haakon_haakonsson – you left out wave and tidal

I am quite prepared to accept more coal to be burnt in the interim until the fruits of these things come thru.

So we shift the issue of the waste (CO2 and climate change in coal’s case) to Bangladesh and other low-lying poor countries – how very noble.

Did you know there’s a damned sight more radioactivity released from a coal fired plant to the atmosphere than from a nuclear plant? Just food for thought – if we’re worrying about radiation that may leak into the environment, why not worry about the radiation that does?

zokes – Member

Did you know there’s a damned sight more radioactivity released from a coal fired plant to the atmosphere than from a nuclear plant? Just food for thought – if we’re worrying about radiation that may leak into the environment, why not worry about the radiation that does?

Because that which does is miniscule compared to the amount which we subsequently have to store and which could leak/ be mis-appropriated.

As a generic question to the pro-nuclear lobby – are you all happy to have nuclear reactors installed throughout the world, in every country?

If real significant steps are taken in energy conservation consumption could be reduced dramatically. This will make up much of the shortfall. If a bit more coal has to get burnt then so be it – this is far less dangerous than the waste from nukes – remembering that they are not carbon neutral by any means. Lots of co2 produced by the construction ogf the stations, the mining of the fuel and the decommissioning of the sites

druidh – yes I did miss them off. I realised and edited my post to include tidal, apologies for my lapse in concentration (watching the last episode of Downton Abbey, v gripping)

Wave power – need a lot of it to make a significant difference, not many mechanisms like being pounded in seawater

haakon_haakonsson – Member
druidh – yes I did miss them off. I realised and edited my post, apologies for my lapse in concentration )

So, you dismiss wave and tidal on account of the fact that the Severn Barrage is a bad idea?

Edit: you just added that wave thing – grrr!

i think there are pro’s and con’s to the idea of hinkley C, as a local and someone who enjoys the contryside around me, i dont think that hinkley really affects the views and surounding that much, its something look at and talk about! It is going to bring alot more buisness into the town and can hopefully regenerate it into a great town during the day and provide more things to do for young people,

the cons are the obvious affects to the wildlife for a few years, although they will be rehabilitated somewhere else it is going to lead to some species leaving the area, also all the new roads that are going to be built are going to improve the poor traffic management the town has but also ruin some green fields to build them,

AND.. there is little to no risk about any sort of terrorist attack on hinkley because of the way it is built, the reactor is so far underground and surrounded by huge reinforced walls that a plane would not even get close and security is so tight that nobody could get close with any sort of bomb, the nearest thing they have had in the last 10 years to a terrorist atack is a plane flying to low on its way to landing in cardiff international!

haakon_haakonsson

Pelarmis looks very promising.

I thought tidal ponds wre much less damaging than a barrage, albeit less power generated?

i forgot.. taking it all in i think it should happen and will do more good than bad

here’s a view of Hinkley Point…

The way I kinda see it is that we started off burning trees, the earth’s most readily available form of sequestered solar energy but also the least dense, requiring huge quantities of wood to fuel not very much, we have been finding denser and denser supplies of energy through oil, coal and then we found Uranium.

Most of the substances that we use are so voluminous that the de-sequestration can have a huge impact on the environment around us, but Uranium, is so dense in energy that its extraction and processing is of negligible danger and we actually babysit all of the de-sequestered waste, rather than release it all into the atmosphere.

Either this source of energy or the next (probably Thorium) will give us the energy resources to develop proper renewables but at the moment they simply don’t cut it without some serious breakthroughs. And to all of you who reckon insulating their homes will save the world, China will counteract your efforts a Billion times over as they develop. We must continue to develop the sciences of energy production and continue to use the densest, lowest impact sources of fuel available to us as we do it. Ignoring nuclear is ridiculous.

druidh – No, I actually think that tidal is a good idea, particularly for isolated communities that are off-grid. I’ve also seen some recent interesting designs for wave power that work more on “swell”, and are mounted on the seabed, think it’s worth investing some time & money to trial these ideas.

Your question regarding whether I’d like to see reactors around the world is a really good one, I had to think about my response. I think that I’d be as happy for a country to have a nuclear reactor as I would be for them to have a complicated chemical plant. That’s the big drawback about nuclear, it requires a high skill level to operate the plants, not something I’d be confident to find everywhere.

