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Nuclear energy

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    Nuclear energy

    I was surfing on the interweb today looking for nothing in particular and you know what happens, before you know it you are looking at things like wind turbines and nuclear reactors (did you know Betz law limits a wind turbines efficiency to 59% max?, or that the Severn barrage could generate 15,000 Mega Watts (6% of the UKs energy needs)). Sorry about nesting parenthesis but there's so much more where that came from, including this:

    In June 2007 a report for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) focused on the 100 tonnes of reactor-grade plutonium and 60,000 tonnes reprocessed and depleted uranium which will be available by 2012...Three options are considered: treating the materials as wastes destined for deep geological disposal, storing them long-term, or using them as fuel (or selling them others for this purpose). In the last case, the energy content is enough to run 3 GWe of new PWR reactors for 60 years, or 12 GWe of fast reactors for 700 years.

    The Uranium and Plutonium: Macro-economic Study provides an economic analysis of the options. It makes no recommendations but notes that the waste option is lowest undiscounted cost with low uranium prices and re-use is profitable above about US$ 80/lb U3O8 price.
    http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf84.html



    GWe = GigaWatts electrical energy. The average nuclear power plant produces around 600 MW (0.6 GW). UK electricity capacity is currently 81 GWe.

    It looks like we've got or are going to have so much energy laying about that may be cheaper to dump it than use it for the next 700 years. At least assuming the Macro-economic chaps are proper qualified people and not shiny arsed bureaucrats with sociology or politics degrees/diplomas? Flip, if I were in charge all the unemployed and public sector workers would be starting work on building the Severn barrage tomorrow and we'd get people trained up to be world leaders in leading edge nuclear reactors too.

    #2
    Originally posted by TimberWolf View Post
    and we'd get people trained up to be world leaders in leading edge nuclear reactors too.
    The talent is there already. My current client is waiting to build them; they’ll just have to wait who-knows-how-many years for the Government to make up its mind.

    Comment


      #3
      You might find this interesting reading.

      Linky
      Me, me, me...

      Comment


        #4
        I think there is some kind of international agreement to prohibit the re-use of reactor-grade plutonium because it then becomes weapons-grade plutonium. This decrease the efficiency of power stations and increases the amount of radioactive waste but is meant to prevent proliferation.
        Bored.

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by Cliphead View Post
          You might find this interesting reading.

          Linky
          Thanks for that, I've downloaded his (free but in draft stage) book as well!

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by Cliphead View Post
            You might find this interesting reading.

            Linky
            Wow, what with the slides, the video and the PDF document, it may take some time to go through. Looks great and unfashionably sensible though.

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by zeitghost
              To use all that lovely DU, you need a successful fast breeder reactor design...

              We're still waiting for that...
              I might be getting a ZeitGhost(tm) Certificate of PIC16F84 Traffic Lights Programming soon. I could probably do it.
              My all-time favourite Dilbert cartoon, this is: BTW, a Dumpster is a brand of skip, I think.

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by Cliphead View Post
                You might find this interesting reading.

                Linky
                It's interesting that there seem to be many different possibilities for replacing oil & gas, but every one of them would take an astronomical engineering effort to implement, let alone the financial investment required to pay for it.

                And - unlike canals, railways, electricity and the internal combustion engine - each of the options has huge drawbacks and vocal opponents, so there's no one solution which everyone would support without question.

                Some of these options seem to offer centuries or even millennia of power, but only if they are actually built and put into service - which seems to be decades away. I suppose there's little urgency because of the situation we have now where most people are living very comfortably already. In the past, the previously mentioned canals, railways, electricity and internal combustion engine all made massive improvements to people's lives and were well worth the effort and cost. All these alternative energies offer is a continuation of current lifestyles, but with loads more taxes to pay for it all in the first place.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by dang65 View Post
                  unlike canals, railways, electricity and the internal combustion engine - each of the options has huge drawbacks and vocal opponents,
                  ...
                  , the previously mentioned canals, railways, electricity and internal combustion engine all made massive improvements to people's lives and were well worth the effort and cost.
                  There were many people very unhappy about the impending canals and even more were unhappy about the upcoming railways.

                  The Dragoons usually solved any dissension problem.
                  My all-time favourite Dilbert cartoon, this is: BTW, a Dumpster is a brand of skip, I think.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Didn't the govt sell off all of the UK's nuclear energy capability and talent to foreign companies? I read a report about this last week and apparently the companies that bought all this technology and expertise have a full order book for the next god knows how many years and can't fit in another nuclear power station for the UK...
                    Older and ...well, just older!!

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