We are overloading the planet: Now What?

[Loren Pechtel]

2) Water that undergoes neutron activation pretty much can't glow in the dark.

Understood. I was just joking about glow-in-the-dark toilet paper coming from a mill next to a nuke. Hence, the smile face.

It surprised me at first when I realized some of the common isotopes couldn't and I went digging. I knew it was a joke (neutron radiation is quite deadly) but I was surprised to figure out there's little in the body that could glow even if activated. The body is mostly light elements and every light element used by biology isn't energetic enough to make a glow.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Note that it did not take long to fill low Earth orbit space with junk.

I used to be fascinated to spot a satellite, now I cuss at them. Thick as flies they are, especially in the polar orbit. Maybe it’s just that our longitude is close to Cheyenne Mountain and everybody has to have eyes/ears on that?

In the news the moon is to become a cemetery. Ashes of Gene Rodenbury and others are on the probe on the way to the moon.

The mission is in trouble, a lunar landing looks unlikely.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Note that it did not take long to fill low Earth orbit space with junk.

I used to be fascinated to spot a satellite, now I cuss at them. Thick as flies they are, especially in the polar orbit. Maybe it’s just that our longitude is close to Cheyenne Mountain and everybody has to have eyes/ears on that?

In the news the moon is to become a cemetery. Ashes of Gene Rodenbury and others are on the probe on the way to the moon.

The mission is in trouble, a lunar landing looks unlikely.

Struck down by the Native American spirits who opposed it!

 

[Jokodo]

4) Shielding (it's just a big pile of rocks. We stick those rocks together, to stop them from moving; That's called "concrete". The Romans used it to build loads of stuff, including the Collosseum Colosseum, and they didn't need a single piece of fossil fuel burning equipment to do so).

<nitpick>
The Romans would have used some fossil fuels to build the Colosseum
1. Lime for mortar Roman lime burning
2. Cooking of some food for slaves, free workers, soldiers etc.
3. The metal used in the construction would have been forged using fossil fuel

Granted nowhere near the proportion of fossil fuel used by them compared to what we would use
</nitpick>

Wood. I don't believe they used any fossil fuel.

relases carbon though

Yes, but it would be reclaimed if the tree grew again.

We saw that when diseases swept the New World--areas were reclaimed by nature and global CO2 dropped.

This already started in the 13th and 14th century in the Old World though, when the Mongol invasions and the Black Death reduced the population and led to the desertion of many marginal villages in the old world - even though the collapse was nowhere near as complete as in the Americas.

 

[Jokodo]

Note that it did not take long to fill low Earth orbit space with junk.

I used to be fascinated to spot a satellite, now I cuss at them. Thick as flies they are, especially in the polar orbit. Maybe it’s just that our longitude is close to Cheyenne Mountain and everybody has to have eyes/ears on that?

No. All orbits cross the equator. The only question is how far away from the equator the satellite goes. The farther from the equator the fewer satellites there will be.

The farther den the equator, the fewer week be crossing your parallel pretty gay, yes. But the density need not get less, because the parallels are getting shorter. For an extreme scenario, consider a case where there are exactly 40 satellites, all in polar orbits. Per orbit, every satellite is going to cross the equator twice, once northbound and once southbound. The same is true for the 89th North - only there, they will be much closer together, and more of them visible from one and the same position on the ground.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Note that it did not take long to fill low Earth orbit space with junk.

I used to be fascinated to spot a satellite, now I cuss at them. Thick as flies they are, especially in the polar orbit. Maybe it’s just that our longitude is close to Cheyenne Mountain and everybody has to have eyes/ears on that?

No. All orbits cross the equator. The only question is how far away from the equator the satellite goes. The farther from the equator the fewer satellites there will be.

The farther den the equator, the fewer week be crossing your parallel pretty gay, yes. But the density need not get less, because the parallels are getting shorter. For an extreme scenario, consider a case where there are exactly 40 satellites, all in polar orbits. Per orbit, every satellite is going to cross the equator twice, once northbound and once southbound. The same is true for the 89th North - only there, they will be much closer together, and more of them visible from one and the same position on the ground.

Agreed. Fewer to spot but the ones that are there are more likely to be above the horizon.

 

[Merle]

Water isn't a problem, if you have access to abundant cheap energy, and live within a hundred km or so of a coastline or river (most people live near water). If energy is sufficiently cheap, you can pump water to anywhere where you want it but don't have it.

