News Switching off lights (and brains)

[vanesch]

Silly "ecology action": a collective of ecologist organisations in France wanted everybody to switch off lights between 19:55 and 20:00, in order to "give a strong signal" to politicians that one is serious concerning measures against climate change.

Especially in France where about 80% of the electricity is nuclear, and about 10% is hydro, this is a pretty dumb thing to do, as the only effect such a glitch will have, is utilities to start up gas turbines to be ready for the consumption spike.

 

[EnumaElish]

the only effect such a glitch will have, is utilities to start up gas turbines to be ready for the consumption spike.

I am not an engineer and I will prove it to you:

At 19:54:59 there is sufficient nuclear + hydro online generation capacity to meet the demand from 50 million French households. ("To make up a number.")

At 19:55:00, 1 million households become dark, leading to excess capacity.

At 20:00:00, the load goes back to 50 million households. If the nuclear + hydro capacity was sufficient at 19:54:59, why is there a need for gas turbines at 20:00:00?

 

[mgb_phys]

1, Turn lights on/off to try and blow up power statsion.
2, Most of France's power is Nuclear.
3, Most of the power plants are on the channel coast (where the wind blows towards the UK)
4, It's all a conspiracy!

 

[EnumaElish]

1, Turn lights on/off to try and blow up power statsion.

Will that create a surge? (I guess it would...)

 

[Evo]

Silly "ecology action": a collective of ecologist organisations in France wanted everybody to switch off lights between 19:55 and 20:00, in order to "give a strong signal" to politicians that one is serious concerning measures against climate change.

okay

I'm at a loss for words.

Kind of like the "don't buy gasoline on Tuesday because this will cause a serious financial problem for the oil companies". Right, like all of the fools filling up their tanks the day before to make sure they have enough gas is going to hurt the gas companies. A lot of people actually fell for this joke.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Silly "ecology action": a collective of ecologist organisations in France wanted everybody to switch off lights between 19:55 and 20:00, in order to "give a strong signal" to politicians that one is serious concerning measures against climate change.

Especially in France where about 80% of the electricity is nuclear, and about 10% is hydro, this is a pretty dumb thing to do, as the only effect such a glitch will have, is utilities to start up gas turbines to be ready for the consumption spike.

It sounds more like a signal for the politicians than an energy conservation effort - literally flashing the lights to express concern. I don't understand that objection.

I agree that this sort of thing is a bit silly, but it does bring attention to the effort, thus the reason for the effort.

 

[EnumaElish]

Anyone to tackle my excess capacity question?

 

[vanesch]

I am not an engineer and I will prove it to you:

At 19:54:59 there is sufficient nuclear + hydro online generation capacity to meet the demand from 50 million French households. ("To make up a number.")

At 19:55:00, 1 million households become dark, leading to excess capacity.

You can't keep that excess capacity for longer than a few seconds or the voltage of the grid will rise and the generators will speed up! So you have to be able to reduce production in a matter of a few seconds. Utilities have a whole staff trying to predict consumption evolution, and adapt their means of production to the events. As such, when such a glitch is foreseen, they have to power up gaz turbines BEFORE the event and reduce nuclear + hydro a bit, in order to be able to follow the foreseen drop in production with the tubines (the only generators that can follow production in a matter of seconds).

At 20:00:00, the load goes back to 50 million households. If the nuclear + hydro capacity was sufficient at 19:54:59, why is there a need for gas turbines at 20:00:00?

At that moment, they have to speed up the turbines again, in order to adapt to consumption. Afterwards, they can slow down gaz turbines while speeding up nukes (matter of several minutes) to take over again a smooth consumption pattern.

 

[vanesch]

It sounds more like a signal for the politicians than an energy conservation effort - literally flashing the lights to express concern. I don't understand that objection.

The point is that this is a typical ecologist ideology thing: they want people to "reduce energy consumption because of climate change". But electricity from nuclear doesn't contribute to it, not more than eating vegetables. You can consume as much electricity from nuclear as you want, you won't be contributing to any greenhouse effect and this is something that pisses off ecologists (mostly with anti-nuclear ties), so they want to instore some kind of confusion. So the point is: there is no objective ecological reason to reduce electricity consumption if it comes from nuclear.

You could just as well have given a "strong signal to politicians to limit climate change" by not eating vegetables for a week.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

You don't sell power? By conserving, can the power saved be sold to countries using dirtier technologies.

But I do agree that many of these stunts are rather lame.

 

[vanesch]

You don't sell power? By conserving, can the power saved be sold to countries using dirtier technologies.

Well, that's already the case in fact. Maybe France can build 50 more nukes, in order to sell electricity all over Europe, and especially in Germany where they are going to replace nukes by coal power plants (and a few windmills). 26 new brown coal plants have been approved in Germany in march 2007 in order to be ready for their nuclear phaseout, but indeed, maybe France should build enough nukes to "save the planet" in Europe...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,472786,00.html

 

[Art]

The point is that this is a typical ecologist ideology thing: they want people to "reduce energy consumption because of climate change". But electricity from nuclear doesn't contribute to it, not more than eating vegetables. You can consume as much electricity from nuclear as you want, you won't be contributing to any greenhouse effect and this is something that pisses off ecologists (mostly with anti-nuclear ties), so they want to instore some kind of confusion. So the point is: there is no objective ecological reason to reduce electricity consumption if it comes from nuclear.

I think the argument is that the nuclear process produces heat and most of the electricity produced ends up as heat so although no greenhouse gasses are produced according to the ecologists the energy produced still contributes to GW as this heat ends up bouncing around between the atmosphere and the planet. Unfortunately it seems many ecologists are not so interested in clean energy as no energy.

