Nuclear power, has the Japan incident changed your views

[It'sNotWorthComplaining!]

I have always thought ,no thanks not in my backyard on Nuclear power.
The pro sayers have always been promoting clean power, safe etc,.
I know the percentage of radiation accidents have been low in comparison of the large number of nuclear stations around the world. But the small number of accidents effect 10 of thousands of people.
Nothing can protect these nuclear accidents when mother nature blows a steady hand. Chenobal, Japan, Long Island that's 3 cases of safe power going wrong. The blame is often the age of the installations.Apart from effecting the immediate areas, the radiation travels with particals in the air effecting other places. When the Frogs were blowing the proverbial out of atolls in the pacific, we were warmed fall out would effect the milk cows in QLD.
I wonder if all the reports we here are spin doctoring or the truth?

[bee utey]

Nuclear power is driven by politics, not common sense. It's generally a NIMBY thing and if if there are more nuclear plants they will cause locals to fight tooth and nail, without success. My opinion? Not near me please, but I can think of towns that would embrace nuclear. Maybe.

I suspect this thread will rapidly head for the soapbox zone, myself.:cool:

[abaddonxi]

Oh I think we need a poll with this one.:D

[BigJon]

My opinion has not changed. I am pro nuclear power.

[101RRS]

Is this really anymore of an environmental disaster than the Exon Valdez or the rig leak in the US last year - actually think it is less yet we continue to suck oil out of the ground.

No systems are perfect - we should have moved to nuclear years ago.

No change in my view.

Garry

[d@rk51d3]

Pro nuclear also.

[Tote]

Old reactors on a known active faultline. Wouldn't happen in Australia if we were to implement nuclear power. No change, still think it's an obvious solution.

Regards
Tote

[p38arover]

I'm for it.

[p38arover]

Oh I think we need a poll with this one.:D

Done.

[tangus89]

hasnt changed, pro nuclear

[Chucaro]

In Australia give me win, solar and gas to produce electricity.

[VladTepes]

Pro Nuke.

The enviro-crowd keep telling us we shouldn't pollute the world by burning oil... but more practically it is a finite resource so we certainly will need an alternative source of energy.

As much as Bob Brown and his mates might like to think so, it's just not possible to meet the power demands of a country, or even a major city on windmills and good intentions.

Australia has plentiful supplies of Uranium and is geologically very stable, making the risks seen in Japan not really an issue here.

Modern reactors are safer and better than the ones Japan is having trouble with at the moment - that facility was due to close last year, but the Japanese government controversially extended its licence for another 10 years just recently. A decision I'm sure they now regret. This may well have avoided the current emergency.

So yep, I'm in favour of nuclear power - would give is a much greater independence as far as energy is concerned and would reduce our reliance on oil imports.

[isuzutoo-eh]

Ron, you spelt 'generation' incorrectly in the poll! :)

[brend0n]

Pro Nuc.

Australia is a geologically stable continent (Japan's issues are extremely unlikely to happen here) especially if built in inland no tsunamis

vast deposits of uranium, cost effective. (Australia should be the hub for a global power grid)

Hyrdo, Wind, solar, gas, geothermal has its merits but it is way to hard/costly to produced to meet some of the demand...

And when looking at the full cradle to grave analysis some 'enviro friendly' energy sources produced some harmful byproduct and are energy intensive.
(ie solar panels need more energy to make the then can produce in their lifecycle and are made using some nasty chemicals...technology may have improved on this since I researched energy sources in uni 4 years ago.

[Xul]

Also Pro-Nuclear. It just makes sense and if implemented correctly it's perfectly safe. Although there has been a lot of conflicting news, apparently the majority of the radiation from the Japan incident has only been elements with a relatively short half life.

[ugu80]

Nuclear power stations, especially new ones learning past lessons, are safe, clean and efficient. The problem is, and has always been, what to do with the radioactive waste.

[ugu80]

In Australia give me win, solar and gas to produce electricity.


Give me untaxed coal, its the cheapest way. (Cue THE GREAT GLOBAL WARMING SWINDLE).

[d3syd]

Until someone comes up with a cheaper cleaner source of bulk energy, I'm pro nuclear as well, particularly in one of the most geologically stable continents like ours. Wind/solar/wave power just can't produce enough to satisfy demand.

The Japanese plant appears to have initailly survived the earthquake fairly well, it was the Tsunami that knocked out the auxillary cooling power that caused the problem. I'm no expert, but as I see it, all they needed to have done was put the backup generators/pumps in a sealed enclosure or even high up on the roof tops of the buildings and they wouldn't have the problems they are having now. You would think they would have thought about this seeing the plant is right on the coast line of a Tsumani prone place!!

[d3syd]

Nuclear power stations, especially new ones learning past lessons, are safe, clean and efficient. The problem is, and has always been, what to do with the radioactive waste.

I don't see any problem with burying the waste deep underground in the desert somewhere where it is not going to be disturbed. Afterall we will be returning it to where it came from.

[rick130]

Of course when one hears people advocating nuclear energy as 'green' no one seems to mention the resources that need to be 'burnt' just to build one nuclear power station before it generates 1kw of electricity.

Then you need to de-commission it when it's life is over (the one they are having problems with in Japan was to be de-commissioned over the next twelve months, mores the pity :()

Just for balance, it wasn't the earthquake that did the power stations in over there, it was the tsunami knocking out the cooling systems.
The newer power stations can run a thermo-syphon cooling system when the pumps are knocked out, the older ones can't.

Sydney Uni is working on Thorium (sp?)
Much, much cleaner than uranium fuelled fusion, and Australia has the worlds largest deposits.
Then there's hot rocks (geo-thermal) for base load power, wind, solar, all sorts of things just waiting to be developed if the coal fired power industry wasn't so subsidised.

[solmanic]

My opinion is also unchanged - I still think nuclear power generation makes sense here in Australia.

Let's look at the three most infamous nuclear disasters...

Three Mile Island - beginners bad luck in my opinion. The technology has moved on since then.

Chernobyl - Soviet Union operating a superpower on a 3rd world budget.

Fukushima - Nuclear plant on one of the worlds most active faultlines, just plain stupid.

I am a great believer that power generation should logically be a product of environment where it's being done. For example, here in Australia we have lots of uranium, advanced 1st world technology, adequate funding, and we are geologically stable. Ergo nuclear power seems like a logical way to generate power until something better comes along.

China has plenty of topographically good places for dams and reliable water supply so hydro-electric power seems logical there.

Dry arid areas = solar. (eg north Africa, western USA, middle east, here also)

Geologically active areas = geothermal (eg New Zealand, Iceland)

Islands = wave power generation

Windy environments = wind power

By contrast, in the UK it is bleak and miserable so coal fired power is ideally suited to there :p.

[It'sNotWorthComplaining!]

a few are saying OLD TECH nuclear stations, so with ever inproving technology. why are not the old ones being decomissioned, if 30 year old technology is out of date. There is a definite life span of a station, but what it contains is infinite.
Could can't compare disasters like the exxon valdeze oil spill.
Oild contaminates do just blow around in the air contamination things for thousands of years. The problem with radiation is that you can't smell it, taste it, hear it ,or see it, you wouldn't know if it effected you.
These was a movie on the beach, although it was about a total world war of nuclear devastation, it protrayed the slow death, the panic the unknown. scary stuff, scare mungering, but not a nice thing to happen.
Accidents happen, safe guards are untested, just like japan, the safeguard was not fool proof, as they are not tested in real situations.

[frantic]

Yes but NIMBY, now before you all start screaming , no problem if you put it in the southern highlands(plenty of fresh water , it was the only place in the drought not declared an emg. zone) which still puts me in the "fallout" radius but as has been shown in Japan you should not put a reactor on the coastal flats! It does not matter if sea levels rise ,from climate change, or not but there is still a remote chance of a tsunami from N.Z.

[Hymie]

The ideal place to build Nuclear power stations is close to where the power demand is, as opposed to Coal which requires the Power Station to be built close to the fuel source. So a plant close to Melbourne sounds Ideal, say around Dandenong, Werribee or out North near Craigeburn.

One of those nice shiny new Thorium Reactors would be nice.

Seriously, Brown Coal is that plentiful i the Latrobe Valley electricity should be too cheap to Meter, the only reason Electricity is costing more and more is because of the Infrastructure upgrades required to handle the Influx of Solar and Wind Generation.
Solar, Pffftt. Victorias Grid can only handle a maximum of 100 MW of Solar Power, so it's costing Millions of Dollars to take Half a Unit of Hazlewood Offline.
We'd save more greenhouse gas emmission if we canned Solar, the Tradies Utes running around during their installation would emit more CO2 than the things would save in a year.

[kentkal]

A couple of questions to ponder; How much energy is needed to dig, process and ship the stuff in the first place.
What happens when we have dug it all up and no more left, what happens to the great pile of waste left over. I can hear people say "that's not going to happen for a thousand years" The way the world population is increasing, it may be sooner than we think.

[waz]

Of course when one hears people advocating nuclear energy as 'green' no one seems to mention the resources that need to be 'burnt' just to build one nuclear power station before it generates 1kw of electricity.

....snip....

Sydney Uni is working on Thorium (sp?)
Much, much cleaner than uranium fuelled fission (- solar power is fusion based), and Australia has the worlds largest deposits.

...snip...

Resources need to be used to build any power source. This problem is not nuclear-only. The difference is, once it is built, nothing is burnt to generate power.

Pro-nuclear all the way.

Waz

[TerryO]

A couple of questions to ponder; How much energy is needed to dig, process and ship the stuff in the first place.
What happens when we have dug it all up and no more left, what happens to the great pile of waste left over. I can hear people say "that's not going to happen for a thousand years" The way the world population is increasing, it may be sooner than we think.


The same thing will happen as when they dig big holes for coal and while I don't know for sure I'd guess they use a similar amount of energy to refine and ship the stuff around the world.

A mate of mine works down at Roxby Downs and if I remember rightly he said about every two weeks a decent sized plane arrives and they load all the gold that comes out as a by-product of mining for Yellow Cake. Apparently according to him they just seal off and mark for later recovery all the gold seams they keep finding as it is not the primary ore they are looking for.

I don't believe they get any other valuable by-product when they mine Coal.

cheers,
Terry

[tangus89]

nuclear works in the dark

[Benz]

I can't see why you would want nuclear power...

first off mining uranium is the most dangerous and expensive mineral to mine.

second it's hugely expensive to enrich.

third you have to deal with the waste which pretty much lasts forever and needs constant monitoring to make sure the waste doesn't have a meltdown too...

and if anything goes wrong along the way.... your stuffed... and the area in which has been exposed has to be locked off for ages... and people die slowly and painfully from radiation poisoning or get cancer

the risk for me anyway is far too high...

it's not even clean... have you ever seen a uranium mine? they use 100,000 Ltrs of water... I know in Australia we don't have that much water. all the water is mixed with acid and becomes radio active so it can't be reused... and they use lots and lots of power.

didn't really mean for that to turn into a rant...
my bad =]

[rovercare]

Pro, I'll be first to put my hand up for a spot in construction, then wagging my tail madly for a job in operations

Oh, thought you were going away and no longer whinging:(

[F4Phantom]

I used to be in favor of nuclear but then I found out some things that changed my mind, mainly to do with the financial side.

For Pro nuke we have a good country with stable ground as stated, we can dig holes and let the waste sit forever, and each plant only generates one cubic metre of waste per year which is nothing. Actually I think we should store the worlds nuke waste here and charge them rent, what a great long term income.

Anyway the problem I have with nuclear power is that it costs a lot of money to set up and we only have 100 years worth of uranium. The japanese reactors are already 40 years old and of newer design, so we would make a all these hugely expensive reactors at a cost of billions upon billions, then we run out of fuel in only 100 years? Very short term thinking, wereas to me nuke power should involve long term thinking. They say we could have 1000 years nuke power with breeder reactors but that is a great unknown.

If the nuke money was given to the CSIRO to make green power cheap I recon they could do it and make power too cheap to meter and on top of all this, green power is cheap to manufacutre maintain, and no side effects so is the obvious choice IF it can be done, and as we know R&D money can do anything.

[BigJon]

and we only have 100 years worth of uranium.

Where does that figure come from? Are you aware that uranium exploration is a massive industry in Australia?

[F4Phantom]

Where does that figure come from? Are you aware that uranium exploration is a massive industry in Australia?

I knew this would happen, I read it about a year ago on ABC science site, I cannot really verify much more than that unfortunatly unless I re-research it, the reason I remember it so clearly is because I could not believe at the time we were talking about nukes with such limited supply of fuel. EG we apparently have around 400 years of coal in Aust.

[rovercare]

I knew this would happen, I read it about a year ago on ABC science site, I cannot really verify much more than that unfortunatly unless I re-research it, the reason I remember it so clearly is because I could not believe at the time we were talking about nukes with such limited supply of fuel. EG we apparently have around 400 years of coal in Aust.

500years that's viable, more deeper and off lesser quality

[Mick_Marsh]

we run out of fuel in only 100 years?
How many years of mud... er.... brown coal do we have left?
Serious question. I have no idea.

[stig0000]

i miss read the Q,,, i looked at the has it changed your view and i hit no,,,, :D im for nuclear,

[CraigE]

I am pro nuclear power. But new technology not outdated 60s technology. It appears the Japanese stations that have failed are older technology. IMHO they should not have been built on the east coast of Japan unles they could withstand earthquakes and Tsunamis of extreme magnitudeds.
Obviously there are areas they should not be built.
I think Australia should have them, a couple in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. After all these are the high power use and overpopulated areas.:p

[F4Phantom]

some facts I found from the Aust Gov site

"Australia has 7% of the world's recoverable black coal EDR and ranks fifth behind the USA (31%), Russia (22%), China (14%) and India (8%).

Australia produced about 6% of the world's black coal in 2009 and ranked fourth after China (47%), the USA (17%) and India (8%).

Australian brown coal production for 2008-09 was 68.3 million tonnes (Mt) valued at $2.3 billion, all from Victoria. The Latrobe Valley mines of Yallourn, Hazelwood and Loy Yang produce about 98% of Australia's brown coal. Locally significant brown coal operations occur at Anglesea and Maddingley.

Australia has about 25% of world recoverable brown coal EDR and is ranked first ahead of the USA (20%) and China (12%). Australia produces about 7% of the world's brown coal and is ranked as the fifth largest producer after Germany (21%), Russia (10%), Turkey (9%), USA (8%), China (7%) and Greece (7%).

Hmm this article says we have 90 years of coal left on the basis of exponential consumption.

When will Australia's coal run out? | Crikey (http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/10/28/when-will-australia%E2%80%99s-coal-run-out/)

[Ferret]

third you have to deal with the waste which pretty much lasts forever and needs constant monitoring to make sure the waste doesn't have a meltdown too...

I don't necessarily disagree with all your saying but one alternative being proposed - coal fired power stations with CO2 sequestration is similar. You bury the CO2 waste and monitor it for all time to make sure it does not leak back into the atmosphere.

I think I would prefer to bury a little bit of radioactive waste (much of which will decay over ~100 years, yeah I know some lasts longer than that) than a lot of CO2 waste which never decays.

[Fluids]

I'm pro.

The Japanese plant in question is approx' 40yrs old and HAS endured earthquakes for the last 40yrs without failures .... and Japan have numerous (100's) of quakes per year ... and have around 55 nuclear reactor driven power stations .... and the problem with nuclear power generation is ??

The straw that broke the camels back was the tsunami, which caused the backup power system (diesel gen' sets) that runs the cooling pumps to fail, and in reality, how on earth does anyone safeguard/predict when a torrent of water that size will strike ? You all saw what devastation it caused.

Sure, don't build them on a tsunami prone coastline and the odds diminish greatly.
Don't write something off on the basis that someone made a bad location decision some 40+ yrs ago ...

... or invest in a candle factory :p

[bee utey]

Discussion on the Japanese nuclear industry:

7.30 Report - 15-Mar-2011 (http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/201103/r734661_5955893.asx)

[mikehzz]

For me the only concern is the waste. From Wikipedia-
"Hannes Alfvén, Nobel laureate in physics, described the as yet unsolved dilemma of high-level radioactive waste management: "The problem is how to keep radioactive waste in storage until it decays after hundreds of thousands of years. The geologic deposit must be absolutely reliable as the quantities of poison are tremendous. It is very difficult to satisfy these requirements for the simple reason that we have had no practical experience with such a long term project. Moreover permanently guarded storage requires a society with unprecedented stability."
As such, I think that its not as simple as digging a hole. I saw a doco on the absolutely fanatical extremes that the Swedish government has gone to in an effort to safely and responsibly store their waste. I wish I could provide a link to it as it was quite unbelievable and expensive.
I think that all other concerns are relatively trivial compared to the waste issue, except for building them on fault line plains next to an ocean of course.
Solve the waste problem and I'm for it.

[Rosscoe68]

In Australia give me win, solar and gas to produce electricity.

and the tonnes of oil and coal burned in producing these "so called" efficient energy sources???? (not including gas, but thats not a renewable resource anyhow)
seriously, take a look how much energy is used to produce these inneficient power sources, fine if you are remote, i am all for it, but not a viable option for mass power i think.

i am pro nuclear as well. :)

[richard4u2]

i dont think we would get one in w.a.. no political party would be game to close down the collie coal mine , but N/P stn's will come one day and it wont worry me

[Hymie]

How many years of mud... er.... brown coal do we have left?
Serious question. I have no idea.


At current usage rates enough for another 500 years, of Latrobe Valley Brown Coal.
After that they will have to go down to the second, thicker seam that is below the water table.

[Homestar]

Sydney Uni is working on Thorium (sp?)


The concept of a Thorium reactor has been around since the 40's. The very first nuclear reactor was a Thorium reactor, but it was dumped in favor of a uranium reactor for a couple of reasons. First, it cost more to build, and more to run, second is the fact that you can't use any of the by product to use in weapons - so it was thought that the whole concept was basically useless. The benifits of them are that they can't melt down, Thorium is plentiful, unlike uranium, which is getting scarse, the waste has a much shorter half life and you can't make weapons out of the by products. I think you will see this technology coming to the forefront very soon, accelarated by the current situation in Japan.

I'm all in favor of nuclear power in Oz, preferably a thorium reactor, and yes, I would have either in my backyard.

[blitz]

if you have reservations regarding nuclear power just check out the amount of nuclear powered ships currently wandering around the planet.

I want to be a greeny but my arse is in reality and reality is nuc's are the best immediate solution to a discustingly huge power hungry planet.

[Reads90]

Pro Nuke.

The enviro-crowd keep telling us we shouldn't pollute the world by burning oil... but more practically it is a finite resource so we certainly will need an alternative source of energy.

As much as Bob Brown and his mates might like to think so, it's just not possible to meet the power demands of a country, or even a major city on windmills and good intentions.

Australia has plentiful supplies of Uranium and is geologically very stable, making the risks seen in Japan not really an issue here.

Modern reactors are safer and better than the ones Japan is having trouble with at the moment - that facility was due to close last year, but the Japanese government controversially extended its licence for another 10 years just recently. A decision I'm sure they now regret. This may well have avoided the current emergency.

So yep, I'm in favour of nuclear power - would give is a much greater independence as far as energy is concerned and would reduce our reliance on oil imports.

This may be a first I totally agree with you Vlad

I am pro nuke and believe if it was not for the problems in the past then we would already have it

In france if you have a nuke plant in you village then you get free power and free rates and alot of stuff built for you in the town. They have villages fighting to have a plant in their back yard in France

Wind , wave or solar will not produce enough power that we need

Sent from my iPhone

[Blknight.aus]

so long as theres no sneaky trying to extend the life of the units just cause it saves a few bucks in the short term.

once the yanks get Mag linear acceleration sorted and can shoot the spent fuel at the sun then we're apples.

[F4Phantom]

This may be a first I totally agree with you Vlad

I am pro nuke and believe if it was not for the problems in the past then we would already have it

In france if you have a nuke plant in you village then you get free power and free rates and alot of stuff built for you in the town. They have villages fighting to have a plant in their back yard in France

Wind , wave or solar will not produce enough power that we need

Sent from my iPhone


cant see a power plant giving free power to local in this country!

[Chucaro]

......... huge power hungry planet.
Well, put it in a diet and live a more simple life. It will be hard for the present generation but much better for our children ;)

[blitz]

Well, put it in a diet and live a more simple life. It will be hard for the present generation but much better for our children ;)

I already live a very energy conservative life - If you can convince the USA and the rest of the power hungry countries then more power to you

[Sparksdisco]

Well, put it in a diet and live a more simple life. It will be hard for the present generation but much better for our children ;)


Well said. :)

Why do we need so much stuff?
Sometimes i wonder if a moden world is worth it. and i think we have lost sight of what is realy important in life, Our survival depends on having somthing left for our children. Im only young but the most important thing for me is that my children will grow and live. in trying to beter ourself we have actualy made our own destruction.

My little bit anyway

Voted pro nuke for the simple fact the human race cant help but try and better ourself

[Homestar]

cant see a power plant giving free power to local in this country!

:D agreed! All too greedy here. Just have to look at the Vic Desal plant - no locals there getting free water...:D

[ramblingboy42]

I can't see why you would want nuclear power...

first off mining uranium is the most dangerous and expensive mineral to mine.

second it's hugely expensive to enrich.

third you have to deal with the waste which pretty much lasts forever and needs constant monitoring to make sure the waste doesn't have a meltdown too...

and if anything goes wrong along the way.... your stuffed... and the area in which has been exposed has to be locked off for ages... and people die slowly and painfully from radiation poisoning or get cancer

the risk for me anyway is far too high...

it's not even clean... have you ever seen a uranium mine? they use 100,000 Ltrs of water... I know in Australia we don't have that much water. all the water is mixed with acid and becomes radio active so it can't be reused... and they use lots and lots of power.

didn't really mean for that to turn into a rant...
my bad =]

Benz, where do you get your information? I have worked in and out of Oly mpic Dam and there is nothing dangerous or difficult about mining uranium ore. It is also simply processed into yellowcake. The copper extraction and smelting process at Olympic Dam (which is I believe over 90% of the mines production) is far more dangerous as well as the extraction of rare earth metals from that plant. If you knew the content of many of the hundreds of raod trains that travel to Roxby Downs/Olympic Dam each day youd be concerned. The ones travelling south just carry waste toxic chemicals and copper and yellowcake back to adelaide.

