Fukushima Nuclear Plant Accident

[MarkInMKUK]

Wind farms tend to raise a lot of opposition. For starters, the noise generated by the turbines is propagated down the support and resonates in the water. Given Japan's history of wanting to continue whaling, anything that adds low frequency noise to the area will tend to frighten off whales and as such may cause protests. That's in addition to the usual complaints about ruined views and danger to shipping / wildlife / whatever. Then there's cable to bring power to shore. And how consistent is the wind? It's an intermittent supply at the mercy of weather conditions ... and also very unlikely to be tsunami-proof, which may also be a design consideration.

[Skevitj]

There must be available space outside of major shipping lanes, more than on land at any rate? Finding one close enough to grid feed-in points but away from commercial areas could be tricky though. The variable output wont matter, there are a number of wind installations around the world which use hydroelectric dams to buffer their output, pumping water into the dam when there's excess generations and feeding it out during drops in the wind. Scaling up from existing installations, Japan has the hydro capacity to allow highly variable sources a relatively high penetration. It's not like it's going to replace the entire grid, 10% capacity is probably an absolute best case. I'm more a fan of solar than wind, but when space is at a premium, solar's power density isn't that crash hot, and at least with wind the area around the turbines can still be used for farming etc. Tide and wave stations could work, tide tends to be heavily dependent on geography though, wave is actually one of the best of the renewable sources in terms of output consistency and space considerations but has the least commercial history.

 

Apparently all of Japan's wind farms, both off-shore and land based, survived the earthquake and tsunami completely unscathed. I'm not too sure about the location relative to the quake center, but that aint too bad. There are a few wind farm designs around which use flotation boys instead of grounded supports, allowing them to be placed in far deeper water, and are supposed to be capable of brushing off events that make what hit Japan look trivial. That's gotta be one of the best and worst things about most renewables, there's so many different way of setting them up, everyone just spends their time arguing against each other over which is best, instead of just picking one and building it.

 

As for whaling, it's my understanding that it's on its last legs anyway. They're up to their necks in debt and they've canceled all activity for this year at least. As for commercial fishing, there is a wind farm planned at Rhode Island which is supposed to allow commercial fishing in the area to continue even within the farm boundary. I haven't seen anything providing a strong link between the presence of a wind farm and an ongoing effect to fish stocks nearby. At any rate, how much whaling actually goes on in Japanese waters? I was under the impression that it occurs mainly in international waters well away from the Japanese coast.

 

For other complaints: A group of turbines on the horizon is likely to draw less public opposition than the continued expansion of nuclear plants. That said, people can do stupid things, it wouldn't be the first time if it went the other way and people leaned towards expansion of nuclear.

Edited April 15, 2011 by Skevitj

[MarkInMKUK]

The noise problem would be pretty much a whale-only issue - they are the only creatures I'm aware of that use subsonics to communicate. I just prefer geothermal on the grounds that it's relatively unobtrusive - surface buildings and power pylons and that's more-or-less it.

 

... and that's despite the fact I work for a company more likely to benefit indirectly if they go the wind farm route.

[ub3rman123]

Does Japan have the space for energy acquirement methods that are room intensive?

[Skevitj]

Geothermal isn't too bad on the room side (and I find it hilarious when people insist it isn't related to nuclear power), and there are wind farms with an almost negligible footprint. Probably the best in terms of space usage is actually my pet favorite, wave power. There is a wave farm design (CETO bouys) which sits on the bottom of the ocean (relatively shallow water is preferred for capital reasons, but depth isn't a huge factor), hence it takes up almost no space apart from a small complex on the shore. Because the buoys sit under water it is effectively immune to freak waves and storms on the surface, and as it's footing doesn't need any real stability, just the ability to resist a fairly large pull it can withstand pretty much any event you can throw at it, including severe earthquakes. It works by following the natural motion of the underwater swells (as opposed to other designs which work against it) so it can sit in the middle of a reef or an area of sea grass and not have any sustained effect on marine life, hell If i remember right, one of their larger studies actually found it increased marine life in the area around it similar to an artificial reef. On top of that it can produce high pressure water for desalination just as easily as it can produce electricity.

 

I'm not sure what it looks like around Japan, but in Australia we've got wave reliabilities around and often above the 90% mark, putting wave power as the most consistent source behind thermal generation. It's just a pitty neither state nor federal governments have the guts to invest in future energy security while we have so much cheap coal and gas sitting around. Contrasting Japan's lack of natural coal/gas it may be that they can actually conjure the funds needed to put a large scale demonstration plant in place and get the ball rolling.

[DeTomaso]

@ Skevitj

 

Fertility is known to decrease after exposure to radioactivity (Radzikhovsky and Krisevich 2002). If the WHO doesn’t even know this simple fact the dudes haven’t yet run through a simple roentgen irradiation and have thus no idea of the critical dose. Their statement is actually a medical piss-take of its best as is their medical ethos behind. Dangerous this disinformation is, as is the denial of the published research reports on the increase of stillbirths and deformities among newborn babies and animals caused by Chernobyl throughout Europe. The latter is vividly known to any, I repeat, to any European animal breeder of 1986 and thereafter. It is possible that the younger generation without own experience in life and job is to be fooled again with the opposite of what is true, but still atom policy is not yet made by them. And we who we are politically in charge say: Enough is enough!

