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Nuclear Power

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Karl

Bill McLean (32)
I decided to put this in the Politics thread because it's sort of tied to things like Climate Change and is a political hot potato.

Australia currently has no nuclear facilities generating electricity, however, Australia has 23% of the world's uranium deposits. We've also got so much coal and gas etc that we've never had to exploit that resource domestically (although we're the worlds second biggest producer of Uranium) or seriously look at Nuclear Power Generation. This has good basic info about the political and social position - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Australia Resistance certainly seems to be diminishing amongst the populace, but there is distinct separation along Party Lines.

Issues include the economics, what to do with the waste, accidents and safety etc

It seems to me that :
  • it's sustainable - in that there is heaps of "fuel" to last thousands of years (or much longer if Fusion becomes viable, which it seems it will at some point)
  • it reduces co2 emissions, if you think that anthropogenic co2 production is causing serious climate change
  • it decreases energy dependency on imported sources (not a big issue for us I suppose but it is for other places)
  • it's base load power, not intermittent
  • new technology in generation (GenIII and GenIII+ and GenIII++ reactors with GenIV technology under development) and waste management deals with a lot of the concerns on safety and the environment.
I think we should be actively developing a Nuclear Power Industry in Australia and reforming our laws in relation to exploitation of Uranium resources. It needs a longer term view and I don't think you want to get 10 years down the track and be starting from scratch.

MIT produced a good paper looking at the issues associated with the future of Nuclear Power http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/
 

rugbyskier

Ted Thorn (20)
I'll be interested to see if Fukushima is quoted as justification as to why it shouldn't happen. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station was hit by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake with ground acceleration around 0.56G, followed by a 13-15m high tsunami. The total number of deaths from radiation currently stands at zero, although six TEPCO employees have received a radiation dose above the assessed lifetime limit. The expected maximum number of deaths of residents of Fukushima Prefecture that can be directly attributed to radiation exposure from the plant is approximately 100.

At the height of the crisis the ambient radiation levels in Tokyo were lower than those in Melbourne at the same time. The 'fly-jin' who evacuated from Tokyo received higher doses of radiation from the 10-14 hour flights to Europe, Australia and North America than they would have received staying in Tokyo.

I am travelling to Japan in a few weeks for 23 days; skiing in Nagano and Niigata Prefectures and sightseeing in Tokyo, Kanazawa, Kyoto, Nara and Hiroshima. I have no qualms about travelling to Japan and eating locally produced food.
 

Lior

Herbert Moran (7)
I don't think it quite stacks up economically until the price on carbon rises more substantially. However I think we should look at it in the future, and we should have a proper debate without the moral posturing from the Greens and Labor left. It needs to be looked at and down the line I think it is well and truly a viable industry. States shouldn't be afraid to exploit our vast uranium riches and put them to use. The Greens are well and truly kidding themselves if they think we can have a energy industry which is 100% renewable. It's laughable.

I do seriously have doubts over whether a issue like this can be handled in the public arena appropriately though. Especially with the current political discourse which is on offer.

I know this is slightly off topic, but now is the best time possible for states to flog off electricity assets as well. A national market which promotes competition can only put downward pressure on electricity prices. NSW and QLD should seriously look at privatising electricity including poles and wires. NSW is kind of doing it I understand, but the useless government and opposition over in QLD are refusing. It is a missed opportunity.
 

Cutter

Nicholas Shehadie (39)
I don't pretend to know an awful lot about nuclear power but my understanding of the situation is:

Positives:

1. Low CO2 emissions;
2. We've got a shedload;
3. Baseload.

Negatives:

1. Despite 70 years of trying, no one knows how to dispose of the extraordinarily dangerous waste.
2. The conversion from nuclear power to nuclear weapons isn't a big enough jump (though I would hate to think Australia would ever be tempted to develop nuclear weapons).
3. Time lag to get these bad boys on line is 20 years meaning they're going to be too late to deal with our CO2 problem.
4. They need lots of water. It can't be fresh water because we don't have any to spare meaning it must be seawater. Given our coastline, there is a fair bit of NIMBYism (which I can perfectly well understand).
 

Cutter

Nicholas Shehadie (39)
I know this is slightly off topic, but now is the best time possible for states to flog off electricity assets as well. A national market which promotes competition can only put downward pressure on electricity prices. NSW and QLD should seriously look at privatising electricity including poles and wires. NSW is kind of doing it I understand, but the useless government and opposition over in QLD are refusing. It is a missed opportunity.

