I'm not in principle against nuclear power, not at all, but all options considered need to have all the pluses and minus considered. And renewables have issues too.
I'm against their stupid nuclear ideology which prevents any useful progress on anything. They say "Nuclear is perfect and solar/wind/geothermal isn't good enough" and neither is true.
My guess is that they are more detail oriented and less likely to turn their hands into sheets of paper.
It is a complete myth that women are weaker than men.
The two are not the same. Being detailed oriented isn't the same as possessing and manipulating physical strength to a degree of accuracy that only men can achieve en masse.
Some work requires an eye for detail that women do possess and no bigger example of this can be found in Rolls Royce where women were the ones who would construct the wax molds for the titanium turbine fan blades for their jet engines. Let's not forget that men and women have their roles in society and that maintaining that balance is always going to be an ongoing challenge for the Human race.
Also nuclear produces greenhouse gases. During mining, during enrichment, during reactor construction.
Careful bringing facts into the debate. It won't go well.
Well TransAtomic's Wamsr reactors is not longer listed as a solution on the US govt's egeneration site so I don't know what these nuclear idealists think they are going to do now that the only Gen IV reactor proposed for NRC approval is not going to be available. Oh well there goes that idea.
I suppose they're waiting for some magic thinking to save us.
If you are in one of the five eyes nations the new class of Access and Assistance Bills our Attorney Generals are negotiating will mean data generated by your car can be legally taken without your knowledge and used as evidence against you.
I don't think people know what is going on. I don't think that they understand the rate of improvement and that when they think of "robots" they think of Daleks that can't climb stairs or something clunky. I think they think reality is not as close to science fiction as it really is.
Mr AC, PBMR reactors are unreliable technology. If German engineering couldn't get them to work how do you expect Chinese engineering to get them to work?
China is actively researching and developing pebble bed nuclear power generation technology, and their plan is to design their future pebble-bed nuclear power plant modules that is smaller than the space provided by (decommissioned) coal power plants
Pebble bed reactors have been proven unreliable for a few reasons. The first is the graphite fuel balls cannot be reliably manufactured to consistent sizes. The second is the fuel balls get jammed in the reactor and nothing can get them to move after that.
The third is the graphite moderator tends to catch fire and we all know how that went down for Chernobyl.
Are you people so dogmatically idealistic you cannot see the word DECOMMISSIONED?
Reactors don't run forever, they have a service life. Take Fukushima for example, that was near the end of its service life. That is when nuclear reactors are at their most dangerous because the S class facilities are all neutron embrittled. That's when steel cracks and breaks apart and creates a nuclear accident. We can't afford any more nuclear accidents.
However the turbine and grid infrastructure is still serviceable and is a perfect candidate for conversion to natural gas. I'm not saying it's an ideal solution, I'm saying not to waste what is there and provide an income to the utilities that will handle the decommissioning of the reactor.
Also nuclear produces greenhouse gases. During mining, during enrichment, during reactor construction.
Clearly nuclear power advocates are all out of ideas when it comes to nuclear power.
Wow, it seems like some people want to mod down viable solutions to climate change. What is wrong with converting decommissioned Nuclear reactors to Gas?
That's not the only rational conclusion. Another is that the politicians that keep talking of our impending doom unless we do something don't believe their own words.
You must be able to see right through them. That's awesome.
Another example the US Coast Guard wants... that's not right, NEEDS new ice breakers to service scientific missions in Antarctica
I'm not following your reasoning of why the US Coast Guard needs to guard the coast of Antarctica. Shouldn't they be busying themselves preventing immigrants and drug dealers making it to US shores?
Instead of wasting time on science is some chunk of ice. You're saying it's a horrendous waste of tax pay money being down there when those immigrant muslims are just barging into America to take jobs and bring drugs into the country. You seem ashamed about that.
Here's an example, the US Navy wanted some new nuclear powered warships.
Someone has to stick up for the military's right to kill people and end civilization, I bet that kind of liberalism really get's you so mad.
If these people were serious about solving the problems of reducing CO2 output, providing for energy independence, and assuring the military is effective in defending our national interests, then they'd be building nuclear powered ships and putting nuclear power plants on military bases, airports, seaports, and other vital facilities.
Living the dream.
This means a series of half-assed "solutions" that on the surface appear to be a means to make things better but in the end merely push the problem off into the future so it can still be held over the head of the public to stay in power and distract from other matters they are imposing on the public.
