This thread is nuclear (nuclear power discussion)

Do we though?
In a city builder, when you have just spent all your hard earned cash on solving the garbage disposal and transport issues, and suddenly you do not have all the electricity you need. What do you do?
Well, Policies panel, and tick that “Preserve Electricity”-policy and you are on your way. Simple. It usually costs some money, but in the grand scheme of things, acceptable.
This is somehow an impossible policy to even bring up for consideration in reality.

It is a trifecta of “this sucks” really. Sure, the Cellular approach would be neat (Every home is self-sufficent on solar/battery for 80% of the year, the rest is covered via grid brought in from other cells). To role this out for testing, 15 years, to get it stable and operational, 30 years. An entire generation of houses being build and maintained.

  • Coal is terrible for the environment and the heavy metals exhausted despite filters are a huge problem.
  • Gas is better than coal, issue is energy density.
  • Nuclear, expensive to build plants, expensive to maintain, the fuel is a huge problem during mining, extraction, preparation and the spent elements are constant headache for everyone.

Is it unethical though?
A village in central Africa will do fine with solar and battery installations for the moment, no idea how to pay for those systems though. Most of Europe has the money (in total) to figure something out. Not sure about the Americas, Asia or Oceania.

No car/plane/ship accident ever contaminated an area for a decade.
Calculating “Likelyhood x Operational systems” is too simplistic.

Mining for any resource, and then refining that ore to be actually more than fancy rock is absolutely disastrous to the environment, greenhouse gasses included.
I am not saying stop all mines, I am saying reduce where not necessary.

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So we’re just going to build out more solar/wind and put some batteries in the basement of every house? How are you feeding heavy industry with electricity?

Your post solves literally none of the current problems we have with the generation of electricity.

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Fukushima suffered because the emergency generators were destroyed.

“At the four damaged nuclear power plants (Onagawa, Fukushima Daiichi, Fukushimi Daini and Toka Daini), 22 of the 33 total backup diesel generators were washed away, including 12 of 13 at Fukushima Daiichi. Of the 33 total backup power lines to off-site generators, all but two were obliterated by the tsunami.”

Similar to what they said during the Challenger disaster, there was a failure of imagination. No one expected such a large Tsunami.

There’s been many studies on nuclear power and overall, it is safe. The issues come with the longevity of any incident. A plane crash might kill a lot of folks, but that’s it. Nuclear accidents have a lasting impact. Chernobyl could have rendered most of Europe uninhabitable if the Russians hadn’t acted.

The science has advanced with nuclear. They can build reactors that issue no radioactive waste products, but organizations like the Sierra Club fight tooth and nail against anything “nuclear” regardless of how safe they are. This causes lawyers to get rich fighting endless lawsuits that drive up costs. Nuclear bad, renewables good. However, renewables can’t supply enough power alone. There needs to be additional capacity to supply the grid and coal, LNG or dams are needed, but they are in limited supply and the resources will eventually run out. Nuclear fills that gap. Until the human race gives up their air con, game consoles and FaceTube there won’t be enough power to go around.

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Well, I suppose one solution, would be to reduce the demand, and PooTin might help.

Every century or so, Europe have a blow out and thin the herds.

Westerners use vastly more energy per capita than developing people, and consume a bunch of the goods produced by developing nations.

So a good old blow out, would directly slow the increasing demand, and the consequential demand for goods that need energy to produce for a generation to follow.
After an initial spike to make a bunch of ammo and supplies of course.

By the time the conflict blows over, perhaps battery/energy storage has been improved enough for each house remaining with people in to store a days worth, with generation?

It would also really help with housing pressures in the west as well.

It would not help with oncoming food and water shortages though.

A slight problem, is a bunch of people working on better energy production and storage, might be in the west at the moment, and be co-opted to the war effort.

So I suggest supply is still the side to look at.

If only Thorium did not poison the fuel, else that would have been such a nice alternative to fission, until storage sorted.

IMHO

True. Fukushima is also a 2 generation type of nuclear power plant. The new 3 gen plants have more safety built in, as I’m sure you know. I’m also aware that we need to build these nuclear power plants in suitable locations.

Agree with you on the fact that solar/wind cannot exist without a base load way of generation. Unfortunately today that seems to be coal/natural gas in most cases.

In every case where a nuclear accident has happened to date has been 100% because of cost-saving bureaucratic malfeasance.

Chernobyl - The Soviets decided to use a graphite moderator and install graphite tips on their cooling rods. This was an active decision and along with gross negligence caused the failure. Worse is they KNEW it was a potential issue but assumed it could never happen so they did not tell the operators.

Fukushima - Tepco opted NOT to install a sufficient seawall despite multiple warnings, and their regulatory agency was complicit in allowing the facility to operate again KNOWing there was a flood risk. Secondly they knew the backup generators were in the basement and not protected from water ingress regardless of the seawall. They kept operating because it was profitable not to fix the issues.

3 Mile Island - It all came down to a faulty valve signal, and training. Given that this was the worst disaster in the US and “all” it did was cause a partial meltdown that never escaped the facility I think its fair to call this a win, not a loss.

The nuclear fuel in a reactor has NEVER exploded. In every single situation where an accident has happened explosions were always due to secondary systems and inherent design for the generation of reactor. The explosions at Fukushima were caused by hydrogen build up from the chemical reaction between hot Zirconium and water (sea water did not help as its corrosive). The explosion at Chernobyl was caused by steam from flash heating due to uncontrolled neutron flux from the graphite tips.

Nuclear fuel does not go boom. Even nuclear weapons dont actually go boom, the boom comes from initially conventional explosives that are used to compress nuclear fuel to criticality where the energy becomes additive. If you take a uranium or plutonium core and bring it to critical mass it will heat up, burn, and release crap-loads of radiation but its not like shaking nitro glycerine, or potassium tossed into water.

The biggest risk in Nuclear energy today is that rather than investing, and continuing to build and develop new reactors we have been extending the life of nearly 80 year old designs that were done without modern engineering and electronics. They were built before we could really understand everything that was happening with interactions in nuclear chemistry. They were built before we knew that we could burn off trans-uranic materials as fuel in purpose built reactors. They were built for the Navy, not for domestic use, we just bolted on all the civilian tools to the navy’s reactor design.

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Tom Scott had a decent video of students running a reactor.

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Wake up sheeple, we had fusion batteries forever!

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Sabine has some interesting things to say on fusion energy, especially regarding Qtotal vs. Qplasma and especially in light of the recent announcement (this vid was made a year ago): How close is nuclear fusion power? - YouTube

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This is the big issue that the current fleet in the US will soon face. If you look at Russia’s fleet of reactors in the past 2 decades (and France right now), you’ll see they’ve had issues that have forced plants to be shutdown for maintenance. The Russian reactors faced this in the early 2000’s since they are more compact and have higher neutron fluxes → more helium production and radiation damage per year. The reactor components (I.e pressure vessel) had issues with swelling. Swelling means the materials increase in volume (they become more porous due to the voids that are created by radiation damage) and become more brittle.

If you try to anneal out the defects making the materials swell, you may make things worse because the helium already present in the components will further accelerate the swelling at high temperatures.

TLDR: There is a limit to how long we can extend the license of current fission reactors, we will experience the same issues in the US that are currently plaguing French and Russian reactors.

Best solution, take the Amazon approach; do it all. I.e. build renewables, build natural gas + Carbon Capture, build Gen4 Fission, build and fund Fusion. Relying on only one solution won’t work.

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(It’s good that this got carved off into its own, separate, thread.)

Just to be clear, it looks like we all on the same page that:

Renewables (e.g. solar/wind/hydro) > Nuclear Fission > Gas > Coal

Correct?

All of the energy sources have their downsides, but if one were to rank each type of source (as the various technologies stand at the close of 2022), it would be in that order?

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Fusion would produce quite a bit of radioactive waste, or at least ITER is expected to. And I would presume most of the laser based systems do as well (since they all vaporize containers of the fusion material last I heard).
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1741-4326/ac62f7

When people talk about fusion byproducts, they always seem to forget about neutron activation. Not to say that the byproducts overall as much of an issue as it is for fission, but still, not zero.

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It might be an even bigger issue depending on what you make the plasma facing and vacuum vessel components out of. For example if you made the components inside the Toroidal Field (main) magnets out of a nickel superalloy or a niobium/molybdenum containing steel (Inconel 718
or some F/M steel for example), those components would be hotter than Fukushima for 10000 years. If interested, I can post a few activation calculations I’ve done using FISPACT using a fusion neutron spectrum.

These are BIG components (they can occupy more than 2m^3 of volume). Let’s say you had 100 Fusion Reactors in the US, and each Vacuum Vessel took up 2m^3 of material. You’d produce the total amount of radioactive waste the US has stored (~16000 m^3), every 20 years…

That’s why there is a huge push to develop low activation structural materials, but we’re still not quite able to make anything at scale to build these reactors.

