German company, Siemens, its wind subsidy bleeding money, enters the nuclear energy supply chain.

[NNadir]

This came in on one of my email news feeds:

Siemens Energy Poised to Partner with Oklo on Aurora Nuclear Reactor

Coal and Wind dependent Germany willfully destroyed its clean nuclear infrastructure as an expression of its contempt for climate change.

There is no evidence whatsoever from the official arm of the Government of changing this disastrous policy but apparently there are some Germans in industry who have an ounce of sense.

Excerpts from the full article:

Siemens Energy may be poised to become a crucial equipment and consulting partner for Oklo’s Aurora powerhouse, a liquid metal-cooled fast nuclear reactor.

A memorandum of understanding (MOU) Oklo unveiled on Dec. 19 designates Siemens Energy to become Oklo’s potentially preferred supplier for the rotating equipment in the conventional island of the Aurora powerhouse, including its steam turbine generators. Oklo noted the agreement would also position Siemens Energy to “provide consulting to support” the design and integration of the powerhouse’s conventional island.

For Oklo, the agreement marks a strategic partnership that allows the company to “secure an efficient, reliable, and scalable supply chain for converting that heat into power in our Oklo Aurora powerhouses,” said Alex Renner, senior director of Product at Oklo, in a statement.

Oklo’s Aurora Powerhouse is a vertically oriented compact passive fast-spectrum reactor derived from the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II) that uses liquid metal as a coolant. The company recently uprated its design’s capacity offerings to 15 MWe and 100 MWe. The compact fast reactor uses a high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU) metallic uranium-zirconium fuel enriched to about 19%...

...The potential contract signals new momentum for Siemens Energy’s foray into advanced nuclear power. Long before Siemens AG spun off its gas and power business in 2020, forming Siemens Energy, Siemens AG was a full-range nuclear power generation supplier with broad nuclear fuel experience. Under its 1969-founded Kraftwerk Union business (which was eventually reintegrated into Siemens in 1987), Siemens built Germany’s 17 nuclear power plants and supplied reactors to Argentina, Austria, and Brazil. In 2001, Siemens merged its nuclear activities with Framatome (to form Framatome ANP, later AREVA), but in 2009, Siemens announced it would sell its 34% in AREVA...

Siemens dirty gas and power spinoff is bleeding money owing to its financial waste case of its dirty wind industry:

Siemens Energy shares fall 40% after company seeks government help as wind-turbine woes threaten gas and power division

Excerpt:

Siemens Energy AG is in talks with the German government about securing as much as €16 billion ($16.9 billion) in state guarantees as problems at its wind-turbine unit spread to the rest of the business. Shares plummeted 40%.

The company is seeking backstops over a two-year period after major shareholder and former parent company Siemens AG indicated it was no longer willing to help, according to people familiar with the matter. The company said Thursday it’s also speaking to banks, and the government confirmed the talks.

Siemens Energy needs the guarantees to win new large-scale contracts to build transmission networks and gas turbines. While those units are profitable, they’re now threatened by the strain that the string of losses from the Gamesa wind unit is putting on the company’s balance sheet in what has become one of Germany’s biggest industrial debacles.

The guarantees have become crucial after the company earlier this year forecast a €4.5 billion loss for fiscal 2024 despite assurances it had finally come up with a plan to address problems with certain wind turbines. S&P in July downgraded it to BBB-minus with a stable outlook from BBB with a negative outlook...

This tentative move for Siemens Energy to consider switching to a position in clean and sustainable nuclear energy as opposed to the unsustainable gas/wind industry should be welcomed by anyone concerned with climate change. Of course, this, climate change, has nothing to do with Siemens Energy's investment in joining Oklo's supply chain; it's all about money, but if money moves away from gas and the gas and coal dependent wind industry, it is worthy of applause.

I trust that you will have a wonderful New Year.

[lapfog_1]

1. "an expression of its contempt for climate change."

I know people that work at Siemens... in fact for a few months I was an EIR at Siemens,

I don't think the backing wind or solar was an expression of Siemens's contempt for climate change. That is hyperbole that really goes too far in your unwavering support of nuclear as the ONLY solution ( but always leaving out the powering transportation issue ).

It's fine to advocate for nuclear if you like, but don't ascribe either evil or moronic motives to people who were trying to fill a market need with solutions that people want because of the actual dangers of human run fission power plants ( I can now recite the list of nuclear power accidents but we have gone through them all before, no one will live near Chernobyl in likely a 1000 years ).

I learned long ago to give people what they want rather than trying to dictate your preferred solution as to what they need. The best you can do is give them complete information and suggest the best choice... but using language to disparage the motives of other people ( especially when that motive is completely untrue) is simply counter productive to your case.

make people demand fission nuclear and the governments and industry will provide it, of that I can assure you.

[NNadir]

3. You are free to your opinion. The gas, and in Germany's case, coal dependent wind industry is in my opinion...

...an expression of contempt for climate change.

Everywhere.

Let's be clear on something, OK? The so called "renewable energy" industry was not developed or promoted to address climate change. To the extent that's now the claim, it's an after thought, a bullshit after thought. I experienced this here for probably the first 10 or so years, I wrote here. The advocates of this hair-brained solar and wind scheme with its grotesque land and mass requirements had very little interest in addressing fossil fuels but had a lot to say about nuclear energy, all of it stupid stuff about Chernobyl and then Fukushima.

Question: Which killed more people in Ukraine, radiation from Chernobyl or dangerous fossil fuel weapons utilized by fossil fuel King Putin, paid for with vast exports of oil, gas and coal to antinuke Germany?

It is widely reported, and happily believed, because it's a fact - facts matter - that carbon dioxide is the primary driver of climate change.

Here is the data on the carbon intensity of that coal dependent hellhole Germany over the last 12 months, reportedly covering the bulk of the year 2023, the year that much of the planet burned because of, um, climate change:



That number is 435 grams of CO₂/kWh of electricity.

The pop up window of the neighboring country, France, is also shown, 52 g CO₂/kWh.

Electricity Map, 12 month European data.

(France's would be better, but briefly, to the disgust of anyone serious about climate change as opposed to irrational radiation paranoia, France briefly under Holland drank the antinuke pro-climate change Koolaid. There is wind and gas junk in France.)

Now what might be the difference between 435 and 51? Any idea?

Germany shut 17 fully operation nuclear plants not because they killed anyone in Germany, of if they did, certainly not on the scale coal waste is killing people there now, and increased reliance on coal, in particular after they were embarrassed out of their long standing fondness for funding Vladimir Putin and his war machine.

Now people can lie to each other, or they can lie to themselves or they can do both. By contrast, numbers don't lie.

Have a Happy New Year.

[lapfog_1]

5. no one is currently dying in Chernobyl

well, except for a army division that were ordered to "dig in" in the red forest despite the local operators of Chernobyl TELLING the Russian soldiers that is was a very bad idea at the beginning of the current war. It has been reported that the troops suffered horrendous radiation burns and were taken away by buses leaving all their now contaminated equipment behind. No reports have emerged as to the fate of those Russian troops.

However, had the exclusion zone NOT been vacated after the accident, I hope you would agree that some percentage, likely high percentage of the people living within the exclusion zone would have died from radiation or cancer.

There is no statistics now on the increase of cancer rates in Belarus or the Baltic states or Finland and parts of Poland where the radiation fallout happened. I'm certain that some people died as a result. 100s more certainly, 1000s very likely, 10s of 1000s, quite possibly.

Fukushima was a much different accident, manned by competent nuclear power plant operators.. some of which still died most likely as a result of the accident. However, it was a very close run thing. And we still don't know the full effects of that accident, nor has Japan started to fetch the melted and very hot fuel rods at the bottom of the reactor(s).

But hey, convince the rest of the world that nuclear is the only way to save the planet ( and first you have to convince over half the world that it needs to be saved ) and you will get your wish. Nukes for everyone. You don't have to convince me that the world need saving. I know it does, probably far better than you. Unlike your constant railing for fission nukes, I already did my part in the struggle to convince people that climate change was real, that it was caused by humans, and mostly caused by our burning of fossil fuels. And not simply by posting screeds on a message board.

As for you constant condemnation of solar and wind as being wastes of money and time, you are welcome to your opinion. Again convince the world of the need for fission nuclear and the world will demand it. So far, your are not winning the argument.

"After more than 40 years, the U.S. has its first new nuclear reactor running in Waynesboro, Georgia. The completion of the new units at Plant Vogtle, is a huge milestone for nuclear energy in the United States. They are the first new reactors in decades."

The article says first, but I believe that a new unit went online some years ago in Tennessee too. In any event, 2 or maybe 3 new fission nuclear power plants in 40 years is not a record to crow about.

The other issue is one of time to come online. Rooftop solar can come online immediately, all that is needed is money to loan to people to buy it. Yes it probably has to be replaced every 10 years. Yes it will need batteries for night time or local generators ( side of the house or at the local power company, mostly natural gas ), but it would drop our consumption of fossil fuels immediately and by dramatic amounts. Sadly we gave away the construction of solar panels to China... but I understand their economy needs a boost now anyway. maybe we buy their solar panels IF they stop selling materials for war to Russia. Rooftop solar creates thousands of new jobs (mostly only lightly skilled) labor here in the USA? Er, what's that you say... 100s of thousands of out of work migrants at our border all looking for something to do, willing to work hard but few have skills? Hey there. What an idea. I love a solution that kills two birds with one stone and increases the governments tax revenue and feeds new immigrant families... all without taking a single job from union or non union labor.

But I guess we can wait another 10 to 15 years to construct, what, 200 new nuclear plants? 20 years... environmental impact statements, site planning, local feedback by people living, what, 10 mile radius from the plant. Could we build 100 plants in 20 years? Do we have the engineering talent to even do that? 5 nuke plants every year. I helped Teledyne Brown long time ago, pre NASA.. like right out of college. They designed Diablo Canyon. Used my companies Cray 1 to do the design work... Nastran / Patran G... I integrated the simulation pipeline for them... ran the batch job on the Cray 1, took the data directly to a Vax workstation to show the engineers the outcome of the structural steel reaction to seismic events. Really speeded up the planning... still took I think about 12 months just for the planning... I think 5 years from start of planning to operation. And, as I recall, they missed a fault line that goes right under the containment building. Fortunately, it is a fairly inactive fault. But as you must already know, no fault is ever completely dormant. I certainly hope the plant is closed before the "accident" happens. Can't just relocate a nuclear reactor. oh well.

Solar just doesn't have those issues. Something that I think you know but choose to ignore.

Rooftop Solar is not the do all end all panacea. but it doesn't require the use of sq miles of land that you postulate. It also doesn't require the use of dangerous electric grid. We in California have been paying the price for grid operations for over a decade now... massive forest fires from downed high tension electric transmission lines... hundreds of people killed, property damage in the billions. All avoided by just say "no" to grid connection. And don't forget all that CO2 emitted by burning 10s of thousands of acres of forest. The grid is not needed. All suburbs and rural homes should be off grid and use rooftop solar... preferably with batteries or ( my favorite ) large underground spinning cylinders of iron or steel, spun up when there is excess solar and used for electric generation when needed. No exotic metals, no toxic waste. Easy to build. Cheap.

of course my solution does not feed the corporate coffers with pay by the month electric rates forever and ever. So I am not likely to get corporate buy in. After all... in ten years the home owner gets free electricity until the panels or something fails... and we have to do it again. But modern panels can last up to 15 years now, possibly longer. And if people don't like the way they look, solar tiles for the roof are on the market now.

[NNadir]

6. I do NOT agree with this line of bullshit about the consequences of Chernobyl, including all the "ifs."

The scientific literature is very clear about radiation deaths connected with Chernobyl. If one looks in the scientific literature, as I do, one can immediately recognize the difference between mindless paranoia of badly educated people who know almost nothing about radiation except that they're terrified by it, and reality.

I have spent 20 years here listening to this paranoid bull. Not so long ago I started posting the death toll from antinukism from the scientific literature, one of the most respected medical journals in the world, Lancet.

I'll do it again.

It is here: Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (Lancet Volume 396, Issue 10258, 17–23 October 2020, Pages 1223-1249). This study is a huge undertaking and the list of authors from around the world is rather long. These studies are always open sourced; and I invite people who want to carry on about Fukushima to open it and search the word "radiation." It appears once. Radon, a side product brought to the surface by fracking while we all wait for the grand so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here and won't come, appears however: Household radon, from the decay of natural uranium, which has been cycling through the environment ever since oxygen appeared in the Earth's atmosphere.

Here is what it says about air pollution deaths in the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Survey, if one is too busy to open it oneself because one is too busy carrying on about Fukushima:

The top five risks for attributable deaths for females were high SBP (5·25 million [95% UI 4·49–6·00] deaths, or 20·3% [17·5–22·9] of all female deaths in 2019), dietary risks (3·48 million [2·78–4·37] deaths, or 13·5% [10·8–16·7] of all female deaths in 2019), high FPG (3·09 million [2·40–3·98] deaths, or 11·9% [9·4–15·3] of all female deaths in 2019), air pollution (2·92 million [2·53–3·33] deaths or 11·3% [10·0–12·6] of all female deaths in 2019), and high BMI (2·54 million [1·68–3·56] deaths or 9·8% [6·5–13·7] of all female deaths in 2019). For males, the top five risks differed slightly. In 2019, the leading Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths globally in males was tobacco (smoked, second-hand, and chewing), which accounted for 6·56 million (95% UI 6·02–7·10) deaths (21·4% [20·5–22·3] of all male deaths in 2019), followed by high SBP, which accounted for 5·60 million (4·90–6·29) deaths (18·2% [16·2–20·1] of all male deaths in 2019). The third largest Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths among males in 2019 was dietary risks (4·47 million [3·65–5·45] deaths, or 14·6% [12·0–17·6] of all male deaths in 2019) followed by air pollution (ambient particulate matter and ambient ozone pollution, accounting for 3·75 million [3·31–4·24] deaths (12·2% [11·0–13·4] of all male deaths in 2019), and then high FPG (3·14 million [2·70–4·34] deaths, or 11·1% [8·9–14·1] of all male deaths in 2019).

That's 7 million deaths per year roughly from antinukism, the nature and mechanism of this death toll being a point made in another scientific publication co-authored by one of the world's most respected climate scientists:

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

The Lancet figures suggest that in the nearly 38 years since fools started carrying on about Chernobyl without giving a rat's ass about how many people died from their popular ignorance leading to a vast death toll from fossil fuel waste, aka climate change - and we haven't even begun to discuss the other area about which antinukes couldn't care less, climate change, a number approaching 250 million people, a quarter of a billion people, more than 5 times the total population of Ukraine have died from air pollution.

I have never met or heard from an antinuke with a sense of decency. At long last, they have no such sense.

Now.

