Is it time to go nuclear?

Danzy

Nuclear is over, it's too expensive to build, run, handle.

When States had weapons programme, viewed it as the industry of a global power, they coughed up. Some still do.

When it comes to the business of electricity, it's untouchable for investors, returns matter more than anything else.

cnocbui

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/mar/27/renewable-energy-cost-nuclear-reactors



Spinning reserve is backup for when a generator goes off line.You need to be able to replace 75% of the largest generator on the system in FIVE seconds.

For a 1.6GW EPR this means you need 1.2GW in 5 seconds and Pumped storage can't respond that fast so it's fossil fuel or demand shedding.

you also need to replace the full 1.6GW in 15 seconds.

BTW compare that to wind forecasts a week ahead.


There are also local constraints.
http://www.eirgridgroup.com/site-files/library/EirGrid/Operational-Constraints-Update-Feb-2019.pdf

Greenpeace - are you kidding me?

"Nuclear reactors need back-up, which is expensive and which its advocates tend to forget," said Doug Parr, policy director at Greenpeace.

I have already shown that nuclear energy is the most reliable form of power generation. This means that it is the backup for the other types, not the fallback. The fundamental problem with renewables like Solar PV and wind is that they are unreliable and variable as they rely on the whims of the weather. They are the ones that mean you have to match their capacity with reliable backups, such as nuclear and gas turbines. It's like having a really reliable car, but then due to an inexplicable brain fart, you go and buy a second, unreliable one, and try to drive that one as much as possible, even though it breaks down and leaves you stranded 60 times a year, instead of just driving the reliable one. Oh that's right, you bought the unreliable one because it's 'green'. So's nuclear in terms of `CO2 emissions.

Capt'n Midnight

cnocbui wrote: »

Greenpeace - are you kidding me?

So you are saying that your ability to cast scorn on 5% of a newspaper article in a paper of record is a reason to go nuclear ?

And you are going to ignore the other 95% which included facts and figures quoted the UK National Grid who run the power grid, EDF who run nuclear power plant, a Professor of Energy Policy, renewable operators, the Department of Energy and Climate Change, and a lawyer specialising in EU law ?

Capt'n Midnight

cnocbui wrote: »

I have already shown that nuclear energy is the most reliable form of power generation.

No you haven't.

This means that it is the backup for the other types, not the fallback. The fundamental problem with renewables like Solar PV and wind is that they are unreliable and variable as they rely on the whims of the weather. They are the ones that mean you have to match their capacity with reliable backups, such as nuclear and gas turbines. It's like having a really reliable car, but then due to an inexplicable brain fart, you go and buy a second, unreliable one, and try to drive that one as much as possible, even though it breaks down and leaves you stranded 60 times a year, instead of just driving the reliable one. Oh that's right, you bought the unreliable one because it's 'green'. So's nuclear in terms of `CO2 emissions.

You are handwaving.

Nuclear is NOT a backup for anything, it is absolutely dependent on other generators picking everything that isn't baseload.

The renewables that are not dispatchable are reasonably predictable.

Nuclear can go down at the drop of a hat and stay off line for days after a SCRAM or jellyfish, or longer if it's a transformer fire or design flaw or referendum.

SlowBlowin

cnocbui wrote: »

Greenpeace - are you kidding me?



I have already shown that nuclear energy is the most reliable form of power generation. This means that it is the backup for the other types, not the fallback. The fundamental problem with renewables like Solar PV and wind is that they are unreliable and variable as they rely on the whims of the weather. They are the ones that mean you have to match their capacity with reliable backups, such as nuclear and gas turbines. It's like having a really reliable car, but then due to an inexplicable brain fart, you go and buy a second, unreliable one, and try to drive that one as much as possible, even though it breaks down and leaves you stranded 60 times a year, instead of just driving the reliable one. Oh that's right, you bought the unreliable one because it's 'green'. So's nuclear in terms of `CO2 emissions.

As you like analogies....

So by the same logic a cordless drill is not as reliable as a corded drill, so we should all throw them away.

But hold on, a cordless drill is a lot less hassle even though it only works some of the time, no dangerous cord holding you back. Weighing up the pros and cons, the advantages of the cordless outweigh the more powerful and more reliable corded drill, so it the first choice of most.

The only pro I can think of is nuclear operates most of the time, thats it. Its too expensive, too polluting, too dangerous, a security risk, the list goes on.

mickuhaha

SlowBlowin wrote: »

As you like analogies....

So by the same logic a cordless drill is not as reliable as a corded drill, so we should all throw them away.

But hold on, a cordless drill is a lot less hassle even though it only works some of the time, no dangerous cord holding you back. Weighing up the pros and cons, the advantages of the cordless outweigh the more powerful and more reliable corded drill, so it the first choice of most.

The only pro I can think of is nuclear operates most of the time, thats it. Its too expensive, too polluting, too dangerous, a security risk, the list goes on.

Your analogy is fine for a cordless drill when it's an intermittent use tool for intermittent work. In an industrial environment ie a factory line the drills in use for the factory line are corded because they need to work all the time or the lines stop working and production time is lost. The same idea for the national grid . It needs to work all the time. It's fine for a house to be without power for awhile, just an inconvenience but a ER , factory, anywhere with a elevator , coolers, restaurants ect all need to know that there is power there when they need it. The Idea at the moment is that you use a large amount of land cover to build solar , wind farms to give the girid a low co2 source. This is great but it still needs to be backed up. The most environmentally friendly option regardless of cost is nuclear. And it's less polluting than any other form of reliable energy.

SlowBlowin

mickuhaha wrote: »

Your analogy is fine for a cordless drill when it's an intermittent use tool for intermittent work. In an industrial environment ie a factory line the drills in use for the factory line are corded because they need to work all the time or the lines stop working and production time is lost. The same idea for the national grid . It needs to work all the time. It's fine for a house to be without power for awhile, just an inconvenience but a ER , factory, anywhere with a elevator , coolers, restaurants ect all need to know that there is power there when they need it. The Idea at the moment is that you use a large amount of land cover to build solar , wind farms to give the girid a low co2 source. This is great but it still needs to be backed up. The most environmentally friendly option regardless of cost is nuclear. And it's less polluting than any other form of reliable energy.

