Nuclear power

ninky_2

Niv wrote: »

Nik - you said that you were coming around to nuclear then this has put you off. When do you expect the UK to be hit with a 8.9 earthquake followed by a tsunami? Put things into perspective, I agree nuclear stations may not be suitable in every location on the planet but just because a plant on a fault line that has been hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami is having some issues does not mean that they are unsuitable everywhere.

i'm not expecting 'the big one' in uk anytime soon. however what this shows is that despite being very seismically active with a history of massive tsunamis japan with it's top nuclear expertise decided putting nuclear power stations with the features they had to be a 'safe' decision. this shows me that the vested interests are absolutely massive and not always correct in thinking (or choose to ignore risks). it now transpires that warnings had been made about the unsuitablity of the designs and those warnings had been ignored.

if a very transparent process is made in which scientists and other experts are able to examine the plans and those plants can be shown to be 100 percent foolproof / disaster proof then i think there might be a way of moving forward with it.

we may not have had tsunamis but there is a risk of flooding / landslides etc as well as military / terrorist threat. all these things have to be considered and put into play. "passive safety" may not always be enough if someone actively wishes a nuclear plant ill for example. we've been a relatively trouble free nation for a few years now and not been invaded but we can't assume the world situation will always stay as it is.

i just don't see enough of a situation of trust at the moment.

irok20002

ninky wrote: »

i'm not expecting 'the big one' in uk anytime soon. however what this shows is that despite being very seismically active with a history of massive tsunamis japan with it's top nuclear expertise decided putting nuclear power stations with the features they had to be a 'safe' decision. this shows me that the vested interests are absolutely massive and not always correct in thinking (or choose to ignore risks). it now transpires that warnings had been made about the unsuitablity of the designs and those warnings had been ignored.

if a very transparent process is made in which scientists and other experts are able to examine the plans and those plants can be shown to be 100 percent foolproof / disaster proof then i think there might be a way of moving forward with it.

we may not have had tsunamis but there is a risk of flooding / landslides etc as well as military / terrorist threat. all these things have to be considered and put into play. "passive safety" may not always be enough if someone actively wishes a nuclear plant ill for example. we've been a relatively trouble free nation for a few years now and not been invaded but we can't assume the world situation will always stay as it is.

i just don't see enough of a situation of trust at the moment.

New build plants can survive a fully fueled jet liner flying into them at top speed suffering no damage that would threaten a safe shutdown procedure. They are designed to be able to reach a safe shutdown state from any conceivable threat that has a chance of happening once in 10,000 years.

This is done by first the company that designs and builds the plant, then by the countries health and safety board (in the UK the HSE) and also by the utilities companies that want to build them (they dont want a disaster on their hands after building a £4bn plant). Bare in mind more than one company will be likely building them in each country and more than one country will be having them built so its hardly a small amount of experts looking at the plans.

You have to remember that Fukushima was built before Three mile island and Chernobyl, and the nuclear power industry has far more rules and regulations (rightly so) and more importantly experience now than 40 years ago.

ninky_2

irok20002 wrote: »

New build plants can survive a fully fueled jet liner flying into them at top speed suffering no damage that would threaten a safe shutdown procedure. They are designed to be able to reach a safe shutdown state from any conceivable threat that has a chance of happening once in 10,000 years.

This is done by first the company that designs and builds the plant, then by the countries health and safety board (in the UK the HSE) and also by the utilities companies that want to build them (they dont want a disaster on their hands after building a £4bn plant). Bare in mind more than one company will be likely building them in each country and more than one country will be having them built so its hardly a small amount of experts looking at the plans.

You have to remember that Fukushima was built before Three mile island and Chernobyl, and the nuclear power industry has far more rules and regulations (rightly so) and more importantly experience now than 40 years ago.

okay that all sounds great but we have to know how and why. what if it's not a jet liner but some sort of military aircraft that may have not even been designed yet for example.

i for one want to know the mechanisms and safety measures. i want the science and the detail not the pr spin.

Degenerate

ninky wrote: »

the japan plants already used elements of 'passive safety' - i understand it's a broad description and therefore of itself it's not particularly helpful.

Passive safety in the context I am using it means reactor designs that need no ancillary equipment to cool them down after a scram. These old reactor designs did not incorporate this. If they did, this would not be happening.

irok20002

Ok sorry I shouldnt have said jet liner, any airplane. Do you really think out of the thousands of people who look at the designs or raise questions nobody thinks what about military aircraft or any other specific case you think of.
EDIT: sorry missed the part about not being designed yet.
When dealing with events, its not a case of "a plane weighs this much and travels this fast, we dont need it to withstand 1joule more of energy. Large margins are put on.

