[Closed] Beginners guide to nuclear power stations ?

More problems at nuclear plants.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12729138

gonefishin - Member

Given that the total death toll from Chernobyl is estimated at about 60 it's not actually that big a claim.

Another vented hydrogen ignition. But the vicinity seems safe thanks to the designers for building such good filtering and strong containment. More injures to plant operators though 🙁

Despite how it looks, it seems better managed that 3 mile island where the core boiled-dry. They at least have a means to manage the decay-heat of the cores. I guess the IAEA will be looking at more redundancy in pump-driven cooling systems and also at pressure venting. I wonder if the designers realised that these venting scenarios would be so dangerous to perform.

Anyone got any idea how many times any other sort of power station has had to have a 30 mile radius evacuated?

Seems to me the penalty for failure is pretty severe, so probably worth taking into account in the decsion making process on how much to invest into alternative energies.

Seems to me the penalty for failure is pretty severe, so probably worth taking into account in the decsion making process on how much to invest into alternative energies.

[url= http://manhaz.cyf.gov.pl/manhaz/strona_konferencja_EAE-2001/15%20-%20Polenp~1.pdf ]http://manhaz.cyf.gov.pl/manhaz/strona_konferencja_EAE-2001/15%20-%20Polenp~1.pdf[/url]

[url= http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-energy-sources.html ]http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-energy-sources.html[/url]

had to do it.....

I doesn't seem like core breach would happen with this design - it's not Chernobyl. The local evac is to completely prevent any risk from radioactive Iodine and Cesium, very small amounts of which have been released by the steam venting.

How many people have died from hydro power stations exploding?

Not exploding, but dams ocasionaly burst, which is bad especialy when historicaly people live near rivers, on which dams tend to be built upstream in the mountains. Theres a film you might have seen, it's called Dambusters, it involves a lot of people dying.

Nuclear power tends to be in the arse end of nowhere.

Add into that the greater day to day danger of accidents arround hydro plants which are more often in less developed countries with lower HSE standards and youve got a gentle drip drip drip of fatalities, compared the once a decade nuclear problem.

There were a lot of deaths involved in the building of UK hydro schemes back in the day when H&S didn't exist, there was quite an interesting program about it on telly not too long ago. It is very different these days though someone did die in a construction incident a year or two ago iirc. I think its fair to say there is a lot more disruption from nuclear power going pete tong.

Olly - Member

a so called "melt down" should be impossible, if it isnt, someone is going to have to answer some questions with some damn good answers.

In Chernobyl, the rods were lowered into the reactor, in order to make the heat. when the control systems failed, the weight of the rods, held them in the reactor under gravity, and they could be pulled out.

since chernobyl, its been flipped.

the rods default position (due to gravity mainly) is OUT, not IN.
the rods have to be actively held into the core, and if anything goes wiggy, they should fall out due to gravity.

a high tech dead mans handle arrangement.

if they pump that moves the water around the reactor has failed, no one is getting power ANYWAY, so they will just shut it down and it will begin to cool.

surely?!

Yes, the main reaction was stopped, it is the (significant amount of!) residual heat which is causing problems.

Have a read of this:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/

1. Likely timeline of incident is:

a. Reactors 1, 2 and 3 were in operation at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant when the earthquake struck.

b. all three reactors were shut down and control rods were inserted when earthquake struck.

c. Cooling was maintained to remove decay heat

d. decay heat drops rapidly on reactor shut down (e.g a 3GW reactor will reduce to 200MW decay heat after 1s and 50MW after 1 hour… But takes long time (3-6months!) to reduce to negligible levels)

e. sometime (?1hr) later tsunami struck and mains power was lost to coolant circuit on Unit 1

f. Diesel generators also failed when tsunami hit so cooling was run by backup batteries for 7-8 hours

g. Other emergency diesel generators brought in but insufficient to run pumps

h. loss of coolant leads to fuel rods no longer being cooled by two phase flow (it is a Boiing water Reactor) and eventually get hot enough to recat with steam to produce Hydrogen.

I think its fair to say there is a lot more disruption from nuclear power going pete tong.

Assuming the absolute worst case scenario statistics, how many deaths from Chernoble? I seem to remember 10,000 being banded about? And we're unlikely to repeat that.

