Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity • Hacker News Board

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#201

Post by Turing_Machine » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 12:48 PM UTC

lispm wrote: post #135

asharp wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a quick bit of thought. Lets say that you need to mine, say 2,715,384x the amount of coal to produce the same amount of energy as you would uranium. (From https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Energy_densit... ). Now if mining uranium is less then 2,000,000x more dangerous as mining coal, then per unit of energy generated it is actually safer. Hence yes, I do think that coal mining is more dangerous then…

Wrong. How much percent of Uranium is in ore? How fast is that going down in the next century? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_debate Ever wondered why Europe has coal mines but closed all uranium mines? Just for fun? Uranium mines now happen to be in remote areas or developing countries. Uranium mines are a cluster fuck of all kinds of environmental problems. Germany closed one. It cost billions to conta…

There is enough nuclear fuel to last for billions of years. Billions. With a b.

See: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#202

Post by Turing_Machine » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 12:54 PM UTC

danenania wrote: post #76

burgerbrain wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NOBODY is saying that we shouldn't learn from the past when it comes to nuclear power. However, sensationalists such as yourself, claiming shit like "Nuclear power is inherently UNSAFE. It takes a lot of hubris to claim otherwise." are not adding to rational discussion, but rather detracting from it. The only thing people like you accomplish is preventing modern reactor designs from being implemented, therefore effec…

Every design was once a modern design. Nuclear power is inherently unsafe. That's why we're having this discussion.

Claiming something doesn't make it so, not even if you do it repeatedly and use lots of italics.

It's not really a "discussion" when you're just saying the same thing over and over, without addressing the data presented by others or providing any data of your own.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#203

Post by artsrc » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 12:59 PM UTC

asharp wrote: post #174

adrianN wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With high voltage directed current lines, losses are around 3%/1000km. That's not so much.

Interesting, do you have any links as to how they work/how they are constructed/etc?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#204

Post by Tichy » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 1:26 PM UTC

asharp wrote: post #188

Tichy wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Strangely enough it takes very little money, nor energy to produce nuclear power." And since the new doctrine is that radiation is not dangerous at all, you will make us a good price for storing the nuclear waste in your backyard? I hear it helps grow bigger vegetables, too - win win.

That's a non sequitur. Look up the first nuclear pile experiments and you'll find out just how primitive you can be and still produce a functioning nuclear reactor.

Sorry I don't speak latin? In any case, of course storage of waste has to factored into the cost? I don't see how it is relevant how easy it is to build a reactor. Guess what, it is even easier to start a fire, which produces a lot of energy, too.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#205

Post by lispm » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 2:01 PM UTC

Turing_Machine wrote: post #201

lispm wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. How much percent of Uranium is in ore? How fast is that going down in the next century? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_debate Ever wondered why Europe has coal mines but closed all uranium mines? Just for fun? Uranium mines now happen to be in remote areas or developing countries. Uranium mines are a cluster fuck of all kinds of environmental problems. Germany closed one. It cost billions to conta…

There is enough nuclear fuel to last for billions of years. Billions. With a b. See: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html

See the sun at the sky. There is a fusion process going on. We just need to harvest it.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#206

Post by lispm » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 2:03 PM UTC

kalleboo wrote: post #156

adrianN wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar thermal with molten salt heat storage might be a viable baseload alternative.

As someone who lives in a country where half the year it's -10℃ with 2 hours of sunlight (zero hours if it's cloudy), I'd have to say it's not quite viable.

Most of the world's population is in more sunny areas.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#207

Post by lispm » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 2:09 PM UTC

asharp wrote: post #164

lispm wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. How much percent of Uranium is in ore? How fast is that going down in the next century? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_debate Ever wondered why Europe has coal mines but closed all uranium mines? Just for fun? Uranium mines now happen to be in remote areas or developing countries. Uranium mines are a cluster fuck of all kinds of environmental problems. Germany closed one. It cost billions to conta…

Starting a rebuttal with the word "wrong" seems rather counter-productive. If you have a reasonable point that disproves mine, then anybody reading it would notice this and as such the "wrong" is not required. If on the other hand, your point does not in fact counteract mine, then making such a strong statement seems rather foolish. To begin: * Uranite (U3O8) is a major ore of uranium https://secure.wikimedia.org/wik…

You have now found out a little bit about the energy density of Uranium. It has little to do with how dangerous mining is and what the consequences are (exposure to Radon, contamination of drinking water, ...).

