621–630 of 676 posts
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Translating the numbers: Billions upon billions per capita is three-dollar bills upon three-dollar bills.
It would be one thing if billions and billions lead to success, but we are nowhere near a politically acceptable solution for nuclear waste.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_re...
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I'm quite sure that no one who asks "can chernobyl can happen again?" is actually interested in the response to "can chernobyl happen again _in exactly the same way_"?. This is malicious nitpicking. In the same way that I'm sure the victims of the next Airbus crash will be happy to know that "it didn't crash like the Hindenburg did".
Is it not malicious to scream "chernobyl!" willfully deceptively or willfully ignorantly confusing what can and cannot happen? More people die every single year from radiation in coal than have died in the entire history of nuclear power. Replacing all coal with nuclear would save more lives and health than fighting nuclear ever could, even in theory. And delaying coal to nuclear under the banner of "wind and solar m…
I’m as pro-nuclear as they come, but this is simply not true. No people die from radiation from coal.
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"While price gouging Germany for gas" Huh?!? Price is settled somewhere in Netherlands, what Russia has to do with it?
They send very little gas (much less than agreed upon) through NS1 to send a message and try to force-open NS2, which leads to very high spot prices
How this "message" of yours reach Netherlands?
Whatever is coming, price is defined in Netherlands, look for Dutch TTF futures.
It is like price of oil - Brent futures minus some discount
> which leads to very high spot prices
Russian gas itself is not traded on spot place(s). It is long term contract, but price follow dutch futures. How this "price gouging" is done, could you describe mechanism?
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For accusing others of being highly emotional, this post is incredibly biased and doesn't hold a fact check. - the Greens are the party most opposed to brown coal out of all German parties. - Gas is far less emissions intense than most other forms of fossil fuels, so it is a good transitional source of energy. - Germanies nuclear plants were built around 40 years ago, with a lifetime in mind of 40 years. The idea of…
> - Germanies nuclear plants were built around 40 years ago, with a lifetime in mind of 40 years. The idea of arguing they can run longer because nothing happened in the last 40 years is preposterous, and betrays a complete lack of understanding of how industry works. Not only are the designs lacking essential security features, every single part was produced with 40 year lifetime in mind. It's normal to do a general…
It's like trying to keep an old car on the road, except a few critical components are highly radioactive.
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Do you think those aren't solved problems? First, fast reactors yield waste products that principally live only a couple of hundred years. [1] And even to answer your original question directly, there's a whole area of study that's fascinating on how to provide long-term warnings. [3] Not necessarily in the Australian outback, Yucca Mountain is a great choice. [2] [edit](That area is adjacent to the Nevada Test Site…
Fast reactors are also in principle subject to Chernobyl-like criticality accidents (only worse) in case of meltdowns.
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The safety of any power source projects past performance onto future performance. This is a tautology, and not really relevant as we have 80 years of experience and nuclear provides 20% of US power. It provides almost 40% of Canada's electricity. 10% of the world's electricity. We have plenty of samples necessary to make an informed projection. The direct cost of produced energy is very low with nuclear - super low.…
> The direct cost of produced energy is very low with nuclear - super low. Only if you ignore the amortization of the cost of financing and building the nuclear power plant. That's fine if the plant is provided by the Nuclear Fairy; not so fine in the real world if we're talking about building new nuclear plants that have to be paid for.
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I agree with more nuclear but blasting waste (at least highly radioactive) to space is a problem as there's always a risk the rocket explodes and spreads the radiation on earth. At least I've always understood that's the objection and seems to me reasonable. Yucca mountain type solutions seem more palatable.
You encapsulate the waste so it survives any accident. This adds some weight, but not an enormous amount of weight.
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You encapsulate the waste so it survives any accident. This adds some weight, but not an enormous amount of weight.
If you can encapsulate the pellets to the point that they can survive getting blown out of orbit, catching fire and raining down over the human population without causing any harm - you can encapsulate them and throw them into Yucca Mountain and save the whole exiting earth step.
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Fast reactors are also in principle subject to Chernobyl-like criticality accidents (only worse) in case of meltdowns.
I mean, any bad design is subject to failure. Aircraft are subject to catastrophic failure too, so we iterate and improve until they're super safe.
Edward Teller in 1967 famously expressed his skepticism about fast reactors because of this safety issue.
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> The direct cost of produced energy is very low with nuclear - super low. Only if you ignore the amortization of the cost of financing and building the nuclear power plant. That's fine if the plant is provided by the Nuclear Fairy; not so fine in the real world if we're talking about building new nuclear plants that have to be paid for.
Some things are expensive - more expensive - but we should do them anyways because they're the right thing to do. Generally I refer to the 'nuclear fairy' as the government, whose job it is in my opinion, to make sure we do the right thing even when the market isn't interested.
It's hard to see how wasting resources and, all else being equal, doing something the much more expensive way would be "the right thing to do". If nuclear is too expensive than a renewable solution, too bad so sad.