Nuclear & other power source discussions

[Zatnikitelman]

I'm not sure I understand you Urwumpe, you believe in the myth of global warming, yet you appear dead-set against a technology which would stop pumping those "greenhouse gases" into the atmosphere.
I'm not sure what Germany is doing differently in regards to the United States, but we have 104 reactors operating at 65 plants (with more on the way) and don't seem to have these problems you describe with leaking nuclear waste, and unnatural birth rates. Our waste is stored at the various plants, and other than the long term question of what to do with it (which we have time to work on), it's not causing any problems right now. Is this a perfect solution? no. But is our lack of a solution causing any immediate ill effects? no.
The thing with nuclear power in regards to coal is a question of "what if?" rather than the fact that the problems with coal are now and continuous.

 

[Urwumpe]

I'm not sure I understand you Urwumpe, you believe in the myth of global warming, yet you appear dead-set against a technology which would stop pumping those "greenhouse gases" into the atmosphere.

Look, because I am against HIV as well, I don't go around killing the infected.

I don't fight against AGW by destroying the world by another way. I am not completely against nuclear power, but there is simply no sane reason for it, except the "It doesn't produce CO2". That nuclear boy can still have some really nasty stuff in diaper should not be forgotten.

nuclear power is more expensive than even wind power or solar energy, if you include all that stuff in the costs, that are currently paid by the tax payer: Disposal and deconstruction.

 

[T.Neo]

I entirely fail to see how anyone could regard AGW as 'myth'; what is behind it, is simple physics. Change the atmospheric composition in that way- add CO2, and you can only expect the system to warm.

It isn't only what goes out. It's what goes in as well. Coal plants burn coal, of course- and coal won't last forever. Of course nuclear fuel isn't an infinite resource either, but to be honest, I'd be more worried about supply of coal than CO2, at least on the short term.

I doubt that Japan has much space to plaster the landscape with solar panels, and I have a feeling that they can't really rely on wind power much, either (though I may be missing something about the construction of wind turbines in rugged, forested terrain).

Relying on solar power at the higher latitudes- i.e. in northern Europe, is pretty silly when the insolation is something like 140 watts/m^2 (Spain and Italy have it better though). A far better place to make use of solar energy would be somewhere like South Africa (predominantly maybe 220-250 watts/m^2), Australia, (over 250 watts/m^2 in some places), or the arid areas of the US (around 200 watts^2).

Maybe if you're desperate, I guess. But it does sound rather bad if you're at such a high latitude, you have a lot of overcast days where production is at least greatly diminished, you have long winter nights, etc...

 

[Urwumpe]

Solar power is also one option to supplement other power sources in the north - during the summer months, there is more than enough sunlight to produce extra energy. I know that from spring to autumn, a public swimming pool in Berlin is almost completely working by solarthermal power for heating the water.

You can't of course put all your eggs into one basket. Just ask France - if nuclear power would be so great, they wouldn't have electricity problems. But they have seven times more brownouts than Germany per year, and need to import large amounts of electricity from neighboring countries during summer and winter - because then the nuclear power plants need to be reduced in power output because of the lack of cold water.

There is never one single perfect solution to all energy problems. Not even fusion will be it.

 

[T.Neo]

I know that from spring to autumn, a public swimming pool in Berlin is almost completely working by solarthermal power for heating the water.

Yes, but: Heated to what.

If you say, "regularly above 23-24 C" for a pool of maybe ~50 m^3, I will be extremely confused... :shifty:

 

[Urwumpe]

If you say, "regularly above 23-24 C" for a pool of maybe ~50 m^3, I will be extremely confused... :shifty:

Around 24°C the last time I looked for the 50m x 10m x 2m pool. A few degrees more for the shallow children pool. (Correction: Should be 28°C according to the homepage... maybe it felt cooler)

The annual report of the operator does not say anything about the solarthermal power there, but they have a status indicator of the system in the lobby, which produced a good 50°C output temperature the last time I looked at it.

 

[T.Neo]

Maybe it has to do with air temperature, or area-volume ratio, as a large-ish swimming pool here will get to around 24-25C, after several days of sunny weather and air temperatures of 28-30C.

