Nuclear energy

[HungryHobo]

unfortunatly " egregious offences" would tend to include anything which senior politicians took serious issue with and given the prefered humanities/political science approach to science where they view it as a tool to give the answers they want rather than a tool to give them the right answers whether they like them or not giving or supporting the wrong answer from their point of view becomes an offense.

[BattleMoose]

unfortunatly " egregious offences" would tend to include anything which senior politicians took serious issue with and given the prefered humanities/political science approach to science where they view it as a tool to give the answers they want rather than a tool to give them the right answers whether they like them or not giving or supporting the wrong answer from their point of view becomes an offense.

Firstly, politicians don't get to decide who gets prosecuted and for what, well, strictly speaking. And secondly when changing a system in any manner, very generally speaking, there are always going to be advantages and disadvantages. Personally I feel that having an ignorant public on a large manner of different topics, including but not limited to, nuclear power, coal power, evolution, climate change and homeopathy is incredibly harmful to the progress of society, you perhaps feel differently, or rather that an adjustment to the law that I recommended would not be effective in achieving these aims (it might not be, but it might have a measurable effect).

Decisions, they have pros and cons, I think we have both stated our positions sufficiently and I am ready to move on.

[Zamfir]

Greenpeace is trying to ban chlorine, even in drinking water, they have been trying to do so for a long time. To be fair they do recommend other methods of water treatment, not sure how practical they are, or expensive. It just demonstrates how disconnected they are with reality to actually adopt such a position.

Chlorination has been phased out here as tapwater desinfectant. It doesn't seem to lead to significant problems, and the water tastes a bit better. It wouldn't be high on my list of things to campaign for, but how is it disconnected from reality?

[BattleMoose]

Greenpeace is trying to ban chlorine, even in drinking water, they have been trying to do so for a long time. To be fair they do recommend other methods of water treatment, not sure how practical they are, or expensive. It just demonstrates how disconnected they are with reality to actually adopt such a position.

Chlorination has been phased out here as tapwater desinfectant. It doesn't seem to lead to significant problems, and the water tastes a bit better. It wouldn't be high on my list of things to campaign for, but how is it disconnected from reality?

Seriously? How does your water get treated?

[HungryHobo]

There's other options like UV disinfection or using alternatives like bromine or iodine but they have issues of their own.

I think it's because they want to do away with it entirely... despite the fact that it's an exceptionally useful substance with uses in just about everything, water treatment being a fairly minor use.

God created 91 chemical elements, man more than a thousand and the devil created one: chlorine.

This is a terrible tangent but it's an example of their approach to environmentalism: pick something, decide it's the devil and then lobby for any alternative to anything associated with it, even if it's a worse one and colour anything even tangentally related with the same brush.

For instance for the desinfecting of swimming pools, they prefer the use of ozone instead of chlorine.(Ozone is vastly more toxic than chlorine and is carcinogenic.)

Their attitude to power generation is somewhat similar where they oppose nuclear fusion *in advance* because it's still "nuclear".

but this is all drifting off topic. greenpeace are the exception to the rule, everything that comes from them is too suspect to have any weight since they've shown such willingness to distort facts, do shody research and lie freely but there's plenty of perfectly good environmental groups out there who do perfectly good research and this has no bearing on those groups, the actual issue or anything except the "research" on the issue from greenpeace.

[Zamfir]

Seriously? How does your water get treated?

Ozone and UV light, mostly.

A bit more back OT: I don't think a misinformation ban would have much effect on greenpeace. I my experience (and if you work in nuclear power, you'll get some experience), they have some genuinely smart and knowledgeable people. If they want to, they are quite capable of skirting that area where you just can't really prove them wrong.

Also, there have been controversial court cases before, which only help raise publicity. You do not particularly want to appear in court and the press saying "no, our processes did not cause these malformed children". Think of Lyndon Johnson and the pigfucker.

[hawkinsssable]

Further, in just about every argument they make against nuclear power, they do so while comparing it to renewable energy sources, ignoring many realities and difficulties associated with renewable power. On a very idealistic level, I am sure all of us here would prefer renewable energy sources over nuclear power, assuming cost wasn't an issue... Basically, if an organization is protesting anything, it has to offer up a better way of doing things, and well Greenpeace does do this,but its solutions are so detached from reality that it mightn't have bothered.

I offer up instead another environmental group, GreenSpirit, which incidentally was founded by one of the founding members of Greanpeace, who became disillusioned with the organization. http://www.greenspirit.com/home.cfm

A quick technical point: GreenSpirit isn't an environmental group, it's a consulting firm that provides paid public relations efforts to government and industry on environmental issues. I've got to say, I don't have a very high opinion of Patrick Moore. In one case, he wrote an op-ed in The Seattle Times praised the Pharmaceutical Assessment and Transport Evaluation (PhATE) model for controlling waste pharmaceuticals. Coincidentally, this model was developed BY pharmaceutical companies, and coincidentally, GreenSpirit received quite a bit of money FROM said pharmaceutical companies.

Perhaps more OT, he is a paid lobbyist for the Nuclear Energy Institute. His opinions everywhere seem to align very closely with industry interests. Global warming? People aren't responsible (in my eyes, this alone disqualifies him from being taken seriously). Renewable energy? Gas, coal and especially nuclear are better. Logging? Clear-cutting is GOOD for the environment somehow. I wonder if his work for Asia Pulp & Paper had anything to do with this? He's a paid spokesperson, not a credible authority on environmental questions.


As for "ignoring many realities and difficulties associated with renewable power", Greenpeace's line (as far as I can tell it's always adequately referenced, usually using sources outside of Greenpeace) is that nuclear is MORE expensive, would take LONGER to phase in, and is just generally FURTHER removed from reality than renewables. And they're certainly not the only people saying so. If this is true, there's not really ANY reason to adopt nuclear power.

If there's a convincing counterpoint out there, that's fine. But I'd like to hear it - and preferably from somebody who isn't paid by Nuclear Power interests to cash in on his reputation as an 'environmentalist.'

[HungryHobo]

well this is a UK centric one focusing on simple practicality rather than cost but I highly recommend reading it:

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sust ... sewtha.pdf

The author is a physics professor, I don't think he works in the industry directly.

