End of Nuclear Power Generation

[blubart]

@Burkingam: even assuming the water volume is equally distributed over all levels (which is obviously not true simply due to the way a dam is build) the build up water at peak levels should be sufficient to easily double, likely even triple the output in the winter months without loosing much efficiency or even remotely coming near the minimum water level. i'm not sure what calculations you did. in addition the numbers in the graph are distorted simply by the fact that the first time the dam was actually filled was in october 2010!! - everything before that the dam was not able to work at full efficiency. the graph shows the 2008 values.

@Bob2004: the graph would be true for your argument if three gorges would be a run-of-the-river hydroelectric plant - it's *surprise* a dam though.
which means that you have a considerable headroom of ~35m water level to work with. in the winter season you can lower the water level to produce more energy than what the river flow supplies (that's what the graph is really showing) knowing that in the summer (especially the flood season) the reservoir will be refilled.

not to mention that the peak of the dams power output follows the yearly peak of electric power consumption.


in your definition of "reliable" nuclear reactors are just as bad, as their energy output is only slowly scalable - thus nuclear plants will never be able to compensate for hourly fluctuations in energy demand requiring you to run other plants for everything but the base load.

[Burkingam]

@blubart I simply divided the plan reservoir capacity 39.3 km3 (39,300,000,000m3) in 180 days. The result is about 2500m3/s. This graph shows the average water input from the river.

(click to show/hide)

If we only spread is over 90 days we can double the energy output but we are still far from a stable energy source. Additionally, energy demand will be higher during winter.  Bob2004's point is still valid. The problem is still there. I'm not stubborn. When I'm debating something and someone makes a valid point against my thesis I grant it. That's what I did with Bob2004.

On another hand, since water input is smaller during winter, it means the plant will provide a better protection against flood during spring (because it can stockpile excess water in the now empty reservoir). So I guess it's not all bad.     

[blubart]

@blubart I simply divided the plan reservoir capacity 39.3 km3 (39,300,000,000m3) in 180 days. The result is about 2500m3/s. This graph shows the average water input from the river.

(click to show/hide)

If we only spread is over 90 days we can double the energy output but we are still far from a stable energy source. Additionally, energy demand will be higher during winter.  Bob2004's point is still valid. The problem is still there. I'm not stubborn. When I'm debating something and someone makes a valid point against my thesis I grant it. That's what I did with Bob2004.

ups - i must have misplaced a decimal point somewhere in the calculation - after redoing it i only got a 30% increase using the production limits, not a 300% one -.-
actually the electrical energy demand tends to spike in summer (with a smaller spike in winter) - heat should always be produced separately or as part of a cogeneration process anyway as the efficiency of the heat -> electricity -> heat conversion process is just to low.

it's obvious that hydro electricity can not be the only source for electricity to depend on, but it has the same variability as fossil fuel plants in terms of instant scalability - something nuclear plants can't which makes them in the context of loosing the dependency on fossil fuels pretty much obsolete. our power consumption is not "stable" so our energy source does not necessarily need to either.

without the development of energy storage systems nuclear can not act as a bridge technology to get rid of fossil plants now until renewable energy is established - and if we had those storage systems solar and wind power would be just as "stable" as nuclear.

[Burkingam]

Of course we can have countries 100% powered by hydro. But that's not possible everywhere.

It's actually very hard to start or stop coal plants so it's not an adequate source for load balancing. Gas is often used for that but hydro is the best for that as it's very easy to stop it. Some Plants even have pumps to store additional water from a lower reservoir to a higher reservoir when there is excess energy produced by other plants. It's called Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity. It has the highest capacity to store energy of all current storage technologies. It's great to complement harder to control energy sources, like wind.

[Bob2004]

Of course we can have countries 100% powered by hydro. But that's not possible everywhere.

It's actually very hard to start or stop coal plants so it's not an adequate source for load balancing. Gas is often used for that but hydro is the best for that as it's very easy to stop it. Some Plants even have pumps to store additional water from a lower reservoir to a higher reservoir when there is excess energy produced by other plants. It's called Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity. It has the highest capacity to store energy of all current storage technologies. It's great to complement harder to control energy sources, like wind.

But the problem with hydro plants is that there are so few places suitable for building a reasonable sized one, let alone one with multiple reservoirs for storing extra water. There's pretty much nowhere where a decent size dam could be built in the UK, for example, where I live. The same can be said for countries like the Netherlands which are very flat - and most of the few suitable locations in mainland Europe already have dams in place. In a country like Canada which has vast swathes of uninhabited mountainous areas, there is a lot more potential for building hydroelectric dams than in most of the rest of the world.

Nuclear plants are well suited for providing the bulk of a nation's power precisely because they do not need to be turned on and off to do so. The bulk of a nation's power generation does not need to be particularly scalable, since it is in use all year round; the increased power use in summer and winter can then be efficiently handled by more scalable technologies such as hydro or gas which can be easily shut down when not needed.

