EU election

[Satinavian]

Tell me why this is wrong: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/

Google says there are plans for a 20-30% increase in the number of reactors worldwide at the moment. Where are you pulling 20 years from?

It is in the first sentence "at the current rate of consumption". Currently nuclear provides roughly 10% of power, If you want so significantly expand that, the time uranium lasts goes down accordingly.

as for the numbers
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium-resources/supply-of-uranium
gives a current reactor demand of 67 000t per year and 6 078 500 tons in known deposits, which means it currently lasts about a hundred years, if we include existing stockpiles.


Not sure where your article pulls the 200 years from. Oh, found it. It is from 2009. Numbers 15 years out of date.

No wait, it is worse :

About 10 metric tons of natural uranium go into producing a metric ton of LEU, which can then be used to generate about 400 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, so present-day reactors require about 70,000 metric tons of natural uranium a year.

According to the NEA, identified uranium resources total 5.5 million metric tons, and an additional 10.5 million metric tons remain undiscovered—a roughly 230-year supply at today's consumption rate in total.

That is just faulty math. Quite embarrassing for a dean. Maybe he means 230 yeas, if all the other measures mentioned later were implemented (which would in his estimate reduce consumption by 60%) but that is not what is written here. So yes, the article is just wrong, it should have been a hundred years with those numbers.



So if we were to build enough power plants to provide 40% of current energy need (only current electricity so far, no transport sector, no heating, etc) we would run out in 25 years.

As for the number of planned ones, well, my first google result gives me this
https://world-nuclear.org/informati...rldwide#nuclear-reactors-planned-and-proposed
this does match your 20-30% planned, however their requirement for planned is "Approvals, funding or commitment in place, mostly expected to be in operation within the next 15 years. " They also mention more than three times that number as proposed. "Specific programme or site proposals; timing very uncertain " which i also meant with "in early planning stages". Otherwise yes, those are newer numbers. Seems like a lot of countries have given up their nuclear ambitions or scaled it down recently. Then uranium will last longer. If those plants are all built, we only run out in 50 years while covering only 20% of covering our current electricity needs.

Sure, you could stretch it a bit with breeding but that would mean giving the around 70 countries planning civil nuclear use now easy access to nuclear weapons so no one wants to do that. There is no political will to promote breeding reactors. And they have other issues as well.

 

[tstorm823]

About 10 metric tons of natural uranium go into producing a metric ton of LEU, which can then be used to generate about 400 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, so present-day reactors require about 70,000 metric tons of natural uranium a year.

According to the NEA, identified uranium resources total 5.5 million metric tons, and an additional 10.5 million metric tons remain undiscovered—a roughly 230-year supply at today's consumption rate in total.

That is just faulty math. Quite embarrassing for a dean. Maybe he means 230 yeas, if all the other measures mentioned later were implemented (which would in his estimate reduce consumption by 60%) but that is not what is written here. So yes, the article is just wrong, it should have been a hundred years with those numbers.

Pull out your calculator, divide 16,000,000 by 70,000.

If those plants are all built, we only run out in 50 years while covering only 20% of covering our current electricity needs.

Sure, you could stretch it a bit with breeding but that would mean giving the around 70 countries planning civil nuclear use now easy access to nuclear weapons so no one wants to do that. There is no political will to promote breeding reactors. And they have other issues as well.

So now we're at minimum well beyond the 20 you spit-balled while accounting for expanding usage without counting on any advances in technology and while only considering uranium as a fuel source from only known deposits.

Question: does the phrase "peak oil" mean anything to you?

 

[Satinavian]

Pull out your calculator, divide 16,000,000 by 70,000.

Ah, that makes more sense. We are completely counting the "undiscovered" stuff as supply that is readily available, sure. Assume we can get 3 times as much uranium as we know we can get. Sure, then it will totally last more than 200 years. If we are not expanding nuclear that is, of course.

What a pity that hardly anything of that has been actually discovered in the last 15 years of looking. Slightly over 1.5 million tons and it doesn't look like there will be that much more. Sure, there are places like Antarctica and parts of the northern permafrost region that are still not surveyed. But because it would be cost prohibitive to get any uranium from there anyway.
And we already used up a million tons in the time since your article was written.

So now we're at minimum well beyond the 20 you spit-balled while accounting for expanding usage without counting on any advances in technology and while only considering uranium as a fuel source from only known deposits.

Well, yes.

And while there have been some advances in technology over the last years, it doesn't make all that much difference and is already included in the figures i have given above. And there is little in the works that looks like it would improve classical reactors in the near future.

As for other fuel sources : I'll consider thorium reactors once commercial ones of them are running. So far we only have experimental ones. They will come too late to matter for energy transition anyway.

Question: does the phrase "peak oil" mean anything to you?

Yes. Why ?

Do you propose a similar peak uranium ? The issue with that is that nuclear power plants want a really long runtime. Otherwise they are not economically viable.
The average lifespan of nuclear plants is somewhere between 32 and 40 years (depending on source). Once our uranium supply drops below that, we get viability issues.

