UNEP/Frankfurt School Investment figures in so called "renewable energy" 2006-2016.

[NNadir]

The figures herein come from a report put together by the United Nations "Environmental" Program - I have put "environmental in quotes because I'm not sure that this is about the "environment" at all - and the Frankfurt School and is published by Bloomberg Finance.

These figures are reported regularly, and executive summary reports are available on line.

This link is to the 2017 report.

The figures in "Figure 3" on page 14 give the total investment in so called "renewable energy" going back to 2004. The numbers in the table are in billions of dollars (US).

The table cannot be imported into a spreadsheet directly and so the sums I will report are the result of my transcription into a spreadsheet, but I don't believe, on checking, I've made any errors; I will report the investment in each form of so called "renewable energy" for each type of energy reported in billions of dollars for the period between 2006 and 2016, i.e. the last ten reported years:

Solar: $1,133.6 (1.133 trillion dollars.)
Wind: $ 957.7
Biofuels: $129.1
Biomass and Waste: $156.4
Small Hydro: $68.7
Geothermal: $23.8
Marine (Presumably tidal): $3.7

The total for the last 10 years is $2,473 billion dollars or 2.473 trillion dollars.

This is an amount that is larger than the gross domestic product of any the following nations: France, India, Brazil, Canada, Korea, Australia, Russia...

In fact there are only 5 countries on the planet that have an annual GDP higher than the amount of money squandered on the "renewables will save us" fantasy in the last ten years. They are the US, China, Japan, Germany and the UK, with the UK barely exceeding this figure of 2.473 trillion dollars (at 2.861 trillion dollars.)

The GDP figures I've used for comparison come from the World Bank webpage: the world bank webpage.

The annual mean data for carbon dioxide concentrations in the planetary atmosphere as measured at the Mauna Loa carbon dioxide observatory showed than in 2005 the annual mean concentration of carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere - humanity's favorite waste dump - was 379.80 ppm; in 2016 it was 404.21 ppm, an increase of 24.41 ppm in roughly ten years, despite spending more than the gross national product of India, a nation that contains slightly less than 20% of all human beings on this planet.

That the growth rate is the highest ever on a running decade average can be observed in the following graphic from the Mauna Loa observatory page:



The International Energy Agency's Key World Energy Statistics Data Report for 2016 (which gives figures for 2014) reports, on page 6 that wind, solar, geothermal and marine combined were responsible for 1.6% of world energy demand, which was 13,699 million tons of oil equivalent, which translates to 574 exaJoules. Overall it can be shown that this 1.6% - a trivial amount - is dominated by the production from wind turbines.

I have shown elsewhere, by appeal to the Danish Energy Agency's wind turbine database that the average lifetime for a wind turbine in that offshore oil and gas hellhole of a nation is on the order of 15 years, with some never operating at all, but with a few lasting a little over 30 years before becoming, um, junk.

On the left we can be pretty smug about our claim that we are aware of climate change, and we know how to address it.

It is fine to say that the right is delusional on climate change, but I would submit, that while some of us on the left prattle on mindlessly about how we'll have 100% "renewable" energy by year XXXX (almost always when the person announcing this XXXX figure is sure to be dead), we haven't a clue how to address climate change.

By the way, the UNEP/Frankfurt School/Bloomberg figures show a recent decline in investment in solar and wind, probably because they haven't worked, aren't working, and won't work, and increasingly people are realizing that spending huge sums on providing a place for Godot to stay isn't all that wise if Godot never actually comes, and he won't.

There are on this planet people who know what will work best - certainly not a panacea since at this point the existence of panaceas is dubious - but generally, they're not held in high esteem in places like this; and let's be clear; whether one is held in high esteem or not is not entirely a function of whether one is telling the truth.

Neither the esteem of people who lie to themselves as well as the esteem of people who lie to others is worth all that much of course. One can get esteem by saying "renewable energy is great!" but of course, esteem doesn't make this statement true.

Have a nice evening.

[kristopher]

1. Poor feller.

Standing stalwartly on his digital street corner boiling with hatred for all while spouting delusional interpretations of reality.

[Eko]

2. Uh huh.

The China Effect

• Nuclear power generation in the world increased by 1.3%, entirely due to a 31% increase in China.

• Ten reactors started up in 2015—more than in any other year since 1990—of which eight were in China. Construction on all of them started prior to the Fukushima disaster.

• Eight construction starts in the world in 2015—to which China contributed six—down from 15 in 2010 of which 10 were in China. No construction starts in the world in the first half of 2016.

• The number of units under construction is declining for the third year in a row, from 67 reactors at the end of 2013 to 58 by mid-2016, of which 21 are in China.

