Nuclear MOX and Eire

BJJ

What to do about the Nuclear MOX fule comming up the Irish Sea tomorrow?

Don't just sit on you're a@ss. Lend your support this Sunday!!

or

Let them go through the Irish Sea, that Sellafield MOX stuff is harmless!!

mike65

I'll get me Exocet out of the attic....:rolleyes:

Mike.

dahamsta

http://act.greenpeace.org/ams/e?a=vf3&s=vf

Brian Bennette

We all know that Mike65 would love to join BritishNukeFuels

mike65

What to do about the Nuclear MOX fule comming up the Irish Sea tomorrow?

Don't just sit on you're a@ss. Lend your support this Sunday!!

or

Let them go through the Irish Sea, that Sellafield MOX stuff is harmless!!

My sarcastic responce is borne out of frustration
with the kind of questions above. What makes anyone here think they can do anything that will make a blind bit of difference to the policies of BNFL or the UK government?

You might fell good jumping up and down waving banners but so what? I can only have contempt
for politcians who grandstand on this issue as they are impotent too. I'm sure they understand this but nontheless they play out the ritual of condemnation at every oppotunity.

Its also interesting how its always Sellafield/BNFL that gets it in the neck, never a mention about La Hague
and COGEMA. One is French and a few hundred miles further away, it seems thats enough for the Irish Green
movement... www.cogemalahague.fr/LaHague/HomeUK.nsf/

On the wider nuclear issue, far from closing down
plants, more are likely to be built in the next few decades as carbon-based fuels becomes less and less acceptable for CO2 reasons and less easy to manage
for geo-politcal reasons (i.e. Iraq/Saudi etc).

All of which means the anti-nuke brigade is going to be very busy in the future.

Now wheres' my Say yes to Nukes badge...

Mike.

Typedef

Originally posted by mike65
On the wider nuclear issue, far from closing down
plants, more are likely to be built in the next few decades as carbon-based fuels becomes less and less acceptable for CO2 reasons and less easy to manage
for geo-politcal reasons (i.e. Iraq/Saudi etc).

All of which means the anti-nuke brigade is going to be very busy in the future.

Now wheres' my Say yes to Nukes badge...

Mike.

Come now Mike, even the British Ambassador has stated that Winscale was not built out of any actual engergy need, but out of the madness that surrounded the Cold War and the race to develop Nuclear Weapons.

THORP is know not to be 'economically viable' and whats more no matter what the politico prole feed about the safety of BNFL (apres Ploutonium level falsification), there is always a risk of "something going wrong with the bomb" or more accurately something happening to MOX in transportation, during processing at Sellafield or simply the risk of melt down (as is always present) in every Nuclear reactor.

Either Nuclear waste gets reprocessed or stored, neither of which alternatives is particularly palletable.

Energy could and should be derived from a mixture of Solar, Wind, Geothermal, Hydro and perhaps Hydrogen Fuel Cell technology. The notion that plants such a Sellafield can continue fifty, sixty and seventy years past what they were designed to do in fact negates any claim to 'safety' surrounding Nuclear Energy. I mean seriously do you trust a Nucelar reactor to stand up to operating thirty and fourty years past it's sellby date, no matter how well maintained it is?

I don't.

What's more it is not common knowledge that the fuel on it's way back from Japan is the same reprocessed fuel that the safety records were falsified by BNFL.

If all the money that was devoted to development of facilities like THORP were invested in developing Hydrogen Fuel Cell Technology or Sea based Power stations that work off of rising and falling tides, it is quite likely that a viable alternative to Nuclear and Fossil fuels would come to fruition.

No matter what people extole about 'safety' there will always be a risk of melt down with a Nuclear reactor, there will always be extremely toxic waste that is quite expensive to deal with and for these reasons I don't support the development, expansion nor implementation of any more Nuclear Energy facilities in Europe or across the rest of the world.

mike65

Typedef you're quite right about THORP of course, however I'll argue the toss regarding where the power is going to come from in the future, renewables (which I fully back the use of) will, I belive not cover the gap left by the curtailment of fossil fuel. Of course you and I can do a fair bit just by turning down the thermostat a degree or two and using the efficent technologies which exsist.

