Nuclear & other power source discussions

[Tommy]

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.

Never said that GHGs aren't a serious problem, just that we are so focused on them that we ignore the problem of entropy.

To paraphrase, waste heat is a change in the input into the global thermal equilibrium blackbox, while no change is made to the output side of the equation. Enevitable result is a buildup of heat.

The "least unsustainable" solutions will have BOTH a low GHG emission AND a low entropy, both must be considered when devising "solutions".

 

[Urwumpe]

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.

Not that I know. In Germany, the recently best in the field was the KIDD study about childhood chancer rates near nuclear power plants, which also correlate good to the nuclear waste dump.

Such a study would sure be interesting, also for spaceflight research.

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.

I think that both kinds of fuel lack control, but there are different kinds of being out of control there.

Most CO2 can be chemically filtered out of the gases, if you want to. It isn't effective, and only really works for power plants, but you can do that.

sulfur can be removed from fuel by carefully selecting the fuel or using special chemical filters in the power plant.

But nuclear waste is different there - nuclear waste isn't something you can easily filter out. Take Iodine for example, it is really nasty if released, since it can hide in many molecules, and only a mass spectrometer or centrifuge could separate a bit of it from normal Iodine.

Also, you can't even compare chemical power production with nuclear in terms of the exhaust/waste: chemical power plants have, if you use high enough temperatures and a long enough exhaust stack/filter system to let the exhaust cool, a very reliable output. Carbon and Oxygen become CO2. a bit of water forms. Other, more nasty chemicals form by contaminants alone.

Nuclear fission is different. You only know for sure that the resulting nuclei after the fission have only a small chance of being of similar mass. Everything else is possible - you can have a wide range of different isotopes. Harmless substances in a nuclear reactor can capture neutrons and become highly radioactive. The three classic kinds of radiation can also mess with the materials.

This is one big problem handling the waste - you don't really know what the waste is made of, until you analyzed it. The statistics tell you a reliable figure what you can expect, but then you don't even reliable know, what properties the fuel had that went into the reactor. Or what kind of radiation affected a certain junk part, that is now waste itself.

The many noble gases that are produced along the process are also highly radioactive and noble gases can't be chemically filtered, you need to use different technology there.

Nuclear waste has the nasty tendency to wait silently for a long time until you do an error. And then hell breaks loose. If you don't have the proper respect for the material, you are already gambling with the devil. But even if you do everything thinkable right, nuclear waste can trick you and contaminate a place and produce new nuclear waste.

The funny thing about nuclear fuel is also, that it does not even result in radioactivity constantly dropping - the way how it drops is the sum of many decay processes and many formations of new radioactive isotopes.

 

[FADEC]

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

To demand a different way than just to continue to rely on an old and rather risky technology is not scaremongering. I would call it rationality.

I am very glad to live in a country in which the political class and the society is abandoning nuclear power. In Germany nuclear power has no future. And I hope this will happen to as much other countries as possible. Humans don't need potential threats of a Chernobyl and a Fukushima to produce electricity. Our greatest gift and advantage is our evolutionary brain capabilities. And we really should use it instead of mechanically reciting the old pros and cons of nuclear power like people do for decades.

 

[T.Neo]

Reciting pros and cons is an orders of magnitude better way to use our brilliant brain capabilities, than to engage in alarmist "We must abandon this now!" attitudes.

To demand a different way than just to continue to rely on an old and rather risky technology is not scaremongering. I would call it rationality.

It isn't very rational to call nuclear power "old", that is dependant on the powerplant and not the core concept- which, like everything else, is subject to further development, which includes improvements to safety and reliability.

Guess how humanity produces most of it's power? Fire. And that has been around as technology since before Homo Sapiens even existed.

A jet engine or a coal-fired powerplant is surely such "old technology", that a Neanderthal would be able to build and operate one with ease.

Humans don't need potential threats of a Chernobyl and a Fukushima to produce electricity.

Unfortunately we have not potential threats to produce most of our electricity, but ongoing threats.

Chernobyl and Fukushima are particularly bad examples. They are the exception, not the norm.

A coal fired powerplant, however? It's spewing waste into the air just by doing its job.

Not the same waste, not as intrinsically dangerous, but it is waste nontheless.

