Wind, Solar... Pfffttt! Go Nuclear!

[Sugarphreak]

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[M.alex]

That's right, we get alllll upset over a little pollution from a coal plant, but let's go slapping nuclear power plants down all over the place, no problems there :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

//yes I read the article and no I don't want any form of nuclear anywhere remotely near me

[BerserkerCatSplat]

I've long been of the opinion that nuclear is a great power source to bridge a change to renewable sources and/or supplement renewables. It's good to see that development of the new generation of reactors is making progress. Modern reactors are extremely safe and I'd have no qualms about living near one.

[mazdavirgin]

Originally posted by M.alex
That's right, we get alllll upset over a little pollution from a coal plant, but let's go slapping nuclear power plants down all over the place, no problems there :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

//yes I read the article and no I don't want any form of nuclear anywhere remotely near me

:facepalm: Yup here we have another anti-science zealot. Coal plants release more radioactivity than nuclear plants.



A 500 megawatt coal plant produces 3.5 billion kilowatt-hours per year, enough to power a city of about 140,000 people. It burns 1,430,000 tons of coal, uses 2.2 billion gallons of water and 146,000 tons of limestone.

It also puts out, each year:

10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide. Sulfur dioxide (SOx) is the main cause of acid rain, which damages forests, lakes and buildings.

10,200 tons of nitrogen oxide. Nitrogen oxide (NOx) is a major cause of smog, and also a cause of acid rain.

3.7 million tons of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the main greenhouse gas, and is the leading cause of global warming. There are no regulations limiting carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S.

500 tons of small particles. Small particulates are a health hazard, causing lung damage. Particulates smaller than 10 microns are not regulated, but may be soon.

220 tons of hydrocarbons. Fossil fuels are made of hydrocarbons; when they don't burn completely, they are released into the air. They are a cause of smog.

720 tons of carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide (CO) is a poisonous gas and contributor to global warming.

125,000 tons of ash and 193,000 tons of sludge from the smokestack scrubber. A scrubber uses powdered limestone and water to remove pollution from the plant's exhaust. Instead of going into the air, the pollution goes into a landfill or into products like concrete and drywall. This ash and sludge consists of coal ash, limestone, and many pollutants, such as toxic metals like lead and mercury.

225 pounds of arsenic, 114 pounds of lead, 4 pounds of cadmium, and many other toxic heavy metals. Mercury emissions from coal plants are suspected of contaminating lakes and rivers in northern and northeast states and Canada. In Wisconsin alone, more than 200 lakes and rivers are contaminated with mercury. Health officials warn against eating fish caught in these waters, since mercury can cause birth defects, brain damage and other ailments. Acid rain also causes mercury poisoning by leaching mercury from rocks and making it available in a form that can be taken up by organisms.

Trace elements of uranium. All but 16 of the 92 naturally occurring elements have been detected in coal, mostly as trace elements below 0.1 percent (1,000 parts per million, or ppm). A study by DOE's Oak Ridge National Lab found that radioactive emissions from coal combustion are greater than those from nuclear power production.


Coal is also responsible for more deaths worldwide.



A 2010 study by the Clean Air Task Force estimated that air pollution from coal-fired power plants accounts for more than 13,000 premature deaths, 20,000 heart attacks, and 1.6 million lost workdays in the U.S. each year. The total monetary cost of these health impacts is over $100 billion annually.


But yeah nuclear is scary so scary they had to rename MRI's so they don't include the word nuclear. :facepalm: Queue more anti science idiocy.

[Unknown303]

Pretty awesome to see this type of reactor becoming a reality.

[suntan]

MSRs have been around forever. Just someone got a lot of money to build yet another one that may or may not work.

[Sugarphreak]

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[suntan]

Fusion. Keep waiting. It'll happen eventually. Then Alberta's economy will crumble.

[jacky4566]

I read about this type of plant a while ago.

The best part is the freeze plug. If all the safety features fail then the freeze plug melts and the sludge goes into an underground vault where it can be sealed off. The site is abandoned but there is no mess to clean up. No leakage

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Molten_Salt_Reactor.svg

[Sugarphreak]

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[suntan]

I was thinking wireless power transmission.

I suppose planes would need fossil fuels still. That would piss off all the urban dipshits that walk to work but go on carbon spewing vacations.

[Cos]

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[Rowdy]

Hopefully someone can educate me on this but....

What type of system, or what is it that is different with the small nuclear reactors that the US Navy uses in it's submarines and its carriers? How much energy are one of those systems capable of producing? How do they manage the fuel and the waste?

[Cos]

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[JustinL]

Originally posted by Sugarphreak
Not until they can either mount them into cars, or better battery technology comes along. Electric cars even in their current state are useless for doing anything other than going a short distance to work and back, never mind transport trucks and rail locomotives.


Lockheed Martin's Skunkworks has been working on a compact fusion reactor that sounds promising. Could be vaporware, but if they nail it, problem solved.

http://www.lockheedmartin.ca/us/products/compact-fusion.html

[ZenOps]

Thorium with molten salt lithium 5. Extra tasty goodness.

I could have sworn that they got approval for it up in Alaska, but it never materialized.

They will probably have to restart several nuclear power plants in California to power desalination plants that clean and pump more than 10 million gallons of water per day.

[killramos]

Originally posted by JustinL


Lockheed Martin's Skunkworks has been working on a compact fusion reactor that sounds promising. Could be vaporware, but if they nail it, problem solved.

http://www.lockheedmartin.ca/us/products/compact-fusion.html

Considering fusion is the kind of thing that is easier to do on a larger scale. And still cannot be done sustainable, i put just about 0 credence to that.

Not to mention if something was actually being worked on by lockheed skunkworks. It wouldn't be on the bloody website.

PR stunt.

[suntan]

Originally posted by Rowdy
Hopefully someone can educate me on this but....

What type of system, or what is it that is different with the small nuclear reactors that the US Navy uses in it's submarines and its carriers? How much energy are one of those systems capable of producing? How do they manage the fuel and the waste? Nothing different about it, it's just that people are hysterical about fission.

[suntan]

Originally posted by Sugarphreak
Not until they can either mount them into cars, or better battery technology comes along. Electric cars even in their current state are useless for doing anything other than going a short distance to work and back, never mind transport trucks and rail locomotives.

Graphine might do it, but I havn't heard any new developments about this in the last year or so. I think it might be a dead end.


On the flip side, I am going to laugh my ass off if Hemp ends up being the super plant that will save the Earth as baked hippies have been promoting all along:
http://www.ibtimes.com/battery-made-hemp-plant-based-supercapacitor-better-graphene-study-finds-1657512 No need for "Mr. Fusion", fuel cells will work well for the purpose if fusion is a reality.

[A790]

Originally posted by Sugarphreak
Not until they can either mount them into cars, or better battery technology comes along. Electric cars even in their current state are useless for doing anything other than going a short distance to work and back, never mind transport trucks and rail locomotives.

Graphine might do it, but I havn't heard any new developments about this in the last year or so. I think it might be a dead end.


On the flip side, I am going to laugh my ass off if Hemp ends up being the super plant that will save the Earth as baked hippies have been promoting all along:
http://www.ibtimes.com/battery-made-hemp-plant-based-supercapacitor-better-graphene-study-finds-1657512
You know that you can buy electric cars that have a range of 350km+, right? Hardly "useless" or limited to "short distances to work".

[suntan]

Originally posted by Cos
Ivanpah Solar plant uses enough gas to smooth out export that it still has to qualify for Cap-Trade. :rofl: Still an efficient little bastard but far from a total solution.





http://www.utilitydive.com/news/ivanpah-csp-project-burns-enough-natural-gas-to-qualify-for-ca-cap-and-trad/409138/ Not a surprise, all renewables sources need backing power.

[Cos]

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[suntan]

* facepalm *

[Sugarphreak]

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[kertejud2]

For those who haven't watched it, Pandora's Promise is a really good documentary that is on Netflix about nuclear power

bDw3ET3zqxk

[Tik-Tok]

Originally posted by Sugarphreak


You know you responded to a post from 2014 right? There were no cars that went 350km+ when I had posted that ;)


Oh snap, he got time-bOwned.

[A790]

Originally posted by Sugarphreak


You know you responded to a post from 2014 right? There were no cars that went 350km+ when I had posted that ;)

Also, even today the Nissan leaf only goes 150km... and Tesla isn't exactly a viable option for the average person. Besides if you actually tried to go 350km, we all know it would end with your car on a flat bed.
The Model S started being delivered to owners in 2012 and had a Motor Trend tested range of 238 miles (or around 380km).

Other than that, didn't realize it was a 2014 post ;)

[FixedGear]

I've said it here before, the earth is a giant discharging battery and human life here is fucked.

http://pnas.org/content/112/31/9511.abstract

Link for folks that can't access above: https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/pnas-2015-schramski-1508353112.pdf

Journalist's take for people like sugarphreak that can't be bothered to read about what they want to learn: http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/08/10/Earth-Battery-Running-Low/

[Sugarphreak]

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[FixedGear]

It's a news article - the actual paper I posted is from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, one of the top science journals in the world.

[Sugarphreak]

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[FixedGear]

It's a good article, if you're too biased to read it then it's your own loss. I didn't expect you to read it anyway. Ignorance is bliss, right?

[Sugarphreak]

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[01RedDX]

.

[kdwebber]

Originally posted by Sugarphreak


"The Earth is like a dying cell phone at an airport, says Schramski, but with no rechargeable plug in sight."

That's deep man...

If you honestly can't see that that rag of a newspaper is just as filled with BS & bias as Fox News or The Rebel, you are not as keen as I thought you were.

You are attacking the source which is essentially an ad hominem attack. You would be best served to attack the science but as others have suggested you can't be bothered to read and understand the science behind the article, which is what I'm about to do.

[revelations]

Originally posted by FixedGear
I've said it here before, the earth is a giant discharging battery and human life here is fucked.

http://pnas.org/content/112/31/9511.abstract

Link for folks that can't access above: https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/pnas-2015-schramski-1508353112.pdf

Journalist's take for people like sugarphreak that can't be bothered to read about what they want to learn: http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/08/10/Earth-Battery-Running-Low/

I must say, as educated as the author is, he misses the mark. The OCEANS contain the majority of life (biomass), energy and are the driving force of our planet.

I could just as easily make the clam that the interstellar electric grid will keep providing Earth with essentially unlimitlessness energy.

The whole notion of GAIA comes to mind (the planet itself is an organism). How exactly do you go about proving this?

[FixedGear]

I don't follow your point - are you saying that the paper didn't consider oceans? What makes you think that?

[FixedGear]

I should point out that this is a peer-reviewed paper published in one of the few most selective scientific journals in the world. Thus there are not going to be obvious gaping flaws in the work.

[BandW]

Originally posted by mazdavirgin


:facepalm: Yup here we have another anti-science zealot. Coal plants release more radioactivity than nuclear plants.



Coal is also responsible for more deaths worldwide.



But yeah nuclear is scary so scary they had to rename MRI's so they don't include the word nuclear. :facepalm: Queue more anti science idiocy.

Fukushima has been contaminating some 100,000 gallons of ocean water per day for 5 years now.

[revelations]

Originally posted by FixedGear
I don't follow your point - are you saying that the paper didn't consider oceans? What makes you think that?

He mentions the oceans, but assigns them a far lesser importance than I think he should.

[FixedGear]

^how so? The data include oceanic phytomass. I didn't see him assign importance anywhere - it's just counting carbon. :dunno:

[Unknown303]

Just face it guys FixedGear is right. There's no sense arguing with him. After all he posted a peer reviewed paper....

[FixedGear]

Originally posted by Unknown303
Just face it guys FixedGear is right. There's no sense arguing with him. After all he posted a peer reviewed paper....

Looks like you finally get it bro. :love:

[mazdavirgin]

Originally posted by BandW


Fukushima has been contaminating some 100,000 gallons of ocean water per day for 5 years now.

:facepalm: Yeah and the sun fires more scary radiation at you than Fukushima ever will. Take a ride in a plane and bingo you're now a getting millions times more exposure than Fukushima .

But eh radiation is scary so let's just be rabid morons and protest the scary stuff we don't understand. Nuclear it's like witches! Burn em!

[BandW]

Originally posted by mazdavirgin


:facepalm: Yeah and the sun fires more scary radiation at you than Fukushima ever will. Take a ride in a plane and bingo you're now a getting millions times more exposure than Fukushima .

But eh radiation is scary so let's just be rabid morons and protest the scary stuff we don't understand. Nuclear it's like witches! Burn em!

Well isn't the concern the bio-accumulation causing disease in humans?

[mazdavirgin]

Originally posted by BandW
Well isn't the concern the bio-accumulation causing disease in humans?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/11/16/fukushima-radiation-in-pacific-tuna-is-equal-to-one-twentieth-of-a-banana/

Better stop eating bananas...

[Sugarphreak]

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[suntan]

Originally posted by mazdavirgin


http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/11/16/fukushima-radiation-in-pacific-tuna-is-equal-to-one-twentieth-of-a-banana/

Better stop eating bananas... I think smoking is the #1 source of ionizing radiation for humans.