11 hours ago, dave2013 said:

France gets 70% of its electricity from nuclear reactors, and the U.S. operates 93 reactors providing about 20% of its electricity.  France also exports electricity to its neighbors.

In nearly 50 years of operation, there has never been a serious incident in France and only one in the U.S. in 1979, the infamous three-mile island accident, which was a partial meltdown and adverse health effects on the nearby population are inconclusive.  Nevertheless, it was a regrettable, and avoidable, accident.

In the U.S., several new reactor designs are being tested, some with planned deployment in the 2020s.  The newer reactors are smaller, safer, and more efficient.  They will provide a solid, reliable source of power while the renewable power technology improves and plants and infrastructure are built out.

Nuclear power is, and should be, part of the "clean" energy mix.

Dave

 

 

 

A list of 30 nuclear accidents for you! Which doesn't include increased leukaemia cases near nuclear plants, uranium miners lung cancer. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents#:~:text=Serious nuclear power plant accidents,monetary costs for remediation work.

 

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France gets 70% of its electricity from nuclear reactors

 

And is currently planning to reduce its nuclear power. 

 

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In the U.S., several new reactor designs are being tested, some with planned deployment in the 2020s.  The newer reactors are smaller, safer, and more efficient. 

 

Safer and more efficient is a relative statement and not born out in practice yet. 

 

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Nuclear power is, and should be, part of the "clean" energy mix.

 

Ive posted numerous counter arguments to that stance on page 2. Non of which you provided a counter argument against.

Edited January 18, 20224 yr by martin-w

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Low wind levels have sent power prices soaring to their highest in a month

This is why it's a bad idea put all your eggs in the "renewable" or "green" basket.

 

 

This was a brief reduction in wind speed. A rare event. And again, its not about relying on wind and its not about "putting all your eggs in one basket". Its about a mix from all renewable sources of which there are many. 

Edited January 18, 20224 yr by martin-w

On 1/7/2022 at 8:13 PM, martin-w said:

https://eu.boell.org/en/2021/04/26/7-reasons-why-nuclear-energy-not-answer-solve-climate-change

 

7 reasons why nuclear isn't the answer. 

15 hours ago, dave2013 said:

I've advocated for nuclear power, which would be unaffected by cold weather.

 

 

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Nuclear power’s reliability is dropping as extreme weather increases

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/climate-events-are-the-leading-cause-of-nuclear-power-outages/

 

 

 

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Unlike renewables, which are now the cheapest energy sources, nuclear costs are on the rise, and many plants are being shut down or in danger of being shut down for economic reasons. Initial capital costs, fuel, and maintenance costs are much higher for nuclear plants than wind and solar, and nuclear projects tend to suffer cost overruns and construction delays. The price of renewable energy has fallen significantly over the past decade, and it projected to continue to fall (14).

 

https://www.greenamerica.org/fight-dirty-energy/amazon-build-cleaner-cloud/10-reasons-oppose-nuclear-energy#:~:text=National security,the atmosphere and surrounding region.

 

 

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To recap, new nuclear power costs about 5 times more than onshore wind power per kWh (between 2.3 to 7.4 times depending upon location and integration issues). Nuclear takes 5 to 17 years longer between planning and operation and produces on average 23 times the emissions per unit electricity generated (between 9 to 37 times depending upon plant size and construction schedule). In addition, it creates risk and cost associated with weapons proliferation, meltdown, mining lung cancer, and waste risks. Clean, renewables avoid all such risks. 

Nuclear advocates claim nuclear is still needed because renewables are intermittent and need natural gas for backup. However, nuclear itself never matches power demand so it needs backup. Even in France with one of the most advanced nuclear energy programs, the maximum ramp rate is 1 to 5 % per minute, which means they need natural gas, hydropower, or batteries, which ramp up 5 to 100 times faster, to meet peaks in demand. Today, in fact, batteries are beating natural gas for wind and solar backup needs throughout the world. A dozen independent scientific groups have further found that it is possible to match intermittent power demand with clean, renewable energy supply and storage, without nuclear, at low cost.

Finally, many existing nuclear plants are so costly that their owners are demanding subsidies to stay open. For example, in 2016, three existing upstate New York nuclear plants requested and received subsidies to stay open using the argument that the plants were needed to keep emissions low. However, subsidizing such plants may increase carbon emissions and costs relative to replacing the plants with wind or solar as soon as possible. Thus, subsidizing nuclear would result in higher emissions and costs over the long term than replacing nuclear with renewables. 

