Satan_Klaus said:

I understand that it should be impossible to blow up a water moderated reactor by accident, but that is why I included miscalculations, natural disasters and willful destruction. If someone puts enough thought and C4 into a nuclear plant, he WILL get it to blow up. The point I wanted to make was that Tchernobyl was a demonstration of the worst case. No matter what happens, it can’t get worse than this. And it was bad, but it certainly was not the end of the world.

You need to take a closer look at modern reactor technology before making assertions like that. I don’t think you have a clear idea of how they are designed and built. Even a wilful attempt to blow one up would fail, short of having a professional demolition team come in with drills to plant charges. The possibility of any man-made attempt , or in fact, a natural ‘act of God’ doing in one of these plants such that there would be a significant release of radiation or radioactive material is vanishingly small.

I understand your point, however any comparison to Чорнобиль is just not applicable when it comes to modern NPPs – and I hope that you will excuse me if I feel obliged to drive this point home for the benefit of anyone else reading this.

The increasing penetration of wind power has exacerbated the problems of delivering reliable power to users. “Because wind energy is unstable, it is a pollutant and affects the safety of the power grid,” said Hu Xueha, the deputy chief engineer of China’s Power Grid Research Institute. Furthermore, the transmission capacity of the grid hasn’t kept up with the growth of China’s wind farms. According to recent data from the China Power Union, only 72% (8.94 GW) of China’s total wind power capacity was connected to the grid.

Ref: Great Leap Forward for China’s Wind Energy

In addition, increasing China’s wind power capacity means increasing coal use as well, to provide power when the wind isn’t available. “China will need to add a substantial amount of coal-fired power capacity by 2020 in line with its expanding economy, and the idea is to bring some of the capacity earlier than necessary in order to facilitate wind-power generation,” according to Shi Pengfei, vice president of the Chinese Wind Power Association.

Ref: China’s Wind Farms Come With a Catch: Coal Plants

Shi is also concerned about the high cost of wind power, which makes the industry dependent on the government’s willingness to subsidize renewable power. “It isn’t that wind power is showing signs of over-heating. It has already overheated.

Ref: Wind power growth in China’s deserts ignored financial risks

The National People’s Congress permanent committee passed a law that requires the Chinese energy companies to purchase all the electricity produced by the renewable energy sector.

Ref: Alternative energy news

That is what they have to say, which looks suspiciously like what is going down here with wind. Winds greatest asset it seems, is its capacity to mesmerise politicians of every stripe. Even Chinese ‘technocrats in Beijing – unburdened by the opinions of their people,’ are sucked in it seems, and yet the promised power never quite seems to materialize. Yet somehow more fossil-fuel needs to be burned when it is found that wind is writting checks with its mouth that can’t be cashed.

Does anyone else see a pattern here?

        DV82XL said:

Satan_Klaus is not correct in his implication that the failure of a modern reactor can have the same impact as Чорнобиль even under the worst case scenario. That is because, unlike the RBMK reactor design, modern light and heavy water reactors have containment, the effectiveness of which was proved at Three-Mile Island. Also the very construction of these modern reactors precludes a catastrophic melt-down under most conditions because of the void coefficients built into the design.

I understand that it should be impossible to blow up a water moderated reactor by accident, but that is why I included miscalculations, natural disasters and willful destruction. If someone puts enough thought and C4 into a nuclear plant, he WILL get it to blow up. The point I wanted to make was that Tchernobyl was a demonstration of the worst case. No matter what happens, it can’t get worse than this. And it was bad, but it certainly was not the end of the world.

Multiplying the number of NPPs by twenty will multiply the likelihood of an accident by twenty, it won’t increase the severity of the accident.

We have to keep two things separate, and that goes for both sides of the argument. On the one hand we have what is currently happening or what is financed and/or has political support, and on the other hand what is possible, only limited by current understanding of the technology.

Nuclear power is a proven technology and building this number of power plants should be possible with a concerted effort. It won’t be cheap, though, and it is unlikely to have political support, at least in Europe.

Going all renewables would be an experiment, but it seems feasible, albeit at a much higher price. We might have to pay ten times the price we pay for our power today, but I believe it could be done…but I don’t see it happening. It’s just too expensive.

So there is the ‘possible’ on one hand and the ‘likely’ on the other. I think both scenarios, all nuclear and all renewable are possible in this absolute sense, but both are highly unlikely.

Again, this is the realm of the ‘likely’. And yes, Asia is building NPPs at a rapid pace. They now have the money to afford the relatively high initial capital expense of nuclear power. They also want to be independent of foreign resources.

