Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology • Hacker News Board

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#191

Post by danbruc » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 3:38 PM UTC

hvidgaard wrote: post #151

cf498 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure sounds great, what are the best and worst case costs of storing that stuff for how long? And yes i know dry cask storage is much less problematic, but i would still want a realistic plan of what is happening to that stuff and what this is going to cost. What irks me so much is that i am not simply told, look here it what it currently costs, how it would scale and what the realistic liabilities are. If you were a…

From this https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.2968/065005003 > A typical dry-storage cask holds 10 tons of spent fuel and costs about $1 million–$2 million each. (The CASTOR is at the upper end of that range.) This translates to a cost of less than one-twentieth of a penny per kilowatt-hour—about 1 percent of the cost of generating nuclear power. They last for anywhere between 30-100 years and I assume to be be…

But it is of course not only the price of buying a couple of those containers, you also need a facility to store them, you may have to move them around, you probably have to guard them, you have to monitor them, ...

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#192

Post by ptaipale » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 3:41 PM UTC

makomk wrote: post #168

ptaipale wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Fukushima was built to the requirements of 1970's, not those of today (which are much stronger).

Yes - and I think it's precisely that increase in regulations that the poster which they were replying to was complaining about, given that the 1970s were the last time nuclear seemed affordable enough to build. I've even seen the odd nuclear proponent on here outright advocating that we return to 1970s-era nuclear regulations.

For climate and environment, event that would be better than not building nuclear. But we don't need to do it so.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#193

Post by acidburnNSA » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 3:45 PM UTC

natmaka wrote: post #94

acidburnNSA wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The waste disposal problem has been solved at the Onkalo Nuclear Waste Repository in Finland. It's a deep geologic repository without the political fights associated with Yucca. Deep geologic repositories are basically a consensus solution now. Finns chose to solve the nuclear waste issue and did it. Fukushima killed up to 1 person from radiation. Meanwhile fossil is killing 4.3 million people per year via air pollut…

Urenco only does uranium enrichment, waste management is vastly more than this > France and most of Europe use Urenco. I'm French, and can see the result: waste is piling up nearby the plants. Deep geological repositories are given as the ultimate solution since the 1970's at least, and there is _NO_ exploited site. Cigéo/Bure (in France) is only a project. Yucca Mountain never ran and is halted. On a similar vein se…

Anti-nuclear messaging has traditionally said that nuclear waste problem is unsolvable and then stonewalled potential solutions. In this case, the Finns are operating test drills as we speak [1].

The number of people who have been injured or killed by stored commercial nuclear waste is very near zero, and we know how to store it safely in the long term. Again, meanwhile 84% of our energy generation kills 4.3 million people per year. The nuclear waste issue is no longer a good reason to oppose nuclear energy. Nuclear is unique in its ability to fully contain and store all of its waste in the long term. This is thanks to E=MC2 where the mass of the hazardous waste is extraordinarily small compared to other energy system waste.

There are counter-theories to death counts in Chernobyl and Fukushima. But there is a UN/WHO group of true experts who are the authorities on these items. Think of them like the IPCC for climate change, but for radiation. It's called UNSCEAR, and they are clear in their analysis. Up to 4000 dead at Chernobyl, up to 1 dead at Fukushima. There's always wild counter-theories in these big science questions: just like some people claim millions died at Chernobyl (looking at Greenpeace), some claim that climate change doesn't exist.

[1] http://www.posiva.fi/en/media/image_gallery?gfid_2061=94#gal...

I think you're replying to multiple people above as I only said half of that stuff.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#194

Post by michaelt » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 3:56 PM UTC

akvadrako wrote: post #152

pjc50 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People underestimate how much of the opposition to nuclear plants in the past was due to the "dual use" nature of the technology, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In the 80s it was hard to care about the effects of climate change in a mere hundred years when global policy was to keep civilization-destroying quantities of weapons on hand that could be delivered in 45 minutes. The war between nuclear weapons a…

Iran has a nuclear plant and enough uranium that the bottleneck to weapons is enrichment. I’m not sure what choice of power source has to do with weapon proliferation.

AIUI, one concern with nuclear reactors is what to do with the waste.

A 'breeder reactor' is a type of nuclear reactor that makes more efficient use of uranium than 'light water reactors' and with less left-over radioactive waste.

Sounds great, so why do we build anything else? Well, once you've got a breeder reactor it's a very short step to making weapons-grade plutonium. Whereas with light water reactors, this isn't the case.

So the choice of breeder vs light water reactor has pretty big impact on weapon proliferation.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#195

Post by RobertRoberts » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 4:02 PM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #189

RobertRoberts wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only if the “green energy” people actually had that much power... > In reality there are 2 forces that have stopped nuclear. NIMBYism. And terrible economics. This is a huge misunderstanding. It was the "green energy" people who first fought nuclear power. Go look throughout the country where nuke plants have been taken down. It's because they were leaking and polluting and were ticking time bombs. The greens have…

> . It has only one element of green, that is low carbon, everything else about it is the absolute worst of all power sources. Pretty blatantly false. Nuclear kills fewer people most, if not all other sources of power, per unit of energy generated. There are significant pollution issues from mining and burning coal and from manufacturing solar panels. Hydro produces ecological disruption on par with non other. Wind p…

There is toxic waste leaking into the Columbia river from nuclear storage in Washington. (only one example) Everything else you described has a solution and can be cleaned up.

The nuclear waste is so tragic and horrific and the effects so egregious I can only imagine you are grossly misinformed or a paid troll.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#196

Post by strainer » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #133

thawaway1837 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if the “green energy” people actually had that much power... In reality there are 2 forces that have stopped nuclear. NIMBYism. And terrible economics. But the green energy people are an easy punching bag for the nuclear advocates who are simply unwilling to face up to the reality of why nuclear keeps failing to take off.

The current energy discussion in Swedish politics is Green vs Nuclear. No one is discussing a stop for burning fossil fuels in power plants or banning the import of coal/NG energy from neighbors. Not even a suggestion from the green party at a total stop. Instead we get a bunch of political tricks. If we export more green energy than we import coal energy then we can pretend that that the coal did not actually get re…

>If we export more green energy than we import coal energy then we can pretend that that the coal did not actually get released into the air as pollution.

That exchange is plainly not carbon neutral. Exporting green energy does usually contribute to reducing fossil fuel usage at destination - that cant reasonably be denied. It sounds like you believe the figures are being officially "double counted". But I'm quite doubtful that international agreements really allow for such plain mis-accounting , the idea more likely comes from the kind of confused climate skeptic literature, which imagines that climate science and whole green energy movement is a scam.

> We plant trees and talk about carbon capture, and then we discretely cut it down and turn it into biomass fuel and call it carbon neutral.

That is plainly carbon neutral. If you plant and grow trees sustainably, cut them down and burn them, it is absolutely carbon neutral. It can even be carbon negative as rootmass is left to build soil, and benefit wildlife too - depends on how intelligently its done.

If you phrase your statement more succinctly its easier to see the plain sense in it:

> We plant trees ... and then we ... turn it into biomass fuel and call it carbon neutral.

In a bit more detail:

  Grow trees and turn them into fuel - that's carbon negative. 
  Burn the fuel - that's carbon positive. 
  Do both together - that's carbon neutral.

Perfectly elementary really \"/

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#197

Post by Accujack » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 4:08 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #194

akvadrako wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iran has a nuclear plant and enough uranium that the bottleneck to weapons is enrichment. I’m not sure what choice of power source has to do with weapon proliferation.

AIUI, one concern with nuclear reactors is what to do with the waste. A 'breeder reactor' is a type of nuclear reactor that makes more efficient use of uranium than 'light water reactors' and with less left-over radioactive waste. Sounds great, so why do we build anything else? Well, once you've got a breeder reactor it's a very short step to making weapons-grade plutonium. Whereas with light water reactors, this isn…

>one concern with nuclear reactors is what to do with the waste.

Actually, no. The reactor designs in use generate very little waste, just spent fuel rods that have to be kept in safe storage until their radioactivity level goes down to something reasonable. That doesn't take decades, either. The big problem with nuclear waste is the waste from weapons production, and people don't differentiate just like they don't for reactors vs. bombs.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#198

Post by Accujack » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 4:11 PM UTC

cf498 wrote: post #112

StillBored wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The costs to built the plants dominates the price. Once built the actual operation and fueling costs are best in class https://www.expressnews.com/business/eagle-ford-energy/artic... The majority of the cost to build the plants are due to the crazy uncertainty about the design/build timeline every-time one is built. Given that conceptually they aren't any more complex than your average coal plant those costs are mass…

Reading the article (and hoping i didnt just read over the part), they never mention the word waste once when it comes to the cost calculation. Thats rather convenient seeing as the number of functioning deep repository sites today is rather limited. What good are small operating costs when the build costs are this expensive and we dont have a viable solution for waste management (yet?). In practice these costs are e…

>they never mention the word waste once when it comes to the cost calculation

Because they don't need to. Power generation plants of any reasonably modern design don't generate lots of waste, just spent fuel rods that can be reprocessed and a tiny amount of non reusable radioactive material that needs to be stored until it's less radioactive.

All the mess regarding storage sites like Yucca Mountain relates to waste from bomb production, not from power plants.

Even if we had a storage facility like that operating in the US, spent fuel assemblies from power plants wouldn't be permanently interred there, that would be a waste.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#199

Post by nicoburns » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 4:12 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #116

natmaka wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once the last reactor decommissioned and the last nuke waste inert we may try to evaluate the impacts. Until them everything can happen, even the worst. As for Fukushima there are many hypothesis about the real impact until now, and even more for the future. Believing the effects are already fully known is at best 'weird'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... Thinking that we can only repla…

Stop comparing solar and wind to nuclear. That’s a cudgel to ignore the fact that being anti-nuclear means being pro-fossil fuels. Bringing online solar and wind does not displace nuclear because they do not provide a stable base. You highlight that storage is a challenge, but it’s the entire blocker at this point. Until storage is solved, solar/wind do nothing more than displace some peaker plants.

> does not displace nuclear because they do not provide a stable base.

If we put the money we put into building nuclear plants into energy storage, then that would likely change pretty quickly.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#200

Post by Tiktaalik » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 4:21 PM UTC

dghughes wrote: post #40

Those not up on Canadian politics may not see what a Canadian would see here. These are three politically conservative premiers (think US state governor) that are often aggressive in their policies; cuts to social programs, anti-environmental, no carbon tax. Knowing their policies it makes this out-of-the-blue project seem suspicious. I'm all for nuclear power especially if it's using CANDU reactors and thorium. But…

YEP.

This is sadly most likely an attempt to change the channel and muddy the conversation by creating the illusion that there exists a viable alternative to deal with climate change other than the carbon tax and other demand side measures.

It's the "Technology will save us" non-solution that is mostly about kicking the can down the road and excusing doing nothing in the short term because a wondrous solution is 'just around the corner'.