Climate Change(d)?

[Elixir]

I guess that rules out god.

Are you nuts?
NOTHING can rule out God.
That’s what makes God, God!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

On the topic of FUSION power, let me ask a question which I'm pretty sure is very VERY stupid. Please be gentle with me!

Fusion power may require a locus of very high power density to ignite the energy production. But Europe already has a very expensive apparatus that produces points of very high power. Can the Large Hadron Collider be configured to trigger fusion?

We have little problem with triggering fusion now. All of the current generation systems can do it. The issue is efficiency, you expend a lot of energy heating the target to tens of millions of degrees, you need enough fusion out of it to produce enough power to run the igniter and send the excess to the grid.

 

[steve_bank]

I guess that rules out god.

Are you nuts?
NOTHING can rule out God.
That’s what makes God, God!

Yes, I am nuts. I thought it was obvious.

 

[DBT]

Korea to build Floating Cities.

 

[Swammerdami]

I don't think triggering fusion is as much the problem as containment.

It's hard to contain super-hot plasma, but in my proposal the fuel would be an ice-cold stream of tritium. The "heat" would be supplied by the super-speed protons (or deuterons) bombarding it.

I know little or nothing about the LHC but looking at some simple numbers it may be impossible to ignite directly as much as a milligram of fuel per hour. I think the fusion reaction would need to be amplified at least 1000-fold just to break even, and a million-fold to be a significant power generator.

So, never mind.

 

[bilby]

Is this the best thread for discussing nuclear power? (There is also a The Remarkable Progress of Renewable Energy thread but no active thread specific to fission or fusion power.)

I've learned from Sabine Hossenfelder's YouTubes about cosmology or physics, so I watched her video on nuclear power. She seems intelligent, well-informed and objective. She covers many of the same topics discussed in this thread, but does a concise summary.

I'm afraid her conclusion is ultimately pessimistic: In part because nuclear power will be too late to prevent climate change, and in part because breakthroughs are still needed to reduce the costs of the new reactor types (e.g. thorium) needed to reduce dependence on scarce uranium

Uranium isn't scarce. There's an effectively unlimited supply in seawater, which can be extracted at similar cost to current mining.

Seawater uranium will be replenished by erosion faster than we can use it, for orders of magnitude longer than humanity has existed so far.

You might as well call solar power 'scarce' because one day the sun will use up all its hydrogen.

Regardless, it's certainly true that a massive program of building existing reactor designs to replace fossil fuels would not run into fuel constraints before commercial scale fast reactors could be deployed en-masse. At which point, you can burn pretty much any Actinides. Including the 'waste' from existing fission plants.

All of the necessary technologies have been developed to testbed scale, so scaling up to full commercial reactors is no more difficult than scaling up any other industrial process. A decade of concerted effort should be enough. But we need to stop listening to people who say it can't be done, or it shouldn't be done, and just get on with doing it.

The French did it forty years ago. It's easier now than it was then.

 

[Swammerdami]

Is this the best thread for discussing nuclear power? (There is also a The Remarkable Progress of Renewable Energy thread but no active thread specific to fission or fusion power.)

I've learned from Sabine Hossenfelder's YouTubes about cosmology or physics, so I watched her video on nuclear power. She seems intelligent, well-informed and objective. She covers many of the same topics discussed in this thread, but does a concise summary.

I'm afraid her conclusion is ultimately pessimistic: In part because nuclear power will be too late to prevent climate change, and in part because breakthroughs are still needed to reduce the costs of the new reactor types (e.g. thorium) needed to reduce dependence on scarce uranium

Uranium isn't scarce. There's an effectively unlimited supply in seawater, which can be extracted at similar cost to current mining.

U238 is plentiful but not enough to supply adequate U235. Reactors which operate with unenriched fuel (e.g. U238 or thorium) are needed, but not yet commercially viable.

Is she right? I don't know, but as I say she SEEMS well-informed and objective.

 

[bilby]

Is this the best thread for discussing nuclear power? (There is also a The Remarkable Progress of Renewable Energy thread but no active thread specific to fission or fusion power.)

I've learned from Sabine Hossenfelder's YouTubes about cosmology or physics, so I watched her video on nuclear power. She seems intelligent, well-informed and objective. She covers many of the same topics discussed in this thread, but does a concise summary.

I'm afraid her conclusion is ultimately pessimistic: In part because nuclear power will be too late to prevent climate change, and in part because breakthroughs are still needed to reduce the costs of the new reactor types (e.g. thorium) needed to reduce dependence on scarce uranium

Uranium isn't scarce. There's an effectively unlimited supply in seawater, which can be extracted at similar cost to current mining.

U238 is plentiful but not enough to supply adequate U235. Reactors which operate with unenriched fuel (e.g. U238 or thorium) are needed, but not yet commercially viable.

Is she right? I don't know, but as I say she SEEMS well-informed and objective.

Canada has been operating natural (unenriched) uranium reactors commercially since 1968 (1962, if you count the operational prototype NPD reactor).

Such reactors are the foundation of Ontario's ultra low emissions electricity grid. They have almost completely eliminated fossil fuel use in ON's electricity market.

"Not yet commercially viable" is simply and demonstrably false.

 

[fromderinside]

Things worldwide would be looking up if Japan reversed its nuke elimination with nuke upgrade and hardening policies and if Germany got serious about energy period. Two of the greatest technology driven countries in the world coming off wuss mode.

Oh no. FDI's joining the nuke party ..... WWIII and all that?