I see where you're going now. Basically you're saying those sociopaths have an unimaginative, incapable and unrealistic view of Nuclear power and think people are dumb enough to believe it while they produce inaction. Great insights there.
I did use "sociopath" instead of "psychopath" as you did. That's because a psychopath is someone with violent tendencies, which these people are not doing. Maybe the foot soldiers in the form of GreenPeace are violent but the people at the top making the decisions are not.
Ok, so what you are saying is to project a propensity for violence onto them like they are the aggressors to feel justified to be the aggressor. Clever.
They are sociopaths, people that are acting without concern for others and in ways that are considered antisocial.
Oh, I see. Like those sociopaths that don't really care who gets hurt by transgenic disease in the generations to come from radio-isotopes. I'm so glad that you pointed that out.
These sociopaths demand that we take on the costs of buying new electric cars but can't be bothered to fund nuclear powered ships for the Navy and Coast Guard.
They're forcing the US coast guard to guard the US coast because that's the only place they can refuel.
This is not the actions of a government that is taking CO2 emissions seriously.
If the US coast guard doesn't get nuclear powered boats *real soon* climate change will destroy humanity.
I did use "sociopath" instead of "psychopath" as you did.
They are some amazing insights into how a sociopaths thinks. Thank you so much.
Therefore I conclude that they don't believe CO2 emissions are any real threat to humanity or national security.
You must get confused why people can't see how amazing you are BS. All your BS reasoning to come to an obvious conclusion which must mean everything else is right.
Cheap natural gas makes it easy to eliminate coal.
And Nuclear.
By shutting down the reactors the turbines can be utilized to produce electricity by converting them to gas. Essentially by shutting down the reactors before the end of their service life the remaining infrastructure can be used to safely produce electricity with gas where the nuclear reactor could not. Thus avoiding the risk of a reactor meltdown by running the reactors in the highly risky part of their service life.
This gives us hundreds of sites around the world where baseload power can be produced without the reactors. That also gives us electricity and a profit motivation to run and maintain the site. Also since the spent fuel rods are hot for decades it might be possible to use stirling motors to utilize that waste heat to pre-warm the water for the gas turbine without criticality - to also keep the spent rods cool.
Additionally, accelerator technology can be built on site and utilized to destroy the nuclear spent fuel if materials technology doesn't advance enough to have safe burner reactor technology. I had great hopes in molten Salt Nuclear Burner reactors but it seems that accelerators might be more viable since the nuclear industry can't solve the problem of safely storing the spent fuel and potentially utilizing it in a hundred or so years when reactor technology progresses.
Essentially all of that Nuclear infrastructure is free to any utility that wants to make a bundle of money decommissioning Nuclear reactors and converting it to natural gas infrastructure to fill any residual gaps in wide scale Solar thermal, Solar PV, Wind, Geothermal and biomass electricity producing infrastructure. Take San Onofre for example. It's decommissioned, but why waste all that perfectly servicable turbine and electricity grid infrastructure? You could even use the waste heat to dry up liquid nuclear wastes the site produced.
As those true renewable electrical infrastructure sources increase we even have the option of taking the gas offline and powering the accelerators to destroy the spent nuclear fuel that way. That way we utilize the supporting infrastructure of the Nuclear plant and get a further return on the carbon investment in all that concrete for a very long time, while we ween ourselves off nuclear and coal.
First, it depends on the salt you use. Second, if salt leaks from a solar plant it leaks salt into the environment, which is not a big deal. If a MSR leaks salt it also leaks the radio-active isotopes the salt is carrying into the environment, which is a big deal. Radio-active effluents in the environment are a massive externality. Carbon externality in the environment is a solvable problem, radio-isotope externality in the environment is not.
Let's assume this solar salt thermal storage technology does work, then molten salt nuclear reactors will work. Research in one molten salt technology is directly applicable to the other. If these solar thermal plants gain any traction and prove the technology on molten salts then molten salt nuclear reactors will soon follow.
There is no need to assume anything, one is not applicable to the other. When steel is bombarded with neutrons it becomes brittle and creates leaks. This is the main factor why Nuclear Reactors have limits on their service life and require new materials technologies.
This doesn't occur with solar technology which is why your assumption is wrong.
There's a big difference though between these molten salt technologies, nuclear power doesn't need sunny skies to provide power.
Solar does not produce nuclear waste.
This can be underground.
This was a primary safety improvement recommended to the Nuclear industry by a panel assembled from the Nuclear Industry at the request of the NRC. The improvement was rejected by the Nuclear Industry along with another nineteen recommendations for safety improvements. EPR has four of the improvements and AP1000 has none of those improvements. So all of your theoretical use cases are moot points.
