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Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

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Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#41

Post by TheGamerUncle »

Krasnol wrote: post #32
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

ok but lol you are still obviously denying and acting blind to the fact that for many many years, that neither we will nor our lungs will get back, coal had to be ramped up and overused in Germany, Nuclear is safe and effective and until we actually solve the battery problem most of the world should switch to nuclear if we want to survive, Yale has tried to fit the numbers on many occasions but not even them can disagree that nuclear is required

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#42

Post by TheGamerUncle »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #18
Filligree wrote: post #7

Earlier 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 difference is the cost coming from handling it. The latest figure on the cost to handle Fukushima is $190B from 2016. The great thing today is that we don't need to accept radioactive releases from either nuclear power or coal. Simply build the cheap scalable option instead: renewables.

while cheaper in some contexts and somewhat scalable, renewables are nowhere near being as scalable or effective as nuclear, specially as tensions with China rise

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#43

Post by vkou »

Krasnol wrote: post #17
slt2021 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

japan has limited land, no oil&gas resources, so the nuclear is the perfect source of electricity for them, plus they have the expertise.

Japan has 34 000km (21 126 miles) of coastline. They import about 90% of its energy requirements. This includes nuclear fuel. So this is far away from "perfect" if you can get wind and sun without having to import it.

> This includes nuclear fuel.

Nuclear fuel is both relatively plentiful, and can be sourced from a multitude of countries, both Eastern, Western, and, most importantly, unaligned. A lot of countries have economically viable (for power generation) uranium reserves, but do not exploit them because global prices for it are so low.

It differs significantly from oil in this respect.

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#44

Post by locallost »

TheGamerUncle wrote: post #41
Krasnol wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

ok but lol you are still obviously denying and acting blind to the fact that for many many years, that neither we will nor our lungs will get back, coal had to be ramped up and overused in Germany, Nuclear is safe and effective and until we actually solve the battery problem most of the world should switch to nuclear if we want to survive, Yale has tried to fit the numbers on many occasions but not even them can disa…

> ok but lol you are still obviously denying and acting blind to the fact that for many many years, that neither we will nor our lungs will get back, coal had to be ramped up and overused in Germany

This simply isn't true. Coal use for electricity has been declining consistently in Germany and especially since the first shutdowns of nuclear plants (cca 2011). And the replacement was not natural gas as in e.g. the US.

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#45

Post by OrigamiPastrami »

akerl_ wrote: post #34
pfdietz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I strongly wish we had more comments like the one you're responding to. I find most comments here to be obnoxiously polite and I wish more ignorant opinions were publicly demolished as they should be, rather than continue to spread misinformation because it's the polite thing to do.

Not all opinions are created equal.

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#46

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

TheGamerUncle wrote: post #42
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is the cost coming from handling it. The latest figure on the cost to handle Fukushima is $190B from 2016. The great thing today is that we don't need to accept radioactive releases from either nuclear power or coal. Simply build the cheap scalable option instead: renewables.

while cheaper in some contexts and somewhat scalable, renewables are nowhere near being as scalable or effective as nuclear, specially as tensions with China rise

Nuclear power which currently has zero new commercial reactors under construction in the US while backsliding as an energy source due to cost and construction timelines now apparently is "effective" and "scalable".

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#47

Post by hollerith »

OrigamiPastrami wrote: post #45
akerl_ wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I strongly wish we had more comments like the one you're responding to. I find most comments here to be obnoxiously polite and I wish more ignorant opinions were publicly demolished as they should be, rather than continue to spread misinformation because it's the polite thing to do. Not all opinions are created equal.

I agree.

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#49

Post by dyauspitr »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #29
Krasnol wrote: post #19

Earlier 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.

Well then it sounds like they are progressing in the right direction. If in the future you get to a point where 80% of all energy is renewable and 20% are peaker plants that’s a pretty good place to be in. I’m all for nuclear but a 1 in a 1000 year event causing a nuclear spill, say by the Danube, that makes multiple countries unlivable is a pretty scary proposition. That being said, I have no idea what the state of the art is when it comes to nuclear power plants so maybe plants are very, very safe now.

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#50

Post by bamboozled »

baq wrote: post #2

> “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…

If you were a Japanese tax payer, would it be a success ?

The total cleanup costs were estimated to be between 50.5 and 71 trillion yen ($470 to $660 billion). For the cleanup, only 184.3 billion yen was reserved in the September supplementary budget of prefecture Fukushima, and some funds in the central government's third supplementary budget of 2011.

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