http://www.kevan-shaw.com/blog/ en kevan@ksld.com Copyright 2012 2012-01-05T16:12:22+00:00 http://www.kevan-shaw.com/blog/comments/a_bright_new_year http://www.kevan-shaw.com/blog/comments/a_bright_new_year#When:16:12:22Z 2012 looks to be a year where we will see some significant changes in the lighting regulatory landscape. We will see the new requirements for the UK Building Regulations to be issued in 2013. It is no very likely that these will be based on the LENI. At last we will have a measure for lighting energy use that does consider aspects such as daylight availability and the hours that lighting is actually used. We will also finally see the European Ecodesign regulations for reflector lamps. This has been debated and “consulted” on extensively in the past 3 years however the EU has failed to come up with a realistic regulation. Last year saw further technical meetings and a draft that should be reasonably close to what we will end up with. We should be happy that the low voltage incandescent lamps is still going to be with us for the foreseeable future. There just is not a viable replacement for the MR16 and what is available for the AR111 is rather restricted and does not meet the beam characteristics and light output particularly for the very narrow angles and higher outputs where these lamps excel. 2012 will also see the beginning of consultation on the first revision of the Ecodesign regulations for domestic lamps part 1, aka the Incandescent Lamp Ban. It is vital that the Lighting Design Community engage with this process and do not get left out like we did at the beginning of the first round of this legislation. From what we have seen and learned it is now vital that we secure the future of the Halogen energy saver lamp. At present we are beginning to see the problems I and others have forecast with the disposal of CFLs. We are also seeing increasing numbers of people with non specific photosensitive disorders coming forward. These people can not live with CFLs or LEDs and so far there is insufficient research to understand what this apparently broad range of disorders are caused by though all seem to be able to live with incandescent light. Well as we say in Scotland “Hae a Guid New Year!” Kevan Shaw 2012-01-05T16:12:22+00:00 http://www.kevan-shaw.com/blog/comments/durban_debacle http://www.kevan-shaw.com/blog/comments/durban_debacle#When:12:31:42Z Despite announcing an agreement Durban has failed to achieve its aims. As with previous summit conferences on climate change Durban has once again highlighted the frustration of countries with emerging economies trying to seek a reasonable agreement with the long established major consuming economies. I believe that the emerging economies do have a strong case. The principal that “the producer pays” is almost always the route used to deal with environmental issues, however in the case of overall global economic and environmental issues this seems to be a rather unfair and unreasonable way of looking at things. In Europe and the USA it is now quite difficult to find products be it consumer durables, electronics, or day to day necessities that are not made in China or elsewhere in the far East. In the commercial sector this also now goes for business equipment whether it is a laser printer or a machine tool not to mention a light fitting or lamp! Even if such things are branded “Made in the EU” it is inevitable that they contain, probably the majority of components and sub assemblies that come from China, India, Malaysia etc. What is more the raw materials that are used to make these come from other poorer nations for example copper from Sub Saharan Africa.This is largely the result of developed countries effectively exporting dirty , labour intensive and energy consuming production activities to these emerging economies. Is it really appropriate that the developed economies should now demand that costs and technological burdens be placed on the emerging economies just at the point where they are becoming able to develop their internal markets and improve the life styles of their own populations? It seems that we now need to revise the approach to producer responsibility certainly at the level of Nations. Is this a practical idea? I believe so. It comes back to an issue that I have be looking at for some time, that of “Embodied Energy.” This is the energy required to win materials, form and manufacture products and then store, distribute and .transport them to their final place of use. There is an absolute reluctance of industry and commerce to properly asses this and identify its value. We really should be looking even further than the embodied energy and also factor in other environmental impacts, for example what ecological damage was done to win the raw materials, what proportion of the product can be recovered for re-use through recycling and what impact the remaining fraction will have through its disposal by land fill or incineration. As we are a long way from being able to quantify all these impacts and do not even have a single measure that encompasses all these we need to start with energy alone. Where we are looking at international trade and global energy use would it not be much more fair and reasonable for the countries that benefit from energy used to manufacture things to take the hit on emissions? This would obviously impact the established economies more than the emerging economies