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[Lightningfalcon]

That is why I said as technology develops.  Right now we wouldn't even have the infrastructure to do such a thing, let alone safely.  Alternatives to putting it atop a massive pile of combustibile fuel include using fracking to move the waste into the core of the earth itself, or using mass drivers to send it into space. 
Of course fusion would be much better then all the rest of these solutions, but that is still in the experimental stage. 

[LordBucket]

You want to build a solar power world network that beams electricity from one half of the world

No, I don't even remember whose idea that was. Wait, checking...wasn't that whole crazy cable thing your idea?

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=142324.msg5575609#msg5575609

Sure, except building the batteries, or building the power lines capable of carrying 4x our electrical needs across the world (such that you can lose 75% of it), or whatever crazy scheme could ITSELF cost more than an entire nuclear power grid + plants, potentially.

That was before I even joined the thread, and I'm not sure where you got the idea. Maniac was talking about smart grids and orbital solar farms. When he mentioned transmission ...in the context of oribtal platforms...I assumed he meant wireless transmission, not underwater cables.

Although of course even then, you're operating under the huge and silly assumption that we would launch an entire year's worth of radioactive waste into orbit, lol?

As usual, you're not even reading my posts. Go back and try reading past the second or third sentence.


Personally, I propose we simply keep developing solar like we've been doing until it gets cheaper than coal and nuclear, at which point everything else we're talking about becomes irrelevant. Like somebody pointed out on page one of the thread, that's expected to be within the next 5 years or so.

[GavJ]

Falcon, you don't have to go make up new methods. There is already international agreement on final radioactive waste disposal. And temporary storage is quite effective, has been the source of a tiny minority of already few accidents, and is far less of a health and safety concern than the pollution pumped out every day by the majority of our current electricity production methods.

LB:
My apologies, it was Mainiac who seems to have proposed sending solar from daylight areas to nighttime areas as a grid solution.
Which leaves you with no suggested solution I can see to the huge grid problem of solar. If you aren't on board with cables, then please let us know your alternative.

Keep in mind that every non-equatorial nation will need energy supplements in winter (as you go very north or south, they need almost 100% non-solar for half the year). And that we need energy at night. How are you addressing these problems?

Nuclear inherently addresses them with simple, existing, modern local grids. So that's your competitive cost target.

[Sergarr]

LordBucket, if you're so averse to nuclear energy, then why you don't want to use fusion? It's going to be relevant in 20-30 years time, it is much, much cleaner and safer than nuclear energy, and it produces a shitload more of energy than solar ever can.

[10ebbor10]

I like nuclear energy.

it's pretty damn safe.

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

Level 7 event: Chernobyl

Level 7 event: Fukushima

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

"Established by the USSR military soon after the 1986 disaster, it initially existed as an area of 30 km radius from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant designated for evacuation and placed under military control. Its borders have since been altered to cover a larger area of Ukraine. "

"Area   2,600 km2 (1,004 sq mi)"

That's a comma, not a period. Over one thousand square miles of exclusion zone, even now 28 years after the accident.

Mostly because nobody bothered resettling it. Large parts of the Chernobyl exclusion zone are perfectly habitable.  It's a wildlife reserve now.

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/EE-Biosphere-reserve-for-Chernobyl-0708201401.html

And Fukushima had a 20 km exclusion one. That's about 1200 square kilometers. Large parts, about half of it, already lifted. And quite a few experts have said that the evacuation has been a mistake, as the stress of that killed more people than the radiation ever would have done.

two events

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor_accidents_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_accidents_by_country

Meanwhile, google 'solar plant accidents' and get back to me.

Yes, people fall off roofs while installing solar plants. And that happens more often than nuclear meltdowns. But when somebody falls off a roof, it doesn't create decades-long environmental and health hazards for people miles away.

Neither did the Fukushima incident, but anyway. The solar panels do cause decades long environemental and health hazards for people miles away, btw. After, all, China is where they're produced, and probably where they'll end up being dumped if broken.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_the_Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster
"A 2013 WHO report predicts that for populations living in the most affected areas there is a 70% higher risk of developing thyroid cancer"

Following the link to the source reveals that the statement on Wikipedia is incorrect.

