Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry • Hacker News Board

Re: Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry

#111

Post by loeg » Thu, May 02, 2019, 8:03 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #100

nickik wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or rather the MASSIVE overreaction compared to the actual events. Chernobyl was a Soviet reactor that was designed to make nuclear weapons. Three Mile Island killed less people then 1000s of mining accidents, pipeline explosions and lots of other things. The perception of Three Mile Island was hilariously out of scale with the actual danger. The regulatory overreaction was so big that since then basically the whole n…

> Chernobyl was a Soviet reactor that was designed to make nuclear weapons. Source?

Soviet:

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

> the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the now-abandoned town of Pripyat, in northern Soviet Ukraine.

Weapons:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-10-03-mn-4176-s...

> In interviews, U.S. and West European officials said that some of the graphite reactors like the four at Chernobyl may be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium, but that their most likely military purpose is to make tritium, a rare isotope of hydrogen used in thermonuclear weapons.

Re: Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry

#112

Post by jandrese » Thu, May 02, 2019, 8:40 PM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #94

jandrese wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time the NRC is too cozy with the industry it has kept all nuclear projects in the US tied up in red tape for literally decades.

Citation needed! From what I've read the US government has been incredibly supportive of the nuclear industry. For example, both Obama and Trump have secured federal funding for the Vogtle 3 and 4 plants. US public opinion has also been heavily in favor of nuclear power, even after Fukushima. The "red tape is causing all our problems!" seem, to me, to be just a myth spread by the nuclear lobby. https://news.gallup.co…

If everybody is so supportive and the regulatory picture is so rosy why is there a 20 year gap from 1996 to 2016 in the construction of nuclear plants? Even then the 2016 plant is an expansion of an existing plant.

Not to mention the ones that were started but never finished construction like the Virgil C. Summer plants.

Re: Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry

#113

Post by JudgeWapner » Thu, May 02, 2019, 9:13 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #42

nickelcitymario wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not if we look at the entire supply chain and the construction of the power plant (whatever the source of power may be). But people don't get as emotional about the resources required to build windmills (so long as it's not in my backyard) as they do about nuclear. And once a windmill or a dam or a solar farm has been built, there's a belief that there's no ongoing environmental damage. Whereas nuclear (and coal…

> But people don't get as emotional about the resources required to build windmills (so long as it's not in my backyard) as they do about nuclear. And once a windmill or a dam or a solar farm has been built, there's a belief that there's no ongoing environmental damage. Whereas nuclear (and coal and gas) require ongoing resource extraction. But you need massive amounts of battery storage to actually power a grid with…

you may need massive batteries now, but there are many ways that grids can adapt to this: refrigerators could have a thermal battery that stores excess ice, for instance. same with A/C. home appliances such as dish washers or laundry can be tied to the smart grid and only come on when there is power. same with EV's. The grid can flex a lot more than it currently is.

Re: Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry

#114

Post by Faark » Thu, May 02, 2019, 9:38 PM UTC

freeflight wrote: post #90

bboygravity wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Renewables could work as a replacement" No. They can't as long as cheap energy storage on mass scales doesn't exist. Case in point: closing nuclear plants and replacing them with renewables is what Germany has been trying to do and has failed to do so far. They essentially replaced (and will continue to replace) nuclear by renewables paired with coal and gas plants running on standby. They can't cold start these pla…

> Case in point: closing nuclear plants and replacing them with renewables is what Germany has been trying to do and has failed to do so far. Germany was the global top electricity exporter, by dollar value, in 2017 [0]. If that's what "failing" looks like, then maybe more countries should start "failing" like that? In that context, coal and gas are only stop-gap technologies until storage technology and deployment h…

The talking point i usually hear against this is "germany exports the huge fluctuation in production caused by green energy to the eu grid, straining the entire system". I haven't come across a good argument against this. Import/Export does indeed seem to vary widely based on time of day [0]. But this doesn't mean there are negative effects. Net frequency might be a better indicator, but I haven't found good graphs, yet.

> coal is mostly only around for the same reasons as in the US: To not piss off the miners/lose those jobs.

Totally agree, especially lignite heavy regions don't have a lot of other industry.

[0] select "import, export" at https://energy-charts.de/power.htm?source=all-sources&year=2...

Re: Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry

#115

Post by bjourne » Thu, May 02, 2019, 9:51 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #112

bjourne wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed! From what I've read the US government has been incredibly supportive of the nuclear industry. For example, both Obama and Trump have secured federal funding for the Vogtle 3 and 4 plants. US public opinion has also been heavily in favor of nuclear power, even after Fukushima. The "red tape is causing all our problems!" seem, to me, to be just a myth spread by the nuclear lobby. https://news.gallup.co…

If everybody is so supportive and the regulatory picture is so rosy why is there a 20 year gap from 1996 to 2016 in the construction of nuclear plants? Even then the 2016 plant is an expansion of an existing plant. Not to mention the ones that were started but never finished construction like the Virgil C. Summer plants.