however it would be fair in distributing the pain according to benefit in a much clearer way than crudely looking at the energy use and generation in producing countries? The real challenge is one of consumption. Finding a way to make the ultimate consumers pay is much more fair and reasonable. Properly worked out this idea will also fairly address the developing consumer societies in developing countries as the burden will fall back on those countries in proportion to the amount of product and embodied energy that will be consumed by the population of those countries. Kevan Shaw 12-12-11 2011-12-12T12:31:42+00:00 http://www.kevan-shaw.com/blog/comments/international_energy_agency_wages_war_on_environment http://www.kevan-shaw.com/blog/comments/international_energy_agency_wages_war_on_environment#When:19:01:39Z Having saddled us with incandescent lamp ban, the IEA now promotes Nuclear power! In this year’s issue of the IEA’s flagship annual publication “The World Energy Outlook” The recommendations in the central New policies section make disturbing reading. The main drift outlines that the world is still totally dependent on fossil fuels in the immediate future up to 2035. It still proposes that global warming should not be allowed to exceed 2°C and that the way to achieve this is by reducing CO2 emissions from the human use of power. The report identifies that, despite the policies in place to reduce energy use including the incandescent lamp ban, they are not going to achieve the necessary savings of energy. As usual they make recommendations that we have seen before find their way into legislation across the 28 industrialised countries who take advice from IEA.  In the New Policies Scenario, nuclear output rises by over 70% by 2035. In a telephone interview with the Huffington Post, Fatih Birol, the chief economist of the IEA was quoted: “Our analysis showed that a lower nuclear future would be bad news for energy security,” Birol continued “Renewables cannot make it alone,it is not enough.” In the IEA’s press release Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven. is quoted: “Growth, prosperity and rising population will inevitably push up energy needs over the coming decades. But we cannot continue to rely on insecure and environmentally unsustainable uses of energy,” said “Governments need to introduce stronger measures to drive investment in efficient and low-carbon technologies. The Fukushima nuclear accident, the turmoil in parts of the Middle East and North Africa and a sharp rebound in energy demand in 2010 which pushed CO2 emissions to a record high, highlight the urgency and the scale of the challenge.” It seems the IEA is set to continue making pronouncements and recommendations that directly challenge the public mood. One has to wonder if this is sheer disconnection with the zeitgeist or a deliberate process to provide “evidence” that allows politicians to promote policies that are just not wanted by their electorate but do satisfy big industry and the multinationals. Kevan Shaw 13 Nov. 2011 2011-11-13T19:01:39+00:00 http://www.kevan-shaw.com/blog/comments/a_measure_for_lighting_quality http://www.kevan-shaw.com/blog/comments/a_measure_for_lighting_quality#When:23:33:49Z Two papers presented at PLDC today bring us close to the “Holy Grail “ of a measurable value for lighting quality. As Lighting designers we are all aware that the standards and measurement of light that we have all been working with have little or no relationship with how we see space and how we feel about its visual appearance. We know that measuring the the light output of fittings and that largely in a horizontal plane notionally connected with tasks relevant to the space does not in any way describe the visual appearance of that space. We are aware of this and we see many attempts to devise ways of working with this measuring system to try and avoid the worst visual results that it tends to create. Kit Cuttle’s paper “Percieved Adequacy of Illumination. a new basis for lighting practice” abundantly demonstrated that the existing lighting standards based on the measurement of illuminance have strayed a long way from ensuring the delivery of adequate and appropriate task based lighting through a wholly erroneous attempt to produce the appearance of well lit space. As the plane of measurement is almost universally horizontal at a relatively low level in the space and our normal visual field encompasses more of the vertical and ceiling planes, the amount light measured in the horizontal required to ensure any degree of luminance on the vertical and ceiling becomes quite unreasonable! In fact the combined results of this approach and the ever increasing search for “efficient” lighting with reduced energy use are delivering lighting solutions that reduce the possibility of creating what are perceived as well lit spaces. If we accept in very general terms that a space perceived to be well lit meets at least some of the requirements for lighting quality we are now on our way to establishing something we can model and measure. Kit has defined an approach to this problem in the form of the concept of Mean Room Surface Excitance (MRSE). Instead of measuring or calculating the light that comes directly from the fittings, this approach quantifies all the light that is reflected from all the surfaces in the room, the actual light that we see. In terms of design this will have a significant