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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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The problem is that there a major, major shortage of one of the isotopes needed to re-enrich weapons grade uranium (pu 238). Thats before you get to the vast energy inefficiency of doing it which isn't a problem, if you're just decommissioning them anyway and you don't care about energy consumption. However, in this instance, you would need to worry about energy consumption as well as the isotope there won't be enough of to convert even a fraction of it.
Again, even if you had 100 years, there aren't enough of the specialist minerals needed for hydro storage and renewables.
Essentially theres" a hole in our bucket."
The only answer is degrowth.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/02/nuclear-waste-us-could-power-the-us-for-100-years.html
What specialist materials are we talking about? Wind, solar, and pumped hydro use primarily copper, silicon, carbon, and concrete.
I'm not saying it can't be converted or that the amount couldn't, if refined, potentially fuel America for a number of years. So, I'm not sure what the link was for. I said its not feasible, due to the inefficiency of doing it on mass.
What about the energy transition materials like lithium, nickel and cobalt? We don't have enough of those. All the windmills in the world won't help, if you can't convert motion into electricity.
Even then, copper looks to be facing an impending shortage. More still, refining enough silicone to supply the world with and keep up with increased demand of energy would have a colossal carbon footprint, almost big enough to cancel out the benefit. You'll have to start refining soil thats 0.000000000001% silicone before you got even halfway through. Yeah, we have loads of these things but getting enough of it, in a pure enough form, to power the whole world simply isn't realistic.
We can't keep up with the speed that we increase our energy usage with the resources we have on the planet. Its a circular problem with only one solution. I'm not saying we have to go back to the primitive. We just have the treat the planet as though its resources are finite.
They'll sell us any flavour of distraction other than "work less, do less, slow down and enjoy life more." Whatever way you cut it, its the only answer.
You seem to be trying to push a narrative that I don't oppose as if I do. I support degrowth but your reasons are flawed.
Pumped Hydro, solar, and wind don't really use lithium, nickel, or cobalt. Those are mostly used in NCM Liion cells that none of these use. Permanent magnets would probably be the biggest headache tbh.
Idk why we'd need silicone, we're not making sex toys here. /s silicon is most common in sand and rocks, something there is plenty of basically everywhere.
I don't care what you're saying for this circular problem. I've literally not addressed it once because I agree with you, I just don't agree with your reasoning.
Neo magnets would be an issue to scale, but there are previous generation magnet material that will work just fine. It’s not as strong is all.
Most of the big generators on the grid don't even have permanent magnets. They use electromagnets. This means they need some electricity to be added to get them started up, but once they are running they are self-sustaining. Normally that initial jolt is provided by backup generator or by battery.
The posts are interesting (I didn’t look at all of them) but I am weary of accepting all the conclusions drawn. S/He states a lot of facts, but then does a “therefore it must be (this)”
Pushing a narrative is an interesting description of it.
You have to be able to store energy from renewables. How do you plan to store it without those? How to you plan for the shortfall of natural energy compared to energy consumption when you can't meet it with nuclear?
I'm saying you because you're claiming my reasons are flawed. I'm glad we agree on degrowth though.
Its late here and maybe I got confused. I thought I was talking about refined silicon though. Even though that's still wrong lol.
If you're refuting my reasons for degrowth on the basis that we can use nuclear and renewables to get around it, then its a circular problem. The energy needed to make enough to do it, with our current energy usage, with a rising population would cause so much carbon emissions. They're just so inefficient.
What would your reasons for degrowth be then? I'd genuinely like to know.
Go read my other comment. Batteries don't need rare materials for grid scale storage. It's the small ones in phones that need things like Nickel, Cobalt, and Lithium to be as energy dense as possible. Grid storage began phasing out Nickel and Cobalt a while ago and will eventually phase out Lithium as Sodium batteries get better and cheaper.
Current nuclear is a sad joke compared to what we learned we could do even 50 years ago. The initial investment for nuclear is always expensive, but the pay off is cheap energy for like 40 or 50 years. While it does release CO2 to make new reactors there are ways around even that. Using less or no concrete would be a great start. Making iron is kind of hard though, I will give you that. Maybe we will have to switch to aluminum or something.
Consumer electronics are probably the biggest problem we can't solve right now. That's why we need devices made to last and things like the right to repair. Getting rid of individual vehicles would really help too, as trains can accept power straight from the grid without needing huge batteries.
But they haven't phased them out and we have nothing close to the grid storage we would need to switch to renewables. Even then, they will never provide the amount of energy we need to meet current usage.
At our current rate of usage, we will run out of viable uranium sources within 80 years. If we switched the worlds energy to nuclear, it wouldn't last 5.
The only realistic option is for the world to use less.
This is completely absurd as I keep telling you. The vast majority of the uranium in "spent" nuclear fuel is untouched. Current reactors are a joke compared to what even the Soviet Union could come up with in 1980. Imagine leaving over 90% of your meal on the table and calling it spent.
You can declare it to be thus and such all you like. I keel telling you, we will run out of what we know exists now within 80 or 90 years, at current usage.
You just don't like it and that's not the same as it not being true.
I keep telling you, the energy cost of doing it makes it non viable, as any kind of meaningful solution but you keep repeating it all the same.
What do keels have to do with nuclear power? Unless we are talking about submarines?
No it isn't true. For a start you are focusing only on concentrated diposits. There is enough uranium to last humanity in sea water for 100 years, it's just hard to get at. You're also completely ignoring U-238, and Thorium. You haven't even provided a source once. Since apparently sources aren't necessary I might as well tell you that there is enough uranium in you're house to power the entire world for a billion years and that you need to stop hoarding it. See I can make up things too.
What energy cost? Reactors produce energy on average, not remove it. That's as true for the fast breeder reactors I sourced as it is for conventional nuclear reactors. Do you actually have any evidence for any of this bullshit?
Sources aren't necessarily for widely accepted facts. You just don't like what you're hearing and want to sealion it away.
Like I said, getting it and refining it is the problem.
Don't worry, its clear that you've been making things up the whole time. I'm happy to provide sources for serious people, having serious conversations. Not you and your jokes.
You provided one source that fast breeder reactors were built in the former soviet union. Had you been refuting me saying "no other fuel can ever be used" it might have been a useful link. However, I didn't. So, it wasn't useful.
Reactors don't produce or create energy. They release it. Are you trying to tell me that you literally can't understand a scenario where the energy cost of refining and or gathering something could be more than what is eventually released?
If you think I'm going to waste my life researching links to prove, to your personal satisfaction, everything that you just plain don't like then you really are deluded.
It's not a widely accepted fact at all. Ask three different scientists and you will get three different anwsers.
It isn't sealioning when I provide sources and you don't.
Where have I done that? I am the one coming at you with actual sources and reading material. You have no proof. They say every accusation is a confession, and that's exactly what this is.
Actually I did. Twice no less. I gave you the Thorium fuel cycle, where you make your own Uranium from Thorium. I also gave the fuel cycle using U-238, which is a different isotope to the U-235 used by current reactors.
I am out right now but I can point you to more sources and better explanations of fuel cycles than mine feel free to ask. Honestly though I think you would just ignore them anyway. If you want to find them yourself look at the molten salt reactor experiments, progress made on LFTR reactors, or the third shipping port reactor in the USA. Those are all experimental I will admit, which is why I pointed to the Soviet and Russian reactors first that produce and use Plutonium, as those are less experimental.
Note I am not talking about fusion reactor technology, as while that's very promising it isn't even close to being implemented. If that does become viable at some point then all of this becomes irrelevant anyway, as fusion is likely to be the best available power source at that point.
Okay so maybe my wording is a little off I will give you that. You are correct that energy is neither created nor destroyed.
Yeah, I stopped reading at the lazy recycled rhetoric.
As you love sources to much, provide a source showing that our energy consumption can increase perpetually
Or is that not how things work?
You mean like the rhetoric you have been using this entire time?
That's not what I am saying. Go and read up on what fertile and fissile are. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertile_material
You can convert a fertile material to a fissile material, then fission that to produce energy. The energy though was already in the fertile material to begin with plus a little bit from the neutrons you added. Eventually you will run out of fertile material, but that's a long way away. For example's sake you would might start with Th-232 which is fertile, add a neutron to get U-233, then fission U-233 to get energy plus some smaller elements called fission products. All of this is nuclear engineering 101. I am not a nuclear physicist and even I understand this.
You can't call everything you don't understand or don't know about made up. It would actually be funny if it wasn't so depressing. The lack of scientific literacy some people have, and the unwillingness to learn you and others demonstrate is truly sad. It wouldn't even be so bad if you were willing to admit you don't know and just walk away. I can understand and respect not caring about nuclear enough to actually research it so long as you are willing to admit that. Instead you are sat there arguing about basic principles of nuclear physics and engineering, the kind of things I learned in sixth form, and calling me a liar just because I know more than you do.