All environmental "problems" boil down to getting abundant cheap energy, from technologies with a 100% managed and controlled wastestream. Once you have that, you can remediate, repair, recycle, and replace anything you need, from fresh water to atmospheric carbon.

Right now, there's one technology that produces abundant cheap energy, while having a wastestream that is sufficiently small and sufficiently controlled as to be 100% harmless to the environment.

Do the math. How many nuclear reactors are you building?

There are about 430 reactors today. If we build enough reactors to supply all our current energy needs, it will take 15,000 reactors (Abbott, 2016).

The United Nations estimates that population will increase 30% in the next 50 years. If you want the people all to live at today's standards, multiply your number of reactors by 130%.

The United Nations also targets increasing the GDP of the poorest countries by 7% by year. That means it doubles every decade. In 50 years you get 5 doublings. Meanwhile, the richest nations and those in the middle will also want to increase their prosperity. So where are we at in 50 years? 150% of current energy usage per capita? OK, now we are up to 15,000 * 130% * 150% = 29,000 nuclear reactors.

Each of these reactors will take up about 20 square kilometers. They will need to be located along major sources of water for emergency cooling. Preferably, they will be spaced far enough on major rivers so that the river can cool the reactors in regular usage without getting the river too hot. Otherwise, we are faced with the massive expense of cooling towers. And the reactors shouldn't be right next to cities, neither should they be so far remote that it is unfeasible to access them. In other words, we put them on prime real estate right next to major rivers.

The United States would need to go from 60 reactors to 4000. Here is an exercise for you. Please calculate how many of those will be within 100 miles of your house, and show us where we can put them.

Next question: How are you going to find all the materials you need?

One important question has been neglected in the nuclear debate: What materials make up a nuclear vessel and core? It turns out that a host of exotic, rare metals are used to control and contain the nuclear reaction. For example, hafnium is a neutron absorber; beryllium is a neutron reflector; zirconium is used for fuel cladding; and many other exotic metals, such as niobium, are used to alloy steel to make the vessel withstand 40 to 60 years of neutron embrittlement (Abbott, 2016).

Mines today cover 57,000 square kilometers of the Earth's surface (Maus, 2020). That's 3 times the size of New Jersey. What is the face of the Earth going to look like when we are done with all this "progress" that you propose?

Then consider that the reactors will wear out. Nuclear radiation penetrates the reactor vessel and makes the whole thing unusable in 40 - 60 years (Abbott, 2016). Then what? Do we laboriously dismantle and dispose of all the old reactors? Or do we leave them as permanent monuments to human greed? And do we then build 30,000 more? And 50 years later do we build 30,000 more? When does it all end? Even so come, Lord Jesus?

And we haven't even gotten to all the reactors we would need to power all the carbon capture devices you propose, and all the desalination plants, and all the pumps to pump the desalinated water up to the farmland far from the oceans. How many reactors do you propose we build to take care of that?

By contrast, if people started to see the problem, and there was a global effort to voluntarily reduce birthrates to 1.3 per woman, we would reduce the population to 30% of the current population in 100 years. That might not be far enough fast enough, but it would be a whole lot better than doing nothing. And all that requires is that, on the average, women decide to have one child fewer than what they are currently planning. If they knew of the problem, and realized the urgency, it might be possible.

 

[bigfield]

By contrast, if people started to see the problem, and there was a global effort to voluntarily reduce birthrates to 1.3 per woman, we would reduce the population to 30% of the current population in 100 years.

World energy demand would still be in the order of tens of thousanda of terawatts.

There's no getting away from the fact that we need to generate a lot of energy, and do it without burning fossil fuels.

We have two choices: wait and hope for renewables + storage to become scalable, or build nukes. And we don't have time to wait.

 

[Merle]

There's no getting away from the fact that we need to generate a lot of energy, and do it without burning fossil fuels.

We have two choices: wait and hope for renewables + storage to become scalable, or build nukes. And we don't have time to wait.

I agree that nuclear is an important part of the immediate plan forward. And yes, we need to move rapidly on that. That will help to ease the crisis as energy supplies dwindle.

But in the long term, it does not look to me that we have any available option that will keep energy levels at anywhere close to current levels. Whether we drop off the energy cliff in 100 years or 1 million years may be debatable, but surely the day is coming when people will have only a small fraction of the energy available that they have today.

And it looks to me that this will happen in the next century or two.

