551–560 of 619 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure. Just make sure you don't ask the French to build your plants. It's 2020 now and we're still waiting: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
Cherry-picking an individual plant doesn't change the fact that France produces electricity with much less carbon than most other countries, and often at an even cheaper cost.
Do we stress about the risks nuclear power far out of proportion to how safe it is? Yes. Even accounting for the worst accidents, it kills a very low number of people per TWh. Do we ignore the risks of fossil fuels far out of proportion to how dangerous they are? Also yes. They kill an absurdly high number of people per TWh; by most estimates coal is several hundred times more dangerous than nuclear. Does that mean n…
Nuclear is only so relatively expensive because it’s the only fuel source that’s forced to pay up for all the externalities up front (and I’m not saying that is a bad thing to require). A nuclear plant can’t be built if the money to make it safe (as per some specification), insure against all health complications while it’s in operation, decommission it, clean up the site, securely dump all spent fuel, and return the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not a single person has died directly of radiation from the Fukushima accident. That's in the context of a tsunami wave that has directly killed large number of people by impact. So in general, Fukushima should be a very good example for promotion of nuclear power.
> Not a single person has died directly of radiation from the Fukushima accident. This claim has been extensively debunked in Hacker News yet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...
Deaths
0 from radiation,[3]
2,202 from evacuation,[4]
Non-fatal injuries
37 with physical injuries,[5]
2 workers taken to hospital with radiation burns[6][7]
For long-term displacement, many people (mostly sick and elderly) died at an increased rate[17] while in temporary housing and shelters. Degraded living conditions and separation from support networks[19] are likely contributing factors. As of 27 February 2017, the Fukushima prefecture government counted 2,129 "disaster-related deaths" in the prefecture."
While looking at the tsunami itself:
Casualties
15,899 deaths,[2] +2 (Overseas),
6,157 injured,[3]
2,529 people missingEarlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the cost of a MWh of nuclear comes from the cost of capital (interests). [1] Put differently, if capital is backed by the state, that the $/MWh could be a _lot_ less than it is. 1. https://imgur.com/a/4mAlUbO
I cannot stress this enough - we have people allergic to direct development paid for by the state because "it's socialist". Instead we invent all kinds of stupid ways of financing power plants, such a guaranteed electricity price for 50 years ahead, guaranteed profits to attract 'free market investors' for a project thats specified, sited and planned by the government and where all risk is born by the government. Ao…
More importantly, the reason all those stupid ways are employed is that then the private companies running it have incentive to keep the costs down. Just compare it with recent California's high speed rail project, which was direct development paid for by the state, like you suggest. The most recent cost estimate was $100B, or $250M per mile.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Germany has cut coal use in half since the wind-down of the nuclear fleet began. Please do not repeat misinformation.
That’s misinformation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany You can clearly see how coal is on the rise shortly after 2010. So it is factually true to say they switched back to coal. You would be correct to point out that coal use has gone down since, but not by half. Not even close.
Fuel 2010 2019 (TWH)
Lignite 145.9 113.9
Hard Coal 117.0 57.3
Nuclear 140.6 75.1
Renewables 105.2 244.3
Natural Gas 89.3 91.0
[1] https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/index.php?article_id=29&fileNa...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cherry-picking an individual plant doesn't change the fact that France produces electricity with much less carbon than most other countries, and often at an even cheaper cost.
Feel free to cherry-pick a recent success story from Areva / Framatome to counter mine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would come from electrolysis of water, using renewable energy when that's in oversupply. Overprovisioning renewables for immediate consumption works in tandem with hydrogen, since it means there will be times excess power is available to make the hydrogen. The round trip efficiency of power->hydrogen->power through turbines will be maybe 33%. But this is FINE, if the capital cost of storing hydrogen in underground…
If you're using caverns to reduce the capital cost of storing hydrogen, then you're ignoring a substantial amount of the real cost. Caverns are a geographically dependent feature, you might as well just say that we should use hydroelectricity as our main source of power.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Make hydrogen, store it underground, and have enough combustion turbines available to back up the grid. A simple cycle combustion turbine power plant is about 5% of the cost of a nuclear power plant, per unit of power output.
Making hydrogen via electrolysis is very lossy though.. it's only worth it if you have nothing else to burn the power on.