 

[Azael]

Same idiocity here in sweden. 50% of our electricity is nuclear, the other 50% is hydro. That doesn't stop all environmentalits from whining about the electricity consumption and now some politicians are jumping on the bandwagon aswell.

Everyone here talks about wind, wind, wind, wind while completely ignoring that our electricity production isn't causing any CO2 emissions.

 

[vanesch]

I think the argument is that the nuclear process produces heat and most of the electricity produced ends up as heat so although no greenhouse gasses are produced according to the ecologists the energy produced still contributes to GW

That's "global warming" taken litterally! We "warm" the Earth (with our hands ?).

This is a totally ridiculous idea, first of all because of the utterly tiny fraction of energy involved in the total energy balance of the earth: GW, if true, is due to changes in the way the sunlight is reflected and/or retained by eventual "barriers" such as greenhouse gasses, not by the direct heat of any human activity which is insignificant in the heat balance of the solar radiation.

But what is more, is that if this were true, then the warming would be NOW, and not in 20 years or so!

Hell, if we take the human body to produce 100 W, and we are 6 billion, then our collective body heat is producing the equivalent of 200 nuclear power plants (at 3GWth), which is half of what is installed worldwide. So we should "switch off" immediately half of the human bodies worldwide as a way to avoid GW.

 

[vanesch]

Everyone here talks about wind, wind, wind, wind while completely ignoring that our electricity production isn't causing any CO2 emissions.

Wind is nice... as a minority contribution in the power offer, but in order to have a full-scale non-CO2 producing electricity generation, the only option is nuclear.
The feasibility is shown in the following comparison:
mid-70ies --> mid-90ies: France became about 80% nuclear
mid 80ies --> now: Denmark became for about 20% eolean

and:

France is a net exporter of electricity, helping their neighbours with shortenings ;
Denmark needs Germany and Sweden to act as a power buffer for their variable wind energy production.

This shows the comparison of the two technologies.

Photovoltaic is for the moment still too expensive, and although less erratic, there is nevertheless the day/night cycle and the summer/winter cycle which makes that photovoltaic will also never be able to be a majority contributor in the electricity production.

Biofuel is a joke when looking at the total energy balance.

 

[EnumaElish]

You can't keep that excess capacity for longer than a few seconds or the voltage of the grid will rise and the generators will speed up! So you have to be able to reduce production in a matter of a few seconds. Utilities have a whole staff trying to predict consumption evolution, and adapt their means of production to the events. As such, when such a glitch is foreseen, they have to power up gaz turbines BEFORE the event and reduce nuclear + hydro a bit, in order to be able to follow the foreseen drop in production with the tubines (the only generators that can follow production in a matter of seconds).



At that moment, they have to speed up the turbines again, in order to adapt to consumption. Afterwards, they can slow down gaz turbines while speeding up nukes (matter of several minutes) to take over again a smooth consumption pattern.

Thanks for the explanation.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Well, that's already the case in fact. Maybe France can build 50 more nukes, in order to sell electricity all over Europe, and especially in Germany where they are going to replace nukes by coal power plants (and a few windmills). 26 new brown coal plants have been approved in Germany in march 2007 in order to be ready for their nuclear phaseout, but indeed, maybe France should build enough nukes to "save the planet" in Europe...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,472786,00.html

And we haven't even talked about getting rid of petro powered cars. How many plants would it take to go all electric - or say go H2, perhaps H2 combustion in standard internal combustion engines since fuel cells aren't there yet - using electrolysis at the typical 50% efficiency?

Here in the US, in order to go all nuclear we would have to build about 1200 more plants - ie we need about 13 times the power supplied by the 100 plants operating now - if we ignore the additional losses in the fuel chain [efficiency] as compared to petro. I would expect that this would take about 650 years to do, as a best case.

 

[Azael]

And we haven't even talked about getting rid of petro powered cars. How many plants would it take to go all electric - or say go H2, perhaps H2 combustion in standard internal combustion engines since fuel cells aren't there yet - using electrolysis at the typical 50% efficiency?

Here in the US, in order to go all nuclear we would have to build about 1200 more plants - ie we need about 13 times the power supplied by the 100 plants operating now - if we ignore the additional losses in the fuel chain [efficiency] as compared to petro. I would expect that this would take about 650 years to do, as a best case.

The high temp reactors would be much better suited for hydrogen production than using electrolysis.

How much hydrogen does a car need? I have seen figures(forgot where) that a car can get 400km on 3kg of hydrogen. I don't know if its right but Il use that number.
I guess the avarage joe drives about 40km a day or so? So that means 0.3kg hydrogen/day for the avarage car.

JAEA claims that http://www.uic.com.au/nip116.htm reactor can produce 130tons/day. Enough for 400 000 cars using the above assumptions.
General atomics claim a 2400MWt can produce 800 tons/day. Enough for 2,5 million cars.

If there is 300 million cars running in the us you need anything from 120-800 reactors. So nuclear could have a big impact before 2050.

Much easier in smal countries, sweden could become independent of gasoline with just 2-3 large reactors or 10 small ones.

 

[J77]

In reply to OP:

ummm...

The switching off of lights for 5 minutes isn't to save electricity, it's a statement.

Much like what Gore won his prize for

 

[vanesch]

Here in the US, in order to go all nuclear we would have to build about 1200 more plants - ie we need about 13 times the power supplied by the 100 plants operating now - if we ignore the additional losses in the fuel chain [efficiency] as compared to petro. I would expect that this would take about 650 years to do, as a best case.

