A bimonthly open thread on climate solutions. Perhaps unsurprisingly this is always the most contentious comment thread on the site, but please try and be constructive and avoid going off on wild tangents.
Reader Interactions
554 Responses to "Forced Responses: May 2021"
David B. Bensonsays
Piotr @395 — Reading about the NuScale module will help relieve your current state of ignorance.
But for all readers, a power reactor cannot be used to make weapons plutonium. Note that both India and Pakistan have only uranium bombs.
nigeljsays
Richard Caldwell @385 (aka The Terminator, The Karate Kid, and Muhammad Ali )
“If I had a magic button that would erase 90+% of humanity painlessly I would be sorely tempted. I do not know what I would do. (Though if I could tweak the magic so as to preferentially eradicate GOPpers… I gotta admit it, I wouldn’t miss you at all MrCUG.)”
Brilliant talking point and tempting perhaps, but this undermines the glue that holds society together : “do no harm to others” and defining undesirable people is not as simple as it seems. Conservatives are a useful brake on excessively rapid and risky change. Liberals are the fundamental source of human progress. And what about some psychopath who has the cure for cancer simmering away in his brain? And with stupid people gone who would do the boring menial jobs? Grand social experiments can go wrong: eg communism and its purges.
There are better ways. Society has been largely improving anyway in a moral sense due to the impact of scientific ways of thinking documented in books like The Moral Arch by Michael Shermer. Even the KIAs of the world get swept along by this eventually or left behind stranded.
RC 385: Do you think China is or will become a military threat beyond their declared boundries (that include Tibet, Taiwan, and the South China Sea?
BPL: The problem with that is that it’s a leading question. By including the phrase “beyond their declared boundaries” you tacitly assume their declared boundaries are legitimate. Sort of the way Russia assumes their declared boundaries implicitly include all of eastern Europe.
n 387: So if wind turbines were used for a fully decarbonised economy not just electricity generation, that is approximately 9.6 million high efficiency turbines. It’s a big number, and ignores a possible need for an overbuild, but it sounds like less of a general all purpose headache than half a million nuclear reactors!
BPL: The crucial disconnect is that a wind turbine requires orders of magnitude less materials, labor, and time to put up than a NuScale reactor. Compared to a nuke, wind turbines are tiny. How many cars do we have in this country? How many houses?
jgnfldsays
Re. “A NuScale module is about 1/10 the size and mass of a Liberty ship, which the USA was producing at a rate of 3 per day at one point in WWII…[therefore]…30 NuScales per day …”
A poet you perhaps are. Can’t say I’ve seen any worth reading. An engineer you are NOT.
Richard the Weaversays
Piotr: But HALF A MILLION of them? That’s
RtW: Yeah, it’s me. Time to act like it.
How much wind, solar, and all the rest were assumed? The system floating in my mind utilizes the best parts of each power source to prop up the worst parts of the rest. The more sources the easier this can be accomplished.
And how much demand reduction through efficiency gains was assumed in that analysis? 200mpg is a reasonable goal for a non-plug-in hybrid car, and that will increase as people start letting robots drive. Instead of acceleration and cornering buyers will seek “low jostling”.
And EP’s district heating can’t be ignored. There are lots of places (like Fairbanks) where nuclear power with district heating is the best solution. The smaller the nuke the cheaper and more efficient the district heating will be.
The pandemic showed that our society can successfully hunker down if need be. There’s nothing wrong with your region snuggling with it’s nukes and taking a “bad weather week” off.
Such ebbs and flows in tune with the planet are good for a society’s soul.
David B. Bensonsays
Engineer-Poet @396 — The bottleneck appears to be an insufficient number of forges for the reactor pressure vessel. While not that large it still seems that more forges would be required. Doubt that forges can be built in a hurry but would be happy to be shown wrong.
Piotrsays
Nuclear Poet (396) A NuScale module is about 1/10 the size and mass of a Liberty ship, which the USA was producing at a rate of 3 per day at one point in WWII.”
So if you can make 10 kg of nails, then as easily you could make 1 kg of microchips ?
And since the Bensons’s poster child for NuScale – Idaho plant supposed to have 10(?) modules it would equivalent of making one Liberty ship.
So why we don’t have 100s of Idaho power plants ALREADY built? After all – it’s equivalent …several months-worth of the US Liberty ships production.
Killiansays
50
nigelj says:
9 Jun 2021 at 10:41 PM
Mike@43
“I am not too concerned about it, I think most folks here recognize that you skew to an inherent centrist spin ”
No.I don’t do that
Total lack of self-awareness.
Piotrsays
A relevant to the recent discussion here podcast on CBC radio – 3-part programs, described as:
“ Philosopher Todd Dufresne has written a three-part lecture series for IDEAS, entitled: Climate Change and the Unborn Future: Capitalism, Philosophy, and Pandemic Politics. He argues that the way we live needs a stem-to-stern overhaul — and a new philosophy of the Anthropocene to see the world with new eyes“.
Each part runs as about 45 min lecture, followed by 10-15 mins of questions, comments or criticisms from the producer or from invited guests
I suggest look beyond Killians empty dismissals to the way he rarely answers peoples questions, and when he does its wordy and obscure, and he often doesnt rebut actual points made, instead launching into something unrelated. And notice how often he quotes people out of context. Accident or deliberate?
Dear Readers,
Every point a lie. Three years of this. But this is how nigel responds to his own ignorance: Because he can’t understand the answer, he just claims one was never given.
And we are all expected to have read his every word going back ten years, and memorised the whole lot and pieced it all together.
You have been the NEXUS of my commenting since 2018 because of your constant speaking from ignorance, misrepresentations and outright lies. How could you *not* know? And what will you NEVER do? Study the issues you keep railing against.
You have no ethics.
And like KM says @393 we have been given some so called general principles but not much on real world practical implementation
Principles ARE general rules, fool. But I have also laid out the design process, laid out the most important steps for any community to take, laid out my model elements.
I have TOLD YOU, only you and your community can determine how to change your community. Asking outsiders to tell you/do it for you absolutely violates natural principles.
You are a maddening combination of dishonest and obtuse. Your post is one more example of your complete lack of ethics and honesty.
I have TOLD you, read, take a course. You WILL NOT fully understand these things so long as you keep yourself intentionally ignorant – all while running your mouth minimizing and denigration the only pathway to managing the climate crisis. Anyone minimizing climate solutions is as bad as climate deniers, if not worse. Now, when the tide has turned on climate denial, you and others seek to prevent the changes we NEED.
You are a climate criminal.
“What a fool believes he sees…”
Piotrsays
Richard Caldwell (373) This discussion has talked about the size of a nuke. To me, that’s the size of a single unit, not the whole swarm”
Except in this discussion – it depends on whether the units are completely independent of each other safety-wise – i.e. the same problem cannot affect many units at the same time (say if they shared a parts of the cooling system or control) AND a problem in one will not cascade into the other units.
If “yes” then the size of one unit (“77MWe”) is OK. If “no”, then the total power plant (here 770MWe) should be used instead.
And the size discussion wasn’t for its own sake, but because DBB introduced the size of 1 unit to dismiss the safety limitation for LARGE nuclear plants:
World Nuclear Association: “For large units there are also safety implications relating to removal of decay heat after an emergency shutdown with loss of power.[…] It is unlikely that large nuclear plants (i.e. not individual reactors) will adopt dry cooling in the foreseeable future”.
So when the Michael Sweet implied that DBB was, as you put it “nefarious”, it wasn’t because of DBB making some trivial “typo” or being “less than perfectly clear” – but because DBB dismissed the safety concerns after an emergency shutdown by giving the (small) size of an individual unit, while MS thinks he should have given the size of the plant (i.e. 10 units) – which would probably qualify it for “large” in the World Nuclear Association’s statement.
So the answer to “DBB – nefarious or not?” – depends on the answer to the earlier questions about the independence, or not, of the units within a plant.
More on Killian rarely answering questions. Lots of people ask Killian various questions but by my observation they mostly go unanswered. People include myself, EP, Piotr, KIA, Richard and others. Only a few times do people get answers and they are often grumpy answers. For example Richard asked some totally reasonable hypothetical questions @355 and got a reply @372 “scumbag”. Kia asked 19 questions on last months UV @126, all left unanswered. Keven McKinney asked a question and got accused of lying.
A few examples of Kia’s questions: “OK, just for laughs, say we all agree that we must simplify. What does that look like? What technology would we have? How many people would the earth support in this vision? All 8,000,000,000 of us? Would we have electricity How would we heat in winter? Cool in summer? What would happen to our village during say a 10-year long drought. ….etc,etc ”
Maybe not the brightest of questions on the whole, but some of them are rather good. How can we get a sense of what people propose and whether things work if they don’t answer questions? Or at least post a link to some article, or a list of “FAQs” :) Remember this guy is claiming to be an expert, with some grand plan that will save us.
