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Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

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Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#351

Post by jvanderbot »

pfdietz wrote: post #350
jvanderbot wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not to attempt to convince you, just to explain my rationale

Just pointing out that your rationale is not something that should have convinced even you. So ask yourself: if you cannot construct an argument that can convince someone else of your position, did you really arrive at that position by rational means?

You're arguing from a non-foundation, just a quip against my comments, but I wish to politely decline further discussion. My point in commenting was to point out that the comment further up the chain was ... quite against the evidence at hand.

> That there exist countries with lots of fission does not mean there's a place for construction of new fission power plants. Existing capital can continue to be operated long after it no longer makes sense to replace it, due to sunk costs.

I guess this is an assumption that they have outlived their usefulness and soldier on like zombies? There's no evidence given there, so it doesn't matter.

If you are in fact a policy maker giving me the exclusive chance to redirect funding and regulations to support nuclear energy as outlined in this article, then please let me know and I'll compile a survey and fully justify my opinion.

Cheers

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#352

Post by melling »

olddustytrail wrote: post #349
melling wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Coal declined a lot” Yes, in the United States (4% of global population), coal usage declined. Unfortunately, globally coal usage is at all time highs. https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/global-coal-cons... I’d say it’s ok that we overlooked that but we were warned 45 years ago about global coal usage being a large part of the problem. https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI

4% of global population but 28% of global CO2 emissions. You forgot to mention that.

It wasn’t pertinent to my point. I was merely pointing out that coal is a huge problem.

Also, the United States is 15% of global emissions, not 28%.

https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by...

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#353

Post by Kon5ole »

pyrale wrote: post #347
Kon5ole wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They have been profitable for decades. How can you know if they were profitable or not before you know the final costs? >> Why doesn't that count as being part of the decommissioning costs? >Decomissioning a plant has two parts: dismantling, which is a one-time cost, and long-term storage, Certainly, but the yankee plant is currently housing the fuel in a short-term storage container on-site. So the dismantling part…

> but the yankee plant is currently housing the fuel in a short-term storage container on-site. It's hardly short term if it's been there for 26 years. > It's not yet in the "long-term-storage" phase of operations And, judging by the ongoing process, it's not close to be. For no technical reason, it's just politicians doing politician things. So, the logical conclusion is that no one can predict what politicians coul…

>It's hardly short term if it's been there for 26 years.

It certainly is short-term storage. Short-term simply means that it is not intended for permanent final storage. All nuclear waste in the world is currently in short-term storage.

The costs of nuclear are not invented by politicians, as I have shown they are instead largely hidden by politicians.

So far you have compared nuclear waste to recycling solar panels, you have insinuated that having to manage it carefully is just a political decision, and now you think 26 years is "long term storage". I can just assure you that all of these things are completely wrong and encourage you to investigate it further on your own.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#354

Post by pyrale »

Kon5ole wrote: post #353
pyrale wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the yankee plant is currently housing the fuel in a short-term storage container on-site. It's hardly short term if it's been there for 26 years. > It's not yet in the "long-term-storage" phase of operations And, judging by the ongoing process, it's not close to be. For no technical reason, it's just politicians doing politician things. So, the logical conclusion is that no one can predict what politicians coul…

>It's hardly short term if it's been there for 26 years. It certainly is short-term storage. Short-term simply means that it is not intended for permanent final storage. All nuclear waste in the world is currently in short-term storage. The costs of nuclear are not invented by politicians, as I have shown they are instead largely hidden by politicians. So far you have compared nuclear waste to recycling solar panels,…

> you think 26 years is "long term storage".

It's not about it being 26 years, it's about it being longer than the time needed to actually build the long-term solution, and no solution being planned because of political games.

Dry cask storage is the long-term prospect of US waste, but it's unrelated to producing electricity or the actual cost of anything. It's a political decision and paid for by government money, as it should be. Once politicians tire of wasting money, they can build the actual thing.

And if you believe this kind of stuff couldn't happen to your favorite technology, you're delusional.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#355

Post by ttfkam »

ben_w wrote: post #341
ttfkam wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> A single tornado let alone a hurricane could wipe out gigawatts of solar or wind capacity. > That sounds like a problem with planning permission or construction if the plants can't cope with wherever they happen to be installed. It appears you do not live somewhere with extreme weather. How do you plan to protect hundreds or thousands of square meters during events? Is there some kind of new glass? Panels made of…

> Is there some kind of new glass? Yes, every other year thanks to the phone market. We also have transparent aluminium (oxynitride) now. Not there this should be a particularly hard challenge relative to "people live in these places, do their roofs and windows survive?" (even if you have to use shutters, NDB, do that for the PV also). There's also the option to have transmission lines and can put the panels elsewher…

> Yes, every other year thanks to the phone market.

Whew! That's a relief. Too bad about those phone repair outlets though that are basically out of a job due to these unbreakable screens.

> There's also the option to have transmission lines and can put the panels elsewhere in the places without whatever… and they already exist and are in place

That hailstorm that destroyed the solar farm in Nebraska? Yea, that was just last month. You have a very odd impression of the state of the US power grid and its current power production let alone most places in the world. I wish I had your optimism.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#356

Post by Brian_K_White »

Zigurd wrote: post #139

If you have money, you can make energy. Therefore you should spend your capex on the things that will get you the most power soonest. And that is what is happening: https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-investment-2023/ove... Nuclear is a niche category now. But nuclear technology is a fashionable investment that VC limiteds want in their portfolio. So you get articles like this that position uranium fission energ…

I would think that nuclear is popular with the money class because you can own & control the means of prodution. It requires things that only the existing big boys can afford.

