Do you believe nuclear power generation could be designed to be completely safe?

Discussion in 'Environment & Conservation' started by kazenatsu, Feb 8, 2018.

  1. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    May 15, 2017
    Messages:
    34,608
    Likes Received:
    11,192
    Trophy Points:
    113
    There are so-called "clean coal" technologies.
    One of them involves first reacting coal at high temperatures with steam to convert it into hydrogen, which is then converted to electric energy through a fuel cell. The overall power generation efficiency is 40% higher.
     
    Last edited: Feb 9, 2018
  2. camp_steveo

    camp_steveo Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2008
    Messages:
    23,014
    Likes Received:
    6,601
    Trophy Points:
    113
    All I know for sure is that I grew up here and the old smoke stack no longer leaves a trail of black smoke as far as the eye can see. It doesn't do anything at all, because the shorter scrubber stack is putting out what looks like steam that dissipates after a couple hundred feet at most.
     
  3. btthegreat

    btthegreat Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    May 30, 2010
    Messages:
    16,377
    Likes Received:
    7,057
    Trophy Points:
    113
    This is all too complicated for me. We should breed enough huskies and shave them bald to run on treadmills 24/7 for cheap dog food.
     
    camp_steveo likes this.
  4. reallybigjohnson

    reallybigjohnson Banned

    Joined:
    Jun 23, 2012
    Messages:
    8,849
    Likes Received:
    1,415
    Trophy Points:
    113
    No German engineers are great. German politicians are morons.

    Take a look at your map. The entire Northeast is blue which is the most heavily populated part of the country. Even at half irradiance there is tremendous drop off.

    A residential property can run easily on renewables the problem is that residential is only half of the power consumption. There is absolutely no example of renewables being able to power commercial power needs especially if it involved manufacturing. Volvo built a 19 acre brand new shiny solar farm a few years back and it can only produce enough power for 15% of just one factory.

    Renewable advocates are either illiterate on the subject of commercial power consumption or they are being willfully ignorant. Even Germany can only attain over 50% renewable power production when its a holiday and most businesses are shut down. As soon as the businesses are up again then it drops well below half again despite 280 billion spent.

    You need a baseline and more and more environmental groups are finally starting to realize that. You are one of the holdouts who just will not accept anything other than your own viewpoint. I can't help obstinance. That is your problem, not mine.
     
  5. reallybigjohnson

    reallybigjohnson Banned

    Joined:
    Jun 23, 2012
    Messages:
    8,849
    Likes Received:
    1,415
    Trophy Points:
    113
    The problem with coal isn't just the burning at the plant its the extraction. Unlike oil which can be extracted with minimal impact (cept for that shitty tar sands stuff from Canada which is awful) coal has waste byproducts from the mining process.
     
    camp_steveo likes this.
  6. camp_steveo

    camp_steveo Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2008
    Messages:
    23,014
    Likes Received:
    6,601
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Crazy bad idea! But I bet it would work! LMAO
     
  7. camp_steveo

    camp_steveo Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2008
    Messages:
    23,014
    Likes Received:
    6,601
    Trophy Points:
    113
    You are correct. I am from east TN, I have seen it with my own two eyes. We may have enough fossil fuels to last another thousand years, or even longer, I don't know. But, eventually they will be gone. Besides that, the environmentalists, of which I am one, may be a bunch of nuts, but they are right in that we need to find something else. Not just for that reason, but because of the pollution factors with fossils.
     
  8. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    May 15, 2017
    Messages:
    34,608
    Likes Received:
    11,192
    Trophy Points:
    113
    That is a downside that could potentially be solved by design changes. If the interior containment was designed to be more modular, so that it could easily be moved away and contained somewhere else at the end of the plant's lifespan.

    Like you said, when these plants were constructed, minimal consideration was given to what would happen 70 years in the future.

    While you make a good point, it's also worth pointing out that nuclear power generation facilities did not have all these extreme security measures before 2001, when terrorism from the Middle East started being seen as a big concern. (Before that, only nuclear reprocessing facilities had those para-military squads with machine guns you mention, and there were only two or three of these facilities in the country)

    When I was a kid in school I even went to another kid's science-themed birthday party that was held at a nuclear power plant. We got to see the uranium fuel pellets (which are not radioactive before they go into the reactor) and operate a big electronic crane in a warehouse that was used for picking up heavy equipment. They probably wouldn't do that now.
     
    Last edited: Feb 10, 2018
  9. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 5, 2016
    Messages:
    26,309
    Likes Received:
    7,461
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Just like ours are now.


    You're implying that power must be generated locally. And my sister and her family live in New England, and they have solar panels on their roof and say it keeps their utility electric costs very low. Every little bit helps. Plus, as you can see from this map, the whole East Coast has major wind power generation potential.


    Oh really. You're doing your best to discredit the alternative effort and to intimidate anyone who stands against your objections. Do you work for a fossil fuel company?

