Nuclear Power Station questions

[leifus]

I've been looking on the internet for a while now, but still can't find the answers to these questions, so maybe you could help?

1 how many wind turbines would it take to replace one nuclear power station in terms of energy generation?

2 how much land space do wind turbines take up in the UK compared to nuclear power stations?

[John D]

Originally Posted by leifus

I've been looking on the internet for a while now, but still can't find the answers to these questions, so maybe you could help?

1 how many wind turbines would it take to replace one nuclear power station in terms of energy generation?

2 how much land space do wind turbines take up in the UK compared to nuclear power stations?

Hi, The largest wind turbines currently in use are in the order of 2.5MW and a typical nuclear or coal fired station is in the order of 2000MW to 2500MW rated capacity.
However the annual load factor for wind generators is around 30% and nuclear power stations can be 80% + ((Note - Load factor = (generated output in MWhs) divided by the (generator rated capacity in MWs * 8760 hours in the year))

Although I can't say how much space each takes it is obvious that based on the equivalent rating wind farms require much greater land space.

John D

Zenfolio | John's Wild World

[Cotham Marble]

Originally Posted by leifus

I've been looking on the internet for a while now, but still can't find the answers to these questions, so maybe you could help?

1 how many wind turbines would it take to replace one nuclear power station in terms of energy generation?

2 how much land space do wind turbines take up in the UK compared to nuclear power stations?

I'm not surprised you can't find simple answers to these questions because they are of the 'how long is a piece of string ?' type - but you can find info to do your own calculations based on your own choice of 'how big' - for current nuclear output - British Energy - Nuclear output. Of course the claims for putative newgeration power stations are at higher levels of efficiency. There's a useful categorisation of wind turbine yields by size of turbine/location at: Two Terawatts average power output: the UK offshore wind resource | Claverton Group

However wind and nuclear power generation modules are not easily comparable. Even on a simplistic 'how much land' comparison there are numerous points where direct comparison is not possible. A few obvious non comparables are (a) Wind power generation can be constructed off shore, nuclear can't (b) Wind power generation can be integrated with other land uses, nuclear can't (c) Wind power generation can be constructed close to, and even within urban centres, nuclear can't (d) Wind power generation does not require permanent large scale transport access - road and rail - nuclear does. (e) Wind power generation does not produce waste needing extensive areas for commitment to storage - nuclear does.

There's one other aspect which so far has received little attention, but although permanent employment on wind farms is limited, it is potentially important to small rural communities. Nuclear power generation will always be a centralised operation with employment concentrated in a very few areas. The upland areas of Britain desperately need new employment forms if they are to have any economic future other than tourism - Wind power generation offers precisely the small to medium scale projects that can reinvigorate declining communities.

CM

[John D]

Originally Posted by leifus

I've been looking on the internet for a while now, but still can't find the answers to these questions, so maybe you could help?

1 how many wind turbines would it take to replace one nuclear power station in terms of energy generation?

2 how much land space do wind turbines take up in the UK compared to nuclear power stations?

Hi, I forgot to attach a link to my last reply which may be helpful.

See www.bwea.com/ref/faq.html

John D

[leifus]

thanks very much for your replies and the websites are also very helpful!

[Jim Ford]

A couple of years ago I went to the open day of an energy generation equipment company:

rem Engineering

They have a wind turbine (if you use the M25 near Watford, you'll see it alongside the motorway).

I was impressed when one of the engineers stated that when the turbine comes to the end of its life, they can clear the site and a month later you wouldn't know it had been there. I know we're talking different levels of energy production, but I found it an interesting contrast to the years it takes to decommission a nuclear power station.

Jim

[freefeet]

Another thought here that not many seem to address is the fuel.

Where are we going to get all the nuclear fuel for these power stations from and how much is that going to cost - not only in terms of cash but also in terms of environmental damage?

I was reading recently (not sure how accurate the report was) that most of the shallow buried uranium has already been mined out in Australia and that they're having to go deeper and deeper for it, causing more expense and certainly much more CO2 being produced by machinery to mine and transport it. That doesn't even begin to address the effects on local environments and communities caused by the mining in the first place.

Then as other countries nuclear-fy their generating systems, there's going to be a increasingly larger international demand for a dwindling supply of nuclear fuel - this stuff is going to get extremely expensive in the years to come.

What the UK has to face is that we cannot go on relying on other countries for all our energy needs. We need to exploit the energy sources available to us here - wind and tidal make so much more sense.

[Rob_D]

Uranium is a common element - there are low levels in just about everything including you and me. Current price & consumption rate means reserves lasting 100+ years. If the price goes up, it becomes economic to mine the lower grade ores, of which there are far greater reserves. So it could easily last 100's or 1000's of years using current technology.

Total uranium mining is only about 50,000 tonnes per year which is pretty small scale compared to other mineral extraction. World copper extraction is 15,000,000 tonne. Iron is over a Billion tonnes. The environmental impact of uranium mining isn't significant compared to other mining activities.

Not only that, nuclear fuel can be re-processed. If the cost goes up significantly, then fast-breeder reactors can be used and they'll take 1000's of years to run out if fuel. Of course there are issues around nuclear power, but the mining and continuity of uranium supply isn't going to be the key problem any time soon.

[freefeet]

Originally Posted by Rob_D

Uranium is a common element - there are low levels in just about everything including you and me. Current price & consumption rate means reserves lasting 100+ years.

We're not discussing current consumption, we're discussing future energy needs in low carbon economies all over the world. Very few countries currently use a lot of nuclear power, if the world switches over to low carbon generation then more and more countries will have to switch to nuclear, so current price and consumption rates will go through the roof. Just look at oil prices and think of that kind of effect on uranium.

Originally Posted by Rob_D

Total uranium mining is only about 50,000 tonnes per year which is pretty small scale compared to other mineral extraction. World copper extraction is 15,000,000 tonne. Iron is over a Billion tonnes. The environmental impact of uranium mining isn't significant compared to other mining activities.

Look at how the price of copper went sky high over the last few years when global demand went up. As i said above, apply that to uranium and then tell me that the UK is sensible building a power supply network that is dependent upon a supply over which we will have no control of either pricing or of supply itself.

Originally Posted by Rob_D

Of course there are issues around nuclear power, but the mining and continuity of uranium supply isn't going to be the key problem any time soon.

Any time soon? You obviously have been on holiday to another planet the last few years. Just look at the news. As soon as a country begins to develop its own uranium processing facilities the countries who are currently controlling the processing market attack them - Iran is a very good example.

This isn't about Iran having nuclear weapons, it's about Iran becoming another player in the uranium enrichment marketplace. Those who currently have control want to retain complete control of the uranium market and they use the nonsense threats of WOMD to go and start wars against any country who threatens their stranglehold on the uranium market.

[Cotham Marble]

Originally Posted by Rob_D

Total uranium mining is only about 50,000 tonnes per year which is pretty small scale compared to other mineral extraction. World copper extraction is 15,000,000 tonne. Iron is over a Billion tonnes. The environmental impact of uranium mining isn't significant compared to other mining activities.

That's a non squitur argument at best. Both nuclear and wind power require iron for construction but only nuclear involves use of a fuel that is derived from inherently toxic extraction and processing operations. To compare iron and uranium mining and to conclude uranium mining isn't an issue because it's small, is akin to comparing citiric and nitric acids and concluding that the latter is no a problem if your get in on your lips so long as it is a small quantity compared to the amount of fruit juice you have drunk some time previously.

Uranium mining produces wastes that require very careful managment to ensure security from environmental leakage for 10s, even 100s of thousands of years. The hazards involved derive not only from uranium but from radon, thorium and polonium. It maybe that in developed countries (currently Australia and Canada) that the 'errors' made prior to 1980 will be avoided, but the evidence in other parts of the world is that political instability, poverty and unnaccountable private corporations, mean that the necessary level of sophisticated environmental controls will not be put in place. We know from the US experience just how difficult cleaning up after inadequate environmental control is - and that was in an environment that was amenable to restoration work. Translate those problems to tropical environments with little infrastructure away from the mine sites and the result will be millenial catastrophies.

IEER Factsheet | Uranium

Ignorance and Uranium Don't Mix Ecology Today: Ecology News, Information and Commentary

CM