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Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

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Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#111

Post by epai »

avar wrote: post #104
est31 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, coal is even worse than nuclear. So let's have neither but renewables instead :). Compared to europe, the USA is a big country and it is also further in the south which means more sun for solar collectors.

Yeah that's fortunately increasingly an option we can take, but the world would sure suck less if we weren't dealing with the compounded effects of 50-70 years of the sort of nuclear skepticism expressed in your comment upthread. But still, even if we're going to aggressively build out renewables there's still room for a lot more nuclear in the energy mix. There's use-cases for it where solar, wind etc. isn't a subst…

Isn’t that what the tesla semi electric truck and airbus e-fan x electric plane projects aim to help mitigate though: the reliance on gas for shipping/transportation?

Just because some use cases are not practical for renewables now doesn’t mean they won’t be in the near future.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#112

Post by elcomet »

javagram wrote: post #110
frenchman99 wrote: post #69

Always the same thing: instead of reducing energy use, humans will find a way to push back problems instead of tackling them head on. Using nuclear energy "because runway is too short" without doing much else is not going to save us. We have to go out of our comfort zone and start pushing for laws that force manufacturers to allow for 20 year repairability of electronical products (some brands already offer 10 years,…

In practice people will riot in the streets like the “yellow vests” in France over even mild measures such as fuel taxes. Extreme measures like you are talking about could not be implemented in any democracy.

Come on. Fuel taxes have a higher cost on poor people, that's why people are doing riots in France. This is about social justice. You can very well have extreme measures that are also socially fair.

The example the parent is taking is very good: having 10 years guarantee on all products is pro consumer (it might increases prices a bit, but I believe people will actually save money in the long run).

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#113

Post by roenxi »

est31 wrote: post #92
avar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we've got right now is on the order of a million people dying prematurely every year because of the human issue of people worrying too much about concentrated risk (nuclear) and not understanding the diffuse risk (coal). Sure, we can improve fission in various ways, but this sort of skepticism is way riskier in the aggregate as it translates into public policy.

Indeed, coal is even worse than nuclear. So let's have neither but renewables instead :). Compared to europe, the USA is a big country and it is also further in the south which means more sun for solar collectors.

Hang on, are you absolutely sure that renewables are less damaging than nuclear? The footprint for nuclear is tiny, it might be competitive.

Fukashima was a level 7 nuclear distaster, so that is as bad as it gets. The actual damage done is objectivly not that bad compared to a lot of things we have accepted in the past with only increased safety regulation (like dam failures). 2 lvl 7 accidents in 35 years; and design standards generally go up in civilised countries. The footprint of nuclear is so tiny that might be competitive with renewables, accounting for the fact that the reacion to nuclear disasters is paranoid but the response to environmental damage by renewables is basically to ignore it. Renewables need materials, which are mined, and need to be installed, which creates hazards, and use land/airspace, which is costly. I believe some highly questionable rare earths are used too where the environmental impacts are not usually accounted for because it happens in China.

Purely in non-human terms, the land clearing for a solar plant is definitely worse than a nuclear disaster, because a level 7 nuclear disaster is net-positive for biodiversity ("suggest biodiversity around the massive radioactivity release has increased" [0]). Ie, humans are worse than a nuclear disaster if they happen to want space for their own use.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_Chernobyl_disas...

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#114

Post by opportune »

javagram wrote: post #108
learnstats2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power is way slower than current generation renewables.

The energy storage problem isn’t solved for current generation renewables as far as I know. Laying out a ton of solar panels everywhere is great but if we have rolling blackouts when it’s too cloudy for a while people will be very upset.

I’ve read gravity hydro storage is one of most effective per unit cost but that has significant constraints and potential environmental impacts. But in a region with a lot of waterways hydro is an awesome tool to provide renewable on-demand energy and store excess

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#115

Post by [deleted] »

javagram wrote: post #106
zokier wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pro nuclear in principle (it sure beats fossils), but I do get the feeling that the era we are in is not right for such big monolithic infrastructure projects. The costs tend to balloon and the private companies behind them have difficulties in delivering and meeting the stringent quality standards that nuclear requires (for good reasons). See for example the utter failure that has been Olkiluoto 3[1] or the rece…

It’s puzzling how 50 years later, with much better technology, we can’t build plants on the scale of what was built in the 60s. The US navy uses nuclear reactors for their aircraft carriers and they don’t seem to have the same problems getting them built and installed that commercial power operators do now. I wonder what makes the difference, I tried googling but couldn’t find a good comparison. Perhaps it is just no…

[deleted]

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#116

Post by benj111 »

arduanika wrote: post #81
benj111 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re green jobs: I think that's meant as a retort to the "what about coal miners?" Argument. I'm trying to understand your nuclear -> fuel plan. Nuclear reactors already use a storage solution, why are you adding an extra step? Why not combine it with wind/solar? Edit: Are you suggesting the green jobs would lead to high wages and costs? Don't forget theres no fuel cost with renewables.