[wardy1]

Until someone comes up with a cheaper cleaner source of bulk energy, I'm pro nuclear as well, particularly in one of the most geologically stable continents like ours. Wind/solar/wave power just can't produce enough to satisfy demand.

The Japanese plant appears to have initailly survived the earthquake fairly well, it was the Tsunami that knocked out the auxillary cooling power that caused the problem. I'm no expert, but as I see it, all they needed to have done was put the backup generators/pumps in a sealed enclosure or even high up on the roof tops of the buildings and they wouldn't have the problems they are having now. You would think they would have thought about this seeing the plant is right on the coast line of a Tsumani prone place!!

From what I have read, and I do stand to be corrected here, this reactor was built to withstand a Tsunami up to 6.4 metres, this being 1.5 metres above the highest 'evident' Tsunami to hi this coast in it's entire history. The one they just had was in excess of 10 Metres!

We all have to balance probabilities against risk, if we didn;t, none of us would do anything. We'd never travel outside out own fences, we'd never challenge the sciences to find cures to diseases in fact, we'd still be back in the 1600's.

The Japanese have done a great job using nuclear energy. the fact that they have built so many on such unstable (yes...fault lines) is actually a credit to them. At this stage, by all reports the critical containment is still intact. We're talking here of a country where ALL buildings over the last 25 years or so have been built to withstand earthquakes up to 8 on the Richter! Have a look at Tokyo (7.74R I think) and they have absolutely minimal building damage.

Don't let the doomsayers of nuclear power gain the traction that Bob Brown has with only 15% of the vote!!!!

[seano87]

I'm pro-nuclear. But in a way I'm severely biased. I work/play with radioactive substances all day long.

Unfortunately, a hundred scientific experts could spout all day long the safety and benefits of it, and one uninformed 'expert' to blast it, and the media and ergo, public, latch onto only what they one person said.

Interestingly, and somewhat OT, anyone happen to know the most radioactive place in Sydney, in terms of background radiation (not medical or industrial)?

[100inch]

Well, my poll takes a bit longer. Hopefully no one gets too bored...
I do regular shutdown welding work at Beznau, the only Swiss nuke plant with 2 reactors. In 2010 I spent 9 weeks there. But I also worked worldwide for Alstom Power gasturbines as supervisor and on hydro projects.
The poor Japanese really taking a real bashing at the moment. What I don't like about about the Japanese nuke industry is: their approach in "there is no fail" and the fact that a few plants are so called quick breeders Breeder reactor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Question_book-new.svg" class="image"><img alt="Question book-new.svg" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/99/Question_book-new.svg/50px-Question_book-new.svg.png"@@AMEPARAM@@en/thumb/9/99/Question_book-new.svg/50px-Question_book-new.svg.png, which I consider pretty dangerous.
I am getting pretty angry about all those clever politicians at the moment, trying to explain things where they have f.. all clue about it. There also a lot of untrues about timetables to build a plant, waste managment and power output. In Switzerland for example, quite a lot of energy gets used as heatsource for housings. Makes the plant look less efficient as it really is.
There are ways to reduce low/ mid radiactive waste involving plasma Willkommen bei ZWILAG (http://www.zwilag.ch/project/zwilagfacility.asp) Never mentioned by Brown and his friends........
There also quite a lot of infos at
Westinghouse Electric Company, LLC (http://www.westinghousenuclear.com/)
B&W mPower Reactor - Generation mPower - B&W (http://www.babcock.com/products/modular_nuclear/generation_mpower.html)
Don'g get me wrong. I don't have any shares with those industries, the situation in Japan is really bad..But then, earthquake plus Tsunami is as bad as its get. Tchernobyl? Sorry, but the operator made the most stupid move ever by overridding the control rods. Like driving and taking your steering wheel off at full speed....
I am pro nuke, but it has to done 100% professional.....

[Sparksdisco]

I'm pro-nuclear. But in a way I'm severely biased. I work/play with radioactive substances all day long.

Unfortunately, a hundred scientific experts could spout all day long the safety and benefits of it, and one uninformed 'expert' to blast it, and the media and ergo, public, latch onto only what they one person said.

Interestingly, and somewhat OT, anyone happen to know the most radioactive place in Sydney, in terms of background radiation (not medical or industrial)?


Bondi beach?

[Tote]

I'm pro-nuclear. But in a way I'm severely biased. I work/play with radioactive substances all day long.

Unfortunately, a hundred scientific experts could spout all day long the safety and benefits of it, and one uninformed 'expert' to blast it, and the media and ergo, public, latch onto only what they one person said.

Interestingly, and somewhat OT, anyone happen to know the most radioactive place in Sydney, in terms of background radiation (not medical or industrial)?

Hunters hill ex uranium smelter???

Regards,
tote

[alittlebitconcerned]

Honestly, nuclear power scares me but I see no alternative. I'm still pro.

[seano87]

Bondi beach?


Hunters hill ex uranium smelter???

Regards,
tote


Central Train Station. Because of what it is built from (very old sandstone). Has relatively high concentrations of thorium and uranium-238.

Not totally sure about Hunters Hill, if it is higher, I would assume it would possibly come as an industrial source, as its not from natural deposits as such.

Exposure in Aus is about 1.5-2.5mSv per year, central station will give you 5-10mSv generally depending on where you are.

From working I get ~4mSv extra over background, wearing zero shielding. Live in Salt Lake City and you will get potentially upwards of 20mSv a year. In perspective, the determined safe limit I can be exposed to above background is 20mSv per year, averaged over 5 years, with max 50mSv in any one year. No dertrimental effects have been scientifically proven under 100mSv in a single hit.

Alas, nuclear power - with technology and sensible safeguards, I don't have a problem with. But it doesn't mean its the only option either.

[RVR110]

Well, put it in a diet and live a more simple life. It will be hard for the present generation but much better for our children ;)
We can all start by turning our computers off... No more AULRO for any of you!
Still Pro Nuke :D

[Chucaro]

Ok, uranium tax will be the next one :D

[Hymie]

The concept of a Thorium reactor has been around since the 40's. The very first nuclear reactor was a Thorium reactor, but it was dumped in favor of a uranium reactor for a couple of reasons. First, it cost more to build, and more to run, second is the fact that you can't use any of the by product to use in weapons - so it was thought that the whole concept was basically useless. The benifits of them are that they can't melt down, Thorium is plentiful, unlike uranium, which is getting scarse, the waste has a much shorter half life and you can't make weapons out of the by products. I think you will see this technology coming to the forefront very soon, accelarated by the current situation in Japan.

I'm all in favor of nuclear power in Oz, preferably a thorium reactor, and yes, I would have either in my backyard.

I am lead to believe that Thorium reactors can also be used to dispose of spent Uranium Oxide and MOX fuels.

[Hymie]

Ok, uranium tax will be the next one :D

Why not, the carbon tax is effectively a tax on the air that we breathe.
A Politicians wet dream that concept.

[85 county]

Why not, the carbon tax is effectively a tax on the air that we breathe.
A Politicians wet dream that concept.

No its a tax on the pollution in the air we breath. a bit of a difference there

[Grizzly_Adams]

This is an interesting read for those scared of Nuclear power

Fukushima is a triumph for nuke power: Build more reactors now! ? The Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/14/fukushiima_analysis/)

[Hymie]

No its a tax on the pollution in the air we breath. a bit of a difference there

There&#039;s a lot you haven&#039;t told us | The Daily Telegraph (http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/theres-a-lot-you-havent-told-us/story-e6frezz0-1226013109403)

[wouldbeowner]

Benz, not necessarily disagreeing with your opinion but some of the statements you make arent strictly relevant.


first off mining uranium is the most dangerous and expensive mineral to mine.
Uranium ore is no more expensive to mine than any other compound. When calculating the cost of extraction you calculate it based on standard open cut or underground costs per cubic metre to mine rock and get it to a plant for separation. Its the same cost per cubic metre regardless of whether you are digging up gold ore, nickel ore or uranium. It depends on the type of mine, the shape of the ore body and the type of country rock the deposit is in. You dont want to breath the dust in but you wouldnt want to breath the dust in from ANY mining operation. Sure you would have to monitor exposure rates but then you have to monitor exposure rates in many jobs.


second it's hugely expensive to enrich.
True but then that's just a cost in the overall process. So long as the price you are getting covers costs who cares.


it's not even clean... have you ever seen a uranium mine? they use 100,000 Ltrs of water... I know in Australia we don't have that much water. all the water is mixed with acid and becomes radio active so it can't be reused...
I have done a fair bit of work in and around uranium deposits and the ground water anywhere near a deposit carries radioactivity. The water is radioactive whether it is seeping through a deposit left alone in the ground or being dug up. You can easily argue that digging it up and getting it out of the environment actually cleans up the environment.
I dont know what specific acid is used but then acid is used in gold separation and quite a few other separation processes and that isnt being quoted as a reason for banning them.

[abaddonxi]

Would you buy a reactor built by Land Rover or Toyota?

[DiscoStew]

Australia is a geologically stable continent (Japan's issues are extremely unlikely to happen here) especially if built in inland no tsunamis

I am no expert but I thought that they really needed to be built near the coast due to the amount of water required.

[George130]

Pro nuke.







can I be hommer now?

[Nero]

Definatly not doesn't make much sense for Australia IMO anyway. Of greatest concern is if its farmed out to private enterprise which lets face it is likely. Waste storage is a ongoing commitment if the company goes bust someone has to pick up the tab the problem simply won't go away. On the same side most current Nuc power plants don't actually turn a profit although they might if carbon trading actually gets up and nothing to stop a company moving itself off shore (or setting up an Australian subsidiary), right about the time someone has to pay for decommissioning running into financial trouble or genuinely going bust. Again the tax payer will cop the bill, then the tax payer may as well own the thing and make some money out of it and I don't see the currently pollies exposing themselves to the risk.

The biggest thing constraining storage solar and wind energy in other countries is space, we have a bit of that Nuc power will only ever be at best a stop gap IMO we should simply step over gap and get on with something with less drawbacks.

The other aspect is if we start storing high level waste here there will be a lot of pressure to store other peoples waste especially as a exporter of uranium, "come see outback australia the worlds nuclear waste dump" doesn't exactly have much of a ring to it.

[d2dave]

I have no problem with nuclear power. I would not mind having one near me as long as I could not see it or hear it, say about 5 kays away.

Dave.

[seano87]

The other aspect is if we start storing high level waste here there will be a lot of pressure to store other peoples waste especially as a exporter of uranium, "come see outback australia the worlds nuclear waste dump" doesn't exactly have much of a ring to it.

Nice argument. Except high level waste is really easily stored - in very large water tanks. Which incidentally, high level radioactive waste, in water, causes a phenomenon I find really beautiful - Cherenkov radiation (Google should yield some nice pictures). In the middle of the Opal reactor in Lucas Heights, they have such a storage tank where their fuel rods are stored. Anyway, once its decayed - in the Nuc power industry anyway, its usually REPROCESSED, RE-ENRICHED and used again. High level waste is not the issue as it reused and decays relatively quickly anyway.

About 97% of high level waste is re-utilised, 3% becomes intermediate waste. These are some transuranic elements and fission products. This is the waste I think you might be referring to that will cause a blight on society. :D

[mikehzz]

Nice argument. Except high level waste is really easily stored - in very large water tanks. Which incidentally, high level radioactive waste, in water, causes a phenomenon I find really beautiful - Cherenkov radiation (Google should yield some nice pictures). In the middle of the Opal reactor in Lucas Heights, they have such a storage tank where their fuel rods are stored. Anyway, once its decayed - in the Nuc power industry anyway, its usually REPROCESSED, RE-ENRICHED and used again. High level waste is not the issue as it reused and decays relatively quickly anyway.

About 97% of high level waste is re-utilised, 3% becomes intermediate waste. These are some transuranic elements and fission products. This is the waste I think you might be referring to that will cause a blight on society. :D

Hundreds of thousands of years is relatively quick on a geological time scale. I don't know why all these governments and scientists are making trouble over the waste then? A heap of them are actually saying its difficult to store.

[rick130]

This was posted on another forum, I'm trying to find the link to the original article.

Why there's no need to worry about a radiation disaster in Japan


written by Dr. Josef Oehmen, a research scientist at MIT.

I have been reading every news release on the incident since the earthquake. There has not been one single report that was accurate and free of errors (and part of that problem is also a weakness in the Japanese crisis communication). By “not free of errors” I do not refer to tendentious anti-nuclear journalism – that is quite normal these days. By “not free of errors” I mean blatant errors regarding physics and natural law, as well as gross misinterpretation of facts, due to an obvious lack of fundamental and basic understanding of the way nuclear reactors are build and operated. I have read a 3 page report on CNN where every single paragraph contained an error.

We will have to cover some fundamentals, before we get into what is going on.

The plants at Fukushima are so called Boiling Water Reactors, or BWR for short. Boiling Water Reactors are similar to a pressure cooker. The nuclear fuel heats water, the water boils and creates steam, the steam then drives turbines that create the electricity, and the steam is then cooled and condensed back to water, and the water send back to be heated by the nuclear fuel. The pressure cooker operates at about 250 °C.

The nuclear fuel is uranium oxide. Uranium oxide is a ceramic with a very high melting point of about 3000 °C. The fuel is manufactured in pellets (think little cylinders the size of Lego bricks). Those pieces are then put into a long tube made of Zircaloy with a melting point of 2200 °C, and sealed tight. The assembly is called a fuel rod. These fuel rods are then put together to form larger packages, and a number of these packages are then put into the reactor. All these packages together are referred to as “the core”.

The Zircaloy casing is the first containment. It separates the radioactive fuel from the rest of the world. The core is then placed in the “pressure vessels”. That is the pressure cooker we talked about before.

The pressure vessels is the second containment. This is one sturdy piece of a pot, designed to safely contain the core for temperatures several hundred °C. That covers the scenarios where cooling can be restored at some point.

The entire “hardware” of the nuclear reactor – the pressure vessel and all pipes, pumps, coolant (water) reserves, are then encased in the third containment. The third containment is a hermetically (air tight) sealed, very thick bubble of the strongest steel. The third containment is designed, built and tested for one single purpose: To contain, indefinitely, a complete core meltdown. For that purpose, a large and thick concrete basin is cast under the pressure vessel (the second containment), which is filled with graphite, all inside the third containment. This is the so-called "core catcher". If the core melts and the pressure vessel bursts (and eventually melts), it will catch the molten fuel and everything else. It is built in such a way that the nuclear fuel will be spread out, so it can cool down.

This third containment is then surrounded by the reactor building. The reactor building is an outer shell that is supposed to keep the weather out, but nothing in. (this is the part that was damaged in the explosion, but more to that later).

Fundamentals of nuclear reactions: The uranium fuel generates heat by nuclear fission. Big uranium atoms are split into smaller atoms. That generates heat plus neutrons (one of the particles that forms an atom). When the neutron hits another uranium atom, that splits, generating more neutrons and so on. That is called the nuclear chain reaction.

Now, just packing a lot of fuel rods next to each other would quickly lead to overheating and after about 45 minutes to a melting of the fuel rods. It is worth mentioning at this point that the nuclear fuel in a reactor can *never* cause a nuclear explosion the type of a nuclear bomb. Building a nuclear bomb is actually quite difficult (ask Iran).

In Chernobyl, the explosion was caused by excessive pressure buildup, hydrogen explosion and rupture of all containments, propelling molten core material into the environment (a “dirty bomb”). Why that did not and will not happen in Japan, further below.

In order to control the nuclear chain reaction, the reactor operators use so-called “moderator rods”. The moderator rods absorb the neutrons and kill the chain reaction instantaneously. A nuclear reactor is built in such a way, that when operating normally, you take out all the moderator rods. The coolant water then takes away the heat (and converts it into steam and electricity) at the same rate as the core produces it. And you have a lot of leeway around the standard operating point of 250°C. The challenge is that after inserting the rods and stopping the chain reaction, the core still keeps producing heat. The uranium “stopped” the chain reaction. But a number of intermediate radioactive elements are created by the uranium during its fission process, most notably Cesium and Iodine isotopes, i.e. radioactive versions of these elements that will eventually split up into smaller atoms and not be radioactive anymore. Those elements keep decaying and producing heat. Because they are not regenerated any longer from the uranium (the uranium stopped decaying after the moderator rods were put in), they get less and less, and so the core cools down over a matter of days, until those intermediate radioactive elements are used up. This residual heat is causing the headaches right now.

So the first “type” of radioactive material is the uranium in the fuel rods, plus the intermediate radioactive elements that the uranium splits into, also inside the fuel rod (Cesium and Iodine). There is a second type of radioactive material created, outside the fuel rods.

The big main difference up front: Those radioactive materials have a very short half-life, that means that they decay very fast and split into non-radioactive materials. By fast I mean seconds. So if these radioactive materials are released into the environment, yes, radioactivity was released, but no, it is not dangerous, at all. Why? By the time you spelled “R-A-D-I-O-N-U-C-L-I-D-E”, they will be harmless, because they will have split up into non radioactive elements. Those radioactive elements are N-16, the radioactive isotope (or version) of nitrogen (air). The others are noble gases such as Xenon. But where do they come from? When the uranium splits, it generates a neutron (see above). Most of these neutrons will hit other uranium atoms and keep the nuclear chain reaction going. But some will leave the fuel rod and hit the water molecules, or the air that is in the water. Then, a non-radioactive element can “capture” the neutron. It becomes radioactive. As described above, it will quickly (seconds) get rid again of the neutron to return to its former beautiful self.

This second “type” of radiation is very important when we talk about the radioactivity being released into the environment later on.

What happened at Fukushima I will try to summarize the main facts.

The earthquake that hit Japan was 7 times more powerful than the worst earthquake the nuclear power plant was built for (the Richter scale works logarithmically; the difference between the 8.2 that the plants were built for and the 8.9 that happened is 7 times, not 0.7). So the first hooray for Japanese engineering, everything held up.

When the earthquake hit with 8.9, the nuclear reactors all went into automatic shutdown. Within seconds after the earthquake started, the moderator rods had been inserted into the core and nuclear chain reaction of the uranium stopped. Now, the cooling system has to carry away the residual heat. The residual heat load is about 3% of the heat load under normal operating conditions. The earthquake destroyed the external power supply of the nuclear reactor. That is one of the most serious accidents for a nuclear power plant, and accordingly, a “plant black out” receives a lot of attention when designing backup systems. The power is needed to keep the coolant pumps working. Since the power plant had been shut down, it cannot produce any electricity by itself any more.

Things were going well for an hour. One set of multiple sets of emergency Diesel power generators kicked in and provided the electricity that was needed. Then the Tsunami came, much bigger than people had expected when building the power plant (see above, factor 7). The tsunami took out all multiple sets of backup Diesel generators.

When designing a nuclear power plant, engineers follow a philosophy called “Defense of Depth”. That means that you first build everything to withstand the worst catastrophe you can imagine, and then design the plant in such a way that it can still handle one system failure (that you thought could never happen) after the other. A tsunami taking out all backup power in one swift strike is such a scenario.

The last line of defense is putting everything into the third containment (see above), that will keep everything, whatever the mess, moderator rods in our out, core molten or not, inside the reactor. When the diesel generators were gone, the reactor operators switched to emergency battery power. The batteries were designed as one of the backups to the backups, to provide power for cooling the core for 8 hours. And they did. Within the 8 hours, another power source had to be found and connected to the power plant. The power grid was down due to the earthquake.

The diesel generators were destroyed by the tsunami. So mobile diesel generators were trucked in. This is where things started to go seriously wrong. The external power generators could not be connected to the power plant (the plugs did not fit). So after the batteries ran out, the residual heat could not be carried away any more.

At this point the plant operators begin to follow emergency procedures that are in place for a “loss of cooling event”. It is again a step along the “Depth of Defense” lines. The power to the cooling systems should never have failed completely, but it did, so they “retreat” to the next line of defense. All of this, however shocking it seems to us, is part of the day-to-day training you go through as an operator, right through to managing a core meltdown. It was at this stage that people started to talk about core meltdown. Because at the end of the day, if cooling cannot be restored, the core will eventually melt (after hours or days), and the last line of defense, the core catcher and third containment, would come into play.

But the goal at this stage was to manage the core while it was heating up, and ensure that the first containment (the Zircaloy tubes that contains the nuclear fuel), as well as the second containment (our pressure cooker) remain intact and operational for as long as possible, to give the engineers time to fix the cooling systems. Because cooling the core is such a big deal, the reactor has a number of cooling systems, each in multiple versions (the reactor water cleanup system, the decay heat removal, the reactor core isolating cooling, the standby liquid cooling system, and the emergency core cooling system). Which one failed when or did not fail is not clear at this point in time.

So imagine our pressure cooker on the stove, heat on low, but on. The operators use whatever cooling system capacity they have to get rid of as much heat as possible, but the pressure starts building up. The priority now is to maintain integrity of the first containment (keep temperature of the fuel rods below 2200°C), as well as the second containment, the pressure cooker. In order to maintain integrity of the pressure cooker (the second containment), the pressure has to be released from time to time. Because the ability to do that in an emergency is so important, the reactor has 11 pressure release valves. The operators now started venting steam from time to time to control the pressure. The temperature at this stage was about 550°C. This is when the reports about “radiation leakage” starting coming in.

I believe I explained above why venting the steam is theoretically the same as releasing radiation into the environment, but why it was and is not dangerous. The radioactive nitrogen as well as the noble gases do not pose a threat to human health. At some stage during this venting, the explosion occurred. The explosion took place outside of the third containment (our “last line of defense”), and the reactor building. Remember that the reactor building has no function in keeping the radioactivity contained.

It is not entirely clear yet what has happened, but this is the likely scenario: The operators decided to vent the steam from the pressure vessel not directly into the environment, but into the space between the third containment and the reactor building (to give the radioactivity in the steam more time to subside). The problem is that at the high temperatures that the core had reached at this stage, water molecules can “disassociate” into oxygen and hydrogen – an explosive mixture. And it did explode, outside the third containment, damaging the reactor building around. It was that sort of explosion, but inside the pressure vessel (because it was badly designed and not managed properly by the operators) that lead to the explosion of Chernobyl. This was never a risk at Fukushima.

