/sci/ - Science & Math

>>12517076
The amount of the uranium and other radioactive isotopes is very limited, further massive experimentation with them would lead to total depletion before we get any new effective method of obtaining energy from them.

>>12517235
>radioactive isotopes

>>12517235
Not true and not the point either

It's still a meme, it's just too expensive to utilize safely. There's a reason the industry hasn't gone anywhere in 70 years.

>>12517259
>utilize safely.
Is a critical point OP. Only takes one little fuck up to possibly render a widespread area unsafe to live in or worse.

In a small island like the UK. You would be very fucked since space is limited.

>>12517259
>industry hasn't gone anywhere in 70 years.
Retard
We are on Gen IV now

>>12517259
>it's just too expensive to utilize safely

Honestly, this. Every time you see people price out nuclear power, they always leave out government subsidies, or the price of construction of a nuclear plant, and they ALWAYS leave out the cost of decommissioning the nuclear plant. This last one turns nuclear power into a figurative and literal poison pill of sorts. It's my personal belief that some advocates of nuclear power are really trying to get hostile nations to adopt it, so in 30-50 years their nation will be hit hard with the cost of decommissioning a ton of nuclear plants.

Either you like Nuclear or you are completely misinformed.

Simple as

>>12517267
and still zero growth
remind me again how many gen IVs have actually been built?

>>12517269
Lifespan of Nuclear Plants are 80 years and its decommissioning cost is no more different from natural gas plants

>>12517276
Don't move the goalpost.

>>12517292
I'm not, there's been no growth, while the worlds population and energy consumption has exploded. Nuclear somehow is still a huge meme.

>>12517276
>>12517294
Please update your chart.
Nuclear total energy output is now at 2657 TWh at 2019

>>12517282
>Lifespan of Nuclear Plants are 80 years and its decommissioning cost is no more different from natural gas plants

On paper maybe. On grossly generously over estimated paper.
Reality is never what you plan it to be, and that hubris is the Achilles heel of every nuclear installation and nuclear disaster.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_decommissioning#Cost
>decommissioning of Brennilis Nuclear Power Plant, a fairly small 70 MW power plant, already cost €480 million (20x the estimate costs) and is still pending after 20 years

>>12517282
strange how it's still almost 3 times more expensive

>>12517076
Every epse in this thread is spot on. Yes nuclear power is cheap in comparison to cutting down trees like we used to 100s of years ago, but solar power (and basically alll the 'renewable' energies) is now FAR cheaper per kwh, and less likely to exterminate all life for 100s of miles (even if this chance for nuclear is actually tiny).

>>12517320
>>12517308
You're using LCEC which assumes that the energy source would continuously work at peak capacity 24/7
Does not calculate for extra costs such as maintenance, batteries, lost of power to grids, and land lease

>Disclaimer
>The data gathered here are for informational purposes only. Inclusion of a report in the database does not represent approval of the estimates by DOE or NREL. Levelized cost calculations DO NOT represent real world market conditions. The calculation uses a single discount rate in order to compare technology costs only.

>>12517303
so virtually no change from the chart?

>>12517331
Higher than 2006

>>12517330
I'm comparing to gas which has less of those problems compared to nuclear so good luck.
If you aren't happy with the source feel free to provide your own.

>>12517334
So nuclear power has grown like 1% in 14 years, while electricity consumption has grown 46%?

>>12517338
I'll go for energy efficiency and resource consumption
It does not mislead

>>12517349
My point is growth. Is all
There are 50 plants being made in the next 5 years which would grow its energy production by 7-13%

>>12517351
Both are only meaningful because they generally mean lower prices. Which nuclear never has and never will, so why should anyone care?

>>12517358
And how many being shut down?
I think my point stands.

>>12517361
Just 60 in 10 years

>>12517359
LCC is misleading, is all
Realisitcally, if your energy source is inefficient, costs a lot to build, consumes too much land space, weather dependent, suffers from energy loss to grid, and highly dependent on battery storage, it would be completely unsustainable to support everyone

It would be a suplementary energy source. Nothing more

>>12517365
you still haven't provided a good argument for nuclear, simply the fact that renewable installations have exploded while nuclear has seen zero growth should tell you which is the better option.

>>12517309
Bureaucrats paying each other and demanding endless makework is not the same as costs

>>12517375
In a 10 year timespan?
Nuclear is 80 years old

>>12517375
Call me when the Renewable Regulatory Agency exists to destroy solar/wind power

>>12517384
>NUCLEAR IS ACTUALLY DA BEST BUT THERE'S A CONSPIRACY ACROSS THE ENTIRE WORLD TO MAKE IT LOOK BAD BOOHOHOOO
I think this conversation is over.

