Finally (nuclear power)

Limburger

zanes wrote:

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:

My mistake. Probably thinking about colliders or some other obscure ultra high end kit.

Anyway. Think of all the good nuclear can do. Look at Spiderman.

tebbit

Try getting people to conserve energy, the people who will get the message and really approve are the people who are already interested. Nuclear is only a short term stop gap couple of hundred years, nuclear waste from some view points will only be dangerously active for a few hundred years.

We've got fun with Cs127 in the basement at the moment and contamination on the roof.

zanes

tebbit wrote:

We've got fun with Cs127 in the basement at the moment and contamination on the roof.

Chernobyl fallout?

gkerr4

GeorgeShaw wrote:

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.

yes - but there are ways around this - the early magnox reactors on which I used to work are hideously over engineered - mainly because in the 40s when they were designed people "really" didn't know what to expect or what was likely to happen. So the pressure vessel which is only at 10PSI was build for 1000's of that - the concrete radiatio shield was double what you would expect - every instrument system in quadruple - 3 live and one "live spare" - any one of the three can cause shutdown. so this can be dealt with.s

(course there was some bad stuff - like the windscale piles too which were just a plain stupid idea but hopefully we have moved on!)

gkerr4

zanes wrote:

tebbit wrote:

We've got fun with Cs127 in the basement at the moment and contamination on the roof.

Chernobyl fallout?

interesting - when chernobyl went pop - all four reactors at Chapelcross shut themselves down - the systems detected the contamination cloud and thought there must be a leak - but all other systems (pressure, flow, power etc) registered fine. I think it was one of the counters in the flu-stacks which detected the cloud.

course the russions denied chernobyl for a number of days - cue much head scratching while trying to bring the reactors back up to power!

tebbit

Yes on the roof of Reactor 4, the Cs is in the basement, due to the contamination on the roof we're having to change the ceiling design on the arch.

The UK reactors will most likely be the Westinghouse system.

I'm a contracts person not a scientist or engineer, but I'm learning a lot and it is a fascinating project.

pneumatic

I'm all for it. On one condition. That they build the reactors right in the middle of London, Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester.

Since they are completely 100 percent safe, it seems sensible to build them close to the large urban populations who most need the power generated.

I also propose that the buildings are multipurpose. First n storeys are the power plant, above that we could put nice functional offices (with overnight accommodation) for politicians, above that some really well specced science laboratories for the boffins to work from.

zanes

tebbit wrote:

Yes on the roof of Reactor 4, the Cs is in the basement, due to the contamination on the roof we're having to change the ceiling design on the arch.

The UK reactors will most likely be the Westinghouse system.

I'm a contracts person not a scientist or engineer, but I'm learning a lot and it is a fascinating project.

D'oh thought you meant on your house.

Double d'oh, was thinking of radon in cornwall etc.

The biggest problem with nuclear power (IMHO) is that the people that understand it the most/design it are often the worst at discussing it. And that we've screwed up. A few times.

but no as much as the russians

gkerr4

pneumatic wrote:

I'm all for it. On one condition. That they build the reactors right in the middle of London, Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester.

Since they are completely 100 percent safe, it seems sensible to build them close to the large urban populations who most need the power generated.

I also propose that the buildings are multipurpose. First n storeys are the power plant, above that we could put nice functional offices (with overnight accommodation) for politicians, above that some really well specced science laboratories for the boffins to work from.

nothing is 100% - the air you breathe - the bus you use the gas central heating in your house - a nuclear reactor is no different.

besides, that doesn't make sense for a whole host of reasons - even an experimental reactor the size of a dustbin needs to take up a whole lot of space - like the space of a decent house - for 1st, 2nd, 3rd and aux cooling circuits, gas flow, control systems and rods + biological and radiation containment - they really aren't small things on an industrial scale.

besides - would you want a coal or gas fired station in the city centres? probably not - not when land costs multiples of remote agri-land and so much is needed.

pneumatic

gkerr4 wrote:

remote agri-land

This is

a/ where I live
b/ going to be very valuable when we start running out of food

Build the power stations in urban gap sites and put other urban stuff on top of them. Makes sense.

and what do you mean it is not 100% safe. Of course it is.

Jez mon

At the end of the day, unlike petroleum, there is quite a bit of coal left and as it's a relatively easy technology to implement there are going to be more and more coal fuelled power stations being built for the foreseeable future.

What needs looking at is the fact that at current estimates we are going to run out of petrolium pretty damn soon which is basically going to screw mankind over!

gkerr4

pneumatic wrote:

gkerr4 wrote:

remote agri-land

This is

a/ where I live
b/ going to be very valuable when we start running out of food

Build the power stations in urban gap sites and put other urban stuff on top of them. Makes sense.

and what do you mean it is not 100% safe. Of course it is.

it's also where I live - on a farm no less - so agree with you there.

I still don't agree with putting them in cities!

if something goes wrong - not just nuclear - coal, gas fired - even those damned wind vanes falling off (have you seen the size of those things close up!?!) - the consequences on immediate loss of life are far fewer in the country..

Splottboy

Secret Welsh Assembly Meeting, Cardiff Bay:

" Right, Boyo's, what we'll do is this: We'll put 2 Nuclear Power Station in North Wales, coz no one lives there, or at least no one like Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey or Rugby players...and we'll spend about a Billion Dollars on the Bay project to keep the South happy!

All in favour? Passed then. Now who's got the tickets for this Fridays Wales/Samoa game?"

DavidBelcher

gkerr4 wrote:

interesting - when chernobyl went pop - all four reactors at Chapelcross shut themselves down - the systems detected the contamination cloud and thought there must be a leak - but all other systems (pressure, flow, power etc) registered fine. I think it was one of the counters in the flu-stacks which detected the cloud.

Apparently the safety systems at the Wylfa plant on Anglesey did the same thing! Not sure if the reactors shut down in that instance, but the detectors certainly registered the presence of the cloud.

David

GeorgeShaw

gkerr4 wrote:

yes - but there are ways around this - the early magnox reactors on which I used to work are hideously over engineered - mainly because in the 40s when they were designed people "really" didn't know what to expect or what was likely to happen. So the pressure vessel which is only at 10PSI was build for 1000's of that - the concrete radiatio shield was double what you would expect - every instrument system in quadruple - 3 live and one "live spare" - any one of the three can cause shutdown. so this can be dealt with.

Yet the Magnox reactors have been hideously unreliable ... bad welds, etc. Though not as bad as the AGR at Dungeness, which was caused, I believe, by the operators letting sea water into the cooling system. But that's the problem, you see. Even when built, one "error" and the repairs are hideously expensive or impossible. Isn't there a leak in one of the old cooling ponds at Trawsfynedd (spelling?), which they're still trying to work out how to fix. It's easy when you've a problem with a bridge or a railway. You just dig things out and replace them. When it's in a contaminated area, it's not so simple. And whatever you say, things break.

brownleather

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. Which now means we have two choices;

1.Rush build some academy somewhere for it.

2.Pay a foreign company (probably the french) to build/design/operate it for us.

Good old UK.

Manchester do Nuclear Engineering Research.

http://www.manchester.ac.uk/postgraduat ... /?index=NG

zanes

brownleather wrote:

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. Which now means we have two choices;

1.Rush build some academy somewhere for it.

2.Pay a foreign company (probably the french) to build/design/operate it for us.

Good old UK.

Manchester do Nuclear Engineering Research.

http://www.manchester.ac.uk/postgraduat ... /?index=NG

Ooops, of course I only looked at undergrad stuff when I applied a few years ago :oops:

Interesting to know, but I think my interests have shifted away from nuclear now, even if I do go on to do some postgrad stuff (atm looking likely )

symo

As a project manager (and former mechanical engineer) working in the energy industry, we need nuclear now.
It is retarded to suggest that the energy needs of a modern society can be met with renewables. Right now we need more local CHP schemes, taxation on those lovely scrolling bill boards (plus anything else which is merely frippery to life) and fast breeder nuclear reactors.

The water pressure reactors we have now are part of some sh1te deal maggie did with the septics who know sweet fnck all about maths and less still about engineering. The Gas Cooled Fast Reactors are superior to the water technology ones and are a better way to meet our energy needs.

Oh and what to do with waste? I am with Professor Lovelock inventor of the Gaia theory. He says stick it in the rain forest which will a) protect the rain forest and b) nature will adapt (witness chernobyl area).

Bored of bleeding hearts who see no link between them listening to music and greenhouse gases, or their trip to the supermarket in the car. As for where to site,the government should take a leaf out of the French's book; "In the national interest" trumps house prices.

Despite the recent finds you don't realise how expensive fossil fuels are to become.

Oh and the geothermal plant in Cornwall. Dumped a lakes worth of water into the rock fissure and it never came back up!!!

PLus there is no "nuclear shutdown switch" all that can be done is to stop the reaction which is a controlled process and not available on a key in the operators room stating "Shutdown the Reactor". Also nuclear operators are assessed and trained in simulators regularly. Do you think they let any monkey into the control room (actually been to one in Northern France (incidently where do you think the electricity you get is coming from London peeps?)) and I had to stay behing a rail in the operating room that kept me out of reach of any switches whatsoever.

zanes

symo wrote:

PLus there is no "nuclear shutdown switch" all that can be done is to stop the reaction which is a controlled process and not available on a key in the operators room stating "Shutdown the Reactor". Also nuclear operators are assessed and trained in simulators regularly. Do you think they let any monkey into the control room (actually been to one in Northern France (incidently where do you think the electricity you get is coming from London peeps?)) and I had to stay behing a rail in the operating room that kept me out of reach of any switches whatsoever.

I thought a SCRAM was pretty much an abrupt shut off of the nuclear reaction (although, obviously, the rest of the SCRAM process (control rods/coolant flow/etc) is highly managed and controlled) and that once SCRAM'd a reactor was essentially "dead" in the sense of on going reactions. Although, iirc the exact shutdown procedure/response varies greatly between reactor types?

Note: This isn't an area I currently read up on. When I did, the maths scared me nearly as much as rocket engine design mathematics does now

brownleather

zanes wrote:

Ooops, of course I only looked at undergrad stuff when I applied a few years ago :oops:

Interesting to know, but I think my interests have shifted away from nuclear now, even if I do go on to do some postgrad stuff (atm looking likely )

TBH, departments pack up because they don't have the money given to them by industry, or they don't get enough interested students to make a department viable.

I can't imagine they'd be all that many jobs available for undergrads anyway in the industry which couldn't be done by other science or engineering disciplines. What you are taught at undergrad is "theory" anyway, reality only sets in when you are industry.

zanes

brownleather wrote:

zanes wrote:

Ooops, of course I only looked at undergrad stuff when I applied a few years ago :oops:

Interesting to know, but I think my interests have shifted away from nuclear now, even if I do go on to do some postgrad stuff (atm looking likely )

TBH, departments pack up because they don't have the money given to them by industry, or they don't get enough interested students to make a department viable.

I can't imagine they'd be all that many jobs available for undergrads anyway in the industry which couldn't be done by other science or engineering disciplines. What you are taught at undergrad is "theory" anyway, reality only sets in when you are industry.

Tell me about it, on placement atm. Although I do remember with fondness a transistor amplifier experiment we did once, told to work out all component values and build them. Which was fine. Until the smoke started.

Iirc the nuclear engineering course that packed in was a joint degree between physics and (mech/civil???) engineering departments. Which, if our integrated engineering course is anything to go by would not be too brilliant.

I agree that while "any" sci/eng grad could do the jobs a nuclear eng graduate could do, the nuclear course would at least mean graduates would graduate looking to go into the nuclear industry, unlike me who now will be happy to go and do silly things with flexible mirrors and very old photons (here endeth the OT )

Also, you may only be taught theory at undergrad but it is up to you whether to learn other stuff. Which is why when I'm at uni rapid/farnell/rs get too much of my beer tokenry.

geoff_ss

zanes wrote:

brownleather wrote:

zanes wrote:

Ooops, of course I only looked at undergrad stuff when I applied a few years ago :oops:

Interesting to know, but I think my interests have shifted away from nuclear now, even if I do go on to do some postgrad stuff (atm looking likely )

TBH, departments pack up because they don't have the money given to them by industry, or they don't get enough interested students to make a department viable.

I can't imagine they'd be all that many jobs available for undergrads anyway in the industry which couldn't be done by other science or engineering disciplines. What you are taught at undergrad is "theory" anyway, reality only sets in when you are industry.

Tell me about it, on placement atm. Although I do remember with fondness a transistor amplifier experiment we did once, told to work out all component values and build them. Which was fine. Until the smoke started.

Iirc the nuclear engineering course that packed in was a joint degree between physics and (mech/civil???) engineering departments. Which, if our integrated engineering course is anything to go by would not be too brilliant.

I agree that while "any" sci/eng grad could do the jobs a nuclear eng graduate could do, the nuclear course would at least mean graduates would graduate looking to go into the nuclear industry, unlike me who now will be happy to go and do silly things with flexible mirrors and very old photons (here endeth the OT )

Also, you may only be taught theory at undergrad but it is up to you whether to learn other stuff. Which is why when I'm at uni rapid/farnell/rs get too much of my beer tokenry.

You soon learn that electronic circuits depend on smoke. Once it's gone it no longer functions.

My electronics education started with thermionic valves and continued through semi-conductors and integrated circuits until I ended up designing circuits on a PC to be realised on PLDs (Progammable Logic Devices) driven by software I'd written.

Trouble is I hardly understood what a lot on the younger guys and girls who supposedly worked for me were doing by the time I retired .

I'm old enough to remember when the advocates of 'atoms for peace' were claiming it would result in electrical energy 'too cheap to meter'. Alas the costs proved to be rather higher than that and in fact ended up far more expensive (in an economic sense) than that generated from coal dug out of the ground beneath my feet.