Fact is, here in Germany we have been mining for coal for decades. It has a lot of negative impacts on nature. It is still going on. But it is slowly phased out against political opposition.

Uranium mining OTOH has been phased out already. Uranium mining has such severe negative effects on the nature that in Germany it is closed with huge monetary investments.

You can read about the closing of the Wismut mine here: http://www.wise-uranium.org/uwis.html

Mining for Uranium is now going on in remote areas or in states with the political structure for it.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#208

Post by lispm » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 2:11 PM UTC

TillE wrote: post #185

lispm wrote: post #116

I'm from Germany and I'm supporting our move to 100% renewable electricity production by 2050 or earlier. It will be interesting to see what the US does. Let's say coal and gas are much more dangerous than nuclear and nuclear is the way to go. Let's also say renewables is not a way to go, because many people die from erecting wind mills, bio mass plants and solar panels. Chemicals for solar panel production are dirty…

> 100% renewable electricity production by 2050 or earlier Do you know anywhere I could read about the specific plans for this? I assume lots more wind turbines are a big part of it. I buy green power from Vattenfall, and I know at the moment most of it is hydroelectric imported from Norway.

If you can read German you find it here:

http://www.uba.de/uba-info-medien-e/3997.html

and here:

http://www.umweltdaten.de/publikationen/fpdf-l/3997.pdf

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#209

Post by GFischer » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 2:11 PM UTC

asharp wrote: post #120

jbert wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out if interest, the way I'd try and design a fail-safe solution would be to have meltdown trigger a shutdown. Picture a bunch of large, heat-proof (ceramic?) test-tubes, with their bases apart but their openings together. Put that underneath the core - then if it melts and drops down, small pieces of it flow in different directions - until you've got a sub-critical amount in each one - so the fission reaction stops.…

I would have a look at pebble bed reactors, molten salt reactors and heavy water moderated reactors. long story short, the designs exist, we just can't seem to get rid of the old ones that are currently built and we can't seem to get the new designs built in any sort of scale.

The R&D costs for those are HUGE, as they are unproven, the countries like mine (Uruguay) that are looking into building new power plants don't want that, we want proven designs.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#210

Post by asharp » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 2:12 PM UTC

justatdotin wrote: post #197

asharp wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power reactors can be produced without any real proliferation risk, see for example thorium reactors. Similarly the thorium fuel cycle is a lot clearer, ie. assuming that you can recycle actinide wastes, there is very little radioactivity after the first few hundred years: http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/04/14/97/PDF/documen... Finally, if you have waste of any sort that you want to keep away from hum…

thanks A#: thorium? maybe. but all of the reactors currently dotting the globe, and any of those which may be built in the near future, all use uranium. I'd hate for us to make the mistake of basing decisions about whether or not to retire existing aging uranium reactors on the promises of theoretical thorium models. We certainly shouldn't keep building dangerous uranium reactors simply because, one day, hopefully, t…

The candu reactors are thorium. As was AVR... Last I heard there were reactors in india/china using thorium.

All the gen IV reactors I remember are thorium based, however keep in mind that most of the gen IV reactors can be made with uranium, it's just that thorium is a rather nice fuel. Well, if you don't need to build any more nukes, that is.

To be perfectly honest, once you've mined out all of the nuclear materials out of nuclear waste, what you're left with is a fairly standard bundle of heavy metals that we deal with all the time in chemeng. (ie. what do you do to the Cad in Nicads?)

Anything that's fertile can be converted into fuel. Anything that's fissable is fuel. Anything that is usefully radioactive can be used either directly in a reactor or indirectly in betavoltaics and related.

One major problem at the moment is that it's not politically viable to reprocess waste anywhere near completely, and even though waste storage is basically solved in much the same way that the waste storage of garbase is basically solved (Where do you think the toxins go when you throw something else out?), we can't really do either and so you end up with waste just piling up in places where it honestly shouldn't be.