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Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

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

#181

Post by natmaka »

Moldoteck wrote: post #158
pfdietz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You provide excellent examples of the bogosity of the arguments. Let me demolish them in turn. 1) System cost Sure, it's high. That's because we spend huge amounts of money on energy. ANY system to replace fossil fuels will be expensive, in the trillions of dollars. But if this is an argument against renewables, it's an even bigger argument against nuclear. Because nuclear is much more expensive than renewables. 2) R…

nuclear is not much more expensive, it's cheaper. It's just harder to scale If the waste is your concern - nuclear is better. And no, you can't just bury renewable waste, it too contains forever toxic materials that can be dispersed in soil and water. Amount of mined stuff- nuclear is better, amount of land used- nuclear is better No matter how you turn it, renewables were and will be more expensive for germany https…

> nuclear is not much more expensive, it's cheaper

Production costs: renewables are way cheaper than nuclear ( https://www.lazard.com/media/xemfey0k/lazards-lcoeplus-june-... ) and this is not a new trend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...

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

#182

Post by bell-cot »

Moldoteck wrote: post #157
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.

why bury precious fuel? Use purex or fast reactors, vitrify rest, put in casks and deal with it at least till transmutation research advances

My understanding is that the anti-proliferation lobby* is intensely allergic to several of the technologies involved in doing that.

*EDIT - I'm referring to the US-centered anti-proliferation lobby. Though "national security establishment" might be a better term. And yes, its ability to influence French, Japanese, etc. domestic nuclear power policy is much more limited.

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

#183

Post by bell-cot »

pvaldes wrote: post #148
bell-cot wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

(Sadly, it feels like my use of the colloquial term "barrel" has triggered a "proclaim authority, dismiss straw man" reflex.)

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

#184

Post by bell-cot »

zdragnar wrote: post #155
Kon5ole wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Four decades of studies by experienced engineers and a very decent budget to figure out how to store US nuclear waste has resulted in 0 solutions so far. I think we can safely assume that dumping it at sea is not an option.

We have solutions in the US, but politicians keep playing games. Yucca mountain has been authorized and de-authorized back and forth for decades. It isn't an engineering problem at all.

True-ish - but those game-playing politicians don't have much freedom of choice, if they want to keep their jobs. The US nuclear establishment has earned itself a "bungling pathological liars" reputation with the public. Why would the average voter react well to any "we'll store a whole lotta Bad Stuff near you" plan?

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

#185

Post by pyrale »

Kon5ole wrote: post #166
pyrale wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically you’re so caught up in this infighting between two carbon neutral energies that you’d rather spread disinformation about climate change and the negative effects of coal…

I have spread no disinformation. Seems to me you fail to come up with arguments against what I actually said so instead you create a strawman. Nuclear costs are way higher than anyone has ever accounted for and they are kicked to future generations. This is a fact and we can do better. The right thing to do is surely to spend now on tech that continues to pay dividends in the future. Maybe we ourselves won't see the…

> So, if your fathers started coal plants, you close them, stop paying for them and can forget about them.

I suspect you don't live in e.g. Tuvalu? Or in a country experiencing desertification like Spain?

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

#186

Post by Moldoteck »

natmaka wrote: post #181
Moldoteck wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nuclear is not much more expensive, it's cheaper. It's just harder to scale If the waste is your concern - nuclear is better. And no, you can't just bury renewable waste, it too contains forever toxic materials that can be dispersed in soil and water. Amount of mined stuff- nuclear is better, amount of land used- nuclear is better No matter how you turn it, renewables were and will be more expensive for germany https…

> nuclear is not much more expensive, it's cheaper Production costs: renewables are way cheaper than nuclear ( https://www.lazard.com/media/xemfey0k/lazards-lcoeplus-june-... ) and this is not a new trend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...

it kinda depends: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03605... https://liftoff.energy.gov/advanced-nuclear/ Edit: for lazard study I kinda fail to assume why they assume 4h storage? I mean, looking at California's grid, they need about 10-14 hours of storage of about 10GW each. And at minimum triple their solar. And that's for ideal 365 sunny days case. But they get about 100 cloudy days. Some of it could be covered with wind but it'll still be a lot. What you'll do in case both solar&wind will be low? Needless to say that this overcapacity will need to be subsidized heavily because excess solar capacity will be unused a lot of the time when most of day consumption will be covered, storage too - if it'll be used less and less, youll need subsidies for companies to build more of the stuff to get back their investment

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

#187

Post by Moldoteck »

bell-cot wrote: post #182
Moldoteck wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why bury precious fuel? Use purex or fast reactors, vitrify rest, put in casks and deal with it at least till transmutation research advances

My understanding is that the anti-proliferation lobby* is intensely allergic to several of the technologies involved in doing that. *EDIT - I'm referring to the US-centered anti-proliferation lobby. Though "national security establishment" might be a better term. And yes, its ability to influence French, Japanese, etc. domestic nuclear power policy is much more limited.

i mean, france does purex, japan too, soon us too. fast reactors are slowly rolling out in some countries like india, china, russia, even eu has some projects in mind

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

#188

Post by natmaka »

Krasnol wrote: post #17
slt2021 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

japan has limited land, no oil&gas resources, so the nuclear is the perfect source of electricity for them, plus they have the expertise.

Japan has 34 000km (21 126 miles) of coastline. They import about 90% of its energy requirements. This includes nuclear fuel. So this is far away from "perfect" if you can get wind and sun without having to import it.

... Japan: no real nuclear 'restart', less and less fossil fuel, more and more renewables: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewa...

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

#189

Post by natmaka »

slt2021 wrote: post #51
Krasnol wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan has 34 000km (21 126 miles) of coastline. They import about 90% of its energy requirements. This includes nuclear fuel. So this is far away from "perfect" if you can get wind and sun without having to import it.

nuclear fuel: nuclear rods can last about 3-7 years, lets say 5 on avg. 150 rods per 1 GW reactor. so its like one or two rail cars of fuel - extremely compact footprint. how calculate yourself how much fossil fuel you need to power 1 GW power plant for half a decade, and how much CO2 emissions will you generate? How many rail cars of coal Germany will need to generate 1 GW 24/7/365 for 5 years reliably ? it is just…

It's not about energy density but availability. If a nation cannot buy uranium (scarce resources, embargo...) it loses at least temporarily its nuclear infrastructure (and gasps for energy).

This is not a real concern for renewables.

> Nuclear is capturing strong and weak forces

Other (way more practical and determinant) parameters are less enticing. For example: it 'burns' uranium and produces dangerous waste.

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

#190

Post by ovi256 »

imtringued wrote: post #126
bamboozled wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not at all, the chemical industry also can do this.

Worse, we store untreatable chemical waste forever (see Germany's many chemical waste dumps), unlike nuclear waste which will eventually become safe.

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