But even then unless we can convince the USA to cease to be
it'll not be enough, after all think of China or India and thier galloping use of current. Its got to come from somewhere, and short of a breakthrough with cold fusion or room-temperature superconductivity I suspect it'll end up coming from Nuclaer power.

Giant mirrors in space...anyone remember that idea?

Mike.

Shinji

What's more it is not common knowledge that the fuel on it's way back from Japan is the same reprocessed fuel that the safety records were falsified by BNFL.

Er, this is common knowledge. Common enough for the BBC to be including it in their reports on the matter.

What's NOT common knowledge is just how stringent the safety procedures surrounding MOX are - and even if somehow the ships DID sink and the massive lead and steel holders DID crack open and the MOX pellets (about the size of a thimble) DID get out... Well, er, they're not water soluble anyway. Recovering them from the ocean floor would be unpleasant work but the actual danger presented by them is very minor indeed.

As far as I can gather most of the people whinging about MOX are bandwagon jumpers who don't actually understand what it is, and a hell of a lot of people who still don't understand that "nuclear power" and "nuclear weapons" are different things.

Renewable energy sources will NOT provide the energy needs of the planet any time soon, if ever. I don't think you quite understand just how much power a nuclear power plant generates compared to renewable sources, and even to fossil fuel plants.

One interesting question to ask the anti-nuclear sheep-like protestors is whether they'd be happier living in the shadow of a modern coal-burning plant or a modern nuclear plant...

Typedef

Originally posted by Shinji
Er, this is common knowledge. Common enough for the BBC to be including it in their reports on the matter.

I for one have never heard it touted often, sure I have heard about Mox transportation, however I don't think the fact that the pellets were being returned because of safety record falsification was or is widely know, not that the safety records are why I am opposed to transportation of Nuclear waste and or fissile materials.

What's NOT common knowledge is just how stringent the safety procedures surrounding MOX are

Except for the exception to the rule, where the records were falsified and reported, which invalidates your claim to stringentness.

Besides if the safety records can be falsified, what is to stop a small accident being covered up, like the fire that happened at the then Windscale plant?

http://www.lakestay.co.uk/1957.htm

In October 1957 Britain spread a plume of radioactive contamination into the atmosphere from a nuclear reactor fire at Sellafield.
Having helped the US Manhattan Project develop the atom bomb at the end of the Second World War, the British government felt it had to develop its own A bomb to be able to stay “at the Top Table” as a world power. The Americans had refused to allow Britain to have the weapons technology its own scientists had helped develop.

We all know that Windscale became Sellafield, so the entire reason behind the British Nuclear energy industry has stemmed from a military desire for the British to posess Nuclear Weapons.

The fact that Sellafield has been made into an Engery production centre is an ammendum in this context.

Even if somehow the ships DID sink and the massive lead and steel holders DID crack open and the MOX pellets (about the size of a thimble) DID get out... Well, er, they're not water soluble anyway. Recovering them from the ocean floor would be unpleasant work but the actual danger presented by them is very minor indeed.

I think the biggest fear is one of a fire on board the ship burning for somewhere in the region of twenty hours (as is the average for large scale fires on the types of ship the MOX is transported on according to GreenPeace on the Late Late last Saturday), as opposed to the twenty minutes or so the containers the MOX is kept in are designed to withstand.

Thus the inference is that a radioactive plume would be released if these containers were to become compromised during a prolonged fire and that this radioactive plume could contiminate and kill.

As far as I can gather most of the people whinging about MOX are bandwagon jumpers who don't actually understand what it is, and a hell of a lot of people who still don't understand that "nuclear power" and "nuclear weapons" are different things.

In the case of Windscale/Sellafield Nuclear weapons lead to Nuclear power and in the case of Chernobyl, a Nuclear Power station ended up causing radioactive contimination right across Europe.

