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Posted

I saw mention on the news this morning that today there is going to be a hearing on a way forward for Eskom. I didn't know this was happening, but reports are that there are 5000 + submissions from interested parties and members of the public, most of which are believed to be objections to any deployment of nuclear power. mostly, if the news is to be believed, on the grounds of "we don't understand how it works" which really means that the write doesn't know how it works, but the writer probably doesn't know how a coal fired plant or a solar panel works either.

But what really interests me is that clearly there is an organised lobby who is very concerned about nuclear power and which takes every opportunity to put their views forwards when the likes of me didn't even know that anybody wanted to hear what our views are.

This is how things get done or don't get done. There may be a number of people and organisations who think that nuclear power, maybe specific types of reactor or operating under certain constraints, is acceptable. There may be people and organisations with all sorts of interesting, well considered ideas, but because the anti-nuclear lobby is organised theirs is the voice that will be heard.

The "other voices" need to get organised, write letters to anybody who will listen etc so that all options will be put on the table for consideration. OK... too late for that to happen this week.

Disclosure: My own views on Nuclear are not well formed beyond accepting that there is not one thing called "nuclear power", and recognising that Koeberg has not yet melted down and left Capetoninans glowing in the dark. I did some years ago decline to sign a petition against pebble bed reactors (and received loud insults in a public place for my trouble) and I don't think that traditional coal burning plants are that good an option for our future.

Posted

great point or idea bobster, having worked on the old Pukke or north west PBMR project on their micro model simulation project while finishing my studies, i can vouch that nuclear is by far the cleanest and safest form of energy generation (or atleast was when we did the research now more than ten years ago... i doubt it has changed much), but most of the tree huggers have NO sense or idea of how these plants actually work, and the technology behind it...  actually neither how the normal coal or gas fired plants work either, so why comment on something you have no idea on... i think if memory serves, the report i saw last year (wife is senior electrical engineer involved with the eskom woes, so all reports and data is courtesy of her work etc etc), nuclear was still the safest way to generate power per megawat generated with either hydro or wind being the the most dangerous (think about it,it normally goes wrong during installation, less casualties during the actual plant builds since it is not such a harse environment when compared to a hydro or wind turbine installation where guys are working at heights etc with lots of risks.... just google the wind farm installations to see how the big blades gets installed and how easily it goes pear shaped... and the safety or casualty rate is determined per megawatt generated over the rated or planned life of the system vs the casualties incurred during operation and installation!)

 

Even solar is not that great when considering the entire carbon footprint since the manufacturing process behind these is not great, albeit improving all the time atleast... i hate these so called people who is environmentally conscious but actually have not idea what it is actually about..... and just sprout their own ignorance and crap as far and loud as they possibly can..... they normally cloud the judgement of people still forming their own opinions.....

Posted
43 minutes ago, Saint said:

nuclear was still the safest way to generate power per megawat generated with either hydro or wind being the the most dangerous (think about it,it normally goes wrong during installation

When people refer to the dangers of nuclear power, they probably refer to the Three Mile Island/Chernobyl/Fukushima type of incidents, as well as the issues around waste disposal, rather than the number of deaths that occur during the construction of the plant.

Posted

I guess my point is - and this may be getting way off topic - that discussions end up being steered by people out on the various wings and not by people in the middle. Because there is no Alliance Of The Middle or League Of People That Just Want To Get On With Their Lives or something like that. EG where I live there is a small but very organised and very noisy group of people who agitate about smart meters, cell masts etc. I am not going to get into the merits of their arguments, but I am struck by how they have managed to punch above their weight. Because that group of people is noisy and organised the residents association and even our ward councillor pay them much more attention than they do the middle of the road masses who don't have a strong view either way and just want stuff to work and don't spend lots of time writing letters and phoning into radio talk shows.

Posted

well then it is still retarded, both fukushima and chernobyl was due to GROSS human negligence or error, and neither of them the actual fallout was nearly as bad as what the press or stories makes it out to be, yes nucluar fallout is not what you want.... i am not ignorant to that... just making the point that people who little to nothing of nuclear speak about it like they are experts on the subject which is quite annoying.... evedently the nucluar waste generated by the pebble bed reactors would have been so little that all waste generated during its operational time could have been stored on site of the actual reactor..... if you have been to a actual coal powerstation you will know it is not nearly the same comparing the waste generated by a coal station just considering the ashdams needed to deal with the burnt cola ash then not even touching the actual coal mines and overburden and other enviromental issues this causes.... etc etc

Posted

There's an interesting report on the Mail and Guardian re this conference and the dealings leading up to it. Basically it comes down to nuclear is deprioritised because of changes at the top of the government, but people who may feel they have won have been short-sighted and aren't looking at who stands to gain what and what South Africans will pay when it's all done and dusted.  The report also mentions foreign governments (notably Germany) looking at a deal that is good for their country and amounts of money on offer to journalists who agree to skew their reporting in certain directions.
 

Posted

Nuclear power is falling by the wayside. This is the way the market is moving despite every Tom, Dick & Harry having their own opinion on the matter!

I posted this article on the discovery of solar PV (in Solar PV). Their comment on nuclear power is:

It is a striking contrast to the history of nuclear power. Introduced in 1954, like the solar battery, civilian nuclear-power plants were seen as hugely promising. But since the 1970s nuclear experience has grown only slowly, and prices have risen rather than fallen. Of the many reasons for this, one is the benefit brought by extended small-scale experimentation. Energy technologies cannot be magicked into being fully formed, as was attempted in the case of nuclear; they need an adolescence. Jenny Chase of Bloombergnef, a data provider, says that in the company’s “economic transition” scenario solar starts to deliver more kilowatt-hours than nuclear by 2031. In practice she expects it to pull ahead sooner.

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