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Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

spectrum.ieee.org

141–150 of 357 posts

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

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet we've had Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Sellafield and many others (military ones too). Unforeseen accidents happen. Wars too, which tend to destroy safety equipment. Artillery was fired around Zaporizhzhia when the reactors were still online, Ukraine is currently invading Russia near Kursk where two of the mad-graphite RBMK reactors are still operational today. I hope they try to avoid those when blow…

Chernobyl was an actual disaster. The others created big headlines, but the real human casualties were smaller than a bad traffic accident. The core argument here is "you never know!". And that argument is always true. But people only apply it to things they're afraid of.

It's not just about deaths. Hundreds of billions in cleanup is a disaster too. Environmental releases too.

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

#142
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet we've had Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Sellafield and many others (military ones too). Unforeseen accidents happen. Wars too, which tend to destroy safety equipment. Artillery was fired around Zaporizhzhia when the reactors were still online, Ukraine is currently invading Russia near Kursk where two of the mad-graphite RBMK reactors are still operational today. I hope they try to avoid those when blow…

> It feels like playing with fire Much safer to burn the rest of the planet instead.

That's going to happen anyway. We're already locked in. No amount of nuclear we can build can reverse that in time.

We're just adding more risks to the mix. And externalising more issues to the future which is how we got into this crisis to begin with.

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

#143
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) it's not the money, it's the EROEI 2) at scale, panels recycling does become a very real issue 3) It's not the abundance, it's the mine-able ore at high enough concentration that matters 4) solar panels, read the docs please 5) again, it's the EROEI, maybe panels and wind scrap a 3, early oil was in the hundreds, nuclear is at around 50 After having gotten 0/5 in terms of correctness on actual facts, maybe tone do…

EROEI of renewables is fine, some well-debunked garbage studies not withstanding. No, at scale recycling doesn't become a "real issue" in the sense of being a showstopper. It would be nice if it could save some money (recover aluminum frames, say) but it's only a "nice to have". "High enough concentration" is dependent on technology. Like other mineral resources, one can expect lithium extraction technology to keep a…

you wrote: "EROEI of renewables is fine" I am sorry, but "fine" is a text string, not a number.

About your "Completely wrong." I hope you take the time to consider sources, for example:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X1...

As you wrote about "well debunked" studies then please please^3 debunk this one. Thank You

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

#144
post #25
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The explosion of Chernobyl released a few thousand PBq of activity. Coal contains a few tens to a few hundreds of Bq/kg. You would have to burn something like 50 times the world coal reserves (and make sure not to use any exhaust filters) in order to match the radiation release of Chernobyl.

While I like nuclear on the paper and its theoretical env impact, this one is hard to ignore. Add costs of current projects which became ridiculous in reality. Plus as we see with various wars nuclear powerplants would be a prime target for terrorists or even state actors, they are certainly not considered as excluded from wars, in contrary. If we move to renewables, over 100 years there would be 0 reason to have a s…

> If we move to renewables, over 100 years there would be 0 reason to have a single nuclear plant running anywhere, apart from making nuclear weapons fuel. I just wish we were now where we would/will be in 50 years in terms of renewables technology maturity and its spread.

Of course if we ignore the need for batteries. Renewable advocates conveniently forget to include that in the calculus (there’s active action in progress to strip mine the ocean floor creating untold ecological damage to try to keep up with requirements for batteries). And they also tend to ignore the fact that renewables can’t be used in various industrial processes. Nuclear fission remains the best option for large scale power and is still cheaper than directly comparable renewables with batteries included despite being divested from raising overall costs.

Hopefully we get fusion soon and renewables and fission become a thing of the past.

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

#145
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do pray tell calculate a world's energy system looping back while running purely on renewables, with electric powered mining, transport of ores, refining, panels production... You will find that you cannot, cheap (for now) fossil fuels are subsidising solar panels and wind farms massively.

The mining for renewables would be a small fraction of the mining for industrial society as a whole. So, if electrification cannot be done on this, industrial society as we know it is doomed, and nuclear cannot save it. Unless you're thinking we're going to have nuclear reactors in our mining vehicles...

On site mini reactors with directly wired machinery isn’t entirely inconceivable but would require a massive restructuring of industrial layouts and processes.

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

#146
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Negative industrial byproducts creating costs for future generations is an unique challenge? Have you heard of climate change?

Any one power plant has no measurable effect on global climate. (All fossil power plants combined worldwide have about the same emissions as all cars; about 1/6). So, if your fathers started coal plants, you close them, stop paying for them and can forget about them. this is not at all the case if your fathers started nuclear plants, not only do you have to pay, your children have to pay, all their lives, and all you…

Only really true for gev iii reactors. Gen iv reactors don’t have any of the challenges you mention. It’s almost as if you don’t have any faith on the human race’s ability to creatively problem solve and are assuming nuclear technology needs to be stuck in time from designs of the 1960s.

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

#148
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep proposing that nonsense from 70's but can be cured studying some really basic biology and oceanography. In 2024 is at a level similar than saying that smoking is good for your children. Is not even funny as a joke. > Absolutely nobody's going to accidentally dig those up Read about the concept of vertical migration

Are you referring to this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diel_vertical_migration If so, Wikipedia's first para makes it clear that that migration occurs at vastly shallower depths than an ocean trench.

Why do you think that people spend decades studying and mastering a field where they could just instead read a page of Wikipedia? There are hundreds of entire books about marine ecology and sea physics. Thick books with entire chapters about how energy/matter moves up and down in the ocean. There are more than one type of migration and we don't still know a lot of things about the sea. Physics tell us also that warm water tend to ascend over cold water, and that the water is moved from very deep areas to some coastal areas just because the shape of continents.

To achieve the same effect of leaving a barrel of nuclear waste in the middle of the sea (hoping in vain that nothing will move from there) we could better to put nuclear dust in the way of a stampede, or leave the barrels in the beach before the tornado season. Would achieve the same effect but saving much more money.

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

#149

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.

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…

it was replaced by coal,gas and exports. With nuclear, much less of them would have been used, as simple as that

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

#150
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here we can see how their electricity generation has fallen https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE...

Where are all those rolling blackouts we've been promised by the fearmongering of the nuclear-astroturf? Weird eh? Maybe it's not always clever to use US-logic on the rest of the world. Germany is not Texas.

it didn't happen because germany increased imports by a lot. 20TWh this year so far
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