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The New Atomic Age We Need

nytimes.com

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Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#71

Post by mohawk »

pilom wrote: post #13
T-A wrote: post #8

> We already know that today’s energy sources cannot sustain a future we want to live in. Is this really true? In Lazard's 2014 comparison of total cost per MWh, both wind and solar beat coal and nuclear [1]. Costs have fallen so much that it's becoming hard to justify continued subsidies [2]. [1] http://energyinnovation.org/2015/02/07/levelized-cost-of-ene... [2] http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/us-energy-…

The problem is scale. Here is a really good analysis of renewable resources in the UK: http://www.withouthotair.com/ Conclusion: The UK doesn't receive enough sunlight or have enough wind/waves/tidal pools/land to grow food, power cars (of any kind) and meet other energy needs. The UK can never get all of their energy carbon free without nuclear or importing power. The US is in a better place because of solar in the…

That analysis uses solar panels with 10% efficiency in its calculations...

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#72

Post by electronvolt »

legulere wrote: post #30
Amorymeltzer wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, but don't discount the FUD. Much as people fear an airplane crash more than a car crash, the prospect of nuclear power is far more terrifying to most than just another coal plant. It's not enough that the coal plant is orders of magnitude more deadly, it's the perception. Even the image the NYT used will convey to many a disregard for life, pumping harmful radiation into our environment, rather than merel…

I think the big fear of nuclear power is because we don't know how to handle catastrophic risks. With coal power you will have a few dead mine workers. It's only mine workers that are affected and they have a definite risk in front of their eyes. You can rise the worker protection regulations for making this safer. You have the problem of air pollution through fine particles and sulfur. You can solve this with filter…

I think the fundamental thing is that it is not a rational fear--nuclear is associated with bombs that flatten cities and radiation is, to many people, a simply scary unknown that they can't touch, smell, or see, but which might kill them. (Many of the people I've met who were against nuclear power didn't really emotionally understand radiation as something you get some of every day anyways--it's a bogeyman that gives you either cancer or superpowers.)

Smoke/smog, in comparison, is something you can see and can expect to interact with daily if you're in a city. Despite the fact that it's much more dangerous, people don't perceive it as such.

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#73

Post by jacquesm »

[deleted] wrote: post #54
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #41

Where are we at with nuclear fusion? At this time, the only promising progress I know of is happening at Lockheed Martin's Skunkworks[1] where they are developing a truck-sized 100 MW [ corrected from Mhz ] power plant in an incremental, iterative fashion and claiming to have something operational by 2020. As regards solar and other "clean" alternatives, there exists vast potential for reducing daytime electric grid…

[deleted]

If it works at all that would be a breakthrough of truly epic proportions. So I'd be more than fine with that.

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#74

Post by pdonis »

jpdus wrote: post #65
T-A wrote: post #8

> We already know that today’s energy sources cannot sustain a future we want to live in. Is this really true? In Lazard's 2014 comparison of total cost per MWh, both wind and solar beat coal and nuclear [1]. Costs have fallen so much that it's becoming hard to justify continued subsidies [2]. [1] http://energyinnovation.org/2015/02/07/levelized-cost-of-ene... [2] http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/us-energy-…

This! In my opinion Thiel does not think far enough and doesn't talk about the real question: Is fission even (economically) competitive? In my opinion (and from what I've read on this subject), it is not and won't be in the foreseeable future. I will quote myself [1]: >People always forget about indirect costs when talking about cheap nuclear energy (risk factors aside). Nobody has ever built a profitable nuclear po…

> Is fission even (economically) competitive?

Remember that he's talking about a new generation of reactor designs. Also remember that a key driver of the high cost of nuclear energy is lawsuits based on irrational overestimates of the risk of nuclear energy compared to other energy sources. Coal has killed orders of magnitude more people than nuclear, yet nobody ever brings a NIMBY lawsuit to prevent a coal plant from being built.

> Wouldn't a profit oriented insurance company cover these risks, of these were really as low and controllable as people say here?

The technical risks are not the risks the insurance companies are worried about.

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#75

Post by pdonis »

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

The key problem in my mind is the failure of project management in building reactors. If they said it was going to take 2 years and 1 billion dollars and it stretched out to 3 years and $1.5 billion that is one thing. Back in the 1970s it was more like 2 years stretches to 9 years and $15 billion and you could blame union workers who never did nuclear work before, the no nukes, high interest rates, etc. The industry…

> Nobody is going to put up billions of dollars unless there is some predictability in terms of cost and schedule.

