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Nuclear power is the climate superhero too nervous to wear its cape

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Re: Nuclear power is the climate superhero too nervous to wear its cape

#31

Post by loopback_device »

kennend3 wrote: post #24
mnw21cam wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coal and gas power stations need cooling water in exactly the same way as nuclear. Regarding the waste, I'd much rather have the very small amount of nuclear waste produced by a nuclear power station kept somewhere nice and safe than the humongous amount of waste that coal and gas produce and spew out into our atmosphere. A coal power station releases more radioactive waste than a nuclear one. Even the renewables pro…

This! People like the person you responded to seem to think nuclear power plants are producing tons of high level waste per day. Fact is most of the used fuel for the operating reactors are safely stored ON SITE because there is actually very little "radioactive waste". If not for NIMBY disposing the waste would be fairly straightforward. were i live (canada) we have the "canadian shield" which contains rocks as old…

People like me don't think they produce massive amounts of waste. I am well aware how "little" waste material they produce. The issue is not the volume, but that you only need very little of it to completely deny a large area to living organisms like us for a very long time. Also, the on site storage facilities for spent fuel are only temporary holding pools until it goes off to a treatment facility, to then either be reprocessed for re-use or to be disposed of. Safety concerns with this stuff are not necessarily about the short term storage. Not that there aren't any risks associated with that – let's say, for example, a nuclear power plant being shot at with heavy artillery by a certain military? That'll certainly do.

There's this mind-boggling hubris that these materials can be kept safe and controlled under all circumstances, for all of their decay time. Sure, burying it under that mountain or in a salt mine is going to help, until you find that the containers have corroded, and you've now got it in your ground- and drinking-water. [1]

[1]: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0579-x

EDIT: Missing link

Re: Nuclear power is the climate superhero too nervous to wear its cape

#32

Post by loopback_device »

kennend3 wrote: post #24
mnw21cam wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coal and gas power stations need cooling water in exactly the same way as nuclear. Regarding the waste, I'd much rather have the very small amount of nuclear waste produced by a nuclear power station kept somewhere nice and safe than the humongous amount of waste that coal and gas produce and spew out into our atmosphere. A coal power station releases more radioactive waste than a nuclear one. Even the renewables pro…

This! People like the person you responded to seem to think nuclear power plants are producing tons of high level waste per day. Fact is most of the used fuel for the operating reactors are safely stored ON SITE because there is actually very little "radioactive waste". If not for NIMBY disposing the waste would be fairly straightforward. were i live (canada) we have the "canadian shield" which contains rocks as old…

In case the theoretical point of containment corrosion doesn't quite deliver, consider the practical one [1] from Brunsbüttel in Germany. The solution? If one rusts through, just put it into a bigger one!

I'm sure that's going to work just fine until the end of time.

[1]: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/rost-nagt-an-atommuell-f...

Re: Nuclear power is the climate superhero too nervous to wear its cape

#33

Post by jjk166 »

ncmncm wrote: post #6
melling wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After 40 years, perhaps the anti-nuclear movement could realize they were wrong. Burning all that coal for the past half century was a really bad idea. In the meantime, we patiently wait for another solution. Today we could be talking about being carbon neutral by 2070 instead of 2050 but we decided to wait. Now we need to spend money to “adapt” to climate change. https://hbr.org/2022/08/its-time-to-invest-in-climate…

After 60 years perhaps the nuke-boosters can admit that nukes were never a good idea. They have always depended on massive public subsidy to appear competitive. Now nukes are radically more expensive than alternatives even neglecting the massive subsidies. Each dollar diverted from renewables to nukes brings climate catastrophe nearer.

It's almost like a concerted effort over the past several decades to put up so many obstacles to nuclear construction that the cost of clearing such political hurdles can't be justified has worked.

The fact that nuclear costs only skyrocketed in the US while they stayed relatively constant or decreased in other countries suggests quite strongly the issue is political, not technical. In countries like South Korea, the LCOE of nuclear is less than half that of solar.

Re: Nuclear power is the climate superhero too nervous to wear its cape

#34

Post by kennend3 »

loopback_device wrote: post #31
kennend3 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This! People like the person you responded to seem to think nuclear power plants are producing tons of high level waste per day. Fact is most of the used fuel for the operating reactors are safely stored ON SITE because there is actually very little "radioactive waste". If not for NIMBY disposing the waste would be fairly straightforward. were i live (canada) we have the "canadian shield" which contains rocks as old…

People like me don't think they produce massive amounts of waste. I am well aware how "little" waste material they produce. The issue is not the volume, but that you only need very little of it to completely deny a large area to living organisms like us for a very long time . Also, the on site storage facilities for spent fuel are only temporary holding pools until it goes off to a treatment facility, to then either…

Have you ever seen a storage Cask used to transport/store nuclear waste after it leaves the pools?

How much energy was delivered to the cask when a rocket powered train hit it at 84 mph? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu1YFshFuI4

How much radioactive material was released?

Are you aware that in earths distant past there were natural nuclear reactors running? if you go back in time the amount of U235 increases. Go back far enough and you no longer need to "enrich" it to support a nuclear reactor.

Care to guess how far the radioactive byproducts from this reactor travelled?

Not sure about Ukraines designs, but here (Canada) our reactors can withstand the impact of a fully loaded jet slamming into them. Nothing is invincible, and i suppose if you it it enough you can open it up, but by then it would have been shutdown and had the fuel removed (a unique design of CANDU allows them to be refuled while operating, so you can remove the fuel this way too).

you can come up with all sorts of event and wonder if a reactor can survive them, perhaps a meteor strikes it? Perhaps military? Perhaps like Pickering it runs for its entire lifetime and very little happens?

There are also facts to consider, coal releases more radiation vs nuclear power plants. if you are concerned about radioactivity you should focus on that?

Re: Nuclear power is the climate superhero too nervous to wear its cape

#35

Post by kennend3 »

ceph_ wrote: post #26
exabrial wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For FUCKS SAKE: Nuclear waste is a non issue. You dedicate once, EXACTLY ONE, swimming pool to store spent fuel for an entire country. The lie of nuclear waste has been repeated so many time by uneducated fossil fuel lovers we’ve missed hundreds of opportunities to provide clean sustainable power for generations. There are some logistic and construction problems that need optimization, but waste is the least of them.

You are vastly over simplifying this problem. If it was that simple why did yucca mountain fail? It's not. Realistically every nuclear facility is gonna be a waste storage site for thousands of years. That's not being factored into the cost. Having one nuclear waste dump site per country means transporting nuclear waste to that site by truck or train. Good luck when there's an accident.

Good thing the people designing the transport casks never thought of that.. you should join their team.. Oh wait.. they did in 1972, and tested the designs?

How much energy was delivered to the cask when a rocket powered train hit it at 84 mph? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu1YFshFuI4

How much radioactive material was released?

What sort of accident do you propose would deliver more energy vs a train strike at 84mph?

Re: Nuclear power is the climate superhero too nervous to wear its cape

#36

Post by throwawayffffas »

loopback_device wrote: post #23
melling wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After 40 years, perhaps the anti-nuclear movement could realize they were wrong. Burning all that coal for the past half century was a really bad idea. In the meantime, we patiently wait for another solution. Today we could be talking about being carbon neutral by 2070 instead of 2050 but we decided to wait. Now we need to spend money to “adapt” to climate change. https://hbr.org/2022/08/its-time-to-invest-in-climate…

Where does this idea that the anti-nuclear movement advocated for fossil fuels come from? That's never been the case, as anyone who lived at the time of the early protests can tell you (or anyone who's parents did). Even Wikipedia has a whole section on that topic [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement#Nuclear-...

I don't think anyone thinks the activists are pro fossil fuels, but by stopping the development of nuclear projects they essentially served the fossil fuels industry interests. It's not an accident for example that Friends of the Earth was founded by money from an oil magnate. From the groups wikipedia page:

> stopped more than 150 destructive dams and water projects worldwide

While I empathize with the desire to preserve waterways, you can be sure that for each one of these dams that didn't get built a coal or gas plant didn't shutdown.

Re: Nuclear power is the climate superhero too nervous to wear its cape

#37

Post by rekabis »

loopback_device wrote: post #2

And the cape is made out of run dry riverbeds of cooling water. Not to mention that waste handling is still not a solved problem, but sure, let's put all our eggs into a single danger-basket of extinction (again) - what could possibly go wrong?

>waste handling is still not a solved problem

Yes, yes it is.

1. There are a number of sites that have the geological stability and impermeability for long term storage.

2. Thorium reactors can take nuclear waste products and re-process them down (along side their standard thorium fuel) into “radioactive waste” that only needs a century or two of minimal safe storage before it’s harmless.

