when solar power is being held down by political and economic interests
>surface needed covered by solar panels to power marked area
Wow it looks so small on the picture!
I hate the world, people suck! #groanzone
>>6603521
>divide square in many little ones
>distribute around globe
>profit
>>6603525
>distribute around globe
Then it wouldn't be in an equatorial desert, where solar power is actually practical.
>>6603520
And then you become aware of what is required to transport that electricity everywhere else.
>>6603520
I don't think you are anywhere close to grasping the scale of that red square, OP.
better map
>That square seems small
>Realize that you could power the world with nuclear reactors that take up not even 1% of that space
>They can be anywhere in the world
Fuck people who are just inherently afraid of the word "nuclear"
>>6603550
>what is politics
>what is nuclear wast disposal
>what are earthquakes
I'd like to see a similar map for nuclear power plants.
It would almost be worth the effort to build these just to appeal to environmentalist retards while the rest of the world ushers into the age of LFTRs.
>>6603520
Its funny that this picture was meant to show that solar is feasable, but really did the exact opposite.
Look how absolutely large that box is. Around half the size of france. Do you really think anyone has the amount of resources necessary to cover that area in solar panels? Also that picture doesn't even show what type of solar panels are being used, because they vary on how much energy they produce.
What we need is nuclear and fision. Hopefully thorium will become viable as well soon so that way we won't have any nuclear waste. (Combined with other systems of course)
>>6603560
Earthquakes are not that big of a deal. We can design for them.
>>6603560
>>what are earthquakes
>implying that there wasn't an earthquake in Japan in 2011
>and a tsunami
>implying that any Japanese citizens received harmful doses of radiation
>implying that current leakage isn't sufficiently contained
>implying that the radioactivity in the ocean won't diffuse to below background levels
>implying that Fukushima was even a disaster at all
>not realizing that the damages done by the earthquake and tsunami themselves were infinitely worse
>believing the media's anti-nuclear propaganda
>>what is nuclear wast disposal
>mfw you think nuclear plants generate "wast"
>>6603590
>environmentalist retards
Yeah, fuck the environment! (What?)
>>6603602
>Look how absolutely large that box is. Around half the size of france. Do you really think anyone has the amount of resources necessary to cover that area in solar panels?
They wouldn't have to all be in one place, I guess.
I suppose you could spread that amount of panels out over the globe.
I think the point was how that's a relatively small area compared to its power output.
However, I agree with your larger point.
>>6603657
They COULDN'T be all in the same place
they need to be able to deliver the electricity generated as well.
Nuclear power (fission chain reactions) is completely natural, just as natural as solar power.
Look, it happens underground naturally:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor
Most solar panels of any reasonable efficiency tend to require all kinds of rare elements. Are there even enough resources to cover an area that large with panels?
Hello solar power believers. I have come to introduce mr. Cloud to you. Mr. Cloud doesn't like solar power very much...
>>6603699
seawater extraction?
>>6603723
Put the solar panels on top of the clouds and use lightning bolts to put the electricity on the ground.
Please fund my solar clouds project on indiegogo :)
>>6603645
children cancer rates have already raised. some workers did receive heavy doses and are suffering very bad atm. another heavy earthquake will definitely spill and set loose much more of the radioactive material. there is a measureable loss in Japan's national product again after putting the whole county area into quarantine. the cooling water is a problem that grows and grows.
>>6603725
But seriously, what if we put solar panels on top of balloons and then beam the power back using microwave transmission?
how much surface area does every human city cover? because that big red square looks like it would be significant percentage of the entirety of human construction in and of itself if it was built and entirely covered in solar panels. I mean a just poorly eyeballing it it looks like the surface area of Portugal in solar panels. Where is all the material for that going to come from? Who's going to own it? Will children grow up in the sea of panels, raised to maintain them, knowing nothing else?
>>6603699
in the whole solar system?
>>6603747
The efficiency gain by putting the solar panels above the obstruction is then completely lost when you send the energy THROUGH the obstruction in a way that interacts even more with water vapour.
This is without mentioning the increased cost of maintaining balloon mounted solar powered microwave cannons.
Panels on the ground wired in are much cheaper and more efficient even given losses to cloud cover, they are also a LOT easier to maintain.
>>6603798
Ok, instead of microwave transmission what if we just tethered the balloons with extremely long cables?
>>6603787
I think if we've reached the stage where we're harvesting materials from asteroids, we'll probably leave the panels in orbit rather than looking into how much space they'll take up down here.
>>6603534
>this
>photovoltaics
Nobody seems to mention their horrendously rare materials and their hilariously toxic manufacturing processes.
Just use CSP. More efficient, doesn't require nearly as many rare metals, and doesn't end up poisoning the very earth itself. That and CSP has achieved the best solar-to-electricity efficiency in the world.
>>6603520
Is this marked to energy that hits the surface of the Earth or to the scale of current solar absorption efficiency?
>>6604405
> horrendously rare materials
I guess you're referring to the tellurium in CdTe panels or the Indium in CIS/CIGS panels. Those are both about as rare as platinum, and we use that in every car's catalytic converter and many other places. There are also ways to make solar panels which don't require rare materials, such as amorphous silicon.
> hilariously toxic manufacturing processes.
There's chemicals that will melt your face off in paper and pillow factories.
>>6604406
Current solar absorption efficiency.
>>6604422
Well, as much fun as watching /sci/ nerds try to figure out economic viability is, I think I'm gonna go invest in solar and get to upgrading.
>>6603725
why not use solar roadways that would be a genius idea. and then we can have cool LED everywhere...
![stg_031324[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/787jkdS.jpg "stg_031324[1].jpg")
solar panels are neet but, as good as they are, the turnover for advancement and replacement will probably end up being exponential and hard to keep up with.
what I think should be invested in, at least in very sunny countries, is this motherfucker. A ton of mirrors directing light at a tower that uses the radiation(I think some are boilers, some are just heat energy) for energy.
>>6604440
I believe they're called solar condensers.
We used them for one of my design classes.
>>6604440
>the simulated radiation of 1000+ suns
how would, whatever it is, not melt?
>>6603810
Patent it
what do you gentlemen think about solar natural gas combined plants? I think they are a great way to solve the intermittency problem while using a cheap and abundant (for now) resource
>>6603578
The nuclear plants are the blue squares
>>6603657
> I suppose you could spread that amount of panels out over the globe.
Like on roads?
But seriously though, I think solar panels on residential/commercial/industrial rooftops (or property they own) are a good idea to help generate "free and clean" energy... but they need to have the backing of nuclear power plants. That way the nuclear plants don't have to put in as much work because solar can help out during the day.
New/efficient nuclear + new/efficient solar = perfection?
>spread solar panels around africa (not like theres anything in the way)
>every nation contributes an equal amount to fund it
>set up all the power storage/distribution shit
>educate niggers
>train niggers to fix broken panels and operate grid
>energy problem solved
>africa stops being a shithole
>everyone lives happily ever after
>>6604543
That's pretty much the goal. Basically the only people pushing for solar-only schemes are Luddites that fear nuclear power because "muh radiation", and PV cell companies.
>>6603560
cause earthquakes are gonna hunt your nuclear reactors down right :^)
god i hate greenfags, they complain about emissions, but fucking hate nuclear, and actually have ramped up emissions by banning nuclear (japan, germany, etc)
dumbest fucks on the planet bar none
>>6604552
>train niggers to fix broken panels and operate grid
u fugged it up there m8
chances are they'd destroy everything
>>6604457
dude, it heating shit to all fuck is sort of what they're counting on.
>>6603748
You could put every human being on the planet into that red square and space them about 5 meters apart.
Assuming that square is about 400km on a side,
sqrt( 400 * 400 *1000 *1000 /7e9)=4.79 meters
>>6603550
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield#Radiological_releases
> The Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR Convention) reports an estimated 200 kilograms (441 lb) of plutonium has been deposited in the marine sediments of the Irish Sea
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Toxicity
>Cohen's own estimate is that a dose of 200 micrograms would likely be necessary to cause cancer
>200,000,000,000 micrograms / 200 = 1,000,000,000 cancer-causing doses.
Enjoy your tumors.
>>6603520
Taking the best Solar Panel lifetime expectancy, you'll have to cover this area with Solar Panels every 40 years, over and over and over again.
