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Activists who embrace nuclear power

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Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#101

Post by numpad0 »

rpiguyshy wrote: post #9

i just dont buy it. hypothetically, there is a nuclear power plant design that is perfectly safe in that it will never melt down. but there is no nuclear power plant that produces no waste. as long as you are producing waste, you are depending on bumbling bureaucrats to properly dispose of that waste and manage the waste often for extremely long periods of time. its just not an ideal situation. the government cant ev…

"High level nuclear waste" is such a weird idea once you take a bit of in depth look at nuclear technology. It's just fuel. Just nuclear material. No need to "manage for extremely long periods of time". Only requiring more sophisticated Fast Neutron technology to be used, and if used, provide practically unlimited supply of electricity and nuclear material to a nation.

The reason as to why "safe storage of nuclear waste" is a problem lies in the last part: unlimited supply of nuclear material. Completely destroys national security for everyone. Without that part the problem reduces to just engineering challenges of building and running some Sodium cooled Fast Neutron reactors.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#102

Post by orwin »

StreamBright wrote: post #71
rpiguyshy wrote: post #9

i just dont buy it. hypothetically, there is a nuclear power plant design that is perfectly safe in that it will never melt down. but there is no nuclear power plant that produces no waste. as long as you are producing waste, you are depending on bumbling bureaucrats to properly dispose of that waste and manage the waste often for extremely long periods of time. its just not an ideal situation. the government cant ev…

>> meanwhile, solar is safe to set up, safe to operate, and there is no radioactive waste to manage Only some giant amount (only 300x compare to nuclear) of non-radioactive waste that ends up in poor countries. Do you care about that? https://www.solarpowerinternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2... https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die... https://www.technocracy.news/solar-energy-produces-300-ti…

You can build recycling plant and force PV vendor to sent their panels to said plant once the panel hit the end of its life.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#103

Post by throw0101a »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #59
Daniel_sk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with radioactive waste is more of a political and emotional problem than a real one. The amount of waste is rather small and it's not like it will irradiate you from a kilometre away :-). It can be stored in safe containers and buried in stable geological sites or even stored temporarily for many years in storage houses and maybe later re-used in types of reactors that will be able to recycle the spent fuel…

The issue for me is not quantity but time. 1000-10,000 (or even much longer) years for decay is an incredible amount of time for the human race. Written language only appeared ~5500 years ago. Let’s say ancient Rome 2,000 years ago made and stored a substance that kills everyone exposed to it, would we expect that substance to still be intact and unblemished right now?

In general there is an inverse relation between the half-life and the intensity of radioactivity of an isotope. Isotopes with a long half-life decay very slowly, and so produce fewer radioactive decays per second; their intensity is less. Istopes with shorter half-lives are more intense.

In nuclear waste, isotopes with very short half-lives, say a few days or even a few weeks, are not the major concern. They will decay to negligible amounts within a year or two. Isotopes with very long half-lives, more than 1000 years, are likely to be less intense.

Long-term isotopes are more complicated. They don't dose as heavily, but there are a lot more issues than just that. Plutonium for example is comparatively long-lived, but some of its decay products can be quite nasty. At the extreme end are isotopes that are so long-lived that their hazard levels are close to zero. Uranium-238, the kind left after the fissile 235 is removed, pretty well falls into this category.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#104

Post by airhead969 »

undefined1 wrote: post #89
airhead969 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in nuclear. There's definitely no way now to insure a new plant and make money. Try as they may, even Duke couldn't break ground on any new US project because there hasn't been money in it for about 40 years. The economics kill it and there aren't going to be anymore PWR/BWRs, with the possible exceptions of BCH, 2 PWRs at Turkey Point, and 1 ESBWR at North Anna. Renewables will likely undercut them all to c…

how much of that is due to regulations or other overhead or inefficiencies? e.g., "China Tariffs Blocked Bill Gates’ Plan for Safe Nuclear Power" https://futurism.com/trump-china-tariffs-bill-gates-nuclear-... also, SpaceX managed to make reusable rockets, I just have to imagine we could make nuclear energy feasible if we approached it from first principles and took a hard look at the entire process.

Gimme a break. Don't pull the Reagan/Bush/libertarian "all regs are bad" line. It's tired.

The NRC knows their job, have excellent people, and are good at it. It's like questioning whether we need the NTSB or not.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#105

Post by cygx »

reedjosh wrote: post #35
afterburner wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just buy solar and wind, avoid both.

Solar & wind != nuclear. Solar and wind are not on demand and require storage that's not currently practical.

Nuclear also isn't 'on demand', but load-following at best. You'd have to add some peaker plants (or storage) into the mix if you wanted to go majority-nuclear as well...

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#106

Post by hntrader »

afterburner wrote: post #96
hntrader wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still doesn't make sense. Even if what you say is true, then the valid comparison is to compare nuclear to wind rather than nuclear to solar.

Again, what the hell are you talking about. These are bad faith arguments. Moving goalposts, redefining everything. What a joke.

I'll put aside your rudeness (I assume you think this is a status contest, or maybe you've just misunderstood my intentions) and try to explain again.

Solar being cheaper than nuclear makes it a foregone conclusion for daytime electricity supply.

However the direct comparison you were making in the first paragraph of your original post between nuclear price and solar price is nonsensical because they're not in direct competition with each other. Nuclear satisfies a slightly different use case to solar.

Nuclear instead is in direct competition with sources that are capable of providing base load power such as gas and solar+storage. The only meaningful price comparison is between nuclear and these other sources, since we need to decide if the stack is going to be solar+storage, solar+nuclear, etc.

Comparing solar prices directly to nuclear prices without considering the whole stack is just a meaningless comparison.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#107

Post by undefined1 »

airhead969 wrote: post #104
undefined1 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how much of that is due to regulations or other overhead or inefficiencies? e.g., "China Tariffs Blocked Bill Gates’ Plan for Safe Nuclear Power" https://futurism.com/trump-china-tariffs-bill-gates-nuclear-... also, SpaceX managed to make reusable rockets, I just have to imagine we could make nuclear energy feasible if we approached it from first principles and took a hard look at the entire process.

Gimme a break. Don't pull the Reagan/Bush/libertarian "all regs are bad" line. It's tired. The NRC knows their job, have excellent people, and are good at it. It's like questioning whether we need the NTSB or not.

you're setting up and attacking a strawman. didn't say all regs are bad. obviously you have to identify which regulations are good and which are not, or those no longer necessary, and find a balance so you don't quash innovation. like the example I gave with Bill Gates nuclear project.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#108

Post by airhead969 »

epistasis wrote: post #97
undefined1 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how much of that is due to regulations or other overhead or inefficiencies? e.g., "China Tariffs Blocked Bill Gates’ Plan for Safe Nuclear Power" https://futurism.com/trump-china-tariffs-bill-gates-nuclear-... also, SpaceX managed to make reusable rockets, I just have to imagine we could make nuclear energy feasible if we approached it from first principles and took a hard look at the entire process.

I always ask: what regulation would you change? Nobody in the nuclear industry has suggestions for what is unnecessary, as far as I can tell. And as Texas showed us last week, without regulations, profit motive alone is not enough to maintain proper equipment. The nuclear plant that tripped off could have made months worth of profit in less than a day. Yet they did not do simple weatherization preparations that they…

The usual answer from the unreasonable, irrational, and selfish Rand Paul-types is "gubberment always too big, so regulations bad."

I would modify Madison's quote: If everyone were angelic, proactive, and wise, no government or regulations would be necessary. Since none of these can ever be true, government and regulations will always be essential.

I'm in Austin and froze for 3 days because of piss-poor under-regulation due to lack of grid and backup power investment. ERCOT did they best they could while under-resourced and then thrown under the bus by the MSM and libertarian, anarcho-capitalist sympathizers like Abbott.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#109

Post by fulafel »

throw0101a wrote: post #39
rpiguyshy wrote: post #9

i just dont buy it. hypothetically, there is a nuclear power plant design that is perfectly safe in that it will never melt down. but there is no nuclear power plant that produces no waste. as long as you are producing waste, you are depending on bumbling bureaucrats to properly dispose of that waste and manage the waste often for extremely long periods of time. its just not an ideal situation. the government cant ev…

Princeton did a study, and found to get to net zero by 2050, the US could do it with only renewables (the "E+ RE+" scenario). To accomplish that: > Cumulative total wind and solar farm area in E+ RE+ by 2050 is ~1 million km^2, or roughly an area the size of AK, IA, KS, MO, NE, OK, and WV combined (with an additional 64,000 km^2 of offshore wind); directly impacted lands total 70,000 km^2, an area larger than WV. * P…

This study starts with existing laissez-faire energy demand projections. Hopefully another large part of the emissions reduction will come from people adopting less wasteful living, transport, eating etc behaviours and preferences.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#110

Post by einpoklum »

mcenedella wrote: post #3

According to the Department of Energy, nuclear energy creates minimal waste, has a small land footprint, and is cleaner for the air. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/3-reasons-why-nuclear-cle... Interestingly: “ All of the used nuclear fuel produced by the U.S. nuclear energy industry over the last 60 years could fit on a football field at a depth of less than 10 yards!”

> According to the Department of Energy

Isn't that the department that corrupt US politicians staff with people who are partial to the interests of the industry they're supposed to regulate?

Anyway, the link seems rather propagandistic. Let the Secretary of Energy bury a football field's worth of nuclear waste next to his town.

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