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Activists who embrace nuclear power

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Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#331

Post by tedk-42 »

rpiguyshy wrote: post #244
abernard1 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ok well lets settle it. how much waste would be produced if the whole country ran on nuclear? That waste goes into Yucca mountain, and it's behind / underneath 100s of meters of neutron heavy metals. If we were exclusively powered by nuclear power for a century without recycling, it'd be something like 100 football fields. Absolutely, completely, utterly inconsequential. 1 inch of neutron-heavy lead is enough to di…

ok but i just have doubts. you say that buried nuclear waste is safe but i need more detail. what if it leaks into ground water? can it leak? what kind of containment is necessary? and does it need to be guarded? do people want the stuff for bombs or something? i just have a bunch of doubts and i think they are reasonable. and meanwhile solar is simple and there are no doubts about it. probably much easier to do clea…

The problem is that you see it as one or the other as opposed to investing in BOTH solutions and trying to adopt both technologies for the better.

It seems like we should put all our eggs into one basket but why? If people realised how 'anti-nuclear' they actually were, things would move along faster.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#332

Post by cygx »

vlovich123 wrote: post #317
cygx wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We still have no data that indicates wind and/or solar can displace coal/gas as energy sources. Germany, 2010: Coal+Oil+Gas 55% Nuclear 25% Wind+Solar+Hydro 13% Germany, 2020: Coal+Oil+Gas 36% Nuclear 12% Wind+Solar+Hydro 41% Source: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE...

Carbon dioxide emissions from consumption of energy Germany: 847.6 million Mt (2017 est.) France: 341.2 million Mt (2017 est.) Germany: 57% from non-co2 sources France: 69% (50% from nuclear, 19% wind/solar/hydro) https://www.indexmundi.com/factbook/compare/germany.france/e...

Note that the difference shrinks to a factor 2 if you consider per capita values.

That's still bad, no argument: France splits atoms, while Germany burns lignite, and peat aside, that's as bad as it gets as far as CO2 goes.

However, that's beside the point: The fact remains that Germany did move a significant amount of electricity generation from fossil fuels to renewables.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#333

Post by garmaine »

runarberg wrote: post #327
macspoofing wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s disingenuous to factor in mining requirement for solar panels but not uranium. It would be if it wasn't for the fact that nuclear power is incredibly energy dense so mining requirements for Uranium or Thorium or whatever iteration of nuclear we have, are not even in the same universe as what we will need to scale solar and wind. > But these include better recycling of existing minerals (this includes solar pane…

> Solar panels are not recyclable. Neither are wind mills I don’t understand why you say that. If a wind mill blade is made out of aluminium, it can be recycled as aluminium after it has been decommissioned. It being used in a high tech device doesn’t change that fact. Same if solar cells are primarily made out of glass and silicon, both could be recycled into anything else that requires glass or silicon. I also don’…

Most of a wind turbine is concrete and fiberglass, which doesn’t recycle very well.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#334

Post by vkou »

throwawayboise wrote: post #203
vkou wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that nuclear cannot be built. It's that America is incapable of building... Pretty much anything in the 21st century. If the interstate system were to disappear tomorrow, for example, we simply wouldn't be able to rebuild it. It's not because concrete is some arcane technology that isn't cost effective, or doesn't work. It's because we just aren't very good at building things anymore.

New interstates are being built all the time. They are under construction today.

Yes, and they are built at absolutely ruinous costs.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#335

Post by tedk-42 »

epistasis wrote: post #8

Articles like this miss the main point and instead focus on culture war material. There are plenty of sites that would happily accept more nuclear being built, but all other forms of energy have undercut the cost of nuclear. It's no longer cost competitive, and places like China that adopt a "let's try everything and see what works best" approach have heavily pulled back on nuclear. The issues aren't safety, waste, a…

Just stop the anti-nuclear argument please. Cost shouldn't be a thing if it means we can avoid a climate disaster.

The whole, 'nuclear is too expensive' argument was had 10 years ago with electric vehicles and look where we are now.

If cost is your main motivation to be anti-nuclear, you're hiding a bias whether you're aware of it or not.

We need a replacement for base load power and nuclear can fill that capacity.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#336

Post by cycomanic »

screye wrote: post #282
epistasis wrote: post #8

Articles like this miss the main point and instead focus on culture war material. There are plenty of sites that would happily accept more nuclear being built, but all other forms of energy have undercut the cost of nuclear. It's no longer cost competitive, and places like China that adopt a "let's try everything and see what works best" approach have heavily pulled back on nuclear. The issues aren't safety, waste, a…

Afaik, nuclear energy is more expensive only because it is regulated far beyond what any other form of energy for the same level of risk. Disposal of nuclear waste is a huge expense, but the main waste product generated by natural gas (CO2) gets away scot free despite literally being the cause of what might be our generation's biggest problem. The end-of-life expenses of nuclear plants are included in the cost sheets…

That's simply not true. Nuclear has always and is still receiving significant indirect subsidies. A huge subsidy that nuclear power gets is that plants are not insured against incidents (because essentially nobody is willing to sell them insurance), so it's essentially the state that does it. Also many argue that the nuclear waste storage costs are significantly underestimated, I mean I understand estimating cost for safe storage for thousands of years is difficult.

Interesting you mentioned France, the only project they are building is Flammanville 3 which started in 2007 with an estimated cost of ~3 billion euros, it is now estimated to go online in 2022 with an estimated cost of 19 billion euros. That's just construction cost.

Regarding the cost for decommissioning, the European commission has actually called out France for currently significantly underfunding the cost by a factor of 3 or 4.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#337

Post by BurningFrog »

subaquamille wrote: post #254
BurningFrog wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fukushima happened after the biggest Earthquake in over 1000 years of recorded Japanese history hit at the right spot to produce an enormous flood wave at the reactor. I'd be careful to draw conclusion from such an outlier.

And radiations in Fukushima will last for the next 1000 years. Do we have the same understanding of "zero error tolerance" ?

Considering the magnitude of the damage as well as how rare it is, is a very valid point.

And it's sometimes forgotten that 10s of thousands of people had to leave their homes.

Though some googling reveals that the main contaminant is Cesium-137, which has a 30 year half life. That will fade into background radiation long before that, even ignoring cleanup operations.

They've already reopened parts of the closed area.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#338

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

vimy wrote: post #135
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue for me is not quantity but time. 1000-10,000 (or even much longer) years for decay is an incredible amount of time for the human race. Written language only appeared ~5500 years ago. Let’s say ancient Rome 2,000 years ago made and stored a substance that kills everyone exposed to it, would we expect that substance to still be intact and unblemished right now?

Worst case scenario is that society collapses and nuclear knowledge disappears. Then at some point in the future some farmers will get radiation poisoning and others will avoid the area since it’s “cursed”. This hypothetical problem is hardly anything to worry about when nuclear is sorely needed to help us with an actual problem, climate change.

Well that is a quite crass and horrible fate to condemn those farmers to.

The point is why do any of this when solar and wind are cheaper and have none of these issues? It doesn’t matter what we say here, money always wins and that is why nuclear will be left behind no matter how many astorturfers always show up.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#339

Post by conradev »

arrosenberg wrote: post #309
runarberg wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s disingenuous to factor in mining requirement for solar panels but not uranium. Sure the supply chain to support the infrastructure required for 10 billion people is a lot on the environment, and we certainly could do a lot better. But these include better recycling of existing minerals (this includes solar panels), better forest management, better land use for food production, more careful road design that doesn…

Nuclear fuel is several orders of magnitude more energy dense than solar or wind, so the amount of fuel required is shockingly low, especially compared to how many resources all those panels and windmills require to build and transport. > How much land solar and wind farms use seems kind of minuscule next to all these efforts. And given how urgent the climate disaster is, complaining about land use from solar farms s…

> The 100 acre solar farm you build instead of a 1 acre Nuclear plant is going to have its' own environmental and maintenance challenges

What specific environmental and maintenance challenges? Solar farms are incredibly low maintenance. The land is graded before construction if it is not flat enough and besides that the only maintenance required is:

- Cleaning the panels periodically

- Replacing broken equipment

Top tier panels can come with 25yr manufacturer warranties, and inverters can come with 12yr warranties.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#340

Post by dismayedjim »

screye wrote: post #282
epistasis wrote: post #8

Articles like this miss the main point and instead focus on culture war material. There are plenty of sites that would happily accept more nuclear being built, but all other forms of energy have undercut the cost of nuclear. It's no longer cost competitive, and places like China that adopt a "let's try everything and see what works best" approach have heavily pulled back on nuclear. The issues aren't safety, waste, a…

Afaik, nuclear energy is more expensive only because it is regulated far beyond what any other form of energy for the same level of risk. Disposal of nuclear waste is a huge expense, but the main waste product generated by natural gas (CO2) gets away scot free despite literally being the cause of what might be our generation's biggest problem. The end-of-life expenses of nuclear plants are included in the cost sheets…

You can't wipe a continent out with the worst case coal plant failure. A reactor going critical and exploding, however "impossible" would do just that. Look at the Saudi plant going up. It is jokingly referred to as "a car with no seatbelts".
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