The World's First Osmotic Power Plant 262
ElectricSteve writes "Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway officially opened the world's first osmotic power plant prototype on November 24. The prototype has a limited production capacity and will be used primarily for testing and data validation, leading to the construction of a commercial power plant in a few years time. Statkraft claims that the technology has the global potential to generate clean, renewable energy equivalent to China's total electricity consumption in 2002 or half of the EU's total power production" What's osmotic power? Wikipedia to the rescue!
Impact (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Impact (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Impact (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called rivers flowing out into the sea.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Impact (Score:5, Informative)
You do realize this is located at the mouths of rivers, where fresh water was and will continue to mix with salt?
You had to read ALL THE WAY down to the 4th Paragraph to find:
such power plants could be located wherever sea water and fresh water meet, such as the mouth of a river. They run without producing noise pollution or polluting emissions
So any mixing of fresh and salt has been going on in these very same locations for millions of years and is perfectly normal.
Somehow I think the Local Ecology will survive.
Re: (Score:2)
Since some energy can be extracted from mixing salt water and fresh water, it would be possible that this energy (in terms of water temperature) would be missed by fish.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
This seems relevant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmotic_power#Possible_negative_environmental_impact [wikipedia.org]
Re:Impact (Score:5, Informative)
But did you actually READ that wiki link?
All it says is that salty water will be discharged into SALTY WATER.
Further this will all happen at the river's mouth where fresh water is mixing with salty water already.
It won't be any saltier than the sea water, because it is a mixture of fresh and salt water, discharged directly to where fresh and salt water have been mixing for millions of years.
Osmosis does not create or destroy any salt content. Fresh river water is mixed with salt water from the sea and discharged EXACTLY where it would have been discharged by nature with the EXACT same average salinity as the mixed water at the rivers mouth.
Any animal that can't tolerate this would not be there. Because the mixing has been going on at least since the Pleistocene all local animals are already adapted to it.
The wiki article says nothing, and seems to suggest the author is not cognizant of the fact that these facilities are planned for locations where river water meets the sea. But then it is wikipedia.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You might count me as an evironmentalist because I can see the problem with your argument. A river discharges into the sea and there is a certain amount of fresh water and a certain amount of salinity. But, a local study would always have to be done. A river
Re: (Score:2)
No, it won't discharge more salt.
Take sea water.
Take river water.
Discharge into the mixing zone at the river's mouth.
You do not discharge into the RIVER. There is no Down stream to worry about.
Did you miss the part where it said these plants will be built at the river's mouth?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not creating salt or importing it from anywhere. The total amount of salt in the neighbourhood of the plant will not be changed. If the concentration is moved around a bit, there is a river right there to feed a mixing pool to moderate the salinity before releasing the salt into the sea.
I can understand the point that they should be aware of the issue, but I feel certain that it can be completely dealt with.
Re: (Score:2)
If you do that nearish to a river estuary (which is a logical place to build these anyway), then that's something that would have occurred naturally.
Eh... (Score:2)
Brackish water is released into the Eco-system all the time. Don't you have rivers running into the sea in your area?
the natural place for such a power plant would be in areas where this process already takes place, and then tap the power of it.
Your assessment is a lot like saying "Won't solar plants cause a lot of sunshine?"
Re:Impact (Score:5, Funny)
except where boats need to enter/exit riverways, and for that matter fish.
... you _should_ think of the fish ... they have children, too
Or the bees (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, I'd rather think of the bees, but then there are already too many sons of a bee ;)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Given the swill US rivers dump into oceans, perhaps combining this process with pollutant separation would improve the outflow while generating power.
Re: (Score:2)
Marking the above a troll is jingoism at best. Here in the USA we have achieved truly amazing levels of water pollution through stupid practices. There are numerous alternatives; the easiest to implement replaces sewage treatment plants with ponds which produce algae and methane gas, not to mention clean water.
Re: (Score:2)
It appears that it requires fresh water, and outputs salty water.
Fresh water is in short supply in many parts of the world, and one of the ways people deal with this is to use electricity to desalinate salty water. For that reason, I don't think this is going to be very popular.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It appears that you may not have actually read the article.
It's to be built where rivers run into the sea. Rivers usually run with fresh water. It takes input from the river, puts it in an osmosis chamber with water from the sea, and spits the result out into the area where that river water was going to mix with the sea water anyway. There's zero net loss of fresh potable water as compared to what was going to happen anyway (as part of the natural water cycle), and as they're dumping the result into an area
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So much handwringing...
