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A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

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Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#61

Post by v_lisivka »

saagarjha wrote: post #40
v_lisivka wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can build one CO2 capture factory in Nevada desert to capture excessive CO2 and bury it there. I see no difference.

The amount of CO2 is orders of magnitude more than the amount of radioactive waste; you cannot just build “one factory in Nevada” and sequester all the carbon dioxide produced.

We need to capture about 1 trillion of tons of CO2 to return to sane levels, and then capture about 25 billion tons of CO2 annually. It looks doable.

See http://www.climatecentral.org/news/first-commercial-co2-capt... .

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#62

Post by archgoon »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #58
BurningFrog wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to remind people that we already live on a radioactive planet. We can build nuclear reactors because radioactive stuff naturally is everywhere. There probably wouldn't be life here without it. So to me the "let's get it off the planet" idea is an overreaction. Radioactive material just need to be handled with common sense.

Hmm... what's the over-under on dropping barrels into a volcano? You get a little radioactive steam surely...but eventually turns into radioactive dust... As an aside, ignorant physics question, does the half-life of something decrease with heat? Like does more beta-decay mean it gets to safe levels faster? Maybe a few years in between tectonic plates would do a planet good eh?

> As an aside, ignorant physics question, does the half-life of something decrease with heat?

Short answer: No. Definitely not in a Volcano.

Long Answer:

Decay rates are ultimately determined by the subatomic structure of the nucleus. This is why different chemicals, and different isotopes of said chemicals, will decay differently. A lone neutron will decay after about 15 minutes (which is a long time in subatomic scales), however, the two neutrons in (4/2)He will happily stick around forever.

So melting a material won't have any impact on the structure of the nucleus, you're just disassociating the intramolecular bonds; same goes for turning said material into a gas.

If you were to raise the temperature high enough, and we're talking sun-like (not the measly 5000k that you get on the surface, I mean like 27-million degrees you find in the core), then you'll actually start stripping and fusing nuclei, which will at that point change (but not necessarily decrease) the radioactive rates of whatever material you started with.

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#63

Post by credit_guy »

hunta2097 wrote: post #18
mikestew wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power creates the most dangerous waste known to mankind From what I've been reading, seems CO2 tops that list. One can bury nuclear waste in the Nevada desert, keep everyone a few hundred miles away, and it'll be fine. From what I learned in high school chemistry class, a gas wants to expand to fill its container, so the CO2 produced by Chinese coal-fired plants eventually makes its way to me. The process of…

Great insight. I am fond of the phrase "final generation nuclear". We need 30 years of nuclear fission before we can sustain fusion. I think we're already past the point where some nuclear risk is acceptable. It's not a zero sum game - fossel fuels are already being used with risk. We need to take some (calculated) risks again.

> We need 30 years of nuclear fission before we can sustain fusion.

Not sure where that comes from. I don't think we'll have competitive fusion in the next 50 years. Sure, people who talk about ITER draw (quite optimistic) plans for when we'll be able to get more from the fusion reaction than what energy we pump in, but they forget to mention that's not the end of the story. Fusion may be clean, but it's terribly inefficient. In the Sun, fusion generates about the same amount of energy per liter as a liter of warm chicken soup releases to the ambient environment [1]. The Sun is huge, so overall the amount of generated energy is huge, but on Earth a power plant that has the same power density as the Sun would need to have a volume of 4 billion m3 to be similar to a typical fission power plant (1GW). That's 4 cubes of 1 square kilometers each. And don't bet on us getting to that efficiency in the next 20-30 years. So, sorry for the bad news, but no, we won't have viable fusion power plants in the foreseeable future.

[1] https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/370899/suns-powe...

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#64

Post by 8bitsrule »

Now there'a title that Ed Bernays would be proud of. 'A new generation approves.' So, where's this new generation? What demonstrates their love? Show me pictures of a dozen, or it didn't happen. Then, show how that scales with full knowledge of history, not just free jelly babies.

