Ultra Safe Nuclear • Hacker News Board

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#91

Post by briffle » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:19 PM UTC

crispyporkbites wrote: post #41

gruez wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We can capture 1/5th of its output per square meter. For free! except you know, the solar panels. by the same logic you can you can capture fission power for free, all you need is set up the reactor.

Installing a solar panel can be done today, for a $100. Tomorrow it will be $50, and it’ll keep going down until the market dictates the price. Nuclear takes years to build and generate output, and the price is going up. It would be foolish to build a nuclear plant today unless you have a specific need for it (small location, little sunlight/wind). Personally I think that in 20-40 years time most people will get the…

The whole point of this system is that its also quick to install, and cheap. Its not a custom designed for each mega site type of setup like traditional reactors.

Solar is going to have fun in places like Alaska.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#92

Post by dangerface » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:20 PM UTC

evgen wrote: post #63

dangerface wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are short on space for your solar panels put them on your roof, problem solved. There are cheaper better ways of storing electricity like water stores, and this is what they use not batteries, they have never used batteries thats just a Tesla thing.

> put them on your roof, problem solved. This is why solar kills more people every year than nuclear, and your hydro storage and batteries are not even a drop in the ocean compared to total load or daily capacity of even a small grid.

Wha? Becuase stuff falls off your roof and kills them? How does that compare to tiles falling off your roof and killing people? This doesn't sound like a real thing.

Hydro storage is quite literaly a drop in the ocean, get it.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#93

Post by evgen » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #65

3pt14159 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deaths per joule are the lowest out of any major fuel source except for maybe wind, which is debatable depending on your assumptions about the future.

That's deaths per joule so far. How would nuclear compete if far more renewables were installed, producing far more joules? How about clean-up costs? Estimates for Fukushima vary from $76bn to $660bn depending who you ask. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the-radi... How about general carelessness? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-weapons-s... This is not unusual for the nuke indu…

Since deaths from renewables scale linearly with installations I think that nuclear will continue to win that particular argument. Building more wind turbines and solar installations is not going to reduce the deaths from installation and maintenance.

I wonder what the clean-up costs are long-term for the groundwater contamination from solar panel production and for the dismantling and junking of wind turbines when they reach their EOL? Maybe not as much as nuclear but definitely not free -- right now they are a hidden negative externality just like coal plant fly ash, but eventually someone is going to have to pay the bill.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#94

Post by V6HBGNQHU » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #54

throwaway894345 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The glaring problem (pun intended) with solar and wind is that the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow and we don't have a good way to store energy for those sunless and windless intervals.

We do have a good way to store energy. It's called batteries, they are already cost effective in several use cases, and their cost is going down about 5% per year.

When people talk about the cost of solar they ignore the price of batteries and underestimate the amount of batteries required. Watch this video about renewables in California[0]. The video mentions a study that would put the cost of energy storage required for California to be 100% on renewables would be over $3.6 trillion which is equivalent to an entire year's GDP for the state. The video author explained that study's methodology got that number by assuming enough to store excess capacity during the summer to provide power in winter when not enough would be generated on most days. This isn't great because li-on batteries are not great for long term storage and would lose power over time.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5cm7HOAqZY

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#95

Post by slezyr » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

dangerface wrote: post #88

slezyr wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The sun is a giant, free nuclear fusion plant in the sky. We can capture 1/5th of its output per square meter. For free! Are going to clean solar panels/mirrors for free? > Bahawalpur is desert terrain , having high dust count, therefore, the efficiency of panels were reduced by 40%. It required 30 people to clean panels with 15 days to restore the panels back to their full capacity, which reduced production of ins…

Do you get out of your car to wipe your windscreen when its raining? This cleaning problem seems like something that would be super easy to automate, I dunno why they would higher 30 people to do this when you could higher one engineer.

Just add a bit of water™

How come that number of rovers on Mars dies due to dust on its panels? If it's a simple problem to solve why would NASA let them die?

