It seems that one point has not been mentioned so far: In my humble opinion, one VERY iportant aspect of the transition towards alternative energy sources is decentralization. Few, large energy producers are inherently vulnerable. In a country that is supplied by only a few nuclear power plants, the smallest failure in one of them can cause a chain reaction and a total blackout in the whole country. (Happened in the US occasionally). Another critical point is the supply network, including the electric power transformation substations - so the vulnerable points are not only the power plants. This "vulnerability" on the one hand refers to plainly technical defects, or overloads due to unexpectedly high demands (air conditioners during a heat wave etc.). On the other hand, and, although I'm not a fan of this "terrorism-fear-mongering" in general, this can be seen as one agument here: IF a terrorist attacks a nuclear power plant, e.g. with an airplane, then ... the nuclear power plant is the 'fan', and the terrorist is the 'sh...'. :/ In contrast, imagine he's REALLY attacking a 'fan', namely a single wind turbine. Nobody would care. "Hey, look there, a broken wind turbine, did anyone notice that?". Decentralized power supplies can be more robust, and I think that this fact alone may contribute to a solution of the major flaw of many renewable energy sources (sun, wind...), namely the fact that they are not 'reliable' (i.e. not human-controllable). And, by the way, this dam is right the opposite of decentralization. Just try to imagine what could go wrong there... :| I would have expected that the idea of decentralization might be more appreciated in Australia than in densely populated counties. However, according to Wikipedia, there are no nuclear power plants in Australia anyhow, and maybe this is not so much seen as a crucial point.
A shame they banned in flight peanuts on the airlines now.Was on Emirates last year and they gave me some horrible processed 'savoury' snack things instead which i took one bite of and threw in the bin.They were bad. Anyhow i think the number of deaths from nuke plants is understated by an order of magnitude.And what about all those freak kids born in the Ukraine after Chernobyl whats the cost of that?
Significantly less than the cost of high emission energy production from coal-fired power plants. See: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html For every death caused by nuclear about 1500 are caused by coal.
Good link. To be fair(er) to coal, the average falls to 375 if take out China (presumably due to the mining deaths) which distorts the world average considerably. Mind you on the up side, coal can be picked up with a shovel (or bare hands), dumped into huge piles and left out in the rain. Bit harder to do this with oil/gas/uranium.
Yeah, but to be fair(er) to uranium, if you take out the complete and utter incompetence that caused the meltdown at Chernobyl then nuclear would look even safer still.
Not really, wet coal has its own problems http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/wet-coal-a-major-problem-1.387966 Scheduled rolling blackouts anyone?
You don't need huge piles of uranium, and it doesn't need to get wet. And I can tell you, no one feeds a coal fired power station by hand or with shovels. A typical nuclear power station uses about 60-70kg U235 per day. A typical coal fired power station burns about 3500-5000 tonnes of coal per day.
I was more pointing out that it is extremely "low" tech with much lower capital requirements compared to the others. This is why it was favoured early in the industrial revolutions of most (all?) countries
Of course you need huge piles of Uranium. Maybe not every day but when that 70kg a day adds up over hundreds of reactors world wide and those all add up day after day after day and have to be stored for 5000 years then you have a problem. Alternatively, you burn coal, CO2 goes into air, ocean and trees eat the vast majority of it and turn it back into O2 and the basis of life (planktons etc). It would be far cheaper to fund the tech to remove the poisonous parts of burning coal than storing spent and very dangerous nuclear fuel rods from Uranium based reactors for the next 5000 years. Remember this is all just an interim until we find a tech advancement that allows us to rely on renewables, why create 5000 years of waste to power us for a few decades. If you want to talk thorium then I am all ears though. Thorium
Thorium is awesome. Named after Thor, the warlike Norse god of thunder it will bring the hammer down on any impending energy crisis and will truly rock your world! Go thorium (ra, ra ra).
pfft. You are aware that coal fired power stations release huge amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere every day? This is old, but there are plenty of other examples http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
I think that's why he said: [Edit] Oops. Sorry lovey- didn't realise you were still online. Hopefully you meant this.
No problem there. I am not part of the alarmist 'global warming' brigade. I question this. If there was economic benefit in this, it surely would have already been done. Agree. Renewables are still pie-in-the-sky and have yet to prove economically viable. The new and revolutionary fourth-generation liquid flouride thorium reactor system (LFTR) solves all the problems previously associated with nuclear power. LFTR systems consume 100% of the thorium fed to them, and can be started with 'spent' fuel rods or old nuclear warheads; so it is almost certain that LFTR systems will be used to clean up old nuclear waste.
It's not that easy. Some people say: Nuclear energy is cheaper than renewable energy. In this form, this statement can be considered as being plainly wrong. It is a naive fallacy to measure the cost of enegry by looking at the individual's energy bill at the end of the month. IF the power suppliers were held responsible for storing nuclear waste securely for the next 5000 or 10000 years, what do you think it would cost? What does it cost to store this trash safely and securely for 1 year? If this was taken into account, nuclear power would probably be way more expensive than any other form of energy (Except, maybe, burning this highly compressed and dense coal that women tend to attach to heir ears). The problem at the moment is: The nuclear waste is not stored securely. As one example, here in Germany, politicans are quarreling about a storage place for the nuclear waste. Nobody wants to have it in his own country. And for a good reason: In the 60s and 70s, they simply stored hundreds of thousands of barrels of radioactive waste in a salt mine ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine ). That was cheap, and that's why nuclear power was cheap. Now it turns out that there is a water inflow to this salt mine, and the ground water may be contaminated. They have to dig out the whole cr*** and find another solution. This will cost billions. But of course, not for the energy suppliers. And of course, this will not affect the price of "cheap" nuclear energy...
Sorry, but... (Posted on 2012-07-29) (Happened on 2012-07-30, source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/30/india-blackout-affects-300-million ) ... I hate this so much :/
Well, there will only be an economic benefit if it is determined that the byproducts of burning coal are really that much of a threat and the decision needs to be made between Uranium based nuclear and coal. Let's leave thorium out of this for the time being because it really is a no brainier with LFTR tech becoming mainstream.
