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After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

forbes.com

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Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#401

Post by sumedh »

jabl wrote: post #366
sizzle wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't we create a nuclear power plant in the middle of the desert like area 51 type of setup so if there is a meltdown it can be contained. Could we safely store the energy somehow and transport it or make some sort of long-distance hookup to our grids? Also anyone know why the nuclear site in San Onofre by San Diego failed?

> Why can't we create a nuclear power plant in the middle of the desert In principle we can. Dry cooling is more expensive and less efficient than using water, but technically doable. But the plant requires personnel. Said personnel has kids, spouses etc. You end up with a small town to run the plant. And that town requires fresh water which might be hard to come by in the middle of the desert. > Could we safely stor…

> But the plant requires personnel.

So all we need is to build the plant and then automate the entire operations.

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#402

Post by nl »

Natsu wrote: post #134
rriepe wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish one person who mentioned the long game would also mention that nuclear accidents can make a place uninhabitable for thousands of years. If I had a dollar for every time a pro-nuclear person (not that I'm not) ignored that, or peak uranium...

> nuclear accidents can make a place uninhabitable for thousands of years. Ignoring the fact that meltdown is not even possible in modern designs, even in a Fukushima total power loss scenario, note that the Bikini atoll is safe to visit at this point and it was the site of repeated nuclear testing. It's hard to see how nuclear power plants, which are designed to avoid any possibility of having a critical mass, could…

> Ignoring the fact that meltdown is not even possible in modern designs

You realize this claim (of molten salt reactors) is mostly untrue, right?

It's true in the sense that the reactor itself can be drained into a drain tank, but this itself remains highly radioactive and liable to leakage.

It also produces radioactive Tritium which is difficult to contain.

See https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Molten_salt_reactor#...

https://www.powermag.com/blog/molten-salt-reactor-claims-mel...

> There's only so much of a solar energy budget for the planet, then we have to get it from off world

I think the 5 billion years until that is projected to happen gives us a little bit of time to work on solutions.

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#403

Post by nl »

DangitBobby wrote: post #263
Natsu wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nuclear accidents can make a place uninhabitable for thousands of years. Ignoring the fact that meltdown is not even possible in modern designs, even in a Fukushima total power loss scenario, note that the Bikini atoll is safe to visit at this point and it was the site of repeated nuclear testing. It's hard to see how nuclear power plants, which are designed to avoid any possibility of having a critical mass, could…

I would like to hear more about "nuclear meltdowns not even possible." You mean on designs that people are actually talking about implenting, or just the state-of-the-art stuff that we are nowhere close to implementing, especially in poorer nations?

There's a claim that molten salt reactors are meltdown free.

It's not entirely true (they meltdown, but have a drainage tank which is supposed to provide containment).

They remain experimental.

https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Molten_salt_reactor#...

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#404

Post by imtringued »

legulere wrote: post #85
reincarnate0x14 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building it makes it affordable. Giant one-off projects have endemic problems with perverse bidding incentives, cost overruns, and engineering problems. Economy of scale production absolutely dominates most industrial supply chains and engineering. The US and other modern economies got the political will together to subsidize solar when it rarely made sense on a MW/$ basis and now it's dropped to by far the cheapest…

What drives nuclear costs is generally rising construction costs. You can’t bring that down with building more nuclear power plants. PV got so much cheaper because it’s a mass producible product.

The reality is that there is an entire supporting industry that needs to be built to make nuclear power plants economical.

Nuclear power plants have special requirements that are rarely met by conventional industry. A lot of nuclear power plant designs involve manufacturing via the largest hydraulic presses we have ever built. There are not many of them and building more of them is expensive so it will raise costs in the short term (10-20 years). The design philosophies have to change considerably if nuclear power wants to be cost effective.

The monolithic nuclear power plant is a dead end.

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#405

Post by SomeoneFromCA »

Akronymus wrote: post #364
username90 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why then did we shut down nuclear plants and build coal plants?

Because it feels good is my guess. Over here in europe, Germany basically did the same thing. They now have higher cost AND pollution per kwh than france, who has MUCH more nuclear. Oh and germany often has to sell the energy for very cheap when the renewables are having a peak, and buy pretty expensively when they are having a drought.

Did you account for the footprint of building the plant (all that concrete manufacturing produces lots of CO2)? And the footprint of the waste storage (again concrete, potential for leaks)? Footprint of mining? Lots of Uranium produced in the the developing countries (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine) which have poor safety standards.

The problem with peaks is not a defect of renewables, it is a temporary problem, which will be resolved once we build international power grid.

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#406

Post by Akronymus »

SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #405
Akronymus wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it feels good is my guess. Over here in europe, Germany basically did the same thing. They now have higher cost AND pollution per kwh than france, who has MUCH more nuclear. Oh and germany often has to sell the energy for very cheap when the renewables are having a peak, and buy pretty expensively when they are having a drought.

