Is Thorium just a meme?
>>7638452
No, it's also an element.
>>7638452
Yep just like the EM drive.
Nope, it's a viable alternative to uranium/plutonium plants. The only reason that it's not as popular is that building a nuclear power plant costs a lot of money and the companies building them need huge subsidies from the government to start. And the politicians don't want their names to be associated with nuclear because it makes them unpopular.
Yup, the hippies ruined this for us.
>>7638480
Not hippies
Jimmy carter ruined nuclear because he was a leftist piece of shit
Hippies couldn't do shit without the commies who were elected & intentionally ruined nuclear power.
>>7638547
>commies who were elected
I think you mean "capitalists". The socialist and communist parties of the US were intentionally disbanded and crushed in the 50's and 60's, which correlates to the reduction in labor unions and worker's rights.
Enjoying that underwhelming pay and poor vacation time compared to every other developed country? Gonna be happy when you have kids, and neither of you can afford to take time to actually raise them yourself?
>>7638571
Oh shut the fuck up. This isn't reddit.
>>7638582
Say something stupid, you get corrected. That's how it works.
The world is a machine, anon.
The biggest LFTR reactor in the world... doesn't exist.
There's one that might come online in about 2 years. It will be 2 MW. That is smaller than the smallest generating unit in a typical utility, maybe the size of the backup generators for a small hospital.
But that's assuming that they can work out the technology. It's almost completely unproven at this time, just one very small experimental reactor in the 1960s, and there are all sorts of technical details to sort out.
>>7638621
Despite your response being very realistic and level headed, the attitude bothers the hell out of me. You see it constantly in the context of thorium.
Yes, there are problems to sort out. That's how R&D for new technology works, since the beginning of human history and even nature was at it long before we even existed.. That's what you ought to expect. You think "traditional" fast-breeder reactors just fucking made themselves out of thin air? You think all the systems and fail safes to deal with high pressures didn't takes tons of iteration? Did they hit the issue with xenon-135 buildup and just say "nah, doesn't work. Let's scrap it."? Fuck no.
There are always problems. Why is this line of thought so often repeated, and why do people see it as meaningful? Enough already.
>>7638452
This thread is literally a meme.
>>7638640
Your balls are literally a meme, anon.
>>7638629
Oh, I recognize that technology can advance... but that doesn't mean that it will, or that it will be as great as promised. Right now there are a lot of problems, and they're downplayed too much.
Heck, maybe it'll be even better than promised. Research sometimes comes up with unexpected but highly useful discoveries. But until we see an actual working reactor, the claims that thorium generation is going to somehow save humanity are too hopeful. It's the rabidity of its proponents that makes me take the slightly skeptical attitude.
>>7638669
Oh, I do agree. Impossible does exist, and there are some things the universe simply doesn't afford, even when searching for work arounds. What I'm saying is there's not yet any indication this is the case for lftr. Alvin Weinberg et al built a working core implementation in the 60's. The blanket and other features just weren't worked out, and the issues with degradation rate and materials needing to survive heat and neutron poisoning hasn't really been worked.
Then again, something not being worked out yet doesn't mean shit when it's barely been worked on to begin with. And that's what's really beginning to piss me off.
>>7638730
>it didn't work the first time so we should never try it again
A+ logic
>>763873
>One time
I'm being trolled
>>7638730
>I don't think I even need an argument for this one because it's so obvious
I'd say you do need an argument. I would advise doing some actual research on the role of the socialist and communist parties in the US during the 40's - 60's. As well as researching the role of those parties in other countries.
>Yeah, there's nothing better than working to have 80% of it go to people that don't work and don't care to work.
That sounds a lot like capitalism.
As for your image, actually, I'm apt to agree entirely. There was a form of socialism that split off and favored the state controlling business and "the means of production". This obviously led to abuses of that power and was little more than an excuse to create a ruling class. That was but one form, and I'm sure all but the most delusional of them quickly realized their mistakes about how human beings function.
For what it's worth, I wouldn't consider myself a socialist, communist, capitalist, whatever. I honestly don't know the solution. I don't know what would work, or what's truly ideal. But I will say your understanding of socialism is entirely incorrect and formed from cultural misconceptions (you grew up in the US), and only seeing how socialist ideas function in a capitalist economy. Do some research.
>It leads to bogus claims that have never been supported by history and will never be supported.
Finland, Sweden, and much of Europe are doing pretty okay. Aside from letting all those muslims and refugees in.
>>7638452
Yes, thorium is just a meme.
People want to believe in more advanced nuclear power, and rather than learning about the field, they just receive the LFTR hype uncritically.
Nuclear power has been an expensive disappointment. The thorium meme makes the complicated truth of an inherently difficult and dangerous technology that proved much harder to implement than to envision, into a simple story about bad men in power suppressing a technology that's innocent and good (the LFTR), in favor of one that serves their nefarious purposes (LMFBR and nuclear weapon production). But the bad men got their comeuppance when the LMFBR turned out to be technically challenging and expensive at grid scale. It gives people an excuse to rekindle "too cheap to meter!" 50s peaceful atom optimism.
The truth is, the reasons the LFTR was not pursued, and the LMFBR was, have nothing to do with nuclear weapon production and everything to do with technical difficulty and cost. The technical challenges of grid-scale fast-spectrum breeders have largely been sorted out through decades of experience and a few iterations and branches of the technology, while those of the moderated thorium breeder lurk in poorly-understood form due to lack of experience since nobody has ever worked with it in a gigawatt power plant.
>>7638785
Yeah buddy when did socialism not turn out that way? When it wasn't tribal.
>>7638785
>Finland, Sweden, and much of Europe are doing pretty okay.
They're not actually socialist. The language of socialism just features heavily in their political rhetoric.
The defining distinction between capitalism and socialism is whether private individuals are allowed to own the means of production. If they are, if you can own a factory and own (and be able to sell, not just have it allocated to your use) farmland or a mine, then it's capitalism.
Whether there's more or less tax-supported welfare has no bearing. If the government needs to collect taxes, it's a capitalist society. In a socialist one, it would directly receive all the profits of production and distribute them as it sees fit.
>>7638547
Don't forget Clinton
>>7638452
No and yes, but mostly no.
Thorium is a useful power source which potentially it could do much of what is claimed, so in that sense it is not a meme. It is significantly resistant to bomb making and a number of plants could power a majority of our needs for a long time.
However the same proprieties that allow Uranium and Plutonium to be used in bombs also allows them to be used in more powerful setups and offers higher returns which is what you want in a power plant.
The real big deal is the molten salt reactor setup. That is where most of these gains actually come from which is why people should make a bigger deal about the reactor setup rather then the fuel used.
I find the whole thing dishonest. The reason we are even talking about thorium molten slat setups is the huge fear of Uranium and Plutonium. So to get investment and attention they changed the fuel to something that was not as scary to the public. That said I would gladly take low grade nuclear fuel in a nice molten salt reactor then none at all, provided we don't make a lot of tiny ones like they talk about because that is just plain irresponsible. Power plants have huge economies of scale so the bigger the better (up to a point) and lots of tiny ones is a huge safety issue.
An simple analogy is
Ethanol < Gasoline < Jet fuel = Thorium < Uranium < Plutonium
V6 < turbine engine = water reactor < molten salt reactor
>>7638584
?
You are the one saying stupid shit
As if the only place a "socialist" or a "communist" can exist, is in a socialist/communist party?
As if it hasn't been the democrats, first and foremost trying to rape the economy & lower wages for everyone?
>>7638918
>Nuclear power has been an expensive disappointment.
This just simply isn't true
It has been intentionally handicapped by leftists in the government.
It continues to be intentionally handicapped.
Without this handicap, every western country would be majority nuclear power.
Anyone trying to build a nuclear power plant gets hit with lawsuits & government fuckery until they give up.
>>7639345
When you need government permission to do anything, with your means of production, do you truly own it?
>>7638597
Try living here in KY. These boards are a walk in the park compared to the arguments heard daily here
>>7639584
>It has been intentionally handicapped by leftists in the government.
>It continues to be intentionally handicapped.
Meanwhile in reality, nuclear power has been heavily, heavily subsidized, with the true costs hidden from public view and regulators turning a blind eye to fudged numbers to let worn-out, unsafe plants continue operating.
![b728cc5f036b2c407e757214cf3f3031[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/tBFVHKJ.jpg "b728cc5f036b2c407e757214cf3f3031[1].jpg")
>>7639736
disregarding the fact that nuclear power subsidies are a third (1.1 billion) compared to fossil fuel subsidies (3.2 billion) and a seventh of renewable subsidies (7.3 billion!), clout and bureaucrats being shit is how this country's energy industry operates regardless of what source that is
>>7639775
>nuclear power subsidies are a third (1.1 billion) compared to fossil fuel subsidies (3.2 billion)
Even if that were true, and accounted for all of the hidden subsidies (hint: it isn't and doesn't), how much of a pro-nuclear zealot do you have to be to try and pretend that nuclear power provides anything even remotely close to a third of the value we derive from fossil fuels?
Nuclear power provides about 2.5% of the world's energy, and in one of its lowest-value, least useful forms (grid power which doesn't throttle according to the grid's needs).
Nuclear is utterly reliant on subsidies. There's no business case for it without them. Fossil fuel subsidies are done for strategic reasons, mostly to promote domestic production so there's some security against foreign producers, not as the only way to get people to burn fossil fuels.
>>7640003
>in one of its lowest-value, least useful forms (grid power which doesn't throttle according to the grid's needs).
Nuclear can be and is regulated quickly nowdays, if you want to be seen arguing instead of pushing agenda it helps if your arguments aren't outdated by over a decade.
The nuclear reaction itself can turn on a dime, see this one[skip to 10 seconds]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgNwtepP-6M
>All the Control Rods are removed simultaneously allowing the nuclear reaction to proceed un-dampened, bringing the energy output of the reactor to 680 Megawatts in 50 milliseconds.
Also since when is baseload power the least useful? Are you trying to make some mental gymnastics case for the superiority of intermittency or what?
>Nuclear is utterly reliant on subsidies.
All energy is reliant on subsidies.
>>7640059
>The nuclear reaction itself can turn on a dime, see this one[skip to 10 seconds]
yes but thats a research reactor. its specifically designed for pulsed operation. you cant do that in a commercial reactor. its power level is much higher, and it doesnt have as much negative reactivity built in to stop the power level from rising after its pulsed without operator input, witch is far too slow to have any effect.
>>7640059
>Nuclear can be and is regulated quickly nowdays
You have no idea what you're talking about.
