Tritium hazard rating 'should be doubled'

[jpak]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12984-tritium-hazard-rating-should-be-doubled.html

Radioactive tritium, commonly discharged in large amounts by civil and military nuclear plants around the world, may be more dangerous than previously thought.

The cancer risk for people exposed to tritium could be twice as high as previously assumed, an expert report for the UK government's Health Protection Agency (HPA) concludes.

The report suggests that international safety standards need to be tightened up, which will put pressure on nuclear plants to cut their emissions.

Mark Little, one of the report's authors from Imperial College in London stresses that the risks are still low, even amongst nuclear workers with the highest exposures. But evidence that tritium causes more biological damage than assumed is "solid enough" to justify a change, he says.

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[madokie]

1. I would rather walk to the store or set in here wraped in a blanket to stay warm

or strip down to my underwear to stay cooler in the summer as have more nuclear energy powered electrical plants anywhere in the world.

[hunter]

2. Unless you are wealthy, you probably will have to do that.

And if you currently live at low elevations near the ocean, you'll probably be some sort of refugee. And you might be hungry too.

All because of fossil fuels.

[madokie]

3. so what you want me to do, jump up and down a scream or run out and buy me a nuclear generator

all I can say is we are not going to start building a bunch of nuclear generators so I suggest we all work on alternate ideas rather than keep beating a dead horse. we've been in this nuclear energy fight before and theres just as many or more against it today as there was back when we were having to fight the industry. Myself I'll not be scared nor shamed into allowing nuclear energy without a fight. sorry

our fears of long ago is still just as strong as it was then if not more so because still to today no one has a good plan on what to do with the waste. yucca mountain that only gets a chuckle out of me

peace

[hunter]

4. The coal industry needs to be shut down quickly.

There are all sorts of ways to accomplish that, but I don't think we will.

Nature will take it's course and the coal industry will be shut down by economic and ecological catastrophe.

At this point I'm wondering how we humans can keep our dignity while all this is happening. Humans have a history of becoming genocidal maniacs when we are hungry, cold, and scared.

Nuclear power is not a big factor in those equations. Maybe it will allow us our dignity, maybe not.

I'm convinced the biggest issue will be Social Justice. If people see themselves as survivors in a limited number of lifeboats they are going to beat down the victims still in the water with their oars. But if we can cooperate we may come out of this with a better more humane civilization where people and the earth's environment are not abused.

Twenty years from now I don't think tritium is going to be a big issue, whether or not we are building new nuclear plants.

[bananas]

6. You can't replace coal with nuclear "quickly" anyway

All the talk about nuclear is just a red herring.
You can't build new nuclear plants fast enough to replace coal.
In the "Nuclear Resurrection", they want to avoid the problems they had the first time.
So they're only going to build a small number at first to shake out the FOAK problems.
The first EPR is already two years behind schedule.
They haven't started building a second one yet.
The AP-1000 still only exists on paper.
In the meantime, you want to keep burning coal for the next several decades,
waiting for the second coming of Nuclear Jesus to save us?

The way to stop burning coal is to stop burning coal.
The Sierra Club and other environmental groups which the pro-nukes hate have been taking the lead in getting coal plants shut down and preventing them from being built.
If we start shutting coal plants quickly, what can we replace them with?
The quickest and cheapest replacement for ooal is efficiency.
Next is wind.
By the time new nukes can come online in significant numbers, solar PV will be cheaper.

[NickB79]

7. You're pinning your hopes on wind power to replace coal?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x122585

Wind will likely supply 0.6% of world energy demand by 2015.

[bananas]

10. 290 GW from wind is like building 100 1GW reactors

Are they going to build 100 new reactors by 2015? No.

[jpak]

11. In Minnesota?? Yup...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=119348

:evilgrin:

[bananas]

12. And I'm not "pinning my hopes" on wind

About half the U.S. electricity comes from coal.
Per capita electricity consumption in EU is about half the US.
We could shut down all our coal plants without building anything if we were as electricity-frugal as Europe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption

[TheWraith]

9. Um, you have that entirely backwards.

New nuclear plants can be built in 5-7 years. To put up enough wind turbines to replace even a single 1 GW coal plant, you'd need to build 3,000 1 megawatt turbines. They're building smaller turbines around here, and I can tell you it would take a hell of a lot longer than 5-7 years to build 3000 turbines.

Solar PV is never going to be cheaper than anything. The cheapest you can get it, given the most optimistic figures, is 20 to 25 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared to 3.8 cents for nuclear or 4 cents for wind. Not to mention the math on the amount of area you'd have to pave over for those solar cells, the strip mining you'd have to do for the materials, and the industrial capacity you'd need to build is absolutely ruthless.

[bananas]

13. No, you have it backwards, your numbers are wrong.

Wind is already 91GW, equivalent to 30 1GW coal plants or reactors.
Wind will be 290GW in 2015, equivalent to 100 1GW coal plants or reactors.

New nuclear won't be 3.8 cents/kWh.
The Keystone group estimated 8-11 cents/kWh at $3500-4000/kW.
More recently, Moody's estimates $5000-6000/kW.
As someone wrote on the NEI blog when the Keystone report came out:
"The fact that the "official" capital cost estimates for new reactors has been going up, oh, about 50% per year for several years now is annoying enough ($1000/kW ~7 years ago, then $1500/kW, then $2000, then $2500, and now I'm even hearing about $3000-$4000). Am I being lied to now or was I being lied to then? Inflation and materials cost escalation is nowhere near enough to explain this. Weren't reactors supposed to be cheaper this time around ("50% fewer valves....", etc..)."
http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2007/06/keystone-report-on-nuclear-energy.html

Solar PV will drop to 15 cents/kWh in 5-8 years, and 10 cents/kWh by 2020.
According to Stephen O'Rourke, Managing Director, Deutsche Bank Securities:
"The key factor, O'Rourke noted, is that the US solar PV electricity-generation cost curve for known solar PV cell technologies is expected to drop, from what is roughly 25¢-30¢/kWh today to about 10¢/kWh by 2020, transitioning through what is commonly considered grid price parity (~15¢/kWh) within five to eight years. Conversely, the average retail price of conventionally generated US electricity will rise, from 8.6¢/kWh in 2006 to potentially more than 20¢/kWh by 2020, depending on cost CAGR projections ranging from 4%-7% (see figure, above). At these rates, cost "convergence" will begin within the next five to eight years, he predicted."

http://sst.pennnet.com/display_article/307597/5/ARTCL/none/none/Wall-Street-analyst:-Take-long-view-on-solar-PV/?dcmp=SSTPVTimes

[eppur_se_muova]

5. Oh noes! And tritium NMR is so useful!

http://www.springerlink.com/content/4527608u652l7401/

;)

[NickB79]

8. So, what exactly is the cancer risk from tritium?

If it is currently listed as, say, 1 in 100,000, and they now feel the risk is double that, that means that it is still only 1 in 50,000.

Doubling a tiny risk results in a slightly higher, but still tiny, risk.