To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed) • Hacker News Board

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

#551

Post by mason240 » Thu, Dec 22, 2016, 4:37 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #452

yummyfajitas wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming each homeowner near the power plant has a $1M cost to move, that works out to a $3,000/person cost ($1,900 after time discounting at a 1% discount rate). Assuming there are 100,000 people within 40 miles of the plant, that's $190M, or 5-20% of the cost of a plant. This hardly seems like an insurmountable barrier.

100,000 homes within 40 miles is probably on the low side. Also, a reasonable penalty for unwanted risk bumps up the costs. Further the value of property and possessions likely increases faster than inflation making the time value equation tricky. More importantly Nuclear is already to expencive before this cost, increasing things further and it's really not worth it.

>100,000 homes within 40 miles is probably on the low side.

Homes, not people. 100k would be a very high number.

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

#552

Post by tim333 » Thu, Dec 22, 2016, 4:39 PM UTC

If you just extrapolate the exponential improvements we've seen with solar and batteries for another decade or two they'll be way cheaper than fission plants. And it'll take a good decade for them to come on line.

The outlook for fusion is surprisingly positive. I never thought I'd see it in my lifetime but there have been a bunch of breakthroughs recently. See the "Breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion?" talk from Dennis Whyte, head of Nuclear at MIT. The main bit 00:26-00:30 - they just have to build a reactor the size of the JET reactor (existing near Oxford) but with the new REBCO tape (also existing and available) and you could have a funtioning power generator https://youtu.be/KkpqA8yG9T4?t=26m6s

They should crack ahead and build one of those.

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

#553

Post by lorenzhs » Thu, Dec 22, 2016, 4:41 PM UTC

spangry wrote: post #350

jsilence wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The german term "Stromgestehungskosten" is a well defined standing term for the price you have to pay for power generation. This price has come down to 5ct/kWh and the estimation is that these costs will be undercut in the upcoming solar projects. So the "Stromgestehungskosten" for solar going to go down even more. Regarding storage and distribution the video reports on a current project in Utrecht/Netherlands where…

I couldn't agree more with your point about electricity car take-up. I've made the same point in the past but it's always gotten a lukewarm reception. In my mind, it's probably our best chance of achieving sufficient scale grid energy storage. It's also kinda brilliant on Elon Musk's part: he's selling people these 'mobile grid batteries' while also being super long solar.

I think the problem is that it would create a new form of range anxiety: what if you want to take a spontaneous trip and your car is at 20%? The other problem is fear of degrading battery capacity through lots of cycles. In time, both of these could be solved, but for now, they're valid concerns that haven't been disproven.

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

#554

Post by niels_olson » Thu, Dec 22, 2016, 4:42 PM UTC

r1k wrote: post #417

Iv wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Price is not the only factor if we seriously want to fight global warming. 1. What is the energy ROI? (ie how much energy does it cost to build a station) 2. At what speed can we transition out of fossil fuel? Germany tried to phase out of nuclear. What happened? They raised their part of renewable sources a lot, but that still amounted to only about 15-20% of their national needs. They ended up reopening coal plants…

> (No, uranium is not a fossil resource) Could you elaborate?

Every atom of every element heavier than iron is stardust (1). Uranium is no more fossil than gold is.

(1) Most of the lighter stuff is stardust too, but there's some small number of heavy nuclei that decayed down to more stable, lighter isotopes, which ultimately leads to iron, the most stable of all.

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

#555

Post by mmmBacon » Thu, Dec 22, 2016, 4:45 PM UTC

I was in kindergarten about 13 miles away when the Three Mile Island (TMI) accidentally occurred. I recall people being panicked about it and my neighbors jamming up the roads trying to get away. There was great controversy when they wanted to restart the undamaged reactor. Most of the controversy surrounding whether the operator could be trusted to run the plant safely as the accident was largely the result of poor management and inadequately qualified operators at the controls.

Despite having lived through all that I still support nuclear power. I think a standardized design approach like they have in France is the right way to go as it can lower costs and improve safety. I think standardization can also improve trust by reducing the likelihood that human factors could cause an accident.

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

#556

Post by robryk » Thu, Dec 22, 2016, 4:46 PM UTC

nkurz wrote: post #547

grzm wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than Wikipedia, no; I was hoping you would. That's why I asked. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage I think it's an interesting field though.

