Some photos https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Torness&tbm=isch&chips=q:t...
Does the east coast mainline railway pass that? It looks familiar.
Nothing like this will be built again (2002)
151–160 of 269 posts
Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)
#152I bet the Fukushima backup power system would have fit this explanation perfectly: > in addition to the grid connection, there are four twelve megawatt diesel generator stations spaced around each corner of the plant -- each with two generators, any one of which is able to provide operating power to keep the reactor's safety systems working. Unfortunately for Fukushima, all generators were flooded by a single Tsunami…
I agree with your risk assessment, but I have to say that given the choice between a climate apocalypse and a nuclear power buildout, I would choose the latter.
But that’s a false dichotomy. Renewables are already good enough and are still getting better.
Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
If only it was a conscious choice... I fear significant climate has happened already, and even if we stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow will continue for a long time to come. Putting up a few km2 of solar in e.g. the Sahara now is surely less effort than decommissioning dozens of nuclear plants in 50 years.
This is my issue with the debate between Nuclear proponents and Renewable proponents (most of whom seem to be nuclear detractors): They usually compare what is possible in a future state with renewables to what is currently possible with Nuclear technology from decades ago. I want people to start imagining what innovation in Nuclear can look like again. If you want to compare current state to current state, then neit…
Renewables are already moving the needle quite rapidly. Take China for example, from 17.74% in 2009 to 29.09% in 2020. Meanwhile coal dropped from 79% in 2009, to 62% in 2019.
Nuclear is going to stick around, but at best we can start building today’s designs and have them finished in a few years. It’s simply to late for any significant R&D effort to pay off, we needed better designs a decade ago for them to be proven reliable today and then ramp up production for 3-5 years from now. It’s not even just building nuclear stuff that’s slow, the Navy has a solid track record and trains people quickly but even that takes time.
Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)
#154I do not understand the argument for nuclear. The risk never seems worth the reward. Clean now? Yes. Cheap now? Yes. Potentially catastrophic? Yes. This feels like an unnecessary risk to take on. The lessons of three mile island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima seem to be forgotten too quickly.
Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)
#155I bet the Fukushima backup power system would have fit this explanation perfectly: > in addition to the grid connection, there are four twelve megawatt diesel generator stations spaced around each corner of the plant -- each with two generators, any one of which is able to provide operating power to keep the reactor's safety systems working. Unfortunately for Fukushima, all generators were flooded by a single Tsunami…
And we're putting in wind and solar at record rates, but that still doesn't cover us at night or when there's no wind. Batteries or other energy storage cannot meet the demand yet. Nuclear is still the best option for continuous weather-independent power among all the low-polluting options.
You could also construct the argument the other way around: Demand is highest during the day and nuclear is struggling to follow the demand.
It’s also not weather-independent. When the water temperature is too hot the power stations have to be turned off.
Further it’s pretty common that when one reactor has an issue others of the same type will get turned off too to check if they have the same issue.
Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)
#156I bet the Fukushima backup power system would have fit this explanation perfectly: > in addition to the grid connection, there are four twelve megawatt diesel generator stations spaced around each corner of the plant -- each with two generators, any one of which is able to provide operating power to keep the reactor's safety systems working. Unfortunately for Fukushima, all generators were flooded by a single Tsunami…
Interestingly hunterston - a nuclear power station on the west coast of Scotland - had a failure of its backup diesel generators. Wikipedia describes it as:
> In December 1998, an INES Level 2 incident occurred after severe winds and sea spray disabled all four power lines to the site during the Boxing Day Storm of 1998. After multiple grid failures in a short period of time, emergency diesel generators failed to start. Normally, in the absence of power for the reactor cooling pumps, the reactor would be passively cooled. However, the emergency control system which would have initiated passive cooling failed to act, as it had not been reset. Reactor cooling was reinstated after four hours.
It seems the safety margin was twenty hours of no reactor cooling.
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunterston_B_nuclear_power_sta...
Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)
#157AGRs also perfectly demonstrate some of the more perverse elements of the nuclear economy.
They can be (at least were designed to be) refuelled online. An operator's dream - 100% uptime! And for the same reason, a security nightmare. So no exports.
Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
If only it was a conscious choice... I fear significant climate has happened already, and even if we stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow will continue for a long time to come. Putting up a few km2 of solar in e.g. the Sahara now is surely less effort than decommissioning dozens of nuclear plants in 50 years.
Except you lose a lot of that power through attenuation. You can't really send electricity from the sahara to europe efficiently. Even over relatively short distances (a few dozen miles), you're losing up to 10-15% of your overall energy. A thousand miles or more...and I can't even find numbers on that because nobody does it.
Your 10 to 15% figure is total transmission and distribution loss from producer to consumer. If you scale up the transmission distance only, the total shouldn't change much. There are several studies referenced in this course http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/harting1/. Looks like 2 to 3% loss over 1000km.
Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with your risk assessment, but I have to say that given the choice between a climate apocalypse and a nuclear power buildout, I would choose the latter.
But that’s a false dichotomy. Renewables are already good enough and are still getting better.
> already good enough
Are they? I was under the impression they required some sort of subsidy and/or restrictions on natural gas production to be competitive.
Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
If only it was a conscious choice... I fear significant climate has happened already, and even if we stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow will continue for a long time to come. Putting up a few km2 of solar in e.g. the Sahara now is surely less effort than decommissioning dozens of nuclear plants in 50 years.
This is my issue with the debate between Nuclear proponents and Renewable proponents (most of whom seem to be nuclear detractors): They usually compare what is possible in a future state with renewables to what is currently possible with Nuclear technology from decades ago. I want people to start imagining what innovation in Nuclear can look like again. If you want to compare current state to current state, then neit…
The problem with your argument that while there is currently more funding for renewables historically much more funding has gone to nuclear [0], and that is not even counting the significant military funding. In fact renewables got to the current state with much less funding, so why should we pour much more money into nuclear when the return on (research) investment is much better for renewables?
[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Too_much...
