61–70 of 124 posts
Why not go one step further and make it fully submerged off the coast, to protect it from a bad weather?
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ownership is different from actually having ops capabilities, I do not think there is a button somewhere is Beijing that China can use to just turn off Australian power plant on Australian soil. The most China can do to sell the asset and temporary depress its price.
The Australian market is routinely manipulated by pretending to turn off equipment until the price rises sufficiently to pretend to turn the equipment on just in time for the high price market. So yes, there is "a button somewhere" that a private owner can use to just turn off Australian power plants on Australian soil.
I've read a bit about Australia's energy problems over the years, I'm unaware of how they regulate pricing though. The US has very strict rules in place for its private utilities.
Private + tight controls has resulted in the US having close to the cheapest power in the developed world. Roughly 1/3 the cost of Germany's or Australia's electricity. Privatization doesn't explain Australia's numerous disastrous energy choices and policies.
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What do you mean by "secure facilities"? Yes, currently the nuclear waste is in intermediate storage facilities. Which are buildings, with an useful life time of 50 years. Unless a nuclear technology for reusing or processing the waste appears, we are talking about safe storage for thousands of years.
I don't think nuclear waste is as big a problem as you might think it is: https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ And on a side note, are solar and aeolic scalable enough to support (let's say) the entire US ? How much of the country would physically need to be covered for that? Cause I've seen claims that it's just impossible
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/187605/does-wate...
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What do you mean by "secure facilities"? Yes, currently the nuclear waste is in intermediate storage facilities. Which are buildings, with an useful life time of 50 years. Unless a nuclear technology for reusing or processing the waste appears, we are talking about safe storage for thousands of years.
I don't think nuclear waste is as big a problem as you might think it is: https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ And on a side note, are solar and aeolic scalable enough to support (let's say) the entire US ? How much of the country would physically need to be covered for that? Cause I've seen claims that it's just impossible
Highly active waste is stored to be separated from the biosphere 10k to 100k years (If stored in a pool that's 200 to 2000 pools assuming a 50 year lifespan and hoping there are no massive earthquakes to ruin that plan - and hoping people are still around to rebuild the pools).
The alternatives for storing includes the pool idea (however difficult), as well as storing in several km deep drill holes (downside not being able to move it again). The most realistic one is storing it in earthquake-safe bedrock at 500m depth, in large metal capsules embedded in clay or salt. Needless to say, even for a small amount of material, this is a rather expensive storage.
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> unsolved problem of disposing the nuclear waste I'm not sure what you mean by unsolved disposal. Nuclear waste from power plants is stored in secure facilities. It takes up a manageable amount of space, is low maintanance and isn't dangerous. Furthermore, future reactors will be able to reuse it; the current reactors only use up a small fraction of the fuel. So actually, you wouldn't even want to throw it away. Als…
Future reactors? Rosatom has 800 MW breeders now!
Why not go one step further and make it fully submerged off the coast, to protect it from a bad weather?
> A French company has designed a reactor called Flexblue that would not float but rather be submerged on the ocean floor.
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Because Assad was going to let a Qatar pipeline go through Syria in the first place? Hmm I wonder which foreign powers destabilized Syria and have been trying to overthrow the current government for close to 7 years now.
" On 1 June 2012, President Assad vowed to crush the anti-government uprising. On 12 June 2012, the UN for the first time officially proclaimed Syria to be in a state of civil war. " - Wikipedia I am sorry but the conspiracy Theory that the US had anything to do with starting the Syrian conflict is simply not true.
Can't believe somewhere in the world, someone is still harnessing nukes
> Q. What about nuclear waste?
> A. The waste consists of the fission products. They are highly radioactive at first, but the most radioactive isotopes decay the fastest. (That's what being most radioactive amounts to). About one cubic meter of waste per year is generated by a power plant. It needs to be kept away from people. After 10 years, the fission products are 1,000 times less radioactive, and after 500 years, the fission products will be less radioactive than the uranium ore they are originally derived from. The cubic meter estimate assumes reprocessing, unfortunately not being done in the U.S.
I'd always assumed 25,000 years for it to return to normal levels.
[0]: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html
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Off shore drilling rigs aren’t anchored to he floor, but the pipe could literally snap if the rig floats away. They are kept in place solely by GPS and thrust vectoring. The Ruskies are going to use the same technology here, known for decades, and probably safer than oil rigs since there nothing to snap and a small volume to protect if the whole thing sinks.
- Your account was created 8 minutes ago - defending some press release coming out of Russia. How is the weather today in Moscow ?
Can't believe somewhere in the world, someone is still harnessing nukes
John McCarthy has an interesting website over nuclear energy [0]. I can't vouch for how actually true it is, but it seems reasonably well argued. This was his comment over nuclear waste: > Q. What about nuclear waste? > A. The waste consists of the fission products. They are highly radioactive at first, but the most radioactive isotopes decay the fastest. (That's what being most radioactive amounts to). About one cub…