They’re talking about recycling the fuel and putting it back into the reactors. Unfortunately it’s cheaper to mine fresh fuel than to reprocess used fuel … as long as you just ignore the waste problem.
Well, any waste problem is a hell of a lot better than what we’re doing to the atmosphere.
Coal should be illegal now.
toothbrush@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 28 Nov 23:05
collapse
The source for that number is the International Atomic Energy Agency aka the nuclear control agency.
As for the rest of your ideas, its sadly not that easy. It has to be stored somewhere where it cant contaminate the environment, water cant get to it, tectonics are stable, etc. No permanent storage location for the waste has been found, to date.
And to burn the unburned fuel you would have to breed the material, which is a process that requires the most dangerous reactors and is extremely costly.
to burn the unburned fuel you would have to breed the material
France reprocesses spent fuel. With increased scale it would be cheaper and cut down on the volume of waste that must be dealt with regardless of if there’s a nuclear industry in the future.
The Phénix reactor shut down in 2009 so I think that was the end of France’s breeder reactors. India, China and Russia still have operating breeder reactors.
Breeding from non-fissile material is different to reprocessing though. Reprocessing is a chemical process, not a nuclear one. The UK had an operational reprocessing capability - though it is being decommissioned now because it wasn’t cost effective with such a small fleet. Japan is still trying to bring its reprocessing plant online (after years of trouble). However France is doing it routinely for their domestic fleet and some foreign reactors IIRC. The USA made reprocessing illegal back in 1977 due to proliferation concerns. Despite that ban being repealed, they haven’t set up the regulatory infrastructure to be able to do it so no one has bothered. Maybe the new nuclear industry will shake that up a bit.
Did you really pick the figure from the RBMK reactor type?
For PWRs, 250 m³ of LILW per GW annum is 28.5 m³ of LILW per TWh.
2.5 million turkeys in a 2.4 kW oven for 3.5 hours uses 0.021 TWh.
So 2.5 million turkeys and 0.6 m³ total low and intermediate wastes generated. Most of this can be released after ~300 years with negligible activity over natural background. That is a long time but not “basically forever”.
helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world
on 28 Nov 21:08
nextcollapse
if they claim a 15lb Turkey feeds 12, how am I supposed trust any of the other numbers?
hissingmeerkat@sh.itjust.works
on 29 Nov 00:22
collapse
Or how 1 GW/(200 W/person) came up with a number that started with a 3 instead of a 5. Like 5 million people, not 30 million.
They’re over by a factor of 6 which would add up to 21 hours, not 24. I don’t know what they’ve done to get 2.5 million, it should be 417 thousand with those numbers.
Edit: Oh dear. They said each oven could completely cook 6 turkeys in a day so they rounded to that number. At least it no longer reads GW/day. The source
The fun part of this is this is true of any 1GW power source. We have been deploying solar+battery arrays in that range recently for much less money and much faster than nuclear.
Thanks “Office of nuclear energy” for pointing out how useful large scale solar+battery is too!
passiveaggressivesonar@lemmy.world
on 29 Nov 00:47
nextcollapse
I really don’t get this ackshually business about nuclear power, we’re absolute idiots to not employ it more. Everywhere there’s been a focus on nuclear power generation we’re seeing reliable results over a long long timespan
Lemmy keeps telling me nuclear power is stupid. I’ve been screaming for more going on 30-years now. 🤷
Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de
on 29 Nov 09:15
collapse
Maybe because we still don’t have a solution for the waste which kills people generations after your death?
A7thStone@lemmy.world
on 29 Nov 12:01
nextcollapse
We’ve had multiple solutions for a long time. Name me some people who have been killed by nuclear waste. Other than Chernobyl I bet you can’t. How does it feel repeating decades old fossil fuel propaganda?
Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de
on 30 Nov 13:13
collapse
Second:
Tell me one spot on earth where we can put this stuff safely.
All the ones named “safe” in the past weren’t so safe actually weren’t they?
Also detecting radiation poisoning as cause of death is super hard, if you die from cancer, it could very well be radiation, but it will not get counted as such, except it is very well documented you got exposed (which it isn’t if its in the Drinkwater supplies as we fear it will happen in a few years here in Germany with the “Endlager asse” because the tons containing the waste are rusting.
There is still no solution for waste which is litteratly a unseeable, unsmellable, untasteble killer, radiating for longer then fucking civilization exists. We CANT possibly plan good enough to manage those kinds of timescales, and we don’t have a plan by now AT ALL
Everyone who thinks this is all taken care of by the responsible company’s selling nuclear has learned nothing from the fossil fuel desaster.
You are falling for propaganda again
He said nuclear waste. Most of those are accidents involving radiation exposure (Are you lobbying we stop radiation therapy too?), Russian subs, and Soviet era handling of nuclear sources.
The rare incident of death cause by nuclear waste was an explosion at a testing facility in Japan that was apparently trying to research a new way to deal with nuclear waste.
One death attributed to Fukushima is amazing to me. That was a catastrophic event. (The tsunami that caused the incident may have killed some that would have otherwise died from exposure, but without the tsunami, there wouldn’t have been an incident, so I don’t know how to argue that one.)
A better argument is cost. It is EXPENSIVE to store nuclear waste. We are not allowed to just bury it and we can’t just shoot it into the sun… yet.
I’ve seen all kinds of novel ideas for modern ways of dealing with nuclear waste but the current rules are tied up in so much bureaucracy, it would practically take an act of God for approval of any change. People fighting nuclear cause more problems than they help.
