The first time I wrote about Azarga’s planned in situ uranium mine near Edgemont (and this is over ten years ago, in June 2009!), they were called Powertech, and they were a Canadian company whose finances were as shaky as their promises of environmental safety. (But read also my August 2014 interview with Powertech’s CEO and tour of the proposed mine sit on project manager Mark Hollenbeck’s ranch for their side of the story.) Since then, Powertech has merged with Hong Kong-based Azarga, but they still haven’t flushed a gram of uranium up out of the Dewey-Burdock sandstone.
A public hearing today in Hot Springs could move them significantly closer to launching their Black Hills mining operation. Azarga/Powertech has proposed significant changes to the permit application that EPA subjected to public comment in 2017, thus prompting another round of public comment. The changes include some breaks for Azarga, like reducing the buffer zone for injection or production wells from 1,600 feet to 1,000 feet, replacing a requirement that construction begin within one year of issuance of the permit with an annual review of the permit, and striking a requirement to report any seismic events of less than 4.0 magnitude within two miles of the mining area within 24 hours and requiring a quarterly report of all such events. The changes also include some tougher standards, like requiring Azarga to demonstrate financial responsibility before receiving the permit.
A group labeled “Independent Volunteers of the Black Hills” posts a video saying Azarga’s in situ mining could cause earthquakes and destroy water sources in the southern Hills. It also alleges that Azarga is scheming to drill extra injection/disposal wells years before actually seeking uranium so pimp out their holes to companies seeking to dump toxic waste. IVBH invites everyone to come express concern over Azarga’s plan to the EPA at the Mueller Center in Hot Springs today from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The EPA will also take written comments through October 10. The EPA’s 2017 draft permit to Azarga drew 1,500 pages of public comment, 95.3% of which opposed the project.
The 2019 draft permit from the EPA appears to be the last federal hurdel Azarga needs to clear.
Related Reading: The Trump Administration is supposed to announce by October 10 what it wants to do to prop up U.S. uranium production. One idea afloat is for Uncle Sam to buy uranium under the Defense Production Act, even though the Navy has 60 years’ worth of ship and sub fuel.
What would really be helpful is if we continued to convert uranium material from its current use in nuclear warheads from Russia and now others into peaceful nuclear energy.
We don’t have energy storage for the power sector. Until that occurs, we will be burning natural gas to make up for renewables. The earthquakes in Oklahoma and other places are indeed coming from natural gas extraction. And natural gas emits carbon.
The alternative to not burning natural gas, not doing nuclear energy, and not having enough energy storage is to go without energy. That is not going to be very popular.
The mining for the rare earth and other critical elements will occur elsewhere for renewable energy and energy storage, be that neodymium in China or lithium in Africa. Where is the environmental concern for the damage that occurs elsewhere?
If you are concerned about the earth….be concerned for the whole earth. If you want those critical elements (including uranium), and actually use energy (whether you want to or not), then practice safer mining techniques and have a robust environmental monitoring program (air, water, soil, food).
I still believe that a beneficial use of renewable energy and energy storage is to power the devices for environmental monitoring and clean any water of interest for uranium mining. If renewable energy is great, then uranium mining issues should then not be a problem.
It is likely the case that other critical elements exist along with the uranium…for Azarga I think one of those is vanadium, which may have some use in flow batteries and making better steel.
The Colorado oil/gas industry spent $27 million last election to defeat the citizens initiative to move back the buffer zone from 1000 to 2500 feet from homes and schools. Highly nasty industry with deep pockets and a far distant sense of moral obligation.
Porter, that isn’t stopping us from building more renewables and using more oil and gas to back up the renewables.
We should tackle climate change now, even if energy storage is not ready. That means backing up renewables with nuclear instead of gas. And said nuclear energy currently is produced by uranium-based power plants.
Thorium-based power plants are coming at some point, but I would say they are in the same boat as energy storage in terms of commercial readiness.
McTag … FAT CHANCE
I am concerned about the whole earth. Being concerned about the whole earth requires being concerned about everyone’s drinking water. The fact that uranium lies underground does not create an obligation to dig that uranium up out of the ground and use it, to the detriment of the surrounding environment. We can do without a few terawatts of electricity more easily than we can do without several million gallons of drinking water.
Fukushima has a problem with radiation tainted water.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/10/fukushima-japan-will-have-to-dump-radioactive-water-into-pacific-minister-says
Glowing whales and salmon should be easier to locate and catch, wouldn’t they?
Fukushima has a tritium issue. Tritium has a 12-year half-life….but that is the radiological half-life. The biological half-life is much less because tritium does not hang around that long in the body.
10 days and it is out of the body vs. 12 years for it to decay and emit radioactive particles. Hmmm.
The reason this is overblown is because little of the tritium decays in the human body. And if it did, the beta ray is one of the weaker ones…so less damage either way.
It is an issue because detectors work so well that they can find low rates of decay.
Cory…it’s not like we are going to stop using energy. As Porter would say…fat chance.
In my opinion, the choice to go without using energy is a false choice…let’s be honest…you are going to use energy!
When you travel to protest the pipeline, you are using energy. When you are writing on your favorite blog, you are using energy. That energy is delivered no questions asked (as long as you pay for it ;^) ). Things like the fuel source and what kind of waste is produced are out of sight, out of mind.
And here is a news flash…that energy will require mining, be that nuclear, wind, solar, or batteries. So you may as well do the mining as safely as possible and have a really good environmental monitoring program.
If you want more of that energy without emitting carbon, then you should support more renewables and more nuclear.
I think the better argument to be made, Cory, is to exhaust the existing resources of nuclear fuel that have already been mined…prior to doing new mining.
That means consuming the waste product to extract the 90% of the energy that still remains in the waste when we dispose of it today. This could be done by recycling, or by a dedicated reactor. This would have the benefit of having less waste to dispose of at the end of the day.
The other is to phase out the current reactors and replace them with the more efficient nuclear reactors. Those would consume more of the uranium in the fuel and probably the fuel would stay in the reactor for consumption a lot longer.
And yes, we should be downblending uranium and plutonium based weapons into usable nuclear fuel.
I would be fine with getting those items done prior to new mining. But that is not what has been happening over the last 50 years. Instead, it has been cheaper to use the fuel in the once-through cycle, dispose of the waste, and get new fuel by mining.
We will need a lot of nuclear energy not just for electricity to consumers, but to clean the water supply for millions without emitting carbon.
Today there are several desalination plants in California, but they run on natural gas. Not solar. Not wind. Natural gas.
Avoid nuclear and the desalination needed to deliver clean water will be powered with natural gas.
Clean water is of growing importance around the globe. UNESCO reports that the shortfall of clean water will reach 500 trillion gallons per year by 2025.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/07/14/megadroughts-and-desalination-another-pressing-need-for-nuclear-power/
I agree with Mr. Conca that building more desalination plants that use nuclear energy will be cheaper than having wars over supplies of clean water.
Various “second hand smoke” arguments on other threads have been offered to justify the continuation of criminal punishment of anyone involved with substances that have a potential to create second hand smoke, even though many uses do not.
This raises a question about uranium mining. Apparently, uranium also gives off a form of second hand exposure with negative health consequences:
http://www.worker-health.org/uranium.html
It would seem that folks posting repeated concerns about the adverse health effects of the possiblity of second hand smoke would be staunch opponents of uranium mining due to the possibily of second hand exposure to uranium dust.
https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/sites/toxzine/uranium_toxzine.html
Hmmm. . . .
As usual, doc is incorrect. We used to care about clean water, those days are no longer thanks to Chubby and Rounds. Read your weekly readers to know how Rounds has been behind the dirty water scheme. The Black guy was for clean water for America and in particular, rural America, so that means Chubby is gonna kill it.
“The Trump administration is changing the definition of what qualifies as “waters of the United States,” tossing out an Obama-era regulation that had enhanced protections for wetlands and smaller waterways.” https://www.npr.org/2019/09/12/760203456/epa-makes-rollback-of-clean-water-rules-official-repealing-2015-protections
Nukes are only for weapons of war, nothing more. The sooner we get rid of nuke plants, as what they are, dangerous threats to mankind, the better. We shouldn’t need those weapons either as Chubby is mothering up to Mother Russia, so there is that.
Hi BCB. I appreciate your line of argument :^). But the general public is not manufacturing uranium in open locations in the middle of town. Such production and/or manufacturing for uranium is highly controlled. Smoking marijuana is NOT.
In situ mining uses an aqueous solution to make uranium sources soluble in water. Basically it changes the oxidation state of the uranium. So the dust issues you speak of are not inherent to the in situ extraction process. Ultimately you are making yellowcake (U3O8), so you have to control that final product.
Good news BCB. Uranium can be monitored with science. Science can solve problems, and we pay scientists and engineers to do that. There are these things called radiation detectors and chemical swipe tests that people can use to determine if any uranium is traveling. If they are not containing uranium dust and other issues, their license is at risk. So the Bernie Sanders “throw up your hands instead of solving a problem” dance is not going to fly.
Just think if you as a marijuana smoker were liable if someone else inhaled your smoke particles….which if you really treated marijuana and uranium on the same playing field (i.e. uranium safety rules), you would be liable.
It would be an interesting calculation to see if second hand smoking delivered more radiation via Radon progeny (from Radon adhering to the smoke, or Radon progeny being collected by the plant) versus what workers at uranium manufacturing facilities get. But the primary issue I believe is not radioactivity for uranium, it is the heavy metal chemistry that must be avoided and contained.
Meanwhile, there is much more uranium being re-concentrated in water supplies via the use and run-off of man-made fertilizers….which by the way are mined. And by not doing nuclear, we will burn coal. Coal burning and mining also distribute uranium into the environment. But you are perfectly fine with both of those outcomes.
The best way to get rid of uranium once and for all (and to get rid of its heavy metal chemistry) is to consume it in a nuclear reactor.
No jerry. You could generate much more clean water with nuclear energy powering the desalination. I mean, if more clean water for the global population were really of interest to you. Some may say that more water that is clean is actually better than less water that is clean.
And yes, you could use renewables and batteries to power the monitoring and the water purification related to uranium mining or processing. But you have to want to solve the problem.
Meanwhile, runoff from lithium mining and rare earth mining that support batteries and wind power also have not-so-nice chemistries. Because we are not recycling renewables, we use them, throw them away, and mine more resources.
Good news guys and gals, nuclear energy could help power that recycling too, but once again, you have to want to solve a problem.
Mr. McTaggart … If a marijuana smoker is smoking pot in their living room (a home is the only legal place allowed) who’s going to wander through their house and contact second hand smoke? You have no experience so let me educate you a little. The second hand smoke from pot isn’t like the 35 tokes you smoke when you smoke cigarettes and fill a room with smoke. It’s one puff, maybe two and the smoke dissipates nearly immediately.
Also, you want to misconstrue my FAT CHANCE to mean other than there’s no way nuclear energy is going to do anything other than disappear.
Funny….one atom released is a big problem for uranium. A house full of cancer-causing combustion by-products, no problem at all for marijuana.
And where does the smoke go? It doesn’t disappear. It goes into the environment. It goes into the air and into the water. So if you are a champion of clean air and clean water, be a champion of clean air and clean water. Don’t smoke.
It virtually disappears. It’s a gas and it mixes with a million trillion more molecules of oxygen and virtually disappears. Last word is yours, Mr. Expert. You invent too much false information for me.
I didn’t say go without using energy. I say go without using the extra energy that would be generated by the uranium Azarga wants to squirt out of the southern Black Hills. Just leave the uranium there. Get by without. That uranium has sat there for billions of years (or some shorter hundreds of millions of years, however and whenever it ended up down in that sandstone). It can sit there for another hundred years until we nail down fusion.
If you told me aliens were coming hell-bent on eating us and that the only we could repel their invasion was to mine every ounce of uranium from every identified deposit in the world for nuclear rockets (fuel and rockets), I’d say, all right, mine away. But no one has presented a case that that uranium in our Hills is absolutely necessary and unalternativable. Why bother?
Sorry…it is not my fault that smoking doesn’t result in cleaner water or cleaner air.
I don’t know how you can smoke and be a champion for clean air. Sort of like being for clean water but chemically treating your lawn.