-------------------------------------

I always supported to let the exiting nuclear plants run. Those alone won't run into fuel issues, we have more than enough for their remaining runtime. We could even replace them when too old and still be fine for a century.


However i also always said that nuclear won't solve the energy crisis and let us get off fossils. It takes too long to build plants, and we really don't have the uranium to replace oil, coal and gas. And that remains true. Without primarily relying on wind and photovoltaics, we won't get rid of fossils, there is literally nothing else that could be used at the scale we need. (And yes, that includes water power which is nearly tapped out already, biofuels which are inefficient, tide power which somehow seems to struggle, geothermal power which has proven to be too expensive at most places)


As a side note : Seems as if indeed a number of planned plants were scratched after Belt and Road got problems.

 

[tstorm823]

They will come too late to matter for energy transition anyway.

I don't believe there will ever be a "too late" in the meaningful sense. We may transition to wind and solar faster than we develop thorium, but that transition doesn't make us sustainable. Everything we need for real sustainability: recycling, desalination, carbon capture, ammonia production, etc. all are energy intensive processes. They aren't solutions to large scale environmental problems without large scale energy inputs way beyond what we currently produce, at the sort of scale where renewables start taking up problematic amounts of the earths surface.

 

[Satinavian]

Oh, i have nothing against thorium reactors - as long as they are not used to justify delaying or abandoning other measures now. There is really no reason to not build new windparks just because we might get thorium in two decades.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Joe Biden just pulled out of the race

The EU is shocked and saddened to hear this, I'm sure.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

The EU is shocked and saddened to hear this, I'm sure.

Sorry thought this was the US election thread

 

[Summerstorm]

Well, digging this thread up again.

Was just browsing around on reddit, when i found something - german politics:

So we are having an problem with a very low trust in the government (I can understand)

Terrible confidence in established parties (i can understand)

and populistic, nationalistic young parties being pretty popular even though at about half their members are stupid nazis and the others are pro-russian or straight anti-democratic opportunists (that i can't understand)

The whole thing is a bit more of a problem in the old east of germany (They got fucked a bit harder by life... and you know... the west). The "small" state elections are coming up and it looks weird.

There is this project where the schools "practice voting" it is not representative (Someone has to volunteer to host local counts, and it isn't regulated and observed)
But the under 18 (can't vote) count of saxony came back as:



To explain: AFD (Alternative for Germany) is a radical-right party observed by the "Office for the protection of the constitution" (trnsl).
BSW is an offshoot of the left, but is somehow pro russian... and weird... and named after their leader.
CDU and SPD are the old "Baseline"-parties (christian conservative and pro-worker respectively)
Left is left, Grüne is green.

Smaller parties not mentioned are under 5% (Liberals and 13 diverse small parties)

So: The most politically active youths and children of (non-berlin) east germany would be voting populist right. What is going on when the children are not thinking empathetically and progressively anymore? This feels weird. Also there seem to be a lot more "proud neonazis" activity. I mean it was always there... but still. Feels growing fast. More in the open, more shameless, bold.

Information on my stance: I too have stopped voting strategically (everything that the CDU isn't getting the power) and have voted Humanists (most aligned program to my beliefs) the last few elections, even if they have no chance (Getting fewer votes than the damn Animal-Protection Party) - Out of frustration.

 

[Agema]

So: The most politically active youths and children of (non-berlin) east germany would be voting populist right. What is going on when the children are not thinking empathetically and progressively anymore? This feels weird. Also there seem to be a lot more "proud neonazis" activity. I mean it was always there... but still. Feels growing fast. More in the open, more shameless, bold.

By my experience, children mostly tend to express the same political allegiances as their parents, because they haven't yet developed their own voice. Also, I think children may be lower on empathy compared to adults: it requires development with age, maturity and experience.

I don't think mainstream parties pay much attention to youth. Firstly, young people tend to be much less likely to vote. Secondly, because our populations are increasingly age-heavy due to declining birth rates, the young are a smaller proportion of the population than they used to be. As has always been the case, they also don't have much money or status. For the short-term job of winning the next election, there are much better demographics to target. As a result, it makes sense that mainstream parties tend to overlook the young, so they're more easily captured by other parties.

Finally, I think a lot of niceties like the environment are sort of higher-order interests for people who worry less about finding work and putting food on the table. An insurgent party in a deprived area that focuses on poverty - and blaming other people for your deprivation - might be more appealing than to an insurgent party professing switching to solar and talking about shared human experience.

 

[tstorm823]

What is going on when the children are not thinking empathetically and progressively anymore?

Have you considered the possibility that they are, and perhaps you shouldn't judge a person's character by who the internet claims is a nazi?

 

[Agema]

Have you considered the possibility that they are, and perhaps you shouldn't judge a person's character by who the internet claims is a nazi?

To be fair, AfD are hardly lacking a Nazi problem.

