TOKYO, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Japan on Sunday marked the 78th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing on Hiroshima, where its mayor urged the abolition of nuclear weapons and called the Group of Seven leaders' notion of nuclear deterrence a "folly".
ATLANTA (AP) — A new reactor at a nuclear power plant in Georgia has entered commercial operation, becoming the first new American reactor built from scratch in decades.
If you were hoping that somehow #renewableenergy would exclude #nuclear power (most obviously due to its financial costs & the historic problem of its waste products)... the fact that the rising price of #uranium would suggest demand (by Governments' #energy programmes) is rising will be disappointing news.
Whether its a victory for sectoral lobbying or a lack of confidence in developments around energy storage from renewables, its not good news for anyone wanting the end of nuclear power.
Today is the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
It is not over. Chernobyl spread radioactive particles across Europe and beyond. The fire in reactor #4 burned for over a month, releasing massive amounts of radionuclides which then would fallout and embed into the #ecosystem.
37 years later we still find food contaminated with Chernobyl fallout every year. Often with cesium-137 which is very adept at transporting in an ecosystem once the particle has deposited from the fallout cloud.
Our high-level nuclear waste, spent fuel from nuclear reactors, is the most substantive creation of human civilization. It will outlast everything else humans have made.
It is how our descendants will know us, we are the people who made that.
How do we warn the 1,000s of generations who will experience risk from this radioactive waste?
Global warming is shutting down nuclear, not the other way around:
"High river temperatures to limit French nuclear power production"
This is the second summer in a row that French nukes are being taken offline because higher water temperatures make it impossible to cool the reactors and the spent fuel.
Not only has used #nuclear fuel been stored safely for decades, it can be reprocessed into fuel for the future.
Used fuel safely stored could potentially power us for centuries, via fast breeder reactors. No more mining needed, solving the waste problem at the same time.
Greer's understanding of energy and the capabilities of renewables is spot-on, but his assessment of risk sounds off. Just because a nuclear war hasn't happened doesn't mean it never will. I'm not saying it's inevitable either, but the risk is much higher today than it was even ten or twenty years ago, and due to climate change is only bound to increase with time.
Peter Dutton's nuclear plan is just terrible public policy.
The truth is that, in an Australian context, with nuclear power more expensive per kilowatt hour than either grid scale solar & storage or coal, nuclear just doesn't make economic sense.
The UK has a mature nuclear industry. Its new Hinkley Point C plant, started in 2016, is now expected to not be complete until 2031, and costs £35bn.
So how much would it cost to replace all of Australia's coal power plants with nuclear ones?
We'll, at current exchange rates, £35bn — that's the cost of just one Hinkley Point C sized reactors — works out to A$67.6 billion.
So building just 10 nuclear reactors the size of Hinkley Point C costs $A676bn, making the AUKUS subs look like Home Brand corn flakes in comparison.
(Just for comparison, ScoMo's AUKUS subs cost $368bn, and Daniel Andrew's Suburban Rail loop is estimated at around $100bn.)
That's assuming Australia, starting from scratch, could build nuclear plants as quickly and cheaply as the UK, which was one of the first nations on Earth to split the atom.
So is it debt & deficit to fund this? Big new taxes? Even by the LNP's own measuring sticks, it's a crap policy!
The big thing that's changed since it was published is that grid solar + storage is now cheaper than coal or nuclear power.
So would you support holding up the closure of coal plants for 15 years until nuclear plants are completed, then paying substantially more on your power bills, while the federal government pays hundreds of billions of dollars in government subsidies, while also hiring thousands of additional public servants to regulate it all?
The amount of electricity that the #Nuclear industry has produced globally peaked in 2006, but regrettably that wasn't the peak in regards to how much taxpayers have subsidized that industry.
if i noticed something when talking with outspoken pro-nuclear people it's that you really can't trust anything they say. they are intellectually bankrupt, will use all kinds of shady argumentation tactics, ad hominems, and can't even be bothered to write their own arguments (instead using AI for that)
So I just saw the YouTube video someone posted that showed nuclear reactors starting up, and the first thing I noticed was that they all glowed a very bright, pretty blue. I'm probably an idiot, but I was honestly expecting green, because of many years of dramatized depictions in popular media....
This is very bad news for radioactive waste management at #Hanford
"Hanford’s pre-treated waste might not meet Vit Plant criteria"
Much of the worst radioactive waste at Hanford is the "liquid" waste in the Tank Farms. The plan was to vitrify them (enclose them in glass). Now, looks like the Vit Plant may not be up to the task. Billions more wasted after the first Vit Plant was scuttled for safety concerns.
All of the tanks in the Tank Farm are leaking. Workers are hospitalized annually for inhaling toxic fumes working at the site. They may remain with no viable plan to process the waste into a form that is manageable.
Complexity of building electricity grid based on #renewables is probably best illustrated on days like this in #Germany^1:
instantaneous electricity consumption is 67 GW
Germany has 66 GW in wind, but it’s merely potential output if there was wind - and there’s now enough wind to produce 3.8 GW satisfying 5.67% of the demand
Germany also has 69 GW in PV, but same story here - there’s enough light to produce 5.3 GW (7.74%)
Note that each of these, wind and PV, have installed capacity alone exceeding the current demand! But installed capacity isn’t much worth when it doesn’t produce any electricity. Statistically that’s the case with wind and PV most of the time (capacity factor <50%)🤷 I think this gives you some idea about the feasibility of postulates such as “we just need to build more renewables!”
Now let’s factor in time. Watt is the unit of instantaneous power, how much the country uses electricity right now. At this load (66 GW) to survive one hour Germany needs 66 GWh (unit of amount of electricity). Lower than that, and you need to start switching off factories, electricity supply to houses, trains, hospitals etc.
Germany, like most of us, is not ready for these consequences of variability of renewables. And this is the sole reason why it runs on gas and coal, including lignite, the dirtiest form of coal: these can be switched on and off whenever needed (they are dispatchable).
Of course, there are other dispatchable sources of electricity which are also as safe and low-carbon as renewables, such as #nuclear (see #France for comparison)^2. However, Germany governments in the course of #Energiewende decided that 0.03 deaths/1 TWh (nuclear)^3 is too much and instead chose to switch to 24.6 deaths/1 TWh (coal) as the dispatchable source.^4
Of course, there are days when wind and PV perform much better so would electricity storage help? Let’s take the 66 GWh hourly consumption: there was much talk about how battery storage is going to fix the whole variability of renewables. ElectricityMaps doesn’t show the total capacity (GWh) of available batteries directly, but it can be somewhat estimated from 30 days average (at the bottom)^1.
Over the last 30 days German batteries supplied 1 TWh to the grid, which makes ~53 GWh per day, which makes ~2 GWh per hour. While we don’t know their total capacity to estimate maximum period they could keep the country running, that’s still 30x less than the hourly consumption. A very rough guess, the battery farms built in Germany in over a decade (Energiewende started in 2011) could power the country for around 2 minutes.
I guess from now on you can make your extrapolations and assess the feasibility of statements like “we just need to build some more storage!”
Wondering why so small? Poland seriously considers retrofitting its existing thermal power plants running on coal with small nuclear reactors, thus preserving all the existing generation, heating and distribution infrastructure, minus coal. 30 MW sounds like perfect replacement for the existing coal reactors.
Additionally, a number of chemical plants consider obtaining power and heating (hot steam) from nuclear power, and this design seems to respond to this demand perfectly. It's also very safe.
> The conceptual design of a new Polish high-temperature research reactor, developed by the National Centre for Nuclear Research (NCBJ), has been unveiled. Developed with input from Japan, the reactor could be built in Poland at the NCBJ.
> The helium-cooled reactor - measuring 12.3 metres in height and with a diameter of 4.1 metres - will provide 30 MW of thermal power. It will feature a prismatic-type core consisting of hexagonal blocks. Moderated with graphite, the reactor will use TRISO-type fuel with 8-12% enrichment. The primary forced circulation helium cooling circuit will operate at a pressure of 6 MPa. The helium temperature at the reactor outlet will be 750°C, at the inlet 325°C. The reactor will feature passive and active safety systems, with a planned lifetime of 60 years.
Reminder that BEVs do next to nothing to replace fossil fuels. You need a true alternative, such as green hydrogen, to actually reduce fossil fuel use. Also, nuclear makes sense too.
A new Shelter/National Housing Federation report argues that investing around £12bn on building 90,000 #socialhousing units would see a positive return within 11 years.
Getting people into homes would reduce benefits costs, save the #NHS money & more likely see those in proper homes (back) in #work. It would also, of course, boost employment in construction & associated trades.
The paradox for UK #politics is while a long time horizon is acceptable for #nuclear#energy, for homes, not so much!
Since there's a bunch of dipshits doing the "omg Russia #nuclear movements" BS again, my handy dandy guide on who's reliable regarding all such movements and their significance:
Principals in the nuclear chain of command. i.e: the President, Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor, or head of nuclear forces, or their official spokesperson; and even then ONLY if they deliver that message from the podium as an explicit statement on that subject
Hiroshima marks a-bomb anniversary, calls nuclear deterrence "folly" (www.reuters.com)
TOKYO, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Japan on Sunday marked the 78th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing on Hiroshima, where its mayor urged the abolition of nuclear weapons and called the Group of Seven leaders' notion of nuclear deterrence a "folly".
The first US nuclear reactor built from scratch in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia (apnews.com)
ATLANTA (AP) — A new reactor at a nuclear power plant in Georgia has entered commercial operation, becoming the first new American reactor built from scratch in decades.
Russia plan to blow up Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has been “drafted and approved” (www.newstatesman.com)
Kyrylo Budanov, chief of Ukraine’s military intelligence, warns of a dangerous escalation.
Why do we associate nuclear radiation with a green glow?
So I just saw the YouTube video someone posted that showed nuclear reactors starting up, and the first thing I noticed was that they all glowed a very bright, pretty blue. I'm probably an idiot, but I was honestly expecting green, because of many years of dramatized depictions in popular media....
Russian state TV threatens nuclear strike on US (www.newsweek.com)
Regarding the U.S., military pundit Igor Korotchenko told the Russia 1 channel: "we will not wage war with you in Europe."
Growing share of Americans favor more nuclear power (www.pewresearch.org)
A majority of Americans (57%) say they favor more nuclear power plants to generate electricity in the country, up from 43% who said this in 2020.