3. Modern _non-breeder_ reactors produce very little of the severe waste that needs billions of years of storage. Problem is, many current reactors in the States are breeder reactors that are _meant_ to help build nuclear weapons, and so are optimized to produce massive amounts of highly radioactive waste.

Re: Nuclear power is the climate superhero too nervous to wear its cape

#38

Post by loopback_device »

kennend3 wrote: post #34
loopback_device wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like me don't think they produce massive amounts of waste. I am well aware how "little" waste material they produce. The issue is not the volume, but that you only need very little of it to completely deny a large area to living organisms like us for a very long time . Also, the on site storage facilities for spent fuel are only temporary holding pools until it goes off to a treatment facility, to then either…

Have you ever seen a storage Cask used to transport/store nuclear waste after it leaves the pools? How much energy was delivered to the cask when a rocket powered train hit it at 84 mph? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu1YFshFuI4 How much radioactive material was released? Are you aware that in earths distant past there were natural nuclear reactors running? if you go back in time the amount of U235 increases. Go ba…

> Have you ever seen a storage Cask used to transport/store nuclear waste after it leaves the pools?

Yes, I've even seen them close up, during transport. But that's not how they're stored in the holding pools. Not sure how the minuscule amount of time the rods spend in there during transport is relevant here?

> Are you aware that in earths distant past there were natural nuclear reactors running?

Yes, also not sure how that's relevant here? It's not like we built them... Background radiation is a thing, and life has adapted to it. A nuclear accident that ends up high enough on the International Nuclear Event Scale however is something you're not going to adapt to.

> Not sure about Ukraines designs, [...]

I think we've all seen in Chernobyl and Fukushima that you don't need to breach the containment to have things go boom. The unshielded auxiliary buildings and systems are the cause of worry. You're always just one unexpected failure chain away from disaster – unless the reactors are fully shut down and without need for external cooling, there's a chance it's not going to go well.

> There are also facts to consider, coal releases more radiation vs nuclear power plants.

Sure, that doesn't somehow automatically make other things safe® though? Also, while I certainly do not like coal power plants either, that's not quite the topic.

Re: Nuclear power is the climate superhero too nervous to wear its cape

#39

Post by GekkePrutser »

loopback_device wrote: post #17
exabrial wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For FUCKS SAKE: Nuclear waste is a non issue. You dedicate once, EXACTLY ONE, swimming pool to store spent fuel for an entire country. The lie of nuclear waste has been repeated so many time by uneducated fossil fuel lovers we’ve missed hundreds of opportunities to provide clean sustainable power for generations. There are some logistic and construction problems that need optimization, but waste is the least of them.

Not sure how regarding nuclear fission as reasonably dangerous automatically makes you a "fossil fuel lover", but okay. It's not like there aren't any other options out there. They just haven't received much investment in the past decades (except for a few places, i.e. geothermal in Iceland). I'd like to be educated about that radioactive waste lie – I've not seen it work (meaning no-maintenance, safe, long-term or p…

Finally someone with a realistic view on the waste problem.

To me it just seems we're exchanging the results of not tackling one long-term problem (climate change) with another even longer term problem. Externalizing to the future. We don't seem to have any other ideas.

Re: Nuclear power is the climate superhero too nervous to wear its cape

#40

Post by loopback_device »

rekabis wrote: post #37
loopback_device wrote: post #2

And the cape is made out of run dry riverbeds of cooling water. Not to mention that waste handling is still not a solved problem, but sure, let's put all our eggs into a single danger-basket of extinction (again) - what could possibly go wrong?

>waste handling is still not a solved problem Yes, yes it is. 1. There are a number of sites that have the geological stability and impermeability for long term storage. 2. Thorium reactors can take nuclear waste products and re-process them down (along side their standard thorium fuel) into “radioactive waste” that only needs a century or two of minimal safe storage before it’s harmless. 3. Modern _non-breeder_ reac…

> 1. There are a number of sites that have the geological stability and impermeability for long term storage.

And yet, not one of them has been developed into a storage facility so far. Also, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32471115 – having prospective storage sites that look nice and stable is great and all, just not the current reality, and likely also not a near-future reality.

> 2. Thorium reactors can take nuclear waste products and re-process them down

Would be good to have them, not a single one commercially operating at the moment though. China has apparently built a test reactor recently – curious to see how that develops.

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