SA to get 3 'Koebergs'

semiautomatix

semiautomatix

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Cape Town - Three large nuclear power plants are in the pipeline for South Africa's coastline - two in the Western Cape and one in the Eastern Cape.

This has emerged from an environmental impact study done by the engineering consultancy, Arcus Gibb, which will proceed with the large scale nuclear power programme after the scope of the project was taken from Eskom.
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http://www.news24.com/Content/SciTe...1a9a015/24-07-2009 09-07/SA_to_get_3_Koebergs

About time! As far as the cost/benefit ratio goes nuclear is the way forward. As I see it we have to (feasible) options on a large scale: traditional coal plants which are pissing former US vice-presidents off or nuclear which produces a fair amount of radioactive waste (stored correctly this is a non-issue).

If my estimates are correct, once operational, these plants will produce 12 000MW, which is about 1/3 of current supply. It may be an expensive initial investment but the power output is on an exponential scale compared to "green" power stations.

We do not have the dams for hydro, wind is possible but expensive waste of land, solar is not mature enough, wave power again has a much lower cost/benefit and will require many structures along a lot of coastline, gas releases methane (which can't be good). Have I missed any?

Thoughts?
 
A single kilogram of uranium can produce more energy than 200 barrels of oil, and uranium is about as common as tin. Thorium, three times more abundant than uranium, can also be converted into uranium-233 (which is too unstable to be used for bombs) and broken down for similar quantities of nuclear energy. So why the holdup for constructing new nuclear power plants? Well, first, they are relatively expensive to build, although cheap to operate. The lower initial cost of gas, oil, and coal plants has thus made them more economical in the last few decades, but with the rising cost of fossil fuels, that is changing. Global warming is another concern.

The second reason more nuclear plants have not been constructed is safety fears primarily based on the Chernobyl accident, which killed 30 people. By comparison, per terawatt of energy produced, hydroelectric power kills 885, coal kills 342, natural gas kills 85, but nuclear kills only 8. Fossil fuel pollution kills over 10,000 in the United States per year due to respiratory problems. But nuclear plants are emissions-free, and 95% of spent fuel can be reprocessed, producing very little waste, which can be adequately contained at reasonable cost.
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The only prohibiting factor is the initial cost.
 
My main concern with nuclear lies in the long term supply issue. How much more fuel is out there?
 
The safety concern is rather a stupid one. We can make our reactors safe. Just dont let the Russians build them. The French were bad enough!
 
Eskom has trouble managing and maintaining normal coal power plants and you guys are excited that they'll be put in charge of 3 more nuclear ones!? :D
 
I hope this happens. Nuclear is the way to go. Should have been done years ago.

WRT lightning: Our ability to store electrical energy is very crude, almost non-existent. That's the show-stopper.
 
Very cool, I fully support nuclear energy. The fact that we have more than enough Uranium makes it a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned.
 
antonc said:
Very cool, I fully support nuclear energy. The fact that we have more than enough Uranium makes it a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned.
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Do we have more than enough uranium? For some reason I recall something about there being only around 40 years of uranium left worldwide at current rates of consumption. Anyone got any more info on this?
 
Timgaul, as for the "green" options- I'm glad you used the inverted commas...

Solar only works during the day, so you would need lots of big batteries. Wind is just as useless- the best windy sites still only yield a load factor of about 30%- that means a 1MW unit will produce about 8MWh per 24h period- again, lots of batteries. And batteries are about as un-green as you can get. They are the reason the Toyota Prius has a worse carbon footprint than a Jeep Wrangler.

If they could get wave or tide power right it would be the answer. Until then we need to burn fuel. And seeing as the Cape has no natural gas or coal, nuclear is the only way to go. And the new ones are comparatively cheaper than the old ones as they are designed to be inherently safe rather than needing lots of expensive safety systems added on, which makes the designs simpler and more compact.

And w1z4rd, they probably will be built by the world leaders in PWR technology, the French. Koeberg was built by the French using a modified Westinghouse (US) design.
 
BCO said:
Do we have more than enough uranium? For some reason I recall something about there being only around 40 years of uranium left worldwide at current rates of consumption. Anyone got any more info on this?
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"to the Moon, Alice!"
 
BCO said:
Do we have more than enough uranium? For some reason I recall something about there being only around 40 years of uranium left worldwide at current rates of consumption. Anyone got any more info on this?
Click to expand...

There is as much uranium as tin on earth. In fact no one has even looked for additional deposits for 40 years - 85 years without further exploration and estimates put it as high as 500 years at current capacity with new reserves. You can also use thorium instead of uranium, of which there is three times more than the latter. Further to that you can use nuclear waste, especially any plutonium (or the uranium), as reprocessed fuel.
 
BCO said:
Do we have more than enough uranium? For some reason I recall something about there being only around 40 years of uranium left worldwide at current rates of consumption. Anyone got any more info on this?
Click to expand...

*google is your friend* :erm:
 
BCO said:
Do we have more than enough uranium? For some reason I recall something about there being only around 40 years of uranium left worldwide at current rates of consumption. Anyone got any more info on this?
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Various agencies have tried to estimate how long these resources will last.

* European Commission

The European Commission said in 2001 that at the current level of uranium consumption, known uranium resources would last 42 years. When added to military and secondary sources, the resources could be stretched to 72 years. Yet this rate of usage assumes that nuclear power continues to provide only a fraction of the world’s energy supply. If electric capacity were increased six-fold, then the 72-year supply would last just 12 years.[5]

* OECD

The world's present measured resources of uranium, economically recoverable at a price of 130 USD/kg according to the industry groups OECD, NEA and IAEA, are enough to last for some 80 years at current consumption [25]

* Australian Uranium Association

According to the Australian Uranium Association, yet another industry group, assuming the world's current rate of consumption at 66,500 tonnes of Uranium per year and the world's present measured resources of uranium (4.7 Mt) are enough to last for some 70 years.[8]
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Wiki
 
As for fuel supply, power plants use about 5% enrichment, whereas weapons grade uranium is 90%+, and the market is still flooded with the weapons grade stuff recovered from all the warheads dismantled over the last 25 years. No need to even mine any new stuff, although as already mentioned, it's plentiful...
 
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