Comments by "kokofan50" (@kokofan50) on "Sabine Hossenfelder" channel.

  1. It’s niche at best because of it geographic limitations, and it has problems like causing earthquakes and releasing radioactive gases into the air.
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  2. There’s a teacup of tritium in a huge amount of water that’s going to be diluted into a literal ocean.
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  3. The US used to have a program doing that called Megatons to Megawatts where we would buy old plutonium warheads from Russia.
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  4.  @clarkkent9080  I double checked and it was for uranium, which just requires mixing low enriched with the weapons grade to get reactor grade.
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  5.  @davidpeterson6307  manmade and natural earthquakes aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, drilling and injecting water can trigger an earthquake that would have happened later if not for human interference. How stupid do you think it to go poking at unstable geologic formations? Japan has looked at using some of their hot springs for geothermal. They decided against because of earthquakes and causing problems with the water supply.
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  6. This is better than most analyses, but there ar major problems. Wind and solar are far more expensive in practice. Germany and California have both seen massive increases in electricity prices. There are several things the levelized life time cost doesn’t account for. It doesn’t factor in a the cost of batteries and/or natural gas backup. Also, wind and solar last 1/3, at best, the time as a reactor before needing replaced, so if they cost 1/3 as much over their life time but need replaced 3 times as often, you don’t really save any money. The we’re running out of uranium argument always ignores any form of adaptation to the fuel cycle. They never consider that the current reactors only have a 5% burn rate. That leaves a lot of un used fuel that can be reprocessed and used again, and then fast reactors can burn the spent fuel straight from PWRs. There are also reactors that can use upwards of 90% of the fuel to begin with. Then there’s seawater extraction rather. The oceans hold more uranium than has ever been mined. Finally, we have alternative fuels to uranium. While the benefits of thorium have been exaggerated, it’s widely available and several times more common than all isotopes of uranium. As for construction costs, you’re not wrong, but you make extreme outliers seem like they’re normal.
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  7. 1) compared to the tens of billions of years half-life of waste from renewables, nuclear waste is short lived. 2) we can burn spent fuel in advanced reactors, and the isotopes from that have many different uses, like cancer treatment to RTGs for space probes.
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  8. People near Three Mile Island were exposed to about 1 chest X-ray exam of radiation. There was a tiny bit of radioactive material carried outside of the Chernobyl exclusion zone, and what did didn’t travel anywhere near as far as some people like to claim.
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  9. It would cost about what it did before the 70s adjusted for inflation, and as we bring better designs online, it would drop even further
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  10. Nuclear produces fewer emissions, takes up less land, and uses fewer resources
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  11. Burn what we have now in fast reactors. Then extract all the isotopes we can use for things like RTGs and radiation therapy. The tiny bits we don’t have a use for can be sealed in concrete and dropped into the ocean where it will be inert in less than 300 year.
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  12. Making intelligent long term decisions is exactly what keeps countries together
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  13. The war in Ukraine has proven that a complete lie.
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  14.  @SteveBakerIsHere  solar and wind are only viable with natural gas backup, which kind of proves you wrong already, and with natural gas mostly being found in conflict prone areas, the supply isn’t reliable enough to pretend you’re using solar and wind.
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  15. Only people who had no idea what they were talking about said it couldn’t happen.
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  16. 1) she’s wrong that it’s not economically viable 2) if we want something to be adopted it has to provide more value than it costs because you’re going to run out of extra cash some time
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  17.  @ottertvmtg6229  there are plenty of of private schools, not to mention all the other educational services.
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  18.  @clarkkent9080  even if some states are pro-nuclear, nuclear is regulated at the federal level, and the NRC is extremely anti-nuclear. Also, there are many anti-nuclear organizations with local chapters in states that file law suits to slow down and cost projects money. In South Korea, where there’s legitimate institutional support for nuclear, they can build a plant for $3-4 billion.
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  19.  @clarkkent9080  1) don’t use quotation marks unless you’re actually quoting the person. 2) when paraphrasing, don’t strawman people and are lying. Regulators being against the industry they’re regulation doesn’t mean they have the legal power to wholesale stop it. Why do you think the AP 1000, an American design, was built in a different country first if not for difficulties in getting the NRC to approve it? Ok, you gave an example of incompetence. How do you explain the other $10 billion over where SK? Also, if you want people to be good at what they do, they need practice, which is impossible with the NRC and others blocking construction of nuclear power plants.
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  20.  @clarkkent9080  it’s not a conspiracy theory. When the NRC replaced the AEC, the number of approvals for new nuclear reactors instantly dropped to almost nothing. A former head of the NRC is an anti-nuclear activist. If the regulatory environment is actively hostile to nuclear, of course, no company is going consider it.
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  21.  @clarkkent9080  You’re confusing permission for new builds with finishing what has already been started.  Jaczko isn’t the problem with the NRC. He’s the exemplar for it. Thanks for disproving your previous point about Republicans loving nuclear. They’re just neutral.
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  22.  @clarkkent9080  how do operating permits make the NRC more pro-nuclear? Nuclear clearly makes money in other countries, so it’s not that companies can’t make nuclear work. It has to be something about the US that makes nuclear uneconomic. The clear answer is the NRC.
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  23.  @clarkkent9080  the CEO said people fucked up and cost the company a billion dollars. He didn’t say nuclear was flawed. Yes, logic is a conspiracy theory to stupid people. I never said nuclear is dead in the US. I said there forces working against it.
