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Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

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Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#361

Post by opo »

godelski wrote: post #218
opo wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As an aside, I'm pro- wind, hydro, geothermal, solar, and nuclear. (I'm also very pro-smart-design which obviates the need for created energy.) I think many of the people who aren't anti-nuclear, would agree with all that. >However I only really see nuclear proponents (and those of fossil fuels) attacking renewables. I rarely see that here. What I tend to see are people who don't like the idea of nuclear power makin…

A problem with both nuclear-bros as well as anti-nuclear folks is that they tend to get their information through armchair experts who oversimplify extremely complex topics. Neither group tends to understand the real reasons for costs, the risks and dangers of technologies (including other than nuclear, for proper comparisons), or even the complexities of simply emissions which is far more than electricity and transp…

>FWIW, the IPCC advocates for a diversified portfolio which includes nuclear, and this is the general stance of most climate and energy researchers as the simplified version of reasoning (I know, ironic) is "don't take it off the table." When to use it, how much, and where is more controversial, but this gets extremely complicated quite quickly.

This seems like the most reasonable approach - if someone disagrees with this, it would be interesting to hear their reasoning.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#362

Post by ETH_start »

effed3 wrote: post #322
Detrytus wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a lot of assumptions here, about the directions in which future technologies can possibly develop. The thing is: if we are making decisions right now, we should make it based on what we know for sure, not based on our hopes and dreams, which might never materialize. In 20 years time, if the technologies you mention do indeed appear, we can re-evaluate our approach. > Uranium (like fossil fuels) is not everyw…

Much of the technology i mention are here now, concrete and available, storage/battery for sure, driven dy automotive conversion to electric, synthetic fuels are way more close than 20years, all the fossil fuel infrastructure will benefit, and here are big$$, and will work with CO2 capture tech, i suspect we will need this very very soon. In the future are fusion (hope), ad real -safe- fission. if i have 1$ to invest…

Transmission lines and storage are costly. When these costs are factored in, solar is possibly much more expensive than nuclear:

"True cost of using wind and solar to meet demand was $272 and $472 per MWh"

https://web.archive.org/web/20220916003958/https://files.ame...

Current mass deployment of solar could prove to be very beneficial in the long run though, as 1. it leads to advances in the mass-manufucturing of solar panels which in turn produce reductions in per unit costs, and 2. it encourages research into energy storage, like methane production from CO2 and solar energy.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#363

Post by ben_w »

ttfkam wrote: post #355
ben_w wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 j…

> [snip sarcasm]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxynitride

> That hailstorm that destroyed the solar farm in Nebraska

I had to look that one up, because Nebraska has about x3 as much capacity in HVDC converter stations from the 70s and 80s as it does total statewide grid-connected PV (which is one of my points, the one I can rephrase as "put it elsewhere if it's really that bad").

> The Scottsbluff project features […] hail stow capabilities from Array Technologies. While it's unclear if the asset's hail stow program was activated during the weather event, damage to the face of the modules indicates it was not.

- https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/solar/solar-farm-pelted...

So again, like I said, solutions are known, even if not actually used.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#364

Post by olddustytrail »

melling wrote: post #352
olddustytrail wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Fair enough, the figures I found were probably older.

My point is the USA should fix its own problem before lecturing others. Other countries are far more advanced in renewables, time to catch up.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#365

Post by effed3 »

ETH_start wrote: post #362
effed3 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of the technology i mention are here now, concrete and available, storage/battery for sure, driven dy automotive conversion to electric, synthetic fuels are way more close than 20years, all the fossil fuel infrastructure will benefit, and here are big$$, and will work with CO2 capture tech, i suspect we will need this very very soon. In the future are fusion (hope), ad real -safe- fission. if i have 1$ to invest…

Transmission lines and storage are costly. When these costs are factored in, solar is possibly much more expensive than nuclear: "True cost of using wind and solar to meet demand was $272 and $472 per MWh" https://web.archive.org/web/20220916003958/https://files.ame... Current mass deployment of solar could prove to be very beneficial in the long run though, as 1. it leads to advances in the mass-manufucturing of sol…

well, sure, nothing is free, but costs are (sometimes) investment, and this is more an issue of politics/economy planning than tech. And with the perspective of such a big development, investment everywhere, of planetary size, who will stay out of a businnes at this scale? i don't understand..

About Minesota, i will read the report, after a brief look i understant that in a state with 25%coal, 20%nuclear, 17%gas, talking of such big increase of green will cause panic to someone.

About Grid, the infrastrucure is here, is necessary, and is independent from the pool of sources (green, fossil, etc..) so it's cost is not related to nature of sources, it's a long term investment to be mantained, so is unavoidable.

The Storage is the open problem, here the investment are necessary and, as you say, in the long run. But to have a real long run, maybe some classic rules of the market need to be relaxed? to let the techs develop..

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#366

Post by pfdietz »

krupan wrote: post #359
pfdietz wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

We can assign monetary value to things and then compare them. Food, for example, has value mostly because of enjoyment, not because we absolutely have to eat (the elasticity of demand for beef is an example of this.) The value of the ecosystems displaced by farming, PV, or other land using activities can also be assigned a monetary value (since it's clearly seen as tradeable against economic benefits.)

Given that, we can ask what's the ratio of the value of the output of a farm to the value of the displaced natural ecosystem, and do the same for PV. And if we do that, we will find the ratio is MUCH higher for PV than it is for farming.

So, if the goal is to maximize utility for a given displacement of natural ecosystems, we come out ahead (on the margin) if we use land for PV instead of farming. If we want to return land to nature at lowest cost we would do that by returning farmland to nature, not PV land.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#367

Post by pfdietz »

yawaramin wrote: post #348
pfdietz wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intermittency of renewables adds costs, but these costs are finite and declining. At this point it's likely that going with renewables will be cheaper than going with nuclear, especially as one projects these declines into the next couple of decades (when any nuclear plant started now will have to compete with improved renewable and storage technologies.) A quote: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 "On…

Theoretical price decreases are not, in fact, convincing fossil fuel companies to get into renewables when they are making record-breaking profits from FF: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/16/big-oil-clim... The plan by RE people is 'Let's hope that a hundred different unlikely events all line up exactly right, and we'll be able to go fully RE'. This is not a realistic plan. If you did software engineerin…

Fossil fuel companies would have no special advantage in most renewable and storage technologies, so it's rational they'd try to stick with what they're good at for as long as possible, perhaps even going down with the ship and returning value to the shareholders as they collapse.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#368

Post by ETH_start »

effed3 wrote: post #365
ETH_start wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transmission lines and storage are costly. When these costs are factored in, solar is possibly much more expensive than nuclear: "True cost of using wind and solar to meet demand was $272 and $472 per MWh" https://web.archive.org/web/20220916003958/https://files.ame... Current mass deployment of solar could prove to be very beneficial in the long run though, as 1. it leads to advances in the mass-manufucturing of sol…

well, sure, nothing is free, but costs are (sometimes) investment, and this is more an issue of politics/economy planning than tech. And with the perspective of such a big development, investment everywhere, of planetary size, who will stay out of a businnes at this scale? i don't understand.. About Minesota, i will read the report, after a brief look i understant that in a state with 25%coal, 20%nuclear, 17%gas, tal…

>>About Minesota, i will read the report, after a brief look i understant that in a state with 25%coal, 20%nuclear, 17%gas, talking of such big increase of green will cause panic to someone.

The authors of the report advocate getting to zero carbon via nuclear and hydro. The advantage is they are both concentrated baseline power sources, so don't require extensive storage and transmission infra.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#370

Post by polotics »

aurelwu wrote: post #26
polotics wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This chart distresses me: solar at 0.9 is only about a third of petroleum at 36. It is making it look like new renewable (ie non-hyrdo) are a lot more sizeable than they really are. From Lawrence Livermore this is hard to swallow. If the boxes sizes are on a weird logarithmic scale, then this should be explicit in the legend.

the lines are what shows the energy amount, the boxes have a minimal size for readability and are acting as the legend of the chart.

ok. what got me is that the amount is written on the box, not on the lines...
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