[Newfie]

Mouse,

You make a good argument. But it is unlikely to be implemented as you desire.

The way I see it we are hooked on cheap energy like a heroine addict. Our current fossil production will surly kill us and damage the planet. We will eventually resort to coal and that ain’t good.

Nuclear is a step down program, build nukes while we can and in tandem take the societal steps necessary (degrowth, reduce population) to do a controlled recovery of sanity. I completely agree that we need to reduce the amount of energy we use drastically. And reduce population as well.

That said I have about zero hope my plan would be any more successful than yours.

[evilgenius]

So the leaders shouting the most about climate change are the ones keeping us from doing anything practical about it.

It's true that nuclear needs to be part of the mix, but don't forget that nuclear fuel isn't renewable, either. It's a stopgap measure.

Hubbert's estimate of stopgap, for those unfamiliar with his important quantification on this topic.

Yeah, because there is enough uranium in the oceans, which can be extracted, to keep us going for a long time.

My worry, though, is over how people will take that stopgap, and make it permanent. If it was fusion, I would be happier.

Fission produces too much waste, which we then have to deal with in a certain amount of time. That waste, further, means that every nuke plant built has to maintain some sort of political certainty about its environment that people don't seem to demonstrate they are all that capable of.

There were no nuke plants when WII took place. We don't know what the devastation of that war would have done to them. Most likely, based upon what happened in places like the Colmar Pocket, it wouldn't have led to something terrible, but there are a lot of plants, and it only takes a few mistakes...

FYI, the Colmar Pocket was an area where the Germans had stored a lot of chemical weapons. Rather than see fighting in that area do the obvious, the Germans surrendered the Pocket. They did it peacefully. Even though the fighting was intense everywhere else, the two sides could agree upon that action. My dad was part of the Allied army that took over after them. He told me about it.

[AdamB]

Hubbert's estimate of stopgap, for those unfamiliar with his important quantification on this topic.

Yeah, because there is enough uranium in the oceans, which can be extracted, to keep us going for a long time.

The ocean ain't got nuttin' on the Chattanooga Shale that Hubbert specifically detailed to help create that graph.

Let's keep the facts straight here, no need for faux crustal abundance arguments when Hubbert built such graphs using good ol' hot shales and whatnot.

Fission produces too much waste, which we then have to deal with in a certain amount of time. That waste, further, means that every nuke plant built has to maintain some sort of political certainty about its environment that people don't seem to demonstrate they are all that capable of.

Yup....using nukes means worrying about the consequences of using nukes. But it also includes taking ADVANTAGE of what we can do with the things. You figure people would rather freeze in the dark than use nukes and dedicate the NE corner of Nevada as the designated waste site? Seems like the state was good enough for the first depository that couldn't overcome political hurdles, but that freezing in the dark thing....I'm betting it will provide more and better impetious next time.

[Tanada]

So the leaders shouting the most about climate change are the ones keeping us from doing anything practical about it.

It's true that nuclear needs to be part of the mix, but don't forget that nuclear fuel isn't renewable, either. It's a stopgap measure.

Hubbert's estimate of stopgap, for those unfamiliar with his important quantification on this topic.

Yeah, because there is enough uranium in the oceans, which can be extracted, to keep us going for a long time.

My worry, though, is over how people will take that stopgap, and make it permanent. If it was fusion, I would be happier.

Fission produces too much waste, which we then have to deal with in a certain amount of time. That waste, further, means that every nuke plant built has to maintain some sort of political certainty about its environment that people don't seem to demonstrate they are all that capable of.

Serious question, how much is too much? Building Solar PV panels produces toxic waste but people accept that as either the price of "clean" energy or completely ignore that the situation exists at all.

I do not know of any waste free source of energy and before you point at Fusion I don't think you realize just how much of the proposed system structure gets bombarded with high energy neutrons and radioactively activated in the process of running the plant for 30 to 60 years. Coal, Oil, Natural gas all release all kinds of side chain toxins in addition to CO2 and NOx gasses, this is well established. Large wind turbines are death on flying animals both birds and bats. Geothermal pulls up and releases radon gas along with a bunch of other things dissolved in the water injected for heating. Large Hydroelectric projects cause a lot of methane emissions unless the builders and operators do a perfect job of cleaning out the flood zone before the water fills the reservoir.

We need energy to have anything like even a 19th century level of technology and the higher the tech the more energy needed per capita. From years of studying every open source I could lay my hands on I can tell you that Fusion and Fission are both on the order of a million times the energy potential per gram of material than any fossil chemical heat source. A typical Generation II LWR which is the vast majority of current power reactors produces around 25 tons of spent fuel a year. After ten years of storage you can reprocess that 25 tons and recover 23.5 tons of Uranium with an enrichment very nearly the same as natural uranium or a little bit higher. You also get out about a 250 kg of Plutonium and higher actinides that can be recycled as fuel or stored indefinitely. That leaves you with 1.250 tons of fission products. Of that 1.250 tons after a decade in a cooling pool only 125 kg is radioactive in the sense it is hazardous to life. Most of the rest, over a ton of the 1.250 tons is stable isotopes of things like Silver and Molybdenum that were either stable as they were formed or which had decayed to stable state in the decade after leaving the core of the reactor. Even if you stop here and count the whole 1.250 tons as permanently sequestered waste material it makes up a cube about the size of a typical kitchen oven. That is not a lot of waste production for providing energy to half a million people for 18 months. If you remove all the stable elements for recycling into useful purposes your cube is reduced to the size of a kitchen microwave because it is mostly very dense metals.

Nuclear fission produces waste, absolutely and without a doubt. However the average person has no concept at all how small that volume is in real world terms compared to alternative choices.

[AdamB]

Nuclear fission produces waste, absolutely and without a doubt. However the average person has no concept at all how small that volume is in real world terms compared to alternative choices.

It is amazing to me that the entire peak oil fear mongering world (now much smaller, and lets include everyone else in this category without a basic understanding of energy precepts) doesn't already know this. There was a reason why Yucca Mountain would work. There is a reason why the power produced through radioactive isotopes will work. There is a reason why Hubbert knew this, and wrote about it in the same paper turned into a neo-Malthusian doomer bible by the willfully ignorant.

The waste products are small in volume. The power generation benefits per cubic foot of manageable waste product is unimaginably higher than anything else humans have used to date. The waste can be handled in such a way, and within the borders of the US, to be near inconsequential when compared to the biosphere damage caused by the convenient, less complex and occasionally cheaper alternatives we employ instead.

It is a more valid argument that humans could be potentially effected in the long run by important mineral resource limitations than energy limitations. But just as peak oilers couldn't be told how silly their ideas were 15 years ago, they reveal their Apocalyptic bent even with that idea dispatched by reality, and won't reengage with any future that doesn't lead straight to cool doom scenarios and MZBs, back to the land farming schemes, agrarian nirvana, or whatever.

[Plantagenet]

Joe Biden has given up on his pledge to stop oil drilling on federal lands as a way to stop global warming.

Now Joe is all gung ho on fossil fuels now....... Thanks to Joe Biden's latest flip-flop, drilling on federal lands has now re-started.


Thanks to Joe Biden's latest flip-flop, drilling on federal lands has now re-started.

Cheers!

[AdamB]

Now Joe is all gung ho on fossil fuels now....... Thanks to Joe Biden's latest flip-flop, drilling on federal lands has now re-started.
Cheers!

The drilling never stopped. Leasing did. And industry had about an 18 month supply of approved permits to use and never came close to running out. If you want to blame Joe for something that matters, use something that matters.

What, are you related to those Alaskan intelligentsia?

[jedrider]

About Yucca mountain, that it would be a good repository for US nuclear waste, but why no action? Because of our deadlocked politics, of course. Full speed ahead, I guess. A rational decision does not seem possible unless someone gives up something in return. Still, what do other countries plan to do with their nuclear waste? Maybe the same, that no one wants to pay in advance for any future benefit, no?