The problem of hydrogen-oxygen formation is one of the biggies when you design a power plant (if you are not Soviet, that is), so the reactor is build and operated in a way it cannot happen inside the containment. It happened outside, which was not intended but a possible scenario and OK, because it did not pose a risk for the containment. So the pressure was under control, as steam was vented.

Now, if you keep boiling your pot, the problem is that the water level will keep falling and falling. The core is covered by several meters of water in order to allow for some time to pass (hours, days) before it gets exposed. Once the rods start to be exposed at the top, the exposed parts will reach the critical temperature of 2200 °C after about 45 minutes. This is when the first containment, the Zircaloy tube, would fail. And this started to happen. The cooling could not be restored before there was some (very limited, but still) damage to the casing of some of the fuel. The nuclear material itself was still intact, but the surrounding Zircaloy shell had started melting.


What happened now is that some of the byproducts of the uranium decay - radioactive Cesium and Iodine - started to mix with the steam. The big problem, uranium, was still under control, because the uranium oxide rods were good until 3000 °C. It is confirmed that a very small amount of Cesium and Iodine was measured in the steam that was released into the atmosphere. It seems this was the “go signal” for a major plan B. The small amounts of Cesium that were measured told the operators that the first containment on one of the rods somewhere was about to give.

The Plan A had been to restore one of the regular cooling systems to the core. Why that failed is unclear. One plausible explanation is that the tsunami also took away / polluted all the clean water needed for the regular cooling systems. The water used in the cooling system is very clean, demineralized (like distilled) water. The reason to use pure water is the above mentioned activation by the neutrons from the Uranium: Pure water does not get activated much, so stays practically radioactive-free. Dirt or salt in the water will absorb the neutrons quicker, becoming more radioactive. This has no effect whatsoever on the core - it does not care what it is cooled by. But it makes life more difficult for the operators and mechanics when they have to deal with activated (i.e. slightly radioactive) water.

But Plan A had failed - cooling systems down or additional clean water unavailable - so Plan B came into effect. This is what it looks like happened: In order to prevent a core meltdown, the operators started to use sea water to cool the core. I am not quite sure if they flooded our pressure cooker with it (the second containment), or if they flooded the third containment, immersing the pressure cooker. But that is not relevant for us. The point is that the nuclear fuel has now been cooled down. Because the chain reaction has been stopped a long time ago, there is only very little residual heat being produced now.

The large amount of cooling water that has been used is sufficient to take up that heat. Because it is a lot of water, the core does not produce sufficient heat any more to produce any significant pressure. Also, boric acid has been added to the seawater. Boric acid is "liquid control rod". Whatever decay is still going on, the Boron will capture the neutrons and further speed up the cooling down of the core.

The plant came close to a core meltdown. Here is the worst-case scenario that was avoided: If the seawater could not have been used for treatment, the operators would have continued to vent the water steam to avoid pressure buildup. The third containment would then have been completely sealed to allow the core meltdown to happen without releasing radioactive material. After the meltdown, there would have been a waiting period for the intermediate radioactive materials to decay inside the reactor, and all radioactive particles to settle on a surface inside the containment. The cooling system would have been restored eventually, and the molten core cooled to a manageable temperature. The containment would have been cleaned up on the inside. Then a messy job of removing the molten core from the containment would have begun, packing the (now solid again) fuel bit by bit into transportation containers to be shipped to processing plants. Depending on the damage, the block of the plant would then either be repaired or dismantled.(End Article)

[Chucaro]

Among today news about Japon is the following:
Quote:
2035: US officials have concluded that the Japanese warnings have been insufficient, and that, deliberately or not,............ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12307698)
End of Quote

Are you people would like to put their life of your children children in the hands of possible corrupt or incapable private companies or government authorities?

Good luck with your choice ;)

[Pedro_The_Swift]

I just opened your link Arthur,,
where was your story?

[Pedro_The_Swift]

He certainly is well published Rick--
Publication List of Josef Oehmen (http://web.mit.edu/oehmen/www/)

[Nero]

Just as a point of clarification I didn't think Nuc power for Australia was a good idea before the quake, on the flip side if you are not willing to have it in your backyard you are not prepared to have it.

[greg smith]

I have always thought ,no thanks not in my backyard on Nuclear power.
The pro sayers have always been promoting clean power, safe etc,.
I know the percentage of radiation accidents have been low in comparison of the large number of nuclear stations around the world. But the small number of accidents effect 10 of thousands of people.
Nothing can protect these nuclear accidents when mother nature blows a steady hand. Chenobal, Japan, Long Island that's 3 cases of safe power going wrong. The blame is often the age of the installations.Apart from effecting the immediate areas, the radiation travels with particals in the air effecting other places. When the Frogs were blowing the proverbial out of atolls in the pacific, we were warmed fall out would effect the milk cows in QLD.
I wonder if all the reports we here are spin doctoring or the truth?

:D How do you keep potitics and politicians out? How do you keep PROFIT based companies [industry] out of the mix?? Maybe if power became a right rather than a luxury,a regulated industry, as should all [public???] utilities we maybe able to enjoy a safe and enjoyable lifestyle....JUST MY TWOBOBS worth

[Hymie]

Hundreds of thousands of years is relatively quick on a geological time scale. I don't know why all these governments and scientists are making trouble over the waste then? A heap of them are actually saying its difficult to store.

Probably because on a Human timescale hundreds of thousands of years is longer than any Human civilisation has existed.

[F4Phantom]

does anyone know if there is any truth to this outrageous article I got emailed?

"About 6 months ago, the writer was watching a news program on oil and one of the Forbes Bros. was the guest. The host said to Forbes, "I am going to ask you a direct question and I would like a direct answer; how much oil does the U.S. have in the ground?" Forbes did not miss a beat, he said, "more than all the Middle East put together." Please read below.




The U. S. Geological Service issued a report in April 2008 that only scientists and oil men knew was coming, but man was it big. It was a revised report (hadn't been updated since 1995) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota, western South Dakota, and extreme eastern Montana ..... check THIS out:


The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska 's Prudhoe Bay , and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable... at $107 a barrel, we're looking at a resource base worth more than $5...3 trillion.



"When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea.." says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature's financial analyst.






"This sizable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years," reportsThe Pittsburgh Post Gazette. It's a formation known as the Williston Basin , but is more commonly referred to as the 'Bakken.' It stretches from Northern Montana , through North Dakota and into Canada . For years, U. S. oil exploration has been considered a dead end. Even the 'Big Oil' companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken's massive reserves..... and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels. And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL!




That's enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 2041 years straight. And if THAT didn't throw you on the floor, then this next one should - because it's from 2006!


U.. S. Oil Discovery- Largest Reserve in the World


Stansberry Report Online - 4/20/2006


Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world. It is more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. In three and a half years of high oil prices none has been extracted. With this motherload of oil why are we still fighting over off-shore drilling?


They reported this stunning news: We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth.. Here are the official estimates:

- 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia


- 18-times as much oil as Iraq
- 21-times as much oil as Kuwait


- 22-times as much oil as Iran


- 500-times as much oil as Yemen


- and it's all right here in the Western United States .


HOW can this BE? HOW can we NOT BE extracting this? Because the environmentalists and others have blocked all efforts to help America become independent of foreign oil! Again, we are letting a small group of people dictate our lives and our economy.....WHY?

James Bartis, lead researcher with the study says we've got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East -more than 2 TRILLION barrels untapped. That's more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in the world today, reports The Denver Post. "

[87County]

One "elephant in the room" on the economics side that does not seem to have been addressed here (apologies to the poster if I have missed it) is the question of just who would build and operate a nuclear power plant in Oz.

This nation has neither the corporate experience nor the technical knowledge and personnel to build and operate it... so obviously it would be GE or one of their Indian subcontractors who would have to provide staff to build and have to provide staff operate it. Think just of the construction phase project requirements - we hardly have the manpower to maintain/improve any of our existing infrastructure.

(The crippled plant at Fukushima is a GE design) :o

Yes, ANSTO has a small "research" rector at Lucas Heights - but the knowledge required for power plant construction and operation is significantly different from what has been gained there.

Indian corporates wait in the wings for the opportunity to provide staff and to transfer wealth from here to there.



For a continent that receives so much solar energy, it disappoints me that we have only taken up the use of this source in such a token and minimal way.

[dobbo]

Just as a point of clarification I didn't think Nuc power for Australia was a good idea before the quake, on the flip side if you are not willing to have it in your backyard you are not prepared to have it.


I'd prefer to have a nuclear power plant in my backyard than a coal powered one on any day of the week.

As the crow flies, we'd be close enough Lucas Heights to say the phrase "what the **** was that"

As would most of Sydney's CBD.

I am not concerned.

[abaddonxi]

You spelt 'generation' incorrectly in the poll! :)
Are you in favour of nuclear power geberation?


I'm not sure,,

what gerberation?

a power station run on gerbils?



I think you have your facts a little mixed up here.


Gerbils are only used in the cores US reactors. They initially considered gremlins but the problems with getting them wet ruled them out. Gerbils were the next likely candidate.

One of the main factors inhibiting adoption of nuclear power generation in Australia is the choice of appropriate, so called, 'containment technology'. While not wanting to be seen to follow the USA, gerbils were considered, but not wanting to be seen to follow the USA too closely, other options were considered. A parliamentary sub-committee made a comprensive on-site survey of solutions taken in many nations, as listed below. Historical connections to the UK were a strong consideration, but the NRL pool of retired players was not of sufficient number or quality to fullfil power generation needs. An indigenous solution was desirable, and the recommendation of the sub-committee was to initate a Drop Bear program. Results of the international survey below.

In France they use surrender monkeys in their cores. These are seen as one of the best solutions since their cries for help act as a timely early-warning system.

The UK tried a radical solution using retired professional footballers, but found their demand for attention and crippling contractual 'entertainment' budget demands were impossible to fulfill and the program was abandoned. Since then news from the UK has been under a press blackout. It is rumoured that NRA - UKs Nuclear Regulatory Body - has gone into partnership with Hogwarts school to find an alternative solution.

In Japan they considered Transformers for their multi-tasking abilities, but metal content was a radiation issue. Next choice were Tamagotchi, but their care schedules were too labour intensive for them to be economically viable. Finally they bred Hello Kitty with Pokemon to create a strain that combined the docility of Hello Kitty and the adventurousness of the Pokemon, which so far has been seen by the industry as one of the most successful solutions. This is currently undergoing review.

In Switzerland the SFOE commissioned the Swatch watch company to present design solutions. The result was a carbon fibre masterpiece that runs on residual power from the reactor and has seen to be such a success that it has become the solution of choice for all power plants currently at the design stage.

[dobbo]

In Japan they considered Transformers for their multi-tasking abilities, but metal content was a radiation issue. Next choice were Tamagotchi, but their care schedules were too labour intensive for them to be economically viable. Finally they bred Hello Kitty with Pokemon to create a strain that combined the docility of Hello Kitty and the adventurousness of the Pokemon, which so far has been seen by the industry as one of the most successful solutions. This is currently undergoing review.


http://www.wtfcostumes.com/costumes/anime_character_costumes.jpg


does Hello Kitty want a saucer of milk?

[OffTrack]

He certainly is well published Rick--
Publication List of Josef Oehmen (http://web.mit.edu/oehmen/www/)

Well published in his area of expertise - risk management in supply chains. :angel:

[Redback]

Bondi beach?


Hunters hill ex uranium smelter???

Regards,
tote

ANSTO at Lucas Heights maybe;)

Baz.

[VladTepes]

once the yanks get Mag linear acceleration sorted and can shoot the spent fuel at the sun then we're apples.

Now THERE is a spectacle for riverfire.. more impressive than an F1-11 flypast !



Unfortunately, a hundred scientific experts could spout all day long the safety and benefits of it, and one uninformed 'expert' to blast it, and the media and ergo, public, latch onto only what they one person said.


Indeed. This is the way that politicians, and the Greens especially, operate. They will invoke Fukushima, Chernobyl etc in their fear mongering anti-nuclear pro mung bean rants. They never let the truth get in the way.


Definatly not doesn't make much sense for Australia IMO anyway. Of greatest concern is if its farmed out to private enterprise which lets face it is likely. Waste storage is a ongoing commitment if the company goes bust someone has to pick up the tab the problem simply won't go away.


It's true we'd want someone less greedy that the big banks running it. Where profit is the ONLY considerataion then safety is ompromised, so there would need to be a very rigorous process around this.



On the same side most current Nuc power plants don't actually turn a profit although they might if carbon trading actually gets up


On what are you basing that assertion. It is (generally speaking) a capitalist world - even in nominally communist countries - and people are not in teh habit of building huge facilities / factories etc unless there is a profit in it.



The biggest thing constraining storage solar and wind energy in other countries is space, we have a bit of that Nuc power will only ever be at best a stop gap IMO we should simply step over gap and get on with something with less drawbacks.


Why only a stop gap? Given that the amount of fuel (by volume) required is very low to generate a lot of power we aren't going to run out during our civilization.



The other aspect is if we start storing high level waste here there will be a lot of pressure to store other peoples waste especially as a exporter of uranium, "come see outback australia the worlds nuclear waste dump" doesn't exactly have much of a ring to it.

It doesn't need to - we can charge a lot more for waste storage than we can for tourism.. :p


One "elephant in the room" on the economics side that does not seem to have been addressed here (apologies to the poster if I have missed it) is the question of just who would build and operate a nuclear power plant in Oz.

This nation has neither the corporate experience nor the technical knowledge and personnel to build and operate it... so obviously it would be GE or one of their Indian subcontractors who would have to provide staff to build and have to provide staff operate it. Think just of the construction phase project requirements - we hardly have the manpower to maintain/improve any of our existing infrastructure.

(The crippled plant at Fukushima is a GE design) :o


You don't give us Aussies much credit. We have a very high degree of technical knowledge in all sorts of fields. We also have plenty of manpower for such a project. (it's not manpower but funding that's crippling infrastructure).

It doesn't matter who builds the thing - as long as we are satisfied the design is good, and ensure the materials etc used are all first-class as per the requirements.

The fact the Fukushima reactors are a GE design is relevant to nothing at all. They are a 40+ year old design, not a modern one.

It would be easy enough to train Australians to operate the plant mate, no need to have foreigners doing it for us.



For a continent that receives so much solar energy, it disappoints me that we have only taken up the use of this source in such a token and minimal way.

Well that's a whole other debate. What''s the life span of a solar panel. How much can it generate in that time? How much energy and $ does it cost to produce? What minerals are used in their manufacture and would using them in this way impact severely on other industries liek the semi conductor industry etc? If you need large amounts of energy then you need huge fields of solar arrays. These would need (as space is required) to be away from cities where land is at a premium. This in turn means the power has to be transmitted a long way by cable - what's the loss over that distance as a percentage of the total. Would these huge solar arays impact on land that should be being used for farming instead? Would these huge arrays of what are effectively mirrors cause any local climate variations? Would teh reflections cause problems for birdlife etc?

The Greens would have you veleive that solar is a solution that is ready to go. Not true. Sure you ca get a solar system for your house - you'd just need to live there for 50+ years to make it an economic viability. Large scale energy production is entirely another thing.

[OffTrack]

There is a great post on Salon.com addressing the significant problems with Josef Oehmen's article posted earlier in the thread, not least being his lack of expertise in the area of Nuclear Power.

Debunking a viral blog post on the nuke threat - War Room - Salon.com (http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/03/15/josef_oehmen_nuclear_not_worried_viral)

[blitz]

the link below is about a Thorium reactor and the operating principles of it - very interesting read, and it's got me jiggered as to why we aren't doing it?

Thorium Reactors - Further Information (http://www.abc.net.au/quantum/scripts98/9820/thoriumscpt.htm)

[wagoo]

Haven't changed my opinion.I'm pro clean coal, but if the criminally idiotic rabble we and many other nations have elected to run the countries close down coal fired power stations, then Nuclear is the only alternative that is capable of providing baseload power .The 3,000 bloody useless wind generators scattered around the UK supplied bugger all power during the recent Christmas/New year cold snap and they had to buy most electricity from Nuclear France to prevent the UK from grinding to a complete stop and many of the frail and elderly from freezing to death.Even though geographically small,the UK has known coal reserves to last them at least 300yrs, and we here must have reserves to last a couple of thousand.
Wagoo.

[JDNSW]

There is a great post on Salon.com addressing the significant problems with Josef Oehmen's article posted earlier in the thread, not least being his lack of expertise in the area of Nuclear Power.

Debunking a viral blog post on the nuke threat - War Room - Salon.com (http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/03/15/josef_oehmen_nuclear_not_worried_viral)

If you read the modified version of the article now hosted at the NSE department of MIT http://mitnse.com/2011/03/13/modified-version-of-original-post/(link in the above article, which does not exactly debunk the original, as claimed), you will note few changes to the overall picture.

One comment I would make is that certainly it appears the author is not qualified in nuclear engineering, although judging from the changes to the article he seems to understand the situation reasonably accurately. What he is qualified in, however, is risk assessment; it seems to me that this is perhaps a more relevant qualification than that of most of the people who are running down the original article, since what everyone is worried about is "exactly what is the risk?"

John

[rick130]

What somehow didn't appear when I posted the article of Oehmen's was that the bloke that posted it is an ex-Nuclear tech and has done assessment/testing/certification work at the Fukushima plant.

Oh, and the couple of other ex-nuke techs (I'm guessing subs) on that site also broadly agreed with Oehlem's assessment.

...and I'm actually anti-nuke, but I'm all for balanced reporting

[blitz]

Vlad how the hell do you fit so many quotes into one answer??

[abaddonxi]

Vlad how the hell do you fit so many quotes into one answer??

Multi quote button, bottom right, looks like this - ˮ+ - click every post that you want to quote, then click post reply and it should prompt you to use quoted posts.

[WedWon]

I'm all for nuclear power

[isuzurover]

Well published in his area of expertise - risk management in supply chains. :angel:

That, and all his "publications" seem to actually be seminar presentation and conference papers. (as opposed to journal papers).

[Chucaro]

I just opened your link Arthur,,
where was your story?

Was on the BBC news page (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/)

[bee utey]

..The 3,000 bloody useless wind generators...
A bit like their Land Rovers then, only work on odd-numbered days....:wasntme:
Oh, by the way, "clean coal" is a sweet little myth promoted by the coal industry, they might get around to some demos by 2030, but don't bet on it.

[CraigE]

The concept of a Thorium reactor has been around since the 40's. The very first nuclear reactor was a Thorium reactor, but it was dumped in favor of a uranium reactor for a couple of reasons. First, it cost more to build, and more to run, second is the fact that you can't use any of the by product to use in weapons - so it was thought that the whole concept was basically useless. The benifits of them are that they can't melt down, Thorium is plentiful, unlike uranium, which is getting scarse, the waste has a much shorter half life and you can't make weapons out of the by products. I think you will see this technology coming to the forefront very soon, accelarated by the current situation in Japan.

I'm all in favor of nuclear power in Oz, preferably a thorium reactor, and yes, I would have either in my backyard.

Uranium, scarce, you are kidding right? There is hundred of years supplies in SA and WA and that is without thorough exploration. Most of it has been found more by accident when looking for other minerals/ There are quite a few just south of us waiting for mining licences to start up. bu the WA govt wont issue them. BHP for one has around 300 years of reserves at Olympic Dam alone at current and projected consumption rates..

[Hamish71]

Im late to the party...PRO!

Not only that, I believe it is a possible key to Australia's future prosperity.

The model works like this:

1. Dig up ore

2. Process it locally for fuel use. This means it cant be used for weapons (ok, other than a dirty bomb).

3. Lease it to users around the world. The lease cost is to include, transport to user location, transport back to Australia once used and proper storage of that material until it is "safe".....a bloody long time......abloody long income stream which will be around a lot longer than coal and iron ore.

4. Build bloody great big, worlds best practice storage facilities in the most stable geological location in the world - Central Australia.

This gives an income stream well after the ore is gone, denies its use for weapons, and builds a nuclear industry in Australia for processing, ensuring that those skills can be used for an electrical generation industry.
As well as generating jobs in remote Australia, and a driver for infrastructure (roads, rail) in that location.

[isuzurover]

I'm pro clean coal,

No such thing in Victoria - they burn "brown mud" for power. Victorian power generation has the highest emissions per kWh generated than any state in Australia.

[Mudsloth]

Whether we like or not overall nuclear power is the cleanest viable solution to our power needs that doesn't drop off when the wind dies down or the cloud cover increases. I think all new houses built should include a 3kw solar system by default and the incentives for existing homes to have large systems installed should be expanded and not reduced. I run solar and wind in my suburban (pascoevale south) home and it supplies roughly 60% of my total power needs. I put it all together myself and it cost around 6 grand with no rebates. Imagine if everyone did this! But back to the point, i am pro nuclear but I think it should be built well away from fault zones and coastal regions. Thank God it was a Japanese built station that took the hit and not a north Korean one.

[wagoo]

No such thing in Victoria - they burn "brown mud" for power. Victorian power generation has the highest emissions per kWh generated than any state in Australia.

Being a man made climate change sceptic, i don't think it's a problem here in Vic, considering where our brown coal fired power stations are located, but I was referring to Clean Coal as in filters/scrubbers on the smoke stacks or coal gasification for smaller countries where plants have to be located closer to major population centres. Anything but pie in the sky solar or wind farms. Ask Spain how successful putting all their eggs in those renewables baskets went. Their economy is a basket case, as will ours be if we allow JooLIAR and her partners in crime to take us down the same road.
Wagoo.

[zuno555]

..... I think all new houses built should include a 3kw solar system by default and the incentives for existing homes to have large systems installed should be expanded and not reduced.

I am not a greenie by any measure, but this is just common sense. And if building install a decent water tank (can even be under the garage) for toilets/laundry and garden use.

Both of those should be heavily govt subsidised or even free. Toilets use 50% of household water, and 3kw solar would almost cover most peoples power. It doesn't provide baseload power for industry, but it is a start.

On topic - I think the cleanest baseload power in regarding to mining/emissions is nuclear - until better technology is perfected. (Storing solar power (heat) in salt solution is one I saw the other day, quite promising! Can still provide power overnight or for a few cloudy days!)

As soon as the Japan power stations were hit I knew it would get way out of hand in the media.

[slug_burner]

Being a man made climate change sceptic, i don't think it's a problem here in Vic, considering where our brown coal fired power stations are located, but I was referring to Clean Coal as in filters/scrubbers on the smoke stacks or coal gasification for smaller countries where plants have to be located closer to major population centres. Anything but pie in the sky solar or wind farms. Ask Spain how successful putting all their eggs in those renewables baskets went. Their economy is a basket case, as will ours be if we allow JooLIAR and her partners in crime to take us down the same road.
Wagoo.

So where are these clean coal power stations? How much electricity have they produced (kwHr)? Although photovoltaic cell probably take more energy to produce than they will generate in their usefull life I'd say wind energy has and is delivering energy/electricity, it is real if only dependant on the wind.

Neuclear has to ber considered compared to CO2, acid rain producing coal.

[Mudsloth]

(kwHr)? Although photovoltaic cell probably take more energy to produce than they will generate in their usefull life


Solar Panel Manufacturing Environmental Costs and Benefits | Scotts Contracting (http://scottscontracting.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/solar-panel-manufacturing-environmental-costs-and-benefits/)
Solar panels pay for themselves environmentally wise very quickly

.

[isuzurover]

Being a man made climate change sceptic, i don't think it's a problem here in Vic, considering where our brown coal fired power stations are located, but I was referring to Clean Coal as in filters/scrubbers on the smoke stacks or coal gasification for smaller countries where plants have to be located closer to major population centres. Anything but pie in the sky solar or wind farms. Ask Spain how successful putting all their eggs in those renewables baskets went. Their economy is a basket case, as will ours be if we allow JooLIAR and her partners in crime to take us down the same road.
Wagoo.

No such thing as clean coal in AU. No single coal fired power station in AU has SOx scrubbers. EVERY plant in china has SOx scrubbers. Our coal is not much lower in sulphur on average. That is ignoring Hg emissions (and others) which are tipped to become one of the next big environmental problems. Coal power stations also emit more radiation (as radon gas) than a nuclear power plant produces.

Note that all of the above is irrelevant to your (or my) position on climate change.

As for wind being pie in the sky - have a read about the setup which has provided the Island of Utsira with 100% of its power since 2004.
Utsira vind/hydrogenprosjektet &mdash; Norsk Hydrogenforum (http://www.hydrogen.no/hydrogenaktiviteter/prosjekter/utsira-vind-hydrogenprosjektet)

[miky]

Wind is not pie in the sky nor is solar panels, but in Australia it is a lot more expensive than coal or gas.

The only reason power companies use wind (or solar) is that it is subsidised by the government. Take away the subsidy and they would not build them.


.

[isuzurover]

Wind is not pie in the sky nor is solar panels, but in Australia it is a lot more expensive than coal or gas.

The only reason power companies use wind (or solar) is that it is subsidised by the government. Take away the subsidy and they would not build them.


.

True, but the way natural gas prices are rising they will be at parity with wind before too long.

Last time I looked, the REAL (no subsidy) numbers were (cost of generation - with capital costs factored in):

Coal ~4c/kWh
"clean" coal ~8-14c/kWh
Nuclear ~15c/kWh
Wind ~12c/kWh
Solar Thermal ~15c/kWh
Photovoltaic ~25c/kWh

[JDNSW]

Saw a comment re the carbon tax a couple of days ago pointing out that the proposed carbon tax would be ineffective for the planned purpose as the level required to make solar competitive was $200/tonne, not the $20 proposed. I can't remember where, I think somewhere on the ABC website, probably the Drum. Subject was the truthfulness of the PM, if you're looking.

One thing that needs to be noted when talking about cost of power generation, is you need to remember that a large part (even the largest) of your power bill is the cost of distribution, so you can't just take the relative costs of generation. Also, by the same token, you have to remember that often the cost of solar or wind will involve high transmission costs compared to coal, gas or nuclear, as the the power plants have to be where the sun/wind is not where the power use is.

John

[isuzurover]

Saw a comment re the carbon tax a couple of days ago pointing out that the proposed carbon tax would be ineffective for the planned purpose as the level required to make solar competitive was $200/tonne, not the $20 proposed. I can't remember where, I think somewhere on the ABC website, probably the Drum. Subject was the truthfulness of the PM, if you're looking.

One thing that needs to be noted when talking about cost of power generation, is you need to remember that a large part (even the largest) of your power bill is the cost of distribution, so you can't just take the relative costs of generation. Also, by the same token, you have to remember that often the cost of solar or wind will involve high transmission costs compared to coal, gas or nuclear, as the the power plants have to be where the sun/wind is not where the power use is.

John

Back when the original carbon tax was proposed, Citigroup investments did a comprehensive analysis of the effect of the carbon tax (mooted to be $10/T at the time) on ASX 100 companies. The summary was it would have little/no impact on companies - those that were exposed (e.g. qantas was one of the biggest) would be able to pass the increase on to consumers. I think the level back then was $50-100/t to make renewables on par with coal etc...

I think your transmission losses is a bit skewed John. e.g. in WA, coal fired power comes from collie (~200km from Perth) and major wind installations ~300 and ~400 km from Perth). There is also a landfill gas plant within greater perth, and lots of rooftop photovoltaic.

Given that 95% of the population of WA lives in the southwest corner (where all the wind generation is), I would guess transmission losses for renewables would be the same or less on average than for coal or NG.

[CraigE]

Yep and this morning they are talking tax cuts for low and middle income earners to compensate. High income earners are expected to absorb it again. Maybe time to move back to the city and earn $60k pa. With all the benefits I would only actually be a few $k worse off. Get my wife to work and we would actually be better off. And they wonder why people dont want to work outside the metro area.:mad:

[Mick_Marsh]

Uranium, scarce, you are kidding right? There is hundred of years supplies in SA and WA and that is without thorough exploration. Most of it has been found more by accident when looking for other minerals/ There are quite a few just south of us waiting for mining licences to start up. bu the WA govt wont issue them. BHP for one has around 300 years of reserves at Olympic Dam alone at current and projected consumption rates..
Olympic Dam is a copper mine. Gold, Silver and Uranium are byproducts.
Imagine the reserves we will find if we looked for it.
I wouldn't object to a little thorium reactor planted in my geologically stable neck of the woods.

[JDNSW]

.......

I think your transmission losses is a bit skewed John. e.g. in WA, coal fired power comes from collie (~200km from Perth) and major wind installations ~300 and ~400 km from Perth). There is also a landfill gas plant within greater perth, and lots of rooftop photovoltaic.

Given that 95% of the population of WA lives in the southwest corner (where all the wind generation is), I would guess transmission losses for renewables would be the same or less on average than for coal or NG.

I was not talking about losses - I was talking about the proportion of your power bill attributable to transmission and distribution. the proportion of this cost that is due to losses in transmission is pretty small - the major costs in distribution and transmission are capital cost, maintenance, and legal costs when your transmission lines start major bushfires (makes the money you saved on maintenance look small).

The further the energy source is from the point of consumption, the higher the transmission cost - mainly in capital. As you point out, WA is in a good position in this regard for wind and solar - other major centres, such as Sydney and Melbourne (which together probably add up to about half the country's population!) less so.

John

[isuzurover]

I was not talking about losses - I was talking about the proportion of your power bill attributable to transmission and distribution. the proportion of this cost that is due to losses in transmission is pretty small - the major costs in distribution and transmission are capital cost, maintenance, and legal costs when your transmission lines start major bushfires (makes the money you saved on maintenance look small).

The further the energy source is from the point of consumption, the higher the transmission cost - mainly in capital. As you point out, WA is in a good position in this regard for wind and solar - other major centres, such as Sydney and Melbourne (which together probably add up to about half the country's population!) less so.

John

If we go nuclear I imagine the power plant will be built in the middle of nowhere, as would a large solar thermal or geothermal plant.

Wind installations though are usually along the coast, on high mountains, or (now) offshore. Around 95% of the population of AU lives within 100km of the coast - as are most of the mountains.

Interestingly, I was having a discussion about coal dust from mining with someone today. Apparently there is a recent study done in the hunter valley which shows that IQ of children is inversely correlated with distance from the coal mines (i.e. the closer to the mines the child lives the lower their IQ) - this is after data has been normalised to correct for socioeconomic variations in IQ. This has been attributed to airborne particulate levels.

[rick130]

[snip].

Interestingly, I was having a discussion about coal dust from mining with someone today. Apparently there is a recent study done in the hunter valley which shows that IQ of children is inversely correlated with distance from the coal mines (i.e. the closer to the mines the child lives the lower their IQ) - this is after the data has been normalised to correct for socioeconomic variations in IQ. This has been attributed to airborne particulate levels.

Said GP is really having trouble getting his findings further researched and acted upon.

Unsurprisingly the current and soon to be ditched NSW State Govt. doesn't want to know about it.

The only reason the coal mine 5km from my place was quashed (the only time a proposed coal mine has been denied) was due to the lobbying power of the Thoroughbred Industry.
Thankfully the closest mine to me is 60km away, so I get to keep the few remaining brain cells I have :D (and keep enjoying some of the cleanest air in the world)

[one_iota]

Media meltdown | COSMOS magazine (http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/features/online/4149/media-meltdown)

and this:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/18/3167818.htm

and I'll leave you with this quote from Scientific American:



The popular conception of nuclear power (http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=nuclear-power) is straight out of The Simpsons: Springfield abounds with signs of radioactivity, from the strange glow surrounding Mr. Burn's nuclear power plant workers to Homer's low sperm count. Then there's the local superhero, Radioactive Man, who fires beams of "nuclear heat" from his eyes. Nuclear power, many people think, is inseparable from a volatile, invariably lime-green, mutant-making radioactivity.

[Ferret]

Came across this post in another forum (Further-Updates-On-Post-Tsumami-Japan (http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/03/17/1957231/Further-Updates-On-Post-Tsumami-Japan)) discussing the nuclear threat in Japan. I can't verify the 'facts' being reported here and I don't necessarily agree with every point being made here yet I think the post is worth repeating for discussion purposes and to place some things in context.

There is also some insightfull discussion of this post both for and against the sentiments expressed in this post at this site.




.....Have you ever heard of Banqiao? It was a Chinese nuclear plant which in 1975 suffered a severe accident. The Chinese covered it up for 30 years and quietly admitted it to the world in 2005. So quietly that most people still haven't heard of it. The toll compared to Chernobyl is just staggering:

26,000 immediate deaths (57 for Chernobyl)
145,000 long-term deaths (4000 estimated cancer deaths for Chernobyl)
11 million people relocated (336,000 people relocated for Chernobyl)
Nearly 6 million homes and buildings made uninhabitable 768 km^2 rendered uninhabitable (489 km^2 exclusion zone for Chernobyl)

Horrific, isn't it? Worse than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Clearly proof that nuclear power is too dangerous to use, right?

I'm sorry. I lied. Banqiao wasn't a nuclear plant. It was a hydroelectric dam [wikipedia.org]. Everything else I said is true though. In 1975, during a typhoon and torrential rainfall, it filled to over capacity. After several attempts to lower its water level by opening sluice gates, the dam above it burst. The swell of water overwhelmed the Banqiao dam, and it too burst. 700 million tons of water were released, and it precipitated a cascade failure of dams beneath it. In all, 62 dams burst or were deliberately destroyed in attempts to divert water into flood plains, with a total of 15.7 billion tons of water released.

26,000 people lost their lives in the flooding. Over 1 million people were left stranded by the waters, cut off from disaster relief, and had to have food and water airlifted to them for weeks. An estimated 145,000 of them (Chinese govt figures) died of the famine and disease caused by the disaster. Nearly 6 million buildings were destroyed, and 11 million people had to be relocated. When the dam was rebuilt, 768 km^2 was flooded to form the flood catchbasin.

Horrific, isn't it? Worse than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Clearly proof that hydroelectric power is too dangerous to use, right?

No? Why not? It's the exact same evidence. When it was presented against nuclear, you were probably in full agreement. But when told the truth and you find out that it's really evidence against hydro, your mind rejects it. Hydroelectric is more dangerous than nuclear? Can't be! Why not? Confirmation bias against nuclear power. You hear all those terrible things that happened, and when nuclear power is to blame, you accept it. But then you find out that hydro power is to blame, and your mind rejects it. You have an anti-nuclear bias. A double standard created by astroturfing propaganda from anti-nuclear activists.

Let me address all the objections you're probably going to bring up. The same ones you dismissed when the pro-nuclear side brought them up with Chernobyl.

But Banqiao was a clay dam. Western dams are typically concrete.
Chernobyl was a dangerous and unstable reactor design never used in the West.

It was Chinese. They had shoddy building and operating standards. (My apologies to the Chinese)
Chernobyl was built and run by the Soviets with substandard construction and operating standards.

Banqiao was one incident, in fact the only hydroelectric dam failure in history with a large number of deaths up to today.
Chernobyl was one incident, in fact the only nuclear accident in history with a large number of deaths up to today.

It was built in 1951. It was 25 year-old technology when it failed. They didn't know better when building it.
Fukushima Daiichi was built in 1971. It was 40 year-old technology when it failed. Are you going to accept that as an excuse for any deaths it causes?

It wasn't really the dam's fault. It was hit by a typhoon and once-in-2000-years flood.
The Fukushima Daiichi plant was hit by the biggest earthquake and tsunami in Japan's history. Are you going to excuse nuclear power from the current accident for that reason?

The land Chernobyl contaminated is too dangerous to enter.
I'm pretty sure if you try to visit the land flooded by the new Banqiao dam's catchment basin, you won't live more than a few minutes. How long can you hold your breath? Danger is a funny thing. Under the right circumstances, even the most innocuous things can be dangerous.

I fear invisible atomic rays. I'm comfortable with water - I handle and drink it every day.
I don't think the people killed in both disasters really cared whether they died from invisible rays or by water. Either way, they're still dead.

The Banqiao and related hydroelectric dams generated 18 GW of power. That's a lot more than Chernobyl (4 GW) or Fukushima Daiichi (4.9 GW).
Ah, now we're getting somewhere. So you agree that the number of deaths should be compared to the amount of power generated in order to make it a fair comparison? Something like... deaths per TWh generated?

That's what I've been saying all along. And if you compare the power technologies that way [nextbigfuture.com], no bias, no subjective measures, just objective data making a best effort to tally all deaths caused vs. power generated, you come to the following conclusion: Nuclear power is the safest power generation technology man has invented.

I'm not going to kid anyone. What's going on at Fukushima Daiichi right now is a very, very serious nuclear accident. There are almost certainly going to be deaths from it when all is said and done. But it would have to kill something like 10,000 people in order to mar nuclear's historical safety record to where it becomes as dangerous as wind power (the second safest). And it would have to kill tens of millions of people in order for it to become as a dangerous as our most common power source - coal.

[bee utey]

Coal Vs Nuclear:

Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste: Scientific American (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste)

[rovercare]

Interestingly, I was having a discussion about coal dust from mining with someone today. Apparently there is a recent study done in the hunter valley which shows that IQ of children is inversely correlated with distance from the coal mines (i.e. the closer to the mines the child lives the lower their IQ) - this is after data has been normalised to correct for socioeconomic variations in IQ. This has been attributed to airborne particulate levels.

Hmm, explains my trouble with piecing sent......sentee......centa.....oh look a flutterby:D

[Benz]

don't know why people write off renewable energy production so fast...

silly people...

I'm also as against burning coal for power as much as I am against nuclear...

nuclear power plants are very safe I will agree with that... and of coarse they produce no greenhouse gasses once they are up and running... it's the mining of yellow cake which I don't like... and I don't trust the human race with something which can have such devastating affects if someone were to stuff up.

but money, as always, pretty much comes first for the people of silly planet and sadly I think it always will.

[rovercare]

don't know why people write off renewable energy production so fast...

silly people...

I'm also as against burning coal for power as much as I am against nuclear...

nuclear power plants are very safe I will agree with that... and of coarse they produce no greenhouse gasses once they are up and running... it's the mining of yellow cake which I don't like... and I don't trust the human race with something which can have such devastating affects if someone were to stuff up.

but money, as always, pretty much comes first for the people of silly planet and sadly I think it always will.

So your not connected to the grid?

Its like those that pay the premium for "clean" energy, oh look, out wind turbines aren't spining because its not windy/too windy/out on maitenance, lets just buy some MW's of the stiky coal burners and resell it:angel:

[Benz]

So your not connected to the grid?

Its like those that pay the premium for "clean" energy, oh look, out wind turbines aren't spining because its not windy/too windy/out on maitenance, lets just buy some MW's of the stiky coal burners and resell it:angel:

no just think there are better ways of doing it...
much much better ways.

and at the moment our renewable energy production is tiny... that's why it doesn't work....

[Ace]

I havent read all the posts, but I voted No when I meant to vote yes.

The major issue in Japan is that its built on a country with tectonic plate fault lines around it. We arent so much plagued with those problems here so I have no issue what so every with having nuclear energy being utilised in Oz. Bring it on.

[rovercare]

no just think there are better ways of doing it...
much much better ways.

and at the moment our renewable energy production is tiny... that's why it doesn't work....

Such as?

[rick130]

Coal Vs Nuclear:

Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste: Scientific American (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste)

Heard a funny story from a mate yesterday that used to be in research at BHP.

Years ago the CSIRO proposed that the flyash leftover from the burnt coal be utilised to make house bricks instead of dumped, so it was trialled....until someone ran a Geiger counter over the trial house :D

[rick130]

No nukes now, or ever (http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/no-nukes-now-or-ever-20110319-1c1ed.html)

[isuzurover]

No nukes now, or ever (http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/no-nukes-now-or-ever-20110319-1c1ed.html)

You should hear what Ian Lowe's colleagues say about him. Not much that is flattering...



Heard a funny story from a mate yesterday that used to be in research at BHP.

Years ago the CSIRO proposed that the flyash leftover from the burnt coal be utilised to make house bricks instead of dumped, so it was trialled....until someone ran a Geiger counter over the trial house :D

AFAIK fly ash blends of concrete can contain up to 10% fly ash. There are also groups developing geopolymer - a replacement for concrete - which is mainly made from aluminosolicate compunds (such as fly ash).

[akelly]

Coal Vs Nuclear:

Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste: Scientific American (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste)

The headline does its job of catching attention, but the article demonstrates that coal ash is NOT more radioactive than nuclear waste - its just that coal ash is not normally stored in shielding and nuclear waste is. Either way, we are talking about a tiny proportion of the background radiation absorbed by people living near a coal fired plant. As the linked article points out, the acid rain from burning coal is a greater health hazard than the radiation.

[Benz]

Such as?


cant be bothered you wouldn't listen anyway...

[Hymie]

cant be bothered you wouldn't listen anyway...

That's a bit harsh. Thousands of families around here rely on the income from coal power generation to survive.
Loy Yang A has just had a scheduled overhaul canceled indefinitely due to the Hitachi Technicians being required in Japan.
One of my casual jobs relies on my boss making his living as an Instrument fitter at the power stations during shuts, if he don't work, I don't work-it's that simple.
All of the Casual maintenance workers are now without income.
Mate, if you can find a way of employing 2-3000 people just like that I'm all for it, run for P.M while you are at it.
So, before you write us Brown Coal Burnin' Gippslanders off as ignorant Neanderthals remember one thing. We rely on Brown Coal.
Remember, it will take 1000 wind turbines to replace 1 Unit at Hazlewood Power Station. 8000 Turbines to replace the whole thing. Where do you propose they go? They would cast that big a shadow that Solar Panels would be rendered useless. Can you imagine the thrum thrum thrum from 8000 turbines, we'd all be medicated to stay sane!

[Benz]

That's a bit harsh. Thousands of families around here rely on the income from coal power generation to survive.
Loy Yang A has just had a scheduled overhaul canceled indefinitely due to the Hitachi Technicians being required in Japan.
One of my casual jobs relies on my boss making his living as an Instrument fitter at the power stations during shuts, if he don't work, I don't work-it's that simple.
All of the Casual maintenance workers are now without income.
Mate, if you can find a way of employing 2-3000 people just like that I'm all for it, run for P.M while you are at it.
So, before you write us Brown Coal Burnin' Gippslanders off as ignorant Neanderthals remember one thing. We rely on Brown Coal.
Remember, it will take 1000 wind turbines to replace 1 Unit at Hazlewood Power Station. 8000 Turbines to replace the whole thing. Where do you propose they go? They would cast that big a shadow that Solar Panels would be rendered useless. Can you imagine the thrum thrum thrum from 8000 turbines, we'd all be medicated to stay sane!

of course you cant instantly close down coal mining....
I'm just saying we as a human race need to start moving away from fossil fuels and accept we cant treat the planet the way we do forever...
and for me nuclear power shouldn't be our solution

unless you want to keep going until it's all poisoned? we'll all be filthy rich! [biggrin]

....sick of this thread now

[rick130]

You should hear what Ian Lowe's colleagues say about him. Not much that is flattering...




AFAIK fly ash blends of concrete can contain up to 10% fly ash. There are also groups developing geopolymer - a replacement for concrete - which is mainly made from aluminosolicate compunds (such as fly ash).

That's the second time in two days I've quoted someone else to boost an argument and I've had a similar response.

The first time I was quoting Ross Garnaut and the response was "do you realise he's considered a &!(#head in the academic world". :o

Yeah, in the first trials the % of fly ash was pretty high.
It wouldn't have been an issue but was a fair bit above background.

Another friend sent this link through which is interesting

http://xkcd.com/radiation/

https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/imported/2011/03/411.jpg

http://xkcd.com/radiation/

[85 county]

So according to that chart

I could sleep with 2 chicks at the same time or eat a Banana

But if I sleep with 4000 chicks at the same time i could die of radiation poising

I wish to volunteer to prove the latter ( only if I get to pic the chicks)

[rovercare]

cant be bothered you wouldn't listen anyway...

Actually I'd listen intently, likely try and debunk your ideas, unless they are something viable, which is very difficult when it comes to base load generation and renewable

But anyway, insert 2 year old voice your "not telling:p"