Greenpeace founder support nuclear energy

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Colonâ„¢
Converting the power into hydrogen, and reconverting it as needed seems to be an often-suggested option.

Expensive.

[Sikander]

It depends on how efficiently the energy could be converted into hydrogen. Once it was converted we know that we can efficiently convert it back into energy when needed or store it easily.

[KrazyHorse]

Once it was converted we know that we can efficiently convert it back into energy when needed or store it easily

Fuel cells are about 80% efficient. Electrolysis is about 70% efficient. Overall storage&regeneration efficiency is therefore ~55%. So you've already almost doubled the cost of the original electricity.

Now add in the actual cost of the facilities and manpower for the conversion, storage and regeneration. And this is assuming you've actually made your power source economic in the first place.

[Colonâ„¢]

Can these ratios be increased?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Sikander


Natural gas is a terrible fuel to waste generating electricity, it's too useful for consumers to be burned up by Californians too wimpy to bite the damned bullet already and build some nuke plants.

Careful. California is the country's leading producer of nuclear power. We also have one of the lowest, if not the lowest, energy usage per person profiles in the country. Sure, most of that has to do with mild weather where we need neither heaters nor air conditioning but the fact remains that we use less power on a per person basis and we produce a lot of nuclear power.

What's more is that the state has passed a law requiring 20% of all electricity produced in the state to be from alternative power sources. This will undoubtablely drive up electricity bills but it has resulted in a lot of new nongreen house gas producing electrity. Vast new wind farms have been constructed, the world's two largest solar plants have been built (one in LA and one in San Diego), a new geothermal plant has been made in the Imperial Valley (local geology is good for geo-thermal power in Imperial county due to crustal thinning as a result of Baja rifting off of mainland North America), and nuclear plants are being expanded to produce more electricity. The state has also passed laws to limit automobile exhaust produced by cars judged on a per mile driven basis. California remains an inovator when it comes to reducing green house gas output per dollar of the economy.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Impaler[WrG]
When one totals the REAL cost of nuclear energy (building the facility, decomishoning it, containing and guarding waste forever, large subsudies, vast research budjets at public expense ect ect). You find that Nuclear power is MORE expensive then solar power.

Right wing polititians and industry types advocate nuclear power because its profitable. The very centralized big investment style of powerplant contruction nessesitates long term contracts which are always very lucrative.

Solar and Wind power on the other hand are small and the manufacturure sells the systems rather then the power itself. The systems range from tiny to huge and theirs constant competition for each new sale, manufacturers have been cutting down the cost of production for decades because of this. Naturaly profits are not as great as the old utility company style of buisness.

Heres a site to back me up

http://environet.policy.net/proactiv....vtml?id=18534

External costs for all power sources are not typically included in the cost per kilowatt/hour of output. That's just the standard. I would say that if the decomissioning costs were larger then the profits produced then no one would bother building nuclear plants but people keep building nuclear plants so they must think the they are profitable.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Colonâ„¢
What's everybody's opinion on biogas?

If you mean the production of methane from the break down of biological material then isn't all gas biogas? Land fills (dumps) produce a lot of this gas and most of the landfills in the US have cogeneration facilities. That is there are electrical power plants which produce electricity by burning the natural gas produced by the power plant.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Colonâ„¢

Donate yourself to your nearest biogas plant.

Maybe they can just stick a tub in his butt and harvest the gas?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Odin
The nucleopobe scaremongers are back out in force for the 20-year aniversary of Chernobyl. Making BS up about it killing 200,000 people.

For all the talk of Chernobyl being the worst nuclear incident ever it has killed only 60 people over the last 25 years. How many people die of inhalation of coal dust in China each year? I bet it is in the tens of thousands and is much larger then the 60 who died because of Chernobyl in the last 25 years.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Colonâ„¢

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#Ecological_footprint

"A wind farm that produces the energy equivalent of a conventional power plant would have to cover an area of approximately 200 square kilometres."

Wouldn't that amount to the entire coastline of Britain?

Why does a windfarm have to be on the coast, when any hill will do?

Windfarms are seriously fugly, though - visually horrible for the environment.

Nuclear Power.

[Colonâ„¢]

There are less obstructions on the seas than there are on land, resulting in stronger winds. I didn't say have to be build in coastal areas exclusively though. It would just illustrate the amount of space required.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Oerdin


For all the talk of Chernobyl being the worst nuclear incident ever it has killed only 60 people over the last 25 years. How many people die of inhalation of coal dust in China each year? I bet it is in the tens of thousands and is much larger then the 60 who died because of Chernobyl in the last 25 years.

I think the issue I would focus on, were I a campaigner against nuclear, would be that a large area of land is now uninhabitable. Were such a thing to have happened in, say, one of the denser Western European countries you'd have serious problems both social and economic.

[Cort Haus]

The Independent is on the '100,000' deaths claim from Chernobyl today, though the last paragraph is interesting :

Establishing how serious Chernobyl was has been made harder by the fact that the 18-mile exclusion zone around the reactor in modern-day Ukraine has become a vibrant unplanned nature reserve, prompting some to say that the accident does not seem to have been as bad as first thought.

[Colonâ„¢]

"Protect nature, blow up nuclear plants!"

[Colonâ„¢]

http://johnrsweet.com/personal/wind/economics.html

Replacement of Conventional Power Plants

The wind industry would have one believe that the installation of wind turbines will lead to the closure of conventional coal-fired or nuclear power plants. In addition to the need for back-up generation discussed above, it would take prodigious numbers of wind turbines to have any significant effect on the operation of other power plants.

Let us take as an example the Mount Storm coal-fired plant and the nearby Mountaineer wind plant. Mount Storm is a 1662 MW plant operating at an average CF of 0.80 for a net output of 1330 MW or 11,650 GWH/year. Mountaineer’s 44 turbines total 66 MW with a 0.30 CF yielding 173 GWH/year, approximately 1.5% of Mount Storm. Thus it would require 67 Mountaineer plants or 2955 turbines to equal Mount Storm. Since turbines are typically installed at about 8/mile this would require about 370 miles of ridge top to be developed. The capital investment would be roughtly $6.6 billion. [2955 turbines = 4432 MW x $1.5M/MW]

Wind generation of 11,650 GWH/year would bring the developer $210M/yr from the PTC or $2.1 billion over ten years, directly from the Federal treasury, our tax dollars at work. Sales of REC would bring in a similar windfall, directly from electric rate payers, our utility dollars at work. Despite all of this investment, tax subsidy, and increased electric rates it would still not be possible to shut down the Mount Storm plant as it would be needed for back-up generation when the wind was not blowing in the ideal speed range.

8/mile according to this author, which equals 5/km.

http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/temp/ofgem/cache/cmsattach/14588_elecgenfactsfs.pdf?wtfrom=/ofgem/press/fact-sheets.jsp

UK's generation capacity in 2004 amounted to 75.3GW, 74% of which was gas and coal, which equals 55.7GW. The biggest wind turbines currently have a capacity of 5MW, so you'd need at least 11,140 wind turbines to replace fossil fuel plants. At 5 every kilometre, it would take 2228km if they'd all be lined up next to each other. Britain's coastline is about 4000 kilometres. So it would't quite take the island's entire coastline, but still quite a chunk of it.

(if my calculations are entirely correct this time )