201–210 of 252 posts
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Nuclear plants can run with those hyperboloid cooling towers as the sink for waste heat. They are just a lot more expensive to build, run and maintain compared to using river water.
You still need water when cooling with towers. Instead of heating the river you consume some of its water and release it into the atmosphere.
I thought the cooling tower design helped maximize cooling and minimize loss as steam.
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I believe this is why the USA recently declared that it's no longer going to follow the "linear no-threshold model" and "as low as reasonable achievable" principle of radiation exposure. In other words they're declaring that a small amount of radiation is good for you. Building a reactor without shielding and with a single open-cycle water loop should reduce costs, right? (Do you know what else reduces costs? Apparen…
The harms of radiation are massively overhyped. Nobody from the Fukushima accident died from radiation sickness or radiation syndrome, and so far there's been no evidence of long term elevated cancer rates either. Meanwhile the nuclear industry has been drowning for 50+ years from egregious layers of overregulation. It costed NuScale $500+ Million just to write the documents required for regulatory approval for a new…
There has actually been 1 radiation death
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>The harms of radiation are massively overhyped. >Nobody from the Fukushima accident died from radiation sickness or radiation syndrome, and so far there's been no evidence of long term elevated cancer rates either. You say these two things as if the second statement supports the first, but it doesn't. The dangers of radiation are very well known and don't change at all based on what happened at Fukushima. If you fir…
Interesting but people die (or are severely injured) in all kinds of industrial accidents all the time. Unfortunately, with or without regulation it comes with the territory of a modern industrial society.
Very few other industrial accidents cause effects that have to be dealt with for decades over 1000 miles away, even across oceans.
Nuclear power really is in a league of its own when it comes to risk. I am not aware of anything that comes close. Dam accidents have killed many more people and devastated towns, but the day after that happens, the area can be reused and the risk is entirely gone. The risks of nuclear power remain for decades or even centuries.
Finding ways to deal with that risk is fine, arguing that it can be managed is fine, but pretending that the risk is exaggerated based on the accidents that have happened so far is a mistake.
The risk is things that could happen, not what has actually happened.
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I believe this is why the USA recently declared that it's no longer going to follow the "linear no-threshold model" and "as low as reasonable achievable" principle of radiation exposure. In other words they're declaring that a small amount of radiation is good for you. Building a reactor without shielding and with a single open-cycle water loop should reduce costs, right? (Do you know what else reduces costs? Apparen…
The harms of radiation are massively overhyped. Nobody from the Fukushima accident died from radiation sickness or radiation syndrome, and so far there's been no evidence of long term elevated cancer rates either. Meanwhile the nuclear industry has been drowning for 50+ years from egregious layers of overregulation. It costed NuScale $500+ Million just to write the documents required for regulatory approval for a new…
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Finding something ideologically inconvenient doesn’t make it noise. There is simply no level of new carbon emissions which isn’t guaranteed to cause expensive problems around the world. That doesn’t mean we can’t switch everything instantly but that means we shouldn’t be building anything new which has a safe alternative — and in the case of electric power generation or cars, that’s especially clear because burning f…
I don't find it ideologically inconvenient, I just don't think it's a realistic take. There are situations for power generation where fossil fuels are the only viable alternatives hence why I mentioned them. Now if you had infinite resources and infinite money then that's probably not true, but we don't live in a world like that.
That doesn't make them safe. Eventually there situations will have to find a way to do without fossil fuels if we want to keep this planet habitable.
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I don't find it ideologically inconvenient, I just don't think it's a realistic take. There are situations for power generation where fossil fuels are the only viable alternatives hence why I mentioned them. Now if you had infinite resources and infinite money then that's probably not true, but we don't live in a world like that.
> There are situations for power generation where fossil fuels are the only viable alternatives That doesn't make them safe. Eventually there situations will have to find a way to do without fossil fuels if we want to keep this planet habitable.
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Backing this up, these high numbers are for typical cooling towers where they vent to atmosphere. Once you get into closed loop PWRs the numbers get crazy. Actual figures for Naval Nuclear plants are classified, but as a nice round number example if you pressurize the secondary loop to 250psi you end up with about 1,725 kJ/kilogram to boil it. Absolutely terrifying stuff.
One of us seems to have our numbers wrong. 1,725 kJ/kg is 1,725 J/g, which is less than the enthalpy of vapourisation I'd quoted. (Though yes, I understand your point: pressurisation raises boiling point, and so far as I'm aware, vapourisation energy.)
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Solar panels keep getting better and cheaper every year. Can't say the same for nuclear.
I believe this is why the USA recently declared that it's no longer going to follow the "linear no-threshold model" and "as low as reasonable achievable" principle of radiation exposure. In other words they're declaring that a small amount of radiation is good for you. Building a reactor without shielding and with a single open-cycle water loop should reduce costs, right? (Do you know what else reduces costs? Apparen…
Linear no-threshold being false doesn't necessarily mean a little bit of radiation is good for you, though there is some shaky data to suggest that might be true, just that small amounts of radiation are not as proportionally bad as large amounts.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The harms of radiation are massively overhyped. Nobody from the Fukushima accident died from radiation sickness or radiation syndrome, and so far there's been no evidence of long term elevated cancer rates either. Meanwhile the nuclear industry has been drowning for 50+ years from egregious layers of overregulation. It costed NuScale $500+ Million just to write the documents required for regulatory approval for a new…
How can writing documents possibly cost $500,000,000?
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Interesting but people die (or are severely injured) in all kinds of industrial accidents all the time. Unfortunately, with or without regulation it comes with the territory of a modern industrial society.
>Interesting but people die (or are severely injured) in all kinds of industrial accidents all the time. Very few other industrial accidents cause effects that have to be dealt with for decades over 1000 miles away, even across oceans. Nuclear power really is in a league of its own when it comes to risk. I am not aware of anything that comes close. Dam accidents have killed many more people and devastated towns, but…
There are estimates that pollution from European coal power plants cause more deaths EACH year in Europe, than the total estimated deaths from Chernobyl accidents (most pessimistic estimate 4000-8000 deaths).
For example, just the Great Smog event that affected London, England, in December 1952 caused by modern estimate 10,000–12,000 deaths.