The long term view of many things like geothermal can be quite surprising: even if you assume it will be free to dig 15 km holes, if you want to get energy sustainably for say a thousand years rather than just mining heat in the short term then Geothermal can only produce a tiny amount.

[morriswalters]

A couple of points. Gaseous chlorine is dangerous, in my memory there have been at least three neighborhood evacuations in my city due to accidental chlorine releases and fires involving chlorine. We won't mention train accidents. Next. Greenpeace doesn't need to twist the facts. Poor planning on the part of industry is doing their job for them. Here's a short history lesson on how to lose trust. Have above ground nuclear tests and have certain isotopes migrate into the food supply. Detonate weapons at a nuclear testing ground and have troops rush into the fallout. Run a bunch of Pacific islanders from their homes and then contaminate it so thoroughly that they can never go home. Contaminate the site of nuclear weapons manufacturing facilities so badly that they become Superfund sites where we have spent billions and will spend billions more before they is clean, if ever. Then get in bed with industry to promote nuclear power and look me in the eye and say trust me. I am a firm nuclear supporter. The technology is safe. It's been proven by time. But what hasn't been proven is the ability to manage it, particularity by for profit entities.

[Zamfir]

You realize that in most places, nuclear weapons and nuclear power are developed by completely different people and organizations? That's true for the US as well, where the historic link between the military and nuclear power was through naval reactors. Beyond the very basics, the two fields just do not share that much in technology. Roughly the same relation as between chemical explosives and thermal power plants, or car engines.

In most countries with nuclear power plants, no single person has ever worked on nuclear weapons. The UK is probably the strongest exception, whhere at least initially the weapons and power were srrongly tied up. But even there the split occured in the 1960s or so, when they started buying US bombs. France, ironically, kept its own bombs but changed to US-inspired powerplants.

[morriswalters]

Sure I realize, but it goes to credibility. The government is expected to deal with the waste, and this speaks directly to that. Overall though, fair or no, people do lump them together. Radiation is invisible, odorless, colorless, and pretty much like magic to the average person. I guess that to the average technocrat, it seems unfair that that would be true. But humans are distributed over the bell curve and a lot of those people are still just one step away from believing in ghosts and fairies. They operate off trust and authority. Destroy that belief in trust and authority and people will believe what they will. Arthur C. Clarke, I believe it was, asserted that any sufficiently advanced technology will appear as magic. This plays in to that part of society that believes exactly that even though they would never admit it. You beat this by doing it right and by giving them a reason to trust. And of course this is written with a US bias.

[Yakk]

Nuclear weapons development was during a time when they where facing an existential threat, and believed that it was worth cutting corners because of that threat.

If you are talking about why people don't trust the government, you don't need a step by step argument -- people simply do not trust large powerful organizations, regardless of what that large organization does. The "random" or other components to that mistrust are going to be much larger than the type of chain you are talking about.

If you want to talk about why that mistrust is rational, pointing out flaws in your chain of reasoning is a valid thing for others to do.

Do you want your cake, or are you going to eat it?

[morriswalters]

Nuclear weapons development was during a time when they where facing an existential threat, and believed that it was worth cutting corners because of that threat.

If you are talking about why people don't trust the government, you don't need a step by step argument -- people simply do not trust large powerful organizations, regardless of what that large organization does. The "random" or other components to that mistrust are going to be much larger than the type of chain you are talking about.

If you want to talk about why that mistrust is rational, pointing out flaws in your chain of reasoning is a valid thing for others to do.

Do you want your cake, or are you going to eat it?

I'm not certain what point you are trying to make but I'll give it a shot. Stop every person going down the street and see how many people know what existential means. And then ask them if they care. I come here to post because people want to talk about these things. But the average person could care less. They neither know nor care about alpha, gamma, or beta radiation. They couldn't, in most cases, tell the difference between and bomb and a reactor, and on a level that is below the threshold of consciousness they believe reactors might explode. They move like a herd. Frighten them and they take the path of least resistance. Rationality on any level has nothing to do with this.

[Yakk]

And if you are going to bring up a bunch of "people are irrationally afraid of nuclear power because of X Y and Z", why should anyone who isn't engaged in a propaganda piece give a rats ass what particular things the people you are talking about tied their irrational fears to? The response to irredeemably irrational fears is fuzzy puppies that take your concerns seriously. And pictures of fuzzy puppies is off topic in this thread.

In my opinion, peoples fears are not irredeemably irrational, and talking about errors and accuracy of these fears is topical. And more interesting than fuzzy puppy pictures. Marginally.

[StevenR]

But those people vote too. That's the problem as I see it. Even if the facts about whatever issue at hand are available and able to consumed by the general public, many people vote emotionally instead of rationally. Candidate Jones explains how nuclear power works, the good, the bad, the ugly, and wants a real debate about it. Candidate Smith just shows pictures of Hiroshima and Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. The rubes at home that don't understand the issue still get to pull a lever.

[BattleMoose]

On Patrick Moore.

I had no idea, this is quite embarrassing, thank you for putting me right on both him and his organization.

As for "ignoring many realities and difficulties associated with renewable power", Greenpeace's line (as far as I can tell it's always adequately referenced, usually using sources outside of Greenpeace) is that nuclear is MORE expensive, would take LONGER to phase in, and is just generally FURTHER removed from reality than renewables. And they're certainly not the only people saying so. If this is true, there's not really ANY reason to adopt nuclear power.

If there's a convincing counterpoint out there, that's fine. But I'd like to hear it - and preferably from somebody who isn't paid by Nuclear Power interests to cash in on his reputation as an 'environmentalist.'

France generates most of its electricity by using nuclear power. They seem to be handling the costs and if we actually had plans for the future, the lead times could be managed, easily demonstrated by having a country that produces most of its electricity from nuclear power.

To produce a countries electricity needs using just hydro, wind and solar would not be an easy task at all. If there are many dams it could be functional but if a country is not so blessed, managing demand with supply, I don't even know how it could be managed. I would like to know how it could be managed because I just don't see it.

