Nuclear Power Plant Issue Raised By Cm Uni Professor

[sriracha john]

Without wishing to be too negative, would anyone on this forum really want to live next-doors to a Thai nuclear power-plant, built to the same high standards as the new airport ?

Made from thai engineers accourding to Thai standards (ground rods, for what should that be???).

At least it would need so long till they can start it that I am already 20 years dead....

Phew!!....the safety catch.

We'll all be long gone before it gets off the ground...

[The Dan Sai Kid]

Also, isn't the rest of the world turning AWAY from nuclear reactors these days?

Man, that is such a 90's statement!

This is the new Millenium - oil is depleting and most of the worlds remaining fossil fuels are in unstable regions of the world.

Besides, enviromentalism is not the vote-winner that it was - cheaper fuel bills are

[Martin]

The only sensible, reliable way to reduce fuel bills is to reduce usage.

But politicians and professors don't lead.

They follow public opinion to get the votes and the grants on which their personal 'success' depends.

So they won't say "You should save" till the public says "We have found out that we must save", and it will be too late by then.

Way back in 1956, a shrewd old Canadian engineer told me that, in his opinion, "BS, MS, PhD" signified "BullShiit, More Shiitt, Piled higher and Deeper."

Off and on, I worked in the West in its academia for about 22 years, and rarely found any PhD whose thesis justified the trees that died to produce the paper for it to be written on.

I was a right sod. Whenever I met a PhD, if it was convenient (and sometimes I wangled that!), I would ask "Unto which part of the Philosophy did you doctor?" And a few supplementary questions soon had them floundering.

I recommend that activity. It never made me any friends, but I got an impressive list of enemies to be proud of.

[sriracha john]

The only sensible, reliable way to reduce fuel bills is to reduce usage.

But politicians and professors don't lead.

They follow public opinion to get the votes and the grants on which their personal 'success' depends.

So they won't say "You should save" till the public says "We have found out that we must save", and it will be too late by then.

Way back in 1956, a shrewd old Canadian engineer told me that, in his opinion, "BS, MS, PhD" signified "BullShiit, More Shiitt, Piled higher and Deeper."

Off and on, I worked in the West in its academia for about 22 years, and rarely found any PhD whose thesis justified the trees that died to produce the paper for it to be written on.

I was a right sod. Whenever I met a PhD, if it was convenient (and sometimes I wangled that!), I would ask "Unto which part of the Philosophy did you doctor?" And a few supplementary questions soon had them floundering.

I recommend that activity. It never made me any friends, but I got an impressive list of enemies to be proud of.

Case in point:

"Yes, I'm guilty as charged. I have a PhD and don't deserve it."

Dr. Thaksin Shinawatra

[Martin]

Has anybody had a shufti at Dr Thaksin's PhD thesis?

Or is that an investigative reporter's step too far?

Come to that, can anybody give a reference to an authoitative biography of the PM (in English), please?

[meadish_sweetball]

This discussion is going off topic. Feel free to start a new thread in the General forum, or please keep to the topic at hand.

Thank you,

Meadish

[skippybangkok]

<deleted>.....if we build a N. Plant, whats the possibility of Thailand being a "paraiah" state and getting invaded by the US ?

[Martin]

If the USA thought about invading Thailand, they would probably decide:

"No way. Been there. Done that. Got the T-shirt. Not going back."!!

Seriously, though, I would trust the latest generation of Thai graduate engineers with a nuclear plant as much as I would trust the Americans, or the Brits. Which is zero.

Materials are so good nowadays that hardware can be trusted not to break.

That is spilling over in engineering minds (and business and political minds) to having equal faith in the software and orgware that is needed to keep the whole system safe. Not justified.

Compared to my generation, engineers now think they dispense with humility. Not justified.

World-wide, they are more likely to 'do a Chernobyl' than back in the safer times.

(And even then 'a Chernobyl' happened---and the accounts of what went on in that Three Mile Island control room are salutary, too).

Let them carry on frying the odd few astronauts on launch pads, if that is the way they want to spend their lives, and their money.

But taking the chance of sending another cloud of contam. circling the planet is a step too far.

[skippybangkok]

"No way. Been there. Done that. Got the T-shirt. Not going back."!!

