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Ultra Safe Nuclear

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Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#211

Post by semi-extrinsic »

Tade0 wrote: post #140
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a comment here about cleanup costs of nuclear vs. solar, that was deleted while I was typing my response to that. I'm just gonna copy in my response here, because I think it's an interesting topic: Are we really sure solar panels are much easier to dismantle on a euro-per-kWh basis though? That is, if you divide the total cost of dismantling and recycling a solar power plant, divided by the total amount of…

EDIT: my numbers regarding annual kWh/m2 were wrong. Are you sure you would spend significantly less than 150 euros per square meter of panel to dismantle, transport and recycle the solar panels? Yes, because it's being done by leading companies and doesn't seem to diminish their competitive advantage: http://www.solarscorecard.com/2018-19/scorecard-2018-19.php

How are you getting to 1000 kWh/m2/yr?

From what I can find, Saudi Arabia is one of the best locations for solar power globally, and they have a total solar influx of 2300 kWh/m2/yr. Commercially available solar panels have efficiencies of 22% at best.

For the second point: I'm not saying people aren't recycling solar panels in a good way. I'm saying it doesn't look like the cost of that is significantly lower than for cleaning up after nuclear power.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#212

Post by valuearb »

steeve wrote: post #114
mdorazio wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people with increased cancer rates from solar? Stop quoting deaths from nuclear accidents - the harm from nuclear incidents goes far beyond killing people outright.

Then how much harm? How many cancers?

Far fewer than other forms of energy such as coal.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#213

Post by cbmuser »

merb wrote: post #31
manfredo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?…

4. The Russians and the French do it, the US is still researching:

> https://www.rosatom.ru/en/press-centre/news/the-first-serial...

> https://www.orano.group/en/nuclear-expertise/from-exploratio...

> https://www.anl.gov/article/nuclear-fuel-recycling-could-off...

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#214

Post by sbierwagen »

theptip wrote: post #196
manfredo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One point that's commonly missed in the lay discussions is that the stuff with a really long half-life (e.g. uranium/plutonium) is not that radioactive/harmful; by definition if it takes you 100k years for 50% of your unstable nuclei to decay, the emission rate per second is very low. In contrast, the really nasty stuff has a very short half-life, and emits radiation at a very high rate for a very short duration. The…

>do something safe with the potentially weapons-grade plutonium

Reprocessed plutonium from a civilian power reactor would never be weapons-grade, it has too much Pu-240 in it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactor-grade_plutonium

It is claimed that it is possible to make weapons from reprocessed plutonium, but the warheads would need active cooling and exotic pit geometries, making them not so amendable to miniaturization.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#215

Post by cbmuser »

noja wrote: post #141
manfredo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Forever. Uranium is a heavy metal, it's toxic regardless of it's radioactivity. 2. The US already has one [1]. Congress stopped it's opening, but it's sitting there built ready to be used. Europe also is constructing a disposal site [2] 3. Like I wrote in my comment, bury it in an area with no groundwater. 4. France does recycle it's nuclear waste. 5. We do, as I pointed out above. And for the second time, this wa…

> Forever How can anything with a cost that lasts forever be cheaper?

It’s solid waste. It just sits there and does nothing unless you get too close.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#216

Post by yongjik »

Klinky wrote: post #191
yongjik wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever heard of Kessennuma [1]? You probably don't remember the name. When the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake hit, an oil tank ruptured, caught fire, and burnt for four days. According to [2], 1,152 people were killed, with additional 214 missing. That's a similar level as Fukushima's expected casualties, probably more. But nobody talks about Kessennuma, and nobody brings it up as an evidence that fossil fuels are an inherentl…

Is the point you're trying to make that nuclear and fossil fuels can both be dangerous during a natural disaster? I don't think anyone will dispute this.

Well, I guess most people don't, but then again, they don't dispute this in the same way folks say "All politicians are bad!" - and when they go to voting booth, they always pick a particular party of their choice. And they come back, and until the next election they keep saying "Bah, politics! All politicians are bad!"

The majority of our energies are generated by fossil fuels, in most industrial countries. This has to stop - I think that's much more urgent than arguing between nuclear and renewables.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#217

Post by cbmuser »

merb wrote: post #187
s9w wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany we have a thing called Ewigkeitskosten ("eternal costs"). That's how we call the expenses that still arise as a consequence from the coal mining operations, especially in the west of Germany. That are things like constantly pumping around water. About a fifth of the western coal region would be underwater without it. They're called that way because we already knew that they will never go away. That was acc…

I'm german. and yes I know about that. It's even worse that our politics fought that it is a good idea to keep coal alive that long, worse we keep lignite alive that long, which is probably even worse than anything on the market. (we are the biggest in lignite and it's the worst thing you can do to your environment. Hambacher forst is a eyesore for our country [1]) but as already said it should not be a tradeoff betw…

And despite we all know that in Germany, we fight nuclear and support fossile energies (coal and gas).

> https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/kharecha_02/

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#218

Post by cbmuser »

colinmhayes wrote: post #204
colonwqbang wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But no arguments were cited in the comment, there was only a John Oliver name drop.

No. The comment pointed out an argument against nuclear and asked for a counter-argument.

Well, just ask NASA:

> https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/kharecha_02/

And looks at this pollution map:

> https://www.electricitymap.org/

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#219

Post by drcongo »

hairytrog wrote: post #189
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which you can't really do because of Xenon poisoning Can you clarify this part? You mean that channging the power level of the reactor would cause Xenon poisoning?

I highly recommend HBO's Chernobyl. Explains a lot this stuff. Basically, as a nuclear reactor operates, it is turning the Uranium into lots of other stuff. One component of this other stuff is Xenon-135, which absorbs neutrons and basically gets in the way of nuclear reactions. This is not an issue if you keep the reactor on because there are enough neutrons to keep things going and overcome the Xenon absorption. Bu…

That's an excellent explanation, thanks!

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#220

Post by Tade0 »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #211
Tade0 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: my numbers regarding annual kWh/m2 were wrong. Are you sure you would spend significantly less than 150 euros per square meter of panel to dismantle, transport and recycle the solar panels? Yes, because it's being done by leading companies and doesn't seem to diminish their competitive advantage: http://www.solarscorecard.com/2018-19/scorecard-2018-19.php

How are you getting to 1000 kWh/m2/yr? From what I can find, Saudi Arabia is one of the best locations for solar power globally, and they have a total solar influx of 2300 kWh/m2/yr. Commercially available solar panels have efficiencies of 22% at best. For the second point: I'm not saying people aren't recycling solar panels in a good way. I'm saying it doesn't look like the cost of that is significantly lower than f…

Yeah, you're right - I confused m2 with kW. It's 1000kWh/kW/yr or in other words 1000h/yr.

I'm saying it doesn't look like the cost of that is significantly lower than for cleaning up after nuclear power.

Raw solar panels currently cost less than 45 Euros per m2 and since these companies recycle them and still get ahead, it can't be expensive.

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