Finally (nuclear power)

DavidBelcher

zanes wrote:

What I love about all of this is that the countrys only Nuclear engineering speciality degree (ie. a degree solely concentrating on designing/building/operating nuclear reactors) closed the year before I could apply.

Indeed - someone somewhere didn't think that one through. Likewise, AEA Harwell is a sorry sight these days compared to when it was at the cutting edge of nuclear power research, resembling little more than an industrial estate.

David

Limburger

johnfinch wrote:

Limburger wrote:

johnfinch wrote:

Limburger wrote:

They are all very well and good but they wont power the UK either. You'll be crying for nuclear when it costs a pound per unit of electricity instead of the 20p it does now.

Why?

And I feel that this point is going to be avoided or downplayed - how can we justify leaving behind so much radioactive material when we don't know that our descendants will be able to deal with it?

Why? Taking wind turbines as an example. You would need 3400 wind turbines operating to be able to shut down 1 small reactor like Sizewell B. There are only approx 2400 wind turbines in the whole of the British isles. There are 43 power stations in the UK. You would need about 1 turbine for every 60 people for it to work. The logistics alone are insurmountable. You have to place the turbines where they will catch the wind. You can put them out to sea of course but 1000000 of them? Turbines are not very reliable either and have a habit of failing.

You also need to understand how the national grid works and how our power supply operates at 50hz. This doesn't magically happen, there are operators 24h a day who balance supply and demand by turning on and switching off the supply from various power stations (shutting down the steam turbine is essence). This is not possible with wind power or solar or tidal power. You cannot generate power on request from these sources. The whole electrical system would fail or have to be redesigned entirely on a new concept for it to work.

Fair points, but are you looking at land-based turbines or sea based?

Have you heard about the plans to link up different parts of Europe by high voltage DC cables? It was in a copy of New Scientist earlier this year, but I can't find the article on their website. The idea is that with Europe-wide political and economic co-operation, it would be possible to guarantee energy supplies throughout the continent using existing and emerging renewable technologies. I don't know how feasible it is, but surely it should at least be examined.

Also, call me old-fashioned if you like, but what about a bit of good old-fashioned energy conservation? My grandparents had their house insulated last year, and their bills have fallen by 30%. I don't know if this would be typical throughout the UK, but given the fact that we had a cold winter 2008-9 it's a very significant drop. Add to this, say, LED lighting, actually turning things off when you aren't using them, etc. and there are massive savings to be made. And then once they have been made, it would be possible to assess how much electricity needs to be generated, and how much can be from the different sources. There is a big difference between genuine electricity needs and covering wastage.

You haven't answered my question - how can we justify the nuclear policy without being sure that future generations will be able to clean up what we leave behind?

Either type of wind turbine - land, sea or air.

There's a huge conundrum surrounding how you generate your energy.

Even the most generous scientist will admit that solar, wind and tidal are going to leave you in the dark. The only people saying otherwise are fundamentalist environment types who base their arguments on emotive issues rather than facts and reality.

You have a tough choice. If you believe that CO2 emissions with cause sea level rises and the end of life as we know it will you accept nuclear. Nuclear is not perfect, of course theirs waste, of course there's a risk. Do you accept the problem of nuclear waste and deal with it, or do you sit about waiting for the water to rise around your ankles.

I agree whole heartedly that there is a great deal of energy wastage and there are schemes and measures to combat that. You must also remember that there are 6 billion people on the earth (and rising) and a great swathe of those people do not have electricity. Eventually everyone is going to be switched on in the future (how far I dont know and wouldn't like to guess) but all these extra consumers are going to need supplying.

China opens a coal fired power station a week however so any efforts we in the UK are making to minimise atmospheric pollution are somewhat futile in the face of that fact. Doesn't mean we should stop though

pepelepew

verloren wrote:

Interesting discussion - tell me more about this idea of bulldozing Wales...

javascript:emoticon(':P')

Why not. People were thrown out of their houses so a dam could be built to supply Birmingham with water.

Birmingham FFS!

Don't tell them, but we p!ss in it. And we only sh@g the sheep 'cos we know the English like the salty taste.

:twisted:

ride_whenever

Limburger wrote:

ride_whenever. superconducting materials are a great idea but don't exist at room temperature (yet, or for the near future). The few that exist do so at near absolute zero and the amount of energy required to reach these low temperatures is obscene. I do know some people working on the subject however and while very interesting, it is at the moment pure fantasy.

Wrong, recently published one at dry ice temperatures, a modified ybco one. There is also a large family that work at liquid nitrogen temperatures (ybco being the famous example), which is positively balmy compared to abs. zero. There is no inherent reason a RT one cannot exist, there are just a lot of potential substances to try...

