Monday, April 13, 2015

Nuclear Wasted + links

Worlds within worlds

The government announced this week that it may have to shut down a nuclear power generator ahead of schedule because of the waste problem...
(Taipower, 台電) warned Sunday that the No. 1 generator at the country's first nuclear power plant may have to go offline sooner than expected because of limited storage space for spent nuclear fuel.

On Feb. 17, Taipower issued an invitation for foreign companies to tender for the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from Taiwan's first and second nuclear power plants but withdrew the request on April 2 amid a budget controversy.

Taipower had allocated NT$11.257 billion (US$360 million) for the overseas reprocessing of 1,200 clusters of spent fuel rods, 300 of which were to be shipped out by the end of the year.

But lawmakers failed to approve the budget in March, saying that Taipower and the Ministry of Economic Affairs were trying to initiate a bidding process with foreign companies without legislative oversight and were accessing the nation's nuclear back-end management fund before the establishment of legal guidelines for its use.
These same problems exist at the second nuke plant. Yes, that's right, the KMT government built four nuke plants with no plan for handling high level waste. That's because the KMT is the rational party, see?

This might also be a vapor announcement meant to put pressure on the public to accept that the fourth nuke plant has to be completed, or the lives of the current ones have to be extended. However, both Tsai Ing-wen of the DPP and Eric Chu of the KMT have said they want an end to nukes, Chu by 2025. Chu began talking about that a couple of years ago when it became apparent that the public had turned against nukes, especially in New Taipei City where there had been a non-binding local referendum almost two decades ago that decisively rejected the plant.

The whole nation could easily be run on a robust combination of renewables. A rational policy by the rational party would have had the nation collecting two things on every rooftop, sunlight and water. But we wasted billions on the fourth nuclear power plant instead...
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12 comments:

Hans said...

Want Times made a valid point, having only 36 million square kilometres, only just over twice as big as Russia, Taiwan got absolutely no chance against China.

StefanMuc said...

Unfortunately that's not unusual. Japan doesn't have a place to store spent fuel either, and Germany too has been looking for a storage place for over 50 years now.

Mike Fagan said...

"The whole nation could easily be run on a robust combination of renewables."

How are you going to store electrical power on the massive scales required for industry to get around the intermittency problem?

Anonymous said...

I would like to thank China for denying Taiwan's entry into its bank... and again reminding the Taiwanese exactly why they should strive for de jure independence.

an angry taiwanese said...

China is the geographically closest nation to Taiwan and is also the only nation in the world, that wants to destroy Taiwan. The Taiwanese only need to bear this in mind. Then the rest would be put together nicely.

Anonymous said...

Taiwan could easily make use of geothermal energy, which would also solve storage problems. Just get some engineers from Iceland, they'd show how it's done.

taipei said...

Taiwan would need to radically change it's energy usage pattern to even be partially powered by renewables. Gas and coal will have to step in to fill in the gaps for a couple of decades unless Taiwan society is transformed.
Solar could power a lot of stuff but it will take decades to ramp up and we need better power storage tech.
Geothermal resources are difficult tap on a large scale. Taiwan has over 20 million people, Iceland has 200,000, about 1% of Taiwan's population and Iceland is a far bigger landmass.

Mike Fagan said...

It's almost as if the renewable energy advocates are not actually interested in the question of how to supply electricity, but are only in it for the chance of "reshaping" society by getting control over the utilities.

Michael Turton said...

It's almost as if the renewable energy advocates are not actually interested in the question of how to supply electricity, but are only in it for the chance of "reshaping" society by getting control over the utilities.

It would look that way, if you live inside an ideological prism and imagine that it is an analytical stance.

Michael


Michael Turton said...

Taiwan would need to radically change it's energy usage pattern to even be partially powered by renewables.

What aspects of its energy usage would have to be changed?

Gas and coal will have to step in to fill in the gaps

Unfortunately coal has to go right away. Like yesterday.

Hopefully the counties and municipalities coming out against coal can force Taipower to stop fighting renewables.

Michael

Mike Fagan said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Jesse said...

I really enjoy your blog Michael, but I think you've got it wrong on this one. Taiwan could and should certainly do more with renewables, especially solar as you say, but with current technology they could never replace fossil fuels. It's just a matter of numbers: 23 million people and not a lot of land, let alone rooftops. I see nuclear as a necessary evil for Taiwan - less harmful than coal. Even Tsai admitted that under her policy the country would burn more gas. The fourth nuclear plant is in a stupid place no doubt, but nuclear power and reprocessing the spent fuel abroad to me seems like one of the better KMT ideas yet, even if they were for the wrong reasons.