 

[bilby]

Water isn't a problem, if you have access to abundant cheap energy, and live within a hundred km or so of a coastline or river (most people live near water). If energy is sufficiently cheap, you can pump water to anywhere where you want it but don't have it.

All environmental "problems" boil down to getting abundant cheap energy, from technologies with a 100% managed and controlled wastestream. Once you have that, you can remediate, repair, recycle, and replace anything you need, from fresh water to atmospheric carbon.

Right now, there's one technology that produces abundant cheap energy, while having a wastestream that is sufficiently small and sufficiently controlled as to be 100% harmless to the environment.

Do the math. How many nuclear reactors are you building?

One to replace each existing or proposed coal or gas power plant should suffice; It's a simple one-for-one swap.

If it's possible to generate the power we are generating today from fossil fuels (and it is, because we are), then it's equally possible to generate the same power from nuclear plants, by replacing them on a one-for-one basis.

There are about 430 reactors today. If we build enough reactors to supply all our current energy needs, it will take 15,000 reactors (Abbott, 2016).

Abbott is either a moron, or is deliberately attempting to manipulate morons.

Total electricity production from all sources in 2022 was 29,165TWh. There are 8,760 hours in a year, so the total generation rate from all sources was about 3.33TW, which is 3,330GW.

A nuclear power plant has a typical output of 1GW; Worldwide we therefore would need just 3,330 nuclear plants if they were the ONLY electrical power source.

But nobody's suggesting we close all the Hydroelectric plants. Or that we can get zero electricity from wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, tidal, or any other carbon neutral technology.

Fossil fuels account for around 60% of world electricity production; So to replace all of that would require 80% of 3,330, or about 2,670 nuclear power plants.

The United Nations estimates that population will increase 30% in the next 50 years. If you want the people all to live at today's standards, multiply your number of reactors by 130%.

OK. So that's 3,471 power plants. Not 15,000.

The United Nations also targets increasing the GDP of the poorest countries by 7% by year. That means it doubles every decade. In 50 years you get 5 doublings. Meanwhile, the richest nations and those in the middle will also want to increase their prosperity. So where are we at in 50 years? 150% of current energy usage per capita? OK, now we are up to 15,000 * 130% * 150% = 29,000 nuclear reactors.

No, we aren't. We're at 5,200.

Each of these reactors will take up about 20 square kilometers.

Nope. Sizewell B, a fairly typical 1.2GW presurised water reactor, occupies a site of 6.23sq km. The actual power plant occupies 0.42sq km of land, with the rest being ancilliary stuff - electrical switchyards, employee and visitor car parking, etc., etc.

They will need to be located along major sources of water for emergency cooling.

Not really; They don't build 1950s designs any more.

Preferably, they will be spaced far enough on major rivers so that the river can cool the reactors in regular usage without getting the river too hot. Otherwise, we are faced with the massive expense of cooling towers.

Cooling towers are not particularly expensive. And nuclear plants can use the ones already in place at the coal
power plants being replaced, if you are really that worried about the trivial cost of building some more.

Again, we are already doing this stuff for fossil fuel plants (which are much LARGER than nuclear plants); So suggesting that it's impossible is absurd.

And the reactors shouldn't be right next to cities,

Why not? The reactors can go wherever the demand is.

neither should they be so far remote that it is unfeasible to access them. In other words, we put them on prime real estate right next to major rivers.

The United States would need to go from 60 reactors to 4000.

No, it wouldn't.

Here is an exercise for you. Please calculate how many of those will be within 100 miles of your house, and show us where we can put them.

No reactor anywhere in the United States would be within 4,500 miles of my house; No reactor in the continental US (excluding Hawaii and Alaska) would be within 7,000 miles of my house.

But if you wanted to build one near me, I would be more than happy. I have been lobbying for a nuclear power plant at Swanbank for decades; That's 18 road miles from my house, and around ten miles as the crow flies.

Next question: How are you going to find all the materials you need?

One important question has been neglected in the nuclear debate: What materials make up a nuclear vessel and core? It turns out that a host of exotic, rare metals are used to control and contain the nuclear reaction. For example, hafnium is a neutron absorber; beryllium is a neutron reflector; zirconium is used for fuel cladding; and many other exotic metals, such as niobium, are used to alloy steel to make the vessel withstand 40 to 60 years of neutron embrittlement (Abbott, 2016).

Mines today cover 57,000 square kilometers of the Earth's surface (Maus, 2020). That's 3 times the size of New Jersey. What is the face of the Earth going to look like when we are done with all this "progress" that you propose?

