Public acceptance in nuclear power is key to building such plants in Thailand

[lvr181]

So what is the problem with nuclear power?All they have to do is let it be run by westerners ,,,,100%,,,

My personal problem with it is that it is not safe no matter who is running it, who built it or where it is located.

I can sympathise with your concerns.

But IMHO they are unfounded generally speaking.

I worked with a few Swiss guys many years ago.

Most of their power(in Switzerland) came from a combination of nuke and hydro power.

The nuclear power stations are built below massive dams.

At night time..the lowest electrical demand period..they would use massive pumps to pump water from reservoirs into the dams using the electricity from the nukes.

In the morning when the power usage peaked they would generate using hydro power from the water in the dams . Same in the evenings.

That way they kept the nukes on base load and humming along quite nicely.

Ever heard of Swiss nuclear incident?

Many of the US and I suspect the old USSR navy aircraft carriers and submarines are nuclear powered. Don't hear too much about incidents with them.

Yup. Unfortunately none so deaf as those who do not want to hear and none so dumb as those who do not want to learn. Applies to many caucasians (greenies?) as well.

Life is a risk, learn to deal with it

[Keesters]

Thailand already has a functioning nuclear reactor in Chatuchak. It was comissioned in 1961 and has been operating from 1962 until today.

Can you site your sources please? I haven't been able to find anything that verifies your claim.

There is one but I understand it to be very small. When Bangkok was seriously flooded a few years back there were reports about it then together with some worries about its safety.

[Time Traveller]

More wasted oxygen......whilst a couple major players...Japan & Germany have decided to stop or reduce their dependence on nuclear energy, Thailand would be indebted for decades if only 1 power reactor was constructed.....and that after 10-20 years planning and developement.

Whether Thailand would be permitted to purchase the source is a major factor also.

The Philipines have a reactor, albeit rather old technology nowadays, but have been unable to purchase fuel for obvious reasons.

Renewable energy is the way of the future.....definately not coal, not nuclear......!

The reason that the Philippines reactor did not start was unrelated to fuel supply - the US would have been happy to provide at the time. Instead the reason was because some idiot had loctaed it slap bank above a major seismic fault. Than heavens it never was fueled up.

That said, nuclear for Thailand is an economic nonsense. Better to (as an agricultural country) to go bio-fuel to the extent possible.

By money, Thailand is more of a manufacturing country than an agricultural one. I don't quite understand how you could say nuclear is nonsense. USA has a quater of it's electricity generated by nuclear. Even middle eastern countries awash in oil are building nuclear reactors.

[craigt3365]

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[MaiChai]

Thailand can't even reach international standards on airline safety, never mind running nuclear plants!

[jerojero]

Public acceptance now determines Thailand's energy policy, with a supreme leader in charge? Article 44. Mr PM, just build the plant. Someone thinks the people will get a vote on this ? Fat chance.

Edited August 1, 2015 by jerojero

[AleG]

I can sympathise with your concerns.

But IMHO they are unfounded generally speaking.

I worked with a few Swiss guys many years ago.

Most of their power(in Switzerland) came from a combination of nuke and hydro power.

The nuclear power stations are built below massive dams.

At night time..the lowest electrical demand period..they would use massive pumps to pump water from reservoirs into the dams using the electricity from the nukes.

In the morning when the power usage peaked they would generate using hydro power from the water in the dams . Same in the evenings.

That way they kept the nukes on base load and humming along quite nicely.

Ever heard of Swiss nuclear incident?

Many of the US and I suspect the old USSR navy aircraft carriers and submarines are nuclear powered. Don't hear too much about incidents with them.

Yes, the Swiss Lucens reactor had a meltdown in 1969 causing a massive leak of radiation. Workers had to seal off the cavern in which the reactor was located to the outside world for several years and a very costly clean up was required..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucens_reactor

It is amazing how far behind almost (almost) everyone in this alleged discussion is.

Wind powered turbines have been producing electricity into the national grid for years. Chatuchak's functioning, accident-free nuke reactor effectively powers most of the x-ray machines in this and neighbouring countries. Bangkok's nuke plant ALSO produces the isotopes for probably the most modern and efficient food irradiation plant in Asia, which is why so much Thai food is certified for export.

And yes to some ignoramus up there ^^ rice is irradiated and is, indeed "nuked" before it leaves for most markets, including the US. The government doesn't deny it - the government brags about subjecting rice to radiation, along with tonnes of fresh fruit and vegetables. It's almost impossible that you haven't eaten some of that fine radiation yourself since so much of it gets on the local market, by design.

With current knowledge and possible public/private spending, enough electricity to meet demand will not, CAN not be produced from the standard, unimaginative methods so tiringly brought up over and over - wind, solar, waves.... It can NOT meet demand for generations, and that's if there are technological inventions and development we currently know nothing about. We may be able to adapt, but not (say) in 20 years.

In that 20 years, nuclear COULD be set up to be sustainable for many, many further generations. I doubt strongly it will be, but the thing is I *know* wind/solar/wave won't be. And I know you're as eager to charge your phone from a plug-in charger as I am, and as eager to watch a ball game on your electric TV set as I am and as joyful to log on to Thai Visa on your new-fangled electric computer as I am.

That's why the marvelous, developed carbon plants will be used into the foreseeable future. They are all that actually work, now or in the near (50-year) future, except for nuclear which most people view as most people here view - with a combination of ignorance and uninformed opposition - which will drive actual events anyhow. I've got well past hating nuclear ignorance, it's just a fact and it will drive government policy for now, for which I'll shrug and breathe that lovely coastal coal-flecked air from the power plant along with y'all.

I don't think that's correct. Maybe you were thinking of radiotherapy with isotopes etc

X-ray machines work by firing electrons in a vacuum from a cathode to a tungsten anode. The anode then releases high energy X-ray photons which are channelled though a lead cylinder and series of filters and focussed on the part of the patient of interest.

There are no nuclear isotopes in an x-ray machine and they don't require anything from a nuclear reactor. Indeed, the first x-ray machine was built in 1896, some 50 years before the first nuclear reactors were built.

Finally, the big hoo-hah about thorium being the next big thing in nuclear power to replace uranium.

We've heard all that before back in the 1950s with uranium. We were promised, abundant, safe, clean energy "too cheap to meter". We were told "Cars would be powered by a pellet of uranium, the size of a grain of rice".

Then we had Windscale, Three mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, all accidents we were told by the nuclear industry would never happen.

And when you look at the cost of building the reactor, dismantling them at the end of their life and storing the waste for thousands of years, the claims about cheap energy fall flat. Indeed, when the UK privatised the nuclear industry in the 1990s I recall they had to ring fence off the decommissioning costs for it to go ahead.

The UK's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority set up to deliver the decommissioning and clean-up of the UK’s civil nuclear legacy came up with an estimated decommissioning cost of about £72 billion in 2006.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Decommissioning_Authority

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_Kingdom#Decommissioning

"And when you look at the cost of building the reactor, dismantling them at the end of their life and storing the waste for thousands of years,"

But that's the thing about a Thorium based reactor, not only it would produce much, much less long lived waste, it could also use Uranium reactor's waste as fuel, thus eating up the current waste.

As for the costs of nuclear power, I think they seem high as compared with things like coal and gas plants (the only realistic option at the moment and for the foreseeable future) because all the costs are factored in for nuclear, whereas environmental costs for fossil fuel plants are by and large ignored. With that I mean, what are the costs associated with the climate change produced by fossil fuel plants? I don't think anyone has a clear figure, let alone those operations having to foot the bill for any of it. Or health costs from smog and pollution, or environmental damage from the extraction of resources, etc, etc...

Chernobyl (which was an accident involving an unsafe design deliberately rendered even less safe on purpose for an experiment) death toll stands (or would stand at 9000) people, Fukushima stands at zero with a probability of causing a few hundred cancer cases in the long term, Three Mile Island also caused zero deaths. Meanwhile tens of thousands die every year from pollution emanating from coal and gas plants, and it goes almost completely ignored.

As bad as Japan's nuclear emergency could have gotten, it would never be as bad as burning coal. Coal is fantastically dangerous, responsible for far more than 1 million deaths per year, according to the World Health Organization.

Start with the coal miners, thousands of whom die from mine collapses and thousands more from various lung diseases. Next, add the hundreds of thousands of deaths in the public from breathing coal's gaseous and particulate pollution, mostly from respiratory and heart disease.

Next, add the untold deaths and disabilities resulting from mercury in coal entering into the food chain. Then add the millions of acres of land, river and lake destroyed by mining waste.

Some of China's citizens worried about a radioactive wind blowing over from Japan, but coal-burning power plants from China are causing far more health problems for both China and Japan.

Coal even releases more radioactive material than nuclear energy — 100 times more per the same amount of energy produced, according to Dana Christensen of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), as reported in Scientific American in 2007.

According to WHO statistics, there are at least 4,025 deaths from coal for every single death from nuclear power. Switch to "clean" natural gas? That's still 100 times deadlier than nuclear energy. Oil is 900 times deadlier.

