Drax Power Station are to spend some billions on a new plant to for the burning of BioMass, including imported timber from Canada etc. Drax is a coal fired power station that produces around 7% of the countries electricity. Much of the coal it uses now is imported.
Could this sort of Power station best be changed to 'clean Nuclear' ?
What alternatives do we have? I visited the area of a Nuclear Power Station in France. No smoke, all clean. A wellcome board as you approach the area invites visitors to come and see it.
John
Drax Power Station - Going Green?
Biomass power stations are a non-starter other than as a political panacaea. Imagine every power station in the world being fuelled in that way - where are we going to get all the biomass from?
Nuclear is, in my opinion, the way the world will have to go in the end. But the Drax station cannot be converted to nuclear - it's a completely different technology with completely different requirements. Sure, a new nuclear station could be constructed on the Drax site, but a new build is not a conversion.
However, you said "Clean Nuclear". It may be more practical (once again, in my opinion) if we concentrated on getting our associated technologies right before we allowed any proliferation of nuclear power - how to make a pipe leakproof, why we shouldn't be dumping crap into the oceans, glass sintering techniques and why we shouldn't dump the results of that anywhere near a geological fault line: how, in other words, to prevent a reoccurrence of Chernobyl or Three Mile Island or even the first (admitted) occurrence of any other form of nuclear accident.
Power generation is a dangerous game - lots of people have died as a direct result, in one way or another, of the existence of coal-fired power stations - and no matter how safe we try to make nuclear power, there will be accidents. To those there will be (although I now hesitate to use the term on this site) knee-jerk reactions confusing nuclear dangers with those better associated with straightforward civil engineering.
So yes - if we can produce clean nuclear power, then that is definitely the way to go. Will our present political and commercial systems allow that to happen? I doubt it.
Nuclear is, in my opinion, the way the world will have to go in the end. But the Drax station cannot be converted to nuclear - it's a completely different technology with completely different requirements. Sure, a new nuclear station could be constructed on the Drax site, but a new build is not a conversion.
However, you said "Clean Nuclear". It may be more practical (once again, in my opinion) if we concentrated on getting our associated technologies right before we allowed any proliferation of nuclear power - how to make a pipe leakproof, why we shouldn't be dumping crap into the oceans, glass sintering techniques and why we shouldn't dump the results of that anywhere near a geological fault line: how, in other words, to prevent a reoccurrence of Chernobyl or Three Mile Island or even the first (admitted) occurrence of any other form of nuclear accident.
Power generation is a dangerous game - lots of people have died as a direct result, in one way or another, of the existence of coal-fired power stations - and no matter how safe we try to make nuclear power, there will be accidents. To those there will be (although I now hesitate to use the term on this site) knee-jerk reactions confusing nuclear dangers with those better associated with straightforward civil engineering.
So yes - if we can produce clean nuclear power, then that is definitely the way to go. Will our present political and commercial systems allow that to happen? I doubt it.
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Ellendra
- A selfsufficientish Regular
- Posts: 765
- Joined: Sat Nov 03, 2007 2:15 am
- Location: Wisconsin, USA
The Elimanure system shows promise: http://www.burnmanure.com/Imagine every power station in the world being fuelled in that way - where are we going to get all the biomass from?
It can be modified to use municipal waste as well as livestock manure.