From TFA:
Such power plants could be located wherever sea water and fresh water meet, such as the mouth of a river. They run without producing noise pollution or polluting emissions.
Look, its simple. The river water was flowing into the sea for millions of years. The fish have adapted.
Calm down.
Desalination (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Desalination (Score:5, Funny)
I would advise against that kind of project. You'd get arrested for breaking the laws of thermodynamics.
Re: (Score:2)
It could work, you'd just need a bit more oil.
Reference too obscure? (Score:2)
No Bud Grace fans here?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No. Not in the slightest. A desalination plant takes in a quantity of salt-water, and consumes a fixed amount of energy to separate it into fresh water and a salty residue. There is not an available shortcut to do "less of this" as you suggest. The salty residue has a higher salt concentration than the salt-water source and hence there is an energy potential that could be exploited. The energy released from an Osmotic power station would reduce the net energy requirement to desalinate the water.
Some numbers... I think it might work! (Score:5, Informative)
I was skeptical of the numbers, so I looked around to figure out how much energy we're talking about here. This link [tripod.com] discussing desalinization is pretty useful... what we're talking about here is a desalinization plant run in reverse.
The short answer: 0.66 kcal (2760 joules) per liter of salt water converted to fresh water, so you'd get the same order of magnitude of energy *back* with an osmosis plant. The Mississippi river flow rate is 17 million liters per second at New Orleans, so the maximum possible energy output is 47 GW!
I don't see any obvious efficiency-loss factors here: it should be possible to do this pretty efficiently.
Another way of looking at the problem: the osmotic pressure difference between fresh water and seawater is 28 bar, which is equivalent to 280 meters of hydraulic head. That's roughly the same pressure gradient as is found across the Hoover Dam.
Now, the technical challenge of building miles and miles of carefully-folded osmotic membrane, and keeping it clean, is a bit daunting. But in theory, it should work!
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ever looked at the water coming down the Mississippi? I wonder what the silt content per liter of water is?
Now I am not a RO expert, not by a long shot, but I know that the water coming to the membrane has to be fairly particulate free.
I really cannot fathom what kind of pre-filtering would have to be done to make this work in such a river basin. Perhaps in am area where there is a huge glacier run off that is pretty clean to begin with. <shrug>
Re:Some numbers... I think it might work! (Score:4, Interesting)
You ain't seen silt until you've seen a real glacial runoff river.
But yeah, I have no doubt there are some serious and maybe impossible engineering challenges, I'm just making the point that from a basic physics perspective, the energy is there.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I last failed chemistry 1 year ago and we're still fucked! The only solution is to grow plastics (like we grow biofuels), but that comes with significant downsides because farming is harder than drilling and well we need food too. IMO long term the solution is factory farming (they are starting to research this in Japan), but that requires a lot of energy.
Oh man, Starcraft?! (Score:3, Funny)
Oh wait, Statkraft? Gosh, I thought they were talking about something important for a moment there.
Re:Oh man, Starcraft?! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Starcraft was not the first Starcraft:
http://www.utopiasales.ca/assets/rv%20trailers/DSC00168.JPG [utopiasales.ca]
Slartibartfast was a genius (Score:3, Funny)
This is all being built next to Oslo's Fjords....
No wonder Slartibartfast won an award for them!
When they go commercial... (Score:2)
... they should call the company/project "Norwegian Blue".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_energy [wikipedia.org]
We should be talking about fusion. (Score:2, Interesting)
I think an osmotic power plant is the lamest type of power i can think of.
Fusion is the only way i can see it going, really if we are going to be great conquerers of the galaxy, and fly around in Millennium Falcon type spaceships.
Anyway, Fusion is the only way to go because, we will either fix the problem, or maybe blow ourselves up.
It will be a race between ITER and the LHC.
Between explosion and implosion.
Maybe we should hook.. them,. together?..
^mtrl drtw
Not the first osmotic power plant (Score:5, Informative)
It's merely the first with a proper marketing scheme... :p
Since 2005 a 50kW test installation has been working in Harlingen, the Netherlands. This is a POS (pressure retarded osmosis) installation just like the Norwegian one. A 10kW RED installation has been installed not 20km away in the Afsluitdijk barrier dam.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TGK-4MDGP8H-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1111993059&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=a85c6a42fb58101cbda1cb384456dd18
Re:Deplete our Fresh Water supply? (Score:5, Insightful)
An interesting aspect mentioned in TFA is the fact that you need two water sources, i.e., a river of fresh water that empties into a salt sea. So it would seem that they are just doing preemptively what nature would have done anyway. It actually seems like a pretty non-destructive method to me.
