France To Shut Down All Coal-Fired Power Plants By 2023 (independent.co.uk) 328
French president Francois Hollande announced at an annual UN climate change conference on Wednesday that France will shut down all its coal-fired power plants by 2023. He also "vowed to beat by two years the UK's commitment to stop using fossil fuels to generate power by 2025," reports The Independent: Mr Hollande, a keynote speaker at the event in Marrakech, Morocco, also praised his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama for his work on climate change, and then appeared to snub president-elect Donald Trump. "The role played by Barack Obama was crucial in achieving the Paris agreement," Mr Hollande said, before adding, in what has been perceived as a dig at Mr Trump, that becoming a signatory to the treaty is "irreversible." "We need carbon neutrality by 2050," the French President continued, promising that coal will no longer form part of France's energy mix in six to seven years' time. France is already a world leader in low-carbon energy. The country has invested heavily in nuclear power over the past few decades and now derives more than 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear fission. It produces so much nuclear energy, in fact, that it exports much of it to nearby nations, making around $2.66 billion each year.
What Hollande says (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What Hollande says (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't speak for France's trust (or lack thereof) of Hollande. But one thing the US could do in emulating France is to start replacing our coal plants with more nuclear, especially in areas where solar or wind aren't a good fit. It's not like it isn't a proven, feasible technology. I still can't understand how environmentalists could be opposed to it, if they truly believe what scientists are telling us about what's happening with AGW and what the long term effects may be. Yes, nuclear is a compromise. We have to extract ore, it's potentially dangerous, and it generates very nasty waste products. But wouldn't it be worth compromising on this point a bit to get to carbon neutrality faster? We have the rest of history to start phasing nuke power plants out with better technologies, and there are theoretical ways to deal with the waste products other than simply burying it in the ground.
Maybe we should tell Trump that building a bunch of nuclear plants would really piss off the wacko environmentalists, create a bunch of new 'murican jobs, and help lessen oil dependency from all those foreign commies and terrorists. Sometimes, you just have to sell these things with your target audience in mind.
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"theoretical ways to deal with the waste products" = "no actual ways to deal with the waste products"
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You do realize that many European countries have successfully dealt with it. Only the fucking stupid Americans have decided to not reprocess fuel rods, and consequently are generating stupid quantities of radioactive waste. Get over your 1970's Jimmy Carter stupidity, start reprocessing fuel rods, and deal with two issues at once.
Re:What Hollande says (Score:4, Interesting)
Your stupidity. There is no amount of reprocessing that will make nuclear power cost effective. Disagree, name the nuclear power plant that charges its customers for the full cost from cradle to grave: everything from mining & refining, to plant construction & maintenance, to waste disposal/recycling/reuse.
You can't do that because that nuclear power plant doesn't exist. Because nuclear power is corporate welfare masking ongoing nuclear weapons programs.
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There is no amount of reprocessing that will make nuclear power cost effective.
Of course, that's because fresh fuel is cheaper. But you Americans have been too spoiled by your cheap natural gas to realize that in Europe (where France is located), nuclear power is perfectly cost-effective.
Re:What Hollande says (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:What Hollande says (Score:4, Informative)
Nearly the entire new generation of nukes has been one giant economic disaster after the next, both in the US and Europe. The most expensive "things" on Earth are now predominantly nuclear power plants (ISS tops the list if you count it as "on Earth", otherwise, the first "thing" on the list that's not a nuke plant is the LHC, which comes in several slots down). Hinkley Point tops the list among nuclear plants (~$35B USD and counting if you count interest and such, at least $18B if you just count construction costs), but it's got lots of company. By contrast, the Burj Khalifa was a piddling $1,5B.
In the US at least, nuclear power has always had more popularity on K Street than Wall Street. Nuclear died for decades, and the new "renaissance" died as well, not because of NIMBYs, but because investors abandoned it. Indeed, when you look at the cost breakdowns, "NIMBYs" have almost nothing to do with it. Look, for example, at the Olkiluoto #3 reactor in Finland. The project started in 2000. Construction started in 2005, with plants to open in 2010. Now it's not expected to open 2018-2020 (and I wouldn't bet my life on even that). Why? From Wikipedia:
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Nuclear plants can't charge the customer the full cost, because they can't get insurance for their full liability. No insurer will cover the potential losses in full. Governments have to cover the risk, which is kinda insane because if the worst happens it could easily bankrupt them. I guess the implication is that if that did happen, the government would do something to avoid paying out in full.
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Because the argument is always that "nuclear doesn't pay". And you did bring that up. That's not that interesting/persuasive an argument if it turns out that pretty much all the alternative don't pay either. Hydro-electric here in Sweden doesn't pay either. If one of those dams went, that would be it. (The fund that's supposed to pay would try up very quickly). But since they're (mostly) government owned, that wouldn't be a problem. Or rather that wouldn't be the problem.
And while France may be moving away
I know you are but what am I (Score:4, Insightful)
All of this either gets paid for by the taxpayer or you let the people hurt by it suffer and die (google "Cancer Villages"). Sorry, but you really have no idea wtf you're going on about...
Re:What Hollande says (Score:4, Informative)
Reprocessing produces MORE waste, than not reprocessing.
You are mixing up spent fuel with waste.
Re:What Hollande says (Score:5, Insightful)
"theoretical ways to deal with the waste products" = "no actual ways to deal with the waste products"
As opposed to coal and other fossil fuels, where we have a very effective way of dealing with the waste products: just let them go up the smokestack!
P.S. You do know that coal mining releases more radiation into the air, and kills more people, than nuclear power - right?
Re:What Hollande says (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems that mistake in Scientific American will never be lived down:
In response to some concerns raised by readers, a change has been made to this story. The sentence marked with an asterisk was changed from "In fact, fly ash—a by-product from burning coal for power—and other coal waste contains up to 100 times more radiation than nuclear waste" to "In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy." Our source for this statistic is Dana Christensen, an associate lab director for energy and engineering at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as well as 1978 paper in Science authored by J. P. McBride and colleagues, also of ORNL.
Coal waste is NOT more radioactive than nuclear waste. The difference is that nuclear waste is not dumped into the environment, while waste from coal burning is. Nuclear waste is stored, and storage space is limited. Permanent dumps for nuclear waste are difficult to engineer. They must be designed to hold nuclear waste for millennia.
The big problem with nuclear power is that accidents are extremely dangerous and costly. That wouldn't be a problem if accidents were extremely unlikely. We know how to design and operate nuclear power plants safely, the problem is that we won't. Fukushima showed that. That accident was entirely avoidable. They needed only to build the walls higher. They had good information on how high the walls needed to be, and the recommended height was not a strain on our engineering capabilities. But management chose to ignore the recommendations and build a lower wall, to save a little money. The fools in those management positions did not understand that the risk they were taking was very high, they chose instead to ignore the warnings. Disaster could still have been averted had they not also cut another corner to save a little money, and the backup generators had been in working order and not located in the basement.
Re:What Hollande says (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you agreeing or disagreeing?
The claim was that coal dumps more radiation *into the air*. Would make sense given that their is very little nuclear radiation leak into the air.
As to accidents, with the notable exception of Cherbynol, there have been very few and most of the cost has been due to the hysteria. Very few people died in Fukushima compared to those killed by the tidal wave itself.
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"Very few" = zero, if we are talking about radiation deaths at/around Fukushima.
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Right, in the same way the number of deaths from smoking will be "zero" if you and your circle of friends start smoking 3 packs of cigarettes a day, every day, for the next four years.
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We know how to design and operate nuclear power plants safely, the problem is that we won't. ... They needed only to build the walls higher.
Build walls higher, put generators above flood level, and make allowance for safely venting hydrogen, so that things don't progress from bad to total disaster.
According to one source I read, the USA realized the risk of hydrogen explosion and retrofitted all their stations to allow for safe venting. The Japanese chose not to retrofit. (Warning - the source was a USA nuclear engineer, but I read it years ago, and my memory is fallible.)
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Re:What Hollande says (Score:5, Interesting)
Chernobyl was not localized.
In south germany and south sweden you still can not eat mushrooms harvested from the woods and game is unsafe to eat.
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Chernobyl was not localized. In south germany and south sweden you still can not eat mushrooms harvested from the woods and game is unsafe to eat.
Ugh, technically the winds have carried a bit of radiation from Chernobyl/Fukushima all over the world so if you want to split hairs you could call them Global Disasters but compared to the Civilizations level dangers posed by the rise in sea levels, droughts and extreme weather phenomena one could hardly put them on the same scale Globally
Re:What Hollande says (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What Hollande says (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy solution: Give regulatory control of the nuclear power industry to the navy. No joke. The US Navy has been operating nuclear reactors... hundreds of them... for nearly as long as there's been such a thing. And they have a perfect operational safety record. That is: zero nuclear accidents in the 62 years since the USS Nautilus was launched in 1954. (They *have* lost two nuclear submarines at sea. But neither the Thresher nor Scorpion were lost due to reactor accidents.)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja... [forbes.com]
They do it by standardizing on a small number of reactor designs (Generally one per ship/sub class. Though the S5W persisted from the Skipjack class until it was replaced by the S6G with the Los Angeles.), training the sweet holy hell out of their people (There are stories of standing desks at power school, so trainees don't fall asleep while sitting and studying... and of the occasional *thump* when someone standing falls asleep anyway.), and holding them strictly accountable to operations and safety standards throughout their careers.
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There are stories of standing desks at power school, so trainees don't fall asleep while sitting and studying... and of the occasional *thump* when someone standing falls asleep anyway
I hope that this doesn't reflect their operational environment...
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They do it by standardizing on a small number of reactor designs
Well there goes your idea.
No seriously, there are fundamental differences in management of a standardised platform vs a collection of assets which were each built independently. One model attempting to copy the other typically ends in disaster. The Navy is excellent in maintaining their safety as their management is tailed to their standard design. Handing the entire industry over to the Navy would just result in the loss of many years of learnt lessons and the repeat of many years worth of mistakes as they
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They do it by using very special and extremely expensive reactors and very highly enriched fuel (90%) or so. The latter part is already cost-prohibitive. The reactors are also quite small, barely larger than research reactors, have a limited lifespan (half of a commercial nuclear powerplant) and are only refuelled once or twice during their lifetime, instead of every year or two. All these reasons make American marine reactors much safer, but not really comparable to commercial reactors. If commercial react
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That accident was entirely avoidable. They needed only to build the walls higher. They had good information on how high the walls needed to be, and the recommended height was not a strain on our engineering capabilities. But management chose to ignore the recommendations and build a lower wall, to save a little money. The fools in those management positions did not understand that the risk they were taking was very high, they chose instead to ignore the warnings.
Anyone who distils a disaster down to a specific layer blamed on a specific set of people fundamentally doesn't have a clue how accidents, risks, or their mitigation works.
I suggest you start reading some books which analyse how such incidents come to be before applying your expert opinion.
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Coal waste is NOT more radioactive than nuclear waste. The difference is that nuclear waste is not dumped into the environment, while waste from coal burning is. Nuclear waste is stored, and storage space is limited.
This is a big red herring. The tiny amounts of radioactive pollution dumped in the atmosphere by coal plants is NOTHING compared to the hundreds of tons of heavy metals, arsenic, NOX and mercury (not counting nondescript particulates, which still cause various lung diseases). The number of premature deaths per year caused by coal-fired plants numbers hundreds of thousands. This without mentioning the thousands dying directly because of mining of the humongous amounts of coal needed by those plants. We could
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Coal waste is NOT more radioactive than nuclear waste. The difference is that nuclear waste is not dumped into the environment, while waste from coal burning is. Nuclear waste is stored, and storage space is limited. Permanent dumps for nuclear waste are difficult to engineer. They must be designed to hold nuclear waste for millennia.
Yeah, about this, why aren't we dumping it at the bottom of the ocean already?
Someone please confirm, but aren't the bottom of the ocean filled with clay and heavy water that are both very efficient radiation shield topped with the lack of much life there and the near impossibility for terrorist to get them?
Of course, there's always dumping them in the sun, but that's not for anywhere soon.
Re:What Hollande says (Score:4, Insightful)
This is what happens when something turns into an -ism. I think opposition to nuclear is based more on dogma and irrational fear than anything else at this point.
Here's a thought: maybe we should listen to specialists (say, nuclear scientists and engineers, and throw in some statisticians to tally up safety records) about whether modern nuclear power is safe and effective enough to use. Because, I'm pretty sure the science is settled at this point. Should we also should start calling opponents "nuclear deniers"?
Re:What Hollande says (Score:4, Informative)
The science isn't the issue, it's the engineering. In theory you can build a very safe reactor (not perfect, but very very good). In practice you have to design it, make sure that the design is flawless, then build it exactly to spec, and do it on a budget that will attract commercial investment. Then you have to operate it for decades, with constant pressure to reduce operating costs. You have to anticipate that 40 years later someone will say "we could use new material X to save a few bucks" or "this part was over-engineered and has never failed, we can downgrade it", and somehow make sure that they are as careful and diligent as you were before your retirement/death.
Turns out engineering is quite difficult. You need multiple people, all at the top of their game. Geologists, metallurgists, scientists, architects, software engineers, electrical engineers... The list is long, and some of their fields are still a long way from having a complete understanding of how they work or what the risks are. Many of the nuclear plants in Japan that were thought to be completely safe have now been found to rest on previously unknown fault lines, for example. The geologists in the 60s and 70s when they were planned and built weren't even incompetent, their field just wasn't advanced enough and sensitive enough equipment didn't exist.
These issues could be overcome, but I don't think people would like the cost. If you can find a cheaper way or convince people to pay, then maybe we can talk.
Re:What Hollande says (Score:5, Funny)
I'm so very glad you bough that up, check my sig friend, it's not my ism I am talking about.
OK, let me get you started. This is the peer reviewed science that show nuclear power provides no Net Energy Return [stormsmith.nl] with contributions from about 10 Universities around the world, including CERN.
That would be like saying climate change is bullshit, but I kind of like it.
Yeah fuckit, I'm a nuclear denier. I deny Nuclear is a real solution to climate change. I'll start calling the nutty nukker fanbois, physics deniers, better FACT deniers or 'unable to provide fact'ers - but I jest ho ho ho.
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You know that's clever idiocy - right? Opposition to nuclear does not mean support for coal. Now, here's a buttplug you can use to fill that hole in your head:
Your logical fallacy is...false dichotomy. [yourlogicalfallacyis.com]
Re:What Hollande says (Score:4, Informative)
Fainting couch aside, no. I'm not.
In the context of nuclear power??? That's like saying you can't afford $2,000 to fix your leaky roof (before hurricane season) so you can take a $200,000 vacation to Paris.
Renewables are already cost effective next to coal, much less the mother-of-all-corporate-welfare-programs, nuclear power. There is no nuclear power plant in existence that charges its customers the full cost of mining, refining, construction, security, maintenance, disaster preparedness and waste disposal.
All of this has been known since the '70's, and nothing has changed. So, drab and beige, or maybe a nice bondi blue? The color of the plug in your head, I mean.
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And what exactly does your tautology mean? ...
Countries that have nuclear power most likely cover all their night time base load with nuclear power aleady.
There is no point in building more except you want a few for day time load following
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You keep stating this, citation needed. Yes they are very expensive to build, but produce for decades with very little actual fuel (as opposed to the constant supply of coal or NG needed for fossil fuel plants). And dismantling afterwards adds to the total cost. But if we can reduce the kneejerk reactions and opposition
Not entirely true (Score:2)
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So, you believe that even in the next century or two we won't figure out how to deal with the waste? That seems a bit unlikely to me. And what if the result of a stubborn opposition to nuclear power is that we simply hang onto our coal plants? That would seem like a rather Pyrrhic victory. It really feels like opponents to nuclear are risking the life of the forest to save a single tree.
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We already know "how" to deal with the waste. We just don't have the political will to actually do it.
Waste is mostly a political problem, FUD (Score:5, Informative)
Read some of the recent articles by the elder statesmen of the environmentalist movement, such as one of the founders of Greenpeace. They are now acknowledging that they spread a lot of FUD about waste. Here are the two biggest lies:
Intentionally conflating alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. They really hyped things up, through out a lot of numbers and such, about "radiation", carefully cherry-picking things about completely different types of radiation, while making it sound like all the statements went together. Of course you know there are different types of radiation - light from a light bulb is radiation, warmth radiating from a fireplace is radiation. When discussing nuclear waste, the two main types are alpha and beta. Here's the funny thing - alpha is stopped by almost anything - tissue paper, a few centimeters of air, moisture in the air, etc. Unless you press the uranium against your skin, the alpha can't get to you. So when any old 1980s article talks about radiation, ask "are they taking about ALPHA radiation, the kind that's blocked by even tissue paper?" Often they are.