Essentially unchanged. All those materials can be extracted easily from those existing mines.

Incredulity and ignorance aren't compelling arguments; Mining is a mature industry that has been providing vast quantities of pretty much everything since the industrial revolution, and building 3,500 nuclear power plants requires resources that are a drop in the bucket compared to all our other construction and industrial activity.

The "rare and exotic" materials are in many ways the easiest to source; They're required in very small quantities, and are currently sourced as co-products of the mining of bulk metals such as Copper, Tin, Zinc and Iron. (That's where a lot of Uranium comes from too. If Uranium mining were banned at the world's largest known Uranium deposit, Olympic Dam in South Australia, then they would still dig up as much Uranium there as they do today - because it's primarily a Copper mine, and Uranium is a secondary revenue source. Banning Uranium sales from Olympic Dam would just mean leaving the Uranium in the spoil heaps).

Then consider that the reactors will wear out. Nuclear radiation penetrates the reactor vessel and makes the whole thing unusable in 40 - 60 years (Abbott, 2016).

Nonsense. Sixty years is a minimum life span for a nuclear reactor, based solely on wear; And these are the longest life spans of ANY electricity generating technology. Nuclear plants are typically closed either for political reasons, or simply because new designs are an improvement on the old ones (would you drive a brand new car built to a sixty year old design?), LONG before they 'wear out'.

If wearing out and having to be replaced is a concern for electricity generation, the BEST option to MINIMISE the problem is nuclear power. Nuclear plants last longer than any of the other ways of making electricity.

Then what? Do we laboriously dismantle and dispose of all the old reactors?

Yes. Though it's not particularly laborious; They have cranes and trucks and other machines to do it these days.

Or do we leave them as permanent monuments to human greed? And do we then build 30,000 more? And 50 years later do we build 30,000 more? When does it all end? Even so come, Lord Jesus?

Well, you could ask that about any human activity. We plant wheat, but only a year later, it's all been harvested, and we need to plant more! It's a disaster! How long can it possibly go on for??! We're doomed!!1!one!!

And we haven't even gotten to all the reactors we would need to power all the carbon capture devices you propose, and all the desalination plants, and all the pumps to pump the desalinated water up to the farmland far from the oceans. How many reactors do you propose we build to take care of that?

A few thousand, worldwide, should suffice.

By contrast, if people started to see the problem, and there was a global effort to voluntarily reduce birthrates to 1.3 per woman, we would reduce the population to 30% of the current population in 100 years.

Sure. And that wouldn't cause any massive problems at all.

FFS, many nations are struggling with aging populations due to the reductions in total fertility rate we are already seeing.

There's no clear benefit to accelerating these falls, and many severe problems that would be greatly worsened by doing so.

And that's making the wildly implausible assumption that you could do it at all.

Population is levelling off already. No further action is needed nor desirable.

That might not be far enough fast enough,

Or it might be far too far, far too fast; And impossible to achieve anyway.

but it would be a whole lot better than doing nothing. And all that requires is that, on the average, women decide to have one child fewer than what they are currently planning. If they knew of the problem, and realized the urgency, it might be possible.

Or we could just let population stabilise as it already is, and build the frankly trivial numbers of nuclear power plants necessary to let that population live without energy poverty.

Even 10,000 nuclear power plants would only be 1 for every million people, in a world of ten billion*.

As a fraction of the construction, land use, and resource consumption, that a city of one million people has over sixty years, the building of one nuclear power plant (or even a dozen) is utterly negligible.




* Which provides a good "sanity check" on that absurd 29,000 figure. 29,000GW for ten billion people is 2.9kW each. What are they all going to be doing that requires that much energy? We could certainly produce that much, if required; But it would require incredible profligacy for us to actually consume it all.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Water isn't a problem, if you have access to abundant cheap energy, and live within a hundred km or so of a coastline or river (most people live near water). If energy is sufficiently cheap, you can pump water to anywhere where you want it but don't have it.

All environmental "problems" boil down to getting abundant cheap energy, from technologies with a 100% managed and controlled wastestream. Once you have that, you can remediate, repair, recycle, and replace anything you need, from fresh water to atmospheric carbon.

Right now, there's one technology that produces abundant cheap energy, while having a wastestream that is sufficiently small and sufficiently controlled as to be 100% harmless to the environment.

