[thewowsignal (OP)]

Is there any alternative to nuclear energy? Long term, nuclear energy creates more problems than solutions. For many decades mankind has been trying to develop more efficient way of producing energy and tackle nuclear waste. Many scientific teams around the world hope to make some progress in this area. Billions of taxpayers money are being pumped into the research every year.
Is there any chance for nuclear fussion technology to power our homes and businesses in the near future? Is there any chance for nuclear power plants to become obsolete?

I want to start a serious discussion here about our future on this small planet. This thread is especially dedicated to those of you, who are enthusiastic about atomic energy and energy crisis.

[alancalverd]

We need to explore "more problems than solutions". There's a gulf between science and politics.

Any nuclear power generator will produce some radioactive waste. This is a political, not scientific, problem. We live on a radioactive planet, so all you need to do is decide where you are going to dispose of this small additional activity, and ensure that you do so with minimum loss and spillage. Theft by terrorists is primarily a religious, not scientific, problem. There are many reasons why we should rid the world of religion, a wholly malignant man-made parasite that only infects humans.

In the 1950s, nuclear fusion was "5 years away from commercial generation". The gap increases by about 6 months per year, so as far as we know it is a non-starter.

Building a safe fission reactor and its ancillary power station probably consumes more fossil fuel than it replaces for 10 - 20 years. This was a sensible and strategic use of cheap oil 50 years ago but demand for electricity  increases annually. With political insistence on replacing internal combustion engines with electric motors, demand will at least  double and more likely quadruple in the developed world over the next 20 years, and will grow explosively in developing countries. Meanwhile oil is  a political weapon and will not get any cheaper, so building nukes puts more political power into the hands of theocracies and other corrupt states by increasing the immediate demand for fossil fuels.

The UK was a world leader in nuclear power generation, the five remaining stations of which now account for 10% of grid capacity. If we are to double grid capacity in line with government policy, we need to build another 95 similar units. Not feasible in any rational timescale, and in the light of recent demonstrations of official competence at letting contracts, not economic: merely being the brother-in-law of a Member of Parliament does not guarantee the ability to do anything more than take taxpayers' money. Things are even worse in other countries.

The future of humanity on this planet is not dictated by the availability of electricity, or even oil, but by food and water. These are limited at best, and in practice subject to serious variation due to inevitable climate change. If we want to preserve homo "sapiens", we must limit its numbers and distribution to a resilient, sustainable level.

[thewowsignal (OP)]

Nuclear power plants are no long-term solution, in my opinion. I am neither a scientist nor an expert, but I realize that nuclear waste has always been a huge problem. This is not about politics, this is about technology, which by definition is not renewable. And such technology was developed by scientists some decades ago.
Your post did not convince me to change my point of view on "more problems than solutions". Nuclear energy must become obsolete one day, for "homo sapiens" to survive on such a small planet in enormously big Universe.
In my opinion a couple of fusion reactors are already under construction and will be operational soon, to tackle constantly growing global energy crisis.

[alancalverd]

SPARC is currently under construction and may generate more energy than it consumes after 2035 (no other machine has sustained fusion yet). They have plans for a commercial 1GW unit thereafter, assuming SPARC actually works. There is no other current project with a clear route to commercialisation of fusion power.

Current UK demand for electricity is 40 GW but if we eliminate ICE transport and convert all industry to electricity we need about 5 kW per capita to maintain our standard of living. So 300 new reactors of a type that so far has never been demonstrated to work.  Worldwide, 40,000 new reactors, each of which will eventually require the replacement and disposal of various bits of radioactive material.

This is a good time to gamble on fusion, but buy the shares as a fun gift for for your grandchildren, not as a reliable investment for your own pension. 

The "global energy crisis" has two elements: too many people with legitimate aspirations to a western lifestyle, and the only viable primary energy sources being owned by the sort of people you wouldn't want to share a planet with, never mind a taxi.  Both elements are under our control

Note that I only put "sapiens" in inverted commas. The genus homo was remarkably successful until it anointed itself with that grandiose adjective and invented hatred and self-loathing.

[Eternal Student]

Hi.

Is there any alternative to nuclear energy?

