Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation? • Hacker News Board

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#511

Post by jakehop » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

jerven wrote: post #495

jakehop wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The battery isn't the source of the energy. You are missing wind and solar (which isn't free), an electrical grid overdesigned for the peak-energy requirements (since you will not get all of your energy over the course of a day). 4 APR-1400 will cost the UAE ~ $24.4 bn to complete. So $600 bn will give you 98 APR-1400 reactors, for a total of 131GW of electrical power – not to mention twice that in thermal power, whi…

So to meet the requirement of the poster I replied too, you need to spend another +/- $1800bn to get to the 500Gw peak power production. What amount of wind and solar can you purchase for that? Considering you have just bought the battery per the description? Hornsea 1 pricing would get you there, and that includes transmission etc. With Hornsea 2 being half that and other offshore even cheaper. After 60 years of bei…

You are skipping a crucial variable: Capacitance Factor.

New nuclear power plants come in at 90-95%+, while lower for both solar (10-25%) and wind (22% for onshore and 36% for offshore in 2018). This means that 1GW of nuclear power will, on average, result in 0,9-0,95GW of grid capacity, while 1GW of offshore wind will result in 1/3rd of that.

So if we use your example with Hornsea 2 (I haven't checked your data, but choose to believe you), Hornsea 2 is 50% more expensive than nuclear power, with out factoring in the cost of large scale energy storage. Ask any honest person in the battery industry – I have done that, because I wanted to know whether or not it was an option – and she will clearly tell you, that they will not even be able to meet the anywhere close to 10% of EU or US storage needs in 2050, while also supplying batteries to EVs and other needs.

Those windmills have an operating life of 15-20 years. Once again, we need to triple or quadruple the cost, to keep that capacity on the grid for an equal amount of time. The same goes for whichever storage solution you choose – batteries for example.

Newer battery technology might change that, but that is a very schizophrenic approach that I see in far too many people, who put their politics first: The environmental challenges are enormous, present and must be solved fast... just not with that specific type of technology, but rather one that we haven't invented yet. I find this close to disqualifying.

Safe modern reactors are built; look at the South Korean project in UAE. SMR's are a relative new field, they have already come very far, which is surprising for many, since government support of this research is close to none, compared to money spent on other green energy projects (even the foolish ones, such as wave energy).

Nuclear is stable and delivers energy 24/7. When the requirement is for stable energy with a high total EROEI, nuclear is a great technology. If one thinks of the environmental situation as a crisis, one should want to act now. Nuclear can be rolled out now and a wide rollout would make the industry do all those things, you think it is lacking. Because not enough is being done now and if it was a purely economic discussion (including proper safety, storage of spent fuel until it can be used, etc. – not cutting corners!), nuclear would already be the major power source in he world. But feelings go above facts, which is hurting science, humanity and the planet.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#512

Post by dv_dt » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

Lazare wrote: post #498

atoav wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well well. My girlfriends oldest brother died in what was a wave of cancer infant deaths that strangely coincides with the fallout of Chernobyl's radioactive cloud. Her other brother came to the world deformed, which again happened to more mothers than hers. In my school class (~30 kids) alone there were 4 kids who had deformations or other mutations that affected their life's negatively (for those who still live: to…

> My girlfriends oldest brother died in what was a wave of cancer infant deaths [..] That's horrible, and I don't want to diminish it in any way. Nuclear power has killed many people, and impacted many more others negatively. Thousands, certainly, possibly tens of thousands. Some (very disputed) estimates for Chernobyl range as high as hundreds of thousands of premature deaths. Each of those is a unique tragedy. On t…

Compare vs renewables not coal.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#513

Post by necheffa » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

dv_dt wrote: post #512

Lazare wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My girlfriends oldest brother died in what was a wave of cancer infant deaths [..] That's horrible, and I don't want to diminish it in any way. Nuclear power has killed many people, and impacted many more others negatively. Thousands, certainly, possibly tens of thousands. Some (very disputed) estimates for Chernobyl range as high as hundreds of thousands of premature deaths. Each of those is a unique tragedy. On t…

Compare vs renewables not coal.

Renewables are not a silver bullet either. There are plenty of nasty things that go into building batteries and solar panels with no where near the attention to safely disposing them. Plus, renewables just can't handle baseload and load follow the way fossil or nuclear can.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#514

Post by pvaldes » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

m4rtink wrote: post #500

pvaldes wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe more smart? Spain has the biggest fishing industry in EU and is the biggest producer of fish in the area. Period. France is not even close in terms of captures or people employed. And the area where the plant was about to be raised exports tomatoes to all EU currently. There are kilometers of greenhouses in the countryside. Another activity totally incompatible with the presence of a maybe-cracking-maybe-not an…

A lots of greenhouses nearby ? Well, thats perfect - nuclear power plants produce a lot of heat that could be used fow greenhouse heating instead of being dumped via cooling towers/sea water thermal exchangers. Win-Win!

We have sun here, m4rtink. This is not Finland

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#515

Post by Manfredo_1 » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

nullc wrote: post #398

Manfredo_1 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The batteries need to be replaced every 5 to 10 years depending on how many cycles they can endure. By comparison, the AP-1000 is rated to last 60 years. Furthermore you're being very pessimistic with the $20 billion dollar cost estimate for the AP1000. Plants with equivalent output have been built for less than $10 billion. When you include the cost of storage, solar and wind is still enormously more expensive than…

Batteries can be build that last more than 5 to 10 years. e.g. https://ironedison.com/nickel-iron-ni-fe-battery

Nickel-Iron batteries have 10-20 times less energy density and are more difficult to manufacture. You might get a battery that lasts 30-50 years instead of 5-10 years but at a cost increase that's greater than the gain in number of cycles.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#516

Post by toddh » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

Perhaps some of us are not concerned about radiation risks, we simply do not want a continuation of old centralized paradigms. The future is energy systems based on decentralization, redundancy, and dispersal.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#517

Post by Manfredo_1 » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #384

Manfredo_1 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You use the word "smart grid" as though it just automatically makes electricity usage go down. A smart grid works by redistributing load to when there is power. A smart grid almost always needs storage, unless it's doing simple things like running your dryer where it's just a matter of turning on your appliances at a certain time of day. If you're at he from 7pm to 8am, and you want your home to be heated while you'r…

I use "smart grid" to mean that the electricity provider has a measure of control over the load. For example they can turn heating in your home on or off as long as the temperature stays within a band defined by you. This is not science fiction, it exists today. I know people who use it already.

> For example they can turn heating in your home on or off as long as the temperature stays within a band defined by you. This is not science fiction, it exists today. I know people who use it already.

That's how literally every thermostat has worked that I've encountered in my entire life, and I'm close to 30. Yes, this technology already exists. That's why there's no benefit to it: almost everyone already has a thermostat that works like this.

The problem is that most people turn the heat on from 7pm to 8am, which is when solar is producing little to no energy.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#518

Post by adrianN » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

Manfredo_1 wrote: post #517

adrianN wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use "smart grid" to mean that the electricity provider has a measure of control over the load. For example they can turn heating in your home on or off as long as the temperature stays within a band defined by you. This is not science fiction, it exists today. I know people who use it already.

> For example they can turn heating in your home on or off as long as the temperature stays within a band defined by you. This is not science fiction, it exists today. I know people who use it already. That's how literally every thermostat has worked that I've encountered in my entire life, and I'm close to 30. Yes, this technology already exists. That's why there's no benefit to it: almost everyone already has a the…

No, almost nobody has a thermostat where the power company decides when the heating comes on.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#519

Post by willis936 » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

willis936 wrote: post #460

grey-area wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. The right questions to ask is not 'But what about Chernobyl' (which is unlikely in most countries) but instead: What about decommissioning costs? Fukushima is a good example of costs from a normal accident we can expect from time to time. Costs are at 200b USD and rising, and they still don't have the reactor site under control. Even normal decommissioning is incredibly expensive and usually covered by gover…

>there is still the question of how to deal with reactor parts I don’t think this has ever been a question. Put them in a shed for 100 years then recycle the metal.

I would say the largest inherent danger with fusion reactors is the prospect of a tritium leak. D-D fusion reactor designs are not on the horizon. They are a “probably, one day” option. So for now we are aiming for D-T operation. All signs point towards a functional MCF reactor needing to be pretty large and, by extension, have a large recirculating stored energy (roughly 100 MJ). Tokamaks face the prospect of disruptions that slam all of that stored energy into the wall. An event like this would breach the reactor and leak the tritium fuel. The entire reactor and tritium processing facility should be behind a bioshield that shouldn’t leak, but the risk is there and real. It takes extreme care to prevent dire scenarios.

Stellarators don’t have the chance of disruptions, but would still need to rely on tritium.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#520

Post by Manfredo_1 » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

reitzensteinm wrote: post #388

Manfredo_1 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This isn't going to be cheap. But it is feasible, and if you care about carbon I'm not sure how else you do it. How about we use the carbon free method of generating electricity that France has used to generate most of it's electricity for close to half a century? We don't have to wait for a miracle that makes batteries cheaper, we don't have to scale up battery production by several orders of magnitude. If we buil…

You don't need a "miracle". Hornsdale was installed for $500/kWh, which works out to $125/MWh of storage at 4000 cycles. Prices have already decreased by over 30%, so we're probably at $100/MWh today. If you need to store half your generation on a diurnal cycle, add it on to the LCOE of ~$50/MWh for utility scale solar, and you are cost competitive with the LCOE of nuclear today . Lithium battery production is going…

$500 KWh is still much more expensive nuclear. Furthermore competition with electric vehicles isn't going to decrease battery cost, it's going to increase it. More demand for a constrained supply leads to higher prices. Wind is also geographically dependent, not all regions are capable of generating wind power at the same cost as Hornsdale. If your wind averages half the average wind speed you're going to have to build a lot more wind turbines. Nuclear power, on the other hand, is geographically independent in terms of it's output.