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Dreissi posted:Tias, This I agree with, I guess I was just hoping there was some other solution, or maybe to use the carbon we're spamming on coal to build renewable sources :-/
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Nov 29, 2015 16:29
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Morbus posted:And if we are really making a Christmas wishlist, maybe all the internet troglodytes who are out their shouting from the rooftops about thorium reactors and how them drat environmentalists are the only thing holding back clean, safe, and cheap power can go do something useful and become nuclear engineers instead of masturbating to techno-utopian fantasies in between bouts of fallout 4. I think that if your Christmas wish came true, this thread would probably fall off the front page and die a quick death. Most of this thread is beating off about how great nuclear power is and whining how the US government is stupid for kowtowing to the environmentalists and not spending bajillions of dollars now so that they can get nuclear energy plants online in 30 years.
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Nov 29, 2015 16:32
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Tias posted:This I agree with, I guess I was just hoping there was some other solution, or maybe to use the carbon we're spamming on coal to build renewable sources :-/ Renewable sources have downsides of their own. Environmental impact was noted but variability in power generation is another major factor. Powering your country with solar energy ain't so good when winter comes around. Germany found this out the hard way (not that they were in the best place for solar in the first place), and have supplemented their solar power with coal since they decided to shut down their nuclear plants.
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Nov 29, 2015 16:35
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Tias posted:This I agree with, I guess I was just hoping there was some other solution, or maybe to use the carbon we're spamming on coal to build renewable sources :-/ Deaths per TWH per energy source.  If you think Chernobyl killed way more people than it did, times the nuclear bar by ten- to twenty-ish for Greenpeace estimates. Also, you can't build renewable energy from carbon emissions. silence_kit posted:I think that if your Christmas wish came true, this thread would probably fall off the front page and die a quick death. Most of this thread is beating off about how great nuclear power is and whining how the US government is stupid for kowtowing to the environmentalists and not spending bajillions of dollars now so that they can get nuclear energy plants online in 30 years. Germany's 500 billion euro renewable rollout for a decreasing energy use scenario and the assumption that we can damp output fluctuations by dumping into neighbouring grids for a while (better hope no other EU countries go full renewable  ) would pay for two completely state-funded maximum cost overrun French surrender reactors per year until we supply the current electricity demand. Nuclear is expensive, but full renewable power is even more expensive. Building up nuclear capacity as the backbone of the grid while renewables fill in gaps that aren't storage constrained makes much more sense than letting nuclear whither away.Build times of nuclear power plants other than French surrender reactors and constructions that go on hiatus because of fossil fuel price drops or politics are around 5-8 years by the way, not 30. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Nov 29, 2015 |
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Nov 29, 2015 16:42
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Just build a global power grid. The sun is always shining somewhere.
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Nov 29, 2015 17:04
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Lucy Heartfilia posted:Just build a global power grid. The sun is always shining somewhere. A december noon in Hawaii is the best time to power the whole world.
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Nov 29, 2015 17:55
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Tias posted:Dude, you were born a shitposter, and you'll die a shitposter. Provoke yourself if you want to, but I got better things to do with my time than replying to your shitbrained flailings. Tias posted:Renewable plants failing just become an inert building taking up some space
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Nov 29, 2015 18:03
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silence_kit posted:I think that if your Christmas wish came true, this thread would probably fall off the front page and die a quick death. Most of this thread is beating off about how great nuclear power is and whining how the US government is stupid for kowtowing to the environmentalists and not spending bajillions of dollars now so that they can get nuclear energy plants online in 30 years. Acting like residential solar is going to fix the problem is like thinking that organic food will solve industrial farming. Makes you feel good but actually does nothing for the problem. It ain't just environmentalists, it's that there's no political will to actually fix the problem from either party. There is also a lot of flashy issues that do get political attention, like the marital options of homosexuals and reproductive choice. Not that those are not important, it's just that nuclear power is the third rail. Either it's unconscionable government spending, competition with jobs created by coal, NIMBY or unreasonable fear of nuclear hazards caused by the cultural zeitgeist of MAD and the Cold War. No political party is going to gain votes by touching nuclear power so that solution will not happen in America, even if it's the better long-term solution.
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Nov 29, 2015 18:23
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Grognan posted:Acting like residential solar is going to fix the problem is like thinking that organic food will solve industrial farming. Makes you feel good but actually does nothing for the problem. Obama likes nuclear power and he hired two secretaries of energy that like nuclear power. Thanks Obama. However, even Obama can't spend a trillion dollars on nuclear power plants while republicans deny climate change is a thing so cheap natural gas is still choking off nuclear construction and the main meaningful thing that happens is development of small modular reactors that may be a viable short term investment.
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Nov 29, 2015 19:00
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blowfish posted:Obama likes nuclear power and he hired two secretaries of energy that like nuclear power. Thanks Obama. Obama only gives a poo poo about nuclear power insofar as it gets him votes and attention. He personally killed Yucca Mountain.
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Nov 29, 2015 19:10
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Grognan posted:Acting like residential solar is going to fix the problem is like thinking that organic food will solve industrial farming. Makes you feel good but actually does nothing for the problem. America is currently building multiple reactors though. Several new ones will be online by 2020.
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Nov 29, 2015 19:11
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-Troika- posted:Obama only gives a poo poo about nuclear power insofar as it gets him votes and attention. He personally killed Yucca Mountain. Harry Reid killed Yucca Mountain, to be fair. As majority and minority leader he had a lot of pull and there has been quite a few nuclear weapon tests that have taken place in Nevada. Grognan fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Nov 29, 2015 |
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Nov 29, 2015 19:17
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Grognan posted:Acting like residential solar is going to fix the problem is like thinking that organic food will solve industrial farming. Makes you feel good but actually does nothing for the problem. I make no claim or prediction about how economically relevant solar PV will eventually be. Obviously, there is the problem of intermittency and energy storage. I will say though, that IF the price of solar electricity keeps on dropping and we ever live in a world where solar electricity is very cheap, a lot of the truisms that people in this thread like to parrot would be out-of-date. Industry would actually be motivated to change what they do to use the cheap solar electricity during the day, and electricity-wasteful technology like energy storage via electro-chemically synthesized fuel would become more viable. IF solar is like nuclear power in that it always remains a high-cost technology, obviously it won't be super-relevant. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Nov 29, 2015 |
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Nov 29, 2015 19:38
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The thing is Yucca Mountain is literally in the middle of the nuclear bombing zones. The surrounding area is among the most radioactive land on earth, and settlement is forbidden within many many miles, so it's the safest place to put nuclear waste.
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Nov 29, 2015 19:39
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fishmech posted:America is currently building multiple reactors though. Several new ones will be online by 2020. Like two thirds of the planned power plants are dead or in limbo though, to a large extent because oil and gas suddenly got real cheap again and because green power plans were slow on the uptake regarding nuclear. The current builds will very slightly increase US nuclear output accounting for the closures of old plants, but not much more. The only countries doing a large nuclear rollout right now are China and India, with some possibly maybe also aiming for a larger scale nuclear programme. Basically places that do long term planning.
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Nov 29, 2015 20:03
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fishmech posted:The thing is Yucca Mountain is literally in the middle of the nuclear bombing zones. The surrounding area is among the most radioactive land on earth, and settlement is forbidden within many many miles, so it's the safest place to put nuclear waste. Uh, no. If it were so radioactive that people couldn't live there, it'd be sort of tough on the people who would have to work at the site. It's got a lot more to do with the geologic attributes of the site, coupled with the enormous existing security presence due to NTS, Groom Lake, and Nellis. The last aboveground testing at NTS happened in 1962, the contamination is mostly subsurface and people work aboveground at NTS all the time.
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Nov 29, 2015 20:07
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Phanatic posted:Uh, no. If it were so radioactive that people couldn't live there, it'd be sort of tough on the people who would have to work at the site. It's got a lot more to do with the geologic attributes of the site, coupled with the enormous existing security presence due to NTS, Groom Lake, and Nellis. The last aboveground testing at NTS happened in 1962, the contamination is mostly subsurface and people work aboveground at NTS all the time. People aren't actually allowed to live there though, at and around Yucca Mountain. And yes even though the last tests were in the 60s it's still among the most highly radioactive areas - of course they didn't directly nuke the airbases and other such long term facilities. That'd just be stupid. The test were done many miles out from the various bases in the area, specifically to avoid making it unsafe to live at those places. Yucca Mountain is in the bounds of one of the test areas.
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Nov 29, 2015 20:25
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fishmech posted:People aren't actually allowed to live there though, at and around Yucca Mountain. People aren't allowed to live there because it's US government land and a secure facility. People aren't allowed to live at Groom Lake, either, it's not because it's a radioactive wasteland. Dose limits to the public outside the Yucca Mountain storage facility would have been limited to 15 millirem per year, if that area was more radioactive than that then it would have been impossible for the facility to meet its requirements. Yeah, there are some areas of concentrated contamination, you wouldn't want to go excavating in the tailings pile from the Sedan shot for instance. But that's nowhere near where Yucca mountain is. 
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Nov 29, 2015 20:46
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Let's put the radiation thing in perspective (again), shall we? All the freaking out about radiation and nuclear reactors is a clear sign someone is dangerously underinformed at best.
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Nov 29, 2015 21:02
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-Troika- posted:Let's put the radiation thing in perspective (again), shall we? Glad to know that ALARA is stupid bullshit done for no reason at all, or possibly liability concerns.
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Nov 29, 2015 21:09
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Effectronica posted:Glad to know that ALARA is stupid bullshit done for no reason at all, or possibly liability concerns. And yet coal plants are not required to follow as low as reasonably achievable despite causing more environmental damage.
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Nov 29, 2015 21:14
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hobbesmaster posted:And yet coal plants are not required to follow as low as reasonably achievable despite causing more environmental damage. That has nothing to do with what I said, because you are arguing at an inference, not an actual human being. I am not going to play the game where you pretend I'm saying all the things the nasty environmentalists you "joke" about murdering say and demand I respond to them. This isn't a loving show trial circa 1937.
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Nov 29, 2015 21:16
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Effectronica posted:Glad to know that ALARA is stupid bullshit done for no reason at all, or possibly liability concerns. This is unironically true. If the nuclear industry were regulated to achieve the same risk of death as every other industry except airliners (hmmm another thing with very rare accidents which nevertheless blow up into shitstorms, I see a pattern here) then radiation dose limits for workers would be an order of magnitude higher. e: also good job effectronica for accusing the wrong person of wanting to kill people suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Nov 29, 2015 |
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Nov 29, 2015 21:38
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Effectronica posted:That has nothing to do with what I said, because you are arguing at an inference, not an actual human being. I am not going to play the game where you pretend I'm saying all the things the nasty environmentalists you "joke" about murdering say and demand I respond to them. This isn't a loving show trial circa 1937. I love how posters in this thread brag about the safety track record of nuclear energy while at the same time they talk out of the other side of their mouths and complain about how over-regulation and safety controls are holding back nuclear energy from rapid adoption. Good luck convincing investors that you are going to half-rear end looking over the design and procedures of your plant, which could cause a catastrophic failure leading to the early shutdown of the plant, to save a couple of bucks on their gazillion dollar investment. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Nov 30, 2015 |
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Nov 29, 2015 21:40
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silence_kit posted:I love how posters in this thread brag about the safety track record of nuclear energy while at the same time they talk out of the other side of their mouths and complain about how over-regulation and safety controls are holding back nuclear energy from rapid adoption. 1) radiation dose limits are too stringent because there are demonstrably few deaths from radiation so that we are wasting safety spending that would be more effectively applied by improving, say, workforce safety during the construction phase 2) other types of regulation in nuclear energy actually do not meaningfully increase safety (see e.g. the post-Fukushima bullshit that reached ca 70 million euros total in upgrade costs at Grundremmingen I mentioned before, of which only a tiny fraction performs actually useful functions) 3) it would be more effective to mandate inherent safety mechanisms so that plant operators can just gently caress off and run for the hills during a tsunami/earthquake/whatever without actually impacting reactor safety (the thing might be more likely to be a total writeoff economically if they don't stick around but that's not a safety issue). E.g. passive lowering of control rods under a loss of power, or for more modern designs using fuel which expands fast under heat so there is no way to cause a meltdown even if you actively try. 4) it would be more effective to focus on a particular type of reactor or two for every powerplant generation instead of building twenty one-off power plants (see e.g. South Korea doing it right). That way you can double check and triple check and test everything about the standard reactor type before cheaply and quickly deploying it en masse e: in addition, your point ignores the fact that the bragging about the nuclear safety records includes the bad old days of lovely chernobyl type reactors with retards in the control room so yeah nuclear is less bad than most other energy sources even without the regulation and safety controls ~we~ allegedly want to get rid of suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Nov 29, 2015 |
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Nov 29, 2015 21:48
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ALARA doesn't have anything much to do with the specific dose limit, because the point is to keep dose as low as reasonably achievable, regardless of what the specific limit is. Now, licensed nuclear engineer, physicist, and medical doctor "blowfish" assuredly knows that it's those dirty environmentalist saboteurs and not health concerns about possible effects from long-term low exposure, that drives dose limits. He's also aware nuclear power is inherently safe and clean, rather than that being the product of obsessive concern with safety.
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Nov 29, 2015 22:56
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Effectronica posted:ALARA doesn't have anything much to do with the specific dose limit, because the point is to keep dose as low as reasonably achievable, regardless of what the specific limit is. Now, licensed nuclear engineer, physicist, and medical doctor "blowfish" assuredly knows that it's those dirty environmentalist saboteurs and not health concerns about possible effects from long-term low exposure, that drives dose limits. "Reasonable" Some people have problems finding the point where it turns to unreasonable and also have double standards if something isn't obviously related.
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Nov 29, 2015 23:25
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Effectronica posted:ALARA doesn't have anything much to do with the specific dose limit, because the point is to keep dose as low as reasonably achievable, regardless of what the specific limit is. Now, licensed nuclear engineer, physicist, and medical doctor "blowfish" assuredly knows that it's those dirty environmentalist saboteurs and not health concerns about possible effects from long-term low exposure, that drives dose limits. Fear is a stupid emotion.
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Nov 29, 2015 23:26
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Tias posted:Apart from the (admittedly large) footprint made by setting up renewable infrastructure, renewables (at least in the case of solar, wind and water) don't carry any environmental destruction. My issue with the prevailing mode of political thought (consumerism, unchecked capitalism, egoism etc) is that no one considers that the earth has to remain habitable for future generation. There is no realistic potential for a dignified and safe existence for humanity on other planets (as far as I am informed), and so we have to do whatever it takes to keep earth safe. First, you're overestimating the destructive capacity of a nuclear meltdown by a huge margin. Second, as others have pointed out, building a hydroelectric dam is environmentally devastating right off the bat; this is something that a lot of people don't consider when they talk about hydroelectric power. And in case of plant failure, a catastrophic failure with a modern reactor design inevitably causes far less devastation (including "none at all" depending on the type of reactor) than a bursting hydroelectric dam. Regarding solar: Tias posted:I am clearly not talking about the land used to set up plants, this is necessary to produce energy, no matter the sort. Why not? Land use is environmentally destructive when you start talking about power generation on a national scale, and it needs to be considered. Solar power is super inefficient on a Watts per Square Mile basis. If we could replace all power generation with solar power, but it required paving over every square foot of the state of Texas in order to meet the country's needs, would you really claim that that's not ecologically terrible?
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Nov 29, 2015 23:31
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Although, unlike almost all other electricity generation technologies, solar PV can easily be co-sites with non generation buildings. We have a lot of rooftops we can use for solar PV in a way that involves no land use change. And it looks like the SONGS decommissioning will cost $4.4B.
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Nov 29, 2015 23:46
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Lurking Haro posted:"Reasonable" I don't know what this has to do with it, sorry.
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Nov 29, 2015 23:52
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QuarkJets posted:Why not? Land use is environmentally destructive when you start talking about power generation on a national scale, and it needs to be considered. Solar power is super inefficient on a Watts per Square Mile basis. If we could replace all power generation with solar power, but it required paving over every square foot of the state of Texas in order to meet the country's needs, would you really claim that that's not ecologically terrible? You are ignoring that flat plate solar cells can be put on houses, office buildings, over covered parking lots, etc. You don't need to slash native forests to put in solar cells. They can pretty much be installed anywhere. While I agree with you that it is mostly better to be energy dense than not, I'm not really convinced that the energy density of flat-plate solar cells is a major problem.
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Nov 29, 2015 23:54
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silence_kit posted:You are ignoring that flat plate solar cells can be put on houses, office buildings, over covered parking lots, etc. You don't need to slash native forests to put in solar cells. They can pretty much be installed anywhere. Even if you covered every urban area (including highways, etc) with solar panels it would (depending on the latitude obviously) still be a lot less than what you need.
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Nov 29, 2015 23:56
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The resource investment of the quantity of solar cells you need is greater then the resource requirement of an equivalent nuclear plant. Silicon refining is a high tech process and cell production also incorporates a number of rare earth metals. Solars environmental cost lies in material production elsewhere in the world.
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Nov 30, 2015 00:11
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computer parts posted:Even if you covered every urban area (including highways, etc) with solar panels it would (depending on the latitude obviously) still be a lot less than what you need. Could you show your work? In the online book Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air, the author, who by the way is not really committed to solar energy at all, does a back of the envelope calculation, and concludes that there is enough roof space in not exactly sunny Britain to make a pretty good dent in personal use. It's an old book--he mostly complained about the current production of solar cells being too low and the price being too high, but of course things have changed a lot in the past couple of years. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Nov 30, 2015 |
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Nov 30, 2015 00:19
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Effectronica posted:ALARA doesn't have anything much to do with the specific dose limit, because the point is to keep dose as low as reasonably achievable, regardless of what the specific limit is. Now, licensed nuclear engineer, physicist, and medical doctor "blowfish" assuredly knows that it's those dirty environmentalist saboteurs and not health concerns about possible effects from long-term low exposure, that drives dose limits. Well, if you're going to appeal to authority then stack em up. What's your degree in?
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Nov 30, 2015 00:20
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M_Gargantua posted:cell production also incorporates a number of rare earth metals. This is news to me. Source? I don't think silicon cells use non-trace amounts of scarce material. This is an often bandied about myth in this thread. People also complain a lot in this thread that silicon purification is super polluting, but they never actually meaningfully compare it with other industrial activity in this thread. If you happen to know about it, I'd be interested in hearing about it. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Nov 30, 2015 |
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Nov 30, 2015 00:21
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Killer-of-Lawyers posted:Well, if you're going to appeal to authority then stack em up. What's your degree in? I actually did major in physics, as it happens, but, "Killer-of-Lawyers", the point is that "blowfish" is, from all appearances, talking out of his rear end. Ideally, he would have provided some justification for "dose limits are too low!", that inerrant macaw's squawk of the nuclear cultist. This is unlikely to ever happen, alas for him. This kind of anal discourse happens because most nuclear boosters have no experience with nuclear power, such that anyone with even a small level of experience knows they are ignorant. Spreading ignorance is evil, quite.plain and simple, and must be stopped if we are to be moral persons.
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Nov 30, 2015 00:24
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computer parts posted:Even if you covered every urban area (including highways, etc) with solar panels it would (depending on the latitude obviously) still be a lot less than what you need. Not to mention the un-solved storage problem, which seems to have been missed in this recent conversation. Renewables are great - as an addition to an existing, functional grid. They are not - and until massive technological leaps are made - will never be able to be baseline power. Power storage to deal with a renewable-only energy grid is technology that does not exist in any even remotely efficient manner, no matter how great and space-efficient the renewables supplying it are. There has to be baseline power. Right now in most of the world that's coal and natural gas. It should be nuclear. It's efficient and reliable and doesn't dump carbon or destroy ecosystems or kill people. Even it's failure state in modern reactors is very safe. Fukushima was an old reactor that underwent a one-two punch of a couple of the worst natural disasters ever, and its fallout was still negligible and massively overblown. And, someone correct me if I'm mistaken in this, but I believe in the long-run it competes (or even beats?) coal and gas in price, albeit with very high upfront cost.
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Nov 30, 2015 00:24
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Nuclear is cheaper per kWH, but this is due to the cheapness of uranium (or increasing coal costs, rather). Operating and maintenance costs are almost double.
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Nov 30, 2015 00:29
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