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Tony Wilson
David Pakman Show
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Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Absolutely FURIOUS Anti-Nuclear Caller" video.
I'm an engineer and look at this a while back. In America places like Diablo Canyon are just sitting there with tons of high level nuclear waste. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant In Britain they spent over £200Billion (that's British pounds) cleaning up all there existing sites. It was originally budgeted at about £40billion. It took around 20 years of work to clean up some sites. Its very slow and very expensive and now they are building 8 new nuclear plants to replace the older ones. The clean up in America is a very big discussion that nobody yet wants to talk about, especially nobody in politics.
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@niu9432 There's a great doco on Fusion I think its called "Star in a Bottle" or similar. I saw it a few years ago. There's a French Canadian guy near the end whose into fusion using lasers and he makes a great point about ITER. Its totally impractical as a power generating plant, BUT we need it for the answers it will provide. Just think he's into a completely different technique and yet he's saying we need it. I haven't found that doco on YouTube sadly. I think he's right. If you look at the costs and time taken its simply not practical. But with its power it should give people the answers they need to make other technologies work. I think the Stellarator (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellarator) is the best candidate at the moment because it can operate continuously. But that can change.
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@shinobione2575 Standard power station life cycles are something like. 25 years then 1st major rebuild 15 years then 2nd major rebuild 10 years and that's it. ALL UP 50 years of life and then its over. Usually after that amount of time the next technology should be ready to go. As an engineer I can tell you there has been a real change over previous generations. At the very top there are people so invested in old tech they don't wont change to new tech. That's odd when most of them made their money on what was at the time new tech. This is why I try and tell people one odd thing about the Dems and GOP. They are supported by 2 different groups of billionaires. The GOP is supported by billionaires who want things to stay as is like the Kochs. The Dems are supported by billionaires who want change like Musk, Bezos,....etc. There's other factors in there, but a chunk of it is change versus no change. 🤷♂️🤷♀️
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Sorry but there have been many Tokamaks built and tested. NONE have (so far as I know) been able to generate more power than they used to generate the fusion. ITER (the biggest Tokamak so far planned) isn't finished and isn't planned for its first work for at a few years. Its very big its very complex and there's been less than optimal project management.
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@niu9432 Your half right. Its kind of like the HADRON Collider over Fermilab in that being bigger ITER allows for higher energy inputs with more fuel. It simply allows things that can't be done right now. On the comparison to renewables there is an issue they simply don't want to acknowledge. All renewables wind, solar, hydro & tidal are all dependent on GEOGRAPHY. If you don't have the right location they simply don't work as well. Plus these locations need to be grid friendly. I'm Australian and there's a patch of our southern coastline that' simply perfect for wind. Its exposed to the southern ocean with desert behind. The coast is a 100s of km of 50m cliffs so anything you build is already up in the air and with no obstructions. BUT its 100s of kilometers from any population and over 1000km from any major population. One thing the Germans learnt from their massive investment was that eventually every country runs out of VIABLE sites. To high that last 10-20% as with other areas of engineering the costs keep climbing to get the next kW. One thing everybody needs to realise is that future energy will be a mix of renewables storage and high density base load. How any one country does that will depend on lots of things. Geography is just one of them.
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@niu9432 Dude I am an engineer with 30+ years in automation and control systems I know this stuff. Its why I comment. My big eye opener cam about 4 years ago when I did this cheesy little consult for some Taiwanese Investment brokers. They just wanted an Australian engineer to do a power point on the state of Australia's renewable sector and potential growth. We haven't been replacing our now very old coal fired power stations. Our renewable sector is growing very rapidly but its trying to catch up on 30years of mismanagement. After I did that project I checked on other countries to see how they were going and its even worse for most. It the same problem everywhere - culture war. An example of the culture war is the COVID issue. There were public conversations that we should have had 12-15months ago and still haven't, because there are people on both sides just screaming at each other. Its the same problem with energy. You just get people screaming at each other over nothing. And then nothing happens. The Germans for example had a simple choice - turn of the coal or turn of the nuclear. One side out screamed the other and they turned off the nuclear. So after spending €1.3 Trillion to reduce carbon emission their carbon emissions went UP. Does that make any sense to you?
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Try 30 years. Did you know that 30 years ago it was 30 years away and that 60 years ago it was 30 years away. Fusion is always 30 years away. Why 30? 🤷♂️🤷♀️
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Hooray, somebody else commenting actually knows that.
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