OT Electricity Generation

Again there is potential shortage or rare earth's BUT as with uranium, its an economic, not a geophysical issue.

Take neodymium: most used to come from California. Then China started dumping it on the market. Prices fell, mine was shut down. It's now being reopened BUT there is two years of water to pump out of it before the diggers can get scooping.

Of course wind turbines like lots of neodymium.

Uranium is dirt cheap and in plentiful supply right now, because world usage is low. Currently basic ore cost is about 1% of the generated electricity (enriched is about ten times that). So it could rise by 10 times price wise before it makes any serious impact on electricity prices.

That's a huge driver to prospect for more.

AND at that price, reprocessing gets more profitable, which means less spent fuel in store, and more being recycled.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher
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I think that you have overestimated the cost of wind power somewhat.

Most reports show commercial wind power as 50% more expensive that coal/gas which isn't any more expensive than nuclear.

tim

Reply to
tim....

Interesting. That wasn't the sense of the NS article. Wonder if I can find it?

For the magnets of course.

Very encouraging. I am a firm believer in photovoltaics being the primary source of energy at some point, once the cost of the cells and storage is overcome. During the day there is always light. If we covered all roofs with cheap plastic PVs we'd have all the energy we need. But that is perhaps 20 or 30 years away? In the meantime nuclear is our cleanest option for large-scale generation. Living in Norfolk I am aware of the visual and aural impact of the few windmills we've got now. And how often they are not turning. Shame we haven't any uranium ore in this country. Have you noticed how even the educated are starting to pronounce it nucular? I blame Homer Simpson.

Incidentally over the last week or so I've noticed several PV installations on people's house or in gardens near me. They all look very new and bright. Am I missing some new funding?

Peter Scott

Reply to
Peter Scott

Are the big ones based on permanent magnets?

Reply to
Clive George

Yes, no and yes. No-one has ever made weapons-grade Pu from a fast breeder reactor. It has nearly all been produced from graphite moderated reactors, some from heavy water moderated reactors. Although the very few fast reactors did breed some plutonium, this wasn't then processed for commercial-scale reprocessing - just not enough demand for the results. The little reprocessing that did ever take place (really just the UK, no-one else bothered) was from the more common thermal reactors, Magnox and AGR.

UK weapons Pu was made at Windscale, tritium at Chapelcross (broadly the same design). These were "dual use" reactors, Windscale also being the world's first commercial (sic) power generating reactor. The operating fuel cycle of these reactors was shortened, so that only the appropriate Pu isotope was produced, even though this made them even less economic for power generation. This is the reason why commercially operating power reactors haven't been used for weapons- grade Pu production, and why there is so much international interest in just what cycle time is being used by reactors in North Korea.

In the 1960s though, the US did manage to demonstrate a device design that did use reactor grade Pu, with the mixed isotopes.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

No, but the Natural Pillock wouldn't let that get in the way of an anti wind-power rant.

kW wind turbines use permanent magnets, MW turbines don't.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

On Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:50:41 +0100 someone who may be Peter Scott wrote this:-

All but one in my post are newspaper reports/web announcements which tend to avoid "details".

Dounreay is the place where they lobbed materials which included sodium down a shaft near the sea. They had no proper records of what had been lobbed into the thing. The subsequent explosion was played down for 18 years [1].

So-called security. They were not really interested in security, otherwise they would not have assembled a collection of tanks in Windscale which must be constantly cooled otherwise the contents will boil and the probable subsequent explosion will scatter the contents over the countryside [2]. They are also a great target for "terrorists". These dangers are why the HSE has spent at least a decade trying to get the amount of highly radioactive nitric acid stored in these tanks vastly reduced by turning it into glass blocks, so far with little to show for it as the equipment constantly breaks down.

Intense radiation isn't good for machinery, as was demonstrated at Chernobyl. All the expensive western machinery sent there soon broke down in the intense radiation, with the result that the military were forced to use "bio-robots" [3] to do the work machines could not do. This work consisted of things like picking up irradiated fuel rods, which had been blown out of the reactor, with a pair of tongs and throwing the rods back into the hole, or shovelling other debris back into the hole. These bio-robots ran out onto the roof, did their task and ran back. They were then treated for the effects of radiation with vodka and a medal. I salute them for their amazing courage, if any are still alive. Given the explosion the deliberate sacrifice of people was the only way to make the aftermath as least bad as possible, they are true Heroes of the Soviet Union. Their immediate superior officers were even braver, repeatedly going back to extremely hazardous places, as did the scientists and engineers who explored what had happened to the bits of reactor which had melted through the bottom. Similar courage was demonstrated by those fighting the Windscale fire, though that was over a lot more quickly.

