5 ms·

> If you have 1 xray taken in a hospital, that's as much radiation exposure as living next to a nuclear plant for 100 years. Now do living near Serpent river,

> If you have 1 xray taken in a hospital, that's as much radiation exposure as living next to a nuclear plant for 100 years. Now do living near Serpent river, or Church Hill, or Kadapa, or Ranger or Mailuu-Suu or the cumulative worldwide effect if we got 15% of our power from a reprpcessing facility like La Hague. Make sure to include the effects of heavy metal poisoning, not just radiation. Also would you like to replace your drinking water with aquifer water from Inkai? > the potential benefits of cheap nuclear power would be massive Here's a riddle. What fraction of world energy can 40,000t of fissile material provide and for how long? Where do you propose to get more?

trashtester 4y ago
> Make sure to include the effects of heavy metal poisoning, not just radiation. I'm a bit lazy. Maybe you have some numbers available for this? My guess is that deaths caused by this (associated with nuclear power), if at all measurable, would be orders of magnitude lower than deaths from the extraction and pollution associated with fossil fuels (Per GWh). > Here's a riddle. What fraction of world energy can 40,000t of fissile material provide and for how long? Where do you propose to get more? There is around 40 trillion tons of uranium in Earth's crust. How much of that we can utilize, depends on how much we're willing to pay for the extraction. The current fuel price (after processing) is about $5/MWh, and reserve estimates are based on that price. Should fuel prices go up a bit, more mines and excavations will be profitable.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  You're talking about scifi. I'm talking about the next 8 years. You're also completely failing to distinguish between fertile and fissile. So realistically, at the same scale of ore extraction as coal mining. How much power is available?
  - trashtester 4y ago
    > So realistically, at the same scale of ore extraction as coal mining. How much power is available? This article estimates that regular supplies is enough for 230 years at the current rate of consumption: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-glo... If we triple the the number of plants, that would be approximately a 75 year lifetime for existing plants. Beyond that, the main directions to take would be to use breeder reactors, which would be enough for 30000 years at today consumption, using regular fuels or to extract uranium from seawater, which would provide enough uranium for 60000 years at present rates (and much more if combined with breeder reactors). In total, there is enough uranium to last thousands of years, even consumption goes up 10x or more. Obviously, costs will gradually go up, or at least the extraction will require more advanced technology. Even just 75 years is a long time, and a lot can change by year 2100. Thorium or fusion power could be solved by then, or we could have space based solar covering our needs.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      I said realistically. And this decade. Not in some weird scifi scenario where we have enrichment facilities that are 10x more effective and efficient and you have the reprocessed waste before you start. Tripling generation by adding 600GW is nothing. 8 years. 2TWe net installed by the end of it and producing around 300GWe net of new capacity per year. Renewables are on track (and 2TW is extremely pessimistic). What's your plan? How much ore? Where is the scale? Ignore the cost. You gotta demonstrate it's possible before you can gaslight about costs.
      - trashtester 4y ago
        > 8 years. 8 years is barely enough to start changing course in how things like energy production is organized. Is there a specific reason you insist on this kind of velocity? Global warming is going to gradually increase as a problem over the next 200 years, if we continue our current course, it's not like the world is ending in 2030. In fact, on our current trajectory, the truly hellish outcomes are not expected until around 2150-2250 (based in IPCC reports). But precisely because it takes so long to change course, we need to start turning the ship now. > Tripling generation by adding 600GW is nothing. Watts is not a unit of energy, it's a unit of power. Peak capacity is not very interesting. What matters is actual production as well as the cost of producing the power when there is demand (including the cost of storage, if needed). Nuclear produced 2.8TW last year, which is roughly identical to Solar+Wind. That's about 10% each. If we add hydro to this mix (currently 15%), we have a total of 35%. The depressing part is that this has been relatively constant since 1985, meaning we haven't made any progress over the last 37 years. https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix However, if we restart investments in nuclear, while continue our renewable investments, we may be able to triple both over the next 15-20 years. If hydro remains constant, we may produce enough energy to cover 75% of 2021 consumption by 2040 (which would perhaps be 50% of 2040 consumption). That should be enough to replace most fossil fuels for electricity in the EU+US, at least. To reach such a level is highly non-trivial, both for nuclear and wind/solar. For nuclear, it means a u-turn is needed on several fronts, and for wind/solar, there are economic and geographic limitations (some areas are getting saturated). For this plan and time horizon, there are plenty of uranium deposits that can be mined, perhaps most interestingly for western countries, a lot of this is in Australia and Canada. If we restart construction of nuclear plants, we will also drive incentives to go looking for more sources elsewhere. As for your "Peak Uranium" hypothesis, I suggest looking at the history for "Peak Oil". Oil was predicted to reach its peak in year 2000, but the reality is that production is still increasing. I would be very surprised if the same is not happening for uranium. And as far as I can tell, we DO need it (or nuclear in some other form), if we're supposed ween ourselves off fossil fuels this century. Wind and solar may be competitive in some locations up to some production volumes, but they seem to have very diminishing returns above some level, due to storage costs and available land areas. Maybe we can, some day, have solar panels carpeting the Sahara or even in Outer Space, but that's definitely scifi.
  - __pache__ 4y ago
    billions of years of energy ? https://whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.html#:~:text=Breeder%20reactors%20can%20power%20all,construction%20performance%20and%20public%20acceptance https://whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.html#:~:tex....
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      Failing to understand the distinction between power and energy doesn't make you seem very credible. And neither does saying failing to understand what a breeder is. You need fissile material to start a reactor of any kind. Working breeders with a real closed fuel cycle don't exist but if we pretend they do it's about 5 tonnes per GW. You can't start breeding until they're built and the breeding ratio of proposed designs takes on the order of a decade to fuel another reactor. How many billions of tonnes of ore do you need to extract the uranium from per year to meet net zero installed power roadmaps? How do you get to 2TW by 2030 to come close to the scale of the renewable roadmap?
      - __pache__ 4y ago
        They don't do it because fuel is so cheap, lol.
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        How much fissile material do you need to meet net zero by 2050 with all nuclear?
- nl 4y ago
  > My guess is that deaths caused by this (associated with nuclear power), if at all measurable, would be orders of magnitude lower than deaths from the extraction and pollution associated with fossil fuels (Per GWh). The competition isn't fossil fuels. Everyone wants to get rid of them. The competition is renewables.
  - trashtester 4y ago
    > The competition is renewables. When those regulations were introduced, the only renewables were hydro. And nobody was worried about the tiny amounts of radiations coming from coal plants, it was the soot that killed people. Still, the "green" movement in Europe have been fighting nuclear power since at least the 80s, usually with more fervor than they've been fighting fossil fuels. The nuclear scare must have been easy to sell (and so an easy source of contributions), especially in the years after Chernobyl. With catastrophic effects both for the local environment and the climate. Utopianists may indeed see nuclear as a threat to their dream of a perfect world. To me, nuclear is simply one of several energy sources with very low impact to the environment and climate, one that we _could_ have elected to produce at a low price. And still can.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      Well good thing on river hydro is a separate category from renewables and noone is suggesting going back to it. All of the examples of cheap nuclear power are ridden with corruption scandals and incredibly unreliable. If you decide the CCP are suddenly trustworthy and ignore that finance and insurance have costs then the very limited fraction of nuclear power that can be produced might be both, but that doesn't make mining uranium any less horrific. Cry bullying about the mean greens that have never been in power and only rarely held minority coalition positions just makes you look pathetic.

trashtester 4y ago

> Make sure to include the effects of heavy metal poisoning, not just radiation. I'm a bit lazy. Maybe you have some numbers available for this? My guess is that deaths caused by this (associated with nuclear power), if at all measurable, would be orders of magnitude lower than deaths from the extraction and pollution associated with fossil fuels (Per GWh). > Here's a riddle. What fraction of world energy can 40,000t of fissile material provide and for how long? Where do you propose to get more? There is around 40 trillion tons of uranium in Earth's crust. How much of that we can utilize, depends on how much we're willing to pay for the extraction. The current fuel price (after processing) is about $5/MWh, and reserve estimates are based on that price. Should fuel prices go up a bit, more mines and excavations will be profitable.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
You're talking about scifi. I'm talking about the next 8 years. You're also completely failing to distinguish between fertile and fissile. So realistically, at the same scale of ore extraction as coal mining. How much power is available?
- trashtester 4y ago
  > So realistically, at the same scale of ore extraction as coal mining. How much power is available? This article estimates that regular supplies is enough for 230 years at the current rate of consumption: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-glo... If we triple the the number of plants, that would be approximately a 75 year lifetime for existing plants. Beyond that, the main directions to take would be to use breeder reactors, which would be enough for 30000 years at today consumption, using regular fuels or to extract uranium from seawater, which would provide enough uranium for 60000 years at present rates (and much more if combined with breeder reactors). In total, there is enough uranium to last thousands of years, even consumption goes up 10x or more. Obviously, costs will gradually go up, or at least the extraction will require more advanced technology. Even just 75 years is a long time, and a lot can change by year 2100. Thorium or fusion power could be solved by then, or we could have space based solar covering our needs.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    I said realistically. And this decade. Not in some weird scifi scenario where we have enrichment facilities that are 10x more effective and efficient and you have the reprocessed waste before you start. Tripling generation by adding 600GW is nothing. 8 years. 2TWe net installed by the end of it and producing around 300GWe net of new capacity per year. Renewables are on track (and 2TW is extremely pessimistic). What's your plan? How much ore? Where is the scale? Ignore the cost. You gotta demonstrate it's possible before you can gaslight about costs.
    - trashtester 4y ago
      > 8 years. 8 years is barely enough to start changing course in how things like energy production is organized. Is there a specific reason you insist on this kind of velocity? Global warming is going to gradually increase as a problem over the next 200 years, if we continue our current course, it's not like the world is ending in 2030. In fact, on our current trajectory, the truly hellish outcomes are not expected until around 2150-2250 (based in IPCC reports). But precisely because it takes so long to change course, we need to start turning the ship now. > Tripling generation by adding 600GW is nothing. Watts is not a unit of energy, it's a unit of power. Peak capacity is not very interesting. What matters is actual production as well as the cost of producing the power when there is demand (including the cost of storage, if needed). Nuclear produced 2.8TW last year, which is roughly identical to Solar+Wind. That's about 10% each. If we add hydro to this mix (currently 15%), we have a total of 35%. The depressing part is that this has been relatively constant since 1985, meaning we haven't made any progress over the last 37 years. https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix However, if we restart investments in nuclear, while continue our renewable investments, we may be able to triple both over the next 15-20 years. If hydro remains constant, we may produce enough energy to cover 75% of 2021 consumption by 2040 (which would perhaps be 50% of 2040 consumption). That should be enough to replace most fossil fuels for electricity in the EU+US, at least. To reach such a level is highly non-trivial, both for nuclear and wind/solar. For nuclear, it means a u-turn is needed on several fronts, and for wind/solar, there are economic and geographic limitations (some areas are getting saturated). For this plan and time horizon, there are plenty of uranium deposits that can be mined, perhaps most interestingly for western countries, a lot of this is in Australia and Canada. If we restart construction of nuclear plants, we will also drive incentives to go looking for more sources elsewhere. As for your "Peak Uranium" hypothesis, I suggest looking at the history for "Peak Oil". Oil was predicted to reach its peak in year 2000, but the reality is that production is still increasing. I would be very surprised if the same is not happening for uranium. And as far as I can tell, we DO need it (or nuclear in some other form), if we're supposed ween ourselves off fossil fuels this century. Wind and solar may be competitive in some locations up to some production volumes, but they seem to have very diminishing returns above some level, due to storage costs and available land areas. Maybe we can, some day, have solar panels carpeting the Sahara or even in Outer Space, but that's definitely scifi.
- __pache__ 4y ago
  billions of years of energy ? https://whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.html#:~:text=Breeder%20reactors%20can%20power%20all,construction%20performance%20and%20public%20acceptance https://whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.html#:~:tex....
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Failing to understand the distinction between power and energy doesn't make you seem very credible. And neither does saying failing to understand what a breeder is. You need fissile material to start a reactor of any kind. Working breeders with a real closed fuel cycle don't exist but if we pretend they do it's about 5 tonnes per GW. You can't start breeding until they're built and the breeding ratio of proposed designs takes on the order of a decade to fuel another reactor. How many billions of tonnes of ore do you need to extract the uranium from per year to meet net zero installed power roadmaps? How do you get to 2TW by 2030 to come close to the scale of the renewable roadmap?
    - __pache__ 4y ago
      They don't do it because fuel is so cheap, lol.
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        How much fissile material do you need to meet net zero by 2050 with all nuclear?
nl 4y ago
> My guess is that deaths caused by this (associated with nuclear power), if at all measurable, would be orders of magnitude lower than deaths from the extraction and pollution associated with fossil fuels (Per GWh). The competition isn't fossil fuels. Everyone wants to get rid of them. The competition is renewables.
- trashtester 4y ago
  > The competition is renewables. When those regulations were introduced, the only renewables were hydro. And nobody was worried about the tiny amounts of radiations coming from coal plants, it was the soot that killed people. Still, the "green" movement in Europe have been fighting nuclear power since at least the 80s, usually with more fervor than they've been fighting fossil fuels. The nuclear scare must have been easy to sell (and so an easy source of contributions), especially in the years after Chernobyl. With catastrophic effects both for the local environment and the climate. Utopianists may indeed see nuclear as a threat to their dream of a perfect world. To me, nuclear is simply one of several energy sources with very low impact to the environment and climate, one that we _could_ have elected to produce at a low price. And still can.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Well good thing on river hydro is a separate category from renewables and noone is suggesting going back to it. All of the examples of cheap nuclear power are ridden with corruption scandals and incredibly unreliable. If you decide the CCP are suddenly trustworthy and ignore that finance and insurance have costs then the very limited fraction of nuclear power that can be produced might be both, but that doesn't make mining uranium any less horrific. Cry bullying about the mean greens that have never been in power and only rarely held minority coalition positions just makes you look pathetic.