Nuclear Power - C/D

Folks, there ain't nothing wrong with nuclear power. Chernobyl blew up because it was run by the atheist god-less Communists, and look where they are now, folks.

Also note how we are just investing in Noo Nooclear power just before a decision has to be made on Noo Nookes for the Nooclear Subs and without Nooclear Power we can't make Nooclear material for Nooclear Nookes.

Pillocks.

Atomkraft? Nein Danke!

is renewables stuff like wind farms? i have to admit a smidge of sympathy for the horrible tory country-dwellers who dislike the wind farms.

i like the idea of damns.

Nuclear power is bad becasue we still haven't worked out what to do with the waste. Nuclear power stations make pretty good terror targets. Accidents, whilst infrequent, have the potential to be much worse than other industrial accidents. Shiping fuel and spent fuel around is a dangerous business. No one has ever built a nuclear power station on time or on budget (same goes for most major projects though).

None of these problems are insurmountable. Would have been bettre if we'd bought into wave power 15 years ago.

no idea dude

http://glen.utdallas.edu/chernobyl.jpg

One gets the impression that national policy decisions on this have already been made.

http://www.tarifa-ar.de/Fotos/images/spinoutsurfschool_jpg.jpg

yeah, they are. see 'em when they're moving...

I think that windfarms can also be problematic for birds if they're placed on migration routes.

so don't put them in migration routes :) no, i heard something about this on the radio a year or so ago. birds can fly into them, yeah, but birdpeople know what heights birds generally fly at and it's not hard to build them at a height to make it less likely. also birds can see and stuff. also aeroplanes kill birds all the time (um i am basing this scientific fact on an 3ddi3 1zz4rd video) ("they call it bird-strike. it shouldn't be called bird-strike; it should be called engine-SUCK!" etc) and i don't see all these fucks using that as an argument against wind farms opposing new airports/runways/subsidised fuel for aeroplanes for the same reason.

Unfortunately, that would discount most of the windy exposed coasts in the south and east of the UK. And Tarifa for instance is right on the route from Africa to Europe.

Wasn't the large numbers of birds in the area one of the main objections to Maplin Airport, or have I just imagined that

It's also one of the main objections to the major expansion of Lydd (London Ashford) - Dungeness is one of the most important sites for birds in Europe.

Also, birds and other animals die in great numbers from oil spills. So take your pick.

xpost
Nick - good point about controlling usage...

there is an alternative to SO MUCH air travel.

Unfortunately, that would discount most of the windy exposed coasts in the south and east of the UK. And Tarifa for instance is right on the route from Africa to Europe.

i realised when i read that that i was picturing migration routes as similar to aeroplane corridors. BARGH.

There is no Tax on Aviation fuel. Everyone else apart from farmers and sailors pays tax on fuel.

Some renewables don't suit the national grid paradigm, (wave, hydro and offshore wind are the ones that do). There would be a lot of milage in community, borough and city level biomass CHP, solar and wind projects. One could argue for replacing the High tension electricity grid, which is inherrently lossy, with a liquified hydrogen distribution system feeding local level fuel cell generation, to supplement these other sources.

James Aach
http://RadDecision.blogspot.com

http://www.supercables.com/

[poop joke]

There are ways we could use uranium more efficiently, and make it last longer. But by choosing nuclear power, its possible we'd be expending all our resources on a temporary fix, rather than reshaping society so that we could get by with renewables, conservation and a big retraction of consumption. And then a few decades down the line, we'd be in the same mess.

The geopolitical implications for the large-scale shift from fossil fuels to nuclear would be huge. The five current major uranium producing countries are Canada, Niger, Namibia, South Africa and Australia, they together have a virtual monopoly. There's no reason to expect that the conflict that could be caused by competition for uranium resources would be any less disastrous than conflicts in the last few decades over oil and gas.

At the moment, I am unsure whether nuclear power might be a necessary evil. Renewables alone are never going to cater for the global energy demands of 6 billion people, unless there is some miraculous unforeseen breakthrough in technology. But moving to dependence on uranium would be suicidal if it's not going to last long enough to allow us to come up with something else. I've heard very varying estimates of how long supplies could last.

Also, I really need to find out more about possibilities for a hydrogen economy. Can anyone recommend me any books/realistic and balanced articles on that?

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast23mar_1.htm

http://www.freemars.org/history/sps.html

http://www.spacefuture.com/power/sps2000.shtml

http://www.ieee-virtual-museum.org/collection/tech.php?id=2345888&lid=1

I think the conflict will be how much nuclear and how much renewables...to drastically expand either sector to compensate for fossil fuels will require massive resources, and billions used to build new nuclear power infrastructure is billions not being spent on renewables.

The economic consequences of transition will probably be pretty dire, so all this extra money we need to invest in the replacement energy sources will have to be found during a time of recession and volatility (which is why we should be starting now). Of course, the later we leave it, the harder that transition will be. So I do think it's really important that we don't expend time, money and energy pursuing the wrong alternative, at the cost of long-term safe and viable ones.

until then, i'm entirely open to building more nuke plants if the coal folks won't invest in the scrubbers and updated fuel tech to prevent so much co2 and mercury from getting dumped into the local environs, rivers, etc

this article in the NYT was pretty interesting. i'm gonna post it, cuz you probably won't be able to read it in a few days without signing up to their site:

NEWCASTLE, England — There is more riding the waves here than surfers, thanks to a growing number of scientists, engineers and investors.

A group of entrepreneurs is harnessing the perpetual motion of the ocean and turning it into a commodity in high demand: energy. Right now, machines of various shapes and sizes are being tested off shores from the North Sea to the Pacific — one may even be coming to the East River in New York State this fall — to see how they capture waves and tides and create marine energy.

The industry is still in its infancy, but it is gaining attention, much because of the persistence of marine energy inventors, like Dean R. Corren, who have doggedly lugged their wave and tidal prototypes around the world, even during the years when money and interest dried up. Mr. Corren, trim and cerebral, is a scientist who has long advocated green energy and pushed through numerous conservation measures when he was chairman of the public energy utility for the city of Burlington, Vt.

Another believer in the technology is Max Carcas, head of business development for Ocean Power Delivery of Edinburgh. “In the long run, this could become one of the most competitive sources of energy,” said Mr. Carcas.

His company manufactures the Pelamis, a snakelike wave energy machine the size of a passenger train, which generates energy by absorbing waves as they undulate on the ocean surface.

With high oil prices, dwindling fuel supplies and a growing pressure to reduce global warming, governments and utilities have high hopes for tidal energy. The challenge now is turning an accumulation of research into a viable commercial enterprise, which for many years has proved elusive.

No one contends that generating energy from the oceans is a preposterous idea. After all, the “fuel” is free and sustainable, and the process does not generate pollution or emissions.

Moreover, it is not just oceans that could be tapped; the regular flow of tides in bodies of water linked to oceans, like the East River, hold promise too. In fact, it seemed like such a sensible idea that inventors started making the first wave of such generators centuries ago. Many operated like dams, trapping water and then releasing it after the tides fell. But they were outmoded with the rise of steam engines and other more efficient fuel sources.

Ocean energy had a brief revival when oil prices rose in the 1970’s, and prototypes were tested in Europe and China. But financing dried up when oil prices were low in the 1990’s, and advances in wind turbines and other renewable energy elbowed out tidal projects.

These days, wave power designs vary from machines that look like corks bobbing in the ocean to devices that resemble snakes pointing into waves. There are shoreline machines that cling, like limpets, to rocks.

Tidal power machines, in contrast, often come in the form of turbines, which look like underwater windmills, and generate energy by spinning as tides move in and out; some inventors also are testing concrete-and-steel machines that lie on the seabed and pipe pressurized water back to the shore.

Even big commercial power companies are joining the action. General Electric; Norsk Hydro, a Norwegian company; and the Germany power giant Eon have recently pledged money for new projects or investments in tiny marine energy companies.

“It is an untapped renewable energy source,” said Mark Huang, senior vice president for technology finance in General Electric’s media and communications business, which is financing marine projects. “There is no where to go but up,” Mr. Huang said. He added that solar or wind energy should be viewed “as a case study” for the direction marine energy could take.

Right now, wave power generators are being tested near the shores of New Jersey, Hawaii, Scotland, England and Western Australia. A long-awaited East River tidal turbine project is to start this fall, and Representative William D. Delahunt, Democrat of Massachusetts, has proposed that the United States follow in Britain’s footsteps to build an ocean energy research center, the country’s first, off the Massachusetts coast.

A handful of commercial projects are also in the works, including the world’s first “wave farm,” as the fields of machines are known, being installed off the north coast of Portugal. A field of tidal turbines is also being built off the shore of Tromso, Norway.

Britain could generate up to 20 percent of the electricity it needs from waves and tides, according to an estimate by a government-financed group here called the Carbon Trust. That is about 12,000 megawatts a day at current usage, or three times what Britain’s largest power plant produces now. In fact, England and Scotland have become experimental laboratories for ocean energy development. As reserves shrink and the offshore oil business in the North Sea winds down, governments are trying to capture the accumulated knowledge and transform oil industry jobs into other ways of generating energy.

One research center here in Newcastle is putting marine devices to the test in a wave pool, and another is deploying them in the roiling ocean off the Orkneys, the low islands off northernmost Scotland. The Scottish government has pledged to generate 18 percent of its energy from renewable resources by 2010.

If marine energy replaces the burning of some fossil fuels like coal, it can help reduce overall carbon dioxide emissions and possibly increase the diversity and security of energy supply, said John Spurgeon, a marine energy specialist in the British Department of Trade and Industry. Since 1999, the government has committed more than $47 million to research and development, $93 million to commercialize that research and additional money to bring the energy into the electrical grid, Mr. Spurgeon said.

No energy source is perfect, though, and marine energy developers are running into some hurdles. While such generators do not emit smoky pollutants or leave behind radioactive waste, the machines are not small or delicate, and can be an eyesore. To draw energy from the ocean, they often need to be rooted on sea floors relatively close to shore, or mounted on rocks on the shore — places that have not traditionally been used for energy generation.

And despite their green-friendly intentions, inventors are finding some of the stiffest resistance is coming from environmental groups.

Take the case of Verdant Power, Mr. Corren’s company, which has been trying for years to erect a small field of tidal turbines in the East River — a project that may finally get started this fall. Mr. Corren, the company’s technology director, first developed the turbines as part of a New York University project in the 1980’s and planned to attach them to the Roosevelt Island Bridge.

After the school pulled the plug on the project, the design team spent years trying to find a new home. One executive even brought a prototype to Pakistan, but the data it collected was lost when the computers and instruments went missing.

Verdant embarked on a new East River turbine project in 2003, but it has taken two and a half years to get regulatory approval for the project from environmental agencies and the United States Army Corp of Engineers. The issue was not blocking the river to boat traffic, or how it would hook up to the electrical grid or even how it might mar the view, because it is mostly underwater. It was the fish population of the East River.

“We had eight fish biologists against it, and no one on the other side advocating for clean air” or other environmental issues, said Ronald F. Smith, the chief executive of Verdant Power. “You can see that the regulatory process is extremely biased towards doing nothing,” Mr. Smith said, adding that regulators were worried about complaints that could arise from any new projects.

To get approval, the company is installing $1.5 million in underwater sonar to watch for fish around the turbines “24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” and the data will be shown online, Mr. Smith said. Verdant Power executives warn against looking forward to a live “East River cam” that broadcasts the murky mysteries beneath the water. Sonar transmissions look more like fuzzy black and white television, they say, and besides they have seen “very, very few fish” on their visits to the river.

Ultimately, Verdant estimates it can generate 10 megawatts of electricity from the East River’s tidal flows — enough to power several thousand homes, though its test turbines will be used primarily to power a Gristedes grocery store on Roosevelt Island.

To date, studies on the effect of wave and tide machines on marine life have been sporadic and sometimes bizarre. For example, in one British trial, frozen fish were shot like projectiles onto a piece of metal that was supposed to estimate the effects of the turning blades of marine turbines.

Proper testing will involve putting some of these devices where they are not wanted, a problem reminiscent of the wind industry’s battle to construct new turbines. Some leading environmental advocates say that the issue is part of a larger wrenching change being thrust on the green movement.

“It’s a major psychological and cultural challenge for the environmental and conservation movement,” said Stephen Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace UK. “What we need to combat climate change is a complete transformation of our energy system, and that requires a lot of new stuff to be built and installed, some of it in places that are relatively untouched.”

But the potential of marine energy is too strong to ignore. For example, a recent report identified San Francisco Bay as being the largest tidal power resource in the continental United States. “There are tremendous resources for generating power along the northern coast of California,” said Uday Mathur, a renewable energy consultant to government agencies and private enterprises.

The biggest hurdle is creating a landscape for development “where these technologies can thrive,” he said, which includes a combination of government involvement, community support and of course the availability of financing.

“The situation is very similar to wind 15 years ago,” said John W. Griffiths, a former British gas executive and founder of JWG Consulting, which advises on renewable energy projects. He added: “We think that this is an industry waiting to happen.”

http://www.capewind.org/

and how people are fighting them every step of the way. here is why:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/11/21/MNG5H9V40D1.DTL

"But to many Cape Codders, concern for global warming does not justify spoiling a view"

I think wind farms are beautiful, and I'd like to see as many of them as possible. But yeah, they are never going to be efficient enough and can't be used in enough places to be The Solution.

It's a bloody pesk having to think about global warming and peak oil at the same time, isn't it? It's possible that we could really get it together, manage the whole massive transition to sustainable fuels without economic disaster, and still already have released enough greenhouse gases to start an irreversible process of climate change which will wipe out most of our species.

I saw James Lovelock give a speech earlier this year, and he seemed to be of the opinion that nuclear was the only option that we could get up and running and efficient enough in time to prevent global warming killing 5 billion of us, and that it might be irreversible from now anyway. It was really incredibly depressing.

methane is a greenhouse gas. does anaerobic digestion somehow harvest methane that would be going into the atmosphere, and use it to generate energy? and that energy doesn't release any greenhouse gas?

my knowledge of basic science is pretty poor/non-existant, I'm afraid.

But the reason the process is considered renewable is because it taps into a constant, naturally occurring phenomenon, like the wind, the tides, the rays from the sun.

no shit. I worked on a project at university that tried a coupla different methods of manufacture. But gee, whaddayaknow, current science can't do this, so's I guess it never will.

at any rate, there are folks working on this right now, and having prized events like the Space Elevator games.

http://www.radionz.co.nz/nr/programmes/brainstorm

As for the 1970s resource depletion thing, this old article from the guardian touches on it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4239923,00.html

The long-term trend is unlikely to deviate much from these levels because high prices deter consumption and encourage the development of other sources of oil - and forms of energy supply. Likewise, low prices have the opposite effect.

So, all we have to do is wait until oil becomes so expensive that 70% of us can no longer afford it, and enjoy the worlwide recession for a while, and wait for entrepreneurs to save us by finding an easy replacement.

Seriously, has this guy ever read anything about Peak Oil? The environmentalists all *say* that its unlikely we'll ever drain the last drop of oil, because it'll become far too expensive to be worth while. But Lomborg just repeats this and then says "so what's the problem? Oil will never run out, it'll just get expensive and then the market will move to other forms of energy". He completely ignores that the cheap oil we've been using for decades is far, far superior in terms of energy efficiency to any alternative, and that massive government involvement will be needed to prop up alternatives until they become profitable, and to try and counter the effects of recession brought on by oil price volatility, let alone to ensure that the chosen alternatives don't contribute to global warming (which 'the market' will not take into account).

Anyway, Lomborg has been widely discredited by real scientists. In fact there are several websites on the internet devoted entirely to disproving the ridiculous claims he makes in his book.

Thanks for the radio show links, Kiwi, that's really interesting!

Their Malthusian “source limit” focus and subsequent “predictions" did much to discredit and damage wider envirnomental arguments and I don’t think you can argue the data on this, at least for the 47 elements that are handy for humans-- from memory only gold, silver, tin, mercury and one or two others are considered "potentially scarce".

As for the peak oil meme, there’s an indie film out about this recently, no? It must be true! I have my doubts but then I’m one cynical bugger as I watch record oil company profits. To me change from cheap oil will be gradual with differing mixes of new and old resources and technology slowly evolving not the sudden “shiiit we're all out of oil now” scenario despite Lombergs bluster . Its sad to think that self interest is the best agent of change but I do think price signals are the key when words like scarcity as so ethereal its always going to be tricky for govts and policy decisions incorporating moral questions regarding fairness, esp of the intergenerational kind. Global warming end times maybe though! Go the sink limits!

Looks like it's full speed ahead into the nuclear age.

At last!

or

Oh No!

I really don't know.

So will Nuclear, and all the new renewable plants like Wind plants, make my bill cheaper ?

I think I'm all for it, on paper it sounds more eco friendly but they don't seem to tell us too much about the risks of it all.

i think we should get used to being cold and living in semi-darkness more of the time tbqh.

did you guys have any idea that nuclear power plants just use the heat from uranium or whatever to HEAT STEAM which then turns giant turbines VERY FAST, which then creates electricity?? i have to admit i find this kind of pathetic, i thought it was MAGIC!

anyway, there's a new concept by the maker of the super-soaker watergun which could make this (and all other heat-based generation schemes) twice as efficient:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/10/super_soaker_nasa_boffin_heat_engine_solid_state/

Nuclear is the bomb. Classic. A thousand years from now, we'll still be talking about it.

I'm still mind-boggled that James Lovelock became a pro-nuclear person.

If his Gaia hypothesis is correct (Earth functioning as a kind of superorganism), I'd be interested in living long enough to see if the Earth starts taking self-regulatory action against humans and their nuclear plans (nuclear being so destructive to dna).

Is anyone writing science-fiction around this? If not, I might throw my hat into the field.

As Cathy said way upthread, it's a good question if nuclear is simply a postponement of an long-term energy solution.

Nuclear power is natural.

Tracer I'm with you on the steam turbines. Very antiquated technology, and so many levels of indirection - nuclear > heat > steam > motion > electricity. Hardly sounds like it's designed for efficiency. I was even kinda surprised to find that nuclear fusion is gonna do the exact same thing.

Steam turbines are one of the most efficient ways of converting heat to electricity on a large scale.

Even large scale solar power plants are just mirrors that concentrate sunlight onto a large container of water, which turns to steam and spins a turbine.

Giant magnifying glasses is the way to go.

Yeah I was surprised to find out how inefficient photo-voltaic cells are - only about 10-20%. And yet steam turbines are still only about 30%. Scientists need to work harder. xp.

yay i'm learning stuff from ilx today!

Lovelock is batty, as his book Revenge of Gaia amply demonstrates. Basically, his thesis is that growing biofuels will spoil the lovely countryside of Devon, and since microgeneration, renewables or indeed, energy spin-down doesn't feature for him as they require the sense of hope, he says go nukes.

Jeremy Leggett (formerly of FoE and now Solar Century) argues that the reason the British Govt - specifically civil servants - is so resistant to renewables (viz yesterday, Energy minister Malcolm Wicks still 'isn't convinced' by the feed-in tariff, the fucking cretinous New Labour cunt) is that they don't want anything to work, thus making the case for Nukes. It makes a lot of sense, but I'm struggling to see why unless it's simply a case that any major nuclear programme must be managed by the civil service, whereas most renewables are based on a decentralisation of generation and distribution of energy / power (DYS!!!!!). If true, I hope they drown in rising seas. Which will affect all the nuclear powerstations, which will be build on the coast. Doh!

the feed-in stuff is going great guns in germany, right?

18 of 27 EU countries use it AFAIK.

Scientists need to work harder.

The laws of physics are strict taskmasters.

Hey I'm not asking for perpetual motion. But in the eternal struggle against entropy, 30% efficiency doesn't seem like a hell of a lot to me.

certainly a failure of systems thinking. have they even BEEN to the eden project? 30% darkwave power by 2020.

c'mon guys, steam power as the wave of the future is pretty hilarious

man you gotta see 'southland tales'

Nuclear fusion generates heat, not electrical energy. We have all this water lying around. It's kind of a no-brainer.

There are only a few ways of making electricity - photovoltaic, piezoelectric (pressure applied to certain types of crystals), galvanic (utilized by batteries), and Faraday's principle of moving a conductor through a magnetic field. This final method is the most efficient of the 4. Harnessing tidal power to provide the motion component is interesting and might work on a large scale.

