Nuclear Power is Dangerous - Use with Care

tahanson43206 · 2022-03-25 13:17:28

Nuclear Power could meet ALL of the needs of humans living on Earth.

There are some who argue that it already does.

The Sun is a Fusion reactor, and it delivers power at a (relatively) safe distance (except when the distance is insufficient).

All the hydrocarbon stored energy on (or in) the Earth came from the Sun.

However, ** this ** topic is about locally produced nuclear power.

It is simply a fact that in order for the human race to advance beyond it's current dependency on chemical fuels (stored solar energy) and on the vagaries of Solar photons, it ** must ** master atomic power.

This topic is intended to frankly acknowledge the dangers that come with use of nuclear power, and to report on the many attempts on going to overcome them.

The list of major concerns of nuclear fission would start with safe disposal of long lived fission daughter products.

The next item on the list of concerns might be the untrustworthiness of some human beings.

Unfortunately, it would appear that those who would seek to harness nuclear energy for power or other benign purposes must contend with the existence of human beings who would employ nuclear power to do evil.

Accordingly, any and ** all ** nuclear facilities (and products) must be protected against misuse by those humans who cannot be trusted, for whatever reason.

Given those two major concerns, and acknowledging the existence of others, this topic calls for development of nuclear power facilities as rapidly as possible.

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2022-03-25 13:42:47

I'd like to launch this new topic with a specific idea that arises from the work of Calliban in the "Nuclear is Safe" topic, and a comment by a member of Reddit.

I know that some in this forum are skeptical of Reddit, but in my experience, everything I have seen is suitable for PG 13 audiences, so I'm giving the comment the benefit of the doubt.

The subject of the conversation was the possibility that nuclear fusion may never be achieved, if the mechanism is magnetic confinement.

Ma Nature provides only ** one ** example of safe fusion production, and that is achieved using Gravity Field Confinement.

It would appear that humans are some way distant from achieving successful Gravity Field Confinement.

That noted, the comment I'm thinking about observed that humans have been successfully harnessing nuclear fusion since 1952.

An interesting space propulsion system was proposed in the 1950's.

Apparently the idea itself was published even earlier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_O … ropulsion)

The concept of ** this ** post arises from the work of Calliban, who has reported thinking about using very ** small ** atomic devices to generate propulsion for space craft. The small size of power packages is suggested by the work of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in the United States.

Tiny fusion packets are compressed and ignited by powerful laser beams, in the national ignition facility at Lawrence Livermore .

In a recent post, Calliban reported that his studies seem to indicate that power packets must be larger than those used at Livermore, if there is hope of achieving useful propulsion.

Since we know that small nuclear explosions are possible (given production of atomic artillery during the Cold War), the only question that Calliban may be addressing is: Where is the sweet spot? Artillery shell sized explosions would generally be regarded as too robust for a commercial power facility, or for a space craft. It remains to be seen whether a marble sized package (about a centimeter in diameter) might perform well enough to be tested by experiment.

However, for the purpose of ** this ** post, I'll toss out the suggestion that a sufficiently ** small ** power packet might be able to drive a (very large) piston, in a modern equivalent of the 1890's era one cylinder steam and gas engines.

Here is a YouTube video that shows the restored 1917 Snow Machine at Coolspring Power Museum in Pennsylvania.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3nvPQPR9ko

What I am imagining is a version of this machine, adapted for small atomic packages such as those Calliban is studying.

The exhaust would be radioactive, so it would be captured, cooled and processed for long term storage.

However, if production of the power packets is reliable, then operation of the machine itself would be reliable.

The machine would inevitably become radioactive, so it too would end up in whatever solution is found for disposal of radioactive waste.

(th)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-03-25 14:48:46

I am amazed by what humans could one day make

but with the recent Wars I am also amazed by human stupidity, War in Ukraine and reports of Russians shoot at or near Nuclear rectors. I posted news on this in another thread and Kbd512 responded

kbd512 wrote:

Harnessing nuclear power demands responsible users. If the users or their next door neighbors are absurdly irresponsible, as is the case with Russia and its neighbors, then nuclear power may not be in their best interests. This is a human-caused problem, not a problem with the technology itself.

The engine vids is interesting

tahanson43206 wrote:

Here is a YouTube video that shows the restored 1917 Snow Machine at Coolspring Power Museum in Pennsylvania.

Some old stuff I have never seen I guess I like to be hands on to understand things or see a diagram old tech sometimes I've trouble understanding think I need to go on tour with the kids and have this thing show to me

I have never seen anything like this, I assume they have a local thousand gallon water tank, local power and there something that explains what I'm looking at big heavy piston design for the gas compressing cylinder
is this a Pressure Steam Boiler, a duplex steam pump with giant pump pistons?

tahanson43206 wrote:

An interesting space propulsion system was proposed in the 1950's.

Maybe Space will be the New Test Site

the rules for Science in Space and the rules for Science on Earth are going to be different, space already being a hazard and radioactive might allow more fringe frontier ideas.

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-03-25 16:14:00)

louis · 2022-03-25 15:12:43

We have nuclear fission power but all such power systems to date have been very expensive. It's much more expensive than gas - about twice as expensive. Whether smaller automated fission reactors can be developed remains to be seen. If they were and they could be buried in the Earth, with very secure monitoring and anti-terrorist defences, then they might operate more cheaply. But I haven't yet seen anything that is past the experimental phase.

Fusion power remains where it always has been - 20 years away.

