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Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

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Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#511
post #450
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that misjudgments would have such long half-lives, I’m pretty sure that’s not the only possible interpretation.

Do you know we could keep people safer if we set car speed limits to 10 mph everywhere. We can make everybody wear safety helmets all the time. Maybe we could just prevent everyone from interacting with others, and we can just shut down all public spaces, and then disease would not spread. Guess what, there's risk to everything we do. The science for radiation seems to contradict with the US government has dictated.…

Yes, I am familiar with the concept but confabulating more analogies isn’t useful. What you’ve failed to establish is that this is in fact an unnecessary overreaction. I do find your mention of speed limits and helmets interesting, however, because I remember people using your argument against antilock brakes, seatbelts, and airbags to claim they were unnecessary and government overreach, but nobody looking at the data now would be able to say they didn’t have a substantial benefit.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So it matters when wind is providing 20%, but it doesn't matter when it's providing 100%. Of course. Because when there's no electricity, there's no electricity. > even though coal use is at a historic low, it's actually increasing You pretend this is a contradiction when it's not. Germany has just shut down its last reactors. So yes, the usage of coal will increase because when renewable generation is low you stil…

No. Germany already began shutting down reactors in 2011 and coal use continued to go down. The proof is in the pudding -- data beats predictions. The rise in renewables will continue to decrease coal use. Deadline for coal is 2038, with possibly moving it to 2030.

> The proof is in the pudding -- data beats predictions.

Tell me, using data, on a quiet night, where does Germany's electricity come from, and where it will come from this wondrous future of 2030?

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#513
post #489
post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it leadership or just lower requirements, no rule of law and suppression of any opposition (political or technological)? It's easier to build reactors when there are no environmental/safety/security concerns voiced, because those voice end up in prisons. China also builds up its coal power plants with high speed, while knowing that its air is already extremely polluted. Environmental concerns generally don't seem…

First of all you seem to be confusing their designs with the more common LWR design which is commonly used in Europe/US. Instead most of their new fleet is planned based on HTG pebble bed designs. These have much different cooling requirements and are actually being built at smaller size and being deployed into remote desert areas like Xinjiang. This design was selected specifically because it's low water and cooling…

Right, it's planned. So far they have a demonstrator with 200MWe output. It supposed to be scaled up to 600MWe.

Small designs are generally not cost efficient.

These reactors are not that new, since they are in part based on old designs, for example from the AVR in Germany. A larger attempt was this 300MWe pebble bed reactor, which failed spectacularly in the 80s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300

> my recent visits it feels like going to the future instead and the slow realisation they completely passed us by has set

Environmental Performance Index from 2022:

China is at place 160.

https://epi.yale.edu/epi-results/2022/component/epi

Check the electricity mix over the last years:

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-new-coal-plan...

It's mostly coal. Not much nuclear. They are building hundreds of new coal power plants...

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In France, for example, only 0.2% of nuclear waste is high level long-live waste and needs to be disposed of somewhere deep and safe. The absolute vast majority is low-level waste that we have not trouble with. See report on nuclear inventory: https://international.andra.fr/sites/international/files/202... page 14 The FUD around nuclear waste is FUD and politics

It's not only high level long-live which has to be stored deep and safe. Your source shows it pretty good, and therefore it's not "just" 0,2% but 9% + an unknown amount of VLLW. However, the best thing about this "report" is what's not in there: DECOMISSIONING :D France will be so full of nuclear waste at the end of this ridiculous era, they're going to protests about that over and over. Mo matter where anybody decid…

> It's not only high level long-live which has to be stored deep and safe. Your source shows it pretty good, and therefore it's not "just" 0,2% but 9% + an unknown amount of VLLW.

See, again you're bunching very different types of waste together as if they were the same thing.

VLLW is "Very Low Level Waste". Disposal: Existing surface disposal. And yet, you're bunching it up with high-level waste.

So, to correct my calculations. Deep geological disposal is required for: High-Level Waste (HLW) and Intermediate-Level Long-Lived waste. Combined they are 3.1% of all waste.

Disposal for Low Level Long Lived Waste (LLW-LL) is in development, will be near-sruface disposal, 5.9% of waste.

Literally everything else, that is 91% of all waste, can be safely disposed of using existing surface disposal. 5.9% will be near-surface disposal. Only 3% will be buried deep.

But sure, do keep on spreadin FUD on how OMG THERE'S HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF TONS OF HAZARDOUS WASTE WE DON'T HOW TO DEAL WITH.

What was that original FUD you were talking about? Oh, right: "Germany will have 300.000m³ of waste which needs to disappear for a long time in hope that nobody will ever get the idea of digging it out again."

Reality check: (conidering that the scary volume isn't made up) 9 000 cubic meters of that is something to be stored deep in the ground (and even if we don't have that storage, nuclear waste as it's stored is very safe, and can be stored for about a hundred years above ground).

> However, the best thing about this "report" is what's not in there: DECOMISSIONING

Oh look. Goalposts are wooshing by.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#515
post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low/mid waste is mostly just normal trash after it sits for a year or two. Going through the trouble and expense of burying all of it like it's spent nuclear fuel is just wasted money. We spend billions of dollars pretending lightly radioactive material is going to kill someone. Not one person has ever died from handling nuclear waste.

Well I guess the German government should have just asked evilos on the internets and not bother with all those scientists and regulations. Crazy them.

That is exactly what they did. Instead of asking people who know their shit they went ahead with populism, emotions, and scare tactics.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#517
post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The details: one tube on a safety backup system, so with a 0.1% chance of needing to be used, was shown to have the potential to corrode under strain ("corrosion sous contrainte") this led to all plants using that kind of tube being shut down for months because of extreme care. The irony being that this extreme care is keeping things extremely safe, but somehow in the news it comes out as "nuclear is unsafe". The rea…

While I personally share the opinion that the standard that nuclear is held to is higher than it needs to be — on the basis of the old "deaths per TWh" chart — this standard leads to them being both expensive to build and run, and also to it being shut down for months making it unreliable . I've noticed by trying that one cannot simply win a political argument by waving the banner of utilitarian ethics. (I'm hoping f…

> share the opinion that the standard that nuclear is held to is higher than it needs to be — on the basis of the old "deaths per TWh" chart

And if you ignore possible deaths from Chernobyl, how about the purely financial cost?

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, coal goes up.

Maybe you're reading the data upside down. Take care.

Still goes up. Does not matter how much you are trying to gaslight me

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/energy-crisis-fu...

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#519

As a French not expert in the matter but living near nuclear plants: - one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material - rivers are getting too hot to cool down nuclear plants correctly - nuclear plants are very unreliable, we almost got out of power this winter and next winter will be equally tough (only an abnormally hot winter avoid cuts...) - the government wants to simplify control organism and laws around…

"Not expert in the metter"

So why are you talking? Seriously, why? Lol

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#520
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blaming things on neglect or politics just isn't useful. We need power sources that have some resilience to those things.

Name a thing that is resilient to both neglect and human politics. We'll wait.

Some things are more resilient to those things than others.
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