First Floating Wind Turbine Buoyed Off Norway

MonkeyClicker writes to tell us that the world's first large-scale floating turbine has been installed off the coast of Norway. A combined effort between Siemens and StatoiHydro, this marks the first foray into deeper waters due to restrictions in place that require offshore turbines to be attached to the sea bed. "The turbine in Norway will be 7.4 miles offshore where the water is 721 feet deep. It will be utility-size turbine, with a hub height of about 100 feet, capable of generating 2.3 megawatts of electricity. To address the conditions of the deep sea, the turbine will have a specially designed control system that will seek to dampen the motion from waves."

Comments

Reminds me...

[nhytefall]

Of an old saying... "There's power in the motion of the ocean". Though I think that quote referred to something completely different.

Re:Reminds me...

[davidphogan74]

But if Sweden did it they'd be copying something.

Why not

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone provide me with a credible reason why we shouldn't stack these things on every coast in the world to provide nations with clean electricity? Or is nuclear power still too sexy to give up?

Re:Why not

[Henry V .009]

A nuclear power plant generates about 1000 times as much power as this thing and costs only about 10 times as much (although some built in the 1970s cost only about twice as much).

Re:Why not

[RsG]

Well, too many could be a hazard to navigation, plus there's the whole cost-benefit business, and the high maintenance costs associated with anything left in saltwater. But I'm inclined to think such an energy solution is probably worth using where available - it certainly offers an answer to the question of where we're going to fit enough windmills to be useful. This is a problem that all forms of passive energy collection suffer from to some degree.

That being said, I could put your question back at you. Can you give me a credible reason not to build nuclear power plants? And don't just trot out Chernobyl or waste issues without elaborating - show some depth in your reasoning.

Re:Why not

[QuantumG]

You mean other than the fact that they're like 100x more expensive than nuclear?

I'm an Australian.. we have one experimental nuclear reactor, 20 MW. It uses about 30 kg of uranium a year. It's used for research.. but not into power reactors. The majority of Australians are afraid of nuclear power. If you ask people on the street why they don't want nuclear power, they'll all say the same, we don't want to have to deal with the nuclear waste. Of course, this doesn't stop us from selling shitloads of uranium. The international community has threatened to prohibit the sale of Australian uranium because we don't store the spent rods, but we do reprocess them. This has non-proliferation consequences. That threat prompted the National Repository/Store Project.. but in 2004 Scrooge McJohnny Howard killed that as he did to every other infrastructure project.

Nuclear is the only option for affordable and ecological responsible power.

Re:Why not

[oneirophrenos]

It's the first of its kind, if we are to believe the headline. I'd expect the efficiency/cost ratio to increase with further R&D. Also, a wind turbine doesn't require the mining and transport of radioactive isotopes, nor does it require the disposal of radioactive waste. If we are to look for a "clean" source of energy, wind power is one of the first alternatives that spring to mind.

Re:Why not

[RsG]

The international community has threatened to prohibit the sale of Australian uranium because we don't store the spent rods, but we do reprocess them. This has non-proliferation consequences.

Okay, now I'm curious. What non-proliferation consequences are there to this policy?

Re:Why not

[Quothz]

Can someone provide me with a credible reason why we shouldn't stack these things on every coast in the world to provide nations with clean electricity? Or is nuclear power still too sexy to give up?

Because we don't yet fully understand our atmosphere. How will this impact air currents? Will that alter climates? We don't know.

Re:Why not

[RsG]

Minor quibble: The mining and transport of fuel for a nuclear reactor is a negligible cost. Uranium ore and fuel pellets are relatively safe items, at least as far as heavy metals go, and you don't need very much fuel for a reactor. Even processing it needn't be that costly, since you can use a heavy-water reactor with un-enriched or minimally enriched fuel. If you are using enriched fuel, it's still fairly cheap in terms of dollars spent per megawatt generated.

Reprocessing the waste does have a cost associated with it, and storing or disposing of the waste you can't or won't reprocess even more so, so that part of your post was correct. And of course the operational costs of a nuclear reactor are pretty high. But then, we don't know the operational costs of these new turbines yet (which is going to be higher than it ought to be, given it's a prototype).

Re:Why not

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.apnastory.com/out/celebs-in-macau-for-the-iifas

Re:Why not

[Sundo]

You mean other than the fact that they're like 100x more expensive than nuclear?

Building a single windmill prototype like that and sticking it alone in the ocean (with a 10 kilometer power cable) is bound to be lot more expensive per MW than building a whole farm of them. The original article also does not specify how much of that money went into development and how much went to actually building the turbine. The cost should come down quite significantly if that thing actually works as advertized and they start building them by dozens.

Your claim that nuclear is the only option for affordable and ecological power is either pure trolling or rather incredible stupidity and ignorance. I agree that it's propably the best current short term option, but it definitely isn't the only or best one in long term.

Re:Why not

[Anonymous Coward]

The international community has threatened to prohibit the sale of Australian uranium because we don't store the spent rods, but we do reprocess them. This has non-proliferation consequences.

Okay, now I'm curious. What non-proliferation consequences are there to this policy?

At a guess: someone other than the Australian government looking after the spent fuel (and it's load of weaponizable plutonium). Nobody in the West is too concerned about the Aussies embarking on a secret program to develop nuclear weapons. The same can not be said for every nation that is buying low-enriched uranium fuel for its power reactors.

Re:Why not

[Anonymous Coward]

We probably should do exactly that. When the wind is blowing, we can offset combined cycle natural gas powerplants (which ramp up or down easily). To offset coal (by far the majority of US electricity comes from coal -- it's plentiful, cheap, and the utilities don't pay directly for the environmental consequences of burning it by the trainload), you need BASELOAD generating capacity.

Baseload is the "always on" demand for energy, 24/7. Coal and nuclear are ideally suited to meet this demand: large powerplants that operate most efficiently running at 100% capacity all the time. Solar and wind are great. We should be roofing houses with photovoltaics, building solar thermal plants in the deserts, and sticking windmills in the ground everywhere it's appropriate. But intermittent power sources like renewables can't supply the baseload demand... barring some astonishingly unlikely advances in battery technology or super-conducting electrical cables, or other technological breakthroughs that might as well be labeled "magic" or "Star Trek."

Yeah, nuclear has some issues, but they're largely political (i.e. Yucca Mountain phail) and not technical. The WHOLE WORLD'S nuclear waste could be stored outside of Carlsbad, NM at the Waste Internment Pilot Project (WIPP). I've toured the place. It's amazingly robust, and a cunning mixture of low-tech (salt mining is EASY fer chrissakes!) and high-tech (radiation monitoring that regularly detects the fallout from dust storms in the Gobi Desert, but no emissions from WIPP). Frankly, I was impressed.

So, yeah. Energy. You want to limit greenhouse gas emissions? Replace natural gas with renewables wherever possible. Replace coal with nuclear everywhere. Close the nuclear fuel cycle, and push for energy efficiency standards that matter. Transportation energy requirements? That's where things get a little bit tougher...

Re:Why not

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans are fucking stupid. They just have lots of money to throw at people. Their government dogs will throw money at your government to prevent alternative energy while the majority of Americans will be sucking the Arabs' dicks for petrol this coming summer. I predict that their gas prices will rise to 6 dollars a gallon. Sit back and laugh.

Re:Why not

[catmistake]

Nuclear power is complex. Maintaining a reaction takes experts with decades of education and years of training. Calculate the cost of education into the cost of nuclear power? You should.
Compare "the worst that can happen" in nuclear power to the same with solar, wind, geothermal, or hydroelectric power. This alone should be enough to deter us from nuclear power, because no matter what, mistakes are always made and the unexpected occurs. Currently, the only method of cleaning a nuclear accident is to package and store all the radiated stuff underground. Did you see the article recently about the irradiated mud wasps? That is seriously messed up.
Before sending astronauts into space, every conceivable scenario is considered and plans are made for the just in case. Nuclear proponents never seem to want to finish solving the problems before plunging headlong into them.
Nuclear power isn't perfect. It does have serious problems. These problems need to be definatively solved before the concept as a whole is a valid solution to the energy crisis we face. Cheap power now is NOT worth the deadly problems it WILL bring. Solve the waste problem, solve the security problems, solve the what-if problems, THEN build your nuke plants. In the meantime, we can schlep our way through the problems of other truely clean energy alternatives and not sweat so much when tge mistakes are made. So power is a little more expensive, but the risk of a wind turbine taking out an entire region for generations is non-existant.

Re:Why not

[Phurge]

Because we don't yet fully understand our atmosphere. How will this impact air currents? Will that alter climates? We don't know.

I daresay that you would have to put up a ridiculous number of turbines before they have any effect. I mean, the world seems to have done ok with those other large scale wind blockers commonly known as office buildings....

Re:Why not

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's used for research.."

It's major role is for the production of short half-life medical isotopes

Re:Why not

[feepness]

We've been putting off nuclear energy for thirty years now. The chickens continue to come home to roost as our costs rise and our options dwindle. As my new President is fond of saying, let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Re:Why not

[catmistake]

Nuclear power is the only option for affordable and ecologically responsible power

The only reason nuclear power is cheap is the bajillions the governments poured into researching the best way to make fuel for bombs. If a tenth of that had been spent researching solar power, then solar power would be cheap.

Nuclear waste, btw, really isn't all that eco-friendly. The waste is only one problem, and today this particular problem is not solved, but the solution has been postponed. Maybe someday we will be able to safely turn nuclear waste into car tires or something. Or maybe we'll never come up with a better idea than burying it. No one can say. But we are guarunteed that the cost of wind power plants and solar plants will get cheaper. Its an economic fact. But only if we embrace and develop and use the technology. This is how nuclear power got cheap (ignoring the expensive educations needed for nuclear engineers... those costs only go up over time).

No, the only ecologically responsible choice is just about anything but nuclear. And "affordable" is always a relative term. What made nuclear power affordable can be applied to any new energy technology. Take your pick, and pour equal resources into developing it and costs will look better for most of the alternatives because they're all much simpler, easier to understand, and will be to build and maintain.

Re:Why not

[EsbenMoseHansen]

A nuclear power plant generates about 1000 times as much power as this thing and costs only about 10 times as much (although some built in the 1970s cost only about twice as much).

Where did you get the numbers for the windmill? I was unable to find them.

I am all for nuclear (and wind! let's spread out! In different directions!) Anyway, as far as I can tell, the cost of a nuclear plant is very different from a windmill (flotilla, I suppose in this case).

Costs includes construction, fuel, security, maintenance and deconstruction. Of these, it seems likely that nuclear has lower construction and maintenance cost, while windmills (rather obviously) wins in fuel, security and probably deconstruction cost (I suppose they could simply be emptied and sunk, reusing whatever parts are reusable.).

Does anyone know a sensible comparison of these cost? I tried to read one of Bjorn Lomborg's, once, and I nearly fell of the chair laughing. Now there is a man who cannot use a calculator.

Re:Why not

[jhol13]

WHAT??? Only ten times more expensive? You've gotta be kidding.

Oh, you were ... 400 million NOK for a prototype v.s. 4500 million Euros (e.g. Olkiluoto 3).

Re:Why not

[RsG]

Nuclear power is complex. Maintaining a reaction takes experts with decades of education and years of training. Calculate the cost of education into the cost of nuclear power? You should.

Unless "decades of education" was meant to include their high school diploma, I think you're exaggerating. Not that I disagree with your fundamental point; a nuclear plant does pay good money for qualified staff, and that does include paying for some of their training.

You're correct that the level of expertise needed is particular to nuclear power, but it is part of a larger cost associate with staff. No means of power generation is fully automated. Even a system like the one in TFA presumably pays somebody's wages.

Compare "the worst that can happen" in nuclear power to the same with solar, wind, geothermal, or hydroelectric power. This alone should be enough to deter us from nuclear power, because no matter what, mistakes are always made and the unexpected occurs.

"Worst that could happen" for a hydro dam is a major flood. I'd call that unlikely, assuming the engineers and construction team did their jobs right. But then, I'd say the same about nuclear.

I'd agree that nuclear is dangerous, but disagree that the danger should deter us from using it at all. Like all technology that can go awry, caution must be used, safeguards put in place.

I'd suggest reading up on passive safety mechanisms in nuclear power. Look up "pebble bed reactors", which have the means to make the fuel fly apart if it gets too hot, halting the chain reaction. There is never a total absence of risk, but the risk can be made small enough for our purposes. The question is not: is it perfect? - the question is: is it worth it?

If the choice came down to a mix of passive power collection, coupled with either nuclear or coal, which would you pick? Assuming we could not meet all our energy needs with alternative energy alone and we needed one or the other.

Currently, the only method of cleaning a nuclear accident is to package and store all the radiated stuff underground. Did you see the article recently about the irradiated mud wasps? That is seriously messed up.

Didn't see the article. Got a link?

I am very much aware of the risks associated with radioactive contamination. I am also aware that it isn't the end of the world. There are living things in closer proximity to Chernobyl than we though possible; the assumption 20 years ago was that the reactor site and all around it would be sterile for centuries. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both rebuilt and are home to people today, a bare sixty years after being nuked (and it's not like they were rebuilt yesterday either). Yes radiation is scary. No it is not reason enough to convince me that we must abandon nuclear power.

Before sending astronauts into space, every conceivable scenario is considered and plans are made for the just in case. Nuclear proponents never seem to want to finish solving the problems before plunging headlong into them.

On this... I actually agree with you. If new reactors are going to be built, they need to be designed with the utmost care, even if that means raising the cost considerably.

What you may not realize is that even the older, less safe, water moderated reactors currently in use have an excellent safety record. The major accidents - Chernobyl and Windscale - used designs known at the time to be less than safe. The sole accident I can think of for a light water moderated design was Three Mile Island, where the safety systems actually worked. Nobody died, no contamination was released - the worst problem was actually the hysteria associated with the words "nuclear" and "accident" in the same headline.

Nuclear power isn't perfect. It does have serious problems. These problems need to be definatively solved before the concept as a whole is a valid solu

Re:Why not

[cyn1c77]

Nuclear is the only option for affordable and ecological responsible power.

Yeah, accidentally drop some nuclear waste in your water supply and see how affordable and responsible it is then.

Or better yet, let a terrorist get his hands on some and do it for you.

With history as my witness, humans are not responsible. We mean well, but we have very short memories and radioactive material has a very long life.

Widespread nuclear power would be a fucking catastrophe. You think third world countries run by dictators are going to be "careful" with their reactors or their waste?

Re:Why not

[catmistake]

Agreed. Nuke proponents always use the "its cheaper" card. But is it, really?

What was the cost of developing nuclear power. Just because we already paid for it doesn't mean it wasn't expensive. How many cumulative years of education does it take for a nuclear power plant to be designed, built and maintained? Why is this cost always ignored? What is the possible cost of something going terribly wrong? Another ignored cost is insurance... surely accident insurance for a nuclear plant is much higher than for a wind farm (an entire wind farm catching on fire and getting knocked over onto a bunch of solid gold Rolls Royces will undoubtedly cost astronomically less than a single nuclear reactor fully melting down).

Re:Why not

[jabithew]

For a course on nuclear power, we had to analyse the lifecycle cost of a nuclear plant. The operating costs are about half of the capital costs. Decommissioning was taken as a capital cost in this context, which it at least behaves a lot like. The decommissioning has a low cost in the context raising capital for the project because it happens 30 years or so after the initial investment, so it is heavily discounted, leaving a very small contribution.

Let me see if I can dig out the spreadsheet for this...here we go. The capital costs came to 67% of the electricity generation cost (p/kWh) and the rest was taken up with operation and maintenance, including fuel purchase and waste disposal. The cost we calculated was 2.62p/kWh total, excluding the profit (cost of capital). If you ignore the initial capital investment then the cost is only about 0.8p/kWh.

Re:Why not

[amn108]

Send it off into space. Plenty of space in space.

Re:Why not

[catmistake]

But wind is crazy dangerous. It can bury cities in sand, obliterate houses, knock down bridges and blow planes right out of the sky. And there is the lingering issue of what to do with all the spent wind. We should first solve the problems with wind before trying to harness such a volitile energy source. At least a nuclear reaction is reasonably predictable, and we can just bury and forget about the waste. /sarcasm

Re:Why not

[LinkFree]

This is all infinity more cleaner than a nuclear power plant, you are missing the point.

Re:Why not

[Anonymous Coward]

someone please mod this shit down. it's like a game of how many fallacies can you fit into one sentence after pulling numbers out of your ass.

Re:Why not

[Bj�rn]

but it definitely isn't the only or best one in long term.

Unless we go with breeder reactors, I don't even think you can call it a long term option since there is a limited amount of uranium.

Re:Why not

[Anonymous Coward]

The majority of Australians should not be afraid of nuclear power, it can be safe if engineered properly, long-term waste-disposal is planned in from the start and included as part of the cost. Most importantly good quality MANAGERIAL expertise needs to be put in place at all stages of the construction and running process to ensure safety standards are maintained over time spans of decades to 100s of years. This is NOT trivial in any industry let alone big engineering projects, to suggest people are just afraid of nuclear is ingenious, what they are afraid of is poor planning, lack of experience, incompetence, or over-emphasis on profits leading to shortcuts in safety standards that can have real effects.

Australians should therefore be afraid of power plants if they were built right now by the current Australian nuclear organizations - they still need to prove themselves competent for the task. The HIFAR and OPAL reactors Australia has built are both simple open-pool research reactors that are mainly teaching aids and producers of radioisotopes. Compared to a nuclear power plant they are the equivalent of a tricycle teaching a child how to ride his father's Harley Davidson. Australia's handling of the most recent OPAL reactor was poor at all stages: there were multiple rounds of planning and bidding before the final design and company were decided upon; when the Argentinian company INVAP finally got the job it was because their bigger competitors had gotten sick of being jerked around so were no longer putting in reasonable bids. INVAP then did a mediocre job of construction, loose fuel plates caused the newly commissioned OPAL reactor to be shut-down immediately for a year. The solution was to REDESIGN the fuel plates after the reactors construction - that is still simply staggering no matter how you spin it.

Australian companies will someday be capable of large scale, high-technology engineering projects. If we didn't have first-world expectations of safety we could build such reactors right now. However, for comparison look at the construction of the Collin's class submarines or the Boomerang synchrotron - they both sort of work but lots of mistakes were made in project planning, contracting and construction. The results are projects that have a slightly unplanned and inexperienced feel about them, as long as we learn the correct lessons and resolve to do better next time then fine. Once we achieve this, we can think about contracting the construction of nuclear power plants to *competent* foreign firms and put in place the incentives that ensure they build them correctly.

Re:Why not

[Anonymous Coward]

In what sense? Both produce no pollutants and no greenhouse gases and although I haven't got the numbers to back it up, my guess is that the amount of energy required to build either a nuclear power station or an amount of windmills with the same average electricity production is roughly similar.

Re:Why not

[catmistake]

Nuclear power is complex. Maintaining a reaction takes experts with decades of education and years of training. Calculate the cost of education into the cost of nuclear power? You should.

Unless "decades of education" was meant to include their high school diploma, I think you're exaggerating. Not that I disagree with your fundamental point; a nuclear plant does pay good money for qualified staff, and that does include paying for some of their training.

You're correct that the level of expertise needed is particular to nuclear power, but it is part of a larger cost associate with staff. No means of power generation is fully automated. Even a system like the one in TFA presumably pays somebody's wages.

Actually, I did mean to include the hs diploma, and ... I was also exaggerating. Sry, I often speak in hyperbole to make the point easier to see. I believe groups with barely a 6th grade education could probably maintain a wind farm.

Compare "the worst that can happen" in nuclear power to the same with solar, wind, geothermal, or hydroelectric power. This alone should be enough to deter us from nuclear power, because no matter what, mistakes are always made and the unexpected occurs.

"Worst that could happen" for a hydro dam is a major flood. I'd call that unlikely, assuming the engineers and construction team did their jobs right. But then, I'd say the same about nuclear.

I'd agree that nuclear is dangerous, but disagree that the danger should deter us from using it at all. Like all technology that can go awry, caution must be used, safeguards put in place.

I'd suggest reading up on passive safety mechanisms in nuclear power. Look up "pebble bed reactors", which have the means to make the fuel fly apart if it gets too hot, halting the chain reaction. There is never a total absence of risk, but the risk can be made small enough for our purposes. The question is not: is it perfect? - the question is: is it worth it?

If the choice came down to a mix of passive power collection, coupled with either nuclear or coal, which would you pick? Assuming we could not meet all our energy needs with alternative energy alone and we needed one or the other.

How dangerous does something have to be to deter you? btw, I'm not suggesting we dismantle all the 110 or so US plants and replace them with alternatives. I'm merely trying to stave off the flood blindly screaming for cheap nuclear power (no, you are not included in this flood, but they like you). My point is that one way has serious risk to human (and other) life (even if risk is reduced to tiny), and is complex, takes serious intellectual capital to pull off, and only appears cheap because much of the R&D was paid for by war/preparation for war; and another way that will eventually be crazy cheap, is so simple children play with working models, and the risk does not involve decades to centuries to clean up if something unfortunate occurs. A dam breaking and flooding a populated valley is small potatoes compared to a melt-down or a terrorist group stealing the bad stuff and doing stuff with that stuff. A flood is over within days to weeks, and (hopefully) the damage is repaired within a few years. I don't think is nuclear power is ever worth what happened at Chernobyl, and I understand that the plant was flawed in ways new reactors are not, however... a mad nuclear scientist, I bet, could still get a pebble reactor to hurt or terrorize lots of people, while a mad windmillist... is just funny.

Currently, the only method of cleaning a nuclear accident is to package and store all the radiated stuff underground. Did you see the article recently about the irradiated mud wasps? That is seriously messed up.

Didn't see the article. Got a link?

Re:Why not

[catmistake]

Send it off into space. Plenty of space in space.

I always said that too... send the waste into the Sun! But its really heavy, so getting to space is really expensive. And if something goes wrong on the way there, its much worse than if we just left it lying around.

Re:Why not

[amn108]

Well, hopefully, as with many (not all though) other things that cost money, the process will perhaps get cheaper?

Re:Why not

[wisty]

Nuclear power stations are driven to improve safety, not to cut costs. Nuclear power will always be crippled by over-regulation and excessive conservatism, because the risks are just too high if things go pear (or mushroom) shaped.

Wind generator manufactures can be a lot more aggressive in cost cutting, because the consequences are a lot less severe.

In the long run, wind generators will drop in price a lot quicker.

Re:Why not

[Jartan]

But we are guarunteed that the cost of wind power plants and solar plants will get cheaper. Its an economic fact.

The cheaper they get the more it will cost to put them somewhere. There are only so many spots where you can harness natural energy. Offshore is a good idea but somehow I doubt miles upon miles of turbine wind farm buoys are going to do wonders for marine ecology.

If you want to convince people these things can work you need to explain where we'll put them all. Show numbers explaining how we can supply 3x our current power needs 40 years from now without choking the surface of our planet with alternative power generation methods.

Re:Why not

[catmistake]

If you want to convince people these things can work you need to explain where we'll put them all. Show numbers explaining ...

Not really. I could just convince them that it must work because there is no other alternative.

Whose idea was centralized power, anyway? Why not decentralize power to the individual units that need it? If a single home can be built to be off grid, then all homes could be built that way. If, for the next 40 years, all new homes built were required to generate all the power they need, I think that'd get it done.

Re:Why not

[cjsm]

Nuclear power is complex. Maintaining a reaction takes experts with decades of education and years of training. Calculate the cost of education into the cost of nuclear power? You should.

Ha ha ha. Got you there. Homer Simpson operates a nuclear power plant, and he doesn't seem like he got past the 8th grade. You need to watch more TV, you might learn something, and not be quite so ignorant of how nuclear power plants are really run.

Re:Why not

[Khyber]

Why haven't we found a way to capture energy from the radioactive waste and convert it to power?

Also: I'm going to keep saying it - combine wind and solar. We have technology available that could be adapted into a hybrid wind/solar installation, a wind turbine coated with thin-film solar panels would harness loads more energy in pretty much the same footprint. In Southern California, there's a wind farm just down the I-10 that would benefit greatly from this idea because of the location, up high with no obstructions, and lots and lots of sunlight. So much potential energy gathering capability gone totally unused.

Re:Why not

[nyctopterus]

... and trees! Wind turbines could balance out our deforestation.

Re:Why not

[Carewolf]

Does anyone know a sensible comparison of these cost? I tried to read one of Bjorn Lomborg's, once, and I nearly fell of the chair laughing. Now there is a man who cannot use a calculator.

Well, what did you expect from a professor in economics?

Sarcasm aside you should reread Bjørn Lomborgs work. Many of the conclusions and some base estimates are colored by his political convictions, but the rest of the stuff besides global warming is pretty neutral and well researched.

Re:Why not

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with uranium is the environmental cost of mining it. In the area of sweden i live there is plenty of resistance to mining plans, everyone around here wants to stop the mining companies from test digging.

Re:Why not

[LordVader717]

Compare "the worst that can happen" in nuclear power to the same with solar, wind, geothermal, or hydroelectric power.

The last one really bugs me. Many more people have lost their lives due to damn failure than because of nuclear power plants. You should really investigate your claims.

This alone should be enough to deter us from nuclear power, because no matter what, mistakes are always made and the unexpected occurs.

By installing mechanisms aimed at multiple redundancy and self-regulation, we can basically exclude many previously feared MCAs like chernobyl and stamp down other safety breaches to statistical insignifgance. We just need the right safety culture and openness.

Solve the waste problem

The problem with final depository is mainly a political one than the science. If we focus on breeder reactors, we'll need far less space than we do today, which by the way isn't all that much to begin with.

solve the security problems

First define "secure". There are plenty of "security problems" with air travel, but that hasn't stopped us.

solve the what-if problems

Solved for people who have faith in science and the laws of physics.

THEN build your nuke plants.

Even then we will be held up by hysterics and scaremongorers who were forged by popular media, and who neither have any interest in engineering and science or of energy politics.
They will continue to cause damage and will even criticize scientific research because of their fundamentalist ideals that were entrenched in them decades ago.

In the meantime, we can schlep our way through the problems of other truely clean energy alternatives

Let me guess that in the mean time, you will continue to use your cooker, water boiler, TV and computer, and probably a car and enjoy a variety of food and consumer products made possible because of our energy infrastructure.

So power is a little more expensive

That's one fundamental misconception that many people share. The consequances of energy shortage are very dire and severe. Energy policy need to be planned decades in advance, it's not a "supply and demand" problem like you learned in school.
I bet it hasn't once crossed you mind that as little as a generation ago in western countries, there was heavy investment in the electric grid so that people could get out of their backward living conditions and economic burdon.
This required many battles for public money and truly long-term investment.
I know that with time people tend to take things for granted but sheesh.

Re:Why not

[rtfa-troll]

The answer you get depends on the numbers you put in. Please tell us exactly what values you used for

• the cost of the campaign to persuade people
• the cost of having people guard the waste for a million years
• the cost of the defence force for the thing
• the cost of the nuclear accident

I think that there are a new generation of nuclear plants that may turn out to be reasonably safe. However, past experience says that everything the nuclear industry says is lies so maybe lets just calm down and see some evidence before we commit to it.

Hint; if your calculation was on a course on nuclear power; the people helping you do it were not without their own bias.

Re:Why not

[ultranova]

A dam breaking and flooding a populated valley is small potatoes compared to a melt-down or a terrorist group stealing the bad stuff and doing stuff with that stuff.

A dam breaking and flooding a populated valley will basically kill everyone there. A melt-down might kill a few people and will give a slightly increase risk of cancer to many more. A terrorist group, assuming they could get either the fuel or the waste and transport it offsite without dying from radiation poisoning would be unable to much of anything with it, except leaving it somewhere it would irradiate people - they'd cause a lot more actual destruction with conventional explosives.

I'm sorry to say this, but you have it exactly backwards.

A flood is over within days to weeks, and (hopefully) the damage is repaired within a few years.

A broken dam can't be repaired, it has to be completely rebuilt, possibly redesigned (since the old design broke). And while the flood will be over in a few days, don't forget that many dams also act as water supply to nearby communities. What will they do?

A major dam breaking is a major catastrophe that makes Chernobyl look like small potatoes.

Re:Why not

[raynet]

That would kill many many birds, which can be a good thing. And that many wind turbines would also change the weather somewhat, but change is for good I've heard.

Re:Why not

[cheesybagel]

That is funny. The worst power plant disasters in history, with the most fatalities, where made by hydroelectric plants (i.e. dams). This little accident in China for example caused 26000 direct fatalities in flooding. 145000 additional disaster affected residents died from epidemics and famine.

Re:Why not

[ultranova]

The only reason nuclear power is cheap is the bajillions the governments poured into researching the best way to make fuel for bombs. If a tenth of that had been spent researching solar power, then solar power would be cheap.

Large-scale solar power production would and does use mirrors to concentrate sunlight to boil water and drive turbines. This technology doesn't need any research; it's low-tech, efficient and frankly, pretty obvious.

The problem with solar is the same as with almost all renewable energy sources: energy storage. Sun doesn't always shine, so you need to store energy when it does so you'll have light and heat when it doesn't. Make storing energy cheap and efficient and sun and wind become competitive. Another problem is that sunlight is only available in some locales. For example, here in Finland, during winter when energy is most needed the Sun only shines a few hours a day, and even then near the horizon, which means that the atmosphere will absorb most of the energy.

Of course, we could coat Sahara with sunlight power stations and produce more than enough power to run the whole world, but that would be costly.

Re:Why not

[Anonymous Coward]

Which makes it 1/100 the cost of the nuclear plant.

The fission plant energy is still about 20 times as cheap (neglecting operating costs). But this is a prototype.

The turbine will produce about 5 GWh per year.One could potentially produce up to 10 EWh per year with this technology, if there is enough raw materials to fill all ocean and sea area in the world with turbines.

If wind power would continue to double every 3.5 years, as it has done the last 20 years, we will have covered the globe in a forest of wind turbines sometime in the 2060's.

Re:Why not

[raynet]

Atleast part of this is due to 'not in my backyard' syndrome and general ignorance and fright over anything nuclear.

Re:Why not

[cheesybagel]

Here in page 15. You can see the amount of land area solar power would require for generating our requirements for the next couple of decades. Only problem is, it is still too expensive to build it.

Re:Why not

[Retric]

10 years after a dam breaking you can use the land, 10 years after Chernobyl they where still guarding the wasteland. The real cost of CHernobyl was not the 56 direct deaths but the ~4,000 additional cancer deaths. The loss of a city and the 19 mi exclusion zone around the site (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_alienation). Plus the constant low enforcement issue.

PS: The overall cost of the disaster is estimated at US$200 billion, taking inflation into account. This places the Chernobyl disaster as the most costly disaster in modern history.[5] There are a tiny number of dam's worldwide that could damage on that magnitude. However, most of those saves lives due to a reduction in annual flooding and a steady water source so they would exist even if they did not provide energy.

Re:Why not

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a cold-war leftover. Reprocessing spent fuel allows the extraction of plutonium for use in nuclear weapons (see DPRK). Arms limitation treaties and talks often touched on reprocessing fuel, since it was one way to increase a nations' nuclear stockpile. This story is a few years old, but summarizes the situation nicely.

Posting AC to avoid undoing mod points.

Re:Why not

[Anonymous Coward]

More modern reactor designs are not only safer than the old designs currently in use, they can actually burn up older "waste", meaning that new reactors could possibly help solve the waste problem we already have.

Re:Why not

[Moridin42]

No, in fact, we don't need to calculate the cost of education into the cost of nuclear power. You could, certainly, but it wouldn't mean much of anything. You'd also have to go in and do the same for the engineers operating the wind turbine network. Since we're looking at big, pointless numbers why don't we throw in the cost of the design teams for both sides. And where do you stop this line of thought anyway? Include the cost of books? Housing? Food? We could get really recursive, including in the cost of educating the nuclear engineers the cost of educating the professors that educated them. Or the cost of educating the architechs that built the universities they were educated in. We don't need to know the costs of education because we pay the engineers. If the education really is burdensome, then the pay will be higher for those positions. If you counted both the salary and the education costs, you'd be double counting part of the costs.

Re:Why not

[radtea]

A nuclear power plant generates about 1000 times as much power as this thing

Actually, a nuclear power plant generates about FIVE THOUSAND times as much power as this thing--you forgot to include the standard duty factor for wind turbines, which is typically about 20%. Really good ones can get up to about 33%, so in fairness a nuclear power plant may generate only about 3000 times as much power as this thing, but no non-experimental reactor is going to generate as little as 1000 times.

Nuclear plants typically generate full power over 90% of the time. Wind turbines generate on average 20 to 30% of their peak production. The idiot press, unfortunately, has yet to cotton on to this, and continues to report peak production numbers for wind farms as if they were remotely interesting or relevant.

Since the expected capacity factor for any given wind farm is known well in advance of construction, there is no reason not to provide the public with the more accurate estimate of the farm's production, if anyone in the media is actually interested in informing the public.

But then, if anyone in the media were interested in informing the public they would focus on the economic issues with nuclear power, not the safety issues (Very small errors on the part of operators can write-off a nuclear plant even though the public is perfectly safe--some new designs may improve on this over PWRs, but none of them are running yet.)

Re:Why not

[Anonymous Coward]

[QUOTE]But we are guarunteed that the cost of wind power plants and solar plants will get cheaper. Its an economic fact.[/QUOTE]

Er, do you have a source for this "fact"? Yes, generally with more production things will get cheaper, but usually not indefinitely. Moore's law is an exception, not the typical case. It's entirely possible that costs will level out at a value that's still too high to be economically viable.

Re:Why not

[ultranova]

10 years after a dam breaking you can use the land, 10 years after Chernobyl they where still guarding the wasteland.

The "wasteland" is in the process of turning into a forest, and is already a wildlife haven.

The real cost of CHernobyl was not the 56 direct deaths but the ~4,000 additional cancer deaths.

How many cancer deaths does the average coal power plant cause during its life?

There are a tiny number of dam's worldwide that could damage on that magnitude.

And only those few produce power on the magnitude of Chernobyl.

However, most of those saves lives due to a reduction in annual flooding and a steady water source so they would exist even if they did not provide energy.

They might exist. They might not. Producing power makes money, saving lives doesn't. Isn't capitalism wonderful?

Anyway, you didn't answer my point, despite re-iterating it: in case a dam breaks, what will the communities that depend on it for water do?

Re:Why not

[alexandre_ganso]

No it is not. Tell that to people in Caetité, Bahia, Brazil, where uranium is just a dozen of meters (that's about 36 feet for those who didn't get it) from their houses. They know which sources of underground water are safe, and those which aren't. But digging and screwing things screws their lives, too.

BTW, children has cancer there.

Re:Why not

[alexandre_ganso]

But what a windmill generates as trash? some grease for their axis? What about the half-life of atomic fuel?

