Advanced Nuclear Reactors

[novaphile]

I'm a bit puzzled by this.

It seems obvious to me that the best way to deal with radioactive waste is to load it onto a decommissioned boat, tug it out to a deep part of the ocean and sink it.

What am I missing?

Any terrorist with a fishing boat can drag it up again, and use it to poison you?

 

[GlennB]

Any terrorist with a fishing boat can drag it up again, and use it to poison you?

Tricky if it's 2 miles down, and that's assuming they can find it which is also extremely tricky.

 

[pipelineaudio]

FTFY.

Proponents of nuclear power must be prepared to house the waste in their bedrooms, and the bedrooms of their descendants for all eternity.

Sure, as long as the proponents of coal (which is in reality anyone pushing solar at this point) agree to store all the radioactive waste from that process in their houses

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Sure, as long as the proponents of coal (which is in reality anyone pushing solar at this point) agree to store all the radioactive waste from that process in their houses

And the CO₂.

But you won't find many people advocating for coal these days. Most solar panels are made in China and coal is used for some of that, but they are 'bootstrapping' their way to fully renewable energy. Better to do that than just sit back and wait for a clean power source that may never happen.

Actually if we had all started 'bootstrapping' 20 years ago things wouldn't be so dire. China is projected to have emitted as much CO₂ as the US by 2050, but that assumes a constant emission rate from now until then. If they can replace most their coal plants with clean sources before then the US may continue to be the biggest contributor.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

I'm afraid that no nuclear waste is actually stored at Yucca mountain for political reasons.

The Yucca mountain site was apposed by - surprise! - the citizens of Nevada, including Republican Senator Dean Heller. I'm not sure that this qualifies as political, unless you think democracy itself is 'political reasons'.

If there is no technical reason to oppose it then the problem lies with the people who are pushing for it and didn't get the messaging right.

 

[theprestige]

The Yucca mountain site was apposed by - surprise! - the citizens of Nevada, including Republican Senator Dean Heller. I'm not sure that this qualifies as political, unless you think democracy itself is 'political reasons'.

If there is no technical reason to oppose it then the problem lies with the people who are pushing for it and didn't get the messaging right.

I think the people pushing for it did get their messaging right.

The problem lies with the people who are against it and are getting the technical messaging wrong on purpose.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

There is an obvious solution to this: pay the communities in question a shitton of money from your revenue.

But that's hard to do when you are already more expensive than other energy sources. Power companies (or to be more precise, their customers) and taxpayers are already paying billions into the fund. I bet they wouldn't be happy having to pay even more just to shut up the locals.

If you can't find a way around NIMBY, then I guess you can't have your waste site.

Stop blaming citizens for the shortcomings of companies.

Yep. But in this case it isn't just companies, the DOE will be using the site to store military nuclear waste too. They really should have sorted this out before those nuclear plants were built. But hey, that's not the American way! Lets just do it and worry about the mess later...

 

[crescent]

I actually used to live in the great metropolis of Beatty, NV (population about 1000 at the time) back when Yucca Mountain was still under consideration. (ETA: That's the closest town to Yucca Mountain)

For whatever it is worth, the locals there were pretty well all in favor of it. Mostly because they needed the jobs. The towns largest employer (the Bullfrog Mine) had shut down a few years before and something like half the town's population had moved away. The remaining population was poor as dirt.

Construction of the site was mostly done by then, but I guess the plan would have been to keep enlarging it over time, so there would have been a decent number of relatively well paying blue collar type jobs in construction and maintenance, not to mention the monitoring equipment placed for miles around.

They even installed seismic stations and monitoring wells in Death Valley, one of the seismic stations was right outside my office there.

 

[dudalb]

Blind opposition to Nuclear power has become a religion with some people; pure emotion over facts.
Look bitter fact is Solar Power is promising, but who knows how long until it has the tech to totally replace current energy sources> We are in a crisis folks, and we cannot afford to wait for a perfect solution which will take heaven knows how long.
Of course I also feel that some of the Anti Nuclear Power people are really anti power in general, and want people to go back to a pre industrial agriculture based life style, the back to the earth movement on steroids. Problem is, most people do not want to go back to the earth.
IMHo although ther are ligitimate concersn about Nuclear Power and lot of the oppostiion if based on a simplistic emotion driven "Anything Nuclear Is Bad" Philosophy.
The Sixties have been over for a while, ttime to drop a lot of the hippie nonsense. Peple forget how much of the 60's Counterculture was very much based on mysticism and was hostile to modern science...just a much as any Fundy group today.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

I think the people pushing for it did get their messaging right.

Nope. If the messaging was right there wouldn't be significant opposition.

The problem lies with the people who are against it and are getting the technical messaging wrong on purpose.

'on purpose' because they are worried that the 'technical' messaging they are being given may not be accurate. With proper messaging that wouldn't happen. This is consistent failure of the nuclear industry.

Perhaps they should take a leaf out of the playbook of the inventor of leaded petrol, who proved it was perfectly safe by drinking it. Mind you he did die of lead poisoning...

 

[dudalb]

I think the people pushing for it did get their messaging right.

The problem lies with the people who are against it and are getting the technical messaging wrong on purpose.

Like I said, the Anti Anything Nuclear movement has become a religious movement driven by pure emotion.
And, I repeat,, a lot of them bascially want to return to some kind of pre industria society as being a utopia.
Actually, life pre the Industrail revolution was nasty, brutish and short but they ignore that.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

We are in a crisis folks, and we cannot afford to wait for a perfect solution which will take heaven knows how long.

Over nuclear waste? But I was assured that it wasn't a problem. Plants have been storing their waste on site for many years. why can't they keep doing that? After all we were told that it's perfectly safe, so...

If not having Yucca Mountain really is a crisis then it proves my point. They should have planned for this contingency from the start. What if the site had been found to be not suitable?

 

[novaphile]

I notice a couple of people saying that solar can't replace all power generation so that we need nuclear.

Obvious false equivalence.

Solar, plus hydro, plus wind, plus tidal, plus geothermal, plus batteries (or other storage mediums) has no problems that nuclear is needed so solve.

Cover your ears to protect yourself from the chorus of lame whining:

The sun doesn't shine during the daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.
The wind does blow at niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Tides don't run if the moon goes awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.
Geothermal doesn't work when the mantle goes cooooooooooooooooooooooooold.
Water doesn't run downhill in summeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer.

etc. etc. etc.

Funnily enough, the deployment of solar and wind generation in my country is causing coal power plants to close, not open. (We already had hydro).

I guess that doesn't follow the nuke-booster narrative.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Nuclear Power is necessary to embezzle large amounts of money at once.

 

[arthwollipot]

Funnily enough, the deployment of solar and wind generation in my country is causing coal power plants to close, not open. (We already had hydro).

Snowy Hydro 2.0 is also going to contribute to storage, and it's about time.

I used to be fully on board with nuclear power, for the reason other people have been: baseline loading. But renewables are now so cheap and easy it no longer makes sense. Nuclear is too expensive and too slow to come on line. We have solar, wind, and batteries now. We can have nuclear in fifteen years, if we're lucky.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Data Point.

Northern Ont. community votes in favour hosting nuclear waste site

 

[Roboramma]

I notice a couple of people saying that solar can't replace all power generation so that we need nuclear.

I don't see the point of comparing nuclear to solar. We're not in a situation where one is replacing the other. Both are potential replacements for coal. We still burn a lot of coal. Yes, let's build as much solar power as the grid can take as fast as is economically feasible. Let's also do the same with nuclear. That means removing some of the unreasonable and net-negative regulatory hurdles for both technologies.

 

[theprestige]

Nope. If the messaging was right there wouldn't be significant opposition.

'on purpose' because they are worried that the 'technical' messaging they are being given may not be accurate. With proper messaging that wouldn't happen. This is consistent failure of the nuclear industry.

Perhaps they should take a leaf out of the playbook of the inventor of leaded petrol, who proved it was perfectly safe by drinking it. Mind you he did die of lead poisoning...

What is it about sociopolitical woo that you don't understand? The pro-Yucca Mountain messaging was fine. The state wanted it. The local citizenry wanted it. They were blocked by anti-nuke activists who weren't interested in honest messaging and overrode it with their insistent woo.

 

[Ziggurat]

Nuclear Power is necessary to embezzle large amounts of money at once.

You say that like you can't embezzle lots of money with solar and wind. You absolutely can.

But I suspect you don't actually mean embezzlement in the literal legal sense. Hell, that's probably less likely with nuclear than with solar or wind because the barrier to entry in the market is much higher. I suspect you're more talking about rent seeking behavior from corporations, kickbacks to politicians in the form of campaign donations, plus insider trading in Congress. All of which are legal and distinct from embezzlement or fraud, but are morally illegitimate gains taken from the public. But again, that can all happen with solar and wind too. Remember Solyndra? Half a billion dollars flushed down the drain.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Solyndara is a fairy tale Libertarians have to tell themselves.

But when Musk burns many tens of billions on Twitter, that doesn't count because it's not a government doing it.