135
submitted 23 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) by Dot@feddit.org to c/technology@lemmy.world

nuclear power produces long-lived radioactive waste, which needs to be stored securely. Nuclear fuels, such as the element uranium (which needs to be mined), are finite, so the technology is not considered renewable. Renewable sources of energy, such as solar and wind power suffer from “intermittency”, meaning they do not consistently produce energy at all hours of the day.

fusion technologies have yet to produce sustained net energy output (more energy than is put in to run the reactor), let alone produce energy at the scale required to meet the growing demands of AI. Fusion will require many more technological developments before it can fulfil its promise of delivering power to the grid.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 1 points 3 minutes ago

I was under the impression that the major two advantages of fusion were exponentially more power output, provided we can actually sustain it, and no radioactive byproducts....

[-] mvirts@lemmy.world 1 points 8 minutes ago

Man this article is terribly off base compared to the title.

[-] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Really shitty scaremongering article. I'd like to know how exactly increased investment in fusion could potentially make it unsuitable for public use, as the article claims?

[-] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 19 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Quiet!!

If the tech brows wanna dump money into developing renewable energy systems, detaching themselves from our main power grid they currently destabilize. Let them!

[-] Rolive@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 6 hours ago

Huh. Buzzword fueled stupidity might have a positive effect for once.

[-] Cryophilia@lemmy.world 2 points 57 minutes ago

"AI hype trash accidentally solves global energy issues and ends fossil fuels" was not on my bingo card, but I'll take it lol

[-] x00z@lemmy.world 21 points 11 hours ago

I don't see why we are hating on the waste like this. Yes it's very dangerous waste, but the amount is quite small, and if we store them safely, as shown in Tom Scott's video on Nuclear Storage in Finland, it's actually a very good solution for the time being.

[-] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 hours ago

I hate on the waste that pushes AI in everything.

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 5 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Maybe Tom Scott should make a video about the Asse salt mine. It's where the "yellow barrel == nuclear waste" meme comes from look here a picture.

This stuff is the driving factor behind nuclear energy being a political no-go in Germany: We just don't trust anyone, including ourselves, to do it properly. Sufficiently failure-proof humans have yet to be invented. Then, aside from that: Fission is expensive AF, and that's before considering that they don't have to pay for their own insurance because no insurance company would take on the contract.

Fusion OTOH has progressed to a point where it's actually around the corner, when the Max Planck institute is spinning out a company to commercialise it you know it's the real deal. And they did.

[-] Etterra@lemmy.world 9 points 10 hours ago

"if we store them safely" - here's the problem with the entire argument. Nobody wants to pay for it, so they won't unless they are forced to. Carbon capture is a viable technology but it costs money to implement at a net financial loss, so nobody uses that if they don't have to either. The problem is the same as always - nobody who stands to lose money gives a damn. The planet dying is somebody else's concern tomorrow, and profits are their concern today.

[-] mwguy@infosec.pub 3 points 8 hours ago

We've already paid for it though. That's why we built Yucca Mountain.

[-] x00z@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago

Are you talking about the USA? Because I don't see this mentality much outside of it.

But yeah, make it a law and force them.

[-] Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 9 hours ago

At least in Germany it's the same. It gets ignored in the discussions concerning nuclear exit but it's actually the main reason why I'm not aggressively against it: we have save areas for nuclear storage but those fight bitterly to not have it. The areas which are currently used are... Not good. Paying someone else (such as Finland) is out of budget for both state and energy companies. The latter anyway want to do the running but not the maintenance and the building, state should pay for that.

It's really white sad for me. The (true) statement that the dangerous waste needs to be stored carefully got corrupted to "it can't be stored".

[-] cocomutative_diagram@infosec.pub 6 points 11 hours ago

I think a even better solution might be to not unnecessarily waste energies 😉

[-] echodot@feddit.uk 2 points 9 hours ago

It's also not as if there are not other nuclear power stations in existence. There is plenty of storage capacity as you say.

This is just the standard hating everything tech companies do because, AI equals bad

[-] grue@lemmy.world 41 points 18 hours ago

Tech bosses think nuclear fusion is the solution

No they don't; this is literally the first thing I've ever read claiming that. Tech bosses are perfect happy to power AI with nuclear fission and don't give the slightest fuck about the waste.

(As well they shouldn't, TBH, since it really ought to get reprocessed anyway. But that doesn't excuse them for wanting to waste the power on bullshit.)

[-] mwguy@infosec.pub 4 points 8 hours ago

Also nuclear fusion has essentially zero waste.

[-] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 4 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

That turns out to not be true, at least not with the tokamak reactors most groups are pursuing.

You see, at some point you need a shield around the reactor to actually absorb all the high energy particles released, and turn that energy into heat. That's the whole point of the reactor, to generate heat and run a turbine. You absorb those high energy particles with a "blanket", that's just what they call the shield around the reactor.

Here's the issue, absorbing all those high energy particles necessarily results in transmuting the material absorbing them. That blanket becomes brittle and eventually needs to be replaced. Not coincidentally, that blanket is also now radioactive, because you've bombarded it with protons and neutrons and it's now partially made up of unstable, radioactive elements.

So while fission reactors have radioactive fuel rods to dispose of, fusion reactors will have radioactive blankets to dispose of. Who knows if this is an improvement.

[-] crapwittyname@lemm.ee 6 points 6 hours ago

Who knows if this is an improvement.

The Max Planck Institute for Physics knows and spoiler, yes. Yes it is.

[-] echodot@feddit.uk 2 points 9 hours ago

If it ends up working though it's not a waste of power is it? And if it doesn't work then, oh well.

Big tech companies do a lot of cramp, but this one I actually don't really mind. You never know we might actually get the Star Trek utopia we've always wanted from this, it's unlikely but it's not impossible.

[-] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world -3 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

I think people still don't understand what the problem is with fusion. The problem is not that it doesn't work, it will work, and soon. The problem is that everyone seems to think fusion means cheap limitless energy, and that couldn't be further from the truth. When fusion does finally work, it will be the most expensive form of energy available. That's going to be a gamebreaker, right out of the gate.

So far, the only method we know of to guarantee that your reactor will be energy positive is to make it truly enormous. Let me tell you, going truly enormous is not a good way to keep costs down. But let's say you just spent 8 years building a cutting edge fusion power plant and you want it to work smoothly. Well you better hire a large team of nuclear physics PHDs to keep that reactor working, they must be a dime a dozen, right? You'll need them for all the maintenance of your cutting edge reactor, get ready for those maintenance costs to mount up. And be prepared to continue paying for all your staff and facilities even while the reactor is (frequently) power down for maintenance.

Also, you do have an economical way to dispose of nuclear waste right? Because fusion reactors are probably going to generate a significant amount of nuclear waste... That's one of the side effects of actually turning the high energy particles released by the reactor into heat. Those free protons and neutrons get absorbed by a physical shield around the reactor called the blanket. That blanket becomes radioactive over time and needs to be replaced. Congratulations, your clean fusion energy is now producing radioactive waste, and your back to the exact same problems we have with fission.

My advice, keep using the nuclear energy we understand really well at this point, fission. Also, renewables and storage are already a cheaper solution to do exactly the same thing fusion will eventually do. I'm certain that fusion will be a fantastic technology for large spacecraft someday, but I make no promises it will ever become the first choice for general terrestrial power generation.

[-] brey1013@lemmy.world 6 points 4 hours ago

Fusion does not produce nuclear waste.

[-] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

It does, it produces low and intermediate level waste, the waste decays over about a hundred years, not thousands. So it's better, but still an issue requiring management.

[-] crapwittyname@lemm.ee 5 points 6 hours ago

Your comment doesn't stand up. It seems you've got something against fusion energy for some reason.
On cost: it's a best guess, since we don't yet have a working fusion reactor. The error bars on the cost estimates are huge, so while it is possible fusion will be more expensive, with current data you absolutely cannot guarantee it. Add to that the decreasing costs as the technology matures, like we've seen in wind and especially solar over recent decades.
On nuclear physics PhDs: that's no different to any energy generation, you need dozens of experts to build and run any installation.
On waste: where are you getting this info on the blanket? The old beryllium blanket design has been replaced with tungsten and no longer needs to be replaced. The next step is to test a lithium blanket which will actually generate nuclear fuel as the reaction processes.
This is the important fact that you have omitted, for some reason.

Nuclear fusion reactors produce no high activity, long-lived nuclear waste. The activation of components in a fusion reactor is low enough for the materials to be recycled or reused within 100 years

And that is why it's so important this technology is developed. It's incredibly clean and, yes, limitless.

As for your advice, there was a time not long ago when we didn't understand how to build fission plants either, and it cost a lot of time and money to learn how. I wonder if people back then were saying we should just stick to burning coal because we know how that works.

load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
135 points (87.7% liked)

Technology

58753 readers
5789 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS