Labor MP's want nuclear power debate

[Marius]

so if china is building enough reactors to double consumption then the forecast, logically, would be halved, no?

Only if half of the supply is sold to China. Would probably happen, but still.

[André Axe'm]

Well Japan got almost 40 years out of Fukushima 1.

That was a tongue-in-cheek comment, where my aim was to use typical anti nuclear claims as arguements for nuclear power.

[TRB]

so if china is building enough reactors to double consumption then the forecast, logically, would be halved, no?

Only if half of the supply is sold to China. Would probably happen, but still.

They've already secured their fuel supply, you don't go putting up to 70 reactors [52 of them old gen II] into production without a contract for fuel.

[TRB]

Well Japan got almost 40 years out of Fukushima 1.

That was a tongue-in-cheek comment, where my aim was to use typical anti nuclear claims as arguements for nuclear power.

except it made no sense.
since as I clearly said, the current rate leaves about 70 years of commercial fuel and once china doubles consumption it'll be less then that.

[Spl@!]

slighty-off-topic, but regarding the tectonic plate map...

Another quake. 4.0 a ways out from Innisfail.
NZ, Japan, Pacific Ocean.
Pacific plate is grindin some ****.

Someone go check on the Maldives, they may no longer exist.

[nudge]

Japanese authorities have confirmed that the fire at the spent fuel storage pond at the Unit 4 reactor of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was extinguished on 15 March at 02:00 UTC.



Please note that all future communications from the IAEA regarding events in Japan will use the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) standard.



The IAEA continues to liaise with the Japanese authorities and is monitoring the situation as it evolves.

So with the reactors being under control and the fire out seems to be all good for them.

I'm very pro Nuclear for Australia, but even if you are not, power consumption is growing every year and when I was working in the industry the government were not approving new coal plants. So the current plants were running at near capacity all the time and getting older and older, effectively burning more coal per kwh every year. So where are we going to get our power, before we start having brownouts or rolling blackouts to cope with over demand.

[Mekon]

since as I clearly said, the current rate leaves about 70 years of commercial fuel and once china doubles consumption it'll be less then that.

That's a century's worth (from what I've read) of available Uranium at the current cost of mining it, not that we'll have depleted all stocks. Never mind the ongoing research into reprocessing, etc

http://www.oecd-nea.org/press/2008/2008-02.html

It's a perfectly viable technology, IMO.

Which is not to day that I wouldn't prefer the money to be invested into renewable energy... but a mix of nuclear for heavy load and renewable for supplemental makes sense to me.

[War]

I'd like to add this comment I saw. I'm personally in favour of Nuclear power.


http://imgur.com/r81co

[TRB]

[quote="Mekon"
Which is not to day that I wouldn't prefer the money to be invested into renewable energy... but a mix of nuclear for heavy load and renewable for supplemental makes sense to me.[/quote]


what do you mean renewable for supplemental?
Australia has enough geo-thermal capacity to provide base load electricity on its own for the next 20,000 years with 8-10km bores.

the USA could have geo-thermal provide electricity for at least 2000 years without going below 8km.

and we're talking about wasting money on a 'blink-of-the-eye' power source why?


its just a matter of funding.
If I had the money I'd do it myself.

[André Axe'm]

Isn't a 8 km borehole twice as deep as any that have been done before?

I support nuclear power as it reduces the hazardous nuclear materials on the planet.

[nudge]

I don't know if anyone else cares or is following it but I'll chuck on the latest update from 10.30pm tonight

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Update

Radiation Dose Rates Observed at the Site

The Japanese authorities have informed the IAEA that the following radiation dose rates have been observed on site at the main gate of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

At 00:00 UTC on 15 March a dose rate of 11.9 millisieverts (mSv) per hour was observed. Six hours later, at 06:00 UTC on 15 March a dose rate of 0.6 millisieverts (mSv) per hour was observed.

These observations indicate that the level of radioactivity has been decreasing at the site.

As reported earlier, a 400 millisieverts (mSv) per hour radiation dose observed at Fukushima Daiichi occurred between units 3 and 4. This is a high dose-level value, but it is a local value at a single location and at a certain point in time. The IAEA continues to confirm the evolution and value of this dose rate. It should be noted that because of this detected value, non-indispensible staff was evacuated from the plant, in line with the Emergency Response Plan, and that the population around the plant is already evacuated.

About 150 persons from populations around the Daiichi site have received monitoring for radiation levels. The results of measurements on some of these people have been reported and measures to decontaminate 23 of them have been taken. The IAEA will continue to monitor these developments.

Evacuation of the population from the 20 kilometre zone is continuing. The Japanese have asked that residents out to a 30 km radius to take shelter indoors. Japanese authorities have distributed iodine tablets to the evacuation centres but no decision has yet been taken on their administration.

