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Pandora's Promise - On Netflix Now

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Re: Pandora's Promise - On Netflix Now

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Wed 26 Mar 2014, 05:50:55

One take-away statistic from the documentary is that the French get 80% of their energy from nuclear power plants. The French also successfully powered all their trains and all urban buses with electricity.

I believe that Nuclear Energy is the ONLY available and usable candidate to replace fossil energy. If the French can do this and succeed, the USA can tackle the much larger task in our country and succeed. My modest proposal:

1) Replace all fossil power plants with nuclear plants, using inherently safe 4th generation designs. Build these nukes at the same sites that currently have fossil fuel plants, and use the same power grid infrastructure. Again taking lessons from French success, standardize the design of the reactors and transition from enriched uranium single-pass fuel to breeder designs - with appropriate federal oversight. Target: the same 80% as France.

2) Scale the present 3% renewable energy up to 20% to fill the gap. This is a very very aggressive goal that requires a 600% to 700% increase in renewable sources. Actually since we can't install a lot more hydro-power, it is really probably 10X to 15X the present amount of renewable solar/wind energy. This I expect will be HARDER than the nuclear goal.

3) Use the remaining natural gas, conventional oil, tight oil, and coal-to-liquid fuels to A) grow food and B) for personal transportation. Tax ICE and hybrid vehicles at 25% of purchase price every year for the life of the vehicle, regardless of use. Tax liquid fuels for ICE and hybrid vehicles at 100% of fuel cost. Allow unlimited use of all-electric vehicles without federal taxation. Standardize on electric vehicles that support tow-behind range extenders for rural areas. Limit the use of range extenders to 2 weeks per year per driver.

4) Electrify the superhighway system for the use of heavy trucks, and private EV chargers. Electrify all train tracks. Forbid the use of ICE heavy trucks and trains within 20 years.

5) Allow use of coal furnaces for steel manufacturing and other industrial processes, consistent with EPA standards. Forbid the generation of grid power by coal. Phase out oil and natural gas peaking power plants over time, using a combination of distributed solar and enhanced efficiency space heating and cooling. Place extensive and expensive power saving and energy-saving standards for all new construction. However, allow off-grid housing to exist without taxation.

6) Forbid the import or export of carbon-releasing fossil fuels from our country by the 10th year. Forbid the use of carbon fuels for space heating - no wood or pellets or biomass burning, all such material should be mulched.

My prediction: Nobody in Federal government will propose such an aggressive plan as mine, or any variation that has a chance to succeed. The time frame is 10-20 years, based on the World Peak Oil milestone in 2005.

Because the sky is in fact about to fall when the oil runs out.
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Re: Pandora's Promise - On Netflix Now

Unread postby Ibon » Wed 26 Mar 2014, 08:03:09

KaiserJeep wrote:
My prediction: Nobody in Federal government will propose such an aggressive plan as mine, or any variation that has a chance to succeed. The time frame is 10-20 years, based on the World Peak Oil milestone in 2005.


We live in the counter intuitive time that solutions need to focus initially on decreasing resiliency rather than tryng to find alternatives that keep 7 billion afloat.

You sometimes have to wonder if intuitively we might understand that we are just too many for any configuration of meeting our energy needs.

Isn't it perhaps the wisest choice to do exactly what we are doing? Allowing the current energy regimen to create a bottle neck that creates limits that scale back our population.

And when this population decline accelerates to a more manageable number, then we can build out nuclear or any other combination of energy sources.

I have been long an advocate of the alternative paradigm that sees solutions to our global dilema as promoting policies that decrease resiliency. In this spirit the very consequences of our stupidity IS the actual solution.

If we get our population back to around 1 or 2 billion as a result of failing to mitigate our dilema, then get smart and build out a suite of sustainable and nuclear energy, then we can seriously talk about long term energy solutions.

Advocate policies that decrease resiliency. Counter intuitive perhaps but truely the one viable path toward a true sustainable future for our species.
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Re: Pandora's Promise - On Netflix Now

Unread postby Tanada » Wed 26 Mar 2014, 08:54:47

pstarr wrote:
Tanada wrote:By the same token any reactor with a ratio greater than 1.0 is a 'breeder' because when the fuel elements physically wear out it has more fissionable material in its mass than it had at the start of the cycle."