A production line is a very specific tool in itself, I was talking about the building industry. The point I was making is you need to consider the whole picture, not just continually focus on one aspect of nuclear (availability) and say because of that its the only answer.

I would never call nuclear environmentally friendly at all, thats another Myth, but we have already been though that.

mickuhaha

SlowBlowin wrote: »

A production line is a very specific tool in itself, I was talking about the building industry. The point I was making is you need to consider the whole picture, not just continually focus on one aspect of nuclear (availability) and say because of that its the only answer.

I would never call nuclear environmentally friendly at all, thats another Myth, but we have already been though that.

I would, compared to gas which is considered the cleaner fossil fuel it causes 40 times more deaths per unit electric energy produced than nuclear. The reason that nuclear is more environmentally friendly is that we are capable of containing the hazardous material. I am not saying don't build solar and wind farms but rather get rid of fossil and replace with nuclear to support the renewable energy which cannot support the grid itself. I already pointed out full battery storage is not a viable option.

SlowBlowin

mickuhaha wrote: »

I would, compared to gas which is considered the cleaner fossil fuel it causes 40 times more deaths per unit electric energy produced than nuclear. The reason that nuclear is more environmentally friendly is that we are capable of containing the hazardous material. I am not saying don't build solar and wind farms but rather get rid of fossil and replace with nuclear to support the renewable energy which cannot support the grid itself. I already pointed out full battery storage is not a viable option.

Let me explain why I think you are wrong by saying Nuclear is environmentally friendly.

OK as far as I know it solar has never destroyed the environment. A percentage of guys fall off roofs fitting it, and that is what the nuclear industry use in the biased figures they present. Solar farms tend not to be on roofs, they are usually on uneconomical (for farming) land.

Nuclear on the other hand has already rendered an area of land bigger than County Wicklow, and Dublin totally uninhabitable, in a single incident. No human can live there, for generations to come.

No other form of energy generation has been so destructive to the planet.

The nuclear industry is massively selective in its figures. The deaths in the nuclear figures take no account of so many factors. When these factors are taken into account its a different story.

A life cycle analyses (LCA) carried out by Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith came to the following result:

Electricity from atomic energy emits 90 to 140 g CO2 per kWh of electricity produced.The relatively high range of uncertainty is due to the different grade of ores used. It depends on how rich the ores are that are used to obtain the Uranium. For poor ores, the higher value does apply and for rich ores, the lower value does apply.

This leads to an interesting issue: The world-wide reserves for Uranium are a very limited resource. It is estimated to last for about 50 to 70 years with the current demand. If additional nuclear reactors are built, the supply will last correspondingly shorter.

The higher the demand for Uranium, the more and more poor ores will have to be processed. This however will lead to a CO2 balance for atomic power, which gets worse and worse over time. Storm and Smith in the above mentioned life cycle analysis came to the conclusion, that between the years 2050 (if additional nuclear power stations are built) and 2075 (no additional nuclear reactors) the CO2 emissions of electricity from atomic energy will be higher as the same electricity produced by a gas.

So given all this I think its foolish and misguided to promote something as dangerous a nuclear. Who would want to gamble on something that could potentially ruin such a large amount of Ireland, especially when its more expensive too...

SlowBlowin

mickuhaha wrote: »

I already pointed out full battery storage is not a viable option.

Why ?

SlowBlowin

By the way before you talk of oils spills and land damage etc, those effects last decades at most, not millennia.

mickuhaha

https://www.google.com/amp/s/globalnews.ca/news/5903523/russia-nuclear-plant-arrives/amp/

SlowBlowin

mickuhaha wrote: »

https://www.google.com/amp/s/globalnews.ca/news/5903523/russia-nuclear-plant-arrives/amp/

A new level of risk from the world leaders in nuclear contamination...

Capt'n Midnight

mickuhaha wrote: »

https://www.google.com/amp/s/globalnews.ca/news/5903523/russia-nuclear-plant-arrives/amp/

Not even close to being economic if you have access to other sources of power. We'd need 110 of these to match our existing dispatchable capacity.


From11 August 2008
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Russia_relocates_construction_of_floating_power_plant-1108084.html

The keel was laid for the world's first floating nuclear power plant - the Akademik Lomonosov - at the Sevmash shipyard on 15 April 2007.
...
The plant will house two 35 MW KLT-40S nuclear reactors, similar to those used in Russia's nuclear powered ice breakers, and two generators,
...
the Akademik Lomonosov will cost an estimated six billion roubles ($232 million) to build.

Capt'n Midnight

Back in 2013 20% of our electricity is base load.


Base load is the thing only nuclear can be used for. But because it can't follow demand and it has to take whatever price the grid offers at the time. And wind means more times when that price is low.

In the UK to get Hinkley C built they are paying TWICE the average grid price, index linked too so it won't get any cheaper.


We get now get 25% of our annual electricity from wind.

unkel

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

We get now get 25% of our annual electricity from wind.

We need to make that about 200% within a decade or so. And trade our shortages and surpluses via interconnectors with other countries. Like solar PV from Spain, hydro from Norway, Nuclear from France, etc.

Expensive to install all that wind? Not really. The money Apple owes us will cover it.

mickuhaha

unkel wrote: »

We need to make that about 200% within a decade or so. And trade our shortages and surpluses via interconnectors with other countries. Like solar PV from Spain, hydro from Norway, Nuclear from France, etc.

Expensive to install all that wind? Not really. The money Apple owes us will cover it.

The French interconnection is set to cost €930,000,000 and rising, I think that will raise electric prices and if we go as far as Spain!

unkel

13 billion from Apple is 10 billion for wind plus 3 billion for interconnectors

SeanW

SlowBlowin wrote: »

By the way before you talk of oils spills and land damage etc, those effects last decades at most, not millennia.

Extinction is forever. And that's what some in the environmental movement want to do to bats by putting up wind farms everywhere.

