Women In Nuclear, South Africa.

[NNadir]

From their FAQ:

What does the logo mean?
South Africa is known as a country of diversity and culture. The hands holding the atom symbolise the multiracial society we live in. To demystify the fears and concerns around nuclear energy, we have used the image of two hands to symbolise that anything that can be held can be used peacefully.

This statement, of course, is another reason why Nelson Mandela must be considered one of the transcendent figures of our times. Twenty years ago it would have sounded absurd.

Former President Mandela, by the way, discussed during his term the fact that under the Apartheid regime, in co-operation with Israel - to whom South Africa was a major supplier of uranium - South Africa assembled several nuclear weapons. The weapons were dismantled ultimately, making South Africa the only nation in the world to have possessed nuclear weapons and subsequently to have totally engaged in nuclear disarmament.

Here is a list of the executive committee:

Name and Surname Company
Tel.No

Ntebatse Matube
NECSA

Nomathemba Radebe
Eskom


Beauty Monamodi
PBMR


Carol Mathibe
PBMR


Tumelo Mogamisi



Yvonne Kheswa
iThemba LABS


Peggy Mampe
NNR


Lynnette Jones
Westinghouse


Mimi van Noordwyk
Westinghouse

The names do sound poly-cultural, if you ask me, and seems even to include some Welsh sounding names.

Only one of the women appears to work at the nuclear power plant at Koeberg, ESKOM.

Here is what the nuclear plant at Koeberg, by the way, says about itself

The stations' two reactors supply 1 800MW or 6% of South Africa's electricity needs. Koeberg has produced more than 81 000 million kWh of electricity since 1984 using seven and a half tonnes of uranium:


Koeberg is a strategic water user and saves 22 billion litres of fresh water per annum. The condensers are cooled by means of sea water, which is returned to the sea after use. The sea water is not consumed. In a similar period of time, a coal-fired power station of the same size would use, more that 50 million tons of coal and 160 000 million litres of scarce fresh water. The fresh water would be consumed entirely. South Africa's fresh water resources are extremely scarce and, at current economic and population growth rates, South Africa is expected to experience a permanent water shortage from 2020.

Wow. That's outrageous! They have seven and a half tons of used nuclear fuel when they could have just burned 50 million tons of coal instead. Thank goodness for Germany, South Africa's largest coal purchaser.

Koeberg employs 1200 people, including, apparently, some who are women. Returning to WiNSA, here's what their charter says:

•Creating a national forum and network for women in these fields enabling them to meet regularly to exchange ideas and experience towards advancing the role of women in respective nuclear-related fields;

•Promoting broad-based understanding of the fields of nuclear technology, safety and non-proliferation through targeted interventions, including public information programmes; and

•Interaction with all relevant stakeholders to foster an environment conducive to advancing the empowerment of women in the relevant fields.

Personally, I don't have a problem with that, although I have a rather openly stated opinion of the opposite approach which is clearly advocated by some people who I don't like very much: That approach is "nuclear ignorance."

One of the achievements of the local chapter at South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa), they say, besides negotiating improved pregnancy leave terms is:

There is also a remarkable increase of black women within the technical levels or in leanerships programs.

As someone who opposes ignorance, deliberate or otherwise, I like to see increases (of any type) within the technical levels, anywhere, anytime, any place.

http://www.dme.gov.za/winsa/index.stm">Here is the website of "Women in Nuclear, South Africa.

http://www.eskom.co.za/live/content.php?Category_ID=105">Here is ESKOM's website for its nuclear power plant, right now the only one on the African continent.

[joshcryer]

1. Is South Africa planning to build more nuclear plants?

[NNadir]

2. They have been planning PBR reactors for some time. They are, in fact, the current

world leader in this technology that was initially developed, ironically enough, in Germany.

It is not clear that they will actually build these reactors, but they are certainly not into nuclear ignorance in South Africa.

Nuclear reactors always involve high up front costs, mostly because years and years and years and years of whining by the nuclear ignoramuses have destroyed most nuclear manufacturing infrastructure, world wide, although India is making great strides in developing such infrastructure, impressive strides. (They recently fabricated a head plate for a fast breeder reactor in record time at extremely low costs.)

However, over a long period of time, periods of half a century or more, the overall costs of nuclear power - especially if one includes external costs, the costs of destruction to the environment and human health - are extraordinarily low.

Thus the choice whether to build or not build nuclear power plants really is a choice about whether to forgo short term profits in order to give benefits to future generations.