How many people live downstream of the Hoover dam? 10x that? 100x that?

My point is that nuclear has a very good safety record, and if it goes wrong it's not quite as horrific as you might be lead to believe and the consequences of other forms of generation going wrong are just as bad.

By default the current reactors are all unsafe-by-default. If left to their own devices without active-cooling they go super-critical.

A better way would be safe-by-defualt, where being left alone cause the reaction to slow to a stop without external input of power or otherwise.

LFTR does this, well worth watching some of the videos (mostly the same talks, various different lengths with associated brevity) on YT. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=liquid+thorium&aq=f

Unfortunately current regulation is not setup for either these or travelling wave reactors, so even starting development again has been a no-no since the late 70s.

I read that India was developing Thorium. And Thorium is more abundant than Uranium. Why not Thorium then?

The google tec talk was very interesting. I liked:

As the grid demands more from the fluid it goes back colder. The colder the fluid gets, the denser it is, the more energetic the reaction. So the reaction is to an extent, demand lead.

The solid "plug" of reactive material at the bottom of the core is maintained by fan cooling. If the core overheats, or if external electrical supply fails, the plug melts and the fluid pours into a separator catch tray, where it is non-reactive. You then re-heat the fluid in the tray and re-start the pump to put it back in the core to resume. At the Oakridge experimental plant, they did this over every weekend so they could have the weekends off.

That is very operationally flexible and safe. The barriers would seem to be setting up the infrastructure. The Uranium-based infrastructure we have today was largely paid for by the weapons programme.

My point is that nuclear has a very good safety record, and if it goes wrong it's not quite as horrific as you might be lead to believe and the consequences of other forms of generation going wrong are just as bad.

[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbre_Vieja ]i wonder what would happen?[/url]

There are other unstable landmasses around, i wonder if any coastal nuclear plants have anything in the emergency manual just in case?

Some of the comments on the first page are starting to look very silly. Laughable even were it a laughing matter. Forums are great in the way posts stick around and some people demonsrate how easily duped they are.

Keep up the good work. What I know about this stuff could be written on the back of an envelope, however, I've been listening for the word "boron", haven't heard it and can't help wondering why not.

Every single system designed by human beings, thus far, has, at some point, failed.
Humans make mistakes - it's in our nature.

Sounds much cooler if you imagine it in Darth Vaders voice.

I reckon that if an older generation nuclear reactor can take a hit from one of the largest earthquakes in history, it is a remarkable success and my best wishes are with them all.

I reckon that if an older generation nuclear reactor can take a hit from one of the largest earthquakes in history, it is a remarkable success.......

Yeah well I think it is now pretty well established that an older generation nuclear reactor [i]cannot[/i] take a hit from one of the largest earthquakes in history - or at least the [i]consequences[/i] of one of the largest earthquakes in history. Otherwise there wouldn't any problems today with three nuclear power plants in Japan.

I've been listening for the word "boron", haven't heard it and can't help wondering why not

Is boron still used as control rods? It's been a long time since I studied Nuclear reactors, and even then it was AGRs which I'm guessing isn't the type of reactor that's causing the problems in Japan.

What happens when a coal one breaks down how many people get cancer and for how long can you not live in the vacinity with conventional power?

Well there are plenty of other nasties that get given off by conventional power stations, and I'm going to go out on limb and say that quite a few of them are carcinogens. Apparently about 20-30 years is how long you have to stay out the area. There are people who live in that area now. Granted not everything there is sweetness and light but there is life doing rather well there. Bear in mind that it is very difficult to get a proper idea of just how many people have died as a direct result of the disaster. What can be said however is that that, the worst nuclear disaster in history doesn't even come close to the worst industrial disaster.

[url= http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/14/fukushiima_analysis/ ]And the other side[/url] A good read

Otherwise there wouldn't any problems today with three nuclear power plants in Japan.

To be fair they are taking all the right precautions and the story comes out sounding like they might pull it off. If they can keep the damage to a minimum I am sure it will more than justify it's service to the people of Japan.

Not saying it is a foregone conclusion, and I wish them all the luck, but it could turn out to be a bit of cracking PR for the nuclear industry.

the story comes out sounding like they might pull it off.

Yep, let's hope they do. And let's also hope that lessons are learnt. Although by their very nature, unforeseen circumstances are very difficult to plan for.

So the Japanese are efficiently working through problems caused by a once in 200year or more earthquake and the tsunami. Meanwhile, the media and people who didn't go to school are running round in a flap.

We shut down the nukes and we have to burn more coal.

[b]A coal power station emits 100x more radioactive material than a nuclear station that generates the same energy.[/b]

Coal contains uranium and thorium, both radioactive elements. They occur in trace amounts in natural coal, and so are not a problem whilst the coal is in the ground. However, when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels.

This fly ash spreads further and blankets a wider area than the radiation produced by a nuclear plant.

Nice to be a hippy sitting in a warm house whinging about the environment, dude. But you want your house warm, and the internet working to chat to the other dudes online.

Nuclear fuel is the most environmentally friendly choice we have at the moment. As others have said, in 30 years time renewables might be a go-er, but not yet.

The operators must have been horrified when they saw the primary coolant levels dropping away and no means to pump around fresh coolant. There's a certain amount of improv going on e.g. using fire pumps to put sea water into the core. I bet that isn't in the manual. I read that they are going to "ventilate" i.e. drill holds in the outer building before steam venting again, to prevent explosive build up of hydrogen.

I hope they get medals.

Meanwhile, the media and people who didn't go to school are running round in a flap.

I bet I'm a darn sight more relaxed and sleeping better than the nuclear bods in Japan.

The answer isn't producing ever more electricity, it's cutting demand, particularly peak demand. I bought a 30s house which already had double glazing and roof insulation,and reduced gas consumption from 600m3/year to 220m3/year just by futher insulating and adding a solar hot water heater. I could have cut it to about 150m3/year by changing to a condensing boiler but cut the gas off and fitted a wood burner instead. Wood consumption is curently 4m3/year but with yet more insulation that will go down.

Now if everyoen does the same then renewables become viable now.

Assuming the absolute worst case scenario statistics, how many deaths from Chernoble? I seem to remember 10,000 being banded about? And we're unlikely to repeat that.

who are you who is so wise in the ways of science 🙄
Cancer is negligible amd makes you die 10 mins early?

The digest, based on a three-volume, 600-page report and incorporating the work of hundreds of scientists, economists and health experts, assesses the 20-year impact of the largest nuclear accident in history

I've just been reading about Chernobyl. It was a dreadful disaster because the reactor design was poorly behaved so that operator errors could and did lead to overheat. And the design lacked a vessel strong enough to contain an overheated core. Very shonky design.

What happens when a coal one breaks down how many people get cancer

How many people suffer short term or long term effects of pollution from coal fired power stations every day? How many more may be affected or displaced by the long term effects of climate change if the predictions are true.

and for how long can you not live in the vacinity with conventional power? etc

As for the hoover dam at 600 ft thick at its base and 45 foot at its top it is hard to think what could be done to break it.

In fact, although not as sexy a story as the nuclear issue, just along the road [url= http://www.hydroworld.com/index/display/article-display/5036367493/articles/hrhrw/News-2/2011/03/dam-breaks_following.html ]a dam[/url] (don't know if it was for hydro or water) broke in the quake and washed away thousands of houses.

And that problem is [url= http://www.hydroworld.com/index/display/article-display/357756/articles/hydro-review-worldwide/volume-16/issue-4/articles/technical/evaluating-earthquake-safety-for-large-dams-in-southeast-turkey.html ]not unique to Japan[/url]. Indeed you may remember the quake in China last year [url= http://www.internationalrivers.org/en/node/5285 ]damaged a dam[/url] which threatended the homes and lives of at least 100,000 people.

Yes it could happen [ i suppose a meteor could hit it] but nuclear ones have occured numerous times.

I am not certain that it is wise to compare hypothetical scenarios with ones that have occured when assessing risk

dmjb4 - Member

So the Japanese are efficiently working through problems caused by a once in 200year or more earthquake and the tsunami. Meanwhile, the media and people who didn't go to school are running round in a flap.

We have had nuclear power for what 50 years? How many serious accidents and releases of radioactivity? How many more "nearly" until one blows properly?

A coal power station emits 100x more radioactive material than a nuclear station that generates the same energy.

Only so long as you ignore the issue of waste - low medium and high level.