Re: (Score:2)
So it would seem that they are just doing preemptively what nature would have done anyway. It actually seems like a pretty non-destructive method to me.
Yeah , but what effect does this have on the wildlife that lives in that ecosystem? I've heard that these kinds of problems happen in dams, and also in places where nuke plants dump their cooling water, which is actually warmer than the stream they feed into.
Actually, (Score:2)
just hook a desalt plant to it and reuse it out pu (Score:2)
just hook a desalt plant to it and reuse it out put
Re:just hook a desalt plant to it and reuse it out (Score:4, Insightful)
Desalination plant will consumer more energy than the water it produces can generate, because in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics.
Why is it that every time anything power related is posted to /. there are a bunch of people who suggest perpetual motion machines? What happened to /. being for nerds? Nerds would know perpetual motion when they see it, and know that it's not possible. This is the fourth comment I've read in this thread that has fallen foul of this so far.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Desalination plant will consumer more energy than the water it produces can generate, because in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics.
Why is it that every time anything power related is posted to /. there are a bunch of people who suggest perpetual motion machines? What happened to /. being for nerds? Nerds would know perpetual motion when they see it, and know that it's not possible. This is the fourth comment I've read in this thread that has fallen foul of this so far.
Alas, not all nerds know a joke when they see it...
Re: (Score:2)
You forgot the obvious link [fortunecity.com] in case you're not the only WHOOOSH in this thread.
Re: (Score:2)
Not really, but it depends on volume.
The sun evaporates salt water in the sea and it falls as fresh water into the land, thus replenishing the "fuel".
Again, if the volume of rain is less than the volume used then yes, one would run out. But this happens in a natural fashion all the time, rivers run dry because of drought or overflow because of rain higher than usual.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
If you pumped the spent water into a lake (either artificial or man-made), then the sun will do the work in retrieving fresh water from brackish water. Since the water has to essentially be isolated from other water sources to prevent ecological damage, one way you could make use of this otherwise-useless lake (whilst you're waiting for it to evaporate) is to use it as an energy reservoir. I'm not sure of the proper name, but the idea is that you store power by pumping water from the lower lake to the highe
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
and thats why there probably will never be a one-source-fix-all solution, unless one manage to run a fusion reactor of any water source...
Re: (Score:2)
No. The discharge of every coastal sewage plant and every storm drain is your fuel. Then there's these things called "rivers". I understand something like 0.01% of all water on the planet flows through them every year. As small as that sounds, it's a substantial number in terms of solar kJ's sequestered in its distillation.
Re: (Score:2)
T
Re:Deplete our Fresh Water supply? (Score:5, Funny)
The power plant is at the ocean next to a river.
The river's fresh water runs into the ocean as it is. That's just how nature works. All this is doing is diverting some of the water into the power plant and mixing the water there. What they're doing is siphoning off gravity and osmotic pressure, and THOSE are the vital resources that will be depleted instead.
Re:Deplete our Fresh Water supply? (Score:5, Funny)
What they're doing is siphoning off gravity and osmotic pressure, and THOSE are the vital resources that will be depleted instead.
Typical short-sightedness. We're going to use up all our gravity, and then we'll float off into space! We've got to shut down this plant fast!
Re:Deplete our Fresh Water supply? (Score:4, Funny)
What they're doing is siphoning off gravity and osmotic pressure, and THOSE are the vital resources that will be depleted instead.
What ever will we do if we deplete the world's supply of gravity. Sure, this scheme might solve problems now, but in thirty years our children will have to deal with global floating.
Re: (Score:2)
our children will have to deal with global floating.
By the time global floating becomes a problem, we won't exactly have a globe anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
What they're doing is siphoning off gravity and osmotic pressure, and THOSE are the vital resources that will be depleted instead.
Gravity is a vital resource we can deplete it? Ummmm, nope. See: physics.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Don't worry, we'll use the power produced to run desalination plants.
What? thermody-whati-namics?
Re: (Score:2)
Although I like this idea. Won't it just deplete our supply of fresh water?
Mmm, nope, don't think so. This isn't a case where you're diverting fresh water to the task. You're simply borrowing the energy those rivers would normally dissipate when they hit the sea anyway.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Although I like this idea. Won't it just deplete our supply of fresh water? If we're constantly running our fresh water through a membrane into salt water, won't our "fuel" of fresh water run out?
Really, this is what passes for insightful these days?
Every time it rains, the rain is composed fresh water that was evaporated from the ocean and desalinated in the process. That process has occurred for millions of years, and will continue for the foreseeable future, no matter what we do. All the fresh water th
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Deplete our Fresh Water supply? (Score:5, Insightful)
That is /not/ a valid worry.
The plant is next to a river, which empties into the ocean.
Part of the nature of rivers, is that they transport fresh water easily.
Depleting a supply of fresh water, when you are on a RIVER next to the OCEAN is not only not a valid worry, it is a stupid worry that verges on the same sort of knee-jerk hysteria that lead the pumping millions of tons of radioactive material into the atmosphere because of coal burning, instead of using nuclear plants.
It's ridiculous, short-sighted, and causes more harm than good.
Re: (Score:2)
Just look at the problems caused by dams on the Mekong and the effects it has downstream
or water being used from the murray river for irrigation and the effects it has downstream
do not dismiss the effects of changes
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
depending of course how much fresh water you take
No, not depending on that at all. The fresh water used, if not taken by the plant, just goes directly into the ocean to become saltwater anyway. And WTF are you talking about with this "downstream" thing? There's nothing downstream from the mouth of a river...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Marine ecology is actually highly sensitive to salinity in the water - and this process increases relative salinity in the water. Whilst this won't affect the volume of fresh water available for human use, it will have significant impact on marine life living in the unique ecosystem that exists at a rivers
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Good luck with the salmon then. Because every animal moving in or out that river entry, or living there, will be completely fucked. And then those who depend on it will be fucked. And so on. Until the whole loop / food chain is dead.
Good luck with your salmon exports too. And the jobs and industry related to it.
Why are most humans unable to think around the next corner??
In nature you can NEVER change a single part. You ALWAYS change the whole chain / loop. Often even many or a whole tree of them.
If you do s
Re: (Score:2)
two words (Score:2)
Thorium Fluoride
Re: (Score:2)
If that fails, Energy Amplifier (it uses Thorium [cam.ac.uk], and you can even burn waste with it).
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
That's not sustainable, as they're just more efficient, not a closed infinite loop. Entropy always increases. In this house...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
How does it seem destructive to the environment?
Look (Score:2)
to stupid logic (Score:2)
Seriously... Why are we bothering with this nonsense. There is no way this system can produce that much power and it seems ridiculously destructive to the environment. Nuclear power is the way to go! The Greenpeace crowd needs to acknowledge that they've done more harm than good, in lobbying against nuclear power.
Luddites the lot of them.
Obviously nuclear power hasn't solved the worlds energy problems yet and weather it will remains to be seen. Until then I'm all for researching all conceivable options - with the future uncertain few thigs are sure, but knowledge being power is pretty damn close. Oh, and I tire of fools who reject an idea just because that idea alone doesn't solve everything.
Destructive? (Score:2)
It just changes the salinity gradient of the river mouth a bit (which already shifts based on the river flow which is hardly static year round).
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously... Why are we bothering with this nonsense. There is no way this system can produce that much power and it seems ridiculously destructive to the environment. Nuclear power is the way to go! The Greenpeace crowd needs to acknowledge that they've done more harm than good, in lobbying against nuclear power.
Luddites the lot of them.
We're bothering, as you put it, due to several reasons:
- First off, this is taking place in Norway. Norway has plenty of rivers which delivers lots of fresh water to areas where there is lots of salt water. Norway also decided many years ago to NOT build any nuclear power plants.
- Secondly, there is this idea that you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket. Reactors are nice and all, but what do you do with them when you run out of fuel? Uranium is a finite resource, but the water cycle goes on forev
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously... Why are we bothering with this nonsense. There is no way this system can produce that much power and it seems ridiculously destructive to the environment.
Whoa.. What destruction?
These plants are located where fresh water meets salt water, at the mouth of rivers.
There is no destruction.
As for capacity, "the technology has the global potential to generate clean, renewable energy equivalent to China's total electricity consumption in 2002 or half of the EU's total power production (some 1600 to 1700 Twh)"
So, wrong on both counts.
Now DO GO BACK AND READ TFA before you climb on you high horse...
Re:Nuclear power plants are offtopic, but here goe (Score:5, Insightful)
And what claims are those? Nuclear power is the predominant form of power in many countries and it does well. The pebble bed design is interesting, but even 70s plant designs were fine. People like to ignore the fact that coal burning plants send up far more radioactive elements in the atmosphere than even a "disaster" like 3 mile island.
