/go/ - Golden Oaks

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https://mlpol.net/archive/mlpol/11973.html

>>623
We have are own energy bunny ready to come on line and power us up on a 4 hourly cycle. Who needs more than that.
However seriously I think using less energy in our daily lives is what people should do rather than look for a centralised solution from people taking back handers.

I think we should invest more into clean coal technologies. We have millennia worth of coal might as well find out how to use it.

Nuclear if we had any sense. But we don't, so it'll probably be a combination of solar/wind to provide good feels and natural gas to provide most of the energy.

The way energy markets are set up in most places seems to promote intermittent renewables and generators that can quickly ramp up and down to work with them. Coal and nuclear, at least as currently used, work best running flat out all the time and is less profitable if not.

I hope the small modular reactor crowd can make it all work somehow. Maybe that's our best bet for industrial process heat after we've moved to 100% certified natural non-GMO expensive as fuck boutique electricity.

>>626
It's funny how the term "clean coal" didn't even exist in europe until trump drew attention to it. To me, because coal mostly produces mundane oxides, it seems like it'd be one of the easier and cheaper chemical processes to clean.

>>627
Nuclear energy is in the perfect storm. The public is scared to death of anything nuclear, make plans to build or change a plant and expect endless protests based on nothing but muh bombs. You can't advertise with it, nobody wants to sponsor it. Nuclear energy is also the most regulated industry on the planet, making innovation all but impossible. There are many known improvements to the efficiency and safety of the reactors, but those don't fit in the nuclear regulatory committee's burocratic framework. Nuclear power could have been a waste-free energy, but recycling of nuclear waste was banned because those plants are capable of making weapons-grade fissile material, so now there's an artificial appearance that nuclear energy produces unhandlable waste, making it look like a dirty technology. Like you said, modular reactors could do a lot for us if the regulatory hurdles be cleared.

>>628
I think the one thing that nuclear has going for it is that normal people don't really know much about it, just that "isn't it kind of bad?" It's possible to show that it's actually pretty good in most aspects people care about (CO2, safety/reliability, etc) as long as there's some interest.

The usual route to becoming pro-nuclear now seems to be watching Thorium / molten salt reactor videos on Youtube, reading about new exciting uranium designs, and then realizing that the boring old ones that we already have is good stuff too.

>>628
Based Dutch

I have faith in nuclear energy in the short and mid term as long as nuclear waste is properly disposed. It's cheap and relatively clean if we compare it to hydroelectric energy and fossil fuels.

Geothermal energy also sounds like a good bet in countries with lots of volcanoes.

I don't have much faith in solar and wind energy for industrial use, but it's a reasonable alternative if you want to live in a rural house and you don't use much energy-expensive electronics.

>>628
Your point is really interesting.
>recycling of nuclear waste was banned because those plants are capable of making weapons-grade fissile material
Are you talking about dirty bombs?

Nuclear is king. We need more new reactors, but I'd rather have shitty soviet chernobyl reactors than worthless PR stunt solar/wind farms.

>>623
noone knows how much oil or nat. gas is actually available. They try to extimate it but we are restimulating 50 yr old wells right now and getting them back to original production rates. in wells that are supposed to be "dried up", that shouldnt happen and does not factor into "predictions"

>>632
this tbh famalamadingdong

>>632
It's the closest we've got to sustainable, scalar power in the modern world

>>635
b-but what about all the waste anon?

>>636
the wste isn't as big a deal as you'd think
95% of the rods are U238, which doesn't fission in normal reactors, of the five percent that's U235, nearly half isn't used, resulting in us throwing away useable material
why?
because government regulations based on international treaties prohibit enrichment of nuclear materials in this manner

meaning we have 20-40 times more waste from reactors than we need, most of that material could be re used

and don't get me started on breeder reactors and thorium

>>637
this interests me because it makes liberals get rabid any time you mention nuclear. "the waste the waste, you want to mutate our children"

>>637
What about the cost of de-commissioning? In Japan the money people paid for electric supply included the cost of clean up once the reactor had finished it use (around 40 years). However because they shut down all the nuclear power stations after Fukushima the companies lost a lot of income and will now need bailing out by future generations. Is that the same in the US. Who will paid for the clean up of old age?

>>623
>>623
We're not running out of oil, they don't actually know how much there is and we get most of it from the Saudis who want you to believe that we are running out so prices stay high. We have plenty here in the US but regulations make it hard to go after, thanks obummer.

While we wait for fusion reactors another viable option is Thorium reactors. They are more efficient and last longer than Uranium but hasn't been developed because Thorium is so stable it's not easily weaponized.

