Should Ireland go nuclear?

[poulgorm]

But the water heats up because of the radioactivity and has to be replaced every so often. But the water can't be just dumped - it becomes radioactive itself, so has to be stored safely for a long time.
The really dangerous stuff has to be stored in massively thick lead-lined concrete tanks for several thousands of years. Currently, in the UK, these tanks are stored in underground vaults, but mine shafts, in geologically stables areas, will probably be used at some stage in the future.

This all costs serious money. And, on top of that, the cost of dismantling a nuclear power plant costs billions, at the end of their life cycle.

These costs are not factored in to the price that the consumer pays for the electricity produced by nuclear stations.

Maybe fusion will become the answer - little or no radioactive waste. But that always seems to be 15 years away.

Perhaps hydrogen is the long term solution. Use wind power to produce it and store the hydrogen in liquified format - like LNG ships do with methane. Use the hydrogen for power stations and transport vehicles. Also use it to replace methane in the gas grids. It's a long term solution and will cost a fortune. But it maybe the only option.

Already, British Gas (or whatever they are called now) are experimenting with hydrogen in a couple of small isolated gas grids. Results to date indicate that it is quite easy to convert existing gas appliances to using hydrogen. Much the same process as the changeover from town gas to natural gas (methane) a few decades ago.

All this could change again if batteries could be made vastly more efficient, lighter and cheaper than they are now. Which would solve the problem of intermittent wind power & solar power switching off during darkness.

It's an interesting debate. Difficult to get impartial assessments of the various options.

 

[flyingspud]

Ahh the good old Irish, still suffering from colonial hangover.

Naw we're just useless at major public projects. Can't even house our own people. Couldn't plan a piss up in a brewery.

 

[The High King]

Naw we're just useless at major public projects. Can't even house our own people. Couldn't plan a piss up in a brewery.

Nonsense

 

[Roundyfield]

It's not though.

Hydrogen is not an energy source. You keep comparing it to nuclear but it's not equivalent. I would say you need both to properly go net zero.

I would say a legacy of an overheated planet is a lot worse than the odd bit of nuclear waste in hard to access regions that you can really only get at with a substantial bit of concerted effort.

Scale of zero carbon generation is the biggest challenge here. There has been good progress on decarbonisation of the existing electricity supply. Ireland was up to 29% in 2020 https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/seai-statistics/key-statistics/electricity/. Long way to go but progress is decent.

But that, as a rule of thumb, is only about a third of the job. You then have transport, heating and general industrial use. Those are waaaay off being fully decarbonise.

Current levels of renewables in Ireland are about 1/9 the way there. It's worth noting at this point that the more renewables you have on your electricity supply, the more difficult it is to manage the load. And Ireland has excellent wind generation potential.


You can get about 33KWh/kg of recoverable energy from hydrogen. That 60,000 kg from that plant in the Netherlands translates to 2GWh of energy storage. At peak demand that would supply all of Ireland's current electricity demands for 24 minutes.

To get to Net Zero, we need to triple that peak demand and make it more resilient as we are completely and utterly fucked if it goes down for even a day, literally nothing will work.

And then there's the solar panel waste...



Nuclear waste isn't half as dangerous as it has been made out to be. And it is way more scalable with proven technologies that get us to where we need to get to massively faster than renewables.

Your argument is sound except how dismissive you are of nuclear waste and nuclear reactors potential for disaster. It is not a decision to be taken likely. If there were another path we should take. I don’t trust humans to do the right thing.

 

[How bad boy]

Your argument is sound except how dismissive you are of nuclear waste and nuclear reactors potential for disaster. It is not a decision to be taken likely. If there were another path we should take. I don’t trust humans to do the right thing.

There's a reason why I'm dismissive.

When you look at the physics of those issues, and compare them to real world risks, they simply are not as dangerous as people usually believe. There has been an enormous amount of scare mongering around nuclear, especially when compared to alternatives.


Are there massive arguments around what to do with Coal ash? No, because while it is significantly more dangerous, it has been around a lot longer and simply has been brushed under the carpet:

Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste

By burning away all the pesky carbon and other impurities, coal power plants produce heaps of radiation

www.scientificamerican.com

"At issue is coal's content of uranium and thorium, both radioactive elements. They occur in such trace amounts in natural, or "whole," coal that they aren't a problem. But when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels.

Fly ash uranium sometimes leaches into the soil and water surrounding a coal plant, affecting cropland and, in turn, food. People living within a "stack shadow"—the area within a half- to one-mile (0.8- to 1.6-kilometer) radius of a coal plant's smokestacks—might then ingest small amounts of radiation. Fly ash is also disposed of in landfills and abandoned mines and quarries, posing a potential risk to people living around those areas.

In a 1978 paper for Science, J. P. McBride at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and his colleagues looked at the uranium and thorium content of fly ash from coal-fired power plants in Tennessee and Alabama. To answer the question of just how harmful leaching could be, the scientists estimated radiation exposure around the coal plants and compared it with exposure levels around boiling-water reactor and pressurized-water nuclear power plants.

