Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy - BBC News

[lostcattears]

Ehh by the time this is out for everyone Earth will be in a climate crisis 20x worst then now

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

5 hours ago, ShrimpBrime said:

We already have a HUGE ass power plant in the sky, err in space. Which gives us plentiful amounts of energy. 

 

Instead of spending money trying to find better ways to collect it, lets build a sun and hope it doesn't implode into a black hole and suck all our hopes and dreams away.

That's a bad argument. Our civilization can, should and is investing into all avenues, with investment proportional to the return and urgency.

 

We need short term investment into better fossil fuel technology (e.g. expanding gas at expense of coal)

We need medium and long term investment into electrification (solar panels, wind farms, batteries, etc...)

We need medium and long term investment into nuclear 

We need long term investment into making fusion a thing

We need long term investment into far fetched teorethical concept, like black hole generators and other stuffs we have no idea if they even can be done

We need ongoing investment in base research (e.g. understanding how snowflakes form. you never know what trivia might be world changing)

[Imbadatnames]

6 hours ago, ShrimpBrime said:

We already have a HUGE ass power plant in the sky, err in space. Which gives us plentiful amounts of energy. 

 

Instead of spending money trying to find better ways to collect it, lets build a sun and hope it doesn't implode into a black hole and suck all our hopes and dreams away.

 

 

Issue with solar panels is the efficacy, efficiency, reliability, land area required and environmental impact long term 

[Mark Kaine]

5 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

Issue with solar panels is the efficacy, efficiency, reliability, land area required and environmental impact long term 

The only real issue is energy storage afaik? Like if we had high quality reliable none ultra toxic batteries using solar would be much less of a problem I think.

 

Lots of ideas in that field (i like the "tower battery" thingies) but no real  breakthrough or support from big investors, seemingly.

 

 

1 hour ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

understanding how snowflakes form

thank goodness this mystery has been solved!

 

not uninteresting, but one of his weaker entries for sure… 

[Imbadatnames]

Just now, Mark Kaine said:

The only real issue is energy storage afaik? Like if we had high quality reliable none ultra toxic batteries using solar would be much less of a problem I think.

 

Lots of ideas in that field (i like the "tower battery" thingies) but no real  breakthrough or support from big investors, seemingly.

 

 

thank goodness this mystery has been solved!

 

not uninteresting, but one of his weaker entries for sure… 

Right so they’re only able to function for a portion of the day, they don’t have long at peak efficiency, for a significant energy output you need hectares of land and they only last 20 years meaning you have to replace them constantly which involves toxic manufacturing processes. Oh and they’ll never produce the same as a nuclear plant for the same land areas. The highest cap solar farm takes 14,000 acres to produce 2.25GW PEAK output, the most powerful nuclear is 7.5 sustained and you could fit several of those in the same area as the solar farm. 

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

That's a bad argument. Our civilization can, should and is investing into all avenues, with investment proportional to the return and urgency.

 

We need short term investment into better fossil fuel technology (e.g. expanding gas at expense of coal)

We need medium and long term investment into electrification (solar panels, wind farms, batteries, etc...)

We need medium and long term investment into nuclear 

We need long term investment into making fusion a thing

We need long term investment into far fetched teorethical concept, like black hole generators and other stuffs we have no idea if they even can be done

We need ongoing investment in base research (e.g. understanding how snowflakes form. you never know what trivia might be world changing)

The only thing I'd change is putting nuclear before of wind and solar.  It will have a magnitudes of greater impact withing 10 years than wind or solar can ever hope to achieve.

 

This is of course assuming change must happen immediately.  

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Imbadatnames said:

Issue with solar panels is the efficacy, efficiency, reliability, land area required and environmental impact long term 

With solar you actually need to separate out photovoltaics (PV) and concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP). Quite a lot of different factors between the two.

 

CSP generally is installed in low fertility, low economic or social yield land areas so that isn't too much of an issue in reality unless it's a CSP that hasn't or isn't planning to abide by that. CSP scores pretty highly on efficacy and reliability while also having low ongoing environmental impacts. CSP can also produce power in low light and even night situations unlike PV.

 

PV is much more efficient than CSP, however technically still low but you have to be mindful that so is Gas and Coal that also have emissions for ongoing produced power. Efficacy is also very good so long as the sizing calculations are correct for a system without battery/energy storage. I mistake a lot of household installs do is put in a too large system without storage then be out of the house all day working mean all the power is exported for next to no return or even no return at all for many power companies.

 

One of the concerning things about PV is that they are getting deploy outside of the most suitable applications like roof areas. Many farms in the UK have solar arrays in what is or could be productive and fertile land. They will argue that the land they are doing it on isn't actually that good and they also grow some crops between the rows it's still not the most ideal usage of farmland.

 

Personally I have PV on my roof, other than stopping raid and weather getting it roofs have no functional use so PV is perfect. I also have battery storage, during summer my power bill is 50% to 80% lower than without the PV and batteries. The batteries are also repurposed from a UPS meaning I have extended the service life of them and prevented them from being recycled and broken down which has an environmental impact, this will have to happen some day however.

 

Solar energy (eletric and hot water) makes a lot of sense so long as it's done sensibly. It's not the answer to everything and even though Nuclear realistically is in the short term diversifying production is a good thing as well as distributed generation overall being a net benefit so log as the scale is large enough. 

[Imbadatnames]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

With solar you actually need to separate out photovoltaics (PV) and concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP). Quite a lot of different factors between the two.

 

CSP generally is installed in low fertility, low economic or social yield land areas so that isn't too much of an issue in reality unless it's a CSP that hasn't or isn't planning to abide by that. CSP scores pretty highly on efficacy and reliability while also having low ongoing environmental impacts. CSP can also produce power in low light and even night situations unlike PV.

You have to have a large areas of that land for it to work though, in Europe for example you pretty much don’t have that. 

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

 

PV is much more efficient than CSP, however technically still low but you have to be mindful that so is Gas and Coal that also have emissions for ongoing produced power. Efficacy is also very good so long as the sizing calculations are correct for a system without battery/energy storage. I mistake a lot of household installs do is put in a too large system without storage then be out of the house all day working mean all the power is exported for next to no return or even no return at all for many power companies.

 

One of the concerning things about PV is that they are getting deploy outside of the most suitable applications like roof areas. Many farms in the UK have solar arrays in what is or could be productive and fertile land. They will argue that the land they are doing it on isn't actually that good and they also grow some crops between the rows it's still not the most ideal usage of farmland.

 

Personally I have PV on my roof, other than stopping raid and weather getting it roofs have no functional use so PV is perfect. I also have battery storage, during summer my power bill is 50% to 80% lower than without the PV and batteries. The batteries are also repurposed from a UPS meaning I have extended the service life of them and prevented them from being recycled and broken down which has an environmental impact, this will have to happen some day however.

 

Solar energy (eletric and hot water) makes a lot of sense so long as it's done sensibly. It's not the answer to everything and even though Nuclear realistically is in the short term diversifying production is a good thing as well as distributed generation overall being a net benefit so log as the scale is large enough. 

I get the point of having panels on roofs to lessen the demand from the grid but for a grid power supply the amount of land it would take and the variation over the year just makes it a no go when for example nuclear runs for years, shuts down for a refuel during non peak hours and then carries on for another few years 

[leadeater]

38 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

I get the point of having panels on roofs to lessen the demand from the grid but for a grid power supply the amount of land it would take and the variation over the year just makes it a no go when for example nuclear runs for years, shuts down for a refuel during non peak hours and then carries on for another few years 

Well my 106m² house with non optimal roof design can take 9 panels, with the ones I chose and the microinverters the peak actual output is 2kw. I can do 18kwh in a day semi maximum with about 16kwh average for 3 months and above 10kwh for another 3. Winter months it's about 5kwh. Depending on country either winter or summer period is the high portion of the year, Australia for example is summer.

 

There is over 10 million houses in Australia, so not counting businesses and industrial buildings at all. So that's 160mwh of potential residential production. The average daily consumption in Australia is 19kwh, so residential production can offset 84% of the residential demand during the months that are most important, I'd classify this as significant. Of course Australia is an example country that will always land on the better side of the solar debate, for both residential PV and  also CSP. Like Australia has vast amounts of land area, like seriously a lot as the country is huge, that cannot be used for anything at all other than potentially CSP or mining if there is anything there at all.

 

I use Australia btw since they have history of power problems, although better now, sort of. I'm in New Zealand which has a lot shorter summer months and lower average of sunlight hours over the year.

[IPD]

12 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

Deaths directly caused by nuclear meltdowns? That’s 31. 31 from Chernobyl 0 from Fukushima. 
 

Dude you’re quoting Wikipedia. Also you’re not understanding how severe the scales are. Until you hit the upper tiers there’s not really a massive issue. You should also look at the dates of the incidents. Aside from Fukushima the latest one is in the 80’s and the majority are from the 50’s. You’re just seeing “nuclear” and getting scared. We don’t live in a fallout game, radiation isn’t that bad for the most part. If you’re not swimming in a short term storage pool you’re probably fine. 

You only think that because you aren't aware of the actual details of every one of these incidents.  For example, Windscale only rates a 5 on this scale.  But had the particulate traps not been installed (pretty much only 1 person wanted to have them)--the release into the atmosphere would have been exponentially worse, and much of the UK would be a wasteland.  "Cockroft's Folly"--if you want to look it up.

 

Yes, dates matter.  Because it used to be the wild-west.  Blood and treasure has created advancements that allow nuclear to be used/handled far safer--which is why you don't see this happening much in recent decades.

 

Why should death toll be limited to those that are direct and immediate?  Are we letting the USN off the hook for Bikini Atoll and the lack of precautions for servicemembers, ultimately leading many to a slow and painful death from cancer?

 

If you want to dip your toes into the bizarre and misunderstood world of nuclear incidents, check out "Plainly Difficult" on youtube.  He covers a litany of them.  It's shocking how close many countries have come to disaster.

 

p.s.

Enriched and weapons grade fuels are dangerous.  Depleted fuels are carcinogenic.  As of this very moment, the USA still does not have a permanent, high-level nuclear-waste storage facility--as Yucca Mountain is again on hold...thanks to hippies and NIMBY-ism.  That doesn't mean we lack high-level waste.  It means we are storing it in less-than-optimal ways....for now.  And if the history of storing chemical and nuclear waste in the USA is any indication, that's an unnerving prospect.  Read up on Union Carbide sometime.

[IPD]

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

The only thing I'd change is putting nuclear before of wind and solar.  It will have a magnitudes of greater impact withing 10 years than wind or solar can ever hope to achieve.

 

This is of course assuming change must happen immediately.  

This.  Of course, you'd need to find ways to convince the public to fund it--including Yucca Mountain.  Nuclear fission isn't a permanent fix, but it is the most viable one we have readily available.

 

Though to be honest, renewable, crop or algae based biofuels are going to be a far more viable option for transportation than even a 10 fold increase in electric power generation capacity.  A Tesla will never be as versatile as something that runs off the 110 octane of e85.  And commercial aviation will NEVER switch to batteries and electric power--it's way too heavy to be feasible.

[tikker]

  

14 hours ago, Tech Enthusiast said:

And all of those proved to be as perfectly safe and secure as you suggested? Yes?

The best we can do is build new ones that are MUCH more save, but "perfectly save" is far off. As long as a meltdown can happen, the possible fallout is just way too big to call it save.

 

If the worst that could happen was a sick person in the plant, we could call that perfectly save. If a "woopsie!" could lead to several hundred thousand dead people AND a dead piece of land for centuries, it is hard to call it perfectly save.

14 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

There’s been 3 major meltdowns in the history of nuclear power, 51 deaths between them. 50 of those from Chernobyl which we chased by doing an experiment that really shouldn’t have happened at a time other than the scheduled test date. The other was Fukushima which took an earthquake and a tsunami to trigger into meltdown that was largely contained. So basically don’t build them near places at risk of a tsunami. 
 

To put that into context solar panels kill about 100-150 people a year

I generally think of nuclear power plants as the airplanes of energy. They're quite safe, but if something goes seriously wrong it goes seriously wrong. From what I've read Fukushima also wasn't a meltdown of the kind we think of when people say meltdown, but again a "starts align" moment (and preventable as IIRC design warnings had been given about earthquakes and/or tsunamis). Control rods went into the core after the earthquake hit, stopping the reactor. It was the residual heat from the waste that caused the problem after the tsunami took out the power.

11 hours ago, Tech Enthusiast said:

So, an article that basically says: "there have been setbacks in research of a new technology", is your basis on being "right" on it never releasing ever? Because that is exactly what "always 30 years away" suggests. It will never get there.

 

That is a pretty low bar as far as "proof" goes, man.

The "fusion is always 15-20-30 years way" is simply a running joke, even within the physics community that keeps itself busy with it. Good progress has been made, many stories of almost breaking even and being close to achieving it as well. That's it, there's no deep meaning behind it

 

[Lightwreather]

1 hour ago, IPD said:

And commercial aviation will NEVER switch to batteries and electric power--it's way too heavy to be feasible.

This is true, but mostly for long- to medium-haul flights. Short-haul flights (ie. <2hrs) have already switched to electric planes in some parts of the US iirc.

[Imbadatnames]

9 hours ago, IPD said:

You only think that because you aren't aware of the actual details of every one of these incidents.  For example, Windscale only rates a 5 on this scale.  But had the particulate traps not been installed (pretty much only 1 person wanted to have them)--the release into the atmosphere would have been exponentially worse, and much of the UK would be a wasteland.  "Cockroft's Folly"--if you want to look it up.

So you argument is that safety features were installed and used? 

9 hours ago, IPD said:

 

Yes, dates matter.  Because it used to be the wild-west.  Blood and treasure has created advancements that allow nuclear to be used/handled far safer--which is why you don't see this happening much in recent decades.

 

Why should death toll be limited to those that are direct and immediate?  Are we letting the USN off the hook for Bikini Atoll and the lack of precautions for servicemembers, ultimately leading many to a slow and painful death from cancer?

Because if you don’t set a limit you can just include pretty much anything? 

9 hours ago, IPD said:

 

If you want to dip your toes into the bizarre and misunderstood world of nuclear incidents, check out "Plainly Difficult" on youtube.  He covers a litany of them.  It's shocking how close many countries have come to disaster.

Ah yes YouTube. My degree counts for nothing I guess. 

9 hours ago, IPD said:

 

p.s.

Enriched and weapons grade fuels are dangerous.  Depleted fuels are carcinogenic.  As of this very moment, the USA still does not have a permanent, high-level nuclear-waste storage facility--as Yucca Mountain is again on hold...thanks to hippies and NIMBY-ism.  That doesn't mean we lack high-level waste.  It means we are storing it in less-than-optimal ways....for now.  And if the history of storing chemical and nuclear waste in the USA is any indication, that's an unnerving prospect.  Read up on Union Carbide sometime.

Weapons grade isotopes, not fuel, aren’t dangerous. The conditions required for them to be dangerous have to be manufactured they won’t just randomly go off and plutonium as a fuel has a tendency to fizzle even under those manufactured conditions. 
 

So your argument is that protests against nuclear power are the reason why nuclear power isn’t able to be the best version of itself, maybe if uninformed people just shut up we’d be better of eh? 

[Imbadatnames]

9 hours ago, leadeater said:

Well my 106m² house with non optimal roof design can take 9 panels, with the ones I chose and the microinverters the peak actual output is 2kw. I can do 18kwh in a day semi maximum with about 16kwh average for 3 months and above 10kwh for another 3. Winter months it's about 5kwh. Depending on country either winter or summer period is the high portion of the year, Australia for example is summer.

 

There is over 10 million houses in Australia, so not counting businesses and industrial buildings at all. So that's 160mwh of potential residential production. The average daily consumption in Australia is 19kwh, so residential production can offset 84% of the residential demand during the months that are most important, I'd classify this as significant. Of course Australia is an example country that will always land on the better side of the solar debate, for both residential PV and  also CSP. Like Australia has vast amounts of land area, like seriously a lot as the country is huge, that cannot be used for anything at all other than potentially CSP or mining if there is anything there at all.

You’re assuming everyone’s will output the same and you’re not taking into account industry and conversion from domestic to grid to industrial voltage 

9 hours ago, leadeater said:

 

I use Australia btw since they have history of power problems, although better now, sort of. I'm in New Zealand which has a lot shorter summer months and lower average of sunlight hours over the year.

Australias issues is how large the country is and just getting power everywhere as it’s very sparsely populated 

[wanderingfool2]

25 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

Ah yes YouTube. My degree counts for nothing I guess. 

Yes, because someone touting having degrees on the internet means a lot.  In actuality where you lose most of your credibility from is by making comments regarding 31 direct death toll from Chernobyl.  Trying to use "direct" death tolls is a foolish en-devour, and anyone who had a degree/knew the subject wouldn't be arguing that the low direct count of Chernobyl means anything.  It's akin to only counting the death toll of those whom immediately died from the 9/11 attacks.  Even by conservative estimates the Chernobyl incident killed over 4,000 people (hard to tell a real number given the information was hidden for so long).  Also, Fukushima isn't 0.  There has already been at least one confirmed death by cancer caused by the leak.

 

Oh, let's not forget that you quoted 20 years for solar panels before they need replacing, which is also false.  First it's roughly 25 - 30 years and second, the efficiency just drops overtime.  It's like how car batteries are promised to last like 8 years, at which point they have 90% of their original range.  Similar thing occurs with solar panels.  So people who want solar, and have the space can buy the panels for cheap and all that is sacrificed is lower output per square meter.  Examples being, Samsung's panels are rated at 10 year mark to have derogation of only 10%, and 25 years 20% loss...this is their warranty numbers as well, so actual % loss is likely to be less given they want to maximize their profits and not have warranty claims.  If it follows that trend that means in 50 years it would only have lost about 50% capacity.

 

Also, density matters a lot less when you consider that solar can be installed on a roof.  Like what LeadEater was saying regarding his setup.  There currently is a whole lot of square footage that is not utilized on warehouses and houses.  While it might not be able to cover all the needs, it def. can make a massive dent in the energy usage.  The added benefit as well, it can keep your house itself cooler in hotter summer weather.

 

35 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

So you argument is that safety features were installed and used? 

If you actually read and try to comprehend what is being said, I think you would realize that his argument isn't that safety features were installed and used...it's that they were only installed and used because of a single employees insistence to have it them.  That is actually quite an important point as well, that it was one mans decision that prevented a major disaster

 

It seems like always the case in nuclear disasters that human error is the cause, and while true that safety measures do get put in place there are valid concerns by the population regarding it.  Examples being Fukushima, where the reports indicated an issue if a tsunami were to hit at the size it was.  The offending company didn't do anything to mitigate it.  Cherynobyl happened because of cost cutting measures, and recklessness of the management.

 

To be clear, I think nuclear reactors can be safely operated, and I do feel that they should be explored...but it's feeding gas to the fire by stating things the way you are regarding nuclear safety.  It also has to be said it's worrisome that a lot of nuclear issues boils down to human error/neglect...and there could very well be a time where there is a major release of radiation that could have major consequences.  For myself, nuclear reactors do not belong in any earthquake zones or along the coastline.

[Imbadatnames]

58 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Yes, because someone touting having degrees on the internet means a lot.

 In actuality where you lose most of your credibility from is by making comments regarding 31 direct death toll from Chernobyl.  Trying to use "direct" death tolls is a foolish en-devour, and anyone who had a degree/knew the subject wouldn't be arguing that the low direct count of Chernobyl means anything.  It's akin to only counting the death toll of those whom immediately died from the 9/11 attacks.  Even by conservative estimates the Chernobyl incident killed over 4,000 people (hard to tell a real number given the information was hidden for so long).  Also, Fukushima isn't 0.  There has already been at least one confirmed death by cancer caused by the leak.

The 4,000 figure was heavily critiqued when it came out due to the assumptions it made. 
 

Fukushima from the meltdown is officially 0.  

58 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

Oh, let's not forget that you quoted 20 years for solar panels before they need replacing, which is also false.  First it's roughly 25 - 30 years and second, the efficiency just drops overtime.  It's like how car batteries are promised to last like 8 years, at which point they have 90% of their original range.  Similar thing occurs with solar panels.  So people who want solar, and have the space can buy the panels for cheap and all that is sacrificed is lower output per square meter.  Examples being, Samsung's panels are rated at 10 year mark to have derogation of only 10%, and 25 years 20% loss...this is their warranty numbers as well, so actual % loss is likely to be less given they want to maximize their profits and not have warranty claims.  If it follows that trend that means in 50 years it would only have lost about 50% capacity.

You’re not seeing the point. At 20 years they’re just not viable as a source for the grid. Not only do they take uk a gigantic plot but when they start dipping in efficiency they’re just wasting space. Again the largest solar production facility takes up 14,000 acres of land and at peak production is only a third of the largest production nuclear plants sustained production. Pretty much all solar farms produce far below 1MW of energy and when you’re knocking double digit percentages off that figure it’s more economical to scrap them than it is to persist with lower production. 

58 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

Also, density matters a lot less when you consider that solar can be installed on a roof.  Like what LeadEater was saying regarding his setup.  There currently is a whole lot of square footage that is not utilized on warehouses and houses.  While it might not be able to cover all the needs, it def. can make a massive dent in the energy usage.  The added benefit as well, it can keep your house itself cooler in hotter summer weather.

It’s extremely limited in scope, it’s not doable in much of the world and is only viable at certain times of the year, ontop of that the production process involves toxic chemicals. 

58 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

If you actually read and try to comprehend what is being said, I think you would realize that his argument isn't that safety features were installed and used...it's that they were only installed and used because of a single employees insistence to have it them.  That is actually quite an important point as well, that it was one mans decision that prevented a major disaster

I don’t think you know how building design works. The employee wasn’t the one who put it in the design plan and there’s no evidence the measures wouldn’t have been put in by the architect anyway. 