Take the San Onofre plant in California. They replaced a system that was aging, then some time later, they shut down for routine maintenance and discovered that the replacement system was wearing out much faster than it should. So the plant said they would stay off until they found the problem and fixed it. At no time was the public in danger. But the anti nuclear whackos took their opportunity to pounce, took advantage of that famous California NIMBYism, and got the plant shut down permanently. Now electricity is provided by natural gas.
That was a waste of fucking money. Plant was already producing electricity, and now there is more CO2 getting pumped into the air.
I don’t trust the anti-nuclear power crowd anymore than I trust the oil industry. They both lie their asses off and don’t care about facts. One just has a lot more money than the other.
Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de
on 01 Dec 02:45
collapse
When you hear people hating on bureocracy is mostly rich people hating on rules which stop them from fucking the public over for profit.
The truth is: we can’t possibly plan a safe storage for that kind of timespan, there are way better alternatives like renewables, everyone arguing for nuclear is replacing the propaganda from the fossil lobby with propaganda from the nuclear lobby.
My theory on why Americans recently started to believe in a miricale storage which in the future sure will be found? Because if they wouldn’t they would need to realise that they need to change their economy and their way of living
Bureaucracy does have a purpose but it can also become a problem. Sometimes technology can advance much quicker than the paperwork can process. It’s not a miracle or propaganda.
But spouting the same anti- nuclear shit that has been spouted for the last 50 years IS propaganda.
passiveaggressivesonar@lemmy.world
on 29 Nov 12:56
collapse
Can I get some references that compare nuclear waste vs coal, gas, solar, wind waste and emissions?
Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de
on 30 Nov 13:07
collapse
All the ones you mentioned except nuclear don’t create radiation waste at all…
passiveaggressivesonar@lemmy.world
on 30 Nov 16:03
nextcollapse
Coal waste (fly ash) releases 100 times more radiation than shielded nuclear waste
Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de
on 01 Dec 01:58
collapse
The source you give is comparing the direct surrounding of opperating power plants, it is not talking about the nuclear waste. no on argues living near an (safely) operating power plant is too dangerous, its that you get nuclear waste which is the problem. Sure you can wheel it of to somewhere else, but then its a problem there.
passiveaggressivesonar@lemmy.world
on 01 Dec 06:07
collapse
I just want to see a comparison between the waste, that’s all. If it really is worse I’ll accept it as worse
I can imagine It’s easier to manage nuclear waste than fly ash
ultracritical@lemmy.world
on 30 Nov 17:00
collapse
Uranium is present in coal in high enough quantities that a coal plant releases more uranium to the environment then an equivalent nuke plant burns in its reactor, and mining for materials for solar panels creates literal mountains of thorium salts and other thorium contaminated debris.
Nuclear plants have the unfortunate position that they actually have to manage their nuclear waste due to its concentration. It’s not actually hard to store the waste permanently from a technical perspective, it’s just difficult to have the political will to actually do it.
Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de
on 01 Dec 01:51
collapse
In germany we have, after 20 years of search, not one safe place. The one we have for temporal storage is expected to start leaking soon…
The problem with nuclear is: business wise, it is a TOUGH sell to the public, even without the anti-nuclear lobby groups fighting with safety propaganda.
It takes a much higher capital spend to start up nuclear than any other type of plant, so you won’t “break even” for 30 plus years, if ever.
It doesn’t help when there are high profile sites that are being refurbished, whose costs are already phenomenaly high, and then the managing firm fucks it up (I’m looking at you Crystal River).
It makes it high risk, financially. And it’s the public that ultimately ends up paying.
My hope is that SMR’s become viable. They introduce a new factor though. If you get small, “cheaper” nuclear plants, then you will get more operators and you will get some that may run fast and loose. One fuck up can ruin it for everyone.
passiveaggressivesonar@lemmy.world
on 30 Nov 16:06
nextcollapse
I can accept the argument that it’s safe and effective but the public irrationally won’t accept it. Seems to have been a pretty good sell on the other side of the curtain though
It’s sort of too late for nuclear though. They take years to build and cost a fortune. The time to invest in nuclear power on a large scale was probably 10 years ago (although, was it as safe then? I don’t know)… Right now we need answers that get us away from fossil fuels much, much quicker. Nuclear may still be a part of the picture, but renewables are more pressing.
passiveaggressivesonar@lemmy.world
on 30 Nov 19:13
nextcollapse
The energy problem we have isn’t beyond my lifetime, it’s now. There is a finite amount of investment available for new energy projects, and if we pour it into nuclear that means 10+ years of continuing with present usage of fossil fuels. Obviously I know noone is suggesting we do only nuclear, but the point remains that renewables projects can be completed sooner and cheaper. Even if we continue to use nuclear to support the base load and decide to develop some level of capability beyond what exists today, the majority of investment should go to renewables.
Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de
on 01 Dec 02:29
collapse
We have there options:
Continue fossils and make earth uninhabitable for a medium (on the scale of humanity) duration of time.
Switch to renevables, even if it means changing our way of living, maybe overproducing less, having less ultra riches etc.
Switch to nuclear, which isn’t fast enough to stop the fossil problem but also contaminates earth for a ultra long amount of time and also is way harder to get rid of (we have at least in theory options to get co2 out of the atmosphere even if its not at all practical/usable e ough to help us with our current situation, for nuclear waste there is literally nothing you can to except wait.)
No sane person I met ever argued for 1, but since some time Americans seem to start arguing for 3 instead of 2 with literally no good arguments.
