The Green New Deal

Belz... said:
If we're going to put money into developing a technology, that makes it more expensive.
Click to expand...
As I've been saying the money we'd be putting into it would be for designing, testing and writing regulations for a totally different kind of reactor.

A reactor, that would be smaller, simpler, inherently safer and wouldn't require expensive equipment and cooling infrastructure. No need for huge very thick pipes to carry 1500 PSI radioactive water from the reactor vessel to the heat exchangers. Or a ten foot thick concrete and steel reactor vessel cover. Or a huge sealed reactor containment building necessary to contain that water if a pipe burst and the water flashed to steam.

Molten salts would not be under pressure. If the pipes carrying the salts to the heat exchanger cracked, the salts wouldn't flash to steam, they'd freeze. Everything is different. But things you shouldn't need is the requirement ever to evacuate people in a 15 mile radius. An evacuation plan is required for every commercial reactor as part of the three year long approval process.

This would be a much much cheaper to build, cheaper to maintain, cheaper to operate much safer reactor.
 
human population sizes follows resources, not the other way around - if you use a magic gauntlet to kill off half the earth's population, the freed-up resources would lead to astronomical birth-rate, which in turn would make the earth as populated as before within the span of 2 generations.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
human population sizes follows resources, not the other way around - if you use a magic gauntlet to kill off half the earth's population, the freed-up resources would lead to astronomical birth-rate, which in turn would make the earth as populated as before within the span of 2 generations.
Click to expand...

We need a benevolent dictator, who will kill off half the population and ration resources for the survivors.
 
acbytesla said:
As I've been saying the money we'd be putting into it would be for designing, testing and writing regulations for a totally different kind of reactor.

A reactor, that would be smaller, simpler, inherently safer and wouldn't require expensive equipment and cooling infrastructure. No need for huge very thick pipes to carry 1500 PSI radioactive water from the reactor vessel to the heat exchangers. Or a ten foot thick concrete and steel reactor vessel cover. Or a huge sealed reactor containment building necessary to contain that water if a pipe burst and the water flashed to steam.

Molten salts would not be under pressure. If the pipes carrying the salts to the heat exchanger cracked, the salts wouldn't flash to steam, they'd freeze. Everything is different. But things you shouldn't need is the requirement ever to evacuate people in a 15 mile radius. An evacuation plan is required for every commercial reactor as part of the three year long approval process.

This would be a much much cheaper to build, cheaper to maintain, cheaper to operate much safer reactor.
Click to expand...

10 years to design and develop, 10 more to build and test full scale prototypes and another 10 to get to critical mass on production so it becomes a truly attractive option. That’s 30 years before such a technology could even start to make an impact. Even ignoring the fact that it would take decades to actually build enough of them to replace a large fraction of fossil fuels this is already to we’ll have passed the point of no return on climate before they even enter full scale production.
 
lomiller said:
10 years to design and develop, 10 more to build and test full scale prototypes and another 10 to get to critical mass on production so it becomes a truly attractive option. That’s 30 years before such a technology could even start to make an impact. Even ignoring the fact that it would take decades to actually build enough of them to replace a large fraction of fossil fuels this is already to we’ll have passed the point of no return on climate before they even enter full scale production.
Click to expand...

We've already passed the point of no return. Except that point keeps getting postponed for some reason. If I were a betting man, I'd wager it will get postponed again.
 
theprestige said:
We need a benevolent dictator, who will kill off half the population and ration resources for the survivors.
Click to expand...

Thanos-Nike.jpeg
 
acbytesla said:
As I've been saying the money we'd be putting into it would be for designing, testing and writing regulations for a totally different kind of reactor.
Click to expand...

Yeah but A) the developing costs will factor into the total costs and B) it's called "nuclear", which pretty much insures that people will freak out about it, forcing governments to impose ridiculous regulations that will up the costs.
 
