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Merged nuclear power safe?

Belz... said:
But is it really a problem, or just a perceived problem ?
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The accumulation of waste has not reached a level where it presents a serious problem for the moment.

But that time will come if political and technological issues are not resolved in a timely manner.

And asa I have mentioned before, we tend to be a recationary culture rather than a proactive culture.
 
r-j said:
His idea of "To put it into perspective" is to literally say "if you were at ground zero during the atomic bombings of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, you had a 4% greater chance of dying of lung cancer"

Isn't that so rational and appealing to the normal person? Being at ground zero of an atomic bomb isn't really that bad at all! Not nearly as bad as smoking!
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The epic fail here is you. That's quite obviously not what he's saying, since the death toll from Hiroshima wasn't dominated by lung cancer. I further note that while you're launching into hysterics about the style, you can't contest the actual facts he presents. Strange, that.

The mind that can actually say that, and think it soothes the fears and concerns of normal people, I can't fathom that level of denial.
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Said the poster who thought linking to a 9/11 truther would lend credibility to your arguments.
 
Sword_Of_Truth said:
Coal pollutants cause or contribute to thirty thousand deaths per year in the United States alone. Coal plants also release thousands of tons of radioactive waste directly into local soil and water tables. My power where I live comes from coal.

I would have less radiation in my food and air if I lived near a nuke plant.
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Unless you live in the Fukushima district, or other zones with heavy fallout.

I've seen the 30,000 deaths a year many times, but nobody ever provides any evidence. You would think lawyers would get involved on that. That's a lot of money if you can nail the coal burning bastards who are killing people. That's like a hundred people every day. Dead.
 
r-j said:
I have to agree. The nuclear agenda is pretty clear to see, just as you seem to be able to view valid concerns over real dangers as "an agenda".
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When you start using that kind of rhetoric tactic, people around you are bound to notice that you are being dishonest.
 
uruk said:
Fortunatetly there's always wind somewhere (like the Texas plains, constant wind nearly 365) for most wind conditions gearing and feathering keeps the turbines running in most conditions. Except for micro burts, tornados, etc. Anyhoos. Wind turbines are not meant to be a sole source of electrical power. It's just one part of a renewable whole.
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Then what's meant to be the main source, if not wind, or solar, or geo ? All three of them combined ? Not good enough. And if we go all-nuke, there's simply no need for them at all.

Havent heard about the noise thing since they are usually outside of city limits and in open fields and pastures.
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Does a winmill make noise when no one is around to hear it ?

The bird thing is a bit over blown. the number of birds killed by wind turbines is very small compared to other sources of bird mortality.
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They still kill more than nuke plants. ;)
 
Belz... said:
How is that relevant ? If the waste is stored, say, on the bedrock below any water source, what exactly is going to happen ?
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Well, so far the long term waste is not being stored below ground. Thanks to our hard working lads in congress, such a facility is being stalled or put on hold pending what ever issues our elected officials need to resolve.

So for the time being this material is being stored on site. The waste is piling up at working nuclear plants or at decommissioned sites untill congress pulls it's collective finger out of it's backside and approves the underground storage site.
 
Belz... said:
Then what's meant to be the main source, if not wind, or solar, or geo ? All three of them combined ? Not good enough. And if we go all-nuke, there's simply no need for them at all.
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Why does there have to be a main or single source?
If you include other renewable power sources, you can cut down the amount of nuclear waste you produce.

By the way Nuclear power plant also consume freshwater. Of course it is only half of the amount used by residential consumption.



Does a winmill make noise when no one is around to hear it ?
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If no one is around to hear the noise, then there is no one to complain about it.



They still kill more than nuke plants. ;)
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Not according to statistics. A nuclear powerplant is a building type structure. Re-read what the avian mortality rate for buildings are.
 
uruk said:
Well, so far the long term waste is not being stored below ground. Thanks to our hard working green nutters, who put organized pressure on, and are fearmongering the lads in congress, such a facility is being stalled or put on hold pending what ever issues our elected officials need to resolve until these nutters come to their senses.

So for the time being this material is being stored on site. The waste is piling up at working nuclear plants or at decommissioned sites untill congress pulls it's the greenie-nutjobs pull their collective finger out of it's their backside and approves the underground storage site. start to become more rational instead of driven by irrational fears.
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There, much closer to the truth, IMHO. At least over here the politicians bow to the pressure of these greenies. Start one project, greenies go havoc, and it gets stopped. Another solution/site is found, project started, greenies go havoc, it gets stopped. Rinse and repeat. And during all that the greenies have the balls to complain that there is no site/solution found yet. If anything, they have to point their fingers at themselves, because they are causing all the trouble that blocks people from getting things done.

Greetings,

Chris
 
uruk said:
Why does there have to be a main or single source?
If you include other renewable power sources, you can cut down the amount of nuclear waste you produce.

By the way Nuclear power plant also consume freshwater. Of course it is only half of the amount used by residential consumption.
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The problem is that renewables are a huge waste of resources and will consume a massive amount of space. As i have written already, just putting up windmills and solar panels is just the beginning of the problem with renewables. No "smart grid" can help you with that, despite the fantasy stories they like to tell us.

Can you show us how all that is supposed to work, how many resources and installations are needed? And please, use numbers that make sense and check them yourself before posting, and do not repeat some fantasy-land dreams about how easy it all is. Hard numbers, hard facts. So far, no one has ever been able to produce numbers that have any relation to reality. And once you are done with getting to the bottom of it, use those numbers to tell us what electricity will cost then, and also tell us who is supposed to pay for that.

