Forums > General Discussion   Shooting the breeze...

Who wants nuclear reactors in their suburbs?

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Created by FormulaNova 8 months ago, 24 May 2024
Carantoc
WA, 6900 posts
30 Jun 2024 7:19PM
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remery said...
"Developed nations"


"rest of the developed world combined"

...what have I missed that adds up to more than 2B. If you filter the list on 2022 emissions and scan down even if there is somewhere like Maccau and Singapore, I figure it isn't likely to to get much over 12.7B total, and therefore the fact-check stands.

I do find myscreenname is usually right about everything, even though at first you don't want to believe.

myscreenname
1864 posts
1 Jul 2024 2:28AM
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Carantoc said..

"rest of the developed world combined"

...what have I missed that adds up to more than 2B. If you filter the list on 2022 emissions and scan down even if there is somewhere like Maccau and Singapore, I figure it isn't likely to to get much over 12.7B total, and therefore the fact-check stands.

I do find myscreenname is usually right about everything, even though at first you don't want to believe.

An acquaintance of mine posted it. I had no idea if it was true or not, but it did sound probable.

Thanks for the clarification.

Remery, are you going to apologise?

Carantoc
WA, 6900 posts
1 Jul 2024 8:06AM
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Argh.... yeah, look with the cool logic a new day brings I think I may have mis-understood remery with the comment :

"Developed Nations"

I had indeed included USofA in the list of 'rest of the developed world", but as we saw from the Presidential debate the notion that they are "developed" is somewhat disputable. Perhaps WA and Tasmania should also have been removed from Australia's figures.

FormulaNova
WA, 14854 posts
1 Jul 2024 8:33AM
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Admittedly I cannot see half of the conversation, but what are you guys quibbling about?
Team Crack and talk and myscreenname? I think I would convert to believing in a flat earth just to be on the other team. I would prefer to be completely absolutely mind-numbingly wrong, than a dh. Well, some of the time anyway.

So far, to my knowledge, we have suggestions that nuclear power as it stands now is not really a complement to renewable energy sources. We have suggestions of other renewable sources that may help.

Now, we have a political party that is raising the idea of nuclear energy, with no real plan, no cost projections, suggesting that 'they' will implement nuclear power stations across the country. The most concrete part of the plan is that they want to use existing transmission lines. That is it. "We want nuclear power, and here they should be."

Now, given that at least some of the population will vote against these proposals and try and tie these things up in protests and all sorts of stuff, what do you think the chances of these things will even get started by 2050?

Will we ever have cheap power? Never. There is no need. People just use as much as they want when its cheap and will have to pay no matter what when it is not.

Anybody remember the selling off the 'poles and wires' in NSW. It was a great chance for the state government to collect a windfall from some company that then wants to make its money back plus a profit on infrastructure. Would you believe that that has no impact on power prices?

As a true believer in conspiracy theories, I think the Liberal party are trying to spike their chances at an election. They can see a recession lasting longer and they don't care to be in charge. Nuclear power is probably just enough to help them out.

remery
WA, 3242 posts
1 Jul 2024 12:25PM
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myscreenname said..

Remery, are you going to apologise?






kato
VIC, 3444 posts
2 Jul 2024 7:21PM
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The French nuclear giant EdF, the government owned company that manages the country's vast fleet of nuclear power stations, has reportedly scrapped its plans to develop a new design for small nuclear reactors because of fears of soaring costs.EdF, which is now fully government owned after facing potential bankruptcy due to delays and massive cost over-runs at its latest generation large scale nuclear plants, had reportedly been working on a new design for SMRs for the last four years.The French investigative outlet L'Inform? reported on Monday that EdF had scrapped its new internal SMR design - dubbed Nuward - because of engineering problems and cost overruns. It cited company sources as saying EdF would now partner with other companies to use "simpler" technologies in an attempt to avoid delays and budget overruns. The closest to reach that landmark, the US-based NuScale, abandoned its plans after massive cost overruns and push back from its customers, who refused to pay high prices.The EdF plans appears to have run into similar problems. Its potential customers, the European energy companies Vattenfall, CEZ and Fortum, wanted guarantees that the SMRs would not have a levelised cost of energy of more than ?100 a megawatt hour ($161/MWh) and EdF decided that that was not possible.

