Greenpeace activists paraglides into French nuclear reactor

[BackPacker]

Summary says it all really. I could not find an English news source yet.

NOS Nieuws - Activist landt op terrein kerncentrale (http://nos.nl/artikel/368714-activist-landt-op-terrein-kerncentrale.html)

The 1-mile Prohibited area around French nuclear plants has always seemed silly to me. If you wanted to fly into a nuclear plant, the 30-60 seconds warning that this area would give the French authorities would not be sufficient. But a lot of pilots have had the proverbial cup of tea without biscuits with the French authorities for busting it.

What's more, the enforcement seems to be purely based on radar/transponder readout. In a paraglider, or possibly even in a plastic fantastic microlight, with the transponder turned off, you would be virtually invisible.

So I wonder what this is going to do for those prohibited areas. In order for them to be even moderately effective, you'd have to increase them to 5 or even 10 nm. That would give you, arguably, a marginal response time to any threat. But that would make navigating France all the more problematic.

[riverrock83]

or add a SAM site on them to enforce the zone... Would probably need a person with a radio to decide whether to press the button or not to differentiate between mistakes and terrorists...

Not sure how you can enforce it in any way other than by using radar? A man with binoculars?

[Unusual Attitude]

SAM = Surface to Activist Missile?

[Ultranomad]

What's more, the enforcement seems to be purely based on radar/transponder readout. In a paraglider, or possibly even in a plastic fantastic microlight, with the transponder turned off, you would be virtually invisible.
Not entirely true. Being a radar maintenance engineer by military training, I can assure you that a paraglider is perfectly visible on a radar, and anything with metal parts in it, even if these parts are only a few centimetres in size, is visible still better. The question is whether a given blip is assessed as a potential threat (discrimination methods may vary) and whether a timely response to this perceived threat is effected. In fact, fooling even fairly sophisticated means of defence may not be too difficult - fortunately, people with enough intelligence to orchestrate it properly hardly ever become terrorists (although, from my own experience, people in charge of such defence are usually not terribly bright, either). The modern nuclear industry, however, doesn't really take such risks lightly, and places a great deal of emphasis on physical protection - so that, for example, a backpackful of TNT may simply be insufficient to breach the containment.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Probably insoluble, but don't you love the attitude of people who are protesting against the cleanest and most non-polluting form of power generation, which has no significat greenhouse gas emissions "to save the planet".

G

[NorthSouth]

the cleanest and most non-polluting form of power generationyou missed out the wink
NS

[Genghis the Engineer]

Okay, cleanest and non-polluting, that actually generates enough power to be useful to anybody.

G

[Pace]

So we end up with all the visually polluting windfarms which destroy our lovely hills and countryside while their advocates make a fortune??

Restriction zones are political and a waste of time other than keeping law abiding citizans away.

I can remember flying in a Citation 5 Ultra in an airway which touched the 20 mile restriction zone put around London in the days following 9/11.
We were climbing through 20,000 feet and had kit which could literally put us into the front door of Parliament.

Had we been of such intent it would have taken us from turning 3 minutes max to get there.

For public consumption only springs to mind ;)

Pace

[soay]

Nuclear power will only be the solution when its by-products, some of which are lethal for much longer than the time between ice ages, can be disposed of securely. Of course, if it's proposed as the solution to global warming, it's got to be globally applicable, which means some nasty regimes would be entitled to deploy it.

[lasseb]

Soay, I don't think you actually know anything about nuclear power with that statement. The lethal time range for the isotopes currently used is in the range 50-100 years. (unless you consume them)

The solution for nuclear power (i.e. dig stuff up, use it, then put it back underground again) is a hell of a lot better than what we currently are doing with the majority of power plants, where the lethal pollution is just lead out in free air causing all sorts of cancer cases.
Windfarms - unfortunately - can never produce the amount of power that we require.. not even close. We are talking less than a percent currently in the western world. Globally it is unmeasurable.

After 9/11 there was a lot of debate about what would happen if a plane where to make a direct hit to a nuclear power plant. The conclusion was that nothing would happen (to the plant.. not the plane ;) ). I seriously doubt that a paraglider - even stuffed with TNT - can do any harm to a power plant. Except on people.

[Pace]

Soay

We all know that a Volcano chucks more Carbon into the atmosphere than we do.
Global warming occurs through out history caused by Sun Hot spots and only a minute fraction man made
But the politicians know its a big acceptable tax revenue and job creation source as simple as that.
But probably the biggest con of the century.

Pace

[mad_jock]

I was lucky enough to see a Royal Marine boarding of a Green Peace ship in the clyde one fine day while scuba diving.

Very impressive it was too, right up until the point they all got back on there ribs with armfuls of t-shirts.

They then came off went 500m up the loch turned round and an extremely huge red headed scotsman yelled "fark off tree huggers, your not coming any nearer"

Also on a more serious note one of them went up the out pipe of an installation and inflated a blocking bag and very nearly started our own Chernobyl when the cooling shut down. But luckily the safety trips did thier job and the kettle shut down with only a few fuel rods damaged beyond being able to extract them.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Soay

We all know that a Volcano chucks more Carbon into the atmosphere than we do.
Global warming occurs through out history caused by Sun Hot spots and only a minute fraction man made
But the politicians know its a big acceptable tax revenue and job creation source as simple as that.
But probably the biggest con of the century.

Pace

If you're interested, I know a number of climate scientists who would be glad to teach you how to fly Pace.

US Geological Survey figures are that the annual CO2 output of volcanos globally is about 200 million tonnes, whilst human activity runs at around 24 billion tonnes.