impact on the working practices of not only the Lighting Designer, but also the Architect and Interior Designer as, quite obviously, the reflectance values of all the surfaces in the space need to be decided in order to determine MRSE. While this may sound onerous and challenging, attempts to achieve good quality workplace lighting using the current approach has already resulted in surface reflectances being included in the 2011 revision of the European Workplace Lighting Standards, for now this might have escaped the attention of architects and interior designers however it won’t be long before the lighting designer is forced to bring this to their attention in order to meet increasingly limiting power densities required in LEED, BREEAM and building regulations. How we will approach calculating and measuring MRSE and any other luminance based quantification of lighting formed the content of Dr Craig Bernecker’s paper “ A Practical Method for Commissioning Lighting using High Dynamic Range Photography.” HDR is a technique that has sprung from image making photography and Computer Graphic Imagery. The initial desire was to create images that relate more closely to what we see with the eye than the restricted ranges of luminance that can be captured by cameras. Digital photography and computer image processing allow the capture of a number of images at different exposures and processing them to create a single image containing a true record of all the luminances within the image. To create a picture another set of processing is required to re-compress all this information into a range that can be output on a screen or printer. For our purposes the intermediate data is immensely useful. In software it is possible to identify a numeric value for each and every pixel in the image that proportionately represents the luminance in that area of the camera’s field of view. Dr. Bernecker’s paper describes how it is possible to calibrate these values to luminance values using easily available tools such as a photographic grey card and an illuminance meter. He also pointed us towards “Photoshere” by Anywhere Software  This program provides a function to create HDR images and calibrate the camera from a single measured point, typically the grey card that should be located in the image and a luminance or illuminance measurement taken at at hat point to provide the calibration value. Currently this software is available for MAC OS however it is being ported to Windows and eventually Linux. Elsewhere at PLDC other speakers have talked around the subject of designing to Luminance values and considering the values of darkness in visual compositions. notably Edward Bartholomew’s paper “Applied Darkness - A model for Luminance based design”.  Unfortunately I had to leave on Friday afternoon however the message of this convention is clear, Luminance design must replace Illuminance design and we do now have the tools to do this. The next challenge is to change the basis of standards and legislation to a Luminance based mode. Kit invited us all to join the conversation on luminance design issues on his blog here see you there (and here if you want to comment!) Kevan Shaw 21 October, 2011 2011-10-21T23:33:49+00:00 http://www.kevan-shaw.com/blog/comments/manifesto_or_propoganda http://www.kevan-shaw.com/blog/comments/manifesto_or_propoganda#When:17:00:05Z Cree’s “manifesto “ for LED lighting highlights what has gone wrong with LED marketing. From the outset the document suggests that all other lighting technologies are effectively obsolete in comparison with the LED “miracle” light source, or at least should be! While it goes on to suggest the reasonable aims that we already strive for: * Reduce the damaging effects of energy inefficiency on our economies and environments * Realize energy-efficient lighting products in every country, city and home It then suggests that: * Revitalize the lighting industry and release it from its century-old habits Except that overselling and over claiming has been rife in the lighting industry since Thomas Edison. His marketing genius included the “invention” of the AC electric chair beloved of the USA penal system to scare people into using his “safer” low voltage DC power distribution and lighting system. While Cree may fairly claim to be innovators I believe their claim to be “the doers, the influencers, the teachers” and “the rebels, the nonconformists, the free spirits.” rings hollow. As for signing the manifesto this is hardly an act of non-conformity! Again the “Universal Declaration of LED lighting” borrows heavily from what we all recognise as good practice: * All human beings are born into light. Created light is a fundamental and integral part of our productivity, security and artistic expression as human beings. * Creating light consumes energy. The least expensive, most secure and cleanest energy is the energy that is not used. * Proper quantity and quality of light are essential to human perception, performance, and enrichment of life. These should not be sacrificed in the name of energy savings. however goes on into some suspect territory: * Poisoning our ground water, lakes, oceans and fellow humans with toxic mercury is not an acceptable price for energy-efficient lighting. I do not have any disagreement with this however I do not see how LEDs will significantly better this in the short term. In fact a wholesale and overly rapid change to LED will cause worse pollution. For a start what happens to all the lighting equipment and lamps that are replaced, often before they reach end of life? Admittedly they should be re-cycled however more will end up in landfill and much of the material gathered from “recycling” will end up being disposed of rather than re-used due to contamination with mercury from lamps and the widespread use of brominated fire retardants in plastics used in light fittings. Manufacturing LEDs involves winning some specialist new materials for phosphors and for the LED deposition process. Most of this is done in China, where CREE are now manufacturing and where environmental concern and control is a lot less rigorous than elsewhere in the world. *Innovation and creativity can make efficient LED lighting affordable and available to all. Above innovation and creativity questions have to be asked about commercial approach. LEDs are accepted as a “more expensive” light source. There are many “proofs” offered in marketing blurb that they really are cheaper if all the long term issues of maintenance and power used are factored into a lifetime calculation. The truth is that prime cost is still the determining factor in the decision to use LEDs or not. While we have been paying these high prices it is notable that companies such as Cree have grown exponentially and made sufficient money to purchase significant players elsewhere in the value chain, such as Ruud lighting. Philips have also been doing the same however it is not so easy to show a link between LED production and cash growth with such a large and broad based company. Patent issues also have a strong influence on the LED market.  Manipulation of patents and legal challenges have affected the share value of many companies. Some of these patents are substantiated through the weak patent process in the USA. The royalties that some companies set for use of these patents are so high that smaller and new companies cannot meet these demands so are blocked fro entering the market. If we need a manifesto for LEDs in the current market then is should be : * Honest and realistic information on products available today * Realistic efforts to reduce costs of LEDs and reduce the number of profit hungry companies in the supply chain between LED manufacturers and Light Fitting manufacturers * Cooperation rather than profiteering and share price pumping from Intellectual Property * Create meaningful industry standards and all companies adhere to them There are some, few companies who do adhere to these principles. Their honest information looks inferior to the bloated clams of others. It is also sad to note that the much vaunted Zhaga consortium ostensibly founded to create standards and comparability seems to have descended into an industry exclusive talking shop that has failed to deliver anything and is pretty much silent even on what has been discussed. As practitioners we need to support the good guys and challenge the rest of the industry to come clean and drop the crazy marketing stories. Kevan Shaw 4 October 2011 2011-10-03T17:00:05+00:00 http://www.kevan-shaw.com/blog/comments/lost_in_space http://www.kevan-shaw.com/blog/comments/lost_in_space#When:14:29:14Z Have we lost the impetus for technological advancement? Yesterday was the 42nd anniversary of the first moon landing and today saw the final return of the last Space Shuttle. This has set the blogosphere and twitterverse alive with comments. These range from the “Oh how sad that we are not putting men in space,” not strictly true given the Russians seem to be able to continue with the Soyuz Programme with what remains an essentially 1960s spacecraft design. There is another, quite vitriolic strand about how puitting men in space is and always has been a monumental waste of money better spent on ‘humanitarian’ programmes. The space Programme was undoubtably based on national hubris and development of defense technology. There is an absolutely direct line of descent between the first ballistic missile , the WW2 German v2 and the appollo Programme with the main player throughout being Werner Von Braun.  Many elements of the Shuttles’s rocket motors continued the same technological DNA. What the naysayers are missing is the absolutely massive spin off technological development without which we would be living in a very different world. To start with however you are reading this be it smart phone, personal computer or even ink jet or laser copy exist due to space related technology development. The whole field of microelectronics owes its development to the requirements for compressing what were then wardrobe sized computers into a box the size of today’s typical games console. It is not just space and rocketry that has led these developments but the human needs of astronauts that have driven so much of the useful spin off which affects our everyday lives. Technologies born of the astronaut programme really are pervasive and are so important for dealing with many of the issues currently causing concern. First let’s look at the renewable generation area. Photovoltaic panels exist and are as developed as they are due to the necessity of producing electrical energy in outer space. Those massive sails on wind turbines are built from composite materials that were hugely advanced by the need to produce stronger and lighter structures for space craft capable of providing a human liveable environment in space. We are all aware of mundane space spin off such as Velcro that remains a fashionable and very useful fastener and PTFE, the non-stick on pans however the more esoteric sounding cross linked olefin pipe originally developed for plumbing in human occupied spacecraft is now the standard material for water supply pipes in the street and for new water supply schemes in less developed parts of the world. The decline of manned space exploration has already resulted in a huge reduction in the rate technological innovation seen during the 1960s and 1970s. The impetus provided by the challenge set by President Kennedy to land a man on the moon within a decade is long lost. We need a new challenge with comparable political will and public excitement to re-invigorate industrial innovation. The current negativity brought about through global financial crisis and scare stories of global warming do not provide the impetus given by a strong forward and outward looking target that the race to the moon provided and without which we seem to be sinking into a technological torpor. Kevan Shaw 21 July 2011 2011-07-22T14:29:14+00:00 http://www.kevan-shaw.com/blog/comments/nuclear_campaining_by_jellyfish http://www.kevan-shaw.com/blog/comments/nuclear_campaining_by_jellyfish#When:17:11:17Z In recent weeks jellyfish have been successful in closing two nuclear reactor sites, in Scotland and Japan, also affecting a coal fired generating plant in Israel. Starting on the 24th June swarms of jellyfish stopped Chuba Electric’s Hamaoka nuclear plant in Shimane, Japan. a week or so later on July 5 the Torness Nuclear plant in South East Scotland was closed by another massive swarm of jellyfish and within a week another swarm crippled the Hadera power station in Israel. As the news services seem confused as to whether the Hadera plant is Nuclear or not one cannot expect an invertebrate not generally credited with having a brain for making a mistake on this one. While the scientists are trying hard to mark this down to coincidence brought about by increases in jellyfish populations, it does leave room for other interpretations. Jellyfish extracted from inlets at Hadera, Israel Apparently increasing sea temperatures combined with overfishing of species that generally predate jellyfish are resulting in population explosions of the species. Quickly looking through stories on jellyfish there are not many instances of previous plant closures. Admittedly jellyfish have previously caused problems at some Red Sea desalination plants and we are in peak jellyfish season however it is nice to fantasize about a hive mind of intelligent activist jellyfish or even consider this of active evidence of James Lovelock’s Gaia principle where the earth will protect itself from destruction by human greed and stupidity. In fact that looks even more likely when you factor in the Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan and the two recent further earthquakes in the area in the past weeks, this morning’s one triggering a tsunami warning and evacuation of workers at Fukishima. I will leave it up to you to decide or even comment suggestions of your own as to what is going on or which species will rise up next against the humans! Thanks to Reuters for the images. Kevan Shaw July 10, 2011 2011-07-10T17:11:17+00:00 http://www.kevan-shaw.com/blog/comments/bim_lighting_desgin http://www.kevan-shaw.com/blog/comments/bim_lighting_desgin#When:14:55:36Z I recently went to a BIM seminar organised by TMS - an Autodesk systems dealer in Scotland - that was a broad overview of all the Autodesk BIM software packages.Despite the event being an obvious plug-in for the various programs that Autodesk now provide, it did highlight the fact that the construction industry is now moving towards BIM design - something that will affect how all construction professionals will work and operate in the future. Similar design systems have been used for many years in the automotive and aerospace industries, where computer -aided design has virtually eliminated the need for expensive and time costly prototypes. Designers working in 3D can check their designs for conflicts between components and modelling programs can now analyse and test virtual designs to give an accurate indication of real-world performance. So how will BIM design affect the practice of lighting design in the future? The lighting design industry’s biggest draw-back is that the information we produce needs to be incorporated either into the Electrical Engineer’s and Architect’s packages, as lighting designers generally don’t issue stamped construction drawings. This sometimes limits our involvement with projects. With BIM, lighting designers will be “designing” directly on worked-up 3D models and inputting the lighting information into that - with no need for information to be duplicated and co-ordinated into Electrical and/or Architectural drawing packages. There are clear advantages to working on 3D models, both for lighting designers to understand the volume of the space they are lighting and for other disciplines to understand the information we produce. Additionally, the potential is there for the lighting design inherent in the model to be used with rendering programs to produce realistic visuals used for Client/Public presentations - hopefully meaning that as lighting designers we’ll be incorporated earlier into the design stages of a project. Rather