[Meomix]

Am i the only one amazed that a butchered up nuclear plant can survive 75,000 freaking years?
If tomorrow Germany's plant decides to go under thats one district barred from the spectrum of time.

[Burkingam]

Am i the only one amazed that a butchered up nuclear plant can survive 75,000 freaking years?
If tomorrow Germany's plant decides to go under thats one district barred from the spectrum of time.

sources please

[undetz]

Am i the only one amazed that a butchered up nuclear plant can survive 75,000 freaking years?
If tomorrow Germany's plant decides to go under thats one district barred from the spectrum of time.

sources please

Depends a bit on what leaks out, but if they're splitting Plutonium, then yeah...

[Burkingam]

@Meomix Sorry I have misread your post. I thought your were saying a decommissioned plant wouldn't leak any wastes for 75,000years, which I was highly skeptical of.

[AceHigh]

If tomorrow Germany's plant decides to go under thats one district barred from the spectrum of time.

If the German NPPs have the same "made in Germany" quality seal as the rest of the stuff Germans make, then I wouldn't be worried. I am worried however that this will just shift problem elsewhere and that we will see an NPP "made in Poland" or "made cutting corners eastern bloc style". You get the idea.

[Burkingam]

If I want too be consistent I can't base an antinuclear speech based solely on the risk of a meltdown while promoting hydroelectric instead. After all, a dam has a chance of inducing seismicity which in turn can kill thousands as history has shown, or it can simply fail. Dam are possibly better targets than nuclear plant for terrorism or during war. Despite the general protection against flood they offer, dams are definitely not risk free.

Frankly we are fairly limited when it comes to energy source with lower risk to cause deaths than nuclear. I can't think of anything but wind and solar, both of which are intermittent and therefore require back-ups.

[Freedom Kira]

Except wind turbines kill birds. So I wouldn't say they have "lower risk to cause deaths" per se, not to mention they are pretty bad for the environment in that respect.

[pingryanime]

Sorry, but which one is more valuable, thousands of human lives or a few hundred stupid birds...

[Meomix]

Sorry, but which one is more valuable, thousands of human lives or a few hundred stupid birds...

Boggles the mind, while we're at it we should have made sharks extinct long time ago.

[AceHigh]

Sorry, but which one is more valuable, thousands of human lives or a few hundred stupid birds...

The fact that there are billions of humans on the planet, I would say that as a species a life of a few thousand is worth near nil. If anything, trimming down the human population should be a priority.

Besides it's not the few hundred birds which is the problem, but rather the fact that the entire species will leave that location in search for more habitable lands. When stuff like that happens, the balance in ecosystem is disrupted. That would be the problem, not a few hundred birds themselves.

[Meomix]

Sorry, but which one is more valuable, thousands of human lives or a few hundred stupid birds...

The fact that there are billions of humans on the planet, I would say that as a species a life of a few thousand is worth near nil. If anything, trimming down the human population should be a priority.

Besides it's not the few hundred birds which is the problem, but rather the fact that the entire species will leave that location in search for more habitable lands. When stuff like that happens, the balance in ecosystem is disrupted. That would be the problem, not a few hundred birds themselves.

Balance to the ecosystem my ass, we control the ecosystem, all vital components found in nature are going to only be found in factories very soon.

[AceHigh]

Can't control something that we don't fully understand.

[mgz]

Sorry, but which one is more valuable, thousands of human lives or a few hundred stupid birds...

The fact that there are billions of humans on the planet, I would say that as a species a life of a few thousand is worth near nil. If anything, trimming down the human population should be a priority.

Besides it's not the few hundred birds which is the problem, but rather the fact that the entire species will leave that location in search for more habitable lands. When stuff like that happens, the balance in ecosystem is disrupted. That would be the problem, not a few hundred birds themselves.

true story IMO use most of africa for nuclear power plant farms to power the world

[Burkingam]

Can't control something that we don't fully understand.

Annette doesn't understand bob.
Annette fucking shoot bob in the head.


That's the kinda control we have on das ecosystem.

[pingryanime]

Sorry, but which one is more valuable, thousands of human lives or a few hundred stupid birds...

The fact that there are billions of humans on the planet, I would say that as a species a life of a few thousand is worth near nil. If anything, trimming down the human population should be a priority.

Besides it's not the few hundred birds which is the problem, but rather the fact that the entire species will leave that location in search for more habitable lands. When stuff like that happens, the balance in ecosystem is disrupted. That would be the problem, not a few hundred birds themselves.

As much as I agree with that, a very large majority of the world won't. People can't get it through their damn heads that at the rate the human population is rising, Earth really won't be able to sustain the population. It's just a matter of time and how much more resources we use.