Nuclear needs over ten years to be built

[dhaslam]

Finland really has no excuse for using nuclear energy.   Their  wind industry is tiny   and could easily be greatly increased and they have  an  enormous amount of hydro power which is the ideal partner for wind energy.  There is also  potential for  CHP plants using even just waste wood,   Finland  is the most forested country in Europe.  So why bother with nuclear energy at all?       
 
http://www.small-hydro.com/index.cfm?Fuseaction=countries.country&Country_ID=29

http://www.forestindustries.fi/Infokortit/diverseuseofforests/Pages/default.aspx

[renewablejohn]

Nothing like having a large carbon foot print just in steel and concrete used

http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Olkiluoto+III+hasnt+iquitei+gone+according+to+plan+/1135246952355

[zeus]

Nothing like having a large carbon foot print just in steel and concrete used

http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Olkiluoto+III+hasnt+iquitei+gone+according+to+plan+/1135246952355

52000 Tonnes of Steel and 250000 cubic metres of concrete (600000Tonnes) for one nuclear reactor creating 14000GWh/year ..... and that's worse than 13000GWh/year of 2010 installed capacity of PV, so around 52million pv panels containing around a million tonnes of glass, copper and aluminium ? ...  to paraphrase - "Nothing like having a large carbon footprint in just glass and aluminium used" ... it's not an argument for nuclear power, but perhaps the carbon footprint of the plant isn't quite that bad as portrayed when considered in context ...

As a direct comparison using the same materials I wonder what the likely weight of steel and concrete would be for 14000GWh/year of onshore and offshore wind ? .... anyone know ?

[billi]

As a direct comparison using the same materials I wonder what the likely weight of steel and concrete would be for 14000GWh/year of onshore and offshore wind ? .... anyone know ?

Do not know   , but should not  the fuel and the waste of the Nuclear plant be calculated in as well

and recycling options of materials involved

Billi

[zeus]

As a direct comparison using the same materials I wonder what the likely weight of steel and concrete would be for 14000GWh/year of onshore and offshore wind ? .... anyone know ?

Do not know   , but should not  the fuel and the waste of the Nuclear plant be calculated in as well

and recycling options of materials involved

Billi

Hi

Probably not if the original point was "Nothing like having a large carbon foot print just in steel and concrete used" so the direct comparison should use the same materials, it seems that pv would have a high footprint, possibly higher considering the materials used, but that's comparing aluminium and glass with steel and concrete .... considering that windfarms are mainly concrete and steel there must be a view on how much is used to generate similar annual production to the power plant in question .....
 

[StBarnabas]

 I'm with Billi - I was making similar arguments on another thread. What is needed is super-grids/smart grids and production  majorly linked across Europe and North Africa. We should produce PV in southern Europe/ North Africa and wind in the UK and Ireland and another places with good wind resources and hydro etc. where it can be produced.

[Philip R]

HVDC transmission can be used, e.g. South America; from Itaipu to Brazil, as AC transmission is distance limited. You are enterring the realm of the infinite busbar, much vaunted when I was studying electrical engineering last century.

Other such mentions have been made for the Congo River and its hydroelectric potential of over 35GW.

Major problem with HVDC is that of fault protection due to line short circuit arcing when the Poynting vector sends the arc travelling back towards the source. Shunting the load current into a load resistance at he source end for a duration to allow the ion cloud to dissipate from the arc site would lead to unaccepable power outages at the load centre. These faults are instigated by people lighting fires under the lines or by lightning.

We might be looking at an electrochemical conversion process (innefficient) and piping/ tankerring the hydrogen or multivalent compound overseas like we do with oil and LNG.

The other problem is that after Europe pays for the scheme, the locals nationalise it, a bit like the Suez canal back in the 1950's.

PhilipR

[Baz]

Another advantage of a Eurogrid might be greater opportunity for pumped storage using eg the Alps.

