These comments I am quoting were made at the blog post.
Frank R. Eggers:
It took the railroads years of experience to determine that Diesel locomotives should replace steam locomotives. Similarly, it could take a while to identify the best nuclear technology. We’ve already made a mistake by deploying only PWRs. Let us not repeat the mistake by limiting ourselves to only one nuclear technology before we have had sufficient experience to know which is the best nuclear technology.
We also have BWRs and CANDUs so it isn't just PWRs. MSRs (using both Fluoride and Chloride salts) look like the best nuclear for most purposes though HTGRs might be better for process heat if we can't run MSRs as hot and we'll probably be looking at gas core or even fission fragment for rocketry but it does make sense to have a backup (at the very least a plutonium breeder is good to have in case we need to use all that Uranium in the oceans).
Asteroid Miner:
DU is NOT radioactive.
Yes it is, it isn't very radioactive (less radioactive than natural U) but it's still radioactive.
Asteroid Miner:
My guess is that since uranium is pyrophoric, it starts a fire, causing secondary explosions of ammo stored in the tank.
Here I was thinking that it was the pyrophoric properties causing the projectile to self-sharpen as it goes through the armour (thus actually getting through where any other material would deform and stop).
AP ammo, at least the stuff fired from tank guns (as opposed to what comes out of one of the SGC's P90s), has an explosive charge at the back of the shell which is meant to detonate once it has penetrated the armour.
MisterDTV:
Our sights need to be on Fusion!
Fusion should be researched (I'd even support funding ITER even if I thought it wouldn't lead to anything practical like a power plant or rocket engine (rocketry is where fusion has its best chance at beating fission)) but fission can do the job we need done and seems to have enough growth to be a workable solution for quite a bit of time (thousands of years at significantly higher energy usage rates than present is pretty much guaranteed).
Zachary Moitoza:
Nuclear power will do nothing to phase out fossil fuels.
Then what will?
Besides, that'd be like saying "Petroleum will do nothing to save the whales" at the time when whale oil was being used for heating and lighting (i.e. just before fossil fuels saved the whales).
Zachary Moitoza:
I suggest you research Jevons Paradox.
We are well aware of Jevons paradox around here (it's one of the big reasons why energy efficiency as the solution to global warming is dangerous policy).
One other thing worth understanding about Jevons paradox is that even if the efficiency increase causes more of a resource to be used it is still a good thing because we're doing more.
It's also worth noting that Jevons paradox only sometimes applies (i.e. it is quite possible to increase efficiency of using a resource and reduce use of that resource, though even there you don't usually reduce it's use as much as would be naïvely expected).
Zachary Moitoza:
Even as we become many times more efficient, fossil fuel use continues apace. This is because the efficiency just goes to more growth. The same is true for nuclear. Even with our nuclear plants doubling output since the 1990s, fossil fuel use continued apace. All the nuclear did was go to more growth.
Never mind that some countries have reduced their fossil fuel use significantly from nuclear power.
Zachary Moitoza:
Fossil fuels are like magic, and if we use less the price collapses, like in 2009 when the economy shrank, and then the low price spurrs their use.
This is where your argument falls down in that you don't factor in the cost of production, fossil fuel companies can't stay in business if they are selling at a loss.
All we need to do to get rid of fossil fuels from electricity production is make nuclear energy cheaper and solve the political problems which hold nuclear back (and I contend that a large part of making nuclear cheaper is to solve the political problem).
Zachary Moitoza:
As long as all our politicians want more growth, nuclear won’t reduce fossil use, it will just create more growth.
It isn't just the politicians who want growth, it's their employers, i.e. the public.
We want our lives to get better (and for our children and grandchildren to have better lives as well) which requires growth.
Zachary Moitoza:
Just think of the economy this way: energy in, garbage out. So, nuclear would just create more garbage. Who wants more overconsumption, more obesity, bigger homes, population growth? Who wants that?
So you're one of those then?
It would be more accurate to say: energy in, work out (for energy is the ability to do work).
On the issue of who wants more consumption (overconsumption to you, but not to everyone), it appears the majority does and in a democracy we get our way.
Zachary Moitoza:
At 3 percent economic growth, energy consumption increases by a factor of 16 in 93 years. All we can do is wait a few decades for peak oil, peak coal, peak gas, and peak uranium to put growth in its tracks, and force us to end population growth and transition to a steady-state society.
