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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)

#561

Post by dv_dt »

Analog24 wrote: post #440
hubert123 wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The Fukushima reactor was old and outdated.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.

That's another problem with Nuclear. After investing a large capital stake into a nuclear plant, the operators are unwilling to make hard decisions on safety because of how deeply they're invested. The Fukushima reactor design was "safe" for the time it was built, and flaws were found afterwards, yet the plant wasn't taken offline.

Modern passive safety systems are safe as far as the designers can anticipate, just like Fukushima, and there is a lot which can go wrong.

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

#562

Post by Retric »

mason240 wrote: post #550
natch wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying the scenarios are identical doesn't make them so. And scale matters. But... I'd say with truly modern nuclear power, safety is less of an issue. Perception of safety is still an issue. So your home value will go down. No biggie; you may be ok with that. The issue that really bugs me though is that with nuclear, a large government or corporate entity has decided to roll the dice for you on your behalf. With som…

The scenarios are the same. Gas explosion: house destroyed, possessions gone, death if I am home, move to a new home. Nuclear incident: house is uninhabitable, possessions gone, possibility of shortened lifespan if I receive excessive radiation, move to a new home. Actually you are right: they aren't the same because the nuclear incident has a better outcome. >I prefer local control. Nuclear is too centralized. I'm w…

In the first case you can sell the land in some cases for more than 1/2 the value of the house, thus making them different.

Not to mention the number of homes destroyed in a gas explosion world wide is tiny by comparison.

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

#563

Post by ared38 »

afterburner wrote: post #187
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…

Don't even bother talking about political capital. Nuclear is a worse option because it is overpriced, period. It's not just the downsides that are subsidized by the government, the actual running cost is hidden behind reams of bureaucracy, hidden program budgets, optimistic amortizations, and underestimated decommissioning costs. And even then the reactors still manage to go massively over budget with the initial co…

Honest question: I thought the big problem with solar and wind is what to do on windless nights. AFAIK battery technology is nowhere near good or cheap enough.

Nuclear seems like a solution to that gap. What are others?

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

#564

Post by spangry »

tim333 wrote: post #542
spangry wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point about the materials challenge for MSRs is very true: for the designs I've seen the 'solution' is super corrosive. However, I don't think it's an insurmountable challenge, and its more a question of durability over time (and then subsequent maintenance costs). Our water plumbing systems will eventually succumb to the rigours of time; it will just be a very long time... On waste storage, MSRs product much mu…

Yeah the: - We could do it for less than $3 Trillion ... - We could do it for $1 Trillion with liquid-fueled Molten Salt Reactors Seems very dubious. The first successful MSRs were built over 60 years ago. The reason none are in commercial use is probably because the costs would work out higher than conventional reactors.

Yeah it's possible he's overstating the case, although he seems to have gone in to quite a bit of detail estimating the costs. But you'll see from some of the comments above those might be distorted.

My own very crude back of the envelope, for replacing all worldwide coal generation with AP-1000s (at $7bn a pop) puts the cost somewhere in the $6T range. This is assuming I got the unit conversions correct...

As for MSRs, there's some very interesting history there. There is, of course, the fact that MSRs weren't as good at producing the necessary byproducts for making nuclear bombs (remember this was during during the cold war). But the other accident of history was simply that Oak Ridge National Labs (who ran a prototype MSR for a few years) just happened to be in the wrong part of the country: the story goes that Nixon apparently wanted to shore up political support in (California?...) and so pushed money more in the direction of the LMFBR.

Nixon also fired the director of ORNL too, apparently because his support for MSRs and advocacy for increased nuclear safety didn't gel too well with that administration. At that point MSRs were kind of forgotten about...

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

#565

Post by grzm »

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.

Thanks. This has been recommended to me in the past, though I haven't yet taken the time to read it.

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

#566

Post by phil21 »

natch wrote: post #512
coredog64 wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your logic doesn't hold up. You cannot ignore externalities when... arguing against them to begin with.

I'd much rather live with a nuclear power station in my backyard, than install solar knowing I'm robbing those who can't afford it for my usage of the free grid battery.

Rooftop solar as implemented today is not sustainable, and is a regressive tax.

So the only honest way to do this is with your own energy storage - e.g. batteries. I do agree the allure of being completely off-grid sounds great, until you price it out. So I choose nuclear reactor in my backyard until energy storage tech catches up.

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

#567

Post by vixen99 »

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…

The point about a scientific theory is that you test it and if its predictions do not agree with the observed facts - it's wrong. No ifs or buts. Back to the drawing board. At least that should be the approach. https://youtu.be/EYPapE-3FRw.

What do we see in climatology?

"The IPCC have produced 102 climate models to predict our future climate. The world’s meteorological organizations use weather models to forecast and predict weather and have been for many years. They have proved to be very accurate over 4 days and reasonably accurate over a week. The IPCC’s climate models are notoriously inaccurate. We’ve had these models now for some 30 years and we now have 30 years of data to compare them against. They are not even close to accurate."

Facts trumped by theory? Looks like it these days!

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/21/homogenization-of-tem...

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

#568

Post by saint_fiasco »

Chathamization wrote: post #533
saint_fiasco wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Existing nuclear power plants are old designs, much less safe than a new one would be.

Every design will be old after a few decades. If, when these old designs were being built, people were saying "they're not so safe, but in a few decades we'll have a much safer design" and are now saying that we have a safer design, then, it seems reliable. However, if people were saying a few decades ago, "These new designs are much safer than the old ones" and are now saying "Well, THESE new designs are much safer…

I'm not talking about frequency of disasters but rather their severity. It's not that one Fukushima-type disaster every 30 years is much better than one every 50 years, but that one Fukushima-type disaster is a lot better than one Chernobyl-type disaster.

Fukushima type plants have Chernobyl type disasters approximately never. That part was not a lie.

Supposedly new plant designs never have Fukushima type disasters.

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

#569

Post by tim333 »

spangry wrote: post #564
tim333 wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the: - We could do it for less than $3 Trillion ... - We could do it for $1 Trillion with liquid-fueled Molten Salt Reactors Seems very dubious. The first successful MSRs were built over 60 years ago. The reason none are in commercial use is probably because the costs would work out higher than conventional reactors.

Yeah it's possible he's overstating the case, although he seems to have gone in to quite a bit of detail estimating the costs. But you'll see from some of the comments above those might be distorted. My own very crude back of the envelope, for replacing all worldwide coal generation with AP-1000s (at $7bn a pop) puts the cost somewhere in the $6T range. This is assuming I got the unit conversions correct... As for MS…

I didn't know the Nixon stuff. Nick Touran has a good summary of the practical difficulties if you haven't seen it https://whatisnuclear.com/reactors/msr.html#problems

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

#570

Post by spangry »

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…

I guess the flipside on centralisation is it allows you to build much simpler (and much less) transmission infrastructure (unless we're talking about a scenario where everyone is 'energy independent' at the household level).

I do somewhat agree with you though: the sheer scale of current nuclear power plants (and the technical complexity) means the market is fairly uncompetitive. From what I understand, companies like Westinghouse will practically sell you the plant 'at cost' and then gouge you on the fuel supply contract.

Then again, some of the gen4 designs can work as small, modular fission reactors that might power a small town or community. I know the molten-salt reactor's initial intended applications were: (a) powering army bases and (b) powering a nuclear-powered strategic bombers (which seems rather insane to me).

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