Nuclear Power is not cost effective

SeanW

Pocari Sweat wrote:

Several European countries have begun to lead the transition away from coal. (See data.)

In Germany, coal use has been cut in half since 1990, while expanding wind electric generation is taking its place.

Coal use in the United Kingdom has dropped by 46 percent over the same period, offset by efficiency gains and a shift toward natural gas. Plans are moving ahead for a huge expansion in wind energy in the U.K. and other European countries.

Let's not forget about those pesky Ukranians, the fly-in-the-ointment of all pro-coal and anti-nukes alike. Here they are, Chernobyl-meltdown scarred, broke, and with enough coal reserves to give certain posters here a green-eye for the next century, yet their use of thermal energy has been falling almost every year since 1990, while generation from other forms has increased.

This chart kind of explains it all IMO, as does the attendant World Nuclear Association article.

A large share of primary energy supply in Ukraine comes from the country's uranium and substantial coal resources. The remainder is oil and gas, mostly imported from Russia. . In 1991, due to breakdown of the Soviet Union, the country's economy collapsed and its electricity consumption declined dramatically from 296 billion kWh in 1990 to 170 in 2000, all the decrease being from coal and gas plants.

Fossil fuel advocates (be honest?) please explain the above ...

Pocari Sweat

they can't

Pocari Sweat

If coal was put under hyper-scrutiny like nuclear, imagine the range of disasters you could look at, not just in terms of colossal death figures of coal users globally, and the historic mass slaughter of miners, or things ignored such as CO2 and sulphur emmissions, air pollution, smog and global warming, or even the slag heaps left over, and even slag heaps collapsing on schools in Wales killing most of the kids, much more than chernobyl.

Just put one minor thing cast aside by the pro-coal lobby such as mercury.

This is pretty nasty stuff when it is let loose in our atmosphere and oceans in large quantities.

Looking back at my recent post, lets review mercury:

[Q]Humans are exposed to mercury primarily by eating contaminated fish. Forty-five of the 50 states have issued consumption advisories limiting the eating of fish caught locally because of their high mercury content. New analyses of fish samples collected by the ... (EPA) from 500 lakes and reservoirs across the country found mercury in every single sample.

In 55 percent of them, mercury levels exceeded the EPA’s “safe” limit for a woman of average weight eating fish twice a week, and 76 percent exceeded limits for children under the age of three. Four out of five predator fish—those higher on the food chain, such as tuna or swordfish—exceeded the limits.

The largest source of mercury pollution is coal-fired power plants.

Airborne mercury emitted by these facilities is deposited anywhere from within a few hundred kilometers of the smokestacks to across continents, far from its source. Biological processes change much of the deposited mercury into methylmercury, a potent neurotoxin that humans and other organisms readily absorb. Methylmercury easily travels up the aquatic food chain, accumulating at higher concentrations at each level. Larger predator species contain the most mercury, which is then passed on to those who eat them.

Since the industrial revolution began, mercury contamination in the environment has jumped threefold.

The 600 plus coal-fired power plants in the United States, which produce over half of the country’s electricity, burn 1 billion tons of coal and release 98,000 pounds (44 metric tons) of mercury into the air each year.

Power plants yield an additional 81,000 pounds of mercury pollution in the form of solid waste, including fly ash and scrubber sludge, and 20,000 pounds of mercury from “cleaning” coal before it is burned. In sum, coal-fired power plants pollute the environment with some 200,000 pounds of mercury annually.[/Q]


So then, 200,000 pounds of mercury let loose into the environment every year. Thats 2,000 pounds to the imperial ton, or 200 old tons or approximately 180 metric tonnes every year, just for one tiny fraction of the overall output in terms of pollution from burning coal.

180 tonnes of mercury per year let loose from the United States alone!

Now, if degenerating diseases of the nervous system became endemic globally, which they are to a good extent, it would still take a while before people would start getting rational on coal pollution versus nuclear.

As hyper-scrutinised levels of low-level radioactive waste have fallen to less than 1% of their original figures of the fledgling nuclear industry in the last 40 years or so, because of public concern, and diametrically the gross tonnage of mercury has increased with population increase over the same period despite "so called cleaner coal plants", where is all the mercury going that was once safely tucked away underground in coal reserves?

If half the 600 US coal plants were shut down because they cannot meet environmental pollution standards and the rest became hyper efficient and "clean", then where would they dump the mercury, that they would need to clean out of coal before they burn it in the atmosphere?

Dump it of course. And decades later after 1000's of tonnes of mercury, dumped with slag, that is rained upon and vast levels of mercury are washed through the water systems and aquifiers, rivers and oceans, and higher mercury levels are found in fish, the pro-coal lobby may have to give excuses about mercury being shifted from atmospheric output to terrestrial output in coal fired power stations still ending up in the eco-system.

I have not looked fully into what mercury does to the body in high accumulative doses, but I will in due course.