Re:Why not

[Anonymous Coward]

A dam breaking and flooding a populated valley will basically kill everyone there.

No it won't. Been there, done that. Next.

Re:Why not

[alexandre_ganso]

Now imagine the damage of a chinese nuke power plant on a heavily dense area...

Re:Why not

[dbcad7]

The problem is.. everyone is for nuclear power plants.. no one is for building them in their town. If you had the money right now to build a plant, you would have to search really hard to find some remote place to build it.. Then you would go through decades of legal fighting and probably lose..

Re:Why not

[iggymanz]

we have plants going for their 2nd round of 30 years. cost of campaigns is negligible. waste doesn't need to be guarded for a million year, it merely needs to be reprocessed because it contains 1% plutonium and breedable u-238, it's golden source of energy. Defense cost is negligible compared to huge outlay we make for petrodollar empire protection. Cost of nuclear accidents has been very small for sane reactor designs and procedures, nothing really major has happened compared to fossil fuel toll on life.

Re:Why not

[alexandre_ganso]

I'm not sure I got it. Are those red squares all what we need? And why europe doesn't need any?

Re:Why not

[alexandre_ganso]

like how much we spend with communication these days? Take a look at 20 and 30 years ago...

Re:Why not

[M. Baranczak]

an entire wind farm catching on fire and getting knocked over onto a bunch of solid gold Rolls Royces

Sounds like a Jerry Bruckheimer film.

Re:Why not

[alexandre_ganso]

Way less than beach buildings as we see in every coast currently.

Re:Why not

[Henry V .009]

I Googled for the name of the corporation and project until I found an article stating that they were spending $80 million on it. I think it was the BBC, but I don't remember.

Re:Why not

[cliffski]

This powerplant has no fuel requirements
This powerplant generates zero waste products
This powerplant is not a terrorist target
This powerplant will cause no widespread panic or disaster even in a complete critical accident
This powerplant can be disassembled cleanly, easily and cheaply
This powerplant uses tech that we arent paranoid about leaking to undesirable nations.

I'll stick with wind and solar thanks.

Re:Why not

[Henry V .009]

To be fair, that's a 4-unit plant. So a lot more power than 1 GW. And, as I pointed out, we've already proven that they can be built for a much more reasonable price.

Re:Why not

[Quothz]

I daresay that you would have to put up a ridiculous number of turbines before they have any effect. I mean, the world seems to have done ok with those other large scale wind blockers commonly known as office buildings....

Well, the GP was asking why we shouldn't erect a ridiculous number of turbines. And cities do interfere with the climate for miles around.

I think wind power is terrific, but I don't think we should consider it an answer to all our power needs without knowing how it'll impact our environment. Same with hydro power and Earth-based solar collection.

FWIW, I favor some wind, some hydro, some solar, nuke plants, and working toward extraplanetary solar collection.

Re:Why not

[catmistake]

Thanks for your post. Sometimes, I feel like its me alone against the ridiculous.

Something just occurred to me. A flood, generally speaking, while bad for people in the short term, is great for the environment and good for agriculture in the long term.

Re:Why not

[transporter_ii]

If everyone had solar and wind power, it would decentralize a lot of the power grid. If something broke, it wouldn't automatically be the power company that came out to fix it. I think in the long run, that would be better for everyone.

The problem with nuclear, is it is your power company on steroids. Huge and complex. Unions are involved. The man hours to build are unreal, and in the end, it is even more consolidated in scope than coal powered plants.

I knew an electrician that worked on a nuclear power plant for years. After many problems, the contract was taken over by another company and the first thing they did was rip out everything that had been completed over the years and everything was restarted from scratch.

Of course, that all gets passed along to us...even the union guys he told me about who would come in and hide all day because they didn't have anything to do at the time.

Everybody's had to suck it up some these days. Big massive nuclear power plants are NOT the way to go in my opinion. I'm tired of "sucking it up" so guys making 35.00 an hour can find a crawl space to sleep in all day.

Re:Why not

[raynet]

Brazil is not Sweden and mining regulations are much thougher in Scandinavia compared to many other nations. Here the mine could never be just a dozen of meters from residental areas.

BTW, children in Sweden have cancer too.

Re:Why not

[alexandre_ganso]

Not from uranium ore.

Re:Why not

[hey!]

One of the problems with costing nuclear power, IMHO, is that an adequate long term storage solution for the waste can't be had at any price.

That doesn't mean we can't muddle along, of course, but that brings up a really important point about the economics and engineering of energy sources: scale matters.

Suppose the world doesn't have any coal fired electricity plants, and you decide to estimate the cost of building and operating one. Now, consider making 1500 of them. Many costs would go down because of economies of scale, but other costs would go up. We could probably ignore the pollution from one plant, but we'd get really concerned with it at the 1500 mark.

I think the same thing applies to nuclear power. Lots of things would become cheaper as we ramped up the number of nuclear plants, but I think not having something like Yucca would leaves us with a problem that could only be handled by externalizing costs on a massive scale -- in other words making the public pay.

Getting back to the original question, I think the unit cost of the wind generators would go down dramatically in the number of generators created -- up to a point. That point is probably pretty high.

Re:Why not

[HiThere]

I'm not sure your estimate of the use time is accurate for a turbine in the open ocean. I suspect that away from obstacles the wind would blow considerably more frequently. I'm sure the information is available somewhere, and I agree with you that it should be a part of the article. But different locations have different use factors. There are locations where the wind effectively NEVER stops blowing. Naturally, these aren't on the open ocean, and they rarely have very MUCH wind. But I suspect that a location in the open ocean might have a use factor of over 50%...depending on the location. (OTOH, in some locations it could shut down for months at a time. See "becalmed". See also "horse latitudes".)

Re:Why not

[HiThere]

The problem is that while most of the problems of nuclear power are quite soluble, the solutions appear to be unattractive to those in power. So they don't happen. It's not really a technical problem.

E.g., the waste problem could be solved by fast breeders. Unfortunately one of the results is plutonium. This isn't a technical problem, it's a political one...and I don't see any solution.

Security, again, isn't a technical problem. And nobody's ever come up with a perfect solution when you consider it as a political problem. As a technical problem, pieces of it can be solved. But when major corporations don't change the default passwords....that's NOT a technical problem.

Therefore, the only safe nuclear plant will be one that's totally robotized. Even then there'll be accidents, but accidents are technical problems, and can be limited. OTOH, it's likely to be well over a decade before I'd be willing to trust a robotized nuclear plant. Actually, I'd want to have it running at a test site for over a decade. Say at the Nevada nuclear testing site. And I'd want it to be under heavy variable load. So build a new Super Collider near it for it to power (or something similar). Or build transmission lines from there to feed power to the grid. And in that case, build several of the plants there. Some distance and around a decade apart. That would minimize several of the problems...but you need a design that doesn't demand lots of water for cooling.

And until that's ready, off-shore windmills sound like a good, safe, transition step.

Re:Why not

[Anonymous Coward]

Now here's an idea, why not build the nuclear powerplants out at sea? Nuclear submarines are a proven technology to some degree. Why not get rid of the weapons and propulsion stuff, moor them to the bottom of the sea, and then put generators in there and run power lines from them?

The extra room from getting rid of the weapons/propulsion could be for more maintenance stuff and things like food for the crew. By staying below water, they avoid all the bad weather and potential security risk, and would only need to surface for crew turnover or resupplying of stores. Also by staying underwater, you limit the risk of any accidents and that the water itself is a form of natural nuclear shielding. (Provided there's no debis field floating around, the radiation won't be able to get very far.)

Staffing shouldn't be too hard either. Everything that was needed for the engineering side of navy nuclear subs would apply. I'm sure there's a certain population of navy vets that would have no problems operating such constructs by using everything they already know. Just make the pay good enough, and the living conditions a little better, from being on subs they're already used to being away for months - so getting people to take up that job shouldn't be a problem.

Re:Why not

[HiThere]

You seem to be confusing the worst that has happened with the worst that could happen. The worst that could happen hasn't even been approached. It needs to be analyzed separately for each plant, but in many cases it's a lot worse than a mere breaching of containment and dispersion of radioactive materials. (That is, indeed, comparable to a dam bursting.)

It's hard to do comparisons, though. How does one compare drowning on the day of the accident vs. getting cancer 5 years later and dying after another 7 years of increasingly intrusive and expensive treatment? Any comparison you make is going to be based on non-objective biases. OTOH, both would cause the cities/towns/villages affected to be deserted. Both would allow some salvage...usually more after the nuclear event (at least technically...governments might have other ideas).

But there are often potential disasters for nuclear plants that are much worse. We haven't seen any of them, so I presume that the people who said they were extremely unlikely were correct. But if you model "worst case scenario" you don't just model the worst that has happened. You model the worst that could happen. This is almost never done honestly by anyone, so don't feel I'm singling out the nuclear industry. It's just that Dams have a long history, so not many of the "worst case scenario"s are still hidden. (I haven't seen record of "an earthquake splits the dam right down the center and it all comes loose at once just as the town is trying to recover from the earthquake", but it's probably happened.)

P.S.: That "worst case scenario" for a dam was inspired by the Diablo Canyon reactor which was decommissioned before start up when the public raised an uproar because the reactor was built right on top of one of the major active faults in the area. I don't know what would have happened, but it certainly gives me pause when I think about trusting the people who build the nuclear plants. We're still paying for that idiocy, when the bill should have been sent to the site engineers who selected the site.

Re:Why not

[HiThere]

And why does every company refuse to build a nuclear plant without the government indemnifying them against any problems that can be caused by an accident or act or war?

If they trust it so much, they should be able to get normal insurance. Or would that make it too expensive? And if it would, then that cost is just being hidden and spread out over people who otherwise wouldn't accept it.

(This may be US only, but I wouldn't bet on it. I think in France the plants are officially owned by the government, which is pretty much the same thing.)

Re:Why not

[HiThere]

Actually, nuclear waste isn't all that bad. It's just concentrated. There's less radiation remaining in the waste than there was in it when it was fuel, and the fuel is just concentrated rock. (Special kind of rock, but people lived around it for mega-years without problems. And their ancestors before them.)

So if you dispersed the waste evenly over the planet there'd be less radiation now than there was before the nuclear plants were build. Breeder reactors are different, but there are designs that will essentially burn all the fuel to inactive materials. But there are political problems with building them. Intractable ones. (The core is Plutonium.)

Renewables should be preferred, but there's a place for nuclear reactors. Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that our current approach is a good on. To me it seems that breeder reactors are the only reasonable long term approach, and the current designs for such are very crude. More unfortunately, all the breeder reactors that I consider plausible require a stable political environment to be safe. Whoops!

Re:Why not

[HiThere]

They use long distance electrical transmission lines.

Re:Why not

[destrowolffe]

Unless you are seriously proposing that today, in 2009, we would build a nuclear reactor similar to Chernobyl, which was KNOWN to be flawed and inherently dangerous back in 1977(?) when it was commissioned --unless that is your proposal, continually harping about the damages and destruction from Chernobyl does nothing except spread FUD and promote ignorance of the one power source currently working that can provide all our power needs, until Something Better Comes Along (TM).

Modern reactors designs all have multiple, redundant, overlapping failsafe designs, that as the name "failsafe" implies...fail...safe... The reaction cannot continue in a failure mode. A Chernobyl type accident is simply not possible with modern designs. I won't even say this knowledge was learned the "hard way" because it was known back in the seventies that Chernobyl was a dangerous design.

Re:Why not

[destrowolffe]

Yeah, nuclear is a disaster waiting to happen with all the "Evil Terrorists"(TM) out there......oh, wait, HALF OF EUROPE is powered by nuclear power. I wonder why Germany hasn't been nuked by terrorists or had to deal with nuclear waste in its water supply???? hmm....quick, we need a new FUD excuse to bash nuclear power. (I swear I'm not a troll, but for some people ignorance must be bliss!!!)

Re:Why not

[RsG]

Why haven't we found a way to capture energy from the radioactive waste and convert it to power?

It's called a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator.

The problem is that waste isn't very energetic. To make a RTG work at top efficiency requires specialized isotopes, which are not present in abundance in the waste from your average reactor. You could use an RTG at a much lower efficiency with any old decaying waste, but the power output would be pathetic. And you can't make RTGs cheaply, because that would involve cutting corners - never a good idea with nuclear power.

Simply put, the stuff that genuinely is "waste", and cannot be reprocessed into fuel, isn't much use for much of anything. A few isotopes might be useful, for power generation or other applications, but there is always going to be a remainder that needs to be disposed of permanently.

Also: I'm going to keep saying it - combine wind and solar. We have technology available that could be adapted into a hybrid wind/solar installation, a wind turbine coated with thin-film solar panels would harness loads more energy in pretty much the same footprint. In Southern California, there's a wind farm just down the I-10 that would benefit greatly from this idea because of the location, up high with no obstructions, and lots and lots of sunlight. So much potential energy gathering capability gone totally unused.

Combined power collection stations are in the pipe. Trust me, you're not the only one who thinks this is a good idea - it's been on the table for years. We'll probably see more of them in the next decade or so.

However, we do not absolutely have to build centralized power collectors to provide energy to the grid. Distributed power collection may be a better option in the long term, provided there are enough high-output generators to supply the power needed to take up the slack.

Re:Why not

[ericferris]

Actually, you don't have to "guard he waste". The MOX process "burns" (transmutes, actually) more plutonium than is generated. It's used in Europe and it allows France to reduce its plutonium stockpile. The remaining mass is about 600 liters (two barrels) of medium radioactivity waste per reactor per year, which can be stored in a warehouse until their decay sufficiently. Google "nuclear fuel reprocessing mox" for much more details.

I am against the idea of burying waste (especially the nuclear kind) becausereprocessing technology will improve and we'll find ways to neutralize today's unprocessable waste.

The nuclear waste problem is a political one, not a technical one. Get the stupid politics out of the way. Solutions already exist.

Re:Why not

[destrowolffe]

Mod Parent UP please!!

Nuclear is too expensive to maintain, even though other countries have been doing it successfully for decades, but the U.S. has been concerned about the Middle East and South America since the 1950s. International policy has been concerned about the petrodollar and controlling oil supplies. First Desert Storm under Bush, Sr. then Iraq and Afghanistan under Bush, Jr. Now Global Warming.

Yeah fossil fuels haven't cost us anything at all.

I like wind and solar power, but nuclear can provide the power we need to move away from fossil fuels today! rather than 15-20 years from now when wind and solar is mature and ready for wide-scale deployment. Why does this have to be a zero sum game? Can't we switch to nuclear today and still invest heavily in development and deployment of wind, wave, and solar technologies?

Re:Why not

[jabithew]

You've got a good insight there, and one major stumbling block with nuclear power is that some of the waste will be dangerous for a period longer than most cultures last. How can we keep that message of danger alive after our civilisation is buried under the ruins of ones above?

Re:Why not

[daver00]

They had to pump liquid nitrogen into the melted core of Chernobyl for two weeks at a constant rate to prevent it from burning its way underground and causing an underground aquifer to explode from the steam pressure. As the previous poster said it is on record as the single most expensive catastrophe in human history. If you read about it, you see that it was significantly more monumental an event than most people seem to be aware of. Something in the order of hundreds of times more radioactive waste was dumped into the atmosphere than the Hiroshima bomb (400 times more according to wikipedia). My point here is that trivialising what happened at Chernobyl is not very smart, it was a catastrophe on a scale never seen before or since, a very, very scary event, the thing is we only know this now since there was such a vast cover up at the time.

Don't get me wrong, the reactor used at Chernobyl was a stupid design that would (hopefully) never be used in modern applications, and even better still we have new generations of breeder reactors becoming viable that would consume most of the waste products as lower grade fuel. Modern designs are orders of magnitude safer than that particular one, Chernobyl had the unfortunate feedback mechanism whereby in certain circumstances, it behaved in the exact opposite way as would be expected. I think it was something like once it was really hot, it just got even hotter, to the point where switching on certain safety mechanisms made it go super super critical... Kind of stupid? Yes...

The big question I think is whether or not it is morally sound to engage in an activity that creates waste that will continue to be dangerous to life for centuries after we are gone. To me that is a morally dubious activity, regardless of the quantity of waste we are producing. Breeder reactors dodge this problem quite neatly, producing waste that is hot for only a few decades, but as far as I know they are not commercially viable just yet. Nothing wrong with nuclear power, but there are very important questions about the nature of the waste products that I think few people actually consider in any adequate seriousness, for or against.

Re:Why not

[jhol13]

Olkiluoto 3 is not a four unit plant. It produces 1.6 GW which is quite close to 1000x more than the prototype wind plant (nominal 2.3MW, i.e. actual will be lot less).

You have proven absolutely nothing until you have build such a system in practice. For example the Olkiluoto 3 was supposed to be much cheaper and probably will end up even more expensive.

Just like the wind power plant, the price for a prototype does not give good estimate for a "real" plant (well, it does give upper bound, but ...).

Nuclear and wind cannot be directly compared, wind can sometimes be generated near consumption, wind is suspect for interruptions, and so on.

Re:Why not

[toriver]

Meanwhile, coal power plants are spewing out radioactive isotopes by the bushel because noone outside of geologists even bother that coal holds many radioactive elements.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

Nuclear power plants are built to deal with radioactive materials, coal plants - not so much.

Re:Why not

[giorgist]

Craploads ... A backpack of Uranium is equivalent to a tanker load of oil. (The floating kind)
All the radioactive waste ever created in the US could fit in one football field waist high.

