nuclear thoughts
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Pebble bed - expensive I think but a good safe design. The Sydney reactors are tiny(last was about washing machine size) - we also have US ships fuelled that way that I don't think we prohibit (NZ does). If things go wrong, contamination is very confined.Gimp said:
There is a project in Kidson NQ that intends , I believe, to use solar (or excess solar!) to pump water uphill (fresh not salt!) to create the ability for hydro, after dark. Obviously there are efficiency losses, though if they are using 'excess' solar to do this, it becomes less of an issue. I am not sure how far they are along, or if this may be only a 'localised' solution.goldierocks said:
Don't understand what you mean about orphanages. The number of deaths was quite small, mostly those who fought the fire at Chernobyl, one person at Fukishima. Thyroid cancer increased a bit near Chernobyl but only because the government failed to distribute iodine tablets - and few deaths resulted (92% of thyroid cancers are treatable). Compared with tens of thousands of deaths from coal plants (you just don't see it so ignore it). So far nuclear has caused few deaths, but has put a lot of land out of use for a long time.OldGT said:
Not quite that simple - you can build tiny ones and they have small output. Yes, you can build them safe but it is a cost issue. Chernobyl didn't have a containment building hence the widespread contamination (a graphite core). Fukishima was built on the coast in an earthquake zone. Neither great for reactors....Swinging & digging said:
Where uranium is mined is pretty much irrelevant - it is processed to U235 elsewhere to form pellets for fuel rods. We can't do that in Australia (but probably could - very expensive).
The overwhelming majority of their power is still nuclear I think - just not building new reactors. Germany also said they would not buld more (so solved the problem by buying power from France, which has 40% n :drooling: uclear power generation (one hopes any fallout can recognise a border)LoneWolf said:
I think the first thorium reactors come on line in 2025 in India. They have abundant thorium (so do we). They are quite good - must add energy to get going, can't go critical, end products not good for building bombs (the reason the big powers didn't go that route more than 50 years ago). Not totally safe waste but certainly better, Does produce one nasty intermediate product along the way that then decays - U233 - so requires considerable care for operators. It will come down to economics in the end....I don't hear people cheering for higher energy bills, and that is a major determining factor.pagan prospector said:
Goldfreak, there is a lot that sounds positive about them but in the end it will come down to economics. There are some environmental issues with all such things (lots of nasty things mixed with the thorium ore, but none are radioactive except thorium). Monazite sand - we often re-bury ours after separating the zircon, rutile etc sand from it.
I mention environmental issues because years ago the French (Rhone Poulenc?) wanted to build a plant near Jarrahdale to extract rare earth minerals (present in the monazite) from the beach sand operations, and also gallium from the nearby bauxite operations. Both are "new age" metals (although the rare earths tend to be what we call ceric or light rare earths, which have much lower demand. It was rejected on environmental grounds. It is a real Catch-22. We complain about being so dependent on mining and agriculture, but often reject projects to directly refine things ourselves (we ship concentrate overseas instead). Therefore we don't develop the associated secondary industries (eg modern electronics). I thought at the time that there should be some way to overcome any environmental issues, but who knows? In the end it still comes down to costs and economics.
I mention environmental issues because years ago the French (Rhone Poulenc?) wanted to build a plant near Jarrahdale to extract rare earth minerals (present in the monazite) from the beach sand operations, and also gallium from the nearby bauxite operations. Both are "new age" metals (although the rare earths tend to be what we call ceric or light rare earths, which have much lower demand. It was rejected on environmental grounds. It is a real Catch-22. We complain about being so dependent on mining and agriculture, but often reject projects to directly refine things ourselves (we ship concentrate overseas instead). Therefore we don't develop the associated secondary industries (eg modern electronics). I thought at the time that there should be some way to overcome any environmental issues, but who knows? In the end it still comes down to costs and economics.
No, the excess solar energy produced is used to pump water uphill to a 'holding dam' to be used as Hydro electric when solar cannot be produced.goldierocks said:
This term "base load power" is greatly misused, especially by politicians. My understanding is that base load power only relates to coal plants, not to any other type, The problem with a coal-fired plant is that there is a MINIMUM rate at which it can run during periods of low demand, if it drops below that the plant has to be shut down. It takes days to get it going again. Building more coal plants would only increase the problem relating to base load power - except that base load power is not the real problem.pagan prospector said:
It seems that what they mean is providing extra power during period of peak demand (which has nothing to do with base load power). Which makes me wonder if extra coal plants can even achieve that easily (i.e. you can't just start up another coal fired plant to only run when there is high demand, for the reason stated above - you would increase the problem then of base load power in periods of low demand). However, since peak load, not base load demand, is the real problem, I imagine that can be overcome by running multiple plants at well below capacity in low-demand periods.