58 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

It seems like always the case in nuclear disasters that human error is the cause, and while true that safety measures do get put in place there are valid concerns by the population regarding it.  Examples being Fukushima, where the reports indicated an issue if a tsunami were to hit at the size it was.  The offending company didn't do anything to mitigate it.  Cherynobyl happened because of cost cutting measures, and recklessness of the management.

Fukushima was due to two natural disasters, it withstood the earthquake and if the tsunami was an individual event it would have weathered that too. 
 

Chernobyl was a cock up cascade, poor design, poor management, the idea to do an experiment/test of that type and at that time along with doing it later during a shift change when it was scheduled much earlier. 

58 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

To be clear, I think nuclear reactors can be safely operated, and I do feel that they should be explored...but it's feeding gas to the fire by stating things the way you are regarding nuclear safety.  It also has to be said it's worrisome that a lot of nuclear issues boils down to human error/neglect...and there could very well be a time where there is a major release of radiation that could have major consequences.  For myself, nuclear reactors do not belong in any earthquake zones or along the coastline.

Honestly I don’t think you know much about nuclear reactors, you seek to have just read Wikipedia or google without understanding of why things happen or why numbers regarding direct deaths are more valuable than spitballed, widely critiqued estimated figures of a wider impact, I'm not saying Chernobyl didn’t cause a small uptick in cancer rates in the local area but the numbers thrown around aren’t very reliable as they’re just not very well put together. 
 

Most issues boil down to human error or neglect it’s kind of how things happen. (Deep Water Horizon being another energy related one). Reactors can be built to withstand earthquakes and not all coastlines are under threat from tsunamis. Ideally they wouldn’t be near either and they don’t need to be but you don’t need to do a mass decommission. 

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

You’re assuming everyone’s will output the same and you’re not taking into account industry and conversion from domestic to grid to industrial voltage

At that large of scale you don't need to take in to account differences in output, that is the point of averages and especially at that scale. There will be houses that don't use 19kwh and there will be ones that use much more. Since it is unlikely that domestic/residential output will be greater than their demand ever then grid offset factors basically stay localized to street or block level, group of blocks maximum. So we are talking about frequency and phase offset only which will also benefit transmission loss as a significant portion of electricity production will be within 10km.

 

Industrial power demands will never be satisfied with PV solar on roofs etc, isn't and likely won't be viable for 100 years unless some major breakthrough happens that allows us to capture 80% of sun energy instead of 20%.

 

If you have large scale residential PV solar and you are for whatever reason have capacity supply shortage you'll have a real hard time selling the need for rolling blackouts to homes when they need so little in the first place, lets just say that would be politically untenable to do. 

 

2 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

Australias issues is how large the country is and just getting power everywhere as it’s very sparsely populated 

It's actually not that much of a problem, the population is mostly coastal and actually reasonably densely populated where the majority live. New Zealand is actually worse in this aspect as we have population through most areas to a more significant degree. Melbourne alone is the population size of NZ in a city that is smaller in land area than Auckland (AKL is 4x larger).

 

New Zealand is very hydro power dependent and the majority of our power is produced in the South Island and goes to the North Island via an under sea high voltage DC supply. There is some pretty significant benefits to large scale residential PV here too.

[leadeater]

37 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

Again the largest solar production facility takes up 14,000 acres of land and at peak production is only a third of the largest production nuclear plants sustained production.

Are you talking about PV or CSP? Because if that is a CSP site then efficiency degradation over time simply is not a thing like it is with PV. The largest PV is actually 40,000 btw, in India and produces 2.7GW.

 

Lets just say I'm not in favor of land based PV array for large scale production, however CSP is far more logical.

 

PV degradation over time is rather insignificant when using the perspective of offset only and utilizing otherwise useless roofing area etc. 60% offset in year 1 and 45% offset in year 25 is still decent either way, neither are houses static so the actual drop over time will not be that much as capacity and panels are cycled through.

 

37 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

Pretty much all solar farms produce far below 1MW of energy and when you’re knocking double digit percentages off that figure it’s more economical to scrap them than it is to persist with lower production. 

Even with PV farms that's not the case. The top 100 alone are all above 100MW with the top 10 being above 1GW. Did you mean to say 1GW?

 

Back to CSP and the benefits

 

Quote

Noor Power Plant in Morocco is the world’s largest concentrated solar power plant project. Situated in the municipality of Ouarzazate in the Agadir district of Morocco, the Noor plants are located in a very favorable region with one of the highest amounts of sunlight in the world – 2635 kWh/m2/year.

 

The Ouarzazate complex is set to develop into a 500 MW solar park that incorporates several utility-scale solar power plants using various solar technologies. The first plant within this complex is the 160 MW Noor I, where three hours of thermal energy storage is used to deliver power at the evening peak times.

 

Noor II will be based on the parabolic trough CSP technology with a capacity of 200 MW and 7 hours of storage to be developed. The 150 MW Noor III CSP Project is a greenfield IPP developed as the third project in a series of several planned developments at the Ouarzazate Solar Complex. The three projects cover an area of 2,500 hectares (6,178 acres). Both Noor II and III started delivering clean electricity to the grid in 2019. 

 

The fourth phase of Noor is a 950 MW hybrid project (700MW CSP & 250MW PV) – the largest single-site concentrated solar power plant in the world. 

https://www.ecohz.com/noor-solar-power-in-morocco#:~:text=Noor Power Plant in Morocco,kWh%2Fm2%2Fyear.

 

CSP:

• Steam base generation like basically everything else
• Can produce power outside of daylight hours
• No significant change in output of large time scale, mirror maintenance required obvious but what doesn't need maintenance
• Low land area to production ratio

Land area is pretty much the only significant detractor and that mostly comes down to not putting them in stupid places that don't make any sense.

[IPD]

43 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

I don’t think you know how building design works. The employee wasn’t the one who put it in the design plan and there’s no evidence the measures wouldn’t have been put in by the architect anyway. 

 

You've officially lost all credibility with this statement.

 

The filters were never part of the original design, and that's why the chimneys ended up with such an odd shape--because they had to accommodate the afterthought filtration system.  The base of the chimneys was already complete--so this was the only way this could be done.

 

I don't know what your degree is in, but your flippant, caviler attitude towards established facts and poo-pooing the sources I quoted (which are hardly authoritative, but were instead chosen for ease of access to the reader and to those searching at random)--only underscores the dearth of knowledge you bring to the topic.  Your degree does count for nothing if your injects clearly indicate a failure to grasp fundamentals.

 

P.S.

Bragging about your degree online is usually a sure-fire sign that one is both losing an argument and desperate to cling to some sense of authoritativeness on the topic.

[Mark Kaine]

4 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

Ah yes YouTube. My degree counts for nothing I guess. 

Nope, especially not against cheapo clickbait channels as the aforementioned, your degree doesnt stand a chance. : p

 

4 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

So your argument is that protests against nuclear power are the reason why nuclear power isn’t able to be the best version of itself, maybe if uninformed people just shut up we’d be better of eh? 

yes, but instead of blaming protesters you should be blaming the industry, which again and again proved to be negligent and actually never tried to make things less dangerous beyond the most necessary things, because the highest and often seemingly only priority was and always has been to produce weapon grade materials, the whole "energy for the masses" thing has mostly just been a smoke screen, at least initially… 

 

Its why we still dont have cool stuff like thorium reactors, or indeed fusion (if thats even actually possible)

 

 

2 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

Fukushima was due to two natural disasters, it withstood the earthquake and if the tsunami was an individual event it would have weathered that too. 

Case in point, it was actually due to poor design and not listening to recommendations…

 

The emergency pump station was much too low level and was always  going to be flooded in case of a (not unlikely) Tsunami. They should have put it uphill as recommended, but didnt due to pure negligence and probably trying to save a few pennies.

[Zodiark1593]

On 2/9/2022 at 1:52 PM, dizmo said:

What's the long standing joke? Nuclear fusion is always about 30 years away? 

It will get off the ground about the time when Star Citizen launches. 

[dizmo]

8 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

It will get off the ground about the time when Star Citizen launches. 

You think Chris Roberts has 30 years left in him? Pretty sure he's just making sure he's employed for the rest of his life

[CarlBar]

@IPD: I suggest you read up some more on nuclear accidents you seem to have a severely inflated view of how bad the actual worst case scenarios would have been.

 

 

To address Windscale specifically, yes without the filters it would have been bad. But:

 

A) it would still have been far below Chernobyl, and even that didn't turn an area the size of the UK, (or even the whole of Wales), into a wasteland. No filters would have been bad but not the country obliterating event your claiming.

 

B) Windscale took place in the very earliest era of nuclear reactors. In fact given the UK at the time didn't even have full access to all the details of the Manhattan project and was being actively blocked from receiving information beyond what participating British scientists had brought back. This influenced the design, the safety precautions , and the views on what the dangers where. You can see this in action with both the issues with Wigner energy they had and the increased operating temperatures they had to adopt, as well as general issues with the fuel cartridges. 

 

C) Even within the realms of what they did understand, a lot of it was highly theoretical at best, downright educated guesswork at worst. Thats why the Filters attracted such derision, most involved didn't think there was a serious danger. Under better circumstances this would have led to more caution and work to figure out the truth, but Windscale was a nuclear weapon production system, not a powerplant or a research institute. And national security concerns pushed it along despite any worries. Thats a very different situation to a powerplant.

 

D) Everything i said applies to countless other early reactors, many of them where built with limited understanding. Indeed many early reactors and bomb tests where more about refining the understanding of this stuff because they knew their theoretical models weren't perfect, (the entire point of the first test in WW2 was to confirm that the theory they had on implosion devices held up like they thought it would, they expected it to work, but they weren't actually 100% certain it would until it went off). A lot of early incidents where various people finding out various problems the hard way by building somthing and having it explode in their faces. But that was driven in large part because the theory was somewhat behind the practical applications due to the way it had gone from very vague theories, (The neutron was only discovered a handful of years before WW2), to a practical use so quickly due to WW2.

 

 

None of this applies to the current state of the art. I'm not saying we can't get bit, there;s allways room for things to go wrong or flaws to slip by. But we don't have the same pressures pushing the practical applications ahead of the theory and we have in fact got a lot of the theory really well nailed down and validated by experiments now. It's also important to remember that Chernobyl is pretty much the absolute worse case scenario possibble, i.e. a large chunk of the fuel material blown up into the atmosphere and spread over a wide area. Short of the same thing with a bigger reactor core it can't get any worse, and whilst i won't say Chernobyl was in any way good, it was still a long way from a doomsday scenario, even worst case estimates put it at a far lower impact than for example the US's total workplace related deaths for 2020. It's awful and it really should not have bloody well happened given how much better understood this stuff was by the time it happened, but it's also in the grand scheme of things somthing we've managed to cope with fairly well.

 

Any decent level of safety requirements, (like a proper containment structure), makes anything on the same scale impossible without external action to breach the containment structure. And they're rated to stand jet airliners crashing into them these days. So outside of military action, good luck with that.

 

[wanderingfool2]

7 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

Most issues boil down to human error or neglect it’s kind of how things happen. (Deep Water Horizon being another energy related one). Reactors can be built to withstand earthquakes and not all coastlines are under threat from tsunamis. Ideally they wouldn’t be near either and they don’t need to be but you don’t need to do a mass decommission. 

I didn't say doing a mass decommission.  I am merely saying it's foolish putting them in zones that experience natural events that can have severe consequences.  Fukushima proves that, a plant that was built "safely" but later had reports that it wasn't built well enough and modifications needed to be done; of which those modifications weren't done and an event like the one in the report occurred and disaster happened.

 

7 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

Honestly I don’t think you know much about nuclear reactors, you seek to have just read Wikipedia or google without understanding of why things happen or why numbers regarding direct deaths are more valuable than spitballed, widely critiqued estimated figures of a wider impact, I'm not saying Chernobyl didn’t cause a small uptick in cancer rates in the local area but the numbers thrown around aren’t very reliable as they’re just not very well put together. 

It's numbers released by IAEA's report, plus the increase of cancer rates.  While numbers might be an estimate, it's foolish to say we should only utilize direct deaths because that is not where the majority of deaths would come from.

 

7 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

You’re not seeing the point. At 20 years they’re just not viable as a source for the grid. Not only do they take uk a gigantic plot but when they start dipping in efficiency they’re just wasting space. Again the largest solar production facility takes up 14,000 acres of land and at peak production is only a third of the largest production nuclear plants sustained production. Pretty much all solar farms produce far below 1MW of energy and when you’re knocking double digit percentages off that figure it’s more economical to scrap them than it is to persist with lower production. 

Do you understand what I said?  At 20 years, the current panels on the market should still obtain 80% efficiency.  Here's a hint for you, with the future of solar production it gets put on houses and industrial building, where the space is already wasted anyways (or areas that currently aren't occupied).  It doesn't matter if in 25 years the efficiency is only 80% of what it use to be...it's still generating electricity; and likely wouldn't be replaced.  Or like what's currently happening, those panels get sold to other people at very reduced costs (because installing a panel that is 80% of what it originally was at 25% the cost is worth it to some people).

 

It's all about the numbers as well, reducing the grid demand.