America proposal to go all-renewable

Originally posted by sonhouse
Nuclear is certain, however the downsides are considerable. Look at Chernobyl or 3 mile Island. And you have to find a REALLY deep hole to deposit that 100,000 year half life leftovers. Fortunately the big accidents like Fukashima are few and far between but when they happen and they WILL happen somewhere sometime, they are really big disasters.

I see Fi ...[text shortened]... y day.

Now if the scientists and engineers will just get off their deadbeat asses and do it!

googlefudge is right about this. Windscale was not a nuclear power plant, it was a nuclear barbeque for making plutonium and the reason for the calamity was that they did not understand the physics of graphite in strong neutron fluxes well enough. At Chernobyl they did everything wrong, it's quite breath-taking, but the critical failure was to think they could save money by omitting a containment dome. Again at Fukishima there were problems with the design of the reactor. The safety rods were raised into the core rather than dropped. This is an obviously stupid move as it means you need power on to SCRAM the reactor. In British AGR's the safety rods are spring loaded and held out of the reactor by a magnet, so that in the event of a failure where power is lost the reactor is automatically SCRAMMED. Three Mile Island is the most worrying, but the design had some defects, most notably it was overcomplicated in the way engineering tended to be at that time.

By way of comparison look up Chapelcross nuclear power station. They had a single channel fuel clad melt (partial meltdown) in 1967 and the reactor was up and running again in 1969.

The main worry with nuclear projects is that some idiots decide that it is more important to go for the cheapest option than the safest.

Originally posted by DeepThought
The main worry with nuclear projects is that some idiots decide that it is more important to go for the cheapest option than the safest.

The human factor is a very real worry - and examples of it happening even in the most developed countries is perfectly valid evidence that it happens and may happen again.
For you to declare nuclear 'safe' you have to ask 'what is the worst case scenario?' and declare that an acceptable cost.
One of my biggest problems with nuclear in SA is that it is shrouded in secrecy and thus gets very little oversight.

Originally posted by twhitehead
The human factor is a very real worry - and examples of it happening even in the most developed countries is perfectly valid evidence that it happens and may happen again.
For you to declare nuclear 'safe' you have to ask 'what is the worst case scenario?' and declare that an acceptable cost.
One of my biggest problems with nuclear in SA is that it is shrouded in secrecy and thus gets very little oversight.

With South Africa being the only country to have developed nuclear weapons and to have abandoned them - they were for internal use only, and the end of Apartheid meant the end of the 'need' for nuclear urban pacification - it is not clear why they would want to maintain a shroud of secrecy around their civilian nuclear program. Other than the necessity of keeping the whereabouts of nuclear waste and plutonium secret from people who would try to steal it for the purposes of making a dirty or nuclear bomb, the only reason I can think of for secrecy is, as you say, to cover up safety shortcomings.

Originally posted by DeepThought
googlefudge is right about this. Windscale was not a nuclear power plant, it was a nuclear barbeque for making plutonium and the reason for the calamity was that they did not understand the physics of graphite in strong neutron fluxes well enough. At Chernobyl they did everything wrong, it's quite breath-taking, but the critical failure was to t ...[text shortened]... that some idiots decide that it is more important to go for the cheapest option than the safest.

Indeed. Although that is a worry that is applicable to almost any field of endeavour.

Aircraft being a prime example.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Indeed. Although that is a worry that is applicable to almost any field of endeavour.

Aircraft being a prime example.

Yes, although while the consequences of an aircraft crashing into a city are intense, they don't persist for fifty odd millenia.

Originally posted by DeepThought
Yes, although while the consequences of an aircraft crashing into a city are intense, they don't persist for fifty odd millenia.

Generally speaking neither does the consequences of nuclear accidents.

Ignoring the very localised area around the Fukashima reactors [for example]
the evacuated [previously inhabited] area has radiation levels that are in the
top end [or just above] of normal background levels.

And given exponential decay, those levels will drop.

There are communities living in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl, and they
are not exhibiting detectable excess cancers or other disease, beyond those normally
seen in poor communities.

Sure, if nothing is done to clean the place up [likely to be much easier in a few decades
with autonomous robotics] the actual reactor and surroundings might be dangerous
for those kinds of time scales. But that's a very very very small area of effect compared
to the size of the habitable Earth.

And in terms of casualties, every nuclear accident combined has not killed as many people
as a single large aircraft crash.

Originally posted by googlefudge
And in terms of casualties, every nuclear accident combined has not killed as many people as a single large aircraft crash.

And it must be noted here that coal and other fossil fuels cause millions of deaths each year.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollution/en/

Originally posted by twhitehead
And it must be noted here that coal and other fossil fuels cause millions of deaths each year.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollution/en/

Absolutely.

To which point, I am increasingly coming to the point of view that those continuing to
push for polluting fossil fuel power are guilty of mass murder* and crimes against humanity
and as such should face [life] prison sentences.

This includes all members of all governments who do not push clean energy as fast as humanly
possible.