Thing is this has been said for longer than I’ve been alive, and will probably still be said after I’m dead, in the intervening 70-80 years we could have and could be actually building the damn things.
Thing is this has been said for longer than I’ve been alive, and will probably still be said after I’m dead
I’m not making this argument in the past, I’m making it now.
in the intervening 70-80 years we could have and could be actually building the damn things
Well, they are being built? It’s not like the world has abandoned nuclear power. We need the base load, there’s certainly an argument to use some nuclear, but the safety and waste issues mean it shouldn’t really ever be our only way to generate power, at least until some of those problems are solved. Modern reactors are much safer than they once were, but as I said before - the fossil fuel situation is immediate and pressing. I’m not sure I disagree with anyone who made this argument in the past - renewables are a faster way to convert away from fossil fuels. It’s more pressing now than ever, but it isn’t a new problem and it’s been urgent for a long time. Just because we failed to solve it before doesn’t mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. What’s your reasoning to focus on nuclear rather than renewables today?
My reasoning is we should do both, nuclear and renewables both have useful properties in the short and long term and the idea we can’t afford both seems ridiculous when we can apparently spend huge amounts of money on things like space tourism and giving amazon more money back in rebates than they paid in taxes to begin with.
Well I agree there. I think we should be focusing on renewables, but like I said I think we also need nuclear unless we can solve the energy storage problem.
ToothpasteSundae@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 29 Nov 02:18
nextcollapse
Can we also talk about the way they chose to manipulate the perception of the data by their choice of states
Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de
on 29 Nov 09:13
nextcollapse
Now calculate how many generations of turkeys will be eaten till the waste stops killing people
Edit: can’t believe how many people here are falling for nuclear. Have you all learned nothing from what companies did with fossil fuels? Taking the profits and leaving humanity with a fucked up world?
And now you are falling for the same stuff with nuclear again, I assume this is the discourse in america which is so scewed? Here in Europe people are not that naive… Even the ones in France, which is quite into nuclear are reasonable and see the waste problem normally.
And here on Lemmy people really come and say “nuclear waste isn’t dangerous, it didn’t kill anyone”
Wtf people?!
stephen01king@lemmy.zip
on 29 Nov 16:26
nextcollapse
How many people has all the waste we’ve produced kill up to now?
Quite a few (if you remember not even a fraction oft its life time is over by now)
Also: radiation doesn’t kill right away. Often you live 10 more years with weird symptoms and die from something like heart attack, so your death isn’t counted as “caused by radiation exposure” but as “died from cancer” or “heart attack”
Yes, radiation can kill people decades later, but so does pollution from burning fossil fuel. BTW, your link talks about nuclear accidents, not the number of people killed by nuclear wastes produced normally, which is what you claimed is killing people. A bit of a misdirection on your part, isn’t it?
Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de
on 01 Dec 02:21
collapse
No one is arguing for fossils lol
That’s a strawman
And yes, I just gave you the first link I found, point given, but you wouldn’t argue that nuclear waste is safe to be around would you?
It’s not a strawman. It is 100% completely comparable to your point. You’re over here using deaths as a point against a technology when the current de facto standard society runs on us unimaginably worse.
But keep handwaving and calling actual legitimate arguments against what you’re saying, “Strawmen.” It’s great and doesn’t stifle healthy discussions in any way.
Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de
on 01 Dec 04:15
collapse
Dude, its a strawman because im not arguing pro fossil but pro solar, Wind, Walter and economical and social change.
To be arguing pro solar, wind, water, and social and economic change, you would have had to have mentioned them. The only things you said were isolated anti nuclear rhetoric, lol. Ultimately, I agree with you, but read back through the comment thread, perhaps.
tl;dr - It was not a strawman, but opposition to your comments as existing in a vacuum.
Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de
on 01 Dec 11:47
collapse
Its like saying electric cars are good for the environment just because benzin cars are worse. Its not true. Both are bad for the environment.
The nuclear waste is a fucking problem, no matter if burning coal also is a fucking problem
Speaking of strawmen, no one said nuclear energy is good for the environment. Nice job using exactly what you accuse others of doing, though. Spot on projection.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 30 Nov 16:16
nextcollapse
Things lemmy loves: imperial propaganda, corporate propaganda, genocide, joe and kamala, liberalism, blaming (non)voters, anti-russian racism, etc.
Nuclear waste is indeed a problem, however it is a contained problem that can be isolated. Oil’s byproduct are distributed into the atmosphere and are killing every living thing on earth. Do you know how many people die every year due to pollution from burning fossil fuels? It’s orders of magnitude worse. The fear of nuclear waste, while absolutely an issue, is so incredibly blown out of proportion compared to the silent killer that is fossil fuels.
Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de
on 01 Dec 02:18
collapse
You people always come and compare to oil.
THATS A STRAWMAN NOONE IS ARGUING FOR OIL
yes short term the rising temp by climate gases is prob worse, but you need to compare it to actual alternatives, like wind, water, sun -.-
Everyone fucking knowes that oil needs to be stopped from being used better yesterday then today, but this doesn’t make nuclear any better
Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de
on 01 Dec 11:44
collapse
Its saying Corona isn’t dangerous because cancer is worse.
When the actual comparison should be made between corona and getting a corona antibody shot.
Sure you can compare nuclear with fossils and will see: both lots of downsides bad, we shouldn’t use them.
The problem is when you stop there, don’t compare it to wind, solar, water, and then go around hyping nuclear.