David B. Bensonsays
Piotr @413 — The NuScale modules are completely independent, right out to the grid connection transformers.
If you had bothered to study the NuScale Internet site, you would have learned that. But maybe it is too hard for you.
BPL: The crucial disconnect is that a wind turbine requires orders of magnitude less materials, labor, and time to put up than a NuScale reactor.
A NuScale unit weighs about 700 tons and generates perhaps 77 MW. A wind turbine tower weighs about 71 tons, and the wind turbine generates FAR less than 1/10 the output of a NuScale. And let’s not mention the hundreds of tons of concrete in the tower base, or the nacelle at 56 tons and blades at 36 tons.
Compared to a nuke, wind turbines are tiny.
Compared to a nuke, wind turbines and their output are pathetic.
Piotrsays
David B. Benson (401) “ Piotr @395 — Reading about the NuScale module will help relieve your current state of ignorance” “For all readers, a power reactor cannot be used to make weapons plutonium. Note that both India and Pakistan have only uranium bombs”
somebody played a cruel joke on you, Mr. Benson: Compare, for instance:
”the Magnox was designed with the dual purpose of producing electrical power and plutonium-239 for the nascent nuclear weapons program in Britain.”
“Two Magnox reactors (50 MWe and 200 MWe), under construction at Yongbyon and Taechon (North Korea). If completed, 200 MWe reactor would be capable of producing 220 kg of plutonium annually, enough for approximately 40 weapons. ”
So despite your paternalistic lecturing “all readers” – it seems that power reactor CAN be used to make weapons plutonium. In fact, the power production is the BEST COVER for it:
Ira(q/n): our nuclear program aimed solely to produce electricity. Your unjust sanctions were preventing us from doing our part in reducing CO2 emissions! After all – power reactor CANNOT be used to make weapons plutonium. Ask David B. Benson!
And your arrogant reply does not address any of the _other_ questions, addressed to your words, not to NuScale materials:
1. DBB: “ Most thoughtful commenters on the future of the grid anticipate a continued support of 20% from nuclear power plants.”
Piotr: “What are you saying ??? That your friend, the Nuclear Poet – is NOT thoughtful???” The guy who addresses others with: “Gentlemen and ruinables fags” would favour the “ruinables” providing 80% of power???
2. Why are you glossing over the article: “Two’s a crowd: Nuclear and renewables don’t mix” https://techxplore.com/news/2020-10-crowd-nuclear-renewables-dont.html
“[In a one large country, the negative] relationship between renewable electricity and CO2-emissions is up to seven times stronger than the corresponding relationship for nuclear.”
After all – it was your link, even if given by mistake. Hmmm, it seems that reading from David B. Benson’s links CAN sometime “relieve your current state of ignorance”. Who knew ?!
3. Where in the recommended by you NuScale promotional materials is the answer to my “ignorant” questions:
” how keeping (the NuScale reactors) in holes would stop Iran and other countries from using them as a “ cover story to buy a dual-use nuclear equipment, acquire dual-use technical training for your people, and produce materials for the bomb“?
And since most of the nukes would need to be placed in developing countries – are you saying that keeping them in holes (which have to be accessible for operating and/or servicing), would …. stop the dictators, factions in a civil war, or terrorists from getting their hands on the material for a dirty bomb? Particularly if there will be 100,000 of them to guard?“
nigeljsays
Killian @411
“And like KM says @393 we have been given some so called general principles but not much on real world practical implementation”
“Principles ARE general rules, fool. But I have also laid out the design process, laid out the most important steps for any community to take, laid out my model elements.
That doesn’t answer my question. What I’m obviously asking Killian, and I’m 90% sure Kevin is asking the same thing, is for some EXAMPLES of how these principles or rules or whatever have been applied in the real world, or at least a hypothetical example. How hard can that be to understand?
Thinking of your response to Kevin, it doesn’t need to be where WE Live. It just has to be come actual examples from somewhere, perhaps where YOU live. It doesn’t really matter as long as its a western country because that is where most change would need to happen. I’ve asked you all this before at least twice. This is why I get frustrated that you dont answer questions.
“I have TOLD you, read, take a course. You WILL NOT fully understand these things so long as you keep yourself intentionally ignorant – all while running your mouth minimizing and denigration the only pathway to managing the climate crisis.”
The problem is these permaculture principles were mostly designed for GARDENING. I’m not convinced you can take them and apply them to virtually everything which is what you and others appear to be doing. I certainly won’t be taking a course in them.
As to the climate crisis, thats just an opinion. There are other ways. I will come back to this elsewhere.
nigeljsays
This is why I disagree with in most respects with the de-growth and simplicity plan for dealing with climate change. The plan appears to consist of 1) stopping using fossil fuels 2) massive 90% reductions in consumption of energy and various materials within the next decade or two, 3) building tiny amounts of solar and wind power 4) burning biomass for energy in some places 5) Reliance on just regenerative agriculture and tree planting as a carbon sink.
This plan does not sound correct, apart from stopping using fossil fuels. We dont know HOW to make such massive reductions in energy in a technical sense of increasing efficiencies, and its very unlikely people would make such steep cuts to their consumption, or that people in poor countries will just remain with very basic technology and levels of electricity use. If we rely on promoting such a plan and it fails, we have lost our chance to build a new energy grid as a climate solution ( as others have pointed out). Such massive cuts in energy consumption could also be quite unhealthy.
There would probably be very few places left where increasing burning biomass like timber for energy would be sustainable, especially when we are trying to plant trees to sequester carbon and increase the use of timber in buildings etc and have a growing population! Plus there’s the air pollution problem. I don’t think the simple living people think widely enough. Using regenerative agriculture to sequester carbon is proven and useful, but the simplicity people have very optimistic expectations of whats possible.
The mainstream or conventional plan is broadly speaking to build a new zero carbon energy grid and transport system, and because of the fact this is hard to perfect this in a short time frame we have some carbon sequestration strategies and reduce personal carbon footprints REALISTIC amounts. I can’t really fault this plan in broad terms. Its very difficult and obviously has some downsides, but looks ok overall and far more likely to gain traction and have less dire problems than the alternative. We should of course make what sensible reductions to consumption we can, and the circular economy idea is one good simple living idea, and industrial agriculture does need to change to at least some extent.
Sorry for being repetitive, but I want it to be clear that I’m not dismissing ideas of certain people because I get irritated with their attitude or just have a knee jerk reaction.
A poet you perhaps are. Can’t say I’ve seen any worth reading.
If you cannot appreciate Sappho, Lewis Carroll or Ogden Nash, there is no hope for you.
An engineer you are NOT.
Tell that to the people whose cubes I’ve walked into to talk about directional couplers or figured out that the mechanical diagram on the screen is a locking planetary torque-split differential. I’m a numbers guy at heart, and it doesn’t matter what the particular numbers are about; I smell out the fishy ones.
So if you can make 10 kg of nails, then as easily you could make 1 kg of microchips ?
Wrong. A Liberty ship is built out of steel, like a NuScale. Making nano-scale features on silicon chips is completely different.
And since the Bensons’s poster child for NuScale – Idaho plant supposed to have 10(?) modules it would equivalent of making one Liberty ship.
Roughly, yeah. A 924-MW plant every three days (roughly 81x/yr) in the USA would replace the ~470 GW average load in about 6.27 years. Not too shabby a decarbonization program, don’t you think?
So why we don’t have 100s of Idaho power plants ALREADY built?
Because the opposition hasn’t let us build even ONE yet. It used to be the case that the USA could have build 2, maybe 3 generations of plants since the NuScale was proposed. The rules have changed to PROHIBIT that. So WHY, in the face of our climate-change disaster, have we not KILLED THOSE RULES and the fucking evil scumbags who imposed and still insist upon them?
@nigelj @415: Do please LINKIFY your references so they can be clicked upon for convenience. I do that as a courtesy to others. You should too.
michael Sweetsays
DBBenson at 401:
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists reprocessed fuel from power reactors can be used for proliferation. https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/advanced-isnt-always-better. Claims made by nuclear supporters that non-fissile isotopes of plutonium contaminate the used fuel are not even mentioned in their report.
Even if the plutonium from normally run power reactors could not be used in bombs, it is easy to change the fuel usage cycle in a power reactor to obtain weapons grade plutonium from any type of reactor, even research reactors. The claim by nuclear supporters that “a power reactor cannot be used to make weapons plutonium” is simply a deliberate lie, ignorant or both. Provide a reference to support your ignorant claim that power reactors cannot be used to make weapons grade plutonium”
It is common knowledge that it is much more difficult to make a nuclear bomb from plutonium than one using uranium 235. Perhaps the Indian and Pakistani military decided that it was enough to have uranium bombs and not necessary to do the extra work to obtain a plutonium bomb. Not everyone wants enough bombs to destroy the entire world. Modern centrifuges make it easy to obtain weapons grade uranium. Why should everyone want to do the hard work to build a plutonium bomb?