 

 

4 hours ago, birdguy said:

Here's an excellent article on disposal problems of wind turbine blades.

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-waste-problem-caused-by-wind-energy

Noel

 

An excellent article on wind turbine recycling.

 

 

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Recycling wind turbines step by step

Wind turbine components are essentially 100% recyclable. Their different parts are dismantled, sorted and then sent through specialised recovery channels. The concrete used for their foundations is reused on other sites, steel and aluminium are sent to foundries or steelworks, and fibreglass from turbine blades is reused for other products, such as fire hydrants. In Port-La-Nouvelle (Aude), ENGIE decommissioned the first wind farm to be connected to France’s national grid, recycling over 96% of its components.

 

 

 

https://www.engie.com/en/activities/renewable-energies/wind-energy/recycling-wind-turbines

Very few solar panels have been recycled why because the industry say it`s cheaper to build new ones, so the stockpile of old panels is growing. So it`s likely the industry will hold out until governments make it worth it through a subsidy=more tax on energy bills.      

And it`s ironic that the world weather monitor that last year showed the lowest winds on record around the planet, Global Warming !!!! 

Edited January 18, 20224 yr by G-RFRY

8 minutes ago, G-RFRY said:

Global Warming!

Climate change please. That covers all the bases. 😉

Edited January 18, 20224 yr by Ron Attwood
It used to be called 'Weather'

7 hours ago, martin-w said:

7 reasons why nuclear isn't the answer. 

Like I've said over and over again, nuclear alone is not the answer, and neither is anything else.

So, because there's some risk in operating them, do you then support shutting down all the nuclear power plants?  What will you replace them with?  More solar panel arrays and wind turbines?

There is a cost to building and recycling solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries.  Materials must be mined, processed, and transported, land must be cleared, concrete must be produced and poured, ore must be mined and steel and aluminum produced to use for related infrastructure, cables must be manufactured and installed.  Then when the panels and turbines reach their end of life, they must be dismantled, recycled, rebuilt, and reinstalled.  Batteries must be manufactured and then recycled and rebuilt.  This all takes energy and materials to do.  So-called green energy is not so green after all.  It may be less polluting than fossil fuels, but it's not "clean".

Wind and solar are not the holy grail for energy production.  They should be a significant part of the mix, but not the only part.

Fusion power can't be realized fast enough, if for no other reason than it will end the thus far endless debates about "clean" or "renewable" energy production.  Meanwhile, natural gas prices have soared in Europe, who depend largely on unfriendly and hostile foreign nation sources to heat their homes, excluding of course the U.S. and Canada.  You guys had better get busy buying more land in Africa because you're going to need it if you really plan on supplying all your power with solar panels and wind turbines. 

Meanwhile, Germany has increased its coal power plant generation, the dirtiest form of energy.  Now they claim that they will phase out coal by 2038.  What happened to 2030???  Mark my words, it'll be pushed back again, and then again.  All talk, no action, while they and other nations lecture the rest of us.

Dave

Edited January 18, 20224 yr by dave2013

43 minutes ago, dave2013 said:

Like I've said over and over again, nuclear alone is not the answer, and neither is anything else.

 

And quite a few experts say that longer term  it shouldn't even be part of the equation. See links provided. 😀 It depends on time frames. Fossil fuel's and nuclear power aren't going to vanish over night. We will have them for quite a while. But they should be phased out as soon as feasible.

 

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So, because there's some risk in operating them, do you then support shutting down all the nuclear power plants?  What will you replace them with?  More solar panel arrays and wind turbines?

 

Some would say its more than just "some" risk. But no, I wouldn't shut down existing plants prematurely as long as they are operating within acceptable parameters. What I wouldn't do is expand nuclear. With the excessive lead time before plants are operable, waste disposal issue, nuclear proliferation issue, the fact that they rarely operate as cheaply and as efficiently as intended, and that the levelized cost is higher than many renewables, are a nightmare to decommission, and are no better than renewable energy in terms of the need for backup,  still emit significant CO2... no, its not the answer. 

Financial institutions are terminating their involvement in nuclear, regarding it as a risky venture. And according to research it is actually possible to switch to fully renewable energy, for some nations as soon as 2030. And yes, research has shown that the US could be fully renewable by 2050. 