Much more variable, but forest fire CO2 emissions are actually around 2-3 times volcanic emissions.

Besides...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4036/4254681996_27b1ed7ff0.jpg

G

[Pace]

Genghis

I am sure you are aware that many scientists do not agree if you have such figures I am sure you also have details of temperature changes caused by explosions on the Sun and the radiation which comes from that?
Glacier core samples show regular global warming before cars or pollution ever existed.
While I do not question that "some" Global warming is caused by us the majority is not.

Do you have a breakdown of the distribution of what parts of the world the 200 billion tons come from?
How many $Billions are being spent on protecting the rain forests and developing genetically modified plants and trees to live in rain short desert areas?
These are just inflamatory figures which dont show the real picture.
But then things like that cost money while Government seem more intent on artificial job creation and Tax revenues to fill their coffers while leaving the real polluters of the world free to do what they want.
How much of the revenue for so called Global warming actually goes to rectifying the problem rather than balancing government books?

Pace

[Unusual Attitude]

Isn’t there a 15 year old girl who has for years produced more accurate predictions on climate change than the top global warming, sorry, climate change scientists?

As Pace said she monitors sunspots and solar wind and at the time everyone else was telling us that we were all doomed due to global warming she was stating that the climate would again become cooler and wetter. We now no longer hear the term "Global Warming" (Since it didn’t happen) which has been dropped in favour of "Climate Change".

Now excuse me if I've got this a bit wrong but a few million years ago wasn’t the whole of the UK under several billion tonnes of Ice, then in the 16th Century we had vineyards as far north as Newcastle, if that’s not climate change I don’t know what is!
Oh yes and then we have the fact that the axial tilt of the Earth is not steady and has in fact varied between 22-25 deg which has a massive effect on the climate, bugger all man kind can do about that.....!!!

[peterh337]

Does anybody have a reference (with a translation if possible) of the French law stating the penalties for busting these?

I have seen forum claims of e.g. 10k euros and/or aircraft confiscation.

[soay]

Soay, I don't think you actually know anything about nuclear power with that statement. The lethal time range for the isotopes currently used is in the range 50-100 years.

Really?

"Of particular concern in nuclear waste management are two long-lived fission products, Tc-99 (half-life 220,000 years) and I-129 (half-life 17 million years), which dominate spent fuel radioactivity after a few thousand years."

Source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste#High-level_waste).

[Pace]

Soay

If you are such an expert on the subject of Nuclear waste which I am not :E do you know what weight and mass waste is?
Could there ever be a time when it could be sent into space? Ie we get rid of our waste by shuttle outside the planet?

Pace

[soay]

If you are such an expert on the subject of Nuclear waste
I don't want to get into an argument about who knows what, but while the Internet is a wonderful tool for providing access to knowledge, it is just as easy to use it to propagate misinformation, such as that you repeated in your earlier reply to Ghengis.

Could there ever be a time when it could be sent into space?
Do rockets ever fail to launch their cargoes into space?

[The500man]

Probably insoluble, but don't you love the attitude of people who are protesting against the cleanest and most non-polluting form of power generation, which has no significat greenhouse gas emissions "to save the planet".

What happened in Fukushima was a good recent demonstration of why nuclear power is not the solution. It having no significant greenhouse gas emissions doesn't mean it is clean or safe.

Could there ever be a time when it could be sent into space?

Wouldn't that cost a fortune?

[eharding]

Probably insoluble, but don't you love the attitude of people who are protesting against the cleanest and most non-polluting form of power generation, which has no significat greenhouse gas emissions "to save the planet".

G

They're not fussy - anything that generates the Devil's Electrickery, thereby supporting the evils of an industrialised society, is fair game for the Lentil Weavers to have a strop about.

They prefer to paraglide into nuclear installations, however, as paragliding into windfarms tends to have a brutally Darwinian outcome.

[Pace]

What happened in Fukushima was a good recent demonstration of why nuclear power is not the solution.

500Man

That is not a demonstration of why Nuclear power is not the solution but a demonstration of how important it is that the sites are not built in totally the wrong areas and on fault lines.

Also many of the Nuclear power stations are years old with old technology unlike the latest creations which are far safer.

But wind farms will not make your lights go bright at night only the developers who s bank accounts will glow very bright.
Frankly the things are so ugly I would rather look at our lovely countryside in the dark.
Are they worth the 1% of our energy supplies they create?

Wouldn't that cost a fortune?

500

Have not got a clue? Dont know the weight or mass of Nuclear waste ;)
If its a quarry load YES :E
Might be a good earner for the owner of the old Citation I fly :E At least we will get it part of the way up there!!!



Pace

[Genghis the Engineer]

Land based windfarms are probably everything you say. The massive offshore windfarms that keep appearing around our coasts are another beast.

The amount of energy available in wave and tidal power is massive, but the engineering problems to be solved are also equally massive for the time being. Much to be said in trying to solve those however, and lots of people are having a damned good go. As an engineer (amongst other things) the idea of working on that sort of technology I personally find nearly as exciting as working on flying machines. Nearly!

Nuclear power has issues undoubtedly. One of those is the difficulty of waste, another is safety - they do need to be put somewhere very stable, which really really means not in an earthquake zone. Another is that because they got unfashionable in the 80s and 90s, we're down a generation of nuclear engineers and there's a massive amount of new training and education needed. And then also, they need to deal with the waste issue and to be fair, it's not trivial. Although, the quantity of genuinely nasty stuff is very low - the bulk of nuclear waste is things like tools and protective clothing that have been contaminated and are best off in a hole in the ground. But there's no real hazard, and no weapons potential, to that stuff.

What were we talking about again?

