Nuclear generation safer than coal

Still decades of coal under the UK. They should have carried on digging it out instead of closing the mines. But then again it was all about money not safeguarding our energy future.
 
Just a thought but what would be the issue with firing the nuclear waste into space and even into the sun? Other than cost obviously.

From an energy point of view why is it not law that all newly built properties should have solar panels.
 
robj20 said:
Just a thought but what would be the issue with firing the nuclear waste into space and even into the sun? Other than cost obviously.

From an energy point of view why is it not law that all newly built properties should have solar panels.
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What if the rocket blows up on launch?

Not all roofs are south facing and point towards the sun
 
Orionaut said:
Much of the "Dirty" stuff at Sellafield is not as a consequence of civil nuclear power. It is the result of the immediate post war UK Atomic Bomb program.

This was a project that was carried out in haste, with limited resources, at a time when it was felt to be necessary to prevent invasion and/or Nuclear annihilation by the Soviet union.

Yes, there are issues (As there are at the USA's Hanford reservation) and they need to be cleaned up, but there is actually no great hurry and waste generated by cold war bomb programs should not be used as a criticism of nuclear power generation in the 21st century.
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I agree with this. A lot of the legacy facilities at Sellafield are a result of not thinking through the disposal process. This is now much better understood and therefore the mistakes of the past (driven by the need for the bomb) will not be made in the future. In addition, the new nuclear reactors make fractions of the nuclear waste that the old Magnox and AGR stations made.
 
Jonnybmac said:
That's the point. We are still building gen 2 reactors that are in effect ancient and still dump as much waste as 60/70 years ago. Eastern counties are building/running gen 3+ that have passive safety whilst we invest in old tech that is expected to run for many years to come
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It is not true to say that we are still building Gen 2 reactors. The last of those was SZB. We will be building Generation 3 reactors such as the EPR which does have the passive safety features that you mentioned. The designs for generation 3+ are years off deployment.

It is also not true to assume that the EPR will produce as much waste as our legacy plants. Magnox plants produced massively more waste than SZB and the EPR will be expected to produce less than that, or at the least be more efficient in its fuelling programmes (potential for MOX etc).
 
Nuclear is fine until there's a problem

Then it's literally the worst pollutant imaginable



I guess the question really is nuclear worth the potential risk ?

robj20 said:
Just a thought but what would be the issue with firing the nuclear waste into space and even into the sun?
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Same reason we don't dump the nuclear waste into volcanoes, because if/when they explode they make a very big radioactive mess

Even storage isn't all that safe


Another factor we must consider is this, we build our nuclear reactors close to a water source because said water is needed for cooling

Majority of reactors are built on the coast because it's got a good source of water, Fukushima has shown what happens when the sea gets in and floods

So what happens when sea levels rise due to climate change ?
 
physichull said:
Then we will have bigger problems on our hands than the siting of nuclear power stations.
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I don't think the rise itself will be a problem, as it will be gradual and slow so it's something we can adapt to as a species and move away from the rising tides

The issue is the nuclear reactors can't be moved
 
physichull said:
It is not true to say that we are still building Gen 2 reactors. The last of those was SZB. We will be building Generation 3 reactors such as the EPR which does have the passive safety features that you mentioned. The designs for generation 3+ are years off deployment.

It is also not true to assume that the EPR will produce as much waste as our legacy plants. Magnox plants produced massively more waste than SZB and the EPR will be expected to produce less than that, or at the least be more efficient in its fuelling programmes (potential for MOX etc).
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I stand corrected. I just googled Hinkley point Cand its an EPR which is Gen 3.
 
Jonnybmac said:
What if the rocket blows up on launch?
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Well, that's another way to get rid of the nuclear waste. :D

Not all roofs are south facing and point towards the sun[/QUOTE]

For best results with solar, you need the house to be north facing.
 