As for there only being a few, again, BS, just about everything will superconduct if you push it hard enough. Hydrogen superconducts at about 4K under an insane pressure. I agree that's not practical, but superconductors aren't exactly hard to make.

Aggieboy

pepelepew wrote:

verloren wrote:

Interesting discussion - tell me more about this idea of bulldozing Wales...

javascript:emoticon(':P')

Why not. People were thrown out of their houses so a dam could be built to supply Birmingham with water.

Birmingham FFS!

Don't tell them, but we p!ss in it. And we only sh@g the sheep 'cos we know the English like the salty taste.
:twisted:

Good in theory, but we don't eat their arses!

pepelepew

Aggieboy wrote:

Good in theory, but we don't eat their arses!

That's what you think.

Limburger

tarquin_foxglove wrote:

whyamihere wrote:

New nuclear plants to be fast tracked through planning.

About time someone in power woke up to the fact that nuclear is the best way for the UK to go...

Cue misinformed people moaning about Chernobyl...

"When they start siting them in urban areas rather than remote parts of the country then I'll believe they are 100% safe.

Battersea power station still hasn't been redeveloped has it, why not there?

The waste can go under the Houses of Parliament, as it is perfectly safe."

BTW that isn't my opinion but that of my father who was a Chartered Electrical Engineer & worked at Hartlepool Nuclear Power station in the 80's.

I mean no disrespect to your father but an electrical engineer is in no way qualified to make statements as to whether nuclear power is safe or not.
I'm sure there were bricklayers working at Sellafield who will tell you its a timebomb. Means nothing.

Not wanting to get into a 'my dad 'll take your dad' argument but my father is a nuclear physicist. He worked on the UK nuclear program. He worked on the Harwell experimental Fast Breeder Reactor, and at Sellafield on the Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor (The dome which is now dismantled).

He is qualified to tell me whether nuclear power is safe or not. He did the calculations for the shut down sequence of the AGR. His research was Alpha rated by the UKAEA, you can probably look up some of his papers I suppose.
If he tells me nuclear energy is 'safe' I believe him. Some of the reactors running right now are based upon his mathematics.

The reason they dont put nuclear reactors in urban areas is public perception. Your average punter on the street isn't very bright. They read what The Sun tells them that nuclear is a dark art and bound to go wrong. Ask a sociologist why nuclear power stations are not in urban areas. They use them to power ships for god sake.

gkerr4

Limburger wrote:

tarquin_foxglove wrote:

The reason they dont put nuclear reactors in urban areas is public perception.

agree - and a great post - I'd add to the line above the requirements around "geography - solid base for building, sufficient water for cooling etc..."

Nuggs

Q: Why shouldn't you operate a nuclear power station wearing only your pants?

A: Because Chernobyl fallout.


I'm here all week. Try the veal.

brownleather

They seem to put conventional power stations in rural areas too. I'm not sure people would want any sort of Power Station right next to them anyway.

I think with the size of the plants, cheaper land in the country is more sensible too.

Mister W

DavidBelcher wrote:

I'm sure years ago a small geothermal scheme was proposed for Cornwall - did anything ever come of that?

David

Yes, I believe the theory was that you pump water down a hole in the ground, it picks up heat from the surrounding rocks then comes back up a second hole in the ground. Of course water tends to take the shortest route between the two holes so it very quickly cools down the small amount of rock that it's pasing through. The upshot is that you start off getting warm water but it very quickly cools down and you end up with cold water.

Limburger

ride_whenever wrote:

Limburger wrote:

ride_whenever. superconducting materials are a great idea but don't exist at room temperature (yet, or for the near future). The few that exist do so at near absolute zero and the amount of energy required to reach these low temperatures is obscene. I do know some people working on the subject however and while very interesting, it is at the moment pure fantasy.

Wrong, recently published one at dry ice temperatures, a modified ybco one. There is also a large family that work at liquid nitrogen temperatures (ybco being the famous example), which is positively balmy compared to abs. zero. There is no inherent reason a RT one cannot exist, there are just a lot of potential substances to try...

As for there only being a few, again, BS, just about everything will superconduct if you push it hard enough. Hydrogen superconducts at about 4K under an insane pressure. I agree that's not practical, but superconductors aren't exactly hard to make.

I bow to your better knowledge of superconducting crystal structures. Having just searched science direct I found (Tl4Ba)Ba2Ca2Cu7O13+ to be superconducting at 254K although from what I saw in the paper the Mesisner was pretty sketchy at best. I can see a market for cheap tabletop NMR machines. Its still a long way off superconducting phonelines and lossless transmission.

Like I say, crystal structures, substitution and doping are not my area. I'll stick to surface chemistry.

Anonymous

Anyone fancy a pint?

Limburger

NapoleonD wrote:

Anyone fancy a pint?

It'll have to Grolsch and a half litre. Yes.

gkerr4

Limburger wrote:

NapoleonD wrote:

Anyone fancy a pint?

It'll have to Grolsch and a half litre. Yes.

half-litre indeed....

get 'im a pint!

finchy

Limburger wrote:

Either type of wind turbine - land, sea or air.

There's a huge conundrum surrounding how you generate your energy.

Even the most generous scientist will admit that solar, wind and tidal are going to leave you in the dark. The only people saying otherwise are fundamentalist environment types who base their arguments on emotive issues rather than facts and reality.

You have a tough choice. If you believe that CO2 emissions with cause sea level rises and the end of life as we know it will you accept nuclear. Nuclear is not perfect, of course theirs waste, of course there's a risk. Do you accept the problem of nuclear waste and deal with it, or do you sit about waiting for the water to rise around your ankles.

China opens a coal fired power station a week however so any efforts we in the UK are making to minimise atmospheric pollution are somewhat futile in the face of that fact. Doesn't mean we should stop though

The point that I was trying to make (I didn't express it very clearly, 'cos I'm at work and I have to rush these things) is that once energy efficiencies have been made, then we need to assess the situation (and by "we" I mean somebody else ) and work out what we need. Just go as far as we possibly can with renewables, maybe carbon capture technology - although I'm aware that there are now seismologists who are questioning the wisdom of this, anything really, and then when we've gone as far as we can, consider what other options there are.

The problem with nuclear waste is, as I have said, that it won't be us who deal with much of the problem. The nuclear power station closest to me closed down a couple of years ago, and they're not even going to start cleaning it for another century. So even if we have to take on some extra costs now, I would prefer to pay these than leave a nuclear power station standing around for future generations to clean up. Maybe it will encourage me to cut down on Internet use. :roll:

As for China, given that they're not some evil race intent on destroying the world, I agree with you that we should not stop trying to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions - after all, any technology that we develop over here may just be able to bring environmentally-friendly electiricty production into the reach of the Chinese.

GeorgeShaw

The most persuasive argument I've seen against nuclear was from a civil engineer. A nuclear power station is only a vast civil engineering project - there's not a great deal of high technology in it. But it's a civil engineering project that demands zero percent failure. The problem with vast civil engineering projects is that they can't be done with zero percent failure. There's always concrete that isn't made properly, or welds that fail, or measurements that don't quite add up. When something fails in a nuclear power station, the costs are VERY expensive.

How's the only build in Europe going on - in Finland? 3 years behind schedule after 3 years the last I heard.

Pross

DavidBelcher wrote:

volvicspar wrote:

Thin film solar cells have been on the verge of a major breakthrough every year since solar cells were invented (ok a bit of an exaggeration, but you get my drift!)

What do we do at night where there is no sun and no wind ? These technologies are 'useless' without backup or some form of storage ?

There's always pumped-storage hydroelectric, though it too has its downside in the need to flood huge chunks of land. The Dinorwig plant in North Wales was fortunate in being able to make use of disused slate workings rather than virgin terrain.

David

So lets wait 10 years until East Anglia has flooded and then use the water to power it (or will it take too much power to pump the water up the hills?)

The problem is that the same people who criticise nuclear also criticise fossil fuel (CO2), wind (endangering birds, scarring the landscape), bio fuels (taking away crops from those who need them for food) and tidal (preventing migratory fish spawning, changing the habitat for wading birds). You can't win! Maybe one day we'll have a viable way of producing nuclear fusion on a usable scale? Tidal and wind power also have problems with storing power for peak usage. I wonder if the use of bio fuels from algae could produce enough to fuel power stations or whether it will just replace petrol for vehicles?

We need a bit of everything in the short term.

thejesusandsedischain

NapoleonD wrote:

But I once saw a documentary where the guy, was was some kind of nuclear 'engineer' didn't even know where the emergency shutdown switch was and apparently all he could think of were clowns. He even saw his friends as clowns dancing when they were in fact on fire.

It was shocking!

i saw a similar documentary were a safety officer in a nuclear plant allowed his fondo set spill on his control desk,im glad it was in america well at least i think it was over there.

verylonglegs

Too many people....either we seriously consider our numbers or nature and the available resources will do it for us. I can't see it ending any other way unfortunately unless there are some very large advances in some aspects of science.

Porgy

I think the best arguments against nuclear power are economic tbh - can we afford it?

Someone mentioned energy conservation a while back - and until we go down that road - i'm against going back to nuclear.

