[KaiserJeep]

Silly premise. Nor is the nuclear fuel cycle carbon free. Mining uranium requires oil powered machines, and enriching uranium for fission requuires electricity, still mostly made from coal.

[StarvingLion]

I don't know which is more hilarious: The Buffoonery of the Fission Industry or the Outright Hokum of the Fusion "Researchers"

[Tanada]

Silly premise. Nor is the nuclear fuel cycle carbon free. Mining uranium requires oil powered machines, and enriching uranium for fission requires electricity, still mostly made from coal.

You are being totally parochial in your outlook yet again KJ. France has been enriching Uranium for well over a generation now using fission produced electricity to produce fission reactor fuel. In addition due to the vast energy density of nuclear reactions compared to chemical reactions the carbon footprint for the currently oil powered machinery used to mine Uranium resources is tiny compared to the vast emissions that come from even Natural Gas, the lowest carbon emitting fossil fuel. Several modern mining operators are actually using in situ leaching to produce Uranium by drilling, fracking and then leaching the ore baring rock in the ground without extracting anything other than liquid containing the dissolved Uranium and the inevitable by products. Once the ore strata are stripped of economically recoverable Uranium the unwanted leachates can be reinjected back into the formation and the wells capped. This drill/frack/leach process not only allows vastly deeper strata to be easily exploited, it also has a very very small equipment footprint compared to a large open cast mine producing low grade ores which are the typical competing sources at this point in history.

48% of Uranium is mined by in situ leaching

[dohboi]

https://watchers.news/2017/12/14/ikata- ... -meltdown/

[onlooker]

Tanada, or anybody else who might know. If I may ask out of pure curiosity. Not taking a position either pro or con nuclear. If in fact over the course of a few decades, civilization declines precipitously, how or can all the current nuclear reactors be decommissioned safely and effectively? And also, can all the waste products being safely stored-reused for at least a few hundred years?

[GHung]

Tanada, or anybody else who might know. If I may ask out of pure curiosity. Not taking a position either pro or con nuclear. If in fact over the course of a few decades, civilization declines precipitously, how or can all the current nuclear reactors be decommissioned safely and effectively? And also, can all the waste products being safely stored-reused for at least a few hundred years?

There is a long list of chemical and nuclear sites that have simply been abandoned rather than be cleaned up, especially in the former USSR; This during relatively stable times for civilization. If things fall apart to any degree, does anyone really think we'll do any better?

[onlooker]

Tanada, or anybody else who might know. If I may ask out of pure curiosity. Not taking a position either pro or con nuclear. If in fact over the course of a few decades, civilization declines precipitously, how or can all the current nuclear reactors be decommissioned safely and effectively? And also, can all the waste products being safely stored-reused for at least a few hundred years?

There is a long list of chemical and nuclear sites that have simply been abandoned rather than be cleaned up, especially in the former USSR; This during relatively stable times for civilization. If things fall apart to any degree, does anyone really think we'll do any better?

Maybe I have not read all the nuclear threads and Tanada's replies. We may be annoying to him and others if we keep rehashing the same questions. But apparently Ghung, you have been on this site for quite some time and have not been convinced at all about the safety of nuclear. I think I will bow out now and await the cogent reply of Tanada but I believe he believes we have the knowhow to do this and build safer nuclear power stations but the will is not their politically and people are too biased against nuclear. Let us see if his reply is different or more nuanced.

[GHung]

Ghung, you have been on this site for quite some time and have not been convinced at all about the safety of nuclear.

I'll skip the part about me being one of the only people on this site that has actually been trained in the operation of nuclear reactors, and all that. My doubts are based of humans' record of dealing with the messes we've made in the past: the complex and expensive processes that determines who cleans it up and who pays. See the recent case of Duke Energy and old/failing coal ash ponds in NC as a relatively minor example. Societies don't simply decide things will be made right and then do it. Alakazam! Bring forth your magic wands!

I, again, ask a simple question that requires no "nuance": Considering our record of such things, does anyone think, when things begin to fall apart, when we are struggling to even provide basic goods and services to the masses, that we will have the wherewithal and will to clean up the hundreds of sites that will require high levels of finance, expertise, and commitment?

