Nuclear power , not that cheap or safe it appears

200 – I claim all the hot air to heat my flat 🙂

edit – too slow

Tell you what. You convince yourself of whatever you like. I’ll stick with the evidence from reputable sources.

Are you saying that Edukator is not a reputable source?

So even in economic terms I get my money back in 11 years. No boiler to service, no standing charge, no pumps, no electronics, low depreciation. Nothing to do apart from clean the glass now and then.

I’m happy for you, really. But it remains the case that your results are highly atypical. It seems that most systems never pay back.

Given that you doubled the price of gas in your calculations, I also question the accuracy of your figures.

“in general”, what mean “in general”?
What mean “for some swimming pool heating systems”?
What mean “However, these estimates”?
These are the statements that mean independant reporting is vague not some smartarsery comment.

Take it up with the chartered institute.

With the exception of gas-powered stations and pumped storage stations.

Gas turbine or gas powered or both?
pumped storage doesn’t contribute enough to be considered though does it? (we only have 1)

Are you saying that Edukator is not a reputable source?

I’m saying that an anecdote is not evidence.

pumped storage doesn’t contribute enough to be considered though does it? (we only have 1)

errmmm- rather more than that 2 in Scotland 2 in wales

On a rainy day (hence the posting 😉 ) in SW France the water from the solar tank is running at 24°C. So, even less than a month from the winter solstice the sun is still providing nearly half the energy to heat our water.

So, even less than a month from the winter solstice the sun is still providing nearly half the energy to heat our water.

More like one third. In SW France.

My gas price is from the British Gas site for the first 2500 kWh. It’s about the same I was paying before I cut the gas off. Do you use more than 2500kWh a year? If so, start insulating.

errmmm- rather more than that 2 in Scotland 2 in wales

My mistake 😳
They still contribute a fractional proportion small amount of our energy requirements though.

Edit; fractional proportion? WTF?

Tap water at 10°C and I’m happy to shower at 40°C. 24°C is nearly half. A kettle on the wood burner provides water for washing up at this time of year.

My gas price is from the British Gas site for the first 2500 kWh

Typical domestic annual consumption is around 16,000 KWh. You’re cherry picking the initial units to support your argument.

I originally quoted a saving of £100 to £200. Cherry picking results in a saving of £200 based on a family of four using 200l a year of water at 50°C. Using the higher consumption tarif the saving would be £100.

I’m making a clear distinction between my own case and the average case which is what the EST should be basing their savings on.

Does the site you took 16 000kWh from give a break down including domestic hot wter and heating? Because sites I’ve seen that give typical domestic gas consumption of 16-20 000 kWh generally attribute about 4 000 to domestic hot water.

regardless of the debating, what’s good for SW France isn’t necessarily good for the UK. I suspect TJ wouldn’t get as good results in Edinburgh.
Having said that, edukator has applied renewable technology intelligently (which we should do) and is reaping the rewards. I genuinely admire him for that and hope that it continues to perform for him.

Thank you, Wrecker. Southern England gets about 3/4 of the solar intensity we do. A bigger more steeply inclined thermal panel would be needed but it would still work. The photovoltaïque pay back would be over eight years. Return on investments in insulating materials would be quicker in the UK. The investments I’ve made wouldn’t have the same return periods but overall the saving would be greater.

I’m saying that an anecdote is not evidence.

I think an anecdote generally refers to a story about someone that your mate might once have known who probably did something (maybe). Or was it his sister?

My experience of paybacks in SW England has been that it hovers around 10-12 years. For many commercial clients, that is not seen as an effective investment (they can use their money better elsewhere). These are companies which advertise their green credentials. Others put tiny “token” panels in, then advertise that they are using renewables!
Looks good on the CSR report.

Does the site you took 16 000kWh from give a break down including domestic hot wter and heating? Because sites I’ve seen that give typical domestic gas consumption of 16-20 000 kWh generally attribute about 4 000 to domestic hot water.

Hot water and heating are not separated for billing purposes. For a typical house, the annual bill is 2,500 units at 8p and 13,500 units at 4p. That means that any savings due to solar thermal will be at 4p, not the 8p you quoted.

Did we already do “Extracting nuclear fuel needs a lot of carbon based fuel”?