G

[Pace]

What were we talking about again?

Whether there is any mileage in my owners old Citation getting the nasty stuff part way to space and making a nice earner from it ;)

Seriously there could be mileage in the nasty stuff heading into space? and the better stuff buried safely?
Maybe not yet but ???

Forgotten what the original subject was too

Pace;)

[Denti]

But wind farms will not make your lights go bright at night only the developers who s bank accounts will glow very bright.
Frankly the things are so ugly I would rather look at our lovely countryside in the dark.
Are they worth the 1% of our energy supplies they create?


Dunno, the latest figures of enegry used over here are from the first half of 2011, 19,5% was produced by "green" energy production, the main producer is land based wind energy, bio-gas and solar energy however are growing quite fast, especially the latter now that farmers have gone to build solar energy installations instead of growing crops. Around 9 to 10% of the net electrical energy used is produced by on shore wind farms, the installed generating capability of wind farms was at the end of last year around 29,1 GW, however due to unsteady nature of wind energy only around 20% of the installed capability is used on average.

But i do agree, it can look quite ugly if all one can see is those wind energy farms.

[Pace]

farmers have gone to build solar energy installations instead of growing crops.

So the next thing to all those Ugly windfarms polluting our beautiful hill lines we will now have our lush green meadows covered in black rectangular panels :ugh: All in the name of Green (sorry Black) energy!

Back to the subject :rolleyes: When I flew past the 20 mile exclusion zone just days after 9/11 in a Citation 5 Ultra We worked out in a dive from 20 thousand feet less than 3 minutes to hit parliament had we been nasty terrorists rather than the lovely people we are ;)

So dont reckon the fighter pilots would even finish their coffee! same goes with power stations

Pace

[Jan Olieslagers]

the lovely people we are I just hope you can produce the official certificates to that - or are you AGAIN making vain assumptions?

Seriously though: the one thing that can come of it is the French extending the prohibited zones around their nuclear plants. Which will change nothing to the safety situation but will again make life a bit harder on, err, how was it, "the lovely people we are" ...

Though, as these LFPxx generally extend up to FL 55 or so, this might be harder on some pilots than on others.

[mad_jock]

The Enviromental containment building is designed to take a light aircraft wanging into it, its double skinned. And can take a blow out of the secondary cooling system which is a serious amounts of high pressure steam.

Then within that there is the reactor containment vessel which is the bit you see pics of folk walking over which has all the primary coolant sytems in it and the heat exchanger for the steam generator in it. Then there is the reactor vessel itself which isn't exactly under engineered. The PWR's are at something like 150bar. If the primary coolant water leaks out of them the reaction stops because thats the moderator gone.

If you see how little damage that occurs when a light aircraft hits a normal building?

The current western Nuke's are a completely different kettle of fish compared to the ones currently in service. Some of the old eastern jobs are plain shocking.

If you stand in the middle of red square there are actually meant to be something like 16 reactors within a half mile radius. All of them zero energy jobs though like the one in Glasgow. Which always makes me laugh when I see the nuclear free zone signs. Should have a line under it say well apart from one nuclear reactor and all the nuke missles that get transported up to the store near Faslane.

[vihai]

Really?
"Of particular concern in nuclear waste management are two long-lived fission products, Tc-99 (half-life 220,000 years) and I-129 (half-life 17 million years)


If an isotope has very long decay times it also has little activity so, it may be a concern to store it for a long time but it also causes relatively little harm if there is a leak.

[Stephen Furner]

From some of the discussions I’ve read about thorium fuel cycle reactors they look a lot more appealing than the current plutonium reactors. They appear to have an inherent stability and lack of long half life waste products that at one time had this reactor technology proposed as a power source for use in aircraft.

[vihai]

What happened in Fukushima was a good recent demonstration of why nuclear power is not the solution.


Exactly WHAT happened in Fukushima?
How many people died?
How many people can you, even pessimistically, estimate will die?
How many people die each day mining coal, or by coal power pollution, drowning because a dam failed, etc... etc...

Do those calculations and then maybe realize that nuclear power is not that much worse at all with respect to other sources.

[mad_jock]

I think Britain stores most of it in the Irish sea. I think its something like 4 tons of it has been dumped there.

I would disagree with the relatively little harm, Iodine LLFP is it 129 or 131? Thats very nasty stuff if it gets into the food chain.

I think though that they have a good solution putting into glass as long as they store it somewhere sensible until they can develope a practical method of turning it into something else.

[pitofrost]

Even if you disregard 98% of the people who actually study climate change, the oil is going to run out (perhaps sooner than we think if the Saudis really are lying...)

If we want to keep oil for what it's best for, making plastic and, err flying aeroplanes, then we need as many other energy sources as possible. That includes nuclear, which works now but is not as cheap as promised. Solar, getting cheaper all the time and wind (I like wind farms.)

*I do believe in it, taking the view that if 99 civil engineers said 'don't drive over that bridge' and an electrical engineer said 'the bridge is fine' I wouldn't take my kids over it.

[abgd]

I am sure you are aware that many scientists do not agree if you have such figures I am sure you also have details of temperature changes caused by explosions on the Sun and the radiation which comes from that?
Glacier core samples show regular global warming before cars or pollution ever existed.
While I do not question that "some" Global warming is caused by us the majority is not.

A few years ago I downloaded the US senate minority report listing 400 scientists who disagreed with the consensus that global warming is real, and worked my way through a dozen or so names on the list more or less at random, googling who they were and what they had published.

The thing was absolutely risible. People's quotes were being taken out of context; their newer work was being neglected... The bar for inclusion was clearly very low. One 'dissenting scientist' turned out to be a TV weatherman who had never done any original research.

