Nuclear power is awesome.

Author: Alec

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#31
Greyparrot
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@Snoopy
If only salt water was not so incredibly corrosive and the sea not so abundant with marine life that clogs the mechanical workings.

:(

I personally would like to see more research into this source of energy.

#32
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@Greyparrot
Yeah, so you’ve mostly stopped with facts and started with your feelings and opinions. Proof by anecdote seems to be a common thread and tactic from the right so far.

So to start wIth, I can completely agree that some particular regulations are aimed at stifling competition. The consistent push to remove them comes from corporations too. Eradicating regulations, and lowering enforcement of, say, mandatory product recalls are great for fisher price - not so great for dead babies.

While I dig the paranoia: it’s worth focusing on whether a regulation is good or bad on its face, rather than some nebulous and opinionated woo peddling of how nameless regulations are the death knell of America.

For example, regulations governing safe levels of lead in drinking water - I’m okay with those, even if they are a ploy by big tech companies not
to have a generation of lower intelligence children due to exposure to lead. Back ups and redundancy in safety critical system to enforce multi level layers of failure for a catastrophic accident - I’m okay with those too.

Like I said, regulation can be a tool to allow the market to do things that are necessary but incurr no, or limited cost to the company: capitalism normalizes for cost, not social necessity.

Now, you may not like that: but your overt paranoia and mistrust of all regulation, is no more valid than the mischaracterized straw man optimism you’re portrayin. In reality regulation can be nefarious, lack of regultion can be nefarious, both can also be good. Is it too much to ask to treat examples on their merits, rather than make blanket assumptions about them all being the evil machinations of Herr Zuckerburg and his paid of congressional lackeys?

I think I asked - which specific regulation do you take issue with, and what is the cost basis of it?

Secondly, your confusing plastic with eWaste. You can’t export eWaste to developing countries in this way; and while some gets to Malaysia, it’s a tiny fraction of what is recycled in Europe. Worse, even your characterization is far far worse then the article implies or states.


For solar installations - which as I stated is one out of many forms of renewable generation - solar panels even in the UK without feed in tariffs pay for their initial investment in 10 years, larger CSPs and lathe Solar plants are more expensive and do better in brighter sunnier areas, which there are substantial locations all around the US that would benefit, given that almost everywhere in the US gets more sun power per day than the UK, most locations would be economical on an individual level even if not with raging profits.



#33
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@Ramshutu
What about the "golden zone" problem and peak energy?
#34
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@Greyparrot
Like I said: there’s more than one type of renewable energy. Better yet there is a substantial multitude of storage technologies. My favourite is pumped storage hydro.

There are indeed golden zones for sun, this includes a substantial portion  of continental US.

There are “golden zones” for Nuclear also; it has to be within a communizing distance of medium sized city for the purposes of having employees and access to core infrastructure. Most current reactors require access to large volumes of water - so the sea (or due to salinity) a large river. While there are many zones that fit the criteria, you can fit a solar panel pretty much on your roof, and make your money back in a decade. 

This type of microgenerarion is not available to Nuclear and is largely a different way of thinking about energy generation, rather than thinking things in terms of large ubiquitous power farm - though they also have their place.

But Kudos on ignoring everything else said.

#35
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@Ramshutu
I'm not ignoring, I am conceding.

I just wanted to hear your perspectives on the problem of increasing scarcity of golden zones for solar power that do not apply to Nuclear and also possible solutions for the peak energy problem.

#36
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@Greyparrot
The important thing is that there really isn’t any legitimate safety issue with Nuclear Power Plants. Most direct deaths in the last decade have been from people stirring mixing tanks with too much Uranium in.

There was actually a substantial push by oil companies to promote the safety issues after 3 mile island. Pro nuclear maybe pushing Nuclear power today for much the same reason. For me, that someone is pushing an agenda is not particularly relevant, only whether the agenda is reasonable and relevant.

In this case, while nuclear capacity is economical to maintain (so shouldn’t be shut down), the plants are incredibly expensive, require large subsidies, tax incentives and loan gaurantees to build in an economic climate where the cost of natural Gas doesn’t include its own pollution. The true inherent cost is largely obfuscatsd, because the true direct cost to the taxpayer for these sweeteners isn’t clear, and the indirect economic cost of disasters - whilenrare - isn’t factored in.

if you want to make Nuclear Power Competitive, slap a 25c tax per kg of co2 generated that goes up 0.25c every 6momyhs - capped at $3 per kg; issue a rebate an equal fraction of each the tax income (save 10% to spend on clean energy investment and climate change mitigation) to each adult in the country every quarter.

While someone facetious that I make half jokingly: it would solve poverty, global warming almost overnight, and would cause dozens of nuclear plants and renewable
energy projects to be rapidly expedited.



#37
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@Ramshutu
What about the peak energy problem?
#38
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@Greyparrot
What part of my explanation did not make sense to you?
#39
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@Ramshutu
Just did not see you type the words peak energy. Can you please recap?
#40
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@Greyparrot
1.) There is more than one type of renewable energy. There are many different types that do not have issues when the sun goes down. The wind doesn’t stop blowing, water doesn’t stop flowing, the earth’s core doesn’t cool down, and tides don’t stop just because it’s night time or daytime.

2.) There are many various forms of energy storage. This can either be on a household scale (like batteries), or large storage facilities such as pumped hydro. Even CSPs can retain generation for up to 15 hours using molten salt heat storage. 

You have not mentioned any other forms of renewable energy other than solar, and haven’t really talked about any other type of solar power other than Photovoltaics. There is more than just Solar PV - and the fact you’re fixating on this one, and arguing as if itre limitations of a single type of technology extend to all renewables is not particularly intellectually honest approach to the subject, no?

#41
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@Ramshutu
Not really arguing when I am asking for your take on specific problems.

CSP looks really promising.
#42
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@Greyparrot
@Ramshutu
There is more than just Solar PV - and the fact you’re fixating on this one, and arguing as if itre limitations of a single type of technology extend to all renewables is not particularly intellectually honest approach to the subject, no?
Good luck having any rational, logical common sense disscussion with GP.

Neither of you have begun to consider the nuclear waste issues  --ergo consequences for seven generations out--

Nor a world-energy-grid that connects day and night sides of planet ergo "peak energy" values are more than adequately covered with all forms of energy production, and that doe not even include untapped Himalayan gravity fed hydro-electric potentials.

95% of humanity is very narrow/short minded. 

Some of the Native American Indians approach was to consider seven generations out into the future.

Too many people, who are all too greedy and within a shorter and shorter little time period remaining, if any, to correct our mistakes.

Many of the above are a resultant of our not having a wholistically forward thinking unified humanity. 





#43
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@mustardness
the waste is tiny in volume and completely controllable. France's approach by sinking nuclear waste miles down into the ocean is brilliant, as even if a phenomenally small happenstance caused the containment to leak, the immense volume of the ocean ensures there will be less radiation from the leak than background radiation.
#44
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@Alec
.."The Trump administration, as always, has figured out a unique way to slash through this Gordian knot:  --- { of nuclear waste }---
The U.S. government on Wednesday will reclassify some of the nation’s most dangerous radioactive waste to lower its threat level, outraging critics who say the move would make it cheaper and easier to walk away from cleaning up nuclear weapons production sites in Washington state, Idaho and South Carolina. The U.S. Department of Energy said labeling some high-level waste as low level will save $40 billion in cleanup costs across the nation’s entire nuclear weapons complex.

….The waste is housed at the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina, the Idaho National Laboratory and Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state….The new rules would allow the Energy Department to eventually abandon storage tanks containing more than 100 million gallons (378 million liters) of radioactive waste in the three states, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
That’s the answer for weapons-grade nuclear waste, but what about the stuff from power plants? That’s even easier: just reclassify it as agricultural waste and compost it. Liberals, with all their yammering about “policy” and “plans” and “safety” would never have thought of this. Only the Trumpies, who came to office promising to disrupt the tired old bureaucracy with insights gained from building golf courses, could have come up with this. Huzzah!"....


#45
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@Greyparrot
GP you need to come to your senses by smelling the roses of truth.

..."The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 dictated that the federal government would identify a permanent geological repository—a long-term storage site—and begin transferring waste from nuclear power plants to that repository by 1998. A decade and a half after that deadline, the search for a repository site has stalled, with no resolution likely in the near future."....

the waste is tiny in volume
How much volume of a single ionizing particle does it take to cause cancer or other genetic deformities that can be passed on to future generations?


and completely controllable.
Ex the weather, geophysics and climate are completely controlable.  GP your living in fantasy land of denial and false beliefs.
 
France's approach by sinking nuclear waste miles down into the ocean is brilliant, as even if a phenomenally small happenstance caused the containment to leak, the immense volume of the ocean ensures there will be less radiation from the leak than background radiation.
Ok so lets say we send it to the center of the Earth.  ---ain't gonna happen---  Can it come back via volcanoes in the sea or other and and any of those connections to volcanoes?



#46
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@Greyparrot
..."Using Department of Energy data, the inhalation of 360,000 Bq of Pu-239 would result in a whole-body radiation dose to an average adult over a 50-year period between 580 rem and nearly 4300 rem, depending on the solubility of the compounds inhaled. The material was most likely an oxide, which is relatively insoluble, corresponding to the lower bound of the estimate. But without further information on the material form, the best estimate would be around 1800 rem.

....What is the health impact of such a dose? For isotopes such as plutonium-239 or americium-241, which emit relatively large, heavy charged particles known as alpha particles, there is a high likelihood that a dose of around 1000 rem will cause a fatal cancer. This is well below the radiation dose that the most highly exposed worker will receive over a 50-year period. This shows how costly a mistake can be when working with plutonium.

...The workers are receiving chelation therapy to try to remove some plutonium from their bloodstream. However, the effectiveness of this therapy is limited at best, especially for insoluble forms, like oxides, that tend to be retained in the lungs".


What is the safe volume of radioactive substance in human body? Depends on the ionizing substance.  Some more toxic than others. Some have PU239 has half-life of 24,000 plus year.

#47
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@mustardness
France knows best.
#48
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@Greyparrot
France knows best.
That explains why French fries are so popular and nothing about nuclear waste storage. GP, you live in fantasy land of irrational, illogical lack of common sense out-of-sight, then out-of-mind.


..."A geologist might point out that subduction is not really secure. At relatively shallow levels, subducting plates become chemically altered, releasing a slurry of serpentine minerals that eventually erupt in large mud volcanoes on the seafloor. Imagine those spewing plutonium into the sea! Fortunately, by that time, the plutonium would have long since decayed away.

Why It Won't Work

..Even the fastest subduction is very slow - geologically slow. The fastest-subducting location in the world today is the Peru-Chile Trench, running along the west side of South America. There, the Nazca plate is plunging beneath the South America plate at around 7-8 centimeters (or approximately 3 inches) per year. It goes down at about a 30-degree angle. So if we put a barrel of nuclear waste in the Peru-Chile Trench (never mind that it's in Chilean national waters), in a hundred years it will move 8 meters - as far away as your next-door neighbor. Not exactly an efficient means of transport. 

...High-level uranium decays to its normal, pre-mined radioactive state within 1,000-10,000 years. In 10,000 years, those waste barrels would have moved, at maximum, just .8 kilometers (half a mile). They would also lie only a few hundred meters deep - remember that every other subduction zone is slower than this.

....After all of that time, they could still be easily dug up by whatever future civilization cares to retrieve them. After all, have we left the Pyramids alone? Even if future generations left the waste alone, the seawater and seafloor life would not, and the odds are good that the barrels would corrode and be breached."...


.."Ignoring geology, let's consider the logistics of containing, transporting and disposing of thousands of barrels each year. Multiply the amount of waste (which will surely grow) by the odds of shipwreck, human accidents, piracy and people cutting corners. Then estimate the costs of doing everything right, every time.

A few decades ago, when the space program was new, people often speculated that we could launch nuclear waste into space, maybe into the sun. After a few rocket explosions, nobody says that any more: the cosmic incineration model is infeasible. The tectonic burial model, unfortunately, isn't any better."...


#49
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@Alec
..."Currently, there is a global stockpile of around 250,000 tonnes of highly radioactive spent fuel distributed across some 14 countries.
Most of this fuel remains in so-called "cooling pools" at reactor sites that lack secondary containment and remain vulnerable to a loss of cooling. Some lack a source of back-up power.

.....The partial meltdown of Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2011 made clear that the high-heat hazard of spent fuel pools is not hypothetical.

......The 100-page report, compiled by a panel of experts, dissected shortcomings in the management of voluminous waste in France, which has the second largest nuclear reactor fleet (58) after the United States (about 100).

..."There is no credible solution for long-term safe disposal of nuclear waste in France," the report said.

...French oversight bodies have already raised concerns about capacity of massive cooling pools in Normandy at the La Hague site.
In response, energy giant Orana, which manages the site, said in a statement that "there is not risk of saturation of the pools in La Hague until 2030."


#50
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...The remainder of this paper will address only deep geological disposal on land, as this is currently the preferred disposal option throughout the OECD countries and, indeed, worldwide.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Disposal in geological formations under the stable, deep ocean floor, also called subseabed disposal, is conceptually similar to deep geological disposal on land, but there are a few notable differences.

...Whether the waste is emplaced in the relatively soft near-seabed unconsolidated sediments, or in the underlying consolidated sediments or even deeper basalt, the emplacement technology is not entirely defined. A major difference, however, would be

.....the enormous dilution capacity provided by the ocean, should the containment system prematurely fail and allow substantial releases of radionuclides to the ocean floor   --{ out-of-sight out-of-mind and diluted in a finite ocean on a finite Earth }--- the sea life always gets the shaft of humanity.  Garbage, just dump it into the sea.  Let the marine life deal with it.  

...Another significant difference is that this disposal would be ideally suited for the establishment of international cooperative activities, although using the high sea, which is common property, represents a major political complication. Nonetheless, subseabed disposal is currently the only other disposal option under serious consideration as an alternative to deep geologic disposal on land.

....With regard to other disposal options that have been discussed in OECD countries, disposal of HLW on the ocean floor in some kind of highly engineered containment would not be internationally acceptable at this stage.

....Disposal in glaciated areas, in Antarctica for example, would require substantial changes to international legal and political agreements.

....Disposal into space would provide the greatest degree of isolation from man's environment, but its practicality, cost, technological complexity, and potential risks all argue against it at the moment.

.....Finally, nuclear transmutation, the conversion of long-lived radionuclides into shorter-lived or even stable nuclides, is not considered feasible in the near future."......




#51
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@Greyparrot
France knows best.

..."France has a policy of reprocessing SNF for new nuclear fuel followed by disposal of the resulting ILW. France also has a nuclear weapons program that has generated significant ILW. Their underground rock laboratories are in clay and granite. The French Parliament confirmed deep geological disposal for nuclear waste in 2006, and the waste containers are to be retrievable and the policy “reversible”.

..This leads to significantly higher costs......

....Sail it out to a deep ocean trench and drop it in. This is not a bad idea geologically – cold impermeable, oxygen-free, self-sealing ooze that will eventually get dragged down into the trench formed between two colliding crustal plates.

---{already addressed this fairy tale above in a seperate post}-----

But trenches are in international waters, and if you thought getting 50 States in the U.S. to agree on a single solution was hard, just think 193 sovereign nations."....





#52
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@Greyparrot
GP---France knows best.
Lick my battery Frenchie


The "Humans Are Dead" music vidieo ---{ made in France? }--