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Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

energyrealityproject.com

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Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#341

Post by Eeko »

jessaustin wrote: post #306
david-given wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The channel's a really dumb place to dump waste. There's a massive difference between a life-rich continental shelf with a complex ecosystem, and the barren abyssal seafloors five miles down. Put the waste there and it will just stay there for millennia.

This doesn't seem like a very straightforward process. If it were, I'm sure we'd get rid of all sorts of nasty shit that way. Is every component of "the safe nuclear power we'll have in future" yet to be developed?

Pretty much. Hitachi is currently selling their IFR design "on-the-shelf" by name S-Prism. Russians are operating and selling their BN-600 and BN-1200's.

It's not like things are completely problem free, but that's kind of unreasonable expectation for any industrial or commercial project.

E.g. advertising breeders as a solution for the nuclear waste problem is a bit tricky, since we already have centuries worth of waste to dispose of, plants will only be operated for some decades etc. We would need to increase humanity's electric consumption to tenfold or more to justify enough breeders to dispose all current nuclear waste in reasonable time.

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#342

Post by PolLambert »

kgarten wrote: post #338

I wonder why hacker news is so positive on nuclear power. The article is full of false information or misguided information. I always recommend "Into Eternity" to understand why nuclear is one of the worst options for eternity ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Eternity_(film)

While I strongly disagree with you on nuclear power (especially since radioactive decay means that 'eternity' by definition is always safe, unlike chemical waste), I strongly agree that "Into Eternity" is a must-watch.

The only real long-term risk to geological disposal are future humans. The question the documentary adresses is 'how to communicate to future generations not to dig there'.

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#343

Post by cousin_it »

dredmorbius wrote: post #316
nicobn wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuel is a minuscule percentage of the cost of building and operating a nuclear reactor. The cost of uranium is currently about $90/kg. Citing a previous poster, around 70 MT of uranium is used every year, which comes to about 6.3 G$, which comes to about 2.61 $/TWh. As per the NEI, the cost of nuclear energy is 108 $/TWh. At current prices, uranium accounts for 2.4% of the cost of producing nuclear energy. Keeping th…

The cost of everything else about a nuclear reactor is based in hugely understated fossil-fuel subsidised cost basis. That is going to inflate when you don't have those fossil fuels around, particularly for elements for which hydrocarbons are essential inputs or exceptionally difficult to substitute (coking coal for steel, much or all transport, chemical feedstocks, industrial process heating). But that's less a conc…

> The cost of everything else about a nuclear reactor is based in hugely understated fossil-fuel subsidised cost basis.

I don't see how that makes nuclear worse than other methods of energy production

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#344

Post by jagermo »

I have nothing against nuclear energy, but I have a problem with "let's just put the waste, idunno, here and let it sit for a few thousand years".

In Germany, several of the energy companies completley distanced themselves from the waste they produce. I was at a conference once, where one of the heads of EnKK (a dauthger of EnBW) said after beeing asked what he things his responsibilities for the waste are:

"Well you know, you don't care what happens to your waste at home. Look to the law, we are not responsible."

I think this is one of the biggest reasons why nuclear power has run its course. I might be feasable for contries like the US, Russia or China to find a spot where to store their nuclear waste, but in densly populated areas in Europe? No way.

Just look at the catastrophy that is the Asse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine

Tl;dr: As long as there is no secure way to store nuclear waste for a thousand years, nuclear has no future.

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#345

Post by akie »

anon1mous wrote: post #115
blumkvist wrote: post #86

Nuclear energy is very expensive when adjusted for building the plant. Companies building those plants know this and their usual tactic is to severely underbudget, knowing that a government cannot refuse to pay because it is committed. The Olkiluoto plant in Finland was estimated at €3bn before start and at the most recent revision the estimation was €9bn with a 10 year delay. The plant is not yet operational and I e…

Exactly. Most of the numbers and arguments in this article are made up. Has there been a single nuclear plant built anywhere in the developed world on budget? They all end 3x-6x the budget. Decommissioning those is extremely expensive as well. Nuclear waste is a huge problem. The nuclear industry always has magical solutions 20 years in the future. The US ends up melting that waste into Depleted Uranium weapons and d…

> "killing millions"

Do you have a source for that?

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#346

Post by kgarten »

sooheon wrote: post #332
_urga wrote: post #319

A nuclear researcher from iThemba Labs gave a talk at University of Cape Town shortly after the Fukushima accident. 1. During his talk, he mentioned that nuclear plants are designed to have a very low probability of Chernobyl-scale failure, and that the current rate of Chernobyl-scale failure given the number of nuclear plants in production is roughly 1 every 20 years. 2. He eventually concluded his talk by saying th…

I'd still take 1 Chernobyl every 10 years over breathing Beijing air every single day of every year.

For you dying every 10 years is better than breathing Beijing air once ... hmm ...

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#347

Post by InclinedPlane »

jpgvm wrote: post #321
InclinedPlane wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hastelloy-N, it's expensive stuff but it works. Corrosion is one of the difficulties of molten salt reactor designs, but it's manageable with the right materials. And the tradeoff is that you don't need an enormous high-strength containment vessel (because everything radiological is at 1 atm), you don't need to pump water into the thing constantly to avoid "really bad things" happening (Fukushima), etc, etc.

Exactly this. Specifically you should read the findings of the MSRE (Molten Salt Reactor Experiment) at ORNL. Wikipedia has a relatively laymans explanation of the state of the Hastelloy-N when the experiment concluded.[1] It's worth mentioning Hastelloy-N isn't that expensive all things considered. It would probably come out to a small percentage of the reactors total cost factoring in R&D expenditure etc. [1] https…

Additionally, while using a lot of Hastelloy-N would be expensive, in the context of a full reactor it's a modest expense. Especially when you compare it against the extremely enormous forgings and gigantic reinforced concrete structures that traditional lightwater reactors use. Overall you end up with a much smaller and much safer reactor. And one that can burn existing high-level transuranic waste as well. It's such a huge win it's criminal we're not spending billions in R&D right now.

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#348

Post by filmor »

barney54 wrote: post #298
paulsutter wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you clarify the "huge problem of load-following" for nuclear power plants? My understanding is that it's mostly a licensing issue rather than a technical issue, and in practice hasn't had a big impact on CF[1] [1] https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea-news-29-2-lo... "Most of the currently operating Generation II nuclear reactors were designed to have strong manoeuvring capabilities. Nuclear power pla…

Load following is a technical issues--nukes are limited in the amount they can load-follow. But winds cannot load follow at all and solar can help some, but doesn't necessarily help cover peak daily load. For example, yesterday in California the system peak load was at 5:49 pm, but solar PV peak was at 9:44 am. data: http://content.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/20151102_DailyRenewa... Nukes aren't great for load following…

Most wind turbines can be regulated very fast in negative direction, i.e. you can change the angle that the blades have to the wind to reduce the force. This is needed for the turbine to survive storms but it can also be (and is) also used to "help the grid".

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#349

Post by biafra »

nicobn wrote: post #314
dredmorbius wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it does matter. Price isn't some abstract thing. It's based on cost , and that which you've got to give up to get something. The entire price system of modern civilisation is predicated on a "cost" of energy that's merely an access cost -- how much it takes to prise it from the ground. Not a replacement cost. So our price system is predicated on widely and directly utilisable energy sources that offer 30:1 to 100…

Fuel is a minuscule percentage of the cost of building and operating a nuclear reactor. The cost of uranium is currently about $90/kg. Citing a previous poster, around 70 MT of uranium is used every year, which comes to about 6.3 G$, which comes to about 2.61 $/TWh. As per the NEI, the cost of nuclear energy is 108 $/TWh. At current prices, uranium accounts for 2.4% of the cost of producing nuclear energy. Keeping th…

Do those calculations (108$/TWh) include the cost of safely getting rid of the waste and the insurance costs to cover the damage done by an accident? Let alone the costs of accidents.

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#350

Post by bigbugbag »

BurningFrog wrote: post #318
posnet wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> official nuclear death are low - but there is a lot of dispute on the "long tail" of long term deaths from the big nuclear disasters of Ukraine and Japan Fukushima happened too soon, and it will be a long time before the results of that disaster on the healthy of the surrounding people can be properly analysed. Chernobyl on the other hand has been studied extensively and considering the scale of the disaster the to…

Those are very high numbers. > estimated 2000 caused due to directed exposure to clean up workers at the site itself The more common numbers you see are under 50. This Slate article goes over the uncertainty: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/explainer/2...

>The more common numbers you see are under 50.

This is a very high number.

The official Soviet total death toll was 2 until risen to 31 in 1986 and repeated.

The point is you'll find all kind of number ranging from 2 to a million death due to chernobyl and number of death is not even a valid metric to measure the human impact of the chernobyl "accident". One of my family member is a farmer living a few thousand kilometer away from Chernobyl, he was working outside on the days where the contaminated cloud didn't reach him according to the government, but still he developed a chronic red blood cell sickness shortly after.

Then again death count of past nuclear accident is a terrible way to assess the impact of nuclear energy, it is a good way to show that humans are bad at dealing with nuclear plants and that nuclear plant are run with not enough regard for security and regulation, not decommissioning due and overdue plants because money and greatly underestimating such costs.

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