This is with maybe 40 square meters area, and a volume of around 44 m^3.

 

[Urwumpe]

Maybe it has to do with air temperature, or area-volume ratio, as a large-ish swimming pool here will get to around 24-25C, after several days of sunny weather and air temperatures of 28-30C.

This is with maybe 40 square meters area...

It sure isn't small, also the power output was in the range of 300 kW, if my memory serves me right, which would mean almost 600 m² collector area. But the roof of a 50 x 20 meter hall has alone 1000 m² area.

Maybe not enough for bringing cold fresh water instantly on the right temperature, but sure enough power for keeping the water warm.

All baths in Berlin still consume a lot of thermal energy every year, if you look at the annual numbers, this heat comes directly from coal and gas power plants by district heating.

District heating is something which you can't do with nuclear power plants BTW - they are technically unable to reach the needed high steam temperatures for such a system. If you include district heating to the energy costs of a coal power plant, you are already down from 0.4 cent/kWh to 0.3 cent kW/h - and thus 0.15 cent below current nuclear power plants and 0.35 cent below future nuclear power plants (which are more effective but need all those safety gear that old ones are still permitted to operate without, as well as still having to pay full taxes, what old power plants don't need, the oldest are already tax free).

 

[FADEC]

@FADEC

Ever hear of the three mile island incident?

Yes I did. But I did not mention Harrisburg because it is not comparable to Fukushima and less than ever to Chernobyl in dimension and location. Harrisburg (as we call the accident in Germany) was a partial meltdown which was brought under control.

I'm not sure I understand you Urwumpe, you believe in the myth of global warming, yet you appear dead-set against a technology which would stop pumping those "greenhouse gases" into the atmosphere.

I presume to say something about it.

Global warming is not a myth. People who say so actually did not even understand the most naive AGW sceptics because even them do know that global warming is as real as the holocaust was (denying the holocaust is based on the same naivity). The question is to which extent humans do have an influence on global warming. And the question has already been answered to a certain degree of prediction and observation. It's like the moon landing hoax. One can tell conspiracy theorists how it was done a thousand times and they still won't or don't want to understand it.

Nuclear power does not stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmopshere. Uranium mining and extraction produces greenhouse gases which increases as time goes on. High-grade uranium sources also become less just like the Saudis do get more and more water during oil extraction and they only keep the extraction level under huge efforts and costs. It's all limited sources. Nuclear power has not better future than power based on fossil fuels.

 

[T.Neo]

Nuclear power relies on fuel that has a far higher energy density, than chemical fuels. This is why (ideally), fuel reserves are able to provide power for far longer timescales.

Mining minerals is not like pumping oil. Of course you can deplete a resource, but if there is... less rich reserves, it won't be impossible to get to them (i.e. unrecoverable oil).

Coal is a far better comparison than oil here anyway, especially because it is primarily used for municipal electricity production, just like nuclear energy.

To ship coal also emits CO2, to build coal plants also emits CO2, and to burn coal, emits CO2- if over its lifetime, a nuclear plant is responsible for more, or at least a considerable fraction of the CO2 from a coal fired powerplant, there is something very, very clearly wrong, economics-wise (and not only money, but in terms of fundamental energy economics).

Sorry, but you cannot hate on nuclear because it is nuclear. I understand some people here may have a lot of anti-nuclear views from where they are from, many of them understandable, but these are not intrinsic to nuclear power, they are intrinsic to the people who manage and operate it poorly.

Of course nuclear power has problems, just like every single other power production regime. Some of those problems are bad, some of them, are less bad. And it has some advantages that don't exist elsewhere. In some instances, it is something that will exist for some time, and will have to be used, in some cases, whether people like it or not.

 

[FADEC]

Of course nuclear power has problems, just like every single other power production regime.

How is nuclear power comparable to every single other power production regime?

 

[Urwumpe]

How is nuclear power comparable to every single other power production regime?

Practically speaking: All existing large power plants produce electricity by boiling water. Nuclear is not different there.

Still, there is a tiny difference in nuclear about how the water is boiled.

 

[T.Neo]

Oh, I dunno, currently the entire human civilisation uses a power source that is running low on it's finite supply and pumps thousands of tons of pollutant into the atmosphere each year...

