Airpocalypse Now - Pollution Red Alert in Real Life

[Holliefant]

The good is that China is investing in nuclear power massively and that should reduce their CO2 emissions significantly withing a decade or two.

What the heck is the good thing about this? Don´t get me wrong I am not a environmentalist, but nuclear power is one of the most stupid things mankind has ever invented. We still have no idea what to do with the waste... In china it will probably be stored next to a slum.... 

 

[ekianjo]

What the heck is the good thing about this? Don´t get me wrong I am not a environmentalist, but nuclear power is one of the most stupid things mankind has ever invented. We still have no idea what to do with the waste... In china it will probably be stored next to a slum.... 

LOL, of course we know what to do with the waste, we have been handling for years, and we even know how to treat it... ANd if you really care about CO2 emissions this is only realistic option we have right now to replace oil/gas at reasonable cost. 


Add it Thorium reactors and you could have extremely safe and cleaner nuclear power should some countries decide to invest in it.

 

[thatgui]

LOL, of course we know what to do with the waste, we have been handling for years, and we even know how to treat it... ANd if you really care about CO2 emissions this is only realistic option we have right now to replace oil/gas at reasonable cost. 

Name at least one country that has a plan about what to do with nuclear waste (and no, just dumping it somewhere does not count as a plan).


About Thorium reactors, you meant the thing where research began somewhere in the mid 50s and almost no one wanted to even poke it with a 10inch pole since then ?

 

[WizardStan]

About Thorium reactors, you meant the thing where research began somewhere in the mid 50s and almost no one wanted to even poke it with a 10inch pole since then ?

There's massive weight behind getting thorium working en mass right now, not just talk and some side research but actual construction.  Governments and major corporations are throwing money at the problems with a fully functional reactor slated to open next year in India.


But I am curious, what's the argument you were going for?  I don't get it.  Are you trying to say that it's not good tech because no one did any major construction on it in about 50 years?  The reason they went with uranium instead of thorium is because they had already done decades of research on it and had all the facilities to make use of it from the construction of nuclear weapons: it was cheap and easy to switch from weapons to power.  50 years later someone says "maybe it wasn't a good idea to make power plants out of the same stuff we make world destroying explosives from" and effectively re-discovers thorium.  The fact that it's gone from practically no research to almost having a fully functional prototype in 6 years is pretty amazing and should be used as evidence of how serious people are about it.

 

[fusion_power]

Air pollution, Thermonuclear war, Trump Presidency... The planet will be still here, Humans on the other hand...

Humans breed like rabbits, that's the main problem. There is not enough done in certain countries in family planing, sexual education, prevention, etc... Where will this end? China may have it overdone with their 1 child policy (2 child policy would have been better) but the idea was not that bad, except they forced it way to much. 


What did Agent Smith sayed to Morpheus?

I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I've realized that you are not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment. But you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague. And we are... the cure.
 - That is the sound of inevitability.

 

[Klumpen]

Humans breed like rabbits, that's the main problem. There is not enough done in certain countries in family planing, sexual education, prevention, etc... Where will this end?

Well, we are certainly not contributing to the problem.


Children born per 1,000 inhabitants over the past five years (before May 2015):


Germany: 8.2 (lowest worldwide)


Japan: 8.4


Portugal: 9.0


Italy: 9.3


France: 12.7


United Kingdom: 12.7


[...]


Niger: 50


Someone really needs to promote contraceptives, masturbation and celibacy in some areas (although the last one doesn't seem to work out, the catholics have tried this long enough).


Source:


http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1991216,00.html


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-s-birth-rate-lowest-in-the-world-according-to-study-10286525.html


http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32929962

 

[comradekingu]

Celibacy works just fine for original monks in Bhuddism.

 

[Yoyobuae]

Well, we are certainly not contributing to the problem.


Children born per 1,000 inhabitants over the past five years (before May 2015):


Germany: 8.2 (lowest worldwide)


Japan: 8.4


Portugal: 9.0


Italy: 9.3


France: 12.7


United Kingdom: 12.7


[...]


Niger: 50


Someone really needs to promote contraceptives, masturbation and celibacy in some areas (although the last one doesn't seem to work out, the catholics have tried this long enough).

Is that really such a good thing?:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageing_of_Europe

 

[ekianjo]

Humans breed like rabbits, that's the main problem.

Actually your statement is completely wrong. The richer countries get, the less kids they have, and as a whole the human race is having less and less children per woman as more and more countries go beyond the stage of poverty - the rate is progressively going down. 

 

[ekianjo]

There's massive weight behind getting thorium working en mass right now

yes and no, as far as I know there is not much research/experimentation on Thorium reactors from the US side - seems like in the US the whole nuclear program is at a halt and very few new reactors have been built recently, and many existing ones should actually be decommissioned in the next 10-20 years, and there is no replacement plan for most of them. 

 

[thatgui]

There's massive weight behind getting thorium working en mass right now, not just talk and some side research but actual construction.  Governments and major corporations are throwing money at the problems with a fully functional reactor slated to open next year in India.

There is also massive critisicsm about parts of the industry beeing far too optimistic about the advantages thorium reactors are "promising" and there are also studies already claiming that getting hold of thorium in a scale to secure supply will be a lot more cost intensive then originally propagated. I did not know about India already beeing that far into it, I only knew about their three stages plan, where they where already at stage two using thorium to "breed" uranium 233. Can you give me a link on that, I am currently not able to find anything about it.

But I am curious, what's the argument you were going for?  I don't get it.

The argument I am going for is that pro nuclear fission arguments are usually based on some "saviour" technology that is just right around the corner, which just needs a little bit more research and the "puff" all the disadvantages are gone (even some really akward ones about harvesting uranium from the ocean). Same with Thorium reactors, all the rage for the last years in the "anglo-american" realm, but nothing really substantially happend > except India, maybe. I know that there is a lot going on behind the scenes in terms of research (like the promising Dual-Fluid Design), but that is the same for other means of creating energy too, so I have a hard time accepting that as an argument

 

[Klumpen]

Standard pro nuclear power arguments:


- Yeah, so we had a few accidents that made chunks of land uninhabitable and gave a few million people and other creatures cancer now and then, but it's all just the worst case, won't happen again until next time


- Sure we got plans for the nuclear waste, it just needs a bit more research by someone else, so no problem if we create new amounts of this in big quantities, we can put it in "temporary storage" for another 50 years


Sorry, but no cigar.


I'd rather have the old coal plants of the 70s updated to the current state of technology, use more renewable energy and heavily tax too high energy consumption of big companies and people.


We could use the money for updating old power plants and building more facilities for renewable energy.

 

[WizardStan]

Can you give me a link on that, I am currently not able to find anything about it.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/worlds-first-thorium-based-nuclear-reactor-barc/1/343569.html


It's only a 300MW prototype, and it's only planned to run for a few months, but still quite impressive.

Standard pro nuclear power arguments:


- Yeah, so we had a few accidents that made chunks of land uninhabitable and gave a few million people and other creatures cancer now and then, but it's all just the worst case, won't happen again until next time


- Sure we got plans for the nuclear waste, it just needs a bit more research by someone else, so no problem if we create new amounts of this in big quantities, we can put it in "temporary storage" for another 50 years

These are the supposed advantages of thorium reactors: the reactors are meltdown proof so no catastrophic explosions, and what little waste there is becomes inert after a few hundred years instead of tens of thousands of years meaning they actually can have a plan for disposal.

We could use the money for updating old power plants and building more facilities for renewable energy

The amount of money the US government spends on military exceeds the global amount being spent on energy research(*).  Arguing about what tech is best spent money on is like fighting for scraps in front of the king.  If the US could avoid war for just a year and divert some of that money to science we could do both and actually see which is better instead of arguing about it.


(*) didn't actually verify this, too lazy; it was a sound bite I heard on the radio a few months ago

 

[thatgui]

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/worlds-first-thorium-based-nuclear-reactor-barc/1/343569.html


It's only a 300MW prototype, and it's only planned to run for a few months, but still quite impressive.

thanks, no "fully functional reactor slated to open next year in India " but still interesting to see, that there is actually "practical" work done in this particular disciplin.

 

[WizardStan]

no "fully functional reactor slated to open next year in India " but still interesting to see

Ah geez. I rewrote my post before submitting, the original I specifically said it was a prototype but I must have removed that part. Sorry about that.

 

[fusion_power]

Actually your statement is completely wrong. The richer countries get, the less kids they have, and as a whole the human race is having less and less children per woman as more and more countries go beyond the stage of poverty - the rate is progressively going down. 

True, it get less in western countries but this is not enough to prevent global increasing of humans. Africa/Asia are very busy there and so far nobody ever picked that aspect of Development Assistance. I have nothing against children but it should be at least tired to only get as much children as you can feed. Our Planet has alot of ressources but they are not infinite. I really can't see how this will end in the future. "Soylent Green" anyone? 

 

 

[_jr_]

But what solution do you have in mind? At a first glance there are several articles in the universal declaration of human rights that do limit the possibilities. A tax on additional children like in China until recently might be compatible, but not everybody agrees. But even that cannot be implemented without a stable society which (not surprisingly) doesn't exist in these countries.

 

[fusion_power]

Education would be a good start, more rights for woman, serious efforts against rape, forced marriage etc...


It's hard for me to understand why people still beget children in the greatest poverty, in war zones and in conditions that are absolutely not suited for children. So, a peaceful environment is very important but it's not easy to do in certain areas of our world. However, in Countries like India and certain african states without war, there could be at least started on that front. Instead most of Development Assistance is only to feed people, not to educate them or tell them why it is a bad idea to get 10 children if they can only feed 3 or so.   


And Religion on top makes it all worse.

 

[ekianjo]

why people still beget children in the greatest poverty, in war zones and in conditions that are absolutely not suited for children

Very simple to understand why. Because many of their children die in the first place.

 

[Haraldur]

Very simple to understand why. Because many of their children die in the first place.

Also because, traditionally, child labour is normal and they can help on the farm (where there is plenty of space). In times of relative plenty (i.e. not famine) children can be an economic net asset (rather than a liability) for a subsistence farmer or similar. Also, traditions, almost by definition, tend to last longer than the conditions that developed them, so biases in favour of larger families tend to last a generation or two.


In conditions, which apply to most of the West, where child labour is greatly restricted and most people live in urban or suburban areas (and so space is at a premium), children are a substantial economic burden, so many people who would like to have many children may not be able to realize their desire. I have read, too, that, correcting for culture, geography (i.e. city vs country) etc., rich people have more children than the poor, as the economic burden burdens less. So it seems, to me, that the major influence is urbanization, including indirectly via culture change, rather than economic improvements, per se.


Given this, it would be interesting to see comparisons between modern families in the country and the city (and the proportion childless in each) as well as statistics for the (much smaller) cities of a few hundred years ago (in Europe) vs the country.