>>6604543
What if we put Savonius wind turbines on the roofs and then put solar panels on top of them? Power in windy days baby.
>>6604592
Spread across an area how big?
>>6604592
200 metric tonnes of plutonium came from where?
>>6604614
>Spread across an area how big?
>http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/294164/Irish-Sea
>Its total area is approximately 40,000 square miles (100,000 square km)
>1,000,000,000 / 100,000 = 10,000 cancer-causing doses per square km.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction#Ongoing_Holocene_extinction
>One scientist estimates the current extinction rate may be 10,000 times the background extinction rate. Nevertheless most scientists predict a much lower extinction rate than this outlying estimate
>One scientist estimates the current extinction rate may be 10,000 times the background extinction rate. Nevertheless most scientists predict a much lower extinction rate than this outlying estimate
>In The Future of Life (2002), E.O. Wilson of Harvard calculated that, if the current rate of human disruption of the biosphere continues, one-half of Earth's higher lifeforms will be extinct by 2100. A 1998 poll conducted by the American Museum of Natural History found that seventy percent of biologists believe that we are in the midst of an anthropogenic extinction.[30] Numerous scientific studies—such as a 2004 report published in Nature,[31] and papers authored by the 10,000 scientists who contribute to the IUCN's annual Red List of threatened species—have since reinforced this conviction
I'm sure it's just a coincidence.
>>6604630
Nuclear reactors.
>http://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/plutonium-watch-tracking-plutonium-inventories/
>At the end of 2003, there were about 1,855 tonnes (metric tons) of plutonium in the world in 35 countries
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Physical_properties
>With a half-life of 24,100 years
That's 9,275,000,000,000 cancer-casing doses. Will we be here 24,100 years from now to literally keep a lid on it?
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant#2014_incidents
>Later, trace amounts of airborne radiation consisting of americium and plutonium particles were discovered above ground, a half mile from the facility
I hope we are.
>>6604630
Fission turns Uranium into Plutonium. That's what happens in Uranium reactors. Once cores have too much plutonium in them they are sent to nuclear reprocessing plants like Sellafield. These plants separate the plutonium from the uranium then ship the uranium back. Plutonium has uses for weapons and thermal-neutron reactors, but England had a lot more of the stuff than they knew what to do with, so Sellafield had a lot in storage, and did a really shit job at keeping it from washing into the sea.
>>6603520
you also need to store and transport that energy. also, making PV panels isn't so simple, and it requires energy, which mean, contamination, you know...
things are usually not so simple
>>6603645
>implying some japanese guy couldn't and didn't collect some radioactive water in a jar
>>6604656
> Fission turns Uranium into Plutonium.
no
>>6604536
Now mark the nuclear plant exclusion zones.
>>6604699
U238 -> U239 -> Np239 -> Pu239.
It's a significant secondary reaction.
...But then of course Pu239 absorbs a neutron and immediately fissions, so there is no accumulation of plutonium.
Hey hey stop sci. What did you mean by "nuclear plants produce no wast"?
>>6604702
Fission means it's dropping neutrons right?
>>6604704
No, this is "dropping" neutrons:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2002/jan/17/neutrons-reveal-quantum-effects-of-gravity
>>6603520
[citation needed]
>>6604602
>solar is great, but muh night-time batteries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy#Molten_salt_storage
more data for the debate:
>>6604147
>>6604439
Let's put the solar panels on planes or zeppelins that use the power to keep flying higher and higher and then power a giant turbine on the ground by using the force of the crash. Kickstarter?
Are you retarded it would tae half of the landmass of the u.s covered in solar panels to power the other half
>>6604738
Depends on efficiency.
Source?
>>6604701
The resolution of the map isn't fine enough for any from civilian plants. Even Chernobyl would be a single pixel.
At best, you'd be able to show the exclusion zones along the Techa from the Kyshtym accident and the general operation of Chelyabinsk in the 50s and 60s but the Soviets were just dumping even high level waste straight in the river.
These things are pretty stupid, transporting electricity is extremely fucking expensive. If you use solar power only, then on cloudy days or in winter you get no power, or you can pay even more to store it, batteries are much more expensive than main power.
