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Price is not the only factor if we seriously want to fight global warming. 1. What is the energy ROI? (ie how much energy does it cost to build a station) 2. A

by Iv 10y ago

Price is not the only factor if we seriously want to fight global warming. 1. What is the energy ROI? (ie how much energy does it cost to build a station) 2. At what speed can we transition out of fossil fuel? Germany tried to phase out of nuclear. What happened? They raised their part of renewable sources a lot, but that still amounted to only about 15-20% of their national needs. They ended up reopening coal plants. We know how to build a shit ton of nuclear power plant fast. It has been done in the past, the tech is proven, the grid is appropriate. Even in France, where a lot of the electricity is nuclear (~70%) transitioning out of fossil fuel would require to double the nuclear capacity. Oh, and the plants are getting old so they need to be decommissioned/restored. I agree that the politcal factor is important, but, damn! People should not say they are concerned about global warming if they refuse to consider the nuclear option. It is a shortcut to a post-fossil fuel future. (No, uranium is not a fossil resource) It would then allow a much more optimal and stressless path toward full renewables.

r1k 10y ago
> (No, uranium is not a fossil resource) Could you elaborate?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- niels_olson 10y ago
  Every atom of every element heavier than iron is stardust (1). Uranium is no more fossil than gold is. (1) Most of the lighter stuff is stardust too, but there's some small number of heavy nuclei that decayed down to more stable, lighter isotopes, which ultimately leads to iron, the most stable of all.
- Iv 10y ago
  First, and mostly irrelevant, is a definition thing: a fossil resource comes from organic decay. Oil and coal mostly come from ancient prehistoric forests. As far as we know, you can't find these outside earth and even the most optimistic projections do not expect oil to last more than one more century (pessimistic projections are surprised it did not stop yesterday. Without shale oil we would be past peak oil.) It has an important consequence: coal and oil can only be found on a relatively thin layer of the earth, its outer crust. Uranium on the other hand can be found outside the earth (we have found some of the moon for instance and it is a mineral: all planets are expected to have some) and inside the mantle. Actually, the deeper we go, the more we expect to find. It is believed that the heat of earth's center is partly caused by fission reactions. Second, it is not scarce like oil is. Known reserves may seem small but mineral resources tend to plateau at ~80 years of global consumption as it is usually not profitable to do exploration at a higher pace than that, so the actual reserves are probably much more and likely very extensible as we improve our boring techniques. It is pretty realistic to say we have several centuries of regular uranium for the most common fissile reaction used in power plants. Third, we have mastered more than one nuclear reaction for energy production. And by that, I mean that we have demonstrated their use on industrial scale: we know how to use plutonium and uranium-238, an isotope of uranium that is 100 times more common than the one we use in regular power plants. Huge plants using these have been built and operated. They are a bit more complicated and expensive, but they work. With these known and industrialized tech, and only accounting currently known and profitable reserve, you reach an amount of reserve that has to be counted in tens of millennia. And that is not counting reactions that we know work from experimental reactors, or more futuristic prospects like nuclear fusion.
  - r1k 10y ago
    Thanks.

by Iv 10y ago

r1k 10y ago

> (No, uranium is not a fossil resource) Could you elaborate?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
niels_olson 10y ago
Every atom of every element heavier than iron is stardust (1). Uranium is no more fossil than gold is. (1) Most of the lighter stuff is stardust too, but there's some small number of heavy nuclei that decayed down to more stable, lighter isotopes, which ultimately leads to iron, the most stable of all.
Iv 10y ago
First, and mostly irrelevant, is a definition thing: a fossil resource comes from organic decay. Oil and coal mostly come from ancient prehistoric forests. As far as we know, you can't find these outside earth and even the most optimistic projections do not expect oil to last more than one more century (pessimistic projections are surprised it did not stop yesterday. Without shale oil we would be past peak oil.) It has an important consequence: coal and oil can only be found on a relatively thin layer of the earth, its outer crust. Uranium on the other hand can be found outside the earth (we have found some of the moon for instance and it is a mineral: all planets are expected to have some) and inside the mantle. Actually, the deeper we go, the more we expect to find. It is believed that the heat of earth's center is partly caused by fission reactions. Second, it is not scarce like oil is. Known reserves may seem small but mineral resources tend to plateau at ~80 years of global consumption as it is usually not profitable to do exploration at a higher pace than that, so the actual reserves are probably much more and likely very extensible as we improve our boring techniques. It is pretty realistic to say we have several centuries of regular uranium for the most common fissile reaction used in power plants. Third, we have mastered more than one nuclear reaction for energy production. And by that, I mean that we have demonstrated their use on industrial scale: we know how to use plutonium and uranium-238, an isotope of uranium that is 100 times more common than the one we use in regular power plants. Huge plants using these have been built and operated. They are a bit more complicated and expensive, but they work. With these known and industrialized tech, and only accounting currently known and profitable reserve, you reach an amount of reserve that has to be counted in tens of millennia. And that is not counting reactions that we know work from experimental reactors, or more futuristic prospects like nuclear fusion.
- r1k 10y ago
  Thanks.