"piezoelectric (pressure applied to certain types of crystals)"

this one sounds cool tho.

and surely lovelock would approve?

I like the idea proposed for a piezoelectric floor - like in a mall or a train station - where the forces of people walking on it generates electricity stored to deep-cycle batteries which can then be used to run the lights and stuff.

http://thecia.com.au/reviews/m/images/matrix-poster-0.jpg

a modest proposal

I like the idea proposed for a piezoelectric floor - like in a mall or a train station - where the forces of people walking on it generates electricity stored to deep-cycle batteries which can then be used to run the lights and stuff.

so does Michael Jackson

http://www.sustainabledanceclub.com/index.php?t=project

Yeah I was surprised to find out how inefficient photo-voltaic cells are - only about 10-20%. And yet steam turbines are still only about 30%. Scientists need to work harder. xp.

It's up to 40% now, but not on a mass scale yet.

nuclear power - classic or dud?

listening to a radio report on britain's new plan to add something like 25 nuclear power stations by 2040, i was shocked to learn (and more shocked that i didn't already know) that nuclear power stations create energy by... HEATING UP WATER AND CREATING STEAM and this steam then turns gigantic turbines, which generate the electricity?!

is it really this pedestrian?? i had no idea

-- Tracer Hand, Friday, January 11, 2008 12:08 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Link

Nuclear Power - C/D

-- That one guy that hit it and quit it, Friday, January 11, 2008 12:09 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Link

D'OH

-- Tracer Hand, Friday, January 11, 2008 12:14 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Link

Ineviable really, government, and this one especially was always going to go for the 'safe' (I.e. We've done it before - safe). Given that they weren't going to take the risks of a massive renewable investment it's probably our best bet of a low carbon future. I don't have a particular problem with fission power per se, but no one has come up with a decent solution to the waste problem and no one has a particular track record of building nuclear stations on time and on budget.

-- Ed, Friday, January 11, 2008 2:36 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Link

Tracer, commercial ac electricity is always made by something turning a turbine. In a hydro plant it's water obv, wind power spins giant blades, but nuke, coal fired, oil fired, and gas fired all make high pressure steam that's used to spin turbines. It works on Faraday's principle - moving a conductor through a magnetic field generates an electrical current in the conductor.

-- Jaq, Friday, January 11, 2008 2:49 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Link

The nuclear waste problem is bad news. Nuclear reactors make stuff that is comprehensively poisonous to just about every form of life and it stays poisonous for thousands of years. If you are responsible for making such shit, you are responsible for what happens to it.

You can't detoxify it. You can't safely dilute it. You can't store it anywhere it won't escape from eventually. And when it escapes, it's not only that some living things will die, but that a whole area on earth will die.

Massive dud.

-- Aimless, Friday, January 11, 2008 6:34 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

i nominate luton

-- That one guy that hit it and quit it, Friday, January 11, 2008 6:36 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

That's the alarmists' take, yes.

-- Kerm, Friday, January 11, 2008 6:41 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i heard they put it all in massive and impenetrable metal containers and buried it a long way beneath the earth's surface

-- Just got offed, Friday, January 11, 2008 6:42 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

I have some real estate near Chernobyl I could sell you, Kerm. That's where the smart money is going these days.

-- Aimless, Friday, January 11, 2008 6:44 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i nominate luton

yeh, nobody would notice. (i was born in luton, fwiw; we left when i was two, but my one visit since then suggests that even moving to fucking blackpool -- as we did -- was an improvement.)

-- grimly fiendish, Friday, January 11, 2008 6:44 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

buried it a long way beneath the earth's surface

No, no. That was a Jules Verne novel.

-- Aimless, Friday, January 11, 2008 6:48 PM (49 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

-- Just got offed, Friday, January 11, 2008 6:51 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Comparing the nuclear waste storage problem to the Chernobyl disaster is a bit like comparing pineapples to pineapple grenades.

-- Kerm, Friday, January 11, 2008 6:53 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

nukes are not the answer. insanely costly, impossible to clean up, incredibly dangerous. saying its "better" than greenhouse gas emitting technologies is like saying getting shot in the head is better than being decapitated.

-- Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, January 11, 2008 6:53 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Ah, then, I see. Hmmm.

Alternatively, you could volunteer to have a pond in your backyard full of spent fuel rods. Safety would be a simple matter of keeeping the pool topped off to make up for the evaporation. Just be sure the concrete never develops a crack or the water might all leak out while you slept, or were on vacation. Then the situation would get stickier.

So, of course, it would be wise to be sure the ground beneath the pool is pretty stable, so it wouldn't settle under the wieght of the concrete and water. No real problem there.

I'm sure you'd be glad to do it as a public service. And to obligate your descendents to keep things up to snuff. It's not much good if you die and the whole place goes to wrack and ruin. About 10,000 years ought to cover it. OK?

-- Aimless, Friday, January 11, 2008 7:23 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Aimless - luckily, the private sector will ensure that none of these things ever happen, and no-one will ever cut any corners.

-- The Boyler, Friday, January 11, 2008 7:24 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Significantly more research and investment is required before naysaying can become a reliable source of clean energy.

-- Kerm, Friday, January 11, 2008 7:33 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

I am not a naysayer, I work in the energy industry

-- Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, January 11, 2008 7:35 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

If nuclear waste is "clean" I will eat something improbable.

-- Aimless, Friday, January 11, 2008 7:36 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

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then I said something really silly, as ever

'clean' my sides my sides

Here's another idea. Since the only way in which nukes can be made worthwhile is to a) either build them by the state or more usually, guarantee prices for a 25 year period to encourage private 'investors' to put in. How about we guarantee those prices for renewables. We also have a taper tax for standard energy. Maybe call it a feed-in tariff. Watch renewables grow. Watch as economies of scale kick in. Watch as competition stimulates research bringing greater efficiencies.

Or just give major corporations lots of cash under the guise of nukes somehow being carbon neutral (more rofls).

-- The Boyler, Friday, January 11, 2008 7:41 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

We could work on both nuclear power and renewable energy, instead of talking about it like one is the boogeyman and the other is all doves and hershey's kisses.

^^^^rly

fwiw i'm largely pro-nuclear, but i can see a choice in the future where we must pick between oblivion and retrograde self-sufficiency. terminator vs. luddite: requiem and all that

This is kind of going both ways. Althought there aren't any guarantees on energy prices per se, in the wholesale market, an investor could sell the energy forward as part of a power purchase agreeement to a load (which would be impractical for a nuclear plant, since they usually serve as base load and no individual load owner is going to consume the entirety of the power put out, but several companies have been doing this with smaller renewable resources, e.g. wind and hydro to municipalities, industrial plants, etc) guaranteeing a certain price over x number of years to hedge against price volatility; this is becoming a more popular option as wholesale prices have become more "realistic" over the past ten years as ISOs have begun to regulate the markets, and the costs are trickling down to distributors, industries, loads, etc.