There is enough Uranium to sustain 10 billion people at Qatar's per capita energy consumption for the next ten thousand years so peak uranium is just utter crap. I would also tend to say about peak oil, coal and methane that I wish they were true but that the evidence indicates otherwise (there's plenty of fossil fuels in Antarctica for example).
Besides, if you think we need to end population growth, how do you plan to do it?
Zachary Moitoza:
The U.S. will be using half the fossil fuels by 2025. We will be living like the Amish by 2040, which is when we can start rolling out the fast reactors and return to growth, and rebuild civilization. Trust me, this is the only way.
Why should we trust someone so obviously wrong?
A more realistic assessment is that the US will start moving to nuclear in the 2020s once people finally learn the most important lesson of both Chernobyl and Fukushima (i.e. that the anti-nuclear movement is more dangerous than nuclear power).
Zachary Moitoza:
The peaks means that global warming can’t exceed 450 ppm, so the planet won’t become uninhabitable, and we will avoid the worst of climate change.
That would require you to have estimated when we will run out accurately which is not something people estimating when non-renewable resources will run out of have a good record at.
Zachary Moitoza:
We can’t rely on our politicians to do the right thing, and they are forcing all this population growth and economic growth upon us, and will do everything they can to keep the status quo.
No, actually it's the public forcing economic growth on the politicians (and you don't seem to know much about population growth if you think it's happening in a big way in prosperous countries).
Zachary Moitoza:
Only a couple of decades of steadily increasing economic contraction and job loss will teach people that there are limits to growth, and teach people to live within population and economic limits.
How anyone can claim limits to growth exist in an infinite universe and expect to be taken seriously is a mystery.
Besides, Malthusians have been proven wrong so many times throughout history you'd think people would learn that we humans are good at overcoming limits.
Zachary Moitoza:
We already have 313 million in the U.S., do you want to see it reach a billion? That is where we’re heading, and this must come to an end.
The US population won't be reaching a billion any time soon.
Zachary Moitoza:
Admiral Hyman G. Rickover gave a speech in 1957 about how only the breeder would work,
In the long term we'll need a breeder but it's worth noting that he started out in nuclear at a time when we didn't know how much Uranium there was (people thought there was a lot less than there is) and was under the impression that the nuclear submarine programme along with any civilian power programmes would have to compete with other possible uses (including nuclear weapons) for scarce fuel (which would certainly justify making your reactors use as little of it as possible, thus anything which could be a breeder should be).
Of course then there's the fact that the
S2W wasn't a breeder and worked pretty well.
Zachary Moitoza:
but then he became very antinuclear in the 1980s,
Rickover seemed to be something of a control freak who thought that the Navy nuclear programmed had to be run by him to be run well.
Zachary Moitoza:
If we went with the IFR now, it would kill us all,
There is no evidence of that (in fact the evidence indicates that the IFR would be safer than current nuclear, which is already the safest way to generate electricity).
Zachary Moitoza:
just a billion people going on hundred mile a day commutes, living in mcmansions out in the middle of nowhere,
If people think that's better than the alternative of living in a high-rise apartment where they can't even watch a movie at night without upsetting the person in the unit next door (or above or below them) then that's their choice to make, not yours (and 160 km commutes are quite rare, woudln't surprise me if most people with commutes that distance spend most of it on a high-speed train).
Zachary Moitoza:
I think that by 2040 the U.S. population will be 250 million,
How many are going to have to die to get there?
Zachary Moitoza:
and we will be living in villages, and growing our own food, and living without electricity, and be happier as a result.
Highly doubtful, you just don't have a very realistic idea of what life would be like in that case (it would not be planting some crops and then going off to play, it'd be back-breaking work everyday just to stay alive and you're always one bad harvest away from starvation).
Zachary Moitoza:
Trust me, nature will solve itself. The situation is non-negotiable, and the infinite growth paradigm that has been killing us all is coming to an end, non-negotiabally. I suggest you pick up a copy of the new “End of Growth” books by Heinberg and Rubin, or check out Chris Martenson and Al Bartlett. Regards, Zachary
People have been saying that for a long time and yet none of them have been right, why should I believe you to be any different?
