We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal • Hacker News Board

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#121

Post by barney54 » Sun, Oct 11, 2020, 6:11 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #27

pvaldes wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally different type of waste.

Indeed, one is the kind of waste you can drop a few oil drums of into Yucca Mountain and never have to worry about it again. On the other hand wind requires huge quantities of rare earth metals mined in open-air hellscapes in the far western reaches of China -- devastating the environment [1, 2]. So, why is it all mined in China you might ask, knowing rare earths are distributed all over the world? Specifically becau…

Not all generators in wind turbines require permanent magnets (which are made from rare earths). In fact most generators in wind turbines in the US do not have rare earths. But it should be said that generators with rare earths are more efficient.

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#122

Post by pfdietz » Sun, Oct 11, 2020, 6:12 PM UTC

sradman wrote: post #97

> Reactors from civilian plants don’t blow up like atomic bombs... No they don't, but they do blow up like industrial hydrogen gas explosions. Loss of coolant accidents are unforgiving in boiling water reactors and quickly fail catastrophically (in the engineering sense). > the 1950s design CANDU reactor is small enough to be considered “modular” Ummm, no. I stood in front of reactor #4 at Darlington just before it w…

Fast reactors could, in principle, blow up like atomic bombs (in the sense of having a prompt supercritical reaction with unmoderated neutrons.)

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#123

Post by DennisP » Sun, Oct 11, 2020, 6:12 PM UTC

est31 wrote: post #92

DennisP wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clear that right now we should roll out wind and solar as fast as we can. However, once those reach high penetration, costs increase rapidly as you attempt to reach 100% clean energy. At that point it helps a lot to have clean dispatchable power. Nuclear plants we start today can fill that role, in areas without available hydro. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511...

Nuclear power isn't very "dispatchable", it takes long times to be turned on vs off. But it might be useful for seasonal use in the winter when there is less sun.

Perhaps that wasn't the best term for the point they're making. From the abstract:

"This paper presents a comprehensive techno-economic evaluation of two pathways: one reliant on wind, solar, and batteries, and another also including firm low-carbon options (nuclear, bioenergy, and natural gas with carbon capture and sequestration). Across all cases, the least-cost strategy to decarbonize electricity includes one or more firm low-carbon resources. Without these resources, electricity costs rise rapidly as CO2 limits approach zero. Batteries and demand flexibility do not substitute for firm resources."

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#124

Post by adamsea » Sun, Oct 11, 2020, 6:12 PM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #52

tertiary wrote: post #30

First off, you can have both. Green new deal doesn't ban reactors or anything. Second, I'm on the fence over whether I support more reactors and not because nuclear==bad. I trust the technology, but my concern is whether we can maintain a stable political environment for the decades/hundred years required to responsibly take care of nuclear. Buying into a fission reactor means you pay billions up front, but you also…

> First off, you can have both. Green new deal doesn't ban reactors or anything. Am I crazy, or did the Green New Deal have as an explicit goal the decommissioning of all nuclear plants? EDIT: Ah, apparently that was in the initial released plan, but they changed the language to technically leave the door open for nuclear, without supporting it (and with occasional statements expressing disfavor towards nuclear as a…

It's a proposal; it can be negotiated and changed until it becomes law. The main purpose is:

a) Help give future generations a reasonably livable and enjoyable planet. b) Help Americans by creating jobs.

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#125

Post by sergeykish » Sun, Oct 11, 2020, 6:13 PM UTC

bob1029 wrote: post #20

Nuclear providing all of our base electrical generation needs, as well as co-generation applications like cooling & heating, is an obvious engineering slam dunk. I think there are also some incredible synergies that can emerge with electric cars and batteries. Just a little bit of distributed storage (e.g. Tesla car in your garage back-feeding your home periodically) could potentially obviate the need for peak genera…

NuScale modular reactor provides 60 MW [1], Emma Mærsk (397 m) propulsion - 81 MW + 30 MW [2].

Problem is not technical, nuclear-powered icebreakers built long ago [3]. It is political — nuclear-powered cargo ship approaches Norway and it is news [4]:

> the increasing number of voyages with nuclear-powered vessels along the coast of Norway is something the agency is taking into consideration as Norway updates its nuclear emergency preparedness.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuScale_Power

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_M%C3%A6rsk

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Let_Pobedy

[4] https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/09/10/russian-nuclear-po...

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#126

Post by pfdietz » Sun, Oct 11, 2020, 6:14 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #91

arcticbull wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No my dude, you can find yourself on the other side of an argument without your opponents needing to be well-paid and delusional ;) Nuclear energy accounts for about 6% of the world's energy mix. It is the safest source of carbon-free energy in terms of deaths per TWh in the world, leading to half a many deaths as industrial solar, 1/4 as many as wind and 1/10th as many as rooftop solar. [1] The genuinely tiny amount…

4,000 is a conservative estimate. http://www.chernobylreport.org suggests 30,000 to 60,000. Cancer deaths are hard to attribute while workers falling off the roof installing solar equipment... not so much. With Chernobyl it's also worth bearing in mind how much worse it could have been easily if the cleanup workers hadn't done their jobs right: "There was a moment when there was the danger of a nuclear explosion, and…

> The explosion would have been between three and five megatons.

This is ridiculous and obviously wrong. A chain reaction with moderated neutrons with water and graphite could not, even in principle, produce that much energy.

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#127

Post by manfredo » Sun, Oct 11, 2020, 6:14 PM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #100

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the higher cost for nuclear related to the high regulation put in place? Are the low costs for solar and wind using subsidies and considering lifetime/replacement/disposal? Don’t know. Actually asking.

And to address the other half of your question, the lower costs for solar and wind take into account the lifetime of the generation, and it's usually measured by the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) which is roughly the lifetime cost divided by the lifetime energy output. This does not take into account the value of the time that energy is delivered, so LCOE is not directly comparable for renewables and dispatchable g…

The issue with renewables isn't recycling, it's storage. Solar generates electricity in a sine wave. Half the day it's generating no electricity. Wind doesn't follow a sine wave, but has the potential to generate lower levels of power for long stretches of time. Wind is consistent on a yearly basis, but variable on a weekly basis.

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#128

Post by deepnotderp » Sun, Oct 11, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

dane-pgp wrote: post #62

tertiary wrote: post #30

First off, you can have both. Green new deal doesn't ban reactors or anything. Second, I'm on the fence over whether I support more reactors and not because nuclear==bad. I trust the technology, but my concern is whether we can maintain a stable political environment for the decades/hundred years required to responsibly take care of nuclear. Buying into a fission reactor means you pay billions up front, but you also…

> First off, you can have both. Green new deal doesn't ban reactors or anything. While that is true in principle, there is apparently some evidence that investing in nuclear energy causes countries to de-carbonise more slowly (perhaps because of the upfront costs of nuclear power stations, and the time it takes to build them). "Researchers found that unlike renewables, countries around the world with larger scale nat…

Isn't there an obvious hidden random variable there? The only countries that are really actively building nuclear power are growing developing countries like India, so of course their emissions are increasing.

EDIT: So yes:

> "The study found that in countries with a high GDP per capita, nuclear electricity production does associate with a small drop in CO2 emissions."

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#129

Post by mnd999 » Sun, Oct 11, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #44

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the higher cost for nuclear related to the high regulation put in place? Are the low costs for solar and wind using subsidies and considering lifetime/replacement/disposal? Don’t know. Actually asking.

Partly. It's also just very expensive to build a nuclear plant. It's also worth noting that cleanup costs in the case of a nuclear accident are capped by law at $200 million. Any costs above that are shouldered by the taxpayer. Cleanup costs for Fukushima are about ~$500 billion.

And it takes a very long time. I’m not convinced at this point we have time to nuclear.

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#130

Post by toast0 » Sun, Oct 11, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #58

aplummer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define short term; I think by the time a reactor you start today comes online, we are already pretty screwed

It's trite, but it's never too late to start. Certainly starting now is better than doing nothing in this case, and nuclear may be a good option. I'm not convinced that old nuclear tech is economically viable anymore compared to batteries + renewables. New nuclear tech may be. We need investment there.

It could possibly be too late to start with new nuclear plants, although I'm not totally convinced.

If we had them now, nuclear plants would be vastly superior to coal plants for baseload, at least in terms of emissions.

The question is, if a nuclear plant takes 20-30 years from project start to being online, how will it compare with what's available then and over the design lifetime (50ish years). Of course, we can't know for sure, but if storage becomes good enough in the next 30 or so years, the lifetime economics of a nuclear plant get pretty bad.

That said, maybe the economic risk isn't as important as the emissions risk. If renewable + storage doesn't work, and we are still running coal plants in 30 years, that's probably worse than if renewable + storage works and ratepayers paid for an underutilized nuclear plant.