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Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

nytimes.com

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Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#71

Post by [deleted] »

ianai wrote: post #33
istjohn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTA: New nuclear power plants are hugely expensive to build in the United States today. This is why so few are being built. But they don’t need to be so costly. The key to recovering our lost ability to build affordable nuclear plants is standardization and repetition. ... Currently, as M.I.T.’s Richard Lester, a nuclear engineer, has written, a company proposing a new reactor design faces “the prospect of having to…

“Chernobyl in 1986, the result of extraordinary Soviet bungling, which killed 31 in the accident and perhaps several thousand from cancer, around the same number killed by coal emissions every day.” just that is all I need to know to prefer nuclear to coal.

[deleted]

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#72

Post by detaro »

stcredzero wrote: post #16
cm2187 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much because Merkel decided so in the days following Fukushima. Not exactly the result of long term strategy.

Pretty much just going by feels. Not exactly good governance.

Not exactly good governance was what she did before too, going back on existing long-term exit plans that the majority supported. Fukushima just moved that from somewhat unpopular to entirely politically untenable.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#73

Post by DennisP »

pfdietz wrote: post #57
quelsolaar wrote: post #31

Nuclear is not a viable solution, due to public opinion. A nuclear reactor has an incident once every 10.000 years. If we divide that with the number of reactors we get an accident every 30 or so years. (Harrisburg, Chernobyl, Fukusima, ligns up well with that) Every time there is an accident, the public turns against nuclear for 5-10 years. Add to that that it takes a decade to plan and build a reactor, and you real…

No, nuclear is sadly not a viable solution, due to cost. If nuclear were affordable it would be pushed through regardless of opposition. But it has just not worked out. The people with the money saw what happened at Vogtle and Summer (and also at Flamanville, Olkiluoto, Hinkley Point). Those efforts to make nuclear affordable failed spectacularly, even with public and government support. Westinghouse and Areva were j…

Half the article was about the reasons costs are so much higher in the U.S. than South Korea, and how to fix it.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#75

Post by kakwa_ »

quelsolaar wrote: post #31

Nuclear is not a viable solution, due to public opinion. A nuclear reactor has an incident once every 10.000 years. If we divide that with the number of reactors we get an accident every 30 or so years. (Harrisburg, Chernobyl, Fukusima, ligns up well with that) Every time there is an accident, the public turns against nuclear for 5-10 years. Add to that that it takes a decade to plan and build a reactor, and you real…

Not to mention the small nuclear waste issue.

Managing waste for a period far, far, far longer than any state has historically lasted continuously (or even since the dawn of human civilization) seems really optimistic.

Very few states have lasted continuously more than a few centuries without some kind of partial or total collapse (military defeat, revolution, bankruptcy of government, etc), ant these waste will need to be managed for thousands of years.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#76

Post by acidburnNSA »

jk27277 wrote: post #66
quelsolaar wrote: post #31

Nuclear is not a viable solution, due to public opinion. A nuclear reactor has an incident once every 10.000 years. If we divide that with the number of reactors we get an accident every 30 or so years. (Harrisburg, Chernobyl, Fukusima, ligns up well with that) Every time there is an accident, the public turns against nuclear for 5-10 years. Add to that that it takes a decade to plan and build a reactor, and you real…

Thorium reactors?

Thorium is an alternate fuel that can be used in breeder reactors with fast or slow neutrons. It's particularly well-suited for thermal breeders, which work best in fluid fuel systems. Fluid fuel systems (like the now internet-famed Molten Salt Reactor) have lots of great capabilities that fall into the broader category of Gen-IV nuclear reactors (near infinite sustainability, super-safe, reduced waste, higher temperature, etc.).

