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To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

nytimes.com

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Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

#171

Post by Bluestrike2 »

flexie wrote: post #150
hackuser wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The downside of solar is approximately 0 compared to the downside of a reactor accident. ... The political capital lost in a reactor accident isn't worth it. The lost of faith in technology, the loss of trust in science That omits what is by far the largest risk and issue, climate change. The cost of climate change dwarfs the risks mentioned above. If solar or other renewable sources can't prevent climate change, t…

Are you sure about that? Wouldn't a 1 or 2 degrees temperature increase be preferable to nuclear meltdowns becoming more frequent because we get much more nuclear power plants?

And just how common are nuclear meltdowns over time? It's a flawed risk analysis, further mitigated by newer Gen-IV reactor designs that are going to be coming out of China and India before long. Altogether, there have only been two INES level 7 incidents and one level 6 incident since 1954 [0]. And while unfortunate and expensive, they're incidents that can be cleaned up and recovered from.

By contrast, you're stuck with the consequences of a 1-2 degree temperature increase. And they're guaranteed, and will be around for centuries before the carbon cycle could ever even hope to compensate. The loss of low-lying property and other problems tied to rising sea levels would be in the tens of trillions [1].

People tend to bake in all sorts of potential negative externalities for nuclear energy, and much of that's baked into current regulations. Unfortunately, the same isn't done for other energy sources. When you start to try and look at those externalities (and that's a very difficult task, as many are hard to precisely measure), it can drastically change the math involved. And many of those negative consequences aren't a matter of chance. They're 100% guaranteed byproducts, especially with coal for instance.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Sc...

1. http://www.un.org/climatechange/blog/2014/06/sea-level-rise-...

Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

#172

Post by petre »

beders wrote: post #152

Just to remind the nuclear fans here: cost of Chernobyl: estimated around 201b euros, cost of lives: between 4000 and several hundred thousands indirectly, the area is a radioactive wasteland for centuries to come, the reactor still needs additional protection. The effects are still measurable all over Europe, resettlement of thousands of people. That is ONE reactor gone wrong. Why anyone would build another one when…

The RMBK reactors at Chernobyl are of an irresponsible design, with no containment, graphite moderator and a highly positive void coefficient. Combined that with human error and zealotry and you have a recipe for disaster. Russian VVER PWRs on the other hand have excellent track record with no accidents whatsoever. Your country has at least two gen IV reactor designs with pasive cooling and negative void coefficient.

Solar is not base load. To make solar base load you need solar thermal with molten salts or a gas pipe nearby to run the turbines on gas during the night. Solar PV is good for distributed power generation, as they do it in Germany where almost every building has solar PV on their roof.

Your other bet for base load power of a comparable scale to nuclear is geothermal power, but it's highly location dependent.

Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

#173

Post by wamatt »

It's kind of unfortunate that the label "nuclear power" seems to inevitably bundle both nuclear fission and nuclear fusion into the same public policy debate. Their respective safety profiles couldn't be further apart.

While the economic risks for a failed nuclear fusion strategy can be argued, given even a modest chance for eventually producing large amounts of clean and safe energy output 24/7, should we not be pursuing fusion more aggressively?

Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

#174

Post by ekianjo »

adwn wrote: post #163
ekianjo wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Human societies, en masse, are terrible rational decision makers. Never seen "societies" making any decision. Most of the time, there are very few people in positions of power who make such decisions. If you want to see "societies" making decisions every single day, look at the market. Not so irrational at all, though.

> If you want to see "societies" making decisions every single day, look at the market. Not so irrational at all, though. Except for the stock market crashes of 1929 and 1987, the dot-com bubble, the housing bouble followed a crash, the tulip mania, ... Markets are not always rational.

>Except for the stock market crashes of 1929 and 1987, the dot-com bubble, the housing bouble followed a crash, the tulip mania, ... Markets are not always rational.

Crashes are expected in the market theory. Crashes are actually healthy outcomes that get rid of mal-investment. There could have been much less severe crashes in the situations you described if there has been less government involvement (there is ample evidence of the government agencies and the FED being involved in the dot-com bubble and the housing bubble).

Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

#175

Post by ChuckMcM »

niels_olson wrote: post #3

My undergrad is in Physics and I took engineering classes in Rickover Hall. I was stationed on a nuclear ship. Even after deploying for the Fukushima disaster, I am a fan of nuclear power. But I have a hard time justifying new investment in an era where solar is competitively priced. The downside of solar is approximately 0 compared to the downside of a reactor accident. I'll even allow for the high, high likelihood…

And the interesting thing is that no nuclear plant built starting today would have any of the issues that hit Fukishima, Chernobyl, or Three Mile Island. Both because the material safety is better today, and we better understand how to engineer these to passively fail safe rather than have safety systems that can themselves fail.

But the political will is hard to muster. And even though something like the traveling wave reactor design will burn its fuel almost completely up, leaving very easily containable waste products, the voices against it will be shrill and loud and full of emotion.

No matter how detailed your design, or solid your physics and mathematics, they cannot win an argument with someone who is simply afraid of the concept.

Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

#176

Post by mikeyouse »

omginternets wrote: post #119
mikeyouse wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can recycle almost all of the Lithium and other metals in modern batteries.

How much energy does that require?

Much less than digging it out of the ground.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265158823_Paper_No_...

> Further, the recycling of Li-ion battery materials potentially reduces the material production energy by as much as 50%. If battery active materials can be recycled in forms suitable for reuse with minimal processing, this percentage reduction could be even higher, as considerable energy is committed to making them from raw materials.

Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

#177

Post by wyager »

fgpwd wrote: post #90

The initial estimates for the cost to repair the damage caused by Fukushima were as far as I remember, around 50 billion dollars. According to a recent news article [1], the costs are now estimated at 250 billion dollars. They just keep on increasing. And then there is also the human/environmental damage to consider. I have been excited about nuclear since my school days, but at this point the downside if something g…

> I would much rather pay 2x for a safer solar plant

That kind of cost increase would hurt a lot more people than the (very) occasional reactor malfunction.

Quality of life is strongly dependent on energy availability. We need an incredible amount of energy for modern food logistics, goods production, infrastructure, R&D, etc. Keeping society energy-impoverished is a sure way to harm as many people as possible.

Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

#178

Post by hguant »

beders wrote: post #152

Just to remind the nuclear fans here: cost of Chernobyl: estimated around 201b euros, cost of lives: between 4000 and several hundred thousands indirectly, the area is a radioactive wasteland for centuries to come, the reactor still needs additional protection. The effects are still measurable all over Europe, resettlement of thousands of people. That is ONE reactor gone wrong. Why anyone would build another one when…

> That is ONE reactor gone wrong.

That is ONE reactor that was of a design many years out of date at the time of the failure, a failure where the people at the controls turned off the safety controls, then turned off the back up safety controls, then intentionally put the reactor in an unsafe state.

France gets 76% of its power from nuclear energy and has never gone above 4 on the INES scale, with an average clean up cost of 24.7 million USD[1].

There needs to be a Godwin's law for the Chernobyl. There are so many caveats and "yes buts" and weird political contexts to everything about that accident that it really isn't helpful when talking about nuclear reactors (unless you're talking about how politics and human intervention can screw up the best laid plans of mice and men).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accident...

Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

#179

Post by ekianjo »

ianai wrote: post #169
ekianjo wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Human societies, en masse, are terrible rational decision makers. Never seen "societies" making any decision. Most of the time, there are very few people in positions of power who make such decisions. If you want to see "societies" making decisions every single day, look at the market. Not so irrational at all, though.

The paradox of the efficient market hypothesis disagrees with you. For EHM to hold enough people must be acting irrationally.

Are you referring to the EHM that says that all stocks are traded at their fair (long-term) value? It's very easy to debunk that economical theory when you see some bubbles occurring in certain fields, not related at all to the actual long-term expectations of said company/sector (especially when no market changes and no productivity increase occur to indicate otherwise).

Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

#180

Post by sanxiyn »

sounds wrote: post #94
niels_olson wrote: post #3

My undergrad is in Physics and I took engineering classes in Rickover Hall. I was stationed on a nuclear ship. Even after deploying for the Fukushima disaster, I am a fan of nuclear power. But I have a hard time justifying new investment in an era where solar is competitively priced. The downside of solar is approximately 0 compared to the downside of a reactor accident. I'll even allow for the high, high likelihood…

So let me get this straight: 1. It's a given that somehow, somewhere, a nuke is going to get away from humanity. I'm honestly optimistic that it'll just be a reactor problem, and that we -- humanity -- learn every time one happens. (Because engineers are a careful lot.) Then the environmental damage will be less than Fukushima. 2. Solar + A Storage Miracle (that much storage would be a certifiable wonder of the world…

From 2012 to 2016 (5 years), China connected 20 GW (20863 MW to be exact) nuclear power capacity to grid. You can check yourself at IAEA Power Reactor Information System: https://www.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/CountryDetails.a...
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