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Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

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Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#71

Post by slt2021 »

visarga wrote: post #64
slt2021 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nuclear fuel: nuclear rods can last about 3-7 years, lets say 5 on avg. 150 rods per 1 GW reactor. so its like one or two rail cars of fuel - extremely compact footprint. how calculate yourself how much fossil fuel you need to power 1 GW power plant for half a decade, and how much CO2 emissions will you generate? How many rail cars of coal Germany will need to generate 1 GW 24/7/365 for 5 years reliably ? it is just…

Technically, solar is also nuclear.

photovoltaic elements inside solar panel rely on photoelectric effect, which is electromagnetic force. It cannot be weak/strong force

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#72

Post by JumpCrisscross »

legulere wrote: post #67
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 61.5% of Germany's electricity comes from renewable sources Now. For years they switched to coal. Even today, Germany falls to the siren songs of the gas lobby, who promise a €1.5tn investment into gas infrastructure will be happily written off for the sake of the planet.

Nuclear was replaced by renewables, not by coal: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Energiemix_Deutschla... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Electricity_generati... A point you certainly can argue about, is that coal should have been replaced by renewables before nuclear, but that discussion is over now. For gas use electricity production is just a minor use. Most gas is consumed by industry and for heati…

> coal should have been replaced by renewables before nuclear, but that discussion is over now

Right. Coal stayed online where it would have otherwise gone away. That was true for close to a decade.

> gas use electricity production is just a minor

And growing. Look at your own chart. The change in natural gas electrical generation is about as large as solar’s entire controbution.

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#73

Post by polotics »

pfdietz wrote: post #14
elzbardico wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that their system cost is prohibitive in the real world? The fact that we don’t fucking have the slightest idea of how to deal with recycling that stuff on their EOL? Or would be the fact that mining cobalt and lithium in the required quantities to indulge on the fantasy of a solar/wind based grid would poison an inordinate portion of our environment? Or would it be the fact that every single fucking country…

You provide excellent examples of the bogosity of the arguments. Let me demolish them in turn. 1) System cost Sure, it's high. That's because we spend huge amounts of money on energy. ANY system to replace fossil fuels will be expensive, in the trillions of dollars. But if this is an argument against renewables, it's an even bigger argument against nuclear. Because nuclear is much more expensive than renewables. 2) R…

1) it's not the money, it's the EROEI 2) at scale, panels recycling does become a very real issue 3) It's not the abundance, it's the mine-able ore at high enough concentration that matters 4) solar panels, read the docs please 5) again, it's the EROEI, maybe panels and wind scrap a 3, early oil was in the hundreds, nuclear is at around 50

After having gotten 0/5 in terms of correctness on actual facts, maybe tone down the sneer?

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#74

Post by Dalewyn »

teamonkey wrote: post #58
Dalewyn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Fukushima #1 meltdown was man-made, namely the absolute ineptitude of the Japanese government at the time. As disasterous as the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami were, those were not what ultimately caused the meltdown.

The government was no more or less inept than any other organisation - government or private - anywhere in the world. When faced with pressure to save money but still deliver, weighed up against a very low risk of catastrophe in their time, they did the mental math and cut corners, found ways around the safeguarding policies previously put in place and kicked infrastructure spending down the line. The big problem wit…

You literally do not know what transpired.

When the tsunami hit and Fukushima #1 lost power and was at risk of meltdown, TEPCO was ready to scuttle the reactors by dumping seawater in them. It would have rendered the reactors unusable, but meltdown would be prevented.

The Japanese government at the time, coming from the Prime Minister (Naoto Kan) himself, denied TEPCO from scuttling them because the government wanted the reactors usable. TEPCO was begging for authorization but it was not meant to be.

So what happened was the meltdown happened and the reactors became unusable anyway.

The blame was then scapegoated on TEPCO, because elite politicians surely can't and shouldn't be prosecuted for their ineptitude.

What happened at Fukushima #1 was a human failure that did not have to happen.

Bittersweet revenge was that the incumbent party at that time, the Democrat Party of Japan, lost the subsequent general election and the party subsequently fell apart.

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#75

Post by Krasnol »

haconBagrid wrote: post #30
Krasnol wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, sure they are reaping. 61.5% of Germany's electricity comes from renewable sources[1]. What nuclear generated has been replaced years ago, and they have a law to phase out coal completely. The only weird thing about it is that they're being hated on so much from the nuclear-bubble, while the bubble simultaneously drags the shield of innovation and environment protection. Meanwhile, there is negligible innovation…

And here we can see how their electricity generation has fallen https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE...

Where are all those rolling blackouts we've been promised by the fearmongering of the nuclear-astroturf? Weird eh?

Maybe it's not always clever to use US-logic on the rest of the world.

Germany is not Texas.

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#76

Post by JumpCrisscross »

wkat4242 wrote: post #60
polotics wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chernobyl with its totally mad graphite design is not representative of safe designs like Fukushima, or French plants, or even Chinese plants...

Yet we've had Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Sellafield and many others (military ones too). Unforeseen accidents happen. Wars too, which tend to destroy safety equipment. Artillery was fired around Zaporizhzhia when the reactors were still online, Ukraine is currently invading Russia near Kursk where two of the mad-graphite RBMK reactors are still operational today. I hope they try to avoid those when blow…

> we've had Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Sellafield

You’re comparing rubber ducks and battleships

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#77

Post by pfdietz »

Krasnol wrote: post #75
haconBagrid wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here we can see how their electricity generation has fallen https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE...

Where are all those rolling blackouts we've been promised by the fearmongering of the nuclear-astroturf? Weird eh? Maybe it's not always clever to use US-logic on the rest of the world. Germany is not Texas.

Texas, where new nuclear has been dead in the water for years.

> “The cost of new nuclear is prohibitive for us to be investing in,” says Crane. Exelon considered building two new reactors in Texas in 2005, he says, when gas prices were $8/MMBtu and were projected to rise to $13/MMBtu. At that price, the project would have been viable with a CO2 tax of $25 per ton. “We’re sitting here trading 2019 gas at $2.90 per MMBtu,” he says; for new nuclear power to be competitive at that price, a CO2 tax “would be $300–$400.” Exelon currently is placing its bets instead on advances in energy storage and carbon sequestration technologies.

(passage from Dec. 2018 Physics Today; Texas natural gas is even cheaper than that now)

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#78

Post by pfdietz »

TheGamerUncle wrote: post #42
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is the cost coming from handling it. The latest figure on the cost to handle Fukushima is $190B from 2016. The great thing today is that we don't need to accept radioactive releases from either nuclear power or coal. Simply build the cheap scalable option instead: renewables.

while cheaper in some contexts and somewhat scalable, renewables are nowhere near being as scalable or effective as nuclear, specially as tensions with China rise

Renewables are vastly more scalable and effective than nuclear.

You mentioned China. Last year, China brought more than 100x more PV on line than they did nuclear (on a rated power basis; levelized basis maybe 30x as much.)

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#79

Post by 7952 »

slt2021 wrote: post #70
7952 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So for nuclear power to be successful you just have to change human nature and politics to secure long term investment. And do so in countries that cannot even figure out how to properly fund education.

the fact that we allowed non-technical people with liberal arts education, who have no concept of physics and energy, to make nuclear a political issue is a big failure. Plus oil rich countries lobbying LNG as a greener alternative for nuclear is another fail

But it is not within your gift to control human nature or suppress politics. Or at least I hope its not. A good design/proposal/plan considers human factors.

And energy production is not some science experiment where you can control all the baseline conditions. It exists within a complex mix of economy, environment, social system, manufacturing etc. There is no scientific method for navigating that. And your industry will probably ignore it if there was. Politics is all we have for deciding complex interrelated questions.

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#80

Post by pfdietz »

polotics wrote: post #39
jajko wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I like nuclear on the paper and its theoretical env impact, this one is hard to ignore. Add costs of current projects which became ridiculous in reality. Plus as we see with various wars nuclear powerplants would be a prime target for terrorists or even state actors, they are certainly not considered as excluded from wars, in contrary. If we move to renewables, over 100 years there would be 0 reason to have a s…

Do pray tell calculate a world's energy system looping back while running purely on renewables, with electric powered mining, transport of ores, refining, panels production... You will find that you cannot, cheap (for now) fossil fuels are subsidising solar panels and wind farms massively.

The mining for renewables would be a small fraction of the mining for industrial society as a whole.

So, if electrification cannot be done on this, industrial society as we know it is doomed, and nuclear cannot save it. Unless you're thinking we're going to have nuclear reactors in our mining vehicles...

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