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Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

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Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#141

Post by jcfrei »

perlgeek wrote: post #138
jcfrei wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the fuel can be recycled and doesn't need to be stored for thousands of years. Storing the remainder underground is mostly a one-off cost except for some monitoring. It's a solved problem and only public misconceptions about tectonics and radioactivity are holding it back.

> A lot of the fuel can be recycled and doesn't need to be stored for thousands of years. But is it, actually? The amount of nuclear waste in interim storage speaks against it. > It's a solved problem It is certainly not. For example in Germany there's only one terminal storage facility, and it's already showing problems, less than half a century in. And we thought/hoped it could last for tens of thousands of years.…

> But is it, actually? The amount of nuclear waste in interim storage speaks against it.

No, there aren't a lot of breeder reactors running. But that's just because there hasn't been any pressure to develop them commercially.

> but I'm not aware of any actually viable solutions.

Check out the Onkalo fuel repository: https://www.posiva.fi/en/index.html

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#142

Post by yholio »

The problem with nuclear energy is not, and never was, availability of fuel. The fueling costs are by and large negligible in the balance sheet of a nuclear plant.

Nuclear has a massive capital cost issue, you need to invest a very large sum of money up-front and recoup it over decades; and you can start to recoup it only after at least 5 years of construction that can be bogged in regulatory and construction delays, political and civil opposition can stretch construction to more than a decade, all the while the investor is billions in the red.

This makes nuclear very very risky from a financial perspective, slow to adopt innovation, hard to attract private investors that can't accommodate projects that take such a long time to become profitable. Basically, they are too expensive and slow compared to the business risk they entail, especially compared to renewables, which are quick to market and have very clear risk profiles.

If and when this changes, for example by SMRs or advanced, low cost designs, then nuclear will have a place in the clean energy market. Up to now, attempts to bring the cost down have failed, for example NuScale's battery of small reactors is estimated to cost the same as a clasic reactor.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#143

Post by ortusdux »

Robotbeat wrote: post #17
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.

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…

Re: #3 & 4, I've toured that lab and seen that experiment in person, and it is extremely promising. Their original tests we able to produce yellowcake uranium at roughly 2x market rate, which is amazing for a domestic source. They are now working on scaling and unique applications to bring the price even lower. I believe that they are looking at post filtering desalination brine. The process extracts many heavy metals, which can make make for good alternate revenue streams, further decreasing the price.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#144

Post by daneel_w »

an9n wrote: post #133
bryanlarsen wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50 year problem? Climate change is an 8 year problem. That's the main reason that nuclear is infeasible, we can't do it in 8 years. We should have started building 100s of nuclear reactors 20 years ago. Doing it now is too late. Wind & solar + batteries can be built much quicker.

What are you going to make the batteries from - lithium? That comes with its own host of terrible impacts that people seem to be keen to brush under the carpet.

The majority of lithium is extracted through passive evaporation of brine, not from ore mining. The impact is far less horrible than mining copper, gold, silver, platinum and so on. I'd wager that you have conveniently forgotten about these metals in your environmental argument.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#145

Post by danny_codes »

yholio wrote: post #142

The problem with nuclear energy is not, and never was, availability of fuel. The fueling costs are by and large negligible in the balance sheet of a nuclear plant. Nuclear has a massive capital cost issue, you need to invest a very large sum of money up-front and recoup it over decades; and you can start to recoup it only after at least 5 years of construction that can be bogged in regulatory and construction delays,…

Alternative solution:

Lean into private/public ventures to change the economics. We just make the private risk profile look reasonable. via direct investment.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#146

Post by xyzzyz »

jcfrei wrote: post #58
avmich wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When antinuclear activists constitute 90% of the population, the other people start to be called differently :( . Despite attempts on HN to help me, I still don't see a good way to deal with nuclear waste, which would be well explained.

It's all well explained - at this point you don't want to understand the solution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository I've cited this quote before: " Despite a long-standing agreement among many experts that geological disposal can be safe, technologically feasible and environmentally sound, a large part of the general public in many countries remains skeptical as result of anti-nuclear campaign…

> rather than risking that some guy in 10'000 years gets cancer because he recklessly trespassed into an old fuel depot.

The way I see it is that if human civilization degenerates so much that it loses track of where and what are nuclear waste deposits, there will be much bigger sources of death and misery than occasional radiation induced cancer.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#147

Post by ortusdux »

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.

Re: 3) & 4), Uranium seawater extraction does exist, and it is cheap, easy, and requires very little energy. I toured PNNL and viewed their uranium extraction project in person. It utilizes thin, high surface area fibers of plastic impregnated with a molecule that binds uranium and other heavy metals. A rinse with a dilute acid (acetic, citric, etc) releases the metals. The substrate can then be reused indefinitely.

The deployed system is fully passive - basically fake floating kelp beds, anchored to the sea floor, deployed in high current areas. They would be hauled in every 3 months or so, rinsed off on the boat, and then redeployed. Everything could be done using standard bivalve farming methods, but with lower impact on the environment.

They are now looking at a way to use the same material to post-filter desalination brine.

https://www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=4514

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCF3k_EbGiU

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#148

Post by Turing_Machine »

mro_name wrote: post #110

I find it amusing how easy we leave waste and decide for generations to come to deal with. Plutonium has a half-life of 24110 years – it will take about ten of them until it's gone. Just imagine the provision for 1 security guard's toilet paper for a quarter of a million of years. It's always pipe-dreams like 'somebody will eventually have a genius idea about it'.

Longer half-life = less radioactive.

By definition.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#149

Post by mro_name »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #148
mro_name wrote: post #110

I find it amusing how easy we leave waste and decide for generations to come to deal with. Plutonium has a half-life of 24110 years – it will take about ten of them until it's gone. Just imagine the provision for 1 security guard's toilet paper for a quarter of a million of years. It's always pipe-dreams like 'somebody will eventually have a genius idea about it'.

Longer half-life = less radioactive. By definition.

radioactivity isn't the only problematic property of plutonium.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#150

Post by mro_name »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #123
mro_name wrote: post #110

I find it amusing how easy we leave waste and decide for generations to come to deal with. Plutonium has a half-life of 24110 years – it will take about ten of them until it's gone. Just imagine the provision for 1 security guard's toilet paper for a quarter of a million of years. It's always pipe-dreams like 'somebody will eventually have a genius idea about it'.

Nuclear waste has appropriate and functional solutions on those time scales in deep geologic repositories. Finland is the leader here [1]. Compared with combustion waste from fossil and biofuel which kills ~8 million people every year and causes climate change, I have to say that the nuclear waste is dramatically better for the present and for the future. [1] https://posiva.fi/

the claim was 'long term sustainable' – burning fossils isn't a contender here.
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