If that's the best they could do...

[The500man]

Exactly WHAT happened in Fukushima?

This (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster)

Contaminated food and water, and a 20km evacuation zone with between 70,000 and 80,000 people evacuated. The point was no one builds a bad nuclear power plant on purpose, but yet there have been a good number of accidents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nuclear_accidents) involving bad design or poorly trained staff. Do you really think building newer better power plants is going to resolve this? They've only been trying 60 years so far.

US Geological Survey figures are that the annual CO2 output of volcanos globally is about 200 million tonnes, whilst human activity runs at around 24 billion tonnes.

On that note I think Yellowstone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera) is around 40,000 years overdue. We might not need to worry much about global warming since they reckon an eruption from this baby will reduce global temperatures by 21 degrees!

[Captain Smithy]

Fukushima was about as bad as it can get, and was a stupendous example of the swiss cheese effect. A whole multitude of extreme events far in excess of normality combined together in a perfect storm.

That said, the anti-atomic knee-jerk reaction after Fukushima by Greens and Antis was, although sort of understandable in the short-term, bordering on the rather rediculous.

Sadly as with all things in life, there's no magic silver bullet to solve the problem of generating energy. Advantages/disadvantages for everything, swings and roundabouts. Inevitably there will be some sort of negative consequence which will make someone moan, whether it be nuclear fuel disposal, spoiling the landscape, cost, noise, not enough capacity, emissions, use of finite resources, compliance with rules/regs, blah de blah de blah, ad nauseum. Whatever method is chosen there will be some sort of negative consequence that will need to be lived with.

The problem with Greens/Antis is that they never come up with any reasonable compromise or idea. Its their way or no way. For example, despite all the vast improvements in fuel economy, noise pollution etc. the Antis are still completely opposed to aviation and in their view the only way to "solve" he "problem" is to, and I quote from the notorious organisation "Plane Stupid", "Bring the aviation industry down to Earth". And so it is with their view on nuclear power. Antis moan about emissions - energy source with little or no emissions is available - Antis still against it. The Watermelons will seemingly never be happy until most forms of transport and technology are wiped from the face of the Earth, we're all eating lentils and wearing sandals.

Back on topic, this is a rather farcical incident and makes a mockery of supposed "security".

[Jan Olieslagers]

How long to dive from FL55 to, er, ground zero?

Whether that takes 10 seconds or 10 minutes is irrelevant, as argued before.

My point is that an extension of the LFPxx zones will be hard on modest VFR bimblers like myself, but hardly add any annoyance to the wealthy IFR pilots at FL 80 and above.

[Pace]

Jan

This is probably why they have a restricted zone! Not because of a terrorist attack where such a zone would be a waste of time but because they dont want Joe Blog public low flying and taking sightseers over the power stations.
An accidental accident from such activity is probably more likely the reason for a restriction zone rather than a threat from terrorism.

Pace

[Jan Olieslagers]

That might make sense, yes. I can't however suppress a gut feeling that it all has more to do with outward show than with real risk management.
After all, politicians are the same everywhere.

BTW there's a nuclear power plant close to my former home aerodrome of EBHN Hoevenen, I often flew close enough for detail photography, in all legality. Don't underestimate today's cameras!

[BackPacker]

Various clips here.

fyi UNCUT Greenpeace fly's into nuclear plant - YouTube
Activist Swoops Into France Nuclear Facility - YouTube
Greenpeace activist flies into French nuclear plant - YouTube

Do paramotors always land this way?

they dont want Joe Blog public low flying and taking sightseers over the power stations.

If that's the intention of the prohibited zones, then why do they prosecute (or at least, invite for tea without biscuits) VFR pilots that genuinely got a bit unsure of position, in marginal VMC conditions, while under radar guidance from ATC?

And why extend the zone all the way up to FL55? For that purpose, 1000' AGL would work just fine.

[abgd]

The problem with Greens/Antis is that they never come up with any reasonable compromise or idea. Its their way or no way. For example, despite all the vast improvements in fuel economy, noise pollution etc. the Antis are still completely opposed to aviation and in their view the only way to "solve" he "problem" is to, and I quote from the notorious organisation "Plane Stupid", "Bring the aviation industry down to Earth". And so it is with their view on nuclear power.

I think that's unfair - environmentalists such as James Lovelock have spoken out in favour of nuclear power. If you try to put a wind turbine on the roof of your house, the people asking whether you've installed insulation first are likely to be environmentalists. George Monbiot has written articles condemning the tiny wind turbines you see installed all over sheltered industrial estates in an attempt to 'greenwash' them.

But the truth of the matter is simply that the majority of people, environmentalist or otherwise, have a pretty poor grasp of reality and are generally unaware of it.

Personally, I used to support nuclear power... The worst that can happen if it all goes belly-up is that you get an unplanned wildlife sanctuary. But these days some of the alternatives such as wind and solar power really do seem to be becoming more viable. There are plans for intelligent grids where large cooling plants and factories shut down during times of high demand, that may counter some of the issues with continuity of supply. Alas I have to admit that I'm simply not capable of determining the difference between viable technologies and the hype any more. At least, not all of the time.

Incidentally, googling around I'm seeing values of 1.5% (2007) to 3.5% (2013, projected) for the proportion of the UK's energy that's generated by wind. I don't know where the 1% figure came from. Personally I find wind turbines attractive, in moderation, and at some point I'd like to fly out over some offshore wind turbines. One of the things I enjoy about flying is seeing the industrial infrastructure that the planners have worked so hard to hide.