And the costs associated with renewable energy that I have seen, have always been performed by calculating value of electricity and comparing it to the cost of production and while this does seem sensible, it is decoupled from the imperative of always been able to meet demand, the costs associated with that, if not using baseload such as coal/gas/nuclear/hydro would be enormous, if not impossible.

I like the technology of using concentrated solar power, number of varieties exist and with additional costs, storage of heat to run generators at night can be done (and has been done). But the technology as I understand it is still far too young to be scaled up to meet a countries energy needs.

[morriswalters]

I didn't make the world, I just have to live in it. My brother in law's favorite TV show is Ghost Hunters. Billions of dollars are spent on bread and circus's. People want a warm and fuzzy world. People don't want bad news. FUD is only possible when people are ignorant of the facts, or when the facts add up in a way they don't like. Let me ask you a more civil question. How many people do you think can master elementary physics? How many people can learn enough biology to understand why radiation can cause cancer even if it doesn't make you sick? Because if they can't do these things then they must accept someone as an authority.

Here's a page with some interesting numbers.

Here's the Wikipedia article On EDF, the French power company.

[Zamfir]

Mw, i am still not following you here. You think that mistrusting the government or industry on such issues is comparable to believing Ghost Hunters?

Perhabs i am reading you wrong but iI get the impression that you share a large part of that mistrust, if perhaps for different reasons. If that's the case, it seems to me more interesting to discuss the reasons for your mistrust, instead of others who aren't present.

There surely are good reasons to be skeptical of industry or government, I just posted a good example on the previous page. Such example are, imo, more interesting because people really could have acted differently, or others there and abroad could have raised concern.

There are good and difficult questions to be answered on such issues, even by people who were not directed involved but are in a similar position elsewhere, who could also potentially hide or downplay risks they are aware of. That includes me, and I am very interested in the extent I should trust the judgement of my colleagues and even myself, and to what extent our trustworthiness can or cannot be verified by outsiders.

But there's approximately nothing that people involved with nuclear power can do about nuclear weapons tests. If people's objections were to stem mostly from weapons test etc, than a marketing campaign would be called for, not improvement of the industry or governments.

[morriswalters]

No, I am saying that at least a large plurality of people have neither the capacity of the desire to partake in a rational discussion of nuclear power. They will go where they are led, or where they are stampeded. People are superstitious. The fact that my brother in law watches Ghost Chasers or whatever it is called is only important in the sense that it shows that level of superstition is so high. Young Earth Creationism, conspiracy theories. This is the world we live in. It is not the one where people use reason and make good decisions.

Remember that the production of civilian nuclear reactors was a product of weapons development. A catchphrase early on was Atoms For Peace. But it is important only in the sense that the governments(US) handling of it shows that they can operate from a position of expediency rather than safety. The reaction of people to the Yucca Flats site was indicative of this in my opinion.

I trust the technology. Reactors are safe if operated within their limits, and if they are managed so that the isn't a perverse incentive to cut costs for profitability. The accident in Japan exposed a limit of management and planning. If we can't do better than that then we should quit while we are ahead. You can't plan for any possible event, but what you can do is say, as long as the reactor survives intact, it's associated systems should be able to safe it. Japan shouldn't have happened.

[Zamfir]

No, I am saying that at least a large plurality of people have neither the capacity of the desire to partake in a rational discussion of nuclear power. They will go where they are led, or where they are stampeded.

Hmm, my opinion of people is both higher lower and higher, simulatenously.

Arguably, no single person has the capacity to particiapte in a discussion of nuclear power on a rational basis alone. The amounf of facts you would have to know and understand is simply too large for any person to hold. And fully unanticipated events happen as well: clearly, even the collective knowledge and understanding of all people involved togethr does not fully cover the spectrum of relevant risks.

In any discussion, all participants are partially relying on a their personal trust of the contributions of others, and trust in the systems that are intended to justify such trust. As the tsunami example shows, that trust can be misplaced. People do sometimes mislead others, and the ssocial systems intended to prevent that can fail.

On top of that, the participants have to make a personal judgement call on amount of information required to make decisions, even when all the information available is from honest sources. People (including experts) can honestly say that the evidence rules out a particular risk, and still be wrong.

That's where I estimate people's capacity lower than you do. I do not believe there is an elite cadre who can discuss a complicated issue like nuclear safety on a fully rational basis. On the other hand, I estimate the capacity of most people to work with such uncertainty fairly high, even for mostly uninformed people who watch Ghost Hunters. People are fairly (though far from perfectly) decent in trusting and mistrusting sources of authority, based on their track record and on their interests.

It's a good thing to be skeptical of nuclear experts. Even honest experts are still self-selected to be biased towards a 'safe and worthwhile' judgement, since they would leave the field otherwise. And a track record for nuclear safety is inherently hard to build. If you claim an once-in-100,000 reactor years safety level, your claim cannot be verified for a long time to come.

Still, if the accident track record of the last half-century had been spotless, people (even uninformed people) would be more prone to trust experts who predicted a spotless track record, and experts who predicted accidents would become less and less trusted over time. Even among the Ghost Hunter crowd.

A side issue:

Spoiler:

You can't plan for any possible event, but what you can do is say, as long as the reactor survives intact, it's associated systems should be able to safe it.

This principle really doesn't work. A reactor vessel itself can withstand a truly enormous amount of abuse. Nearly any scenario to destroy a reactor requires the prior elimination of some outside components that are required for active cooling, followed by a destruction from within. It's simply infeasible to give all other components a higher survivability than the reactor itself.

[hawkinsssable]

France generates most of its electricity by using nuclear power. They seem to be handling the costs and if we actually had plans for the future, the lead times could be managed, easily demonstrated by having a country that produces most of its electricity from nuclear power.

To produce a countries electricity needs using just hydro, wind and solar would not be an easy task at all. If there are many dams it could be functional but if a country is not so blessed, managing demand with supply, I don't even know how it could be managed. I would like to know how it could be managed because I just don't see it.

