Vogtle 3 and Vogtle 4 Nuclear Reactors Are Now Providing Commercial Power to Georgia.

[NNadir]

2. Antinukes throw numbers around all the time, but seldom have a reputable reference for them.

They simply make stuff up in my opinion. They're strong on wild eyed claims, but weak on supporting any of the bull they hand out.

(My favorite is one last week from an antinuke airhead who confidently announced that the temperature of nuclear fuels is 5000 "degrees." Since, like most antinukes, this person, now happily on my ignore list, apparently holds science in contempt, the temperature units were not supplied, Kelvin, centigrade or Fahrenheit.)

Now it's, "I have seen." Where? In the circle jerk of antinuke websites or in reputable literature?

The United States built more than 100 commercial nuclear reactors in about 25 years in the 20th century, before anything close to modern computational engineering systems existed while providing some of the lowest cost electricity in the industrialized world.

Many of those reactors proved to be gifts to future generations, my generation included, and still operate, albeit not without catcalls from people whose rhetoric is pointedly myopic.

Now what has already happened is declared impossible?

Now nuclear reactors cost 61 Billion? Really?

My numbers are supported by references. My reference above in the OP. for the money squandered on so called "renewable energy" for no result with respect to climate change, other than its acceleration. If one clicks on the link, one can see graphics that even a poorly educated antinuke could interpret are from the International Energy Agency. Now editorially they claim that this expenditure represents "clean energy" - which is not how I would categorize solar and wind energy - but the numbers are for the class which is popularly called "renewable energy" even though it isn't sustainable because of land and material requirements.

Here is a reference for the number of nuclear reactors built by China in the last 24 years, including the 13 years since the big, big, big big boogeyman at Fukushima:

World Nuclear, China

What's the claim, that China spent 54 X $61B more than three trillion dollars on this effort to fight climate change?

The Chinese GDP didn't reach three trillion dollars until 2007. Everybody in China ate mud to build nuclear reactors?

It's always amusing when bourgeois types writing on computers powered by electricity that is overwhelmingly generated in this country from dangerous fossil fuels say that energy is bad, and we should not be energy pigs, Such people in my view are completely cold hearted since, among other things, there are 2 billion people on this planet who lack improved sanitation systems of any kind.

The ethical myopia is appalling.

Included in the references I often cite, those I often produce here in response to antinuke drivel repeatedly, is the death toll associated with fossil fuel enabling antinukism, is one delineating the death toll associated with air pollution, about which antinukes couldn't care less, anymore than they care about climate change.

It is here: Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (Lancet Volume 396, Issue 10258, 17–23 October 2020, Pages 1223-1249). This study is a huge undertaking and the list of authors from around the world is rather long. These studies are always open sourced; and I invite people who want to carry on about Fukushima to open it and search the word "radiation." It appears once. Radon, a side product brought to the surface by fracking while we all wait for the grand so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here and won't come, appears however: Household radon, from the decay of natural uranium, which has been cycling through the environment ever since oxygen appeared in the Earth's atmosphere.

Here is what it says about air pollution deaths in the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Survey, if one is too busy to open it oneself because one is too busy carrying on about Fukushima:

The top five risks for attributable deaths for females were high SBP (5·25 million [95% UI 4·49–6·00] deaths, or 20·3% [17·5–22·9] of all female deaths in 2019), dietary risks (3·48 million [2·78–4·37] deaths, or 13·5% [10·8–16·7] of all female deaths in 2019), high FPG (3·09 million [2·40–3·98] deaths, or 11·9% [9·4–15·3] of all female deaths in 2019), air pollution (2·92 million [2·53–3·33] deaths or 11·3% [10·0–12·6] of all female deaths in 2019), and high BMI (2·54 million [1·68–3·56] deaths or 9·8% [6·5–13·7] of all female deaths in 2019). For males, the top five risks differed slightly. In 2019, the leading Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths globally in males was tobacco (smoked, second-hand, and chewing), which accounted for 6·56 million (95% UI 6·02–7·10) deaths (21·4% [20·5–22·3] of all male deaths in 2019), followed by high SBP, which accounted for 5·60 million (4·90–6·29) deaths (18·2% [16·2–20·1] of all male deaths in 2019). The third largest Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths among males in 2019 was dietary risks (4·47 million [3·65–5·45] deaths, or 14·6% [12·0–17·6] of all male deaths in 2019) followed by air pollution (ambient particulate matter and ambient ozone pollution, accounting for 3·75 million [3·31–4·24] deaths (12·2% [11·0–13·4] of all male deaths in 2019), and then high FPG (3·14 million [2·70–4·34] deaths, or 11·1% [8·9–14·1] of all male deaths in 2019).