In the most contaminated area, the WHO estimated that there was a 70 percent higher risk of females exposed as infants developing thyroid cancer over their lifetime.

The radiation exposure means about 1.25 out of every 100 girls in the area could develop thyroid cancer over their lifetime, instead of the natural rate of about 0.75 percent.

So, only cancer for those people who were exposed as children, who were in the most heavily contaminated area, at the time of the accident.

"Ground, water and sewage contamination outside of 30 kilometers"

That's not a quote from the article, but a title of a subsection.

"radioactive caesium from the reactors at Fukushima ended up in Kanagawa more than 300 kilometers (190 mi) to the south"

A single anomalous hotspot, with the grand contamination of 550 Becquerel per kg. Japanese legal limit is 500 becquerels per kilogram. As a note, radiation limits are often an order of magnitude or more below the point where actual damage occurs.

"11 times the governmental limit of 8000 becquerels – were detected in a groundsheet at the Suginami Ward elementary school in Tokyo at a distance of 230 kilometers from Fukushima"

Which resulted in an exposure of 3.95 microsieverts per hour on a distance of 1 cm. Or about 35 millisievert. Still just one third of the lowest 1-year dose which can actually be proven to cause cancer, and this requires you to faceplant on the groundsheet for an entire year.

Look at all this toxic waste produced through the process which china is dumping into farmer's fields.

Yes. China has lax safety enforcement. Knowing this, tell me honestly whether you would rather the Chinese build solar or nuclear plants.

That with which they would do the least damage. Therefore Nuclear.

Chernobyl was the result of massive stupidity on the part of their operators.
 Fukishima was the result of bad design and regulation

the two old accidents happened with old first generation reacters, we are on the third gen I believe.

Ok. Bad Russians and Japanese. Shame on them. And shame on those old designs. We know better. Surely nothing bad could happen here in the US using our spiffy neato-keen high tech current nuclear plants.

Oh, wait.

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

Just as a header for the entire section, this shows how secure the US nuclear sector is. In any other type of energy generation, this would have been ignored.

* January 30, 2012 Byron, Illinois, US   Unusual Incident reported at Byron Nuclear Generating Station. Loss of off-site power caused unit 2 to run a shut down cycle and release tritium steam into the atmosphere

Unusual incident. Thus an INES scale -2. Radiation release was so tiny, that apparently the NRC didn't even bother saving the numbers (link is dead). Then again, it was deemed no threat, at all.

* February 1, 2010   Vernon, Vermont, US   Deteriorating underground pipes from the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant leak radioactive tritium into groundwater supplies

Ground water levels tritium levels peaked at 37 times the federal limit. No contamination of site. On site contamination resolved within a few weeks.

* March 6, 2006   Erwin, Tennessee, USA   Nuclear Fuel Services plant spills 35 litres of highly enriched uranium, necessitating 7-month shutdown

This is just another Industrial incident, no of site contamination, nothing interesting.

* August 4, 2005   Buchanan, New York, USA   Entergy’s Indian Point Nuclear Plant leaks tritium and strontium into underground lakes from 1974 to 2005

Once again surprisingly, no measure of how much. Sources I have found, and INES classification of the incident, leads me to believe the answer is once again, neglible.

* June 16, 2005   Braidwood, Illinois, USA   Exelon’s Braidwood nuclear station leaks tritium and contaminates local water supplies

Releases were far below legal drinking limits.

* In 2012, the Union of Concerned Scientists, which tracks ongoing safety issues at operating nuclear plants, found that "leakage of radioactive materials is a pervasive problem at almost 90 percent of all reactors

Indeed, but mostly because our detection mechanisms are just that good. There's no danger at all, from any of these leaks. [Except from fear, that is.]

More people have died more radiation released and more environmental damage has been done by coal then nuclear ever will.

ever

ever

"Ever." What a curious choice of word to use when defending nuclear power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_radioactive_waste_management

"High-level radioactive waste management concerns management and disposal of highly radioactive materials created during production of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The technical issues in accomplishing this are daunting, due to the extremely long periods radioactive wastes remain dangerous to living organisms. Of particular concern are two long-lived fission products, technetium-99 (half-life 220,000 years) and iodine-129 (half-life 15.7 million years),[1] which dominate spent nuclear fuel radioactivity after a few thousand years. The most troublesome transuranic elements in spent fuel are neptunium-237 (half-life two million years) and plutonium-239 (half-life 24,000 years)."

We're talking periods of time that are orders of magnitude longer than our species has existed on this planet. And yet here you are casually dismissing the amount of damage it will cause ever.

So how much of this stuff are we talking about?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#High-level_waste

"High-level waste (HLW) is produced by nuclear reactors. It contains fission products and transuranic elements generated in the reactor core. It is highly radioactive and often hot. HLW accounts for over 95 percent of the total radioactivity produced in the process of nuclear electricity generation. The amount of HLW worldwide is currently increasing by about 12,000 metric tons every year, which is the equivalent to about 100 double-decker buses or a two-story structure with a footprint the size of a basketball court. A 1000-MW nuclear power plant produces about 27 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel (unreprocessed) every year."

And that is why reprocessing is a thing. Reprocessing reduces high level waste by 90%, and reduces lifetime from million of years, to 1000.
Or you know, fast breeder reactors which would permanently resolve this problem. PRISM and the like.

But anyway, I must note that Nuclear power isn't the only source of high level waste, and isn't even the dominant source of HLW. So eliminating nuclear power doesn't solve the waste issue.

On aside, it's quite easy to be safer than the power source which kills million each year.

I'm not defending coal here, guys...but I think you're seriously underestimating the risks. This stuff is not "pretty damn safe" like Pufferfish is claiming. It's terribly, horribly, awfully dangerous...and it's only by being extremely careful that terrible tragedy is averted.

Not really no. Nuclear power has been subject to gross mismanagement before, and it hasn't always exploded. The security culture is laudable, and it certainly doesn't deserve the fear it gets.

But don't worry, it's normal. The human mind is pretty bad at risk assements. When you run the numbers, not think emotionally, you see the truth.

Nobody would say that highwire tightrope walking is pretty damn safe...."if you're careful." No, of course not. We're talking about stuff that is so dangerous, and so long lasting...that hundreds of years from now, one single earthquake in a bad place...one single terrorist act...one single mistake...could result in the release of tens of thousands of tons of stuff that's so dangerous that even minimal exposure for mere minutes could kill you.

Completely unjustified comparison, but whatever. An underground storage can not be broken by a single earthquake, or even a single terrorist attack. And it will not result in the release of tens of thousands of tons of deadly nuclear material. The stuff doesn't float you know. Even if the storage is breached. It's still sitting deep, deep down in the ground at the bottom of a hole.

"ten years after removal from a reactor, the surface dose rate for a typical spent fuel assembly exceeds 10,000 rem/hour, whereas a fatal whole-body dose for humans is about 500 rem"

Radiation level from Nuclear waste drops very, very rapidly in the first few years. It won't be harmless.

If you look at "an" accident and count only the number of people at the facility who immediately died...you're really not seeing the whole picture here.

We don't. Projections of deaths from nuclear power range from 4000 to 56000, 200 000 for greenpeace and  900 000 for the really silly studies. Still better than coal in any case. [Note: that is Chernobyl. Add between 0 - 1200 deaths for Fukushima]

Shooting it into the sun couldn't possibly hurt, right?

But remember you'd need to get it off-planet first. Were you alive when Challenger exploded? Imagine if she'd been carrying 12,000 tons per year worth of nuclear waste. That sounds like a potential planetary genocide sort of event to me.

Shows what you know. Aside from the fact that the Challenger would struggle  to take launch even 1 ton of material into solar orbit,(Seriously, the shuttle itself with boosters weighted only 2000 ton)  even a loss of 12 000 tonnes of HLW would not be a life destroying event. It would most certainly have severe local consequences, but by far not destroy the earth.

The earth has a surface area of 510,072,000 km˛.  That's a rad distribution of 20 grammes of High level waste per square kilometer. This is bad, but also completely silly and irrealistc.

