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Post by Barry Brook on Feb 18, 2013 16:45:01 GMT 9.5
A new post has been published on BraveNewClimate. Link here: bravenewclimate.com/two-decades-and-countingWhile the French have been generating electricty for ~80 grams of CO2 per kWh for two decades, the Germans are still putting out ~450 grams/kwh and Australia is close to world’s worst practice ~850 grams/kwh. The anti-nuclear movement has corrupted green thinking and cost us two decades and thousands of lives in the battle to avoid dangerous climate change … and counting. So says guest poster, Geoff Russell. Do you agree? This BNC Discussion Forum thread is for the comments related to this BNC post.
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Post by Roger Clifton on Feb 18, 2013 17:36:31 GMT 9.5
Observation of proper procedure after Chernobyl would have averted the 6000 thyroid injuries. Following standard procedure, children in the area around the Windscale (Sellafield, UK) fire of 1957 were protected by distributing iodine tablets - as at Fukushima. The 6000 thyroid cancers were as much the result of criminal neglect as excess radiation. For several days after the accident, the operators concealed the event from the authorities. Immediately they knew, civil emergency authorities dosed all children downwind with inert iodine, however in the intervening time millions of children had been poisoned, and approximately 6000 were permanently injured. By the time the cloud reached Poland and further north, children had been dosed and injuries did not occur. According to UNSCEAR: "This was only major radiation-related health effect of the Chernobyl accident on the public." Does anyone know if the Chernobyl operators were tried specifically for this crime ?
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Post by quokka on Feb 18, 2013 18:20:37 GMT 9.5
It is worth noting that Belarus has about the same incidence of thyroid cancer as Australia. I don't have the references handy, but they are easy to find from Australian government statistics and the UNSCEAR 2008 report.
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Post by Rod Adams on Feb 18, 2013 20:26:57 GMT 9.5
My theory is that the world's powerful hydrocarbon interests recognized early on that the French, Swiss, Swedes, Belgians, Japanese, and South Koreans were on the right path. Nuclear fission energy is the only technology that can replace the useful, reliable power normally supplied by burning hydrocarbons.
Of course, that is exactly the result that the hydrocarbon lobbies and their friends in the media, politics, and finance do not want to see. They LIKE selling coal, oil and gas and make a tremendous amount of money doing so. That is why so many climate change skeptics fall back on the idea of adaptation if they are argued into a corner. They are people who can afford to adapt and cannot seem to understand that option is not available for many of the rest of us.
Fission fans need to unite and recognize who the real opponent is.
Please do not misunderstand me. I LOVE the good things that hydrocarbons have enabled. I know that we will never stop burning them because fission cannot do everything that oil and gas can do. However, if we slow our rate of consumption, we might be able to leave some valuable hydrocarbons in accessible reservoirs for our children, grandchildren and many additional future generations. We might be able to reduce our CO2 production back down to a level that can be mitigated by natural processes - like growing more plants and trees.
Of course, no industry will comfortably accept falling sales and shrinking market share, especially one that is as money focused as the global hydrocarbon enterprise. Be ready for a tough, but absolutely necessary struggle that will last for a very long time.