The planet is pretty much ready to go 100 percent renewable by 2050.

https://www.popsci.com/the-world-can-power-itself-with-renewable-energy/

 

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There is a cost to building and recycling solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries.  Materials must be mined, processed, and transported, land must be cleared, concrete must be produced and poured, ore must be mined and steel and aluminum produced to use for related infrastructure, cables must be manufactured and installed.  Then when the panels and turbines reach their end of life, they must be dismantled, recycled, rebuilt, and reinstalled.  Batteries must be manufactured and then recycled and rebuilt.  This all takes energy and materials to do.  So-called green energy is not so green after all.  It may be less polluting than fossil fuels, but it's not "clean".

 

Of course, but its significantly lower in terms of CO2 emissions than nuclear or fossil fuels. And the more renewable energy the world has the more the energy requirement to create the renewable infrastructure is "clean". 

 

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Wind and solar are not the holy grail for energy production.  They should be a significant part of the mix, but not the only part.

 

Nobody has said wind and solar are the holy grail. They should be part of the mix, part of the mix in regard to all of the other renewable technologies available. Wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, hydroelectric, tidal, wave. We will have fossil fuel energy production and nuclear in terms of existing plants for a while, but they should be replaced with renewable energy sources as son as feasible. 

 

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Mark my words, it'll be pushed back again, and then again.

 

No comment. Speculation on your part.

Edited January 18, 20224 yr by martin-w

12 hours ago, dave2013 said:

Object all you like.  I stated, quite clearly, that the new designs are being "tested", and that deployment is "planned" for the 2020s.

I'll make a prediction that not a single fission reactor generating more than 200MW will come online in the 2020s, or even the 2030s, in the United States. That's including Plant Vogtle, which has been bankrupting companies and looting ratepayers in my state for several decades now.

Nuclear reactors (and fission, for that matter) has been a few years away for over a half century. Not going to happen. No sense repeating debunked claims.

12 hours ago, dave2013 said:

France stores their waste deep underground.  There's plenty of space in the western part of the U.S. for that.  BTW, what happens to all the old wind turbines and solar panels once they've reached the end of their life?

Nope, Dave. If nuclear waste is similar to turbine blades, you can store it in Alabama junkyards.

Of course it's not similar. I'll take 3oz of dog poop on my front lawn over 3oz of Sr-90, Co-60 or Cs-137, any day. And that's the point - the wastes are so toxic for so long (vastly more so than anything else) that it makes nuclear a much more expensive and dangerous choice. I suspect the Earth can recover from global warming sooner than massive radioactive isotope releases.

So please, let's not engage in whataboutism over the wastes. They are nowhere nearly the same.

I'm familiar with this disposal site Luke.  It's almost in my back yard.

Located 26 miles southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico, the repository sits 2150 feet below the desert surface in the middle of a 1000-foot thick salt bed. To date, WIPP has disposed of TRU legacy waste resulting in the clean-up of 22 generator sites around the nation.

It's not an unsolvable problem.

Noel

9 minutes ago, birdguy said:

To date, WIPP has disposed of TRU legacy waste resulting in the clean-up of 22 generator sites around the nation. It's not an unsolvable problem.

It may be solvable, but in 2014 they managed to release radioactive isotopes above ground, irradiate several workers and it cost $500 million to clean up the mess (in fairness, the original estimate was $2 billion 😲)

If it's solvable, I'm not sure WIPP has solved it yet.

It could, proponents say, isolate for 250 million years all the nuclear waste that the entire world might generate in 10,000 years. 

http://discipline.longnow.org/DISCIPLINE_footnotes/WIPP.html

The ball is in your court, Luke, to show us the pitfalls of storing nuclear waste far underground in the middle of a an average 2000 foot thick salt bed.

Noel

 

24 minutes ago, birdguy said:

It could, proponents say, isolate for 250 million years all the nuclear waste that the entire world might generate in 10,000 years. 

...

The ball is in your court, Luke, to show us the pitfalls of storing nuclear waste far underground in the middle of a an average 2000 foot thick salt bed.

It hasn't, Noel. It's already leaked above ground once already. WIPP has already proved my case for me.

Why do you choose to believe disproven claims over objective facts?

That was fixed and waste is still being brought to the site for storage.  It's the safest storage facility there is.  Do you want to shut it down and let the tons of nuclear waste stored above ground remain in place?

https://www.ans.org/news/article-2826/shipments-of-tru-waste-to-wipp-resume/

If you are looking for complete safety you are on the wrong planet.  Look at this week's volcanic eruption in the Pacific.  We are more at risk from climate change than we are from the WIPP facility.

Noel