Huge Ivanpah solar power plant, owned by Google and Oakland Opens

[The Von Matrices]

So you're saying a nuclear power plant can be made perfectly safe?

There is no safe reactor. There can always be a bigger wave or a bigger earthquake.

Shouldn't have to explain that. If there is an alternative, we need to make it work.

Nothing is perfectly safe. You need to calculate risk and determine what is acceptable; everything is a trade off. Is the ridiculously low chance of a nuclear leak acceptable? In a perfect world, no. But compared to spending 10x that cost to build base load renewable plants (not to mention land use issues) or building fossil plants that contribute to air pollution and global warming, I would say it was.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

you repeat the officials speech .... that has as much lies as the official-11-september one .
here in france , we reacted after all lies we had heard with the nuclear-cloud of chernobyl : according to chirac-the-cocksucker , it stopped itself at our frontiers ....
so no restriction on anything like being outside or on food and plants , mushrooms ...
same like the air in NY days after 11/9 , no masks was needed because of gwbush orders ....that s why all policemen and fire brigade are all dead of cancers...same happened to some french .
so we have a "greenpeace" for nuclear : crirad : http://www.criirad.org/index.html
some pages are translated : look right top : http://www.criirad.org/english/presentation.html
fuskushima report is in french , english and japanese : http://www.criirad.org/actualites/dossier2011/japon_bis/en_anglais/english.html

France is running BWR and PWR too. They're not IFRs and that's what we need to be building everywhere.

FYI, France has the lowest CO2 emissions of industrialized nations because of their commitment to nuclear. The places where CO2 emissions are climbing, they aren't building new nuclear reactors (e.g. China, Germany, USA).

we can always put the nuclear waste onto a rocket and chuck it away into space.

a) That's ridiculously expensive.
b) Why do that when we've only extracted 0.5% of the fission power out of it? This is why IFRs are so important: they literally hit three birds with one stone (dispose of nuclear waste, produce grid power, produce power for deep space satellites).

one thing... how are they gonna keep the reflectors clean XD

Maintenance workers. Lots of maintenance workers.

...

You do realize that Chernobyl was a terrible design, right? It wasn't used outside of the USSR.

So you're saying a nuclear power plant can be made perfectly safe?

YES!

There is no safe reactor. There can always be a bigger wave or a bigger earthquake.

IFRs shut themselves down in five minutes without any human intervention (uses chemistry and physics). In earthquake prone areas, they can and should be built on shock absorbers.

 

[PopcornMachine]

Nothing is perfectly safe. You need to calculate risk and determine what is acceptable; everything is a trade off. Is the ridiculously low chance of a nuclear leak acceptable? In a perfect world, no. But compared to spending 10x that cost to build base load renewable plants (not to mention land use issues) or building fossil plants that contribute to air pollution and global warming, I would say it was.

So costs are never going to go down and a bunch of mirrors and a steam generator present the same risk as a reactor.

Thanks for clearing that up.

This is why these discussions never end. People ignore information to make a point. Or at least pretend they made a point.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Costs do not go down with solar power plants. Heliostats are expensive and require replacement and constant cleaning. The steam turbines themselves also have to replaced eventually. Solar power plants undeniably destroy more habitat than nuclear power plants do. Environmentalists have already pointed out that the Ivanpah dry lake bed was established to protect an endangered turtle and they're destroying its habitat by building these monstrosities.

Wild life didn't leave Pripyat when humans did. I believe there has been no documentation of mutations around Pripyat either in wild life.

For the record: only about 5000 people have ever died directly due to radiation exposure.

 

[PopcornMachine]

5000 dead people are ok. Again, can't thank you enough for clearing that up.

I guess I didn't know any of them either.

 

[The Von Matrices]

So costs are never going to go down and a bunch of mirrors and a steam generator present the same risk as a reactor.

Thanks for clearing that up.

This is why these discussions never end. People ignore information to make a point. Or at least pretend they made a point.

5000 dead people are ok. Again, can't thank you enough for clearing that up.

