Ultra Safe Nuclear • Hacker News Board

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#31

Post by merb » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:51 PM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #17

grawprog wrote: post #8

So why has nuclear waste become a thing that's not mentioned anymore? It was a pretty big thing in the 90's, now it seems to get brushed under the rug for all this 'safe' nuclear power marketing. It's mot just meltdowns and containment breaches that are a problem with nuclear power. None of the renewable alternatives produce radioactive waste that needs to be stored and dealt with. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rad…

Because it's not a problem. There's actually very little of it. It occupies a volume the footprint of a football field and 10 yards high [1]. Storing it is pretty foolproof: bury it in an area with no aquifer. The main risk of contamination is getting into the groundwater. If there's no groundwater the risk of contamination is eliminated even if the containers decay over time. And lastly, it doesn't make sense to bur…

1. How long does it need to be kept safe?

2. How to find a storage facility that can keep it safe that long?

3. How to ensure that a facility does not contamine other stuff in X years?

4. if it is recycable why does nobody do it?

5. if it is so easy to store it safe, why does not country have a TRUE final depot?

yeah coal is bad, but why compare it to coal in the first place when we want to reduce such things anyway?!

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#32

Post by typeformer » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:51 PM UTC

3pt14159 wrote: post #7

xibalba wrote: post #3

Assuming nuclear truly can be ultra safe, how do you convince a public that has seen Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima to get on board? Particularly when the "competition" (solar, wind, etc) has such a strong tailwind.

Deaths per joule are the lowest out of any major fuel source except for maybe wind, which is debatable depending on your assumptions about the future.

Yeah perhaps but the tail risks are much higher.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#33

Post by throwaway894345 » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:51 PM UTC

nimish wrote: post #18

Safety is no longer the reason Nuclear is not worth it. The sun is a giant, free nuclear fusion plant in the sky. We can capture 1/5th of its output per square meter. For free! The wind -- caused by solar heating -- also generates free power. The cost of harvesting it is now so low, and will always continue to decline as any technology will, that any fuel-based generation mechanism is going to be rendered uneconomic…

The glaring problem (pun intended) with solar and wind is that the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow and we don't have a good way to store energy for those sunless and windless intervals.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#34

Post by whatshisface » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:51 PM UTC

nimish wrote: post #18

Safety is no longer the reason Nuclear is not worth it. The sun is a giant, free nuclear fusion plant in the sky. We can capture 1/5th of its output per square meter. For free! The wind -- caused by solar heating -- also generates free power. The cost of harvesting it is now so low, and will always continue to decline as any technology will, that any fuel-based generation mechanism is going to be rendered uneconomic…

>Investing in any such generator needs to be for other reasons like land scarcity.

Yeah, there's no upper limit on energy usage. In several decades, mark my words, we will have a solar panel related deforestation problem.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#35

Post by Konohamaru » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:51 PM UTC

nimish wrote: post #18

Safety is no longer the reason Nuclear is not worth it. The sun is a giant, free nuclear fusion plant in the sky. We can capture 1/5th of its output per square meter. For free! The wind -- caused by solar heating -- also generates free power. The cost of harvesting it is now so low, and will always continue to decline as any technology will, that any fuel-based generation mechanism is going to be rendered uneconomic…

Nuclear power provides enough megawatts for creating sustainable, electricity based heavy industry. If we're going to become zero carbon, that means we also need a system to fuel steel foundries, chemical manufacuring, and cement mixers without coal.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#36

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:52 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #27

nimish wrote: post #18

Safety is no longer the reason Nuclear is not worth it. The sun is a giant, free nuclear fusion plant in the sky. We can capture 1/5th of its output per square meter. For free! The wind -- caused by solar heating -- also generates free power. The cost of harvesting it is now so low, and will always continue to decline as any technology will, that any fuel-based generation mechanism is going to be rendered uneconomic…

>We can capture 1/5th of its output per square meter. For free! except you know, the solar panels. by the same logic you can you can capture fission power for free, all you need is set up the reactor.

[deleted]

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#37

Post by hindsightbias » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:52 PM UTC

nimish wrote: post #18

Safety is no longer the reason Nuclear is not worth it. The sun is a giant, free nuclear fusion plant in the sky. We can capture 1/5th of its output per square meter. For free! The wind -- caused by solar heating -- also generates free power. The cost of harvesting it is now so low, and will always continue to decline as any technology will, that any fuel-based generation mechanism is going to be rendered uneconomic…

As populations move north to escape climate change those areas will also become more adaptable to solar. Plus the areas they left will be well suited for solar as long as there is adequate infrastructure to move the electricity north.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#38

Post by steeve » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:52 PM UTC

nimish wrote: post #18

Safety is no longer the reason Nuclear is not worth it. The sun is a giant, free nuclear fusion plant in the sky. We can capture 1/5th of its output per square meter. For free! The wind -- caused by solar heating -- also generates free power. The cost of harvesting it is now so low, and will always continue to decline as any technology will, that any fuel-based generation mechanism is going to be rendered uneconomic…

Wind and solar are very diffuse forms of energy, so harvesting them is hard and costly both in money, and most importantly for the biosphere. For instance, the universe radiates 3K of heat, which we could harvest and use. We don't because it's too diffuse.

And I'm not talking about the intermittency problem.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#39

Post by ttul » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:53 PM UTC

grawprog wrote: post #8

So why has nuclear waste become a thing that's not mentioned anymore? It was a pretty big thing in the 90's, now it seems to get brushed under the rug for all this 'safe' nuclear power marketing. It's mot just meltdowns and containment breaches that are a problem with nuclear power. None of the renewable alternatives produce radioactive waste that needs to be stored and dealt with. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rad…

You have to weigh the waste disposal and storage costs against the external costs of other fuel sources. What is the "cleanup cost" of carbon emissions from fossil fuels? Even wind power has a waste disposal cost; the blades are often made of toxic material and must be buried when they wear out.

The scary radioactivity of long lived isotopes can be dealt with via geological storage. There is plenty of rock underneath us that can be tunneled into. We can store basically limitless quantities of radioactive waste deep underground, forever.

And then there is reprocessing. France and other countries aggressively reprocess their spent fuel, freeing up new fuel without additional uranium mining. There are highly toxic biproducts from reprocessing that must be stored for a long time; however, these products are small in volume.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#40

Post by dmm » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:53 PM UTC

grawprog wrote: post #8

So why has nuclear waste become a thing that's not mentioned anymore? It was a pretty big thing in the 90's, now it seems to get brushed under the rug for all this 'safe' nuclear power marketing. It's mot just meltdowns and containment breaches that are a problem with nuclear power. None of the renewable alternatives produce radioactive waste that needs to be stored and dealt with. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rad…

> get brushed under the rug for all this 'safe' nuclear power marketing

The problems humanity faces are immense. There are no choices that are 'safe'. Even if the US was building Nuclear power plants as fast as we could it still wouldn't be enough.