Water shortage is also present on that power plant.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#96

Post by s9w » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

merb wrote: post #31

manfredo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's not a problem. There's actually very little of it. It occupies a volume the footprint of a football field and 10 yards high [1]. Storing it is pretty foolproof: bury it in an area with no aquifer. The main risk of contamination is getting into the groundwater. If there's no groundwater the risk of contamination is eliminated even if the containers decay over time. And lastly, it doesn't make sense to bur…

1. How long does it need to be kept safe? 2. How to find a storage facility that can keep it safe that long? 3. How to ensure that a facility does not contamine other stuff in X years? 4. if it is recycable why does nobody do it? 5. if it is so easy to store it safe, why does not country have a TRUE final depot? yeah coal is bad, but why compare it to coal in the first place when we want to reduce such things anyway?…

In Germany we have a thing called Ewigkeitskosten ("eternal costs"). That's how we call the expenses that still arise as a consequence from the coal mining operations, especially in the west of Germany. That are things like constantly pumping around water. About a fifth of the western coal region would be underwater without it. They're called that way because we already knew that they will never go away. That was accepted because it brought the region and its people prosperity.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#97

Post by manfredo » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

merb wrote: post #79

manfredo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Forever. Uranium is a heavy metal, it's toxic regardless of it's radioactivity. 2. The US already has one [1]. Congress stopped it's opening, but it's sitting there built ready to be used. Europe also is constructing a disposal site [2] 3. Like I wrote in my comment, bury it in an area with no groundwater. 4. France does recycle it's nuclear waste. 5. We do, as I pointed out above. And for the second time, this wa…

both your links actually say the following: 1. yucca mountain can not sustain a million years due to strong seismic activity 2. onkalo stores the waste in iron that is probably corrosion prone well no matter the waste is a problem and humans can't handle it, because money is the problem. as long as somebody can make it cheaper the cheapest option is always used which probably can harm people. nuclear technology was N…

> 1. yucca mountain can not sustain a million years due to strong seismic activity

Where does it say this? Here's the paragraph under earthquakes:

> DOE has stated that seismic and tectonic effects on the natural systems at Yucca Mountain will not significantly affect repository performance. Yucca Mountain lies in a region of ongoing tectonic deformation, but the deformation rates are too slow to significantly affect the mountain during the 10,000-year regulatory compliance period. Rises in the water table caused by seismic activity would be, at most, a few tens of meters and would not reach the repository. The fractured and faulted volcanic tuff that Yucca Mountain comprises reflects the occurrence of many earthquake-faulting and strong ground motion events during the last several million years, and the hydrological characteristics of the rock would not be changed significantly by seismic events that may occur in the next 10,000 years. The engineered barrier system components will reportedly provide substantial protection of the waste from seepage water, even under severe seismic loading.

It sure doesn't seem to conform to what you're saying. Later in the article there is one sentence claiming it's unsafe:

> Nevada National Security Site officials in April 2019 assured the public that the Device Assembly Facility on the Nevada security site was safe from earthquake threats. In contrast, Nevada officials claimed seismic activity in the region made it unsafe for the storage of nuclear waste.

But this is a one-off statement that doesn't seem to be backed by any sort of studies.

> onkalo stores the waste in iron that is probably corrosion prone

And when those containers corrode, how does the waste escape the bedrock that's surrounding it?

Nuclear power represents the only way for countries to decarbonize their energy sector. Solar and wind offer cheap bandaids, throw up a few solar panels and you can reduce daytime use of electricity. But they do not offer a real path to decarbonization without spectacular breakthroughs in energy storage. By comparison, France has successfully produced more than 2/3rds of their electricity with nuclear power since the 1980s.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#98

Post by V6HBGNQHU » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #66

steeve wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many deaths for Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima? Would that number change your mind?

How many people with increased cancer rates from solar? Stop quoting deaths from nuclear accidents - the harm from nuclear incidents goes far beyond killing people outright.

How many people die from loosing power during winters and freezing to death? How many more would that be if everyone was using solar which can't provide enough power in winter?

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#99

Post by bryanlarsen » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

evgen wrote: post #63

dangerface wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are short on space for your solar panels put them on your roof, problem solved. There are cheaper better ways of storing electricity like water stores, and this is what they use not batteries, they have never used batteries thats just a Tesla thing.

> put them on your roof, problem solved. This is why solar kills more people every year than nuclear, and your hydro storage and batteries are not even a drop in the ocean compared to total load or daily capacity of even a small grid.

Roofing is dangerous, but using a product such as Tesla or GB Sol solar tiles means that installing solar is no more dangerous than roofing without solar.

Presuming you have to reroof anyways.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#100

Post by whatshisface » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #62

whatshisface wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Investing in any such generator needs to be for other reasons like land scarcity. Yeah, there's no upper limit on energy usage. In several decades, mark my words, we will have a solar panel related deforestation problem.

There is actually an apparent upper limit on energy usage once countries reach a certain level of development. See for example [1] and [2]. Total energy consumption in Western countries has been level or dropping for years as devices that use energy become more efficient. [1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=39092 [2] https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/opinion/eu-at-risk-o...

Yeah, that's until the price of solar reaches a point where desalination becomes economic. The fact that today is not a day when it's profitable to cover the world in solar panels means as little as the fact that today oil can be more profitable.