Looking at the Australian requirement, that area is about 60% of the size of tazmania (the island below the main continent) which is 68,401 km^2 so approximately 40,000 km^2. Cost estimates are $100 per square meter (which is excluding everything else like the new transport and infrastructure, the power transformer system that the solar cells fuel) so a heavily understated estimate is 100*40000*1000^2=4e12 = 4 trillion, more than the 1.5 trillion yearly gdp of australia.
>>6604809
I don't get why Australia doesn't just build giant reactors over uranium mines, do all the reprocessing on site and dump the waste back down there. They could use the power to make HC fuels and become a major petroleum exporter and perhaps even do some desalination to make the desert green (I think this was in a Thunderbirds episode).
Has grid level storage even been mentioned yet? Grid level storage is what kills all intermittent power sources as it is huge, expensive and uses lots of toxic materials.
>>6603725
>>6603747
You guys are hilarious
>>6604592
>I have no understanding of concentration, like literally none. - You
>>6604876
he's just a rabble rouser and a trickster
>>6604810
>Australia doesn't just build giant reactors over uranium mines
Well that should be obviously stupid, but we do have vast uninhabited deserts (with no earthquakes) that no one is ever going to live of that we could dump all the waste of the world. But our people are really stupid because nuclear power shares a word with nuclear bombs.
>>6603725
someone explain to me why this wouldn't work
If you installed solar panels as floor tiles in every room that is illuminated, you'd have enough energy to power the world, 10 times.
>>6604924
Clouds are really fragile, planes move too fast to land on them and helicopters blow them away. The only way to do it would be with a large crane but you'd have to hope the clouds moved near it.
>>6604928
That's dangerous, a lot of people use CFL bulbs which produce 100W of light for 20W, you'd get 80 extra Watts, scale that up to the entire globe and it would be like a hiroshima bomb per football field area. Needless to say, this would be too much energy.
>>6603532
what if we put it on the roads?
>>6603520
Were will you get power at night?
>>6604405
Photvoltaics can be made from silicon, the most common element in the earth's crust.
>>6604953
They're not just made from silicon, it's the dopants and the chemicals needed for fabrication that are the problem, both in sourcing them and in the waste their production generates.
>>6604949
it's at the equator, so the sun is always shining on it
>>6604943
That's what Big Oil wants you to think.
>>6604957
>0/10
>>6604959
Those bastards.
>>6603534
so what? at least we would stop burning oil, gas or coal that ruins our home planet!
>>6604954
I'm pretty sure concentrated solar doesn't have the raw material issues of photovoltaics. Though, I'm not exactly sure how practical it is to put large numbers of steam based power plants in a desert.
>>6604592
radioactive material has naturally been around us forever, we just mine it and use it in fission reactors
>>6604729
you don't accelerate forever in a free fall, not even in classical physics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_velocity
>>6603657
>worse
But it's not a relatively small area compared to output, that's the point. That red square is huge compared to the footprint of all our current dirty power plants. It would take enormous resources to build a solar farm that big. It is a relatively HUGE area compared to many other types of power generators.
>>6605078
wat m8 he never said anything about that
>>6605078
In a "true" freefall, the only force acting on you is gravity. So you do accelerate forever.
>>6604876
You're missing the point. 441lbs of plutonium exists across the Irish Sea. That's 10,000 cancer-causing doses (Using pro-nuke dose sources) per square kilometer.
Not all of it will wind up in a living organism and cause cancer, but to deny that the plutonium deposited will kill living beings - especially humans who tend to exist at the top of the food chain - is delusion.
Call me ignorant all you want, I'm presenting actual numbers, and your fright at them is what's motivating your emotional reaction.
>>6604879
Whatever you need to tell yourself to get to sleep at night.
>>6605073
>radioactive material has naturally been around us forever
Plutonium 239 is found at concentrations of parts per trillion in nature. It's decay product, Pu-244, is found at slightly higher concentrations I would imagine.
441lbs of plutonium in the Irish Sea is orders of magnitude higher in concentration then anything nature has ever produced. It will have negative effects on life, until life evolves to deal with the higher quantities of radioactive particles.
When I look at what humans are doing with radioactive elements, I'm reminded of what the cyanobacteria did with oxygen. It didn't mean the end of life, in fact life wound up more complex then ever, but it wasn't good news for the cyanobacteria.