[Pace]

Backpacker

I am just guessing ;) I suppose anything above FL55 and they consider that to be enroute to somewhere below could be taking aunt Matilda for an eyeball view of the power station.
The second reason is they have to show a law you have broken should a conflict ever occur.
Entering a restricted zone would be cited whether your an innocent PPL or a Greenpeace intruder.
But just guessing :{

Pace

[Captain Smithy]

Personally I find windfarms useful as navigation points :)

Up here in the Heelands King Alex loves wind power and often blaws about how much energy we are producing; whatever it is, its nowhere near the stunning level of thermal & excremental energy that King Alex farts out of his facial orifice with his constant talking of pish, perhaps we should wire him up to a big turbine and connect him to the national grid, he could power the whole of Europe, never mind Scotland. :hmm: Anyway, to get back to the point, politicians and Greens love to chuck figures at us about the stunning vast energy that is produced by windfarms, yet nobody is so forthcoming about how much power getting produced by the things when they are stationary, the wind's not blowing, or how much of the energy actually gets lost in the conversion to good old AC Amperes and distribution into the grid. Which is what makes Smithy somewhat skeptical of said technology.

Brilliant idea, all for it in principle, but at current seems rather useless. Much like King Alex, come to think of it.

[mad_jock]

Thing is the wind isn't constant so you still need all the unfriendly enviromental stuff sitting in standby for when there is no wind. Also the wind isn't very good at picking up up just around lunch and dinner time. Mind you Nukes arn't very good at that either hence why they are best paired with a pump storage scheme.

So by the time you have built the wind turbine which produces loads of CO2 from making the materials and the concrete etc and then built the backup generation capability your actually not really saving any CO2.

[Captain Smithy]

Ah but you see Mad Jock its Green and keeps the sandal wearers happy so its good, y'see? :hmm:

[Pace]

Mad Jock

Just think if we stuck them all up in the jetstreams 200 mph winds all waiting to be tapped into and converted into electricity ;)

Did not realise you are a Scuba diver too :)

The biggest Gobbler up of CO2 is plants and trees so why are not all these so called greens and invironmentalists not spending the huge revenues from green taxes on developing genetically modified plants designed to grow in deserts and saving the rainforests instead of filling the national debt coffers?
Its all a Con with self interest.

Pace

[RTN11]

Personally I find windfarms useful as navigation points

In Scotland at the moment, the number of wind farms has doubled, if not tripled since the last map edition was out. As such, half the wind farms you see aren't on the map thus making them useless, or even add to confusion if you expect a wind farm on one side, and one which isn't on the map is on the other.

When the next map comes out in June I think some people will be shocked at how many wind farms there are now. Ultimately Scotland could become one giant wind farm... :}

[abgd]

Thing is the wind isn't constant so you still need all the unfriendly enviromental stuff sitting in standby for when there is no wind. Also the wind isn't very good at picking up up just around lunch and dinner time. Mind you Nukes arn't very good at that either hence why they are best paired with a pump storage scheme.

So by the time you have built the wind turbine which produces loads of CO2 from making the materials and the concrete etc and then built the backup generation capability your actually not really saving any CO2.

Hmm... The wind power lobby claims that in practice it's not too big an issue. There are pilot projects looking at shutting-down energy intensive industries for short periods (e.g. industrial refrigeration plants, aluminium smelting) to deal with peaks in demand, rather than keeping large gas fired plants stations in reserve. Even home freezers may soon be able to to shut down for brief periods to the same effect. Ditto for air conditioning. Long distance powerlines may mean that if all of Britain is becalmed, we may still be able to import power from the continent (and vice-versa). Obviously, this all has costs which ought to be factored into the price of renewable energy.

A distant relative had a scheme for powering the world by generating energy whenever vehicles passed over sleeping policemen. There are fairly fundamental reasons why this simply won't work. Likewise for a recently-opened department store which has a 'green' program to generate a few hundred watts of energy as shoppers walk over energy-producing tiles on the floor.

When it comes to all the wind-power schemes though, none of the examples I gave seem to break any laws of physics. Perhaps they would work, but would be inordinately expensive. Or perhaps they simply can't make a big enough difference to make larger-scale wind power viable. They're quantitative questions, and the only way to answer them will be through extensive computer modelling. But modelling is only as valid as the data it's fed and the methods chosen to perform the analyses, and it's easy to get silly answers by doing something wrong.

As a layperson I simply don't feel that I have any valid intuition about whether or not these windpower schemes are feasible and I'm not certain that anybody else truly knows either. However, I certainly can't dismiss them outright either. It seems to me that the best plan of action is to proceed gradually, without over-committing to any single power source.

[abgd]

The biggest Gobbler up of CO2 is plants and trees so why are not all these so called greens and invironmentalists not spending the huge revenues from green taxes on developing genetically modified plants designed to grow in deserts and saving the rainforests instead of filling the national debt coffers?Well, most 'greens' would quite like to save the rainforest though it's not so obvious that this would reduce greenhouse emissions hugely. As for greening the desert... Are you sure it would it work? Both in terms of managing to get plants to grow in desert conditions, and in terms of managing to grow sufficient plants sufficiently quickly to make a difference.

Read the following article on biochar, and also contemplate the train-wreck of a policy that biofuels have proved to be:

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Biochar: Is the hype justified? (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7924373.stm)

[west lakes]

Just ponder on this one.
As gas gets exhausted as eventually it may, it is estimated that domestic use of electricity in the UK will quadruple, never mind industrial use.
This will have a huge effect on generation requirements and the transmission and distribution networks.

