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I changed my mind about nuclear waste

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Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#341

Post by rayiner »

geysersam wrote: post #340
rayiner wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But sure, go ahead and blame environmentalists for the destruction profit driven market capitalism caused. If that soothes your cognitive dissonance This is laughable. I come from a country that’s officially socialist. But even people from there want to come to Texas and drive a big SUV and live in a big house with a pool. Better yet, they want to attain that same standard of living in their own country. If environ…

> they will lose every time. Then I dearly hope turning down the thermostat, stopping eating meat, and crowding in public transport isn't necessary to prevent climate change. Because if it is, and if you're right, then we are fucked.

Because people in India and China want air conditioned malls, meat for every meal, and private cars. The governments in these regions are absolutely dependent on keeping those countries on a path to western prosperity for their legitimacy. Any climate change plan that contradicts that isn’t a serious plan and will fuck us all.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#342

Post by acdha »

Accujack wrote: post #279
erpellan wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes a decade to bring a nuclear plant online, at astronomical cost. Instead, why not take that money and start building wind turbines, solar PV and grid-scale batteries? They can start generating (ie. delivering ROI) in a matter of months, be constructed incrementally and are cheaper per KWH.

Newer designs (existing reactors use 1970s technology) are cheaper and faster to build. Look up the concept of "Small Modular Reactors".

If Wikipedia isn’t missing some examples, there’s exactly one of those operating now in Russia. That seems like we might need more data points before proclaiming them cheaper and faster in the present tense.

I’m totally on board for building more but it doesn’t seem like this is a solved problem yet.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#343

Post by pvaldes »

LarryMullins wrote: post #207
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That has been working well, stored well and safely without issue. Fukushima Daiichi. In case those two words aren't enough to jog your memory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Powe... > "leading to releases of radioactivity and triggering a 30 km (19 mi) evacuation zone surrounding the plant" > "the Japanese government approved the dumping of radioactive water of this power plant into the Pac…

> "the Japanese government approved the dumping of radioactive water of this power plant into the Pacific Ocean over the course of 30 years." A minuscule amount of tritium, dumped into an ocean that has billions of tons of uranium dissolved in it. This Fukushima water issue is a perfect example of people letting emotions overrule rational thought.

> A minuscule amount of tritium, dumped into an ocean that has billions of tons of uranium

(And then marine life enters the room, accumulating this while ignoring that, and all those carefully raised math models, simulations and speeches fall like a house of cards).

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#344

Post by skrbjc »

horsawlarway wrote: post #309
helf wrote: post #50

the fearmongering and all around nuclear is deeply ingrained in the public consciousness. It will be hard to kill it. Sadly. There are all sorts of designs that are awesome but havent been put to wide use because its insanely expensive to even get permits for a nuclear plant (if it is even possible) not to mention the insane costs to actual build one. Economies of scale never took hold due to a couple of incidents (o…

Say what you will, but I don't think you'll ever get economies of scale in nuclear like you will with solar (or even wind). You can certainly get some economies of scale, but those cost benefits are almost always a function of number of units produced. Nuclear just doesn't need that many units produced - so it will never get the same functional benefit. Unless you're planning on going down to Asimov-esque wearable re…

The economies of scale for nuclear require far fewer units to have a benefit compared to something like solar panels. Because you aren't building 100s of 1000s of them like you need with solar panels.

Just building two identical plants at the same time creates a huge cost savings.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#345

Post by skrbjc »

LgWoodenBadger wrote: post #266
dauertewigkeit wrote: post #222

I wonder how much The Simpsons contributed to nuclear fear. No, but seriously, I only have one criticism. What about all the rest of the world? The developed world and the big developing countries might be trusted with nuclear fission, but there are still a whole bunch of countries who cannot be. So in some sense this debate is stupid. Deploy nuclear were it makes sense, but there are definitely places where renewabl…

Probably none? Nothing "bad" ever happens in a Simpsons episode, especially around nuclear materials.

Mutated fish was one at least.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#346

Post by lamontcg »

erentz wrote: post #215
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That has been working well, stored well and safely without issue. Fukushima Daiichi. In case those two words aren't enough to jog your memory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Powe... > "leading to releases of radioactivity and triggering a 30 km (19 mi) evacuation zone surrounding the plant" > "the Japanese government approved the dumping of radioactive water of this power plant into the Pac…

> Fukushima Daiichi. In case those two words aren't enough to jog your memory: Yes, I get that nuclear power scares people, which is why we should put aside our emotions on the subject and just deal with the facts. We've had decades of empirical evidence about nuclear safety at this point. Zero radio-logical related deaths from Fukushima. And zero deaths in all history from all other civilian nuclear waste. > "the Ja…

> Zero radio-logical related deaths from Fukushima. And zero deaths in all history from all other civilian nuclear waste.

Still a trillion dollar clean up.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#347

Post by bryanlarsen »

tonyarkles wrote: post #148
lanstin wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we had started a serious decarbonization 20 yeats ago, sure, but solar is now so cheap and easy that it will be harder for large scale nuclear to ramp up in time to matter. Maybe those container nuclear plants and maybe the last 20% of base capacit by 2040. But slowing solar in deference to nuclear would prolong the era of high atmospheric carbon.

> but solar is now so cheap and easy that it will be harder for large scale nuclear to ramp up in time to matter There's still the storage and base load problem. But I am 100% with you that we shouldn't slow solar in deference to nuclear; what we should be doing is mapping out what we want our next generation energy mix to look like (solar, wind, pumped storage, nuclear, geothermal, etc) on a regional basis, stop fuc…

The Canadian prairies have fabulous solar production, even in the winter time. They also have a good amount of wind.

And BC has tons of hydro.

So build out enough renewables to supply BC when the sun is shining, maybe even enough to pump some water uphill, and then have BC hydro supply the prairies at other times.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#348

Post by yongjik »

aktenlage wrote: post #299
yongjik wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fossil fuel industry is funding pro-nuclear PR because they realize that renewables do pose a major economic threat to their business in the short term Last time I heard, it wasn't pro-nuclear France that urgently built a new LNG terminal, it was staunchly anti-nuclear Germany (in 2023!!). So I have doubt about your analysis.

I hope you also heard that Germany exports electricity to France . The natural gas is mostly needed for heating and industrial processes and that cannot be simply replaced by nuclear electricity.

It's not an externally imposed constraint that Germany's heating and industrial processes require natural gas; it's the result of Germany's conscious decision to build them on gas instead of electricity. Hard to interpret it as anything but pro-fossil-fuels.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#349

Post by philipkglass »

LarryMullins wrote: post #329
idlewords wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may be confused about the distinction between radioactivity and black body radiation. The fact that gamma rays, microwaves, visible light and so on are all on a spectrum doesn't mean that every EM emitter is radioactive.

Whether or not you want to apply the term "radioactive" to a black body emitter is completely beside the point, which is that EM radiation doesn't make things radioactive. Your objection is to the use of a word, not the physics, so I think this discussion has run its course.

At high enough photon energy, electromagnetic radiation actually can make things radioactive. The general term is "photonuclear reactions."

Here's an example:

"Photonuclear production of medical isotopes 62,64Cu using intense laser-plasma electron source"

https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5100925

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#350

Post by tonyarkles »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #347
tonyarkles wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but solar is now so cheap and easy that it will be harder for large scale nuclear to ramp up in time to matter There's still the storage and base load problem. But I am 100% with you that we shouldn't slow solar in deference to nuclear; what we should be doing is mapping out what we want our next generation energy mix to look like (solar, wind, pumped storage, nuclear, geothermal, etc) on a regional basis, stop fuc…

The Canadian prairies have fabulous solar production, even in the winter time. They also have a good amount of wind. And BC has tons of hydro. So build out enough renewables to supply BC when the sun is shining, maybe even enough to pump some water uphill, and then have BC hydro supply the prairies at other times.

So I’m looking at this from the perspective of completely eliminating fossil fuels from my home. Not just electricity, but heating as well. I want solar to win, but here’s the numbers I get from looking at December/January this year (my bills don’t quite line up cleanly on month boundaries):

863 m^3 of natural gas -> ~9100 kWh of heating energy

Assuming (generously) that I can get a COP of 3, even though that’s unrealistic at the miserable temperatures we had over the last few months, that’s ~3000 kWh for electric heat pump heat.

Electricity was about 745kWh for the month, so 3750kWh total between heat pump heating and electricity.

https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/ma... shows 3.5kWh/mo/m^2 for December and 4.4kWh/mo/m^2 for January. Let’s go with January to be generous.

3750kWh/mo / 4.4kWh/mo/m^2 = 852 m^2 = 9170 sq.ft. of solar required to cover both my electricity and heating needs.

If I look at just electricity it’s a lot easier. 745 / 4.4 = 169m^2 = 1800 sq.ft. which is essentially the same footprint as the house. Heating completely kills it though and is, I suspect for most people, an even larger source of carbon than their electricity use. At least looking at those two bills, there’s an $88 carbon tax charge on the natural gas bill and only $8 on the electrical bill.

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