My Snow Blower Batteries Are in the Garage Recharging. Guess What Isn't Charging Them on the PJM Grid?

[NNadir]

Solar cells.

We do have two functioning nuclear plants in New Jersey. As thermal plants, they are running at higher efficiency because of the cold heat sink, so that helps.

But for the most part on this grid, PJM, the batteries are charging on gas and coal. As of this moment, according to the Electricity Map the climate gas intensity of PJM is 445 grams of CO₂ per kWh. This is, in "percent talk" 1780% higher than the 25 grams of CO₂ per kWh of electricity in France as of this moment.

On our PJM grid as of this moment, 42.5% of our electricity is generated by combustion of dangerous natural gas, followed by nuclear 28.41%, followed by coal, providing 20.92%.

Happily our Democratic Governor Elect, Mikie Sherrill, supports another nuclear plant in New Jersey. So do I. I'd feel better about the damned magical lithium batteries for the snow blower if additional nuclear plants were operating.

Wait! Wait! There is solar on the PJM grid somewhere somehow despite being covered by snow!!!!! 2.6% of electricity comes from solar, probably down in Virginia. It's noon now, and the capacity utilization of solar on PJM is 16.13% in "percent talk." We're saved!!!!!!!

I'm an old man. I was half way through the sidewalk, with the batteries running out, my neighbor came by and graciously offered to finish the sidewalk portion of the job with his gasoline powered snow blower. I'm not sure, from a thermodynamic perspective, whether his snowblower has a lower carbon intensity than my battery powered one.

[Bluetus]

1. Please share the plan that you and Sherrill have

for dealing with 1000 years of radiation.

And by the way,, wind turbines work fine today. If we deploy cheap, environmentally insert sodium-ion batteries at scale, you can recharge those snow blower batteries any time of the day or night.

It is insane to spend another penny on any fission technology or deployment. Solar and wind are now lower cost than nuclear or fossil fuels, even if we don't include the cost of NOT dealing with the 1000 years of nuke waste. There has been enormous progress on fusion reactors. They now appear likely to be commercialized in the 2030s and will have none of the nuclear waste or meltdown issues we have with every fission reactor.

[NNadir]

2. I understand used nuclear fuel very well. I also understand the difference between fusion and fission. I support...

...the latter, but have no faith that the former will ever do anything, and if it does, it will be far too late.

By the way, I also am amused when antinukes, who know almost nothing about the thing they hate, pick a number of years that so called "nuclear waste" is supposed to be dangerous. Sometimes it's 1000 years, sometimes, 10,000 years, a million years, a billion years.

In addressing an ignorant antinuke sometime ago, I showed that with continuous recycling of used nuclear fuel - possible because of the extremely high energy density that makes it environmentally superior to all other forms of energy - that can reduce the intrinsic radioactivity of the planet that naturally exists.

Antinukes are spectacularly disinterested in the fossil fuel waste that will kill people in the next hour, just as they are spectacularly disinterested in the fossil fuel waste destroying the planetary atmosphere.

... The recovery of the transuranium actinides using a wide variety of processes is well understood, and all of them, not just plutonium but also neptunium, americium, and curium are potential nuclear fuels. I therefore always argue that it is just stupid to bury them, as they are vital resources in a time of climate change and massive rising air pollution death rates.

The following figure shows the very different case obtained if one separates the uranium, plutonium and minor actinides (neptunium, americium and curium) and fissions them, whereupon the reduction of radioactivity to a level that is actually below that of the original uranium in a little over 300 years:



The caption:

Fig. 4. – Radiotoxicity (log-scale, unit: Sv/tSM) of 1 t of heavy metal (SM) from a pressurized water reactor (initial enrichment 4.2% U-235, burn-up 50 GWd/t) with regard to ingestion as a function of time (log-scale, unit: years) after discharge. Left-hand frame: contribution of fission products (FP), plutonium (Pu) and minor actinides (MA) to radiotoxicity. Right-hand frame: Modification of radiotoxicity due to separation of U, Pu or U, Pu, MA. The reference value is the radiotoxicity of the amount of natural uranium that was used to produce 1 t of nuclear fuel. Source: [17].

(Hartwig Freiesleben, The European Physical Journal Conferences · June 2013)

Source 17, in German, is this one: Reduzierung der Radiotoxizität abgebrannter Kernbrennstoffe durch Abtrennung und Transmutation von Actiniden: Partitioning. Reducing spent nuclear fuel radiotoxicity by actinide separation and transmutation: partitioning.

It is important to note that simply because a material is radioactive does not imply that it is not useful, perhaps even capable of accomplishing tasks that nothing else can do as well or as sustainably. Given the level of chemical pollution of the air, water and land, in fact, the use of radiation, in particular high energy radiation, gamma rays, x-rays, and ultra UV radiation may prove to be more important than ever, but that's a topic for another time...