[mad_jock]

There are pilot projects looking at shutting-down energy intensive industries for short periods (e.g. industrial refrigeration plants, aluminium smelting) to deal with peaks in demand

Its really not a good idea to cut the power on smelting and high temp processes for a wee while while the nation cooks there dinner. You can do all sorts of damage to the machinery/protective cladding by cooling it down for even 30 mins in an uncontrolled manner. And a controlled manner can take over 2 weeks to make sure the thermal gradients don't cause anything thing to go "bang" never mind the 4 weeks you would need to make sure you don't shag the material properties.

So I suspect that these industrys would have some big generators on standby to cover when they couldn't use the grid. So some big nasty inefficent CO2 belching generators will be getting used anyway.

Tidal has always seemed a great plan to me with some very interesting engineering problems to be over come.

[abgd]

Its really not a good idea to cut the power on smelting and high temp processes for a wee while while the nation cooks there dinner.

And yet it can be done:

certs.lbl.gov/pdf/dr-alcoa.pdf

[Pace]

Tidal has always seemed a great plan to me with some very interesting engineering problems to be over come.

The problem with Tidal is the damage they can cause to marine life! Seals, Dolphins and fish.
One area I do back Greenpeace is the massive damage we do to the marine world with fishing practices and the criminal way some of the beautiful creatures are killed just for a fin or gill as in Sharks and manta rays as well as beautiful whales.
Fishermen drag huge nets across the sea bottom destroying everything that lies in its path from corals to creatures just to fish one type.
We cannot loose sight of what constitutes protecting the environment by covering our beautiful countryside in huge man made contraptions or turning green fields into black solar panels in the name of green.
Neither can we stick everything out of sight in the sea without realising that that world needs equal protection.
While I am all for being efficient with the use of our energy supplies I still feel that Nuclear has to supply the majority.
For me Modern technology Nuclear located in the right areas is green energy.
The biggest problem is waste and dealing with that safely and securely maybe blasting it into space is not so far fetched? Ie Nuclear waste rockets.

Pace

[abgd]

Offshore wind farms are apparently fish-havens - not good places for trawlers. I don't know how tidal schemes compare - there are so many different types on the drawing board.

[Pace]

From the program I saw with a trial in Scotland they are placed in very fast tidal flows.
The tide turns at high speed some large turbine type blades below the surface sucking and chopping into bits anything unfortunate enough to enter its suction range.
Pretty big contraption.
In the program it referred to damage to Marine life.
Dont think I would go diving or swimming near one :E

The above water wind farms would create shelter for marine life below the surface as Sunken wrecks already create a haven for such life.

Pace

[Flying Binghi]

.

A little background...

France is the world's largest net exporter of electricity due to its very low cost of generation, and gains over EUR 3 billion per year from this.


France has been very active in developing nuclear technology. Reactors and fuel products and services are a major export.

Nuclear Power in France | French Nuclear Energy (http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf40.html)

I wonder where the greenpeace muppets get their money from ? ...wouldn't be some nuclear 'income' in the dole check eh..:hmm:





.

[martello]

rarely does one find such enlightenment :) on a prune forum

interested in the Scottish Army's views on wind power and King Alex ( failed labour party spin man as I understand - just found a more amenable audience in Scotland with too many Scots already over the border in politics- as I see it)

Anyway the consensus seems that something must be done - I mean what happens to electricity demand once we all start driving electric cars

two five pennyworths -
1) I have a friend who is bigwig at Cern and over a wine soaked tutorial on physics he said they would crack fusion but it is about 30- 50 years away - it currently works but y'need more energy in than y'get out but it offers a real green prospect - in the meantime his view was that fission plants are a necessary evil
2) another friend - citation driver invested in a tidal power project - apparently one big machine dropped in the Humber was able to power a third of the city - the money went in, they dropped the machine -- and lost it !! ha ha not very funny if you are an investor pioneer putting yer money where yer mount is. but seriously if a compact generator could work like that surely it would do less damage than chinese medicine harvesting sharks fins or whatever.

would mad jock or one of the other engineers care to enlighten us as to why tidal power has not been the X Factor darling of the media that wind has? and what are the engineering issues ? (there y'go that's respect for engineers )

[abgd]

I had a hydrodynamicist friend working on tidal and wave energy. Basically, it's hard. Everything gets rusty, barnacled and breaks in storms.

Funding... If you throw money at hard problems you have a chance of solving them. If you don't, you don't. Nobody will be making money from tidal schemes for a little while.

Then you need to get power back to the shore which is very expensive... It's interesting to see that offshore wind-farms are only just starting out, even though much of the technology was proven on land long ago. A big problem is simply getting maintenance people on and off the turbines.

[mad_jock]

Wind wasn't really a hard problem to crack.

They screwed up the bearings on the first one in Orkney, did a bit of vibrational analysis and basically everything was cracked.

Tidal is orders of magnitude harder to engineer.

One of the big things is getting the plant to stay in the same place.

The forces involved are hurenous because you dealing with a liquid.

But because there are huge forces there is loads of energy available but when things go wrong it tends to destroy everything.

It doesn't help matters though that there is so much crap floating around in sea water. Then you add in corrosion etc and you have quite a difficult engineering problem to crack.

The media used to take an interest in wave and tidal. Its just they have turned up so many times to get soaked while the boffins fanny around trying to get it to work. Then nearly always it sinks or floats off or just disappears when its rips its anchor lines.

