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Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

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Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#161

Post by gosub100 »

noosphr wrote: post #119
boshomi wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power has been killed off by economic forces; there’s no turning back. Solar and wind power generate cheap electricity in abundance, and midday electricity prices in Europe regularly dip into negative territory (as low as minus €500 (sic!) on May 1!). Modern grids do not require high-risk investments in ultra-inert baseload power that ultimately fails to find a market; instead, they require low-risk investmen…

Nuclear power died 20 years ago for 40 years now. Meanwhile Chinas 2060 plan for a carbon zero grid with 25% nuclear and 100% over provisioning is right on track.

And we call them the enemy

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#162

Post by Ringz »

cluckindan wrote: post #155
TitaRusell wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pro nuclear comes from American conservatives. The same people who claim climate change is a hoax. The same people who hate green energy solutions.

Pro-nuclear comes from scientifically informed progressives, definitely not conservatives. Nuclear IS a green energy solution.

Again. Show us some peer reviewed studies for your claims. A simple search will show you that, according to dozens or hundreds of peer reviewed studies, research and real world examples, a 100% renewable energy solution is feasible.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#163

Post by Forgeties79 »

01100011 wrote: post #31
colechristensen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was largely our own governments wanting to scare us of nukes so we'd be scared of the Soviets, like in America with the schoolchildren doing duck and cover drills. Having enemies the population is afraid of is good for politicians and they'll take any enemies they can find, and they'll do so indiscriminately regardless of the real nuance of the issues. Immigrants, abortion, this religion or that, rock music, jazz…

I think it came from peaceniks and hippies mostly. You're talking about the equivalent of modern anti-vax liberals. Anti-science and given to conspiracies and mysticism. There was a pretty good reason to be scared of nukes when these folks were children in the 50s. The world was quite a different place back then. The US was lagging behind the Soviets, militarily speaking, and Communism was much more expansionary.

> You're talking about the equivalent of modern anti-vax liberals. Anti-science and given to conspiracies and mysticism

In 2026 this is decidedly a more conservative stance. They installed RFK Jr., who in addition to Wakefield, is the antivax guy. MAHA specifically (can’t believe they actually stuck with that acronym) is overwhelmingly Republican dominated/supported.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#164

Post by Ringz »

cluckindan wrote: post #151
acdha wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around the turn of the century that was a stronger argument–it’s one of the reasons why I backed nuclear then–but now we have cheaper renewables which can be online decades sooner so the choice isn’t nuclear vs. coal but vs. solar & wind which have orders of magnitude less pollution. Even if we’re talking natural gas, which has killed coal economically, there’s still far more pollution and direct health risk avoided…

Solar and wind haven’t yet solved the two major issues: producing power 24/7/365 even when it isn’t sunny or windy (or when it’s too windy). Batteries are one solution, but the power storage requirements far surpass the world’s capacity for battery production, and come with the same caveats: rare earth metals, which need mining. Mining is a huge source of air pollution, as mining equipment is usually diesel powered,…

Uranium mines will become a problem if every country tries to make 25% of electricity with nuclear. Electrification of primary energy might even need more nuclear according to some pro nuclear people.

Many forget that while there is plenty of uranium on Earth, most of it occurs in very low concentrations. The lower the concentration, the higher the CO₂ emissions for the entire uranium chain from the mine to the fuel rod.

Meanwhile, renewable energies receive free fuel from the sun. They are already recyclable today and, with intelligent local and intercontinental grids, will also require fewer batteries for storage.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#165

Post by khafra »

titanomachy wrote: post #149
khafra wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If power is so cheap mid-day, why don't european buildings have sufficient air conditioning not to kill the elderly during heat waves? The laws restricting AC all have power conservation as their rationale.

Do old people not have air conditioning because the law prohibits it? I thought it was more that air conditioners are expensive, old people in Europe are often somewhat poor and on fixed incomes, and a lot of historically temperate places in Europe have no tradition of AC. Certainly a lot of the young wealthy people I know in Europe have AC, even outside of the really hot places.

The death toll per heat wave can easily hit 5 figures in just france. A hybrid portable-minisplit that will cool a 100m^2 apartment is under a thousand euros, and draw just under a Mwh per year. A portable to cool one small bedroom is much less power-efficient, but can often be found between 200 and 300. That's not cheap, per se, but funerals aren't much less expensive in Europe than in America. Many EU countries allow some limited cooling in public buildings, but I still sweat in most grocery stores, malls, libraries, museums, etc. during hot weather--they just don't take air conditioning to a comfortable temperature as worth the power bill, the way America does.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#166

Post by roryirvine »

account42 wrote: post #85
9dev wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of you ever manages to answer the waste storage question. That was, and still is, one of the deciding factors in Germany, for example.

Because its an irrelevant problem. The amount of waste nuclear produces is miniscule.

Miniscule, yet extremely dangerous and incredibly difficult & expensive to deal with.

The estimated cost of making the UK's current stock of waste safe is currently £136bn, for a value of "safe" that leaves at least one of the high level waste pools being at an "intolerable" level of risk of leaking into groundwater until the late 2050s.

For comparison, the estimated cost of achieving net zero in the UK by 2050 is £110bn.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#167

Post by pingou »

cluckindan wrote: post #151
acdha wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around the turn of the century that was a stronger argument–it’s one of the reasons why I backed nuclear then–but now we have cheaper renewables which can be online decades sooner so the choice isn’t nuclear vs. coal but vs. solar & wind which have orders of magnitude less pollution. Even if we’re talking natural gas, which has killed coal economically, there’s still far more pollution and direct health risk avoided…

Solar and wind haven’t yet solved the two major issues: producing power 24/7/365 even when it isn’t sunny or windy (or when it’s too windy). Batteries are one solution, but the power storage requirements far surpass the world’s capacity for battery production, and come with the same caveats: rare earth metals, which need mining. Mining is a huge source of air pollution, as mining equipment is usually diesel powered,…

Most batteries do not use rare earth metals. Even if they did and it was an issue, we would find alternatives if that was necessary, just like rare earth free motors were developed to avoid all the downsides of that come with those.

Have a look at CATL’s sodium-ion batteries, they do not use anything expensive, rare, or particularly damaging to extract from the environment.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#168

Post by pfdietz »

TitaRusell wrote: post #136
boshomi wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power has been killed off by economic forces; there’s no turning back. Solar and wind power generate cheap electricity in abundance, and midday electricity prices in Europe regularly dip into negative territory (as low as minus €500 (sic!) on May 1!). Modern grids do not require high-risk investments in ultra-inert baseload power that ultimately fails to find a market; instead, they require low-risk investmen…

Yeah they found gas in the Netherlands which was exported for cheap all across Western Europe. It's not because of hippies or Chernobyl that nuclear reactors never got built. A gas turbine is cheap and simple.

Gas turbines are a modern scientific/technological miracle.

The materials science of turbine blades is awesome. Most materials can't be used above about 1/2 their absolute melting temperature as they become subject to creep. But turbine blades are made with nickel and aluminum (and a carefully optimized mix of alloying elements) that just happen to form phases that become less subject to creep as they are heated (until much closer to the melting point).

The reason (as I understand it) for this is that the intermetallic phase of NiAl prevents migration of single linear dislocations; pairs of linear dislocations are needed to migrate together. But at elevated temperature these pairs dissociate from each other and migration is inhibited.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#169

Post by pfdietz »

Neil44 wrote: post #108
boshomi wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power has been killed off by economic forces; there’s no turning back. Solar and wind power generate cheap electricity in abundance, and midday electricity prices in Europe regularly dip into negative territory (as low as minus €500 (sic!) on May 1!). Modern grids do not require high-risk investments in ultra-inert baseload power that ultimately fails to find a market; instead, they require low-risk investmen…

Solar and wind are still heavily subsidized are they not? If they're so economically amazing why are they subsidized?

Given that we're approaching 1 TW of new solar capacity installed globally each year, who do you think is doing the subsidizing?

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#170

Post by mgfist »

mejutoco wrote: post #54
mgfist wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I distrust techno-optimist promises to manage ever-growing collections of spent nuclear fuel over millennia. We can hardly trust plant operators to manage it safely over decades. Nuclear power plants have been extremely safe for many decades! Fuck, even the worst disasters related to nuclear power plants have killed less people than coal or oil disasters, even including Chernobyl which was a fuck up beyond comparis…

You argue it is safe. When it is not (Chernobyl, Fukushima) then you argue it kills less people. That is before considering the possibility of these sites being attacked during war (see Zaporizhia in Ukraine) and how centralized they are vs solar. Rectang explained it very well, and all their points stand imo.

60 deaths attributed to Chernobyl.

1 death attributed to Fukushima.

0 deaths attributed to Three Mile Island.

Meanwhile, deaths in the fossil fuel industry total hundreds to thousands every year.

Now before you say "but wait, I've seen estimates of thousands of deaths linked to Chernobyl" - then we must also include all the deaths caused from fossil fuel carbon emissions and radiation emissions, which total in the hundreds of thousands every year.

> You argue it is safe

I do! The fact that a nuclear plant was struck by a tsunami and yet just 1 person died from the radiation fallout is pretty damn amazing. That's about as bad as it gets and yet the result was the same as an oil well accident.

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