Lol - Answer of the week i recon

[Oleg_Rus]

Lets build m/f/ N.Plant!

after major leack, we'll have the following

1 Glowing bananas

2 Walking Crocodiles

3 Huge Juicy Fruits

4 Ox-size chicken

5 Talking mammals

Why not, been there, done that :-)

Chernobyl'96 Rules!!!

P.S. I like that "Black rubber thing from k.Somchai for 2 Baht only" - true

Edited August 4, 2006 by Oleg_Rus

[Martin]

"1 Glowing bananas

2 Walking Crocodiles

3 Huge Juicy Fruits

4 Ox-size chicken

5 Talking mammals"

I am willing to forgo all those, because I was taught that "the rems and the rads are bad for the gonads".

[tjo o tjim]

It is such a pity that the old excuse 'it is to expensive' is used when the subject of solar energie is raised.

Start mass producing solar cells and it will be very very cheap.

Just to compare:

If a 15" TFT flatscreen monitor can be sold for 2000 baht why is it that a solar cell of the same size is 10.000 baht. A TFT is much more difficult to produce with a lot more failures.

I guess the economies are not ready for alternative energie as they are built around the use of fossil fuels.

Solar cells have payback when electricity costs are over about B8/unit if there are no subsidies. The payback drops to about B6/unit without subsidies if "net metering" is used. When there are peak/off peak rates of B6/4, you can also get a reasonable payback today.

Without import duites, you can buy a solar cell about the size of a 15" TFT screen for the same price. (A 1.2m x 0.8m cell is about B8,000 in the US).

The things that hold Thailand back from going solar are the desire to use cheaper, low efficiency solar cells that can be manufactured locally using local materials, in order to prevent massive cash outflows to other countries. This is why the duties on imported solar cells make it prohibitive.

The logical thing to do would be to encourage the use of solar cells wherever diesel fuel is used to produce electricity. The cost of producing electricity on an island with diesel gensets is about B10/unit, while the cost charged to a consumer is B3.5 (?) /unit. Use *that* subsidy to put in some solar cells for the peaking needs at the generation level, and allow for net metering.

When it comes to the electricity needs of major cities, especially Bangkok, there won't be a viable alternative to going Nuke. If the power consumption for BKK is ~2.5GW (based on half the consumption per capita of an industrialized country), you would need about 100km^2 of solar cells to satisfy the total load. You can take a dent out of peak needs with much less, but the math simply doesn't work without a Nuke plant.

The best you can do is to try and make the nuclear power plant as efficient as possible, thermodynamically, mechanically, and fuel:waste. Pebble bed reactors or breeder reactors do offer a good deal of hope. Another option is the "micro" reactors, such as Toshiba was developing a few years ago-- self contained, zero maintenance on the nuclear side, and simply standard steam turbine maintenance on the generation side.

Personally, I am a fan of wind power, but the viability there is even worse, unless there is tremendous diversity between generation sources.

[Martin]

It now appears that the capital to build a new generation of nuclear power stations in Britain cannot be raised unless the Government guarantees to buy the electricity output at 'over the odds', and undertakes to foot the bills for decommissioning at the end of the stations' useful lives.

So what chance would EGAT have of raising capital for a nuclear station? Zero.

Fortunately for Thailand, it has a sustainable future without any manufacturing industry (other than a bit for the home market), and with the population of Bangkok reduced to about a third of what it is (and using no air con, of course).

Thailand is way high in two international league tables: the one that lists the countries that can export most food per head of population, and the one that lists the countries that import least food per head of population.

So it will be able to chunter on quite happily, feeding itself and doing a bit of feeding of China, and letting the West go hang.

Of course, the professor who knows how to tell the tale, and grade the homework assignments, about nuclear generation probably doesn't want to retrain by becoming a student enrolled in Peasantry 101. But it beats looking to a future of going hungry.

[African]

I think there is some confusion here about the electricity markets. The electric company (EGAT) tries to keep electricity flowing 24 hours a day. To do this we have 2 types of plants:

1) ‘Base Load’ power plants, that run all the time (Coal, Hydro, Nuclear, Oil etc.)

2) ‘Peak Load’ plants that only run during times of peak demand, i.e. during the day when its real hot outside (Natural Gas, Solar, wind).

You can’t replace a coal fired plant with a solar cell because the sun is not always shining. And it becomes way too expensive to try to store the energy in batteries. (Even if you did batteries are DC and Thailand operates on AC power).

So, I agree with the guy who said solar is Sci Fi, because it is Sci Fi to say that a solar cell can replace a coal power plant. Your options are either to build a dam, build a nuclear plant, or turn your lights off.

[Martin]

'African' puts it well.

Look at his last four words, and ponder.

"Turn your lights off".

I haven't researched the figures of highway lighting and base-load generation for Thailand, but in the UK the Prime Minister who is trying to get more nuclear generation accepted wouldn't have to do it, if he could get acceptance that an 80 km/h speed limit could be introduced and all the highway lighting turned off. (Street lighting needs to stay on for security and peace of mind).

But it won't happen, because we have the habits and the politicians that result from 200 years (or about seven generations) of bulk energy supplies getting cheaper and cheaper and the resulting 'economic growth'. We are wasteful, and our politicians are 'growth managers'. That is, they follow us, organising the "More, more" that we demand.

As we move into the times when bulk energy supplies get dearer and dearer, we need 'managers of decline' who will lead us to be more and more thrifty and frugal.

This will turn many things completely around. One is that centralised electricity generation in big power stations will become a minor activity compared to local generation from wind and solar (and microhydro, where the topography allows).

After that comes the time when the local generation systems wear out. First the batteries crap out and can't be replaced as new ones need a lot of energy for their manufacture and so have become enormously expensive. So the village electricity will only be on when the wind is blowing, or the sun shining.

Never mind. Even when the electricity is off, the Isaan villagers will still have food to eat and a place to live that is never too hot nor too cold. And there isn't much on tv that is worth watching anyway.

And there will still be a few in Bangkok (maybe 10% of its present population?) who will have employment in the export of rice in exchange for the import of a little of that so-expensive oil.

And the EGAT engineers will get good at cannibalising the big, old, redundant power stations to keep the newer little ones going and supplying those few Bangkokians.

They will live in interesting times.

[moonoi]

'African' puts it well.

Look at his last four words, and ponder.

"Turn your lights off".

I haven't researched the figures of highway lighting and base-load generation for Thailand, but in the UK the Prime Minister who is trying to get more nuclear generation accepted wouldn't have to do it, if he could get acceptance that an 80 km/h speed limit could be introduced and all the highway lighting turned off. (Street lighting needs to stay on for security and peace of mind).

But it won't happen, because we have the habits and the politicians that result from 200 years (or about seven generations) of bulk energy supplies getting cheaper and cheaper and the resulting 'economic growth'. We are wasteful, and our politicians are 'growth managers'. That is, they follow us, organising the "More, more" that we demand.

As we move into the times when bulk energy supplies get dearer and dearer, we need 'managers of decline' who will lead us to be more and more thrifty and frugal.

This will turn many things completely around. One is that centralised electricity generation in big power stations will become a minor activity compared to local generation from wind and solar (and microhydro, where the topography allows).

After that comes the time when the local generation systems wear out. First the batteries crap out and can't be replaced as new ones need a lot of energy for their manufacture and so have become enormously expensive. So the village electricity will only be on when the wind is blowing, or the sun shining.

Never mind. Even when the electricity is off, the Isaan villagers will still have food to eat and a place to live that is never too hot nor too cold. And there isn't much on tv that is worth watching anyway.

And there will still be a few in Bangkok (maybe 10% of its present population?) who will have employment in the export of rice in exchange for the import of a little of that so-expensive oil.

And the EGAT engineers will get good at cannibalising the big, old, redundant power stations to keep the newer little ones going and supplying those few Bangkokians.

They will live in interesting times.

Except that the future you see will never happen.

As nice as you view of how Thailand might be in the future maybe to you.......I doubt that many people (Thai and Foreign) would subscribe to your future........they worked hard to get away from just that existance...why would they want to go back. This is what will fuel people now and in the future to find better and more efficient methods of generating electricity rather than ignoring it, "going back to peasantry" and "letting the west go hang"

[Martin]

"This is what will fuel people now and in the future to find better and more efficient methods of generating electricity rather than ignoring it, "going back to peasantry" and "letting the west go hang".

Well, they have been trying to find those methods, but failing.

We shall see what we see, and succeeding generations will see what they see, in the light of what we leave behind us.

But I am an optimist, and remain hopeful that it will all work out quite well (albeit very differently from what we have now).