More Nuclear Power Please & Not This

mr_goo

Before one of you starts doing a bit of web research I have done quite a bit. You may wish to check out the wind farm history of Denmark.
Over 20% of the electricity generated by the Danes comes from Wind Farms, which are in the most part community owned. Thus generating revenue for local people. As electricity from wind farms cannot be stored, virtually all of it is exported to Norway and Sweden to power up the pumps used on Hydro Electric plants. Therefore so called environmentally friendly power generation is not being used by the consumer but merely to fuel other power generating sources.

team47b

I think us open toe sandal tree huggers were more astounded by your desire for more nuclear power

BelgianBeerGeek

Nuclear power is the way forward. We have an immense appetite for power that can only get bigger when we all start driving electric cars.
My local council want to build a 7500 house town at the back of my house. I would rather they built a nuclear power station.

daviesee

BelgianBeerGeek wrote:

Nuclear power is the way forward. We have an immense appetite for power that can only get bigger when we all start driving electric cars.
My local council want to build a 7500 house town at the back of my house. I would rather they built a nuclear power station.

Yeah!
Lets build nuclear power stations to charge up the "green" electrical cars. :twisted:

team47b

BelgianBeerGeek wrote:

Nuclear power is the way forward. We have an immense appetite for power that can only get bigger when we all start driving electric cars.

is that what they told you to think?

MaxwellBygraves

If we put aside the practical elements of the argument and focus purely on the aesthetic - I've never understood the 'ugly' objection to wind turbines, I think they look beautiful and genuinely enjoy seeing them on the horizon, in the countryside, etc. I've always thought they add rather than detract.

capt_slog

Mr Goo wrote:

Before one of you starts doing a bit of web research I have done quite a bit. You may wish to check out the wind farm history of Denmark.
Over 20% of the electricity generated by the Danes comes from Wind Farms, which are in the most part community owned. Thus generating revenue for local people. As electricity from wind farms cannot be stored, virtually all of it is exported to Norway and Sweden to power up the pumps used on Hydro Electric plants. Therefore so called environmentally friendly power generation is not being used by the consumer but merely to fuel other power generating sources.

I'm guessing that they use the 'spare' electricity to pump the water up hill in off-peak times into high reservoirs so they can release it when they need to make power in peak times. The same thing is done in Wales at the Llanberis power station, look up "Electric Mountain".


You said above...."As electricity from wind farms cannot be stored". You make this sound as if this is peculiar to the power from wind turbines, and it isn't. We can't normally store any power from power stations, okay, we can switch them off, but this isn't as easy as throwing a switch. The 'pumping water' method is how they store electrical power in the generating industry, it's the only way I know of at the moment.

One environmentally friendly source is being put to best use to help provide generating power in another environmentally friendly power station, there's no fuel being used, surely that's the point.

natrix

Kieran_Burns wrote:

Gawd...

http://singularityhub.com/2012/12/11/no ... r-reactor/

Read up on Thorium reactors and maybe research on the 'dangers' of Nuclear reactors.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.html for some more reading

The nuclear industry still hasn't come up with a sensible way of dealing with the waste they create, until they can get to grips with that issue all their talk about the new thorium 'super-fuel' is just a lot of hot air.

(I'm so glad that I invested in a local wind farm project, if only to p**s off folk who hate them 8) 8) 8) )

tiredofwhiners

There are never going to be enough renewables to keep the lights on and people moving 24/7.

People are not going to be happy when the lights go out or their cars cannot move.

People don't like the idea of nuclear in general, but dislike living in an electricity free world even more.

People will put up with 100% nuclear, if thats what it takes to keep civilisation going, and as long as the waste isn't in their doorstep.

They will however have it on their doorstep if the alternative choice is lights off.

Nuclear is here to stay and in 50+ years time will be the only reliable, cheapish source our ancestors will have.

daviesee

tiredofwhiners wrote:

...............
Nuclear is here to stay and in 50+ years time will be the only reliable, cheapish source our decendents will have.

FTFY.
Tee Hee

bompington

natrix wrote:

The nuclear industry still hasn't come up with a way of dealing with the waste they create that will satisfy all its opponents, who like nothing better than to spread scare stories that vastly inflate the cost of nuclear energy, then point out how expensive it is

FTFY

tiredofwhiners

natrix wrote:

The nuclear industry still hasn't come up with a sensible way of dealing with the waste they create, until they can get to grips with that issue all their talk about the new thorium 'super-fuel' is just a lot of hot air

Fair point, but remember that there are a whole lot of folks who will NEVER accept anything to do with nuclear is safe for purely dogmatic reasons. Its like talking to a PETA advocate about how nice bacon tastes - you're wasting your breath.

Its nasty stuff that gets produced but it really is just one of the ways we are going to have to pay for our high technology, energy sucking lifestyles, and no "tofu eating, left wing crusty" is going to persuade the majority to do without.

Tom Dean

Mr Goo wrote:

Fantastic. It seems all the Metropolitan elite have crept out of the wood work

I hope I am included in this

Looking again at the original picture, you can hardly see the windmills FFS. Very unobtrusive. If you want nuclear (not that I think you shouldn't), lets put a power station there instead.

