Impressed £67.5 billion... nope... 263 billion, and rising.

[rynnor]

Shale gas is the way to go until Nuclear technology is sufficiently improved to make it a viable private sector investment.

Domestic production via fracking is deeply unpopular though and we'd need hundreds of drilling sites scattered throughout the UK to properly exploit it - years spent in planning appeals as nimbys poured in, protests at sites etc. etc.

 

[rynnor]

You can't just dig a hole and dump nuclear waste in it. You need to make sure the site won't leak anything out in to the groundwater, and then you have to make sure it won't happen for the next god knows how many thousand years.

It has to be a deep hole You have to go below the water table and seal around so that theres no cross contamination - ideally into an impermeable clay layer because you can then use the material you excavated to plug the entrance - otherwise you'd need to bring in materials to seal it.

I still cant see it costing 60 odd Billion tbh.

 

[old.Tohtori]

It has to be a deep hole You have to go below the water table and seal around so that theres no cross contamination - ideally into an impermeable clay layer because you can then use the material you excavated to plug the entrance - otherwise you'd need to bring in materials to seal it.

I still cant see it costing 60 odd Billion tbh.

3 billion, with finnish taxes and all

Into granite 400m deep and clayconcretestuffy used as filler for the containers and hundreds of testdrills to make sure there's no water to contaminate nearby.

That all is why i think the huge cost of this is mostly bullsh*t costs.

 

[TdC]

Most of what you said is opinion based so i'll not start on that(all the will it questions), but the thing i will say(on matter of it being a problem) is that compared to rest of waste from industry(etc) sources nuclear is rather miniscule. Chemical wastes being, if i remember correctly, thousand times greater in harm. Also, after a quick googly, it seems no human or nature in general has been harmed by well maintained nuclear power plants.

This isn't fallout(No need to be condecending ), that is true, but nuclear isn't the big boogeyman everyone makes it out to be, especially when comparing to other waste sources and radiation sources(as noted before).

All current facts point that the waste disposal solution(in finalnd per example) is a safe, long lasting and cost efficient. We can speculate, but i'd rather trust our scientists.

not really: all my probables are based on past history. I'm not saying the site will fail, I'm saying that based on past results the likelihood of success seems rather small. Also, I didn't mean to be condescending and I apologize if I came over that way.

I guess the main point is this: build such a site, and you automatically commit to it's maintenance. If you look at the oldest of the man-made structures they look rather grim, and they're not even 10% of the proposed life of the island site. They haven't been maintained... both on purpose, and because the civilization that built them died out. So, I propose that the site will fail -not because of any technical reason per-se (albeit perhaps ultimately), but for political or sociological reasons.

 

[Scouse]

So you're saying that because engineering and tech have failed before it's impossible for, say, the finnish project to succeed?

Quite obviously what I'm saying is that the evidence on deep geological storage - it's track record - is extremely bad so why do you have faith that this would be any different?

All current facts point that the waste disposal solution(in finalnd per example) is a safe, long lasting and cost efficient.

No, quite evidently, they don't.

 

[Himse]

Sorry to sort of derail, but what would the other options be to dispose of nuclear waste other than digging deep down and burying it?

 

[Scouse]

Sorry to sort of derail, but what would the other options be to dispose of nuclear waste other than digging deep down and burying it?

It's not a derailment. The answer to that has been spelled out several times: We don't know.

It's beyond us as a problem at the moment. We're shit out of luck because we're not clever enough to deal with it. We're fucking stupid monkeys.

So, what we're left with is a technology (deep geological storage) that's so far proven hugely unreliable and extremely expensive - but that's what we've got.


I'm saying: lets not add to that problem unnecessarily with new nuclear build.

 

[rynnor]

Sorry to sort of derail, but what would the other options be to dispose of nuclear waste other than digging deep down and burying it?

