Nuclear Power

fullgas

spankmemunkey wrote: »

http://www.environ.ie/en/Environment/EnvironmentalRadiation/Sellafield/


http://www1.american.edu/TED/SELLA.HTM

If its in the sea dont you think it might also be causing damage to Irish Health?

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/04/nuke-a19.html

None of your links prove anything. The first link provides no information. The second link is just a collection of Frank McDonald opinion pieces from the Irish Times. The third link is a propaganda site.

spankmemunkey

fullgas wrote: »

None of your links prove anything. The first link provides no information. The second link is just a collection of Frank McDonald opinion pieces from the Irish Times. The third link is a propaganda site.

The first link i provided was from the Irish Government, and a report conductecd by the RPII not credibal sources?

fullgas

spankmemunkey wrote: »

The first link i provided was from the Irish Government, and a report conductecd by the RPII not credibal sources?

Here is a quote form the report conducted by the RPII:

In general, levels of artificial radioactivity in the Irish
environment remain fairly constant and are broadly
consistent with levels reported previously. It must be
emphasised that the levels of radioactive contamination
present in the marine environment do not warrant any
modification of the habits of people in Ireland, either in
their consumption of seafood or in any other use of the
amenities of the marine environment.
http://www.rpii.ie/RPII/files/8d/8dd8d6c9-e097-4c56-98cd-f2a1dd4f6aab.pdf

spankmemunkey

fullgas wrote: »

Here is a quote form the report conducted by the RPII:

Its long been known that the Irish Sea is one of the most toxic seas in the world, I wont post any more links cos youll just question the validity of them no matter where i get them from! to think that theres a nuclear plant there and you think theres no issues with it and the Irish sea and our health is laughable, its been long known that there are problems in the Irish Sea becuase of this!

fullgas

spankmemunkey wrote: »

Its long been known that the Irish Sea is one of the most toxic seas in the world, I wont post any more links cos youll just question the validity of them no matter where i get them from! to think that theres a nuclear plant there and you think theres no issues with it and the Irish sea and our health is laughable, its been long known that there are problems in the Irish Sea becuase of this!

I'm not saying it, the RPII is saying it.

Markcheese

Chloe Pink wrote: »

thousands

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=83511535&postcount=548

"China's also a world leader in terms of installed coal fired power stations.
It's also expected to add about 160 new coal-fired plants to the 620 operating now, within four years
http://www.thegwpf.org/china-india-b...r-plants-week/

And it's also a world leader in CO2 emissions which have more than tripled since 1990
http://www.ref.org.uk/presentations/...d-power-debate

Basically it's a large nation making industrial and economic progress.

Coal-fired power plants fuel 41% of global electricity.
In China coal-fired power plants fuel 79% of their electricity.

Pie chart at this link shows world electricity generation by fuel: http://www.worldcoal.org/coal/uses-o...l-electricity/

Renewables apart from hydro power i.e. solar, wind, combustible renewables, geothermal & waste make up 3% of world electrcicty generation."


Which bit of wind generators don't remove any of the problems of nuclear because they are unlikely to replace or displace nuclear, haven't you grasped yet.

Your big obsession with wind is irrelevant to this thread.

Just as your big problem with nuclear was irrelevant to this thread: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=83546194&postcount=554

As pointed out more than few times now - what do you want in your back yard:

Nuclear/oil/gas/coal power stations
OR
Nuclear/oil/gas/coal power stations plus a load of wind turbines

In my back yard (within 2 miles) I have , 6 gas turbines of varying size (3 of them as big as they get) an oil refinery, wind turbines and a GAA pitch. the wind turbines are great (IMO) , the refinery is pretty much surrounded by mature trees so looks pretty good, especially at night... The local GAA pitch actually looks the worst , creates most noise , and has idiots driving round beeping car horns ...
So should committees be formed around the country to curb or block GAA and sports field development...
And no I don't want a nuclear reactor built in my backyard .... If anyone could afford to build one anyway...

Chloe Pink

spankmemunkey wrote: »

Its long been known that the Irish Sea is one of the most toxic seas in the world, I wont post any more links cos youll just question the validity of them no matter where i get them from! to think that theres a nuclear plant there and you think theres no issues with it and the Irish sea and our health is laughable, its been long known that there are problems in the Irish Sea becuase of this!

