Chernobyl deaths

[Blind groper]

Mistermack

Geothermal in NZ is only 13% of the total generated. This is a useful contribution to North Island consumption, but certainly not enough to send south. Hydroelectricity is the big one. The lowest electricity consumption is in the South Island, and the biggest hydroelectric generation is in the South Island. So power is sent north, via cables that run to over 1000 kms.

We got diverted. My point is simply that 1000 kms of transmission cable is quite practical. So it Australia builds some big nuclear power stations up to 1000 kms inland, they can be sited in areas of low population, and low agricultural productivity.

In fact, 500 kms would be enough to avoid the main population centres.

[mistermack]

Which is not shown by your example at all.
The wiki figures show that only 4% of NZ power is sent from south to north.
As I pointed out, NZ uses the link to transmit surplus power, from water that would otherwise have to be discarded. So it gets it virtually free. In that case, transmission losses don't matter at all.
If something costs you nothing, and you lose half of it, the unit price is still nothing.

In Australia's case, they would be transmitting nuclear electricity generated at a very high price, nearly three times the price of coal, and the transmission losses would make it totally uneconomic.

I can't see Australians being happy paying four times the price, or more, than they should be for their electricity.

One other problem in siting big plants inland, is getting enough water to run the plant.
I'm sure it can be done, but it would cost more money.

[Blind groper]

Mistermack

Australia has inland rivers. Not too many, sure. But enough for the odd nuclear power plant, especially with good recycling of water.

[piscator]

A criticality accident is an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction. It is sometimes referred to as a critical excursion or a critical power excursion and represents the unintentional assembly of a critical mass of a given fissile material, such as enriched uranium or plutonium, in an unprotected environment. A critical or supercritical fission reaction (one that is sustained in power or increasing in power) generally only occurs inside reactor cores and occasionally within test environments; a criticality accident occurs when the same reaction is achieved unintentionally and in an unsafe environment. Though dangerous and frequently lethal to humans within the immediate area, the critical mass formed is still incapable of producing a nuclear detonation of the type seen in fission bombs, as the reaction lacks the many engineering elements that are necessary to induce explosive supercriticality. The heat released by the nuclear reaction will typically cause the fissile material to expand, so that the nuclear reaction becomes subcritical again within a few seconds.

In the history of atomic power development, 60 criticality accidents have occurred, including 22 in collections of fissile materials located in process environments outside of a nuclear reactor or critical experiments assembly. Although process accidents occurring outside of reactors are characterized by a large release of radiation, the release is localized and has caused fatal radiation exposure only to persons very near to the event (less than 1 m), resulting in 14 fatalities. No criticality accidents have resulted in nuclear explosions.[1]

...

24 July 1964 Wood River Junction The facility in Richmond, Rhode Island was designed to recover uranium from scrap material left over from fuel element production. An operator, intending to add trichloroethane to a tank containing uranium-235 and sodium carbonate to remove organics, erroneously added uranium solution instead, producing a criticality excursion. The operator was exposed to a fatal radiation dose of 10,000 rad (100 Gy). Ninety minutes later a second excursion happened when a plant manager returned to the building and turned off the agitator, exposing himself and another administrator to doses of up to 100 rad (1 Gy) without ill effect. The operator involved in the initial exposure died 49 hours after the incident.

30 December 1958 Los Alamos Cecil Kelley, a chemical operator working on plutonium purification, switched on a stirrer on a large mixing tank, which created a vortex in the tank. The plutonium, dissolved in an organic solvent, flowed into the center of the vortex. Due to a procedural error, the mixture contained 3.27 kg of plutonium, which reached criticality for about 200 microseconds. Kelley received 3,900 to 4,900 rads according to later estimates. The other operators reported seeing a flash of light and found Kelley outside, saying "I'm burning up! I'm burning up!" He died 35 hours later

10 December 1968 Mayak The nuclear fuel processing center in central Russia was experimenting with plutonium purification techniques. Two operators were using an "unfavorable geometry vessel in an improvised and unapproved operation as a temporary vessel for storing plutonium organic solution"; in other words, the operators were decanting plutonium solutions into the wrong type of container. After most of the solution had been poured out, there was a flash of light and heat. "Startled, the operator dropped the bottle, ran down the stairs, and from the room." After the complex had been evacuated, the shift supervisor and radiation control supervisor re-entered the building. The shift supervisor then deceived the radiation control supervisor and entered the room of the incident; this was followed by a large nuclear reaction that irradiated the shift supervisor with a fatal dose of radiation, possibly due to an attempt by the supervisor to pour the solution down a floor drain.

