Beginners guide to nuclear power stations ?

The equvalent to the dose at Hiroshima, that dose. If you were refering to the previous paragraph not he dose in the same sentence you should have made it clear.

This whole thing about thresholds is contested. It’s something dreamt up by the nuclear industry and there’s evidence such as the French thyroid cancer peak to suggest it’s nonsense. There was a peak in thyroid cancers among children that fits perfectly with the Tchernobyl cloud, yet the nuclear lobby persuaded a pro-nuclear government that despite a blindingly obvious link it couldn’t be proved statistically. Costs less that way see.

How many years did it take to get the idea accepted that passive smoking not just heavy smoking caused lung cancer?

You’ll find medical specialists on both sides of the fence, some saying that low doses are safe and others saying that no dose is safe. You’ll never prove either with statistics but you know what I think. You can think differently.

I’ve had my fair share of dose over the years (doing in vessel boiler inspections within feet of the reactor core) but to be honest I’m more worried about the asbestos I was exposed to at the coal fired power station I worked at for 10 years before I went to the nuclear 🙁

You’ll find medical specialists on both sides of the fence, some saying that low doses are safe and others saying that no dose is safe. You’ll never prove either with statistics but you know what I think. You can think differently.

Whilst it can’t ever be proven, if no dose is safe, then how are we all here? We all absorb radiation on a daily basis – especially those living in Radon areas and airline staff. Are there documented increases in cancers in airline staff compared to other workers in similar jobs (cruise ship workers?)??? I don’t know, I haven’t looked, but I suspect if it was regarded as fact, we would know about it.

I’m done arguing with the flouncer as he chooses what he reads and ignores anything he doesn’t agree with, but I am interested in where the line of no harm is drawn and how this came about. From a theoretical point of view, there must be some threshold, as otherwise we’d all die from cancer as we are all exposed to radiation on a daily basis. One assumes it has something to do with the chance of DNA being able to repair itself, and how often it needs to do this after being damaged by radiation.

Zokes – you are a fine one to talk. You have consistently ignored hard data on renewables, you shift the goalposts everytime your position is shown to be untenable, you attack the messenger not the message

On cancer – why must there be a threshold? people die of cancer all the time. Rates are higher where radiation is higher. IE in cornwall.

you attack the messenger not the message

That’s what you do as a matter of course.

If someone does not agree with your data it doesn’t mean they are ignoring it.

Really TJ you are the most RUBBISH arguer I have ever encountered.

Are there documented increases in cancers in airline staff..

Yes I thought that was well known –
Increase breast cancer risk in cabin crew

Rates are higher where radiation is higher. IE in cornwall.

Thats not proof of cause and effect though, is it TJ?

Haynes R M, 1993, “Radon and lung cancer in Cornwall and Devon” Environment and Planning A 25(9) 1361 – 1366

Radon and lung cancer in Cornwall and Devon
R M Haynes
Received 14 January 1993; in revised form 3 April 1993

Abstract. The relationship between average indoor levels of radon and lung cancer mortality in the counties of Cornwall and Devon, England, are investigated. The associations of population density, social-class distribution, and regional smoking prevalence with lung cancer mortality in the local-authority districts of England and Wales were estimated by regression analysis. Low rates of lung cancer in Cornwall and Devon were predicted from the relationship. The differences between observed and predicted mortality in Cornwall and Devon districts were compared with average indoor levels of radon, which varied considerably between districts. Residual variations in lung cancer mortality were not significantly correlated with average indoor radon measurements. The current advice of the National Radiological Protection Board to government is to concentrate radon measurements, remedial action, and preventive action principally on Cornwall and Devon, but cross-sectional geographical data do not support the hypothesis that raised levels of radon indoors in southwest England have an important effect on lung cancer mortality.

Now then, which cancer does the South West have the highest rates in the UK of? yep, you guessed it, Skin cancer – and guess what, which is the sunniest part of the UK? which part of the UK is well known for sunbathing and watersports? coincidence?

So, come on TJ – is the increased cancer rate in the SW of England down to Radon, or sunlight?