[StBarnabas]

Philip
Poynting Vector - that brings me back to the days when I used to teach proper Electromagnetism with divs, grads and curls and Maxwell's equations.

The Chinese have used DC interlinks with the Three Gorges Dam. The DC interlink to Shanghai is about 1GW and runs about 1100km so maybe it can be done. I am no expert on grids, but fortunately work with people who are so can ask in the new year what is the current state of the art and what is possible.

Hydrogen is as you say an option. It is good to have diversity and there is an existing natural gas infrastructure which could be used. All eggs in one basket is a bad idea.

Regarding Europe paying for the scheme, politics is a big worry. I sense a greater anti EU feeling in the UK. I do not trust the UK government and am very pleased the EU can put some breaks on its power at times. There is a possibility of breakup which will be a disaster in my opinion. The right wing of the Tory party would consider it a triumph I guess. We need to grasp the nettle. Billi may look a bit mad, but it is society that is mad at present.

[wookey]

My understanding of the relative footprint of building wind and nuclear is that wind uses quite a lot more steel per kWh, Nuclear uses somewhat more concrete. I'm sure (widely varying) figures could be dug up online, but the basic take-home is that to the nearest order of magnitude they use the same amounts of materials, so can reasonably be considered equivalent on this metric. You can make a good case that it's going to be a lot easier to recycle the steel, or maybe even concrete, used in wind turbines as it's in relatively small bits and hasn't been made radioactive.

There is an extra footprint from putting turbines into peat bogs (which is where they tend to get put in scotland at the moment as we aren't allowed to put them anywhere popular), due to the displaced peat. A scottish planning person was telling me (3 days ago) that this outweighed their whole utility, but that sounds like total nonsense to me. I'd imagine it something like doubles the effectve concrete volume of the base, or somesuch, but I would be interested if anyone has the details?

Obvious thing would be to sell the peat in garden centres because they do that a lot anyway so we might as well use the stuff we had to dig up when sticking turbines in. Better than leaving it on the hillside to oxidise.

[dhaslam]

The displacement of peat  at Derrybrien, which is just a few miles  away from here, was quite serious.  It displaced,  according to the video, about a million tonnes of peat.   At the time the bigger scandal was that  the contract for  the electricity  supply which was supposedly  given to  an independent company was actually  given to an ESB subsidiary.     They initially denied it but later admitted that it was theirs.       
 
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6UMUW4IIrc

[renewablejohn]

Nothing like having a large carbon foot print just in steel and concrete used

http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Olkiluoto+III+hasnt+iquitei+gone+according+to+plan+/1135246952355

52000 Tonnes of Steel and 250000 cubic metres of concrete (600000Tonnes) for one nuclear reactor creating 14000GWh/year ..... and that's worse than 13000GWh/year of 2010 installed capacity of PV, so around 52million pv panels containing around a million tonnes of glass, copper and aluminium ? ...  to paraphrase - "Nothing like having a large carbon footprint in just glass and aluminium used" ... it's not an argument for nuclear power, but perhaps the carbon footprint of the plant isn't quite that bad as portrayed when considered in context ...

As a direct comparison using the same materials I wonder what the likely weight of steel and concrete would be for 14000GWh/year of onshore and offshore wind ? .... anyone know ?

How can you talk about context when discussing Finland a country not renown for its solar radiation so we go off at a tangent and discuss PV. The obvious resource for Finland is hydro and biomass neither of which have the carbon footprint of nuclear. (Large dam schemes have been prohibited in Finland for decades)

If your talking PV then for efficiency you should really be talking CHP similar to below

http://www.zenithsolar.com/solar-engineering.aspx

 

[zeus]

Nothing like having a large carbon foot print just in steel and concrete used

http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Olkiluoto+III+hasnt+iquitei+gone+according+to+plan+/1135246952355

52000 Tonnes of Steel and 250000 cubic metres of concrete (600000Tonnes) for one nuclear reactor creating 14000GWh/year ..... and that's worse than 13000GWh/year of 2010 installed capacity of PV, so around 52million pv panels containing around a million tonnes of glass, copper and aluminium ? ...  to paraphrase - "Nothing like having a large carbon footprint in just glass and aluminium used" ... it's not an argument for nuclear power, but perhaps the carbon footprint of the plant isn't quite that bad as portrayed when considered in context ...

As a direct comparison using the same materials I wonder what the likely weight of steel and concrete would be for 14000GWh/year of onshore and offshore wind ? .... anyone know ?

How can you talk about context when discussing Finland a country not renown for its solar radiation so we go off at a tangent and discuss PV. The obvious resource for Finland is hydro and biomass neither of which have the carbon footprint of nuclear. (Large dam schemes have been prohibited in Finland for decades)

If your talking PV then for efficiency you should really be talking CHP similar to below

http://www.zenithsolar.com/solar-engineering.aspx

 

Probably classify pv as being relevant due to the following post by the OP (billi) ....

Why ?  13 GW  PV  was built in Europe 2010

the  Olkiluoto 3 nuclear unit will have  1,600 megawatt

and the Olkiluoto 1+2  units allready running with their 1720 Megawatt   produce per year  14,268 GW·h


13 GW  PV  should produce 13000 GWh   per year   ( if we take 1000 kwh  per installed KWp)
                         produce  20000 Gwh per year     ( if installed in North Afrikas desert   )

And the desert  Sahara  has a size of       9 million  km2   as big as USA or 26 times Germany


1 GW PV  is about 17 km2   and produces about 1600 GWH  per year  over there

So the area  over there covered with PV   to replace whole Europes Nuclear plants   will look like a birds poo on a soccerfield

[billi]

No one said , Finland should install  PV

Billi said   that it takes over 10 years to built  a Nuclear Plant  in Finland    (and  there are not much other examples  available  in Europe for Nuclear  under construction, will be more shutdowns and decommissioning    )

As far as i know there are anyhow not many Nuclear construction managing companies available  in Europe

But there are plentiful  PV companies available in Europe  , that managed  to erected the same yearly yield of KWH    in  just one year

And this could be done  much faster  as well

So can you see  a Nuclear unit  is getting online each year  in Europe  in the Future ?

I cannot understand why people  think and try to force  a renewable plan has to work on a National scheme only ,  while they import oil, coal, gas ,uranium  since decades 


Billi

[zeus]

No one said , Finland should install  PV

Billi said   that it takes over 10 years to built  a Nuclear Plant  in Finland    (and  there are not much other examples  available  in Europe for Nuclear  under construction, will be more shutdowns and decommissioning    )

As far as i know there are anyhow not many Nuclear construction managing companies available  in Europe

But there are plentiful  PV companies available in Europe  , that managed  to erected the same yearly yield of KWH    in  just one year

And this could be done  much faster  as well

So can you see  a Nuclear unit  is getting online each year  in Europe  in the Future ?

I cannot understand why people  think and try to force  a renewable plan has to work on a National scheme only ,  while they import oil, coal, gas ,uranium  since decades 


Billi

Hi

I don't think that anyone has actually said that Finland should install pv, however, as a sovereign nation their government will have a duty of care to secure the nation's energy supply, particularly as the country does not enjoy such a maritime winter climate as that available to the UK. Take pv as an example - Finland would probably have two choices, no pv or paying for installed capacity elsewhere and importing pv energy ..... neither very good options for ensuring national supply from within their own borders or securing their taxpayers' funds.

My participation in this thread was simply to raise a position to balance a statement on carbon footprints (was it ever resolved ?)  ..... everything needs to be considered in context when establishing scale, so another way of looking at the issue is that it's not one european nuclear plant which is being built in the 10 year window - 2 plants do not take 20 years, just as 10 plants do not take 100 years and 100000 pv installations do not take ~450 years .... it's something to do with being able to work in parallel as opposed to series .....