What climate change is not

[billvon]

Storage is not the same as recycling to a benign and/or environmentally beneficial state.

Agreed.

Storage is just a cop out from the responsibility of developing poisoness substances and not knowing what they are doing...The world already has a serious problem with land fill waste... and that aint going to go away any time soon.

Agreed 100%. So do we use a process that generates tons of nuclear waste from every terawatt of electricity generated, or a process that generates three kilograms of nuclear waste for every terawatt of electricity generated? I'd prefer the latter. How about you?

Better yet - reuse the fuel over and over again.

There are still places around the globe that are more or less permanently irradiated (dead spots) that we have no idea as to how to rectify...most of them classified no doubt especially in Russia and China.

Yep, like Chernobyl. Fortunately we don't use RBMK reactors.

Let's look at the biggest nuclear disaster ever in the US - Three Mile Island. How many square miles of permanently irradiated dead spots are there near that reactor site?

Promoting Nuclear energy as a long term fix with out long term solutions for its inherent problems is insane.

Again, I am happy to be called insane by you.

Learn how to clean up the mess at Chernobyl and maybe it is worth talking about...

We don't have any RBMK reactors. If you want to clean up the mess at Chernobyl, be my guest.

 

[billvon]

I suppose I just have a more "extreme" notion of conservation. Not really, though, 'cuz even with that 25% reduction, household consumption in the US is still multiples of that in households throughout the rest of the world.

Yep. There's a lot more to be done.

These are only gonna help me if I have access to other people's households--I know precisely how much I'm using.

Right. I use (and recommend) those devices all the time to other people who are concerned about electrical waste.

Still boggling to me. Our household uses between 3 and 6 kwh/day. The only other energy sources are propane for the stove (100 gallon tank was filled four years ago and it's still at 70%) and a wood stove for heat--we're in the "mountains" of New England and burn about two cords a year.

We generate a few kwhr a month more than we use. (On average; during the winter we use more than we generate and during the summer we generate a lot more than we use.) We don't get much money back for it (they use the "avoided cost" which always comes to few cents a kwhr) but it offsets our natural gas use. We just switched to an instantaneous hot water heater which has saved a fair amount; our gas bill went up a lot when the kids started washing their own hands and taking their own baths.

 

[parmalee]

We generate a few kwhr a month more than we use. (On average; during the winter we use more than we generate and during the summer we generate a lot more than we use.) We don't get much money back for it (they use the "avoided cost" which always comes to few cents a kwhr) but it offsets our natural gas use. We just switched to an instantaneous hot water heater which has saved a fair amount; our gas bill went up a lot when the kids started washing their own hands and taking their own baths.

It's undoubtedly been analyzed, extensively, but it seems that higher payment for surplus energy produced by solar panels might incentivize. But then, power companies are private and for profit, so...

I forgot to mention a 20 gallon water heater, that is part of my power consumption in this moment. We were going to switch to instantaneous a couple years back, but we literally lack sufficient power for the electrical and the propane ones seemed problematic. Actually, I don't recall specifically why I ruled out the propane.

I suppose kids might account for increased energy consumption incommensurable with that of regular people (by which I mean adults). "Rumor" has it that households with kids do laundry way more often. I'm not really sure why exactly that may be, but perhaps?

 

[parmalee]

You know how Malthus said, the more food we grow, the more people we'll make to outgrow the food supply?
We do the same with energy. One kind of energy production gets us in trouble, we make more energy with some other substance that will get us into trouble later on, and just keep demanding more energy and more and more and more...
what we never do
is say
enough
enough packaging, enough plastic toys, enough idiotic electronic devices, enough pictures of cats and body parts, enough half-time spangles,enough explosions, enough fun, enough fast food delivered even faster; fast enough, big enough, tall enough, powerful enough, rich enough
never enough

Academic understandings of such matters can only get a person so far. Some people regard more as, among other things, comfort and security. For me, more has always been stress-inducing and annoying. And I've been told that i really don't understand addiction.

Still, tremendous--or even infinite--material wants do not emerge in a vacuum or in isolation. American culture is hardly the sole culprit, but even de Tocqueville identified acquisitiveness as a defining trait of Americans nearly 200 years back. Not designating it as a pathology was a huge mistake.

Edit: Dammit. Dude didn't put lyrics in video, rather, in comments.


Eat, drink, and be merry
For tomorrow we die
Eat electricity
Drink five of the seven seas
Here is paralyzed sleet
Here is bubble bath rain
Acrid stench and festering tongue
New York to Moscow, Nairobi in flames

I don't know either
What is the answer?
We were told to expect more
And now that we've got more
We want more
We want more

We have moved from A to X
This welfare state is our progress
The size of it all carries us along
More equals better, it's what we want
Our energy is endless, it seems
It's there when we need it
We've got men on the job

We finance clinics to research
A cure for cancer, our least vague fear
A new kind of water
A new way of breathing
Always, somehow, a wonder cure-all
Turns up when we need it
We've got men on the job

You know from experience
The creature comforts, a house that's warm
Your body would choose all this
Of course! It's innate, we're selfish
But what if there's not enough to go round?
Defense is needed, they've got some odd men in odd jobs

We have moved from A to Z
This nuclear state is our demise
Fly away Peter, hide away Paul
Who can watch as the Earth burns, shatters, and dies?
Fail-safe, foolproof, we've heard that before
Good sense is needed
Let's hope we've got men on the job

The size of it all carries us along
More equals better, it's what we want
You know from experience
Your body would choose all this

 

[Michael 345]

Almost all reactors out there go critical via thermal neutrons - neutrons that have been slowed down by a moderator. A large number of these are delayed neutrons, neutrons that are released milliseconds to minutes after the fission event. This is a good thing for several reasons. One is that since the power ramps up and down over a time range of milliseconds to minutes, it's possible to move control rods at human-comprehensible speeds (i.e. seconds) to control the reaction, which was a very important factor early on in reactor research, A second is that if you lose the moderator the reaction usually slows down.

Nuclear bombs, on the other hand, use prompt neutrons - the neutrons that result instantly from fission of a uranium or plutonium nucleus. Since bombs don't generally use moderators, they are also high energy neutrons that have not been slowed by a moderator. These neutrons are released so quickly, and go so fast, that a nuclear bomb can detonate completely in less than a microsecond. As you can imagine, it would be very hard to get control rods back into a reactor that fast, which is why this sort of prompt-criticality is reserved for weapons.

When you see a high school science book with that "billiard ball" diagram, it is talking about that prompt-criticality.

So let's say you have a reactivity excursion in a BWR or PWR reactor - the power increases for some reason. If it's minor, then the reactor's power surges, more steam is generated and the pressure goes up. The control system inserts the control rods over the course of a few seconds and the reaction slows down. If the pressure surge is large, then the relief valve opens and vents some coolant into a capture area (or the containment vessel if that fails.)

But lets say the rod drive fails. Now the reactor generates more and more power. The water around the core starts to boil. This leads to large steam voids where there is no moderator. Since the reaction needs that moderator to slow down those neutrons to keep the reaction going, the reaction slows down. That effect is known as a "negative void coefficient." As long as you keep the coolant flowing the core is still OK, and as soon as you get the rods reinserted (or, worst case, dump neutron poisons into the coolant) the reaction shuts down.

The Chernobyl reactor was designed with a positive void coefficient. It had enough other moderator (graphite) that it didn't need the water moderator to continue the reaction. During preparations for a test, they were getting very low power output from the reactor due to neutron poisons that had built up. (This can happen when the reactor is shut down and started up a lot.) So they manually pulled most of the rods all the way out. Still almost no power due to the poisons. But neutron flux was increasing and burning away the poisons slowly.

During the test the power slowly ramped back up but it was still way too low, and the reactor was all over the place - some areas (where the poisons had accumulated) were cold other areas were super hot and boiling away the water. Finally someone hit the SCRAM button, which took control of all the rods and started lowering them into the reactor. This process took about 20 seconds.

If these had been normal control rods the process would have ended there; the reactor would have shut down. But these control rods were also designed poorly. Their tips had a large graphite section, and graphite is a moderator. So as the rods began their trip through the core, the reactivity in the "hot" areas of the core went very high as the tip of the control rod passed by. Again, had this been a PWR or BWR, the reaction would have ended there since the water (required for the reaction) boiled off from the intense heat. But in an RBMK that has the opposite effect. Sections of the core passed the threshold for prompt fusion, and those areas got very hot very quickly, fusing the rods in place so they couldn't continue to insert. After the water boiled away that section of the core then exploded just like atomic bombs do, blowing the reactor to pieces and ejecting pieces of the core hundreds of feet into the air. The hot graphite then began to burn, causing even more problems.

The reactor was designed to output 3 gigawatts of thermal energy. Estimates for the energy release during the explosion range from 30 to 300 gigawatts, far more than any reactor is capable of withstanding.

Think I have a copy of my paper somewhere. Will see if I can find it. If I can I won't be relying on memory

But for the moment (from memory) billiard ball reactors are exactly that. Billiard ball size and air cooled

Hence not enough to produce large amounts of power. I'm sure I had to provide a link to the full details of the reactor. You may have to wait for me to find my paper as I am returning to Bali and my energy is being directed there

Cheers

 

[billvon]

But for the moment (from memory) billiard ball reactors are exactly that. Billiard ball size and air cooled

Oh, you are thinking of a pebble bed HTGR. Yes, although not air cooled - helium cooled. (Red hot graphite balls in air have an obvious issue.)

Hence not enough to produce large amounts of power

They can produce quite a bit of power. Two other pluses are that the coolant temperature is enough to provide process heat for things like cement kilns and thermal dissociation of water, and much easier refueling (just add balls.) IMO HTGR's are the only way we will practically get to a hydrogen economy. On the downside, any air that gets in the primary coolant loop can cause very bad things to happen.

 

[billvon]

It's undoubtedly been analyzed, extensively, but it seems that higher payment for surplus energy produced by solar panels might incentivize. But then, power companies are private and for profit, so...

Yeah, they exist in a sort of limbo between private and public. They are run as private companies but have to follow rules (rate schedules, mainly) set by regulators.

At my last company we talked to our local utility about kicking off a smart grid project. They were open to it but said "honestly we can't spend money on it unless someone passes a law that tells us we have to do it. The PUC keeps too close an eye on our expenditures."

I suppose kids might account for increased energy consumption incommensurable with that of regular people (by which I mean adults). "Rumor" has it that households with kids do laundry way more often. I'm not really sure why exactly that may be, but perhaps?

Laundry, dishes, food purchases - all have gone up by at least 3x. (And that's just for two kids.)

 

[Quantum Quack]

Sure, you could do that. That's a low energy density source so you would have to destroy a LOT of coastlines to make much energy, and of course it is by definition not 24/7.

there is no reason to hug the coastline... tidal resources are virtually any where... and do not have to be only on the surface. Just a water pressure differential on the ocean floor would be sufficient.
Also, because it is a low density source it would deploy a many small inputs can generate significant outputs type paradigm.

Ie. IDEA: Measure pressure differentials on ocean floor in significant tidal areas. Install devices that capitalize on those pressure differentials on ocean floor. No waste products to store...minimal moving parts, durable and recyclable materials. No threat of poisoning our wold with nuclear waste and accidents.
For example:
Think pressure panel as you think of a solar panel to generate electricity.
Pressure farming instead of just solar farming.

Philosophically Nuclear power is "all eggs in the one basket" where as I am suggesting that we just have eggs and no basket...

The point of my post is about how there are many possibilities to replace Nuclear poisoning if only we choose to look for them.

 

[billvon]

there is no reason to hug the coastline... tidal resources are virtually any where...

Tidal ranges are much higher near the coasts. In the middle of the ocean you see very small (even zero) tidal ranges.

Also, because it is a low density source it would deploy a many small inputs can generate significant outputs type paradigm.

Right. Financially it would mean "a very large number of large, expensive devices are required before any significant output is seen" sort of thing.

And keep in mind that the tide isn't always coming in or going out. Any system is going to have some dead time where flows have to go to zero and reverse.

Philosophically Nuclear power is "all eggs in the one basket"

Nope. Nuclear should not make up more than 40% of our energy; it is best suited for base load generation.

The point of my post is about how there are many possibilities to replace Nuclear poisoning if only we choose to look for them.

Sure. You could replace "nuclear poisoning" with "killing our coasts" or "coal poisoning" or "explosive natural gas death." There's no such thing as a free lunch.

 

[Quantum Quack]

Tidal ranges are much higher near the coasts. In the middle of the ocean you see very small (even zero) tidal ranges.

Right. Financially it would mean "a very large number of large, expensive devices are required before any significant output is seen" sort of thing.

And keep in mind that the tide isn't always coming in or going out. Any system is going to have some dead time where flows have to go to zero and reverse.

Nope. Nuclear should not make up more than 40% of our energy; it is best suited for base load generation.

Sure. You could replace "nuclear poisoning" with "killing our coasts" or "coal poisoning" or "explosive natural gas death." There's no such thing as a free lunch.

Unless we as a race think out side the box of our preconceptions we ain't got much of a future...
Nuclear energy is not very smart at all...
Need to get smarter...

 

[billvon]

Unless we as a race think out side the box of our preconceptions we ain't got much of a future...

Agreed. Next generation nuclear, renewables and biogas for peaker plants in the future. In the meantime, use the best of what we have.

 

[Michael 345]

Oh, you are thinking of a pebble bed HTGR. Yes, although not air cooled - helium cooled. (Red hot graphite balls in air have an obvious issue.)

They can produce quite a bit of power. Two other pluses are that the coolant temperature is enough to provide process heat for things like cement kilns and thermal dissociation of water, and much easier refueling (just add balls.) IMO HTGR's are the only way we will practically get to a hydrogen economy. On the downside, any air that gets in the primary coolant loop can cause very bad things to happen.

Thanks

 

[Quantum Quack]

Tidal ranges are much higher near the coasts. In the middle of the ocean you see very small (even zero) tidal ranges.