Ziggurat said:
Not anymore. Many countries face decreasing populations even as resources expand.
Click to expand...

no.
It's just that the limiting resources have changed, from the bottom of the Pyramid of Needs to the top.
For potential parents in rich countries, good schools, child-compatible jobs and university scholarships are the so scares that they can only afford one child.
 
lomiller said:
10 years to design and develop, 10 more to build and test full scale prototypes and another 10 to get to critical mass on production so it becomes a truly attractive option. That’s 30 years before such a technology could even start to make an impact. Even ignoring the fact that it would take decades to actually build enough of them to replace a large fraction of fossil fuels this is already to we’ll have passed the point of no return on climate before they even enter full scale production.
Click to expand...

Here's the thing. It's been almost 50 years since the MSRE was terminated AND almost nothing has happened since.

However there are already designed full scale reactors. The Oak Ridge National laboratory designed one in 1970 after running the MSRE for 3 years. There are dozens of new designs that have been made since. What we need is for it to be greenlighted. In 10 years they can be building one 250 Mw reactor a week in a factory. We just have to get moving.
 
If X percent of the population thinks we have too many humans... I kind of feel like there's an easy solution to the problem.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
no.
It's just that the limiting resources have changed
Click to expand...

If the resources are only limiting because of social expectations, then they aren't actually limiting

For potential parents in rich countries, good schools, child-compatible jobs and university scholarships are the so scares that they can only afford one child.
Click to expand...

Those things are not any more scarce now than they were 30 years ago. They absolutely affect birth rates, but in the case of a hypothetical "snap", they would STILL suppress birth rates, because all of that stuff scales with population.
 
Okay but "the point of no return" isn't like... a real thing.

We can't have the fact that we're getting better at averting disaster thrown back in our face as evidence that there is no disaster to avert.

Yes the environmental movement has had more then it's fair share of "The Sky is Falling" moments. But as I keep having to point out the moral of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" was never "Wolves don't exist and never eat sheep."
 
JoeMorgue said:
Okay but "the point of no return" isn't like... a real thing.
Click to expand...

Take it up with lomiller.

lomiller said:
Even ignoring the fact that it would take decades to actually build enough of them to replace a large fraction of fossil fuels this is already to we’ll have passed the point of no return on climate before they even enter full scale production.
Click to expand...

I'm quite willing to accept the idea that there is no point of no return.

JoeMorgue said:
We can't have the fact that we're getting better at averting disaster thrown back in our face as evidence that there is no disaster to avert.
Click to expand...

That's not my point at all. Rather, there's two things I'm driviging at: first, we're very prone to overestimating the urgency of that disaster. Second, and this is actually the more important bit, predictions of imminent disaster should not stop us from pursuing advanced nuclear reactor designs, as lomiller seems to believe it should. Can we find common ground, at least on that second point?
 
acbytesla said:
Here's the thing. It's been almost 50 years since the MSRE was terminated AND almost nothing has happened since.

However there are already designed full scale reactors. The Oak Ridge National laboratory designed one in 1970 after running the MSRE for 3 years. There are dozens of new designs that have been made since. What we need is for it to be greenlighted. In 10 years they can be building one 250 Mw reactor a week in a factory. We just have to get moving.
Click to expand...

Experimental reactors and commercial designs are completely different things. AFAIK the earliest proof of concept MSR is at least 10 years away. From that point you still need extensive testing to really understand how it behaves and then more time to commercialize the final design. Once the deign is commercialized you’d need to build and deploy more than 50,000 of them. This just doesn’t fit the timeline for keeping warming below 2 degrees, and may not be fit the timeline for keeping warming below 6 deg.
 
Ziggurat said:
2006: 10 years
2007: 5 years
2009: 4 years
2017: only 3 years
2018: back up to 12 years

This isn't a comprehensive list, it's just a sample I was able to find with a quick search.
Click to expand...

LOL, so no facts at all just some articles in the popular media that you are not representing correctly, even if they had properly grasped the subject to begin with. About par for the course from your posting history.

Not everyone agrees it’s really safe but the general consensus in the scientific literature is that we need to warming to under 2 deg or we risk serious economic and humanitarian consequences. This is also when we start to get into unknown territory for tipping points and positive feedback that could drive temperatures much higher. To be confident of staying below this level we need to stay under ~450ppm atmospheric CO2.

At current emission rates we are set to hit this sometime around 2040. No credible source has ever said we’ve already hit these numbers, and your suggestion that “we have” is complete BS.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom