So about the NIF laser fusion thingy...
https://www.science.org/content/article/historic-explosion-long-sought-fusion-breakthrough
> If gain meant producing more output energy than input electricity, however, NIF fell far short. Its lasers are inefficient, requiring hundreds of megajoules of electricity to produce the 2 MJ of laser light and 3 MJ of fusion energy. Moreover, a power plant based on NIF would need to raise the repetition rate from one shot per day to about 10 per second.
Don't get me wrong, it is a huge breakthrough and very exciting. But:
> “The physics phenomenon has been demonstrated,” says Riccardo Betti of the Laboratory for Laser Energetics at the University of Rochester.
That's what it is. A PoC of a physics phenomenon, or rather of the fact that it is possible to make it work at will (ish).
It's going to be decades and billions in funding to get it anywhere near to becoming a viable energy source.
For an almost completely unwarranted analogy (so, more of an illustrative example):
April 1932 - first time an atom was split by humans
June 1945 - first human-initiated nuclear explosion (even with all the resources pumped into the Manhattan project)
December 1946 - first nuclear reactor hosting a self-sustaining, controlled chain reaction
January 1954 - first nuclear-powered sub
June 1954 - first nuclear reactor generating power directly for public energy grid
Took 22 years for fission.
Obviously the history of fusion power will be different than that of fission power.
Also, comparing nuclear fusion to nuclear fission is problematic: for one, nuclear fusion has way, way less radioactivity-related and radioactive waste-related issues than fission. It would be an absolute travesty if fusion was painted with the same brush as fission.
But practical applications of fusion, if any, are decades away.
Today we need to focus on the tried and true: solar, wind, hydro, geothermal.
And yeah, I would not mind some serious re-consideration of the general negativity (see what I did there?) around fission power nuclear plants get, especially the ones that already exist.
Shutting down nuclear power plants and thus pumping out more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere today seems to me… ill-advised.
But that's a whole separate thread. 😉
@rysiek sure, and nature is thriving in the Chernobyl zone, with black frogs that have evolved to manage the high levels of radiation. So we could expand nuclear, have more meltdowns, and thereby expand nature to prevent climate change! 😉 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35233243/
2) Part of why nuclear development stopped is because there was widespread agreement that fission could not be done safely.
@rysiek
3) Because nuclear is better than bad options still does not make it good. Baseload power can come from hydro, tidal, batteries, and other potential sources. That is where research should go, not fission.
@eighthave@social.librem.one @rysiek@mstdn.social well obviously if you don't follow safety procedures and you let the technology fall out of date problems stack up and you get a catastrophic failure.
it can be done safely, the question is really is,
would it be done safely?
i think the answer is apparently obviously no.
if i remember from the articles about these incidents correctly both of them were a result of the machinery being run in abnormal condition from their normal day to day operations (such as turning off the safety measure to show how amazing safe nuclear power is 😮💨).
this isn't a problem with nuclear power itself , it's a problem with our stupidity as humans.
@eighthave @rysiek Fossil fuel plants cannot be run safely, even when no accidents occur. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928053-600-fossil-fuels-are-far-deadlier-than-nuclear-power/
@scotclose @eighthave @rysiek Very interesting. Did not know about the dam failure deaths mentioned in that article, though it seems a bit unfair to blame hydroelectricity for that.
@cinebox dam failures are engineering and regulatory failures. Just like release of radioactivity incidents in nuclear power plants.
@rysiek @cinebox @scotclose @eighthave this is exactly my problem with some of the pro-nuke crowd, specifically the ones that claim that the only reason why building and maintaining nuclear plants is so expensive and takes so long is because of “bureaucratic red tape” and “regulatory capture”, forgetting that that's the only reason why it's so safe.
@oblomov oh I am completely with you on the need of regulation and control over such dangerous technology!
But I am also saying that if the research into it had not been knee-capped decades ago, we would have much *safer*, much *cleaner* fission power plants already in operation.
But that's just heavy water under a bridge.