About fifty tons of nuclear fuel was mobilized in the explosion and ejected into the atmosphere. In addition, about seventy tons of reactor material were ejected onto the grounds around the plant, mingling with the debris of the building. Twenty six people, fire fighters and plant operators, received lethal doses of radiation during the first hours of the disaster. Soviet army personnel called "liquidators of the consequences of the Chernobyl accident" were brought in to cover the burning remains of the reactor, and pick up pieces of the reactor core that were on the ground. No reliable health records are available, but anecdotal evidence indicates high casualties were suffered and continue to be suffered by these people. The reactor continued to burn for several days after the explosion releasing radioactive particles into the air. Especially heavy contamination occurred downwind of Chernobyl in the areas where contaminated rain fell.

http://www.igc.org/envreview/baldwin.html

Renewable energy sources will NOT provide the energy needs of the planet any time soon, if ever. I don't think you quite understand just how much power a nuclear power plant generates compared to renewable sources, and even to fossil fuel plants.

Hydrogen Fuel Cell technology and I'm talking about deriving electricity from water, not storing it, is promising.

However I firmly believe that where there is a will there is a way. To say that for reason(n) Nuclear power, Nuclear waste and the risk of Nuclear Meltdown must exist is not an option in my opinion, because the technology of the Nuclear reactor if and when it goes wrong[1], can, will and does carry massive health consequences for all forms of life on earth.

One interesting question to ask the anti-nuclear sheep-like protestors...<snip>

Now where is that Gathering card?

Is whether they'd be happier living in the shadow of a modern coal-burning plant or a modern nuclear plant...

It's not a question of either or, it's simply neither. I firmly believe that if sifficient resources are appropiated and invested in renewable energy production then totally renewable forms of energy can supply all of society's energy needs. Yes it may cost, but you get nothing for nothing[2].

[1]Murphy's Law "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong".
[2]Yes I know you already knew that.

bonkey

Originally posted by Shinji
Renewable energy sources will NOT provide the energy needs of the planet any time soon, if ever. I don't think you quite understand just how much power a nuclear power plant generates compared to renewable sources, and even to fossil fuel plants.

The largest nuclear generating station in the world is, AFAIK a combination of Bruce A and BruceB, each of which has 4 nuclear generators, each producing a net 750MW. This is towards the top end of single-generator output. This gives an 8-unit station output of approximately 6000MW (or 6GW).

Bull Run, on the other hand, was producing 870MW from a single thermal generator in 1967 - at which point it was the largest fossil-fuel thermal generator in the world. It no longer is.

At current, while new designs are being researched for safer and more economical operation (nuclear power aint all that cheap) it does not look like the per-unit output will increase significantly. In fact, IIRC, there are limitations on the output placed by such foolish things as safety, so its possible that the per-unit output will not increase significantly for quite some time.

Hydro, on the other hand, is coming along in leaps and bounds. The Chinese are currently building an 18,000 MW hydro facility. Thats 3 Bruces. In one clean plant, which doesnt produce 15% of the world's uranium as its output (which I believe Bruce does). So while Hydro may or may not not beat nuclear on the "max-output-per-generator", it scales just as well. OK - yes, you need the right locations, but once we stop thinking in terms of rivers, and start looking at tidal hydro, there is massive room for expansion.

At the same time, we are seeing increased development in wind-power (the Irish undertaking to build a > 500MW station for example), as well as advances in technology such as (as Type pointed out) hydrogen fuel cells.

In short, nuclear is by no means the certain path forward. The US already has a problem, for example, figuring out how to deal with its nuclear waste. This is a country with huge amounts of available space, and the most advanced tech in the world. THey have a problem with their existing systems. Until that gets a publically acceptable solution, the US will not be able to easily manage massive nuclear generation expansion - but thats what will be required Real Soon Now, when fossil fuels become either too rare, too expensive, or simply too unacceptable (although this last one is a bit unlikely). Well - that or the clean renewabl;e resources like Hydro, wind, etc. which do not have these associated image problems, and which are ultimately cost-effective in the long run (high construction cost, tiny running cost, when taken in comparison to any other form of power generation).

