Wind-farms and power generation

Reading this article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7135299.stm

The idea, for NZ, sparked some ideas. Surely we could build some large wind-farms out at sea... big clusters of them. We have the ideal environment for wind-power... why don't we even put them in areas where foreign ships are known to fish illegally. Bet the ships would steer well clear of a couple of hundred wind turbines.

Not to mention the surveillance, rescue, scientific research and other sorts of activities which could be greatly aided by the presence of permanent structures.

Just thinking of the distant future... Blade Runner-esque structures in the sea - visible from space - emitting zero pollution and causing near aero environmental harm. Where's the harm in aiming for this? Why are they being planned now?

R

Typo.. Meant: "near zero environmental harm"

R

how does this equate with sea turbines or whatever they are called? Timeframe wise

Thing is with these sorts of things there will always be some environmental impact - wind turbines at sea could create a whole new eco system around them (possibly a positive outcome) which will anger someone, that is a given

cost could be a mitigating factor, you don't have to go far before that water gets deep

would be good to see this sort of thing being debated now - instead of our current obsdession with talking nuclear options whenever this sort of thing comes up

boy do I have an investment for you Rob

NZ Windfarms transferred onto the main NZ Stock Exchange board during 2007 currently trading at 1.13

Opened its first windfarm - Te Rere Hau near
Palmerston North - during the financial year ended 30 June 2007
currently running with only 5 turbines but aiming for 97 , ,....
As an indication of just how windy the Te Rere Hau Wind Farm is, the turbines operated for 86percent of the time, (an average 20 out of every 24 hours), with much of time when no generation occurred being due to very high winds, rather than a lack of wind.

A few of the major issues with offshore wind farms are a) maintanance is going to be rediculously expensive, and imagine the damage one big storm would do.. b) your going to lose a shit load of your generated electricity just from the distance its going to be transported.

Ok if the only options were land based or offshore wind turbines I'd say offshore. I dont understand why, when we live in one of the most beautiful coutries in the world, when people travel thousands of miles to gaze at our amazing scenery we're so eager to go and put hideous wind turbines all over the country side.

Go nuclear and solve all your problems with one easy clean green plant.

Haha BD that makes me laugh you saying we're obsessed with nuclear power, seems your more obsessed with being anti-nuclear power. Good debate needs to look at all the options, not just the ones that you like. Nuclear power is an option.

nuclear is a flawed option considering our other options, they are the best option for many other countires, this is a given - but we have other options and better options I believe when will the pro nukes mob get this very simple fact?

Some of NZ is beautiful and some of our countryside is gawdamn ugly - much like many other countires

we are not unique in our beauty, we are in our distance from major destinations



(please: yaksha and co fuck off with ya unique arguments)

How is nuclear a flawed option exactly? I know you are going to probably pull out the old 'NZ is such a seismicly active country' and the tired 'what about Chernobyl' arguments but they have both been dealt with before so I wont go down that track.

Given the choice between a combination of wind farms (visual pollution), tidal and wave energy production (destruction of ecosystems plus visual pollution), and burning of fossil fuels (we all know what sort of pollution that is) or nuclear, I know which one I would choose for NZ

are you serious or just yanking my chain? I did a bit of research on sustainable energy not too long ago and wouldn't mind hearing others opinions

So land based wind costs twice as much as our current generation (and more than nuclear) and is un-reliable.

I would presume that water based generation is even more expensive.

Apparently its ok for up to 20% of the total countries production without major backup generation (ie other power supplies usually have more than 20% buffer BUT if we get a long term drought that affects our hydro generation and a short term wind problem what do we do?

That's from the ELECTRICITY COMMISSIONER...

It's not viable from a power generation POV up front, let alone the costs and environmental impacts of attempting to dispose of the waste. Give it up.

When did he write that?

I believe sydney has a nuclear power plant, there are also many small nuclear power plant option - ones designed for small towns - they run for 10/20 years and then replaced/shipped off for processing.

Also - going off the historical cost is misleading when its the future cost of power that is issue.

If we placed the power station close to Auckland (or somewhere between AK & Wellington we could generate the power nearer to where its needed rather than sending it up from the hydro.

I also question the flicking on and off thing but we have hydro and other demand power stations already.

Its not a short term solution of course.

I'm not prepared to argue for the placement of a nuclear but that spiel from the power commissioner seems to be of a fairly poor standard.

Ok I dont have all night to deal with all of the points raised in GWs post but I'll tackle a few.

The reason most plants are around 1000megawatt is because that is what the demand dictates. Its entirely possible to build a nuclear plant small enough to power an individual house, or big enough for a whole city. You dont really think nuclear submarines have a reactor as big as one that runs a city do you?

So instead of one big nuclear plant you build a series of smaller ones that then negate the risk of losing a huge % of your total production if one goes offline.

Next one, yes nuclear REACTIONs run flat out, but it is quite easy to regulate production of electricity depending on the load. I dont know if you know how a nuclear power station works or not but to put it simply its just a steam turbine. Simple way to regulate is to vent the steam instead of having it drive turbines (and no the vented steam is not radioactive because it never comes in contact with the reactor).

From a cost standpoint nuclear may be more expensive initially, but that is like most new things. Long term though we would see the savings.

If you are serious about being clean and green nuclear is the way to go.

That is a transcript of a verbal response to select committee questioning - so don't try and use bad grammar to bury the message
Having done some work with transmission clients in utilities, it was the standard line I heard - nuclear just isn't right for NZs infrastructure. It only becomes economically viable at significant output and that wouldn't work here. I haven't heard of any of the generator companies really pushing to be able to invest in nuclear generation.

