The green lobby would rather have a new coal plant (with no pollution control at all) than a nuclear power plant.
We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal
321–330 of 397 posts
Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal
#322First 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…
We're killing our planet because we externalise cost.
CO2, deforestation, habitat destruction, species extinction, overfishing, ocean pollution are proximate problems arising from that deeper ultimate problem.
Nuclear is an adequate response to the proximate problem of global heating, it the worst possible response to ultimate problem of externalising cost.
To advocate nuclear in good faith it is essential to acknowledge this tension, and the complex social and philosophical challenges to resolving that tension.
Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
AOC can claim any position she wants, but the Green New Deal says (page 7, lines 6-9 as linked in another post) says "meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources". That's a clear anti-nuclear stance.
You don’t think that’s a desirable goal?
It is desirable however impractical given currently available technology. We need significant developments in energy storage to make it work. We could have zero carbon now using nuclear with no new technologies.
Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for providing references - there's some subtlety in the analysis you link to (on ourworldindata.org) about the human impact of nuclear energy production. While it does state that nuclear and renewables are both comparatively much safer for humans than other forms of energy generation, it does contain two different harm rates for nuclear. You're quoting a little selectively by stating that nuclear is safer; tha…
Ah, you know, I actually didn't catch that until after I posted. I used to use an older source that didn't make that distinction ([1]) but I had trouble finding it and dropped in the newer one after a cursory read-through. I appreciate you adding the clarifying analysis! I think the newer one provides a more balanced take. I will say it seems disingenuous to include the death toll of the tsunami towards nuclear energ…
>I will say it seems disingenuous to include the death toll of the tsunami towards nuclear energy
~16000 people died from the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.
The 573 figure is from the 2012 Yomiuri Shimbun survey, based on "A disaster-related death certificate issued when a death is not directly caused by a tragedy, but by "fatigue or the aggravation of a chronic disease due to the disaster"
An IMO reasonable measure. Sadly the same data will never be available for Chernobyl due to the political reality surrounding the event.
Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's that branch of minimalist environmentalism where their favorite nuclear reactor is whatever doesn't already exist. The instant it starts getting built, /somebody'll/ start protesting it.
Of course there will always be a better and safer design. But what about replacing the 50 year old designs currently deployed now with recent ones?
Can we afford to do that?
We have finite resources. If prevention of a disastrous change in climate is your goal does it make sense to replace the older plants?
Yes it would be safer to do so but would the cost be worth it?
Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
In addition to other points made, I wanted to add, at the altitude large turbines reach, there is almost always wind, around the clock.
This is not the case, wind is not enough, the production depends on the strength of the wind "In particular the occurrences of wind blowing below à 8 m/s (4 Beaufort, blue line) are far from being negligible, and that winds of 7 Beaufort or over, which are necessary to get the full power of the above wind turbine, blows much less than 50% of the time." https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/renewables/how-ma...
Why must you get the "full power" of the turbine? You asked about keeping the lights on at night- when demand is lowest.
Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Maybe it's a flaw of Nuclear that you have to stuff its waste in a giant pit inside a mountain. Every type of energy plant has wastes. Even wind turbine blades wear out and are dumped in landfills.[0] The difference is that the nuclear waste eventually decays into nothing, while the fiberglass/plastic blades will stay around for thousands of years... [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turb.…
But fiberglass is just silicon and hydrocarbons. The same stuff soil and sand is made of. It's not really a huge problem to bury them. There's also huge developments in fiberglass recycling/repurposing these days. Solving this issue will be extremely helpful as wind power is not the only use of fiberglass as I'm sure you know. In fact, wind power could be instrumental in setting up a supply-chain for recycling of fib…
>I'm willing to bet that it'll take way less time for life to develop the ability to break down plastics.
A double-edge sword if it does occur. While it could reduce or eliminate microplastics from the environment, it would also unleash a massive amount of currently-sequestered carbon to the atmosphere.
Only way around that I can see is if we re-sequester all that plastic deep underground before it happens.
Sorry, a bit of a tangent I know, but it's been on my mind lately.
Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal
#328First 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…
I think we don't have a good way to transport energy which makes green energy slightly impractical as the main source of energy.
If we find a way to connect the world on a common electricity grid, we might be able to skip nuclear and go full green (ofc this ignores the cost of producing/disposing those green energy generators)
Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a single plant, and it's not all going to be installed in a year; these are the interconnection plans for all sorts of much smaller projects. We are only at the infancy of lithium ion production, I'm actually surprised that we are at 300GWh. With this very limited capacity, and typical grid storage batteries being warranties for around 15 years, our current production supports a global deployment of 4.5TWh o…
If your takeaway is that we're on track to solve energy storage with lithium ion batteries, then you have severely misinterpreted the situation. Remember 300 GWh is global battery production. 4.5 TWh is 9 hours of storage for just the United States. Furthermore, actually using this quantity of batteries would entail ceasing the use of lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles and electronics - not a realistic optio…
Existing storage lithium ion batteries have a minimum of 10 year warranties [1,2], and the Tesla Hornsdale battery has a fifteen year warranty. [3] it’s not as though the batteries suddenly stop working then, they just have less capacity. So 3-5 years of equipment life is not a realistic estimate.
Putting 12 hours of battery storage right next to 3 weeks just makes the 12 hours look suspect too. 3 weeks is just crazy numbers from people that haven’t studied the problem much. Most zero carbon grid modeling selects far far less than 12 hours of battery storage.
But even if we stick with that 12 hours of world energy of batteries, 60 TWh is only 5x more than the 12 TWh of US energy. I apologize for misinterpreting your stats and being off by 5 in the comparison of numbers, but a 5x or 10x or even 100x growth is well within the range of sustained exponential growth.
As grid storage plus solar becomes cheaper than natural gas, we will hit an inflection point that will drive massive expansion of battery storage production capacity, even beyond what is currently being built for EVs.
Will there be a massive interchange of technologies and production capacities. Yes, it will be huge, so from one perspective we are a long ways away from our target, but from the perspective of our current trajectory and from the perspective of what is currently being planned just for EVs, an entire industry is being built. It will take a little while for energy guys to wake up to this new reality because they are a slow changing industry, but they will be brought along for the ride whether they know it now or not. There’s a good reason that NextEra surpassed the market cap of Exxon recently, as the market is finally waking up to the new reality too.
[1] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/inside-construction-of-the-...
Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, you know, I actually didn't catch that until after I posted. I used to use an older source that didn't make that distinction ([1]) but I had trouble finding it and dropped in the newer one after a cursory read-through. I appreciate you adding the clarifying analysis! I think the newer one provides a more balanced take. I will say it seems disingenuous to include the death toll of the tsunami towards nuclear energ…
>I will say it seems disingenuous to include the death toll of the tsunami towards nuclear energy ~16000 people died from the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. The 573 figure is from the 2012 Yomiuri Shimbun survey, based on "A disaster-related death certificate issued when a death is not directly caused by a tragedy, but by "fatigue or the aggravation of a chronic disease due to the disaster" An IMO reasonable measure.…
I suggest you read the UNSCEAR report. It's collated about 20 years of data into a 600 page report about Chernobyl. I'd suggest it's probably one of the most thorough and detailed such works put together, ever. It covers all manner of chronic disease, excess mortality, and even mental health outcomes of people who believed they were somehow contaminated. That pins the number at 4,000. [1]
At your suggestion I'll read the survey you mentioned.
[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/05-09-2005-chernobyl-th...