Frank the tank

tiredofwhiners wrote:

natrix wrote:

The nuclear industry still hasn't come up with a sensible way of dealing with the waste they create, until they can get to grips with that issue all their talk about the new thorium 'super-fuel' is just a lot of hot air

Fair point, but remember that there are a whole lot of folks who will NEVER accept anything to do with nuclear is safe for purely dogmatic reasons. Its like talking to a PETA advocate about how nice bacon tastes - you're wasting your breath.

Its nasty stuff that gets produced but it really is just one of the ways we are going to have to pay for our high technology, energy sucking lifestyles, and no "tofu eating, left wing crusty" is going to persuade the majority to do without.

You relly enjoy stereotyping people don't you. I believe in nuclear but I'm no right winger.

natrix

If you think that windfarms are obtrusive, what about the Severn barrage!!

Although plans have currently been scrapped as its too expensive compared to 'cheap as chips' nuclear (£18bn compared to Sellafield clean up costs of £68bn and rising).

pinno

Nuclear power is okay on paper and okay because of the IF factor.
If we could deal with the waste properly...
If we harness other types of radio-active material...
If we could somehow make it safe...

This isn't woolly liberal, tree hugging, tofu eating left wing rubbish. This is the reality. Too many IFS and ANDS.

AND Certain types of radioactive material are finite, just like oil.

AND Open cast mining is an environmental disaster.

We are not investing in/investing in research solar power, wave power etc. The solution to energy problems is to subsidise the national grid with micro-generation. Community owned projects where the vested interest is in the hands of people - like Denmark rather than the corporatised and imposed system that is in place in the UK.
Whilst I was in Sweden, a statistic was published based on an EU report. If we all switched off all the appliances that were on standby in Europe (before the extra countries were accepted in), we could get rid of one nuclear power station.

secretsam

Mr Goo wrote:

Fantastic. It seems all the Metropolitan elite have crept out of the wood work and swapped their carbon soled SIDIs for open toed sandals.

{blah, blah}

Of interest to you tree huggers out there

Then you go on to tell us all to save juice, which is kind of tree-huggy, n'est-ce pas?

And who are you callling a) Metropolitan (isn't that a kind of cake?) and b) elite?

I'm a fat bloke living in Bucks with a terminal case of untrendy-itis

Geordiemc

Another nuclear supporter here. Unless we curb population growth and all cut back energy use dramatically then wind turbines just won't cut it. Wave energy seems a more viable option. Tide comes in and out twice a day everyday.

mr_goo

I went to the consultation evening for the giant Navitus Wind Farm development. The representatives of the Eneco(Dutch) and EDF (French) consortium admitted when I asked. That they would not be trying to develope this site if there were no government subsidies. For a site of this size it will run into £Billions over its 20-25 year life span.
Yes the site will only be there for a max of 25 years. By which time £billions will have been banked and our electricity bills would have probably doubled or tripled.

Conservation of electricity is the best way forward. Failing this next generation nuclear. Nuclear fusion perhaps.

rob churchill

You're worried about disposal of waste from nuclear power stations? Consider this:

We currently burn about 6,000,000,000 tonnes of coal a year, and the Chinese are building coal-fired power stations faster than Tesco Expresses.

Coal is about 1 part per million to 100 parts per million uranium, depending on the source.

Taking the lower figure, that's 6,000 tonnes of uranium in coal-burning emissions per year. Anybody care to tell me where it went? Was it a) sealed in flasks capable of withstanding collision with a freight train and dumped in deep mines, or b) pumped into the atmosphere?

Nuclear power stations can be run long after uranium ore runs out, we just have to mine uranium from the fly-ash dumps round the old coal power stations, instead of spreading it on the roads whenever it snows.

DrKJM

I'm going to nail my colours very firmly to the mast. Wind, as baseload for a national supply, is useless. Still day? You're knackered. Windy day? Ditto. Breezy day? Marvellous, turn stuff on. Wind has its place, but the intermittent and uncontrollable nature of its generation means that those big "it'll replace Drax" type installations are more about politicians being able to demonstrate their green credentials than they are about sensible capacity planning. And I tend to agree with the OP, they're bloody ugly. Just as ugly as nuclear installations and often visually more intrusive because they HAVE to be situated where you can see the damned things for miles. You can at least hide nuclear/coal/gas sets in the landscape a bit.

We are an island built on coal. Mrs T did her damndest to destroy the industry that digs the stuff out of the ground but it's still there. The only sensible approach to future energy needs has to be based on a mix of sources: coal and gas, nuclear, wave, community scale wind. And turning stuff off.

tiredofwhiners

I was all with you until you came up with the usual old tripe of

DrKJM wrote:

Mrs T did her damndest to destroy the industry that digs the stuff out of the ground but it's still there..

No, she stopped subsidising an industry with massive costs, low productivity which was being run with the publicly stated intent of overthrowing the elected government. The public were paying most of miners wages through subsidies. Much like British Leyland.