The point is more that all the pro-nuclear types state that it's "just the greenies" fighting it. There are significant concerns about it's economic viability before you get anywhere near the environmental/security aspects etc

I agree. Some of the comments about nuclear plants only running flat out. So what? They generate their electricity by creating steam. It's easy to vent steam with zero environmental impact.

Also - I thought of wind power because a) NZ wont change their anti-nuclear stance anytime soon, b) nuclear waste processing hasn't been addressed by anyone yet, and c) the time when we use the most power, i.e. winter, is the time when wind power is generated the most efficiently.

R

With only five in place and a pretty average hit-rate of getting things approved and made in-time and to budget thus far investing in them isn't something on my radar. Maybe when they've gone past basic 'test' sites which is realistically all they've done so far.

R

The fact that you are costing these things in dollars and cents - an incorrect model - shows the flaws.

We need to measure it in total energy. How much energy to build them? How much to maintain them? Because from an ecological perspective, THAT is what matters. Thermal efficiency.

Im the last person to criticise grammar ?

He didnt know where the closest nuclear power plant was.

He used the idea of sourcing spare parts being difficult - wtf? How long does it take to send a part by plane not to mention service agreements.

Using historical cost as a bases for not using nuclear? - surely he should be quoting the figures for future production - which are all well known. Nuke is cheaper than current production, sure but the whole fricken reason we are going through this discussion is because NZ has (for the most part) exhausted its hydro options and looks down on fossil fuels which will be getting expensive in future.

and it goes on.

Hardly the level of argument I would expect of anyone with half a brain and it makes me think he lacks integrity.

oh and guess whats going to happen to our power requirements as fossil fuels go up in price and carbon costs kick in.

I wasnt serious about the company as a good investment - merely in drawing to everyones attention what is being done.
Sure its in development... but hey, someones doing it!

The only real argument against nuclear power for NZ is the processing and reprocessing of fuel. We aren’t going to have anywhere near enough demand to justify doing this ourselves so we will be shipping the fuel in from somewhere and waste out for reprocessing somewhere. Probably Aussie though, which isn’t really that inconvenient I guess…

Nuclear power does like to run flat out (much like coal does) and so that exactly what you have it doing (size it for the total minimum demand) ~ 60% of total load on nuclear running flat out 24 hours 7 days a week, the next ‘up to 20%’ on unreliable renewable stuff like wind, and the final 20% to 40% (depending on how the unreliable renewables are going) comes from our reliable and easily adaptable hydro dams. They will almost always be running at much less than full capacity so should never have a problem with water shortages.

Put the nuclear plants all in one big compound for security, and near Auckland for transmission efficiency. 6 x 500MW would be a good start, leave room for a few more alongside in the future.

Just trying to keep it light hearted.
Fair enough if you don't like the way he put it across, but as I said, that's the message I've heard from two of the major transmission companies I've worked for and have yet to hear of a generator in this country begging to be able to build a nuclear plant.
Couple of other things:
- vads point about total energy is a good one, there are studies that show that the total energy cost (from construction through mining through disestablishment) of a nuclear plant is actually similar to coal.
- you mention fossil fuels but how rare do you think uranium is? Study I read estimated with expected growth rates in nuclear fuel, uranium will last another 50 years. And as the high-grade stuff disappears and they have to switch to low-grade ore the carbon argument disappears because of the energy required to make it usable. Given it would take us 10 years to get the plant up and running that's hardly a sustainable investment huh.

I completely agree that nuclear energy shouldn't be dismissed solely because of Chernobyl/waste fears. But when you look at it further it makes very little sense for NZ's power generation needs anyway. And like it or not, the nuclear-free image is in many ways ways a positive one overseas

...with expected growth rates in nuclear plants...

OK, in the real world, Nuclear energy is perhaps the most environmentally unfriendly thing mankind has ever invented. We see it as being clean because the waste is put into drums and stored underground somewhere else. That is not environmentally friendly in reality.

Likewise, going down that path is just admitting you can't be arsed researching/developing other, truly green, alternatives. It's the pike-out option which short-term thinking would force people into.

The long-term effects of having a nuclear power plant anywhere are not even fully known now for the earliest plants ever made. Chernobyl was made using the current knowledge - as a completely safe, failsafe and 'perfect' plant - but stuff obviously went very wrong. Even if it hadn't the waste it and other plants create seems like nothing because we don't have to see it - burying it underground isn't achieving much. If anything it's saying "we don't know what to do, so we'll just wait until we invent something to do with it - which, so far in close to 50 years, hasn't happened. In that time space travel, the microprocessor, super-conductors, TV, cell-phones have been invented - but the problem with nuclear waste hasn't improved one bit.

So, until they can say, we've found a way to get rid of the waste - make the reactors much more adaptable and safe - we should spend money investigating other options instead.

R

Again not necessarily supporting nuclear power for NZ as such but RW some of the info there is wrong.

Chernobyl was not current technology.

The US chooses to store its waste but other countries choose to reprocess it. Reprocessing technology has come a long way.

Chernobyl was not a technology failure but a human failure - something you have to watch for in any situation but something that is able to be accounted for.

Chernobyl was the current technology when it was built. I saw it on Discovery only weeks ago. Even some western countries visited and studied it's awesomeness.

The storage of Nuclear waste outweighs the reprocessing by 95:5. It's come a long way but dick-all in reality since the bulk of the nuclear waste since reactors were invented is still sitting in drums somewhere.