 

[Belisarius]

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.

Actually there is some data on people living in these areas and it has unexpected results:

The level of natural background radiation varies depending on location, and in some areas the level is significantly higher than average...The highest levels of natural background radiation recorded in the world is from areas around Ramsar, particularly at Talesh-Mahalleh which is a very high background radiation area (VHBRA) having an effective dose equivalent several times in excess of ICRP-recommended radiation dose limits for radiation workers and up to 200 times greater than normal background levels. Most of the radiation in the area is due to dissolved radium-226 in water of hot springs along with smaller amounts of uranium and thorium due to travertine deposits. There are more than nine hot springs in the area with different concentrations of radioisotopes, and these are used as spas by locals and tourists. This high level of radiation does not seem to have caused ill effects on the residents of the area and even possibly has made them slightly more radioresistant, which is puzzling and has been called "radiation paradox". It has also been reported that residents have healthier and longer lives.

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation"]Wikipedia: Background Radiation[/ame]

The reference given in the Wiki article is the following paper:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/309/5736/883.1.full

 

[Sky Captain]

Could it be that people who live in those areas for generatons are simply become more tolerant to high radiation? 200x above normal bacgroud levels is a lot of radiation. If a leak from a nuclear plant causes that much increase in a large area it is considered major disaster.
It is really a puzzling situation on one hand you have increased cancer rates nearby a nuclear waste dump which cause relatively minor increase of radiation while on the other hand people living for generations in area with bacground radiation orders of magnitude higher are OK.

 

[Urwumpe]

200x above normal bacgroud levels is a lot of radiation. If a leak from a nuclear plant causes that much increase in a large area it is considered major disaster.

We didn't freak out here before Fukushima exceeded 400x above normal for a nuclear power plant, which is about 1200x above normal for normal places.

Don't forget the relations there.

200 times more radiation than normal sounds much, but even a X-Ray exceeds that by far. 200 times more than normal is even less than what astronauts get.

 

[FADEC]

It isn't very rational to call nuclear power "old", that is dependant on the powerplant and not the core concept- which, like everything else, is subject to further development, which includes improvements to safety and reliability.

Guess how humanity produces most of it's power? Fire. And that has been around as technology since before Homo Sapiens even existed.

A jet engine or a coal-fired powerplant is surely such "old technology", that a Neanderthal would be able to build and operate one with ease.

We operate 17 nuclear power plants in Germany. 14 of them were build in the 1970s. The other 3 in the early 1980s.

Neither Lufthansa nor Air Berlin (germanys biggest airlines) uses jet engines and airplanes from the 1970s and 1980s.

If one wants to modernise nuclear power plants and raise safety constraints, further nuclear power plant operation becomes unpayable. In Germany we had more than 5000 reportable events for now including a few close calls. Nuclear power luckily has no future in Germany. The nuclear phase-out is a done deal and due to Fukushima it might accelerate.

Chernobyl and Fukushima are particularly bad examples. They are the exception, not the norm.

We sadly don't live in a perfect world. Chernobyl and Fukushima are the worst visible outcomes of human error, misbehavior, and greed for profit. The operator of the plant in Fukushima is known for faked reports and missing inspections. And the operator is one of the 30 biggest CO2 emitter by the way. In Germany, another progressive country beside Japan, there is also some botch and cover-up. Since Fukushima and the moratorium nobody will get a permission to visit a nuclear power plant simply because they are afraid of inconvenient questions.

A coal fired powerplant, however? It's spewing waste into the air just by doing its job.

Not the same waste, not as intrinsically dangerous, but it is waste nontheless.

Which is no justification for continuing to rely on nuclear power.

7 German nuclear power plants (the oldest) are decommissioned temporarily because of the 3 month Moratorium due to Fukushima. Those power plants are not necessary. The operator of one of those plants (which is one of Europes biggest power supplier) filed a suit to try to continue operation. They are losing almost 1 million Euro profit each day. But nobody is losing electrical power. It is only a question of profit.

 

[Sky Captain]

200 times more radiation than normal sounds much, but even a X-Ray exceeds that by far. 200 times more than normal is even less than what astronauts get.