The result: estimated radiation doses ingested by people living near the coal plants were equal to or higher than doses for people living around the nuclear facilities. At one extreme, the scientists estimated fly ash radiation in individuals' bones at around 18 millirems (thousandths of a rem, a unit for measuring doses of ionizing radiation) a year. Doses for the two nuclear plants, by contrast, ranged from between three and six millirems for the same period. And when all food was grown in the area, radiation doses were 50 to 200 percent higher around the coal plants."



Here's Moneypoint, those exposed black hills behind it are made from radioactive coal ash:
https://electrek.co/wp-content/uplo...ypoint-power-station.jpg?quality=82&strip=all



What's the long term plan for it?

As for nuclear meltdown risk scenarios, what do you think would prompt them in Ireland? Tsunamis? War?

 

[The High King]

There's a reason why I'm dismissive.

When you look at the physics of those issues, and compare them to real world risks, they simply are not as dangerous as people usually believe. There has been an enormous amount of scare mongering around nuclear, especially when compared to alternatives.


Are there massive arguments around what to do with Coal ash? No, because while it is significantly more dangerous, it has been around a lot longer and simply has been brushed under the carpet:

Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste

By burning away all the pesky carbon and other impurities, coal power plants produce heaps of radiation

www.scientificamerican.com

"At issue is coal's content of uranium and thorium, both radioactive elements. They occur in such trace amounts in natural, or "whole," coal that they aren't a problem. But when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels.

Fly ash uranium sometimes leaches into the soil and water surrounding a coal plant, affecting cropland and, in turn, food. People living within a "stack shadow"—the area within a half- to one-mile (0.8- to 1.6-kilometer) radius of a coal plant's smokestacks—might then ingest small amounts of radiation. Fly ash is also disposed of in landfills and abandoned mines and quarries, posing a potential risk to people living around those areas.

In a 1978 paper for Science, J. P. McBride at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and his colleagues looked at the uranium and thorium content of fly ash from coal-fired power plants in Tennessee and Alabama. To answer the question of just how harmful leaching could be, the scientists estimated radiation exposure around the coal plants and compared it with exposure levels around boiling-water reactor and pressurized-water nuclear power plants.

The result: estimated radiation doses ingested by people living near the coal plants were equal to or higher than doses for people living around the nuclear facilities. At one extreme, the scientists estimated fly ash radiation in individuals' bones at around 18 millirems (thousandths of a rem, a unit for measuring doses of ionizing radiation) a year. Doses for the two nuclear plants, by contrast, ranged from between three and six millirems for the same period. And when all food was grown in the area, radiation doses were 50 to 200 percent higher around the coal plants."



Here's Moneypoint, those exposed black hills behind it are made from radioactive coal ash:
https://electrek.co/wp-content/uplo...ypoint-power-station.jpg?quality=82&strip=all



What's the long term plan for it?

As for nuclear meltdown risk scenarios, what do you think would prompt them in Ireland? Tsunamis? War?

So burning coal for power is bad?

You need to get this out public m8.
It's a revelation and may move us away from burning fossil fuels.

 

[How bad boy]

So burning coal for power is bad?

You need to get this out public m8.
It's a revelation and may move us away from burning fossil fuels.

More like we've been living with this as a problem for coal for a very, very long time and nobody seems to give much of a shit about it.

Yet, for a far smaller volume, of way, way more controllable waste, it's an absolute drop dead no.


There's nobody talking about creating 10,000 year+ storage facilities for that fly ash for Moneypoint, despite it being radioactive waste.

It's down to the risk from nuclear waste, fly ash is one point of comparison. Another point of comparison is Radon Gas:

https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/41/081/41081616.pdf

The majority of Sligo (and quite a lot of Mayo, Galway, Carlow and Wicklow) falls into zones where over 20% of houses (page 61) have levels of 200 Bq/m3.


To put this in perspective, here's an extract of a report from the IRSN, the French nuclear safety authority on the Fukishima disaster:

Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety | IRSN

www.irsn.fr

Event of 14-16 March
This event is marked by turning winds and by a rainfall that generated significant contamination of the Japanese territory. On the evening of the 14th of March, a first radioactive plume was transported by winds towards the southwest first along the coast (366 Bq/m3 measured at Tokai). It then came inland and reached the Tokyo area. At Tsukuba, 153 Bq/m3 were measured between 23:00 on 14 March and 2:00 on 15 March. This plume was not subjected to leaching by rain. Observations show that the wind then gradually turned towards the west and then the northwest. Plumes probably travelled through the reliefs located to the west of the power plant (at an altitude of 900m on average, Mount Otakine reaches 1193 m) to be measured in the Nakadori Valley (Stations A to G). The increase in the dose rate values at the stations located about twenty kilometres west of the plant, coupled with the analysis of the winds measured by the meteorological observation stations of the AMEDAS network, validate this assumption. The South of the Valley was first struck on 15 March between 2:00 and 3:00 (Point E) and the maximum value of 330 Bq/m3 was measured between 3:00 and 4:00. Plumes were detected in the north of the valley at 6:00 (Point B). The activity concentrations were higher in the South of the valley than in the north, where they peaked at 138 Bq/m3 in Nihonmatsu (Station B). Very light winds probably favoured the stagnation of the plumes, which were measured until noon in the southern part and up until 17:00 in the northern part. In the Fukushima Basin (Point A), the measured activities were much less significant than elsewhere in the valley. They peaked at 33 Bq/m3 at 13:00.



