Energy • Hacker News Board

Re: Energy

#31

Post by jacquesm » Mon, Jun 29, 2015, 8:40 PM UTC

transfire wrote: post #24

There are other technologies. Nuclear isomers for example have a lot of potential, but the fossil fuel hegemony really keeps alternatives from flourishing. We can be very thankful that photovoltaics was invented pre-WII, otherwise I doubt we'd be seeing it today either.

That's not really how it works. Technologies are either commercially viable or they are not. The thing that enabled windpower and solar power to take off is economic parity with other means of generating power. Photovoltaics and windpower being 'invented' (as if it isn't blatantly obvious that there is energy in wind and solar and that this energy can be captured in a myriad of ways) before a certain date has nothing to do with whether or not we see them today.

Tons of money and effort has been sunk in attempts to create more sources for energy and some of those have paid off and others are still under review. The 'fossil fuel hegemony' is actually quite a large investor in more than a few projects, their product is energy, not a particular kind of energy.

Re: Energy

#32

Post by jarvist » Mon, Jun 29, 2015, 8:41 PM UTC

transfire wrote: post #24

There are other technologies. Nuclear isomers for example have a lot of potential, but the fossil fuel hegemony really keeps alternatives from flourishing. We can be very thankful that photovoltaics was invented pre-WII, otherwise I doubt we'd be seeing it today either.

The first practical high efficiency (6%) cell was made in Bell Laboratories in 1954. It was the first PN junction silicon solar cell, the technology that still powers 90% of solar cell modules on the market.

http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200904/physicshistor...

Re: Energy

#33

Post by transfire » Mon, Jun 29, 2015, 8:41 PM UTC

andy_ppp wrote: post #26

Isn't decommissioning nuclear power plants still basically a huge bill underwritten by the tax payer? I'm not really sure about creating radioactive waste that has such huge half lives... From Wikipedia: Of particular concern in nuclear waste management are two long-lived fission products, Tc-99 (half-life 220,000 years) and I-129 (half-life 15.7 million years), which dominate spent fuel radioactivity after a few tho…

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/187917-startup-gets-fundi...

Re: Energy

#34

Post by mikeash » Mon, Jun 29, 2015, 8:42 PM UTC

arenaninja wrote: post #11

jonathannorris wrote: post #4

It's great to see you invest your time and money in nuclear power Sam. We already have the nuclear technology to solve our energy emissions problem, we just lack the political will to make the shift away from coal/oil/gas. Great leaps in the efficiency and safety of nuclear power systems will hopefully make the shift politically achievable.

I thought the biggest hurdle with nuclear energy was waste management? As in, we've nowhere to put the toxic dump that's produced that will radiate a few tens of thousands of years? Unless that's been solved, in which case consumer education would be a next step

Much of the waste problem can be solved by using reactors designed to use the waste as fuel. This isn't currently done, but there's no big technical reason it couldn't be.

For what remains after that, well, there's nothing particularly wrong with sticking it in some extremely sturdy armored containers, sticking the containers in a shed, surrounding the shed with a razor-wire fence, and stationing a couple of guards at the gate.

The paranoia over nuclear waste is weird. What if civilization collapses and people in the far future discover the stuff and don't know it's dangerous? It lasts tens of thousands of years, after all! OK, but we leave dangerous stuff all over the place. There are tons of barrels of toxic chemicals, ponds full of poison, and heaps of awful stuff just sitting around, and more being produced all the time. Nuclear waste is bad because it lasts tens of thousands of years? How about arsenic or mercury, which lasts forever? And sure, precautions are taken with those toxins, but not on the "this must be placed in a geologically stable area, packaged to survive the fall of civilization, and signposted so that all future intelligence will know to avoid it" level of precaution.

Re: Energy

#35

Post by jacquesm » Mon, Jun 29, 2015, 8:42 PM UTC

codingdave wrote: post #27

jacquesm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also a very large amount of snake oil in the renewable energy field and a ton of ideas that keep being recycled that have long ago been invalidated.

There is some of that. There are also very valid projects out there. I am running under the assumption that people can tell the difference. Frankly, most of the sketchy folk that I ran into during my projects were the investors, not the engineers.

> Frankly, most of the sketchy folk that I ran into during my projects were the investors, not the engineers.

I've seen a couple of both, but for the most part the engineers when they are wrong are deluding themselves as well, the investors that are sketchy seem to be more cynical and aware of what they are doing.

Re: Energy

#36

Post by chinathrow » Mon, Jun 29, 2015, 8:42 PM UTC

andy_ppp wrote: post #26

Isn't decommissioning nuclear power plants still basically a huge bill underwritten by the tax payer? I'm not really sure about creating radioactive waste that has such huge half lives... From Wikipedia: Of particular concern in nuclear waste management are two long-lived fission products, Tc-99 (half-life 220,000 years) and I-129 (half-life 15.7 million years), which dominate spent fuel radioactivity after a few tho…

Yes, multiple decomissioning projects are showing the true costs these days.

Germany:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greifswald_Nuclear_Power_Plant Decomissioned: 1990

Destruction started: 1995

Ongoing as of today....

Re: Energy

#37

Post by selimthegrim » Mon, Jun 29, 2015, 8:43 PM UTC

transfire wrote: post #24

There are other technologies. Nuclear isomers for example have a lot of potential, but the fossil fuel hegemony really keeps alternatives from flourishing. We can be very thankful that photovoltaics was invented pre-WII, otherwise I doubt we'd be seeing it today either.

Who on earth told you that? Hafnium doesn't work - DOE and DOD moved mountains in the nineties trying to get it to work and a number of people lost their careers and sanity in the process. But you go ahead and tell yourself that it's the "fossil-fuel hegemony"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafnium_controversy

(I'm sure you think muon-catalyzed fusion is right around the corner too)

Re: Energy

#38

Post by mikeash » Mon, Jun 29, 2015, 8:44 PM UTC

andy_ppp wrote: post #26

Isn't decommissioning nuclear power plants still basically a huge bill underwritten by the tax payer? I'm not really sure about creating radioactive waste that has such huge half lives... From Wikipedia: Of particular concern in nuclear waste management are two long-lived fission products, Tc-99 (half-life 220,000 years) and I-129 (half-life 15.7 million years), which dominate spent fuel radioactivity after a few tho…

The half life of the immense amount of chemical toxic waste produced by industry each year is essentially infinite. And yet somehow we're mostly content with chucking it in a landfill (albeit ones regulated and built to safely handle it) and calling it good. Drop the dangerous period from "infinity" to "some millions of years" and suddenly people get more worried?

Re: Energy

#39

Post by chinathrow » Mon, Jun 29, 2015, 8:44 PM UTC

sskates wrote: post #19

I always wondered why more energy wasn't generated from nuclear. On paper it seems like a great energy source. Kudos to Sam for putting not just his money, but his time where his mouth is. If only the rest of the internet could do the same!

> On paper it seems like a great energy source.

On paper the waste issue is still not solved. And the risks are still large (yes I know, coal, gas and oil has it's drawbacks too).

Re: Energy

#40

Post by DennisP » Mon, Jun 29, 2015, 8:47 PM UTC

andy_ppp wrote: post #26

Isn't decommissioning nuclear power plants still basically a huge bill underwritten by the tax payer? I'm not really sure about creating radioactive waste that has such huge half lives... From Wikipedia: Of particular concern in nuclear waste management are two long-lived fission products, Tc-99 (half-life 220,000 years) and I-129 (half-life 15.7 million years), which dominate spent fuel radioactivity after a few tho…

Nuclear power plants in the U.S. pay a fee for waste disposal. Those fees have accumulated in a fund, currently amounting to over $30 billion. The money was going to go to Yucca Mountain, until that project was shut down.

The long-lived fission products are a very small portion of the total waste, and if we only had fission products to worry about, the total waste would go back to the radioactivity of the original ore within three centuries or so, since most fission products are relatively short-lived. It's pretty easy to contain them for that long.

The great majority of the total waste, and almost all the long-lived waste, is transuranics. Those can also be considered unspent fuel, and fissioned for energy in fast reactors or with neutrons from D-T fusion reactors. The Russians have a couple fast reactors in commercial operation, one of which has provided 560MWe to their power grid since 1980. They're working now on using them to process transuranic waste.