Nice Photovoltaik Peak in Germany

[kladner]

Originally Posted by chalsall

Well, at least one...

If San Onofre is shut down, but not fully unloaded and decommissioned, including the spent fuel pools; would loss of outside power let this or that overheat? EDIT: I'm not sure of the geological details, but it seems that this installation is vulnerable to the ocean if enough of an earthquake happens offshore. I do think that the big faults around there are mostly passing each other, rather than subducting. However, a big collapse in Hawaii could probably provide an adequate wave to hit San Onofre.

There is a reason power generation plants are placed near the ocean (if possible). But there is a risk associated with this.

I remember fishermen clustered around the cooling outflow, from what was probably a gas-fired generating station, into Clear Lake near the Johnson Space Center. Apparently, fish liked it too, as well as birds like cormorants, who were there for the fishing.

Most inland plants need to use "Cooling towers", also known as an "Evaporative cooler". These are the hyperbolic towers so synonymous with nuclear power, but don't actually contain the core.

What we haven't yet talked about is what to do with the by-products of nuclear energy generation.

The US of A and its partners are in consternation about Iran doing work on this; meanwhile the US of A itself has lost the ability to dispose of its own waste because of a recent accident at its lone facility.

That 'accident' was caused by willful corporate negligence. The company chose to stop washing the salt mining trucks, though I believe they were still required to wash the waste haulers. It was a salt truck which caught fire. EDIT: The truck's fire suppression system was disabled.

Hmmmm....

Indeed.

[chappy]

Originally Posted by chalsall

I'm sincerely interested in your thought on this...

Are you saying the US of A's reactors are built differently than those in Japan, which experienced catastrophic failure (and repeated radiation leakage) after an earth quake and a tsunami?

Are you saying the US of A's nuclear reactors are fool-proof, and can't leak radiation?

yes to the first part, and this has been discussed elsewhere in the world, even before TMI US and Europe built better reactors than the rest of the world. After TMI (which was the same kind of accident as Chernobyl to place it in perspective) safety was strengthened even further.

Are US of A's reactors fool-proof, no, can they leak radiation? possibly. is the chance utterly remote? yes. Davis Besse Plant, for example, was hit by a tornado in the late 90's. It was shut down for most of a year as they repaired the turbine building. No radiation leaks. No breaching of the 4 foot thick reinforced concrete walls of either the reactor building or the less protected auxiliary building.

The walls of the reactor buildings used by the nukes in the US were designed by German engineers to protect submarines from bombs during WW2. The allies bombed them for years without a single sub being lost. This is anecdotal evidence of course, but they are over-engineered for the job.

Kladner the reactor vessel (which showed cracks) is a very small part of the overall protection designed into Davis Besse. It is a large metal vat that sits in the middle of a huge concrete building. The vat was compromised (though not as much as the article would have you believe) the building and all the safety systems designed to mitigate an actual failure were not compromised.

Chris is asking perhaps if I think that American Nukes are perfect? No, of course not. But there is more chance of every other kind of industrial disaster happening than the chance of a significant breach at an American nuke.

You know who had even better nukes than us? The Germans.

Of course now the Canadians have better nukes than us. And Ernst is correct that other designs look very promising. But the threat of invisible death by radiation and the general public's irrational fears will keep those promising emerging technologies down.

[kladner]

http://www.gizmag.com/saphonian-blad...turbine/24890/

The idea is interesting, though there is only rather scanty description of how it operates. The claims are glowing: vastly more efficient, and cheaper to build than rotating designs.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by chappy

The walls of the reactor buildings used by the nukes in the US were designed by German engineers to protect submarines from bombs during WW2. The allies bombed them for years without a single sub being lost. This is anecdotal evidence of course, but they are over-engineered for the job.

A timely article found on SlashDot.org today...

Under Revised Quake Estimates, Dozens of Nuclear Reactors Face Costly Safety Analyses.

From the article... "Owners of at least two dozen nuclear reactors across the United States, including the operator of Indian Point 2, in Buchanan, N.Y., have told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that they cannot show that their reactors would withstand the most severe earthquake that revised estimates say they might face, according to industry experts.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by chappy

Chris is asking perhaps if I think that American Nukes are perfect? No, of course not. But there is more chance of every other kind of industrial disaster happening than the chance of a significant breach at an American nuke.

Chappy, I very much appreciate your knowledge and interaction on this topic.

My personal concern is not so much an industrial accident at a facility, which I agree is statistically unlikely to cause many deaths (Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and Fukushima considered); one is far more likely to die driving a car -- or even eating a meal.

My primary personal concern is the nuclear industry's claim to be being "clean" (read: no carbon emissions), while ignoring the byproducts (which are very dangerous) and the construction and decommissioning requirements of the generation process (which are very carbon emitting).

There are some crazy people out there. Some of these crazy people might steal some of the byproducts (or even the fuel, in less controlled environments), and make problems for others.

Now, everyone here knows it takes a great deal of skill to actually make a nuclear bomb which goes thermonuclear. But it doesn't take much skill to make a "dirty bomb" (read: place radioactive material around a conventional bomb which spreads radioactive material over a large area).

Heck, even Oliver Wendell Jones of Bloom County made an atomic bomb using only the glowing numbers off of 10,000 watches.... (that's meant to be funny.)

[kladner]

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...nergy-records/

[chappy]

http://www.engadget.com/2014/08/20/b...h-bird-deaths/


Lunch! But, seriously, I think this is a bit overblown. I'm no expert in the field but here in the Midwest we call CTGs (the primary mechanism behind natural gas based electricity) pidgeon roasters because each one emits high temperature exhaust and kills many birds.

That's not an excuse, of course, but we need to compare these emerging technologies to the things they replace not against an ideal--I could rant about the same thing re: the EPA forms that I have to fill out, but that is another rant for another cranny of the forum.

[chappy]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/huge-s...192346676.html

This is to be expected in my opinion, but further reinforces my belief that the world is spending a lot of money on untried technologies, that even if they work as advertised don't actually solve our problems.

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by chappy

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/huge-s...192346676.html

This is to be expected in my opinion, but further reinforces my belief that the world is spending a lot of money on untried technologies, that even if they work as advertised don't actually solve our problems.

Not exactly "untried"

Originally Posted by Uncwilly

Here is the Grand-daddy of that project:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sol...ject#Solar_One

FWIW, those 2 projects are not horridly far from each other.

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by Uncwilly

The cost per watt has continued to fall. By 2015 (IIRC) it should cross over (without incentives) with typical cost of power from the grid. Soon it should make plenty of sense to just use solar in a huge number of areas.

http://www.computerworld.com/article...-coal-oil.html

[VictordeHolland]

Google has made a deal with Eneco (electric utility company) for the use of a complete windmill-park that is currently under construction in Delfzijl. The park will consist of 19 turbines with a combined capacity of 62MW. It will power the 600 million euro costing data centre Google is building in the Eemshaven. The deal is for 10 years, starting in 2016.

Original article (in Dutch):
http://www.nu.nl/internet/3931925/go...indmolens.html