simply run out of the stuff. Solar power also relies on rare earth metals as do the lithium batteries in those Green favourites, the hybrid and electric car.
In China, the true cost of Britain's clean, green wind power experiment: Pollution on a disastrous scale.
Nuclear is more expensive when you have to retire plants early.
http://www.power-eng.com/news/2013/04/02/russia-might-decommission-7-gw-of-nuclear-power-early-by-2019.html
Yet, from your own article ...
GOOD! The RBMK reactor was the type of reactor used at Chernobyl-4 and it never should have been used, anywhere, in the firstplace. Indeed, it was never used outside the Soviet Union because its so dangerous. Of course the Chernobyl accident would still have been avoided had the test they were doing been planned and executed in a competent fashion, but, it being the Soviet Union, the whole thing was mired in secrecy, borderline corruption and absolutley breathtaking incompetence.All of these units have RBMK light-water graphite-moderated reactors that are beginning to have problems with graphite stacks, which are deforming earlier than anticipated.
As an ardent pro-nuke, I've always condemned the RBMK reactor design and I'm delighted they have to be consigned to history sooner than expected, for any reason.
Yet you come on saying premature retirmement makes nuclear power "too expensive" and to support that you cite a reactor design that any nuclear advocate or Westen nuclear regulator will tell you never should have been built? You just made that argument for me, nearly as strong as I could have! :rolleyes:
Presumably the same as before Fukushima? :rolleyes:After Fukushima what are the chances of a Nuclear Plant being flooded0 -
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No
Nuclear energy exists. Steorns' "we've broken the laws of physics" whatever it was, does not.Capt'n Midnight wrote: »Steorn is different, it's more like nuclear in that they haven't produced working examples of new technology.
How they going to get them down there? Go for a dive? Additionally, they will still have to be processed and even I accepted (I do not) that the mountain of toxic sludge result in processing would be reduced by a commensurate amount, that benefit would be quickly lost given the dramatically increased demand provoked by some boneheaded worldwide renewables programme.rare earths Japanese have found deposits on the sea bed that are 1000 times more concentrated than on land.
Which, if true, only proves that there is a strong regulatory framework, one of many key planks missing in the Soviet Union for example.I've shown that predictable problems are still happening. I cba checking up on the promises made because so far there is a whole litany of failed inspections.
I don't have to: the French have already done it and the Irish government might have got a good start on it in the 1970s but for the actions of the environmental-left.Fossil fuel If you can explain how nuclear can replace most fossil fuel then I'll listen. Until then it's a temporary fact of life.
Not a problem when the reactors are of an appropriate size relevant to the market are used. For example, a bog standard 1000MW or so Light Water Reactor in the United States, no big deal if one goes down because the market is absolutely humongous, the grid probably has many times that in spinning reserve.Except with nuclear you have can loose huge %'s of your generating capacity without warning and for times varying from hours to years
They aren't? :rolleyes: That's news to EDF, that is currently building an EPR for Flamanville-3.Also France have more controllable reactors then others, slightly less efficient. Also they export at night. Also and this is the rub, why aren't they building more of them ??
You're forgetting some key points, I fear:Capt'n Midnight wrote: »Here is a survey for North East USA , with more costings than I've ever seen from any nuclear proposal
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpowsour.2012.09.054- The Northeast United States is a huge, varying region sizewise that has lots of wind, tidal and solar. Ireland is not, we have a unreliable wind 'asset' that has a proven negative correlation between supply and demand (i.e. when we need electrcity the most desperately, during anti-cyclones such as the big freeze of 2010) the wind will not co-operate. Tidal maybe, but not there yet, I doubt.
- It also, like much of the world, has very warm summers, so if solar energy can be made viable, then it makes sense to use it because there's likely to be a very strong correlation between air-conditioner use and solar radiation. Ireland does not have this peak problem.
- Using unreliable renewables continuously, i.e. regardless of weather conditions, requires obsecene levels of storage. That means: if you want to store wind energy, for any reason, you need something like a massive mountain valley that you can flood with pumped hydro. Other things are proposed as solutions, such as storing solar energy in energy crops.
As you might like to know, they proved that renewables could supply any given amount of energy (1/100th of 1% IIRC) at any given time.
The chief problem was that the video started by the assumption that there was going to be a phase out of both nuclear and coal mining. We now know that this will not happen, yes to the nuclear phase out, but coal consumption, rather than being phased out is accelearting at an unprecendented rate. The second problem arose near the end, in that their approach relied on storing solar energy in biogas energy crops, and wind power in pumped hydro. So to go from 0.01% to 100% of the supply for Germany, you would need 10,000 mountain valleys, and 10,000 times as much land to be pressed into service for energy crops. Much of it, I feared, would be taken from nature reserves. I hoped against hope that I was wrong, and sense would prevail. It didn't. I was right about the potential environmental destruction that would follow from this madness, but to a far greatet extent than I ever dreaded.
From Der Spiegel:The Costs of Going Green
One would assume that ecology and the Energiewende, Germany's plans to phase out nuclear energy and increase its reliance on renewable sources, were natural allies. But in reality, the two goals have been coming into greater and greater conflict. "With the use of wood, especially," Kaiser says, "the limits of sustainability have already been exceeded several times." To understand what this really means, one needs to know Kaiser's background: For several years, he has been the head of the climate division at Greenpeace Germany's headquarters in Hamburg.
same article:Encroaching on Nature Reserves
The opposition in Berlin has so far contented itself with criticizing Merkel, believing that her climate policies have failed and that she has steered Germany's most important infrastructure project into a wall. Granted, neither the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) nor the Greens are part of the ruling coalition at the federal level, but they do jointly govern a number of Germany's 16 federal states. And, when forced to choose between nature and renewable energies, it is usually nature that take a back seat in those states.
It was in this way that, in 2009, Germany's largest solar park to date arose right in the middle of the Lieberoser Heide, a bird sanctuary about a 100 kilometers (62 miles) southeast of Berlin. Since German reunification in 1990, more than 200 endangered species have settled in the former military training grounds. But that didn't seem to matter. In spite of all the protests by environmentalists, huge areas of ancient pine trees were clear cut in order to make room for solar collectors bigger than soccer fields.
A similar thing happened in Baden-Württemberg, even though the southwestern state has been led for almost two years by Winfried Kretschmann, the first state governor in Germany belonging to the Green Party. In 2012, it was the Greens there who passed a wind-energy decree that aims to boost the number of wind turbines in the state from 400 to roughly 2,500 by 2020. And in the party's reckoning, nature is standing in the way.
The decree includes an exemption that makes it easier to erect huge windmills in nature conservations areas, where they are otherwise forbidden. But now this exception threatens to become the rule: In many regions of the state, including Stuttgart, Esslingen and Göppingen, district administrators are reporting that they plan to permit wind farms to be erected in several nature reserves.
But apparently even that isn't enough for Claus Schmiedel, the SPD leader in the state parliament. Two weeks ago, he wrote a letter to Kretschmann recommending that he put the bothersome conservationists back into line. Schmiedel claimed that investors in renewable energies were being "serially harassed by the low-level regional nature-conservation authorities" -- and complained that the state government wasn't doing enough to combat this.
It costs a fortune, some say the "energy revolution" in Germany will cost 1 trillion dollars, i.e. $1,000,000,000,000. Most of this will be paid for by consumers, including recipient of the Hartz IV welfare scheme who are already feeling the pain.
It has also caused massive power fluctuations that cause serious damage to industrial users, with damage from an unstable grid costing upwards of €10,000 each time to repair wrecked machinery, write off destroyed goods in production and possibly even compensation for injuries to workers.Sudden fluctuations in Germany's power grid are causing major damage to a number of industrial companies. Germany is undergoing a transition to renewable energy which is wreaking havoc on the German power grid. Spikes and dips in power are becoming a regular occurrence.
