 Poster: A snowHead
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Please take a minute to sign this petition, to stop the Austrian Government sticking a hydro-electric scheme in the river Sanna.
http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Prevent_the_destruction_of_the_Sanna/?fNLfZeb&pv=3
The Sanna is a fantastic river, formed by the Rosanna (flows past St Anton) and the Trisanna (flows past Ischgl), and joins the Inn just below Landeck. This HEP scheme would totally destroy the river ecosystem (so not exactly 'green renewable energy!) and ruin the whitewater kayaking/rafting.
We already have more than enough HEP schemes in Tirol, large stretches of the Inn have been reduced from raging rapids to flat, concrete lined canals. Recently another scheme on the Oetz (one of the mightiest rivers in the Alps) was prevented, hopefully this one can be too. It's high time the Austrians got over their phobia of nuclear power, rather than destroying their fantastic rivers!
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| Quote: |
| It's high time the Austrians got over their phobia of nuclear power, rather than destroying their fantastic rivers! |
Your concerned about the rivers from a kayaking perspective (fair enough), but your quite happy to leave a toxic radioactive legacy that others will have to deal with for thousands of years in nuclear waste? Nuclear Fission power is surely one of the ultimate examples of the 'me now' society and damn the future. Also nuclear is far from low carbon when you consider the mind boggling amounts of concrete required to build a fission power plant or the energy used to get the fuel - indeed the latter is only going to get more difficult. The potential cost of contracts the UK government is about to sign with EDF is horrific and that doesn't account for decommissioning and dealing with the waste. The financial, environmental and legacy costs of nuclear fission power are utterly unacceptable.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Done and passed on to my skiing buddies
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Sorry clarky999, I'm with Winterhighland on this one. Plus the fact that petition is not very well presented, it is pretty NIMBY in many ways.
The reason that Tirol got off relatively lightly in the recent storms and floods is because the work done on the major rivers and streams - partly to produce fairly green power but also to tame some fairly horrendously wicked rivers. Sorry not with you on this one - plenty of other rivers to play in, you just have to find them. 
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Winterhighland, clearly nuclear power is not 100% ideal, but from what I can see, it is the best option. Huge amounts of power can be generated, the vast majority (99%) of the particularly dangerous waste (the spent fuel rods) can be recycled, and the actual output is very small - "With current technology, six years of operation of a 1-GWel plant yields spent fuel that could fit inside a 4-meter cube, and the vast majority of this material is recyclable."
http://www.nae.edu/Publications/Bridge/ExpandingFrontiersofEngineering7308/SustainableEnergyfromNuclearFissionPower.aspx
It also seems increasingly likely that Nuclear Fusion will be able to further re-use this 'spent fuel,' in addition to significantly decreasing it's half-life.
The simple fact is that more and more energy is required globally, and this has to be found somewhere. For all it's negatives nuclear power actually has the capacity to generate the significant amounts of power required. Damming/HEP schemes on small rivers like the Sanna, which only flow 'properly' for half the year, yields so little energy it makes barely any difference to the energy budget, at the cost of no small amount of environmental damage. It's a much more reasonable proposition on some of the massive African rivers, like the Nile and the Congo, that flow reliably year round with vastly greater volume than anything in Europe. Even the Inn would make a far more sensible proposition, as it still flows well even in winter.
Samerberg Sue, there's a world of difference between the dams on things like the Inn (which is what I assume you're referring to re. flood control) that hold water back at the cost of a few hundred metres of the original river channel, and a near-total divert of the river as proposed on the Sanna. You might be surprised at quite how much damage has been wreaked on some of the Tirolean rivers, with lots of re-inforced concrete chucked in. There's a total watersports ban on the Wolf's Gorge of the Rosanna for instance, as much of the concrete has been eroded away leaving huge amounts of exposed metal spikes in the bed and banks. Similar stuff on some of the main sections of the Inn near Landeck too, though not as bad.
There are plenty of other rivers, but ever more are under threat of HEP schemes, all over the world. It would be a sad state of affairs if we lost all 'wild' rivers to HEP, to meet 'number of green energy schemes' targets rather than 'amounts of energy required' targets.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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^ nuclear waste might be physically small - but it lasts a looooooong time (millions of years). though I agree that in the short to medium term it is the only technology we have that can produce the power required to meet expectations whilst reducing carbon emissions and dependency of fossil fuels. especially if we are going to drive electric cars in 50 years time.
hydro electric is important too though - it produces 12% of Scotland's electricity!
http://www.hi-energy.org.uk/Renewables/Hydro-Energy.htm
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| clarky999 wrote: |
| There are plenty of other rivers, but ever more are under threat of HEP schemes, all over the world. It would be a sad state of affairs if we lost all 'wild' rivers to HEP, to meet 'number of green energy schemes' targets rather than 'amounts of energy required' targets. |
Indeed, the same risk applies to 'wild' mountains with the proliferation of wind turbines. Harnessing mass to release its energy is the only viable way for civilisation to survive without screwing up the environment.
And winterhighland's somewhat spurious point about the enormous amount of CO2 released in a construction project (assuming referring to the lime production for the concrete) is equally valid (if not more so) for a barrage. It's all about reward for effort and minimum impact though.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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There's nothing morally indefensible about burying semi-spent fissiles in rock strata which naturally, safely contain fissiles that have been quietly depleting for millennia but yes, Britain should have been pioneering a Thorium reactor development long ago. What's morally indefensible is that while we were once a nation of engineering pioneers, we've since become paralysed with fear and apathy, reliant on Russian gas, Middle Eastern oil, we bicker about our own dwindling carbon resources, and meantime, we pollute vast tracts of our open spaces with imported wind turbines for what are effectively just political ends.
There'll be 276,000 industrial scale wind turbines required in the UK to support just our electricity needs. I'd advocate shoving 10,000 or so of them up on Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, the Thames outside Westminster Palace in London and in the heart of the Cairngorms and Lake District national parks to prick the political and public conscience into an early sense of the reality to come ... http://www.the-weinberg-foundation.org/thorium/
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clarky999,
| Quote: |
| It also seems increasingly likely that Nuclear Fusion will be able to further re-use this 'spent fuel,' in addition to significantly decreasing it's half-life. |
Fusion will not re-use any of the waste from fission! I think you may be thinking of some of the other technologies such as Thorium reactors or the travelling wave reactor which is specifically designed to burn all the rubbish from current reactors.
Thorium is the way to go, and the it is in fact the way that several countries are going right now. The technology is clean, not useable for bomb making, and above all it's fail safe ( which all the current reactors most definitely are not ).
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Yep, the historical reason that we are not all using clean, effectively limitless (to all current intents and purposes) thorium is an American requirement (for purely political reasons to begin with: Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't do any more damage than any of the conventional bombing but provided a convenient excuse for the Japanese to surrender; and continued because of the ensuing nuclear weapon proliferation).
Uranium based fission is such a dumb idea in comparison would have withered withoit the military demand.
Fusion is such a long shot it's not worth considering other than for pure science research (and maybe lifeboat engines once we need a new habitat).
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| Steilhang wrote: |
clarky999,
| Quote: |
| It also seems increasingly likely that Nuclear Fusion will be able to further re-use this 'spent fuel,' in addition to significantly decreasing it's half-life. |
Fusion will not re-use any of the waste from fission! I think you may be thinking of some of the other technologies such as Thorium reactors or the travelling wave reactor which is specifically designed to burn all the rubbish from current reactors.
Thorium is the way to go, and the it is in fact the way that several countries are going right now. The technology is clean, not useable for bomb making, and above all it's fail safe ( which all the current reactors most definitely are not ). |
It's quite possible I've been reading it incorrectly, but I was thinking of things like this: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/a-new-look-at-nuclear-waste/
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/could-fusion-clean-up-nuclear-waste
Get more power out and chop the half-lives of the resultant waste. Admittedly it seems to be purely theoretical at present, but it seems at least part of the system they've designed is going to be tested at the Culham Science Centre.
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You know it makes sense.
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under a new name, yep. Pretty dumb in retrospect huh? Anyway, it looks like things are moving forward now. At least the Indians are working flat out on a new generation of Thorium reactors. Once they get that going, the rest of us are going to look pretty stupid still backing Uranium.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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clarky999, interesting, I was not aware of that. However, given that a workable fusion reactor still seems to be something like 30 years out, and that this 30 year figure is a constant offset that has been restarted at the beginning of every year since 1960 ( or maybe earlier ), I'm not holding my breath.
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Poster: A snowHead
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| boabski wrote: |
| Done and passed on to my skiing buddies |
Thanks!
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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