Interestingly, China is also building quite a number of wind power plants. Usually, the technocrats in Beijing – unburdened by the opinions of their people – make very sound, rational decisions. So analyzing this might shed some light on the economy of wind power. Is this just a testbed for export turbines? Is wind actually economical for them? Or are the Chinese afraid of being ‘left in the dust’ and simply ‘do as the west does’? I don’t have a pre-made answer for that and would be interested what people have to say to that.

Satan_Klaus

        Satan_Klaus said:

Modern light water reactors are much safer than the design used in Tschernobyl, but in the final analysis, when taking into account human error, miscalculations, natural disasters and even intentional destruction like war, sabotage or terrorism, a catastrophic failure can not be said to be impossible.

Satan_Klaus is not correct in his implication that the failure of a modern reactor can have the same impact as Чорнобиль even under the worst case scenario. That is because, unlike the RBMK reactor design, modern light and heavy water reactors have containment, the effectiveness of which was proved at Three-Mile Island. Also the very construction of these modern reactors precludes a catastrophic melt-down under most conditions because of the void coefficients built into the design.

Furthermore the scope of the Чорнобиль accident, and the reaction of the Ukrainian has been blown out of proportion for political ends, and much of what is going on there is not supportable by the science. For pity sake, downtown Hiroshima and Nagasaki, each which received a greater radioactive hit than the Exclusion Zone, were repopulated sooner.

No we have not. The belief that renewable technologies can pick up the slack from combustion technologies is simply not supportable by fact. Imagining it can does not make it so. The fact is that more and more power is being generated by coal and gas every day, and the numbers, that is the amount of power needed to replace them cannot possibly be made up by renewable energy and even the industry itself admits to this. Nuclear energy is the only technology that can even hope to produce the amount of electricity needed to run a modern society.

The only hubris in play here is the breathtakingly arrogant belief that the West is still in a position to call the shots on this matter anymore. Asia is committing to nuclear power, and there is not a damned thing the West can do about it. We ether follow, or get left in their dust.

        BMS said:

God, I should hope so!

Er … no. Not by a long shot.

Perhaps this is the source of your deep confusion. You apparently think that a modest size nuclear power plant costs $3 trillion, an amount whose size on the order of the entire federal budget of the US.

Sorry, I meant USD3,000 million, or USD 3 billion.

        Satan_Klaus said:

Modern light water reactors are much safer than the design used in Tschernobyl, but in the final analysis, when taking into account human error, miscalculations, natural disasters and even intentional destruction like war, sabotage or terrorism, a catastrophic failure can not be said to be impossible.

That’s exactly my point.

I am not against industrialization or technology. However, there are approximately 400 NPPs today (some are in the process of decomissioning ) accounting for about 6% of of total power production. To replace all fossil fuels at present capacity (no growth) it would require at least 6,000 to 7,000 new NPP’s of present average power, i.e. 18 to 20 times the current total number of plants. With that number the likelihood of a plant being sited close to a major urban center will increase considerably, and the next nuclear catastrophe will have that much more chance of being even more devastating than any in the past. To achieve that number of NPPs by 2050, there would have to be about 4 nuclear plants completed every week from now until 2050, assuming a lead time of 5 years. I don’t see that kind of investment in the pipeline – average USD 600 billion per year world wide starting today. For the US (and now China) which consumes 25% of the world’s energy that is USD150 billion per year. I don’t see even 5% of that in the near future. Then again by 2050 total energy demand could be double present values at 2.5 to 3.0% growth per year.

Again, exactly my point – we have reached a stage of technological development where we can pick the most environmentally benign technologies to satisfy or fulfil our needs. And I don’t think nuclear comes at the head of that list. We can still use it, but there’s no need to make it our exclusive or even main source of energy. And only in good time, when all the potential dangers and drawbacks have been minimized to an acceptable level. The much vaunted “latest” generation NPP being built in Finland and France by Areva are currently running behind schedule and grossly exceeding their budgeted costs and undergoing constant revisions in basic design and safety features, improvising even as they are being constructed – a far from perfect design, and yet to be proven in performance.

Yes, greed and technological hubris plays a big part in the choices that have been made in the past. That is what we have to eliminate.

        Satan_Klaus said:

I would like to challenge that assumption.

snip

Changing something out of its natural state in not necessarily bad for animal life. This is something many of the radical environment faction don’t understand, I’m surprised that you don’t either.

Satan_Klaus

Actually it is not just an assumption.

