651–660 of 709 posts
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Your first article is all hypothetical about the costs of storage tech rather than reality based.
Ah yes, the usual passive aggressive approach of dismissing contrary ideas that have not been fully confirmed with 100% certainty. And yet you guys never apply this to nuclear.
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> > because of some development in the future will make recycling of spend fuel rods feasible. > Context: They are responding to a complaint that isn't explicit here. That complaint usually comes in the form of: "we have nowhere to put the waste" or "Yucca Mountain was canceled and we'll never have such a facility because of NIMBY." So the response is more "We can store on site and don't need deep geological deposito…
I do not feel like you are giving me a good faith response, but I am responding in the hope that you are. > So the argument is: because we haven't managed to actually find a long term storage we can make up numbers about recycling and lifetime of the waste? No, that is not the argument. 1) Those lifetime numbers aren't made up. I'm not sure why you would claim so. You can easily check these numbers. (This is why I'm…
I am trying to give a good faith response, but I feel that the original article is not arguing in good faith and I don't understand your justification.
> > So the argument is: because we haven't managed to actually find a long term storage we can make up numbers about recycling and lifetime of the waste?
> No, that is not the argument.
> 1) Those lifetime numbers aren't made up. I'm not sure why you would claim so. You can easily check these numbers. (This is why I'm concerned about good faith. You are just saying that the article is flat out lying, not hand waving)
The lifetime numbers are not made up and I never said the original author was lying. However, saying that solar cells have an issue because they at this moment can not commercially recycled 100% (which is incorrect but besides the point), but at the same time arguing that nuclear waste is not a problem because we can ignore everything with a lifetime >300 years because it is potential fuel and could be somehow recycled in the future is dishonest. You can't in the same argument criticise one technology based on the current state of the art and at the same time use some hypothetical future development to say the other technology does not have an issue.
This is what I criticised, many discussions boil down to exactly this. Renewables are criticised based on some current state, while nuclear is good because all issues will somehow be solved through future developments.
You argued that it was OK to be handwavy because of NIMBY preventing a repository. I disagree that ignoring long lifetime components because they somehow could be recycled in the future is handwavy, that is wishing the issue away.
> 2) We don't need repositories. There are other sources, including our own acidburnNSA[0].
What do you mean acidburnNSA? I could not find anything on the link you provided.
> Storing things on sight is perfectly fine and we can do so for hundreds of years safely.
While I agree that storing things on site is currently the best solution. It is completely unproven that we can do this for 100s of years. Neither is it clear that the containers will last that long, nor the social/political structures.
>I think many miss a lot of the purposes of deep geological repositories and the strange constraints they have on them. One such constraint (driven by cold war fear) is that these sites can't accidentally be dug up by future archeologists or aliens thousands of years after we are gone and who may not understand our language. It is a weird constraint because it's assuming we have a nuclear war, wipe everyone out, and forget everything about radiation. This is really unlikely.
What do you mean? Understanding languages that are several hundreds to thousands of years old is not straight forward. We don't need to think of aliens either. We don't even have established information storage mechanisms that lasts that long.
> > there are massive uncertainties about not just the storage, but also the logistics of the transport, the maintance etc..
> Would you care to explain? We've advanced storage techniques in the last 70 years we've been using nuclear. What is the concern with transportation? We've had them fall out of planes (during a period where engines would also fall off planes, but this doesn't happen anymore) and hit by trains all without any problem. It sounds like we have room for mistakes/error. Those examples are success of real world testing.
I'm talking about that they are obvious targets for terrorist attacks, protests etc.. All of these increase the costs of transports. Also I recall some experiments or expert assessments for at least the french/German castor containers which showed possible (impropabale but not unrealistic) scenarios that they would not withstand.
> > Where are the real world examples?
> > now opened a long term storage facility is Finland
> It feels like you answered your own question. But here's France's storage[1] and Russia's[2]. You should also read [0] because it discusses easier methods.
You are moving the goalposts, first Onkalo is even by the nuclear industry acknowledged to be the first long term repository, and it can't have been proven to work having just opened. The French facility (and I assume Russian one, I don't speak Russian) is much more like a temporary storage, also not proven yet that it will work. I covered recycling already, it is highly uneconomical produces a lot of low rate waste and is only done for political/military reasons in France.
> [0] https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html
> [1] https://twitter.com/Orano_usa/status/1182662569619795968
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So now that we talked about the most radioactive and least radioactive waste, we might get to the stuff between. The amount is neither small enough to fit "into a single gymnasium" nor can it be ignored. It has to be stored for generations to come. It can not be reprocessed and the amounts are already so high that most nuclear countries on this planet store it in plain sight. Which isn't a solution for generations...…
Those things in the middle do sound risky. But what's the alternative really? What energy do we have that (i) scales, and (ii) comes at will ? Right now that's mostly nuclear and fossil. Now there's this thing called "global warming", caused by fossil fuels. That thing is poised to displace billions of people as parts of the planet becomes unfit for human life. That means wars, famine, and disease, whose scale will i…
No. That's just a proper grid with renewables. It works already within the single market of the EU.
> Now there's this thing called "global warming", caused by fossil fuels.
Yeah we've heard of it. Actually the country which is most ridiculed for turning off their nuclear fleet is the only one with an LAW to phase out coal completely. The only reason it took so long is because of the jobs in the industry. Other countries have other reasons. Some are just ideologically retarded. See states in the USA.
Nothing of all that has anything to do with nuclear. Nuclear isn't part of the calculation anymore. If you start building a reactor now in a civilized country where safety rules are relevant, you won't be finished by the time it's too late to save us from the results of global warming.
The topic "nuclear and global warming" is a straw man. It makes no sense at all.
> Nuke plants make more sense in France than they do in other countries.
You did get the news that it's just another year where France needs to turn off their nuclear fleet because their rivers get too hot? How do you even get the idea? I mean France has a huge coast, hills, whatever. There is ample opportunity for renewables. They just messed up their jump on the train tot the future. This is why they need to buy dirty coal power from Germany and the UK these days...again...
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I assume the fact that you didn't touch waste again is that you agree with me on that issue.
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Can you share some of these studies? I just don’t understand how you can power a grid at night with just wind and solar (no batteries). Even the US isn’t large enough that sun would always be shining somewhere.
Here is one from 2015 [1] (I recall some older and more recent ones, but can't find them right now). IIRC they rely on a number of strategies (not necessarily all in the same story) : 1. A much better interconnected frid 2. Overcapacity in both wind and solar, but particularly wind. 3. Operate e.g. heatpumps during times with lots of energy available to heat or cool coolant. 4. Adjust energy intensive industries to p…
I’ve still to read the article (hopefully I can find the full text somewhere) but looks like instead of batteries they’re proposing heat-based energy storage (and radical energy use reduction).
Edit:
The study you linked to actually just summarises another study (in about as many words as I did above):
Jacobson, M.Z., M.A. Delucchi, M.A. Cameron, and B.A. Frew, 2015. A low-cost solution to the grid reliability problem with 100% penetration of intermittent wind, water, and solar for all purposes, Science, in review.
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Nuclear power plants create large amounts of waste that remain radioactive for thousands of years. In the United States, most nuclear waste is stored on site at the plant. This is because there is simply nowhere else to put it. Uranium is a natural material and will eventually run out, much like fossil fuels. In other words, cross nuclear off the list of sustainable energy. Solar energy would be the most obvious sust…
Pretty much each statement in your post is incorrect. Nuclear plants produce tiny amount of waste, which we know what to deal with. Amount of fuel if you count thorium is enough for many millennia. And solar can not possibly replace other forms of energy production, not in a state it's in. I don't know why you are spewing misinformation, but you are clearly not going to solve climate crisis with that attitude
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Pretty much each statement in your post is incorrect. Nuclear plants produce tiny amount of waste, which we know what to deal with. Amount of fuel if you count thorium is enough for many millennia. And solar can not possibly replace other forms of energy production, not in a state it's in. I don't know why you are spewing misinformation, but you are clearly not going to solve climate crisis with that attitude
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Also, it looks like you've been repeatedly posting flamewar comments. Can you please stop? It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
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> The fact is the waste is negligible. Esspecially so when you consider the return of energy It doesn't matter how much energy it "returns". It doesn't make the waste less worse for generations. > Per square meter of real estate versus most viable renewables You can literally put solar on roofs of private buildings...if your local fossil/nuclear lobby allows it. I don't even get how this is relevant. Especially becau…
> You can literally put solar on roofs of private buildings...if your local fossil/nuclear lobby allows it. What about the 16% of americans living in apartments? that’s just apartments, not counting condos or other units where you don’t have permission to install things on the roof. what do these people do for power?
