Jason
February 16, 2020 at 10:48 pm
I don't know what nuclear plants you are talking about, but I know for a fact the nuclear plant I work at Operates at $21-22 per megawatt. That is significantly less than the $100 per megawatt this article claims. Also, it appears the figures provided for solar and wind include federal subsidies into the prices being so low. Subtract those subsidies and solar and wind become far less attractive.

As far as safety, the US commercial nuclear industry, historically, is one of the heaviest regulated and safest, especially post Three Mile Island. Compare commercial nuclear with oil, gas, coal, etc... And how frequent minners get stuck in mines, refineries and oil rigs catch fire, gas lines explode etc etc. You never see that in the US commercial nuclear industry. I work in the industry and nuclear reactors are extremly safe. There are numerous safety systems and backup systems and back ups to the back ups to the back ups in commercial nuclear plants. Chernobyl was a flawed Soviet design mixed with unnecessary and harmful government interfierience which lead to the worst commercial nuclear disaster in world history. Chernobyl doesn't belong in the same conversation as Three Mile Island and Fukushima. TMI is what it is and as bad as it was there are no deaths nor adverse health conditions attributed to TMI. The commercial nuclear industry learned immensly from TMI and the US commercial nuclear industry is much much safer today because of it. As for Fukushima, this is a complex issue that primarily resulted from a poor choice of lacation and the selection of a BWR reactor design vs the inherently safer PWR design that you see in the overwhelming majority of the reactors in the US. Had Fukushima been a PWR like the reactors at the plant I work at it wouldn't have been an issue. A PWR has gravity dropped control rods that immediatly stop the reaction and eliminates 90% of the heat inside the reactor. The remaining 10% is decay heat which would have been controlled with numerous systems including passive accumulators, but in a worse case scenario like Fukushima in which all off site and onsite power was lost (ie they lost the grid and their onsite emergency diesel generators), a PWR design would have utilized natural circulation (thermodynamic principle in which warm water rises from the reactor to the higher elevated steam generators and cooler water flows from the steam generators to the lower elevated reactor) the secondary loop of the steam generators would then bleed off steam to drive a steam driven Terry Turbine Aux Feedwater pump which would pump large tanks of demineralized water into the inlet of the steam generator which cools the primary loop via convective heat transfer (ie shell and tube heat exchanger... The steam generators ) the shell side is the feedwater side which is clean thus excess steam not needed to run the terry turbine is vented through steam dumps and relief valves. The primary side is reactor grade water and the investory is never lost it remains in the primary loop inside containment and is continually cooled via the secondary feedwater loop. This design would have allowed a PWR to survive a Fukushima level disaster where a BWR could not. As bas as Fukushima was it was nowhere near as bad as Chernobyl nor say a Deep Water Horizon or other frequent oil and gas disasters, nevertheless; the industry learned from Fukushima and made changes which in turns made the industry safer. One thing common in commercial nuclear power is they learn from any mistakes that have occured and make changes to prevent the saem issues from arising again. This is done via the NRC regulations as well as Industry Leader revomendations throughout the industry (ie INPO and WANO). Often people have the impression that Homer Simpson is running your local nuclear reactor, but this couldn't be further from the truth. In addition to the federal government, INPO and WANO the workers operating reactors are some of the smartest and best people on the planet. The large majority of nuclear operators in the US are former Navy nuke workers from submarines or carrriers, or are well educated, college degreed individuals with backgrounds in physics or engineering. So there are many many factors that keep nuclear plants safe. Thats why you don't hear about accidents occuring anywhere near the rate you do in oil and gas and there are smart individuals in those indistries as well.