Making obviously false claims does not make your argument in support of nuclear power stronger.
All the proposals that I have seen for future energy systems use no nuclear or only the last couple of reactors that have not reached their end of life. No nuclear power plants are built. Even Williams et al 2021, who supported nuclear power in the past, no longer find nuclear power to be needed in the future. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020AV000284. Jacobson et al 2018 group at Stanford uses no nuclear and Connelly et al 2016 shut down all nuclear plants as their first step in an all renewable energy system. Please provide at least 4 references that suggest obtaining 20% of all power from nuclear plants (since I have provided three references that use no nuclear power.)
BPL: You are a judge in Stalin’s purge trials. Same mentality.
Ray Ladburysays
Richard Caldwell: “Do you think China is or will become a military threat beyond their declared boundries (that include Tibet, Taiwan, and the South China Sea?”
You might want to ask India about that.
John Pollacksays
David “Bot” Benson @401 you assert “But for all readers, a power reactor cannot be used to make weapons plutonium.”
“Today’s light water reactors – used to make commercial power in the United States – create plutonium when the uranium in their fuel fissions. Some of the neutrons released by uranium interact with other uranium atoms to form plutonium. Some of the plutonium itself fissions – part of the chain reaction of splitting atoms that is the basis of nuclear power. Any plutonium that does not fission stays in the spent fuel. Spent nuclear fuel from U.S. reactors contains about 1 percent plutonium by weight.
There are many metric tons of plutonium in spent nuclear fuel stored around the world. To be usable, plutonium would need to be separated from the other products in spent fuel. This process, known as reprocessing, uses chemicals to separate plutonium from uranium and other fission products. Once separated, plutonium oxide can be mixed with uranium oxide to produce mixed oxide or MOX fuel.
MOX fuel can be used in power reactors. Reprocessing is controversial internationally, BECAUSE THE PLUTONIUM CAN ALSO BE USED TO MAKE NUCLEAR WEAPONS.” (emphasis, mine)
I am struck by how many of your postings are false, poorly referenced, or not to the point when you do provide a reference. Have you drawn a breath, lately?
Thanks DBB, that is something of a hopeful piece by Robinson Meyer. The gist:
Yes—and here, the narrator always inserts a gale-force sigh—America knows what it needs to do: Pass a carbon fee or tax, some kind of policy that nudges people to reduce their use of fossil fuels. Yet America refuses. And so the 2010s, once greeted as a “new era” for climate action, now seem unexceptional, the third decade in a row that the United States understood the dangers of climate change but failed to act. Meanwhile the seas rose, wildfires raged, and the Earth saw its hottest 10 years on record.
You have probably heard this tale before; it is a popular and undeniably accurate read of recent history. It has just one flaw: America is decarbonizing anyway.
He attributes the ongoing decarbonization of America to public subsidies for R&D and ramp-up of wind and PV solar, which has brought their price down to market parity with fossil fuels, without internalizing the social cost of carbon for producers or consumers. I recently became aware of the astonishing 10-year price drop for renewables, and started backing away from strong advocacy for carbon fee and dividend with border adjustment tariff. I still think CF&D w/ BAT would help drive build-out of the carbon neutral economy, by making renewables even more competitive. I’m ruefully aware of the political obstacles, however. The Atlantic article is therefore encouraging.
“Climate activism and efforts are heavily skewed toward CO2, but excess atmospheric GHGs are not a cause, they are an effect of the actual cause, abuse of Earth’s resources/ecosystem services.”
Excellent point. Preaching to the choir here.
“Mitigation and adaptation are focused on drawing down CO2, which *is* necessary, but without ecosystem restoration, drawing down CO2 will not save us from ecosystem collapse, thus societal collapse.”
Another excellent point! 2 for 2 so far.
“A comprehensive approach that draws down C, actively restores the ecosystem and avoids consuming finite/unsustainable resources and/or uses sustainable resources too quickly. And it must be done quickly. Biota are already at collapse levels, tipping points have been and soon will be passed, so solutions must be rapid.”
Brilliant! 3 for 3 I have been saying exactly the same for many years.
“Only regenerative simplicity meets all these criteria”
Ermmmmm Not so fast. Entire lines of logic skipped here. The premises in the beginning of your post do not necessarily support this conclusion.
1) Regenerative simplicity is poorly defined.
2) Your link to the reference material while valid, does not really support the conclusion, but rather supports the premises. It’s a great article, and very important, well written, etc… But is is in no way a comprehensive guide to achieving the results. It certainly does not support “regenerative simplicity” as the “ONLY” solution. In fact it really doesn’t support regenerative simplicity as one of many solutions.
Regenerative? Yes I can follow you there. Simplicity in this complex world? Maybe, maybe not. There is a case to be made that while it certainly is helpful in individual cases and small groups, the organizational requirements for a worldwide move to that exclusively by the entire worldwide population of 8 Billion would ultimately need a far more complex nuanced solution. Potentially a single powerful bad actor could collapse the whole thing like a house of cards. We certainly need be vigilant about this happening as history has shown time and time again.
An example of what I mean. Regenerative Agriculture. That I can and do support 100%. We can indeed support 8 billion and even many more with regenerative agriculture and at the same time restore ecosystem function over vast areas.
Local regenerative economic networks I also support strongly, but not exclusively. I strongly agree we have tipped the scale away from local far to heavily, and it will certainly result in economic and societal collapse in a sort of “boom bust cycle”. History also shows this happening over and over, and the one coming is likely to exceed all others and be worldwide. So I agree that the local infrastructure must be regenerated too! But local social and economic networks are also subject to local boom and bust cycles! Rather than exclusively, we need a balance of both! When the local is stressed, the regional, national, or even international can help relieve the strain, preventing catastrophic domino effect as local networks fail and overload neighboring areas… In a similar way when the larger infrastructure and networks bust, local can relieve the stress and prevent a much worse outcome. In my opinion balance is the key here and I happen to agree currently we are skewed far far out of balance to centralized systems at the expense of local. Change is needed, but I think exclusively local regenerative simplicity would eventually fail almost as badly. Again, this is where balance is key.
Keep up the good work though. Don’t get discouraged by the trolls. The direction you advocate moving is certainly needed, even if we might have minor disagreements on the extent.
nigeljsays
Michael Mann is critical of several elements of the “de-growth” and “simplicity” solutions to the climate problem in his book The New Climate War. He is particularly critical of those environmentalists who oppose building a substantial new energy grid, and who oppose things like carbon taxes and subsidies for renewable energy, and who promote climate doomerism which leads to loss of hope. Book review:
Richard the Weaver (406) “How much wind, solar, and all the rest were assumed?”
According our nuclear enthusiasts – as close to zero as possible? (see below)
RtW “The system floating in my mind utilizes the best parts of each power source to prop up the worst parts of the rest. The more sources the easier this can be accomplished.”
That’s precisely what I was trying to tell DBB and Nuclear Poet – that renewables do not have to be their enemy – that they could prop up nukes during their weak times:
– hydro via its storage capacity compensating for nukes inflexibility in meeting a quickly varying demand
– solar + wind – propping up the nukes when they are the weakest. In the US and majority of the world the demand is the highest in summer and during heatwaves.
Which means that when we need the nukes the most – they are at their weakest, because:
– all thermal sources are less thermodynamically effective when the temperature difference between the steam and coolant is smaller
– in case of the nukes using river water – there may not even be enough of the coolant – the water is not only warm, so you need more of it, but also is more scarce during summer/heat waves.
So I have tried to explain all that to DBB and to Nuclear Poet – to … no effect.
And you can understand it psychologically – particularly in case of the Nuclear Poet: after spending years trying to discredit renewables:
– by claiming that they increase the use of fossil fuels,
– by dismissing ability of hydro to provide storage for peak demand by saying that hydro production is small comparing to the …baseload ;-)
– by making witty puns (ah, the Poet!): “the ruinables”
– by calling his opponents “ruinables fags” or telling them: “GFY” (Go Fuck Yourself – for those not fluent in Engineering lingo), etc.
… after all that – how can you admit to yourself and to others that your arrogance was unjustified?
RtW: “And how much demand reduction through efficiency gains was assumed in that analysis?”
that’s a question to Jacobsen et al. – link in my earlier posts on the subject.
RtW “And EP’s district heating can’t be ignored. There are lots of places (like Fairbanks) where nuclear power with district heating is the best solution. The smaller the nuke the cheaper and more efficient the district heating will be.”