Countries have shipped their stuff to be stored for decades in underground 'mines'. That isn't environmentally friendly by any stretch of the imagination - but it is out of sight enough for most people to also be out of mind.

And it doesn't matter that Chernobyl was a human failire. Humans will be involved in operation - errors happen. It still adds risk.

The comparable problem with wind turbines is if there were too many and they eventually stopped all of the wind.. Oh NOES!

R

No the problems of wind are much different to that.

So when you said current you meant latest at the time?

Just to be clear about the lengths nuclear proponents have gone in the past to promote their industry...

In order to get rid of spend nuclear material the grand idea in the 50s and 60s was to put it into drums and dump it at sea. This was done until some smart cookie said "what if they leak one day - then they'll be in the worst place possible.." So they check the areas where they'd been dumped. Over 20% of the drums were leaking! DOH!...

Nowdays the waste material from US reactors alone runs in the thousands of tonnes - with a half life of over 2 million years on average. The clothing worn by staff, test equipment and water from the plants also has to be disposed of safely. At present something like 90% of the nuclear waste ever created in the US is still in temporary storage - with no firm plan or idea of what to do with it.

An example of the lack of care over nuclear material, despite people claiming it's pretty safe today, is the US military storage in Hanford, Washington State. No-one thought to consider it might rain sometime and years of rain on the drums/packages of military equipment have washed water into the ground, not the sort of stuff you'd want to drink. Worse yet, the site is right next to the Colorado river.

I'd never trust a proponent of nuclear power for one second. They know that, once up and running, they'll be in business for eternity. No never-ending license to operate should be given for anything - especially something with so many unknowns and "we'll deal with it in 100 years" type issues.

Deep geological storage sites are also something I wouldn't trust. An earthquake could end the notion of safety in a second - and a clean-up would be absolutely impossible. Likewise, discovering later on that a water table or flow was nearby - it'd be too late to do anything. Even if this happened in 500 or 1000 years time it'd be a catastrophe.

R

Of course. It was a proud display of technology to the west. Who knows the reality though - I'm sure there were some scientists (probably French or German) laughing at it.

R

Can I just add (and remember I'm with you on the overall argument!) that it's not - at all. Uranium is really pretty rare, and is required in as high a grade as possible for nuclear fission.
Nuclear fission power is not sustainable. It relies on mining a rare substance that some commentatos suggest could be gone in 50 years. I'll call that 50 years may be a bit doom-saying but it ain't going to last for ever.

Youd never trust a nuclear power proponent for a second because the americans have been idiots... surely you can come up with better reasons than that?

This is what bothers me - I havent read an unbiased review yet against nuclear power, even your reasoning's are based on specific, perhaps isolated incidents and guesses or feelings.

Have you looked at the french program?

Im sure someone's done a evidence based analysis of future nuclear power stations?

Surely?

You mean the same people who detonated nuclear weapons in a 'safe environment' when outside experts were telling them that coral reefs were pretty porous and would lead to environmental damage?

Those guys?

R

Thanks for proving my point - you're not interested in evidence or the reality of the situation you just want to rant on about shit.

Which puts you in the same league as antiGE idiots who spout crap like trout with sharks heads.

But the arguments for nuclear power are just as hazy - skipping over the near disasters and 1000+ year issues with it as if 1000 years in the future was far enough away to not have to worry about. It lacks foresight and only blindly ignoring the issue allows more nuclear plants to get build.

Since the advent of Nuclear power - 50 years ago - no significant advances have been made in the area of waste disposal. At least none which have been implemented at any meaningful level, nor will be in the foreseeable future. They make deeper holes, have better cases for the waste - so what? The problem is still there and the major users of nuclear power don't seem to be in any hurry to deal with the issue. It will come back to bite us one day - and very badly I imagine.

R

Im not prepared to go looking for the info (it was on tv) but I believe the French process not only their own but other peoples waste as well.

And the fact that the americans dont do it doesnt mean you have to bury it. Anyone can decide to reprocess it.

I dont know if you could work it out but the crap i hear almost always comes from the anti nuke side. I trust scientists over power station sales people too.

I didn't prove your point. The history of someone's business is completely relevant to the current situation. If they have previously shown the attitudes of "not our back yard - not our problem" and "our scientists say you're wrong" then I say they can't be trusted. If we opened up a plant here - how long before we get pressured into storing waste for others in return for money? 20 years? 40 years?

Every major user of Nuclear power has had some sort of problem/leak, and all have come up with nothing of practical use to get rid of nuclear waste - in 50 years.

The disposal problem is so large for them they just don't seem to bother - the status quo is the easy path - too easy to warrant investigating end solutions.

R

man you have some strange arguments. There is already a world treaty on the storage of waste - even if the waste is processed it has to go back to the country that it originated from.

Or we could simply say no to storing other peoples waste?

Come on youre really scraping the barrel - im not saying there arent valid arguments against nuclear power in NZ but you seem to be oblivious to them.

compared towind generation I can't even see why one would consider the nuclear option -the disposal of waste and decomissioning of power plants is a potential disaster area, especially considering we're a poor nation

wind, we have loads of... the technology to harness it should only increase and well the only negatives are "they look ugly"

fuck auckland city looks ugly, doesn't stop over 1 million of us living here

So far, I have the following pros/cons list. Feel free to expand upon:

Pros:
Cheap operational cost
Zero operational carbon emission

Cons:
High cost of construction and disestablishment
Rarity of source fuel, lack of longer term sustainability
Lack of suitability to NZ generation environment
Dangers associated with nature of technology
Disposal of waste (in some ways arguable that because you can capture and store waste in small areas is better "waste" than emissions into the atmosphere)


On the whole, that is why I come down on the NZ don't need it side.

Should change the Dangers of Technology and Disposal stuff to risk profile type stuff (low probability, high impact still ain't a great risk profile)

NZ is good at starting out saying 'no' and then accepting things quietly later on. Our future is on a path to us being less well-off compared to our peers - in ten years, 20 years and beyond - so desperate situations give rise to accepting deals like I mentioned. Once the path into Nuclear power opens others, like storage, could open up pretty quickly.

There is also so much money to be made in Nuclear power - construction and material supply - that no-one pro-nuclear can really be trusted as far as they can be kicked. Venturing into nuclear arena, as I said many posts above, seems like a tacit admission that you can't be arsed researching other options. The auto/oil-industry seems to be implicated in many cases of research being bought and then discontinued (no tinfoil-hat wearing theories sorry) suddenly - all the while promoting themselves as aiming for the future. Nuclear supply companies have no reason, at present, to change their ways other than to convince people they're a good option for power generation.

With a country so prime for wind and hydro-power I think it is just laziness and lack of foresight to even consider nuclear power. We should accept we're going to lose a few of our amazing views with wind-towers or new lakes formed by hydro dams. But the penalty for getting these things wrong is almost nil - for eternity. Not so with nuclear energy.

We have to consider the issue from two angles: how much power do we need and how to get it; and how much environmental damage will we accept for that power? China's carbon output will be so large by 2020 - more than the US and Europe combined that a completely zero output NZ would have no impact at all on a global level. So we're really aiming for efficient power generation in reality - we're not helping save the planet. At best we can we be a role-model for others - surely that would be a good thing. Developing and researching ever more efficient wind/hydro power systems/technology could be a massive industry for us in theory. But having nuclear power would stomp quite heavily on that notion.

R

if only we could harness their windage

Time I waded back into the fray I think.

There are some 'facts' being thrown around that simply arent true.

For starters GWs claim that there is only 50 years of Uranium left. This is just plain wrong. What is being said is that currently there is 50 years of Uranium RESERVES left. The reserve is the amount of the total RESOURCE that is economically viable for extraction at this time. Currently the amount spent on Uranium exploration is only a tiny % of that spent on oil and gas exploration. As nuclear becomes more mainstream more will be spent on exploration and therefore more Uranium will be found.

Next one, all this worry about waste blah blah. The French have developed methods of reprocessing 97% of their waste. By reprocessing it may be possible to extend the usefulness of mined Uranium by 60 times.

Trying to compare the French nuclear power programme to the tests in the Pacific is just narrow minded Rob. You know which country has the lowest emissions per person in the World? Yea you guessed it, France.

David Lange, the man who made us nuclear free, even said that the only reason he went completely nuclear free was that he couldnt convince his collegues that there was a difference between nuclear weapons and nuclear power.

you still haven't come up with a rational argument why nuclear as opposed to wind bobthebuilder5

I don't see any logic to going nuclear when it puts us into a market place where we have to purchase the raw ingrediants to provide that power source, regardless of how much of it is estimated to be left

so why not utilise a source of power that the raw material is free, creates no waste (other than the infrastructure needed to harness it)?

the nuclear arguments on both sides just seem a lot of hot air - time we harnessed that action

Reasons for nuclear over wind:

1) Wind turbines are highly unreliable

2) They must be built within aprox 50km of a main center or else too much is lost through transmission.

3) What do you do when the wind isnt blowing? You fire up a big 'ol coal burning powerstation..

4) They take up ALOT of space for very little electricity production.

5) Theyre just plain ugly, for a country that prides itself on having one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world I see this point as being highly important.

6) Expensive to build and maintain.

---------------------------------------------------

NZ wouldnt nessecerally have to purchase ore from overseas, we have our own right here. But it may be cheaper to purchase from already established large scale mines. Even so it isnt going to cost much if we get it from Aussie.

Even purchasing ore from overseas the long term costs both economically and environmentally are going to be lower than wind (and the fossil fuel back ups that are needed).

There are areas in NZ where they would operate at the most consistent level of anywhere viable on earth



This is the same no matter how you generate it. There will be loss. As far as I can tell Huntly is further than 50km from Auckland.



Advances in coal-powered generators have some so far as to - if you put the effort in - reduce the emmissions to very low levels (catching and compressing the gasses)



Space is what we have lots of though - tons and tons and tons of it - and where there is lots of wind.



But still a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the cost of running, maintaining and securing a nuclear facility.

R

Why is so much lost from Wind Turbines due to transmission but not other sources of energy? Or is this the case with all forms?

Nuclear Power Stations = ugly as fuck

expense compared with the expense of nuclear? Wind turbines as the technology takes off should decrease in value, yes?

If we have uranium why aren't we digging up our beautiful countryside and selling it for the filthy lucre like our Australian cousins?

nuclear seems a easy answer for some to a complex issue as far as I can see, yet as already ppointed out whom and where do the qualified staff come from to build, manage and run our station(s)? Springfield?

why does every power generation thread revert to a nukes vs all the rest arguments?

yawn

Bollocks. France was 63rd in 2004 out of 206 countries/principalities. Their per capita carbon emissions was 6.2 tonnes per person (NZ's was 7.8, ranked 50th).

Notably: Hong Kong, Sweden, Portugal, Thailand, Mexico, Chile, China etc produced less per capita than France - not to mention something like another 135+ countries.