The even bigger lie is intentionally conflating short half-life with long half-life. You know a candle radiates visible light, heat, uv, etc. Gunpowder radiates the same wavelengths - light, heat, etc. The difference between a candle and a bomb is that the candle releases the energy slowly, a little bit a time, while gunpowder releases it's energy quickly. So quickly, in fact, that there's a dangerous amount of energy, for about 50 milliseconds. Nuclear materials are the same. Some release their energy quickly, so there's a dangerous amount of radiation for a short time. Roughly 14 days, in one common case. Other nuclear materials release their energy incredibly slowly, over thousands of years. At any given time, the slow ones are releasing such a small amount of energy you could WEAR the waste on your head all day and it would have absolutely zero effect. In fact I, and many others, DO wear tritium on our belts.
There is waste that releases enough radiation in a year to be dangerous, and there's other waste that releases so little as at a time that it takes a thousand years before most of it is used up. Dumping the energy fast is like a firecracker which burns metal powder very quickly - it's dangerous, for a very short period of time. Releasing it over a thousand years is like the heat generated as a bolt rusts - it's an almost indetectable, and completely safe, level of energy being released.
It's really it like showing somebody a firecracker and saying "this is metal oxydizing" (true) and "the metal in your car could oxydize at any moment" (also true, your car is oxydizing all the time).
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It's like the crazies in the Sierra club who want to hear down the Hetch-Hetchy dam. The dam and the reservoir behind it provide large sources of water and clean electricity.
Tearing it down would be an environmental disaster, but hey, it would create some beautiful views, so, what the heck.
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Here's the funny thing - alpha is stopped by almost anything - tissue paper, a few centimeters of air, moisture in the air, etc. Unless you press the uranium against your skin, the alpha can't get to you.
When calling for honesty, it is always weise to try to be honest yourself. Nobody claims alpha radiation our in the environment is going to harm you - it is after all just Helium kernels buzzing around, and because they are big and heavy, they don't go very far. The problem arises when you ingest the radioactive material, in which case it becomes extremly dangerous, for that very same reason: it doesn't penetrate very far - so it deposits all of it energy in he tissue and causes huge, localised damage. The
Don't eat it, or bleach, paint thinner, hair dye (Score:3)
True, you shouldn't EAT nuclear waste, cleaning products, paint thinner, swimming pool chorine, nails, dirt, etc. I tell my two-year-old "we only put FOOD in our mouth."
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"theoretical ways to deal with the waste products" = "no actual ways to deal with the waste products"
These solutions are just theoretical in America. They very much exist in actual various forms in France who often take nuclear waste from other countries to process.
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Erm, no.
France is not reprocessing any waste. That is impossible, there is nothing in waste that is usefull for anything.
What france and others are doing is: reprocessing a mediocre amount of spent fuel, producing a tiny amount of reuseable new fuel and a huge amount of waste.
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No, the problem for nuclear is that coal is a giant jobs program (at least it was in the past, that is changing now), and elected officials get plenty of money form the coal industry - they suckle on that teat like they haven't eaten for eons. By way of example Trump is coal man, the chance of him walking away from that trough to embrace nuclear are about zero.
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I still can't understand how environmentalists could be opposed to [nuclear power], if they truly believe what scientists are telling us about what's happening with AGW and what the long term effects may be.
Actually, environmentalists are on board when it comes to nuclear power, for the very reasons you mentioned.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06... [nytimes.com]
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
http://www.wsj.com/articles/en... [wsj.com]
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Anyone still believe what president Hollande says?
Who cares? He will be long gone by 2023, and nobody will even remember this meaningless promise.
Re: What Hollande says (Score:2, Funny)
That isn't much in the way of praise.
It's like saying you're less of a talentless slut than Paris Hilton, or more pleasant and thoughtful than Ted Nugent, or more likely to win the world series than the Chicago Cubs.
Re: What Hollande says (Score:2, Informative)
Hey. The Cubs DID win this year...
Nuclear (Score:2)
Yea, because they produce something like 75% of their electricity with nuclear. I can't figure out why people who want to go carbon neutral are not strong advocates of nuclear, unless they are so dogmatically tied to "green" issues that they just can't accept that the cure to their problem is in the form of big bad nuclear. We should be building modern gen 3/4 breeder reactors on the sites of current plants and reprocessing all the waste that we don't know what to do with into fuel.
Are they insane? (Score:2)
Let's see, they plan to replace coal with nuclear power. So, not insane.
Good job, France. I wish we'd do the same in the USA. With Trump it might happen.