Flyash one of the resultants of burning coal is toxic now, and will be for ever. There is no half life.
yet we produce it, and dump it. We create MEGAtonnes of it ... 1KG of Coal produced 2KG of CO2 and 0.7KG of flyash.
Can you imagine replacing 500 tonnes of coal that you will use in a lifetime with a cup of uranium ?
(If we are allowed to reprocess, make that a thimble)

Then there is CO2 ... aaaa, don't worry about that.

Basically there is a theory that most cancers are because of our dirty energy.
There's scaremongering for you.

I could keep going, but nuclear is the only technological solution that works now.

It produces "NO" emissions. A tiny amount of radioactive polutant which is less than the radioactive
pollutants coal burning produces but we store that in the atmosphere and hide it amongst the flyash,
and the other heavy metals.

Ignorant greenies are the second worst enemy of the environment. The worst are the corrporations who are laughting their heads off for getting the greenies to do their dirty work

Anyway, let's stop actual solutions and make us feel warm an fuzzy ..

To think that nuclear power could green every desert and eradicate world hunger.

The reality is that it is happening now, so there is no stopping it.

Re:Why not

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Sarcasm aside you should reread Bjørn Lomborgs work. Many of the conclusions and some base estimates are colored by his political convictions, but the rest of the stuff besides global warming is pretty neutral and well researched.

He rather lost credibility with me when he wrote off a windmill in 10 years, while totally ignoring maintenance *and* maintenance of his the coal plant. Not that I mind coal plants that much, but if you cannot be objective even to the level of including the same costs on both side of the balance, you are not a scientist. Sorry.

This was well before the global warming thing really took off, so I haven't read anything from him about that. So he might have learned how to use a calculator later on, I admit. But do double check his numbers.

Re:Why not

[catmistake]

A Chernobyl type accident is simply not possible with modern designs.

Not a Chernobyl type accident I'm talking about, but a Chernobyl SCALE accident, that is, a nuclear accident that is the size and scope of what happened at Chernobyl, and what the cost of such an accident of that scale is.

If you are suggesting an incident of the SCALE of Chernobyl is not possible with designs currently in use, then you are completely wrong. (How well do current designs and safeties stand up to being dismantled, or intentionally set for melt-down, or being blown up?).

Re:Why not

[catmistake]

Thanks for your post. I'm adopting it verbatim as my response to the GP. ;-)

Re:Why not

[Anonymous Coward]

Flyash one of the resultants of burning coal is toxic now, and will be for ever. There is no half life. yet we produce it, and dump it. We create MEGAtonnes of it

Yeah, which is why its preferred two to one over weapons-grade nuclear fuel by extremist bomb making rogue nations and terrorists!

Re:Why not

[Jartan]

That looks like a slide-show showing how we can augment our current power generation methods with solar power?

The map on page 15 is interesting though. The problem is it looks pretty optimistic. How much of the real spots chosen would be farmland? How much farmland do we already need to return to wilderness by moving to hydroponic farming?

How much more energy will we need when we have to power the lights for those hydroponic farms? The greenhouse effect isn't the ONLY problem we need to solve here. That kind of thinking will just lead to a new ecological disaster.

Re:Why not

[shplorb]

Nevermind the premier of SA Mike Rann, who took the Commonwealth to court over the decision to site the repository in SA and won... it was all the fault of John Howard!

Re:Why not

[cheesybagel]

Other people have done the math on this problem as well. The areas better suited for solar power generation are deserts which are currently not being used for farmland, or anything else really. The technology discussed there is solar photovoltaic modules, but other technologies such as solar thermal could be used just as well. You seem to be confusing this solution with power generation from biofuel crops.

Re:Why not

[LordVader717]

The maximum credible accident for a nuclear reactor is that a large portion of the radioactive material within the reactor is released to the environment.
Your assumption that it is "a lot worse" is simply misinformed,

With Chernobyl that's basically what happened. The reactor exploded and the following graphite fire released a huge amount of radioactive material to the atmosphere.

With safe designs this mode of failure is not conceivable. There are reactor design which basically can can contain a complete nuclear meltdown.

But there are often potential disasters for nuclear plants that are much worse. We haven't seen any of them, so I presume that the people who said they were extremely unlikely were correct. But if you model "worst case scenario" you don't just model the worst that has happened. You model the worst that could happen.

Umm, no. There are no "secret failure modes". Contrary to popular belief, a power plant will not go off like a thermonuclear weapon if attacked.

drinky drinky...

[S-4'N3]

Anybody else craving a Sea Breeze?

Re:drinky drinky...

[delta98]

Not really but I wonder if at least one of those boat captains got a bit of a chub thinking about using that as a prop.

Future Bond location

[LoudMusic]

Well obviously there's potential there or they wouldn't have gone as far as they have, but I just don't understand how it doesn't tip over instead of spinning, or how they keep it pointed in the right direction. I'd love to see it in person. And I bet they use them in a future Bond film.

Re:Future Bond location

[RsG]

You do know that using wind power on the ocean goes back a ways, right? If we hadn't solved that tipping over problem some time ago, we'd never have build sailboats :-P

All that it takes is a wide keel and some ballast. You just need to be bottom heavy enough to have a low centre of gravity, and be wide enough that if one side starts to sink, buoyancy automatically corrects by lifting that side back to the water line.

For a non-moving station, these problems are simple, since you don't need to worry about maintaining mobility. Your buoy can be an air-filled plastic sphere with a lead weight bolted to the bottom. Easy. On a boat, you need to keep a more slender shape than a sphere in order to lower resistance, and you want your ballast to be as light as you can safely get away with to keep the keel fairly shallow (both for reducing resistance and weight, and allowing the ship to enter shallow water without grounding).

Re:Future Bond location

[Plunky]

You do know that using wind power on the ocean goes back a ways, right? If we hadn't solved that tipping over problem some time ago, we'd never have build sailboats :-P

You do know that sailboats heel over, right?

All that it takes is a wide keel and some ballast. You just need to be bottom heavy enough to have a low centre of gravity, and be wide enough that if one side starts to sink, buoyancy automatically corrects by lifting that side back to the water line.

Deep keel. Also your views one bouyancy are really quite awry and your ignorance of offshore conditions is showing, sorry.

Re:Future Bond location

[RsG]

Bah, I typed that in a hurry. For starters, I meant to talk of both hulls and keels and conflated them. My bad.

Wide hull, deep keel. Better?

And how exactly have I got buoyancy wrong? If you're listing sideways buoyancy is (part of) what rights you. The dipping side is tries to rise up, while the rising side tries to fall down, both because they've changed in depth from where they ought to be. This is an oversimplification, but not an inaccurate one.

Re:Future Bond location

[Plunky]

And how exactly have I got buoyancy wrong? If you're listing sideways buoyancy is (part of) what rights you. The dipping side is tries to rise up, while the rising side tries to fall down, both because they've changed in depth from where they ought to be. This is an oversimplification, but not an inaccurate one.

A wide hull would only hinder your stability, until the width is a significant multiple of the wavelength (which btw can be hundreds of metres). What you need for stability is a narrow tower structure that extends deep into the sea so that the surface waves don't have any appreciable affect on it. The surface of the sea is chaos and a structure like this needs to endure it rather than adapt to it. See Spar Platforms for example.

Re:Future Bond location

[IrquiM]

I've seen it in person, as they put it together outside my office window.

Not much to talk about really. It's a Wind Turbine, floating in the sea, anchored to the sea bed by 3 anchor chains

Re:Future Bond location

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess: you just don't understand why sail boats don't tip over either, right?

Re:Future Bond location

[RsG]

Cool, thanks for the link.

Re:Future Bond location

[vectorious]

If I had mod points I would be modding you two up simply for the most constructive conversation I have seen on slashdot for ages. A post followed by a correction (that could be taken as the start of a war of words) and instead, an admission of error in what you had typed, a request for reference which was provided and a thank you! Thanks for improving my view of online discussions

Re:Future Bond location

[HiThere]

How does it weather major storms?

That's the primary problem for off-shore platforms. The secondary one is how efficient is the power transmission to shore? (Including reliability.)

Once those two are solved, then it's just a wind turbine.

Re:Future Bond location

[bergwitz]

They've moored it to the sea bottom, that's why it doesn't tip over basically. Lots of videos and explaining at the StatoilHydro Hywind website

Re:Future Bond location

[spitzak]

I recall hearing that the pressure on the turbine really is not that great. The vanes actually act like wings with lift and have an opposing force into the wind. You really want to transfer the maximum amount of energy possible into *spinning* the turbine, so any action at right angles is wasted.

Am I off base

[Dasher42]

For suggesting that a measure of tidal power could be harvested as well here? After all, kites can be used to harvest power through the tension exerted on their cables, if I'm correct. Similarly, these turbines are going to be tethered, right? How about it?

Re:Am I off base

[RsG]

This particular turbine isn't tethered. That's what makes it special - the earlier models work the way you describe.

The advantage of tidal is that it's cyclical and predictable; the drawback is that it's expensive and hard to maintain. I don't think attaching it to a wind based system would lessen the drawbacks much.

Now, attaching a wind turbine to some sort of nifty power storage device to equalize it's variable output, that would be useful. Wind power would pair nicely with a hydroelectric dam, since the reservoir can be used to store power during periods of low demand by pumping water back up into it.

Re:Am I off base

[Plunky]

This particular turbine isn't tethered. That's what makes it special - the earlier models work the way you describe.

In fact it is not fixed to the seabed, it definitely is tethered otherwise it would float away. Also, wireless power transmission has not been developed yet (on this scale).

Re:Am I off base

[Sulphur]

If there is a current, then you could use a similar underwater structure to get power from water current together with wind. Either use a long pylon or floats on the cable tethers to clear the underwater blades.

Re:Am I off base

[280Z28]

Something along those lines took first place in the Renewable Energy category at this year's Conrad Awards. (MoTGen (Motionless Thermal Generator))

Re:Am I off base

[RsG]

True, but he referred to "tension exerted on their cables" as a means to generate power. I visualized his proposal as something like an buoy anchored to the seabed, which has in fact been done for previous offshore wind power systems. I'm not positive, but I don't think his idea will work if the tether is simply a line to keep the buoy from floating away.

Re:Am I off base

[charliebear]

For suggesting that a measure of tidal power could be harvested as well here? After all, kites can be used to harvest power through the tension exerted on their cables, if I'm correct. Similarly, these turbines are going to be tethered, right? How about it?

Kites harvest power with keys tied to their strings, not tension.

Extension cord

[jo42]

All you need now is a 7.4 mile long extension cord that can survive the ravages of the open sea to plug the dang thing into a power grid.

Re:Extension cord

[GreenTech11]

If we can lay telephone cables across the Atlantic, we can plug a windmill into the grid.

Re:Extension cord

[stonedcat]

We have massive cables running across the oceans making the global internet possible... I'm pretty sure we can find a sturdy enough solution based on what we already know.

Re:Extension cord

[that this is not und]

Static non-moving cables carrying small signals along the ocean floor are an entirely different undertaking than high-energy cables that tether a bobbing, floating vessel to the shore. You may as well have said 'If we can send a man to the moon...' in your sentence, it has similar relevance.

What a waste.

[Anonymous Coward]

2.3 Megawatts is fucking nothing, and for $63 million?
I fucking hope the maintenance is low, it won't ever pay itself off otherwise.

Re:What a waste.

[RsG]

You do know it's a prototype, right? The first design to float freely (as opposed to earlier designs that were anchored)?

The first version always costs more. Later versions are built at a fraction the price. Such is the nature of R&D.

So, patience. Expect a solution immediately, cheaply and bug-free, and you will be endlessly disappointed with what real life has to offer. But hey, it'll open up a career in management for you :-P

Re:What a waste.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure it's free floating?

ScuttleMonkey said there are "restrictions in place that require offshore turbines to be attached to the sea bed".

This means they would be breaking the law if it were free floating.

They set up this big ginormous windmill by my....

[yourassOA]

place and it never runs because when there is a breeze it doesn't work when its windy it blows over. I have only seen it working twice in two years (and it blew over twice) and it only cost 1 millions dollars already. I could make cheaper power with my 3500 watt Honda generator we use at work.

Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[reporter]

According to a researcher at the University of California, solar power, wind power, and nuclear power have the following costs in 2006 and 2016. The first cost is for 2006. The second cost is projected for 2016.

1. solar power: more than 20 cents/kwh, 10 to 14 cents/kwh

2. wind power: 5 to 7 cents/kwh, 3 to 6 cents/kwh

3. nuclear power: more than 3 cents/kwh, more than 3 cents/kwh

Here, "wind power" refers to wind turbines on land. A wind turbine at sea would surely cost more than a land-based one.

In other worse, nuclear power is still the best solution until we can significantly improve the efficiency of generating solar power and wind power.

We should also address the major reason for the growing demand for energy. That reason is overpopulation. However, no American politician has the guts to touch that topic. It is too closely tied to illegal immigration. When a faction in the Sierra Club tried to address that issue, the members of that faction were accused of being "racist".

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[Anonymous Coward]

3. nuclear power: more than 3 cents/kwh, more than 3 cents/kwh

 
  So if it costs $100000/kwh it is cheaper than "wind power" because it only costs "more than" 3 cents/kwh?

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[RsG]

I fail to see what immigration has to do with overpopulation. Or rather, I do see, but what I see is only shortsightedness.

A person moving from place A to place B does not increase the net population of AB, but does make their negative impact on the environment B's problem. So the attitude of "if we curb immigration, we reduce pollution" omits the reality that pollution does not obey national borders. It's the attitude of "somebody else's problem", which I could frankly do without.

Of course, you could argue that immigrants moving from a poor country to a rich one will use more resources once there. That is technically correct. But the counterpoint is that richer populations have fewer children, and in the long run that immigrant is going to assimilate. If not them, then their children. And part of that assimilation is the reduction in birthrate that comes from living in the developed world.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[feepness]

The problem is that if you use fiscal measures to "encourage" having fewer children you are, by definition "punishing" those who have more. At the very least you are questioning the wisdom of having so many children.

Immigrants typically have more children. Since questioning anything that is typical of immigrants is racist, much less actually punishing, this topic is verboten.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[catmistake]

What is exactly the cost of a Chernobyl scale accident? Unless the possibility of such an event is reduced to zero, we should really define this figure, and be prepared to spend it if the need arises.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[chefren]

Still another point to make is the efficiency of distribution. Not many of those watts produced at the power plants actually make it to your wall outlet.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[Zumbs]

We should also address the major reason for the growing demand for energy. That reason is overpopulation. However, no American politician has the guts to touch that topic. It is too closely tied to illegal immigration.

Overpopulation in North-East US, Western Europe and Japan is not due to immigration. Most of the people living there are breed and born there. The major reason for growing demand for energy is not overpopulation - it is technological development. In the West as well as in the developing world.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[RsG]

The problem is that if you use fiscal measures to "encourage" having fewer children you are, by definition "punishing" those who have more. At the very least you are questioning the wisdom of having so many children.

You misunderstand. The reduction in birthrate I speak of has nothing whatsoever to do with punishment. No program is in place to ensure people like myself do not have many kids, and yet I can't think of a single person I've known within ten years of my age with more than 3. 1 or none is more often the case.

The cause isn't government programs, or social stigma, or any such bullshit, it's a reflection of reality. If you live in a developed country, you have an incentive (several actually), not to have as many kids. That's true whether you've just moved there from some other part of the world, or whether you've always lived there.

It takes time for culture to catch up to the reality. It always works that way, no matter what the reality and culture clashing with it are. But when it does, an immigrant or their offspring will cease to have as many children. This has happened before and will happen again, no matter how loudly both the immigrant groups and their opponents claim otherwise.

Immigrants typically have more children. Since questioning anything that is typical of immigrants is racist, much less actually punishing, this topic is verboten.

I can't think of a single way for a government to punish having kids that wouldn't be borderline totalitarian. Forget "racist" - "tyrannical" springs to mind. Better to let cultural assimilation do what it has always done, and assume they'll be at the average birthrate in a generation or so.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[sumdumass]

Chernobyl was really only possible at Chernobyl. It wouldn't effect modern plants around the world.

If I remember right, it had something to do without the same safety concerned and most every where else implemented along with half of the plant not knowing what the other half was doing so they reacted incorrectly when people were running a drill or a test on parts of the system.

It really isn't repeatable. At best, we will get minute leakage somewhere that will most likely be detected soon and contained.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[johannesg]

In other worse, nuclear power is still the best solution until we can significantly improve the efficiency of generating solar power and wind power.

The word "best" is not solely defined by price. When you buy a new car, do you always get the cheapest pile of shit you can get your hands on? Or do you look for something with a certain range, speed, capacity, and maintainability, in addition to it being in your budget?

We should also address the major reason for the growing demand for energy. That reason is overpopulation. However, no American politician has the guts to touch that topic. It is too closely tied to illegal immigration. When a faction in the Sierra Club tried to address that issue, the members of that faction were accused of being "racist".

Sending all the immigrants back just moves the problem of energy generation to another place in the world - but it will still be there, and the ecosystem is a global one.

Of course, americans use more energy per head of the population than everybody else. Scaling that back a little would be trivial, and wouldn't have any impact on your quality of life.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[catmistake]

You missed my point. Not talking about precisely what happened at Chernobyl... but a nuclear accident, any nuclear accident, that had the scale of Chernobyl. Maybe what happened at Chernobyl can't happen again, but other stuff with exactly the same results can happen.

take a look at this

Anyway, I'd like to know what Chernobyl, and any nuclear accident of that scale, might cost, and I'd like this figure taken into account when considering the cost building more nuclear power plants. kthx.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[feepness]

I can't think of a single way for a government to punish having kids that wouldn't be borderline totalitarian. Forget "racist" - "tyrannical" springs to mind. Better to let cultural assimilation do what it has always done, and assume they'll be at the average birthrate in a generation or so.

What you're missing is that we currently pay people to have children. In our modern society, removing a benefit is considered punishment.

Since immigrants tend to have more children... well, you can do the math.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[legirons]

It [Chernobyl] really isn't repeatable. At best, we will get minute leakage somewhere that will most likely be detected soon and contained.

By which you mean a huge leak draining the reactor pool into the sea which would likely have been detected 10 hours later after the fuel rods had caught fire if it not for blind luck in this incident?

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[dfenstrate]

That's a lovely list you have there. It appears, though, your premise in posting it has two questionable basis:

1) That all the knowledge required to prevent any of those incidents was freely available to humanity before we started experimenting with nuclear power.

2) That people in the nuclear power industry don't learn from these events and design & train against them.

The acquisition of knowledge isn't 'free'- sorry, no one is smart enough to foresee everything. Once the knowledge is acquired, however, it spreads rapidly throughout the industry.

Plus, a number of the items on that list are exaggerated, and their importance 'played up' for ignorant readers. Ignorance is of course rampant on the anti-nuke side: ignorance of the specifics of radiation, lack of perspective, the inability to evaluate realistic alternatives, ignorance of the political issues (not technical ones) that dominate the 'waste debate', etc, etc.

For most anti-nukers, all they have left is 'RADIATION BAD!!!!'. If they've got anything more than that, it's "WASTE BAD." In both cases a substantial level of ignorance and the accompanying fear are an intrinsic part of the equation.

Anyway, I'd like to know what Chernobyl, and any nuclear accident of that scale, might cost, and I'd like this figure taken into account when considering the cost building more nuclear power plants.

Now multiply it by the probability, and I'm just fine with that- Because the added dollar cost of this figure is utterly insignificant.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[misexistentialist]

Sending all the immigrants back just moves the problem of energy generation to another place in the world - but it will still be there, and the ecosystem is a global one. Of course, americans use more energy per head of the population than everybody else. Scaling that back a little would be trivial, and wouldn't have any impact on your quality of life.

Once immigrants arrive they live like Americans and use more energy. Also exporting labor from South America increases its birthrate. A US salary converted into local currencies can support a large family, while in the US it will barely support a single person. If the border was closed the overpopulation would become evident to South Americans and they would be forced to reproduce less or watch their children starve.

Finally, scaling back consumption "a little" in the US would obviously have to decrease the US standard of living "a little" at the very least. Certainly there is waste, but it takes effort to eliminate waste.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[sumdumass]

I see your point now but I think it is largely already accounted for.

The extra protections, then safety switches and procedures, actual lock out tag out and demanding on site compliance is all an expense that can be built into the plant and operating costs rather then account for a disaster. So I guess what we could ask in addition would be could any of the expense of handling something like a Chernobyl scale disaster be either accounted for with the extra safety protections or would those protections be in addition to any disaster. If I could guarantee that when X, Y, and Z are followed, no accident on that scale would happen, then would that be in addition to the costs of an incident if it did happen or could the costs of it not happening be considered the costs of it happening.

I guess that pretty important because from a cost benefit analysis, it would seem the prevention would be the most beneficial route. Most of Chernobyl is tolerable as far as radioactivity is concerned as long as you stay away from the concrete and metal. Well, maybe not exactly at ground zero but there are people living since one year after the disaster less then 8-10 miles away with no obvious effects. The original evacuation zone was 30km or about 18 miles in diameter. They evacuated about 200,000 people, now I believe the total number is more around 330,000. The Ukraine claimed to have spent about $100 billion US by 200 and planed on another 6 billion in 2000 with 6.4 of it's annual budget allocated thereafter. This doesn't include the almost 1 billion dollars in donations from other countries and private aid organizations or the costs of direct assistance given during and immediately after the incident. Also not included in that is 1 billion US in changed to other plants in either safety mechanisms or training brought about with foreign aid or the costs of the new containment domes planned to be placed over the failing concrete domes made in the heat of the issue. I don't have links but I believe one is supposed to costs of around 505 million US for the one containment dome and 200 million for the other. As rough guess would be something close to around 3-6 billion dollars total not counting the costs of lands lost. Personal and real property losses, health treatment from the effects of radiation and relocation costs.

However, it should be stressed that something like Chernobyl can't really happen today because of differences in core designs as well as physical safety measures built into the plant that cause a safe fail shutdown instead of a run away reactor. It's one of the requirements of the IAEA which is followed by almost every country now. Section 5.40. of IAEA SAFETY STANDARDS (PDF warning) states that:

"The principle of fail-safe design shall be considered and incorporated into the
design of systems and components important to safety for the plant as appropriate: if
a system or component fails, plant systems shall be designed to pass into a safe state
with no necessity for any action to be initiated."

6.2 states, "The reactor core and associated internal components located within the reactor
vessel shall be designed and mounted in such a way that they will withstand the static
and dynamic loading expected in operational states, design basis accidents and external
events to the extent necessary to ensure safe shutdown of the reactor, to maintain the
reactor subcritical and to ensure cooling of the core."

This design consideration has been designed from the start or has been or is in the process of being retrofitted into almost every nuclear plant. We can talk about if an incident could happen or it this design would fail on the premise of a terrorist strike or war or something of the sort but we would have bigger problems then a Chernobyl type incident when that comes around.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[Anonymous Coward]

I think GP was not trying to argue that rewarding people for not having many children is racist - he was just pointing out that that is how political correctness can frame it these days.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed my point. Not talking about precisely what happened at Chernobyl... but a nuclear accident, any nuclear accident, that had the scale of Chernobyl. Maybe what happened at Chernobyl can't happen again, but other stuff with exactly the same results can happen.

I think you miss the point. The Chernobyl plant was poorly designed, had essentially no containment structure and what few safeties it had had been disabled at the time of the accident.

A better example would be Three Mile Island where almost everything that could go wrong, did go wrong and yet there was virtually no release of radioactive material. And we have better, safer designs now.

Nobody talks about it, but the biggest source of radioactive pollution isn't the nuclear industry, it's coal fired power plants. Burning coal concentrates any radioactive contamination in the coal into the coal ash.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[sumdumass]

If you read the article, you would have noticed that it wasn't an operating nuclear plant and the fuel wasn't in the reactors, they were being decommissioned in a cooling pond.

The chief inspector for the NII said a fire was not at risk because the rods were partly decayed and would have remained submerged in 2 feet of water. The only risk of a Chernobyl type accident here was the fear the information created to people not paying attention.

BTW, it's easy to engineer a fail safe on something like this, just place the coolant lines above the bottom of the pond so as it can't be emptied by them. The most it can be drained by the lines is to the level of the lines. It looked like that was already in place and I stand by me statement.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[Anonymous Coward]

This is going to sound cruel.

Letting poor people into your rich country is like ordering more poor people to be made.

Mothers who think that their children will get into a rich country, and send checks back home, will have more children than mothers who know that their children will have to make it in their poor domestic economy.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[Joren]

We should also address the major reason for the growing demand for energy. That reason is overpopulation. However, no American politician has the guts to touch that topic. It is too closely tied to illegal immigration.

Overpopulation in North-East US, Western Europe and Japan is not due to immigration. Most of the people living there are breed and born there. The major reason for growing demand for energy is not overpopulation - it is technological development. In the West as well as in the developing world.

You are aware that Japan's population is declining at a rather alarming rate, right?

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[cca93014]

In other worse, nuclear power is still the best solution until we can significantly improve the efficiency of generating solar power and wind power.

We don't necessarily need to improve the efficiency of wind or solar, we can improve the cost instead...

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[rtfa-troll]

If you read the article, you would have noticed that it wasn't an operating nuclear plant and the fuel wasn't in the reactors, they were being decommissioned in a cooling pond.

So; the fact that the material from the reactor remains dangerous and at risk of a "supercharged radioactive fire" even when it's not actually in use any more is supposed to be a good thing????

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[Anonymous Coward]

In other worse, nuclear power is still the best solution until we can significantly improve the efficiency of generating solar power and wind power.

You are forgetting one thing... there is simply not enough capacity to produce all the nuclear reactor cores to play any big role in whatever solution you are thinking of. Wind turbines and solar panels power are the only energy plants that can be mass produced like - say cars - because the technology is relatively simple (and wind turbines are easier to make than solar panels). For this reason - mass production - and this reason alone, Nuclear Technology can never significantly contribute to the solution. This is also the reason why Nuclear Fusion isn't going to happen anytime soon.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[blind biker]

What is exactly the cost of a Chernobyl scale accident? Unless the possibility of such an event is reduced to zero, we should really define this figure, and be prepared to spend it if the need arises.

Yeah, totally. Also, we should calculate the cost of a 100 tom meteorite hitting California. The possibility of that isn't zero, either, so by your wonderful logic, "we should really define this figure, and be prepared to spend it if the need arises."

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[blind biker]

First of all, let me say that I am a big proponent of nuclear energy, and in particular fast-breeder reactors.

That said, those figures look silly: you do realize that 34 cents/KWh is also more than 3 cents/KWh, don't you? I even read that "article" you linked to, and it's very poorly written. I am pretty sure this is not a peer-reviewed article, because its quality is severely lacking and no scientist would give approval to its publication in this form.

In any case, the way it is written, it does NOT support the thesis that nuclear energy is necessarily the best solution - though I know it is. There are no citations, no original research done, no methodology.

So, while both of us know that nuclear is the best solution, for the near future, for our energy needs, this article is a piss-poor argument for that position.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[drinkypoo]

We should also address the major reason for the growing demand for energy. That reason is overpopulation.

Wrong, that reason is overconsumption. I'm not talking about "taking more than your share"... WTF is your share? I'm talking about needless economic activity which causes the consumption of energy (i.e. purchasing of manufactured goods.) People buy all manner of shit they don't want, don't need, don't use. They leave lights on when they're not in the room. The biggest culprit, in fact, is our throwaway society. It can actually be cheaper to replace a two year old car that has light collision damage than to repair it. If you don't think a lot of energy went into making the steel and the glass, think again.

Every time we throw away an appliance with a bad switch instead of replacing the switch, mother nature dies a little more.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[MobyDisk]

A wind turbine at sea would surely cost more than a land-based one.

Is that true per kilowatt-hour? Seems to me that ones on sea should get more wind, more consistently. Is that not enough to offset the increased costs?

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[Anonymous Coward]

"3. nuclear power: more than 3 cents/kwh, more than 3 cents/kwh "

and where did he get this number from? The major MIT study has nuclear power at 8.4 cents/kwh. I know which value I trust more.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[NeutronCowboy]

We should also address the major reason for the growing demand for energy. That reason is overpopulation. However, no American politician has the guts to touch that topic. It is too closely tied to illegal immigration. When a faction [nytimes.com] in the Sierra Club tried to address that issue, the members of that faction were accused of being "racist".

The reason charges of racism were thrown around are two-fold:
- the faction advocating control of overpopulation was basically a set of very fresh faces with no historic connection to the Sierra Club. They did, however, have a historic connection to nativism and opposition to illegal immigration.
- overpopulation,as others have already pointed out, has nothing to do with illegal immigration. Unless, of course, you argue that Americans have more rights to resources than illegal immigrants, or that those illegal immigrants use more natural resources than legal immigrants - which is nonsense, of course.

The reason that this is a touchy issue in the Sierra Club is because the faction against illegal immigration was using fairly strong methods to take over the group. There is no grass roots support in the Sierra Club for that issue, nor has there been any historic connection between the Sierra Club and illegal immigration. The only conclusion left is that a group of people who feel strongly about illegal immigration tried to highjack a fairly weak but generally well regarded organization for their own purposes. Your NYT articles actually hints at all these issues... for a complete picture though,you'd have to have followed the election process in the Sierra Club, or listened to KQED. I can't find anything specific about this in the general news channels.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[sumdumass]

It's not a good thing yet it's not a bad thing either. At that state is only temporary until the rods have cooled sufficiently. Your are statistically more likely to be fatally injured in a car crash on the way to or from work then to ever be effected by decommissioned nuclear fuel rods erupting into a fire. Does that make going to work a good thing? No, it just a risk we can live with and take precautions so that it won't or is unlikely to happen.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[Fian]

interesting that you consider the price of the produced electricity as the measure of what is best...do these figures include the impact on the environment? the exposure to the public to potentially dangerous wastes? please don't use money as the *only* metric to measure by thats how we end up in energy and environmental crisis

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[maxume]

I don't find it alarming at all.

The prevailing Japanese attitude towards foreigners will probably even shift, simply out of necessity.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[maxume]

Which is just financial efficiency...

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[maxume]

I heat for 5-6 months a year (several of those are pretty light). In that time, I burn propane equivalent to 2.5 kilowatt-years of electricity (I have that right, 2500 watts continuously for a year). My electric consumption is on the order of 500 watts continuous (that is an average that includes water pump, hot water and the normal stuff other than AC; the water pump, water heater and refrigerator are a big chunk of it, the meter is closer to 200 watts when none of them are on but entertainment devices are on (lights, computer, television)).

So my point that I am eventually getting to is that encouraging people to insulate their homes better makes loads more sense than complaining about light bulbs. This includes working for seemingly ridiculous requirements for new construction. 10% saved on heating or cooling is going to be equivalent to a significant portion of overall electric consumption.

I pretty much agree with the rest of what you say.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[DerekLyons]

I can't think of a single way for a government to punish having kids that wouldn't be borderline totalitarian.

Oh, horseshit. If the US were to remove the tax credit for kids it would a) not be anywhere near totalitarian and b) be much more fair.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[noidentity]

A person moving from place A to place B does not increase the net population of AB, but does make their negative impact on the environment B's problem. So the attitude of "if we curb immigration, we reduce pollution" omits the reality that pollution does not obey national borders.

Except that if B's way of living is much more polluting per person than A's, then moving from A to B does increase pollution. Perhaps people dimly recognize that other countries manage to produce less pollution per person than the USA?

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[Anonymous Coward]

"We should also address the major reason for the growing demand for energy. That reason is overpopulation."

And the evidence for that is?

I can understand how a growing population causes growing demand for energy, but there can be overpopulation without a growing population and without growing demand for energy, and there can be a growing population and growing demand for energy without there being overpopulation.

The point being: it is not self-evident that growing demand for energy is caused by overpopulation, nor is it self-evident that there is overpopulation.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[Anonymous Coward]

No Chernobyl type incident is possible in every water cooled Chernobyl type reactor RBMK-1000 like in Sosnovy Bor or elsevere.
Main problem is this. All the nuclear powerplants in soviet empire were constructed under the 5 year state plan. So, all the local government officials who were supervising the construction were tampering papers to get the 5 year plan done and to get the Moscow officials to sign OK papers and not to get the local official fired becouse the "work is lagging behind the party set timeline for construction completion".
So the work was rushed, and guality of concrete and metal work is not what it must be for a nuclear powerplant.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[cliffski]

does that cost include
The security cost at the nuclear power plant (zero for wind and solar)
The waste disposal costs for nuclear (collosal vs zero for wind and solar)
The cleanup and decommissioning costs for nuclear (very very low for wind and solar,, collosal and unknown for nuclear).

People love to omit those costs, in a blatant attempt to make nuclear look cheap.
It isn't.
If nuclear was cheap, why did the UK govt have to bail out our nuclear industry with 400 million pounds of tax payer cash a few years ago?
Surely those efficient nukes should be rolling in cash right?

(and that's DESPITE the fact that the UK govt pays all the security, waste and decommissioning costs anyway).

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[fritsd]

I read the Californian government was in some financial trouble now, but using a 100 tonne meteorite to generate cheaper alternative energy.. wow.. that sounds desperate..

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[cliffski]

The thing is the pro-nuke lobby has serious form on this.
We are always told in the UK nukes are safe, and that's in-between the numerous reports of leaks and accidents at our nuclear plants.
Our waste-reprocessing plant got caught falsifying data about nuclear waste by the japanese.
This stuff happens. Things go wrong.

I trust scientists. But they can get it wrong. You cant anticipate everything.
Engineers assured us that even a jet plane hitting the twin towers would not cause the structure to fail.

They were wrong. BIG disaster. And that's without nuclear waste.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[fritsd]

8.4 cents is more than 3 cents so his statement was perfectly truthful :-)

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[IrquiM]

Tsjernobyl happened because they didn't follow the specs. It was never made to last as long as it did before the accident happened.

Always RTFM!

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[juancnuno]

We should also address the major reason for the growing demand for energy. That reason is overpopulation. However, no American politician has the guts to touch that topic.

Population: The elephant in the room

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[Anonymous Coward]

Chernobyl type event in the western world is near impossible as is. Currently the older generation nuclear reactors are already being phased that could have produce something even quarter the event that happened in the Soviet Union. The reactor design that the Soviets used has not been used in the west for the very reason that it could melt down easily. Todays reactors and especially the newest ones being built are easy to control and the chances of a even a melt down are nigh impossible due to the very nature of the design. I'm not discounting incompetence, you can't factor out idiots but to fearmonger about a event that happened once is like fearmongering that your car might exploded if the gas tank is punctured.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[HiThere]

You seem to be considering that cost is the *only* criteria for judging the desirability of a power source. You've made an argument that nuclear power is probably going to be slightly cheaper. (Not grossly cheaper.) To me it's close enough that other considerations are quite able to decide the issue.

