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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)

#511

Post by nine_k »

natch wrote: post #470
mason240 wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would prefer to live near a nuclear plant than within sight of a wind farm.

As long as we're exploring hypothetical choices, would you prefer to live near a nuclear plant over living in a house with energy provided by solar tiles on the roof?

Works well in e.g. California. May work less well in Maine. Especially when it snows.

Much of Europe and US is situated too far north for trouble-free solar operation. Other power sources do make sense there (or, for me, "here").

I keep hearing that several hundred thousand square miles of solar panels in Sahara could power the entire hemisphere. They could if transportation was 100% efficient. Even if we pretend that we can build humongous power lines out of superconducting material, maintaining them is going to cost us a lot still.

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

#512

Post by natch »

coredog64 wrote: post #487
natch wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as we're exploring hypothetical choices, would you prefer to live near a nuclear plant over living in a house with energy provided by solar tiles on the roof?

Yes, because I like to have power at night ;)

Since you seem not to have thought of it, you can also get power from the grid at night. Or from batteries. The grid gets its power from diverse sources.

So your logic doesn't quite hold up.

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

#513

Post by alphydan »

hvidgaard wrote: post #241
sdoering wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Because we didn't already have 60+ years of time with actual smart people trying to find a solution. I am all in for nuclear and much more so for doing ground work and heavily investing in research on nuclear recyclability. But doing the math this will not get as anywhere. We would non the less need to add 1GW of power to the grid nearly every day to fulfill projected demand over the next generation. So this wo…

Storage and recycling of spend fuel rods are not a problem. We have not all that much waste, and plenty of places to put it. And breeder reactors seems to be able to convert part of it into usable fuel again. I agree that it is a temporary solution, but it's the best we got until we figure out how to store energy efficiently, and generate truly renewable energy. I'm sceptical of wind, because it produce a large amoun…

I studied in a lot of detail the waste generated by dismantling wind turbine blades while working for a wind manufacturer.

If we were to recycle today all the blades of all the turbines in the world reaching 20 years of age, the weight would be equivalent to a few hours of household waste generated only in the UK. So the amount of waste is completely trivial (at this point), and it can be down-cycled easily (some companies turn it into plastics, cement, etc).

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

#514

Post by Retric »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #464
Retric wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Risk X exists has nothing to do with risk Y. Nuclear powerplants increase risks so the local population should be compensated.

Hard to assess that risk. No modern plant has had catastrophic failure like that. Essentially there's no data to extrapolate from.

Fukushima exclusion zone disagrees with you. Sure, if we limited reactors to 'safe' locations that reduces risks, but we still put them in stupid areas such as near fault lines.

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

#515

Post by hxegon »

natch wrote: post #475
Analog24 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Fukushima reactor was old and outdated. Modern reactors are built with passive safety systems that essentially make it impossible for a Fukushima style meltdown to occur. Ignorance and coal are not the answer.

There's still the centralization problem. Nuclear power is centralized and lends itself to government or corporate control of the energy system, in contrast with solar which gives each property owner individual control. I'm not saying we can't have both, it's just that the problems with nuclear are not only (perceived or real) safety problems and the fact that it yields byproducts the most tempting use of which is to…

> Nuclear power is centralized and lends itself to government or corporate control of the energy system As opposed to what we have now?

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

#516

Post by hxegon »

natch wrote: post #475
Analog24 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Fukushima reactor was old and outdated. Modern reactors are built with passive safety systems that essentially make it impossible for a Fukushima style meltdown to occur. Ignorance and coal are not the answer.

There's still the centralization problem. Nuclear power is centralized and lends itself to government or corporate control of the energy system, in contrast with solar which gives each property owner individual control. I'm not saying we can't have both, it's just that the problems with nuclear are not only (perceived or real) safety problems and the fact that it yields byproducts the most tempting use of which is to…

> Nuclear power is centralized and lends itself to government or corporate control of the energy system

As opposed to what we have now?

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

#517

Post by roryisok »

spangry wrote: post #483
roryisok wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a thread about nuclear power on here during the year, and some commenter had crunched the numbers on how many nuclear power plants we'd need to fully power the planet. It was in the tens of thousands. Even in the best case scenario, at this density we'd be looking at a Fukushima style disasters occurring regularly, not just every 30 years. That's best case scenario. Worst case scenario is that it gets more…

I'm not an engineer so I've probably got this wrong (would appreciate a correction). The Westinghouse AP-1000 (a Gen3+ reactor) produces 1,117 MWe of power. Say we want to replace all coal plants with nuclear. 2013 world electrical energy generation was 23,322 TWh, with 41.3% being coal (so, 9,632TWh from coal). Presumably consumption was somewhat less (overproduction, transmission losses etc.), but let's just use th…

Ok, I was definitely wrong about how many it would take, but you can't argue the risk, however managed by safety standards, is orders of magnitude higher than any risk from solar.

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

#518

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Retric wrote: post #514
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to assess that risk. No modern plant has had catastrophic failure like that. Essentially there's no data to extrapolate from.

Fukushima exclusion zone disagrees with you. Sure, if we limited reactors to 'safe' locations that reduces risks, but we still put them in stupid areas such as near fault lines.

"No modern plant"

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

#519

Post by eli_gottlieb »

hubert123 wrote: post #416
mseebach wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the train has indeed left the platform, but the inflection point for solar only happened this year. If the parties to Kyoto had gone home back then and created said regulatory environment for nuclear and gotten on with it, we'd be looking at a 80-90% carbon emissions free electrical grid across the entire western hemisphere today. Climate change would have been more or less solved, and yes, we knew that then,…

I prefer not having fukushima events and I'm happy to wait and use coal in the meantime

And I'd prefer my eventual children grow up on a planet capable of supporting complex life indefinitely.

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

#520

Post by roryisok »

tripzilch wrote: post #400
Hondor wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with regular Fukushima scale disasters? They're not very deadly. We already have frequent mining disasters in the coal industry and don't care about that. If anything, nuclear power needs less safety to reduce costs and become competitive. For some reason people are still scared of radiation even after seeing how harmless Chernobyl turned out to be compared to predictions.

> Fukushima scale disasters? They're not very deadly. except for the people that literally had to give up their lives in order to save the situation and not let it grow many times worse. knowing they were stepping into the radiation that would kill them in a few hours (if they were lucky). hey if it's not very deadly, why don't you volunteer for being one of those heroes the next disaster also Fukushima is not yet do…

> now it's kinda too late

I know we've passed the 400ppm threshold, it's too late to prevent that, but its not "too late" to switch the planet to renewable energy. It can never be too late for that. We can't stop the catastrophic effects of climate change that we'll likely see in our lifetimes, but we can hopefully stop it from being even worse

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