Nuclear Energy - I need to vent/rant

[luddite]

I'm convinced that solar energy is not a complete solution to the energy issue(the solar park in Germany pretty much destroyed the last shreds of that fantasy for me), but I was wondering if anyone had info about the environmental impact of building the solar panels? I've seen opinions that it is as bad or worse than coal power plants, but I've never been able to find any solid facts.

Solar PV is good for peak, and likely to become more so if we stop using fossil fuels on peak and prices skyrocket. It's not so good for baseload. It's just too expensive, both in terms of embodied energy and monetary cost to compete with lower cost options, and would require storage for overnight delivery in addition.

As far as I know the biggest concern is the energy it takes to make a solar panel. A couple decades ago, it required more energy to create a solar panel than the panel delivered in its lifetime. Which is why solar power languished in niche markets - off grid and experimental applications.

These days, it generates enough energy to cover its manufacture in about two years. Some manufacturers claim a 1-year energy payback. If it lasts for 30 years, even if all the energy used to make it came from coal, it would still have an impact of 1/15 the impact of coal. In terms of emissions, the study below puts coal at 1000 g/kWh produced, combined cycle natural gas at 400 g/kWh, and every other power source below 50 g/kWh. Solar is still the highest in the group at 45 g/kWh, but that's less than 1/22 the emissions of coal.

http://www.nrel.gov/pv/thin_film/docs/lce2006.pdf

And if we're talking about speculative technologies, the impacts of solar PV are rapidly going down, with thin films, frameless panels and alternative materials dramatically decreasing the energy required in manufacture.

Solar thermal panels have had very low impacts and quick payoff times for decades.

 

[T-Diddy]

Disclosure: I have experience with US nuclear plants. I also admit I haven’t read this entire post, only the first few pages, due to its massive length. I have serious problems with Gengi’s (who seems to be leading the anti-nuke charge) issues:

Please cite the United Nuclear Corporation death. I’m willing to bet it had nothing to do with the nuclear systems: the only deaths I am aware of in the U.S. as the result of unintentional criticality were at the U.S. Army’s SL-1 reactor. Also, please cite for (U.S.) Subs. Even the lost Soviet subs were not lost as a result of the reactors. I do not believe you without verification. Also, you claim that there is no benefit to several large plants vs. multiple smaller ones due to transmission losses. That is why they jack up the voltage – resistance is the product of the square of current, but is not proportional to voltage, thus if you convert your power to potential, the transmission losses are negligible. Due to the added value with extra heat exchangers and other features on large plants, larger plants are indeed more efficient. Also, the largest cost in reactors is regulation, not fuel or facilities.

Further, your point about the British sub a few years back (the Tireless) had nothing to do with the reactor systems. It was a faulty manufacturing process that led to cracking of a primary coolant joint. The same thing can happen on any high-temp plant, such as a coal-burning plant. The only reason it caused a ruckus was that it was unpopular in Gibraltar.

Incidentally - Hindmost - great name and reference.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Professor Gerard K. O'Neill, in the wake of the Energy Crisis of the early 1970s, began writing a series of extensive proposals for the establishment of space-based solar power stations. Since in space the solar panels can capture 100% of the sunlight 100% of the time, they'd be much more useful and efficient than ground-based ones. The energy would then be beamed back, in the form of microwaves, to receiving stations on the Earth.

It's very interesting reading if nothing else. I'm not sure how the numbers he came up with in the late 1970s would compare to the current economic conditions though.

The undergrad project in energy conversion I worked on, 1980, with that as a general model, and some generous assumptions "pro" the method, came out with a 13% usable output from those space based solar energy generators. It was an interesting exercise, but also an eye opener regarding the costs of energy conversion and transmission.

DR

 

[Darth Rotor]

Finally read to the last page.

Thanks all for the discussion. Good to see the hysteria cheerfully presented, and the arguments against the anti nuke woo well stated.

No one in the thread, pro or con, seems cavalier on nuke safety, nor of the need to intelligently handle spent fuel, but the perceptions of those two matters are profoundly marked between the woo and those who know what the hell they are talking about.

A point on accidents and safety.

Within the last two years, I think it was 2005, BP had at its Texas City refinery an accident that killed/injured 100. That's a run of the mill petroleum processing facility. (Yes, they cocked it up a bit, did BP.)

From 1998 to 2002, DoD in the US lost 2000 people to accidents.

The citing of one or two deaths in a 1950's accident was an asinine attempt early in this thread to lean on fear mongering themes, but the accident matter, and human ability to screw up are significant factors in design and operation of any plant, (Hindmost, Belz, Dr Greening, all chimed in so nicely) be it a nuclear carrier, a coal plant, a breeder reactor, or a chemical plant.

You can mitigate risk, but you can't eliminate risk or hazard completely. You are dealing with humans.

Those of you preaching risk avoidance, versus risk management, are missing the point, in both energy production and the other matter, which Schneibster did the best at addressing.

None of this science and tech exists in a vacuum. It exists to address a human need or activity. Energy is, like it or not, interwoven in life, and life quality, and life choices, as of this writing, in November of 2007. If energy isn't found, it will become a scarce commodity, sure, but given the little thing about expectations, it is a critical commodity, like water has been for millenia. (still is)

People have gone to war over water, and water rights.

Hell, the US has shown it will go to war over oil and oil rights, along with the bulk of the industrial world on its team. See Kuwait, 1991 for the classic example. Other nations have so scrapped: China over the Spratleys, Iran and Iraq in the 80's.

