Slashdot Mirror
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."
Of an old saying... "There's power in the motion of the ocean". Though I think that quote referred to something completely different.
0100010001101001011001 0100100000011010010110 1110001000000110000100 1000000110011001101001 0111001001100101
Anybody else craving a Sea Breeze?
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.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
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).
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.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
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?
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.
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.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
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.
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".
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?
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
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.
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).
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
One whale will die, whole project will be shot.
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.
The Admin and the Engineer
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.
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....
I'll see your hokum and raise you a boondoggle.
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.
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.
The Admin and the Engineer
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.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
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).
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
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
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?
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).
The Admin and the Engineer
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.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
Send it off into space. Plenty of space in space.
HAhahaha. Ha ha ha. HA. No.
You may be thinking of Iceland.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
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
The Admin and the Engineer
This is all infinity more cleaner than a nuclear power plant, you are missing the point.
...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")
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.
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. --Niels Bohr
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?
The Admin and the Engineer
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.
The Admin and the Engineer
Well, hopefully, as with many (not all though) other things that cost money, the process will perhaps get cheaper?
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.
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.
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.
The Admin and the Engineer
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).
If anyone needs me, I'll be in the Angry Dome.
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.
This ad space for rent.
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. =)
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.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
... and trees! Wind turbines could balance out our deforestation.
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.
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.
The answer you get depends on the numbers you put in. Please tell us exactly what values you used for
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.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
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 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.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
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.
- Raynet --> .
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.
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.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Atleast part of this is due to 'not in my backyard' syndrome and general ignorance and fright over anything nuclear.
- Raynet --> .
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.
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.
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.
I don't expect morality, equality, consistency, or justice from the law. I expect only legality.
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.)
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
The "wasteland" is in the process of turning into a forest, and is already a wildlife haven.
How many cancer deaths does the average coal power plant cause during its life?
And only those few produce power on the magnitude of Chernobyl.
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?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
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.
But what a windmill generates as trash? some grease for their axis? What about the half-life of atomic fuel?
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
.
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.
Now imagine the damage of a chinese nuke power plant on a heavily dense area...
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.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
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..
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
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.
I'm not sure I got it. Are those red squares all what we need? And why europe doesn't need any?
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.
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
like how much we spend with communication these days? Take a look at 20 and 30 years ago...
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.
Way less than beach buildings as we see in every coast currently.
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.
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.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
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.
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.
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)
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
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.
The Admin and the Engineer
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.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
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.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
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.
- Raynet --> .
Not from uranium ore.
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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".)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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!
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
They use long distance electrical transmission lines.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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
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.
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!!!)
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.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
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.
Fantasy: http://ferrisfantasy.blogspot.com/
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?
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?
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
It's already been done off of Scotland and off of Portugal by a Scottish company.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
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.
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.
..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.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
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.
Craploads ... A backpack of Uranium is equivalent to a tanker load of oil. (The floating kind)
... 1KG of Coal produced 2KG of CO2 and 0.7KG of flyash.
... aaaa, don't worry about that.
..
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
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
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.
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.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
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?).
The Admin and the Engineer
Thanks for your post. I'm adopting it verbatim as my response to the GP. ;-)
The Admin and the Engineer
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.
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!
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.
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.