The problem Cory is that it is not possible to generate all of our energy from renewables. When renewables are not available, your approach would require the combustion of a fossil fuel to make up the difference.
With more electric vehicles, we will use more electricity. That will mean burning more natural gas and coal. As our consumption of electricity grows for both us and the globe, so will the carbon. Thus I view your approach (given how humans really use energy) as part of the pro-carbon platform.
Good news Cory, there is uranium elsewhere. You just are not going to have any local jobs or tax revenue from its production in South Dakota.
The monies that could be accrued for South Dakota (in South Dakota) from the same uranium would go up if we were to start building more nuclear power plants, and the air would be cleaner. So not only are we not generating clean energy, the talking down of nuclear power means that we would get less money too. Great. Awesome.
Fusion is in the same boat as energy storage. We should be doing research in both of those areas, and I will take whatever we get from them. But we do not have to wait for them to work. I mean, is climate change a crisis that needs to be solved now…or not?
I like Biochar for water and soil treatments. Much better than those danged old nukes.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar
Nukes cause death and do not solve anything but money in the pockets of special interest groups that are already shafting the populace. Way to expensive and dangerous.
As you said, Robert, there’s uranium elsewhere, available in converting those warheads. Let’s exhaust that source first (we keep enough nuclear missile to repel asteroids and Martians, though, right?).
And let’s not deem conservation impossible. Let’s keep it on the table and encourage people to do it. We can leave the air conditioner off for a few more hours each day. We can put on a sweater in October instead of kicking in the furnace. (And I’m wearing a used sweater right now, and a shirt beneath that I purchased twenty years ago.)
Put simply, America does not have the grid infrastructure to do much of anything but keep band-aiding it together. Perfect use for duct tape and old bailing wire. Sad, but true. Hide and watch as the first snows knock down the power systems again for the umpteenth time and rural folks go weeks without power. No wonder they get so disappointed in the hollow promises.
Generating clean water via desalination while not emitting carbon would be helpful. Your choices for desalination given the energy intensity required are either natural gas, coal, or nuclear. Your choice.
Or you can tell the growing populations in Africa, South America, and Asia that they don’t deserve to have all the water they use to be clean water. Seems like we need to support billions of people in that effort.
It is not like access to clean water is important for public health or anything.
I can tell growing populations in other countries that they aren’t going to dig up my backyard for the fuel they need to power their desalination plants. I can help connect them to alternative energy sources.
I am fine with drawing down the uranium and plutonium in warheads first. We just have to start doing that again.
Conservation works to a point. But once those efforts plateau, energy use increases.
Moreover, people buy an energy efficient refrigerator, and then they buy another one for the office downstairs. So energy efficiency can ironically lead to more energy consumption.
Jerry, that is why there is so much effort in keeping our current nuclear power plants operating longer. We do not want to lose the carbon savings they provide, nor the baseload power that we enjoy 24/7. But we don’t want to build a new power plant. Renewables are cheaper to build up front, but they lose that advantage as the solar or wind farms are replaced several times, or when the waste issues build up. So we are being penny wise and pound foolish.
Biochar can be used in the desalinization of water as well. You certainly don’t need nukes for clean water. In fact, if the water is warm, nukes must shut down or they will destroy themselves. Boom is not a good practice. Better to go with something safe and something that can be produced right here in South Dakota.
https://nmwrri.nmsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/technical-reports/tr377.pdf
The alternative energy sources don’t work for those energy intensive applications. Like mining the elements needed for renewables or desalination.
So you might as well tell them to be happy with dirty water. Or go without water. If they can go without the power they want which you don’t think they should have, certainly they can go without water, right?
We are not talking about putting a filter on your faucet. We are talking about cleaning the water for millions of people at a time…entire cities.
But if biochar is such a good idea, why can’t it be used as a filter as part of the water purification process for in situ uranium mining?
Natural gas needs water cooling too, so your backup energy is at risk there too.
But no worries, I am sure energy storage and renewables can be used to cool the water for thermal power plants…..because if they cannot do that, how are they going to be counted on to power a whole town?
Or we could build the nuclear power plants that do not require water cooling….some can be air-cooled. Some designs use carbon dioxide, so capture that carbon and get a beneficial use out of it.
