321–330 of 399 posts
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> very outdated information no rush on that -- we have another 21,000 years of half-life to talk about it, right?
Longer half-life = less radioactive. By definition. A half-life of infinity would mean that the isotope is not radioactive at all.
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Aren't there newer nuclear technologies that use alternative fissionable materials that have much shorter half-lives?
If you’re referring to Thorium and pebble bed, they’re both not proliferation safe and have their issues with ecological confinement of highly active waste. So unfortunately they never managed to overcome the initial “should we even seriously try it” cost/benefit analysis
because...
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Frankly, non-nuclear is austerity in disguise. "Too cheap to meter" electricity is like full employment, objectively better but a huge target politically. It's not a coincidence that US gave up on both at the same time. https://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf does justice to the full employment situation, and the same arguments apply. In the econ case it's kind of incredible we filled our minds with nonsense to conv…
I agree with you on both points of full employment and abundant energy. And IMO the same political forces are behind both -- it's a nasty mix of elites and high income professionals who genuinely believe people need to suffer. They love austerity, and micromanagement of the population. It's the same reason we have ugly architecture, because the architects think we deserve to be surrounded by ugly, inhuman buildings.…
An interesting one to bring up. There is a cultural dimension, but also the fact the modern architecture is much less labor intensive even though it will break down.
Generally I like such a response to labor shortages, but clearly we've gone wrong. Perhaps we just need to value key buildings more, based on a long lifespan, and just admit they will be crawling with craftsman to a large degree?
Or, we can get more serious about improving construction productivity to make it less 0-sum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushchyovka are pretty ugly, but might nonetheless have a better "beauty * efficiency" score than much more prestigious modern architecture?
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Frankly, non-nuclear is austerity in disguise. "Too cheap to meter" electricity is like full employment, objectively better but a huge target politically. It's not a coincidence that US gave up on both at the same time. https://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf does justice to the full employment situation, and the same arguments apply. In the econ case it's kind of incredible we filled our minds with nonsense to conv…
> "Too cheap to meter" electricity How about electricity that doesn't flow through a meter because it goes from the roof into the socket?
Might as well take better advantage of the land we already annihilated. But taking out a bunch more is iffy.
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and who has actually been directly affected by this? I think it's your definition of harm that is too loose and overly inclusive. Your average oil spill does 100x more damage to the ecosystem and economy than fukushima
So Fukushima did no harm, because the 100 000 people who had to be evacuated were not harmed?
I'm trying to compromise a bit with the "at least"s :)
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I'm not sure there are (can be?) enough batteries in the world, to support the grid for any length of time.
There was a project to try this: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/german-utility-... Unfortunatly this project was cancelled since Germany taxes electricity from batteries two times: Once when charging the battery and once when discharging it (since it is then seen as "producing" electricity).
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To a first approximation, Fukushima did not cause any harm. I view the plant iself as a success story, given ancient reactor design etc. etc. I think a lot of half-paying-attention people confused the reactor and the tsunami. Of course the news coverage and in-hindsight-unnecessary evacuation didn't help either.
'Not any harm' is quite a cynic formulation. Maybe a couple of hundred deaths seems relatively few, for such an enormous event. But the impact the event had on Japan, their economy and their mental state, was obviosly the worst since WW2. And Fukushima is still not under control. https://apnews.com/article/world-news-japan-tsunamis-5a5a70d... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-nuclear-idUSKCN11D0...
I think the 6-7x 9/11 is the foundation of pain, even if nuclear is an extra salient cherry on top.
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I am calling out my ignorance here, but are there not reactor types that don't require enriched uranium? Sodium-cooled, Molten Salt, etc. I'm curious about the current state of reactor technology and if it addresses your concern.
They all need some enrichment, but then apparently it’s still very hard to go from a civilian reactor to weapons-grade uranium. Just, I guess, much easier than from a heap of coal. I understand that with adequate supervision from the IEA proliferation is generally a non-issue.
Lithuania had its own nuclear power plant, which is currently being decommission, so it's not that they are just playing the NIMBY card without knowing what they are talking about.
https://www.urm.lt/default/en/news/fundamental-problems-of-t...
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Safety concerns are moot when the coal alternative will kill orders of magnitude more people.
But your own point is itself moot, given that we are not comparing nuclear to the dirtiest most lethal of fossil fuels, but nuclear to composite solutions of renewables+batteries/electricity storage or renewables+natural gas