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Activists who embrace nuclear power

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Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#221

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

FooHentai wrote: post #201
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…

So nuclear has been up and running in mainstream use for what, fifty years at this point? If that waste sticks around for just 10,000 years (optimistic), and assuming no increase in demand over today (which is laughable), your ‘just one football field’ waste site is actually two hundred times bigger. And that’s raw waste, it doesn’t include containment for each deposit you make. Not to mention the issues we’re alread…

There's also more waste than just the spent fuel rods. One of the things I learned that really shifted my views is just how expensive decommissioning nuclear plants is. Meanwhile, recycling solar is basically the cost of shipping the material around.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#222

Post by ip26 »

afterburner wrote: post #37
biren34 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm squarely of the opposite opinion. There are 2 main concerns I think "only renewables" solutions miss: 1. Impact on land usage. The sheer amount of land required to provide 3-4x global use is impractical and has major environmental consequences. It's not free to pave over large areas with solar panels or make huge swaths of air unsafe for birds. 2. Cost of storage is usually projected using current prices with som…

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?

Hah, that’s a great point- for all the hand wringing about bird strikes, none of the concern trolls are saying a thing about outdoor housecats.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#223

Post by sudosysgen »

FooHentai wrote: post #201
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…

So nuclear has been up and running in mainstream use for what, fifty years at this point? If that waste sticks around for just 10,000 years (optimistic), and assuming no increase in demand over today (which is laughable), your ‘just one football field’ waste site is actually two hundred times bigger. And that’s raw waste, it doesn’t include containment for each deposit you make. Not to mention the issues we’re alread…

Two hundred football fields is absolutely trifling even now and much less on the scale of 10 000 years.

You're also ignoring the fact that reactors that recycle spent fuel have been made and can be drastically improved, so demand for storage of waste as well as how hard they are to contain can very realistically go down.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#224

Post by sudosysgen »

orwin wrote: post #102
StreamBright wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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.

Then do that and see how costs increase, and do the comparison again.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#225

Post by temp8964 »

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…

solar generation farm takes way too much land. If it's in a desert, that would be fine. But many of them are on otherwise beautiful mountains, how can this be environmentally acceptable?

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#226

Post by sudosysgen »

afterburner wrote: post #22
systematical wrote: post #4

Go heavy nuclear and invest in fusion. The later will lead to clean abundant energy and eventually a reduction in resource scarcity. What is the economics of air? That's the economics we want.

Fusion research ? Sure. I hope you aren't expecting practical commercial reactors anytime soon. I believe the current fusion scientists just entering the workforce are hoping for major strides by the end of their CAREER when they finally retire .

I don't see where that's implied. The scenario that makes sense is that by the time our heavy investments into nuclear pay off and then some, maybe in 80-100 years, we can transition to fusion.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#227

Post by sudosysgen »

epistasis wrote: post #216
sudosysgen wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a dangerous and wrong assumption. Weather events can have high area. What do you do if a hurricane comes at the same time as high cloud cover?

You plan for the worst case, same as we do now.

Sure, but solar plus wind does not allow the flexibility to plan for the worst case and come out ahead.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#228

Post by dane-pgp »

undefined1 wrote: post #122
airhead969 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh so now some nuclear industry regulations are "bad." Then who knows better than NRC engineers and scientists, legitimately aiming to ensure the industry doesn't die from mass-casualty events, public harm, or unworkable costs? Maybe before throwing shade on something you know nothing about, it's often best to not prove that you're speaking from your tail end. ; ) EDIT: You made a bunch of edits. No, you in particula…

in a time when institutions and experts are failing all around us, I appreciate your optimism. but it's too much like a blind faith and devotion to priests for my tastes. and maybe they are right about every regulation, that's a possibility! but clearly something has gone wrong when we could have had a clean grid powered via nuclear energy by now. so I think it would be wise to question everything in the chain.

> institutions and experts are failing all around us

Is that what we're seeing? Which institutions and experts do you think are failing us?

Could it actually be the case that institutions and experts are 99% accurate in their output, but the information ecosystem around us is highlighting the 1% of inaccuracies and presenting them as fatal flaws (while ignoring the fact that the alternatives to these institutions and experts have less than 50% accuracy)?

Certainly you could make the case that there are some people with an ideology and/or incentives to make sure that governments don't work for the benefit of the people they are supposed to serve, but if that's the threat model then all proposed plans need to be considered against that threat.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#229

Post by glogla »

airhead969 wrote: post #118
glogla wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One common complaint is that every plant is a special snowflake that is validated, qualified and certified from scratch. Building more at once as a single project using a single plan could bring a lot of efficiency in the process. I think that was the promise of Small Modular Reactors - you certify reactor by itself, making the plant certification much easier and faster. I'm not sure that materialised, though.

SMRs like SSR heatpipes are interesting. The issues of decentralization of controlled nuclear sites are many. It's better to have many SMRs in one location for safety, security, and backbench of resources and talent for engineering and operations. Simply, it scales better. Giving every Tom, Jane, and Sally corporation or town an SMR is an absolutely terrible idea.

Oh sure, I understood the effort to make it easier to "plop down" bunch large plants at once, not hundreds of small ones - though those are kind of interesting in isolated locations.

The other thing is old Soviet idea of using small nuclear reactors for heating - put small reactor to every town and run central heating to the housing estates, meaning you get to use close to 100 % of the heat output of the reactor, instead of the ~ 30 % the turbines give you in electricity.

Of course, if things go wrong, you have very efficient radioactivity delivery mechanism to every home. And outside of very cold climates it might be actually less efficient than a modern heat pump, even accounting for the heat conversion.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#230

Post by boomboomsubban »

philipkglass wrote: post #174
iso8859-1 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

It's still the country building the most new nuclear power, but it's also reducing ambitions from just a few years ago. From your own link: The 13th Five-Year Plan formalized in March 2016 included the following nuclear projects and aims: ... Reach target of 58 GWe nuclear operational by end of 2020, plus 30 GWe under construction then. China actually has 47.5 GWe operational now. See table "Operable nuclear power re…

Falling 20% short of a five year plan that included 2020 is not strong evidence they're pulling back.
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