Sure, they're not overtly advocating gassing Jews, but neo-Nazis rarely do these days: doesn't gain much enthusiasm from voters. It's more the chipping away at anti-Nazi sentiment, like saying it's ridiculous that Germany commemorates that whole Holocaust thing that happened 80 years ago, and it's time Germans stop remembering or feeling bad about it because it was no big deal, really. We'll realise it was no big deal just as soon as we learn that the way we understand it now is sort of a myth and what society really needs to do is give it a good, thorough, re-evaulation. Society could be more understanding towards those poor, maligned, wartime SS personnel, and maybe Germany needs more of that good ol' Nazi rhetoric and principles to build a better future. Just not the gassing undesirables policy (yet), presumably: they can try forcible expulsion to other countries first. And yes, they don't talk about a lot of this stuff often or loudly, so plenty of their less vigilant voters may well have little or no idea these conversations are going on amongst a significant chunk of the party upper echelons and hardcore supporters.

I also think empathy is partly a learnt experience. To some extent, people choose to extend empathy to others, and thus also choose not to. What right wing nationalist parties like AfD do is attempt to corral empathy into a narrow band of their approved "in-group": ethnic Germans and maybe some suitably adjacent people, in AfD's case.

 

[tstorm823]

I also think empathy is partly a learnt experience. To some extent, people choose to extend empathy to others, and thus also choose not to. What right wing nationalist parties like AfD do is attempt to corral empathy into a narrow band of their approved "in-group": ethnic Germans and maybe some suitably adjacent people, in AfD's case.

That's almost exactly what I say to left wingers who talk about empathy.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Well, digging this thread up again.

Was just browsing around on reddit, when i found something - german politics:

So we are having an problem with a very low trust in the government (I can understand)

Terrible confidence in established parties (i can understand)

and populistic, nationalistic young parties being pretty popular even though at about half their members are stupid nazis and the others are pro-russian or straight anti-democratic opportunists (that i can't understand)

The whole thing is a bit more of a problem in the old east of germany (They got fucked a bit harder by life... and you know... the west). The "small" state elections are coming up and it looks weird.

There is this project where the schools "practice voting" it is not representative (Someone has to volunteer to host local counts, and it isn't regulated and observed)
But the under 18 (can't vote) count of saxony came back as:

View attachment 11762

To explain: AFD (Alternative for Germany) is a radical-right party observed by the "Office for the protection of the constitution" (trnsl).
BSW is an offshoot of the left, but is somehow pro russian... and weird... and named after their leader.
CDU and SPD are the old "Baseline"-parties (christian conservative and pro-worker respectively)
Left is left, Grüne is green.

Smaller parties not mentioned are under 5% (Liberals and 13 diverse small parties)

So: The most politically active youths and children of (non-berlin) east germany would be voting populist right. What is going on when the children are not thinking empathetically and progressively anymore? This feels weird. Also there seem to be a lot more "proud neonazis" activity. I mean it was always there... but still. Feels growing fast. More in the open, more shameless, bold.

Information on my stance: I too have stopped voting strategically (everything that the CDU isn't getting the power) and have voted Humanists (most aligned program to my beliefs) the last few elections, even if they have no chance (Getting fewer votes than the damn Animal-Protection Party) - Out of frustration.

It's difficult not to think of Germany as a lost cause these days. My political awakening, if you want to call it that, came in the mid 10's when movements like Pegida started to gain traction and the AfD entered the parliament. Honestly, that was the first time I felt like I saw this countries true face and it's an ugly one indeed. Well, not only that, it was more in how the media kept talking up our "welcoming culture" while refugee shelters were being set on fire and fascists were rampaging through the streets. I think to some extent, that obvious hipocrisy was what really woke me up. The dissonance between how Germany was presenting itself compared to what I actually saw.

I don't know, I feel extremely estranged from my country and alienated from my countrymen. If I could afford it, I'd pack by bags and go somewhere else, but I can't. Which is the other thing that makes me feel dread. That I know, that as a person with a mild disability who struggles holding down employment, people like me is who they're gonna come for next once they're done with foreigners and LGBTQ people.

 

[Satinavian]

So: The most politically active youths and children of (non-berlin) east germany would be voting populist right. What is going on when the children are not thinking empathetically and progressively anymore? This feels weird. Also there seem to be a lot more "proud neonazis" activity. I mean it was always there... but still. Feels growing fast. More in the open, more shameless, bold.

Corona and schools was an utter mess.
A mess children lived through. And one where the AfD very loudly and constantly blames the established parties for.

Otherwise, AFD has long had better numbers for younger voters that don't remember the GDR well. It won't just go away with time.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Macron appoints Michel Barnier, right-wing former European commissioner, as prime minister

The appointment of the EU's former Brexit negotiator, a member of the right-wing Les Républicains party, comes after almost two months of deadlock following legislative elections that produced no clear majority in Parliament.

www.lemonde.fr

So Macron wants to appoint a right wing candidate from the 4th place party that didn't even help with keeping the RN out. The politics of the move is obvious, it's a concession to RN so Macron doesn't have to work with the left, and if the left tries to fight it he'll say it makes them look petty. I'm just wondering if he's accounting for the fact that everyone is watching him, and him "killing" the left will lead to his own defeat in future elections.