    You willfully ignore the reality of "every little bit helps" and are arguing an absurd position of "all or nothing". Businesses are adopting solar production to reduce their power costs - http://www.skyfireenergy.com/solar-for-business/commercial-case-studies/

    You are actually the holdout who refuse to accept anything other than your own viewpoint. I'm advocating a reasonable position of adopting alternatives where possible to reduce fossil fuel consumption. But you are the one demanding all or nothing, and taking the absurd position that since we can't power the whole country 100% with renewables today, we should abandon the whole effort because anything else is "ignorant" and "obstinate".

    There is lots more evidence for my position but I see it's pointless.
     
    Last edited: Feb 10, 2018
  10. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 5, 2016
    Messages:
    26,309
    Likes Received:
    7,461
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Yup, and here in Oregon the Trojan nuclear power plant was built on the river and went online in 1976. And there was legislation in place that disallowed PGE the "privilege" of charging rate payers for decommissioning in the future. Taxpayers and ratepayers were happy with that and the plant was built. Subsequently, the plant experienced a series of operational problems and ceased operation in 2006. It was decommissioned and buried at Hanford, WA. Then PGE found reasons to raise utility rates and it was widely known, but denied, that the reason was really to pay for decommissioning.

    The higher rates continued and after I retired we moved in 2010 to a country home where a PUD provides our power, and their rates were half what PGE was charging. Meanwhile, I remember that in the years between the closing of Trojan and the time we moved in 2010, the stupid people of this state voted against converting to a PUD "because it was socialism" thanks to a very heavy and very expensive anti-PUD campaign run by PGE. The people bought the BS.
     
  11. Mircea

    Mircea Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 24, 2015
    Messages:
    4,075
    Likes Received:
    1,212
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Yes. The Chinese are designing such reactors now.

    Yes.


    Neither fission reactors nor breeder reactors explode.

    Breeder reactors do not produce waste. The "waste" they produce is actually fuel for other breeder reactors.

    Breeder reactors are. They produce their own fuel in perpetuity.

    There are nuclear reactors in Arkansas, Nebraska, Kansas and Arizona, and they're not on coastlines.

    The water does not become radioactive.
     
    Robert likes this.
  12. tecoyah

    tecoyah Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    May 15, 2008
    Messages:
    28,370
    Likes Received:
    9,297
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
  13. Robert

    Robert Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Aug 16, 2014
    Messages:
    68,085
    Likes Received:
    17,134
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Normally your nuclear plants do not ... ahem .... explode. Not in the way hinted at. They may overheat and the steam builds up. But of course plants in operation do not blow up.

    Thus far one plant has blown up and that was in Russia due to faulty design. In Japan, it took an extreme earthquake to cause their disaster. So the problem boils down to avoiding areas of earthquake danger that also can produce a tsunami. That is a wicked combination and should be avoided.
     
  14. Chester_Murphy

    Chester_Murphy Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Oct 2, 2017
    Messages:
    7,503
    Likes Received:
    2,227
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
  15. mamooth

    mamooth Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jan 16, 2012
    Messages:
    6,415
    Likes Received:
    2,182
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    To be technical, primary coolant becomes contaminated with traces of iron-59 and cobalt-58, due to neutron activation of iron from the piping. However, those isotopes both have a half-life of < 1 year, so they vanish quickly. In older days, when cobalt alloys were used in valves in nuclear plants, larger amounts of cobalt-60 would be present, which is much nastier stuff with a 5 year half-life. For that reason, the use of cobalt alloys in new reactors ended around 1970.

    The waste disposal problem is something different, involving mainly spent fuel rods. Those have to sit in the cooling pool for about 2 years, then they can be transferred to dry cask storage. Once that happens, they're fairly safe. They won't self-burn and vaporize any more, so even if those those dry casks were hit with a bomb, the radioactive pollution would stay localized to the explosion site.
     
    Last edited: Feb 25, 2018
  16. Blücher

    Blücher Active Member

    Joined:
    Sep 8, 2016
    Messages:
    479
    Likes Received:
    223
    Trophy Points:
    43
    Gender:
    Male
    German energy mix 2017 (in comparison to 2016)

    [​IMG]

    Offshore wind energy is becoming more and more important and efficient, the latest licences for offshore wind parks have been subsidy free. The new power grids to transport the wind energy from our coasts to the south are in construction.

    Another important project about the German "Energiewende" (energy turn) is a new cable to Norway. The "NordLink" cable will connect the German and Norwegian power grids to export sun and wind energy to Norway and to import hydropower when needed. Norway has the potential to be the battery for Europe.

    https://www.kfw-ipex-bank.de/Intern...0-MW-subsea-cable-between-Norway-and-Germany/

    As far as I kown all plans for new coal plants in Germany are stopped or canceled.
     
  17. reallybigjohnson

    reallybigjohnson Banned

    Joined:
    Jun 23, 2012
    Messages:
    8,849
    Likes Received:
    1,415
    Trophy Points:
    113
    No that wind farm will not be even close enough to power the entirety of Europe. This is more pie in the sky nonsense that renewable proponents keep pumping out like those silly articles about "If you just built enough solar panels to fill North Dakota you could power the world" nonsense which falls apart immediately when you actually start doing stuff like ......MATH!