The markets are also trying to use ancillary products / services other than energy that generators can provide to the market at a fixed rate for x number of years to encourage investment; for example the New England region recently instituted a forward capacity market, guaranteeing a fixed rate / MW for all new capacity (as well as existing capacity) built within the region for the next 4 or 5 years, after which it reverts to an auction - based system, but that's going on a tangent....

There are definitely some kick-backs being introduced to renewable energy; in most states resources that produce renewable energy qualify for a certain amount of green credits relative to their output; purchase of these green credits is required by federal / state law for most major industries (the amount varies wildly from region to region, there isn't a FERC standard that I'm aware of yet), so it's an emerging revenue stream; alot of companies are seeking for green credits to be rolled into the cost of the energy they're seeking to purchase via PPA so they can hedge against the rising cost of green credits as they become increasingly mandatory.

We're definitely seeing a rise in the construction of renewable energy developments; it's very challenging to site new hydro due to less prime real estate being available and strict environmental concerns, but the company I work for constructed a ~120 MW capacity wind farm last year, and there's alot of investment in wind in the midwest / south (see the Horizon Wind Project for example). No other sources have really developed any broad appeal yet, though, and construction of non-renewable fuel burning plants (e.g. oil, gas, nuclear) is still more popular at the moment. But there's definitely a slow, general shift going on....anyways, point of view ramble from someone who works in the industry, it's pretty interesting :)

I am pro nuclear power, and I vote!

(This is a popular Idaho bumper sticker, as well as "I'm pro salmon, and I vote!")

I am pro nuclear power, and I do vote. AND, I'm pro nuclear power.

I'm pro-nuclear power as well. I think most of the naysayers are Newsweek readers or something.

hahahahaha

Microwave power's what we gotta watch out for...that thing can zap your entire city.

o whatever happened to black power and girl power

NEWSWEEK: science stories where somewhat marginal criticisms are afforded as serious criticism

Abbott did you see - http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/12/tiny-country-of.html

I am definitely not an expert on the tech side of this stuff; how does "continuously beam down 5 gigawatts of power" equate to "beams that would be no more powerful than the energy emanating from a microwave oven's door." ?

Maybe spread over a huge area?

They better have their tiny country set on "No Disasters!" This = joek.

Excepting that interesting article, I kind of hate when people suggest solar power as some viable solution, bcz for it to power anything of note, it would have to cover so much land that it would change weather patterns & surrounding ecology so much in unpredictable ways that it would be a huge crapshoot. And not very efficient.

Abbott, I'm not sure if some of your criticisms apply, but are you aware of thermal-solar?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy

Also lol @ solar thermal collectors being Archimedes death rays in waiting

the best possible thing we can do is find a corner to huddle in where we can rock back and forth on our heels muttering "can't sleep... nuclear power's gonna eat me... can't sleep... nuclear power's gonna eat me..."

I am pretty much only aware of photovoltaics; thx for the scoop JW.

Energy discussions sometimes verge a little too close to millenarian/eschatological thinking, which I think really hinders good, rational discussion. Seriously, the first rule in an emergency is "don't panic."

yes, but first we have to agree it's an emergency. :(

Solar thermal power plants are large and seem to use a lot of land, but when looking at electricity output versus total size, they use less land than hydroelectric dams (including the size of the lake behind the dam) or coal plants (including the amount of land required for mining and excavation of the coal). While all power plants require land and have an environmental impact, the best locations for solar power plants are deserts or other land for which there might be few other uses.

^ wow

Hmm, no wait, that is pretty much exactly what I was talking about.

kenan basically I just wish people were calm all the time, because I usually am and people getting histrionic or strident kind of freaks me out.

float 'em.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/PS10_solar_power_tower_2.jpg

I wonder if throwing a paper airplane into it will incinerate it

Abbott, I just never considered the land use of other power sources.

Do you guys know the "salmon ladder" controversy w/hydroelectric? It is my favorite controversy. "The salmon can't figure out how to use the salmon ladders ohhhhhhhhh fuuuuuuuuuck."

I was on a flight from Portland to SLC last month and sat with three hydroelectric plant foremen and they talked about that stuff the whole time.

One mentioned how great the fishing is just below the dam (on private plant property).

That is fucking rad.

"They don't want to swim up the ladder." I would love to hear 2.5 hours of that. Also, did you note SLC airport's smoking lounges? Those things are BONKERS.

They can't? We have a herring ladder in my hometown.... </Tuomas>
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Tehachapi_wind_farm_3.jpg

CUE THE PHILIP GLASS

KOYA..... NIQUATSI.....

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Kluft-Photo-Aerial-I580-Altamont-Pass-Img_0037.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Solarplant-050406-04.jpg

Haha, I drove past all those windmills in November.

They put up a bunch near my family's house on the outskirts of Idaho Falls. People complained they are an eyesore BUT within the same five square miles are like three cell phone towers and two giant-ass beer making places that look like nuclear misiile silos,.

My dad though it was nice.

Ever see the cell towers disguised as evergreen trees?

Like near Tahoe, yes.

that solar power tower i was looking at on wiki earlier, that's the one near Seville yes?

One mentioned how great the fishing is just below the dam

This was mentioned and a pic posted on a fishing thread I think, or am i just pissed?

Let's talk about nuclear power as a US election issue.

http://www.grist.org/candidate_chart_08.html

Hillary: Says she's "agnostic." Ok, I will take that as a "no." (Also as a "I'm totally full of shit" -- I am really starting to hate this lady.)

Obama: Says it should be explored, which I take essentially as a yes, but is careful to hedge a bit and say something about safety and initial expense so as not to alienate any anti-nuke base he has. I'm cautiously optimistic about him.

McCain: Here's your nuclear guy. A big bold "yes."

(I don't think there's any way I could forgive myself for voting republican in a presidential election, but man... if I have to vote for Hillary over McCain, my hands are gonna shake.)

Yet to be determined: does McCain still hate ethanol? I'm not sure he really flip-flopped at all. Now he's like, "Oh, I LOOOVE ethanol! But I'm not going to subsidize it, no fuckin' way." Hey, close enough.

There’s only one issue that the presidential candidates should address in depth, should construction of new nuclear plants exist in their respective term?

Frankly, I agree with no candidate on this issue. Any new construction would be passing the buck to the next president (using the conservative estimate it would take a decade for a plant to be functional) and that is simply not fair when the public largely believes that we should move towards renewable.

It is not a stretch to believe that a two-term president could see the construction of enough renewable sources to easily replace the amount of energy provided by our 60+ reactors, and it would have the added benefit of creating new industry and force us to upgrade our archaic power grid.

That website is frankly disturbing. All four major candidates support a cap-and-trade system over the far superior carbon tax, a conservative pace on fuel standards to protect American car companies that have already doomed themselves to failure and the myth of clean coal.