[Plantagenet]

About Yucca mountain, that it would be a good repository for US nuclear waste, but why no action?

There's no action because Sen. Harry Reid (D) defunded and killed the Yucca Mountain project years ago after the Ds took over the Senate and named Harry Reid as the leader of the Senate.

Still, what do other countries plan to do with their nuclear waste?

Other countries are building nuclear waste depositories of various sorts. Harry Reid and the Ds were only able to sabotage the US nuclear waste repository program.


Sen. Harry Reid (D) defunded and killed the Yucca Mountain project after the Ds took over the Senate and named Harry Reid as the leader of the Senate

Cheers!

[Tanada]

About Yucca mountain, that it would be a good repository for US nuclear waste, but why no action? Because of our deadlocked politics, of course. Full speed ahead, I guess. A rational decision does not seem possible unless someone gives up something in return. Still, what do other countries plan to do with their nuclear waste? Maybe the same, that no one wants to pay in advance for any future benefit, no?

Since the 1960's most governments using civilian power reactors have been reprocessing their spent fuel to recover the slightly enriched Uranium and Plutonium reducing their volume by some 94 or 95 percent from when it came out of the reactor. In France an possibly elsewhere they dry the resulting liquid after the fissionables have been extracted until it is a fine powder, mix it with purified sand with Boron and cast the whole mass as a borosilicate glass that is poured into a stainless steel canister while still hot and allowed to set inside. A stainless steel lid is then welded on and you have a nice tidy weather proofed tube that emirs some gamma radiation that you need to stack somewhere for about 300 years unless you decided to do additional recycling steps on it before that time has expired.

[theluckycountry]

About Yucca mountain, that it would be a good repository for US nuclear waste, but why no action? Because of our deadlocked politics, of course.

Anywhere is a good place, but if you are worried about leaks, why not at Chernobyl or a facility at Fukushima. You couldn't make those sites any more dangerous could you. The only reason they ignore those obvious sites is because they don't want to draw attention to them, leave them swept under the carpet so to speak.


Australia's CSIRO estimates SMR power costs at A$258-338 MWh, a consumer here pays around $230 MWh at their door, except in South Australia, the state that went "Green", there they pay around $400/MWh
As far as nuclear is concerned the real issue is cost, they simply cost too much.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/small-nucle ... uge-costs/


In the dawn of the nuclear era, cost was expected to be one of the technology's advantages, not one of its drawbacks. The first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis Strauss, predicted in a 1954 speech that nuclear power would someday make electricity “too cheap to meter.”

A half century later, we have learned that nuclear power is, instead, too expensive to finance.
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nuclear-power-cost

[Tanada]

About Yucca mountain, that it would be a good repository for US nuclear waste, but why no action? Because of our deadlocked politics, of course.

Anywhere is a good place, but if you are worried about leaks, why not at Chernobyl or a facility at Fukushima. You couldn't make those sites any more dangerous could you. The only reason they ignore those obvious sites is because they don't want to draw attention to them, leave them swept under the carpet so to speak.


Australia's CSIRO estimates SMR power costs at A$258-338 MWh, a consumer here pays around $230 MWh at their door, except in South Australia, the state that went "Green", there they pay around $400/MWh
As far as nuclear is concerned the real issue is cost, they simply cost too much.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/small-nucle ... uge-costs/


In the dawn of the nuclear era, cost was expected to be one of the technology's advantages, not one of its drawbacks. The first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis Strauss, predicted in a 1954 speech that nuclear power would someday make electricity “too cheap to meter.”

A half century later, we have learned that nuclear power is, instead, too expensive to finance.
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nuclear-power-cost

Not to side track this thread any further but the "high cost of nuclear" is at least half an illusion cast by cherry picking short time cycles. Yes Fission costs more in the up front investment phase of the system as a whole. However when you amortize that cost figuring in the very inexpensive fuel compared to fossil energy over a 60 year lifespan for the plant and equipment the cost differential is clearly favorable to the Fission energy option. Even over a 30 year timespan it pays more profit than most of its serious alternatives like Wind.
Please watch this if you doubt my inexpert knowledge. YouTube Cost Of Nuclear Presentation 22 minutes

[theluckycountry]

Not to side track this thread any further but the "high cost of nuclear" is at least half an illusion cast by cherry picking short time cycles... However when you amortize that cost figuring in the very inexpensive fuel compared to fossil energy over a 60 year lifespan for the plant and equipment the cost differential is clearly favorable to the Fission energy option. Even over a 30 year timespan...