I specifically pointed out that nuclear energy has its issues. Holy crap, you just accused others of strawmanning when they aren’t, then strawman yourself.
We’re done with this conversation. Nothing productive will come of it. Learn to have a productive conversation instead of stifling others.
I thought this was going to be about how many turkeys you could cook directly using the reactor heat
my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined
Dohnuthut@lemmy.world
on 29 Nov 13:45
nextcollapse
Glad to know I’m not the only one!
ultracritical@lemmy.world
on 30 Nov 16:39
collapse
Be about 3x that number. Reactors are about 33-40% efficient. So a 1000 MW electric plant is running at 3000 MW thermal. Would be relatively easy too. Just a gigantic steam heated oven. So 7.5 million turkeys, enough to feed 90 million people or about a quarter of the US.
in a country where half of the presidents cant even pronounce nukular…and the only usecase for nukular is make some machines like openAI work cheaper. go eat the nukular waste george.
I’d like to see this redone using energy instead of power. E.g is 2,400 watts during the initial heatup or when the oven reaches stable temperature? They’re not taking into account the time change either.
or security costs, including the promised good time of civil war that get’s floated around.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 30 Nov 18:18
collapse
6000$ to “feed” every X minutes that it takes to microwave to microwave a turkey. This plant cook 2.5 million turkey in parrallel.
ChillPenguin@lemmy.world
on 30 Nov 16:33
nextcollapse
Wow, didn’t realize how anti-nuclear Lemmy is after looking at this comment thread.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 30 Nov 18:20
nextcollapse
Common on contrarian and alternative platform as this particular topic has been seeded by russia psyops against russian oil alternative.
This is why germany shut down all its reactors and went back to burning lignite coal when nordstream was blown up by a ln Ukrainian triggerman.
iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com
on 30 Nov 18:55
nextcollapse
IIRC Germany shut down their reactors because of Fukushima and the disaster there, not because of psyops.
litron3000@feddit.org
on 01 Dec 00:11
nextcollapse
Germany’s exit from nuclear power was decided way back in the early 2010s. When the pipeline was destroyed the last three remaining plants were overdue for maintenance, didn’t have any more fuel and also no one to run the plant for significantly longer. They extended the shutdown until spring and that was it. Stop spreading the lie, that this was some kind of rushed decision or that it could have been prolonged much further.
Building new ones isnt economical and also wouldn’t produce any electricity until the late 2030s
If the exit was a mistake 15 years ago can be debated, but the discussion is worthless now, no matter how often this gets pushed by the party that fucked up the buildup of renewable alternatives in the 16 years they were in power
Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de
on 01 Dec 02:07
collapse
We didn’t this is misinformation spread in USA.
Yes we shut down nuclear plants (but the laws fasing out nuclear were made over a decade ago because we still haven’t found a solution for the waste, this was all looong before nordstream) and our investments in renewable are behind, but none is planning on going back to coal (except some crazy right wing fascists who are not in political power)
For the most part we are investing in gas heavily at the moment, which is fucking stupid in our climate situation, but the fracking gas from the USA with very competitive prices and lot of political hegemony from USA drive the government to do it anyway.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 01 Dec 09:29
collapse
Not sure how good these sources are but russia bankrolling anti nuclear sentinent is something I often heard said.
Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de
on 01 Dec 11:54
collapse
I read the Reuters article and it backs up my point…
Reactivating a coal power plant which was kept in hold because of gas shortage…
Has nothing to do with nuclear…
As I said: we ditched nuclear decades ago, were going with renevables, then conservatives slowed renewables aimed for gas and a a
Slower transition out of fossils, thats why we still don’t have enough renewable and need to still rely on coal. But we don’t build new coal plants and no sane person thinks we are going back.
Here is energy production over time, you can clearly see we are phasing out fossils an nuclear in favor gas of renewables
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 01 Dec 19:07
collapse
The russian backed anti nuclear operation was from the 2000s
Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de
on 01 Dec 19:17
collapse
Sure sure, if all your arguments fail blame the russians.
You are from the states hm?
Not to say Russia isn’t lobbying for gas and oil, just funny that that’s the reaction on critic on a technology: you must be influenced by Russian propaganda!
Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de
on 01 Dec 02:10
collapse
Didn’t think people smart enough to use Lemmy would fall for american nuclear lobbying.
Guys come on you can’t really think nuclear is better then renewables and everyone who thinks differently is having an agenda.
If something like this ends up in my feed I wanna talk to the people and see how they ended up with such “interesting” positions, that’s all.
(For what I can tell most are Americans and influenced by local consent manufacturing)
ChillPenguin@lemmy.world
on 01 Dec 05:54
nextcollapse
I wouldn’t say nuclear is better than renewables. I would say it’s a good at providing base load as we transition from fossil fuels over to renewables. That’s all.
threaded - newest
2.5 Million Turkeys… and 500-1500 cubic meters of impossible to store basically forever radioactive nuclear (LILW) waste😋😋😋
source
Yeah, what about the waste, gonna eat that with your Turkey?
I’m not sure where they got those numbers.
All nuclear waste produced to date isn’t 500-1500 cubic meters.
As to storage. Just bury it again. We dug it up, we can bury it. There are a few places that are currently doing just that.
Or, here a wild idea. Just burn the waste. It’s something like 90% unburned fuel, just reprocess it and burn it.
Wouldn’t that like… eradiate our whole fucking atmosphere? O.o
They’re talking about recycling the fuel and putting it back into the reactors. Unfortunately it’s cheaper to mine fresh fuel than to reprocess used fuel … as long as you just ignore the waste problem.
