Natural & Renewable Energy and Nuclear

Energy.
1. Natural & Renewable Energy and Nuclear Energy
(1) Nuclear Energy
Nuclear Energy is being used in Electricity Generation
Plant.
Every matter is organized by Atom. Atom is
organized by Proton, Neutron which is in the
Nuclear, and Electron which is orbiting the
Nuclear. When Heavy Atom (such as Uranium)
absorbs Neutron, Nuclear is going to break with
a lot of energy and a few Neutrons. These
Neutrons are going to break other Atoms. This
phenomenon is called Chain Reaction of Nuclear
Fission. 1gram of Uranium Nuclear Fission makes
a lot of energy equal to burning 9 drum of oil or 3
ton of coal.

The basic process is

1) Boil the water with Chain Reaction of
Nuclear Fission and this will make the
super vaporized steam.
2) The super vaporized steam will go to the turbine of electric generator.

(2) Natural & Renewable Energy

Solar Energy, Wind Energy, Tidal Energy, Terrestrial heat Energy are also good power
resources. These Energies have no toxic waste, and are clean and renewable. In this
document we will focus specially on Solar Energy.
 Solar Energy is coming from the Sun. This energy can be used
by distillation and power generation. Distillation is one of the
great invention technologies. It can be used to transform the
seawater to the fresh water.
For example, Symi island in Greece have Solar distillation
facility. This facility has hemisphere shape. Seawater is going to
vaporize inside of hemisphere with solar energy and vapor is
going to condense inside of hemisphere surface and fall down.
With This process it can supply 1 gallon of fresh water to each
4000 people of this island in one day. This facility doesn’t need
a complex device to build it. Just with this, hemisphere shape
can make 4000 gallon of fresh water per day.
Concentrating Solar Power plant has same basic idea from
conventional power station to produce electricity. Because they
both are using the steam to run the turbine, but CSP plant uses
solar energy to make steam. There are 4 major parts of
Concentrating Solar Power generation, Concentrator, a receiver, storage and power
conversion. CSPs are classified with how they can concentrate the sunlight. Until now
four types of concentrators have been invented.
The Parabolic Trough has parabolic surface to concentrate the sunlight to the center of
trough. Central Receivers has many mirrors to reflex the sunlight to the Central Tower.
Parabolic Dish has looks like reflexible antenna. it concentrates the sunlight to the one
point and this point has receiver. Linear Fresnel has similar structure with Parabolic
Trough but plane mirror reflexes the sunlight to the receiver.
Information of four types of concentrator is given in Table 1.

 Table 1. Type of Concentrating Solar Power Generation.

Parabolic Central Parabolic Dish Linear Fresnel
Trough Receivers
Type

Capacity(MW) 10~200 10~200 0.1~1 10~200

Efficiency(%) 10~25 10~25 16~29 9~17
Temperature 350~415 250~565 750~800 2700~500
(℃)
Investment 3,000~6,500 4,000~6,000 4,000~10,000 2,500~5,500
cost
(Euro/KW)
Development Commercializati Commercializati Prototype Test Prototype
status on completed on progressing
Advantage Stabilized system High Temperature Highest efficiency Low Investment
High efficiency High efficiency Module system cost
Efficiency
improvement
expected
Disadvantage Hard to improve Commercialization Untested Low Efficiency
Efficiency not proved Technology
High operation cost Impossible to Store
the heat
Reference Deutsche Bank(2009), The CSP industry An awakening giant,
Greenpeace(2009), Concentrating Solar Power Global Outlook 09
 2. Comparing about energy.
(1) Nuclear
Nuclear energy is more useful than Solar energy. Nuclear energy can generate
electricity 24 hours a day. Also it doesn’t require the large land to install the plant. But
nuclear power plant uses the uranium as fuel.
Uranium is used in the nuclear power plant as fuel. Natural uranium consists of 0.7%
of uranium 235 and 99.3% of uranium 238. Natural uranium that is going through the
refining process and enrich process, will change Natural uranium concentrate to the
2~5% of uranium 235 and then it’s used by fuel in the nuclear power plant.
Nuclear power process uses 3% of fuel and it remains 1% of plutonium and 95~96%
of uranium. If this waste going through the separation process it can be divided with
plutonium and uranium. Plutonium is a material of nuclear bomb of Nagasaki in Oct 9th
1945. There is some rumor that U.S.A threw the nuclear bomb twice because they
wanted to have experiment about 2 kind of nuclear bomb which made of plutonium and
uranium.
This Nuclear waste has high radiation intensity and produces a lot of heat. Also,
nuclear waste has toxic radioactivity. If human is exposed to radiation, it causes
illnesses such as, headache, vomiting, infection, internal hemorrhage, destruction of
marrow and cancer or even death. Furthermore, nuclear waste disposal technology
does not exist. So, it cannot be exposed in the air. Normally it is kept in temporary
tank inside of nuclear power plant with the cooling water. If it has to move, it goes into
the 120~150 ton of cask and goes to the nuclear waste site.
Even U.S.A, Japan and any other countries which have Nuclear Power Plant are
spending a lot of money and land to keep the nuclear waste and do the experiment
about nuclear waste technologies.

(2) Natural Energy

Solar Energy is one of the good renewable energy sources. but it has many issues.
Firstly, it needs a lot of space to install the plant.
Sun radiate 2cal/min of energy in 1cm2 to outer space of the earth. This is Solar
coefficient and considering about latitude, weather condition, shape of the earth,
normally Sun convey 1/8 of energy to the surface. According to the International Nuclear
Safety School, Nuclear power plant require 1~2km2 for generate 1,000MWe but solar
power plant require 20~50km2. Because of this problem, the efficiency of solar power
generation is very low.
This is only one issue of solar energy. Beside of this issue it has a lot of advantage.

 Table 2. Comparing Cost of Renewable & Nuclear power plant

Renewable Power Plant Nuclear Power Plant
(Gori 2nd)
Unit 1015 1
Capacity(MW) 620 650
Total Capacity(MWH) 3,654,647 5,232,779
Hours of operation 5,889 8,050
Building cost(\) 1,780 billion 1,500 billion
Fuel cost(\) 0 720 billion
Demolition cost of 0 325.1 ~ 1,000 billion
plant(\)
Medium-Low active 0 400.9 billion
waste(\)
High active waste(\) 0 430 ~ 932.7 billion
Local area support 4.7 billion 30 billion
Transmission tower 0 250 billion
Total 1,784.7 billion 3,656 ~ 4,838.6 billion
Reference Environmental Movement in Korea,
According to table, a nuclear power plant is 2~3 times more expensive than
renewable energy. This table shows that nuclear power plant is just convenience energy
source.

3. Conclusion
With these facts, we can think about 3 options. First, keep using the nuclear energy
which has expensive cost and risk for radiation exposure. Second, we can develop the
renewable energy. Finally find another energy sources.
Nuclear energy is more useful than Renewable energy on one side. This is true at
some point. Nuclear energy is more powerful, useful and has a higher capacity than
Renewable energy. But it is expensive because high active waste needs to be kept in
safe way and keeping time will be centuries. Furthermore, the high active waste disposal
technology does not exist. It’s like keeping the bomb inside of our body. Also since no
one didn’t dispose the nuclear waste (Just Keep in nuclear waste site), no one knows the
nuclear waste disposal cost.
Renewable energy has a lot of problems but also it has a lot of possibility. It’s well
known fact that clean and unlimited. Fossil fuel and nuclear fuel are has limit.
Eventually, these energies are going to exhausted. But as long as the Sun exists,
renewable energies are not going to exhaust.
If we concentrate on renewable energies, we can develop the technologies of
renewable energies. And our next generation can live with clean environment.

4. Reference
Concentrating Solar Power Global Outlook 09’ (Greenpeace International, ESTELA,
SolarPACES)
Environment Movement in Korea.
http://blog.cbs.co.kr/jwkim2.blog$1/656390 by Reporter Jewon Kim.
LG Business insight 2009 9 16 p29~35. By Researcher Nakhwan Seong
http://www.e2news.com/pdf/check.php?fd=115&dnfile=01.PDF by Reporter Sangbok
Lee
International Nuclear Safety School