>>All the Control Rods are removed simultaneously allowing the nuclear reaction to proceed un-dampened, bringing the energy output of the reactor to 680 Megawatts in 50 milliseconds.
That's instantaneous thermal output, not electrical output. Steam systems with a significant thermal mass don't change their power output quickly.
Besides, with nuclear you're not saving anything by throttling down the output. It's not the fuel that's expensive, it's the capital expense, fixed costs, and decommissioning. It's not hard to waste excess energy, if that's what they want, just running some big heating coils outdoors.
>Also since when is baseload power the least useful? Are you trying to make some mental gymnastics case for the superiority of intermittency or what?
How fucking ignorant are you? A constant non-load-following output is almost as bad as uncontrollable intermittency.
The most valuable grid power can be throttled up and down quickly, like hydro and gas turbines. But that's not the most valuable *energy*. The most valuable energy is a versatile chemical feedstock, and a dense, convenient store of energy you can put in a car or an airliner. Oil is the best thing to burn in grid generators, the easiest and cheapest to make generators for, the easiest to deliver to and store wherever you want to generate power, but we try not to do that because it's so useful for other things, which makes it expensive.
>>7638584
>Say something stupid, you get corrected. That's how it works.
Not true, given that post, you've likely been saying stupid shit your entire life and no one's corrected you to this point.
Then again, someone would have to care enough about you to make the effort.
>>7640170
>A constant non-load-following output is almost as bad as uncontrollable intermittency
I don't think you understand what a base load is, anon
>>7640189
Did I say anything about nuclear power plants not providing base load?
Jesus. Ignore a dozen things where I point out correctly where the person I'm replying to is full of shit, and focus on one thing you *imagine* might be wrong in mine, if you squint your eyes, turn your head sideways, and interpret it in bad faith.
>>7640179
Looks like you sure aren't the one to start telling me how it really is. If I received meaningful feedback that highlighted a deficit in my ideas, I would adapt.
Like anyone, I've said, thought, and believed some stupid and disjointed shit. Doesn't change the fact that no one has had it in them to shake my framework on their level, much less mine. Short version, bitch more you useless little twat.
>>7640314
All right I fold,
Here. 3 years of succesful testing with the stuff~
>yfw Norway
http://thorenergy.no
Ofc its Norway
>>7640333
Either you're confused, or I am. I didn't say thorium wasn't viable or at the very least worth some heavy R&D, my posts have been the inverse.
>>7640003
I could argue about this true cost and subsidy aspect as you could just have some very different definition of subsidy. Like if you are including the lost opportunity cost of the Manhattan project adjusted for inflation and ROI, as that did subsidize the technology. But that seems a bit much and would need to also be reflected in others you are comparing against.
But when it comes to responding to the grids needs nuclear can directly throttle better then any of them. So I really start to doubt you when you say otherwise.
>>7640973
>when it comes to responding to the grids needs nuclear can directly throttle better then any of them. So I really start to doubt you when you say otherwise.
You're fucking delusional. Nobody has ever built a nuclear peaking plant.
>>7638582
No, but this is the board of objective truth, and I applaud that anon for calling you out on your bullshit.
>>7638621
>It's almost completely unproven at this time, just one very small experimental reactor in the 1960s, and there are all sorts of technical details to sort out.
That's not true. A lot of the parts are demonstrated. We had a core running for 6 years. The reprocessing is mostly basic chemistry. I admit, it's not a clear-cut solid case, but the case is much better than you make it out to be.
And IFR is even better still.
>>7638669
>It's the rabidity of its proponents that makes me take the slightly skeptical attitude.
My language is chosen because I want to save the world, and this is one of the most promising technologies to do it. That and IFR. I'm not saying it will work, but it seems to be our best bet at the moment. Specifically some sort of conventional breeder reactor. It is criminal that we still haven't spent the money and effort to build it to see if it works.
>>7638918
>The truth is, the reasons the LFTR was not pursued, and the LMFBR was, have nothing to do with nuclear weapon production and everything to do with technical difficulty and cost.
No, it has to do with Nixon being a native Californian, and the LMFBR program being in California.
>>7639736
>Meanwhile in reality, nuclear power has been heavily, heavily subsidized, with the true costs hidden from public view and regulators turning a blind eye to fudged numbers to let worn-out, unsafe plants continue operating.
Protip: Nuclear power is the safest form of energy production by far. IIRC, only wind comes even close. Your points are bullshit and figments of your imagination.
>>7640003
>Nuclear power provides about 2.5% of the world's energy, and in one of its lowest-value, least useful forms (grid power which doesn't throttle according to the grid's needs).
Bullshit meme. Please stop saying this. It's just false. You can build nuclear plants to load follow. There's nothing magic that says you cannot. It costs a little more, which should come as no surprise.
Further, even at the worst possible outcome, we could just overbuild by a factor of 2 in order to provide reliable power.
>>7640170
>How fucking ignorant are you? A constant non-load-following output is almost as bad as uncontrollable intermittency.
You're the ignorant one.
We can power a grid with a technology that cannot load follow. We cannot power a grid with a technology that is intermittent like wind and solar. Batteries cost too much - way too much. Plus lots of other problems, like energy-returned-on-energy-invested calculations.
>>7638452
I wish America was like France and installed nuclear power plants everywhere.
Even better if they were Thorium.
Shame only China seems to care about Thorium these days.
China even hired the American scientists who worked on Thorium before.
Without more investment in nuclear energy, we will never obtain nuclear fusion.
And to reach the ultimate energy source - Antimatter, we would need to have perfected nuclear fusion beforehand.
And after reaching Antimatter, every star in the sky will inevitably be Seeded by Us.
>>7641276
>>7641276
Antimatter will never be a major source of power. Shit takes more energy to produce than you'd get from using it as a power source. Not to mention that anti-matter is fail-deadly.
If you build tall towers. I mean really tall. Like push the limit of the structural capabilities of steel tall, and then attach those towers to the grid. You can take more electricity from the air then Humans could ever need. Why do you people think lightning exists. It's a hint from God.
>>7638785
>2015
>unironically supporting socialism
You're either a very good troll or an absolute retard.
>>7638452
Some of the people who spew garbage on the topic are meme-level. Unfortunately there is a lot of misinformation on the topic.
Regardless, I think Thorium is viable. It's just going to take a lot of money to get off the ground. The two biggest issues are producing reactor vessels with a low enough chemical reactivity and the regulatory issues.
...
And anti-nuclear hippies.
>>7638918
Even before you account for frivolous hippie lawsuits and a hostile regulatory regime nuclear is on part with the more expensive coal plants.
If you got rid of those conventional nuclear power would be more competitive than coal.
>>7641413
Its not coal plants that Nuclear needs to worry about competing with. Its cheap natural gas.
>>7641413
>nuclear is on part with the more expensive coal plants.
The price (after subsidies) of the power out of them, you mean, not the cost.
The cost profile of nuclear power is completely different from a coal plant. There's a much larger up-front cost, a much longer construction time, an incomparably larger decommissioning cost (wrecking a coal plant is straightforwardly collecting valuable scrap, wrecking a nuclear plant is painstakingly removing dangerous waste), and then waste containment that needs to be done properly for as much time into the future as we've had the wheel so far.
When nuclear looks competitive with coal, what's really happened is that the up-front costs have been paid (usually with some mix of open and hidden subsidies, or the government pays for it entirely and isn't open about what it costs, as in France) and the company running it has no intention of ever paying/recouping (private/public respectively) the decommissioning and waste storage costs.
>>7640170
Wow, it is like you are trying to be wrong.
I don't know where to start with this.
>>7640100
What does the scouter say about its power level?
>>7642046
>I have no argument, and am humiliated, so I will spew non-specific scorn hoping to inflict the same emotional state.
>>7640170
>You have no idea what you're talking about.
At least I bothered to google it and lo and behold, every fucking nuclear nation nowdays use load following nuclear tech.
From the most availible source of wikipedia
>Nuclear power plants in France and in Germany operate in load-following mode and so participate in the primary and secondary frequency control.
>These plants have the capability to make power changes between 30% and 100% of rated power, with a slope of 5% of rated power per minute.
Was apparently too much for you to find out so you just try to pull some convincing lie that is destroyed by 20 seconds on google.
> Steam systems with a significant thermal mass don't change their power output quickly.
If you use a steam turbine from 1890 perhaps, a modern steam system is much more flexible.
>It's not the fuel that's expensive
>It's not hard to waste excess energy
>A constant non-load-following output is almost as bad as uncontrollable intermittency.
Nice self-contradiction.
> most valuable grid power can be throttled up and down quickly
>energy you can put in a car or an airliner
Nice topic changing.
Are you trying to make a point or just make up lies to be contrarian?
>>7642009
Pretty sure decommissioning costs are included in any KWH/$ cost estimates.
A lot of the construction time/up front cost comes from regulatory burdens or lawsuits holding up construction.
I believe the asians manage to build nuke plants in under 5 years.
Its not like coal/natural gas plants are put up overnight.
>>7642096
Apparently he was successful.
>>7642143
>>It's not the fuel that's expensive
>>It's not hard to waste excess energy
>>A constant non-load-following output is almost as bad as uncontrollable intermittency.
>Nice self-contradiction.
There's no contradiction. Uncontrollable intermittency requires a lot of load-following capacity or storage. Constant output (or constant cost regardless of output) requires the same or a similarly-expensive and wasteful overcapacity.
>>energy you can put in a car or an airliner
>Nice topic changing.
That's not changing the topic. I was responding to someone who was comparing nuclear to petroleum. Nuclear's a poor replacement for petroleum. You'd have to synthesize fuel with electrical power, which is costly and inefficient.
>every fucking nuclear nation nowdays use load following nuclear tech.
>From the most availible source of wikipedia
"A large part of the installed capacity operates at constant power in the base-load mode."
"the daily variation of the nuclear generation is typically less than 5 - 10% of the total nuclear generation in France"
As I said before:
>>It's not the fuel that's expensive
Load-following doesn't save money. It's almost entirely the capacity, not the actual output, that determines the costs, with nuclear. France does a lot of uneconomical things with nuclear power. They do load-following so they can say their nuclear plants can do load following, but they don't do much of it because it's economically meaningless.
I'll acknowledge that I believed incorrectly that nuclear reactors were mostly run in base-load mode for technical, rather than economic, reasons. Thank you for correcting me on that.
>>7642169
Oh, here we go...
>Make any kind of reply? U mad! I win!
>No reply? Guess that means you slunk away in shame. I win!
