Will solar and wind solve all our energy problem?

>>8408424
no.

nuclear power can

>>8408433
Until we run out of cheap uranium 20 years from now and we end up in the same position as we are now wrt Arabs.

Good thinking, Batman.

>>8408424
>all
Not for the foreseeable future. Only most of them.

>>8408424
Our energy problems are unsolvable, since we'll never overcome scarcity.

>>8408457
Thorium, breeder reactors, spent fuel recycling, and fusion.

also uranium is very plentiful. we can extract it from ocean water if we wanted to.

>>8408424
solar only, wind is shit.

>>8408467
We can easily overcome scarcity once populations start coming down around the end of this century. We already have more than enough resources and energy to cover the basic needs of everyone on the planet, what we don't have is enough resources and energy for everyone to have a smartphone and eat meat every day. And the problem is, everyone wants smartphones and meat.

>>8408505
Offshore wind is great though

We're literally already fucked. Best we can do is try to make it better for next generation but the next 50 years are gonna be fucking harsh. More and more hurricanes, mass migration as more area becomes uninhabitable etc etc

Its like we're in a car in the garage, and we left it on, and we've slipped into unconsciousness. There is nothing *we* can do. Essentially, unless aliens come and rescue us, we're stuck with the shitty atmosphere we created and have no ability to fix it.

>>8408523
we have the ability to fix our problems. it is the lack of political will. mostly due to a lot of lobbying by established (((economic))) interests.

>>8408424

Solar and Thorium (in b4 memes) and in fact "regular" atomic power will solve our needs. Solar will really come into its own when we start putting solar power satellites around the sun and beaming the delicious power back to Earth.

>>8408556
>Solar will really come into its own when we start putting solar power satellites around the sun and beaming the delicious power back to Earth.
How would that be even remotely efficient?

No. Neither power source is useful for spacecraft propulsion.

>>8408433
>>8408500
>>8408556
>wasting rare nuclear material to generate power on earth rather than long distance space travel

Nuclearfags should be lined up and shot

>>8408563
>How would that be even remotely efficient?
Infinite fuel > transmission losses

>>8408575
>Thorium
>Uranium

>Rare

Top kek lad. Maybe go back to /b/ that seems more o your level.

>>8408575
>>wasting rare nuclear material
Nuclear material isnt rare though. At all

>>8408586
>>8408587
>physicists can't into geology
xDDDDD!!

>>8408593
We have about 400 years worth of mineable uranium if we stick to current techniques and rates of use.

If we extract from sea water it becomes a non-issue

>>8408580
You still have infinite fuel reaching earth, just at a lower rate. A transmission system good enough to overcome that change in rate will not be viable for a long time. Besides, that problem is easily solved by just adding more panels.

>>8408599
>If we extract from sea water it becomes a non-issue
The cost of this on an industrial (i.e. relevant) scale renders this idea useless.

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Isn't in true that sun gives us 100 times more energy than humanity needs today?
Hard to imagine all the planet under these panels, but wind is also sun energy (sun heats planet, water becomes vapour and starts falling up which moves gases that are already there thus movement we use since thousands years ago, though they tried to taboo it with inventing conception of perpetuum mobile, which all of the sudden needs to be isolated, when wtf for (so you know that you should pay for everything, so you don't mind to be robbed like always, cannabis is forbidden for the same reason: it doesn't bring hangover, it may bring you masterpiece instead.

>>8408606
At this point yes, but that still leaves millions of tonnes of uranium that can be mined

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>>8408617

>>8408467
>scarcity
>...of SUNLIGHT...
Not to mention tides, wind, geothermal, gravity, and, since you said 'never' - ZP and the accelerating expansion of the universe itself.

>>8408617

Fossil fuels are also solar energy, and of course all the radioactive compounds on our planet were made in the centre of a long-dead star.

>>8408606
>>If we extract from sea water it becomes a non-issue
>The cost of this on an industrial (i.e. relevant) scale renders this idea useless.
No, seawater uranium extraction is already just a few times more expensive than mining it out of good deposits is now (and getting natural uranium oxide is a tiny cost in nuclear power). On an industrial scale, it'll be much cheaper than on a small scale, and they'll probably invent some new tricks along the way.

They do it with ion exchange resins, like a water softener. You stick them out in the ocean, where there's a current (it's no good extracting trace uranium without the water flowing -- the local area will become depleted, and you'll be depending on diffusion), and after a year or so, you haul them up and wash the uranium out.

It's not competitive with good conventional mines, but it's certainly cheap enough to be practical when the conventional mines run out.

Raw fuel supply isn't a long-term problem for nuclear power.

>>8408433
>>8408424
Solar is the only thing that can save humanity.

But it can't be PV solar. The matierals used for PV solar, wind turbines, and nuclear power plants are finite. The only viable technology that can be extend further than anything else is bio solar. Where the power is generated from organisms that use solar to create energy.

The final tier level of the solar system is to use 100% of the sun's energy. Not through the use of a Dyson sphere but instead using a cloud swarm of colony space stations similar to what an O'Neil Cylinder is. There's be so many of these that they'd block out the sun entirely, but not be one solid structure. They'd change places from being close to the sun to being outside the sun's radiation like how a raft of penguins will change places from inside the raft to outside the raft, taking turns warming up. That would be the swarm's day/night cycle while allowing a maximum number of stations.

>>8408691
Have you ever stuck anything into the sea? It eats everything and everything it doesn't eat it covers with biomass.

>>8408532
we have the ability to make life possible past 2100
Its downhill until then

>>8408532
This right here.

all life will be electronic within 100 years

Why aren't TV news meteorologists (weathermen) freaking out 24/7 over the effects of climate change.

They report on the effects every single day. Why aren't they going off the script saying, "It's the worst its ever been and here's why."

They are the most ready vehicle to access the public and nobody is doing anything.

>>8408587
Thats what they said about oil faggot. And nuclear fuel isn't even renewable.

>>8408948
?
are you an idiot? climate change/global warming are just left wing globalist memes, not reality.

>>8408509
>once populations start coming down around the end of this century
Have you seen how Mexicans breed?

>>8408523
>More and more hurricanes
First major hurricane in 11 years

>>8408962
lol

or maybe it's not the weatherman's thing to worry about climate when his job is about the weather

we're circling the drain

>>8408730
Yeah man, that's why fishing and shipping are practically impossible.

>>8408967
>>>/pol/

No only fusion can
And we need quantum computers to solve that problem
So only quantum computing can

(We'll also probably need those reflective aerosols)

Solar (and wind and hydro and geo, albeit to a lesser extent) can solve our energy problems, especially with nuclear and natural gas as bridge resources. It'll take some time though, because we still need to solve the problem of intermittency (the sun isn't always shining and the wind isn't always blowing, after all). This could be accomplished by 2 means - creating an efficient macro-scale storage system or a method to transfer power long distances (as in from areas with sunlight to those without, or from areas perfect for generation to populated areas).

>>8408424
just wind, solar is a meme

No chance as we run out of natural resources. We need to navigate all the types of fusion so we can generate matter, and form whatever catalysts we need.

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>>8408424
These are the only sensible answers:
>>8408433
>>8408500
>>8408556
Nuclear is the only feasible solution to growing energy demands, not to mention the unforeseen technologies which will require unfathomable amounts of energy to operate.

Anyone who disagrees is short-sighted (however, this is not a premise to dismiss their arguments) the dangers of nuclear power will be ignored when its competitiveness and cost effectiveness makes solar and wind simply nonsensically inefficient alternatives. Like the predominant use of cost effective and competitive non-renewable energy, this will be replaced with nuclear in the future.

For example, nothing can hold a candle to the cost effectiveness and economic viability of non-renewable energy. Can you imagine a country banning non-renewable energy outright, and replacing it all with wind or solar? It's economically infeasible and unsustainable. In the future, therefore, all the non-renewable power plants will be nuclear (replacing current fossil fuel plants). Economies will be unable to economically sustain themselves without using nuclear.

>>8408967
Mexicans are not humans though

>>8409181
>dangers of nuclear power will be ignored when its competitiveness and cost effectiveness makes solar and wind simply nonsensically inefficient alternatives

Nuclear is not cost effective.
Nuclear is not competitive.
Nuclear is inherently less safe than Solar and Wind.

Renewables are cheaper, easier to setup, easier to maintain, easier to manage, easier to invest in, easier to subsidize, easier to distribute, and have massive public support.

Nobody wants nuclear but a bunch of impractical shills that don't know how the real world works.

>Can you imagine a country banning non-renewable energy outright, and replacing it all with wind or solar?

Carbon caps are effectively doing it right now as we speak. Nobody is talking about replace fossil fuels with Nuclear. France is/was the only one to do it, and now Areva and their entire nuclear industry is bankrupt and a massive taxpayer black-hole. They can't wait to dump it and then move onto renewables.

>>8409197

prices of a kilowatt hour of electricity in various countries disagress.

France, the 80% nuclear nation, pays 18 cents per kilowatt hour.

Germany which has eliminated nuclear power and taxed coal and gas up to the price of solar and wind. Pays 35 cents per kilowatt hour.

Denmark pays 45 cents per kilowatt hour.

Interior Alaska, which is wind power going to batteries. Is 25 cents per kilowatt hour.

Americans in the lower 48 states pay 1-12 cents per kilowatt hour. they get about 30% coal, 30% natural gas, 20% nuclear and 20% other.

>>8409269
Germany implemented renewables entirely without regard to economy, investing in full-scale deployments of immature technologies which are rapidly dropping in price.

You know, under the same management that threw the borders open to 3rd-world migrants.

>>8408523
>More and more hurricanes, mass migration as more area becomes uninhabitable etc etc

Here is an example of a person who is an adherent to the new Druidism.

You cannot argue facts with these guys, you might as well try and talk a Muslim out of blowing himself up.

Be wary of these sorts, there's millions of them out there, the new Druidism is strong indeed, and if we are not careful, will usher in a new Dark Age.

>>8408433
Nuclear engineer here. It'll never happen. The fucking morons of this country have fallen for the nuclear plants = WMD meme that big oil spread. The government won't commission any new plants until we get investors willing to shell the cash out, and they won't go near nuclear unless the public calms the markets down. It's a shit show, everybody in the industry knows it, the media won't let it be brought up in any unbiased light either so people just ignore us.

>>8408457
Also you're pretty wrong with that 20 year estimate. It's a shame people will read your comment and take it as fact

>>8408617
>Isn't in true that sun gives us 100 times more energy than humanity needs today?

Yes.

BUT.

The energy density of that power is very bad. Weak, diffuse energy over vast areas is a terrible way to run an economy.

Just build Gen4 nukes. Tear down all the coal plants, all the gas plants, and all the old nuke plants. Build IFR-style closed-loop breeder reactors everywhere.

Although, I'm actually pretty fond of that fancy Dual Liquid Reactor that just went de-classified in Britain.

Damn redcoats, keeping all the best toys under wraps....

We'd be able to finish global electrification in our lifetimes, and be way better off for it.

>>8408556
Thorium is a meme. My intro to nuclear engineering explained it to us like 3rd week. We spent the next 4 years learning exactly why breeding thorium sucks. Best hope is for fusion

>>8409310
They're building new reactors at existing plants at least.

Vogel, in Georgia, is getting two new reactors.

People will call for nuclear when their Liberal energy policies have tripled electricity prices, or worse. No one wants to pay $5 for electricity to run their clothes dryer. or keep a computer running for a hour.

>>8409321
Literally worked at Vogtle sites 3 and 4. We will be lucky to see both units up by 2022

>>8408950
>>>8408587
>Thats what they said about oil faggot.

You DO realize that there are higher proven reserves of oil right now, today, then there were fifty years ago, right?

We have barely scratched the surface of the fossil fuel in the earth, my frightened friend, no matter what everybody is telling you.

Here's a hint: They are lying.

>And nuclear fuel isn't even renewable.

The energy resource from nuclear energy (uranium and thorium) is conservatively a thousand times larger than all the fossil fuels on Earth, and as I mentioned, we've barely scratched the surface of the fossil fuels.

We're not running out of anything.

Stop believing without doing a little research for yourself.

>>8409322
>>8409317
so why is thorium a meme?

>>8409269
>>>8409197
>prices of a kilowatt hour of electricity in various countries disagress.

You can't argue with guys like that anon, he's a true believer.

His religion says that nuclear is bad, he believes that nuclear is bad. You might as well argue with a flat-earther.

>>8409324
the cheap easy oil is running out.

All that nice light sweet crude that comes from Saudi Arabia. The new oil reserves coming online, need $80 a barrel to be profitable. Sources like shale fracking, deep deep sea, tar sands.

>>8409322
>>>8409321
>Literally worked at Vogtle sites 3 and 4.

Good for you!

So why is China cranking out new plants like they're popcorn?

I'm thinking it has to do with all the wretched government red tape.

>>8408424
remember coal plants have more output of radioactive elements than nuclear power

>>8409329
China has the political will to do anything. As long as they can keep the economy growing. The people will put up with anything.

>>8409325
There are a few reasons why it's not exactly feasible right now:

Breeding cycle of thorium into uranium fuel is hot. Hot as in temperature and radioactivity. That energy absolutely destroys any housing/containment material structures you have as a rate that's not cost effective right now.

(Online versus offline means doing stuff while the reactor is hot)
Breeding thorium requires neutrons which you get from the cores of reactors. It's basically only cost effective to breed the thorium into fuel then use the fuel right after it's produced, that's online breeding/refueling. However right now we can't exactly make that work. If you turn the reactor off to move the fuel into the right place/ remove to sell, you build up shitty radioisotopes which degrade your fuel (impurities and shit). So it ends up being cost inefficient again.

There are other reasons too, some based on physical and material limitations and some on cost. People are moving away for both types of reasons these days. Liquid fuel is big these days, molten salts and the like

>>8409327
>>>8409324 (You)
>the cheap easy oil is running out.

Correct!

So?

The hard-to-get stuff burns the same, and there is FUCKTONS more of it. There's nothing magic about 'light sweet crude' these days, every refinery worth a damn has a cat cracker and a coking unit.

Duh?


>All that nice light sweet crude that comes from Saudi Arabia. The new oil reserves coming online, need $80 a barrel to be profitable. Sources like shale fracking, deep deep sea, tar sands.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/03/19/low-oil-prices-ahead-as-fracking-breaks-even-at-25barrel/

You may be misinformed, anon.

>>8409334
>That energy absolutely destroys any housing/containment material structures you have as a rate that's not cost effective right now.

Lies.

Good lord, this is so wrong it's not even lies, it's just....

What the fuck, anon?

Do you BELIEVE this idiocy?

Modern reactor vessels are being built with 60 year design lifetimes, and will probably get extended to 80+.

And hell, even at that lifetime, they're still fine, it's just the plant is so old it's time to replace it with a better one.

Wow.

>>8409344
Not reactor housing, blanket breeding structural materials. Like the hexagonal fuel planks we see in LSCR breeding and fuel structures

>>8409335
>There's nothing magic about 'light sweet crude' these days
At some point EROEI is a problem and when it gets to barrel in for one barrel out the gig is up. With safety and enviro regs, intense refinement and mining operations it will happen this century and that is not near enough time to rebuild the worlds oil based infrastructure. or replace the one billion internal combustion engines with yet unknown and undiscovered sources of energy. Batteries are just another energy sink not a supply.

There really isn't much of a problem in the grand scheme of things though, as oils deplete we go back to coal, wind and solar might supplement a bit but require the oil based infrastructure to roll out so will take a hit as well. All the while human populations decline rapidly through die offs decreasing demand, worst case large scale conventional resource wars break out upping demand and forcing rationing. Many places are going to run out of potable water before oil anyway.

It has nothing to do with the technology, it has to do with capitalism. Nothing will be solved unless that is solved and there is no glimpse of hope that it will happen nowhere in sight. Other energy sources may grow, but it will always evolve at a lower pace than the ability of someone to profit from it and to hold people for ransom.

And even if, supposedly, from now on every energy source was "clean" whatever you guys think that is. Then what would happen? Productivity would improve everywhere as energy would be widespread and you'd have more people inventing ways to turn things into garbage.

It's not because this or that company is lobbying and blocking the advance of that technology. Those companies themselves are forced to lobby or someone else will in their place. It's not lack of political will, it's not a moral problem that would be solved if only you chose the right person to sit at the important chair. The chair itself can only be occupied by those who paid for the campaign, by vultures who will force whoever sits to either comply, be played or get out.

Ecological disaster is already happening, it's not an event in particular. It's the misery of everyday life, total dependence of a system, coup after coup. Humanity will not end, you'll have the 0,001% of mankind living quite well when the rest of the world is in flames (and dumb enough to think they did this to themselves). There is nothing more profitable than the ruin of the other.

It's not about being socialist or anarchist or what have you, just a matter of understanding that capitalism itself is the problem and start to think of ways out of it asap.

>>8409354
oil energy isn't the biggest concern about rising oil prices and scarcity. it is all the other shit that crude oil makes.

we'll run out of phosphor before we run out of fresh water. phosphor doesn't a replenishment cycle where it turns into a gas. So it when it runs out, it is out for millions of years. no phosphor no synethetic fertilizers, and then no intensive mechanized agriculture.

>>8409349
>Like the hexagonal fuel planks we see in LSCR breeding and fuel structures

You mean shit we can make out of zirconium?

And if we don't like zirconium we can move to silicon-carbide, which is effectively invulnerable to neutron radiation at any level you care to discuss?

You mean silicon carbide which we're actively developing into parts to build reactors out of?

You mean reactors that last fucking forever, instead of 'only' SIXTY YEARS?

https://www.atimetals.com/news/corrosion-conference/Documents/CSC11-pdfs/presentation_8c_herderick.pdf

How hard is it to understand that technology has gotten better?

>>8409354
>All the while human populations decline rapidly through die offs decreasing demand, worst case large scale conventional resource wars break out upping demand and forcing rationing.

I have a long-standing policy of not talking to you die-off maniacs.

Do the world a favor and kill yourself first, thank you and goodbye.

>>8408424

Only one thing can solve our energy problems, and that's less people.

>>8408424
Not on their own at this point in time. But they'll form an important part of the energy mix in the coming decades. The other part being natural gas, which will be needed for smoothing out the variability in renewable energy production until we have energy better storage. Then renewables will take over completely. And that's actually not that far away in the future.

>>8408505
solar and wind are complementary in their average production times

>>8408587
Lol the Frenchfrogs are waging resource wars in Africa over nuclear material right now! Africa is their ME.

>>8409334
Hahahhaaahahaa and you are a nuclear grad?? In what country? Just to laugh at your shitty education.

You mention molten salt to be the panacea while you also ignore that lftr combibed both, breeder and molten salt in one technology. Its not the solid thorium fuel we are talking about and every old fuck want to disprove, is the thorium flouride molten salt we mean.

Go and use a brain, faggot.

Physics bachelor and civil engineer here. Fuck your teacher, hes full of shit

>>8408969
America once again showing they have no idea what goes on in the rest of the world.

>>8409311
No one takes you fucktards seriously. This is 4chan. Extraction is dependent on oil powered machines, ultimately recoverable resources (economics defines tractability), and civilization has to remain intact (historically not likely) otherwise the hundreds of low type reactors go critical and our nostrils are vacuuming up the fallout while we eat each other.

>>8409310
>nuclear engineer
>student

>>8409269
>>8409326
>Price per Killowatt

Doesn't matter when your State-owned Nuclear Facilities and Utilities are all bleeding red and in massive debt. The taxpayer is going to foot their multi-billion bailouts, which is going to cost a lot more than their artificially low cost of electricity.


Nuclear is NOT investor friendly. The payback periods are poor and it is a very risky and bureaucratic-heavy industry.

Investors prefer Renewables, as do the public. So that is where the funding and future energy situation is headed.

>>8409685
You can use gas-powered machines, whose Methane fuel can be fixated from the atmosphere using energy from nuclear plants. Otherwise Hydrogen is possible. Else, electric vehicles are possible.


Nuclear looks great on paper and in youtube videos and presentation talks. But in practice it almost nearly falls apart.

>>8409301
>Germany implemented renewables entirely without regard to economy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjYlrFewchY#t=4m37s

>>8409269
Electricity prices aren't comparable between countries as they're hugely distorted by different kinds of taxes and subsidies. On top of that come differences due to different purchasing power. There's just no point in trying to argue via prices for private consumers.

How long does a solar panel or wind mill take to pay off the carbon of its creation? Then how much longer after that do they produce energy before needing replacing?

Solar panels wear out in 20 years or so under normal operations. By the end of their life span they are only producing a fraction of the power they did new.

Wind mills have moving parts that need maintenance.

>>8410255
Don't be an idiot. "without regard to economy" and "without regard to the economy" are TOTALLY different statements.

When you want to implement a pork program, the point is to waste money. Solar was a good way for the German government to waste lots of money, thereby spending lots of money into the economy.

However, this joker getting up there and insisting Germany "would never ruin its economy" is obviously pushing political propaganda. Many very foolish things look beneficial in the short term.

>>8410268
>How long does a solar panel or wind mill take to pay off the carbon of its creation?

Entirely dependent on how much carbon was used to produce them in the first place.

Early Solar Panels were made using electricity from Coal. Modern Solar Panels are produced from factories that themselves are powered by Solar PVs. So a great reduction in carbon budget. And a VAST improvement over just burning coal and other fossil fuels.

>Then how much longer after that do they produce energy before needing replacing?

+20 years is the most common industry operations. But studies are showing that older panels from the 80s and 90s are actually still competently running, well above expectations.

>Wind mills have moving parts that need maintenance.

All forms of energy require maintenance. Nuclear requires a large of amount of specialized workers. Hydro, Fossil Fuels, and Wind, less so but still very important.

Solar PV '''''maintenance''''' requires a monkey with a wrench and a manual. You can set them up on your own, and large parks are no different than the ones you put ontop of your roof, but run in parallel.

>>8408424
No one cares for hydroelectric power :'(

>>8410282
>However, this joker getting up there and insisting Germany "would never ruin its economy" is obviously pushing political propaganda. Many very foolish things look beneficial in the short term.
How about shutting your piehole and listening what the guy has to say? Is it too hard to listen to someone who's challenging your preconceived notions?

>>8410293
Mostly saturated completely in developed countries. Hence, little future interest. It can't power any major country entirely, apart from perhaps Brazil.

>>8410296
>How about shutting your piehole and listening what the guy has to say?
How about not being garbage and typing down an argument in text, instead of linking hour-long videos of a bureaucrat defending his policies and acting like it's totally reasonable to expect everyone to watch every video some random asshole posts on 4chan?

>>8409197
>Nuclear is inherently less safe than Solar and Wind

Nuclear has less deaths per kilowatt/hour than solar or wind.

>>8410293
location dependent and the Eco Weenies don't like it because of destruction of natural habitat and fish migration paths.

We should be pushing geothermal more. Technically you could implement it almost anywhere. Though for cost reasons, you want spots that are hot near the surface, for less drilling needed.

>>8410304
>everything needs to be explained with 140 characters
generation Twitter, ladies and gentlemen

>>8410310
There's no way to be a bigger asshole in an anonymous internet argument than to just link an hour-long video with no explanation, and then act like everyone else is being unreasonable by not watching it.

>>8410307
Doesn't matter.

Fukishima is still abandoned. BILLIONS had to be pumped into mitigating its disaster.

Solar PVs doesn't kill anyone.

>>8410314
There's no way to be a bigger asshole in an anonymous internet argument than to claim the other side as propaganda and refusing to listen to it. That's no argument at all. It's no dialogue, it's monologue.

>>8410321
Two seconds in Google proves that solar kills more than 4 times as many people per year than nuclear does.

>>8410321
Fukishima is a big fuckup on the part of the japs, it didn't need to happen, if the backup power for the plant wasn't in the flood zone it would have been fine.

Hell, would have been fine if they didn't automatically SCRAM the reactors.

Tons of people fall off houses installing solar.

>>8410321
Fukushima was hit by a once in a 1000 year disaster. The Diesel generators were put in the basement of all places. The reactor vessel had no gauges to tell if there was water in it or not. Unforseen plumbing issues caused water pumped in by fire truck, to go to heat exchanger instead of the core. The plant it self was at the end of the life cycle. TEPCO, like a lot of Japanese companies, runs everything at bare minimums.

Most of the exclusion zone is actually cleaned up. The only problem is finding a place to permanent store all the contaminated dirt and trash they bagged up. They still have to find a way to remove the cores. As they are far too radioactive for robots or humans to be near.

I have an idea on the core extraction.
>build a dock with two long piers into the ocean.
>build one of those huge cranes(pictured) you see at ship yard.
>place rails so the crane can be moved over each reactor core.
>crane then lowers a hydraulic powered claw/containment vessel
>buildings containing the cores are torn down. to expose the cores to the sky.
>the crane goes over the core. rips them out of the building
>crane then moves the core to a barge waiting in the dock.
>the barge is towed out to the Mariana Trench.
>core is dropped to the deepest place on earth. where the depth, cold, pressure, and water will keep the radiation from spreading out of the general area.
>repeat for all the other remaining cores
>once the cores are gone. the remaining slag and contaminated building rubble can be removed by robot and humans.

I even emailed TEPCO with this idea years ago.

>>8410342
Isn't just dropping your shit into the ocean kind of forbidden or something?

>>8410307
>Nuclear has less deaths per kilowatt/hour than solar or wind.
Big Tobacco argued similarly for decades. Just because causation is a lot harder to prove in probabilistic events than counting guys who fall during construction work, doesn't mean they're less.

>>8410348
well the alternative is to find another nation to bury your waste in. Japan is too seismically active for high grade radioactive waste storage.

>>8410342
>core is dropped to the deepest place on earth
>repeat for all the other remaining cores

You should've sent your idea to Hollywood instead and pitched it as the opening to the sequel of Godzilla

>>8410355
Just dump it on one of the isles Russia wants and give it back. Serves them right.

>>8410332
>including construction deaths of people accidentally falling off of roofs

Lmao. Might as well include nuclear plant construction deaths as well in that case. Not to mention people die in the mining process as well, and the massive ecological and health effects of the strip mining used to extract Uranium.

Future PVs could also easily be installed with drones or built right into roofs. Thereby mitigating those effects entirely, however small and insignificant they are today.

>>8410338
>Nuclear Reactor Fails
>"This reactor design is bad, our shiny new 'Silver Bullet' XYZ reactor will solve all those problems!"
>Nuclear Reactor Fails
>"This reactor design is bad, our shiny new 'Silver Bullet' XYZ reactor will solve all those problems!"

Might as well save yourself the time and wait out Nuclear Fusion, and ITER. Investors are done with Nuclear Reactors, it is a shitty over-promised and under-delivering technology with tremendous risks and crap payback times associated with it.

Otherwise, just stick with the safest, most Investor-friendly choice possible: Solar+Wind.

>>8410338
>Tons of people fall off houses installing solar.
Well, it's not as if that isn't, similarly, due to doing stupid shit, and when you do stupid shit installing solar, you're the only victim (well, provided you don't fall on top of anyone.)

Further, they don't have to evacuate your entire town.

>>8410361
Russia is illegally occupying the Kurill Islands.

You are probably thinking about the Senkaku Islands. Which China started claiming in the 1970s when oil was discovered in the water near them.

>>8410362
Gen 4 reactors are safe for a week with out power. So long as there is water in the core, passive circulation will keep temperatures down.

molten salt or molten lead reactors are even safer.

>>8408424
Super-critical CO2 geothermal is better.

>>8410362
Your beloved PVs are made from rare earth minerals as well.

>>8408500
>and fusion.
you can lose the rest.

>>8410383
just waiting for the day when SpaceX ITS Super Heavy Lift rockets can put He3 extraction equipment on the moon.

>>8410373
I am aware of passive safety features in newer Reactor Types.

The reality is that the first-mover cost is just too great with Nuclear. Reactors are big, heavy, and expensive to operate and maintain, not to mention require specialized labor and parts. All of this adds tremendously to the cost and downgrades investor sentiment. Without investor sentiment, the trillions of dollars of investment needed for ANY energy revolution will never be realized. Those hedge-funds, pension-funds, etc. aren't going to invest their portfolios in low-return, high risk investments like Nuclear. Especially not experimental and 'New' Designs.

One of the worst things about nuclear is that their long average lifespan guarantees that several components, especially those that need special-snowflake chemistry (life LIFTR) will go out of stock in their operations. Due to economics of producing them and the fact that companies go out of business.

These are major factors that a completely modular and ultra-simple system like Solar completely owns. Simple installation, maintenance, distribution, investment (pay as you go model), downtime (you plug it in and it starts producing immediately), and long-term safety under all conditions. Nuclear Reactors of ANY time lack these innate advantages.

>>8410382
>Your beloved PVs are made from rare earth minerals as well.

Nope. Total bullshit perpetuated by Nuclear Shills. You need silicon, and really old models used Lead as solder before they were banned.

WIND requires Neodymium in their turbines to produce electricity.....but so does Fossil Fuels/Nuclear because you have to boil water and power a turbine anyway ;). So at best it is parity with what is require by Fossil Fuels and Nuclear.

Solar PVs use no rare elements or parts, contrasted to virtually all other methods that directly require them (Nuclear) or indirectly require them through powering Turbines (Wind, Nuclear, Fossil Fuels)

>>8410395
solar is garbage for industry with out a massive battery or being on a grid connected to another power source.

try running an aluminum plant on solar panels alone, you can't.

which is why we need nuclear and offset the start up and tear down expenses with government incentives.

>>8410402
Thin-film PVs contain gallium and cadmium.

>>8410409
>Powering 13% of all Texas electric demand
>Without major battery storage

You can easily replace 10-30% of electric demand already in high insolation areas. Germany and several US states have already demonstrated this. This is WITHOUT any major energy storage solutions.

To get to the +50-60% range to go for a nearly full-renewable future, batteries are needed.

Large Grid-Scale batteries are infinitely more plausible of coming to fruition than paper-Reactors people keep trying to shill. It would easily take +10 years for any major new Reactor-Type to even be mass production-ready, and that is assuming it has major funding today (nope.jpg) and hundreds of billions of potential orders tomorrow (it doesn't). Remember, battery technology and cost keeps improving from demand of Electronics and Electric Cars. This Dual-Use of batteries for Solar energy storage and Electronics/Transportation is yet another major advantage for going renewables. They fit together like a fucking glove.

>which is why we need nuclear and offset the start up and tear down expenses with government incentives

Governments and the Public are tired of dumping money into subsidizing Nuclear yet again. So much money was already spent in the 60s and 70s. And Politics is far to fickle to support long-term strategies of 'big' projects like Nuclear. They would MUCH rather spend those subsidies on Electric Cars and Batteries, because those offer the very real and very soon possibility of lowering costly oil-imports.

>>8410373
>So long as there is water in the core, passive circulation will keep temperatures down.
Which is great until the water leaks out or boils off.