Has anyone sat down and worked out how much power we actually need as opposed to what we use now?

It's easy to see where there's waste - street-lighting that lights up the sky, illuminated advertisements, moving advertisements, millions of lights left on all night, houses not properly lagged, millions of computers, televsions, hi-fis, etc. left on standby, people driving 100m to the shops, digital broadcasting, energy intensive farming and food distribution, etc. etc.

and encouragement of small-scale local renewables can be enacted now - it will save a lot of energy - a plan to build housing with energy conservation in mind, etc etc.

But instead we'll do F all and jump straight to nuclear. Flipping marvelous!

spanielsson

NapoleonD wrote:

But I once saw a documentary where the guy, was was some kind of nuclear 'engineer' didn't even know where the emergency shutdown switch was and apparently all he could think of were clowns. He even saw his friends as clowns dancing when they were in fact on fire.

It was shocking!

BEST POST EVER!!!!!!

DavidBelcher

Porgy wrote:

lit up advertisements, moving advertisements

There seems to be more and more of this about - footie grounds, bus shelters, Tube escalators etc., etc. and I strongly agree, these gimmicky ads are just using electricity for the sake of it.

Porgy wrote:

people driving 100m to the shops

That's another pain in the bum I could rant all day against. I just don't get it.

David

KonaMiniMula1

Nuclear energy may seem like a good idea now, however for long term not so much. The actual radioactive waste can remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years. When nuclear power stations are decommissioned all the cladding and so on inside the reactor core will also remain radioactive for this amount of time. In the long run this could become incredibly detrimental to peoples health.

I believe the way forward is most likely fusion. It is the basically the same process that the sun uses to create energy. Through putting hydrogen atoms at immense pressure and heat the atoms fuse together creating helium atoms. the Admit ably the ability to actually make more power than you put in to run the machine using this method is not possible, the technology is there. The potential is huge and the only waste that is formed is helium, which isn't such a bad thing.

Porgy

KonaMiniMula1 wrote:

Nuclear energy may seem like a good idea now, however for long term not so much. The actual radioactive waste can remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years. When nuclear power stations are decommissioned all the cladding and so on inside the reactor core will also remain radioactive for this amount of time. In the long run this could become incredibly detrimental to peoples health.

I believe the way forward is most likely fusion. It is the basically the same process that the sun uses to create energy. Through putting hydrogen atoms at immense pressure and heat the atoms fuse together creating helium atoms. the Admit ably the ability to actually make more power than you put in to run the machine using this method is not possible, the technology is there. The potential is huge and the only waste that is formed is helium, which isn't such a bad thing.

Fusion is inevitable now - and of course we'll get there eventually. I heard someone say that we're about 50 years away now - and i know that there were people saying that when i was a kid - but breakthroughs are happening and the amount of money being spent on research for this is a trifling sum.

Solar is the other one I think that when we make THE breakthrough we will have limitless and almost free energy. But there's a way to go yet. Wish our politicians would fecking wake up though!

Frank the tank

ride_whenever

KonaMiniMula1 wrote:

I believe the way forward is most likely fusion. It is the basically the same process that the sun uses to create energy. Through putting hydrogen atoms at immense pressure and heat the atoms fuse together creating helium atoms. the Admit ably the ability to actually make more power than you put in to run the machine using this method is not possible, the technology is there. The potential is huge and the only waste that is formed is helium, which isn't such a bad thing.

Okay, you can certainly make more energy than you put in, large shining example in the day time. And actually for once you can theoretically make more energy than you put in, because you're drawing energy from mass. Splitting water to produce hydrogen and burning it, will not work without some sort of energy input in the cycle.

Fusion reactors just need to be made larger, eventually one will be large enough to generate more energy than you need to sustain the fusion. Even if it ends up the size of a star.

Limburger

Fusion power is something of a play thing for nuclear physicists at the moment I'm afraid. Fusion reactors are huge. km across even. Fusion has never been sustained either. Generating a few megawatts for half a second while consuming twice the power you generate is hardly environmentally friendly.

Also, hydrogen isn't free. In fact its very expensive. It also comes from naptha cracking plants (ie crude oil). You can try and liberate H2 from water but its only going to make your fusion reactor more inefficient.

You would be better off trying to harness lightning power.

Chip \'oyler

Frank the tank wrote:

Well said Frank. Couldn't have put it better myself

zanes

Limburger wrote:

Fusion reactors are huge. km across even.

Ahem;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JET

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LHC


Edit: Also, hydrogen isn't that expensive relatively. Bugger to store properly though.

Other than that, post spot on.

And note the size of the thing is the least of "our" problems atm :oops: