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Chernobyl series on HBO

March Audio

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Regarding the proposal of expanding the use of nuclear power to reduce our emissions, there is simply not enough uranium to make that worthy of consideration:

Uranium abundance: At the current rate of uranium consumption with conventional reactors, the world supply of viable uranium, which is the most common nuclear fuel, will last for 80 years. Scaling consumption up to 15 TW, the viable uranium supply will last for less than 5 years. (Viable uranium is the uranium that exists in a high enough ore concentration so that extracting the ore is economically justified.)https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.htmlI have not seen the show yet, but I am definitively interested! https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.html

Apart from increasing research on nuclear fusion reactors, which works on a completely different principle and promise clean and unlimited energy once its monumental challenges are (hopefully) resolved, mankind should be focusing on renewable sources and energy carriers (vectors) to accumulate and transport the “excess” energy produced by the elements when there is less demand on the grid.

This brings me to a point I think has not yet been discussed in the forum, that it is of my interest and I believe will also be a consideration for some other members: the sustainability of our hobby. The focus here I think should be the reliability and expected longevity of the electronics and to a lesser extent speakers, something that it is embedded in both the design and manufacturing of a product. There is also the energy consumption and footprint of the media of choice (hint: streaming is terribly unsustainable) but it is probably worth a separate discussion :)

"Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) has accurately estimated the planet's economically accessible uranium resources, reactors could run more than 200 years at current rates of consumption."

Dont know who is right :)

Compared to the energy used to distribute physical media, planes, trains, boats and trucks, the energy consumption of streaming is not an issue.
 
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DKT88

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These estimates for how long we can operate reactors are for the currently operating Gen II and Gen III reactor designs that are inefficient in burning uranium in the fuel. Some Gen IV reactor designs could be 50 to 100 times more efficient than the current (old) designs. And the US, China and Japan are developing technology to extract uranium from seawater which could provide essentially unlimited quantities.
https://www.gen-4.org/gif/jcms/c_40275/gen-iv-reactor-design
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesc...lear-power-completely-renewable/#8fb2d9d159ae
 

Nemo

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Thanks to both March-Audio and DKT88 for some additional insights on the nuclear fuel availability: I would personally still put my (reserach) money mostly on renewable and fusion, but there is clearly room for debate ;)

@March-Audio: Regarding the footprint of streaming music, this article is what I have in mind:

Storing and processing music in the cloud depends on vast data centres that use a tremendous amount of resources and energy.

It is possible to demonstrate this by translating plastic production and the electricity used to store and transmit digital audio files into greenhouse gas equivalents (GHGs). This shows that GHGs from recorded music were 140m kg in 1977 in the US, 136m kg in 1988, and 157m kg in 2000. By 2016 it is estimated to have been between 200m kg and over 350m kg – and remember that this is only in the US.

file-20190405-180023-1av6so3.jpg
Matt Brennan/Kyle Devine
Obviously this is not the last word on the matter. To truly compare past and present, if it were even possible, you would have to factor in the emissions involved in making the devices on which we have listened to music in different eras.
 
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Blumlein 88

Blumlein 88

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Fusion............did someone mention fusion? The technology only 50 years from being the answer and always will be.

Maybe one day it won't be that far away. Unlike fission, it hasn't demonstrated anything yet other than conjecture about what is possible.

So until it does, it is an unknown that can't reasonably be bet upon. Besides solar is fusion powered. :)
 

Soniclife

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Storing and processing music in the cloud depends on vast data centres that use a tremendous amount of resources and energy.
There is no citation for where they get this from, and whilst there are indeed vast data centers running the internet I don't really but that streaming is a huge player in energy usage.
 

March Audio

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Thanks to both March-Audio and DKT88 for some additional insights on the nuclear fuel availability: I would personally still put my (reserach) money mostly on renewable and fusion, but there is clearly room for debate ;)

@March-Audio: Regarding the footprint of streaming music, this article is what I have in mind:

Storing and processing music in the cloud depends on vast data centres that use a tremendous amount of resources and energy.

It is possible to demonstrate this by translating plastic production and the electricity used to store and transmit digital audio files into greenhouse gas equivalents (GHGs). This shows that GHGs from recorded music were 140m kg in 1977 in the US, 136m kg in 1988, and 157m kg in 2000. By 2016 it is estimated to have been between 200m kg and over 350m kg – and remember that this is only in the US.
file-20190405-180023-1av6so3.jpg
Matt Brennan/Kyle Devine
Obviously this is not the last word on the matter. To truly compare past and present, if it were even possible, you would have to factor in the emissions involved in making the devices on which we have listened to music in different eras.

This article doesnt take into account the transportation used for distribution of the physical media as I mentioned above. This is *BY FAR* the greater energy consumer.
 

Nemo

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@Blumlein 88
I did mention fusion is tremendously challenging from an engineering point of view, but so did fission, and when given enough resources (starting with the Manhattan project) those were resolved. It is obviously risky to draw parallels, but it is fair to say that the world it is not pouring the same kind of resources to resolve the fusion challenges...

@Soniclife
The argument it is not that streaming music makes for a significant portion of the internet traffic (and therefore of the data enters energy usage), but that streming music vs. using a physical support media has a much larger footprint. The way the calculation was done was using an estimate of how much musi is being streamed, convert that into data, and using well-known (averaged over many different data centers) rates of energy onsumption per data unit come up with an estimate.
It is also worth noting that once you have a CD or similar at home, there is no additional emissions when playing it multiple times beyond the stero/multichannel system consumption, but that it is not true for streaming.

Please understand I am not starting a crusade!! I just wanted to point out at a fact that I found surprising ;)
 

Cosmik

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Re. solar: in the UK at least, solar farms can be seen as effectively using up land that could be used for growing food - and I read that they, too, displace or wipe out the rare frogs, hedgehogs newts etc that many people worry about. You presumably need a hell of a lot of land to duplicate the power output of a more conventional power station. (Mirrors in deserts sounds more like a viable solution to me - if the power can be sent over cables far enough).

Kites in high altitude wind, tidal etc. all seem like nice benign energy sources. But a question: if man made climate change is a terrible, terrible thing, might massively-scaled up wind and tidal-based generators also contribute to changing sea currents, wind patterns and so on?

To be alive is to change the planet at some level.
 

March Audio

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Re. solar: in the UK at least, solar farms can be seen as effectively using up land that could be used for growing food - and I read that they, too, displace or wipe out the rare frogs, hedgehogs newts etc that many people worry about. You presumably need a hell of a lot of land to duplicate the power output of a more conventional power station. (Mirrors in deserts sounds more like a viable solution to me - if the power can be sent over cables far enough).

Kites in high altitude wind, tidal etc. all seem like nice benign energy sources. But a question: if man made climate change is a terrible, terrible thing, might massively-scaled up wind and tidal-based generators also contribute to changing sea currents, wind patterns and so on?

To be alive is to change the planet at some level.
Well, having done some work measuring thermal output of flares from offshore gas platforms, from memory the pyranometer measurements indicated you can get up to about 1.2 kW per square metre out of the sun. Good photovoltaic cells manage about 25% efficiency. So you can figure out the area needed to replace a Gigawatt power station from there. There is plenty of roof space out there, no need to rip up green fields :)

We have 24 panels on the roof generating up to 6kW, although the electric company only allow 5kW to be put into the grid. The extra panels just mean we are at max for more hours of the day. Good day is 42kWh. Probably a bit less in the UK.

Just watched the first episode. Gripping stuff.
 
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Cosmik

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There is plenty of roof space out there, no need to rip up green fields :)
Nevertheless, in the UK they *are* ripping up green fields to install solar farms...
 

March Audio

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Nevertheless, in the UK they *are* ripping up green fields to install solar farms...
Well unfortunately that's down to planning permission and government policy.

Over here the install cost is low (roughly $4k AUD for a 6kW system) and the sun shines so its an easy economic decision for home owners to install their own on the roof. As mentioned our ROI may be as soon as 3 years.
 
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Dogan

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I wouldn't be surprised if such a thing isn't done one day.

You have disasters simply designed in and waiting to happen. Almost always there are people who can see it from years away and try to get it changed. Bureaucracy interferes and nothing happens until the disaster occurs. At which point people from the outside are almost incredulous that something so stupid could have been done or that something so stupid was done in handling the disaster. Worse the bureaucratic response is often to implement some onerous rule to prevent it in the future, and about as often as not the rule actually isn't effective either.

The Soviets were indeed aware of the design problem(s):

"The SCSSINP Commission report states that this phenomenon had been known of at the time of the accident and that it had first been identified at the Ignalina RBMK plant in the Lithuanian Republic in 1983 (Annex I, Section 1-3.8). Although the Chief Design Engineer for RBMK reactors promulgated this information to other RBMK plants, and stated that design changes would be made to correct the problem, he made no such changes, and the procedural measures he recommended for inclusion in plant operating instructions were not adopted. Apparently, there was a
widespread view that the conditions under which the positive scram effect would be important would never occur."

https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub913e_web.pdf

Dogan
 

kevinh

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One of the responses to the global warming idea is to say that we need more nuclear power and that modern types of reactor are safe, stable, inherently can't go wrong. In fact, I did read someone advocating having one in every town! What's your opinion?


Well for a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Salt reactor yeah that would work.
 
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Blumlein 88

Blumlein 88

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Re. solar: in the UK at least, solar farms can be seen as effectively using up land that could be used for growing food - and I read that they, too, displace or wipe out the rare frogs, hedgehogs newts etc that many people worry about. You presumably need a hell of a lot of land to duplicate the power output of a more conventional power station. (Mirrors in deserts sounds more like a viable solution to me - if the power can be sent over cables far enough).

Kites in high altitude wind, tidal etc. all seem like nice benign energy sources. But a question: if man made climate change is a terrible, terrible thing, might massively-scaled up wind and tidal-based generators also contribute to changing sea currents, wind patterns and so on?

To be alive is to change the planet at some level.

I've seen modeling that indicate widespread use of wind power would in time change the air currents. Air currents are powered by solar indirectly anyway.

I've seen a few articles promoting the idea (by some environmentalists who've had a change of heart) pointing out that historically as our energy use has grown we've made advances by increasing the intensity or density of power generation. Solar and wind are the opposite. They take up much more space and spread out generating energy at rather low density levels. That following this trend we'd be much better off to spend more on expanding nuclear which is another step up in energy density. Some of those have even said nuclear waste is actually more manageable for this reason. That nuclear gathers up its waste and stores it. Coal doesn't gather its waste and trying to do so would result in a huge pile of waste much larger than equivalent nuclear. Same for petroleum.

But while that is true I don't see why solar can't be very useful and currently it is rather inexpensive vs most other new power. If energy use per capita continues to rise there will come a time when solar isn't energy dense enough. Of course people density could eventually cause the same problem.
 

777

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Near my house, about one or two mile away, there is the most powerfull laser in the world. Maybe we can control the fusion reactions ?
 

NTomokawa

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Regarding Fukushima and Japanese nuclear energy in general:

An independent investigation in Japan has revealed a long history of nuclear power companies conspiring with governments to manipulate public opinion in favour of nuclear energy.

Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-03/japan-nuclear-companies-stacked-public-meetings/3206288

I am a third-generation Japanese and I am profoundly disgusted by the conduct of the officials involved. I used to think honour and integrity are the pillars of Japanese culture.

Guess this isn't those days anymore.
 

JJB70

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I spent a few years working in electricity generation and at a nuclear fuels facility (Sellafield for our UK readers) and personally I am pro-nuclear. The Chernobyl disaster was dreadful but the RBMK reactor design was always a highly problematic concept in risk management terms. One of the big mistakes of the nuclear sector was that in the 1960's the world decided that very large PWR reactors and to some extent BWR reactors were the optimum solution. There was quite a lot of promising research into alternatives in the 60's which ended up being abandoned because the PWR and BWR were so successful. In a way it is a good example of the dangers of assuming that a superb design which is perfect for a very particular application can be scaled up orders of magnitude and provide an optimum solution for a very different application. The PWR was pretty much railroaded along by Hyman Rickover to power the USN nuclear submarine fleet. Rickover was a brilliant man (and one deserving of much wider recognition for his brilliance and achievements) and the PWR naval reactor has been a remarkably reliable and effective technology with an excellent safety record but I do think that in scaling up to multi-GW output size and dropping development of other technologies we made a mistake. Unfortunately after Fukushima the word nuclear became toxic once again after having sort of been partially rehabilitated after Chernobyl, the cold war etc. At that time there was a lot of promising work into compact fully sealed nuclear reactors, they were being called "nuclear batteries" as the concept was that a sealed reactor would be plugged in and then returned to the factory for recycling once the fuel was depleted, Hyperion had some very promising ideas. The concept is still around but nowadays there is limited interest in commercialising it.
 
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Blumlein 88

Blumlein 88

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I spent a few years working in electricity generation and at a nuclear fuels facility (Sellafield for our UK readers) and personally I am pro-nuclear. The Chernobyl disaster was dreadful but the RBMK reactor design was always a highly problematic concept in risk management terms. One of the big mistakes of the nuclear sector was that in the 1960's the world decided that very large PWR reactors and to some extent BWR reactors were the optimum solution. There was quite a lot of promising research into alternatives in the 60's which ended up being abandoned because the PWR and BWR were so successful. In a way it is a good example of the dangers of assuming that a superb design which is perfect for a very particular application can be scaled up orders of magnitude and provide an optimum solution for a very different application. The PWR was pretty much railroaded along by Hyman Rickover to power the USN nuclear submarine fleet. Rickover was a brilliant man (and one deserving of much wider recognition for his brilliance and achievements) and the PWR naval reactor has been a remarkably reliable and effective technology with an excellent safety record but I do think that in scaling up to multi-GW output size and dropping development of other technologies we made a mistake. Unfortunately after Fukushima the word nuclear became toxic once again after having sort of been partially rehabilitated after Chernobyl, the cold war etc. At that time there was a lot of promising work into compact fully sealed nuclear reactors, they were being called "nuclear batteries" as the concept was that a sealed reactor would be plugged in and then returned to the factory for recycling once the fuel was depleted, Hyperion had some very promising ideas. The concept is still around but nowadays there is limited interest in commercialising it.

I'd been aware of the nuclear battery concept and it seemed an excellent approach. Do you know if that was simply not viable economically or was it just the general fear of nuclear that kept that from working out in the energy market?
 

Cosmik

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