Nuclear Energy Q&A and Applications - General sperging or questions about nuclear energy.

[Hepativore]

There have been mentions about nuclear energy here and there on Kiwi Farms, but they are scattered or are very old threads. This is a place where people can talk about what can be done with nuclear and ask questions about how it works or what it entails.

There are a lot of people who do not understand what nuclear energy is. Because of the combination of rising global energy prices as well as most of the mainstream environmentalist movement being vehemently anti-nuclear energy for decades, the topic is as relevant as ever.

This is an issue that is opposed by people both on the political left and political right, as while many "green" activists seem to despise nuclear energy beyond all reason, fossil fuel companies have captured much of the right-leaning political sphere which is why these politicians continue to promote the use of coal, oil, and natural gas as instead of nuclear. It also does not help when much of the promotion of "renewables" such as solar and wind largely seems to be an astroturfed campaign funded by fossil fuel lobbyists as they know full well that solar and wind cannot be a replacement for baseload energy as we see what is happening in Germany with their massive project to build lignite-burning coal plants to take up the slack after shutting down their nuclear powerplants.

To get started, here is some food for thought...

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

I've found this to be an extremely informative and even-handed site on nuclear power.

What is nuclear energy?

Nuclear fission power plants make sustainable, reliable, and clean heat and electricity with almost no lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions. However, they are expensive and generate radioactive material. Here you will learn about the nuances of nuclear energy.

www.whatisnuclear.com

 

[Deke Rivers]

It’s unpopular until people find they need it.

 

[Hepativore]

I've found this to be an extremely informative and even-handed site on nuclear power.

What is nuclear energy?

Nuclear fission power plants make sustainable, reliable, and clean heat and electricity with almost no lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions. However, they are expensive and generate radioactive material. Here you will learn about the nuances of nuclear energy.

www.whatisnuclear.com

There was a guy who ran a now-defunct rational skepticism blog call Depleted Cranium under the name of drBuzz0. He did a lot of stuff related to clearing up misconceptions of nuclear energy and radiation. You can still find archives of it on the Wayback Machine. I can dig it up if anybody is interested.

 

[alpha889boba]

Nuclear energy is the only source that can meet our entire energy needs now and in the future with no negative effects on the climate. Its also not contingent on weather like solar and wind is. But every time some incident happens, everyone loses their fucking minds. The pollution and industrial accidents from coal and fossil fules does more damage and kills more fucking people than all of nuclear combined.

 

[Chongqing]

Can the waste be sent into the sun or into deep space? That's something I've always wondered.

If we sent the waste away, there would be very little criticism left.

 

[Deke Rivers]

Can the waste be sent into the sun or into deep space? That's something I've always wondered.

Not while the Earth has gravity.

 

[Chongqing]

Not while the Earth has gravity.

I mean with rockets and space vessels.

 

[byuu]

I mean with rockets and space vessels.

Nuclear power is already expensive enough.

 

[Hepativore]

Can the waste be sent into the sun or into deep space? That's something I've always wondered.

If we sent the waste away, there would be very little criticism left.

Rockets have very strict weight requirements in terms of what you can load them with vs the cost of launching.

It would be much cheaper and easier to reprocess spent nuclear fuel like France does when they convert their spent fuel into MOX (Mixed Oxide Fuel) using the PUREX process. Ninety-percent of the spent fuel rods coming out of an LWR (Light-Water Reactor, the most common reactor type in the world) consists of recyclable fuel.

The only reason that the US does not do this is political, as President Carter banned nuclear fuel reprocessing in 1977 due to errant fears about nuclear weapons proliferation...even though the latter using spent fuel out of an LWR has never been done successfully, because of the presence of Plutonium-240.

There was a project called the Thin Man which ran from 1943-1944 that attempted to do this but it was abandoned by the US military for being a failure. Plutonium-240 serves as a "bomb poison" as it "steals" the neutrons needed to carry out the runaway chain reaction necessary for a nuclear explosion, and becomes plutonium-241. Plutonium-241 is not fissile. Theoretically, you could separate out the plutonium-240 from plutonium-239 (The latter is the isotope you want for weapon-making) but as it would require such specialized equipment and a lot of money to do so if you had the resources for such an undertaking it would be cheaper and easier to build a dedicated facility for producing military-grade material.

Here is an archived Depleted Cranium post on the subject...

Why You Can't Build a Bomb From Spent Fuel

Depleted Cranium » Blog Archive » Why You Can’t Build a Bomb From Spent Fuel

 

[Pandy Fackler]

Any good resources for backyard nuclear energy? Read The Nuclear Boyscout and I know I could top that

 

[Deke Rivers]

Plutonium-241 is stable.

It’s fissile and also radioactive by beta decay.

 

[Hepativore]

It’s fissile and also radioactive by beta decay.

Stupid autocorrect. Anyway, it tends to capture the thermal neutrons necessary for a nuclear chain reaction and undergo beta decay by releasing electrons or positrons rather than neutrons itself. This why alpha-emitting isotopes are a requirement for carrying out nuclear fission chain reactions.

 

[Deke Rivers]

Any good resources for backyard nuclear energy? Read The Nuclear Boyscout and I know I could top that

Contaminating a shed ain’t generating electricity, kid.