Grid Instability Has Industry Scrambling for Solutions
German Chancellor Merkel set the ambitious goals of boosting renewable energy to 35 percent of total power consumption by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. Germany is phasing out their nuclear power reactors by 2022.
Some of these industrial companies are responding by brining online their own power generators to help minimize the risks.
Some companies might be forced to leave Germany if the government doesn't deal with the issues fast.
The Cause
It was 3 in the morning when the machines suddenly ground to a halt at Hydro Aluminium in Hamburg. The Aluminum rolling mill's highly sensitive production line stopped so abruptly that the aluminum belts snagged causing significant damage.
The reason behind this disaster: the voltage from the electricity grid weakened for a millisecond.
After the shutdown, workers had to free half-finished aluminum rolls from the machines. Several hours elapsed before the machines could be restarted.
The estimated cost was $12,300 USD (€10,000).
In the following three weeks, the voltage weakened at the Hamburg factory two more times, each time for a fraction of second. No damage was done because the machines were offline both times. A lucky twist of fate.
Power fluctuations could also lead to a plant fire and that would be expensive and threaten people's lives.
If you want to talk about how nuclear power is "too expensive" you also have to talk about the cost of the mass-embrace of renewables that you claim is an alternative ... yeah, if you don't mind destroying your nature reserves, threatening the survival of bats and endagered birds, going hell for leather into coal/gas burning, spending $1,000,000,000,000 and threatening whats left of your industrial base with the consquences of an unstable grid ... But other than that it's a great idea :rolleyes:
You couldn't make this stuff up, but I seriously fear that boneheaded environmental-leftist policy will threaten not only what remains of our first world lifestyle, but also whats left of our ecosystem.0 -
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I'd hardly call a 24/7 price of 10p per unit wholesale as a Massive reduction. And that's not including the £160m a year subsidy that other generators in the UK have to pay to provide standby in case nuclear goes down. And that UK plant isn't going to be ready anytime soon.What normally doesn't get translated is the actual benefit to the end user. You and me. A Nuclear installation would obviously result in massive benefits in terms of longevity, security of a power source, minimal waste etc. But to me and you it would result in MASSIVELY reduced cost of electricity.
Compare that to our current wholesale prices are here ( 10c/unit ~ €116/MWh) http://www.sem-o.com/Pages/default.aspx
I've posted in the Wind thread that there is ~ 750 of renewables in the pipeline here. (assuming 75% of the 1GW contracted is completed)
AND 2GW of offshore wind ready to rollout - it's just a matter of economics
One of the big problems with solar that the electricity you produce may not cover what you would save by waiting until they get cheaper. LED lights have the same problem. It's not that solar isn't cost effective (Grid parity in Italy etc.) it's that it will be so much more cost effective in the foreseeable future.
The industry roadmap is this
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/top-chinese-manufacturers-will-produce-solar-panels-for-42-cents-a-watBetween 2009 and 2012, leading "best-in-class" Chinese c-Si solar manufacturers reduced module costs by more than 50 percent. And in the next three years, those players -- companies like Jinko, Yingli, Trina and Renesola -- are on a path to lower costs by another 30 percent.
And then's stuff like this waiting in the wings
http://gigaom.com/2013/04/08/tiny-wires-could-be-a-breakthrough-for-cheap-solar-panels/The company turns these nanowires into an ink, which can be layered onto basic solar panels and boost the efficiency of a standard panel by 25 percent.
...
The company says the capital expensive of the ink and machines add 1 to 2 cents per Watt for the panels.
Also peak uranium is a huge problem if when you consider that most of the easy ore has been found. Granite contains uranium but it takes a lot of fossil fuel energy to crush and transport the rocks. Using current technology there are limits beyond which it takes more energy to recover than it contains. In the US for example mining gets huge reductions in excise on fuel. It's not at the state yet where the cheapest way of getting uranium will be from phosphate tailings and coal ash. But expansion of the nuclear industry to back to the position it had before Chernobyl would mean that there would be no economic fuel after the next generation of reactors are build.
Also decommissioning and waste repository and mine clean up would incur a huge energy debt.0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR8gEMpzos4
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