If it were such a great idea why it hasn’t been widely applied? What is a chance that our Poet stumbled onto a solution the nuclear industry haven’t thought of themselves? And here is why:
Nukes are not typically located in downtown areas – so you have to put a pipeline bringing the hot water from the nuke to the city, put additional pipes throughout the district to supply the water and other pipes to collect it and return it to the nuke.
And most of the people do not live in Fairbanks – where he winters are long and harsh – so there is a long and large demand for heating. For the MAJORITY of human population, where you may need _a bit of_ heating during several weeks or even months during a year. So the costs for the pipe infrastructure outweigh the limited savings.
Killiansays
Simplifying works. People will. Besides, people must. (The tsunami *is* coming. Don’t listen to idiots who think policy should follow what people *want* to do vs getting the he’ll off the beach.)
Ahh, but the button is magic and was defined above as inducing no pain. How? Hmm…
Perhaps a disease lowered human fertility drastically a few centuries ago (as soon as said button is pushed). Note that neither you nor I would “survive”. A different past equals a different set of people alive today.
BPL,
Lots scares me about the folks who run China. Military expansion is less of a worry for me than the surveillance state and the ongoing erasure of entire cultures.
nigeljsays
Regarding geoengineering in the arctic region. Another approach could be marine cloud brightening which is used to brighten low level clouds using ships blasting out water. This avoids some of the problems of using aircraft to inject aerosols high up in the stratosphere where you get drift over other regions, and also at low levels where you would need aircraft doing it almost constantly:
The only issue is whether the arctic would have enough low level clouds and how relatively stationary they are. This study suggests to me borderline maybe on enough low level clouds.
I have had probably THOUSANDS of interactions with you, liar. Because I have begun to stop reading your posts after too much stupid and/or too many lies have been encountered, I suddenly “rarely” answer questions.
What is your IQ, maybe 80 on a good day?
EP
EP is a troll and/or nuclear propagandist. I make it a point of honor to only rarely interact with him, and then only to make a specific point about something I think is worth my time. Why would I answer his questions? He is not an honest actor in the climate conversation, and rather irrational about nuclear as a climate solution. But, again, that translates to “rarely” answer questions.
Piotr is a self-defined bully, intentionally and constantly rude whether or not provoked and has nothing of use to say wrt mitigation. I studiously avoid reading his posts at all most of the time.
But, again, I simply refuse to answer questions…. despite doing so here since 2007. Brilliant trolling, you damned fool.
KIA
You are all feeding into that criminal’s plans. Congrats on being “useful idiots.”
Richard
Let me see… Richard accused me of seeking mass murder as a climate solution, so I didn’t answer his sick questions one time, but, again, I just don’t answer questions….
You shouldn’t be allowed near the internet.
You know nothing, understand less, and think yourself a mental giant. Ridiculous. You will get nothing but mockery from me if you choose to continue trolling me and acting against the best interests of humanity.
Mikesays
on degrowth:
There’s a simple answer to climate change. But will capitalism allow it?
“In discussions of climate emergency, degrowth has always been the elephant in the room; acknowledged from time to time, but rarely spoken about. But it may be the only solution”
Bill Gates is a smart guy. It’s just that sodium is a very reactive sort of element. I’m speculating, but if the reactor cooling system leaked and the sodium got in contact with water or air there could be a fire or explosion. Likewise if the reactor caught fire you might not be able to use water to cool things down or put it out. What then? What do people think of this Natrium project?
Killiansays
People won’t? Looks like the entire EU is headed toward degrowth.
See if you can make sense of why this is such an important perspective WRT solutions (but it’s obvious, really):
The world becomes a threat, to the hyper individualistic, hyper materialistic personality — and sharing anything with anyone, which is vulnerability, becomes a liability.
But how can a society exist that way? It can’t, because real relationships can’t exist. And that is what I miss most in America. It’s not just me, though. Snowy misses them, too. The dog park in America, which is more of a dog prison — it’s not a place for relationships. In Europe, the dogs from the neighbourhood all play together, on the grass, chewing their stickies. They say hi to all the kids and old folks. Everyone laughs and catches up. We are in it together. Something ignites between us. This bond of friendship.
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists reprocessed fuel from power reactors can be used for proliferation.
They’re lying. They know damned well that the only bomb test of Pu from a MAGNOX (in the reactor for mere months) was a failure, and MAGNOX plutonium has far less Pu-238 and Pu-240 than Pu that’s been generated in 2-3 fuel cycles in a LWR. In short, every word out of a UCS spokesperson should be considered to be a lie, including “and” and “the”.
All the proposals that I have seen for future energy systems use no nuclear or only the last couple of reactors that have not reached their end of life. No nuclear power plants are built.
Dig into the financing of those studies. I’ll bet you 10:1 that the money comes from natural gas interests or is laundered through foundations which accept their donations. Natural gas is the “bridge” fuel which leads to nowhere.
That’s precisely what I was trying to tell DBB and Nuclear Poet – that renewables do not have to be their enemy – that they could prop up nukes during their weak times
WHAT “weak times”? It was NUCLEAR that propped up the grid in Texas when the “renewables” and natural gas were weak. Nuclear in the USA has a capacity factor well over 90%.
My scheme for a full decarbonization of the US economy relies on an overbuild of nuclear power, so that the excess electric generation can be turned to purposes such as generating enhanced fuels derived from biomass carbon.
So I have tried to explain all that to DBB and to Nuclear Poet – to … no effect.
And you can understand it psychologically – particularly in case of the Nuclear Poet: after spending years trying to discredit renewables:
– by claiming that they increase the use of fossil fuels,
– by dismissing ability of hydro to provide storage for peak demand by saying that hydro production is small comparing to the …baseload
Your faulty claims have no effect because the numbers refute them. Here’s a dollar, buy a clue.
If it were such a great idea why it hasn’t been widely applied?
Because of artificial fear. It’s being applied in Haiyang and Pevek.
EP is a troll and/or nuclear propagandist. I make it a point of honor to only rarely interact with him, and then only to make a specific point about something I think is worth my time.
I rarely interact with you, because I skip over most of your posts as a waste of time. I am not paid by anyone these days; I’m retired and have no outside income.
One of the things you fail to grasp is that nuclear energy is a minimally-impactful way to meet human needs from things nature doesn’t need and cannot even use, and thus frees up resources like land for purposes like food production, wildlife and carbon sequestration. Generating several GW(e) from a few tens of acres of power plant and leaving a multi-hundred acre buffer zone is far more “regenerative” than meeting human needs from solar PV or biomass. Why can’t you grasp this? WHAT is your ideological blind spot?
Piotrsays
jgnfld(405): “ A poet you perhaps are. Can’t say I’ve seen any worth reading.”
Nuclear-Poet (421)” If you cannot appreciate Sappho, Lewis Carroll or Ogden Nash, there is no hope for you.”
I wouldn’t put yourself next to Sappho, Carroll and Nash just yet. Your: “Gentelmen and ruinables fags” – still needs some work to be on the same level…
jgnfld(405): “An engineer you are NOT”
Nuclear Poet: “Tell that to the people whose cubes I’ve walked into to talk about directional couplers”
Your cubical triumphs do not transfer automatically to RC – jgnfld said precisely WHY he thinks that “an engineer you are NOT”, I quote:
“You are equating building what was essentially a welded barge with an obsolescent triple expansion steam engine to a modular nuclear reactor?”
In your other feats of engineering, you didn’t understand the difference between
providing the top up power during PEAK demand and providing the BASELOAD, and your response to the explaining you the difference between the two was: “GFY” (Go Fuck Yourself). Sappho, eat your heart!
Nuclear Poet: “[I] figured out that the mechanical diagram on the screen is a locking planetary torque-split differential”
too bad that seeing on the screen a simple graph: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915
which I used to point that the solar has its top efficiency nicely matched to the peak demand in the US (highest: summer and daytime):
you countered with the praise of nuclear:
“ Damn, if we only had some power source which produced energy 24/7 and was especially effective when it’s cold out”
which would make sense ONLY if one read the above graph as peak demand being … in winter.
Hence I agree: “ A poet you perhaps are. An engineer you are NOT.“
It’s just that sodium is a very reactive sort of element. I’m speculating, but if the reactor cooling system leaked and the sodium got in contact with water or air there could be a fire or explosion. Likewise if the reactor caught fire you might not be able to use water to cool things down or put it out. What then? What do people think of this Natrium project?
We’ve dealt with that. The EBR-II had a leak in the superheater. It was successfully plugged and ran flawlessly for the better part of 30 years. It provided district heating for the Idaho National Laboratory until it was closed by act of law.
The problem is inculcated fear of something that is minimally harmful even if it happens. Going the fast-breeder way would free up land for the rest of the ecosystem to regenerate. It’s the only way to solve the problem short of gigadeaths.
Piotrsays
David B. Benson (416) “The NuScale modules are completely independent, right out to the grid connection transformers. If you had bothered to study the NuScale Internet site, you would have learned that. But maybe it is too hard for you.