I don't know if the following helps:

Radiation and the Irish Sea
http://www.challenger-society.org.uk/sites/challenger.bangor.ac.uk/files/7_IrishSeaRadiation.pdf

"It is essential to emphasize the importance of natural radioactivity in the sea. The description 'the most radioactive sea in the world', so often
applied to the lrish Sea, actually belongs to one of those seas with higher than average salinity, where the potassium content (and hence the content of radioactive 40~i)s higher than normal. So, for example, the Dead Sea, which has a 40c~on tent approximately 20 times higher than that of the lrish Sea, has a much greater amount of radioactivity within a given volume of water than any part of the lrish Sea."

"For most people living around the Irish Sea coast,
about 87 per cent of their radioactivity dose arises from natural sources, with the other 13 per cent
coming from artificial sources. As shown in Figure 4(a), the artificial contributions break down
as follows: medical, 12 per cent; fallout, 0.4 per cent; miscellaneous and occupational, 0.6 per
cent; and discharges from Sellafield, less than 0.1 per cent. Most of this unnatural exposure is thus
from medical sources."

Toxicity and the Irish Sea
http://www.marine.ie/home/services/operational/phytoplankton/Toxic+species+and+toxins.htm

"Although the majority of phytoplankton are harmless to humans, some contain toxins that can cause illness and even death in extreme cases through the consumption of contaminated shellfish.
In Ireland shellfish poisoning is presently a year round occurrence with most closures being attributed to Dinophysis species. However other toxic species that are problematic to the Irish aquaculture industry are Pseudo-nitzschia, Alexandrium and Protoperidinium species."

James Lovelock and Sellafield
http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/lovedeten.htm
http://www.prospect.org.uk/html_version/4651_4452810721-6.html

'I was amazed to find for most of the site a level between 0.2­0.3
micro-sieverts per hour, about the same as at my home in Devon'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1658162.stm

"Yet some respected voices now argue that it may have a role to play, at least for a time.
Professor James Lovelock is known for the Gaia Hypothesis, his theory that that the global ecosystem sustains and regulates itself like a biological organism.
Three months ago he said: "Nuclear is the only practical energy source that we could apply in time to offset the threat from accumulating greenhouse gases."

"In 1999, the British environmental biologist Sir Frederick Holliday wrote: "My belief is that all the people of the world need abundant energy at reasonable costs.
"My science tells me that without nuclear power the long-term future of global ecosystems is at risk.""

Chloe Pink

Markcheese wrote: »

In my back yard (within 2 miles) I have , 6 gas turbines of varying size (3 of them as big as they get) an oil refinery, wind turbines and a GAA pitch. the wind turbines are great (IMO) , the refinery is pretty much surrounded by mature trees so looks pretty good, especially at night... The local GAA pitch actually looks the worst , creates most noise , and has idiots driving round beeping car horns ...
So should committees be formed around the country to curb or block GAA and sports field development...
And no I don't want a nuclear reactor built in my backyard .... If anyone could afford to build one anyway...

Fair enough, it seems as though you're with the oil/gas/coal power stations plus a load of wind turbines option.

Curly Judge

No

old hippy wrote: »

In regard to Fukushima. You said that nuclear power = no one dead. I pointed out that we don't know the legacy of the diaster and already there are reports of illness and cancer risks.

Which you then tried to deny.

Would you be happy with a nuclear power station on your doorstep? I wouldn't.

In one of your posts you said that I proposed the opinion that there were no reports of illnesses or cancer risks.
I did not say that.
To say so would be unscientific, and I do try to be scientific.
So, I ask you again, where did I say it.
If you cannot answer my question, at the third time of asking, then I would suggest that it's you who have been rumbled.

Capt'n Midnight

Chloe Pink wrote: »

"China's also a world leader in terms of installed coal fired power stations.

not exactly news.

and doesn't provide any support for a pro-nuclear argument.

Renewables apart from hydro power i.e. solar, wind, combustible renewables, geothermal & waste make up 3% of world electrcicty generation."

hydro provides about 16% ,
it's a case of the low hanging fruit being picked first, renewables are growing in exactly the same way that nuclear output has stagnated.
It's like fossil is went from coal / oil / gas , oil has been squeezed out

Which bit of wind generators don't remove any of the problems of nuclear because they are unlikely to replace or displace nuclear, haven't you grasped yet.

