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I changed my mind about nuclear waste

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Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#321

Post by goatlover »

connorgutman wrote: post #288
shawnz wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

My entire point was that we should strive for neither. We could half per-capita energy consumption in the US and still consume twice as much as Brazil. If everyone in rich countries stopped being greedy we could easily meet global demands with renewables alone.

Halving per-capita energy consumption has an economic cost in terms of reduced production, consumption and thus employment. Which will have a political cost in follow-up elections.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#322

Post by LorenPechtel »

robbintt wrote: post #184
robbintt wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share the details about renewables being cost competitive with oil?

chat.openai.com claims it is true, albeit without specific sources: Yes, there is a significant amount of data and research that supports the increasing competitiveness of renewable energy compared to oil. Here are a few examples: The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that in 2020, the average global cost of producing electricity from solar photovoltaic (PV) systems was lower than the cost of producing elect…

No. They are not remotely cost competitive, the data saying otherwise is a case of lying with statistics.

Yes, the cost of generating a watt-hour of power from renewables is competitive with fossil fuels. If you could put those watt-hours in a tank somewhere those numbers would work. However, a tank for a watt-hour is called a battery--and storing that watt-hour is going to cost you more than creating it.

In practice what happens is that renewables reduce the fuel use by gas plants. You still need just as many gas plants, though, and once you count those costs the renewables are no longer the cheapest.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#323

Post by hosh »

zellyn wrote: post #314
hosh wrote: post #307

While nuclear power can give us the most bang for the buck, it's main flaw has to do with the degree of centralization it requires. It takes the infrastructure of an advanced civilization to not only design, build, and maintain the facilities and equipment, it also requires the educational infrastructure to produce the personnel needed to operate them safely. This means that it requires a degree of centralization, an…

Isn't this a case where efficiency through centralization is a huge win for the environment?

Centralization is not necessarily a win. There are other concerns besides efficiency -- such as resiliency.

The efficiency gains we had with JIT global supply chain failing during the pandemic lockdowns is a great example.

There are worst problems than just resiliency. As an example, overharvesting happens when the people consuming a resource is disconnected from those who harvest it. Traditionally, local harvesters were also the consumers, and there is immediate feedback on the limits of a harvest.

It's made worse when we have been under a couple centuries of a civilization founded on the presumption that we have continuous, and unbounded growth.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#324

Post by xyzzyz »

geysersam wrote: post #219
rayiner wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

There is so much wrong with this comment I'm not sure where to begin. 0. Nuclear is not forbidden. 1. Nuclear power is exceedingly common in many countries. 2. Electricity production is not (by far) the only source of carbon emissions. Why have we also not seen any major action to reduce emissions from other sources? Or did the treehuggers also force people to fly, eat meat and drive large cars? 3. > Last best hope.…

> But sure, go ahead and blame environmentalists for the destruction profit driven market capitalism caused.

The alternative economic systems are even worse on environmental grounds, and their only saving grace is their ineptness and inefficiency, which limits the amount of damage they cause.

Like, have you heard about environmental disaster of Aral Sea? About how Soviet Union explicitly pursued maximizing fossil extraction as its core economic policy? About the environmental disaster of Great Leap Forward? Check out the list of 10 most polluted places in the world, where are they? Literally the only one that got its pollution under capitalism is in Zambia, all the rest are in former Soviet Union, China and India, which started doing market economy when they were already high polluters.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#326

Post by LorenPechtel »

qclibre22 wrote: post #109
stareatgoats wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GWPF The Global Warming Policy Foundation, a British foundation highly critical of the anthropogenic global warming scientific consensus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Warming_Policy_Foun...

> anthropogenic global warming scientific consensus Isn't there some serious, vigorous debate on this topic?

There's a lot of noise made by those whose ox is going to get gored by getting serious about the climate. There's no scientific debate other than in the size of the debacle. (For example, methane hydrate--it's not included in the IPCC reports at all because our estimates are still too wide. Note that on the high end it's *worse* than the high end estimates for the effects of CO2--and they will add. Earth has seen that kind of temperature before--most of the rocks laid down at that time don't have fossils.)

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#327

Post by wcerfgba »

gorgonical wrote: post #265
wcerfgba wrote: post #238

> But radiation hasn’t harmed anywhere near as many people as fossil fuels. The implication with both this statement and the map is that we should be comparing the total number of people who died from radiation, and the total from fossil fuels, and see which is bigger, but there are other ways of evaluating (potential) harms. Nuclear power and other radtech is not equally common around the world, and neither are foss…

There are a few ways of comparing these numbers. I think you're suggesting that something like deaths/kWh is a better metric, which I agree with; if we just go with total deaths than something like pedal-driven generators are the safest way to generate power, which is obviously an unhelpful statement. However, the greater point is that although nuclear power is dangerous by default because of the waste and risks of m…

I agree deaths/kWh is a better metrics, and I was probing into your point about how nuclear can be safer due to better engineering. Is the engineering alone enough? Can we engineer out the risky human parts? Perhaps today that looks like increasing automation of reactors, perhaps in future it means a computer could run an entire station without human inputs or oversight.

Also great points about perceived vs actual risk, and observability of effects, as other things affecting the political landscape of nuclear!

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#328

Post by skrbjc »

aktenlage wrote: post #299
yongjik wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Last time I heard, it wasn't pro-nuclear France that urgently built a new LNG terminal, it was staunchly anti-nuclear Germany (in 2023!!). So I have doubt about your analysis.

I hope you also heard that Germany exports electricity to France . The natural gas is mostly needed for heating and industrial processes and that cannot be simply replaced by nuclear electricity.

You're sharing misleading information here. While this is true recently, it's not like France has been consistently short of energy. Typically it's Germany that imports energy from France.

"Due to the technical problems affecting French reactors, Germany for the first time sold more power to France than it received from its neighbour, doubling its year-earlier export volume there.

France produced 15.1% less power in 2022 and the volume fell short of national usage by 1%."

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-germany-...

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#329

Post by LarryMullins »

idlewords wrote: post #313
LarryMullins wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thermal radiation is in fact emitted from the nucleus of atoms; all matter emits black body radiation. The reason hot things generally aren't considered radioactive is because that would pull literally all matter into the discussion. But that wasn't the point being made here. The point being made with the hot spoon example is that EM radiation doesn't make other things radioactive (except insofar as it heats things u…

I think you may be confused about the distinction between radioactivity and black body radiation. The fact that gamma rays, microwaves, visible light and so on are all on a spectrum doesn't mean that every EM emitter is radioactive.

Whether or not you want to apply the term "radioactive" to a black body emitter is completely beside the point, which is that EM radiation doesn't make things radioactive. Your objection is to the use of a word, not the physics, so I think this discussion has run its course.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#330

Post by Kon5ole »

helf wrote: post #50

the fearmongering and all around nuclear is deeply ingrained in the public consciousness. It will be hard to kill it. Sadly. There are all sorts of designs that are awesome but havent been put to wide use because its insanely expensive to even get permits for a nuclear plant (if it is even possible) not to mention the insane costs to actual build one. Economies of scale never took hold due to a couple of incidents (o…

The main problem is that nuclear is too expensive. You make a commitment that lats for centuries, which makes the actual cost of the energy way more expensive than most anything else. Our children for generations will have to pay for the "cheap" energy we consume today. This has been proven several times now, most nuclear operators in the world have been bailed out by taxpayers at least once, one way or another.

Separately from that there is the undeniable risk of catastrophic failure laying waste to very large areas of land for centuries. The reactor design is not the main reason for this risk, humans are. No matter how amazing the reactor is, as long as it produces waste it's unsafe during a war, for example. We've not had a century without war yet.

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