And the costs associated with renewable energy that I have seen, have always been performed by calculating value of electricity and comparing it to the cost of production and while this does seem sensible, it is decoupled from the imperative of always been able to meet demand, the costs associated with that, if not using baseload such as coal/gas/nuclear/hydro would be enormous, if not impossible.

I like the technology of using concentrated solar power, number of varieties exist and with additional costs, storage of heat to run generators at night can be done (and has been done). But the technology as I understand it is still far too young to be scaled up to meet a countries energy needs.

This could definitely be true, iunno. In Australia, though, moving to 100% proven and commercialised renewable technologies (40% wind, 60% solar, hydropower and biomass used for contingencies) within the next 10 years is, at least according to this collection of experts, entirely feasible and not particularly expensive. (If you're interested enough, you could wade through the 200-page report for details on how to manage electricity needs using these resources.) The Zero Carbon guys basically dismiss the relevance of nuclear in meeting this target because single reactors tend to have implementation times of 10-19 years, and they wanted to prove the possibility of a few 10 year transition plans. They also point out that although nuclear and geothermal produce far fewer emissions than coal, they still produce significantly more than renewables. By many accounts the report is a little optimistic, but the core idea - that 100% renewables are feasible for Australia, if not strictly within the time frame they propose - seems to me at least to be pretty solid.

Of course, Australia might be unique in this regard - we're in a pretty damn good position to make use of solar and wind power - so this might well be completely false for the rest of the world. The thing that bothers me, though, is that even here in Australia we get opinion piece after editorial after TV presenter after radio talk show host after Andrew Bolt (our country's most widely read columnist who at one point claimed that excess radiation from nuclear disasters such as Fukushima is actually GOOD for you and CURES cancer) presenting nuclear power as the only sensible, practical solution to reducing emissions.

At least for Australia, it's not. (... I think.)

[morriswalters]

This principle really doesn't work. A reactor vessel itself can withstand a truly enormous amount of abuse. Nearly any scenario to destroy a reactor requires the prior elimination of some outside components that are required for active cooling, followed by a destruction from within. It's simply infeasible to give all other components a higher survivability than the reactor itself.

I was speaking in terms of Japan where the reactor and it's associated equipment came through intact.

[Zamfir]

Yes? Your appear to say that systems like generators, pumps or pipelines should be made at least as resilient as the reactor itself. That would indeed be a noble goal, but the reactor of a light-water plant is a passive structure of thick, high-quality steel. Pretty much everything is less resilient than that. The weak spots are inevitably going to be other things.

If something happens (either internally or externally) that directly breaks the reactor, you're screwed anyway. Such an event would wipe out everything else as well, but we're talking way more than a tsunami here. More like sustained artillery fire, or perhaps a crashing jetliner if it hits everything just right, though opinion on the latter are divided.

The relevant risks for a light water reactor are pretty much all related to a disruption of water supply to the reactor, not damage to the reactor itself.

[morriswalters]

Yes? Your appear to say that systems like generators, pumps or pipelines should be made at least as resilient as the reactor itself. That would indeed be a noble goal, but the reactor of a light-water plant is a passive structure of thick, high-quality steel. Pretty much everything is less resilient than that. The weak spots are inevitably going to be other things.

If something happens (either internally or externally) that directly breaks the reactor, you're screwed anyway. Such an event would wipe out everything else as well, but we're talking way more than a tsunami here. More like sustained artillery fire, or perhaps a crashing jetliner if it hits everything just right, though opinion on the latter are divided.

The relevant risks for a light water reactor are pretty much all related to a disruption of water supply to the reactor, not damage to the reactor itself.

No I'm saying if the pumps, switch gear and the auxiliary equipment survives, then it's foolish to lose the reactor because you lose power. The following quote from the Wikipedia article pretty much lays it out. They didn't get bombed out, wrecked, or otherwise damaged. Had those generators been available we wouldn't be having this conversation. Pay attention to paragraph 2. Here is how not to do it. Anticipate losing the generators to flooding, site them high, but do nothing protect the switch gear. Am I reading it wrong?

The earthquake was followed by a 13–15 m (43–49 ft) maximum height tsunami arriving approximately 50 minutes later which topped the plant's 5.7 m (19 ft) seawall, flooding the basement of the Turbine Buildings and disabling the emergency diesel generators[74][75] located there[70] at approximately 15:41. At this point, TEPCO notified authorities, as required by law, of a "First level emergency". The Fukushima II plant, which was also struck by the tsunami, incorporated design changes which improved its resistance to flooding and it sustained less damage. Generators and related electrical distribution equipment were located in the watertight reactor building, so that power from the grid was being used by midnight. Seawater pumps for cooling were given protection from flooding, and although 3 of 4 failed in the tsunami, they were able to be restored to operation.

In the late 1990's, three additional backup generators for reactors Nos. 2 and 4 were placed in new buildings located higher on the hillside, in order to comply with new regulatory requirements. All six reactors were given access to these generators; however, the switching stations that sent power from these backup generators to the reactors' cooling systems for Units 1 through 5 were still in the poorly protected turbine buildings. All three of the generators added in the late 1990's were operational after the tsunami. If the switching stations had been moved to inside the reactor buildings or to other flood-proof locations, power would have been provided by these generators to the reactors' cooling systems.

[BattleMoose]

This could definitely be true, iunno. In Australia, though, moving to 100% proven and commercialised renewable technologies (40% wind, 60% solar, hydropower and biomass used for contingencies) within the next 10 years is, at least according to this collection of experts, entirely feasible and not particularly expensive.

I actually just spent some time going through this report (I read the bits that seemed of interest).

Firstly, its a vision of how things could be, in the sense of both human behavior and how we manage demand. It goes a lot further than just supply. Consequently any direct comparisons made from conclusions from this report, between just supply options is non-nonsensical. But it is a vision of how things could be and should be treated as such. Its a complete work over of the entire energy infrastructure of the country.

Secondly, it basically wishes away spikes in demand on both diurnal and seasonal scales, arguing certain demand side technologies and strategies, its, grossly optimistic to say the least.

Thirdly, I really like the concept of Concentrated Solar Thermal power, I think it really could be the future of power generation, or at least a large part of it. It also needs to be said that the largest such plant is only 354MW in California, now that is a lot of power, but is nowhere supplying on a national scale. And while conceptually the technology is scalable, it first needs to be proven in much larger plants.

