Wind Farms

[bernardgreen]

In the early days of nuclear power stations some UK protesters go hold of a geiger counter and "proved conclusively" that nuclear stations leaked radiation beyond the security fences. I recall them being shown the luminous paint on their watch taking the greiger counter needle even further across the dial. In fact the "leakage" was natural background radiation, a fact that the anti-nuclear brigade choose to ignore.

 

[JohnW2]

In terms of numbers, there are many in other energy sectors that dwarf them - just one (Aberfan) comes to mind which in just one incident killed far more. Reading about it, it's clear that the final toll was more as there were significant related illnesses for many years (for example, there was a rapid increase in alcohol related illnesses and presumably deaths which wouldn't have been recorded as being linked). One can't help but wonder if some of the alleged illnesses caused by nuclear aren't in fact symptoms of stress caused by the fear so many people have of it ?
Against that, and this is where few people I've ever conversed with seem to consider, one has to consider the benefits that years of (relatively) clean and reliable electricity has brought. I can't help thinking that without reliable supplies of reasonably priced electricity, our overall standard of living would be considerably lower - and there are (I believe) plenty of studies that show a correlation between living standards and health.

That is all true. Particularly given the relative youth of nuclear electricity generation, I would imagine that it's inevitable that, up to date, far more people have died or been injuried (or made unwell) as a direct or indirect result of energy industries other than nuclear.

However, although I am essentially on your side and, in general, a supporter of nuclear power generation, one cannot get away from what BAS has said - namely that, although it has not yet happened (and may not happen for a very long time to come), there is an extremely small risk that a 'nucear accident' could result in a catastrophe on a scale that would overshadow all of the consequencies of energy industries since the year dot.

Such a risk is obviously effectively unquantifiable. In any event, the nature of probability means that quantification wouldn't help much, anyway - if it were known that the probability of a 'catastrophic accident' was, say, "once evey 100,000 years", that does not mean that it's any less likely to happen tomorrow than it is for it not to happen for thousands of years. It therefore comes down to 'us' making a decision as to whether or not we are prepared to accept an incredibly small probability of something catastrophic happening 'tomorrow' an acceptable price to be paid for the undoubted benefits.

Kind Regards, John

 

[Spark123]

That was the last death I am aware of in the nuclear industry in the UK, I am unaware of any related to any directly associated radiation exposure. Even those which are such as the ones in Japan (Tokai incident) the people died weeks later.
Also not taking into account deaths outside of the industry which people associate with radiation such as from leukaemia or thyroid cancer etc. One estimate is 33+ cancer deaths as a result of the Windscale fire.

Thank you.

I think you'll agree that's a very small number compared to, for example, deaths of coal miners. And, of course, can they be absolutely certain that these cancer deaths were caused by radiation leakage at Windscale? I don't claim to know, but I'm sure that there is the possibility of other causes.

You can only really go on statistics relative to other parts of the country/world, there were a few reports produced back in the 80s and 90s regarding the possible link with the certain cancers and location relative to a nuclear establishment but it is one of those things that cannot be proven 100%.
In cases such as Chernobyl there was a marked increase in thyroid cancer, thyroid cancer being pretty rare, only 2700 cases in the UK per year. Thankfully it responds well to treatment. I know of a number of cases of this around this part of the country, given the population in Cumbria it will probably show a higher than the national average figure but proving the link is nigh on impossible. Similar, proving the link with other cancers such as Leukemia is nigh on impossible.

 

[JBR]

The Frogs have invested far more heavily than us in nuclear energy generation, to the extent that we buy their electricity.

One thing that a lot of people fear - a large nuclear explosion - is not going to happen. Even Chernobyl wasn't the same thing as a nuclear bomb, and that happened because the Russians weren't so keen on safety as we are.

Until nuclear fusion is developed, nuclear fission is our only long-term hope and it doesn't have to be uranium or plutonium. Thorium seems to be an even safer option.

 

[viewer]

It would make sense to just accept that some technologies, whilst not intrinsically unsafe are very unforgiving of mistakes. Secrecy, laziness and misunderstandings have been sources of those mistakes in the nuclear industry. Nuclear power has a bad record in some areas mostly because early plant was linked to production of plutonium (Windscale) and there were bad designs which could run away (Chernobyl) or bad siting (Fukushima).
IMHO it would be better to state that the production of electricity has the potential to cause disaster and therefore plan complete strategies to avoid it happening.
Statistical probability is not really useful once we get to long time scales. Indeed it is often not useful in the real world of domestic decision making. Frigfreezers cause a large number of fires, but what is the trade-off between injuries from those fires and the illness caused by food poisoning. A sort of estimate could be made, but it wouldn't be useful for the individual home-owner.
Looking at fatalities is also very misleading. In Ukraine (Chernobyl) more miners lost their lives in one year than were killed at the accident, but what does that actually tell you? The biggest killer in energy production (described as deaths per kilowatt) in recent years has been wind power because it has not produced a lot but most deaths were during construction. Again it is unforgiving, but then what idiot parachutes into a windfarm?
Even the reliable and non toxic tidal power systems have ecological effects which will lead to health problems about which we know little.
A major problem is that we have not had an energy policy which covers half a century which is what we need and which governments understandably are loathe to accept. Until the public accept that nothing is completely safe, that decisions for 30 years hence might be wrong due to unforeseen changes in technology or climate and the future will not be cheap then we are doomed to go around in this argument.
Shale gas offers (at high CO2 cost) a breathing space, but it must be used to provide a buffer and platform for long term strategies and not wasted on short term cheap power.

 

[SimonH2]

And so have the Chinese - to the extent that before long it's likely that we'll need to go to them to have ours built

They've bee inveting heavily, but they are clever enough that they don't just buy a nuclear power station, but technology transfer is part of the deal. So they are busy buying into the knowledge that we are in danger of losing.

I'm surprised that no-one has come up with the "can't be done on time and on budget" argument yet - usually adding Olkiluoto as proof. They usually omit that EDF declined to be involved from the start which might say something.
The situation in China is different - theirs are (AFAIK) going to plan, as are the 4off Westinghouse AP1000 systems they are building (edit: I now see they are building 16 !).

And since I've mentioned the Westinghouse design, if you haven't seen it then it's interesting to look at.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000
I can't help thinking that had this been the design at Fukushima, then it might have survived intact - no longer usable, but without having "blown up" as the media insist of portraying it. The key thing is that it has a single passive cooling system for use in emergency, that uses gravity to allow cooling water to flow onto the outside of the primary containment. As long as the header tank is kept topped up, it will passively cool with no power supplied needed. Since the tank is sized to hold 2 days supply, there's a good chance that access to top it up could have been arranged within that timescale, and the thing would just have cooled down without any issues.
Unfortunately, the two that were proposed for the UK were to be built by a consortium including RWE - and so they pulled out under pressure from Germany, about whom I think the least said etc ...

 

[ban-all-sheds]

When I was younger, electricity from nuclear power stations was going to be so cheap that they were going to just give it away.

 

[Spark123]

That was one of the publicity things for Calder Hall, that it wasn't going to be worth metering.
I once heard, don't know how true it is, that if you live within a certain radius of a nuclear power station in France that you get free electricity.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

[joke]And glow-in-the-dark vegetables from your garden.[/joke]

 

[SimonH2]

Shale gas offers (at high CO2 cost) a breathing space, but it must be used to provide a buffer and platform for long term strategies and not wasted on short term cheap power.

Well actually, shale gas has allowed the USA to cut its CO2 emissions considerably - just by switching from coal for a lot of its lecky.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

How much different is one hydrocarbon to another?

For sure all sorts of other exhaust compounds - particulates, sulphur, NOx etc will vary between different fuels, as they have different impurities, and different ease of getting perfect combustion, but CO2?

 

[SimonH2]

How much different is one hydrocarbon to another?

Very ! For practical purposes - ie calculating CO2 emissions :
Coal = pure carbon
Natural gas = (IIRC, methane) CH4

So switching from coal to natural gas, you switch from C + O2 = CO2 to CH4 + 2O2 = CO2 + 2H2O. So for every carbon atom you turn into CO2, with natural gas you also add the energy from turning 4xH2 into H2O (less some energy required to break up the input molecules). Result, for the same energy output, you need less carbon input.
If you want that in terms of CO2 out per fuel in : For carbon it's 46 (2x16 + 14) units of CO2 for each 14 units of carbon, so 3.29 kg of CO2 per kg of coal. For methane, it's 46 units of CO2 for 18 units of fuel, so 2.56 kg of CO2 per kg of gas, plus 2kg of water.
I'll leave someone else to lookup the relative energy outputs.

 

[bernardgreen]

Coal is not pure carbon. It has a lot of hydro-carbon compounds, heating coal produces coal gas ( aka town gas ) and coke. Even the coke is not pure carbon.

The other source of carbon dioxide is us humans. I have never seen any data about what percentage of CO2 comes from humans and other animals.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Very ! For practical purposes - ie calculating CO2 emissions :
Coal = pure carbon
Natural gas = (IIRC, methane) CH4

Well I didn't mean the chemical composition, obviously.

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/co2-emission-fuels-d_1085.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_...uels#Relative_CO2_emission_from_various_fuels

Plus, of course, things like the fact that it's tricky to transport coal by pipeline make it's lifecycle CO2 higher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_...le_greenhouse-gas_emissions_of_energy_sources

Interesting to note that solar PV is much worse than nuclear in that respect.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Coal is not pure carbon.

It varies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal