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All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

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Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#101

Post by Goety »

mlindner wrote: post #60
Goety wrote: post #19

Nuclear is not a palatable political solution for a lot of people and it is easily simpler to reject the proliferation of such materials. The current 'theater' from a geopolitical standpoint for nuclear is China and it does not appear to be succeeding well. I don't expect France to succeed given all that has occurred. Smaller nuclear devices will need constant care and monitoring that it is highly likely people will…

It's not palatable because of poor education. We need to be including nuclear in the list of green technologies in basic school science textbooks. We don't.

Stronger controls on education about the nuclear industry is not the magic pill for success. The magic pill in my estimation is trust and time without accidents.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#102

Post by mlindner »

fsh wrote: post #64
mlindner wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear fuel is incredibly abundant. People talk about the small amounts of nuclear fuel available but completely ignore how energy dense it is. You need very little of it. There's vastly more energy in nuclear ore in the ground than there is even coal and oil combined in the ground.

Do you have a source for this? To my knowledge, uranium would run out in a decade or two if one would use it to supply 100% of the world primary energy consumption [1]. Coal is obviously way more abundant. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-glo...

Adding: your link is from 2009, so is rather out of date.

Here's some more info: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#103

Post by whatever1 »

mlindner wrote: post #96
fsh wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for this? To my knowledge, uranium would run out in a decade or two if one would use it to supply 100% of the world primary energy consumption [1]. Coal is obviously way more abundant. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-glo...

Pop science articles like that mistake "proven reserves" with "how much is actually in the ground". When geopolitics talks they look at proven reserves as that's how much we know is available and accessible in the short term, but it's not how much is actually available. Proven reserves expand whenever there is a shortage as effort is made to find additional amounts of the stuff. Additionally, most countries in the wo…

So now we went from abundant down to potentially abundant.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#104

Post by malthuswaswrong »

DisjointedHunt wrote: post #92
malthuswaswrong wrote: post #83

That's how you know none of this is real. If mankind was actually on the brink of extinction all options would be on the table. Especially one that offers free unlimited energy. Mankind does not have an energy generation problem. It only has an energy storage problem.

It could both be real and at the same time be true that these people don’t care. They simply want to use to genuine concern around climate to further their own ends.

Agreed. It could also be real but no where near as serious as they are claiming. Mankind went from the first manned flight to footprints on the moon in 60 years. I'm not losing any sleep about a mathematically insignificant projection that may or may not lead to something 100 years from now. 100 years from now if they want terraforming to strictly regulate the climate it should be well within their capabilities.

Again, these people aren't serious. And their actions prove how the threat is either not real at all, or extremely distant to the point of being irrelevant for us.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#105

Post by laurent92 »

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #91
laurent92 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a new thing? In France, the nuclear plants built between 1960 and 1980 have throttling but it takes more than 20hrs to cool down, making it inefficient to stop at night (hence over-provisioning overnight leading to price shifts to encourage people to run water boilers and washing machines at night).

But what is so bad about encouraging people to schedule their energy expenditure? Charging the electric car during the night sounds like a no brainer for me. Same goes for the water heaters. The only heavy argument agaisnt nuclear is NIMBY.

It makes it relevant to add solar during the day. This would allow reducing the baseline at night.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#106

Post by catlikesshrimp »

asteroidbelt wrote: post #11
arrrg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With renewables baseline doesn’t make sense. Nuclear doesn’t combine well with renewables, not in a way that would complete the picture. Meaning: you can’t build something that works with only those two building blocks. Even more: baseline is not at all needed with renewables. Renewables need to be combined with power sources that can be turned on and off quickly and on demand. Nuclear emphatically cannot provide tha…

> Renewables need to be combined with power sources that can be turned on and off quickly and on demand. No they don’t. Wind and solar energy output can be very well predicted for hours and days ahead.

First, you can't predict solar or wind days ahead in the same way you can't predict rain, days ahead. There are "weather forecasts", not cloud reading.

Second. Even if you knew two days ahead about wind speed fluctuations that lasted for 10 to 20 minutes. What, then? You can't inform the population there will be 10 minute outages, in advance, or ask them to turn off appliances for exactly 10 minutes, in advance.

Solar and wind aren't reliable. The plan is to turn on thermal plants when the wind stops blowing. In my very humble opinion, solar and wind aren't THE long term future of energy production. They have their uses, but the way it is being marketed obeys to political discourse, not reality.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#107

Post by fsh »

mlindner wrote: post #102
fsh wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for this? To my knowledge, uranium would run out in a decade or two if one would use it to supply 100% of the world primary energy consumption [1]. Coal is obviously way more abundant. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-glo...

Adding: your link is from 2009, so is rather out of date. Here's some more info: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...

I would argue that 2009 is not very much out of date when it comes to geology research. The sources also agree with each other:

Scientific American: "According to the NEA, identified uranium resources total 5.5 million metric tons, and an additional 10.5 million metric tons remain undiscovered"

World Nuclear Association: 8 million tonnes "reasonably assured and inferred resources".

This does not change the conclusion that the uranium would run out in less than 20 years if used to supply 100% of the earth's primary energy consumption.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#108

Post by option_greek »

aetherspawn wrote: post #66

Unpopular opinion in this thread but ... I don't want a world with nuclear. That makes me anxious. It's not if there will be a problem, but when . I'd rather the world spend money on batteries and solar/wind energy, like South Australia. And by focusing on that technology, the market will drive innovation in that class of renewables. That technology is reusable in other applications, like domestic (rooftop), EVs and…

The world is filled with nuclear energy. We are literally bathing in the results of a continuously running nuclear reaction if you think about it.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#110

Post by johnchristopher »

Azsy wrote: post #56
japanuspus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument does not make a lot of sense without detailing which power sources that can turn on and off quickly you are talking about. The only ones I can think of are hydro and gas-powered thermal? So you want natural gas over nuclear? On the other hand, your comment presumes that there is such a thing as too much power. Once hydrolyzers mature, we could use all of the current renewable power in Europe just for pr…

You're missing a lot of background on how these markets work. And i'm not remotely qualified to explain them. But, very broadly and simplistically speaking. We are not even remotely close to living in a "We have too much power" world. ( Markets will change drastically then.) All the nuclear supply has already been sold and is being constantly used 100% of the time. It never makes sense to turn off the nuclear power p…

> All the nuclear supply has already been sold and is being constantly used 100% of the time. It never makes sense to turn off the nuclear power plant.

Assuming the plant operations are running smoothly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Belgium#Hydro...

Which will be less and less the case for the European nuclear champions whose plants are approaching their 40-50 years lifespan of commercial support and safe operations (or so I am told) and it's going to cost a lot to replace them, more than going full renewables apparently.

In Belgium, at some points we had to shut down offshore wind turbines because there was not enough demand on the grid and turning off and on our nuclear plants would take too much time.

Gas plants don't have that problem (or so they say). So we are building some to compensate until we have enough renewables to shut them off for good.

Also, SMR are gaining tractions so who knows.

Disclaimer: I hear both sides, one claiming we don't need nuclear to reach our emissions carbon target and the other claiming we need classic nuclear plants to manage climate change and I don't know who's right.

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