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The New Atomic Age We Need

nytimes.com

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Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#131

Post by beefman »

mronge wrote: post #77

How does this compare to what Elon Musk says about solar power? In this presentation he shows that a reasonable amount of area could power the entire US (if we used roof tops etc for solar panels). Is that not feasible? https://youtu.be/yKORsrlN-2k?t=187

It's not feasible, no. The "reasonable area" is on the order of all the concrete in the world. You have to duplicate civilization but with precision electronic devices instead of stone.[1] Musk is, unfortunately, not thinking outside his prejudices on the subject of energy systems. In all fairness, this is very common. Discourse on energy systems in our culture is closer to religion than engineering.

[1] http://lumma.org/energy/EnergyLCA.html

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#132

Post by chefkoch »

merpnderp wrote: post #98
pdonis wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 fr…

This times one hundred. Nuclear in the West is far more expensive than places like China and Vietnam not because western plants are better or safer but because they face incredible legal and regulatory hurdles designed to appease people's irrational fears.

Shure, China is atm mostly using a more than 30 year old design bought from france and everyone knows safety is not their primary concern.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China#Reactor...

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#133

Post by olau »

merpnderp wrote: post #98
pdonis wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 fr…

This times one hundred. Nuclear in the West is far more expensive than places like China and Vietnam not because western plants are better or safer but because they face incredible legal and regulatory hurdles designed to appease people's irrational fears.

I call bullshit on that. Nuclear safety is not to be taken lightly. The reason we haven't had more disasters than we've currently had is precisely because people working in the field take this stuff deeply seriously. And they need to.

What's killing nuclear isn't environmentalists, it's that this stuff is hard, really hard, and it's getting harder over time as more failure scenarios are known.

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#134

Post by pdkl95 »

guelo wrote: post #112
ommunist wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, transporting U3O8 is enough. Upd: http://namrc.co.uk/intelligence/uk-new-build-plans/ 4 sites are already acquired for development on British grounds.

Oh sorry I misunderstood that you're talking about fuel production. But this highlights what I think is the main problem with the large scale nuclear energy vision, it would replace oil with Uranium as the root of geopolitical resource control wars.

This is nonsense the amount of uranium required is incredibly small compared to oil or coal. We are talking on the order of 1:100,000 or in the case of a proper breeder reactor even less.

Worse, this concern is making the usual mistake of only considering uranium. Thorium is a waste product from rare earth mining and is very abundant in the USA (and elsewhere). If we build thorium based reactors, fuel is practically unlimited and free (compared to the costs of running a reactor).

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#135

Post by ScottBurson »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #125
ScottBurson wrote: post #124

I'm in the middle of reading a great book on geoengineering, Oliver Morton's The Planet Remade . Engagingly written and comprehensive; I recommend it highly. From the introduction: If the world had the capacity to deliver one of the largest nuclear power plants ever built once a week, week in and week out, it would take 20 years to replace the current stock of coal-fired plants (at present, the world builds about thr…

If the world had the capacity to deliver one of the largest nuclear power plants ever built once a week, week in and week out, it would take 20 years to replace the current stock of coal-fired plants (at present, the world builds about three or four nuclear power plants a year, and retires old ones almost as quickly). That's extremely hard to believe. Does he show the math?

No, but I see on Wikipedia: In 2007 there were over 50,000 active coal plants worldwide and this number is expected to grow. [0] One nuke plant a week for 20 years would be 1000 plants. So the numbers don't seem unreasonable at all.

That's not necessarily an argument that we shouldn't build more nuclear power capacity; only that we can't expect it to be the entire solution to global warming this century.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil-fuel_power_station#Envi...

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#136

Post by chefkoch »

nitrogen wrote: post #120
Sinaf wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Germany we used a salt mine to dispose of our nuclear waste, which backfired, to say the least. [1] How big the eventual costs (the article speaks of "at least €4 billion ($5.3 billion), but more likely somewhere between €5 billion and €10 billion") will be is uncertain, and I can't back this up by any real evidence, but my guess is that those who profited from the waste disposal might not be the ones paying…

I didn't see any evidence in that article that the waste was causing problems in the salt mine. Why is it considered safer to remove it?

It was deemed that it was going to cause problems in th elong term, that's why it was cdecided to remove the waste and store it somewhere else. You can't really plan ahead for the periods that long.

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#137

Post by olau »

thebmax wrote: post #108
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-…

These cost comparisons don't take into account reliability. Power is almost useless if it's not reliable. A large part of your monthly bill goes towards reliablility and transport of power, not just the power itself. A 100% wind or solar grid would require an equal amount of backup gas or coal power in order to provide reliability which essentially doubles these cost estimates. Even now most wind and solar is conside…

I don't think you framed it correctly. What matters is always matching the consumption curve.

Due to high capital costs, that's really expensive to do with nuclear plants (that's why people talk about baseload, i.e. constant output). So you'd have to solve the same problem in an all-nuclear world - maybe the magnitude would be different, but's essentially the same problem.

You could even say that the 'why don't we all use nuclear power plants' is a bit crazy. :)

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#138

Post by krasin »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #125
ScottBurson wrote: post #124

I'm in the middle of reading a great book on geoengineering, Oliver Morton's The Planet Remade . Engagingly written and comprehensive; I recommend it highly. From the introduction: If the world had the capacity to deliver one of the largest nuclear power plants ever built once a week, week in and week out, it would take 20 years to replace the current stock of coal-fired plants (at present, the world builds about thr…

If the world had the capacity to deliver one of the largest nuclear power plants ever built once a week, week in and week out, it would take 20 years to replace the current stock of coal-fired plants (at present, the world builds about three or four nuclear power plants a year, and retires old ones almost as quickly). That's extremely hard to believe. Does he show the math?

According to Wikipedia ([1]), the world energy consumption is on the order of 20 TW. A typical Russian nuclear reactor outputs 1 GW ([2]). It gives us 20000 reactors to cover the current human needs. It seems that the math is correct.

At the same time, it does not prove that it's impossible to go mostly nuclear. It just shows the need for mass production of smaller reactors, so that we can make&install them by thousands a month across the globe.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors#Russi...

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#139

Post by beefman »

jensen123 wrote: post #85

He does not mention bombs. I'm certainly no expert here, but I think I read in the book An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore a long time ago, that if you have the ability to build a nuclear power plant, then building a bomb is not very hard. I'm not terribly keen on living in a world where most of the countries in Africa, the Middle East etc. are able to build nuclear bombs.

It's actually easier to build production reactors (for weapons) than power reactors.

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#140

Post by Simorgh »

ScottBurson wrote: post #124

I'm in the middle of reading a great book on geoengineering, Oliver Morton's The Planet Remade . Engagingly written and comprehensive; I recommend it highly. From the introduction: If the world had the capacity to deliver one of the largest nuclear power plants ever built once a week, week in and week out, it would take 20 years to replace the current stock of coal-fired plants (at present, the world builds about thr…

The Economist just recently published an article on geoengineering. If you read between the lines it's actually very scary stuff.

Some academics, notably Chomsky, openly talk about the extinction of our species as a plausible outcome of global warming. I asked him about geoengineering. He just said, 'it seems hazardous.'

http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21678963-man-ma...

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