Or my favouite

“16% of current nuclear fuel is from decomissioned warheads – what happens when the nukes run out?”

When the nukes run out, we’ll be relying on reasonably plentiful, but low-grade ore. Low grade ore results in lots of CO2 emissions……

And is a finite resource although amounts are disputed – its some decades at current usage rates and the pro nuke folk want a massive increase in teh number of reactors built

We’ve gone a bit far from the original topic, which was the cost and safety of nuclear power. (I was quite fascinated to find this thread in a site devoted to mountain biking, BTW.)

With regard to safety, the correct question is “Compared to what”? For that, I would refer you to the ExternE project, which assessed the total life cycle risk of various electric generation technologies. This means building/decommissioning the plant, finding/mining/transporting the fuel (if any), routine emissions, and accidents. It found that nuclear was roughly comparable to renewables, and much safer than coal, oil or gas in terms of deaths per unit electricity generated.

Accidents happen in all technologies; they’re just much more dispersed and less detectable long term than radiation. To the poster who said the Fukushima residents could “never return”, consider this:

http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/kids/KPSH_E/hiroshima_e/sadako_e/subcontents_e/15fukkou_1_e.html

Perhaps the real subject of discussion should be our modern near-pathological avoidance of any risk whatsoever (as if that were possible). Low level radiation is (a) universal, and (b) a very small cancer risk. The more foam-at-the-mouth estimates of the deaths from both Chernobyl and Fukushima result from misapplying the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) hypothesis at very low doses to enormous populations. Almost nothing else in toxicology works that way.

Considering cost, the cost of nuclear is almost entirely the initial capital investment (same as for wind, solar and hydro). What drives that up is not technology, but political opposition from groups who have become adept at using the legal system for obstruction.

If you’ve read this far, take a look at a talk I gave back in the spring (yes, post-Fukushima) called “A Rational Environmentalist’s Guide to Nuclear Power”: http://www.scribd.com/doc/54904454

Considering cost, the cost of nuclear is almost entirely the initial capital investment

Decommissioning.

waste disposal

far higher than the cost of building the reactors – an open ended unknown cost

a very small cancer risk.

over the population of the planet means many many deaths

Edukator – Member

Does the site you took 16 000kWh from give a break down including domestic hot wter and heating? Because sites I’ve seen that give typical domestic gas consumption of 16-20 000 kWh generally attribute about 4 000 to domestic hot water.

My usage in the last year was about 7000kwh gas, used for central heating and hot water. And electricty was around 4600kwh used for lighting, power points, cooker and general house hold electronics.

This cost me about £600 in leccy and £600 in gas, so it was under £1200 total.

On the Original Post

Chris Huhne says:

“The nuclear industry was like an expense-account dinner:
everybody ordering the most expensive items on the menu
because someone else was paying the bill.”
Britain’s Energy Secretary Chris Huhne

“Britain is still paying for nuclear-generated electricity consumed a generation ago because of the hidden costs of an industry reared on the expectation of public subsidies, the Energy Secretary Chris Huhne said yesterday. Half of the budget of the Department for Energy and Climate Change goes on cleaning up Britain’s legacy of nuclear waste, which includes the world’s largest stockpile of civil plutonium waste. That is £2bn a year, year in and year out, that we are continuing to pay for electricity that was consumed in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s on a false prospectus.”

http://climatetoday.org/?cat=12

Decommissioning.

waste disposal

far higher than the cost of building the reactors – an open ended unknown cost

A cost we’re going to cover anyway – to deal with the stuff our grandparents have left us.

a very small cancer risk over the population of the planet means many many deaths

but not as many as will die while fitting solar panels to roof-tops.

Awhles – but if we build more reactors these costs will rise. thats no argument for building more

rise yes- but not in proportion.

if it costs £100Billion to build a long term storage facility to cope with the stuff we’ve already got, it won’t cost twice as much to deal with twice as much waste.

whether we like it or not, burial will be our long-term solution to waste.

finding/developing a site will be expensive, this is a price we already have to pay – thanks grandad.

while we’re down there*, we can build an extra chamber or 10 (30 instead of 20, or whatever). and we can stop worrying about ‘the energy crisis’.

(*a mile or so down, under some really boring** geology)

(**not moved in a few hundred million years, not going anywhere in the next 100,000)

radon gas kills 2000 people every year in the uk – modern, air-tight houses will make this worse.

energy efficiency kills.

