Nuclear power help (arguments)

[His Divine Shadow]

Okay I was having an argument about nuclear power safety and I pulled out this link in response to an article about the rotor breaking off a wind powerplant and how it could have killed someone easily:
http://mntek3.ulb.ac.be/pub/pel/devoogh ... part10.htm

I wanted to show mortality rates for nuclear vs. others per TWh to show it's about as safe as wind, or if not potentially more so?

I got replied to with a link to fucking greenpeace about how uranium mining kills far more people than wind power. Is this true? I am not sure if the link I used figures in uranium mining in it's mortality rate for nuclear or not? I would like some help to find such figures if they exist.

[SpacedTeddyBear]

Here's a link that might help:
linka
The last paragraph may have what you're looking for.

[SpacedTeddyBear]

Ghetto edit:
I'd also argue that it's not fair to compare ( ha! I rhymed) uranium mining to actual deaths directly from the wind turbines/fan. The actual mining for the ore is not part of the actual energy production. If he wants to use uranium mining for his argument, then you can bring up a list of deaths resulting from iron/aluminum mining and refining.

[His Divine Shadow]

Here's a link that might help:
linka
The last paragraph may have what you're looking for.

The data clearly indicates that the wind industry will have to do a better job at improving safety if it wants to live up to its promise of being clean, green, and--benign.

This? No, I am looking for figures on nuclear mortality rate that also includes mining, or atleast has it separately so I could see how high it would go. The second argument I will use however.

[Kanastrous]

The actual mining for the ore is not part of the actual energy production.

Ore extraction is part of the process. Subtract mining and there's no more nuclear fission power, so treating the mining end of the operation as though it's irrelevant to the rest of the process of nuclear power generation seems disingenuous.

[Darth Wong]

Ghetto edit:
I'd also argue that it's not fair to compare ( ha! I rhymed) uranium mining to actual deaths directly from the wind turbines/fan. The actual mining for the ore is not part of the actual energy production. If he wants to use uranium mining for his argument, then you can bring up a list of deaths resulting from iron/aluminum mining and refining.

You do realize that nuclear power plants require prodigious amounts of metal to construct as well, don't you?

The biggest problem with wind power is not the iron and aluminum used in the construction of the windmills; it's the fact that you need thousands of big windmills to equal a single nuclear reactor. A big power plant like Darlington NGS in Ontario, when completed, will have 8 reactors, each putting out 900 MW net. That's 7200 MW. Meanwhile, Toronto's big lakefront windmill averages production of less than 150 kW, despite a rated 750 kW maximum (I guess we don't always get gale-force winds; go figure). Given those figures, you would need somewhere around fifty thousand of those big windmills to equal Darlington NGS once it's finished.

[His Divine Shadow]

But doesn't that in the end mean you still require more steel and aluminium for wind than nuclear? Per unit of produced power anyway, so couldn't you turn the argument on the pro-wind guy since uranium mining is from what I've seen no more dangerous than any other type of ore mining, possibly less given more strenous regulations?

[His Divine Shadow]

The actual mining for the ore is not part of the actual energy production.

Ore extraction is part of the process. Subtract mining and there's no more nuclear fission power, so treating the mining end of the operation as though it's irrelevant to the rest of the process of nuclear power generation seems disingenuous.

Technically, nuclear power does not need mining (seawater extraction and reprocessing could replace it if we really wanted to). Is it also in your opinion disingenuous to exclude the mining required for getting the resourdes to build wind power plants while including it for nuclear?

[Kanastrous]

Technically, nuclear power does not need mining (seawater extraction and reprocessing could replace it if we really wanted to).

"Could if we really wanted" doesn't address how it's actually being done, if we're doing a real-world head-to-head comparison of what's available now, and in the very near future.

Is it also in your opinion disingenuous to exclude the mining required for getting the resourdes to build wind power plants while including it for nuclear?

If we're talking about excluding the steel, nickel, cobalt, aluminum, limestone, gypsum, etc, etc to construct the one, while ignoring those materials needed for the other, then the answer is yes.

Both systems require the mining products needful for construction. And nuclear is additionally saddled with the overhead of the uranium mining, too. That's all.

[Steel]

Both systems require the mining products needful for construction. And nuclear is additionally saddled with the overhead of the uranium mining, too. That's all.

And do you think a greater tonnage/energy produced of uranium is raquired compared to the mining for materials that needs to take place to replace broken or worn out components of the wind farms? 50,000 turbines will need a lot of replacement rotors...

[Kanastrous]

Both systems require the mining products needful for construction. And nuclear is additionally saddled with the overhead of the uranium mining, too. That's all.

And do you think a greater tonnage/energy produced of uranium is raquired compared to the mining for materials that needs to take place to replace broken or worn out components of the wind farms? 50,000 turbines will need a lot of replacement rotors...

I think the salient aspect of uranium production here isn't the tonnages/KWH produced; it's the destructive nature of the mining, and the toxic by-products of refining it into fuel.