Your big obsession with wind is irrelevant to this thread.

considering I've also discussed gas / osmosis / solar / tidal etc....

nuclear is only of use for baseload electricity , no use for peaking (in theory you could use pumped storage but then that would get used by wind )
http://www.sem-o.com/Pages/default.aspx shows that this is usually worth 3-5c KWh

I keep asking , but no one has given costs full costs for nuclear plant construction.

As pointed out more than few times now - what do you want in your back yard:

Nuclear/oil/gas/coal power stations
OR
Nuclear/oil/gas/coal power stations plus a load of wind turbines

I'm sick of pointing out that we have more than enough installed capacity here so overall there won't be any more thermal plants in anyone's back garden.


Wind doesn't always blow and sun doesn't shine at night

But Nuclear power has the opposite problem , what to do with the excess energy generated at night ?
Could we see a scenario where a nuclear station has to pay people to take the electricity away ?

Look at how Enron & Co. manipulated the market, it might be possible for other players to subvert a nuclear operator that way.

Chloe Pink

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

doesn't provide any support for a pro-nuclear argument.

In just the same way that your post "China alone is planning 1,000GW of wind installed by 2050." doesn't provide any support for a anti-nuclear argument which was exactly my point.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

renewables are growing in exactly the same way that nuclear output has stagnated.

You say that as though renewables are replacing nuclear but as you know wind (the subject of your post I was responding too) isn't a replacement for nuclear so it seems that the growing use of use of gas and coal are replacing the gap in the slightly slowed nuclear market as already pointed out to you:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=83546194&postcount=554
"There you've done it again - why state that there's a decrease in the share of nuclear generated electricity alongside stating there's an increase in the share of wind generated electricity - the two need not be related and as you state "nuclear isn't quick to ramp up or down and so doesn't complement wind as well as cheaper quicker stations like gas."
It is because of the misleading inference by association that I commented."

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

I'm sick of pointing out that we have more than enough installed capacity here so overall there won't be any more thermal plants in anyone's back garden.

Until they need replacing (forward planning as already mentioned) which they will even though you want to add thousands of wind turbines to people's back yards (even though there's already enough thermal plants).

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Wind doesn't always blow and sun doesn't shine at night
But Nuclear power has the opposite problem , what to do with the excess energy generated at night ?
Could we see a scenario where a nuclear station has to pay people to take the electricity away ?

Has this happened with nuclear, I know it does with wind turbines.


Your posts show some knowledge but what is knowledge without reason.


Back to the point that was in question:

Is / isn't it important to you that electricity generation addresses
Anthropogenic climate change and fossil fuel usage with the aim of reducing the environmental damage and loss of life associated with these?

Curly Judge

No

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

it's a case of the low hanging fruit being picked first, renewables are growing in exactly the same way that nuclear output has stagnated.
It's like fossil is went from coal / oil / gas , oil has been squeezed out

The only way renewables [for which read wind] has grown is by making the towers higher and increasing their ever sprawling foot print.
There has been no increase in their availability, flexibility or usability, except in the way other technologies are muscled aside to make room for them at the top table on the days they decide to turn up.

old hippy

Curly Judge wrote: »

In one of your posts you said that I proposed the opinion that there were no reports of illnesses or cancer risks.
I did not say that.
To say so would be unscientific, and I do try to be scientific.
So, I ask you again, where did I say it.
If you cannot answer my question, at the third time of asking, then I would suggest that it's you who have been rumbled.

In summing up; you admit that the Fukushima disaster has caused significant risks of cancer, thyroid problems and other illnesses. Good for you. But not good for the victims.

Chloe Pink

old hippy wrote: »

In summing up; you admit that the Fukushima disaster has caused significant risks of cancer, thyroid problems and other illnesses. Good for you. But not good for the victims.

This is getting more than tedious.

In summing up, the report "WHO: Low radiation risk from Fukushimato" which you linked to and which CJ acknowledged states:

"Clear cases of health damage from radiation generally only occur following exposures of 1000 mSv - far more than the 10-50 mSv WHO said was received by people in Namie and Iitate. Across Fukushima generally the doses were in the range 1-10 mSv, said WHO."

Also of note is this from the same report:

"WHO's use of the linear no-threshold method of gauging health effects will have resulted in a cautious overestimate of health impact. The method is controversial, given that the effects of radiation at low doses are small enough to be overwhelmed by other environmental and lifestyle factors. The WHO noted dissenting views about the highly conservative assumption, but thought it "prudent" to adopt the method, "attempting not to underestimate the risks." "

Now go and compare this with coal figures instead of trying to put words into other people's mouths.

When did you decide you wanted to retire Japan.

Capt'n Midnight

Nuclear is a 30-40 year investment by the time you've gone through the planning , construction and paying off the capital costs.

There are a lot of technologies being developed that could bypass it entirely. While each is unlikely to be the silver bullet it's highly likely that some will become significant.

Imagine if someone figures out a cheap way to make aerogel using diatoms or something.

Some stuff we can forget about in the short term such as fuel cells (CCGT has a similar efficiency and a whole lot cheaper when you need GW) and grid level batteries. This link http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130308111310.htm shows that batteries don't justify the energy invested in their fabrication yet. It shows that Pumped Storage and CAES are energy efficient in construction terms so it's just the capital costs that hurt.


Once you get more than a certain % of power supply from intermittent renewables or Nuclear you need energy storage. The conditions that benefit large scale nuclear adoption also benefit some renewables.



Other new technologies

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130313095432.htm - software to load balance intermittent renewables

OGEMA apps receive variable electricity tariffs and automatically calculate the optimum times to run connected devices such as a refrigerator, freezer or washing machine. This allows consumers to turn on, say, their dishwasher at the most economical times -- especially when there is an oversupply of wind energy. Air-conditioning units, radiator thermostats, heat pumps and photovoltaic facilities can also be operated automatically by the apps. There are, for instance, applications running on OGEMA that let consumers know whether they would be better off using the electricity generated by their PV facility themselves or putting it on the grid.

The internet uses a lot of power - I'd nearly argue that the electrical load for computers won't increase much and may even drop - the overall effect is that increased demand won't come in developed markets - though the location of server farms here to reduce air con loads is one counter-example.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130312134654.htm -

Proesel and his colleagues created a power-efficient optical communication link operating at 25 gigabits per second using just 24 milliwatts of total wall-plug power, or 1 pJ/bit. "Compared to our previous work, we have increased the speed by 66 percent while cutting the power in half,"

Solar power getting cheaper and more efficient - yet another type of solar panel, since they can tune the dots you could use a prism to illuminate different areas with different wavelengths and so maximise the yield (or use layers or waveguides - too many options) - this is a biggie since the main inefficiency with solar is that most panels are a bad compromise between number of photons harvested and voltage extracted per photon
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130307145716.htm

The new technique developed by Sargent's group shows a possible 35 per cent increase in the technology's efficiency in the near-infrared spectral region, says co-author Dr. Susanna Thon. Overall, this could translate to an 11 per cent solar power conversion efficiency increase, she says, making quantum dot photovoltaics even more attractive as an alternative to current solar cell technologies.

"There are two advantages to colloidal quantum dots," Thon says. "First, they're much cheaper, so they reduce the cost of electricity generation measured in cost per watt of power. But the main advantage is that by simply changing the size of the quantum dot, you can change its light-absorption spectrum. Changing the size is very easy, and this size-tunability is a property shared by plasmonic materials: by changing the size of the plasmonic particles, we were able to overlap the absorption and scattering spectra of these two key classes of nanomaterials."

fuel from Electricity + CO2
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130307124550.htm

fter more than 10 years' work, scientists at the University of Granada have a developed a carbon gel that enables carbon dioxide to be turned into hydrocarbons by electro-catalytic transformation.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120329171607.htm

Liao and his team genetically engineered a lithoautotrophic microorganism known as Ralstonia eutropha H16 to produce isobutanol and 3-methyl-1-butanol in an electro-bioreactor using carbon dioxide as the sole carbon source and electricity as the sole energy input.
...
"Instead of using hydrogen, we use formic acid as the intermediary," Liao said. "We use electricity to generate formic acid and then use the formic acid to power the CO2 fixation in bacteria in the dark to produce isobutanol and higher alcohols."

