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[TyrantII]

Would you call the new ones "risk free"?

For the population, sure. They're designed to shut down the reaction without any human input. You literally can't have a meltdown, you have a turn off.

I doubt itll be needed though. Germany and Lockheed are 10 years from building the first fusion plants.

 

[PdotMichael]

For the population, sure. They're designed to shut down the reaction without any human input. You literally can't have a meltdown, you have a turn off.

I doubt itll be needed though. Germany and Lockheed are 10 years from building the first fusion plants.

I just did a short power napping. Woah, didn't know that I was sleeping for 50 years.

 

[Aureon]

It would probably scaled with the square of distance (I'm assuming the mathematics would be similar to difussion equations), but I still get your point.
(I'm here to be pedantic and not really contribute,woo)

When you have water taking in the brunt of the radiation, it's cube - or something like ^2.7 at worst.

Maybe so, but you can't exactly blame me for not taking Tepco's word for it.

No, but i can blame you for just going ahead and assuming they're lying instead of doing a two minute googling about it?
I mean, it's explained why they think it's unrelated. It does make sense.

Oh I think the numerous 30+ year old reactors that are constantly having issues which get downplayed by officials manage that just fine by themselves

As long as media and general idiocy regards shit like TMI as "Incidents", i guess, yeah.

Meanwhile, Banqiao fell.

 

[Nikodemos]

I doubt itll be needed though. Germany and Lockheed are 10 years from building the first fusion plants.

Just like they were for the past 30-odd years.

 

[Dryk]

99.99% of the risk with nuclear power is sociological, if you can find a group of people that can be trusted to handle a nuclear plant you'll never have a problem. Easier said than done though judging from history.

Just like they were for the past 30-odd years.

The real technological breakthrough regarding both fusion and geothermal is the time dilation field that keeps them 30 years away indefinitely

 

[Nikodemos]

99.99% of the risk with nuclear power is sociological, if you can find a group of people that can be trusted to handle a nuclear plant you'll never have a problem. Easier said than done though judging from history.

The main sociological problem facing nuclear power is actually technological. Due to military fuckery and the machinations of Westinghouse and Babcock & Wilcox, for the past 50 years we've been saddled with the shittiest version of nuclear fission: water. All the problems we've had so far with nuclear power plants can be traced down to the single issue of using shitty water-based technology for maintaining and moderating the reaction inside a vessel.

 

[shaowebb]

Can you imagine the stress level of the people in charge of a situation like that?

I work in a power plant. Yes. Yes I can.

The man who chose to ignore orders and keep that seawater coming is a true operator IMO. He'd rather be damned that listen to an order he knows would end in tragedy. Their are lots of people like that in the field. We live in these plants and often see our work and coworkers more than our families. We take all things very personal about the integrity of our equipment and keeping everyone safe. To be in a scenario like Fukushima would be one of those moments where I can say that most of the career people I've seen would turn to steel. Pure work. Pure distilled mechanical problem solving. Everything else shuts off in the tense moments. Folks come together fast and work without ego and with more determination than you'd believe. If you've seen firemen then you've seen plant workers (who by the way ARE their own firemen and emergency medical staff).

The stress hits after its over.

 

[pr0cs]

Terrifying.
Until technology improves I'll never be a fan of nuclear power

 

[meltingparappa]

Terrifying.
Until technology improves I'll never be a fan of nuclear power

Nuclear technology makes huge advancements all the time. A modern reactor would never have the same issues as the Fukushima plant, which was erected in 1971 and overdue for decommission.

As macabre as it is, despite the close call, the plant and nuclear power on the whole is safer than other sources by several orders of magnitude.

 

[shaowebb]

Nuclear technology makes huge advancements all the time. A modern reactor would never have the same issues as the Fukushima plant, which was erected in 1971 and overdue for decommission.

As macabre as it is, despite the close call, the plant and nuclear power on the whole is safer than other sources by several orders of magnitude.

