These are hard problems that I am not sure about: decommissioning, spent fuel storage.
A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power
131–140 of 231 posts
Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 sc…
The stats you have provided are the numbers for the whole electricity generation, while I was talking of the heavy industry alone. I am not an expert, but AFAIK for steelmakers in particular it is crucial to have a reliable constant power supply, which neither solar nor wind can provide (let alone steel production itself relies on coal).
Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 releas…
> What is the problem with having one minuscule location on earth where you are not supposed to go and stock pile this material there?
How much time do you have? This article isn't just long, it has many, many interesting links.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_radioactive_waste_m...
> There is a debate over what should constitute an acceptable scientific and engineering foundation for proceeding with radioactive waste disposal strategies. There are those who have argued, on the basis of complex geochemical simulation models, that relinquishing control over radioactive materials to geohydrologic processes at repository closure is an acceptable risk. They maintain that so-called "natural analogues" inhibit subterranean movement of radionuclides, making disposal of radioactive wastes in stable geologic formations unnecessary. However, existing models of these processes are empirically underdetermined: due to the subterranean nature of such processes in solid geologic formations, the accuracy of computer simulation models has not been verified by empirical observation, certainly not over periods of time equivalent to the lethal half-lives of high-level radioactive waste. On the other hand, some insist deep geologic repositories in stable geologic formations are necessary. National management plans of various countries display a variety of approaches to resolving this debate.
So, various countries display a variety of approaches to resolving this debate.
That's all we have for now.
> I don’t think waste is a legitimate concern of nuclear energy, as long as they are stored and protected responsively.
Yeah, but so far we have no way of doing that, so it's a legitimate concern. I might as well say "we can just turn off all nuclear reactors now, we just need other means oto generate the energy and do the shutdown responsibly". Leave it allll up to the reader, or in this case, future generations, why not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste
https://grist.org/article/stang/
> At Hanford, a rough rule of thumb for planners is to look ahead 1,000 years. That’s like a Viking trying to conceive of an astronaut, then trying to pass a note to him.
> Experts inside and outside of DOE have pondered this communication conundrum. The agency has assembled panels of scientists, historians, artists, and others to tackle from all angles the question of how a 21st century sign should look to a 31st century person. From symbols to colors to materials to size, everything’s up for grabs — and nothing’s been decided.
We don't have solutions. Pretending we have solutions will not help us get solutions, either.
Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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/
The ability to reuse more and more will improve over time so yes it's perfectly feasible. Furthermore, the price of uranium is so cheap that it's financially feasible right now. It will be over time but that should also show you just how abundant and available it is as a resource. If we actually got politicians to sit down and go through the requirements with engineers and scientists they would realize how cheap and…
> The ability to reuse more and more will improve over time so yes it's perfectly feasible.
Well, if that "counts", then solar power will become totally free and have a net positive environmental impact, we'll just plant some nanobots that grow and repair solar panels inside a marked area, and can be scooped up should we need them elsewhere, hence "100% free once we perfected them". They'll smell like vanilla, and change color according to the moods of people using the energy.
Latter on we make nanobots and send them to the sun to hang out there for a few thousand years and grow a scaffolding from, uhh, space dust or something, and then we shoot nanobots at it that grow solar panels on it, and we have our Dyson sphere. Add some nanostuff that creates material from energy and flings that at Earth, then convert material back to energy.
This didn't even take me 5 minutes, so I really don't get what the problem is :P
Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
That doesn’t address solar and wind being drastically cheaper than nuclear fission. It would be wasteful to continue to poor dollars into fission at this point, versus scaling up renewables and battery manufacturing further. Whether the race is rigged is irrelevant; the race is over.
Again, they aren't cheaper when you compare to output. Just to put things in perspective. Solar can do roughly 50W per m2 at best and I am being generous. Nuclear does 1000W per m2. Solar is not even close to being able to deliver stable energy so you would have to factor either coal, nuclear or oil into the mix too to provide stable delivery. Renewable can't deliver the needed energy not even close. Less than 1% rig…
Just to put things in perspective. Solar can do roughly 50W per m2 at best and I am being generous. Nuclear does 1000W per m2.
Apples and oranges. We have plenty of desert land and /or roof space for solar. Granted solar is not with its enviro issues but nuclear stands apart. Also costs. A Nuclear power plants costs $20+billion to be built. But then solar by definition is only during the day
Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power
#136I 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…
I don't know what a strike price or a Hinkley point is, but if you're saying that it's more expensive than some other renewables, then the issue is still: we can't build enough renewables (in some countries it's physically impossible, in others you'd have to appropriate a lot of land for power production, and in a small number of exceptions the only issue is expenses) so price will have to go up in order to save mankind. I mean, we can haggle over prices, but that's what we're talking about. I'm not advocating nuclear because I see other options, I'm advocating it because I see no other options.
Fukushima was before I was into the topic. I really can't say anything either way, except to parrot what others say: it was tech from the 60s and they built it on a major fault line.
I haven't read up on insurance for nuclear reactors, so I can't say much about that either. Again, though, even if it's dangerous, I don't see a way out that does not include dependency by all countries on solar power from the Saharah and similar places, or nuclear power. Assuming it's somewhere in the middle between the current safety levels and the claimed ones for newer designs, we should not exclude nuclear. It's also not as if we would build 1000 reactors worldwide simultaneously. Some will be built earlier than others and we'll learn more about their safety, allowing us to steer whether we want to appropriate more land for renewables or continue building more reactors.
Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 releas…
I am somewhat sympathetic to your points, but was responding to a comment that seemed to claim it was a non-issue.
I’m only “somewhat” in agreement because humans are terrible at reading warning signs, especially from long-dead people. “Oh,” they say, “that was ages ago. It’s just a primitive superstition. Anyway, we’re special.”
Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
Is this you https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_R._Greenberg :) ?
Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
The amount of CO2 is orders of magnitude more than the amount of radioactive waste; you cannot just build “one factory in Nevada” and sequester all the carbon dioxide produced.
We need to capture about 1 trillion of tons of CO2 to return to sane levels, and then capture about 25 billion tons of CO2 annually. It looks doable. See http://www.climatecentral.org/news/first-commercial-co2-capt... .
That process absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere at low concentrations (400 ppm) onto stones coated with X-material. Later the stones are heated (using more fuel) to release CO2 at much higher concentrations (more than 75%). Then what? It is a gas. You need to bury the carbon. They suggest feeding it to greenhouses, to grow food, which re-releases it later.
Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nuclear is far from "carbon neutral." The process of extracting uranium from the earth uses tremendous amounts of heavy equipment Numbers. Show numbers. Without numbers you have said NOTHING.
The numbers are clear. Nuclear lifecycle is 11 gCO2-eq/kWh, less than almost anything and on par with wind. The idea that uranium mining requires tremendous amounts of anything compared to the alternatives is ludicrous simply by the physical fact that there are 938 MW*days of energy in every kilogram of natural uranium. That's 2 million times more energy per mass than any chemical fuel, and that results in a very sma…
70 is a a lot closer to the truth. That 11 is a selective figure.
None of these numbers includes the carbon used to bulldoze the East side of Japan, or Belarus. And again, as the first attempt was clumsy, and a minimum.