As for those proposing to use nuclear for desalination - less power needed, and more water for hydro , win-win
http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/bre92c057-us-usa-desalination/

"It's 500 times thinner than the best filter on the market today and a thousand times stronger," said John Stetson, the engineer who has been working on the idea. "The energy that's required and the pressure that's required to filter salt is approximately 100 times less."
...
"Between now and 2040, fresh water availability will not keep up with demand absent more effective management of water resources," the report said. "Water problems will hinder the ability of key countries to produce food and generate electricity."

Capt'n Midnight

oh yeah

forgot to mention this http://www.airproducts.com/microsite/h2-pipeline/index.asp?utm_source=redirect&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=h2pipeline?utm_source=&utm_medium=NR&utm_campaign=fy13-News-Release we’ve united 22 hydrogen plants and 600 miles (965 km) of pipeline, with a total capacity of over one billion SCFD (1.3 million Nm3/hr).

Hydrogen isn't an ideal way of storing energy, but this shows that a 1,000km pipe is doable. That would get you from Cork to Portugal where there is more sun. More importantly it would go from southern EU countries to areas in the Sahara

Really it's a matter of cost

Capt'n Midnight

Curly Judge wrote: »

The only way renewables [for which read wind] has grown is by making the towers higher and increasing their ever sprawling foot print.
There has been no increase in their availability, flexibility or usability, except in the way other technologies are muscled aside to make room for them at the top table on the days they decide to turn up.

Of course there has been no increase in availability, flexibility or usability because there has been no increase in wind :rolleyes:

Wind is available most of the time, and we usually have 4 days notice of how much wind can be used.

It's windpower 101 , no one uses wind without a plan for times when there is no wind.

When it's not there we use the pre-existing fossil fuel generators. Otherwise we are saving on fuel imports.

The footprint of wind is tiny. Apart from the actual plinth the tower sits on, in what area does it prevent economic activity ?



But we also have tidal to tap into to too. Ireland doesn't need a nuke to get 1GW of 24/7 energy. And it's very unlikely for all the tidal farms to have a year long outage at the same time, an event that isn't rare for a nuclear reactor.

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/clean-tech/item/29634-irelands-first-tidal-energ

Energy provider Bord Gáis and the Irish tidal energy technology company OpenHydro have been awarded a lease to develop what could be the island of Ireland’s first tidal energy farm, a 100MW development, off Torr Head in north Co Antrim. It's expected that the tidal farm will be built by 2020.

http://www.sustainableguernsey.info/blog/2013/01/irish-marine-tidal-turbine-company-to-be-taken-over-by-french-naval-defence-company/

Irish marine tidal turbine company to be taken over by French naval defence company
...
The ambition of DCNS is to achieve annual sales of at least €1 billion by 2025 in the tidal energy market.

Chloe Pink

So CM, if've understand you're saying no nuclear because other technologies might come through even though we have no idea of the costs of them.

And if they haven't come through or have but are financially out of reach we can just do more fossil fuels

Capt'n Midnight

Chloe Pink wrote: »

So CM, if've understand you're saying no nuclear because other technologies might come through even though we have no idea of the costs of them.

And if they haven't come through or have but are financially out of reach we can just do more fossil fuels

more or less

fossil fuels are going to get used for the foreseeable future, gas turbines can react to unpredicted changes in wind in exactly the same way that nuclear can't

it's not like the costs of nuclear are clear either

the iterative improvements in renewables have guesstimatable costs
solar has dropped something like 7% year on year for the last 30 years
wind turbine costs drop x % every time the installed base doubles

Like you suggest it's renewables vs. fossil fuel.
This is where a lot of the growth in renewables will come as they get cheaper and fossil fuels get used up.
The only realistic role in this for Nuclear is roadkill as it just hasn't been able to adapt to a world that is changing ever faster.


The renewable stuff that we can't predict costs on are the game changers where one breakthrough will change the rules completely. I don't know if anyone is looking at using water to capture the heat and carbon dioxide from power stations and growing fuel producing algae in it. I don't know the economics of storing heat as molten salt but I'd imagine they'd scale up well due to surface/volume ratio. I know you can store liquid gasses for years if you have a huge volume and really really good insulation.

Sadly the truth is that nuclear is adsorbing huge amounts of funding for clean up and interest costs that should be funding basic research.