[1] "the papers show the shaft's concrete plug, weighing seven tonnes, was blown three to four metres into the air and thrown against a security fence, while a steel plate, nearly 1.5 metres in diameter, was blasted 12 metres." [2] a chemical explosion in waste tanks at Tomsk-7 contaminated an area of countryside after the concrete roof was blown off. This "incident" is not known about by many people, but can be researched. It could have been a whole lot worse, but the winds were favourable. [3] humans.
Reply to
David Hansen

On Thu, 21 Oct 2010 18:32:43 +0100 someone who may be Peter Scott wrote this:-

There are a number of different opinions on how much uranium can be realistically extracted. Enthusiasts often speak of extracting it from seawater, as if that was an easy task.

Reply to
David Hansen

That's just the turbines and installation..based on hopelessly optimistic MTBF.

in the real world the turbine farms get three times as much per KWh generated as anyone else, and all the costs of extra transmission lines and carbon burning backup are borne elsewhere.

That's needed to make them profitable.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

believe away: It wont alter the fact that they can't and wont ever be.

once the cost of the cells and

There is no better energy density than uranium etc.

Theee is not enough lithium lead and so on to do it wioth batteries. There is not enough usable cheap pumped stiarge to do it with water.

Some people also believe in flywheels. Frankly Id rather have a few megatons of reasonably safe uranium, than a few megatons of ultra high speed flywheel.

There isn't enough land area in the UK to have photovoltaics AND any meaningful agriculture.

So I would suggest dong some basic sums, rather then just 'believing'

During the day there is always light. If we covered

You would need about 30-50 square meters per household.

But

No, its lala land.

In the meantime nuclear is our

yes, they are ripping you off as much as the windmill guys. They get about 45p a unit for any PV. You pay.

In spain, the PV is so successful, that people are managing to get 15% of the PVS to generate after dark. Or so the figures say. More cynical people have decided that enterprising Spaniards are buying electricity by day and off peak, storing it in car batteries, and feeding it back to the grid and pretending to be PV generators.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Apparently so.

I would have thought field coils would have been simpler meself.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Its been done in Japan. Its not currently cost effective.

It may be one day.

There's rather a lot more in coal fly-ash.

>
Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

The very best onshore wind farms might achieve that, but onshore can be up to twice as expensive as conventional and offshore wind farms can be up to three times as expensive, based upon whole life figures.

Colin Bignell

Reply to
Nightjar

Maybe some one got the wrong end of the stick about China reducing it's export quotas of rare earths. Most rare earths orginate in china...

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

The average roof isn't far from those figures. One south facing pitch here is roughly 10m x 6m...

But what do you do in the winter when it's dark for 18hrs...

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Interesting. When they built Dounreay it was widely reported that it was to make materials for H Bombs.

Colin Bignell

Reply to
Nightjar

shiver in the dark?

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Highest FITs rate for PV is 41.3p/unit for retrofit systems up to

4kW. If you actually manage to generate more than you use then you get an extra few pence. I guess you are arriving at 53p/unit by adding in what you are not spending on imported powe?

How ever a 2kW rated PV installation only manages about 300W over a year, load factor of about 15%. Check the figures from a real installation that are online somewhere, the URL was posted recently.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Except that peak demand isn't in the middle of the day when solar output is at its peak. The peaks are in the morning and evening when PV outpu will be low in the summer and non-existent in the winter.

Reply to
Bill Taylor

Scientists sometimes tend (or perhaps did) to be cavalier in handling dangerous materials. It's a kind of macho attitude. Happily the much vilified H and S has changed this to a large degree.

Couldn't agree more. Some of these surviving men were interviewed on BBC TV a while back. One described how he turned a corner round the broken concrete shielding. He said there was a blue beam pointing out into the atmosphere from the hole in the ground, presumably ionised nitrogen, and nothing else. He stood dumbfounded for about half a minute, then his mate dragged him back behind the shield, saving his life. No real protective clothing of course. Many of his colleagues died of course. Very noble.

Yes, of course the word security is abused now. Its too easy an excuse. But I meant it in the sense of not wanting less stable groups round the world getting hold of fissile material more easily.

Peter Scott

Reply to
Peter Scott

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