Am going to have to sign off now to get my beauty sleep, would be happy to continue this discussion tomorrow unless everyone’s got bored with it 🙂

haakon_haakonsson

I think you are referring to pelarmis as

‘ve also seen some recent interesting designs for wave power that work more on “swell”, and are mounted on the seabed, think it’s worth investing some time & money to trial these ideas

It does not need trialling further – its in production now and there has been a plant running of the Portuguese coast for more than a year. Being put in the waters off Scotland as well.

http://www.pelamiswave.com/

No TJ – Pelamis is a surface generator. I think h_h is referring to seabed turbines.

They are tide tho are they not -not swell. ??? Corryvracken would power a few of those turbines

The ratio of the amount of radioactive elements released into the atmosphere by coal fired power station compared to the amount of waste that requires long term storage is not as great as you think.

Taken from Wikipedia .. A 1,000 MW coal-burning power plant could have an uncontrolled release of as much as 5.2 metric tons per year of uranium (containing 82 pounds (37 kg) of uranium-235) and 12.8 metric tons per year of thorium. In comparison, a 1,000 MW nuclear plant will generate about 500 pounds of plutonium and 30 short tons of high-level radioactive controlled waste.

I think the scary bit should be.

the ratio of controlled waste to un-controlled waste.

One other thing to bear in mind is that in any society there is always going to be a need for at least some Nuclear reactors as the byproducts produced can be of massive use to society.

Taken from Wikipedia .. A 1,000 MW coal-burning power plant could have an uncontrolled release of as much as 5.2 metric tons per year of uranium (containing 82 pounds (37 kg) of uranium-235) and 12.8 metric tons per year of thorium. In comparison, a 1,000 MW nuclear plant will generate about 500 pounds of plutonium and 30 short tons of high-level radioactive controlled waste.

I was thinking more about all the 14-C in the coal, which in terms of kBq is probably reason enough not to want to be anywhere near a big coal-fired powerstation.

And back to my terminally boring discussion with TJ on this:

1) We both agree that energy saving has to happen – surely you must understand however that for the foreseeable future, it would be political suicide for any (UK) government to force energy-efficiency upon us. Therefore like it or not, it’s not going to happen, and we will need to at least replace the current 25% generating capacity currently carried out by nuclear fission.

2) Every time we discuss this, you completely fail to take into account the catastrophic effect climate change will have on the planet that would make Chernobyl look small by comparison. Digging up more CO2 (not to mention the other pullutants, radioisotopes too) in the form of coal is not the answer. Obviously said damage is much more diffuse in nature, and therefore less easy to point the finger at. I also doubt a rising sea level worries most of Scotland, but it certainly does for the billions who would be affected…

3) As I dug out last time round, the load-factor stats for the UK’s aging fleet of reactors is surprisingly high. LCA on the whole lifecycle of a nuclear plant vs coal or gas is favourable for nuclear by quite some margin, even taking into consideration building / decommissioning and fuelling etc. Coal still needs to be dug up etc, and as most (all?) in the UK is now imported, that’s a damned sight more CO2 per KW electricity shipping coal from Australia than it is shipping U from Australia – just look at teh differences in energy density.

4) We both agree that we need more renewables, however, I think you’re picking the wrong fight in terms of renewables vs nuclear – it should be renewables vs coal / gas. Both fission and renewables have a part to play – it doesn’t need to be either / or.

5) Ironically, it’s most probably the hiatus in nuclear research since Chernobyl that means fusion is STILL ’50 years away’. This (if we can crack it on a large scale) does present the answer to replacing our reliance of fossil energy.

6) In all the drive for reduced electricity usage, it’s easy to miss the elephant in the room. Electricity is actually less than 50% of the UK’s energy consumption at present. Petrol and gas will run out, and will need replacing both for heating and transportation. The easiest way to make a uniformly-transferrable energy source is via electricity. Ergo we’ll still need more electricity generation over all, even if energy efficiency increases massively

7) No, I don’t have an answer to waste. Stopping being so damned paranoid about ‘terrorism’ would be a good starting point though – it’s a lot easier to hijack a plane than to break into a nuclear facility and steal some plutonium. That way other fuel cycles open up that could use a lot of the energy still embedded in the ‘waste’. As with fusion, had research not effectively stopped dead after Chernobyl, we’d probably be in a much better place for this now.

Very much in favour given the massive gap in renewables to demand is likely to persist for twenty plus years and even then you would need to move to a hydrogen economy to be able to ‘store’ excess renewable for troughs in generation capactity (something that will work really well for remote communities in particular). Think the waste storage issue is a red herring really – we know how to store it we just can’t do it as there hasn’t been the political will to designate a site and get on with it.

Wave and tidal are promising but neither offer adequate bridging capacity in their current form without life-extension of nuclear or coal plants plus they haven’t to date been made to really account for their externalities either (disturbance to seabed, impact on marine species in construction and operation, impact on protected sites and archeology, traffic compression effects on shipping, denial of access to seaspace to other users, decommisioning etc) although that is changing with the IPC and MMO coming into being.

Nuclear strikes me as the only realistic medium term option without either building more coal plants, increasing gas imports dramatically or turning the lights out.

I read all of that zokes, and nodded a lot. Fancy becoming energy minister?

I’m in favour, only viable solution for the short term, pump money into researching alternative means and how to sort the nuclear waste issues.

Just because we don’t have a way of getting rid of it now doesn’t mean some clever spark won’t come up with a way.

Watched a couple of really good documentries last week – What the greens did wrong and another on Chernobyl (apparently it has been scientificly proven that there was no increase in birth defects, or in any cancer other than thyroid which was treated and non fatal from the radiation – not what I’d learnt at school!)

I’m in favour of having nuclear power stations located in cities. makes more economic sense and would ensure better safety records.

I see the Ministry of Fear and Propaganda have done their work well.

Sometime in 1982…
Tarquin, i say old bean we must stop relying on those filthy frogs for coal and the Stalinists for gas, we must fathom a way to generate power without..

Ahhh but Horace, we do have a generation method, the problem is the filthy proles will revolt.
All those Duck and Cover, No blades of grass and Threads type propaganda that we used to control the populace with fear have backfired on us. They are terrified of Uranium.

I say Tarquin, i think i have just the very ticket! What if we devise a wheeze whereas we make coal and carbon emission more terrifying then atomic power generation? Do you think we could swing it? Let me make a transatlantic call to Al and Tipper….

U31 – interesting satire, but better irony as it kind of misses the point. Climate change is happening, and is projected to kill between 1-2 BILLION people directly through flooding and extreme weather, or mostly more indirectly through failed harvests, famine, and disease that follows.

You could detonate every single nuclear rector in the UK right now and the death toll wouldn’t come close. But it’s easy to be NIMBY when it’s at an (inter)national level…

jonb

So its OK to muck up rural areas with nuclear power stations but not good enough for urban areas?

Taht does not bear scrutiny. If its not safe enough to put int eh middle of cities its not safe enough to put anywere in teh UK

Votes then. If everybody with 25 miles of Hinkley complained do you think it would have as much affect as if everyone within 25miles of a major city complained.

People generally don’t want to live next to them so they put them where people don’t live in high density. Same with lots of things, it’s not entirely a safety arguement is the point I’m trying to make.

I dont doubt climate change, mate. Not for one second. Only an idiot would ignore the evidence, historical and present. Its happened since the solar system was formed.
Where as I applaud all efforts to cut down the wanton destruction, pollution and rape of resources etc, in the persuit of the all mighty dollar dividend, but what i do chuckle at is mans arrogance to imagine its all down solely to our activities.

And i’d bet my boots that most on here shouting the benefit of Nuclear generation, 30 years ago would have protested at any further ones being built.
We have all had our opinions expertly manipulated.

Very much in favour given the massive gap in renewables to demand is likely to persist for twenty plus years

You may want to look at how long it takes from conception to actual generation for a new nuke power station.
Those who claim they are carbon neutral or reduce c02 need to look at the concrete and mining costs and storage – it is not really green
Long term renewables and reduced consumption are the only real solutions. Storage, coupled with public distrust is a huge issue for nuclear but as there is money in it we will get some no doubt.

We have all had our opinions expertly manipulated.

Really? I think for myself chum. As has been raised before here, I do actually have some qualification to back up what I’m talking about – do you?

but what i do chuckle at is mans arrogance to imagine its all down solely to our activities.

Manipulation you say? Are you paid by Exxon Mobil? It’s certainly not all down to us, but it doesn’t take an idiot to work out that if CO2 has a warming effect, and after the last 200 years of industrialisation, we’ve raised the atmospheric levels to well in excess of any previously observed levels, it might be more than just coincidence.

Interestingly, we’ve been at it for 5000 years really – ever since we started cultivating rice – turning huge swathes of land anoxic leading to methane emissions. There is now a pretty good body of evidence suggesting that this may even have averted the ice age we were due about 4000 years ago…

Those who claim they are carbon neutral or reduce c02 need to look at the concrete and mining costs and storage – it is not really green

Simply wrong. It isn’t carbon neutral, and never has pretended to be. In full LCAs it comes out far more favourably than any fossil-based energy production. As I said above, coal needs mining and shipping too, and oil and gas hardly surface without significant expenditure of energy in exploration and transport.

Zokes – nicely argued. Nice to see a step away from the hysteria

Howeever of course I don’t agree with all of it.
1) – I really think this could be sold to the population especially if it done by efficiency

2) Th0e extra CO2 that would be produced by not going nuke is there but is small in the overall scheme of things – and how much better would be the renewables if all the money that was spent on nukes went into them. We have th potential to be world leaders in renewables – like pelarnmis and that has had very little government help – the firts plant was in portugal FFS. All that research into renewables could easly lead to a reduction in CO2. Nukes produce CO2 as well.

6) which Is why I stated Energy efficiency

Effectively tho it comes down to a faith argument. Zokes looks to teh future and sees clean nukes working well, I look to the past and see an expensive, unreliable and dirty power source. “electricity to cheap to meter” indeed.

Really? I think for myself chum.

You keep on believing what you want if it helps you sleep at night.

Soviet proletariat used to say they have 1 massive advantage over the West.
They never believed a word printed or uttered by their Media……

Irony not your strong point, U31?

Oh, actually, it appears it is…

Effectively tho it comes down to a faith argument. Zokes looks to teh future and sees clean nukes working well, I look to the past and see an expensive, unreliable and dirty power source. “electricity to cheap to meter” indeed.

Well, whilst it’s certainly not lived up to the over-optimistic 50s billing, it’s a lot more reliable than you give it credit, and these re 30 and 40 year old designs we’re talking about here.

Anyway, time for bed over here. To save yourselves the bother, just read this from 9 months ago – I doubt opinions, facts, or suppositions have changed much in the last 3/4 of a year…

http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/nuclear-power-yay-or-nay

Is it something like Aluminiumy?

“everybody with 25 miles of Hinkley”

I got the impression that locals preferred the Hinkley C option to the alternatives. No? Rural people need jobs too.

I take Sharki’s point about the pylons, and agree that it’s a crap solution.

We have to get real about the safe storage aspect. I’m not sure putting a waste repository a kilometre under the Quantocks is such a bad idea. It’s virtually next door and has a granite core. If geological stability is good and the right safety barriers and handling are designed in, then why not? It’s not like it will disrupt life on the hill in any way, is it? And better than transporting it around the country or exporting it to some unknown fate.

Effectively tho it comes down to a faith argument.

I’ve heard it said that the green movement has become a replacement for religion for some people but I didn’t think it had gone this far! Decisions on nuclear power have to be made on facts and probabilities, not faith, or what you “feel” is right. Many governments have gone through this process recently and decided that nuclear is a good thing after all based primarily on its past record, which despite the rhetoric has been pretty good.

Rio – thats the point. The past record is not good at all. If you rely on that no new nukes is a no brainer! Large amounts of downtime, serious and polluting accidents, expensive electricity, unreliable, and we still don’t know the cost of decommissioning.

so you have to have faith that they will be better in future. There is no proof they will be better in future.

why is the answer for waste still “bury it in the ground and pretend its not there”?

That’s a bit of a myth, its much more common to just leave it in a concreet box on the surface where you can keep an eye on it.

Ohh and good to see you putting peoples safety above nationalistic principles. Lets have the plants in populated areas where the slim chance of an accident has catastrpohic consequences for millions of people, over putting them in the middle of nowhere just becasue its the wrong side of some notional line.

TJ – as I keep on saying, look at the figures. Nuclear is reliable, is relatively cheap, and has few incidents per kW/h generated. People do have a pretty good handle on decommissioning costs. Governments aren’t all stupid (possibly UK excepted), they’ve done the figures and know that the risks of not doing it and having the lights go out are greater than the risks of doing it but annoying a subset of voters who “feel” its wrong.

Rio – its not! It all depends on teh figures you look at. The current stations in Scotland have been running at well under 5o% From your link.

Modern Generation III+ nuclear reactor designs are expected to reach operational load factors of greater than 90%

I don’t believe them. Too many lies in the past.

The Magnox fleet has operated at just over half of its maximum capacity.

Cost -its ridiculous to pretend its cheap. Remember the nuclear levy? And no station has been decommissioned yet. No solution has been found for the waste Add those costs into the equation and its very very expensive.

Safety.
Teh problem is that when they go wrong its very very nasty and long lasting in its effects.

Windscale / Three mile island / Chernobyl. Many many thousands dead

Teh Irish sea is a radioactive mess as a result of pollution

This is why I say its a faith argument. You have faith in the engineers will get it right in future. I look to the past and see they got it wrong.

TJ – I don’t have faith in anyone, that’s why I only look at facts and figures. But I accept that some people will not be swayed by that – it’s just like religious arguments. C’est la vie.