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Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

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Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#111

Post by karaterobot »

effed3 wrote: post #51

All the analysis like this forget to count the cost of decommissioning the nuclear technology, reactors and fuels. Cost for end of life reactors are an order of magnitude those of contruction, and no safe definitive solution for fuel exist, both payed by -public-. The technology is not safe, a nuclear incident will span years and affect a wide area, people life, healt, and economic impact are to count in, not easy to…

> and no safe definitive solution for fuel exist

This is certainly wrong, unless the word "definitive" is used to shift the goal post such that it's effectively impossible to meet. Like the people who said, of Yucca Mountain, that "sure, it's been geologically stable for millions of years, but we can't definitively say there won't be an earthquake tomorrow", or "what if society collapses and, ten thousand years from now, a tribe of stone age explorers breaks into the concrete and reinforced steel facility buried under a mountain in the remote desert, and then goes 700 meters down, uses their lithic tools to bust down a few more steel doors, and gets irradiated? Those hypothetical 10-20 people in the distant future might die, thus we can conclude there is no definitively safe storage solution".

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#112

Post by cinntaile »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #22
cinntaile wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Since you kept talking about solar panels it was very unclear that you were no longer talking about the quote your mom got.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#113

Post by dang »

uoaei wrote: post #44
meghan_rain wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> operation of these facilities will require teams of people recruited, evaluated, and compensated by merit, not metrics of “diversity”, “equity”, or “inclusion” Indeed a gem. Or do you want a nuclear power plant in your neighbourhood managed by people who happen to be the pet-minority-du-jour on Twitter?

[flagged]

Hellish flamewar is not ok on this site, regardless of how wrong other people are or you feel they are. Your comments stand out in this flamewar as being distinctly the most hellish. Not only that, you've broken the site guidelines so egregiously elsewhere (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36744128) that I think we have to ban this account.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Edit: I changed my mind and unbanned you because your recent comments before these two threads don't look this egregious, although you've still been breaking the site guidelines and that's not ok. Please fix this going forward.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#115

Post by dang »

meghan_rain wrote: post #40
eaasen wrote: post #30

[flagged]

> operation of these facilities will require teams of people recruited, evaluated, and compensated by merit, not metrics of “diversity”, “equity”, or “inclusion” Indeed a gem. Or do you want a nuclear power plant in your neighbourhood managed by people who happen to be the pet-minority-du-jour on Twitter?

If you continue to post unsubstantive comments and/or take HN threads further into flamewar, we are going to have to ban you. Your account has been doing a ton of this, and that's seriously not ok. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#116

Post by krupan »

brazzy wrote: post #46
roenxi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll kill a lot less people than a plane crash.

It could very, very easily kill a thousand times more. That we haven't seen anything like a worst case scenario for a unclear accident does not mean those are impossible.

We haven't seen anything like a worst case scenario for [insert any energy source here]. So?

Covering too much land in solar panels could have dire long-term effects that we don't even know. Sucking too much energy out of the air with windmills could too. All energy sources have risks.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#117

Post by cma »

rayiner wrote: post #85
effed3 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What does the future look like when we have 10 times as energy available? What does the future look like when we have 10 times the efficency on energy use? This is the right question/goal. Denemark (IIRC) has sometimes reached the 100% solar/wind coverage, sure in a sunny day and low demand situation, but 10 years ago this was unthinkable. This appear the true way of prosperity, not the growt of availability/consump…

> What does the future look like when we have 10 times the efficency on energy use Energy efficiency improvements of that magnitude don’t exist. In most industries, getting a 10% efficiency improvement would be groundbreaking. These are limits dictated by physics.

It exists for some segments, it happened for household lighting.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#118

Post by Gwypaas »

After 70 years of trying we haven't built an economic traditional nuclear reactor. Even less a breeder.

It is like saying we have infinite fossil fuels because we can use renewables to create it from water and air. The interesting part of the conversation is the efficient allocation of money and people. In that conversation nuclear power never materialized.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#119

Post by genocidicbunny »

effed3 wrote: post #94
rayiner wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What does the future look like when we have 10 times the efficency on energy use Energy efficiency improvements of that magnitude don’t exist. In most industries, getting a 10% efficiency improvement would be groundbreaking. These are limits dictated by physics.

True, an overall 10% improvement is a big number, one order of magnitude is SF now. But for single technologies, more than 10% is possible, internal combustion engines vs electric, incandescent light vs led.. So reasoning on the global efficiency (resource and energy use, recycling of materials, capture of wasted energy, ) is the mainline to go. IN nature photosynthesis is around 100% efficient.

> IN nature photosynthesis is around 100% efficient.

If your measure of efficiency of photosynthesis is how much sunlight is turned into chemical energy, its in the low single digit percentages. C4 photosynthesis is something like ~4% efficient, C3 is lower still.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#120

Post by bob1029 »

effed3 wrote: post #60
rayiner wrote: post #37

Nuclear is the only optimistic energy solution—I.e. one that could enable continually increasing human prosperity, rather than rationing. Forget simply replacing today’s energy generation. That’s sad. What does the future look like when we have 10 times as energy available? Moreover, technology that will “level up” civilization is almost certainly going to be an outgrowth of nuclear development, or something similarl…

>What does the future look like when we have 10 times as energy available? What does the future look like when we have 10 times the efficency on energy use? This is the right question/goal. Denemark (IIRC) has sometimes reached the 100% solar/wind coverage, sure in a sunny day and low demand situation, but 10 years ago this was unthinkable. This appear the true way of prosperity, not the growt of availability/consump…

> This is the right question/goal.

No. I have seen the effects of this "goal" at scale in my personal life. Semi-non-effective HVAC systems that I now have to run 24/7/365, LED lights with weird flicker that perpetually antagonize me everywhere, vehicles with obnoxious start/stop mechanisms that absolutely induce premature wear (causing much more serious waste than otherwise). Oh yeah - my washing machine doesn't really fill up with water all the way, so I run FOUR cycles just to make sure everything is properly rinsed. This one isn't even directly about energy (someone was trying to save water), but it consumes more energy as a consequence. Is this what the environmentalists were going for with the fake "deep fill" selector knob on my ultra-high "efficiency" machine?

The people pushing "efficiency at any cost" are either completely blind to the idea of 2nd order+ consequences or are evil/anti-human. I cannot fathom a different set of options. Do you realize that you have to live on this damn planet with all these side-effects too?

I am completely over it. Let's figure out how to make energy carbon free and infinite. Let's stop fucking over the user experience in every possible way just so we can feel like we are doing something to "help".

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