Can you cut the fuel into small pieces and keep them away from each other so that they don't reach such a high temperature?
Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel
31–40 of 357 posts
Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, sure they are reaping. 61.5% of Germany's electricity comes from renewable sources[1]. What nuclear generated has been replaced years ago, and they have a law to phase out coal completely. The only weird thing about it is that they're being hated on so much from the nuclear-bubble, while the bubble simultaneously drags the shield of innovation and environment protection. Meanwhile, there is negligible innovation…
> 61.5% of Germany's electricity comes from renewable sources Now. For years they switched to coal. Even today, Germany falls to the siren songs of the gas lobby, who promise a €1.5tn investment into gas infrastructure will be happily written off for the sake of the planet.
FYI: In Germany the same companies who have nuclear reactors, have coal, gas and renewables. They do not lobby against themselves. Therefore, your "lobby" phrases do not work for Germany. You should stop repeating that. It only shows that you have not sufficient knowledge to participate in this discussion.
Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, sure they are reaping. 61.5% of Germany's electricity comes from renewable sources[1]. What nuclear generated has been replaced years ago, and they have a law to phase out coal completely. The only weird thing about it is that they're being hated on so much from the nuclear-bubble, while the bubble simultaneously drags the shield of innovation and environment protection. Meanwhile, there is negligible innovation…
61.5% sounds like a lot, but how much electricity is needed to replace everything that fossil fuel is now used for? I think it needs to increase to 400% or so to do that.
We don't need to replace primary energy with electric energy in a 1:1 ratio.
An ICE car is 20-30% efficient, an EV is 90% efficient. Generally we are looking at a grid expansion, but it is not massive.
See this amazing chart on rejected vs. useful energy:
Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fact that their system cost is prohibitive in the real world? The fact that we don’t fucking have the slightest idea of how to deal with recycling that stuff on their EOL? Or would be the fact that mining cobalt and lithium in the required quantities to indulge on the fantasy of a solar/wind based grid would poison an inordinate portion of our environment? Or would it be the fact that every single fucking country…
You provide excellent examples of the bogosity of the arguments. Let me demolish them in turn. 1) System cost Sure, it's high. That's because we spend huge amounts of money on energy. ANY system to replace fossil fuels will be expensive, in the trillions of dollars. But if this is an argument against renewables, it's an even bigger argument against nuclear. Because nuclear is much more expensive than renewables. 2) R…
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel
#35> TEPCO speculates that radiation passing through camera semiconductor elements caused electrical charge to build up, and that the charge will drain if the cameras are left on in a relatively low-dose environment. It was the latest setback in a very long project. I found this interesting. I wonder how many of the ICs onboard the robot are radiation hardened, and how many are just COTS with the hope they'll last for t…
There's a company selling a radiation-tolerant TV camera for use inside nuclear reactors.[1] It uses a vacuum tube imager (a vidicon?). But it may be too big to put on the pointy end of the long, thin Fukushima manipulator.
[1] https://diakont.com/nuclear-services/radiation-tolerant-cctv...
Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other hand, the existence of coal power proves that releasing small amounts of radiation is fine, really. So we should be able to build a lot more nuclear power plants; it would take a lot of accidents like these to match the releases from coal.
The explosion of Chernobyl released a few thousand PBq of activity. Coal contains a few tens to a few hundreds of Bq/kg. You would have to burn something like 50 times the world coal reserves (and make sure not to use any exhaust filters) in order to match the radiation release of Chernobyl.
Chernobyl with its totally mad graphite design is not representative of safe designs like Fukushima, or French plants, or even Chinese plants...
Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, sure they are reaping. 61.5% of Germany's electricity comes from renewable sources[1]. What nuclear generated has been replaced years ago, and they have a law to phase out coal completely. The only weird thing about it is that they're being hated on so much from the nuclear-bubble, while the bubble simultaneously drags the shield of innovation and environment protection. Meanwhile, there is negligible innovation…
And here we can see how their electricity generation has fallen https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE...
And in France:
https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR...
Note that France has lost more nuclear generation than Germany over this period.
Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel
#38> “With the goal of completing the decommissioning in 30 to 40 years [...]" Can't decide if it's a success of nuclear or a failure. Leaning towards success: - ~900 tons of super duper radioactive material is more or less safely sitting in steel enclosures - we're (as a global civilization) slowly but surely figuring out how to move the hazardous waste to a safer storage, and it may only (ahem) take a couple generatio…
The Fukushima #1 meltdown was man-made, namely the absolute ineptitude of the Japanese government at the time. As disasterous as the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami were, those were not what ultimately caused the meltdown.
Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
The explosion of Chernobyl released a few thousand PBq of activity. Coal contains a few tens to a few hundreds of Bq/kg. You would have to burn something like 50 times the world coal reserves (and make sure not to use any exhaust filters) in order to match the radiation release of Chernobyl.
While I like nuclear on the paper and its theoretical env impact, this one is hard to ignore. Add costs of current projects which became ridiculous in reality. Plus as we see with various wars nuclear powerplants would be a prime target for terrorists or even state actors, they are certainly not considered as excluded from wars, in contrary. If we move to renewables, over 100 years there would be 0 reason to have a s…
Do pray tell calculate a world's energy system looping back while running purely on renewables, with electric powered mining, transport of ores, refining, panels production...
You will find that you cannot, cheap (for now) fossil fuels are subsidising solar panels and wind farms massively.
Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fact that their system cost is prohibitive in the real world? The fact that we don’t fucking have the slightest idea of how to deal with recycling that stuff on their EOL? Or would be the fact that mining cobalt and lithium in the required quantities to indulge on the fantasy of a solar/wind based grid would poison an inordinate portion of our environment? Or would it be the fact that every single fucking country…
You provide excellent examples of the bogosity of the arguments. Let me demolish them in turn. 1) System cost Sure, it's high. That's because we spend huge amounts of money on energy. ANY system to replace fossil fuels will be expensive, in the trillions of dollars. But if this is an argument against renewables, it's an even bigger argument against nuclear. Because nuclear is much more expensive than renewables. 2) R…
Indeed you have to look at the figures, no amount of wordage without computation will get you a true answer, still calling someone or something deplorable is, I am sorry, a dog-whistle.
So to clear the air I propose you look at this substantive set of answers:
https://youtu.be/Z4teA8ciuRU?si=9L-_bHawmM8MI5UA (cc to english should work ok)