Irrelevant to my argument, as I merely explained to Richard Caldwell that Michael Sweet didn’t criticize you for “some trivial “typo” or being “less than perfectly clear”, but for falsifiable reason (see my 412), and I suggested how to test the validity of that reason.
If you had bothered to read [my post to which you react with such a condescension] – you would have learned that. But maybe it is too hard for you.
Piotr @395 — Reading about the NuScale module will help relieve your current state of ignorance.
But for all readers, a power reactor cannot be used to make weapons plutonium. Note that both India and Pakistan have only uranium bombs.
Richard Caldwell @385 (aka The Terminator, The Karate Kid, and Muhammad Ali )
“If I had a magic button that would erase 90+% of humanity painlessly I would be sorely tempted. I do not know what I would do. (Though if I could tweak the magic so as to preferentially eradicate GOPpers… I gotta admit it, I wouldn’t miss you at all MrCUG.)”
Brilliant talking point and tempting perhaps, but this undermines the glue that holds society together : “do no harm to others” and defining undesirable people is not as simple as it seems. Conservatives are a useful brake on excessively rapid and risky change. Liberals are the fundamental source of human progress. And what about some psychopath who has the cure for cancer simmering away in his brain? And with stupid people gone who would do the boring menial jobs? Grand social experiments can go wrong: eg communism and its purges.
There are better ways. Society has been largely improving anyway in a moral sense due to the impact of scientific ways of thinking documented in books like The Moral Arch by Michael Shermer. Even the KIAs of the world get swept along by this eventually or left behind stranded.
RC 385: Do you think China is or will become a military threat beyond their declared boundries (that include Tibet, Taiwan, and the South China Sea?
BPL: The problem with that is that it’s a leading question. By including the phrase “beyond their declared boundaries” you tacitly assume their declared boundaries are legitimate. Sort of the way Russia assumes their declared boundaries implicitly include all of eastern Europe.
n 387: So if wind turbines were used for a fully decarbonised economy not just electricity generation, that is approximately 9.6 million high efficiency turbines. It’s a big number, and ignores a possible need for an overbuild, but it sounds like less of a general all purpose headache than half a million nuclear reactors!
BPL: The crucial disconnect is that a wind turbine requires orders of magnitude less materials, labor, and time to put up than a NuScale reactor. Compared to a nuke, wind turbines are tiny. How many cars do we have in this country? How many houses?
Re. “A NuScale module is about 1/10 the size and mass of a Liberty ship, which the USA was producing at a rate of 3 per day at one point in WWII…[therefore]…30 NuScales per day …”
You are specifically equating building what was essentially a welded barge with an obsolescent triple expansion steam engine to a modular nuclear reactor? plan here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_ship#/media/File:Libertyship_linedrawing_en.jpg
A poet you perhaps are. Can’t say I’ve seen any worth reading. An engineer you are NOT.
Piotr: But HALF A MILLION of them? That’s
RtW: Yeah, it’s me. Time to act like it.
How much wind, solar, and all the rest were assumed? The system floating in my mind utilizes the best parts of each power source to prop up the worst parts of the rest. The more sources the easier this can be accomplished.
And how much demand reduction through efficiency gains was assumed in that analysis? 200mpg is a reasonable goal for a non-plug-in hybrid car, and that will increase as people start letting robots drive. Instead of acceleration and cornering buyers will seek “low jostling”.
And EP’s district heating can’t be ignored. There are lots of places (like Fairbanks) where nuclear power with district heating is the best solution. The smaller the nuke the cheaper and more efficient the district heating will be.
The pandemic showed that our society can successfully hunker down if need be. There’s nothing wrong with your region snuggling with it’s nukes and taking a “bad weather week” off.
Such ebbs and flows in tune with the planet are good for a society’s soul.
Engineer-Poet @396 — The bottleneck appears to be an insufficient number of forges for the reactor pressure vessel. While not that large it still seems that more forges would be required. Doubt that forges can be built in a hurry but would be happy to be shown wrong.
Nuclear Poet (396)
A NuScale module is about 1/10 the size and mass of a Liberty ship, which the USA was producing at a rate of 3 per day at one point in WWII.”
So if you can make 10 kg of nails, then as easily you could make 1 kg of microchips ?
And since the Bensons’s poster child for NuScale – Idaho plant supposed to have 10(?) modules it would equivalent of making one Liberty ship.
So why we don’t have 100s of Idaho power plants ALREADY built? After all – it’s equivalent …several months-worth of the US Liberty ships production.
50
Total lack of self-awareness.
A relevant to the recent discussion here podcast on CBC radio – 3-part programs, described as:
“ Philosopher Todd Dufresne has written a three-part lecture series for IDEAS, entitled: Climate Change and the Unborn Future: Capitalism, Philosophy, and Pandemic Politics. He argues that the way we live needs a stem-to-stern overhaul — and a new philosophy of the Anthropocene to see the world with new eyes“.
Each part runs as about 45 min lecture, followed by 10-15 mins of questions, comments or criticisms from the producer or from invited guests
The podcast of the first episode – https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas
I suggest look beyond Killians empty dismissals to the way he rarely answers peoples questions, and when he does its wordy and obscure, and he often doesnt rebut actual points made, instead launching into something unrelated. And notice how often he quotes people out of context. Accident or deliberate?
Dear Readers,
Every point a lie. Three years of this. But this is how nigel responds to his own ignorance: Because he can’t understand the answer, he just claims one was never given.
And we are all expected to have read his every word going back ten years, and memorised the whole lot and pieced it all together.
You have been the NEXUS of my commenting since 2018 because of your constant speaking from ignorance, misrepresentations and outright lies. How could you *not* know? And what will you NEVER do? Study the issues you keep railing against.
You have no ethics.
And like KM says @393 we have been given some so called general principles but not much on real world practical implementation
Principles ARE general rules, fool. But I have also laid out the design process, laid out the most important steps for any community to take, laid out my model elements.
I have TOLD YOU, only you and your community can determine how to change your community. Asking outsiders to tell you/do it for you absolutely violates natural principles.
You are a maddening combination of dishonest and obtuse. Your post is one more example of your complete lack of ethics and honesty.
I have TOLD you, read, take a course. You WILL NOT fully understand these things so long as you keep yourself intentionally ignorant – all while running your mouth minimizing and denigration the only pathway to managing the climate crisis. Anyone minimizing climate solutions is as bad as climate deniers, if not worse. Now, when the tide has turned on climate denial, you and others seek to prevent the changes we NEED.
You are a climate criminal.
“What a fool believes he sees…”
Richard Caldwell (373) This discussion has talked about the size of a nuke. To me, that’s the size of a single unit, not the whole swarm”
Except in this discussion – it depends on whether the units are completely independent of each other safety-wise – i.e. the same problem cannot affect many units at the same time (say if they shared a parts of the cooling system or control) AND a problem in one will not cascade into the other units.
If “yes” then the size of one unit (“77MWe”) is OK. If “no”, then the total power plant (here 770MWe) should be used instead.
And the size discussion wasn’t for its own sake, but because DBB introduced the size of 1 unit to dismiss the safety limitation for LARGE nuclear plants:
World Nuclear Association: “For large units there are also safety implications relating to removal of decay heat after an emergency shutdown with loss of power.[…] It is unlikely that large nuclear plants (i.e. not individual reactors) will adopt dry cooling in the foreseeable future”.
So when the Michael Sweet implied that DBB was, as you put it “nefarious”, it wasn’t because of DBB making some trivial “typo” or being “less than perfectly clear” – but because DBB dismissed the safety concerns after an emergency shutdown by giving the (small) size of an individual unit, while MS thinks he should have given the size of the plant (i.e. 10 units) – which would probably qualify it for “large” in the World Nuclear Association’s statement.
So the answer to “DBB – nefarious or not?” – depends on the answer to the earlier questions about the independence, or not, of the units within a plant.
Here’s a pleasant surprise:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/06/climate-change-green-vortex-america/619228/
Thought provoking comments: “Public debt and intergenerational ethics: how to fund a clean technology ‘Apollo program’?”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14693062.2021.1935679?af=R
More on Killian rarely answering questions. Lots of people ask Killian various questions but by my observation they mostly go unanswered. People include myself, EP, Piotr, KIA, Richard and others. Only a few times do people get answers and they are often grumpy answers. For example Richard asked some totally reasonable hypothetical questions @355 and got a reply @372 “scumbag”. Kia asked 19 questions on last months UV @126, all left unanswered. Keven McKinney asked a question and got accused of lying.