Why not mention that cancelled plant? Construction started in 2013 but it became to expensive so the contractors abandoned the project. Why there was a 17 year gap, I don't know. Big cost overruns and time delays plagued nuclear construction projects in the 80's. So perhaps the gap was because that is how long it took politicians to forget the previous decades failures and give the nuclear lobby another chance?

Re: Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry

#116

Post by SiempreViernes » Thu, May 02, 2019, 10:16 PM UTC

nickelcitymario wrote: post #79

SiempreViernes wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get more hydro then as it's faster at adapting to changing loads than nuclear.

Hydro is damaging to the local ecosystem and has a long history of fucking over small communities, in particular indigenous communities who somehow never factor into these decisions. Show me a powerful river than can be dammed with minimal to no impact to the ecology or the communities up- or down-stream of it, and you will have my support.

Oh, so "we should pull all the stops" turns out to be "please don't impact local ecology and communities"? Concerns about local ecology seems like a bit of climb down from "I'll pay the bloody premium"

Re: Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry

#117

Post by SiempreViernes » Thu, May 02, 2019, 10:17 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #97

SiempreViernes wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get more hydro then as it's faster at adapting to changing loads than nuclear.

Hydropower has environmental issues and the number of places with sufficient hydraulic head and no dam there already is not all that large.

Sure, but if you say things like "I'll pay the bloody premium" I expect you're willing to take the environment and political issues for the sake of clean, reliable, and fast power.

Re: Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry

#118

Post by oppressedgf » Thu, May 02, 2019, 10:24 PM UTC

Of all the words you could use to describe the nuclear industry, blew up should not be in the list

Re: Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry

#119

Post by Gibbon1 » Thu, May 02, 2019, 11:26 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #43

bilbo0s wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, nuclear is also just incredibly expensive. Witness Vogtie. Take away all taxes and regulations, then compare the price of, say, Iowa, building a nuclear plant instead of just slapping up windmills wherever they want. (Remember, we're assuming zero regulations. So while slapping up windmills would normally be incredibly illegal, we're able to do that under the conditions that our thought experiment postul…

Your first paragraph misses the mark, because, unlike a nuclear plant, a windmill or solar plant isn't a standalone power source. To have reliable baseload power with renewables, you need massive battery storage. Right now, you don't factor in the (very high) cost of building battery storage into the cost of wind power because you still have all those coal, gas, and nuclear plants providing baseload power. But the co…

> To have reliable baseload power with renewables

You have to be careful baseload power isn't the same thing as battery backed (time shifted) renewable power.

Coal and Nuclear baseload power exists for two reasons. Excess generating capacity at night. And the inability of coal and nuclear plants to shutdown. It's cheap because of oversupply. Time shifted renewable's is more expensive because of under supply.

Some percentage of base load power consumers are only in it for the balance sheet economics. If the pricing structure changes they'll shift their usage to the cheapest source.

Take away: Renewables don't need to generate as much baseload as coal and nuclear plants do now.

Re: Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry

#120

Post by new4thaccount » Fri, May 03, 2019, 12:28 AM UTC

Gibbon1 wrote: post #119

rayiner wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first paragraph misses the mark, because, unlike a nuclear plant, a windmill or solar plant isn't a standalone power source. To have reliable baseload power with renewables, you need massive battery storage. Right now, you don't factor in the (very high) cost of building battery storage into the cost of wind power because you still have all those coal, gas, and nuclear plants providing baseload power. But the co…

> To have reliable baseload power with renewables You have to be careful baseload power isn't the same thing as battery backed (time shifted) renewable power. Coal and Nuclear baseload power exists for two reasons. Excess generating capacity at night. And the inability of coal and nuclear plants to shutdown. It's cheap because of oversupply. Time shifted renewable's is more expensive because of under supply. Some per…

You also need base load during the day when wind is blowing and it all of a sudden disappears. Don't say this doesn't happen as I've seen it many times.

Think about it. Wind might be 30% or more of your dispatch and then it just disappears quickly (even with multiple forecast vendors you are lucky to have a 2 hour warning). At this point you have to either have a lot of headroom (excess thermal generation for times like this) or you hope you can startup a resource in time. Therefore you either need storage on a massive unheard of scale, very fast starting resources, or lots of thermal generation for those times of trouble. Another option would be drastically increasing the demand response in the region (basically shut all the A/C's off at a few universities for an hour or so).