1. Solar thermal collector (evacuated flat plate, Low viscosity mineral oil as coolant)
2. Insulated thermal mass. (Water, cement, brick, iron, etc)
3. Absorption Chiller
4. Cold thermal mass (Ice, Wax, Cement, etc)
5. Stirling engine.
(Hot water, Space heating, Refrigeration, Air conditioning, Electricity)
>>6604957
>>6603520
Yeah, but here's the problem - solar panels are fucking expensive. In Germany, where they're doing anything but keeping solar down - putting massive subsidies on it, in fact - solar costs about $2.50 a watt to build. To power the whole planet with solar would thus require $37.5 trillion - or half of the entire planet's GDP.
(Note that "about $2.50 a watt" holds true for solar thermal as well, and solar thermal can handle energy storage- the ability to deliver a reliable baseline is the big issue of solar, and thermal storage solves that - , so that's probably about the real cost of converting the globe over to solar)
>>6607859
(Note that $2.50 includes things like installation costs, inverters, racks, wiring ... the actual cost of the panels themselves is much less, but the panels aren't the only component to the cost of building a solar plant)
>>6607322
A lot worse, actually; power transmission infrastructure is a lot more demanding, material and industry wise, than communications infrastructure.
>>6607322
Similar, but a lot more difficult. Overground high-voltage power lines are in the 100,000s of dollars per mile (And underground lines in the millions), but fiber-optic is just $30,000 per mile.
GUYS!
Could someone make a picture like this but with nuclear power plants? The are would be much much smaller, and I want a picture to taunt green solarfags with.
(pls like and upvote if you like my epic idea xD)
I don't think you realise how big that really is
>>6609877
you wouldn't even see it on the map. And it would be much cheaper than all those solar panels. And it runs at night. and works just as well all across the world.
seriously what do these guys have against nuclear?
>>6609891
See also: Chernobyl and Fukushima, each one of which was a "fluke" that could "never possibly happen again."
>>6609898
Both also were bad designed and administrated.
>>6609898
I hate it when people bring up Fukushima as a serious health threat (0 deaths - source: WHO) when almost 20.000 people died as a result of the earthquake and tsunami that caused the malfunction.
>>6603548
Yeah unless we find efficient energy storage techniques, this is retarded.
What's also funny is that these kind of maps exist only because people realized that it would take a huge surface to power the world on solar so they decided to slap it on a world map to make it look small. We wouldn't even be able to see how much space is needed on the world map with nuclear reactors.
>>6604718
I'd rather use molten salts in LFTRs
>>6609898
That's true though. Chernobyl didn't happen again, and Fukushima showed to everyone the necessity of earthquake-proof designs. It will never happen again.
>>6610494
These are much, much cheaper, less corrosive molten salts.
The LFTR molten salt would be made of fluorine, beryllium, and isotopically-tailored lithium. These ingredients range from costly to stupidly costly. And they're not chosen for making the salt easy to handle (and thereby making it possible to build long-lived, low-maintenance pipes and fittings for the highly radioactive and difficult to repair reactor core), but for their nuclear properties and their ability together to dissolve nearly anything.
Molten salt for solar thermal storage is generally a mix of cheap nitrates which are relatively easy to handle.
>>6607859
Yeah, but here's the problem - solar panels are fucking expensive. In Germany, where they're doing anything but keeping solar down - putting massive subsidies on it, in fact - solar costs about $2.50 a watt to build. To power the whole planet with solar would thus require $37.5 trillion - or half of the entire planet's GDP.
(Note that "about $2.50 a watt" holds true for solar thermal as well, and solar thermal can handle energy storage- the ability to deliver a reliable baseline is the big issue of solar, and thermal storage solves that - , so that's probably about the real cost of converting the globe over to solar)
Gosh... so economics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_future_GDP_(PPP)_estimates
Look, the fact is that we need zero-carbon power or the ice that keeps this planet comfortable is going to go away.
I love it how people will leap to defend the status quo even though it is stealing their future.
The interests of everyone invested in the way things are vs. everyone else, and all other living things.
They'll defend their investments beyond any logic or rationality. Its the younger generations against older generations. They have all the wealth and power- and they are using it to influence the younger generations to keep their investments safe- don't be fooled.
