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Ultra Safe Nuclear

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Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#451

Post by pfdietz »

johnisgood wrote: post #379
ajross wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And unlike a natural gas plant, it costs 3-10x what the equivalent generating capacity in renewables would cost. I come to post this Same Thing every time this discussion comes up. It's not about safety. Everyone serious understand nuclear, even current technologies, is "safe enough" to be useful to build out. Nuclear is outrageously expensive , though. And new reactor designs don't seem to be making much progress on…

Well, I am still hoping for ITER.

If its gross fusion power were converted to electrical power at 40% efficiency, it will have cost $100/W(e) to build, an order of magnitude more expensive than fission power plants.

(Its net power output would be negative, btw, and there won't be enough tritium to run it for more than a few weeks total, as it's not going to breed its own tritium.)

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#452

Post by evgen »

socialdemocrat wrote: post #226
evgen wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> put them on your roof, problem solved. This is why solar kills more people every year than nuclear, and your hydro storage and batteries are not even a drop in the ocean compared to total load or daily capacity of even a small grid.

That is such a ridiculous and disingenuous argument. The numbers are minuscule compared to fossil fuels it is replacing. You make it sound like solar power is dangerous. That is total BS. And nuclear numbers are totally unreliable so this is just an apples to orange comparison anyway.

You have made a lot of claims about solar power that have been completely unsourced and are easily shown to be false. For all of the scary noises made by anti-nuclear activists it is actually a power source with an extremely good safety record. Solar and wind power kill more people every year, but the deaths are spread out and appear to be routine so no one really notices. This is why ignorant people are afraid to fly but have no problem driving hundreds of miles -- the incredibly rare airplane crashes kill hundreds and make headlines around the world while driving kills thousands every day and no one notices.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#453

Post by pfdietz »

cmehdy wrote: post #198
epistasis wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My "fight" is that you have now made two plainly false claims: 1) physics precudes renewables from providing our energy needs. This is just a silly claim. There are no such "physics" and if you think that "energy density" stops this from happening, you clearly haven't run any numbers. 2) Renewables aren't reducing carbon output. This is also incredibly bizarre. > You might want to re-assess why is it that you are see…

I'm making the claim because it is painfully obvious that unless you're making calculations about spherical cows there's nowhere near enough resources, surface, and specifically predictability to have renewables be more than marginal for a long time. And at all times, due to unpredictability, there is no chance at all that the source is controllable. Therefore, unless and until we have much much MUCH better ways to s…

He's right, and you are grossly overestimating your level of clue. You do not understand the degree to which you do not understand. Dunning-Kruger says hi.

I suggest you try to fully flesh out your supposed argument, with as much self-skepticism as you can muster. Your enemy is your tendency to motivated reasoning, where you stop thinking when you get a conclusion you like. The symptom of this is that you present half-baked nonsense, which as he told you is easily debunked (or so vague as to not even need debunking.)

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#454

Post by pfdietz »

cmehdy wrote: post #336
epistasis wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't "help" me understand your claim because it is baldly false! There's an entire field that models different grids and transitioning to carbon free energy. Using fine-grained weather patterns, they optimize for various factors such as cost, by timing out deployments of renewable resources, nuclear, transmission, storage, etc. using projected costs over the next few decades. There are huge fights in the field,…

As a reply to your "edit": You don't know how to bloody read. Claiming renewables emit CO2 in their construction and maintenance is not saying that they don't decrease emissions in comparison to gas-oil-coal, only that they do produce emissions. Unless you want to state that for a fact renewables are leading to no emissions for their construction or maintenance, you can't possibly be denying that. And by the way nucl…

In a world that has transitioned to no fossil fuels, how would renewables be emitting CO2? They wouldn't.

In a world transitioning away from fossil fuels, the metric is not how much CO2 renewables use to build, but how much CO2 they displace per $. Renewables, being cheaper than nuclear, allow more CO2 to be displaced more quickly.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#455

Post by rswail »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #284
WalterBright wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an armed guard almost forever Things that have long half-lives are not very dangerous, as in order to have a long half-life it must be emitting radiation at correspondingly lower levels. For example, something with a half-life of 100,000 years is emitting 1/100,000 of the radiation that one with a half-life of a year is.

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.

The way to do that is to make the manufacturer responsible for the mandatory recycling.

That works to make the manufacturer price in that externality, but it also likely leads to lease arrangements instead of outright purchase.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#456

Post by marcosdumay »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #357
marcosdumay wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least until somebody gets a design that isn't basically a coal power plant using different fuel, nuclear can not get cheaper than coal. And guess what is being mass decommissioned right now because it's too expensive?

That isn't my understanding, would love to learn more about how you come to that conclusion. (Ideally based on an idea like the one in the article vs just your run of the mill designed in 1950 power plant :-))

Are they changing any relevant part of the power generator compared to a 1950 plant? Are they at a minimum heating the steam into a higher temperature than what a modern coal plant do? (Are they using water? Because coal works on the limits of what you can do with water already.)

This article seems to have no detail at all, but all the information there seems to be about the reactor. Guess what, you won't build a nuclear reactor that is cheaper than a coal furnace, thus if you don't change anything on the power generator, you can't get cheaper than coal.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#457

Post by cmehdy »

pfdietz wrote: post #453
cmehdy wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm making the claim because it is painfully obvious that unless you're making calculations about spherical cows there's nowhere near enough resources, surface, and specifically predictability to have renewables be more than marginal for a long time. And at all times, due to unpredictability, there is no chance at all that the source is controllable. Therefore, unless and until we have much much MUCH better ways to s…

He's right, and you are grossly overestimating your level of clue. You do not understand the degree to which you do not understand. Dunning-Kruger says hi. I suggest you try to fully flesh out your supposed argument, with as much self-skepticism as you can muster. Your enemy is your tendency to motivated reasoning, where you stop thinking when you get a conclusion you like. The symptom of this is that you present hal…

First, let's get back to the very beginning: my first message gave an explanation to what was pure antagonizing of the "pro-nuclear" people, and I mentioned that it's based on physics (which it is).

You're stating a "he's right you're wrong" with an unsubstantiated singular paragraph while I've been giving dozens of elements of reflection over a half dozen posts. That's a bit rich, isn't it?

You want something to substantiate a decent amount of what I'm saying? Here's one part[1].

Here's a case for why nuclear is the actual bridge for renewables[2]. Here's why renewables can't save the planet[3]. Reasons for environmentalists to look at nuclear[4].

And if you happen to care enough to actually read full reports, the IPCC did a lot of work and it's always good to try to read their reports with an open mind to collate the data[5].

Have a good day.

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(07)61253-7/full...

[2] https://towardsdatascience.com/a-case-for-nuclear-bridging-t...

[3] https://quillette.com/2019/02/27/why-renewables-cant-save-th...

[4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2020/09/09...

[5] https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#458

Post by V6HBGNQHU »

quonn wrote: post #180
V6HBGNQHU wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people die from loosing power during winters and freezing to death? How many more would that be if everyone was using solar which can't provide enough power in winter?

I doubt anyone freezes to death in the EU, US, Australia, and Canada because of loosing power in winter.

> During 2006-2010, about 2,000 U.S. residents died each year from weather-related causes of death. About 31% of these deaths were attributed to exposure to excessive natural heat, heat stroke, sun stroke, or all; 63% were attributed to exposure to excessive natural cold, hypothermia, or both;

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25073563/

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#459

Post by f154hfds »

pfdietz wrote: post #349
f154hfds wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

This is a very weak argument for renewables. You have to make the case that nuclear is fundamentally not able to work in a similar way. The very article we're commenting on is demonstrating the more 'distributed' nature a new generation of nuclear power plants can offer.

Your other argument about cheap labor is completely ignoring principle 3. above. Saying cheap labor for an industry is _inherently_ good is basically saying we should go back to the dark ages. This is probably the only principle both capitalists and socialists agree on (at least our 21st century brand of socialists that hope for a UBI utopia)!

Anti-nuclear has almost taken on a religious fervor that I don't understand. Safety is a property of an implementation, not a fundamental law of nature. Please! We're arguing for the same ultimate goal!

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#460

Post by cmehdy »

pfdietz wrote: post #454
cmehdy wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a reply to your "edit": You don't know how to bloody read. Claiming renewables emit CO2 in their construction and maintenance is not saying that they don't decrease emissions in comparison to gas-oil-coal, only that they do produce emissions. Unless you want to state that for a fact renewables are leading to no emissions for their construction or maintenance, you can't possibly be denying that. And by the way nucl…

In a world that has transitioned to no fossil fuels, how would renewables be emitting CO2? They wouldn't. In a world transitioning away from fossil fuels, the metric is not how much CO2 renewables use to build, but how much CO2 they displace per $. Renewables, being cheaper than nuclear, allow more CO2 to be displaced more quickly.

There's not a single metric to take but many, first of all.

The initial cost in CO2 is absolutely part of the measurement, but if you want to look at finer metrics then you can look at the ratio of estimated CO2 costs over the life of the source over the energy produced too, which gives you good hints as to what requires a lot of emissions to get a lot of energy (which is really what we're trying to curb in the first place). From that metric for example, photovoltaic energy is orders of magnitude worse than nuclear and wind (wind without storage: a dozen grams per KWh, nuclear: a dozen grams per KWh, photovoltaic: between 100g and 200g of CO2 emission per KWh, and beyond if you were to count the batteries). The ROI on the other hand definitely got much better for photovoltaic over the years, and AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN this is why I have not been saying once in all those messages that renewables should be dropped and all the research on it dumped. We CAN make things better, and we WILL benefit from having such extra sources - especially as we learn to extract more and more energy from the same sources.

I'll refer to my response to your other message for multiple sources of why that is not enough.

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