In your Critical Thinking Forum article, "Nukes to the rescue?" (November 26), your contributors voice many fallacies about nuclear power.
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dave andrews
Jan 1, 2011, 5:53:59 PM1/1/11
to Claverton AB MAIN GROUP, pau
http://za.mg.co.za/article/2010-12-09-letters-to-the-editor-december-3-2010
Elementary physics missed
In your Critical Thinking Forum article, "Nukes to the rescue?" (November 26), your contributors voice many fallacies about nuclear power.
Tristen Taylor of Earthlife Africa needs to learn some elementary physics. He says nuclear energy "produces highly radioactive carcinogenic waste that lasts for hundreds of thousands of years …"
This is nonsense. The radiation-decay law tells us that radioactivity is inversely proportional to half-life -- the longer the half-life, the less radioactive. If a radionuclide has a half-life of 10 seconds, it is highly radioactive.
If it has a half-life of hundreds of thousands of years it is very feebly radioactive. Think of a candle and a stick of dynamite with the same energy content. The dynamite is more dangerous because it discharges its energy in a shorter time.
Consider a radioactive waste from wind energy, thorium. This is a waste from the mining of neodymium, used in the generators of modern wind turbines. It has a half-life of 14-billion years, roughly the same as the age of the universe.
Its radioactivity is therefore very feeble. (Neodymium, a rare earth, has special electrical properties, which is why it is used in wind generators. Its mining, mainly in China, produces dreadful pollution, of which thorium is probably the least of the problems.)
Chemical wastes are different. Toxins such as cadmium, arsenic and lead, used in solar photovoltaic power units, remain dangerous forever -- not for billions of years but forever. The solar industry has no plan for storing them forever, or any plan for recycling them forever.
Does the solar industry therefore constitute a great threat to "future generations"? Of course not, but still less does the nuclear industry, which, alone of all energy technologies, has procedures for storing its waste safely.
Peet du Plooy of Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies is wrong to say wind and nuclear power are "broadly compatible price-wise". Wind is far more expensive, everywhere on Earth, which is why it cannot run without big subsidies. But, more importantly, nuclear power is highly reliable and produces electricity whenever you want it for as long as you want it.
Wind is hopelessly unreliable and only produces electricity intermittently and unpredictably (unpredictable a month ahead, let alone a year). For many customers, perhaps all, wind power is useless -- but very expensive.
Per kilowatt hour, wind all around the world is always far more expensive than nuclear. In South Africa the renewable energy feed-in tariff for wind is 125c/kWh compared with Eskom's average price of 44c/kWh. My calculations indicate that a new nuclear station here would generate electricity at 60c/kWh - and reliably, too. -- Andrew Kenny, Noordhoek
In your Critical Thinking Forum article, "Nukes to the rescue?" (November 26), your contributors voice many fallacies about nuclear power.
Tristen Taylor of Earthlife Africa needs to learn some elementary physics. He says nuclear energy "produces highly radioactive carcinogenic waste that lasts for hundreds of thousands of years …"
This is nonsense. The radiation-decay law tells us that radioactivity is inversely proportional to half-life -- the longer the half-life, the less radioactive. If a radionuclide has a half-life of 10 seconds, it is highly radioactive.
If it has a half-life of hundreds of thousands of years it is very feebly radioactive. Think of a candle and a stick of dynamite with the same energy content. The dynamite is more dangerous because it discharges its energy in a shorter time.
Consider a radioactive waste from wind energy, thorium. This is a waste from the mining of neodymium, used in the generators of modern wind turbines. It has a half-life of 14-billion years, roughly the same as the age of the universe.
Its radioactivity is therefore very feeble. (Neodymium, a rare earth, has special electrical properties, which is why it is used in wind generators. Its mining, mainly in China, produces dreadful pollution, of which thorium is probably the least of the problems.)
Chemical wastes are different. Toxins such as cadmium, arsenic and lead, used in solar photovoltaic power units, remain dangerous forever -- not for billions of years but forever. The solar industry has no plan for storing them forever, or any plan for recycling them forever.
Does the solar industry therefore constitute a great threat to "future generations"? Of course not, but still less does the nuclear industry, which, alone of all energy technologies, has procedures for storing its waste safely.
Peet du Plooy of Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies is wrong to say wind and nuclear power are "broadly compatible price-wise". Wind is far more expensive, everywhere on Earth, which is why it cannot run without big subsidies. But, more importantly, nuclear power is highly reliable and produces electricity whenever you want it for as long as you want it.
Wind is hopelessly unreliable and only produces electricity intermittently and unpredictably (unpredictable a month ahead, let alone a year). For many customers, perhaps all, wind power is useless -- but very expensive.
Per kilowatt hour, wind all around the world is always far more expensive than nuclear. In South Africa the renewable energy feed-in tariff for wind is 125c/kWh compared with Eskom's average price of 44c/kWh. My calculations indicate that a new nuclear station here would generate electricity at 60c/kWh - and reliably, too. -- Andrew Kenny, Noordhoek
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