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Activists who embrace nuclear power

newyorker.com

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Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#21

Post by orwin »

flaque wrote: post #12
epistasis wrote: post #8

Articles like this miss the main point and instead focus on culture war material. There are plenty of sites that would happily accept more nuclear being built, but all other forms of energy have undercut the cost of nuclear. It's no longer cost competitive, and places like China that adopt a "let's try everything and see what works best" approach have heavily pulled back on nuclear. The issues aren't safety, waste, a…

This assumes that larger investment in nuclear won’t yield reduced costs, just as larger investments in solar did.

It would, but not as much as solar did. But people don't include recycling cost in PV, as well as electrical grid maintenance, impossibility to work as a baseline, no pilotability.

Solar is good if the population is mature enough to accept the cost of sending PV to a recycling plant. And as long as it doesnt go past 50% of the energy production (you NEED a baseline of 30 to 40% at the very least)

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#22

Post by afterburner »

systematical wrote: post #4

Go heavy nuclear and invest in fusion. The later will lead to clean abundant energy and eventually a reduction in resource scarcity. What is the economics of air? That's the economics we want.

Fusion research? Sure. I hope you aren't expecting practical commercial reactors anytime soon. I believe the current fusion scientists just entering the workforce are hoping for major strides by the end of their CAREER when they finally retire.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#23

Post by simplicio »

flaque wrote: post #12
epistasis wrote: post #8

Articles like this miss the main point and instead focus on culture war material. There are plenty of sites that would happily accept more nuclear being built, but all other forms of energy have undercut the cost of nuclear. It's no longer cost competitive, and places like China that adopt a "let's try everything and see what works best" approach have heavily pulled back on nuclear. The issues aren't safety, waste, a…

This assumes that larger investment in nuclear won’t yield reduced costs, just as larger investments in solar did.

We already tried that, didn't we? Several national gov'ts, subsidized the building of hundreds of reactors, trained gillions of nuclear scientists and engineers, etc. And indeed, nuclear power still is a bigger fraction of US electrical generation then renewables.

Obviously, a new effort might yield a break-through the old one didn't. But it seems likely all the "low-hanging" fruit in lowering reactor costs have already been picked.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#24

Post by mbgerring »

reedjosh wrote: post #19
rpiguyshy wrote: post #9

i just dont buy it. hypothetically, there is a nuclear power plant design that is perfectly safe in that it will never melt down. but there is no nuclear power plant that produces no waste. as long as you are producing waste, you are depending on bumbling bureaucrats to properly dispose of that waste and manage the waste often for extremely long periods of time. its just not an ideal situation. the government cant ev…

Solar requires energy storage. It is not on demand. Wind and solar must be backed by an on demand source as we don't have sufficiently cost effective storage methods. Options are then basically hydroelectric, natural gas, petroleum, coal, or nuclear. Nuclear is the cleanest if you can't put a dam somewhere.

Or batteries, which are getting cheaper and are now less expensive than natural gas peaker plants in many locations

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#26

Post by biren34 »

epistasis wrote: post #8

Articles like this miss the main point and instead focus on culture war material. There are plenty of sites that would happily accept more nuclear being built, but all other forms of energy have undercut the cost of nuclear. It's no longer cost competitive, and places like China that adopt a "let's try everything and see what works best" approach have heavily pulled back on nuclear. The issues aren't safety, waste, a…

I'm squarely of the opposite opinion.

There are 2 main concerns I think "only renewables" solutions miss:

1. Impact on land usage. The sheer amount of land required to provide 3-4x global use is impractical and has major environmental consequences. It's not free to pave over large areas with solar panels or make huge swaths of air unsafe for birds.

2. Cost of storage is usually projected using current prices with some decline due to production efficiencies. However, producing grid-sized storage would put such pressure on the supply of critical metals that the subsequent price rise would put bitcoin's performance to shame.

Whereas, we know we can scale nuclear to meet global demand, at least as a major base load supply as part of a mixed-generation strategy.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#27

Post by zaik »

flaque wrote: post #12
epistasis wrote: post #8

Articles like this miss the main point and instead focus on culture war material. There are plenty of sites that would happily accept more nuclear being built, but all other forms of energy have undercut the cost of nuclear. It's no longer cost competitive, and places like China that adopt a "let's try everything and see what works best" approach have heavily pulled back on nuclear. The issues aren't safety, waste, a…

This assumes that larger investment in nuclear won’t yield reduced costs, just as larger investments in solar did.

Given that nuclear has existed for quite some time now and hundreds of very costly plants have already been built, how much more cost-effectiveness can we expect? It feels like the current state is exactly what "larger investments" in nuclear get you.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#28

Post by hntrader »

afterburner wrote: post #17
flaque wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes that larger investment in nuclear won’t yield reduced costs, just as larger investments in solar did.

It seems like the largest feature of modern nuclear power is that it got a lot more expensive as we realized how much safety we truly needed to build into it. Whereas, without much prompting, solar got a LOT cheaper. When nuclear develops that significantly, we will all pay attention. Until then, build cheaper sources. Also consider when building nuclear, you are locking into technology from 10 years ago (when the pl…

Isn't the point of nuclear to provide power when it's not sunny as a cheaper alternative to storage in batteries? If so then what's the purpose of comparing the cost of solar and nuclear as if they're directly competing for the same use case?

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#29

Post by afterburner »

orwin wrote: post #21
flaque wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes that larger investment in nuclear won’t yield reduced costs, just as larger investments in solar did.

It would, but not as much as solar did. But people don't include recycling cost in PV, as well as electrical grid maintenance, impossibility to work as a baseline, no pilotability. Solar is good if the population is mature enough to accept the cost of sending PV to a recycling plant. And as long as it doesnt go past 50% of the energy production (you NEED a baseline of 30 to 40% at the very least)

> impossibility to work as a baseline

Not true. Just overbuild it, and make sure your grid is large enough to transfer power between areas or just store it. Still cheaper than nuclear.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#30

Post by abernard1 »

rpiguyshy wrote: post #9

i just dont buy it. hypothetically, there is a nuclear power plant design that is perfectly safe in that it will never melt down. but there is no nuclear power plant that produces no waste. as long as you are producing waste, you are depending on bumbling bureaucrats to properly dispose of that waste and manage the waste often for extremely long periods of time. its just not an ideal situation. the government cant ev…

> as long as you are producing waste, you are depending on bumbling bureaucrats to properly dispose of that waste and manage the waste often for extremely long periods of time.

The entirety of nuclear waste ever produced by humanity can fit in a football field.

This is without even considering fuel recycling. Acting like this is a problem has to be the most absurd (and I might add politicized) argument ever made against nuclear energy.

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