828 Underground Nuclear Tests, Plutonium Migration in Nevada, Dunning, Kruger, Strawmen, and Tunnels

Mikie Sherrill probably does not know how to deal with used nuclear fuel. Of course, being a very bright person, well educated, she surely knows how to ask people called "scientists" about the value of used nuclear fuel and how it should be managed; used nuclear fuel is just that, "valuable." Of course, it really doesn't require much attention, as it's proved to be spectacularly safe. The storage of used nuclear fuel has not killed, in the 70 year history of its accumulation, as many people as fossil fuel waste - air pollution - will kill in the next six hours. Antinukes might well improve their appalling ethics if they gave a shit about fossil fuel in the next six hours as they do about their paranoia over 1000 years.

Antinukes should try that some time, do as Mikie Sherrill might do, ask people who know about the subject, realize that there are people who know more about a subject than they do. In general, antinukes don't do as much. They just wallow in their ignorance, with which they seem very happy.

Personally, I find that appalling, but common.

I'm not happy with a destroyed planetary atmosphere.. I take it very seriously, and I know a great deal about the subject, having explored the primary scientific literature. This is the reason, among many, I support nuclear energy. I give a shit about the future of the humanity.

Have a very nice afternoon; and an enjoyable holiday season.

[Bluetus]

3. So, basically, your answer is

you have no plan for the waste (and didn't even acknowledge the very real radiation threat from runaway reactors, which has happened three times at global scale and countless other times at smaller scale) other than throwing out red herrings about exactly how many thousands of years the waste will remain a problem for the planet.

The biggest problem with all nukes is that they aren't needed, at least not until the current wave of AI nonsense. And even with AI, we can easily scale up our energy production using safe renewables, 100% known technology, at a lower cost than any fossil fuel or nuke installation.

If the fuel could be recovered and recycled as easily as you imply, surely we should have done so by now, rather than continuing these protracted NIMBY wars abut where to bury the waste. Can I assume you don't want the waste buried in your neighborhood, but you are fine with it being dumped in New Mexico or somewhere else far away?

[NNadir]

4. Antinukes are so damned cute. I note that toxic dangerous fossil fuel waste is in the neighborhood of every living...

...thing on this planet, and unlike used nuclear fuel, it kills people, animals, and (not that antinukes give a shit) the planetary atmosphere.

There is no way I can avoid fossil fuel waste in my neighborhood, or, in fact, any neighborhood anywhere on the surface of this planet.

I would have no problem with used nuclear fuel in my neighborhood. That's because I understand the stuff very well. In fact, I am encouraging my son to find a position to work with it. It is absolutely essential material for the rapid scale up of nuclear energy, which is now required because the planet is burning, not that there is a single antinuke on this planet who gives a shit.

(I have personally worked with radioactive substances, albeit 40 years ago, in making tools for biomarker analysis.)

I regard the belief that used nuclear fuel should be buried as obscene. It should be used; and would be used were it not for paranoia promulgated by people with weak educations. This is entirely a function of the waste mentality that needs to go.

The reason that we do not reprocess nuclear fuel in this country is because there are so many dumb people with an irrational fear of it, and like Magats, people have bought into the line of emotive and destructive shit, thus preventing a better world. These people are the equivalent of anti-vaxxers if one thinks about it, people who seek to export and promote their abysmal ignorance causing great harm to other people.

Nuclear energy saves lives.

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

It follows that antinukes, like antivaxxers, kill people by omission. It's quite the equivalent of RFK Jr. territory, only worse, since air pollution and climatic meltdowns have killed vastly more people than even Covid killed, than measles killed, more than any infectious disease in this century or the last half of the previous century.

For the record, used nuclear fuel has been reprocessed around the world, and the plutonium therein returned to reactors to save lives and the environment. France, Germany and Japan have all operated reactors using plutonium recovered from commercial nuclear reactors.

I have literally hundreds (if not thousands) of scientific papers on the topic in my files, collected over decades, covering both on current industrial processes and proposed superior processes. The number of people killed from reprocessing nuclear fuels over the entire last 70 years is vanishingly small compared to the number of people who will die from exposure to gasoline today.

Most antinukes like to make the highly immoral statement that "we don't need nuclear energy."

That's because they don't give a shit about fossil fuels, the environment, the collapse of the planetary atmosphere, and the millions of deaths that fossil fuels cause each year.

If one gives a shit about fossil fuels one would never be inclined to make such a absurd statement as "we don't need nuclear energy."

If one scratches the surface of any antinuke, anywhere, any time and one will find an apologist for fossil fuels. There are no exceptions.

These people perfectly happy with the status quo, a burning planet, polluted air, dying seas. In their little bubble things are just fine.

I regard this set, antinukes, as having the ethics of turnips, which is not intended to insult turnips with the comparison, since some people actually like turnips. Afterall, turnips have some nutritional value, and in direct opposition to antinukes, help some people to survive and even flourish, and don't cause irreparable harm like antinukes do.

Nuclear engineers - highly educated people, including my own son - really don't give a shit anymore about antinukes and their paranoid blather, any more than medical researchers give a shit about the "thoughts" of RFK, Jr. while they try to press on with their work. Antinukes have done their worst, and the days that they are able to kill people with the application of their ignorance are over. Nuclear engineers can't be bothered with clowns. They have important work to do, involved with trying to save a dying world.

Have a wonderful day tomorrow and a pleasant holiday season.