• China spent over US$100 billion on renewables in 2015, while investment decisions for six nuclear reactors amounted to US$18 billion.
Early Closures, Phase-outs and Construction Delays

• Eight early closure decisions taken in Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and the U.S.

• Nuclear phase-out announcements in the U.S. (California) and Taiwan.

• In nine of the 14 building countries all projects are delayed, mostly by several years. Six projects have been listed for over a decade, of which three for over 30 years. China is no exception here, at least 10 of 21 units under construction are delayed.

• With the exception of United Arab Emirates and Belarus, all potential newcomer countries delayed construction decisions. Chile suspended and Indonesia abandoned nuclear plans.
Nuclear Giants in Crisis – Renewables Take Over

• AREVA has accumulated US$11 billion in losses over the past five years. French government decides €5.6 billion bailout and breaks up the company. Share value 95 percent below 2007 peak value. State utility EDF struggles with US41.5 billion debt, downgraded by S&P. Chinese utility CGN, EDF partner for Hinkley Point C, loses 60% of its share value since June 2015.

• Globally, wind power output grew by 17%, solar by 33%, nuclear by 1.3%.

• Brazil, China, India, Japan and the Netherlands now all generate more electricity from wind turbines alone than from nuclear power plants.
Chernobyl+30/Fukushima+5

• Three decades after the Chernobyl accident shocked the European continent, 6 million people continue to live in severely contaminated areas. Radioactive fallout from Chernobyl contaminated 40% of Europe's landmass. A total of 40,000 additional fatal cancer cases are expected over the coming 50 years.

• Five years after the Fukushima disaster began on the east coast of Japan, over 100,000 people remain dislocated. Only two reactors are generating power in Japan, but final closure decisions were taken on an additional six reactors that had been offline since 2010-11.
https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/The-World-Nuclear-Industry-Status-Report-2016-HTML.html

[NNadir]

3. Once again, you announce that 100,000 people "dislocated" largely out of fear and not risk, are...

...more important in this one time event than the 7 million people killed by air pollution every year.

Which is worse, 100,000 people moving every twenty years, or seven million people dying every year?

According to the world renowned climate scientist, even accounting for Fukushima and Chernobyl, the two boogie men anti-nukes prattle insipidly about all the time, usually using electricity generated by gas and coal, nuclear energy saved 1.8 million lives that would have been lost to air pollution: Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power.

It might have saved more lives, but for the selective attention of fools with no scientific, engineering or mathematical training.

Among the set of people who embrace this absurd logic there are zero among them who bother to acknowledge that two trillion dollars squandered on so called "renewable" energy in solar and wind alone - which is in fact no such thing, renewable, given it's material requirements - saved very few of these lives.

This is, again, in case we have anyone here who remains too stupid to get it, why so called "renewable energy" is dangerous. It soaks up vast sums of money, equivalent to the yearly income of a nation with more than a billion people in it, and does nothing to prevent these deaths.

In my next post, I will offer some math - based on the operational history of a reactor near where I live, Oyster Creek - that operated for almost 50 years, was built in four years, using technology developed by scientists and engineers operating with slide rules and very primitive computers.

China is building nuclear reactors, training engineers and scientists to run and design them, and the US is filled with little bourgeois brats weeping and crying over Fukushima. Those reactors will be operating in 50 years. It can be shown, and I have shown it, that just one or two Chinese reactors, in one or two small buildings, can produce more energy than all of the wind turbines in that offshore oil and gas drilling hellhole Denmark that our dumb anti-nukes are always prattling on and on and on and on about.

And let's be clear. When that oil and gas is brought up by the Danes in the North Sea, it will kill people when it is used normally, no fucking tsunami required, just as the carcinogens released in the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that all our Fukushima crybabies couldn't care less about is killing people right now.

But they're a "renewable" example, aren't they, those Danes? How come they're still drilling oil and gas in a marine environment? How come?

But let's go back to the 2011 Sendai earthquake,. Which killed more people in the 2011 event, radiation or drownings?

How come none of our anti-nukes want to ban coastal cities? I mean their fear and ignorance is certainly responsible for rising seas, and between Indonesia and Japan, close to 270,000 people died from seawater raised by tsunamis. Which has proved safer in the last half a century, all the world's nuclear power plants, or living on coasts?

Arguably for people who can do math - this would exclude the entire set of innumerate scare mongers who prattle on about Fukushima while 800 people die every hour from the health consequences of air pollution while we engage in endless illiterate percent talk that's been going on for 50 years with the failed, useless, and absurdly expensive solar scam - one can examine this "percent" claim and run right through it with third grade math.

If I have a nickel and I increase by holdings by 1,000 percent, I'm not going to appear on the cover of Forbes as the next Bill Gates. I'll have half a buck. If I've announced this money as the sum I've put towards my retirement, I'll be homeless and considered, um, a failure. Of course, if I go around and announce that I'm an expert at increasing my holdings by 1000% I might find some gullible assholes who would be impressed, but I'd be a fraud, and anyone giving me money to "invest" would be scammed. My "percent" success would be entirely possible precisely and only because I'm a failure.

The continuous lies put forth using the "percent talk" are the reason that 7 million people are allowed to die each year from selective attention, because anti-nukes can't fucking think. This is comparable to the lies they tell when they attempt to represent peak power and being the same as average continuous power, or, better, energy.

Nuclear provided, in 2014, in the link provided in the OP 4.8% of the world's energy. Were it not for stupid people raising specious selective attention - as a mature technology developed by some of the smartest people in the world, obvious not members of the ignorance society Greenpeace - it might have provided more, and thus saved more lives than it already saved from air pollution, but no matter. At 574 exajoules - it appears that conservation, the other stupid idea of the renewable will save us people who expect four or five billion people to live in dire poverty so they can smugly prattle on about the electric cars of a few bourgeois dullards who buy and drive them is also a failed idea - this amounts to about 23 exajoules.

This document from the IEA, the International Energy Agency, gives in TWh the total output for 2016 for the solar PV and solar thermal industries in TWh: See table 2 page 11.

In 2016 we see that the solar PV industry produced 267 TWh, and the solar CSP industry 22 TWh, for a grand total of 289 TWh. This amounts to barely one exajoule in 2016, this at an investment cost of over a trillion dollars spent over ten years on a planet where billions of people lack access to clean water and even rudimentary sanitary systems.

If the fraudulent solar industry were able to suck another 10 trillion dollars - twice the GDP of Japan - and increase by 1000% it will still be producing less than half of what nuclear energy is producing largely using 30 year old technology put in place by a generation much smarter than this one, since they didn't let assholes who obviously know nothing about math, science or engineering pull cheap marketing tricks to hype their useless - and since it's ineffective, deadly - solar and wind toys even as more and more and more oil, gas, and coal is dug up, burned, and allowed to release seriously deadly materials into the planetary atmosphere without interruption.

Ignorance kills people.

By the way, you mentioned Japan. Which does Japan produce more electricity with now that dumb hysteria caused it to shut it's nuclear reactors? Wind power or dangerous fossil fuels? Which killed more people in Japan this year, radiation or air pollution?

Basically, the liars who are in praise of the failed, soon to be landfill wind turbines don't really a fuck about anyone, anyone at all who will be killed by Japan's very dangerous decision to close its nuclear reactors (but not its coastal cities) or else they would be able to ponder this, much as the Nobel Laureate Burton Richter pondered it: Richter, Energy and Environmental Science, 2012

Shutting Japan's reactors killed people. Excuse me if I claim you seem thrilled about these closures. Par for the course. There was no legitimate reason to shut them, other than fear and ignorance. As Nobel Laureate Richter pointed out, and world renowned climate scientist Jim Hansen before him, they were saving lives when they operated.

Later on, when I'm in the mood for confronting ignorance - it's tiresome and depressing today, given all the Trump lies flying around to confront yet another class of liars and scammers, those in the "solar will save us" industry - I'll compare what we might have done with more than two trillion dollars if we spent the same amount that previous generations spent (converted to 2017 dollars) to build lots of additional Oyster Creek reactors using the safety standards of 1969, standards that were adequate to prevent a single loss of life in 50 years of operations. I note, with due contempt, that the United States built more than 100 reactors in about 20 years time while providing some of the lowest cost electricity in the world. I'm not in the mood to hear from dumb people how what has already happened is now impossible.

In the meantime, may I suggest you sit in the corner and try to figure out how to work a pocket calculator's "percent" key? Once you learn to work it, try to see if you can calculate the difference between 1000% of five cents and 1% of a billion dollars.

You might learn something. Maybe not, but you never know, maybe you will.

[kristopher]

4. Blah, blah (shake fist/scream incoherently) blah blah...

Decisions going forward are based on this reality:

Nnads:

[Eko]

5. Well, going by your last 10 years litmus test

nuclear energy has not saved any more people than it did since the early 2000's. Please note from 2007 and on for nuclear in your graph.

[NNadir]

9. Nuclear energy has been consistently under attack by stupid people for half a century.

Last edited Sat May 13, 2017, 07:16 AM - Edit history (4)

It doesn't matter that all of the rhetoric they use involves the application of criteria they apply to nothing else - which is amazing because in comparison to everything else, notably the issue of "waste," nuclear energy is actually vastly superior to everything else in any compartive analysis - the selective attention has a political effect.

It also has a hype effect. If a seal at a nuclear power plant fails it's national news, even if it injures no one at all. If a major blowout of an oil platform instantly kills workers on the platform and then destroys vast areas of marine ecosystems people forget about it; it goes down the media and cultural Orwellian "memory hole."