Rod Adams Publisher, Atomic Insights
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Post by proteos on Feb 18, 2013 22:00:01 GMT 9.5
While the French have been generating electricty for ~80 grams of CO2 per kWh for two decades, the Germans are still putting out ~450 grams/kwh and Australia is close to world’s worst practice ~850 grams/kwh. The anti-nuclear movement has corrupted green thinking and cost us two decades and thousands of lives in the battle to avoid dangerous climate change … and counting. I have not had time to read the whole piece, but here are a few primary thoughts. Focusing on the french case might not be the best way forward. Sweden has an even better record when it comes to CO2 emissions. They got down from 11t CO2 per capita in the 70s to 6t in the 90s and then to 5-5.5t CO2 per capita now. Another point I've already made here is that all these nuclear heavy countries (Belgium, France, Sweden, Switzerland) have something in common: - they have little or no coal, gas or oil
- no that much room for additional hydro
- they had to ramp up electricity production in the 70s
Then, nuclear appeared as a chance to have electricity at a reasonnable price and security of supply, through stockpiles. After the oil counterschock of the mid-80s, gas became more competitive and despite the dependancy problems, many have chosen it. If you look at the other european countries, they all lack one of the 3 elements above, save Italy. Danemark, the UK & the Netherlands are big oil & gas producers. Norway has nearly unlimited hydro. Germany has lots of lignite. Spain developed only in the 80s. So it's not just the Greens who have impeded the nuclear expansion, it's also the availability of resources in the country itself. And now that the price of new nuclear has gone through the roof in many industrialized countries, it has become hard to sell. And by the way, the IEA figures tend to overstate the CO2 emissions from electricity for France. The IEA count all CO2 of a plant towards electricity even for CHP plants, which is a bit odd but a nice shortcut. If one counts gives the heat production its part of the emissions, it gets down to 50-60g/kWh. In his yearly assessment (p21), French production is 540TWh for 30Mt giving 55g/kWh. And in the IEA CO2 highlights, I have seen that Denmark managed to have less than 300g/kWh for its gas plants. I don't see how this is possible! To summarize, the french situation is good on the electricity generation front, but it is down to special circumstances. Other countries have only used nuclear as a hedge against wild swings in fossil fuel prices (think US, Germany & the UK). The big nuclear countries went that path because there was no other real alternative left! It's not just the Greens that are at fault here, even if they played a part. The local circumstances should also play a big role when shaping an energy policy. When I see the capacity factors of the Australian wind farms (>30%!), wind has a good selling point and will be hard to dislodge. To sell a nuclear solution, one has to project 30 to 40 years into the future and show that carbon emissions from electricity must be very low (30g/kWh?) and that wind can not do it: that's the main problem.
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Post by Mark Miller on Feb 19, 2013 1:35:07 GMT 9.5
Thanks for the link to the Australian report- it is very informative!!! I was a bit surprised that the policy efforts that have been undertaken in CA were not denoted (calculated, reported etc) in Table 2 of the overview on cost effectiveness. It has been reported that the cost to reduce a ton of CO2 from electrical generation in CA is about $200.00 Ton, which should be dropping now that PV hardware costs are decreasing. Naturally, the price varies dramatically over which particular service provider in the state you look at. The issue CA is running into is how to allocate the costs for the transmission and distribution infrastructure required to get the energy to where it is needed, and the well known problem of intermittency of most forms of RE (wind, solar). Do we count the idling natural gas plants CO2 loads and the costs to have them idling in the abatement numbers. The elephant in the electrical energy generation area is really how we deal with energy storage if we have intermittent, non scalable, sources of generation www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/energy/electric/storage.htm. Process wise either we make a percentage of the intermittent forms for RE generation like scalable generation with energy storage or we have to live with an unstable grid and/or back up forms of generation sitting on line generating no useful energy, but producing lots of CO2. It looks like, out here in CA we are going to require (mandate) at least some energy storage- solarindustrymag.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.12106 By my math, or looking at the process that is, these costs should role up into abatement costs.
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Post by stevek9 on Feb 19, 2013 5:36:27 GMT 9.5
I wish we could change the terminology from 'nuclear dependent France' to 'fossil-free electricy France'.
A minor point about Chernobyl. It was not just poor design, the 'accident' was actually caused by a poorly conceived and poorly conducted 'experiment'. Normal operation of the plant was not enough. There is a blow-by-blow description in Bernard Cohens 'The Nuclear Option', Chapter 7. It is interesting to read. He also describes the design inadequacies. Sorry for the long paste, but here are the first few paragraphs:
In April 1986, it was decided to use the Chernobyl power plant for an electrical engineering experiment on its turbine-generator, the machinery used to convert the energy of steam into electricity. The purpose was to develop a system for utilizing the rotational inertia of the turbine-generator to operate water pumps if electric power should be lost. The only function of the reactor was to get the rotation of the turbine and generator up to speed before beginning the experiment. Since no experimentation with the reactor was involved, no reactor experts were on hand. Electrical engineers supervised the experimental work while the reactor was run by the regular operators. The experiment was set to start at 1:00 P.M. on April 25, but a need for the plant's electrical output developed unexpectedly, delaying the experiment until 11:00 P.M. At that time, the power level of the reactor was reduced to the level desired for the experiment, but in the operators' rush to make up for lost time, they reduced the power too rapidly. Reactors have a peculiar characteristic: if they are shut down, a neutron-absorbing "poison" develops that prevents them from being restarted for many hours. The overly rapid reduction in power led to a buildup of this poison that made it difficult to get anywhere near the desired power level, 25% of full power. In order to get as much power out of the reactor as possible, many of the control rods had to be withdrawn, but still, the power level was only about 6% of full power (one-fourth of the power level planned for the experiment). At this low power level the temperature instability becomes very pronounced, and it was, therefore, strictly against the plant rules to operate under those conditions. Nevertheless, at 1:00 A.M. (April 26) the supervisors decided to go ahead with the experiment. At 1:05 A.M., additional water pumps were turned on as part of the experiment; these were the pumps to be driven by the rotational inertia of the turbine-generator following a loss of electricity. No one seemed to notice that this action was providing too much water flow for the reactor at this lower power level. In fact, that quantity of water flow at such a low power level was forbidden by the rules. Coincidentally, a normal operating situation came up which, by a quirk in the reactor design, caused a further increase in water flow at 1:19 A.M. Since water acts as a poison, this additional water flow required withdrawal of the manual control rods. That put the reactor into a condition such that a loss of water would make it "prompt critical", which means that the power would escalate very rapidly, doubling every second or so. Operating any reactor in that condition is strictly prohibited, but apparently ignoring rules was not considered to be a serious transgression at the Chernobyl plant. ...
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Post by David B. Benson on Feb 19, 2013 8:35:40 GMT 9.5
Geoff Russell --- This is quite good. I'd like to know the location of the picture, please.
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Post by Barry Brook on Feb 19, 2013 12:42:25 GMT 9.5
The picture is the Port Augusta Power station in South Australia - discussed in the article.
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Post by geoffrussell on Feb 19, 2013 18:14:01 GMT 9.5
It is worth noting that Belarus has about the same incidence of thyroid cancer as Australia. I don't have the references handy, but they are easy to find from Australian government statistics and the UNSCEAR 2008 report. Age standardised thyroid cancer incidence in Belarus is 10.1 (Globocan 2008), Australia 6.8, Ukraine 4.5, Russia 4.7. Why is Belarus rate higher? I've no idea.
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Post by John ONeill on Feb 19, 2013 18:23:52 GMT 9.5
Won't efforts to reforest Australia's grazing country be nullified by drought and fire? I don't know how effective iron seeding the ocean for carbon sequestration will be, but at least the algae, diatoms or whatever won't burn.
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Post by Roger Clifton on Feb 19, 2013 18:31:23 GMT 9.5
Will the old ban-the-bomb voices ever die away? We ageing hippies inevitably will die out, but public sentiment against any weapons of mass destruction will certainly continue. However we can hope that the perceived associations between military and energy will fade away.
A major figure in the ban-the-bomb movement of the 1950s was Bertrand Russell. A pacifist protester jailed during World War I, he changed his position in the 1930s to speak for the just war that became World War II. If he were alive today to see the bomb makers move away from sourcing their material from reactors, he probably would change his position to praise nuclear energy as a necessary defence against today's looming threat, to the climate.
If our aim is protecting the greenhouse, we should have no argument with the anti-bomb movement. However they and we do need to re-categorise plutonium, as a sustainable substitute for carbon fuels.
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Post by jagdish on Feb 19, 2013 19:04:32 GMT 9.5
Australia is sitting on top of highest uranium reserves in the world. There is no earthly reason they should not use it for carbonless, smokeless electricity. 2012 estimates of Indian PHWR was estimated at $1700/kW. This is not likely to go beyond 2500 in Australia by the time it is constructed. As a contrast, the French EPR is costing $11100 millian for 1650MW amounting to $6800/kW as the estimate for plants under construction in France and elsewhere in Europe. Australia clould make a start with an Indian PHWR for an investment of $1000-1500M.
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Post by quokka on Feb 19, 2013 19:18:42 GMT 9.5
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Post by KAP55 on Feb 20, 2013 6:48:38 GMT 9.5
The OP remarks that "The PDF version of this submission contains graphs ..."
Can we have a link to the pdf version of this posting? Or is it there, but I'm missing it?
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Post by Barry Brook on Feb 20, 2013 13:09:48 GMT 9.5
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Post by Frank Eggers on Feb 23, 2013 10:23:57 GMT 9.5
Those whose religion is anti-nuclear are putting forth Deutschland as a model of environmentalism which we here in the U.S. of A. should emulate. They quote statistics about the growth of PV power in Deutschland and tend to ignore the dependency of Deutschland on imported power from Gaul and lignite mined in Deutschland which is the direct result of attempting to phase out nuclear power.