It is estimated that in one country alone - the United States - wind turbines may be killing up to 900,000 bats per year. This is especially grave because bats are already threatened by White Nose Syndrome, which is in itself and extinction level threat, but wind turbines are killing more. Bats have very slow reproductive cycles so mass kills are severely harmful to any affected species even if the end result is not extinction.

Even Chernobyl - which was so badly designed, built and run by the Soviet Union that anyone comparing to a Western nuclear programme is either clueless or disingenuous - the damage caused by that accident will be reversed within 600 years because the Cesium 137 and Strontium 90 polluting the place will break down into stable elements. If bat species are driven to extinction by a misguided obsession with carpet bombing countries with windmills, that is eternal. And that's just one of the problems.

As Capt'nMidnight alluded to, equipping a grid with unreliable, weather dependent "renewables" severely limits what you do for everything else, e.g. how you get power when the wind isn't blowing and/or the sun is not shining. As a consequence, countries that have prioritised renewables over actually useful low-carbon technologies tend to rely more on fossil fuels than those countries that have prioritised going fossil-free. As a consequence "woke" countries tend to emit much more CO2 from electricity generation than others. Compare Ireland and Germany, both "woke" to green lefty causes, with Sweden and France, which decades ago decided to go non-fossil.
https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false&countryCode=FR
It seems to be working weird at the moment, but 'electricity map' keeps a real-time account of CO2 emissions from the electricity sector of selected countries, and the results are telling. Sweden and France - decades ago - decided to add heavy reliance on nuclear energy into their mixes - France almost totally nuclear, Sweden about 50/50 nuclear and hydro. They emit almost no CO2 per kwh of energy they produce (always under 100g/kwh, usually much less). Germany and Ireland by contrast typically emit 300-400g/kwh and very often more - all owing solely to the fact that mainstream environmental policy requires very large scale reliance on fossil fuels.

Wind turbine and solar panels require an enormous waste of land to use. They require fossil fuel backup. They also have to be built in very remote places often nowhere near where the power is used. This requires the construction of enormous amount of new power grid infrastructure. In areas with high tree cover, this in turn can require wholesale destruction of forestry to facilitate. In all cases, the cost is also enormous.

Ireland's energy policies have been set by the environmental-mainstream movement since the 1970s while term Energiewende has been in Germany since 1980.

We are also allowing the mainstream environmental movement to create a e-waste timebomb in the form of solar panels. Solar panels are made of plastic, cadmium and a variety of other nasty elements, "recycling" these normally consists of burning them to recover the valuable copper - creating smoke and soil pollution that is both carcinogenic and which causes birth defects. This price is usually paid by the poorest people, as are the costs of insanely high electricity prices caused by these inane policies.

The references to Hinkley Point C are also at best, somewhat selective. I haven't checked in a while but it's likely to be behind targets of time and budget. However such crude claims that "Hinkley C proves that nuclear is too expensive" tend to exclude the next most recent UK nuclear reactor, Sizewell B. Costing around £2bn for 1.2GW of power, this reactor has been granted continued operation until 2055. Seems like the UK was much better at building nuclear plants in the 1990s - what happened since?

Capt'n Midnight

SeanW wrote: »

Extinction is forever. And that's what some in the environmental movement want to do to bats by putting up wind farms everywhere.

It is estimated that in one country alone - the United States - wind turbines may be killing up to 900,000 bats per year.

Or they may not.

There are 2.9 billion (yes, that's billion with a fewer birds on the North American continent today than there were 50 years ago. Habitat loss and insecticides, wind turbines don't get a mention.

Even Chernobyl - which was so badly designed, built and run by the Soviet Union that anyone comparing to a Western nuclear programme is either clueless or disingenuous - the damage caused by that accident will be reversed within 600 years because the Cesium 137 and Strontium 90 polluting the place will break down into stable elements.

The decay products of Cesium 137 and Strontium 90 are the dangerous ones.

We are also allowing the mainstream environmental movement to create a e-waste timebomb in the form of solar panels. Solar panels are made of plastic, cadmium and a variety of other nasty elements, "recycling" these normally consists of burning them to recover the valuable copper - creating smoke and soil pollution that is both carcinogenic and which causes birth defects. This price is usually paid by the poorest people, as are the costs of insanely high electricity prices caused by these inane policies.

Panels are made of glass. Most use silicon. A small minority use cadmium but only as a thin layer. See my earlier about how thing it is.

The references to Hinkley Point C are also at best, somewhat selective. I haven't checked in a while but it's likely to be behind targets of time and budget. However such crude claims that "Hinkley C proves that nuclear is too expensive" tend to exclude the next most recent UK nuclear reactor, Sizewell B. Costing around £2bn for 1.2GW of power, this reactor has been granted continued operation until 2055. Seems like the UK was much better at building nuclear plants in the 1990s - what happened since?

The big what happened since was that it's not the UK building the plants. Its foreign companies with foreign money. Brexit means sterling has fallen and will likely fall a lot more. So those companies will want hard currency.


Hinkley C likely to behind ?
It's nuclear. On time and on budget is practically unheard of in any country that has workers rights and proper workplace health and safety.

Please also comment on how the construction of the FIVE other UK nuclear power plants is going.

Sizewell B was an off the shelf Westinghouse started in the 1980s so very different to the EDF not in service yet EPR.

Capt'n Midnight

TABLE-UK power station outages

From 2013 because some people say nuclear is reliable
Refuelling outages aren't sort and have predictable end dates.

CURRENT OUTAGES
 PLANT                  CAPACITY   DURATION           OWNER         TYPE
 Dungeness B21          555        Sept 22-?           B.Energy      nuclear
 Hartlepool 1           605        Sept 23-?           B.Energy      nuclear
 Hartlepool 2           605        Sept 21-?           B.Energy      nuclear
 Hinkley Point B7       610        Sept 22-?           B.Energy      nuclear
 Hinkley Point B8       610        Oct 19-?            B.Energy      nuclear
 Hunterston B7          600        July 17-?           B.Energy      nuclear
 Hunterston B8          600        Oct 20-?            B.Energy      nuclear
 Wylfa 4                250        July 29-?           BNFL          nuclear
 Torness 2              485        Oct 27-31           B.Energy      nuclear
 Sizewell A1            594        Oct 26-30           BNFL          nuclear
 Heysham 27             625        Oct 10-17           B.Energy      nuclear
 Sizewell B1            594        Sept 4-Oct 4        B.Energy      nuclear
 Heysham 12             575        Aug 23-Sept 25      B.Energy      nuclear
 Hinkley Point B8       610        Sept 13-18          B.Energy      nuclear

https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=eds/main
compare grid price to Hinkley C's indexed linked £92.50 price guarantee.

