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

nytimes.com

391–400 of 731 posts

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

#391
please correct me if i'm wrong, but doesn't the climate have so much inertia that NYC will be underwater no matter what we do?

i mean, we could go all renewable at this very moment, and NYC will still be submerged, along with most of humanity.

at least that's my understanding from this paper:

Consequences of twenty-first-century policy for multi-millennial climate and sea-level change

https://www2.bc.edu/jeremy-shakun/Clark-2016-NCC.pdf

so what's the point of these discussions? shouldn't we start building-out Mars or something?

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

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but what about having to evacuate the area for decades / more to come? And the radioactive waste problem?

The counter risk is having the entire planet rendered uninhabitable for human life, right? Let's see, some area rendered uninhabitable versus the planet rendered uninhabitable... I'm going with A.

Sounds like a false dichotomy to me

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

#393
Greenpeace has been known to fight nuclear power, as have far left green parties. It really saddens me.

Reaching good power output with renewable energies is laughable. I keep hearing that germany generated a lot of power with wind, like 80%, but it lasted one week, and it makes me really wonder about the accuracy of that news. Wikipedia is moot about germany wind energy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Germany

The amount of solar panels, dams and wind turbine you need to reach the power output of a nuclear plant is ridiculous. I wish we would consider the cost of kWh for each non carbonized energy.

A french consultant showing cost graphs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuzGG9W7obs

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

#394

Still no answer to the question : what do we with nuclear waste... Only answer I get is : more money will solve it or one day...

It's just a non-issue. All of the world's nuclear waste could fit in one warehouse and isn't that dangerous. You can either put all of it in a building somewhere or keep it in smaller buildings on-site.

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

#395
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may all very well be true, but it still means that the power plant was unsafe . All the time nuclear power fans tell us that "this time we've learned and current design are safe". And all the time bad things happen and they have to admit "well, not when X happens". Or "not when A and then B happens". Just as you did here. It's nice that Fukushima could have survived an earthquake, but the tsunami isn't a freak a…

Disclaimer: I am not really pro- or con- nuclear energy but try to keep an open mind. How does what you are saying not apply to any other technology? Cars are “save” but kill more people than all nuclear power plants and accidents combined. Still we say to ourselves we can deal with the risk, which is obviously the case for lot’s of cases but might not be in some exceptions. I think your reaction seems a little bit t…

You're right. It fully applies to cars, as well. That's why we have those "more bikes" discussions here every now and then.

But that's no reason not to point out the obvious flaws in the comment I replied to.

And re: emotionality: you can wish it away, but it is real. Nuclear fans always act as if they only had to show this one scientific study to citizens, and everyone would immediately fall in line. That's hilarious.

Nuclear is done. It may be irrational, but the nuclear community has richly earned that. A little bit of humility and risk-weighing instead of grandiose claims of "perfect safety" would have helped.

But these lies of "perfect safety" were useful back then. They were a shortcut. A cheat. They could get their reactors much quicker if they made false claims.

Now they get the long-term results to their short-term thinking.

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

#396
post #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 th…

I feel like it's bad to talk about safety of nuclear without comparing it to another option. What's the safety of fossil fuels? What bar would have to be met for nuclear to save lives when compared to alternatives?

For the most part nuclear falls victim to the same human reasoning flaws that make us more worried about flying on a plane than driving even though driving is way riskier.

For more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents

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

#397

Renewable energy is cheaper than nuclear, or will be imminently. Proponents of nuclear tend to ignore the long-run costs associated with nuclear (eg. waste transport and storage), and the potential for cost blowouts due to acute disasters like Fukushima (estimated cost to taxpayers: USD $100 Billion). The fact tax money is going towards Fukushima highlights another problem with nuclear power: the agency problem. The…

One of the biggest advantages renewable energy has over both nuclear and mega-dams is that the size of project required to achieve the commonly quoted LCOE (levelized cost of energy) is much, much smaller. 50 MW or perhaps less per site, versus 1000+ MW. This means: 1. no mega projects that attract similarly sized public opposition 2. 1-2 year construction timelines instead of 10+ 3. much, much less financial and reg…

Dams produce renewable energy.

