4 ms·

> I quote this too much, but all the nuclear waste the US has ever generated would sit in a single football field, 10 yards high. Well you couldn't because you

> I quote this too much, but all the nuclear waste the US has ever generated would sit in a single football field, 10 yards high. Well you couldn't because you'd have a stew of fissioning soup. But once you include all the concrete and steel and low level waste that needs decades of storage it's about the same size as a 4hr battery for the entire country. > But this concentration is a blessing because you don't need to mind nearly as much material > 3) The main issue with solar/wind though, is that we literally don't have enough material to build enough of it. Not to mention the battery storage. It's not a matter of we can't mine fast enough, we literally don't know of the mineral reserves needed. Here's a presentation going over a report that find this False. If it's a problem for PV it's a much worse problem for existing nuclear plants. Olympic dam is one of the world's largest uranium mines. It produces 7.5g of silver and 30kg of copper for every kg of Uranium. You need 10kg of natural uranium for 1kg of PWR fuel. PV is made of sand, copper, and silver. 70g of silver is enough for 3.5kW net of solar at 5mg/Watt (after needing 5g for the fuel and control rods which you have yet to supply indium, cadmium, and zirconium for). The solar panels will produce ~1.8TJ in their lifetime and be recyclable. The nuclear fuel will produce 500GJ and require large quantities of steel and concrete for storage and transport. You get triple the net energy from a uranium mine compared to nuclear. The silicon, glass, frame, and power electronics take less resources than the rest of the plant. The story for wind is not so hilariously one sided (for example it uses more concrete than nuclear), but it's still fine. The blades of a >3MW turbine have about the same energy density as packaged nuclear waste. There are also at least 3 storage technologies undergoing commercialisation that use abundant materials.

evilos 4y ago
The report that the presentation is covering goes over this in fine detail: https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf > False. If it's a problem for PV it's a much worse problem for existing nuclear plants. There's basically unlimited quantities of uranium in sea water. Plus you can breed it from thorium if you want to. > But once you include all the concrete and steel and low level waste that needs decades of storage it's about the same size as a 4hr battery for the entire country. I highly doubt it but I'd love to see the math on that. The author of the report I linked concludes that fission cannot be main power source of the future because of the limits of mineable uranium. However he completely ignores the ocean as a source of uranium, which is basically inexhaustible. We don't get it from there today because demand is low and it's cheaper to get it from the ground but ocean uranium capture has been demonstrated. Solar panels by themselves don't require a lot of rare material but they do require tons of high heat and carbon to "bake". A large part of how cheap they are today is due to the fact that they are made using coking coal in China. But of course the material constraints of the storage needed for solar/wind is the main obstacle. Until we demonstrate cheap storage at scale, wind/solar won't cut it.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  > The author of the report I linked concludes that fission cannot be main power source of the future because of the limits of mineable uranium. However he completely ignores the ocean as a source of uranium, which is basically inexhaustible. In addition to ignoring sea uranium mining which does not exist in any meaningful way he also ignores a bunch of things which actually do exist like LiFePO4 batteries, the last 10 years of PV research, trains, LEVs and affordable offshore wind. It also ignores things that are much more likely to exist than uranium sea mining like prussian blue batteries, AlS, iron air, perovskite solar panels and affordable tidal power (all of which are presently undergoing large scale industrialisation).
  - evilos 4y ago
    It doesn't exist industrially because there's no need for it. Uranium has been incredibly cheap for decades. But the cost of fuel is such a small factor in the cost of nuclear energy that you could 10x the fuel costs and the LCOE wouldn't move much at all. LiFePO4 batteries still need lithium, and any wind turbine > 1MW requires literally tons of copper. These solutions are simply too material intensive, ie not energy dense enough.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      > It doesn't exist industrially because there's no need for it. Uranium has been incredibly cheap for decades. But the cost of fuel is such a small factor in the cost of nuclear energy that you could 10x the fuel costs and the LCOE wouldn't move much at all. That's a great way of saying 'I believe the capital and operational costs for nuclear are at least 5x as much as renewables and will stay that way'. Fuel is $1660/kg currently using fairly generous assumptions https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec... This is $5/MWh in an AP1000 and $10/MWh in lower burnup models. Once the cheap Uranium goes, that doubles. If Rio Tinto or Kazatomprom actually cleaned up their mess properly, that doubles again. Your proposed 100000km^2 sea mining operation is unlikely to be cheaper. There are subsidy free solar farms already at around $13/MWh with more normal prices being in the $30-50 range. A vestas 660kW turbine uses around ~500kg or 3t per MW net of copper (less than a nuke plant) in the nacelle, busbars and cabinet https://www.copper.org/environment/green/casestudies/wind_energy/wind_energy.html https://www.copper.org/environment/green/casestudies/wind_en... everything else including transmission can be made from Aluminum. Bigger turbines are more mass efficient as are ones placed offshore. If you wanted to scare monger about wind, focus on the permanent magnets as that's not solved commercially yet. PV already uses less than a tenth of this. A TopCon or Perc cell uses about 5-10x as much silver as an AP 1000, but silver plated copper metallization reduces this by a factor of 10 and is already being used in demo plants. There are also Aluminum foil backed cells being trialled commercially. > LiFePO4 batteries still need lithium, SIB, Fe-Air, AlS and NaS batteries do not, and supply chains for them are better developed than those for PWRs or for still-fictional mining methods.

evilos 4y ago

The report that the presentation is covering goes over this in fine detail: https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf > False. If it's a problem for PV it's a much worse problem for existing nuclear plants. There's basically unlimited quantities of uranium in sea water. Plus you can breed it from thorium if you want to. > But once you include all the concrete and steel and low level waste that needs decades of storage it's about the same size as a 4hr battery for the entire country. I highly doubt it but I'd love to see the math on that. The author of the report I linked concludes that fission cannot be main power source of the future because of the limits of mineable uranium. However he completely ignores the ocean as a source of uranium, which is basically inexhaustible. We don't get it from there today because demand is low and it's cheaper to get it from the ground but ocean uranium capture has been demonstrated. Solar panels by themselves don't require a lot of rare material but they do require tons of high heat and carbon to "bake". A large part of how cheap they are today is due to the fact that they are made using coking coal in China. But of course the material constraints of the storage needed for solar/wind is the main obstacle. Until we demonstrate cheap storage at scale, wind/solar won't cut it.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
> The author of the report I linked concludes that fission cannot be main power source of the future because of the limits of mineable uranium. However he completely ignores the ocean as a source of uranium, which is basically inexhaustible. In addition to ignoring sea uranium mining which does not exist in any meaningful way he also ignores a bunch of things which actually do exist like LiFePO4 batteries, the last 10 years of PV research, trains, LEVs and affordable offshore wind. It also ignores things that are much more likely to exist than uranium sea mining like prussian blue batteries, AlS, iron air, perovskite solar panels and affordable tidal power (all of which are presently undergoing large scale industrialisation).
- evilos 4y ago
  It doesn't exist industrially because there's no need for it. Uranium has been incredibly cheap for decades. But the cost of fuel is such a small factor in the cost of nuclear energy that you could 10x the fuel costs and the LCOE wouldn't move much at all. LiFePO4 batteries still need lithium, and any wind turbine > 1MW requires literally tons of copper. These solutions are simply too material intensive, ie not energy dense enough.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    > It doesn't exist industrially because there's no need for it. Uranium has been incredibly cheap for decades. But the cost of fuel is such a small factor in the cost of nuclear energy that you could 10x the fuel costs and the LCOE wouldn't move much at all. That's a great way of saying 'I believe the capital and operational costs for nuclear are at least 5x as much as renewables and will stay that way'. Fuel is $1660/kg currently using fairly generous assumptions https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec... This is $5/MWh in an AP1000 and $10/MWh in lower burnup models. Once the cheap Uranium goes, that doubles. If Rio Tinto or Kazatomprom actually cleaned up their mess properly, that doubles again. Your proposed 100000km^2 sea mining operation is unlikely to be cheaper. There are subsidy free solar farms already at around $13/MWh with more normal prices being in the $30-50 range. A vestas 660kW turbine uses around ~500kg or 3t per MW net of copper (less than a nuke plant) in the nacelle, busbars and cabinet https://www.copper.org/environment/green/casestudies/wind_energy/wind_energy.html https://www.copper.org/environment/green/casestudies/wind_en... everything else including transmission can be made from Aluminum. Bigger turbines are more mass efficient as are ones placed offshore. If you wanted to scare monger about wind, focus on the permanent magnets as that's not solved commercially yet. PV already uses less than a tenth of this. A TopCon or Perc cell uses about 5-10x as much silver as an AP 1000, but silver plated copper metallization reduces this by a factor of 10 and is already being used in demo plants. There are also Aluminum foil backed cells being trialled commercially. > LiFePO4 batteries still need lithium, SIB, Fe-Air, AlS and NaS batteries do not, and supply chains for them are better developed than those for PWRs or for still-fictional mining methods.