Nuclear power is definitely a hugely problematic scourge of humanity. :dry:

There is knowing the risks and problems of nuclear power, and there is unfoundedly blowing up those risks and problems to ungodly epic proportions because of annoying propaganda and hype of scary historical events.

Sadly you seem to be arguing from the latter...

 

[Urwumpe]

There is one sadly unprintable quote from a claimed German nuclear power engineering professor, who said that he was tasked with a study 40 years ago to investigate all the currently known problems of nuclear power plants in abnormal situations and get solutions for them. His study resulted in a few simple redundancy aspects and a more sturdier containment, which would in the estimates of his study cost just 5% more during the construction of such a power plant.

In detail:

• Secondary cooling water inlets, pumps and outlets, separated by distance
• 2.2m thick containment structure for PWRs instead of the 2m used today
• 2 meter containment structure thickness for BWRs, compared to the 1.6m used today
• Really redundant emergency power system, physically separated.
• Redundant ECCS, each ECCS loop should be able to cool the reactor.

But sadly, his study is under the German interpretation of "top secret" by the government and can't be accessed for verifying his claims. Which is why I consider his information dubious, despite the magnitudes of it being pretty conservative and sure not a conspiracy theory of somebody without a clue about nuclear power plants.

Some of the stuff is now found in the EPR design, maybe a bit late.

@T.Neo: Experimental results by real-life reactor anomalies and accidents is of course defeating purely theoretical estimates. Just by the hope that nothing will go wrong, you do not make a reactor safe.

 

[FADEC]

Practically speaking: All existing large power plants produce electricity by boiling water. Nuclear is not different there.

Still, there is a tiny difference in nuclear about how the water is boiled.

But the problem with nuclear power is different. Thousands of square kilometers of land can be contaminated for thousands of years. It has happened once and it is likely going to happen a second time.

One can not downplay the risks of nuclear power. It is not just a question of who manages and operates it like T.Neo wrote. It is the risk that is inherently related to nuclear fission and human error. I can only speak of Germany. Most people here are against nuclear power because it is a play with fire no matter who operates it. Because a most safest nuclear power plant does not exist. Nobody believes it anymore. Any country claims to operate the most safest nuclear power plants. Japan did. Russia also did. They even used the slogan that it is that safe that one can place a nuclear power plant beside the Kremlin... :facepalm:

 

[Urwumpe]

But the problem with nuclear power is different. Thousands of square kilometers of land can be contaminated for thousands of years. It has happened once and it is likely going to happen a second time.

Look at the coal fires in the USA or China and you will see that there is no simply way of handling this as well.

Nuclear is the more dangerous, sure, but that doesn't mean any energy carrier is harmless.

Even wind power has its dangers. and producing solar arrays is still a messy business.

 

[T.Neo]

@T.Neo: Experimental results by real-life reactor anomalies and accidents is of course defeating purely theoretical estimates. Just by the hope that nothing will go wrong, you do not make a reactor safe.

I never said that you can hope for a reactor to be safe, and it will magically be safe... this is one of the problematically unsafe aspects.

Thousands of square kilometers of land have been contaminated for thousands of years.

I'd like to point out that inside the Chernobyl-created exclusion zones, there is an abundance of flora and fauna, including species that are extinct elsewhere. Of course some mutations have been noted, and the effects of radiation in the short period after the disaster killed many animals and plants, but it is clear that within this region, life is most definitely possible, and despite heightened radiation levels, the lack of human interference allows many species to flourish.

I'm not saying it would be perfectly safe for humans to live there long-term, or to farm there for example, but it is by no means a radioactive wasteland. This is rubbish.

And chemical power is not without danger either- the Deepwater Horizon oil spill had pretty horrifying ecological effects, for example.

Of course you always have fission danger and human error; that's why you try to make things as redundant and safe as possible. There is no "this is perfectly safe", there is "this is as safe as we can make it". The failing comes when that is not done.

I'm not saying nuclear power is perfectly safe, not at all. But there is a difference between the legitimate risk and the propaganda-filled nonsense of nuclear power being an evil planet destroying force that should not be dealt with in any way.