> Nuclear reactors already use a storage solution Hmm, not sure what storage solution you're thinking of? Is there a nuclear-specific means of storing the energy produced for later use? What I mean to say is: nuclear power is so cheap that you could use it to power carbon recapture, even at the current cost. There are even people working on using direct air capture to create ultra-dense fuel, e.g. http://carbonengine…

"Hmm, not sure what storage solution you're thinking of"

The fissile material itself.

Nuclear power is dispatchable to a point, and I don't think its as cheap as you seem to think it is. The scheme might be worth it for producing jet fuel etc, but using fission to generate electricity to generate fuel for short term storage for a generator? Unless it is really efficient, no.

Combined with renewables which aren't dispatchable at all, more likely, but not where I would put my money.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#117

Post by skybrian »

pjc50 wrote: post #59

Three serious problems with nuclear, globally: - too slow. Break ground now and you'll be producing energy by 2030. - political instability. Hands up who supports the switch of Iran and Saudi Arabia to nuclear? It would reduce a lot of carbon emissions. Let's not overlook Ukraine either: https://www.neimagazine.com/features/featurenuclear-plants-i... - budget instability: Wylfa has stopped https://www.independent.co.…

Along with "too slow," I wonder if there is also "doesn't pay for itself fast enough." It's hard enough to predict what electricity will cost in 2030, let alone over the life of a plant.

Mass-produced energy technology (solar and wind) would seem to have the edge?

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#118

Post by opportune »

pgcosta wrote: post #97

Coal kills more than nuclear. Modern nuclear is safer and reliable. It's similar to the fear of planes vs the actual safety statistics of planes.

I think people are always going to be more scared of violent, headline-making deaths than slow, boring deaths

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#119

Post by ComputerGuru »

smsm42 wrote: post #57
aiyodev wrote: post #13

Gates is worth ~$100B. The US federal budget is ~$4.1T per year. This is like asking someone with a 4 Gbps connection to transfer some files and offering to burn a single mini CD to help them.

To give you a data point, current shutdown that just ended was a fight about 5 billions. Budget is big - even discretionary one - which is only one that needs to be considered when we talk about spending priorities, since non-discretionary one is pretty much fixed - but it also has a lot of items inside. And if we talk about priorities for specific items, 100bn is nothing to sneeze at. Whole Department of Energy budg…

The shutdown wasn’t about the money so much as what it represented.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#120

Post by roenxi »

mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #107
est31 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of those fission sceptics. The main problems I have with fission isn't technological issues, it's human issues. E.g. in Fukushima, people were forced to move back into their homes, without giving them an option to get compensated instead. Furthermore, engineers pointed out that there were issues with the way Fukushima was built but their concerns were discarded. Human issue again. Fission plants should be bui…

It always boils down to greed, power and image. "What's that, we need to do a major upgrade? Cuts I to profits, no can do!" Ask those in charge how close to a plant they are willing to live. I bet most won't live anywhere near. The thought of waking up in a radiated area in the middle of the night as a meltdown occurs is not exactly comforting to anyone. Private entities will always run a risk assessment to calculate…

> Cuts I to profits, no can do!

Capitalists, funny to say, are actually highly protective of their capital. If you have an asset worth billions of dollars no rational manager would take a risk on it; the maintenance generally gets done. Billion dollar assets generally don't get associated with reckless people.

That sort of short-termism no-maintenance approach is more likely a symptom of the political risk of running a reactor. Maybe they want to invest in an upgrade, but there is a reasonable chance that politicians will shut you down (eg, as happened in Germany). In that sort of environment, because the asset is at risk, the rational course of action switches from maintenance to exploitation.

And I'd bet the plan managers would live locally, you'd be silly not to. They don't expect their plant to melt down, or they wouldn't be willing to be the plant manager. Nobody would be involved if they didn't expect the plant to function, they'd shut it down.

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