Climate Change

[Core Shot]

^that sounds like some coreshit conspiracy theories

Do you know how many barrels of waste are off shore of California?

[fomofo]

Nobody does, but it’s a lot.

https://clui.org/ludb/site/farallon-...ear-waste-dump

[neufox47]

I’m all for nuclear if we can reduce the cost per Bill Gates plan to produce 100+ of the same reactor. The Vogtle plant cost so much though that we could produce 15x as much capacity with solar for the same $ and on a cloudy day where panels only produce 10% that electricity is still cheaper than nuclear.

Solar is getting so cheap we can over install it. Excess energy could be paired with direct carbon capture and use the energy to extract co2 from the atmosphere.


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[skaredshtles]

<snip> Excess energy could be paired with direct carbon capture and use the energy to extract co2 from the atmosphere.

Nah, man. Bitcoin.

[californiagrown]

I’m all for nuclear if we can reduce the cost per Bill Gates plan to produce 100+ of the same reactor. The Vogtle plant cost so much though that we could produce 15x as much capacity with solar for the same $ and on a cloudy day where panels only produce 10% that electricity is still cheaper than nuclear.

Solar is getting so cheap we can over install it. Excess energy could be paired with direct carbon capture and use the energy to extract co2 from the atmosphere.


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I had a drunk conversation with an engineer from a defense contractor (much smarter than me) at a holiday function neither of us wanted to attend, and he was REALLY high on all the new reactor technologies that were being developed. Apparently there are a bunch of smaller reactors (i.e. bill gates') and also sodium(?) reactors and stuff that produce very, very little waste and/or are able to reuse spent fissile material for fuel super easily. And also something about the new reactors basically not even having the ability to melt down because of basic physics, so Chernobyl and Fukishima couldnt happen. I knew about all the issues trying to store nuclear waste (more related to my area of expertise) and had been really down on it, but after that conversation (details are somewhat hazy), i came away really high on nuclear energy for future use. I think it is going to be one of those things where we look back 100 years from now and realize just how fucking dirty/wasteful/awful the early technology was, and regret being scared away and not pushing the technology forward faster.


The other thing to think about with solar is that it isnt space efficient (so large fields are eye sores and/or you are giving up wildlife habitat/farmable fields/ etc), and correct me if i am wrong but you do get a significant heat island effect from the panels. That said i am in favor of completely covering most of Arizona, Southern Nevada, and SE California with solar panels. Fuck that godforsaken desert.

[MagnificentUnicorn]

God forsaken desert? The Sonoran and Mojave Deserts are beautiful and incredibly diverse ecosystems. Large portions are already have Federal protections.


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[Buster Highmen]

One thing I read recently is that because the efficiency of solar panels decreases with heat, most solar panels are incorrectly installed so as to be perpendicular to the solar rays which makes them hotter than if they were oblique.

Installing the panels so that at the suns relative zenith, the plane of the panel is oblique to the solar ray, the panel is cooler and generates more electricity.

I'd always thought the worst landscapes are the suburbs where every construct should have a solar panel on it and damn the aesthetics.

[Bunion 2020]

The mighty Columbia River has helped power the American West with hydroelectricity since the days of FDR’s New Deal. But the artificial intelligence revolution will demand more. Much more.

So near the river’s banks in Central Washington, Microsoft is betting on an effort to generate power from atomic fusion — the collision of atoms that powers the sun — a breakthrough that has eluded scientists for the past century. Physicists predict it will elude Microsoft, too.

The tech giant and its partners say they expect to harness fusion by 2028, an audacious claim that bolsters their promises to transition to green energy but distracts from current reality. In fact, the voracious electricity consumption of artificial intelligence is driving an expansion of fossil fuel use — including delaying the retirement of some coal-fired plants.

In the face of this dilemma, Big Tech is going all in on experimental clean-energy projects that have long odds of success anytime soon. In addition to fusion, they are hoping to generate power through such futuristic schemes as small nuclear reactors hooked to individual computing centers and machinery that taps geothermal energy by boring 10,000 feet into the Earth’s crust.

Tech companies had promised “clean energy would be this magical, infinite resource,” said Tamara Kneese, a project director at the nonprofit Data & Society, which tracks the effect of AI and accuses the tech industry of using “fuzzy math” in its climate claims.

“Coal plants are being reinvigorated because of the AI boom,” Kneese said. “This should be alarming to anyone who cares about the environment.”

https://wapo.st/3KSgQxx

[Mofro261]

I had a drunk conversation with an engineer from a defense contractor (much smarter than me) at a holiday function neither of us wanted to attend, and he was REALLY high on all the new reactor technologies that were being developed. Apparently there are a bunch of smaller reactors (i.e. bill gates') and also sodium(?) reactors and stuff that produce very, very little waste and/or are able to reuse spent fissile material for fuel super easily. And also something about the new reactors basically not even having the ability to melt down because of basic physics, so Chernobyl and Fukishima couldnt happen. I knew about all the issues trying to store nuclear waste (more related to my area of expertise) and had been really down on it, but after that conversation (details are somewhat hazy), i came away really high on nuclear energy for future use. I think it is going to be one of those things where we look back 100 years from now and realize just how fucking dirty/wasteful/awful the early technology was, and regret being scared away and not pushing the technology forward faster.


The other thing to think about with solar is that it isnt space efficient (so large fields are eye sores and/or you are giving up wildlife habitat/farmable fields/ etc), and correct me if i am wrong but you do get a significant heat island effect from the panels. That said i am in favor of completely covering most of Arizona, Southern Nevada, and SE California with solar panels. Fuck that godforsaken desert.

Molten NACl instead of H20 both carrying the nukes and absorbing heat. Couple short vids on the tech below.

[fomofo]

Molten NACl instead of H20 both carrying the nukes and absorbing heat. Couple short vids on the tech below.

First video would not play for me, but second vid did, and it was interesting and informative. Thx for posting.

As a lay person coming up to speed on the basic concepts of the newer nuclear alternatives I try to absorb info, but take it with a grain of salt, (molten, not stirred), as even different scientifuc experts can have their beliefs influenced by their own biases, and perhaps financial ties of one form or another.

In that spirit, here's another take...



He does not strike me as a shill for Big Oil or anyone else, maybe more so the Noam Chomsky of the nuclear world? (Just a knee-jerk take.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._V._Ramana

https://thebulletin.org/biography/m-v-ramana

Clearly there is a huge and ever-growing need (and opportunity) to supply the electricity required by e-cars, computers, etc, and that's not lost on lots of smart, ambitious folks who would like to capitalism on that, perhaps even make a cleaner, better world for the people who will live in it long after we're all gone.

I say let em all at it, just keep asking the tough questions. And if you ever hear something like "this design is accident-proof" ... remember The Titanic.

[old goat]

https://wapo.st/3KSgQxx

Fusion by 2028? Utter bullshit. While people buy electric cars and do the laundry in cold water, AI and crypto overwhelm our meager efforts to use less fossil fuel while making a few people rich(er) and providing zero benefit to humanity. It's enough to make one annoyed.

[pfluffenmeister]

Fusion by 2028? Utter bullshit. While people buy electric cars and do the laundry in cold water, AI and crypto overwhelm our meager efforts to use less fossil fuel while making a few people rich(er) and providing zero benefit to humanity. It's enough to make one annoyed.

I heard an estimate that AI would "need" ~9% of total world electricity.
Add in another 9%? for crypto currency and there's not much left over for thumb loving primates.

[fomofo]

... and providing zero benefit to humanity.

Hey now, we got a "crotcheted" elephant. That's ... something.

[Dantheman]

I think it is going to be one of those things where we look back 100 years from now and realize just how fucking dirty/wasteful/awful the early technology was, and regret being scared away and not pushing the technology forward faster.