Their investments aren't your investments- they buy the allegiance of the STEM crowd because they hold the purse strings. STEM graduates are being seduced by the dark side of personal financial gain at the naked expense of everything else. Its not a secret, and most of the STEM types reading this board are in the employ of these old paradigm organizations or someday will be.
Th Its a new paradigm of how we survive andthrive on this planet vs.
>>6610532
Dark side = oil, fossil fuels = no future
You get the picture
>>6603532
the equator, get this, circles the entire world.
also everywhere but the UK and similar environments will have sufficient suitable locations for solar.
>>6610467
>I hate it when people bring up Fukushima as a serious health threat (0 deaths
...
The wind steadily blew the fallout straight out to one of the emptiest patches of ocean on the planet. The Japanese government promptly and permanently evacuated hundreds of square miles of habitable land while that wind was blowing.
Fukushima didn't demonstrate anything positive about nuclear power safety. It had potential to kill millions of people, that was largely averted by good luck with the weather, and still would have killed thousands if not for the extreme and highly competent measures taken to protect the nearby population.
>>6610467
the thing about radiation is it causes a general reduction in health, rather than instant, easily countable deaths. Chernobyl region is still dealing with birth defects, including stillbirths, undoubtedly consequent of the Chernobyl incident. Japan now will as well. and wherever the cloud falls/fell. and it will affect all animals, not just humans, and those effects will carry up the food chain.
>>6610551
>the thing about radiation is it causes people with no formal knowledge of radiation or its biological effects to start claim their opinion is fact
fixed
>>6603548
>Half a dozen nuclear plants would eliminate my country's need for unclean power
>B-but money
>B-but nuclear is DANGEROUS
>>6610542
>It had potential to kill millions of people
no
not even in the worst scneario imaginable these numbers would be possible, not even cancer deaths included.
>>6603548
are these jokes?
>>6603548
>it's fuckhuge but it's still only 1/18 of the desert so it's not so bad
the fuck. not to mention these panels wouldn't last 50 years.
If something is dangerous, the solution is not to stop using it. It's to make sure we are using it in as safe a way as possible.
>>6610535
Was that even engrish?
>>6604583
you might want to check your math there, buddy.
Each person on earth has a square that's 5m^2 in area. not spaced 5 meters apart.
>lrn2units
>>6610580
>not even in the worst scneario imaginable these numbers would be possible
The wind could have blown the fallout down the length of Japan, the weather could have trapped it between the ocean and the mountains.
It may have settled over the Greater Tokyo Area and even the Kyoto area, and contaminated an area inhabited by over 50 million people. That's the worst case scenario. It certainly could have killed milions of people. Remember that most of the nastiest stuff decays in the first few weeks, so we're not hearing much about it, since it blew out to sea in this case, where it could decay harmlessly.
Permanent evacuation of Tokyo would destroy Japan's economy, and probably involve no little loss of life among the infirm. Failure to evacuate under such circumstances would result in a high fatality rate even among the young and healthy.
Even with the highly favorable weather, 300,000 people were permanently displaced by this incident. They didn't just lose their homes, they lost the land the homes were built on so they couldn't rebuild. And that basically worked out as well as it possibly could have, with the weather and the government response. Don't wave the fucking "nuclear is safe!" flag when talking about Fukushima.
>not even cancer deaths included
I can't believe you'd say, "not even cancer" as if cancer is some minor afterthought.
>>6610522
>To power the whole planet with solar would thus require $37.5 trillion - or half of the entire planet's GDP
Something to keep in mind is that the world's GDP is growing.
Just wanted to put that cost into long-term perspective.
>>6610542
>The wind steadily blew the fallout straight out to one of the emptiest patches of ocean on the planet
I have a friend that doesn't seem to understand this. For some reason, it doesn't make sense to him that even if the cores blew up into the sky, plutonium (The element he always mentions) is 19 times heavier then water, and has a melting temperature so high that it's instantly going to turn into a solid and fall down to the lowest point it can reach.
What does that mean for a hypothetical cloud of MOX fuel spewed out over the pacific? It's going to go directly to the bottom of the ocean.
I'd like to see a chart where they compare these sizes to the land usage for agriculture, for specific crops, for roads, for mowed grass, for sidewalks, for buildings, etc.
