The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > Trashing nuclear promises > Comments

Trashing nuclear promises : Comments

By Tilman Ruff, published 21/8/2008

Time for Australia to stand up and be counted on the India-US nuclear deal.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. Page 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. All
I would like to draw attention to anti green's post of 21-8-08 that Nuclear is safer for power generation, - it is only safer if you assume the waste problem will somehow still be solved after over 50 years of failure.
Much safer than nuclear is Geothermal Hot Rocks, (GHR )which generates power using heat stored deep in the earth, (see info link http://www.geodynamics.com.au/IRM/content/faqs.html)
which produces no radiation or any other pollutants, no toxic waste, is cheaper than Nuclear and far more widespread, is easy to ramp up and down so ideal to work in with Solar, Wind or any variable source, and for which the technology is already developed and being used.
In fact we and India and America and China could all replace coal fired power stations let alone nuclear, with GHR, The skills of the work force would be very transferable.
In Australia we have enough GHR resource to provide all our current electrical requirements for 7000 years, - much longer if we put solar, wind, etc into the mix.
Interesting that Google has just put 10 billion towards GHR.
Cheers,
Geoff Thomas.
Kuranda
Posted by Geoff Thomas, Monday, 25 August 2008 12:10:45 PM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Geoff Thomas obviously has information that the rest of the world doesn't.

The capacity of power generation or the cost he is claiming is not even claimed by the exploration company.

That the heat to be used, is generated by nuclear decay is OK because it is "natural". Pumping water down to the rocks and then using the steam that results from this "natural" nuclear reactor has its own risks. Deep mines such as in South Africa, do not permit the water pumped from the mines to be used for human consumption or irrigation due to the level of radioactive particles.

Modern reactors do not allow any of the liquid cooling the reactor to come in contact with "external" water.

In the meanwhilst, please check your facts.
Posted by Shadow Minister, Monday, 25 August 2008 4:10:33 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Geoff Thomas

The management of nuclear waste and spent fuel is of course a technical subject in which I have no experience. I can only refer you to web documents.

Radioactive waste is allocated into three broad categories; Low level, Intermediate level and high level waste. Categorisation depends on physical, chemical and biological properties of the material.

There is no high level waste in Australia as yet. Since this is the spent fuel from power reactors.

I understand that the intermediate level waste from the ANSTO reactor is stored on site or sent to overseas fuel reprocessing plants before return to Australia.

The Switkowski review has pointed out that the volumes of waste are small compared to many other industrial processes and has been safely managed for decades.

The World Nuclear Association –waste management in the nuclear fuel cycle makes the following points.

• Nuclear power is the only energy-producing technology which takes full responsibility for all its wastes and fully costs this into the product.
• The amount of radioactive wastes is very small relative to wastes produced by fossil fuel electricity generation.
• Used nuclear fuel may be treated as a resource or simply as a waste.
• The radioactivity of all nuclear wastes diminishes with time.
• Safe methods for the final disposal of high-level waste are technically proven; the international consensus is that this should be deep geological disposal.

I will for reasons of space limit my remarks to HLW.

HLW is either the spent fuel itself in fuel rods or waste separated after reprocessing. A large typical power reactor is said to generate about 27 tonnes of waste per year or about 3 cubic meters.
Initially the HLW waste is stored in water ponds on site. This serves both as a cooling and shielding function. Remember radioactivity decays exponentially, so after about 40-50 years heat and radioactivity are fallen to one thousandth (0.1%) of initial level.
Subsequent treatment with or with out reprocessing consists of vitrification and deep geological sequestration.
[Continued]
Posted by anti-green, Monday, 25 August 2008 4:50:42 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
[Waste Continued].
“The radioactivity of nuclear wastes naturally decays progressively and has a FINITE radiotoxic lifetime. The radioactivity of high level wastes decays to the level of an equivalent amount of original mined uranium ore in between 1000 and 10,000 years. Its hazard then depends how concentrated it is. Compare this to other industrial wastes (e.g. heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury), which remain hazardous indefinitely.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
A NOTE ON A FEW COUNTRIES.

BELGIUM: Reprocessing. Central waste storage at Dessel. Construction of a repository to begin in 2035.

CANADA. Direct Disposal. Repository site search from 2009 planned for use by 2025.

CHINA: Reprocessing.Underground disposal from 2020-2050.

FINLAND Two fuel storages in operation.

FRANCE: Reprocessing. The Bure underground site will be available from 2015-2025.

Plans are advanced in Germany, India, Japan, Russia South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and USA.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

In my view as a lay person in this area, the evidence is clear. The technology to handle waste safely and successfully has been available for decades. In fact the nuclear industry has been very successful in this sphere.
There is a plethora of useful and fact full information to be found on either The World Nuclear Site and/or the Uranium Information Centre Site.
However, one outstanding question remains: How to get the message across to the general public that the processing and storage of spent fuel is a solved problem?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

One other thing I not opposed to the geothermal experiment
Posted by anti-green, Monday, 25 August 2008 4:53:59 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Responding to Shadow Ministers claim that I have superior knowledge, - when Geothermal plants already exist in over 20 countries, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power) and in Australia there are more than that number of exploring companies, (But this is Geothermal Hot Rocks, or GHR - also called Enhanced Geothermal) one has to be more specific about what company it is that said about capacity or cost, because the company I quoted, http://www.geodynamics.com.au/IRM/content/faqs.html definitely claims cheaper than Nuclear - particularly when the cost of Nuclear waste disposal is factored in.
Claims of 7500 years, not 7,000 are to be found in their background material and really these claims are extremely conservative, we all know we are sitting on a thin layer of Earth's crust under which is billions of megatons of liquid rock, - probably from the formation of the earth and gravitational stresses, - and possibly some radioactive decay, - thankfully over millions of years ago, not like the current mad ideas, putting nuclear reactors on geological fault lines as in USA or Japan.
Great idea to check out my link to Geodynamics, Shadow Minister where you will find that there is no contact between the water in the GHS cycle and the generator, (no risks!) but it has been tested to be not radio active in any case. Knowing about GHR, why would you support Nuclear, there is not enough anyway, and if ever we get to outer space we will need all our fissionables then.
Posted by Geoff Thomas, Monday, 25 August 2008 7:06:53 PM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Geoff,

Most Geothermal energy production occurs near volcanic activity. The GHR technology is as yet untested, and remains a theoretical possibility. The proposal that it will be cheaper than nuclear was not made in the link you provided.

The site they are using is the "best" site, and still there are few takers. The fact that GHR consumes vast quantities of water, and where there are hot rocks generally the sites are devoid of water and far from energy users.

The claim that it could replace the base load supply of Australia, is naive at best, let alone that of the world.

The green movement is replete with grandiose statements but very short of reality. Making hard choices is something they avoid.
Posted by Shadow Minister, Tuesday, 26 August 2008 7:53:55 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. Page 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy