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Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

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Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#361

Post by catwell »

oconnor663 wrote: post #165
amluto wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fukushima was a boiling water reactor, which is not a good design. A good design would be passively safe, which more or less means that you can turn off the plant and walk away without a disaster occurring.

Were the safer designs available in 1971?

Yes. Pressurized water reactors are very old, they were developed around the same time as boiling water reactors, in the 50s.

Their superior safety has been known for a long time as well, which is why all 58 French reactors active today are PWRs (and most of those in the US are as well).

That being said, it is still probably a bad idea to put a power plant in a place which is known to be exposed to tsunami...

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#362

Post by digi_owl »

lispm wrote: post #124
payne92 wrote: post #13

I believe the politicization of nuclear energy (the resulting lack of investment & innovation) will go down as one of the major blunders in human history. We'd be in a far, far better situation with greenhouse gasses if we (as a human race) had continued to invest in nuclear energy. There would have been mishaps along the way, but at a much smaller scale than we're experiencing now with deaths from air pollution and…

Nuclear energy was politicized from day minus one. It was developed out of government driven military technology. In day zero nuclear energy was set up by politicians: goals, strategies, financing, deployment, risk handling, etc. Everything was coming from energy politics. Investments were directed and the market&regulations for nuclear were set up. Government largely financed it and insures it. The large scale, the…

Indeed.

I suggest people check out part six of Adam Curtis' Pandora's Box, that cover this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora's_Box_%28TV_series%29#...

On top of all of this we had a generation that was hammered about the dangers of a nuclear war, including the potential poisoning of the environment around a blast by fallout.

And at the core of all this we have the issue that radiation is a silent killer. We can't smell it, we can't see it, we can't feel it. This amps up the fear element greatly.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#363

Post by datenwolf »

outworlder wrote: post #319
datenwolf wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly due to the chemistry required to liberate the Uranium from the ore. What you have in the ore is mostly Uranium oxides. You have to strip away those pesky oxygen atoms in order to further process the Uranium. And in that process quite the amount of CO2 is produced. Now keep in mind that this must be done to all the Uranium, before it undergoes enrichtment. So for every atom of U235 you get about 200 (give…

> So for every atom of U235 you get about 200 (give or take) atoms of U238 How is that even a problem? Nuclear power plants do not require much fissionable material at all. Compare that with any fossil fueled power plant.

It means that you have to invest a lot of energy in extracting material that's thrown away later without going to extract one bit of energy at all.

For making solar cells you don't have to be picky in which isotope you make them from.

Also there's only about 1ppm of uranium in the Earth's crust, whereas silicon is the second most abundant material (27%). So you don't even have to spend a that much energy just to separate the non-silicon stuff from the silicon-stuff, whereas a huge amount of energy in uranium production is preoccupied with doing just that.

If you go outside and take any rock, you're holding in your hands mostly silicon and oxygen. Strip away the oxygen and you get pure silicon.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#364

Post by triangleman »

payne92 wrote: post #13

I believe the politicization of nuclear energy (the resulting lack of investment & innovation) will go down as one of the major blunders in human history. We'd be in a far, far better situation with greenhouse gasses if we (as a human race) had continued to invest in nuclear energy. There would have been mishaps along the way, but at a much smaller scale than we're experiencing now with deaths from air pollution and…

I believe the focus on CO2 will go down as a pretty big blunder. As for nuclear, it seems pretty expensive when you account for the total lifecycle of the plants (see sibling comment from France).

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#365

Post by xcryogenicx »

btilly wrote: post #262
payne92 wrote: post #13

I believe the politicization of nuclear energy (the resulting lack of investment & innovation) will go down as one of the major blunders in human history. We'd be in a far, far better situation with greenhouse gasses if we (as a human race) had continued to invest in nuclear energy. There would have been mishaps along the way, but at a much smaller scale than we're experiencing now with deaths from air pollution and…

The problem with nuclear energy is that a nuclear power plant isn't very different in concept from a nuclear bomb. Getting the latter from the former is a serious concern. Having the former accidentally turn into a dirty nuke (not a lot of force, but lots of fallout), is scarily easy. Just see 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl.

>Just see 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl.

The fact that you would reference TMI in reference to dirty bombs is extremely telling in that you have no idea what you're talking about. The average radiation exposure outside TMI compound was less that an airplane flight or x-ray. Bananas are literally more dangerous.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#366

Post by adrianN »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #282
Recurecur wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New reactor designs completely eliminate the possibility of meltdown. LFRs include an electrically cooled salt plug that seals a holding tank. If power fails, the molten salt melts the plug, and the fuel safely drains into the tank. I particularly like ThorCon's concept, where the reactor is underground. Another plus of this reactor type is that water cooling isn't needed, so siting is much more flexible. Note that t…

Solar prices in the sunniest regions have already dipped below 3c unsubsidized, and are projected to keep falling for decades to come, even without any major technological breakthroughs. So aiming for that price 10 years out, with a new design isn't a very good sign

What are solar prices like in the night? /s

Renewable are all nice and good, but currently we're still building fossil fuel power plants all over the world. It would be better if we instead built nuclear plants. Expanding renewables and nuclear are not opposites of each other.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#368

Post by zukzuk »

vbuwivbiu wrote: post #287

I'm against centralized power generation of any kind. Make a household fusion generator that's safe and maybe I'll consider it, but until then I'm for solar because it can be deployed in a decentralized network (with batteries), and it's clean. That leaves the problem of the mining and manufacture, which is still centralized. This problem can be solved with GM organisms. We engineer fungi and bacteria to grow on roof…

Came here to say more or less this. A centralized power grid was perhaps unavoidable, but now that decentralization is a possibility, the sooner the better. Nuclear is a good option when compared to big gas or oil plants, but what we really need is an energy paradigm shift, and there is little room for fission power in a decentralized grid.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#369

Post by beat »

Of course, this is only comparing to fossil sources, not solar, wind, or other renewables (except biomass).

I don't think this is going to matter in the end, though. The best, most optimistic arguments the nuclear proponents can make would still take 20-30 years to build out enough to make a standard-deviation difference in greenhouse gasses.

Meanwhile, solar/wind are already hitting production costs that rival or beat nuclear, with lower setup costs and other barriers to entry. A wide variety of storage are being actively developed (with real investor support) to cache cheap surplus production from solar/wind, making a mostly-solar grid viable. What will our solar/wind/storage grid look like in 30 years?

Nuclear as a stepping-stone to solar won't matter. It's faster and easier to just to straight to solar.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#370

Post by ZeroGravitas »

iheartmemcache wrote: post #311
bmcusick wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Great point. It could cut risks in half if it lasts twice as long.

We'd need long term statistics to fully develop a model of risk. I.e., (admittedly, anecdotally) within the first year or two of having his monocrystalline setup, Dave[1] suffered damage to one panel (aerial debris) requiring a service call to replace the unit. If this happens on a semi-frequent basis (i.e. one panel per ~3 years per install) the risk profile changes not insignificantly. [1] https://player.fm/series/…

I've had workmen on my roof for damaged slates due to high wind, so again, with a Tesla roof this could conceivably be a negative death rate of the solar tiles are stronger than standard tiles, which they claim they are.
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