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I love that you can post whatever you want on the internet. “Nuclear is quite exhaustible”, “The earth is flat”, “Ernest Borgnine killed JFK” you can just put w

I love that you can post whatever you want on the internet. “Nuclear is quite exhaustible”, “The earth is flat”, “Ernest Borgnine killed JFK” you can just put words together and put them online. Such a thrill

ranger_danger 1y ago
"As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding."
immibis 1y ago
Do you believe that underground elves are continuously manufacturing more uranium, or what do you believe is the case?
- jjk166 1y ago
  There are ~65 Trillion tons of uranium in Earth's crust. This dissolves into sea water to maintain an equilibrium concentration. It takes 18.6 tons of natural uranium to produce 1 TWh of electricity with light water reactors. The world consumes ~30,000 TWh each year. 65 Trillion / (18.6 * 30,000) = 1x10^8 years worth of uranium with present day technology, no elves required.
- jrflowers 1y ago
  I’m just having fun posting online as an expert on nuclear energy that’s never heard of fusion, breeder reactors or thorium it is a blast because you can just write numbers. 100 100,000 100,000,000 are all the same to me
  - zarzavat 1y ago
    The question is whether current nuclear power can be considered renewable. The answer is that it is not. Renewable, to my mind, means energy that will be there in a million years. Solar. Wind. Waves. That kind of thing.
    - jrflowers 1y ago
      Exactly. Nuclear power is not eternal because uranium is finite whereas solar will last forever because the aluminium, cadmium, copper, gallium, indium, lead, molybdenum, nickel, silicon, silver, selenium, tellurium, tin and zinc to make the panels exist in infinite quantities
      - zarzavat 1y ago
        If we can extract minerals from the Earth then we can extract them from PV panels to refurbish/build new PV panels. If you don't like that, then there's also concentrated solar. We're not going to run out of mirrors. Fissile isotopes on the other hand, once they're gone, they're gone. You can build new reactors that run on different fuel but that's not the same thing as you were doing before, so you can't call the original process renewable.
        jrflowers 1y ago
        [flagged]
        immibis 1y ago
        Bro what the fuck are you talking about. This comment is incomprehensible.
- vlovich123 1y ago
  No but technology improves. Breeder reactors can take the current fissile material (assuming estimates of the total fissile material are accurate, which isn’t necessarily accurate) and extend it by about 60x, meaning thousands of years or even closer to tens of thousands of years. And we don’t need it to last forever. Just long enough to get to fusion.
  - immibis 1y ago
    Fusion will be the permanent end of all known life in the universe, as we compete with each other to boil the most ocean to make more bitcoins, leading to a planet with a helium atmosphere and no water.
    - jrflowers 1y ago
      So what you’re saying is that there is more than enough nuclear fuel to power humanity through its entire existence

ranger_danger 1y ago

"As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding."

immibis 1y ago

Do you believe that underground elves are continuously manufacturing more uranium, or what do you believe is the case?

jjk166 1y ago
There are ~65 Trillion tons of uranium in Earth's crust. This dissolves into sea water to maintain an equilibrium concentration. It takes 18.6 tons of natural uranium to produce 1 TWh of electricity with light water reactors. The world consumes ~30,000 TWh each year. 65 Trillion / (18.6 * 30,000) = 1x10^8 years worth of uranium with present day technology, no elves required.
jrflowers 1y ago
I’m just having fun posting online as an expert on nuclear energy that’s never heard of fusion, breeder reactors or thorium it is a blast because you can just write numbers. 100 100,000 100,000,000 are all the same to me
- zarzavat 1y ago
  The question is whether current nuclear power can be considered renewable. The answer is that it is not. Renewable, to my mind, means energy that will be there in a million years. Solar. Wind. Waves. That kind of thing.
  - jrflowers 1y ago
    Exactly. Nuclear power is not eternal because uranium is finite whereas solar will last forever because the aluminium, cadmium, copper, gallium, indium, lead, molybdenum, nickel, silicon, silver, selenium, tellurium, tin and zinc to make the panels exist in infinite quantities
    - zarzavat 1y ago
      If we can extract minerals from the Earth then we can extract them from PV panels to refurbish/build new PV panels. If you don't like that, then there's also concentrated solar. We're not going to run out of mirrors. Fissile isotopes on the other hand, once they're gone, they're gone. You can build new reactors that run on different fuel but that's not the same thing as you were doing before, so you can't call the original process renewable.
      - jrflowers 1y ago
        [flagged]
        immibis 1y ago
        Bro what the fuck are you talking about. This comment is incomprehensible.
vlovich123 1y ago
No but technology improves. Breeder reactors can take the current fissile material (assuming estimates of the total fissile material are accurate, which isn’t necessarily accurate) and extend it by about 60x, meaning thousands of years or even closer to tens of thousands of years. And we don’t need it to last forever. Just long enough to get to fusion.
- immibis 1y ago
  Fusion will be the permanent end of all known life in the universe, as we compete with each other to boil the most ocean to make more bitcoins, leading to a planet with a helium atmosphere and no water.
  - jrflowers 1y ago
    So what you’re saying is that there is more than enough nuclear fuel to power humanity through its entire existence