Renewable energy sources won't cut it, to fit the energy needs of the future Thailand will have to build more coal plants (which they are already doing), that will kill people, thousands, under normal operation.

Edited August 2, 2015 by AleG

[Down the rabbit hole]

Just seen that Thailand does have a small number of geothermal generators. So why not invest in more of these?

Doesn't have quite the cachet of 'nuclear' though. Gravitas is so important, even if it's only a someone's pipe-dream. Personally I'd rather see better roads that stay better, traffic light systems that actually manage traffic and power lines that don't allow a single lorry to bring down 40-odd concrete poles if it bumps into one.

Edited August 2, 2015 by Down the rabbit hole

[Down the rabbit hole]

"And when you look at the cost of building the reactor, dismantling them at the end of their life and storing the waste for thousands of years,"

But that's the thing about a Thorium based reactor, not only it would produce much, much less long lived waste, it could also use Uranium reactor's waste as fuel, thus eating up the current waste.

As for the costs of nuclear power, I think they seem high as compared with things like coal and gas plants (the only realistic option at the moment and for the foreseeable future) because all the costs are factored in for nuclear, whereas environmental costs for fossil fuel plants are by and large ignored. With that I mean, what are the costs associated with the climate change produced by fossil fuel plants? I don't think anyone has a clear figure, let alone those operations having to foot the bill for any of it. Or health costs from smog and pollution, or environmental damage from the extraction of resources, etc, etc...

Chernobyl (which was an accident involving an unsafe design deliberately rendered even less safe on purpose for an experiment) death toll stands (or would stand at 9000) people, Fukushima stands at zero with a probability of causing a few hundred cancer cases in the long term, Three Mile Island also caused zero deaths. Meanwhile tens of thousands die every year from pollution emanating from coal and gas plants, and it goes almost completely ignored.

As bad as Japan's nuclear emergency could have gotten, it would never be as bad as burning coal. Coal is fantastically dangerous, responsible for far more than 1 million deaths per year, according to the World Health Organization.

Start with the coal miners, thousands of whom die from mine collapses and thousands more from various lung diseases. Next, add the hundreds of thousands of deaths in the public from breathing coal's gaseous and particulate pollution, mostly from respiratory and heart disease.

Next, add the untold deaths and disabilities resulting from mercury in coal entering into the food chain. Then add the millions of acres of land, river and lake destroyed by mining waste.

Some of China's citizens worried about a radioactive wind blowing over from Japan, but coal-burning power plants from China are causing far more health problems for both China and Japan.

Coal even releases more radioactive material than nuclear energy — 100 times more per the same amount of energy produced, according to Dana Christensen of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), as reported in Scientific American in 2007.

According to WHO statistics, there are at least 4,025 deaths from coal for every single death from nuclear power. Switch to "clean" natural gas? That's still 100 times deadlier than nuclear energy. Oil is 900 times deadlier.

Renewable energy sources won't cut it, to fit the energy needs of the future Thailand will have to build more coal plants (which they are already doing), that will kill people, thousands, under normal operation.

Not to mention those who are killed during construction.

[Norvabc]

More wasted oxygen......whilst a couple major players...Japan & Germany have decided to stop or reduce their dependence on nuclear energy, Thailand would be indebted for decades if only 1 power reactor was constructed.....and that after 10-20 years planning and developement.

Whether Thailand would be permitted to purchase the source is a major factor also.

The Philipines have a reactor, albeit rather old technology nowadays, but have been unable to purchase fuel for obvious reasons.

Renewable energy is the way of the future.....definately not coal, not nuclear......!

Renewables are fine except when it's night time or when there's no wind. Oh and yeah, they'll need to make 3/4ths of the land area of the country available for solar and wind farms as well. So dream on !

Please read the story carefully. Thailand IMPORTS almost half of it's electricity! That presents a very big risk to the country. In the case of disruption of those supplies.

Nuclear is a sensible option. There is no reason for people to fear nuclear power plants. More people die each day from coal fired power plant emissions than have died from nuclear power plants in their entire history.

The Japanese accident is a perfect example. They have about 50 reactors.....49 of them were fine after the earthquake. Yet the one that was damaged was built in a tsunami danger zone that never should have been built there to begin with. That is, it was not cause by a design fault, but by the wrong location.

Technology no provides much safer reactors than the type built 30 to 40 years ago

China has several commercial nuclear reactors operating, and there safety standards are no better than thailands.

"Nuclear is a sensible option"

Are you for real

I have one word for you "Fukushima"

globalresearch.ca/radiation-spreads-worlwide-the-poisoning-of-mother-earth/24292

Now go and clean that up first.

