"They are spelt out in the Energy White Paper, to be published on 24 February (Monday), which is the official response to a report on climate change by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) in 2000. The UK is to work towards radical cuts in greenhouse gases - a reduction of 60% on 1990 levels by 2050. It aims to achieve this through more efficient energy use and greater dependence on renewable sources like wind power. It plans to build no new nuclear power stations to replace the present generation. "
A few factors can clean that up. When Nuclear power (Fission reactions) was first used, it was during times of extreme population growth, industrial movement and the need for electricity. It was seen as a power that was clean effective and would be available for years to come. Well it's 50 or so years later and the nuclear reactors have got to their maximum safe level before they start pushing towards their halflife. (A halflife being the half point in the life expectancy, which is most notibly the most unstable point of it's lifetime) They have found that although Nuclear energy was cheap to make, that the bills are now stacking up for the cleanup costs. It seems those Grandparents that made the decision to build them didn't save up for the cleanup and left it for us kids to cleanup. One other point about nuclear power is the Water used to cool, a few pollutants can get out through the cooling towers. The main point is that the world doesn't need nuclear energy as much as it once thought. Every human on this planet creates rubbish through consumerism, and some of that rubbish is biodegradable, and ends up filling a purposely dug hole called a Landfill. Landfills are being brought into more stringent legislation, since previously there were no checks on their Pollutant outputs (CH4,NOx,CO,CO2,H2S,NH3). Pollutants from a landfill can be Airborn and Land based through water absortion. Thats why landfills nowadays are Lined to stop ground water poisoning, Leachated to treat poisoned water that is drained through pipework. The pipework doesn't just drain water though, as if the pipe is "sucked upon" (Through the use of blowers) it can cause the Gases that would escape up to be sucked through the pipe. This allows CH4 (Methane) to be captured and used as a fuel, if not to be disposed of correctly. A landfill's life expectancy is approx: 30 years, this gives it a halflife of 15 years. (when the levels of gas production hypothetically lower). Kyoto Legislation means that the Gas has to be disposed of, where previously it had been Vented or put through inefficient Open Flares. (A bit of pipe that flows gas through it to be burnt) It's now viable to take landfill gas and pass it first through a gas turbine to generate power, then the exhaust from the gas turbine can be used to heat water to generate steam for a steam turbine, and some of the gas can be put through a seperate line to make a flare where the rest of the exhaust is injected into to remove any left over pollutants. A decent sized landfill can generate 10-15Mw+
That is pretty ingenious to use leached gases to power generators. I like it. The paper talks of dropping Fission power, well, at least not building any new reactors. My question arises in the idea that they wish to reduce greenhouse emissions. Fission power is not a producer of greenhouse gases at all because it does not use the combustion of hydrocarbons to produce the heat. So I was mainly wondering why they wish to drop both Nuclear power and reduce emissions at the same time. From what was originally posted I inferred, because there was no information stating otherwise, that they planned to reduce the gases by not building more Fission reactors. So my question is where exactly do they plan to cut the gas emissions from?
What is your source of information? The population numbers I have seen show a steady increase in population since the late 1960's. This is not the correct definition of half-life. A half-life is the time it takes for a radioactive material to decay to one half it's original activity. Radiation decays exponentially. Many operating plants in the US are undergoing license extensions (extending their life for another 15-20 years from the original 40-50 year lifetime). Two extensions have been granted after years of review, five or six more have been submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for similar safety reviews. Where did you obtain this data? I have never heard of this. I do safety simulations on nuclear reactors and have never seen this phenomenon. It is not remotely possible to my knowledge. Nuclear energy is the fastest growing primary energy sector. Total worldwide nuclear energy consumption has increased by 2.77% last year or 26.6% in the ten years since 1991. (J. Stefan Institute, Slovania: Mofel for Ceq calculation: The IAEA Nuclear Power and Sustainable Development, 01-00678/FS Series 3/10/E) Nuclear power plants provide a C02 emissions savings. Power is never dropped from a grid. It is replaced, since worldwide consumption of energy continually increases. Hence, if nuclear power plants were removed, what would they be replaced with? The most common is gas or fossil fuel, which emit greenhouse gases. Hence, an increase in greenhouse gas emissions if nuclear power were dropped and replaced by gas or coal. In general. I think it is poor planning to eliminate ANY energy source from an energy portfolio. Almost all investors will tell you to diversify your portfolio. The same applies for energy. A diverse energy system gives the maximum potential for economic, environmental, safety, reliability and availability benefits.