Nuclear energy saves lives in spite of the stupidity of popular anti-nuke rhetoric.

The anti-nuke mentality, which kills people continuously by appeals to fear and ignorance, is rather like arsonists containing about fires, an analogy I use repeatedly because it's especially apt. Anti-nuke people do everything in the immoral and ignorant power to oppose nuclear energy, do everything they can to raise its cost by attaching requirements for "safety" they attach to nothing else, everything they can to resist infrastructure building, and then announce that it's "slow and expensive."

If one reads and understands the scientific and engineering primary literature referring to nuclear energy one will often find that the major resistance to the expansion of nuclear energy mentioned are based on the "problem" of "public perception." It has nothing to do with engineering or science. The public perception is in turn, based on appeals to ignorance, hype, wishful thinking, and frankly contempt for science and engineering which is clearly on the rise in the world culture as evidenced by the inhabitant of the White House. And let's be clear, the lies, distortions and selective attention to nuclear issues is Trumpian in scale, and has been Trumpian in scale for more than a generation.

The United States built more than 100 nuclear reactors in roughly 20 - 30 years while providing some of the lowest cost electricity in the world. I have no use for crap statements that "it isn't doing that now," especially when people doing so are clearly in the camp of the anti-nuke "renewables will save us" camp.

So called "renewables" didn't save us. In fact they were abandoned at the beginning of the 19th century because a the vast majority of people comprising a much smaller world population than we have now generally lived short, miserable lives of dire poverty. The reactionary sun worship crap cannot change that fact. They aren't saving us. The degradation of the planetary atmosphere is now taking place at the fastest rate every observed despite the squandering of trillions of dollars on this temporary and toxic junk. They won't save us, because their material demands and their ecological impact resulting from their extremely low energy to mass ratio are not sustainable.

Sometime this weekend I'm going to compare the reliability, the cost, and most importantly the active lifetime of the US's oldest nuclear reactor, the Oyster Creek nuclear reactor, which is partially powering the computer on which I write, with the cost, performance and lifetime of all the so called "renewable" crap on which morons and fools are betting the future of this planet. I'm going to use 1965 criteria - the year the reactor's construction began - with the historical results.

Probably almost all of the people who designed the reactor, and who built it, are dead or at least long retired. Since the reactor is powering my computer, the money and time and effort they spent is a gift from their generation to mine, and in fact, my children's, since my sons were born and raised in New Jersey, and nearly every time a computer or light switch came on in their schools, Oyster Creek was powering it. The generation that built the Oyster Creek nuclear reactor was a generation that cared about the future and about future generations. This generation, by contrast, can only be regarded by contempt for its regard for future generations. We think only of ourselves and don't give a shit about the future, which is why we are reluctant to spend our money on nuclear reactors that will be operating near the dawn of the 22nd century. By contrast, every goddamned useless wind turbine on this planet right now will be a pile of useless junk before my sons, and everyone else now entering college, reach midlife.

This is why this Trumpian bull about so called "renewable" energy is allowed to prevail, even as it has, is, and always will give clear and irrefutable evidence of its failure: We couldn't care less about the future.

Have a nice weekend.

[kristopher]

10. Wow. Talk about bad science; you excel only in fallacious logic.

None of your arguments or (contrived) data prove your claim - that nuclear is the heart of an energy system that would be superior to renewables.



See:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127110344

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127110302

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127110308

[Eko]

11. This is engineering and science.

Where are we going to put 1800% more nuclear waste? I dont know why you keep bringing up anti-nuke people, I have stated that I am not one. I am anti-nuclear is safer than solar. Its that simple. That doesn't mean I think we should not have nuclear power facilities, I am not against that. I am just against your absurd claim that nuclear is safer than solar, and you base that on what people might do, not what is happening, and you allow for this huge federal agency to take care of nuclear waste and cant allow for even half of something like that for solar. Will solar panels be a huge problem in the future for the environment, that is possible. Possible. Know what else is possible? Recycling solar panels to get a discount on new ones, it could be business based or federally funded. That is possible also.

[NNadir]

12. Really? This statement is "engineering and science?" I have spent 30 years studying the...

...chemistry and physics of used nuclear fuel, but first let me ask you a different question which is exactly the same, except for the fact that the storage of used nuclear fuel is only remarkable since its storage, despite the incessant caterwauling of anti-nukes, hasn't killed anyone.

I suspect that you clearly don't give a shit about this question I will ask, given your selective attention, clearly, but here it is:

Where is humanity putting 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide, along with heavy metals, carcinogenic organic compounds and other horrible stuff that constitutes dangerous fossil fuel waste?? Do you have a "safe and reliable" "harmless" way to store it forever?

