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I changed my mind about nuclear waste

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Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#111

Post by thescriptkiddie »

yellow_lead wrote: post #27

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?

The term you are looking for is "neutron activation". Irradiation alone doesn't make things radioactive, they have to capture fast neutrons specifically in order to be transmuted into unstable isotopes. Hydrogen and Oxygen are less susceptible to this than heavier elements which is why it is so hard to make heavy water. It does happen inside running nuclear reactors but spent fuel doesn't give off enough neutrons for it to be an issue.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#113

Post by LarryMullins »

dale_glass wrote: post #48
glitchc wrote: post #11

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.

Unfortunately nuclear doesn't appear to be a viable supplement. Suppose a grid with just nuclear and solar. Nuclear may be overall very stable, but solar is still not, and so you still need storage. The only difference is how much of it you need. But nuclear has a terrible problem: it's not really economical. Solar is much, much cheaper and therefore any economically minded person would build solar if they had a choi…

If you want the cheapest power, then burn lots of coal and don't hold power plants accountable for their emissions. Do you really want the cheapest power?

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#114

Post by nomel »

lanstin wrote: post #98
nickelcitymario wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While these are reasons to be suspicious, they do not counter a single point she made in her article. Her logic and her facts were solid. If they're not, I'd love to see a take down of that. But I see no problem with anything she wrote, I remain convinced nuclear is the only rational energy source left, and all this fear mongering about nuclear is causing us to slowly kill ourselves.

If we had started a serious decarbonization 20 yeats ago, sure, but solar is now so cheap and easy that it will be harder for large scale nuclear to ramp up in time to matter. Maybe those container nuclear plants and maybe the last 20% of base capacit by 2040. But slowing solar in deference to nuclear would prolong the era of high atmospheric carbon.

> so cheap and easy

I think this is a little misleading, unless there' a good story for storage and long distance power transmission, which I haven't seen yet.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#115

Post by whatshisface »

LarryMullins wrote: post #79
whatshisface wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are a lot of geiger counters around operated by various organizations. Every time there is a radioactive leak just about anywhere in the world, it is promptly discovered even if that government wants to keep it a secret. In fact it is practical for you to own your own geiger counter if you live near a nuclear facility and are worried about it. The equipment needed for general analytical chemistry, which you'd n…

The radioactivity accidents that are picked up by environmental sensors tend to be very large-scale. The little, nasty ones, like the mining source that was lost in Australia, tend to disappear.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#116

Post by matthewdgreen »

nickelcitymario wrote: post #54
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #18

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…

While these are reasons to be suspicious, they do not counter a single point she made in her article. Her logic and her facts were solid. If they're not, I'd love to see a take down of that. But I see no problem with anything she wrote, I remain convinced nuclear is the only rational energy source left, and all this fear mongering about nuclear is causing us to slowly kill ourselves.

The fossil fuel industry is not funding pro-nuclear arguments because they want to see 50% of their business lost to nuclear. They are not worried about losing huge profits to nuclear because from a purely economic perspective nuclear is not cost-competitive with fossil fuels. Hence it doesn’t pose a major threat, absent massive government-subsidized build-outs (which aren’t remotely on the table now.)

The fossil fuel industry is funding pro-nuclear PR because they realize that renewables do pose a major economic threat to their business in the short term, since they are now cost-effective enough to replace vast chunks of their business (even if not 100% of it.) Pro-nuclear (and coincidentally anti-renewable) PR is the most efficient way to protect their business. If they can convince the public [incorrectly] that the best way to decarbonize rapidly is to abandon/block renewable build-outs because “nuclear is the only way” then they’ve paid enormous dividends to their shareholders.

If your response to the above is “these random technical points are correct, what’s the problem”, then the problem is: those random technical points are largely a distraction from the important questions of how we decarbonize quickly. The fossil fuel industry understands this perfectly, because they have a lot of skin in the game.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#117

Post by wirrbel »

rayiner wrote: post #87
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #18

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…

> Extinction rebellion have a page on her (NSFW warning for some nudity in the banner image Controversial opinion: by scaremongering about nuclear power—which the west could have started adopting in the 1970s like France did—the naked tree huggers did as much to set back climate change mitigation efforts as the oil lobby. At least with the oil folks, they were pushing a status quo that was likely to stand until today…

> Controversial opinion: by scaremongering about nuclear power—which the west could have started adopting in the 1970s like France did—the naked tree huggers did as much to set back climate change mitigation efforts as the oil lobby.

You would have thought that France would have supplied the European continent with electricity now that Russia cut its gas supply, but it turns out that France received electricity from Germany even during this time.

It turns out that even new builds of nuclear power plants take years to be completed. Getting safety right is a challenge, the more we know about engineering and material science for nuclear plants, the more we know about challenges in building them, the more we need to do to avoid these risks, the harder it is to build a safe power plant.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#118

Post by Aloha »

lanstin wrote: post #98
nickelcitymario wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While these are reasons to be suspicious, they do not counter a single point she made in her article. Her logic and her facts were solid. If they're not, I'd love to see a take down of that. But I see no problem with anything she wrote, I remain convinced nuclear is the only rational energy source left, and all this fear mongering about nuclear is causing us to slowly kill ourselves.

If we had started a serious decarbonization 20 yeats ago, sure, but solar is now so cheap and easy that it will be harder for large scale nuclear to ramp up in time to matter. Maybe those container nuclear plants and maybe the last 20% of base capacit by 2040. But slowing solar in deference to nuclear would prolong the era of high atmospheric carbon.

I think we could build 100 plants in under a decade - it takes us being willing to build them assembly line like, meaning no more 'designed for the site' plants.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#119

Post by legitster »

refuse wrote: post #91
uoaei wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtually no one who is critical of nuclear thinks that "it's scary" is the best, or even a good, reason for not having nuclear. But loads of analysis have been done on the financials of different energy generation methods and shows very clearly that, except for those contracted to build and maintain the thing, no one sees a real benefit. It simply doesn't pan out to plan and build new nuclear reactors today, conside…

A lot of people say that new reactor designs will be a game changer but I can't help but wonder how much more benefit they'll provide over plain old solar and wind with hydrogen for storage and transport. After the Ukraine invasion, I think it's also worth considering future political instability in reactor permitting and design. I believe the molten salt reactors negate a lot of the problems we've had to consider wi…

If anything, the Ukraine invasion changed my opinion the other way. Germany had the largest investment in solar and wind anywhere in the world. But their dirty secret was that they were dependent on malicious petrostates to keep the lights on this whole time.

Meanwhile, the Nordics and France that when all-in on nuclear are enjoying relative energy independence.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#120

Post by bitwize »

People protest nuclear power because they do not trust the for-profit energy industry to handle waste properly. They expect the power companies to cut costs and process the waste in a slipshod measure that risks exposure to the environment and public.

It's not about green goo leaking into the environment. It's about human failures and flaws in the system we set up.

Solar and wind are cheap. Focus on a renewables-only solution.

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