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Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

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Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#41

Post by NotPaidToPost »

jessaustin wrote: post #31

If other low-carbon sources, namely wind and solar PV, are to fill the shortfall in nuclear, their deployment would have to accelerate to an unprecedented level. In the past 20 years, wind and solar PV capacity has increased by about 580 gigawatts in advanced economies. But over the next 20 years, nearly five times that amount would need to be added. This is misleading enough to make one question every "fact" stated…

Err, they say production grew by 580 GW in the past 20 years and that it must grow by another 5x580=2,900 GW in the next 5 years.

Nothing misleading and indeed an unprecedented production increase.

It's not the ratio that is hard, it's the raw amount.

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#42

Post by Cederfjard »

Tharkun wrote: post #23
umvi wrote: post #4

Haven't nuclear waste recycling and safety features gotten really good in the past few decades? I feel like not many people know just how little waste is created with modern recycling and just how safe nuclear is with modern safety features. Seems like we need a positive PR campaign to help convince folks that nuclear is way better than fossil fuels. This could easily be bipartisan.

> Haven't nuclear waste recycling and safety features gotten really good in the past few decades? I thought you were being snarky at first, but the rest of the comment appears to indicate you're being serious. In Belgium we've been stuck in endless discussions regarding what to do with our nuclear waste. We used to dump it in the sea, which was probably a bad idea. Now it's stored in barrels which are apparently leak…

The grandparent comment mentioned modern recycling. Perhaps Belgium is operating old types of reactors that aren't amenable to modern ways of dealing with waste? A quick search yielded that all of Belgium's reactors were built in the 70's and 80's.

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#43

Post by dclowd9901 »

jessaustin wrote: post #31

If other low-carbon sources, namely wind and solar PV, are to fill the shortfall in nuclear, their deployment would have to accelerate to an unprecedented level. In the past 20 years, wind and solar PV capacity has increased by about 580 gigawatts in advanced economies. But over the next 20 years, nearly five times that amount would need to be added. This is misleading enough to make one question every "fact" stated…

Going from 5-580 is much easier than going from 580->2500. Just ask anyone how hard it was to make their first 100,000, million, billion, etc. Using multiples is actually oversimplifying the issue (i.e. "to make a hundred dollars, you just have to make $10 10 times, so making $1000 from $100 should be just as easy")

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#44

Post by pjc50 »

ekianjo wrote: post #7
umvi wrote: post #4

Haven't nuclear waste recycling and safety features gotten really good in the past few decades? I feel like not many people know just how little waste is created with modern recycling and just how safe nuclear is with modern safety features. Seems like we need a positive PR campaign to help convince folks that nuclear is way better than fossil fuels. This could easily be bipartisan.

Greenpeace has successfully spent several decades painting nuclear power as Evil so its going to be difficult to convince voters to support it from now on.

Hoisting my previous comment on Greenpeace from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17774347

The backlash against nuclear comes from four points and a meta-point:

1) Weapons proliferation. The standard fission cycle is just too convenient for this (after all, that's why it was developed) and so an international infrastructure needs to be developed around restricting this. See Iran for example. This also prompted a lot of opposition from people who didn't want to live under the threat of their cities being nuked.

This also turned into lethal fights with the environmental movement (the French government sank Greenpeace's ship Rainbow Warrior with a terrorist bombing that killed a photographer, over the question of nuclear weapons testing). A difficult bit of bad blood to bury.

2) Huge scale and persistence of accidents. Chernobyl affected agriculture in the whole of Western Europe, and took decades for an adequate final containment to be built. Bhopal was bad - and possibly worse in effects! - but at least the area isn't a permanent wasteland.

Pebble bed reactors were deemed the promising future, until one of them jammed. It's now unfixable and practically impossible to decomission: (wikipedia) "There exists currently no dismantling method for the AVR vessel, but it is planned to develop some procedure during the next 60 years and to start with vessel dismantling at the end of the century."

3) Waste disposal. A forever problem. I'm old enough to remember Greenpeace fighting it being dumped at sea, but the problem of where we put it remains.

4) Cost overruns. A systematic problem in the industry. Doesn't affect renewables to anything like the same extent.

5) The meta-point: systematic lying about the effects of all of the above. That this happens to overlap with the era of discovering that all sorts of previous advances (CFCs, tetraethyl lead, DDT, asbestos) had nasty side-effects which were also lied about or minimised is not a coincidence. Nuclear advocates take the arrogant position that they don't need to win trust.

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#45

Post by ElKrist »

ekianjo wrote: post #7
umvi wrote: post #4

Haven't nuclear waste recycling and safety features gotten really good in the past few decades? I feel like not many people know just how little waste is created with modern recycling and just how safe nuclear is with modern safety features. Seems like we need a positive PR campaign to help convince folks that nuclear is way better than fossil fuels. This could easily be bipartisan.

Greenpeace has successfully spent several decades painting nuclear power as Evil so its going to be difficult to convince voters to support it from now on.

Thanks for pointing that out. Greenpeace is the perfect example of how "fighting for the environment" is meaningless. Are we talking about biodiversity, air pollution, water pollution, side effects of mining... or climate change? Unfortunately, it's hard to find something that works for all of these problems. Except reducing consumption overall.

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#46

Post by Zigurd »

Articles like this carry the implication that current-generation nuclear technology should be subsidized. There are reasons to subsidize new energy technologies, but not ones that have failed to become practical, safe, and economically viable over the long term.

Subsidizing current-generation nuclear power is what we have had all along. The cost of nuclear power was imposed on ratepayers without them having a say. It didn't work. Nuclear plants are still too expensive. Still uninsurable due to unbounded risk. Still ending up with shortfalls in decommissioning funds. Still without waste disposal. Practically nothing you would expect a period of subsidy to get to practical market-supporting economic models.

I could support government funding for demonstrator reactors using genuinely new technology that can make a case for solving the problems of nuclear power.

I will not support extending the life of reactors that do not even meet current site requirements (like Fukushima) or current containment standards. I will not support building new reactors based on old technology that does not transform the safety and economics of nuclear power.

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#48

Post by tim333 »

isolli wrote: post #36
jessaustin wrote: post #31

If other low-carbon sources, namely wind and solar PV, are to fill the shortfall in nuclear, their deployment would have to accelerate to an unprecedented level. In the past 20 years, wind and solar PV capacity has increased by about 580 gigawatts in advanced economies. But over the next 20 years, nearly five times that amount would need to be added. This is misleading enough to make one question every "fact" stated…

It reminds me of this: https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra/status/866313289306963969/p... tl;dr The International Energy Agency kept predicting, year after year, in the face of all the evidence, that solar production would plateau.

That's quite impressively wrong from the IEA. I wonder how come.

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#49

Post by Zigurd »

jessaustin wrote: post #31

If other low-carbon sources, namely wind and solar PV, are to fill the shortfall in nuclear, their deployment would have to accelerate to an unprecedented level. In the past 20 years, wind and solar PV capacity has increased by about 580 gigawatts in advanced economies. But over the next 20 years, nearly five times that amount would need to be added. This is misleading enough to make one question every "fact" stated…

You can't overtake oil without spending a comparable amount on developing renewables. While it isn't quite there yet, soon renewables will be a bigger business than oil. That's impressive, and it makes the kind of growth needed to replace nuclear power plausible.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/renewables-investment-overtak...

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#50

Post by briandear »

umvi wrote: post #4

Haven't nuclear waste recycling and safety features gotten really good in the past few decades? I feel like not many people know just how little waste is created with modern recycling and just how safe nuclear is with modern safety features. Seems like we need a positive PR campaign to help convince folks that nuclear is way better than fossil fuels. This could easily be bipartisan.

It could definitely be bipartisan. I am a conservative and 100% support nuclear as an alternative to dirty coal. Unfortunately, many “environmentalists” seem to be stuck in the 1970s when it comes to knowledge about modern nuclear.
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