The lack of predictability comes from lawsuits, not technical problems in construction. Plants that were completed and ready to go online on schedule were stopped at the last minute by lawsuits, and in many cases were never started up.

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#76

Post by Symmetry »

legulere wrote: post #30
Amorymeltzer wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, but don't discount the FUD. Much as people fear an airplane crash more than a car crash, the prospect of nuclear power is far more terrifying to most than just another coal plant. It's not enough that the coal plant is orders of magnitude more deadly, it's the perception. Even the image the NYT used will convey to many a disregard for life, pumping harmful radiation into our environment, rather than merel…

I think the big fear of nuclear power is because we don't know how to handle catastrophic risks. With coal power you will have a few dead mine workers. It's only mine workers that are affected and they have a definite risk in front of their eyes. You can rise the worker protection regulations for making this safer. You have the problem of air pollution through fine particles and sulfur. You can solve this with filter…

You can filter the output of coal plants and that does help a lot. In the US coal only kills 15 people per terawatt-hour compared to 150 in China. But a coal plant generating as much power as Fukushima did will still tend to kill about 20 people even with safer US style plants. If you add up all the coal power in the US that's about 20,000 deaths per year. More or less the same order of magnitude as the damage from Chernobyl. But of course that's normal and doesn't make the news.

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#78

Post by johncolanduoni »

Retric wrote: post #60
pilom wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is scale. Here is a really good analysis of renewable resources in the UK: http://www.withouthotair.com/ Conclusion: The UK doesn't receive enough sunlight or have enough wind/waves/tidal pools/land to grow food, power cars (of any kind) and meet other energy needs. The UK can never get all of their energy carbon free without nuclear or importing power. The US is in a better place because of solar in the…

BS, solar is not great in the UK, but your comparing electric generation at 2009 efficiency levels with powering cars, heating using resistance heating etc. (Heat pumps break 100% nominal efficiency by extracting heat from outside air.) It's also perfectly reasonable for the UK to continue to import significant amounts of energy in one form or another and or increase efficiency levels. EX: We can manufacture 40+% eff…

> PS: Photovoltaic panels with 20% efficiency are already close to the theoretical limit (see this chapter’s endnotes Current, world record for concentrated solar is 46%.

They are likely referring to the theoretical limit for crystalline silicon based cells (~30% IIRC). This is due to silicon's particular band gap. The record is held by multi-junction cells, which don't suffer from this limitation (which is part of their problem, as they use materials far more expensive than silicon).

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#79

Post by NumberCruncher »

ommunist wrote: post #23

Currently only France, US, and Russia can build reactors for energy, but these are using U or Pu in different flavours. This fuel is hard to get. China can't afford that kind of fuel in quanities it will need. This is why China backs breakthrough research in Th fission, delivered by Norway. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the future.

We have 4x more Thorium on Earth than Uran, 1 gram Thorium gives 3x more energy than Uran and has a shorter halft-time, this means it produces less radioctive waste. The problem is, that a Th-plant can not be used to produce nuclear weapons. That shows that we have a political crisis and not an energy crisis. If Japan wouldn't be afraid to build his nuclear plants on the west-coast (protected from tsunamis but easy to get hit by a chinese rocket), Fokushima still would be a nice place to live.

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#80

Post by pdonis »

legulere wrote: post #30
Amorymeltzer wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, but don't discount the FUD. Much as people fear an airplane crash more than a car crash, the prospect of nuclear power is far more terrifying to most than just another coal plant. It's not enough that the coal plant is orders of magnitude more deadly, it's the perception. Even the image the NYT used will convey to many a disregard for life, pumping harmful radiation into our environment, rather than merel…

I think the big fear of nuclear power is because we don't know how to handle catastrophic risks. With coal power you will have a few dead mine workers. It's only mine workers that are affected and they have a definite risk in front of their eyes. You can rise the worker protection regulations for making this safer. You have the problem of air pollution through fine particles and sulfur. You can solve this with filter…

> With coal power you will have a few dead mine workers.

Actually, most of the risk of coal power is soot in the air, causing respiratory problems. This has killed far more people than coal mining. But most people don't know that, as your comment illustrates. So part of the problem is that the risks of other power sources are not accurately represented.

(Also, btw, there is radioactivity in coal ash--more than in some types of nuclear waste.)

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