Lime Green Energy - Nuclear or Fossil?

[Beskar]

I am a big fan of ITER and Fusion power. Though there are quite a lot of promising alternatives.

I think everyone having mandatory solarpanel systems would end up reducing a lot of the cost. Depending on who lives in the buildings and locations, they can be self-efficient and excess can be 'sold' to energy companies.

[Kadagar_AV]

I am a big fan of ITER and Fusion power. Though there are quite a lot of promising alternatives.

I think everyone having mandatory solarpanel systems would end up reducing a lot of the cost. Depending on who lives in the buildings and locations, they can be self-efficient and excess can be 'sold' to energy companies.

You can even be stupid and understand that humanity basically have 2 options:

1. Die.
2. Find a renewable source of energy.

I hope I don't have to defend this position as I quite frankly deem it as a "doh!"

[a completely inoffensive name]

Are we reprocessing it?

Do we have the ability to do that in a functional manner?

1. Yes (in some areas)
2. Yes, we do. There are entire reactors designed to reuse spent nuclear fuel and turn it into isotopes that decay on a different time span than current nuclear fuel.

I am a big fan of ITER and Fusion power. Though there are quite a lot of promising alternatives.

I think everyone having mandatory solarpanel systems would end up reducing a lot of the cost. Depending on who lives in the buildings and locations, they can be self-efficient and excess can be 'sold' to energy companies.

Fusion is known for always being 25 years away. It's problematic to try and recreate the process on the sun by using a large magnetic field and an enclosed volume to simulate what gravity does for the stars.

Solar panels like with a lot of renewable energy sources are dependent on rare earth elements that are almost entirely mined by China (seriously, like over 90% of the total supply for them is from China). If you want the Western world to feel nice and green, you are gonna have to ignore the barren craters that the unregulated Chinese mining will create all over their pristine wilderness.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Are we reprocessing it?

Do we have the ability to do that in a functional manner?

Yes, but it's not like we're sprinkling magic pixie dust on it. We're basically separating the nasty from the really nasty stuff. The nasty can then be mixed up with slightly less nasty and be reused as ordinary fuel. Yay for BWR type reactors which were specifically designed to not be efficient and to yield particularly nasty wast products (so you can turn the really nasty stuff into weapon grade nasty bomb stuff using what is known as a breeder).

I am a big fan of ITER and Fusion power. Though there are quite a lot of promising alternatives.

I think everyone having mandatory solarpanel systems would end up reducing a lot of the cost. Depending on who lives in the buildings and locations, they can be self-efficient and excess can be 'sold' to energy companies.

1. Yes (in some areas)
2. Yes, we do. There are entire reactors designed to reuse spent nuclear fuel and turn it into isotopes that decay on a different time span than current nuclear fuel.

In theory that be great, in practice it doesn't really work out that way -- you wind up with smaller quantities of worse stuff, unless of course you are looking to weaponise it in which case you end up with smaller quantities of ammunition. Now there are reactor designs which don't involve Uranium and use something like Thorium (usually based on designs around molten salt). Bonus points for being inherently a much safer reactor design without the well known runaway conditions of BWRs.

Fusion is known for always being 25 years away. It's problematic to try and recreate the process on the sun by using a large magnetic field and an enclosed volume to simulate what gravity does for the stars.

Energy efficient fusion has been with us since about the 1950s. It's called the hydrogen bomb. The trick is to scale it down to controllable proportions. That too has been achieved, you can build a DIY fusion reactor in your garage. Unfortunately at that scale it's not energy efficient anymore. So what we are really looking to simulate (by way of lasers) is the effect of a fission missile to heat hydrogen to a plasma to trigger fusion, the magnets are merely there to stop the reactor and the environment from being deep fried. This is done with lasers and magnets of the type which require some serious cooling, which in turn requires some pretty hefty machinery which needs a lot of power to run. So all in all "energy scaling" and reliability/lifetime of the safety equipment is the big problem. Not unlike weapon grade laser systems, actually.
[QUOTE]

Solar panels like with a lot of renewable energy sources are dependent on rare earth elements that are almost entirely mined by China (seriously, like over 90% of the total supply for them is from China). If you want the Western world to feel nice and green, you are gonna have to ignore the barren craters that the unregulated Chinese mining will create all over their pristine wilderness.

Those rare earths of which most are not rare at all. As it happens the USA sits on a few deposits, as does India. However you are right that the business relies on some pretty nasty chemicals to refine the ore so there is a risk to the local environment and photo-voltaic solar sells in particular are of dubious efficiency given the energy cost of their production.

[a completely inoffensive name]

In theory that be great, in practice it doesn't really work out that way -- you wind up with smaller quantities of worse stuff, unless of course you are looking to weaponise it in which case you end up with smaller quantities of ammunition. Now there are reactor designs which don't involve Uranium and use something like Thorium (usually based on designs around molten salt). Bonus points for being inherently a much safer reactor design without the well known runaway conditions of BWRs.

But that's the point of it anyway, is to reduce the volume/mass of nasty stuff. I don't think anyone is expecting 100% efficiency at removing all the bad stuff, but given the amount that is piling up (in many cases, in on site pools) establishing a few power plants for the purpose of reusing spent fuel will provide energy out of what would otherwise just sit there. The byproducts that decay on a faster timescale (and hence are a lot more deadly to us) have the advantage of being locked up in facilities where they will become inert faster than the stuff we currently have. Well, I guess that last part depends on the path of decay these isotopes take. But the less mass we have to store in vaults under neath mountains, the better.

Energy efficient fusion has been with us since about the 1950s. It's called the hydrogen bomb. The trick is to scale it down to controllable proportions. That too has been achieved, you can build a DIY fusion reactor in your garage. Unfortunately at that scale it's not energy efficient anymore. So what we are really looking to simulate (by way of lasers) is the effect of a fission missile to heat hydrogen to a plasma to trigger fusion, the magnets are merely there to stop the reactor and the environment from being deep fried. This is done with lasers and magnets of the type which require some serious cooling, which in turn requires some pretty hefty machinery which needs a lot of power to run. So all in all "energy scaling" and reliability/lifetime of the safety equipment is the big problem. Not unlike weapon grade laser systems, actually.

Yes, in fact everything you said actually proves my point. The reason development has taken (and will continue to take) a long time is precisely because we need all these roundabout ways to get a controlled reaction since we do not have the luxury of living in a sci fi universe where we can create gravitational wells to get nuclei to naturally fuse.

Those rare earths of which most are not rare at all. As it happens the USA sits on a few deposits, as does India. However you are right that the business relies on some pretty nasty chemicals to refine the ore so there is a risk to the local environment and photo-voltaic solar sells in particular are of dubious efficiency given the energy cost of their production.

All true, but the business side of extraction is not the only major problem. Even though the US and India have their own deposits, the fact is that we simply don't have the infrastructure built, the Chinese do, and everyone is pushing for solar panels everywhere RIGHT NOW. The Chinese EPA simply does not exist. What does everyone expect to happen?

[Papewaio]

For a years supply of fission energy an individual will generate:

760 mL of low level waste
60 mL of intermediate level waste (espresso glass)
25 mL of high level waste (stored for a thousand years) (1.5 tablespoons)

http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_170.shtml

[a completely inoffensive name]

For a years supply of fission energy an individual will generate:

760 mL of low level waste
60 mL of intermediate level waste (espresso glass)
25 mL of high level waste (stored for a thousand years) (1.5 tablespoons)

http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_170.shtml

Good info, the estimates in my head I was using until now were off by a factor of 10-20.

[Tellos Athenaios]

But that's the point of it anyway, is to reduce the volume/mass of nasty stuff. I don't think anyone is expecting 100% efficiency at removing all the bad stuff, but given the amount that is piling up (in many cases, in on site pools) establishing a few power plants for the purpose of reusing spent fuel will provide energy out of what would otherwise just sit there. The byproducts that decay on a faster timescale (and hence are a lot more deadly to us) have the advantage of being locked up in facilities where they will become inert faster than the stuff we currently have. Well, I guess that last part depends on the path of decay these isotopes take. But the less mass we have to store in vaults under neath mountains, the better.

Yes but there are better, cleaner alternatives which are more efficient and don't decay to stuff which you need to get all panicky about should the Iranians do it. BWRs are kinda like buying a brand new 1970s car in 2012.

Yes, in fact everything you said actually proves my point. The reason development has taken (and will continue to take) a long time is precisely because we need all these roundabout ways to get a controlled reaction since we do not have the luxury of living in a sci fi universe where we can create gravitational wells to get nuclei to naturally fuse.

I don't disagree with you on that point, but I submit that if we considered fusion more of a priority we might just get results faster. The cynic might say the only reason fusion research is happening at all is to stress test weapons grade laser tech.

All true, but the business side of extraction is not the only major problem. Even though the US and India have their own deposits, the fact is that we simply don't have the infrastructure built, the Chinese do, and everyone is pushing for solar panels everywhere RIGHT NOW. The Chinese EPA simply does not exist. What does everyone expect to happen?

Depends on price point. If it steadily rises or if China will continue to use the monopoly situation arbitrarily to its advantage, then eventually that may give rise to credible alternatives as companies and countries seek to become more vendor independent? Bit like oil, really. What currently prevents this from happening is that the rare earths are dirt cheap, so there's not enough money in it.