How do you get to that number ? A nuclear power plant, a standard one (PWR, BWR...) costs of the order of 1 billion $. Probably gen IV reactors will be a bit more expensive, say 2 billion $. So in order to build 1000 such reactors, you need 2000 billion $. How much did the Iraq war cost you in how much time ?

Realistically, we are talking on the scale of 4 decades or so. France built ~60 reactors in ~20 years time. A 6 times bigger economy (US vs. France) can hence build 360 reactors in the same period, or 720 reactors in 40 years time. But the nuclear power building didn't "ruin the country" in France. So an extra effort is possible without difficulties.

 

[vanesch]

In reply to OP:

ummm...

The switching off of lights for 5 minutes isn't to save electricity, it's a statement.

Much like what Gore won his prize for

I know, but it is a statement about "electricity savings to save the planet". Green ideologists like such kind of statements (we should reduce all of our technological confort), whether or not they have ecological implications. Ecologism is going to be the Bolshevism of the 21st century. Which doesn't mean that one shouldn't be concerned about REAL ecological issues, in the same way as it was a good thing to be concerned about social welfare issues in the beginning of the 20th century, but which was abused for political/ideological concerns by the communist agenda.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

How do you get to that number ? A nuclear power plant, a standard one (PWR, BWR...) costs of the order of 1 billion $. Probably gen IV reactors will be a bit more expensive, say 2 billion $. So in order to build 1000 such reactors, you need 2000 billion $. How much did the Iraq war cost you in how much time ?

This ignores the political reality that no one want a reactor in their back yard. And with terrorism being such a problem, controls are a huge concern. What's more, the industry lost the trust of the public long ago; and rightly so IMO. TMI was a near disaster. It is a matter of record that the two most knowlegible people alive could not agree on what to do when the system was failing. "We now know how to avoid this" doesn't carry much weight as it was promised as safe the first time.

Did you all happen to see where the US Navy just busted a sub crew for falsifying maintenance records on a nuclear vessel? Eventually, this sort of thing WILL happen.

 

[vanesch]

This ignores the political reality that no one want a reactor in their back yard. And with terrorism being such a problem, controls are a huge concern. What's more, the industry lost the trust of the public long ago; and rightly so IMO. TMI was a near disaster. It is a matter of record that the two most knowlegible people alive could not agree on what to do when the system was failing. "We now know how to avoid this" doesn't carry much weight as it was promised as safe the first time.

TMI made how many victims ?
0

It was a "near" disaster... if it were a disaster (still a lot had to happen before the core got out: it was still IN the reactor vessel, which was still IN the containment vessel...) what would have happened ? There wouldn't have been a Chernobyl, but there might (if the two extra barriers gave up) have been a serious release of radioactive material. One would probably have had to evacuate the neighbourhood, and maybe a few square miles would have gotten heavily contaminated. Once every, I don't know, 300 years or so, if we put it to 1/10 the chance for the two extra barriers to give up and as TMI happened once in 30 years. But in the mean time, power plants even became safer.

The absolute maximum disaster, Chernobyl, which is hardly conceivable for fundamental technical reasons with power plants in the West, made about 10 000 victims worldwide (over 50 years) according to the estimations of the IAEA. That's 1% of the yearly number of victims of car traffic. So in order to be as risky as car traffic, one would have to have about 100 Chernobyls per year. This is realistically never going to happen.

Are we going to refuse a technology which is thousands of times safer than driving a car and that can potentially solve a worldwide ecological disaster, for safety and ecological reasons ? THIS is the green anti-nuclear nonsense.

Now, how does nuclear safety (in expected number of victims) compare, to say, oil industry ?

 

[vanesch]

Did you all happen to see where the US Navy just busted a sub crew for falsifying maintenance records on a nuclear vessel? Eventually, this sort of thing WILL happen.

Well, worse things already happened. Chernobyl. It was not a disaster of another scale than any other major industry knew. This is like people who are affraid of taking the airplane because it can crash, and take their car. Yes, the plane can crash. But it is 6 times safer per kilometer than car driving. Only, when a plane crashes, it gets in the news.

So we have to do what is possible to avoid a nuclear power plant releasing a big amount of radioactive material. It will probably happen some times (over long periods). It will make some victims. It won't be such a big deal.

Remember: EVERY YEAR, car traffic is equivalent to 100 Chernobyls.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

TMI made how many victims ?
0

It was a "near" disaster... if it were a disaster (still a lot had to happen before the core got out: it was still IN the reactor vessel, which was still IN the containment vessel...) what would have happened ? There wouldn't have been a Chernobyl, but there might (if the two extra barriers gave up) have been a serious release of radioactive material. One would probably have had to evacuate the neighbourhood, and maybe a few square miles would have gotten heavily contaminated. Once every, I don't know, 300 years or so, if we put it to 1/10 the chance for the two extra barriers to give up and as TMI happened once in 30 years. But in the mean time, power plants even became safer.

The absolute maximum disaster, Chernobyl, which is hardly conceivable for fundamental technical reasons with power plants in the West, made about 10 000 victims worldwide (over 50 years) according to the estimations of the IAEA. That's 1% of the yearly number of victims of car traffic. So in order to be as risky as car traffic, one would have to have about 100 Chernobyls per year. This is realistically never going to happen.

Are we going to refuse a technology which is thousands of times safer than driving a car and that can potentially solve a worldwide ecological disaster, for safety and ecological reasons ? THIS is the green anti-nuclear nonsense.

Now, how does nuclear safety (in expected number of victims) compare, to say, oil industry ?

The true number of victims of Chernobyl is not yet known and industry has proven untrustworthy. But the real concern is terrorism. How many dirty bombs does it take to make a bad day?

The problem is not theory, it is the reality of implementation. And again, since industry can't be trusted, there is no reason to believe that the safeties will be effective.

 

[vanesch]

The the true number of victims of Chernobyl is not yet known and industry has proven untrustworthy

Officially, Chernobyl made 60 direct victims (Soviet records), but one is rather convinced that about 300 people died of radiation illness. The IAEA bases its estimates of victims on the measurements of contamination over the territory, with known activity-dose relationships, and basing itself upon the linear dose-effect hypothesis (5.6% chance to devellop a deadly cancer over 50 years per Sievert of dose). The linear dose-effect hypothesis is not established, but it is about the most severe hypothesis that one can make. In principle, it will be almost impossible to find out by epidemiology if there were any victims due to Chernobyl, as the *deadly* cancer rate increase will be in the noise.

Now, it is true that Greenpeace, and the German Green party ordered different reports, and one of them is the TORCH report, which assigns several illnesses to the low doses of Chernobyl: heart attacks, digestion problems... by epidemiological analysis (without reference study). They speak of about 400 000 victims, but on a completely unscientific basis. There has never been any indication of these kinds of illnesses as a result of low doses.

Also, a big part of the victims is due to extremely bad handling of the situation at Chernobyl. The nearby town was only evacuated 36 hours after the accident, and people have been sent to clean up the site without the slightest form of protection. They make the bulk of the 10 000 victims on long term and of the 300 victims on short term. If the accident were handled a bit more seriously, probably the number of victims would have been much lower and in the hundreds or a few thousand.

But the real concern is terrorism. How many dirty bombs does it take to make a bad day?

What do dirty bombs have to do with nuclear power plants ?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

One of the more likely ways to die is by a meteor impact; not because we usually have large impacts, but because when one does hit, billions will die. The same logic can be applied here. One catastrophic failure is unacceptable, and there is no such thing as perfect controls.

 

[vanesch]

The problem is not theory, it is the reality of implementation. And again, since industry can't be trusted, there is no reason to believe that the safeties will be effective.

That was true in the beginning, because one had to predict. But now we have a record of more than 30 years of operation. Empirically, the number of victims generated in 30 years is a good indication of what is the average number of victims to be expected per year. It is ridiculously small compared to other human activities. I don't have a citation, but once I read that per year, the nuclear industry worldwide makes less victims than the shoemaker industry.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Officially, Chernobyl made 60 direct victims (Soviet records), but one is rather convinced that about 300 people died of radiation illness. The IAEA bases its estimates of victims on the measurements of contamination over the territory, with known activity-dose relationships, and basing itself upon the linear dose-effect hypothesis (5.6% chance to devellop a deadly cancer over 50 years per Sievert of dose). The linear dose-effect hypothesis is not established, but it is about the most severe hypothesis that one can make. In principle, it will be almost impossible to find out by epidemiology if there were any victims due to Chernobyl, as the *deadly* cancer rate increase will be in the noise.

Now, it is true that Greenpeace, and the German Green party ordered different reports, and one of them is the TORCH report, which assigns several illnesses to the low doses of Chernobyl: heart attacks, digestion problems... by epidemiological analysis (without reference study). They speak of about 400 000 victims, but on a completely unscientific basis. There has never been any indication of these kinds of illnesses as a result of low doses.

Also, a big part of the victims is due to extremely bad handling of the situation at Chernobyl. The nearby town was only evacuated 36 hours after the accident, and people have been sent to clean up the site without the slightest form of protection. They make the bulk of the 10 000 victims on long term and of the 300 victims on short term. If the accident were handled a bit more seriously, probably the number of victims would have been much lower and in the hundreds or a few thousand.

I will have to get back to this point. But the last time that I checked, the materials were being spread over the countryside by rodents and birds, and people are eating food deemed to be unsafe - babies are drinking contaminated milk. However, at the moment I'm in no position to debate the numbers. I will say that "not shown to" does not translate to "doesn't" since in many cases we would have no way to know. Another trust issue and possibly misleading statements! How many examples of "safe" materials and chemicals later deemed unsafe would you like?

What do dirty bombs have to do with nuclear power plants ?

Access and opportunity. And you can bet that we would outsource control! Cripes, in the middle of the war on terror, Bush tried to outsource control of our ports to a country with historical ties to terrorism.

 

[vanesch]

One of the more likely ways to die is by a meteor impact; not because we usually have large impacts, but because when one does hit, billions will die. The same logic can be applied here. One catastrophic failure is unacceptable, and there is no such thing as perfect controls.

This is the kind of green party logic. The point with the meteor impact is that it is inconceivable to have it several times. So it is a yes/no risk. And a low probability of a total extinction is similar to buying a ticket for the lottery (but with the opposite hopes).

However, a nuclear power plant blowing up, even like Chernobyl, is not such a big disaster. Yes, it has made some victims. Even if we have to suffer a Chernobyl every 100 years, that's still no problem. Personally, I would even say that if we have to suffer a Chernobyl every 10 years, it wouldn't be such a problem.

Let's take the worst case from worst case: a Chernobyl every 10 years, and the Torch report is right, so that's 400 000 victims. Ok, that's 40 000 victims on average per year.

We are at the level of 4% of the number of car traffic victims. Even with a Chernobyl every 10 years, nuclear power would be 25 times safer than driving a car.

Also, with a Chernobyl every 10 years, we would get used to it, like airplanes crashing, and car victims.

Now even good old Russian style (un)safety wasn't able to produce a Chernobyl every 10 years. So it's really MUCH MUCH safer than what I show here. But even if it weren't it would still be a good solution.

The main difficulty of the nuclear power industry is its safety. It's way too high, and that worries the public. It should be made much more dangerous. Then people would accept it much better.

 

[BobG]

This ignores the political reality that no one want a reactor in their back yard. And with terrorism being such a problem, controls are a huge concern. What's more, the industry lost the trust of the public long ago; and rightly so IMO. TMI was a near disaster. It is a matter of record that the two most knowlegible people alive could not agree on what to do when the system was failing. "We now know how to avoid this" doesn't carry much weight as it was promised as safe the first time.

Did you all happen to see where the US Navy just busted a sub crew for falsifying maintenance records on a nuclear vessel? Eventually, this sort of thing WILL happen.

Well, worse things already happened. Chernobyl. It was not a disaster of another scale than any other major industry knew. This is like people who are affraid of taking the airplane because it can crash, and take their car. Yes, the plane can crash. But it is 6 times safer per kilometer than car driving. Only, when a plane crashes, it gets in the news.

So we have to do what is possible to avoid a nuclear power plant releasing a big amount of radioactive material. It will probably happen some times (over long periods). It will make some victims. It won't be such a big deal.

Remember: EVERY YEAR, car traffic is equivalent to 100 Chernobyls.

Ivan's first statement is the biggest problem. A fairer comparison would be "how many people die in car traffic in my home town?"

A nuclear reactor wouldn't be placed in the middle of a large city simply because of the number of lives that would be jeopardized in an accident. You have to find a small town well outside a large city to assume the risk for the large city. It's a good move in theory, but the town selected to host a nuclear power plant usually doesn't think so.

You have the same problem with figuring out how to dispose of the waste. Everything goes pretty well, with all of the states involved very agreeable, right up to the point that the final disposal site is selected and the lawsuits begin.

You mention 'nuclear' and everything degrades into the ethics scenario of the life raft with too many occupants.

 

[vanesch]

I will have to get back to this point. But the last time that I checked, the materials were being spread over the countryside by rodents and birds, and people are eating food deemed to be unsafe - babies are drinking contaminated milk.

That is because the norms for "radiological safety" are set do draconian values. Do you know that one of the densest population areas in India has a natural radioactivity which is way higher than the rim of the contaminated area in Chernobyl ? It's also a tourist resort.

I don't say that one has to be reckless with radioactivity, but the biggest harm that is done to the whole nuclear industry is its extreme safety.

Do you remember the "news" that after the Japanese earthquake, "50% more radioactivity" was released than initially announced ? Well, what happened was that 90 000 Bq in a few cubic meters of water was released instead of the 60 000 Bq announced. But the point is: even if you DRANK UP all that water, you would still be below the acceptable yearly dose for the public ! In other words, the toxicity of what was released was of the same order as, say, a glass of oil (and I'd prefer having to drink up 90 000 Bq in water, than a glass of oil!).

So the big bad news that did the round of the world was that they didn't spill a glass, but a glass and a half of oil in the sea.

How many examples of "safe" materials and chemicals later deemed unsafe would you like?

I can assure you that in the nuclear business, we err on the other side!

Now, I find it also stupid of officials to say that there is no risk. That's stupid. There's always a risk. You simply have to give the risk (in expected number of victims, and financial loss, ...) as compared to an accepted risk, such as car driving.
And if you do that, no matter how you turn it, nuclear industry is way too safe (meaning, they've invested too much in safety).

Access and opportunity.

There is no way to outsource control, as the IAEA imposes a state control of radioactive materials. So in any case the state remains responsible. But honestly, there is already more than enough material available to make a dirty bomb. The last place you want to go for it, is a nuclear power plant ! You would be able to follow the guy with no problem, just following him with sensitive detectors. You know how to make an efficient dirty bomb ? Not with stuff from a reactor, but rather with an old industrial Co-60 source. There are many of these around, and not always well guarded. Or an Am-Be source as used in oil drilling.

But a dirty bomb wouldn't make many real victims. It would indeed scare out the hell of people, and be a great thing for a terrorist. But objectively, it wouldn't be a big deal.

 

[vanesch]

It's a good move in theory, but the town selected to host a nuclear power plant usually doesn't think so.

It's not a good idea in general to put a nuclear powerplant in a city, big or small. You should put it in the country side !

You have the same problem with figuring out how to dispose of the waste. Everything goes pretty well, with all of the states involved very agreeable, right up to the point that the final disposal site is selected and the lawsuits begin.

That's really a wrong issue, because in geological waste disposal, the "highest risk" is after about 1000 years, when the human-made containment will have lost its integrity, and we trust upon the geological structure to do the confinement - and that's where the uncertainties set in (that is: the uncertainties of being sure that we haven't overlooked a possible geological process, because for waste management, all possible scenarios have been worked out and showed that there was no problem).

So for the first few hundred years, "your town" is entirely safe. And here, the choice should be guided by geological considerations.

 

[mgb_phys]

Do you know that one of the densest population areas in India has a natural radioactivity which is way higher than the rim of the contaminated area in Chernobyl ? It's also a tourist resort.

Indians don't count - otherwise we would have closed chemical plants in the west after we killed 20,000 of them at Bhopal.

 

[Azael]

This ignores the political reality that no one want a reactor in their back yard.

Acctualy people that live near nuclear power plants is more supportive of nuclear power!
http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2007/08/nuclear-power-plant-neighbors-accept.html
Sure its from the NEI so it might be industry propaganda. But I know from polls in sweden that its exactly the same here. People in communities near nuclear power plants think they are great. Placing new reactors at those sites will not be a problem.

And with terrorism being such a problem, controls are a huge concern. What's more, the industry lost the trust of the public long ago; and rightly so IMO. TMI was a near disaster. It is a matter of record that the two most knowlegible people alive could not agree on what to do when the system was failing. "We now know how to avoid this" doesn't carry much weight as it was promised as safe the first time..

In what way was TMI a near disaster? Even if it had been a complete meltdown instead of a partial meltdown what would have happened? Not much at all. The consequenses are irrelevant compared to the consequenses of coal. Acctualy a 1GWe coal power plant in normal operation kills 200 people each year(according to ExternE's LCA). So every coal power plant is like a chernobyl. If we replace all coal with nuclear we can have several chernobyls and it still won't be as bad as coal was.

But most of all risk of meltdown is a mute point since its possible to design reactors with passive safety that eliminates the risk of meltdowns. There is light water reactor designs cooled by natural convection, pebble bed and high temperature reactors with fuel particles that can not melt since the temperature in the reactor can't reach the melting point of the materials even with total loss of coolant(demonstrated), molten salt reactors where the fuel is molten during regular operation so obviosuly there can be no melt down ect. So even if meltdown was a serious potential disaster in current gen LWR's they are eliminated by design in many new reactors.


There is also the question, what else? What else except nuclear have even a slim chanse to replace a fraction of coal?

 

[vanesch]

Ivan's first statement is the biggest problem. A fairer comparison would be "how many people die in car traffic in my home town?"

BTW, I think that even that comparison is ok. Probability to die in a car accident is about 0.01% per year worldwide. Now, take a town of about 100 000 inhabitants, and consider a Chernobyl nearby in that town every 100 years (they are not going to win the lottery every time! We assumed a Chernobyl every 10 years, worldwide). Per year, we have 10 victims in car accidents, which make about 1000 victims in 100 years.
Chernobyl made about 4000 victims in the nearby town, but that was due to very late evacuation. So let us say that reasonably, we could bring that down to 1000 victims if we have better evacuation plans and so. Given that there is a Chernobyl every 10 years, we can tune the procedures.

So we see that under the super disaster hypotheses of having a town of 100 000 inhabitants with normal drivers, but with a Chernobyl every 100 years (each tenth Chernobyl is for this town if we assume there is one every 10 years worldwide, which is already a hugely pessimistic disaster hypothesis), that in this very unlucky town, driving is as dangerous as having the power plant there.

But I want to stress again that I have made extremely pessimistic hypotheses. Indeed, if there is a Chernobyl every 10 year worldwide (which is already a crazily pessimistic hypothesis), given that there are 400 power plants working now, that would mean normally that the town would only be hit on average every 4000 years. But I gave them bad luck, and put it to 100 years.

 

[Azael]

It's not a good idea in general to put a nuclear powerplant in a city, big or small. You should put it in the country side !

Its still a good idea to place NPP's close enough to supply district heating to cities. There where major plans for that in sweden until they where stopped by environuts. A big chunk of the heating needs of Copenhagen could have been meet by the Barsebäck plant in sweden. Same with Göteborg and the Ringhals plant.

 

[vanesch]

Its still a good idea to place NPP's close enough to supply district heating to cities. There where major plans for that in sweden until they where stopped by environuts. A big chunk of the heating needs of Copenhagen could have been meet by the Barsebäck plant in sweden. Same with Göteborg and the Ringhals plant.

Mmm... personally, I'd prefer them to be in low population density areas, because it eliminates the very last of worries. Chernobyl was really the worst of the worst, with a high smoke plume, driven by a fire and a not-stopped reactor (the reactor was still working many hours after the accident, because there was - in contrast to all western reactors - no passive safety mechanism that stopped it). It was THIS which spread out the activity over such a large area. But this is simply physically impossible in a plant with build-in passive safety, which means that the worst of the worst in such a plant (breakdown of reactor vessel, breakdown of the containment building, massive dispersion of the core material) is a heavy contamination, but of a more restricted area. The long-term consequence is then that this area is turned into a natural reserve with build-in guarantee against promotors The contamination will last for 100 - 200 years.

So one should foresee a zone of a few miles around a power plant as a potential natural reserve which will be selected randomly by the distribution of accidents. It is then economically wasteful to put towns in there.

This view has the advantage that one can create more natural reserves worldwide by lowering security standards for power plants So again, I wonder why ecologists are against nukes: in the worst case, they generate natural reserves with guarantee

 

[Azael]

Mmm... personally, I'd prefer them to be in low population density areas, because it eliminates the very last of worries. Chernobyl was really the worst of the worst, with a high smoke plume, driven by a fire and a not-stopped reactor (the reactor was still working many hours after the accident, because there was - in contrast to all western reactors - no passive safety mechanism that stopped it). It was THIS which spread out the activity over such a large area. But this is simply physically impossible in a plant with build-in passive safety, which means that the worst of the worst in such a plant (breakdown of reactor vessel, breakdown of the containment building, massive dispersion of the core material) is a heavy contamination, but of a more restricted area. The long-term consequence is then that this area is turned into a natural reserve with build-in guarantee against promotors The contamination will last for 100 - 200 years.

So one should foresee a zone of a few miles around a power plant as a potential natural reserve which will be selected randomly by the distribution of accidents. It is then economically wasteful to put towns in there.

This view has the advantage that one can create more natural reserves worldwide by lowering security standards for power plants So again, I wonder why ecologists are against nukes: in the worst case, they generate natural reserves with guarantee

Thats one way of looking at it

 

[mgb_phys]

Thats one way of looking at it

There was a semi-serious suggestion that the best way to preserve the Amazon rain forrest was to detonate a dirty bomb over it so that you couldn't cut it down and grow cattle for McDonalds - I like to suggest this to the more over the top eco-freindly types!

 

[Moonbear]

A nuclear reactor wouldn't be placed in the middle of a large city simply because of the number of lives that would be jeopardized in an accident. You have to find a small town well outside a large city to assume the risk for the large city. It's a good move in theory, but the town selected to host a nuclear power plant usually doesn't think so.

It would seem there are a number of good potential sites along the "rust belt." To put it bluntly, many of those areas are already so contaminated and polluted from the old industries that have died off that you couldn't do much more harm to them if you tried, so you'd alleviate such unfounded worries. They're located near the sorts of waterways that would be required for the cooling systems. The towns are depressed, with few residents left, and in desperate need of the jobs such a plant would bring to the area. These are already locations that have been deemed "industrial" much more than residential, so they seem like perfect places. Many of the people "stuck" living there are only stuck because there is no value to their property anymore, so they can't afford to pick up and move out...who would buy? But, if a power plant comes in and offers them a good price for their land, they could relocate out to a nicer place (so you don't have to deal with the "not in my backyard" issue...give them a price that gets them out of the backyard of the proposed site), yet they also may stay close enough to benefit from the jobs and provide the workforce for the site.

One thing that would limit a few areas, however, is mine subsidance issues. Unfortunately, the towns that might be willing to adopt an industry that's cleaner, but still provides jobs for them, would be the coal-mining towns. Coal mining accidents have taken far more lives than nuclear power plants in this country. But, the ground there would be too unstable I think.

And, maybe we need some brave politicians...perhaps some nearer the end of their careers who don't have to worry about getting reelected...who will simply say, yes, this is the site for it, and you can complain all you want, but it's still happening.

 

[russ_watters]

One of the more likely ways to die is by a meteor impact; not because we usually have large impacts, but because when one does hit, billions will die. The same logic can be applied here. One catastrophic failure is unacceptable, and there is no such thing as perfect controls.

It is not true here because one catastrophic failure will not kill enough people for it to be that big of a deal. Chernobyl was orders of magnitude smaller than what is needed to equal the yearly damage done by other forms of energy. Vanesch used cars as a comparison, but the same comparison works for coal power. We'd need several Chernobyls a year to equal the death rate due to coal power. Air pollution kills people at a pretty surprising rate.

This ignores the political reality that no one want a reactor in their back yard.

Anti-nuclear environmentalists are stupid, but that doesn't mean the rest of the general public is. 20 years after TMI, it is easy to show people the evidence and convince enough that it is a good idea - especially when you factor in the money it feeds into the town.

I live about 5 miles from Limerick and there is no vocal opposition to the existence of the plant. I realize that there are places out west where there are people working to get plants closed, but areas where the concentration of enviro-nuts is very high are the exception, not the rule.

 

[russ_watters]

A nuclear reactor wouldn't be placed in the middle of a large city simply because of the number of lives that would be jeopardized in an accident. You have to find a small town well outside a large city to assume the risk for the large city. It's a good move in theory, but the town selected to host a nuclear power plant usually doesn't think so.

A nuclear plant (or any other large power plant) isn't built in the middle of a city for technical reasons. There is no safety benefit to placing a nuclear plant in Limerick (20 miles west of Philly) rather than in Philly. The fallout from an accident would be more effectively spread over Philly than if, for example, the plant were placed on the Deleware in south Philly.

 

[russ_watters]

By the way, vansech - you are being far to accomodating of the fearmongering. I know you gave the caveats already, but there is simply no reason to use Chernobyl as your basis for analysis of the risk. It is like using the Titanic for analysis of car accident risk. Cars don't strike icebergs and sink and a Chernobyl type accident is a technical impossibility in the west.

Using TMI as the basis for a risk analysis shows just how "risky" nuclear power is. The worst "what could have happened" scenario for TMI probably still wouldn't have killed anyone. But then, of course, you run into the problem of trying to predict a disaster rate based on a historic rate of zero. After 40 years of waiting, we're still at zero. Assuming we haven't been unusually lucky, a bad disaster tomorrow would set us up for a rate that would probably allow all the world's energy to be nuclear based and have one disaster a year. Given the death rate from things like air pollution, that's certainly something people could live with.

 

[vanesch]

By the way, vansech - you are being far to accomodating of the fearmongering. I know you gave the caveats already, but there is simply no reason to use Chernobyl as your basis for analysis of the risk. It is like using the Titanic for analysis of car accident risk. Cars don't strike icebergs and sink and a Chernobyl type accident is a technical impossibility in the west.

I know, but my reasoning is the following: nobody will claim that any car accident will be WORSE than the titanic sinking. If we can show now that "titanics sinking" are still less risky than making shoes, then we should allow for cars.
Translated: no imaginable accident with a power plant will ever be worse than Chernobyl: we've had the maximal accident there. This puts an upper limit, by observation, to the phantasies about what could happen with power plants. If given this upper limit, we're still having acceptable risks, then the REAL (but yet unobserved) risk will definitely be lower.