OTOH, I'm not certain that this will be as expensive as you claim. And yet again, it comes with the problem of how to have a power storage facility for when the wind isn't blowing. How much do you need? How much would it cost? Etc. And what happens to the transmission costs? Nuclear plants are located a long way from most of the potential users of the power. That means long transmission lines, and extensive line losses. How about off-shore wind turbines? They can be located relatively close to most of their users, but the transmission is via cables that run through or over sea water. What losses does that cause? ("Purchasing the site", however, should be almost cost free, once the government straightens out the handling of the paperwork.)

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[HiThere]

I doubt it. I expect the drop would stop shortly after the population density achieved an optimum level...if things remained stable that long. I can't define optimum, but I *can* say that Japan is overcrowded, as are US cities. The optimal density of an area appears to depend partially on transportation. I'm sure it also depends on other factors. Just as the optimal birth rate depends on the actual death rate.

I'm not certain, but I suspect that an optimal population density would allow most families to live on 4 or 5 acre lots. Youths, of course, would need to congregate more densely before pairing off to form families. Some functions would probably need to be denser. Etc. (Note that this is below the density of US suburbs, but far above it's rural density.)

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[RsG]

What you're missing is that we currently pay people to have children. In our modern society, removing a benefit is considered punishment.

Since immigrants tend to have more children... well, you can do the math.

I have disagreed with those programs for years. To date, nobody has called me "racist" or assumed my opposition to giving people a bonus for having kids stemmed from a dislike of immigrants. If I were to argue against those incentives for immigrants, while suggesting they should be kept for locals, that would be different.

I think you're conflating two issues here. The first is immigration leading to a larger population. The second is government tax breaks providing an incentive to have kids. I disagree with you on the former, and agree with you on the latter.

In any case, the artificial incentives to have kids are small, compared to the natural incentives not to. I would like to see the artificial incentives removed, but I do not think they ultimately have a large impact on a person's decision to breed, or not to breed.

Consider how costly dependants are in the developed world. If you're going to have kids here, it's going to cost you a fortune in the long run. Against that, you have the small incentive of tax breaks, which will not even come close to break even. If you've got other government programs on top of the tax breaks, it might make a difference (and I'm none too fond of those programs either), but alone, the breaks aren't going to sway a person's decision making.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[RsG]

I covered that in the next paragraph, which you omitted in your quote. Did you miss the part about people in rich countries using more resources per person?

In any case, your point assumes the level of per-capita pollution in the developing world is static, whereas it is in fact rising sharply. The US pollutes more per person today than, say, China or India, but as the local technological and economic conditions in those countries rise toward parity with the US, so too do the rates of pollution.

Meanwhile, the developed world as a whole is actually trying to reduce it's emissions, something that nobody in the world has done before. In the long run, an immigrant and their children may do less damage if they move to an environmentally progressive state. Doubly so if immigrating means having fewer kids in the long run.

So what you're saying is true today, but will not be true for much longer.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[feepness]

I have disagreed with those programs for years. To date, nobody has called me "racist" or assumed my opposition to giving people a bonus for having kids stemmed from a dislike of immigrants.

I'm guessing you don't live in California.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[Eil]

What is exactly the cost of a Chernobyl scale accident? Unless the possibility of such an event is reduced to zero, we should really define this figure, and be prepared to spend it if the need arises.

Chernobyl happened over two decades ago, in a soviet nuclear facility that used old reactor technology (even for the time), had practically no safety features, and whose operators were both untrained and under-experienced.

The combination of modern reactor designs and stringent regulations make a Chernobyl-style meltdown utterly impossible. Chernobyl should not be compared to modern nuclear power any more than DOS 1.0 should be compared to Windows 7. Also, most people tend to forget that the U.S. already has 52 operating nuclear plants that chug along just fine every day, almost all without a single solitary incident in their entire history. Nuclear power generation does have its risks but so do all forms of electricity generation. I'd gladly wager that there have been a lot more deaths from the procurement and burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil than there ever will from the generation of nuclear power. If your criteria for "safe" power is a risk of zero, then you probably should disconnect yourself from the grid right now because there is no such thing as zero-risk power generation and there never will be.

Any other straw men you'd like to try and bat down?

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[spitzak]

Wind power at sea is less expensive than land wind power.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[johannesg]

Finally, scaling back consumption "a little" in the US would obviously have to decrease the US standard of living "a little" at the very least. Certainly there is waste, but it takes effort to eliminate waste.

That's "obviously" bullshit. Simple to prove: let's say you go to the gasstation _right now_, buy a jerrycan of fuel, and then throw it in the nearest canal.

You have now increased your energy use, but you have certainly not increased your standard of living (no, really, you haven't). Similarly, there are plenty of opportunities for scaling down your energy use without decreasing your standard of living. Turn off devices you don't use, for example. Having to wait those few seconds before your TV returns to life (about five seconds on mine, and it is an old model) really won't hurt your standard of living but would save a significant amount of energy.

Or install floor-heating in your house. That both decreases your energy use and increases your standard of living! There's plenty of stuff you can do that won't hurt at all.

Unless of course you feel that using energy is a goal by itself, which I sometimes suspect is how some americans see things...

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[noidentity]

I covered that in the next paragraph, which you omitted in your quote. Did you miss the part about people in rich countries using more resources per person?

Argh, my reading comprehension was abysmal there. Indeed, you go on to say exactly what I rebutted with.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[MrKaos]

It appears, though, your premise in posting it has two questionable basis:

1) That all the knowledge required to prevent any of those incidents was freely available to humanity before we started experimenting with nuclear power.

2) That people in the nuclear power industry don't learn from these events and design & train against them.

I think you've made some flawed assumptions in your reasoning. Over time the knowledge does not have to be freely available to humanity, it only has to be available to the industries building the nuclear power plants, and it has been for some time.

A Nuclear industry panel comprising Westinghouse, General Electric, Bechtel, Sargent & Lundy, Northern States Power and Commonwealth Edison compiled design recommendations specifically targeted at reducing the opportunities to sabotage a nuclear reactor installation and improve the operational safety of the reactors. The reactor design proposed as 'standardised for deployment', the AP-1000, incorporates none of the design changes the industry *itself* recommends be applied to reactor facility design. AP-1000 is a rehash of the Standard Westinghouse Nuclear Utility Power Plant (SNUPPs) examples of which are installed at Wolf Creek and Callaway, you will note in the picture the uncanny resemblence to the AP-1000 design (and similar capacity).

The acquisition of knowledge isn't 'free'- sorry, no one is smart enough to foresee everything. Once the knowledge is acquired, however, it spreads rapidly throughout the industry.

The reality of the situation is that existing design changes (reducing valves, gravity fed cooling water) have been made for economic reasons, not to engineer the reactor installations so they are hardened, if anything they are more vulnerable to attack. As technological improvements in reactor design cannot be implemented once they are deployed, application of new knowledge is actually slow, because it only takes place when the reactors are built. The new designs do not take the opportunity to implement design improvements that the industry *itself* recommended on the behest of the NRC. It's not best of breed, it's the whelp of the pack, the solid engineering improvements have not be put into the design. The only knowledge that was spread was 'how do we build a cheaper reactor' not 'how do we build a safer reactor'.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[MrKaos]

I see your point now but I think it is largely already accounted for.

From the link you submitted (thank's -btw) 1.1. The present publication supersedes the Code on the Safety of Nuclear Power Plants: Design (Safety Series No. 50-C-D (Rev. 1), issued in 1988). This document was published in 2000 and the bulk of it refers to design changes intended for new reactor facilities.

Back in 1997 the trend for Licencee Event Reports and Accident Sequence Precursors was going up. Of the 563 design basis issues for 1997 only 238 were found due to a deliberate effort, the remainder were 'self revealing' and the bulk identified by 'luck'.

All good intentions but an increasing trend of Accident Sequence Pre-Cursors and Licensee Event Reports (reported to the NRC) indicates an event of *any* kind is more *probable* every day especially as the reactors approach the end of their designed lifespan. The cost of safety overshadow the actual implementation, because perception of safety will always be cheaper than concrete and steel. It's analogous to 'Computer security by obscurity'.

If I could guarantee that when X, Y, and Z are followed, no accident on that scale would happen, then would that be in addition to the costs of an incident if it did happen or could the costs of it not happening be considered the costs of it happening.

Well the 900 pound gorilla in the room is the Price Anderson act. I could guarantee that if it *wasn't* in place there would be no Nuclear industry at all. As the act is still in place it simply illustrates that when a professional risk assessment is carried out on a Nuclear plant the Insurance industry won't touch it without a regulatory construct, and if they won't neither will investors. If you want a sincere guarantee and if you are in favor of responsible nuclear advocacy then lobby to have the Price Anderson act repealed.

This design consideration has been designed from the start or has been or is in the process of being retrofitted into almost every nuclear plant.

Well I think you will find 'make the entire facility underground' or 'separate processing facilities' or 'relocate the control room' precludes anything but the most superficial changes to a reactor retro fit. Any meaningful changes to operational safety of a reactor can only occur during the design phase. Once deployed you are pretty much stuck with the design as implemented.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[Anonymous Coward]

In what way does illegal immigration have anything to do with overpopulation?

In case you didn't notice, the *world* population stays exactly the same when an illegal immigrant comes here.  And it is the *world* population that is causing the environmental damage, which no matter where it happens, affects the whole world.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[Anonymous Coward]

Sending all the immigrants back just moves the problem of energy generation to another place in the world - but it will still be there, and the ecosystem is a global one.

You missed the point; which is that immigrants from poor nations tend to have as many children as they would have had if they remained in the poor nation, but they live much closer to the standard of living (and thus energy consumption) of the new nation they reside in. This is often driven by religion, the idea of having a large number of offspring who can send money back to the remaining family in the original country, or a simple lack of education. This is obvious to anyone living near immigrant populations from many less-developed countries, yet bringing it up is super-taboo.

Of course, americans use more energy per head of the population than everybody else.

Ninth. Not that that is something to be proud of, but it's hard to trust what you say when you either willfully exaggerate or fail to look up simple facts. Energy per GDP is another way of looking at things that rewards productivity and wealth creation rather than the number of near-starving people a state can maintain.

I'd also like to point out that your last two points are contradictory. You claim that sending immigrants back to a country moves the same problem somewhere else, yet you then claim that people living in different countries use different amounts of energy. Both cannot be true.

Finally, we're not trying to exterminate people, send them back, or ban them from the country. All we want is education and empowerment of women, reform of religious doctrines that are decidedly "viral" in nature, and an end to government bonuses that *encourage* having too many children. As soon as women no longer feel obligated to have 4+ children, or that they must guarantee male heirs, then we'll be in much better shape.

Once the population is stabilized, *then* consumption will be the most important thing to tackle. The most efficient large developed nations are no better than 50% less energy than the US per capita or GDP; While that may seem like a lot, if the population keeps doubling every generation you've only staved off calamity by about 30 years. If the population is stable however, that 50% is something you get to keep indefinitely. Eventually both problems need to be addressed (along with power generation), but it is pure folly to think that percentage adjustments to consumption alone are enough to solve the problem.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[sumdumass]

I don't disagree with you insomuch as what you say, however, I was more or less only dealing with the concerns of a "Chernobyl style" accident happening again. The fact is that Many of Russia's faulty designed fascility has been closed down or redesigned to incorporation automatic safe fail measures.

Also, those features were inherent in the rest of the world facilities since that time.

Keep in mind, I'm not of the opinion that nothing could ever happen, it's just that it won't be on that scale. About the worse that I know of capable of happening is that the rector facility itself will become contaminated with minor leakage that will dissipate quickly.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[catmistake]

You are mistaken. No premise, no subterfuge, I just wanted a figure for the cost of a Chernobyl-scale accident. Another poster was kind enough to give a figure of $200 Billion as the full cost of Chernobyl, and that is good enough for me for the cost of any Chernobyl-scale accident.

Because the added dollar cost of this figure is utterly insignificant.

ahem. $200 BILLION.

Ignorance is of course rampant on the anti-nuke side: ignorance of the specifics of radiation, lack of perspective, the inability to evaluate realistic alternatives, ignorance of the political issues (not technical ones) that dominate the 'waste debate', etc, etc.

well, not sure how this relates to me asking for a figure... but I think I mentioned in another post that one of the problems is that nuclear reactions are complex things, that take smart people with lots of expensive education. Everything involving nuclear power becomes some incomprehensible process for "ignorant readers." Yes, every point will be rationalized against you're probable hunger for "cheap power," but nuclear power has strikes against it because it IS complex, and CAN be VERY VERY dangerous, and can (as in POSSIBLE, has happened before, will happen again) result in VERY VERY expensive collateral costs, and these points cannot be disregarded as ignorant claims of anti-nukers. There are several other options for power, though more expensive in the SHORT TERM, that don't have the complexity, or inherent and invisible danger, that are so simple, and safe, that there is no need to rationalize away these points by calling others ignorant, because they just aren't there.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[MrKaos]

The fact is that Many of Russia's faulty designed fascility has been closed down or redesigned to incorporation automatic safe fail measures. Also, those features were inherent in the rest of the world facilities since that time.

Do you have a link detailing those Russian reactors changes I can read? Have you considered where that presumption comes from? Automatic fail-safe are one of the design recommendations the nuclear industry made for itself then ignored in the design of the *new* AP-1000. Current reactor facilities have very limited automation, and that's US reactors, forget Russian reactors.

with minor leakage that will dissipate quickly.

They do not dissipate, *ALL* radioactive isotopes bio-accumulate in the food chain, meaning one day someone will eat it. Radioactive isotopes look like nutrients to the body, i.e plutonium looks like iron, strontium-90 looks like calcium, once they are deposited in the body internal organs are exposed to the radiation they emit, alpha, beta, gamma - cancer.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[sumdumass]

Do you have a link detailing those Russian reactors changes I can read? Have you considered where that presumption comes from? Automatic fail-safe are one of the design recommendations the nuclear industry made for itself then ignored in the design of the *new* AP-1000. Current reactor facilities have very limited automation, and that's US reactors, forget Russian reactors.

I don't have a link to it, but I do know that an international fund created by donations from private citizens and countries have spent close to 1 billion to help implement safety upgrades by 2000 or so. OF course there is the Wikipedia page but I don't particularly like referencing them. The IAEA has verified the safety upgrades in various press releases over the years. This gets a little complicated to track because the former soviet union states kept their own reactors so all of the information is spread out a little.

I also think you/we might be misunderstanding the AP1000 operational. It didn't ignore the fail safe, it revised how it works and relied a lot on water pressure just to keep the reaction alive. In short, it's a self contained unit during the cool down phase requiring no alternative pumps or power for three days. The fail safe is in the design in which the reactor material is dropped into a containment vessel to be extinguished as it uses stream and condensation to protect the core during this time.

Of course I may be understanding that wrong. The information from the site is a little vague and general but the passive failure mode has been around for a while in the genII stations and considered safe.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[MrKaos]

an international fund created by donations from private citizens and countries have spent close to 1 billion to help implement safety upgrades by 2000

With over 25 operating reactor installations you are talking less that 40 million per reactor - chump change really, and if it has to fund safety improvements from --==*donations*==-- is the nuclear industry in Russia viable any more. Do you feel re-assured, I certainly don't.

AP1000 operational

Of 34 design changes recommended 25 years ago by an NRC chartered an industry panel. To re-iterate 3 design changes recommended 'make the entire facility underground', 'separate processing facilities', 'relocate the control room'. These are fundamental issues that have to be addressed. For accident mitigation the EPR design is better. Briefly the buildings that service the reactor are split into four (main) operational divisions (and the reactor containment). An accident, failure or maintenance in the other areas can be mitigated by the other divisions. It's planning, and being prepared for, problems.

To save money on construction costs the AP-1000 cuts back on concrete and steel, a lot. The result is a ratio of containment volume to thermal power below that of today's PWRs, thereby increasing the risk of containment over-pressurization and failure in event of a severe accident. They have been designed this way to reduce the expense of building them, as the sheer volume of concrete required to build a reactor containment is one of the highest input costs as well as the third greatest contributor of greenhouse gasses.

The information from the site is a little vague and general but the passive failure mode has been around for a while in the genII stations and considered safe.

I think you have to consider why the information is vague and what safe means. A release of highly toxic elements into the environment as opposed to a core excursion such as Chernobyl or meltdowm seen at TMI. It's not just the reactors, it's the entire industry mining, enrichment, reactors and long term containment. None of it is engineers to deal with the geological time frames of the isotopes contained.

I mean if we *have* to have the fucken things can't they be made not too leak and to last as long as the elements they are tasked to contain.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[sumdumass]

With over 25 operating reactor installations you are talking less that 40 million per reactor - chump change really, and if it has to fund safety improvements from --==*donations*==-- is the nuclear industry in Russia viable any more. Do you feel re-assured, I certainly don't.

Slow down there Francis, I never said that was all that was spent. The Russian government spend quite a bit too. the 1 billion was to initial specific changes in which the Russian government followed with.

Besides, Chernobyl did/does have a fail safe mechanism. It was faults in that in which caused the explosion, not the lack of one. It's not like you would need to rebuild the entire plant. There was two basic problems that caused Chernobyl outside of the operating situation. The first problem was that the control rods were coated with graphite in order to get around a sticky control tube mechanism which was the second problem. It turns out that the tube for the control rods and the fuel rods would slightly twist due to heat and stress in which Russia compensated by coating them with graphite. Anyways, when the worker who didn't know of the tests saw that something was seriously wrong, he initiated the fail safe but the graphite caused an explosion when the boron rods were introduced. This shattered the control rods and made them ineffective as well as took the other tubes off line and damaged a second reactor which they only had limited control over but couldn't remain to monitor. All the measures had to do to fix that was strengthen supports for the insertion tubes so the materials wouldn't bind and remove the graphite coatings and then automate the shutdown process to happen on a single point of failure. Of course Chernobyl happened partially because the shutdown process was disabled while some workers were conducting tests.