kentwelter Thanks for putting the Halflife right, the halflife I was concerning myself with was the Landfill one that increases in gas production at about half the life expectancy of the landfill tip. Seems we could be exchanging words if your Pro-Nuclear and I'm Pro-Power Regeneration. I'd ask to keep it civil though Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! As for Nuclear energy being the fastest growing, well the only reason why that is, is because people originally didn't invest in the technology to harness what "other" methods there are to generate power (e.g. Closed/Open Minefields/Oilfields, petrochemical/Chemical tanks, tankers, landfills, Solar and Volcanic thermals.) Nuclear power I believe is a little "old fashioned", and as I mentioned before it's Cost for cleanup totally outways how much it makes. (In the sense that people will make money the first X number of years but the surrounding populous has to fork out the cleanup when it needs to be closed)
Andre: Thanks for the welcome. Let's break it down... Widespread? Among who? How many people believe this? This has not come up in my conversations with civil society, government, interest groups, industry or education. I'm trying to remember if I ran across a report that went through the entire nuclear fuel cycle in painstaking detail. I can't seem to think of one, so I'll try and use induction logic to the best of my ability to better understand the problem... The first part of the nuclear fuel cycle, depending on where you want to start, would be the mining of uranium. If you want to get detailed, first you need to find the uranium. Even more detailed, you need the tools to find uranium. My understanding is that uranium ore is not as difficult to find as other deposits, but then I'm no prospector. When you say energy, do you mean BTU's expended? Actually, before I get into details, maybe it's easier to create an outline first...The nuclear cycle is commonly broken down thus, Prospecting Mining Enrichment Fabrication Fission Temporary Disposal Permanent Disposal Decomissioning (for those plants past their lifetimes) Transportation throughout the entire process Of course, now that I think of it. This type of argument is flawed. How much energy does it take you to drive your truck into the woods, cut down a tree, cut it into small pieces, load it into your truck, take it back to your house, then unload it. Then, when it get's cold, go outside, pick up the wood, and put it into your fireplace? Now, without really getting into numbers. Which process do you think takes more energy? Getting your wood into the fireplace or burning that piece of wood? In a practical sense, it's kinda hard to compare, since you need the warmth to survive and are willing to do the work to get it. Electricity is similar. Your willing to do work to get it. But where do I close the energy cycle if I want to figure out how much total energy is inputed? Does it start with the research it takes to build the truck to mine the uranium ore? The people used to construct the tires? This type of problem is very ambiguous and based solely on arbitrarily defined boundary conditions. That's in a theoretical sense. In a practical sense. The only way to quantify the energy through an entire nuclear fuel cycle is to compare it to something else. In other words, this is more or less than that. Those assumptions must be the same for both systems. For example, we state that we will only consider the energy used in heavy machinery, not BTU's expended by the workers. The reason for this lethargy is that we lack infinite time and resources. So we must bound the problem, even if those boundaries are arbitrary.. In a very rough sense. There are studies that do this on a limited bases. For example, you get some big machines, you mine the ore, you make the fuel, you burn-it (fission), and then dispose of it. But that process is just about the same for every energy cycle (you have to get the materials to make solar panels and on a large scale it'll require mining). When we compare input and output energies (efficiencies), we often look at material loss or mass to energy conversion. We put in 10 g of U235, after three years we have 9.4 g left, producing X amount of power. Then we get a number for efficiency. That's about it. For solar it's the conversion of the total amount of photons to actual electricity generating photons. And so on... In summary. When you look at the nuclear fuel cycle as a whole, what's the input, what's the output? When do you close the cycle? These choices are very arbitrary and don't mean anything unless they are compared to something else (i.e. a coal fuel cycle, solar fuel cycle, etc.) So, I basically haven't answered your question, but stated how I think the question is flawed and how any study that would attempt to quantify this type of problem is flawed as well or I’m not knowledgeable enough to answer it...
Okay. But you tell me when I'm wrong. And I tell you when you're wrong. Nothing uncivil about that. It's a process to reach a higher level of understanding. Old? Uh, the ability to harness solar energy was started in the mid 1800's. But if you mean old by all the old white guys in the industry. Then I agree. I don't think "old" has much relevance. If it ain't broke, don't fix it... You cannot ignore the fact that nuclear power was derived from the huge Manhattan project. But that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Most of our advanced technologies come from government/military. Solar panels and fuel cells on the Apollo. NASA put a lot of research into those. Just because a lot of dollars went into something, doesn't mean you should discard it. It's a resource that should be utilized to its fullest potential. Anyway, enough philosophy. I got caught on a tangent. I'm curious about your Volcanic thermals. Never heard of those. I'm not really here to debate one power system over another. I do want to point out that you MUST keep a diverse energy portfolio. I do agree with increased renewable like you mentioned. Yes they are uneconomical. They will need to be subsidized and have been subsidized by the government. But they don't see the need if other sources are more readily available. The cost of disposal and decomissioning of a nuclear plant is included into the electric cost of the costumer. The consumer pays for the cleanup bill already. Nuclear power is the only industry that internalizes waste costs. The utilities have been paying billions of dollars (12 to be exact) into the final disposal of nuclear waste for thirty years, due to a bill past by congress. Tax payers are not paying for Yucca Mountain. The utilities are. It doesn't help that the government went back on their promise to find a solution for the final disposal of the waste by 1999. And happen to spend 7 billion of the 12 on paper studies. Oh well, can't really expect much more.
I have to admit my biased nature towards the cleanup bill is because in the UK, although I believe a cleanup bill had been preposed many years ago, the tax payer is looking to fork out the cleanup costs. Now admittedly those tax payers were children that used the energy, but they didn't have any say in the plants being built. electricity has become cheap here, and that has also caused problems since those companies are not making as much money as they use to. I gather thats not the case in the US purely because of the Brownouts that have happened over there the past few years. Which is why there was talk I believe about the creation of more Nuclear stations, yet the US has hundreds of poorly tapped Landfill sites that are outputting Gas. It would make sense to use the landfill gas.
The UK currently relies on "decide, announce, defend" for policy issues like building power plants. There are increased programs in several countries to allow more public decision-making into selecting power plants. But that process is still in its infantcy. I hope we get to see more on this consensus building topic. I have a feeling that our pro-nuclear stance is not in large part due to brownouts, but improved technology and sustainable development. I was at the UN Earth Summit in South Africa last year and from what I heard from delegates is that the US firmly believes that nuclear energy should be kept in the sustainable development mix. New advanced reactor designs are making huge gains in the DOE and NRC in terms of safety analysis and design enhancements. The US Executive Branch is aware of this and believes them to be sound economical and environmentally responsible investments. Providing energy at much lower costs, with inherently safe designs using state-of-the art technology, and with significant waste reduction. I feel the US stance is more technology driven regarding sustainable development than lack of actual commercial and urban power. Response to brownouts was provided by quickly built gas power plants. Nuclear is a long term option and would have a little effect on current energy demand trends. In my opinion.
Soalr interview tonight... I just wanted to let everyone who has posted here know that we are doing our interview with Bill Lord, owner of The Maine Solar House tonight at 7:30 pm on The Catacombs Show . We have made a list of pertinent questions and comments from some sciforums posts, and will give Mr. Lord an opportunity to answer those and any others that come in over instant messenger ( AOL - catacombs2012 ) during the show. Please tune in and use this opportunity to interact with the owner of this amazing house! Thanks! Becky