Me thinks Scomo and the Nuclear fan boys are still dreaming that it will work despite the real world experiences.

Rango
WA, 765 posts
3 Jul 2024 5:11PM
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hardpole
WA, 587 posts
4 Jul 2024 9:45AM
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This would let us store all the excess solar power we are generating.


www.pv-magazine.com/2024/07/02/worlds-largest-sodium-ion-battery-goes-into-operation/

Carantoc
WA, 6900 posts
4 Jul 2024 11:41AM
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hardpole said..
This would let us store all the excess solar power we are generating.
www.pv-magazine.com/2024/07/02/worlds-largest-sodium-ion-battery-goes-into-operation/




Seriously ?

How many houses do you think that 100MW battery (when complete, article says first stage only done at the moment) would power for one hour, ignoring all the incidental things like traffic lights or hospitals or 5G towers or seabreeze.com.au servers.

How many for 12 hours of darkness every night ?

How many for a few weeks in a cloudy high pressure system in winter ?

I am not convinced by 'batteries' being the answer. Yes, maybe sodium-whatever is less energy dense than lithium, which is less dense than Ni-Cd, which is less dense than lead/acid, which is less dense than copper/zinc & seawater, but the battery has been around since about 1800, and the rate of improvement is extremely slow compared to so much other technology we have. Compare something else from the year 1800 to now. Horse and cart versus freight train say. Batteries should be the size of a pin and able to power a truck for a million miles.

Maybe the big break in batteries is just around the corner, but I doubt it will be an anode and cathode separated by a metal - no matter what fancy elements get stuffed in. The rate of improvment of everything else that has been used (and there are so many variants of electrodes and electrolites that have all been hailed as the next great thing) just isn't there.


Like I said forever, generating green power is the easy bit. Storing, distributing and consuming it in a green way is the hard bit.

Maybe the excess solar is used to fill giant tanks with hydrogen, which is then burnt when it is dark. No transport needed. Just don't crash anything into the tank. Or burst a pipe whilst taking a fag-break. And also add some batteries to cover the minutes between the sun shining and the hydrogen heating the steam up, not the hours between sunset and sunrise.


Batteries as the worlds energy storage system just seems so far from being realistic, that putting all your eggs in the battery basket seems extraordinarily risky.

Mr Milk
NSW, 3056 posts
4 Jul 2024 2:39PM
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^^^ Google fed me that article last night. From memory it went on to say that pushing the cost reduction curve out a few years gets to the point where storage cost $10/kwh. At that price, it does look like even things like pumped hydro get blown out of the water. It would even be feasible to go off grid in the suburbs when a battery that can store a fortnight's worth of consumption is only a few $000

EDIT: It wasn't that article that talked about cost reductions. It was this one
www.power-technology.com/features/exclusive-sodium-batteries-to-disrupt-energy-storage-market/?cf-view

remery
WA, 3242 posts
4 Jul 2024 1:03PM
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"According to Datang Group, the power station can be charged and discharged more than 300 times a year. A single charge can store up to 100,000 kWh of electricity and release electricity during the peak period of the power grid. It can meet the daily power needs of around 12,000 households and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 13,000 tons annually."

kato
VIC, 3444 posts
4 Jul 2024 8:53PM
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Interestingly battery prices are continuing to come down as everything else continues to go up. The suggestion is that Aus will be at 50% renewable in 2 yrs.
My new battery goes in next week and will be paid for in 8 yrs.

FormulaNova
WA, 14854 posts
4 Jul 2024 8:50PM
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Rango said..


