How to make Nuclear Power safer

[AndrewJ]

Gday Rom

"they" wont be around in the near future.

"They", will be pollies, warlords, dictators, priests, etc etc
It is human nature that someone will always want to be in control
and will rise to the top when someone else falls,
and they will all want subservience and money from the population
to pay for them.
Only thing that changes is who is on top
are they benevolent or not
and what will they tax to fund themselves.
The current political model we have here now isnt too bad considering,
but unless they address the fact that if an ever increasing economy
is required to survive "economically", what is the end result???
Nature doesnt like monocultures

Andrew

[el_draco (Rom)]

Kind of prefer a monarchy myself...
Not perfect, but Liz beats the box heads we have to choose from hands down
Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves...
Oooh, what I said

Cor blimey, I can hear the bleedin Scots and Irish squarkin already....

[xelasnave]

Having a chat and it was presented to me the cost of decommissioning a plant was twice it cost to build it..Please tell me that is negative propaganda
I don't want to argue with who told me but I would like an opinion from an advocate of NP to get a balance at least.

[AndrewJ]

Gday Alex

As i posted earlier in this thread

There is no money in cleaning up after you have made your profit.
What i think will be very interesting with nuclear power is how the "utilities" that own them and make money "now" will behave when they have to be decommissioned. Even if there is no accident along the way, the costs of dealing with radioctive waste wont be cheap, and i'll bet some operators will declare bankruptcy and/or run for the hills, just like happened with asbestos when the true costs came out.

If the reactor is owned by the state, then it may be decommissioned properly, but if the reactor is a "commercial" entity, then i have grave fears that the end of life "clean up" will not have been allowed for or funded.
You only have to read the litany of "cost saving" measures that were exposed as a result of Fukushima to see that commercial expediency will always override what is required to do it properly. Just the nature of a "good economy"

Andrew

[PeterEde (Peter)]

No one has watched Barry's video have they. Where all these questions were asked and answered.
Any government that does not put in a decommissioning clause is negligent. That goes with ANY mine or industrial plant. It's costed over the life of the plant. Having said that a Penrice plant in Port Adelaide is closed and they are broke. But the state Labor government is not going to make them clean it up. I guess it'll be left derelict for years

[xelasnave]

Thanks Andrew and thanks Peter.
I must have missed something I don't recall seeing a cost of build to cost of demotion anywhere..
Anyways great inputs everyone I am probably less anti than before.
Shouldn't we save coal for plastics and fertilizer and uranium for those long space flights when we abandon this planet

[PeterEde (Peter)]

With a complete combustion or fission, approx. 8 kWh of heat can be generated from 1 kg of coal, approx. 12 kWh from 1 kg of mineral oil and around 24,000,000 kWh from 1 kg of uranium-235. Related to one kilogram, uranium-235 contains two to three million times the energy equivalent of oil or coal. The illustration shows how much coal, oil or natural uranium is required for a certain quantity of electricity. Thus, 1 kg natural uranium - following a corresponding enrichment and used for power generation in light water reactors - corresponds to nearly 10,000 kg of mineral oil or 14,000 kg of coal and enables the generation of 45,000 kWh of electricity.

Energy density of uranium is amazing by comparison to coal.
We make much more mess of the environment digging up coal than we do digging up uranium

[AndrewJ]

Gday Peter

Any government that does not put in a decommissioning clause is negligent.

Dont go to sleep with your head under the pillow then, as the tooth faeries will come and take all your teeth.
All governments are negligent, just you seem to refuse to believe it.
Most make contracts that are "commercial in confidence", and are designed for short term gain where heads they win and tails you lose.
Just look at the recent coal mine fires in the Latrobe Valley.
Mines supposed to be rehabilitated that werent.
Mines that had their fire fighting systems removed/not maintained.
Pollution limits "adjusted" as required to ensure no problem exists.
Sorry, but govt and private industry doesnt give a $h!t other than how to make a profit and keep the economy going, and you need to take that into account when determining what the end results may be of a commercially viable proposition.

Andrew

[PeterEde (Peter)]

I worked for BHP at Olympic Dam. I saw the plans for reverting the land to it's "Original" state at the end of the mine life. Obviously having a plan and being made to do are two different things.
Olympic Dam is backfilled as ore is removed. That just leaves dismantling of the plant.
Australia is fast running out of exportable anything. All we have left are our resources

[Amaranthus (Barry)]

As Peter said, watch the video. All the issues are covered there in the Q&A:

Click here to load the video

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I'm the bald guy on the right

[el_draco (Rom)]

Originally Posted by PeterEde

Any government that does not put in a decommissioning clause is negligent. That goes with ANY mine or industrial plant. It's costed over the life of the plant. Having said that a Penrice plant in Port Adelaide is closed and they are broke. But the state Labor government is not going to make them clean it up. I guess it'll be left derelict for years

Hallelujah to that brother. Queenstown in Tassie is the perfect example. Many years of toxic waste poured into the rivers to the point where they may as well be radioactive, and nobody is responsible for the clean-up...

[PeterEde (Peter)]

Believe it or not I am a "Greenie" at heart. That is why I'd rather see one nuke plant instead of thousands of wind turbines. I love my countryside pristine as possible.
But a country does not grow without mining in our case. So it becomes a bit of give and take. In moderation of course. And every site should be forced to clean up after

[clive milne]

Originally Posted by PeterEde

Any government that does not put in a decommissioning clause is negligent.

From the perspective of a corporation, the most important interpretation of the term 'negligent ' is: Failing to act in a way to maximise profit.
When a government's actions appear negligent with respect to the best interests of the general population but are consistent with corporate values, it is easy to label them as (insert invective here) However, it is likely that they are functioning as vassals (to multinational corporations)

That goes with ANY mine or industrial plant. It's costed over the life of the plant.

Neither coal nor oil is costed to include the deferred costs associated with pollution. If it were the case, these sources of energy would be untenable in an open market. The fact that fossil fuels are promoted as our only viable option simply illustrates the extent to which the functions of media and government have been abrogated (globally)
If the above statement is correct, it follows that; nuclear power is not compatible with the hierarchy of values prescribed by our current political/financial system....
If it came down to a choice, I would prefer responsible application of nuclear technology over government by, for and of the corporations (which is intrinsically far more toxic).

[el_draco (Rom)]

Originally Posted by PeterEde

Believe it or not I am a "Greenie" at heart. That is why I'd rather see one nuke plant instead of thousands of wind turbines. I love my countryside pristine as possible.
But a country does not grow without mining in our case. So it becomes a bit of give and take. In moderation of course. And every site should be forced to clean up after

... and that's why we are screwed. The vast majority have been conned by the "sustainable growth" oxymoron. Complete twaddle. We need massive contraction and then long term stability. Excellent National Press club on Saturday. Worth looking at.

[Barrykgerdes]

The last thing we need is nuclear power on Earth. It will create more pollution than a millenium of coal and gas. Let the Sun create all the nuclear power we want.

Wind power is too expensive and erratic. Besides the more energy we remove from the circulating winds the more it will alter climate.

The best source of power is to build dams to store water when it rains and release the stored energy to drive generators. However we can't store enough energy this way to supply all our needs.

In the short term the safest and cheapest is coal fired power that has been improved in efficiency over the years so much that all the pollutants are removed before the left over CO2 is released to continue the carbon cycle.

Of course this surmise won't go over well with the people that are pushing political agenda.

[PeterEde (Peter)]

We really don't look past our nose these days do we? Coal produces tonnes and tonnes of waste. Toxic waste every single day. It takes thousands of tonnes more coal to produce the same energy.
Next gen plants use recycled/spent fuel as fuel.
We can stop digging up uranium and coal today and power the earth for 500 years. Chernobyl is the only accident to cause death. Future on the dwg board reactors are passive in that they can not melt down as Chernobyl did or fukushima. The systems shut down due to natural physics.
And clean coal and a belief in that is not pushing an agenda?

[xelasnave]

Peter I have found your presentation of facts persuasive and although I have reservations you have made me feel happier about the prospect of NP.
It seems finally the real problem is sufficient regulation
Coal could have been handled better
Our subservience to the market needs adjustment such that money and profit are not the only considerations for sustainability

[avandonk]

There is no simple solution.

We are all living on stored wealth in the form of fossil fuels. This has allowed us to overrun Planet Earth like vermin. Yes I am one of these vermin.


If all the current known fossil fuel reserves were burnt at the current increasing rates we would have a planet that was uninhabitable. We have about ten years before the tipping points of our climate occur.

Any form of nuclear fission power just puts this grim future back by about fifty years.

The long held promise of unlimited energy from fusion reactors is tainted by the fact that the reactor vessel made of exotic metals will become structurally unsafe due to the high neutron flux within about twenty years. These reactors are too dangerous to dismantle! The solution is to build another next door etc.

We have a nuclear reactor that will last for about another five billion years.

It is the Sun.

If we do not learn how to use renewable energy and limit our greed to this limited energy, we do not have a future as a species.

It is down to ALL of US!

Bert

[clive milne]

Originally Posted by avandonk

If all the current known fossil fuel reserves were burnt at the current increasing rates we would have a planet that was uninhabitable. We have about ten years before the tipping points of our climate occur.

It think the consensus in the scientific community is that we can burn no more than 20 to 25% of current known reserves before the feedback loops become stronger climate levers than our own activities. It might even be less.
I have zero confidence that we will avoid that outcome.

Incidentally, here's a bit of an hypothetical question.
If we as a species look set to deplete one planet's worth of resources in the time elapsed since the industrial revolution, would it not stand to reason that any given species with similar social and mental attributes would act in a similar way? Now consider the real possibility that we are not the first species to leave our planet, and consider we will no doubt do so again in search of resources (assuming we survive that long) It follows then that any existing advanced species we might potentially overlap territorially would regard us with some degree of hostility. It would be a natural response for them to sabotage our development to the extent that we could never challenge them.
Would there be a more efficient method of doing this than directing us down the path of self destruction at our own hand?

[sn1987a (Barry)]

The singularity will be here soon and all these problems will be solved.... one way or another