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‘We should have better answers by now’: climate scientists baffled by unexpected pace of heating
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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If I remember correctly, we don't have enough of it to go fully nuclear with our current energy demands. More so, we've mined nearly all of the soil thats anything above 0.02% uranium. As such, not only do we not have enough on the planet, getting it and refining it would almost defeat the whole point of doing so in the first place.
It is a problem in that there might be plenty of it but that doesn't mean there's enough.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying we have to go back to the stone ages. Its just that we can't afford the super rich anymore.
Pretty sure there's enough weapons grade plutonium to run the US for 100 years in decommissioned nuclear weapons alone.
I think 100 years is enough time to build pumped hydro storage and renewables like solar/wind.
The problem is that there a major, major shortage of one of the isotopes needed to re-enrich weapons grade uranium (pu 238). Thats before you get to the vast energy inefficiency of doing it which isn't a problem, if you're just decommissioning them anyway and you don't care about energy consumption. However, in this instance, you would need to worry about energy consumption as well as the isotope there won't be enough of to convert even a fraction of it.
Again, even if you had 100 years, there aren't enough of the specialist minerals needed for hydro storage and renewables.
Essentially theres" a hole in our bucket."
The only answer is degrowth.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/02/nuclear-waste-us-could-power-the-us-for-100-years.html
What specialist materials are we talking about? Wind, solar, and pumped hydro use primarily copper, silicon, carbon, and concrete.
I'm not saying it can't be converted or that the amount couldn't, if refined, potentially fuel America for a number of years. So, I'm not sure what the link was for. I said its not feasible, due to the inefficiency of doing it on mass.
What about the energy transition materials like lithium, nickel and cobalt? We don't have enough of those. All the windmills in the world won't help, if you can't convert motion into electricity.
Even then, copper looks to be facing an impending shortage. More still, refining enough silicone to supply the world with and keep up with increased demand of energy would have a colossal carbon footprint, almost big enough to cancel out the benefit. You'll have to start refining soil thats 0.000000000001% silicone before you got even halfway through. Yeah, we have loads of these things but getting enough of it, in a pure enough form, to power the whole world simply isn't realistic.
We can't keep up with the speed that we increase our energy usage with the resources we have on the planet. Its a circular problem with only one solution. I'm not saying we have to go back to the primitive. We just have the treat the planet as though its resources are finite.
They'll sell us any flavour of distraction other than "work less, do less, slow down and enjoy life more." Whatever way you cut it, its the only answer.
You seem to be trying to push a narrative that I don't oppose as if I do. I support degrowth but your reasons are flawed.
Pumped Hydro, solar, and wind don't really use lithium, nickel, or cobalt. Those are mostly used in NCM Liion cells that none of these use. Permanent magnets would probably be the biggest headache tbh.
Idk why we'd need silicone, we're not making sex toys here. /s silicon is most common in sand and rocks, something there is plenty of basically everywhere.
I don't care what you're saying for this circular problem. I've literally not addressed it once because I agree with you, I just don't agree with your reasoning.
Neo magnets would be an issue to scale, but there are previous generation magnet material that will work just fine. It’s not as strong is all.
Most of the big generators on the grid don't even have permanent magnets. They use electromagnets. This means they need some electricity to be added to get them started up, but once they are running they are self-sustaining. Normally that initial jolt is provided by backup generator or by battery.
The posts are interesting (I didn’t look at all of them) but I am weary of accepting all the conclusions drawn. S/He states a lot of facts, but then does a “therefore it must be (this)”
Pushing a narrative is an interesting description of it.
You have to be able to store energy from renewables. How do you plan to store it without those? How to you plan for the shortfall of natural energy compared to energy consumption when you can't meet it with nuclear?
I'm saying you because you're claiming my reasons are flawed. I'm glad we agree on degrowth though.
Its late here and maybe I got confused. I thought I was talking about refined silicon though. Even though that's still wrong lol.
If you're refuting my reasons for degrowth on the basis that we can use nuclear and renewables to get around it, then its a circular problem. The energy needed to make enough to do it, with our current energy usage, with a rising population would cause so much carbon emissions. They're just so inefficient.
What would your reasons for degrowth be then? I'd genuinely like to know.
Go read my other comment. Batteries don't need rare materials for grid scale storage. It's the small ones in phones that need things like Nickel, Cobalt, and Lithium to be as energy dense as possible. Grid storage began phasing out Nickel and Cobalt a while ago and will eventually phase out Lithium as Sodium batteries get better and cheaper.
Current nuclear is a sad joke compared to what we learned we could do even 50 years ago. The initial investment for nuclear is always expensive, but the pay off is cheap energy for like 40 or 50 years. While it does release CO2 to make new reactors there are ways around even that. Using less or no concrete would be a great start. Making iron is kind of hard though, I will give you that. Maybe we will have to switch to aluminum or something.
Consumer electronics are probably the biggest problem we can't solve right now. That's why we need devices made to last and things like the right to repair. Getting rid of individual vehicles would really help too, as trains can accept power straight from the grid without needing huge batteries.
But they haven't phased them out and we have nothing close to the grid storage we would need to switch to renewables. Even then, they will never provide the amount of energy we need to meet current usage.
At our current rate of usage, we will run out of viable uranium sources within 80 years. If we switched the worlds energy to nuclear, it wouldn't last 5.
The only realistic option is for the world to use less.
This is completely absurd as I keep telling you. The vast majority of the uranium in "spent" nuclear fuel is untouched. Current reactors are a joke compared to what even the Soviet Union could come up with in 1980. Imagine leaving over 90% of your meal on the table and calling it spent.
You can declare it to be thus and such all you like. I keel telling you, we will run out of what we know exists now within 80 or 90 years, at current usage.
You just don't like it and that's not the same as it not being true.
I keep telling you, the energy cost of doing it makes it non viable, as any kind of meaningful solution but you keep repeating it all the same.
What do keels have to do with nuclear power? Unless we are talking about submarines?
No it isn't true. For a start you are focusing only on concentrated diposits. There is enough uranium to last humanity in sea water for 100 years, it's just hard to get at. You're also completely ignoring U-238, and Thorium. You haven't even provided a source once. Since apparently sources aren't necessary I might as well tell you that there is enough uranium in you're house to power the entire world for a billion years and that you need to stop hoarding it. See I can make up things too.
What energy cost? Reactors produce energy on average, not remove it. That's as true for the fast breeder reactors I sourced as it is for conventional nuclear reactors. Do you actually have any evidence for any of this bullshit?
Sources aren't necessarily for widely accepted facts. You just don't like what you're hearing and want to sealion it away.
Like I said, getting it and refining it is the problem.
Don't worry, its clear that you've been making things up the whole time. I'm happy to provide sources for serious people, having serious conversations. Not you and your jokes.
You provided one source that fast breeder reactors were built in the former soviet union. Had you been refuting me saying "no other fuel can ever be used" it might have been a useful link. However, I didn't. So, it wasn't useful.
Reactors don't produce or create energy. They release it. Are you trying to tell me that you literally can't understand a scenario where the energy cost of refining and or gathering something could be more than what is eventually released?
If you think I'm going to waste my life researching links to prove, to your personal satisfaction, everything that you just plain don't like then you really are deluded.
It's not a widely accepted fact at all. Ask three different scientists and you will get three different anwsers.
It isn't sealioning when I provide sources and you don't.
Where have I done that? I am the one coming at you with actual sources and reading material. You have no proof. They say every accusation is a confession, and that's exactly what this is.
Actually I did. Twice no less. I gave you the Thorium fuel cycle, where you make your own Uranium from Thorium. I also gave the fuel cycle using U-238, which is a different isotope to the U-235 used by current reactors.
I am out right now but I can point you to more sources and better explanations of fuel cycles than mine feel free to ask. Honestly though I think you would just ignore them anyway. If you want to find them yourself look at the molten salt reactor experiments, progress made on LFTR reactors, or the third shipping port reactor in the USA. Those are all experimental I will admit, which is why I pointed to the Soviet and Russian reactors first that produce and use Plutonium, as those are less experimental.
Note I am not talking about fusion reactor technology, as while that's very promising it isn't even close to being implemented. If that does become viable at some point then all of this becomes irrelevant anyway, as fusion is likely to be the best available power source at that point.
