I think a lot of people are missing a key part of the energy systems conversation, which is storage. Daddy Musk has us believe the future lies in expensive, high-tech lithium-ion batteries.
Over 95% of global energy storage is in pumped-hydro facilities. They are anywhere from 70-87% efficient, compared to lithium-ion batteries at 80-90% efficient.
However they last a lot longer, are much easier to scale, and they don’t rely on extremely limited materials that only exist in certain places (Ugandan cobalt, right? Bolivian lithium? Oh and you probably haven’t heard about the colonialism of ‘Canadian’ uranium). Not to mention the extremely toxic battery factories.
Pumped-hydro storage is the future of energy storage, just as it’s the present. 95% of global energy storage haha, you can’t argue with the practicality of something like that. And you can just repurpose dead mines. All you do is fill them with water haha. It's not exactly an open-pit lithium mine
Which means that renewable energy generation systems like wind are viable alternatives to non-renewable nuclear energy. Because pumped-hydro can flatten the curve and help supply meet demand. And if we can do without the 500,000-year complexities of nuclear waste, we are ethically required to.
How does one create a warning sign explaining radiation to all the different possible peoples who will live here in 10,000 years, let alone 500,000 years? It's simply impossible. Just as is creating a storage facility guaranteed to self-maintain for that long.
This tbh. Also, you can totally make batteries without lithium, they're just not going to be as light. Which isn't really an issue for stationary storage. As an example, Nickel-Iron also has the advantage of not being flammable - which is kinda desirable for home applications anyway.
Edit: Also also, on extremely productive days in terms of renewable energy, you can just make hydrogen. Not the most efficient but that you can simply burn or turn back into electricity again.
There are fuel mixtures that dont create as much waste( not used now because we are using left over bombs from Russia)
Waste can be reprocessed and used as fuel (it's not done now bc it could theoretically be used for bombs)
The waste that is generated decays at different rates. One of the more dangerous materials cs137 has a half life of 30 years, so in 210 years all the cesium is gone (or it's at back ground radiation) plutonium has a half life of 24 million years, but if it's reprocessed it will be used as fuel and knocked apart into smaller elements that decay faster. This is why the fuel rods sit in pools for the first 10 years or so to decay after that they can be moved to dry cask storage.
It's not that much trash... An Americans life time radioactive waste (under current energy consumption) would fit in their hand.
The most dangerous part imo is the mining and not because of radiation. Because of heavy metal poisoning. My college had a nuclear reactor and I've touched low enriched uranium. It was normal metal. There are stories of people touching high enriched uranium and it's kinda warm.... The problem. Is it is like lead. It will fuck up your insides and kids. See what happened after dessert storm when they made munitions out of uranium or look at the deviation in the 4 corners region on the indians there.
The waste could be used energy. Probably not much tho. There are things called rtg ...radiation? Thermal generators which use thermoelectric ....magic to make energy but may not be worth it
There are different types of radiation. Some are worse then others. Nuclear engineers practice " the cookie test".
Four cookies made of radiation you have to eat one, put one in your pocket, hold one in your hand and throw the other across the room. Which do you do?
There is also amounts of radiation to take into account. For example as a person working with radiation I can take 5 REM a year for the rest of my life and most likely never get cancer from exposure to those sources. In fact I would also rather take that bargain and over the course of a 50 year career get 250 REM instead of getting CORONA once.
So most of the issues are weaponization. I wonder if that is likely to ever happen over the next, potentially, millions of years? Hahaha
Look, it's just dangerous. It's not a boogeyman, but it's not as safe as water. Or wind. Viable alternatives exist, I think they're a wiser choice overall. Nuclear made sense before we had good wind and solar, tech, maybe, but there's just no point now. Plus, whether we choose to remain nuclear or not, we'll run out of fuel some day. It's non-renewable.
You gotta envision all the crazy, horrendous shit people will do over the loong, long stretch, which is hard to do I think. You basically have to assume that every terrible thing that could happen, will, over those long time frames. We can't know, so we have to play it as safe as possible, imo. We'll probably have like 10 mad maxes and 10 civilizations in that time. Gotta cover all the future peoples' bases, while we can
That's dope. Nothing quite like that. It's like how bicycles are ~99% efficient; just one of those weird, archaic things you would never expect to work as well as it does.
Only thing I’d say is that it’s probably not that scalable for grid storage. Like, they would take a lot more resources per watt to make en masse than, say, a pumped-hydro reservoir. All you need is one pump and one turbine, basically.
