Subject: Nuclear power debate: yes or no?

...maybe some break through will cover our problems :)


Maybe it will. But that's exactly the bet I'm not happy to make. What if it doesn't?

Price matters, of course. But if you read my post, you would either give a counterargument or admit that it cannot matter as much as it does in order for the whole thing to work.

Talking about huge demands of land, there is enough space which would not even be taken away from people. I'm talking about offshore wind energy in the north sea or solar energy in the sahara which both actually are ongoing projects.
And the reliability is not that big of a matter, it is - apart from very, very rare cases, of course it's not impossible - going to be cloudy or without wind for an extraoridnary long period, at least not in regions that are made for the resepctive energy harvesting (coming back to the coastal regions or sahara in this example, even in Spain). I honestly don't know about the storage, I just know that storage is possible. Concerning back up, this does not need to be fuelled. I read about pumped storage hydro power stations, where you can use overpowering to pump water from one lake up to another and let it down in case of a shortage in order to gain the needed energy.

Still, it takes a huge will, or more exactly speaking, the will of diminishing ones profit. If it wouldn't, it would have been done by today. But if we're not ready to bring this will power, future generations will be doomed (same story with fuel as well) and that should somehow be enough motivation to start the whole process

Energy is best produced locally. Otherwise it brings new problems - transferring the energy. Even today with Germany's limited supply of wind power from the North Sea to the south I know you have problems. New power grid is beeing planned, and people are already rising to oppose the idea of plastering the countryside with a new powergrid.

About supply, last winter we had months with almost no wind in Denmark. Production went to rock bottom - at the very season were demand is highest. We had to keep all of our fossil fuelled plants on max output and at the same time import a lot of energy from Sweden and Germany. Which is ironically mostly from nuclear power plants.

Hydro storage i certainly a possibility. But apart from raising the price for wind power dramatically it has it's own problems. Again it takes up huge amounts of space - and hydroelectricity is by no means safer than nuclear power. Again I'll just refer to the Banqiao Dam accident. And point out that dam failures caused by the earthquake in Japan has so far caused more loss of life than radioactive leaks.

Yeah, you can always come up with new problems. The require new solutions - at least none of the problems endangers people actively or pollute the environment.

And point out that dam failures caused by the earthquake in Japan has so far caused more loss of life than radioactive leaks.

Umm, yes, this comparison makes no sense, because you don't die right away from radiation, but you do from a huge amount of water drowning you.

It always has..

in dutch there is a saying: Whenever the need is the highest the rescue is close (or something like that =p, with the highest need comes the rescue?)

Instead of repeating my posts from many pages back I'll just recommend you some Wiki-reading:

Banqiao Dam disaster effects

Chernobyl disaster effects


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I read once that the energy losses over distance are much lower if you choose not AC lines but DC lines or the other way around. At least, in that way it can still be quite profitable to harvest energy for Europe in the Sahara.

It's true that DC current is used in long distance transmission. But even with minimal loss you'd still need some pretty hefty new grids to supply Europe from Sahara. It's not impossible, just expensive. As is the case generally with solar power. It's very expensive, but will hopefully continue to become cheaper with time.

But you'd still have to cover very large areas with solar panels to produce relatively little amounts of energy. Using the numbers from e.g. the Nellis Solar Plant in the Nevada Desert you'd need 68 km2 of panels to get the same maximum output as the Olkiluotu reactor (1600 MW) beeing built in Finland. But that's max output, mind you. To get the same output you have to multiply by 4, because Nellis' capacity factor is around 22%, where a nuclear power plant has a capacity factor of 90%. So roughly 250 km2 of panels to replace the output of 1 modern nuclear reactor.

Even in the Sahara that's quite a lot.

And you'd still have the problem with storing the energy for when it's needed - if it's to be more than just a supplement to regular power plant base load, be it fossil, nuclear or hydro.

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I know for the moment it's still SF but can you tell us how much energy a fusion plant would produce if it existed?

I dont know much about fusion power. Other than it's just another form of nuclear power. Which makes it a bit funny, that so many, who hates nuclear power (fission), are very interrested in developing fusion power. :)

It's still in it's early stages of developement, and from what I've heard, it would be a much safer bet to invest in making traditional fission power even safer, cleaner and more self sustainable than it is today. Future designs of nuclear reactors show a lot of promise in that direction.

But without real knowledge, I'd rather just refer you to Wikipedia: Fusion power

And while you're there, check out the articles on generation IV fission reactors, thorium as nuclear fuel and breeder reactor design also. Those are all very promising and likely scenarios on the future of fission power - and they bring most of the same benefits as fusion power does.

This is where we should seek the energy solutions of the future in my opinion - instead of putting all our hope into fusion or some other form of speculative future energy source.
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I don't hate fissionI just like the idea of fusion more =p.
From what i've heard from experts when we visited a nuclear lab in my area he said it was more powerfull, emission clean => the perfect energy

And yes those options seem very feasible I just mentioned I like this idea above all. And if this is impossible i'll settle for the second best

I'm not accusing you. :)

I just know a lot of people, who are very skeptical if not outright opposed to nuclear power - but who at the same time hails fusion power as the energy form of the future.

The thing they often fear the most about fission power is the "risk" (" is used because it's not a risk at all - it's impossible by law of nature) of a nuclear detonation in a reactor gone wild. As in blowing up like a nuclear weapon, mushroom cloud and all. To tease them a bit I then try to explain them, that what happens in a fusion power plant is actually a small scale and controlled reaction likewise to what's happening in a hydrogen bomb - just as fission in a nuclear power plant is a small scale and controlled reaction likewise to what's happening in a nuclear bomb. A hydrogen bomb is set of by a traditional fission bomb (design similar to the one dropped over Nagasaki) that "ignites" the fusion proces in the bomb's second stage, increasing the effect many, many times.

Again, it's an impossible scenario in a fission reactor. You need a lot of high grade and dense uranium to make a core explosion, that you simply don't have in a reactor. But if an unintended nuclear explosion is the stuff, you fear about nuclear power (and I know that it is for a lot of people), you should be terrified by the prospects of fusion power. Fusion power is essentially creating a mini version of the Sun inside a controlled confinement.
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I know the power of fusion. But as yo usaid the chances of that happening are as big as creating a black hole in the LHC in Geneva ;-).

And yet if we fuse the lightest atoms known (H) and not He we are doing something less powerfull as the sun is doing now.
Also on the positive side: if something big happens with fusion no one will ever know it because we'll all be dead in a moment ;)

Yes, fusion can be a good solution. However we can't contain safely the plasma yet; it should be done with a strong magnetic field, and that needs too much power now - the reactor isn't a power source yet, it consumes too much.

profitable to harvest energy for Europe in the Sahara.

The Sahara is a reliable source of energy if you want to use the sun, during daytime it is ;) But in many places the sun and wind can be used only when it's there. With these solarfields, but also windparks, there are always powerstations needed to compensate the drops (we don't want power fluxuation on electrical lines). And because powerstations can't just be turned off it's always producing electricity, burning fuel and making money. That's why the current energy-providers love these options. Not only they can build windparks and solarfields but also powerstations. It's a win-win situation for them. Not that strange Nuon en Shell build a windpark together knowing this ;)

Tidal energy and geothermal energy are true reliable energysources that don't need backup powerstations as the sources they use are always predictable. The current energy-providers won't like these options as they have to change the core business completely and that's not what businesses want because it will cost a lot of money. They will lobby for what they know and will even try to stop the competition in every way.

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