Fourthly, I am just going to put this here, as a demonstration of how awkward things can get if we depend on wind.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/02/ ... 2920080228
This event did appear in either Science or Nature, I forget which and cannot find it right now. Also, as a total of generation at this time in Texas, wind comprised only 3.6% and it is suggested that Australia relies on 40%.

Finally if any energy company actually contemplates operating a supply side in such a manner, then they will need to accept liability if they cannot meet demand and then we will really see how they view the risks.

[hawkinsssable]

I actually just spent some time going through this report (I read the bits that seemed of interest).

I'm impressed. I hadn't read much beyond the executive summary before tonight - maybe 10 pages or so? - but I'd heard quite a bit about it at uni.

Firstly, its a vision of how things could be, in the sense of both human behavior and how we manage demand. It goes a lot further than just supply. Consequently any direct comparisons made from conclusions from this report, between just supply options is non-nonsensical. But it is a vision of how things could be and should be treated as such. Its a complete work over of the entire energy infrastructure of the country.

Absolutely, and I probably should have mentioned that when I brought Zero Carbon Australia up. Still, their aims re: reducing per capita energy consumption fall well above the levels of many energy-efficient countries (like Germany), and the methods for reducing it seem to me to be fairly feasible, especially since they've been tried and tested successfully elsewhere.

Secondly, it basically wishes away spikes in demand on both diurnal and seasonal scales, arguing certain demand side technologies and strategies, its, grossly optimistic to say the least.

Since I had to google "diurnal scales", I'll bow down to your expertise here. Increased demand in winter is brought up quite a bit, but maybe it's done a bit crudely? Because, well, I don't really know very much about this, would you mind elaborating?

Thirdly, I really like the concept of Concentrated Solar Thermal power, I think it really could be the future of power generation, or at least a large part of it. It also needs to be said that the largest such plant is only 354MW in California, now that is a lot of power, but is nowhere supplying on a national scale. And while conceptually the technology is scalable, it first needs to be proven in much larger plants.

From a paper by the lead authors:

CST is a nascent, commercially available energy technology. At November 2010, there were 632.4 electrical megawatts (MWe) of CST operating in Spain, including 250 MWe with storage, and a further 422 MWe in the US. Another 2000 MWe are in advanced stages of construction and development in Spain. This project pipeline amounts to over a US$20 billion investment. Meanwhile, in the US, federal loan guarantees and cash grants have fostered the approval of over 4 000 MW of CST, many of which have begun construction.

The CST plants in the ZCA Plan are modelled on the Spanish Gemasolar plant, which is now dispatching electricity to the Spanish grid. Our cost projections are based on those from existing projects in the US and Spain, with provisions for significant cost reductions following the first 1000 MWe installed.

Fourthly, I am just going to put this here, as a demonstration of how awkward things can get if we depend on wind.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/02/ ... 2920080228
This event did appear in either Science or Nature, I forget which and cannot find it right now. Also, as a total of generation at this time in Texas, wind comprised only 3.6% and it is suggested that Australia relies on 40%.

Wouldn't producing more of your energy from wind make it less susceptible to local weather events? I believe the idea was that the unreliability of wind wouldn't be an issue because: the electricity grid would be greatly upgraded and extended nationally (though the East-West link is, according to some people, a little impractical), easing fluctuations in energy supply; hydroelectric and biomass would be available for situations of low sunlight and low wind spread cross the whole country; and because CST is, at least according to the demand, more flexible to meeting varying demands than fossil fuels. According to the authors, this should, theoretically at least, offset the problems with wind. But, well, I guess I can see why that would be worrying.

Anyway, the Texas example is interesting, and I definitely want to learn more. I do wonder how closely it could translate to the Australia experience, though. The Zero Carbon plan places turbines across 23 geographically diverse, mostly coastal, locations designed to minimise the effects of local weather events (and have a high average winter wind resource.) They also use a conservative estimate for reliable wind capacity (15%) and make sure this can accommodate the winter peak. Of course, Texas may have placed turbines in equally diverse locations (though on a smaller scale) and had supply drop below an equally conservative estimate for reliable wind capacity. At some point I'll google around and see what I turn up.

(Also on the reading list for me is stuff on France's experience of nuclear power. Have any recommendations?)

Finally if any energy company actually contemplates operating a supply side in such a manner, then they will need to accept liability if they cannot meet demand and then we will really see how they view the risks.

The plan would rely on massive federal expenditure ($37 AU billion per year), yeah.


Anyway, I've got a quick question I'd really love to hear a reply on but that might take an unfair amount of effort to answer. The lead authors have basically stated that they put forward the plan largely in order to identify the specific challenges and improve the plan in future iterations. Taking the Zero Carbon Australia as the baseline, and accepting the premise that the most important thing is to move to zero carbon emissions as quickly as possible, how would you change / improve the plan to make it more realistic (scientifically, not politically) or less expensive? And ofc, what role would nuclear play, and when (if at all) would you eventually phase it out?

[mosc]

I think this thread has all the information needed to realize how by leaps and bounds nuclear power is the safest and cleanest option. I'll not belabor that but I wanted to mention again the need to consider power consumption patterns when looking at electricity generation.

When you turn on your light switch, do you care if it's windy? Sunny? If it's high tide or low tide? No, you don't. When you set your air conditioner, do you tell it to turn off when it gets hot? Probably the opposite, right? Electricity use varies minute by minute and generation adjusts 24/7/365.25 to account for it. If it doesn't adjust accurately and quickly, the entire thing becomes unstable (read: blackout). How does it adjust? It increases or decreases the power generation. On the fly. That very minute. High load and low load the world over are at least 2 to 1 and sometimes more like 5 to 1. If you want to be able to run your air conditioner whenever you want, you need generation you can move.

The vast majority of electricity generation in the world can be moved. It uses a consumable resource (coal, gas, uranium, potential energy in water) and we can decide, at least in the short term, how much resource we want to consume to make electricity. There are exceptions to this: Solar and Wind. We cannot ask for more power from a solar panel or a windmill. It's important to understand this because it is impractical to rely on power, even if economical and clean, that you cannot control. Also, please note the "capacity factor" when looking at power technologies. Nuclear plants run around the clock at basically their maximum output. A solar panel clearly doesn't do much at night let alone when it's cloudy. Windmills are even more fickle, often needing to be shut down when it's TOO windy let alone not enough.

Electricity cannot be stored in bulk. Batteries of all shapes and sizes share a similar cost to store electricity and it's important to keep in mind the sheer scale of energy consumption. 474 exajoules across the world yearly according to wikipedia. It's hard to quantify that, but using the familiar AA (1.5V 1500 mAh) battery and trying to store the world's energy needs for even an HOUR, you'd need ~7.3 Trillion of them. By length (each is about 2 inches long), that's to the moon and back 475 TIMES! Many papers on renewable energies will talk about their production and claim it can be dropped into a bucket like a coin in a bank, to be retrieved whenever it's needed. This really isn't the case, as I explained about with energy usage patters. I wanted to highlight the infeasibility of storing power in bulk for any length of time. You cannot build a battery, as some pro-wind/solar folks will have to believe, that can store a week's worth of generation to make some hypothetical power bank to draw on when it's not windy in the morning that week, or when it's cloudy over the weekend. It's sheer nonsense. The closest thing we have is hydroelectricity. We can pump water up a hill and then use it's potential energy to spin a turbine on it's way back down when we want later. However, the biggest plant in the world to my knowledge is in bath county Virginia and only stores a few thousand Mwh of electricity (not that it's lossless turning electricity into water potential and back either mind you, a lot of it is lost).

Nuclear plants can adjust their output (though they are so cheap to run, they generally don't in the US) and follow usage patterns. Wind and solar cannot. You can never make up a majority of your power from sources you cannot control. A common misconception is that if you throw enough "renewable" energies together, and spread them across a large enough area, that these "capacity issues" will go away. This is not true, they multiply. Solar doesn't make power at night. The sun is down over huge areas of the earth at the same time. When it's not windy, that's a double whammy. Wind patterns span continents, not just local areas.

EDIT: I'll also point out the absurdity of supply side solutions to this problem. Power consumption is already minimized by cost and availability. Cheaper, more available power could do a lot of real good in this world. Hydrogen for cars is the first thing that I would point out but there are many others. The idea that consumption is too high at current levels is gut wrenching to me. Our birthrate continues to be exponential and even with improved efficiency, electric power is the fundamental divider between modern civilization and poverty. It is simply inhumane to ask the world to reduce power consumption. If we could use it more effectively for what we do now, we'd use it for more things in ADDITION to what we do now. Nuclear is a proven technology already in widespread use around the globe that is:
1) Economically viable
2) Scalable
3) Renewable enough to far FAR outlive any plant's we build's useful lives
4) Safer than any other form of power on a per Mwh basis
5) Existing technology, not R&D
6) Can follow power usage patterns
7) Clean

Build. More. Nukes. Seriously. Every day we don't, PEOPLE DIE. Every single day.

[morriswalters]

Build. More. Nukes. Seriously. Every day we don't, PEOPLE DIE. Every single day.

They are breeding faster than they are dying, mostly in places that don't use power like the US. Just out of curiosity how many gigawatt reactors would we need to build to supply power to a population of 8 billion at the rate of consumption in modern industrialized countries? Some numbers for you, using data from the Wikipedia. The population of the US is 313,382,000 and China is 1,347,350,000, which by my calculator means that China is about 4.3 times the size of the US. Total world consumption is listed as 20,261TWh. The US uses 4,369TWH's and China uses 3,457TWh, let us assume that China used power the way the US does. So multiply our consumption by 4.3 and we end up with China's consumption at our rate. 18786.7TWh. The sum of those two numbers is greater than sum total of power generation of the entire planet. My mind gets numb with the numbers. If you calculate the numbers for the average use of power by one person in the US multiplied by the expected population in the year 2050 which I will call 8 billion, I get 111531.6TWh's. I don't really trust these numbers but I present them for purposes of illustration. That is 6 times, give or take, the current amount we generate. Does any want to speculate the outcome if we tried to build our way to that? That's what is implied by continued growth.

[hawkinsssable]

When you turn on your light switch, do you care if it's windy? Sunny? If it's high tide or low tide? No, you don't.

Which is exactly why any reasonable plan for large-scale use of wind estimates the lowest remotely possible electricity generation, then makes sure this baseload is above winter peaks. It's also exactly why any reasonable plan would place turbines in locations that receive MORE average wind in winter.

We cannot ask for more power from a solar panel or a windmill. It's important to understand this because it is impractical to rely on power, even if economical and clean, that you cannot control. Also, please note the "capacity factor" when looking at power technologies. Nuclear plants run around the clock at basically their maximum output. A solar panel clearly doesn't do much at night let alone when it's cloudy. Windmills are even more fickle, often needing to be shut down when it's TOO windy let alone not enough.

Concentrating Solar Power (CST) draws its power from salt storage tanks independently of whether the sun is shining or not. It can produce power at full output at any time of the day. i.e., a solar 220 can produce 217MW regardless of whether it has 15 hours of salt storage remaining, or only 2 hours. It's MORE scalable than fossil fuels and, I believe, nuclear.

Electricity cannot be stored in bulk.

In the case of CST, it can be stored for an impressive amount of hours in the form of molten salt. And re: batteries, I read a while ago from a source I can't find about batteries that can store enough power to power a decent-sized German city. I've got no idea about the cost or where (if anywhere) these are being used, but I'm fairly sure that they at least exist.

Nuclear plants can adjust their output (though they are so cheap to run, they generally don't in the US) and follow usage patterns. Wind and solar cannot.

CST can, to a significant extent. And clever placement of wind can help.

Power consumption is already minimized by cost and availability.... Our birthrate continues to be exponential and even with improved efficiency, electric power is the fundamental divider between modern civilization and poverty. It is simply inhumane to ask the world to reduce power consumption.

If it's already minimised everywhere electricity costs anything, how come some countries are so much more energy efficient than others? Also, exponential growth - are you sure? And I'm guessing it's equally inhumane to ask severely energy inefficient first-world countries to become more energy efficient? Maybe require things like, say, proper insulation in new homes, and subsidise improvements to old homes?
*gasp* the horror.

Build. More. Nukes. Seriously. Every day we don't, PEOPLE DIE. Every single day.

This kind of rhetoric is the exact reason I can't take nuclear power seriously. It's a mainstay of almost all the pro-nuclear power writing I've read (in my limited experience of mostly newspaper and magazine articles.) Which is a shame, because I'm sure nuclear should be taken seriously, but not unreservedly so, and not because it will somehow stop anybody from dying ever again.

[BattleMoose]

Secondly, it basically wishes away spikes in demand on both diurnal and seasonal scales, arguing certain demand side technologies and strategies, its, grossly optimistic to say the least.

Since I had to google "diurnal scales", I'll bow down to your expertise here. Increased demand in winter is brought up quite a bit, but maybe it's done a bit crudely? Because, well, I don't really know very much about this, would you mind elaborating?

I misspoke, I meant diurnal and seasonal cycles. Demand can vary greatly over the course of a day and I know here in Australia so does the cost, sometimes up to a factor of 10, with nighttime prices being $10 per MWH and in excess of $100 at peak times. Which firstly raises an interesting question of the value of electricity, it is completely time dependent and if you cannot choose when you are generating, there are problems.

All the demand side strategies are fine although I have grave reservations about how optimistically the report thinks they will work, regardless, if they make sense in their zero carbon scenario, then they will make sense in our current scenario because they are independent of supply strategies. And then we have to ask the question as to why such strategies are not implemented.

Fairly recently, experiences in South Africa, which was and is, having serious supply issues, the electrical company Eskom, installed controllers on peoples geysers, so they could control when they draw power. A sensible approach, much better to heat your hot water when electricity is dirt cheap and help smooth the peaks and considering that geysers can keep water hot for day(s) it really seems like a very good idea. The reality, a lot of people didn't have hot water for their morning showers. Now it could be managed properly, but it wasn't, things don't always work as they are planned.

Also, in the building industry, specifically building operation for energy efficiency, experiences out of the USA with the Leadership Energy Efficient Design (LEED) rating system for green buildings show that assumptions based on how buildings are designed to be operated and should be operated, are just woefully wrong. When it comes to human behaviour (and energy) things just go very very very wrong. (very)

And Mosc outlined the problems with renewables in terms of times of production, which I certainly was trying to do. This idea that sun and wind generation can balance each other, even under worst case scenario to meet a peak, is just a fairy tale. There will be serious supply issues as well as oversupply issues.

And although I think Mosc could be more optimistic about CSP his assertions about nuclear power are correct. It is a proven technology, it works and we know it does, we fundamentally can build ourselves out of this problem with known technologies. The reasons we are continuing to operate coal power plants is something we are going to have to explain, with shame, to future generations. And in addition to GHG from coal, coal also kills people, a lot of people, this isn't hyperbole, ergo, replacing coal with nuclear will save lives.

[elasto]

Fossil fuel usage causes an enormous number of deaths - but because it's not in a spectacular way it doesn't make the headlines in the way a Fukushima does. Coal-fired power stations are far more damaging to health than nuclear ones, but it's fossil fuels in general we'd do well to transition away from asap.

Road pollution is more than twice as deadly as traffic accidents, according to a study of UK air quality.

The analysis appears in Environmental Science and Technology, carried out by Steve Yim and Steven Barrett, pollution experts from MIT in Massachusetts.

They estimate that combustion exhausts across the UK cause nearly 5,000 premature deaths each year.

The pair also estimate that exhaust gases from aeroplanes cause a further 2,000 deaths annually.

By comparison, 2010 saw, 1,850 deaths due to road accidents recorded.

Overall, the study's findings are in line with an earlier report by the government's Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants (COMEAP), which found that air pollution in 2008 was responsible for about 29,000 deaths in the UK.

Color me in the camp that says make nuclear a big part of the mix. Go nuclear to tide us over until fusion is economic, then transition to that.

Yes, processed nuclear material takes money and care to store, but it's so tiny volume-wise that it's far more manageable a problem than generic air pollution.

link

[mosc]

I don't have opposition to solar technologies except photovoltaic solar for bulk power. That said, there are no proven techs and certainly nothing we could deploy to power the world within our lifetimes like we could with nuclear. I also support wind energy, but it can never make up more than about 10-20% of your power needs. Wind at that level would already put a burden on what little hyrdo we have to improve availability. None of that gets at the bulk of the need. The stuff currently serviced by coal and what nuclear we do have.

[hawkinsssable]

re:elasto - Of course. The problem is when you go from "fossil fuels are bad" to "the best alternative is expanded use of nuclear power", especially considering that they take an inconvenient 15 years to get operational (during which time people will continue dying, just as before.) The logic seems to me the same as saying Build. More. Coal power plants that emit slightly less polution. Every day you don't, people die.

I agree that nuclear is better than coal, and would never support replacing nuclear WITH coal power, but it doesn't seem clear to me that it's the best solution (and unless expanded use of wind, solar and hydro is an impossibility, it's clearly not the best for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.)



re:Battlemoose - I was actually trying to say that I trusted you re: diurnal cycles, not trying to be snide. But thanks for the clarification! I take it you're saying that the extent of the variation is greater than the Zero Carbon guys predicted, and that their figures for lowest possible energy supply weren't as conservative as they claimed?

As for poor implentation of supply and demand side strategies, I agree that it's a horrible, inconvenient problem. But as for things going very wrong as soon as you bring 'human behaviour' into it, nuclear power hardly seems immune. There were 14 easily preventable “near misses” in US Nuclear plants in 2010, according to one report, due largely to “unbelievably poor worker performance” and poor training. There were also errors in design and procurement of safety equipment, maintenance and operations – with the NRC basically failing to effectively enforce the regulations that ensured nuclear power remains safe. (citation.)



re:Battlemoose & mosc - Honest question, because I'm interested: any chance of a citation about the difficulties deploying CST or the limitations (10-20%) of wind energy?