Though I think using Nuclear in space is a good idea though - as long as it never comes back here because it will be as hot, radioactive speaking.
Land use is effectively zero for both but the power output per area is very low for solar but nearly unlimited for nuclear.
Utilization for solar is very high and very low for nuclear.
The only rational conclusion is that the world is being run by complete anti-social psychopaths
Sorry, but that is just a populist opinion.
No, it's human nature. Anyone ruthless and power hungry enough will take positions of authority. Ever heard the saying Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The other possible rational conclusion is that things are not as simple as they appear to you. Which do you think is more likely?
I think it is more likely there are legions of people convinced of that. I think it is likely that there are a lot of people invested in the way things are and don't want them to change.
Solar Reserve have some great low externality base load solar power stations. The heat is stored in molten salt and is available when the sun goes down. Base load solar plant like this can be scaled up, I have no affiliation with them however I find their technology interesting.
Coupled with domestic, industrial and commercial P.V there is enough energy in the sun to build power infrastructure. Combined with the terawatts of power available with wind and geothermal does anyone think the oil and coal industry want this technology to be developed and advanced?
I reason that any form of massive dynamic grid will need a lot of intelligence to make the power available where it is needed, which means interesting technological avenues to explore, a massive explosion of information technology and, fortunes to be made as the economy changes. If we can overcome the economic inertia.
None of the criticisms of these technologies ever ask what it would take to build such infrastructures and all of the technologies look like they scale well. We know we can't continue the way we are going because we will die. This is not just about the planet - Save the Humans, the planet will be just fine.
The only rational conclusion is that the world is being run by complete anti-social psychopaths who actually want such an outcome, otherwise it would be done already. The excuses are less and less believable every day.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not in principle against nuclear power, not at all, but all options considered need to have all the pluses and minus considered. And renewables have issues too.
I'm against their stupid nuclear ideology which prevents any useful progress on anything. They say "Nuclear is perfect and solar/wind/geothermal isn't good enough" and neither is true.
Are you thinking Japanese robot army?
My guess is that they are more detail oriented and less likely to turn their hands into sheets of paper.
It is a complete myth that women are weaker than men.
The two are not the same. Being detailed oriented isn't the same as possessing and manipulating physical strength to a degree of accuracy that only men can achieve en masse.
Some work requires an eye for detail that women do possess and no bigger example of this can be found in Rolls Royce where women were the ones who would construct the wax molds for the titanium turbine fan blades for their jet engines. Let's not forget that men and women have their roles in society and that maintaining that balance is always going to be an ongoing challenge for the Human race.
Also nuclear produces greenhouse gases. During mining, during enrichment, during reactor construction.
Careful bringing facts into the debate. It won't go well.
Well TransAtomic's Wamsr reactors is not longer listed as a solution on the US govt's egeneration site so I don't know what these nuclear idealists think they are going to do now that the only Gen IV reactor proposed for NRC approval is not going to be available. Oh well there goes that idea.
I suppose they're waiting for some magic thinking to save us.
If you are in one of the five eyes nations the new class of Access and Assistance Bills our Attorney Generals are negotiating will mean data generated by your car can be legally taken without your knowledge and used as evidence against you.
See section 27D
You had better not unknowingly go anywhere or be around someone you should not.
I don't think people know what is going on. I don't think that they understand the rate of improvement and that when they think of "robots" they think of Daleks that can't climb stairs or something clunky. I think they think reality is not as close to science fiction as it really is.
Thank you.
https://www.stopkillerrobots.o...
Australia, Israel, Russia, South Korea, and the United States all oppose a treaty to stop killer robots and keep them under human control. Insanity.
Needs to start with the same letter. So either Blitzed Baby or Drunken... ehh.. Daughter? Dumpling? Darling? *shrugs*
Dickhead. Drunken Dickhead!
Something we've all had the misfortune of seeing.
It also didn't flip out and kill people, so there's that.
Talking about flipping out look at the back flips this thing can do. Can anyone here do that?
I wish people would stop building things that are going to wind up being used to control or kill us all.
I wonder who is funding these guys?
The media induces panics all the time. Remember in 2011 they scaremongered about nuclear power?
You mean when the Fukushima reactors blew up, that was really elaborate scaremongering.
Mr AC, PBMR reactors are unreliable technology. If German engineering couldn't get them to work how do you expect Chinese engineering to get them to work?
China is actively researching and developing pebble bed nuclear power generation technology, and their plan is to design their future pebble-bed nuclear power plant modules that is smaller than the space provided by (decommissioned) coal power plants
Pebble bed reactors have been proven unreliable for a few reasons. The first is the graphite fuel balls cannot be reliably manufactured to consistent sizes. The second is the fuel balls get jammed in the reactor and nothing can get them to move after that.
The third is the graphite moderator tends to catch fire and we all know how that went down for Chernobyl.
Not really a fair comparison when Germany started in a worse position than the US.
Just keep moving those goalposts.
Just keep making excuses.
*slaps forehead*
Are you people so dogmatically idealistic you cannot see the word DECOMMISSIONED?
Reactors don't run forever, they have a service life. Take Fukushima for example, that was near the end of its service life. That is when nuclear reactors are at their most dangerous because the S class facilities are all neutron embrittled. That's when steel cracks and breaks apart and creates a nuclear accident. We can't afford any more nuclear accidents.
However the turbine and grid infrastructure is still serviceable and is a perfect candidate for conversion to natural gas. I'm not saying it's an ideal solution, I'm saying not to waste what is there and provide an income to the utilities that will handle the decommissioning of the reactor.
Also nuclear produces greenhouse gases. During mining, during enrichment, during reactor construction.
Clearly nuclear power advocates are all out of ideas when it comes to nuclear power.
Wow, it seems like some people want to mod down viable solutions to climate change. What is wrong with converting decommissioned Nuclear reactors to Gas?
That's not the only rational conclusion. Another is that the politicians that keep talking of our impending doom unless we do something don't believe their own words.
You must be able to see right through them. That's awesome.
Another example the US Coast Guard wants... that's not right, NEEDS new ice breakers to service scientific missions in Antarctica
I'm not following your reasoning of why the US Coast Guard needs to guard the coast of Antarctica. Shouldn't they be busying themselves preventing immigrants and drug dealers making it to US shores? Instead of wasting time on science is some chunk of ice. You're saying it's a horrendous waste of tax pay money being down there when those immigrant muslims are just barging into America to take jobs and bring drugs into the country. You seem ashamed about that.
Here's an example, the US Navy wanted some new nuclear powered warships.
Someone has to stick up for the military's right to kill people and end civilization, I bet that kind of liberalism really get's you so mad.
If these people were serious about solving the problems of reducing CO2 output, providing for energy independence, and assuring the military is effective in defending our national interests, then they'd be building nuclear powered ships and putting nuclear power plants on military bases, airports, seaports, and other vital facilities.
Living the dream.
This means a series of half-assed "solutions" that on the surface appear to be a means to make things better but in the end merely push the problem off into the future so it can still be held over the head of the public to stay in power and distract from other matters they are imposing on the public.
I see where you're going now. Basically you're saying those sociopaths have an unimaginative, incapable and unrealistic view of Nuclear power and think people are dumb enough to believe it while they produce inaction. Great insights there.
I did use "sociopath" instead of "psychopath" as you did. That's because a psychopath is someone with violent tendencies, which these people are not doing. Maybe the foot soldiers in the form of GreenPeace are violent but the people at the top making the decisions are not.
Ok, so what you are saying is to project a propensity for violence onto them like they are the aggressors to feel justified to be the aggressor. Clever.
They are sociopaths, people that are acting without concern for others and in ways that are considered antisocial.
Oh, I see. Like those sociopaths that don't really care who gets hurt by transgenic disease in the generations to come from radio-isotopes. I'm so glad that you pointed that out.
These sociopaths demand that we take on the costs of buying new electric cars but can't be bothered to fund nuclear powered ships for the Navy and Coast Guard.
They're forcing the US coast guard to guard the US coast because that's the only place they can refuel.
This is not the actions of a government that is taking CO2 emissions seriously.
If the US coast guard doesn't get nuclear powered boats *real soon* climate change will destroy humanity.
I did use "sociopath" instead of "psychopath" as you did.
They are some amazing insights into how a sociopaths thinks. Thank you so much.
Therefore I conclude that they don't believe CO2 emissions are any real threat to humanity or national security.
You must get confused why people can't see how amazing you are BS. All your BS reasoning to come to an obvious conclusion which must mean everything else is right.
Cheap natural gas makes it easy to eliminate coal.
And Nuclear.
By shutting down the reactors the turbines can be utilized to produce electricity by converting them to gas. Essentially by shutting down the reactors before the end of their service life the remaining infrastructure can be used to safely produce electricity with gas where the nuclear reactor could not. Thus avoiding the risk of a reactor meltdown by running the reactors in the highly risky part of their service life.
This gives us hundreds of sites around the world where baseload power can be produced without the reactors. That also gives us electricity and a profit motivation to run and maintain the site. Also since the spent fuel rods are hot for decades it might be possible to use stirling motors to utilize that waste heat to pre-warm the water for the gas turbine without criticality - to also keep the spent rods cool.
Additionally, accelerator technology can be built on site and utilized to destroy the nuclear spent fuel if materials technology doesn't advance enough to have safe burner reactor technology. I had great hopes in molten Salt Nuclear Burner reactors but it seems that accelerators might be more viable since the nuclear industry can't solve the problem of safely storing the spent fuel and potentially utilizing it in a hundred or so years when reactor technology progresses.
Essentially all of that Nuclear infrastructure is free to any utility that wants to make a bundle of money decommissioning Nuclear reactors and converting it to natural gas infrastructure to fill any residual gaps in wide scale Solar thermal, Solar PV, Wind, Geothermal and biomass electricity producing infrastructure. Take San Onofre for example. It's decommissioned, but why waste all that perfectly servicable turbine and electricity grid infrastructure? You could even use the waste heat to dry up liquid nuclear wastes the site produced.
As those true renewable electrical infrastructure sources increase we even have the option of taking the gas offline and powering the accelerators to destroy the spent nuclear fuel that way. That way we utilize the supporting infrastructure of the Nuclear plant and get a further return on the carbon investment in all that concrete for a very long time, while we ween ourselves off nuclear and coal.
Amazing BlindSeer.
Let's assume this solar salt thermal storage technology does work, then molten salt nuclear reactors will work. Research in one molten salt technology is directly applicable to the other. If these solar thermal plants gain any traction and prove the technology on molten salts then molten salt nuclear reactors will soon follow.
There is no need to assume anything, one is not applicable to the other. When steel is bombarded with neutrons it becomes brittle and creates leaks. This is the main factor why Nuclear Reactors have limits on their service life and require new materials technologies.
This doesn't occur with solar technology which is why your assumption is wrong.
There's a big difference though between these molten salt technologies, nuclear power doesn't need sunny skies to provide power.
Solar does not produce nuclear waste.
This can be underground.
This was a primary safety improvement recommended to the Nuclear industry by a panel assembled from the Nuclear Industry at the request of the NRC. The improvement was rejected by the Nuclear Industry along with another nineteen recommendations for safety improvements. EPR has four of the improvements and AP1000 has none of those improvements. So all of your theoretical use cases are moot points.
Though I think using Nuclear in space is a good idea though - as long as it never comes back here because it will be as hot, radioactive speaking.
Land use is effectively zero for both but the power output per area is very low for solar but nearly unlimited for nuclear.
Utilization for solar is very high and very low for nuclear.
You know BlindSeer, every time I read your posts I think "that BS is amazing".
Thanks for the lols Waffle Iron!
The only rational conclusion is that the world is being run by complete anti-social psychopaths
Sorry, but that is just a populist opinion.
No, it's human nature. Anyone ruthless and power hungry enough will take positions of authority. Ever heard the saying Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The other possible rational conclusion is that things are not as simple as they appear to you. Which do you think is more likely?
I think it is more likely there are legions of people convinced of that. I think it is likely that there are a lot of people invested in the way things are and don't want them to change.
Solar Reserve have some great low externality base load solar power stations. The heat is stored in molten salt and is available when the sun goes down. Base load solar plant like this can be scaled up, I have no affiliation with them however I find their technology interesting.
Coupled with domestic, industrial and commercial P.V there is enough energy in the sun to build power infrastructure. Combined with the terawatts of power available with wind and geothermal does anyone think the oil and coal industry want this technology to be developed and advanced?
I reason that any form of massive dynamic grid will need a lot of intelligence to make the power available where it is needed, which means interesting technological avenues to explore, a massive explosion of information technology and, fortunes to be made as the economy changes. If we can overcome the economic inertia.
None of the criticisms of these technologies ever ask what it would take to build such infrastructures and all of the technologies look like they scale well. We know we can't continue the way we are going because we will die. This is not just about the planet - Save the Humans, the planet will be just fine.
The only rational conclusion is that the world is being run by complete anti-social psychopaths who actually want such an outcome, otherwise it would be done already. The excuses are less and less believable every day.