R

In case you were referring to nuclear waste, France is the 3rd highest producer of nuclear waste after USA and Canada - and significantly ahead of the next three: Japan, UK and Germany. Frances waste creation is only half that of the US who have over 4.5 times the population...

Think France don't care about their nuclear risk? It would seem so. (altho, in fairness, it probably makes them the experts in nuclear power generation - I'll grant them that).

R

1) Sure there may be some constantly windy parts of NZ where a wind turbine could run for a high % of the year. The reality is though that they break down alot. I've driven through Palmy numerous times and looked up to see sometimes less than half the turbines turning.

2) They must be built within 50km because they produce so little electricity that any further and it simply isnt worthwhile. The more that is being generated the smaller the total % loss for a given distance of transmission.

3) If advances in coal technology has come so far why are we even having this debate. We have HUGE coal reserves in the South Island, we just cant use them at the moment.

4) Yes we have lots of space, but not compaired to say Aussie. Now if we could wack a couple of thousand turbines out in the middle of a desert where bugger all people went I would say great, do it. Unfortunetly we cant so we end up with hideous turbines in prominent places spoiling our natural beauty.

Now some people might not see this as an issue and thats fine if you live in the city and aren't the adventurous type. I however would hate to be out climbing a mountain or exploring a new part of the country and have the beauty of the place ruined by wind farms.

a) Because the amount you are producing with a wind farm is so small. If you have a big nuke plant you can afford to lose more.

b) Nuclear powerstations are ugly but you dont have to build them along ridgelines so they dominate the view.

c)Because of our whole nuclear free deal we arent allowed to dig it up and sell it.

d) Obviously early on we would have to get staff in from offshore, but long term it would be possible to to train our own. So therefore there are social benefits too, more work..

e) Why does it always turn into a nuclear vs the rest? Because nuclear is a sensible, viable option for our future energy needs so it goes without saying that it should be included in any balanced debate.

We have spaces which are consistently windy - Aussie's wide-open places aren't to the same extent.



What? Like the roads which are already everywhere?

There are plenty of places remote enough which would be fine - not to mention, from the first post in the thread, I mentioned out at sea. You don't have to go very far out to sea before things aren't visible from land. Even then, in some areas, who cares?

R

Ok I didnt mean litteraly like in Aussie, what Im saying is that if we had an area like the Aussie outback where we could run windfarms and they weren't visable then choice, but we dont, theyre pretty much going to be visable where ever you put them.

As for out at sea, well I think I already dealt with that in my first post in this thread.

You put a 100m+ high wind turbine on top of an already high ridgeline and its going to be visable for a LONG way.

i think the wind turbines look great. the thought of non destructive non polluting power generation has an aesthetic of its own.

Well good for you then. I dont think tourists come halfway around the world to look at wind turbines though. Maybe you can start up your own little niche 'Peats Wind Turbine Experiences' holiday company.

Don’t have much time, but a few points jumped out at me…


Well that is great news because coal power is really fuking cheap!


Rare enough that they wasted tonnes of it blowing away tanks in Iraq?? haha
This is either a fundamental misunderstanding or deliberate confusion of this issue. Read about breeder reactors and then up your 60 year estimate to 12,000 years - should be enough time to get those fusion reactors online aye


Well we could always put it back into the same mines from where we got it in the first place! - sat there for the last 3 billion years without causing too much problem lol But it is better to keep it somewhere more convenient as we will probably be hauling it all out again for reprocessing in 50 years anyway.


Well it was both in a way; the technology was flawed because it was not designed to allow for human failure. Modern reactors are. You can press any buttons, pull any switches, throw spanners into machinery, hell you could even drop a bomb right into the core – the thing will never melt down.


The number one reason has been posted and is obvious.
Wind cannot and will never run 100% of the time. You can assume some proportion of the total will always be met, 20% is often used, but this still leaves 80% which must be completely matched by standby plant elsewhere. So you are not only paying for these bloody expensive wind turbines all over the country - you also have to pay for the coal/gas/nuclear standby plants anyway!

Pffft, 12,000 years huh?
I said myself that 50 years was probably a doom-sayers call (even though it is the common one) as it's based only on proven reserves, not the rest of it - but even reading highly pro-nuclear sites they believe that total recoverable uranium (including low-grade etc etc) is in the hundreds of years WITH breeder reactors. And all those calculations are based on the price of uranium rocketing up as demand rises to encourage exploration - therefore making the cost arguments less solid (although I'm not sure how elastic the output price is based on uranium input cost)

I'm making broad arguments here OK - people claim it's this incredibly low cost, it's not. It's not expensive but it's not saving cost.
It is not a sustainable resource. That may be fine for some (I'm not super fussed by it) but a LOT of people seem to believe we have endless fusion power already!
The pro-nuke folks evangelise it and demand it happens, the anti-nuke demonise it and demand it doesn't...

I stand by my argument that while I'm happy for nuclear energy to exist in general, it doesn't make sense in NZs generation environment. Hopefully future technology will, but none of those technologies are yet operational and I hardly think we are a country well-placed to be cutting edge in a generation technology we have no experience in.

I wonder anyway how the taniwha could ever be appeased for nuclear energy to be a viable alternative

Im not sure planning for more than 100 years is worthwhile. If history has taught us anything its that change comes and often it comes quickly.

Around the turn of the century the head of the US patent office suggested closing it was almost everything that could be invented had already been.

While uncertainty is a reason to be careful it isnt a reason to be so careful that you only rely on the 'tried and true'.