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Trump's victory must have the CTR guys really demoralized if this is the best they can come up with.
Re:Are they insane? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Trump's Plan for Coal Industry Revival Means Big EPA Changes" (Nov-14)
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/trump-coal-industry-revival-plan/2016/11/14/id/758745/ [newsmax.com]
Re:Are they insane? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11... [nytimes.com]
tl;dr version: coal's problem isn't Obama, its Exxon-Mobile and natural gas, and coal is not going to win that fight
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And worse than that, US taxpayers will (once again) have to foot the cleanup bill [theconversation.com].
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Trump is committed to "clean coal" (sic) and getting all those Kentucky coal miners their jobs and black lung back. So nah, probably not replacing coal with nuclear.
On the other hand, Trump has already started racking up the imaginary successes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Gaslighter-in-Chief.
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Rule 3. SJW's always project. In Alinsky terms, the best defense is to have already accused your opponent of what you are guilty of, ideally before anyone catches on.
This is so common that accusations from certain people and groups can be interpreted as if they were signed confessions.
After watching a 16-month election cycle where the media was caught red handed acting as agents of the Clinton campaign, and where damn near all of the media polls were fiction, you are seriously dumb enough to accuse Trump
Makes sense (Score:2)
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After Fukushima, everyone was announcing that they were abandoning nuclear power. Since then, everyone, including Japan, has quietly started going back to nuclear.
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Since then, everyone, including Japan, has quietly started going back to nuclear.
Germany hasn't. They are still on track to be nuke free by 2022.
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The future is [may be] fusion.
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To be fair, Germany's approach to coal isn't bad. They're working to retire their old generation of coal plants and replace them with advanced coal gassification plants. The big difference is that the new ones are dramatically more efficient than the old ones they're replacing, and will be responsive to rapid changes in demand or production. This in turn will let them gradually transition from baseload to peaking as renewables continue to make up an increasing share of the European power mix.
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Coal gassification does not emit more CO2 than coal by itself after taking into account the efficiency difference.
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Hang on, France only said they were going down to 50%. It's carbon neutral. And France isn't on any major fault lines so they should be alright...
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cuck harder
I'm genuinely curious as to the origins of this with regards to the Trump fanboys. Who sat down and flipped through the dictionary to settle on 'cuck'? Is that the most insulting thing you could come up with to get under the skin of people you disagreed with?
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The cultural connotations of the "cuckold" term allows them to combine derogation of their opponent's masculinity with devil imagery, given the historical association with horns, and can be construed (depending on what brand of lunatic you are) to apply to either immigration/cultural purity or generic ideology if you don't have the stomach for overt racism.
The whole thing is rather ironic considering trumpistas look more and more like rogonosets with each passing day.
I'm more curious of what brought marakes
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'Rongonosets' apparently means 'cuckold' in Russian.
I was going towards 'hairpiece' myself but then again ....
Re:Marrakech, Morocco (Score:5, Funny)
I was going towards 'hairpiece' myself but then again ....
Rogainosets?
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Rogonosets, literally "wearer of horns". In German, and apparently, in French, horns stand for the same thing.
Re:Marrakech, Morocco (Score:4, Insightful)
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attempted insult completely fails to connect.
I would pay money to sit and get 'insulted' by this crowd. Bring a lawn chair and popcorn and settle in for a comedy show. I mean when I was a 14 year old boy we tried to insult and push buttons but I'd like to think we could have been a bit more original than 'cuck'.
Re:Marrakech, Morocco (Score:4, Informative)
It comes from cuckold, a derogatory term for the husband of an adulteress, and from Cuckoo, a bird which lays eggs in others' nests to be raised and supported by unsuspecting parents.
The alt-right started calling moderate conservatives 'Cuckservatives', claiming that there were like the Cuckoo, sitting in the 'nest' of the Republican party and feigning conservatism to win votes, but voting for progressive policies while in office.
It was later abbreviated to 'Cuck' and took on more connotations as it spread through the alt-right, most to do with some kind of perceived emasculation, submissiveness, or 'selling out': Men who allow women to hold too much power ('feminazis', 'SJWs', etc.), people who are accepting of foreigners (to 'steal our jobs' and leech off our social services), globalists who sell America out to the Jews, socialists who would turn the country over to freeloaders, etc, etc.
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I know the etymology of the world. I'm just fascinated that that's what this crowd decided to run with this entire election.
As in, 'is that the best you can come up with. You get a C- on trolling come back with a better effort'.
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That's simply not true. That story is just the alt-Right trying to lie about the fact that they started on 4chan, where the word, "cuck", short for "cuckold" has been a popular insult for a while. It is a mythical origin story that was concocted long after th
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It was popularised by anti-feminists, "neomasculinists" and Men Going Their Own Way who like to portray "beta" males as cuckolds, doomed to keep giving their resources to and even marrying women who have sex with many other men. They call it the "cock carousel", and think women primarily gain resources by exchanging them for access to their vaginas.
That soon evolved into calling everyone that they didn't perceive as a manly man alpha male as a "cuck".
Re: (Score:3)
That's simply not true. That story is just the alt-Right trying to lie about the fact that they started on 4chan, where the word, "cuck", short for "cuckold" has been a popular insult for a while. It is a mythical origin story that was concocted long after the term "cuck" and "cuckservative" were widely used.
It' never had anything to do with a cuckoo bird. It has to do with 4chan's seemingly very intimate knowledge of p0rn videos that show black men having sex with married white women.
So really, you could say that "cuck" is a term used by men who have a fascination with black penises. I hope that clears up your confusion.
Either way, nobody in the known universe really gives a fuck.
Re: (Score:2)
It comes from cuckold, a derogatory term for the husband of an adulteress, and from Cuckoo, a bird which lays eggs in others' nests to be raised and supported by unsuspecting parents.
The alt-right started calling moderate conservatives 'Cuckservatives', claiming that there were like the Cuckoo, sitting in the 'nest' of the Republican party and feigning conservatism to win votes, but voting for progressive policies while in office.
That's hilariously ironic considering that describes almost perfectly what the alt-right did to the GOP, especially their new patron-saint, Trump.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Nothing to brag about (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Radioactive waste can be contained and when reprocessed as part of waste disposal
Therein lies the rub. Firstly, while you're absolutely correct when things are working properly, nuclear is very hard to clean up after things go wrong. While the immediate effect might still be reasonably small in global terms, a much larger area (and therefore politically more problemtic) is affected in a nuclear disaster than in an equivalent coal-power disaster.
An oil spill might be more comparable actually, but even there, hard radiation is much harder to clean up, and a much more dangerous environment
Re:Nothing to brag about (Score:5, Insightful)
France uses breeder reactors, so they don't have anywhere near the nuclear waste problem that we do. (Jimmy Carter banned the commercial use of breeder reactors in the U.S. because they can be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium.)
Also, nuclear in the U.S. produces about 800 TWh of electricity per year. The amount of spent fuel that's created to produce that much energy is about a single tractor trailer's worth (the entire volume of nuclear waste produced since we began using nuclear power would about fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool). Contrast that with coal. A ton of coal produces about 2000 kWh of electricity. So to produce 800 TWh would require about 400 million tons of coal, or about 300 million cubic meters - enough to fill a thousand oil tankers. It also produces 1.14 billion tons of CO2.
So compare that single tractor trailer of nuclear waste (which still contains 97% of the energy in the uranium because we don't reprocess) to a thousand oil tankers full of coal. Still think nuclear is such a bad idea?
Re: (Score:2)
Although to be fair, taking that tractor trailer volume of nuclear waste and putting it all into the volume of a tractor trailer would be a Bad Idea.
Re:Nothing to brag about (Score:4, Informative)
Modern light water power plants use more than 3% of energy in fuel and they also produce quite a bit of (non weapons grade) plutonium. This plutonium can be extracted and re-used in MOX (mixed oxide) fuel in regular reactors, US does NOT do this but France and Russia do. Spent fuel also contains some nasty minor actinides that have long half-lives and must be stored for a long time, they are chemically extracted during reprocessing. It is possible to transmute them into less harmful elements by enough fast neutron flux.
Right now the only 2 working fast neutron reactors are in Russia (BN-600 and BN-800), France terminated its fast neutron reactor project long ago ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ). Fast neutron reactors are not necessarily breeder reactors (breeder reactors allow to produce more fissile products than they get) but in most cases they are.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Nothing to brag about (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, most of that "waste" can be reused as fuel. Modern light water nuclear plants only use about 3% of the energy in uranium. That's why the waste is "hot" for so long
That's not quite right. The uranium has a half life of billions of years, so it will be radioactive for a long time but that is not what makes spent fuel "hot". Just as a candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long a radioactive material with a long half life puts out very little radiation. Uranium has such a long half life and therefore very little radiation from it that uranium is routinely used as a shield against radiation.