My parents generation, for instance, built the Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant in New Jersey, and it their generation's gift to mine. I wish I could report to my sons that my generation has given a similar gift, but in my generation all we built was gas plants - and we're not precisely sure where the gas in the future to fuel them will come from. The other great thing we did was to print a lot of great flyers about how much we really, really, really, really expect my sons' generation to build magic wind and solar plants.

Will they build the 25 PBR plants they've talked about in South Africa? I don't know. I certainly hope they will. It would be a tremendous gift to future generations of Africans if they do.

South Africa is, however, a coal power house. Countries with big investments in, and big profits from, dangerous fossil fuels, countries like Norway, Denmark and others don't generally like nuclear energy. But SA has been talking the talk for a nuclear future, that is for sure. Good for them.

[tabatha]

5. Coal is a dirty industry in South Africa.

"The dirty man of Africa: South Africa, the industrial power-house of Africa, is also the biggest environmental polluter. It is responsible for 90% of energy sector carbon dioxide emissions on the continent."

"...respiratory diseases caused by air pollution are still the fourth biggest cause of infant death in South Africa."

Gold Mining there is probably just as bad, but it pollutes soil and water more than air.

Hopefully, the thin layer solar developed in South Africa and probably to be manufactured in Germany as a start will also help. Sasol recently bought shares in this company
http://moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page292520?oid=264195&sn=2009%20Detail

(I once visited Pelindaba in the 1970s - but never saw any of the nuclear stuff)

[NNadir]

7. In spite of all the "clean coal" talk, there are zero places on the planet where coal is clean.

Every once in a while here in the E&E forum we'll have some anti-nuke talking up IGCC coal and pretending that it's clean.

The number of these people who can find clean ways to dig coal, or can demonstrate a permanent repository for dangerous coal wastes, which happen, ironically enough, to include uranium, but are dominated by carbon dioxide, is the same as it has always been: zero.

Sasol is one of the few companies on earth that has commercial coal based Fischer-Tropsch infrastructure. Even though SA can now import oil, the Sasol plants still run.

[joshcryer]

14. Carbon dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life.

:shrug:

[Javaman]

20. Um, what? are you using their failed marketing angle to show that coal is clean?? nt

[HamdenRice]

19. Pelindaba was a very weird place to put a nuclear plant

I remember passing it often because I was living in Joburg and doing research in the western Transvaal/Bophutatswana. If I went to Bop by way of the Hartebeestport dam, I would see Pelindaba off in the distance to my left on a ridge that I think was part of the Witwatersrand or Magaliesberg range.

It was supposed to be kind of secluded and hush-hush, but then they built Sun City in Bop, and every drunken tourist driving out to Sun ("Sin") City on weekend passed Pelindaba.

I sometimes wonder whether it was actually intended to be seen as some kind of propaganda effort.

[jpak]

8. South Africa cancelled the pebble bed reactor - so sorry

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=124&art_id=vn20090918034855711C347705

:rofl:

[tabatha]

11. Hundreds of nuclear reactors

did NOT have to be built in California because an engineer made fridges more efficient.

It would be better if solar could pre-empt nuclear.

[NNadir]

17. Solar is neither as clean, nor reliable, nor as safe, nor as cheap as nuclear.

California didn't build nuclear plants because of absurd paranoia, marketing and the hegemony of the dangerous natural gas industry.

The solar industry is trivial in California, just like it is everywhere else.

[tabatha]

18. Actually, they did not build plants because of some smart thinking:

(I probably should not have said hundreds, but many)

Brown learned, in a meeting with Rosenfeld, who by that time had turned his full attention toward promoting energy efficiency, that California's refrigerators were using the equivalent of five Sundesert plants. A modest improvement in their efficiency would more than offset the need for new power plants, Rosenfeld told him. So the state adopted stringent appliance standards -- before the federal government did -- and staved off construction of the Sundesert plant. The change in California's refrigerators has saved energy equal to all the hydroelectric power produced nationwide, Rosenfeld says.

...............

"For 30 years, Rosenfeld has been one of the forces guiding California on a mission of conservation. And today the state uses less energy per capita than any other state in the country, defying the international image of American energy gluttony. Since 1974, California has held its per-capita energy consumption essentially constant, while energy use per person for the United States overall has jumped 50 percent."

http://www.alumni.berkeley.edu/calmag/200701/id_power.asp
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003609253_california09.html

etc

[Nederland]

21. Hundreds?

Wow. Someone is really bad at math.

