alt.energy.renewable

"nada" ha scritto nel messaggio
news:3b586e5d-ce6c-41f3-9732-fa8f76b846a1@i12g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
On Feb 8, 1:32 pm, "Alex Chiani" wrote:
> "Roland Mösl" ha scritto nel
> messaggionews:8d3fe$47acbed4$557f96cf$6712@news.inode.at...
>
> >> With breeding and thorium, nuclear is not really a finite source, we
> >> have
> >> hundreds of thousands years of uranium and thorium to satisfy all
> >> current
> >> world electricity needs. Bear in mind that current price of uranium
> >> (even
> >> exploited in a once-through fuel cycle) is only less than two US dollar
> >> per oil barrel equivalent, the tenfold escalaltion you mention has been
> >> from 30 cents to about 2 US dollar per oil barrel equivalent (135 $ per
> >> lb
> >> of U3O8 in the past summer), it' s a figure totally irrelevant in the
> >> nuclear electricity kWh cost
>
> > When it's such a good business,
>
> I didn' t say it's a good or a bad business at all
>
> > why do You not built some
> > nuclear reactors?
>
> > Proof it!
>
> > Go out, found a incorporated, tell all the people what a great
> > investment
> > and built many nuclear reactors
>
> > Come on and show it!
>
> Obvoiusly, you have no serious argumentations.
>
> My point is that uranium price is irrelevant in nuclear energy costs, even
> without thorium or breeders, not that nuclear kWh is more or less costly
> than other strategies, it's not my business to claim it. Nuclear energy
> costs are basically human work costs (staff, design etc).
> Moreover, I believe there are very good ecological reasons to substitute
> part of fossil fuel use with nuclear, and I don't refer only to CO2
> emissions
>
> Anyway, there are tens or hundreds of nuclear plants proposed/planned or
> in
> costruction worldwilde, including Finland, notoriously the most ecological
> country in the world

>Yes, it's basically irrelevant. In fact, many of us in the pro-nuclear
blog area are in favor of *higher* prices so there is more exploration
>and prospecting. But...we should, for a variety of reasons, switch to
thorium, there is just so much of it and can easily breed it out to
30,000 years worth. There is enough thorium *already mined* to power
>the entire US electircal grid for 3,000 of those years.

>In grand plans you set goals. The initial goal should be to replace
coal plants, all 340 GWs of them in the US, with nuclear. Then gas
>plants. *During ths process*, if we go to Liquid Fluoride Thorium
Reactors, we can use the very high temperature to crack H2 from water
>at night during low load periods (or desalination) then it's easier to
>integrate the whole hydrogen thing with our electrical grid.


Personally, I don't really support the idea that nuclear alone can solve all
worlwide energy problems, but, yes, is a proven and safe technology (at
least with Western designs) which can produce the massive amount of clean
power we need (not only from CO2 emissions point of view).
I agree with you we have all the time to develop new nuclear technology or
even perfectionate current ones : for example, where the heating demand is
very high , I think nuclear district heating networks like those developed
and operated in Romania and Swiss conf should be welcomed
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf93.html
"The unit also provides district heating to Cernavoda township, and 148 TJ
was supplied in 2003."

http://wscsd.org/ejournal/spip.php?article208
"The REFUNA district heating network sells about 130 000 MWh of energy every
year and is thus by far the largest district heating system of Switzerland"+

Moreover, molten salts reactors are very interesting, but we can perfectly
develop thorium even in current fleet of nuclear reactors, Indians are doing
it in natural uranium heavy water reactors (pratically, converted CANDU
reactors) with a plutonium-thorium cycle, which plutonium is produced in a
first stage from the same HWR

Finally, I don' t think hydrogen is a good idea, electric and plug-in
vehicles are 4 to 8 times more efficient than hydrogen ones per electric kWh
use to produce hydrogen by electrolysis


>It's just common sennse. We can also see if Wills optimism on solar--
>>hyrdogen-->electricity will actually be economical.

I think solar thermal to heat up water, about 10% or 20% of total heating
needs, will be for a very long time the most efficient, reliable and
economical way to harvest
solar energy; in the mid term maybe we could use hot
water to feed absorption heat pumps for summer conditioning : both
applications, even if don't produce power directly, allow anyway enormous
energy savings