A lot of it is sitting around - in the UK they put the high level waste mixed in glass into steel drums then store them in an air cooled warehouse. Its reccomended they spend the first 50 years being cooled before you can look at burying it.

 

[TdC]

Sorry to sort of derail, but what would the other options be to dispose of nuclear waste other than digging deep down and burying it?

tbh there are no cost effective ones dude.
the only thing I can come up with is to physically destroy it: shoot it at the sun in a rocket. that won't work, as a) nobody in their right minds will launch a rocket full of waste and b) rockets cost too much as it's a one-shot.

Saturn V is the most powerful rocket in the world with a trans-lunar payload of 45.000 kg. (45 tonnes)
A Saturn V launch costs 1.17 billion USD in today's currency.
The US alone produce 3000 tonnes of HLW in a year.
The cost of getting rid of the current yearly produce (NOT the stockpile) of the US waste by launching it at the sun with Saturn V's is (3000/45)*1.17 billion or something like 78 billion dollaholla. (aka 78 days of gulf war btw)

 

[Scouse]

the only thing I can come up with is to physically destroy it: shoot it at the sun in a rocket. that won't work, as a) nobody in their right minds will launch a rocket full of waste and b) rockets cost too much as it's a one-shot.

Please, for the love of the very real and certainly omnipotent babeh jebus, can we please please please put the rocket idea to bed.

5% of rocket launches fail. Shooting it into space is one of the most dangerous ideas available.

there are no cost effective, safe, viable, sensible alternatives to dealing with nuclear waste, dude.

This is the answer. Unfortunately.

It should make us think that perhaps we should minimise it's use for essentials like medical imaging etc? But no...

 

[rynnor]

It should make us think that perhaps we should minimise it's use for essentials like medical imaging etc? But no...

Our civilization needs energy - we cant continue to get it from fossil fuels forever and renewables just could never supply our demand so the future is Nuclear or back to caves - I know which I'd choose...

 

[Scouse]

the future is Nuclear or back to caves

That is absolute bollocks. Total shite. I don't think even the Daily Fail would go that far rynnor.

 

[rynnor]

That is absolute bollocks. Total shite. I don't think even the Daily Fail would go that far rynnor.

Its pretty obvious really - renewable schemes produce a negative overall energy contribution - i.e. it takes more energy to build them and maintain them than they will ever produce before they are junk.

Fossil fuels will eventually run out.

Unless you have a magic new energy source the future is indeed nuclear - unpalatable as that may be for you

 

[soze]

I believe Scouse is in favour of drastically higher energy prices to reduce the overall need do reducing the reliance on nuclear energy. I can't remember exactly what he said but that's the gist.

 

[TdC]

Please, for the love of the very real and certainly omnipotent babeh jebus, can we please please please put the rocket idea to bed.

that's what I said. nobody sane would launch a rocket full of waste...from this planet...

 

[Gwadien]

Hate to sound like a hippy, but has anyone seen Wall-e?

If we're not careful, the world will end up like that.

We should increase the amount of 'purely clean' energy sources, maybe put mile high wind turbines in the middle of the sea and everyone around the world puts a percentage of their countries wealth to it.

Vote for me, King of the World.

 

[Bahumat]

What about making Swedish themed furniture out of it? Then sell it to idiots?

 

[Wij]

Hate to sound like a hippy, but has anyone seen Wall-e?

If we're not careful, the world will end up like that.

We should increase the amount of 'purely clean' energy sources, maybe put mile high wind turbines in the middle of the sea and everyone around the world puts a percentage of their countries wealth to it.

Vote for me, King of the World.

No. Not fucking wind turbines.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/31/lovelock_wind_fu/

Yes, I know it's the reg but the source material isn't.

Great comments in there too.

Don't know how to direct link to individual comments but on page 2 check out David Pollard's and Ledswinger's.
http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/2/2013/01/31/lovelock_wind_fu/

 

[rynnor]

Wind would be the answer if it was always windy at a constant velocity day/night all year around and there werent many of us - i.e. not in our reality.