Cause and effect dear boy, cause and effect!

Zulu-11 – Are you sure ?

Radon Linked to Cancer – UN Report

Also:

The Distribution of Domestic Radon Concentrations and Lung Cancer Mortality in England and Wales

Radiat Prot Dosimetry (1988) 25(2): 93-96

R.M. Haynes
Abstract

Using aggregate data for the counties of England and Wales, a negative association is found between mean radon concentrations in dwellings and lung cancer standardised mortality ratios, when regional smoking variations, diet variations, social class variations and population density are controlled. Cornwall and Devon have the highest mean domestic radon gas concentrations, yet the number of lung cancer deaths there was within the range to be expected from relationships not involving radon observed in the rest of the country. While high values of radon exposure appear to concentrate in particular localities, the variations in lung cancer mortality between districts in Cornwall and Devon are small. These findings do not refute the linear exposure-risk hypothesis, but the evidence suggests that relatively few, if any, radon related deaths were associated with the dwellings where radon gas concentrations exceeded the recommended action level.

See TJ – Thats called science – peer reviewed, substantiated, referenced science and it completely refuted the wild, inaccurate hyperbole you’re coming out with!

😆

Edit – J_me – unreferenced UNSCEAR briefing note, versus published peer reviewed studies, I know which one I’d believe… come back to me with peer reviewed rebuttals of the above studies, and I’ll consider it!

A good many of us will die of cancer and the mutations that cause it won’t all be due to radiation. It’s the level of cancer from other causes that mean we can’t prove a correlation between cancer and radiation dose below a certain level. Call it a threshold if you like but it isn’t the point at which radiation causes cancer, it’s the point beyond which the relationship is statistically proveable. Comon sense says the relationship is maintained at lower levels but lost in the “noise” from other causes.

There’s been much debate in France since Tchernobyl with as much hostility between government organisations as between posters on this forum. All using the same data to suit their agenda.

Background radiation levels in some US states are high enough to double cancer rates according to the authorites IIRC, Google it. Those levels are derisory compared with the 100/250 mSv doses the japanese workers are being allowed to get, and yet some posters on here claim no danger for worker recieving less than that. The French kids got pretty low doses but only a blind man would fail to see the Tchernobyl blip. There is a double discours in which the risk of low doses in the environment is recognised and high doses due to nuclear accidents minimised.

You have consistently ignored hard data on renewables

Today’s Register reports a study by the John Muir trust that shows that wind power delivers nothing like the amount of power that is claimed for it.

A lot of renewable energy sources seem to be more about wishing for a pony than actually providing people with enough energy to meet their demands. Energy demand reduction has its place, but we need actual real generating capacity.

Zulu-11
Fill your boots……

Plenty in the reference section there for you to check out. A couple of journal articles do not make a fact !

Some of the worst science I’ve ever seen was peer reviewed, you choose your peers when you publish – bin there, done that. 😉 You would be unwise to invite your adversaries to peer review.

oldnpastit – Member
You have consistently ignored hard data on renewables
Today’s Register reports a study by the John Muir trust that shows that wind power delivers nothing like the amount of power that is claimed for it.

I referred to that last night. Worth noting that it’s an anti-wind farm conservation organisation reporting it though..

As for the John Muir Trust what do you expect them to say? More biased you would have to search long and hard to find.

Edit: I see Druid beat me to it, I was beginning to think I was the only one aware of the influence of vested interests in what people publish.

Worth noting that it’s an anti-wind farm conservation organisation

Bit harsh there, as far as I know JMT have only objected to a handful of proposals (5 or 6 at most). I don’t think they are anti windfarm so long as they are planned/scaled/sited “appropriately”.

Oldandpastit. The hard data I was referring to was about the amount of tidal available. Aracer / Zokes claimed it was negligible. In fact the amount available is plenty – 1/10th of UK energy requirements will be met by tidal within 10 years. could be 1/3 in total if not more. Thats just from Scotland – England could contribute some as well.

Once I had shown them this the stance changed from ” we must have nukes of the lights go out” (which clearly is an unsustainable position)to – “we must have no fossil fuels for electricity at all”

I have been continually insulted and derided for not wanting to believe their cant and hyperbole.

They continually refuse to answer questions.

1) if the solution is uranium reactors then how does this apply worldwide? Nukes in Iran? Afghanistan? How about countries with geological instability?

2) Where is the fuel going to come from

3) what to do with the waste?

4) How to cope with fluctuations in demand using nukes?

5) How are you going to fund both nukes and reneawables?

6) why discount solar ( PV and heat), wind, wave?

7{) why discount energy usage reductions?

I think the funniest thisng is the shifting of the goalposts. All I aim to do is the realistic target of meeting Kyoto limits without nukes – a perfectly feasable target. Very few countries will meet this anyway. The USA is not even going to try. But apparantly now we need to go zero carbon in 10 years.

Some of the worst science I’ve ever seen was peer reviewed, you choose your peers when you publish – bin there, done that

So we can’t even place any weight on peer reviewed scientific literature now. We’ve just got to trust you have we?

Like TJ you’re just coming up with tenuous reasons to defend a position you have taken which is partially based on emotion and belief and not just rational argument and scientific evidence.

You’ve just done the intellectual equivalent of going into the loft and pulling the ladder up after you.

And if we are not going to promote nukes to all countries what is the proposal for them? is it don’t do as I do, do as I say?

Given that we have a had half a dozen major radiation releases in the 50 years we have had nukes then if the world is going to be powered by nukes needing hundreds of times as many generators then these “once in a lifetime” accidents will clearly be happening several times a year.

TJ Said

I have been continually insulted and derided for not wanting to believe their cant and hyperbole.
They continually refuse to answer questions.

😆

Pot and Kettle of the finest order TJ!

Choose your journals uponthedowns. Just because it’s peer reviewed doesn’t give it weight. It’s where it’s published and whom it’s reviewed by that matters. It’s also worth taking note of the response it gets. Don’t trust me, trust the journals that have a long term record of publishing unbiased excellence. If it’s made it to Nature then it’s more likely to be rigorous than if it’s in some industry journal or a government report.

Ah so now we can trust some peer reviewed papers. Pity you didn’t say that earlier.

The peer review system is as biased (corrupt if you wish ) as any other system. When you do work you think adds something to the collective knowledge in your field then you hunt around for somewhere to publish it. Like newspapers, journals often have an agenda. It would be a brave or stupid scientist that submitted a paper demonstrating measurable climatic change to an oil industry journal. Therfore you choose a journal that is likely to accept your work and call on peer reviewers sympathetic towards it.

Peer review is a system that works but is far from perfect and you would be unwise to regard everything published in a peer review as a neutral and rigorous piece of research.

The hard data I was referring to was about the amount of tidal available

Except it’s not hard data, it’s conjecture and supposition and it’s heavily politically weighted.

If you were a scientist you’d understand this stuff.

Molgrips. Did you actually bother to read the stuff? This is not conjecture and surmise. This is real practical plans that are moving forward. Teh 10 mw trial plant goes in the water in the sound of islay this year with the scaled up 1 Gw plant to follow. This is using proven technology and the presence of the tidal flow is irrefutable. To follow that is the bigger plant in the Pentland firth.

Back with the insults again. actually I am trained in assessing and understanding research. I can tell the difference between hard data and surmise and conjecture.

So Islay can generate 1GW. Then what about the rest of the country? Are you envisaging these things all over the place generating the majority of our power?

