Cheap Power
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OK, I don't want to get into the political debate, but I did want to mention this article on nuclear energy. It mainly talks about the 3rd generation nuclear plants with few or no moving parts, relying on gravity and intelligent design instead of complex pumps, valves, and IT control systems.
I've mentioned it before, but I used to work at a nuclear plant, the Surrey plant in my native Virginia, and after getting over the first few months of fear, I thought nuclear power was a great source of ensuring my MSN Backgammon account continues to work. I was also dismayed to learn that if I wanted to work at a plant, my choices were extremely limited in the US and getting fewer every year.
I also had the chance to look over some of the new designs since my boss at the time was giving input on the IT systems that would be required. The next generation of plants were supposed to be cookie cutter in nature, allowing a much quicker, cheaper plant to be built with less regulatory impediments.
The article mainly talks about how nuclear might be a good choice for developing nations if we can get around the nuclear non-proliferation restrictions. There's a lot of political issues here and I certainly don't want to see more nuclear weapons in the world.
However we have a power crisis in this country in places, and we're the most developed nation around. As more and more nations want to implement cell phones, expand their computer infrastructures, and more, they need power to do so. I think nuclear is a viable option and its environmental impact is probably not worse than that of the alternatives.
PS: If you are missing your newsletters, let us know at sscupgrade@sqlservercentral.com. We're migrating to new servers over the next week.
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With nuclear power there is still the unsolved problem of dealing with waste.
I don’t think the current schemes for storing high level waste for hundreds of thousands of years can ever be made practical, considering there is no history of a society stable for even 10% of that time. Who can ensure the long-term security of such a facility, and what is the true current cost of the money required over the next 100,000 years to safeguard the waste?
Until there is a safe, reliable method of making high-level waste inert, it will continue to be a huge environmental catastrophe waiting to happen, as well as an extremely inviting target for a terrorist attack. How about a small nuke that vaporizes a few hundred tons of spent fuel rods?
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Developing nations should be steered towards other alternatives beside nuclear energy.
Windfarms, solar cells could all be used in places like the Sahara desert.
The world just doesn't need a proliferation of these technologies. As the previous poster stated, there has just never been an extended period of 'peace' in human civilization to think that this technology would not be exploited to do terrible things.
Frankly, I'm suprised nuclear weapons have not been used again since 1945 even accidently. One only has to look at nations like N. Korea and Iran to know the dangers these technologies represent to mankind.
There are several large offshore windarms being planned in the United States. The first one is scheduled offshore of Galveston, TX and will power something like 45K homes.
While a drop in the bucket, this is a positive start.
Also there is the possibility that ocean waves could be used to push turbines and generate electricity. There is a lot of ways to generate electricity. The problem is national will to push for more funding for these alternatives rather than pushing tax credits to large oil companies.
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Hi
I'm from South Africa, who are working on so-called "Pebble bed modular reactors". My father is actually emplyed by the company responsible for the fuel plant, and while interesting, I'm not keen on it. There are so much untapped natural energy out there and I wish (especially the States) would spend more money on these than oil and nuclear energy.
Some examples of recent advances:
- Non-reflective nano coatings for solar cells, increasing effectives by percentage points, but also increasing LED effectivenes by 40%.
- Nano-tube technology for PV cells - more efficient, cheaper.
- Algae: They have proven it possible to use algae to filter C02 from coal powerstations' emissions, up to a 40% reduction if I recall correctly. This algae is harvested and used in bio-fuels, aparently much higher yield than Soya and corn.
I'm no expert, but it seems there are many alternatives which can be developed rather than worsening an already bad situation by introducing nuclear waste.
How about each of your readers fitting one solar cell to their roof and using it's energy to power something small, for instance charging small appliances like cellphones and toothbrushes. Or pre-heating water with solar energy for the geyser intake. It sounds silly, I know, but it can make a huge difference if everyone plays along.
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I used to live about 2 miles away from a nucelar power station and spent quite a lot of my youth swiming in the sea by the plant's cooling water output (it was a couple of degrees warmer than the surrounding water) and I can certainly see the arguments for it - no greenhouse gas emissions and a minimal environmental impact.
However the one thing which makes me anti nuclear is how long will it be before someone screws up and there is another meltdown - every industry in the world screws up at times and the nuclear industry isnt going to be any different and the cost (both environmentally and economically) of even a partial meltdown is huge.
If we wait for renewable energy to be a viable alternative then it will probably be too late - governments need to encourage and citizens need to begin to use these alternate energy sources.
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James Moore
Red Gate Software Ltd -
"...for instance charging small appliances like cellphones and toothbrushes..."
Hey, here's an idea - why not use a manual toothbrush? If part of the energy generation issue is the rate of increase of power usage, should we not each consider where we could easily reduce our own usage?
Just the simple oft repeated things....turning lights off, turning devices off rather than on standby, turn the thermostat down a couple of degrees and maybe wear a jumper in winter.
I don't think we'll find a single source for future energy supplies and all the research going on is great - reminds me of how we got out of the caves in the first place.
What do people think of biofuels? I've heard good things about them but I've also heard a couple of concerns, I don't know whether they are true:
1) The energy used in growing the crop far outweighs the energy produced by the crop.
2) The land used for the crop would otherwise be used for food production in poorer countries - leading to them growing fuel for us rather than food for themselves.
On that last point, it's still Fairtrade Fortnight, go buy something fairtrade (NOT free trade). Take a look at http://www.fairtrade.org (or is that org.uk?). Enough posturing.
There is no problem so great that it can not be solved by caffeine and chocolate. -
Ian,
On your two points:
1) - "energy" in this context is rather specious. If the solar energy absorbed by the crops is high, it makes no difference - we wouldn't have captured that energy anyway. And having more plants growing and absorbing C02 is always a good thing. Also, if you're needing too much input to grow the crops (irrigation, fertiliser, etc) there are plenty of alternatives which need virtually no input to flourish: the aforementioned algae is one example, another would be hemp (no, I'm not a stoner, but there's a good reason it's called weed...
)2) - There's no way that anyone (unless they have a gun to their head) is ever going to grow fuel for someone else while they're starving. There is actually no shortage of food production on a global scale anyway - there are local shortages due to political instability, but those are problems of distribution rather than supply.
just my 1.74c (after energy taxes...)
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C8H10N4O2
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Land use is, in itself, a massive problem. Huge tracts of pristine forest are still being cut down every year - and not necessarily for the trees. The main driving factor is more agricultural land. On a global scale, there simply is not enough agricultural land to feed everyone. Unless you employ intensive farming techniques, which requires MASSIVE amounts of energy.
The benefits of growing rape-seed or other crops for biofuel are marginal at best. They are certainly not carbon-neutral (you do not recoup all energy used in the production).
So, back to energy again. By far the simplest solution is to reduce the amount of energy we use. I completely agree about the toothbrush argument - it doesn't need a battery.
However, you have to look further than this and realise that we, in particular the 1st World Countries, use far too much energy and resources, and simply cutting back is not enough.
It may be that nuclear is a medium term solution - but there are strong arguments about the quantity of useable urannium in the world, and seemingly insurmountable problems of nuclear waste.
All very depressing.
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On a more optimistic note, technology usually catches up, biofuels are not a realistic alternative option to oil now because of the land area which would be needed to grow them, but in the future higher yielding crops could be developed in tandem with engines to maximise their use.
Windfarms are getting a lot of attention in Europe at the moment, but there are problems with them, wind is not consistant and they need backup power when the wind is not available, and I dont think anyone is in favour of covering all our mountains and coastlines with unsightly wind towers, especially people who have to live next to them and their helicopter like noise........except for the few who are getting large subsidies to build them and are profiting from them!!
Tidal and solar energy are much more consistant and are a better alternative.
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There are most certainly strong arguments for both sides. Personally, I think neucular is not the way to go. To me how to dispose of the waste is a big problem AND terrorist attack issues as well.
Energy in the US is cheap so we take it for granted and waste alot of it. Light bulbs, cell phone chargers, PC's left on....etc.. We need a president to take charge like Kennedy did with the Space Program and put some teeth into R&D for energy conservation and other alternative fuels projects. I have been saying for some time every energy consuming product should be energy star compliant. Why not ! Why don't we adopt the California model for smog etc in the other 48 states... that technology already exists. It would be painful for lower income and senior citizens on a budget but some type of tax on energy consumption with all of that money going 100% to R&D for conserviation and research.
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Steve, your comments just got you on the FBI watch list...
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Why is it that everything has to be a Political statement?
The thing about the article I can not stand is how the author has to make a Political point against President Bush and about Iran. He thinks that if the US/World would make this type of reactor available to Iran we wouldnt have the problems with Iran. Funny because its Iran who is saying the US is Satan and that they want to wipe Israel off the map. Then he says we have problem with countries like North Korea, but we can limit access to sensitive technology. Another thing, this appears to be based on the same technology the Russian Navy used on their subs.
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The politically driven fear of nuclear power unfortunately is one of the things that caused the extent of CO2 that we currently have in our atmosphere. Tremendous mistake by society.
Waste disposal and 'terrorism' are red herrings. They are both manageable problems, but every solution gets decried as inadequate by those who are ideologically opposed to nuclear power. In the meantime millions of tons of carbon are in the atmosphere insted af a few thousand solid waste that can be much more easily controlled. Vastly more people dying prematurely from athsma and other problems due to coal burning.
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-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
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Am I the only one who knows that CO2 is not a pollutant? CO2 is used by plants to live; they breathe it in and exhale O2. How about just planting more plants? I personally think Global warming by humans isn’t true. I believe that the earth warms and cools in cycles. The Romans wrote about planting grapes in England, but I bet nobody was growing grapes there in the last 300 years.
Over 2/3rds of all CO2 is produced by animals and rotting vegetation. I think we should clean the air so we can have a better quality of air to breath for us and the rest of the animals. Only a small minority of all scientists believe golbal warming is caused by humans.
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I don't think piling up tons of nuclear waste to power our power consuming electronics is the answer considering they stay radio active for hundreds of centuries.
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