A few examples of Kia’s questions: “OK, just for laughs, say we all agree that we must simplify. What does that look like? What technology would we have? How many people would the earth support in this vision? All 8,000,000,000 of us? Would we have electricity How would we heat in winter? Cool in summer? What would happen to our village during say a 10-year long drought. ….etc,etc ”
Maybe not the brightest of questions on the whole, but some of them are rather good. How can we get a sense of what people propose and whether things work if they don’t answer questions? Or at least post a link to some article, or a list of “FAQs” :) Remember this guy is claiming to be an expert, with some grand plan that will save us.
Piotr @413 — The NuScale modules are completely independent, right out to the grid connection transformers.
If you had bothered to study the NuScale Internet site, you would have learned that. But maybe it is too hard for you.
@404:
A NuScale unit weighs about 700 tons and generates perhaps 77 MW. A wind turbine tower weighs about 71 tons, and the wind turbine generates FAR less than 1/10 the output of a NuScale. And let’s not mention the hundreds of tons of concrete in the tower base, or the nacelle at 56 tons and blades at 36 tons.
Compared to a nuke, wind turbines and their output are pathetic.
David B. Benson (401) “ Piotr @395 — Reading about the NuScale module will help relieve your current state of ignorance” “For all readers, a power reactor cannot be used to make weapons plutonium. Note that both India and Pakistan have only uranium bombs”
somebody played a cruel joke on you, Mr. Benson: Compare, for instance:
”the Magnox was designed with the dual purpose of producing electrical power and plutonium-239 for the nascent nuclear weapons program in Britain.”
“Two Magnox reactors (50 MWe and 200 MWe), under construction at Yongbyon and Taechon (North Korea). If completed, 200 MWe reactor would be capable of producing 220 kg of plutonium annually, enough for approximately 40 weapons. ”
So despite your paternalistic lecturing “all readers” – it seems that power reactor CAN be used to make weapons plutonium. In fact, the power production is the BEST COVER for it:
Ira(q/n): our nuclear program aimed solely to produce electricity. Your unjust sanctions were preventing us from doing our part in reducing CO2 emissions! After all – power reactor CANNOT be used to make weapons plutonium. Ask David B. Benson!
And your arrogant reply does not address any of the _other_ questions, addressed to your words, not to NuScale materials:
1. DBB: “ Most thoughtful commenters on the future of the grid anticipate a continued support of 20% from nuclear power plants.”
Piotr: “What are you saying ??? That your friend, the Nuclear Poet – is NOT thoughtful???” The guy who addresses others with: “Gentlemen and ruinables fags” would favour the “ruinables” providing 80% of power???
2. Why are you glossing over the article: “Two’s a crowd: Nuclear and renewables don’t mix” https://techxplore.com/news/2020-10-crowd-nuclear-renewables-dont.html
“[In a one large country, the negative] relationship between renewable electricity and CO2-emissions is up to seven times stronger than the corresponding relationship for nuclear.”
After all – it was your link, even if given by mistake. Hmmm, it seems that reading from David B. Benson’s links CAN sometime “relieve your current state of ignorance”. Who knew ?!
3. Where in the recommended by you NuScale promotional materials is the answer to my “ignorant” questions:
” how keeping (the NuScale reactors) in holes would stop Iran and other countries from using them as a “ cover story to buy a dual-use nuclear equipment, acquire dual-use technical training for your people, and produce materials for the bomb“?
And since most of the nukes would need to be placed in developing countries – are you saying that keeping them in holes (which have to be accessible for operating and/or servicing), would …. stop the dictators, factions in a civil war, or terrorists from getting their hands on the material for a dirty bomb? Particularly if there will be 100,000 of them to guard?“
Killian @411
“And like KM says @393 we have been given some so called general principles but not much on real world practical implementation”
“Principles ARE general rules, fool. But I have also laid out the design process, laid out the most important steps for any community to take, laid out my model elements.
That doesn’t answer my question. What I’m obviously asking Killian, and I’m 90% sure Kevin is asking the same thing, is for some EXAMPLES of how these principles or rules or whatever have been applied in the real world, or at least a hypothetical example. How hard can that be to understand?
Thinking of your response to Kevin, it doesn’t need to be where WE Live. It just has to be come actual examples from somewhere, perhaps where YOU live. It doesn’t really matter as long as its a western country because that is where most change would need to happen. I’ve asked you all this before at least twice. This is why I get frustrated that you dont answer questions.
“I have TOLD you, read, take a course. You WILL NOT fully understand these things so long as you keep yourself intentionally ignorant – all while running your mouth minimizing and denigration the only pathway to managing the climate crisis.”
The problem is these permaculture principles were mostly designed for GARDENING. I’m not convinced you can take them and apply them to virtually everything which is what you and others appear to be doing. I certainly won’t be taking a course in them.
As to the climate crisis, thats just an opinion. There are other ways. I will come back to this elsewhere.
This is why I disagree with in most respects with the de-growth and simplicity plan for dealing with climate change. The plan appears to consist of 1) stopping using fossil fuels 2) massive 90% reductions in consumption of energy and various materials within the next decade or two, 3) building tiny amounts of solar and wind power 4) burning biomass for energy in some places 5) Reliance on just regenerative agriculture and tree planting as a carbon sink.
This plan does not sound correct, apart from stopping using fossil fuels. We dont know HOW to make such massive reductions in energy in a technical sense of increasing efficiencies, and its very unlikely people would make such steep cuts to their consumption, or that people in poor countries will just remain with very basic technology and levels of electricity use. If we rely on promoting such a plan and it fails, we have lost our chance to build a new energy grid as a climate solution ( as others have pointed out). Such massive cuts in energy consumption could also be quite unhealthy.
There would probably be very few places left where increasing burning biomass like timber for energy would be sustainable, especially when we are trying to plant trees to sequester carbon and increase the use of timber in buildings etc and have a growing population! Plus there’s the air pollution problem. I don’t think the simple living people think widely enough. Using regenerative agriculture to sequester carbon is proven and useful, but the simplicity people have very optimistic expectations of whats possible.
The mainstream or conventional plan is broadly speaking to build a new zero carbon energy grid and transport system, and because of the fact this is hard to perfect this in a short time frame we have some carbon sequestration strategies and reduce personal carbon footprints REALISTIC amounts. I can’t really fault this plan in broad terms. Its very difficult and obviously has some downsides, but looks ok overall and far more likely to gain traction and have less dire problems than the alternative. We should of course make what sensible reductions to consumption we can, and the circular economy idea is one good simple living idea, and industrial agriculture does need to change to at least some extent.
Sorry for being repetitive, but I want it to be clear that I’m not dismissing ideas of certain people because I get irritated with their attitude or just have a knee jerk reaction.
@405:
If you cannot appreciate Sappho, Lewis Carroll or Ogden Nash, there is no hope for you.
Tell that to the people whose cubes I’ve walked into to talk about directional couplers or figured out that the mechanical diagram on the screen is a locking planetary torque-split differential. I’m a numbers guy at heart, and it doesn’t matter what the particular numbers are about; I smell out the fishy ones.
@408:
Wrong. A Liberty ship is built out of steel, like a NuScale. Making nano-scale features on silicon chips is completely different.
Roughly, yeah. A 924-MW plant every three days (roughly 81x/yr) in the USA would replace the ~470 GW average load in about 6.27 years. Not too shabby a decarbonization program, don’t you think?
Because the opposition hasn’t let us build even ONE yet. It used to be the case that the USA could have build 2, maybe 3 generations of plants since the NuScale was proposed. The rules have changed to PROHIBIT that. So WHY, in the face of our climate-change disaster, have we not KILLED THOSE RULES and the fucking evil scumbags who imposed and still insist upon them?
@nigelj @415: Do please LINKIFY your references so they can be clicked upon for convenience. I do that as a courtesy to others. You should too.
DBBenson at 401:
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists reprocessed fuel from power reactors can be used for proliferation. https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/advanced-isnt-always-better. Claims made by nuclear supporters that non-fissile isotopes of plutonium contaminate the used fuel are not even mentioned in their report.
Even if the plutonium from normally run power reactors could not be used in bombs, it is easy to change the fuel usage cycle in a power reactor to obtain weapons grade plutonium from any type of reactor, even research reactors. The claim by nuclear supporters that “a power reactor cannot be used to make weapons plutonium” is simply a deliberate lie, ignorant or both. Provide a reference to support your ignorant claim that power reactors cannot be used to make weapons grade plutonium”
It is common knowledge that it is much more difficult to make a nuclear bomb from plutonium than one using uranium 235. Perhaps the Indian and Pakistani military decided that it was enough to have uranium bombs and not necessary to do the extra work to obtain a plutonium bomb. Not everyone wants enough bombs to destroy the entire world. Modern centrifuges make it easy to obtain weapons grade uranium. Why should everyone want to do the hard work to build a plutonium bomb?
Making obviously false claims does not make your argument in support of nuclear power stronger.
