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Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

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Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#81

Post by rich_sasha »

drclau wrote: post #66
rich_sasha wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All the affordable reactor designs with no risk of accidents or proliferation are just 10 years away like they have been for four decades. So, like storage for renewables? Seems to me, we're not concerned on R&D budgets, so we should pursue all relevant methods of decarbonisation, of which nuclear is a very promising one.

> we're not concerned on R&D budgets Just curious, why do you think so? I do think this should be the case, but I just don't see it happening.

Mistyped, should have said "constrained".

In the planetary scale, paying a few $10bns or $100bns is nothing, especially against the backdrop of global warming damage. I don't think we should skimp on researching nuclear in this context, "because renewables are cooler".

I think we need a new "nuclear Trinity project" (only this time for energy generation!) or a SpaceX-type enterprise. Iterate, build a simple, single, safe design, and deploy it widely. Or fail, but not without trying.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#82

Post by OscarCunningham »

purerandomness wrote: post #18
zeryx wrote: post #9

It's incredibly frusturating that this isn't part of the public discourse, where are the pro-nuclear candidates? Which parties are pro-nuclear?

It was for decades, there simply isn't anything new to discuss. We still have no solution a) where to put nuclear waste, and b) how to communicate to civilizations for the next 25000-50000 years what kind of waste that is. In Germany, the ongoing search for a permanent waste repository is going on for decades now. Funnily enough, this taxpayer's money is never calculated into the total cost of operating nuclear plant…

> b) how to communicate to civilizations for the next 25000-50000 years what kind of waste that is.

People care about this way more than it actually matters. If going near a certain area kills you, people are going to learn that after the first few deaths. The casualties are never going to anywhere near the stakes of global warming.

And besides that, the whole worry only applies in the narrow range of futures where humanity neither drives itself extinct nor retains advanced technology. It occurs to me that in that kind of future, society might actually be helped overall by the scientific advancement driven by having access to radioactive sources.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#83

Post by mekkkkkk »

andbberger wrote: post #57
mekkkkkk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever since Chernobyl nuclear power has been voter kryptonite. Trying to explain how all these fancy terms changes the equations won't do anything for those who recoil just by mentioning the term. Nuclear had its run and we blew it. Literally.

There have been plenty of environmental disasters caused by oil production and that's still going strong. Ongoing use of coal for power production emits radiation far exceeding that of Chernobyl and that's still going strong. Is it really political kryptonite or is that the oil lobby owns all of the politicians

I'd argue that it's both. Not that the lobbyists need to do much more than slight nudging with a sprinkle of fear mongering.

Regarding the comparison with other power production methods, you are most certainly right about fossil fuels causes more harm than nuclear. Facing climate disaster it's hard to argue otherwise.

Unfortunately nuclear hazards in the form of accidents are much more ominous. Invisible, immediate and easily measured. It's just a scary technology.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#85

Post by BitwiseFool »

Tepix wrote: post #65
BitwiseFool wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"But the problem nuclear is that either way, it's far too late." Sadly I see no other viable alternative. Wind and Solar are seemingly clean but require a ton of resources, have a massive footprint, and just don't scale with on-demand needs during bad weather. >"All the affordable reactor designs with no risk of accidents or proliferation are just 10 years away like they have been for four decades." No risk of accid…

What's the massive footprint you talk about? If we put enough solar panels to provide electricity for all humans into the Sahara desert, it only covers a small area.

When I say footprint, I'm alluding to installations like the Taihang Solar Farm in China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n731JjYSySY And, by footprint I mean the amount of space these panels occupy on the landscape.

Putting solar farms in a desert is an attractive idea and way less impactful than covering hillsides in green and temperate areas. My understanding, though, is that the transmission of all that energy is the real issue. You can build a giant solar farm in the Mojave desert but distributing it to farther parts of the U.S. is a problem.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#86

Post by Zigurd »

xyzzyz wrote: post #26
jagermo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus, you know, storing the waste for thousands of years without a good place to do so. Payed for by the public.

We have good places to do so, it’s just they never are good enough to antinuclear activists.

There is a lot of political diversity on the planet. But even the economically ambitious authoritarian places are not storing or reprocessing fuel as a service for the supposedly timid places.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#87

Post by twofornone »

Tepix wrote: post #65
BitwiseFool wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"But the problem nuclear is that either way, it's far too late." Sadly I see no other viable alternative. Wind and Solar are seemingly clean but require a ton of resources, have a massive footprint, and just don't scale with on-demand needs during bad weather. >"All the affordable reactor designs with no risk of accidents or proliferation are just 10 years away like they have been for four decades." No risk of accid…

What's the massive footprint you talk about? If we put enough solar panels to provide electricity for all humans into the Sahara desert, it only covers a small area.

Except it is not practical to colocate all of the worlds solar power in a single location, and wind farms are even less space efficient by orders of magnitude when compared to energy density of nuclear per area.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#88

Post by yholio »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #6

1) there are no working thorium reactors 2) breeder reactors are hazardous 3) uranium seawater extraction doesn't exist 4) if uranium seawater extraction were made to work it would use enormous amounts of energy not reflected in this. The depressing truth is this shows that current uranium oxide reserves and nuclear tech could supply global energy needs for only 6 years.

If efficient, safe and low cost fast breeders become available, you don't need thorium or sea extraction. Just transmute the vast quantities of U238 that have been stockpiled as depleted uranium into fissionable Plutonium 239 and run reactors on that for decades.

Large nations have about one milion tons of depleted Uranium, in oxide or hexaflouride form, that's about 1 trillion megawatt-days, enough for 150 years of current energy consumption, or decades of geometric increases of energy use. Only then we need to go after existing proven mineral reserves, and only after that, maybe at the turn of the 22nd century, we would need to ponder sea water extraction.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#89

Post by dodobirdlord »

dahart wrote: post #60
Robotbeat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Untrue https://sg.news.yahoo.com/china-hopes-play-leading-role-2203... 2) Not in any way that is irreducible. 3) wrong. https://www.machinedesign.com/materials/article/21836993/ura... “Oh, that’s just proof of concept.” Yes, and even 5 grams is enough to disprove your claim it doesn’t exist. Reality is we won’t need it for an extremely long time, so why would anyone do more than proof of concept? 4) still on-net e…

Your news article link appears to state that China hopes to build a thorium reactor. It doesn’t seem say one is up and running, does it, or did I miss something?

Wikipedia indicates that some test reactors are currently operational, and there are construction projects underway for commercial reactors. The article notes that in 1999 there were 0 operating thorium reactors anywhere on earth, but that no longer seems to be true.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#90

Post by jabl »

dahart wrote: post #60
Robotbeat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Untrue https://sg.news.yahoo.com/china-hopes-play-leading-role-2203... 2) Not in any way that is irreducible. 3) wrong. https://www.machinedesign.com/materials/article/21836993/ura... “Oh, that’s just proof of concept.” Yes, and even 5 grams is enough to disprove your claim it doesn’t exist. Reality is we won’t need it for an extremely long time, so why would anyone do more than proof of concept? 4) still on-net e…

Your news article link appears to state that China hopes to build a thorium reactor. It doesn’t seem say one is up and running, does it, or did I miss something?

Be as it may, a thorium reactor is in no way particularly special compared to a uranium reactor [1]. As humankind is able to make uranium reactors work, we can make thorium reactors work. Just like with seawater extraction of uranium, there's no particular hurry to commercialize the technology since uranium so far is plentiful and cheap.

[1] There is the issue that thorium by itself is not fissile, so it's a breeding fuel cycle similar to the U-Pu breeding cycle with reprocessing etc. Which, again, hasn't been developed as quickly as hoped many decades ago, as the simple once-through uranium cycle has been cheaper and good enough.

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