Green energy and green energy storage are here now, and getting cheaper every year. Once storage is sorted then green energy can go toe to toe with nuclear and I think we will find that nuclear power remains just too expensive to be viable in the long term.

tahanson43206 wrote:

I'd like to launch this new topic with a specific idea that arises from the work of Calliban in the "Nuclear is Safe" topic, and a comment by a member of Reddit.
I know that some in this forum are skeptical of Reddit, but in my experience, everything I have seen is suitable for PG 13 audiences, so I'm giving the comment the benefit of the doubt.
The subject of the conversation was the possibility that nuclear fusion may never be achieved, if the mechanism is magnetic confinement.
Ma Nature provides only ** one ** example of safe fusion production, and that is achieved using Gravity Field Confinement.
It would appear that humans are some way distant from achieving successful Gravity Field Confinement.
That noted, the comment I'm thinking about observed that humans have been successfully harnessing nuclear fusion since 1952.
An interesting space propulsion system was proposed in the 1950's.
Apparently the idea itself was published even earlier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_O … ropulsion)
The concept of ** this ** post arises from the work of Calliban, who has reported thinking about using very ** small ** atomic devices to generate propulsion for space craft. The small size of power packages is suggested by the work of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in the United States.
Tiny fusion packets are compressed and ignited by powerful laser beams, in the national ignition facility at Lawrence Livermore .
In a recent post, Calliban reported that his studies seem to indicate that power packets must be larger than those used at Livermore, if there is hope of achieving useful propulsion.
Since we know that small nuclear explosions are possible (given production of atomic artillery during the Cold War), the only question that Calliban may be addressing is: Where is the sweet spot? Artillery shell sized explosions would generally be regarded as too robust for a commercial power facility, or for a space craft. It remains to be seen whether a marble sized package (about a centimeter in diameter) might perform well enough to be tested by experiment.
However, for the purpose of ** this ** post, I'll toss out the suggestion that a sufficiently ** small ** power packet might be able to drive a (very large) piston, in a modern equivalent of the 1890's era one cylinder steam and gas engines.
Here is a YouTube video that shows the restored 1917 Snow Machine at Coolspring Power Museum in Pennsylvania.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3nvPQPR9ko
What I am imagining is a version of this machine, adapted for small atomic packages such as those Calliban is studying.
The exhaust would be radioactive, so it would be captured, cooled and processed for long term storage.
However, if production of the power packets is reliable, then operation of the machine itself would be reliable.
The machine would inevitably become radioactive, so it too would end up in whatever solution is found for disposal of radioactive waste.
(th)

Calliban · 2022-03-25 15:45:17

Here are a few statistics to provide perspective for this discussion.

1. Fossil fuel air pollution results in ~3million mortalities every year, about 1 million in China alone and hundreds of thousands each in the US, Japan and Europe. Globally, air pollution is a leading cause of death.
2. The radioactive effects from Chernobyl were estimated to produce around 4000 mortalities in total across Europe. It would get lost in the rounding errors of total pollution deaths in Europe since 1986, which surely run into millions.
3. The Fukushima accident probably has or will result in a few hundred, because the effects were more concentrated.
4. There are about 500 large power reactors on Earth.

From these statistics we can infer that even if every nuclear reactor in the world melted down with poor containment tomorrow, the resulting mortality from radioactive pollution would not reach the mortality rate from 1 year of fossil fuel air pollution. The dangers of nuclear power are much bigger in people's minds than they are in reality.

That is not to say that we should be careless about nuclear safety or the storage of radioactive materials. But the present situation, in which paranoia about safety is driving capital costs to insane levels, is certainly not justified. Even with heavy use of nuclear power in the future, there is no scenario under which radioactive pollution can lead to comparable health problems to existing use of fossil fuels. Whilst fission products are far more toxic than hydrocarbons and particulate air pollutants, they are produced in far smaller quantities and even under accident conditions, most of them remain contained. This is why you are much safer living close to a nuclear power plant than down wind of a coal burning power plant.

I would also propose that there is nothing inherently expensive about nuclear power plants. The Chinese and Koreans are able to construct LWRs for $2000/kWe. In the US in the 1970s, LWRs were completed for around $1000/kWe in modern money and some came in even lower. You remember the promise 'too cheap to metre'? Nuclear power was indeed the cheapest form of electricity in the US in the 1970s and early 80s. After this point, increasing regulatory ratcheting, law suits, political pressures, etc, reduced order rates, increased build times, design complexity and generally caused costs to explode.

It is only in the US and Europe in recent years, that nuclear costs have gone to the moon. Even in the 1990s in the UK, we managed to build the 1200MWe Sizewell B PWR plant for £3.7bn ($4.8bn) in modern money. So the question is why are new plants costing so much now? Part of it is regulatory ratcheting and requirements creep. Part is simply the fact that we stopped building these things and now have to resurrect an almost dead industry, along with it's supply lines. As new nuclear build accelerates in future years, series production of identical units can be expected to bring costs down. Whether it will be possible to build as cheaply as we did in the 70s remains to seen.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-03-25 16:15:35)

kbd512 · 2022-03-25 19:05:53

How much more dangerous is not having any power than having a form of power that some person deems to be "dangerous"?

Life expectancy in the US, prior to coal, was about 40 years. When coal, oil, and gas were widely exploited, average life expectancy doubled.

When there's no fossil fuel power and no nuclear power, then there will be no 24/7/365 power availability.

When energy is unavailable, does anyone here believe that life expectancy will increase?

If so, can you point to some historical evidence where life expectancy increased when energy was unavailable?

tahanson43206 · 2022-03-25 20:04:01

For Mars_B4_Moon re #3

I am delighted to see your mention of the 1917 Snow machine, painstakingly restored by an all-volunteer work force at the Coolspring Power Museum in Pennsylvania. If you ever have a chance to visit, please plan for an overnight stay (accommodation is about 20 miles away in a modest sized town).

A friend is one of the volunteers who invest in machines from the late 1800's through about 1930 ... the site has a natural supply of gas, so it has the ability to power a huge collection of gas engines from a period of heavy use in the United States, before advances in engine design made them obsolete.