Do you know where it's being "stored" right now, today? I'll tell you where: It's being "stored" in every living organism on the planet, in the cells, tissues, organs of every living organism on earth or in the matrices on which every organism on earth depends, specifically air, water and soil.

I repeatedly refer to the 7 million people killed each year from air pollution which is dangerous fossil fuel waste as well as dangerous biomass combustion waste, and typically, in classic anti-nuke selective attention, I get a selective attention response.

When, exactly, despite all the "waste mentality" caterwauling about it, has so called "Nuclear waste" killed seventy million people in a ten year period, for example the last ten years, when, again, the world squandered more than two trillion dollars on so called renewable energy while the death toll from air pollution and climate change continued to rise, not fall?

Of course, when I raise this point, I hear nothing but insipid - to the point of criminal - whining. "We're not talking about air pollution! We're not talking about air pollution!"

Why for the love of God are you not talking about air pollution!?!

Again, why are you not concerned with 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year? You are aware, aren't you than 70,000 people reportedly died in 2003 from exposure to high temperatures in Europe? It was reported in the scientific literature:Death toll exceeded 70,000 in Europe during the summer of 2003 (Comptes Rendus Biologies Volume 331, Issue 2, February 2008, Pages 171–178)

You think that dealing with climate change is easy, but dealing with used nuclear fuel is difficult? Really? Are you willing to get serious, or are you just pulling my leg?

Who, exactly, do you think you're talking to? Some airhead on a "wind and solar are great!" website run by people who have never taken or passed an engineering or science course in their pathetic lives?

Science and engineering? Really?

In the United States, the used nuclear fuel removed from nuclear reactors and largely stored where they were generated amounts to about 75,000 metric tons. This, accumulated over more than half a century. It amounts in mass, to 2.08 millionths the mass of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide which was release just last year, an amount released in 2014 that is roughly six billion tons higher than it was being released ten years ago ten years ago, when we began squandering trillions of dollars on temporary and useless junk that didn't work, isn't working and won't work to prevent the release of carbon dioxide from being even higher next year.

The 75,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel in the United States is roughly 95% unreacted uranium. Since it's very, very, very, very clear that anti-nukes can't do math, I'll do it: That means that a little over 71,000 tons of the content of used nuclear fuel is uranium, an element of the periodic table that has been naturally found on this planet - with easily measured billions tons being present in the Earth's oceans alone - since the Earth formed from supernovae ashes.

Converted to plutonium, this 71,000 metric tons of uranium (which translates to 300 million moles of uranium), a tiny fraction of the naturally occurring examples of this element - since a fission of a single atom of plutonium releases, not counting neutrinos, 199 MeV of energy - is the equivalent of 572 exajoules of energy, coincidentally very close to the amount of energy, all the dangerous natural gas, all the dangerous coal, all the dangerous petroleum, all the river destroying hydroelectric facilities, all the biomass produced by the destruction of natural ecosystems for factory farming, and, of course, including the trivial and useless contribution from so called "renewable" energy that sucked 2.4 trillion dollars out of the world economy for no fucking result in just the last ten years.

In fact, overall, in terms of the total uranium already mined, and including the radioactive waste from the wind industry, specifically the thorium from China's lanthanide mines, we have enough energy content in uranium and thorium to provide all of humanity's energy needs for centuries. I detailed this, along with more than 50 references, elsewhere, on a website put together by an Australian environmental scientist: Current World Energy Demand, Ethical World Energy Demand, Depleted Uranium and the Centuries to Come This is only one of many suggestions I've made in pop blogging settings. A friend of mine once posted a list, some years, 2010, back of some of my writings on this topic. Reference to some of my thoughts on used nuclear fuel, 2010

Now, as I've continued my research, I may have changed some of my ideas from back in 2010 and before, since I've grown in my respect for the problems that the constituents of used nuclear fuel, might be utilized to accomplish for future generations, but the basic concept remains unchanged: My "solution" to the problem of so called "nuclear waste" is to utilize all of the valuable constituents therein.

Used nuclear fuel for the most part consists of largely insoluble solids, with some minor exceptions. Carbon dioxide is a gas. Which is easier to contain, 75,000 tons of solids or hundreds of billions of tons of gases?

Now you ask me to tell you what I think we should do with what you and not I, call nuclear waste?

My interest in used nuclear fuel and the radioactive and non-radioactive materials in used nuclear fuel began in April of 1986 when Chernobyl blew up when I pulled the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics off the bookshelf to look up the half-lives of the released elements. I encountered a term called the "neutron capture cross section," about which I knew very little, and began to research the topic in what were then paper based scientific libraries, libraries I routinely used in my day to day life in any case.

Slowly at first, and with increasing intensity, I began to study the subject in depth...considerable depth.

In the mid 1990's much of the world's scientific literature became available in electronic form and I began collecting papers relating to non-nuclear and nuclear scientific issues electronically and saving them on my computer. Of course after roughly a decade of reading papers on paper I already knew a lot more by the mid 1990's about nuclear materials than I did in 1986, but when the electronic format became available, I would say my knowledge exploded relative to what it had been before.

I have more than 600,000 files in my computer, and in the sub directory in my Energy and Environment sub-directory is a directory called "nuclear" and in that directory another sub-directory called "Fuel." There are according to the "properties" function in Windows 10, exactly 8,615 files in this sub-directory.

You ask me to tell you what I think we should do with what you and not I, call nuclear waste?

Did you do any work at all before asking this question or is just the recitation of lazy pablum that you think allows you to make a judgement about humanity's fate?

I know exactly what to do with used nuclear fuels since I know that there are no constituents in that are not valuable. It happens that radioactive materials can do lots of things that nothing else can do.

Of the 75,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel in the United States, about 1% of it is plutonium and 4% is fission products. In a world far less stupid than the one we apparently live in, one in which dangerous fossil fuel waste can kill 70 million people every decade while people whine about what they call, with their weak "waste" mentality, "nuclear waste" which has existed for more than half a century without killing anyone, those fission products would be seen for what they clearly are, gifts to future generations which might well save the world.

Radioactive materials are subject, in their accumulation, to a differential equation known as the Bateman equation The solutions to this equation demonstrate that there is a maximal amount of any radioactive material that can accumulate before it is decaying exactly at the same rate it is being formed and that the more radioactive it is, the smaller this quantity will be.

In a way this inviolable law of mathematical physics is unfortunate, since radiation can do things that nothing else can do as well, mineralize persistent organic pollutants, in particular dangerous halogenated compounds, as I briefly reported in this space by appeal to the scientific literature recently: Direct exposure of polychlorinated biphenyls to the radiation field of used nuclear fuel.

Don't talk to me about "Science and Engineering" with a glib superficial and clearly mindless reference to so called "nuclear waste" unless you're willing to learn something about science and engineering. Clearly the nature of your question indicates that you haven't done a damned thing to understand nuclear technology and, like most anti-nukes, are merely criticizing something you know nothing about.

By the way, I used to be a nuclear critic before 1986, because I knew nothing at all about nuclear science. The only difference between you and me is that unlike you, I questioned my assumptions.

If you are willing to do that, question your assumptions you will have a right to speak. If one refuses to do that and simply chants insipid phrases over and over and over and over mindlessly, one should be ignored if one offers up garbage rhetoric which, again, kills people through moral and intellectual indifference.

Have a nice Sunday,.

[ccarrick]

13. More BS

Nuclear waste storage hasn't killed anyone YET precisely because it is stored on site, which is a temporary solution. When it is shipped to a permanent repository, IF it ever is, would you like it shipped on Route 1 or the Parkway by your house? Or by train? Or by magic unicorn?

Even worse if we start using it for all the magical applications you've read about in your thousands of papers. Because scientists, especially those working with/for industry, have never jeopardized the public before right?

My computer is powered by nuclear too, most likely since 80% of the generation in my region comes from three aging outdated plants, but that doesn't give my arguments any more authority than it does yours.

You should think about reading some rhetoric and public writing books and give the nuclear chemistry a break.

[Eko]

14. ok.

Last edited Thu May 18, 2017, 09:50 PM - Edit history (1)

except for the fact that the storage of used nuclear fuel is only remarkable since its storage, despite the incessant caterwauling of anti-nukes, hasn't killed anyone.
And the disposal of solar cells has?

Where is humanity putting 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide, along with heavy metals, carcinogenic organic compounds and other horrible stuff that constitutes dangerous fossil fuel waste?? Do you have a "safe and reliable" "harmless" way to store it forever?

Do you know where it's being "stored" right now, today? I'll tell you where: It's being "stored" in every living organism on the planet, in the cells, tissues, organs of every living organism on earth or in the matrices on which every organism on earth depends, specifically air, water and soil.

I repeatedly refer to the 7 million people killed each year from air pollution which is dangerous fossil fuel waste as well as dangerous biomass combustion waste, and typically, in classic anti-nuke selective attention, I get a selective attention response.

When, exactly, despite all the "waste mentality" caterwauling about it, has so called "Nuclear waste" killed seventy million people in a ten year period, for example the last ten years, when, again, the world squandered more than two trillion dollars on so called renewable energy while the death toll from air pollution and climate change continued to rise, not fall?

Of course, when I raise this point, I hear nothing but insipid - to the point of criminal - whining. "We're not talking about air pollution! We're not talking about air pollution!"

Why for the love of God are you not talking about air pollution!?!
Because I am not arguing with you that air pollution is not bad, of course it is. Once again the argument is you think nuclear is safer than solar.

