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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

#71

Post by 8bitsrule »

ThomPete wrote: post #67
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.

No! Even the 'new' ones are killing it? Too slow, too expensive, too toxic.

Hmmm, let's see: how many years before the residents of the San Onofre region finish paying for its recent failed upgrade ? Then how much more will they pay for decommissioning it?

That 'clean, safe, too cheap to meter' line is from the 1950s. Before longer we'll have a decentralized, more secure power source that actually lives up to those lies. And best of all? The fuel supply will never be exhausted ... never need to be decommmissioned ... and lives a nice safe 90M miles away.

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

#73

Post by BurningFrog »

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?

The classic answer is to bury extremely long lived waste in a subduction zone at the bottom of the ocean, such as the Mariana Trench.

A "subduction zone" is where two tectonic plates collide and fold into the depth of the planet. So anything you bury there would naturally travel deeper into the planet over the eons.

I haven't heard any serious arguments against this, but I suspect it's impossible because people think it would "contaminate the oceans".

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

#74

Post by robocat »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #53
jws wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One hand full of uranium is enough for a whole human live inclusive transportation heating and so on. Now compare this to the literal mountain of solar panels that would have to be produced… 1.1 billion hectares of land are farmed to feed the 7.5 billion people. That works out to 2000 square meters per person. World energy consumption (all sources) runs about 18 terawatts, or 2400 watts per person. That is 58kWhr per…

All land doesn't receive the same quality or quantity of sunlight.

So choose land that is poor for food production and good for electricity production, then find a way to transport the energy (one good advantage of gas/coal/oil is transportability with current infrastructure).

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

#75

Post by jws »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #53
jws wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One hand full of uranium is enough for a whole human live inclusive transportation heating and so on. Now compare this to the literal mountain of solar panels that would have to be produced… 1.1 billion hectares of land are farmed to feed the 7.5 billion people. That works out to 2000 square meters per person. World energy consumption (all sources) runs about 18 terawatts, or 2400 watts per person. That is 58kWhr per…

All land doesn't receive the same quality or quantity of sunlight.

That is the 3.0 insolation I chose. It’s reasonably representative of areas of northern hemisphere cities. The United States average by population is probably between 4 and 5 according to this map, but winter is lower and you have to plan for that.

https://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/eere_pv/national_photovoltai...

Here is a map of the world…

https://globalsolaratlas.info/downloads/world

Northern Europeans are going to want to have some power lines to the south. Chile might be the new aluminum refining capital of the world. Africa would be energy rich.

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

#76

Post by pvaldes »

mikestew wrote: post #4
mimixco wrote: post #2

No. Nuclear power creates the most dangerous waste known to mankind and we have no way of mitigating or eliminating it. Nuclear isn't cost effective on an ongoing operating basis (compared with natural gas). When you add the costs of closing and "cleaning up" a plant site, which run into the billions of dollars for each plant, nuclear just doesn't make sense. Nuclear is far from "carbon neutral." The process of extra…

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…

> CO2 is the most dangerous waste

> the CO2 produced by Chinese coal-fired plants eventually makes its way to me

Not. It doesn't work like that. CO2 is not even waste in the strict sense of the term; is basic for our survival. If you wipe all CO2 from the air, humankind will go extinct in a hurry because all plants would die really fast. All what we eat started as a CO2 molecule being captured by a plant somewhere.

The problem to recycle or clean it from the air has been solved for us by plants millions of years ago. Plants love CO2 and clean it for free.

Therefore, in the real life, many CO2 produced by Chinese coal-fired plants will be soon captured by a weed or a tree. The rest will go to the atmosphere where will hang on, maybe for a long time, but far away from you.

If you touch or inhale radiactive waste you could die in literally seconds. If you encounter CO2, as long that there is also enough oxygen around, nothing will happen. You will inhale it, will readily enter in your bloodstream, do a couple of roller coaster trips and will be discarded. All of we do it, many times a day for our entire life, without noticeable damage in our body.

And we could say that CO2 is a signifiant danger for the climate, but again, there are much worse molecules in this sense. Methane for example.

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

#77

Post by ThomPete »

8bitsrule wrote: post #71
ThomPete wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No! Even the 'new' ones are killing it? Too slow, too expensive, too toxic. Hmmm, let's see: how many years before the residents of the San Onofre region finish paying for its recent failed upgrade ? Then how much more will they pay for decommissioning it? That 'clean, safe, too cheap to meter' line is from the 1950s. Before longer we'll have a decentralized, more secure power source that actually lives up to those l…

Thats not because of the technology but legislation around it. Most of the pricing will go down once more gets put up so yes and its a hell more effective than wind snd solar which arent even supporting 1% of the worlds supply and not even close to a realistic solution to them beeing unreliable and frankly inferior even with a 300% improvement which isnt possible.

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

#78

Post by ThomPete »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #21
thatcat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your cost analysis neglects replacement, disposal costs for batteries, long term costs of carbon emission, and coal flyash disposal. The only reason nuclear is losing to gas and coal is because the externalities of the mess they make are dumped on the public, whereas nuclear pollution and waste processing is heavily regulated.

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…

Uranium can be reused so that pretty much solves that.

Its not too expensive its very cheap, its the regulation around that makes it expensive which can be solved too.

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

#79

Post by toomuchtodo »

ThomPete wrote: post #78
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…

Uranium can be reused so that pretty much solves that. Its not too expensive its very cheap, its the regulation around that makes it expensive which can be solved too.

If it was easy to solve, it’d be solved already. It’s not easy and it’s not cheap, and for those reasons it’s likely it won’t be done.

It’s already cheaper to build new solar plants and wind farms than continue to run an existing coal plant (which itself is cheaper to run than nuclear).

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

#80

Post by ThomPete »

fogetti wrote: post #29
misiti3780 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you are getting downvoted --- solar and wind account for 1.5% of total, taken from Enlightenment Now by Steve Pinker: > A second key to deep decarbonization brings up an inconvenient truth for the traditional Green movement: nuclear power is the world’s most abundant and scalable carbon-free energy source. Although renewable energy sources, particularly solar and wind, have become drastically cheaper, an…

Net wind energy percentage in Germany in 2017 was 18.9%. And that's a fact. Which clearly voids your argument. Yes, there are limitations how high it can go and I don't expect it to be anywhere near 100%. But it's clearly a huge source of energy already and it will increase even more in the coming years. The reason why it totals 1.5% is because it costs money to replace existing power sources and the lobby power of t…

18% at a horrible cost and not for all uses of energy. The german energy politics is a diaster. You are confusing reality with potential. Most countries get energy outside their own countries just like Denmark who are even higher on wind but still had to get coal based energy from germany because of the lack of wind this summer. Solar and wind isnt even close to solving actual energy needs which includes transportation one of the biggest co2 immitors.

And no realistic fuelcell technology or disrributed grids.

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