This really. I love Nuclear power. You just dont build them in tsunami zones or on fault lines and you especially never squeeze a dollar by neglecting safety. Thats why nuclear gets a bad rap really...bureaucratic budget garbage in other countries demanding they work at a certain unfeasible low cost. Heck you can actually build in those zones if you LISTEN to the engineers and peer groups on safety about how to protect the equipment and plant. Read up on Chernobyl sometime. You'll grow to hate the idea of folks with "economic majors" telling the folks with Science and Engineering backgrounds how they should be running their plants efficiently. Thats how you ruin a great energy resource's reputation as is the case with Nuclear.

 

[YoungFa]

This really. I love Nuclear power. You just dont build them in tsunami zones or on fault lines and you especially never squeeze a dollar by neglecting safety. Thats why nuclear gets a bad rap really...bureaucratic budget garbage in other countries demanding they work at a certain unfeasible low cost. Heck you can actually build in those zones if you LISTEN to the engineers and peer groups on safety about how to protect the equipment and plant. Read up on Chernobyl sometime. You'll grow to hate the idea of folks with "economic majors" telling the folks with Science and Engineering backgrounds how they should be running their plants efficiently. Thats how you ruin a great energy resource's reputation as is the case with Nuclear.

If youd calculate the exernalities of nuclear power (especially waste management,risk reservers) into the price of the generated power, I doubt it would be economically feasible to build a nuclear power plant. But same goes for the other fossils.

 

[Aureon]

If youd calculate the exernalities of nuclear power (especially waste management,risk reservers) into the price of the generated power, I doubt it would be economically feasible to build a nuclear power plant. But same goes for the other fossils.

It's true for all power generation, to a degree which starts to average back.
Carbon-based is obviously worst case, with global warming as main and pulmonary issues as second.
Dams have a track record that's so hilariously worse than nuclear that i'm just going to say Banqiao and leave it at there.
Intermittent power sources (Wind\Solar) have the issue of being, well, intermittent, which means "unusable as baseload", which basically means you have to build all the generation again as a reliable source for when it's down.*
Nuclear has waste storage, which is actually pretty cheap if you take the reasonable route of burying it all casked, or still pretty cheap if you used a closed fuel cycle which leaves no high-radiation scories (Th plants).
Risk assessment is practically nil if you're counting out Chernobyl - (Fukushima damage is largely inflated by the excessive evac zone, but even fully counting the estimated $105bn bill, it isn't much when you're counting it against 800twh per year, over half a century)
If you're counting chernobyl, it's somewhat more in line with everything else.



An australian think tank put out a report claiming full coverage through desert-solar, canyon-wind and biomass, but iirc it was debunked as unable to scale up\down fast enough. Capacitors are a bitch.

 

[Zaptruder]

It's true for all power generation, to a degree which starts to average back.
Carbon-based is obviously worst case, with global warming as main and pulmonary issues as second.
Dams have a track record that's so hilariously worse than nuclear that i'm just going to say Banqiao and leave it at there.
Intermittent power sources (Wind\Solar) have the issue of being, well, intermittent, which means "unusable as baseload", which basically means you have to build all the generation again as a reliable source for when it's down.*
Nuclear has waste storage, which is actually pretty cheap if you take the reasonable route of burying it all casked, or still pretty cheap if you used a closed fuel cycle which leaves no high-radiation scories (Th plants).
Risk assessment is practically nil if you're counting out Chernobyl - (Fukushima damage is largely inflated by the excessive evac zone, but even fully counting the estimated $105bn bill, it isn't much when you're counting it against 800twh per year, over half a century)
If you're counting chernobyl, it's somewhat more in line with everything else.



An australian think tank put out a report claiming full coverage through desert-solar, canyon-wind and biomass, but iirc it was debunked as unable to scale up\down fast enough. Capacitors are a bitch.

Basically we seem to be going the batteries or bust route right now.

 

[Aureon]

Basically we seem to be going the batteries or bust route right now.

Building enough current-tech batteries (eg. lithium-ion batteries) to get through a night, let alone a worst-case, would cause enough pollution to make coal burning seem like a joke.

Large-scale batteries (Water reservoirs, molten salts, etc) usually are still pretty costly, and have efficiencies around 40%.
Which means 3x overbuilding for what's already the priciest energy tech.

 

[Zaptruder]

Building enough current-tech batteries (eg. lithium-ion batteries) to get through a night, let alone a worst-case, would cause enough pollution to make coal burning seem like a joke.

Large-scale batteries (Water reservoirs, molten salts, etc) usually are still pretty costly, and have efficiencies around 40%.
Which means 3x overbuilding for what's already the priciest energy tech.

This is assuming that economies of scale and technological improvements doesn't apply to battery technology... which of course they do and have been.

Personally, I think the mix will be solar/wind/batteries & fuel conversion systems (to store extra energy that you can't store directly in batteries) & electric grid infrastructure upgrade.

Will probably take the better part of next decade or two to fully flesh out and complete. But that's the kinda time scale you should expect for the scale of work required anyway.

 

[PdotMichael]

It's true for all power generation, to a degree which starts to average back.
Carbon-based is obviously worst case, with global warming as main and pulmonary issues as second.
Dams have a track record that's so hilariously worse than nuclear that i'm just going to say Banqiao and leave it at there.
Intermittent power sources (Wind\Solar) have the issue of being, well, intermittent, which means "unusable as baseload", which basically means you have to build all the generation again as a reliable source for when it's down.*
Nuclear has waste storage, which is actually pretty cheap if you take the reasonable route of burying it all casked, or still pretty cheap if you used a closed fuel cycle which leaves no high-radiation scories (Th plants).
Risk assessment is practically nil if you're counting out Chernobyl - (Fukushima damage is largely inflated by the excessive evac zone, but even fully counting the estimated $105bn bill, it isn't much when you're counting it against 800twh per year, over half a century)
If you're counting chernobyl, it's somewhat more in line with everything else.



An australian think tank put out a report claiming full coverage through desert-solar, canyon-wind and biomass, but iirc it was debunked as unable to scale up\down fast enough. Capacitors are a bitch.

The joke with reneawable energy is that you are moving away form the traditional baseload/peakload categories of energy sources.
Smart grinds, Demand-Side-Management/Demand-Side-Response, local energy sources.

 

[Aureon]

This is assuming that economies of scale and technological improvements doesn't apply to battery technology... which of course they do and have been.

Personally, I think the mix will be solar/wind/batteries & fuel conversion systems (to store extra energy that you can't store directly in batteries) & electric grid infrastructure upgrade.

Will probably take the better part of next decade or two to fully flesh out and complete. But that's the kinda time scale you should expect for the scale of work required anyway.

The joke with reneawable energy is that you are moving away form the traditional baseload/peakload categories of energy sources.
Smart grinds, Demand-Side-Management/Demand-Side-Response, local energy sources.

What?
We've been trying to build proper batteries for decades. It's not a new field, it doesn't get massive exponential improvements out of thin air.
The technology you're talking about just doesn't exist. "Smart Grid" is already there, especially in europe.
"Fuel conversion systems" aren't a thing. Thermodynamics doesn't really allow you to go from mechanical\electrical energy to chemical energy efficiently. Hydrogen cells are a thing, a thing with 40% efficiency in large facilities and 17-22% efficiency for cars.

"We'll solve the battery issue and <buzzword>" is exactly like saying "We're going to have fusion anyway!" - No, we don't, not fast enough.

 

[PdotMichael]

Why do you talk about batteries? No one cares about batteries in that context.

 

[Zaptruder]

What?
We've been trying to build proper batteries for decades. It's not a new field, it doesn't get massive exponential improvements out of thin air.
The technology you're talking about just doesn't exist. "Smart Grid" is already there, especially in europe.
"Fuel conversion systems" aren't a thing. Thermodynamics doesn't really allow you to go from mechanicalelectrical energy to chemical energy efficiently. Hydrogen cells are a thing, a thing with 40% efficiency in large facilities and 17-22% efficiency for cars.

"We'll solve the battery issue and <buzzword>" is exactly like saying "We're going to have fusion anyway!" - No, we don't, not fast enough.

Of course the gains arent overnight. But theyre also not linear. Technologies reach tipping points in terms of technological and economic viability which helps to accelerate growth deployment and cost of manufacturing.

Liion gaining 5 to 7 percent efficiency each year is still an exponential gain. Just of a low exponent.

An additional 10 years if development will make solar and battery economically viable in a large proportion of the developed world. I mean it already makes some economic sense now of youre ok with pay off in the 10 year range.

And this also applies to the other battery tech vectors.

 

[Deleted member 80556]

Wish they talked about what's done differently now and what new precautions are set in place to prevent this from occurring again.

Isn't it illegal since Abe made it that every nuclear detail is a state secret? I might be wrong.

Nuclear has waste storage, which is actually pretty cheap if you take the reasonable route of burying it all casked, or still pretty cheap if you used a closed fuel cycle which leaves no high-radiation scories (Th plants).

I actually want to learn more about this. Why isn't this done more, is it because the tech would be one step away from weaponization?

Where can I read more about this?

 

[Aureon]

Why do you talk about batteries? No one cares about batteries in that context.

Even if you had a world grid (And that's not happening), what powers the world when the sun is over the pacific?

Of course the gains arent overnight. But theyre also not linear. Technologies reach tipping points in terms of technological and economic viability which helps to accelerate growth deployment and cost of manufacturing.

Liion gaining 5 to 7 percent efficiency each year is still an exponential gain. Just of a low exponent.

An additional 10 years if development will make solar and battery economically viable in a large proportion of the developed world. I mean it already makes some economic sense now of youre ok with pay off in the 10 year range.

And this also applies to the other battery tech vectors.

The issue is that li-ion isn't going to provide grid-grade energy storage.
Li-ion batteries generally last roughly 500 cycles, need rare metals, and are very polluting both to produce and dispose.
You can power cars with those, not grids.

Isn't it illegal since Abe made it that every nuclear detail is a state secret? I might be wrong.



I actually want to learn more about this. Why isn't this done more, is it because the tech would be one step away from weaponization?

Where can I read more about this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle

It's a bit more costly, and the repro process entails pu-235 and u-233, which if pure enough, can be bomb material, and the fuel cycle is pretty tight - requiring much more frequent refuels.

 

[Oriel]

Terrifying.
Until technology improves I'll never be a fan of nuclear power

Modern nuclear reactors are a world away from the likes of Three Mile Island, Windscale, Chernobyl and Fukushima. Hell even the last one had to contend with an earthquake and tsunami and still held up relatively well. Unlike others the Tohoku disaster only strengthened my support for nuclear power.

 

[Zaptruder]

The issue is that li-ion isn't going to provide grid-grade energy storage.
Li-ion batteries generally last roughly 500 cycles, need rare metals, and are very polluting both to produce and dispose.
You can power cars with those, not grids.

There's a lot of misinformation here... I'm at work, so I don't have the time to debunk it.

But if you're interested in the potential for Li-ion battery tech, then best to watch a lecture from the main guy at Tesla working on the stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWSox7mLbyE

Not to say that it's going to be a sure fire thing... but the potential for it looks far better than the standard talking points allow for.

 

[PdotMichael]

Even if you had a world grid (And that's not happening), what powers the world when the sun is over the pacific?

You mean at night when wind energy produce so much energy that countries like Germany are selling it for free just to get rid of the energy?

 

[Deleted member 80556]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle

It's a bit more costly, and the repro process entails pu-235 and u-233, which if pure enough, can be bomb material, and the fuel cycle is pretty tight - requiring much more frequent refuels.