Right. Financially it would mean "a very large number of large, expensive devices are required before any significant output is seen" sort of thing.

And keep in mind that the tide isn't always coming in or going out. Any system is going to have some dead time where flows have to go to zero and reverse.

Nope. Nuclear should not make up more than 40% of our energy; it is best suited for base load generation.

Sure. You could replace "nuclear poisoning" with "killing our coasts" or "coal poisoning" or "explosive natural gas death." There's no such thing as a free lunch.

smart application of the piezoelectric effect making use of oceanic pressure differential would probably solve most of the problems we have regards energy.

 

[billvon]

smart application of the piezoelectric effect making use of oceanic pressure differential would probably solve most of the problems we have regards energy.

Do the math for an average 20cm tidal range out in the ocean somewhere. How much power could you harvest with a square meter of piezo material? Let's assume an efficiency of 50% (way higher than possible now, but just for argument's sake.) How many joules per day?

 

[Quantum Quack]

Do the math for an average 20cm tidal range out in the ocean somewhere. How much power could you harvest with a square meter of piezo material? Let's assume an efficiency of 50% (way higher than possible now, but just for argument's sake.) How many joules per day?

No idea... but you miss my point.
Do you have any idea how much we have to change in the next 20 or so years to survive as a race?

 

[Write4U]

No idea... but you miss my point.
Do you have any idea how much we have to change in the next 20 or so years to survive as a race?

Interestingly, this is about the time frame where human expansion has reached it limits of exponential growth at about 10-12 billion.
This is estimated to be the limit of humans the earth can accommodate at our current behaviors and the ending of available oil reserves. Major changes in the making. Maybe war, if pandemics prove ineffective (as a function of natural selection)

 

[Quantum Quack]

Do the math for an average 20cm tidal range out in the ocean somewhere. How much power could you harvest with a square meter of piezo material? Let's assume an efficiency of 50% (way higher than possible now, but just for argument's sake.) How many joules per day?

The typical tidal range in the open ocean is about 0.6 metres (2 feet).[citation needed] Closer to the coast, this range is much greater. Coastal tidal ranges vary globally and can differ anywhere from near zero to over 16 metres.[3] The exact range depends on the volume of water adjacent to the coast, and the geography of the basin the water sits in. Larger bodies of water have higher ranges, and the geography can act as a funnel amplifying or dispersing the tide.[4] The world's largest tidal range of 16.3 metres (53.5 feet) occurs in Bay of Fundy, Canada,[3][5] and the United Kingdom regularly experiences tidal ranges up to 15 metres (49 feet) between England and Wales in the Severn Estuary.[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_range​

not 20cm...

 

[billvon]

No idea... but you miss my point.

Well, my point is that if you decide to go with low density energy sources that we don't have the resources or time to pull off, then in 20 years we are no better off. Even today, tidal generators generate tiny amounts of energy.

The typical tidal range in the open ocean is about 0.6 metres (2 feet) . . .

not 20cm...

If you pick your location well. But on average. . . .

Do you have any idea how much we have to change in the next 20 or so years to survive as a race?

A huge amount.

But you are squeamish about nuclear. And other people are squeamish about wind. (o the poor birds, and it causes cancer.) And other people are squeamish about solar. And you add all that up and we don't change, because whatabout this and whatabout that.

Are YOU willing to make the hard calls to switch away from fossil fuels, even if it means more nuclear?

 

[Write4U]

Are YOU willing to make the hard calls to switch away from fossil fuels, even if it means more nuclear?

In 45 years we (our children) won't have a choice anymore. We'll be out of oil, period.

ENERGY

413,026,208 Energy used today (MWh), of which:
351,591,230- from non-renewable sources (MWh)
62,198,145- from renewable sources (MWh)
2,588,042,746,677 Solar energy striking Earth today (MWh)
84,711,584 Oil pumped today (barrels)
1,515,725,625,858 Oil left (barrels)
15,807 Days to the end of oil (~43 years)
1,097,300,074,603 Natural Gas left (boe)
57,753 Days to the end of natural gas
4,318,712,841,211 Coal left (boe)
148,921 Days to the end of coal

https://www.worldometers.info/

 

[billvon]

In 45 years we (our children) won't have a choice anymore. We'll be out of oil, period.

Well, we keep predicting peak oil and it never happens. I have a chart in my office, published in 1990, that showed all the estimates for peak oil. They ranged between 1999 and 2015. The authors were certain it would be one of them.

And we literally never will run out; it will simply become so expensive that other sources are cheaper and we will switch to them, one use at a time. The key is getting us to a place (via solar, nuclear, wind, biogas, biofuels, hydrogen etc) where that transition is less painful than it would be today.