Gardeners Corner Global Energy Policy

Warning you that I'm not good at discussing energy issues in either Bulgarian or English :o, I just want to share a related invention patented by my husband.
The WPO rated it as an invention and as 'industrially applicable'.

espacenet - Bibliographic data

You may find it interesting.

 

I wonder how many know the facts from Chernobyl - there is now scientific thinking that the body can withstand much higher doses of radiation than the current "safe limits" would suggest.

After Chernobyl an organisation (UNSCEAR) was set up to thoroughly monitor the after effects (you don't get many opportunities for an experiment like THAT!) and they conducted 20 years worth of monitoring.

How many deaths do you think there have been? Make your guess now and then I'll tell you the answer

600,000 people received "significant" exposure to radiation

It was predicted that there would be 5,000 additional cancer deaths related to the accident in that group.

The number of excess deaths among 5 million people living in the less contaminated areas was estimated at 3,000–5,000. The number of excess cancer deaths worldwide (including all contaminated areas) was approximately 27,000

From the tight monitoring that has been done amongst the residents of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, there had been 6,000 [more than "normal"] cases of thyroid cancer reported in children and adolescents (up to 2005)

I heard that figure at the time, and associated cancer=death, I never heard an update on the news, and was just left with that figure (bloody newspapers again) in my memory, so I thought "that's a lot of deaths" But success rates for thyroid cancer treatment are very high.

What UNSCEAR now say is that apart from the increase in thyroid cancer there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 20 years after the accident; no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality rates nor in non-malignant disorders attributable to radiation exposure; incidence of leukaemia does not appear to have increased.

So how many deaths?

57 deaths as a direct result of the accident itself plus 15 - yes FIFTEEN !! - from Thyroid cancer.

Every single one of those deaths is regrettable, but I would guess that pales into insignificance compared to deaths from pollution from oil and coal based electricity generation, acid rain, not to mention global warming, and gawd knows what else.

Sources: Some documentary I watched, facts themselves lifted from Chernobyl disaster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

The only reason NUCLEAR is complained against so much, is MONEY
Too many big companies have too much to lose, against the benefit of cheap power for the people

I do not know much about conspiracy theories etc as some on here do, but Nuclear is bandied about as so dangerous to be used, when what they mean is we would lose OUR big profits

Thousands of men have served on Nuclear boats, and non have had malformed children due to radiation, or not being able to produce children due to radiation,
Actually less than the normal, (I suspect that is down to the gene pool, as you have to be 100% fit and normal to join the forces,Let alone Nuclear boats, you do not get in even with flat feet or in my day the need to wear spectacles for 20/20 vision, Plus intelligence tests)

Jack McH

 

So.

Hemp & Nuclear Bad

Oil & Gas good

Anyone else thinking of the same George Orwell book?

 

The opponents of nuclear power will site Chernobyl and Fukishima.

Here's some basic GCSE level physics about nuclear power. You need some fuel rods, and you need some control rods. The latter are usually made of boron, which does a good job of blocking the path of neutrons thus inhibiting a fission reaction. Then you need a control mechanism to insert or retract the control rods, and of course some coolant which also goes off to a heat exchanger to generator steam for the turbines etc. The important bit is the control rods, and modern reacts have lots of failsafes to make sure these can't fail.

Chernobyl
Most modern reactors, I understand, have the control rods suspended above the fuel rods in the reaction chamber. It takes energy to hold them up. Cut the power to the control mechanism and the control rods drop under gravity and stop the reaction. They are configured mechanically so that they'll fall if the reactor overheats. So no intervention, either by man or machine, is required to prevent the reaction running out of control. Chernobyl didn't have this standard failsafe. When it went wrong, it was up to the chaps in the control room to react to the alarms and do something about it. If I remember right from the reports that followed, in the very short time between becoming aware of a problem and trying to do something about it, the control rods which didn't have the afforementioned failsafe configuration, had overheated and seized in position, rendering them useless. From that moment on, the reactor was doomed, and all that could be done to control the fission reaction was to wait until the reaction chamber cracked under the extreme heat, and then they chucked tonnes of sand in to slow the reaction. By then of course the radiation had already leaked. It was an old reactor with known design flaws.

Fukishima
Well, lets face it, the Japanese are very clever people, but sticking a nuclear power station right on the coast in one of the most earthquake prone parts of the world wasn't one of their smarter moves. They should have known better. Its in their spiritualism and culture, that water is one of the unstoppable forces. They have proverbs about water's destructive capabilities, one such proverb mentioning how water can shape the greatest mountains. So given their unfortunate extreme risk of major earthquakes, which can and do create tsunamis, it was a bit silly to put the power station right on the coast. I'd have put it at least 10 miles inland and on them giant shock absorbers they now build many of their sky scrapers on.

 

Plus people (in general) are frightened of Nuclear. Irrationally, but still ... they don't like the thought of it.

 

Are we actually staging an invasion? Can someone let me know as I'll need some new combats and a beret. Maybe some kendal mint cake as well.

 

Not till Melinda is back, so that'll be after the Olympics.

 

Water pipeline SOUTH
Sunday papers today actually suggested, what my thoughts were
Run the pipeline at the same time as the HS2 Rail work

Unless the Suffeners accept large resevoirs in their land of milk and honey , then there is no point tranfering the water with no place to store it

If they built these reservoirs in the first place (nimbys) then they would not need a re supply from UUP NURF

Jack McHammocklashing

 

Daft to put in pipes to move water Nurf to Surf. Lots of energy to move the water around ...

If the Surf doesn't have enough water, or won't build reservoirs, its not the Norf's problem, nor should we spend money shifting the stuff around. Reservoirs are daft anyway, nothing like the right surface-area to depth ratio, its just a means of creating evaporation!

East Anglia is a very dry place (drier than Israel or somesuch the statistics say). Can't remember the last time we had a hosepipe ban (which has no doubt put the kiss-of-death on it for this coming summer!!), we just drill holes and get the water from there. I remember in 1976 (or whichever year the really dry summer was) place where my Father worked used vast quantities of water and had its own borehole, the water level didn't drop more than an inch or two ... grass was brown for months, and the water must have been evaporating from reservoirs at what? half-inch a week I expect?

We've been very dry here. I've been watering the hedges and trees I planted in the Autumn all winter! Not having any difficulty digging my only-good-for-making-bricks clay soil, which is unheard of for this time of the year.

 

We actually have these people having fine food and wine debating at our expense:-
Europe to cut power of vacuum cleaners to save energy

Europe to cut power of vacuum cleaners to save energy - Telegraph

 

So we'll hoover everything twice to try and get the dirt out - bit like cisterns in loos reduced by 30% but now you have to flush twice.

 

Jack there's nowhere left to build these reservoirs, Essex in particular is covered in bricks and mortar, and roads of course!

 

It was definitely 1976 Kristen, I remember it well, what a scorcher! I was heavily pregnant and dragging myself to hospital twice a day to visit my sick father.........for six weeks. :(

 

On the island of Minorca, where they quite literally have no room for reservoirs, they've done the sensible thing with underground water storage tanks that are filled from the roof gutters of ordinary houses that people actually live in. Then you get the bricks and mortar and the reservoir. They are also a bit tight with their water, so they don't need as much per person anyway.