Thanks for the reply!

 

[Aureon]

You mean at night when wind energy produce so much energy that countries like Germany are selling it for free just to get rid of the energy?

?

Also, it's not that "There's so much wind". It's that you can't turn off baseload plants on a whim, so if baseload is covering the entirety of the demand, and you don't have the time to turn off the baseload, further production is useless - and that's what causes negative prices.

There's a lot of misinformation here... I'm at work, so I don't have the time to debunk it.

But if you're interested in the potential for Li-ion battery tech, then best to watch a lecture from the main guy at Tesla working on the stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWSox7mLbyE

Not to say that it's going to be a sure fire thing... but the potential for it looks far better than the standard talking points allow for.

Yes, because we're all trusting a company that has an enormous vested interest in that area saying "Any day now" (two years ago).
I mean, if Tesla manages to work it out, great - but that's the same space as "If Fusion comes along". Bit more likely, but it's not there and there's no proof it'll be there anytime soon.

 

[PdotMichael]

Germany had 9 days with a negative energy price in 2014 and more than 20 days with a negative energy price last year.
A result of solar energy in the summer months and wind energy at night.

Renewable energy render baseload energy plants obsolete - what we need aren't nuclear energy which are just usuable for baseload and one would need several other types of energy plants anyway, but plants for midload/peak energy which can run for a few hours every day.

 

[Aureon]

Germany had 9 days with a negative energy price in 2014 and more than 20 days with a negative energy price last year.
A result of solar energy in the summer months and wind energy at night.

Which is exactly why i'm saying we're going to need better batteries for that. They're already causing problems at low penetrations.

Renewable energy render baseload energy plants obsolete - what we need aren't nuclear energy which are just usuable for baseload and one would need several other types of energy plants anyway, but plants for midload/peak energy which can run for a few hours every day.

So, you'd rather build carbon than build nuclear?
Because peaking plants are gas-fired, or diesel-fired.
Also, wind gives very little time warning. You don't need midload (which, by the way, new generation nuclear is, since it's modulabe) but full on peaking, which is as above.

 

[Zaptruder]

Yes, because we're all trusting a company that has an enormous vested interest in that area saying "Any day now" (two years ago).
I mean, if Tesla manages to work it out, great - but that's the same space as "If Fusion comes along". Bit more likely, but it's not there and there's no proof it'll be there anytime soon.

Well, I'd certainly put more trust in JB Straubel's prognostication on the issue than your own.

Consider that they're putting their money where their mouths are... and that if they really believed what they were peddling, they'd still be acting in this manner (i.e. making heavy investments into the technology).

So, sure apply skepticism, but try not to be cynical about it. Also, he's far from the only figure in the broader technology/energy industry that is cautiously-modestly optimistic about battery tech as part of the primary energy paradigm within a reasonable time frame. You've got players with various energy substrates (beyond li-ion), and guys like Bill Gates also harping on about the potential of battery.

 

[Hibiki Kurosawa]

Yikes! I'm so glad it didn't come to that. Scary to think that could happen though.

 

[PdotMichael]

Which is exactly why i'm saying we're going to need better batteries for that. They're already causing problems at low penetrations.



So, you'd rather build carbon than build nuclear?
Because peaking plants are gas-fired, or diesel-fired.
Also, wind gives very little time warning. You don't need midload (which, by the way, new generation nuclear is, since it's modulabe) but full on peaking, which is as above.

You would need them anyway even with embracing full nuclear energy for your mid and peakload needs - even more than with wind and solar energy.

And they are just your backup with renewable energy as main source.

 

[bodyboarder]

He admitted “regret” at his decision not to publish results from a computer system called Speedi, System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information, which accurately forecast the spread of radioactivity around the plant and could have saved thousands of local residents from exposure.

“As a result, some areas were exposed to high levels of radiation,” he said.

Regret isn't quite strong enough for what he did.