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Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

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Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#151

Post by zapataband1 »

defrost wrote: post #23
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 t…

Interesting way of putting it, thanks for the explanation

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#152

Post by effed3 »

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.

Ops, true, overall photosynthesis is low, i remembered some higher capture eff. at some wavelenghts.. (just retina photon conversion is about 50% IIRC)

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#153

Post by Zigurd »

pyrale wrote: post #150
Zigurd wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The French have discovered that they vastly underestimated end-of-life costs. And the power having been sold and used at a price that did not fund those costs, they are well and truly screwed.

> And the power having been sold and used at a price that did not fund those costs, they are well and truly screwed. I don't know where you read that, but that's nowhere in actual reasonable sources. Actual serious sources [1] report funding is being set aside for dismantling, which may be significantly eased by the fact that these reactor are actually going to serve for longer than expected. [1], in french: https://…

https://energypost.eu/how-much-will-it-really-cost-to-decomm...

Whereas Germany has set aside €38 billion to decommission 17 nuclear reactors, and the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority estimates that clean-up of UK’s 17 nuclear sites will cost between €109‒250 billion over the next 120 years, France has set aside only €23 billion to decommissioning its 58 reactors.

That's about 6X less than Germany, per reactor. When is the last time that kind of project came in under budget?

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#154

Post by greatfilter250 »

Gwypaas wrote: post #118

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.

[dead]

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#155

Post by ianburrell »

zerodensity wrote: post #77
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…

Having excess energy is great! We can use it for alot of useful stuff. For example to: - Recycle waste products. Most (not all) things are recyclable you just need the energy. - Grow food vertically so more land can be nature. - Siphon greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere. - Desalinate Water

Many of those extra things can be intermittent and shut down when excess power isn’t available. Which means can overbuild solar and wind to satisfy everything but the worst case, and use the excess most of the time.

The result is that don’t need seasonal storage only daily storage. It is likely better to build more capacity than long-term storage. Although, generated fuels like hydrogen might work well for long-term storage.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#156

Post by adrianN »

hedora wrote: post #131
Gwypaas wrote: post #118

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.

The French managed to. I guess they have super-human engineering prowess. The trick is that they keep building the same obsolete US-based design instead of re-inventing the entire thing from scratch for each plant. Imagine how much more accessible computers would be if you could just copy the operating system from one "printed" circuit board to another, instead of hand-wiring all the transistors, then hand coding pro…

It is my understanding that the French massively subsidize nuclear power because they essentially run it as a job program to keep nuclear engineers employed so that they can build nuclear bombs.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#157

Post by marcosdumay »

zokier wrote: post #21
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…

The text line under it tries to explain the concept, but fails due to brevity. I believe (by looking at the numbers there) it counts as "loses" everything that happens due to energy conversion, and "useful work" everything that happens with the final form of the energy. If that's the case, friction inside an internal combustion engine counts as loses, but at the wheels of a car counts as useful work.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#158

Post by antonvs »

hedora wrote: post #131
Gwypaas wrote: post #118

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.

The French managed to. I guess they have super-human engineering prowess. The trick is that they keep building the same obsolete US-based design instead of re-inventing the entire thing from scratch for each plant. Imagine how much more accessible computers would be if you could just copy the operating system from one "printed" circuit board to another, instead of hand-wiring all the transistors, then hand coding pro…

According to https://www.ad.nl/economie/duur-en-gevaarlijk-elke-kerncentr... (translated with Google):

> "The leading German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin investigated whether new nuclear power plants can indeed contribute to a clean(er) economy. The answer is negative: all 674 nuclear power plants that were built worldwide between 1951 and 2017 were built with substantial government subsidies. Without such support they would never have come about."

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#159

Post by thatguy0900 »

antonvs wrote: post #158
hedora wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The French managed to. I guess they have super-human engineering prowess. The trick is that they keep building the same obsolete US-based design instead of re-inventing the entire thing from scratch for each plant. Imagine how much more accessible computers would be if you could just copy the operating system from one "printed" circuit board to another, instead of hand-wiring all the transistors, then hand coding pro…

According to https://www.ad.nl/economie/duur-en-gevaarlijk-elke-kerncentr... (translated with Google): > "The leading German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin investigated whether new nuclear power plants can indeed contribute to a clean(er) economy. The answer is negative: all 674 nuclear power plants that were built worldwide between 1951 and 2017 were built with substantial government subsidies. With…

Of all the things the government can and does subsidize, cheap electricity seems like a pretty good one, especially if it's clean. I suppose that does lead to sillyness like bitcoin farms though.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#160

Post by brazzy »

krupan wrote: post #116
brazzy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We absolutely have seen worst case failures for everything except perhaps dam failures. Your solar and windmill speculations are completely implausible, relying on nebulous things "we don't know".

But we know exactly how badly nuclear reactors can fail, we know exactly how widely nuclear contamination can spread, and we know exactly what it can do to people. The results if those things happened on a large scale in a densely populated area are not speculative at all.

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