I listened to that. I now want to know if he is 100% correct. If so, I am all for it. Well, almost. I still think that reactors need to placed a decent distance from population centres. The infrastructure costs are just costs to improve the safety factor.

I was suggesting to a friend the other day that if reactors are 100% safe, then why not locate them in the CBDs? Safe is 'safe' right? 100% safe is safe no matter where they are placed. If they are in the CBDs then a large part of the load is right next door and the transmission lines can be used to feed other industrial users.

Bet it wouldn't fly at an election though...

kato
VIC, 3444 posts
5 Jul 2024 10:27AM
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^^^^Great idea. What ever happened to the idea of windows generating power? Seems a great idea for hi rise buildings.

Carantoc
WA, 6900 posts
5 Jul 2024 8:35AM
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FormulaNova said..
I was suggesting to a friend the other day that if reactors are 100% safe, then why not locate them in the CBDs?


You got a friend ?

(arrgh be-jeezus, chill-ax FN, chiiiiiillll-ax. Just a jokey quip for Friday morning)



If land is cheap in the middle of the desert why not build houses there ?
Why not build a windfarm in the middle of the suburbs ?
Why not build a massive robotic goods distrubution warehouse right in the middle of the CDB. Good road access for all those trucks, and plenty of people to distribute goods to.
Why not have broadscale wheat farms in Rockingham town centre ?

There is a reason industry is located in industrial areas, houses are in suburban areas, farms are in farming areas and business offices are found in CDBs.

Carantoc
WA, 6900 posts
5 Jul 2024 8:49AM
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kato said..
....My new battery goes in next week and will be paid for in 8 yrs.


Batteries at individual houses kinda make sense to me.

I have rainwater tanks. When it rains they fill up, when I want to put ice in me whiskey, I go dip a bucket in the tank and get some water out to freeze.

If houses had batteries then the grid wouldn't need to be 24/7 like the rain isn't 24/7. If you can't manage your own consumption and your battery runs flat before the next grid charge, then you have to go pay Tommo to come fill it up, like I do with my rainwater tanks.

But then there could be no crying that its the government's fault and that society should be responsible for my desire to have electricity.

I am not too sure how batteries would work for multi-residential buildings, or how they would work for everything that isn't a house. Traffic lights or hospitals or industry or anything.

And I'd suspect in practice the actual effect would be more wood burners, coal fires, pertrol generators and a worse emissions situation than we would be in than having some new gas power stations to do the same job and power the grid for that missing %.

But it seems batteries will be a very important part of the mix. Just not 100% of the mix.

remery
WA, 3242 posts
5 Jul 2024 11:06AM
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Carantoc said.

There is a reason industry is located in industrial areas, houses are in suburban areas, farms are in farming areas and business offices are found in CDBs.


That's not entirely true, some of the best farming land is covered by cities.

Carantoc
WA, 6900 posts
5 Jul 2024 12:14PM
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remery said..


Carantoc said.

There is a reason industry is located in industrial areas, houses are in suburban areas, farms are in farming areas and business offices are found in CDBs.




That's not entirely true, some of the best farming land is covered by cities.



eh ? You been smoking somfink Frothy gave ya ?

So - it is not true that industry is located in industrial areas, houses are in suburban areas, farms are in farming areas and business offices are found in CDBs.

It is just a totally random occurance and quite a freak of probability that the vast majority of industrial areas contain industry, surburban areas contain houses, farming areas contan farms and CBDs contain business offices.

A CBD is just as likely to contain a farm as it is an office space? They never taught me dat in skool.



It may well be true that some of the best farming land is covered by cities, but if you consider cities and farms, should they all be swapped about ? Would it be better to move the City of Perth to 50km outside of Hyden and farm wheat in the Swan valley coastal plain ? Farming might be a reasonable idea, but Perth is Perth because, in part, it has a seaport at Fremantle. So taken together I am not convinced it would be any better idea to put a broadscale cropping farm into the Perth CBD than it would be to put a nuclear power plant in a CDB. But not only because of irrational concepts around 'safety' when somebody hears the word "nuclear', more generally to do with sanity.

remery
WA, 3242 posts
5 Jul 2024 12:33PM
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Cities are generally established close to good farming land. Cities expand and cover that land. Geddit?