David Mackay's "Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air" has good numbers comparing many different forms of energy storage: http://www.inference.eng.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/ . It's a "hard-headed" engineering look at our energy options written by a physicist. It might be a bit outdated (published in 2008), but when it came out it was the best compendium I'd seen.

Note that some of the statements there (e.g. estimates of areas needed to provide power from solar energy) are not technology-dependent (ie. are about physical limitations).

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

#557

Post by Retric » Thu, Dec 22, 2016, 4:49 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #536

Retric wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No true Scotsman." There are recent powerplants built with similar designs that would have had similar failure modes. The core issue was the sea wall not the powerplant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onagawa_Nuclear_Power_Plant was closer to the quake but it's giant sea wall made a huge difference.

Foul! The Fukushima plants were among the oldest in service. They were indeed not modern in design by any definition.

The two direct deaths where from an insufficient sea wall not the reactor design. Saying future reactor designs fix the problem is a mistake. Because again it was not the reactor design that caused their deaths.

So again, saying some hypothetical perfect design exists and it would obviously have a large enough see wall, and that is what your defending is a true Scotsman argument.

PS: Remember, future designs also have future defects.

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

#558

Post by fcanesin » Thu, Dec 22, 2016, 4:49 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #546

fcanesin wrote: post #509

Solar don't have the power density needed by US. Do a simple calculation of current energy levels plus 1% YOY, turns out that you would need to cover the world with panels in just a few decades. There are proved new technology on nuclear (like molten salt and front advancing reactors) that is orders of magnitude safer. The light water reactor design from the 50-60th used in this aging plants was funded by Navy and wa…

Nah. Less area than that http://landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp-content/uploads/2009/08...

This is a gigantic amount of area just for 2030! The compound grow don't stop there. Compare this view of the US from a satellite at a much closer zoom, if you can't see all the concrete even in Boston-NYC-Washington area. But from a world view you would need that square of solar energy. https://goo.gl/maps/wWpFW7nRZSq

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

#559

Post by AnthonyMouse » Thu, Dec 22, 2016, 4:50 PM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #387

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The downside of solar is approximately 0 compared to the downside of a reactor accident. The downside of solar is that it provides no electricity at night. We should be building enough nuclear to provide the nighttime load and enough solar to make up the difference between that and the daytime load. > The political capital lost in a reactor accident isn't worth it. The only use for political capital in favor of nuc…

My reading of the political argument is a bit different. Recent elections testify to a strengthening antipathy to expert authority. In an argument about nuclear power, the authoritarian experts are all going to be on one side. If the authoritarian experts happen to win, and then within a decade or two something awful happens as it inevitably will, that will just undermine those authoritarian experts even more. Then h…

Some people believe that vaccines cause autism. Experts assure us that they do not. If we vaccinate children some of them will be autistic and vaccines will be blamed, which will reduce confidence in experts. Therefore we should stop vaccinating children.

Yet clearly the answer is not to stop vaccinating children. That's letting the terrorists win. The answer is to do the right thing even if loud people are wrong about it, and answer them with facts and evidence when they object.

If the opposition is reasonable then the truth will out. If they're unreasonable then you have to fight them because you always have to fight unreasonable people. You can't get out of it by giving them what they want because in five minutes they'll find some other irrational thing to want and if you keep giving in, by the end of the day the world will be on fire.

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

#560

Post by SapphireSun » Thu, Dec 22, 2016, 4:50 PM UTC

wahern wrote: post #271

EGreg wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See my reply to a sister comment for the data I am speaking of. I agree that currently we have some correlation of global warming and CO2 increase, but this doesn't prove causation esp considering the 70s experienced global cooling. https://skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enha... AND the main point is that there is a limit on how much more Co2 can be released: roughly the same amount that already has,…

I presume you're trolling, but I still think it worth pointing out that no science proves causation. The scientific method, for example, only rejects null hypotheses--that is, alternative explanations. Scientists and society writ large come to tentative, qualified conclusions about causation by assessing, among other things, 1) consistency with observed phenomena, especially consistent, multi-dimensional correlations…

If there's anything we've learned from the election, it's that we must engage substantively with people that disagree with us. We can not dismiss people as trolls just because they hold a different opinion.