In the distance, you can see the outlines of the reactor buildings at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which is in the slow process of being decommissioned at a cost so far of $35bn (£26bn) almost 15 years since it suffered a triple meltdown after being struck by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and a 15m (49ft) tsunami.
That plant is borked, yes.
The plan has been controversial with campaigners because it ditches attempts to reduce Japan’s reliance on nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster, calling instead for a “maximisation” of nuclear power, which will account for about 20% of total energy output in 2040: about 14 reactors have been restarted and the assumption is that 30 will be in full operation by then.
The others aren’t. And, of course, the very worst that could possibly happen to a nuclear plant led to zero direct deaths. So, pretty safe then.
Pity Germany heard the close it all down bit and not the restart them all bit, eh?
The worst at Fukushima could have been prevented by a better designed backup generator system. As it was the diesels also became swamped which allowed the meltdown to happen.
The German response had been symptomatic of the country’s general collapse since 2008.
The German response had been symptomatic of the country’s general collapse since 2008.
It’s starting to look like a bit earlier than that, 22 November 2005, to be precise.
As I point out to my German friends, if a mag 9 quake and a 14m tsunami strike Germany, the safety of their nuclear plants will not be among their first concerns.
Additionally, half the country runs on 50Hz and half on 60Hz, and when the on-site generators failed they sent the wrong portable generators, resulting in a couple of days’ extra delay.
And that potential exposure to a large Tsunami was not only known but specifically pointed out to the operators. Who then entirely failed to take any remedial action. The plant itself had essentially zero issues with the earthquake itself, and survived the almost unprecedented Tsunami itself, except for the backup generators which were swamped, along with the battery back up systems. The Tsunami that hit was estimated to have reached 12-15 metres. Damage to pumps was also a factor in the subsequent loss of cooling water and the resulting core meltdowns.
No element of infrastructure can be secured against a tsunami or a 9.0 quake.
Over here we refuse to frack for fear of inducing a seismic event of around one billionth that strength.
It’s not just Germany who are the idiots.
I bet I could build one out of Lego.
wibble
It can’t be ‘secured’ in the sense of continuing in working order uninterrupted, but it can be built to shut down safely. The Fukushima plants would have had no problems, if only their emergency generators had been placed a few metres higher. Of course, there are modern reactor designs that can shut down safely without requiring external power.
I disagree, the facility in fact survived, the tsunami being of huge size too, but the unfortunate location of the backup generators and batteries in areas that were MOST at risk of flooding almost guaranteed that some sort of failure would occur. Due to the design of the plant, active cooling was required to keep the cores at safe temperatures, and keep them immersed in water. Even when fully shutdown the cores generated substantial residual heat. If the operators had taken advice and located the backup systems to a location that would survive unless the plant itself was overwhelmed, and they also hardened the pumping systems from flooding, then although shutdown the site would have been able to restart undamaged in quite a short time.
Nuclear would be cheaper – for all I know, enormously cheaper – if the hopeless “linear, no threshold” model of the risks of low dosage rates of radiation were abandoned and evidence-based estimates used instead.
I wonder if anyone has even sketched out the potential savings.
Nuclear is only “cheaper” with massive support from tax payers to build the reactors, then with Government guaranteed above market rate wholesale prices which increases costs to the consumer.
All reactors worldwide, including those Jap ones, get taxpayer funded subsidy.
Hinkley Point C (Chinese/EDF joint venture) is currently 15 years behind schedule and twice initial build cost. UK Government has guaranteed an inflation linked, operating lifetime price of £128 per MWh. Gas can do it for around £60 to £70, and wind strike price is £128… so nuclear is as expensive as wind.
EDF in France owner if a fleet of 59 reactors which need replacing has been renationalised by the Government to provide funding because EDF was unable to attract sufficient private investment to rebuild the fleet.
Nuclear is “cheap” like the NHS is “free”.
Hinckley is behind schedule because everyone and his dog can object and require yet another court case to resolve at vast expense.
Liability is extended to stuff that would not be entertained for any other industry (other than firearms). Not surprisingly the companies say “If you’re going to make us liable for special things, we want special cover.”
Nuclear stations have a very long ROI.
Once their Return threshold has been reached, they make absoultely oodles of cash. This was one of the craziest aspects of Merkel’s shutdown. Most of the reactors had reached the end of the investment cycle and wera about to start generating a million euros a day in profit.
“… so nuclear is as expensive as wind.”
However it carries on working when there is no wind blowing. With wind you also have to factor in the cost of providing back up for when it isn’t working, which is quite often.
Right. That cost isn’t included, which is nuts. Power should be paid for as the complete price.
This is where a carbon tax is all you need. If you burn some coal, you pay a tax to generate the power. You don’t pay it on the wind or solar bit. The more efficient option can be easily seen by consumers. Energy producers will then do what works.
This might include things like using solar and wind in different ways. Converting the intermittent energy into stored in some way (like pumping water up a hill) or finding uses where intermittency is OK (like mining bitcoin).
Beyond that, you can have consumer choice. Flying Swiss is a bit greener than Easyjet because some of their fuel is the zero carbon stuff from Synhelion, and the Eloi that fly Swiss don’t mind paying a bit to do that, where the Easyjet Morlocks don’t.
Not quite fair…. and possibly stupid…
The same can be said for any coal plant, or even small gas plant if it were to be built to the ever-increasing “Guidelines” and “Safety Requirements” demanded of a nuclear plant or a bird-chopper park.
You’re talking about projects that can only be done properly and safely *communally* ..
So it’ll *always* include TaxPayer Money. “Outside” large investments is a bonus.. Saves on the tax expenditure, but has a Price…
You’re talking about a tad more power that cones out of your home fuse box…. To serve that domestic fusebox…
Scale is an issue here…
I don’t know if it’s true but I read that we couldn’t build a nuclear power station in Cornwall because the natural background radiation exceeds the maximum level allowed for a nuclear power station. Much like fracking is banned because of the minor earth tremors that may be produced. We do live in a brain dead country.
I have been told that this is true. Now, whether it actually is……
The odd thing I find about the UK is that despite all the rules and regulations that hold business back and prevent infrastructure projects going ahead, the UK manages to get some economic growth. Not a lot, pretty thin gruel , but it is measurable.
There seems to be a lot of ambition in the country. If can get the government to get out of the way, then we should see a mini boom.
Paki’s/Chinese/etc. can make an economy selling rocks to each other….
None of it “official economic activity”, but you can *estimate* it and insert it in the Numnbers…
So you can in/deflate Gross Numbers by simply including the Unofficial Economy in the Official Numbers.
Whether or not you *want* to include the amount of $$$ going around in the phone shop/kebab bar/tea house/hairdresser circuit….
“The odd thing I find about the UK is that despite all the rules and regulations that hold business back and prevent infrastructure projects going ahead, the UK manages to get some economic growth. Not a lot, pretty thin gruel , but it is measurable.”
Even before the crazy prices of energy we were generally a low energy user (measured in terms of the percentage of the price of what we produced that was energy). We shifted away from mass manufacturing of shoes to Church’s selling £400 brogues to the well-heeled around the world. There’s still some energy needed to make those, but most of the value is the craft and the marketing. Same with making F1 cars, specialist optics, blockbuster movies and high-end hi-fi. The bit of Dyson we have here is the design, and services bit. No-one is really thinking much about energy needs when producing games or accounting software.
One of the things I find most strange about the Catastrophic-man-made-climate-change zealots is that nearly none of them support nuclear power. If you really believe it’s an existential threat, a crisis, an emergency, must get to net zero ASAP!!!, you should be embracing nuclear energy.
The voters (whose support you will need) are not going to accept a huge reduction in their standard of living and electricity that shuts off frequently.
Nuclear power is the only way to make dramatic progress towards net zero. I get that a lot of people haven’t looked into this and don’t realize that the promises of unicorns aren’t realistic (if the pop stars say this will work that’s good enough for me) but this charade shouldn’t be able to stand up.
“The building is on fire, we must get out fast”
“There’s a door right here”
“No, no, we must dig a tunnel”
As Amory Lovins, perhaps the most distinguished writer to have been involved in the move away from fossil fuels, put it in 1970:
“If you ask me, it’d be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it.”
The idea that cheaper energy is a positive good – that it reduces poverty and gives people more leisure time – has been almost wholly lost.
As Paul Ehrlich, the father of modern greenery, put it in 1975:
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy at this point would be the moral equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun. With cheap, abundant energy, the attempt clearly would be made to pave, develop, industrialise, and exploit every last bit of the planet”.
What’s crazy about it is, as Tim has often said, there’s every possible element you could want in the dirt in your back garden. It’s just not in economically extractable quantities. The “economic” there is the cost of energy. If energy was cheap enough, it would be economically possible to make anything out of anything. Resources would be absolutely unlimited
There’s a BBC R4 Analysis programme from 2010 in which they talked to a woman who organised events for Greenies.
She reckoned that if she went on stage and told the (large) audience that she had a magic want and if she waved it the laws of physics would be suspended and burning fossil fuels wouldn’t produce greenhouse gases. If she then asked how many people wanted her to wave it it would be less than 10%.
This attitude is why the term Watermelon came in to use to describe them and whilst its no longer in common usage the watermelons haven’t gone away and if anything they’re a lot bolder as Miliband is demonstrating.
The left were against fossil fuels long before the environmentalists came along, but it gave them a good opportunity when it became obvious their constant and gleeful predictions that we’d soon be reaching peak fuel failed to come about.
“The voters (whose support you will need) are not going to accept a huge reduction in their standard of living and electricity that shuts off frequently.”
But isn’t that the point of it, for the real zealots? The eco stuff is just the excuse.
The real aim, as always, is to impoverish the proles and put the zealots at the top of the tree.
The green thing did well because there were a lot of influential fellow-travellers, who made it difficult for normal people to admit that they didn’t really believe in it. Fortunately that seems to be ending.
Yep, see my comment about watermelons above.
70’s /80’s WWF/Greenpeace indoctrination… Nuclear is Bad™…
A lot of this is about a vaguely nicer world, a natural world. There’s a romantic view of pastoralism, that I think particularly appeals to the maternal instincts of women.
But it’s very touchy-feely and not about the numbers. It’s also very much a thing people get into once they are no longer in touch with actual, awful pastoral life. HS2 is likely to build at a rate of 1 yard per employee per year. I’d love to know what the numbers were when Brunel was in charge. But I bet it was a lot more, because no-one gave a fuck about building over a bit of Berkshire and knocking a hole through Box Hill. Today you’d have a weighty report and millions in spending because of a few dozen bats.
The Chinese can build tons of railways and tunnels because they’re still close enough as a people to the brutal reality of pastoralism. They built a 13 mile road tunnel. Which apart from getting people around faster, is probably good for the environment, saving hours of driving.
“Pity Germany heard the close it all down bit and not the restart them all bit, eh?”
Germany, like UK, committed to a grid served by wind power replacing fossil fuels. Wind is intermittent and needs constant back-up but has priority. This means the back-up must leave the grid when wind power can supply, then quickly rejoin the grid when wind conditions mean wind cannot supply.
This on/off back-up often involves short periods. This way of operating is possible with gas generation – not so easy with coal – but it is not possible with nuclear.
Nuclear is designed for constant (core temperature) steady output, ideal for providing base-load, but frequent scaling down/scaling up reaction has been shown (in Germany reactors) to cause fuel rods to buckle from stress due to sudden changes in temperature in the reactor core.
This is why both Germany and UK are reliant on gas generation and always will be, de facto operating two parallel systems. As more wind power is added to the grid, more gas capacity will be needed as back-up and stand in.
For this reason, the more “unreliables” that are added to the grid, the more the cost of electricity will rise and the more vulnerable the grid will become to frequency variations. (See: Spain a few months ago.)
I note that the gas backup means it can’t be “net zero”. Not without indulgences, excuse me I mean carbon certificates.
Indulgences nails it.
It’s like Vegans not wearing any animal products…
So they have to keep themselves warm using synthetics, or …. Non-Animal Organics, which at the scale needed is that Plantations Bad thing…
It’s Idiocy, compounded ny Idiocy…
Veganism requires more imports of food because we don’t produce enough (or at all) substitutes like nuts and soya.
Something I keep arguing with people about, and I’ve yet to meet anyone who can explain the other side with any seriousness, is the environmental impact of meat.
People will say things about how much land you need for meat over crops. Which is true. But you can’t grow crops up on the Ridgeway, or in most of North Wiltshire. Or Cornwall. Or much north of Birmingham.
And the cow farts thing makes no sense to me at all. It’s not digging into the ground and unlocking carbon. It’s grass. It’s a cycle. Cow fart produces methane, Goes into the atmosphere. Breaks down into CO2. Grass uses the CO2. Cow eats the grass. I suppose there’s transportation of steak, but there’s transportation of soya too. What am I missing?
I, too, like to remind Greens about the carbon cycle – which they should have learnt about in secondary school, unless like the Goblin, they were on Klimastreik that week. The ‘best’ answer I’ve received is CH4 is much ‘worse’ than CO2 as a GHG (not entirely convinced, it’s a trade-off between persistence and short term effects), but even if we accept that argument, it’s at worst a second or third order issue. And even if all domestic livestock vanished overnight, the vegetation would still grow* and (absent mammals to consume it) would be ‘digested’ by bacteria and fungi with very similar results.
But ecoloons want to ‘compare’ the CH4 emitted by farm animals with CH4 emitted by boats, cars, trains and planes, which is obvious lunacy.
* as you correctly point out, nobody farms animals on land that is suitable for arable crops – the latter is more profitable and you don’t have to get up at 4am in winter to milk the wheat.
Of course you farm animals on land suitable for cropping, if the returns are better from doing so. There is a shed load of farmland able to be cropped in various crops that is grazed by dairy cattle. Raising the animals for meat tends to be lower return and usually though not exclusively done on land not particularly suitable for cropping. Rather depends on the crop too, and on the size of the area suitable for cropping, may not be worth having or employing all the machinery for a small area.
“Rather depends on the crop too, and on the size of the area suitable for cropping, may not be worth having or employing all the machinery for a small area.”
And expertise, too. You get your dominant agriculture and network effects. Like there’s other places you can grow watercress other than around Winchester, but it became the centre of expertise in it.
“If the returns are better …” We KNOW the returns are better from growing crops: that is why the price of arable farmland is per acre is more than 20% higher than that for pasture.
Every year there is some farmland that is suitable for crops that is grazed because some farmers introduce grazing into their crop rotation – it used to be one year in seven the land was “fallow” and sheep or cattle would graze it but the overall %age of arable land grazed is less than 14% because some farmers skip the “fallow” year, adding more fertiliser and/or more years growing beans.
Your second sentence appears to be based on ignorant casual glances..
You can add to the lunacy the idea that burning coal is bad, but Thatcher closing coal mines was hyper bad …