This doesn't imply perpetual energy, huh? Or rather is it the same quantity of less energetic fissionables?


People speak in very loose terminology when translating reactor probabilities to English words.
Technically any nucleus heavier than Actinium is 'fissionable' if you hit it hard enough, but what most people mean when they use the word would be better expressed as 'fissionable by thermal neutrons'. I should also point out that materials in the Actinide group of metals are all fissionable with fast neutrons, and the faster the neutron the greater the odds that a direct impact will lead to a fission. What this means is a fast reactor, like the IFR, gets part of its energy directly from fission of elements like Thorium-232 and Uranium-238 that we classify as Fertile. The fission threshold for Uranium-233, Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239 is 0 meaning a thermal neutron will often cause them to fission. For Thorium-232 the fission threshold is 1.4 MeV and for Uranium-238 it is 0.6 MeV. When you put fuel in a reactor and start it fissioning the neutrons released by the reaction have a wide range of energy levels from 10^-3 eV up to 10^7 eV aka 10 MeV. The average is between 1 and 2 MeV, so a breeder reactor 'burns' some of its fertile material directly without having to breed it into thermally fissionable material first. This is good for the neutron efficiency because it eliminates two steps and requires one less neutron.

Why isn't this perpetual energy? Simple. If you take weapon grade material that is 90% plus U-235 or Pu-239 and mix it with Silicon Carbide you can make fuel rods out of it that do not contain much fertile material at all, in fact 10% U-238 or none at all. Contrast this with standard LWR fuel that is 95.5 U-238 when fresh. The first day you put the Silicon Carbide U-235 fuel into the reactor it acts exactly like the fresh UOX fuel that is 4.5% U-235/95.5% U-238. As time goes forward the UOX fuel converts part of its U-238 mass into Pu-239, to the point that after 24 months or so the the fuel spent UOX fuel is 5% fission fragments, 1.1% U-235, 0.95% Reactor Grade Plutonium and 90.15% U-238.
With the inert Silicon Carbide fuel matrix there was very little U-238 to start with but in the regular UOX fuel 5.35% of the fuel that started as U-238 has been converted into fission fragments or Plutonium of several different isotopes.

So in the Silicon Carbide fuel the reactivity starts dropping right away, all of the energy and neutrons have to come from fissioning the U-235. In the UOX the replacement ratio is at least 0.5 and as high as 0.8+ in the last Gen III reactors, but in the inert Silicon Carbide fuel the U-238 is less than 10% of what it was in the standard fuel. This means the replacement ratio is less than 10% so 0.05% is likely. This means that the spent Silicon Carbide/Uranium fuel that was 4.5% U-235 will be about2.7% fission fragments 1.8% U-235 and 0.4% U-238 with only trace amounts of Plutonium in it. That gives a fuel life ratio of 0.54 so the inert Silicon Carbide fuel only operates for 13 months instead of 24 starting with exactly the same U-235 load.

So if a regular LWR like you find all over the USA and World today generates half its own fuel internally as it operates from fertile material is that perpetual motion? You are 'destroying' a Fertile nucleus by converting it into a fissile nucleus, not creating the fuel out of thin air. Take away the fertile nuclei and you get no fissile material generated. The faster the neutrons the higher the conversion ratio of Fertile to Fissile goes because when a fast neutron does cause a fission it releases more neutrons, which serves as a multiplier. Add in the fertile fast fission reactions and you cut the neutron requirement even further for breeding. Think of it this way, if a thermal neutron hits a Plutonium-239 nuclei 61% of the time that nuclei fissions, but the other 39% of the time it just captures that neutron. This fission/capture ratio is so bad that on average for all thermal neutron collisions with Pu-239 2.1 neutrons are released for every one captured. If you take that same Pu-239 and hit it with a 1 MeV fast neutron its odds of fissioning climb up to about 79% and the neutron emission ratio climbs from 2.1 per capture to 2.74 per capture. If the incident neutron was over 2 MeV in energy the ratio goes over 3.0, so the more fast neutrons you use the better your 'neutron efficiency' in terms of neutrons used for neutrons generated for Pu-239. The same kind of multiplier effect takes place for Uranium-233 bred from Thorium-232, but natural Uranium-235 only has a slight efficiency increase in a fast reactor going from 2.06 thermal to 2.18 for 1 MeV. To get U-235 to an emission/capture ratio of 3.0 you need fast neutrons in the 7 MeV range. This makes U-235, the natural fuel, ideal for thermal reactors, but the bred U-233 and Pu-239 are ideal for Fast reactors. Of the three only U-233 releases enough neutrons in a thermal reactor to have a conversion ratio over 1.0 with an emission/capture ratio of 2.27 for thermal neutrons.
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Re: Pandora's Promise - On Netflix Now

Unread postby Subjectivist » Wed 26 Mar 2014, 16:10:29

I looked up DUPIC, it means direct use of spent PWR fuel in CANDU heavy water reactors.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/04/dupic- ... se-of.html

Seems like a natural method of recycling even for people opposed to fuel reprocessing that separates ou th Plutonium. DUPIC burns up a lot of the Plutonium in the spent LWR fuel so it actually cuts the needed storage time for the spent fuel by a large margin.
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Re: Pandora's Promise - On Netflix Now

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Wed 26 Mar 2014, 19:56:40

Ibon wrote:-snip-

We live in the counter intuitive time that solutions need to focus initially on decreasing resiliency rather than tryng to find alternatives that keep 7 billion afloat.

You sometimes have to wonder if intuitively we might understand that we are just too many for any configuration of meeting our energy needs.

Isn't it perhaps the wisest choice to do exactly what we are doing? Allowing the current energy regimen to create a bottle neck that creates limits that scale back our population.


My whole life as an engineer has been spent making things work better with fewer raw materials and less energy. I find I cannot stop now. But I am also focused on the 330M in the USA, not the 7B on the globe.

Ibon wrote:And when this population decline accelerates to a more manageable number, then we can build out nuclear or any other combination of energy sources.

I have been long an advocate of the alternative paradigm that sees solutions to our global dilema as promoting policies that decrease resiliency. In this spirit the very consequences of our stupidity IS the actual solution.

If we get our population back to around 1 or 2 billion as a result of failing to mitigate our dilema, then get smart and build out a suite of sustainable and nuclear energy, then we can seriously talk about long term energy solutions.

Advocate policies that decrease resiliency. Counter intuitive perhaps but truely the one viable path toward a true sustainable future for our species.


I don't think anybody's policies will make any actual impact on the die-off. I think the brunt of the impact will fall unfairly on the third world, plus China and India. It may be hubris on my part, but I think that the high technology countries will save themselves with - wait for it - high technology. Marginal economies will become deadly environments, and highly technological societies will go through a forced evolution that changes everything we eat and drink and touch - into appropriate low energy high tech.

Everybody else dies.
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Re: Pandora's Promise - On Netflix Now

Unread postby sparky » Wed 26 Mar 2014, 20:31:33

.
All nuclear reactors have some breeding effect ,last time I checked it was around 8%
it's a bit of a pain to operate with al lot of "dirty" isotopes but boost performances somewhat
a beneficial side effect is it make the plutonium unsuitable for weaponisation
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Re: Pandora's Promise - On Netflix Now

Unread postby Ibon » Mon 10 Aug 2015, 10:17:31

Watched this last night again with friends. I agree that nuclear power is a "cleaner fuel" than fossil fuels and I also agree that misinformed environmentalists demonized nuclear power during these past decades. The solution of scaling up nuclear power to replace fossil fuels to power a civilization that will grow to 8 or 9 or 10 billion is the solution presented here by these "converted environmentalists" The thrust of their argument is that climate change with CO2 emissions from fossil fuels is a catastrophe easily mitigated if we ramp up nuclear power as the only scalable alternative. That wind and solar are only the tiniest sliver still in meeting our growing energy needs. I can't argue with any of that.

These converted environmentalists claim shortsightedness on their previous positions and on the public at large. Now we have to ask the tough question. What about the shortsightedness of using nuclear power to sustain a growing population that will max out at 10 billion to continue to draw on native lands and freshwater to sustain the agricultural demands? Plus all the other resource sinks that will be taxed?