I guess I didn't know any of them either.

You are taking an overly simplistic view of the topic. All decisions need to be analyzed by the expected value rather than solely on the consequences of the most catastrophic failure. The best decision is the one with the greatest expected value. As difficult as it might be for you to accept, human lives can easily be factored into this equation. When designing safety systems, there has to be an acceptable risk of human injury or otherwise the system's cost is infinite.

Every day we put our own lives into situations (like driving a car) where our chance of death is much greater than zero. Why do we do it? Because the chance is low enough that the benefit (getting to a location quicker) outweighs the minuscule chance of dying or getting injured. That is a positive expected value.

My point is not that nuclear power is the best option for electricity production; it is that its risk needs to be put into perspective. Having a minuscule chance of a catastrophic disaster can be a better scenario than a larger chance of a major failure.

 

[buildzoid]

So you're saying a nuclear power plant can be made perfectly safe?
There is no safe reactor. There can always be a bigger wave or a bigger earthquake.
Shouldn't have to explain that. If there is an alternative, we need to make it work.

Not perfectly safe but very very close to perfect because a semi controlled fission reaction can be terminated very quickly in many ways. The Chernobyl reactor almost turned itself off by a natural processes when the reactor generated so much Xenon 135 that it dropped bellow 1% of operating power but humans intervened to make sure that it didn't shut down completely and screwed up the reactor's automatic shutdown system.

Also nuclear power plants can run on fuels other than Uranium that are less dangerous and still generate way more power than an equally sized solar array.
Now don't get me wrong I don't believe that nuclear power is the ultimate solution but as of right now it's the best we have. Instead of building huge solar arrays that are 20-30% efficient and unreliable to the point of being useless at night we should be using the money to research ways to achieve 75+% efficiency and some way to keep the power running at night. There is no point building a larger version of something that we know is not as good as it could be.

For example if you wanted to run the US(317,000,000 people) during the day entirely on solar plants like this one running at peak power you would need 2,265 of them that's over 10,000 square miles. That's to run during the day so if you also wanted nighttime power you would need 4,530 of them so that half of them can charge the accumulators that's over 22,000 square miles. Now take in to account that there is no way in hell that they would all be producing 400MW constantly so lets say the would do 200MW each and oh look 45,000 square miles are being used for solar power plants. Now please note that my calculation doesn't account for land taken up by the accumulators. Also this crazy 45,000 square mile solar power plant setup would cost about 20 trillion dollars excluding the costs of accumulators for nighttime power.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Ohio is 44,825 sq mi. Let's not forget that excluding the desert, most areas that are suitable for large solar power stations are also great farming land. Sacrificing farm land in the name of power generation is counter-productive.

 

[The Von Matrices]

For example if you wanted to run the US(317,000,000 people) during the day entirely on solar plants like this one running at peak power you would need 2,265 of them that's over 10,000 square miles. That's to run during the day so if you also wanted nighttime power you would need 4,530 of them so that half of them can charge the accumulators that's over 22,000 square miles. Now take in to account that there is no way in hell that they would all be producing 400MW constantly so lets say the would do 200MW each and oh look 45,000 square miles are being used for solar power plants. Now please note that my calculation doesn't account for land taken up by the accumulators. Also this crazy 45,000 square mile solar power plant setup would cost about 20 trillion dollars excluding the costs of accumulators for nighttime power.

Ohio is 44,825 sq mi. Let's not forget that excluding the desert, most areas that are suitable for large solar power stations are also great farming land. Sacrificing farm land in the name of power generation is counter-productive.

I'm sure you'll agree that the 100% solar example is completely ridiculous; not even PopcornMachine suggested that. I've never heard anyone suggest that a 100% solar electricity supply is achievable. You can put wind turbines on farms with minimal impact to land use and use the inedible cellulose the farms generate as an energy source,

 

[PopcornMachine]

I'm being simplistic?

If you don't have to take a risk, if there's another way, why not try to find it and make it work?

You're right it is simple. Why do so many people have trouble grasping the simple?

 

[FordGT90Concept]

The only option better than fission IFR is fusion reactors. Fusion reactors likely can't be started without enormous power draw and IFRs could provide that. There are huge risks associated with fusion but it must be done.

Remember, it takes a fission explosion to start a fusion reaction in hydrogen bombs. We've known this since the 1950s.

 

[buildzoid]

I'm sure you'll agree that the 100% solar example is completely ridiculous; not even PopcornMachine suggested that. I've never heard anyone suggest that a 100% solar electricity supply is achievable. You can put wind turbines on farms with minimal impact to land use and use the inedible cellulose the farms generate as an energy source,

I'm fully aware it's ridiculous but the fact remains that coal and gas plants have got to go and solar is definitely not capable of replacing them all so we have to go more nuclear than solar.

 

[The Von Matrices]

I'm being simplistic?

If you don't have to take a risk, if there's another way, why not try to find it and make it work?

You're right it is simple. Why do so many people have trouble grasping the simple?

The issue with your reasoning is that you are continually discounting opportunity costs. In a world of finite resources, I argue that there are much better ways to allocate them.

You can dedicate resources toward finding a way to make a better solar plant. Or, you can accept the very low risk that a nuclear power plant would meltdown and instead allocate resources toward medicine. I can assure you that medical research would save many more lives than would ever be killed by that nuclear plant.

 

[wesley_farkenharder]

Wild life didn't leave Pripyat when humans did. I believe there has been no documentation of mutations around Pripyat either in wild life.

Um, didn't you see the wonderfully done documentary called "The Chernobyl Diaries?"

But to the point, I'm 100% for any source of energy that won't give people cancer. Cancer sucks.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

That's a horror film--a work of fiction. It was filmed in Hungary and Serbia, not Ukraine where most of the fallout landed (especially Pripyat). Considering the poor reviews, I'd say it isn't even worth watching.

There were two documentaries filmed in Pripyat in 2008--one for an HBO short. Pripyat is not safe because the buildings are unstable but it is safe from a radiation perspective.

5000 dead people are ok. Again, can't thank you enough for clearing that up.

I guess I didn't know any of them either.

What you're drinking is more likely to kill you. It's a tiny price to pay considering it is much better for the environment than coal and it can address increasing energy demands where "green" reasonably can't. Even countries that milk the "green" cow for all it is worth haven't been able to derive their grid power from much more than 20%. Nuclear (specifically IFRs) are the best answer humanity has to the other 80%.

Oh and the number I gave (5000) is for generations of people. As of 2008, Chernobyl incident only has 28 confirmed deaths due to acute radiation syndrome (ARS). Have this food for thought:

http://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/2008/11-80076_Report_2008_Annex_D.pdf

There appears at present to be no persuasive evidence any measurable increased incidence of all cancers combined or breast cancer alone among the general populations of the Russian Federation and Ukraine. There also appears to be no pattern of increased incidence of solid cancers among the inhabitants of the areas deemed contaminated compared to the inhabitants of the areas deemed uncontaminated, and no difference in the trends with time for areas with different levels of radioactive deposition.

Everyone that got a lethal dose of radiation was more or less in or right next to the facility during and immediately after the explosion. They received in excess of 6 Gy of radiation. See page 14 (18) of the above link for a breakdown. If you don't die from radiation exposure within a year, odds are, you're not. Virtually all that did had skin damage from beta radiation. Only 15 deaths from thyroid cancers occurred out 6000 (as of 2005) and this was preventable--USSR didn't have the iodine available to prevent it at the time of the incident.

The report says in conclusion:

From this annex based on 20 years of studies and from the previous UNSCEAR reports [U3, U7], it can be concluded that although those exposed to radioiodine as children or adolescents and the emergency and recovery operation workers who received high doses are at increased risk of radiation-induced effects, the vast majority of the population need not live in fear of serious health consequences from the Chernobyl accident. (This conclusion is consistent with that of UNSCEAR 2000 Report [U3]).

The worst nuclear accident in human history and there's a very short list of people who are in actual danger or have died from it. And just because someone may count themselves among those numbers doesn't mean they'll die because of it. It's merely a risk factor that can't be absolutely ruled out yet because most of these people are still alive and healthy.

 

[newtekie1]

Chernobyl was a snowballing of terrible decision making. Turning of safety systems conducting test a 1/3 of required power. Setting the coolant flow way too high. The turning off of the automated reactor shutdown systems. Basically Chernobyl was the result of doing the exact opposite of what you should be doing when trying to run a nuclear power plant safely.

People over exaggerate how bad Chernobyl really was. The other reactors at Chernobyl continued to run for over a decade after the accident. The disaster happened in 1986 in reactor 4. The other 3 reactors continued to run until reactor 2 was taken offline due to a fire. Reactors 1 and 3 continued to run until 1996 when reactor 1 was shut down, and reactor 3 continued to run until 2000!

At this point, spending the money on IFRs is definitely money way better spent than spending it on Solar. IFRs have proven to be extremely safe, by design they are basically meltdown proof. Not to mention the waste actually has extrmely low levels of radiation and most experts say that simple sea water uranium extraction would be enough to provide enough fuel to satisfy our energy needs indefinitely.

Also, the prototype IFR was brought online in 1964, and cost about $233 Million in todays money. It was a very small reactor designed only to test the theory. It still managed to produce 20MW of electricty 24/7/365 for 30 Years!

As for this solar project, everyone seems to make a big deal about Google being involved, but no one seems to want to mention the fact that they actually pulled out of the project financially in 2011 because they said this type of solar power wasn't economically viable. Interesting...

Also, while the maximum output of this solar array is 400MW, the expected average output is only 126MW. For the money they spent on this thing they could have built 10 IFR reactors, easily outputting close to double the electrical power and they wouldn't need 5 square miles of desert.

If people are really worried about nuclear contamination caused by nuclear reactors, even though IFRs make it basically impossible, what is the argument against putting them out in the Nevada desert, in the areas that are already massively contaminated from all the nuclear tests conducted in the 60s? There are 1,300 square miles of desert in Nevada designated as the Nuclear test site, put the nuclear reactors there. There is very little chance of earthquake, and pretty much 0 chance of tsunami or a tornado strong enough to cause any damage.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Google contributed very little. US taxpayers are footing 3/4 of the bill (loan guarantee) and the remaining 1/4 is on NRG Energy and BrightSource Energy. I guarantee you that if taxpayers weren't eating 3/4 of the bill, this project wouldn't have left concept phase. It makes about as much sense as buying a brush for a hairless cat.

If people are really worried about nuclear contamination caused by nuclear reactors, even though IFRs make it basically impossible, what is the argument against putting them out in the Nevada desert, in the areas that are already massively contaminated from all the nuclear tests conducted in the 60s? There are 1,300 square miles of desert in Nevada designated as the Nuclear test site, put the nuclear reactors there. There is very little chance of earthquake, and pretty much 0 chance of tsunami or a tornado strong enough to cause any damage.

Water. You need a lot of water to make steam but...this solar power plant does too so lose-lose for desert projects.

Also, high-skilled labor. People that run a nuclear power plant expect good accommodations which usually means close to a city and a relatively short commute (Pripyat was created principally to run the nuclear power station). Solar power plants don't require high-skilled labor (maybe one guy that checks on it once a month) so it doesn't matter where they put it.

 

[jcgeny]

....