Another thing about uranium is that most isotopes of the element are alpha emitters upon decay. In a solid fuel reactor the uranium is encased in a metal tube, an alpha particle would not leave the tube. Even if it did about a foot of air would stop it.
What makes spent fuel "hot" is the fission products, and to a lesser extent the transuranic elements. A fission product is from the uranium nucleus taking in a neutron and fissions into two smaller nuclei. The transuranic elements are from when the uranium takes a neutron and doesn't fission but instead decays into a heavier element, such as plutonium. These fission products and transuranic elements can be beta and gamma emitters upon decay, these require more shielding to stop, such as a few feet of water or other dense material.
In a solid fuel reactor it is very difficult to remove these elements. This is a problem because some of these elements like to soak up neutrons with a greater affinity than the uranium fuel. At some point the fission products will take up so many neutrons that a chain reaction cannot be maintained in the reactor, when this happens the fuel is "spent" even though there is still a large amount of uranium fuel in the fuel rod.
There's several ways to address this problem but one that is gaining traction is to use a liquid fuel. The uranium in a solid fuel reactor is usually a ceramic (an oxide), because in that form it can hold up to a lot of heat and radiation without turning into something else. In a liquid fuel reactor the uranium fuel is in the form of a salt, usually a fluoride (like the sodium fluoride in toothpaste). This salt can also withstand the radiation but it melts at a relatively low temperature, which make it easy to turn into a liquid. In liquid form many of the worst fission products, like xenon, will bubble out of the fuel and get collected at the top of the reactor tank. Many of the others, like noble metals, will fall to the bottom. With these fission products out of the way just about all the fuel can be burned. With the addition of a chemical processor on the liquid fuel the transuranic elements can be removed before they can become a problem of soaking up neutrons, becoming a weapon proliferation problem, or generally a nuisance. Some of these fission products and transuranic elements are quite valuable and would become a salable product for medicine and industry.
With a solid fuel the spent fuel rods are effectively worthless because the valuable elements are mixed in with the really radioactive stuff that built up over time. This is difficult to process until it has "cooled" which also means a lot of the really valuable elements have decayed away. A liquid salt reactor would save a lot of trouble by not producing this waste, and potentially save a lot of lives because many of the fission products the reactor could produce is used to treat and diagnose a lot of medical conditions. Some of them could also be used to disinfect surgical tools, find leaks in pipes, and make it easier to explore space.
A very good reactor using this liquid fuel is called the liquid fluoride thorium reactor, designed by Flibe Energy. Look it up.
Re: (Score:2)
How on earth did you manage to come up with that rubbish? What websites are you reading that lead you to believe such bizarre ideas?
Or was it an attempt at satire?
Re: irreversible (Score:5, Insightful)
Explain to me how nationalism valuing America first is anti American
Because it is counterproductive and leaves the country in a worse place than being a responsible member of the international community does. Also, it is too easily leveraged into white nationalism.
For them to put the interests of foreign nations or even the international community above the interests of the US seems treasonous on its face.
We have many conflicting interests as a nation, many of which are the same interests as the international community (like defeating ISIS.) In order to make progress on some of our national interests, it is necessary to compromise on others.
In other words, you can wish really hard that America exists in a vacuum, but wishing does not make it so.
Re: (Score:2)
Explain to me how nationalism valuing America first is anti American
Because it is counterproductive and leaves the country in a worse place than being a responsible member of the international community does. Also, it is too easily leveraged into white nationalism.
Bullshit! Every country in the world protects it's borders and puts it's own citizens first, or they fail. Every country that recently harmed their populaces by importing tons of immigrants has lost elections and had to reverse direction. Merkel, Brexit, Trump are three easy examples, but most other EU countries have reversed directions on things like massively importing refuges. Swiss people demanding a halt were not doing so because "white supremacy", nor were Germans, Brits, or US people. The argume
Re: (Score:2)
Re:irreversible (Score:5, Funny)
You are a hyperbolic idiot, this isn't the Breitbart comment section
And you continue the hyperbole ...
This is the Breitbart comment section?!