Lior can you please elaborate upon your explanation as to why it's a good idea to sell power infrastructure?
 

Karl

Bill McLean (32)
There is some good info here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste on both proliferation and disposal issues.

There are solutions but these are often hampered by emotive reactions - like when the Mongolian Government basically banned further negotiations about waste storage (deep geologic I think was the proposal) with the US and Japan after the Mongolian people found out and chucked a wobbly.

Other issues are of course good management and controlling corruption so you don't have repeats of things that branch of the Italian mafia getting paid to take waste off people's hands and either sinking the ships carrying it or dumping it in places like Somalia after paying off the local politicians and leaders. And the accidents from dodgy storage methods. Lake Karachay, Maxey Flat, the French at Tricastin etc. You gotta stop them. But can you? Maybe not all of them, but with development comes better controls and systems and mitigation as well as remediation. And lets face it, energy generation tends to be dangerous and volatile, no matter how it's being generated.

In terms of the Co2 problem, and assuming you think we have one that is that urgent, I think the worlds energy needs will mean that fossil fuels aren't going to go away in the next 20 years anyway, "renewables" like wind and solar etc have shortcomings when it comes to baseload and realistically just won't, in that 20 years, get close to replacing traditional generation and surely having a plan to develop something that we pretty much KNOW can do the job 20 years from now is something we need to move on pretty quickly, even if it's just from an energy security point of view. It's got a lead time, so the sooner we start, the sooner we're done. To me, Nuclear Power is one of those things that we'll look back on in 50 years and marvel at how far it's come and how safe it's become, whether because of Fusion development or just massively better Fission generation. In many ways, what we're doing now is still pretty primitive.

Cutter - I hadn't thought about the water requirements, but went and had a look at some maps about where NPP's are located elsewhere in the world - it looks like on or near a Coast is common, but the French have them all over the place, so does Russia and the USA - but I can't tell easily if they are on major rivers etc and I suspect they are. Surely we can pipe the water into them and locate them somewhere a bit remote in a geologically stable area? And we have lots of very remote Coastline that shouldn't offend too many people. Near the WA/SA border for example. Along the Eyre Highway there. Or Gladstone :)

I found this interesting too on the economics - sorry for all the wikipedia links. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_new_nuclear_power_plants
 

bryce

Darby Loudon (17)
I live in Germany. Which is going in the opposite direction.

This country has been a user of nuclear power but decided to phase it out over the next 11 years. Merkel, who is a scientist (she has a PhD in, I think, chemistry) made the decision after Fukushima. The Germans seem to think that renewables are going to replace it. Renewables account for just over 20% of electricity here at the moment, and you really notice how serious they are about it. Just driving through the countryside around Munich you see it everywhere. I'd say around half of the homes, and just about every barn, has its roof covered in solar panels.

I'm not ideologically opposed to nuclear power, and in fact I was surprised when they made the decision to phase it out here. I think it is probably the way forward for countries like China and India over the next few decades as their energy demands grow, as it is a lower emissions source.

As for Australia though, I would say that I lean towards being against it. If the Germans are being so ambitious about renewables (they want 35% by 2022) in an industrialised country of such a big population (80 odd million), which is less than half the size of NSW, I'd be interested to know why we in Australia couldn't do much, much better than we are doing now. I'd like to see us at least seriously look at increasing renewable energy sources before taking the nuclear option. Each time I go home I notice that there seems to be a much more negative and dismissive attitude towards the potential of renewables in Australia than here in Germany. Which, to someone who, admittedly, knows little about the science behind it, seems baffling given the amount of sunshine, space and coastline that Australia has. Certainly in comparison to Germany. It certainly baffles every German person I speak to about it who has been to, or knows anything about the situation in Australia.

As I said though, I'm not a scientist so I'd like to know more before I took too strong a position.
 

Gagger

Nick Farr-Jones (63)
Staff member
As I understand it, the hole that Nuclear decommissioning in the UK and Germany is going to leave is never realistically going to be plugged by renewables. The UK government has realised this and flip-flopped on replacing the old reactors several times now. As we're talking a 10-15 year timeframe before the shit hits the fan, it's a whole lot easier to leave the problem to another government that tackle it yourself, which is going to leave us up the creek buying a gas paddle from Russia for whatever it costs (another scary prospect).

As far as disposing of the waste goes, there are actually plenty of options - as long as you realise it's about burying your problem and not remediating it - just like sticking a nappy in landfill. The problem is more one of political will - who wants to be seen as a nuclear dumping ground?
 

