Why Nukes are Cleaner than Oil. (Visually)

[chimaxi83]

"Clean" is totally subjective; some people don't like cleanliness whatever that is. I mean, I like O negative blood from individuals with mtDNA hg U/U8bK; that is what turns me on the most. But psychiatrists like me turned off if they can't make money. Yet some still have the self-control to ignore me or avoid me. Maybe one will kill me. And others suffer pollution from the mtDNA I exhale (that's what I hate myself for the most).

Does all that explain why it is not bad for society if I stay in my parents' home typing for as long as I can?

It used to be funny, but I'm pretty sure your sad retard DNA basement dweller skit is up.

 

[BoberFett]

Oil goes towards petroleum products. Nuclear develops electricity. It isn't a fair comparison because they aren't producing the same thing. You should be comparing nuclear to coal.

Electric vehicles are imaginary? I was not aware of that.

 

[OutHouse]

People are just scared of nuclear power because of it's risk of melt down. From what I understand, the major incidents in world history were mainly at plants where user error or just plain old outdated/old facilities were in use.

With modern technology and a highly professional and trained staff, I don't see how anything would go wrong. We've had nuclear power on Submarines and other Navy vessels for decades, amounting to hundreds of ships, and not one reactor has melted down and caused the catastrophic damage people are so afraid of.

so move to chernobyl and Fukushima.

http://jciv.iidj.net/map/ge

 

[glenn1]

I posted the original link on OT. If the discussion is how "clean" a fuel is then I think a more informative graphic would be a bigger block showing the total footprint of various fuels. Oil requires a huge infrastructure plus brine, sulfur, and refinery wastes and emmissions. Coal requires a huge infrastructure plus mine wastes, fly ash, emmissions, and dead miners. Uranium requires huge infrastructure, mine wastes, mill wastes, enrichment tails, high level, low level wastes. Getting to the cubes in the pics requires bigger cubes. Nothing is free.

Sure, but since all 3 feedstocks are products of mining I doubt there are huge differences in end-to-end infrastructure requirements. Petroleum distillation vs. uranium enrichment both take lots of infrastructure, it's not like you're comparing the complexity of a $1 kids toy against the Boeing 787. If we were measuring the efficiency of photosythesis vs. internal combustion we wouldn't include the energy costs to produce the entire tree the leaf is attached to.

 

[OutHouse]

why are natural gas power plants not on this list?

 

[chucky2]

"Clean" is totally subjective; some people don't like cleanliness whatever that is. I mean, I like O negative blood from individuals with mtDNA hg U/U8bK; that is what turns me on the most. But psychiatrists like me turned off if they can't make money. Yet some still have the self-control to ignore me or avoid me. Maybe one will kill me. And others suffer pollution from the mtDNA I exhale (that's what I hate myself for the most).

Does all that explain why it is not bad for society if I stay in my parents' home typing for as long as I can?

When I think of a "CBD" obsessed poster, I think of this. Congrats on changing up the material! :thumbsup:

 

[lopri]

While nuclear energy may seem cleaner than fossil fuel at first, the long term damage is difficult to calculate. We take the risk of driving off of gasoline but not many will take a chance driving a car with active radiation.

Chernobyl happened not too long ago. If you are too young to know what it was, be warned before engaging in a search. My position is not that we should shun nuclear energy completely but that it be treated much more carefully.

 

[crashtech]

So many misconceptions about nuclear power, I don't try very much to dispel them anymore. Technology has advanced to the point where "walk-away safe" reactors could be built today.

 

[Darwin333]

So despite what we've been told, electricity ISN'T a replacement for fossil fuel vehicles?

Not with our current infrastructure but it could be.

 

[Darwin333]

Funding for research on Gen IV reactors should be accelerated, imo. Risk factors can be even lower than they are today. Designs in use today are based on outdated reasoning and stem in part from the forceful vision of Adm. Rickover.

Many environmentalists who have rationally analyzed the risk see that Gen IV represents a bridge to a clean energy future.

Actually the nuke technology we use to generate electricity is directly because of military needs. We would have (and did at one point) developed much better and safer reactors had we not needed a bunch of stuff to make gigantic booms and the need for ridiculously small reactors to power ships and subs. The commercial sector has no such need for the absurdly small space requirements nor do they need stuff that can vaporize cities.

Regardless, the energy problem is one we need to solve asap. Economic output and growth is directly tied to energy use. Coal is very nasty stuff that the .gov actually backstops more than nukes, the hidden health costs are enormous and they actually release more radiation than nuclear power plants.

 

[Darwin333]

Electric vehicles are imaginary? I was not aware of that.

1. Use nukes to make electricity
2. Use electricity from the nukes to turn the coal we aren't using for electricity anymore into an alternative to gasoline (The Germans used coal to make liquid fuel for most of their vehicles in WW2 due to petroleum shortages).
3. Stop giving people that don't like us money
4. Use the above as a stop gap until we build out the infrastructure to power vehicles with just electricity
5. Profit

 

[sm625]

Oil doesnt melt down and contaminate huge swaths of the landscape for centuries. And for those idiots living next to a nuke plants in california, I cant wait to they earn their darwin awards. That day is coming, it is only a matter of time. Building such volatile structures on a fault line is certainly one of the top 10 stupidest actions of mankind. The worst part is, we do all this only to support the nuclear arms industry. If it wasnt for that we would have switched to LFTR technology by now, and nuclear would be both cleaner and safer. But the dumbed down masses refuse to be educated and responsible because I guess its just easier to sit in front of a tv and suck your thumb while listening to the propaganda spewed constantly by the very same powers who just happen to own both the media and the nuclear weapons industries? The fact that every last american cannot look up from their stupid screens and see what is so obvious is just downright shameful...

 

[Paratus]

Oil doesnt melt down and contaminate huge swaths of the landscape for centuries. And for those idiots living next to a nuke plants in california, I cant wait to they earn their darwin awards. That day is coming, it is only a matter of time. Building such volatile structures on a fault line is certainly one of the top 10 stupidest actions of mankind. The worst part is, we do all this only to support the nuclear arms industry. If it wasnt for that we would have switched to LFTR technology by now, and nuclear would be both cleaner and safer. But the dumbed down masses refuse to be educated and responsible because I guess its just easier to sit in front of a tv and suck your thumb while listening to the propaganda spewed constantly by the very same powers who just happen to own both the media and the nuclear weapons industries? The fact that every last american cannot look up from their stupid screens and see what is so obvious is just downright shameful...

Nope oil and coal are just spread across the entire planet intentionally. Screwing up our climate for decades and making large swaths of land unlivable due to oil spills or storing fly ash.

So if we are going to be hyperbolic about the potential dangers you could at least be "fair and balanced".

And as the graphic shows, Nukes produce over a million times less waste by volume.

I won't disagree that we should have long ago moved to safer reactor designs.

 

[Triumph]

Electric vehicles are imaginary? I was not aware of that.

You fail to make a coherent point.

 

[werepossum]

Funding for research on Gen IV reactors should be accelerated, imo. Risk factors can be even lower than they are today. Designs in use today are based on outdated reasoning and stem in part from the forceful vision of Adm. Rickover.

Many environmentalists who have rationally analyzed the risk see that Gen IV represents a bridge to a clean energy future.

QFT

People are just scared of nuclear power because of it's risk of melt down. From what I understand, the major incidents in world history were mainly at plants where user error or just plain old outdated/old facilities were in use.

With modern technology and a highly professional and trained staff, I don't see how anything would go wrong. We've had nuclear power on Submarines and other Navy vessels for decades, amounting to hundreds of ships, and not one reactor has melted down and caused the catastrophic damage people are so afraid of.

One of the Russian subs suffered a critical event. One of the sailors had to gone into the reactor chamber with an exposed core and manually shut it down, knowing he would be dead within hours.

I posted the original link on OT. If the discussion is how "clean" a fuel is then I think a more informative graphic would be a bigger block showing the total footprint of various fuels. Oil requires a huge infrastructure plus brine, sulfur, and refinery wastes and emmissions. Coal requires a huge infrastructure plus mine wastes, fly ash, emmissions, and dead miners. Uranium requires huge infrastructure, mine wastes, mill wastes, enrichment tails, high level, low level wastes. Getting to the cubes in the pics requires bigger cubes. Nothing is free.

This, exactly. I'm a big fan of nuclear, but even more significant than the waste is the huge amount of ore required to get that much pure enriched uranium. Nothing compared to coal, but worth noting. Clean is relative; even solar panels have to be manufactured and distributed.

 

[crashtech]

Nuclear is just one of the necessary ingredients to get us to a clean energy future, which I hope will eventually be fusion. Bring it all on, wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear, natural gas, whatever works (and whatever will get people on board) along with as much increased efficiency in consumption as we can achieve, while tech advances enough for us to get to fusion. Not that fusion won't have some neutron activation issues of its own, but right now it's the holy grail, and I hope to see useful power generation from it before I die.

 

[Fern]

-snip-
And as the graphic shows, Nukes produce over a million times less waste by volume.

I'm not bashing nukes etc, but I believe these pictures are wildly misleading.

Unlike the oil, uranium requires large amounts to be mined and then refined to get to that cube. All that other material should be counted too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_tailings

Uranium tailings are a waste byproduct (tailings) of uranium mining. In mining, raw uranium ore is brought to the surface and crushed into a fine sand. The valuable uranium-bearing minerals are then removed via heap leaching with the use of acids or bases, and the remaining radioactive sludge, called "uranium tailings", is stored in huge impoundments. A short ton (907 kg) of ore yield one to five pounds (.45 to 2.3 kg) of uranium depending on the uranium content of the mineral.[1] Uranium tailings can retain up 85% of the ore's original radioactivity.[2]

If uranium tailings are stored aboveground and allowed to dry out, the radioactive sand can be carried great distances by the wind, entering the food chain and bodies of water.[citation needed] The danger posed by such sand dispersal is uncertain at best given the dilution effect of dispersal. The majority of tailing mass will be inert rock, just as it was in the raw ore before the extraction of the uranium, but physically altered, ground up, mixed with large amounts of water and exposed to atmospheric oxygen, which can substantially alter chemical behaviour.

Uranium tailings contain over a dozen radioactive nuclides, which are the primary hazard posed by the tailings. The most important of these are thorium-230, radium-226, radon-222 (radon gas) and the daughter isotopes of radon decay, including polonium-210.

Fern

 

[Paratus]

QFT


One of the Russian subs suffered a critical event. One of the sailors had to gone into the reactor chamber with an exposed core and manually shut it down, knowing he would be dead within hours.


This, exactly. I'm a big fan of nuclear, but even more significant than the waste is the huge amount of ore required to get that much pure enriched uranium. Nothing compared to coal, but worth noting. Clean is relative; even solar panels have to be manufactured and distributed.

While I'm not sure how much rock they have to mine to get the amount of Uranium in the picture above, that picture is of U238, not enriched U235. So that's all the Uranium the world used in 2013. Any enriched U235 was derived from that block.

The energy density I used for the calculations above was for natural U238 with 0.7% U235.

Reactor grade Uranium is enriched to 3.5% U235 and has a much higher energy density of 3,456,000 MJ/kg than U238.

 

[crashtech]

Actually the nuke technology we use to generate electricity is directly because of military needs. We would have (and did at one point) developed much better and safer reactors had we not needed a bunch of stuff to make gigantic booms and the need for ridiculously small reactors to power ships and subs. The commercial sector has no such need for the absurdly small space requirements nor do they need stuff that can vaporize cities.

Regardless, the energy problem is one we need to solve asap. Economic output and growth is directly tied to energy use. Coal is very nasty stuff that the .gov actually backstops more than nukes, the hidden health costs are enormous and they actually release more radiation than nuclear power plants.

Not sure what the "actually" was for because I do not think you contradicted anything that was asserted. But I would rather say that today's nuclear tech is derived from the military, not because of. Semantics aside, I think we agree and that is why I mentioned Rickover, who was one of the main impetuses behind today's LWR derived designs.

 

[Paratus]

I'm not bashing nukes etc, but I believe these pictures are wildly misleading.

Unlike the oil, uranium requires large amounts to be mined and then refined to get to that cube. All that other material should be counted too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_tailings



Fern

Well I was trying to show the relative amounts of waste from use of the particular fuel.

But that's a good point.

Let's see if we can get an idea of how much more waste, albeit low level radioactive waste, is required if we include mine tailings.

From your numbers let's assume 1.5kgU/900kg of ore.



So that increases the mass of the waste to:

37.2 million metric tonnes

Or

0.86% the amount of waste of just the oil or


0.47% the amount of waste of just the coal and no coal tailings.

So still much cleaner by mass, but not as much if you ignore the mining waste.

 

[MongGrel]

How NIF Works


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yixhyPN0r3g


Countdown to a NIF Laser Shot



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgdSVt6vHV0

National Ignition Facility shorts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMRD2Ckmmes

 

[Paratus]

How NIF Works


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yixhyPN0r3g


Countdown to a NIF Laser Shot



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgdSVt6vHV0

The NIF is really cool.

Fusion potentially even puts breeder reactors to shame.

Deuterium-Tritium Fusion gives 576,000,000 MJ/kg

Even that pales next to the big momma of energy density -

Antimatter at just under 90 billion MJ/kg.

 

[Timorous]

Oil doesnt melt down and contaminate huge swaths of the landscape for centuries. And for those idiots living next to a nuke plants in california, I cant wait to they earn their darwin awards. That day is coming, it is only a matter of time. Building such volatile structures on a fault line is certainly one of the top 10 stupidest actions of mankind. The worst part is, we do all this only to support the nuclear arms industry. If it wasnt for that we would have switched to LFTR technology by now, and nuclear would be both cleaner and safer. But the dumbed down masses refuse to be educated and responsible because I guess its just easier to sit in front of a tv and suck your thumb while listening to the propaganda spewed constantly by the very same powers who just happen to own both the media and the nuclear weapons industries? The fact that every last american cannot look up from their stupid screens and see what is so obvious is just downright shameful...

The problem with this argument is that even with Chernobyl and Fukushima in terms of deaths / MW hour Nuclear is by far the safest method of generating electricity on the planet. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/

It is another example of how bad Humans are at assessing risk, we put too much stock into those large disasters but not enough into the small individual incidents so our perception becomes skewed.

The other thing to consider is that Thorium is potentially viable alternative to Uranium and there is plenty that has already been mined, if Thorium reactors could be researched and built the current stocks of fuel can be used.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

The NIF is really cool.

Fusion potentially even puts breeder reactors to shame.

Deuterium-Tritium Fusion gives 576,000,000 MJ/kg

Even that pales next to the big momma of energy density -

Antimatter at just under 90 billion MJ/kg.

Now we just need like 80 years for it to be viable.

 

[Paratus]

Now we just need like 80 years for it to be viable.

No only 20 years away.

As in its always 20 years away.