>>631
Dirty bombs are just bombs that scatter radioactive material, so they don't really need special plants, you just give the thing a uranium shell or put some spent reactor pellets anywhere in the head. After the bomb has gone off, being in the area will make your geigercounter very talkative.

The idea is that a dirty bomb will not only destroy the enemy's resources, but also make the physical space unusable.

When people talk about weapons-grade fissile material, they mean proper A-Bombs; Nukes. Recycling nuclear waste is mainly isotope separation, and the end product is enriched uranium.

Also see >>637

Not to get you started, but those reactors are still quite expensive right now because their fuel isn't being produced. You can quadruple your cost estimates until there's a few in operation.

>>639
I don't know what kind of plants you use in japan, but the biggest cost factors in disassembling a plant has to be regulatory overhead and contract breaches. Around here at least, reactors are designed so that anything radioactive or irradiated cannot physically leave the reactor room and unless you have leaks wouldn't even leave the tank. Compared to chemical refineries there's far less hazardous material to handle.

>>641
Hearty kek at that image. Also, dubs checked.

I agree with all the praise nuclear reactors are getting in this thread. Personally I think solar energy is also a great power source. Solar panels have become relatively cheap over the last years and they can be put on almost any roof.
Wind energy however is imo complete shit. Sure it's renewable but in order to 'harvest' it, a windmill is required which requires a shitload of resources and energy to build.

>>639
Jap Anon, I think I accidentally banned you when your post came up at the same time as a threatening /jp/ post on my "recent posts" list. Your appeal has been granted and you are unbanned now. I'm very sorry...

>>644
THX. I thought as much hence my low level appeal. Went out and got dinner. However I think you still need a socialist horse cock as punishment.

>>645
Huehuehuehue

>>645
I know... Feel free to post a socialist horsecock if you have one. I'm glad to hear it didn't inconvenience you that much

>>631
>>641
>recycling of nuclear waste

Blog post coming up.

Natural uranium is mostly U238, with some U235 mixed in. U238 can't be used as fuel, so it has to go through isotope separation first - throwing away some of the U238 makes it enriched, i.e. the relative amount of U235 goes up as U238 goes down. This is the part where you'd use things like centrifuges.

What goes into a reactor is like >>637 said still mostly U238, but there's enough U235 to sustain a chain reaction.

When fuel comes out, some of the U235 has fissioned and become "real" waste, it's been split in half into elements with half the atomic weight and is extremely radioactive. But there's still U235 left, just not enough to keep things going. Additionally some of the U238 will have swallowed neutrons and have become plutonium, Pu239.

Plutonium is more radioactive than uranium 235, which is more radioactive than uranium 238. None of those are "kill you instantly" dangerous, and of course uranium already exists in nature. The split-in-half fission products are the real nasty stuff, but they only make up something like 1% of the total.

This also means that only about 1% of the fuel going in has been consumed. Reprocessing is the idea that you could pull out the remaining U235 and get fuel efficiency up to about 5%, or better yet, chemically separate the plutonium and use that as fuel. That way we could, in theory, turn all the U238 into plutonium and then use that as fuel, getting us close to 100% efficiency.

Sounds great! But plutonium equals bombs for most people, and uranium is cheap enough that we don't absolutely have to try to be efficient, so in practice reprocessing isn't done and we end up with 100 times more waste than we need to.

The other thing is that the most radioactive part of waste, the fission products, are not dangerous for tens of thousands of years, they're radiating and decaying so hard that they're mostly harmless after a few hundred years. Plutonium is the long-lasting stuff that causes the apparent problem that would have us need geological storage. But it can be used as fuel!

So we can't reprocess Pu because bombs, and we have a waste problem because we don't reprocess. Meanwhile, countries that use nuclear energy already have bombs, or have made the choice not to develop them, but somehow it's still absolutely vital that we prevent the US, France and Japan from getting their hands on plutonium.

>>643
Swedenfag here. The turbines goes into remote areas, so now we need roads and transmission lines where we'd otherwise have unspoilt nature, but Green party voters live in cities and never see any of that, so what do they care?

I will say that wind is a good match for hydro though, which we have a lot of. Just think of wind as a way of extending the hydro reserves and not as an energy source of its own and it makes more sense. Up to a point.

>>643
>Solar panels have become relatively cheap over the last years
What you're observing is China heavily subsidizing solar panel production to strangle competition out of the market. When you buy cheap solar panels, you're buying solar panels that are the dirtiest and most harmful to the environment.