Even the early tech has proven to be very safe and reliable when viewed as a whole. But, you can understand why Chernobyl freaked people out.

On the waste issue, there's like 70,000 tons of high level waste. That certainly sounds like a lot, but it's so dense that the actual volume isn't really that much. It's a solveable problem. Yucca Mountain should have been built. I understand Harry Reid's opposition to it but he should have conceded for the good of the country.

God forsaken desert? The Sonoran and Mojave Deserts are beautiful and incredibly diverse ecosystems. Large portions are already have Federal protections.

Much of it is beautiful but there's definitely some wasteland-y parts too.

I'd always thought the worst landscapes are the suburbs where every construct should have a solar panel on it and damn the aesthetics.

Plus, rooftop solar is perfect for summer peak loads from AC use since those days are always sunny. Building solar farms instead of using all that roof space is crazy. But, power companies don't want to deal with the public for anything but a meter and a bill, and enough members of the public are crazy assholes that you kind of can't fault them for it.

[old goat]

Even the early tech has proven to be very safe and reliable when viewed as a whole. But, you can understand why Chernobyl freaked people out.

On the waste issue, there's like 70,000 tons of high level waste. That certainly sounds like a lot, but it's so dense that the actual volume isn't really that much. It's a solveable problem. Yucca Mountain should have been built. I understand Harry Reid's opposition to it but he should have conceded for the good of the country.



Much of it is beautiful but there's definitely some wasteland-y parts too.



.

The problem with nuclear is the risk of very rare but catastrophic accidents. It's hard to figure the odds and risk/benefit ratio on stuff like that but the problem is that build enough nukes and operate them long enough and the risk of catastrophe becomes non-neglible. The appeal of nukes is the prospect of continuing our current US lifestyle without inconvenience. If we want our grandchildren to have decent lives we can't continue. And the cost of our lifestyle is not just energy. Suppose we stop making and using forever chemicals. Feeding 8 billion people takes some nasty chemicals. Things like lithium, and if we go to nukes, uranium have to be mined. Etc etc.

[old goat]

Even the early tech has proven to be very safe and reliable when viewed as a whole. But, you can understand why Chernobyl freaked people out.

On the waste issue, there's like 70,000 tons of high level waste. That certainly sounds like a lot, but it's so dense that the actual volume isn't really that much. It's a solveable problem. Yucca Mountain should have been built. I understand Harry Reid's opposition to it but he should have conceded for the good of the country.



Much of it is beautiful but there's definitely some wasteland-y parts too.



.

The problem with nuclear is the risk of very rare but catastrophic accidents. It's hard to figure the odds and risk/benefit ratio on stuff like that but the problem is that build enough nukes and operate them long enough and the risk of catastrophe becomes non-neglible. The appeal of nukes is the prospect of continuing our current US lifestyle without inconvenience. If we want our grandchildren to have decent lives we can't continue. And the cost of our lifestyle is not just energy. Suppose we stop making and using forever chemicals. Feeding 8 billion people takes some nasty chemicals. Things like lithium, and if we go to nukes, uranium have to be mined. Etc etc.

As far as wasteland in the Mojave--there is Las Vegas. (But seriously, the value of an ecosystem is not whether humans find it appealing.)

[neufox47]

Plus, rooftop solar is perfect for summer peak loads from AC use since those days are always sunny. Building solar farms instead of using all that roof space is crazy. But, power companies don't want to deal with the public for anything but a meter and a bill, and enough members of the public are crazy assholes that you kind of can't fault them for it.

Rooftop is always going to be significantly more expensive to install. Frankly it makes more sense to only do utility scale solar farms, except the utility companies haven’t been willing to Acton their own, hence rooftop.

[Buster Highmen]

The inference from the research on rooftop and other instantiations that sit perpendicular to sun rays indicates that fences or vertical mounts may be more efficient.

