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A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

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Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#121

Post by WalterBright »

crdoconnor wrote: post #39
lucb1e wrote: post #28

I see so many people against nuclear but I wonder if they read books such as Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air. As I understand it, either we kill ourselves fast, or we use this as a stop-gap until we can figure it out for real. With newer reactors being much better, maybe another generation (helped by more implementations) will even be good enough not to have to be a stop-gap solution.

Three questions that I have never had satisfactorily answered by nuclear advocates: * If nuclear is that safe, why don't we eliminate or at least, significantly raise the nuclear liability cap? The nuclear industry keeps trying to sell us (this article included) on the idea that disasters are now close to impossible. It'd be an easier sell if they voluntarily increased their liability, to, say $150-400 billion and fo…

Give me a billion and I'll write you a policy for $400b. No problemo!

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#122

Post by cm2187 »

ben_w wrote: post #114
ThomPete wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uranium can be reused so that pretty much solves that. Its not too expensive its very cheap, its the regulation around that makes it expensive which can be solved too.

> Uranium can be reused so that pretty much solves that. No it can’t. Any given atom stops being uranium after it fissions. Some of the waste can be reprocessed because not all is fissioned, but even then there is a lot of literally untouchable waste left over — well, literally untouchable if you want to live: https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/

But I don’t get this untouchable concept. Lava is untouchable. Deep oceans are unreachable. Why is it a requirement that we have to be able to go and touch every single spot on earth? What is the problem with having one minuscule location on earth where you are not supposed to go and stock pile this material there? It is contained, we have full control over it, unlike the immense volumes of chemicals currently released in rivers or the atmosphere. And there are already countless locations where you are not supposed to go because it is private or military property, polluted with chemicals, or too cold or too warm for humans, or a protected natural reserve, etc.

I don’t think waste is a legitimate concern of nuclear energy, as long as they are stored and protected responsively. The risk of an uncontained explosion of a reactor is a more legitimate concern. But I understand many modern designs like molten salt reactors reduce this risk to pretty much zero.

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#125

Post by sien »

credit_guy wrote: post #63
hunta2097 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great insight. I am fond of the phrase "final generation nuclear". We need 30 years of nuclear fission before we can sustain fusion. I think we're already past the point where some nuclear risk is acceptable. It's not a zero sum game - fossel fuels are already being used with risk. We need to take some (calculated) risks again.

> We need 30 years of nuclear fission before we can sustain fusion. Not sure where that comes from. I don't think we'll have competitive fusion in the next 50 years. Sure, people who talk about ITER draw (quite optimistic) plans for when we'll be able to get more from the fusion reaction than what energy we pump in, but they forget to mention that's not the end of the story. Fusion may be clean, but it's terribly ine…

There are a number of interesting companies looking at fusion.

High Temperature Superconductors change what you can do for Tokomaks.

In the US Commonwealth Fusion Systems are exploring these paths:

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

In the UK Tokomak energy are exploring ideas as well:

https://www.tokamakenergy.co.uk/

This video explains why high temperature super conductors can enhance fusion's prospects:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk&t=3642s

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#126

Post by pgeorgi »

eukgoekoko wrote: post #45
fogetti wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Net wind energy percentage in Germany in 2017 was 18.9%. And that's a fact. Which clearly voids your argument. Yes, there are limitations how high it can go and I don't expect it to be anywhere near 100%. But it's clearly a huge source of energy already and it will increase even more in the coming years. The reason why it totals 1.5% is because it costs money to replace existing power sources and the lobby power of t…

I wouldn't call Germany's Energiewende a success story since Germany has the highest electricity prices in EU: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... You may call it "the lobby power" but there seems to be no choice for the heavy industry than to use coal, thanks to nuclear phase-out.

> the highest electricity prices in EU

The renewable parts of that is bound to go down: As part of the push to renewables, when spinning up capacity, you get prices guaranteed for 20 years. The different to market rates is spread across the whole market ("EEG Umlage", "renewable energy law contribution").

But: that law is approaching 20 years now and so in 2021 the first installations will drop out of that subsidy scheme. Prices and guaranteed rates were dropping ever since, and so will the subsidies - with a delay of 20 years.

> there seems to be no choice for the heavy industry than to use coal

Comparing the numbers in 2000 and 2017 (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromerzeugung#Bruttostromerze...), coal used to account for more than 50% of power generation in 2000, down to 36.6% in 2017. Even in absolute numbers to account for the rise in total power production, coal is less in 2017 than in 2000. Petrochemicals are up from 9.5% to 14.1% though.

Non-regenerative power was 436.5 TWh in 2017, down from 538.7 TWh in 2000.