...come on guys...is solar really so expensive that it's better to take these kinds of chances?

Aside from the launch into space strawman (not provided by you, but by an uninformed forumite, yes).

Besides, we took the chances, we lost, and in the end we still came out of it better than if we hadn't done it.

Besides let's make a comparison. The current Fukushima exclusion zone is 600 km˛, though the final exclusion area is likely to be even smaller still. It's power plant used to deliver 4.7 GW of power, at a 80% capacity factor. (Being generous here. Nuclear can go up to 95%). Assume we replace it with solar, capacity factor 20% (very generous here). We then need 18.8 GW of solar, or 17 600 000 000. Assuming a panel production of 200 Watt per square meter, that is  120,000,000,000. So, in order to get better at a land use perspective, one in ten nuclear powerplants need to blow up.

On a side note, this does not solve the storage conundrum.

Personally, I propose we simply keep developing solar like we've been doing until it gets cheaper than coal and nuclear, at which point everything else we're talking about becomes irrelevant. Like somebody pointed out on page one of the thread, that's expected to be within the next 5 years or so.

I must say that I very much doubt that number. I mean, at this moment solar can't even compete with coal, or nuclear even if there's a 100 USD/ton Co˛ carbon price. Costs will have to halve at the very least.

On a site note, the blogpost seems to regard Swanson's law as a magical law that holds true, rather than what it really is, an interesting observation.

It also ignores that fact that the Chinese solar sector has crashed before, is artificiall subsidized by the Chinese government, and is likely to crash again.

http://report.mitigation2014.org/drafts/final-draft-postplenary/ipcc_wg3_ar5_final-draft_postplenary_annex-iii.pdf

[sneakey pete]

I'd like to point out that the nuclear power plants being built in china right now are European/American designs.

Personally, I propose we simply keep developing solar like we've been doing until it gets cheaper than coal and nuclear, at which point everything else we're talking about becomes irrelevant. Like somebody pointed out on page one of the thread, that's expected to be within the next 5 years or so.

Did you read any of the solar discussion on the previous 3 pages, about how the costs of the grid to handle a pure solar/wind power grid would be vastly more expensive than the cost of the cells themselves, meaning such a grid wouldn't be viable even if the pure cost price of generating the solar cells evens up?


Anyway, like I said, geothermal... Its just a giant nuclear plant, except the earth is the reactor. Also it may cause earthquakes? study needed on that...

[LordBucket]

LordBucket, if you're so averse to nuclear energy, then why you don't want to use fusion?

I'm not particularly opposed to fusion, but it seems like it's always been something that "maybe we can do someday" rather than something that "hey, this is actually an option." I remember back in the 80s when somebody announced that they'd achieved cold fusion, but nothing ever came of it. Here we are, 26 year later and we still don't have any commercially viable fusion plants.

It's going to be relevant in 20-30 years time

Ok, that's fine. When it becomes relevant, we can consider it. I'm sure there are researchers working on it, just like they've been working on it for my entire life. In the meantime, we still need energy now.

[10ebbor10]

Anyway, like I said, geothermal... Its just a giant nuclear plant, except the earth is the reactor. Also it may cause earthquakes? study needed on that...

EGS has a tendency to cause earthquakes. Standard geothermal doesn't, but it's potential is extremely limited.

Then again, I feel the note that geothermal often is more expensive than nuclear, and it's lifetime is limited, depending on the site.

[MonkeyHead]

Why the obsession with "Big Solar Plants"? The beauty of solar panels (and wind turbines, but less so) is that they are great for distributed microgeneration - one or two smallish solar panels on a large number of buildings. The current set up (national grid systems) exists as fossil fuel and nuclear plants need to operate on a one to many distribution pattern. That simply is not the case for solar and wind technologies. Distributing solar panels on the roofs of a significant number of buildings will give you the total area you need to generate an abundance of electricity, without any awkward distribution bottlenecks, and allow you to have panels somewhere in the world that are always in daylight, unlike a big solar plant which will get approx 50% night-time. The only obvious con to this is the expense of the panels, but that will change with time.

