Climate Change

[archibaldcrane]

But is it safer then teabagging reactor vessels while shutdown?

As far as "waste" goes from what I've read mines themselves have always been a bigger problem. Particularly to the Navajo

Yeah, the Navajo were abused pretty badly from the 50's-80's in uranium mining. The US doesn't produce much uranium anymore (less than 10% of our power plant needs are fulfilled domestically) - our deposits are of lower quality than the places we import from so it's uneconomical unless prices are high.

[dasva]

Dunno my studies show you're likely to get cancer but my sample size is real small.

I certainly got some weird looks when I frisked out each time. I figure my family gets exactly 1 person per generation so I'm fine

[dasva]

Yeah, the Navajo were abused pretty badly from the 50's-80's in uranium mining. The US doesn't produce much uranium anymore (less than 10% of our power plant needs are fulfilled domestically) - our deposits are of lower quality than the places we import from so it's uneconomical unless prices are high.

Yeah other places driving price down is also why any "reprocessing" behind simple mechanical is alsp uneconomical. And we dont have any that that would work for. I've always wondered if we might be able t9 sell to countries that are interested in using it

[Fiye]

Dasva I don't know if I actually posted it on BG but a mechanic I worked with on the prise did get testicular cancer.

And he was notorious for tea bagging shit. They found out the cancer at stage 2.

[dasva]

Notorious? How much do you have to do it to get a rep lol

[Byrthnoth]

We should have embraced fission reactors in the 80s and 90s because it would have allowed us to largely avoid the large problem of global warming in exchange for creating a small problem for humanity that would play out on a geological time scale. However, at present the regulatory/spin-up time for new reactors is too slow and we might as well dump more money into solar/wind/improving the grid, perhaps while we work on fusion. Nuclear is just not a viable path anymore, not because the technology doesn't work but because the regulatory burden is so high (to some degree rightfully so.)


I will say that John Oliver's show is typically fun to watch but it has basically missed the target every time I've been an expert on the subject being discussed. This is no different; you're just keyed in to it.

[archibaldcrane]

We should have embraced fission reactors in the 80s and 90s because it would have allowed us to largely avoid the large problem of global warming in exchange for creating a small problem for humanity that would play out on a geological time scale. However, at present the regulatory/spin-up time for new reactors is too slow and we might as well dump more money into solar/wind/improving the grid, perhaps while we work on fusion. Nuclear is just not a viable path anymore, not because the technology doesn't work but because the regulatory burden is so high (to some degree rightfully so.)

Or we could just lower the regulatory burden. And "rightly so" is a joke, in America, where our worst incident was just that one reactor at 3-mile island broke and was expensive, with no deaths or serious injuries to anyone. We keep trying to chase the dragon of "enhanced safety" with these Gen III/III+ designs that explode the costs because they are all FOAK (first of a kind), leading people to say "welp it's just too expensive!" as if there isn't precedent for nuclear being built efficiently in other countries (like S. Korea and France). The key is to take the best existing design, like the APR-1400, and use that standard design to build plant after plant with the same construction companies that learn by doing, continuing to drop unit costs, and crush coal and natural gas off our grid.

Wind and solar just aren't going to do it - not even close. At relatively low grid penetrations the variable nature of them becomes chaotic, and they lock in natural gas as the load balancer permanently. And don't get me started on how "batteries can fix the load problem" - you're talking like 10 Tesla powerwalls per person needed if you want to be able to achieve a relatively stable grid with high wind/solar penetration needed to actually deeply decarbonize - and that's BEFORE we electrify most of our transportation (which is also desperately needed for climate change purposes).

For countries that can't produce 80+% of their power with hydro, nuclear is the only option for actual deep decarbonization - not this fluffy "take 10% off the top" that wind/solar can do, but I'm talking about hitting the back walls decarb.

[dasva]

I mean we certainly need more regulation and safety than say cold war Russia... but we've gone full opposite spectrum. Plenty of other countries have completely fine track records and standards hell even Russia last I checked had cleaned up their act a ton.

As somewhat alluded to by Archi a lot of the burdensome regulation and cost isn't necessarily just having certain standards but the ironically unreasonable ALARA push and the sheer difficulty of just getting individual designs thru. So even plans that should be much safer if they are too different or new have basically no chance of getting approved even things not directly related like secondary plant stuff can be difficult. I mean we are still using Rankine steam cycles which are kind of terrible. Should also be noted in some supreme irony that it is actually much much easier to get approval for new military designs than civilian. And well look at our military nuclear track record. A couple of small hiccups and SL-1. And for the most part goes for making the same thing over and over again.

There has been some push in the industry to until that can be fixed to some level of mass production particularly with some kind of modular design which could drive the price way down with just current tech/designs but seems like it's running into similar problems. Meanwhile countries like India, China and Russia are perfecting designs/concepts we came up with back in the 60s/70s that should prove both significantly more passively/redundantly safe but cheaper. Several Gen IV designs are already in construction or in various testing/wind up phases and I believe a few are already connected to the grid. So at this point might be better to see how they do over the next few years and then partner with them and fasttrack designs that do well.

Another thing is people talk about costs but it's hard to do a real comparison. Nuclear is somewhat unique in that pretty much all the related costs are built into the industry/regulations and accounted for. And while there is a little effort to factor in more of the external costs for things like coal/gas they kind of fall short and there is basically no attempt to do so with solar/wind and for that matter little thought given to them in the first place. So in comparison makes nuclear seem more expensive than it would be in comparison.

Along with that is subsidy talk. Everyone talks about how much nuclear gets but wind and solar both receive several times as much and on a per unit energy basis solar received about 100 times as much. To note coal/gas also get a bad subsidy rap but get the least per energy produce. But we obviously there are better reasons to shy away from them

[archibaldcrane]

Good quick article on John Oliver

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesco...g#18b1ab3a1365

Besides, there just isn’t much nuclear waste. 70,000 tons over 60 years? Hello - it’s uranium, the heaviest element on Earth prior to 1940. That much waste wouldn’t even fill one good-sized landfill. Coal generates that much toxic waste every 30 minutes.

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[Byrthnoth]

people don't care about frogs, but they do care about . . .

Oh look, a polar bear!

For those of you who don't know how polar bears work, they kind of keep the inverse cycle of other bears. Although they never hibernate, they have trouble finding food when it's nice out. The best time of year for a polar bear is the late autumn to early spring, when the sea ice freezes and they can hunt seals. They may go a long time without a meal in the spring-summer, when the sea ice breaks up.

We have been monitoring sea ice since the 70s and saw the least of it last year: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeaut..._july_2017_oc/

There are three ellipses on this graph. The outermost ellipse is the total amount of ice in the Arctic and Antarctic. The inner two ellipses are the Arctic (this is where polar bears live) and Antarctic. As the animation runs, the line rotates (to indicate changing time) and it leaves three trace at a different distances depending on the three ice amounts. The Arctic and Antarctic are out of phase with each other because the earth tilts as it goes through its rotation (north pole summer is south pole winter).

As you watch the animation, pay attention to the Arctic trace, as that is where polar bears live.
* The ice melt becomes much more dramatic starting in the fall (September 8-o-clock) of 2007
* There is obviously a big global deviation in the winter of 2016, and if you pay attention to the Arctic trace you can see that it didn't freeze nearly as much this past winter.

Thus, polar bears can't hunt as well.

Thus, the link above.

\(^.^)/ shoulda elected Gore

Edit: An interesting sidebar about polar bear reproduction. Polar bear females abort fetuses if they are undernourished. If they do allow the egg to implant, they actually *do* den for a few months in the winter (prime hunting time), so the earlier ice melt cuts down on the time that new moms have to fatten themselves and their cubs up in time for summer. Basically, less ice means that there will be a lot fewer females getting pregnant and those that do will be more likely to starve in the coming summer because they will miss the best hunting time.

tl;dr: wild polar bears are probably going to go extinct within a century and now that can be seen in a single plot.

