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Hall of Famer [20546]
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Nuclear power...filling in the grid
Oct 26, 2022, 7:16 AM
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I'm a really, really big proponent of thorium nuclear and I think it's the way forward for the USA, mostly because we have a huge supply of thorium and thorium or thorium-salt reactors could power us for the foreseeable future, without producing a crippling amount of nuclear waste and without risk of meltdown...and largely without environmental consequence. Thorium is as clean as non-fusion nuclear gets.
The problem is there's probably years of development ahead of us before thorium is ready for prime-time. The Dutch are building them. The Chinese are building them. (With our technology. I will grump about this yet again.) We're at least a decade away from even building the test beds, and probably at least a decade behind that. That's not a for-tomorrow solution though we definitely should sink a ton of focus on thorium.
So we're going to need something else in the short-and-medium term. The answer could be deployed in the next couple years: SMR's. Small module reactors. I'd build these things by the hundreds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbrT3m89Y3M
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Hall of Famer [20546]
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Re: Nuclear power...filling in the grid
Oct 26, 2022, 3:02 PM
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Woops...mods, please bump this to the politics board. Was meant to be a response to another thread. My bad.
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110%er [5712]
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Re: Nuclear power...filling in the grid
Oct 26, 2022, 4:16 PM
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When are the climate change DAs going to realize that fossil fuels, cow farts, beaver urine and auto emissions are not the problem! The real climate problem is too many ***** PEOPLE!! We used to have good old famines and disease to help control the population. Not to mention good old world wars. Not any more.
Reduce the world’s population by just 25% and you would automatically reduce auto emissions, aircraft emissions. Industrial pollution and human sewage by 25%. There would be more clean air to breathe and clean water to drink for those remaining survivors. Farmers wouldn’t breed as much farting livestock!!
The base problem is too many people. I can think of a couple of ways to reduce the world’s population by 25%. Can you think of any?
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110%er [5712]
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Also………..
Oct 26, 2022, 4:24 PM
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Why do climate nuts blame all the methane on cows. There are about 10 billion humans releasing methane every day. This includes AOC, who wants to eliminate cows to save the climate. I can think of one methane emitting being that she could eliminate first if she is serious about saving the climate.
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All-TigerNet [11004]
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110%er [5054]
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Re: Nuclear power...filling in the grid
Oct 26, 2022, 5:31 PM
[ in reply to Re: Nuclear power...filling in the grid ] |
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Population control? I agree. In the '60s I thought it would be helpful to mount an extremely high-powered precisely aimed radar emitter on a vehicle and drive around the country targeting dumb-arses in order to augment Darwin's Law of self-elimination.
I guess it would require someone to rationalize and select the targets. I'd be happy to take on that burden in the name of societal sanity.... 
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Oculus Spirit [77072]
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Actually, studies show that the world is underpopulated.
Oct 26, 2022, 5:38 PM
[ in reply to Re: Nuclear power...filling in the grid ] |
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You’d probably say, without knowledge like your original statement, “I’m sure these studies aren’t without political biased,” but when Ben Shapiro advocates the opposite, I’m thinking you need to better educate yourself…
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Orange Blooded [4365]
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Legend [16207]
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Varsity [202]
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Orange Blooded [4150]
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Re: Nuclear power...filling in the grid
Oct 26, 2022, 3:08 PM
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Agree with the writer 100%. But, dummies in our Govt will not use proven technology.
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Hall of Famer [20546]
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Re: Nuclear power...filling in the grid
Oct 26, 2022, 3:15 PM
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Especially in blue states, voters hear the word "nuclear" and reflexively go: "eek!", put their hands over their ears, and start yelling "la! la! la! la!" like three-year-olds. And yeah, traditional nuclear plants have some mighty big drawbacks, not the least of which being that they can blow a hole in the world and irradiate an entire seaboard if stuff goes truly awry. So you do understand the concern.
But those limitations simply do not apply to thorium nuclear, and generally not to SMR's, which are far, far safer that large-scale plants and are essentially failsafe by design. You'll never get 100% "safe" with anything that involves nuclear but these things are vastly more environmentally friendly than anything short of solar or wind, which are unlikely to ever be deployed at sufficient scale to power our eminent conversion over to battery-powered EV's. And while the better batteries are assuredly coming - solid-state batteries with a minimum of 2X current capacity are dropping as soon as next year, and quantum batteries with easily 10x current capacity look like about a decade away - where is all the power going to come from?
That isn't a political question, just a scientific one, and SMR's address that, IMHO.
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1st Rounder [625]
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Re: Nuclear power...filling in the grid
Oct 26, 2022, 3:47 PM
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I'm not sure that political affiliation has much to do with it, lol. I know plenty of conservatives that are scared to death of nuclear as well. Most I know would rather we stay with hydro and coal. Personally, I'm all for nuclear, of any kind. It's honestly gonna be the only way our grid keeps up with the increased demand of EV's and such (like it or not, EV's will be the only form of personal transport in less than 50 years. Probably less than 30).
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All-In [30841]
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I think the head football coach of Clemson University
Oct 26, 2022, 3:11 PM
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would agree with:
They started these nuclear power plants up to get away from fossil fuels.. BUt People were totally against them in the 70's. They wanted to keep the coal plants.
Now they seem to be 100% on board with nuclear to get away from coal.
Not too long now.. bell bottoms will make their rotation again. Can't way for hair rock to come back.. that was awesome.
18 and life you got it
18 and life to go
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MVP [536]
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Re: I think the head football coach of Clemson University
Oct 26, 2022, 9:00 PM
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Groovy baby!!
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Legend [17806]
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All-TigerNet [10782]
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Re: Nuclear power...filling in the grid
Oct 26, 2022, 3:22 PM
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the time needed will all depend on how much our beloved leaders are able to benefit first and foremost from what you propose.
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Hall of Famer [20546]
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Re: Nuclear power...filling in the grid
Oct 26, 2022, 3:31 PM
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Well, with SMR's, the answer is actually: pretty quick.
You just sort of bundle them together like a bunch of oversized D-cell batteries, and away you go. The upside is they're small and really easy to build, and you can roll them off assembly lines.
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110%er [7169]
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quozzel + Nuclear power
Oct 26, 2022, 3:41 PM
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I thought for sure this was going to be an indepth analysis of the hows and whys Clemson is going to go nuclear on our remaining opponents butts.
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Legend [16097]
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Haha you and me both. I don't even know what...
Oct 26, 2022, 8:29 PM
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...the heck thorium is.
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CU Guru [1087]
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Re: Nuclear power...filling in the grid
Oct 26, 2022, 3:51 PM
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Let us count the ways we are falling behind China. They are well on their way to supplanting us as the world's lone superpower. If anything we are helping to achieve their objective.
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CU Guru [1577]
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Great topic, great talking points.
Oct 26, 2022, 4:06 PM
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I’ve been a proponent of Nuclear in its current form for a long time.
The reality of the situation is outlined pretty well in a recent episode of the Freakonomics podcast. The actual human cost per KWH of Nuclear in its current form is proven to be safer than all other forms of energy generation including solar, wind, and hydro. Most of the Environmental campaign against Nuclear was spearheaded by the Sierra club that was at the time being led by a gentleman who created his own offshoot environmental group that was primarily funded by the coal and oil industry; you do the math. To all, Give it a listen.
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CU Guru [1577]
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Also telling….
Oct 26, 2022, 4:08 PM
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Germany and Japan abandoned and shuddered their nuclear programs after the Fukushima disaster but are now clamoring to restart them.
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Legend [18798]
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Nuclear energy is where I part ways with tree huggers
Oct 26, 2022, 4:27 PM
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I always thought it was a good idea. Thanks for the post.
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Legend [16877]
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Based on today's mock tests, so is
Oct 26, 2022, 5:24 PM
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Putin
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All-TigerNet [13700]
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Re: Nuclear power...filling in the grid
Oct 26, 2022, 9:33 PM
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I’m my view this country made a strategic mistake in not further advancing nuclear as part of our national grid architecture years ago despite the legitimate issues of inherent risk, storage, and remediation.
For environmentalists who truly believe the most dire predictions of our CO2 driven climatary demise, the most rational move should include embracing the option you hate least. That’s nuclear, even with the “yeah buts”.
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110%er [5119]
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Re: Nuclear power...filling in the grid
Oct 26, 2022, 10:08 PM
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Heck no man. Wind and solar power baby, give the Democrat party a donation and they will save the planet. Gotta get rid of fossil fuels and we will be OK. Come on man get on board, AOC and big Joe going to save us all.
Oh yeah follow them like all the ignorant socialist Democrats do.
The world is going to end in 3 years if fossil fuels aren't eliminated.
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Orange Blooded [2987]
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Re: Nuclear power...filling in the grid
Oct 26, 2022, 10:28 PM
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Fusion reactors with a Helium 3 bump are proven, built and working and with zero waste. H3 increase effective efficiency to 98%. MIT has a small working model and the EU is currently funding a bigger version. The H3 is hard to make but it only takes 15lbs to fuel enough annual for US. Easiest way to extract that amount is to use moon rocks, approximately 1 ton could to get 15-25lbs of H3. But if a small reactor the size of whats used for 1 US aircraft carrier, more than enough H3 could be manufactured annually for the globe.
So fusion would take hydrogen, oxygen H3 plus water to produce more water and regular Helium H2. The only problem, nobody wants to fund this because it would put the energy and oil business in a quandary. France is the location of the new fusion project but Covid, Supply chain, and engineering issues has put the project way over budget and obviously way behind schedule.
Nobody wants clean, fossil fuel free energy because petroleum makes up the majority of the economy. If clean, free energy happens the worlds economy collapses. All the more reason to be energy independent in America so we can afford to build fusion plants. H3 will be the new fossil fuel replacement.
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Hall of Famer [20546]
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Re: Nuclear power...filling in the grid
Oct 26, 2022, 11:49 PM
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Again, that's the key limiting factor with fusion though. Helium-3 is hard to make. My understanding is that it'd take way more moon rocks than 1T to get 15-25lbs of the stuff unless they've found some new kind of moon rock I'm unaware of. (It's possible...have they?)
My understanding is, the best places to get Helium-3 are gas giants. At some point in the fairly near future, Jupiter and Saturn are going to be the gas stations of the solar system, and you're going to see a gazillion orbital stations with great big long hoses all dangling off them, syphoning off the the H3 like folks with drinking straws. It'll almost certainly be the first thing they go after upon reaching Jupiter.
But that's probably 50 years from now...and in the meantime, the problem with synthesizing Helium-3 is you put more energy into doing so than you get from turning around and then fusing it. Which means we're going to need an intermediate step before then...again, SMR's, then probably thorium LFTR reactors.
The stuff from France is really interesting though. I've been watching those tests with interest...the results are incredibly encouraging though they're a mile off sustainability with fusion right now too.
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