10 ms·
The interviews are interesting.
I was a kid those days, and my mother keeps telling me that diary products were suddenly put on a sale (before the news release
The interviews are interesting.
I was a kid those days, and my mother keeps telling me that diary products were suddenly put on a sale (before the news release). I live in Eastern-Europe, in the former Warsaw Pact bloc. My father worked in a research institute, so managed to get a hold of the information before the official announcements. He told her not to buy any diary or vegetable for a while.
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What troubles me is the contant flow on anti-nuclear-power propaganda to HN. If we accept the fact of global warming, and humanity as its cause, then the fearmongering about nuclear power should stop, as it is a necessary component in reducing CO2 emissions while not giving up too much from our lifestyle. With the lessons learned from the nuclear accidents we have every measure to avoid them in the future, until the fusion technology is ready, and to have reliable, zero-emission power in our energy mix.
Problem is, that wouldn't satisfy the "humans are evil, and the cause of all nature's ills" narrative that underlays much of the activism around climate policy and other environmentalist causes.
The solution always has to be fewer humans and less human activity, with the possible exception of temporary "sorry, we were never here" cleanup efforts.
A movement is composed of people, and those people can be reasoned with individually. If we reason with enough of them, the narrative changes.
China did managed population growth, guess what happened, no one is happy. I doubt human can overcome their own nature to step ahead and regulate population effectively.
Would you prefer the "humans are basically good" narrative?
Do you honestly find that to be a better explanation of human history the past few thousand years than "humans are evil, and the cause of all nature's ills"?
Personally, I find the latter proves true to life. Better to accept it and deal with it, than to sweep it under the rug.
That's assuming that all the harm we do, we do it just to do harm. I think this assumption is false. Most of the harm we do is a side effect of things we're trying to achieve.
So, basically, we're just another (slightly smarter) animal.
It's not like, for example, invasive species introduced from another continent stopped for a second and thought: "hey! maybe we shouldn't breed too much and we shouldn't eat all the bees/birds/whatever!".
Life is like a gas, it expands to fill all the space given to it.
I don't think that's inherently bad. After all, life is the exception in the universe. And frankly, most of the universe is boring :)
There are a number of problems with nuclear power.
1. The world's uranium supply won't actually go that far [1].
2. A lot of places aren't suitable for nuclear reactors (eg they're seismically active).
3. We have to trust either corporations or governments to run such plants. Corporations will tend to maximize short term profits at the cost of long term safety. Governments will tend to do the same for budgetary reasons.
4. We'd create a whole bunch of radioactive slag that we honestly have no good way of dealing with.
So far it seems the best power source we have is hydroelectric. Of course it's only possible in some places. This can devastate certain species (eg salmon) but in terms of cost, risks, environmental impact and power output, hydro is hard to beat if it's an option.
Solar has been on a stellar (pardon the pun) rise for some years simply because the cost of cells has decreased by way more than I ever would've predicted.
Widespread electric vehicles are still hindered by the relative expense and scalability issue of batteries, notably how much lithium we have available as well as the environmental impact of mining the necessary materials. It does seem like we're one big battery breakthrough away from completely changing this landscape however.
Wind has a place but I think will remain a niche energy source.
I increasingly have the view the the economic production of electricity from nuclear fusion is a pipe dream. The temperatures are too high, magnetic containment seems too problematic and, worse, the neutron emissions are a big problem (yes, yes, I know about He3).
This does seem like it's a problem we're going to have to solve this century.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium
> in terms of cost, risks, environmental impact and power output, hydro is hard to beat if it's an option.
The death tolls tell a different story.
You aren't alone in this belief, but I've never really understood it. Banqiao dam bursts and kills 170,000 people: hydro is fine, we should do more. Chernobyl melts down and kills 30: nuclear power is inherently unsafe!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident...
You tell us some short emotional story. And then provide a second completely contrary paragraph comment how bad the propaganda is and how great nuclear is. You know what, your tactic is called Zersetzung, and what you are doing is not nice.
My story has nothing to do with the facts about nuclear power. The moral of the story is about socialist dictatorships, the lack of free speech and free flow of information.
The fact that you very subtilely called me a nazi (I had to google the word Zersetzung to recognize this) tells me something else: your ad-hominem attack is just annother example of the anti-nuclear propaganda I talked about. My opinion about nuclear power does not match yours, thus you call names on me, point finger at me, and even try to tell me what my idea should be after the experiences I have, or how should I present them. This is the very attitude which made the Eastern block be a bad, opressive place. This attempt to kill conversations about inconvenient/controversial topics, which starts to get the norm even in the western world is very troubling for me.
To conclude: what you are doing is just as much not nice as what you attributed to my story and opinion.
What I see on HN is a stream of technological idealism that tends to ignore the practical difficulties. Blaming protestors for lack of progress is very easy as it allows you to neatly ignore those issues. There are many economic and engineering reasons why nuclear is so hard to get right.
France, a rich, functional, liberal, western democracy, is more or less uncontroversially nuclear powered to a very high degree. There are no more practical difficulties than any other large, important project. The only problem is politics.
Ya we better destroy all life on earth so you can keep your lifestyle.
It's "dairy", not "diary".
You're not taking into account all the people who didn't die immediately but long before their time because of cancer.
“I know three women my age (between 30–40) who have experienced thyroid cancer. When one of them was surprised to get the diagnosis, her doctor told her they see women our age from the Soviet Union very frequently with the same. Not a coincidence.” — Z. K.
Thanks for posting. I'm in the nuclear industry and would like to try to address some of these issues if you don't mind.
1. Uranium in seawater is replenished by erosion through streams at a rate faster than we could ever burn it. It is effectively totally sustainable and even renewable on a 4+ billion year time frame, even without breeder reactors. But really, breeder reactors will become a thing when uranium gets expensive enough to warrant them. The reactors that were attempted so far just weren't needed because it turned out we had way more uranium that we originally thought.
2. With passive cooling systems, even seismically active regions can be powered by nuclear. Also, there are exciting possibilities for offshore nuclear, floating 10km out to sea where tsunami wavelengths are huge. Cooling is guaranteed and huge shipyards can do the construction. I agree that it's clear from Fukushima that designs requiring active cooling are no good in such places.
3. There are teams of nuclear engineers and other reactor designers in San Francisco right now at the American Nuclear Society meeting whose goal is to reduce the price of nuclear so that corporations can make a profit from them without compromising safety. I believe it can be done.
4. The Finns are about done with their deep geologic repository [1] and it's looking great. We definitely know how to dispose of nuclear waste. It's just a matter of political will and outreach. The tradeoff you have to keep in mind is that you can get all your primary energy for literally your entire life while personally producing 2 soda cans of nuclear waste. Compare that to fossil fuel (2 million times more waste) or to the vast energy harvesting resources for wind and solar (concrete bases, fiberglass, steel, silicon, glass, semiconductor processing, etc.) and you see that nuclear is extremely low footprint and that's its magic.
I sympathize with your concerns and am working to mitigate them. Biggest hurdle in my mind is standardizing designs. I dream of coordinating an open source reactor design effort some day.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...
Hi, interesting answers.
1) Could you tell me more about replenishment of Uranium in seawater, or point me towards your source?
Wouldn't it mean that we would reach a maximum saturation of Uranium in the ocean after some time (with precipitation of excess Uranium in the form of salts)?
Have you seen / access to estimates of Uranium electrode deposition cost from water? Are they cost competitive in any way in comparison to other energy systems that will be employed in the future?
At the end, you would need to use electrical energy converted from another source to gain Uranium. For me, that scenario is a bit 'fishy'.
Thanks, and sure. You're right to be skeptical. The renewability of uranium isn't a widely accepted idea and unfortunately is hard to definitively prove experimentally due to the hilariously long time scales. So we're left with less rigorous claims of this to treat rationally more than scientifically. Also, haha: 'fishy'!
Here's a good source: http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/4/11/3088/htm http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/4/11/3088/htm
And it points to an older one: http://tmtfree.hd.free.fr/albums/files/TMTisFree/Documents/Energy/Breeder_reactors_A_renewable_energy_source_pad11983cohen.pdf http://tmtfree.hd.free.fr/albums/files/TMTisFree/Documents/E...
From the first:
"One additional aspect of nuclear sustainability—noted long-since by Bernard Cohen—is that a significant fraction of the nuclear fission energy resource is in fact completely “renewable” in the same sense as wind and solar energy [32]. Wind and rain constantly erode the Earth’s crust, which contains an average uranium concentration of 3 parts per million. Rivers then carry this dissolved uranium into the oceans, at a rate of approximately 10,000 MT per year [33]. In a breeder reactor energy system, this is a sufficient rate to supply the world’s entire electricity demand at the present time more than five times over—or is roughly one quarter of what’s needed to supply a continual 100 TW to a hypothetical global civilization of 10 billion persons which is energy supply-replete by any contemporary measure.
As the crust is being eroded by rivers, it is constantly replaced by new layers of rock being pushed upward by plate tectonic processes. The supply of uranium in the Earth’s crust is effectively inexhaustible, on the order of 40 trillion metric tonnes, a factor of 10,000 more than is present in the oceans. At present erosion rates, this source of uranium would last on the order of 4 billion years, similar to the timespan over which the Sun will become a red giant.
Therefore, this assured source of “continually mined-by-Nature and oceanically presented” uranium will last as long as life on Earth does—even if burned at rates sufficient to supply a large fraction of a fully-developed human civilization—and represents an astronomical amount of nuclear energy, one that is in fact truly renewable and inexhaustible by any human measures."
EDIT:
As for increasing concentrations of uranium in the sea, it's already in equilibrium so the incoming stuff that leaches in through rivers is leaching back into the rocks, giving us the equilibrium concentration we observe today. The point here is that if we start extracting it that concentration is not expected to drop because we can't offset the balance very much.
> Uranium in seawater is replenished by erosion through streams at a rate faster than we could ever burn it.
Isn't there a substantial energy cost associated with collecting that Uranium?
The same goes for gold, there is a huge amount of gold in seawater and yet, nobody has been able to extract it in a way that left money on the table after the process had run.
This article suggests a total cost of $1000-$1500 which is ~20x the cost of mined uranium (and 40x less the cost of gold). It does not mention energy as a significant driver of this cost.
http://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/2013/06/the_cost_of_recovering_uranium.html http://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/2013/06/the_cost...
Great question, and one that I don't have a quantitative reply to on hand. The thing with uranium is that it is so unimaginably energy dense that with the success we've seen so far in seawater extraction technology, it's hard to imagine the energy required for extraction being anything but minuscule in comparison. Obviously there's a limit of concentration where this becomes not true but my understanding is that we are not near that limit.
Here's a summary of some recent work on seawater uranium extraction: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-seawater-extraction-makes-nuclear-power-completely-renewable/#3b3fcd1e159a https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-s...
And here's a special edition of Industrial and Chemical Engineering dedicated to the topic: http://pubs.acs.org/toc/iecred/55/15#UraniuminSeawater http://pubs.acs.org/toc/iecred/55/15#UraniuminSeawater
I also had my fair share with nuclear power plant design and power plant design in general in the past. From that time I have kept a rather moderate/positive view of the technology. However 'we' seem to be implementing it so badly that I am concerned. The total (from end to end) are unknown and even based on what is known not fully accounted for.
While you point out that there are technical solution to the challenges I strongly believe Countries/Corporations/Governments are not willing or capable of operating these plants to a safe standard and earn money doing so.
The whole issue of decommissioning and deconstruction is only in its infancy and already a huge money drain on the backs of the people and not the Corporates who earned money for 30 years running the plant. I think we should speak of deconstruction and not of demolition. Demolition is mainly smashing buildings to pebbles with a big steel ball, for nuclear power plants that is not the case. See [1] or [2] - sorry both in German
Re 1. Until the technology has actually been built and scaled up we won't know what technical details and challenged await us. I don't see that as a reason to not do it but rather a call for caution on over-optimistic timeline.
Re 2. Indeed many aspects of the reactors have been improved on paper/in theories. See for example the European Pressurized Reactor [3]. The first 3 plants to that nature are riddled with technical detail problems and budget overruns, see [4]. When I was at Unit learning about EPR most lecturers where approaching retirement or already past retirement. The nuclear power industry - at least for the German part - has had the issue of very few skilled successors.
This might have a big role in the building of the actual new types of plants. 35-45 years ago when the current old plants where built there was a large pool of experts - engineers, construction, QA/QC - they are all retired now.
Re 3. That is good, and there surely are technical solutions but I am very sure they are no easy find. Just think about the discussion of material selection for certain vessels in light of the current material embitterment news from Belgium Power plants [5]. I'm not saying that these issues are insurmountable but that the process to get to an agreed (experts and governments) new solution is slow and painful with no ETA.
Re 4. In Germany at least the search for a repository was driven by politics into the wrong direction. This should have been driven buy science and technology people. By now the topic is so far down the drain so that changing course is political suicide.
Another point regarding the waste is the discussion of marking the nuclear wasted depositories for >1000 or rather 10000 years. Interesting YC discussion here [6]
[1] http://www.focus.de/finanzen/eon-spaltet-akws-ab-muessen-jetzt-die-steuerzahler-fuer-den-atomausstieg-zahlen_id_4316103.html http://www.focus.de/finanzen/eon-spaltet-akws-ab-muessen-jet...
[2] https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/industrie/milliarden-rueckstellungen-kernkraftwerks-rueckbau-verschlingt-unsummen/8636764-2.html https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/industrie/milliarde...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_energy_in_Belgium#Hydrogen_flakes_in_Doel-3_and_Tihange-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_energy_in_Belgium#Hydr...
[6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14530978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14530978
Hydro is not an option at many places. Also dams also have negative environmental impact, which is often simply ignored.
Fusion will work eventually, but currently it is in the constant "we'll be there in 30 years" since the 1970s. Yet we are not getting further, but closer to it. Just thnik about it: now you have technology in your pocket that was used in putting humans on the Moon. More and more durable and special materials becoming cheaper and affordable. We are getting close to handle the heat, EM and possibly the neutron flux. It is doable in the near future (<100 years), thus worth pursuing. What we must avoid (this also applies to the energy storage tech for renewables) is the wishful thinking: "we can shut down nuclear powerplants, as fusion/battery tech will be solved in ten years: extrapolation from 2 conviniently chosen datapoints..."
Breeder reactors and Thorium based fuel cycle will mitigate the problem of running out of U235.
Radioactive residual reprocessing will eventually be solved. Maybe peak-uranium will make it economically desireable. Btw there is current work on reprocessing spent radioactive fuel in reactors, at least in Russia and China.
I firmly beleive that while solar and wind will stay with us, they cannot be the fundamentals of our energy mix, and nuclear is here to stay. Simply many politicians are not ready to admit it yet.
Despite those unique challenges, the French built 56 reactors in the 70s and 80s. GDP had quadrupled since then, while those unique challenges haven't gotten bigger -- but they have been amended with 40 years of rabid FUD. That is the challenge, and as long as politicians are repeating the FUD, it's not going to get easier.
>The point is, there is no good outcome in a pissing match over what has the most negative impact when we routinely ignore any number of causes of death that we can be fixing but don't.
That isn't the point, any time you mention nuclear power you get a swarm of people saying it's so unsafe and we need to move towards renewables. It's safer than the largest renewable source currently, and the UN considers some nuclear power a renewable source. The US doesn't, largely due to fossil fuel lobbying.
Hi,
thank you very much for your detailed elaboration on the subject, and the references. I was not aware of the bigger, geologic perspective:
~ 3 mg Uranium in 1 m^3 ocean water.
Makes sense, when one thinks about the relative ratio of chemical elements on earth. I guess, as always, it is the demonstration of chemical enrichment procedures that is the key here, and there is currently no economic incentive to do such a thing. Although, I have not looked into current fuel production procedures. How expensive is 1g (sufficiently) pure Uranium fuel?
The sentence that our energy requirements could be covered with breeder reactor systems for 50K years made my smile, though. It will be probably the lack of higher "level fuels" such as proteins and carbohydrates that give us headaches, first.
Please note that I am not at all hypercritical regarding nuclear energy. There is a lot of industrial and green propaganda out there, and it is sad to see that we scientist are loosing the battle in media. Too often, rigorous scientific explanations in not sexy enough for us apes.