30 September 1999 Tokai At the Japanese uranium reprocessing facility in Ibaraki Prefecture, workers put a mixture of uranyl nitrate solution into a precipitation tank which was not designed to dissolve this type of solution and caused an eventual critical mass to be formed, and resulted in the death of two workers from radiation poisoning

....




You got to hold your mouth just right when you're dealing with this shit. Jus sayin'.

[JimC]

Interesting info, piscator.

[mistermack]

Mistermack

Australia has inland rivers. Not too many, sure. But enough for the odd nuclear power plant, especially with good recycling of water.

All power plants recycle all that they can. But they all lose large quantities of water that cannot be recycled.
And nuclear has something like twice the water loss of gas or coal. Why that is, I don't know.
Also, in a hot climate, you use up a lot more water than in a cold climate, because it's harder to condense vapour, and evaporation is faster.

All in all, it's best to site the plants on a big river, or on the coast.
There might be some inland rivers in Oz, but there are big demands on them for irrigation.
I doubt if you will find inland rivers with water to spare.

In fact, I vaguely remember reading that power stations in Oz are the biggest users of desalinated sea-water. Doesn't sound like there are rivers going spare.

[Hermit]

Australia has inland rivers. Not too many, sure. But enough for the odd nuclear power plant, especially with good recycling of water.

Showing your ignorance, neighbour. Trouble with our rivers is that the ones that are outside the 1000 kilometre range of major population centre are usually dry, sometimes for many years at a time. In other words, you can't rely on them for a regular water supply. 400 kilometres north of me lies Australia's biggest lake. It's usually a dustbowl The rivers feeding it usually peter out before they get there. Since 1885 Lake Eyre has been full seven times. Even at its fullest it only takes two to three years to become bone dry again, so that's not a reliable source for water either.

Which is a pity. Australia is the seismically most stable continent on earth. Uranium supplies are plentiful. We have big mines, but all the yellowcake is exported. And we do have plenty of deserted land to store nuclear waste. Maralinga would be the most suitable area. That's where the British tested several atom bombs in the early 1950s, mostly via above ground explosions. Nuclear power has cost way fewer deaths than power generated by coal. Yet 80% of Australia's energy comes from the latter.

[JimC]

Australia has inland rivers. Not too many, sure. But enough for the odd nuclear power plant, especially with good recycling of water.

Showing your ignorance, neighbour. Trouble with our rivers is that the ones that are outside the 1000 kilometre range of major population centre are usually dry, sometimes for many years at a time. In other words, you can't rely on them for a regular water supply. 400 kilometres north of me lies Australia's biggest lake. It's usually a dustbowl The rivers feeding it usually peter out before they get there. Since 1885 Lake Eyre has been full seven times. Even at its fullest it only takes two to three years to become bone dry again, so that's not a reliable source for water either.

Which is a pity. Australia is the seismically most stable continent on earth. Uranium supplies are plentiful. We have big mines, but all the yellowcake is exported. And we do have plenty of deserted land to store nuclear waste. Maralinga would be the most suitable area. That's where the British tested several atom bombs in the early 1950s, mostly via above ground explosions. Nuclear power has cost way fewer deaths than power generated by coal. Yet 80% of Australia's energy comes from the latter.

I'm not certain that a lack of water would be the death knell for inland nuclear power stations. It may be, but the cooling process does not have to automatically rely on evaporative cooling towers; alternative methods which would circulate water through radiators are possible. However, this could add excessively to costs. On the other hand, there are costs associated with transporting nuclear fuel and nuclear waste; my "all in one" location idea would at least greatly reduce these.

[Hermit]

I'm not certain that a lack of water would be the death knell for inland nuclear power stations. It may be, but the cooling process does not have to automatically rely on evaporative cooling towers; alternative methods which would circulate water through radiators are possible. However, this could add excessively to costs. On the other hand, there are costs associated with transporting nuclear fuel and nuclear waste; my "all in one" location idea would at least greatly reduce these.

I'm not even certain that nuclear power plants cannot be built east of the Great Dividing Range, that is to say near major population centres, the coast and reliable water supplies. The likely hysteria by ill-informed sections of the population and the NIMBY effect are the only reasons I can think of against the acceptability of any such proposal.

[Blind groper]

Anywhere monsoonal would not have a water problem. When I was travelling Broome to Wyndham, I stayed a couple of times with farmers and asked them about water. Too much during the wet season, but no problem during the dry, since they had massive aquifers, topped up each wet season, able to supply all their needs right through the dry. I went also to Lake Argyll, which was supposed to be used for hydroelectricity and for irrigation. Only there were no farms within hundreds of kilometres that needed the irrigation water.

Australia's problem is poor distribution of fresh water, rather than a lack. Too much up north and too little down south. Sydney is not much more than 1000 kms in a straight line from monsoonal country.

[mistermack]

This principle of siting nuclear power stations just doesn't stack up. Virtually everything is against it, and the pros are just minor.
Groper's claim that NZ supplies Aukland from 1,000 km away is completely false, as I've shown, and a simple check on wikipedia would tell you.
The North Island generates 60% of NZ electricity, and has the biggest power station in the country. It doesn't need power from the South, and the 4% that does travel to the North Island via the HVDC line is sure to be used up by Wellington. The HVDC is also 650 km long, not 1,000.

It's perfectly obvious that it wouldn't be economic to transmit expensively produced electricity 1,000 km, or anywhere near that distance.
Especially when you can put the Uranium on a truck or train, and move it to where the energy is needed, for a minimal amount of diesel. That's the point. Moving the fuel thousands of kilometers costs next to nothing. Transmitting the electricity the same distance is hellishly expensive. It's a no brainer.

Especially with the water problem, which inconveniently is worse near where the most people live.

[Blind groper]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric ... ansmission


"Long-distance transmission of electricity (thousands of kilometers) is cheap and efficient, with costs of US$0.005–0.02/kWh (compared to annual averaged large producer costs of US$0.01–0.025/kWh, "

Mistermack

The above reference and quote shows that long distance transmission is both practical and cost effective. Jim's scheme could be done.

[mistermack]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric ... ansmission


"Long-distance transmission of electricity (thousands of kilometers) is cheap and efficient, with costs of US$0.005–0.02/kWh (compared to annual averaged large producer costs of US$0.01–0.025/kWh, "

Mistermack

The above reference and quote shows that long distance transmission is both practical and cost effective. Jim's scheme could be done.

Really?
According to those figures, I make that adding a cost of between fifty and eighty percent of production cost.
So it's ok to nearly double the price?

[JimC]

From a Wiki article on electrical transmission: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_p ... ion#Losses

Transmitting electricity at high voltage reduces the fraction of energy lost to resistance, which varies depending on the specific conductors, the current flowing, and the length of the transmission line. For example, a 100 mile 765 kV line carrying 1000 MW of power can have losses of 1.1% to 0.5%. A 345 kV line carrying the same load across the same distance has losses of 4.2%.[9] For a given amount of power, a higher voltage reduces the current and thus the resistive losses in the conductor. For example, raising the voltage by a factor of 10 reduces the current by a corresponding factor of 10 and therefore the I2R losses by a factor of 100, provided the same sized conductors are used in both cases. Even if the conductor size (cross-sectional area) is reduced 10-fold to match the lower current, the I2R losses are still reduced 10-fold. Long-distance transmission is typically done with overhead lines at voltages of 115 to 1,200 kV. At extremely high voltages, more than 2,000 kV exists between conductor and ground, corona discharge losses are so large that they can offset the lower resistive losses in the line conductors. Measures to reduce corona losses include conductors having larger diameters; often hollow to save weight,[10] or bundles of two or more conductors.

Transmission and distribution losses in the USA were estimated at 6.6% in 1997[11] and 6.5% in 2007.[11] By using underground DC transmission, these losses can be cut in half.[citation needed] Underground cables can be larger diameter because they do not have the constraint of light weight that overhead conductors have. In general, losses are estimated from the discrepancy between power produced (as reported by power plants) and power sold to the end customers; the difference between what is produced and what is consumed constitute transmission and distribution losses, assuming no theft of utility occurs.

As of 1980, the longest cost-effective distance for direct-current transmission was determined to be 7,000 km (4,300 mi). For alternating current it was 4,000 km (2,500 mi), though all transmission lines in use today are substantially shorter than this.

If transmission losses on average are only 6 - 7 % in a large country like the US, then they are a relatively minor factor in terms of overall cost, even if we are looking at distances of one or two thousand km. It is also interesting that rEv seems to have been right in his earlier suggestion that high voltage DC transmission involves even lower loss rates; perhaps this could be part of my inland Oz nuclear program, which I will certainly undertake when I become dictator of Oz...

[Blind groper]

So it's ok to nearly double the price?

Between power plant and consumer, the price is substantially more than doubled.

Middle man mark up accounts for far more than transmission costs.