The Snow is a 600 horsepower model of a single cylinder engine that runs on natural gas. My recollection is that it was used to pump water at it's original location. The friend made (and still makes) his living working in the turbine engine field. He traveled to the site of the then retired machine, and helped to bring it back to Pennsylvania. It has taken literally decades to fund the work of restoration, and to carry it out.

In thinking further about how that design might lend itself to operation with a feed of small hybrid fission-fusion pellets that Calliban has described, I think that the only part that will become radioactive is the cylinder and piston assembly. The drive shaft can be long enough so that the momentum wheels and power take off assembly do not become radioactive.

There are many examples of gas engines, and a few steam engines at the Coolspring Museum.

***
I wonder if the gas inside the cylinder has to be allowed to exit at all.

A Stirling engine operates without releasing the gas used as a working fluid.

Energy enters a Stirling engine from the outside, such as with a simple wood fire, or a gas burner. The NASA Kilowatt Nuclear Reactor is reported to use a Stirling engine to produce rotary energy given thermal input from the reactor.

In the case of a hybrid fission-fusion engine, if the pellets are sized "just right" the energy released by ignition of the materials would expend itself doing useful work (as well as heating the wall of the combustion chamber) so that the gas would be ready for use in the next compression cycle.

Calliban has reported that pellets may have to be larger rather than as small as the millimeter sized ones in use at the National Ignition Facility.

The Snow (type) engine might be sized to match the optimum pellet size. There are still a few engineer/operators still alive, who worked on those designs, but they are really getting up there.

(th)

Terraformer · 2022-03-26 04:07:15

kbd512 wrote:

How much more dangerous is not having any power than having a form of power that some person deems to be "dangerous"?
Life expectancy in the US, prior to coal, was about 40 years. When coal, oil, and gas were widely exploited, average life expectancy doubled.
When there's no fossil fuel power and no nuclear power, then there will be no 24/7/365 power availability.
When energy is unavailable, does anyone here believe that life expectancy will increase?
If so, can you point to some historical evidence where life expectancy increased when energy was unavailable?

Sigh. This old chestnut. Point to unrelated things that happened around the same time and think you've actually made some kind of point. You don't need large energy expenditures to wash hands, provide clean water, and deal with excrement in a way that doesn't sicken people. Or to vaccinate against smallpox. Or build houses that are fit to live in.

The Amish don't burn coal, and they've been doing fine since they got to America. Yes, they do take advantage of some modern medicine now, but really the bulk of the benefit doesn't seem to come from the modern world.

It's like pointing to improvements in cancer survival rates since 1900 and claiming credit for it for the Wright Brothers.

kbd512 · 2022-03-26 10:38:02

Terraformer,

Yes, "sigh" is right. Your arrogant attempt to dismiss history does not change it. That electronic gadget you used to transmit your thoughts to someone on the other side of the planet at the speed of light has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not the Amish burn coal. The microchip factories, metal smelters, and plastic factories that made it possible for you to share your thoughts in the manner you did, all burn coal. There's an object lesson in there somewhere, if not for you then for someone capable of demonstrating more gratitude for all the good things our ancestors devoted their lives to providing for us. Do not besmirch their toil on our behalf. You are in no position to judge them.

If you want to live the way the Amish live, then stop using a computer to post such nonsense. Mail your thoughts to me using hand written letters. I'll respond in kind and reproduce our correspondence here for everyone else to read. If you still want to read these forums, then I'll mail the veritable mountain of paper to you. If that seems like a rather time consuming way to communicate our thoughts with each other, then accept the reason why we burned all of that coal and move on with the rest of your life, just as our ancestors did.

tahanson43206 · 2022-03-26 10:44:32

For All ...

I would like to see posts to this topic that help to advance the use of atomic energy.

Posts of an emotional nature are probably not a good fit for this topic.

There are other topics in this forum where the dangerous nature of atomic energy are dismissed or ignored.

This topic is intended to set a tone which recognizes that atomic energy is inherently dangerous, just as some forms of highly useful chemical are inherently dangerous.

I would like to see solutions developed/reported in this topic.

Comments that more properly belong in one of the chats should be delivered there.

(th)

kbd512 · 2022-03-26 11:26:03

tahanson43206,

The reason nuclear power is dangerous has nothing at all to do with nuclear power. All of us who don't "know that already" are operating on ideology, rather than observation. We may as well have started a topic that said "Humans are dangerous - Use with Care".

Having no power was provably far more dangerous than any form of power we actually use or have used. We know what life was like before power was abundant and almost always available. Some of us either haven't seen what that kind of life was like or arrogantly dismissed it with a, "Well, that could never happen here." Oh, really? Life was short, bleak, and miserable for most people before energy abundance. Now some of them want to return to energy poverty. Maybe they're transfixed by their ideology or really suck at math. I have no way of knowing which it is. Historically, rich people were still rich and poor people were still poor, yet nobody I know who isn't Amish wants to go back to living the way the Amish do- not even the people who claim to. You can tell that quite easily if they're posting on this forum.

So... What is it that they actually want?

Do they want power without any responsibility?

That simply doesn't exist. It never did and it never will. If it ever does, then the next catastrophe is right around the corner. The greater the power you have, the greater the responsibility to act with prudence at all times. Outside of the three pound universe sitting between everyone's ear lobes, I can't fathom any other universe where that statement would not hold true. The real issue is related to dropping that sense of entitlement like a bad habit and learning to respect others.

Nobody else should be dragged kicking and screaming into oblivion because someone else with a nihilist ideology wants to go there.

Nuclear power is the cleanest and most reliable form of energy generation that humanity has ever devised. It is not perfect. No solution will ever be perfect. The alternatives all have even more serious problems associated with them- such as leaving huge swaths of humanity without any energy or requiring us to clear-cut every square inch of land for hundreds of square miles because we want to pretend that things like energy density don't matter to a planet of billions of people using more than 150 PetaWatt-hours of energy every single year- a staggering figure that keeps going up, not down.