FormulaNova
WA, 14854 posts
5 Jul 2024 12:48PM
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remery said..
Cities are generally established close to good farming land. Cities expand and cover that land. Geddit?


I can only see half of the conversation, but arguing with that guy is where craziness lies. I think some people go out of their way to find the most strange interpretation of things and then argue the point on that. Sometimes shouting at the clouds.

You would have a better conversation with PM33 on whether the earth is flat, spheroid, or a construct in the matrix.

As for cities and farms, where I grew up on the south coast of NSW, farmland is essentially disappearing as cities expand along the coast, filling in the spots where you would assume they would never bother.

It may not have been the case 200 years ago, but now I think it sort of makes sense to build new cities in areas that are otherwise pretty barren. If you are going to carve it up into tiny plots and irrigate lawns anyway, why not just build it somewhere cheap and desalinate the water supply. A lot of cities are doing that anyway as they expand. I spent a little time in Wagga Wagga, and I feel like you could build a similar city even further away from fresh water supplies and still get a decent environment.

Carantoc
WA, 6900 posts
5 Jul 2024 2:53PM
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remery said..
Cities are generally established close to good farming land. Cities expand and cover that land. Geddit?



Yes I get that. I have no idea what it has to do with the price of fish though.

I thought the point at discussion was that the reason you wouldn't put a new nuclear power plant in the middle of the existing CDB is not because of safety concerns, and that the fact it would not be sited in a CDB is not a logical confirmation it is therefore too dangerous to be sited anywhere.

May I humbly suggest if you wish to discuss the evolution of urban society it may be best to start a new thread on that very subject ?

Carantoc
WA, 6900 posts
5 Jul 2024 3:02PM
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FormulaNova said.......(words to the effect of arguing that)
If an office block nuclear power station is such a good thing to build why not build in on the top of a volcano the CBD.
You wouldn't, it would not be safe for the office workers.
So clearly office blocks nuclear power stations are too unsafe and should not be built anywhere





If an office block nuclear power station is such a good thing to build why not build in on the top of a volcano the CBD.
You wouldn't, it would not be safe for the office workers.
So clearly office blocks nuclear powe[s]r[/s] stations are too unsafe and should not be built anywhere.


Simples.

myscreenname
1864 posts
5 Jul 2024 3:28PM
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Why are all these pro nuclear people bagging the CSIRO? I'm not convinced nuclear is the way to go for Australia. But I also think net zero is a bulldust goal. If exports of gas and coal are not counted, net zero just doesn't make sense.

psychojoe
WA, 2164 posts
5 Jul 2024 3:45PM
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myscreenname said..
Why are all these pro nuclear people bagging the CSIRO? I'm not convinced nuclear is the way to go for Australia. But I also think net zero is a bulldust goal. If exports of gas and coal are not counted, net zero just doesn't make sense.


Didn't you learn anything from Covid politics?! Writing zero after any topic wins votes.

myscreenname
1864 posts
5 Jul 2024 3:51PM
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psychojoe said..
Didn't you learn anything from Covid politics?! Writing zero after any topic wins votes.


Coke Zero was around before COVID

remery
WA, 3242 posts
5 Jul 2024 4:17PM
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Carantoc said..

May I humbly suggest if you wish to discuss the evolution of urban society it may be best to start a new thread on that very subject ?



Your grandiloquent pretensions to erudition aside. It was you who remarked, "farms are in farming areas and business offices are found in CDBs".



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Forums > General Discussion   Shooting the breeze...


"Who wants nuclear reactors in their suburbs?" started by FormulaNova