A fun video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25vlt7swhCM


If you want the rules and expectations go to http://www.hse.gov.uk/nuclear/index.htm

The HSE would never allow a new plant to be built that did not conform to any of guidelines set out here.
Companies don't want their plants to explode, its expensive and bad PR.


You can't really go into specifics because if you've ever worked in engineering you know everything takes up a tremendous amount of paperwork as there is so much to say, and nuclear even more so.

I suggest looking at the EPR and AP1000 on wikipedia, to get a background understanding of their safety systems. You will notice both pages mention safety concerns, which the manufactures are expected to address or explain before construction can begin in specific countries. Nobody wants a nuclear disaster and the HSE doesn't have a financial interest in the plants either.

ninky_2

irok20002 wrote: »

The HSE would never allow a new plant to be built that did not conform to any of guidelines set out here.
Companies don't want their plants to explode, its expensive and bad PR.

.

you know what i'm sure japan has its own hse equivalent. i'm sure they said the plants were designed to withstand earthquakes and tsunamis. thing is you only hear the positives and incredible safety features until something bad happens.

the way hse evaluate and judge risk can be a bit bizarre tbh. sometimes it's very tick box and all to do with !!!! covering in case of an accident to reduce negligence claims.

irok20002

None of the other planes on the east coast had any problems did they. This was a 40 year old plant your trying to compare the new build to. If a bunch of 40 year old planes started falling out the sky you wouldn't order a back to basics review of every single aircraft. Though theres nothing wrong with a review in my opinion.

Licensing takes years because its so indepth. Why do you think the new build process is already delayed so much without construction even beginning anywhere in the UK.


Can I ask you a different question, why are you so paranoid about nuclear power, with its excellent safety record (Chernobyl is the only loss of life caused from nuclear power plants) when every year hundreds of thousands of people die from coal plant fumes.
Yes there are far more coal plants but nuclear power plants do not kill people year in year out.
I'm not trying to say that nuclear power plants are too safe, just maybe other forms of power should be brought up to the same level of safety.

ninky_2

i agree with you about the lack of concern over coal. although i do think there is concern it just doesn't get the headlines of nuclear. many environmentalists have been campaigning against coal for years. it's possibly because fossil fuel reliance goes back to a time before we can remember. before there were the health and safety issues and so people just get used to the risks. why are we so concerned about barriers to stop people falling off high buildings but allow people to walk on cliff edges exposed to high winds and possible erosion?

i don't think i'm paranoid about nuclear power. it's just this latest incident has got people like me thinking again because it is so massive and also part of an unimaginably terrible natural disaster. i realise that is reactive but that can also be a good thing.

the timing is also very prescient as we are about to a whole load more nuclear power stations.

StevieJ

irok20002 wrote: »

None of the other planes on the east coast had any problems did they. This was a 40 year old plant your trying to compare the new build to. If a bunch of 40 year old planes started falling out the sky you wouldn't order a back to basics review of every single aircraft. Though theres nothing wrong with a review in my opinion.

The way that the A330 has been behaving I don't think that is a good example.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/5423193/Air-France-plane-Airbus-has-had-computer-problems-in-the-past.html

Niv

ninky wrote: »

i agree with you about the lack of concern over coal. although i do think there is concern it just doesn't get the headlines of nuclear. many environmentalists have been campaigning against coal for years. it's possibly because fossil fuel reliance goes back to a time before we can remember. before there were the health and safety issues and so people just get used to the risks. why are we so concerned about barriers to stop people falling off high buildings but allow people to walk on cliff edges exposed to high winds and possible erosion?

i don't think i'm paranoid about nuclear power. it's just this latest incident has got people like me thinking again because it is so massive and also part of an unimaginably terrible natural disaster. i realise that is reactive but that can also be a good thing.

the timing is also very prescient as we are about to a whole load more nuclear power stations.

Why are you so worried after this latest disaster? What I mean by that is:
- In the UK we are very unlikely to get a 8.9 rated earthquake
- In the UK we are very unlikely to get a tsunami
- The reactor in Japan is ancient
- How do the regulations in Japan compare to UK? If you dont know, maybe you should find out as your phrasing makes it look like (to me) that the UK is directly comparable to Japan. I disagree.

If we as a nation move away from nuclear, apart from the rolling blackouts that you would find acceptable to have, how do you propose we protect ourselves from other nations that decide to use nuclear? I am not suggesting that 'everyone is doing it' so lets carry on, BUT, nuclear is here to stay for the time being, imo it will not be gone for quite some time and at the moment there really is not an alternative. Stop banging on about renewables at domestic level, it simply will not work for the majority.