Their are many many power sources available that are covered up by the Nuclear and petrol industries but apart from that just look around you, two power plants could be shut down by teaching or introducing solar hot water rather than the Electric show use all over Thailand the list is endless. Now why is that not promoted or ask yourself why is that not used. YES HOT WATER FREE FROM SOLAR. 2 to 5 Kwh for 1 shower that is 5 horses doing work for 1 hour. what a f%^$£ waste. Will this be banned from the forum now i have the cat out the bag. And yes to those that want to know Air con is easily done on solar if you used the correct system.

Edited August 22, 2015 by Norvabc

[Colabamumbai]

Cochin Airport in India is fully Solar Powered and they are also able to sell to the grid. I suggest that Thailand start with windmills, get some experience they if they are capable go to Solar Power. Safer and cleaner.

Thais could never build such Nuclear plants without the work of foreign countries and workers with experience .

[DrTuner]

If they ever get around to building a Nuclear Power Plant here in Thailand,

I will be on the first plane out.with someone like Somchai Simpson at the

controls.

Ah yes, Somchai Simpson, the luekkrung from Hell. I'm kinda hoping they'll put the power plant at the lower suk sois in BKK.

[puck2]

Cochin Airport in India is fully Solar Powered and they are also able to sell to the grid. I suggest that Thailand start with windmills, get some experience they if they are capable go to Solar Power. Safer and cleaner.

Thais could never build such Nuclear plants without the work of foreign countries and workers with experience .

++++

Thailand should have a law that dictates, atomic power plants must be buildt cattycorner parliament.

ALL atomic power problems solved within a second.

[FBlue72]

More wasted oxygen......whilst a couple major players...Japan & Germany have decided to stop or reduce their dependence on nuclear energy, Thailand would be indebted for decades if only 1 power reactor was constructed.....and that after 10-20 years planning and developement.

Whether Thailand would be permitted to purchase the source is a major factor also.

The Philipines have a reactor, albeit rather old technology nowadays, but have been unable to purchase fuel for obvious reasons.

Renewable energy is the way of the future.....definately not coal, not nuclear......!

Renewables are fine except when it's night time or when there's no wind. Oh and yeah, they'll need to make 3/4ths of the land area of the country available for solar and wind farms as well. So dream on !

Please read the story carefully. Thailand IMPORTS almost half of it's electricity! That presents a very big risk to the country. In the case of disruption of those supplies.

Nuclear is a sensible option. There is no reason for people to fear nuclear power plants. More people die each day from coal fired power plant emissions than have died from nuclear power plants in their entire history.

The Japanese accident is a perfect example. They have about 50 reactors.....49 of them were fine after the earthquake. Yet the one that was damaged was built in a tsunami danger zone that never should have been built there to begin with. That is, it was not cause by a design fault, but by the wrong location.

Technology no provides much safer reactors than the type built 30 to 40 years ago

China has several commercial nuclear reactors operating, and there safety standards are no better than thailands.

China controls the media strictly, it is essential for Thailand to emulate this before any kind of nuclear reactor can be built for 2 reasons; one, citizens must not get accurate information on the dangers, and two, any mishaps can be covered up easily.

[FBlue72]

So what is the problem with nuclear power?All they have to do is let it be run by westerners ,,,,100%,,,

My personal problem with it is that it is not safe no matter who is running it, who built it or where it is located.

I can sympathise with your concerns.

But IMHO they are unfounded generally speaking.

I worked with a few Swiss guys many years ago.

Most of their power(in Switzerland) came from a combination of nuke and hydro power.

The nuclear power stations are built below massive dams.

At night time..the lowest electrical demand period..they would use massive pumps to pump water from reservoirs into the dams using the electricity from the nukes.

In the morning when the power usage peaked they would generate using hydro power from the water in the dams . Same in the evenings.

That way they kept the nukes on base load and humming along quite nicely.

Ever heard of Swiss nuclear incident?

Many of the US and I suspect the old USSR navy aircraft carriers and submarines are nuclear powered. Don't hear too much about incidents with them.

Yup. Unfortunately none so deaf as those who do not want to hear and none so dumb as those who do not want to learn. Applies to many caucasians (greenies?) as well.

Life is a risk, learn to deal with it

I've read the Swiss do have fully developed frontal lobes.

It isn't nuclear energy per se, it is the people running the plant, or more frightening, the corruption during construction that allows shortcuts that make it so dangerous.

Thailand must get itself onto renewables. Unfortunately, the index for pocketing money is not nearly so great.