Fantasy fiction isn't going to solve our dilemma. Advanced, less toxic technology will. Nuclear has had its chance.

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#65

Post by maxerickson »

imtringued wrote: post #14

With a new projected cost of 25 billion USD the cost overruns of the Vogtle Plant are worse than I thought. There is a reason why nuclear is losing to natural gas and coal. It's too damn expensive and takes too long. If this money was instead spent on building more storage capacity we'd have solved our energy problems a long time ago and even if we started today we'd be done long before the nuclear plant is online. T…

Where's the over-capacity to make that thing work going to come from?

There's ~12 hour batteries on the grid (pumped storage), but they mostly recharge from coal and nuclear at night.

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#66

Post by ethbro »

beaconstudios wrote: post #30
toomuchtodo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries can be recycled, nuclear waste is stockpiled with no permanent disposal or recycling plan in sight. Solar and wind, unsubsidized, with storage, are already cheaper than nuclear. Those costs will continue to plummet, especially as EV battery demand ramps (rapidly expanding battery manufacturing capacity). Nuclear lost because it’s too expensive, and has its own externalities to ignore (decommissioning, waste…

this might sound silly (and it probably is), but I don't understand why we don't build a hulking great cannon and shoot our nuclear waste into space.

Uranium (elemental) has a density of 19.1 g/cm^3.

For comparison, lead has a density of 11.34 g/cm^3.

It's heavy.

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#67

Post by ThomPete »

8bitsrule wrote: post #64

Now there'a title that Ed Bernays would be proud of. 'A new generation approves.' So, where's this new generation? What demonstrates their love? Show me pictures of a dozen, or it didn't happen. Then, show how that scales with full knowledge of history, not just free jelly babies. Fantasy fiction isn't going to solve our dilemma. Advanced, less toxic technology will. Nuclear has had its chance.

Nuclear is the safest, most scaleable, greenest most reliable power source we know of bar none and blows every other alternative energy out of the water at 1000w per m2.

Far less people have because of nuclear power in all its time than gets killed by nature in a year.

The environmentalist not rationality kille nuclear.

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#68

Post by 8bitsrule »

imtringued wrote: post #14

With a new projected cost of 25 billion USD the cost overruns of the Vogtle Plant are worse than I thought. There is a reason why nuclear is losing to natural gas and coal. It's too damn expensive and takes too long. If this money was instead spent on building more storage capacity we'd have solved our energy problems a long time ago and even if we started today we'd be done long before the nuclear plant is online. T…

How many wind turbines could already be spinning for the $25B thrown at this endless project? The answer, at $10M each, is 2500.

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#69

Post by NickM »

crdoconnor wrote: post #39
lucb1e wrote: post #28

I see so many people against nuclear but I wonder if they read books such as Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air. As I understand it, either we kill ourselves fast, or we use this as a stop-gap until we can figure it out for real. With newer reactors being much better, maybe another generation (helped by more implementations) will even be good enough not to have to be a stop-gap solution.

Three questions that I have never had satisfactorily answered by nuclear advocates: * If nuclear is that safe, why don't we eliminate or at least, significantly raise the nuclear liability cap? The nuclear industry keeps trying to sell us (this article included) on the idea that disasters are now close to impossible. It'd be an easier sell if they voluntarily increased their liability, to, say $150-400 billion and fo…

These seem like very reasonable questions to me. Is this comment just getting downvoted because pro-nuclear HNers don’t like the opinions being expressed, or can someone legitimately justify the negative comment score I’m currently seeing?

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#70

Post by ryacko »

ethbro wrote: post #66
beaconstudios wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this might sound silly (and it probably is), but I don't understand why we don't build a hulking great cannon and shoot our nuclear waste into space.

Uranium (elemental) has a density of 19.1 g/cm^3. For comparison, lead has a density of 11.34 g/cm^3. It's heavy .

Yes, but how much coal versus uranium would a household use, if used to generate electricity in the most efficient way possible (cogeneration presumably)?
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