If there is something I would like to see during this election it would be the Republicans stealing the issue from the Democrats and winning on it. While this has been mumbled in political circles for the last few weeks it’d be nice to see pressure from their base to push it further. This could happen: fiscal conservatives need fresh industry, evangelicals see its connection to faith and foreign policy conservatives see it as the only way to return to any sort of isolationism.

The issue being a revamp of our current environmental policy, obviously.

OTM in that last sentence -- as a matter of fact, I'm starting to believe that it may actually *require* conservatives to get any truly new environmental or energy policy. Hillary talks big about how oil companies are big baddies, but man, watch her drop to her knees when agribusiness walks into the room. I think her entire rural campaign is, "Pave the Midwest with valueless corn! Yay!"

the way forward here is to get big defense involved a la the interstate highway system. fuck oil, fuck corn, fuck uranium, fuck free hydrogen molecules made from algae farts or whatever, tell the Atomic Weapons Commission DOE to put its thumb back in its butt and have DARPA issue a big fat prize to whoever can invent a renewable mechanism for powering an aircraft carrier

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Prize_Foundation#Future_X_Prizes_.28energy.2C_education.2C_environmental.2C_social.29

basically because nobody besides the defense industry has ever proven willing to up and throw the kind of money necessary behind a project to build a completely new system to replace a working system in which literally trillions upon trillions of dollars and man-months have been already sunk

though really I perhaps shouldn't be so mean to DOE

to replace a working system

are you saying we have one of those? I think that's kind of the snag, innit?

OMFG WE MIGHT HAVE TO PLAN AHEAD TEN YEARS, WELL FUCK IT

while i was reading your first post, tom, i was thinking, "Yes, and asteroid mining is the only thing that will get us back into space." Unsarcastically.

no, chinese space program will get us back into space

OMFG WE MIGHT HAVE TO PLAN AHEAD TEN YEARS, WELL FUCK IT

private industry - the kind of private industry that has the capital to seriously take on an overhaul of the entire energy infrastructure of the world as we know it - is notoriously bad at this. go into work on monday and inform your own boss that his business model is a decade out from being completely obsolete, dead, stalled, sunk, and that the office needs to start figuring out how to adapt to an uncertain future. three responses:

1. why don't we just cross that bridge when we come to it? I've got enough to worry about already.
2. get the fuck out of my office and get back to work, fruitcake
3. ten years? I'll be retired!

cf. the reason i can't decent cell phone reception in or very near my apartment in the middle of the most densely populated neighborhood in chicago.

the difference of course being that if i drop a call, i'm inconvenienced, but if we run out of reliable, long-term sources of energy, CIVILIZATION ENDS. Someone should send a memo re: this.

No one really mentions on this thread nuclear power's sustainability problem. It's dependent on uranium. Currently, there is a lot of uranium around, but if nuclear power expanded to cover far more of global energy demand, no-one knows how long it will last.

-- Cathy (Cathy), Saturday, 5 August 2006 10:26 (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

my knowledge of basic science is pretty poor/non-existant, I'm afraid.

-- Cathy (Cathy), Saturday, 5 August 2006 21:47 (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

Why this and this are so important.

private industry - the kind of private industry that has the capital to seriously take on an overhaul of the entire energy infrastructure of the world as we know it - is notoriously bad at this

I knew a Maoist who used this as his central plank in a "Socialism is the only way to Full Green" argument

"Who do you want organizing a full overhaul of energy infrastructure: squabbling, bloodthirsty profit-driven businesses?"

classic for giving homer simpson work for life

So nuclear power is dangerous, right? But also cleanest? Why is this such a hot potato? I'm not sure I understand. Is it just a cost/benefit issue?

More like a cost/dangerous issue.

I am v much for it.

Right, I'm considering danger & monetary costs as parts of abstract "cost" vs. the benefit of clean energy. xp

in this day & age, isn't the danger pretty much nil?

Well -- there's two things. First of all, the big Chernobyl scare that comes up in people's minds, and yeah the danger of that is pretty much nil in the US because we're not likely to only have the money to built a Soviet bloc-housing version of a nuclear reactor. But then there's the issue of what sandbox we should bury our nuclear poos in.

also one blew up on the west wing

I don't say this often, but: pernicious liberal propaganda.

so pretty...
http://i28.tinypic.com/2r2ymqb.jpg

i mean come on:
http://i28.tinypic.com/fyzcro.jpg

Oh CIO, those are still from "The Abyss"

(stillS)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v703/DBrennan3333/abyss.jpg

http://www.weblogsinc.com/common/images/3981100454476300.JPG?0.5543498896717638

Cerenkov blue is really pretty - the prettiest thing I've ever had to go through a week of safety training just to walk past.

http://www.filmsite.org/speeches/abyss2.jpg

You've never given nuclear power a fair chance in your life, now fight! FIGHT, GODDAMNED IT! FIGHT!

oh, that was an image. You get it. Joeks.

So nuclear power is dangerous, right? But also cleanest? Why is this such a hot potato? I'm not sure I understand. Is it just a cost/benefit issue?

Cost is the primary reason for opposition but the philosophical arguments are also significant. To explain in brief:

The cost for building a reactor is extrodinary, approximately $5B, which depending on a typical estimate is about three of four times greater than a typical gas-fueled power station but you’d need to add about $10B-15B for cleanup for every station.

There is also philosophical reasons not to pursue nuclear at this point in time. If you’re using the most liberal estimates for planning and construction of a reactor you’re looking at about 10-15 years before its functioning therefore its nothing more than a marginally effective stopgap. It should also be pointed out that any dramatic change to nuclear would require a re-haul of our existing power-grid which would be single-handily the most expensive infrastructure project undertaken by the United States.

This is not to say that I would be against a re-haul, I am, but I’d rather us look to the future rather than the past. We made that mistake once, I’d rather not make it again.

It should also be said waste is still a significant issue and one that no one has found a solution for. In regards to danger, its there, but not nearly as significant compared to other forms of energy production.

It should also be said waste is still a significant issue and one that no one has found a solution for. In regards to danger, its there, but not nearly as significant compared to other forms of energy production.

Given that we are now trying to deal with all sorts of huge and hideous unintended consequences from our fossil fuel use, I would have thought going full-on for nuclear power when we ALREADY know we have an insoluble waste disposal problem with the potential to last hundreds of millenia was pretty foolish.

There is also philosophical reasons not to pursue nuclear at this point in time. If you’re using the most liberal estimates for planning and construction of a reactor you’re looking at about 10-15 years before its functioning therefore its nothing more than a marginally effective stopgap.

The 10-15 year timeframe is the most significant obstacle to solving our energy problems (which, make no mistake, are happening NOW) with nuclear energy, correct. I see this entirely as a practical concern, not philosophical. The point is, why dump so much money into more nuclear energy when you could be investing in wind, solar and geothermal solutions, which are much cleaner and can produce energy in the short term, not in a decade and a half? Not to mention the problems of radioactive disposal and uranium supplies (finite, believe it or not, and becoming scarce more quickly than popularly perceived).

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/10/bring-back-the.html

lol al-Qaeda weapon 2.0

fuck this shit.

it pretty much boils down to enrique & Montgomery Burns vs Greenpeace.

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campaigns/nuclear/

Nuclear power is neither safe nor clean.

Neither is any other form of power generation FFS

flaky fucking hippies vs. actual science

Burning my own leg up would produce a small but noticeable amount of heat that could contribute towards heating enough steam to move a turbine around.

Safety = very poor
Clean = relatively so
Waste issues = nonexistent

It's the latter where nuclear falls down imo, even if the bureaucracy, cost and safety issues were 100% resolved. (I know Sanpaku believes otherwise, that there are salt domes that will remain undisturbed for 100,000 years. I confess I don't know.)

As I think I said on another thread I would really love to see this movie - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Eternity_%28documentary%29

Incidentally, the waste facility the movie's concerned with is just next door to this beauty - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto - a nuclear power plant whose third reactor has been beset by a multitude of cost overruns and years of delay due to shoddy manufacturing

at least i have an idea now why so many of you think The Simpsons is not funny

when nanotechnology enables us to build a space elevator, we'll just fling the waste at the sun

The aliens living on the sun will just throw it back. I vote we throw it at Uranus.

If the predicted mid-century climate effects of famine (and its riding buddy disease) weren't so severe I'd put all my chips on renewable energy. But its starting from such a small base, and has so many problems with intermittancy, that I think the ideal approach to reducing greenhouse emissions appears to be:

1) Provide incentives to ramp up utility scale renewable as fast as possible (primarily offshore and great-plains wind, and desert southwest solar thermal with storage)
2) Replace all coal burning plants with combined cycle natural gas plants (this wasn't feasable prior to the paradigm shift of horizontal drilling + multistage frac jobs in shale overcame a 30 year decline in availability. Combined cycle gas still produces around 0.5-0.6 as much CO2 as coal, so this is an interim solution.)
3) Increase nuclear power production as the lowest carbon cost base-load generation until mid-century, when hopefully renewable generation is sufficiently geographically dispersed and the distribution network sufficiently advanced to guarantee minimum availability.
4) As the reliability of mostly renewable electrical generation is demonstrated, slowly decommission nuclear plants, keeping a few thorium breeders to maintain the knowledge base.

The Sendai tsunami will be a global disaster if it prevents the world from reducing greenhouse emissions as fast as possible.

funny article about the current best-case disposal solution of casking, which most reactors are on the whole postponing due to cost & just winging it by increasing the capacity of spent fuel pools

Exelon Nuclear, operator of the twin-reactor LaSalle plant, says it pays about $1 million for each cask and that loading each one with fuel costs another $500,000. It has filled six casks so far, and the concrete pad on which they sit outdoors cost the company another $1 million.

The assumption is that the fuel will remain in the casks for “years, maybe decades,” said Peter Karaba, the plant manager. The fuel that was loaded the other day dates from the mid-1980s, when Mr. Karaba, 42, was still in high school.

Once the fuel enters a cask and has left the pool at the LaSalle plant, it joins others on a concrete pad a short walk from the reactor buildings. Maintenance is relatively simple. A worker checks twice a day to ensure that nothing is blocking the vents at the bottom of the outer cask so that air can circulate past the sealed steel capsule inside, carrying away the heat generated by the fuel.

Cask manufacturers anticipate decades of healthy demand for their product. “I joke my children will be doing my job,” said Joy Russell, a corporate development director at the manufacturer Holtec International.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/06/business/energy-environment/06cask.html?src=recg

after that last sentence, the only thing I can think of our civic duty as americans to vote eco-terrorists into office

/ is our civic duty

etc

Maintenance is relatively simple: Just check them twice a day, and transfer the fuel into new dry casks at a cost of $1.5 million every other decade or so for the next 100,000 years

Joy the corporate development director is quick to point out the benefits of this in terms of sustained consumer demand & job creation

putting aside all of the other (significant) critiques, i still don't see how building additional nuclear plants makes sense financially.

Maintenance is relatively simple: Just check them twice a day, and transfer the fuel into new dry casks at a cost of $1.5 million every other decade or so for the next 100,000 years

What could possibly go wrong?

http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110620/ap_on_re_us/us_aging_nukes_part1
US Nuke Regulators Weaken Safety Rules

http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_aging_nukes_part2
Tritium leaks found at many nuke sites

http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110627/ap_on_re_us/us_aging_nukes_part3
Populations around US nuke plants soar

http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_aging_nukes_part4
NRC and industry rewrite nuke history

dumb dumb dumb question from someone who doesn't understand, but if spent fuel still generates heat, why can't it continue being used for fuel?

probably not worth all the shielding and escape pods you'd have to build around it in return for the heat you'd get

yes it will keep generating heat for millenia, just not enough to generate the steam to efficently push the turbines

one of the more interesting promises made in the early years of nuclear power was that all the spent rods would be recycled, minimizing waste. but in 1976 when it came time to begin doing this, President Ford recognized that commercial reprocessing sites in other countries could lead to nuclear weapon proliferation, and so they shut down domestic recycling businesses and the world followed suit. so the early reassurances didn't pan out and the rods are piling up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing

There's currently a wildfire very close to San Onofre:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BnoAoa6IMAEvB9W.jpg:large

You may remember San Onofre from such films as:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5OQMoSCrqw

plant has been inoperative for a couple years now

Damn son. Save the boobies!

I didn't know it wasn't operational anymore!

permanently retired:
http://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/reactor/songs/decommissioning-plans.html

one of the only good things to come out of the Fukushima meltdown

that leaves only one operating nuclear power plant in CA, PG&E's Diablo Valley plant and god willing one day that fucker will get shut down too

great, just great

http://www.king5.com/news/local/investigations/catastrophic-event-at-hanford-prompts-emergency-response/140990679

hmmmmmmmm

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/09/527605496/emergency-declared-at-nuclear-contaminated-site-in-washington-state

I'm sure Rick Perry is all over it

he probably even put on his glasses

his 3D safety goggles

This book looks interesting and terrifying

In Plutopia, Brown draws on official records and dozens of interviews to tell the extraordinary stories of Richland, Washington and Ozersk, Russia-the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium. To contain secrets, American and Soviet leaders created plutopias--communities of nuclear families living in highly-subsidized, limited-access atomic cities. Fully employed and medically monitored, the residents of Richland and Ozersk enjoyed all the pleasures of consumer society, while nearby, migrants, prisoners, and soldiers were banned from plutopia--they lived in temporary "staging grounds" and often performed the most dangerous work at the plant. Brown shows that the plants' segregation of permanent and temporary workers and of nuclear and non-nuclear zones created a bubble of immunity, where dumps and accidents were glossed over and plant managers freely embezzled and polluted. In four decades, the Hanford plant near Richland and the Maiak plant near Ozersk each issued at least 200 million curies of radioactive isotopes into the surrounding environment--equaling four Chernobyls--laying waste to hundreds of square miles and contaminating rivers, fields, forests, and food supplies. Because of the decades of secrecy, downwind and downriver neighbors of the plutonium plants had difficulty proving what they suspected, that the rash of illnesses, cancers, and birth defects in their communities were caused by the plants' radioactive emissions.