Cutter

Nicholas Shehadie (39)
Solar and wind power are now being produced in various projects at grid parity. That means they will take off on a larger scale. The reason their price has come down? Investment. Germany, in particular, has put a lot of research into wind power. The Chinese have made some big steps in solar power.

As for burying radioactive waste, that isn't really a solution for the long term although it does get it out of sight for this generation.j

Lior I'm still not sure I understand why you think privatisation is the right answer. Just getting those assets of the balance sheet isn't a good enough reason for mine. You also need to think about energy security amongst other things.

If the market were allowed to operate freely, fossil fuels wouldn't be subsidised and renewables would be far further down the line.
 

Karl

Bill McLean (32)
Vitrification or use of Synroc with deep geologic disposal should work, as one example. Transmutation technology is coming along and so are re-use methodologies.
 

WorkingClassRugger

David Codey (61)
Vitrification or use of Synroc with deep geologic disposal should work, as one example. Transmutation technology is coming along and so are re-use methodologies.

But neither of those options are perfect and still leave a great deal of radioactive residue. Burying it isn't a real long term option as now in some cases in Europe, hazardous materials disposed in this way have begun to seep unexpectedly into the environment.

Transmutation and re-use methodologies do provide prospective alternatives but as my brother who has ANSTO clearance as part of his job and is regularly updated on these developments told me in a discussion on this very topic about 6 month's ago now, its viability is still some way off.

Before we venture down the nuclear power generation path, we as a nation should look to properly investigate the full extent of our opportunities in relation to renewable energy sources. A great deal of emphasis is placed on the current inefficiencies of solar and wind technology and very little on the innovation occurring within both such as the paint on crystal solar panel and other such new methodology. Furthermore, other alternatives such as geothermal and wave/tidal current generators should also be given greater heed.

We as a nation should first look to become leaders in renewable energy generation using a variety of the above technologies with an eye on the future instead of committing ourselves to (albeit highly efficient yet economically and environmentally in relation to such facilities need for scarce freshwater reserves, which in turn relates back to the economic cost having to build several desalination facilities in addition to the plants) a technology that even today after several decades of refinement still remains questionable in the public spectre.
 

Gnostic

Mark Ella (57)
1. It is not CO2/emissions free. There are massive costs not only from mining and refining the ore to usable standard directly, the indirect costs come in the massive amounts of aluminium required to process the ore and the related energy inputs to create these components that then cannot be used for anything else. The energy inputs do not stop there, there is then processing of and then the maintenance of the waste. The Waste is highly corrosive both chemically and physically, (Chemically by oxidization of its containments and physically by displacement and conversion of the atomic structure of the containment.) Thus the waste must itself be continually maintained, and given the extraordinarily long half life of the majority of the waste the energy inputs are massive. For proof of this have a look at the continuing efforts being made to contain Chernobyl.
2. There is currently no permanent storage facility for high level waste.
3. Given the lead times for most cancers caused by the types o radio isotopes released from a Power Reactor it is a grossly misleading statement to say that nobody has been killed by the incident at Fukishima. and the fact same lies are still propagated by Nuclear supporters regarding Chernobyl despite the evidence of increases in many types of cancer in areas surrounding Chernobyl since that incident. It is also misleading given that a more telling measure of the impact of Nuclear accidents is the impact on the lives of the effected. More than 20 years since Chernobyl people still cannot live in the exclusion zone. Ask what the impact of the Fukishima incident is on the people of the areas no quarantined.
4. Accidents are common place though rarely publicised in power generation and the level of maintenance in the now privately run Power Stations is minimal and basically on a 'replace it when it breaks' basis. I have no faith at all that these people can run a Nuclear facility safely given the consequences of a failure.

I often ask people a similar question regarding so called renewables, add up the inputs that go into the production of the units as Solar cells and wind turbines as they both contain highly carbon intensive components and you will find that the time to break even is very close to the service life of the unit, without taking into the significant input costs in maintenance for units like wind turbines.
 

Ruggo

Mark Ella (57)
Are renewables actually renewables? We don't know yet. What we do know is that every action has an opposite reaction. Petrolium was saviour when it was first discovered but now with hindsight?

What will be the opposite reaction to our renewables?

It is easy to see how nuclear is such an emotive issue. Accidents are rare though the consequences of an accident are dire. In the reduction of Carbon emissions nuclear is a very plausable alternative.

I have no idea if I am pro or against nuclear power. I think what we must accept is that Nuclear power should not be used in geologically unstable regions such as Japan or anywhere else on the ring of fire.
 