Of 34 design changes recommended 25 years ago by an NRC chartered an industry panel. To re-iterate 3 design changes recommended 'make the entire facility underground', 'separate processing facilities', 'relocate the control room'. These are fundamental issues that have to be addressed. For accident mitigation the EPR design is better. Briefly the buildings that service the reactor are split into four (main) operational divisions (and the reactor containment). An accident, failure or maintenance in the other areas can be mitigated by the other divisions. It's planning, and being prepared for, problems.

To save money on construction costs the AP-1000 cuts back on concrete and steel, a lot. The result is a ratio of containment volume to thermal power below that of today's PWRs, thereby increasing the risk of containment over-pressurization and failure in event of a severe accident. They have been designed this way to reduce the expense of building them, as the sheer volume of concrete required to build a reactor containment is one of the highest input costs as well as the third greatest contributor of greenhouse gasses.

Of those 25 year old design recommendations, have any of them been revamped because of changes in processes? 25 years seem like a lot of time when advancements are made quite often.

I think you have to consider why the information is vague and what safe means. A release of highly toxic elements into the environment as opposed to a core excursion such as Chernobyl or meltdowm seen at TMI. It's not just the reactors, it's the entire industry mining, enrichment, reactors and long term containment. None of it is engineers to deal with the geological time frames of the isotopes contained.

Well, not necessarily. It's intended for people with a working knowledge of that type of plant. The second link I provided seems to think the design is more then proven and more then safe. Although it was addressing the high pressure system itself more then ap1000. As for the rest of your complaint, that's a little beyond the ap1000 itself and we

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[MrKaos]

I never said that was all that was spent. The Russian government spend quite a bit too. the 1 billion was to initial specific changes in which the Russian government followed with.

Where can I find information on this? Do you have a link? Who is Francis?

Of course Chernobyl happened partially because the shutdown process was disabled while some workers were conducting tests.

The operators were running the test out of spec after they xenon poisoned the reaction. When they actually started to do the testing the shift had changed and the operators were less experienced.

Of those 25 year old design recommendations, have any of them been revamped because of changes in processes? 25 years seem like a lot of time when advancements are made quite often.

You cannot implement significant changes to a reactor facility once it is operational. Since they are designed for a forty year life span you can consider those 25 year old design recommendations state of the art for a Nuclear reactor. Besides any technology development is an iterative process. The design changes I mentioned are the simplest and most straight forward ones I thought to list, yet they have not been implemented in new designs. I mean it's pretty basic, underground reactor.

The other concerns may be valid or not, I don't care to look into them. they won't cause a Chernobyl style accident.

To save money on construction costs the AP-1000 cuts back on concrete and steel - significantly. The result is a ratio of containment volume to thermal power below that of today's PWRs, thereby increasing the risk of containment over-pressurization and failure in event of a severe accident. That is the making of a core excursion style accident, like Chernobyl.

So your not concerned with the plant itself, your concerned with the entire idea. That's understandable.

Indeed, once you understand the engineering, it's hard not to be concerned.

However, it's probably impossible and impractical to design the plant to last the lifetime of the isotopes. You will end up with a functioning obsolete facility that is used for nothing but housing a small amount of wastes.

If the facility is performing the function it was designed for (to process, use and contain) radioactive isotopes then it is not obsolete, it is operating within it's designed lifetime.

It makes much more sense to decommission the unit and consolidate the radioactive material at a specific place, then either start fresh with a more efficient system that may not even include nuclear, or use the land and resources for something else.

"Greenfielding" an ex-nuclear reactor site has never been achieved. What you suggest introduces significant logistical challenges. Efficiency of Nuclear reactors is a joke, currently a 0.3% of available fuel capable of being utilised in todays designs.

It isn't like 100 years from when it gets decommissioned

No-one cares about people one-hundred years hence, it's their problem. People only care about getting their electricity now.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[sumdumass]

Where can I find information on this? Do you have a link? Who is Francis?

I read about it in one of the IAEA reports on the state of soviet reactors. No, I don't have a specific link, I would have had one a week ago when everything we were discussing was still in my browser history. Anyways, the report was circa 1999 or so and was talking about the progress of the upgrades, it included the amount used by donation and the amount invested by the former soviet governments.

Francis was a talking mule in old movies who was enlisted in the army (WWII - Korea days). "Slow down there Francis" was just a catch phrase from it.

You cannot implement significant changes to a reactor facility once it is operational. Since they are designed for a forty year life span you can consider those 25 year old design recommendations state of the art for a Nuclear reactor. Besides any technology development is an iterative process. The design changes I mentioned are the simplest and most straight forward ones I thought to list, yet they have not been implemented in new designs. I mean it's pretty basic, underground reactor.

They did though. The problems which caused Chernobyl, outside of having a reaction that stayed lit, was because the supports for the boron tubes wouldn't move the control rods reliably. They ended up coating the control in graphite which when introduced into the reaction, caused the first explosion which shattered the control rods making them ineffective. To fix that, they strengthened the support tubes so as they wouldn't flex, added a cooling passage around part of it, and now use pure boron which will kill the reaction without needing the graphite which caused explosions when introduced to the reaction.

The shift change happened, someone noticed the reactor was out of limits (because of the testing) and the auto-shutdown wasn't engaged so he manually engaged it. When the control rods hit the reaction, the graphite exploded and shattered the control tubes making them in effective and halting any further attempts to shut it down.

To save money on construction costs the AP-1000 cuts back on concrete and steel - significantly. The result is a ratio of containment volume to thermal power below that of today's PWRs, thereby increasing the risk of containment over-pressurization and failure in event of a severe accident. That is the making of a core excursion style accident, like Chernobyl.

Most of the concrete and steel being saved is from unneeded buildings due to the simplified designs. As for the ratio of, I think your conflating the design issues here. First, American and most new reactors operate on a negative coefficient. This means that instead of adding a substance to stop the reaction, they add one to maintain it. If something happens, the feed stops and the reaction goes out on it's own. All the is necessary from there on is to cool the fuel to stop it from igniting and to maintain the vessel integrity. The AP-1000 is designed to use convection to cool and keep the reactor safe for three days without any additional pumping or water being added. This design is safer then traditional reactors and yes, it doesn't require as much concrete an steel because it isn't the same reactor.

If you were to tell me that they are just trimming the materials on the old design, I would be just as or more concerned then you are. But the very real fact is that we are talking about two different designs here and they have two different requirements which had been engineered and approved by all of the major regulatory agencies.

If the facility is performing the function it was designed for (to process, use and contain) radioactive isotopes then it is not obsolete, it is operating within it's designed lifetime.

Your ignoring efficiencies, improvements in processes and so on. Fist of all, the concrete

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[MrKaos]

The problems which caused Chernobyl,

While that is great and I thank you for the information they are not really significant changes though. In essence they are resolving a really fundamental basis design issue. What I'm talking about are four trains accident mitigation like in the EPR, underground facilities, etc etc etc. Design changes which give the reactor an opportunity to mitigate accidents *when* they occur.

As for the ratio of, I think your conflating the design issues here.

No, it's exactly what I mean. you are talking about core cooling I am talking about core containment. The ratio is expressed as the containment buildings capacity to 'contain' the thermal pressures created in an accident scenario.

That's as close to greenfielding as you can get with the exception of some cooled spent fuel left on site.

So it's not actually 'greenfeild'. Thats the bottom line, there are still radioactive isotopes contained on the site.

However, now that some are attempting to attach a cost to it, nuclear power is more efficient hands down.

because like the coal industry got away with foisting it's externalities on the community, the Nuclear industry does exactly the same thing.

Is there a problem with that?

yes, it doesn't engender the long term thinking required to engineer a Nuclear reactor to function well beyond a human lifetime. The capacity of a Nuclear reactor hovers around 1Gw so engineering a 2-5Gw Nuclear reactor with a 1000 year lifespan should be achievable if we are to insist on using Nuclear power. Obsolescence should not be a factor if you have a standardised design with known basis design issues. This is the way to producing a technology platform to develop the technology commercially as opposed to designing the reactor to a price the market find appetising as with the AP-1000.

Re:Costs of Solar, Wind, and Nuclear Power

[sumdumass]

While that is great and I thank you for the information they are not really significant changes though. In essence they are resolving a really fundamental basis design issue. What I'm talking about are four trains accident mitigation like in the EPR, underground facilities, etc etc etc. Design changes which give the reactor an opportunity to mitigate accidents *when* they occur.

Please remember 2 things here, First, when I said they were upgraded, I was talking specifically of the RBMK units that was the type used in the Chernobyl plant. They have other reactor designs in use to and some of them meet what your talking about. Second, please remember that I was speaking of a Chernobyl style accident happening in modern time. It is virtually impossible for a Chernobyl accident to happen today because of the fixes in place. While that may not me significant in your book, it is significant to the control of the reaction and limiting it's ability to get out of control.

No, it's exactly what I mean. you are talking about core cooling I am talking about core containment. The ratio is expressed as the containment buildings capacity to 'contain' the thermal pressures created in an accident scenario.

Well, actually, you are then. The different designs and reaction cores place different requirements on the containment vessels and so on. Because a 50 year old design needed more concrete and steel doesn't mean that a more efficient and easier cooled/maintained design would need the same. This goes along with the concept of taking advantage of improvements and why you wouldn't want to design a reactor to last the life of the isotopes.

So it's not actually 'greenfeild'. Thats the bottom line, there are still radioactive isotopes contained on the site.

There are confined and safely stored Radioactive isotopes on site. They are awaiting the completion of the DOE's storage facility in which they will then be moved to. There won't be any residual radiation once they are moved and there is no detectable radiation on site outside of the storage containers themselves.

Your getting kind of anally picky here too. A nuclear power plant can use take up several square miles of land and the storage of spent fuel takes the space about the size of an Olympic basketball court. The storage space isn't dangerous or radioactive and outside of security concerns, there is no reason why people couldn't walk through that space with no protective gear. Claiming no green fielding is happening is hanging onto a technicality because you think it proves your point. The reality is that moving the fuel is so expensive that it's planned on only being done once when the DOE storage facility is up and running.

because like the coal industry got away with foisting it's externalities on the community, the Nuclear industry does exactly the same thing.

Ok, I didn't want to get into this but externalities are a load of crap. Everyone uses electricity and they pay for the externalities in savings in the cost of it. It's really that simple. Don't act like a business that is created to sell electricity to the consumer would somehow magically absorb all the costs of creating that electricity. They have to at least break even to stay the same, profit to grow and meet tomorrows demands, and profit to make the investment capitol worth the expenditure. If Coal or Nuclear, or Hydro had to cover all externalizations, you would simply be paying more for your electricity. So all of the externalities is already recovered by your decreased costs. Now that the government wants to tax this money under the guise that it impacts the air or global warming or whatever is nothing more then a money and control issue. It has nothing to do with the environmental impact. If it did, they would just mandate a reduction, grandfather some small offenders in, and give X amo

navigation maps

[Max_W]

I hope they will put it on new navigation maps. But how to update existing maps?

I would be a nightmare for a captain to meet such things in high seas. As far as navigation is concerned it is a new island.

Re:navigation maps

[GreenTech11]

It is comparatively small, even when compared to an island, and it is almost definitely detectable by radar, and very few ships travelling in that region don't have radar.

Re:navigation maps

[Plunky]

I hope they will put it on new navigation maps. But how to update existing maps?

This problem was solved a long time ago, chart updates are made available regularly and large vessels will be obliged to subscribe to the service. In these modern times of electronic charts (most ships use them though they are still required to carry paper charts) updates are easily applied.

Also ships have RADAR so they can see obstructions (other vessels are not marked on charts) plus another more modern invention called AIS which allows vessels to broadcast their position, heading, course and speed and have it overlayed onto the radar plot (and the charts). You can be sure that massive floating platforms will have lights, radar reflectors and an AIS transmitter.

Re:navigation maps

[Max_W]

A radar is a good thing. But practice,teacher of fools, shows that even satellites in orbit do collide.

In the navigation school, where I studied, we were taught that a radar and GPS are very good things, but they tend to get unserviceable at the times when you need them most. Sometimes just because a battery is low.

Yes, there are ships, which do not have a motor running all the time. In future more and more ships will use sails. Even cargo ships. This is where the wind will really work.

Putting hard things in the navigable waters is the bad idea as far as I am concerned. If we want to use the wind and solar energy - do not forbid, but promote, drying linen and clothes outside, in the open air, as opposite to electrical driers. Sun-wind-linen-cloth-drier is the most effective green power device. Still in some European and North America countries it is the tabu.

So we put hardware items in the open fields and in the navigable ocean to produce electricity and then use this electricity to for electrical driers, which consume enormous amounts of energy. But the Order is kept.

This is an attempt to solve a social problem with an engineering means. Instead dry clothing and linen outside, get over it, use energy saving lamps, small cars, and leave oceans and nature fields alone. This is the real solution, real thing.

Re:navigation maps

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Sun-wind-linen-cloth-drier is the most effective green power device. Still in some European and North America countries it is the tabu.

While I disagree with pretty much everything you wrote up until this point, I figured I would support this point and mention that many HOA's (home owner associations) in the US have rules forbidding the use of clotheslines in their neighborhoods. They think it makes the neighborhood look cheap and thus brings down property values. Like much of the way HOAs operate, those rules against clotheslines are just fucked up.

Re:navigation maps

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Norway. One of the largest oil exporter in the world.

All the oil production in Norway done on offshore oil rigs. Objects in the sea is nothing new. You will find Norwegian oil, oil technology, oil tankers, oil supply vessels, and oil related workers all over the world.

Norway has also been one of the leading shipping nations of the world for hundreds of years or more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_merchant_marine_capacity_by_country

Re:navigation maps

[Max_W]

The fact that clotheslines are forbidden in some European countries and US is not a problem in itself. It is just a tiny part of humanity. The problem is that these parts are generating a global fashion in large sense of this word.

The problem begins when the bulk of humanity starts to follow this fashion, this bad example. The global epidemics of flu began after the Asian and African nations began to follow a European and US habits of handshakes and 3-hug-kisses, instead of their traditional greeting bows.

Yes, Norwegian oil rigs are in the ocean all right. But an oil rig is an expensive and relatively rare occurrence in n navigable ocean. But if they put these things in the water all over the world to produce electricity to make some districts to look luxury without clotheslines, it would be another level of complexity.

And it may well become popular because stupidity is popular. Has not a 3000 kg car been popular for decades?

Re:navigation maps

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

But an oil rig is an expensive and relatively rare occurrence in n navigable ocean. But if they put these things in the water all over the world to produce electricity to make some districts to look luxury without clotheslines, it would be another level of complexity.

There are over 4000 oil rigs in the gulf of mexico alone. I think you underestimate just how common these things are.

Re:navigation maps

[hcdejong]

Putting hard things in the navigable waters is the bad idea as far as I am concerned.

Great, another form of NIMBY to contend with. The oceans are plenty big enough to allow for a few manmade structures here and there. It's not as if they've parked their turbine in the middle of the only available highway. And it's not as if this turbine is easily overlooked, either.

Besides, if we follow your argument, we wouldn't be able to use ships at all.

And that satellite collision had nothing to do with radar. Nobody puts any anti-collision hardware on board satellites.

Re:navigation maps

[Max_W]

The main danger for a sailboat navigating in an ocean is not a bad weather, or waves, but, firstly, a collision and then falling into the water. Anti-collision system? Leave a car on a highway, even with the emergency anti-collision lights blinking, and see what happens. An ocean is a highway.

Before making oceans more dangerous by putting a network of hardware there, before doing it, put a clothesline into a yard, where it causes no danger.

A device for drying linen and clothes in the open air, clothesline, is the most energy and cost effective technology ever. It changes the state of a matter, from liquid into the gas. And changing physical state is where the energy is.

Leave water for people to navigate, use your yard, your energy saving lamps, your small car, to produce energy. Producing energy by saving it. Not occupying more space by industrial equipment, but leaving space for people to live.

The problem is not that there is not enough concentrated energy, the problem is that people do not switch off unnecessary light. So why not to try to solve this real problem before contaminating oceans even more? This was my point.

Re:navigation maps

[anachronous diehard]

Plus, there will almost certainly be an anchor light. And I haven't heard of a big problem with ships colliding with navigation buoys, even though buoys are much more likely to be adjacent to a shipping lane than wind turbines will be.

Here's the 2009-02-11 StatoilHydro press release, which has much more detail than the OP link, and even a little more than the Siemens link in the OP article.

Re:navigation maps

[Blakey Rat]

Maybe I'm a retard, but aren't there these things in the oceans called "ships?" Since ships are currently well-capable of avoiding collisions with other (moving) ships, I'd imagine that ships would avoid collisions with this stationary platform in a similar manner.

Re:navigation maps

[meyekul]

I would be a nightmare for a captain to meet such things in high seas.

Someone had better warn Capt. Don Quixote immediately.

Re:navigation maps

[HiThere]

I wonder about the power transmission line. It would be a lot less visible than the turbine.

Re:navigation maps

[BovineSpirit]

This may surprise you, but the problem of updating charts has been encountered before. And solved. In the early nineteenth century by Admiral Beaufort. The Hydrographic Office issues weekly 'Notices to Mariners' which list the changes to be made to charts. These include shifting sandbanks, new navigational bouys, new survey data and yes, new wind turbines. As far as navigation is concerned it's not a new island it's a new wind turbine. If the captain was unsure of his position the sight of one (and it would be visible at some distance) would give a clue as to his position.

Re:navigation maps

[spitzak]

Thank you for some reason here!

Yes there are "ships" and there are always going to be MANY times as many ships as wind turbines. Also "ships" have some big problems that these turbines don't have: they move, and they are far more likely to be in places (called "sealanes") where a collision is likely.

The grandparent poster is really grasping for reasons to oppose this! Anybody who can think even the tiniest amount will realize that the objection is totally silly.

Re:navigation maps

[Max_W]

Modern motor-sail boat is practically indestructible by weather. It is a small boat on which people are free to move wherever they want, say, during their holiday. They do not have manpower to update navigation charts, and they definitely do not go along shipping lanes.

Because big ships are danger for them. The same way as arrays industrial equipment on water would be danger for them.

Development of boat building technology will bring more and more families living in habitable boats. The advantage of such mobile boat-homes is that they, well, mobile, and at the same time even more comfortable than city apartments.

One vision of a sea or ocean is that some big ships cruising along strict shipping lanes, another is that it is place of freedom, without treacherous arrays of obstacles.

Containers too have a system of fixation on a ship, still half-submerged containers are floating all over the globe, causing collisions all the time. These things if they are numerous will be floating around too before long. And as road policemen know well - if something is in the way of moving vehicle the collision is not excluded. That is why a shoulder exists on the road. On the water there is no shoulder, the whole water is the road.

Consequences for long-term Earth settlement

[Mathinker]

In the very long-term (barring global catastrophes) humanity will have to start to settle the oceans, and this experiment will give us information as to how we might be able to do that in the far future.

I've always been fascinated if it might be practical to build a floating ocean settlement which could also submerge to a relatively shallow depth for relatively short periods to avoid the dangers of ocean storms.

Re:Consequences for long-term Earth settlement

[RsG]

In the very long-term (barring global catastrophes) humanity will have to start to settle the oceans, and this experiment will give us information as to how we might be able to do that in the far future.

Why?

Habitable space won't be the reason. To settle the ocean would require a fully artificial environment - one where we build every square meter we live in from the ground (or sea) up. If we're going to do that, we might as well build arcologies, and save ourselves the trouble of plugging leaks. Plus, the population growth rate is levelling off, lessening pressure to find new places to inhabit.

Because it's there? Space would be a better choice. Absence of pressure is easier to live with than overabundance of it. Solar energy is plentiful in the inner system. And an offworld colony has the virtue of surviving global catastrophes that would wipe out land and sea based habitats. Added bonus - no local ecology to damage, something the ocean most definitely has. We can colonize both of course, but I'm not sure I'd say we "have to".

Apart from all that, I'd say we already "colonized" the ocean, ages ago when we started building long-haul ships. We just don't live there all the time, or without land-based support. I doubt that will change.

Re:Consequences for long-term Earth settlement

[maxume]

I watched part of a show, I think called "Mega-engineering" or something similar that had computer generated footage of a floating New Orleans (so someone considers it a serious enough thing to spend at least a few tens of thousands of dollars on it).

There is also that cruise ship, I think called "The World" or something. Yep, ResidenSea:

http://www.residensea.com/index.html

Nowhere near a colony, but not quite a cruise ship either.

Re:Consequences for long-term Earth settlement

[im_thatoneguy]

Floating in the ocean is much easier than living in space. And if you float in a temperate climate you don't have to reprocess oxygen. Maintain atmosphere. Ward off radiation etc etc.

Cost of Living on Land Cost of Living at Sea Cost of Living in polar regions on land Cost of living under water Cost of Living in Space.

By the time we exhaust our space on land we'll be socially conditioned to have less children. By the time we exhaust the surface of the ocean, the polar continents and under water we'll probably be software living in the matrix. Once we're software and the size of a smartphone without need for oxygen, food and resistant to radiation then we'll colonize space because it'll no longer be an inhospitable environment. Why create offspring when you can improve yourself and others? Teach the existing software things you've learned. Children are an awkward means of immortality and cultural advancement. If you find someone that is extremely attractive to you and you want to create something that mixes the best of the two of you then just share personality traits with one another.

The secret to ensuring humanity's survival is to become software and human in name only.

Re:Consequences for long-term Earth settlement

[im_thatoneguy]

Oops Slashdot ate my less than signs.

Cost of Living on Land is less than the Cost of Living at Sea which is less than the Cost of Living in polar regions on land which is less than the Cost of living under water which is less than the Cost of Living in Space.

Always good to see third world getting cheap power

[Anonymous Coward]

Can only help them in one day becoming a citizen on the EU which I hear it is trying to do but have yet to be accepted.

Think of the whales :(

[tiger32kw]

One whale will die, whole project will be shot.

Re:Think of the whales :(

[bentcd]

One whale will die, whole project will be shot.

This is Norway. We kill whales for a living.

Re:Think of the whales :(

[c0d3r]

But seriously, is the whale killing business profitable. Perhaps you can burn the blubber to generate energy.

Re:Think of the whales :(

[jasoncar]

I SO wish I had a mod point right now...

Re:Think of the whales :(

[catmistake]

Great idea! And if we run out of whales we can just burn harp seals, Florida panthers, pandas, polar bears, manatees and bald eagles!

Re:Think of the whales :(

[cheesybagel]

Actually, they do hunt seals by clobbering them in Norway.

Re:Think of the whales :(

[maxume]

Don't forget humans, they will probably burn better than some of the animals you mentioned.

Re:Think of the whales :(

[bentcd]

But seriously, is the whale killing business profitable.

In 2003, 647 whales killed generated NOK 26.3M, about $4M, in profits.

Perhaps you can burn the blubber to generate energy.

The blubber is not being used at all at present I think. We used to both use it domestically and also export the best bits (of a bacon-like quality) to Japan. This last is considered a delicacy and used to sell for $10-50 per kg at retail. The temporary whaling ban of 1987-1993 stopped this and blubber production hasn't restarted since. Nowadays, it's mostly the meat that is used. (Which is quite excellent, we had some from this year's catch yesterday and I can heartily recommend it.)

Part of the problem with whale blubber these days is that it's full of dioxins, PCB and such so one will have to find some way of cleaning it up if it's to be used for food.

The whale oil factories also never got restarted, it's probably something of a marginal product.

Wind... what about ocean currents?

[carlzum]

I missed the word "wind" in the summary and thought they had developed a current turbine. Ocean currents have incredible potential, but maintenance challenges make underwater turbines impractical today. But unlike wind and solar power, ocean currents and waves could actually displace fossil fuel as a primary source of energy.

marinelife greater threat than saltwater

[Anonymous Coward]

marinelife greater threat than saltwater

Re:Always good to see third world getting cheap po

[jabithew]

HAhahaha. Ha ha ha. HA. No.

You may be thinking of Iceland.

Cheapest does not equate to 'best'

[Anonymous Coward]

But you are correct about overpopulation. There is no point reducing consumption per person by 10% if the population increases by 50%.

The scale of nearly every environmental problem we face is directly proportional to the size of the population. Politicians think that the slice of the cake that they will be left with after the profits, driven by those extra workers, have been disproportionately distributed, will be large enough for them to live a good life. They don't care what effect it has on those who will be less well off.

dampen vs. damp

[the_other_chewey]

...dampen the motion from waves...

So the waves aren't wet enough yet? Norway has strange oceans.
On the other hand, I think for the first time "inertial dampeners" is the right term to use...
(Yes, to damp is a verb too. Heavily underused. As is "dampers")

Re:dampen vs. damp

[rantingkitten]

(Yes, to damp is a verb too. Heavily underused. As is "dampers")

Thanks professor. Here on slashdot nobody watches Star Trek so that would have been lost on them without your explanation. :P

Initial costs are the only realistic problem

[wisenboi]

I think someone mentioned this earlier, but the overall initial costs/building requirements will be the most expensive point in these turbines lifetime. Just like any major capital investment, the cost is static/ one time. After it's paid off in generating enough electricity at a given price, the long term results are more beneficial - yes this means less waste compared to nuclear reactors in service, also mitigating down potential hazards from previous known incidents and close calls. You can't ignore these measurable and discernible results and effects - they are part and parcel of the energy source. People need to remember that the long term and general picture of alternative energy sources is what needs to be considered - cost is irrelevant in that any new capital is expensive initially and that it gets paid off eventually through the function it serves (or functions).

Re:Initial costs are the only realistic problem

[svirre]

Hmm an off-shore installation with huge moving exposed parts and a power generator, nope can't see any maintenance costs in that...

Seriusly, the on-shore windmill farms i've seen seems to have a significant amount of turbines down for maintenance. Off shore turbines will be more complicated to maintain, and likely fail more due to the harsh environment. I suspect initial investment costs will be minor compared to lifetime maintenance. (And said maintenane will have some carbon footprint as well)

Blame evolution for population growth

[justinlee37]

Politicians think that the slice of the cake that they will be left with after the profits ...

We also have war to blame. Cultures and nations at war attempt to out-breed each other in order to produce more soldiers and laborers. The cultures that reproduce the most stamp out the others, and thus we evolve, becoming cultured to reproduce and exponentially more numerous until we stamp out all other life on the planet.

Hopefully someone puts the brakes on human reproduction before it goes that far. We've come a long way in the past couple of centuries, even though we grow more numerous; condoms are a good start.

For a real solution to population growth, check out VHEMT.org -- their argument is compelling.

Wouldn't it be possible...

[LunarEffect]

to harvest the wave energy as well as the wind energy with something similar to this? I guess you could also slap some solar cells on it. =)

The numbers don't add up

[Anonymous Coward]

"It will be utility-size turbine, with a hub height of about 100 feet, capable of generating 2.3 megawatts of electricity."

No bleeping way will you get that many watts from a turbine that size. One of the numbers or units in the above sentence is wrong.

Re:The numbers don't add up

[TheTurtlesMoves]

Its over water so you don't need the extra height that land based ones do. Then by my numbers 2.3MW is doable with a strong wind. Norway has a lot of strong wind. Remember the power goes to the *cube* of wind speed. But.

..capable of generating 2.3 megawatts ...

Which is why wind doesn't work so well as a BOTE calculation suggest. Most of the time it won't be doing that and so you have a big chuck of expensive copper that is only "capable" of generating 2 MW. While the coal equivalent spends 90% of its operating life at capacity.

Re:They set up this big ginormous windmill by my..

[that this is not und]

Virtually none of the 'alternative power' schemes work in a way that results in a net benefit to society. Hopefully this won't always be the case but right now the main way for an individual to profit is by collecting the subsidies or tax breaks.

The subsidies act to pay off various political players and reward sectors of the voting population. And except for in the minds of the most idealistic advocates, that's what they're intended to do.

Re:Always good to see third world getting cheap po

[Anonymous Coward]

You must mean what we call Greenland. Ice is what it is, unless you want to buy a timeshare, then it's Greenland.

Already Being Done

[andersh]

We already have at least one tidal power plant operational here in Norway. We are also working on osmotic power.
Like our national oil company Statoil (state oil) that was mentioned above, our other national power company, Statkraft (state power), is innovating these kinds of projects:

Tidal power project
Osmotic power installation

Non-Threatened Whale Species

[Anonymous Coward]

We do not hunt threatened species of whale, the Minke whale Norway hunts is plentiful and currently has the conservation status of "Least Concern"

.

There are over a hundred thousand Minke whales just in the seas surrounding Norway, and we hunt less than a thousand a year. We conduct proper government controlled supervision of the hunt, and the product is used domestically.

It is a centuries old tradition and our sovereign national right to sustainably harvest our sea resources.

.

Ironically most people think hunting whales is illegal under the IWC moratorium, however Norway lodged formal objections, since the moratorium was not based on advice from the Scientific Committee, and we are thus legally exempt from the ban

.

Polar Bears are in fact a species Norway, the US and Canada are cooperating to defend and protect in our Arctic regions. Read more about the intitative here.

Re:Non-Threatened Whale Species

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe its not so repugnant because the hunt is for (or isn't for, as you've pointed out) endangered species, but whales are probably as smart and as close to sentient as chimps or other highly intelligent primates (like human children), so maybe its more like hunting great apes or chimps. Sure, a sovereign nation in Africa might justly claim the right to do so, but it doesn't diminish the appearance of ignorance or arrogance, so neither does the right to hunt whales in Norway diminish their appearance of being backward and ignorant. Hey, enjoy that 19th Century mentality! A whale is just a big fish, right?

Remember Dodewaard

[fritsd]

We've been putting off nuclear energy for thirty years now.

You talk about thirty years as if it's a long time--it's really, really not, if we talk about nuclear energy.
Let's find out the real cost of decommissioning a nuclear plant in 2046 and then discuss whether they are actually economically feasible.

Re:Remember Dodewaard

[feepness]

If thirty years isn't so long then let's do nothing for another three decades and see where we are...

Re:They set up this big ginormous windmill by my..

[yourassOA]

Oh I'm sorry were you one of the suckers that bought into wind power and are taking it out on me because I'm not as stupid as you? Moderation should not be anonymous so stupid assholes who simply disagree with you can push their agenda.

Anchored

[andersh]

According to StatoilHydro "the floating structure consists of a steel jacket filled with ballast. This floating element will extend 100 metres beneath the surface and will be fastened to the seabed by three anchor piles".
There are plenty of details and videos about the project on their website:
http://www.statoilhydro.com/en/TechnologyInnovation/NewEnergy/RenewablePowerProduction/Onshore/Pages/Karmoy.aspx

house construction, Passivhaus

[fritsd]

Here in Europe this seems to be an idea that's slowly gaining traction, but possibly most of the news and literature is in German so maybe that's why it's underreported in the English-speaking media :-)
Lemme give the de.wikipedia article then, just to get the Slashdotters practicing their German language skills :-)
Passivhaus (in German)
An evaluation report mentioning some of the disadvantages(pdf, English)
The glossy advertisement folder (English) :-) I especially like the paragraph about the costs slowly coming down:

Although the passive house approach is more expensive than standard construction, in countries where the concept is most widespread â" such as Germany and Austria â" prices are coming down as technologies and building techniques become more common.

Re:house construction, Passivhaus

[maxume]

It's going to take a long time in the U.S.; Building codes are pretty well normalized, but adoption is a fairly local process and the new house market is currently structured so that it is seller driven (huge companies build and sell whole neighborhoods). Those sellers are highly focused on cost minimization (Rather than value maximization) and they, just by being constantly active, have a strong voice in the adoption of building codes.

Re:house construction, Passivhaus

[drinkypoo]

More relevant is that there's already a gigantic glut of homes on the market; there are many new and used homes available all over the USA, for example. This is due to a combination of factors including the massive mortgage scam, the beginning of the mass baby boomer dieoff, general poor health of the economy (there are more jobs available, but more of them are part-time, so more people are working for less, leaving more people unemployed as well) and of course the fact that even when it came to be clear that purchasing was slowing, more companies built more homes. The availability of homes is spread pretty unevenly, but in B.F.E. (e.g. Lake County, California) about half of the houses are literally for sale in some neighborhoods. It's a great time if you're staying put, because you can pick up almost anything at a yard sale right now... People are moving out of here to even cheaper places; I just bought three baker's racks from a guy going back to Florida, who built his own house in the area we call "The Riviera" and can't possibly even get his money back out. He lives around the corner from the golf course...

Terrestrial nuclear - higher risk to reward ?

[mrflash818]

If we disregard that terrestrial nuclear fuel is a finite resource, like petrol based fuel, there is also the risk/reward.

Already had "Three Mile Island" and "Chernobyl".

Lets see for solar: hm, perhaps some eyestrain from getting reflected sunlight in the eye?
Lets see for wind: being struck by a fan blade if one self-destructs?

And actually, I am quite the advocate of nuclear power: Fusion power. Big 'ol billions of years reliable nuclear fusion power plant running 100% output safely, and we orbit it constantly. Free for the harvesting, once we create enough solar panels, wind turbines, and such to capture its output.

I think the argument on financial costs is a fair one, but society also once decided that removing lead from gasoline was worth the higher cost, as well as putting catalytic converters on cars. Maybe not the greatest analogy, but seems to fit.

Re:Terrestrial nuclear - higher risk to reward ?

[destrowolffe]

When I argue for nuclear power, and I do, I am not saying we shouldn't be investing in and developing other sources of energy like wind, solar, or (as a dream) fusion. Wind and solar are not mature enough as technologies to replace our current methods of producing power, but nuclear can.

Also, Three Mile Island wasn't a disaster and lumping it with Chernobyl usually means a person doesn't understand either incident and is only parroting what they read in [insert fav. news source here]. Chernobyl was a dangerous design even in the 1970s and modern nuclear reactors failsafe, as in the reaction cannot continue in a failure mode. Chernobyl is simply not possible using modern reactors.

This is not nuclear VS. wind, wave, solar. This is nuclear VS. fossil fuels. Nuclear is easily the superior option to supply our current power needs, WHILE we further develop wind, wave, and solar energy technologies into the future.

How many read that and thought, "Laputa"?

[Fantastic Lad]

Floating Wind Turbine?

It's probably that I just woke up and am dizzy enough for the fantastic to make sense, but. . .

I pictured a giant blimp with a windmill on it, tethered to Norway. And my only thought was, "Gosh, is that safe?"

My second thought when I realized I was mistaken was, "Aw, what a shame. That would have been cool."

-FL

this isn't first

[superwiz]

It's already been done off of Scotland and off of Portugal by a Scottish company.

Waves don't need to be 'dampened', they are ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... already wet.

...the turbine will have a specially designed control system that will seek to dampen the motion from waves.

For the love of God, people, oscillations are damped, not dampened!