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.