sniperviper21
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Look at the Japaneses Nuke Plants.
Nuclear Power; energy scenario
- Thread starter alex_boothby
- Start date
As I said before, the japanese plants are in a lot of ways testament to just how safe the energy is,
the earth quake was massive, (reactors survived), the tsunami was massive (reactors survived). so far there has been 3 explosions, in 1 explosion 11 people were injured and there was a slight leak of radioactive materials.
Compare that to the deep water oil platform where no natural disaster meant 1 explosion meant 11 dead and massive oil leak.
The point that I was trying to make is that when you talk about nuclear power in the UK we don't really have large uninhabited areas that we'd be able to put massive exclusion zones around in case of disaster.
And it still comes back to the point that you can build in as many safety features as you like, but it still doesn't change that things can go wrong. and we don't have the land space to displace en-mass lots of people.
loosing 1.1GW of generating capacity... oh no!! whatever will we do :'(
again. go look at the national grid website and look at the demand data.
we currently exporting half that to France to make up for their shortfall, (same to Ireland).
if you look at the historic data, on Jan 3rd we exported more than this whole stations output (to France) all day on most days in January...
Other days we imported much more than this.
so firstly, that shortfall of 1,000MW is a pitifully small amount (when you consider that the nations consumptions runs at 40 - 50GW that makes that station about 2% of energy demand).
secondly, if you look at the time scales, nuclear won't save us at all!
lets look at Dugness B
it's construction was started in 1965, yet wasn't finished for 18 year (1983), and didn't start producing power until 1985.
where it produces 1.1Gw
lets compare that to my local coal station (Didcot)
Didcot A, work started 1964, finished 1968, and it's got 4 500Mw generators
it burns, coal, gas or biomas (which is considered a totally green/CO2 less fuel).
so if you were to power didcot A on biomass only, it is cleaner than nuclear fuel (no polution rather than lots of radiative waste). quicker to build, cheaper to build, with a higher power output.
Didcot B might be a better comparison construction started 1994, finished 1997(generating in 97 too). produces 1.4Gw (so again, quicker, cheaper with more generating capacity).
there you have the answer...
if there genuinely is an energy crisis looming, we're going to have to stick with traditional burning stations, we can construct burning stations that have greater generating output with less time and less budget than it takes to build a nuclear station.
No nuclear station has eve been completed in less than 6 years, from the start of construction, -and they are still trying to find sites!
There are no nuke stations generating more than 1.2Gw
There is still the problem of waste.
compare that to a coal station, where we have a station that can generate 2Gw of power from biomass (Didcot A), or a station (Didcot B) that can produce 1.4Gw (200MW more than any current nuke station), constructed in less than 3 years.
Couple that with the fact that if we use biomass fuels the stations are arguably completely Co2 neutral.
and there is less risk of accident, radiation leak with nuclear power.
look at the absolute worst case scenario...
you have to build stations on sites where there already are stations because you have to have an entry point to the grid.
so lets assume that a Didcot C is built, and lets assume it's a nuclear station.
it'll produce 1GW (same as other nuclear stations).
that'll put the total power generating ability of the three stations at ~4.5GW (10% of national demand).
now consider an accident at the plant.
firstly this immediately shuts down the nuke reactor there needs to be a massive exclusion zone, this immediately shuts down the other stations.
10% of power generating ability immediately lost.
exclusion zone means that thousands of people are displaced from homes, from Didcot, north as far as Oxford, west as far as Swindon, East as far as Reading, South as far as Newbury...
so that's lots of people removed from local towns (evacuated to where exactly?)
lots of students and academic researchers moved from Oxford (massive stop to research). car production stopping in Swindon (Honda factory), car production stopping in Oxford (Mini factory). Vodafone are based in Newbury, so that shuts down the nations biggest cellular network (or at least stops it's ability to maintain it's network properly), Vodaphone also maintains the tetra network used by police/fire/ambulance so you're possibly going to affect that networks ability.
moving east to reading you're looking at shutting down Microsoft UK, Oracle UK, Sage UK, plus tens of data centres...
a lot of the space is fields a well, so you're also looking at loosing harvests as the land can't be worked and who knows how many thousand cows/sheeps/pigs etc need to be moved...
when you consider the risk to all those industries and people (in the monetary terms of moving people/cattle/shutting down businesses). then nuclear becomes less and less attractive.
the earth quake was massive, (reactors survived), the tsunami was massive (reactors survived). so far there has been 3 explosions, in 1 explosion 11 people were injured and there was a slight leak of radioactive materials.
Compare that to the deep water oil platform where no natural disaster meant 1 explosion meant 11 dead and massive oil leak.
The point that I was trying to make is that when you talk about nuclear power in the UK we don't really have large uninhabited areas that we'd be able to put massive exclusion zones around in case of disaster.
