Java Jive wrote:
On Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:35:47 +0100 (BST), "Dave Liquorice"
wrote:
1GW, enough for two big cities it says and it will have been doing it
for 39 years when it finally closes.
But how much energy did it take to build it? How much to mine the
ore, refine it (these in another country, so it doesn't appear in our
carbon account), ship it to the UK, maybe process it some more, 'burn'
it, make the waste safe for transport, transport it, process it, and
store it INDEFINITELY into the future, for we will be expending energy
looking after and containing nuclear waste long after the sites that
produced it have been decommissioned. How much energy will it take
entirely to decommission the plant safely at the end of its working
life? By the time you've added up that lot, just how much 'net'
energy will the plant have produced?
About 1%-3% of the energy it produces, typically. Is what is used by it
to produce the actual structure and take it down afterwards.
Somewhat better than a windmill.
The data you need is all in David Mackay's excellent and very unbiased
(he is a committed greenie, but with the ability to think and do sums as
well) book, and website
www.withouthotair.com
If any? A recent BBC programmes about Windscale/Sellafield cast doubt
on how much energy it ever produced.
They are actually designed with rushed production of weapons grade
plutonium in mind. Power generation was a bit of a smokescreen. A handy
politically acceptable by-product if you like. After all the damned
piles WERE producing a lot of heat, as part of the desired nuclear
reactins., and needed cooling, so it made sense to strap a boiler and a
turbine on the back, and do something with it.
After all, it was primarily
built as a source of weapons-grade plutonium, not to supply
electricity, which was just a public cover story, and the programme
stated that it was sometimes drawing power from the grid rather than
supplying power to it!
Exactly. Historically intersting, but in no way relevant to modern
plants designed to produce power safely and economically, and be
dismantles safely and economically afterwards.
A recent BBC programme about Dounreay revealed that its
decommissioning employs as many people as it ever did when it was
operational. This inevitably means that it will produce incidental
CO2 until decommissioning ends in 2025, even though it hasn't been
operational since 1994.
Indeed. An early set that wasn't designed to be taken apart in the sort
of Elfin Safety regime that would have had post war technologists
sputtering their coffee all over their slide rules.
And that's not even to mention environmental radio-active hazards ...
Which are, frank;ly, alomost non existent.
A school-friend's family had to pour all their milk into the sea
during the incident at the then Windscale plant.
Says who?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire
There are Welsh farmers still unable to sell their lamb after
Chernobyl:
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wa...1466-20822842/
The same BBC programme revealed (newly to me, at least) that there are
heavy particles washing along the coast from Dounreay:
Ther are heavy particles washing along the Channel and bristol channel
from Dartmoor and Exmoor..
natural radon is the greatest source of radioactive related deaths in
the country, by IIRC a factor of several thousand over the nuclear industry.
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0952-4...b-754751b7c89c
And, don't forget, every spillage, leak, incident, or whatever,
whether it be major like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, or the more
frequent lesser problems, besides the instantly alarming concerns
about radio-activity, have an associated energetic cost in cleanup
operations, etc.
Trivial ion compariso=n to the power generated, and arguably about a
1000 times more diligent than the actual facts say is necessary.
The really big windmills are 2MW so you need 1500 "jumbo jets on a
stick" spread out over the country to have even a hope in hell of
matching this one nuke station.
It is certainly true that wind has its own problems, the chief of
which are that most of the population do not choose to live where most
of the wind is, the number of windfarms that are required to be built
in an impossibly short time, and the only commercial manufacturer in
the UK has just closed. However, planning permission aside, a
windfarm has a much smaller lead time, and a much smaller initial CO2
outlay to recover. We need to use as much wind as we can, but it
clearly won't be sufficient on its own.
WE don't need to use any wind. Its an appalingly inefficient way to
generate usable power. It has no real justification beyond seeming to
the naive, to be a green solution to a real problem. In reality its no
solution at all, but it gets the greenies of peoples backs whilst they
work on real solutions.