There remain too issues that mean nukes are not the answer. Waste and decommissioning.

coal is intresting as the mining is dangerous for sure but not sure this is rlevant pr se as we are discusssing the actual power genration stations not the method you get the fuel. You would need to give deaths for coal fired fuels stations to compare them to nucleur or we are not really comparing the same thing.
climate change is not a debate for here but oil is far more critical than coal as is is eating meat.
how many nucleur reactors would survive an earthquake? I suspect a dam is more likely to survive but I dont actually know. Nor do I expect google to answer it for either of us. i assume they dont build them anywhere near know fault areas.

there have been very few nuclear accidents which have caused significant casualties (and even fewer members of the public have been killed). You are simply remembering the nuclear incidents over the others.

In many ways they are like planes we all know they are safe if nothing goes wrong but when they go wrong the effects are fairly catastrophic.
i accept this one has not gone wrong and is still contained and highly likely to remain so.

Junkyard - Member

coal is intresting as the mining is dangerous for sure but not sure this is rlevant pr se as we are discusssing the actual power genration stations not the method you get the fuel. You would need to give deaths for coal fired fuels stations to compare them to nucleur or we are not really comparing the same thing.

I ain't buying that. Surely theh only faior comparision is total deaths per kilowatt hr of leccy we get out. Mining ( some folk die urainium mining as well I guess) transporting, generating, emmssions deaths.

that what i was [trying to] saying TJ
perhaps we both spell so badly no one can understand us?

TJ - We have had nuclear power for what 50 years? How many serious accidents and releases of radioactivity? How many more "nearly" until one blows properly?

But I agree with you it is waste (and decomissioning) which are the barriers to nuclear rather than safety per se.

junkyard - A fair point but you may be doing the opposite. I assume if we blow up all the dams and all the nucleur power stations more of us would die from the later than the former. I am less sure that this proves my point or has any baring but I it seems like a noc epice of hyprbole so it can stay

[quote=double award science student]We have had nuclear power for what 50 years? How many serious accidents and releases of radioactivity? How many more "nearly" until one blows properly?

Do you also refuse to travel by plane? I mean, it must be way more dangerous than driving, wasn't there a plane crash on TV last year?

A few sensational nuclear disasters get the news, but the tonnes of carbon and radiation emitted over the same period from burning coal have caused more harm.

[quote=double award science student]There remain too issues that mean nukes are not the answer. Waste and decommissioning.

Only if you ignore the issue of waste - low medium and high level.

I'd prefer nuclear waste buried several miles below my house to a slag heap next to it? Wouldn't you?

some estimates suggest 12000 people die EVERY year worldwide from coal mining

That is a shocking figure. On the plus side, that's probably not that far from the maximum possible figure. You might get a 10% or 20% increase in any given year, but you would not get 100% or 200% increase in any one year. Well, not without some sort of pre warning that fatalities were stacking up. So that's fairly reassuring.

Another shocking figure is that, a large meteorite killed off 90% of all species and it took life on Earth 30 million years to recover. The good news is, that almost no one has died as the result of a meteorite for 250 million years.

Which all goes to prove, that I have absolutely no idea whatsoever what my chances are, of dying from a coal, nuclear, or meteorite, related death. I am surprisingly unbothered though......maybe I should be?

Whatever the merits (or not - and I'm still inclined to view the industry as a massive white elephant) of nuclear.... hats off to the bravery of the engineering & other personnel on the ground.

I've been scouting for the most alarmist/innacturate press and this is the best I've come up with: [url= http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/2011/03/15/japan-quake-and-tsunami-48-hours-to-stop-a-nuclear-disaster-115875-22990301/ ]The Mirror[/url]. Surely they should be reporting celeb gossip, not serious news?

"How many more "nearly" until one blows properly?"

Reactor fuel is not explosive. The burning reactor core exposed to the atmosphere at Chernobyl was almost the worst that can happen.

I am quite taken with this liquid fluoride thorium reactor mentioned earlier. Although the chemistry and reactions are more complex, it's operations seem way simpler and safer.

The pebble bed reactor is another worthwhile self-moderating design. I think SA are building some of these.

A pebble-bed reactor thus can have all of its supporting machinery fail, and the reactor will not crack, melt, explode or spew hazardous wastes. It simply goes up to a designed "idle" temperature, and stays there. In that state, the reactor vessel radiates heat, but the vessel and fuel spheres remain intact and undamaged. The machinery can be repaired or the fuel can be removed. These safety features were tested (and filmed) with the German AVR reactor.[6]. All the control rods were removed, and the coolant flow was halted. Afterward, the fuel balls were sampled and examined for damage and there was none.

Why not Thorium then?

Answered by:

The Uranium-based infrastructure we have today was largely paid for by the weapons programme.

Exactly. Nuclear power was a nice side-product discovered while making weapons-grade materials. The legislation, especially in the US and Europe, is very much geared towards Uranium infrastructure, with other options being ignored as a result.

Bill Gates is a big investor in travelling-wave research, and had been hoping that Japan would give permission for some small-scale experimental reactors.

I've been scouting for the most alarmist/innacturate press and this is the best I've come up with

Well if alarmist is what you want, then this takes some beating :

[url= http://www.****/news/article-1366055/Japan-earthquake-tsunami-America-nuclear-alert-Fukushima-explosion.html ]U.S.S. Ronald Reagan hit by month's radiation in just one hour[/url]

[i]The U.S.S. Ronald Reagan was around 100 miles (160km) offshore when low-level radioactive contamination was detected from the stricken Fukushima plant.

Low radiation levels were detected on 17 members of the crew on three helicopters as they returned to the ship after delivering aid to the devastated city of Sendai.

Most of the radiation was found on the clothing of the 17-man crew, but also on one's skin. The sailors were said to not have experienced ill-effects following the incident.

Contamination was found on the helicopters, which were scrubbed down on landing.[/i]

Lots of interesting thoughts in regard to nuclear power, most people forget the Windscale fire - the most probable source of the Cs-137 in the Cumbria / Lake District area rather than the fall out from Chernobyl.

What happens in Japan will depend on the ability of the people on the ground to maintain cooling to remove the residual decay heat from the core and prevent the loss of fuel pin geometry (the clad melts). If this happens there is the risk of fission product release to the environment through either bypass of the containment boundary (eg relief valve lift) or damage to the primary containment.

As an aside the Japanese nuclear industry has a history of misleading the public or attempting to cover up nuclear incidents, which is why the Japanese public seem a bit nervous.

The accidents at Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Tokaimura all had different root causes but none has covered the nuclear industry in glory. The near miss with the Davis Besse reactor head is another example of how things can go wrong.

I am not certain that it is wise to compare hypothetical scenarios with ones that have occured when assessing risk

Well if alarmist is what you want, then this takes some beating :

U.S.S. Ronald Reagan hit by month's radiation in just one hour

Top quote from that in a picture caption - just in case you'd missed the connection between a nuclear reactor and nuclear bombs:

The towns destroyed by the tsunami look very similar to Hiroshima in 1945

Maybe a better picture caption would have been :

The towns destroyed by the tsunami look very similar to how Ronald Reagan would have liked North Korea to look

Well there has been an explosion at reactor 3, this is of greater concern than the others as it contains mixed oxide fuel - a mixture of uranium and plutonium oxides. With Tepco having admitted to having uncovered the fuel on 2 separate occasions it is likely that a zircaloy fuel element will have ruptured leading to fission product release within the primary containment. As they have been venting to the secondary and tertiary containment, it is likely that there will have been fission product release following the recent explosion.

Ps The accident progression is what would be expected for the loss of cooling scenario that has occurred.

So given there hasn't been an accident with a current generation nuclear generator, that's a purely hypothetical risk, and you can't compare with more dangerous methods of energy production in which fatal accidents have occurred, like hydropower

Whether or not more modern reactors are safer isn't really the point.

In the past I've heard plenty of people expounding about how wonderful nuclear power is in Japan, and how they have a flawless safety record. Everybody has a flawless safety record until the very moment that they haven't.

If these old reactors were inherantly less safe than current reactors, then surely it would have been a good idea to either improve their saftey features or shut them down some time ago. But IMO that's not how the nuclear industry works. Instead it relies on the support of a bunch of technophiles who think that everything can be managed, even when the evidence is right in front of them.