Why on earth would there be a need for uranium mining when the solution is not dangerous or hazardous and doesn’t form a mushroom cloud.
“The case against new nuclear plants is also fairly straightforward. Nuclear waste remains toxic for 250,000 years, roughly the same amount of time since early humans first evolved. There’s no good way to store spent fuel rods, despite recent progress in storing waste in remote underground caverns in Northern Europe and developing powerful lasers to alter atomic nuclei. That makes existing plants radioactive, literally and politically, particularly in a heated primary. Nevada, where the federal government has long stored waste in desert facilities and has proposed a controversial waste storage facility in Yucca Mountain, is an early-voting primary state, and nuclear storage is a top concern there.
Nuclear plants are extremely expensive, both to build and operate. The only new nuclear plant under construction, in Georgia, is running about four years behind schedule, and its cost surged to $28 billion last year, double the initial estimate of $14.1 billion. And it could climb higher. South Carolina spent $9 billion on two new reactors only to abandon the project over costs and delays after hiking electricity rates in the state to cover nearly $4 billion of the cost overruns.”
Are you a paid lobbyist doc?
I’m not for nuclear power, but if you are going to have nuclear power it makes sense to convert the warhead material into fuel, rather than mine uranium. When you mine uranium, it goes into the uranium market. There is absolutely zero assurance that that uranium goes into nuclear power. It is bought by whoever can use it. Since Trump is vastly expanding the nuclear arsenal, much of that uranium could go into additional warheads. There are some export controls that supposedly keep it out of the hands of, for example, the Russians or the Chinese, except that it can pass over to second, third and fourth parties. Eventually it can all get blended into fuel that goes to China or Russia.
Azarga is one of those inverted companies that seems to be particularly stealthy about who is behind it. No one really knows who controls the thing. It’s very dangerous to permit a company like that, because they can just bankrupt the shell companies and subsidiaries, sucking all the money out leaving nothing to fix problems. That’s what the Canadian and Australians did in the Black Hills gold mines, and South Dakota got a Superfund site. My suspicion is that Azarga is mostly a subsidiary of one or another Chinese state-owned enterprise.
McTaggart, just to clarify some points since your comment at 2019-10-06 at 18:35 seemed somewhat unclear and a bit evasive (as well as some of your other comment on this thread concerning uranium).
Do you dispute that second hand uranium dust is a health hazard?
Do you dispute that there is a danger of exposure to second hand uranium dust from current mining operations?
Do you dispute there is a danger of exposure to second hand uranium dust from ” Inactive mines and mills,” and “Inactive uranium industries?”
Wrong. Nuclear waste only lasts hundreds of thousands of years because we do not take measures to reduce the time of isolation. That can be on the order of a couple hundred years….which is the same time scale for fusion wastes.
It is just cheaper right now to do direct disposal and new mining….and cheaper wins these days.
You are correct that a new nuclear power plant from the commercially available reactors is expensive to build. I find it ironic for one to complain about the rising costs of nuclear, when one’s favored policies have led to those higher costs.
Fundamentally, we stopped building nuclear power plants in ~1980. The supply chain and expertise needed for building a lot of them is therefore not as robust as it should be. It is not a surprise that cost overruns occur when we have largely ceded leadership in nuclear power to China and Russia, and therefore access to domestic companies that do not ship products from overseas is limited.
Smaller power plants will help with some of those costs, as will 3d-printing of a lot of components.
Meanwhile, things like arsenic, selenium, and cadmium in solar cells have no half-life for the chemical effects. You are complaining about 250,000 years vs. trillions of years! Nuclear science could help bust those elements apart, but that would mean nuclear would be helping renewables….and we cannot have that, can we?
Wrong….I don’t have to be paid to believe that we must do a lot more nuclear to address climate change while generating all the power we will need.
I don’t dispute that exposure to uranium beyond the intake permitted by the EPA or NRC (which is typically a number times the natural background level) is a health hazard which must be avoided.
What I mean by that is uranium is a naturally-occurring substance. Biology seems to do OK with concentrations that are several times the naturally-occurring levels.
Do you dispute that science and engineering can be used to reduce if not avoid those exposures?
You have biochar and hemp. What more do you need to filter the water or phytomine the uranium from brownfield sites?
See BCB, even Donald and I can agree on something every now and then :^).
The best way to get rid of plutonium and uranium in warheads is to consume them in a nuclear reactor.
McTaggart, actually I haven’t disputed or asserted anything other than wonder how someone who supports jailing people because of a fear of second hand smoke somehow apparently has no fear whatsoever of second hand uranium dust. So it seemed appropriate to inquire whether you actually disputed the three points from the articles I linked about whether second hand uranium dust was harmful to human health, and, if so, whether there is a danger of exposure to second hand uranium dust from active and inactive uranium mines, mills and industries as stated by the linked article (I personally do not know if the statements are accurate, but I have not seen a reason to doubt them). A straight answer to these questions might help clarify whether your inconsistent positions about second hand smoke and second hand uranium dust are rational or irrational in light of facts that can be agreed upon.
Uranium dust requires strict oversight and monitoring. That is the great thing about science BCB…you can take actual data for the dust that does or does not exist.
I wouldn’t want to have to deal with the extra costs of similar safety rules to avoid the release of any smoke particles if I were a marijuana supporter either…..but it would keep the carcinogens to the user only.
Remember, it is your smoke…you paid for those carcinogens. You shouldn’t waste your money by sharing them with others.
McTaggart, you say “Uranium dust requires strict oversight and monitoring.”
Why? Is it a health hazard? Is there a danger of exposure to second hand uranium dust from active and inactive uranium mines, mills and industries? Is the strict oversight currently available and in use complete and foolproof?
I already said that there is a health hazard from excessive exposure to uranium.
So control it and use it. The best way to get rid of uranium is to consume it in a nuclear reactor. By absorbing neutrons you convert the uranium into other elements. It stops being uranium.
Cadmium used in solar cells doesn’t stop being cadmium after you throw away the solar panel. You could work together with nuclear to destroy cadmium in the same fashion. But let’s not work together to solve problems. Moreover, let’s ignore the problems that renewables have and blame nuclear, even though they could be working together to solve their life cycle issues and tackle climate change without carbon!
Why can’t you use renewable energy, biochar, and hemp to address your problems with uranium dust and water issues? It doesn’t sound like you want nuclear to succeed, or solve problems that would help it succeed.
If one atom of uranium is a problem (i.e. everything must be “foolproof”), then please apply your standard to smoke particles and carcinogens from marijuana smoke.
If I told you that a greedy corporation was emitting carcinogens into the environment in a cavalier manner without regard to any regulations, you would want to put an end to it. But marijuana smoke and marijuana corporations get a pass.
If I told you that greedy and corrupt corporations were throwing away materials and not isolating toxic elements for as long as they are toxic, you would want to put an end to it. Everyone would. But this is not the case regarding the waste management of renewables.
Nuclear actually has to track everything and monitor everything…and they can because radiation detectors and chemical methods work so well. But that is also a problem….detectors are so good, that this one atom business is pervasive.
Wind, solar, batteries and nuclear have their own set of problems, and sometimes they are different problems. If you use energy, then you should solve those problems.
Correct me if you wish, but I don’t think marijuana would welcome rules that say not one THC molecule can escape from manufacturing facilities, or not one carcinogenic by-product from smoking can be released to the public.
So then McTasggart, since you finally state that “there is a health hazard from excessive exposure to uranium,” do you advocating criminally prosecuting all people involved with uranium?
If you do, then your beliefs relating to uranium would consistent with your approach to other substances and is arguably rational even if there is disagreement about the wisdom of such an approach.
If you do not, however, then either your approach to uranium or your approach to other substances reveals itself as irrational and based more on targeted fear mongering than on any realistic or rational factual assessment of possible health hazards to you or to the public.
People who illegally use or illegally obtain or illegally transport or illegally store uranium should be prosecuted.
However, regulations exist so that one can legally and SAFELY use uranium…but you will need to be part of an organization that has a license to use it…which means other infrastructure and procedures must be put in place. Which means that it costs money and personnel to use it in a legal fashion and secure it.
Probably for medical marijuana there would be a licensing process required to legally grow it, store it, transport it, and use it. And there is a way to use it without exposing other people to harm.
POWER THAT’S OUT OF THIS WORLD!
“The electricity is turned into a microwave signal and sent out to a receiver on the ground.” – John Mankins (Solar power expert, NASA)
Solar power produces cheap, renewable energy—but only when the sun shines.
One solution: Space-based solar farms. With no cloudy days to worry about, they can produce 24/7.
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/10/acid-rain-that-70s-scourge-comes-back/
With drumpf heaving regs left and right it only seems logical that we get acid rain.
In other news, nukular energy wants 23 billion from the gubmint for something.
Yes Porter, 24/7 power from solar in space may be an alternative, but that will not happen any time soon.
You have to launch all of that mass into space (which is expensive), and you will need to replace it every so often due to space environment effects (solar wind, galactic radiation, differences in temperature, etc.).
Mike, nuclear today has a relatively larger up front cost, but over several decades the costs even out (particularly when you have to replace the solar or wind farm several times, and you include the costs of waste management on the back end of those energy farms).
Investments that keep the current power plants operating longer will be important to reducing our carbon, as anything else (renewables plus natural gas) will emit more carbon. Research into new nuclear that can better displace said natural gas in the backup of renewables would also be a good investment.
McTag … Wrong. Not to contradict your continual negative bias but China is already making it happen. Burning natural gas for another decade won’t change much. Your mindset of not starting because it will be hard and take a long time is America’s real problem. Shhhh! Just hush up if you can’t contribute to a project.
Good luck to them. Then you will have no cause to complain about the cost of nuclear any more.
To heck with them. USA needs to do the same thing. PS … there will never be another nuclear power plant build in America.
China is building more nuclear power plants. If you favor doing what China is doing, then you favor building more nuclear power plants in the U.S.
I would agree that we will not build the same kind of nuclear power plant that we currently use. We will size the reactor according to the use. The small reactors will be more affordable upfront and will work well with renewables in a decentralized grid model that reduces carbon. Small reactors can help deliver the clean water that a growing population will require.
I don’t think the cost-benefit ratio works at the moment, but a space-based solar power system will need nuclear science to operate. You may need nuclear propulsion to place those space-based solar systems or to make orbital adjustments. People that work in space will need radiation shielding and radiobiological studies. And the power systems themselves will have failure mechanisms due to space radiation from the sun or the galaxy.
That’s a false equivalency. You gotta get off the weed, man.
Gotta love oil pipelines right? Well, Keystone is leaking yet again. Are we surprised? We are not.
“A pipeline that carries tar sands oil from Canada through seven states has leaked an unknown amount of crude oil over more than quarter-mile swath in northeastern North Dakota, state environmental regulators said Wednesday.
“State Environmental Quality Chief Dave Glatt told The Associated Press that regulators were notified late Tuesday night of the leak near Edinburg, in Walsh County. Glatt said pipeline owner TC Energy shut down the pipeline after the leak was detected. The cause of the spill is under investigation.”
is.gd/nK690q (Strib paywall)
I thought these pipelines were monitored so a leak could be detected immediately. Another broken promise?
You could power your transportation needs with something other than oil, which means buying something like an electric car, or just not go anywhere or do anything.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/10/31/shutting-down-japans-nuclear-plants-after-fukushima-was-a-bad-idea/
Closing all of the nuclear power plants at once, including those not subject to effects of tsunami, has led to an increase in the use of fossil fuels and the increase in deaths from respiratory effects from burning coal.
“The only health effects suffered from the reactor meltdowns continue to be from stress, depression and fear.”
Professor McTaggart,
How much money have you donated to pro-nuclear politicians and who are they. We all want to come off the long cash and get this death train on the rails. :)
Zero. Zilch. Nada. Zippo. Nothing. The Null Set (…math!).
And there is a math issue here….the energy we use and what renewables can contribute do not match up. We burn fossil fuels to make up the difference. You think math isn’t important? All that extra carbon that Japan has emitted since they turned off their nuclear keeps adding up.
So you ignore the carbon math literally at your own peril.
Cory, this is why we need more math, not less math.
#4Math