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Best options for going Carbon Neutral?

Fujisan

Fujisan

四月咲く花
Location
Vietnam
Personally, I think going nuke is the way to go; incredible power/fuel ratio, literally zero carbon output, and has a far, far better track record than, say...coal. Chernobyl and Fukushima notwithstanding, as the former was a cheaped out design missing many safety features on modern reactors (and was pushed well beyond it's limits when it blew), and the latter ate the brunt of not only an earthquake but also a tsunami.

Renewables are nice to have and would be good as a portable energy source in the future (as in quick to set up and get going), but personally I doubt it could replace nuclear fully, even in the future. We're already a few decades away from viable fusion power, by the time renewables fully mature I'd expect fusion to start phasing out fission already.
 
For far, far too long upon clicking into this thread, I thought it was a bait and switch topic in the corncob forums, proposing... something else about going nuclear.

-Cough-

I think fission as a stepping stone to wean off of oil is fine, and if fusion proves viable on the scale we need it, then that'd be fine too.
 
Nuclear was a good option fifteen or twenty years ago. They take a long time to build meaning that, as a practical response to climate change and the increased urgency in the necessity of that response, they're not really suitable despite their advantages. In saying that political resistance to renewables is so strong (and so irrational lol) that the practical benefits they have in terms of speed are arguably lost, anyway ...
 
Ford Prefect said:
political resistance to renewables is so strong (and so irrational lol
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It varies by country and government level, I believe, as certainly in Australia you have numerous state level pushes but fierce resistance on the federal level. I don't see coal and gas winning the fight, honestly, as renewables are just so much cheaper nowadays the main hiccups are building enough to cover whatever we used prior fuel sources for.

Takes time to replace two or three centuries of infrastructure, and all.

In regards to nuclear power generation I don't have any immediate issues with it, but as Ford mentioned it takes a long time to construct each facility, even if we ignore the delay as people bicker on where to even host it. Time the existing coal & gas companies can keep chugging away merrily. So I think renewables wins again here just on the speed of manufacturing and rollout.

The main hurdle with solar and wind is storing the energy when we don't need it (or at night, with solar), and I believe many folks are working on solutions. Whether that's batteries, using excess power for some big expensive manufacturing activity or anything else, society shall settle on a solution eventually.
 
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Swamps. Lots and lots of swamps.

Swamps catch carbon from the atmosphere and can be eventually mined for fuels. Renewables are of very limited utility no matter how much lobbyists praise them, and nuclear doesn't solve the problem of transportation fuels (and no, batteries do not solve it either except for limited use-case better solved by rapid transit systems).
 
Allbirds is a great example of a company that's actually walking the walk in terms of aiming for carbon neutrality. Their site has an incredible amount of detail and resources on what they're doing to achieve that. Seriously, take a look at this!
www.allbirds.com

Sustainability Guide & Practices | Allbirds

At Allbirds, sustainability is at the foundation of our company. Learn about Allbirds' commitment to sustainable practices to make a better business.
www.allbirds.com www.allbirds.com

They also have whitepapers on their carbon capture methodology and their methods to produce a true carbon neutral shoe (although I think some of their calculations here are iffy).

I think my biggest takaway from reading through this is that to get even close, they needed their 1st stage materials producers (wool and bioplastics) to be carbon negative. This heavily relies on carbon capture via regenerative planting. For this to actually be true carbon capture, you need to not harvest it.

I think a lot of companies and people (side eyes @permeakra) aren't taking that into account. If you're capturing carbon in a forest/swamp/whatever, and planning to harvest it for resources down the line that's at best not contributing to emissions. People are starting to realise this, but for a while there you could get away with planting out pine forests, selling massive carbon credits from it, then cutting it down 20 years later and burning it all back into the atmosphere as firewood.
 