I don't know how much of an additional demand for multi-use ores (iron, aluminum, whatever) with attendant pollution, etc the maintenance of large-scale wind farms will add to the normal growth in demand driven by all the other industries that use those materials.

But uranium mining does present unique problems to solve - like radioactive tailings and large quantites of radon gas exposure for workers - that are either absent or much less urgent, in mining for general construction materials.

[His Divine Shadow]

All that I've seen on the issue has given me the impression that uranium mining is no more destructive than any other conventional mining.

Procedures are in place to deal with the tailings, which aren't that radioactive anyway, and when the mine is done for, it's put back where it was to begin with, in the ground, deep down, minus alot of radioactive uranium.

[Kanastrous]

I'm looking around at articles comparing coal and uranium mining. I'll post some links when I've found some suitable articles.

It will be interesting to see if one is really much worse than the other.

[wjs7744]

One possible argument could be that the uranium should be considered seperately from the construction materials because, as fuel, it needs to be provided continuously for the whole life of the plant (this, of course, ignores such things as replacements for rotors as have been previously mentioned). I'm not sure what the best way to respond to this would be, maybe someone else can help?

[His Divine Shadow]

I've pretty much got my info from here, some people say it's biased though, I've had the source contested once (about a claim regarding nuclear proliferation) and that was pretty much an interpreptation I found in UIC's favour (UIC said no nuclear powerplants had contributed ot nuclear proliferation ever, someone contested that using india and speciality reactors made for producing fissile material). Sources are also ever present so I think its reliable.

http://www.uic.com.au/nip.htm#Mining%20&%20Environment

[Guardsman Bass]

Ghetto edit:
I'd also argue that it's not fair to compare ( ha! I rhymed) uranium mining to actual deaths directly from the wind turbines/fan. The actual mining for the ore is not part of the actual energy production. If he wants to use uranium mining for his argument, then you can bring up a list of deaths resulting from iron/aluminum mining and refining.

You do realize that nuclear power plants require prodigious amounts of metal to construct as well, don't you?

The biggest problem with wind power is not the iron and aluminum used in the construction of the windmills; it's the fact that you need thousands of big windmills to equal a single nuclear reactor. A big power plant like Darlington NGS in Ontario, when completed, will have 8 reactors, each putting out 900 MW net. That's 7200 MW. Meanwhile, Toronto's big lakefront windmill averages production of less than 150 kW, despite a rated 750 kW maximum (I guess we don't always get gale-force winds; go figure). Given those figures, you would need somewhere around fifty thousand of those big windmills to equal Darlington NGS once it's finished.

On a side note, this has always bothered me about the people who argue against nuclear power's lack of CO2 by arguing "but the production process generates CO2!"

I guess those Wind Mills just build themselves. Incidently, couldn't you save a lot in fuel by building a nuclear power plant instead of thousands of turbines? I mean, usually a Nuke Plant is in one location, so if you had to, you could connect it to the rail line to move supplies in. However, if you are building thousands of turbines, then you have to move around that much material - and since it's scattered, it's harder to do it with something like rail.

[LapsedPacifist]

I worked at the American branch of a danish wind turbine company for about a year. Our basic product had 80-90m swept area and generated 2-3MW of power.

A fatality from the rotor coming off is kinda silly. Yeah, it'd kill someone, but a 40m blade breaks lots of things when it lands and SHOULD give you lots of warning as it fails. It should also be good for many many years. Also, wind turbines are only built where people aren't.

What needed to be replaced are generators and other mechanical parts in the nacelle, all of which needed to be placed 100m up or so. Lot of stairs for people to slip on, lots of ways to drop tools a long long ways(I had one laptop fall a full tower), generally stupid ways for a guy to make a mistake with some serious equipment. Probably not as dangerous as driving a big truck around a wind farm because lots of guys, with lots of time, servicing lots of turbines... accidents do happen.

So a freak failure of a blade isn't as likely as just general accidents with heavy equipment. Of course wind turbine accidents would probably not ever put the general public at risk, unless one came off the truck during transit...

LP

[Zixinus]

I recall that in 2007, there were total 9 deaths in the Nuclear power industry worldwide. I'm still looking for the figure.

[Darth Wong]

I worked at the American branch of a danish wind turbine company for about a year. Our basic product had 80-90m swept area and generated 2-3MW of power.

How the hell do you measure area in units of metres rather than square metres? And 2-3 MW of power seems rather optimistic. Of course, Toronto's waterfront turbine makes less than 20% of its rated output on average; is it standard industry practice to assume gale-force winds when computing power output?

[LapsedPacifist]

Sorry that was a quick post that I screwed some terms up in.

All of our turbines had model numbers based off of their rotor diameter, v80, v82, v90. I mis-used the term swept area, when I should have said the diameter of the swept area.

And yes, that's a very optimistic generation figure. They would only function in a certain wind speed range, if the wind was too high the turbines would also shut down.

[LapsedPacifist]

Looking over the sales lit for the v80 1.8MW: The cut in speed is 4m/s and the cut out is 25m/s.


LP