Is this project completely crap?

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,66694,00.html

It looks as though the less expensive, more efficient of the two competing technologies for construction of the tower has lost out (would love to know about the politics involved in this decision), but with the ability to power 200,000 homes, one would think the Aussie government would include the notion in the mix.

Admittedly, I know very little about whether these projections (200,000 homes, low cost) are accurate, but the concept is more than intriguing.

" . . . because the world doesn't matter anymore if you don't have the strength to go ahead and choose something that's really true." - Julio Cortazar

that article linked to is a little misleading. A powerplant located by the ocean does not need to consume any water. It just uses it for cooling and then puts it back in the ocean. If properly designed, it will not have a negative impact on ocean life (properly designed intake and output systems). In addition, if properly designed, it can generate freshwater with its waste heat (cogeneration). It can actually increase the amount of fresh water available.

In contrast, growing biofuel uses far more water. Again, I am not defending nuclear, just pointing out some holes in the link article.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com

TokyoTom asks, "How is uranium mining for nuclear plants better than coal mining?"

Well, nuclear plants depend on their fuel to burn in the absence of oxygen, under water, more if the water is relatively cool, and less when it warms up. But when immersed in water, coal produces no heat at all; not even if it's icewater :)

Uranium mining for nuclear plants is better than coal mining for coal burners in that coal is in much more limited supply than uranium. This is to some degree reflected in the per-million-BTU prices: coal close (as I recall) to US$1.50, uranium US$0.26, both before taxes. The cost of finding new uranium deposits has been near US$0.0013 per mmBTU, so even when uranium prices were much lower, it was already being found at a rate exceeding consumption about fivefold.

The comparative cheapness of uranium is largely due to the much smaller holes that must be dug; thus, it is favoured on environmental grounds. So, for instance, huge investments and I don't know how many workers -- thousands? -- are heading west from where I am, to the Alberta tar patch, and with much sound and fury they're getting a million barrels of oil a day. Meanwhile, in the first half of 2006,the McArthur River mine had a somewhat disappointing production of only 1.8 million thermal barrel-equivalents per day.

Uranium mining is, of course, relatively safe work, not just harming fewer workers -- it necessarily doesn't employ very many -- but a much smaller fraction of them than coal mining.

Some Australian officials, I don't know if Beattie is one of them, have been candid about their preference for exporting six dollars' worth of coal, before taxes, over one dollar worth of uranium, before taxes. The taxes are, perhaps, somewhat more present in their minds than workers' lives or environmental concern.

In suggesting a nuclear plant would "guzzle" troublesome quantities of water Beattie is of course deceitful or stupid. Nuclear plants now being built are specified to get something like 37 percent heat-to-work conversion efficiency, so an evaporatively cooled one making 1600 electrical megawatts would need to evaporate 40 million tonnes a year. This may sound like a lot, but in crop irrigation terms it's 32,000 acre-feet, enough I guess for ~5 square miles of beets, if they grow beets there.

If the concern were genuine, they could specify air-cooling, and reduce the equivalent beet-field square mileage to zero.

--- G. R. L. Cowan, indirect nukemobile fan
Burn boron in pure oxygen for vehicle power

The question I answered was asked by "stringy", I see, not "TokyoTom".

The "independent study" gave the answer they were paid to give. Nuclear steam cycles are a little less efficient because of the limited temperature at which water will stay liquid, so the other water that gets evaporated must be more, right? And that's what we'd better report if we want any more study contracts.

But not all water consumption is at the plant, as AtomicRod points out; and when consumption elsewhere is considered, the petrolists' argument fails utterly. QFS.

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen fan
Burn boron in pure oxygen for vehicle power

Oh! Why can't I get a long enough headline to say all I want to say!

I agree that we need to encourage scientists and engineers to think big about solar, etc., but if "etc." does not include nuclear, then the implied warning is that only their thoughts may be large; doing big will only lead to trouble. That may be so, but the trouble is of a kind that you should be ashamed to shirk.

Since I posted yesterday, nuclear has kept a couple megatonnes of fossil carbon out of the atmosphere and several hundred million dollars in fossil carbon tax out of tax men's pockets. Any power source that does that is going to have staunch opponents; exactly and specifically, it is going to have the staunchest opponents government money can buy.

A sample of 757 Navajo uranium miners shows, Table 2 p. 3, 26 fewer deaths due to heart disease than would be expected, and 24 excess lung cancer deaths, compared to "combined New Mexico and Arizona non-white mortality rates". A "healthy worker effect" is usually seen in this sort of study, and this one is no exception: total deaths are 90 percent of the expected, 303 versus 325.5.

Uranium mining is relatively safe; as above shown, relatively safe compared to being an average person, because some of them don't work. Relatively safe compared to coal mining. Relatively safe compared to working on wind turbines for the same energy output, since that's about as dangerous as coal mining.

Maybe oil money has been lying to Navajo miners for some time, hoping to persuade them that the risks they took did not save many others from worse risks; maybe if I tried to show them how I see it, they'd hit me. Is setting up straw men -- pretending a claim of absolute safety had been made when it had not -- and arguing from the strength of a lie really the sort of thing you like to see yourself doing, 'canis'?

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen fan
100 nuclear watt-hours in a baby's fist