than working with 2D symbols, BIM design will allow lighting designers to work with 3D representations of light fittings. The ability to potentially imbed information into these ‘3D blocks’ is significant. Ideally, information such as Manufacturer, model number, accessories, lamp type, control gear etc. will be included. This information can allow users to generate circuit/load schedules, luminaire quantities, watts/circuit information and other tabulated data that currently needs to be outputted manually with the use of spreadsheets. The 3D blocks can also be dimensionally accurate (model specific) and highlight any physical conflicts that may arise (ie. ceiling depth, diameter, width). All this information will be controlled and inputted by the lighting designer, which then can be used by the Architect and Electrical Engineer without the need for duplication and co-ordination. The potential for lighting designers is, I think, quite positive. Regardless we need to be prepared for an eventual change to BIM design - something that has already been adopted by large architectural and construction practices and is commonly used in other European countries. The first challenge to lighting design practices will be the capital outlay for appropriate software packages and which one to adopt - the big three are currently Microstation, ArchiCad and Revitt. Software providers need to ensure that each of these packages are interchangeable with the others, and when questioned at the seminar, the vague answer was that a common interchange file-type is used for this purpose. However, a search of the various online forums show that interchangeability is not that straight forward. For me, this remains one area of uncertainty towards adopting BIM design. It will be useless if practices cannot easily communicate and share information between each other because of compatibility issues. There is also a major role to be played by the lighting manufacturing sector that hasn’t been addressed yet. Will they provide downloadable BIM ‘3D blocks’ that can be loaded into a model? Will they be dimensionally accurate and come with standard lamp and accessory combinations (something similar to what is already provided for RELUX and DIALux models in the form of IES and LDT files)? Will they have photometric data attached to them? For now, I do not see any manufacturers moving in this direction and, at least for now, each lighting design consultancy will have build its own 3D blocks and imbed their own information - or use the standard ‘3D blocks’ that come as part of the software. This method of working is something not too dissimilar to the current practice of using symbols and tags in 2D drawings. Additionally how will RELUX and DIALux adapt to this new BIM software? Will they allow lighting designers to import BIM models directly into their programs and run lighting calculations on the areas that they want? Will they recognise the room surface finishes that will be integral to the BIM model? Or will we see a move away from RELUX and DIALux to something like 3D Studio Viz or 3D Studio Max, which already have the ability to import BIM models but have been, until now, used mostly as a rendering tools? The aim of BIM is integrated design with other disciplines and minimising duplication of work. The potential is there but it needs to be mass adopted by the industry and supported by software providers and lighting manufacturers. If anything, I welcome the wide-scale use of BIM software and am confident that it’s use will make it easier for lighting designers to be part of the building process. Martin Granese July 7th 2011 2011-07-07T14:55:36+00:00 http://www.kevan-shaw.com/blog/comments/lamps_that_will_make_you_glow_in_the_dark http://www.kevan-shaw.com/blog/comments/lamps_that_will_make_you_glow_in_the_dark#When:13:03:35Z There are radioactive materials used in a number of common commercial lamp types, in microscopic quantities. With the ever increasing burden of “Health and Safety” and requirements for labeling products with even the slightest content that may be considered harmful Philips and the ELC ( European lamp Companies Federation) are trying to promote rationalisation and harmonisation of rules that are due to be put in place in the next year. It was quite a surprise to open a letter on this subject from Philips today particularly as I have been blogging about the Nuclear industry recently. This is a case of regulation risking the creation of a big panic and further diversion from things that should be the focus of attention in lighting sustainability. The radioactive materials concerned are Thorium - 232, which is naturally occurring, Krypton - 85 and less commonly Tritium and Promethium -147. They are used in high pressure short arc lamps including metal halide, mercury and Xenon lamps. They are also found in fluorescent lamp starters both stand alone and those integrated in 2 pin compact fluorescent lamps. Starters should be getting phased out along with magnetic gear in Europe to meet existing Energy Related Products legislation, however switch start is still a necessary technology in countries with extremely high or low temperatures. The same or similar materials exist in much greater quantities in other everyday objects, Tritium particularly is used for luminous watch and clock dials. Notoriously it was used in the 1960’s Trimphone to make the dial visible in the dark. When these