So Islay can generate 1GW

In theory maybe. I doubt it will ever manage to produce that.

ignoring all the babble….

key weeknesses to all of the non thermal or non nuclear options

they don’t last as long….. you need to replace the installation at least twice as often…

installed capacity you need loads more 7 – 8 times more for PV….

well actually more as you need a peak higher than the equivalent current solution…..

then you have too store the energy you produce…….so you need a storage technology equal to the peak….

so you mix technologies to ease this scenario…. helps a little bit but you still need all that expensive or replicated capacity….

still the numbers can work if tax payers want to stup up lots of £££££

alternatively howabout applying levies upon users of conventional electricity and gas…. then use the money to subsidise people to install renewables…. what a great idea ….. yes if you’vegot cash to invest … so the poor end up subsidising the wealthy to generate a nice profit….hmmm sound like simplistic greenwash to me……

ps I’m not anti the tech just the stupid arguments…. I’ve installed and run large solar thermal in the uk in the 80’s, PV, Small and large scale, biomass etc and without someone throwing lots of £££ at the technology it’s v difficult to achieve real paybacks or avoid creating ‘dirty green’ buildings…

I suggest both sides of the argument read Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air by David MacKay. You can download it for free. Using simple assumptions and simple arithmetic he puts the problem and the possible solutions into perspective. If we want to decarbonise Britain and Europe cannot live on their own re-newables. It will take nuclear power and/or the use of solar power from other peoples deserts in addition.

Did you actually bother to read the stuff?

What stuff, TJ? I’ve checked back through the thread, and I was the last to post links to any stuff on what tidal generation is getting rolled out – reposting the last links you put up. Maybe you’d do us the courtesy of actually reposting links to the data you’re referring to (as it’s clearly not the last set of links you put up) to save us all the trouble of going searching.

Just to remind you, as you seem to have forgotten:
Tidal stream and wave generation deployment could account for 1 to 2.5 GW of installed capacity in Europe by 2020
By around 2015 Scotland will host 17.1 GigaWatts ( GW) of renewable capacity. At that stage only a minority of the capacity (3.0W) is likely to be from marine sources (of which 2.4GW is wind) …with only 1.2GW of medium term future tidal+wave.

It seems there’s not quite as much tidal appearing as you seem to think (particularly when you consider the quoted figures for tidal are peak, so need derating by at least 50% compared to nuclear – hence that’s actually less than one nuclear power station in reality by 2020).

The hard data I was referring to was about the amount of tidal available. Aracer / Zokes claimed it was negligible

it’s not even the first time I’ve had to point out I’m far from being against tidal or consider it’s not an important part of our future energy supply, just that it’s not coming onstream (SWIDT) quickly enough given the numbers published about how much we’ll have in the next 10 years. Maybe in 20 years it will provide a significant chunk – good!

Aracer The numbers do vary from place to place for sure and that does lead to confusion. I may have been including some wind in the numbers as it is confusing. Every where I look now I see different numbers and with a few beers in me I ain’t sure at all now. I cannot find the sources of the 5 GW I have been quoting from the sound of islay and pentland firth.

In February 2009 the Crown Estate Commissioners announced the awarding of ten ‘exclusivity agreements’ for offshore wind sites in Scottish territorial waters. This has since been revised to nine agreements, with a potential capacity to generate 5.7 GW of electricity. Some of these possible sites are controversial and all nine sites may not be exploited. In addition the Crown Estate Commissioners identified two Round 3 sites adjacent to Scottish territorial waters with the potential to generate 4.8 GW of electricity.

Offshore Wave and Tidal Energy, Pentland Firth and Orkney Waters – In March 2010, the Crown Estate Commissioners signed ten exclusivity agreements for six wave and four tidal projects with a potential capacity to generate 1.2 GW of marine energy in the Pentland Firth. The anticipated capital investment required within the Pentland Firth and Orkney Waters is estimated to be between £2-3 bn between 2010 and 2020. It is estimated that this will build up to £300 million per annum of operation and maintenance service requirements by 2020.

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/03/21114728/15

so thats tenders out / expressions -of interest asked for for 10GW of offshore reneaables and signed deals for 1.2 GW just from the pentland firth plus what is installed in the sound of Islay – and we haven’t got to corryvraken or falls of lora yet. dunno why nothing proposed for the falls of lora – seems to me to be a perfect place

What is clear is that tidal generators are being installed in the tens of Mw and that the potential is many GW

Why do you need to discount tidal by 50%? can I discount nukes by big % as that is what the historical record shows? 🙂 tidal ratings are what it produces surely? tidal flows are fairly constant especially in the areas selected.

