71–80 of 428 posts
I'm confident if we made the author an absolutist ruler he would find a way that's better than what we have. We just have this nasty thing called democracy, and citizens' initiatives and huge protests and so on.
And that's the real world we're living in, not some imaginative fantasy land.
The author, who gives every appearance of being funded by the industry, founded an activist group that claims: > Aim for 50% nuclear at least, as per the science. Which suggests a pretty cavalier attitude to "the science". edit: I take it back, she's in cahoots with Shellenberger and GWPF so it's the fossil fuel industry that she's supporting. I thought the timing was mysteriously exact for both her and Shellenberger…
The author says the waste isn't liquid, but also says that spent fuel rods are cooled in pools for several years. Does the water not become irradiated in that time?
Assuming the fuel rods have intact cladding, then the first shouldn't be happening in a cooling pond. However the fuel rods do give off neutron radiation, and a small amount of the hydrogen in the water is turned into tritium by that neutron radiation. Tritium is a weak beta emitter, it could harm you if you drank a lot of it. But it's not a long-term problem because it has a half life of 12 years.
The author, who gives every appearance of being funded by the industry, founded an activist group that claims: > Aim for 50% nuclear at least, as per the science. Which suggests a pretty cavalier attitude to "the science". edit: I take it back, she's in cahoots with Shellenberger and GWPF so it's the fossil fuel industry that she's supporting. I thought the timing was mysteriously exact for both her and Shellenberger…
I would like to see a MASSIVE increase in the amount of nuclear power in use around the world. AND, I appreciate calling out conflicts of interest, astroturfing, and artificial "viral" information campaigns. Thank you for outing the author.
The author, who gives every appearance of being funded by the industry, founded an activist group that claims: > Aim for 50% nuclear at least, as per the science. Which suggests a pretty cavalier attitude to "the science". edit: I take it back, she's in cahoots with Shellenberger and GWPF so it's the fossil fuel industry that she's supporting. I thought the timing was mysteriously exact for both her and Shellenberger…
Thank you. I believe all environmentalists need to curb their fear and absorb a healthy dose of science. It would limit the outpouring of outrageous, fear-mongering statements to leave some room for serious adult discussions on how to tackle the energy problems we face as a species.
So even if some super good nuclear reactor design was finalized, proposed, funded, and constructed on a wide basis, we're looking at, what, 10 years?
10 years of solar/wind likely improving at LEAST 5-10% per year. Compounded. Meanwhile, the nuclear industry almost always blows the budget, and if there's one thing modern America hasn't fixed its government budgets from being boondoggled.
I'm a pro-nuclear person, I believe that price-matured wind/solar can be competed with using a future reactor design, hopefully one that is scalable, meltdown proof, uses all the fuel/no waste, can breed from thorium, nonfissile uranium, or long-term nuclear waste, AKA a LFTR/MSR, although I admit those have real challenges.
We should probably keep existing nuclear functioning as load leveling on the grid, and continue aggressive funding of research/development of test reactors. But there really isn't a price competitive design in nuclear out there.
And fusion? Pfft. Even if they can sustain a reaction, I highly doubt they'll even get to fission LCOE costs, and fusion isn't as clean as people think, those fast neutrons degrade/irradiate the confinement equipment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Her analysis is fundamentally flawed. For a stable energy source, it cannot be solar alone or wind alone. Rather it needs to be solar plus battery and wind plus battery. Let's factor in the costs of producing maintaining and environmentally disposing of those batteries and let's see how the numbers shake out, ceteris paribus of course.
At what price difference does this become a non-issue? I.e. if wind and solar are 10x cheaper than nuclear, can we have a stable grid by overprovisioning like crazy and building distributed networks, coupled with limited storage in the form of pumped hydro and batteries?
Hydro is an excellent pseudobattery but it's not available everywhere.
The author, who gives every appearance of being funded by the industry, founded an activist group that claims: > Aim for 50% nuclear at least, as per the science. Which suggests a pretty cavalier attitude to "the science". edit: I take it back, she's in cahoots with Shellenberger and GWPF so it's the fossil fuel industry that she's supporting. I thought the timing was mysteriously exact for both her and Shellenberger…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The military has no problems detecting the chemicals that get leaked around bases Even they will be hard pressed to detect chemical polutants at the extremely low concentrations that radiation can be trivially detected. But also, they know what to look for. What about everybody else in the area who don't even know what they should be looking for in the first place? With radioactive leaks it's easy, but DOW's chemic…
I'm not sure what you're saying - people living in towns near military bases do not* walk up and down the local creeks with Geiger counters any more than they compare soil samples against lists of plausibly leaked toxic chemicals. Maybe they should start, but I mean, that's not a good normal. *Edit: Except when they do.
Hence, chemical pollution very often goes unnoticed for decades until somebody starts to wonder why half the babies in town are born without brains.
The author, who gives every appearance of being funded by the industry, founded an activist group that claims: > Aim for 50% nuclear at least, as per the science. Which suggests a pretty cavalier attitude to "the science". edit: I take it back, she's in cahoots with Shellenberger and GWPF so it's the fossil fuel industry that she's supporting. I thought the timing was mysteriously exact for both her and Shellenberger…
if you think that nuclear is an awesome energy source why shouldn’t you work for increasing its adoption?