I didn't say this is supposed to be the only way of getting power. You can put solar everywhere. Not just on roofs and you might have heard about wind. That's a thing too.
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Your skipping power to gas [0]. At least for the US, how are you going to use nuclear to heat every building in the entire continent 30-100 degrees fahrenheit when a polar vortex hits [1] with nuclear? Nuclear has the opposite problem of wind/solar in that they need to be run at 100% capacity basically all the time because of their absurd building costs and low operating costs. Building enough nuclear to support that…
But i never said nuclear would have to be used for 100% of power generation. I was taking issue with statements that nuclear should be avoided, and that wind can be used for 100% of power generation - it can't. Nuclear is "base load" through and through. Yes it would be awkward to manage spinning nuclear plants up and down if you were targeting 100%, but France manages pretty well with 70% of energy coming from nucle…
How is that embarrassing state "pretty well"? They use dirty power from their neighbours to manage their support holes created through that narrow minded energy infrastructure. Just like every summer, they've been struggling due to too hot rivers and now those "cracks" in those reactors...France has shown that focusing on nuclear is sheer stupidity. Stupidity funded by the French taxpayer btw and it goes only downwards from here since their old fleet is not getting younger and everything they build takes too long and costs too much.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/nuclear-po...
https://jeromeaparis.substack.com/p/edfs-woes-are-a-bigger-l...
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> Germany being one of your best examples has put out vaaastly more CO2 than let's say France. Or look at Spain. 43% renewable power, less CO2 than France, and shutting down 4 out of 7 nuclear power stations by 2030. The solution to intermittent power is transmission lines, not nuclear. https://www.statkraft.com/newsroom/news-and-stories/archive/...
Spain puts out more CO2 per capita than France and I don't expect it to improve as they reduce their nuclear capacity. Just like our plan to deal with that and boost renewables is big gas plants with long contracts and insane subsidies.
I mean yes, but only just[1]:
Spain: 4.47
France: 4.27
Portugal by comparison is 3.96 with zero nuclear.
> I don't expect it to improve as they reduce their nuclear capacity
Well they do - see the projections in the plan I linked above. They are building a lot more capacity and transmission.
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> You can literally put solar on roofs of private buildings...if your local fossil/nuclear lobby allows it. What about the 16% of americans living in apartments? that’s just apartments, not counting condos or other units where you don’t have permission to install things on the roof. what do these people do for power?
Are you trolling me? I didn't say this is supposed to be the only way of getting power. You can put solar everywhere. Not just on roofs and you might have heard about wind. That's a thing too.
> I didn't say this is supposed to be the only way of getting power.
Your previous comments do sign you up very much in favour of anything other than nuclear.
> . Not just on roofs and you might have heard about wind. That's a thing too.
It certainly is, but to my previous point of 'per square meter return' .. Are you planning to organise a turbine with the local people of each apartment block ?
I sound facetious, but actually I'm not sure you know how energy is delivered.
Renewable's are amazing, the more the merrier. But discarding nuclear over it's waste isn't a genuine argument.
We've gotten better than the 60s/70/80 when old plants were built - granted through horrific experiences. That shouldn't stop us from pursuing cheap energy.
Thanks to technology we know how to even automate where humans fail. We know how to distribute more efficiently.
We also know how to use solar, wind and aqua. It will never be as efficient as splitting the atom though.
Again I reiterate - Why not both ?