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

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but what about having to evacuate the area for decades / more to come? And the radioactive waste problem?

The counter risk is having the entire planet rendered uninhabitable for human life, right? Let's see, some area rendered uninhabitable versus the planet rendered uninhabitable... I'm going with A.

The worst of the lies about nuclear is that it can somehow help create a carbon-neutral economy.

Of course it wouldn't. Designing a carbon-neutral economy is a much bigger problem that requires much broader strategic thinking.

The levelized cost of renewables is already cheaper than the equivalent for nuclear power, with much smaller capital costs, much faster start-up and build costs, and no concerns about long-lived waste.

And the trend lines are clear.

There is simply no case for nuclear power now - economic, political, or environmental.

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

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opinion is that you might underestimate the magnitude of potential nuclear accidents. I think that Germany's decision to decommission over time their nuclear power plants was pretty well studied. Please see: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2018/...

And now Germany is not meeting its decarbonization goals. How is that a win for the environment?

That has little to do with the decommissioning itself, and more with the Governments stupidity and ignorance. The decommissioning is only one part of that screw-up.

Germany wants (and the whole world should):

* enough energy

* carbon-free

* nuclear-waste-free

On order to do that, you need massive investments in renewable energy and storage.

Instead, they found a way to have:

* large investment in solar energy, without protectionist measures, leading to the German solar industry dying an creating demand that lead to cheap China solar (overly simplified - feel free to elaborate in your answers)

* laws that limit the building of wind power significantly

* failure to build a power line from the north (offshore windparks) to the south (high power demands, less power resources) which currently leads to insane situations with the neighbors

* first extending the nuclear power plants permits, shortly afterwards deciding to shut down, which lead to Germany having to pay compensations to the companies (in addition to a completely botched nuclear fuel tax, that they had to pay back after it was found invalid in court)

* subsidies for dirty coal plants over decades (300 billion was a number floating around) and another I think 50 billions to help the regions which rely on the coal business after the coal shutdown

Politicians deal in compromise. They see different interests and they try to find a middle ground between those two. They do that with a pretty heavy disregard of science. Scientist are just another interest group.

Scientists: If we don't cut CO2 but this much until this date, the effects of climate change will become this nasty.

Industry: If we do that, that will cost us X moneys and endanger Y jobs and we will make Z less profit.

Government: OK. let's meet halfway.

Earth: LOL

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

#400
I am flabbergasted that some commenters here argue against nuclear because of waste and accidents, while ignoring that

- coal produce radioactive waste too

- it kills a lot more persons (without taking into account global warning) due to air pollution

- the economic cost of nuclear may be underestimated, but this is nothing compared to the economic cost of global warming.

Renewable (wind and solar) are extremely important, but nuclear replace coal and gas. Renewable alone are not enough, especially since we will need a lot more electric energy for transport and to decarbonise the atmosphere; so both are needed.

It boggles my mind that Germany made a great effort on renewable, and used this extra energy to close nuclear plants rather than coals ones. (At the beginning they even had to open more coal plants!) This means that Fukushima (which made Germany close its nuclear plants) killed a lot more people in Germany than in Japan.

People's priority are wrongly aligned: first close coals and gas plants using renewable, and then think about reducing nuclear plants once we have good storage technology.

Recall that coal is 1000 times more deadly than nuclear per unit of energy (including the nuclear accidents). Taking global warming into account, this is way worse; if nothing is done we are talking about billions of death to total collapse of human civilisation.

Compared to that, the human and economic cost of nuclear waste and a few potential large nuclear explosions due to accident/malice is trivial.

Nuclear energy is a vital tool against global warming, and I am very concerned for the future of my children that even well educated people (I have these same arguments with my university colleagues) don't realise that.

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