Jonnybmac said:
Not really when you factor in the fact you have to store the waste fuel for several lifetimes. They are still building old generation plants because they are cheaper than the new gen - the difference being is that the new gen can recycle most of the waste yet old gens are once through then in the ground for thousands of years.
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It makes you wonder how can we warn people far, far into the future (like 10,000 years time) not to enter these sites that contain radioactive spent fuel rods time and make them realise that it's a deadly area and isn't' somewhere that shouldn't be explored under any circumstances.
 
Jonnybmac said:
Not all roofs are south facing and point towards the sun
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And they dont need to be. We run a SW/SE split, E/W would be ideal for a nice even spread through the day.
A variety of differing directions is desirable, spreads the generation through the day.
 
Evangelion said:
For best results with solar, you need the house to be north facing.
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I'm sure that's wrong, for best results you need south facing roof as that gets the most sun throughout the day.

And it's why people tend to only get them put on their south or south east facing roofs but never on their north facing side.
 
samcat said:
And they dont need to be. We run a SW/SE split, E/W would be ideal for a nice even spread through the day.
A variety of differing directions is desirable, spreads the generation through the day.
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Isn't south more ideal than E/W as its the highest part of the day? SW/SE would be okay too but I'd imagine E/E you would get least as its sunrise and sunset. You obvioisly could have facing any to gain energy but south from what I understand is the most efficient direction
 
LeeUK said:
I'm sure that's wrong, for best results you need south facing roof as that gets the most sun throughout the day.

And it's why people tend to only get them put on their south or south east facing roofs but never on their north facing side.
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Woops, I forgot we're in two different hemispheres! :p

In Australia, north facing is the best way to go. It's the opposite for you guys in the Northern Hemisphere.
 
Jonnybmac said:
Isn't south more ideal than E/W as its the highest part of the day? SW/SE would be okay too but I'd imagine E/E you would get least as its sunrise and sunset. You obvioisly could have facing any to gain energy but south from what I understand is the most efficient direction
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Yes, for peak generation at solar noon you aim south at around 30 degree tilt.. If all panels were setup like this generation would (does) massively spike at solar noon, when not much is in use...

BUT, if you want to consume it/reduce your bills (which is ideal from a 'green' point of view - no transportation overheads), consumption occurs mainly, in a domestic setting, morning and mainly in the evening, hence east/west.

If you are on E/W you pitch the panels steeper than you would for noon, aiming at where the sun is around mid autumn/mid spring in the east/west. You pitch like this to improve generation in the shoulder months (as generating more power than you can use in the summer is easy).

It all depends why you are doing it, if you are being paid a good FIT rate and you want to maximise your profits then setup for maximum annual generation is right (so south, 30 degrees).. But if you want to offset your usage, reduce your bills etc then setting up for when you use the power is the best idea. With the removal of FIT next year then this will become even more important

None of this takes account of batteries/storage as they are not cost/benefit right yet (in its lifetime it wont pay for itself). When batteries get cheap enough it will change everything again.


You can see here our power usage on a normal day, NET of solar.

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So you can see the power we pay for drops to zero fairly early on.. around evening you can see the oven going on etc.

Washing machine/dishwasher are on timers generally to run noon/mid-afternoon so before anyone is home but when we are generating lots of power.
Same for laptops, we have a 5 way strip on a timer, laptops, tablets etc get plugged into it and left.. Around noon it is turned on (timer) so everything charges.

After that any spare power that would be exported out to the grid is dumped into our hot water tank via the immersion heater, offsets a bit of gas usage.
 
LeeUK said:
Still decades millennia worth of coal under the UK. They should have carried on digging it out instead of closing the mines. But then again it was all about money not safeguarding our energy future.
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Fixed for you! :p

Recent discoveries suggest that Coal reserves under the north sea run into the Trillions of tons!

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/newly-discovered-north-sea-coal-could-power-britain-centuries-1442551

"We think there are between three trillion and 23 trillion tonnes of coal buried under the North Sea," Dermot Roddy, former professor of energy at Newcastle University, told the Sunday Times.

"This is thousands of times greater than all the oil and gas we have taken out so far, which totals around 6bn tonnes. If we could extract just a few per cent of that coal it would be enough to power the UK for decades or centuries," he continued.
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