Because it is the fact that the real risk is still unobserved which feeds the fears: "we've been lucky, but the Big Bang is maybe for tomorrow". Well, consider, as a cure for that fear, that the worst possible Bangs happen regularly...
and you'll see that even that is no big deal compared to other accepted risks, such as driving cars, smoking...

 

[Art]

By the way, vansech - you are being far to accomodating of the fearmongering. I know you gave the caveats already, but there is simply no reason to use Chernobyl as your basis for analysis of the risk. It is like using the Titanic for analysis of car accident risk. Cars don't strike icebergs and sink and a Chernobyl type accident is a technical impossibility in the west.

Using TMI as the basis for a risk analysis shows just how "risky" nuclear power is. The worst "what could have happened" scenario for TMI probably still wouldn't have killed anyone. But then, of course, you run into the problem of trying to predict a disaster rate based on a historic rate of zero. After 40 years of waiting, we're still at zero. Assuming we haven't been unusually lucky, a bad disaster tomorrow would set us up for a rate that would probably allow all the world's energy to be nuclear based and have one disaster a year. Given the death rate from things like air pollution, that's certainly something people could live with.

Last time I checked Windscale (Sellafield) was in the West.

 

[vanesch]

Last time I checked Windscale (Sellafield) was in the West.

Windscale wasn't a power reactor. It was a hastily build military reactor to produce plutonium an tritium after Eisenhower had decided to cut the British off from the military applications of nuclear technology (and hence material supply).

It was an extremely dangerous design: it was essentially a graphite reactor in a corridor, with a big ventilator on one side, which blew air (!) through the channels in the reactor in order to cool it, and a stack on the other side, where the air was given off to the atmosphere. And regularly, one let the reactor overheat (to a few hundred degrees C) in order to relax the Wigner energy in the graphite. So you essentially had a hot cole stove with a ventilator and a stack, stuffed with uranium and - this was the main contribution to the contamination - a lot of materials to be irradiated, such as polonium.
At one point, the overheating went wrong, and the graphite/uranium took fire.

One estimates that the Winscale accident has made around 200 victims (over 50 years), again under the hypothesis of linear dose-effect relation etc...

All this has nothing to do with a western powerplant.

 

[russ_watters]

I know, but my reasoning is the following:

I follow your logic and it is sound except for the fact that it allows crackpots and the ignorant to believe something that isn't true. Yes, you are working within their expectations/beliefs and still making a convincing argument, but I just don't like letting untruths slide. Conceding the point will undoubtably make people who are simply ignorant think that Chernobyl really is a possibility here. It isn't so much a problem for this discussion because people are smart enough to follow your reasoning, but as a general tactic, I prefer to demand realism.

 

[t-money]

Biofuel is a joke!

If we devoted the total biosphere of Earth to production of biofuels we still could not sustain our current and future energy demands which is ever increasing.

 

[Art]

Windscale wasn't a power reactor. It was a hastily build military reactor to produce plutonium an tritium after Eisenhower had decided to cut the British off from the military applications of nuclear technology (and hence material supply).

It was an extremely dangerous design: it was essentially a graphite reactor in a corridor, with a big ventilator on one side, which blew air (!) through the channels in the reactor in order to cool it, and a stack on the other side, where the air was given off to the atmosphere. And regularly, one let the reactor overheat (to a few hundred degrees C) in order to relax the Wigner energy in the graphite. So you essentially had a hot cole stove with a ventilator and a stack, stuffed with uranium and - this was the main contribution to the contamination - a lot of materials to be irradiated, such as polonium.
At one point, the overheating went wrong, and the graphite/uranium took fire.

One estimates that the Winscale accident has made around 200 victims (over 50 years), again under the hypothesis of linear dose-effect relation etc...

All this has nothing to do with a western powerplant.

It has everything to do with Western nuclear safety records and Sellafield is still a part of the nuclear power plant cycle supplying reprocessed fuel.

The fact it wasn't a far far bigger disaster was entirely down to luck.

Once the reactor started burning they hadn't a clue what to do. In desperation they tried using water to put it out. They didn't have enough people on site and in desperation recruited volunteers from a local cinema to man the fire hoses.

This didn't work and they were incredibly lucky they didn't cause a steam explosion which would have caused an absolutely massive catastrophe spreading contamination over hundreds of miles.

Eventually someone had the bright idea of switching off the fan to stop the flow of air to the reactor which put out the fire.

The point is, it is not only in the East reckless and stupid decisions have been made in relation to safety matters in the nuclear industry and so although Western reactors might be safe from an exact replica of the problems of Chernobyl, based on prior experience, there is nothing to say they can't cobble together an equally disastrous outcome albeit with different ingredients.

btw As recently found following the publication of secret documents released under the 50 year rule the fire wasn't caused by heating to dispel the Wigner energy. It was caused by the components placed in the reactor catching fire due to political decisions to reduce the size of the heat fins on these components to increase production of tritium. This was discovered at the time but was covered up and all references to it in the official report deleted personally by the then PM Harold MacMillan who chose to blame the workers instead.

The reason there is a deep distrust of nuclear power is because this reaction by the British gov't is typical of how the industry responds to problems. It's knee jerk reaction is to cover up it's mistakes and lie to the public. The public however aren't stupid. They know they have been lied to in the past and wonder what other lies they are being fed. A recent example would be the use of depleted uranium in weaponry, gov'ts who use these armaments still keep insisting they are safe no matter how much evidence to the contrary accumulates. Even if you give the gov'ts the benefit of the doubt and allow they believe their own bs then you are merely substituting a fool for a liar neither of which fills one with confidence.