This assumes we use DT fusion.

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To be realistic, you need solar, wind, gas (replacing coal), and nuclear (fission now + fusion soon). What you build depends on the location, presence of skilled workers, existing infrastructure, and probably some other factors I’m not aware of.

For example, building wind in Texas is great. Building solar in the northeast US could be questionable. Building natural gas away from all the existing pipelines is downright dumb. Building nuclear in a place without any skilled workers, source of Uranium, or public approval is a big nono.

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I’d rank them

Nuclear>hydro with dams>solar/wind/hydro>natural gas>the rest

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I would tend to agree because crazy enough Nuclear has the lowest footprint and least disruption to the local ecology of any form of power.

I would rank Fusion > Fission > Solar > Wind > Hydro > Gas > Coal

In my perfect world we would co-locate reactors of different types so they can share and refine fuel. Have a thorium reactor breed Uranium, have a PWR create tritium, have a deuterium tritium fusion reactor burn it off… and so on. We should not be investing in just one type of nuclear power we should be using them all so we get the maximum efficiency out of the “waste” products of each.

One of the nice side effects of the Thorium to Uranium reaction is that that U 233 makes fewer trans-uranic elements and splits cleaner. Nuclear including both Fusion and Fission need to be the future of power, they need to be the base on which all the renewable sources sit, and they will be how humans reach the stars. While we can use solar power for many of our activities in near earth orbit, once we go beyond Mars their effectiveness drops using the inverse square law. Solar wind can be used for propulsion but its not really something we can use to spin a turbine. So nuclear will be the future of humanity.

We best get our crap together and make it safe, cheap, and abundant.

Having unilateral rankings for power generation without factoring in where you’re building it is not the right approach. Ignoring Coal, Oil, and Hydro (cause it just physically ruins the environment), all the others should be built case by case. For example, if you were to rank things on a first order basis, Geothermal could be the best, it’s cheap, low-carbon, and easy to integrate with the grid, but it’s so location dependent that not everyone can enjoy the benefits.

Fusion has a long ways to go before it can even be considered but Commonwealth Fusion Systems is really doing a stellar job of building the infrastructure, supply chains, and workforce to get Fusion where it needs to be.

This fuel issue is a great point you bring up!
One of the reasons why the fast breeder reactor idea died out in the 1980s was because of how we just found more Uranium in Australia and Canada. It was cheaper to just find more Uranium than to breed it. Ignoring the uranium in sea water, we have enough uranium in existing mines for the next 30-40 years. Then we just look for more or extract from the Sea piggybacking off tech developed for Lithium extraction.

For Tritium, we will only need to use PWRs to breed tritium for the first of a kind Fusion Reactor (this is super inefficient), then Tritium will be bred via Fusion. First 10s of reactors (if built) will have tritium breeding ratios (TBRs) above ~1.03 to fuel future reactors.

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You are of course absolutely right about this. Coming from Norway I should know this all too well. We have fantastic conditions for hydro power and get between 90-95% of our electricity that way.

@infinitevalence makes a good point though. There really is not just one solution for this, but nuclear power is by far the best base load power generation we have today considering all the factors.

That aside, Fukushima being the concrete example, you can prepare for a once a century earth quake, and 3 meter tsunami, and then nature throws you a 3.5m tsunami.

Ironically the nuclear power station closest to the epicenter of the earthquake that ultimately destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi NPP did exactly this. Two of the reactors will soon be restarted.

From wikipedia, Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant:

The town of Onagawa to the northeast of the plant was largely destroyed by the tsunami[17] which followed the earthquake, but the plant’s 14 meters (46 ft) high seawall was tall and robust enough to prevent the power plant from experiencing severe flooding. Yanosuke Hirai, who died in 1986, is cited as the only person on the entire power station construction project to push for the 14.8-meter breakwater. Although many of his colleagues regarded 12 meters as sufficient, Hirai’s authority eventually prevailed, and Tōhoku Electric spent the extra money to build the 14.8m tsunami wall.

Following the tsunami, two to three hundred residents of the town who lost their homes to the tsunami took refuge in the Onagawa nuclear plant’s gymnasium, as the reactor complex was the only safe area in the vicinity to evacuate to, with the reactor operators supplying food and blankets to the needy.[25] At the time Reuters suggested that the Onagawa nuclear power plant may demonstrate that it is possible for nuclear facilities to withstand the greatest natural disasters, and to retain public trust.[5]

Where Tohoku Electric Power Co. increased the height of their sea wall, Tepco took an opposite approach at Fukushima Daiichi and reduced the height of theirs in order to save money. In the end, the Fukushima disaster didn’t really kill that many people (other than fatalities from the evacuation itself, and certainly in contrast to the massive death toll from the direct effects of the Tsunami), but it did create a mess.

That said, even Chernobyl doesn’t come remotely close to the #1 killer in power generation accidents, however.

From Wikipedia, 1975 Banqiao Dam failure:

The dam collapse created the third-deadliest flood in history which affected a total population of 10.15 million and inundated around 30 cities and counties of 12,000 square kilometers (or 3 million acres), with an estimated death toll ranging from 26,000 to 240,000.[1][3][4][5][6] The flood also caused the collapse of 5 million to 6.8 million houses.[5][7] The dam failure took place when many people were preoccupied with the Cultural Revolution[4]

Sadly, a different attitude was taken during its construction - a strong contrast to the one taken towards Yanosuke Hirai at Onagawa, with disastrous consequences:

Chen Xing, then chief engineer of the dam projects, opposed the ideas of constructing too many dams as well as prioritizing the goal of “retaining water”.[2][5][10] He pointed out that the local geographical conditions made it unreasonable to overly emphasize the reservoir’s function of water storage, because otherwise there was risk of creating serious floods and other disasters such as alkalinization of farm land.[5][6][8] Nevertheless, Chen’s warning was ignored and he was criticized for being a “Rightist” and “Opportunist”; he was subsequently removed from his post and was sent to Xinyang[5][6][8]

The pattern I’m seeing here is not with a particular technology when it comes to prevention of catastrophic failures, but a preference for emphasis on ‘safety culture’.

Another nuclear example, though in the context of the UK’s rushed program to acquire nuclear weapons:

From Wikipedia, Windscale fire:

The presence of the chimney scrubbers at Windscale was credited with maintaining partial containment and thus minimizing the radioactive content of the smoke that poured from the chimney during the fire. These scrubbers were installed at great expense on the insistence of John Cockcroft and were known as Cockcroft’s Folly until the 1957 fire.[42]

Combined with an appropriate response to the disaster: (contrast to Soviet officials not screening milk post-Chernobyl yielding high rates of thyroid cancer)

In the days following the disaster, tests were carried out on local milk samples, and the milk was found to be dangerously contaminated with iodine-131.[65]

It was thus decided that consumption of milk from the surrounding area should be stopped, and eventually restrictions were put in place on the consumption of milk from the 200-square-mile (520 km2) area surrounding the piles.[66] Milk from about 500 km2 of nearby countryside was destroyed (diluted a thousandfold and dumped in the Irish Sea) for about a month.[7] However, no one was evacuated from the surrounding area.

Still, some fatalities:

Their study concluded that because the actual amount of radiation released in the fire could be double the previous estimates, and that the radioactive plume actually travelled further east, there were likely to be 100 to 240 cancer fatalities in the long term as a result of the fire.[3][2]

But nothing close to a similar energy-related incident of the same era:

From Wikipedia, Great Smog of London:

A period of unusually cold weather, combined with an anticyclone and windless conditions, collected airborne pollutants—mostly arising from the use of coal—to form a thick layer of smog over the city. It lasted from Friday 5 December to Tuesday 9 December 1952, then dispersed quickly when the weather changed.[3]

More recent research suggests that the total number of fatalities may have been considerably greater, with estimates of between 10,000 and 12,000 deaths.[1][2]

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Nuclear > Hydro > gas > wind > solar > coal

Solar and wind have a much higher human life cost than nuclear or hydro. Pretty much on par with gas. The benefit of Gas is that it comes on quick and you decide when it’s usable, so I’ll put that over solar and wind because they both are an environmental disaster when it comes to manufacturing and recycling. You ever see what happens to solar panels after their lifetime is used up? Same thing as that sandwich you didn’t quite finish. And the same thing happens to the turbine blades.

Fiberglass can’t be recycled, and solar panels technically can be recycled, but it’s just not cost effective, so nobody does.

Fusion would be great, but we need high capacity base loads now, not in 20 years. So my perspective on nuclear is we need to build fission reactors while we wait for fusion reactors to mature. The ideal fission reactor would be one that has a negative heat coefficient, like a LFTR. Build one of those and they don’t melt down due to the fact that as they get hotter, the reactivity reduces. The US produced proof of concepts around the thorium fuel cycle reactors as far back as the 60s, so we know it can be done. This is not just conjecture.