It is Schneibster's pointing to second and third order dependencies that is often the hardest thing to get people to see, either in this thread, or IRL, when the mythology of the bogeyman of energy supply versus living standards, in combination, interferes with problem solving. Carter's cock up back in 1977, one of many reasons I thought he failed as President, is a case in how policy based on myth is damaging "unto the second and third generation." As a nuclear engineer (NOT SCIENTIST) he should have known better. Sorry, he was a peanut farmer at heart, when the last song was sung.

Y'all want to leave a better future for the next generation? (I do, I read the sentiments of both sides of this discussion as similar in intent.) Don't close out any options, or the conflict over energy, or the products it affords us, will arise, as conflicts have ever done among the various peoples of the earth.

Solve the problem, and don't close off any options.

Or, choose other variables to change in the equation. Address the problem of overpopulation, and start killing people off, to address Global warming and energy demand. Where gross demand goes down, the carbon foot print drops. That's an objective statement. (Of course, who lives, who dies, who decides? Not a pretty question.)

That path is not a solution I think any of us prefers, but science also provides the tech to pull that off.

Like it or not, it's there.

One way or another, the problems arising from energy supply and demand, and thus energy production, will be solved. Will this problem be solved by people who solve problems, and their methods, or by people who cater to hysteria, and their methods?

I know where I want that answer to fall, and thanks, Dr Buzzo, for a great thread iniiation. This is one of the best multi variable problem discussions I've seen in a while, and another feather in the cap of the S & T forum crowd. I mostly lurk, and learn, here.

Good stuff.

PS: luddite and robinson. As Lonewulf tried to explain to you: in Corpus Christi, regarding air conditioning, from April through september, you can plan on 90's to high 90's most days, humitidy 30-60%. Some days, though, it gets really hot and humid.

PPS: for Kevin and ludditeI agree with you that conservation and wiser usage is a part of the answer.

DR

 

[Schneibster]

First rule: the world ain't simple. If it was, we'd have developed the perfect society several thousand years ago. Always remember the Law of Unintended Consequences. I.e., be careful what you wish for- you may get it.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

I will have to find the article I found it in, but the number one cause of workplace deaths in the nuclear industry is falling, as from a ladder or catwalk or something. A close second is having something fall on you. These are both commonly the number one cause in many work environments. The actual number is small but it happens in any industry.

The only deaths I am aware of in anywhere besides the Soviet Union, due to a power producing reactor malfunctioning were three at the SL-1 Reactor in 1961. That was back in the dark ages of nuclear energy reactors. I don't mean to write off the Soviet Union, but their safety measures were deplorable... or simply non-existant.

 

[Lonewulf]

Or, choose other variables to change in the equation. Address the problem of overpopulation, and start killing people off, to address Global warming and energy demand. Where gross demand goes down, the carbon foot print drops. That's an objective statement. (Of course, who lives, who dies, who decides? Not a pretty question.)

I have a Modest Proposal: Let's eat all the poor kids. Especially anyone from Ethiopia.

...What?

 

[Darth Rotor]

I have a Modest Proposal: Let's eat all the poor kids. Especially anyone from Ethiopia.

...What?

Given that this would be the exploitation of a lean meat source, that's not the Atkins Diet, it's the Addis Ababa High Protein Diet. Is this good for people with cholesterol issues, Doktor Mengele Lonewulf?

(I might go to Hell for that one.)

Jonathan Swift would surely approve of your jest.

DR

 

[Lonewulf]

Given that this would be the exploitation of a lean meat source, that's not the Atkins Diet, it's the Addis Ababa High Protein Diet. Is this good for people with cholesterol issues, Doktor Mengele Lonewulf?

Only if you eat the skinny, healthy children. The fat ones can be fed to anorexics.

Jonathan Swift would surely approve of your jest.

I dare say that Jonathan Swift stole my thesis for himself, the time-travelling bastard.

 

[Hindmost]

I realize this is from an earlier part of the discussion, but I wasn't paying attention then, so...

I'm convinced that solar energy is not a complete solution to the energy issue(the solar park in Germany pretty much destroyed the last shreds of that fantasy for me), but I was wondering if anyone had info about the environmental impact of building the solar panels? I've seen opinions that it is as bad or worse than coal power plants, but I've never been able to find any solid facts.

I have had difficulty finding definitive stuff on the environmental impact associated with building and installing solar cells. However, I did find a link or two that gives some info.

http://www.clca.columbia.edu/papers/21-EUPVSC-Alsema-DeWild-Fthenakis.pdf

http://www.energybulletin.net/17219.html

It appears to be optimistic. I do not know enough about manufacture of solar cells to give a good estimation.

glenn

T-Diddy: A fellow Niven fan I assume...

 

[Lonewulf]

Hm, seems like Nuclear in Europe (not the U.S.) gives off less greenhouse gas than Wind, Biomass, and even present and projected solar.

...even I'm surprised about that.

European Nuclear gives off ... uh... 6. Derived from the formula (g CO2-eq/kWh), Wind has 11, and projected solar gives off 15 (present-day gives off 32 for multi-Si and 25 CdTe). USA nuclear gives off 25.

Meanwhile, fossil fuels go up into the hundreds, from the lowest being 160 to the highest being 400.

And no, I don't quite know what these numbers mean. I'm dumb.