6 ms·

Watching our civilization dance around infinite energy is like watching cave men hiding away from flames.

by survirtual 4y ago

depereo 4y ago
Nuclear has important limits and constraints.
- jvm___ 4y ago
  Would unlimited, free, do whatever you want etc. nuclear power kill more people than our current trajectory? Not trying to start a fight, just curious. I guess there's enough people crazy enough to shoot/stab/invade that radioactive material being widely available is a bad thing.
  - ianai 4y ago
    So make it a navy ship.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    One of nuclear's most important limits is that it is extremely expensive and nearly impossible to construct in modern Western economies. Ignore all the people complaining about safety. Ignore any waste concerns. Taking those off the table, nuclear looks incredibly undesirable, due to the uncertainty in ability to construct the project, inability to meet budgets. And the capex heavy, super long life, nature of nuclear which makes both the construction time and budget risks all the worse. If you're a technologist/capitalist/industrialist without any hippy dippy concerns, nuclear is a damned nightmare.
    - ProjectArcturis 4y ago
      Exactly this. That's why the industrialists have been building solar, not nuclear.
      - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        And if you and your political tribe have been telling people not to build solar and wind for decades, because it's so expensive, and useless and counterproductive and communism, and the exact opposite reality is arriving on schedule you're going to need some other argument to bring up to avoid looking like a total dupe. Well, those hippies where right about global warming, and fossil fuels, and solar PV, and wind, and EVs, and insulation, and heat pumps, and government regulation but.... They're still wrong about nuclear, the fools, so we can still ignore them about everything, even the stuff they were right about. If they really think climate change is happening, why don't they like nuclear!! Spoiler, they weren't wrong about nuclear either, just the fossil fuel lobby paid better than the nuclear lobby and the listen to the experts lobby took a long time to slowly establish credibility over time rather than just buy politicians.
    - throwaway2037 4y ago
      You wrote: <<nearly impossible to construct in modern Western economies>> What is France doing so well / different? As I understand, they have the highest mix of nuclear energy for any advanced economy. My guess: Most of their nuclear power plants were built by a single state-owned company: EDF (or some predecessor), and the designs were remarkably similar. (I have no idea if both are true, but it is my guess.) Also (Re: "Western"): Is nuclear power really cheaper in Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and China? I doubt it. And did you see the price tag on UAE's quad @ "Barakah"? Staggering: 20B USD! How many solar panels could UAE lay for that price!!??
      - epistasis 4y ago
        France is not doing well, they are sadly failing like everyone else in the Western Hemisphere, quite miserable! Flamanville is a complete disaster. Olkiluoto continues to be a problem, and is still not running at full power. Or perhaps you were referring to the reactors built 40-50 years ago? That is exactly what I'm not referring to, that was a different era with completely different economic costs and complete different economic capabilities. France has spent the last 15 years proving that they can no longer build nuclear on time or near budget. And the cost of France's reactors builds decades ago increases with additional reactors. A persistent amount of negative learning curve has been observed in France, and in the US. Construction productivity has barely improved over the past forty years, and at the same time manufacturing productivity has gone through the roof. Since nuclear is a constructed technology, it's unlikely to ever be able to catch up to a power system where most of the costs come from manufactured components.
        throwaway2037 4y ago
        Excellent reply. Thank you to provide clear counterpoints that "France nuclear power is cheap". My feeling about out of control costs for nuclear power comes from the audit requirements. Each part must be carefully inspected and its origin must be fully documented. Compared to fossil fuel power plants, the cost must be 10x. As a result, nuclear power becomes unaffordable when considering this important requirement. Real question: I know nothing about the actual realised cost of China nuclear power plants. So far, their safety record appears quite good. However, I assume their audit requirements for each part are much lower than highly advanced economies. Lastly, you wrote "everyone else in the Western Hemisphere": Let's be real. If Japan were to ever build a new nuclear power plant the audit plus safety costs would be absolutely insane and unaffordable. I guess Japan will run down all of its plants in the next 25-50 years, then replace everything with renewables (including batteries).
    - survirtual 4y ago
