4 ms·

You would probably have to measure it in years or decades of equivalent coal plant emissions. According to a 1978 paper [1], a 1 GW coal power plant releases s

by fsh 4y ago

You would probably have to measure it in years or decades of equivalent coal plant emissions. According to a 1978 paper [1], a 1 GW coal power plant releases something like 50 GBq per year. The Minnesota Department of Health did not release the activity of the water that was leaked from the nuclear plant. However, according to one article, "In water directly below the plant, the picocurie-per-liter count was in the millions." [2]. 1.5 Ml of water at 1 million pCi/l would correspond to 1.5 Ci or 56 GBq of total activity. This is a very conservative estimate, since the water below the plant is probably already significantly diluted by ground water. [1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.202.4372.1045 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.202.4372.1045 [2] https://phys.org/news/2023-03-xcel-radioactive-minnesota.html https://phys.org/news/2023-03-xcel-radioactive-minnesota.htm...

elcritch 4y ago
So the headline could be "nuclear plant leaked the equivalent of 1 years worth of radiation from a large coal power plant diluted to below safe levels in 1.5 Ml of water"
natmaka 4y ago
The big picture isn't about "nuclear vs. fossil fuel" anymore, it is "nuclear vs. renewables". I write "vs." because we need to tackle the climate challenge as quickly as possible and have limited resources, therefore the need for optimization is clear: boosting the better approach and neglecting anything else.
- hedora 4y ago
  Nuclear plants probably kill less wildlife and people per delivered kWh than lithium extraction does for making batteries. No one technology is adequate. Even as we ramp lithium production as fast as we can, we’re facing production shortages for the next few years. More shortages of other stuff will hit each technology as it ramps. This looks like a “spray and pray” sort of situation to me. We should pick the top 5-10 technologies, and throw enough funding at each to get it to be a 33% solution. In five years, fund the top two or three at 100%, but don’t cut funding for the rest. (I’m counting geologically fixed atmospheric carbon capture and efficiency measures in that top N computation, fwiw)
  - natmaka 4y ago
    > Nuclear plants probably kill less wildlife and people per delivered kWh than lithium extraction Uranium extraction has not negligible effects. Recent case: https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20230124-french-uranium-miner-leaves-20-million-tonnes-of-radioactive-waste-in-niger https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20230124-french-uranium-miner-l... > Even as we ramp lithium production as fast as we can, we’re facing production shortages Maybe, however the big picture seems clear: https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/lithium-electric-vehicles https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/lithium-electric-vehicl... > We should pick the top 5-10 technologies Globally we did so during the last 20 years, as many nations (including the US) tried hard to build and then use nuclear reactors and also renewable sources of energy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-renewables-electricity?country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-renewables-electr...

by fsh 4y ago

elcritch 4y ago

So the headline could be "nuclear plant leaked the equivalent of 1 years worth of radiation from a large coal power plant diluted to below safe levels in 1.5 Ml of water"

natmaka 4y ago

The big picture isn't about "nuclear vs. fossil fuel" anymore, it is "nuclear vs. renewables". I write "vs." because we need to tackle the climate challenge as quickly as possible and have limited resources, therefore the need for optimization is clear: boosting the better approach and neglecting anything else.

hedora 4y ago
Nuclear plants probably kill less wildlife and people per delivered kWh than lithium extraction does for making batteries. No one technology is adequate. Even as we ramp lithium production as fast as we can, we’re facing production shortages for the next few years. More shortages of other stuff will hit each technology as it ramps. This looks like a “spray and pray” sort of situation to me. We should pick the top 5-10 technologies, and throw enough funding at each to get it to be a 33% solution. In five years, fund the top two or three at 100%, but don’t cut funding for the rest. (I’m counting geologically fixed atmospheric carbon capture and efficiency measures in that top N computation, fwiw)
- natmaka 4y ago
  > Nuclear plants probably kill less wildlife and people per delivered kWh than lithium extraction Uranium extraction has not negligible effects. Recent case: https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20230124-french-uranium-miner-leaves-20-million-tonnes-of-radioactive-waste-in-niger https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20230124-french-uranium-miner-l... > Even as we ramp lithium production as fast as we can, we’re facing production shortages Maybe, however the big picture seems clear: https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/lithium-electric-vehicles https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/lithium-electric-vehicl... > We should pick the top 5-10 technologies Globally we did so during the last 20 years, as many nations (including the US) tried hard to build and then use nuclear reactors and also renewable sources of energy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-renewables-electricity?country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-renewables-electr...