Nuclear power is viable in NZ from an economic perspective and I think from a infrastructure pov. It is unlikely to be accepted culturally as demonstrated by some of the crap rationales in this thread. You simply cant change the minds of some people who dont want to think which includes the vast majority of NZers. Along side this is the 'not in my backyard attitude that NZers have - see the pylon issues. And finally the willingness of some groups to use disinformation and outright lies means that nuclear power is unlikely to be put in NZ in the next 25 years.

That said, it is still useful to include it in discussions. Too many people choose to look at things in isolation either because it matches their intellect or it is convenient. EVERY option has drawbacks and benefits and arguing over specifics without a overall goal/objective is one of the things that is keeping NZ power infrastructure on the same level as our auckland roading. Short term fixes expire sooner than youd think.

PS we actually do have some high level nuclear research in NZ and a number of world experts on nuclear reactors make their home in NZ.

I'm interested in your take on this - solely because I haven't heard one generator wanting to build it. All the discussion I've heard is around pro/anti camps but never from someone saying "I want to spend $XXXmillion dollars to put this plant in". And I did discuss it with people who have spent a long time working in the industry when I did work at Vector and at Powerco - none of them said it was a great idea. They certainly said that the majority of NZ just didn't want it, but that regardless it didn't make current sense for us.

ha, knew this would be raised after my post! but you see my point that you wouldn't want to go from no actual investment to cutting-edge in an industry like this...

Well youve hit the main issue in NZ - our power infrastructure is made up of lots of companies - game theory comes in.

Given uncertainty over future power needs and costs there is an argument that we are better off with lots of smaller stations but this is self perpetuating, we don't reach a time where we need to make a single big investment which may be the best option in the medium - long term. Which is a concept I think NZ could do better at conceptualising.

I don't actually see the initial knowledge capture as a problem, modern reactors are not much different to running as other comparative plants and I suspect it would be relatively straight forward to get the required staff and training from overseas.

And - its going to take 10-15 years to get a reactor up and running.

no matter how you reword this garethw I don't think anyone is going to respond

which kina boils down to it being a redundant argument if no one wants to or is prepared to pay for nuclear power, regardless of the arguments for and against

whereas wind is already being put into place

no no, I expect some people to avoid parts of arguments but generally think bob discusses a balanced line - which he has...

and there is almost two discussions - is nuclear power "OK" in general, and if so, does it fit here in NZ?
Unfortunately there can be a tendency to say it's OK in general so lets put it in here, regardless of whether it suits our generation footprint or not...

But power use fluctuates massively throughout the day and, more to the point, through seasons. Winter power use is far higher - and this is exactly when wind power will be at it's peak generation.

There will always be a need for some level of gas/coal burning (modern technology can make them much better environmentally). The example you use of wind power not being available all the time is based on the current level almost anywhere where wind power is not widespread enough yet. (Germany I think is a long way down the track on this though - they have a bigger population and power need than France yet a fraction of their nuclear power generation capabilities - much of this is due to their wind-power)

The point is, wind power is at its best when it is most needed - a match made in heaven.

R

Ha ha on you trapper. They use depleted uranium in military shells. It's made out of uranium hexafluoride (waste material created in the process of enriching uranium to reactor-grade levels).

The two have nothing in common - in fact, using depleted uranium in shells helps get rid of an otherwise problemsome material. They use it for no other reason than it is extremely heavy (so you can get the highest weight into a certain sized projectile) - not because of any radioactive properties.

R

W..T...? The raw mined uranium isn't enriched, they do that after they mine it. It doesn't have 1000/th of the radio-activeness of the stuff they use in reactors. You can't put it back into the same mine and say "well, this is where it came from anyway."

R

Actually they use it for another property it has but thats off topic. I suspect trapper actually knows all about uranium.

You can get uranium from seawater fairly easily also (well easier than processing normal earth).

What? As far as I've read/seen it is used for it's weight per volume and density. These are the key factor in projectiles - how little frontal area you can construct something with but retaining the ideal weight/strength for max inertia and damage on impact.

A smaller projectile which weighs the same = higher possible intertia (by volume), less wind deflection (more accurate). Higher density of metal = more able to penetrate objects.

The radioactiveness of it is irrelevant to the use. The Balkan's and Iraq's issues with their use and the dirty bomb effect would be removed in a second if it were possible (actually, maybe not knowing what military contractors get up to).

(I guess though it is a quite cunning idea of the US military's to dispose of the US's radioactive waste in tiny bits all over the world shot by shot.)

R

I would doubt disposing of it is the motive for using it, the US seem to have no problem just storing stuff away.

One of its properties and why it is used as both a projectile and for armour is that when it impacts it actually gets sharper - the pressure point doesn't collapse. Its off topic anyway - there's heaps of threads on DU in CA.

Ireland is about to build the worlds biggest wind farm. It will have 200 turbines and produce 520 megawatts. According to that article from the electricity commisioner NZ uses about 4500 megawatts a year. So we would need 1800 of the same turbines to provide for our energy needs soley with wind. The Irish wind farm is going to be 24kms long. For NZ we would need 216km of wind turbines.

Currently we have 273 wind turbines generating a measley 170 megawatts.

Theres your answer as to why wind turbines arent the answer to our energy needs in NZ.

Have a read of this article.

http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/uranium.html

But they're still cheaper than nuclear energy - and self reliant and have zero (on-going) emissions.

We have land/coast - many times more than Ireland available which would be suitable.

R

Well you obviously have no love for our natural beauty if you are happy to fuck up 200+ km of our coast line with hideous wind farms.

how do we compare to Ireland for wind etc.. or in other words its not an answer, its an exmaple of why Wind farms may not be the solution TODAY... who knows tomorrow and its tomorrow we're talking about

what about solar - we haven't had that mentioned

surely wind and sunlight are logivcal means to pursue as both are infinite - and ya don't need the variously biased findings (not suggesting your link Bobthebuilder is incorrect) of one scientist after another to know this

and shall we go back to garethw's point - no one seems to want to build nor pay for the damn reactors

course we could just close down the aluminimu smelter and reclaim what 15-20% of our power generation

Solar is one of the most inefficient methods of generating electricity. Not sure of the exact figure and maybe someone can correct me but from memory solar panels are only about 10-15% efficient. Then you have the problem of having to replace them regularly, something like every 4 years and some of the chemicals in the panels are highly toxic.

Again with solar you have the problem of space. You need a shit load of panels to generate even enough electricity to supply a small town.

Then you have the problem of what you do when the sun isnt shinning, ie when most electricity is used.. Battery storage is again inefficient and used batteries arent very good for the environment..

______________________________________________________

At a guess I would say NZ is fairly similar in terms of wind compaired to Ireland.

If wind isnt the answer today how is it going to be the answer tomorrow? Is it suddenly going to get more windy in 50 years time?

O and to address GWs point that no one seems to want to build one.. Theres a few explanations behind this. For one dont the companies get some sort of government funding for building windfarms? So theres an incentive right there for the electricity companies to be anti-nuclear. Also at the moment with the amount of bad informantion about nuclear that Kiwis think is fact for a company to come out and be pro nuclear would be a bad business move.

If the Government said 'we want someone to set up a nuclear power plant in NZ' I bet there would be companies queing up for the contract.

no ya silly... in time we will be better able to build more efficient wind turbines and thus farms - you know with increased knowledge and research on the technologies involved

NZ is I believe one of the windiest countries on the planet, thus making harnessing that wind a good idea, or so it seems to me

same goes for wave/sea turbines

perhaps not for solar

Yea sorry I was just being silly. I see what you are saying but I still dont see the need for NZ to go down that path when there is a much easier and less intrusive option avialable in nuclear.

Tide and wave turbines introduce their own set of problems. The biggest of which is the adverse effect they have on ecosystems. If you start introducing things that effect tidal flows or alter wave energy delicate ecosystems will suffer.

every form of generation has its inherent problems and not all those of us against the nuclear thang are not all illogical nutbars stuck in a world of old arguments and rationales as the pro camp likes to make out (in this thread and everywhere else these debates rage)



George Monbiot (refferring to the UKs energy needs)

Problems can be over come, as the nuclear energy world has shown, their are many things to factor in for all potential future energy needs and I still believe that we should be finding solutions that don't make us reliant on anyone but ourselves (ie having import raw materials)

Well alot of peoples anti nuclear sentiment is based soley on Chernobyl. Thankfully the biggies that have got involved in this debate generally seem to be more intelligent than this.

From the little bit I just read about George Monbiot he seems like a bit of a nut job to be honest with you. Some of his ideas to battle 'global warming' are just silly, but thats an entirely different debate alltogether.

Is it really a big deal to rely on getting a raw material for energy production from Australia, our closest neighbour and biggest ally? I dont see an issue with this. We could even extract our own uranium right here in NZ but it would probably be cheaper to get it from Aussie at this stage.

most people think Monbiot is a nutbar, I don't - but I also don't blindly follow not agree with all his opinions (I imagine Bob and/or Trapper will see red at the mere mention of his name )

thing is , if he is a nutbar even he agrees that many of the traditional anti nuke arguments are no redundant and states as much in the article I grabbed that quote from.

My raw matierials thang.. if possible I'd like us to be as independant as possible in relation to power generation, as oil will continue to show us it sucks when dependant on a resource we can't supply ourselves... especially when we aren't as rich a nation as we'd like to think... a long term worst poss scenario thang of mine and we are talking long term

Sure in a perfect world each country would be entirely independant and self sufficient. Im pretty sure if that was the case we wouldnt have any wars.

The reality is quite different though. No country is 100% self sufficient. Every country trades to some degree, why is it an issue for NZ to be any different? And like I said, its only Aussie, no big deal really. Not like we would be relient on some nut job Arab states.

just putting my preference - ideal world scenario, no slight against our neighbours across the ditch

Being realistic though, NZ seems to be about 10-20 years behind Aussie on most things so unless Aussie go nuclear soon I dont see it happening in NZ for a while yet unfortunetly.

erm im sure aussie has a reactor... wasnt there a terrorist plot to blow it up at the games?

Maybe its a research facility.

Your right, Lucas Heights is a research facility.

A few more quick responses…


I’m sorry bro but this is just completely incorrect, I don’t know what pro-nuclear sites you have been reading but you might want to do a little more research. Uranium supplies are in the hundreds of years without any breeding or reprocessing, you breed all that DU (99.3% of all uranium) into plutonium and nuclear power will for all intents and purposes last forever.

Kind of beside the point anyway. - Even if the uranium did only last 50 years, that is more than the expected lifetime of almost any power plant, so we would be building something new around then to replace it (or your wind turbines) anyway.


Fundamental misunderstanding. Wind power may be at ‘peak’ during winter but this is an average peak, not a 100% peak for every second of every day for the whole of winter. Think of it this way; if the wind has a ‘trough’ lasting even one second there must be something standing by to take the load for that one second – it’s either that or the computers go off and the lights or out. So to maintain our reliability of supply to X minutes failure per Y years the maximum estimate of load that can be solely placed on unreliable sources is somewhere around 20%. Above this every single watt of wind/solar/etc installation must be backed up by a reliable source on standby.