There may be rubes out there who want to be believed when they throw around made up numbers - my favorite is when they throw around arbitrary numbers about how long so called "nuclear waste" will be "deadly" - they vary by orders magnitude, sometimes thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years, millions of years, billions of years. I'm sorry to report that I'm not a rube though. If you press these people to show that so called "nuclear waste" is "deadly" by asking them to produce a legitimate reference to the number of people actually killed by the storage of used nuclear fuel over the last 70 years that is greater than the number of people killed in the next 12 hours from air pollution - that would be between 8000 and 9000 people - they either fail to respond, work to change the subject, or make stuff up.

As for how long used nuclear fuel remains more radioactive than the uranium ores from which it is obtained, it is covered by the Bateman Equation, which in differential form is written:



It can be shown, using this equation and modern computers, that in the case of the recovery of all of the actinide components of used nuclear fuel, chiefly uranium, neptunium, plutonium, americium, and ultimately curium, that all radioactive materials reach secular equilibrium asymptotically, at which they are being destroyed (by nuclear decay) as fast as they are formed. Under these conditions, nuclear power will make the planet as a whole less radioactive than it is now.

It is not true for the fossil fuel industry which has been supported and maintained by credulous antinukes that waste reaches secular equilibrium. It can accumulate indefinitely.

The following text comes from a post I wrote to respond to a claim by another antinuke who wanders this space - one the dishonest "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes as it happens - of the type who makes stuff up and provide hyperbole. Note that it includes references:

The caption:

Fig. 4. – Radiotoxicity (log-scale, unit: Sv/tSM) of 1 t of heavy metal (SM) from a pressurized water reactor (initial enrichment 4.2% U-235, burn-up 50 GWd/t) with regard to ingestion as a function of time (log-scale, unit: years) after discharge. Left-hand frame: contribution of fission products (FP), plutonium (Pu) and minor actinides (MA) to radiotoxicity. Right-hand frame: Modification of radiotoxicity due to separation of U, Pu or U, Pu, MA. The reference value is the radiotoxicity of the amount of natural uranium that was used to produce 1 t of nuclear fuel. Source: [17].

(Hartwig Freiesleben, The European Physical Journal Conferences · June 2013)

Source 17, in German, is this one: Reduzierung der Radiotoxizität abgebrannter Kernbrennstoffe durch Abtrennung und Transmutation von Actiniden: Partitioning. Reducing spent nuclear fuel radiotoxicity by actinide separation and transmutation: partitioning.

828 Underground Nuclear Tests, Plutonium Migration in Nevada, Dunning, Kruger, Strawmen, and Tunnels

It is important to note that simply because a material is radioactive does not imply that it is not useful, perhaps even capable of accomplishing tasks that nothing else can do as well or as sustainably. Given the level of chemical pollution of the air, water and land, in fact, the use of radiation, in particular high energy radiation, gamma rays, x-rays, and ultra UV radiation may prove to be more important than ever, but that's a topic for another time.

I don't buy innuendo. I report from the scientific literature and from respected sources and I produce numbers. People lie, to themselves and each other, but legitimate numbers don't lie.

Here are some numbers brought to us, in my view, but the rote acceptance of the nonsense handed out by the antinuke cults.

Week beginning on April 21, 2024: 427.94 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 423.96 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 401.62 ppm
Last updated: April 30, 2024

Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa (Accessed 5/1/2024)

A cult is a collection of people who hold a series of unsupportable beliefs that cannot be changed by any amount of information. In response to information, their normal response is to chant and repeat dogma. When all else fails they either make stuff up or engage in innuendo.

The antinuke cults are not only killing people; they're killing the planet.

Have a nice day tomorrow.