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

nytimes.com

271–280 of 731 posts

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

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Renewable energy is cheaper than nuclear, or will be imminently. Renewable energy at that scale is still theoretical and hasn't shown its downsides yet. Nuclear has shown all its downsides, and they have been 95% corrected. It's a mature, known technology.

In 2018, renewables provided 713 TWh of energy to the US electricity grid. Nuclear provided 807 TWh. They're already at the same scale, and renewables are rapidly increasing while nuclear has stagnated for decades. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

Conflating hydro with wind and solar is bordering on deception.

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

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Renewable energy is cheaper than nuclear, or will be imminently. Renewable energy at that scale is still theoretical and hasn't shown its downsides yet. Nuclear has shown all its downsides, and they have been 95% corrected. It's a mature, known technology.

Renewables already supply a similar amount of power to nuclear, its growth rate is higher, and its cost curve is improving faster. As for plant capacity, the largest power plant in the world is renewable (Hydropower):22.5 GW. Compare that with the largest nuclear plant, the Kashiwazaki Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant (currently closed due to safety concerns): 8GW. If you limit "renewables" to only solar and wind, there ar…

Conflating hydro with wind and solar is bordering on deception.

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

#273
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nuclear waste is not as big of a problem as most people think.

I will support nuclear if you have a solid solution that will work for the waste for the island living populations of the world. Hawaii for example. If a good solution for the waste can be presented there, we can more effectively move forward. Looking just at large continental areas when solving the problem leaves some holes to fill. Not saying nuclear is bad, it does have a solid cost presentation and a low pollutio…

I mean, if the world switches largely to nuclear power, it’s probably fine if small populated islands that don’t have anywhere to store nuclear waste keep using whatever power source they’re using now (or switch to other clean energy sources if possible). There’s no reason to let the perfect get in the way of the better.

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

#274
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed! And so goes hindsight. And we (the human race) have learned.

> And we (the human race) have learned. yet, this is specific to this one incident, one specific threat. The issue is more likely to be systemic. Once a production system is up and running, it is not consistantly being improved and iterated upon, but instead left to stagnate technologically (and in this case, in safety in light of new research etc). But the argument is that such level of continuous improvement/iterat…

Thus regulate mandatory re-certified every 10 years. Also that such process must involve meeting or exceeding //current// engineering standards and safety, with the potential for limited exceptions if approved by need and actively in progress plans for achieving the specifications.

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

#276
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at Australia. We've been very easily influenced by the coal lobby. If there's plenty of jobs and investment flowing in, we'll do the same for nuclear.

Australia has huge amount of unusable dessert on the interior of the continent that could easily be used to store spent nuclear fuel. It's honestly nuts that they use carbon-emitting fossil fuels at all given their nuclear, solar, and wind potential.

A colonialist perspective, would see it as "unusable desert" ready for nuclear waste. The original owners, Australian Aborigines, would certainly not.

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

#277

Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant? Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was because of one design flaw... Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor buildings. DERP. Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not s…

> My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are taken into account

It is impossible for us to take all disaster scenarios into account. Our knowledge is very limited.

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

#278

Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant? Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was because of one design flaw... Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor buildings. DERP. Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not s…

> My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are taken into account

I don't know if you are old enough to remember it, but that's exactly what nuclear energy proponents said in the 70s.

Since then, actual experience showed that about every 20 years, there has been a big incident with global impact, and it will take decades if not centuries until the affected area is usable again. And the latter is something that might be tolerable in less densely populated countries or locations (Chernobyl), but in very densely populated ones it would be a major catastrophe.

And so far we've only seen disaster scenarios caused by human error and force of nature, and there's a third one (human malice), which thankfully hasn't happened yet, but which is impossible to guard against.

So my conclusion from reality is that no, we can't make nuclear power completely safe: The consequences of a disaster are too great, the monetary incentives are all wrong (it's not the nuclear companies which pay in case of the disaster, the state takes over; and the costs of the risk are not factored in into the actual running costs; and safety measures are expensive, so economics will always lead to, say, putting the backup generators NOT on the hill, because that would have cost more).

And then there's the problem that in some countries using nuclear energy and producing nuclear waste, the problem of actually storing that waste safely for the next few centuries is still not solved. Even after 50 years of producing it. And that is just insane.

I wish we could make nuclear safe. It would be a great way to reduce carbon emissions. Looking at reality, I can only conclude that we can't, and it's wishful thinking. (Yes, I know, that opinion is not popular, and the nuclear fanboys will be all over me, but so be it).

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

#279

Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant? Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was because of one design flaw... Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor buildings. DERP. Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not s…

I'm pretty pro-nuclear. Nuclear power has proven to be extremely safe relative to the alternatives. In this specific case though, to say that there was one design flaw is failing to go beyond the first why.

The second why is "why does the reactor require an uninterrupted supply of electrical power in order to not melt down? Gen 2 nuclear power is inherently dangerous, and is only made safe through active safety systems. If the reactor trips, the cooling pumps must run or decay heat will cause a meltdown. Gen 3 reactors tend to incorporate a lot more passive safety systems or at least ones that don't require electricity.

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

#280
post #275

Coal is literally 1000x more dangerous than nuclear power. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities Humanity's inability to understand basic math will be our downfall -- perhaps already has sealed our fate.

Though it's the most amount of deaths by year currently, their argument generally is about if a nuclear plant close to population pops off. A single city would be 1000x what coals killed.
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