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spankmeister posted:Sure it does, you could build a nuclear reactor there! Why would you want to though? Surely a better location is near a metropolitan area so there's less transmission lines.
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Sep 17, 2012 15:38
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Yeti Fiasco posted:Why would you want to though? Surely a better location is near a metropolitan area so there's less transmission lines. The location of a nuclear plant depends pretty much only on water availability for cooling, that's why they're all close to sea / rivers / lakes. Transmission losses are pretty small for the first few hundred km.
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Sep 17, 2012 15:47
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Yeti Fiasco posted:Why would you want to though? Surely a better location is near a metropolitan area so there's less transmission lines. Joking aside, the middle of a hot, arid desert is a bad location for a nuclear plant because of the lack of cooling water. 
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Sep 17, 2012 15:55
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spankmeister posted:Joking aside, the middle of a hot, arid desert is a bad location for a nuclear plant because of the lack of cooling water. But what if you had some kind of mystical reactor that didn't require water as coolant and couldn't melt down? Wy don't we make one of those? 
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Sep 17, 2012 18:19
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Yeti Fiasco posted:No one ever seems to mention the sheer quantity of water you need to keep the vast array of mirrors clean, along with the difficulty of getting it where solar power is situated (In arid, sunny regions at high altitude). Every type of power plant requires vast quantities of water, solar thermal isn't any different in this respect
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Sep 17, 2012 18:35
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spankmeister posted:Joking aside, the middle of a hot, arid desert is a bad location for a nuclear plant because of the lack of cooling water. Tell that to the Palo Verde nuke plant in Arizona. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station It uses reclaimed water for cooling.
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Sep 17, 2012 19:29
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Winks posted:Tell that to the Palo Verde nuke plant in Arizona. That's pretty drat cool.
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Sep 17, 2012 19:38
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Pvt Dancer posted:The location of a nuclear plant depends pretty much only on water availability for cooling, that's why they're all close to sea / rivers / lakes. Transmission losses are pretty small for the first few hundred km. You need water for conventional plants, yes. For high temperature systems, you can get away with air cooling.
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Sep 17, 2012 22:56
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Winks posted:Tell that to the Palo Verde nuke plant in Arizona. Far out man. 3 x ~1.1 GW reactors, just sitting there quietly, doing their thing, servicing 4 million people. Cost $6 bn to build. Operating costs are 1.3 cents per KWh. Sells it wholesale for 6.3 cents per KWh. All day, every day. Where do they get the fuel and what do they do with the waste?
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Sep 18, 2012 01:22
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Hobo Erotica posted:Far out man. 3 x ~1.1 GW reactors, just sitting there quietly, doing their thing, servicing 4 million people. Cost $6 bn to build. Operating costs are 1.3 cents per KWh. Sells it wholesale for 6.3 cents per KWh. All day, every day. Fuel? You can stockpile 40 years of fuel on-site, if you want. It's not like a coal plant. The quantity and intermittentcy of nuclear refuelings makes them more akin to maintenance than to fueling something. It's like changing an the oil of a car, not like getting gas for it. Waste could be just casked and desert-buried, but people must freak over it for nonsensical reasons, so it's actually stored until 99% of it isn't dangerous anymore, which means 50-100y.
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Sep 18, 2012 01:41
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This is a greatly informative thread. Id love to see a model done on New Zealand's ideal renewable distribution.
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Sep 18, 2012 01:44
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Aureon posted:Fuel? ... Right, that doesn't answer my question though. Where do they get the fuel, and what do they do with the waste? Even if 99% of it isn't dangerous in 50 years, what do they do with that one percent that is? Drill a hole in Yucca Mountain and stuff it in there? How radioactive is it, what are the legally mandated exclusion zones and storage requirements, and what do you think plain science would mandate?
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Sep 18, 2012 02:23
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Hobo Erotica posted:... Right, that doesn't answer my question though. Where do they get the fuel, and what do they do with the waste? Mines. Put them in casks that can survive a terrorist bombing and an 80 mph head on train crash. The 1 percent that's left is not very radioactive. It's far more poisonous in the way that eating lead is, or taking deep lungfuls from a coal smokestack is. Highly radioactive equals decays fast as hell. Not very radioactive; what do you mean by exclusion zones? You can't go prancing into an operating nuclear power plant that's about it.
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Sep 18, 2012 02:27
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Hobo Erotica posted:... Right, that doesn't answer my question though. Where do they get the fuel, and what do they do with the waste? The fuel is mined, and Palo Verde has enough storage space on site to store 60 years of fuel, which is the expected life of the plant. And yeah, Yucca Mountain would be ideal, but you'd likely need Harry Reid to no longer be in office before that happens.
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Sep 18, 2012 02:36
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Hobo Erotica posted:... Right, that doesn't answer my question though. Where do they get the fuel, and what do they do with the waste? Plain science would mandate: Cask it and drill it into my lawn. Heck, with 5mm of shielding and 10cm of concrete, i can redo my own house foundations with class 2 waste if you like. There's a massive explanation of how resistant are the casks and how non-dangerous is the waste in the nuclear power thread (thanks to bedpan), but it boils down to: 1) The stuff is dangerous, but dangerous in the sense "do not eat and do not vaporize". The small part that actually radiates substantial amounts of alpha or gamma waves should be drilled a bit deeper. 100m of rock is shielding enough for more or less anything. 2) In the case of "someone who shouldn't" getting it's hands on it: There's much worse stuff around, like anything present in a refinery or a chemical complex, if you want to go around killing people. 3) The casks are resistant to just about freaking anything, and shield enough that you could make a couch out of one. There's also a very tongue-in-cheek explanation of how pulverizing 80 tonnes of plutonium over france would not lead to any radiation danger. (Physichs explanation) Exclusion zone for a nuclear plant is nill. A nuclear plant nowdays is about as safe as the POTUS office, or a military bunker. If a permanent worker gets 50 mSv in a year there's something that has gone marginally wrong, and there's no shown correlation with doses under 100 mSv/year to any health effects. Linear correlation (radiation == tissue damage/cancer) begins at 1000 mSv, but 100+ mSv can have abysmal (but statistically shown on very large samples) effects on cancer rates. For reference, the background radiation of the earth itself, in inhabitable areas, swings from about 0.1 to 40. No correlation has been shown with increased cancer rates in relation to background radiation changes. Minor doses of radiation have actually reportedly increased health (as in increasing self-immunity mechanisms of humans against cancerous tissue, but not in the order of magnitude necessary to show a decrease of cancer rates) For the fuel: Mining, reprocessing, and if scarcity arises, can take impressive quantities from saltwater itself. Current available uranium at a top cost of $120/kg (current spot price) would last ~400 years(Varies between estimates, 200-800), and at triple that more than the human civilization is expected to last. (saltwater recovering becomes feasible) It's important to note that fuel cost in the energy production is nearly negligible, and tripling the cost of the fuel would highen the price of the price of the electricity produced by less than 15%. (Fuel accounts for 15-20% of operating costs, which are roughly one fifth of building+dismantling cost) Aureon fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Sep 18, 2012 |
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Sep 18, 2012 02:57
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I've always found it hilarious how people were opposed to putting the stuff in Yucca Mountain. The Yucca Mountain area is highly irradiated by decades of atomic bomb tests so frankly most waste you'd put in there would be less deadly than just rolling around on the ground outside a bit.
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Sep 18, 2012 03:13
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I've been wondering for awhile why we couldn't just stick waste casks in former chemical weapons depots. I mean you've already got these bunker complexes out in the middle of nowhere, they've already been built with the intent of containing much more hazardous substances, why not repurpose them and get more utility out of them now that we're destroying our chemical weapons stockpiles?
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Sep 18, 2012 14:25
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:I've been wondering for awhile why we couldn't just stick waste casks in former chemical weapons depots. I mean you've already got these bunker complexes out in the middle of nowhere, they've already been built with the intent of containing much more hazardous substances, why not repurpose them and get more utility out of them now that we're destroying our chemical weapons stockpiles? because, YA'KNOW, nuclear waste is, ya'know RADIOACTIVE, not at all like, ya'know, chemical waste. And it's physically impossible that different problems have the same solutions!
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Sep 18, 2012 16:32
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Is there a good book that deals with presenting the actual facts of nuclear power in a concise manner? It'd be nice to have something to give to people to help to dispel a lot of the myths surrounding it. I enjoyed Superfuel, though something written from a more academic context would also be good.
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Sep 18, 2012 20:48
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Vermain posted:Is there a good book that deals with presenting the actual facts of nuclear power in a concise manner? It'd be nice to have something to give to people to help to dispel a lot of the myths surrounding it. I enjoyed Superfuel, though something written from a more academic context would also be good. This one is reasonably good at dispelling scientific misinformation and covers a lot more topics than just nuclear power Physics for Future Presidents 
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Sep 18, 2012 22:51
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https://theconversation.edu.au/water-based-battery-a-step-up-for-renewable-energy-8906
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Sep 19, 2012 02:01
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Vermain posted:Is there a good book that deals with presenting the actual facts of nuclear power in a concise manner? It'd be nice to have something to give to people to help to dispel a lot of the myths surrounding it. I enjoyed Superfuel, though something written from a more academic context would also be good.
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Sep 19, 2012 02:32
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Frogmanv2 posted:https://theconversation.edu.au/water-based-battery-a-step-up-for-renewable-energy-8906 Considering no existing battery (in the strict sense of the term) is anywhere near economical enough to smooth power peaks, and the article contains no numbers at all, with no sources, we can't really comment on this. On how it's phrased, could solve any problem. On how it really is, it's probably wishful thinking. But we can't tell, because there's no way to tell what this is. http://media.murdoch.edu.au/new-salt-based-battery-a-leap-for-green-energy is a bit better, but actually not much. My common sense is tingling, but it's an university site, so it's not really dismissible as "those dreaming hippies". Still, Stanford had "announced" basically the same thing atleast one year ago: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/106539-stanford-creates-everlasting-nanoparticle-battery-electrode-free-water-based-electrolyte e: Is Australia on the whole ridiculously anti-nuclear or something? e2: Onto "why don't we just throw away the nuclear "waste": dividing u-235 can (in a completely theoretical way), throw up any lower element. (In reality, just an handful.) In the "normal" waste, we get the really-precious Rhodium in significant quantities. quote:may be even more valuable for the fissionproducts it contains. To give one example, rhodium, a platinummetal, makes up about 2% of the fission products, and the price of rhodium fluctuates between the price of gold and ten times that. Aureon fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Sep 19, 2012 |
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Sep 19, 2012 02:43
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Aureon posted:e: Is Australia on the whole ridiculously anti-nuclear or something? All the major parties are against nuclear power generation. There is a staggering amount of NIMBYism, and we had the brits and the yanks testing bombs in the outback in the 50s. Plus, there is no need for it here. I used to be a massive nuclear power supporter, but have since changed my views. I would still prefer nuclear power over coal.
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Sep 19, 2012 02:57
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Frogmanv2 posted:All the major parties are against nuclear power generation. There is a staggering amount of NIMBYism, and we had the brits and the yanks testing bombs in the outback in the 50s. There's no "need" for basically anything, though. So, mass-scale indoctrination. Am i allowed to make Orwellian comparisons yet? (If the situation is the same as in Italy, where literally four people out of five believe nuclear reactors can explode, that speaks for impressive mindwashing)
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Sep 19, 2012 03:07
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Frogmanv2 posted:All the major parties are against nuclear power generation. There is a staggering amount of NIMBYism, and we had the brits and the yanks testing bombs in the outback in the 50s. Yeah, there's no 'need' for it here if we spend 4x the money (compared the nuclear) replacing our coal fired power generation with solar/wind.
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Sep 19, 2012 03:46
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Aureon posted:There's no "need" for basically anything, though. Australia has some of the best settings for solar power in the world. Huge amounts of sunlight, huge amounts of open space, with most of the population in a comparatively small area. We are already installing rooftop solar PV at a rate never before seen in this country, as well as a distinct downwards trend shift in total energy consumption. Given the issues with waste (minor issues sure, but still an issue), plus you need to mine and refine the fuel, plus the huge amounts of NIMBYism, plus that water issues (I realise solar needs water as well, but to my knowledge, not to the same amount as nuclear, plus I dont think the water is irradiated after being used in a solar plant, but im happy to be corrected) plus geosecurity issues (I have heard of nations being invaded for an energy source, but that energy source has never been the sun) plus other bits and pieces that im sure im forgetting. To me, they all add up to solar/renewables being a better choice to focus on. quote:So, mass-scale indoctrination. Am i allowed to make Orwellian comparisons yet? blacksun posted:Yeah, there's no 'need' for it here if we spend 4x the money (compared the nuclear) replacing our coal fired power generation with solar/wind.
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Sep 19, 2012 03:51
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blacksun posted:Yeah, there's no 'need' for it here if we spend 4x the money (compared the nuclear) replacing our coal fired power generation with solar/wind. I think 4x is a bit optimistic if you really want 24/7/52 uninterrupted power without nuclear or fossil fuels
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Sep 19, 2012 03:51
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Frogmanv2 posted:<SNIP> plus I dont think the water is irradiated after being used in a solar plant,<SNIP>
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Sep 19, 2012 04:00
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Frogmanv2 posted:Ok. Let me try a different tack. I thought most of the water use from a (nuclear) plant was from the steam-turbine energy generation, not the pool that surrounds the reactor? So wouldn't the generator water not be irradiated? edit: ^
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Sep 19, 2012 04:08
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Cartoon posted:Only the water actually in contact with the fuel is 'irradiated' and as the very most that you can do to water by irradiating it is boil it, nobody sees this as much of an issue. You can't make Heavy Water in a light water reactor for instance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water. People would be cock a hoop if you could. Irradiating water is used to kill nasties in dirty water so maybe it's a good thing? http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/documentlibrary/protectingtheenvironment/factsheet/water-use-and-nuclear-power-plants/?page=1 I found that which rebuts my water argument, so there is that I guess. Feral Integral posted:I thought most of the water use from a (nuclear) plant was from the steam-turbine energy generation, not the pool that surrounds the reactor? So wouldn't the generator water not be irradiated? Not really sure if I'm right on any of this Not 100% sure, but it sounds more correct than what I was thinking earlier.
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Sep 19, 2012 04:08
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Frogmanv2 posted:Ok. Let me try a different tack. Solar uses about the same amount of water, assuming you mean solar thermal and not PV
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Sep 19, 2012 04:22
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QuarkJets posted:I think 4x is a bit optimistic if you really want 24/7/52 uninterrupted power without nuclear or fossil fuels nah, 4x is about right. Only, 4x is about "world-shattering" in the world of business. Frogman: Anyone informed enough to hang out in D&D won't be swayed by propaganda much. I'm not talking about anyone reading this, when i blame full brain-washing. Accidental misinformation, perhaps. But not really doublethink and the related stuff. Everyone against nuclear here (i really hope) has his qualms with Waste/dangers (which are unfounded in facts, but still, they're serious questions which need serious answers). If anyone thinks that nuclear is bad for no real reason, and continues to do so after reading the thread, well, i don't think he could stomach D&D for more than a week. Direct fuel-river water contact is reserved for occasions of real danger. About solar: Yes, Australia is basically the place where the odds for solar stack up in the best way possible. And it still isn't enough to compare with solar. The thing is, once ALL externalities are accounted (backup, maintenance, grid, land, et all for solar; fuel, maintenance, dismantling and waste storing/reusing for nuclear), there's no real reason to use Solar over Nuclear as long as nuclear is cheaper (after accounting for capital costs, for both, which makes odds against nuclear since it has longer building times). Even for 10%, there's no real reason to use Solar. The usual qualms about nuclear have all been thoroughly debunked in the other thread: Waste Danger Death toll Dismantling Land contamination And basically whatever you can pull up. The unsolvable problem is, of course, political. But it does not help to have supporters of ""renewables"" being obnoxious about nuclear. We're all on the same side on the fence. Boot the retards and corrupts (As an activist/engineer friend of mine said, "Greenpeace is always green, even when it takes bribes, since dollars are green"), and we can talk energy generation worldwide as we're doing here. The point is: Coal needs to get out. Facts are: In today's technology, nuclear is the only option which can take over >70% of the electricity generation, can scale to whatever you need, at reasonable prices. If the wholesale energy prices are 7-8c/KWh, don't you think that a project which sells energy at, at the very, very least 50c/KWh is excessive? (Andasol number doubled, as per ratios of the ZCA dream) Energy is the lifeblood of economy. Even more so once electric cars (And if we tout against coal, gas/oil cars are hardly better) get implemented. As the recent events have demonstrated, modern economies are more fragile than thought. Driving up energy prices by at the very least a factor of five would crash the world economy down. Unless we want to talk about economics, how we've got more supply than demand, and so doing the hi-tech equivalent of digging needlessly would actually help. Which, to be honest, is a respectable point of view. But i think we've actually got enough proper uses of labor and resources, such as actually making sure no one dies in stupid ways, decent welfare, or, god forbid, actually decreasing supply by shortening the work week. But that's an huge derail, which nevertheless could be useful. I find the keynesian motives the most credible motivation behind a solar-based plan.
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Sep 19, 2012 04:38
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Feral Integral posted:I thought most of the water use from a (nuclear) plant was from the steam-turbine energy generation, not the pool that surrounds the reactor? So wouldn't the generator water not be irradiated? Most of the water "use" of a nuclear power station is exactly the same as the water "use" for a coal power station: removing waste heat. Power plants that boil water to turn turbines fall into a category of machines called "Carnot heat engines". They transfer heat from a hot area to a cold area making it do useful work along the way. The hotter the hot side or the colder the cold side, the more work can be extracted in the middle. The reactor is the hot side, the turbines are the "along the way" and the waste heat removal system is the cold side. Tall, concrete cooling towers are iconic of nuclear power but they're used at coal plants as well for exactly the same reason. Inside the towers are jets that spray the (still very hot) water that's just been through the turbines straight up. The water breaks into droplets and the hotest of the water molecules evaporate and are removed by an updraft (the sweeping shape of the tower helps this). This effectively makes the cold side of the heat engine colder, improving efficiency. A second method of getting rid of waste heat is by pumping cold lake, river or ocean water into one side of heat exchangers and the post-turbine steam into the other. Sometimes long, serpentine canals are used to get rid of waste heat too. What all this means is that any coal or nuclear power station will "use" many thousands of liters of water every day to get rid of waste heat. Use is in quotation marks because it means "temporarily come into contact with", rather than "consume"; the water is invariably returned to the environment almost exactly where it was removed and only slightly hotter. Other uses of water in a nuclear power plant are miniscule compared to waste heat removal.
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Sep 19, 2012 05:14
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ductonius posted:What all this means is that any coal or nuclear power station will "use" many thousands of liters of water every day to get rid of waste heat. Use is in quotation marks because it means "temporarily come into contact with", rather than "consume"; the water is invariably returned to the environment almost exactly where it was removed and only slightly hotter.
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Sep 19, 2012 06:36
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Aureon posted:(If the situation is the same as in Italy, where literally four people out of five believe nuclear reactors can explode, that speaks for impressive mindwashing) Depends on your definition. In Chernobyl the reactor DID explode, and at Fukushima the reactors remained more or less intact, but (hydrogen) explosions DID occur. Of course you're probably talking about the reactor going up in a mushroom cloud like a nuclear bomb, in which case the answer is no.
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Sep 19, 2012 06:50
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Frogmanv2 posted:[...]Given the issues with waste (minor issues sure, but still an issue), plus you need to mine and refine the fuel, plus the huge amounts of NIMBYism[...] Australia currently has no nuclear power stations, yet they are a large producer of uranium. I don't see that changing any time soon anyway since they make heaps of money off of uranium mining.
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Sep 19, 2012 06:55
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spankmeister posted:Depends on your definition. In Chernobyl the reactor DID explode, and at Fukushima the reactors remained more or less intact, but (hydrogen) explosions DID occur. That kind of thing really irked me with the Fukushima coverage. A car engine is constantly exploding, but when you read "a car exploded on the freeway today" you don't get a bunch of folks coming in and equivocating on the definitions.
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Sep 19, 2012 07:10
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Cartoon posted:As it effects almost all energy sources, has anyone ever calculated the effect on global warming that the energy exchange between the heated vapour and the atmosphere involves? Your point has been explored in science fiction, though. The classic novel Ringworld included a highly-advanced race whose industrial processes generated so much heat that they had to remove insolation from the equation (by moving their homeworld away from its star) lest the planet's surface become uninhabitable.
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Sep 19, 2012 07:16
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ductonius posted:Most of the water "use" of a nuclear power station is exactly the same as the water "use" for a coal power station: removing waste heat. That's the most fascinating part about nuclear power to me; people seem to think that we just absorb electricity from the atoms directly somehow, but really we're just heating up water and using the steam to run turbines. It's a steam engine. We're just obtaining heat from a different source (atomic fission instead of burning coal or wood). Most power generators, including solar thermal, are still just steam engines at heart 
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Sep 19, 2012 07:31
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