@kravietz
Even if someone cut down the trees in their yard, PV is still one of the best sources of energy:
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/12/16/mediocrity-is-the-enemy-of-the-solution/
@mithrandir @kravietz
Definitely worth investigating to some extent. Scaling properties on solar are hard to beat, but small self-contained nuclear batteries could be competitive.
@mithrandir @kravietz
Per the link I dropped, problem with NEW nuclear is it takes like 15 years to bring it to completion. So shutting down nuclear prematurely is probably a bad plan, but spinning it up right now is kind of a case of too-little-too-late. New solar deployment is up within a year.
Also scaling properties. Every solar panel built makes building the next one cheaper. True too of reactors but not many of them are (ever) made so scale doesn't happen.
>New solar deployment is up within a year.
Indeed, it is quicker to build the plant, but the plant also takes up more space (with exceptions -- those towers outside Vegas are wonderfully compact, idk how much power they put out though), and you have to build it somewhere where you get sunlight/wind reliably enough that the plant is worth building. For a lot of cities that means the plant has to be far away, which leads to high line loss.
OTOH solar and wind are eminently the best strategy for power in rural and low-density urban areas, where the cost of land is cheaper and also it makes more sense to spread out power production. A small town would probably be better served by nearby solar and wind farms than a faraway nuclear plant.
The article you linked seems to be making an argument that *nothing* besides wind, solar, and waves should be invested in. That just seems shortsighted to me, especially when so many proposed power sources are still in their infancy.
>Every solar panel built makes building the next one cheaper.
Huh? You mean that it's easy to mass produce them, right? There is not an infinite supply of silicon, and the fixed marginal cost of the production process remains the same until you change the production process.
@mithrandir @kravietz
1. "Naive" economies of scale, bigger more efficient factories, better processes.
2. R&D-based economies of scale: more people buy PV, more competition, more R&D investment --> higher efficiency, longer lasting PV made with cheaper materials and processes.
Same story as batteries. It's not govt research that's driving these curves, it's competition.
~
@lain @mithrandir @kravietz
Batteries. Buy a phone, buy a Tesla, push dat curve.
Because PV is actually made mostly of mined resources, as this friendly ad from Australian Mining (!) demonstrates
@kravietz @lain @mithrandir
A PV cell is mined and then runs 10 years. A cm3 of gas is mined and then burned within a couple of hours.
Also I prefer the Australians, they don't try to invade Europe every chance they get.
I don't think anybody supports fossil fuels in this thread, so this argument is irrelevant.
The problem with PV is specifically what you described - it runs 10 years, and then you need a new one.
Per 1 W of energy mining requirements are much higher for PV than other sources.
Then you need a whole lot of them due to low surface power density.
Then you need even more due to low capacity factor.
And then you need storage.
@mithrandir @lain @kravietz
Love how they have this little black sliver "Geological repository". Cost of storing the waste 100,000 years is way higher than that, but I guess that's close to the cost of giving it to the Mafia to dump off the coast of Somalia.
@cjd That’s the problem most people have with nuclear power, after the elephant in the room, dirty bombs all over your country. It’s hard to convince a people who couldn’t hold their country together for 300 years that there’s a good plan for the next 10,000 years. (Did you write 100,000 on purpose?) @mithrandir @lain @kravietz
But it's based on three fundamental misconceptions:
1) that only nuclear reactors produce radioactive waste
2) that it needs storing for 100'000 or 10'000 years
3) that radioactive waste is the *only* one that needs safe storage for a long time
@kravietz I have spoken before with people in the industry whose job was to push nuclear power, which is nothing but a solution of what to do with the existing waste we have now.
1) that only nuclear reactors produce radioactive waste I’ve not heard of anything producing nuclear waste in the massive amounts that nuclear power or weapons do. Do you mean small amounts like for medical purposes?
2) that it needs storing for 100’000 or 10’000 years Those proponents never said that long-term storage wasn’t necessary, never was the thousands of years contested. Their solution was it would be encased in concrete and stored at the reactor sites themselves. I found that silly because those sites won’t last that long either and it would be even harder to get people to accept a reactor near their home. (And check the comma key on your keyboard. I think it’s on upside down)
3) that radioactive waste is the only one that needs safe storage for a long time I’ve heard the big problem with solar power is its disposal too. Not crazy toxic like nuclear waste, but must be disposed of in dumps lined with rubber or similar, like you would batteries or computer parts. What else needs long-term storage in figures like thousands of years (which was not denied by the people selling it).
> crazy toxic like nuclear waste
Nuclear waste is not "crazy toxic". There are plenty of much more toxic things around and we are literally bathing in ionizing radiation every day, we evolved in an irradiated world. Here's a good scientific explainer on that:
Dead?! Are you living on the Moon? Because in Europe there's a whole lot of operational reactors and new in constructions. As of today nuclear power provides 25% of all EU electricity and 50% of low-carbon.
@kravietz @epic @lain @mithrandir
New projects, or just old ones from the 80s ?
Finland 2005, France 2007, UK 2018, Russia 2010, Belarus 2014 - and these are only those under construction (actually Belarus went into production this year)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors
Also worth mentioning ITER that goes first plasma in 2025
@kravietz @epic @lain @mithrandir
Looks like all of Germany's reactors were 60s and 70s era, France's are all 70s and 80s and are still being operated -- though questionable how dangerous these old beasts become.
Also worth noting these timelines. Every year of construction is a year of additional debt you take on, this is probably one reason why solar projects are able to raise money easier than nuclear.
It's not "questionable" at all. They are inspected and their licenses extended for another 20 years. A boiling water reactor can safely operate for 80+ years. That's hell of a return on investment, especially if you count CO2 emissions avoided.
@kravietz @cjd @epic @lain @mithrandir Operating for 80 years isn't sufficient information to determine ROI. You also need to include initial capex, opex, profit, etc.
@mlg @cjd @epic @lain @mithrandir
Assuming you're doing it for profit.
@kravietz @cjd @epic @lain @mithrandir every generation project would like to assume it operates at a profit for the full lifecycle. Energy market can change, more cost effective generation can come online, demand can be reduced (customers trade their 100w incandenscent for 5w led, their 500w desktop + CRT for a 50w laptop + LED monitor etc). everything about the grid is evolving, the history of energy policy walks a balance between overregulation and underregulation failures
So you probably understand why I'm a bit surprised when you say "dead" about a single source that provides *half* of all low-carbon and non-intermittent energy in EU, so the same amount as all solar, wind, hydro.
And this should be even more surprising when you compare CO2 emissions of "renewable" Germany with France or Sweden (both largely nuclear):
@kravietz Carbon schmarbon. We’re carbon-based life forms. The root of the carbon scare is control and taxation. @cjd @lain @mithrandir
@kravietz Oh, I don’t want to watch an hour and a half about how everything’s bombarding us with rays. I’d probably get sick and think I had the Rona. I’ll save it though, in case I ever wish I’d watched it. Thanks. @lain @cjd @mithrandir
Nuclear waste is not “crazy toxic”. There are plenty of much more toxic things around and we are literally bathing in ionizing radiation every day, we evolved in an irradiated world.
My brother was a truck driver for a long time, then got a degree in radiology and became an x-ray technician. The hospital had a mobile CAT-scan unit that went all over the US. He proposed that they pay him 1-1/2 times his wages and he would do both, so he did that for years. He made more, the hospital paid less.
After that he went into inspecting nuclear power plants for a few years. None of them ever failed tests and his badge never turned colors. He was never around more radiation than is deemed safe by all standards.
One reason two people weren’t needed for the mobile CT unit was because he was a giant of a man. Where normally the truck driver would help the tech move frail or overweight patients onto the bed of the CAT-scan machine he could move them alone without hurting them.
He slowly faded away until he is now on permanent disability. He can hardly see where he’s going, hasn’t much coordination, and is as thin as a rail. He really shouldn’t have to eat food because he carries a little briefcase around with him chock full of pills he has to take multiple times a day for I don’t know how many types of cancer.