SlowBlowin

SeanW wrote: »

Extinction is forever. And that's what some in the environmental movement want to do to bats by putting up wind farms everywhere.

It is estimated that in one country alone - the United States - wind turbines may be killing up to 900,000 bats per year. This is especially grave because bats are already threatened by White Nose Syndrome, which is in itself and extinction level threat, but wind turbines are killing more. Bats have very slow reproductive cycles so mass kills are severely harmful to any affected species even if the end result is not extinction.

Wow, doomed we are.

Heres an European study from 2018:

https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/lifestyle/outdoorsandgarden/why-wind-farms-are-often-bad-for-our-bats-870892.html

A wind turbine kills on average 2.9 bats per year.

This is insignificant compared to cats.

You are also way off on the CO2 thing, as previously discussed several times in this thread already.

SeanW

I don't know where to start with this.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Or they may not.

There are 2.9 billion (yes, that's billion with a fewer birds on the North American continent today than there were 50 years ago. Habitat loss and insecticides, wind turbines don't get a mention.

I did not mention birds, but since you brought it up, it has been pointed out before, possibly on another thread by another poster, that not all bird kills are equal.

Smaller birds with short reproductive cycles (sparrows, robins, crows etc) are not so threatened by bird kills as larger soaring birds with longer reproductive cycles (like eagles). Guess which kind of birds are more likely to be killed by wind turbines?

But of course, I never mentioned birds, you did. I was referring to bats, and The Wildlife Society is clear that the leading causes of bat mortality in the 21st century are White Nose Syndrome and Windmills.
The USGS agrees. Bat mortality caused by human activities (habitat destruction and wind turbine operation) have now reached unsustainable levels. Someone mentioned cats ... Fifi, Fluffy and Mr. Tiddles have been with us since the dawn of human civilisation yet bat mass-mortality in enormous numbers seems to be a new thing ... what's going on? If we don't stop this we will lose many bat species and the benefits they provide in plant pollination and pest control will go with them. We have to change course now.

The decay products of Cesium 137 and Strontium 90 are the dangerous ones.

The radioactive decay products have half lives measurable in hours or days. Cs137 and Sr90 have half lives of 30 years, they are the reason "the zone" is uninhabitable. After sufficient decay, those will have become Barium 137 and Zirconium 90.

Not that it matters so much, because Chernobyl was designed, built and run so badly that it should not be compared with nuclear power outside the Communist world.

Panels are made of glass. Most use silicon. A small minority use cadmium but only as a thin layer. See my earlier about how thing it is.

Are you seriously suggesting that solar PV panels are only ever made from silicon and glass?

The big what happened since was that it's not the UK building the plants. Its foreign companies with foreign money. Brexit means sterling has fallen and will likely fall a lot more. So those companies will want hard currency.

So you admit that the problems at Hinkley Point C are nothing inherently to do with nuclear energy, and that Sizewell B was a different story? If the EPR is such a bad design that it can't be built efficiently, why not build more Sizewell Bs? And send the EPR back to the drawing board?

It's nuclear. On time and on budget is practically unheard of in any country that has workers rights and proper workplace health and safety.

Sizewell B seemed to come in about as expected. £2bn might sound like a lot when you say it quick, but I would say that was good value for 60 years of reliable generation of near-zero CO2 electricity.

Please also comment on how the construction of the FIVE other UK nuclear power plants is going.

I'll have to do some research.

Sizewell B was an off the shelf Westinghouse started in the 1980s so very different to the EDF not in service yet EPR.

So it's almost like building things to commonly used designs saves time and money ... that almost sounds like an argment for choosing a reliable nuclear reactor design and building them continuously across the world?

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

TABLE-UK power station outages

From 2013 because some people say nuclear is reliable
Refuelling outages aren't sort and have predictable end dates.

<snip>

https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=eds/main
compare grid price to Hinkley C's indexed linked £92.50 price guarantee.

First of all, I have absolutely no idea what you were trying to prove with that chart because it shows nuclear outages during that period were few compared to other power plant types, coal plants took up around 2/3s of that list with gas taking a few more, nuclear was only about a 1/4. Granted these are rough counts as I didn't count each individually.

Secondly, I've never defended the Hinkley Point C. project - so in addition to posting a list that that proves at most nothing, you're also beating a straw man.

SlowBlowin wrote: »

Wow, doomed we are.

Heres an European study from 2018:

https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/lifestyle/outdoorsandgarden/why-wind-farms-are-often-bad-for-our-bats-870892.html

A wind turbine kills on average 2.9 bats per year.

This is insignificant compared to cats.

You are also way off on the CO2 thing, as previously discussed several times in this thread already.

Doomed we may indeed be if we continue to allow misguided (at best) individuals and ideas to detract from real solutions to global problems, and direct us towards expensive, pointless, destructive follies. Because that is the choice here. Either averting catastrophic climate change (preferably at reasonable cost and without serious impact to wildlife) is important, or it is not. If it is, then tools that are actually effective and useful should be used. Otherwise what the hell are you doing?

As for "the CO2 thing" I get my data from electricitymap.org which clearly shows nuclear powered countries having less CO2 output for their electricity usage than non-nuclear or nuclear phaseout countries.

And remember that this is after generations of "woke" countries having the energy policies set by the mainstream environmental movement. Ireland's energy policies have been set by mainstream environmentalists since the Carnsone Point protests of '78. The Energiewende has been a concept in Germany since 1980.

Yet if the purpose of all of this was to eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels and minimise our CO2 emissions at minimum costs, it has been an abysmal failure.