@rysiek @oblomov @cinebox @scotclose perhaps we could have had safer fission power by now, but that is unfortunately speculation. Other facts get in the way, like the waste products have to be managed for thousands of years, and no one has proven they can manage them for decades, let alone centuries or millenia. Fission is a dead end that at best will always just be less bad than fossil fuels. Solutions like expanding nature, eating less meat, making cities work without cars are all proven.
@eighthave sure, we agree more than we disagree. Fission products would always be a problem, though they could be minimized by using breeder reactors, for example.
At least we got the "This is not a place of honour" text from all of this. 😉
@rysiek@mstdn.social @eighthave@social.librem.one @oblomov@sociale.network @cinebox@hackers.town @scotclose@indieweb.social
?so much for drilling a bunch of really deep holes and shoving some cement caskets down there?
what are the current solutions anyways? 😆
@rysiek @cinebox @scotclose @eighthave ironically, that might have actually made things worse by increasing the rate at which energy consumption grows, though.
@scotclose @eighthave @rysiek "Fossil fuel plants cannot be run safely, even when no accidents occur. " True.
But, also: maintaining the safety of nuclear power stations and waste storage facilities as civilisation unravels: that's going to be pretty hard.
But yeah, nuclear is still better than fossil fuels.
As a reminder, there's ~450 civilian reactors worldwide and they have been operating safely for the last ~50 years, delivering the largest amount of low-carbon electricity of all sources. So yes, people do run them safely all the time.
Fukushima happened as result of the largest earthquake and tsunami, that killed 20'000 people (zero people dies in the power plant failure itself). Apart from a few spots, radiation in the whole Fukushima region is back to the background level long time ago.
Same in Chernobyl, which is best demonstrated by Russian invasion in February, as their troops crossed right through the isolation zone, and retreated the same way.
So while I appreciate Greenpeace & friends use that "thousands of years" argument a lot, we should realize it has nothing to do with science and the actual situation on the ground.
It's pretty much like you'd argue against hydro power because Banqiao dam failure in 1976 killed 60'000 people and polluted thousands of km², or against PV because a solar farm fire in England a few years ago released toxic cadmium smoke which resulted in evacuation of a village.
And if you look well, you'll find traces of that PV cadmium somewhere in the area, pretty much like you can find traces of cesium isotopes in Chernobyl forest. The point is however whether these traces have any biological activity — and they don't — which is why such argument would be just as pseudoscientific when used against PV, hydro and nuclear.
@rysiek
@kravietz @rysiek all energy sources can cause horrific accidents. Fission is the only one that causes problems with a timescale of millenia, both the waste from normal operation and the outcomes from accidents. Human society does not deal with well with that kind of timescale, particularly when the implementers are corporations who focus on yearly profits.
No, it’s again not true. Even high-level nuclear waste loses 93% of its activity only after 100 years (and then gradually goes down to background level over millenia).
And I know where you’re coming from, because this “millenia” argument is very frequently raised in Germany against #nuclear waste, which is kind of surprising as Germany also has a thriving chemical industry, which produces chemical waste. Of course, it’s very useful, that’s how we get modern photovoltaic panels and house insulation.
So you may be not aware of it, but in Germany you have not one but two underground disposal sites, storing thousands of tons of cyanide, mercury and arsenic waste from that chemical manufacturing:
https://www.kpluss.com/en-us/our-business-products/waste-management/underground-disposal/
But do you know what is the best part of it? Unlike nuclear waste, chemical waste never loses its toxicity - it doesn’t decay into inactive isotopes, it just stays there and will be just as poisonous in 100, 1000 and 1e6 years.
@eighthave first of all, people are already returning to the "no go zone" around Fukushima:
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/14/asia/japan-fukushima-katsurao-village-return-intl-hnk/index.html
Secondly, the fact that we're stuck with less-than-very-safe half-a-century-old nuclear fusion power tech is because the nuclear panic stopped development of newer, way safer designs (like PBR for example).
Third, these "real solutions" still need baseload power. And nuclear power plants that exist and are in operation today are still a better choice here than new gas plants.