

New cracks in Hunterston reactor - reirob
http://bbc.com/news/science-environment-29481481

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brc
This type of problem with extending lifetime shows the problems that are
coming from a two- decade plus halt in construction of new plants due to
fearmongering by pressure groups. Even though plant construction has
recommenced, it's not possible to catch up. So the pressure groups have
actually engendered a situation where a safety problem is more likely.
Eliminating the plants was never going to be possible, accelerated replacement
with better designs would have been a better outcome.

~~~
spacefight
"pressure groups"? Care to explain the term?

~~~
brc
Any group that has spread non-factual anti-nuclear hysteria in order to oppose
nuclear power generation and specifically the construction of new plants. The
list is pretty extensive, really.

~~~
spacefight
I feel that "anti-nuclear hysteria" is poor wording. New plants (even if
they're much safer than existing ones) still produce waste. Long term storage
is an unsolved problem. There is nothing hysteric about that. Oh and remember
Fukushima? That plant is still not cleaned up and the cost go into the
billions. Still hysteric to say no to new plants?

My stance is: don't build new nuclear infrastructure if it's not sure how to
cope with its waste. Better: don't build new nuclear infrastructure at all.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Coal plants, which would likely replace the nuke plants that don't get built,
will output way more radiation then the waste you don't want to worry about.

~~~
spacefight
I oppose coal plants as well. It's not only the waste I care, it's also that I
care quite a lot that we, human mankind haven't been able to come up with a
better solution yet to nuclear power. I also care, that our next generations
have to deal with the waste. Have you seen the issues with the experimental
storage waste sites in Germany?

~~~
ZoFreX
So what should we build then, given that no alternatives are currently viable?

~~~
insky
Perhaps we should build better software that helps to reduce power in
electrical devices?

A decade back I remember every office in a building I worked in (in the UK),
leaving their machines on pretty much 24hrs. The building manager suggested
the idea of cutting electric between certain hours, and people protested.

Phone chargers, desktops, monitors were all on. Probably for 16 hours of each
day when no one was there. Even when people were there the machines were
barely busy.

Computers could have been suspended to ram or turned off. I still see this
even in offices with modern PCs that can boot quickly and suspsend to ram with
ease (used to be touch and go).

Could spare CPU cycles be farmed out?

I'm glad to see better power saving settings in newer CPUS, and operating
systems. But this needs to be better. Some mobiles can hold a charge for a
week even with voice calls. Other smartphones are getting charged daily, some
with negligable use. Charging batteries takes more power than you get back
out.

Lots of small energy efficiencies could really help. Stuff like giving screen
savers the boot, having sensible power defaults in OSs etc.

~~~
brc
Really, that stuff is small potatoes. Look outside at night time and see how
much power goes into lighting. Then heating/cooling, large scale manufacture.

It was fashionable a few years back to turn off your devices 'at the wall' so
stop so-called 'vampire use' \- which was TVs and other equipment on stand by.
It sounded plausible - but in reality is just noise in the overall consumption
picture, and is just window dressing to make people feel like they are doing
something.

I'll agree that idling PCs and monitors should go into sleep mode like laptops
do, but that stuff is not going to make the slightest dent in consumption
anyway. Compare the power consumption of an electronic device with something
like an iron or a stove or a clothes dryer and you'll see why. And that's
before you start looking at heavy industry and large-scale building
temperature control.

~~~
insky
Large wattage items aren't on for that long in my experience. We could get our
electric use right down and probably run it on solar during the summer months,
save for the fridge/freezer, fan in the bathroom, the kettle and hair dryer.

Even with our paltry electric use we are still getting high bills (UK)!
Expense is the biggest incentive for us to get our electric use down.

If server farms have become a bigger polluter than the aviation industry, I
see that as a challenge. Use the hardware as efficiently as possible. Caching
layers could hugely reduce CPU use. Perhaps we could measure an app's power
consumption aswell as bandwidth use?

------
dmm
Everyone seems to talk about the safety of nuclear power but to me the costs
are as big a problem. If it was affordable to build new plants these long term
problems would be less important.

I mean, has a nuclear power plant ever been built on budget? In my state the
only nuclear plant was finished years late and 2 billion over the original 1
billion budget.

Now they are trying to build another with a 6 billion budget. How much over
will that one go? The prediction is that it will be producing power in 15-20
years. That's so long from now and meanwhile power users will be charged
interest on the loans to build this thing.

They are predicting a 30% increase in power demand in the next 20 years, so
maybe it is the best option...

~~~
reirob
Another cost that you don't mention is the cost of waste disposal. As far as I
am informed no single country has yet found a safe, clean and cost-effective
solution for nuclear waste disposal (correct me if I'm wrong here).

If that is true this means that the cost estimation of all the reactors that
we have until now are false and until now we do not even know what it will
cost us in the future to "clean up the mess".

~~~
gambiting
Because it's not really a pressing problem. Spent nuclear waste can sit in a
swimming pool of water for any amount of time without endangering anyone. And
water is so good at shielding radiation that you can even swim in such a pool.
After few years the waste is moved to outside casks which are also not a
danger to anyone. The only real problem is protecting those places from
terrorists and such. But then again we have burnt coal ash sitting in huge
piles outside under clear sky, and I would argue they pollute a lot more than
a spent nuclear fuel cask does.

~~~
reirob
For me this looks like pressing enough:
[http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/legacy-danger-
old...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/legacy-danger-old-nuclear-
waste-found-in-english-channel-a-893991.html)

I hope that I am just hysterical and there is some solution planned since long
time, and maybe there is totally no danger at all and we can continue for long
time enjoying sea products from the channel.

~~~
gambiting
But absolutely no one is dumping nuclear waste into the sea at the moment.
It's something that has been done decades ago, so why would it be stopping us
from using nuclear power nowadays? Don't get me wrong - we've done huge damage
to the environment by dumping our waste into seas, lakes and just general
carelessness. But using that as an argument to stop using nuclear power now
is.....illogical?

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lucaspiller
TL;DR; The cracks were expected and are well within the safety margin.

> The tubular graphite bricks, each about a metre high, moderate nuclear
> reactions and are essential to safe operation. However, they cannot be
> replaced.

Can anyone comment on why they can't be replaced?

~~~
jackgavigan
You'd have to disassemble the entire core and rebuild it with new bricks. Kind
of like replacing the bricks in a brick house.

More information:
[http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport...](http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport/7810.pdf)

~~~
wastedhours
Except you can replace bricks in a brick house individually...

------
sspiff
Sounds similar to what caused the shutdown of some nuclear reactors in Belgium
earlier this year and late last year. As a result we're facing power shortages
in the coming winter.

~~~
Luc
Only very superficially similar. The microscopic cracks in the Belgian
reactors are in the steel pressure vessel, and are probably a manufacturing
defect.

What's puzzling is that the manufacturer in the Netherlands supplied pressure
vessels of the same model to other countries (including 10 to the U.S.), and
that the different testing procedures in those countries haven't turned up any
problems.