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#127

Post by PavlovsCat »

ThomPete wrote: post #67
8bitsrule wrote: post #64

Now there'a title that Ed Bernays would be proud of. 'A new generation approves.' So, where's this new generation? What demonstrates their love? Show me pictures of a dozen, or it didn't happen. Then, show how that scales with full knowledge of history, not just free jelly babies. Fantasy fiction isn't going to solve our dilemma. Advanced, less toxic technology will. Nuclear has had its chance.

Nuclear is the safest, most scaleable, greenest most reliable power source we know of bar none and blows every other alternative energy out of the water at 1000w per m2. Far less people have because of nuclear power in all its time than gets killed by nature in a year. The environmentalist not rationality kille nuclear.

> Nuclear is the safest, most scaleable, greenest most reliable power source we know of bar none

That doesn't change the article we have here.

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#128

Post by PavlovsCat »

mikestew wrote: post #4
mimixco wrote: post #2

No. Nuclear power creates the most dangerous waste known to mankind and we have no way of mitigating or eliminating it. Nuclear isn't cost effective on an ongoing operating basis (compared with natural gas). When you add the costs of closing and "cleaning up" a plant site, which run into the billions of dollars for each plant, nuclear just doesn't make sense. Nuclear is far from "carbon neutral." The process of extra…

Nuclear power creates the most dangerous waste known to mankind From what I've been reading, seems CO2 tops that list. One can bury nuclear waste in the Nevada desert, keep everyone a few hundred miles away, and it'll be fine. From what I learned in high school chemistry class, a gas wants to expand to fill its container, so the CO2 produced by Chinese coal-fired plants eventually makes its way to me. The process of…

Was this included in what you've been reading?

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

> One can bury nuclear waste in the Nevada desert, keep everyone a few hundred miles away, and it'll be fine.

Yeah, for a million years. The ideas people have come up with to prevent future generations just blowing it up without knowing what they're doing, and irradiating the whole planet, are quite interesting. If you have a good idea, people will be all ears, because we don't have a plan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_radioactive_waste_m...

> Because some radioactive species have half-lives longer than one million years, even very low container leakage and radionuclide migration rates must be taken into account.[21] Moreover, it may require more than one half-life until some nuclear materials lose enough radioactivity to no longer be lethal to living organisms. A 1983 review of the Swedish radioactive waste disposal program by the National Academy of Sciences found that country’s estimate of several hundred thousand years—perhaps up to one million years—being necessary for waste isolation "fully justified."

Look through all that. It's ideas and proposals and things we're trying. We don't even have one thing you could call "a solution", and haven't found one in decades.

> From what I learned in high school chemistry class, a gas wants to expand to fill its container

Just plant trees, then store the wood. Okay, it's probably more complex than that, or there's much better ways. But this is no anywhere near the "a bunch of proposals, and good luck to future generations" level that nuclear waste is.

You're basically saying "CO2 is a gas so it will move to me, and nuclear waste can be buried and you just have to stay a few hundred miles away". There is more to it than that. (apart than CO2 moving to you probably being a good thing, because then you can trap it)

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#129

Post by PavlovsCat »

beachy wrote: post #34
hunta2097 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great insight. I am fond of the phrase "final generation nuclear". We need 30 years of nuclear fission before we can sustain fusion. I think we're already past the point where some nuclear risk is acceptable. It's not a zero sum game - fossel fuels are already being used with risk. We need to take some (calculated) risks again.

Agree, and maybe we should start installing more, smaller, less safe nuclear reactors (hence cheaper and more widespread), to the point where people are ok with the occasional failure and even with occasional loss of life resulting. The vastly greater dangers of environmental collapse from global warning are so relatively long term that people can't make sensible risk analyses about them, hence the terror around nucl…

I don't think there is a dichotomy between taking nuclear waste seriously and taking global warming seriously. If anything, I wouldn't be surprised if taking one seriously is positively correlated with taking the other seriously.

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#130

Post by [deleted] »

thatcat wrote: post #17
imtringued wrote: post #14

With a new projected cost of 25 billion USD the cost overruns of the Vogtle Plant are worse than I thought. There is a reason why nuclear is losing to natural gas and coal. It's too damn expensive and takes too long. If this money was instead spent on building more storage capacity we'd have solved our energy problems a long time ago and even if we started today we'd be done long before the nuclear plant is online. T…

Your cost analysis neglects replacement, disposal costs for batteries, long term costs of carbon emission, and coal flyash disposal. The only reason nuclear is losing to gas and coal is because the externalities of the mess they make are dumped on the public, whereas nuclear pollution and waste processing is heavily regulated.

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