I'll take your word for it Tanada, but upfront costs is what seems to matter now in our debt laden world. Then there is the grid, the worn out over-stretched monster that threatens to have a heart attack any day now. Any future expansion or major replacement scheme must take that into account too, and we must ask ourselves, is centrally controlled power transmitted over major grids really going to be the future? What happens in a depression, when no one can pay? How is the grid maintained when people bail out due to high costs. Many are bailing now, they simply can't pay their bills.

Covid-induced poverty and rising power bills make an explosive combination
https://countercurrents.org/2022/04/covid-induced-poverty-and-rising-power-bills-make-an-explosive-combination/

One in four surveyed households has unpaid electricity bills. The total amount they owe is skyrocketing.
June 9, 2021 https://blog.arcadia.com/unpaid-electri ... rocketing/

Oil exploration is all but unprofitable, no one is building new refineries and here in Oz they are closing them all down, why? Because the companies see no future in oil obviously, at least no 40~60 year future as they did when they built it all back in the 20th century.

I imagine a similar number crunching is going on in the electricity industry and brighter minds than us, with more detailed information on the issues, could well be deciding it's not worth the effort and expense to replace all the plants with Uranium burners. On forums like this the entrenched thinking is "How can we power the future based on what we use now" Like all the air conditioners, like all the cars and truck miles we drive now converted to EV. But what built this world we enjoy was a 100 year bounty of super cheap oil and coal.

Take that away and you are making cement clinker for concrete at much higher cost, Re-bar for concrete at much higher cost. In other words things that require high temperatures to make and that's best done with oil and coal. Our world is built on electricity but just as equally on Steel and Concrete. The men running the big power companies know this and have to factor it all in, for 30 to 60 years in the future.

Personally I think most of the big grids will be gone in 60 years, it seems obvious to me that locally generated power will be the model, people with money having power and people without, going without. Back in the days of slavery in the South all the big plantation owners' homes would have been brightly lit by candles and oil lamps but I doubt the slave quarters had but one candle.

I wouldn't count on the Grid being functional in 30 years, I'm not.

[yellowcanoe]

Personally I think most of the big grids will be gone in 60 years, it seems obvious to me that locally generated power will be the model, people with money having power and people without, going without. Back in the days of slavery in the South all the big plantation owners' homes would have been brightly lit by candles and oil lamps but I doubt the slave quarters had but one candle.

I wouldn't count on the Grid being functional in 30 years, I'm not.

We are definitely going backwards here in Ontario, Canada. Electric power in the early days was provided by a number of private sector companies which meant that only people living near an electrical provider could get power. It was a Conservative politician, Adam Beck, that proposed buying out the private companies and creating a single public owned company to provide power to all at cost. The result was Ontario Hydro that would eventually build all the nuclear plants currently operating in Ontario. Alas, both Conservative and Liberal governments in recent years have pursued privatization of our power infrastructure, and Ontario Hydro is but a distant memory. Most recently Hydro One which operated the transmission grid has been privatized. Privatization was expected to reduce the cost of power but has had the opposite effect. I can see in the long run we'll be back to having a market that only serves those with the wealth to purchase it. Nuclear power would be the correct investment for the long term but the private sector is more interested in cheaper gas generation that is more profitable in the short run.

[vtsnowedin]

A decade or so ago we had a young Canadian engineer working for the DOT while his wife attended medical school at Dartmouth. He called all utility poles Hydro-poles as in his part of Canada they all delivered hydro power from James Bay Lagrand four.
Vermont and New England imports quite a bit of Canadian hydro-power so Canada still has excess to sell. If things deteriorate they could stop selling to the US and keep it for their own use.
I doubt the grid will ever be abandoned as even if you have local generation being tied into a grid helps you balance loads to supply. If anything the grid will get updated and expanded to take in and distribute renewable and new nuclear sources as they come on line.