The last thing ill mention is this. If you took the average american and you took all the electricity they would consume in their entire lifetime, and say it was all from nuclear power, the waste that would have accumulated could fot inside a 12oz pop can. That's it! This tid bit of info even suprised me, but nuclear is not wasteful it is not chemical burning of coal or gas, nor does it require large quantities of rare earth metal batteries or PV cells. According to Lawrence Berkley Lab, the fission of 1 g of uranium or plutonium per day liberates about 1 MW. This is the energy equivalent of 3 tons of coal or about 600 gallons of fuel oil per day, which when burned produces approximately 1/4 tonne of carbon dioxide. Now the US doesn't use Plutonium in our reactors largely because i dont think we are allowed to per Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1979 , but if we could nuclear reactors make plutonium as a result of U238 neutron absoption. This fact makes nuclear fuel recyclable, but we can not reprocess it so it sits in fuel pools and decays away until we can put it in dry cask storage that we keep onsite. I can walk right up to a dry cask full of old fuel, take my dosimeter right up to it and register 0.0 mR/hr. These dry casks are concrete and/or lead lined and were supposed to eventually be stored inside Yucca Mountain (a projected site paid entirely by the commercial nuclear industry and not the tax payers) , but the last administration killed that, so until we find a permanent location waste will be an issue in 50-100 years or so, but Yucca or a Yucca mountain like location would solve this problem. The good news is the funds are already secured for the long term storage all that really needs done is the beaurocratic process to take place. Remember a pop can size amount of waste per person in their entire lifetime on nuclear alone. Think about how many tons and tons of solar pannels that would take that laste what maybe 10 years at best.

I'm not knocking solar or wind they are an important part, but if you want to get serious about climate change you can't do it without nuclear power it is pound for pound the most effective energy source we have. And, if we only funded it 1/10th of what solar and wind get in subsidies i'd imagine we could fix the few flaws the commercial nuclear industry has. My appologies for all the typos im sure this is riddled with them.

Jason
February 18, 2020 at 3:09 pm
The 10% decay heat I presented above is a little high. That 10% would be a very very conservative amount factoring begining of core life and rounding up for a conservatism. The real numbers are closer to 6-7% and even as low as 1-2% toward the end of core life. By enlarge the commercial nuclear industry in the US has gotten more predictable, more reliable, safer and more cost effective in the last 10-15 years or so. With funding towards advancing nuclear power the industry could explore Thorium reactors which you theoretically can press a button and walk away without any decay heat kr radiological concerns, or could look towards producing Hydrogen in conjuction with electricity which can be used to fuel H2 automobile cells. Really there are a vast array of things nuclear power can do, but we are not even scratching the surface.

David Campbell
March 6, 2021 at 9:09 am
The article claims the nuclear industry needs to solve these things and aren't. This is patently false.

Molten salts as opposed to pressurized water solves the melt down problem. High thermal load following tanks rather than piles solves this issue entirely. Safety is inherent in all the new designs being developped.

The waste problem will be solved by reactor designs that will use existing waste as fuel. The fuel waste thing will be eliminated for good.

Costs will plummet with these new designs. Given theres no huge risks of meltdowns or explosions there will not be a need for huge concrete containment domes and other expenses. The reactors will be small modular designs meant to be built in a factory and shipped to location, not permanent constructions with cost overruns. Most of these new startups are targetting being cheaper than coal.

Commentators from Greenpeace to the World Bank agree that climate change is an emergency, threatening civilization and life on our planet. Any solution must involve the control of greenhouse gas emissions by phasing out fossil fuels and switching to alternative technologies that do not impair the human habitat while providing the energy we require to function as a species.

This sobering reality has led some prominent observers to re-embrace nuclear energy. Advocates declare it clean, efficient, economical, and safe. In actuality it is none of these. It is expensive and poses grave dangers to our physical and psychological well-being. According to the US Energy Information Agency, the average nuclear power generating cost is about $100 per megawatt-hour. Compare this with $50 per megawatt-hour for solar and $30 to $40 per megawatt-hour for onshore wind. The financial group Lazard recently said that renewable energy costs are now “at or below the marginal cost of conventional generation”—that is, fossil fuels—and much lower than nuclear.

“It is the one country in the world that has the military, economic, diplomatic capacity to undermine or challenge the rules-based order that we care so much about and are determined to defend. But I want to be very clear about something. And this is important. Our purpose is not to contain China, to hold it back, to keep it down. It is to uphold this rules-based order that China is posing a challenge to. Anyone who poses a challenge to that order, we’re going to stand up and— and defend it.” //

Can someone smarter than me explain how those two statements are not likely mutually exclusive? //

“I think what we— what we’ve witnessed over the last— several years is China acting more repressively at home and more aggressively abroad. That is a fact.” //

And then the question, as posed by O’Donnell: “What is China’s goal?” //

“I think that over time, China believes that it— it— it can be and should be and will be the dominant— country in the world.”

