Nuclear Power - debate / poll

A couple of people have commented on the fact that this debate has been robust, but civilised.
That is really quite an extraordinary thing and something of which we can all be very proud.
The potential for this debate to descend into something nasty was enormous.
For a start it is about a subject of great importance to most of us. We tend to defend our views vigorously because we believe that what we advocate is necessary for our future, the future of our children or even the future of the planet. No wonder we get a bit excited at times.
Another reason is that, as some people have apparently observed elsewhere it is so easy for people to hide behind the anonymity of the internet to launch a personal attack on someone. We have obviously avoided the temptation.
It is also remarkable because it is notoriously difficult to express yourself clearly when you have limited typing skills and are desparately trying to complete your response before half a dozen others appear ahead of yours and make yours irrelevant. It is so easy to type something that will be misinterpreted.
Finally it is a credit to our tolerance that we have managed to extend the debate so far and keep it civil, using what is often a very inefficient or incomplete method of communication. In face to face conversation, the extra clues we get from body language, tone of voice and numerous other things make it easy to realise that a comment that on the screen looks a bit abrupt or arrogant is really not something we should get upset about. We need to start with the assumption that everyone else is treating us and our opinions with the respect we think we deserve. We must have done that to avoid what apparently some other forums have been unable to avoid.
I must admit I am impressed by our achievement. Perhaps I should not have been surprised however. I have always taken it for granted that Land Rover drivers are rather special people. I think this confirms it.:)

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Originally Posted by vnx205

A couple of people have commented on the fact that this debate has been robust, but civilised.
That is really quite an extraordinary thing and something of which we can all be very proud.
I must admit I am impressed by our achievement. Perhaps I should not have been surprised however. I have always taken it for granted that Land Rover drivers are rather special people. I think this confirms it.:)

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It takes a less easily influenced mind to ignore the hype, and PR blurb. That my friend, is why we own a sensible car, and wear sensible shoes. Just like Her Maj.
That dear lady, drives a Series model on the farm at Balmoral. Did you know that? The Queen herself, is a Landy Series owner driver. Just has to say something about the rest of us.

Cheers Allan.

Shorty.

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Originally Posted by drivesafe

Hi tank, although I agree whole heartedly with most of your posts, JDNSW is right on the money about the first A bomb test.

The story about not knowing if the chain reaction would just continue on and on until it destroyed the world is actually Hollywood hype for the benefit of adding drama to the original movie.

They had already carried out extensive test on a controlled pile reaction in New York way before they started work on the first bomb. BTW the name of the A bomb development, “ The Manhattan Project “ was a spinoff of the name of the location where the original tests were carried out, New York.

The reason the scientists threatened to resign was in an attempt to stop the bomb being dropped on Japan.

Cheers.

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I didn't see the movie you are alluding to, I read it in a book back in the 70's, either a National Geographic or Readers Digest, so I'm only quoting, Regards Frank.

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Originally Posted by shorty943

There is a lot of, I don't want to hear you, in this thread. Like JD writes, we will need the power capacity somehow, somewhere. As yet, no real viable option has been forwarded, yet every year the drain on capacity rises, with absolutely no new generation facilities built. Just what do some people want. Free electricity from non poluting free air? Never gonna happen. You want, you pay. Simple. Coal costs to get out of the ground, then it must be proccessed to make it usable in furnaces to boil water to make steam to turn turbine. 1 ton of coal, 1 ton of oil, or 1 ton of Uranium fuel rods. I KNOW, which will produce electricity for a hell of a lot longer, and so do you. There is the cost benefit. We also benefit from much lowered CO2 emmissions, we will see. We will see.
Trust me, I am no lover of the Nuke, that was my field in the services, but, we are not talking about a damn bomb design, but a strictly controlled furnace of enormous potential, to generate power. Ordinary old common or garden variety electricity.Bah humbug, I'm going outside to rub two sticks together. I'm going to eat burned dead animals.

Shorty.

I return bearing information.
Been googleing. check this Aussie site, from Melbourne. http://www.uic.com.au/nip08.htm It will make a mockery of all the emotive rubbish on costs for Nuclear Power Generation. Granted, the initial setup of the reactor and the containment units are high, and so they must be for our own safety. But, in the long run NPG is much cheaper in actual running costs.
Than any other form of generation. Any other. Period. And these figures also include all the costs of waste management, everything.

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1 tonne of uranium fuel for a reactor comes from 210 tonnes of ore, the processing and transport adds to CO2 emissions, 1 tonne of coal is 1 tonne of fuel, minimal processing and usually right on the doorstep of the power stations, not hundreds or thousands of miles from coastal based (water Supply demands coastal siting). There are pilot plants being operated on Clean Coal which has been treated to remove most of the nasties, because if you think any Australian government is going to scrap coal mining, then you are living in Fairyland, Regards Frank.

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Originally Posted by Tank

1 tonne of uranium fuel for a reactor comes from 210 tonnes of ore, the processing and transport adds to CO2 emissions, 1 tonne of coal is 1 tonne of fuel, minimal processing and usually right on the doorstep of the power stations, not hundreds or thousands of miles from coastal based (water Supply demands coastal siting). There are pilot plants being operated on Clean Coal which has been treated to remove most of the nasties, because if you think any Australian government is going to scrap coal mining, then you are living in Fairyland, Regards Frank.

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The difference of course is that a nuclear power station has a daily consumption of uranium measured in kilograms, where the coal fired power station uses thousands of tonnes of coal a day. Coal fired power stations already clean up almost all their emissions except carbon dioxide and water. And the carbon dioxide is the problem. One of the things that annoys me is that every time there is a mention of air pollution from power stations on TV is there is the obligatory shot of steam rising from cooling towers - which, of course is not pollution. And carbon dioxide cannot be seen.

The mining damage caused by all the world's uranium mines since mining started is less than the damage caused by one open cut coal mine in a few days. A typical uranium mine produces a few tonnes of ore per day, a typical coal mine produces hundreds of tonnes of coal an hour plus thousands of tonnes of overburden shifted.

The scale of the materials (coal/uranium) is vastly different for the same amount of power, and the same applies to the energy used to transport and process it, even if the uranium needs more processing.

John

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Originally Posted by JDNSW

Coal fired power stations already clean up almost all their emissions except carbon dioxide and water. And the carbon dioxide is the problem.

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Actually the water content of the steam is not a pollutant but the HEAT is and both coal and uranium power production produce heat but uranium not only produces far more heat but requires much more water to produce the same amount of power as coal can do.

CO2 emissions have a pollution life of less that 50 years after they are emitted form the power station while the waste from a nuclear power station is is unsafe to humans and the environment for at least 10,000 years, this much they know. What they still don’t know, is how to safely store this dangerous waste for more that a few years.

Furthermore it’s not the mining of uranium that is the most dangerous part of using this stuff, it’s uranium's use in power stations where the vast majority of all the accidents have occurred and I don’t remember hearing of any form of coal related accident that has made hundreds of thousands of square kilometres land uninhabitable for thousands of years It’s a shame the nuclear industry can say the same thing.

What’s even worst, no coal related accident and probably all coal related accidents combined have not killed as many people as Cherobyl has done.

As Tank has pointed out and is the main reason the stuff should be left in the ground, if we use uranium today, our children’s children for at least the next 500 generations are going to be left with the legacy of looking after the waste. That to me seems like an unbelievably selfish attitude to live by.

As it is now likely that in a very few years from now, and at a much low initial cost as well as a much lower cost to the consumer, the CO2 content of the waste from a coal fired power station is going to be a thing of the past.

This will make coal by far the safest way to go.

Cheers

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Originally Posted by drivesafe

1. Actually the water content of the steam is not a pollutant but the HEAT is and both coal and uranium power production produce heat but uranium not only produces far more heat but requires much more water to produce the same amount of power as coal can do.

2. CO2 emissions have a pollution life of less that 50 years after they are emitted form the power station while the waste from a nuclear power station is is unsafe to humans and the environment for at least 10,000 years, this much they know. What they still don’t know, is how to safely store this dangerous waste for more that a few years.

3. Furthermore it’s not the mining of uranium that is the most dangerous part of using this stuff, it’s uranium's use in power stations where the vast majority of all the accidents have occurred and I don’t remember hearing of any form of coal related accident that has made hundreds of thousands of square kilometres land uninhabitable for thousands of years It’s a shame the nuclear industry can say the same thing.

What’s even worst, no coal related accident and probably all coal related accidents combined have not killed as many people as Cherobyl has done.

As Tank has pointed out and is the main reason the stuff should be left in the ground, if we use uranium today, our children’s children for at least the next 500 generations are going to be left with the legacy of looking after the waste. That to me seems like an unbelievably selfish attitude to live by.

4. As it is now likely that in a very few years from now, and at a much low initial cost as well as a much lower cost to the consumer, the CO2 content of the waste from a coal fired power station is going to be a thing of the past.

This will make coal by far the safest way to go.

Cheers

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1. I am at a loss to understand how nuclear power produces far more heat or uses far more water than coal. Both provide a source of heat used to generate steam which is used in a heat engine to provide rotary power that is used to drive an alternator. Both are essentially identical apart from the heat source, and both require either cooling towers or large volumes of cool water to maintain the heat difference that the Carnot cycle requires. The only difference is that the coal burning station operates at a higher temperature, resulting in slightly greater efficiency, and hence slightly less heat dumped into the environment - but of course, 90% of the power generated ends up as heat dumped in the environment anyway, so the difference in amount of heat to the environment overall is negligible.
2. The problem with CO2 is not the life of it (and this is not well understood!) but the sheer volume of it! At least nuclear waste is very small in volume.
3. My point about mining was in response to Tank's comments about mining.

There are more people killed every year in China alone than all the deaths that can be attributed to Chernobyl. While the Russian figures of less than 100 are almost certainly understated, some of the other figures are vastly overstated, being calculated as an estimate of the number of deaths that will eventually result from the known spread of radiation. But these estimates assume there is no safe threshold for exposure, ignoring the fact that we are all exposed to radiation from natural sources and have evolved to cope with it. If you are going to include these sort of figures from Chernobyl you have to include the equivalent figures from emission of K40 from coal fired power stations, and again, while these emissions are relatively small as a proportion of emissions, the overwhelming number of coal fired power stations and the volume of emissions from each more than makes up.

4. I think that carbon sequestration of coal fired power station emissions will eventually become feasible, and this is one of the main reasons why I am unsure about nuclear. But if you think it is going to be significantly cheaper than nuclear, you are kidding yourself. This is an area where I have a pretty good idea what is involved, and I have a reasonable idea of the sort of costs that will result.

To continue to produce CO2 emissions at the present rate will leave our children with a legacy of flooded cities and changed environment. Unfortunately, as I have commented earlier in this thread, what Australia does is pretty much irrelevant - the only countries that really matter are the US, China and India, possibly Europe.

John

Hi John, this is a research note put out by the Australian Government.

Makes for some interesting reading, both for and against.


http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/r...-07/07rn12.pdf

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Originally Posted by JDNSW

..... we are all exposed to radiation from natural sources and have evolved to cope with it.
John

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Isn't part of the problem that some of the radioactive substances, such as plutonium, that are involved in the nuclear cycle are madmade? Since they don't occur naturally, life on earth has had no opportunity to evolve to cope with it.

I dont really care