[AdamB]

Oil exploration is all but unprofitable....

....says the fool who can't be bothered to check on the record profits being generated first....

.... no one is building new refineries and here in Oz they are closing them all down, why?

Because they are more complex than cars...and folks in the land of Oz can't build those either. Or submarines.

Because the companies see no future in oil obviously, at least no 40~60 year future as they did when they built it all back in the 20th century.

Because without increasing demand there is no need for new refineries to refine additional crude to meet it...

[vtsnowedin]

Exxon made a profit of $5.12 per share last year. With 4,225,673,726 shares outstanding that is a tidy little profit.
The only new refineries in the USA are new splitting units that deal with light tight oil and gas well condensate. The last new crude refinery was built in 1977. But they keep expanding and modernizing old refineries rather then starting from scratch so their capacity has kept up with demand.

The newest refinery in the United States is the Targa Resources Corporation's 35,000 barrels per calendar day (b/cd) condensate splitter in Channelview, Texas, which began operating in 2019. Condensate splitters are distillation units that process condensate, which is lighter than crude oil.

www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=29&t=6

[AdamB]

Exxon made a profit of $5.12 per share last year. With 4,225,673,726 shares outstanding that is a tidy little profit.

Yes. I know. You know. Anyone with a couple neurons firing knows it. But the fellow you don't want me to characterize by the sum total of his intellectual abilities doesn't know that.

[theluckycountry]

@Tanada
We are definitely going backwards here in Ontario, Canada. Electric power in the early days was provided by a number of private sector companies which meant that only people living near an electrical provider could get power. It was a Conservative politician, Adam Beck, that proposed buying out the private companies and creating a single public owned company to provide power to all at cost.

I think if we laid all the factors out on a chart we'd find these transitions were more about the cost of the underlying fuels and constructions than the politics. As for Nuclear, well I'll give it some points as soon as they start building the plants out of energy produced in the plants. Nuclear is a dead end as far as I'm concerned, it and most of the "rebuildables" are so heavily dependent on fossil fuels it's a joke to call them solutions.

Here in my state all the electricity (aside from rooftop solar) is generated by the government, 15 odd years ago they privatized the billing, yes, just the billing. They said it would make prices more competitive (lol lol) and within a year prices went up 50%. It was obvious to me at the time what was going on, the cost of generation and the cost of maintaining the aging grid demanded higher prices, but the government didn't want people marching on parliament house in protest so they put a buffer between them and their constituents.

That's how stupid most of the population is, they can't be told the truth or they would freak out! Tell millions of people about the relentless rise in energy, the collapsing state of the power grid and how in 20 years it might not be functional? No way. Tell them a pack of lies instead and send them deeper into a state of cognitive dissonance. This is why I listen to NOTHING that comes out of government mouths or government agencies, it's all lies now, all misdirection.

Even the recent floods in Brisbane north of me was denied by the state government, right up until the morning after when the streets were awash. The night before, the fat pig of a Premier was on TV telling people not to worry, it wasn't going to flood. The engineers at the dam though had other ideas, they had to release the water because the wall is an earthen/clay structure and an over-topping would have destroyed it. Of course the Premier was fully aware of this but you don't want people panicking in the suburbs, just let them sit there and we'll sort it out in the morning. Unbelievable!

[theluckycountry]

Exxon made a profit of $5.12 per share last year. With 4,225,673,726 shares outstanding that is a tidy little profit.

April 21, 2020
President Donald Trump on Tuesday promised the $181 billion oil and gas industry a federal bailout, after the price of oil suffered historic drops... Trump met with Big Oil executives earlier this month in the White House. In the foreground is Darren Woods, Chief Executive Officer of ExxonMobil.

Their profits are guaranteed.


https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/big-oi ... e-promise/