 

[Ctuchik]

I still cant see it costing 60 odd Billion tbh.

It's a big area to sanitize and there's a lot of it. They are most likely looking at an on-site solution to get most of it done at the same time so they just have to ship it off to the repository and seal it once it's done. It might cost even more if they didn't as they'd have to ship the crap all over the country or even half the world. Would also have to think about the risks of shipping it around to much. Accidents do happen, and you don't want that with this stuff. So they might just prefer the increased costs instead.

But i highly doubt it will end up costing this much. Most likely they are exaggerating it on purpose so you won't react this way when they release the true costs...

 

[ileks]

Its pretty obvious really - renewable schemes produce a negative overall energy contribution - i.e. it takes more energy to build them and maintain them than they will ever produce before they are junk.

Is this actually true?

 

[rynnor]

Is this actually true?

I think so - its a complicated picture but basically all the renewables have a finite life and drop in effeciency over time so you can work out how much energy they will realistically produce (not the overblown projections of the manufacturers) in their lifetime (which isnt actually as long as the manufacturers would like to claim).

Against this you have to set all the transportation costs (which use precious fossil fuels that electricity cant replace - you are yet to see an electric container ship, electric loaders, eletric lorries etc. etc.) to get the thing to its site plus the energy to build it (which can be a lot for the offshore wind as you have to transport a lot of material to anchor them etc.)

Next theres all the energy used in extracting the raw materials like steel or the very limited platinum then the transport of those materials to the factory or factories where these are fabricated etc. etc.

Then the inconvenient fact that the best renewable resources occur far from where the demand is so you need to build extra links (cabling/pylons etc including raw materials/transport/manufacture again) to connect to the network.

Then all the losses from transmission of the electric power and the fact that theres no effecient storage methods.

Then factor in that in order to make renewables part of your energy mix you have to have a load of conventonal power plants on standby to replace them when its too windy/no wind etc. All the costs of building these and running them plus its not an effecient way to run them and you have a real toxic energy mix which can only survive with massive subsidisation in both energy and economic terms.

In the best case - oil - you spend 20% extracting the oil - what chance do you really think renewables have?

Ironically they just serve to hasten our eventual lack of fossil fuels...

 

[Wij]

Fast-starting gas plants are very inefficient. They are the only reliable backup we could provide for wind-turbines. (It is a criminal subsidy for companies that run wind turbines that they do not have to pay to provide the backup generation though.) So if the wind turbines only produce power 25% of the time and the rest of the time their capacity is being met by the least efficient gas turbines, how much fossil fuel burning will be saved? Fuck all, as opposed to running an efficient always on gas turbine. Cost of running windmills saved. Major distortion of energy market to subsidy-vacuums avoided.

 

[Job]

The reason we have so much nuclear waste is because we have stopped reprocessing, which of course is the perfect route for making nukes, we can just dig it all back up and stick it through the repro plant again.
The greenies are so scared of that they would rather moan about us burying it when it has years of good use.

 

[rynnor]

The reason we have so much nuclear waste is because we have stopped reprocessing, which of course is the perfect route for making nukes, we can just dig it all back up and stick it through the repro plant again.
The greenies are so scared of that they would rather moan about us burying it when it has years of good use.

Your talking about the fuel rods - they make up a tiny proportion of the radioactive waste (most of the high level stuff though) - the intermediate level is stuff like water from inside the reactor and reactor casings, the low level is the concrete and rest of the structure and all the medical waste.

 

[Wij]

Your talking about the fuel rods - they make up a tiny proportion of the radioactive waste (most of the high level stuff though) - the intermediate level is stuff like water from inside the reactor and reactor casings, the low level is the concrete and rest of the structure and all the medical waste.

True but it's a good point. Some of the nastiest 'waste' could actually be used as fuel.