Did you account for the footprint of building the plant (all that concrete manufacturing produces lots of CO2)? And the footprint of the waste storage (again concrete, potential for leaks)? Footprint of mining? Lots of Uranium produced in the the developing countries (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine) which have poor safety standards. The problem with peaks is not a defect of renewables, it is a temporary problem, whi…

> Did you account for the footprint of building the plant (all that concrete manufacturing produces lots of CO2)?

Same can be said about renewables and such, which produce MORE pollution per amount of capacity, along with having a even worse footprint.

> And the footprint of the waste storage (again concrete, potential for leaks)?

Are you talking about waste from setting it up or waste from operation?

> Footprint of mining? Lots of Uranium produced in the the developing countries (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine) which have poor safety standards.

The uranium mines definitely can be improved. I agree with that. Same could be said with rare earth mines needed for solar panels, for example.

> The problem with peaks is not a defect of renewables, it is a temporary problem, which will be resolved once we build international power grid.

We DO have a international power grid in europe. Still doesn't solve the problem, or even close to solving it.

In summary, I feel like nuclear is currently still the better option. I am not saying to not use renewables though, but that replacing nuclear with renewables/other fossils is currently a bad idea.

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#407

Post by imtringued »

readams wrote: post #337
nl wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish nuclear advocates would stop selectively quoting to try to hide things. Almost no one wants to continue with fossil fuels, and instead the competition is renewable. "This comparison" mentioned in that quote doesn't include renewables (it was from 2007) but from the very same page , in the very next section : > Modern renewables are about as safe as nuclear energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-en…

But you cannot use 100% renewable energy without some storage technology not currently known. Nuclear is the only carbon free energy source we have that can supply power reliably.

>But you cannot use 100% renewable energy without some storage technology not currently known.

Tell me what storage are we currently missing?

We have capacitors, flywheels, an uncountable number of battery chemistries, pumped hydro, power to gas and curtailment. We even have exotic storage technologies in the TWh range.

I'll tell you what we are currently missing. We are missing electric grids that have a high enough renewable share to even think about storage. As long as you have a flexible grid you can always make up the lack of electricity on a given day with fossil fuels but if you don't produce excess energy in the first place, storing it is pointless.

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#408

Post by p_l »

legulere wrote: post #372
p_l wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 50% is for peak renewable usage. To keep grid stability, Germany depends a lot on French nuclear power plants, imports from elsewhere (usually not green), and ridiculously dirty lignite power plants with natural gas for load following. And they are building more and more gas power plants and can't really decrease the amount of dirty coal (lignite fueled power plants make other coal-fired power plants look clean )

Did you actually look at the link that I posted? Those are the numbers for all of 2020. Germany doesn’t depend on French nuclear power. Germany was a net exporter to France in many of the last years. Many neighboring countries have even higher percentage of renewables (Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Norway which is connected via nord.link). Even though I would have shit down fossil fuel power plants before nuclear, G…

Those are average values with shortest timespan being full 24hour days. Which don't show daily slumps in production, nor issues with overproduction at times.

Germany is net exporter in general, but that's again - net. If you look, right now as I am writing this Germany is importing ~294 MW of power from France.

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#409

Post by imtringued »

controversy wrote: post #177
colordrops wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990): "They told us that nuclear plants were safe. Human accident is the danger, not the nuclear plant itself. No accidents, no danger. That's what they told us. What liars!"

Please stop with this. Nuclear is the only way to keep our current level of society. Our solar plants are going to lead to massive poisoned landfills due to their heavy metals. They are hard to recycle and so many are just dumping them. Modern nuclear can meet all our needs and stop global warming. If we pursued nuclear in the last century, we would be facing global warming now.

>Our solar plants are going to lead to massive poisoned landfills due to their heavy metals.

"heavy metals" as in leaded solder, something that was banned in 2006?

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#410

Post by andi999 »

rimliu wrote: post #397
andi999 wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not know the current data, but previously the catastrophy rate was by design below 1 in 10000 years. But this is per plant, we have about 400 plants, so 1 catastrophy per 25 years on average; this values agrees with experiment. About your statistics: that it is safer was pure luck. In the fukushima incident there were depending on the season two prevalent wind direction either towards the ocean or towards Tokyo.…

Another look at Fukushima can be that the incident was pure bad luck.

Can you elaborate? Do you mean having a Tsunami is pure bad luck in Japan? (With Tsunami actually beiing a japanese word...)

I see your point though, one shouldnt go too much into 'what ifs', because all accidents are in a sense accidents/bad luck. But I still feel we can apply the what if on the outcome of the disasters, especially if it is that seasonal clear cut with high propability.

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