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Activists who embrace nuclear power

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Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#141

Post by throwaway894345 »

afterburner wrote: post #91
throwaway894345 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Desert solar is certainly going to be part of the story, but I can’t imagine that we can feasibly power the whole country with desert solar alone, and I don’t think residential solar will be a significant contributor because you lose the efficiencies of scale afforded by acres and acres of collocated, homogeneous, ground-level panels for construction, maintenance, and operation. Consider even the overhead of dealing…

All those individuals will respond to the incentive of cheaper energy bills by installing roof solar voluntarily. Provided their government doesn't pass pro-fossil fuel legislation that actively punishes that decision, as some have.

I’m not talking about persuading people to install solar, I’m talking about the sheer bureaucratic work (on the part of the utility) to manage contracts with thousands of property owners instead of just one. Similarly, the overhead of servicing thousands of roof-top installations (scheduling appointments, driving to sites, climbing onto the roof, etc) versus a single contiguous site at ground level. I don’t think residential solar is a major feature of any serious green energy plan, and for good reason.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#142

Post by cozzyd »

ssijak wrote: post #46

Now that launching stuff into orbit is getting much cheaper, is there any reasonable calculation to just ship nuclear waste into orbit? Or even further away (crashing it into Sun would be ideal but too expensive I guess)

There goes the carbon benefits...

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#143

Post by hannob »

vlovich123 wrote: post #60
afterburner wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're worried about birds? Better raze all buildings and kill all the cats. Wind turbine bird deaths are negligible. https://www.evwind.es/2020/10/01/the-realities-of-bird-and-b... You know you can set up solar panels on roofs, and in the desert, right?

Deserts are not ecosystems devoid of all life. Here’s a life long anti-nuclear activist talking about how his direct experience in this space evolved as he started looking into the data more: https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shellenberger_why_i_change...

You know that by now he's a climate denialist? (Technically he would probably deny that, but he's published a lot of "stop these climate alarmists" messaging lately.)

(Update: Can't reply to the reply, but here's some actual scientists on Shellenbergers latest output https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/article-by-michael-sh... )

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#144

Post by phonon »

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…

>there is no nuclear power plant that produces no waste.

"no" is difficult. "Very little" is feasible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor#Nuclear_...

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#145

Post by andrewzah »

vkou wrote: post #127
epistasis wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare your best estimates of land usage to the amount of land the US uses to grow corn for ethanol. Or compare it to the amount of land used for parking. Or for roads. Or for roofs of buildings. I've never, not once, ever seen a comparison of this sort that sounded the least bit scary. 2. I'm a bit flabbergasted that you think we can scar nuclear production to what we need. We can't even scale nuclear production to…

It's not that nuclear cannot be built. It's that America is incapable of building... Pretty much anything in the 21st century. If the interstate system were to disappear tomorrow, for example, we simply wouldn't be able to rebuild it. It's not because concrete is some arcane technology that isn't cost effective, or doesn't work. It's because we just aren't very good at building things anymore.

That and we can’t displace black people anymore to build national highways thru residential areas. /s

However I do agree. Our politicians prefer to wank over unimportant things instead of working on things that actually would benefit the people. And the government contracting system is horribly broken.

There is no incentive to putting in the hard work to accomplish projects like before.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#146

Post by fulafel »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #136
fulafel wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Hopefully another large part of the reduction will come from people adopting less wasteful living, transport, eating etc behaviours and preferences Zero chance. This would require reductions in quality of life. Even minor fuel tax increases have spawned capital-freezing protests from the Arab world to Paris.

There's a lot of low hanging fruit, eg electricity consumption per household is ~3x in the US vs the EU. I feel it's quite likely that the coming voter and decisionmaker generations have increasingly developed consciences about these things.

Regarding fuel tax protests, I think your anecdotes are actually pretty unrepresentative. In the EU the fuel tax increases have been going on for a long time. And there haven't been any Arab world spanning protests recently from my memory.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#147

Post by redwall_hp »

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?

It's kind of facile to argue about a hypothetical future a thousand years in the future when we're facing crises right now that depend on solving energy issues yesterday.

Scenario 1: a hypothetical societal collapse happens and scientific knowledge and written language are somehow lost. A handful of people explore a dangerous area and are swiftly killed by radiation from tampering with a storage facility.

Scenario 2: millions die from climate-related catastrophes and ecological collapse leads to famines that kill millions more.

We know we're facing scenario two as a distinct possibility, or we'd be happily burning coal until we can't find any more. The first scenario relies on several assumptions, none of which are honestly likely at this stage of human society. And it unlikely to have an effect on nearly as many people.

Fuel reprocessing is a thing, modern reactors deplete the fuel much more thoroughly, and there isn't even that much of it. All of the spent fuel France has used since the 1970s fits in a small fraction of their basketball-court sized storage facility.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#148

Post by iso8859-1 »

epistasis wrote: post #8

Articles like this miss the main point and instead focus on culture war material. There are plenty of sites that would happily accept more nuclear being built, but all other forms of energy have undercut the cost of nuclear. It's no longer cost competitive, and places like China that adopt a "let's try everything and see what works best" approach have heavily pulled back on nuclear. The issues aren't safety, waste, a…

> China that adopt a "let's try everything and see what works best" approach have heavily pulled back on nuclear.

They have brought 15 GW online the last 5 years, and they have another 15 GW under construction. How is that pulling back?

https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#149

Post by jscipione »

vlovich123 wrote: post #133
afterburner wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prove to me that these pro nuclear activists actually truly care about the land use from solar and wind power.

Why do you think I’m saying it’s an either or? Wind and solar are an important part of the energy mix. But if you truly care about minimizing the impact our energy use has on the world around us, you have to take a mix of all of it. Wind and solar alone will never rid us of fossil fuels on their own. Nuclear has lots of important properties that make it a much better overall true replacement for our fossil fuel depen…

According to the EPA: "Generally, [coal] wastes are only slightly more radioactive than the average soil in the United States. The amount of natural radiation in wastes from coal-fired power plants is so small that no precautions need to be taken."

https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactive-wastes-coal-fired-po...

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#150

Post by ouchjars »

js2 wrote: post #57
epistasis wrote: post #8

Articles like this miss the main point and instead focus on culture war material. There are plenty of sites that would happily accept more nuclear being built, but all other forms of energy have undercut the cost of nuclear. It's no longer cost competitive, and places like China that adopt a "let's try everything and see what works best" approach have heavily pulled back on nuclear. The issues aren't safety, waste, a…

> steam based thermodynamic cycles Technical question: my understanding is that the frequency of an electrical grid is literally related to the RPM of turbines providing power, and that over/under frequency are related to supply and demand. https://www.brighthubengineering.com/power-plants/45640-grid... If we hypothetically had a grid that was 100% solar, presumably there'd no longer be any spinning turbines. At that…

South Australia, which generated 60% of its electricity with renewables last year, is installing synchronous condensers to provide some kind of grid stabilisation. (The current conservative government is aiming for net 100% renewables by 2030 and 500% by 2050.)
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