I'd recommend you that you look up on the "EEG" in Germany (Erneuerbares Energien Gesetz). It is eye-opening, because it shows what massive subsidies are required and used up right now for a very marginal result. Oh, yes, i know. We can not call that "subsidies", as a european court has ruled. But the effect is exactly the same, the difference is just that instead of the government handing over that money and collecting it back through taxes, we all (the consumers) have to pay a high premium for every kWh that we use that goes goes directly into that.

Without that no one would ever build a wind farm or put solar panels on their roofs. Because they would make no profit at all with that.

And water isn't "consumed" as such. Most water is needed for cooling, that's why these things are often placed close to rivers or the sea. The remainder can easily be decontaminated if needed and put back into circulation. See, pretty much as we do with the water we use to flush our toilets, etc.

Greetings,

Chris

ETA: We already pumped in excess of 100 billion Euros into renewables during the past years, here in Germany, and all we get from that is a meager few percent contribution of the overall electricity demand.
 
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Christian Klippel said:
If anything, they have to point their fingers at themselves, because they are causing all the trouble that blocks people from getting things done.
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China and Russia have no greenies to stop them from solving the nuclear waste problem.
 
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r-j said:
China and Russia have no greenies to stop them from solving the nuclear waste problem.
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Do they have a "nuclear waste problem" to begin with, or are you again making stuff up? Do _we_ have a "nuclear waste problem" anyways, or is that "problem" just something that the greenies are telling us exists, but does so only in their heads? Or to be more exact: Isn't it so that the "problem" is actually caused by them, because they actively work against any plans to handle that "problem", and also massively block the deployment of new technology that could make use of that "waste"?

But hey, don't worry, no one here really expects a honest answer from you anymore. That chance is long gone.
 
uruk said:
Why does there have to be a main or single source?
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It doesn't have to, but those power sources can't cope with our needs currently.

If you include other renewable power sources, you can cut down the amount of nuclear waste you produce.
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In exchange for depleting our copper and iron supplies and increasing rare earth waste.

By the way Nuclear power plant also consume freshwater. Of course it is only half of the amount used by residential consumption.
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It doesn't "consume" it.

Not according to statistics. A nuclear powerplant is a building type structure. Re-read what the avian mortality rate for buildings are.
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Alright, then. Consider my argument retracted.
 
Belz... said:
It's amazing how easy it is to get people to act against their own best interest.
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If by "get people to act against their own best interest" you mean "forced to pay for it by passing laws that make them pay", then yes.

Here's some info on the EEG on the English WP, the one on the German WP is of course much more detailed.

Everyone (that is, business consumers as well as private consumers) has to pay it, and was 2.047 Euro-Cent per kWh in 2010, and is expected to rise to 2.5 Euro-Cents for 2011. Of course, the more renewables are installed, the higher the premium gets.

Take a look at the tables here from the German WP. A home owner who has installed a PV system on his roof in 2004, with a capacity up to 30 kW, will get 57.4 Euro-Cent per kWh he produces! For 20 years, fixed!

In comparison, if you have a contract with a rather high-priced electricity company, you pay around 17 to 20 Euro-Cent per kWh. And that includes taxes, charges for the grid usage, and all sorts of other stuff. The average cost of producing one kWh ("Strom-Gestehungskosten") from conventional sources is below 7 Euro-Cent for more expensive methods, down to 3-4 Euro-Cents for nuclear.

That means that renewables get way more per kWh produced than it is really worth on the market. And to make things worse, grid operators and electricity companies are _forced_ to buy that electricity from renewables for these prices. Oh, wait, i'm wrong. That wasn't making it worse. What really makes it much, much worse is the following (take a seat and swallow any fluids/food you have in your mouth): In case the grid cant handle the feed-in of renewables, because for example the wind is blowing well during a low-demand period, the renewables get disconnected from the grid while they still get paid for the electricity they could have fed into it! We are paying for electricity that is generated but never fed into the grid or being used at all! I am not kidding you!

Oh, and why can't hey feed it into the grid, you ask? Well, guess what. The operators of renewables pay exactly nothing to extend/renew the grid. They simply use the existing one and want the operators of regular power plants to pay for installing/extending the grid. Really. Now they complain how bad the four big electricity companies are, because they never extended the grid to accommodate all their shiny renewables but instead focused to build/expand the grid to the demands these companies have with their regular power plants!

Really, what's going on over here is pure insanity, devoid of any logic and reason.

Greetings,

Chris

ETA: And before you ask: no, we do not have enough storage capacity for the excess electricity produced by renewables. Why? Well, guess what. Because they prefer to install windmills and solar panels and all that, but they do not want to build storage systems. They want (who would have thought _that_) the grid-operators/electricity-companies/general public to pay for that. They are happy because they get paid their 20-years-fixed-rates no matter what. Yes, basically you can put some windmills out there and get paid for every kWh they produce, without feeding anything of that into the grid or into storage.
 
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uruk said:
Fortunatetly there's always wind somewhere (like the Texas plains, constant wind nearly 365)
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The power curve for a wind turbine is steeper than the cube of wind speed. The cube comes from K = 0.5*mv^2 times the rate at which mass flows past the turbine, which is proportional to wind speed. It's steeper than that because wind turbines are designed to be most efficient at quite high wind speeds.

The result of this attrocious power curve is that going from 8 m/s wind to 10 m/s wind doubles the power output; going from 8 m/s wind to 6 m/s wind halves the power output.

This is your nearly constant wind 365:

ercotjanjuly06.jpg


It's a couple of years out of date, so the scale on the y-axis has changed. But there's no reason to believe variability has improved any, because weather systems are still the same size and just putting more wind turbines in the same ERCOT(texas) area doesn't really make your wind farms more geographically diverse.
 
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