But there is a difference between occasional Xray procedure or few months aboard ISS and living the entire life in VHBRA. If that paper linked from wikipedia is to be believed then inhabitants of Ramsar recieve several times lethal dose during their life.

---------- Post added at 11:56 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:41 AM ----------

We sadly don't live in a perfect world. Chernobyl and Fukushima are the worst visible outcomes of human error, misbehavior, and greed for profit. The operator of the plant in Fukushima is known for faked reports and missing inspections. And the operator is one of the 30 biggest CO2 emitter by the way. In Germany, another progressive country beside Japan, there is also some botch and cover-up.

That is the real problem. When company operating a dangerous equipment start to cut corners in the name of the short term profit major disaster is waiting to happen. Eliminating such behaviour should be the real goal. Nuclear plants or not if you have TEPCO wannabees running a chemical plants, oil refineries, natural gas distribution pipelines it is only a matter of time before a major industrial disaster strikes.

 

[jedidia]

But nobody is losing electrical power. It is only a question of profit.

And where does that power come from, now that it doesn't get produced in the country anymore? probably from nuclear powerplants from russia or romania, where the plants are even in a worse state.

The problem here is that if the west abandons nuclear energy now, without having working solutions to compensate, we are not abandoning nuclear power at all. We're merely outsourcing it, passing the biggest risks on to other, often more irresponsible countries.

in my opinion, the german moratorium to not build any new powerplants without a clear program on how to follow up on nuclear power was a major mistake, and is responsible for the desolate state many german powerplants are in. They had to be kept going, because they can't build any new ones. In the meantime, that would have been ok if the intermittant time would have been used to develop a workable alternative, which it was not. So now germany is stranded with outdated and unsave powerplants, unable to build new ones, but unable to solve the problem differently than just importing power from other, even more outdated powerplants. Maybe nice for the conciousness of politicians, but an utterly selfish and irresponsible answer to the problem at hand.

The problem doesn't end at powerplants, though. I'm generally proud of swiss nuclear plants that have been kept going at pretty high safety standards, and I'd go living next to one without second thought. However, when I see where our fuel comes from, I could go mad with rage. It's produced in a russian facility with absolutely inacceptable standards and means.

So yes, I'm all in for an alternative to nuclear power, but right now all we have are "some ideas how we could generate some more power", and no sound plans and programms to actually replace the full power output of our nuclear powerplants. As long as such a programm isn't developed, agreed on and carried out, it is a bad, selfish and very irresponsible idea for the nations that consume the most power worldwide to stop producing it. And it will lead to further accidents in overstressed reactors in other places of the world, where the gouvernament doesn't really care about safety and only sees a good buck.

 

[Urwumpe]

in my opinion, the german moratorium to not build any new powerplants without a clear program on how to follow up on nuclear power was a major mistake, and is responsible for the desolate state many german powerplants are in.

you have a few errors there:

1. The program exists behind the renewable energies law.This one had been created and evolved with clear goals on how much energy from which source the program should later result in. Including also how much coal, gas and nuclear should be kept.
2. Most accidents in German nuclear power plants happened before the exit from nuclear power generation. The poor state was already a norm in the 1980s, in many places even in the 1960s. What changed was the law about when to report accidents: many previous accidents have never been published in written form, or had only been poorly documented.
3. The real problem here is the same as in Japan - the same people people that should watch the nuclear power plant operators and ensure that they work properly, are nuclear power plant operators and lobbyists.

While German anti-nuclear novels like "The cloud" are hellish alarmist and often exaggerated, they have a true core behind their stories, that shouldn't be forgotten. I am still searching the book here, after the first reports from Fukushima and the spread out of nuclear radiation started to remind me on the novel. Anyway, the truth behind such novels is: Those nuclear power plants had really a chain of major accidents and minor radiation releases in the past. After some years, we even know that things had been in reality more dangerous than what we have known in public at the time of the Chernobyl craze and when such books had been written.

It is a very faulty concept in sociology to assume, that all people are good honest people. It failed so often, that it is even hard to write a book about how often many people turned really out to be good and honest. The same applies to nuclear power plant owners. The workers who really directly risk their lives there might be really all good and honest people, at least when it comes to their jobs, but the managers that are far away from the front line and never have even to bother about the results of their decisions, because they are not even responsible by law, are very likely not interested in being honest about such things.