[Sergarr]

LordBucket, if you're so averse to nuclear energy, then why you don't want to use fusion?

I'm not particularly opposed to fusion, but it seems like it's always been something that "maybe we can do someday" rather than something that "hey, this is actually an option." I remember back in the 80s when somebody announced that they'd achieved cold fusion, but nothing ever came of it. Here we are, 26 year later and we still don't have any commercially viable fusion plants.

It's going to be relevant in 20-30 years time

Ok, that's fine. When it becomes relevant, we can consider it. I'm sure there are researchers working on it, just like they've been working on it for my entire life. In the meantime, we still need energy now.

Then use nuclear! If we need energy now, nuclear is the best option!

[10ebbor10]

Why the obsession with "Big Solar Plants"? The beauty of solar panels (and wind turbines, but less so) is that they are great for distributed microgeneration - one or two smallish solar panels on a large number of buildings. The current set up (national grid systems) exists as fossil fuel and nuclear plants need to operate on a one to many distribution pattern. That simply is not the case for solar and wind technologies. Distributing solar panels on the roofs of a significant number of buildings will give you the total area you need to generate an abundance of electricity, without any awkward distribution bottlenecks, and allow you to have panels somewhere in the world that are always in daylight, unlike a big solar plant which will get approx 50% night-time. The only obvious con to this is the expense of the panels, but that will change with time.

I do consider the fact that you will need to move power from on side of the globe to the other an awkward production bottleneck.

On a site note, there has been little talk about  a single monolithic big solar plants here.

[miauw62]

Why the obsession with "Big Solar Plants"? The beauty of solar panels (and wind turbines, but less so) is that they are great for distributed microgeneration - one or two smallish solar panels on a large number of buildings. The current set up (national grid systems) exists as fossil fuel and nuclear plants need to operate on a one to many distribution pattern. That simply is not the case for solar and wind technologies. Distributing solar panels on the roofs of a significant number of buildings will give you the total area you need to generate an abundance of electricity, without any awkward distribution bottlenecks, and allow you to have panels somewhere in the world that are always in daylight, unlike a big solar plant which will get approx 50% night-time. The only obvious con to this is the expense of the panels, but that will change with time.

That's not really the problem, the problem is the infrastructure you need to bring power from the dayside to the nightside and (roughly) from around the equator toward the poles, since the yield of solar decreases the closer you are to the poles. (and it's not always sunny, etc)

FAKEEDIT: ninjad by ebbor

[sneakey pete]

EGS has a tendency to cause earthquakes. Standard geothermal doesn't, but it's potential is extremely limited.

Then again, I feel the note that geothermal often is more expensive than nuclear, and it's lifetime is limited, depending on the site.

Would be interested in reading some literature about these quakes actually if you know of any, has not come up in any of the research I did on the subject a few years ago.

The lifecylce issue is something that's present across all forms of power generation. Even nuclear reactors that produce for 50 yeras will undergo a few Major overhauls. (eg, new boiler rubes, fuel rod changeout). In the case of Geothermal that just means moving the wells a km or two. You could probably just pipe the water back to the central generating plant.

[10ebbor10]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_seismicity#Geothermal_energy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_seismicity_in_Basel

It includes some rather severe quakes. Unconfirmed 6.4 quakes, and confirmed 3.4 ones.

On a side note, moving a kilometer or two isn't going to cut it. If you deplete the well to fast, it can take the field decades to recover.

[sneakey pete]

Yeah, just did some more searching, found those links. My research was focused on the technical aspects of the low temp turbine so I guess I missed it back then. Not looking good at all.

The water itself probably won't be flowing particularly far between wells. (for reference, gas wells where I am our here are spaced in a 1x1km grid pattern) Of course fields will have multiple wells. And, at least for some areas, the basics are vast, and the land is empty, so moving stuff wouldn't be to hard. You could even just put the whole plant on skids so you just need to flatten an area and place down some concrete blocks if you want to move it.

for it ever to be economical the cost of drilling wells has to half, but I can see that happening, at least locally, as the CSG boom here rolls up in a couple of decades there's going to be a lot of excess drilling capacity.