[californiagrown]

On the waste issue, there's like 70,000 tons of high level waste. That certainly sounds like a lot, but it's so dense that the actual volume isn't really that much. It's a solveable problem. Yucca Mountain should have been built. I understand Harry Reid's opposition to it but he should have conceded for the good of the country.

If i am not mistaken you are a literal expert in an adjacent field, right? So i would assume you know better than most on here. But...

My concerns about waste storage are more along the lines of the high level wastes staying highly radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years- we have no idea what hidden seismic faults, climate changes etc will take place in the next 200,000 years. Yucca mountain may have a gnarly deep fault underneath it that is undiscovered, or climate change may turn that area into a rainforest in 50,000 years, or both, and then we have polluted an aquifer, or fertile land that we currently have no idea will even exist. The timescale for high/medium level radioactive waste is so long that we are taking a fairly uneducated guess as to where its safe to store it... we only "know" its safe in the short term. And there is only a finite capacity at each storage site with huge opposition to building new storage sites, so you end up storing waste in substandard containment vessels on the site of the reactor facitilites, which then leak and pollute the area (this is currently happening at numerous facilities across the country)

And then there is the interesting challenge of labeling the waste so that future humans/beings, who do not know of any current languages or symbols and who may be more or less advanced than we are now, will know that the stuff is toxic AF and to stay away. Actually fairly interesting linguistics/symbology problem.



All of that to say that if we can reuse/recycle spent fuel, and/or solve the "radioactive waste" problem, then its a no-brainer to utilize nuclear energy. And it sounds like new tech is very promising on this front.

[neufox47]

In case anyone was wondering June 24 was the hottest June on record, extending the streak to over 1 yr.


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[old goat]

Donner Lake is comfortable for swimming. Normally that's in late August, if at all. And that;s despite a snowy winter.

[Bunion 2020]

One solution to one very specific problem. And fuck everyone else.

PLAQUEMINES PARISH, La. —

The marshes that blanket this pancake-flat parish south of New Orleans stretch for miles, strewn with small streams that flow into the Gulf of Mexico. A lone four-lane road goes south past a Navy air base, an idle industrial site, a coal export terminal and a handful of small storm-battered communities.

Then, suddenly, a gigantic facility rises from the wetlands. Cranes dot the skyline. They hover over crews that are installing a jumble of pipes, pumps, storage tanks and two 720-megawatt power plants — equipment needed to freeze natural gas into a liquid form so it can be shipped around the world.

It might seem like a risky location for a $21 billion liquefied natural gas plant, given this region’s ferocious hurricanes and sea levels that are rising faster than almost anywhere else on the planet. But the company building this plant, Arlington, Va.-based Venture Global, says it has an answer to these threats: a 26-f00t-high steel sea wall that surrounds the 632-acre site, twice the size of Washington’s National Mall.

The fortress highlights a crucial tension for this region of the country. The sea is rising here and the land is rapidly sinking, in large part driven by decades of oil and gas drilling and the planet-warming emissions that come from the burning of those fossil fuels. That is accelerating the destruction of wetlands, which serve as a critical barrier, and speeding up flooding across the coast, often with less advantaged communities most vulnerable.

https://wapo.st/3zq8niG

[The SnowShow]

Donner Lake is comfortable for swimming. Normally that's in late August, if at all. And that;s despite a snowy winter.

The signs are everywhere. Yet we ain’t doing shit and are barreling towards having another 4 year massive setback if Trump is elected.

[AirheadD8]

Don’t worry Nuclear winter will kick in before January.

[Summer]

That’s 107 in freedom units. In winter. New high score.

Season’s gone to complete shit. August is historically the peak snow depth month but most everything is closing down. New normal they say. Great.

Epic pass sales numbers for 2025 are gonna be interesting. Rumour has it they were down 22% for 2024. Vail being Vail, they jacked the pre-sale price up by $50 to $999 for 2025. Slow learners or see the writing on the wall, anyone’s guess.