41–50 of 393 posts
1 cm3 of water weighs a lot more than 1 gram ?? From a quick skim through, many of his calcs seem to be based on this i.e. major error.
1000 kg/m^3 * (1000 g / kg) * (1m / 100cm)^3 = 1 g/cm^3.
1 cc of water weighs one gram.
I am not reflexively anti-nuclear. However, I have never heard a satisfactory answer to the simple question: "How do we store nuclear waste safely?"
By not hiding it away, but using warehouses that are actively staffed just like the plant that made the waste. Of course these facilities should be secure installations. But the root of the problem is not wanted to actively take ownership responsibility for the waste. I imagine every major city having its secure storage installation. Consider the scale of waste generated as well. All the waste used to power a life of…
I absolutely agree that nuclear is our best option as long as the reactor and the waste is located in your backyard.
They aren't nearly as dangerous as the popular opinion would have you believe. There has been only a single incident that I'm aware of (Chernobyl), all others were near incidents (Three Mile Island, Japan, etc...). In fact, the technology and safety has come a long way since the 60's. Most US Navy ships are nuclear powered, and have not had incidents (and these are designed to go to war and survive). Japan was hit by…
Great! I'm glad that you are volunteering your backyard as the storage facility :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone brushes over that, the billions of dollars to build a plant, and the ~10 year construction time. Any nuclear power plant that has construction started today won't be cost competitive with renewables when it comes online. It would be like building a new coal plant in the US today. You simply can't compete with wind, solar, and natural gas (which is still superior to coal, and I don't mind it being a stranded…
How do wind and solar provide a solid baseline power. And China builds nuclear plants a lot faster and cheaper than we do, and no known accidents. Maybe we can learn something from them. Plus the whole 90% of a nuclear plant's cost is servicing the debt. Once completed the operational costs are a rounding error.
Properly built and managed distribution networks, along with utility scale battery storage.
> And China builds nuclear plants a lot faster and cheaper than we do, and no known accidents.
Yet. China still gets more power from wind than nuclear, and they're building out wind generation capacity far faster than nuclear: http://www.earth-policy.org/data_highlights/2015/highlights5...
> Maybe we can learn something from them.
Indeed. When you're an authoritarian regime, you can operate more fluidly "at scale" (fuck you, I do what I want).
> Plus the whole 90% of a nuclear plant's cost is servicing the debt.
And yet, someone has to pony up those billions of dollars. A kickstarter perhaps?
> Once completed the operational costs are a rounding error.
And when you fail hard, it costs billions of dollars to cleanup: http://www.psr.org/environment-and-health/environmental-heal...
I'll take solar and wind, thanks.
1 cm3 of water weighs a lot more than 1 gram ?? From a quick skim through, many of his calcs seem to be based on this i.e. major error.
Uh, maybe if you're talking about heavy water. The density of liquid H2O at standard temperature and pressure is almost exactly 1g/cm^3.
The molar mass of heavy water is 20.0276 versus 18.01528 for regular water.
The biggest problem with nuclear is making the numbers work. You end up paying something like 80% of the cost 1 GW/year * 50 years before you get your first cent in revenue. That's a very tough thing to finance. Cost and especially time overruns during construction can easily tank the project financially. About the only way to make it work is to be a regulated utility that has a long term captured audience for its po…
1 cm3 of water weighs a lot more than 1 gram ?? From a quick skim through, many of his calcs seem to be based on this i.e. major error.
The weight of one cubic centimeter of water is in fact one gram. By definition.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They aren't nearly as dangerous as the popular opinion would have you believe. There has been only a single incident that I'm aware of (Chernobyl), all others were near incidents (Three Mile Island, Japan, etc...). In fact, the technology and safety has come a long way since the 60's. Most US Navy ships are nuclear powered, and have not had incidents (and these are designed to go to war and survive). Japan was hit by…
> all others were near incidents (Three Mile Island, Japan, etc...). I would hardly call Fukushima [0] a "near incident." It's considered on the same scale as Chernobyl [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Sc...
I called it a "near incident" because there was no meltdown, and the issue was resolved without having to permanently evacuate any area around the plant.
Essentially they got it under control, and given the circumstances it took to get the plant into that situation in the first place, I'd say it's a flagship example of how far Nuclear safety has come.
Today Japan is activating even more Nuclear power plants.