were withdrawn by British Telecom disposing of the many thousands of dials became a major headache for BT and they spent many years in a container in a car park! ELC have provided the following nice infographic indicating the extent of the problem. The materials are used specifically to promote ionisation of gasses in lamps at start up to promote longer operating life of electrodes and faster start and heat up times so are key to the use of metal halide and xenon lamps for car headlamps. The quantities are so low that even large numbers of lamps do not contain enough to require any special handling however we will start to see “radioactive” labels appearing on or in boxes of lamps and from a designer’s point of view fittings will no longer be able to be shipped with lamps already fitted, an aggravating inconvenience at most. As a side issue the Dangerous Goods Regulations also consider the Mercury in lamps. This is a bigger issue as quantities in a big box of lamps will exceed the limiting value for air transport of 1 gram per package. Again mercury is essential for the operation of most discharge lamps and is a much bigger concern for disposal and recycling. Overall the radiation issue is not a practical concern however is yet another example of how over regulation is elevating inconsequential issues to a level of major irritation. Kevan Shaw July 1, 2011 2011-07-01T13:03:35+00:00 http://www.kevan-shaw.com/blog/comments/what_is_the_sell_by_date_of_a_nuclear_plant http://www.kevan-shaw.com/blog/comments/what_is_the_sell_by_date_of_a_nuclear_plant#When:13:54:40Z In the USA the Government are extending operating licenses for Nuclear plants by 20 years or more. Given what happened at Fukishima to an “aging USA built reactor” the findings of Associated Press’ recent investigation into the background of extending operating licenses bears some consideration. The background is that during the great rush to nuclear power back in the 1960s and 1970s licenses were granted on a 40 year operation. The origins of this number seem to relate to several factors. Firstly it was the expected construction payback period, secondly it was seen by other generators as fair and reasonable in terms of competition, and crucially it was described as the design life of the systems being installed. What is now happening is that the operators are seeking extensions to their operating licenses and, so far, most of these have been granted with little concern. From the operators point of view this is good business, after 40 years, capital payback has been achieved so the profit margin over operating costs has just gone way up. The argument put forward for exceeding what was originally stated as the design life is that good maintenance can resolve the typical failures that occur through aging. This can obviously answer minor issues such as wiring, instrumentation, small mechanical items such as pumps and even control systems however major items in and around the reactor that are highly irradiated are not so fixable, exactly what TEPCo are finding at Fukishima where leaks are appearing in the reactor vessel and associated pipework. AP looked at the analogy of conventional coal fired generation. These plants share very similar steam circuits, turbines and generators, and are generally replaced after 50 years so it is questionable whether there is any realistic case to extend a Nuclear plant’s life beyond 60 years in total and even extending to 60 years is questionable. In a separate but related issue also investigated by AP the populations surrounding USA nuclear facilities have exploded, (sorry, inappropriate choice of phrase:) have expanded dramatically in the 30 to 40 years since the plants were built. In some cases there are three or four time as as many people now in the 10 mile evacuation zones. Despite this no particular efforts are being made to update or re-evaluate the evacuation plans drawn up when the plants were opened. It is also worrying to consider that when the Fukishima incident started US government advice was for US citizens to leave the area within a 50 mile radius of the stricken plant! As recently as last week The Nuclear plant at Fort Calhoun in Nebraska was inundated when a berm protecting it from flood water burst. Luckily the plant was off line for routine re-fueling however the similarity between what happened there and at Fukishima is scary. It is clear that the risk assessments undertaken when nuclear plants were built are substantially out of date. Considering the increased number of extreme weather events, geological events and massive population growth, risks of the existing nuclear operations now need to be reassessed. As I have previously mentioned Nuclear is, or should I say was, one of the options for carbon free electricity. It won’t take more than one significant accident for the existing capacity to be rapidly shut down leaving a very significant generating shortfall. Coincidentally a new pipeline has just been signed off by the Obamah Administration to move bitumen from the Canadian tar sands to the USA for processing into oil. The argument is that this eases reliance on non-domestic, i.e Middle Eastern, oil. In addition more coal mining licenses are being granted in previously un-mined areas. This isn’t really showing evidence of a move away from fossil fuel to renewables or other non carbon based energy. Kevan Shaw June 29, 2011 2011-06-29T13:54:40+00:00