Climate Worries Galvanize a New Pro-Nuclear Movement in the US (washingtonpost.com) 272
As states race to keep plants open, California becomes a test case of how much the tide has shifted. From a report: Charles Komanoff was for decades an expert witness for groups working against nuclear plants, delivering blistering critiques so effective that he earned a spot at the podium when tens of thousands of protesters descended on Washington in 1979 over the Three Mile Island meltdown. Komanoff would go on to become an unrelenting adversary of Diablo Canyon, the hulking 37-year-old nuclear facility perched on a pristine stretch of California's Central Coast that had been the focal point of anti-nuclear activism in America. But his last letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, in February, was one Komanoff never expected to write. He implored Newsom to scrap state plans to close the coastal plant. "We're going to have to give up some of our long-held beliefs if we are going to deal with climate," Komanoff said in an interview. "I am still a solar and wind optimist. But I am a climate pessimist. The climate is losing."
Komanoff's conversion is emblematic of the rapidly shifting politics of nuclear energy. The long controversial power source is gaining backers amid worries that shutting U.S. plants, which emit almost no emissions, makes little sense as governments race to end their dependence on fossil fuels and the war in Ukraine heightens worries about energy security and costs. The momentum is driven in large part by longtime nuclear skeptics who remain unsettled by the technology but are now pushing to keep existing reactors running as they face increasingly alarming news about the climate.
The latest report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published in April, warned that the world is so dangerously behind on climate action that within a decade it could blow past the targets crucial to containing warming to a manageable level. Emissions analysts are increasingly critical of retirements of existing nuclear reactors as they take large amounts of low-emissions power off the grid, undermining the gains made as sources such as wind and solar come online. The movement to keep plants open comes despite persistent worries about toxic waste and just a decade after the nuclear disaster at Japan's Fukushima plant. It has been boosted by growing public acceptance of nuclear power and has nurtured an unlikely coalition of industry players, erstwhile anti-nukers, and legions of young grass-roots environmental activists more worried about climate change than nuclear accidents.
Komanoff's conversion is emblematic of the rapidly shifting politics of nuclear energy. The long controversial power source is gaining backers amid worries that shutting U.S. plants, which emit almost no emissions, makes little sense as governments race to end their dependence on fossil fuels and the war in Ukraine heightens worries about energy security and costs. The momentum is driven in large part by longtime nuclear skeptics who remain unsettled by the technology but are now pushing to keep existing reactors running as they face increasingly alarming news about the climate.
The latest report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published in April, warned that the world is so dangerously behind on climate action that within a decade it could blow past the targets crucial to containing warming to a manageable level. Emissions analysts are increasingly critical of retirements of existing nuclear reactors as they take large amounts of low-emissions power off the grid, undermining the gains made as sources such as wind and solar come online. The movement to keep plants open comes despite persistent worries about toxic waste and just a decade after the nuclear disaster at Japan's Fukushima plant. It has been boosted by growing public acceptance of nuclear power and has nurtured an unlikely coalition of industry players, erstwhile anti-nukers, and legions of young grass-roots environmental activists more worried about climate change than nuclear accidents.
Baseload power? (Score:2, Troll)
What's that? We need a baseload power source which can take over from coal/gas? Wind / Solar aren't ready, and probably will never be?
That sounds familiar. Wonder who's been saying that for the past several decades. Smart guy, whoever that was. We should listen to him more often.
( it was me. I'm that guy ).
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And on the real world, nuclear is _bad_ for base load (the only thing it can do). As France is currently finding out.
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nuclear is _bad_ for base load (the only thing it can do)
How can it be bad for the only thing it can do?
As France is currently finding out.
France has security and maintenance problems, otherwise all is fine.
And: France plants can cycle up and down 2x per day from low poer to max power, so in a certain sense: they are pretty good at load following too.
On the other hand: France has an artificial high base load level of over 60%, even in summer. Because thy have high demand for power for the reprocessing plant
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nuclear is _bad_ for base load (the only thing it can do)
How can it be bad for the only thing it can do?
