Posted on 03/30/2021 7:13:55 AM PDT by DIRTYSECRET
"Chernobyl," HBO's five-part mini-series about the 1986 disaster at a Soviet atomic reactor. This film is reasonably accurate historically, well worth watching, and horrifying. Don't watch it right before bedtime! One expert in the film comments that atomic power is wonderful ... when working normally. It emits no heat-trapping carbon dioxide and generates large amounts of electricity. The film, however, depicts the tremendous dangers when something goes wrong. This disaster resulted from reactor operators' mistakes combined with a design fault in the reactor. It rendered the city of Chernobyl and around 1,100 square miles of surrounding land uninhabitable for centuries. But it was nearly much worse, potentially depopulating all of Europe. Drastic actions organized by the Soviet government prevented total disaster, but shortened or destroyed the lives of many workers sent onto the highly radioactive reactor to minimize the damage it would cause. Modern civilization requires lots of energy, all sources of which have costs and risks. But energy sources don't all have the same level of risks. The Chernobyl disaster suggests that atomic power is neck and neck with hydrocarbon fuels — coal, oil, natural gas — as prime threats to the human race. To protect ourselves from a runaway climate we must phase out hydrocarbon fuels as soon as possible. To avoid massive reliance on atomic energy, the obvious replacement is the fusion reactor only 93,000,000 miles from earth — the sun.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
the future is mini-grids....less transmission (including some wireless), and yes, even some renewables (like hydro) which can be immediately profitable with bitcoin mining at the point of production, and continuing advances in storage
the same old motivations will govern how quickly the future comes to us....supply and demand, profit, etc.
sadly, the more government distorts markets, the less sustainable development there will be
If you wanted to design and operate a nuclear reactor to produce an intentional massive failure you would do exactly what the Russians did.
To protect ourselves from a runaway climate …Already decided that this guy is a hack.
“It rendered the city of Chernobyl and around 1,100 square miles of surrounding land uninhabitable for centuries”
If that were really true, then how come the natural life at and around Chernoble has recovered so well at this time. Is it only that officials could not tell the plants and animals to leave?
Lastly, new modern small safe nuclear power plant designs place the Chernoble plant in the kindergarten of nuclear power age.
In other words the authors no very little about nuclear power and even not enough about Chernoble, what it was and what it was not.
Political science:
1. Apply utopian thinking to fix what is not broken.
2. Wreak havoc through unreliability of utopian plan.
3. Oppose any solution to 2. that does not require more world government.
4. Rinse and repeat.
I saw a statistic that pointed out that per unit of energy generated, nuclear has by far the lowest death rate of any energy source.
That includes mining and processing, but also accidents and deaths by pollution
Decentralization, subsidiarity, local control. Is it any wonder that the political "scientists" are pushing a world grid to head that off?
Hey, a billion here a billion there right pedo joe. Example:
Butt, I hear that the current owners would like to see if they can power up some day. Better hurry. Our NevaDUH legislators have put it into law that we must have 50% renewables by 2030 and 100% by 2050. Consequences of NOT meeting that? Who knows? Planet explodes? We’ll all paraboil to death?
Its a hoax for political control.
Wind nor Solar Power are economically or geographically feasible.
But it doesn't matter, anyway. The elites want reliable electricity taken away from the masses, and they have MILLIONS of people believing that "renewable" energy is what they should do. Let this civilization burn down, as all others before have done.
My evaluation is more in line with the land resources that are needed but it is good to factor that the size of the grid may be a variable to add to the mix. And if the grid extends from darkness (night ) to daylight (day somewhere else) then it is possible but this is a lot of transmission line, Is not copper wire also a commodity we will run out of?
As a safety engineer I realize that the issue of cost and risk benefit analysis can show that we can have safe nuclear power, and it will not take more surface area than we currently devote to fossil fuels plants. Also we can and must plan for a few human errors since people will always be
able to foul things up a bit.
So there is an analysis that can be done for the world, but it has not been done to date. For my money I would bet on small fission reactors and enhanced safety design. I have no problem with the rest of the concerns being taken care of using economic market forces.
I’m certainly not a nuclear engineer, but I have read descriptions that said the Russian reactor was literally running in a common cement building/ warehouse, with no containment or safety systems whatsoever.
But an atomic backup means less transmission costs and loss to contend with. And with the coming mini-ice age (both poles creating record ice now), they’ll be real handy when a volcano takes the sun out of the sky ...
The concept of Peak Load vs Base Load and storage of Green Energy from Solar Cells and Wind Mills just escapes many people. When 40% of of California’s electricity is produced by natural gas, how are Telsa driver’s using a Carbon Free vehicle?
If indeed there was global warming to the point of rising seas and other absurdities that they spout then the best solution would be the “new, modern, small safe nuclear plant designs” you refer to. But that’s not the play here, to make abundant and cheap energy.
https://www.nuscalepower.com/technology/technology-overview
Fourth generation liquid flouride thorium reactors are safe clean and cheap. they will solve a lot of problems.
They’re due out in under 10 years.
They are not building big light water reactors in the USA anymore. When the current generation of light water reactors come to the end of their working life—that’s it for light water reactors.
The nuclear power industry is trying to push light water reactor based small modular nuclear reactors—but these are dead end.
Heh, the author is a political scientist?
That’s a major oxymoron.
We’ve seen what these idiots have wrought.
Can’t pass a rigorous academic regimen? Major in something easy. No intelligence required. Slighter harder than underwater lesbian shark hunting, but not much.
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