 

[T.Neo]

We operate 17 nuclear power plants in Germany. 14 of them were build in the 1970s. The other 3 in the early 1980s.

Neither Lufthansa nor Air Berlin (germanys biggest airlines) uses jet engines and airplanes from the 1970s and 1980s.

Ahem. Many aircraft designs today originate from the 70s and 80s, and I am sure that there are many aircraft actually built in the 70s and 80s still flying today (especially in militaries- the B-52 is from the 1950s!)

If one wants to modernise nuclear power plants and raise safety constraints, further nuclear power plant operation becomes unpayable.

As time goes on, you will have to decommission old plants and build new ones. This goes for any power supply.

In addition, new plants built to meet demand or supplant coal-based production, would obviously not be heritage back to the 1970s...

In Germany we had more than 5000 reportable events for now including a few close calls.

And how many "events" have occured with coal-fired stations?

Remember that "event" does not necessarily mean "capable of precipitating a catastrophic accident". The loose bolt event at Koeberg is a good example.

Which is no justification for continuing to rely on nuclear power.

If you'd rather breathe in all those coal-toxins than live with the potential of a nuclear accident, be my guest.

Coal reserves will eventually run low- estimates for 'peak coal' range from 2030 to 2150; even the latter is a scary prospect. And the climatic effects cannot be downplayed.

We sadly don't live in a perfect world. Chernobyl and Fukushima are the worst visible outcomes of human error, misbehavior, and greed for profit. The operator of the plant in Fukushima is known for faked reports and missing inspections.

7 German nuclear power plants (the oldest) are decommissioned temporarily because of the 3 month Moratorium due to Fukushima. Those power plants are not necessary. The operator of one of those plants (which is one of Europes biggest power supplier) filed a suit to try to continue operation. They are losing almost 1 million Euro profit each day. But nobody is losing electrical power. It is only a question of profit

Politics and profit, are not physics. People, not power, are the problem. They need to be fixed, not the actual power source (already you can have bad effects with other energy storage, look at the Deepwater Horizon oil spill).

When there is a problem, you fix the problem. You don't run away screaming that you can't fix it.

 

[Urwumpe]

And how many "events" have occured with coal-fired stations?

Remember that "event" does not necessarily mean "capable of precipitating a catastrophic accident". The loose bolt event at Koeberg is a good example.

There you are badly wrong in the comparison. The same kind of fault can mean completely different levels of threat depending on where it happens. A loose bolt at the front gate isn't maybe a danger. If this bolt is at a pump or turbine, there is a high chance for disaster.

Coal power plants have accidents, that isn't something new - but the magnitude is different. Also what is pretty funny, but has its cause in industrial history: Nuclear power plant reactor pressure vessels are less strictly regulated in Germany than boilers of coal power plants. Coal power plants are controlled with over a century of experience in how coal boilers should be made so they can't fail catastrophically.

Nuclear power plants don't have such experience - Not because it was impossible to get it. The people behind it simply have never been really interested in it. The pressure vessels had been designed by coal boiler experience, included some nuclear theory for optimization, but the reality checking never happened as it did with coal boilers.

The TÜV does monitor both coal and nuclear power plants - but the TÜV isn't an authority on tell if a design is good or not, that isn't their primary duty, and they can only do such kind of research if asked by the owner. Without such, the only work that the TÜV is permitted to do is measuring that all the specifications of the owners and law makers (which are the owners) are kept.

 

[Sky Captain]

Anyway, if nuclear generation capacity is going to be significantly increased in the future then new fuel cycles and reactor designs should be evaluated first. Currently used uranium fuel cycle is extremely wasteful because only U235 can be used in comercial reactors, U238 just adds to the spent fuel waste. Then there is a cost issue, a projected costs for AP1000 or EPR1600 is somewhere in range from 3 - 5 billion$
Maybe a thorium fuelcycle in molten salt reactors should be considered. It has many advatages over conventional uranium fuel cycle and appearently wasn't developed further in the sixties only because it was not suitable for plutonium production.