It doesn’t matter how much radiation we’re constantly bombarded with. We shouldn’t add to it the most deadly form of energy ever created. Trading carbon emissions for nuclear radiation has to be one of the worst ideas ever imagined. @lain @cjd @mithrandir
Sorry for your brother, but there's nothing in this story that indicates any relation between his health and his work in nuclear power plants.
By making this type of irrational fears drive your energy policy you're actually exposing yourself to sources of energy that *actually* cause way more deaths.
The graph doesn’t show the relationship between how much of each type of power is used. If nuclear serves 10 people and gas serves 100,000 people, you can’t say nuclear is better because 1 died from it and 10,000 died from gas.
The graph must be deaths in the industry. The graph doesn’t show whether the people killed by nuclear were too close to a failed reactor. That just shows why no one wants nuclear power anywhere near them.
The concrete problems are dirty bombs and waste storage, and concrete solves neither.
When we weren’t even yet at war on our home soil, I would say don’t build dirty bomb sites all over the place. Even if you post security guards all over plants 24/7, they wouldn’t be expecting one and a terrorist could easily through, and then there’s bombs dropped from above.
Saying the waste storage problem is solved because we’re just not going to do anything about it, just to leave it in concrete in the plants along with security 24/7 for thousands of years, is not feasible.
> how much of each type of power is used
This is precisely why it's normalised per TWh of energy produced.
> terrorist could easily through
Sorry, but this is FUD. You can come up with *any* number of hypothetical and very scary scenarios that involve terrorists and hydro power dams, and technically you can get tens of thousands of casualties from these scenarios, and then call for abandoning hydro power. The truth is no terrorists ever attacked either nucler, or hydro or any power plant.
@kravietz The British dam busters in WWII bombing German dams made ingenious bouncing/rollong barrels to hit the dams. Dams are far thicker and much harder to destroy.
I have nuclear plants near me within the range of everything that died after Chernobyl meltdown. They’re shut down but no one know what’s in there and no one will buy a house anywhere near them. It doesn’t matter if their concern is dirty bombs or emissions. There’s a gap between Orange County and San Diego where the land is worthless anywhere near the domes. No one wants it. @lain @cjd @mithrandir
Excuse me, there was one case - in 1982 a Green activist Chaim Nissim obtained a RPG and fired five rockets at unfinished Superphénix plant in France to demonstrate how terrorists can destroy it but he didn't even scratch the concrete.
@kravietz I didn’t think anyone would do that. I mentioned the security to stop people getting inside and destroying the machinery and the security that would be needed forever to stop them, and I talked about bombing from above.
You’re pushing nuclear in a time of war to a public who rejected it in times of peace.
@epic @lain @mithrandir @kravietz
It doesn't take terrorists to cause nuclear accidents, you have economic incentives for that.
When a plant prints money as long as it keeps running and is massively expensive to shutdown, you don't need a PhD to know that the owners are going to do whatever they possibly can to keep renewing the permit.
Homer Simpson plant safety manager is kind of in jest, but it's more real than people want to believe.
> possibly can to keep renewing the permit
And that's great news. There's nothing more beneficial for climate and for the environment than a low-carbon power plant that works for 80 years.
> cause nuclear accidents
Absolutely yes, but this applies to *every* single energy source. You got radioactive waste from rare earth mines for PV, you got cadmium contamination from PV panels, you got gearbox oil spills from wind, you got hydro dam disasters, you got pollution from new fossil gas and coal built for baseload.
This is why we use objective engineering indicators, such as deaths per kWh to compare what is less or more safe.
@kravietz @cjd @epic @lain @mithrandir
>objective engineering indicators
Those are statistics. By this reasoning, cirque du soleil extreme acrobatic stunts are "safer" than chopping a carrot in the kitchen, looking at injuries per hour.
The real engineering indicator is a something called Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and its based on a thorough understanding of system, subsystem and component levels potential failures and interactions.
@cjd @epic @lain @mithrandir @kravietz
What country do we invade in response to this terrorist attack on our infrastructure? https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/04/us/bird-poop-nuclear-power-shutdown/index.html
> pushing nuclear in a time of war to a public
I don't care about public, I care about pollution and climate change.
If you see the public being told that "Fukushima killed 20'000 of people" or "5G is causing COVID" you don't quietly affirm that "ah ok, maybe they're right", you just stand up and tell them this is bullshit.
I don’t care about public, I care about pollution and climate change.
And you think when everyone’s like China, where the people are just a herd of animals to be managed by government, everything will be better. It won’t. Look at your own statement. You are the public, and no one can see how you don’t realize that.
They’re still checking and finding cancers in the people exposed to radiation from Fukushima. And the stories of 5G causing COVID is baloney put forth to discredit the fact that it’s all spyware. There are trolls all over this place who exist only to make anyone stating the truth look like a raving lunatic.
I’d say that you, with your history, should know propaganda when you see it, but after this statement I think you do but use it for what it was intended.
You won’t realize you are that public until it’s too late.
> They’re still checking and finding cancers in the people exposed to radiation from Fukushima
I don't know who are "they" but UN has just found exactly opposite 10 years of studies:
@kravietz The UN is about as trustworthy as Wikipedia. What I stated is from specials on TV about Fukushima, how the people are dying, and how the government pays them for life, much shorter lives. It doesn’t matter if the UN says it’s not happening when it is. @lain @cjd @mithrandir
@kravietz I am the public you don’t care about because your science religiosity doesn’t let you question the lies and data manipulation of people controlled by grants and lucrative positions.
Science ain’t what it used to be by a long stretch.
> I am the public you don’t care about
I care about you enough to continue explaining and providing you with scientific evidence for three days, but when at the end all you can say is "IT'S ALL BIG ,PHARMA BITCHES" then it clearly means you don't care about anything I've said.
@kravietz I have no idea where that statement came from. I think you mixed up some discussions. I’m saying all your information paid for by the nuclear power industry isn’t as valid as you think it is, no matter how many PhDs they’ve got on the payroll. @lain @cjd @mithrandir
Almost none of the articles linked in this discussion comes even close to nuclear industry. These are mostly peer-reviewed scientific publications including bodies such as IPCC.
@kravietz Where does that low grade nuclear fuel come from for these new nuclear power plants? How much money is in the nuclear industry with a bunch of waste they can’t get rid of because of the pesky public you don’t care about?
All of the people paid to push what you are work for the nuclear industry, and its major problem right now is what to do with the waste. Track them down online. It always leads to corporations in trouble with waste disposal. They’ll swear that the waste can’t be used for the new ones. Why do they all work for those companies then?
If you don’t think the money they’ve got buys politicians and government agencies, you’ve got blinders on. @lain @cjd @mithrandir
If you think this applies to nuclear power exclusively, you've got blinders on
https://www.cfact.org/2019/09/15/the-solar-panel-toxic-waste-problem/
@kravietz I’m the guy wondering how you’ve all been convinced to get rid of your own power, fossil fuels. @lain @cjd @mithrandir
As someone who had been "empowered" by ovens working on wood and coal for a significant part of my life I don't need convincing, I happily give away that power to a electric socket operated by any reasonable utility company, thank you very much...
@kravietz I grew up with the fireplace being the source of heat and sometimes cooking too, wood in rural America and coal in urban England. Don’t knock it. It’s better than dead. @lain @cjd @mithrandir
@kravietz @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir It's wrong to paint all nuclear critics as science denying greenpeace nuts. Unless people are keeling over from acute radiation, there are so many cases where statistics show EG certain forms of cancer rising in nearby residents while the rest of the country shows declining rates of the same cancer - but its never "conclusively proven" to be related to a nuclear facility. eg the book "The Hanford Plaintiffs"
@mlg @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir
> so many cases where statistics show EG certain forms of cancer rising in nearby residents
This is a well known story of leukemia clustering near nuclear power plants in UK.
These clusters were a fact.
What was missed by the media hype was that they were also a fact around any other industrial facility in the country and caused by infections caused by migration of workers.
@mlg @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir
The screenshot is taken from a *massive* report by the commission from 2016. They have researched and tested probably every single hypothesis raised by the public back then, and the only problem with this publication is that no gutter press reported about it because there is no sensationalist & scandalous stuff there to be sold.
@mlg @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir
> all nuclear critics
Absolutely not all nuclear critics are nuts, many are simply misled.
I personally was anti-nuclear and very close to Greenpeace when I lived in Poland and almost went to protest against Temelin nuclear power plant in 90's (free bus & booze!).
I however studied chemical engineering and when I started to dissect the arguments they presented I not only failed to find the data behind it, I found exactly the opposite.
@mlg @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir
People oppose things for various reasons. People who are misled or just concerned due to lack of information deserve respect and education.
On the other hand, activists who actively mislead the public and distorting, inflating or inventing falsehoods, like Greenpeace or these "lithium-ion nuclear explosion" idiots are doing, are harmful and deserve nothing but contempt.
Their disinformation leads to choices that are by far worse off and more harmful.
@kravietz @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir There is an argument to be made for nuclear but I don't think there is scientific consensus that is the only path to fully de-carbonized power generation.
From first principles there is ample potential to provide humanity's entire electrical consumption from nuclear or renewables sources. So it comes down to what is possible with todays technology, supply chains, etc. And it all gets reflected in cost - the metric that accounts for everything else.
@mlg @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir
> from nuclear or renewables sources
"AND" nor "or"
Renewables are great when coupled with nuclear, and this is the only way to achieve scalable 24/7 low-carbon energy we know today.
> it all gets reflected in cost
It depends on methodology. In principle, externalities such as excess deaths from fossil fuels pollution and climate change are *not* captured by any metric such as LCOE.
@kravietz @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir
173,000 terawatts continuous.
More energy received in 1 hour than is used in 1 year.
These are 100% FACTS just as real as the e=mc^2 energy released when an atomic reaction results in less mass.
100% nuclear is also not possible with todays technology, it assumes not-yet-existing technology that will take uncertain time and money to develop.
@kravietz @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir Hence, to produce 15 TW by 2050 would require roughly 14,636 new 1-GWe nuclear power plants. Construction of this number of plants would require,11 on average, the commissioning of a new nuclear power plant somewhere in the world every day continuously for 40 years. ...
At this rate, the estimated global conventional uranium terrestrial resources (17.1 MtU) (NEA 2002) would be exhausted in less than 10 years.
@mlg @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir
> uranium terrestrial resources
This assumes the current fuel cycle in US where 4% of fuel rods is actually used and these "spent" rods are treated as waste.
In reality, 96% can be recycled back into MOX fuel:
https://scitech.video/videos/watch/53184e23-6490-4158-a616-68af6afc0925
You just didn't scroll down to the next page (BN-800 reactor went into operation in 2020 in Russia):
@mlg @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir
> that is the only path
That depends on the time perspective. The further you look, the more uncertainty.
In 10-20 years perspective it's pretty clear as there is no scalable storage, and Germany is knowingly choosing *certain* excess 20-30'000 human deaths because they chose to keep coal until 2038 and shut down nuclear by 2021.
After 20 years we may have scalable power-to-gas or storage, or we may just as well have nuclear fusion (ITER goes in 2025).
@kravietz @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir its like trusting a police department to decide if its own officers were guilty of misconduct.
Newsflash: "Organiziation that would be held liable finds itself completely not guilty or responsible for misconduct in any way"
> truth look like a raving lunatic
Absolutely agree. In case of nuclear power and GMO the trolls are called Friend of Earth and Greenpeace, organisations employing known scientific frauds (Seralini), very much like anti-vaxxers employed Wakefield.
This is precisely why it's our duty not to follow the popular sentiments but verify the truth at scientific sources, and scientific consensus on both topics is quite clear.
@kravietz @epic @lain @mithrandir
Not really worth arguing about. Nuclear power is dead everywhere except China, and when China melts down it'll be dead there too.