Okay so maybe my wording is a little off I will give you that. You are correct that energy is neither created nor destroyed.
Yeah, I stopped reading at the lazy recycled rhetoric.
As you love sources to much, provide a source showing that our energy consumption can increase perpetually
Or is that not how things work?
You mean like the rhetoric you have been using this entire time?
That's not what I am saying. Go and read up on what fertile and fissile are. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertile_material
You can convert a fertile material to a fissile material, then fission that to produce energy. The energy though was already in the fertile material to begin with plus a little bit from the neutrons you added. Eventually you will run out of fertile material, but that's a long way away. For example's sake you would might start with Th-232 which is fertile, add a neutron to get U-233, then fission U-233 to get energy plus some smaller elements called fission products. All of this is nuclear engineering 101. I am not a nuclear physicist and even I understand this.
You can't call everything you don't understand or don't know about made up. It would actually be funny if it wasn't so depressing. The lack of scientific literacy some people have, and the unwillingness to learn you and others demonstrate is truly sad. It wouldn't even be so bad if you were willing to admit you don't know and just walk away. I can understand and respect not caring about nuclear enough to actually research it so long as you are willing to admit that. Instead you are sat there arguing about basic principles of nuclear physics and engineering, the kind of things I learned in sixth form, and calling me a liar just because I know more than you do.
It's really telling that this is regarded as such a terrible thing by almost everyone.
Thank your local homeless person for doing their part in degrowth and underconsumption. Socrates and Jesus were finally vindicated. They really are the saints here.
We literally don't need any of those. Grid scale storage I don't think has used Nickel and Cobalt for some time, as the best way is to use Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries which need fewer replacements (longer cycle life) and are less volatile (explosive). Sodium batteries remove the need for even Lithium. Sodium is many times more abundant btw. As bad as they are Lead Acid batteries are also an option, as well as many other battery technologies made with less rare earth materials. Heck you could just do pumped hydro and not worry about batteries at all.
You also don't need any of those materials to make electricity from motion. A generator is a fairly simple device needing only coils of wire and a few moving parts. Some need permanent magnets but even that isn't hard really. Storing power was always the problem, not making it.
Likewise current reactors are a joke in terms of fuel efficiency. Basing any estimate on current reactor technology being used is kind of silly, as we already know we can do so much better. The majority of earth's nuclear fuel is in fertile materials, not fissile materials. We have known this for a long time by the way. Decades ago countries like the USA and Japan were doing research into reactors using U-238, more than 100 times as abundant as U-235. It has been demonstrated that breeder reactors for Plutonium from U-238 are feasible even 50 or 60 years ago. The reason we don't do this is because U-235 reactors were determined to be cheaper, and probably safer. I think sacrificing some safety and cost is necessary when up against something like climate change. With modern technology I am sure safety issues could be reduced or eliminated. Likewise Thorium is a thing, but that's more experimental than U-238 to Plutonium technology.
If we are talking about solar panels: just don't. Solar panels are mostly glass and silicon. I believe some rarer materials are needed to make them as efficient as they are now, but that doesn't mean they are actually needed. In fact why bother with solar panels at all? They aren't even the most efficient way of turning solar power into useful energy. Solar systems that work using mirrors to heat molten salt have their own energy storage built-in, and don't require exotic materials, and are more efficient anyway. They might require more investment, or be more complex to deploy, but overall they are a great option.
Degrowth might be necessary in the short term. Long term wise though humanity very much has room to grow further. We haven't even talked about mining the moon yet, and if we can't do that we are very much screwed anyway. Being dependant on one planet is horrifically bad for long term survivability. You think climate change is an extinction level event? Try a gamma ray blast from a pulsar.
All you've really demonstrated is that you don't understand technology specifically renewables and nuclear. There is a real concern with lack of rare materials, but not for renewables. The real issue is computers. Modern computers and especially smartphones need a lot of rare things. So constantly replacing your smartphone might not be practical anymore, and things like battery life and processing speed might actually get worse for a while as we are forced to use alternative materials. Not really a huge deal in the scheme of things though.
Also thinking the rich elite are the only people consuming things at an unsustainable rate is hilarious. They use more resources per person obviously, but the number of them is also really small. If you actually looked into it you would probably find that lost of the consuming of resources is to support the lower and middle classes. Don't get me wrong oil executives are a real issue because of how they effect government policy and the behaviour of the rest of society. They do deserve a significant share of the blame. Not every rich person is an oil executive though. Having ultra rich people around is bad but this isn't the reason why.
You don't need any of those things....well other than the nickel in the coils I specificallymention and the other components that I clearly know nothing about......
Pipe dreams are lovely and all that but until we have something more solid, its best to dismiss the use of other isotopes as it'll take a decade just to build the power station needed to make the energy. Thats before we get to the time it will actually take to fully research it all.
You're attempting to argue that I don't know about renewables or the technology necessary to go green and you're talking about mining THE MOON in order to, wait for it, lower carbon emissions of all things.
The fucking moon
No wonder you found it so funny. I never said "the rich elite are the only people consuming things at an unsustainable rate." Honestly, you're hilarious for attempting to twist what was said into that. Have some intellectual integrity please.
You've failed so hard at an "akshually" but please do carry on. As I guessed, you're against degrowth as anything but a temporary measure and rather than having the spine to come out and stand for it, you try waffle instead.
Just want to leave this here, in case you choose to delete it later
Nickel in generator coils? What? They are mode from copper. Sometimes aluminum because it's cheaper than copper. The majority of nickel isn't even used in things like batteries, it's used to make steel alloys like stainless steel and heat resistant alloys used for engine parts. Also you keep pretending all of these material aren't recyclable. Metals can be reshaped an indefinite number of times. It's like arguing you can only use water once.
I am not talking about a pipedream. I am talking about something that was actually implemented in the soviet union. This isn't Thorium that has never had a commerical implementation that was successful. Both of these reactors are still operational:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-600_reactor
There is even a third one that has now been decommissioned, but still operated for around 20 years.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-350_reactor
You're lost again. I am talking about doing that in the long term after we have decarbonized.
Given you kept talking about the elite and how they can't exist in your degrowth scenario, it seemed to me that blame was implied. I am not being dishonest here. If anything you are the one changing goal posts by doing the whole I didn't say that routine when it's clearly implied.
Yes. Did I not say it isn't necessary in the long term? I thought I stated it pretty clearly. I don't support long term degrowth anymore than I support shrinking the human population long term. Maybe the population of earth specifically, but not the population of all humanity.
I am still waiting for a response to that last quote. I think you've found something you can't dispute.
Good job there isn't a copper shortage coming ...
Oh wait
Nickel is used in the alloys needed in wind turbines and solar panels.
Theres no factual basis to what you're saying. You're just declaring utter bollocks to be thus and such.
Youre saying they don't use uranium or are you trying to move the goal posts again?
Oh, I see, mining the moon is a solution for when we've already fixed the problem. No wonder it was so confusing.
No, you just made that up and its not implied. They can't exist without vast amounts of excess labour being undertaken. Im saying its two birds with one stone. That doesn't mean I'm saying that they made all the emissions. If that's genuinely what you read from those words then you have a problem. Youre just grasping at straws here.
It took a long time to drag out of you.
Well, far be for me to have to explain to you the finite nature of the planet you find yourself on. Who knows, maybe perpetual growth on a finite planet is possible? Maybe all the scientists and the laws on entropy are wrong and youre right? Maybe thats a thing that could happen in the real world?
Omg, yeah, you got me. I can't dispute that there are more "lower" and middle class people in the world. Well done you.
Nope not at all. Do you understand what an isotope is? The vast majority of Uranium on earth is U-238. Ordinary reactors mainly use U-235 with less usage of U-238. If you look at the composition of "spent" fuel you would see most of it is unreacted Uranium. Likewise the depleted uranium produced in manufacturing new reactor fuel can also be used by turning it into Plutonium.
Normally when people talk about running out of Uranium they are talking about U-235. Since you have provided no source I can only presume this is what you mean. If you could link your source we could actually talk about it.
You might want to actually read up on closing the fuel cycle, this is where you reuse previously used fuel. One of the reactors I am talking about uses plutonium as part of it's fuel source. Plutonium can only have come from other reactors, meaning it's reusing either material from nuclear weapons that was originally produced in military reactors, or from waste produced by other civilian power reactors. It's called a breeder reactor because it produces more fissile material than it actually burns. This fissile material comes from converting fertile U-238 into fissile Plutonium. All of this stuff is a google search away.
Here are some places you can start learning about this stuff:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactor-grade_plutonium
This is again without getting into the Thorium fuel cycle which involves converting Thorium-232 into Uranium-233. This has been done before in the USA but only on a small scale. If this could be scaled up you could make your own Uranium without mining it. It would require some U-235 to start with but would become self-sustaining in a couple of years. You can read about it here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle
I am talking about plans for expansion once the global warming situation is resolved. I probably should have stated this more clearly which is my fault. I apologize for causing confusion.
Also pretending Nuclear is the only option is even more funny. Solar and wind are the cheaper energy sources. There are plenty of other options too like geothermal, tidal, hydro, and so on.
Honestly man just take the loss and actually read up on stuff next time. It's great for your education to actually learn how science and technology works, instead of grasping at straws. You've painted yourself into a corner where regardless of whether you are correct or not you don't actually understand enough to defend your arguments. You aren't informed enough to determine if things like degrowth are actually necessary or not. Heck I am not informed enough to make those decisions either, and I understand this stuff better than you do, especially the basics of nuclear fuel cycles. Ultimately this comes down to engineering and scientific considerations, and frankly you don't strike me as an engineer. While I am a scientist this isn't my area either, and I shouldn't be called on to make policy decisions in this area.
I mean, you could Google "uranium shortage" and find what you need very quickly. Again, I'm not spending my evening teaching you and providing you with sources that you're unable to refute in any way, despite your best efforts. I'm sure you've convinced yourself that anyone who doesn't do that for you must be wrong but thats just not how the world works.
I've already told you how there isn't enough of the materials we need to make sufficient numbers of solar panels or wind turbines, let alone figure out a way to store the energy for when we need it later.
Why is the default position that there has to be enough of what we need to do that, unless proven wrong?
Degrowth doesn't have to mean smaller.
I used to do research too but then I left for a career that paid more. Not that something like that would make me right or more believable, of course. No, that would be ridiculous.
Im not really sure why you decided to bring up your career in an unrelated field. Honestly, if I was arguing for perpetual growth on a finite planet, I wouldn't tell anyone I was a scientist, let alone demand someone "take the L" for having to explain to you that our energy consumption can't grow perpetually.
Fyi I had a quick look and all I can see is sources saying we need to build more uranium mines by 2030 to meet demand. Nothing about the earth running out.
Yeah there will eventually be a shortage of U-235. I fully admit that. There isn't and won't be a shortage of either Th-232 or U-238 for over 100 years at least. By then we will probably have found something else. That's just thinking about nuclear fission as well. To me nuclear fission is about filling in the gaps that renewables can't cover until we work out energy storage, nuclear fusion, neutrinovoltaics, or something entirely new. Nuclear fission is one of the best power sources we have today, but I don't expect that to always be the case.
Nuclear fusion uses completely different fuels (no uranium, plutonium, or thorium) that have their own sourcing considerations. Getting fuel sources for fusion might legitimately be a problem, but we don't know that yet as we haven't picked which kinds of fusion fuel we are going to use yet. Current experiments involve things like tritium which have to be made artificially from other isotopes like deuterium using particle accelerators or nuclear reactors. This is used at the moment because it's the easiest to do fusion with. There are other options though, and eventually we might work out how to do fusion with ordinary hydrogen (protium/H1). Since hydrogen (specifically protium/H1) is the most abundant material or isotope in the Universe and is found in everyday water that's obviously the best option if we can build a reactor to use it.
Why use solar panels? You can use concentrated solar power that doesn't rely on photovoltaics. You instead use mirrors to heat up water or salt, that then drives a turbine or a thermochemical reaction. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power
Also what materials are we running out of for solar panels? From what I have seen there are multiple ways to make solar panels using different materials, some more efficient than others. Most of them seem to be made from a mixture of silicon, glass, and metal. All of which are fairly abundant material, and at least some of which can be recycled.