My solution is to go nuclear but that anyone who objects, doesn't get the electricity that it generates. They can live off the shared output of wind and solar and wave power. Except at night, when its calm and the tides are in ebb. They they can live off the power generated by their own hypocrisy

cornerblock

tiredofwhiners wrote:

They they can live off the power generated by their own hypocrisy

And all the hot air you come out with should keep you going.

Jez mon

A lot of the mines were closed without the foresight that coal mining might want to be resumed. Coal is generally freaking inefficient and even more so when necessary post processing is taken into account (flue gas desulphurization and Carbon capture) so you need to burn a lot of stuff, which is only going to get more expensive, to get energy which is clean-ish. Not to mention, the capital cost of the processing technologies.

Nuclear has an image problem, and not without good reason. But because of the basic economics, you can ramp up the cost of the fuel fairly dramatically, without effecting the end cost of the power generated too much. This means that technologies to get uranium from seawater could be feasible, which gives almost unlimited supply ( for all intents and purposes)

ben@31

pinarello001 wrote:

Nuclear power is okay on paper and okay because of the IF factor.
If we could deal with the waste properly...
If we harness other types of radio-active material...
If we could somehow make it safe...

This isn't woolly liberal, tree hugging, tofu eating left wing rubbish. This is the reality. Too many IFS and ANDS.

AND Certain types of radioactive material are finite, just like oil.

AND Open cast mining is an environmental disaster.

It's not reality as you're incorrect.

Thorium is considered the “most abundant, most readily available, cleanest, and safest” energy source on Earth", adds Martin.“[15]:7
Thorium is four times as abundant as uranium and as common as lead. The Thorium Energy Alliance (TEA) estimates "there is enough thorium in the United States alone to power the country at its current energy level for over 1,000 years." [17][18][unreliable source] "America has buried tons as a by-product of rare earth metals mining," notes Evans-Pritchard. "Norway has so much that Oslo is planning a post-oil era where thorium might drive the country’s next great phase of wealth. Even Britain has seams in Wales and in the granite cliffs of Cornwall. Almost all thorium is fertile Th-232, compared to uranium that is composed of 99.3% fertile U-238 and 0.7% more valuable fissile U-235. There is enough to power civilization for thousands of years."[19]
Thorium is safer and cleaner than uranium because its radioactivity is significantly lower: "A chunk of thorium is no more harmful than a bar of soap", states Martin.[15]:11
LFTR reactors offer many attractive passive safety features. Kirk Sorensen notes that because LFTRs operate at atmospheric pressure, hydrogen explosions as happened in Fukushima, Japan in 2011, are not possible. "One of these reactors would have come through the tsunami just fine. There would have been no radiation release."[19] Meltdown is impossible, since nuclear chain reactions cannot be sustained, and fission stops by default in case of accident.[15]:13[20]
It is nearly impossible to make a practical nuclear bomb from a thorium reactor's byproducts. According to Alvin Radkowsky, designer of the world’s first full-scale atomic electric power plant, "a thorium reactor's plutonium production rate would be less than 2 percent of that of a standard reactor, and the plutonium's isotopic content would make it unsuitable for a nuclear detonation."[15]:11[21]
There is much less nuclear waste—up to two orders of magnitude less, states Moir and Teller,[4] eliminating the need for large-scale or long-term storage;[15]:13 "Chinese scientists claim that hazardous waste will be a thousand times less than with uranium."[19] The radioactivity of the resulting waste also drops down to safe levels after just a few hundred years, compared to tens of thousands of years needed for current nuclear waste to cool off.[22]

pinno

ben@31 wrote:

It's not reality as you're incorrect... ...to cool off.[22]

If we could produce Nuclear reactors which use Thorium...

How far away from practical use is it ?

ben@31

pinarello001 wrote:

If we could produce Nuclear reactors which use Thorium...

How far away from practical use is it ?

Diadvantages of thorium nuclear power:

It is "technically immature," and would require a significant financial investment.

I think theres only 5 running at the moment. India , for example, currently generates 97% of its electricity from coal and oil, it will be 2025 before it gets it 62 Thorium reactors operational.

pinno

Thatcher not only pulled the plug on coal mining, she also pulled the plug on the research on the derivatives of coal.
I have a friend who was employed by the NCB in one of their research labs in Cheltenham of all places. They were making huge advances by distillation of tars and oils.
The Chinese have no problem burning billions of tons of coal - look at the pollution stories recently. They feel that they are answerable to no one and won't sign up to the Kyoto protocol. Their economic rise is simbiotic with cheap energy but contrary to any environmental/human concerns.

ThatBikeGuy

Don't mind either way, we already have a nuclear power plant in hartlepool and the first turbines in a rather sizeable "farm" are being assembled just off the coast.

symo

I am currently working on installing the worlds second largest windfarm. For me the future is wind/solar/tidal AND nuclear. As an engineer who has worked in the energy industry for my whole career this is the future. Nuclear is needed for base load, renewables for everything else.

Once we have developed off peak energy storage then we will be in a better position too.

Fusion at the moment is just over the horizon, the JTER experiments have shown great success but ITER should provide a valuable start to the future of energy generation.