Ireland uses 27TWh of electricity a year. Half that amount could be got from the Severn Barrage for £10Bn (13.7TWh/yr at a cost of £9.9bn) which is less than a sixth of the Sellafield clean up cost.

If we could make that a condition of the midland windfarms then we'd be sucking diesel.

old hippy

Chloe Pink wrote: »

When did you decide you wanted to retire Japan.

The first time I visited the country. Why?

Chloe Pink

old hippy wrote: »

The first time I visited the country. Why?

Assuming that was before the tsunami that damaged the nuclear site, I was wondering if Japan's use of nuclear power had put you off.
I have friends living in Japan and they love it as does my brother's wife who is Japanese and of course, like all of us, was devasted by the whole disaster, her family live there.

My earlier post was blunt and I apologise; the whole thing is appalling and a bigger protecting wall should have been built as recommended and it must be horrible for many, in particular for those who have had to leave their homes and can't yet return.
However, hard as it is, I still think it is important to try and look at things as they actually are and the sad fact is that coal takes an even bigger toll on us and the planet.

Chloe Pink

OK CM, so you're 'more or less' saying no nuclear because other technologies might come through even though we have no idea of the costs of them.

And if they haven't come through or have but are financially out of reach we can just do more fossil fuels

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

and fossil fuels get used up.

So what happens if fossil fuels get used up and other technologies haven't come through or they have but are financially out of reach, the former point being the most important one

spankmemunkey

Chloe Pink wrote: »

OK CM, so you're 'more or less' saying no nuclear because other technologies might come through even though we have no idea of the costs of them.

And if they haven't come through or have but are financially out of reach we can just do more fossil fuels


So what happens if fossil fuels get used up and other technologies haven't come through or they have but are financially out of reach, the former point being the most important one

So its all consume consume consume, theres no thoughts about well maybe we should conserve our power use in the same way we say conserve water, There shouldnt be an emphasis on well we need it so we have to create it by any means necessary regardless of the consequences environmentally or otherwise, I think it was David Attenborough who said quite recently that the world cannot sustain the amount of demands human beings are placing on it, Food Power and Water, lets destroy the planet so people can go on facebook and have Iphones!

Capt'n Midnight

Chloe Pink wrote: »

OK CM, so you're 'more or less' saying no nuclear because other technologies might come through even though we have no idea of the costs of them.

You've missed the bit about existing renewables falling in price.

That's what makes nuclear look uneconomic today as it loose out to gas/clean coal vs. renewables because they can evolve faster.

Nuclear is more a white elephant / national price / plutonium for the military thing. If you use fuel rods you are locked into a supplier and you are operating close to the temperature limit of the metals involved - phase changes in a reactor are not a good thing - this can happen in seconds if systems or assumptions are wrong.


The whole point about the many varied paths of renewable research is that if any one of dozens of them pays off then then the game changes. People have imagined economies where smelting zinc is the way to transfer energy , just return the zinc oxide when finished. But imagine if you could do that with plants growing in field.


And still no idea of what nuclear actually costs

Curly Judge

No

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Of course there has been no increase in availability, flexibility or usability because there has been no increase in wind :rolleyes:

Curiouser and curiouser!

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Wind is available most of the time, and we usually have 4 days notice of how much wind can be used.

If wind is available most of the time why is it that wind turbines are only able to achieve, at most, 30% of their rated output?

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

The footprint of wind is tiny. Apart from the actual plinth the tower sits on, in what area does it prevent economic activity ?

One of the main problems with wind is it's foot print!
When you have x of Ireland covered with wind turbines you have no choice but to cover 2X of the landscape when consumption doubles.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

But we also have tidal to tap into to too. Ireland doesn't need a nuke to get 1GW of 24/7 energy. And it's very unlikely for all the tidal farms to have a year long outage at the same time, an event that isn't rare for a nuclear reactor.

Tidal? Where?
Where is it even proposed in the Republic?

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/clean-tech/item/29634-irelands-first-tidal-energ

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

http://www.sustainableguernsey.info/blog/2013/01/irish-marine-tidal-turbine-company-to-be-taken-over-by-french-naval-defence-company/

Show me one MW of energy generated by any company in the Republic of Ireland?
We hear about game changing developments in wave and tidal but all we get are fatter Quangos who are "looking into it"

Curly Judge

No

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Nuclear is a 30-40 year investment by the time you've gone through the planning , construction and paying off the capital costs.

There are a lot of technologies being developed that could bypass it entirely. While each is unlikely to be the silver bullet it's highly likely that some will become significant.

Imagine if someone figures out a cheap way to make aerogel using diatoms or something.

Some stuff we can forget about in the short term such as fuel cells (CCGT has a similar efficiency and a whole lot cheaper when you need GW) and grid level batteries. This link http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130308111310.htm shows that batteries don't justify the energy invested in their fabrication yet. It shows that Pumped Storage and CAES are energy efficient in construction terms so it's just the capital costs that hurt.


Once you get more than a certain % of power supply from intermittent renewables or Nuclear you need energy storage. The conditions that benefit large scale nuclear adoption also benefit some renewables.



Other new technologies

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130313095432.htm - software to load balance intermittent renewables


The internet uses a lot of power - I'd nearly argue that the electrical load for computers won't increase much and may even drop - the overall effect is that increased demand won't come in developed markets - though the location of server farms here to reduce air con loads is one counter-example.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130312134654.htm -

Solar power getting cheaper and more efficient - yet another type of solar panel, since they can tune the dots you could use a prism to illuminate different areas with different wavelengths and so maximise the yield (or use layers or waveguides - too many options) - this is a biggie since the main inefficiency with solar is that most panels are a bad compromise between number of photons harvested and voltage extracted per photon
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130307145716.htm

fuel from Electricity + CO2
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130307124550.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120329171607.htm

As for those proposing to use nuclear for desalination - less power needed, and more water for hydro , win-win
http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/bre92c057-us-usa-desalination/

You forgot the UNOBTAINIUM!

Chloe Pink

spankmemunkey wrote: »

So its all consume consume consume, theres no thoughts about well maybe we should conserve our power use in the same way we say conserve water, There shouldnt be an emphasis on well we need it so we have to create it by any means necessary regardless of the consequences environmentally or otherwise, I think it was David Attenborough who said quite recently that the world cannot sustain the amount of demands human beings are placing on it, Food Power and Water, lets destroy the planet so people can go on facebook and have Iphones!

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=83594824&postcount=609
My view (as stated in the above link) is that yes, without a doubt, energy conservation should be our top priority however my post to which you responded was not about my view, it was a reflection of CM's business plan.

Chloe Pink

Originally Posted by Chloe Pink

"OK CM, so you're 'more or less' saying no nuclear because other technologies might come through even though we have no idea of the costs of them.

And if they haven't come through or have but are financially out of reach we can just do more fossil fuels

So what happens if fossil fuels get used up and other technologies haven't come through or they have but are financially out of reach, the former point being the most important one"

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

You've missed the bit about existing renewables falling in price.

No I haven't; you've missed the bit about "what happens if fossil fuels get used up and other technologies haven't come through"

The price of renewables is irrelevant if other technologies haven't come through to replace our use of fossil fuel.

So what happens in your plan if fossil fuels get used up and other technologies haven't come through

Capt'n Midnight

Curly Judge wrote: »

If wind is available most of the time why is it that wind turbines are only able to achieve, at most, 30% of their rated output?

because wind speed varies

One of the main problems with wind is it's foot print!
When you have x of Ireland covered with wind turbines you have no choice but to cover 2X of the landscape when consumption doubles.

like I said apart from the plinth what space to they occupy

Also what % of the land area is covered in wind farms ?

Tidal? Where?
Where is it even proposed in the Republic?

if one site in NI has 100MW (with up to 300MW proposed) and we have similar tides and currents then 1GW is likely here, and I've linked to an Irish company
also we've already been getting tidal power into the Single Electricity Market on this island (iirc since 2008)




You mentioned quangos. I don't like the possibility of brown envelopes, the long lead time of nuclear means people may be safely retired by the time it all leaks out.
Nuclear is all or nothing for the wining bidder so there may be temptations.

Capt'n Midnight

Curly Judge wrote: »

You forgot the UNOBTAINIUM!

as in peak uranium :P





like I keep saying, there's no more Russian warheads available

Current prices are $40/lb but forecasts are for $80/lb

the questions are
- at what uranium price does nuclear power become uneconomical ?
- what reserves do we have at that price ?

since the pay back time on construction is so long what are the chances of uranium still being cheap in 40 years time ?