And it still comes back to the point that you can build in as many safety features as you like, but it still doesn't change that things can go wrong. and we don't have the land space to displace en-mass lots of people.
wow, misrepresenting the facts as if "only nuclear will save us".
loosing 1.1GW of generating capacity... oh no!! whatever will we do :'(
again. go look at the national grid website and look at the demand data.
we currently exporting half that to France to make up for their shortfall, (same to Ireland).
if you look at the historic data, on Jan 3rd we exported more than this whole stations output (to France) all day on most days in January...
Other days we imported much more than this.
so firstly, that shortfall of 1,000MW is a pitifully small amount (when you consider that the nations consumptions runs at 40 - 50GW that makes that station about 2% of energy demand).
secondly, if you look at the time scales, nuclear won't save us at all!
lets look at Dugness B
it's construction was started in 1965, yet wasn't finished for 18 year (1983), and didn't start producing power until 1985.
where it produces 1.1Gw
lets compare that to my local coal station (Didcot)
Didcot A, work started 1964, finished 1968, and it's got 4 500Mw generators
it burns, coal, gas or biomas (which is considered a totally green/CO2 less fuel).
so if you were to power didcot A on biomass only, it is cleaner than nuclear fuel (no polution rather than lots of radiative waste). quicker to build, cheaper to build, with a higher power output.
Didcot B might be a better comparison construction started 1994, finished 1997(generating in 97 too). produces 1.4Gw (so again, quicker, cheaper with more generating capacity).
there you have the answer...
if there genuinely is an energy crisis looming, we're going to have to stick with traditional burning stations, we can construct burning stations that have greater generating output with less time and less budget than it takes to build a nuclear station.
No nuclear station has eve been completed in less than 6 years, from the start of construction, -and they are still trying to find sites!
There are no nuke stations generating more than 1.2Gw
There is still the problem of waste.
compare that to a coal station, where we have a station that can generate 2Gw of power from biomass (Didcot A), or a station (Didcot B) that can produce 1.4Gw (200MW more than any current nuke station), constructed in less than 3 years.
Couple that with the fact that if we use biomass fuels the stations are arguably completely Co2 neutral.
and there is less risk of accident, radiation leak with nuclear power.
look at the absolute worst case scenario...
you have to build stations on sites where there already are stations because you have to have an entry point to the grid.
so lets assume that a Didcot C is built, and lets assume it's a nuclear station.
it'll produce 1GW (same as other nuclear stations).
that'll put the total power generating ability of the three stations at ~4.5GW (10% of national demand).
now consider an accident at the plant.
firstly this immediately shuts down the nuke reactor there needs to be a massive exclusion zone, this immediately shuts down the other stations.
10% of power generating ability immediately lost.
exclusion zone means that thousands of people are displaced from homes, from Didcot, north as far as Oxford, west as far as Swindon, East as far as Reading, South as far as Newbury...
so that's lots of people removed from local towns (evacuated to where exactly?)
lots of students and academic researchers moved from Oxford (massive stop to research). car production stopping in Swindon (Honda factory), car production stopping in Oxford (Mini factory). Vodafone are based in Newbury, so that shuts down the nations biggest cellular network (or at least stops it's ability to maintain it's network properly), Vodaphone also maintains the tetra network used by police/fire/ambulance so you're possibly going to affect that networks ability.
moving east to reading you're looking at shutting down Microsoft UK, Oracle UK, Sage UK, plus tens of data centres...
a lot of the space is fields a well, so you're also looking at loosing harvests as the land can't be worked and who knows how many thousand cows/sheeps/pigs etc need to be moved...
when you consider the risk to all those industries and people (in the monetary terms of moving people/cattle/shutting down businesses). then nuclear becomes less and less attractive.
superman22x
Golden Master
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Humans get more radiation damage from coal plants let alone the greenhouse gases. A hydroelectric damn once broke and killed 26,000 people in China. Chernobyl was not up to any sort of code and no one was really surprised it melted down. In Japan, the plant is still fine. Still just hydrogen explosions. There is less radiation walking near the plant than there is flying from London to New York.
Nuclear power is best source of energy but too many people are blindly against it.
Like I said, it's not a big leak at all.
Update from NEI on reactor status.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear NEI Member:
Please note the following update from Tokyo Electric Power Company.
Fukushima-Daini (2F) unit 4 recovered reactor cooling.
Now 4 units in 2F site have cooling function.
Update of Fukushima-Daini NPS (as of March 14 17:00am) :
Unit 2:
- Restoration work in reactor cooling function that was conducted to achieve reactor cold shutdown has been completed and cooling of the reactor has been commenced at 7:13 am, Mar 14th.