Perhaps if our leaders had such a Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads they might actually
do something about the problem.


*Or whatever the correct legal term is for knowingly causing millions of people to die through your
actions... Mass corporate manslaughter? whatever, mass murder carries the gravity of the crime.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-summit-france-solar-idUSKBN0TK5GW20151201

Apparently France (the star of the nuclear world) has just built a solar power plant (based on solar panels) that can produce power cheaper than nuclear.

Originally posted by twhitehead
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-summit-france-solar-idUSKBN0TK5GW20151201

Apparently France (the star of the nuclear world) has just built a solar power plant (based on solar panels) that can produce power cheaper than nuclear.

From the same article it says that France's currently installed nuclear is around half the
cost per MWhr than this solar plant. The 'New Nuclear' it's being compared to is being
built as a 'one off' and not mass produced as France's current reactors were.

So, nothing to see here.

Originally posted by googlefudge
From the same article it says that France's currently installed nuclear is around half the
cost per MWhr than this solar plant. The 'New Nuclear' it's being compared to is being
built as a 'one off' and not mass produced as France's current reactors were.

So, nothing to see here.

I doubt any of the figures quoted are true levelized costs.
It remains the case however that if France were to build a new nuclear reactor those are the costs they seem to be expecting. Clearly there is something to see there. What France did in the past, or how it manages to sell nuclear power from old plants for less is hardly relevant. My own guess is not that it is cheaper because they were massed produced but because they were heavily subsidized and continue to be subsidized.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I doubt any of the figures quoted are true levelized costs.
It remains the case however that if France were to build a new nuclear reactor those are the costs they seem to be expecting. Clearly there is something to see there. What France did in the past, or how it manages to sell nuclear power from old plants for less is hardly relevant. My own guess is ...[text shortened]... ey were massed produced but because they were heavily subsidized and continue to be subsidized.

It's likely, after the Suez debacle they wanted a fully independent nuclear deterrent which meant building nuclear power plants to produce plutonium. The French state had a clear interest in selling the nuclear power option to its population and if nuclear power is expensive then they had a strategic interest in secretly subsidizing the plants. Whether they did or not is a matter of speculation.

The costs are affected by prices of things like boron (a neutron absorber) and costs of uranium mining, which I assume has become more expensive with improved safety, wages in the construction industry and so forth. So that it is more expensive to build them now is not necessarily evidence of subsidy in the past.

On a related note, the last fighter a British company designed and built single handedly was the Hawker Harrier. They were then forced into a merger with BAC to form the nationalized British Aerospace, now BAe Systems. Consolidation in the British aircraft industry seems to have resulted in an industry which cannot produce aircraft on its own.

Originally posted by humy

Nuts like you say ...

you mean people that, unlike you, are qualified scientists and actually see a problem you cannot see because they understand the physics while you don't?

How bad then could nuclear power be as a solution to your little problem since it gives off zero carbon emissions and on a mass scale? Huh?

I ...[text shortened]... fairly modest scale up of nuclear as a partial solution with renewables doing most of the rest.

As for killing the world economy, this is key.

Economic booms produce more carbon emissions.

There is no way around it.

Do you then advocate the destruction of world economies around the world all in the name of environmentalism?

Originally posted by whodey
As for killing the world economy, this is key.

Economic booms produce more carbon emissions.

There is no way around it.

Do you then advocate the destruction of world economies around the world all in the name of environmentalism?

Economic booms produce more carbon emissions.

Do you have any evidence for this, or a reference? Everything I've heard is that pollution and emissions increase during recessions as the cheaper options are chosen and corners are cut.

Originally posted by whodey
As for killing the world economy, this is key.

Economic booms produce more carbon emissions.

There is no way around it.

Do you then advocate the destruction of world economies around the world all in the name of environmentalism?

Economic booms produce more carbon emissions.

There is no way around it.

Why would it be impossible to have an economical boom with infrastructure developed to be carbon neutral?
I see no particular reason why it couldn't be possible to have an economic boom without destroying our future.

...all in the name of environmentalism?

Although, obviously, with all else equal, it would be better to not pollute or make our environment less hospitable for ourselves, I don't support and never have supported "environmentalism" in particular, just humanity. I do not regard myself as an 'environmentalist'. Me wanting carbon emissions reduced to avoid excessive global warming is just as a result of me having compassion for future generations after I have gone and thus isn't about and never was about "environmentalism". I do not subscribe to the philosophy of protecting the 'environment' irrespective of the effect of humanity but rather subscribe to the philosophy of having the primary aim of protecting humanity from harm which, obviously, just happens to generally but not necessarily mean polluting our environment less. Hypothetically, if I thought more carbon emissions was in humanities best interest even in the long run, I would be supporting more carbon emissions regardless of its environmental impact! That is because my primary concern is humanity, not the 'environment'. In fact, I would go as far as saying I don't care a less about the 'environment'! -just the effect of environmental changes have on us. In the case of us causing global warming by much more than 2C, that environmental change would be harmful to humanity (mainly to future generations ) no matter how you look at it.