>molten salt or molten lead reactors are even safer.
...as long as the corrosive molten salt or lead doesn't eat through the pipes.

The thing about a new technology is that you only get to discover the real failure modes when you do a large-scale deployment carried through to final decommissioning.

A guy saying that THIS nuclear reactor is TOTALLY safe, is just a guy saying things. If you believe it, you're trusting the guy, and trusting everybody who would actually implement the idea he's advocating.

The final word on nuclear power is that if it still makes heaps of radioisotopes, there's still the possibility that they'll be let out into the environment.

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>>8410419
>Thin-film PVs contain gallium and cadmium

They do NOT have to use them, almost all do not, and those that do only use trace-amounts. Precious heavy-metals are not a requirement, nor are they preferred because they increase the cost.

There are dozens of solutions, much require nothing but silicon. Because that is the most cost-effective way to do it.

>>8410435
China is building literally over a dozen new reactors and has many more planned projects. I'd say they have production ready designs and lots of orders.

>>8410456
And they are investing and spending a shit-ton more on Renewables.

Their nuclear investment is paltry compared to what they ALREADY have from Hydro/Wind/Solar. And virtually all of it is just 'planning', just like all those 'planned' Coal plants that are being cancelled due to environmental concerns and growth slowdown.

At current rates it is very like that they could go majority renewables (+50%) before US does, in fact.

>>8410287
>Modern Solar Panels are produced from factories that themselves are powered by Solar PVs.

Absolute and complete bullshit. No, they are not. Especially not in china when you throw up a cheap manufacturing facility to capture some market share. Especially in a place where environmental regs turn a blind eye to dumping your slurry, or other industrial byproducts.

>>8410488
>Not knowing that Gigafactory is going 100% Solar

Most are partially/fully powered by Solar. Virtually all are actually Carbon-negative since they are saving more carbon than they are using by deploying the PVs they make.

>Muh China

This is just mostly disinformation, with half-truths, from butthurt US sources that want protectionism from low-cost Chink PVs.

>>8410495
>Gigafactory
Not even operational.

> Carbon-negative since they are saving more carbon than they are using by deploying the PVs they make.

Total butt spew. You've never even sawed an ingot in your life. Czochralski process much? Probably a big proponent of 450mm because you need dem wider butt plugs. I think you should go huff some silane gas.

> China environmentally conscientious
Never heard of Guiyu

>>8410495
Gigafactory is grid connected and has windmills also.

>>8410524
tesla or solarcity? there's two gigafactories

I think we should use zombie power.

>>8410419
>Thin-film PVs contain gallium and cadmium.
These aren't rare-earth elements. Gallium's a post-transition metal and cadmium is a transition metal.

>>8410476
>virtually all of it is just 'planning'

Was operating 35 reactors and having 20 more under construction part of their plan?

>>8410525
tesla

>>8410531
that's batteries not solar panels

>>8410528
Still non-renewable

>>8410529
As a % it is nothing. Very small compared to Hydro for instance.

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>>8410495

>>8410362
>Investors are done with Nuclear Reactors

There is one and only one reason for that in the USA
And it's because the NRC sits on permits for a fucking decade

>>8408626
>gravity
Perpetual motion isn't possible buddy

>>8409310
Vote trump.

Killary wants green energy not nuclear.

>>8410342
Fucking japs didnt expect a tsunami to ruin their diesel generators, when the country is known for earthquakes.

>>8410387
Even if that madman cant get to mars he still has a fucking genius lifter for putting payloads in earth orbit.

>>8410538
No mineral resources are renewable, but they are recyclable, unlike fuels (fossil or nuclear). The relevant issues are scarcity and quality of deposits and environmental cost of extraction and refining.

Cadmium's not terribly rare. It's a byproduct of zinc mining, and is used in ni-cad batteries.

Gallium is a byproduct of aluminum and zinc mining. It's far more abundant than cadmium.

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>>8408433
>Be Australian
>Oil peaks and becomes increasingly irrelevant
>Uranium on the rise
>Suddenly find out through the news media that my government had been an authoritarian dictatorship this whole time and that Australia needs to become a democracy
>Cue the Australian Civil War
>mfw

>>8410518
>I think you should go huff some silane gas.

Ouch.

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>>8411111

>>8410722
the power plant had a seawall to protect against tsunami and typhoon storm surge. the problem was it was not big enough. Because they didn't plan on such an unlikely huge event.

>>8410732
the spacecraft it self is a viable single stage to orbit vehicle for tens of tons to LEO.

>>8410763
Agreed