 

[Hepativore]

Any good resources for backyard nuclear energy? Read The Nuclear Boyscout and I know I could top that

Trying to enrich uranium ore into reactor-grade material is not something that could be done without an entire nuclear fuel production facility.

Although, hypothetically, you could hook up a spent fuel cask to your building's HVAC system for free heating as it cools down, and as they are vitrified material encased in concrete the radiation risk would be minimal, especially if you buried it underneath your backyard.

However, good luck convincing the NRC as well as the neighbors and municipal law enforcement to let anybody do anything like that.

 

[Pandy Fackler]

Contaminating a shed ain’t generating electricity, kid.

Oh wow, real internet nuclear tough guy

 

[Deke Rivers]

Oh wow, real internet nuclear tough guy

Tough I’ve never needed to be.

Ok convince me that he did something more than stupidly spread radioactive material around.

 

[WickyWickyWoW]

Something ive been after for a while, hard numbers and statistics on how much nuclear power costs relative to older fossil fuels like coal/oil/gas and for comparison cost of power generated by "green" energies like wind and solar. A lot of uniformed normies seem to think that green would be cheaper and better than any other type of power, after all the only fuel it needs is the wind blowing or the sun shining, and even I thought that when I was a teen. Having hard numbers to present would go a long way in dispelling one of the chief arguments against "green" power where as the OP put functions to both discourage nuclear power and its subsequent inability to live up to expectations results in nations running back into the abusive arms of fossil fuels. Everytime i try to do my own research and gather information I keep getting extremely wild numbers on both nukejuice and green, I cant even filter out political bias, number fudging, or be able to figure out if they had factored in subsidies/crippling over regulation. Some fancy charts and graphs would go a long way if anyone has anything reputable.

Also is french political world still pro nuclear? I use the french as a prime example as to how safe nuclear is since they have been running mostly nuclear for decades and there hasnt been a 3-kilometer island or a cher-honhon-nobyl, im unsure if they got swept up in the false messiah of green energy especially since when the 2022 energy crisis really started to get going macron decided to mothball a bunch of plants for some reason.

 

[Hepativore]

Something ive been after for a while, hard numbers and statistics on how much nuclear power costs relative to older fossil fuels like coal/oil/gas and for comparison cost of power generated by "green" energies like wind and solar. A lot of uniformed normies seem to think that green would be cheaper and better than any other type of power, after all the only fuel it needs is the wind blowing or the sun shining, and even I thought that when I was a teen. Having hard numbers to present would go a long way in dispelling one of the chief arguments against "green" power where as the OP put functions to both discourage nuclear power and its subsequent inability to live up to expectations results in nations running back into the abusive arms of fossil fuels. Everytime i try to do my own research and gather information I keep getting extremely wild numbers on both nukejuice and green, I cant even filter out political bias, number fudging, or be able to figure out if they had factored in subsidies/crippling over regulation. Some fancy charts and graphs would go a long way if anyone has anything reputable.

Also is french political world still pro nuclear? I use the french as a prime example as to how safe nuclear is since they have been running mostly nuclear for decades and there hasnt been a 3-kilometer island or a cher-honhon-nobyl, im unsure if they got swept up in the false messiah of green energy especially since when the 2022 energy crisis really started to get going macron decided to mothball a bunch of plants for some reason.

This might help answer your question.

Depleted Cranium » Blog Archive » What does it cost to build a nuclear plant? What could it cost?

Basically, the Atomic Energy Comission (AEC) was in charge of approving and overseeing the construction and operation of new nuclear energy sites prior to 1975. It was then dissolved and replaced by the Nuclear Energy Comission (NRC) as the increasing influence of the anti-nuclear movement during the 1970's started to influence many members in the US government. The NRC wrote a bunch of new and often impractical rules and regulations for the approval and operation of new facilities. While things were fine in terms of the AEC, the NRC has been openly hostile to nuclear energy, and under them, construction costs ballooned and the approval process has become intentionally byzantine which is why building new nuclear facilities has become so needlessly expensive.

Somewhat related is this, which is an analysis on how much money is spent on nuclear energy in terms of subsidies compared to "renewables" and fossil fuels.

Depleted Cranium » Blog Archive » Nuclear Trade Group Spends 1.3M on US Lobbying (which is next to nothing)

As far as how nuclear energy is viewed in France, the public by and large is mostly fine with it, as are most of its various environmental groups. There are some detractors here and there but they are mostly ignored.

A large part of why this is, was that France has very little in the way of coal, oil, or natural gas deposits, and so began heavily investing in nuclear energy generation during the 1970's as the French government felt it had little alternative when faced with 1970's energy crunch and the rising costs of importing fossil fuels.

Their investment paid off as now they are the largest exporter of energy in the world as they sell their surplus energy to the surrounding countries in Europe (Anti-nuclear Germany gets 30% of its energy from France!) while having the lowest carbon dioxide emissions in all of Europe.

 

[sedoL]

Seems thread is dead so time to revive it.

I haven't seen these cons dismissed/argued so someone help a nigga out:

1. Strategic vulnerability - one argument against nuke energy is that in times of war it would be an extremely vulnerable piece of tech both internally and externally.

2. Specialists - most kids whana eat hot chip and watch tiktok all day not learn advanced mathematics and physics, so what happens to these machines when the brains dry out? Not to mention that the reactors may become accident prone (though i don't think accidents have ever happened in most western nations - might be wrong).