/mlpol/ - My Little Politics


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KoLiber_energy_crisis.png
Anonymous
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No.189011
189015 189021 189037 189072 189137 189193 189396 189398 189694 189732
What fuel source(s) will solve the energy crisis? We are running out of oil, coal does too much damage to the environment, solar and other renewables are still too inefficient, and we just don't have the technology for fusion reactors. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts /mlpol/.
Anonymous
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No.189015
189028
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>>189011
Fission reactors are the way to go when coupled with electric cars. The radiation can be handled, and we have the tech to radically improve the current reactors to be safer. Most of our shit is still from the 70's. Solar and thermal will eventually supplant it, but nuclear is the current way to go.
Anonymous
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No.189020
189027
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Unironically, gas.
It sure is not that much energtetical as oil or other fossil fuels, but it's easier to obtain - from biomass, and we will never really gonna get rid of leftovers that can be properly harvested and decomposed which later can produce desired substance. For instance, most buses in my city are already LPG running and you can feel the differnce as air is a bit cleaner. So yeah, gas is the future. For the jews too.
Anonymous
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No.189021
189026 189193
>>189011
We're not, you have no idea how import fossil fuels are in the global economy. As soon as fossil fuels run out the west will die. The best we can currently do now is find more efficient ways to extract them.
Anonymous
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No.189026
189047
>>189021
>We're not
They will run out eventually, and are causing harm. It is better to push tech than to sit on the same tech.
Anonymous
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No.189027
>>189020
>For the jews too
Naturally. However, are you not concerned with the continued damage to the ozone layer?
Anonymous
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No.189028
189031 189396
>>189015
i don't believe that solar will ever be a viable option as even when we get to the point where solar panels are deemed efficient enough you will still have to replace them every 5-10 years as they degrade so no power plant would dare make the jump. As i see it nuclear fission is our only real hope
Anonymous
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No.189031
>>189028
Solar can be a solution, it's just not a great one. Better than wind turbines at least.
>As i see it nuclear fission is our only real hope
Agreed.
Anonymous
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No.189037
189047
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>>189011
It is true, oil will run out eventually. The death of oil, however, has been greatly exaggerated. Estimated reserves of oil are based on present extraction technology. As oil becomes more scarce, the monetary rewards for finding more of it goes up, and people develop new ways of extracting it. That is exactly what is happening now with Fracking, and it is why the United States, a country whose oil production was said to have “peaked” in the 1970s, is now the world largest crude oil producer. In addition to extraction technology, high oil prices also cause people to find ways to get further with the same amount of oil. My new Prius can get in the upper 40s MPG even when not driven in the most efficient ways. Because of these, I think that we will have the time to make a not-too painful transition to non-fossil fuel technology.

With regards to what can replace it, I think that electric vehicles are the simplest and cheapest solution for personal vehicles. Larger vehicles will probably still need liquid fuel. But thanks to the Fischer Tropsch process, literally any hydrocarbon can be turned into diesel fuel. We could grow genetically modified sugarcane for sheer biomass, and turn that into perhaps 1400 gallons of diesel and acre a year.

As for electrical generation, there is far more natural gas and coal than there is oil, and it too will benefit from improvements in extraction technology. I believe the amount of coal under the North Sea alone is as much as the entire presently-extractable reserves of the planet. And if we must use “green” power generation, wind, I think, is the most economic.
Anonymous
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No.189038
189047
>running out
Watermelons (eco-socialists) have pushed peak oil for forty years. When oil prices go up companies will prospect for new sources of delicious crude. With the discovery of new deposits we now have enough to sit comfortably for fifty years.

Peak oil is something to be worried about even less than so-called "global warming." When demand finally outpaces supply renewables will then be advanced enough to pick up the slack, not before. Hopefully we'll lose our irrational fear of nuclear then.
Anonymous
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No.189047
>>189026
>It is better to push tech than to sit on the same tech
Thing is the US geopolitical strategy won't give room to alternative energy at all. Look into the petrodollar, its a rabbit hole. Its end implication is we won't be changing at all. Too much power is gained from oil, and so we're stuck on it till the US collapses.

Also like >>189037 and >>189038 have said, oil isn't a problem as far as our supply is concerned the foreseeable future. Any wish to move over is idealistic which is fine, I like nature more then industry, but I'm a realist are heart and know we're not going to be changing or be pushed into changing anytime soon.
Anonymous
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No.189072
>>189011
Nuclear. Fusion is best but more Fission is what we need if we want to continue this shitshow.Too many people wanting too much. We're heading for catastrophe and I'd rather accelerate this.
Anonymous
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No.189092
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Other sources are either just too inefficient or too unclean.
Anonymous
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No.189095
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Anonymous
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No.189137
189174
>>189011
Fission, it's unironically greener than all the 'green' options and shifting to them will force improvements in safety and waste disposal for reactors to be developed. Also, what the fuck are you on? We have working fusion generators, it's just not commercially viable to build and run them for retail power demands. Don't count on fusion becoming viable until the petrodollar implodes and it becomes necessary to focus development on it.
Anonymous
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No.189174
189182
>>189137
Thorium reactors. However all of the kiked governments across the world do not want them to be built. Doing so would dispose of all the radioactive waste stockpiles, "spent fuel rods", the millions of decommissioned/active bombs & warheads that have been built up since the late 1950's. After all, making the faux-threat of nuclear weaponry a useless trick is wrong, isn't it, Orwell?
Anonymous
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No.189182
>>189174
We should meme Best Korea into building one. All the butthurt that would cause.
Anonymous
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No.189185
Thorium
Anonymous
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No.189193
189211 189519
>>189011
Nuclear is not cost effective, safe or friendly to the environment.

RnD should be focussed on solar and battery storage. This should create a combined grid with water turbine backup.

However energy usage and efficiency is what will be required at some point.

>>189021
There is 1000`s of years worth of fuel so I doubt it will be running out.
Anonymous
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No.189211
189212
>>189193
Considering youre from Japan, youre probably on the anti nuke train after fukushima like the rest of the japs. The truth of the matter is you dont build nuclear plants on coastlines and you wont end up with those problems
Anonymous
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No.189212
>>189211
The Fukushima reactor was also cutting corners and skimping on sea wall, they were warned that building the sea wall that low would put the reactor at risk in the event of a flood.
Anonymous
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No.189396
>>189011
For the immediate future? Gas. In the distant future? Hard to tell. Most likely a mixture of solar and nuclear as technology advances.
>>189028
This implies that technology won't at the same time make solar panels more durable over time.
Anonymous
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No.189398
>>189011
Nuclear is king, it's not even a contest. The only thing standing in its way are powerful lobbyists from the oil/gas industry and their useful idiots that have watched too many Godzilla movies.
Anonymous
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No.189416
189426
America is not running out of oil. America has one of the largest oil reserves in the world, and is recently creating many wells to extract more from.

There ISNT an energy crisis, from a technical stand point because the energy exists there already, and it takes a long time to run out.

So back to what does it mean when we hear there is an Energy Crisis. It can mean many things, one of them is that, they are lacking the people to buy their energy! The supply demand isn't in their control as well as it used to be. Price fixing is actually causing people to buy less, because, people literally can't get the money for it, despite how vital energy is.
Anonymous
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No.189426
>>189416
>America is not running out of oil. America has one of the largest oil reserves in the world, and is recently creating many wells to extract more from.
I beg to disagree.
America have a oil bonanza because fracking extraction.
Fracking will fade soon, contrary to what the lugenpresse says to attrack investors, this technology has the particularity that in time the exploiters need to invest more and more just to keep the same production. In other words the profit return is diminishing in time.
This industry in unprofitable when the barrel of oil is bellow 40$ unlike the traditional oil wells.
This is simple math, the more America extracts, the more expensive will be the production. At some time most of the wells will simply stop production because of the cost.
Anonymous
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No.189475
If coal could be made cleaner it would be the ideal solution. Coal is very abundant especially in the states.
Anonymous
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No.189480
You just posted it.
Anonymous
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No.189519
189521
>>189193
Nuclear is cost effective as long as you do it at a large scale. What we're doing right now in most places is building one power plant, make lots of mistakes and end up with cost overruns, then fire everyone involved when it is done so that when it is time to build another, ten-twenty years later, there is no institutional knowledge and we have to start all over from scratch.

Nuclear is safe. What other energy sources have so few major incidents that you can literally count them all on one hand? Adding it up in terms of deaths per unit of energy, it beats solar and is slightly worse than wind. Hydro is way worse, and coal and gas look like full on slaughter by comparison. (That's all from accidents and things like particulate pollution, not counting hypothetical/estimated deaths from climate change.)

The environmental impact is small and well defined, the place where it's built is basically not much different from any industrial site and the only emissions are warm water and steam from cooling towers if they are needed. Uranium is hugely energy dense and not much mining is required; thorium is a waste product of other mining, especially from rare earths, and if we went that route the fuel would be effectively mined for free. The waste generated is in a solid form and "just sits there", and since the fuel is energy dense this means that there's not much waste generated in the first place either.

It's also a baseload source of energy and doesn't require major surgery to electrical grids, neither storage nor fragile smart grids would have to be involved if we wanted to switch the world over to nuclear.

Sorry about the rant.
Anonymous
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No.189521
189522 189543
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>>189519
>Nuclear is cost effective as long as you do it at a large scale.
True, but the catch is sinister.
The nuclear garbage is deadly and a pain in the wallet to dispose.
It is very nice while the central is running, but when the time comes for decommission, everybody tries to dodge the budget bullet.
Nuclear garbage will last being a danger for millennia.
Anonymous
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No.189522
189552 189670
>>189521
Nuclear waste is not a remarkably difficult problem to solve. Most "waste" is not waste at all, but elements like Plutonium that are in fact entire fissible materials in their own right, and can be removed from the waste to provide nuclear fuel. Plutonium and the like are the unstable elements in the waste that give the waste it's 10,000 year half life. If you removed that, the remaining waste, while containing more concentrated radioactivity, has a half life of only 100 years. More importantly, by recycling the waste, you vastly increase your supply of nuclear fuel. I've heard you can get basically 25 times as much fissionable material by recycling waste.
Anonymous
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No.189543
>>189521
The only thing standing in the way of safely disposing of nuclear waste are the oil lobbyists and useful idiots that campaign to entrap the nuclear plants in red tape and prevent them from moving the waste off site. Furthermore the newer generation designs of reactor can utilize the "waste" of yesteryear as fuel.
Anonymous
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No.189552
189570 189671
>>189522
Most nuclear waste that comes out of a reactor - 90% maybe? - is simply non-fissile "filler" uranium that's the same as the day it was put in, but other than that you're spot on.
The rest is, if I remember correctly, unburnt fuel (fissile uranium), transuranics (mostly filler that has been turned into plutonium and other heavy elements), and finally fission products (actual waste, atoms split in half), in that order.
And as you say, separating out the fission products gives us a pile of highly radioactive waste that will have blown its load in 300-500 years, and another pile that can be recycled and go back in as fuel.

Nuclear's big problems are the large initial cost and the regulations put on it, not waste or safety. And the public perception that it's dangerous of course. Fusion will likely be in a similar position when we get it working, but with better PR.
Anonymous
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No.189570
>>189552
Nuclear power plants initial cost to build is the same as coal, but keeping it running will be a heavier cost. As the technology develops that shouldnt be a problem and will be quite easy to solve.
sage
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No.189670
189689
>>189522
>Nuclear waste is not a remarkably difficult problem to solve.
>recycling the waste
Recycling is process incredibly expensive and cumbersome, and only profitable for extraction of plutonium and some medical purpose radio isotopes.
The rest is not profitable to recycle poison and will be with us for millennia.

>the remaining waste, while containing more concentrated radioactivity, has a half life of only 100 years

If I remember well from my chemical class, the average radio isotope's decay of the wasted fuel rods is long enough to consider them dangerous for many, many thousands years.
And if I remember well, the initial proceeding is similar to extract gold, to use acid to dissolve the expended rods, then to use precipitation to get the metals. The problem with this is a new huge volume of contaminated liquids also unprofitable to decontaminate.
So the more you try to extract radio isotopes, the more contaminated garbage you will get, because the cost to process it will grow astronomically.
Then, the "industry" use the solution of to bury the stuff and prey nothing bad will happen in a distant future able to disturb these burial sites.
sage
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No.189671
189688 189689
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>>189552
>Nuclear's big problems are the large initial cost and the regulations put on it, not waste or safety.
Think about Chernobyl in Ukraine.
And my main concern is not about to master technology, but human greed cutting corners and stupidity.
If it happened once, it can happen twice.
Anonymous
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No.189688
>>189671
It's gonna need to happen way more than twice for nuclear's death rate per kilowatt hour to catch up with wind and solar's fatality rates, much less coal, oil, and gas.