Every man is free to go for a ride to live in the Pripyat Swamps or in the area of Fukushima, to collect yummy mushrooms from Bavaria or to eat delicate caribou meat from Scandinavia or crispy roast wild boar from France - still highly radioactive contaminated food - one generation after Chernobyl. Do it!

 

You have indeed argued the facts away. Dismissed!

Edited April 15, 2011 by DeTomaso

[Skevitj]

In case you didn't bother reading the actual report, the point they make is that there is no decrease in human fertility attributable to the radiation from the Chernobyl fallout. Not that there isn't a link between radiation exposure and sterility. That much is common knowledge, but what isn't is the effects of chronic exposure to low level radiation. "Critical dose" in this situation means very little. There are just as many studies which suggest a safe exposure threshold as ones which suggest there isn't, the one thing they all have in common is that they agree there are to many extra factors which make it impractical to try and draw a solid conclusion through all the statistical noise.

 

Care to explain their "medical ethos" which makes the report so misleading? Considering the UN had no problem validating it...

 

"...we who we are politically in charge say enough..."? So you're the ones who opposed it after it happened?

 

There is a significant difference between "arguing away the facts" and "arguing away a personal opinion". One involves actually providing proof as to what you're saying, so don't try and take the higher ground when no-one is making a proper effort to present any real justification.

[brokenergy]

Off-topic but mildly important:

 

I haven't been keeping up with this discussion because I don't have a background in nuclear physics or nuclear medicine, so I can't give a proper insite into Fukushima and the whole impact. What I'm really concerned was about is (and the main point I'm going to address) that some people here picking and choosing the material they want to support their claims. It's been prone to happen with some anti-nuclear protesters (as well as climate change deniers, anti-immunisation protesters etc), who use newspapers and non peer-reviewed papers as their source of material.

 

I'm not stating nor accusing anyone here of using bogus information, but for future reference, please read your material and check that it is reliable. This is a very hot issue, I know but at least have some info from an expert and reliable sources to back up your claims. Thank you :biggrin:

 

On-topic:

 

With the level 7 rating, I'm sure that it is already mentioned that it's only preliminary and that comparisons with Chernobyl is misleading. Both plants were built in different times (Chernobyl in the 50's while Fukushima in the 80s), both use different materials as starters for nuclear fission processes, both have different safety standards, and both fail in different ways. It's worth noting that nuclear is one of the safest forms of energy, due to various threats it is designed to withstand earthquakes. The reason it failed is because of tsunami that came later and destoryed secondary powers generators.

 

As for other forms of energy, there isn't any real alternatives that can feed millions of people with power. I've looked into all other forms of energy production and they can't feed large scale at the moment. Sure Japan is sitting in a thermal hot bed and would be utilising it for geo-thermal but can it feed the entire nation of 70 million people? Maybe Edison had the right idea of giving everyone a generator to feed their homes. All we have to pay is the maintainace costs.

[Skevitj]

Maybe Edison had the right idea of giving everyone a generator to feed their homes. All we have to pay is the maintenance costs.

Ha, can you imagine what fuel prices would look like if that was the case? Distributed solar generation would work perfectly in a number of places around the world, but very few can afford to fork out a new car's worth in money for the storage and inverters needed to make a grid connection redundant. Frankly, the feed in tariffs some power companies offer is just a poor joke.

 

On a similar note, one of the more interesting ideas I've heard to allow variable renewable sources higher penetration values is the idea of distributed storage (as opposed to distributed generation) using electric cars. The idea is that if everyone owned an electric car and plugged that car into the grid whenever they weren't driving it, they would form a very large dynamic electricity buffer which would have the capacity to store enough power to almost completely smooth out the amount of power needed to supply a small neighborhood (per group of cars). It still isn't perfect, in that high capacity base load generation is still needed, then there's the issue of managing the integrity of the buffer while ensuring that attached cars are adequately charged, but it's still something to think about.

 

Just TEPCO by itself is the 4th largest energy provider in the world, and it only controls a 1/3 of the Japanese grid, a change isn't going to happen overnight. That doesn't mean it's not worth starting, the amount of money they must fork out to keep their thermal plants running has gotta give geothermal a decent competitive chance, that said when you're contrasting 50MW geothermal plants against 8GW nuclear it's a very distant goal. Another possible negative to geothermal is that most of the countries best hot spots are actually national parks which could make the approvals process a very long and expensive journey. As I mentioned before, it will be interesting to see how TEPCO is treated. I severely doubt that there will be any large capital investments happening in the near future.

[Kendo 2]

Hmmm...Small scale power generation is possible and can be done for about $500.00. A 12v solar panel (like the ones used to power automatic gates and some street lights) and a small homemade Tesla coil and you'll make enough amps to run power for a standard 4 bedroom house. I've seen it done. The thing is, government codes prohibit use of the power generated. It must be sold to a local provider at a reduced rate and then be bought back at the standard KWph rate. They want it in their grid.

 

Anyway, just reading through the posts in this thread I've realized we are all doomed.