Energy prices on the rise again-time for nuclear power?

[room305]

Google have apparently considered building an elevator into space - if not quite as far as the moon. The idea was to use it to carry payloads cheaply from Earth into space. However, maybe it could be used to carry stuff back down as well.

Probably many years away but I believe commercial space operations will become a very lucrative area of business at some point in the future.

 

[Zack]

Ivuernis, yes, Bush's pledge to return to the moon was interesting, it could indeed be a factor and the thought occured to me when he made it.Using the moon as a "stepping stone" to Mars for instance just doesn't make sense.(I suppose there is also the fear of China's rapidly progressing space programme- we'll probably be watching another space race in 10-15 yrs time.).

After initial outlay, Helium 3 extraction from the moon would, effectively, give the US (and potentially the planet) limitless and more or less free energy. Until nuclear fusion is (if it ever is) developed.The Gigawatts per ton of this stuff is supposedly truly staggering.

It's interesting also to look at US's proposed means of returning to the moon- its been dubbed "Apollo on steroids" ie. effectively the same vehicles/means they used close to forty years ago, I suppose the adage "if it ain't broke don't fix it" applies. This ensures they have a tremendous headstart over any other nation if "moon mining" is indeed their primary objective in returning to the moon.

This is an interesting thread, our kids are going to be living in a world where access to energy sources will be the primary politcal and economical imperatives.Eg. Irish farmland could be a long term bet for your grandkids- will we really be paying for air transported perishables from South America in 60 yrs time? probably not- it'll be homegrown.


Z

 

[room305]

Solar is out of the question.

Funny that when you dismiss any other renewable energy sources you give a reason, yet with solar you simply say it is out of the question. Why?

 

[brian1]

Funny that when you dismiss any other renewable energy sources you give a reason, yet with solar you simply say it is out of the question. Why?

Because we live in Ireland, not California.

Yes, I know that you can make some hot water from solar, but it certainly won't get us anywhere to generating the 4,500MW peak winter power that we currently require. And most people aren't willing to pay out the €10,000 that I heard it costs for it by some one on boards.ie, plus flying chaps over from Germany and putting them up for a week to install it!!!

 

[diarmuidc]

No other energy source has the same density as nuclear. A single wind turbine will produce at most 5MW, the worlds largest solar plant covering 25 hectares generates 10MW. One nuclear plant in Lithuania produces 1500MW. The figures speak for themselves.

France supplies 78% of their needs from nuclear. I live near one in fact. The fact of the matter is that modern designs are safe. How may people die each year from the pollution from coal plants?

 

[room305]

Because we live in Ireland, not California.

You don't need to be able to sunbathe to generate electricity from solar power.

Yes, I know that you can make some hot water from solar, but it certainly won't get us anywhere to generating the 4,500MW peak winter power that we currently require. And most people aren't willing to pay out the €10,000 that I heard it costs for it by some one on boards.ie, plus flying chaps over from Germany and putting them up for a week to install it!!!

If every house in this country had solar panels then the requirements from the grid would be significantly less. Nobody is advocating generating all of Ireland's electricity supply from one energy source. However, we need to consider alternative in order to:

1) Reduce inflation
2) Stop supporting dictatorships
3) Reduce harmful CO2 emissions

Reducing our dependency on imported oil achieves all of these objectives. You are arguing as though we can only choose one energy source, when in fact, using multiple sources makes the most sense. One of these options should definitely be nuclear though.

 

[room305]

Also, that €10k sounds very expensive and I'd question why he flew people over from Germany when there are companies in Ireland which can install solar panels.

 

[brian1]

I'm against nuclear power for the simple reason that it isn't a long term option. It's primary source of fuel, uranium is just like fossil fuels, a non renewable resource.Current estimates of global uranium reserves are somewhere around 80 - 125 yrs, at present nuclear power afaik, provides 16% of the globe's electricity requirements - about 7% of the globe's energy supply.Allow for a doubling of that capacity even to a modest 30% of global electricity requirements- see what that does to remaining viable reserves.

WRONG
yet another myth, please read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#Fuel_resources

basically it says that there is plenty of Uranium, that it is a very common element in nature and that with the new generation of breeder reactors that can use uranium-238 rather then uranium-235, there are between 10,000 to five billion years worth of uranium-235.

Hell there is a large deposit of the stuff in the Wicklow mountains.

BTW with reprocessing of Nuclear waste, you can extract 95% of the original Uranium for reuse.

So there are NO problems with Nuclear fuel supplies.

Why do you say that? Solar panals on rooftops in Ireland can meet a significant part of our energy needs. As I said before, the Portuguese are a superb example of this.

Some on boards quoted he got this done, it cost him €10,000 and he had to get guys from Germany to fly over to do it. And all he gets from this is hot water in Summer. And what about all the people living in cities living in apartments? It simply isn't scalable in any meaningful sense.

The figure is actual 40% in the Northwest of Ireland.

That is nice, but over 30% of the population lives in the East (Dublin area). so nationally we can probably do at very best 30%, again I ask what about the remainder?

There's actually more than enough energy currently produced in Europe as a whole you just need a bit of lateral thinking. Nuclear, Wind, Oil, Coal. These will all be considered complementary in matter of years, not decades. East/west time zones also help.

There are two be problems:

1) CO2 Emissions
We want to reduce our CO2 emissions as it is causing global warming. We currently burn lots of Oil and Gas, this is very bad for the environment.

People might find this funny, but I'm actually an environmentalist, I actually want Nuclear as I believe it is the only reliable solution to reducing CO2 emissions.

2) Security of supply
Yes, there is plenty of coal, but burning coal is one of the most awful, toxic and environmentally damaging things you can do. People don't realise that coal actually contains radioactive material that is known to prove cancer, a coal burning power plant realises far more radioactive material then a Nuclear power plant.

Gas mostly comes from Russia, but we all saw how unstable that is last year when Russia tried turning off the Ukrainians gas supply. That sppoked lots of people in the energy world.

BTW about the European supergrid, it is a great idea, but transmissions lines lose power over distance due to certain physical laws. Such transmission is incredibly inefficient with lots of lost energy. At best it is considered as a backup.

Also a very large part of the power coming from such a grid would be generated by Nuclear power plants.

 

[diarmuidc]

If every house in this country had solar panels then the requirements from the grid would be significantly less.

It is much more efficient to have one plant generating large amount of energy than many small ones.

Also from what I've read the manufacturing process for solar panels is not exactly very clean. They contain some exotic chemicals + elements. I'll need to do some research to back that statement up with hard facts

 

[Jimoslimos]

Incineration anybody..........??

Cue rabid pack of NIMBYs informing me on the dangers of dioxins and other such pollutants to them and their children (whilst smoking 20 a day ).
I'd move next to an incineration plant before I'd live beside a coal/oil power station.

Seriously though it is economically suicidal to depend on any one source of energy and since nuclear fusion is looking increasingly unlikely, helium-3 isotopes from moon are still a long, long way from being an option and wind/solar/tidal unable to produce 100% at peak demand then I'd have have to consider myself reluctantly pro-nuclear along with many others.

Another point to note, biomass has been mentioned as a renewable source of energy (which it is) but it seems to be overlooked that it is also a source of greenhouse gases and therefore is not helping tackle global warming.

 

[brian1]

Also, that €10k sounds very expensive and I'd question why he flew people over from Germany when there are companies in Ireland which can install solar panels.

I asked that also, as I'm really interested, he said the quotes from Irish installers where more then flying them over from Germany.

My point is that it isn't a realistic option by any stretch of the imagine, if anyone thinks every house in the country is going to get they are in Green lala land.

1) What about the massive number of people living in apartments.
2) Most people wouldn't be willing to make such a layout.
3) Many people wouldn't do it as they don't want this on their roof.
4) Where are you going to get all the installers to install 2 million homes?

 

[brian1]

Another point to note, biomass has been mentioned as a renewable source of energy (which it is) but it seems to be overlooked that it is also a source of greenhouse gases and therefore is not helping tackle global warming.

Many environmentalists argue that it is emission neutral as by planting the biomass it absorbs the CO2 from when previous plants are burned. Personally I find this a little dubious.

 

[dam099]

After initial outlay, Helium 3 extraction from the moon would, effectively, give the US (and potentially the planet) limitless and more or less free energy. Until nuclear fusion is (if it ever is) developed.The Gigawatts per ton of this stuff is supposedly truly staggering.

I thought to use Helium 3 you need to use nuclear fusion?

 

[daveirl]

Another point to note, biomass has been mentioned as a renewable source of energy (which it is) but it seems to be overlooked that it is also a source of greenhouse gases and therefore is not helping tackle global warming.

Well only sort of surely. Is it not Carbon Neutral? The amount of Carbon released in buring the tree/whatever will be equal to the amount of carbon the tree uses to grow? On the Solar panels I have to agree with what has been said, the production of solar panels produces plently of toxic waste and they aren't cheap either. It's like the guy on Top Gear a couple of weeks ago, said he owned two Prius' one in the UK one in the US. Of course the amount of damage done in building the second car is probably far more than the amount of damage done by a regular engine versus the hybrid one.

 

[Howitzer]

BTW about the European supergrid, it is a great idea, but transmissions lines lose power over distance due to certain physical laws. Such transmission is incredibly inefficient with lots of lost energy. At best it is considered as a backup.

Yes and no. When I was a wee nipper this was definately the case and if you read anything over 10 years old on the topic and you'll come to the same conclusion but like anything where there's a technical impediment smart people generally find answers. Googling "ABB DC transmission technology" will throw up all you need to know on the topic.

In reality you simply transfer your energy to the nearest destination and so on like a domino trail.

Also, once you have an East / West timezone differential you don't really need to worry as much about capacities since you start trading energy to areas where it's needed most from areas where it's not needed and then back again. This is not the same thing as what Enron were doing in California since there they were mostly dealing within 1 time zone within a North/South area which had chronic energy supply undercapacity.

 

[room305]

It is much more efficient to have one plant generating large amount of energy than many small ones.

Also from what I've read the manufacturing process for solar panels is not exactly very clean. They contain some exotic chemicals + elements. I'll need to do some research to back that statement up with hard facts

I'm pro-nuclear but I think we should also consider alternative energy sources. Our grid uses about 4,500MW at peak. Since we'd probably only realistically build a 100MW or even 700MW nuclear plant, we need to look at other alternative sources as well.

Given the likely reaction to building one nuclear plant, I could not even contemplate the reaction to a government attempting to build five or six.

One option that tricky Dicky Roche could consider - once we've got the non-sticky chewing gum crisis out of the way, is using Ireland as an experimental base for alternative energies. We're a small country with a relatively small grid. We could encourage companies to set up renewable energy plants of various kinds. They could effectively use us a demo model for larger (and hence more lucrative) energy contracts elsewhere in the world. I'm sure Airtricity don't relish being asked just how much of Ireland's electricity needs they supply.

 

[z107]

Also over 1,200 people died in China alone last year from just mining coal. No one died from Nuclear power last year.

When you state 'died from nuclear power', do you mean 'radiation sickness'?
It's a bit like saying that no one died from smoking last year. A lot died from smoking related illnesses and lung cancer though. How many people are currently suffering as a result of Mayak and Chernobyl?

The problem with nuclear power plants is that when they go bad, they go very, very bad. We only need one meltdown. No one knows what to do with the waste either.

 

[Zack]

room305, The profits for the corporation(s) who can pull it off reliable/cheap transport to the moon will be staggering - a monoply on the the sale of the raw material and patents on the extraction technology- think of the Dutch East India Company crossed with Microsoft!

(There are of course international laws currently forbidding individual nations or states extracting materials from the moon- that, I assure you, will change.)

diarmuidic, I agree that contemporary nuclear plants are very safe - (excepting fast breed reactors-much more efficient but cannot as of yet fullfill current safety requirements)It's an emotive topic largely due to an uninformed public and trite,simplistic comments by commentators and politicians with their own axe to grind which are interpretated as hard facts. Still, I disagree with nuclear power, for the reason I previously outlined - it is not a viable long term prospect. It's pointless to compare what one plant currently produces relative to X no. of windmills. As nuclear power use increases, uranium becomes scarcer/more expensive.Does France really supply 75% of it's energy needs from nuclear power or is that figure it's electricity needs?- electric cars are fairly thin on the grounf in France I imagine.

brian 1, yep, I'm well aware uranium is all around us and that it is one of the most common elements. It exists in sea water,topsoil, dead vegetaion etc.etc.However, the technology to profitably extract it from these components is currently about as far away as faster than light travel.
Sure you resuse some of the spent fuel- what do you with the rest? (btw, there is no such thing as consenual science - its a bad thing, & wikipedia ain't exactly an authoritative objective source)

Mankind has lived in the fossil fuel age for close to 150 yrs at this point. By "lived", I mean that our economies and lives as we know them are utterly dependant on the extraction and processing of non renewable energy resources. 150 yrs is a mere blink of the eye and necessity being the mother of invention, I see a paradigm shift in the nature of our energy sources/extraction processes (not in our lifetimes though) rather than plastering every m2 of the planet with a windmill/solar panel.

Z

 

[Jimoslimos]

Well only sort of surely. Is it not Carbon Neutral? The amount of Carbon released in buring the tree/whatever will be equal to the amount of carbon the tree uses to grow?

Yes, true I accept but it also has a host of other issues including;
1) Needs a vast amount of land to be efficient. Is it a bit counter-productive to clear forests to grow biomass as a 'green' energy source.
2) Problems associated with any large scale crop growth - pest/disease control etc.

 

[daveirl]

The problem with nuclear power plants is that when they go bad, they go very, very bad. We only need one meltdown. No one knows what to do with the waste either.

The idea of what's very bad has been hyped out of all proportion. At most 4000 will die as a result of Chernobyl. Those are UN figures not mine. Note that nowhere near 4000 have died as of yet. With regard to the waste, there's not much of it at all. That's another anti-Nuclear nugget of misinformation. While the waste is harmful there's not that much of it to deal with.