Slashdot Mirror
Belgium's Aging Nuclear Plants Worry Neighbors (phys.org)
mdsolar writes with news that Belgium's decision to restart a reactor at its Tihange nuclear power plant and its aging Doel plant have some of its European neighbors uneasy. Phys.org reports: "As the two cooling towers at Belgium's Doel nuclear power belch thick white steam into a wintry sky, people over the border in the Dutch town of Nieuw-Namen are on edge. They are part of a groundswell of concern in the Netherlands, Germany and Luxembourg over the safety of Belgium's seven aging reactors at Doel and at Tihange, further to the south and east. 'I'm happy Holland, Germany and Luxembourg are reacting because they (officials) don't listen to you and me,' butcher Filip van Vlierberge told AFP at his shop in Nieuw-Namen, where people can see the Doel plant. Benedicte, one of his customers, nodded in agreement. Van Vlierberge said he was particularly uneasy with the Belgian government's decision in December to extend the lives of 40-year-old reactors Doel 1 and Doel 2 until 2025 under a deal to preserve jobs and invest in the transition to cleaner energy."
...the Swedish reactors are some of the oldest and the least serviceable in the world.
http://www.thelocal.se/2015062...
Swedish reactors where considered the 2nd least upgradeable and amongst the worst in the world. Kinda interesting since their Finnish neighbour has one of the most efficient and upgradeable reactor designs in the world. Go figure.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
The move away from nuclear power in Europe is a knee-jerk reaction to the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. That the plants are old might be cause for concern, if the reactors don't meet modern safety standards. However, nuclear plants are very safe now and every disaster or near-disaster is thoroughly analyzed and changes are implemented at other plants so such incidents never occur again. For example, the United States' Nuclear Regulatory Commission carefully reviewed the Daiichi plant disaster and implemented changes in the US to make such an event even more unlikely at American nuclear plants. The phase out of nuclear power is based on largely unfounded fears, not science and logic. It's easy to ridicule Americans for attitudes about climate change and evolution. But there are equally foolish things in Europe, like the views on nuclear power and GMOs. I just wish people on both sides of the pond were more rational about some pretty important issues. I'm not opposed to phasing out nuclear power if superior technology becomes available, but I don't think there's really a superior alternative in many situations. Fossil fuels are awful and solar and wind aren't without their own problems.
Nuclear is pretty clean, and low co2. Yes, it's more expensive than its boosters pretend, but then ago so are most of the other highly-subsidised alternatives. Disposal of the waste is not as difficult as people pretend, and in fact would be simple and cheap if successive generations of politicians not bowed to NIMBY pressure...
Running older reactors can be perfectly safe too; costs a bit more, since you have to model how the materials age and replacement can be tricky, but there are specialists who provide those services. The concern is that some organisations are moving away from the "safety first, money no object" mentality to squeeze more cash out of their already highly-profitable installations.
It's fascinating how the old reactors are still in service because the public is afraid of them. The collective fear of the old reactors and their flaws leads to new reactors not being a favorable political decision. Thus, we are stuck with the 40 year old old versions of the most efficient clean energy production we're aware of.
Unfortunately Belgium is the most dysfunctional state in Europe's west. Sometimes their political cast is unable to form a government for years. Actually, it is like that after each election. So they are not properly governed for 1/4 to 1/2 of the time. Their police has no clue where their potential terrorists live, and their control and oversight of nuclear plants is not governed by safety concerns, but by the fact that their grid is not that well connected with neighboring countries. They also do not have any program to replace the old and broken reactors with anything not even new plants. It is necessary that they understand that it us not working and that they should dissolve their country.
The thing may really be a problem, that I don't know. But I _can_ tell you that this whole affair has the stink of public manipulation heavily upon it. For months, we have been hearing about every little problem in that reactor ("the copying machine in the reactor ran out of paper. There was no risk of radioactive contamination."). Which would invariably be followed by "The paper in the copying machine in the reactor has been refilled. Experts say the risk of radioactive contamination is minimal." There have been 3-4 articles a week about things happening in that reactor, and most of them, at least to my non-expert eye, looked really rather like business as usual, while at the same time containing all the keywords that would set of alarm bells in everyone reading it.
As I said, I have no idea if there's anything wrong in that reactor, but public opinion is clearly being massaged. We are supposed to be afraid. It is not normal for every tiny problem to be made into a series of news articles, and I'm wondering what is really behind this story.
Speaking as a Belgian, I'm worried about a French multinational in control of the plants not giving a damn about anything but their own profit margins. We hear about incidents (so far in the non-nuclear parts of the plants) at least once per month. The problem is that unlike Chernobyl, Belgium's nuclear plants are in highly populated areas. In case of a real incident, we might have to evacuate and relocate several million people. Not to mention that the parts of our neighbors that could be affected are also pretty densely populated. The deal referred to exists purely to transfer a lot more money to said multinational. This money might be better spent either on a new generation of nuclear plant, or better, reusable energy. Unfortunately, said multinational also appears to have zero interest in investing in new power plants in Belgium.
While the belgian reactors are old , I think the current worries are mostly a result of the tight regime they're being run at now. Strict safety procedures means lots of powerdowns and lots of news events. This constant media attention then leads the neighbors to start worrying. That's the main issue at work now. It's not due to inherent dangers becoming too high.
That aside, the fact that the reactors are old and still necessary is a symptom of the historical bad approach to nuclear energy that we had in the west. Nuclear energy boomed when the technology was immature, and lots of large scale plants were built with very long lifetime. This slowed down the evolution of the technology. For good evolution you need fast rotation of the plants and good diversity. Then enthusiasm waned and now the west is stuck with very old plants and no mature technology, and the technology here is as good as dead. We don't even have any experience in handling the end of the lifecycle of a plant. China, India and Iran are starting with better knowhow but the conditions are more dangerous (highly populated areas, earthquake prone..), so it looks like they have some disasters in the making too.
and thought "This looks like another post by user 'mdsolar' spreading FUD about alternatives to solar power".
And guess what, that's exactly what is was.
Why does Slashdot tolerate his continual shilling and trolling? Does he pay them?
1) the reactors have had full inspections and are under constant control, this is not Japan
"this is not Japan"? What does that mean? Because Japan is known for having the absolutely finest process control and attention to detail in the world. Are you asserting that your people are somehow immune to corruption? Because I have a large, red bridge in which I would like to interest you in partial ownership. It generates substantial toll revenue...
Those suggesting solar and wind as alternative demonstrate their incompetence in math. Solar and wind will NEVER be sufficient in our region, just check the numbers of all countries investing a lot of money in them.
You talk about demonstrating their incompetence in math, then you demonstrate your incompetence in logic, upon which math is based? Hilarious! Or in light of your prior comment, perhaps I should say, hirarious!
batteries are very green, right? And efficient, right?
Batteries can be very green, only the small and lightweight ones are "necessarily" toxic and actually those are getting greener all the time, too.
solar/wind therefore requires an almost equal amount of production capacity from gas
WHAT? The word "therefore" is supposed to come after an argument which you haven't provided. Do you even English, bro?
last year we had a peak energy import du to unavailability of nuclear
No, due to unavailability of power. Nuclear is just one kind of power. Nobody should have to explain this to you.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Because it has been proven many times over you would need to pepper most of the earth with solar panel
[citation needed]
and it is not as if colar panels
hee hee
are environmentally 'free' to manufacture either.
They are getting cleaner all the time, using less and less objectionable material. They don't need expensive, energy-intensive, and hazardous nuclear cleanup at the end of their service lives, either. Modern panels made in the first world are required to both be recyclable, and to not leach toxics if simply landfilled.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's fascinating how many people think the opposition is down to fear, and not money.
Take the UK as an example. The public doesn't seem to be afraid of nuclear power or nuclear weapons, based on two debates we are having about it right now. First you have the new nuclear plant being built. No-one is complaining about safety, it's all about the insane cost, and the fact that in order to get a French/Chinese partnership to build it for us we had to agree to pay them way over the odds for the power generated, for the lifetime of the plant.
Then you have the debate over our nuclear weapons system, Trident. Again, few concerns over the safety of the thing, it's all about the cost and if we really need it for defence.
The UK has a pretty terrible record on nuclear safety, but most people don't care. They just want cheap power, and nuclear doesn't offer it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Oh, so now we have "peak uranium" being offered as a potential crisis? They said the same thing about oil 50 years ago, and here we are, still going strong with a glut of oil. Stop with your propaganda please. Here's the facts on Uranium as a power source: " Uranium-235 is a finite non-renewable resource.[1][3] However, the current reserves of uranium have the potential (assuming breeder reactor technology) to provide power for humanity for billions of years, until the death of our sun, so nuclear power can be termed sustainable energy.[4] " - from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I just wonder why this guy is always trashing every technology not named solar. If we're serious about climate change, we should be building anything not named 'coal', 'oil', and 'natural gas'.
Solar is fantastic. I work for, and own stock in, a solar company. I would love to see panels on everyone's rooftops, especially if they were installed by my company. It's just not realistic without some form of energy storage technology that doesn't exist today. We still need to produce energy at night time. And, right now when it's snowing and 7 degrees (Fahrenheit) outside where I live, we need reliable energy for heating, and snow-covered panels aren't it.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
One of the rare times where, after many users have provided counterarguments against mdsolar's negative posts in the past, we as a group need to resort to directly attacking the character and motive of all posts by mdsolar.
http://slashdot.org/submission/5458403/20-nations-nuclear-facilities-said-to-be-vulnerable-to-cyberattack
http://slashdot.org/submission/5439281/why-james-hansen-is-wrong-about-nuclear-power
http://slashdot.org/submission/5415059/portions-of-land-at-san-onofre-nuclear-plant-may-be-contaminated-navy
http://slashdot.org/submission/5373577/the-attack-of-the-nuclear-hucksters
Why are we still accepting such biased submissions from mdsolar?
In the US the towers were specifically designed with the possibility of an aircraft impact in mind, and even if the tower were breached, very little nuclear radiation would likely be emitted. Studies suggest the likelihood of an aircraft collision with a US tower actually causing a breach are infinitesimal. If the Belgian towers were designed around similar parameters, I doubt terrorists could breach them and I imagine car bombs wouldn't have much better luck.
If you mean dirty bombs, you'd need to steal nuclear waste (to get the short lived Actinides, mainly - the long lived ones probably won't do enough tissue damage unless you're very near the blast, as in smoking a cigarette is worse because those contain short lived and dangerous polonium) and separate out some of the shorter half life/more toxic parts to have an effective dirty bomb. Uranium itself in fissile/fertile form would be a terrible choice if you are looking at creating radiation related fatalities. Something like polonium would be vastly more effective. You'd also need to build a large conventional explosive, probably a fertilizer bomb, to actually spread it to any reasonable range.
TL;DR - obsolete reactors don't really help terrorists. You'd probably do more damage blowing up a few hundred cartons of cigarettes in a dirty bomb than stolen nuclear waste, though neither would be particularly effective.