Actually not ha ha on me. Depleted uranium is uranium - you have to understand this point. The 238 isotope may not as easily fissionable as the 235 isotope, but it can be converted into easily fissionable materials using breeder reactors.


The waste isn’t enriched either! The vast majority of nuclear waste is less radioactive than the natural uranium they dug out of the ground to start with. High level waste is a very-very small proportion of the total.


Yup.

Your post initially was alluding the scarcity of uranium and that they use it in shells - altho looking at your post above now, not so sure we weren't arguing the same thing but being sarcastic. Garethw put it was rare - the military argument is flawed referring to his point since their is so much depleted uranium available in the US they will find any number of things to try to get rid of the stuff. (According to wikipedia there is nearly half a million tonnes of depleted uranium in the US alone.)




The spend fuel rods are extremely radioactive by volume compared to the original mined product. The reactor doesn't use up their radioactivity and then churn them out as safe, steel rods. Nothing yet has been worked out how to dispose of them permanently - as I said above - in over 50 years.

R

What do you mean extremely radioactive 'by volume'?? The ‘volume’ of spent fuel rods is absolutely miniscule compared to the volume of original mined ores.

Put it this way; from a typical 1GW plant we are talking about as little as 10 cubic meters of high level waste per year, and if reprocessed this total drops to just 2.5 cubic meters per year.

Now compare that to the almost 7 tonnes of coal a typical 1GW coal power station burns every minute! I have seen the 100 million tonne stockpile of coal down at Huntly and it is absolutely fricken huge - this is only enough to keep the thing running for three and a bit months.

Ok so in review here are the options:

-Build several thousand massive, ugly and highly unreliable wind turbines. Still require back up fossil fuel options, effectively defeating the clean green purpose of wind farms. Face the possibility of power shortages. Face high maintance costs.

Or:

-Build a series of small nuclear plants in areas that aren't intrusive on human activity. Apart from initial set up costs, have cheap and reliable electricity for a long time. Zero harmfull emissions. Constant electricity and the ability to increase production depending on load at the push of a button (instead of having to pray for wind).

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm tough choice..

I have not read the entire thread..only parts... but this bit I was curious about...



isnt 70% of NZ's generation Hydro? which act as giant batteries essentially (stored energy), and another 5% in geothermal? So why wouldnt you have these as back ups?

Right, I'll take your word on that. Either I was getting mixed up or the partisan noise was!
Are breeders in action? I know their risk profile increases so wasn't sure if anyone had put them in place yet

fantastically unbiased appraisal

I vote bobthebuilder5 for next Energy minister!

Nuclear power creates the most problemsome emissions of anything man has ever invented. The waste material from nuclear power is an emission - people just conveniently chose to call it something else because it doesn't come out of an exhaust pipe like smoke does. The environmental burden on future generations of the nuclear power industries is pushed under a rug for someone else to deal with in 100 years. If we had to deal with it now I bet the companies would spend every cent they could on developing a way to safely get rid of the waste they create.

There is no way to get rid of it in a sustainable or truly safe method yet - as I said above - over 50 years of ideas has come up with nothing.

As for wind power being unreliable. Don't make a mockery of it if you know nothing about it. Sites are researched carefully. NZ has test sites which are averaging the highest hours at optimum generation of any wind power site in the world. NZ is an ideal place for it in every sense.

The downside, for sure, if the lack of complete control over it - but we've got the coal/gas capacity already - and these can be refined/improved to reduce emissions.. If that were actually the priority.

We have to work out what the priorities are - again, read one of my posts above - we need the power - so we need to decide how we want to generate and how much we want to pay. Then we need to consider how much environmental damage or emission we are prepared to foot in order to have that power.

Wind - zero ongoing emissions, less reliable but NZ is ideal location. Maintenance costs only a tiny percent that of nuclear power. Get cheaper over time as turbines become near mass-production packaged units.

Nuclear - permanent, reliable power from the smalled possible facility. Waste disposal issues a real future 'emission' problem. The cost of disposal is almost as much as the initial fuel itself. Mega expensive to construct and requires multiple countries to agree to provide, take responsibility for their components and enter into perpetual maintenance agreements. Undermines a significant portion of NZs future tourism earnings on 'green' credibility alone.

As far as wind power being ugly - I've seen some pictures of them overseas and they don't look that bad really. I bet you'd find more volunteers to live near them than anywhere near a nuclear plant though.

R

Why thankyou.

But seriously, how is that biased? Its the facts as I see them. What have I written that isn't fact?

In CA you should be a bit less obvious in your biases or youll lose all credibility.

Less intrusive (unless they leak)

Zero harmful emissions? = Zero carbon emissions.

Cheap = more expensive than fossil currently but less than alternatives.

I could go on.

If you want to be taken seriously you need to be a bit more careful how you word things.

Get over it Rob. There are many safe methods of storing the small amount of waste produced. You're making out as though it is dumped in a big pile out in the open. This is not the case and you know it.

Lots is being spent on developing new methods of permanintly dealing with the waste. Probably the most promissing of which is the subduction method.

Rob you dont even know me so who are you to say I know nothing about the subject. Wind power is unreliable. Turbines break down all the time.

You still fail to address the issue of the visual pollution of wind farms. I see this as part of their environmental impact and a key issue in NZ.

As you said in your earlier post, China's pollution is so high that it negates anything we do in NZ to attempt to be 'green'. Why then should we even bother with wind farms. If we simply want the most effective method of electricity generation then nuclear is the answer.