What's more, there is a lot of posturing about nuclear "waste", when it is far from waste. If a byproduct is energetic enough to be dangerous, then it is energetic enough to be fuel. If it weren't for stupid proliferation treaties and unscientific environmentalists, we would be using breeder reactors to derive much of our energy form all this "waste". We wouldn't have a huge dependence on foreign oil, and possibly thousands of lives would not be in jeopardy because of wars in the middle eats.
But by all means, please keep singing your tune. There is no consequence to spouting lies like yours, no one gets hurt...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
That's because of the way you do it. Every single of your nuclear plants is most probably completely different from all the others, maintenance is also probably done by many different companies... every new plant is built like it was the first one you ever built, and every plant is maintained like it was the only one you had, so you never make economies of scale (but each politician who builds a plant gets to please a friend's company, yay).
NB: I'm just guessing for Ontario, based on how things are often do
Re:Nuclear power plants are offtopic, but here goe (Score:5, Insightful)
For the umpteenth time: this is irrelevant. What is dangerous about radiation poisoning is its concentration, not its absolute value. Our bodies, and pretty much every life form on the planet, has evolved with the ability to withstand a certain amount of background radiation. If you dilute the radiation enough, the problem will go away. So stop saying that the total amount of radiation released from a coal power plant makes it more dangerous than waste from a nuclear plant.
You may claim that, at nominal conditions, nuclear plants are cleaner than coal plants. You may even claim that nuclear waste does not give the same problems as coal combustion products. But claiming that coal power causes are more dangerous than nuclear power from the point of view of radiation poisoning is nuts.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you dilute the radiation enough, the problem will go away. So stop saying that the total amount of radiation released from a coal power plant makes it more dangerous than waste from a nuclear plant.
Actually, the standard radiation protection models do *not* assume that radiation is only dangerous beyond a threshold, which is why accidents like Chernobyl have very large numbers of fatal cancers predicted (~10000). Most of these will be in people only exposed to small doses, but the exposed population is h
Re:Nuclear power plants are offtopic, but here goe (Score:5, Informative)
expense: nuclear power costs very little. CHECK. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html [world-nuclear.org]
operating life: nuclear power stations have a long life span, plants built in the 60's are still going. CHECK. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf08.html [world-nuclear.org]
ouput: do i even need to provide a reference on this one? nuclear power runs whole nations such as france.
it would seem good sir, that you are the one spreading bullshit. I call you out on your anti nuke nonsense, you know nothing about the subject past what greenpeace has shoved down your throat.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
If it weren't for the U.S. authorities clever detective work we'd a had another 9/11 [wikipedia.org] on our hands.
Re:Nuclear power plants are offtopic, but here goe (Score:5, Insightful)
Last time I looked France even had a 40+ year old tidal hydro power station near Le Havre as well as a wide variety of other power plants. Try harder.
France consumed 447.27 Billion Kilowatt-Hours [doe.gov] in 2007, but produced 542.41 Billion Kilowatt-Hours, 430 Billion Kilowatt-Hours were produced by nuclear power plants. They export electricity, but nuclear alone essentially covers their consumption. "France runs on nuclear power" would be an accurate statement.
In that post you provide one fact in one sentence, and it's nit-picky and deceptive. You then proceed to argue as though anyone who reads about the topic or your posts agrees with you. This is in stark contrast to the obvious evidence that the GP has read on the topic (the references provided), and the fact that you have about five people arguing against you.
I read your post because in my reading on the topic I came to the conclusion that nuclear is a great idea that's mostly opposed by antiquated concerns about accidents and waste. But, my curiosity was piqued when I saw an argument about something else, and figured that you might have a good point (i.e. obviously nuclear isn't taking off so maybe there's more validity to counterarguments than I am aware of). But I was sorely disappointed by the lack of references, explanations, or basic consistency or logic. You do sound as though you know enough that you could formulate a good opposing position if you weren't trolling though.
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, since you are criticising the worthiness of the guy's post as an argument then I think it is fair to look at some of what you say.
In that post you provide one fact in one sentence, and it's nit-picky and deceptive. You then proceed to argue as though anyone who reads about the topic or your posts agrees with you. This is in stark contrast to the obvious evidence that the GP has read on the topic (the references provided), and the fact that you have about five people arguing against you.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nope, it is not even close. Nuclear power produces base-power, it can not produce peak-power. Most electricity is used during peak hours where you need electricity produced from sources than can be turned
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Most electricity is used during peak hours where you need electricity produced from sources than can be turned on and off during the day. Currently only oil and coal have that ability.
