Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ultra Safe Nuclear

usnc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 536 posts

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#351

Post by pfdietz »

V6HBGNQHU wrote: post #55
nimish wrote: post #18

Safety is no longer the reason Nuclear is not worth it. The sun is a giant, free nuclear fusion plant in the sky. We can capture 1/5th of its output per square meter. For free! The wind -- caused by solar heating -- also generates free power. The cost of harvesting it is now so low, and will always continue to decline as any technology will, that any fuel-based generation mechanism is going to be rendered uneconomic…

Land usage is a big factor. Most people are interested in solar because they care about the environment so taken up vast swathes of land for all the solar panels, destroying habits, is counter productive. Another downside of solar or wind is that it is intermittent and thus will require massive battery systems or alternative conventional power plants to provide energy the rest of the time.

The cost of land for PV is a small fraction of the cost of the PV put on that land. Land is very cheap in most of the world.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#352

Post by lightgreen »

flor1s wrote: post #310
jk700 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Ukraine, which lived through Chernobyl, public is mostly pro nuclear. Turns out solar and wind isn't actually competitive and nobody likes to pay rich "green energy" investors for no reason, so as long as they have no influence in the government and most mass media, it's pretty hard to convince people of the opposite - that they need to pay a lot more so that a tiny percentage of electricity could come from solar…

Is there a particular reason why solar and wind aren't competitive in Ukraine, while in general it seems like those technologies are some of the cheapest sources of energy available today?

> those technologies are some of the cheapest sources of energy available today?

No they are not. They only work well at small percentage of generation when you have enough hydropower backup (effectively, batteries): generate from solar during day, and generate from hydro at night (or use fossil fuel backup).

> solar

In California large amount of electricity is consumed by air conditioners (4%). And they work very well together: on hot days you need more electricity for air conditioners, and on hot days solar generation works better.

And you need more air conditioners during summer, and solar works better during summer.

The opposite is true in Ukraine. They don't need air conditioners because summers are not too hot, but but they need to heat buildings at winter because winters are very cold (when solar is very poor) especially at nights (when solar does not exist).

> wind

You cannot place wind turbines anywhere. You need a place with a constant high wind (that's why offsore farms work better). I guess there are no such places in Ukraine. And still you need to have a hydro or fossil fuel backup, because wind itself cannot produce electricity constantly.

> cheapest sources of energy available today

They are cheapest because they are subsidised on one hand, and on the other hand, nuclear is penalized by lawsuits and regulartions and inspections (in the US; in Ukraine the economy barely grows, they don't build much new power plants).

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#353

Post by pfdietz »

shakezula wrote: post #122
nimish wrote: post #18

Safety is no longer the reason Nuclear is not worth it. The sun is a giant, free nuclear fusion plant in the sky. We can capture 1/5th of its output per square meter. For free! The wind -- caused by solar heating -- also generates free power. The cost of harvesting it is now so low, and will always continue to decline as any technology will, that any fuel-based generation mechanism is going to be rendered uneconomic…

Nuclear is the only way we’re going to be able to get ahead of climate change. Renewables do not have the energy density required at this point. In the 70s? Sure, we might have been able to get ahead of it. At this point, we’re going to need nuclear whether we like it or not. Nuclear is the only option that will provide enough power to both scrub out existing carbon from the atmosphere and reduce our output of carbon…

This is a nonsense argument. How does the energy density of renewables prevent them from providing all the energy we need? Show us the quantitative argument (spoiler: you will not be able to do so.)

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#354

Post by pfdietz »

steeve wrote: post #38
nimish wrote: post #18

Safety is no longer the reason Nuclear is not worth it. The sun is a giant, free nuclear fusion plant in the sky. We can capture 1/5th of its output per square meter. For free! The wind -- caused by solar heating -- also generates free power. The cost of harvesting it is now so low, and will always continue to decline as any technology will, that any fuel-based generation mechanism is going to be rendered uneconomic…

Wind and solar are very diffuse forms of energy, so harvesting them is hard and costly both in money, and most importantly for the biosphere. For instance, the universe radiates 3K of heat, which we could harvest and use. We don't because it's too diffuse. And I'm not talking about the intermittency problem.