Mizu said:
The main hurdle with solar and wind is storing the energy when we don't need it (or at night, with solar), and I believe many folks are working on solutions. Whether that's batteries, using excess power for some big expensive manufacturing activity or anything else, society shall settle on a solution eventually.
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Well, Australia may soon have a solution for storing excess renewable energy:

A Future Made with batteries: Queensland aluminium battery prototypes double electrical charge

https://www.aea.gov.au/news/future-made-batteries-queensland-aluminium-battery-prototypes-double-electrical-charge said:
Supported by Australia's Economic Accelerator (AEA) Seed, battery developer Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG) has successfully produced multiple aluminium battery pouch cells that more than double the electrical charge capacity of previous tests.
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The prototype cell was created by the University of Queensland. And there are two obvious advantages for Australia:

- The cells do not need lithium

- Australia has plenty of aluminium ore

If Australia can do it right, it will become another big player for batteries and renewable energy storage.
 
"nuclear is slow to build" is a skill issue. Make a power plant suitable for mass production, train a workforce to build them and then maintain that workforce, and you can be putting out these NPPs out pretty fast.
Show me an environmental group advocating against nuclear on 'nuclear waste pollution' grounds, and I will show you a useful idiot funded by the fossil fuel lobby through shell corporations.

Solar, with, geo, or hydro can all make sense depending on how suitable the local environment is. They also scale nicely below a certain threshold but above a certain percentage of your power grid they start to scale quite poorly because of the need for storage or overcapacity.

Batteries are good, but some sectors should just not be a focus for decarbonization. Aviation for instance is a really bad fit. It's very, very hard to make a non hydrocarbon based aircraft make sense (unless you've proven and invented in beamed power, which is far from commercialization right now).
 
CyberFemme said:
nuclear waste pollution
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We can just bury the nuke waste a meter or two underground and forget it ever existed :V. Nuke waste isn't dangerous, no more than, say, heavy metals. There may be a risk of contamination if that stuff gets in contact with farmland or water, but that's about it, at least AFAIK (and that can be easily dealt with by simply encasing the fuel rods in concrete).

There was, after all, a natural reactor that kept splitting uranium for quite a long time, and the waste just kept...building up? And there wasn't much fallout from that, last I checked
 
Fujisan said:
We can just bury the nuke waste a meter or two underground and forget it ever existed :V. Nuke waste isn't dangerous, no more than, say, heavy metals. There may be a risk of contamination if that stuff gets in contact with farmland or water, but that's about it, at least AFAIK (and that can be easily dealt with by simply encasing the fuel rods in concrete).

There was, after all, a natural reactor that kept splitting uranium for quite a long time, and the waste just kept...building up? And there wasn't much fallout from that, last I checked
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Great, now where do you want to bury it? Because we tried planning for that in Yucca Mountain and literally everybody politically related to Nevada (including the Western Shoshone, the local indiginous peoples) said fuck no as loudly as possible

Maybe somewhere in Marie Byrd Land once the ice starts melting?
 
Zap Rowsdower said:
Great, now where do you want to bury it? Because we tried planning for that in Yucca Mountain and literally everybody politically related to Nevada (including the Western Shoshone, the local indiginous peoples) said fuck no as loudly as possible

Maybe somewhere in Marie Byrd Land once the ice starts melting?
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Maybe we can put them in the Mar a'Lago basement (mamiacal laughter).

On a more serious note, however. Literally anywhere works, provided sufficient distance from civilization...so maybe just chuck it in the desert. The biggest hurdles to cross right now are political, not practical. But, hey, what can we expect? How many braincells does the average politican have? Maybe...two?
 
Seen some interesting statements that burning coal and fossil fuels releases more radioactive material into the atmosphere per unit of power than nuclear power puts out.

Can't find it now - I've got a throbbing headache and I just finished a shift - but I thought there was a paper on it.
 
A Small Bird said:
Seen some interesting statements that burning coal and fossil fuels releases more radioactive material into the atmosphere per unit of power than nuclear power puts out.

Can't find it now - I've got a throbbing headache and I just finished a shift - but I thought there was a paper on it.
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Here's one article on it.

As to nuclear waste disposal, there's no need to be dramatic. Find a mineshaft that's dry and deep and put it at the bottom. If you actually do reprocessing the amount of waste to dispose of is quite minimal.
And I've seen interesting work on using technology developed for oil and gas to drill even more economical nuclear waste disposal shafts.
 