Wind turbines are essentially glorified windmills with an electric generator hooked up. They can be made from any number of materials. Thus includes wood for the part that catches the wind. Likewise the generator portion can be made from any number of metals so long as they can be turned into wires. Steel and aluminum aren't as good as copper for sure, but they still work in a pinch. There are already multiple designs in use throughout the world and at different scales. They are built the way they are now because it gives the best return on investment. That's just how capitalism works, for better or for worse. It's not hard to imagine a world where we use something else because we ran out of the cheapest available material and it's cheaper to use something different than to recycle it.
You also conveniently forget that recycling is a thing. In physics matter and energy is conserved. You can convert matter into energy and back again too. Even when you burn something like a fossil fuel it doesn't just disappear, it becomes things like carbon dioxide or water as I am sure you know. With enough time and energy you can turn that carbon dioxide back into coal or diesel or whatever is you started with, or into something else entirely. The only things you can truly run out of is lack of entropy. Entropy can only increase, so matter in a low entropy state is always at a premium.
Storage is indeed a problem I will give you that. Part of the solution to this is new technologies like sodium ion batteries that are gaining traction at the moment. Some of it will come from closing down factories when power is low, and starting them back up when there is a surplus.
Degrowth isn't even a complete solution either. While I strongly disagree that the economy can grow to infinity like some economists believe, I also don't think it can shrink forever too. There needs to be give and take. I believe the economy should grow and shrink in accordance with people's needs and the available resources. To me the extreme pro growth and degrowth movements are both extremists.
Jesus christ, is this the closest thing you've had to human interaction today or something?
I was trying to be reasonable with you. It seems you're not actually capable of that if this is how you want to respond.
If that was what you were trying to do, you failed. Honestly, I don't care enough about any subject to have to deal with you or your incessant ranting and poor social skills.
You didn't like something you read online. Your objection is noted.
Okay let's recap what actually happened here:
You support an extremely radical economic policy. This would be fine except your reasons for supporting it are based on a misunderstanding of science, technology, and economics. I call you out on it and you repeatedly call me a liar for explaining stuff that's well known science and engineering just because you don't understand it and it goes against your position. Then you attack me personally and insult my social skills despite everything you just did.
Honestly I hope I never have to deal with you again. You're incapable of admitting you don't know something if that something doesn't support your argument. Despite supporting what I thought was a left wing position you use the exact same tactic as right wing where everything you don't like or don't understand just doesn't exist.
I really hope you were lying about working as a researcher. Someone with your attitude should never be allowed anywhere near academia or science. I am glad you stopped being a researcher, and I hope you never get a job in that field again. The amount of damage you could do or have already done I dread to think.
You think you're arguing your point but you're not. You're arguing mine.
I never argued for perpetual growth on earth. I think you've completely missed what I am talking about. I only started arguing with you because it became obvious you had no idea what you were talking about with regards to renewables and nuclear.
If you had started off by explaining that degrowth to you just meant not expanding infinitely on earth then most of this argument wouldn't have even happened. I don't support infinite growth on one planet either. I support expanding out into the solar system and even further away in the long term, but even that obviously has it's limits somewhere.
To me it sounded like you were saying we can't move to renewables without shrinking the economy massively and tanking standards of living.
Looking back at this argument I can see it's one of those where neither party actually understands the others position, and is actually just arguing against what they think the other person believes.
we need to get rid of them anyway, but do we have enough nuclear fuel, when combined with renewables+batteries, for base load?
Sure, I'm all for getting rid of them but it really seems to be the only option. It really won't be that bad. It'll just mean we can't all take the piss with energy, lose the super rich, eat less meat and do a lot less work.
Its that we've all been made to see the idea of degrowth as something terrible because the rich would be the first thing to go. You just can't have the rich without a vast amounts of excess production.
Please think about this: why shouldnt working less and polluting less be the first thing we should try, if we really wanted to save the planet etc.?
I completely agree, but I also think we should be pursuing every avenue of possible solution simultaneously, some of which might be energy intensive. I have the feeling we are far more climate-fucked than is immediately apparent.