Yep, significant chunks of Ireland are as radioactive as some of the areas affected by the Fukishima disaster.


I'm not saying this is a good thing, I'm saying the fearmongering around problems with nuclear usually don't take into account other sources of radiation, background radiation, the effectiveness of fairly simple mitigations, the probability of incident and the danger of alternatives.


Even with solar panels, I'd be fairly certain the risk from heavy metals used to make them is a bigger long term health risk to humans and the environment. It's very difficult to recycle them and they generally contain materials such as cadmium, which will never break down. Forget about waste that lasts thousands of years, it effectively has an infinite half life.

Cadmium telluride photovoltaics are incredibly cost effective and efficient, making up 5% of all panels globally. They're incredibly difficult to dispose of properly and safely, cadmium is incredibly dangerous if it leeches into the water system.

With the sheer number of panels and the distributed nature of their manufacture, handling and disposal, are we confident they can be handled safely? At least with nuclear waste, it's massively regulated and centralised.

 

[The High King]

More like we've been living with this as a problem for coal for a very, very long time and nobody seems to give much of a shit about it.

Yet, for a far smaller volume, of way, way more controllable waste, it's an absolute drop dead no.


There's nobody talking about creating 10,000 year+ storage facilities for that fly ash for Moneypoint, despite it being radioactive waste.

It's down to the risk from nuclear waste, fly ash is one point of comparison. Another point of comparison is Radon Gas:

https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/41/081/41081616.pdf

The majority of Sligo (and quite a lot of Mayo, Galway, Carlow and Wicklow) falls into zones where over 20% of houses (page 61) have levels of 200 Bq/m3.


To put this in perspective, here's an extract of a report from the IRSN, the French nuclear safety authority on the Fukishima disaster:

Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety | IRSN

www.irsn.fr

Event of 14-16 March
This event is marked by turning winds and by a rainfall that generated significant contamination of the Japanese territory. On the evening of the 14th of March, a first radioactive plume was transported by winds towards the southwest first along the coast (366 Bq/m3 measured at Tokai). It then came inland and reached the Tokyo area. At Tsukuba, 153 Bq/m3 were measured between 23:00 on 14 March and 2:00 on 15 March. This plume was not subjected to leaching by rain. Observations show that the wind then gradually turned towards the west and then the northwest. Plumes probably travelled through the reliefs located to the west of the power plant (at an altitude of 900m on average, Mount Otakine reaches 1193 m) to be measured in the Nakadori Valley (Stations A to G). The increase in the dose rate values at the stations located about twenty kilometres west of the plant, coupled with the analysis of the winds measured by the meteorological observation stations of the AMEDAS network, validate this assumption. The South of the Valley was first struck on 15 March between 2:00 and 3:00 (Point E) and the maximum value of 330 Bq/m3 was measured between 3:00 and 4:00. Plumes were detected in the north of the valley at 6:00 (Point B). The activity concentrations were higher in the South of the valley than in the north, where they peaked at 138 Bq/m3 in Nihonmatsu (Station B). Very light winds probably favoured the stagnation of the plumes, which were measured until noon in the southern part and up until 17:00 in the northern part. In the Fukushima Basin (Point A), the measured activities were much less significant than elsewhere in the valley. They peaked at 33 Bq/m3 at 13:00.



Yep, significant chunks of Ireland are as radioactive as some of the areas affected by the Fukishima disaster.


I'm not saying this is a good thing, I'm saying the fearmongering around problems with nuclear usually don't take into account other sources of radiation, background radiation, the effectiveness of fairly simple mitigations, the probability of incident and the danger of alternatives.


Even with solar panels, I'd be fairly certain the risk from heavy metals used to make them is a bigger long term health risk to humans and the environment. It's very difficult to recycle them and they generally contain materials such as cadmium, which will never break down. Forget about waste that lasts thousands of years, it effectively has an infinite half life.

Cadmium telluride photovoltaics are incredibly cost effective and efficient, making up 5% of all panels globally. They're incredibly difficult to dispose of properly and safely, cadmium is incredibly dangerous if it leeches into the water system.

With the sheer number of panels and the distributed nature of their manufacture, handling and disposal, are we confident they can be handled safely? At least with nuclear waste, it's massively regulated and centralised.

That's a whataboutery post Soundy would have been proud of.

 

[How bad boy]

That's a whataboutery post Soundy would have been proud of.

Nope, it's risk equivalence

 

[The High King]

Nope, it's risk equivalence

But whatabout the fly ash, radon, cadmium, risk equivalence?

It's unadulterated whataboutery m8.