Japan earthquake + tsunami + nuclear problems

Aepervius said:
Nice as a concept, but until really it is built and renewable can replace baseload power, we'll have to rely on the few way to generate baseload, and renewable isn't one.
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Ok... no one said renewable was baseload today. The question is always which way to go tomorrow-- how farsighted we are.
 
Sunstealer said:
Some of it is wrong.

It's best not to read blogs; instead go to proper sources.
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He is a science writer for Nature so not exactly Mr Random and his Random Thoughts blogger...

[EDIT] Here is a cite for the quote which you disagree with:

R. Alvarez et al. [11] points out that "In the absence of any cooling, a freshly discharged core generating decay heat at a rate of 100 kWt/tU would heat up adiabatically within an hour to about 600 °C, where the zircaloy cladding would be expected to rupture under the internal pressure from helium and fission product gases, and then to about 900 °C where the cladding would begin to burn in air."
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(Robert Alvarex, Jan Beyea, Klaus Janberg, Jungmin Kang, Ed Lyman, Allison Macfarlane, Gordon Thompson, and Frank von Hippel, Reducing the Hazards from Stored Spent Power-Reactor Fuel in the United States, Science & Global Security, vol.11, no.1, 2003.)

Just had a look at your link- i think you're confusing a passing interest in the subject with degree level expertise! By all means if you have a better lay person summary i'd be interested in reading that - i'm not especially interested in ploughing through a 36 page university text pdf.
 
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Interesting mainstream analysis of implications of the Japanese nuclear disaster:

"'World energy crunch as nuclear and oil both go wrong
The existential crisis for the world's nuclear industry could hardly have come at a worse moment. The epicentre of the world's oil supply is disturbingly close to its own systemic crisis as the Gulf erupts in conflict.'


Dr Euan Mearns at the Oil Drum said Fukushima has shattered democracies' faith in the safety of nuclear power. If Japanese engineers had prevailed despite the worst that nature could muster, it would have vindicated the industry. 'Alas, this is not the case. The future of the human global energy system has just changed course with potentially far reaching consequences for civilisation,' he said."
 
Pulvinar said:
Ok... no one said renewable was baseload today. The question is always which way to go tomorrow-- how farsighted we are.
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Seeing that due to petty revenge and petty politic we more or less got stuck on building the next nuclear fusion big experiment for nearly 10 years, I would say we human are pretty short sighted (or better said , politics are short sighted, and we voter get the politician we "earned" by voting them in).

Nonetheless I seriously doubt that renewable will take that much over, but I am ready to be surprised.
 
For the amount of money the nuclears want to borrow, for a power plant that might start up 10 years from now, you could put up 16,000 wind turbines in the next year. (assuming of course anyone could build that many that quickly)

What gives more power? One nuclear plant? Or 16,000 wind turbines?

Which is safer? Faster? Creates more jobs?

Since wind turbines would give a return much faster, the interest you save on the loan would be billions of dollars alone.
 
JihadJane said:
Interesting mainstream analysis of implications of the Japanese nuclear disaster:

"'World energy crunch as nuclear and oil both go wrong
The existential crisis for the world's nuclear industry could hardly have come at a worse moment. The epicentre of the world's oil supply is disturbingly close to its own systemic crisis as the Gulf erupts in conflict.'


Dr Euan Mearns at the Oil Drum said Fukushima has shattered democracies' faith in the safety of nuclear power. If Japanese engineers had prevailed despite the worst that nature could muster, it would have vindicated the industry. 'Alas, this is not the case. The future of the human global energy system has just changed course with potentially far reaching consequences for civilisation,' he said."
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Let me get this right.

When people are idiot in chernobyl (and we all know to the FSM that people CAN be really stupid and take a lot of risk) and blow a nuclear central to smithern, this has no far reaching consequence and course change. There is not much one can prepare for against stupid reekless move.

But when a disaster hit a central, a disaster which is excedingly rare and for which we could have in future better preparation for next gen plant, and which at the moment do not seem to have catastrophal environmental regional impact, then it is changing the course of energy providing system with far reaching consequence ?

I love the smell of politic in the morning (not).
 
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r-j said:
For the amount of money the nuclears want to borrow, for a power plant that might start up 10 years from now, you could put up 16,000 wind turbines in the next year. (assuming of course anyone could build that many that quickly)

What gives more power? One nuclear plant? Or 16,000 wind turbines?

Which is safer? Faster? Creates more jobs?

Since wind turbines would give a return much faster, the interest you save on the loan would be billions of dollars alone.
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Turbine are unreliable for baseload, they need to be maintained all over the "country", they take place over the ground, they even break and destroy stuff when the blade flow away, it takes much more energy to build 16000 wind turbine than to build 1 central, and have many more inconvenient problem. You know, there is a reason we didle with nuclear/oil/coal/gas plants. And no, that is not because we wish to, or any lobby reason.
 
JihadJane said:
Dr Euan Mearns at the Oil Drum said Fukushima has shattered democracies' faith in the safety of nuclear power. If Japanese engineers had prevailed despite the worst that nature could muster, it would have vindicated the industry. 'Alas, this is not the case. The future of the human global energy system has just changed course with potentially far reaching consequences for civilisation,' he said."
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I have to wonder about comments and thinking like this. Afaik, everyone who knew anything about these plants beforehand knew that they were not built to stand the level of disaster that happened in Japan. Keeping that in mind, the destruction due to the nuclear plants has been minimal so far, we just have to wait and see what the total bodycount or environmental damage is.
 
r-j said:
For the amount of money the nuclears want to borrow, for a power plant that might start up 10 years from now, you could put up 16,000 wind turbines in the next year. (assuming of course anyone could build that many that quickly)
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16,000 wind turbines ? Imagine the amount of space, iron and copper they would use up ! :(
 
Sunstealer said:
Fixed it for you - funny how you manage to quote people who a) don't specialise in the subject and b)support your point of view.
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So Kaku doesn't support nuclear power, well that doesn't invalidate his opinion that the best approach is the cement-based approach of Chernobyl - and it's hardly completely leftfield - indeed a Japanese spokesman for the nuclear industry (who i presume is not anti nuclear and is not a complete novice in the field) has suggested that is definitely an option....

Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Japanese nuclear agency, said steam or smoke was seen on Friday morning at reactor 2, where the containment vessel is damaged. He said the authorities could yet bury the reactors in sand and concrete, as happened at Chernobyl.

Nishiyama said the priority was adding water to the spent fuel pools. Asked about the "Chernobyl solution", he replied: "That solution is in the back of our minds, but we are focused on cooling the reactors down."

However, the head of the US nuclear regulatory commission, Gregory Jaczko, warned on Thursday that the units may not cool down for weeks. Jaczko said the situation "continues to be very dramatic", adding: "I really don't want to speculate on where this could go."

The plant's operators say workers are attempting to restore power to the cooling systems of two reactors by the end of the day and two more by Sunday. But there are fears that the systems themselves may have been damaged.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/18/japan-nuclear-crisis-iaea-information
 
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Aepervius said:
cement and burrying is only the last ditch solution when everything is lost. That does not yet seem to be the case.
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I'm interested why it's the last ditch solution - won't the reactors be screwed now anyway? Or are they still recoverable?
 
Pulvinar said:
Sorry, but that's not true: the available power doesn't need to match the load, only to be greater than it at any given moment. For large scale renewable power, read up on "super grid".
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No. it must match the grid somehow, you can't just dump excess power. Now windmills could be running with trimming, which could be altered to meet load, but because the energy potential of wind varies drastically over the course of minutes, there would need to be enormous overcapacity. Wouldn't help with dramatic wind drops though. One of the expectations was that having a variety of locations would help, but experience has shown that large area drops in wind power are not uncommon. Of course most of the country doesn't even have enough steady wind to be of use.

Solar has even more problems because lots of power is needed at night and the only available solar is on the other half of the world.
 
andyandy said:
So Kaku doesn't support nuclear power, well that doesn't invalidate his opinion that the best approach is the cement-based approach of Chernobyl - and it's hardly completely leftfield - indeed a Japanese spokesman for the nuclear industry (who i presume is not anti nuclear and is not a complete novice in the field) has suggested that is definitely an option....
...
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Kaku is an interesting guy, with some cool books. In some areas, though, like some other famous scientists, his politics motivate his positions.
 
andyandy said:
I'm interested why it's the last ditch solution - won't the reactors be screwed now anyway? Or are they still recoverable?
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I can imagine that it would be better to try to cool them down, wait a while, and then clean up the whole mess to get rid of it. Burrying would leave the mess where it is and would require constant checking, etc., to make sure that it stays "safe".

Of course that's just my speculation, but to me it seems logical that burrying it in place would have more long-term consequences. It may be cheaper to just burry it, however.

But as said, i can only speculate on that.

Greetings,

Chris
 
As a side thought....

Imagine a 9.0 earthquake on a hydroelectric dam....
 
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