 

[Wij]

From Reg Forums:

Power generation depends on a handful of key concepts - of particular relevance here are load factor (how much power you get from an asset compared to its maximum rated output), the merit curve (the idea of using the most marginally efficient/cheap plant most of the time), and reserve margin (where you have more capacity than you need to allow for breakdowns or grid problems.
Nuclear reliability is addressed by reserve margin, but for all types of thermal plant you only need about 15% reserve capacity. With wind you need 100% reserve (for the wind element) because it doesn't work at all in periods of very high or very low winds, nor on the coldest days of the year, giving the very low load factors observed in practice, of around 25%.
The merit curve means you run nuclear whenever you can because its marginal cost is the lowest, so it provides continuous baseload, supplemented by the most efficient gas plants. The intermittent nature of wind doesn't work well here, because given that politicians have mandated that it must be used when it is available, it acts like a form of negative and unpredictable demand. That increases emissions because the marginal plant at the wrong end of the merit curve is used to backfill when wind stops, but that is by defintion the least efficient. With the "must run" status of wind, it has an incredible hidden subsidy offered to no other form of generation, but this also hinders the system marginal pricing model, and makes the marginal thermal generation plants unprofitable. So on the one hand wind power sets a high marginal price for consumers, but withoutadditional subsidies newly required by the thermal plant, then your beloved renewables won't be able to offer any reliable power to this country.
From a purely technical point of view, wind power without cheap energy storage is madness. It destabilises the grid, it sucks up subsidies, both direct cash and hidden ones like "must run", it then requires new subsidies to the least efficient thermal plant to keep them available. And the capital cost of wind is ruinous.
There has been a never ending tale of woe in this country about rising energy prices. Unfortunately that rise will continue because your electricity charges need to pay for DECC's new "energy company obligations", which are DECC mandated spending to benefit the fuel poor (an ever increasing number because of DECC's policies), because the renewables operators and their financiers are snorting up the subsidies that DECC have spread on the table, and because having bust the wholesale market, DECC are going to have to implement new energy trading arrangements to subsidies the least efficient thermal plant throuigh capacity payments. That's before rises in world primary energy prices, and before unfavourable movements in exchange rates due to the government spending more than it raises in taxes.
At this point, somebody from the greeny/lefty/hard-of-thinking camp says that it should all be renationalised, because it was cheap, green, and reliable in the good old days (Yeah! Remember the three day week? winter of discontent?). Unfortunately, no matter who owns it, there's no change to the underlying concepts that I've discussed above, and the "profit" that you think you'll take off of energy bills will be lost through incremental government borrowing costs. Anybody who thinks that a government already living £120bn a year beyond its means would be able to easily borrow a further £150bn to renationalise the electricity industry clearly doesn't understand anything.

 

[rynnor]

True but it's a good point. Some of the nastiest 'waste' could actually be used as fuel.

Yes - theres is the arguement that we shouldnt see it as burdensome waste but as a potential future fuel source - we just dont currently have the technology to use this stuff much beyond the theoretical point yet.

Is it me or has Nuclear Fusion gone a bit quiet?

 

[Wij]

Fusion is a long way off.

Fission however is still primitive compared to what it could be. This £70 billion millstone is the result of primitive fission. New reactors would be much better and there is huge potential for improvement with great ideas flying around all the time.

The room for improvement in renewables is sorely limited though due to the relative energy densities. You need massive amounts of concrete and metals for a paltry amount of power. That can't change too much because there's only so much wind to capture. Ditto for the Sun (in most places, although up close to the Sun there's obviously masses of it, very concentrated.)

 

[Job]

Its all to do with the great gravy train of fear...much like those stupid anti smoking sdverts showing tumours growing out of cigarettes...smoking cause gene mutations...ffs gene mutations are a part of cell life...everyting can cuse gene mutation..smoking heavily for a.long period just statistically increases your chance of it leading to cancer.
Hasnt anyone mentioned thorium yet?