For the record: only about 5000 people have ever died directly due to radiation exposure.

i wonder where he learnt that numbers....of course in america
if you had really worked at school [to get a rock solid brain...] you would remember the nuclear bombing of japan :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
Casualties and losses
20 U.S., Dutch, British prisoners of war killed
90,000–166,000 killed in Hiroshima
60,000–80,000 killed in Nagasaki
Total: 150,000–246,000+ killed

these deads are only the first with enriched uranium ...but by now and starting with cia_bush [vice-president] , they also kill arabs "for" [petrol of] Irak ....with depleted uranium HURRAH
they use it everywhere on everything solid , like tanks ...for example .
instead of keeping it at home , the nuclear waste from usa are like dog$'$hit in the desert...but they are contaminated and pollutants of the air and water .
its like the napalm in Asia , they use weapons that kill during thousands years .

i wonder if i should quote the minister of the usa FOR EUROPE , that was saying to his ambassador in Ukraine
...............................................................................................FUCK EUROPE , in a scrambled phone call....that some people were able to record and post on youtube .
viva usa.gov and believe-it [if you want to kill&die YOUNG]

 

[newtekie1]

Water. You need a lot of water to make steam but...this solar power plant does too so lose-lose for desert projects. The fact they're willing to truck the water out tells me they don Also, high-skilled labor. People that run a nuclear power plant expect good accommodations which usually means close to a city and a relatively short commute (Pripyat was created principally to run the nuclear power station). Solar power plants don't require high-skilled labor (maybe one guy that checks on it once a month) so it doesn't matter where they put it.

True, but I think a system similar to Area51 could be implement to ferry works to and from the plant. Nice living accommodations could be built at the plant to house the workers when they are on shift days, 3-4 days at a time. A small airport set up at the plant as well, and planes used to ferry workers from Las Vegas.

And it was my understanding, but maybe I'm wrong, that IFRs don't require as many people on staff to run. I seem to remember reading about the EBR-II reactor being manned at times by only 3 people in the control room.

I'm talking about putting IFRs out in the desert, not traditional nuclear power plants, and I'm really only saying put them there to shut up the people saying "OMG, I don't want a big scary nuclear reactor in my backyard."

Water would likely be an issue, but I would think they could pump it up from Lake Mead. They are already pumping water from Lake Mead as far away as Utah. Of course there is concerns of Lake Mead drying up too, so who knows. But the great thing about steam is that after you use it, you can re-condense it and re-use it. Of course there is always some loss that has to be replenished, but it isn't as big of an amount as many might think. And, even if they couldn't pump up water from Lake Mead, there is a natural aquifer under the test site, and it can be reached by drilling. We know this because we did tests with nuclear weapons below the water table to see what affects it had on the water. So wells could be drilled and the water from the aquifer used. And the water is already contaminated to hell with radiation thanks to the nuclear testing, so no worries there either.

 

[The Von Matrices]

Water would likely be an issue, but I would think they could pump it up from Lake Mead. They are already pumping water from Lake Mead as far away as Utah. Of course there is concerns of Lake Mead drying up too, so who knows. But the great thing about steam is that after you use it, you can re-condense it and re-use it. Of course there is always some loss that has to be replenished, but it isn't as big of an amount as many might think. And, even if they couldn't pump up water from Lake Mead, there is a natural aquifer under the test site, and it can be reached by drilling. We know this because we did tests with nuclear weapons below the water table to see what affects it had on the water. So wells could be drilled and the water from the aquifer used. And the water is already contaminated to hell with radiation thanks to the nuclear testing, so no worries there either.

Or you just design a plant like the Palo Verde station.

The Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant is located in the Arizona desert, and is the only large nuclear power plant in the world that is not located near a large body of water. The power plant evaporates the water from the treated sewage from several nearby cities and towns to provide the cooling of the steam that it produces.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

i wonder where he learnt that numbers....of course in america
if you had really worked at school [to get a rock solid brain...] you would remember the nuclear bombing of japan :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
Casualties and losses
20 U.S., Dutch, British prisoners of war killed
90,000–166,000 killed in Hiroshima
60,000–80,000 killed in Nagasaki
Total: 150,000–246,000+ killed

Uh huh. With that logic, iron (and derivatives) has killed billions of people. Better pitch your computer because it has iron in it. It might just kill you with its...metal-ness-ity.

True, but I think a system similar to Area51 could be implement to ferry works to and from the plant. Nice living accommodations could be built at the plant to house the workers when they are on shift days, 3-4 days at a time. A small airport set up at the plant as well, and planes used to ferry workers from Las Vegas.