There was some internet hype for a while that Thorium was a end-all/be-all but those were slightly misguided in the sense that all Gen-IV reactors are end-all/be-alls. The Thorium itself had very little to do with it. It was an attempt at rebranding nuclear. As a nuclear engineer I prefer precision and promote all Gen-IV stuff including Th-fueled ones. Maybe I should have gone with the rebrand.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#77

Post by pfdietz »

OisinMoran wrote: post #25

If this interests you, I would highly recommend reading this article on molten salt reactors [0]. TL;DR: Molten salt reactors are safer (can't have a meltdown if it's already melted), smaller (could fit on the back of a truck), able to run on more abundant materials like Thorium (which in turn come from more politically stable regions), and to top it all off: not only do they leave much less nuclear waste, they can a…

The advantage of MSRs is not that they can't melt down (or that they could use thorium; that's vastly overhyped), it's that there's no volatile material in the containment building.

The containment of a LWR has to be large because it fills with radioactive steam in an accident. It has to be able to contain this steam, which means at least a certain amount of structure to withstand its pressure.

But MSRs don't use water as a coolant. They circulate salt in and out of the building. They can be designed to remain at low pressure even in a bad accident, just from heat transfer that occurs from thermal radiation at elevated temperature. As a result, the cost of the containment could be as much as 1/5th that of a LWR.

Unfortunately, MSRs are not available today, and likely will not be for decades (especially if new materials must be qualified; no one will buy an MSR if there is any question about the materials not lasting their projected lifespans.) By that time, renewables will have marched down their experience curves to an economic position that will likely be unassailable.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#78

Post by est31 »

kakwa_ wrote: post #75
quelsolaar wrote: post #31

Nuclear is not a viable solution, due to public opinion. A nuclear reactor has an incident once every 10.000 years. If we divide that with the number of reactors we get an accident every 30 or so years. (Harrisburg, Chernobyl, Fukusima, ligns up well with that) Every time there is an accident, the public turns against nuclear for 5-10 years. Add to that that it takes a decade to plan and build a reactor, and you real…

Not to mention the small nuclear waste issue. Managing waste for a period far, far, far longer than any state has historically lasted continuously (or even since the dawn of human civilization) seems really optimistic. Very few states have lasted continuously more than a few centuries without some kind of partial or total collapse (military defeat, revolution, bankruptcy of government, etc), ant these waste will need…

And all of this waste management run by the government is another government subvention of nuclear technology of right now unknown height.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#79

Post by DennisP »

pfdietz wrote: post #61
DennisP wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you do solar and mostly skip wind, in which case you can build enough nuclear to run the nighttime load and solar for just the extra daytime load, then you can run the nukes 24/7. That minimizes both nuclear downtime and storage requirements. But if we're going to build a lot of wind, that still doesn't necessarily doom nuclear, if we can lower the capital cost of nuclear. The article describes some fairly sim…

Running nuclear plants just at night would double the cost of that power. This would be insane. Using nuclear instead of solar when solar was available would increase the cost of that power by a factor of 3 or more. That would also be insane. Nuclear just doesn't have a place on a grid with a large renewable supply. EDIT: You wrote: "I agree that would be insane, which is why I said to run the nuclear 24/7 and build…

I agree that would be insane, which is why I said to run the nuclear 24/7 and build enough solar for the extra demand during the day.

Wind/solar is only that much cheaper if you ignore storage.

Stop ignoring the possibilities of much cheaper nuclear and things look different anyway. South Korea is already 6X cheaper according to the article, and some GenIV designs are likely to do even better.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#80

Post by acidburnNSA »

Krasnol wrote: post #67
fastball wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes the technology won't get much better. But there are a ton of potential ways to improve nuclear, like LFTR.

Just like renewables getting better. So why even bother with that old, dangerous and radioactive tech? I really hope the lobby runs out of money soon...this artificial hype is terrible.

Old? Unlocking the energy of the nucleus is certainly our most recent energy resource, by any measure.

Dangerous? Even though nuclear fails catastrophically, it does so very infrequently, and few people die relative to other energy sources (hydro dam failures have killed 100k in one incident, coal kills more each day than nuclear ever killed). Nuclear safety per TWh is on par with wind and solar (which kill very few people e.g. from ice throw and falling off roofs).

Radioactive? Ok, fission products are radioactive. Can't argue with that.

Do you really think Steven Pinker is in the nuclear lobby?

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