[joshcryer]

12. Where does it say that in the article?

[NNadir]

15. Too bad. If they built just one of them, they could easily outstrip all the solar PV energy

produced in the United States.

Recently, by direct calculation - you would have had to have passed a high school physics course to understand it, so I understand why we didn't have any comment from you - that all of the solar facilities in the entire United States can't produce as much power as a weeny gas plant in Redondo Beach.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=210948&mesg_id=210948">I'm sorry to use something called "numbers" since, well, you know...

I've really missed your dumb giggles that obscure your ability to write a complete sentance. Where ya' been? Running another adventure tour to Antarctica for high school kids with low SAT scores whose Moms still want them to apply to Cornell - and get extra credit on their applications for having hauled oil drums in aircraft to the melting ice - even though the chance they'll get admitted is zero?

As for nuclear science in SA and elsewhere...

Like I said, dumb fundie anti-nukes have been doing their best to destroy nuclear science and nuclear infrastructure, mostly because they're so fond of being unable to understand simple scientific concepts.

It appears, however, that the nuclear science community in SA couldn't care less what a bunch of bourgeois brats in the US think. The people working in that community have easily produced more energy than a whole bunch of "solar will save us" noodnicks burning exajoule quantities of electricity to announce how great their petajoule of solar electronic waste producing energy is.

But let's catch up. Like I say, I've missed your gigglys.

How's, um, that solar powered Tesla of yours working out, big guy? Did you and Mom at least appreciate the $50,000 government subsidy on the purchase of the $150,000 car? I certainly hope your funds didn't get caught up in that Bernie or Lehmann business while you were away. I certainly wouldn't want you to have to get a job.

[joshcryer]

16. I don't see that they've cancelled them in that article.

I read it twice, and while I've been called ignorant, stupid, etc here before, I'm pretty sure the article does not in fact say what is being claimed.

They are not using South African-developed PBMR technology. They are working with the US to develop (presumably) newer and more advanced PBMR technology.

[jpak]

22. That's just plain stupid - global installations of PV were 4.8 GW in 2008 *alone*

Compare that to the power output of a stupid 80 MW PBMR

Talk about yer stupid order of magnitude Larouchian sickfuckery...

:rofl:

[Nederland]

23. LOL. Obviously you never bothered to read your own link.

Your linked says nothing about cancelling a pebble bed reactor. It talks about the need to build a "fleet" of nuclear reactors in order to combat global warming and satisfy future energy needs. What a joke. You obviously haven't even read the article.

[tabatha]

3. Welsh-sounding names?

The first seven names are African; Jones is English and van Noordwyk is Afrikaans.

[NNadir]

4. Jones is a Welsh name.

It may be possible to get killed in towns with 50 consonants and no vowels in their names by claiming otherwise.

Alternately, the etymology of the name is thought to derive from Judas meaning traitor - a traitor being someone who likes those notably ungaelic germanic french next door - or John.

http://www.data-wales.co.uk/jones.htm

[tabatha]

6. In South Africa,

it is probably of Welsh ancestry, but an English speaker in current SA.

But, I had a lab assistant named Smith who could hardly speak English (Afrikaans instead.)

[NNadir]

10. When I was growing up, I knew some Joneses that could barely speak English as well.

They all spoke Brooklyn which is considered by some to be an unintelligible dialect of English but is probably a separate distinct language, sort of like Scots.

Native speakers of Brooklyn are dying off, and since all of them were illiterate, linguists are always running around with tape recorders trying to preserve as many words as possible. One word that has been transliterated into written language is igottacutcha which means "You're in big trouble for coming around here with a tape recorder, even if you claim to be a linguist."

[phantom power]

9. A one gigawatt coal plant burns about 500 tons of coal each hour.

Fun fact.

[joshcryer]

13. We use coal, and incresingly, natural gas here in Colorado. Our coal plant requires 60 train cars...

...every single day full of coal to keep it operating. I think they take Sunday's off, but there's a mound of coal near the plant that is at least 20 stories high, can be easily seen off of I-25 as you drive through Colorado Springs.

America the Beautiful Park next to the coal plant has a faint oder at all times. At least the trees along Cripple Creek around the area are lusher than any I've ever seen. The plant kinda sits in a whole mini-forest of trees. No doubt to obscure it from the view of the city, parks, interstate, etc.

But that coal mound can be seen over them.