 

[Urwumpe]

We had tried something like that already, failed epically by project management errors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300

It also already failed before by operator error... a Homer Simpson nearly caused a major nuclear accident, despite this having been officially impossible in such a design.

Its predecessor didn't fare much better:

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_reactor"]AVR reactor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

The building was until Fukushima, the highest contaminated ruin in the world, even exceeding Chernobyl in terms of beta radiation.

 

[A11]

Why don't people start using thorium powered nuclear reactors instead of using uranium. Thorium has zero chances of a meltdown, very minimal amount of waste, the waste can be disposed easily and it is Very abundant in nature. I think that solar power and all the other sources of energy can't supply according to our energy demands. The only thing that can do this is nuclear power.

 

[Urwumpe]

Why don't people start using thorium powered nuclear reactors instead of using uranium. Thorium has zero chances of a meltdown, very minimal amount of waste, the waste can be disposed easily and it is Very abundant in nature.

Because this isn't the truth. Thorium can melt down, if you just push it far enough. Or do you really think you can produce 3000 MW thermal power in a "small" building without a price to pay? Thermodynamics will always apply.

Also, see above, I posted some wikipedia links to the German experiences with Thorium fuel, which had all been not so nice, especially about the operating costs.

I think that solar power and all the other sources of energy can't supply according to our energy demands. The only thing that can do this is nuclear power.

We still don't even use a tiny fraction of the energy that is emitted at the sun to Earth, not even a tiny fraction of the energy that is reemitted from Earth - and claim it all can't feed our hunger for power?

It is true - we are power hungry. But we can first of all do different, not every Watt of electricity is really used well, waste is the main income for the electrical power companies, also we still have a lot of other energy sources that are not yet fully used.

And still, there is the hope for fusion, which would really keep all those promises that Thorium does not keep. It can't melt-down, the radioactivity of the waste is generally lower and the energy generation can be controlled faster than at a nuclear fission plant.

But unbuild nuclear reactors are always better than build ones... :facepalm:

 

[FADEC]

And where does that power come from, now that it doesn't get produced in the country anymore?

A lot of electrical power that is produced is not really needed. We export it. All those 7 nuclear power plants can be decommissioned permanently without losing electricity and without the need to import electricity. There are always reactors which are decommissioned temporarily due to incidents and repair anyway. Our big electric companies are in fear of losing a lot of money. They say they simply can keep opearting nuclear power in combination with alternative power and simply run up and run down reactors whenever needed. But those reactors are not made to run them up and down on every occasion. And we don't need that power anyway. It is a question of profit, not a question of requirement.

Politics and profit, are not physics. People, not power, are the problem. They need to be fixed, not the actual power source (already you can have bad effects with other energy storage, look at the Deepwater Horizon oil spill).

When there is a problem, you fix the problem. You don't run away screaming that you can't fix it.

Nuclear fission can become fully out of control and the outcome is one of the most worst ones resulting from human activity on the planet. The residual risk of nuclear power, which is a much bigger risk in the real world than on paper, sadly is not fixable.

 

[T.Neo]

The residual risk of nuclear power, which is a much bigger risk in the real world than on paper, sadly is not fixable.

Depends on what paper you look at...

Of course the risk is not "fixable". I can walk down the stairs, slip on a bananna, crack my skull, go to hospital, have a botched blood transfusion that gives me HIV, attend a meeting of HIV-positive individuals where I eat bad seafood, go back to another hospital where my kidney is removed unecessarily, attempt to sue, and get killed by falling space debris while in court.

But that is unlikely to happen, because even the risk of me slipping on a bannana peel is low (I look where I'm going and the people around me don't throw rubbish on the floor, etc).

The point with anything, in terms of safety- be it a nuclear power plant or a space shuttle- is to reduce risk as much as possible. It will not magically go away, but it can be reduced.

Nuclear fission can become fully out of control and the outcome is one of the most worst ones resulting from human activity on the planet.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that. There are far, far worse outcomes that have arisen from human activity, they just do not work like nuclear accidents.

 

[Urwumpe]

I wouldn't go as far as to say that. There are far, far worse outcomes that have arisen from human activity, they just do not work like nuclear accidents.

Like what? Cleaning chemical weapon fallout is still easier than cleaning nuclear fallout. And don't start with religion... this is another thread here.