And hydro. Which can also store surplus base power (by pumping water uphill).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For interest sake, peak power is almost removed in some countries due to differing costs of electricity. You will be surprised how much industry (big and small) is started up at non-peak times.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nuclear power produces base-power, it can not produce peak-power. . . . Currently only oil and coal have that ability
I don't believe that coal is considered as a good candidate for turning on and off rapidly in order to meet peak power demand and oil is pretty expensive compared to most other energy sources. Around here (northern Illinois) most of our base load is met by coal and nuclear and most of the peaker plants are natural gas. Looking forward, solar has a potential for providing a significant peaking capacity in the cooling season, when A/C loads match solar availability pretty well. Also, I'd bet that most elect
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It takes a very long time to start up a large boiler and there are very serious thermal fatigue problems caused by large numbers of shutdowns and startups. The workaround for this is to just keep on shovelling in the coal even when you don't need the electricity. It's less coal than if it was running at full capacity, but coal fired power stations are really a base load power source and not very efficient for peaks.
Re:Nuclear power plants are offtopic, but here goe (Score:5, Informative)
Last time I looked France even had a 40+ year old tidal hydro power station near Le Havre as well as a wide variety of other power plants. Try harder.
79% of electricity produced in France is produced in nuclear reactors.
http://www.planete-energies.com/contenu/nucleaire/production-consommation.html [planete-energies.com]
Another source says that out of all energy consumed in France (including fuel for cars and such), 44% is of nuclear origin.
Maybe it is not correct to say that nuclear power runs the whole nation, but the nation sure wouldn't run without it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Who cares?
Nuclear is a huge % of the electricity. Norway isn't only hydroelectric as well, we have power plants running on natural gasses, the one in TFA, couple of wind turbines, etc, but Norway is a hydroelectric country, the same way France is a nuclear.
Re: (Score:2)
I provided links to prove all my points except for the blindingly obvious one that nuclear power produces a huge amount of energy. why don't you try reading the numerous links i gave you, and you mig
Re: (Score:2)
insightful my ass! Nuclear power for civilian purposes produces enough energy for France, in fact it produces enough excess that they can run CERN with no negative effect on the environment. The only thing keeping it down are the lobbiests for coal/oil, big woop obsolete jobs are obsolete, while that sucks for the people who work in the coal industry it's just the way it is.
Re:Radioactive waste? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a big part is that its been working and practical for 30 years while no new plants have been built, and that many feel its been held back from development by the NIMBY masses. If more intelligent and less fearful handling of nuclear power had existed in the past we might be in better shape than we are now. While I don't agree with the grandparent that pursuing other alternatives isn't worthwhile, I do feel that nuclear power is a strong component of a sustainable future energy strategy.
I imagine this particular technology will be economical, useful, but limited in its implementation, just as hydroelectric power is. Just as with hydro power, the ultimate power source is the evaporation, vapor movement and rain caused by the sun -- though I can't claim to be certain, I'd imagine you could predict now the total amount of power available from this, and I'd imagine it is significant but no panacea. This is the general problem I and other nuclear proponents see: not that "clean" power technology is bad or boring, but that current concepts of wind, solar and tidal seem incapable of meeting current demand -- anything that doesn't meet current demand is unlikely to be solely used if alternatives (such as nuclear) exist, since the public would rather not be inconvenienced.
To counter your objections:
1. The toxic material can be reduced significantly by reprocessing the fuels. This poses a proliferation risk, but France and other countries have managed to do so for years without losing any material. It was banned by executive order by Carter, an order that should be rescinded. Also, interestingly and amusingly, Yucca Mountain is only 10 or 20 miles from an old nuclear test site, making the objections to the storage site seem less based on reality.
2. As we continue to operate older and older plants this is bound to be a problem. Extending the operating life past what they were designed for is bound to create safety trouble, but new ones have been impossible to build for decades, and replacing them with coal plants is not better in my mind. New construction and a renaissance in safer plant design (pebble beds are particularly impressive) can mitigate a lot of risk. Also, while the safety concerns are real and significant, and shouldn't be downplayed, I think the general public overestimates the danger -- Three Mile Island released no radiation and showed the validity of safety precautions.
Re: (Score:2)
We live in a world where we can create power without also creating poison. That's awesome! That is the Star Trek future we could be living right now.
For what it's worth, they used nuclear power in Star Trek. Solar power doesn't work when you're traveling to other stars.