[roflwaffle]

Regarding wind power, it depends on the specifics. The NREL seems to think that 20% by 2030 is feasible. As a general rule, the larger the geographical area and the greater the load following the capacity, the greater the wind penetration. Existing producers tend to dislike wind because it competes with everyone and everything in some way. If someone can put up a farm to compete with load following generation, then it'll also compete to a lesser degree with baseload, which hurts the profit margins of existing baseload and load following.

[morriswalters]

Saw this on TED, seemed interesting in light of this discussion. Liquid metal batteries. They are looking at one with a capacity, if I remember correctly of 4 million watt hours? About the size of a semi trailer. I can't really judge the practicality.

[HungryHobo]

re:elasto - Of course. The problem is when you go from "fossil fuels are bad" to "the best alternative is expanded use of nuclear power", especially considering that they take an inconvenient 15 years to get operational (during which time people will continue dying, just as before.) The logic seems to me the same as saying Build. More. Coal power plants that emit slightly less polution. Every day you don't, people die.

I agree that nuclear is better than coal, and would never support replacing nuclear WITH coal power, but it doesn't seem clear to me that it's the best solution (and unless expanded use of wind, solar and hydro is an impossibility, it's clearly not the best for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.)

Nuclear fits well into the existing structure. you can build a nuclear plant where a coal plant used to be and otherwise leave things pretty much as they were in terms of the grid.

Pretty much any large scale power production takes time. Nuclear a bit longer than most due to scale, safety checks and protestors but it'd probably take a similar time to build a dam which produces similar power.

Hydro is great but expanded use of hydro is pretty tough since we're already using the best spots to build hydro plants.

wind is ok but unfortunatly unpredictable and you can't base the whole grid around it .they love to say "the wind it always blowing somewhere"... but it isn't. And everything falls apart if that happens even a day or 2 per year.

Solar PV is still a toy for rich people to put on their roofs to show off that they can afford it and how green they are , solar thermal shows good promise as a real energy source in places near the equator.

wind, solar, etc require massive changes on both the supply side and the consumer side.

[BattleMoose]

re:Battlemoose - I was actually trying to say that I trusted you re: diurnal cycles, not trying to be snide. But thanks for the clarification! I take it you're saying that the extent of the variation is greater than the Zero Carbon guys predicted, and that their figures for lowest possible energy supply weren't as conservative as they claimed?

I didn't think you were trying to be snide. And thanks for the trust. Also, lowest possible energy supply I would hazard should be near zero, a few continuous cloudy days, unable to store energy and at night with low winds, really there won't be much generation then at all, in fact, why not be a cloudy day and at the evening peak. How likely is this scenario, I don't know, but it doesn't have to be worst case scenario, just not be able to meet demand.

As for poor implentation of supply and demand side strategies, I agree that it's a horrible, inconvenient problem. But as for things going very wrong as soon as you bring 'human behaviour' into it, nuclear power hardly seems immune. There were 14 easily preventable “near misses” in US Nuclear plants in 2010, according to one report, due largely to “unbelievably poor worker performance” and poor training. There were also errors in design and procurement of safety equipment, maintenance and operations – with the NRC basically failing to effectively enforce the regulations that ensured nuclear power remains safe. (citation.)

Human behavior, poor training, errors in design, procurement or safety equipment, maintenance and operations have been a part of every human technological/engineering disaster, ever. The nuclear industry is not immune to incidents , no field of human engineering has ever been immune to incidents. But, the nuclear industry is expected to be immune.

Even something as accepted as air travel has had a far larger impact on human deaths. But we accept those incidents for what they are, learn from why they occurred and change designs and operations to make air travel safer. The same procedure applies to buildings, bridges, automobiles, dams, boilers and and and and and. But nuclear power is treated so differently, with a completely different set of standards than the rest of human engineering and for no apparent good reason, except ignorant fear. Its worthwhile to recognize that literally the worst case scenario that could happen to a nuclear reactor(s) did, fukushima, and no one died.

We do not stop building bridges because a bridge fell down, even if due to unforeseen circumstances.

[jules.LT]

literally the worst case scenario that could happen to a nuclear reactor(s) did, fukushima,[i] and no one died.

To be fair, other than the evacuation deaths, many plant workers seem to have received significant radiation doses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster#Casualties

[morriswalters]

Even something as accepted as air travel has had a far larger impact on human deaths. But we accept those incidents for what they are, learn from why they occurred and change designs and operations to make air travel safer. The same procedure applies to buildings, bridges, automobiles, dams, boilers and and and and and. But nuclear power is treated so differently, with a completely different set of standards than the rest of human engineering and for no apparent good reason, except ignorant fear. Its worthwhile to recognize that literally the worst case scenario that could happen to a nuclear reactor(s) did, fukushima, and no one died.

Well that's an interesting way to think about it. Of course normally when an accident occurs you don't have to evacuate a large geographic area, say a hundred square miles, and then keep it evacuated for ?years?. I support it, but it is different then all of those things. And just to keep our facts straight it could have been much worse.

[HungryHobo]

Of course normally when an accident occurs you don't have to evacuate a large geographic area, say a hundred square miles

Depends how many lives do you consider equivilent to the value of that land per square mile.

There is of course a comparison since we put a value on human lives for most other purposes such as hospital administration and insurance.

Is losing the use of a square mile for 1000 years worse than 1 person dying?


if you assume that there will be a famine in a few years and as such value the land based on the amount of people who could be fed by the maximum possible quantitiy of food that could be grown on it then most forms of generation which damage arable land in any way would be totally unacceptable.

assuming you'd need 2 acres to feed 1 person you might value each square mile as equivilent to about 320 lives giving a figure of 32k deaths as the equivilent for 100 square miles.
this of course ignores the possible uses of cheaper electricity which might increase food production so at that point it gets very messy.

Or you might use a cash figure like the EPA's value of a human life of 7.9 million.
land value can vary a lot from 500 bucks per acre for poor farmland to 100K per acre for urban building land.
so a hundred square miles could be worth between 4 lives and 810 lives.