Keep innovating as fast as possible and slowly but by bit start introducing new concepts as the plants get approved. It will snowball, but this stuff will take time, and fortunately we have a long while until 2100 when all the plausible IPCC timelines end at somewhere between 2-3 degrees.
The wind, solar and batteries brigade are in the middle of a rude awakening and that path will eventually fall by the wayside. The XR/350/Greenpeace types are so off putting that they have no real ability to do anything but be a nuisance and make people’s lives miserable. So we march forward into the future knowing that we have the high ground and will eventually win.
I wish it were more exciting, but the best way to go is to show the whole world that the nuclear regulators are basically pointless and they will eventually get defunded. There is really no need for a bunch of intelligent people to quadruple check the thermohydraulic calculations of a company that has already double checked them, and it will just get more and more obvious over time.
Step one should be to greatly reduce regulatory omnipitence. ALARA needs to be squashed abd replaced by scientifically proven acceptable radiation thresholds. No regulatory treatment beyond that required for any other industry.
How we get there is one question. Whether or not economic/political interests will "allow it" is another question, but right now is a sweet spot for progress. An old tech, CANDU, is safe and burns unenriched fuel. Other reactors burn 90%+ of their fuel. Mining. OK. Hmm. "in situ" leaching has cut down on air and water pollution. What if we used breeder reactors? Mine less. Burn safer. Dispose of less. Going to be interesting.
I made this point to several colleagues driving back to Phoenix after a day in the 110F to 130F temps working on some equipment we had installed at PaloVerde Nuclear. A couple of them thought the heat had gotten to me. But my great uncle, who was a strong influence on me as a child, ran a small bank at the end of his career. I remember distinctly conversations about bank failures, loan defaults and such. He impressed me deeply with the importance of a loss ratio. If you run a bank (or a banking system) that requires no one ever defaults on a loan, your bank never makes money. In a banking system you almost instantly produce a low innovation, high cost economy that grinds to a halt. Only the simplest, most idiot-proof businesses are funded and everything is expensive. Nuclear power (and all humanity) desperately need a whole new regulatory approach where risks balance the immense rewards. Deaths equal to say 1/2 other large scale power sources might be an excellent start. In a vital space program, some rockets need to explode. Business need to fail. Nuke plants need to have some releases.
I agree with you about replacing ALARA with a more practical system based on science. In general toxicity is not linear. But, here is an example of why ALARA is such strong motivator. I'm a winemaker by trade and home bread baker as a hobby. I own a small grain mill & grind most of my own flour. The other day I bought 25 lbs of rye grain to use in my mill. While I was pouring it into a storage container I noticed one ergot gain. Ergot is a fungus that can grow on rye in the field. It easy to spot because it causes the rye grain to turn black & grow much longer than a normal grain. It also happens to be toxic. At the time, I didn't know how much was in my 25 lbs maybe not enough to hurt anything. But knowing it was there motivated me to go through the whole 25 lbs to get rid of every last ergot grain. Somehow, I couldn't use the grain knowing I was going to grind a few grains of ergot along with the normal grain. I spent two hours shifting through it all to separate the ergot. I found a bit more, maybe not enough to hurt anything, but I wouldn't have used it without shifting through it first.
Unless they were prolific when you started to transfer to the storage container I would not have spent 2 hours looking at all of it at once. Just look it over when milling.
So the big question is how do we get there?
Keep innovating as fast as possible and slowly but by bit start introducing new concepts as the plants get approved. It will snowball, but this stuff will take time, and fortunately we have a long while until 2100 when all the plausible IPCC timelines end at somewhere between 2-3 degrees.
The wind, solar and batteries brigade are in the middle of a rude awakening and that path will eventually fall by the wayside. The XR/350/Greenpeace types are so off putting that they have no real ability to do anything but be a nuisance and make people’s lives miserable. So we march forward into the future knowing that we have the high ground and will eventually win.
I wish it were more exciting, but the best way to go is to show the whole world that the nuclear regulators are basically pointless and they will eventually get defunded. There is really no need for a bunch of intelligent people to quadruple check the thermohydraulic calculations of a company that has already double checked them, and it will just get more and more obvious over time.
Step one should be to greatly reduce regulatory omnipitence. ALARA needs to be squashed abd replaced by scientifically proven acceptable radiation thresholds. No regulatory treatment beyond that required for any other industry.
How we get there is one question. Whether or not economic/political interests will "allow it" is another question, but right now is a sweet spot for progress. An old tech, CANDU, is safe and burns unenriched fuel. Other reactors burn 90%+ of their fuel. Mining. OK. Hmm. "in situ" leaching has cut down on air and water pollution. What if we used breeder reactors? Mine less. Burn safer. Dispose of less. Going to be interesting.
I made this point to several colleagues driving back to Phoenix after a day in the 110F to 130F temps working on some equipment we had installed at PaloVerde Nuclear. A couple of them thought the heat had gotten to me. But my great uncle, who was a strong influence on me as a child, ran a small bank at the end of his career. I remember distinctly conversations about bank failures, loan defaults and such. He impressed me deeply with the importance of a loss ratio. If you run a bank (or a banking system) that requires no one ever defaults on a loan, your bank never makes money. In a banking system you almost instantly produce a low innovation, high cost economy that grinds to a halt. Only the simplest, most idiot-proof businesses are funded and everything is expensive. Nuclear power (and all humanity) desperately need a whole new regulatory approach where risks balance the immense rewards. Deaths equal to say 1/2 other large scale power sources might be an excellent start. In a vital space program, some rockets need to explode. Business need to fail. Nuke plants need to have some releases.
I agree with you about replacing ALARA with a more practical system based on science. In general toxicity is not linear. But, here is an example of why ALARA is such strong motivator. I'm a winemaker by trade and home bread baker as a hobby. I own a small grain mill & grind most of my own flour. The other day I bought 25 lbs of rye grain to use in my mill. While I was pouring it into a storage container I noticed one ergot gain. Ergot is a fungus that can grow on rye in the field. It easy to spot because it causes the rye grain to turn black & grow much longer than a normal grain. It also happens to be toxic. At the time, I didn't know how much was in my 25 lbs maybe not enough to hurt anything. But knowing it was there motivated me to go through the whole 25 lbs to get rid of every last ergot grain. Somehow, I couldn't use the grain knowing I was going to grind a few grains of ergot along with the normal grain. I spent two hours shifting through it all to separate the ergot. I found a bit more, maybe not enough to hurt anything, but I wouldn't have used it without shifting through it first.
Why not just check as you use?
Like I suspect you do anyway.
Unless they were prolific when you started to transfer to the storage container I would not have spent 2 hours looking at all of it at once. Just look it over when milling.