[Gllug] [OT] Technobabble

[Dylan]

On Thursday 17 Nov 2005 14:57, Nix wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Nov 2005, paul at thinksolution.net spake:
> > The whole thing is designed to make you see the Neo-nuclear point
> > of view the electricity industry is actively promoting a return to
> > nuclear energy
>
> Everybody with a functioning brain who wants the lights to stay on is
> actively promoting a return to nuclear energy. Other techniques don't
> scale, or rely on very limited nonrenewable resources, or are more
> environmentally damaging, or much more costly, or they can't generate
> power on demand and thus run far below capacity much of the time, or,
> often, all of those at once.

All or some of that is only true when the technologies are mis-applied:

>
> - Solar: doesn't scale, making the panels is very environmentally
> damaging, they don't last long, clearing enough land to generate much
> power is environmentally damaging, they cost a lot, and can't
> generate power on demand.

Indeed, but a little consideration suggests that there is no need to 
clear land for extensive "solar farms." There is already a huge and 
growing surface area which can carry solar panels: rooftops. Solar may 
not be the most efficient way of generating electricity, but there are 
other uses. (Pre-)heating water for central heating or washing, for 
example. Such technology doesn't have to scale beyond the local 
community since it is necessarily *local*.

>
> - Coal, oil: doesn't scale, environmentally damaging, relies on
> nonrenewable resources. (Plus oil is so terribly useful for other
> things that it's a damn crime to burn it.)

No argument there, except that almost all oil derived products and 
materials have analogs derived from plant sources (albeit they are more 
expensive at the moment due to the recovery of development costs and 
the economies of scale.) In addition, there is the transportation of 
the fuel (including gas) since we are now a net importer of fossil 
fuels.

>
> - Hydro: making them is environmentally damaging (both the flooding
> and concurrent habitat destruction, and the rotting vegetation in the
> newly formed lakes), they don't scale, they cost a lot.

This is at least partly a result of the way the energy is harnessed. 
With modern equipment, a "traditional" waterwheel can easily generate a 
fair whack of power. Again, a centralized hydro-plant is inefficient, 
but smaller, localized installations would negate many of the problems.

>
> - Wave: you have a choice of making things that get smashed to
> flinders in storms (-> costs a lot and is out of action much of the
> time), or of making things that withstand storms but hardly generate
> any power *unless* there's a storm. Plus if they were deployed in any
> quantity they'd be environmentally damaging because of the habitat
> covered.

Well, I think it's generally accepted that wave power is a dead-end.

>
> - Wind: doesn't scale, quite costly, can't generate power on
> demand. Plus getting planning permission is hellish because everybody
> NIMBYs against them almost as hard as they do against the local nuke
> plant and the military force rejection of a *very* large proportion
> because they interfere with radar something chronic. Wind-out-at-sea
> eliminates the NIMBY problem but the other ones are still there, you
> annoy seabirds, and storms can smash them.

Yet again, it's a matter of scale. A small wind installation can easily 
suppliment the power requirements of a development. And the turbines 
don't have to be whacking great windmills. Torroidal and cylindrical 
systems can be installed in tall buildings to harness the natural air  
flows and provide the energy to power a proportion of the building's 
requirements.

>
> - Nuclear fission: a nasty, but comparatively small-scale, waste
> disposal problem; fairly nasty fuel, very nasty waste products,
> decommissioning very hard because the reactor housing is rendered
> radioactive by neutron bombardment. Many varieties also have severe
> side effects on failure and a large capital cost, but not all; some
> modern nuclear reactor designs are ridiculously safe (as in, break
> the reactor chamber open and fly a jet aircraft into it and there is
> *still* no radiation hazard) but few have been built because of the
> bad rep nuclear power got in the gung-ho days of the 50s to 70s when
> (much) less safe designs were used. Chernobyl-style events are quite
> difficult in any case unless you're a bloody idiot (as the Chernobyl
> Unit 4 people were; the decision of the people at TMI-2 to vent
> radioactive products directly to the atmosphere was also something
> that nobody would do today because they'd be crucified if they did).

Yes, the modern reactor designs are orders of magnitude safer and 
significantly more efficient and cleaner. I find it hard to rationalise 
a "comparatively small-scale, waste disposal problem" though. They have 
a low impact wrt emissions, but the mining and processing of the fuel 
is seriously damaging (maybe we don't worry about that since the U235 
doesn't occur in useful extractable amounts anywhere close by.) All in 
all, though, they are probably a "least worst" option at the moment.

>
> Even if a really unsafe design is used it's environmentally friendly;
> nature doesn't care about a bit of radiation (or a lot!) and a nice
> big contaminated area can go back to nature in a *big* way (look at
> the wildlife haven around Chernobyl now).

Would we look at it that way if Harwell had suffered a similar fate?

>
> - Nuclear fusion: not here yet, expensive even when it gets here;
> fuel more plentiful than for fission, but fusion of deuterium or
> tritium evolves slow neutrons and leads to a radioactive containment
> vessel again (as you can't capture the neutrons in a magnetic
> bottle). Fusion of boron may be better in that respect, but yields
> less power per unit mass. (Fusing ordinary hydrogen is right out: the
> stuff fuses so slowly that unless we want our power plants to be the
> size of stars or to operate at billions of C it's best to use
> something else). Catastrophic failure modes probably less
> catastrophic than failure modes of fission reactors, on the basis
> that irradiation is probably nicer than irradiation *and* heavy metal
> poisoning.

Seriously, I don't expect to see a functioning "proof of concept" plant 
in my lifetime.

>
> All power generation methods suck, but I'd like the lights to stay on
> for the long term, and the only thing which can do that is nuclear
> power. 

There are several alternatives, if only we could get away from the large 
scale generation and distribution model. As well as making currently 
"fringe" technologies viable, a more localised and distributed system 
would be much more robust against failure and disruption.

Dylan
-- 
"The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out."
                                                (Chinese Proverb)
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