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Re: Energy

#61

Post by ansible »

falsestprophet wrote: post #29

The 20th century was the century of carbon-based energy. I am confident the 22nd century is going to be the century of atomic energy (i.e. terrestrial atomic generation and energy from sun’s fusion). It's silly to describe solar as atomic energy from sun’s fusion as a distinct category from carbon-based energy, because of course carbon-based energy was formed by capturing solar energy from the sun's fusion.

It's silly to describe solar as atomic energy from sun’s fusion as a distinct category from carbon-based energy, because of course carbon-based energy was formed by capturing solar energy from the sun's fusion.

Fine, call it a 'carbon-cycle' energy system. Which may make it more clear that we're doing a great job on the 'burning' part of the cycle, but not so good on the 'capturing' part of the cycle.

Re: Energy

#62

Post by secstate »

hyperpallium wrote: post #51

I wonder what environmental impact truly large-scale solar energy will have. In that it is moving energy away from where it would usually fall on the ground/plants, thus reducing heat, less rising air, less photosynthesis etc. Perhaps additionally aid global cooling? Though that energy will mostly end up as heat anyway. (Of course it's far better for the environment than present coal/petrol/gas/wood, and their energy…

These are the sorts of deep questions that often go unasked as we humans look for ever greater efficiencies. I had to attend a seminar on geothermal wells presented by a group of ageing hippies. When I asked if any long term studies had been done on the affect of mass-geothermal well drilling and pumping cool water out of the ground and cycling warmer water back in, no one could even parse my question properly.

Re: Energy

#63

Post by DanBC »

mikeash wrote: post #54
andy_ppp wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says I'm not worried about all the "bad" things(tm)? To be honest I'm just asking the question that while we can all say "isn't it great how safe nuclear is" we still haven't 100% figured out the waste issue. Fusion... well I'll believe it when it's powering my DeLorean.

I'm not saying you're not worried, or trying to pull one of those "but this is worse, so you must only worry about it!" things. I'm just saying that you don't need to "solve" the problem, as demonstrated by how we deal with other toxic waste. Yeah, chucking it in a landfill and calling it good isn't ideal, but it's not terrible if your landfill is reasonably well designed. Nuclear waste is a problem, but not a big on…

How do I answer people who say that kind of thinking is what led to the fucking mess that is Sellafield?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31725365

Behind schedule and over budget is totally normal of UK big projects. But still, £58bn is a lot of money to fix something that's not a big problem.

Re: Energy

#64

Post by drcube »

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #44
falsestprophet wrote: post #29

The 20th century was the century of carbon-based energy. I am confident the 22nd century is going to be the century of atomic energy (i.e. terrestrial atomic generation and energy from sun’s fusion). It's silly to describe solar as atomic energy from sun’s fusion as a distinct category from carbon-based energy, because of course carbon-based energy was formed by capturing solar energy from the sun's fusion.

How is this anything but useless pedantry?

I think the OP is illustrating the pedantry of "well technically solar energy is atomic energy" by pointing out that, by that standard, so is coal and oil. In other words, I don't think you disagree with the OP.

Re: Energy

#65

Post by chinathrow »

hackuser wrote: post #52
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…

> Isn't decommissioning nuclear power plants still basically a huge bill underwritten by the tax payer? That's an important question, but climate change is a far larger bill underwritten by the tax payer (and millions or billions more who can't afford taxes), so I don't think the question is a deal-breaker.

Yes it surely is. We need to take everything into the equation on where to go.

- grey energy invested

- full lifetime costs from start of construction until fully recovered land

- inclusive recycling costs

- inclusive environmental impacts

Re: Energy

#66

Post by rwcarlsen »

mikeash wrote: post #38
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?

"Infinite half-life" basically means an isotope is stable. Half life is only one piece of the radioactivity story. Knowing how isotopes decay is also important - alpha, beta decay, spontaneous fission, etc - these differences matter a great deal w.r.t. how to safely handle and store spent fuel. And we don't just "chuck it in a landfill" - here is a good place to start to learn a bit more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository.

Re: Energy

#67

Post by andy_ppp »

rwcarlsen wrote: post #43
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…

Power plants fund their own decommissioning [1]. And they also (in a way) already pay for disposal - a 1 mill per kWh fee on all energy generated payed to the federal govermnent in exchange for the feds taking responsibility for disposal [2]. This fee has been paid for decades - the industry has no problem supporting that level of disposal cost (and could even afford a higher fee if necessary). There has been an enor…

Also the somewhat wide range is disturbing!

    The NRC estimates costs for decommissioning a nuclear power plant
    range from $280-$612 million.

Re: Energy

#68

Post by ansible »

jarvist wrote: post #49
mikeash wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> using reactors designed to use the waste as fuel What do you mean? The waste is full of nuclear poisons (a technical term, isotopes that stop fission by neutron capture). Reusing it means reprocessing to extract the Plutonium, which is burnable in a reactor (particularly as MOX). The chemistry required for this is pretty messy, and the radioactive environment (fuel from a power station is very 'hot' radioactively s…

There are various reactor design proposals (such as molten-salt), which can be used to burn a variety of fissionable materials. There hasn't been nearly enough investment to put that sort of thing into production yet.

Re: Energy

#69

Post by atomatica »

sskates wrote: post #42
chinathrow wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

Not sure about waste, can someone else here speak to that? Also deaths per unit energy are incredibly low relative to other sources.

http://www.transatomicpower.com

Re: Energy

#70

Post by hackuser »

Years ago, the story I understood was that renewables couldn't scale up fast enough to sufficiently mitigate climate change, and nuclear was the only answer. Recently, I've read that renewables have scaled up much faster than expected.

Does anyone know the current story? Can renewables scale up fast enough? Also, does the availability problem (i.e., renewables not being available when the sun/wind are not) prevent them from having a sufficient impact? I could imagine that, even if renewables weren't always available, their use still could reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to mitigate climate change sufficiently.

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