Do the math. How many nuclear reactors are you building?

There are about 430 reactors today. If we build enough reactors to supply all our current energy needs, it will take 15,000 reactors (Abbott, 2016).

Nuke plants generally run about 1Gw. That's 8.76Twh/year * 92.6% load factor = 8.11Twh/reactor-year. World electric consumption (2019): 22,848Twh. Assuming even power use that's 2,818 reactors. You'll need some more because the load isn't even. He must be figuring to replace all fuel use.

While I don't like the idea of using reactor waste heat for chemical plants there are plenty of other processes that could use it. Only the high temperature processes will actually need electricity--and many of them already run on electricity.

Each of these reactors will take up about 20 square kilometers. They will need to be located along major sources of water for emergency cooling. Preferably, they will be spaced far enough on major rivers so that the river can cool the reactors in regular usage without getting the river too hot. Otherwise, we are faced with the massive expense of cooling towers. And the reactors shouldn't be right next to cities, neither should they be so far remote that it is unfeasible to access them. In other words, we put them on prime real estate right next to major rivers.

Reactors are often clustered. You'll get several reactors per 20 square kilometer.

And how expensive are cooling towers?? They're pretty much just a chunk of reinforced concrete.

Besides, the best source of water for them is desalinated sea water. When the power isn't needed by the grid use it to make fresh water. Just put them above tsunami height.

The United States would need to go from 60 reactors to 4000. Here is an exercise for you. Please calculate how many of those will be within 100 miles of your house, and show us where we can put them.

I don't care. (Although, being in a desert I doubt we will have many due to the lack of cooling water.) As far as I'm concerned all high energy industry should be somewhat isolated in the boondocks, but nuke is one of the more benign neighbors. Certainly better than the rocket fuel plant that used to be here--until it went up in a 3.5kt detonation. (And at that most of the fuel didn't explode--had everything gone it would have been around 10kt.)

Next question: How are you going to find all the materials you need?

It's not like they are a vast use of materials.

One important question has been neglected in the nuclear debate: What materials make up a nuclear vessel and core? It turns out that a host of exotic, rare metals are used to control and contain the nuclear reaction. For example, hafnium is a neutron absorber; beryllium is a neutron reflector; zirconium is used for fuel cladding; and many other exotic metals, such as niobium, are used to alloy steel to make the vessel withstand 40 to 60 years of neutron embrittlement (Abbott, 2016).

Mines today cover 57,000 square kilometers of the Earth's surface (Maus, 2020). That's 3 times the size of New Jersey. What is the face of the Earth going to look like when we are done with all this "progress" that you propose?

And they won't be recovered in the reprocessing??? A small amount will get burned but the vast majority gets pulled out at the reprocessor and used to make new stuff.

Then consider that the reactors will wear out. Nuclear radiation penetrates the reactor vessel and makes the whole thing unusable in 40 - 60 years (Abbott, 2016). Then what? Do we laboriously dismantle and dispose of all the old reactors? Or do we leave them as permanent monuments to human greed? And do we then build 30,000 more? And 50 years later do we build 30,000 more? When does it all end? Even so come, Lord Jesus?

So, the reactor vessel is a wear item with a 40-60 year life. Replace it, continue to use the rest of the plant.

(And note that this can be increased by lining the reactor with the undesirable isotopes recovered during reprocessing--thereby getting rid of some of them in the process.)

And we haven't even gotten to all the reactors we would need to power all the carbon capture devices you propose, and all the desalination plants, and all the pumps to pump the desalinated water up to the farmland far from the oceans. How many reactors do you propose we build to take care of that?

You need the power, whatever the source.

By contrast, if people started to see the problem, and there was a global effort to voluntarily reduce birthrates to 1.3 per woman, we would reduce the population to 30% of the current population in 100 years. That might not be far enough fast enough, but it would be a whole lot better than doing nothing. And all that requires is that, on the average, women decide to have one child fewer than what they are currently planning. If they knew of the problem, and realized the urgency, it might be possible.

And that is supposed to somehow be a solution?? By then we will have big problems from the CO2 of any approach other than nuke. The greens consistently talk about how hot the frying pan is.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

But in the long term, it does not look to me that we have any available option that will keep energy levels at anywhere close to current levels. Whether we drop off the energy cliff in 100 years or 1 million years may be debatable, but surely the day is coming when people will have only a small fraction of the energy available that they have today.

And it looks to me that this will happen in the next century or two.

