3 ms·

There are other options... nuclear power is more expensive but if cost wasn't the issue (e.g. running out of land was) is an option. If cost is the issue there

by gpm 3y ago

There are other options... nuclear power is more expensive but if cost wasn't the issue (e.g. running out of land was) is an option. If cost is the issue there are still risky moonshots like "throw tons of money at fusion" (attacking the cost of nuclear) and "throw tons of money at high temperature superconductor research" (attacking the amount of energy we need), and "geoengineering" (risking screwing it up worse). Not guaranteed to work, but you know, better than rolling over and dying. Also has the side benefit that a lot of the moonshots are worth trying anyways.

immibis 3y ago
Hard reliance on nuclear power is one of the "we all die" options. Didn't we learn our lesson about building a whole civilization on consuming a limited resource dug out of the ground?
- gpm 3y ago
  Sure, at least with regards to fission, but it plausibly extends the timeline out so that the moonshots are no longer quite so difficult.
- kristjank 3y ago
  Is it not the case that Uranium and Thorium are not just more abundant than existing fuels, but also about a million times more energy dense? I find it hard to believe running out is a chance we'll face soon.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    Million times more energy dense, yes. More abundant? Depends. There's a lot in the sea, which isn't currently recoverable. There's a lot we could do (but actually don't) with breeder reactors to make more fuel. This means the answer to the question "how long could we last on just nuclear fuel alone?" varies from 5.7 years[0][1] to 4.3 billion years[1]. [0] https://globalwarming-sowhat.com/renewables https://globalwarming-sowhat.com/renewables [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.html https://whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.html
    - immibis 3y ago
      Don't forget about induced demand.
- lucb1e 3y ago
  Not like the sun is renewable either. Everything is finite if you use enough of it. The problem is that the old "limited consumable resource dug out of the ground" changes our natural habitat as a side effect of creating energy, assuming we continue to use it as we do today. (By that last bit, I mean: powering EVs from coal plants with carbon capture at exhausts might be different, idk, but probably not cheaper than just not polluting in the first place.)
  - gpm 3y ago
    "Renewable" isn't the best word for wind and solar, better would be "use-it-or-lose-it", either you harvest it or it dissipates into useless low grade heat. Using more of it doesn't deplete the supply of it. Solar energy (and thus wind assuming otherwise constant environmental conditions) is only going to get more plentiful for next 5 billion years...
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      The Earth becomes uninhabitable in about a billion years due to solar brightening, but your point certainly applies to far future civilizations in solar orbit.
- rgmerk 3y ago
  I think nuclear is a red herring in most of the world (too expensive and SMRs are too far away to matter), but the idea that we’ll run out of fuel for them is a nonsense. We haven’t looked very hard at all for uranium. Nor have we tried very hard to use the uranium we already have efficiently. Nor have we tried very hard to use thorium as an alternative. Some combination of these would stretch out the supply of uranium we have essentially indefinitely.
ianpurton 3y ago
The problem with nuclear is that their is so much FUD around it that it becomes not just expensive but very difficult to build. Mainly due to new regulations meaning projects have to re-engineer themselves before they are even complete. Leading to delays and cost overruns.
- dv_dt 3y ago
  The problem with nuclear is that it’s slow and expensive to build and there is FUD that it is not.
  - immibis 3y ago
    But it's slow and expensive to build because of ReGuLaTioNS. If we just remove all the rEGUlaTiONS it could be fast and cheap. What's a Chernobyl?
    - WillPostForFood 3y ago
      We are all going to die! But nuclear power is to expensive, so let's sit in the roads and block traffic and subsidize Teslas for rich people. Either we are under an existential threat, in which case nuclear power is an amazingly cheap way to save 8+ billion people, or there is some other agenda at play.
      - gpm 3y ago
        The primary constraint limiting the speed at which we move away from fossil fuels is cost. Investing in more expensive alternatives like nuclear increases the risk of the threat becoming existential, and the damage it does if it doesn't become existential, compared to investing in cheaper alternatives like solar and wind. It is not a case of "we should do everything" because we can't afford to do everything. If we could afford to do everything we could easily do a small subset of everything and solve the problem.
        WillPostForFood 3y ago
ben_w 3y ago
Superconductors are probably a red herring. It's technically possible to make a 1 Ω global power grid for only a few hundred billion in raw materials, a superconductor isn't going to help much with anything except the material cost, including but not limited to the cost of actually installing that cabling, the geopolitics of where to put it, conflicts involving it. A superconducting cable probably also makes attempts to damage the thing easier — to get 40,000 km of aluminium down to 1 Ω, it needs to have a cross section of 1 m^2, which is kinda hard to damage, though also you don't really want a single cable because that, with current global electrical demand and reasonable (i.e. currently in use) choices for the voltage, would be in the order of 1.5 mega-amperes and match Earth's geomagnetic field at a distance of about 11 km.
- gpm 3y ago
  My understanding is that that if they have nice properties they'll enable substantially more efficient motors/generators thanks to strong magnetic fields. I can't say I'm that confident in that knowledge though.

by gpm 3y ago

immibis 3y ago

Hard reliance on nuclear power is one of the "we all die" options. Didn't we learn our lesson about building a whole civilization on consuming a limited resource dug out of the ground?

gpm 3y ago
Sure, at least with regards to fission, but it plausibly extends the timeline out so that the moonshots are no longer quite so difficult.
kristjank 3y ago
Is it not the case that Uranium and Thorium are not just more abundant than existing fuels, but also about a million times more energy dense? I find it hard to believe running out is a chance we'll face soon.
- ben_w 3y ago
  Million times more energy dense, yes. More abundant? Depends. There's a lot in the sea, which isn't currently recoverable. There's a lot we could do (but actually don't) with breeder reactors to make more fuel. This means the answer to the question "how long could we last on just nuclear fuel alone?" varies from 5.7 years[0][1] to 4.3 billion years[1]. [0] https://globalwarming-sowhat.com/renewables https://globalwarming-sowhat.com/renewables [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.html https://whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.html
  - immibis 3y ago
    Don't forget about induced demand.
lucb1e 3y ago
Not like the sun is renewable either. Everything is finite if you use enough of it. The problem is that the old "limited consumable resource dug out of the ground" changes our natural habitat as a side effect of creating energy, assuming we continue to use it as we do today. (By that last bit, I mean: powering EVs from coal plants with carbon capture at exhausts might be different, idk, but probably not cheaper than just not polluting in the first place.)
- gpm 3y ago
  "Renewable" isn't the best word for wind and solar, better would be "use-it-or-lose-it", either you harvest it or it dissipates into useless low grade heat. Using more of it doesn't deplete the supply of it. Solar energy (and thus wind assuming otherwise constant environmental conditions) is only going to get more plentiful for next 5 billion years...
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    The Earth becomes uninhabitable in about a billion years due to solar brightening, but your point certainly applies to far future civilizations in solar orbit.
rgmerk 3y ago
I think nuclear is a red herring in most of the world (too expensive and SMRs are too far away to matter), but the idea that we’ll run out of fuel for them is a nonsense. We haven’t looked very hard at all for uranium. Nor have we tried very hard to use the uranium we already have efficiently. Nor have we tried very hard to use thorium as an alternative. Some combination of these would stretch out the supply of uranium we have essentially indefinitely.

ianpurton 3y ago

The problem with nuclear is that their is so much FUD around it that it becomes not just expensive but very difficult to build. Mainly due to new regulations meaning projects have to re-engineer themselves before they are even complete. Leading to delays and cost overruns.

dv_dt 3y ago
The problem with nuclear is that it’s slow and expensive to build and there is FUD that it is not.
- immibis 3y ago
  But it's slow and expensive to build because of ReGuLaTioNS. If we just remove all the rEGUlaTiONS it could be fast and cheap. What's a Chernobyl?
  - WillPostForFood 3y ago
    We are all going to die! But nuclear power is to expensive, so let's sit in the roads and block traffic and subsidize Teslas for rich people. Either we are under an existential threat, in which case nuclear power is an amazingly cheap way to save 8+ billion people, or there is some other agenda at play.
    - gpm 3y ago
      The primary constraint limiting the speed at which we move away from fossil fuels is cost. Investing in more expensive alternatives like nuclear increases the risk of the threat becoming existential, and the damage it does if it doesn't become existential, compared to investing in cheaper alternatives like solar and wind. It is not a case of "we should do everything" because we can't afford to do everything. If we could afford to do everything we could easily do a small subset of everything and solve the problem.
      - WillPostForFood 3y ago

ben_w 3y ago

Superconductors are probably a red herring. It's technically possible to make a 1 Ω global power grid for only a few hundred billion in raw materials, a superconductor isn't going to help much with anything except the material cost, including but not limited to the cost of actually installing that cabling, the geopolitics of where to put it, conflicts involving it. A superconducting cable probably also makes attempts to damage the thing easier — to get 40,000 km of aluminium down to 1 Ω, it needs to have a cross section of 1 m^2, which is kinda hard to damage, though also you don't really want a single cable because that, with current global electrical demand and reasonable (i.e. currently in use) choices for the voltage, would be in the order of 1.5 mega-amperes and match Earth's geomagnetic field at a distance of about 11 km.

gpm 3y ago
My understanding is that that if they have nice properties they'll enable substantially more efficient motors/generators thanks to strong magnetic fields. I can't say I'm that confident in that knowledge though.