/sci/ - Science & Math

No. Nuclear reactors rely on steam turbines to acquire power, and can therefore never be smaller than a train wagon.

>>5521016
>mfw

>>5521026

So its possible?

My High School chemistry teacher said that through nukes we can travel from Earth to Mars with a teaspoon of Uranium (?, I was not paying attention)

Fission or fusion? If I have something to do with it, we'll have domestic use fusion reactors rolling off production lines someday. Nuclear is *the* way to go.

Nuclear power is awesome, as long as no one cuts corners on safety. They should only be built in geologically stable areas, etc. They work great on a large scale, but can't really be scaled down. We should be using nuclear energy to create hydrogen gas. It's a much more portable way to store energy.

enjoy cancer

>>5521038

oops I forgot I had a sage in that field, sorry.

>>5521043
No, sagefag, you are the cancers.

>tfw Fukushima
>tfw Chernobyl
>tfw Three Mile Island

>>5521069
Aside from Fukushima which is minor in scope, those are freak accidents and will never occur again.

>>5521069
>tfw thousands of other nuclear power plants hummed peacefully and safetly along since the 50s, currently powering 13% of the world and 20% of the U.S

>tfw more people die from industrial accidents (like cranes falling on people and mining accidents) in other energy sectors than accidental nuclear radiation have ever killed

nukes r bad

>>5521088
The general public doesn't know that though.

>not using space elevator to send the nuclear waste to the sun

>>5521100
That's why the general public shouldn't have any say in decision making.

>>5521104
>wasting perfectly good nuclear waste by throwing it into the sun.

>>5521110
>not creating more nuclear waste by taking samples of the sun back to earth

>>5521104
>send up most recent batch of waste on the 50+ km trip
>suddenly, a North Korean missile appears
>nuclear meteorites everywhere

>>5521088
they will
there will always be someone to find a way to blast them up, stop telling yourself it's clean, it's the dirtiest thing humans have yet created, chernobyl got under control relatively quick, they had a corrupt army at hand, they sent in hundreds of soldiers to put cement over the molten core by fucking hands, until today that shit is seeping downwards there, we're currently planning (nearly 40 damn years later) to build a large sized hall above it to safen it even more
fukushima was a tiny outbreak but still huge because it was the largest since chernobyl
>>5521097
>>5521109
what the fuck are you cunts talking about? send a plane into that thing - noone will want to go there, only some retarded martyrs whoms corpses will mark the death zone to the next dumbasses stumbling in there

go inform yourself about that shit again then come back, if a core melts down every drop of water evaporates that arrives on it evaporates, finds its way out of it (which happened in fukushima), gets into the clouds and spreads across the whole fucking area
the water to cool the core is highly radioactive and has to be treated like highly dangerous nuclear waste (by the way, this stuff also got into the ocean in the fukushima incident because the tanks that were supposed to catch it got destroyed by the damn earthquake)
nuclear reactors are ONLY accepted because they put out such simple energy, but the effects that CAN happen from/by them are larger than you can imagine

>>5521133

>>5521118
Jim Profit

WHERE IN FUCKING FUCK IS THE THORIUM LOVE

http://www.globaldemocracy.com/idea/show/172

It is the only way to go. I can't see any other way we can easily meet our growing energy needs.

>>5521133
>(by the way, this stuff also got into the ocean in the fukushima incident because the tanks that were supposed to catch it got destroyed by the damn earthquake)

You fucktard, our oceans are already radioactive

the best place to build a nuclear power plant is in space, because space is already heavily radioactive.

It's not renewable.If we converted our energy supply entirely to nuclear we would use up the available fuel in about 20 years (I read that somewhere)

I read on here that the nuclear reactions used for power were picked so they could covertly use them in breeder reactors to create weapons

And that if a different reaction was used it would be safer

Is this true?

>>5521199

yes, it's why there's a big push to thorium, which is hard to make a bomb with.

>>5521197

yes, but we can always feed the result of nuclear fission into a fusion reactor, harvesting more energy

what ever happened to He3

anybody see that guy?

>>5521202
>But the thorium cycle does produce U 233, and bomb experts assure us that a bomb can easily be made from U 233, and since there are no neutrons from spontaneous fission of U 233, U 233 can also be used easily in a gun-type nuclear bomb. The advantages of a thorium cycle are not therefore as large as often claimed.
http://users.physics.harvard.edu/~wilson/publications/ppaper703.html

I would like to see the documents from the american experiments.

>>5521197

renewable, as in, the "wastes" still retains 95% of its energy content

>mfw France, Japan, and the UK all recycle their nuke shit
>mfw its not allowed in the US, and for reasons that have nothing to do with Nukes
>mfw i dont have a reaction image on the stupidity of the situation

>>5521256
Here, have this one.

>>5521226
Helium-3 is used for Nuclear Fusion. Until Fusion becomes efficient, it's pointless to mine the Moon for it. It's like having gasoline, but no car.

>>5521274
they inhale gasoline in Mexico to get high

would that help?

>>5521281
Do trapped solar winds get you high? Then 420, huff the sun.

>>5521149
this

>>5521300
Bumping with more Th

>>5521305

>>5521311

>>5521319

>>5521133
This, retards.

What if New York city because a nuclear wasteland because of a meltdown? Is that chance fucking worth more than just using coal?

>oh don't worry gais, we planned for every possible senario, meltdown is 100% impossible hur dur

No thanks.

>>5521341
that will never happen because NYC's nuclear plants are miles and miles and miles away

>>5521341

Dont forget your tinfoil hat

Three Mile Island/Chernobyl: Soviet owned, primitive design, based on nuclear subs

We has Generation III+ now and Generaton IV

>>5521341
>mfw coal kills magnitudes more and spreads much more radioactive amterial around than nuclear power.
Yeah why bother with possibly a bad situation when we can just take the option that is guaranteed to be bad.

>>5521346
do you think the cloud infested with flying burning uranium cares about the couple miles? look at the map, because of the propaganda in the soviet union during chernobyl swedish reactor personnel were the first to detect it
>>5521351
>>5521353
yeah, go tell the people that
>oh, it's okay if we built these, if some shit happens we can always tell ourselves we're getting killed by enough other shit anyway
>huh? what do you mean my DNA is fucked for generations by that stuff? i'm healthy now and i want my computer to run a couple cents cheaper every day, who cares?

>>5521351
Gee, sounds safe.

No way those will be old and falling apart in 50 years. It is impossible that there is some design flaw in their system. No possible way a freak earthquake couldn't shake it apart. Also, we have planned for every possible terrorist attack, including using the plant as fuel a dirty bomb.

Let's put thousands of them in every major city around the world! No way one of them will catastrophically fail, resulting in the worst ecological disaster sense the last nuclear meltdown.

Nope, everyone stop using cheap oil because it is too "dirty." Let's all shell out the extra price per megawatt hour just to there is a ticking time bomb in every city around the world. Let's all go nuclear.

>>5521361
What did you not get in
>coal kills more people per energy unit
>coal spreads more radioactive materia per energy unit
That translates to less deaths and less radiation when we use nuclear compared to coal.

But you are trolling anyway, don't know why i bother.

>>5521341

It saddens me that people like you exist, and for some reason your opinions are valued. You people are the reason nuclear energy isn't used on a larger scale.

The argument against nuclear energy is a emotional one. All of the data shows that nuclear energy is basically the best stop gap to meet growing energy needs.

If you actually cared about poison you'd bitch about coal byproducts, solar energy byproducts, or wind energy sight/noise pollution.

Coal fired powerplants release much more radioactive waste than any nuclear plant ever has.

Give up your pointless illogical emotion driven arguments. They make us all weaker.

>>5521369
>implying we need thousands
>implying we just dont need maybe a 120+/- around the world

>>5521375
>coal kills more people per energy unit
excuse me what? just how does that thing kill people? oh wait
>>5521379
>Coal fired powerplants release much more radioactive waste than any nuclear plant ever has.
you all sound like edgy teenagers acting amazed by a theoretically working technology
it's not about the nuclear radiation or waste it produces, it's about the possibility that the whole thing breaks down

>>5521379
I know it is unlikely for plants to fail. The low rate of failures in today's modern nuclear plants is evidence alone for that. The problem I have for nuclear is that the possibility for failure does exist at all.

If you want, go put them in the middle of the desert. I'll agree to that. Pay the extra in shipping costs. Resistance is only linear, so you wont be paying TOO much in heat loss. If you want to, go for it.

But if you want it in my city, you need to ask my permission. And it's not happening.

>>5521390
Yes, so what coal actually kills millions of people, while nuclear has a chance to kill couple of thousand in the worst case scenario.

Here is a small visualization of the difference.
http://www-958.ibm.com/software/analytics/manyeyes/visualizations/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-sources

>>5521390

>let's not use a dam because there's a chance it could break
>let's not use an automobile because there's a chance it could crash
>let's not use a rocket because there's a chance it could explode
>let's not eat a sandwich because there's a chance we could choke

Observe ladies and gentleman, it's an idiot.

>>5521369

Why would they be sitting around after 50 years when they should have been decommissioned?

Oh yeah, it's because people like you are so against the idea of clean, safe energy that we have to keep them running and running until they become unsafe, rather than build new ones.

>>5521402
>Yes, so what coal actually kills millions of people
your mum kills billions of people daily because she eats away all their food
>while nuclear has a chance to kill couple of thousand in the worst case scenario.
a decently sized Nuclear reactor putting a full fallout into a region where food for mega cities is produced and you will see a nice incline of cancer patients over the next decades, good luck getting these dudes some health care

>>5521403
dams, automobiles, rockets didn't have the chance of infesting entire countries

this is psychological, cunts, if the media says "nuclear fallout happening over the grain-producing plains of north america" guess how many people will get grains and everything related to that stuff?
don't think about what good happens when you do something, think of the bad things that happen after it

>>5521396

I can understand that. I can also sympathize with it. I just can't stand when legislators gimp any possibility of expanding nuclear energy because of some boogeyman that really does not exist.

If they just put a shit load of them in concentrated hubs away from population centers I'd be content. But no, we're forced to operate old as fuck reactors that suck ass and we can't build new ones because of said populace/legislators.

>>5521409
you underestimate the cost of "new ones"

>>5521016

It's much easier to make a small steam/gas turbine than a train wagon size.

>>5521402
>implying that the calculation of deaths*hr/terwatt isn't complete bullshit
>implying it is even possible to come up with accurate estimations
>implying that the difference between <span class="math"> 2.128 * 10^-5 <span class="math"> deaths per year isnt statically equal to zero[/spoiler][/spoiler]

>>5521417
>personal insults
>baseless claims

Once again, coal power is killing people, causing cancer and making land uninhabitable now and in magnitudes larger scale than nuclear power ever could even in the worst case scenario.

Did you even look at the link i posted?

>>5521420
you underestimate the advances in the technology

>>5521420

They're only exorbitantly expensive to build because of legislation, and public opinion. They're really no more of an investment than any other power production facility.

>>5521425
Can you actually make some claims instead of implying useless bullshit.
Start by providing at least some logical foundation to your claims or even better some actual source.

I guess it's just easier to imply and greentext.

>>5521431
you overestimate the strengh of current technology

>>5521431
"advances in the technology" don't stop a Boeing playing hide and seek with a uranium core

>>5521430
>Once again, coal power is killing people, causing cancer and making land uninhabitable now and in magnitudes larger scale than nuclear power ever could even in the worst case scenario.

Did you even look at the link i posted?
No and no

>>5521436
those things cost billions, there's a bit more to them than the direct building around the core and the cooling tower
they need to be run for decades until they pay off

>>5521443
>this guy
So you are ignoring all arguments and sources and expect to be taken seriously

This turned officially to troll thread, i'm out.

>>5521396
If you really wanna pay that much for power, why not just use solar? You can put them inside of cities, cutting down costs in comparison to desert nuclear. Plus it wont melt down on you.

It would be wasteful for us not to exploit the sun's energy.

>>5521453
Why not both?

And the issue with solar is land-use requirements and consistency of output. (But you should know this.)

>>5521453
but we already do that? i'm from germany and we have loads of those solar panel field things

>>5521452
what arguments? coal killing people? "advances in technology"? come on, every person who finished high school knows this is bullshit

>Provide facts, sources, and empirical evidence of the superiority of nuclear energy vs. all others currently available
>Emotional responses, no facts, no sources, just opinions, greentext, and insults

How does it feel to be a ball and chain attached to the leg of the human race? People like you just drag us down.

>>5521437
Fine.

161 deaths per terrawatt hour, according to the bullshit estimation they gave.

The entire world produces 21,283 kWH of energy. That is about 2.128×10^-5 TWH. Because coal caues 161 deathhs/TWH This would result in about 3.218×10^-3 deaths per year.

>tfw forgot to multiply by 161 in original calculation.

That is still statically no different from 0 deaths per year. Their estimate means nothing.

>>5521466

>>5521466
And those who have finished college know it isn't.

>>5521478
>21,283 kWh

Wrong.

In 2008, the world used 143,851 TWh

>>5521453
>It would be wasteful for us not to exploit the sun's energy.
Which is fusion.
In other words let's all build fusion reactors.

>>5521467
no facts, opinions
i have only seen one link on this page and i didn't bother to click it because it's bullshit
coal isn't causing so many deaths, the statistics fake their charts with deaths from CO2 related things which is influenced by so many other things it shouldn't need to be mentioned

>>5521475
see above, see >>5521443
>"advances in the technology" don't stop a Boeing playing hide and seek with a uranium core
nuclear reactors in their current state simply have too many disadvantages and you cunts try to talk out of your ass to justify it
what i already said, you sound like edgy 15 year olds who just discovered nuclear energy

>>5521480
yeah, probalby

>>5521453

Solar farms destroy the environment. The surrounding air is heated up by the more efficiently reflected light instead of being soaked up by the ground.

This hot air changes the climate and increases the ferocity of storms and weather.

>>5521478
>The entire world produces 21,283 kWH

>>5521453

A lot of solar farms have nasty side effects. Some chemicals used in solar panel production, as well as chemicals used in the plants themselves.

It would be a real tragedy if the safety systems broke at one of those facilities and leaked molten salt everywhere.

>>5521491
Except all of the asphalt that cities put down causes the earth to absorb more sun that it would normally, more than canceling that out.

I seriously think people just make up ways that harnessing free energy hurts the environment.

>01:41AM
>discussing about nuclear energy with trolls and teenagers on a science image board
what has become of me

>>5521490
Correction, that was total power consumption, not electricity. 20,053TWh in 2009 for total electricity generated.

>>5521496
Sorry that my Mechanical Engineering degree disagrees with you.

>>5521478
Wat?

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption
Total energy consumption in 2008
>143,851 TWH

From the section coal
>38 497 TWH
161*38497= just short of 6.2 million deaths
Lets just say they made a mistake and it would be actually 600k people, thats still quite a bit more than your "math"

>>5521514
>4:43 PM
>trying to explain to gay engineers that increasing the odds of a "nuclear ecological disaster" from 0% to more than 0% isnt a good idea
what has become of our education system

>>5521523
>implying the odds aren't already more than 0% since we ALREADY HAVE REACTORS.

Also, I think it's better to decrease the real present danger posed by coal. So what if we increase risk on something else. At least we're fixing a problem that's ACTUALLY HAPPENING.

>>5521523
>implying there is a 0% chance of anything

Maybe we'll be hit by a radioactive comet.

>>5521542
>implying that decreasing the odds isnt good

Didn't they teach you that values can decrease as well?

>>5521133
Chernobyl used fucking positive temperature coefficient of reactivity reactor. Their moderator was fucking graphite. The plant there was really a Transuranic production facility for nuclear weapons, being able to power the Pripyat country side just seemed like a bonus to the USSR at the time.

>>5521557
You're worried about the potential for disaster.

I'm worried about actual disaster.

>>5521567
What is the actual disaster? How can you say that nuclear isn't an actual disaster after the last two meltdowns?

>oh but today's reactors are much safer

That's what they'll be saying in 30 years after the third meltdown. I really dont want a third nuclear disaster.

>>5521443 >"advances in the technology" don't stop a Boeing playing hide and seek with a uranium core

6ft solid steel walled containment will.

>>5521590
Deaths from coal. (Also environmental impacts, but, really, you can't get away from that no matter which form of energy you use.)

Also:
>implying we've only had two meltdowns

You forgot a few. And apparently you think meltdowns are more dangerous than they actually are.

The real issue are containment breaches, not meltdowns. I can pull out the facts about those if you want.

>>5521624
As would a surface-to-air defense system.

>But there are risks!111!!!
>But its not 0%!!!!11
Nothing will ever bee 100% safe and foolproof you know.
If this technology would be widely implemented, sure there would eventually be some disasters, but what you get in return is alot more valuable than that.
Cars kill people by droves on a daily basis, we still use them.
But then again, this is a troll thread.

>>5521453

LMAO the ignorance is strong in this one

1000 megawatts would need 60 square miles on solar panes alone

which is the biggest industrial structure ever, so no, not solar....just not worth it, man

>>5521033

he is correct.

this makes a pretty strong case IMO

>>5521069

>tfw faggots are scared of radiation and cant comprehend the fact that lessons were learnt and all those reactors used 1950's technology

>tfw faggots dismiss thorium flouride reactors because they know fucking nothing about current nuclear technology

IT MAKES ME WANT TO IRRADIATE YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKERS. YOU ARE THE REASON WE ARENT USING NUCLEAR POWERED SPACECRAFT TO GO TO MARS, YOU ARE THE REASON WE ARE STILL RELYING ON FUCKING SANDNIGGERS FOR OIL SO OUR ECONOMY CAN OPERATE.

EAT RADIATION AND DIE, FAGGOT.

>>5521069

>>5521069

>tfw faggots are scared of radiation and cant comprehend the fact that lessons were learnt and all those reactors used 1950's technology

>tfw faggots dismiss thorium flouride reactors because they know fucking nothing about current nuclear technology

IT MAKES ME WANT TO IRRADIATE YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKERS. YOU ARE THE REASON WE ARENT USING NUCLEAR POWERED SPACECRAFT TO GO TO MARS, YOU ARE THE REASON WE ARE STILL RELYING ON FUCKING SANDNIGGERS FOR OIL SO OUR ECONOMY CAN OPERATE.

EAT RADIATION AND DIE, FAGGOT.

>>5521197

we have 20 years worth of fuel for 1950's type reactors

but 1950's reactors are the dangerous, shitty reactors that the public is aware of.

for current generation reactors (liquid flouride thorium reactors, molten salt integral fast reactors, etc) we have over 5 billion years worth of fissionable isotopes which can be mined CHEAPER than oil and coal

>>5521341
>implying you build reactors in the middle of large cities
>can you BE MORE FUCKING RETARDED?

molten sodium reactors PHYSICALLY CANNOT MELT DOWN. they do not pressurise their coolant, and when the fuel heats up too much its fission rate drops to almost nothing.

liquid flouride thorium reactors also CANNOT MELT DOWN, as they DO NOT HAVE PRESSURISED COOLANTS and WHEN THEY GET TOO HOT THE FUSION RATE DROPS TO ALMOST NOTHING

that is what modern fission technology is like. modern fisson technology IS THE SINGLE SAFEST ENERGY SOURCE ON EARTH.

>>5521968
even if the regulations could be hurdled, the energy market would be flooded by so much cheap energy that it would result in a loss of profitability, potentially beyond recoverable costs.

>>5521988
>that is what modern fission technology is like. modern fisson technology IS THE SINGLE SAFEST ENERGY SOURCE ON EARTH.
Is it also THE LOUDEST ENERGY SOURCE ON EARTH?

>>5521212
I don't think it works like that.

>>5521369

its funny, because you're being sarcastic, but...

> It is impossible that there is some design flaw in their system. No possible way a freak earthquake couldn't shake it apart. Also, we have planned for every possible terrorist attack, including using the plant as fuel a dirty bomb.

that statement is 100% correct.

you know why its correct? because paranoid faggots such as yourself were involved in the design processes. they nitpicked EVEN THE TINIEST FLAWS and outlandish potential problems, and the engineers SOLVED THOSE PROBEMS.

>>5521390

you sound like a paranoid fucking retard.

4TH GENERATION REACTORS DONT BREAK DOWN. THEY ARE DESIGNED TO CONTAIN ALL RADIOACTIVE PRODUCTS AND CEASE FISSION AS SOON AS A FAULT OCCURS. JUST LIKE HOW CARS HAVE AIRBAGS AND SEATBELTS

fukushima was a 2nd generation reactor

>>5521417

TELL ME WHERE I LIVE SO I CAN SEND A NUCLEAR WARHEAD TO YOUR HOUSE

if you hate nuclear that badly, WHY THE FUCK ARENT YOU TRYING TO SHUT DOWN THE CURRENT PLANTS?, THE ONES THAT USE OLD TECHNOLOGY AND ARE ACTUALLY DANGEROUS. YEAH. THATS RIGHT FAGGOT. THEY ALREADY FUCKING EXIST.

seriously, cunts like you piss me off.

go be irrational somewhere else.

geothermal? only takes 0.5 zetajoules of energy to 'power' the earth for a year and there's 2000 zetajoules ready to be harnessed at this very moment in time.

>>5521523
>trying to explain to some fucking retard that we already have nuclear reactors, so any arguments about the possibility of an accident are completely fucking irrelevant, since converting all the old reactors to new reactors would SIGNIFICANTLY DECREASE THE CHANCE OF ACCIDENTS, AND THEREFORE IT IS FUCKING RETARDED TO NOT SUPPORT MODERN REACTOR TECHNOLOGY, EVEN IF IT IS ONLY FOR REPLACING THE DANGEROUS OLD PLANTS

>>5522016
Killing our core magnet. Yeah, stealing iron heat is not a great idea unless you want earth surface to be more like mars surface.

The one thing about Nuclear Power is that people think any slight incident is going to cause a nuclear explosion.

Honestly, with conventional coal fucking up the earth bad enough as it is, I don't see why we're being picky and choosy over the possibility of a nuclear meltdown. Its like how it is with planes and how people refuse to accept that they are the safest way to travel.

>>5521992

>implying that wouldnt result in much lower production costs for most products
>implying that isnt a good thing
>implying it wouldnt be a gradual buildup of nuclear baseload over 20-30 years, during which time the price of oil gas and coal will increase tenfold

the reactors dont need to be profitable if they are a taxpayer funded investment which boosts the economy and lowers the cost of living (including stuff like iron, steel, aluminium, practically every commodity which requires alot of electricity to produce)

bridges arent profitable, roads arent profitable, piped water isnt profitable. why should power stations be profitable?

>>5522043

cont*

forgot to mention, it power stations dont need to be profitable, because power isnt free. we pay money for it, and for the salaries of the people who maintain it.

there is no reason why power stations shouldnt be government-run, to keep electricity prices as low as possible. if they cant get enough money to maintain the plants, they will either do the stupid thing, and raise taxes, or do the smart thing, and raise the elecricity prices

>>5521133
holy shit

I Wish I could find the study - the mother fucking rain clouds that rolled over to the U.S. dropped so little radioactive waste on us that it was almost indistinguishable from the background radiation

>>5521227
>still believing nuclear arms are anything other than a dick-waving contest that means nothing


mutually assured destruction; nobody fucking wins.

>>5521341
>mfw NYC is finally wiped out and all the shit people that reside there die

>>5521432
>strength of current technology

>hurr we made this internal combustion engine 3% more efficient!

>>5522087
>Implying that's not a huge improvement

>>5521508

This is definitely true. I spent a summer canvassing for a non-profit that supported alternative energy in Michigan. The most common negative response I got from people (aside from go away you can't have my money) was "But wind turbines will kill the birds! They'll chop up the BIRDS MAN! WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE FUCKING BIRDS?!"

I wish I were making this up.

>>5521016
maybe we could just use your asshole... I mean, you fit much larger things in there

>>5521016
this
high temp turbines can be really small though, the low pressure steam requires the enormous generators

>>5521033
I think he meant anti-matter

Hey guys, when I drive my 1950's car down the road, and I crash, it's really catastrophic. Fuel gets everywhere, and it's very unlikely I'll survive. They don't have crumple zones or airbags, so it's extremely dangerous to get into an accident.

Anyway my point is I think cars should be illegal because of these things. We have alternative methods, like bicycles and walking. Why would we use cars? They're just insanely expensive, and not worth the risk IMO.

Even in the worst case, that would be having radioactive patches of Earth here and there, I think whatever that goes wrong with nuclear energy will be better than what fossil fuels are currently doing, heating up all of it.

>>5521133
>send a plane into that thing - noone will want to go there, only some retarded martyrs whoms corpses will mark the death zone to the next dumbasses stumbling in there
i love using this image

>>5521945
holy shit

Ok, so in theory, how much would we pay in our bill if we switch to Nuclear energy? It seems like it will be a lot less than coal

>>5522043
>bridges arent profitable, roads arent profitable, piped water isnt profitable. why should power stations be profitable?
>tfw people on /sci/ make fun of economics but don't even understand sub-intro level shit like marginal social cost/benefit or even present-discounted future utility.

>>5524521
It depends on the time scale you choose to use. How much you pay should depend principally on cost. Nuclear power has a high costs associated with actually building the damn thing, but the fuel costs are very low. This implies that nuclear power becomes a better option over longer time horizons.

I have not actually read a thorough economic impact study of the issue but you might want to look.

>>5521011
while it does not take up much space for the amount of power it produces

and it is not really clean when you consider the amount of time after use the site of a nuclear power plant is condemned

nuclear isotopes are not renewable
and carbon emission will be the least of your concern when shtf

in the long run technology will destroy us all
as the earth crumbles around us

>>5524598
>in the long run technology will destroy us all
>as the earth crumbles around us

This kind of Luddite bullshit is unwelcome in /sci/

>>5521088
you just be thank full that the cooling pools did not catch fire

>>5521555
not to mention the guy running Chernobyl
the day it blew up had caused a meltdown on a nuclear sub before being put in charge of Chernobyl

>>5521011
minimum fissionable mass is larger than a soda can

>>5521491
solar towers seem nice tho
they even create a micro climate beneath the skirt so could also be used for farming

>>5524602
your right it is mostly overpopulation and overzealous profiteers causing the problem

but technology makes the process all the more destructive

>is such a thing possible

>>5524621
Retard detected. Sage it to hell, boys.

>>5524621

>but technology makes the process all the more destructive

BURN THE WITCHES AND THEIR SATAN WORSHIPING NUCLEAR REACTORS

>>5521033
It really doesn't take much energy to travel in space (no forces slowing down the shuttle you see), unless you have to support human life also, even then, if you're travelling to Mars on a 6 year voyage there and back, your mileage (on fuel alone) might be better than a car in rush hour.

>>5521227
Does the paper address the inevitable U232 contamination?

>>5521011
Nuclear power would be great, i mean its very efficient and generates high amounts of energy in just one power plant. BUT it pollutes like HELL. just look at pictures of power plants in google, TONS of smoke come out of them. its really a shame the us allows the use of them...

>>5524646
Bobo you're a fucking jew

>>5524646
Is this a troll? Are you talking about a nuclear plant? That's clean steam coming out from a cooling tower.

>>5524632
>>5524636
never studied ecology have you

>>5524653
No this guy has a point; thats like the same kind of smoke they use for cars and greenhouse gas

>>5524653
It may be steam, but that's still smoke coming out

>>5524662
good point, good point.

>>5524653
the picture says its water vapor. but then that means all the other smoke is polluting the environment with water vapor because of the toxins in it

Look. The myths that a meltdown cause countries to be uninhabitable are simply lies. Nearly all of the area around fukushima is quite safe. In fact, the needless evacuations killed several magnitudes more people than the radiation ever will.

Nuclear is at least cost competitive with solar, and at least as safe.

And I have yet to see some compelling studies that demonstrate that a real live grid can handle the mess than a large amount of solar and wind would do to it. Usually such purported studies skimp on the important details. It makes me sad.

We have more than enough thorium. Running out of fuel is not a worry.

The waste is a non-issue.

Proliferation is a non-issue. If you want to build a nuke, then you do it the ways which have already been done, including a uranium pile and centrifuges and dedicated reactors. A normal power reactor under minimal safeguards has more or less never produced a nuclear weapon. It'd likely be easier to start from scratch than trying to repurpose a civilian reactor.

The sheer amount of stupidity on /sci/ is truly mind boggling. I mean, most of it's obvious trolling, but still.

>>5524667
why dont you go live in fukushima then faggot

>>5524669
The levels of radiation except in very isolated areas are well within safe levels. I would be cautious of eating food products for a while due to the nature of such things to bio-accumulate, but basic tests should be able to catch that. Again, the evacuations killed far more than the number of people who have actually died and will die from the radiation released. Put that in perspective.

>>5524656
>>5524662

steam = water vapors, that shit happens in nature

steam =/= car emissions

>>5524674
prove it

>>5524676
I'm too lazy right now. Use google.

>>5524673
they look exactly the same though
EXACTLY...

>>5524678
>I'm too lazy right now. Use google.
>Trip is "Scientist"

Please get the fuck out you cancerous shitstain on the face of fine scholarship.

>>5521011
The problem with nuclear power is the waste, and the potential for disaster, as small as it may be. Never having another Chernobyl or Three Mile Island is more important that nuclear power.

>>5524715
>Never having another Chernobyl or Three Mile Island is more important that nuclear power.

This is one of the most ignorant posts currently on the front page. Congratulations.

>>5521016

You don't have to use steam.

Actually we really should stop using water in reactors entirely. It's ridiculously unsafe and there are far better coolants and heat exchange mediums.

>2013
>not being aware of traveling wave reactors

http://www.terrapower.com/

It has the backing of Bill "Lord of the Nerds" Gates. It will succeed.

>>5521133
>send a plane into that thing

It can take it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X697yZBCN8w

>>5524741
>http://www.terrapower.com/

This is an idea I like.


We need to organise a shitstorm nuclear facts and reveal the anti-nuclear fags for the anti-intellectual fags they really are.

>>5521011
CcC mhp CcC

>>5524734

personally i'd like to see an air cooled reactor, built inside a cooling tower, generating electricity from the airflow. you might run out of water but you'll never run out of air.

you wouldnt even need anything to circulate heat, no moving parts in the reactor makes meltdown physically impossible

This is the biggest troll-feeding, shit throwing reatard thread I have seen in all my years on 4chan.

Holy shit guys, this is really something.
The price for the easiest trollable people goes toooo.... /sci/

>>5524734

nah we can use the water later on, well...not water, but the Hydrogen byproduct, to power cars, so we are 2 for 2 today, solve the dependence on fossil fuel and coal altogether

plus its cheaper, then we can focus on more important things, like idk, working out or something

INB4 go back to /fit/

>>5524734
Have you looked at the Gen IV helium coolant variants? Those are probably the most efficient as well as can serve multiple purposes such as preparing hydrogen to be made into hydrogen fuel cells of cars. Although granted we are at a helium shortage, so this might only be a pipe dream. Which is strange considering that helium is the second most abundant element in the universe.

>>5527508
That big asshole in the sky took it all from the inner rocky planets during the solar system formation. That's why Earth has so little and not a gas giant.

>>5521149

Thorium don't make weapons, friend.

Naturally the world hates that.

>>5521361
>cloud infested with flying burning uranium
How the fuck does that even work?

>>5521453
>let's just use a bunch of panels with massive amounts of boron in it (a reactive element in and of itself) to protect the environment!

>>5521069
Fukishima was some real shit. I'll give you that, but that's the only place on Earth that shit could happen.

Chernobyl was a poor design (reactor surrounded by tin foil) and idiots running it

Three Mile Island was literally nothing

>>5527578
I fucking hate when Sky Man takes our helium.

>>5522072
Except for North Korea

>>5521403
This.

>>5527585
You can make weapons with thorium (or rather, with U-233 bred from it), it's just that they'd be somewhat inferior. Pu-239 is mostly better because it has a smaller critical mass.

The thing about thorium is that you have to bootstrap it from an existing uranium infrastructure, because it's only fertile material, not fissile material. You can start a nuclear infrastructure from just granite and natural uranium, or you can separate out U-235 from natural uranium and make a bomb without ever making a reactor, but making enough fissile U-233 out of thorium to run a reactor would be very similar to the process of making enough Pu-239 out of depleted uranium to make a bomb.

>>5521011
>Imagine something as big as a soda can powering an entire city
>Is such a thing possible?
Maybe. A core the size of a soda can could certainly destroy a good chunk of a city, if you put it together fast enough.

You could maybe do some kind of dense gas core with one of the more obscure advanced fissile isotopes.

It would be an awful lot easier if you just wanted it to fit in a small, nondescript building. Then you could do some kind of high-efficiency fission fragment reactor. There's not much point in a super-tiny reactor, since it would spray radiation all around it since there's no room for shielding.

So whats wrong with LFTR?

>>5527694
Unproven, very expensive, complex design, with a very high and irreduceable proliferation risk, which depends basically on having lots of weapons-grade material to start a reactor up and then produces weapons-grade material.

It's based on continuous chemical processing of the fuel mass, and we don't even do reprocessing of spent fuel rods now because it's too expensive and dangerous with too much weapon proliferation risk.

>>5527699
Didn't they say all those things about current reactors in their early phases?

>>5527708
No.

40% of our power is produced by nuclear reactors.

Do you know what happening now? HURR DURR FUKUSHIMA DERP. We're building a new coal powerplant worth over 3 billion € becouse nuclear energy is bad becouse uneducated hippies said it's bad, mm'kay?.

Fuck you hippies.

I of course believe we should always place research and development investment into all fields of nuclear power.

But honestly for practical application of merely gathering energy, I think solar power is one of the best alternatives. Of course we should diversify just to be safe. But nuclear plants are very expensive to operate, and time-consuming to maintain. Furthermore, while they are generally safe and clean, they are prone to some risk and do generate some waste.

Solar power is always in high abundance given that there can always be light and heat.

I really think for energy we should depend more on solar, while still maintaining funding for all areas of nuclear research to have the potential to develop technology in that area.

Does anyone here have experience with a nuclear power? On a naval ship or at a plant?

>>5527699
>It's based on continuous chemical processing of the fuel mass, and we don't even do reprocessing of spent fuel rods now because it's too expensive and dangerous with too much weapon proliferation risk.
which is why thorium is great, much easier to process, and fluorine gassification works fine for the uranium side of the reprocessing cycle.

>very expensive
the first run of anything is expensive, always and forever
the only really expensive part of the final design would be the hastelloy
>complex
nope. reprocessing would be the most complex part, but that isn't insurmountable. the core is dead simple. the problem is the damn fuel salt mixture is super nasty to anything except hastelloy
>unproven
got me there. the oakridge reactor didn't have any reprocessing, but the core concept ran just fine

>irreduceable proliferation risk
sorta kinda. U233 lights up like a christmas tree on any kind of gamma detector and kills all your workers when it's concentrated.
i'm actually way more worried about people using the core (modifying it) as a high neutron flux zone for plutonium breeding. THAT's fucking scary.
solution is to keep it out of shithole countries.

>>5527727
solar's great for small scale, a couple panels on your roof to make your power bill cheaper

it'll never, ever work for large scale or grid centric shit, it has terrible watts per square meter output

>>5527993
>hastelloy
I've been telling people it's gonna use Inconel. Fuck.

>>5524662

>>5521016

You can just as easily use a sterling generator though, which produces sizeable power and ones have been made that are light and small enough to use in space, they're about twice the size of a fire extinguisher, the real problem however is shielding, it takes a lot of mass to absorb all dat dere gamma rays. The reason people use lead sometimes to shield objects is ironically to save weight since the denser the material the more efficiently it absorbs gamma radiation for a given mass, even so it barely reduces weight of shielding at all.

Hell even using a really dense element like Iridium to power a small city you would still need many, many tons of the stuff.

>>5521034

What do people think about this design anyway?

My money is still on ITER type designs for the moment though.

>>5521038

Hydrogen is stupid, for one thing we already have a method for transportng energy over large distances, second lithium-ion (or even better lithium-air) batteries don't explode (as often.)

>>5521133

They are literally designed so that you could survivably fly a plane into one. They are fucking designed to be airliner-proof.

>>5521361

But modern designs don't even have any pressurised coolant, they literally cannot melt down.

>>5521396

Or hell build them a half kilometer underground in septuple steel-lined tubs in geologically stable area away from the water table, with very few human workers, most functions being controlled with remotely piloted machines.

> Meltdown happens
> No-one notices.

>>5521443

Wait, do you mean someone irradiating the country using uranium and an aircraft? You know there are lots of ways to track a large aircraft across most countires, transponders, radar, drones, manned aircraft, sattelite, visually.

Ontop of that it would be extremely difficult to disperse properly, and on top of that it's really fucking difficult to steal uranium from a power plant, considering you have to get past the electrified, barbed wire fence, kill the armed guards, break into the reactor building, depressurise the core (depending on design), use a heat-proof robot to extract the uranium, somehow get it onto a specially designed truck which is going to be stupidly slow because of all the shielding you will need, then you need to fight you way past an entire nation's military, then you have to get away undetected.

It really is borderline impossible for someone to steal uranium from a nuclear reactor's core.

It would be much easier to use naturally occuring ore, or waste medical sources, and even those are heavily regulated, and MUCH less radioactive.

>>5521453

It's simply too inefficient in terms of land use, don't forget you have to store heat overnight, sine you can only generate power during the day.

>>5524605 >you just be thank full that the cooling pools did not catch fire

If the anti-nuclear morons shut the fuck up for a while cooling pools wouldn't have been a problem. New reactors store spent fuel differently and we would have more permanent solutions for safely storing nuclear waste out of the way.

Don't blame nuclear power when it's the eco-terrorists that insist on placing hurdles in the way of progress.

>>5521590

One meltdown in 30 years is good odds, I'd say.

You even seen a coaldust explosion? Liquid Natural Gas bleve? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_liquid_expanding_vapor_explosion

Do you know the properties of insanely dangerous chemicals used to refine natural gas, some of these are intensely toxic, and some of them will even burn on contact with air.

Finally do you know how many industrial accidents happen at these types of places? A fucking lot.

>>5522032

I doubt you could in reality especially considering that it's not just stored heat but radioactive decay is producing more.

>>5521992

It would have to happen anyway though, since the ultra low energy costs would give a significant advantage to the first energy company to have a functional reactor online, I doubt it will happen anyway though, because the cheaper energy gets the more of it we use.

>>5521011
LFTR when

>>5522087

Not at all technologies progress equally, for instance, lasers and electronics have undergone significant rapid technological growth in relatively little time.

>>5522087

What is diminishing returns.

>>5521033
Likely Nerva, but that isn't a nuclear reactor

>>5523516

Fuck yeah, Katia Managan!

Gaze upon my beautiful, semi-ironic waifu

>>5521069
>Three Mile Island
>disaster

>>5524605

Aren't cooling pools filled with water? How the hell can they catch fire.

>>5524621

No it does not, you in all likelihood wouldn't be alive right now if it weren't for vaccines, relatively cheap avialble power, shelter, heating systems, mass-produced clothing and food, modern medicine etc.

That's not even counting all the other stuff that doesn't keep you alive it merely contributes to your standard of living.

Let's not forget that ultimately technology enables some of mankind's greatest achievements; we have looked into the ver nature of the universe itself, seen the visible edge of it, walked on the moon and now we are trying to harness the power of the very sun.

We can do great things if we are willing.

>>5524619

Shame their so inefficient like other solar power, would be good if we could massively high solar stacks though.

>>5528231

Overheating can boil the water off

>>5524637

Life supprot systems don't require much energy, it just imposes a lot of design constraints, sine humans are needy creatures; they can;t be too hot, or too cold, and if your off by more then 20 or 30 degrees they'll die really quick, they need just the right amount of oxygen, while having poisonous gas that they produce filtered out, they need a very clean atmosphere, tons of chemicals kill or harm them even in relatively low concentrations, they can't be exposed to too much radiation, they're physically not that durable, they can't stand high gravity/ acceleration, they become steadily crippled in low gravity, they need food, they need water, and it needs to be clean and free of bacteria too.

I always imagine aeronautical engineers secretely think of pilots as annoyances.

>>5524690
You can find it on google
Q.E.D

>>5524664

That water doesn't have any toxins in it; it hasn't even come into direct contact with the reactor, it's pretty much water from the local water system or a nearby lake, not to mention half of any toxins will have been removed through evaporation.

>>5528231
Electrolysis, oxygen and hydrogen, you know the rest

>>5524667

This using intermittent, renewable sources, requires fucktons of infrastructure, that ends up being really inefficient, and you need to store some of it for when there's no light, wind or significant waves nearby.

>>5524681

But they aren't. What do you not get about this?

>>5524741

I think it will unfortunately end up a lot like when Google invests some chump change in stuff; it gives some nice publicity to the investor, but a year later the funding drops to nothing, and the program folds over.

Still that space mining thing actually seems to be going ahead seriously which is pretty fucking awesome, especially considering the ludicrous amount of technological development that needs to happen for it to work properly (we might finally get up to where we should be had we consistently funded space exploration after we went to the moon like we should have.)

>>5525206

This, although I'm not entirely sure how you would cool something that massive with relatively inefficient air-based ooling, especially when your relying solely on convection and not using fans etc.

>>5527666

Hahaha, North Korea you so incompetent.

>>5527727

Nuclear power plants are actually expensive to build but cheap to run.

>>5528080

Is inconel cheaper then other refractory materials?

>>5528241
>>5528248

Fair enough, they both seem like easy fixes;
> emergency intake pipes
> electrolysis detectors
> Hydrogen and oxygen sensors
> Good ventilation etc.

Might also be a good idea to package them in ventillated titanium-alloy or inconel containers inside the pool so at least if they melt they won't burn through the pool bottom immediately.

>>5528274

How much does it cost to do dispose of the waste?

I mean real, complete costs, not optimistic projections.

The free market will fix it.
No really, it will!

In Fukushima they had major issues with the electric company hiring untrained workers to cut costs on an already 30 y.o. reactor facility.

On the other hand the new Oilnokooinko oinko [had to google, Olkiluoto] power plant was supposed to cost 3 billion € but due to cost overruns its 8 billion € now...

Nuclear power is expensive to get it to work safely, newer designs are inherently safer but the decreased cost of operation is still not economical due to intense capital costs, its simply cheaper to run coal and gas power plants.

I saw on some Brit show a couple of guys in California were trying to use solar power via photovoltaics but to produce synthetic gasoline or synthetic hydrogen via a solar furnace thing.
Its a much smarter proposal, you can store energy much more efficiently in chemical than electrical form.

>>5521403
ITT: this

>>5528344
>In Fukushima they had major issues with the electric company hiring untrained workers to cut costs on an already 30 y.o. reactor facility.

not saying that those aren't incredibly stupid things, but the plant had a partial meltdown because of poor design.

Their maintenance workers have nothing to do with that poor 1960s design

>>5521011

Correct me if I'm wrong.
But Nuclear energy isn't renewable...

>>5528539
Yeah, some posts here about how quick nuclear fuel will run out if we increase the number of plants. Stuff don't grow on trees.

Also, can we talk about nuclear fusion some more? ITER, Polywell, NIF(lol closed), things like that. No Cold Fusion plz.

>>5528566
Plenty in space brah, plenty.

>>5528591
If we are aiming at mining nuclear fuel from off the planet, we assume we already have our energy problems fixed.

MatrixReloadedArchitechErgo.jpg.png.exe

now that E-cat has been confirmed isnt nuclear power obsolete?

>>5528697
>E-cat
See
>>5528566
>No Cold Fusion plz

>>5528566

ALL SMALL SCALE FUSION IS COLD FUSION

EVER CONSIDERED THAT

>>5528539
Nuclear energy is "not renewable" like solar power is "not renewable"... the sun being a big fusion reactor and all.

The only reason it isn't *currently* economically viable to extract uranium from seawater and uranium and thorium from granite, is that we've got such large bodies of high quality uranium ore.

With a breeder reactor, most of the soils on the planet contain more potential energy from uranium and thorium per ton than coal has from chemical energy, much of it by tens or thousands of times. The processing is a little more involved than shoveling coal into a furnace, but it doesn't take a great deal of energy to do weak-acid leaching and purification, and the fuel is absolutely everywhere.

>>5528705
i mean the hot-cat. it runs at 1200C, so it's not cold fusion.

>>5528716
>1200C
>not cold for fusion

>>5527993
>the only really expensive part of the final design would be the hastelloy
God damn, you still haven't learned your lesson about doing your homework.

The fuel is dissolved in FLiBe made with ISOTOPICALLY TAILORED lithium. Fluorine isn't terribly expensive, but isotopically tailored lithium and beryllium sure as fuck are.

When someone talks about a nuclear reactor and mentions beryllium, you immediately know two things: it can't be big, and it has to be expensive. These two things tell you a third: it's not suitable for grid power.

>>5528720
>C
convert it to Kelvin and you will see its very hot.

o shit. I just remembered something, look for my new thread on power-station training for the definition of temperature.

>>5528697
>E-cat has been confirmed
No, it hasn't.

>>5528740
~1500 K, not hot. Hot fusion takes millions of degrees.

>>5528740
>Convert unit
>Somehow hotter

I'll say it again. Compared to typical fusion temperatures 1200 C is cold

Cold fusion does not mean low temperature it means not started with a massive energy imput.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_oxide_fuel_cell
>Solid Oxide Fuel Cell
>Pages of equations
>HUR DUR BLOOM BOX SERVERS! FUEL IN, ELECTRIC OUT!

>>5521968
Do you have a source for this? I'd love to get more info.

>>5528743
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-11/06/cold-fusion-heating-up

>>5528754
nope
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-10/andrea-rossis-black-box

>>5528280

The fact that it takes 5 minutes or so to think up ways to make a nuclear power plant safer and that engineers are told to do this while designing a plant for years + they have knowledge of many thousands of other previous designs + their is usually the budget to implement them proves how relatively easy it is to build a very safe reactor same with planes (Except you don't have to balance it against weight and aerodynamics etcetera.)

It's weird that technologies the public is scared of the most end up becoming the safest aroun a few years later.

>>5528461

There were a LOT of contributing factors, chernobyl was more or less the worst possible scenario for a nuclear reactor.

>>5528754
>apparent success
>Half claimed output
>Secondly, observers apart from the customer were only allowed to view the test for a few minutes at a time and during the entire test the E-Cat remained connected to a power supply by a cable.
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/29/rossi-success

>The energy was output in the form of heat, measured by the quantity of water boiled off.
I't also claimed that they never measured the water that was boiled off but assumed it had been from the water loss. But no observers were allowed to see the measurements being made.

This was not a sufficient demonstration.

>>5521379
>or wind energy sight/noise pollution.
You are the dumbest piece of fuck I have ever seen. Holy shit, you are one of those senile old dumb fucks that are responsible for potential wind turbines not being built in an isolated field far away from where anyone lives because "it looks ugly"

I wish you fucking died right now on the spot. Fuck you.

>>5528769
>Rossi--a lone Italian inventor with no real credentials and a history as a convicted scam artist
>history as a convicted scam artist

"Hey, sorry about raping your daughter. Mind if I spend some time with your son? nohomoisear".

>>5528591

Would have to deliver it in very small quantities at a time so that if something goes wrong it will burn up in the upper atmosphere and settle too slow for significant contamination.

>>5528766
is there a technology to efficiently provide protection from large commercial aircraft? 560 tons at multiple hundred miles per hour aren't held up by some cheap cement walls

>>5528643

> Implying we won't be using it AS fuel and mining it off-world to refuel.
> Implying it will not be the background of the space mining industry like petroleum is for transportation.

Link related;

that 1,000,000 sec/sp

>>5528776
They already said that they won't allow anyone to inspect the machine because of revolutionary, easily reproducible tech.

Maybe they also used revolutionary cabling technology and revolutionary boiled-water-measuring technology.

>>5528794
>This is our new cold fusion thingamabob.
>Interesting, show us how it works.
>NO, THE ILLUMINATI WHO RUN THE OIL INDUSTRY WANT TO STOP US!

>>5528771
Chernobyl was especially bad, but Fukushima could have killed a lot of people if the wind had been blowing another way.

Any reactor involving large amounts of fuel which fails to function in the intended manner can end up spewing large amounts of radioactive materials. It's the nature of the beast. Because human designers, builders, operators, and maintainers aren't perfect, there is always the possibility of failure modes which were not accounted for.

The two big problems with nuclear power are the proliferation potential and the disaster risk. Both of which make every plant capable of killing millions of people on a bad day. And you're always depending on fallible humans doing things the general public can't understand to prevent this.

Not a good situation.

>>5528783
>herp derp
Most plants are already designed to withstand direct hits from airliners.

That 'cheap cement' is fucking tough and poured with care.

>>5528799
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean we're... uh, they're not really out to get you.

>>5528783

[citation needed]

>>5528799

What are patents.

>>5528806

There are automated systems specifically designed to account for human error.

>>5528794
>>5528821
I never said there wouldn't be a lot of people out to get what they have but this is not a demonstration. The way they are going about these demonstrations really stinks, there are also major conflicting statements.

>>5528831
>[sarcasm]
>>5528794
>>5528821
>[/sarcasm]

>>5528818
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A380
>"560mph at cruise altitude"
>"The A380's wing is sized for a maximum take-off weight (MTOW) over 650 tonnes"

>>5528843

Says nothing about nuclear power plants.

Insufficient.

>>5528789
If you're comfortable doing complex things in space, you can just set up big solar collectors in geostationary orbit, made mostly out of foil a few atoms thick, and beam power down for abundant 24/7 electricity wherever we need it.

We've already got a clean fusion reactor running that's bigger than we'll ever need. We just have to harness it.

Frankly, I think the most likely outcome is that solar collectors on Earth will get incredibly cheap, and so will energy storage devices and industrial process that can just run when the sun shines, and that'll be the end of the energy problem. We may do some space solar or world-girdling power transmission to cut down on storage needs.

Most of our industry will move to space to take advantage of more consistently available solar power, material availability, and freedom from concerns of damaging the biosphere.

>>5528825
>There are automated systems specifically designed to account for human error.
That's fantastic. Do they also have automated systems specifically designed to correct human error in the design of the automated systems specifically designed to account for human error?

No matter how you look at it, people are doing it, and people can fuck it up. There's no way for a layman to tell whether the people are doing a good job or a bad job until a disaster happens.

>>5528857
well, i simply wanted to know how the power plants defend themselves against such an incident

>>5528870

Layman don't need to know because they're not relevant to the running of the plant.

Your right, but this is the risk with literally everything. Although I suppose that since there are multiple engineers working on each component of the plant they probably end up looking over each other's work, exposing safety flaws and thinking of ways to improve safety and other aspects.

>>5528876
They're hardened structures. In the engineering and the military sense.

>>5528859

> A big solar collectors in space composed of foil

I'm going to presume that's parabolic in shape; if it deforms even slightly you've razed a city to the ground.

I doubt it, who in a modern city wants to actually sleep at night? (I'm exaggerating ofc but you get my idea) even with 99.9% efficiency there simply isn't that much energy hitting the ground at once, power consumption will grow inevitably forever, and probably exponentially whenever technology can keep up and it's not like we want the entire Earth to be covered in solar cells.

I agree but most of it will probably be spearheaded by increasing demands that Earth cannot supply without irreparable harm being done and the pull factor will most likely be increasing colonisation of Mars the moon and maybe a few arcologies; we will probably still have a lot of industry on Earth though, simply because we know how to do things there very easily already, plus we have a pre-existing industrial base.

>>5528876

You pretty much protect anything from anything else with enough mass.

>>5527727
It's innefficient as fuck and land costs too. You may as well use sugar as fuel.

>>5528899
so they built 10m of thick dense walls 360° + on top around all plant core buildings?

>>5528878
>Layman don't need to know because they're not relevant to the running of the plant.
The designation of qualified specialists must ultimately be done by laymen.

The quality of specialists generally depends on the ability of laymen to recognize whether they're doing a good job or not. In an endeavor where failure is entirely unacceptable, there's no straightforward rate of success or failure available which is comprehensible to laymen. Consequently, these sorts of endeavors tend to be horribly mismanaged, because the wrong people get treated as experts, often specifically because of their ability to distort and misreport their actual level of qualification.

The experts recognized by society assured us that Fukushima couldn't happen. When it did, the proper conclusion is that the people we considered experts were in fact unqualified. The incident did not give us any clear indication of new experts to trust.

The laymen of society are left without any convincing reason to believe that nuclear power plants are safe. We have neither reason to believe that the old ones have been safe rather than lucky, nor that new ones would be any safer.

>>5528915
FFS, do your own study
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_plant#Vulnerability_of_nuclear_plants_to_attack

>>5528919
Fukushima NPP was warned (and fined, IIRC) before the accident because of unsafe operating procedures. These were ignored because muhmonies!

tl;dr: science and engineering didn't fail here.
Capitalism did.

>>5528895
>I'm going to presume that's parabolic in shape; if it deforms even slightly you've razed a city to the ground.
You're a complete and utter idiot. You don't point it at Earth, you point it at some kind of photovoltaic system or high temperature heat engine, and you send the power down by microwave at frequencies that aren't significantly absorbed by the atmosphere, and at intensities that are completely harmless to anyone walking through the beam.

Even if you were reflecting light down to Earth, it would be very difficult to make one capable of "razing a city to the ground", let alone one that would be likely to do so accidentally.

>>5528926
>tl;dr: science and engineering didn't fail here.
>Capitalism did.
Oh fuck you and your stupid bullshit.

They were warned, not shut down. The system did NOT recognize the real potential for disaster and handle it appropriately. The engineers working on it did not resign in protest and make a big public fuss about it.

Make whatever excuses you like, point fingers wherever you want, the incident demonstrated that the people doing and regulating nuclear power could not be trusted to do so safely.

>>5528947
What amount of deaths per TWH is acceptable so be considered safe?

>>5528960
Large-scale disaster where millions of people die and the land is rendered uninhabitable for decades or centuries is not acceptable.

"Deaths per TWH" SO FAR is not an appropriate metric where there is potential for large-scale disaster.

Fukushima is the perfect example of that: the disaster could have killed huge numbers of people, except that the wind blew most of the radioactive material out to sea.

You don't look at an incident like that and say, "Doesn't count, hardly anyone actually died." You have to count yourself lucky that you got this opportunity to change the way you do things without a lot of casualties.

The way it works with something like nuclear power that has the potential for huge disasters is that you obviously stop if you have one. So no matter how likely that huge disaster is, up until you have one, you're always going to be able to say, "We haven't had one." and if you're a complete idiot, "...and that proves it's safe."

>>5528992
What's your opinion on human exploration and colonization of space?

>>5528992
>Large-scale disaster where millions of people die and the land is rendered uninhabitable for decades or centuries is not acceptable.
Good thing that has not happened with nuclear and won't happen when you intelligently place the plants.
Now about those millions of deaths, you know coal does that every year? and it also pollutes local environment to the point of uninhabitable, plus the global consequneses. What do you say about that.

>clean

>>5528992

You can't stop using something because there's the potential for deaths. Everything has the potential for deaths. You can't just go 'Nope, we can't produce power, someone might die' and expect everyone to stop using power.

>>5529023
I'm sure the residents of Pripyat agree with you. Well, the very few who are still alive.

>>5529017
Don't worry, kids, Chernobyl was a once off, it could never happen again.

>>5529026
I'm sure that the people that have been killed by coal would choose nuclear
I'm also positive that the mothers that get their sons killed in car accidents would like to turn that road near you into no car zone

There is a reason why you don't listen to these people if their argument is entirely emotiona.

>>5529030
Never, ever again.

>>5529026
>very few

>>5529030
>implying graphite fires

>>5529026
I named my porn directory pripyat.

just thought yall should know that.

>>5529026
>WE MUST LISTEN TO THE FEW WHO HAVE BEEN HARMED BY NUKULAR
>WE MUST NOT LISTEN TO THE FEW WHO HAVE BEEN HARMED BY GUNS
If these two describe you, you're an idiot.

>>5529012
>about those millions of deaths, you know coal does that every year?
First of all, those are deeply questionable statistics, and many of the attributed "deaths" are lives slightly shortened (the sick and elderly dying a little earlier due to poor air quality).

We're talking about coal killing the way cigarettes kill, and there's a huge difference in societal impact between a long-term statistical health effect and incidents which indiscriminately kill everybody including healthy young people.

Secondly, the claim is mostly based on very primitive coal power plants.

When coal is done at anywhere near the level of technical sophistication required to make nuclear even work, it's essentially pollution-free. If nuclear was done by the people making dirty coal power plants, there'd be disasters every week.

>>5529054
>that only pertains to primitive coal plants
And all of yours only pertain to primitive nuclear plants, shut up.

How is humanity supposed to advance if we're not willing to try and tame some of the most powerful forces available to us? America wouldn't have got to the Moon if people were too scared to try harnessing the power of a thousand tons of explosive liquid.

>>5529054
And if you didn't suck dicks you wouldn't be a faggot.

Cold fusion it the future

>>5529057
Because the people killed in the Apollo missions knew the risks and chose to take them. You're dragging everyone along with you in your personal recklessness

>>5528934

What's the point? At that kind of intensity it's still going to take vast amounts of land not much smaller then the reflector in itself, human skin doesn't have to heat up much above room temperature (+50 degrees or so) to get nasty burns, so going about it that way your going to still need massive area with low land costs with which to soak up the microwaves why not just build conventional solar collectors in that space?

Not to mention the inneficiency whch adds up at every step (reflector > heat engine > conversion into microwaves > atmosphere + ground + water sources > conversion into electricity > distribution)

Although I will admit having a space elevator type structure with superconducting cable attached is probably a better idea for transmitting the power to ground.

>>5529065
See, we need to drag you out of the trees and caves before we can put you into a house.

I know the open plain is scary, but only by crossing it, a still more glorious dawn awaits.

>>5528919

That's pretty much the risk with anything though, human error can only be minimised not ruled out.

Also failure in a nuclear plant isn't neccesarily that bad by any standard, esp. in a more modern design built further away from civilisation.

I don't see your point about Laymen, engineers are hardly elected officials, not to mention that specialists are actually best designated by other specialists; this is essentially the basis of peer review.

A layman cannot possibly know enough about a subject with wich they are unfamiliar to judge another person's level of knowledge; they could be talking crap or not; it's impossible for them to know, if you owned a business would you rather five interns handle job applications, or your most senior staff member with multiple decades of experienced?

>>5529066
>I don't know that the world turns and doesn't receive equator-level insolation all over the globe
And yet you somehow still think you should be posting here.

>>5529056
Ah, the old "communism works, it just hasn't been tried!" argument.

You can't just claim nuclear power is safe, have a disaster happen, and then say, "Well, nuclear reactors are safe except for that one design. That one doesn't count because the others are different." You were discredited when the disaster happened, because you weren't already saying that design was unsafe.

>>5528992

Yes, but that's exactly the sort of thinking that goes into building, designing and using nuclear power, and such they are designed to be as safe as it possibly can; the risks are there but they're always getting stronger.

If you relalise this then you have to realise that it makes sense to build nuclear power plants if only to replace the older, less safe ones.

>>5529064

>still believing in coldfusion

>>5529086

How do you define 'safe'? I suspect by your measure a whole of of things aren't safe, but I doubt that stops you doing them.

>>5529086
Except that we can. You and your similes suck like a herd of gay elephants.

>>5529017
>>5529030
>>5529034

Emotional arguments, emotional arguments everywhere, just get out of here, you faggot, yo just don't want to change your opinnion out of stubbornness.

>>5529086
My gf didn't orgasm very often. I gave her the "anal works, it just hasn't been tried" argument.

100% success rate

>>5529082
>not to mention that specialists are actually best designated by other specialists
So you figure that 100 guys who all get together and agree that the other 99 guys are experts must be experts?

Homeopaths must be real experts on how to treat illness then.

The problem is that you have to be able to judge the field from the outside, or else you don't know whether their expertise is real.

That's the problem with things like nuclear safety, macroeconomics, and global warming. Meaningful arguments are so technically involved that you have to become an expert to even understand them, and consequences of policy are so distant and hard to experiment with that you can't judge them by their results.

We don't have the option of avoiding the hazards of making the wrong macroeconomic or global climate policy. But with nuclear safety we don't have to expose ourselves to the hazard of trusting false experts, we can simply choose not to use nuclear power.

>>5529054

Most of the deaths attributed to Chernobyl are lives slightly shortened by cancer and there's STILL less of them.

Coal cannot be clean by definition, burning coal releases carbon dioxide and sulphur due to impurities.

>>5529121
>cooperation is collusion
Fuck you.

>>5529096
>you have to realise that it makes sense to build nuclear power plants if only to replace the older, less safe ones.
Uh... no. We can also replace the older ones with non-nuclear power.

>>5529086

So when a 'safe' coal processing plant has a bleve, or a powder explosion it doesn't count either? Or when a damn cracks? Or when a turbine breaks in high winds? it doesn't count either?

Fukushima and it's managemnt was being condemned behind closed doors beforehand since the 80's and if it wasn't for cold war secrecy Chernobyl probably would have too.

>>5529140
NO NUKS R BAD FAGET

>>5529121

People who are experts in homeopathy don't support homeopathy.

>>5529151
>mfw my mum spent 7 years studying homeopathy

>>5529125
>Coal cannot be clean by definition, burning coal releases carbon dioxide and sulphur due to impurities.
Sulphur can be scrubbed. Carbon dioxide can be sequestered, and it's deeply debatable whether it can even be called a "pollutant".

Increasing atmospheric CO2 has unquestionably increased crop yields. Climate change is one of those things where every cloud has a silver lining, and the silver linings look likely to outweigh the clouds. A warmer world is a world with more life, and the way the atmosphere works, the heat will tend to be transported to the cold places rather than make hot places more uncomfortable.

People who talk about things like rising ocean levels as if the best way to prevent them is to curb carbon emissions just flat out don't understand the scale of our industrial capacity. We can mechanically lower the oceans by dredging material off the seafloor onto land. Do the math on it some time, see how much it would take and compare how much material we move doing things like coal mining. It's well within our capabilities to keep up with the projected rates of sealevel rise, and we can do it in ways with major secondary benefits.

>>5529121

> we can simply choose not to use nuclear power.

Just like we can simply chose to not burn fossil fuels to remove the risks of global warming, or simply chose not to have an economy to solve macroeconomic issues. We need nuclear power. You can't solve our ballooning energy needs with windmills and fancy bulbs.

>>5529085

So? Even factoring that in, it still takes up a shitload of land that you could use for anything else? That still doesn't get over the fact that you can't beam craptons of power down to Earth for safety reasons, plus it's always going to be more expensive to do it in space because you have to pay an energy cost to get it up there, and you working in an environment where 99% of our machinery won't work, plus the solar wind and sun's heat degrades things much faster.

Also stop insulting like a childish dick just because I don't agree with you; I respect your opinion but I disagree. Deal with it.

Even if you can get over that;

a) We can actually do nuclear now, not in 20 years with billions of dollars in spending.

b) There's STILL higher power density which frees up a lot of potentially valuable land.

>>5529165
>warmer world is a world with more life
Yeah man i can't wait to visit my bros over at Venus.

>>5529096

*always getting smaller

>>5529156

What did she do after?

>>5529140
Dams are the exception. Those can cause large-scale disasters. However, this is usually the case when their purpose is to *prevent* large-scale disasters in the first place, as flood control, rather than when they're only there for hydroelectric power.

But those other things you're talking about are the kind of risk we can accept. For starters, the people at risk are mostly those who have agreed to accept the risk, and are collectively responsible for their own safety. Coal processing plant explosions or wind turbines flying apart don't wipe out cities.

>>5529030
Living there would expose you to less than 3200 millirems a year. As per http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1994/safe-0105.html , anything under 5000 millirems a year is considered safe by the US.
Looks to me like you're bitching out over nothing.

>>5529175
People who claim that industrial CO2 emissions could possibly lead to an uninhabitably hot world are crackpots, plain and simple, who have no support from mainstream science.

>>5529165

But who actually does that stuff? if it doesn't add to profit then why bother? I'm not being pessimistic but that IS how industry is run.

I highly doubt that you could offset sea level rising. ocean dredging is not and never will be the same thing as mining coal onshore, also what would be the secondary benefits? Also consider how much extra CO2 will be released in the process of offsetting sea level rise? even if your breaking out even, it's better to avoid in the first place. Not to mention who's actually going to do it unless they can turn a profit from it?

> CO2 has unquestionably increased crop yields?

Lastly the point isn't that global warming will increase the Earth's carrying capacity eventually, it's about not destroying the ecosystems we already have.

>>5529195
Ambient radiation is not the issue. The issue is with radioactive material that accumulates in your body.

>>5529199
Yeah, except no.
http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2010/100504HuberLimits.html

Now you can shed that stupid belief of yours.

>>5529205
>>Nuclear reactors can be made with water moderators instead of flammable graphite, and better safety systems can prevent Chernobyl-like disasters.
>But who actually does that stuff? if it doesn't add to profit then why bother? I'm not being pessimistic but that IS how industry is run.
You are being pessimistic, and one-sided.

Coal power plants are a lot more regulated in some places than others, for the exact same reasons and in the exact same ways that nuclear power plants are kept from blowing up every second Tuesday.

Nuclear power plants certainly aren't inherently safer, they're so obviously dangerous that people try much harder to make them safe, and don't even try them unless they've got lots of money and highly qualified people.

Apply the same effort to coal, and you end up with a very clean, safe operation. Just as we found our planet with ample supplies of carbon-fuel, we found it with ample supplies of minerals capable of absorbing carbon dioxide. There are all sorts of places you can pump CO2 into the ground and it'll just become part of the rock through chemical reactions.

>>5529190

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_Alpha_disaster
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_Refinery_(BP)#Explosion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Hertfordshire_Oil_Storage_Terminal_fire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Connecticut_power_plant_explosion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Juanico_Disaster

Those are some of the largest industrial disasters in history all caused by fossil fuels, now imagine if they had happened in much more heavily populated areas.

>>5529199

It's not the industrial emissions you have to worry about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

>>5529240

I'm not being pessimistic, it exists to make money that's what it does, and it tries as efficient as possible.

If they end up both just as safe there's no problem then; but nuclear still outperforms coal.

Also are you the same guy who's been here since early in the thread? Are you just playing devil's advocate or are you being genuine?

I'm not trying to backhandedly insult you, I'm genuinely asking.

>>5529206

You don't have to neccesarily drink the same food and water.

>>5529186
Now she teaches some family planning thing.

>>5529257
>If they end up both just as safe there's no problem then; but nuclear still outperforms coal.
The difference is that if they are equally safe during normal operation, then nuclear will still have that potential for disaster that doesn't exist with coal. Even if there are no accidents, there is still weapons proliferation to worry about, which is a fundamentally unfixable problem with nuclear power.

As for nuclear "outperforming coal", you do understand that there are reasons people choose coal over nuclear that have absolutely nothing to do with worrying about nuclear disasters, don't you?

>>5529273

Yes, but see this;
>>5521945

>>5529262

Oh God, what is it like as a /sci/entist living with her?

>>5529242
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Connecticut_power_plant_explosion
"...bringing the total death toll to six."

After sampling one, I'm certainly not going to waste my time reading more of them.

>>5529284
It's so frustrating that today I am moving out and going back to live with my conservative Christian father.

I love both of them though.

>>5529279
...and if fuel energy density was the relevant measure of performance, you'd have a point.

>>5529285

Laziness is no excuse for being wrong.

>>5529293

Nuclear

> Only has to be refueled a few times during lifespan.
> Produces megawatts of power
> Requires only a few hundred tons of fuel at a time
> Uses up relatively little space

Coal

> Needs to be fed constantly
> Prouces megawatts of power
> Needs thousands of tons of coal every few day
> Takes up relatively little space

Yes, coal is obviously the superior performer here.

>>5529357
If you think "performance" means "how many tons of fuel you have to put in", I don't even know what to say to that.

I suppose you also think that solar power has infinite performance.

>>5529364

Yes it does, do you even efficiency?

No I don't, the same metrics don't apply to it, same as all other renewables, what matter is energy density and in the case of solar conversion efficiency.

Try harder.

>>5529364

Just leave already.

>>5529427
>Yes it does, do you even efficiency?
So to your mind, a process that, to accomplish the same task, consumed a hundred pounds of gold and required a billion-dollar facility would be more efficient and have higher performance than a process that consumed a ton of sand and required a thousand-dollar facility.

Performance, efficiency, and cost effectiveness are entirely different things. And in the case of large-scale power generation, none of those things are determined in a simple way by the mass of fuel consumed, irrespective of what that fuel is.

Fun fact

There is enough thorium in the sands of miami beach. You could collect a lifetime supply in a bucket.

>>5528736
aaaatually the beryllium isn't necessary, only for the beryllium float tower design (which i personally don't like, just leave the shit in the fuel salt and process it out, it's slightly messier with parasitic n2n reactions but whatever)

lithium could be a problem, yes, and you do need a good lot of it.

>>5528080
most of the designs i've seen stick to hastelloy, it's a SHIT to work with though

can inconel take the neutron flux without getting brittle? that's the real shit in the fuel salt