Same goes for various battery & solar techs. If they can't prevent solar panels from becoming common, at least they can make sure that solar panels and batteties rely on at least some key ingredients or processes they can own & control access to.

Somehow, one way or another, through safety regulation if not through artificial scarcity or patents, there will be no cooking up good batteries or solar panels in garages, and I bet it will never be down to actual physical impracticality.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#357

Post by ttfkam »

Zigurd wrote: post #219
ttfkam wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How well do solar and wind infrastructures handle tornados and hurricanes? Also, consistent wind resources are notably absent in the South/Southeast. There are no Hoover Dam-like sites available there. Do you honestly expect to tell tens of millions of people that they should just be content with a single hurricane knocking out their electricity grid for a month? That's not realistic. You cannot plan an electrical fu…

Renewable power sources have risks. Renewable power operators can buy insurance against those risks. Can nuclear plant operators buy insurance against nuclear risks? Or are taxpayers on the hook for that?

You seem to believe I am against renewable power. This is not so. This isn't anything against solar or wind. We need to be in this together against CO2-producing power generation. And yes, that should include nuclear for the reasons I gave earlier. I'm an not an insurance underwriter, but I am in favor of the grid staying up during and immediately after natural disasters. If advancements in solar can do that, sounds good, but so far, solar is susceptible to hail, tornados, and hurricanes whereas nuclear is not. So if my tax dollars help keep the lights on, the hospitals running, and the air conditioning flowing, so be it.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#358

Post by rcxdude »

zerodensity wrote: post #319
rcxdude wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The money represents real resources. Printing more of it doesn't make more resources, it just moves some power over the allocation of those resources to the government printing it.

Money has not been backed by resources since the 1970s.

I know there's no defined relationship to any specific resource, but that doesn't change the fact that money is an abstraction.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#359

Post by krupan »

pfdietz wrote: post #337
yellowapple wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, I decided to do some napkin math on this. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant produced 4.7GWe when it was operational, and its current exclusion zone covers an area of 230 square miles - or 0.0204 GW/mi^2. The US has (according to https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-land-power-us... ) 102.9GWe of solar capacity covering an area of 965 square miles - or 0.1GW/mi^2. Judging by that, a nucle…

If you look at the value delivered per acre by a solar field, it's massively (orders of magnitude) higher than the value delivered by a farm. If land cost rules out solar, it also rules out agriculture. I never see the nuke bros saying we shouldn't grow things because it uses too much land, or that we need to go vegan to reduce land use.

What are you talking about? It’s not all dollar cost. You can’t eat what a solar farm produces. A solar farm does not replaced the carbon sequestration of a forest. Endangered species displaced by solar farms (desert tortoises, for example), do not benefit from the “value” produced by a solar farm, quite the opposite! This is what the “nuke bros” are talking about!

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#360

Post by opo »

rewmie wrote: post #324
opo wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm not convinced you read the doc you cited. I guess I should point out these kind of insults are against the site guidelines. >In it, it clearly states that the levelized cost of energy for solar PV rooftop residential ranges from $115/MWH while gas peaking is $114/MWH and nuclear is $141. You are quoting the lowest value in each range, you need to consider the entire range: $117 to $282 Rooftop residential $115 t…

> I guess I should point out these kind of insults are against the site guidelines. It's not an insult. It's a clear reference to the fact that your source does not support your claim, and it actually rejects it. > You are quoting the lowest value in each range, you need to consider the entire range: I'm actually not. If you read the source you cited, you'll notice that they provide a range of values for their estima…

>>> I guess I should point out these kind of insults are against the site guidelines.

>It's not an insult. It's a clear reference to the fact that your source does not support your claim, and it actually rejects it.

If you are unfamiliar with them, the Hacker News guidelines are here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

In particular, check the section on commenting - for example:

>Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".

>>> You are quoting the lowest value in each range, you need to consider the entire range:

>I'm actually not. If you read the source you cited, you'll notice that they provide a range of values for their estimates of what would be the levelized cost for energy from multiple sources. The observed real world cases fall within the whole range. This means that they report real world examples of residential rooftop PV panels costing well below alternatives such as Nuclear. If your thesis was that residential rooftop PV panels were the most expensive source of energy, your own reference refutes your baseless claim. You have to intentionally ignore all the cheapest real world examples of PV installations to proceed to argue they are the most expensive.

There would be no reason to estimate a range if we only consider the lowest possible LCOE.

As the Statista.com article states:

>>Rooftop solar photovoltaic installations on residential buildings have the highest unsubsidized levelized costs of energy generation in the United States. If not for federal and state subsidies, rooftop solar PV would come with a price tag between 147 and 221 U.S. dollars per megawatt hour.

At any rate, the LCOE comparison between residential rooftop solar and nuclear is irrelevant to the main issue. The main issue is that if we want to subsidize a renewable energy source, why should we subsidize rooftop solar when we could subsidize utility grade solar or wind? Look at those costs - literally the highest cost estimates for both utility grade solar and wind are lower than the lowest cost estimate for residential rooftop solar. Money is fungible and not unlimited - a dollar that goes to subsidize residential rooftop solar is a dollar that would go much, much further if it was used to subsidize utility grade solar or wind. These residential rooftop solar subsidies are also unusual in that much of the subsidy is often paid by less well-off households to subsidize their wealthier neighbors.

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