You guys have had the megaphone in our culture for the past 40 years. And what do we have to show for it in the decades since? More CO2 emissions than are necessary, higher costs, and a lot of dead bats. Why should we give you another 40 years when the first 40 have been such an abysmal failure?

Why should we let you drive bats to extinction? Why should we let you drive our electricity costs to eye-watering levels? And above all, why should we let you cause gigatons of totally avoidable carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere? Because if you just look at the data, (e.g. on electricity map) most of this is avoidable!

SlowBlowin

Hi SeanW

Are you really trying to point a finger at solar for having dangerous pollutants, when you are defending nuclear with its history of poisoning wildlife and nature ? There is a lot more cadmium in that old cordless drill in your garage than is in all my panels, fact.

You brush off cats, saying they have been here forever and birds have only recently started declining off. Really ??? Do more research, cats are a huge worry for all of the bird life organisations. If I used your arguments why not note that the decline, from your reports, started before the big wind farms appeared, yet you say the decline is due to wind farms, not insecticides and pesticides (bats eat insects).

Nuclear has a significant CO2 overhead, mining and operation. You and others quote zero figures all the time, its wrong, think about it. Use google earth go look at Sizewell, count the hundreds of cars in the car park, multiple that by the 3 shifts, then go look at a U mining operation, do you see pollution ? What about the CO2 cost of the Japanese cleanup operations, the CO2 cost of Chernobyl ? Electricity map is a private software company run by a handful of programmers, they scrape data sources and make it pretty. The only member of their team that has studied climate change is in charge of marketing their app.

I have spent the last 20 years generating my own power, in the last 5 years I have generated over 75% of my home electricity myself, all from renewables (now off grid).

With all these renewables around my house wildlife is scarce as you say, have a look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxw3sV4bB1w

During my last 10 years of work I was working with wildlife organisations, nature TV companies and filmmakers , providing technical services. I support Bat charities, I have bats roosting here, I have a bat box detector, I fitted the camera and communication systems monitoring the horseshoe bats in Devon for the wildlife trust, I don't understand how I am to blame for the mess we are in as you say I am ?

cnocbui

Cats are not responsible for bird population declines. Modern farming practices, however, are a significant cause. Farmers are a protected species, so we'll just have to live with it.

Despite the large numbers of birds killed by cats in gardens, there is no clear scientific evidence that such mortality is causing bird populations to decline. This may be surprising, but many millions of birds die naturally every year, mainly through starvation, disease or other forms of predation. There is evidence that cats tend to take weak or sickly birds.

We also know that of the millions of baby birds hatched each year, most will die before they reach breeding age. This is also quite natural, and each pair needs only to rear two young that survive to breeding age to replace themselves and maintain the population.

It is likely that most of the birds killed by cats would have died anyway from other causes before the next breeding season, so cats are unlikely to have a major impact on populations. If their predation was additional to these other causes of mortality, this might have a serious impact on bird populations.

Those bird species which have undergone the most serious population declines in the UK (such as skylarks, tree sparrows and corn buntings) rarely encounter cats, so cats cannot be causing their declines. Research shows that these declines are usually caused by habitat change or loss, particularly on farmland.

https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/gardening-for-wildlife/animal-deterrents/cats-and-garden-birds/are-cats-causing-bird-declines/

cnocbui

SlowBlowin wrote: »

Let me explain why I think you are wrong by saying Nuclear is environmentally friendly.

OK as far as I know it solar has never destroyed the environment. A percentage of guys fall off roofs fitting it, and that is what the nuclear industry use in the biased figures they present. Solar farms tend not to be on roofs, they are usually on uneconomical (for farming) land.

Nuclear on the other hand has already rendered an area of land bigger than County Wicklow, and Dublin totally uninhabitable, in a single incident. No human can live there, for generations to come.

No other form of energy generation has been so destructive to the planet.

The nuclear industry is massively selective in its figures. The deaths in the nuclear figures take no account of so many factors. When these factors are taken into account its a different story.

A life cycle analyses (LCA) carried out by Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith came to the following result:

Electricity from atomic energy emits 90 to 140 g CO2 per kWh of electricity produced.The relatively high range of uncertainty is due to the different grade of ores used. It depends on how rich the ores are that are used to obtain the Uranium. For poor ores, the higher value does apply and for rich ores, the lower value does apply.

This leads to an interesting issue: The world-wide reserves for Uranium are a very limited resource. It is estimated to last for about 50 to 70 years with the current demand. If additional nuclear reactors are built, the supply will last correspondingly shorter.

The higher the demand for Uranium, the more and more poor ores will have to be processed. This however will lead to a CO2 balance for atomic power, which gets worse and worse over time. Storm and Smith in the above mentioned life cycle analysis came to the conclusion, that between the years 2050 (if additional nuclear power stations are built) and 2075 (no additional nuclear reactors) the CO2 emissions of electricity from atomic energy will be higher as the same electricity produced by a gas.

So given all this I think its foolish and misguided to promote something as dangerous a nuclear. Who would want to gamble on something that could potentially ruin such a large amount of Ireland, especially when its more expensive too...

That tosh about the CO2 emmited from the nuclear power cycle is just that, tosh. Greenpeace.....again!

Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen is a Dutch anti-nuclear crank sponsored by Greenpeace and the European Green Party.[1] He runs a website which contains his magnum opus, a paper called Nuclear Energy: the Energy Balance, co-authored with Philip Smith.

Nuclear Energy: the Energy Balance

This publication tries to demonstrate that nuclear power fueled with low-grade uranium ore does not provide net energy gain; in other words, that the nuclear industry will consume more energy than it produces once high-grade ore is exhausted. The paper contains serious factual errors,[2] and relies on what are essentially very pessimistic wild guesses rather than easily available real-world data to come to this conclusion. This work, often called Storm&Smith, Stormsmith or SLS is frequently cited by anti-nuclear activists and environmental organizations in arguments against using nuclear energy to combat global warming.[3] They push it so fervently that, despite the paper's complete disconnection from reality, or the fact that it was never published in a peer reviewed journal,[4] it was referenced in the IPCC AR4 report.[5]

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jan_Willem_Storm_van_Leeuwen

Chernobyl is such a gift to the anti nuclear lobby. The Soviet Union/Russia have an appalling nuclear safety record. They never learn and never seem to stop. Their latest bout of insanity - a nuclear powered missile - blew up and caused a nuclear incident only a month or so ago. Would you use that to argue that NASA and ESA should not use nuclear power sources on spacecraft? That we should have never learned about Mars and the outer planets and their moons; the extent of the solar sphere, find out where it's boundary and interstellar space are - all because the Russians are stupid and never seem to learn from their mistakes?