[Roranora]

this can go in several threads, and perhaps the US Congress is most apt, but irreparable environmental damage for little gain is my kind of tragedy

but wherever we do, let us not fail to grasp how truly shitty this GOP tax bill is. Lisa Murkowski's rider will open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil & gas exploration; it's been on there since October and her vote conditional upon its inclusion. daddy Frank must be proud right now (former Senator and governor who appointed her in 2002)

obviously, or perhaps not, Alaska doesn't give a fuck. they want revenues, they want peak 2014 oil, and they've even sued oil&gas operators to develop their lands (ExxonMobil at Point Thompson)


---
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/...g-environment/

is there oil there? eh, possibly some.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates the area could contain 4.3 billion to 11.8 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil. The higher figure, which USGS gives only a five percent probability, would put ANWR in the range of Prudhoe Bay

so maybe a Ridill-like chance of a large discovery, and certainly not guaranteed Prudhoe-levels of production

but $1.1 billion each for state and federal funding! because we assume that level of production, the 5% probability, brilliant!

At the federal level, $1.1 billion would offset less than one tenth of one percent of the $1.5 trillion tax cut. To raise even that much, the two lease sales envisioned by the bill over the next decade, of around 400,000 acres each, would have to bring in $2,750 per acre—yet lease sales elsewhere on the North Slope have been averaging less than a tenth of that. The top bids for a sale earlier this month were $15 per acre. An independent analysis done for the left-leaning Center for American Progress estimated that revenue from ANWR would net only $37.5 million to federal coffers over the next decade.

..or, maybe $40 million. yikes

it's just drilling. shit'll buff out

Whatever damage is done in ANWR will persist a long time. A study by the National Academies of Science in 2003 concluded that it would be unlikely for oil and gas infrastructure ever to be removed from the North Slope, or for the land to be restored, due to the enormous cost. In the case of the single unsuccessful well drilled in ANWR in the 1980s, the oil companies did remove their equipment from the pad—but satellite images show the tundra has yet to recover, 30 years later.

---
a more nuanced take, identifies the split amongst local communities
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/...nities/547352/


"pfft, it's jobs and much needed money for these communities; besides, restricting ANWR exploration will not stop climate change."

mostly true and true. but yet after 40 years of attempted preservation, it's disheartening to see it end like this, stapled onto the laughable Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

[Clash Perez]

Let's be real, if you lived in Alaska you'd be looking forward to a warmer climate too.

[6souls]

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2017/1...llons-of-water

California regulators find that Nestle only has the permits to extract 8.5M gallons of the 62.6M gallons of water that they take from the San Bernardino National Forest. Nestle has been given 60 days to submit a compliance plan and 90 days to submit a investigation / monitoring plan.

Edit: Coworker of mine just mentioned that this sounds like the plot of Chinatown.

[Byrthnoth]

Derp derp derp it is cold

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/...ors_picks=true

[Byrthnoth]

Pretty accurate summary of the current weather in the US: https://apnews.com/d7809e71d48d44399...a-warmer-world

[Roranora]

it's the same dynamic that set winter record temps in Moscow in the last year or two

we've displaced a jet stream and weakened the polar vortex; frigid arctic air will occasionally (and increasingly frequently) burst out and hit Russia, NA, or elsewhere in the northern hemisphere

it looks like areas of Russia and Asia are 20C (36F) degrees warmer right now, nevermind some of the North Pole deltas. nbd rite

[Byrthnoth]

Interesting review of a recent Science article on polar bear behavior and metabolism:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/...r-bear/552083/

Basic summary is that polar bears burn more calories and consequently need to eat more seals than we thought, which means the problems I laid out here are likely worse than expected.

Also, polar bears undertake some pretty complicated actions that either have no obvious benefit to them or require more awareness than we typically ascribe to animals. For instance, one polar bear spent time throwing ice at seals.

[Roranora]

Cape Town runs out of water in April. Day Zero is coming.

[Salodin]

For instance, one polar bear spent time throwing ice at seals.

As sad as the polar bear story is, this is hilarious. You can imagine a hungry bear throwing ice at seals cause fuck it, what they're doing now isn't working so let's try to hit it with something instead lol.

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[zoobernut]

Middle of February and we have barely gotten any rain this year and it is about 82 degrees outside. By this time last year we had record breaking rainfall that destroyed the roads and knocked down a bridge and created one of the largest landslides in California recorded history.

Stupid rollercoaster weather will only get worse. I know weather vs. climate but mostly I am observing anecdotally the extreme swings from one year to the next and also since I was a kid when we didn't typically see swings like this. The entire west coast is super dry again. I hope it doesn't last as long this time.