Background on Radiation

A person’s radiation exposure due to all natural sources amounts on average to about 2.4 millisievert (mSv) per year. A sievert (Sv) is a unit of effective dose of radiation. Depending on geographical location, this figure can vary by several hundred percent.

Since one sievert is a large quantity, radiation doses are typically expressed in millisievert (mSv) or microsievert (µSv), which is one-thousandth or one millionth of a sievert. For example, one chest X-ray will give about 0.1 mSv of radiation dose.

[TRB]

Isn't a 8 km borehole twice as deep as any that have been done before?

I support nuclear power as it reduces the hazardous nuclear materials on the planet.

deepest is not quite 5km.
the barrier is price more then anything, as I said before, having someone both willing and able to afford it.
Cheaper pilot plants can only do so much with their limited funding.

[Lurk]

Still waiting on documentation for that ****, mate.

[Spl@!]

I'd like to add this comment I saw. I'm personally in favour of Nuclear power.
http://imgur.com/r81co

Contained maybe, but I seriously doubt that the majority of those reactor cores, will ever operate again.
1 and 3 would most likely still be operable once reset.

I will now quote an often demonised opinion columnist on the matter (he agrees with ur mate).

Fukushima is one of the oldest of the nuclear power stations that supply a third of Japan’s electricity, and has been rocked by the worst earthquakes in Japan in a century.

It has suffered multiple failures of its cooling systems. It has been battered by explosions. And if it can take all that without cracking ...

Add to that the lessons Japan’s experts will learn from this, and these grim days may yet mark the time not when the nuclear industry died, but when it learnt how to survive even an apocalypse.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andr ... _a_tsunami





A Ninemsn poll
Sunday, 13 March 2011:
Should Australia still consider using nuclear power?
Yes: 79752 (44%)No: 101878 (56%)
It was running until today.


I have also been told that according to the FTA, we are "obliged" to have US companies run and own any nuclear facilities that we build. Have increasingly, aggressively asked the person to back that up with some sort of reference, no matter how obscure....

[Mekon]

I have also been told that according to the FTA, we are "obliged" to have US companies run and own any nuclear facilities that we build. Have increasingly, aggressively asked the person to back that up with some sort of reference, no matter how obscure....

Sounds like your acquaintances inform themselves by reading whatever the Greens equivalent of Andrew Bolt is... ie. woefully misinformed.

I stupidly went and actually read that Bolt opinion-piece (I'm not going to deign to call it an article):

Right now, rescue workers are combing through the ruins of the seaside cities swamped by the tsunami, looking for 10,000 missing people.

By contrast, Chernobyl, the world’s worst nuclear power station disaster, is known to have killed no more than 65.

Yes, I know this doesn’t fit with all the horror stories that activists and journalists spread about Chernobyl.

Gee, I wonder why people aren't living there any more? After all, it was a total beat-up of a disaster - just ask Andrew!

And of course, tracking the 336,000 people who were displaced from the area was a really high priority and eminently practical... for a Soviet republic which dissolved 5 years after the disaster. And the countries affected (Belarus, Ukraine and Russia) are really well organised and funded these days - they have ample resources to dedicate to epidemiological studies. Oh wait...

Just to add to the stupid, the organisation he references (Chernobyl Forum) regarding mortality doesn't say what he says it does. I quote:

It is impossible to assess reliably, with any precision, numbers of fatal cancers caused by radiation exposure due to Chernobyl accident. Further, radiation-induced cancers are at present indistinguishable from those due to other causes.

(...)

The international expert group predicts that among the 600 000 persons receiving more significant exposures (liquidators working in 1986-1987, evacuees, and residents of the most ‘contaminated’ areas), the possible increase in cancer mortality due to this radiation exposure might be up to a few per cent. This might eventually represent up to four thousand fatal cancers in addition to the approximately 100 000 fatal cancers to be expected due to all other causes in this population.

Such increases would be very difficult to detect with available epidemiological tools, given the normal variation in cancer mortality rates

And the whole "thyoid cancer in children" thing can be easily mitigated by taking Iodine, which the far superior Western world has covered. Silly Russians, which didn't they think of that? Oh wait... they did.

From 1992 to 2002 in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine more than 4000 cases of thyroid cancer were diagnosed among those who were children and adolescents (0–18 years) at the time of the accident, the age group 0–14 years being most affected. The majority of these cases were treated, with favourable prognosis for their lives.

It should be noted that early mitigation measures taken by the national authorities helped substantially to minimize the health consequences of the accident. Intake of stable Iodine tablets during the first 6-30 hours after the accident reduced the thyroid dose of the inhabitants of Pripyat by a factor of 6 on average.

Andrew Bolt is a **** hack.