    Ignoring the politics and just looking at the pure science we can see that ultimately every source of energy we have access to is nuclear.    We can (and should) be collecting energy from renewable sources like wind and solar power.  However, all of that is driven by the sun and the sun is powered by nuclear fusion.  Fossil fuels (oil and coal etc.) are here only because they were plants and animals many years ago and the energy we get from burning them is just a portion of the energy they harvested from the sun while alive.
   It's not all fusion,  as @alancalverd implied earlier, we live just on the skin of a big nuclear fission reactor.
...the vast majority of the heat in Earth's interior—up to 90 percent—is fueled by the decaying of radioactive isotopes like Potassium 40, Uranium 238, 235, and Thorium 232 contained within the mantle....

[Quote from  https://phys.org/news/2006-03-probing-earth-core.html  ]

    There are, in theory, other sources of energy.  We can harvest some energy from a rotating black hole for example but I get the idea that you are keen to discuss practical and realistic sources of energy that mankind can use within, let's say the next 20 years.

    The biggest threat to mankind's continued existence may not be nuclear waste, it's more likely to be the excessive release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  To say it another way, building more fossil fuel power stations will probably kill us faster than building some nuclear power stations.
    There are many problems and serious threats to our continued survival.  An optimistic or positive long term solution is to get some people off this planet and find a second one we can colonise.   Well, I prefer that to some of @alancaverd ' s suggestions like severe population control measures that we enforce.   Another, somewhat less than optimistic idea, is the possibility that a virus will do the job anyway and bring about a severe reduction in global population.

Best Wishes.

[alancalverd]

I wouldn't enforce population control - the effect in China was unpleasant. I would encourage it by paying women not to be pregnant, and demonstrating the benefits of restricting the size of your family (a) to what you can afford to nurture and (b) so that your children can inherit a better life than you. We are an odd species with exceptionally high fertility and remarkably hazardous parturition, but we have at last learned to prevent pregnancy without denying ourselves the fun and companionship of sex.

[thewowsignal (OP)]

This forum thread is supposed to be about nuclear fusion and anti-nuclear technology.

[Kryptid]

What is anti-nuclear technology?

[thewowsignal (OP)]

Thanks very much for getting back to the topic.
The anti-nuclear technology, as name suggests, is technology capable of tackling radioactive material and atomic reactions related to it. I think being able to sustain fusion reaction in a very unique and specific way also gives possibility to produce anti-nuclear technology. Such technology is the best chance for this civilization to recover from nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants.

[alancalverd]

The thread is about energy demand and supply. People demand energy. There is no way we can sustainably supply the likely and legitimate demand for the present population.

We can't get rid of nuclear weapons as long as we have politicians. Politicians need enemies, and having invented an enemy, they need weapons.

Existing nuclear power plants are the cheapest and safest way of generating electricity. Problem is that it is no longer economic to build them.

[Petrochemicals]

In the 1950s, nuclear fusion was "5 years away from commercial generation". The gap increases by about 6 months per year, so as far as we know it is a non-starter.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results

[Janus]

Thanks very much for getting back to the topic.
The anti-nuclear technology, as name suggests, is technology capable of tackling radioactive material and atomic reactions related to it. I think being able to sustain fusion reaction in a very unique and specific way also gives possibility to produce anti-nuclear technology. Such technology is the best chance for this civilization to recover from nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants.

Both Fission (present power plants) and Fusion are "nuclear" technologies.  One taps energy by making lighter nuclei from heavy ones, and the other by making heavier nuclei from light ones.

And a fusion power plant would still produce radioactive waste.( Due to the fact that the fast neutrons produced would react with the walls of the containment vessel.) The difference being that fusion waste would have a shorter half-life than fission waste.  The waste storage issue is lessened, but not eliminated.

[thewowsignal (OP)]

Well, everybody is interested in making a nuclear fusion operational. In my opinion it has already been done. Most likely by a few enthusiasts in a small lab. They just decided to go a bit different direction, than most of the scientific world.
Anyway, nuclear power plants should become obsolete. Tons of nuclear waste is produced every year, and still the best idea to tackle it is to bury it deep under the surface of this planet. Nobody will convince me that this is a long-term solution.

[alancalverd]

You can buy or make a fusor, and it's an occasionally useful laboratory source of neutrons. The physics is fairly easy. What goes wrong is the engineering requirement to get more power out than you put in.

As for burying radionuclides under the soil, God thought it was a good long-term idea when He created the Earth. Indeed I can conceive of no other use for the rocky planets. Are you questioning His Wisdom?