Again, why are you not concerned with 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year? You are aware, aren't you than 70,000 people reportedly died in 2003 from exposure to high temperatures in Europe? It was reported in the scientific literature eath toll exceeded 70,000 in Europe during the summer of 2003 (Comptes Rendus Biologies Volume 331, Issue 2, February 2008, Pages 171–178)

You think that dealing with climate change is easy, but dealing with used nuclear fuel is difficult? Really? Are you willing to get serious, or are you just pulling my leg?
Just because I don't use air pollution in every single post to further my argument that solar is not more dangerous than nuclear, and what that has to do with the dangers of solar or nuclear is beyond me, doesn't mean that I don't care about air pollution and climate change, quit putting words into my mouth please.

Who, exactly, do you think you're talking to? Some airhead on a "wind and solar are great!" website run by people who have never taken or passed an engineering or science course in their pathetic lives?

Science and engineering? Really?
I think I am talking to somebody that does indeed seem to know a lot about nuclear energy but even more so engages in logical fallacies such as moving the goalposts, proof by verbosity, red herring, false analogy, hasty generalization, misleading vividness, Ad hominem,,,, I could keep going.
As for the science and engineering yes,
"The U.S. has 71,862 tons of the waste, according to state-by-state numbers obtained by The Associated Press. But the nation has no place to permanently store the material, which stays dangerous for tens of thousands of years.

Plans to store nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain have been abandoned, but even if a facility had been built there, America already has more waste than it could have handled." "The U.S. nuclear industry says the waste is being stored safely at power-plant sites, though it has long pushed for a long-term storage facility. Meanwhile, the industry's collective pile of waste is growing by about 2,200 tons a year; experts say some of the pools in the United States contain four times the amount of spent fuel that they were designed to handle." http://www.nbcnews.com/id/42219616/ns/business-us_business/t/us-storage-sites-overfilled-spent-nuclear-fuel/#.WRiNmsa1uUk

Notice the 2,200 tons a year. Multiply that by 1800% = 39,600 tons each year. Taking care of that much waste every year to a nation already struggling to take care of what it has does indeed seem to be a Science and engineering problem.

Now, as I've continued my research, I may have changed some of my ideas from back in 2010 and before, since I've grown in my respect for the problems that the constituents of used nuclear fuel, might be utilized to accomplish for future generations, but the basic concept remains unchanged: My "solution" to the problem of so called "nuclear waste" is to utilize all of the valuable constituents therein.

Used nuclear fuel for the most part consists of largely insoluble solids, with some minor exceptions. Carbon dioxide is a gas. Which is easier to contain, 75,000 tons of solids or hundreds of billions of tons of gases?

Now you ask me to tell you what I think we should do with what you and not I, call nuclear waste?
Perhaps you have heard of the NWTRB? Its a part of the government that deals with nuclear waste, Ill give you a hint what the W stands for in their name.

Did you do any work at all before asking this question or is just the recitation of lazy pablum that you think allows you to make a judgement about humanity's fate?
Oh no, I did some work. I certainly did enough not to have to engage in childish ad hominem attacks to get my point across. I do know that nuclear waste can be used further to power us, such as IFR's, diamond batteries and use for medical products. But, as interesting as this is once again the argument is whether nuclear is safer than solar.

Don't talk to me about "Science and Engineering" with a glib superficial and clearly mindless reference to so called "nuclear waste" unless you're willing to learn something about science and engineering. Clearly the nature of your question indicates that you haven't done a damned thing to understand nuclear technology and, like most anti-nukes, are merely criticizing something you know nothing about.
I am not anti nuke, quit putting words into my mouth. Once again I am anti you saying that solar is more dangerous than nuclear. Your continued use of a straw man argument is quite disconcerting and I am asking you to stop it please. I personally believe we need and will continue to need nuclear energy in the future.

By the way, I used to be a nuclear critic before 1986, because I knew nothing at all about nuclear science. The only difference between you and me is that unlike you, I questioned my assumptions.

If you are willing to do that, question your assumptions you will have a right to speak. If one refuses to do that and simply chants insipid phrases over and over and over and over mindlessly, one should be ignored if one offers up garbage rhetoric which, again, kills people through moral and intellectual indifference.

I am not a nuclear critic, you used straw man again, I question my assumptions and have liked this argument because it made me research things that I have not for a while. Have a right to speak? Who do think you are that you think you can decide whether or not I have a right to speak? You who insults, uses logical fallacies left and right and are generally a very unpleasant person to talk to? Chants insipid phrases over and over mindlessly? You mean like bring up air pollution in an argument over nuclear and solar and which is more dangerous? Or that I am anti nuke? It seems that to you, one cannot mention the safety and viability of nuclear vs solar without wanting to kill the world and be personally responsible for the deaths occurring and that will occur from air pollution. I think its possible that you need to challenge your assumptions, especially the one where you think solar is more dangerous that nuclear.

Have a nice Sunday,.
Anyone reading this knows that you don't mean that at all.

[NNadir]

15. This is a fun and interesting post. After the hot news about the liar-in-chief dies down...

...I'll be sure to respond with what I dug up in my existing files and what new interesting and fun stuff there is that I've found in the primary scientific literature.

As it's rather involved and has lots of references, I'll put it in a new thread, assuming you don't object.

I don't have time to do it right now, but I'll get to it, I promise. Right now, I'm rather enjoying the news fare about the orange nightmare.

Oh, and, uh, um, yes, have a nice afternoon and evening.

[Eko]

16. Oh no!!!!!!!

"A worker at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state got radioactive contamination on his clothing this week during an incident at an underground waste storage tank that indicated a possible leak.

Contractor Washington River Protection Solutions said the worker was removing a robotic device out of the space between the double walls of Tank AZ-101 on Thursday evening. Monitors detected radiation at three times the expected level, and the workers left the area, said the company, which operates the storage tanks for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Radioactive contamination was found on one worker's protective clothing, which was removed, the company said. Monitors showed no further contamination on that worker, and all members of the crew were cleared to return to normal duty, the contractor said.

Hanford is near Richland, Washington, and for decades made plutonium for nuclear weapons. Millions of gallons of the most dangerous wastes produced by that work are stored in 177 underground tanks, many of which are decades old and have leaked."
A worker at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state got radioactive contamination on his clothing this week during an incident at an underground waste storage tank that indicated a possible leak."
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127110492

That sucks, Im sure something like that happened for a solar plant someplace recently and that it had many containment vessels that are decades old and have leaked toxic substance into nature.

[NNadir]

17. Like I said...later, I'll give you time to bury the 7 million dead at Hanford. I'm enjoying...

...fraud's vast exaggerations and misrepresentations, the orange fraud, not the vast radioactive everyone on earth will be killed by the worker's clothes fraud.

Just wondering, is the "most dangerous wastes" the ones that killed anyone, like um, say air pollution, or the Hanford tanks?

What exactly, does "danger" mean to you? Dirty linen, I'd guess.

[Eko]

18. Oh yeah,

you can comment on other threads not having to do with Trump, but no time for this one??????
Once again its how many people were damaged by solar vs nuclear, but you cant address that can you without bringing up how many people air pollution from carbon energy has hurt. Would you like to go to Hanford and hang out?
Transparently ridiculousness.

[Eko]

20. So,,

There is a solar plant leak that is just as dangerous?

[Eko]

6. You are also talking about

almost 1800% more nuclear waste to power the world. Where would we put all of that? Spent nuclear fuel rods have a half live of 159,200 years if not treated, an expensive process. But nuclear is safer than solar right? What is the half live of solar panels?

[Eko]

7. Now Im not claiming that

solar panels sitting in your backyard being leached is safer than nuclear fuel rods sitting in your backyard being leached, wait, yes I am. Absolutely I am. For you to argue that point is insanity. Do we want either? No. If we allow the regulatory enforcement of solar to be even half of nuclear then your argument is null, gone and void. And that is your Achilles heel. You act like federal containment of nuclear waste is nothing but don't allow it for solar at all. If a terrorist blows up a solar plant or if it just explodes, yes it creates a environmental disaster of huge proportions, but not for thousands of years like nuclear can. Get a grip. Nuclear is going to be part of the solution as well as solar and wind.

[ccarrick]

8. more deception from NNadir

1) Most of the world's annual energy use is for transportation / liquid fuels, not electricity. Your mantra of 574 exojoules is decpetive at best.
2) Comparing 10 years' worth of investment to the annual GDP of select countries is meaningless. You would need to compare to the total investment in energy sources over the same period.
3) As Westinghouse's failed projects in GA and SC show, so-called "modern" nukes cannot be built quickly or cost-effectively. As has been shown many times on this forum, renewables are cheaper than nukes now. Vogtle is already $3 billion over budget (and continuing to rise) and 3+ years behind schedule. V.C. Summer is similarly $3 billion over its original $11 billion budget and behind schedule. Please tell us why we should have any confidence that 100-200 nukes could be built in the next 10-20 years - especially in the developing world where energy poverty is driving nations to continue to build coal plants.
4) Despite your deliberate attempt to mischaracterize the positions of everyone else on this forum, no one is saying that all nukes should be shut down immediately and all investment should be in solar and wind only.
5) Your repeated reference to the total contribution of solar + wind consistently ignores that fact the rate of growth of those respective technologies is increasing due to cost reductions for each.