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Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

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Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#21

Post by zokier »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #12

The article has a great flow chart in it that highlights rejected energy and energy services and where the rejected energy comes from. energy here spans the spectrum of electricity generation, heating, industrial usage, transport, etc. Basically more than two thirds of the energy is lost to heat, friction, noise, transmission losses, etc. Most of the losses are coal, gas, and oil. Important to note that the image is…

> The article has a great flow chart in it that highlights rejected energy and energy services and where the rejected energy comes from. energy here spans the spectrum of electricity generation, heating, industrial usage, transport, etc.

> Basically more than two thirds of the energy is lost to heat, friction, noise, transmission losses, etc. Most of the losses are coal, gas, and oil.

To uninitiated like me the chart was really confusing. In many sectors doesn't almost all energy get ultimately lost in some way? Like in computing all electricity just becomes waste heat, or in transportation unless you move goods up a mountain all the energy is just lost?

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#22

Post by BiteCode_dev »

cinntaile wrote: post #13
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about that. On paper, it looks like it. On practice, my mother pays 30€ a month of electricity in France, where nuclear energy is everywhere. She asked for a quote to get panels on her house, and they got back to her with 20000€. Sure you can move the needle by noting I drain way more power than her, than she heats her house using fossil fuel and that the quotes could be have been reduced in many ways. You c…

What do you mean wiring isn't included? How is a quote not the total price, including labour and material costs?

I mean that in France, the reports assessing the cost of the energy produced by wind turbines and solar panels don't include the wiring from the source of energy to where the energy is distributed.

Which is logical.

For some reason I don't know, nuclear reactors cost evaluation must include the wiring.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#23

Post by defrost »

bullen wrote: post #17

Maybe, but the heat added to earth has to be radiated away from earth. We have never added energy from matter at this scale before. Same for fusion.

You really should look up the daily energy reaching the earth's surface from sunlight and compare that to annual total energy use by humans.

The vast majority of daily solar energy is radiated away already and it dwarfs human energy consumption.

Climate change is a result of human activity adding more insulation (via C02, methane, increased water vapor) to the atmosphere and trapping more of the energy from the sun that would previously have radiated away.

The increasing global average tempreture is caused by humans adding more blankets .. not by humans adding more heat under the existing blankets.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#24

Post by audunw »

bullen wrote: post #17

Maybe, but the heat added to earth has to be radiated away from earth. We have never added energy from matter at this scale before. Same for fusion.

I was surprised to learn how significant the heat added from thermal power plants can be for global warming. Without technological improvements a massive scale up of nuclear energy would probably be a bad idea.

There are panels that can radiate heat directly to space though. So it has made me wonder if the nuclear power plants of the future could use such panels to radiate their heat directly to space. Essentially they’d be like reverse solar power plants, that also work at night. Wonder if it’s feasible and economical.

Personally, I think the future will mainly just be solar, hydro, geothermal and energy storage. As world population decline we’ll end up having more than enough materials if we recycle them. Energy use will go drastically down.

Question is if we need nuclear in the transition.

And we should have nuclear R&D anyway as we need it for space exploration.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#25

Post by polotics »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #12

The article has a great flow chart in it that highlights rejected energy and energy services and where the rejected energy comes from. energy here spans the spectrum of electricity generation, heating, industrial usage, transport, etc. Basically more than two thirds of the energy is lost to heat, friction, noise, transmission losses, etc. Most of the losses are coal, gas, and oil. Important to note that the image is…

This chart distresses me: solar at 0.9 is only about a third of petroleum at 36. It is making it look like new renewable (ie non-hyrdo) are a lot more sizeable than they really are. From Lawrence Livermore this is hard to swallow. If the boxes sizes are on a weird logarithmic scale, then this should be explicit in the legend.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#26

Post by aurelwu »

polotics wrote: post #25
jillesvangurp wrote: post #12

The article has a great flow chart in it that highlights rejected energy and energy services and where the rejected energy comes from. energy here spans the spectrum of electricity generation, heating, industrial usage, transport, etc. Basically more than two thirds of the energy is lost to heat, friction, noise, transmission losses, etc. Most of the losses are coal, gas, and oil. Important to note that the image is…

This chart distresses me: solar at 0.9 is only about a third of petroleum at 36. It is making it look like new renewable (ie non-hyrdo) are a lot more sizeable than they really are. From Lawrence Livermore this is hard to swallow. If the boxes sizes are on a weird logarithmic scale, then this should be explicit in the legend.

the lines are what shows the energy amount, the boxes have a minimal size for readability and are acting as the legend of the chart.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#27

Post by HPsquared »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #12

The article has a great flow chart in it that highlights rejected energy and energy services and where the rejected energy comes from. energy here spans the spectrum of electricity generation, heating, industrial usage, transport, etc. Basically more than two thirds of the energy is lost to heat, friction, noise, transmission losses, etc. Most of the losses are coal, gas, and oil. Important to note that the image is…

That chart overemphasizes waste heat. 1 MJ of heat at 50°C is a lot less valuable than 1 MJ of electricity. They are not interchangable. The 1 MJ of electricity could pump much more than 1 MJ of low-grade heat, and it would take a lot of low-grade heat to generate 1 MJ of electrical energy.

The parameter of interest is exergy. That is, usable energy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exergy

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#28

Post by zokier »

bullen wrote: post #17

Maybe, but the heat added to earth has to be radiated away from earth. We have never added energy from matter at this scale before. Same for fusion.

The total energy consumption of humanity is still very tiny compared to the total solar irradiation that earth receives. Maybe at some point that might become a concern, but not anytime soon.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#29

Post by goodpoint »

bullen wrote: post #17

Maybe, but the heat added to earth has to be radiated away from earth. We have never added energy from matter at this scale before. Same for fusion.

THIS! People seem to forget basic physics sometimes.

Any source of free, unlimited "clean" energy would be an environmental catastrophe because energy used is released into the atmosphere as heat.

We need sources that *capture* energy already in the environment, like solar, wind and similar.

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