Considering our current rather dismal performance on just about everything, that, in the US, we can't even BUILD new reactors without bankruptcies, cost and time overruns, and confusion, color me skeptical, at the least. I've yet to see a comment (or any evidence) presented here that even comes close to changing my conclusions.

A Table showing about 150 shutdown reactors is at the end of this paper. About 17 of these had the full decommissioning process completed by the end of 2016.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/informatio ... ities.aspx

[aspera]

Ghung: ...the complex and expensive processes that determines who cleans it up and who pays.

Consider the notion of Defensive Expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_expenditures) which themselves do not generate common wealth or contribute to primary productivity. They just allow BAU to continue a bit longer.

Yet, since defensive expenditures consume money (i.e., make claims on future energy production), these expenditures become less possible as cheap energy ends. With time not just the "clean ups" discussed here but all forms of maintenance become problematic (i.e., you might have that Tesla Model 3 all charged up but no paved road to ride on).

[Tanada]

The problem with all these gloom and doom forecasts about how 'awful' nuclear waste is you can not point to any examples of massive death tolls from nuclear energy production. None. Zip. Zero. Nada.

The closest anyone can come is Chernobyl where at the very extreme limit of possible relation to actual events you might tacitly link a few thousand excess deaths to the disaster.

Meanwhile nuclear fission electricity has offset billions of tons of CO2 production and along with that it has offset hundreds of thousands, possibly million, of deaths from respiratory ailments that would have resulted from producing the same electricity with fossil fuels. That is not just coal, but also oil and natural gas all of which cause deaths from people inhaling the exhaust products as they are spewed willy nilly into the environment.

A more realistic look at Chernobyl's effects find less than 100 deaths from acute radiation sickness and a few hundred cases of thyroid disease because the population was deficient in dietary iodine and absorbed too much of the radioactive isotope in the first three weeks after the accident before it decayed away to safe levels. If you consume the appropriate amounts of iodine in your diet then you are relatively immune to the thyroid issue that caused most of the harm after Chernobyl. Nobody in Japan suffered the same issue as a result of Fukushima and with the media hysteria you must realize a mass breakout of thyroid illness would have been headlines around the world.

[StarvingLion]

EDF stock at time of 2008 financial collapse was 85. Now its 10.50.

Nuclear is dependent on oil which France doesn't have.

Thus France is bankrupt like America.

[StarvingLion]

5 years from now these useless contraptions will cost 50-100 billion

Toshiba Pays Up More Than $3B In Georgia Nuclear Expansion

https://www.wabe.org/toshiba-pays-3b-ge ... expansion/

Quote:
As of today, Toshiba has paid nearly $3.7 billion dollars to Georgia utilities. The Japanese company had promised the money to cover debt from its now-bankrupt subsidiary, Westinghouse. Westinghouse was the lead contractor building two nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle, which is near Augusta. The company’s bankruptcy drove costs on the nuclear expansion higher and pushed the timeline for completion back. Now, Georgia Power says the reactors will be complete in 2022, five years behind schedule, and the expansion will cost at least $22 billion. Georgia Power owns 45.7 percent of the project.

[GHung]

The problem with all these gloom and doom forecasts about how 'awful' nuclear waste is you can not point to any examples of massive death tolls from nuclear energy production. None. Zip. Zero. Nada.

The closest anyone can come is Chernobyl where at the very extreme limit of possible relation to actual events you might tacitly link a few thousand excess deaths to the disaster.

Meanwhile nuclear fission electricity has offset billions of tons of CO2 production and along with that it has offset hundreds of thousands, possibly million, of deaths from respiratory ailments that would have resulted from producing the same electricity with fossil fuels. That is not just coal, but also oil and natural gas all of which cause deaths from people inhaling the exhaust products as they are spewed willy nilly into the environment.

A more realistic look at Chernobyl's effects find less than 100 deaths from acute radiation sickness and a few hundred cases of thyroid disease because the population was deficient in dietary iodine and absorbed too much of the radioactive isotope in the first three weeks after the accident before it decayed away to safe levels. If you consume the appropriate amounts of iodine in your diet then you are relatively immune to the thyroid issue that caused most of the harm after Chernobyl. Nobody in Japan suffered the same issue as a result of Fukushima and with the media hysteria you must realize a mass breakout of thyroid illness would have been headlines around the world.

Sounds like Tanada is saying it's no big deal if these sites are not cleaned up and nuke plants are not properly decommissioned. Turn them off and walk away?

[Tanada]

Sounds like Tanada is saying it's no big deal if these sites are not cleaned up and nuke plants are not properly decommissioned. Turn them off and walk away?

What do you imagine happens when you walk away from a defueled reactor either before or after decomissioning? You have a large steel vessel that has a mild radioactive output and a lot of concrete some of which may reasonably be classified as also emitting more radioactivity than it did when it was freshly manufactured. That is it. The radiation levels are low enough after a few weeks that workers can walk within meters of the reactor vessel in complete safety, and that vessel is encased in a several meter thick concrete shell. Close the door and walk away, nothing much is going to happen within the lifetime of the materials present.

[GHung]

Sounds like Tanada is saying it's no big deal if these sites are not cleaned up and nuke plants are not properly decommissioned. Turn them off and walk away?

What do you imagine happens when you walk away from a defueled reactor either before or after decomissioning? You have a large steel vessel that has a mild radioactive output and a lot of concrete some of which may reasonably be classified as also emitting more radioactivity than it did when it was freshly manufactured. That is it. The radiation levels are low enough after a few weeks that workers can walk within meters of the reactor vessel in complete safety, and that vessel is encased in a several meter thick concrete shell. Close the door and walk away, nothing much is going to happen within the lifetime of the materials present.

Oh,,,, and who is going to pay the de-fueling costs if everything has crashed and there's no money for it?

[KaiserJeep]

Far from being financial burdens, nuclear commercial power plants have long been profit centers for the utilities that own them. Nor have any decommisioned plants ever been abandonned or been any type of hazard for surrounding populations.

If you want to understand some real hazards, look into the management and mismanagement of coal ash from commercial power plants. They literally are the most dangerous form of power generation. Meanwhile fools obsess over nuclear power, in truth the safest by a huge factor.

The numbers say that coal kills ONE MILLION TIMES as many people as nuclear. If you know something we should be considering, or a better way of measuring safety than counting actual human casualties from energy generation, please share.

[GHung]

Far from being financial burdens, nuclear commercial power plants have long been profit centers for the utilities that own them. Nor have any decommisioned plants ever been abandonned or been any type of hazard for surrounding populations.

If you want to understand some real hazards, look into the management and mismanagement of coal ash from commercial power plants. They literally are the most dangerous form of power generation. Meanwhile fools obsess over nuclear power, in truth the safest by a huge factor.

The numbers say that coal kills ONE MILLION TIMES as many people as nuclear. If you know something we should be considering, or a better way of measuring safety than counting actual human casualties from energy generation, please share.

Assumes BAU for a long, long time.

[onlooker]

Assumes BAU for a long, long time.----
That is the conundrum isn't. Can Nuclear exist safely within the context of a declining and chaotic downturn of modern civilization. I am persuaded by Tanada that Nuclear could have been a real effective answer to humanities energy needs . But the caveat is that serious financial turmoil seems to be on the horizon and in this context it Nuclear may not be all that feasible

[StarvingLion]

Assumes BAU for a long, long time.----
That is the conundrum isn't. Can Nuclear exist safely within the context of a declining and chaotic downturn of modern civilization. I am persuaded by Tanada that Nuclear could have been a real effective answer to humanities energy. But the caveat is that serious financial turmoil seems to be on the horizon and in this context it Nuclear may not be all that feasible

Don't ya get it? Rockhead educated us that 99.999% of the populace believes in fake money and doesn't concern itself with peakoil.com

What kind of energy system can fake money buy?

Nothing, of course.

[StarvingLion]

I am persuaded by Tanada that Nuclear could have been a real effective answer to humanities energy.

I guess nobody told the idiots in Humanities that combustion is required for modern civilization. Nuclear doesn't solve any problems. Nuclear like "Renewables" is simply a parallel source of electricity that is no longer affordable. It can't replace coal, or gas or anything combustible.