They call themselves converted environmentalists. I call them anthrocentric environmentalists, looking for painless solutions to maintain the growth juggernaut that will ultimately only maintain and allow to grow the vast human artificial landscape on the planet that will continue to convert natural biomass over to human biomass along with our domesticated crops and livestock.

Why mitigate climate change which is one of our most important consequences and "solutions" to lower the resiliency of our species in severe overshoot. Remember that natural ecosystems are far more resilient to climate change than the artificial human landscape which is far more vulnerable to climate change disruptions.

Pandora's Promise is a false promise and Pandora's Box only grows and grows until solutions embrace lowering our resiliency.

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Re: Pandora's Promise - On Netflix Now

Unread postby Ibon » Mon 10 Aug 2015, 18:41:36

pstarr wrote: I find your latest response sad. While it is true that a successful nuclear programs could allow unmitigated human growth and total ecosystem destruction, I think it is unlikely. There is no way to avoid a dieoff of magnitude, but we could/can come out of it wiser.

When does wisdom come if not when we grind through the consequences. And then yes, those who carry on would be wiser. If we slip without major blips from fossil fuel opulence over to nuclear power opulence and grow to 10 billion from where will this wisdom ever come. We will be just 10 billion high level consumers. That is why I embrace climate change that will target vulnerable human habitat more than resilient natural habitats and thus lower human resiliency.

Interested in saving the cloud forest or allowing it and other habitats to expand? Then you lower resiliency of the human footprint, as we are discussing on the following thread

energy-infrastructure-standard-of-living-t71689-20.html#p1262762

Nuclear power will fuel expansion or enable us to maintain the imbalance we have created. Powering down to a lower energy regimen results in the infrastructure of outlying areas untenable and population starts to cluster in smaller areas allowing natural habitats to reclaim abandoned human habitats.

What will save the cloud forest is not Ibon reforesting and preserving 400 acres. That is only my self indulgent hobby. What will save the cloud forest is this region of Panama contracting in population as the infrastructure crumbles and Panama's already small population of 3.5 million contracts down to a couple hundred thousand.

As I have stated many times, humans do not do well with abundance and their best and most honorable attributes come forth when living with constraints. No to nuclear power. Yes to the destabilizing affects of climate change.
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Re: Pandora's Promise - On Netflix Now

Unread postby onlooker » Sat 15 Aug 2015, 16:37:14

However your views of Nuclear may be the proponents of nuclear invariably cite it because of the characteristics of abundance of power and because of CO2 emission being minimal. What proponents do not answer is how nuclear addresses the inherent problems of our consumerist global culture and about how nuclear is a way to prolong our devastating the Earth via consumption and overpopulation. I am not necessarily comfortable with any consequences coming our way, but I certainly do not think continuing with business as usual is a way to try and deal with the tremendous challenges ahead.
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Re: Pandora's Promise - On Netflix Now

Unread postby onlooker » Sat 15 Aug 2015, 16:53:50

Thanks for the info Pstar, I have hear conflicting views of how much nuclear power can power our civilization even how feasible it is to convert to electric transport. I trust your views and point out to nuclear proponents that either way nuclear is not the way to go. Not to mention we risk having a unstable and very dangerous situation if civilization completely collapses with nuclear reactors melting down.
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Re: Pandora's Promise - On Netflix Now

Unread postby onlooker » Sat 15 Aug 2015, 17:01:24

Okay Pstar that makes much sense especially the part of powering society at a much lesser population size as solar like wind could not be scalable to current population sizes. Sorry for the slight misunderstanding.
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Re: Pandora's Promise - On Netflix Now

Unread postby Ibon » Sat 15 Aug 2015, 22:23:44

pstarr wrote:
We do not have the money, political will or time to convert our dispersed suburban infrastructure to electric transport. The time for that is well in the past. It would have required the rewiring of our cities, suburbs, interstate highway and agriculture/mineral/timber lands for 440-volt power. The price to do so is virtually incomprehensible. I have done the numbers.


Plausible. Let's hope that along with the external factors that wont enable us to scale nuclear energy at the current level of consumption that we also "choose" to regulate with cultural values that go in tandem with these external limits.
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