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/1985USSR1.html

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/1968USSR6.html

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/1961USSR1.html

awhiles – however the reprocessing costs will be proportionate as will the decommissioning costs

Only a few accidents over the years:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/mar/14/nuclear-power-plant-accidents-list-rank

The following is a brief history of recent incidents at French nuclear sites:

June 2011: A minor and fairly common incident that involved internal leakage at EDF’s Paluel 3 nuclear reactor was reported by French investigative website Mediapart, knocking 2 percent off EDF shares briefly.

November 2009: A fuel assembly rod got stuck in the pressure vessel at EDF’s Tricastin plant in southeast France, raising the risk of an accident. A similar incident took place in September 2008 in the same reactor during refueling operations. It took two months for engineers from EDF and French energy group Areva to stabilize the position of the rod and proceed with its unhooking and removal.

July 2008: Thirty cubic meters of a liquid containing natural uranium was accidentally poured on the ground and into a river at Areva’s Socatri site in southeastern France. The spillage happened while the tank was being cleaned at the complex, part of the Tricastin nuclear site, which houses four nuclear reactors. The pure uranium was much less dangerous than enriched uranium, but France’s ASN nuclear watchdog rebuked Areva for mishandling the accident.

December 1999: A massive storm provoked the partial flooding of some reactors at EDF’s Blayais plant in southwestern France. Many nuclear opponents said the flooding nearly caused a major catastrophe because it briefly cut off power at the plant.

March 1980: An accident at EDF’s Saint-Laurent nuclear reactor in central France caused two fuel rods to melt, seriously damaging the reactor and causing the most serious accident in France’s nuclear history, classified as level 4 on the International Nuclear Event Scale which runs from zero to 7.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,635788,00.html

http://www.economist.com/node/9595481

pro nuke folk want a massive increase in teh number of reactors built

I am pro nuclear. I do NOT want to see a massive increase in numbers of reactors.

There, proved you wrong.

There, proved you wrong.

Sorry, but I’m quite sure I can find a link to prove you wrong.

errmmm – dinna get it Buzz. so you are one that says nukes are needed for us but not for other countries? Or that we need new nukes but not any more than we have now?

If you believe nukes are the answer to global warming / energy security tehn a massive expansion of them is surely the only logical thing

over the population of the planet means many many deaths

No, it doesn’t, it simply doesn’t.

You’re extrapolating downwards using the theory of “no safe dose”

For example, 30 sievert equivalent exposure can kill 1 person, therefore a total release of 30000 sievert equivalent in an accident where a million people get exposed will result in 1000 deaths – in actual fact, if thats spread over a million people, each person might only get a tiny, tiny exposure and there would be NO adverse clinical effects ever.

Its like saying that a dosing a million people with a million Paracetamol tablets would kill ten thousand of them, Statistically arguable, though we know very well that its bollocks.

Statistical extrapolation that bears no relation whatsoever to actual life.

zulu – wrong there is no safe minimum dose for radiation. All radiation is mutagenic – its nothing like a chemical poison. radiation doses are also cumulative.

So yes – any radiation released into biosphere will mean more deaths.

no safe minimum dose for radiation

utter balls 😆

You’d better move the **** out of Edinburgh then! All that Granite, somebody could drop dead!

Ever had an X-Ray TJ?
Ever flown in a plane?

If I give one million people one X ray – how many of them will die 🙄

the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) wrote in its 2000 report[12]

Until the […] uncertainties on low-dose response are resolved, the Committee believes that an increase in the risk of tumour induction proportionate to the radiation dose is consistent with developing knowledge and that it remains, accordingly, the most scientifically defensible approximation of low-dose response. However, a strictly linear dose response should not be expected in all circumstances.

the United States Environmental Protection Agency also endorses the LNT model in its 2011 report on radiogenic cancer risk:[13]

“Underlying the risk models is a large body of epidemiological and radiobiological data. In general, results from both lines of research are consistent with a linear, no-threshold dose (LNT) response model in which the risk of inducing a cancer in an irradiated tissue by low doses of radiation is proportional to the dose to that tissue.”

also

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/03/31/3177889.htm
http://www.nirs.org/radiation/radtech/nosafedose072005.pdf