Grow up.
>>7642228
nuclear overcapacity would only be relevant if it is the vast majority of power being produced.
Even then, it doesn't matter, because fuel costs are negligible.
>>7642246
>it doesn't matter, because fuel costs are negligible.
That's a point on my side, not yours. Nuclear is expensive power, and almost all the expense is capacity, not output.
Throttling the output down doesn't save money, so overcapacity is terribly wasteful. If you spend the money building a nuclear power plant, you're going to want to run it at full output as much as possible.
Throttling down a nuclear power plant is like turning a solar panel over so sunlight doesn't fall on it. It doesn't make sense to spend so much as a penny to add that capability.
hey guys i read the infographic too, can i talk about all this shit i dont understand with you guys?
There is a facebook group called Thorium alliances and populated by engineers, scientists, and retired engineers and scientists. The consensus is the NRC over-regulation. It takes two years and how many millions of dollar to go from blue print to approval. This is before construction. China is building nuclear power plants faster than anyone in the world. They're essentially mass producing them. The NRC is the issue in the US. Its run by a lot of policy folks who play politics instead of science Which is very common for the US. That's their weakness. Their R&D is run by morons who don't know basic science 101. China knows this, so does India, and Germany. This is why you Amerifats are falling behind. Loosen your NRC regulation and you'll have new plants and idea. Also blame Westinghouse and GE for lobbying Congress to shut down any new idea for nuclear power. Their business model is to supply power plants with fuel. Capitalism and science do not mix. I love capitalism but I know for a fact that its going to lose against science. China is already doing that. The US eventually will streamline projects that are not cost effective to push their R&D further than their closest competitor.
>>7642260
As long as nuclear isn't literally 100% of the total energy produced, then they can run at 100% output all day long while other things more suited to throttling, are throttled.
>>7642281
>capitalism and science doesnt' mix
>all your negatives are big government liberals fucking around
?
>>7642260
>Nuclear is expensive power, and almost all the expense is capacity, not output.
Its not. On a kilowatts per dollar rate Nuclear is far cheaper. Coal and Oil are very expensive. Why do you think they have massive subsides? Wind and Solar are the same. No one wants nuclear because the babby boomers lived through an ERA of nuclear lolocaust. Most millennials are indifferent toward nuclear power because they haven't experienced anything bad with nuclear. Fukoshima only scared the luddites.
>>7642281
>science and capitalism dont mix
>its all the NRCs fault, with their government regulations
pick one m8
>>7642291
Its both. The NRC states its the cost behind it, but its the politics behind it. No one wants to be the politican who pushes nuclear because most people think of super-mutant, and nuclear lolocaust. So the default answer is cost and regulation. No one is willingly going to change the structure.
>>7642307
i think you missed the point. government regulation and capitalism are two opposite ends of the spectrum
>>7642290
>On a kilowatts per dollar rate Nuclear is far cheaper.
The price of nuclear electricity tends to be low, because once you build a plant, you save no money by limiting its output. The cost is high, which is why nuclear is basically only built when government is picking up the tab.
>Coal and Oil are very expensive. Why do you think they have massive subsides?
Because they're the foundation of our economy, used as chemical feedstocks and portable fuels as well as for grid power, and they're key strategic resources? Joule-for-joule, the subsidies are much less than nuclear.
>>7642316
Noone builds nuke plants because of overregulation, and the risk involved because a democrat might get elected who fucks all your money invested.
Not because they aren't profitable when compared to coal or oil.
>>7642260
Fuel costs for nuclear power are smaller than those for sources for things like coal, but not negligible.
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/electricity_generation.cfm
Burning less fuel does equate to money saved. Also, using less fuel means the reactor requires less frequent refuelling, and so spends less time producing no energy (and therefore money). And you're also forgetting that running a nuclear power plant at full power constantly will reduce its life because of the unnecessary neutron radiation damage.
>>7642316
>Because they're the foundation of our economy,
In the 1950s. Natural gas is the foundation. Coal and Oil are becoming too expensive, and Coal plants in the US are being shut down faster than they can be replaced. There is a legal group with a massive warchest that taking them to court and closing them. The group is funded by Bloomberg and his billionaire buddies with their friends at the Sierra Nevada foundation. By 2020 the US coal plant network will be a shell of its former self. Oil is their next target by the way. The other anon is right on a joules-for-joule nuclear is the best option. The cost is lower than a oil plant. The reason why they have subsides. They account for a large portion of your taxes by the way. If people were smart then oil and coal would have been history in the US. Not because of the science, but the reason why they're losing so much of their paycheck.
>>7642335
>And you're also forgetting that running a nuclear power plant at full power constantly will reduce its life because of the unnecessary neutron radiation damage.
youre just making shit up to help your case. reactors are designed to be operated at full power. operating them as theyre designed does not shorten their lifespan
>>7642367
That was my first post in this thread.
Reactors are designed so they can operate at almost any power level up to the maximum. Higher power means greater neutron fluxes, which causes a greater amount of radiation damage. There's only so much damage the materials in a reactor can take - that's why their lifespans are limited (initially) to 60 or so years.
>>7642395
yeah, i know, they dont operate at low power tho. 70% and up is typical
>>7642400
Of course it is. Does that somehow make what I said invalid?
>>7642405
youre trying to make it sound like the standard operating procedure is some sort of bad practice that reduces plant life, when thats the operating conditions used to determine plant life in the first place. basically youre making arguments that dont exist to make retards who dont know any better think youre right
>>7642419
If a reactor is designed to load-follow, then plant life isn't going to be determined by assuming it's running at max power 24/7.
>>7642434
thats a dumb fucking scenario, from an operational standpoint, and the fact that its a base-load power source
>>7642228
>Uncontrollable intermittency requires a lot of load-following capacity or storage. Constant output (or constant cost regardless of output) requires the same or a similarly-expensive and wasteful overcapacity.
You're completely fucking retarded or suffers a psychosis.
Whatever mental gymnastics you employ to allow you to think like this have wiped anything resembling intelligence from your mind.
Intermittent sources can zero out, demanding 100% replacement. Entirely inflexible sources(which doesn't actually exist outside of your delusional fantasy world but I'll let it slip due to your psychotic state) would at most waste the delta between max load and min load.
Just stop posting if you're going to be completely illogical.
>>7642442
France and Germany, among others, operate some of their reactors in a load-following mode. France gets around 80% of its electricity from nuclear power, so they HAVE to do it.
>>7642467
they dont have to, theyre the worlds largest exporter of electricity just because they dont need it all doesnt mean they dont produce it and send it out
>>7642469
But they nevertheless do.
>>7642469
>theyre the worlds largest exporter of electricity
And germany buys a shitload of it because they were so fucking retarded that they spent more money on wind and solar than france did on all their rectors. And then they go and close their own reactors while at it.
It's so fitting that we get to feel schadenfreude towards the germs.
>>7642347
>Natural gas is the foundation.
For pete's sake, we're talking about nuclear vs. fossil fuels here. You get natural gas mostly when you drill for oil. The gas is an unavoidable byproduct, a lot of it still just gets flared off at the well.
>Coal and Oil are becoming too expensive
Natural gas is being built mainly for peaking generators, replacing oil, not coal. They're inexpensive to build, but expensive to run.
Coal remains the cheapest option, which is why China's burning so much of it. We're nowhere close to running out of coal (especially in the USA, which has oodles of coal in the ground). We've got hundreds of years worth of easily-mined resources. There are some really good new designs for peaking coal generators, too, like coal-water slurry.
Coal plants aren't being replaced in the USA and other first world nations because of political objections based on environmentalism and global warming concerns, not to save money.
Meanwhile, the cost of solar is plummeting as the technology advances, with batteries making similar progress. Soon we're only going to need backup fossil fuel plants that sit idle most of the time.
>>7642486
coal isn't THAT cheap anymore
Lot of regulation involved
For good reason, because it's one of the biggest polluters in the world.
>>7642466
>>A constant non-load-following output is **ALMOST** as bad as uncontrollable intermittency.
>Intermittent sources can zero out, demanding 100% replacement.
>Entirely inflexible sources... would at most waste the delta between max load and min load.
The difference between maximum and minimum load is on the same scale as the entire load, furthermore, it's kept down by cost-incentives and storage systems, neither of which are free, to keep the need for generated power as consistent as possible. The natural demand for grid power varies wildly. A system set up more for intermittent generation could deal better with spikes of demand, and thus would require less incentive for consistent industrial load.
All sources zero out sometimes, due to maintenance requirements and accidents.
And you do have to deal with an excess of power somehow, reducing the power put into the system, storing it, or finding ways to use it up. You can't just put more in than comes out without problems happening.
Adding load-following to nuclear plants is something that adds cost to their construction and maintenance, a way to avoid having to add some kind of storage or wastage, not something that saves significant money by the reduction in fuel consumption.
>(which doesn't actually exist outside of your delusional fantasy world but I'll let it slip due to your psychotic state)
You know, it isn't "letting it slip" when you bring it up and accuse the person you're talking to of being delusional and psychotic because of it. Do you honestly not understand that?
>>7642573
How do you manage to be 100% wrong?
>>7642486
>For pete's sake, we're talking about nuclear vs. fossil fuels here. You get natural gas mostly when you drill for oil. The gas is an unavoidable byproduct, a lot of it still just gets flared off at the well.
Eh, not any more. Gas is now expensive enough that they're deliberately drilling for it. That's what the shale boom is about.
>>7642486
>Meanwhile, the cost of solar is plummeting as the technology advances, with batteries making similar progress. Soon we're only going to need backup fossil fuel plants that sit idle most of the time.
It's eventually going to bottom out near the cost of its component materials and still be more expensive than nuclear.
>>7642913
>It's eventually going to bottom out near the cost of its component materials
What? Sand? There are no scarce or costly materials that are essential for solar power. Look at leaves. Made from air, water, and the minerals in ground water. Not just solar collectors, but fuel synthesizers.
There's a huge variety of solar technology. Some relatively cheap technologies use small amounts of scarce, expensive materials (and are cheap because of the small amounts required, low energy, and ease of manufacturing), but others use only common materials and are also making rapid progress in cost.
>still be more expensive than nuclear.
Solar's already considerably cheaper than nuclear, joule for joule, and still dropping fast. The cheapest new stuff is starting to be competitive with coal in good places.
Now that the cheap intermittent joules are there, there are strong prospects for stationary batteries and fuel synthesis, so those technologies are also improving quickly. Because they don't have to optimized for mass and volume to survive on the market, stationary batteries can be made cheaply out of common materials.
Solar panels pay the energy cost of making themselves in a year or two now. You can manufacture and install solar panels, and recover all the energy put into that, in a shorter time than it takes to build a new nuclear plant and begin its operation, and for less money, and then they work for another twenty or forty years with no maintenance. In a few more years, batteries are going to pay for themselves as quickly and last as long without maintenance.
Solar's on an exponential growth curve for good reasons. Copious energy just falls out of the sky on us every day.
>>7642980
>Solar's already considerably cheaper than nuclear, joule for joule, and still dropping fast
Hahaha
You really are a fucking idiot, aren't you? You can't directly compare WATT for WATT something with a capacity factor of less than 20% to something with a capacity factor of 90%+
>>7643008
>>joule for joule
>WATT for WATT
I don't have to exaggerate how much cheaper solar power already is by comparing nameplate power ratings instead of lifetime energy production.
>>7642096
I said I didn't know where to start, not that I did not know how to discuss the points of your argument.
In most classic debate styles this is where you would suggest we pick one aspect of your argument, which you choose. Most people start with their strongest point first in order to end the discussion favorably quickly, as the more points in the argument that are added increases the likelihood one could be invalidated which makes the debater look bad and can lead to much longer debates.
You can pick any one you want. I am not concerned as most of the ones you have used are wrong and the few that are correct as miss used in context.
>>7643027
I assumed you were retarded and meant watt for watt.
Guess you're even more retarded than I though.
>>7638480
>need huge subsidies from the government to start
>hippies ruined this for us
If they were demonstratively money makers then capitalism states they would not need a government to subsidies it. But if you want a risky investment on unproven tech then they all come crying to the governments teat.
Capitalists need to make up their fucking mind, either they can do it without government help or governments have a role in primary research (necessitating taxation to fund blue sky research).
>>7643135
Joule for joule, solar was cheaper than nuclear power around 2011. It's roughly the cost of coal-fired grid power now.
Because it's intermittent, it's currently mostly practical for offsetting air conditioning costs on hot, sunny days, but as I've said, solar power cost improvements show no signs of slowing down, and battery technology is also coming along nicely.
Here's a news story about near-term upcoming products combining to make renewables+storage cheaper than nuclear:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2015/05/05/why-tesla-batteries-are-cheap-enough-to-prevent-new-power-plants/
...and again, these are technologies that are going to continue advancing much faster than nuclear, which people aren't free to experiment with due to the catastrophic hazard and weapons proliferation concerns. Nuclear's being left in the dust. New investments in nuclear power today are going to look like total idiocy by the time the plants actually stop operating.
In the next few years, you might see nuclear projects start to be abandoned half-built.
>>7643165
>New investments in nuclear power today are going to look like total idiocy by the time the plants actually stop operating.
Whoops... I meant "start operating".
>>7638547
fossil fuel lobbies ruined nuclear power.
commies love nuclear power.
capitalism struck again
>>7642228
>There's no contradiction. Uncontrollable intermittency requires a lot of load-following capacity or storage. Constant output (or constant cost regardless of output) requires the same or a similarly-expensive and wasteful overcapacity.
No, solar and wind require massive amounts more overbuilding or storage. Nuclear, solar, and wind might all have some degree of unreliability and/or lack of load following. However, solar and wind have a common mode failure: when it's not sunny and when it's not windy. All it takes to make nuclear work is overbuild to reach the peak demand. You would need to overbuild solar or wind by many factors in order to account for the common mode failure, plus the addition of a ridiculously massive amount of energy storage which cannot be done. The real problem of solar and wind is incredible implausibility of the storage technology. Solar advocates can talk all they want about how solar panels are getting cheaper. That's not the major problem. Supplying reliable power to the grid is the problem, and doing so with an acceptable level of energy returned on energy invested and with an acceptable money cost.
>>7642486
>with batteries making similar progress
lols
Citations please.
And read this please too:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/
Any citations you give for lead, or nickel, or lithium batteries means precisely squat, because there simply isn't enough raw materials available to make a battery big enough.
There's the occasional reference to "flow batteries", but the one vaporware company that announced in a TED talk or whatever failed to mention that their first chemical cocktail also used a relatively rare metal, and so it couldn't scale. They claimed to have a new chemistry, but they haven't released it. Vaporware.
Then there's sodium sulfur batteries. Expensive as fuck. Got citations that these are exponentially dropping in price? Or even dropping a little bit in price?
Finally, do you have citations that show a sufficiently positive energy returned on energy invested metric? The problem is that it takes so much energy to build and maintain these batteries that the net energy production from solar and wind is so pissant that it cannot actually power our economy - money costs be damned.
>>7642980
>Some relatively cheap technologies use small amounts of scarce, expensive materials (and are cheap because of the small amounts required, low energy, and ease of manufacturing), but others use only common materials and are also making rapid progress in cost.
Again bullshit. Citations.
>Joule for joule, solar was cheaper than nuclear power around 2011. It's roughly the cost of coal-fired grid power now.
Only by ignoring the storage problem, and probably by playing LCOE financial games which result in pure bullshit.
>>7643165
>http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2015/05/05/why-tesla-batteries-are-cheap-enough-to-prevent-new-power-plants/
>lithium batteries.
Please see the citation above showing how this is a joke suggestion. Anyone who seriously suggests lithium batteries simply does not understand the problem, and hasn't bothered to educate themselves on the problem.
>>7643233
>solar and wind have a common mode failure: when it's not sunny and when it's not windy.
So you figure there are going to be whole weeks on the grid when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow?
>You would need to overbuild solar or wind by many factors in order to account for the common mode failure,
What? In nameplate watts? Max output? That's not a fucking problem. When people say that solar and wind are competitive with the old conventional options, they mean by joules, not watts.
>plus the addition of a ridiculously massive amount of energy storage which cannot be done.
I'll point you at this, again:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2015/05/05/why-tesla-batteries-are-cheap-enough-to-prevent-new-power-plants/
The "ridiculously massive amount of energy storage" is getting cost-competitive.
Anyway, if the seasonal variations turn out to be too much for batteries, solar's going to keep getting cheaper. Eventually we'll use it for fuel synthesis. You can store hydrogen in the same caverns we currently use for natural gas. The round-trip efficiency's not as good as batteries, but if the energy's cheap enough, it gets cheaper to make the fuel in a factory than to pay guys to out in the field, find some laying around in nature, bring it home, and clean it up.
>>7643253
The number cited was for 1 week. And IIRC it also gave proper worldwide estimated lithium reserves which are only about 2% of the needed battery.
For the US.
The rest of the world wants an electricity grid too.
And IIRC modern lithium batteries make use of approx 25% of the lithium atoms in the battery to store energy, which means efficiency gains are not going to make up for this.
Lithium batteries are a rounding error in terms of the discussion we need to be having.
>>7638452
It's a viable fissile material, but the problem is that - simply put - nobody's been able to come up with a viable, industrial-scale reactor design for using thorium.
We have uranium reactors. They're actually pretty fucking phenomenal as far as power output and efficiency right now (IIRC current gen reactors average 1-2 GW per reactor).
The only reason it's not more widespread in Europe and the US is because
1) High initial investment costs and
2) Hippy fearmongering over DEM SCAWY NUKLARS!!!
If we put all the money going towards oil company subsidies in the US every year towards subsidizing construction of new uranium plants, we could break ground on 5-6 new plants every year.
In five years when the first batch were finishing construction, you'd have another 20-25 under construction. After 20 years you'd have nearly doubled the number of operating nuclear plants in the US, and they'd all be modern-gen plants. You'd basically increase total US nuclear capacity three-fold
>>7643271
>In five years
lol m8
you won't even be done your environmental assessment in 5 years
>>7643242
>the citation above showing how this is a joke suggestion.
>http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/
Oh, this idiot.
"Let’s also plan ahead and have all of our country’s energy needs met by this system: transportation, heating, industry, etc ... we can get by with 2 TW ... Running a 2 TW electrified country for 7 days requires 336 billion kWh of storage."
Okay, so he goes for not only grid electricity, but ALL energy consumption, all the fertilizer, all the jet fuel, all everything. Then he assumes we need 7 days battery storage for it all, because sometimes the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow anywhere in the country for 7 days, and you still need to go on running your jet fuel and fertilizer factories all-out during this national energy emergency.
>Any citations you give for lead, or nickel, or lithium batteries means precisely squat, because there simply isn't enough raw materials available to make a battery big enough.
1) His idea of "a battery big enough" is stark raving mad.
2) We don't need to pick one kind of battery.
3) There are a variety of battery technologies available, and more under development, that don't need any scarce raw materials, using common metals like sodium, or no metal at all. There are, for instance, metal-free flow batteries with cheap organic fluid made of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur.
4) Lithium can be extracted from sea water, which contains 230 billion tons. This currently costs a few times more than conventional lithium mining, and is continuing to improve.
Please, don't cite that moron on /sci/ again.
>>7643283
>There are a variety of battery technologies available, and more under development, that don't need any scarce raw materials,
This is what we call willful delusion, and willful failure to meet the burden of proof. You don't just get to wave that around and wish it so. You need to demonstrate it.
I cited the link simply to show that the lithium supplies are not up the task. Ok. So, by his numbers, we're at 2% of the needed amount, US only, using global estimated reserves. Ok, go to 1 day battery. We'll experience frequent power outages, but let's go there. Now 14%. Let's assume electrical grid only, at current demand. So, we're not solving for global warming here by ignoring stuff like industry heat and transportation. 52%. Using all of the estimated global reserves, and we're barely at half of the amount needed for just the US.
The situation is the same for all other known battery technologies, or they're just stupidly expensive like sodium sulfur batteries.
As "the moron" rightly said, a dozen inadequate solutions might together produce a working solution, but a dozen woefully inadequate solutions do not add together to produce a working solution, and the only things we have are of the woefully inadequate kind.
>Please, don't cite that moron on /sci/ again.
No, you are the moron.
>>7643288
>lithium supplies are not up the task
I already pointed out that you can get it from sea water for moderately increased cost.
>by his numbers
I'm not interested in his numbers. I've pointed out multiple ways in which his analysis is garbage. I'm not going to play the argument whack-a-mole game where you try and run me around in circles shooting the same points down over and over.
In case anyone's curious about his obvious motivated reasoning, he's a peak oil kook. Doom is his religion, he'll rationalize it one way or another:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/just-another-cassandra/
>The situation is the same for all other known battery technologies, or they're just stupidly expensive like sodium sulfur batteries.