 

[skepticalbip]

..

Is this the best thread for discussing nuclear power? (There is also a The Remarkable Progress of Renewable Energy thread but no active thread specific to fission or fusion power.)

I've learned from Sabine Hossenfelder's YouTubes about cosmology or physics, so I watched her video on nuclear power. She seems intelligent, well-informed and objective. She covers many of the same topics discussed in this thread, but does a concise summary.

I'm afraid her conclusion is ultimately pessimistic: In part because nuclear power will be too late to prevent climate change, and in part because breakthroughs are still needed to reduce the costs of the new reactor types (e.g. thorium) needed to reduce dependence on scarce uranium

Uranium isn't scarce. There's an effectively unlimited supply in seawater, which can be extracted at similar cost to current mining.

U238 is plentiful but not enough to supply adequate U235. Reactors which operate with unenriched fuel (e.g. U238 or thorium) are needed, but not yet commercially viable.

Is she right? I don't know, but as I say she SEEMS well-informed and objective.

U238 becomes a fuel in fast neutron breeder reactors. U238 is converted into plutonium, americium, and curium which are fissionable fuel for the reactor. U238 is abundant so there is no fuel shortage for breeder reactors. Breeder reactors are certainly viable but governments don't want them commercially available because they create fissionable material. In other words, nuclear fuel is 'scarce' because of political reasons not technical reasons.

 

[southernhybrid]

I'm trying to use up my gift articles before the month is over. I found one about the effect how our carbon output is having a terrible impact on sea life.

nytimes.com/2022/04/28/climate/global-warming-ocean-extinctions.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxftm3iWka3DJDmwSiO8RAo2J50qKaq5kbdI3miuSXtpANrBqQ_d_x-kaMlxxSg-jvpqDno9DIzkwrcj7eFIK6K_3fOJy9y72PC7-If1jxba7s


A new study finds that if fossil fuel emissions continue apace, the oceans could experience a mass extinction by 2300. There is still time to avoid it.

On Thursday they published “Avoiding Ocean Mass Extinction From Climate Warming” in Science. It is the latest research that crystallizes the powerful yet paralyzed moment in which humanity finds itself. The choices made today regarding greenhouse gas emissions stand to affect the very future of life on Earth, even though the worst impacts may still feel far away.

Under the high emissions scenario that the scientists modeled, in which pollution from the burning of fossil fuels continues to climb, warming would trigger ocean species loss by 2300 that was on par with the five mass extinctions in Earth’s past. The last of those wiped out the dinosaurs.

“It wasn’t an ‘Aha’ moment per se,” said Dr. Penn, a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton, recalling the first time he looked at a graph comparing those past extinctions with their grim forecast. “It was more of an ‘Oh my God’ moment.”

'The new study builds on Dr. Deutsch and Dr. Penn’s earlier work: creating a computer simulation that detailed the worst extinction in Earth’s history some 252 million years ago. Often called “the Great Dying,” it claimed more than 90 percent of species in the oceans. The cause was global warming, triggered by volcanic eruptions. The oceans lost oxygen, and fish succumbed to heat stress, asphyxiation or both. The computer model found more extinctions at the poles as compared with the tropics, and the fossil record confirmed it.
To forecast the effects from global warming that is now driven by human activity, the scientists used the same model, with its intricate interplay between sunlight, clouds, ocean and air currents, and other forces like the chemical dances between heat and oxygen, water and air. They also took into account how much fish habitats could shift, estimating thresholds for survivability.
“It’s a lot of time spent on the computer,” Dr. Penn said.
While the study focused on the effects of warming and oxygen loss, ocean acidification and other snowball effects could worsen the species loss it predicted.'

Some species have already died out due to our carbon output. Read the entire article if you are interested.

 

[steve_bank]

Southernr Ca is restricting outdoor watering to one day a week. There is a potential shortfall in drinking water.

Tomatoes and oter produce may be in short supply this year.

 

[TSwizzle]

Under the high emissions scenario that the scientists modeled, in which pollution from the burning of fossil fuels continues to climb, warming would trigger ocean species loss by 2300 that was on par with the five mass extinctions in Earth’s past. The last of those wiped out the dinosaurs.

What utter nonsense. It’s modeling based off a scenario that can’t happen.

A rapture like cult.

 

[bilby]

It’s modeling based off a scenario that can’t happen.

Yeah, the idea that humanity will continue to burn more and more fossil fuel as more and more of the world becomes wealthy and industrialised is impossible.

That's why it's been ongoing for the last two hundred and fifty years.

 

[pood]

Under the high emissions scenario that the scientists modeled, in which pollution from the burning of fossil fuels continues to climb, warming would trigger ocean species loss by 2300 that was on par with the five mass extinctions in Earth’s past. The last of those wiped out the dinosaurs.

What utter nonsense. It’s modeling based off a scenario that can’t happen.

A rapture like cult.

Climate change denialism is a cult, a rapture-like cult.

Let’s go Dump!

 

[TSwizzle]

Ffs, they can’t get next week’s weather forecast correct never mind the next ten years. Every single prediction has been spectacularly wrong.

A doomsday, end of times, rapture like cult.

 

[pood]

Every single prediction has been spectacularly wrong.

Evidence?

 

[pood]

Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming.

 

[steve_bank]

Ocean temperature is affecting life at the bottom of the food chain. Coral reefs are dieing. A Hannity would say who cares.

 

[TSwizzle]

Oh noes, we are all going to die !!!11!!!11!!

Keep calm lad.