It is. Low reliability, can fail without warning within seconds, prolonged downtimes, etc. All things you very much do not want in baseload. Are you somehow unable to do logic? Nuclear cannot do anything but baseload. It can do baseload badly. The other things it cannot do at all. Also, cycling 2x per day? That is laughably bad for baseload.
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That's not something they're finding out, that's something that's been known for a long time.
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Nope. Nuclear works _only_ for baseload and is very, very sluggish doing it. You cannot "convert" a large nuke to peaking. Not possible.
So I'm not going to pretend I've read studies (Score:2)
Meanwhile we have the real world case of Fukushima. Show me one CEO that was punished for their malfeasance. You won't find one. What you will find is that the public turned against the
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Unfortunately the science has been compromised in favor of the politics; no study showing anything good or bad is to be trusted.
We're left using common sense to understand these issues.
1) If solar/wind could serve as baseload power, it would already be doing so. Particularly in CA where it'd be quite the feather in any politician's cap to claim credit for that.
2) Solar/wind are intermittent power sources; the sun's gotta shine and the wind has to blow to get power. Baseload power, on the other hand, needs
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On the contrary, interconnecting wind farms can provide baseload power [ametsoc.org].
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I would question how viable this approach is.
1) What happens if the wind isn't blowing (enough) in any interconnected region?
2) Complexity; interconnecting all those sources with larger sources would suggest an increase in complexity. How does this compare with other sources?
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Demand response [wikipedia.org] is one strategy, similar to the way airlines prevent too many people from boarding the same overbooked flight.
Yes, redundancy adds complexity, but it's a good tradeoff.
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1) What happens if the wind isn't blowing (enough) in any interconnected region?
Then other plants take over.
Most the world has a real grid. We do not live in Texas.
2) Complexity; interconnecting all those sources with larger sources would suggest an increase in complexity. How does this compare with other sources?
Europe is Interconnected from Islands in the West to Mongolia in the East. No idea what your stupid question is about - oh the third world grid of Texas again?
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1) If solar/wind could serve as baseload power, it would already be doing so.
Germany is doing so. Half the base load is wind.
2) Solar/wind are intermittent power sources;
Correct.
Baseload power, on the other hand, needs to be consistent and reliable;
That is wrong.
You do not know what base load means. I suggest to read it up.
3) For Solar/wind to have a chance at operating in a baseload capacity you need storage ( batteries
that is wrong as well, see above. You do not know what base load means.
4) The more th
Re:Baseload power? (Score:4)
Whenever someone says "baseload" in a discussion about electricity, it is a sure sign that they don't know what they are talking about.
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Unfortunately true.
And it is so embarrassing, as "base load" is probably the most simplest thing to know about how electric grids (traditionally) work.
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Whenever someone says "baseload" in a discussion about electricity, it is a sure sign that they don't know what they are talking about.
Why, do you not believe that there is some level of electrical demand that is effectively never dropped below?
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Whenever someone says "baseload" in a discussion about electricity, it is a sure sign that they don't know what they are talking about.
I give up. What is the connection?
Their insanity is to think it makes any difference (Score:5, Insightful)
You sometimes have the impression reading this sort of thing that those involved are living on a planet where there is only one country, and that is America.
Or maybe some of these think it is California that is the one country.
Why don't any of them seem to understand that whether the US installs more or less nuclear, or converts its entire electricity generation and all of its automobiles to electricity... and so on... it will make absolutely no difference to the world's climate?
The US currently does about 5 billion tons a year in emissions. Whatever efforts are made, this is not going to fall to anything under 3. The most all the contortions that are being proposed will do is reduce emissions by about 2 billion tons, and even that is a long shot.
What is everyone else doing? The world currently emits about 37 billion tons, and rising. Just look up the EIA reports. It is just about certain that whatever the US does (and for sure whatever California does) the world is headed for a number well over 40 billion tons a year by 2030, and probably over 45 billion by 2040.
The US has no force of example. The West has none for that matter. China, India etc are growing as fast as they can, and they are accepting that this means emissions rising.
Buy all the EVs you want, install all the wind and solar you can find room for, by the mid 2030s China will be doing around 15 billion tons a year, up from its present level of about 10 billion.
So yes, nuclear is probably a sensible thing to think about for the US, not to reduce emissions but just to have a reliable grid with enough capacity. There is no way to do this with wind and solar because of intermittency.
But the idea that this is going to make the slightest difference to the climate? That is as mad as it is innumerate. Just do the simple arithmetic and you see it immediately.
Incidentally, while at it, just compare current US electricity generation and steel production with China's numbers. That will open some eyes that now seem to be tight shut.
Re:Their insanity is to think it makes any differe (Score:4, Insightful)
The things you imply are false. but even accepting the premise ..your proposal is to do nothing? For one thing, we could do our part and then encourage (or force) others to do the same. We have many dials to operate on. China's emissions are mostly due to them manufacturing stuff for us. We can refuse to import or buy crap that wasn't made sustainably. And btw, both China and India, unlike 49% of our population, don't need any convincing on climate change. They know it's real and are talking steps to fix it. Steps that must be taken in a manner such that it doesn't ruin the economy to the point where people are starving and rioting.
Re:Their insanity is to think it makes any differe (Score:5, Insightful)
The US currently does about 5 billion tons a year in emissions. Whatever efforts are made, this is not going to fall to anything under 3. The most all the contortions that are being proposed will do is reduce emissions by about 2 billion tons, and even that is a long shot.
Buy all the EVs you want, install all the wind and solar you can find room for
Time and time again we've seen that thanks to early adopters, tech becomes cheaper, through innovation and economics of scale. By the USA using the strength of it's economy to drive down the prices of clean tech, it will become more globally economical.
The worst thing we can do is point fingers at China, throw our hands up in the air and say what's the point.
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US electric: 4 trillion kWh
China electric: 8.1 trillion kWh
Steel (monthly numbers)
US Steel: 7.8 million tons
China Steel: 97 million tons
That was a quick check, I could be wrong as everyone (esp in electrical) seems to be using different units.
Lead, Follow, Or Get Out of the Way (Score:2)
Second, when a big initiative (halting then beginning to reverse our
No "emissions" (Score:2, Insightful)
No "emissions", but a big pile of essentially permanent and deadly waste. A form of waste which the country STILL has NO plan to deal with, including the large amount of it which already exists and is being stored on site at nuclear plants.
Meanwhile, we still have the exact same culture of cost cutting and cover ups that turned three mile island into such a shit show AND we have Fukuishma out there demonstrating that nuclear accidents can still happen in the 2000's.
Risk is likelihood AND impact, not just l
Re:No "emissions" (Score:5, Insightful)
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According to the DOE: "all of it could fit on a single football field at a depth of less than 10 yards."
Furthermore, "Commercial used fuel rods are safely and securely stored at 76 reactor or storage sites in 34 states."
"no plan to deal with it"
Actually we have multiple plans, but they're still fighting the NIMBY's, and non proliferation treaties. Educate yourself before publicly commenting. https://www.energy.gov/ne/arti... [energy.gov]
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A form of waste which the country STILL has NO plan to deal with, including the large amount of it which already exists and is being stored on site at nuclear plants.
What is nice about nuclear is that it produces so little waste compared to most industrial processes. There's about 2 Olympic size-pools of high-level nuclear waste in the US. And the low-level waste isn't a whole lot more dangerous that what we mined out of the ground in the first place. There are plenty of ways to deal with it that are scientifically sound, just not politically sound.
But I thought Nuclear automatically = BAD? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fukushima costs $660 billion and 100,000 displaced (Score:2)
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$660 billion sounds like a lot of money, but spread over the total amount of electricity produced by nuclear power it does not significantly increase the cost.
I really hate the continuous harping on about nuclear accidents and about the waste problem. Those are annoying, but if nuclear power was cheap, we'd fix them. Look at all the damage done by cars, and no one suggests abolishing those.
The ACTUAL problems with nuclear power are plant cost, fuel cost, and construction time. Plant cost make nuclear unviab
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Nope, they said: trillions. And with that they meant long trillions, not the short trillion the USA are using in counting.
We don't have time to build nuclear (Score:4, Insightful)
Only wind and solar combined with power-grid expansion and energy storage can get us there fast enough.
Median time from inception of plan to completion for nuclear these days is about 15 years, including site selection and approval processes, which only succeed about half the time. Actual construction median is about 10 years, mean around 7 years.
To make a dent in its emissions, a large country like the US would have to build a thousand or more nuclear reactors (1 GW each). What is the chance that any significant fraction of that is going to get completed in 8 years or so? Zero.
Re:We don't have time to build nuclear (Score:5, Interesting)
Science is telling us we have to cut emissions about 50% over the next 8 years or so.
Only wind and solar combined with power-grid expansion and energy storage can get us there fast enough.
I didn't realize "Science" had a single number and was so unified. I was under the impression that there were a lot of different climate models and considerable difference of opinion on what amount of reduction would stop at 2 degrees C and further disagreement on whether 2 degrees was exactly the amount that would be a tipping point. Also disagreement on whether reduction in emissions was the only way to get there, instead of for example geoengineering (and on a related topic, not reversing global dimming, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]).
To make a dent in its emissions, a large country like the US would have to build a thousand or more nuclear reactors (1 GW each). What is the chance that any significant fraction of that is going to get completed in 8 years or so? Zero.
So you think current or foreseeable construction in the USA will be able to build a significant portion of 1000 GW of renewable production and storage (after all, have to supply base load that includes EV charging at night) in the same 8 years? Wow, that's kinda optimistic. Really optimistic, actually.
I suppose you're also one of those who compute renewable to be the cheapest power. If so, maybe you can explain why California has been adding fossil fuel capacity, immediately after turning off nuclear? (I'm talking about SONGS, not Diablo canyon, which is still running. Would have been a lot better as the reverse) And maybe you can explain, if renewable is better and cheaper, what's the problem, we'll naturally cut emissions, or at least the vehicle and power production emissions, by 100% and problem will fix itself. (I don't believe any of those numbers, I believe in all-of-the-above approach to reducing emissions)
You're off by quite a bit (Score:2)
*Peak* US electricity consumption was 720 GW last year. (https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=49216) Average electricity demand was 400-500 GW depending on month.
A thousand 1 GW reactors wouldn't just make a dent in that. They'd eliminate all emissions from electricity generation, with power to spare.
Another fallacy is that we need to choose between nuclear and solar/wind/storage. We can (and must) do *both*. We're going to need a lot more electricity than we have now to switch transportatio
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I think he confused gigawatt with gigawatt-hour or some other stupid greentard[1] shit.
1: Actual green is great, ignorant green-tardism with irrational fears of things safer than say coal is laughable. These same people cite debunked crap claiming uranium mining makes nuclear power burn as much carbon as a coal plant. They have a problem with magnitudes.
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So you fail at math and are ignorant of U.S. reactor that coming online in November. Maybe I should give you a hint, a gigawatt-hour is not the same as a gigawatt. Back to the chalkboard, dunce.
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You've illustrated the real problem. It's not science or technology. It's the damn bureaucracy. Those people get paid and get raises whether the projects move forward or not. Many of them will have retired with a pension before a project ever gets approved. None of them will ever lose their job.
Get serious. (Score:2)
Climate Change is real (Score:2)
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Cooling (Score:2)
Thorium (Score:2)
Everyone needs to watch this [youtube.com]. That will re-write your understanding energy and the environment. Everything you think you know about the future of that is probably totally wrong. It will not be wind turbines or solar or uranium water-cooled reactors or fusion.
Teaser: A small ball of thorium costs $100 and contains enough usable energy to provide all the power you will ever need for your entire life. Not just in your own home, but everywhere, for transportation and in public spaces also.
Molten salt thori
Re:Oof. Such a planted story. (Score:5, Insightful)
If it were just arithmetic, perhaps you could do it for us? Because it's hardly self-evident that nuclear is an environmental negative over the long term relative to fossil fuels that would otherwise provide base load.
Re:Oof. Such a planted story. (Score:5, Informative)
Depends on how the OP defines "long term". The issue here is the context of climate change. It should be immediately obvious that the time frame we have to solve this problem is about 30 years. It's what the science says.
It should be also obvious that we in the west are incapable of bringing a nuclear reactor online in 20 years. We have direct evidence showing its not possible in the form of all current projects being delayed to basically at least this time frame, over time and over budget.
Also the timeframe of the next 30 years assumes a steady ramp towards the climate target, not that we solve the problem overnight 29 years and 364 days from now.
As such any nuclear project started with the goal of meeting our climate targets will achieve only the costing the environment in the form of the shitton of cement it will consume, and likely resources diverted from projects which can actually make a difference in a meaningful timeframe.
Nuclear is a super long term solution, but it can't help us to achieve our climate goals. That ship sailed a decade ago.
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Seems like quite the leap of logic. Because prior nuclear projects have been delayed, that means it's not possible to build nuclear plants in a timely manner? That presupposes that the regulatory climate and public perception of such projects will remain static. There are also new designs for micro-reactors coming out that certainly weren't' available 20 years ago, which means projects started today may have a totally different scope and footprint from those started 20 years ago.
It's also a bit artificial t
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Any new reactor design will take 1-2 decades to be approved
Re:Oof. Such a planted story. (Score:4, Interesting)
It should be also obvious that we in the west are incapable of bringing a nuclear reactor online in 20 years ANY LONGER.
Somehow, for decades, a technologically less advanced America built many safe nuclear plants in 5 to 7 years.
I'm not disagreeing with your comment - you are correct, I just want to point out that it isn't impossible to do so. I don't understand *why* it takes so much longer. The usual knee-jerk answers are "regulation" or "NIMBY-ism" yet when I actually look at serious articles on constructions those factors don't seem to be the cause.
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Your an idiot. False statements don't become true just by you saying them confidently. Let's examine what you said..
Your assertion: "Nuclear power has no environmental argument for itself. None whatsoever"
Fact:
1. Nuclear power plants release less radiation than a fossil fuel power plant.
Reference: https://inis.iaea.org/collecti... [iaea.org]
Your assertion: "Nuclear power has no economic argument for itself. None whatsoever"
Fact:
2. Nuclear power is cost-competitive with other forms of electricity generation, except wh
Re:Oof. Such a planted story. (Score:5, Insightful)
Incremental improvement is still improvement. Remember that radioactive discharge is among the least of the sins committed by fossil fuels, and it's still worse than what any nuclear power plant puts out as a course of normal operation.
The biggest issue with nuclear, is the companies that operate nuclear. If you want safer nuclear power, shitcan the operators and their profit motives.
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In some places in the world, you get more radiation from going to the beach, and, generally more radiation from taking a flight.
It's more like, "An occasional paper cut is better then chopping your dick off."
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I'm having a hard time parsing what exactly you're saying:
Political power is just hell-bent...
How does power of any type have a motive?
appropriating the environmental narrative
What is "the environmental narrative"? How is it appropriated? Who owns it?
to its own twisted aims
Going back to the first quote, what are the "aims" of "political power" and why are they twisted?
Nuclear power has no economic or environmental argument for itself.
Why would a concept of electricity generation need to have an argument for anything? Why can't the supporters of that energy type provide an argument?
Even if they ran reactors solely for the purpose of carbon capture
Which literally no one would rationally suggest. Leave carbon capture to the trees.
Do the arithmetic, folks
Where's
Economically dead (Score:3, Informative)
Building new nuclear electricity is economically dead in 2021.
It costs double to four time all the other alternatives, fossil or renewables.
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If fossil fuels go through the roof, you'd be amazed at what becomes "economical".
Is the power going to cost MORE?
SURE!
But if the cost of fossil fuels doubles, or triples, or more, it's going to cost more THERE too.
Renewable energy has defined limits on its duty cycles.
Without mass power storage (which is logistically unfeasible at this point and would drive the cost of renewable power into the stratosphere TOO), renewables are unsuitable for baseline power.
And we NEED the power.
Unless you're saying we shou
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In the 1960s, nuclear power was promoted as "too cheap to meter". And we would be enjoying that cheap power today if it wasn't for the fact that the nuclear power operators are among the most evil and corrupt businesses in existence.
IMHO, any corruption you find in the nuclear industry is fostered by over-regulation. To get anything done, you have to goose the politicians and regulators. That leads to organizations entirely focused on schmoozing government officials, not running a business. And that leads to bribery, corner cutting, and all manner of other ills. I'd much rather depend on market competition providing the regulation than unaccountable bureaucrats.
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"too cheap to meter" was in reference to developing & commercializing nuclear fusion.
but by the time we figure that out, the R&D costs will have been staggering, assuming there are any of us left
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Fixed a typo for you.
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Nuclear power has no economic or environmental argument for itself.
Its advantage is entirely practical: it runs at night when there is no wind.
Solar and wind can't do that yet.
Re:Oof. Such a planted story. (Score:5, Insightful)
You know who's economy isn't going into the toilet due to loss of fossil fuels from Russia? Who isn't forced to look the other way at under the table evasions of the embargo? France, because they get a significant amount of their energy from nuclear.
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No, but France very nearly avoided country-wide blackouts last winter because nuclear absolutely sucks with regards to reliability. They hat to buy more electricity than ever before. And next winter will be worse.
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No, that is the _reality_ on the ground. Which you are ignoring. That does not make the problem go away. Oh, and Flamville? They are at it since 2007 and think that maybe they can commission in 2026 now. That is due to _technical_ problems. So you think they should start to build a lot now to stop the blackouts in 20 years?
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France gets 30% - 40% of its nuclear fuel from ... RUSSIA! idiot.
And France gets 50% of its gas and oil from: RUSSIA! double idiot.
Canada will be quite willing to sell them nuclear fuel. I'm sure Australia would as as well.
All they need to do is ask.
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Since nuclear fuel lasts a while, they won't likely need any in the next few months fucktard. Also they have other non-scarce options, fucktard.
Because they don't need gas and oil for electricity, they're better off than if they had total dependance, fucktard.
Surprise, I too am somehow capable of tossing random ad-hominems, but I have the good sense not to fire first, fucktard.
Now go sit hard on a fence post.
Re:Oof. Such a planted story. (Score:4, Informative)
Of all the strange statements you made -- and there are many -- this one stands out. "It makes the bomb possible"? Presumably you're unaware that commercial light-water PWR's are particularly ill-suited to producing weapons-grade fissile materials? Or perhaps you're conflating things like Soviet-era RBMK's which were designed so they could produce material for nuclear weapons?
Here's a tip: very few nuclear reactors are able to produce the plutonium needed for nuclear weapons. It requires a high neutron flux with very little burnup, something that is anathema to a commercial power reactor. You'd need to frequently shut down the reactor to remove the fuel rods to get that valuable plutonium before it fissioned or got too contaminated with other fission byproducts.. This was one reason the Soviet RBMK's were designed the way they were, so fuel rods could be replaced without shutting the reactor down.
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https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/a... [lemonde.fr]
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And there we have it.
Nookyoolur = BOMZ!
Never mind that nothing in renewable energy can operate as base load.
And power storage has clearly defined, finite limits.
Geographic, for things like pumped storage.
Economic and environmental for battery storage (what DOES one do with several megatons of expired carrier-grade battery modules?)
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"Never mind that nothing in renewable energy can operate as base load"
Geothermal can
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Which is severely geographically limited due to relative rarity of viable locations.
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https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/a... [lemonde.fr]
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Okay.
Now what happens outside of peak solar hours? You know, the OTHER 2/3rds of the day?
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Solar thermal with molten salt storage or photovoltaic thermal hybrid collectors
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They've already gone down that route.
The economics made sense when the tech was initially introduced.
But over the course of the project, the shrinking costs and the failure to get anywhere near nameplate capacity sunk the project. Because it cost more to produce the power than they were able to charge.
Re:It's not gonna happen guys (Score:5, Insightful)
A local power plant melting down will do nothing, it'll melt into containment, and that's all. Chernobyl and Japan's Fukushima had no containment buildings, no one is building reactors like that any more.
USA brought plant online in 2016, more are coming. Government is not building them.
I know that (Score:2, Interesting)
And I've looked into those newer reactors. They still have failure states that result in massive property damage.
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Absolutely false, there are no such failure states now. Containment works, and the incident at Three Mile Island, that released no radiation to public were used to improve reactor design and procedures (other reactor there at TMI operated for forty more years)
Such problems not possible now.
Explain Fukushima then? (Score:2)
Re:It's not gonna happen guys (Score:4, Interesting)
Fukushima had no containment??? What the hell? The only reason Japan is not a nuclear wasteland now is that the containments at Fukushima held. You really are a clueless idiot.
Re:It's not gonna happen guys (Score:5, Informative)
There are about 400 nuclear power plants operating today, with an average age of 29 years. In all of history, 3 plants have melted down (plus a few nuclear powered naval vessels). That's a 0.025% chance, per year per plant, of meltdown. Meanwhile, coal power plants are raining coal ash down for hundreds of miles, every minute of every day, (I know, I lived 50 miles downwind of one) all over the world, turning entire ecosystems into uninhabitable hellscapes, including the ones that humans live in.
Sure, many coal plants have been built so they don't cause this. But then again, safer nuclear plants can be built as well (for example, not building them near active tectonic fault lines).
Your understanding of the relative destruction caused by power plants needs a re-education.
America has changed a lot in 50 years (Score:2, Insightful)
Pre-Reagan/Thatcher and the tendency to privatize things that should not be privatized you had a point. The world has changed. For
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And you do have a point regarding the cost. It's ridiculous. Excessive government regulation, plus a legion of NIMBYers that come out of the woodworks for every proposed plant make them cost prohibitive to build by anyone but nation states.
However, I do not buy the argument that the risk of nuke plants turning large swaths of land into radioactive hellscapes is a reason not to build them. Coal plants and large scale hydroelectric in many cases, if not other forms of generation, are far, far worse than nucle
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Not to mention all the people killed in mining related disasters.
https://wwwn.cdc.gov/NIOSH-Min... [cdc.gov]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Plant Vogtle unit 3 is expected to come online in Q1 of 2023. Unit 4 by the end of 2023.
As for nuclear in the U.S., the very worst was Three Mile Island. While there was a great deal of panic for that, probably because "The China Syndrome" had just come out at the time, nobody was actually harmed by the accident (though some were injured in the ensuing panic).
Ask the residents of Centralia Pa. how coal worked out for them. You'll need to do some digging through public records though since they all moved aft
I don't trust the United States (Score:3)
I don't trust Americans with infrastructure to being with. When it's as potentially dangerous then I trust it even less.
You can either fix nuclear so that you can run an unsafe plant safely or you can fix American society so we stop privatizing things that should not be p
Re:Anything can justify "pro nuclear" (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong, U.S. commercial plants didn't and don't make the material for nuclear weapons, specialized government built and owned reactors did. A meme by the anti-nuclear crowd to claim commercial production was every for bomb.
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You have no clue how things actually work. Do you really thing they would tell _you_? Here is what Macron (who knows how things really work) says about this: https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/a... [lemonde.fr]
You, like any nuclear asshole, are either clueless or blatantly lying. Sure, there is some civil use of nuclear tech, but it is so horrendously expensive, it would never be viable with military funding on the side.
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that is ... without military finding on the side ...
And yes, some countries have reactors but (claim to) have no bomb. What do you think those reactors and nuclear materials allow them do to if the need should arise?
Re:Anything can justify "pro nuclear" (Score:4, Informative)
These people are not rational. They ignore that nuclear is bad in every aspect because it also serves to make bomb material. Without that, nuclear would have had zero chance in the market as it does not even produce energy at reasonable cost. Basically these people are mass-murder fetishists.
It would seem a significant majority of countries with nuclear power generation are not nuclear armed actually. Your argument seems stuck in the 1960s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Your argument seems stuck in the 1960s.
More like in 2020: https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/a... [lemonde.fr]
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It is not: https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/a... [lemonde.fr]
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Most of your description in the first sentence is right but nuclear fission is distinct from radioactive decay. If it relied solely on radioactive decay as you described, then by definition it would not be increasing the radioactivity in the waste.
I'm not sure where you got the max end-to-end efficiency number -- I'm not particularly contesting it either, it's just not really germane to your argument. Yes, there's a theoretical max efficiency at some point, true of basically every energy source.
My main is
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Ummm, no.
Nuclear fission has little, if anything to do with radioactive decay. It is, instead, using nuclear FISSION. No, "fission" is NOT the same as radioactive decay.
Nor do nuclear fission reactors use plutonium (required for an atomic bomb (yes, yes, you can build a Hiroshima-type bomb with uranium if you want to. It won't make much of a bang, but what the hey!).
The thing to remember is that in the history of the world, there have been fewer
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People dying in daily traffic accidents don't make large areas of land uninhabitable for decades or centuries.
And they die in small groups, rarely more than 10 and not to the thousands as in Chernobyl.
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Nitpickers will distract; don't detract from your point by over reaching into fission etc.
Nukes are a huge waste of money - they are not possible as a free market solution.
Given how electricity is essential today, it may as well be nationalized (that doesn't mean you don't pay for it... but poor people with subsidized electricity can move out of poverty.) We subsidize and look the other way at monopolies providing us power and have done so for generations. It is time for that to change. Just straight up b
Re: (Score:2)
The best end-to-end energy-efficiency of such a setup is 23%, t ...
No idea what you mean with end-to-and
The plant itself has an efficiency around 42% - 45%, though.
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Ye olde internet Thorium trope. A Thorium reactor is a Uranium reactor - therefore it is not any better.
Thorium reactors breed U-233 as fuel. The different Uranium isotopes have very different decay paths so you can't really say a U-235 (traditional reactor fuel) , U-233 (Thorium reactor fuel), and U-238 (the barely radioactive isotope which is mostly useless for anything but bullets) are the same thing.
I don't know how people are designing thorium reactors. The ones I hear about are molten salt which is a very different design from pressurized light water reactors. The operation and safety characteristics wi
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U-238 is used as nuclear fuel in power plants. Seems you don't know about a certain kind of reactor. That reactor can use depleted uranium too just fine. Canada gets fifteen percent its power from such reactors.
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False, immense reserves of thorium in the world (unlike Uranium of which there is less than century of supply if only current types of reactors used) and it is extremely difficult to separate out the U233 so not as big a proliferation risk for weaopns. It is better.
Re:Watch Netflix's Meltdown for another perspectiv (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonsense and hysteria, Three Mile Island didn't release any significant amount of radiation into surrounding community. It came within a hairs breadth of doing nothing. Containment system contained, end of story. Containment buildings work.
Stop your irrational fear mongering.
Re:Watch Netflix's Meltdown for another perspectiv (Score:5, Insightful)
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Fukushima had a hydrogen explosion, and it didn't hurt anyone.