Chernobyl is a gift to the non-human environment. Biologists concluded that the damage caused to the environment by nuclear contamination is far less than that caused by humans - lol. The human exclusion area is now teeming with wildlife. There are significant areas where it's now deemed safe enough to restart agriculture, but irony of ironies, there are environmentalists who want to stop that happening because they want the whole area designated a wildlife refuge. So much for Chernobyl as an environmental catastrophe.

Wind power has a very high human death toll - higher than the number directly killed in the Chernobyl incident, which wickipedia report as being 30 immediately and another 30 down the years.

Since 1970, 104 fatal accidents have occurred causing 144 fatalities, and, of these, 87 deaths were among support workers within construction, maintenance and engineering or among small turbine owners and operators.

The human death toll is at least double that of Chernobyl 121 - I'm not including the additional 72 deaths that were related. http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/AccidentStatistics.htm

It is completely nonsensical to judge the nuclear power industry by Chernobyl. The same knee-jerk thinking would have had humanity give up sailing and going on the waters millennia ago. It's still not safe. Give up air transport and rail transport because there are accidents where thousands die - are you kidding? But one nuclear power accident with an inconsequential death toll - relatively, and the bleaters run around bleating screaming hysterically about the sky falling all because they are illogically terrified by anything 'nuclear'.

People who are anti-nuclear on the basis of 'safety' are disingenuous, and love to use flawed reasoning - because they are needed to make even a weak case against nuclear, which as a form of energy production is demonstrably the safest type of power generation we as a species have ever devised. Solar might be safer but it's utterly impractical without cheap energy storage.

unkel

I'm not against nuclear at all. In fact in the past I would have favoured it over other electricity generation sources, particularly coal.

At this stage though, renewables (wind and solar PV) are far cheaper per kWh produced than nuclear, so it simply isn't a viable option anymore.

cnocbui

unkel wrote: »

I'm not against nuclear at all. In fact in the past I would have favoured it over other electricity generation sources, particularly coal.

At this stage though, renewables (wind and solar PV) are far cheaper per kWh produced than nuclear, so it simply isn't a viable option anymore.

Renewables are not cheaper per kwh when you factor in the cost of the backup power plants needed when the renewables fail. Renewables increase the cost of electricity.

It's like arguing a €50,000 Tesla is a cheaper form of transport than a €25,000 ICE, because the fuels cheaper, when the ICE is never going to use €25,000 worth of fuel over it's lifetime. A diesel ICE would have to do almost 400 K km to use that much.

The cost of renewable energy = energy generated / (Cost of backup plant + cost of backup fuel + cost of renewable plant). Roughly speaking.

It's not just the energy produced divide by the cost of the renewable plant.

mickuhaha

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-stations-produce-radioactive-waste/amp/

Coal emits radiation, an interesting situation when we are still burning coal around the world and no one wants nuclear because the collected radiation might leak in storage.

unkel

cnocbui wrote: »

Renewables are not cheaper per kwh when you factor in the cost of the backup power plants needed when the renewables fail

You don't need backup power plants. What do you think happened to the biggest Irish electricity plant, Moneypoint? They just stopped using it earlier this year. Already a lot more renewables than in the past, we have the interconnector with the UK and some gas power plants can easily be fired up or down with demand

The only way we need nuclear is in a trade with France (interconnector)

Markcheese

cnocbui wrote: »

Renewables are not cheaper per kwh when you factor in the cost of the backup power plants needed when the renewables fail. Renewables increase the cost of electricity.

It's like arguing a €50,000 Tesla is a cheaper form of transport than a €25,000 ICE, because the fuels cheaper, when the ICE is never going to use €25,000 worth of fuel over it's lifetime. A diesel ICE would have to do almost 400 K km to use that much.

The cost of renewable energy = energy generated / (Cost of backup plant + cost of backup fuel + cost of renewable plant). Roughly speaking.

It's not just the energy produced divide by the cost of the renewable plant.

Since when did nuclear generation (or any other form) not need back up... And back up to that back up,
If you need spinning reserve to cover a very large generator, then you need a lot of spinning reserve...

cnocbui

Markcheese wrote: »

Since when did nuclear generation (or any other form) not need back up... And back up to that back up,
If you need spinning reserve to cover a very large generator, then you need a lot of spinning reserve...

Not this utter 5hite again! Nuclear is the most reliable power source.

Nuclear Power is the Most Reliable Energy Source and It's Not Even Close
February 27, 2018

Nuclear energy is America’s work horse.

It’s been rolling up its sleeves for 6 decades now to provide constant, reliable, carbon-free power to millions of Americans.

Just how reliable has nuclear energy been?

It has roughly supplied a fifth of America’s power each year since 1990.

To better understand what makes nuclear so reliable, take a look at the graph below.

Nuclear Has The Highest Capacity Factor

As you can see, nuclear energy has by far the highest capacity factor of any other energy source. This basically means nuclear power plants are producing maximum power more than 92% of the time during the year.

That’s about 1.5 to 2 times more as natural gas and coal units, and 2.5 to 3.5 times more reliable than wind and solar plants.

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-power-most-reliable-energy-source-and-its-not-even-close

4068ac1elhodqr

Solar.