And you object to my saying your approach leads to catastrophe. You're advocating heading straight for the cliff, albeit slowing down. We are advocating trying to turn.

 

[Swammerdami]

Not all energy is electrical. I've reddened two words to show a conflation.

If it's possible to generate the power we are generating today from fossil fuels (and it is, because we are), then it's equally possible to generate the same power from nuclear plants, by replacing them on a one-for-one basis.

There are about 430 reactors today. If we build enough reactors to supply all our current energy needs, it will take 15,000 reactors (Abbott, 2016).

Abbott is either a moron, or is deliberately attempting to manipulate morons.

Total electricity production from all sources in 2022 was 29,165TWh. There are 8,760 hours in a year, so the total generation rate from all sources was about 3.33TW, which is 3,330GW.

A nuclear power plant has a typical output of 1GW; Worldwide we therefore would need just 3,330 nuclear plants if they were the ONLY electrical power source.

Make up your mind! Much generated power (e.g. transportation, or the high-temperature processes Merle wrote about) is NOT electricity; and YOU have insisted that that power should be replaced with electrical power derived from nuclear reactors. But now, just to get some arithmetic to counter an argument, you are using nuclear ONLY for electricity production?

Some months ago I posted a beautiful graphic which detailed all human energy production, broken down, clearly showing the inefficiency of electricity, etc. I posted it here partly because IIDB seemed "permanent" and more accessible than my sloppy bookmarks folders. But where/when did I post it? Can anybody point me back to that graphic?

 

[Merle]

But in the long term, it does not look to me that we have any available option that will keep energy levels at anywhere close to current levels. Whether we drop off the energy cliff in 100 years or 1 million years may be debatable, but surely the day is coming when people will have only a small fraction of the energy available that they have today.

And it looks to me that this will happen in the next century or two.

And you object to my saying your approach leads to catastrophe. You're advocating heading straight for the cliff, albeit slowing down. We are advocating trying to turn.

Please don't shoot the messenger.

As you know, I have been advocating over and over for more nuclear power. Please do not pretend it is otherwise.

When I point out issues with nuclear providing all--or even most-- of our future energy needs, that does not mean I want it to be so. I am pointing out that there are serious limitations.

There is going to be trouble trying to sustain future industrial life, and that is likely to bring most industrial output down to minimal. That will be so regardless of whether we push to burn every available piece of coal, maximize nuclear, maximize wind, maximize solar, tax the bejesus out of the rich, try some other exotic solution, or do all of the above. We can argue about whether the timing should be measured in decades, centuries, millenniums, or millions of years, but the eventual result look inevitable.

And when we find we are in a situation with far less energy, and with far less materials, and with a far less healthy Earth, then yes, it will be better if there are fewer people. Else, nature will take care of that for us.

 

[Merle]

Abbott is either a moron, or is deliberately attempting to manipulate morons.

Total electricity production from all sources in 2022 was 29,165TWh.

No, Derek Abbott is not a moron. See his bio-- https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Derek-Abbott-2 . One would think that a person who hates Creationist arguments would begin with an argument that is better than an ad hominem. Maybe not.

Regarding your argument that the required energy is far less than the figure Abbott used (15 Tw), Swammerdami has already pointed out your mistake. Abbott was dealing with replacing all energy with nuclear. You instead use a number based on the electrical grid. But that is not what we are looking at here. We are looking at replacing all fossil fuels, and that means replacing the fossil fuels used in direct heating applications and in internal combustion engines. So we can ignore all your numbers that leave these uses out.

It is going to require a vast number of new nuclear reactors if we are going to use them to replace all current uses of fossil fuels.

Abbott gave a credible source for his energy numbers, the EIA. But you ignore all that, suggest that Abbott is a moron, and give numbers that are totally irrelevant. Maybe next time you will be more cautious before calling people morons.

Regarding my argument that nuclear reactors need emergency cooling water you reply, "They don't build 1950s designs any more." Oh really? Please give me a source to justify this assertion that modern reactors don't need emergency cooling water. I have multiple sources that talk about the need for cooling water in nuclear reactors. Are you just making this up?

Regarding Abbott's argument that reactors last 40 - 60 years, you write:

Nonsense. Sixty years is a minimum life span for a nuclear reactor, based solely on wear; And these are the longest life spans of ANY electricity generating technology. Nuclear plants are typically closed either for political reasons, or simply because new designs are an improvement on the old ones (would you drive a brand new car built to a sixty year old design?), LONG before they 'wear out'.

I disagree. 212 nuclear reactors have already been retired. None of those has lasted more than 50 years. Of the 407 reactors still in service, only 13 are older than 50 years. Reactors are universally considered to have a life less than 60 years. (World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2023). And then we need to build them all over again.

You say the process of decommissioning a reactor is not laborious. Wrong. It is an extremely costly process, often exceeding original expectations by an order of magnitude. (World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2023).

 

[Merle]

By contrast, if people started to see the problem, and there was a global effort to voluntarily reduce birthrates to 1.3 per woman, we would reduce the population to 30% of the current population in 100 years.

Sure. And that wouldn't cause any massive problems at all.

FFS, many nations are struggling with aging populations due to the reductions in total fertility rate we are already seeing.

As I explain at https://mindsetfree.blog/we-are-overloading-the-planet-now-what/, reduced births also mean less children per working age person. Christopher Tucker has shown that at 1.3 births per woman, the ratio of supported people (elderly plus children) to working age people stays about the same as it is today.

So maybe you didn't need to roll your eyes?

And that's making the wildly implausible assumption that you could do it at all.

Why is it widely implausible? Widespread knowledge that the planet was not going to be able to handle all the population in the future, as well as the widespread availability of education for women, contraceptives, and abortions would make a difference. It could make for a new standard in which women had, on the average, 1 less birth per woman.

 

[Merle]

So, the reactor vessel is a wear item with a 40-60 year life. Replace it, continue to use the rest of the plant.

Uh, no, the entire nuclear reactor becomes unusable after 60 years. (World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2023. ) 212 reactors have already been decommissioned. I don't think that a single one of these intends to use the existing infrastructure to support a new reactor. It is all scrap at that point. The intention is to level the building and clear the land to be used for a new purpose. But the process is very slow, taking decades. Some power plants may be left as permanent junk. A few are scheduled to keep the existing buildings for the next client, but I don't think any is keeping any of the powerplant equipment. ( World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2023.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

By contrast, if people started to see the problem, and there was a global effort to voluntarily reduce birthrates to 1.3 per woman, we would reduce the population to 30% of the current population in 100 years.

Sure. And that wouldn't cause any massive problems at all.

FFS, many nations are struggling with aging populations due to the reductions in total fertility rate we are already seeing.

As I explain at https://mindsetfree.blog/we-are-overloading-the-planet-now-what/, reduced births also mean less children per working age person. Christopher Tucker has shown that at 1.3 births per woman, the ratio of supported people (elderly plus children) to working age people stays about the same as it is today.

So maybe you didn't need to roll your eyes?

And a child needs as much care as the elderly?!?!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So, the reactor vessel is a wear item with a 40-60 year life. Replace it, continue to use the rest of the plant.

Uh, no, the entire nuclear reactor becomes unusable after 60 years. (World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2023. ) 212 reactors have already been decommissioned. I don't think that a single one of these intends to use the existing infrastructure to support a new reactor. It is all scrap at that point. The intention is to level the building and clear the land to be used for a new purpose. But the process is very slow, taking decades. Some power plants may be left as permanent junk. A few are scheduled to keep the existing buildings for the next client, but I don't think any is keeping any of the powerplant equipment. ( World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2023.)

Just because political realities have kept them from simply being reactor vessel replacements doesn't mean it's not possible.

Besides, things being replaced now are from the early days of reactors, a modern design would be far better. That doesn't mean that replacement of the whole system always needs to happen.

 

[Merle]

As I explain at https://mindsetfree.blog/we-are-overloading-the-planet-now-what/, reduced births also mean less children per working age person. Christopher Tucker has shown that at 1.3 births per woman, the ratio of supported people (elderly plus children) to working age people stays about the same as it is today.

So maybe you didn't need to roll your eyes?

And a child needs as much care as the elderly?!?!

That depends. The first five years of a child's life, he needs a lot of care. And if you are going to raise a child and pay his way through college, that is a lot of money. Many of the elderly can still take care of themselves--or even be the president of the United States.

Imagine if the world needed to reduce to a sustainable population of say 1 billion in 150 years. Would you tell us we could not possibly do a controlled descent by lowering the birth rate voluntarily? Would you tell us that the only humanitarian option would be to keep pumping out babies until the population suddenly crashes from 12 billion to 1 billion due to mass starvation in a few decades? Can you honestly not even visualize an alternative?