Because people use a lot of land. Drawing a square on a map just provokes arguments between people who have no sense of scale or of how much land we're currently using for other things.
>>6610580
200 micrograms of plutonium is enough to give you cancer. Fukushima contained about 1,600 tonnes of MOX fuel. At 1.5% concentration, that's 16,000kg of Plutonium which was stored at Fukushima.
Let's say 1% of that 16,000kg was released. That's 160kg. 160kg is 160,000,000,000 micrograms. That's 800,000,000 cancer-causing doses, leaked into the pacific.
The sole and only reason it didn't kill anyone was that whatever it did release went straight to the bottom of the ocean. Everyone's gotten upset over TEPCO allowing radioactive particles to leak into the pacific, but it's really the best solution.
How long can we keep doing this before the soil, water, and other sinks concentrate these deadly elements to the point where it's an issue? Recently, there were accidents at the WIPP that released detectable levels of various nuclear wastes. We can't keep the lid on, in other words.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Legacy_waste
>"millions of gallons of radioactive waste", "thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel and material", "huge quantities of contaminated soil and water."
>"31 million pounds of uranium product", "2.5 billion pounds of waste", "2.75 million cubic yards of contaminated soil and debris", and a "223 acre portion of the underlying Great Miami Aquifer had uranium levels above drinking standards."
This isn't safe in the long term. Recycling the waste doesn't get rid of it, it just moves it around and transmutes it. At some point, sooner being more likely then later, all of this stuff will leak into the environment without any control. Until it settles back into the Earth where we found it, it'll be degrading everything it touches.
i made a lightning receiving generator in my back yard and i've stopped all my electrical payments because i can live off of my own generator why cant the governmetn stop lying to us about illominaty and just give everyone free electricity i can show you schematics on how to make your own electricity through lightning if any of you are interesting
>>6610699
Plutonium can dissolve in sea water, and fine dust of just about anything can carry a long way in the air.
But when this stuff gets blown far out to sea, it should be dilute enough to not cause any harm. Consistently dumping it to one area (such as the waste dumping previously practiced by France and the UK, which received considerable media attention), however, can create a dangerous local concentration.
We could increase the general ocean concentrations of dangerous radioisotopes to harmful levels, but not with these sorts of rare accidents.
>>6610694
nuclear is safe and you're an idiot.
We could all die in two hours from an unknown NEO hitting us. Won't happen.
Fukushima could've killed everyone that entered the broken containment vessel and started eating pieces of the fuel rods. Didn't happen.
Fallout blowing in over tokyo could've killed people due to PANIC and that's about it. Tokyo is 300 kilometers away and the reactor did not explode into an open burning pit of graphite like chernobyl did, the atmospheric disperion was tiny and in terms of direct bodily harm from radiation it would at worst produce some minute increase in certain cancers and that would've been it.
I actually kind of like the idea of using nuclear and solar together.
With high-efficiency reactors, such as fission-fragment reactors, we could get maybe three times as much energy out of the same fuel, and at the same time separate the harmful radioisotopes by physical, rather than chemical, means.
Subcritical fission fragment reactors could not only be highly responsive to load (they don't run hot, and don't need careful criticality management, so they can be throttled as rapidly as hydro power), but the neutron source driving them could be used to promptly destroy the most harmful waste.
Excess power during peak sunlight hours and seasons could be used to run the waste-destroying accelerator, with the reactor deactivated (such as by inserting control rods).
It's not physically necessary for nuclear reactors to produce long-lived waste. It is merely a flaw of their present design that they fail to destroy all of their harmful products, and keep the inventory of dangerous radioisotopes low enough to make waste release non-catastrophic.
>>6610752
>Fallout blowing in over tokyo could've killed people due to PANIC and that's about it.
Good lord. You can't actually believe this stuff.
I can't believe how kooky the pro-nuclear crowd on /sci/ gets.
>>6610728
>fine dust of just about anything can carry a long way in the air.
The plutonium dust cancer experiments frustrated the researchers to no end because it was extremely fucking hard to produce inhalable airborne plutonium dust.
The point is it's like saying water bottles are lethal dangers because when frozen and dropped with laser guidance from fighter jets they will kill everyone they hit with 100% certainty.