    Germany and France both decided to shut down nuclear power because of fear mongering by idiotic environmentalists and behind the scenes became more and more dependent on coal which is why their CO2 emissions are either not dropping despite massive spending on renewables or they are in fact increasing as is the case with Germany. Their gross coal amount is down but taking nuclear out of the equation means that more and more of the energy "pie" is now coal that it was before.

    http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/11/13/germany-is-a-coal-burning-gas-guzzling-climate-change-hypocrite/

    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-11-14/germany-is-burning-too-much-coal

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesc...asing-germanys-carbon-emissions/#211cc3ed68e1

    http://environmentalprogress.org/bi...r-second-year-in-a-row-due-to-nuclear-closure
     
    Last edited: Feb 27, 2018
  18. Blücher

    Blücher Active Member

    Joined:
    Sep 8, 2016
    Messages:
    479
    Likes Received:
    223
    Trophy Points:
    43
    Gender:
    Male
    Reducing coal is the next step, the Energiewende is a project for decades

    France hasn't closed a single nuclear plant by now.
     
  19. reallybigjohnson

    reallybigjohnson Banned

    Joined:
    Jun 23, 2012
    Messages:
    8,849
    Likes Received:
    1,415
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Reducing coal can only be done if its replaced by something else and the ONLY thing that can reliably replace coal is either natural gas or nuclear. Did you even read the articles I posted talking about how Germany had less sunlight in 2016 than 2015? France has one of the lowest CO2 per capita in the entire EU with only countries that have no industry at all being lower. That is all because of France's heavy investment in nuclear in the 1970s and some environmentalist luddites want to shut them down and power the world with rainbows and prayers.

    http://www.france24.com/en/20170710-france-hulot-could-close-nuclear-plants

    "As a result, French greenhouse gas emissions fell drastically from the late 1970s to today. In 2014, France averaged CO2 emissions of 4.32 tons per capita, below the EU average of 6.22 tons per person and well below the US average of 16.22 per person."

    "Though environmentalists disagree over whether nuclear power can truly be considered “green energy”, the immediate effect on CO2 emissions from Germany’s nuclear halt in 2011 was a slight increase as the country turned to coal-fired plants to compensate in the short term."

    There is no "short term" Germany is stopping future subsidies of solar power because it was prohibitively expensive and they discovered what everyone who has a brain already knew and that was weather is unreliable form day to day to week to week to year to year and they had to have coal to have a steady reliable baseline. The only places solar works are in areas with consistent and reliable sunshine and most of the worlds population doesn't live in those zones they live in temperate and higher latitudes. And no you can't just build all the solar plants in one area and then send it north because you need substations to stabalize and ramp up any power loss that you get along the way. The longer the distance the more power loss you have and the more substations (which require power to stabilize the line) are needed.

    I would also like to point out the complete hypocrisy of solar proponents and their deafening silence of the thousands of birds killed every year over each solar farm. They were apoplectic over the animals killed by the Valdez spill but are virtually silent when far more animals are killed by solar and wind farms. A dead bird is a dead bird, doesn't matter what killed it.

    http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-solar-bird-deaths-20160831-snap-story.html

    That's just one solar plant.

    https://abcbirds.org/wind-energy-threatens-birds/
     
    Last edited: Feb 27, 2018
  20. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    May 15, 2017
    Messages:
    34,608
    Likes Received:
    11,192
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Typically the most economically practical solution in that case is to have a standby natural gas power plant for the times when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.

    However, this solution isn't as appealing to the radical greenies and in most of their proposals they want to go 100% renewable, which costs 10 times as much. The expense is trying to store that energy, which turns out to be far less practical to do for large amounts of energy than generating it.

    Another more minor strategy is to store up water in dams and only release it when the other renewable sources are not able to provide full power (or when the water level has reached full capacity). Only about 3% of Germany's power comes from hydroelectric, so in practice that might mean that hydroelectric would be able to provide 25% of the total power demand for only 1 or 2 days within a 3-month period. Obviously not a complete solution to the problem but it could have a substantial effect on reducing the consumption of fossil fuels in standby power plants.
     
    Last edited: Feb 27, 2018
  21. Capt Nice

    Capt Nice Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 10, 2017
    Messages:
    9,998
    Likes Received:
    10,217
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    LOL. Do you really think any one on this forum is capable of answering that question? If you asked 'do you wish - - - '. I would answer yes. :)
     
  22. reallybigjohnson

    reallybigjohnson Banned

    Joined:
    Jun 23, 2012
    Messages:
    8,849
    Likes Received:
    1,415
    Trophy Points:
    113
    I will repeat, Germany spent close to 300 billion euros and what they ended up with is more coal and natural gas being used as a percentage of their power than before because they decided to shutter nuclear power because of fear mongering. Guess what happened their CO2 increased.

    France dropped to one of the lowest CO2 emmisions in the EU because most of their power is derived from nuclear. Now because of ignorant luddites believing the nonsensical and completely unscientific hyperbole from environmentalists want to shutter their nuclear plants as well. Germany is the textbook example of the limitations of over relying on renewables and not supplementing it. Gas powerplants are more harmful to the environment than nuclear by far.
     
    Last edited: Feb 27, 2018

Share This Page