It's by far the safest energy source we have even with the most outrageously over the top estimates of chernobyl's damage. The perception that nuclear is dangerous is one of Hollywood and the media's greatest crimes against humanity.
Anonymous
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No.189689
189694 189767 189793
>>189670
>the average radio isotope's decay of the wasted fuel rods is long enough to consider them dangerous for many, many thousands years.
Yeah, that's plutonium. It is uniquely nasty to deal with due to its gamma radiation, that's why you see the thick shielding in any kind of planned waste disposal. However, plutonium is fuel and shouldn't be treated as waste. The actual fission products are far more radioactive and have much shorter half-lives.

>And if I remember well, the initial proceeding is similar to extract gold, to use acid to dissolve the expended rods, then to use precipitation to get the metals.

Yes, that's the way we have been doing it, can't remember the name of the process, France did it on a large-ish scale. But it's not the only way it could possibly be done.
That's also one reason some of us are excited about liquid fueled reactors that do the "reprocessing" as part of normal operations. As far as I know the details are not all worked out yet but it should be possible.

For what it's worth, I do believe we shouldn't continue operating nuclear power the way we do just because it's the most economically convenient way at the moment. We need to move to breeders and have a permanent solution for waste in place.

>>189671
>Think about Chernobyl in Ukraine.
What about it? That kind of incident could not have happened with any type of reactor that is in operation today, it was only possible due to the lack of an outer containment building around the reactor.
Also I'd like to point out that the plant continued operating until late 2000, which means that people were working there for 14 and a half years after the accident. It's the worst nuclear accident to have ever occurred, and even so it's not the certain death radioactive hellscape that it's made out to be. Of course I'm not saying that what happened was harmless, but the effects have been made to seem worse than they actually are.
Anonymous
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No.189694
>>189011
Common fission with thorium added to cycle, and more advanced version is thorium in molten salt reactor.

Be it gas, oil or coal, all will be detrimental for environment due carbon emissions in a way that emission is not already from existing cycle as in burning for example wood, but from "stored" source that adds more to ongoing cycle. So these should be only for limited usage, for example long distance mass transportation where they are used in most efficient manner and no other solution is available, primarily aircraft. Also industry uses are allowed when it's as material, and of course whole global recycling shitshow should also be fixed so every country can handle their waste instead of transporting it around globe eventually ending up in Asia or other third world. This to minimize need for new stuff.

Then as reactor capacity grows, start turning all heating electric based in way or other. Couple this with electric cars and we are getting good chunk of usage into electricity based.

But in short energy crisis is well tied to environment and it's changes.

>>189689
Also Chernobyl had really retarded control rod design, where part of rod wasn't neutron absorber and added to whole shit when they eventually decided to try get rods back into reactor. But whole shit initially was mainly due prime example of USSR style command chain.
Anonymous
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No.189732
>>189011
Thorium is A better and safer alternative to uranium.
Anonymous
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No.189767
>>189689
>For what it's worth, I do believe we shouldn't continue operating nuclear power the way we do just because it's the most economically convenient way at the moment. We need to move to breeders and have a permanent solution for waste in place.
IIRC, current practices weren't chosen for them being economically convenient or even because of safety. They were chosen to generate material for the nuclear weapons programs of their host nation.
sage
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No.189793
189799
>>189689
>it was only possible due to the lack of an outer containment building around the reactor.
Well the containment concrete building's dome blew exposing the fissible elements to the atmosphere.
Given the pressure involved, I doubt a second containment layer (or building) would have done any difference.
Anonymous
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No.189799
189800
>>189793
Pressure decreases with volume. Outer containment buildings are large so that steam has somewhere to expand into and only have to deal with lower pressure. (This is what the plant didn't have, and what every current design has.)
The inner reactor building on the other hand won't be able to handle it.
Anonymous
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No.189800
>>189799
>Pressure decreases with volume.
Point taken.
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