I don't give a sh1t if the UK is unlikely to suffer from a 9.0 earthquake. I don't want a new generation of Nuclear Power here, because it is usually not the foreseeable problems that go bad (except in this case!) but the unforseeable ones, and having a bunch of appologists for the nuclear industry telling me how they are going to make sure that 'lessons are learned' or that 'technology is better now' or 'that shouldn't have happened' doesn't comfort me very much.

I'm afraid that no amount of statistics about numbers of coal miners killed will ever convice me that nuclear is a good idea. Surely the correct response would be to call for coal mining to be made safer? Or better still to start to finally accept that our existing energy usage is unsustainable and try to at least start cutting back on consumption?

Anyway, I'm sure I'll be kept warm enough basking in the flames of the forum, but I'm hoping that this latest wake up call will at least rouse a few more people from their technology induced stupors.

No flaming Rightplace. Just a request to pop out to the shops and buy a bagful of 3W LED light bulbs and a couple of 36W strip lights because those "economy bulbs" your government gave you use are energy greedy (as well as providing poor lighting and taking ages to warm up) and you can start reducing your personal consumption today. Sorry, but all those pretty halogen lights have to go to the recycling centre.

Buy some multi-socket blocks with a switch too so it's easy to switch off the amp/TV/sat box/ cable box/DVD player and 3W LED table lamp in one go when you leave the room.

Buy some multi-socket blocks with a switch too so it's easy to switch off the amp/TV/sat box/ cable box/DVD player and 3W LED table lamp in one go when you leave the room.

There we go, ready for a meltdown of my own now 8)

As accidents go, the one at Fukushima was predictable - earthquakes and tsunami tend to go together. The Windscale fire was a result of a drive to produce Plutonium for the nuclear weapons programme hence an air cooled graphite moderated reactor with only a few filters preventing release of radioactive material into the environment.

TMI was the result of a faulty meter reading and the failure of the regulator system in the US that assumes you are safe if you have met certain targets rather than challenging everything to ensure the plant is safe. Again see the Davis besse reactor head - corrosion due to dissimilar metals around the control rod penetrations in the RPV head.

Chernobyl was the product of political pressure and poor design. The reactor had a significant -ve temperature reactivity coefficient below 20% full power that in the operating rules stated that if you went below 20% full power you need to restart the reactor. Political pressure was placed to run a test at 4% full power (a turbine overrun test) and then continue operating at power. To do this the operators had to defeat all the safety systems and pull the control rods out to a position that only the then president of USSR could authorise. Leading to the prompt criticality accident, the explosion and fire.

The generation 4 reactor designs are very different in that previously a lot of safety was reliant on operator action or active control systems. The latest designs have numerous fail safes and are designed with walk away capability ie you put the control rods in and if you walk away and do nothing the plant will passively sit there.

The next evolution of the the Fukushima plant accident will be that as the cooling fails (no one adding water), the fuel will heat up and the steam atmosphere in the reactor will oxidise the zircaloy fuel clad (an exothermic reaction) at between 600 and 800 deg C producing more hydrogen. As the exothermic zircaloy steam reaction drives up the temperature of the clad along with the residual heat in the fuel, at some point there will be further clad failure leading to a loss of reactor core integrity. This is the expected and worst case scenario.

With the clad failure, the boron that has been added and the control rods (which will also mechanically fail) should prevent any criticality issues.

There is potential for fire in each reactor due to the temperatures involved (even concrete will burn if hot enough), and failure of the primary containment through another hydrogen explosion should this not be being vented.

I have never liked the BWR design as I always felt the design was fundamentally flawed from a safety point of view. Having to drive control rods in against gravity rather than having them drop in under gravity to shut down a reactor in an emergency always seemed to put an undue risk of failure on one system.

The issue with nuclear power always has been that political and commercial pressure to keep operating will always lead to a situation where requirement to keep operating the reactor to produce those MW will at some point clash with safety.

I'm afraid that no amount of statistics about numbers of coal miners killed will ever convice me that nuclear is a good idea. Surely the correct response would be to call for coal mining to be made safer?

Or better still to start to finally accept that our existing energy usage is unsustainable and try to at least start cutting back on consumption?

I disagree Poly. Households could reduce consumption by 75% and renewables could meet that demand within ten years. You simply need the kind of commitment that went into producing weapons for WWII or the cold war.

As accidents go, the one at Fukushima was predictable

Really......everyone expected the safety backup systems in 3 out of the 8 reactors to fail ?

Well they need to get their PR act together then - the message I'm getting isn't, "it's alright everyone, this is suppose to be happening - we predicted it all"

Haven't read all of this thread yet but read this article this morning, [url= http://mitnse.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-worried-about-japans-nuclear-reactors/ ]"Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors."[/url]

renewables could meet that demand within ten years.

. Anyone using a computer to have this argument can't be treated seriously for saying that we waste electricity!

Rubbish. I use far less energy that the average in teh UK. I do still have computers tho

I have attended the enquiries into the building of the Sizewell reactors, and been asked to leave more than once. Simple questions with direct answers requested.

1) Given that after building the station, ongoing the highest cost in production is the tranportation of generated power to the point of use, why are these reactors being built 70 miles from the urban conurbation that they serve (London). The answer given at the time was the proximity to a large water source and that availablity of land. Countered by so the Thames and the Battersea site aren't technically suitable then? ......... Please will you leave?

2) Is it correct that the technology doesn't currently exist to decommission and make these sites safe? Answer: (after some prevarication) It is anticpated that in 120 years time the technology will be available to do so, until that time the site will be managed safely. Response: Given that the site cannot be made safe for that long could I enquire as to why it is being built on the fastest eroding coast line in Europe whose average loss is in the order of 1 metre per annum? .......... Please will you leave?

Safety is a relative term. Not one of these reactors would get past normal scrutiny for a risk assessment in the workplace. The penalty for failure is so unimaginably high that the risk is just not tenable. so the question then comes back to are we prepared to risk it for the benefits we gain? Personally, the answer is no I'd rather look elsewhere, and try to use less energy as a solution to my energy needs.

I wouldn't say using a computer is wasting electricity. I'd say leaving lights on when no one is in the room, leaving the heating on when you are out, leaving everything on standby, that is wasting electricity.

Who keeps saying nothing will explode and no radiation will escape, there's been another explosion and people being told to stay inside for 30km around the site because of a radiation leak

Current production 4A, consumption 1A (it's cloudy); I don't see why I shouldn't use a computer.

How? It's easy. A combination of wind and solar power with pump storage using existing hydro stations will cover it. A tarif system such as the Italians use would also be necesssary to reduce the peaks in demand. Other legislation could be introduced to cut peaks such as limiting the wattage of things like immersion heaters or more drastically: limiting domestic electricity meters to 9A + 2A per occupant.

In my case annual production is 3300kWh and we use 2200kWh. The worst month is December with production of only 120kWh and consumption of 250kWh. I reckon the 12 000e I've inested in a fund to provide capital for mainly wind projects should produce enough to more than cover the December deficit.

Idustry and the public sector could perhaps achieve even greater savings given the waste I've seen in every institution I've worked in.

How? It's easy. A combination of wind and solar power with pump storage using existing hydro stations will cover it.

In my case annual production is 3300kWh and we use 2200kWh. The worst month is December with production of only 120kWh and consumption of 250kWh

Of course I'm being pretty generous here, by ignoring the needs of industry and allowing you the use of solar generation, which is horrendously uneconomic on a large scale basis in the UK (I can only believe it makes sense at any scale due to grants).

Try again.

I reckon the 12 000e I've inested in a fund to provide capital for mainly wind projects should produce enough to more than cover the December deficit

That's a 130kWh gap for the whole month. Or 4.3 kWh per day and given there are 24h in the day about .18kW instant.

On the basis of that consumption (180w instant per household of three) there's enough hydro in Europe for the whole of Europe and then some.

There's a lack of sun in December hense the low production, easily compensated by the wind investment.

300 000 000 x 180/3 = 18 000 000 000 = 18 GW.

So if European households reduce to my level of consumption in Decemeber there is curently two and a half times the necessary pump storage capacity.

I don't know what your "Europe" refers to so I've used a population of 300 million.

You simply need the kind of commitment that went into producing weapons for WWII or the cold war

Hehe. That didn't cost the country much, did it? Lolz.

How? It's easy.

Of course. Silly rest-of-world!

How much d'you reckon it would cost to get every household generating their own power?

A combination of wind and solar power with pump storage using existing hydro stations will cover it.

Numbers, or it's bolx.

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Households could reduce consumption by 75%

Yeah, they [u]could[/u], but most are not going to are they! And how exactly would you force people to do this? The answer is you can't.

Plus household use accounts for only about one third of the energy used in the UK anyway.

Well maths quite clearly isn't your strong point, given two and a half times 18 isn't 38. Of course if you're going to look at instant generation capacity requirement, then you don't take total energy demand and divide by the hours in the day - I mean you're using more than 180W right now - pumped storage being designed to cope with these short term changes in demand rather than longer term lack of wind or sun, which is what you seem to think it's going to do.

There's a lack of sun in December hense the low production, easily compensated by the wind investment.

At some point you might also want to address the power demands of industry rather than just domestic.

You've got the numbers now Molgrips, produce some of your own or admit I'm right.

Household account for a third, quite right. Apply the same philosophy to industry, street lighting, public buildings and so and you'll soon be within the realms of what can be produced from renewables.

I too was sceptical when I went to see an energy advisor back in 05. I thought the estimates I was given were over optimistic. Experience has shown me that the savings from insulating were underestimated and so was the production of the solar panels. The technology works, works well and is viable.

I have a 3kW solar instalation, a solar hot water heater and have invested 12000e in a fund that finances wind power. So I do have more than enough total production capacity even in December, aracer. I am reliant on EDF for managing variations in my output through pump storage. Personal storage using batteries would be more polluting than using existing hydro infrastructure.

Why did they build them on the east coast and not the west coast? West coast being a built more sheltered etc?

DH

Sorry to contradict you but...

As accidents go, the one at Fukushima was predictable - earthquakes and tsunami tend to go together.

But the magnitude was far higher than the design standard. Standards will now have to change so plant survives stronger quakes and tsunami.

The Windscale fire was a result of a drive to produce Plutonium for the nuclear weapons programme hence an air cooled graphite moderated reactor with only a few filters preventing release of radioactive material into the environment.

It worked OK for Plutonium but the thermal modelling was flawed. When they tried to make Tritium for hydrogen bombs they exceed the safe temperature limits, which caused a fire. "Cockroft's folly" filters, inadequate as they were, saved us from a much more serious disaster.

TMI was the result of a faulty meter reading

The PORV solenoid lamp worked fine, but the operators misunderstood what it meant. The PORV position gauge also worked fine but was not with the lamp, and hidden from view. There was no direct indication of coolant level. Coolant boiled away and exposed the rods leading to partial meltdown.

TMI has parallels here. Preoccupied operators failed to notice dangerously low coolant levels. Since the coolant level is so critical, why isn't it measuredly directly and alarmed to death? I guess it's because these plant are as ancient as TMI.

The usual response to: "the equipment doesn't do X" is "the operators will do it manually". But operators forget things, especially under stress. I'm not knocking the operators. If they hadn't had the bright idea of using the fire suppression system to pump seawater into the cores, they would all have suffered meltdown.

So I do have more than enough total production capacity even in December

The water they pumped up the hill using my surplus is used for generation. Overcast periods with no wind don't last long. Taking Europe as a whole they are almost inexistant.

You've got the numbers now

Compulsory hour long turbo sessions for each capable adult every night.

Micro generators built into every mattress sold.

Compulsory dynamo use.

Ban airconditioning AND deodorant.

Hat wearing compulsory on Tuesdays.

Should buy us a year or two....

Deaths per TWh for different power sources. The results shouldn't surprise anyone with a brain.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-energy-sources.html

Overcast periods with no wind don't last long.

Taking Europe as a whole they are almost inexistant

I too was sceptical when I went to see an energy advisor back in 05. I thought the estimates I was given were over optimistic. Experience has shown me that the savings from insulating were underestimated and so was the production of the solar panels. The technology works, works well and is viable

I am fully aware the benefits of home generation. I would love a setup like yours, but the problem is money. I haven't got 12k euro lying around, and I suspect most folk don't.

To get any large scale adoption would require subsidies and grants, and that money would have to come from somewhere. The Govt could in theory but won't be able to for a while yet.

Plus I am sceptial that pump storage would provide enough power storage for the whole country to cover gaps in wind coverage.