Nuclear power is far from the "clean, cheap" solution many people would have us believe, and with the major governments worried about the emergence of nuclear powers, the last thing they want to do is be encouraging the rest of the world to adpot nuclear power which allows them to have realtively easy access to the raew materials they need.

It does not boast the largest single-unit generators, nor the largest stations.

What it does have going for it is "ease of placement" - you dont need nearbvy resources....you can just ship in your nuclear cores every so often, and there you go. This is actually the only major advantage which nuclear still holds.

In other words....I do understand quite well what a nuclear unit generates. It generates less than thermal, on a unit-by-unit comparison. It scales less well than hydro. It scales less cleanly than hydro, wind, wave, solar, etc. It is easier to locate.

While I agree that a lot of the MOX protestors are jumping on a bandwagon and havent a clue what theyre on about, this does not make all of their allegations untrue.

On a seperate note, one could point out that Sellafield has nothing whatsoever to do with nuclear generation. Even if Shinji is correct, and nuclear is the only viable option (or a necessary element of a combined solution), that does not require the existence of ew-peocessing plants such as Sellafield.

jc

Shinji

Hydro, on the other hand, is coming along in leaps and bounds. The Chinese are currently building an 18,000 MW hydro facility.

That's their claimed output for it - I've seen some analysis which says this is massively optimistic. More importantly, perhaps, is the need to consider the sheer damage done by a plant like this. You fundamentally upset the ecology of an enormous area by building a hydro facility that large - and there's no way in hell that facilities like it could be built outside China, frankly, because planning for them would never be approved. It's simply not a viable option for power for the vast majority of the world.

As for the rest of it.... Wind is an attractive one, but one which doesn't scale very well due to the amount of space needed to build wind farms, and the fact that you can't locate them near anywhere inhabited because of the noise they create. Tidal energy is a nifty one but again, can have a massive impact on the ecology of the sea around it and you'd need to build a LOT of tidal energy stations to supply the needs of even a smallish country.

Hydrogen Fuel Cells are a type of battery. You put energy in and get energy out. What you're talking about is nuclear fusion - a technology which we currently cannot control, have made little headway into controlling in the past decade, and which we're not even sure will be economical once we DO control it, since it may take more energy to start the reaction than you'll get out of it. Oh, and here's the killer - you need a nuclear fission reaction to warm up a nuclear fusion reaction. Hydrogen fusion is very attractive mind - perfectly clean, masses of energy... But it's still theoretical and may never work, and besides, any fusion plant would have a fission plant at its heart, so you're still producing nuclear waste...

Nuclear power is far from the "clean, cheap" solution many people believe

It's a lot closer to that particular ideal than it is to the nightmare scenario being fed to us by so-called environmentalists all the time.

I don't claim that it's a perfect solution, but frankly it gets my goat to see masses of people protesting about things they don't understand and haven't taken the time to educate themselves about. Don't they have some paediatricians to burn or something?

Typedef

Originally posted by Shinji
Hydrogen Fuel Cells are a type of battery. You put energy in and get energy out. What you're talking about is nuclear fusion - a technology which we currently cannot control, have made little headway into controlling in the past decade, and which we're not even sure will be economical once we DO control it, since it may take more energy to start the reaction than you'll get out of it.

This argument is almost an exact mirror image of the arguments that were bandied about, during the 1920's by skeptical physicists who doubted that a Nuclear weapon or a Nuclear power station was viable. Simply put, with enough research and development there is a chance for deriving power directly from water, now I'm not going to shout J'Accuse, but since Fossil Fuel corporations are not interested in creating a technology that will effectively make clean, free virtually limitless energy and coupled with the Nuclear Energy industry this is quite a powerful lobby, a lobby that doesn't want to be put out of business. I would speculate that perhaps energy from water has not been given adequate R & D funding, because of vested interests.

Hydrogen fusion is very attractive mind - perfectly clean, masses of energy... But it's still theoretical and may never work, and besides, any fusion plant would have a fission plant at its heart, so you're still producing nuclear waste...

I was under the impression it isn't all that theoretical, you extract the Hydrogen from water for example "burn it" and the resultant by-product is water. Thus the energy is renewable.

You are right that the harnessing of the Yangtze River is detramental to the surrounding area, but what is most certainly is, is preferable to the side effects of a Nuclear power plant meltdown if a few were built in place of the Yangtze River project.

http://www.power-technology.com/projects/gorges/

Shinji

This argument is almost an exact mirror image of the arguments that were bandied about, during the 1920's by skeptical physicists who doubted that a Nuclear weapon or a Nuclear power station was viable.

Yep. It's a naysaying argument, and I fully admit that - however it does have quite a bit of weight behind it right now. I don't doubt that we'll learn to harness fusion - we can already create very powerful fusion reactions (that's what a H-bomb is), it's just a matter of controlling that kind of energy.

However, as I said, there are currently severe problems with this approach which will take easily another decade to iron out - and even once they ARE fixed, commercial fusion reactors are going to be a dodgy proposition for quite some time. If the containment on a nuclear plant fails, it melts down. If the containment on a fusion plant fails, chances are very good that it explodes...

And of course the primary problem is that we have as yet been unable to show how you'd create a controlled fusion reaction which generated more power than it took to get it going in the first place!

By the way, something like $25 billion a year overall goes into fusion research. You're right, it could be more if it wasn't feared so much by the fossil fuel industries - however as it stands that's a lot of money, and the problems experienced by the research are sheer physics issues, not financial ones for the most part.

Oh - and the nuclear industry LOVES fusion. If it ever comes off, they'll be the only people with the experience and expertise to actually build fusion power plants, after all.

bonkey

Originally posted by Shinji
Hydrogen Fuel Cells are a type of battery. You put energy in and get energy out.

Absolutely.

However, there is some interesting research showing how you can obtain the Hydrogen for effectively no cost! It uses some jiggery-pokery with sea-water, and large depth-differences - kinda like what you'd have on the legs of many oil platforms and other similar aquatic platforms.

The major problem at the moment is, in fact, not the hydrogen, but the catalysts. You either have horribly toxic options, or stuff which just isnt abundant enough.

I cant remember which element it is, but the last article I saw mentioned that it was the ideal catalyst, except that there wasnt enough of it on the planet (natural state, not just refined) to manage to do as much as replace all cars in the US with fuel-cell powered ones.

The only argument I have against nuclear energy is that, to date, we have absolutely no inkling as to how we can safely store the waste produced. We know how toxic it is, and any "long term" solution has been shown to be highly susceptible to failure once we get beyond the short-term. We also have no clear idea of the impact that such failure would have on the environment. Estimates range from "trivial and localised" to "ecologically shattering".

In other words...while nuclear power is clean today, it may leave a legacy for future generations even more terrible than the effects of fossil-fuel consumption has, or it may not. It is, at best, an uncalculated risk.

This is clean energy for my lifetime, but not clean energy.

But enough of this. This is a discussion for the Green board. Here, we are supposed to berate ppl for blindly campaigning against MOX

jc

Turnip

Originally posted by Shinji

I don't claim that it's a perfect solution, but frankly it gets my goat to see masses of people protesting about things they don't understand and haven't taken the time to educate themselves about. Don't they have some paediatricians to burn or something?

LOL. True. Except I don’t see many “mass protests” against Sellafield. It’s a non issue for most Irish people who have better things to do with their time. If you’re referring to the anti-globalisation protests then I’d agree. It’s often claimed by these IDIOTS that the gap between rich and poor is growing. Is this supposed to be a shock? Why is it automatically thought to be a bad thing? People who work hard get rewarded. They reinvest their money wisely and overall standards rise. It’s trickledown theory and it is the only realistic solution to the problem of how to balance democracy with the individual’s freedom to make as much money as he wants. I’m still waiting for a half decent explanation why globalisation is BAD. Something more articulate than smashing windows would do for a start.

bonkey

Dear god. You dig up a 2-month-old thread to post something off-topic?

If youre interested in discussing globalisation, take it to a new, relevant thread please.

jc

Turnip

Sorry. Have done your bidding.