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Nuclear has no shot in the current political climate, large reactors take too long and cost too much and the minimal type designs haven't ever taken off.

I've heard people talking about liquid sodium reactors but I think that'scompletely idiotic, If anything goes wrong with the core or you have to shut it down all the sodium then goes completely solid without outside power, it's why there are no Alfa class submarines left.

I think if hydrogen production gets figured out that may work - at least in places like steel mills and glass plants - and it's certainly a better fit for planes than batteries but some safety problems would have to be worked out.
 
The only liquid metal that won't leave people cringing about in a nuclear reactor is gallium, and it's not produced in quantities high enough for the job.

Sodium and Potassium will burn in air at the reactor temperatures, lead and mercury are toxic...
 
Somebody said:
The only liquid metal that won't leave people cringing about in a nuclear reactor is gallium, and it's not produced in quantities high enough for the job.

Sodium and Potassium will burn in air at the reactor temperatures, lead and mercury are toxic...
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Liquid sodium reactors have worked, there's the S2G on the USS Seawolf. In those the sodium is isolated from any air I think.

They didn't end up working well so it isn't really a great idea to bring it back especially for non-military uses.
Breakthrough energy is funding some startup looking at using liquid sodium reactors last I heard.

I've never heard of a gallium based reactor.

(turns out I was wrong the Alfa was cooled with lead-bismuth)
 
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Ford Prefect said:
'Just build the reactors fast' is the energy infrastructure equivalent of 'don't siege Leningrad, take it immediately'
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It's not really a skill issue, but a political will issue. Scale back safety standards to pre-chernobyl levels and with modern technology you could build the reactors in 3 years and at a small fraction of the cost.

Humans just tend to first totally ignore safety and then massively overcorrect when their face melts off. We just aren't good at this, it seems.
 
Onionjones said:
've heard people talking about liquid sodium reactors but I think that'scompletely idiotic, If anything goes wrong with the core or you have to shut it down all the sodium then goes completely solid without outside power
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Um. Isn't that the point from a safety perspective? If it stops the reaction working without power then you contain the fallout to a single reactor room when things go wrong.
 
Mizu said:
Um. Isn't that the point from a safety perspective? If it stops the reaction working without power then you contain the fallout to a single reactor room when things go wrong.
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I guess, but any leak would cause a fire because as somebody said liquid sodium at that temperature would catch on fire.
and they're annoying to run because if the reactor gets shut off the coolant still has to be heated or else the reactor is completely unusable, other metals are highly corrosive etc.
The main benefit in liquid metal reactors is mostly in power density gains.
 
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Onionjones said:
Liquid sodium reactors have worked, there's the S2G on the USS Seawolf. In those the sodium is isolated from any air I think.
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This is military, they do things differently. But yeah, liquid sodium reactors are working, like BN-800. The catch is that they are worth it only for, well, fast neutrons. This means either plutonium (not necessarily weapon grade) or highly enriched uranium (definitely weapon grade). Outside that pressurized water is dramatically more convenient. On the other hand, fast neutron reactors are absolutely necessary to dispose of plutonium formed in any uranium fission reactor.

Onionjones said:
I guess, but any leak would cause a fire because as somebody said liquid sodium at that temperature would catch on fire.
and they're annoying to run because if the reactor gets shut off the coolant still has to be heated or else the reactor is completely unusable, other metals are highly corrosive etc.
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BN-600 had at least 12 incidents with leaks in steam generators, but all were easily contained and fixed thanks to proper design.

As for coolant going solid, guys, when you stop fission reactor it doesn't go cold. The partially spent fuel generates enough heat that common pressurized water reactors still require active cooling anyway.

fame said:
It's not really a skill issue, but a political will issue. Scale back safety standards to pre-chernobyl levels and with modern technology you could build the reactors in 3 years and at a small fraction of the cost.
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Even today RosAtom can build a nuclear island in less then five years. AFAIK, the limiting factor here is concrete of the containment facility, not the reactor itself. And you absolutely don't want to cut costs here.
 
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