7 ms·

Fusion requires lots of time, or a few miracles. Renewable storage and transmission requires some breakthroughs. Maybe we could do it Soon, maybe in decades.

Fusion requires lots of time, or a few miracles. Renewable storage and transmission requires some breakthroughs. Maybe we could do it Soon, maybe in decades. Fission requires political will, no miracles, no breakthroughs. We could have been doing it last year.

Certhas 8y ago
I think this is incorrect. Renewables + Storage is possible now. It's only a matter of price. At marginal cost right now solar+wind are cheaper than alternatives, at total system costs it's within a factor of two (or at break even for optimistic studies) of the current system and falling. Fusion is not possible now. As climate change is happening now, any delay in transitioning to clean and available solutions is purely ideology driven.
- hutzlibu 8y ago
  Also, Fission is a potential dangerous technology. Not only for accidents, also for intentional missuse. The wider it is avaiable, the easier it is for certain groups to get more dangerous.
  - apendleton 8y ago
    This too is a political will problem. Designs for proliferation-resistant gen IV nuclear plants have existed for a long time, and many have been tested. We don't use them because nobody builds nuclear plants any more out of overblown fears of meltdowns (which, incidentally, also can't occur in most gen IV designs).
    - hutzlibu 8y ago
      Hm, this is the first time I heard that you can build a fissoon reactor which cant melt down. Or can't be made into weapons. But I don't know much about the topic. Short google search shows that your claims are not proven and at least controversal: https://theecologist.org/2017/oct/03/james-hansens-generation-iv-nuclear-advocacy-deconstruction-nuclear-fallacies-and https://theecologist.org/2017/oct/03/james-hansens-generatio...
      - apendleton 8y ago
        The "can't melt down" property is usually referred to as "passive safety": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety . These tend to have components that cause all of the nuclear fuel to passively flow out of the reactor and into a cooling chamber in the event of coolant failure. In liquid-fueled designs, this is accomplished via a "freeze plug," essentially a cork made of a low-melting-point material at the bottom of the reaction chamber that's kept solid by active cooling and rapidly melts in the event of a power failure such that the reaction chamber drains. Equivalent mechanisms exist for pebble bed reactors, though, where all the pebbles fall into a cooling chamber. In either case, production reactors have been build that include these features and the physics are very well understood. Proliferation resistance is trickier, and not all gen IV designs focus here. There are a couple of areas of attention here. The first, and probably more mature development-wise, are alternative fuel cycles like the Thorium fuel cycle that don't produce easily usable fissile material out the other end (and do produce a bunch of U232, which in addition to being non-fissile is also difficult to steal because it's super-dangerous to handle). Secondly, there are designs that breed and then immediately burn fuel in situ without reprocessing, such that there's no point during which the fissile material exists outside the reactor to be stolen. I don't think any of this class have actually been built yet, but the Traveling Wave design is probably furthest along, and TerraPower is building one of those in China with a target completion date of ~2025. Two important caveats though: these are "proilferation-resistant" in the sense that fuel would be hard for non-state actors to steal; state actors are another concern as that article points out, but they also don't really need to breed fuel, and can just enrich uranium directly without that much difficulty, as Iran and North Korea have both demonstrated, if they're willing to pay for it. At this point the physics are very well-understood, so this is a problem in need of diplomatic solutions more than technological ones. And second, the focus here is on material for fission weapons. I don't think any nuclear technology has good defenses against using material for dirty bombs. All of that said, I'd still stand by my original point that newer designs are well-understood and dramatically better in these respects than most currently operating plants, and are only not being built (at least in the US and Europe) for political reasons.
        8y ago
    - __m 8y ago
      Or fear of bankruptcy.
      - jnxx 8y ago
        Or actual bankruptcy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Electric_Company#Timeline_of_Westinghouse_Electric_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Electric_Company#...
jnxx 8y ago
> Fission requires political will, no miracles, no breakthroughs. We could have been doing it last year. Assuming you are in the US, you forgot how close the Three Miles Island accident was to cause an US version of Chernobyl in the East coast.
- Semirhage 8y ago
  I’m not in the US, but I do remember. The thing is I remember other disasters relating to energy, including yearly deaths from pollution. It’s not as though gas, oil, and coal production or use are somehow safe, free from catastrophic failure, and subsequent deaths.

Certhas 8y ago

I think this is incorrect. Renewables + Storage is possible now. It's only a matter of price. At marginal cost right now solar+wind are cheaper than alternatives, at total system costs it's within a factor of two (or at break even for optimistic studies) of the current system and falling. Fusion is not possible now. As climate change is happening now, any delay in transitioning to clean and available solutions is purely ideology driven.

hutzlibu 8y ago
Also, Fission is a potential dangerous technology. Not only for accidents, also for intentional missuse. The wider it is avaiable, the easier it is for certain groups to get more dangerous.
- apendleton 8y ago
  This too is a political will problem. Designs for proliferation-resistant gen IV nuclear plants have existed for a long time, and many have been tested. We don't use them because nobody builds nuclear plants any more out of overblown fears of meltdowns (which, incidentally, also can't occur in most gen IV designs).
  - hutzlibu 8y ago
    Hm, this is the first time I heard that you can build a fissoon reactor which cant melt down. Or can't be made into weapons. But I don't know much about the topic. Short google search shows that your claims are not proven and at least controversal: https://theecologist.org/2017/oct/03/james-hansens-generation-iv-nuclear-advocacy-deconstruction-nuclear-fallacies-and https://theecologist.org/2017/oct/03/james-hansens-generatio...
    - apendleton 8y ago
      The "can't melt down" property is usually referred to as "passive safety": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety . These tend to have components that cause all of the nuclear fuel to passively flow out of the reactor and into a cooling chamber in the event of coolant failure. In liquid-fueled designs, this is accomplished via a "freeze plug," essentially a cork made of a low-melting-point material at the bottom of the reaction chamber that's kept solid by active cooling and rapidly melts in the event of a power failure such that the reaction chamber drains. Equivalent mechanisms exist for pebble bed reactors, though, where all the pebbles fall into a cooling chamber. In either case, production reactors have been build that include these features and the physics are very well understood. Proliferation resistance is trickier, and not all gen IV designs focus here. There are a couple of areas of attention here. The first, and probably more mature development-wise, are alternative fuel cycles like the Thorium fuel cycle that don't produce easily usable fissile material out the other end (and do produce a bunch of U232, which in addition to being non-fissile is also difficult to steal because it's super-dangerous to handle). Secondly, there are designs that breed and then immediately burn fuel in situ without reprocessing, such that there's no point during which the fissile material exists outside the reactor to be stolen. I don't think any of this class have actually been built yet, but the Traveling Wave design is probably furthest along, and TerraPower is building one of those in China with a target completion date of ~2025. Two important caveats though: these are "proilferation-resistant" in the sense that fuel would be hard for non-state actors to steal; state actors are another concern as that article points out, but they also don't really need to breed fuel, and can just enrich uranium directly without that much difficulty, as Iran and North Korea have both demonstrated, if they're willing to pay for it. At this point the physics are very well-understood, so this is a problem in need of diplomatic solutions more than technological ones. And second, the focus here is on material for fission weapons. I don't think any nuclear technology has good defenses against using material for dirty bombs. All of that said, I'd still stand by my original point that newer designs are well-understood and dramatically better in these respects than most currently operating plants, and are only not being built (at least in the US and Europe) for political reasons.
      - 8y ago
  - __m 8y ago
    Or fear of bankruptcy.
    - jnxx 8y ago
      Or actual bankruptcy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Electric_Company#Timeline_of_Westinghouse_Electric_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Electric_Company#...

jnxx 8y ago

> Fission requires political will, no miracles, no breakthroughs. We could have been doing it last year. Assuming you are in the US, you forgot how close the Three Miles Island accident was to cause an US version of Chernobyl in the East coast.

Semirhage 8y ago
I’m not in the US, but I do remember. The thing is I remember other disasters relating to energy, including yearly deaths from pollution. It’s not as though gas, oil, and coal production or use are somehow safe, free from catastrophic failure, and subsequent deaths.