Groom Lake has thousands of employees and there is literally a dedicated airline to shuttle them too and from Las Vegas as well as scheduled buses. There's nuclear power plants upwind from dozens of cities already and they haven't caused problems. There's no reason to put them out in the middle when their only real threat (talking BR and IFR here) is psychological.

And it was my understanding, but maybe I'm wrong, that IFRs don't require as many people on staff to run. I seem to remember reading about the EBR-II reactor being manned at times by only 3 people in the control room.

They require more than BWR and PWR because they also reprocess spent uranium. They don't need many people controlling it but they still require a lot of people to inspect and maintain equipment. For sure the number is under 100 if not under 50. It depends on how many reactors and how large those reactors are too.

I'm talking about putting IFRs out in the desert, not traditional nuclear power plants, and I'm really only saying put them there to shut up the people saying "OMG, I don't want a big scary nuclear reactor in my backyard."

Another problem with deserts is that they aren't close to population centers. The further the station is from the customer, the more electricity is lost in transmission.

I, for one, would welcome an IFR in my backyard.

Or you just design a plant like the Palo Verde station.

I knew about Palo Verde but never realized it operated off of treated waste. Problem is, Ivanpah doesn't have cities to draw off of either. The closet city is 40 miles away (Las Vegas) and I would be more concerned about transporting waste that far than the power station. They'd have to treat it in Las Vegas before sending it and...if that were the case, I think they'd rather keep it to themselves.

 

[jcgeny]

Uh huh. With that logic, iron (and derivatives) has killed billions of people. Better pitch your computer because it has iron in it. It might just kill you with its...metal-ness-ity......

talking about metal-ness to kill , yes , once again thanks to FORD and usa , that kills and wounds a lot every years :

Worldwide it was estimated in 2004 that 1.2 million people were killed (2.2% of all deaths) and 50 million more were injured in motor vehicle collisions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision

tell me right word like metal-ness-ity..... to describe that the 200k of atomic-bombs are 20 times your first "calculation"
and tell me if few seconds to kill them is a world record or not and if there is some computers able to kill so fast

 

[FordGT90Concept]

This might surprise you but everyone is going to die one way or another. Acute radiation syndrome and thyroid cancer (assuming you didn't have access to iodine-131) are so rare, CDC doesn't even track them! Gee, I wonder why...maybe it is because there hasn't been a single death in the USA attributed to radiation exposure? Oh, and by the way, USA has about 1/4 of the world's nuclear power plants.


The fuel used in nuclear reactors of all types can't explode like a fission weapon. The explosion at Chernobyl NPP, like all meltdown explosions, was caused by the hot uranium coming into contact with much cooler water turning the water into steam violently. The uranium used in reactors isn't pure enough (pure being U-235) to be weaponized.

If you're so concerned about nuclear weapons, you should embrace nuclear power because decommissioned nuclear weapons have their U-235 removed, diluted with U-238 (96%+ of uranium found naturally is U-238) and then used as fuel. It's win-win.

 

[BiggieShady]

Another problem with deserts is that they aren't close to population centers. The further the station is from the customer, the more electricity is lost in transmission.

There is 360 sunny days per year in average desert. Deserts have huge potential if network could be as low maintenance as wind turbines where you have long period of uninterrupted operation before servicing. For that they should develop self-cleaning collectors - there is no moisture in the desert so there is only dust to be blown or swept from the collectors. That would help mitigate maintenance issues from remote location.
About electricity transfer, when you convert direct current from the collectors into high voltage alternating current, energy is not that much lost on distant transfers (thank you Tesla). Granted you need a huge network of collectors for that.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

The steam turbines this plant uses run generators that produce AC, not DC. Even so, you're still losing energy as heat through the wires. The closer the generator is to the customer, the more efficient the system.

FYI, only about 35% of the energy produced in the USA (excepting Texas grid which is closer to 60%) is actually used. The rest is lost/wasted.