6 ms·

The explosion of Chernobyl released a few thousand PBq of activity. Coal contains a few tens to a few hundreds of Bq/kg. You would have to burn something like 5

by fsh 2y ago

The explosion of Chernobyl released a few thousand PBq of activity. Coal contains a few tens to a few hundreds of Bq/kg. You would have to burn something like 50 times the world coal reserves (and make sure not to use any exhaust filters) in order to match the radiation release of Chernobyl.

jajko 2y ago
While I like nuclear on the paper and its theoretical env impact, this one is hard to ignore. Add costs of current projects which became ridiculous in reality. Plus as we see with various wars nuclear powerplants would be a prime target for terrorists or even state actors, they are certainly not considered as excluded from wars, in contrary. If we move to renewables, over 100 years there would be 0 reason to have a single nuclear plant running anywhere, apart from making nuclear weapons fuel. I just wish we were now where we would/will be in 50 years in terms of renewables technology maturity and its spread.
- polotics 2y ago
  Do pray tell calculate a world's energy system looping back while running purely on renewables, with electric powered mining, transport of ores, refining, panels production... You will find that you cannot, cheap (for now) fossil fuels are subsidising solar panels and wind farms massively.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    The mining for renewables would be a small fraction of the mining for industrial society as a whole. So, if electrification cannot be done on this, industrial society as we know it is doomed, and nuclear cannot save it. Unless you're thinking we're going to have nuclear reactors in our mining vehicles...
    - vlovich123 2y ago
      On site mini reactors with directly wired machinery isn’t entirely inconceivable but would require a massive restructuring of industrial layouts and processes.
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        SMRs are being touted now, but (1) they aren't that small, and (2) they have to be grouped together or else fixed labor costs become unacceptable per unit of power output. The result is a collection whose power output isn't too different from conventional large reactors.
        vlovich123 2y ago
        I agree it’s unlikely but by the same token renewables don’t really solve this problem any better - at the end of the day you need batteries for both.
        pfdietz 2y ago
        Renewables scale down much better than nuclear does, particularly PV. For that matter, so do batteries.
    - natmaka 2y ago
      Moreover many materials used in 'renewables' equipment (wind turbines...) are eternally (at human scale) recyclable. This reduces the need for mining. Uranium has to be mined.
    - polotics 2y ago
      It really makes me so sad to see that some people can be so confidently so wrong. It really does appear that believing in renewables as a way to perpetuate industrial society at scale has become part of some people's identity, and regardless of any actual study on the subject, this belief appears to be a necessity to be part of non-deplorable human society. Nuclear reactors are a safe way to electrify as much as can be and reduce the body blows societies are going to take in the coming decades. Some industry is not doomed, and social stability can be maintained, at some cost, if and only if we use all technologies at our disposal for what they are, and calculate the risks and rewards right. Facts are sadly unmoved by any faith, and the real path forward as painful as it may be, is only open to those that accept that they can always be wrong, and will always have to learn more. Please pfdietz cite your sources and please prove me wrong.
      - acdha 2y ago
        I note that your polemic is long on faith in nuclear but short on the same sources you’re demanding. Perhaps you could model the standard you expect from other people by providing sources and some analysis of the very sweeping assertions you’re making.
        polotics 2y ago
        Slides of the 20 hours lectures at Ecoles des Mines Paris https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fqoACrCFtlXKonP266DkFUcmMVj22yj_ https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fqoACrCFtlXKonP266Dk... The lectures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgy0rW0oaFI&list=PLMDQXkItOZ4LPwWJkVQf_PWnYHfC5xGFO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgy0rW0oaFI&list=PLMDQXkItOZ... The (already provided in a previous comment) EROEI study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X19300926 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X1... The one specific slide about the low EROEI of solar panel is in: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BJvoAm__WVtumohStkF4KwT66cSz2Ojs/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BJvoAm__WVtumohStkF4KwT66cS... The 2.7 value is from 2019, as calculated for Spain, this one slide is in english. Panels have not made a x10 EROEI explosion in the past 5 years, a lot of the energy costs in that calculation are independent of panel technology improvements.
- vlovich123 2y ago
  > If we move to renewables, over 100 years there would be 0 reason to have a single nuclear plant running anywhere, apart from making nuclear weapons fuel. I just wish we were now where we would/will be in 50 years in terms of renewables technology maturity and its spread. Of course if we ignore the need for batteries. Renewable advocates conveniently forget to include that in the calculus (there’s active action in progress to strip mine the ocean floor creating untold ecological damage to try to keep up with requirements for batteries). And they also tend to ignore the fact that renewables can’t be used in various industrial processes. Nuclear fission remains the best option for large scale power and is still cheaper than directly comparable renewables with batteries included despite being divested from raising overall costs. Hopefully we get fusion soon and renewables and fission become a thing of the past.
  - natmaka 2y ago
    > need for batteries They are needed for transportation, whatever the way we produce electricity (even with nuclear). > renewables can’t be used in various industrial processes Why? There is no difference between nuclear-produced electricy and renewable-produced (or battery-stored)-electricy. > Hopefully we get fusion soon Does some optimistic scientist hope to enjoy an industrial prototype before 2050?
    - vlovich123 2y ago
      In the renewables case they’re needed for transportation AND grid. The dream that car batteries are used as grid storage afaict remains a dream with no forward movement on that front.
      - natmaka 2y ago
        > In the renewables case they’re needed for transportation AND grid. Indeed. So? There are more and more vehicles, and the average amount of electricity they store (reflected by their autonomy) grows. One of the reasons is well-known: https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline > no forward movement This isn't true, many experiments are running ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid#Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid#Research ) Even EDF, France's leader of the nuclear industry, field-experiments it: https://www.edf.fr/entreprises/transition-energetique/mobilite-electrique/v2g-vehicule-to-grid https://www.edf.fr/entreprises/transition-energetique/mobili...
polotics 2y ago
Chernobyl with its totally mad graphite design is not representative of safe designs like Fukushima, or French plants, or even Chinese plants...
- chasil 2y ago
  Are there safer plants still, that focus on eliminating the daughter nuclei? I understood that one benefit of molten salt reactors is that the fission products were easier to process or burn. Edit: "MSRs enable cheaper closed nuclear fuel cycles, because they can operate with slow neutrons. Closed fuel cycles can reduce environmental impacts: chemical separation turns long-lived actinides into reactor fuel. Discharged wastes are mostly fission products with shorter half-lives. This can reduce the needed containment to 300 years versus the tens of thousands of years needed by light-water reactor spent fuel." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_reactor
- fsh 2y ago
  Fukushima also released more radiation than all the coal that has ever been burned (a few hundred PBq, ignoring the thousands of PBq of Xe-133). The amount of radiation created by a nuclear power reactor is on an entirely different scale than any natural source of radiation.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  Yet we've had Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Sellafield and many others (military ones too). Unforeseen accidents happen. Wars too, which tend to destroy safety equipment. Artillery was fired around Zaporizhzhia when the reactors were still online, Ukraine is currently invading Russia near Kursk where two of the mad-graphite RBMK reactors are still operational today. I hope they try to avoid those when blowing stuff up. Because they don't have containment vessels. And then see how difficult it is to clean up an accident like Fukushima where the containment mostly held. It feels like playing with fire.
  - exe34 2y ago
    > It feels like playing with fire Much safer to burn the rest of the planet instead.
chickenbig 2y ago
> Coal contains a few tens to a few hundreds of Bq/kg Presumably these are from very long-lived isotopes, so will continue to emit at this rate for the forseeable future. In contrast, the fission products (from Chernobyl) tend to have short half lives of the order of a few days, giving a short burst of radiation. Caesium 137 looks to be the most troublesome isotope in the long term (with a half life of 30 years). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Relative_isotopic_abundances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Relative_is...

by fsh 2y ago

jajko 2y ago

While I like nuclear on the paper and its theoretical env impact, this one is hard to ignore. Add costs of current projects which became ridiculous in reality. Plus as we see with various wars nuclear powerplants would be a prime target for terrorists or even state actors, they are certainly not considered as excluded from wars, in contrary. If we move to renewables, over 100 years there would be 0 reason to have a single nuclear plant running anywhere, apart from making nuclear weapons fuel. I just wish we were now where we would/will be in 50 years in terms of renewables technology maturity and its spread.

polotics 2y ago
Do pray tell calculate a world's energy system looping back while running purely on renewables, with electric powered mining, transport of ores, refining, panels production... You will find that you cannot, cheap (for now) fossil fuels are subsidising solar panels and wind farms massively.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  The mining for renewables would be a small fraction of the mining for industrial society as a whole. So, if electrification cannot be done on this, industrial society as we know it is doomed, and nuclear cannot save it. Unless you're thinking we're going to have nuclear reactors in our mining vehicles...
  - vlovich123 2y ago
    On site mini reactors with directly wired machinery isn’t entirely inconceivable but would require a massive restructuring of industrial layouts and processes.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      SMRs are being touted now, but (1) they aren't that small, and (2) they have to be grouped together or else fixed labor costs become unacceptable per unit of power output. The result is a collection whose power output isn't too different from conventional large reactors.
      - vlovich123 2y ago
        I agree it’s unlikely but by the same token renewables don’t really solve this problem any better - at the end of the day you need batteries for both.
        pfdietz 2y ago
        Renewables scale down much better than nuclear does, particularly PV. For that matter, so do batteries.
  - natmaka 2y ago
    Moreover many materials used in 'renewables' equipment (wind turbines...) are eternally (at human scale) recyclable. This reduces the need for mining. Uranium has to be mined.
  - polotics 2y ago
    It really makes me so sad to see that some people can be so confidently so wrong. It really does appear that believing in renewables as a way to perpetuate industrial society at scale has become part of some people's identity, and regardless of any actual study on the subject, this belief appears to be a necessity to be part of non-deplorable human society. Nuclear reactors are a safe way to electrify as much as can be and reduce the body blows societies are going to take in the coming decades. Some industry is not doomed, and social stability can be maintained, at some cost, if and only if we use all technologies at our disposal for what they are, and calculate the risks and rewards right. Facts are sadly unmoved by any faith, and the real path forward as painful as it may be, is only open to those that accept that they can always be wrong, and will always have to learn more. Please pfdietz cite your sources and please prove me wrong.
    - acdha 2y ago
      I note that your polemic is long on faith in nuclear but short on the same sources you’re demanding. Perhaps you could model the standard you expect from other people by providing sources and some analysis of the very sweeping assertions you’re making.
      - polotics 2y ago
        Slides of the 20 hours lectures at Ecoles des Mines Paris https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fqoACrCFtlXKonP266DkFUcmMVj22yj_ https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fqoACrCFtlXKonP266Dk... The lectures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgy0rW0oaFI&list=PLMDQXkItOZ4LPwWJkVQf_PWnYHfC5xGFO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgy0rW0oaFI&list=PLMDQXkItOZ... The (already provided in a previous comment) EROEI study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X19300926 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X1... The one specific slide about the low EROEI of solar panel is in: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BJvoAm__WVtumohStkF4KwT66cSz2Ojs/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BJvoAm__WVtumohStkF4KwT66cS... The 2.7 value is from 2019, as calculated for Spain, this one slide is in english. Panels have not made a x10 EROEI explosion in the past 5 years, a lot of the energy costs in that calculation are independent of panel technology improvements.
vlovich123 2y ago
> If we move to renewables, over 100 years there would be 0 reason to have a single nuclear plant running anywhere, apart from making nuclear weapons fuel. I just wish we were now where we would/will be in 50 years in terms of renewables technology maturity and its spread. Of course if we ignore the need for batteries. Renewable advocates conveniently forget to include that in the calculus (there’s active action in progress to strip mine the ocean floor creating untold ecological damage to try to keep up with requirements for batteries). And they also tend to ignore the fact that renewables can’t be used in various industrial processes. Nuclear fission remains the best option for large scale power and is still cheaper than directly comparable renewables with batteries included despite being divested from raising overall costs. Hopefully we get fusion soon and renewables and fission become a thing of the past.
- natmaka 2y ago
  > need for batteries They are needed for transportation, whatever the way we produce electricity (even with nuclear). > renewables can’t be used in various industrial processes Why? There is no difference between nuclear-produced electricy and renewable-produced (or battery-stored)-electricy. > Hopefully we get fusion soon Does some optimistic scientist hope to enjoy an industrial prototype before 2050?
  - vlovich123 2y ago
    In the renewables case they’re needed for transportation AND grid. The dream that car batteries are used as grid storage afaict remains a dream with no forward movement on that front.
    - natmaka 2y ago
      > In the renewables case they’re needed for transportation AND grid. Indeed. So? There are more and more vehicles, and the average amount of electricity they store (reflected by their autonomy) grows. One of the reasons is well-known: https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline > no forward movement This isn't true, many experiments are running ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid#Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid#Research ) Even EDF, France's leader of the nuclear industry, field-experiments it: https://www.edf.fr/entreprises/transition-energetique/mobilite-electrique/v2g-vehicule-to-grid https://www.edf.fr/entreprises/transition-energetique/mobili...

polotics 2y ago

Chernobyl with its totally mad graphite design is not representative of safe designs like Fukushima, or French plants, or even Chinese plants...

chasil 2y ago
Are there safer plants still, that focus on eliminating the daughter nuclei? I understood that one benefit of molten salt reactors is that the fission products were easier to process or burn. Edit: "MSRs enable cheaper closed nuclear fuel cycles, because they can operate with slow neutrons. Closed fuel cycles can reduce environmental impacts: chemical separation turns long-lived actinides into reactor fuel. Discharged wastes are mostly fission products with shorter half-lives. This can reduce the needed containment to 300 years versus the tens of thousands of years needed by light-water reactor spent fuel." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_reactor
fsh 2y ago
Fukushima also released more radiation than all the coal that has ever been burned (a few hundred PBq, ignoring the thousands of PBq of Xe-133). The amount of radiation created by a nuclear power reactor is on an entirely different scale than any natural source of radiation.
wkat4242 2y ago
Yet we've had Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Sellafield and many others (military ones too). Unforeseen accidents happen. Wars too, which tend to destroy safety equipment. Artillery was fired around Zaporizhzhia when the reactors were still online, Ukraine is currently invading Russia near Kursk where two of the mad-graphite RBMK reactors are still operational today. I hope they try to avoid those when blowing stuff up. Because they don't have containment vessels. And then see how difficult it is to clean up an accident like Fukushima where the containment mostly held. It feels like playing with fire.
- exe34 2y ago
  > It feels like playing with fire Much safer to burn the rest of the planet instead.

chickenbig 2y ago

> Coal contains a few tens to a few hundreds of Bq/kg Presumably these are from very long-lived isotopes, so will continue to emit at this rate for the forseeable future. In contrast, the fission products (from Chernobyl) tend to have short half lives of the order of a few days, giving a short burst of radiation. Caesium 137 looks to be the most troublesome isotope in the long term (with a half life of 30 years). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Relative_isotopic_abundances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Relative_is...