So what about the new generation of nuclear power stations? I'm quite sure they'll be built because it's difficult to wean ourselves off energy at the touch of a switch. I also remember a period when power cuts were part of normal life. It was a pain then; it'll be a bigger pain now. I'm quite sure they can be made as safe as anything can be but one concern is their potential as terrorist targets. If a dozen determined zealots are capable of flying large aeroplanes into a pair of New York skyscrapers then eventually they're going to try the same thing on a power station. I assume that could have far reaching consequences.

Geoff

finchy

symo wrote:

Oh and what to do with waste? I am with Professor Lovelock inventor of the Gaia theory. He says stick it in the rain forest which will a) protect the rain forest and b) nature will adapt (witness chernobyl area).

:shock: We appear to have a nutcase.

You are joking aren't you?

Please, be joking.

gkerr4

johnfinch wrote:

symo wrote:

Oh and what to do with waste? I am with Professor Lovelock inventor of the Gaia theory. He says stick it in the rain forest which will a) protect the rain forest and b) nature will adapt (witness chernobyl area).

:shock: We appear to have a nutcase.

You are joking aren't you?

Please, be joking.

this is pretty well known - he's not made it up if thats what you mean?

whether you agree with the gaia theory is entirely up to you of course. personally I can see some positives in it.

finchy

gkerr4 wrote:

johnfinch wrote:

symo wrote:

Oh and what to do with waste? I am with Professor Lovelock inventor of the Gaia theory. He says stick it in the rain forest which will a) protect the rain forest and b) nature will adapt (witness chernobyl area).

:shock: We appear to have a nutcase.

You are joking aren't you?

Please, be joking.

this is pretty well known - he's not made it up if thats what you mean?

whether you agree with the gaia theory is entirely up to you of course. personally I can see some positives in it.

I know about the Gaia theory, but I never knew that Lovelock believed in leaving radioactive waste in the rainforests. I thought that he would have been aware that the rainforests are inhabited by human beings.

rake

+paul

Before deciding on the appropriateness of nuclear power, it is worth considering exactly what problem are we trying to mitigate. Currently climate change is foremost in the minds of many people, and nuclear is therefore a good answer because it is carbon free. Or is it? How much rock has to be mined to remove the ore from the ground? How much energy is required to process the ore to refine the uranium into usable fuel rods? How much energy is required to make the cement for the power station? How much energy will be spent creating storage facilities for the radioactive waste? How much energy will be required for ongoing storage management?

Some useful stats:
EREOI (energy return on energy invested) for nuclear: 3. For comparison, Hydro: 87; offshore wind: 40; Biodiesel: 2; coal: 8.

Carbon footprint: (grams of CO2 per kWH): offshore wind: 2.5; Hydro: 3.5; nuclear:250; coal: 974.

Still a good idea?

The second problem the human race is facing currently is "peak oil": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil. If you don't want to follow the link, here is a quick summary: The rate of oil production/extraction has, or shortly will reach a peak, and from this point on the supply of oil will be outstripped by demand, unless we find ways of reducing our dependence. We aren't going to run out shortly, but the price volatility and supply constraints will have a major impact in many areas. I encourage you to go and read more about it.

Nuclear power may seem like a good way to mitigate the effects of peak oil, but it has a climate impact. When considering strategies for the future, it is important to consider mitigating the effects of climate change and peak oil.

I strongly recommend you read http://transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/TransitionHandbook. If gives a clear introduction to the issues we are facing, and some strategies for the future. It also points the way to other sources of information where you can become better informed. When you have a better understanding, contact your local MP and start campaigning. Tell your friends. This is important!

You will note that I haven't used the safety argument, or the moral argument (leaving thousands of tonnes of nuclear waste for future generations etc). This issue is too important to polarise around one issue.

andyxm

+paul wrote:

Some useful stats:
EREOI (energy return on energy invested) for nuclear: 3. For comparison, Hydro: 87; offshore wind: 40; Biodiesel: 2; coal: 8.

Carbon footprint: (grams of CO2 per kWH): offshore wind: 2.5; Hydro: 3.5; nuclear:250; coal: 974.

Source?

Pross

Be interesting to know where that came from. In their calculations have they taken account of the energy used in producing materials required in constructing dams or wind turbines? Are the energy costs associated with constructing the power station included? Is this a whole life assessment? Why is bio diesel so high when it could be harvested and transported by vehicles running on bio diesel? Also, if the energy being used to produce the fuel is being generated from carbon free sources does it matter how much is used?

mrushton

Unfortunately, nuclear power is seen as something for nothing and nobody ever shows the true costs. What does it cost to build,fuel,staff and decommision a power plant and what does it cost for waste storage over the half life of the waste? They do provide a convenient way of fuelling nuclear bombs. India is looking to build 31 nuclear power stations if that's any cause for worry.
Italy has a non-nuclear policy but just buys its power from France (the leading exponent of nuclear tech)