I bought a Solar USB charger online and it works great! Even when it's cloudy I can still charge any USB device fine, in addition, it also serves as a backup battery, so consistent sunlight is not needed (the battery will output 5 volts regardless)
I don't understand all this hate for solar energy, I just charged my smartphone for free using just the sun and nothing else, feels free man, I don't feel tied to an electric grid as much anymore
>>6610761
I can't believe how afraid people are from muh radiations.
Do you have a source that's not naturalnews that have a numerical estimate for what kind of exposure tokyo would get and what isotope mix, and how long it would persist in the vicinity given active decontamination or just weather based removal?
No? well then, shut the fuck up because you're making shit up based on your ignorance of radiation safety/consequences and what qualifies as a reasonable real world scenario.
>>6610769
>No? well then, shut the fuck up because you're making shit up based on your ignorance of radiation safety/consequences and what qualifies as a reasonable real world scenario.
Fukushima qualifies as the real world scenario you are talking about, doesn't it?
The "real world scenario" is unfolding as we speak- still- so, maybe you should shut up.
>>6610787
>fukushima is real
>therefor I can make up ridiculous worst case scenarios
Look, solar panels are so dangerous that not only do people fall from roofs and die when installing them, if a solar panel itself fall to the ground and crack, it will leak so much dangerous chemicals that the US airforce have to napalm the area.
You're a fucking idiot. Please shut up forever.
>>6610793
You're going to get nowhere by refusing to acknowledge the salient points your opponents are making.
There really is nowhere to go in terms of nuclear power. We've got all the capacity we are ever going to have unless or until you can convince people that:
-radioative isotopes, dispersing them into the air, ground, water, organisms, etc. isn't a big deal
-The fukushima- what happened and how its being dealt with- are normal and non-threatening
-and that all this is will actually displace fossil fuels / mitigate global warming
... you are going to get nowhere.
The subject of this thread (and the only responsible option imho) is solar power vs. fossil fuels, in a mutually exclusive sense.
In other words, solar, because the costs (as described above) are small in relation to the benefit.
Good luck arguing that solar will kill more people than nuclear. Or fossil fuels for that matter.
The fact is that you are going to have to make that argument, and I am not going to accept it- until you tell me why its in my best interest.
>>6610769
>you're making shit up based on your ignorance of radiation safety/consequences
This coming from a guy who just seriously tried to claim that if the weather had blown the fallout from Fukushima along the coast into Tokyo rather than out to sea, it wouldn't hurt anyone.
It's true that it's unlikely that the weather would serve up that worst case scenario, but if it did, it would have been disastrous.
When you hear dismissals of the possibility, they were talking about what the weather was likely to be, based on the actual time that it happened. They were including a fairly solid short-term weather forecast. They were talking about what could happen after this particular disaster, the way it actually happened.
In discussing the future of nuclear power, what we have to concern ourselves with is the potential for catastrophic consequences of incidents of this type, with genuine worst-case scenarios, and not merely the likely foreseeable outcomes of this particular incident at that particular time, based on the evidence available at the time of the accident.
They could have determined with reasonable confidence that the weather would not transport the fallout to Tokyo. We do not know with reasonable confidence that if it had happened at another time, the weather would not have transported the fallout to Tokyo.
There was no particular reason it had to happen at this time, when the weather was cooperative. This was an unforeseeable event. It could have happened any time. When the next nuclear reactor fails, it will likewise be an unforeseeable event.
Nuclear power advocates were not saying prior to this accident, "Nuclear power is safe... except for that Fukushima plant. But that one's going to be okay because the weather will blow the fallout to sea." They were laughing off the possibility of any such incident ever happening in a first world country. Now that it has happened, nobody wants to hear your quibbles that it was surviveable.
>>6610817
>Good luck arguing that solar will kill more people than nuclear. Or fossil fuels for that matter.
It's true though it ranks in just above wind and nuclear at deaths.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/
>>6610787
>Fukushima qualifies as the real world scenario you are talking about, doesn't it?
Highest death estimates from Fukushima are in the hundreds, and likely much lower. Fukushima is not a big deal statistically speaking.
It is concievable that more people would die taking care of all those solar panels than from nuclear accidents, per useful energy produced.