You know, "all other known battery technologies" is not the same thing as "all the battery technologies I know about".
ORBAT, metal-free flow battery:
http://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/01/f19/14_2014Storage_PeerRev_Narayan_Organic_Redox_Flow_Poster.pdf
Grid-scale rechargeable zinc-air:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidic_Energy
Aqueous sodium-ion batteries (cost similar to lead-acid):
http://www.aquionenergy.com/
You're not being reasonable here. Lithium is getting to the point of being cost-effective enough to be interesting because development effort has been focused on it, first for portable devices, then for vehicles, now for the grid. It needed that energy density to have an incremental path forward before there was a major established market for grid batteries. Now it's establishing that market, and fundamentally cheaper technologies, which might have lower energy density but don't rely on scarce materials, will catch and overtake it as grid battery companies start to make money.
>>7643219
Nuclear power, the only time greenies and the coal industry stands together.
>>7643316
>You're not being reasonable here. Lithium is getting to the point of being cost-effective enough to be interesting because development effort has been focused on it, first for portable devices, then for vehicles, now for the grid. It needed that energy density to have an incremental path forward before there was a major established market for grid batteries. Now it's establishing that market, and fundamentally cheaper technologies, which might have lower energy density but don't rely on scarce materials, will catch and overtake it as grid battery companies start to make money.
I fail to see how the lithium battery market helped "establish the market" and allow for research into these other battery types.
But when I asked for citations, you did put up, so props there. All of this looks like the last year or two. I need to keep up with my current tech apparently. I have some research to do. First, verify the claims. Second, see what this does for EROEI calculations.
>>7643316
>I already pointed out that you can get it from sea water for moderately increased cost.
Your battery costs, no matter production scales, can't drop bellow the cost of the materials used to make it.
>>7643316
Hrmm... it seems that a lot of the technical details of Fluidic's battery are still confidential. For example, I have this one quote here purportedly of a company spokesperson refusing to give conversion efficiency, except to say it's better than lead-acid. ><
This reminds me of Ambri's metal flow battery, where the original chemistry used antimony, which cannot scale, but then they promised that they had a new chemistry that didn't use rare metals. Haven't heard of them since. Vaporware as far as I can tell.
So, given the extreme lack of technical details, I'll say that I'm cautiously pessimistic.
On to the other two cited battery techs!
I also need to brush up on the costs of extracting lithium from sea water. My initial calculations show that there's more than enough lithium in ocean water - although I suppose I should look into ocean flow and mix rates to see if we can extract a sufficient quantity in 100 years. Based on the numbers I have here, my strong guess is "yes".
And of course, EROEI. I need to spend a lot more time on that.
>>7643333
>I fail to see how the lithium battery market helped "establish the market" and allow for research into these other battery types.
Tesla's grid-scale lithium-ion batteries from their "gigafactory" (which won't be operational until next year) are going to be an off-the-shelf option good enough and available in large enough quantity to replace peaking plants that would otherwise have to be built. In fact, it looks like they'll be able to sell as many as they can make for years to come. That's a huge expansion of the grid battery market. Investors are going to want a piece of that, and the best way to get it is to make a cheaper grid battery.
Furthermore, their powerwall home storage products have got a huge number of pre-orders. A $3,000 house battery is going to sustain the individual benefits of rooftop solar after the subsidies end (in many places, utilities are required to pay homeowners for electricity at the same rate that they charge them, giving them the benefit of a battery without having to actually have one -- that's not going to last forever). That's costly, but affordable, and will be worthwhile. It's a new market opened up for stationary batteries.
>>7643334
>>I already pointed out that you can get it from sea water for moderately increased cost.
>Your battery costs, no matter production scales, can't drop bellow the cost of the materials used to make it.
And I suppose that your extraction costs, no matter the sophistication, can't ever drop when you've got an inexhaustable resource?
>>7643352
Considering it costs energy to extract, yes.
There is a reason few minerals in sea-water are commercially viable to extract. They'll be even less commercially viable if you increase the cost of energy.
>>7643352
The crucial concept here is energy returned on energy invested, EROEI. It's closely related to another concept, a force multiplier.
Imagine human labor. There's a certain amount of work that a human can do in one man-hour with no tools. And I mean "work" in the physics sense, aka energy.
If you give a human a horse, that increases the amount of work that the human can do. It's a force multiplier.
In this sense, solar panels + wind mills + batteries are like that horse. They're a tool which is a force multiplier.
The question is - how much extra work does that allow a human to actually do with a single man-hour?
A deeply related question is how much energy do you need to invest in a set of tools, and how much energy will that set of tools allow you to produce in the lifetime of the tools? Expressed as a ratio, conventional nuclear power plants have a ratio in the neighborhood of 75. I've seen papers that put wind + solar + batteries around 5 or less - much less depending on what assumptions you make, and I've seen interesting arguments that show that with a EROEI number that small, you cannot run a western industrial society.
I know it's an esoteric concept, but it's also incredibly important.
To think of it another way, first calculate all of the energy inputs it will take to produce all of the solar, wind, and batteries to power the grid for the U.S. Determine the lifetime of the equipment. Determine the output energy over the lifetime of the equipment. If you're not producing at least the same amount of energy as the energy cost, then you're actually wasting effort at building sandcastles. For it to be worthwhile from a perspective of sustaining our society, the ratio cannot be merely 1.01 either. It needs to be large number.
The materials, transportation, and manufacture of the batteries takes a lot of energy.
>>7643352
Of course, you can also run the numbers for producing most of our power with wind and solar for 10 billion people at Germany's per capita standard of living, and you get ridiculous numbers like all of the Sahara desert, or half of South America - entirely covered in solar panels. People seriously proposing wind and solar do not understand the scale of the problem. Or they're being dishonest and assuming that western society will "power down". In many Green circles and papers, it's a hidden working assumption that we as a society will have to power down, become more agrarian, aka tree-hugging hippies living off the grid. I believe that this is an insurmountable fiat problem - there is no way people will let that happen. They'd rather destroy the climate by continuing to use coal and nat gas. Our only chance to save ourselves is to get a power production method that is cost competitive with coal, that can scale (and that has good EROEI number).
>>7643368
>Considering it costs energy to extract, yes.
How do you imagine it works? They have to boil all the water off to get at the lithium and then pick it out of the dry salt?
They use ion exchange resins or chemical adsorbents tuned to lithium. They just toss them in the ocean, anchored somewhere there's a bit of current, and let them soak until they're loaded with lithium. Lithium ions in the water stick when they drift into it. They wash the lithium out and use the collector material again.
I don't think energy's the big cost there.
Anyway, energy can get much cheaper, especailly for processes you can just run when there's a power surplus.
http://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/
>>7643390
I don't know how to respond to tone trolling. If you have a substantive point, then I'm all ears.
>>7643384
>I know it's an esoteric concept
I know you're a condescending mediocre shit who likes to talk down to people standing head and shoulders above you.
>>7643392
I'm not "trolling". I've demonstrated that I understand this stuff much better than you do and am better informed, and you're trying to act as if you have to explain what EROEI is to me.
Holy fucking shit. Is that how you talk to someone who just schooled you on grid-scale battery technology?
You keep citing these stupid fucking blog posts, as if I fucking care there are other idiots who share your same idiot opinions and also can't see the glaring flaws in the arguments.
You're not an intelligent person. You're not good at researching topics that interest you. You don't come to sound conclusions. I understand that this is the internet, and you get away a lot with pretending to be more than what you are, but have just a shred of dignity and self-awareness.
>>7643408
I didn't say trolling. I said tone trolling. Tone trolling is attacking the tone of the speaker rather than the speaker's points. It can be a form of ad hom. I'm not much interested if you think I'm an arrogant ass. I care if I'm right or if I'm wrong. You can take your concerns about my tone, and shove it up your ass.
>You keep citing these stupid fucking blog posts, as if I fucking care there are other idiots who share your same idiot opinions and also can't see the glaring flaws in the arguments.
I still disagree on those points. I feel that 7 days of storage is very reasonable target to ensure 99.99% or whatever uptime on the electrical grid when the grid is backed primarily by wind and solar. You didn't make a compelling argument to the contrary, and I am unmoved.
And again, I also think that looking at the target for all energy production instead of just electricity production is warranted. If we're serious about solving for global warming, we need to stop all CO2 production right now.
Tangent: Actually, we need to go further than that. We need to start building massive plants that pull CO2 out of the water and put it into a chemically stable form, and that's going to take a lot of energy.
So no, I still politely disagree with your assessment of that blog post. It shows that at the time, there wasn't a single battery technology that could solve.
Admitting, apparently in the last few years, there's been some new tech developments. We have this improved zinc-air battery. Unfortunately specs aren't published, so it's hard to analyze.
And you still haven't addressed the EROEI problem.
And you haven't addressed the problem of land usage when the land required for solar is approximately all of the Sahara desert or half of South America. And that's without taking into consideration the additional energy cost requirements of producing the backing storage, which I didn't consider when I ran those land calculations.
>>7643415
Oh, and plus this ORBAT tech and Aquion tech. I'm a little concerned that you're linking directly to commercial ventures. At first glance, it fails the smell test. It looks like the Ambri fiasco all over again. Maybe it's legit. I need to do more research. I admit that I do not know right now.
>>7643408
But seriously - did you look into these private commercial ventures with any detail? With some minimal googling, I cannot find any technical details of any of the 3 batteries. Right now, it's starting to smell suspiciously like vaporware, just like Ambri's antimony batteries.
>>7643388
No, they flood an area with embankments on every side and let it evaporate off. The same way they get table salt.
Your method sounds even more costly and overly complicated.
>>7643408
> I've demonstrated that I understand this stuff much better than you do and am better informed,
No you haven't.
>>7643441
Found something:
http://www.solarpaneltalk.com/showthread.php?18789-Aquion-Energy-batteries/page3
Yep.
You have to realize that they announce radical breakthroughs in battery tech many times a year. Almost all of it is venture capitalists trying to hussle money out of investors and government subsidies and grants.
You're going to have to do better than citing a private unproven commercial venture that doesn't release specs. Just a complete non-starter for a discussion like this.
>>7643408
I've determined that one of them is vaporware. The other 2 looks the like the same. I've lost all motivation to look into the other 2 battery techs.
>>7641276
They already made fusion power in France, it just requires way more energy than it supplies for now. Maybe in a couple of decades.
Here's a link to another redox flow battery chemistry; this one uses only ferricyanide and anthraflavic acid in a 1 M KOH solution.
>Actual Papers
http://www.canli.dicp.ac.cn/Gruop%20Seminars%20Pdf/20151024-maweiguang.pdf
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6255/1529.abstract
And the older metal-free bromine-based version:
http://faculty.chemistry.harvard.edu/files/gordon/files/aqueous_flow_battery_nature5052014_dash.pdf?m=1390403650
(This one actually includes energy density and cost numbers: Storage density of the fluid is 50 watt-hours per liter, and the cost of the components is $21 per kiloWatt-hour for the quinone, and $6 per kiloWatt-hour for the bromine.)
>News Article
http://www.forbes.com/sites/carmendrahl/2015/09/24/this-battery-chemistry-could-outperform-teslas-powerwall-for-storing-renewable-energy/2/
>>7644969
And a note, at the cost numbers for the bromine-quinone redox flow battery, storing a household's entire daily electricity usage (about 30 kWh, on average) comes out to about $800 for the chemicals, and about 1000 L of tankage. This is actually fairly reasonable.
I also found the energy density numbers for the ferrocyanide-quinone alkaline flow battery (it was in the supplemental materials) - it should be around 18.8 Watt-hours per liter, although it's only 6.8 Wh/L in their cell because they've got more positive electrolyte than needed to balance the negative electrolyte, and their ferrocyanide isn't at the highest concentration it could be.
>http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2015/09/23/349.6255.1529.DC1/Lin.SM.pdf
They didn't include the cost figures, but most are inexpensive - the ferrocyanide and KOH are standard industrial chemicals. The 2,6-dihydroxyanthraquinone is less so, but I'm not sure how much of that is because it's not in demand and I can only find 5 gram orders, and how much is because it's actually hard to make.
>>7645005
The base material, anthraquinone, is less than $19/kg, and the particular quinone used is just that with two hydroxyls stuck on, so it probably wouldn't be *that* expensive if anyone actually had reason to manufacture it in bulk.
>>7639584
But they're incredibly expensive and have costed a lot in unexpected malfunctions in the past. The manpower, construction, knowledge, and maintenance to keep them running safely and efficiently is a fortune.
Just look at the Three Mile Island incident. I won't dismiss that leftist have handicapped it, just not for reasons you think.
>>7638452
Basically a half-meme. It has some advantages over uranium or plutonium, but it's rather over-hyped.
>>7639584
>This just simply isn't true
>It has been intentionally handicapped by leftists in the government.
>It continues to be intentionally handicapped.
>Without this handicap, every western country would be majority nuclear power.
>Anyone trying to build a nuclear power plant gets hit with lawsuits & government fuckery until they give up.
There's a lot that can go wrong with a reactor if you don't know what you're doing. And there are too many people who lack the ability to perform good cost/benefit analysis to avoid taking excessive risks. The reason nuclear power is so extensively regulated is to make sure that the people working with it know exactly what they're doing.
>>7639584
>When you need government permission to do anything, with your means of production, do you truly own it?
By that criteria, virtually every country is socialist. There isn't really any civilized country where you don't need government permission (implicit or explicit) to do things with your means of production.
>>7641253
Safest in what way? Other power plants may have mishaps more often, but a worst-case nuclear mishap is uniquely difficult to deal with.
>And to reach the ultimate energy source - Antimatter, we would need to have perfected nuclear fusion beforehand.
Antimatter isn't an energy source. Substantial quantities don't exist in nature (at least anywhere near our side of the universe). It's more like a battery - one that is ridiculously inefficient to charge and will explode into gamma rays if you look at it funny. Really the only practical uses for antimatter as a power source is spacecraft with a limited mas budget, or to facilitate small-scale nuclear reactions.
>>7642282
Is throttling really an issue though? Couldn't you store the excess in batteries to ease the transition from low to high power outputs?
>>7643968
Don't you mean England? JET has produced fusion power, but less than put into it. Has ITER actually produced power yet?
>>7641276
>And to reach the ultimate energy source - Antimatter, we would need to have perfected nuclear fusion beforehand.
>And after reaching Antimatter, every star in the sky will inevitably be Seeded by Us.
How exactly would fusion help us get antimatter? (disregarding the obvious problems with antimatter as a fuel) And he real issue with space travel (apart from the fact that we don't even know of anything in space worth going there for) isn't power so much as reaction mass. Even fission would let us travel between planets on just a few pounds of propellant, were we able to make a perfectly efficient thermal rocket, but we're nowhere near that.
>>7645359
>Three Mile Island
>No deaths
>Minimal costs
>One old plant out of several hundred
>>7645396
>Is throttling really an issue though? Couldn't you store the excess in batteries to ease the transition from low to high power outputs?
The battery would probably cost the cost of the power station connected to it.
My personal preference for throttling is either off-peak desalination (I live in Australia) or producing liquid fuels for vehicles
>>7638452
Yes.
>>7638547
>implying most liberals don't like nuclear power because it creates union jobs
Carter himself was a nuclear engineer. You should blame harry ried for stalling yucca mountain a full decade and the nuclear industry execs for not working on a standardized, modular reactor design when they had the chance.
>>7645502
>>implying most liberals don't like nuclear power because it creates union jobs
that's not true in the slightest. liberals hate nuclear power and they dont know shit about it.>>7645502
>You should blame harry ried for stalling yucca mountain a full decade and the nuclear industry execs for not working on a standardized, modular reactor design when they had the chance.
carter and clinton fucked nuclear. and why would you think a single design is optimal? not to mention we have a capitalist economy, we dont do that whole govt control of industry bullshit, competition is king.
>>7645516
repetition does not make right
>>7645524
im not whoever you're talking to, just clarifying that you're wrong
>>7645530
about everything but modular
>>7645530
i'm not whoever you were talking to either
was only pointing out that you were wrong
>>7645502
The reason US nuclear has fallen so behind is for a variety of reasons:
1. huge (and mostly outdated) NRC regulations and licensing fees. Painfully slow licensing process as well
2. no standardized equipment
3. no easily replaceable or modular equipment
4. shale oil boom + fracking + tar sands rock bottom oil prices
5. dropping consumption (due to the shit global economy) = lower demand = lower coal prices
6. no incentive to invest in new types of reactors when the navy is happy with the existing ones
7. NIMBYism, but that's par for the course for any infrastructure project in the US
8. no storage space for nuclear material, thanks to Harry Ried (D-NV) who stalled it for a decade. It's only being restarted now because South Carolina, a nuclear heavy state, sued the Department of Energy and a court forces them to start the licensing and continue the environmental review process for Yucca Mtn. Ried isn't running for re-election in 2016, and the DoE is more or less putting everything else they do on hold to not be in contempt of court (thanks to the 9% sequester/austerity from Congress)
Basically the nuclear industry itself was too far up it's own ass to standardize and make their own reactors cheaper and easier to actually use. The thing is, in the US the vast majority of nuclear reactors made are for navy ships. They demand smaller (though modular) reactors and don't care about what they're powered by. They have their own storage sites too. As a result, there's not a huge demand for innovation unless the NRC modernizes it's regulatory framework. Which they are slowly doing, but it will take at least three or four years for anything of substance to come out. At the core of it, it's just the high capital costs that keep nuclear from happening.
That being said, the US is far better off than Germany. Merkel, singlehandedly (!) killed their entire nuclear industry. Siemens nuclear folded up, and all their employees are out of work.
>>7645516
>carter and clinton fucked nuclear
How so? Provide some examples.
>>7638547
Jimmy Carter is a Nuclear Engineer. He didn't ruin shit. It was everyone after him that didn't start investing in new nuclear that is at fault.
Nuclear sucks because:
1. Its fossil fuels 2.0. We need to dig fissile materials out of the ground and there is a limited supply. The Scientific American estimates that there are only 200 years of uranium left at current rates of consumption.
2. It produces nuclear waste that is difficult to dispose of. The cost is frequently footed by the government and is often not included in cost estimates for nuclear power. Read up on Hanford Nuclear site - aging tanks have leaked millions of gallons of nuclear waste and has contaminated over 100 square miles of groundwater in the area, according to the BBC.
3. No one will shut down aging plants on time. This is the killer. Aging parts is what brought down Fukushima. It also brought down Chernobyl. (Technically, Chernobyl should never have been built because of the poor design decisions, but that's something that we find out in retrospect). The truth is there is is an economic incentive to keep plants running far past their safe lifetimes.
>>7645725
>The Scientific American estimates that there are only 200 years of uranium left at current rates of consumption
Did you read the article wrong?
"If the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) has accurately estimated the planet's economically accessible uranium resources, reactors could run more than 200 years at current rates of consumption."
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/
>>7645725
#1 and #2 have already been solved. Breeder reactors, which use fuel 100x more efficiently and leave much shorter-lasting nuclear waste, already exist and could be used any time we decide we're tired of nuclear waste and limited uranium.
#3 is the biggie, but it's solvable - the reason it occurs is because of the insane startup costs of a nuclear plant, so the incentive is to squeeze every dollar you can out of it. The cost of building nuclear reactors is essentially 100% regulatory; it's a man-made obstruction.
>>7645736
That's exactly what I said, isn't it? 200 years of uranium at current rates of consumption.
>>7645725
Our present idea of "nuclear" sucks because it's primitive. They're glorified water boilers that spin a turbine, and most of the materials and operating costs go into dealing with the myriad failsafes to make a high pressure system fault tolerant.
It's a joke that we should have outgrown a long time ago. Don't get me wrong, it has its clever parts and an important place in our history. But that's what it should be right now. History.
>>7645741
Oh they said more than.
>>7645741
200 years of *economically accessible reserves* of uranium.
"Economically accessible" means that it's profitable to extract them with current technology, at current uranium prices.
If uranium prices were to rise - for instance, because we'd started to use up all the cheap uranium - then the economically accessible uranium reserves would go up, because previously marginal deposits would become profitable at the new higher price.
There's about 5.8 million tons of economic uranium right now.
The known recoverable resources - including those which aren't profitable to extract right now, but could be if extraction got cheaper or uranium pricier - add up to 4000 million tons (At the $600/kg price point, it becomes viable to extract uranium from seawater.)
>>7645739
Breeder reactors have the political downside that they create materials that can be used in nuclear weapons. The powers that be are not happy with the idea of small nations having nuclear arms.
Breeder reactors are also expensive. I'm fine with paying top dollar for my power, dont get me wrong. But why I pay top dollar for nuclear when solar, wind, geothermal, natural gas, or any of countless other alternatives exist?
>>7645756
Or we could leave all that uranium buried deep under the earth and diluted in the oceans and not bring it to the surface and concentrate it in cities where it can hurt millions of people or be used in nuclear warfare.
>>7645761
>Breeder reactors are also expensive
Sure, because we've built like 20-odd total ever, and nuclear reactor development runs at such a crawl that thirty years might pass between design iterations.
>>7645425
Wrong, that's one of the most expensive incidents in history.
>>7645761
>propellorheads don't believe that fissile proliferation isn't a threat
Fissile byproducts are a bigger existential threat to humanity than any energy shortfall or even climate change.
>>7645756
The estimated uranium resource peak is based on current usage, not extrapolated out to widespread usage. On the subject of economics, even ignoring the poor economic future of the fuel, the actual reactors are incredibly uneconomical and it's appearing that they cannot even come close to breaking even when you account for decomissioning and waste costs. Nuclear is yesterday's solution to yesterday's problem: centralized generation. The future is diverse networked renewable.
>>7645761
solar is useless almost everywhere and still bad in the places its not useless.
wind is worse than useless since no turbine fan will ever make more power than went into creating it.
geothermal, you either have it or don't.
natural gas is being fully exploited.
nuclear is the way, the truth, and light.
>>7646121
>solar is useless almost everywhere
It's really good choice in space up to a few AU out.
>>7646098
>The future is diverse networked renewable.
The future is powered by ignorance and wishful thinking?
No wonder everything is going to hell.
>>7645689
he killed reprocessing in 77. effectively destroying any chance of a breeder program, and the ability to utilize our waste properly
>>7646096
Nuclear weapons haven't been an existential threat for a long time. Arguably they never were.
Which is honestly a big problem, because it means eventually somebody's going to decide they really don't like their neighbors and realize they can afford to nuke them without bringing down the Apocalypse.
Nuclear proliferation is a huge problem, but integral fast breeder reactors would be very hard for rogue non-national agents to make bombs with. Breeder fuel has high burnup, so the plutonium produced has isotopic impurities that make it unsuitable for weapons without extensive enrichment, and the omnivorous nature of its neutron spectrum means you never need to produce chemically pure plutonium in the course of reprocessing.
For national agents, unless the reactor is explicitly repurposed into a production reactor by putting a uranium-238 blanket around the core, you would still need a sizable enrichment program to make useful weapons ... which means you could make weapons anyway. It would actually be more obvious with the breeder, since you wouldn't have the excuse of needing an enrichment program to make or reprocess fuel.
And modifying a reactor by converting it into a production reactor would be very noticeable. Don't sell them to anybody who won't let the IAEA inspect them.
(And frankly, the inevitable leakage and spread of SILEX technology means we're already doomed, as far as preventing access to enriched fissile material goes.)
>>7646121
>>7646268
>SILEX technology
This.
Tabletop production of weapon grade uranium instead of an industrial park.
People worrying about energy producing reactors are looking the wrong way.
>>7646268
>Nuclear weapons haven't been an existential threat for a long time. Arguably they never were.
In a thread full of crazy pro-nuclear assertions, this is the craziest.
>>7646395
Nah. Nukes can devastate a nation, but so can regular warfare too. Nukes just do it a lot faster with no boots on the ground.
Nukes wiping out all life is hyperbole, if the russians nuked the US and US the russians it would mostly be business as usual for Canada and the chinese.
>>7645689
Apparently he doesn't like nuclear energy precisely because he was a nuclear engineer. A plant that he was working at blew up and they got the hazard suits and geiger counters out and it was real scary for him. Maybe the hippies are right, if there are more plants there will statistically be more meltdowns and each meltdown is so dangerous that we really can't afford too many therefore the lobby that keeps nuclear power stations to a minimum is a good thing. There should be nuclear stations but for only 20-30% of the country's power.
>>7646426
>Maybe the hippies are right, if there are more plants there will statistically be more meltdowns
no because newer plants are statistically less likely to meltdown. by 2-4 orders of magnitdude
>>7646426
got scared
sounds like a typical liberal
>>7646432
>Being at the scene of a meltdown wouldn't scare me
Edgy
>>7646430
My point is meltdowns are too destructive to the environment for it to be worth it. One meltdown in 50 years can still fuck up half the planet really badly. Look at Chernobyl. It was the only large scale meltdown ever yet it had far reaching consequences for all of Europe even to this day.
>>7646437
>Look at Chernobyl. It was the only large scale meltdown ever yet it had far reaching consequences for all of Europe even to this day.
>wat is fukushima
>implying cherboyl was as bad as people think
>implying coal plants arent silently fucking us daily
>>7646268
>you would still need a sizable enrichment program to make useful weapons
Separating tens of kg of Pu-239 out of tens of kg of mixed plutonium isotopes is not at all on the same scale as separating tens of kg of U-235 out of tons of natural uranium.
It's the difference between lab-scale work and industrial-scale work.
>>7646443
>"Chernobyl wasn't that bad mmkay!"
Face it nuclearfags, it was over from Three Mile Island. Nuclear will never be publicly acceptable.
>>7646453
>tmi
nothing even happened
>>7646437
>one meltdown in 50 years can still fuck up half the planet really badly.
2-4 orders of magnitude lower means you get one accident every 5000 to 500000 years.
>half the planet
Lol no. More people die every year in traffic accidents in the US alone than all nuclear accidents in the entire world have killed since forever.
> far reaching consequences for all of Europe
Yeah, our energy supply is compromised because environmentalists and stupid laymen can't stop wetting their pants and are afraid of our best energy form, that's the consequences.
>>7645725
>1. Its fossil fuels 2.0. We need to dig fissile materials out of the ground and there is a limited supply. The Scientific American estimates that there are only 200 years of uranium left at current rates of consumption.
200 years is probably long enough for us to develop fusion power. And that 200 years could be extended considerably with fuel recycling and thorium (which I believe is substantially more common than uranium).
>2. It produces nuclear waste that is difficult to dispose of. The cost is frequently footed by the government and is often not included in cost estimates for nuclear power. Read up on Hanford Nuclear site - aging tanks have leaked millions of gallons of nuclear waste and has contaminated over 100 square miles of groundwater in the area, according to the BBC.
Nuclear waste is the real issue with fission power, mainly because it takes so long to decay. But with fuel recycling we could end up with waste that we need to store for only hundreds of years, rather than millions. That would make the storage problem far simpler (we can built waste storage that can last for hundreds of years, but not millions).
>3. No one will shut down aging plants on time. This is the killer. Aging parts is what brought down Fukushima. It also brought down Chernobyl. (Technically, Chernobyl should never have been built because of the poor design decisions, but that's something that we find out in retrospect). The truth is there is is an economic incentive to keep plants running far past their safe lifetimes.
I don't know much about Fukushima, however I thought it was because the generator room flooded and the coolant pumps failed causing a meltdown. Chernobyl was mainly human error due to experiments conducted by the night shift (which I think was normally only responsible for monitoring a shut-down reactor) combined with the RBMK reactor lacking passive safety characteristics as a compromise to let it use low-quality fuel.
>>7646472
>Nuclear waste is the real issue with fission power
It isn't, due to energy densities the volumes needed to keep track of are small. Due to solid state waste it's easy to handle. Due to radioactivity we can easily monitor its integrity.
Nuclear waste is a red herring.
>>7646422
>Nah. Nukes can devastate a nation, but so can regular warfare too. Nukes just do it a lot faster with no boots on the ground.
...and to both sides, to whatever extent they decided before the conflict that they would wish to inflict.
>Nukes wiping out all life is hyperbole
It was never about "all life". That's a strawman. It's about the downfall of civilization.
And the worldwide health effects might be more severe than you're imagining. It's not just the fallout from the bombs, there's also the fallout from the nuclear power plants and weapon production facilities that get blown up, plus all of the chemical plants and oil wells and garbage dumps and managed forests (with unnatural buildup of combustables due to forest fire prevention) that get lit on fire with nobody to put them out.
Modern civilization makes a lot of nasty stuff, on the assumption that we're going to be around to control it and clean it up and keep it from leaking too much. Are stragglers going to survive in a world like that?
>if the russians nuked the US and US the russians it would mostly be business as usual for Canada and the chinese.
I don't think the deterrent strategy involves leaving allies and plausible provocateurs unscathed. Anyway, even if this were true, it would be little consolation to the Americans and Russians, and there would likely be further conflict in the power vacuum they leave behind.
>>7646472
>I thought it was because the generator room flooded and the coolant pumps failed causing a meltdown
The same thing happened at Fukushima 2. but because those reactors were slightly newer(Fukushima 1 that had the meltdown was literally fucking OLDER THAN CHERNOBYL) they managed the same problem with no meltdowns, they had steam powered pumps that can use decay heat to circulate coolant to the reactors whereas fukushima 1 only had electric pumps.
No one cares about the safety stories, only about doom and gloom.
>>7646470
>2-4 orders of magnitude lower means you get one accident every 5000 to 500000 years.
Sounds like the reliability estimates of the space shuttle before Challenger blew.
Motivated reasoning.
>>7646422
H-bombs (and even possibly large A-bombs) could render entire regions uninhabitable. Sure, you could cause similar damage (without radiation) in a war. However the real danger is that a nuke small enough to be portable could be a city-destroying weapon.
>>7646426
We could probably do more than 30% nuclear power safely, however the increase should be gradual so as not to outpace the growth of safety inspections and crew training. Nuclear power is fairly safe, but if you let people cut corners you'll end up with a disaster.
>>7646443
Coal pollution doesn't have a million-year half life.
>>7646496
>Coal pollution doesn't have a million-year half life.
no, we just breath it in every day and it sits in our lungs.
>>7646495
>Sounds like the reliability estimates of the space shuttle before Challenger blew.
actually probabilistic risk assessments for plants put accident probability on the order of 10^-5 to 10^-8 per year depending on reactor design, core configuration, operational life, etc
>>7646496
>Coal pollution doesn't have a million-year half life.
Half life doesn't kill people.
Coal pollution on the other hand harvests 100k+ people per year.
>waste storage non-issues are more important than people dying today
Green Peace logic everyone. Please clap like the stupid fucking americans you obviously are.
>>7646504
>actually probabilistic risk assessments for plants put accident probability on the order of 10^-5 to 10^-8 per year
Yeah, that's clearly not realistic thinking. Fewer than one accident in a hundred thousand years? Human beings don't do ANYTHING that well.
To make a claim like this is either dishonest or insane.
>>7646517
per plant. and its based on very in depth accident analysis, not on what you believe is "realistic thinking"
to make a claim like that is scientific
>>7646504
Ok, lets do some basic math.