      Harnessing nuclear energy is about more than just saving civilization from extinction via global warming (our more immediate and easily reversible issue, materially speaking). It opens up the reaches of space. People can talk all day about cost, dangers, this and that. E=mc^2 doesn’t care about fraudulent, man-made economics. An educated populace is capable of harnessing infinite energy. Photons will never have the energy density of a high speed neutron. Even if this planet were covered in solar panels, how much energy will it take to move moons or propel ships the size if cities? Physics shares a pretty clear direction to save this planet and progress to new heights. It doesn’t need to be so complicated. Just because it’s hard, does not mean it’s wrong. We have the intellect. It will just take work.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Yes. The second all the anti nuclear sentiment relents is the same second the exact same people that have been cutting corners and killing us for centuries with oil and coal start cutting the exact same corners with nuclear. We can't solve the fact that they kill people for profit by giving them more power. Except it won't just be 20,000 hectares of amazon ecosystem destroyed, it'll be the water tables of entire countries, or 'oops, we illegally buried thousands of tons of hot waste that has now all eroded through and now cannot be recovered'. Plus it won't help any due to jevon's paradox, and the fact that 'electricity too cheap to meter' will just lead to direct thermal forcing of the climate.
- ianai 4y ago
  Tell me how great the “no restrictions“ on oil has worked out. I seem to recall whole oceans being contaminated and set on fire by oil.
  - 10u152 4y ago
    Can you point me to source for an whole ocean being set on fire ? I must have missed this one.
    - ianai 4y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill
pydry 4y ago
I do like a bit of very very expensive energy with a 1/3625 chance of causing disaster every year: https://scitechdaily.com/likelihood-of-nuclear-accident-200-times-greater-than-previously-thought/ https://scitechdaily.com/likelihood-of-nuclear-accident-200-... (for those who think that estimate is far too pessimistic - dont try to convince me - try talking some sense into those pesky insurance companies who absolutely positively refuse to insure nuclear power without a liability cap of $375 mil or 0.04% the cost of 1 Fukushima)
- ianai 4y ago
  So you want people to convince actuaries because you think the actuarial risk profile is incorrect before you’ll admit the perceived risk profile is incorrect? Seems circular and possibly a distraction. Just use nuclear.
  - pydry 4y ago
    I think the actuarial risk profile is probably more correct than the general public's press-release driven risk perception.
rnk 4y ago
I'm stupid, so you'll have to elaborate on that. Are you saying that fusion power is close? Are you saying that fission nuclear power is infinite energy because we have so much uranium? Probably the former?
- survirtual 4y ago
  By the time we exhaust all nuclear reserves on Earth (after saving the planet via using environmentally friendly nuclear energy, the greenest energy known), we will have unlocked space via nuclear rockets (fission or fusion, makes little difference. People will be more okay launching from Earth’s surface via fusion rockets). Space has boundless access to nuclear energy. As soon as we could do fission as a civilization, our energy needs ceased being a concern intellectually speaking. So in a manner of speaking, yes — uranium gives us unlimited energy.
  - rnk 4y ago
    Okay, thanks for explaining. I get the idea, but I'm skeptical of the practical use of fission, because we haven't shown that in the last 40 or so years we can create reasonable new power fission generation systems. They always seem fragile, need huge unexpected maintenance and cost way more than projected. Of course they work, it's not like the uranium fission process doesn't work as expected. So there's this practical problem we have not solved yet. Of course vastly more clear than fusion's enormous potential. What about all the new renewable things that are working and coming online more every day?
    - survirtual 4y ago
      The unsolved question with nuclear, in my opinion, is how to make constant money with it for the already rich and powerful using unskilled, unintelligent workers. With oil, you use a certain level of thought and programming in a human to generate massive profits on a recurring basis. With nuclear, the power shifts. You need more thoughtful people, which means more distribution of the wealth. Providing unlimited, clean energy is bad for economic interests of the powerful, because of many reasons including it has less side effects and higher education requirements. A more educated populace demands more equitable treatment, which results in significantly diminished recurring profits. I can explain the idea further, but the summary is that the physics of it make sense. The economics for benefitting general society is orders of magnitudes superior. The economics for the rich do not make sense in the least. The question is how long will we all accept excuses so that a cluster of greedy, small-minded human beings at the top can continue to be comfortable? It is a delicate dance. Jeopardize the safety and security of these weak egomaniacs, and they may plunge our entire planet into an abyss. Infinite energy directly threatens infinite profits. Scared energy. Our systems rely on scarcity. When scarcity ceases, it shifts to forcefully demanding scarcity. The mechanics of this are all explainable.
King-Aaron 4y ago
Young lady, in this household we respect the laws of thermodynamics
- survirtual 4y ago
  E=mc^2 + an infinite universe filled with mass.
throwaway_bl 4y ago

Watching our civilization dance around infinite energy is like watching cave men hiding away from flames.

depereo 4y ago

Nuclear has important limits and constraints.

jvm___ 4y ago
Would unlimited, free, do whatever you want etc. nuclear power kill more people than our current trajectory? Not trying to start a fight, just curious. I guess there's enough people crazy enough to shoot/stab/invade that radioactive material being widely available is a bad thing.
- ianai 4y ago
  So make it a navy ship.
- epistasis 4y ago
  One of nuclear's most important limits is that it is extremely expensive and nearly impossible to construct in modern Western economies. Ignore all the people complaining about safety. Ignore any waste concerns. Taking those off the table, nuclear looks incredibly undesirable, due to the uncertainty in ability to construct the project, inability to meet budgets. And the capex heavy, super long life, nature of nuclear which makes both the construction time and budget risks all the worse. If you're a technologist/capitalist/industrialist without any hippy dippy concerns, nuclear is a damned nightmare.
  - ProjectArcturis 4y ago
    Exactly this. That's why the industrialists have been building solar, not nuclear.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      And if you and your political tribe have been telling people not to build solar and wind for decades, because it's so expensive, and useless and counterproductive and communism, and the exact opposite reality is arriving on schedule you're going to need some other argument to bring up to avoid looking like a total dupe. Well, those hippies where right about global warming, and fossil fuels, and solar PV, and wind, and EVs, and insulation, and heat pumps, and government regulation but.... They're still wrong about nuclear, the fools, so we can still ignore them about everything, even the stuff they were right about. If they really think climate change is happening, why don't they like nuclear!! Spoiler, they weren't wrong about nuclear either, just the fossil fuel lobby paid better than the nuclear lobby and the listen to the experts lobby took a long time to slowly establish credibility over time rather than just buy politicians.
  - throwaway2037 4y ago
    You wrote: <<nearly impossible to construct in modern Western economies>> What is France doing so well / different? As I understand, they have the highest mix of nuclear energy for any advanced economy. My guess: Most of their nuclear power plants were built by a single state-owned company: EDF (or some predecessor), and the designs were remarkably similar. (I have no idea if both are true, but it is my guess.) Also (Re: "Western"): Is nuclear power really cheaper in Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and China? I doubt it. And did you see the price tag on UAE's quad @ "Barakah"? Staggering: 20B USD! How many solar panels could UAE lay for that price!!??
    - epistasis 4y ago
      France is not doing well, they are sadly failing like everyone else in the Western Hemisphere, quite miserable! Flamanville is a complete disaster. Olkiluoto continues to be a problem, and is still not running at full power. Or perhaps you were referring to the reactors built 40-50 years ago? That is exactly what I'm not referring to, that was a different era with completely different economic costs and complete different economic capabilities. France has spent the last 15 years proving that they can no longer build nuclear on time or near budget. And the cost of France's reactors builds decades ago increases with additional reactors. A persistent amount of negative learning curve has been observed in France, and in the US. Construction productivity has barely improved over the past forty years, and at the same time manufacturing productivity has gone through the roof. Since nuclear is a constructed technology, it's unlikely to ever be able to catch up to a power system where most of the costs come from manufactured components.
      - throwaway2037 4y ago
        Excellent reply. Thank you to provide clear counterpoints that "France nuclear power is cheap". My feeling about out of control costs for nuclear power comes from the audit requirements. Each part must be carefully inspected and its origin must be fully documented. Compared to fossil fuel power plants, the cost must be 10x. As a result, nuclear power becomes unaffordable when considering this important requirement. Real question: I know nothing about the actual realised cost of China nuclear power plants. So far, their safety record appears quite good. However, I assume their audit requirements for each part are much lower than highly advanced economies. Lastly, you wrote "everyone else in the Western Hemisphere": Let's be real. If Japan were to ever build a new nuclear power plant the audit plus safety costs would be absolutely insane and unaffordable. I guess Japan will run down all of its plants in the next 25-50 years, then replace everything with renewables (including batteries).
  - survirtual 4y ago
    Harnessing nuclear energy is about more than just saving civilization from extinction via global warming (our more immediate and easily reversible issue, materially speaking). It opens up the reaches of space. People can talk all day about cost, dangers, this and that. E=mc^2 doesn’t care about fraudulent, man-made economics. An educated populace is capable of harnessing infinite energy. Photons will never have the energy density of a high speed neutron. Even if this planet were covered in solar panels, how much energy will it take to move moons or propel ships the size if cities? Physics shares a pretty clear direction to save this planet and progress to new heights. It doesn’t need to be so complicated. Just because it’s hard, does not mean it’s wrong. We have the intellect. It will just take work.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Yes. The second all the anti nuclear sentiment relents is the same second the exact same people that have been cutting corners and killing us for centuries with oil and coal start cutting the exact same corners with nuclear. We can't solve the fact that they kill people for profit by giving them more power. Except it won't just be 20,000 hectares of amazon ecosystem destroyed, it'll be the water tables of entire countries, or 'oops, we illegally buried thousands of tons of hot waste that has now all eroded through and now cannot be recovered'. Plus it won't help any due to jevon's paradox, and the fact that 'electricity too cheap to meter' will just lead to direct thermal forcing of the climate.
ianai 4y ago
Tell me how great the “no restrictions“ on oil has worked out. I seem to recall whole oceans being contaminated and set on fire by oil.
- 10u152 4y ago
  Can you point me to source for an whole ocean being set on fire ? I must have missed this one.
  - ianai 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill

pydry 4y ago

I do like a bit of very very expensive energy with a 1/3625 chance of causing disaster every year: https://scitechdaily.com/likelihood-of-nuclear-accident-200-times-greater-than-previously-thought/ https://scitechdaily.com/likelihood-of-nuclear-accident-200-... (for those who think that estimate is far too pessimistic - dont try to convince me - try talking some sense into those pesky insurance companies who absolutely positively refuse to insure nuclear power without a liability cap of $375 mil or 0.04% the cost of 1 Fukushima)

ianai 4y ago
So you want people to convince actuaries because you think the actuarial risk profile is incorrect before you’ll admit the perceived risk profile is incorrect? Seems circular and possibly a distraction. Just use nuclear.
- pydry 4y ago
  I think the actuarial risk profile is probably more correct than the general public's press-release driven risk perception.

rnk 4y ago

I'm stupid, so you'll have to elaborate on that. Are you saying that fusion power is close? Are you saying that fission nuclear power is infinite energy because we have so much uranium? Probably the former?

survirtual 4y ago
By the time we exhaust all nuclear reserves on Earth (after saving the planet via using environmentally friendly nuclear energy, the greenest energy known), we will have unlocked space via nuclear rockets (fission or fusion, makes little difference. People will be more okay launching from Earth’s surface via fusion rockets). Space has boundless access to nuclear energy. As soon as we could do fission as a civilization, our energy needs ceased being a concern intellectually speaking. So in a manner of speaking, yes — uranium gives us unlimited energy.
- rnk 4y ago
  Okay, thanks for explaining. I get the idea, but I'm skeptical of the practical use of fission, because we haven't shown that in the last 40 or so years we can create reasonable new power fission generation systems. They always seem fragile, need huge unexpected maintenance and cost way more than projected. Of course they work, it's not like the uranium fission process doesn't work as expected. So there's this practical problem we have not solved yet. Of course vastly more clear than fusion's enormous potential. What about all the new renewable things that are working and coming online more every day?
  - survirtual 4y ago
    The unsolved question with nuclear, in my opinion, is how to make constant money with it for the already rich and powerful using unskilled, unintelligent workers. With oil, you use a certain level of thought and programming in a human to generate massive profits on a recurring basis. With nuclear, the power shifts. You need more thoughtful people, which means more distribution of the wealth. Providing unlimited, clean energy is bad for economic interests of the powerful, because of many reasons including it has less side effects and higher education requirements. A more educated populace demands more equitable treatment, which results in significantly diminished recurring profits. I can explain the idea further, but the summary is that the physics of it make sense. The economics for benefitting general society is orders of magnitudes superior. The economics for the rich do not make sense in the least. The question is how long will we all accept excuses so that a cluster of greedy, small-minded human beings at the top can continue to be comfortable? It is a delicate dance. Jeopardize the safety and security of these weak egomaniacs, and they may plunge our entire planet into an abyss. Infinite energy directly threatens infinite profits. Scared energy. Our systems rely on scarcity. When scarcity ceases, it shifts to forcefully demanding scarcity. The mechanics of this are all explainable.

King-Aaron 4y ago

Young lady, in this household we respect the laws of thermodynamics

survirtual 4y ago
E=mc^2 + an infinite universe filled with mass.

throwaway_bl 4y ago