So all they are really saying is that we don't have enough power during peak periods (eg scorching summer days, freezing evenings). So any method that can supply it at that time will be equally good, it does not have to be coal. The issue is whether you can do it with renewables at that time (eg wind farms are cheaper than coal by far now, and solar is fairly competitive - nuclear is just so damned expensive and plants produce so much power that you cant build them just everywhere where you need the power due to loss in transmission lines - also for safety issues such as seismic activity, tsunamis, population centres). But there are other issues with renewables - is the wind blowing, is the sun shining. Which is where battery storage comes in, and of course that ups the cost a bit? Pumped hydro is one solution, but it is similarly geographically confined to certain areas (if it is to be significant), and is not huge output, so it can only be the solution in some areas. Battery storage is quietly occurring (eg Ballarat can achieve its full supply for 24 hours with no other source of power, but of course the advantage is to just use it during peak demand and re-charge in low demand).
The reality is that it would be difficult to get any private funding for more coal power stations at present (it is hard enough to get finance for even new coal mines), which is why the government even started talking about government funding - do we want to go that way though? The issue is mostly votes in some rural seats (every type of mining in Australia combined only employs 1.9% of the population in total). Alternative methods of generation would take up some unemployed. Also it is presented as if it would affect all coal mining, but of course we only use a fraction of the coal we mine, most being exported - so my suspicion is that a limited number of local rural seats are the entire issue (although because the issues are not well understood by the public, the increased votes could affect more seats than that). It would be hard on mines that dominantly supply just our power stations (not export) but I imagine there would only be a few of these.
The very real issue with coal is if we stopped mining it for export, since it is probably nearly as much of our export income as all our agriculture (together with other mining, mining is nearly double all agriculture). ALL governments (i.e. both major parties) have every reason to fear this (all of us really) because it would dramatically impact on our international balance of payments, tax incomes to Federal government, royalty income to State governments. So we really need the issue to be discussed as openly and honestly as possible - it does not seem to me to be EITHER coal OR renewables, it is more complex.
In the so called low carbon economy of the future getting approvals for large scale energy hungry industrial plants in Australia
most likely will not happen? Silly though if a global demand exists China or India will do it and make the profit.
most likely will not happen? Silly though if a global demand exists China or India will do it and make the profit.
I doubt that will be an issue. I suspect something like thorium reactors might fill the need in specific industrial areas. I looked at costs and output of different types of plants and despite low cost, the biggest problem I could see was the output and areas of renewable-type plants. There are only a limited number of solar plants in the world with output more than an average sized coal plant. Area covered also seems to be an issue with wind (I was in Texas last year, driving the freeway east to San Antonio from Marathon, and never seemed to be out of sight of wind farms - continuously on every ridge). Yet they only supply a part of Texas needs.
Carbon capture (sequestration) gets a lot of press, but you need storage close to the generation site, and such sites are limited around our industrial areas. I also wonder about sudden, large-scale release by earthquakes (it has been postulated that such release from sediments on the continental shelf may have caused at least local extinction events).
One thing not often mentioned is that the World's population overall will be in steady decline in about a hundred years - but by then we will probably have passed the point of any short-term control and will be hot for at least hundreds of years. Oh well, past history suggests we will have had another big cull by then (perhaps fighting over coastal and agricultural land), We'll survive as a species, but it may not be much fun doing so.
Carbon capture (sequestration) gets a lot of press, but you need storage close to the generation site, and such sites are limited around our industrial areas. I also wonder about sudden, large-scale release by earthquakes (it has been postulated that such release from sediments on the continental shelf may have caused at least local extinction events).
One thing not often mentioned is that the World's population overall will be in steady decline in about a hundred years - but by then we will probably have passed the point of any short-term control and will be hot for at least hundreds of years. Oh well, past history suggests we will have had another big cull by then (perhaps fighting over coastal and agricultural land), We'll survive as a species, but it may not be much fun doing so.
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A mate of mine that has now passed on was working on a geothermal site in the far north of SA he said they got proof of concept for the power plant but that the fracturing of the rock at the bottom of the bore holes was causing a few issues. he also worked in the nuclear industry in England as an engineer in the 60s and he said the sites he worked on were remarkably safe
A power company drilled one hell of a deep hole near Lake Frome. There was much release of its elevated temperatures (which simply reflected the extreme depth of the hole). However I think CSIRO had more luck in SW Queensland, with very high temperatures at only one km depth. But such sites are few and far between....pagan prospector said:
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goldierocks said:
Fukushima was a 50 year old design by General Electric (USA) , it was supposed to be shut down years earlier but the bean counters wanted to squeeze more out of it . What actually killed it though was the backup genset to run the emergency pumps was hit by the tsunami and the genset _fuel tank_ was ruptured or washed away.
There are at least 3 - 4 new designs for nuclear power that can never go into meltdown.
The only real problem is emotional reactivity from uninformed people , what they need to do is give it a new name stable thermo-power and everyone will be just fine with it.
In 10 - 15 years time people will laugh at the idiots who are burning coal for power now.
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cairnspom said:
I crunched numbers last year on the concept of building 200,000 - 400,000 litre water tanks at the top and bottom of a hill on a rural property and use solar panels to pump water up during the day and run it down through a hydro generator during peak time in the evening.
It was not economically viable even with the 90 metres of head available ( 18 kW )
Solar panels alone proved to have a bigger profit potential.
It would be nice if it was producing stable baseload but you only get that with battery inclusion.
The good thing is that more manufacturers are producing battery systems like the Tesla power wall and the price is coming down , I could even build one myself and may do so one day.
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