>The world has fully accepted nuclear power
>There are 60,000 nuclear reactors thought the world (we've replaced all our current non-nuclear plants with new shiny nuclear ones)
>all of these reactors are very well designed, regulated and safe. There are no political scandals so safety is perfect, each plant is rated for a 10^-5 chance of failing each year
The odds of no plant failing in any given year: (1 - 10^-5)^60000 = 54%. So we can expect a meltdown every other year.
>t-thanks
>>7646510
The issue is that half-life means that stuff isn't going away. If we find a perfectly clean power source and eliminate all our coal power plants, that pollution will dissipate rather quickly, while the nuclear waste will still be there for thousands of years.
>>7646526
>we've replaced all our current non-nuclear plants with new shiny nuclear ones
>still have 60 era LOCA probabilities
no, like i said, newer plants are on the orders of 10^-7 and fewer per year, and lower depending on reactor type (LWR, CANDU, HTGR, etc all have different risk probabilities)
your shit calculations that youve put no thought into are even worse than you thought theyd be when you made them up
>>7646523
>its based on very in depth accident analysis, not on what you believe is "realistic thinking"
Heh. You can make the process look as formal and mathy as you like, but you won't find out what will really happen until you try it, and things happen that weren't accounted for in your model. Good engineers respect that. Dishonest and crazy engineers claim their big, complicated system with people working it won't have any serious failures for millions of years.
>to make a claim like that is scientific
Scientism, man. Might as well be Scientology.
>>7646534
10^-5 is the number you supplied m8. You want to change the goalposts and use the fairy tale number of 10^-7? Fine. We still expect a meltdown every generation. Your own numbers show that nuclear is unsafe at scale. Literally blown the fuck out
>>7638452
yes
everyone keeps saying MUH THORIUM will solve it but really we still don't have viable design plans for an actual thorium reactor.
if anyone says otherwise, just remind them that there are very few built still to this day and that no amount of bitching and whining will change that without improving the technology.
>>7646537
>Scientism, man. Might as well be Scientology.
you're a fucking idiot. using science is now not scientific. gtfo you dumb fuck.
>hings happen that weren't accounted for in your model. Good engineers respect that
no shit thats why there are so many different backup safety measures in case something goes wrong
>>7646543
>no shit thats why there are so many different backup safety measures in case something goes wrong
The "things that weren't accounted for in your model" includes people leaving out or disabling those safety measures because they find it convenient.
>>7646541
>10^-5 is the number you supplied m8.
>10^-5 to 10^-8
learn to read you dumb fuck thats for 60 era plants. and your calculations were incorrect
60,000(1-(10^-7)^60) is the probability of a serious LOCA with 60,000 plants worldwide (140 times the current operational fleet) each operating for 60 years. thats about a 35% chance of one accident in 60 years over 60,000 plants (3 times more than the entire worlds energy consumption), using a standard core damage frequency of an AP 1000 a plant already in production, not some new age, speciality, gen 4 reactor.
>>7646565
*60,000(1-(1-10^-7)^60)
>>7646543
Look, engineering isn't science. Calling something "scientific" to try imply that it's reliable and true is making something of science other than what it is, which is what we call "scientism".
Scientism is bad, dumb magical thinking, modern-style superstition.
>>7646542
They had a reactor running for five years back in the 60s. It was shut down because Amerifats at the time thought it didn't provide any military applications. Its technically true, because thorium reactors can't produce fissionable material for a bomb. There is a way supposedly but the process is expensive and classified by the US. China is being a test reactor. I believe India is doing the same.
>>7646571
youre too stupid to even argue with. holy shit. at least this dickhead >>7646541 is trying to use numbers and make a real argument
>engineering isnt science
it literally is applied science, how the fuck do you think they design the cores? the pumping systems? the pressure vessels? the controls systems? you're fucking dumb as shit
>>7646575
>at least this dickhead >>7646541 is trying to use numbers and make a real argument
He's thrashing you by your own standards with your own claims, I'm pointing out that your standards and claims are kind of dumb.
>it literally is applied science
Engineers apply science as *part* of how they work, but there's a lot more to it than that. But to call engineering judgement a "scientific prediction" is abusing the term "scientific" badly.
>>7646591
>He's thrashing you
>he's wrong
>im pointing out that the industry standard and probabilistic risk assessment as a tool is kind of dumb
>PRA
>an engineering judgement
read a fucking book you uneducated idiot, its not a fucking judgement call its a systematic analysis of the plant and its components and its not just a nuclear thing
>>7646541
Thank you for putting into maths exactly what I said. 100% nuclear is a terrible idea because we can't afford even one meltdown in 10 years. We can easily live with a coal plant blowing up every six months but nuclear, no it's too hazardous.
>>7646599
ironic shitposting is still shitposting you fucking mongoloid retard
>>7646541
>fairy tale number of 10^-7
you mean the core damage frequency of the AP 1000? HTGRs are even lower, maybe i should use those numbers? fucking dickhead cant you just accept youre wrong and that other people know more than you?
ITT: Retards talking about things they don't know about.
A typical day in /sci/ shitposters pretending to be "expert".
>>7646603
>"ironic shitposting is still shitposting"
>calls someone a mongoloid retard
>>7646615
We've got on nuke guy here on /sci/ but he probably doesn't waste his time in threads like this bickering with retards.
>mfw internet access makes everything think theyre a genius
add crippling autism and egos that couldnt fit in the grand canyon and you have /sci/
>>7646603
>"mongoloid retard"
>calls me a shitposter
wew
>>7646623
>"Everyone who doesn't agree with me is a retard!"
Who is the autist here?
>>7646609
No actual AP 1000s have been constructed. How, exactly, do we know how often they have accidents?
>>7646632
When you're wrong, you're wrong. Not accepting facts and continuing to argue makes you a fucking idiot
>>7646634
there are two under construction currently in US, 4 in china
>How, exactly, do we know how often they have accidents?
ayy lmao now that's some shitposting
>what is PRA
>literally what you've been arguing about (and have subsequently been wrong about) this whole time.
fuck /sci/ is getting stupider by the minute
go back to your memedrive threads
>>7646645
>>How, exactly, do we know how often they have accidents?
>ayy lmao now that's some shitposting
Predictions of reliability, prior to construction of the first unit, and data about reliability are entirely different things, and the figures involved often end up bearing no resemblance to each other.
You must be mad at reality for shitposting all the time.
>>7646639
>"you're wrong because I say you are!"
We could do this all day.
>>7646677
im telling you exactly how its done in industry. whether you accept that or not doesnt change the fact that it's correct. your denial of facts doesnt change those facts
>>7646681
>"I'm in the industry"
And I'm Elvis.
>>7646695
>>"I'm in the industry"
not what i said, i said that's how it's done in the industry
>>7646709
Isn't Nuclear engineering just applied mechanical engineering? Did you minor in physics?
>>7646748
it started out as an extension of chemE, but its pretty much all the basic ME classes (thermo, statics, dynamics, fluids, heat/mass transfer, etc), phys (mechanics, E&M, modern phys), nuclear phys/neutronics/health phys, materials science, and some systems design/controls plus plasma phys, if you want to do fusion.
>>7646763
it basically comes with a minor in math and phys if you take one extra elective math and phys class
>>7646766
Cool. I guess that's what I'll major in. Most engineering programs don't have Nuke Eng as a major so the compromise is Mech Eng with a physics as your double major.
>>7638452
nuclear power is not only about energy production, but also has a political factor: it allows states to quickly change to enriching uranium for weapons production.
the most prominent example is japan, whose nuclear power plans were ALL shut down w/o major shortages, despite decade-long propaganda about how a state with almost no natural ressources totally relied on nuclear power.
thorium has no weapons potential and therefore won't ever happen apart from test reactors and maybe some homophile irrelevant country like costa rica or switzerland.
>>7646783
>japan, whose nuclear power plans were ALL shut down w/o major shortages
some came back online as soon as two months later tho..
>>7646788
my point exactly:
a country that we were always told totally relied on nuclear power was w/o nuclear power for 8 fucking weeks.
my point stands: japan keeps so many nuclear reactors, because with their close relations to the US (necessary technology) and tensions with china they could quickly become a nation with nuclear weapons.
>>7646799
it's 30% of their power, its not like a 30% loss is sustainable. it was like a bad, extra long refuelling scheduling mistake where all the reactors were refuelled at the same time, and took 4 times longer than expected
>>7646597
>an engineering judgement
It is an engineering judgement - its not based on science. Is there any empirical evidence? No. Its engineering analytics, not based on experiments or science.
>he's wrong
Uhm actually his numbers look right. A 35% chance of meltdown every 60 years is not acceptable. Nuclear simply isnt safe at scale.
>>7646820
>Its engineering analytics, not based on experiments or science.
do you not understand verification and validation? or the entire premise of simulation at all?
>Uhm actually his numbers look right.
that 35% is from my numbers, he said 65%, with the wrong method of evaluating it. and that's with some random 60,000 plants that he pulled out of the sky, which is a few times more energy than the entire world uses. so 10-15% chance of a single accident in the entire world over the full life cycle of all nuclear plants generating 100% of the worlds power. compare the resultant health effects to the health effects of all other forms of power generations (because that's the alternative if youre generating 100% power for the world) and nuclear is far safer. by billions of times, no only in deaths by radiation, but also increased cancer risk, and environmental damage
>>7646832
fucking #REKT
>>7646832
Let's drop the science vs engineering stuff - we're clearly arguing over semantics.
10-15% chance of a nuclear meltdown within a lifetime is not acceptable. It will never be acceptable. Widespread acceptance of nuclear power will result in devastating and recurring ecological disasters. There is no value in pursuing that.
>>7646832
LIBERALS
T
F
O
Dumping my thorium folder.
>>7646853
It's not even comparable to the damage done by coal plants and other forms of power generation. The damage done by nuclear is minuscule. Not that any amount is good. And that's just with current tech, not even future reactor designs, with small modular cores and 100% passive safety. It sounds bad but compared to anything else it's far superior.
>>7646856
Why nobody wants to see this meme shit
>>7646865
>b-but its better than coal
what isnt?
>b-b-but plants be 100% safe in the future
sure, and coal will be 100% clean in the future
>>7646854
LTFO?
>>7646874
Ok you've obviously given up trying at all
>>7638582
This is reddit though. It has always been reddit. 4chan has been property of reddit since 2006. I am now going to downvote your comment and then message all of my friends to also downvote your comment. Then I'm going to circlejerk with my friends about how we are so special because we turned into atheists when we were 12.
