Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 357 posts

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#121

Post by jenadine »

wkat4242 wrote: post #55
bell-cot wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...centuries of unavoidable costs no matter what... OR, you put the nasty and long-lived radwaste into (say) lead barrels, and bury those below some nice, deep, easily-monitored ocean trench. Absolutely nobody's going to accidentally dig those up. And if the effort needed to intentionally do so would be greater than the effort to brew their own fresh radwaste, then nobody will bother trying that, either.

Barrels don't last when filled with nuclear material. The radiation embrittles the materials over time, they wouldn't last 100 years. And then all that crap will be released into the ocean and swerve all over the world.

Nuclear material is put in glass which can last many thousands of years.

Geological studies of the locations where the nuclear waste is burried show that it would take millions of year for the isotopes to escape.

Meanwhile, the effects of low dose radiations on health are vastly exaggerated. Every industry is releasing pollution in the ecosystem that are way more toxic and dangerous. And these get barely any attention for some reasons.

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#122

Post by bhawks »

natmaka wrote: post #115
portaouflop wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the point ? That we dumped so much crap into the ocean a little more won’t hurt?

Indeed, it can be interpreted as "we didn't knew and made huge mistakes, therefore it seems OK to do so", which seems... let's say 'weird'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_...

Spending nearly 1/6th of Japan's GDP to clean up 0.45% of the nuclear waste dumped into the ocean is worth consideration. If the earthquake had happened 20 years earlier (nothing on tectonic timescales) this wouldn't be up to much discussion.

If you were to commit such a large amount of cash - a reparation for the disaster - would you spend it all on this?

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#123

Post by littlestymaar »

_ph_ wrote: post #93
littlestymaar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 61.5% of Germany's electricity comes from renewable sources[1]. What nuclear generated has been replaced years ago, and they have a law to phase out coal completely. 472g of C02 per kW/h as we speak[1]. 20 times more than France and its nuclear. A resounding success… [1]: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE

Whether the number for France is correct, is debatable. While I like the electricitymaps app, they are quite optimistic about nuclear power. But that isn't the point. The point is: Germany is strongly reducing the usage of coal. Yes, historically we have burned far too much coal, but that cannot be changed retroactively. What can and is being done is to replace coal as quickly as possible and that is happening. Ironi…

> Whether the number for France is correct, is debatable. While I like the electricitymaps app, they are quite optimistic about nuclear power.

They aren't “optimistic”, nuclear simply doesn't emit CO2 directly, and indirect emissions are dwarfed by direct emissions of fossils fuel plants.

> What can and is being done is to replace coal as quickly as possible and that is happening.

It has been happening for the past 13 years, and there's no end in sight. We'll be able to have the same discussion in 13 years with only marginal progress (maybe they'll be around 200g/kWh at that point if we're being optimistic…).

> and even more so by France having to shut down too many nuclear reactors for repairs - German coal had to fill part of that gap.

And so what? French nuclear has been filling the gap for defunct German nuclear for more than a decade now … And Germany could have filled this gap with coal even if they had much less regular coal use thanks to their nuclear.

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#124

Post by chickenbig »

portaouflop wrote: post #110
foxyv wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to your point. Disposal of nuclear waste at sea was common up until 1993. There is still a couple hundred thousand tons of such waste sitting in the ocean right now. In addition, about 214 times as much radioactive material was generated by nuclear testing than the Chernobyl breach. Fukushima wouldn't even come close to the waste that has already been released prior to the 1994 ban on Oceanic dumping.

What is the point ? That we dumped so much crap into the ocean a little more won’t hurt?

> That we dumped so much crap into the ocean a little more won’t hurt?

Something I found out recently was that the city of Brussels discharged raw sewage into the rivers until 2007. This from a wealthy city at the heart of the European project.

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

Radioactive waste disposal is seldom paired with a cost-benefit analysis. Perhaps this is because the benefits are harder to quantify.

Does anyone know how many lives will be saved by spending an estimated 4.7B EUR to commence retrieval of the low and intermediate level waste from the Asse II mine? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine

4.7B EUR could provide humanitarian aid to many around the world, saving lives and enabling yet more to more fully reach their potential.

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#125

Post by littlestymaar »

bamboozled wrote: post #82
littlestymaar wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who do you think they will be paying it to? Subsidizing Japanese companies to develop technologies that may be exported elsewhere isn't that bad of a deal actually.

What technologies are Japanese companies developing here, and does the tax payer get any of that privately held revenue back in return?

> What technologies are Japanese companies developing here,

Do you think the technology already exists off the shelf already?

> does the tax payer get any of that privately held revenue back in return?

Japan's taxpayers also happen to be Japanese people employed in these companies, so they get their share of that revenues. And the price doesn't even account for the taxes that are paid back to the government directly.

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#126

Post by imtringued »

bamboozled wrote: post #50
baq wrote: post #2

> “With the goal of completing the decommissioning in 30 to 40 years [...]" Can't decide if it's a success of nuclear or a failure. Leaning towards success: - ~900 tons of super duper radioactive material is more or less safely sitting in steel enclosures - we're (as a global civilization) slowly but surely figuring out how to move the hazardous waste to a safer storage, and it may only (ahem) take a couple generatio…

If you were a Japanese tax payer, would it be a success ? The total cleanup costs were estimated to be between 50.5 and 71 trillion yen ($470 to $660 billion). For the cleanup, only 184.3 billion yen was reserved in the September supplementary budget of prefecture Fukushima, and some funds in the central government's third supplementary budget of 2011.

Nuclear power is one of the few industries where a single mistake can cost you as much as replacing the entire nuclear power plant fleet.

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#127

Post by imtringued »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #29
Krasnol wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, sure they are reaping. 61.5% of Germany's electricity comes from renewable sources[1]. What nuclear generated has been replaced years ago, and they have a law to phase out coal completely. The only weird thing about it is that they're being hated on so much from the nuclear-bubble, while the bubble simultaneously drags the shield of innovation and environment protection. Meanwhile, there is negligible innovation…

> 61.5% of Germany's electricity comes from renewable sources Now. For years they switched to coal. Even today, Germany falls to the siren songs of the gas lobby, who promise a €1.5tn investment into gas infrastructure will be happily written off for the sake of the planet.

This is a popular internet myth. The actual data shows that coal consumption is way down and even in the year of the shutdown the percentage of coal/gas went up by an insignificant amount.

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#128

Post by chickenbig »

_ph_ wrote: post #93
littlestymaar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 61.5% of Germany's electricity comes from renewable sources[1]. What nuclear generated has been replaced years ago, and they have a law to phase out coal completely. 472g of C02 per kW/h as we speak[1]. 20 times more than France and its nuclear. A resounding success… [1]: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE

Whether the number for France is correct, is debatable. While I like the electricitymaps app, they are quite optimistic about nuclear power. But that isn't the point. The point is: Germany is strongly reducing the usage of coal. Yes, historically we have burned far too much coal, but that cannot be changed retroactively. What can and is being done is to replace coal as quickly as possible and that is happening. Ironi…

> they are quite optimistic about nuclear power

Centrifuge enrichment and improved extraction techniques (high quality ore in Canada or else in-situ leaching) mean CO2 emissions are very low.

Would you care to provide references for CO2 emissions from already built nuclear power stations (preferably not the infamous StormSmith and Sovacool papers)?

For new-build, Hinkley Point C "not an EPD" make interesting bed-time reading. https://www.edfenergy.com/sites/default/files/hpc_-_life_cyc...

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#129

Post by imtringued »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #72
legulere wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear was replaced by renewables, not by coal: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Energiemix_Deutschla... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Electricity_generati... A point you certainly can argue about, is that coal should have been replaced by renewables before nuclear, but that discussion is over now. For gas use electricity production is just a minor use. Most gas is consumed by industry and for heati…

> coal should have been replaced by renewables before nuclear, but that discussion is over now Right. Coal stayed online where it would have otherwise gone away. That was true for close to a decade. > gas use electricity production is just a minor And growing. Look at your own chart. The change in natural gas electrical generation is about as large as solar’s entire controbution.

See for yourself

https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&...

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#130

Post by preisschild »

imtringued wrote: post #127
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 61.5% of Germany's electricity comes from renewable sources Now. For years they switched to coal. Even today, Germany falls to the siren songs of the gas lobby, who promise a €1.5tn investment into gas infrastructure will be happily written off for the sake of the planet.

This is a popular internet myth. The actual data shows that coal consumption is way down and even in the year of the shutdown the percentage of coal/gas went up by an insignificant amount.

Because more and more energy-intensive industries are shutting down their factories in Germany.

Those require a large amount of baseload energy.

Post reply on HN