'Grid parity” has already been reached in China, new solar plants are undercutting coal, and cities find solar sources cost lower than regular mixed grid electric.

magicbastarder

apols for coming late to the thread, so it's probably already been covered - about five years ago i read an article about an untested technology for nuclear based generation, which (in theory) could not melt down and generates a fraction of the waste. the gist of the article was that no-one was willing to pour the billions and billions into research to make this a reality.

does anyone know of this purported knight in shining armour that i read about? and if so, were the claims realistic?

user1842

magicbastarder wrote: »

apols for coming late to the thread, so it's probably already been covered - about five years ago i read an article about an untested technology for nuclear based generation, which (in theory) could not melt down and generates a fraction of the waste. the gist of the article was that no-one was willing to pour the billions and billions into research to make this a reality.

does anyone know of this purported knight in shining armour that i read about? and if so, were the claims realistic?

Molten salt reactors. They were not developed as pressurised water reactors could be designed to fit in nuclear submarines and could provide useful plutonium for nuclear weapons.

They only reason the world does not run on molten salt based reactors is the war industry.

Very good book on it:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/First-Nuclear-Era-Times-Technological/dp/1563963582/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+first+nuclear+era&qid=1569418399&s=gateway&sr=8-1

In fact the Oak Ridge National Laboratory ran a molten salt based reactor for 4 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment

If we went the molten salt way 60 years ago, there would be no questioning nuclear power. Sad really and you can blame pretty much one guy: Hyman G. Rickover

Fusion is a dream, fission based on molten salt can very much be a reality.

Reading back on the thread the topic of molten salt has already been covered - around post 40.

cnocbui

magicbastarder wrote: »

apols for coming late to the thread, so it's probably already been covered - about five years ago i read an article about an untested technology for nuclear based generation, which (in theory) could not melt down and generates a fraction of the waste. the gist of the article was that no-one was willing to pour the billions and billions into research to make this a reality.

does anyone know of this purported knight in shining armour that i read about? and if so, were the claims realistic?

That might have been related to the proposed Thorium based nuclear reactors, some designs of which are said to be intrinsically fail-safe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor#Safety

cnocbui

unkel wrote: »

You don't need backup power plants. What do you think happened to the biggest Irish electricity plant, Moneypoint? They just stopped using it earlier this year. Already a lot more renewables than in the past, we have the interconnector with the UK and some gas power plants can easily be fired up or down with demand

The only way we need nuclear is in a trade with France (interconnector)

The UK interconnector you talk about is getting it's power from where? On a freezing cold winters night with little to no wind across the British isles - the power from that interconnector is coming from UK based nuclear, gas and coal fired power plants.

That sort of sophistry is frankly outright dishonest. The location of the reliable backup power generating infrastructure - apart from national energy security issues - is irrelevant. The plant is still being paid for by Irish consumers through the price charged for the interconnector delivered power - or are you going to assert the UK are mugs and are selling it to us at below cost?

Solar power would far and away be my preferred power source - if we had massive scale power storage that was long lasting and cheap. We don't, so it's a case of if wishes were fishes...

4068ac1elhodqr

Isn't there a French-Chinese project/plant being built to get closer to the dream of cold fusion.
That would be the only real game changer, but would take many small steps to arrive.

user1842

Eliezer Gigantic Ruby wrote: »

Isn't there a French-Chinese project/plant being built to get closer to the dream of cold fusion.
That would be the only real game changer, but would take many small steps to arrive.

Cold fusion is not physically possible. You are probably thinking of ITER, which very much hot fusion. It's also an international consortium.

https://www.iter.org/

4068ac1elhodqr

There was something on the news last week about solar plants providing night-time energy via passive thermoelectrics
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Solar-Energy/This-Anti-Solar-Panel-Could-Generate-Power-From-Darkness.htm

Beta Ray Bill

cnocbui wrote: »

Renewables are not cheaper per kwh when you factor in the cost of the backup power plants needed when the renewables fail. Renewables increase the cost of electricity.

It's like arguing a €50,000 Tesla is a cheaper form of transport than a €25,000 ICE, because the fuels cheaper, when the ICE is never going to use €25,000 worth of fuel over it's lifetime. A diesel ICE would have to do almost 400 K km to use that much.

The cost of renewable energy = energy generated / (Cost of backup plant + cost of backup fuel + cost of renewable plant). Roughly speaking.

It's not just the energy produced divide by the cost of the renewable plant.

You don't need backup power plants, but you do need ways to store energy generated during "Off-Peak" hours.
A good example of this is Turlough Hill Power Station, basically it's a giant capacitor/battery.

It's low impact from an environmental perspective
It's very efficient (75% very good for something built in the 70's)
It's cheap to build in comparison to MW production to other Power plants:
Turlough Hill = 292 MW (4x73 MW pumps) - €148 Million in todays money
Poolbeg Incinerator = 60 MW - €600 Million

Also and MOST importantly it can go from standstill to full generation within 13 seconds, compared with 12 hours for some thermal plants.

There were plans to build many of these around Ireland, as all you need is a big mountain, with a lake at the bottom of it.
But as per F**king usual nothing ever happened. (we're great planners, poor do'ers).

Solar, Wind and Biomass make the energy, places like Turlough Hill store it.

I believe last year in the UK During July/September, there were points where the capacity of wind, solar, biomass and hydropower reached 41.9 gigawatts, exceeding the 41.2GW capacity of coal, gas and oil-fired power plants.
Given a hell of a lot of power is Nuclear in the UK, But it's a sign of the way things are going.

Nuclear power is very cheap, until something goes wrong.
"Some" people are estimating that Fukushima disaster costs are going to be close to $1 trillion when you account for Cost of building/dismantling the plant, Radiation cleanup, Liability costs, costs related to the fact that a once economically productive region is now in the 150 sq km exclusion zone and finally the cost of building new non nuclear power plants to plug the power generation deficit.

We can't afford the risk of that to happen here.
No one in Ireland would allow a Nuclear plant to be built near them.

Nuclear accidents are relatively common, 11 in the last 30 years.
Plus there is the cost of disposing of expended fuel. (Sellafield, we've all seen the documentary...)

cnocbui wrote: »

That might have been related to the proposed Thorium based nuclear reactors, some designs of which are said to be intrinsically fail-safe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor#Safety

Thorium will never be a runner, despite the fast it's 3 times more abundant in the earths crust AND exists as an Isotope we can use without refining.
If we could have used it efficiently, we would have done so by now.
Thorium reactors are years away, Uranium got all the Nuclear research because of the cold war.
Renewable research proceeds faster, has more money invested in it and is less complicated/risky.

SlowBlowin

cnocbui wrote: »

Cats are not responsible for bird population declines. Modern farming practices, however, are a significant cause. Farmers are a protected species, so we'll just have to live with it.

https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/gardening-for-wildlife/animal-deterrents/cats-and-garden-birds/are-cats-causing-bird-declines/

Totally agree on that point, I said the amount killed by wind turbines is less than the 30 million odd killed by Cats. I agree pesticides are the culprit.

unkel

cnocbui wrote: »

The UK interconnector you talk about

We need not just the existing UK interconnector. That one is Mickey Mouse in our needs over the next few decades. We need to install 10-20 billion worth of off shore wind, and swap our excess to interconnectors in France for nuclear, Spain for solar, Norway for hydro, etc.

Look at the future, dude. Not at the past. We need some big solutions here.

SlowBlowin

cnocbui wrote: »

That tosh about the CO2 emmited from the nuclear power cycle is just that, tosh. Greenpeace.....again!

Tosh hey, what about the points I raised, will you not concede there is a co2 overhead with Nuclear ?

Have a look at a mine:

https://www.geologyforinvestors.com/wp-content/uploads/Olympic.jpg

I cannot take Nuclear supporter who say nuclear is zero CO2 seriously, its right up there with flat earth. It only takes a few hours research to see thats not the case.

Your other arguments are based on the loss of human lives, and yet you say the land around Chernobyl is fine as its teaming with, radioactive, wildlife ?

Anyway I have a way to reduce the deaths from wind power to zero !! As all the deaths are in the construction of the turbines, just get them built by nuclear power station construction workers, they are far more H & S aware and have no recorded deaths.

My opinions are based on experience, not hearsay, and personally I could never justify the loss of Wicklow due to nuclear contamination, even if there were lots of foxes and deer running free.

Don't assume us mad folk are against nuclear full stop, I am not. The wife has cancer and without nuclear medicine she would be dead by now. I am also a massive space fan, and where there is a technical argument for nuclear I would generally support it. There is no such argument for a nuclear power station in Ireland, for the many many reasons already ignored earlier in this thread.

SlowBlowin

mickuhaha wrote: »

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-stations-produce-radioactive-waste/amp/

Coal emits radiation, an interesting situation when we are still burning coal around the world and no one wants nuclear because the collected radiation might leak in storage.

I saw that some time ago, and also read that peat ash is radioactive. As I have a Geiger counter I checked my own ash, nothing, however a bunch of bananas does register (over time). As I am not aware of any major banana related incident I am not calling for a banana ban.

user1842

SlowBlowin wrote: »

Tosh hey, what about the points I raised, will you not concede there is a co2 overhead with Nuclear ?

Have a look at a mine:

https://www.geologyforinvestors.com/wp-content/uploads/Olympic.jpg

I cannot take Nuclear supporter who say nuclear is zero CO2 seriously, its right up there with flat earth. It only takes a few hours research to see thats not the case.

Your other arguments are based on the loss of human lives, and yet you say the land around Chernobyl is fine as its teaming with, radioactive, wildlife ?

Anyway I have a way to reduce the deaths from wind power to zero !! As all the deaths are in the construction of the turbines, just get them built by nuclear power station construction workers, they are far more H & S aware and have no recorded deaths.

My opinions are based on experience, not hearsay, and personally I could never justify the loss of Wicklow due to nuclear contamination, even if there were lots of foxes and deer running free.

Don't assume us mad folk are against nuclear full stop, I am not. The wife has cancer and without nuclear medicine she would be dead by now. I am also a massive space fan, and where there is a technical argument for nuclear I would generally support it. There is no such argument for a nuclear power station in Ireland, for the many many reasons already ignored earlier in this thread.

I used to be totally against nuclear power.

However after a lot of research, I have changed my opinion and would support a molten salt pit type reactor that would:

1. be fail-safe
2. be impossible to melt down
3. produce no long lasting high-level radioactive waste
4. be able to burn long lasting high-level radioactive waste from past high-pressure water nuclear reactors and make it low level waste

However I continue to be totally against high-pressure water nuclear reactors, they:

1. are inherently unsafe
2. cannot be fully safe no matter the expertise of engineering
2. fail-hot with high pressure and produce explosive radioactive gas
3. in most fuel cycles produce high-level long lived radioactive waste
4. do not currently provided for a means to burn waste
5. are the stupidest thing we have ever designed purely as a result of war or the threat of war

Capt'n Midnight

user1842 wrote: »

Cold fusion is not physically possible. You are probably thinking of ITER, which is very much hot fusion. It's also an international consortium.

https://www.iter.org/

It's budget is about what Japan spent getting their breeder reactor program going.

It produced grid power.

For one hour. Only cost them $20 Billion dollars.


We could get fusion going sooner if we weren't chucking money into the money pit that is fission. But it's generations away. We need transition power sources.

Capt'n Midnight

Thorium ?

Thorium 232 to Uranium 233 nuclear physics is essentially the same as Uranium 238 to Plutonium 239 nuclear physics which we started doing in multiple reactors back in 1944.

Until we get economic breeders thorium is still the next great hope just like it's been since 1946 when the cycle was made public.


It's not new. There's been no breakthroughs.

user1842

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Thorium ?

Thorium 232 to Uranium 233 nuclear physics is essentially the same as Uranium 238 to Plutonium 239 nuclear physics which we started doing in multiple reactors back in 1944.

Until we get economic breeders thorium is still the next great hope just like it's been since 1946 when the cycle was made public.


It's not new. There's been no breakthroughs.

Sounds like the fusion saga.

Capt'n Midnight

user1842 wrote: »

Sounds like the fusion saga.

The amount of money being spent annually on the ITER by Europe, USSR, US and Korea is less than the ongoing cost overruns of Hinkley C.
£1.7Bn announced in 2017
£2.9Bn announced yesterday, and another 15 months delay likely.


Oh yeah there's been actual breakthroughs in fusion. Confinement and temperature improvements.