Eventually the problems resulting from Deutschland's eschewing nuclear power will become too obvious to ignore and it will no longer be possible to write panegyrics extolling Deutschland's "insight" and "wisdom" in attempting to migrate to renewable sources of power. How long it will take for that epiphany to occur is impossible to predict accurately, but it could occur in as little as five years.
When I have corrected the misunderstandings posted on anti-nuclear sites, some if the responses have such that they could not be quoted in polite society. I've been called a liar; the "f" word and words of a similar nature have been liberally used. Many of those people make no attempt to use facts. Instead, they use the well-known propaganda technique of name-calling thereby discrediting themselves. I myself am always very careful to avoid name-calling and language that might be unacceptable in some places.
In spite of the above, there are some environmentalists who, although they oppose nuclear power, are amenable to reason and can be convinced with facts.
This site tends to favor the IFR over any other nuclear power technology. I tend to favor the LFTR but also think that it is too soon to know for certain which nuclear power technology will turn out to be the best one; it could be the IFR. Surely it will not be the nuclear technology which we are now using, i.e., the PRW which, in my view, is a serious mistake.
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Post by anonposter on Feb 23, 2013 12:46:33 GMT 9.5
The PWR is still better than anything that isn't nuclear.
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Post by geoffrussell on Feb 23, 2013 14:49:26 GMT 9.5
Won't efforts to reforest Australia's grazing country be nullified by drought and fire? I don't know how effective iron seeding the ocean for carbon sequestration will be, but at least the algae, diatoms or whatever won't burn. Tough question. Based on evidence of the past, the answer is probably not ... bit.ly/VCupTT White arrival in Australia increased fire while black arrival, much earlier did little or nothing. An interesting article last week bit.ly/XivFfa explained how the cattle industry has increased fire damage in the top end with Gamba grass. Fire might increase with reforestation, but that doesn't necessarily entail that the process is carbon negative. Generally the big trunks which contain the bulk of the carbon are left standing so from a carbon perspective reforestation is still a winner.
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Post by geoffrussell on Feb 23, 2013 15:01:59 GMT 9.5
I eventually found the table ... D11 p.146 ... not sure why the different location on my copy, perhaps they shifted tables to appendices at some point. But the point is valid, nobody understands all the ins and outs of cancer causes, but they know enough to understand that radiation is just a small player.
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Post by engineerpoet on Feb 23, 2013 19:47:09 GMT 9.5
This site tends to favor the IFR over any other nuclear power technology. I tend to favor the LFTR but also think that it is too soon to know for certain which nuclear power technology will turn out to be the best one; it could be the IFR. I don't know what this site favors, but I can give a rundown on pluses and minuses which suggest that there is no "best": - The IFR can turn the word's inventories of SNF and DU into energy.
- The LFTR can turn the thorium byproduct of rare-earth refining into energy.
- The IFR can do a complete job of burning transuranics; the LFTR is a net source of transuranics (about 0.15% Np-237).
- The LFTR can operate at high enough temperatures to drive thermochemical processes; the IFR is much more limited.
- If fleets are to be expanded using fuel bred in reactors, thermal-spectrum thorium breeders have a much faster growth rate than IFR due to high fissionable inventories required for fast-spectrum reactors.
All I can say is, if the USA adopted a sane policy today, we would sign a contract with GE-Hitachi for at least one S-PRISM and also re-commission the MSRE tomorrow. It's not a question of either-or.
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Post by edireland on Feb 23, 2013 21:54:44 GMT 9.5
The US is something of a special case.
Its economy, and appetite for energy, is so enormous that it could support an "all of the above" programme. Other countries like those in Europe do not have this luxury.
I think the BWR is the best option frankly, as it is available now in a suitable design (ESBWR) and uses proven equipment/fuel, but can later be converted to a uranium breeder.
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Post by Roger Clifton on Feb 25, 2013 12:52:41 GMT 9.5
It is depressing realisation that any reactor with excess reactivity can, at least in principle, be adapted to breed Pu239.
So, at least one version of the ESBWR could be adapted to breed Pu239? Immediately the questions come to mind of whether how easy it would be to make such an adaption, how easy it would be to stop it, etc.
But then, perhaps the people who want fissionable material policed should be asking questions of how to regulate it, rather than us asking how to prohibit it.
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Post by engineerpoet on Feb 25, 2013 14:03:06 GMT 9.5
at least one version of the ESBWR could be adapted to breed Pu239. Which one? Production of WEAPONS GRADE plutonium requires fairly low burnups to minimize the conversion of Pu-239 into Pu-240. That in turn would require very frequent fuel changes. If the ESBWR requires a cold shutdown and days-long process to open the reactor vessel and change fuel, that's simply not compatible with generating power. IIUC, the only two power-reactor technologies used to make weapons materials were capable of exchanging fuel while on-line. These were the RMBK and CANDU.
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Post by anonposter on Feb 25, 2013 15:51:26 GMT 9.5
IIUC, the only two power-reactor technologies used to make weapons materials were capable of exchanging fuel while on-line. These were the RMBK and CANDU. Nope, Magnox and UNGG were used to breed weapons grade materials and didn't have on-power refuelling. CANDU has never been used in that role and it looks like the civil RBMKs also were never used to make weapons materials (even though they capable of it and had on-power refuelling).
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Post by edireland on Feb 26, 2013 4:12:51 GMT 9.5
Magnox certainly has on power refueling..... as does the AGR (although AGR has to operate at reduced power during the changeover to prevent vibration issues causing problems for the equipment).
At the time the engineers who designed Magnox thought that any commercial nuclear reactor would need on power refueling to be economically viable, even if they didn't need to use it to make WG plutonium (which they obviously did in the case of Magnox).
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Post by Dan on Feb 28, 2013 6:40:55 GMT 9.5
Probably worth mentioning that solar generation in Germany went from 11.7 TWh is 2010 to 19.3 TWh is 2011 to 28.5 TWh in 2012 (4.8% of consumption). Linear extrapolation gives 50% of power by 2043. In understand about integration issues, but it's a little unfair not to notice that the goal of the FIT, to bring down the price of solar power, has been pretty well achieved.
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Post by anonposter on Feb 28, 2013 7:55:56 GMT 9.5
Probably worth mentioning that solar generation in Germany went from 11.7 TWh is 2010 to 19.3 TWh is 2011 to 28.5 TWh in 2012 (4.8% of consumption). The big question is: how much of that power was actually useful and how much fossil fuel burning did it really prevent? The need to have so much spinning reserve means that it probably didn't reduce CO 2 emissions much. Linear extrapolation gives 50% of power by 2043. Assuming their neighbours hold off on large scale solar deployment it might just be possible, but the cost is going to be enormous (goodbye energy intensive industry, even if you transfer the costs away from industry and towards residential customers they will be demanding higher wages to be able to afford their electricity bills). In understand about integration issues, but it's a little unfair not to notice that the goal of the FIT, to bring down the price of solar power, has been pretty well achieved. Germany has extremely expensive electricity thanks to the FIT (which BTW is the worst way to subsidise energy) so I wouldn't go calling it a success story.
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peterc
Thermal Neutron
Posts: 30
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Post by peterc on Feb 28, 2013 17:39:08 GMT 9.5
Here in Germany, we've just had one of the dullest starts to the year on record. The average for January was 22 hrs. sunshine, with a range from 10 - 55 hrs depending on where you were. Taking into account the sun is at it's lowest during that month, what sort of contribution can that possibly make to a month when domestic demand is likely to near its peak? I doubt if the sun shone much more intensely in neighbouring countries, so geographical spread wouldn't have helped us much. source (sorry in German!): www.wetteronline.de/wotexte/redaktion/rueckblick/2013/01/0131_rj_Rueckblick-Januar-2013.htm
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Post by Roger Clifton on Mar 1, 2013 17:49:15 GMT 9.5
peterc - So you say that the average sunshine across Germany for January was a total of only 22 hours for the entire month. For most of the month, all those solar PV panels were collecting only snow. It is a bleak realisation for me. If the installation of solar energy across Germany really was instituted by a public movement to protect the environment, it makes of all of us would-be environmentalists look like hopelessly ignorant fools. But surely environmentalism is not a single-party movement. Surely there are splinter groups around the world, respectful of the science and pragmatic in politics? In Germany, is there an alternative green movement to the Greens?
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