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Ultra Safe Nuclear

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Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#341

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

8bitsrule wrote: post #316
alextheparrot wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an incredibly weak argument, as most of the opposition to nuclear power even before widespread renewable deployment was political, not economic. Maybe the economics have changed with renewables, but that needs to be proved rather than can be inferred by the lack of US reactors being built. Take Germany’s recent denuclearization, the efforts are completely political, there was no mention of balance sheet optim…

>most of the opposition to nuclear power even before widespread renewable deployment was political, not economic. Most of the opposition to nuclear power was about a whole lot of things other than politics or economics. Decades of quantifiable failure after failure in the environmental, construction quality, maintenance, radioactive discharge, siting-safety, and waste-handling realms, to name just a few. Everywhere t…

And yet the alternative, burning dirty coal, has become an unmitigated disaster.

The only reason coal has been allowed to prosper is political support.

Thereby proving the resistance to nuclear power has been entirely political.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#342

Post by [deleted] »

scoopertrooper wrote: post #282
croutonwagon wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldnt necessarily agree. It needs to be stored for a time that is longer than any single civilization has survived. Its pretty arrogant to assume we will still be around for that amount of time. This source pretty heavily influenced my change of opinion on nuclears efficacy https://www.pbs.org/video/independent-lens-containment/

It's pretty crazy to assume that we wouldn't be around in a millennia, two, or three. No other civilisation has been truly global, no other civilization has achieved so much in terms of mastery of nature and technological advancement. So unless the carrying capacity of earth suddenly collapses to the point that it's impossible to maintain organised society for several hundred years, then I think we'll be alright. If…

[deleted]

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#343

Post by pfdietz »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #167
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…

A problem inherent in renewables is they depend on climate. Doesn't make for reliable or predictable power output. Climatic conditions could suddenly change and wipe out part of your energy capacity. Happened in my country and we ended up with expensive, rationed power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Brazil#T... It's useful to have an alternative that allows burning fuel in order to generate ener…

If we plug in Brazil (2011 weather data, 2030 cost model) into

https://model.energy/

you get very good prices in a 100% renewable system. Mostly solar, with hydrogen backup (although this doesn't take into account Brazil's hydro resources which could make things even cheaper.)

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#344

Post by pfdietz »

bl0b wrote: post #290

Random renewable energy-related question that I've been thinking about: Specifically wrt solar, a big argument against is that it can't provide power during the night and we don't have a good way to store energy. What I'm wondering is why it's so imperative that residential/commercial properties are able to get full power from the grid 24/7? What if prices for power go way up during the night (because it can't come f…

Battery costs are falling rapidly, and will likely be much lower in ten years when any nuclear power plant started today might come online.

Hydrogen electrolyser costs are also falling rapidly, and hydrogen can be stored underground for a per-energy cost two orders of magnitude cheaper than the per-energy cost of batteries.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#345

Post by pfdietz »

sparkie wrote: post #296
bl0b wrote: post #290

Random renewable energy-related question that I've been thinking about: Specifically wrt solar, a big argument against is that it can't provide power during the night and we don't have a good way to store energy. What I'm wondering is why it's so imperative that residential/commercial properties are able to get full power from the grid 24/7? What if prices for power go way up during the night (because it can't come f…

> What if prices for power go way up during the night Individual energy providers do not control prices. The market does. If there is market demand for energy at night, then people will fill in the gap to provide it. Anyone pushing up prices at night will have competition from someone else who will undercut them. They'll be forced to drop prices or lose customers. Batteries are inefficient, expensive, and do not prov…

"Inefficient" = 90%? I think you need to think more about what you've written there.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#346

Post by orthecreedence »

tdy721 wrote: post #302
jay_kyburz wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually have no idea how long waste needs to be kept out of the hands of criminals, but I assume it's "a long time". My comment was mostly facetious, but the point I was making was serious. We never really take the full cost of disposing waste and pollution into consideration. I think, when you buy a new solar panel, you should also pay the full cost to pull it apart and dispose of it as well.

That’s a carbon tax right? How much should a gallon of gas cost?

At this point, probably $20-30. Then we'll see how "expensive" nuclear is.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#348

Post by pfdietz »

jbob2000 wrote: post #126
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…

Solar panels aren't the only way to generate energy using the sun. You can build a concentrated solar farm (see: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/06/motorsport/morocco-solar-... ) which uses mirrors and salt to produce up to 580mw of power, with a cost of just under $1bil. My neighbor heats their pool using solar, it's just a bunch of tubes that cycle water over their roof. They got rid of their gas heater. Given that…

Concentrated solar has lost to PV. It's simply not competitive now.

For domestic hot water, it's now cheaper to use PV and a heat pump (or even resistive!) water heater.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#349

Post by pfdietz »

f154hfds wrote: post #111
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 problem with these renewables over time is that their energy density is fundamentally limited compared to nuclear by physics. We need sustainable _ecologically_ friendly energy sources and at scale unfortunately density becomes all important. People can and will quickly point out the ecological nuclear disasters that have occurred. I only say this - be intellectually honest with yourself about those disaster zone…

The distributed nature of renewables is actually a huge advantage. It means the renewable system is extremely fault tolerant. Not only does that help in operation, but it means installation is much more forgiving of low quality work (so you can use cheap labor that's easy to train). Screw up 1% of the modules in a PV field and output is down 1%. Screw up 1% of the welds in a nuclear power plant and you have a world of pain.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#350

Post by pfdietz »

dangerface wrote: post #88
slezyr wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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! Are going to clean solar panels/mirrors for free? > Bahawalpur is desert terrain , having high dust count, therefore, the efficiency of panels were reduced by 40%. It required 30 people to clean panels with 15 days to restore the panels back to their full capacity, which reduced production of ins…

Do you get out of your car to wipe your windscreen when its raining? This cleaning problem seems like something that would be super easy to automate, I dunno why they would higher 30 people to do this when you could higher one engineer.

There are many PV cleaning robots already on the market. Google for them.
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