Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize • Hacker News Board

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

#601

Post by v_lisivka » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 3:58 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #485

v_lisivka wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power plant failure, like Chornobyl, _can_ make whole continent inhabitable for thousands of years.

Chernobyl made a large area a restricted zone, but nowhere near a continent scale. Besides, I really dislike people bringing up Chernobyl as an example of dangers - the RBMK reactor type like the one in Chernobyl still operates in 10 reactors producing electricity(and they will until 2024 at least). Even Chernobyl itself operated into 2000s before the last reactor block was shut down. And the only catastrophic fault…

Nobody said that Chornobyl hit whole continent, but it's because some people sacrificed their lives to stop continent scale disaster[1], not because it was small scale disaster.

Chornobyl operated till 2000s because cheap atom blasted huge hole in budget of Ukraine. They stopped when Ukraine received financial help to close these reactors. Tax payers and international aid covered these expenses and will continue to cover them for next few centuries at least. Closure of single reactor costs significant part of budget of small country. Closure of bunch of reactors can eat whole budget or two.

If one stupid can devastate whole continent, then better to switch to something else, because it doesn't look like we will breed out stupid people in near future.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raB80HRA1IQ

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

#602

Post by Faark » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

Cass wrote: post #385

kmlx wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one small correction: the fate of the world isn’t in question. it’s the fate of humans that is. meaning: the planet has seen several extinction events. it will survive anything we throw at it. but humans need to start building rockets and space stations asap if they want to survive.

I'm always baffled by the idea that we need to get people living in space for the human race to survive climate chance or other catastrophes. What do you think we could possibly do to the Earth that would make it less habitable than space? Even in the worst, worst case scenario, the Earth's gonna be left with some amount of oxygen-containing atmosphere, arable soil, gravity, and survivable if possibly uncomfortably h…

Long term a big difference would be your space station being isolated from everyone else. This avoids many bad incentives (like prisoners dilemma / tragedy of the commons).

For now, space is just a good training ground. It is not necessary to build isolated eco systems / livable environments on earth and doing so makes no sense financially. Space enthusiasm is a good tool to push R&D.

On an even longer scale it would certainly provide a diverse range of evolutionary benefits, but that would probably go a far bit off topic.

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

#603

Post by cameldrv » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 4:02 PM UTC

doomjunky wrote: post #309

cameldrv wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 syste…

It's just a trade-off of mathematical probabilities. The alleged extreme safety comes with an extreme destructive disasters. When it comes to risk management, the human brain that is bound by evolution to dangers close in time and location, is not capable of assessing the consequences of losing a piece of the planet earth's habitat for millions of years.

Radiation is not as scary as you've been led to believe. The main long-term dangers from a really bad nuclear accident are Cs 137 and Sr 90. Both of these have half lives of about 30 years. We past the first half life of the Chernobyl fallout.

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

#604

Post by Gondolin » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

lispm wrote: post #595

Gondolin wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So still 35% coming from fossil if the remaining nuclear plants are shut down. Again, Germany goals and effort are laudable, but you miss my point, it is not about nuclear vs renewable, but nuclear vs fossils as a complement to renewable. Why didn't Germany close its coal plants first? This would have saved several Metric Tons of CO2 and saved the life of a few thousands people (due to air pollution). When is Germany…

> but you miss my point, it is not about nuclear vs renewable, but nuclear vs fossils as a complement to renewable. I don't miss your point, I just don't think nuclear is a viable complement to renewable in Germany. > Why didn't Germany close its coal plants first? Because it wanted to get rid of nuclear first and as fast as possible. The reasons for that is all known and a little research can explain it to you - bey…

> Because it wanted to get rid of nuclear first and as fast as possible.

And this killed a few thousand persons and rejected MegaTons of CO2 in the atmosphere that could have been avoided.

> The next two decades will bring the end of coal-based electricity.

This is 30 years later than could have been, and gas instead of coal is not the solution either. Will Germany have 100% renewable in 20 years?

> When do you stop going to vacations via airplanes? Stop eating meat? Stop driving a car?

I changed my way of living already. I could still do more yes, but the most efficient way would be to convince policy makers to close coals/gas before nuclear.

> No, nuclear and renewable are not compatible. Nuclear is centralized monopolistic, mostly state-owned form of energy. I sucks up huge amounts of investments and corrupts everything around it.

Again, the drawbacks of nuclear power are nothing compared to the drawback of climate change, and gas corrupts too.

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

#605

Post by TomMarius » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 4:29 PM UTC

Tomte wrote: post #384

TomMarius wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that kind of reactor is never going to be built again - its design was very outdated and outright bad. Today we can build reactors where any failure that would result in an explosion of any kind is physically nearly impossible.

That exact same argument was made back then. You need to accept that all trust is lost. You cannot take backsies every few decades and expect people to trust you that this time you really know what you#re talking about.

> That exact same argument was made back then.

No, it wasn't. Please back it up if you have any proof, but this is not true IMO.

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

#606

Post by ElBarto » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 4:32 PM UTC

lispm wrote: post #544

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…

> 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…

> It does because it is a relatively industrialized country.

No, it does because its electricity comes from fossil fuels.

You are completely avoiding the point of my comment. Germany could have much, much lower emissions with nuclear but it has decided to continue emitting for political reasons, while trying to claim that they are 'green'...

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

#607

Post by BurningFrog » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

Tomte wrote: post #432

BurningFrog wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious solution is to store it in an unpopulated location. Only 15% of the Earth's surface is populated. Yes, observant reader, parts of the ocean floor are some of the best candidate areas.

> Only 15% of the Earth's surface is populated By humans.

Humans do wield the most political power to stop nuclear storage, given the traditional passivity of the Lizard people.

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

#608

Post by ElBarto » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 4:42 PM UTC

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.

> An average onshore wind turbine with a capacity of 2.5–3 MW can produce more than 6 million kWh in a year

(Source: http://www.ewea.org/wind-energy-basics/faq/)

That's an actual average of 685 kW, so 4,700 turbines for Hinkley Point. But that's still the _average_ production. If, or rather when, there's no wind during a high demand period you get a nice blackout.

Also:

> So a 2-megawatt wind turbine would require a total area of about half a square kilometer

(Source: https://sciencing.com/much-land-needed-wind-turbines-1230463...

So for those 4,700 turbines you need more than 2,350 km^2, so the whole of Dorset covered and as said, you'd still need a backup.

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

#609

Post by MertsA » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

progfix wrote: post #420

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…

And I am flabbergasted (again) because of the pro nuclear power comments. Why should we create energy from something so complicated and hard to control when we have something simple and easy to grasp like water, solar and windpower? I understand statistically speaking a nuclear power plant is save, but the risk is calculated by multiplying propability of occurance and potential loss. The potential loss in a maximum c…

If you're just talking about potential loss hydropower is not the argument you want to make here. Just the Banqiao dam failure alone has caused far more fatalities than nuclear power ever has including Chernobyl.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

Even just recently in the United States the Oroville dam came pretty close to catastrophe and required the evacuation of 188,000 people. Repairing the Oroville dam cost $1.1 billion, even back in the 70s the Teton Dam collapse cost over $300 million.

I'm all in favor of using hydroelectric power in places where we need to build a dam to control flooding but building a dam for power alone is ecologically damaging, floods tons of land, and even if you wanted to try to build more, there's not a lot of suitable locations.

As for the complexity of keeping a nuclear reactor under control, this isn't the 50s, we have reactor designs that are dramatically safer than older reactors, we aren't building them. I think you're wrong about trying to conserve energy as well. I'm not saying that we should waste it, but real conservation of energy isn't going to happen without significantly changing our current lifestyles. We don't need to do that if we just invest in sustainable clean energy in the form of nuclear power in the first place.

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

#610

Post by kortilla » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 4:54 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #517

kortilla wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proponents of renewables fail to take into account the need for baseload. It’s nowhere near being cheaper when you take into account the over provisioning and storage costs required to actually compete with the reliability of nuclear (and coal/gas).

The planet doesn't care about intermittency. It only cares about total emissions.

But the people do and they are in charge of what we adopt. Choosing renewables and poo-pooing nuclear is choosing fossil fuels for base load. It’s that simple.