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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

#541

Post by acidburnNSA »

Krasnol wrote: post #515
acidburnNSA wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear hype is timeless, it's caused by the fact that there are 2 million times more Joules in each kg of uranium than in any chemical fuel. This natural resource is astounding, and it's a very human thing to try to put it to work for the good of humankind. Anti-nuclear media is also status quo. The industry has been dealing with it for decades. I don't think the HBO thing is going to tip the scale too much. There a…

> Nuclear hype is timeless The only timeless thing about nuclear is the the waste. Something many future generations can have to be pissed about us. Nobody was talking about nuclear for years before that new hype started a few months ago and suddenly it's allover the place. Come on... > Thus we have a public education issue. No we don't and painting the opposition to the hype as stupid or uneducated only hurts nuclea…

There are hundreds of millions of dollars per year going into advanced nuclear from big investors right now in the USA. Check out Kairos, USNC, TerraPower, etc.

https://www.thirdway.org/graphic/keeping-up-with-the-advance...

I am not painting opposition as stupid. I'm painting the general public as unaware that nuclear is statistically quite safe compared with almost all other energy sources.

There is almost no nuclear lobby to speak of. Nuclear advocacy is almost all grassroots.

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

#542

Post by vinniejames »

Gondolin wrote: post #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 impo…

The best solution is to first implement distributed battery power instead of reliance on a grid.

This eliminates the need to have nuclear plants in close proximity to densely populated areas.

Plants can then be built in remote areas where the negative externalities will be drastically reduced, while still receiving the benefit of green, reliable energy.

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

#543

Post by Gondolin »

pytester wrote: post #534
Gondolin wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has been taking coal offline after taking nuclear offline; and are replacing coal by gas (so they depend even more on Russia) instead of replacing it by nuclear or renewable. They produce 3x the CO2 of France, despite their commitment against global warming. In an ideal world, renewable would replace everything. We are not yet in this ideal world, and we don't know the time frame to get to it (there are huge…

It certainly doesn't look like natural gas usage is ramping up: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g... >They produce 3x the CO2 of France, despite their commitment against global warming. That's because France started replacing fossil fuels with nuclear in the 80s. That was the only sensible approach to reducing CO2 in the 80s. This isn't the 80s though. >In an ideal world, renewable would re…

If I count lignite + coal + natural gas + mineral oil, it goes from 76.9GW in 2010 to 79.3GW in 2019. So it did not go down either. That's because Germany needs a back up energy source for now. It could have gone down by 10GW had Germany closed coal rather than nuclear first.

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

#544

Post by lispm »

ElBarto wrote: post #508
pytester wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, Hinkley point is ~£95 per MWh while renewables are ~£45. It makes no sense to complain about how polluting coal plants are in relation to nuclear. It isn't the main source of competition. Germany has been taking both nuclear and coal offline and renewables have been plugging the gap for both for some years now and will likely continue to do so. It boggles my mind that the nuclear industry itself demands that all…

Calculate how many wind generators you need to guarantee the same production as Hinkley point and you'll see that it is not really realistic. Then, take into account the goal of making of vehicles electric in the next 20 years. There is no viable alternative to nuclear as of today even if renewables should of course be pushed as much as possible. Germany is emitting heavily because most of its electricity comes from…

> Germany is emitting heavily because most of its electricity comes from fossil fuel and it decided to kill nuclear power of purely ideological reasons

It does because it is a relatively industrialized country. CO2 emissions fell last year by 4.5%.

These are actual numbers for electricity production in Germany: from 2017 to 2018:

5.6% more wind electricity, 6.3% more solar electricity.

2.7% less coal/lignite, 6% less hard coal, 9% less gas.

The share of renewable energy of electricity production is 40%.

In 2030 it is projected to be at around 65%.

This is going to be a revolution. We now have working days in 2019 where >60% of the electricity are coming from renewables. There was a week this year with 64.8% renewable energy for electricity, with wind providing 48.4%. Two decades ago this was thought to be impossible.

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

#545

Post by yostrovs »

pytester wrote: post #524
ElBarto wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calculate how many wind generators you need to guarantee the same production as Hinkley point and you'll see that it is not really realistic. Then, take into account the goal of making of vehicles electric in the next 20 years. There is no viable alternative to nuclear as of today even if renewables should of course be pushed as much as possible. Germany is emitting heavily because most of its electricity comes from…

>Calculate how many wind generators you need to guarantee the same production as Hinkley point Hinkley Point = 3200 MW Average wind turbine generates = 3 MW That's about 1,100 wind turbines at current tech. GE is working on a 12 MW wind turbine - it would take 270 of them would replace Hinkley point.

... when the wind blows.

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

#546

Post by Gondolin »

lispm wrote: post #531
Gondolin wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has been taking coal offline after taking nuclear offline; and are replacing coal by gas (so they depend even more on Russia) instead of replacing it by nuclear or renewable. They produce 3x the CO2 of France, despite their commitment against global warming. In an ideal world, renewable would replace everything. We are not yet in this ideal world, and we don't know the time frame to get to it (there are huge…

> Germany has been taking coal offline after taking nuclear offline; and are replacing coal by gas (so they depend even more on Russia) instead of replacing it by nuclear or renewable Germany's Energiewende is a many decade long plan with going beyond 80+ renewable energy for electricity in 2050. The Energiewende is not just about CO2 reductions, it is about making renewable energy viable in an industrialized country…

Germany's goal is laudable, but even if it manages to go full renewable by 2050 that's still 40 years of green house gas emissions it could have avoided had it gone both nuclear and renewable.

Nuclear can be made smaller (molten salt reactor, but I do admit that there are huge challenges for that too), and more flexible. Germany's plant were not as flexible as France's, but France's can be quite flexible: for those of you who can read French " rel="nofollow">https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1102620969808658432.html> a variation of 10GW of nuclear production in a few hours.

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

#547

Post by jason0597 »

vlehto wrote: post #529
lispm wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like I thought. You have no idea how to do it, what it is going to cost and what impact it will have. This will convince nobody.

Are you doubting nuclear or are you doubting climate change?

I'm a bit on the pro-nuclear side, but if you met a banker and asked him for a couple of billion upfront to build a nuclear plant, and said those things, he'd reject you outright.

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

#548

Post by DennisP »

lazyjones wrote: post #466
DennisP wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you should read the book Six Degrees by Mark Lynas, who read 3000 peer-reviewed papers on the effects of climate change and summarized them, one chapter per degree. Billions of deaths at three degrees is probably overstating things, but three degrees does bring massive food shortages and hundreds of millions of refugees. At four degrees, billions of deaths doesn't look that unlikely, and it starts getting hard t…

> Then you should read the book Six Degrees by Mark Lynas, who read 3000 peer-reviewed papers on the effects of climate change No thanks. He's a journalist and political activist, reading his foregone conclusions from selected papers he claims to have read is a waste of time.

His account matches well with everything else I've seen on the subject. Well-referenced journalism isn't a bad way to get at the truth, right-wing bloviating to the contrary. And you could always look up a sampling of the sources to check up on him.

But of course, sticking with your own forgone conclusions is clearly better.

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

#549

Post by lispm »

Gondolin wrote: post #543
pytester wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly doesn't look like natural gas usage is ramping up: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g... >They produce 3x the CO2 of France, despite their commitment against global warming. That's because France started replacing fossil fuels with nuclear in the 80s. That was the only sensible approach to reducing CO2 in the 80s. This isn't the 80s though. >In an ideal world, renewable would re…

If I count lignite + coal + natural gas + mineral oil, it goes from 76.9GW in 2010 to 79.3GW in 2019. So it did not go down either. That's because Germany needs a back up energy source for now. It could have gone down by 10GW had Germany closed coal rather than nuclear first.

What does GW measure in this context? Electricity production is usually measured in TWh.

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

#550

Post by lispm »

Gondolin wrote: post #546
lispm wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Germany has been taking coal offline after taking nuclear offline; and are replacing coal by gas (so they depend even more on Russia) instead of replacing it by nuclear or renewable Germany's Energiewende is a many decade long plan with going beyond 80+ renewable energy for electricity in 2050. The Energiewende is not just about CO2 reductions, it is about making renewable energy viable in an industrialized country…

Germany's goal is laudable, but even if it manages to go full renewable by 2050 that's still 40 years of green house gas emissions it could have avoided had it gone both nuclear and renewable. Nuclear can be made smaller (molten salt reactor, but I do admit that there are huge challenges for that too), and more flexible. Germany's plant were not as flexible as France's, but France's can be quite flexible: for those o…

> molten salt reactor

will have zero impact in the next three decades. There is no market offering and no buyer.

No one is investing in yet another fuel cycle and nuclear technology. There are no reactors of scale and there is no industry surrounding it.

> Germany's plant were not as flexible as France's

Germany had a few flexible nuclear plants. But all old.

> a variation of 10GW of nuclear production in a few hours.

The result is that France has invested very little in renewable energy in the last decades and created a very inefficient and state owned energy system.

France's centralized nuclear state owned energy system and distributed multi-producer/owner renewable energy are largely incompatible systems. Proof: the lack of investments into renewable in the last decades in France.

The main question is this: where are CURRENT investments going. Not nuclear, but renewable. This future had been made possible by investments like the German Energiewende, while other countries did invest in mostly nothing. They even failed to bring nuclear forward (-> US). The US sits on a bunch of outdated reactors and not much idea how to replace them economically with newer and better ones.

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