Cutter

Nicholas Shehadie (39)
Are renewables actually renewables? We don't know yet. What we do know is that every action has an opposite reaction. Petrolium was saviour when it was first discovered but now with hindsight?

What will be the opposite reaction to our renewables?

Ruggo you're a man speaking in riddles. Whatchyou talkin' about Willis?
 

Cutter

Nicholas Shehadie (39)
I often ask people a similar question regarding so called renewables, add up the inputs that go into the production of the units as Solar cells and wind turbines as they both contain highly carbon intensive components and you will find that the time to break even is very close to the service life of the unit, without taking into the significant input costs in maintenance for units like wind turbines.

Gnostic do you have any studies or information on this?

The more recent technology is becoming far more efficient at converting energy (wind, sun, wave, whatever) into power.
 

Karl

Bill McLean (32)
Cutter, I agree, the costs on some of this renewable energy is coming down very fast.
 

Gnostic

Mark Ella (57)
Gnostic do you have any studies or information on this?

The more recent technology is becoming far more efficient at converting energy (wind, sun, wave, whatever) into power.


There was an article in a Energy Supply Industry Journal about three or four years ago. From memory it basically asserted that when the input carbon is taken into account a wind turbine takes between 10 and 15 years to become "neutral" with a service life of between 20-25 years maximum that is not all that good an investment given that they cannot meet base load. Even taking into account the skewed journalism, given that it was a coal generation industry publication, when I consider the energy intensive materials used in the manufacture of the turbines I can see the argument the author used. I have no idea about his figures but it is a very good point that is made in considering the inputs requires in ANY generation method. As it stands nothing is ZERO emissions up front and it is possible that some systems will never even break even when taking into account maintenance, and if these systems do not and cannot meet base load surely we should be investing in efficiencies to base load systems to minimise the emissions from these essential systems.

On a different issue regarding renewables - with various state governments have used various schemes to encourage solar panels to be fitted to residential properties there are a few points to consider:-
1) The grid is set up for one way transmission ie Generator - Sub - transformer - user. Now we have a situation where we have Gen - Sub - Transformer - user - User/Gen - user/Gen. etc etc. The Generation capcity is at the wrong end for the current systems to cope. Friends in supply authorities have told me that there are serious issues with Transformers blowing, users complaining about over voltage incidents and appliances failing. The problem is compounded for those users who have solar arrays feeding the grid between their property and the tranformer as there is no buffer for over voltage incidents and also no Factor Correction to ensure that the sine waves from the traditional supply are correctly matched with that created by the DC inverters from the Solar Arrays.
2) There have been reports that the Fire Authorities will no fight a fire on a property with a solar array as it cannot be isolated. I have seen two fires caused by failure of the Solar Array panels themselves and not through non compliance with the Electrical codes of the various states.

I have a 1500W solar array on my roof, so I am actually a supporter of Solar Power and always have been. But I am not blind in that support. Any discussion of the future of Power Generation should be open and truthful about its impacts and considering all the facts. Solar is great but there are some significant drawbacks that people have not been mad aware of that may well lead to some very large infrastructure costs down the track that somebody will have to pay for.
 

Karl

Bill McLean (32)
With Solar on peoples homes - What is the reason it needs to go back into the grid in the first place? Why can't there be a battery storage system (like Redflow make) so excess power is stored on premises and the home only draws power from the grid when no sun/flat battery?

Or are the infrastructure upgrade costs to cope with the two way power generation being overstated? What are these costs like compared to generating MORE power and the infrastructure costs associated with that?
 

Sully

Tim Horan (67)
Staff member
The vast majority of the power you produce goes to your neighbours and never sees a transformer or substation. all grid connected systems produce power at a power factor at unity or 1. We have problems with power factor being dragged down by inductive loads like motors. Lots of factories have PF correction units to move the PF towards unity. Syncing with the supply is something the inverter does automatically. There have been problems with over voltage caused by supply authorities having to boost voltage in the past to compensate for voltage drop in transmission lines. This has resulted in higher than expected voltages on transformers with a few solar systems on them. Most authorities are rectifying these as they find them. The return in carbon on a solar PV is about 18 months. No idea where I got that figure from. I learnt it when I was researching my solar system.


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Sully

Tim Horan (67)
Staff member
The newer inverters just coming onto the market can do grid connect and battery back up. Bloke on another forum who does solar for a living quoted $17k for 5kw system with 2 kw battery back up. Note there is a cost in maintaining and replacing batteries. I think it runs about 8-10 cents per kilowatt.


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