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  24.  @clarkkent9080  thanks for the excellent examples of the strawman fallacy. The NRC being anti-nuclear and companies being incompetent aren’t mutually exclusive. Terrapower have a deal to build reactors at a defunct coal plant.
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  25.  @clarkkent9080  yes, the EPA and NRC make mining, refining, and refining low enriched uranium such a paid in the ass it’s been easier to buy it off the Russians. Yes, a test reactor is being built because that’s part of the process. Also, it’s normal for prototypes go over budget and time
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  26. Nuclear has the smallest total footprint and has an average capacity factor of 94%
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  27. Nuclear is faster to build than renewables. Although that’s kind of unfair because renewables will never be finished. Even the most optimistic studies say it would take 20 years to build out renewables. The average life expectancy of solar panels and wind turbines is less than 20 years. Do you know where the silica for PV panels comes from? It’s mining. The copper, tin, lead, oil etc used in renewables also has to be mined or drilled for, and there’s a lot more that needs to be extracted. The only reason we don’t have a storage facility is because of people like you blocking it. Although, that fuel won’t be sitting there unused for too long.
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  28. The only terrorists who have ever attacked a nuclear power plant were environmentalists connected to Greenpeace, and all the did was drop a firework on the roof of one of the buildings.
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  29.  @gallectee6032  it won’t happen. Nuclear containment buildings can withstand even a jet crashing into them. Even militaries will have a hard time breaking one open.
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  30. Considering no one died from the radiation, it’s not hard.
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  31.  @schmetterling4477  all lies. Germany and California have gone all in on renewables. Germany has the highest energy costs in Europe, and California has by far the highest in the US. France, which gets 75% of their electricity from nuclear has the lowest prices in Europe. Nuclear is extremely cheap to run. All of the reactor shut downs in ghe US and Germany have been for political, not economic, reasons. Moreover because of what’s happening in Ukraine, many European countries are looking to move away from natural gas, which is the backup for renewables, and the UK just announced the other they’re new plan to build a bunch of nuclear plants in the next 15 years. CIVILIAN nuclear power plants DON’T make weapons grade materials. The entire architecture of a electricity generation reactor is wrong for making plutonium. Making plutonium requires unclad uranium and a light toasting for lack of a better word instead of a full burn.
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  32.  @schmetterling4477  I thought you’d at least defend your position a little, but maybe you’ll actually learn something
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  33.  @schmetterling4477  what are you talking about? We already established your the one spreading bs.
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  34. You saw a bunch of lies.
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  35. That’s just demonstrably false. 200 years ago, with 1/5 the population of today, you would be hanged for theft in the UK. Nowadays, they don’t even have the death penalty.
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  36. The percentage of people who live in absolute poverty has been going down for centuries. If we can keep up the pace, we would get rid of absolute poverty by mid century. Remember, many hands make light work.
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  37.  @deevnn  learn to read! In the last two centuries the percentage of people who live on a dollar a day has gone from 80% of the world’s population to 10%. Even countries we don’t think of as rich are significantly richer than anyone 200 years ago. Elon Musk regularly works 100 hour weeks.
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  38. History has shown the exact opposite. The human population has never been larger, and life has never been better, particularly if you live in a developed country
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  39. A lot less green than your brain.
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  40.  @antispindr8613  nope, just facts and logic.
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  41.  @antispindr8613  burn it in fast reactors. The waste from those has a half-life of 30 years, so more than 90% is gone in 150 years.
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  42.  @antispindr8613  yes, there are number of fast reactors people are trying to build.
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  43.  @antispindr8613  the fast just means the neutrons haven’t been slowed down by a moderator. It doesn’t change the safety
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  44. The economics of renewables don’t work anywhere. Also, trying to crack open a working nuclear is easily one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard of.
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  45.  @Pushing_Pixels  tell California they have the cheapest electricity in the US. Be ready to be laughed at. Why would you have a reactor if your not using it? Also, it takes time to turn off a reactor, so forcing a shut down to break into it doesn’t work either.
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  46. Nuclear only gets a pittance in subsides compared to renews, let alone fossil fuels. Moreover, Germany has seen a massive increase in electricity cost has they’ve tried to transition to solar and other renewables along with shutting down their nuclear. France, which gets 75% of their electricity from nuclear, has the lowest energy costs in Europe. A long time, is still better than never. We would have to start replacing renewable before we even finished installing them.
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  47.  @nagranoth_  say that after getting a $600 electricity bill from Germany or California
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  48. Fewest emissions and smallest foot print of any energy source isn’t green?
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  49.  @Lord_Volkner  when I say the smallest footprint, I mean the area needed to extract resources, build, operate, dispose of waste, and area not useable because of accidents. Nuclear power is a million times more energy dense than fossil fuels and several million times more than renewables, and as such takes less land to do things. By every definition of green, nuclear is more green than anything else called green.
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  50.  @Lord_Volkner  you said it depends on how it’s defined. That isn’t agreeing. Renewable and green are different things. Cutting down forests to burn the wood is renewable, but it’s anything but “green”. Nuclear is green and renewable with seawater extraction, but even without sea water extreme, we have thousands of years worth of nuclear fuel. If we haven’t built a Dyson sphere by then to collect all of the sun’s energy, we’re screwed
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