O’Keefe knew Gates had been acquiring farmland for years, mostly through various Cascade subsidiaries. The mogul’s holdings include large tracts in Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, California, and about a dozen other states. With the Washington state acreage and other recent additions to his portfolio, O’Keefe calculated, Gates now owns at least 242,000 acres of American farmland.

“Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, has an alter ego,” O’Keefe wrote: “Farmer Bill, the guy who owns more farmland than anyone else in America.” //

Gates is also quietly funding technology for digital vaccine passports. //

ID2020 is also active in more developed countries such as the US and has partnered with City of Austin, Texas, to provide a blockchain-enabled digital ID platform for the homeless population, as well as to refugees receiving medical treatment from the International Rescue Committee in Thailand.

Now with the sudden onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, this seems to have presented an opportunity to fast track global health into a new era of digital healthcare.

What could go wrong? Well, personal privacy (there’s that word again!), fraud, mass surveillance, and manipulation of information, among other things. But this does not seem to matter to Gates and his wicked schemes for you and your life. //

Finally, Gates remains a proponent of lockdowns, despite much evidence to the contrary that they did not work then, and they will not work now. As states in the U.S. were reopening, he sat down with every legacy media outlet he could to sound the alarm on the dangers of not following the science. Gates was as dogmatic as Dr. Anthony Fauci in his insistence; the problem is, at least Fauci has an M.D. behind his name. Gates does not. He has no medical experience whatsoever. Gates cannot even create software that doesn’t catch viruses. //

If you thought Bill Gates was dangerous while buffeted by a wife (who was equally dangerous, frankly), imagine how much more dangerous he’ll become now that he can truly focus on his dreams of global domination.

The US Environmental Protection Agency announced a rule Monday that would phase out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), the potent greenhouse gases that are widely used as refrigerants.

Though HFCs aren’t intentionally emitted in the regular use of refrigerators and air conditioners, they often leak out at various phases in an appliance’s life cycle, from manufacturing through disposal. One of the most widely used HFCs, R-134a, causes 1,430 times more warming than an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide over 100 years. Another that is commonly used in supermarkets, R-404A, has a global warming potential of 3,900. Eliminating the use of HFCs worldwide would reduce emissions enough to avoid up to 0.5˚C (0.9˚F) of warming by 2100. //

Once again, countries from around the world came together to address the issue, signing the Kigali Amendment that updated the Montreal Protocol to include HFCs. Notably, neither the US nor China has ratified the agreement, but last month, the two largest greenhouse gas emitters both agreed to eliminate the use of HFCs. //

there are already substitutes available for new refrigerators and air conditioners. One substitute that is already in many models of refrigerators is isobutane. Known in the industry as R-600a, it’s inexpensive, it has almost no ozone depletion potential, and it has a small global warming potential (three instead of R-134a's 1,430). //

Almost a decade ago, isobutane and other hydrocarbon refrigerants seemed poised for use in the market. In 2011, Underwriters Laboratories (UL) gave the refrigerants the go-ahead, and the EPA followed soon after. But then UL slashed their limits, citing a risk of fire if hydrocarbon refrigerants were to leak in a small room that also contained an open flame, like from a gas-fired water heater. //

Ultimately, the fire issue may be moot as some grocery stores have begun switching to using carbon dioxide as a refrigerant. Though it requires higher pressures throughout the cooling system, carbon dioxide is not detrimental to the ozone layer. And its global warming potential? One.

Young Americans for Liberty
@YALiberty
BIDEN: "Anybody making less than $400,000 a year will not pay a single penny in taxes."

Um.... OK? Sounds good. //

The Hill
@thehill
President Biden: "Here's what the American Families Plan doesn't do, it doesn't add a single penny to our deficit."

Create a New SSH Key Pair

Open a terminal and run the following command:

ssh-keygen 

SSH config, which is a per-user configuration file for SSH communication. Create a new file: ~/.ssh/config and open it for editing:

nano ~/.ssh/config

Managing Custom Named SSH key

The first thing we are going to solve using this config file is to avoid having to add custom-named SSH keys using ssh-add. Assuming your private SSH key is named ~/.ssh/id_rsa, add following to the config file:

Host github
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
  IdentitiesOnly yes

Now you can use git clone git@github:username/project