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Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

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Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#111

Post by Retric »

kbenson wrote: post #107
Retric wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Base load power is inherently less useful than peaking power plants as the demand curve while predictable is extremely variable. Power companies build as many of them as they can get away with because they are cheap, not because there is some inherent advantage to steady state power. Wind competes in exactly the same niche as the price is low though with some additional downsides. As you build more of them there is l…

> Hydroelectric is generally the ideal peaking power plant as it’s cheap, the downside is you can’t build many if them. What ever happened to the offshore hydroelectric turbines we were supposed to get? I think is was 15-20 years ago they were being touted as one of the next big power systems.

The ocean is a really difficult place to leave equipment. Short term small scale tests looked promising, but scaling up never really worked out.

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#112

Post by nickik »

jabl wrote: post #49
nickik wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thorium only has advantages if you use a breeder. Uranium is actually better for most applications. And the development of any type of reactor is already expensive, adding the additional challenge of regulatory burden to change fuels is totally pointless. The real debate is about reactor design, not fuel type. I also started to get interested in Thorium, but I learn that its not about Thorium but rather your reactor…

> Thorium only has advantages if you use a breeder. A thermal breeder, that is. In the fast spectrum the U-Pu cycle is superior. And even so, a thermal Th breeder has a very low breeding ratio, and in the thermal spectrum poisons are worse, meaning that the reprocessing volume to produce a unit of fuel will be frickin huge. Good luck making that economical.

Yes. A thermal breeder. Correct.

There are ways to reduce the poisons depending on your reactor design.

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#113

Post by nickik »

mcguire wrote: post #90
magduf wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare the number of deaths due to nuclear accidents to the health effects of us all breathing in coal pollution.

Deaths / trillion kWhr ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d... ) Coal – global average 100,000 (41% global electricity) Coal – China 170,000 (75% China’s electricity) Coal – U.S. 10,000 (32% U.S. electricity) Oil 36,000 (33% of energy, 8% of electricity) Natural Gas 4,000 (22% global electricity) Biofuel/Biomass 24,000 (21% global energy) Solar (rooftop) 440 ( Wind 150 (2% global electricity…

> but what about deaths in uranium mining and processing

Modern Uranium mining is basically pin-point mining mostly done by machines. And even without that, Uranium is so energy dense that you don't actually have to mine much. Every other energy source also has lots of mining simply because you need lots more of normal metals.

Think about the absurd amount of mining required for wind miles.

The same for processing, those are very highly advanced modern processes that are pretty strictly on safety.

There are very few deaths from either.

> One confounding factor in this data is the low numbers of large-scale accidents for nuclear power.

The only ever large-scale accident (in terms of people) for nuclear power is Chernobyl and if you look at the long term death we are talking around 4000 who die earlier and maybe 50 who died faster and that is one event 40 years ago.

Other then that there have been basically 0 deaths from radiation from civilian power nuclear accidents. In reality Chernobyl was a military reactor and shouln't even be included in the first place.

> or if Fukushima happened faster

I'm not sure what you are talking about here. It seems that you assume that evacuation saved people? That is totally wrong. Actually a far larger number of people died during the evacuation that were actually endangered by the radiation.

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#114

Post by nickik »

neuronic wrote: post #43
nickik wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Union of Concerned Scientists are an anti-nuclear lobbyist group. Anything they say should be dismissed out of hand. They have 0 credibility and have spent the last 50 years spreading lies and fear about nuclear energy. The problem here is actually that the people at 'Union' are deeply convinced that nuclear is bad and no nuclear project no matter how much time was spent on safety has ever been endorsed by them. This…

> Union of Concerned Scientists are an anti-nuclear lobbyist group. Or maybe they are just concerned about a power source which has proved catastrophic multiple times in the past.

They are a lobbyist group they get their money from contributions by people who want to fight nuclear power.

> proved catastrophic multiple times in the past

Any evidence for that?

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#115

Post by pfdietz »

thrower123 wrote: post #105
pfdietz wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the biggest hurdle is that it's grossly uneconomic.

Because it costs billions of dollars to check everything over in octuplet and build everything special because everyone is so damned afraid of The Bomb that we gave up on building them fifty years ago at scale. It's the safest thing going. https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/11255616735556935...

The nuclear industry isn't very good at making reactors, but they're really good at making excuses.

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#116

Post by CodeCube »

Balgair wrote: post #84
nine_k wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pool, as far as I can tell, is built pretty sturdy. Breaking this amount of concrete takes a lot of high explosives, and breaking it underwater is an order of magnitude harder. The Allies at WWII had to go to a great length to damage German dams, while using multiple heavy bombers. If terrorists were in possession of such amounts of powerful explosives, and a capacity to place them inside a highly guarded area, t…

It's not human action that would worry me, it's nature. Freezing cycles could easily erode a pool in a few decades and make micro-cracks that fester unnoticed for years. Rust is an ever present issue for re-inforced concrete and is the cause of countless civil engineering disasters. Practical Engineering on Youtube is a great overview of the issues we humans have with water: https://www.youtube.com/user/gradyhillhous…

I hear what you're saying, but I think the point I tried to make in my OP is getting lost here ... in a (well run) facility such as this, nothing would fester unnoticed for years. Actually, I love that you posted some of Grady's videos ... it shows just how much knowledge we have around these problems. And yes, they're not easy, and they're not necessarily cheap to deal with ... but we can deal with them. It's a known problem.
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