>>12517309
That's a 60 year old plant
And you just skipped
>New methods for decommissioning have been developed in order to minimize the usual high decommissioning costs. One of these methods is in situ decommissioning (ISD), meaning that the reactor is entombed instead of dismantled. This method was implemented at the U.S. Department of Energy Savannah River Site in South Carolina for the closures of the P and R Reactors. With this tactic, the cost of decommissioning both reactors was $73 million. In comparison, the decommissioning of each reactor using traditional methods would have been an estimated $250 million. This results in a 71% decrease in cost by using ISD

>>12517390
Every single person who studied physics would agree

>>12517390
When billions of dollars are spent before the first shovel of soil is moved? You bet ur ass

if nuclear reactors are so good then why doesnt 1st world nations build lots of them? there's a reason to everything you dunning kruger tards, im gonna agree with the government and say that the reason is justified. im not gonna side with some 15 year old zoomer who just saw a popsci video on them

Because oil companies didn’t allow it

>>12517419
France is 70% nuclear
UK is 60%
Finland is 40, I think

>>12517375
> wow the curve is growing !
> we must make the curve grow more !
> wow the curve is decreasing!
> that means we should make the curve decrease faster !

Absolute retardation. Please forget to breathe as fast as you can.

>>12517419
>im gonna agree with the government
Good goy

>>12517474
u think theres a conspiracy where the government are purposefully being less efficient by not have nuclear? looks a bit far fetched

nuclear is literally the safest form of energy generation. If you disagree, you are consuming massive amounts of coal&gas company cum-filled propaganda and are unaware of the deaths continually associated with coal.
>>12517308
>strange how pointless red tape makes nuclear energy more expensive
>>12517272
based and correct
>>12517419
>if nuclear reactors are so good then why doesnt 1st world nations build lots of them
Some do, but to answer your question, it is because people are retarded. They are afraid of nuclear energy even though it is much safer than what is already killing them. You may say it has a bad history, but it is statistically much less unsafe than anything else (sans the meme which is solar). People are retarded, as an example the only reason why the world can't just secure nuclear in the ocean is that the USSR and US could not trust eachother to report such activity honestly.

>>12517076
>Am I missing something here or have we been spinning our wheels in terms of nuclear research
Research is fine. There's just too much hesitancy from government sheep and their clueless populations.

>>12517485
YES!
In the media
Fearmongering = more views = more money

Politicians ar just doing what would get them voted, not what is right. And the media and oil companies are against nuclear

>>12517497
but they would get a lot more money if they just chose nuclear, in the billions over a long period of time

>>12517502
Nuclear takes 6 years of construction+4 years payback. Politicians sit for 4 years snd don't care if they cannot reap the reward

>>12517235
Peak uranium was possibly reached in the 80s but even then just from reserves and known caches we still have enough for about a century and also you seem to forget Thorium is a very possible alternative

Anyone biting the fusion pill?

>>12517529
>it's always 20 years away

>>12517502
actually Big Oil and his little brothers, Cole and Gasse, would lose a lot of money if people acted in their own best interests. As for the media, change = bad, bad = scary, scary = money, money money money, money money money money, money
>>12517529
no, that's a pipe dream. we already discovered infinite free safe energy, we don't need fusion on top of fission. Say we figured it out and it was perfect. We never adopt it because muh news, muh politicians, muh corporations: We're in the same spot.

>>12517529
You can detonate solid blocks of deuterium/tritium with a staged rifle. Do it underground to create a heated magma chamber for geothermal.

>>12517529
I genuinely think ITER is just a timebomb.

Even if it succeeds whichever demagoguing politicians are leading the world in the 2030s will likely be facing the economic consequence of the present-day economic slow-down and ballooning population and will easily be able to sir up rhetoric like "My predecessors spent billions on an unprofitable science experiment" pretty much killing any hope DEMO has of succeeding it, thus killing the fusion dream
And if it fails, no government or private agency will want to invest huge funds into fusion for a very long time, thus also killing the fusion dream. Either way, ITER will be responsible for putting the nail in fusions casket
Even if ITER succeeds fusion fails

>>12517673
>not a care about earthquakes
Also, detonations vaporize rocks. It does not melt shit

>>12517235
>The amount of the uranium and other radioactive isotopes is very limited
Wrong.

>further massive experimentation with them would lead to total depletion before we get any new effective method of obtaining energy from them.
Nonsense. We already have effective methods.

>>12517375
It doesnt really matter much if energy is more or less expensive, within a range. Energy pays back it cost (economically) multiple times, all that matters is how much you can get. Producing energy takes energy, its only bad when it takes too much or you just dont have enough.
For instance the energy sector in the United States is less than 5% of the economy, so 100% of the economy relies on said 5%. People would easily pay 6 times as much and its still a profit for energy consumers

>>12517803
Right at tge explosion point its just plasma but it cools down and the vapors just condense into molten matter. And no one cares about earthquakes, its implied this is done in a remote area. Yes, the ground shakes with big explosion, no one cares.

>>12518167
Nigger
At that rate, just heat up water and make a nuclear plant

>>12518335
With pure fusion? You can make pure fusion bombs, not power plants, not yet.

>>12518409
If that's the case then use a fusion bomb to crack a volcano open and vola!
You got your geothermal bullshit

>>12517320
You can't use solar for baseload.

period.

>>12518429
You dont understand, it doesnt matter if you use a volcano or not. The point is underground explosions are a cheap way to use bombs as energy sources.

>>12517235
dude, the Earth's nucleus is mostly made of uranium and there are many big undiscovered deposits of it at crust level too

we can only hope in fusion at this point...

>>12519868
Fission is enough. Yes, you can spend the money in making it safe and decommissioning. You can also do solar, wind, etc. No one cares about the cost, up to a point. Energy is so cheap it could be 10 imes more expensive and there would be no economic problems.

>>12519884
Enough, yes
But fission is heavily tainted by fearmongering idiots
Fusion would be the final nail to oil

>>12519884
And if you give it a thought, there is something poetic about harnessing a star to traverse the stars

>>12520036
Its possible fusion will be more expensive than fusion but it doesn't matter as long as its not savagely more expensive. Could be 10 times more expensive and still be useful.

>>12520060
Dont. Just dont.

>>12520063
Everything is more expensive at the beginning.
Fusion however needs only hydrogen and completely eliminates the need to mine which is a major benefit

>>12520070
Dude we can't see the future so it could go a number of ways. My point is that energy is so cheap it doesn't matter which one is cheaper, all that matters is the total net supply of energy. The energy industry consumes energy, it all works out as long as it produces more than it consumes.

>>12520082
Hydrogen can literally be obtained from water, anon
Only reason to mine would be for the steel, copper, and concrete for the plant itself but the fuel is the most abundant resource in the entire universe

>>12520091
Why are you so emotionally invested on the cheapness of fuel? I have ass and cock cancer, sorry i cant be so joyful about hypothetical cheap hydrogen future.

>>12520110
Because I dream of a future where energy is too cheap to meter.
Just as how spices used to be something super expensive

>>12517076
>The concept of a rechargeable lithium-ion battery is going to seem absolutely barbaric
if you think batteries loaded with nuclear material will replace chemical batteries you're really fucking stupid

>>12517076
It is, as with all things, a political conundrum. Everyone is too convinced by the Simpson-tier depiction of nuclear energy, especially fission, as this super dangerous Cold War era technology. As such, fusion suffers from being related, because the term "nuclear fusion" scares everyone just as much. Pretty sad really.

>>12520368
>ask politicians for nuclear power
>lol no it's dangerous
>but we're burning fossil fuels right now and poisoning the atmosphere
>yeah but that's slow and safer
>if we build nuclear and something goes wrong people will be mad at me :^)

>>12520425
Exactly, it's all about saving face, because all they care about it power, and their legacy, not about bettering mankind. But what can you do? They've always been like that, even when they were nobles and monarchs.

>>12520443
People could demand it by protests but that won't happen.

>>12520480
People are more likely to, and have, protested against it.

>>12520110
you have ass AND cock cancer?

gee billy, your mom lets you lie about having two forms of cancer on the internet

>>12519862
>Earth's nucleus is mostly made of uranium
Good luck to get them, the price won't be competitive to even solar..

>>12517235
Uranium is more common than silver

>>12517076
Chemical battery that has endothermic reaction which recharges it at room temperature.

You think it's safe for somebody to have neutron's at sight of hand while it can be easily weaponized?

>>12523747
YES!
Contrary to popular belief, you need as much as 60kgs of uranium enriched to as much as 80% just to self off a self-sustaining chain reaction. A nuke plant is 20%
The difference here is the difference between your fecal matter and a biobomb

Otherwise it's just pop then nothing

>>12517392
Are you serious? Do you think thats a scientifically viable solution or the bureaucratic noose kicked down the timeline for generations to come to deal with?

Another problem is pic related, top is all pre GEN IV that needs to be decommissioned. That's not even mentioning the fact that we could be going for thorium nuclear reactors but those don't produce weapons grade material so they don't get any gov subsidies.

Also, this is extremely far fetched(as in time sense), more on a geological scale then a human one, but the regular nuclear decay is part of the longterm equation of the thermal upkeep of the planet. And harvesting and burning through that in a few hundred years instead of a few million years will shorten our planets lifespan.

>>12518437
Not with our current battery tech, or without space solar panels and wireless energy transmission

>>12523876
2grams of betavoltaic grade uranium is enough to kill one human.

Phone you kill with.

Apple.

>No one is talking about small modular reactors