There's been another delay in the plan to clean up the Fukushima nuclear plant. The Japan Times reported today that the country's government approved another revision to the cleanup schedule that will push removal of radioactive fuel rods from reactor Units 1 and 2 three years further down the road. This latest delay, which is due to newly uncovered damage in the storage pools, means that the cleanup is now six years behind schedule.

Along with developing a safe plan for removing radioactive fuel rods and melted fuel, even just getting a good look at the state of the reactor units has proven to be pretty difficult. In February, it took just two hours for extremely high radiation levels in the reactor's Unit 2 to destroy a robot sent in to clear debris and locate melted fuel. A second robot sent in a few days later also failed, though it was unclear whether that was due to radiation or the debris. In July, another robot fared a little better, snapping pictures of some melted fuel below Unit 3.

While fuel rod removal in Units 1 and 2 is now scheduled for 2023, debris removal in those units is still planned to begin in 2021. Unit 3 rod removal is expected to take two years to complete and is still scheduled to begin in 2018, though Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings -- the plant operator -- then has another major issue to deal with. It still doesn't know what it's going to do with all of the radioactive waste that starts to come out of the plant next year during cleanup. Decommissioning is expected to take 30 to 40 years to complete.

https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/27/japan-delayed-fukushima-nuclear-cleanup-again/

we are completely fucked. the technology to stop this leak hasn't even been invented yet. they keep sending robots in to just look at what's going on and they don't last more than a few hours. meanwhile they are storing radioactive water in thousands of giant storage pools sitting right next to this leak. best case scenario: if all goes well and another tsunami doesn't happen in the next 50 years and the massive electrified ice wall they are constructing to contain it holds up, someone invents a way out of this mess.

https://vimeo.com/24905300

^also this needs to be required viewing. the US nuked Japan twice but has exploded nearly a thousand on its own citizens.

From 2011-2020 (10 years) Germany's nuclear phase-out has resulted in ~10,000 deaths (1,100 per year) & $33 billion

The Private and External Costs of Germany's Nuclear Phase-Out

Germany having something of a rethink on this, but Taiwan continuing with plans to phase out nuclear by the end of the decade (I think?), which is quite interesting. Presidential elections next year, wonder if that will start to become more of a debate

They've had two referendums on this in recent years, with different results, so looks to be somewhat divisive.

Germany's last three nuclear plants closing down today

understandable now they're fossil fuel free

they just love that smell of burnt lignite smoke in the morning.

it seems quite mad when you've grown up in an area where all old the pit-heads are demolished + concreted over since the 70's/80's and the only remaining coal mine is a museum - that some European countries still have quite big and active coal-mining industries.

Just like in Dark

Somehow, we all missed the news that Amazon bought a nuke-plant powered data center

Talen Energy announced its sale of a 960-megawatt data center campus to cloud service provider Amazon Web Services (AWS), a subsidiary of Amazon, for $650 million.

The data center, Cumulus Data Assets, sits on a 1,200-acre campus in Pennsylvania and is directly powered by the adjacent Susquehanna Steam Electric Station, which generates 2.5 gigawatts of power.

“We believe this is a transformative transaction with long term benefits,” said Mark “Mac” McFarland, Talen president and chief executive officer of Talen, on a Monday call with investors and media. As power demand continues to rise worldwide, “data centers are at the heart of that growth,” he added.

“Several years ago, Amazon set an ambitious goal to reach net-zero carbon by 2040—ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement. As part of that goal, we’re on a path to power our operations with 100 percent renewable energy by 2025—five years ahead of our original 2030 target,” an Amazon spokesperson said. “To supplement our wind and solar energy projects, which depend on weather conditions to generate energy, we’re also exploring new innovations and technologies and investing in other sources of clean, carbon-free energy. This agreement with Talen Energy for carbon-free energy is one project in that effort.”

"steam electric"

isn't solar power technically 'nuclear'? I'm mean... it's atoms and electrons and shit

i mean technically all modes of power generation involve atoms, which have nuclei

that's why you're the Doctor

Bezos being competitive since Bill Gates is trying to perfect nuclear fusion.

reactor envy

https://ifunny.co/picture/way-to-i-made-a-new-generate-energy-new-or-HMUhVG64A?s=cl

THANK YOU

even fusion. it's outrageous.

supposedly the guy who invented super soakers has also invented a brand new non steam powered way to generate electricity but idk how viable it is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_thermoelectric_energy_converter

"She’s a Model. She’s Also a Nuclear Power Influencer. What?"
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/style/isabelle-boemke-nuclear-influencer-rad-future.html

In 2020, Ms. Boemeke, a Brazilian model who has posed for brands including Cult Gaia, began posting on social media as Isodope, a persona she created for her nuclear advocacy work. On Isodope’s Instagram and TikTok pages, Ms. Boemeke uses familiar influencer tropes like “get ready with me” videos, fitness regimens and beauty routines.

The point is to make nuclear energy appear cool while rendering high-level concepts digestible for a mainstream, very online audience. Ms. Boemeke has explained fusion and fission using Legos, and compared uranium pellets (which she also calls “magic spicy rocks”) to gummy bears, for scale.

The question is: Why?

Have I got angry about this on this thread? Not sure but try this argument.

This is so fucking stupid. Aside from the obvious issues - a high marginal cost, inflexible generator will never get dispatched in a market with zero marginal cost generation with low cost, highly flexible storage. Not without huge and continuous subsidies- and it gets worse by the time any of these white elephants get operational there will so many fully depreciated renewable assets in any energy system that any joker with a trading desk will scalp any nuclear generator every single settlement period.

And the Bs over AI needs baseload is, well, BS. when the VC period of AI ends th winners will be those that can optimise in tokens/W and $/token. Back anyone looking at scheduling and prioritizing compute. Not everything has to happen right now. Or just back China - banning the export of current generation chips is the best thing that could have happened to their AI industry. They are going to beat western bloat, are beating western bloat.

The worst thing though is the waste of intellectual capital - people are going dedicated their lives building this utterly useless shit and more are going to have to waste their lives fighting it, regulating it permitting it, making concrete for it…

As with many things this is a grift to capture public money and dafter investor money.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

(grift strengthens)

Britain plots atomic reboot as datacenter demand surges
https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/25/uk_nuclear_power_reform/

where are they gonna get the water to cool the moon reactor?

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