As Dirty Oil Passes Away, Nuclear Energy Begins to Take Over
- Thread starter mentalfloss
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Well I'm glad that reducing carbon emissions is good for you.
But it's good for you (3 seconds ago)
It is.
You being so upset has you believing that a higher oil price and the construction of a refinery are exactly the same thing.
... Albeit, related in terms of resource sector, they are not identical
Vertical integration is the way to go
industry is OK right now, but with a rising price, my netbacks get stronger and stronger.
How's the finance industry treating you?.... Suffering from carpal tunnel with all that opening and closing of the till?
How's the finance industry treating you?.... Suffering from carpal tunnel with all that opening and closing of the till?
Those scientific advances are already here. Although in some cases, the advance was made decades ago. Look at molten salt reactors. The concept has been around since the 60s, the technology has been proven since and to put it bluntly, MSRs are superior to the current generation of NPPs by a large margin. They're safer, cleaner, more efficient and if done correctly could even be relatively inexpensive compared to the current crop of NPPs.
There are also new core configurations. One such design makes it virtually impossible for the reactor to suffer a physical melt down.
Oh yes, new nuclear technology is definitely out there. The question is, are govts willing to pay the cost for them?
As for your statement that nuclear power as we know it is deader than a door nail, there is one sure thing that will revive it. When jurisdictions start suffering rolling brown and black outs because they have either no significant base-load generation or no base-load generation at all. Unless you have access to decent hydroelectric potential, what are you going to use for base-load generation since we're eliminating coal and oil while nuclear power falls into more disfavour among the chicken heads?
$12.8B is going into a Darlington refit because wind and renewables are the future.
At 20cents a watt that could be 44GW of solar.
At 20cents a watt that could be 44GW of solar.
Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power
You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.
A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.
Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution. For a clearer view, look at the graphic published by xkcd.com. It shows that the average total dose from the Three Mile Island disaster for someone living within 10 miles of the plant was one 625th of the maximum yearly amount permitted for US radiation workers. This, in turn, is half of the lowest one-year dose clearly linked to an increased cancer risk, which, in its turn, is one 80th of an invariably fatal exposure. I'm not proposing complacency here. I am proposing perspective.
If other forms of energy production caused no damage, these impacts would weigh more heavily. But energy is like medicine: if there are no side-effects, the chances are that it doesn't work.
Like most greens, I favour a major expansion of renewables. I can also sympathise with the complaints of their opponents. It's not just the onshore windfarms that bother people, but also the new grid connections (pylons and power lines). As the proportion of renewable electricity on the grid rises, more pumped storage will be needed to keep the lights on. That means reservoirs on mountains: they aren't popular, either.
The impacts and costs of renewables rise with the proportion of power they supply, as the need for storage and redundancy increases. It may well be the case (I have yet to see a comparative study) that up to a certain grid penetration – 50% or 70%, perhaps? – renewables have smaller carbon impacts than nuclear, while beyond that point, nuclear has smaller impacts than renewables.
Like others, I have called for renewable power to be used both to replace the electricity produced by fossil fuel and to expand the total supply, displacing the oil used for transport and the gas used for heating fuel. Are we also to demand that it replaces current nuclear capacity? The more work we expect renewables to do, the greater the impact on the landscape will be, and the tougher the task of public persuasion.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima
You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.
A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.
Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution. For a clearer view, look at the graphic published by xkcd.com. It shows that the average total dose from the Three Mile Island disaster for someone living within 10 miles of the plant was one 625th of the maximum yearly amount permitted for US radiation workers. This, in turn, is half of the lowest one-year dose clearly linked to an increased cancer risk, which, in its turn, is one 80th of an invariably fatal exposure. I'm not proposing complacency here. I am proposing perspective.
If other forms of energy production caused no damage, these impacts would weigh more heavily. But energy is like medicine: if there are no side-effects, the chances are that it doesn't work.
Like most greens, I favour a major expansion of renewables. I can also sympathise with the complaints of their opponents. It's not just the onshore windfarms that bother people, but also the new grid connections (pylons and power lines). As the proportion of renewable electricity on the grid rises, more pumped storage will be needed to keep the lights on. That means reservoirs on mountains: they aren't popular, either.
The impacts and costs of renewables rise with the proportion of power they supply, as the need for storage and redundancy increases. It may well be the case (I have yet to see a comparative study) that up to a certain grid penetration – 50% or 70%, perhaps? – renewables have smaller carbon impacts than nuclear, while beyond that point, nuclear has smaller impacts than renewables.
Like others, I have called for renewable power to be used both to replace the electricity produced by fossil fuel and to expand the total supply, displacing the oil used for transport and the gas used for heating fuel. Are we also to demand that it replaces current nuclear capacity? The more work we expect renewables to do, the greater the impact on the landscape will be, and the tougher the task of public persuasion.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima
Your problem is that you don't fully appreciate the word renewable.
Oil is renewable, it never stops being perkolated out of a planet.
Oil is renewable, it never stops being perkolated out of a planet.