/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.6143731]

What do you guys think about the future of energy technology? What field is going to develop more? Which between green and nuclear tecnhology would be a better choice for us?

Also, what kinds of engineer deal with this stuff?

[Anonymous No.6143736]

>Which between green and nuclear tecnhology would be a better choice for us?

Hurr. Would you rather have solar panels on your roof or live next door to Fukushima

[Anonymous No.6143759]

>>6143736

Considering they aren't going to teleport Fukushima into my backyard and are going to build a new one? On the list of buildings to hide in during an earthquake, the reactor sure as fuck ranks higher than my house and probably ranks higher than any shelter in the same distance.

I'd take a building you can fly a 747 into and not even interrupt operations that provides power for millions over a trickle of power that wanes during the time when power use spikes the most.

[Anonymous No.6144072]

>>6143731
bump

[Anonymous No.6144085]

>>6143731
I'm putting my hopes on fusion, solar would be good for powering more distant places

[Anonymous No.6144100]

>>6143731
>green

what green? wind? solar? tidal? neither of these or the combination of them would be enough to replace gas/coal/oil.

>and nuclear technology (sp) would be a better choice for us?

it’s a shame that Fukushima has dashed any hopes of nuϲⅼеаr industry getting more permits to build more plants.

in short, we're fucked in long term.

[Anonymous No.6144111]

>>6143736
just reminding you that there are more annual deaths in the solar power industry than the nuclear industry. Nuclear is the safest power source available. And that is with obsolete 30-40 year old reactors!

[Anonymous No.6144151]

>>6144111
>just reminding you that there are more annual deaths in the solar power industry than the nuclear industry.

[citation needed]

>Nuclear is the safest power source available.

I fucking doubt it.

>And that is with obsolete 30-40 year old reactors!

sure thing kid.

[Anonymous No.6144161]

>>6143736
Hurr. Would you like to have heating in winter?

[Anonymous No.6144167]

>>6144151
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html

[Anonymous No.6144204]

How legit is Thorium?

there is always a few people I see around 4chan praising the coming of the Thorium age

[Anonymous No.6144229]

>>6144167
>http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html


Such a misleading list. It was clearly compiled by a nuϲⅼеаr energy shill.

If solar panel burns up, it doesn't poison the WHOLE FUCKING OCEAN and doesn't destroy fish and doesn't destroy the environment for MILLIONS OF YEARS!

Fuck nuϲⅼеаr technology! Fuck it to hell.

[Anonymous No.6144292]

>>6144229
Fukushima has not poisoned the entire ocean, at the current rate of leakage it would take over 100,000 years to replace 1/10 of the pacific ocean with radioactive waste. The US has detonated dozens of nuclear bombs on the west coast and everyone okay.

[Anonymous No.6144302]

>>6144229
>poison the WHOLE FUCKING OCEAN and doesn't destroy fish and doesn't destroy the environment for MILLIONS OF YEARS!
I just researched about it and your claims are unfunded. There were some contamination of botton fishes close to Fukushima but no such a thing as poisoning the whole ocean or destroying fish. Most of the ocean levels are OK.

[Anonymous No.6146122]

>>6143731
solar, nuclear, hydrogen and synthetic fossil fuels will be made with some clean electicity in 20-30 years, microwave beamed energy from space in 60 years and fusion in 80 years

[Anonymous No.6146212]

>>6144167
This is garbage. It's averaging together all coal power, including the deaths from coal mining and pollution in 3rd world countries, where corruption and incompetence make any industrial activity inefficient and hazardous, and uses large estimates including guesses at deaths from indirect causes.

On the other hand, it counts the deaths from Chernobyl at 50, disregarding estimates of deaths from indirect causes.

When estimating the risk and harm of nuclear, you have to take seriously the dangers of nuclear weapon proliferation and large-scale disasters.

[Anonymous No.6146712]

>>6144229
so uh what exactly is this a picture of? i just see colors and numbers, but is anything being measured?

>>6146212
"4000 people may eventually die earlier [than usual] as a result of Chernobyl, but those deaths would be more than 20 years after the fact and the cause and effect becomes more tenuous."

granted, that fact is construed in a minimizing way, but it doesn't change that fewer deaths can be attributed to the nuclear power industry nearly all of the others.

and i agree that the pollution death estimates are harder to accurately quantify, but the main takeaway here is that coal plants are more or less designed to spew particulate matter and CO2 into the atmosphere that harms the surrounding population and contributes to climate change. a proponent of nuclear energy will inform you that fission reactors are designed to do neither of these things.

and proliferation / large-scale disasters kind of determine the design limitations that nuclear engineers work with (i.e. not-even-that-recent developments in reactor technologies mitigate or even eliminate such concerns), so to say that they "must be taken seriously" is like saying "the power plant must generate AC current." any other designs would be impractical, so statements such as those are somewhat trivial

i'm not biased or bitter at all

[Anonymous No.6146764]

>>6144204
Requires advances in materials science to withstand the molten salt.

Solar's great except that we're barely breaking even right now when compared the energy expenditure in creating the panels. More research is going to be needed in order to ensure that we'll actually see gains. Solar and Wind also have a large land-to-kwh ratio compared to nuclear. While there are issues with meltdowns, the two most major ones were due to incompetence coupled with reactor technology. Chernobyl was due to operator actions and a design prone to meltdown from the start. Fukushima was due to improper maintenance of backup generators and the fact that the reactor is over 40 years old and in a heavy earthquake zone. However, nuclear requires a lot of capital to create so it's pretty much left up to a few billionaires in non-energy industries and the government. And given that both wings of American politics are neo-Luddites, it's not quite likely that widespread adoption of new nuclear technologies will spring up. Essentially it's going to come down to either India or (most likely) China advancing energy technology.

[Anonymous No.6146872]

>>6146712
>and proliferation / large-scale disasters kind of determine the design limitations that nuclear engineers work with (i.e. not-even-that-recent developments in reactor technologies mitigate or even eliminate such concerns), so to say that they "must be taken seriously" is like saying "the power plant must generate AC current." any other designs would be impractical, so statements such as those are somewhat trivial
What must also be taken seriously is that the risk of proliferation and large-scale disaster CAN NOT be designed out of nuclear reactors.

There are very serious dangers with nuclear, which don't exist for other power sources.

What makes nuclear look good in routine situations is that it's so dangerous that no mistakes or pollution can be tolerated. Which means it's going to keep looking good right up until the point that something so bad happens that we have to abandon it.

The people who are trusted with designing, maintaining, and cleaning up after nuclear reactors don't deserve that much trust. The consequences for their failure will be too high for the rest of us.

[Anonymous No.6146881]

bump

[Anonymous No.6146884]

There is no replacement for the energy density of light sweet crude

[Anonymous No.6146893]

>>6146884

[Anonymous No.6146932]

>>6146872
>There are very serious dangers with nuclear
Which ones?

[Anonymous No.6146950]

fusion can get a positive balance on the fuel put in. Though the total process is still inefficient, but its making real progress.

[Anonymous No.6146951]

Liquid salt reactors. There's enough thorium on our planet to power it for a few billion years, and on top of that, liquid reactors are 100% safe due to the fact that they don't operate at many atmospheres of pressure, like all the current nuclear reactors. When these reactors heat up, the reactor expands cooling it down; it's a self-regulated heat control. if there is some sort of catastrophic failure and power is cut to the reactor, a drain opens and drains all the material into a reserve tank. The reaction won't keep going, as it will cool down quite a bit in the process.

You can get about 200x as much energy per ton of fissile fuel. You can even used recycled material from decommissioned nuclear weapons (which we have enough to power us for a very long time alone). The half life on the waste produced by this cycle is on the order of hundreds to thousands of years as opposed to hundreds of thousands.

Most of the time when people say nuclear is too dangerous to use, they have seen disasters caused by solid fuel cycles and extrapolated that to mean absolutely ALL nuclear power is dangerous and no more should be used.

Thorium is also about as common as lead.

[Anonymous No.6146970]

>>6143759
why would you fly a 747 into it if you can take a A380?

[Anonymous No.6147006]

>>6146884

This is true. It amazes me how complex things get with processing/extracting oil. I can't wait to see how things work when we are drilling for oil on Titan.