All the proposals that I have seen for future energy systems use no nuclear or only the last couple of reactors that have not reached their end of life. No nuclear power plants are built. Even Williams et al 2021, who supported nuclear power in the past, no longer find nuclear power to be needed in the future. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020AV000284. Jacobson et al 2018 group at Stanford uses no nuclear and Connelly et al 2016 shut down all nuclear plants as their first step in an all renewable energy system. Please provide at least 4 references that suggest obtaining 20% of all power from nuclear plants (since I have provided three references that use no nuclear power.)
K 411: You are a climate criminal.
BPL: You are a judge in Stalin’s purge trials. Same mentality.
Richard Caldwell: “Do you think China is or will become a military threat beyond their declared boundries (that include Tibet, Taiwan, and the South China Sea?”
You might want to ask India about that.
David “Bot” Benson @401 you assert “But for all readers, a power reactor cannot be used to make weapons plutonium.”
However, from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Backgrounder on Plutonium
https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/plutonium.html:
“Today’s light water reactors – used to make commercial power in the United States – create plutonium when the uranium in their fuel fissions. Some of the neutrons released by uranium interact with other uranium atoms to form plutonium. Some of the plutonium itself fissions – part of the chain reaction of splitting atoms that is the basis of nuclear power. Any plutonium that does not fission stays in the spent fuel. Spent nuclear fuel from U.S. reactors contains about 1 percent plutonium by weight.
There are many metric tons of plutonium in spent nuclear fuel stored around the world. To be usable, plutonium would need to be separated from the other products in spent fuel. This process, known as reprocessing, uses chemicals to separate plutonium from uranium and other fission products. Once separated, plutonium oxide can be mixed with uranium oxide to produce mixed oxide or MOX fuel.
MOX fuel can be used in power reactors. Reprocessing is controversial internationally, BECAUSE THE PLUTONIUM CAN ALSO BE USED TO MAKE NUCLEAR WEAPONS.” (emphasis, mine)
I am struck by how many of your postings are false, poorly referenced, or not to the point when you do provide a reference. Have you drawn a breath, lately?
David B. Benson:
Thanks DBB, that is something of a hopeful piece by Robinson Meyer. The gist:
He attributes the ongoing decarbonization of America to public subsidies for R&D and ramp-up of wind and PV solar, which has brought their price down to market parity with fossil fuels, without internalizing the social cost of carbon for producers or consumers. I recently became aware of the astonishing 10-year price drop for renewables, and started backing away from strong advocacy for carbon fee and dividend with border adjustment tariff. I still think CF&D w/ BAT would help drive build-out of the carbon neutral economy, by making renewables even more competitive. I’m ruefully aware of the political obstacles, however. The Atlantic article is therefore encouraging.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/US-Needs-Nuclear-Power-To-Hit-Climate-Targets-Granholm.html
Secretary of Energy sayeth.
@ 386 Killian,
“Climate activism and efforts are heavily skewed toward CO2, but excess atmospheric GHGs are not a cause, they are an effect of the actual cause, abuse of Earth’s resources/ecosystem services.”
Excellent point. Preaching to the choir here.
“Mitigation and adaptation are focused on drawing down CO2, which *is* necessary, but without ecosystem restoration, drawing down CO2 will not save us from ecosystem collapse, thus societal collapse.”
Another excellent point! 2 for 2 so far.
“A comprehensive approach that draws down C, actively restores the ecosystem and avoids consuming finite/unsustainable resources and/or uses sustainable resources too quickly. And it must be done quickly. Biota are already at collapse levels, tipping points have been and soon will be passed, so solutions must be rapid.”
Brilliant! 3 for 3 I have been saying exactly the same for many years.
“Only regenerative simplicity meets all these criteria”
Ermmmmm Not so fast. Entire lines of logic skipped here. The premises in the beginning of your post do not necessarily support this conclusion.
1) Regenerative simplicity is poorly defined.
2) Your link to the reference material while valid, does not really support the conclusion, but rather supports the premises. It’s a great article, and very important, well written, etc… But is is in no way a comprehensive guide to achieving the results. It certainly does not support “regenerative simplicity” as the “ONLY” solution. In fact it really doesn’t support regenerative simplicity as one of many solutions.
Regenerative? Yes I can follow you there. Simplicity in this complex world? Maybe, maybe not. There is a case to be made that while it certainly is helpful in individual cases and small groups, the organizational requirements for a worldwide move to that exclusively by the entire worldwide population of 8 Billion would ultimately need a far more complex nuanced solution. Potentially a single powerful bad actor could collapse the whole thing like a house of cards. We certainly need be vigilant about this happening as history has shown time and time again.
An example of what I mean. Regenerative Agriculture. That I can and do support 100%. We can indeed support 8 billion and even many more with regenerative agriculture and at the same time restore ecosystem function over vast areas.
Local regenerative economic networks I also support strongly, but not exclusively. I strongly agree we have tipped the scale away from local far to heavily, and it will certainly result in economic and societal collapse in a sort of “boom bust cycle”. History also shows this happening over and over, and the one coming is likely to exceed all others and be worldwide. So I agree that the local infrastructure must be regenerated too! But local social and economic networks are also subject to local boom and bust cycles! Rather than exclusively, we need a balance of both! When the local is stressed, the regional, national, or even international can help relieve the strain, preventing catastrophic domino effect as local networks fail and overload neighboring areas… In a similar way when the larger infrastructure and networks bust, local can relieve the stress and prevent a much worse outcome. In my opinion balance is the key here and I happen to agree currently we are skewed far far out of balance to centralized systems at the expense of local. Change is needed, but I think exclusively local regenerative simplicity would eventually fail almost as badly. Again, this is where balance is key.
Keep up the good work though. Don’t get discouraged by the trolls. The direction you advocate moving is certainly needed, even if we might have minor disagreements on the extent.
Michael Mann is critical of several elements of the “de-growth” and “simplicity” solutions to the climate problem in his book The New Climate War. He is particularly critical of those environmentalists who oppose building a substantial new energy grid, and who oppose things like carbon taxes and subsidies for renewable energy, and who promote climate doomerism which leads to loss of hope. Book review:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933160-300-the-new-climate-war-review-reasons-to-be-optimistic-about-the-future/
Richard the Weaver (406) “How much wind, solar, and all the rest were assumed?”
According our nuclear enthusiasts – as close to zero as possible? (see below)
RtW “The system floating in my mind utilizes the best parts of each power source to prop up the worst parts of the rest. The more sources the easier this can be accomplished.”
That’s precisely what I was trying to tell DBB and Nuclear Poet – that renewables do not have to be their enemy – that they could prop up nukes during their weak times:
– hydro via its storage capacity compensating for nukes inflexibility in meeting a quickly varying demand
– solar + wind – propping up the nukes when they are the weakest. In the US and majority of the world the demand is the highest in summer and during heatwaves.
Which means that when we need the nukes the most – they are at their weakest, because:
– all thermal sources are less thermodynamically effective when the temperature difference between the steam and coolant is smaller
– in case of the nukes using river water – there may not even be enough of the coolant – the water is not only warm, so you need more of it, but also is more scarce during summer/heat waves.
So I have tried to explain all that to DBB and to Nuclear Poet – to … no effect.
And you can understand it psychologically – particularly in case of the Nuclear Poet: after spending years trying to discredit renewables:
– by claiming that they increase the use of fossil fuels,
– by dismissing ability of hydro to provide storage for peak demand by saying that hydro production is small comparing to the …baseload ;-)
– by making witty puns (ah, the Poet!): “the ruinables”
– by calling his opponents “ruinables fags” or telling them: “GFY” (Go Fuck Yourself – for those not fluent in Engineering lingo), etc.
… after all that – how can you admit to yourself and to others that your arrogance was unjustified?
RtW: “And how much demand reduction through efficiency gains was assumed in that analysis?”
that’s a question to Jacobsen et al. – link in my earlier posts on the subject.
RtW “And EP’s district heating can’t be ignored. There are lots of places (like Fairbanks) where nuclear power with district heating is the best solution. The smaller the nuke the cheaper and more efficient the district heating will be.”
If it were such a great idea why it hasn’t been widely applied? What is a chance that our Poet stumbled onto a solution the nuclear industry haven’t thought of themselves? And here is why:
Nukes are not typically located in downtown areas – so you have to put a pipeline bringing the hot water from the nuke to the city, put additional pipes throughout the district to supply the water and other pipes to collect it and return it to the nuke.
And most of the people do not live in Fairbanks – where he winters are long and harsh – so there is a long and large demand for heating. For the MAJORITY of human population, where you may need _a bit of_ heating during several weeks or even months during a year. So the costs for the pipe infrastructure outweigh the limited savings.
Simplifying works. People will. Besides, people must. (The tsunami *is* coming. Don’t listen to idiots who think policy should follow what people *want* to do vs getting the he’ll off the beach.)
https://www.fastcompany.com/90385816/do-tiny-home-owners-actually-live-more-sustainably-now-we-know
Nigel,
Ahh, but the button is magic and was defined above as inducing no pain. How? Hmm…
Perhaps a disease lowered human fertility drastically a few centuries ago (as soon as said button is pushed). Note that neither you nor I would “survive”. A different past equals a different set of people alive today.
BPL,
Lots scares me about the folks who run China. Military expansion is less of a worry for me than the surveillance state and the ongoing erasure of entire cultures.
Regarding geoengineering in the arctic region. Another approach could be marine cloud brightening which is used to brighten low level clouds using ships blasting out water. This avoids some of the problems of using aircraft to inject aerosols high up in the stratosphere where you get drift over other regions, and also at low levels where you would need aircraft doing it almost constantly:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_cloud_brightening
The only issue is whether the arctic would have enough low level clouds and how relatively stationary they are. This study suggests to me borderline maybe on enough low level clouds.
https://atmos.uw.edu/~rmeast/ThesisSub.pdf
Clouds have also been increasing in the region as the climate warms.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2019GL082791
415 nigelj says:
17 Jun 2021 at 5:23 PM
More on Killian rarely answering questions
Lie, climate criminal.
myself
I have had probably THOUSANDS of interactions with you, liar. Because I have begun to stop reading your posts after too much stupid and/or too many lies have been encountered, I suddenly “rarely” answer questions.
What is your IQ, maybe 80 on a good day?
EP
EP is a troll and/or nuclear propagandist. I make it a point of honor to only rarely interact with him, and then only to make a specific point about something I think is worth my time. Why would I answer his questions? He is not an honest actor in the climate conversation, and rather irrational about nuclear as a climate solution. But, again, that translates to “rarely” answer questions.
Piotr is a self-defined bully, intentionally and constantly rude whether or not provoked and has nothing of use to say wrt mitigation. I studiously avoid reading his posts at all most of the time.
But, again, I simply refuse to answer questions…. despite doing so here since 2007. Brilliant trolling, you damned fool.
KIA
You are all feeding into that criminal’s plans. Congrats on being “useful idiots.”
Richard
Let me see… Richard accused me of seeking mass murder as a climate solution, so I didn’t answer his sick questions one time, but, again, I just don’t answer questions….
You shouldn’t be allowed near the internet.
You know nothing, understand less, and think yourself a mental giant. Ridiculous. You will get nothing but mockery from me if you choose to continue trolling me and acting against the best interests of humanity.
on degrowth:
There’s a simple answer to climate change. But will capitalism allow it?
“In discussions of climate emergency, degrowth has always been the elephant in the room; acknowledged from time to time, but rarely spoken about. But it may be the only solution”
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/science-and-technology/climate-change-degrowth-global-warming-bill-gates-geoengineering
This would be a good time to get serious about degrowth.
Cheers
Mike
Bill Gates has a project for a liquid sodium cooled nuclear reactor called Natrium:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/03/bill-gates-warren-buffett-new-nuclear-reactor-wyoming-natrium
Bill Gates is a smart guy. It’s just that sodium is a very reactive sort of element. I’m speculating, but if the reactor cooling system leaked and the sodium got in contact with water or air there could be a fire or explosion. Likewise if the reactor caught fire you might not be able to use water to cool things down or put it out. What then? What do people think of this Natrium project?
People won’t? Looks like the entire EU is headed toward degrowth.
https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/growth-without-economic-growth
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/20/bee-friendly-urban-wildflower-meadows-prove-a-hit-with-german-city-dwellers
Wild flower gardens will help the bees.
The pathway to systemic changes starts with soils.
Do not listen to scared, can’t- be-done, change-is-dangerous, please-can-we-keep-soil-killing-practices ignorance.
Seriously, KEEP chem ag bc natural, regenerative ag is somehow dangerous?
Unbelievable what nonsense is driven by ideology. And fear.
https://youtu.be/V6m-XlPnqxI
See if you can make sense of why this is such an important perspective WRT solutions (but it’s obvious, really):
https://eand.co/why-american-life-is-so-alienated-bbe084e0bd80
michael Sweet @424
John Pollack @427
— A plutonium bomb requires Pu239. A running power reactor produces Pu240. Can’t make bombs from that.
The UCS report is full of error.
Those claiming that a nuclear power reactor can make sufficiently pure Pu239 need to reference a demonstration. I claim that there are none.
@424:
They’re lying. They know damned well that the only bomb test of Pu from a MAGNOX (in the reactor for mere months) was a failure, and MAGNOX plutonium has far less Pu-238 and Pu-240 than Pu that’s been generated in 2-3 fuel cycles in a LWR. In short, every word out of a UCS spokesperson should be considered to be a lie, including “and” and “the”.
Dig into the financing of those studies. I’ll bet you 10:1 that the money comes from natural gas interests or is laundered through foundations which accept their donations. Natural gas is the “bridge” fuel which leads to nowhere.
@432:
WHAT “weak times”? It was NUCLEAR that propped up the grid in Texas when the “renewables” and natural gas were weak. Nuclear in the USA has a capacity factor well over 90%.
My scheme for a full decarbonization of the US economy relies on an overbuild of nuclear power, so that the excess electric generation can be turned to purposes such as generating enhanced fuels derived from biomass carbon.
Your faulty claims have no effect because the numbers refute them. Here’s a dollar, buy a clue.
Because of artificial fear. It’s being applied in Haiyang and Pevek.
@436:
I rarely interact with you, because I skip over most of your posts as a waste of time. I am not paid by anyone these days; I’m retired and have no outside income.
One of the things you fail to grasp is that nuclear energy is a minimally-impactful way to meet human needs from things nature doesn’t need and cannot even use, and thus frees up resources like land for purposes like food production, wildlife and carbon sequestration. Generating several GW(e) from a few tens of acres of power plant and leaving a multi-hundred acre buffer zone is far more “regenerative” than meeting human needs from solar PV or biomass. Why can’t you grasp this? WHAT is your ideological blind spot?
jgnfld(405): “ A poet you perhaps are. Can’t say I’ve seen any worth reading.”
Nuclear-Poet (421)” If you cannot appreciate Sappho, Lewis Carroll or Ogden Nash, there is no hope for you.”
I wouldn’t put yourself next to Sappho, Carroll and Nash just yet. Your: “Gentelmen and ruinables fags” – still needs some work to be on the same level…
jgnfld(405): “An engineer you are NOT”
Nuclear Poet: “Tell that to the people whose cubes I’ve walked into to talk about directional couplers”
Your cubical triumphs do not transfer automatically to RC – jgnfld said precisely WHY he thinks that “an engineer you are NOT”, I quote:
“You are equating building what was essentially a welded barge with an obsolescent triple expansion steam engine to a modular nuclear reactor?”
In your other feats of engineering, you didn’t understand the difference between
providing the top up power during PEAK demand and providing the BASELOAD, and your response to the explaining you the difference between the two was: “GFY” (Go Fuck Yourself). Sappho, eat your heart!
Nuclear Poet: “[I] figured out that the mechanical diagram on the screen is a locking planetary torque-split differential”
too bad that seeing on the screen a simple graph: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915
which I used to point that the solar has its top efficiency nicely matched to the peak demand in the US (highest: summer and daytime):
you countered with the praise of nuclear:
“ Damn, if we only had some power source which produced energy 24/7 and was especially effective when it’s cold out”
which would make sense ONLY if one read the above graph as peak demand being … in winter.
Hence I agree: “ A poet you perhaps are. An engineer you are NOT.“
@438:
We’ve dealt with that. The EBR-II had a leak in the superheater. It was successfully plugged and ran flawlessly for the better part of 30 years. It provided district heating for the Idaho National Laboratory until it was closed by act of law.
The problem is inculcated fear of something that is minimally harmful even if it happens. Going the fast-breeder way would free up land for the rest of the ecosystem to regenerate. It’s the only way to solve the problem short of gigadeaths.
David B. Benson (416) “The NuScale modules are completely independent, right out to the grid connection transformers. If you had bothered to study the NuScale Internet site, you would have learned that. But maybe it is too hard for you.
Irrelevant to my argument, as I merely explained to Richard Caldwell that Michael Sweet didn’t criticize you for “some trivial “typo” or being “less than perfectly clear”, but for falsifiable reason (see my 412), and I suggested how to test the validity of that reason.
If you had bothered to read [my post to which you react with such a condescension] – you would have learned that. But maybe it is too hard for you.
michael Sweet, John Pollack, Piotr et al. — Learn a little power engineering. Here is an introduction to PJM style power pricing:
https://bravenewclimate.proboards.com/thread/714/pjm-style-electricity-markets
Note the extreme difficulty of establishing a capacity market.