6 ms·

Would you think that the waste type from solar panels is comparable to the waste type from nuclear?

by throwaway_pdp09 6y ago

ianai 6y ago
Yes. Solar is probably way more hazardous to work with at plants.
- brazzy 6y ago
  Holy fucking shit are you nuclear fanboys delusional (or well paid).
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    No my dude, you can find yourself on the other side of an argument without your opponents needing to be well-paid and delusional ;) Nuclear energy accounts for about 6% of the world's energy mix. It is the safest source of carbon-free energy in terms of deaths per TWh in the world, leading to half a many deaths as industrial solar, 1/4 as many as wind and 1/10th as many as rooftop solar. [1] The genuinely tiny amount of generated waste can simply be dropped into Yucca Mountain and never worried about again. How afraid are you of, for instance, hydro power? Not very? Did you know Chernobyl, the worst radiological incident in the world killed 4,000 people in total? The worst hydro power accident, Bangqiao Dam, killed between 85,000 and 200,000 people [2]. I would also caution you against personal attacks, they're not welcome here. [1] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-ener... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
    - brazzy 6y ago
      Great, you regurgitated all the standard talking points. Have a pat on the head. Except even if all of that were true (which it isn't), it still wouldn't make nuclear waste "less hazardous to work with" than other kinds of waste. As for Yucca Mountain, funny that the "genuinely tiny amount" of nuclear waste produced in the USA as of 2011 was already more than the approved capacity of the site, and "never worried about again" is clearly not true given that there was a magnitude 7 earthquake near it last year.
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        > Great, you regurgitated all the standard talking points. Have a pat on the head. Again, I suggest you adjust your tone, as site rules are pretty clear. > Except even if all of that were true (which it isn't) [citation needed], as of course, I provided mine. > As for Yucca Mountain, funny that the "genuinely tiny amount" of nuclear waste produced in the USA as of 2011. You're going to have to provide some clarification there, like, all the nuclear waste generated in the history of nuclear power in the United States in the last hundred years? The GAO says the nation has produced 80,000 metric tons to this day. [1] This is in line with Yucca Mountain's capacity. Consider that was generated since 1958 when Shippingport opened. The government believes that 2000T of waste are generated per year at this stage, meaning Yucca Mountain would be able to house 40 years of new waste. At one site. Did the magnitude 7 earthquake near yucca mountain compromise the structural integrity of the proposed storage site? Because if not, then your point is moot. Which is what the DOE said. [2] And in fact when this article was written they said the tectonics of the region wouldn't yield an earthquake in excess of a magnitude 7. It's almost like they considered this, and planned for it. Further, modern fast-neutron reactors and breeder reactors generate an order of magnitude less high level waste than classical designs. [3] [1] https://www.gao.gov/key_issues/disposal_of_highlevel_nuclear_waste/issue_summary https://www.gao.gov/key_issues/disposal_of_highlevel_nuclear... [2] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/loose-nukes-would-earthquakes-aroun-2009-03-10/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/loose-nukes-w... [3] https://nationalcenter.org/NuclearFastReactorsSA1205.pdf https://nationalcenter.org/NuclearFastReactorsSA1205.pdf
        brazzy 6y ago
        So do I take your lack of response to the key part to mean that you agree with me that nuclear waste is not, in fact "less hazardous to work with" than solar waste? Because that was what my original comment was about. > You're going to have to provide some clarification there, like, all the nuclear waste generated in the history of nuclear power in the United States in the last hundred years? The GAO says the nation has produced 80,000 metric tons to this day. [1] This is in line with Yucca Mountain's capacity. It is a bit more than Yucca Mountain's capacity as per its own FAQ: https://www.yuccamountain.org/faq.htm https://www.yuccamountain.org/faq.htm > Consider that was generated since 1958 when Shippingport opened. So? It still needs to go somewhere. > The government believes that 2000T of waste are generated per year at this stage, meaning Yucca Mountain would be able to house 40 years of new waste. Except it's already more than filled by existing waste. And except that's at the current level of nuclear power usage which people here are saying should be massively expanded. > At one site. Which is the only site the USA's 50 states have been able to agree to establish. Wait, no: the state that actually contains it has not agreed: https://ag.nv.gov/Hot_Topics/Issue/Yucca/ https://ag.nv.gov/Hot_Topics/Issue/Yucca/ > Did the magnitude 7 earthquake near yucca mountain compromise the structural integrity of the proposed storage site? Because if not, then your point is moot. That is not how you do risk assessment for a storage site for waste that will be hazardous for thousands of years, my dude.
    - pydry 6y ago
      4,000 is a conservative estimate. http://www.chernobylreport.org http://www.chernobylreport.org suggests 30,000 to 60,000. Cancer deaths are hard to attribute while workers falling off the roof installing solar equipment... not so much. With Chernobyl it's also worth bearing in mind how much worse it could have been easily if the cleanup workers hadn't done their jobs right: "There was a moment when there was the danger of a nuclear explosion, and they had to get the water out from under the reactor, so that a mixture of uranium and graphite wouldn't get into it - with the water, they would have formed a critical mass. The explosion would have been between three and five megatons. This would have meant that not only Kiev and Minsk, but a large part of Europe would have been uninhabitable. Can you imagine it? A European catastrophe." https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/apr/25/energy.ukraine https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/apr/25/energy.u...
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        4,000 is not a conservative estimate. It is based on the UNSCEAR report, which I consider to be the authoritative source. The following WHO write-up provides a full breakdown by category. [1] The 30-60K number is scaremongering. The UNSCEAR report is about 600 pages and took 20 years to compile, and included 8 intergovernmental organizations and all the local affected governments. "Alongside radiation-induced deaths and diseases, the report labels the mental health impact of Chernobyl as 'the largest public health problem created by the accident' and partially attributes this damaging psychological impact to a lack of accurate information." [1] This was a material problem, as many people killed themselves believing they were "contaminated" when, in reality, that were just fine. As the link covers (both yours and mine), the primary cancers attributable to Chernobyl are thyroid cancer, due to radioactive iodine. Thyroid cancers have a 99% survival rate. This is curiously omitted in your link. Thankfully, I-131 has a half-life of just 8 days and is long, long gone. Major incidents should not, in my opinion, dominate the discourse. After all, we're fine with hydro power when the Bangqiao Dam incident killed up to 200,000 people in one fell swoop. A single dam failure could easily cause drastically more harm than a nuclear incident. > "Can you imagine it? A European catastrophe." 26% of all power generated in Europe comes from nuclear today. Luckily, they have learned from their mistakes and improved processes and safety measures. [edit] The discrepancy in your link I suspect comes from this: "Excess cancer deaths can be estimated from published collective doses." Further, I suspect the actual extent of future deaths will be lower than even UNSCEAR. They support the "linear no-threshold dose response" model, where any amount of increased radiation exposure leads to a proportional increase cancer deaths. However, this model is being challenged, as experimental evidence shows this is not consistent with biological and experimental data [2]. [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/05-09-2005-chernobyl-the-true-scale-of-the-accident https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/05-09-2005-chernobyl-th... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2663584/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2663584/
    - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
      > Nuclear energy accounts for about 6% of the world's energy mix. It is the safest source of carbon-free energy in terms of deaths per TWh in the world, ...as long as you completely ignore the risk of large catastrophic events. Like nuclear power plants being targeted during a war.
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        How about hydro dams? Bangqiao killed 200,000 people. There's plenty of things you can try and hit in war, and nuclear reactors aren't generally located near population centers. Nice thing about America and its enemies is it's (a) really hard to get to America and (b) its enemies can just lob their own nuclear weapons at America instead of hoping to hit Los Alamos. If deathly fear of war were an issue we'd probably be building cities underground.
        throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
        Because nuclear is subject to the same problems as anything else, namely human nature (inc. human stupidity). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure "The construction of the dams thus emphasized the goal of retaining water and overlooked their capacities to prevent floods, while the quality of the dams was also compromised due to the Great Leap Forward. Some experts have also pointed out that the Great Leap Forward as well as "Learn from Dazhai in agriculture" severely damaged the ecosystem and forest cover in the region, which was a major cause of the flood, and the government's mishandling of the dam failure, however, further contributed to the casualties." So shitpile upon shitpile. Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure#Whistle-blower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure#Whist... Further "The Chinese government deems the dam failure a natural one as opposed to man-made disaster" so still denying reality. This is why I am uncomfortable with nuclear, not at all because it's intrinsically unsafe but because it will be done cheapest. And if one country does everything on cost uber alles, it's the US (as a brit we're close behind). Chernobyl happened not because a well-built and well-run reactor unexpectedly went bad. Incidentally, from same link: "estimated death toll ranging from 85,600 to 240,000" so your quote is towards the upper limit Additionally, the death toll was again partly due to mismanagement: "For example, while only 827 out of 6,000 people died in the evacuated community of Shahedian just below Banqiao Dam, half of a total of 36,000 people died in the unevacuated Wencheng commune" So again the death toll could have been lower if people in charge hadn't been stupid - but they were.
rtx 6y ago
Yes, less amount and quicker to decay.

Would you think that the waste type from solar panels is comparable to the waste type from nuclear?

ianai 6y ago

Yes. Solar is probably way more hazardous to work with at plants.

brazzy 6y ago
Holy fucking shit are you nuclear fanboys delusional (or well paid).
- arcticbull 6y ago
  No my dude, you can find yourself on the other side of an argument without your opponents needing to be well-paid and delusional ;) Nuclear energy accounts for about 6% of the world's energy mix. It is the safest source of carbon-free energy in terms of deaths per TWh in the world, leading to half a many deaths as industrial solar, 1/4 as many as wind and 1/10th as many as rooftop solar. [1] The genuinely tiny amount of generated waste can simply be dropped into Yucca Mountain and never worried about again. How afraid are you of, for instance, hydro power? Not very? Did you know Chernobyl, the worst radiological incident in the world killed 4,000 people in total? The worst hydro power accident, Bangqiao Dam, killed between 85,000 and 200,000 people [2]. I would also caution you against personal attacks, they're not welcome here. [1] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-ener... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
  - brazzy 6y ago
    Great, you regurgitated all the standard talking points. Have a pat on the head. Except even if all of that were true (which it isn't), it still wouldn't make nuclear waste "less hazardous to work with" than other kinds of waste. As for Yucca Mountain, funny that the "genuinely tiny amount" of nuclear waste produced in the USA as of 2011 was already more than the approved capacity of the site, and "never worried about again" is clearly not true given that there was a magnitude 7 earthquake near it last year.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      > Great, you regurgitated all the standard talking points. Have a pat on the head. Again, I suggest you adjust your tone, as site rules are pretty clear. > Except even if all of that were true (which it isn't) [citation needed], as of course, I provided mine. > As for Yucca Mountain, funny that the "genuinely tiny amount" of nuclear waste produced in the USA as of 2011. You're going to have to provide some clarification there, like, all the nuclear waste generated in the history of nuclear power in the United States in the last hundred years? The GAO says the nation has produced 80,000 metric tons to this day. [1] This is in line with Yucca Mountain's capacity. Consider that was generated since 1958 when Shippingport opened. The government believes that 2000T of waste are generated per year at this stage, meaning Yucca Mountain would be able to house 40 years of new waste. At one site. Did the magnitude 7 earthquake near yucca mountain compromise the structural integrity of the proposed storage site? Because if not, then your point is moot. Which is what the DOE said. [2] And in fact when this article was written they said the tectonics of the region wouldn't yield an earthquake in excess of a magnitude 7. It's almost like they considered this, and planned for it. Further, modern fast-neutron reactors and breeder reactors generate an order of magnitude less high level waste than classical designs. [3] [1] https://www.gao.gov/key_issues/disposal_of_highlevel_nuclear_waste/issue_summary https://www.gao.gov/key_issues/disposal_of_highlevel_nuclear... [2] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/loose-nukes-would-earthquakes-aroun-2009-03-10/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/loose-nukes-w... [3] https://nationalcenter.org/NuclearFastReactorsSA1205.pdf https://nationalcenter.org/NuclearFastReactorsSA1205.pdf
      - brazzy 6y ago
        So do I take your lack of response to the key part to mean that you agree with me that nuclear waste is not, in fact "less hazardous to work with" than solar waste? Because that was what my original comment was about. > You're going to have to provide some clarification there, like, all the nuclear waste generated in the history of nuclear power in the United States in the last hundred years? The GAO says the nation has produced 80,000 metric tons to this day. [1] This is in line with Yucca Mountain's capacity. It is a bit more than Yucca Mountain's capacity as per its own FAQ: https://www.yuccamountain.org/faq.htm https://www.yuccamountain.org/faq.htm > Consider that was generated since 1958 when Shippingport opened. So? It still needs to go somewhere. > The government believes that 2000T of waste are generated per year at this stage, meaning Yucca Mountain would be able to house 40 years of new waste. Except it's already more than filled by existing waste. And except that's at the current level of nuclear power usage which people here are saying should be massively expanded. > At one site. Which is the only site the USA's 50 states have been able to agree to establish. Wait, no: the state that actually contains it has not agreed: https://ag.nv.gov/Hot_Topics/Issue/Yucca/ https://ag.nv.gov/Hot_Topics/Issue/Yucca/ > Did the magnitude 7 earthquake near yucca mountain compromise the structural integrity of the proposed storage site? Because if not, then your point is moot. That is not how you do risk assessment for a storage site for waste that will be hazardous for thousands of years, my dude.
  - pydry 6y ago
    4,000 is a conservative estimate. http://www.chernobylreport.org http://www.chernobylreport.org suggests 30,000 to 60,000. Cancer deaths are hard to attribute while workers falling off the roof installing solar equipment... not so much. With Chernobyl it's also worth bearing in mind how much worse it could have been easily if the cleanup workers hadn't done their jobs right: "There was a moment when there was the danger of a nuclear explosion, and they had to get the water out from under the reactor, so that a mixture of uranium and graphite wouldn't get into it - with the water, they would have formed a critical mass. The explosion would have been between three and five megatons. This would have meant that not only Kiev and Minsk, but a large part of Europe would have been uninhabitable. Can you imagine it? A European catastrophe." https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/apr/25/energy.ukraine https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/apr/25/energy.u...
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      4,000 is not a conservative estimate. It is based on the UNSCEAR report, which I consider to be the authoritative source. The following WHO write-up provides a full breakdown by category. [1] The 30-60K number is scaremongering. The UNSCEAR report is about 600 pages and took 20 years to compile, and included 8 intergovernmental organizations and all the local affected governments. "Alongside radiation-induced deaths and diseases, the report labels the mental health impact of Chernobyl as 'the largest public health problem created by the accident' and partially attributes this damaging psychological impact to a lack of accurate information." [1] This was a material problem, as many people killed themselves believing they were "contaminated" when, in reality, that were just fine. As the link covers (both yours and mine), the primary cancers attributable to Chernobyl are thyroid cancer, due to radioactive iodine. Thyroid cancers have a 99% survival rate. This is curiously omitted in your link. Thankfully, I-131 has a half-life of just 8 days and is long, long gone. Major incidents should not, in my opinion, dominate the discourse. After all, we're fine with hydro power when the Bangqiao Dam incident killed up to 200,000 people in one fell swoop. A single dam failure could easily cause drastically more harm than a nuclear incident. > "Can you imagine it? A European catastrophe." 26% of all power generated in Europe comes from nuclear today. Luckily, they have learned from their mistakes and improved processes and safety measures. [edit] The discrepancy in your link I suspect comes from this: "Excess cancer deaths can be estimated from published collective doses." Further, I suspect the actual extent of future deaths will be lower than even UNSCEAR. They support the "linear no-threshold dose response" model, where any amount of increased radiation exposure leads to a proportional increase cancer deaths. However, this model is being challenged, as experimental evidence shows this is not consistent with biological and experimental data [2]. [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/05-09-2005-chernobyl-the-true-scale-of-the-accident https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/05-09-2005-chernobyl-th... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2663584/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2663584/
  - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    > Nuclear energy accounts for about 6% of the world's energy mix. It is the safest source of carbon-free energy in terms of deaths per TWh in the world, ...as long as you completely ignore the risk of large catastrophic events. Like nuclear power plants being targeted during a war.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      How about hydro dams? Bangqiao killed 200,000 people. There's plenty of things you can try and hit in war, and nuclear reactors aren't generally located near population centers. Nice thing about America and its enemies is it's (a) really hard to get to America and (b) its enemies can just lob their own nuclear weapons at America instead of hoping to hit Los Alamos. If deathly fear of war were an issue we'd probably be building cities underground.
      - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
        Because nuclear is subject to the same problems as anything else, namely human nature (inc. human stupidity). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure "The construction of the dams thus emphasized the goal of retaining water and overlooked their capacities to prevent floods, while the quality of the dams was also compromised due to the Great Leap Forward. Some experts have also pointed out that the Great Leap Forward as well as "Learn from Dazhai in agriculture" severely damaged the ecosystem and forest cover in the region, which was a major cause of the flood, and the government's mishandling of the dam failure, however, further contributed to the casualties." So shitpile upon shitpile. Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure#Whistle-blower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure#Whist... Further "The Chinese government deems the dam failure a natural one as opposed to man-made disaster" so still denying reality. This is why I am uncomfortable with nuclear, not at all because it's intrinsically unsafe but because it will be done cheapest. And if one country does everything on cost uber alles, it's the US (as a brit we're close behind). Chernobyl happened not because a well-built and well-run reactor unexpectedly went bad. Incidentally, from same link: "estimated death toll ranging from 85,600 to 240,000" so your quote is towards the upper limit Additionally, the death toll was again partly due to mismanagement: "For example, while only 827 out of 6,000 people died in the evacuated community of Shahedian just below Banqiao Dam, half of a total of 36,000 people died in the unevacuated Wencheng commune" So again the death toll could have been lower if people in charge hadn't been stupid - but they were.

rtx 6y ago

Yes, less amount and quicker to decay.