Scaremongering about nuclear-related things is about as bad as ignoring their dangers.

 

[Tommy]

Once again this converstion is missing one of the biggest points. Yes, safety is a huge factor - and is being discussed. Carbon emissions are also a problem - and that is also being discussed.

There is still a 600 pound gorilla that no-one seems willing to acknowledge. Entropy.

Politicians talk a lot about CO2, because it's relatively easy to get people to see a link between CO2 emissions and GW. Most people (politicians included) have a much harder time understanding the implications of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It's harder to quantify - heat is too "abstract" because you can't put it in a bottle, weigh it, and show it off.

EVERY form of power generation adds to global warming. There is no such thing as "perfect" efficiency - when you convert one form of power (chemical, nuclear, solar, etc) into another (electrical or kinetic) there will ALWAYS be "waste", and this waste is dispated as heat.

Fuel power plants (coal, gas, etc) convert chemical energy into heat energy, which is converted into kinetic energy, which is in turn converted into electrical energy. At each stage "waste" heat is disipated into the environment - especially when the water is cooled.

Nuclear plants convert atomic energy into heat, etc, and the process is much the same. Again, enormous amounts af "waste heat" are disipated into the environment. The largest, most easily recognizable parts of many nuke plants are the cooling towers.

Cars produce large amounts of "waste" heat - that's why they have radiators. Even electric cars produce waste heat - and of course there was waste heat created when the power was generated. Fuel cells produce waste heat.

Even wind and hydro produce waste heat - but produce less because there are less "stages" - they only need to convert kinetic energy into electrical.

Much ado is made about biofuels being better than fossil fuels - even though both produce similar amounts of CO2 emissions. This is because biofuels are considered "circulating" carbon, and fossil fuels are "stored" carbons.

The same holds true for thermodynamics. Fossil fuels and Nuclear are both "stored" energy - energy that has been "dormant" is being released, or "activated". energy that should be slowly disipated over thousands of years is being released in a matter of moments. Energy is released faster than it can be disipated into the space around our planet. Only solar, and solar derivatives (hydro, wind, and (to a lesser extent) biofuel) don't add to this problem - the Sun will shine and that energy will warm the Earth whether we use it or not.

Interestingly, the Second Law of Thermodynamics implies that Potential Energy and Kinetic Energy are one and the same. Potential energy can be "converted" into Kinetic (and back) with perfect efficiency - therefore no actual conversion can be taking place. The two "types" of energy are actually the same - we only perceive them as being different.

What this all implies is that no form of "Energy Production" is truly sustainable. Even Solar, Wind, and Hydro power create waste heat - and will raise the planet's temperature. We can only try to be "less unsustainable" - not using "stored" energy sources like fossil fuels and atomic energy (fusion also uses "stored" energy), and by using less power - thus reducing the waste heate created by the conversion of energy (both in the generation and use of power).

 

[Wishbone]

Waste heat is a second-order effect compared to greenhouse gases, waste heat is a change in the input into the global thermal equilibrium blackbox, while the GHGs are changing the coefficients within the box, with unknown feedbacks inside.

 

[Sky Captain]

It is not just about deaths, but also illnesses and how long the effect goes on. At the local nuclear waste dump, we have for example the effect, that there are far more boys being born than girls, which is also linked to the still unknown effects of a long-term exposure to weak radiation.

What is researched well, is short-term exposure to strong radiation, but not a long-term effect of weak radiation. It is only known that weak and long-term causes more health problems as a short and strong one.

Aren't there any serious studies done on people who live in areas with high natural radiation like Ramsaar in Iran? I guess that would be a closest thing to living on a slowly leaking radioactive waste dump and best place you could get on studying long term effects of weak radiation levels.

Regarding nuclear vs fossil fuels. Problems with nuclear energy seems to be more managable than problems with fossil fuels. If we continue to burn everything that burns - oil, coal, conventional natural gas, shale gas, tar sands, maybe even develop ways to tap deep sea methane hydrates it all has the potential to cause severe impact on climate. What if major bread baskets of the world suddenly don't get any meaningful rainfall for several years in a row because of some climate shift. Now we have a Very Big Problem.