Nuclear Power: Yes or No?

michaelanthony

No

Go Wind Power. Tons of of cool wind turbines in Deutschland countryside

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.world-nuclear.org/factsheets/uranium.htm

Current situation
According to the summary of uranium resources published jointly by the Nuclear Energy Agency of the OECD and the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, known reserves of uranium from conventional sources are slightly more than 3 million tonnes. Reactor requirements are fairly steady at about 60,000 tonnes per year. Thus there is about 50 years supply of uranium known at this stage to be available.

http://www.geog.ouc.bc.ca/conted/onlinecourses/geog_210/210_9_2.html

Coal is the world's most abundant fossil fuel. About 68 % of the world's proven coal reserves and 85 % of the estimated undiscovered coal deposits are located in three countries: U.S.A., former USSR and China. Identified world reserves of coal should last 220 years at current usage and 65 years if usage rises 2 % a year. The unidentified coal resources are projected to last about 900 years at the current rate
...
On average, a nuclear power plant produces about 20 metric tons of highly radioactive waste each year. This highly toxic waste can remain radioactive for more than 200,000 years. Today, the majority of this waste is being temporarily stored in barrels that have a functional lifespan of about 100 years.

Then there are the Alberta / Athabasca tar sands in Canada which have as much hydrocarbon as all the known reserves of conventional Oil and Gas

And then there are the methane hydrates covering the floors of the Oceans.

By comparison the only way to get Nuclear to last a fraction of this time would be to build breader reactors which convert natural Uranium into extremely radioactive and toxic Plutonium - it's so toxic that terrorists would not need any technology to build a dirty bomb all you need to do is burn it in a city centre cf. http://www.ieer.org/fctsheet/pu-props.html - Finely divided particles under about 1 millimeter diameter - spontaneously ignites at about 150 C or they could just use http://www.webelements.com/webelements/compounds/text/Pu/F6Pu1-13693066.html plutonium hexafluoride - Boiling point: 62°C

Ok this is extreme since not all the Pu will end up evenly spread out in lungs, but...
http://www.ccnr.org/max_plute_aecb.html

In principle, using AECB's regulatory limits,
how many ''civilians'' can be overdosed
....
100 grams can overdose one billion civilians

at a density of 19.8g/cm3 100g fits in a volume of 5.05ml

or in English a level teaspoon contains enough Plutonium to put one billion people over the current recomended lifetime limits.

omnicorp

No

wind power cannot possibly maintain a countries electrical needs.
It's not always going to be windy, like it's not always going to be sunny.
The only real viable option is wave power or nuclear power.

Capt'n Midnight

Wind power - is it the future of electricity generation?

omnicorp

No

no, inneficient, spoils the landscape, unreliable

Superman

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Wind power - is it the future of electricity generation?

I agree, I think wind power is the best, and as for obscuring the landscape. They can be put in the sea!

omnicorp

No

not efficient!
it isn't constantly windy.
If it's too windy they have to be turned off, not windy enoght, ditto.
they don't generate enought and they can only be put so far out to sea.
But wave power....

GreeBo

omnicorp wrote:

they can only be put so far out to sea.

not true, have a look around the Dutch countryside.
<edit>
or do you mean that we cant put them miles out in the sea?
</edit>

omnicorp

No

thats what I mean and they still spoil the view.

bonkey

omnicorp wrote:

not efficient!
it isn't constantly windy.
If it's too windy they have to be turned off, not windy enoght, ditto.
they don't generate enought and they can only be put so far out to sea.

Someone should tell Airtricity all of this quickly!! Clearly they have it wrong.....especially with that Arklow Bank.

As for the whole eyesore argument....just what exactly do you want? Clean, cheap, invisibly-generated power seems to be the minimum to keep you happy now. Whats next? It needs to be transported without ugly pylons, or the disruption caused by digging cables?

I suppose the massive coastal eyesores of wave-power facilities wouldn't be a problem, becasue as long as you didn't live on, or ever go to, the coast you'd never have to see them, right???

Face facts. You have to make some compromises no matter which tech you choose....so don't go knocking one option for its compromises without acknowledging the comparable flaws in your own silver bullet.

jc

Gordon

bonkey wrote:

As for the whole eyesore argument....just what exactly do you want? Clean, cheap, invisibly-generated power seems to be the minimum to keep you happy now.

Now there's a thought - mainlining into the Earth's core for plentiful "magma" heating.

Capt'n Midnight

Gordon wrote:

Now there's a thought - mainlining into the Earth's core for plentiful "magma" heating.

California gets a suprising amount of it's energy this way !

Find a hotspot, usually near a spa, and drill two very deep holes near each other. Detonate explosives at the bottom and you should get small cracks in the rock from one bore hole to the other. Pump cold water down one and hot water or steam comes up the other....

If you have ever a small temperature differential you can generate power using a stirling engine, in Hawaii they used the temperature difference between the seawater at near the surface and further down. We are near the continental shelf so that could be another option - but engineering would have to be impressive and we would not have the same thermal difference.

You could also use something like ether instead of water as it boils at a much lower termperature for an inefficient steam engine.

omnicorp

No

Wave Power could be located out to sea, out of sight.
Pylons could be gotten rid of by puttinf power lines underground although maintenence is problem.

bonkey

omnicorp wrote:

Wave Power could be located out to sea, out of sight.

How? You know the limits on wind-power? Or do you have this fanciful notion that we could (and could) build the things to be entirely unmanned and underwater?

Pylons could be gotten rid of by puttinf power lines underground although maintenence is problem.

Which brings back the whole question of cost, which despite your best wishes just won't go away.

jc

omnicorp

No

Capital cost, it wouldn't require the maintenence of fixing fallen lines and frozen lines.
I was thinking about them being far enough out to sea (above water) to not be visible.
And do you want wind turbines all over the country side?

Another thing is solar panels on houses.

aidan_walsh

We have a set of wind turbines behind us at college, and I have to say that I find absolutly nothing offensive about them. Personally, I can't see how anyone would.

omnicorp

No

disruptive.
I can barely stand many city buildings and Thank God we don't have huge skyscrapers!
They spoil the landscape.
There's some I see sometimes on a hill down in Kerry and they RUIN the landscape.

Typedef

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

France makes 75% of its electricity from nuke power plants and exports a lot to the rest of Europe making it a nice tidy sum.

Yes but, France also has it's own THORP like facilities, for spent fuel reprocessing.

In any case, I vote No, not because I fear the potential environmental catostrophy associated with Nuclear, since clearly fossil fuels _cause_ more damage, then all the Nuclear accidents (to date) combined, but, because Nuclear as a source of energy, is simply _another_ source of non-renewable fuel, which leads people 100 years from now, in the same situation as people are today, ie, facing an impending energy crisis, due to a dependance on non-renewable fuels and too little action to find alternatives, until society as a whole begins to feel the energy bite.

omnicorp

No

good point, how about wave power?

Typedef

Wave power _could_ be feasable, as a component of a renewable energy paradigm, but, you'd have to build an awful lot of wave power stations.

I'm no energy scientist, so, I can't adequately proport whether or not a combination of artificial hydro + natural hydro + wave+ wind + solar would satisfy the power requirements of Ireland, it's very doubtful though.

In fact, space based solar arrays beaming weak microwaves back to earth is the only real long term solution, however, the last NASA estimate I read for that sort of project ran to the 50 trillion mark (give or take) to setup over quite a long period of time.

Link
http://www.feasta.org/documents/wells/sitemap.html#two .

For the short term, finding a low energy means of creating hydrogen, is the name of the game. Right now, to my knowledge, it costs more in terms of energy, to create and store usable amount of hydrogen, then is extracted from it.

To create a quasi-feasable hydrogen cycle, we'd have to at least break even on that.. _and_ then the input energy would have to come from somewhere, like wind, wave, solar or yes Nuclear, but, until someone invents cold fusion, Nuclear is just a stop gap, to a decline in humans' ability to produce energy.

On hydrogen a recent promising contender was a simple way of deriving hydrogen from ethanol, which was fermented from some sort of widely grown crop, promising in that it give a _better_ means of deriving hydrogen for lower input costs, and essentially what we end up talking about is a hydrogen economy, with the best input=>output conversions in terms of energy IO, and storage costs in terms of energy. Nobody really knows if such a hydrogen economy can be attained.

omnicorp

No

I think Wave-Power powering Electric Cars is feasable.

Capt'n Midnight

Typedef wrote:

Wave power _could_ be feasable, as a component of a renewable energy paradigm, but, you'd have to build an awful lot of wave power stations.

we have a lot of coast and there is an awful lot of see just over the horizon ...

I'm no energy scientist, so, I can't adequately proport whether or not a combination of artificial hydro + natural hydro + wave+ wind + solar would satisfy the power requirements of Ireland, it's very doubtful though.

Add in waste burning in power stations and better thermal insulatoin in all buildings and more public transport instead of cars. Also could have a system in houses for "warm" water from solar / heat exchange on waste water, then you are half way to your hot water. - yeah it could work

In fact, space based solar arrays beaming weak microwaves back to earth is the only real long term solution, however, the last NASA estimate I read for that sort of project ran to the 50 trillion mark (give or take) to setup over quite a long period of time.

it's a dead duck - even Satlers Duck might get used some day. - Mobile phones generate a watt of microwaves and look at the fuss, mobile phone masts, people living near power cables. And you want that lot to accept megawatts of power beamed on to a tiny target (from geo-synch orbit several square miles is a small target) and convince them that the powerstation won't move a fraction of a degree, cos that's all it would take to fry neighbouring areas. Geothermal seems much more accessible and like the sun it's powered by nuclear reactions.

For the short term, finding a low energy means of creating hydrogen, is the name of the game. Right now, to my knowledge, it costs more in terms of energy, to create and store usable amount of hydrogen, then is extracted from it.

I've posted links before about algae that produce hydrogen. you need water, sunlight and some fertiliser (or suitable industrial efluent). You can also make it from coal - producer gas.. Electrolysis and fuel cell can be up to 60% efficient IIRC
Also there is a lot of work on batteries running on methanol and other organic molecules.

omnicrop wrote:

I think Wave-Power powering Electric Cars is feasable.

I'd like to hear about your breakthrough on BATTERIES because the only real problem with electric cars is the weight/volume of storing the electricity. Electric motors are many times more powerful than piston engines of the same size, regenerative breaking means ABS is standard and you'd save a lot on brake pads, starting in the morning would not be a problem either

elivsvonchiaing

No

Geo-thermal power is a bad idea (in the long run). Mars has no atmosphere because its core cooled and its magnetic field collapsed allowing solar wind to blow the atmosphere away. Accelerating the process by 1-2 million years (just a pure guess- but gtp would accelerate the process!) is madness imho!

Nuclear power yes - we have gotton by pretty well with it for the last 4 billion years or so...

Fusion on earth - no. This would give heat pollution. Fission - Chernobyl? 'Nuff said?

This leaves us with a mix of "primary" solar power (solar panels - emf, solar heating water to drive turbine etc...) and "secondary" solar power (wind, waves etc.). If we continue with "tertiary" solar power (fossil fuels, biomass etc) we are facing a glaciated planet imho! (And that would be before the oil runs out :eek: - This is my opinion. I have no concrete basis for this - as I suspect no-one has for it being okay to keep burning fossil fuels and -er just hope for the best !)

omnicorp

No

what about solar panels on house rooves?
it would raise the cost about €7000 but houses are so expensive anyway and you could save on heating.
OK, the weather but we do get some sun.l

Capt'n Midnight

omnicorp wrote:

what about solar panels on house rooves?
it would raise the cost about €7000 but houses are so expensive anyway and you could save on heating.
OK, the weather but we do get some sun.l

Phase 1 of Finnstown went on sale for £65,000, a few years later in the same estate Phase 3 went on sale for £165,000. The land was already owned. The cost of building materials if it changed went down ! The % cost of labour to build a house did not change, and they were making a profit on the lower amount. The point being the cost of houses has almost nothing to do with the cost of making them.
Also modern houses are usually gold star energy efficient, but not all of them have a room thermostat, something that most centrally heated 1970's houses had. Compared to industrial buildings houses don't get new energy efficient designs or materials - only major changes in the last 40 years seem to be foil lined plaster board and mineral wool being used more. That and the fact that internal door locks are now considered "options" would all tend to indicate that here the construction industry won't offer anything other than white semi-cubes built using low tech means.

Other threads have pointed out that this uniform blandness of perhaps the most expensive housing in the EU look to other EU members as if they were cheap council housing...

If the same amount of design and use of modern materials, went into housing then people could have interesting houses and more energy efficient and cheaper.

Lets face it the Romans knew a thing or two about bricks, cement, wood , tile , plaster construction and central heating and plumbing so excluding the electrics and pumps the main thing that would suprise them would be the cheapness of metal and glass - materials they were familiar with. Our houses aren't modern and aren't best industrial practice when it comes to energy reuse.

/rant at the construction industry who are involved in the great wealth transfer from PAYE

omnicorp

No

yes.
Our schools roof consists of some foam tiles and a thin "concrete" roof.
And now we can barely afford heating.
And there are HUGE windows in the classes

Ruadan

NO!

Lets face it nmuclear fusion won't be faesable any time soon, and fission just produces too much waste.

The H- Fuel cell is the way to go!

omnicorp

No

But it takes to much energy to make the hydrogen.
It still pollutes.

Capt'n Midnight

omnicorp wrote:

It still pollutes.

yeah nasty stuff, get high concentrations of DHMO in the exhaust.