Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster

[cwbullet]

Green energy is a great idea that, at this time, cannot and does not meet the energy needs of the World. At best, it is an additive to traditional energy sources. I, for one, would love to see people fly all these planes on solar or wind power. We are just not there yet.

Sure, we can use biofuels, but we are years away from that being a viable option.

Nuclear, when done safe, is a clean and better option to many of other sources. Accidents happen, but they are rare.

 

[aerostadt]

One thing about the land area of nuclear plants is developed Land vs undeveloped land. Take Fermi, for example. While the land owned by the plant might be 1000 acres, the actual amount of land used by the facility is a lot less... I'm guessing right around 100-200 acres. In my previous post, I used Palo Verde in Arizona as an example. PVNGS is situated on 3000acres, however, the actual physical footprint of the land occupied by the three reactors, turbine buildings, cooling towers, offices, spent fuel storage pads, and a transmission line substations only occupies 500 acres. The same is true for the other plant I used as an example, Vogtle. I don't have the information for how much land Plant Vogtle owns, but the current 2 reactors, cooling towers, support buildings, and the two new reactors under construction and their cooling towers and support buildings occupies right around 550 acres.

Exactly, developed land versus undeveloped land can really skew the numbers. You have to be careful how the numbers are calculated.

Excluding nuclear power and only accepting wind and solar power is not the solution. There is an opinion editorial in this month's Scientific American where the author complains about would-be environmentalists advocating "carbon capture and storage" that don't currently exist and probably never will exist and then in the last paragraph the author promotes only wind and solar power, which are nowhere near being in-place. I am reminded of the mind-set of Germany that is getting ready to shut down nuclear power plants and is now heavily reliant on Russian natural gas. It seems that former Chancellor Merkel was determined to lock Germany's future in-place without any careful planning.

 

[aerostadt]

Keep in mind that the Ivanpah solar farm that Kris quotes in post #17 is one of the "best of the best" solar facilities worldwide. Regular silicon solar cells will be about one-half as efficient in converting sunshine to electricity. The Ivanpah solar plant consists of 53,000 heliostats aimed at a central boiler to make steam to run a steam turbine to run a generator. The efficiency is about 18 percent (30 percent capacity factor) where regular solar cells are less than 12 percent. Also, the best places in the U.S. for making electricity from solar power either by a thermodynamic cycle like Ivanpah or silicon solar panels are in the U.S. Southwest. Other places have more cloudy weather patterns.

 

[wonderboy]

I 100% agree with the comments on the metrics I calculated showing land area for a nuc site. To be as conservative as possible, I left the total land coverage in there and took numbers from the solar industry reports (which would report as favorably as possible regarding their technology). Given this, it still showed an incredibly lopsided metric in favor of nuclear power generation regarding the "energy density per land usage area". If taking only the actual footprint of all facilities required (plant, fuel storage, cooling, etc) it would probably be another order of magnitude skewed.

 

[Peartree]

Keep in mind that the Ivanpah solar farm that Kris quotes in post #17 is one of the "best of the best" solar facilities worldwide. Regular silicon solar cells will be about one-half as efficient in converting sunshine to electricity. The Ivanpah solar plant consists of 53,000 heliostats aimed at a central boiler to make steam to run a steam turbine to run a generator. The efficiency is about 18 percent (30 percent capacity factor) where regular solar cells are less than 12 percent. Also, the best places in the U.S. for making electricity from solar power either by a thermodynamic cycle like Ivanpah or silicon solar panels are in the U.S. Southwest. Other places have more cloudy weather patterns.

Unless the Ivanpah plant has made some giant leap in technology since the Crescent Dunes/Tonopah plant was built, there is likely to be another problem. The Tonopah plant overcame the problem of periodic (ie. daytime only) power production but had such high operating and maintenance costs associated with pumped fluids and steerable heliostats that it generally sold electricity far below cost and ended in bankruptcy. It has since reopened but its profitability remains in question.

Also at issue, in places like Ohio, completely separate from cloudiness and snow, is that almost any land suitable for a solar farm is probably already... a farm. Building a solar facility in much of the Midwest has a measurable cost in land use and food production. On the other hand building solar installations on factory roofs offers an abundance of smaller opportunities.

 

[CarolynBussey]

https://globalresilience.northeaste...-and-economic-resilience-help-drive-recovery/https://www.businessinsider.com/wha...ernobyls-exclusion-zone-is-really-like-2019-4
There is lots and lots of information and photos available of those who chose to remain in Pripyat. They may not be in the city proper, but they are most certainly in the surrounding areas.

I wish I could help you with the friend, I have no proof that what I stated is the reason the way she is, it just may be her in a nutshell. She is just very much different.

I wish you luck with you subject!

T

Thanks! (it is just smth new for me to hear someone lives there)

 

[Funkworks]

Except at night, or other times that the sun isn't shining!

Solar and wind are used to load batteries. Their average output over weeks or years is what matters, not their instantaneous output.

Green energy is a great idea that, at this time, cannot and does not meet the energy needs of the World. At best, it is an additive to traditional energy sources. I, for one, would love to see people fly all these planes on solar or wind power. We are just not there yet.

Sure, we can use biofuels, but we are years away from that being a viable option.

To ensure sustainability (many are concerned about sustainability of human civilization), what matters is that sustainable sources be developped and adopted ASAP. From that perspective, there is no good reason to hinder their progress and adoption.