And yet, the cost of a kWh from renewables is less than from nuclear, for all the supposed advantage of nuclear's energy density. This should tell you that energy density is not actually a good metric.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#355

Post by marcosdumay »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #288
ajross wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And unlike a natural gas plant, it costs 3-10x what the equivalent generating capacity in renewables would cost. I come to post this Same Thing every time this discussion comes up. It's not about safety. Everyone serious understand nuclear, even current technologies, is "safe enough" to be useful to build out. Nuclear is outrageously expensive , though. And new reactor designs don't seem to be making much progress on…

Picking a nit here. You wrote: > Nuclear is outrageously expensive, though. And new reactor designs don't seem to be making much progress on that. Nuclear plants are expensive the way GE and Bechtel build them not inherently so. At some point I got to look at the Diablo Canyon cost-to-build breakdown and about 2/3ds of the cost were litigation, licensing, and specialized site and construction prep. Finding people who…

At least until somebody gets a design that isn't basically a coal power plant using different fuel, nuclear can not get cheaper than coal.

And guess what is being mass decommissioned right now because it's too expensive?

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#356

Post by ChuckMcM »

pfdietz wrote: post #330
ChuckMcM wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Picking a nit here. You wrote: > Nuclear is outrageously expensive, though. And new reactor designs don't seem to be making much progress on that. Nuclear plants are expensive the way GE and Bechtel build them not inherently so. At some point I got to look at the Diablo Canyon cost-to-build breakdown and about 2/3ds of the cost were litigation, licensing, and specialized site and construction prep. Finding people who…

NuScale claimed they could build their reactor in a factory too. Then that fell apart.

Reference? I know there was some push back on their "walk away safe" claim (something that these guys have a better story for) but I had not seen anywhere that Nuscale would not be able to build their reactors in a factory.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#357

Post by ChuckMcM »

marcosdumay wrote: post #355
ChuckMcM wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Picking a nit here. You wrote: > Nuclear is outrageously expensive, though. And new reactor designs don't seem to be making much progress on that. Nuclear plants are expensive the way GE and Bechtel build them not inherently so. At some point I got to look at the Diablo Canyon cost-to-build breakdown and about 2/3ds of the cost were litigation, licensing, and specialized site and construction prep. Finding people who…

At least until somebody gets a design that isn't basically a coal power plant using different fuel, nuclear can not get cheaper than coal. And guess what is being mass decommissioned right now because it's too expensive?

That isn't my understanding, would love to learn more about how you come to that conclusion. (Ideally based on an idea like the one in the article vs just your run of the mill designed in 1950 power plant :-))

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#358

Post by bananabreakfast »

marcosdumay wrote: post #355
ChuckMcM wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Picking a nit here. You wrote: > Nuclear is outrageously expensive, though. And new reactor designs don't seem to be making much progress on that. Nuclear plants are expensive the way GE and Bechtel build them not inherently so. At some point I got to look at the Diablo Canyon cost-to-build breakdown and about 2/3ds of the cost were litigation, licensing, and specialized site and construction prep. Finding people who…

At least until somebody gets a design that isn't basically a coal power plant using different fuel, nuclear can not get cheaper than coal. And guess what is being mass decommissioned right now because it's too expensive?

What an absurd thing to say.

Nuclear fuel is several orders of magnitude more energy dense than coal. A "coal power plant using different fuel" would produce energy so cheap it couldn't be metered.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#359

Post by bananabreakfast »

pfdietz wrote: post #330
ChuckMcM wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Picking a nit here. You wrote: > Nuclear is outrageously expensive, though. And new reactor designs don't seem to be making much progress on that. Nuclear plants are expensive the way GE and Bechtel build them not inherently so. At some point I got to look at the Diablo Canyon cost-to-build breakdown and about 2/3ds of the cost were litigation, licensing, and specialized site and construction prep. Finding people who…

NuScale claimed they could build their reactor in a factory too. Then that fell apart.

What? That's a pretty outrageous claim with no evidence

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#360

Post by bananabreakfast »

pfdietz wrote: post #331
macspoofing wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it costs 3-10x what the equivalent generating capacity in renewables would cost Except renewables can't actually replace fossil fuels. They need baseload provided by fossil fuels to be viable. They are also defuse energy sources, and so require huge surface area and lots of materials for collectors - not great for a growing world, both in population and per capita energy needs. Oh, they are variable across days, sea…

> Except renewables can't actually replace fossil fuels. They need baseload provided by fossil fuels to be viable. False. Renewables could get to 100% of the grid. A key is using hydrogen for the last 10% or so. This is not currently competitive with fossil fuel, but then neither is nuclear.

So, what? Just use hydrogen like a gigantic grid sized battery?

Also, nuclear is only not competitive due to strangling regulation, not fundamentals.

Post reply on HN