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I changed my mind about nuclear waste

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Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#241

Post by tcmart14 »

Eduard wrote: post #231
tcmart14 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or more importantly, would the same motivators for the military exist for private industries. My example would not be nuclear, but waste in general. I did 5 years in the Navy. Out at sea, by regulations, we have really strict standards of how certain materials get disposed. Clean metal, like aluminum cans from the galley can go overboard, into the ocean, and so can food waste. Plastic can't, batteries cant, etc. Do b…

> Out at sea, by regulations, we have really strict standards of how certain materials get disposed. Clean metal, like aluminum cans from the galley can go overboard, into the ocean, and so can food waste. So inconsistent. Literally trashy if true.

Not really. Clean metal is fine and so are food products. Clean metal can help form reefs and such, why the Navy sinks ships. Food waste, like apple cores and such, all biodegradable. But the trash has to go somewhere. So things that doesn't really hurt the ocean and break down, it goes in the ocean. Things that can actually hurt the ocean and won't break down get flow off the ship during resupply missions and get disposed of properly on land somewhere.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#242

Post by Accujack »

dauertewigkeit wrote: post #222

I wonder how much The Simpsons contributed to nuclear fear. No, but seriously, I only have one criticism. What about all the rest of the world? The developed world and the big developing countries might be trusted with nuclear fission, but there are still a whole bunch of countries who cannot be. So in some sense this debate is stupid. Deploy nuclear were it makes sense, but there are definitely places where renewabl…

Electricity can be delivered over thousands of miles with the right wires in place, so there's no need to spread reactors everywhere, especially considering we need relatively few nuclear power plants to meet everyone's energy needs.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#243

Post by Krasnol »

JohnBooty wrote: post #192
pydry wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, between the sheer 5x higher cost of nuclear power and people who hug trees your consided analysis is that the latter held back nuclear power more? It's like an Illuminati conspiracy theory except with people who dont use soap...

Nuclear power is only "5x" higher cost if you utterly ignore the environmental catastrophe of fossil fuels. Global warming will cost countless trillions and displace, sicken, and/or kill billions in the coming centuries.

I'm quite sure op meant 5x higher than certain renewables not fossil.

Nobody is talking about fossil anymore. It's on the way out just like nuclear.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#244

Post by tcmart14 »

remote_phone wrote: post #212
tcmart14 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or more importantly, would the same motivators for the military exist for private industries. My example would not be nuclear, but waste in general. I did 5 years in the Navy. Out at sea, by regulations, we have really strict standards of how certain materials get disposed. Clean metal, like aluminum cans from the galley can go overboard, into the ocean, and so can food waste. Plastic can't, batteries cant, etc. Do b…

I know people who were so sick and tired of trying to figure out where to dispose of their fluorescent light bulbs that they just threw them to the side of the road on the highway at night. It’s completely undetectable.

Yup, same issue with e-waste. It can be a pain to properly dispose of your broken 10 year old laptop. So many people don't do it. It just does in the trash can with everything else. Make it easy, people do it, minus a few edge case shitheads. But I'd rather 75 out of 100 people do it right and have 25 shit heads than 75 shit heads and 25 people doing it right.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#245

Post by goatlover »

shortcake27 wrote: post #214
ptilt wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you don’t know is that in the 2010’s the left wing had a agreement with the Green Party to stop all nuclear by 2050. That’s why we stop financing and maintaining a lot of nuclear plants. It turned out it was a bad idea..

While I don’t know anything about that agreement, I assume it would have had been a push for renewables. By 2050 it will be easily possible to power the world using renewables. Ending nuclear at that point doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me.

How do you know it will be possible by 2050 to go full renewable?

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#246

Post by Accujack »

connorgutman wrote: post #240

Call me chicken little but my beef with nuclear has always been about the people not the science. If we paint the Earth with reactors it’s a statistical likelihood that through corruption or incompetence someone will screw up. We can’t even keep 50 year old bridges from collapsing in the U.S and meanwhile every time a republican gets into office they bleed FEMA and the EPA dry. We currently have 55 power plants total…

>If we paint the Earth with reactors

No need. About 5,300 1GW reactors would be enough to supply all electric needs world wide. With renewables added in, the number is even smaller.

Electricity can be sent over wires, too, so there's no need to put reactors everywhere, we can keep them in secure locations if needed.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#247

Post by goatlover »

api wrote: post #168
sonofhans wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't believe you're blaming "tree huggers" for this, when the clear beneficiary is the global fossil fuel industry, who've been lobbying against nuclear power since the 50s. Shit, many anti-nuclear groups have been funded by fossil fuel industry for decades. At best, their protests were political cover for governments to do what the oil industry paid them to do.

The rabid anti nukes were more useful idiots. You’re right that the real power is in the fossil fuel industry which was happy to use them.

Is that really true in Germany? Chernobyl was such a big deal to the German public, making nuclear very unpopular.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#248

Post by Krasnol »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #116
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.

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 fue…

> The fossil fuel industry is not funding pro-nuclear arguments because they want to see 50% of their business lost to nuclear.

In Germany it's the same companies running fossil and nuclear btw.

They also expand into renewables now.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#249

Post by shawnz »

connorgutman wrote: post #240

Call me chicken little but my beef with nuclear has always been about the people not the science. If we paint the Earth with reactors it’s a statistical likelihood that through corruption or incompetence someone will screw up. We can’t even keep 50 year old bridges from collapsing in the U.S and meanwhile every time a republican gets into office they bleed FEMA and the EPA dry. We currently have 55 power plants total…

What's more concerning, a corrupt or incompetent government mishandling one ton of nuclear fuel, or the same corrupt/incompetent government mishandling the one million tons of coal that would be needed to replace it? (which by the way, would have approximately the same amount of radioactive potential due to the natural radioactive contaminants that will get concentrated as you use it)

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#250

Post by Accujack »

jheitmann wrote: post #195

> Less than 1% is radioactive for 10,000 years. This portion can be easily isolated and shielded How would this work? My assumption was that the pellets are fairly homogeneous. Does the decay happen faster in exterior of the pellet? Or is there some process to concentrate the radiation?

The pellets are homogeneous. The reprocessing of fuel involves melting or dissolving them and chemically separating out the waste products, with the remaining unused fuel going back into new pellets.

The waste products are spread throughout the fuel pellets evenly, so the pellets have to be deconstructed to remove them.

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