- Afterwards it was confirmed that the average water temperature of suppression chamber was constantly below 100 degrees at 3:52 am.
Unit 4:
- Restoration work in reactor cooling function that was conducted to achieve reactor cold shutdown has been completed and cooling of the reactor has been commenced at 3:42pm, Mar 14th.
Radiation monitoring after 1F-3 hydrogen explosion:
At approximately 11:01am, an explosive sound followed by white smoke occurred at the reactor building of the Unit 3. It was believed to be a hydrogen explosion.
As of 4:00 pm, the measured value of radiation dose at the monitoring post in Fukushima Daini Power Station remains at the ordinary level. No radiation impact to the external environment has been confirmed.
Now this third reactor may be a problem... Don't know yet. I'll wait for the NEI update before I trust any other media though.
not really.
I've just read an article suggesting that the "radioactive gasses" that were released in that explosion were mostly made up of the shorter lived radioactive particles. basically most of then would be decayed to a no-so-radioactive state before the gas cloud even reached the perimeter fence of the plant.
Fukushima is a triumph for nuke power: Build more reactors now! • The Register
JogaBonito1502
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People look at the energy issue one dimensionally. It's not all about innovating the way to convert energy into some useful. There is a lot of stuff we use that do not use energy efficiently. Making these things more energy efficient would go a long way in reducing CO2 emissions. With energy, you have to think outside the box.
superman22x
Golden Master
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Well, that's the one thing we can control now, but if we had better ways of obtaining the energy in the first place, it would be better yet. Gas engines are about 20% efficient. Raise the compression, you raise the efficiency but it's harder to start, more expensive to build, harder to maintain, and more expensive fuel is needed. In the case of hybrids, it's harder to start so gas may be saved, but electricity is used turning the engine on every time the electric motor is out of it's range.
Diesels are much more efficient, around 40% since they ignite on compression. In the summer, you don't even need glow plugs, a lot of drag diesels don't use them at all. But the engines are heavier and more expensive and diesel can turn to a gel in the cold. So it's fairly hard to get engines more efficient, but that's what the automakers do. While other people and automakers research alternate forms of fuel. Nuclear is really a good option. If Nuclear subs/aircraft carriers for example run 25 years before refueling, and they could go much longer but it's just set up that way so it is refueled before it's close to running out. If nuclear plants used military grade uranium, they would be making a ton more power as well.
OP
OP
alex_boothby
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Please dont accuse me 'wow, misrepresenting the facts as if "only nuclear will save us" Its extremly rude and arrogent, you have no idea of my background. The fact is i have spent the last few weeks studying energy in the UK and have experimented with reams of data, and read many peer reviewed papers and government white papers NOT just getting my info from websites/newspapers.TV. THe fact is ther will be a significant energy gap occuring around 2015, with out nuclear WE will experience a 9GW energy loss by 2023, and that is not a "boo hoo" dont be soo naive.
I agree nuclear is not ideal, but atm we have no alternative, nuclear is the only clean resource we have that will help us meet are legally binding 2050 C-emissions. Renewables currently are simply not good eneough...YET
Right well that is my last post as this is getting ridiculous, certain people are being extremly obnoxious, rude and narrow minded, refusing to accept science and sound economic facts.
No disrespect to anyone of course.
More importantly,
My thoughts go out to all in japan.
I know this is probably not allowed due to some sort of restrictions, but i ask, if anyone has the ability to donate to help the poor fellas, please do. Duncan Oldham is fundraising for ShelterBox heres a great way to do it, especially if you are a liverpool fan
Id like to think if someone in the same position as me in Japan had the abaility to help the UK is a event happened they would also.
Cheers All
by the way im no way affliated with the link, just thought its a good thing to do
I agree nuclear is not ideal, but atm we have no alternative, nuclear is the only clean resource we have that will help us meet are legally binding 2050 C-emissions. Renewables currently are simply not good eneough...YET
Right well that is my last post as this is getting ridiculous, certain people are being extremly obnoxious, rude and narrow minded, refusing to accept science and sound economic facts.
No disrespect to anyone of course.
More importantly,
My thoughts go out to all in japan.
I know this is probably not allowed due to some sort of restrictions, but i ask, if anyone has the ability to donate to help the poor fellas, please do. Duncan Oldham is fundraising for ShelterBox heres a great way to do it, especially if you are a liverpool fan
Id like to think if someone in the same position as me in Japan had the abaility to help the UK is a event happened they would also.
Cheers All
by the way im no way affliated with the link, just thought its a good thing to do
superman22x
Golden Master
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Yep, we will have some major energy problems especially when plug in hybrids become more common. If a lot of people had them, they would get home from work around 5-6 plug them in... Massive brown outs daily. The US grid cannot support such things.