[martello]

I was hoping for more Mad J
especially 'bout King Alex :-)
but seriously do I take it that it's really not an insoluble engineering problem - counter intuitive thinking here - I mean accepting that the engineering is a mite more difficult (for that read orders of magnitude) then the deep sea oil exploration has handled if not sorted getting things to stay where they are and corrosion and forces so therefore it is an economic issue - the returns are there for oil but not for tidal and - not that I know - but I suspect that incentives for wind power are easier to give and give quicker returns - so are you saying tidal could be cracked with the right incentives but these would make the wind power sweeteners look like a fraction of a T Dan Smith expense account (points for all who got the historicals there) it's about short termism?
has anyone got tidal power working well anywhere in the world ?
after all tidal is a lot more reliable than wind
reminds me of the story about an engineer, a chemist and an economist washed up on a desert island .......'nuther glass of wine and I'll tell you

[Pace]

You could put a mini generator in every loo so that when you pulled the chain all that water does not go to waste :{
Really I think the solution has to be safer Nuclear energy, much more control over the plant location and a better way even at cost of getting rid of the nasty stuff it produces.
I would ban visually polluting wind farms accept offshore windfarms and forget tidal as we have to protect our marine life!

Pace

[martello]

used to be a sailor and many former colleagues who still sail are stalwartly opposed to offshore wind and for tidal !!
now that idea of a mini generator in every loo !!! I feel a prospectus coming on

[Stephen Furner]

Is the issue here really one of power generation? There is a lot of very conventional potential geothermal (e.g. Iceland) or potential hydroelectric (e.g. Norway) or potential wind power (e.g. Dogger Bank) available this is before even considering options such as photovoltaic arrays or wave power. The challenge here could just be a simpler a more technically tractable problem of building a high capacity power grid. Load balancing across the multiple sources of generation and sources of demand within a large multinational grid could smooth out the differences in generation availability.

High voltage DC transmission has been around since the 1930s for long distance power transmission. According to Wikipedia the current longest power transmission line using this technology is a “2,071 km (1,287 mi) 6400 MW link connecting the Xiangjiaba Dam to Shanghai” This technology also works well over subsea cables so is not restricted to being used on the land. Distance of transmission is not going to be a significant technical problem for say bringing Norwegian hydropower across the North Sea to the UK.

The problem from this perspective is not primarily a technical one but one primarily of the politics and the commercial realities in getting multinational network infrastructure built. There’s not a good track record around the world on this. Cars still need to be made so the steering wheel can go either side and only recently – well within my living memory – has it been possible to use the same mobile phone in more than one country. Oh and did I mention the problem of plugging in electrical items such as hairdryers, PCs and other personal items when travelling!!

If it’s not possible to get the international co-operation needed for a large enough multinational power grid, and nuclear power generation still needs to be part of a national energy mix, then it seems to me that it's time to move on from plutonium and start using the thorium fuel cycle.

[abgd]

Why are sailors against offshore windfarms? Do you mean recreational sailors, or professional?

Tidal power has worked in places like France, where there is a barrage accross the Rance akin to the one that has been mooted over the river Severn. I think the difference here is that we've been talking about different types of tidal generator - more akin to underwater wind turbines.

Is the marine life problem so insoluble? I would have thought that some carefully placed nets could stop the basking sharks from being sliced and diced. I'd be interested to hear more about it but didn't find much online (not that I looked hard so far).

There used to be a lot of fuss about wind turbines hitting birds, but I understand it's not as big an issue as was originally feared.

[mad_jock]

Anything which goes into a net dies unfortunately.

The French one has the advantage of a huge pool behind it and relatively small inlet. The severn one is going to be a collosal barrier.

There are actually plenty of places in Scotland with the same topography but unfortunatey unless you want to power sheep sheds they are hundreds of miles away from the demand.

Then there is the UK planning permission side of things not to mention that the queen owns all the sea bottom. Then building in high currents is an utter bitch as proved by the thames barrier.


Sailors are anti anything they may bang into. They know its only a matter of time before something hits it. Then they are opposed to controlled waters as much as pilots are with restricted airspace. And the big boys hate anything which slows there access to a port and you would need lock gates in the severn.

[riverrock83]

Indeed - this is one of the few successful underwater turbines in the UK:
SeaGen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaGen)
BBC News - Strangford Lough generator given all-clear (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-16595752)

Note - no environmental impact.
The location at the mouth of Strangford Lough is pretty much perfect for it though.

[skwinty]

The walls of a nuclear containment building are able to withstand a commercial airliner crashing into them.

See link to video of a phantom jet hitting a section of wall at 800km/h.

Note wing tips continuing on their path past the wall. The wall was not breeched in this demonstration.


Jet crash into wall - YouTube

[BackPacker]

I have been to Kalkar, the never-commissioned nuclear plant near the German/Dutch border, now a theme park.

All I can say is that the walls of the containment vessel are indeed substantial, and in fact there is a number of layers between the outside air and the reactor core.

Having said that, the incident in Japan showed us that you can have a serious nuclear accident even when the walls of the containment vessel are not breached at all. There is a lot of equipment located outside the containment wall, yet vital for the well-being of the plant.

I wonder if a significant fire, say resulting from a 9/11-like event, outside the containment wall and raging for, say, 24 hours, has ever been modeled. Not just on the structural integrity of the containment wall, but also on electricity feed for the cooling systems, the cooling systems themselves, the operators and so forth. After all, on 9/11 it was not the impact that brought the towers down, but the resulting fire.

[mad_jock]

There are several shields before you get near the kettle.

First one is a enviroment shield which contains all the farts etc that the engineers put out.

Then you have the containment shield which is the bit you normally see folk walking on and lots of holes marked out on.

Then you have the core with its shield as well. Which normal mortals never gets to see. A select few get to go in with an impact hardness tester and spend 10 mins twice in thier life with lead underpants checking how much neutron hardening has been occuring to see if the physics boys have ****** up again.

[gasax]

Moddern reactor designs are tolerant to Backpacker's scenarios. They are designed that on loss of the 'supporting systems' they simply slowly shutdown.

This was also a design feature of the Advance Gas Reactors built in the UK - convection was enough to keep them from going critical.

The water cooled designs from the 60s are much more problematic and often need a massive dump of water or continued cooling. But no one - apart from perhaps the Russians, North Koreans and Iranians, would even think of building that type of reactor.

There is more rubbish spouted about the risks of nuclear power than there is from 'Wee Eck' and the SNP about how Scotland will e energy sufficent from windmills. A modern nuclear plant is reliable (which is really useful on a winter's day), safe and produces precious waste. A windmill relies upon an unreliable resource and is only cost effective if the grotesque subsidy is paid. Even better there is now some evidence that windmills alter the local climate...........

[Pace]

Gasax

Totally agree! trouble is there are too many vested interests at play too many big buck deals on windfarms and all in the name of "Green".
If the Scots want to ruin their beautiful countryside turning the whole area into one giant windfarm ??? :ugh: Just because there is a lot of wind up there! ;)

Location of Nuclear plants should be worldwide approved and agreed and not placed in potential unstable zones like Japan.

Pace

[mad_jock]

The modern ones use water as the moderator, if it goes next to nothing reacts because things are wazzing around to fast and the reaction dies.

The bench mark i think is under 5 seconds from SCRAM to less than 90% reaction rate.

And once you design a truely civilian energy reactor and they don't have to fanny around with the flux things become a whole heap easier and safer apparently.

The ESBWR has alot going for it, the major one being it doesn't breed.
It can also be run in a self cooling convective mode so you don't have to worry about keeping any pumps running, you just have to top up the coolant tanks which its pretty easy to be automatic without requiring power on site

Its not the most effecient though. And the power generation turbines become contaminated.

[Pace]

MadJock

You are a wealth of information :ok:
Thank God EASA or the FAA dont regulate the power industry

Pace

[abgd]

Totally agree! trouble is there are too many vested interests at play too many big buck deals on windfarms and all in the name of "Green".And the oil and nuclear industries have none?

Regarding nuclear security... The reactors may be well protected, but if they rely on passive cooling by large tanks of water above the reactor, are these tanks built to equally high standards or could you cause a nuclear disaster by flying your airliner into the pools or fuel storage facilities?

[Pace]

abdg

It is the veil of "green" a pretense used by many government and industry to make a lot of money.
Nuclear somehow does not fit that veil of Green but maybe it should?

Pace

[abgd]

I've always seen nuclear as being 'green' as in friendly-to-nature. It's the 'friendly-to-humans' side of things where it has historically been found wanting, which is why I would prefer to see wind/solar/tidal if they're truly practicable, and nuclear if they're not.

[mad_jock]

They all have issues, production "greeness" being a big one ie how much CO2 do you produce making the things and how much footprint do place on the enviroment using them per Unit of energy produced. And also how much it would cost to get the energy where it is required and how much transmission drop do you get.

The nuclear regulation is a different beast to what it was 20 years ago or even 50 when the current generation of Nukes were being designed.

The engineers and operators really did take the piss in the past mainly because they were mostly goverment and could also use the national defense excuse. In someways the issues we have today are mainly legacy issues due to this piss taking. There was also alot of none engineers with technical input. Its always an issue if the highly intelligent physics boys don't get some one with a bit of common sense making sure they don't do something daft in the name of science.

There are rather large tracks of land in the US and russia which are basically off limits to humans for a very long time due to enriching and processing contamination. In the UK we also have our issues in various installations and sites which all date back to the same period of lack of regulation or simply ignoring what regulation there was purely for military/national security excuses.

As for Scotland and Nuclear. To be honest I think we have 4 online at the moment which produce over 50% of our energy Torness and Hunterston B has two . But we do export something like 20-25% of total production onto the national grid. The nuclear share is slightly screwed because its a really bad idea to vary the energy production rate in these things so they tend to leave it set and other sources which are more responsive get varied for consumption load.

The current plan of doing away with them is a bit far fetched to be honest. I wouldn't say an expansion in the number of sites is required just a replacement of the ones we have have on the current sites in the borders with modern reactors which can't breed. They can look after GLA and EDI and can export south and the rest of the hydro etc can do the rest of scotland. This next batch of reactors your looking at a 100 years operating by which point hopefully Fusion should be up and running.

O and this is the site for nuclear incidents in the UK.

Quarterly statement of nuclear incidents at nuclear install.... (http://www.hse.gov.uk/nuclear/quarterly-stat/)

Also as well you wouldn't believe how **** the material properties were of the metal that were used in the magnox era of reactor production. Especially the American steel. I tried to get some metal for test pieces for some cracking issues and you just couldn't get it with such low UTS or plastic yield point. Speaking to the steel production guys they said they couldn't even make it that poor these days with the current plant in Europe and Japan. The worst stuff you could get was from the US old stock from 20 years ago. But even that was 10-20% better than what was used.

The first source of metal provided samples when I asked for them for the grade used and when tested it out performed the metal used by 165%. It was then I realised it didn't matter what grade you ordered you actually got the "best" stuff but with a different cert with a lower grade on it. All prefectly legal as it was better than the required grade but utterly useless for what I wanted.

The reactors are loaded with tensile and impact test pieces when they are built before going critical. Then every so often test pieces are pulled out and tested to get the current state of the material properties of the metal in the reactor. It changes over time and flux exposure due to neutron creep and hardening. Its one of the reasons why some reactors are now limited to 60-70% output.