While what you say is true that life may not be destroyed by these installations, the ecology will change in ways that have other impacts. For example most areas that would be ideal for tidal power are already being exploited economically by other industries, fisheries for example, among others, or are the access to major harbours, or the mechanism by which riverine silt is transported out to sea. Disturbing the tides in these areas can have major consequences far beyond the value of any power that can be extracted. Nor is the impact just local. Ocean hydrology especially in littoral zones is poorly understood, and some models show that a major project on the Bay of Fundie, for example, could have impacts on the shoreline as far south as Cap Cod.

Wave farms can result in the displacement of commercial and recreational fishermen from productive fishing grounds, can change the pattern of beach sand, and may represent hazards to safe navigation. These may be or not be issues in every location, however the maze of regulatory gymnastics that is be required because of the possibility, has made money very scarce for such projects. This is not helped by the fact that models of the wave/shore system are incomplete.

So in the end prior use will probably be the determining factor with this technology, and since the shores are normally populated by white people, simply flooding them out, as is done to the natives, for hydro projects in Northern Canada, isn’t likely to be a solution.

        DV82XL said:

Other renewable modes like tidal and wave power are worse. In practice, only relatively small amounts of energy are available from these, and extracting it will have devastating effects on the ocean ecosystem. Good sites for tidal power are all in extraordinarily rich and ecologically fragile straits and estuaries that are critically important spawning grounds for marine life. Strong tides are what make these waters so productive: their turbulence stirs up nutrients vital for life. Tides are indispensable for life in shallow seas. Without them, ocean life would come to a halt. Wave power risks beaches, fishing grounds, marine life migration lanes, and surface transportation corridors. Extraction of their energy may seem attractive, but in reality there is very little energy to be had – and what there is comes at high ecological/economic cost.

I would like to challenge that assumption.

When you put an artificial structure into the ocean, you will destroy some marine life in the short term. But what you have created is basically an artificial reef, a biological niche that is generally considered more ‘valuable’ than plain ocean floor. In the past, this has regularly happened to the supports of oil platforms, which are teeming with life (unless they blow up). Now when you go out of your way to put something like that right into an ocean current or active tidal area, you will attract even more life. Most of these creatures eat by filtering seawater. What they need is a place to hold on to, that is exposed to the flow. Most marine life will love tidal plants – and that is the reason why those things won’t work: They will be loved to death and clogged up. And maintenance, even the simple act of cleaning the equipment, is really expensive if it’s underwater.

Changing something out of its natural state in not necessarily bad for animal life. This is something many of the radical environment faction don’t understand, I’m surprised that you don’t either.

Satan_Klaus

        Pierre_the_idiot said:

Even if I agree with the thesis that renewables have not made much contribution to CO2 emission reduction up till 2005, “have not delivered” doesn’t logically imply “Cannot deliver”. That is the contention that I find totally unacceptable. Also even if renewables cannot fulfil all future energy requirements or completely replace fossil fuels, it doesn’t imply that only nuclear power can and should do the job to the exclusion of all else. Not even the nuclear industry has made that claim. No doubt the contribution of solar and wind or other renewables (except hydro) have not been very significant up to 2005 (the latest figures cited for CO2 emission)….

The failure of wind and solar are not in their CO2 contributions, or lack thereof, but their inability to produce reliable, dispatchable power. When they are put on the grid they have to be backed up 100% with spinning reserve from other more traditional generators, and where hydro is not available now for that task, it means gas or coal combustion. Because of that, wind and solar are stupid little toys and they will forever remain toys. Storage and distributed generation is not the answer ether. The penetration and the amount of extra capacity each site would require is higher that the available resource in almost all cases, and that is assuming the storage and distribution technology is available, which it is not.

Other renewable modes like tidal and wave power are worse. In practice, only relatively small amounts of energy are available from these, and extracting it will have devastating effects on the ocean ecosystem. Good sites for tidal power are all in extraordinarily rich and ecologically fragile straits and estuaries that are critically important spawning grounds for marine life. Strong tides are what make these waters so productive: their turbulence stirs up nutrients vital for life. Tides are indispensable for life in shallow seas. Without them, ocean life would come to a halt. Wave power risks beaches, fishing grounds, marine life migration lanes, and surface transportation corridors. Extraction of their energy may seem attractive, but in reality there is very little energy to be had – and what there is comes at high ecological/economic cost.

None of these will never power an advanced civilization. They are a waste of our economic resources, our attention and our time. If you need to see more proof, just look through this site, we have been over these arguments again and again.

You have been doing little but making the implication that renewables are making a positive impact; it is the core of your own argument, and you are doing it again in the comment above.

Pierre_the_idiot, indeed