Anyway – this continues to go around in circles fairly pointlessly.

Can I go back to another question that has me very confused. What is the total Gw consumption?

Recent posts have been accepting 60 GW as the UK consumption.. further back aracer stated stated 25 gw as the Scottish consumption.

If Scotland has 10% roughly of the UK population I would expect 6 GW as the Scottish consumption.

AS I have repeatedly said this in the end its a faith argument and as such no one will change their mind.

Aracer and Zokes have faith that the next generation of nukes will be reliable and robust and will produce electricty for decades without serious incedent. Me I look to the appalling history and I have no faith in this

similarly I have faith the the potential of renwables will become reality. Others do not

Its a goodf job the Scottish government is making serious attempts to develop renwables considering Westminster is not.

I would also like to revisit a question I have asked several times but got no answer to

if the answer is nukes for the UK how about worldwide? Do you want hundreds of times the number of reactors that we currently have and have them installed in places of political or geological instability?

If so where are you going to get the fuel from? My understanding is that the fuel is scarce and supply cannot expand that much

If its not nukes worldwide then what?

TJ – tidal schemes show a cyclical power output. The numbers shown above will either be averages or peaks. Some of the peaks and troughs can be dealt with by sitting tidal schemes at points where the strongest times occur at different times of the day. However, the Pentland Firth has such a strong potential that it’s cycle swamps all of the others, including the Channel Islands sites (which one would have thought were useful for this purpose as they are furthest away.) I have seen figures of up to 10GW for the Pentland Firth alone, but again, this is probably peak.

Re the Falls of Lora – I don’t see that location as being deep enough, plus it’s currently navigable.

TandemJeremy – Member
if the answer is nukes for the UK how about worldwide? Do you want hundreds of times the number of reactors that we currently have and have them installed in places of political or geological instability?

Don’t expect to get an answer. The pro-nuclear lobby tend to put their heads in the sand about this one.

If so where are you going to get the fuel from? My understanding is that the fuel is scarce and supply cannot expand that much

Nah – I’m pretty sure there are supplies for centuries already discovered, even if not currently being mined. Plus, don’t ignore the potential for “creating” additional fuel.

The equvalent to the dose at Hiroshima, that dose. If you were refering to the previous paragraph not he dose in the same sentence you should have made it clear.

First post I read on page 6. Looks like the fighting has really been coming along. Good effort. 😀

Creating fuel? Like the phoenix fast breeder in France? that worked really well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix

Falls of lora is one hell of a tidal rip – you canactually see a slope in the water as it runs

druidh – Member

“TandemJeremy – Member
if the answer is nukes for the UK how about worldwide? Do you want hundreds of times the number of reactors that we currently have and have them installed in places of political or geological instability?”

Don’t expect to get an answer. The pro-nuclear lobby tend to put their heads in the sand about this one.

One can hope. I have asked it several times but am still awaiting an answer. perhaps as I have attempted to be humble and admit that the numbers I have been quoting are not as solid as I thought than someone might have the humility to try to answer this.

It is noticeable the lack of answers from the Pro nukes to the awkward questions.

if the answer is nukes for the UK how about worldwide? Do you want hundreds of times the number of reactors that we currently have and have them installed in places of political or geological instability?

I say yes.

The deaths from the Fukushima plant, bearing in mind it has been hit by one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded, pale into insignificance against the number caused by the tsunami. Nuclear releases less radiation on average (even taking into account all the accidents ever recorded) than coal and desequesters far less carbon from the planet.

If a country is deemed responsible enough by the UN, they should be allowed to build nuclear power stations wherever they like so they can raise the living standards of their people in the same way as we did when we were burning all our natural resources, but without the pollution.

If a country is deemed responsible enough by the UN, they should be allowed to build nuclear power stations wherever they like

How would you guarantee that such a country would remain “stable”? What about those countries failing your test – would their populations never have their living standards raised?