Well, any waste problem is a hell of a lot better than what we’re doing to the atmosphere.
Coal should be illegal now.
The source for that number is the International Atomic Energy Agency aka the nuclear control agency. As for the rest of your ideas, its sadly not that easy. It has to be stored somewhere where it cant contaminate the environment, water cant get to it, tectonics are stable, etc. No permanent storage location for the waste has been found, to date.
And to burn the unburned fuel you would have to breed the material, which is a process that requires the most dangerous reactors and is extremely costly.
Onkalo
France reprocesses spent fuel. With increased scale it would be cheaper and cut down on the volume of waste that must be dealt with regardless of if there’s a nuclear industry in the future.
Also “spent” fuel is like 90% recyclable.
ah thats cool. I didnt know there finally was a permanent storage facility.
As far as I know france stopped the breeder program?
The Phénix reactor shut down in 2009 so I think that was the end of France’s breeder reactors. India, China and Russia still have operating breeder reactors.
Breeding from non-fissile material is different to reprocessing though. Reprocessing is a chemical process, not a nuclear one. The UK had an operational reprocessing capability - though it is being decommissioned now because it wasn’t cost effective with such a small fleet. Japan is still trying to bring its reprocessing plant online (after years of trouble). However France is doing it routinely for their domestic fleet and some foreign reactors IIRC. The USA made reprocessing illegal back in 1977 due to proliferation concerns. Despite that ban being repealed, they haven’t set up the regulatory infrastructure to be able to do it so no one has bothered. Maybe the new nuclear industry will shake that up a bit.
Did you really pick the figure from the RBMK reactor type?
For PWRs, 250 m³ of LILW per GW annum is 28.5 m³ of LILW per TWh.
2.5 million turkeys in a 2.4 kW oven for 3.5 hours uses 0.021 TWh.
So 2.5 million turkeys and 0.6 m³ total low and intermediate wastes generated. Most of this can be released after ~300 years with negligible activity over natural background. That is a long time but not “basically forever”.
if they claim a 15lb Turkey feeds 12, how am I supposed trust any of the other numbers?
Or how 1 GW/(200 W/person) came up with a number that started with a 3 instead of a 5. Like 5 million people, not 30 million.
But it only takes 3.5 hours per turkey and a day has 24 of them. So if some people get up at 3am it works out!
Rookie Numbers. It only uses electrical power generated. Why not cook turkeys in heat destined for cooling towers ? Gotta push those numbers way up.
Or just toss all the turkeys into the reactor
Restricted sous-vide basin
Turkey control rods
If people didn’t all turn their oven on at the same time but took more of a staggered approach this would supply a lot more people.
Time zones probably help with that!
No, it’s already wrong even for realistic staggered dinners.
I think they are using an arbitrary GW-day of energy instead of power, so it can’t even come close to making as much turkey as claimed.
They’re over by a factor of 6 which would add up to 21 hours, not 24. I don’t know what they’ve done to get 2.5 million, it should be 417 thousand with those numbers.
Edit: Oh dear. They said each oven could completely cook 6 turkeys in a day so they rounded to that number. At least it no longer reads GW/day.
The source
The fun part of this is this is true of any 1GW power source. We have been deploying solar+battery arrays in that range recently for much less money and much faster than nuclear.
Thanks “Office of nuclear energy” for pointing out how useful large scale solar+battery is too!
I really don’t get this ackshually business about nuclear power, we’re absolute idiots to not employ it more. Everywhere there’s been a focus on nuclear power generation we’re seeing reliable results over a long long timespan
Lemmy keeps telling me nuclear power is stupid. I’ve been screaming for more going on 30-years now. 🤷
Maybe because we still don’t have a solution for the waste which kills people generations after your death?
We’ve had multiple solutions for a long time. Name me some people who have been killed by nuclear waste. Other than Chernobyl I bet you can’t. How does it feel repeating decades old fossil fuel propaganda?
Hahah
First: …wikipedia.org/…/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_ac…
Second: Tell me one spot on earth where we can put this stuff safely.
All the ones named “safe” in the past weren’t so safe actually weren’t they?
Also detecting radiation poisoning as cause of death is super hard, if you die from cancer, it could very well be radiation, but it will not get counted as such, except it is very well documented you got exposed (which it isn’t if its in the Drinkwater supplies as we fear it will happen in a few years here in Germany with the “Endlager asse” because the tons containing the waste are rusting.
There is still no solution for waste which is litteratly a unseeable, unsmellable, untasteble killer, radiating for longer then fucking civilization exists. We CANT possibly plan good enough to manage those kinds of timescales, and we don’t have a plan by now AT ALL
Everyone who thinks this is all taken care of by the responsible company’s selling nuclear has learned nothing from the fossil fuel desaster. You are falling for propaganda again
He said nuclear waste. Most of those are accidents involving radiation exposure (Are you lobbying we stop radiation therapy too?), Russian subs, and Soviet era handling of nuclear sources.
The rare incident of death cause by nuclear waste was an explosion at a testing facility in Japan that was apparently trying to research a new way to deal with nuclear waste.
One death attributed to Fukushima is amazing to me. That was a catastrophic event. (The tsunami that caused the incident may have killed some that would have otherwise died from exposure, but without the tsunami, there wouldn’t have been an incident, so I don’t know how to argue that one.)
A better argument is cost. It is EXPENSIVE to store nuclear waste. We are not allowed to just bury it and we can’t just shoot it into the sun… yet.
I’ve seen all kinds of novel ideas for modern ways of dealing with nuclear waste but the current rules are tied up in so much bureaucracy, it would practically take an act of God for approval of any change. People fighting nuclear cause more problems than they help.
Take the San Onofre plant in California. They replaced a system that was aging, then some time later, they shut down for routine maintenance and discovered that the replacement system was wearing out much faster than it should. So the plant said they would stay off until they found the problem and fixed it. At no time was the public in danger. But the anti nuclear whackos took their opportunity to pounce, took advantage of that famous California NIMBYism, and got the plant shut down permanently. Now electricity is provided by natural gas.
That was a waste of fucking money. Plant was already producing electricity, and now there is more CO2 getting pumped into the air.
I don’t trust the anti-nuclear power crowd anymore than I trust the oil industry. They both lie their asses off and don’t care about facts. One just has a lot more money than the other.
When you hear people hating on bureocracy is mostly rich people hating on rules which stop them from fucking the public over for profit.
The truth is: we can’t possibly plan a safe storage for that kind of timespan, there are way better alternatives like renewables, everyone arguing for nuclear is replacing the propaganda from the fossil lobby with propaganda from the nuclear lobby.
My theory on why Americans recently started to believe in a miricale storage which in the future sure will be found? Because if they wouldn’t they would need to realise that they need to change their economy and their way of living
I’m not rich or have money invested.
Sorry to disappoint.
Bureaucracy does have a purpose but it can also become a problem. Sometimes technology can advance much quicker than the paperwork can process. It’s not a miracle or propaganda.
But spouting the same anti- nuclear shit that has been spouted for the last 50 years IS propaganda.
Can I get some references that compare nuclear waste vs coal, gas, solar, wind waste and emissions?
All the ones you mentioned except nuclear don’t create radiation waste at all…
Coal waste (fly ash) releases 100 times more radiation than shielded nuclear waste
scientificamerican.com/…/coal-ash-is-more-radioac…
I doubt solar wind and hydro create any radioactive waste though. Again though would like to see a comparison of their waste vs the shielded casks
.
The source you give is comparing the direct surrounding of opperating power plants, it is not talking about the nuclear waste. no on argues living near an (safely) operating power plant is too dangerous, its that you get nuclear waste which is the problem. Sure you can wheel it of to somewhere else, but then its a problem there.
I just want to see a comparison between the waste, that’s all. If it really is worse I’ll accept it as worse
I can imagine It’s easier to manage nuclear waste than fly ash
Uranium is present in coal in high enough quantities that a coal plant releases more uranium to the environment then an equivalent nuke plant burns in its reactor, and mining for materials for solar panels creates literal mountains of thorium salts and other thorium contaminated debris.
Nuclear plants have the unfortunate position that they actually have to manage their nuclear waste due to its concentration. It’s not actually hard to store the waste permanently from a technical perspective, it’s just difficult to have the political will to actually do it.
In germany we have, after 20 years of search, not one safe place. The one we have for temporal storage is expected to start leaking soon…
The problem with nuclear is: business wise, it is a TOUGH sell to the public, even without the anti-nuclear lobby groups fighting with safety propaganda.
It takes a much higher capital spend to start up nuclear than any other type of plant, so you won’t “break even” for 30 plus years, if ever.
It doesn’t help when there are high profile sites that are being refurbished, whose costs are already phenomenaly high, and then the managing firm fucks it up (I’m looking at you Crystal River).
It makes it high risk, financially. And it’s the public that ultimately ends up paying.
My hope is that SMR’s become viable. They introduce a new factor though. If you get small, “cheaper” nuclear plants, then you will get more operators and you will get some that may run fast and loose. One fuck up can ruin it for everyone.
I can accept the argument that it’s safe and effective but the public irrationally won’t accept it. Seems to have been a pretty good sell on the other side of the curtain though
SMRs also produce significantly more waste for the amount of power generated.
It’s sort of too late for nuclear though. They take years to build and cost a fortune. The time to invest in nuclear power on a large scale was probably 10 years ago (although, was it as safe then? I don’t know)… Right now we need answers that get us away from fossil fuels much, much quicker. Nuclear may still be a part of the picture, but renewables are more pressing.
Think beyond your own lifetime
The energy problem we have isn’t beyond my lifetime, it’s now. There is a finite amount of investment available for new energy projects, and if we pour it into nuclear that means 10+ years of continuing with present usage of fossil fuels. Obviously I know noone is suggesting we do only nuclear, but the point remains that renewables projects can be completed sooner and cheaper. Even if we continue to use nuclear to support the base load and decide to develop some level of capability beyond what exists today, the majority of investment should go to renewables.
We have there options:
Continue fossils and make earth uninhabitable for a medium (on the scale of humanity) duration of time.
Switch to renevables, even if it means changing our way of living, maybe overproducing less, having less ultra riches etc.
Switch to nuclear, which isn’t fast enough to stop the fossil problem but also contaminates earth for a ultra long amount of time and also is way harder to get rid of (we have at least in theory options to get co2 out of the atmosphere even if its not at all practical/usable e ough to help us with our current situation, for nuclear waste there is literally nothing you can to except wait.)
No sane person I met ever argued for 1, but since some time Americans seem to start arguing for 3 instead of 2 with literally no good arguments.
Thing is this has been said for longer than I’ve been alive, and will probably still be said after I’m dead, in the intervening 70-80 years we could have and could be actually building the damn things.
I’m not making this argument in the past, I’m making it now.
