JasonC SBB

Fusion in France:
When you wish upon a star: nuclear fusion and the promise of a brighter future | Science | The Guardian

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

OMG! A fire and explosion at Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, just a few miles south of me! We're all gonna die!

Transformer sparks fire at nuclear plant - CNN.com




Just kidding. We're not gonna die.

Well, a few of us might. I can't help but worry that the fear-mongers will use this as an excuse as to why the plant needs to be shut down, and of they succeed, the subsequently increased emissions from nearby fossil plants will, statistically, cause a few hundred additional deaths from fine particulate pollution.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

dear joe,

I saw these stacks and thought of you from 16,000ft:


Limerick Generating Station From Above by The Braineack, on Flickr

Love,
Brain.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

A few years ago, I made the following statements:



Apparently, I was wrong.

The so-called "AGA Cooker," invented in Sweeden in 1922 and still popular in much of Europe (and the UK, in particular) is a large cast-iron oven / stove fueled by coal or natgas which is designed to run 24/7. It is, without question, the least-efficient cooking device known to modern man, consuming approximately 3,800% more energy than a conventional gas range (425 kWh per week as compared to 580 kWh per year), and yet it continues to be produced to this very day, being highly sought-after as an upscale, high-end kitchen appliance, with current-gen units selling for upwards of US$10,000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGA_cooker

AGA Cast Iron Ranges




So, people are apparently stupider than I thought.

(This **** would never fly in Germany.)

triple88a

iTrader: (2)

Wendelstein 7-X | Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik

NiklasFalk

iTrader: (1)

UK is always "special".
If the AGA is used as the only source of heat, and you need to keep the housing unisolated to keep the external plumbing from freezing, then the references are different.

Didn't some small Township outside see of London apply known energy saving techniques and reduced consumption by 40% (or was it more).

Radiators at full and regulate by opening the window, on more than one hotel stays on that island.

JasonC SBB

I haven't been following nuclear fusion developments, but now it looks like there's a very tantalizing possibility that cheap, *radiation-free* nuclear energy will be commercially available sooner rather than later. If so, high energy physicists were wrong for decades and were searching for a solution based on their current theories which can't explain how Low Energy Nuclear Reactions work. The device has been granted a patent and a private equity firm has invested money in it.

Cold Fusion Heats Up: Fusion Energy and LENR Update | David H. Bailey

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

An older piece which I came across recently. It's all been said before...

How Deadly Is Your Kilowatt? We Rank The Killer Energy Sources

James Conca, Jun 10, 2012


Everyone’s heard of the carbon footprint of different energy sources, the largest footprint belonging to coal because every kWhr of energy produced emits about 900 grams of CO2. Wind and nuclear have the smallest carbon footprint with only 15 g emitted per kWhr, and that mainly from concrete production, construction, and mining of steel and uranium. Biomass is supposedly carbon neutral as it sucks CO2 out of the atmosphere before it liberates it again later, although production losses are significant depending upon the biomass. Carbon emissions and physical footprints are known as externalities and are those vague someone-has-to-pay-eventually kind of thing it’s hard to put a value on. Proposed carbon footprint taxes are in the range of $15 to $40/ton of CO2 emitted, but assigning a physical footprint cost depends on the region, ecosystem sensitivities and importance. A hundred-acre wetlands to be flooded by a new dam is worth more to the planet than a barren hundred-acre strip under a solar array in the Mojave (P. Bickel and R. Friedrich, 2005).

But an energy’s deathprint, as it is called, is rarely discussed. The deathprint is the number of people killed by one kind of energy or another per kWhr produced and, like the carbon footprint, coal is the worst and wind and nuclear are the best. According to the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Academy of Science and many health studies over the last decade (NAS 2010), the adverse impacts on health become a significant effect for fossil fuel and biofuel/biomass sources (see especially Brian **** for an excellent synopsis). In fact, the WHO has called biomass burning in developing countries a major global health issue (WHO int). The table below lists the mortality rate of each energy source as deaths per trillion kWhrs produced. The numbers are a combination of actual direct deaths and epidemiological estimates, and are rounded to two significant figures.

For coal, oil and biomass, it is carbon particulates resulting from burning that cause upper respiratory distress, kind of a second-hand black lung. Our lungs just don’t like burnt carbonaceous particulates, whether from coal or wood or manure or pellets or cigarettes. The actual numbers of deaths in China from coal use exceeded 300,000 last year since they have ramped up coal so fast in the last decade and they usually do not install exhaust scrubbers. The impact on their health care system has been significant in not just deaths, but in non-lethal health effects and lost days of work.

It is notable that the U.S. death rates for coal are so much lower than for China, strictly a result of regulation and the Clean Air Act (Scott et al., 2005). It is also notable that the Clean Air Act is one of the most life-saving pieces of legislation ever adopted by any country in history. Still, about 10,000 die from coal use in the U.S. each year, and another thousand from natural gas. Hydro is dominated by a few rare large dam failures like Banqiao in China in 1976 which killed about 171,000 people. Workers still regularly fall off wind turbines during maintenance but since relatively little electricity production comes from wind, the totals deaths are small. Nuclear has the lowest deathprint, even with the worst-case Chernobyl numbers and Fukushima projections, uranium mining deaths, and using the Linear No-Treshold Dose hypothesis (see Helman/2012/03/10). The dozen or so U.S. deaths in nuclear have all been in the weapons complex or are modeled from general LNT effects. The reason the nuclear number is small is that it produces so much electricity per unit. There just are not many nuclear plants. And the two failures have been in GenII plants with old designs. All new builds must be GenIII and higher, with passive redundant safety systems, and all must be able to withstand the worst case disaster, no matter how unlikely. We also must deal with our spent fuel better, something we know how to do (Deep Geologic Nuclear Waste Disposal – No New Taxes).

Although it is difficult to assign a cost to these numbers, estimates have suggested a 10% increase in health care costs in countries where coal makes up a significant fraction of the energy mix, like the U.S. and Europe (NAS 2010; Cohen et al., 2005; Pope et al., 2002). These additional health costs begin to rival the total energy costs on an annual basis for the U.S. given that health care costs top $2.6 trillion, and electricity costs only exceed about $400 billion. Another way to describe this human health energy fee is that it costs about 2,000 lives per year to keep the lights on in Beijing but only about 200 lives to keep them on in New York.

Guess that’s just the cost of doing business…

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Nuclear Power Must Make a Comeback for Climate's Sake
James Hansen and other climate scientists argue for more reactors to cut coal consumption
By Gayathri Vaidyanathan, ClimateWire on December 4, 2015


Scientists have now turned their attention to what would be needed after 2030 to meet a 2 C goal: an energy system transformation that emits less carbon. For this, all technology options need to be on the table, including nuclear, the scientists said.

James Hansen, former NASA climate scientist, and three other prominent climate scientists are calling for an enlarged focus on nuclear energy in the ongoing Paris climate negotiations.

"Nuclear, especially next-generation nuclear, has tremendous potential to be part of the solution to climate change," Hansen said during a panel discussion yesterday. "The dangers of fossil fuels are staring us in the face. So for us to say we won't use all the tools [such as nuclear energy] to solve the problem is crazy."

He was joined by Tom Wigley, a climate scientist at the University of Adelaide; Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science; and Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Their stance clashes with those of environmental groups such as Greenpeace that advocate against nuclear energy.

As nations have proposed emissions curbs in Paris up to 2030, scientists have computed that there is a 1-in-2 chance that their collective ambition would raise temperatures in 2100 by between 2.7 to 3.7 degrees Celsius. Nations would like to limit temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius, and stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at 450 parts per million (ppm).

There is 400 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere at present.

So scientists have now turned their attention to what would be needed after 2030 to meet a 2 C goal: an energy system transformation that emits less carbon. For this, all technology options need to be on the table, including nuclear, the scientists said.

At present, there is a worrisome groundswell of opinion that renewable energy is sufficient to hit that target, Wigley of the University of Adelaide said. He is the owner of a zero-asset company, South Australian Nuclear Energy Systems, that educates people on the technology but is not involved with the nuclear industry.

"We are alarmed by people who want to close the door on nuclear, and so that is why we are more outspoken than we might have been a few years ago," he said in a phone interview.

Very few nations, at present, mention nuclear in their greenhouse gas emissions reduction pledges, he said. Given the long time needed to build a nuclear power plant, nations should prioritize the technology immediately, he said.

The scientists stressed that even a 2 C target might not be effective. Hansen has previously emphasized that sea-level rise could threaten coastal areas even if that target is met.

Can new nukes be a cheaper alternative?

If nations meet their Paris pledges, called intended nationally determined contributions, or INDCs, and continue decarbonizing beyond 2030 at a rate of 5 percent, there is more than a 3-in-4 chance that a 4 C temperature rise could be avoided. That much warming could trigger irreversible tipping points in the Earth system and catastrophic climate change. The findings were published in Science.

The United States' INDC up to 2030 would require the nation to decarbonize at a rate of 6 percent. China will have to decarbonize at 4 percent.

The Paris pledges make it more probable than before that nations will meet 2 C, provided that the world decarbonizes rapidly after 2030, said Allen Fawcett, chief of U.S. EPA's Climate Economics Branch and lead author of the study. Nations are negotiating in Paris mechanisms to review their climate goals every five years and ratchet up their ambitions.

"Paris is a steppingstone to a better climate future," Fawcett said. "Each additional contribution and each additional increase in ambition that countries make under the Paris framework will help improve our chances of limiting future warming."

Beyond 2030, nations would need a portfolio of technology options to decarbonize, said Gokul Iyer, a researcher with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's (PNNL) Joint Global Change Research Institute and a co-author of the study.

"That is going to entail premature retirements of fossil fuel power plants, and also additional renewable, nuclear and carbon capture and sequestration power plants," Iyer said.

If the nuclear energy option is ignored, nations would have to pay a larger bill to achieve their goals, Fawcett said.

"The more technology is available and the more different opportunities you have for reducing emissions, the less costly those pathways [to 2 C] tend to be," he said.

Or can renewables go it alone?

Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, is optimistic that the world can meet the 2 C target and, in fact, stabilize emissions at 350 ppm instead of the 450 ppm that the United Nations aspires to, using solely renewable energy.

The technologies for this transformation -- wind, water and solar energy -- already exist, he said. They could entirely replace the world's fossil fuel-based energy system by 2050, if governments will it to be so, he said.

"The only obstacles are social and political," he said. "The only reason why it can't get implemented is because there are people against it."

In Jacobson's energy matrix, nuclear energy does not play a role. Nuclear plants need two decades to build, and the mining of uranium fuel is carbon-polluting, he said.

"It is a a whole distraction, and people should know better than to propose nuclear energy, because people who are working in this field know it is not going to go anywhere," he said.

Instead, Jacobson proposes that the world overcome its sociopolitical barriers and install 80 percent renewables by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050. During times when the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine, he proposes using hydropower to make up the gap.

He said the costs of the transformation would be worth the benefits: 22 million net jobs, the costs of global warming, avoiding unstable energy prices and energy security.

"We can have 100 percent reliable grid across the U.S. without nuclear, without natural gas, without biofuels, with only wind, water, solar, with low-cost storage," he said.

Quick, factory-built nuclear power plants?

Other scientists would like to see more research and development to bring down the costs of the energy transition. The Bill Gates-led Breakthrough Energy Coalition last week announced a $2 billion fund for clean energy research.

"Technological change is going to be a critical element in controlling costs of achieving these stringent targets," Iyer of PNNL said.

Wigley of the University of Adelaide sees improvements on the horizon for nuclear technologies, particularly in China, where modifications of Westinghouse technology could allow new plants to be set up in two to three years.

"There are technological innovations in the wings at the moment that will make it much quicker to build nuclear power stations," he said. "There are technologies that involve modular systems where the components for a large number of power stations can be built in a factory and taken to a site and assembled together."

Every attempt to increase national ambitions would help the world meet the 2 C target, Fawcett of EPA said.

"[It] will have a real and tangible benefits in terms of improving the odds of a better climate outcome, reducing the chance of extreme outcomes, improving our changes of limiting the warming to the lowest levels we can," he said.

Nuclear Power Must Make a Comeback for Climate's Sake - Scientific American

Itty

I really hope that someday the stigma surrounding Nuclear power goes away. All it would take is a little education.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

I find the Mark Jacobson quotes to be... interesting.

I've done some googling on the man, and tracked down a few essays and blogs.

He claims that "The technologies for this transformation -- wind, water and solar energy -- already exist, he said. They could entirely replace the world's fossil fuel-based energy system by 2050, if governments will it to be so" and further proposes that "the world overcome its sociopolitical barriers and install 80 percent renewables by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050."


Two questions come to mind.


One is both technical and boring. I don't have time to pull together the data right now to provide supporting sources, but the fact is that, given present-day conversion technologies, providing for 100% of energy demand (including conversion of fossil-driven heating and transportation needs to electrical or electrically-separated hydrogen) simply requires more surface area than exists on earth. And that's assuming that the population doesn't grow between now and 2050, nor the energy demands of developing nations increase.



The second, and most obvious, is to ask when was the last time that all nations and peoples of the world overcame their sociopolitical barriers and acted in concern to achieve a common goal. The most recent example I've been able to find occurred roughly 4,000 BC, and involved the only two then-living humans on earth (according to the literature) jointly conspiring against God.

It ended poorly.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Honest observation:

I'm still trying to figure out how this stigma, which I acknowledge exists, got attached to nuclear energy in the first place. Why do so many people fear the safest, cleanest, and most reliable means of energy production ever devised by man?

Itty

People are afraid of what they don't understand.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

The vast majority of people don't understand how cars work, but they drive them.

The vast majority of people don't understand how electricity and electromagnetism work, but they use electrical appliances and vibrating dildoes.

The vast majority of people don't understand how a cat works, but a lot of people still have cats.

The vast majority of people don't understand how the municipal domestic water & sewer systems work, but they still take showers and poop in toilets.


There just seem to be certain things which get tagged for special fear, despite being no more dangerous than things which we take for granted every day, if not less so.

Handguns, for instance.

Or genetically-modified foods.

Or nuclear energy.

Itty

You make some excellent points. Although people were scared of internal combustion and electricity when they were first introduced.

I suspect that over time - especially if we see more plants being built and used without issues - people will get "used to" Nuclear power and that stigma will begin to disappear.

czubaka

iTrader: (3)

This seems like an appropriate response:

NiklasFalk

iTrader: (1)

On a global scale, we cares about Three Mile Island and Tjernobyl. The CO2-levels act on different scale (not all nuclear waste have enormous half-life).

Just make up your mind how your gonna be fucked.

Nuclear, yellow and blue is a nice mix. No single one can give all we want.
Then make gasoline out of the green, for $30 per gallon

xturner

People tend to be unable to deal with scientific fact, when faced with a competing narrative involving emotion - especially irrational fear.

"The China Syndrome," which was essentially a melodramatic exercise in fear of technology, fuzzy pseudo-science and government fecklessness, was released in 1979, just in time for the 60's-era back-to-nature generation to hit their peak reproductive years. It confirmed their worst fears of what the government would allow to happen to their progeny.

Just about 2 weeks later, Three Mile Island occurred.

"See? See? What did I tell you?" It will happen, because it already has! 2-thousand year half-life of contamination.

Nuclear power is Thalidomide forever!

Brought to you with lulz by the older portion of my generation. I wish it were otherwise, but I was babysitting my 4- and 2-year old niece and nephew so my older brother and his wife could go to see China Syndrome with some friends. Afterwards they came back and had a drink and discussed. I was actually embarrassed by their takeaway, but left them alone in their hand wringing. And these were a bunch of ostensibly educated(mostly Ivy-leaguers) folks.

This same age group now pretty much runs the world.

rleete

iTrader: (21)

Most of the pushback against nukes is not the plants themselves, but the waste, and storage/transportation of it.

triple88a

iTrader: (2)

Solar Farm Rejected Over Fears It Could Drain The Sun, Cause Cancer | IFLScience

By a vote of 3-1, council members approved the rejection of the planned rezoning on the grounds of concerns that had been raised by the public. For instance, Woodland resident Jane Mann, a retired science teacher, feared that vegetation in the area would suffer through a lack of photosynthesis, an energy-making process that requires sunlight. Her anecdotal evidence comes in the form of dead plants she has observed around solar panels. Disappointingly, she is not alone in her beliefs: another resident also said that the farm would suck up the Sun’s energy.