Merged nuclear power safe?

[BenBurch]

I've had to roll this around my brain for a while, scroll up+down quite a lot and generally wonder wtf? before responding.

And I don't really know how to respond without sounding like a nutcase.
Are you serious? Can you explain? That's not a challenge, btw, as I have only superficial knowledge of the subject. 100 billion ??

First, you need to sink coffer dams. And it needs to be done by people in protection garments. Any soil removed has to be assayed and contaminated soil deal with as waste.

Then you sink pumps into wells in the interior of the coffer dams, and keep the water pumped out. What do you do with the water? Store it or decontaminate it. You will have to do this for about a decade.

Then you need to send in teams and first remove the cores from the spent fuel pools into dry cask storage, and then cart those away for reprocessing. First you probably have to do some site clearing and you have to assay the condition of the cores in the pools. All this has to be done with radiation safety protocols. This will take months.

You also have to continuously monitor the condition of the dead reactors, and assay their damage to the extent possible. Most likely robots will have to be used.

At some point, when the cores have cooled enough and the radiation levels have dropped, you will need to get inside the containment and start dis-assembly. This work is going to need to be done by either robots or "jumpers" and will not go quickly.

Everything inside those buildings, and some things outside, are going to need to be treated as high level waste, and this is going to be hellishly expensive.

Also, every machine that you use and every consumable you bring in will also become radwaste.

Then, once you have gutted the containments and hauled away the ruined cores and vessels, you have to take apart the concrete structure, some of which will also be high level waste, and likely all of it radwaste.

Once that is done you need to deal with the earth under where the site was, and likely haul that off as radwaste.

Lots of expensive equipment, some of which will have to be engineered for the job, all of which you will have to dispose of after the job, hundreds of trained workers for years, tons and tons of waste.

100 billion is not a bad estimate in my opinion.

 

[Aepervius]

I've had to roll this around my brain for a while, scroll up+down quite a lot and generally wonder wtf? before responding.

And I don't really know how to respond without sounding like a nutcase.
Are you serious? Can you explain? That's not a challenge, btw, as I have only superficial knowledge of the subject. 100 billion ??

He is speaking in yen . Or in zimbabwe dollar .

 

[DGM]

100 billion is not a bad estimate in my opinion.

By comparison, Is there estimates on the final clean-up of TMI (my understanding is it's not complete)?

 

[Skwinty]

Germany's nuclear program is being phased out, that has been the status quo for several years now.

I am not familiar with German politics, but the gist of what my colleague was saying is probably along these lines.

If the Greens consolidate their position then the phasing out of nuclear will be accelerated,
If they do not consolidate their position then it is quite likely that the nuclear program will continue.

"In 2000, the German government, consisting of the SPD and Alliance '90/The Greens officially announced its intention to phase out the use of nuclear power.

In 2008, Merkel and the CDU shifted to open opposition to the phase-out, rejecting a compromise proposed by the SPD to postpone the shutdown while enacting a constitutional ban on new plants. For the duration of the grand coalition between the CDU and the SPD, the anti-nuclear policy remained in place.

However, after the victory of the CDU/CSU and the FDP in the 2009 federal election, the new government extended the period until the shutdown until 2036.

Following the 2011 Japan nuclear incidents, Angela Merkel suspended the extension and temporarily shut down seven of the oldest reactors.

Although the reactors in Obrigheim had been shut down, the dismantling of the plant began in 2007. Therefore, it remains possible for the newly elected Christian Democratic Union–headed government to restart the reactors."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#Phase-out

 

[BenBurch]

By comparison, Is there estimates on the final clean-up of TMI (my understanding is it's not complete)?

TMI came it at around a billion. But they were dealing with one plant instead of four, and it was not as badly damaged as these are, and they did not have the complication of spent fuel pools in danger and containment breech.

ETA: And the dollar is not worth as much as it was in the interval since TMI.

 

[timhau]

Which plant specifically? The four reactors at the Fukushima Daini site were reported earlier this week to have successfully reached the cold shutdown stage, and all cooling systems were working normally.

I wonder if the media isn't confusing Power Station #2 (Daini) with Daichi's (Power Station #1) reactor #2, which has indeed caused problems.

If Daini has somehow started heating all by itself, then something is clearly amiss.

 

[George 152]

So, who has a coal field for sale?
There's going to be so many coal fired power generators needed to replace the nukes any enterprising businessman will b able to get in on the ground floor.

 

[a_unique_person]

This is the outer shell of the buildings, not the reactor cores. It's like looking at the thermal protection on the Apollo LM and complaining that it's not airtight.



Which is disputed by pretty much everyone else, including those on the ground who rate it as a 4.



They seem to be managing it very well so far.



Actually they were only evacuated for an hour, and then they were back after the spike subsided.

By any measure, they have not managed it well. From preventing it happening in the first place, to the consequences of not managing the site properly. The workers are putting their lives at risk to deal with the consequences, though.

 

[a_unique_person]

So, who has a coal field for sale?
There's going to be so many coal fired power generators needed to replace the nukes any enterprising businessman will b able to get in on the ground floor.

The last thing we need is more coal power, we should be transitioning to a mix of new technology renewables and new technology nuclear.

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

The last thing we need is more coal power, we should be transitioning to a mix of new technology renewables and new technology nuclear.

Corrected free of charge.

 

[Undesired Walrus]

Doesn't the tsunami pose problems for the idea of wind farms? Presumably a majority of them will have to be built in the ocean surrounding Japan/UK/US/Ireland/Australia etc, and will be utterly obliterated by an incoming tsunami. At least the nuclear facility is salvageable.

 

[technoextreme]

Corrected free of charge.

I'm actually with him. Why wouldn't going to new renewable technologies be a bad thing?

Doesn't the tsunami pose problems for the idea of wind farms? Presumably a majority of them will have to be built in the ocean surrounding Japan/UK/US/Ireland/Australia etc, and will be utterly obliterated by an incoming tsunami. At least the nuclear facility is salvageable.

I don't think tsunami's work that way.

 

[a_unique_person]

Doesn't the tsunami pose problems for the idea of wind farms? Presumably a majority of them will have to be built in the ocean surrounding Japan/UK/US/Ireland/Australia etc, and will be utterly obliterated by an incoming tsunami. At least the nuclear facility is salvageable.

The whole site is a complete write off now. They will now have to spend many billions of dollars over many years to decommission it. According to benburch above, about 100 billion dollars.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6983520&postcount=901

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

Why wouldn't going to new renewable technologies be a bad thing?

Solar and wind aren't capable of replacing the capabilities of fossil fuel or nuclear. They don't have they capacity or density. To try to make them function as coal/gas/oil/nuclear plants do, would require the construction of very large arrays and large scale battery or storage systems. You'd be overspending by 6 or 7 times what you'd need for a comparable nuclear plant. Because of their intermittent nature and how they tend to come online all at once in surges, they cause severe grid stability problems if they surpass more than 10% of your total capacity.

 

[Undesired Walrus]

I don't think tsunami's work that way.

I don't understand. Surely offshore wind farms would be the first thing to be destroyed by an incoming tsunami?

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

I don't understand. Surely wind farms would be the first thing to be destroyed by an incoming tsunami?

Not if they are placed in deep water. Tsunamis rise up once they hit shallow water, which has the effect of concentrating the energy of the wave into a smaller mass.

This is why fishing vessels in port will often head to sea if they learn of an approaching tsunami, to try to get as much deep water under their hulls as possible.

 

[dudalb]

The last thing we need is more coal power, we should be transitioning to a mix of new technology renewables and new technology nuclear.

New technology reneweables are a long way from being ready to go. They simply cannot replace fossil fuels or nuclear for a long time to come. They don't have the heft to produce as much power. This is something a lot of enviromental advocates just do not understand or ignore.

 

[BenBurch]

Solar systems with concentrators driving Stirling-cycle generators are actually a pretty good investment in hot places. They operate during the daytime when the domestic cooling load is highest and more people are working, and so they reduce the amount of nuclear or conventional generating capacity you need for daytime cooling loads.

 

[Aepervius]

The last thing we need is more coal power, we should be transitioning to a mix of new technology renewables and new technology nuclear.

Renewable are , as far as I can tell, not good for baseload power, and the few which can provide baseload power are already exploited (hydroelectric for example). But feel free to correct me, as I have to admit my knowledge has big hole on renewable latest development.

 

[timhau]

Renewable are , as far as I can tell, not good for baseload power, and the few which can provide baseload power are already exploited (hydroelectric for example).

If you have the terrain, hydroelectric is great. As long as the dam holds, that is. And as it happens, one in Fukushima prefecture didn't, it broke and washed away something like 1800 homes; death toll is as yet unknown, but assumed significant. (That was an irrigation dam, not a hydroelectric dam; I don't know how much difference that would make in terms of durability.)