Nuclear Warming?

[BlackMastodon]

To wit:

Oh SHIT he means business!

Just playing, I agree with everything you said.

Do you think the process would become safer if we remove the monitary gains from it? Seems like when there is money to be made corners get cut and saftey gets left behind. A not for profit nuclear power plant? Is that even viable? I know there is still human error to account for but is it possible to remove greed from the equation?

I don't think it's possible to remove greed out of any human equation, unfortunately, as others have pointed out.

Science is rarely 'solved,' just advanced. Just because we know how to do it and we know how to do it safely doesn't mean that we know how to do it efficiently and at scale.
There's always room for innovation, discovery, and improvement. For instance, changing from a Uranium fueled reactor to a Thorium fueled reactor. Who's to say there isn't another type of yet-to-be-discovered fuel that is more economically feasible without compromising on efficiency or safety? How would we ever know if we just slapped a bow on it and said "Well, that's nuclear energy; sure is neat we figured that one out, bummer that it's too expensive."

This thread made me want to look up Thorium reactors again. I remember something like 15 years ago on ifuckinglovescience or some shit I read about them and they seemed like such a "why aren't we funding this?!" thing that it drove me nuts. But it does raise the question of whether we could use a less radioactive fuel source even if it would reduce power output.

 

[narad]

This hasn't ever happened

No, the absolute worst outcomes have never happened. Is this solace? The incidents that have happened were frankly bad enough, and we probably won't fully grasp the long-term effects stemming from Fukushima for a long time.

Someone made the car analogy. In the same way, we've been building cars for a hundred years. It's still not uncommon for a manufacturer to have to recall thousands of vehicles for some issue resulting from poor implementation and oversight, until enough unlucky people stumble upon just the right combination of events to experience the failures and make them known. Some of these risks are even known in advance, and the amount of times a company has ignored whistleblowers. the amount of times regulations were ignored or regulators looked the other way, ...innumerable. Private or pubilc, doesn't matter. Look at the series of decisions that led to the Challenger disaster. This is the kind of bumbling and poor decision making you're going to find all across america, where these plants are not necessarily up to date or well-maintained.

So safe in theory is pretty meaningless when the implementation is always subject to human factors and incentives. And just adamantly shouting that it's safe, the perception of safety, contributes to the suboptimal implementations in the first place.

 

[Rubbishplayer]

What? "We know how to do it safe" implies the science is solved. Tesla wasn't an economist or a politician as far as I'm aware. Tech visionaries aren't exactly renowned for political or economical precaution.

Regarding nuclear reactors, the science has been solved, and nobody said Tesla was anything other than a visionary scientist, whose goal was free energy.

But if you can't be arsed to research it before launching a zero-calorie argument, I can't be arsed to spoon feed you.

 

[Rubbishplayer]

Science is rarely 'solved,' just advanced. Just because we know how to do it and we know how to do it safely doesn't mean that we know how to do it efficiently and at scale.
There's always room for innovation, discovery, and improvement. For instance, changing from a Uranium fueled reactor to a Thorium fueled reactor. Who's to say there isn't another type of yet-to-be-discovered fuel that is more economically feasible without compromising on efficiency or safety? How would we ever know if we just slapped a bow on it and said "Well, that's nuclear energy; sure is neat we figured that one out, bummer that it's too expensive."

I would argue that if you take profitability out of the equation, it can be done.

And while some might want to continue arguing the toss about whether that would ever be "practical" or scalable, they will do so while the Earth gradually becomes uninhabitable by humans, making the whole economic argument academic at best (rather like Nero fiddling while Rome burned).

There's an old saying in engineering: better, faster, cheaper: pick any two. Instead of trying to ignore this immutable law, perhaps we should be asking "what price are we prepared to pay to maintain our life-style and ensure the Earth remain habitable". And with an ethical approach to answering that question, that might include making nuclear safe by forgetting profit and prioritising safety.

Right now, the price we're paying is measured in famine, war, mass migration, extinct species, wildfire and weather-driven devastation and a few people getting extortionately rich off the back of it.

 

[TedEH]

nobody said Tesla was anything other than a visionary scientist

But if you can't be arsed to research it before launching a zero-calorie argument, I can't be arsed to spoon feed you.

So, once again, to solve this non-science problem, that we stressed is not a science problem because the science is "solved", we need a visionary scientist...? To solve what you called an economic and political problem? There's no amount of research I could do to explain why you picked a scientist to solve an economics problem.

If you're going to insult me, at least make some sense while you're doing it.

 

[Rubbishplayer]

So, once again, to solve this non-science problem, that we stressed is not a science problem because the science is "solved", we need a visionary scientist...? To solve what you called an economic and political problem? There's no amount of research I could do to explain why you picked a scientist to solve an economics problem.

If you're going to insult me, at least make some sense while you're doing it.

I can't help you

 

[Alberto7]

I would argue that if you take profitability out of the equation, it can be done.

And while some might want to continue arguing the toss about whether that would ever be "practical" or scalable, they will do so while the Earth gradually becomes uninhabitable by humans, making the whole economic argument academic at best (rather like Nero fiddling while Rome burned).

There's an old saying in engineering: better, faster, cheaper: pick any two. Instead of trying to ignore this immutable law, perhaps we should be asking "what price are we prepared to pay to maintain our life-style and ensure the Earth remain habitable". And with an ethical approach to answering that question, that might include making nuclear safe by forgetting profit and prioritising safety.

Right now, the price we're paying is measured in famine, war, mass migration, extinct species, wildfire and weather-driven devastation and a few people getting extortionately rich off the back of it.

I wouldn't rely on any private entity deciding to fund nuclear power R&D out of the goodness of their heart. That's a good thing to hope for, but if we want cleaner energy, like with everything else, public opinion matters.

Also, as an engineer, I feel the need to refute the "better, faster, cheaper: pick any two" saying. It is CERTAINLY not an "immutable" law. Otherwise you wouldn't have ever been able to use your phone or your computer to post that comment. It is because, as engineers, our overall mandate and call to action is to literally figure out how to do it better, faster, cheaper, AND safer. Yeah, shortcuts are taken often because we always have constraints and limitations (like time and resources) and because people are people and we bend over for money and our own egos, but it doesn't take away from the fact that the noble goal of science and engineering is to work together to always improve on those areas. It's not that the saying is never true, but to call it an "immutable law" is to ignore the hard work amd sacrifice so many people have put into achieving exactly that. That saying was probably made up by a very frustrated individual working with very limited resources, and because it rolls off the tongue nicely it stuck around.

 

[Randy]

 

[Rubbishplayer]

I wouldn't rely on any private entity deciding to fund nuclear power R&D out of the goodness of their heart. That's a good thing to hope for, but if we want cleaner energy, like with everything else, public opinion matters.

I guess that's what I'm saying too. This needs to be a government-led project.

Also, as an engineer, I feel the need to refute the "better, faster, cheaper: pick any two" saying. It is CERTAINLY not an "immutable" law. Otherwise you wouldn't have ever been able to use your phone or your computer to post that comment. It is because, as engineers, our overall mandate and call to action is to literally figure out how to do it better, faster, cheaper, AND safer. Yeah, shortcuts are taken often because we always have constraints and limitations (like time and resources)...

Hmm, you see the moment you talk "constraints" I think you start agreeing with the "Law" as stated. And no, as an engineer myself, I'd never denigrate the efforts of those who work within those constraints. But constraints they are, the biggest being financial. Hence, you're kinda agreeing with the Law, in that you admit to shortcuts to meet those constraint, no?

and because people are people and we bend over for money and our own egos, but it doesn't take away from the fact that the noble goal of science and engineering is to work together to always improve on those areas. It's not that the saying is never true, but to call it an "immutable law" is to ignore the hard work amd sacrifice so many people have put into achieving exactly that.

I couldn't agree with you more, especially as I count myself in there too

That saying was probably made up by a very frustrated individual working with very limited resources, and because it rolls off the tongue nicely it stuck around.

Yeah, it does roll off the tongue nicely.

But more importantly, are you telling me, as an engineer, that you've never been frustrated?

In any case, let me put it in a different way. In any engineering project, a RAID (risks, assumptions, issues and dependencies) analysis is essential to predicting the risk of things going wrong. That list is usually risk-ranked, with the "lowest" risks towards the bottom, and a risk teatment plan developed. One of the first things to get dropped when financial constraints come along are the risk treatment plans for those "lower" risks.

Now, one problem with this is that as risk = impact x probability, some of those risks that are discarded have very high impacts, but because the probability is very low, they don't score high. We usually see these risk turn up as "Black Swan" events (e.g. 9/11, the financial crash of 2008).

However, what's worse is that that risk assessment is highly dependent on human judgement. Where a risk is identified (e.g. the first nuclear detonation igniting the atmosphere), it can be assessed, as the Manhattan Project did, using Monte Carlo simulation and, if necessary, planned for.

But where it isn't (e.g. terrorists flying into the twin towers), risk treatment just doesn't get done (which is why so many Wall Street firms' disaster recovery plans failed, because all their WANs went through the Verizon data centre under the towers).

QED.

 

[nightsprinter]

Scientists achieve major breakthrough in the quest for limitless energy: 'It's setting a world record'

"It's a giant leap forward for a concept that promises economically viable, zero-carbon heat and electricity."

www.yahoo.com