The commercial nuclear industry is approaching 70 years old. In the next eight hours, about 6500 people will die from air pollution that results directly from antinukism. I challenge any and all antinukes to show that in its 70 year history, commercial nuclear power has killed as will die from air pollution in the next eight hours. Should one of them find such credible evidence, we can move the figure to ten hours, 8000 deaths, or twenty-four, 19,000 deaths.

Only reputable sources can be respected; to me these are references to the scientific literature, in which, by the way, I live my life.

Oh, and by the way, as for the speed of this wind and solar crap, all of which will be landfill before today's toddlers graduate college, this in a world ravaged by climate change, the unit of energy is the Exajoule (EJ). Solar and wind, in an atmosphere of mindless cheering, after soaking up more than 3 trillion dollars in the period between 2004 and 2019, with vastly worse squandering going on now because of public stupidity and credulousness, has never, not once, approached the nearly 30 EJ of energy nuclear has been producing annually for decades in an atmosphere of vituperation by people who know nothing at all about nuclear energy except that they hate it.

The numbers are here: 2023 World Energy Outlook published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), Table A.1a on Page 264.



The sums squandered on this reactionary "renewable energy fantasy:"

Source: UNEP/Bloomberg: Global Trends in Renewable Energy.

I manually entered the figures in the bar graph in figure 8 to see how much money we've thrown at this destructive affectation since 2004 (up to 2019): It works out to 3.2633 trillion dollars, more than President Biden has wisely recommended for the improvement of all infrastructure in the entire United States.

I don't need a lecture on nuclear energy from any antinuke here. Long experience with them only confirms my very low opinion of their levels of education. I open scientific papers and books. I don't hide under my bed worrying that an atom of tritium might enter my brain.

828 Underground Nuclear Tests, Plutonium Migration in Nevada, Dunning, Kruger, Strawmen, and Tunnels

I know the numbers, because I've spent decades, long hours in major academic libraries, and I'm immune to chanted dogma.

Once again: People lie, to themselves and to each other but numbers don't lie.

My son is working on a Ph.D. in a laboratory dedicated to studying the metallurgy of 3D printed reactor cores. These have already been demonstrated at Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

The people doing this are not interested in the mentally mottled musings of antinukes carrying on about Chernobyl nearly 40 years ago. They don't have time for addressing the appalling and deadly selective attention of tiresome chanting antinukes. They're busy trying to save the world.

They will print reactors, on assembly lines to save what is left to be saved from ignorance, and to restore what can be restored that ignorance has destroyed.

Nuclear energy does not need to be risk free to be vastly superior to everything else. It only needs to be vastly superior to everything else, which they are.

Have a happy New Year.

[lapfog_1]

7. you understand that a table of numbers projecting forward mean absolutely nothing.

Last edited Fri Dec 29, 2023, 01:21 AM - Edit history (1)

at the very top of your "gotcha" chart is the phrase "Stated Policies Scenario". In other words, well if we don't change anything, this is what they predict for the future.

I am not suggesting a stay the course. Neither are you.

So any number in that chart past what was recorded already is complete bullshit.

But to such a highly educated person as yourself, I expect you really do know that. Just like you actually understand the dangers of radiation and of toxic materials made in fission reactions. If you don't and you work in the nuclear industry and have a chemistry background... then I am at a loss as to what to say to you.

As for manufactured nuclear reactors. An interesting idea. But one that has not been put into production. BTW, I have also consulted ORNL, LANL, LLNL, and LBNL on many topics. They seek me out for my knowledge on simulation. My job at NASA had the title "Chief Scientist" and I worked at the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation Facility or NAS. The main purpose of the DOE is the nuclear weapon stockpile and ensuring we know what will happen if we need to use a 20 year old warhead WITHOUT testing it (either in the atmosphere, which we stopped long long ago because of nuclear fallout, or underground testing). The only remaining option was simulation. All four labs ( plus a couple of others ) have this as the primary mission. If we elect compete idiot republicans, because they think the DOE is involved in oil production, they would defund the DOE and we lose our deterrent for nuclear war.

The Department of Energy has very little to do with energy production for domestic use. Not to say they don't propose things occasionally, and they don't do other pressing need projects ( like looking at the structure of the COVID virus to determine how best to create both vaccines and to treat the virus once someone is infected past the trained immune system to fight the virus ). But their primary goal is the nuclear weapons stockpile.

I don't dismiss you as an educated person. I am confident in my own education and intelligence ( despite you insinuations to contrary). I am happy to compare resumes anytime. But I don't need your affirmation. I just disagree with your seemingly singular focus on one solution to climate change. One that the public, so far, does not want.

But keep trying, maybe someday you will convince enough people so they demand nuke plants everywhere. If you do convince enough people, the industry and the government will answer the demands of the people. At least we hope they will.

Let me concede one thing that should make you a little happy.

We need to bend the curve on oil, coal, and natural gas consumption... radically and soon. We are now 20 years too late. My work in simulating global warming at NASA for the DAO and the EOS programs with the actual climate scientists at NASA Goddard convinced me long before Al Gore's book and movie. In fact my work for those scientists allowed them to convince VP Gore (the head of NASA when I was there as in the NASA administrator reported to then VP Gore). We captured the data from the satellites and put it on our super computers to create the simulation models that projected the future. One that we are now seeing (sadly).

If solving the issue can be done with nuclear power plants... fine. We MUST solve it. The earth will be fine with PPM of whatever... but 8 billion people will not be ok.

In fact, if we did BOTH proposals... solar and nuclear, I would be fine with that too. Even if one is waste of money and the other leads inevitably to more human errors and resulting exclusion zones. You see, I just DO NOT trust people to operate nuclear plants safely. Based on evidence of our inability to do so in the past. Just like the space flights that we also simulated with the space shuttle. Only those mistakes only killed one of my friends that had an office down the corridor from me. Or the Osprey we simulated that is still killing marines that fly on them. Spaceflight in inherently dangerous... and my co-worker knew that when she joined the astronaut corps. Doesn't make it any easier.

[NNadir]

10. Of course numbers are meaningless to antinukes.

Last edited Fri Dec 29, 2023, 01:29 PM - Edit history (1)

They are anti-science people, the ethical and moral equivalents of antivaxxers, although antivaxxers have never come close to killing as many people as antinukes kill. On its worst day, Covid never came close to killing the 19,000 people that air pollution kills every day, and has been doing so for decades, not years or months.

I am disinterested in comparing resumes with antinukes, all of whom demonstrate their educational level with respect to nuclear energy every time they type their nonsense into a post. My writings speak for themselves, as do theirs. I'm not a boyfriend or girlfriend with antinukes here or elsewhere. To me 100% of them are people advocating for killing people with air pollution. I have no use for them whatsoever. Where nuclear issues are concerned they all strike me as uneducated idiots.

One does not need a high level of education to note that after the expenditure of trillions of dollars on solar energy it has done nothing to address climate change. Zero. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

As of this writing, the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere is 49.67 ppm higher than when I joined DU in November of 2002.

Week beginning on December 17, 2023: 422.24 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 419.05 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 397.72 ppm
Last updated: December 29, 2023

Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa

If one cannot see that in the period that trillions of dollars were squandered on solar and wind energy in the 21^st century that the rate of degradation of the planetary atmosphere from accumulation of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide has accelerated from approximately 1.5 ppm yr^-1 in the year 2000 to around 2.4 ppm yr^-1 in 2023, as one can see from running averages, and one wishes to report that one is a data scientist, I'm unimpressed with the demonstrated level of competence as a data scientist.

As for Al Gore, I voted for him three times in positions of increasing responsibility. He predicted that solar and wind could be built faster than nuclear energy. He was wrong.

Numbers don't lie.

Antinukes here and elsewhere like to whine about the 30 billion dollar costs of the two Vogtle reactors, after having spent decades whining about nuclear energy and leading, owing to the adoption of their stupidity and ignorance into policy, the destruction of nuclear energy manufacturing infrastructure. I often use the metaphor of comparing to them to arsonists complaining about forest fires.

When the nuclear manufacturing infrastructure in this country was functional, the United States built more than 100 commercial nuclear reactors in about 25 years while providing the lowest cost electricity in the industrial world. All of those plants were gifts from an earlier generation to mine. Now I am told that what has already happened is impossible.

Now our modern head-up-the ass selfish bourgeois airheads are uninterested in future generations. The Vogtle reactors will be providing electricity to the grid as the 22^nd century approaches, assuming (as one might question) the putrid purveyors of antinukism don't succeed, as they have been doing, in causing the collapse of civilization because of their mindless selective attention. The people using that power will not give a rat's ass what this gift to their generation by our generation, otherwise so parsimonious with respect to those types of gifts, cost.

For 3 trillion dollars, the amount squandered on solar and wind junk between 2004 and 2019, all of which will be waste liabilities "by 2050" in the language of magical soothsaying put forth by advocates of so called "renewable energy" for the outbreak of an antinuke so called "renewable energy" nirvana - since one didn't appear as predicted by the same set of chanting fools "by 2020" - at a 30 billion price tag for two reactors, we could have built twice as many Vogtle type reactors as the nuclear reactors that now function in the United States. Of course, if we built 200 reactors, a nuclear manufacturing infrastructure would exist, and reactors would not have a price tag of 15 billion dollars each.

As for the criticism of national labs and the commercialization of their output, all of the more than 440 reactors that exist on this planet, with close to 60 now under construction by countries that did not destroy their manufacturing infrastructure in a pean to stupidity, are the result of work conducted in National Labs, originally Oak Ridge, under the direction of Alvin Weinberg, with other labs ultimately pitching in. (When my son began his Ph.D. program in nuclear engineering, I suggested he steal my copy of Weinberg's book, which he did, because the book is all about nuclear creativity.)

We don't need solar and wind. They are useless. The reactionary impulse to make energy supplies on the weather at precisely the time we have destabilized the weather ignores the fact that dependence on the weather of energy supplies was abandoned beginning in the early 19^th century for a reason. Solar and wind are a waste of money, but more importantly, land and material resources. They are wholly and totally dependent on access to dangerous fossil fuels. (If one looks at the data found at CAISO website , which I check regularly, one can see that all of the wind turbines in California, spread over about 1500 square miles, failed in the period between 12/10/2023 and up to the time of this writing on12/29/2023 to produce as much power as Diablo Canyon was producing on a 12 acre footprint.) All the wasteful bull crap about energy storage - on which even more money is being squandered - this all in contempt of the 2nd law of thermodynamics - has not made, and is not making, and will not make so called "renewable energy" work. It will only do what it is doing, making things worse. All that all of this mindless rhetoric and soothsaying about so called "renewable energy" has done is to entrench the use of fossil fuels.

Have a happy New Year.

[lapfog_1]

12. too bad you are so warped in your hatred

comparing someone that opposes fission nuclear energy to an anti-vaxxer... whatever.

as for the energy storage problem, which you claim is another waste of resources. You do understand that nuclear produces steam that then drives turbines which generate electricity, right? And many applications we need energy to be mobile, right? How do you propose to, idk, say drive a car or truck or train with nuclear without some way of storing the electricity produced by the hundreds of fission nuke plants? Overhead power lines on every highway and road? somehow make tiny nuclear devices to build into every vehicle that either creates steam to propel the vehicle or electricity from the steam? Or maybe you think hydrogen is the answer... or we just leave transportation to fossil fuels? Now that is some magical thinking right there. How is that hydrogen economy coming along? I wonder just how much we have spent of fuel cells and HICE research. Not saying renewables are much different than nuclear in this regard, but energy storage is needed if we are to stop using fossil fuels.

Or perhaps you maybe thinking of a variation of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft

Can't imagine why this sound idea wasn't continued. Must be all those stupid anti-nuke people.


Shout all you want about how stupid the rest of humanity is... it's not winning your argument. And if you really cared about climate change ( which, obviously, you really DO NOT ), you would realize that you need to convince people rather than lecturing them using outdated "facts" and cherry picked results. Telling them they don't know anything is counter-productive.

You voted for Al Gore. I actually sat in meetings with him. He was not wrong. He should have been President.

Whatever.

Your son has a PhD in nuclear engineering... He will have a job... figuring out what to do with all the contaminated nuclear power plants when they are decommissioned ( as the fleet of plants built in the 1960s and 1970s is destined for the scrap heap ). In a few short years ( 6 now, right ), he can start with that 12 acre Diablo Canyon site.

[NNadir]

16. Um...um...um...I understand that you're involved in data, as a consultant to National Laboratories, no?

I would assume therefore that you, like me, have full access to the scientific literature.

My son does as well.

I asked, only to be ignored, for evidence that commercial nuclear energy has killed, in its 70 year history, as many people as will die today from air pollution, based on the figures for the open sourced Lancet paper I linked, 19,000 people roughly daily.

Perhaps you can give some backing to the claim that used reactor cores will kill 19,000 people per day like fossil fuels do.

Lots of airheads complain about so called "nuclear waste," without ever, not even once, showing that its storage over many decades has killed as many people will die from the failure to store fossil fuel waste (aka air pollution) in the next two hours, about 1800 people.

Personally, I think those reactor cores made of steel would make excellent materials for plutonium/iron eutectics, but that's besides the point.

Please offer a reasonable estimate of the maximum radiation exposure these cores will generate in any human being anywhere at any time.

Once again, I feel compelled to refer to my post on the migration of radionuclides in known observable and measurable settings currently available: 828 Underground Nuclear Tests, Plutonium Migration in Nevada, Dunning, Kruger, Strawmen, and Tunnels.

I really couldn't care less if you met Al Gore. The 15 Exajoules produced by Solar and Wind in 2022 compared to the 29 Exajoules nuclear produced in the same year is abundantly clear, the former in an atmosphere of mindless cheering and vast subsidies, the latter in an atmosphere of vituperation and vague appeals to risk not supported by demonstrable observation validating that risk.

Is 29 greater than 15, or am I missing something?

I met Freeman Dyson, and spent three hours chatting with him in the presence of my sons. I have a picture of us together in my office. That doesn't make qualified for anything connected with public policy or for that matter, scientific issues.

Now any fool knows that Al Gore would have been a fine President, vastly superior to the moral Lilliputian installed by the Supreme Court in his place, and perhaps he might have come to his senses about nuclear energy as his father, Al Gore Senior, was as a Senator, a strong supporter of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and nuclear energy.

But he was wrong about whether it would be faster to build wind and solar junk or to build nuclear reactors. If as President, that were his policy, it would have been poor policy.

Joe Biden is a fine President, possibly under the circumstances, one of the finest of my long lifetime, but I do not consider any Democratic politician, including those I support - and basically I support all of them - to be oracular and immune to making mistakes. Joe Biden's support for solar and wind is a mistake; his active support for nuclear energy is not. Saying that politicians are immune to mistakes, that they are oracular, is an exercise in the easily discredited "Appeal to Authority" logical fallacy.

Appeal to Unqualified Authority

The Appeal to Unqualified Authority may look like a Legitimate Appeal to Authority, but it is not. The "authority" in this case may be giving advice or testimony that is outside of their realm of expertise, such as a person who suffers from a disease testifying about the causes of that ailment even though they are not a doctor, or even a doctor testifying about a medical issue that is actually outside of their specialty or area of expertise.

I'll leave appeals to unqualified authority to the Trumpers, thank you.

(Jimmy Carter made a huge mistake in not advancing nuclear fuel recycling, despite claims he was a "nuclear engineer," which was not actually true.)

I am aware, by the way, that nuclear plants are largely Rankine devices, as are most of the gas plants (with the exception of combined cycle plants). However as high temperature devices they are readily adaptable to process intensification, and thus increased exergy recovery, something I frequently discuss with my son and about which I've written a number of posts here. In this case, electricity would be a side product, not the main product.

But no matter.

For a data scientist raising specious issues, be they Fukushima, Chernobyl, the time to build nuclear power plants vs wind and solar junk, or the putative death toll from the disposal of reactor cores, nuclear waste or any other of the bullshit they raise, it should be easy to show, from reputable sources, that commercial nuclear energy has led to as many deaths as will occur in the next several hours - choose any number of hours from six hours up to and including forty-eight hours - in its nearly 70 year history as will be killed by the unrestricted release of dangerous fossil fuel waste directly into the environment. The death toll from fossil fuel waste, aka "air pollution," again, by appeal to the reference Lancet publication I referenced above is around 750-800 people an hour. Feel free to include Fukushima and Chernobyl, the big bogeyman in which antinukes like to wallow while the planet burns.

I ask this question repeatedly of people handing out antinuke specious rhetoric, but it seems they always change the subject.

It's obvious why that is. The data doesn't exist.

Again the question is not whether nuclear energy is or should be risk free. Clearly it isn't. It is merely risk minimized. Again, it does not need to be risk free to be better than everything else. I repeat the tautology: It only needs to be better than everything else, which it is.

As for expressions of hatred, hatred is a very strong word, but I will confess that I hold no small measure of contempt for people whose knowledge of scientific issues are limited by selective attention, be they antivaxxers, antiGMOs or antinukes. The most deadly of the three are the antinukes; air pollution has killed close to 90 million people in all the years they've been whining here and elsewhere about the destruction of the Fukushima reactors by the same natural disaster event that destroyed a coastal city, a tsunami.

I have yet to hear an antinuke calling for the phase out of coastal cities, although their rhetoric and its application will surely make many coastal cities uninhabitable. It's called climate change, a disaster far beyond the scale of Chernobyl or any other bullshit antinukes love to hype. By the way, which caused more deaths at Fukushima, seawater or radiation? Surely a data scientist can access that information from a reputable source.

Here's one I've accessed for example: Motohiro Tsuboi et al 2022 J. Radiol. Prot. 42 031502 Feel free to post references refuting the findings.

Have a happy New Year.

[hunter]

8. People would be moving back to Chernobyl exclusion zone now if not for the war.

And they wouldn't be any worse off health-wise than the would be if they moved to places grossly contaminated with fossil fuel wastes and other non-radioactive pollutants.

There are millions of people, for example, living in places where they have to breathe high concentrations of coal smoke and diesel exhaust.

I'm not saying that anyone should live in the exclusion zone, or that everything is fine, only that people have and will live in the exclusion zone and it hasn't been "a 1,000 years."

Here's an article from 2018:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/moving_to_Chernobyl

[lapfog_1]

9. sure they would, so long as they didn't dig in the dirt there

or farm there.

like the division of Russians found out when they dug trenches in the red forest.

what happened to those guys anyway?

oh right...

"What happened to the Russian soldiers who dug trenches in Chernobyl?
Employees of the Chernobyl nuclear plant say Russian soldiers showed signs of radiation poisoning during their occupation. They say some developed huge blisters and were vomiting after ignoring warnings about digging trenches in radioactive soil.Jun 6, 2023"

Did Russian troops dig in in the Red Forest?
Russian Troops Sick From Camping in Chernobyl Radioactive Forest
April 28 photo of Russian entrenchments found dug into the highly irradiated Red Forest near Chernobyl. If that were not enough, Russia's Chernobyl garrison was apparently hungry and went hunting and fishing around the Exclusion Zone.May 3, 2023

How Long Will It Take For Ground Radiation To Break Down At Chernobyl?
On average, the response to when Chernobyl and, by extension, Pripyat will be habitable again is about 20,000 years.Jul 31, 2023

----

I am giving that an pass by 19,000 years or 20 times too pessimistic.

However if it is 20,000 years... you need to understand that this is longer than by a factor of 2 than ALL of recorded human history. The chances that we can communicate with humans even a thousand years into the future about staying away from Chernobyl are slim to none.

Edit to add -
How long can you stay in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone?
There are two exclusion zones in Chernobyl; a 10km inner and 30km outer Exclusion Zone. It is safe to stay in the outer Exclusion Zone overnight. There is a small hotel in Chernobyl town where our trips spend the night.

How long will the Chernobyl exclusion zone last?
Scientists have previously said, due to the huge amount of contamination in the Chernobyl area, the exclusion zone will not be habitable for many, many years. Experts have said it will be at least 3,000 years for the area to become safe, while others believe this is too optimistic.Oct 14, 2022

[hunter]

11. The Russian soldiers who walked away from that radiation exposure are probably dead now...

... killed by bullets, missiles, and the other hazards of modern warfare.

But all these speculations get us nowhere. There's little or no signal in the noise, and a great many people who seem to be disappointed that the accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima, though horrible and expensive to clean up, didn't live up to their apocalyptic expectations.

Many non-nuclear environmental disasters have been much, much worse, especially the big one, which is global warming. Global warming is already killing people and it's only going to get worse.

Personally, I don't see a lot of difference between radioactive and non-radioactive toxins. Many of the worst non-radioactive toxins have a "half life" of forever but our society tends to ignore them because they are so familiar and not so easily detectable as caesium-137.

[lapfog_1]

13. nope.. the soldiers that were taken away in ambulances and buses

have either been hospitalized and being treated for radiation sickness or died from it.

except in few cases they have not been returned to the Russian front lines.

Their equipment is still in the red forest and will likely be there for the next few centuries. Just like the slowly decaying town.

People are not going to move into the exclusion zone anytime soon, as you wildly speculated about. I will listen to the experts.

I am certainly NOT disappointed in the result of the accidents... I don't want to live in a "more" radioactive world. The accidents were bad enough. How many such accidents need to happen?

Most non-MAGA people agree that Global Warming needs to be solved. I think it needs to be reversed. As I have posted on this thread, I've done way more on global warming than anyone else on DU. But I haven't solved the problem or come up with an acceptable solution. Not my field. I just don't think fission nuclear is the right solution. Doesn't mean we shouldn't do it, but we should continue with other paths as well. None of the energy solutions will reverse what has already happened in the last 20 to 30 years. So, yes, millions will continue to die.

I view "earth atmospheric chemistry" like an acid/base high school chemistry experiment. There is a titration point, add just a few drops and wham, the entire test tube changes color. I hope we have not yet hit that point with the earth, but I fear that we have.

[hunter]

15. Well then, there's nothing to be done. Billions of people will suffer and die.

May as well keep drilling for gas to support our feel-good wind and solar power follies.

Back in the early 'eighties (as I recall without digging my notes out of storage) environmentalist David Brower was promoting this idea of a gas fueled power grid which would be much better than the coal and oil fueled power grids of the time. (The big California power plants were still powered by oil then.) This would be supplemented by wind and solar power, and even existing nuclear plants would be converted to gas. (My anti-nuclear activist partner-in-crime at the time was a big advocate of those sorts of conversions...) Solar and wind power would be important too.

That vision has come to fruition mostly. There is now a national gas grid and gas power plants are indeed replacing oil and coal fired power plants in many places. Nuclear power plants have been shut down, replaced by gas power plants.

That system was supposed to be transitional too -- the fossil fuel gas in the pipelines to be gradually replaced by bio-gas and other supposedly clean synthetic sources of methane. That did not come to pass.

Forty years later we now have plenty of real world operating experience with gigawatt scale wind, solar, and energy storage systems. It's absolutely clear to me now that these systems cannot displace fossil fuels entirely, which is something we must do.

Hybrid gas / wind / solar power systems will not "save the world." They won't even stop our ever-increasing increasing consumption of fossil fuels as living standards in most of the world continue to improve.

I don't look forward to a world where billions of people suffer and die because of climate change or lack of access to high density energy resources.

[GiqueCee]

2. Maybe it's just me...

... but I find phrases like "dirty wind industry" to be counter-intuitive, to put it mildly. "Clean and sustainable nuclear energy"? The Fortune article offers little in the way of context to help the reader understand how wind energy can be called dirty. unless, of course, the entire story is nothing more than a heavy-handed puff piece to promote nuclear energy.
"Coal and Wind dependent Germany willfully destroyed its clean nuclear infrastructure as an expression of its contempt for climate change." "Contempt for climate change," huh. The "Power" article by Sonal Patel is just as brazen in it's apparent contempt for honest journalism.

[NNadir]

4. The designation of the wind industry as dirty is my opinion based on the numbers as opposed to dogma.

There is lip service and there are outcomes.

There are people, for example, who give lip service to the teachings of Jesus, with the outcome that they support fascists.

Of course the Germans give lip service to giving a shit about climate change. However the results of their policy are unambiguous.

The numbers are in post #3.

[hunter]

14. When the $11bn SunZia project goes bust it'll probably be the end of this latest wind power boom.

https://electrek.co/2023/12/28/largest-clean-energy-project-us-sunzia/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SunZia_Wind_and_Transmission

I recall the Zond Enron wind energy boom. Here in California there are still many acres of rotting wind farms that have yet to be cleaned up.