Economics and politics finally have a nuclear bond.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Then why are there coal shortages and rationing if growth has been flat for 7 years? Seems like flat growth is pretty easy to plan for, not something that causes export bans, rationing and rolling blackouts.

I doubt supply chain issues are limited to just the USA. It isn't easy to turn a global economy off and then back on again. Nothing about the last 2 years has been flat and steady.

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

I'm sure there's a good answer, but I wonder why it's easier/cheaper to mine trace amounts of U235 and refine it than to take the already concentrated "waste" and refine it again?

MSR Thorium cycle “recycles” it’s own waste so you end up with 99% less spent fuel waste.

When considering “recycling spent rods” it’s assumed nobody, not even the government can handle it without a proliferation risk.

In terms of cradle to grave costs including the fact our government runs special antique nuclear plants to create bomb making materials
It becomes clear recycling rods is likely cheaper in the long run but we don’t make sense in this country.

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Then why are there coal shortages and rationing if growth has been flat for 7 years? Seems like flat growth is pretty easy to plan for, not something that causes export bans, rationing and rolling blackouts.

Our country for better or for worse follows their own version of LEAN materials strategy even when interest is zero and have more inventory would make sense.

We’ve built ourselves into a corner that only a single company on the planet can make each component within the supply chain and they are inflexible and incapable of producing any more or less than designed and are geologically located on opposite ends of the globe.
“The old way” of doing things (not lean) meant more vertical integration and local sources, backup and sitting ready to online equipment to handle surges or supply shortages , we have become extremely addicted to government subsidized freight and running 95-105% of peak design for decades.

Anyone who is vertically integrated, keeps proper backup and raw stock on hand is likely doing very well at the moment

Toyota who is supposedly the king of lean is vertically integrated and had emergency stock hence why it took longer for them to succumb to the pandemic
AKA Toyota by US standards isn’t lean because they keep inventory and have proper buildout and downtime.


China for all its posturing follows most of our bad behaviors, few of our good ones and a few terrible practices it came up with on its own

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by JSH

It isn't easy to turn a global economy off and then back on again.

Why would you want to turn it back on? There was a world order that was blown away by the First World War. And then that was blown away again by the World Wide Web. Where were you in 1971?

garage.vice.com:
Looking At the 'Whole Earth Catalog' While the World Falls Apart



That was the year Buckminster Fuller said that humankind had exited an era of permitted ignorance.

Education Automation: Comprehensive Learning for Emergent ...
https://books.google.com › books › about › Education_Automation.html?id=FafgDQAAQBAJ
Buckminster Fuller's prophetic 1962 book "Education Automation" brilliantly anticipated the need to rethink learning in light of a dawning revolution in informational technology - "upcoming major world industry." Along with other essays on education, including "Breaking the Shell of Permitted Ignorance," "Children: the True Scientists" and "Mistake Mystique" this volume ...

Fifty years on: www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/19/the-mis-anthropocene/ [possibly worth a read I Cntrl-F'd the thing.]

In the closing scene of Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks, standing on the shattered steps of the White House after the alien invasion has been fortuitously defeated, accidental saviour Richie Norris says, ‘We will rebuild’. He then adds: ‘But instead of houses, we could live in teepees, which are much better in a lot of ways.’ Burton’s joke is that mankind has only saved itself by accident and has not actually worked out how things could be any better. After the denouement of the world’s near destruction, living in teepees seems as good an idea as any.

edit: Recommended. Modern problems require modern solutions.

Limits to Growth in 1972

But as Karl Marx pointed out, even a ‘child knows that any nation that stopped working, not for a year, but let us say, just for a few weeks, would perish’.

[MeteorGray]

I remember in the 1960s about experimental fast-breeder reactors that promised enough fuel for all humanity as far as anyone could anticipate. These marvels not only produced electricity from U235, they also created more fuel than they used: the ultimate recycling dream.

Then, the Jane Fonda Intellectual Society-types quickly pointed out that the fuel they produced was an enriched grade of radioactive danger and could be used for bombmaking that would kill us all. Besides, more uranium was being found for mining, so the problem became if we aren't going to recycle the spent fuel rods, where are we going to bury them?

Well, they looked and looked and decided that Yucca Mountain would be a good place. This sounded like a good idea until the folks who had Yucca in their backyards heard about it and that was the end of that; so far.

I doubt reason will prevail until it absolutely has to.

[freebeard]

...the fuel they produced was an enriched grade of radioactive danger and could be used for bombmaking that would kill us all.

They weren't wrong. The reason Thorium wasn't pursued (aka smothered in the crib) in the 1950s because it didn't produce those materials.

[Hersbird]

Another parable I thought of when thinking about recycling nuclear fuel rods is that what causes them to be endbof life are "poisions" that form which might be more difficult to refine out, and new materials are to refine up. It's like we could recycle and purify the water from the septic tank to drink again but there will always be people not interested in drinking it even if it completely purified. Then also consider that the fuel rods may not be a big expense in the construction and operation of a nuclear power plant. These things are the Ferraris of power plants and it would be like using retread tires on a new Ferrari.

As far as waste, it may actually create more waste as you end up cross contaminating all kinds of other equipment trying to break it all back down where sinking the old into a swimming pool every 20 years on site just makes it nothing to worry about anymore.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

"China is using less coal".
That has not aged well. Simping for commies who can't mine enough coal fast enough. Hahahahahahahhahahahaaaa.
If china says they're using less coal they're either lieing or they're lieing. They're just lieing and say they use less when they use the same or more; or there is a recession and they actually are using less but when you ask china if there is a recession causing them to less coal, no their economy is booming and they are using more solar.

Recently, it was reported that $300-billion worth of industrial waste is off-shored from the USA to China each year, in order to manufacture all the consumer goods imported from China.
If we move that manufacturing back to the USA, we'll register at least $ 300-billion more in 'effluents' of all kinds. And no doubt, at greater cost, due to enforced environmental regulations.
Would that make everyone happy? Expensive plastic crap instead of cheap plastic crap?

[MeteorGray]

Until China quits doing and saying things that represent existential threats to the US, we should stop providing means of wealth to them that support their deeds and assertions.

Did we not learn anything from the past? Remember scrap steel sent to Japan? Etc?

Can we not see it coming?

[redpoint5]

Was just listening to the latest Jordan Peterson podcast this morning and there was mention of China announcing 150 new nuclear power plants. Haven't had a chance to look that up yet.

How much of the new infrastructure bill is going towards next-gen nuclear research? That's about the only thing that actually needs a subsidy to get off the ground.

Things like battery research needs no funding because there's already massive market incentive to do the research, and the means to do it. Regressive EV subsidies are a massive waste of money when it could be used to pursue more important problems more effectively.

[oil pan 4]

Yeah like how to power all these electric cars?
Every family that adds an electric car is going to be adding hundreds of additional KWH to their electric bill.