Well, they are being built? It’s not like the world has abandoned nuclear power. We need the base load, there’s certainly an argument to use some nuclear, but the safety and waste issues mean it shouldn’t really ever be our only way to generate power, at least until some of those problems are solved. Modern reactors are much safer than they once were, but as I said before - the fossil fuel situation is immediate and pressing. I’m not sure I disagree with anyone who made this argument in the past - renewables are a faster way to convert away from fossil fuels. It’s more pressing now than ever, but it isn’t a new problem and it’s been urgent for a long time. Just because we failed to solve it before doesn’t mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. What’s your reasoning to focus on nuclear rather than renewables today?
My reasoning is we should do both, nuclear and renewables both have useful properties in the short and long term and the idea we can’t afford both seems ridiculous when we can apparently spend huge amounts of money on things like space tourism and giving amazon more money back in rebates than they paid in taxes to begin with.
Well I agree there. I think we should be focusing on renewables, but like I said I think we also need nuclear unless we can solve the energy storage problem.
Can we also talk about the way they chose to manipulate the perception of the data by their choice of states
LOL, it’s a reverse population map. Works on the stupid because “lots of orange!”
archive.org/details/howtoliewithmaps0000monm
There are states with populations higher than 30 million. Like yea that’s a lot of people, but the cherry picking of states is annoying
The real question is how many nuclear reactors a turkey could cook.
How is this a meme?
Now calculate how many generations of turkeys will be eaten till the waste stops killing people
Edit: can’t believe how many people here are falling for nuclear. Have you all learned nothing from what companies did with fossil fuels? Taking the profits and leaving humanity with a fucked up world? And now you are falling for the same stuff with nuclear again, I assume this is the discourse in america which is so scewed? Here in Europe people are not that naive… Even the ones in France, which is quite into nuclear are reasonable and see the waste problem normally.
And here on Lemmy people really come and say “nuclear waste isn’t dangerous, it didn’t kill anyone”
Wtf people?!
How many people has all the waste we’ve produced kill up to now?
.
…wikipedia.org/…/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_ac…
Quite a few (if you remember not even a fraction oft its life time is over by now)
Also: radiation doesn’t kill right away. Often you live 10 more years with weird symptoms and die from something like heart attack, so your death isn’t counted as “caused by radiation exposure” but as “died from cancer” or “heart attack”
Yes, radiation can kill people decades later, but so does pollution from burning fossil fuel. BTW, your link talks about nuclear accidents, not the number of people killed by nuclear wastes produced normally, which is what you claimed is killing people. A bit of a misdirection on your part, isn’t it?
No one is arguing for fossils lol That’s a strawman
And yes, I just gave you the first link I found, point given, but you wouldn’t argue that nuclear waste is safe to be around would you?
It’s not a strawman. It is 100% completely comparable to your point. You’re over here using deaths as a point against a technology when the current de facto standard society runs on us unimaginably worse.
But keep handwaving and calling actual legitimate arguments against what you’re saying, “Strawmen.” It’s great and doesn’t stifle healthy discussions in any way.
Dude, its a strawman because im not arguing pro fossil but pro solar, Wind, Walter and economical and social change.
To be arguing pro solar, wind, water, and social and economic change, you would have had to have mentioned them. The only things you said were isolated anti nuclear rhetoric, lol. Ultimately, I agree with you, but read back through the comment thread, perhaps.
tl;dr - It was not a strawman, but opposition to your comments as existing in a vacuum.
Its like saying electric cars are good for the environment just because benzin cars are worse. Its not true. Both are bad for the environment.
The nuclear waste is a fucking problem, no matter if burning coal also is a fucking problem
Speaking of strawmen, no one said nuclear energy is good for the environment. Nice job using exactly what you accuse others of doing, though. Spot on projection.
Things lemmy loves: imperial propaganda, corporate propaganda, genocide, joe and kamala, liberalism, blaming (non)voters, anti-russian racism, etc.
Still better than reddit.
Nuclear waste is indeed a problem, however it is a contained problem that can be isolated. Oil’s byproduct are distributed into the atmosphere and are killing every living thing on earth. Do you know how many people die every year due to pollution from burning fossil fuels? It’s orders of magnitude worse. The fear of nuclear waste, while absolutely an issue, is so incredibly blown out of proportion compared to the silent killer that is fossil fuels.
You people always come and compare to oil.
THATS A STRAWMAN NOONE IS ARGUING FOR OIL
yes short term the rising temp by climate gases is prob worse, but you need to compare it to actual alternatives, like wind, water, sun -.-
Everyone fucking knowes that oil needs to be stopped from being used better yesterday then today, but this doesn’t make nuclear any better
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/27d8433b-5619-4864-8a51-47aeb1da89a8.jpeg">
Its saying Corona isn’t dangerous because cancer is worse.
When the actual comparison should be made between corona and getting a corona antibody shot.
Sure you can compare nuclear with fossils and will see: both lots of downsides bad, we shouldn’t use them. The problem is when you stop there, don’t compare it to wind, solar, water, and then go around hyping nuclear.
I specifically pointed out that nuclear energy has its issues. Holy crap, you just accused others of strawmanning when they aren’t, then strawman yourself.
We’re done with this conversation. Nothing productive will come of it. Learn to have a productive conversation instead of stifling others.
Cheers.
I thought this was going to be about how many turkeys you could cook directly using the reactor heat
my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined
Glad to know I’m not the only one!
Be about 3x that number. Reactors are about 33-40% efficient. So a 1000 MW electric plant is running at 3000 MW thermal. Would be relatively easy too. Just a gigantic steam heated oven. So 7.5 million turkeys, enough to feed 90 million people or about a quarter of the US.
you know what, i am thankful for you
I doubt an oven needs 2400W continuous to keep at temperature. Also a single large oven will be far more efficient than 7.5 million separate ovens.
in a country where half of the presidents cant even pronounce nukular…and the only usecase for nukular is make some machines like openAI work cheaper. go eat the nukular waste george.
I’d like to see this redone using energy instead of power. E.g is 2,400 watts during the initial heatup or when the oven reaches stable temperature? They’re not taking into account the time change either.
2400W is typical maximum power for an oven. If you run that continuous you’ll have very crispy (black) turkey
A typical turkey feeds 12 people? Doubt. Perhaps enough for 12 portions - but that isn’t the same as 12 people get fed off this one bird.
I bet half the turkeys cooked go to waste one way or another (ruined while cooking, spoiled leftovers, etc). And people totally overeat.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.vgy.me%2FeoTkcX.png">
Corporate propaganda power!
With Vogtle expansion costing over $15B per gw, that is $6000+ per fed person, before counting the cost of importing uranium from Russia.
Also without storing the nuclear waste.
or security costs, including the promised good time of civil war that get’s floated around.
6000$ to “feed” every X minutes that it takes to microwave to microwave a turkey. This plant cook 2.5 million turkey in parrallel.
Wow, didn’t realize how anti-nuclear Lemmy is after looking at this comment thread.
Common on contrarian and alternative platform as this particular topic has been seeded by russia psyops against russian oil alternative.
This is why germany shut down all its reactors and went back to burning lignite coal when nordstream was blown up by a ln Ukrainian triggerman.
IIRC Germany shut down their reactors because of Fukushima and the disaster there, not because of psyops.
Germany’s exit from nuclear power was decided way back in the early 2010s. When the pipeline was destroyed the last three remaining plants were overdue for maintenance, didn’t have any more fuel and also no one to run the plant for significantly longer. They extended the shutdown until spring and that was it. Stop spreading the lie, that this was some kind of rushed decision or that it could have been prolonged much further.
Building new ones isnt economical and also wouldn’t produce any electricity until the late 2030s
If the exit was a mistake 15 years ago can be debated, but the discussion is worthless now, no matter how often this gets pushed by the party that fucked up the buildup of renewable alternatives in the 16 years they were in power
We didn’t this is misinformation spread in USA. Yes we shut down nuclear plants (but the laws fasing out nuclear were made over a decade ago because we still haven’t found a solution for the waste, this was all looong before nordstream) and our investments in renewable are behind, but none is planning on going back to coal (except some crazy right wing fascists who are not in political power)
For the most part we are investing in gas heavily at the moment, which is fucking stupid in our climate situation, but the fracking gas from the USA with very competitive prices and lot of political hegemony from USA drive the government to do it anyway.
Coal is already reactivated
reuters.com/…/germany-approves-bringing-coal-fire…
thebreakthrough.org/…/the-source-of-germanys-nucl…
reddit.com/…/was_the_denuclearisation_of_germanys…
theconversation.com/why-germany-ditched-nuclear-b…
www.base.bund.de/…/nuclear-phase-out_node.html
Not sure how good these sources are but russia bankrolling anti nuclear sentinent is something I often heard said.
I read the Reuters article and it backs up my point…
Reactivating a coal power plant which was kept in hold because of gas shortage… Has nothing to do with nuclear…
As I said: we ditched nuclear decades ago, were going with renevables, then conservatives slowed renewables aimed for gas and a a Slower transition out of fossils, thats why we still don’t have enough renewable and need to still rely on coal. But we don’t build new coal plants and no sane person thinks we are going back.
Edit: strom-report.com/…/strommix-entwicklung-deutschla…
Here is energy production over time, you can clearly see we are phasing out fossils an nuclear in favor gas of renewables
The russian backed anti nuclear operation was from the 2000s
Sure sure, if all your arguments fail blame the russians. You are from the states hm?
Not to say Russia isn’t lobbying for gas and oil, just funny that that’s the reaction on critic on a technology: you must be influenced by Russian propaganda!
Didn’t think people smart enough to use Lemmy would fall for american nuclear lobbying.
Guys come on you can’t really think nuclear is better then renewables and everyone who thinks differently is having an agenda.
If something like this ends up in my feed I wanna talk to the people and see how they ended up with such “interesting” positions, that’s all.
(For what I can tell most are Americans and influenced by local consent manufacturing)
I wouldn’t say nuclear is better than renewables. I would say it’s a good at providing base load as we transition from fossil fuels over to renewables. That’s all.
Ah yes, the great and powerful American nuclear lobby… That hasn’t sold a new reactor in 30 years.
Most people support nuclear because it’s the best base load generation method, and that can’t be replaced by renewables.
You’re literally less than a degree of separation from the “nuclear is a Chinese psyop” people.
Plutonium in nuclear waste has a half lifetime of 24 000 years
The first structure which is counted as begin of civilization is was like 11 000 years ago.
Advocating against them is not automatically russion propaganda bro.
Being weary of companies who assure the public this will all be taken care of, just let them profit now is basic human sense.
(And don’t come at me again with how bad fossils are, I advocate for stopping to use them to, it was just not the topic of the meme)
You trying to put me in a drawer with conspiracy theorists is saying more about you then about me
If you cook me a 15lb turkey in 3 1/2 hours that burnt dry shit is going in the trash.