That’s why batteries and things like that haven’t really become a part of grid storage. We just need to store a LOT of energy. Lithium-ion batteries are efficient, sure, but they just take so many resources and so much labour to make per watt of storage, that they just can’t compete with a big lake hahaha
So cool. My friend's dad has like an antique car that has one of these in it to save momentum energy when you're coasting/decelerating. Just such a wild concept haha
They also fail catastrophically if they snap. The biggest thing holding back flywheel storage is the danger of spinning something really really big, really really fast. Like if a flywheel that powers a building fails, and it can due to material weakness, it will take out the entire building. On a household scale, you don't want shrapnel flying around at more than 10000 RPM. For safety they're buried underground, and have other safety features to stop safely but that increases cost. I think they're mostly used for grid regulation.
I think they're mainly for short term regulatory storage, since they can be charged and discharged quickly. I don't think anyone wants to store an entire city's power in flywheels.
Well, Canada has been the world’s largest producer and exporter of uranium since the world started needing it, right? (in 2009 Kazahkstan overtook Canada)
There are lots of mines in Canada, though one really big one that is the main one, responsible for 75% of Canada’s uranium.
I don’t think it would surprise you to hear that the Indigenous peoples of those places weren’t consulted. Nor do they really benefit. And the mines both take up a lot of space and are quite toxic. And mines don’t really benefit local Indigenous peoples. They usually see actually no profit, maybe a few jobs that last as long as the short-lived mine.
And when the mines are empty, like most of them are at this point, they’re just abandoned hahaha as is. No cleanup of the toxic dangers. No efforts made to rehabilitate the ecosystem. The mining company just moves on to the next one.
So, almost unanimously, Indigenous peoples have fought against uranium mines. And who could blame them. They do nothing for the community, and they devastate the land, leaving behind a toxic legacy that will last for generation after generation.
But, the canadian government doesn’t respect that, obviously, despite being legally obligated to by the treaties. Instead, mining companies are given free license to show up, exploit, and leave again, over and over, and have done so since like the 1930s.
Now I believe all the uranium mining in Canada is exclusively in Saskatchewan, and mostly in the north. Basically, my issue with it is that it’s just exploitative and harms the land and the water that people rely on, all while benefiting basically no one who lives there, just the mining corporation, and inevitably leaving behind a toxic legacy.
Indigenous communities near these mines should be rich af off of royalties, but instead they get little to nothing and remote reserves are some of the hardest places on earth to live on. Some of the worst poverty and housing crises in Canada are on reserves that are like a half-hour drove to some of the richest uranium/diamond/what have you mines. It's mind boggling, colonial, and extremely fucked up. Like, I don't know if you know of Attawapiskat First Nation, but they have tonnes of problems of poverty, there's like 20 people per house in these super ramshackle homes.
Guess what's a one-hour drive from their reserve? Literally a De Beers diamond mind, reaping extreme profits while the community owns that land lives in extreme poverty. It's possibly the most localized extreme in economic inequality I know of, frankly. That is what mining in canada means. :af-heart:
edit: the province of ontario famously receives 0 dollars in royalties from De Beers for that mine, as well. One year ontario got a couple hundred bucks, I believe :gui:
There was this really powerful case like last year, where the local Indigenous community was giving its two cents in a consultation for a site to bury nuclear waste.
The local band council Chief said, publically, something along the lines of ‘you have to imagine how having this toxic radioactive waste under our feet will effect the mythology of people in the future, how people will relate to the land and the stories we’ll tell.’
They said it a lot better than that, but it was such a based, long-term-thinking perspective that was entirely different from the other voices in the room
Anyway, this story is utterly unique because, for whatever reason, the nuclear organization decided ‘we will not do this project without the consent of the Indigenous peoples of this place’.
I suspect it’s because they knew the long-term nature of a nuclear waste burial site, and they weren’t willing to deal with backlash in 100, or 1000 years when the power dynamics here are less colonized. So they wanted consent. My theory
Regardless, the Indigenous community voted and said no, obviously, so now I guess they’re going to go ask another First Nation somewhere else hahaha it was a really positive moment in terms of Indigenous people asserting their voice, though, and actually being heard. Felt like a turning point, to me anyway
I think a lot of people are missing a key part of the energy systems conversation, which is storage. Daddy Musk has us believe the future lies in expensive, high-tech lithium-ion batteries.
Over 95% of global energy storage is in pumped-hydro facilities. They are anywhere from 70-87% efficient, compared to lithium-ion batteries at 80-90% efficient.
However they last a lot longer, are much easier to scale, and they don’t rely on extremely limited materials that only exist in certain places (Ugandan cobalt, right? Bolivian lithium? Oh and you probably haven’t heard about the colonialism of ‘Canadian’ uranium). Not to mention the extremely toxic battery factories.
Pumped-hydro storage is the future of energy storage, just as it’s the present. 95% of global energy storage haha, you can’t argue with the practicality of something like that. And you can just repurpose dead mines. All you do is fill them with water haha. It's not exactly an open-pit lithium mine
Which means that renewable energy generation systems like wind are viable alternatives to non-renewable nuclear energy. Because pumped-hydro can flatten the curve and help supply meet demand. And if we can do without the 500,000-year complexities of nuclear waste, we are ethically required to.
How does one create a warning sign explaining radiation to all the different possible peoples who will live here in 10,000 years, let alone 500,000 years? It's simply impossible. Just as is creating a storage facility guaranteed to self-maintain for that long.
This tbh. Also, you can totally make batteries without lithium, they're just not going to be as light. Which isn't really an issue for stationary storage. As an example, Nickel-Iron also has the advantage of not being flammable - which is kinda desirable for home applications anyway.
Edit: Also also, on extremely productive days in terms of renewable energy, you can just make hydrogen. Not the most efficient but that you can simply burn or turn back into electricity again.
That's a disingenuous interpretation of radiation comrade
So it would be no big deal if someone found a spent fuel rod in 10,000 years? Maybe used it as a source of undying heat? Explain :)
There are fuel mixtures that dont create as much waste( not used now because we are using left over bombs from Russia)
Waste can be reprocessed and used as fuel (it's not done now bc it could theoretically be used for bombs)
The waste that is generated decays at different rates. One of the more dangerous materials cs137 has a half life of 30 years, so in 210 years all the cesium is gone (or it's at back ground radiation) plutonium has a half life of 24 million years, but if it's reprocessed it will be used as fuel and knocked apart into smaller elements that decay faster. This is why the fuel rods sit in pools for the first 10 years or so to decay after that they can be moved to dry cask storage.
It's not that much trash... An Americans life time radioactive waste (under current energy consumption) would fit in their hand.
The most dangerous part imo is the mining and not because of radiation. Because of heavy metal poisoning. My college had a nuclear reactor and I've touched low enriched uranium. It was normal metal. There are stories of people touching high enriched uranium and it's kinda warm.... The problem. Is it is like lead. It will fuck up your insides and kids. See what happened after dessert storm when they made munitions out of uranium or look at the deviation in the 4 corners region on the indians there.
The waste could be used energy. Probably not much tho. There are things called rtg ...radiation? Thermal generators which use thermoelectric ....magic to make energy but may not be worth it
There are different types of radiation. Some are worse then others. Nuclear engineers practice " the cookie test".
Four cookies made of radiation you have to eat one, put one in your pocket, hold one in your hand and throw the other across the room. Which do you do?
There is also amounts of radiation to take into account. For example as a person working with radiation I can take 5 REM a year for the rest of my life and most likely never get cancer from exposure to those sources. In fact I would also rather take that bargain and over the course of a 50 year career get 250 REM instead of getting CORONA once.
So most of the issues are weaponization. I wonder if that is likely to ever happen over the next, potentially, millions of years? Hahaha
Look, it's just dangerous. It's not a boogeyman, but it's not as safe as water. Or wind. Viable alternatives exist, I think they're a wiser choice overall. Nuclear made sense before we had good wind and solar, tech, maybe, but there's just no point now. Plus, whether we choose to remain nuclear or not, we'll run out of fuel some day. It's non-renewable.
You gotta envision all the crazy, horrendous shit people will do over the loong, long stretch, which is hard to do I think. You basically have to assume that every terrible thing that could happen, will, over those long time frames. We can't know, so we have to play it as safe as possible, imo. We'll probably have like 10 mad maxes and 10 civilizations in that time. Gotta cover all the future peoples' bases, while we can
(also: great post . )
Dessert Storm sounds like it would be the American version of the Great British Bake-Off
Am ingeneer can math...English harder
Low speed high stack flywheels are in the 99% range.
That's dope. Nothing quite like that. It's like how bicycles are ~99% efficient; just one of those weird, archaic things you would never expect to work as well as it does.
Only thing I’d say is that it’s probably not that scalable for grid storage. Like, they would take a lot more resources per watt to make en masse than, say, a pumped-hydro reservoir. All you need is one pump and one turbine, basically.
That’s why batteries and things like that haven’t really become a part of grid storage. We just need to store a LOT of energy. Lithium-ion batteries are efficient, sure, but they just take so many resources and so much labour to make per watt of storage, that they just can’t compete with a big lake hahaha
Wheels are already the common tech for overflow storage (which isn't the same as general storage, but proves the concept)
So cool. My friend's dad has like an antique car that has one of these in it to save momentum energy when you're coasting/decelerating. Just such a wild concept haha
They also fail catastrophically if they snap. The biggest thing holding back flywheel storage is the danger of spinning something really really big, really really fast. Like if a flywheel that powers a building fails, and it can due to material weakness, it will take out the entire building. On a household scale, you don't want shrapnel flying around at more than 10000 RPM. For safety they're buried underground, and have other safety features to stop safely but that increases cost. I think they're mostly used for grid regulation.
Flywheels are for grid level storage, which is the primary problem holding back renewable sustainables.
Still a lot less effective than just building a pellet reactor.
I think they're mainly for short term regulatory storage, since they can be charged and discharged quickly. I don't think anyone wants to store an entire city's power in flywheels.
Please inform me about this, I talking about nuclear power an hour ago and one of my friends used home grown uranium as a positive point.
Well, Canada has been the world’s largest producer and exporter of uranium since the world started needing it, right? (in 2009 Kazahkstan overtook Canada)
There are lots of mines in Canada, though one really big one that is the main one, responsible for 75% of Canada’s uranium.
I don’t think it would surprise you to hear that the Indigenous peoples of those places weren’t consulted. Nor do they really benefit. And the mines both take up a lot of space and are quite toxic. And mines don’t really benefit local Indigenous peoples. They usually see actually no profit, maybe a few jobs that last as long as the short-lived mine.
And when the mines are empty, like most of them are at this point, they’re just abandoned hahaha as is. No cleanup of the toxic dangers. No efforts made to rehabilitate the ecosystem. The mining company just moves on to the next one.
So, almost unanimously, Indigenous peoples have fought against uranium mines. And who could blame them. They do nothing for the community, and they devastate the land, leaving behind a toxic legacy that will last for generation after generation.
But, the canadian government doesn’t respect that, obviously, despite being legally obligated to by the treaties. Instead, mining companies are given free license to show up, exploit, and leave again, over and over, and have done so since like the 1930s.
Now I believe all the uranium mining in Canada is exclusively in Saskatchewan, and mostly in the north. Basically, my issue with it is that it’s just exploitative and harms the land and the water that people rely on, all while benefiting basically no one who lives there, just the mining corporation, and inevitably leaving behind a toxic legacy.
Indigenous communities near these mines should be rich af off of royalties, but instead they get little to nothing and remote reserves are some of the hardest places on earth to live on. Some of the worst poverty and housing crises in Canada are on reserves that are like a half-hour drove to some of the richest uranium/diamond/what have you mines. It's mind boggling, colonial, and extremely fucked up. Like, I don't know if you know of Attawapiskat First Nation, but they have tonnes of problems of poverty, there's like 20 people per house in these super ramshackle homes.
Guess what's a one-hour drive from their reserve? Literally a De Beers diamond mind, reaping extreme profits while the community owns that land lives in extreme poverty. It's possibly the most localized extreme in economic inequality I know of, frankly. That is what mining in canada means. :af-heart:
edit: the province of ontario famously receives 0 dollars in royalties from De Beers for that mine, as well. One year ontario got a couple hundred bucks, I believe :gui:
deleted by creator
There was this really powerful case like last year, where the local Indigenous community was giving its two cents in a consultation for a site to bury nuclear waste.
The local band council Chief said, publically, something along the lines of ‘you have to imagine how having this toxic radioactive waste under our feet will effect the mythology of people in the future, how people will relate to the land and the stories we’ll tell.’
They said it a lot better than that, but it was such a based, long-term-thinking perspective that was entirely different from the other voices in the room
Anyway, this story is utterly unique because, for whatever reason, the nuclear organization decided ‘we will not do this project without the consent of the Indigenous peoples of this place’.
I suspect it’s because they knew the long-term nature of a nuclear waste burial site, and they weren’t willing to deal with backlash in 100, or 1000 years when the power dynamics here are less colonized. So they wanted consent. My theory
Regardless, the Indigenous community voted and said no, obviously, so now I guess they’re going to go ask another First Nation somewhere else hahaha it was a really positive moment in terms of Indigenous people asserting their voice, though, and actually being heard. Felt like a turning point, to me anyway
deleted by creator
100%.
This is also the Australian situation (we also have the largest Thorium supply. got piles of the stuff in the slag from our Solar Panel silicon mines.