You wanna see what real danger looks like?

Deny some significant number of them the energy they need to survive, then watch how ugly things get.

The fact that most of us have only ever known opulent abundance doesn't guarantee that that will be our future if we continue on our present trajectory.

If we have people who don't think we need nuclear energy, then they should tell us where the hell all the energy to do whatever they want to do is actually coming from. It sure as hell isn't coming from wind and solar, because globally all wind and solar only represents 2% of the total primary energy supply.

So seriously, what's the plan? Starve all the poor people by denying them the energy they need?

Screw that. That's not a plan. That's an evil idea attempting to gain enough supporters for some evil clown masquerading as a "leader" to carry it out. We've blown mad money on wind and solar, but it's just barely scratched the surface of the total energy requirement to simply live as well as we presently do. For the same money spent, we would have already had "green energy" (no CO2) as these ignorant religious zealots define it.

Can none of the rest of you see what they're doing? Are you all that blinded by ideology?

Create an insurmountable problem to overcome, pit one group of people against the other over how to solve it or whether or not it can be solved, and then continue robbing them blind as they descend into crushing abject poverty.

If you can't see that, then do you actually agree with that? Is that really what you want for your children?

If you really think climate change is an actual problem, then stop screwing around with wind turbines and solar panels and get serious about trying to solve the problem using technology that stands a snowball's chance in hell of resolving the immediate issue. Afterwards, you can dink with your favorite wind or solar energy solution for the next few thousand years or so until the Uranium and Thorium supply runs out. I'm clearly not talking about building nuclear reactors in Timbuktu, either. Timbuktu doesn't use PetaWatt-hours of energy per year. America does, China does, Europe does. If we can't figure out how to affordably use technology that we've been using for the past 30 to 70 years, then we're clearly regressing rather than progressing. Don't simply make up non-issues to paint yourself into a corner.

Violent dictatorships are dangerous. We've known this for some time. We mostly refuse to do anything about them. We live with the consequences.

Terraformer · 2022-03-26 11:28:51

Yes, "sigh" is right. Your arrogant attempt to dismiss history does not change it.

Damn how clueless can you be. You legitimately think cars are essential to low child mortality... this is probably the worst nonsense anyone has written on here, and there are quite a few contenders for that position.

GW Johnson · 2022-03-26 11:29:44

It is a mistake to assume that all the radiation around us coms from atomic sources. It does not. Best estimates say that about 1/3 of the average natural background (about 100 of 300 milli-REM per year) comes from burning coal. Coal is slightly radioactive, right out of the ground.

Oil and gas contribute a little to this. That's why frack water is a slight radiation hazard, as well as the better-known hazards of really high salinity and high-enough-to-be-dangerous heavy metal content.

If you live near a mine tailings pile in Colorado, or in uranium ore country, you get a higher background level of radiation. Maybe 10 times the average. It shows up as radon in basement air, things like that. So, 3000 milli-REM= 3 REM in a year is just not very dangerous. People living in those places usually do just fine.

Believe it or not, all the unintended releases of radiation from nuclear plants, nuclear accidents, and weapon explosions, affect that average natural background less than coal does. And that's a fact, Jack!

What turns out to be so dangerous about fission reactors, weapons, and uranium/plutonium processing is a minority of the waste stream mass that has exaggerated biological effects. Plutonium is one. There are several, and they can be quite lethal, as the teams dealing with Chernobyl found out.

The 1963 atmospheric test ban treaty came about because of strontium-90 and cesium-137 released in bomb fallout. This had no measurable effect on background radiation levels, but it did have measurable effects on health. Even tiny amounts in the atmosphere concentrate greatly in the glands and bones, causing serious troubles.

Before the treaty was signed, we were warned not to eat snow ice cream in 1962. There was too much cesium-137 and strontium-90 concentrated in the snow. They had figured that out by 1962. Before that we were not warned, because nobody yet knew. It was this then-unrecognized hazard that caused some of the bizarre health problems experienced by those present at the atomic tests in the 1950's.

That's your history, guys. Deal with it.

You can reduce the hazards of the uranium-processing waste stream if you stay away from plutonium. Unfortunately, plutonium fission cores for bombs produce more yield, pound for pound, than U-235 cores. Which is exactly why the plutonium cycle persists!

You can reduce the waste hazard a lot more, if you shift to a thorium-bred-to-U233 cycle. The Canadians wanted to do this, but got "outspent" by the US and UK who wanted efficient plutonium bombs. U233 can make a bomb, but it's the least-efficient way known to do it.

Now, that's the world you are living in. And you must deal with that, too.

You could reduce the mass of the waste stream (not its hazard, but its mass) by reprocessing spent reactor fuel. We don't do that, but we should. Some of the arguments I have seen for not doing it are based on economics, but I take that with a whole block of salt. Figures lie and liars figure. All you have to do is cherry-pick the cost numbers to get any answer you want. Happens all the time.

Fuel reprocessing is NOT part of the world you are living in, and you have to deal with that, too.

All this just goes to show that everything we do do, atomic or not, has risks. Some known, some not so well known. That's just life. Deal with it. And get on with what you have to do. If that's atomic, then so be it.

Just do it right, and deal with all the hazards as best you can. The US Navy has already proven that if you prioritize safety over money, and you build what you already know works, you won't have bad accidents. THAT is how you deploy atomics.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2022-03-26 11:38:02)

kbd512 · 2022-03-26 12:35:57

tahanson43206,

Those were not rhetorical questions, TH. They require honest answers and honest appraisals of how realistic not using any fossil fuels happens to be. I don't see anything that looks remotely like a solution, and those in favor keep asserting that if we "just blow harder", that will make all the difference. We've screwed around with wind turbines and solar panels for 40+ years. 40 years later, it's 2% of the total primary energy supply. Take stock of where we're at and ask yourself how probable it is that that will change significantly in the next 10 to 20 years- and be honest with yourself.

Those of us who served aboard nuclear powered aircraft carriers weren't riding around yelling, "Yee-haw, this is great." We don't have emergency response drills several times per day because we think nothing bad could ever happen. We know that the quality of our responses to emergencies actually affect the outcome of the event, and that our good judgement and willingness to sacrifice when necessary is the difference between life and death.

Here's what I know about living on a nuclear powered aircraft carrier. We never lost power. Ever. Nobody who served aboard them could ever remember a time when power was lost, no matter how long they served. Some of them had been in for 30 years. Anything you can do every single day for 30+ years, without serious failure of any kind, IS NOT AN ACCIDENT. The fact that the carriers are still in operation is testament to the fact that the technology works reliably enough to state with some certainty that so long as we maintain these power plants, they will keep crapping out power like there's no tomorrow.

If the carrier wasn't nuclear powered, then it would've been powered by boilers or gas turbines. Sure, it would've been a little cheaper if you ignore that breathtaking fuel bill, but making the ship nuclear powered was a practical matter. The ship had to sail around the world for decades on end without being refueled twice per week. There was only one way to do that- nuclear power.

USS CVA-63 Kitty Hawk completed a 170 day deployment in 1999 (back when I was still in the Navy and stationed aboard another ship forward-deployed to Yokosuka, Japan) and consumed 34,000,000 gallons of diesel fuel. It's air wing consumed an additional 16,000,000 gallons of kerosene. That's an average of 200,000 gallons of fuel per day for an 86,000 ton ship. Kitty Hawk had 39 major deployments between 1961 and 2008, IIRC, so at least a billion gallons (5 million cubic meters) of diesel consumed by the ship alone, and probably another half billion gallons of kerosene. That's how many gallons of fuel are saved over the rather lengthy operational lifetimes of multiple 90,000t warships by using nuclear power. We operated around a dozen ships that big and we're ignoring the numerous smaller ships that were every bit as thirsty.

What's the moral of that story?

This is a practical matter. A single batch of nuclear fuel measure in terms of a handful of cubic meters provided as much or more energy than five million cubic meters of fuel. That's hard for most people to wrap their heads around, but it's a real issue.

kbd512 · 2022-03-26 12:53:20

Terraformer,

Has anyone ever taken you to a hospital aboard a train, or maybe using a rickshaw, or carried you on their back?

All of our children were delivered in a hospital after I drove their mother there at significant speed, or an ambulance drove them there at significant speed. I would not have made it on foot and a horseback ride would've killed her and the child. Both of my children spent time in NICU. All the drugs they received, plastics, CT, MRI, and other machines used to keep them alive- all are artifacts of fossil fuel and nuclear power. My wife had 3 brain surgeries and nuclear medicine to prevent her brain tumor from growing back.

I've never worked a job within 5, often 20 to 25 miles from my house. The high-paying job was how I paid for that world-class medical care. Rather than chase my current job around the city or the country, I simply drive or fly to wherever I need to go. Perhaps that's entirely unfathomable to you, but $100K to $150K jobs are hard for my wife and I to turn down.

Since so much child mortality was associated with child birth, yes, your assertion that reliable and rapid transportation didn't have something to do with lowering that figure was not the most enlightened thing I've ever heard.

Fire trucks, anyone?

What do they teach you over there? How does your view of how the world works become so distorted?

Do you have hospitals with MRI machines every five blocks ro so, so that you're always within walking distance, or do you just throw your hands up and say, "Oh well, my worldview about cars can't be satisfied, so to hell with the kiddos."

Good grief.

Terraformer · 2022-03-26 13:03:26

In Britain, we don't build our houses out of tinder.

I don't know why you think needing cars in a world *built for cars* proves that cars are essential. But if you're so confident it's high energy use that is responsible for our extended lifespans, give up clean water and sanitation and antibiotics whilst continuing your high energy lifestyle. It shouldn't cause any trouble, since it's burning billions of tonnes of guzzeleen that is the reason for our improved health.

You do realise Europoors use about half as much energy as Amerifats, right? Yet American health is not significantly better. After a very low point, energy consumption and improved life expectancy decouple.

Calliban · 2022-03-26 13:26:31

Terraformer wrote:

In Britain, we don't build our houses out of tinder.
I don't know why you think needing cars in a world *built for cars* proves that cars are essential. But if you're so confident it's high energy use that is responsible for our extended lifespans, give up clean water and sanitation and antibiotics whilst continuing your high energy lifestyle. It shouldn't cause any trouble, since it's burning billions of tonnes of guzzeleen that is the reason for our improved health.
You do realise Europoors use about half as much energy as Amerifats, right? Yet American health is not significantly better. After a very low point, energy consumption and improved life expectancy decouple.

Terraformer, all of the life extending things you mention require a lot of energy intensive infrastructure to produce. You are correct that energy consumption has diminishing returns for life expectancy beyond a certain point. Things don't stop getting better, but the gradient diminishes. That is probably because the really important things for life expectancy, like clean water, sanitation, nutritious food, warm houses, etc, are the things that people tend to prioritise first. For obvious reasons.

There is essentially a linear relationship between GDP and energy consumption. The reason is simple, wealth is the result of energy doing work on matter. More abundant energy means more wealth. Everyone wants more wealth. You could scour the Earth and not find one person that honestly wants to be poorer.

kbd512 · 2022-03-26 13:41:21

Terraformer,

Hmm...

Flat fire - Bow

Twelve fire engines and around 80 firefighters were called to a flat fire on Wellington Way in Bow.
Half of a five-roomed flat on the 16th floor of the building was damaged by fire. Two people left the affected flat before the Brigade arrived.
Station Commander Keith McDermott, who was at the scene, said: "The fire is believed to have started in the bedroom of the flat and spread to the hallway.
"The Brigade's 999 Control Officers took 66 calls to the blaze and gave vital fire survival guidance to residents on how to stay safe before firefighters arrived. Crews wearing breathing apparatus rescued a man and a woman. One man was treated on scene by London Ambulance Service crews.
"We would like to remind people to never try to tackle a fire yourself. As soon as you become aware of a fire inside your property, get out, stay out, close the door behind you and call 999.”
The fire is believed to have been accidental and caused by the failure of a lithium-ion battery for an e-bike that had been on charge.
A London Fire Brigade spokesperson said: "Electric bikes and scooters are often stored and charged in escape routes in homes or communal areas so when a fire does occur, escape routes are blocked which immediately makes an already serious situation much more frightening for those involved so please do be mindful of where you're storing them.
"We have already issued a warning that many of the e-bike fires we are seeing involve batteries which have been sourced on the internet, which may not meet the correct safety standards.
“We know that lithium-ion batteries are susceptible to failure if incorrect chargers are used, so it’s important to always use the correct charger for the product and buy an official one from a reputable seller.
“Batteries can also pose a risk if they have been damaged, so try to ensure they are not getting knocked around while in use or while being carried as spares as this can increase the chance of damage to cells. You should also not expose them to extremes of temperature.
“You should always make sure you unplug your charger once it’s finished charging. Always follow manufacturers’ instructions when charging and we would advise not to leave it unattended or while people are asleep.”
The Brigade was called at 1046 and the fire was under control by 1142. Fire crews from Dowgate, East Greenwich, Dockhead, Stoke Newington, Euston and surrounding fire stations attended the scene.

Yeah, the English are brilliant. Apparently there are no fires in the UK, either. That was 11 hours ago. 12 fire engines were used, according to the article. Maybe they're all-electric fire engines than ran out of energy?

I guess I think cars are essential because few Americans outside of New York want to live on top of each other like cockroaches.

Clean water and sanitation comes from high energy consumption. Antibiotics come from absurdly high fossil fuel energy consumption. I'm not giving up any of that. You can if you want to, but I won't. I like my vaccines and meds. They've kept me alive thus far. I'm grateful for modern medicine producing them, and all the energy we had to use to get that done is of no consequence in light of the result.

The billions of tons of "guzzeleen" are why you instantly get to spew your angry diatribe at me from "across the pond". We invented the semiconductor technology you're using right now. I know that really irks you, but it shouldn't. You should learn how to show a little gratitude, but that requires maturity and introspection. You're welcome just the same. That little dust-up you had with the Germans that we made sure you survived, no need to thank us for that, either. We love you guys, even if sometimes you don't love yourselves.

Yes, I realize that Europeans use less energy than Americans, because their governments have conspired against their people to make energy more expensive than it needs to be. It's totalitarian zero-sum thinking. If I can't keep the serfs poor, they'll quit producing for me. Well, the serfs over here never stop making stuff for the rich and for the government to steal. Anyway, you only have yourselves to blame for that, not America. Ditto for us. We don't blame other people. All complaints go up the chain of command, not down, and the way I know we're at the top is that everyone complains to us or about us, and expects us to solve their problems. We're working on it.

I'm going to go expend some gasoline to run my lawnmower. After that, I'm going to expend some electricity to trim and edge the yard. When I'm done, I'll take our dogs for a walk. My wife drove our daughter to archery practice in her Escalade, since that's about half-way across Houston. Did I mention that we just ate Sonic for lunch?

Cheers!

kbd512 · 2022-03-26 13:51:54

Terraformer,

One last note. I want to make everyone on the planet so energy-rich that the poorest and least educated amongst us lives in their own private villa or yacht, and can drive around in their own Cadillac. I see that as the greatest possible good. I don't see hand-wringing about using energy to do great things as a productive use of our time here. I also see no point to thumbing our noses at each other or virtue-less signaling. Yes, that's very American of me and I like it like that. The only limits we have are what our minds can conceptualize and our hands can build. Anything else is a self-imposed limit that does nothing to advance humanity and is probably counter-productive.

GW Johnson · 2022-03-26 14:47:46

I actually agree with Kbd512 about most of the things he said about nuclear power and fossil. The differences are minor.

Texas where we both live has its own power grid, more-or-less unconnected with the rest of the nation, specifically to avoid often-heavy-handed federal regulation. With some exceptions, that actually works fairly well for us.

Where Kbd512 and I differ is on the value of renewable energy. On the Texas grid, renewables (almost entirely wind) are roughly 20% (not 2%) of the power generated. It cannot get to be much more of the mix, until there really is grid-scale storage available, and that is not yet reality. The Europeans found a similar mix percentage, and for the same reasons. Surprise, surprise.

There is a little bit of hydroelectric power in the Texas mix, but that is very unlikely to increase, because we have already dammed all the dammable rivers, if you'll excuse my choice of puns.

Most of the rest is now natural gas-fired powered plants, and the remainder coal-fired power plants. We have cleaner air, now that the move is away from coal toward natural gas. It makes a serious difference in air quality to do that. And I have yet to say a word about carbon emissions and climate change. Natural gas is better for that, too.

Now, we do have a little bit of nuclear in the mix. There's one about 60 miles from me at Glen Rose, Texas. It has never had a problem, excepting getting licensed after construction. That takes a while, because you really cannot take safety shortcuts with nuclear. It must work right.

The US Navy has the world's best track record with nuclear, thanks to Adm. Hyman Rickover's leadership that prioritized safety over money, always and everywhere, no buts about it. On a personal level, Rickover could be a real bastard, but his leadership on nuclear was eminently correct. No pressurized-water reactor has ever leaked under any circumstances, not even in two deep-sea ship sinkings (SSN-593 USS Thresher 1963, and SSN-589 USS Scorpion 1968).

The only exception was a sodium-cooled reactor experimentally installed in USS Seawolf, SSN-575, which caused radioactive sodium leaks and radioactive sodium fires, until it was replaced with a pressurized-water reactor for the remainder of the ship's long service life.

Kbd512 is younger than me, too young to remember these things. I do remember them.

Now, a track record like that is obtained by prioritizing safety over money. Period. No exceptions. The US commercial nuclear power industry was not quite as strict about that, which is where Three Mile Island came from. Even so, the release from that incident was about like a chest X-ray or two, and the meltdown was easy to clean up, unlike Fukushima.

Not even Fukushima was as bad as Chernobyl. But then the old Soviet empire had a bad nuclear track record anyway. Look at the leaking reactors in the corroded, sunk-at-the-dock submarines "stored" at Novaya Zemlaya. Look at the nuclear waste dump that had a thermal explosion in about 1959, that contaminated an area about half the size of Texas. I remember shit like that, too!

Done right (prioritizing safety over money), nuclear will always be more expensive than fossil energy and renewables. It is simply the price you have to pay to use the otherwise-clean power source, which is virtually inexhaustible. Kbd512 and I differ a bit about how cheap nuclear might be, but that does not really matter. Prioritizing safety over money is what matters, as the US Navy has proven, including on the ships Kbd512 served on, or was near.

We are going to need lots of natural gas, lots of (safe) nuclear, as much hydroelectric as can be found, and about 20% renewables. And as little coal as we can get away with. Until there really is grid scale storage, when the renewables can be more of the mix.

Obama's policy of "all of the above" was, and still is, the correct energy policy to pursue. Doesn't matter whether you liked Obama or not. That policy is still correct.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2022-03-26 14:55:37)

Terraformer · 2022-03-26 15:03:56

Terraformer, all of the life extending things you mention require a lot of energy intensive infrastructure to produce.

That isn't really true. Producing clean water takes a miniscule amount of our energy, and that's with wasting a lot of it on things like flushing toilets (which are terrible by the way, the flush toilet has been a disaster for the human race. Much better to compost).

Yes, warm houses are important. But domestic consumption only accounts for a quarter of british energy consumption, and again we're wasting a lot of that by heating them more than we need to (bring back cabinet beds!). We could lose an awful lot of our energy supply before it starts to show up at the GP surgeries, especially since the domestic use is skewed quite a bit by wealthy households having things like rain showers.

You are correct that energy consumption has diminishing returns for life expectancy beyond a certain point. Things don't stop getting better, but the gradient diminishes. That is probably because the really important things for life expectancy, like clean water, sanitation, nutritious food, warm houses, etc, are the things that people tend to prioritise first.

Eh I think it probably does stop. Or at least, the gradient gets very shallow, to the point where you're eking out a few more months for the very old, rather than cutting the number of children who die before the age of five from 10% to 0.1%. The CIA World Factbook puts Slovenia as having the lowest infant mortality rate, and it has a per capita energy consumption of around 4.5 kW. Cuba, on 1.4 kW, is below Britain. So whilst it does decline with increasing energy consumption, I don't think the latter is driving the former -- rather, I think that the sort of developments that reduce infant mortality (investments in health, infrastructure etc) tend to make countries wealthier, and wealthier countries consume more. Maybe on the margin, where that 0.1% is made up of infants with severe health needs that can't be saved unless in a state of the art hospital. But those cases are fortunately very rare, and not relevant to the vast majority of infant deaths.

Calliban · 2022-03-26 16:53:10

The reason that wind power probably isn't that useful for Texas, is that for every MW of installed wind generating capacity, a MW of GT plant must be built to back it up when wind isn't blowing. So you end with higher capital costs and higher operating costs. But the wind turbines may save some fuel cost. Basically wind power is natural gas power, with wind turbines marginally reducing the fuel bill. At the expense of inflating all other costs, given that you are paying for two power plants instead of one. Renewable energy looks affordable in isolation. But it is rarely used in isolation. Storage will not help the situation, because a storage system is really just another kind of power plant that uses intermittent electricity as fuel. So you are stuck with two power plants and two sets of capital and operating costs again.

louis · 2022-03-26 18:14:51

We know storage is the key issue and storage is being addressed. But even now within the limits of a green energy solution you don't need 1 for 1 back up. For one thing, hydroelectric installations (even without pumped storage) can be used effectively as storage units. Waste to energy can be ramped up when wind is low. Continental grids can compensate. And already we have lithium battery storage.

I am confident that the solutions for energy storage are already here: green hydrogen and iron-air batteries.

We will probably see a green energy solution (slightly different for each part of the world) that has as key features:

- Wind and solar as the principle means of power generation. (Probably accounting for something like 80% of all power)

- Geothermal, heat pumps, tidal, wave, sea current, energy from waste, biofuels and osmosis power being used as supplementary power sources.

- Lithium batteries being used for short term storage up to 2 days.

- Green hydrogen, hydroelectricity and iron-air batteries being used for longer term storage, to cover worst case weather scenarios that happen (low wind and low solar).

It won't happen overnight of course. This change may well take 30 years. But once the economics of green energy dominate power generation there will be no point in pursuing other power sources.

It is very likely PV power generation is going to get down to the 1 cent per KwH mark. No other system will be able to compete with that. We might see wind get down to 3 cents per KwH. All that is required to make this really work is a relatively cheap energy storage system. If you can get green hydrogen stored power down to 20 cents per KwH, you have a workable system.

Calliban wrote:

The reason that wind power probably isn't that useful for Texas, is that for every MW of installed wind generating capacity, a MW of GT plant must be built to back it up when wind isn't blowing. So you end with higher capital costs and higher operating costs. But the wind turbines may save some fuel cost. Basically wind power is natural gas power, with wind turbines marginally reducing the fuel bill. At the expense of inflating all other costs, given that you are paying for two power plants instead of one. Renewable energy looks affordable in isolation. But it is rarely used in isolation. Storage will not help the situation, because a storage system is really just another kind of power plant that uses intermittent electricity as fuel. So you are stuck with two power plants and two sets of capital and operating costs again.

kbd512 · 2022-03-26 20:01:20

Louis,

You can repeat your ideology until the cows come home, but you haven't told me anything I don't already know. I know your ideology back-to-front because it gets repeated on a daily basis like some sort of religious incantation. You may think your repetition is casting a spell or something, or perhaps praying to the "green energy" gods, but to people counting dollars spent per kWh delivered, well... They just think it sounds like more ideological malarkey. The issue is entirely related to the reality of achieved results, not the idea itself. Ideas are great, but then there's objective reality.

Cheap energy storage is always 10 years away, and it always will be, in the exact same way that fusion energy is always 20 years away. Lithium-ion battery storage is over $100/kWh. Iron-air batteries will theoretically decrease the storage cost to $20/kWh. Reality has never matched theory, but don't let that get in the way of a bankrupt ideology. Solar or wind plus battery storage is already over $100/kWh MORE THAN NUCLEAR. Nuclear provides a 100% solution without a half dozen complete backup power plants or storage units that all cost money to operate, whether they're generating revenue from usage or not. That means you, the consumer, WILL pay for those assets, because that's how Economics 101 works.

It is very likely that it doesn't make a dime's worth of difference how theoretically cheap solar could become since it utterly fails to provide ANY energy 75% of the time. Since we know that solar panels affixed to the surface or a rotating planet will forever and always stop producing any energy at least 50% of the time, that means storage is always required. Lithium-ion battery storage is currently over $100/kWh. You and I will have long since been dead and buried before any type of battery stores power for $1/kWh.

It makes no difference what technology might be. National energy grids are not run on "might bes", "could one days", or "will theoretically bes". London's electricity costs are already well in excess of what nuclear actually costs to build and operate.

You buy a nuclear reactor every 50 to 75 years. You buy new solar panels every 20 to 30 years. You buy new batteries every 10 years. All that stuff requires energy to make and money to buy (and lots of it). Someone is going to pay for it. That someone will be whomever is purchasing electricity from the power plant operator. If you get your electricity from the electric grid, then that someone will be you.

Stop telling me about theory and start showing me tangible results where something actually costs less than nuclear power after all the ifs / ands / buts / wheretofores are taken into consideration. If you can't, then stop regaling us with fantasies.

louis · 2022-03-26 20:36:44

It's not ideology, it's market analysis.

If you are going to quote figures, it's best to give links. I don't recognise the figures you are quoting. Of course you might be quoting irrelevant figures ie the historical cost of green energy. That's of no consequence. What matters now is how much will it cost for whoever to replace their existing power generation system with a new one.

I love the way you nukies lie! Nuclear power stations do not provide 100% solutions. They need downtime maintenance like nearly every other system and that can be v significant. Depending on their coolant systems extreme weather effects can cause them to close down. So let's get away from the nonsense idea that nuclear power stations pump out electricity 24/7 all the time.

Cheap energy storage is always ten years away? Lol. Unlike nuclear fusion, energy storage is already here and you can follow the price graphs for storage costs. You will see (as with PV power) a very steep decline in cost, a product of technological advancement and economies of scale. There are some physical limits to energy storage but there are also huge potential for technical improvements and economies of scale.

kbd512 wrote:

Louis,
You can repeat your ideology until the cows come home, but you haven't told me anything I don't already know. I know your ideology back-to-front because it gets repeated on a daily basis like some sort of religious incantation. You may think your repetition is casting a spell or something, or perhaps praying to the "green energy" gods, but to people counting dollars spent per kWh delivered, well... They just think it sounds like more ideological malarkey. The issue is entirely related to the reality of achieved results, not the idea itself. Ideas are great, but then there's objective reality.
Cheap energy storage is always 10 years away, and it always will be, in the exact same way that fusion energy is always 20 years away. Lithium-ion battery storage is over $100/kWh. Iron-air batteries will theoretically decrease the storage cost to $20/kWh. Reality has never matched theory, but don't let that get in the way of a bankrupt ideology. Solar or wind plus battery storage is already over $100/kWh MORE THAN NUCLEAR. Nuclear provides a 100% solution without a half dozen complete backup power plants or storage units that all cost money to operate, whether they're generating revenue from usage or not. That means you, the consumer, WILL pay for those assets, because that's how Economics 101 works.
It is very likely that it doesn't make a dime's worth of difference how theoretically cheap solar could become since it utterly fails to provide ANY energy 75% of the time. Since we know that solar panels affixed to the surface or a rotating planet will forever and always stop producing any energy at least 50% of the time, that means storage is always required. Lithium-ion battery storage is currently over $100/kWh. You and I will have long since been dead and buried before any type of battery stores power for $1/kWh.
It makes no difference what technology might be. National energy grids are not run on "might bes", "could one days", or "will theoretically bes". London's electricity costs are already well in excess of what nuclear actually costs to build and operate.
You buy a nuclear reactor every 50 to 75 years. You buy new solar panels every 20 to 30 years. You buy new batteries every 10 years. All that stuff requires energy to make and money to buy (and lots of it). Someone is going to pay for it. That someone will be whomever is purchasing electricity from the power plant operator. If you get your electricity from the electric grid, then that someone will be you.
Stop telling me about theory and start showing me tangible results where something actually costs less than nuclear power after all the ifs / ands / buts / wheretofores are taken into consideration. If you can't, then stop regaling us with fantasies.

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