Nuclear power

[glyn]

Glyn,

In addition to Dwarven Pirate's info he may supply, you can have a look at this.

Geodynamics has a bore field in the north of South Australia at the moment and are still in the proving stage I think.

Geodynamics

All interesting stuff but they are a long way from any major power distribution lines and that and possibly the lack of enough water may make the project uneconomic.

Cheers.

Thank you:) I think the plug was pulled from the local project as they couldn't see a major benefit within whatever time scale they had in mind. Bearing in mind the cost of oil now, I think they were premature in shutting down.:( Perhaps 'they' may reconsider...

[captain]

There is another type of energy production thing that I thought sounded very interesting when I read about it. Could surely be implemented today to produce electricity, but I dont know if that electric could be feasibly used.

Basically, it is a set of pipes lowered into the deep ocean, to a layer of the ocean that is either cooler or warmer than the waters above and below it, cant remember which. The water flowing through the pipes then, in some sort of siphon process, is harnessed in the usual ways via turbines, apparently. Anyone heard of this?

Yep, I read about something a little similar here a number of years ago but it wasn't located in the sea.

It involved a very deep shaft down into the hot rocks similar to what Geodynamics are doing but not to produce steam to drive turbines.

Apparently two pipes joined into a continous loop were to be put down into the hot rocks.
The loop was sealed and contained some sort of fluid that was very electrically conductive.
As the fluid heated up it would rise to the surface where many magnets would be placed on the outside of the pipe.
As the fluid passed by it would generate electricity just as a rotary generator would before being cooled and returning back down the insulated side of the loop to be heated again.
The pipes would have had to be made out of something other than steel but I can't remeber if I ever saw that much detail.

I also can't remember the details and don't know how they would keep the fluid going in the right direction but if it worked then it would seem to be as close as possible to a perpetual motion generator as you could get.
The other advantage was, absolutely no mechanical moving parts like turbines or generators.

I have not seen any more about it so I don't know what happened to that idea.

All interesting stuff though.

Cheers.

[furkensturker]

I voted yes for the following reasons.

Firstly, lets take the paranoia out of the equation. Chernobyl and Three mile island are points in time where there was a lot of "what ifs" were being bandied around. The worlds media went into a feeding frenzy saying the end is nigh.

I have no doubt that a large part of the Ukraine is inhabitable and will be for many years to come. Electricity is one of those things that we have become so dependant on that we're unable to contemplate life without it, same goes for cars. The question has to be asked, "where do you get power from in the future"?

That's the $64,000 question. Global warming is a subject that is very confusing. Even the experts can't agree if we are accelerating the greenhouse effect or not. If the experts can't agree, what chance has Joe Average got of working it out.

My own opinion is to treat for the worst, that way if it is as bad as they say, we are doing the right thing to preserve the planet. If it is proved that the greenhouse effect is not the problem that it was thought to be, we've also done the right thing by going to a more efficient, cleaner way of producing electricity, lowering smog levels world wide.

So, the next question is, How do we do it? Coal fired generation is old technology and is not clean at all. I grew up in sight if a coal fired power station and have seen the results of health problems first hand and also the damage to the local area where ash deposits fell from the sky at night.

Solar is not a viable option at the moment and wind power is a bit iffey as well. Tidal action could be a source of future generation but R&D needs to be done there and we all know it all costs $$$$.

We don't know how to do cold fusion yet, if it is possible at all, Hydro, while it is carbon neutral, relies on enough rainfall to fill dams, and here in OZ, we're in the middle of a 100 year drought, no water=no electricity.

We're rapidly running out of options here. If we are to do something, it needs to be done fast, sitting on our hands and waiting for technology to come along is not the way to go.

What ever the new age of power generation is, it's going to be far more expensive than what it is now. We're not going to tolerate going backwards waiting for someone to invent the all singing, all dancing, generation equipment. Nuclear is a proven clean way of generation, clean meaning, when operational, it produces no green house gasses at all, the only problem is what to do with the waste. And yes, it's a huge problem. Again, remove the paranoia and get information that is truthful and accurate.

Who knows what will happen to the containers that store the waste over the thousands of years it takes to break down? Is concrete and stainless steel going to be able to last the test of time? Who knows? I don't.

So do we take the gamble and store it in now technology containers and have clean but expensive electricity and let our grand kids worry about it in the future or do we keep going as we are.

Unless someone has a better, cleaner, cost effective way of producing electricity, it will not be a case of if nuclear power is used more but when.

Freddie

[omon]

I have no doubt that a large part of the Ukraine is inhabitable and will be for many years to come.

really??? i do.
only small zone is inhabitable, a dot on the map.
how small do you think ukraine is??
lage part, lolx2.

the rest of your post i agree.

[cuba]

I was relieved to see that there is overwhelming support for nuclear power... like there should be.

I am all for nuclear power for the following reasons:
1. It is relatively more environmentally friendly
2. Safe technology has come a long way since Chernobyl and 3-mile island (which were caused by aging technology)
3. TEchnology for storing it has also improved markedly.
4. Nuclear power is good.

[furkensturker]

really??? i do.
only small zone is inhabitable, a dot on the map.
how small do you think ukraine is??
lage part, lolx2.

the rest of your post i agree.

If you think 900 square km a small area, then it's small.

I wouldn't call a 900 square km small.

Freddie

[furkensturker]

really??? i do.
only small zone is inhabitable, a dot on the map.
how small do you think ukraine is??
lage part, lolx2.

the rest of your post i agree.

900 Square KM would be a small cattle station here, it would also be the size of a large city. It would be a huge open gut mine, a very small national park, a huge area to boundary ride, a small rabbit proof fence.

But it is an enormous area that can't be used for the next how many thousand years?

Compared to the size of the US, it's small, compared to the size of some European countries, is almost the same size. Size is relevant and does matter.

That area is a toxic wasteland, the largest on earth, I would call it large.

Freddie

[dalem]

900 Square KM would be a small cattle station here, it would also be the size of a large city. It would be a huge open gut mine, a very small national park, a huge area to boundary ride, a small rabbit proof fence.

But it is an enormous area that can't be used for the next how many thousand years?

Compared to the size of the US, it's small, compared to the size of some European countries, is almost the same size. Size is relevant and does matter.

That area is a toxic wasteland, the largest on earth, I would call it large.

Freddie

A 30x30km area is a pinprick no matter what you call it.

-dale

[furkensturker]

A 30x30km area is a pinprick no matter what you call it.

-dale

Size is relevant to what you're referring to.

While it is only a very small area, it is a huge area that is contaminated and can't be used for thousands.

If it was a fully producing diamond mine, it would me massive. If it were a bay or harbour, it would be small.

As i mentioned earlier, it's the worlds largest toxic waste dump so therefore it is large.

Freddie

[Taboo]

When man first made fire, I'm sure many cavemen received second degree burns.

[hx37]

For those of you who were concerned about Nuclear waste management, here's what a little chemistry can do:
Nuclear Chemistry - Recycling Spent Reactor Fuel
Basically, it is possible to recycle nuclear fuel used in fission plants. You basically chop up the spent fuel rods, put the unwanted stuff in glass, and use the rest to enrich new fuel rods. That's a sizable reduction in the amount of nuclear fuel that you have to put inside a mountain. The current method used, PUREX, can take most of the transuranic elements (the really radioactive stuff) and use them in new fuel rods. France and Japan both use this technology, and they've suffered no major accidents within the last few decades.

As for fusion - it'll still be a while. Deuterium-Tritium reactors are being designed, but there are still major technical issues to be addressed. The most important being how to contain the plasma in the reactors. The ITER is being built in France, but it still has issues. It's supposed to generated 5-10 times the amount of energy being put into it though. (Note: this is still an EXPERIMENTAL reactor, it will not be producing any electricity.) On a side note, the positive feature of fusion is that the fuel source can be readily obtained from seawater (Deuterium and Tritium are just isotopes of hydrogen.)
As for the more environmental friendly He3 reactors: maybe you'll see it at the middle or the end of the century.