Activists who embrace nuclear power • Hacker News Board

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#51

Post by fulafel » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

krustyburger wrote: post #6

When she first contemplated working at Diablo Canyon, she imagined the rat-infested Springfield Nuclear Power Plant on “The Simpsons,” where green liquid oozes out of tanks. Eventually, like Hoff, she changed her thinking. “What we were doing actually aligned with my environmental values,” she told me. “That was shocking to me.” You can tell from my username what an enormous fan of The Simpsons I am. One of the few t…

TMI (plus other 80s US NPP incidents) and Chernobyl had happened in the previous 10 years when Simpsons started. Those plants had real problems and caused badly needed corrections to NPP safety culture and standards. It was a pretty reasonable take for its time.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#52

Post by StreamBright » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

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…

>> It's no longer cost competitive

If you compare apples to oranges it is not. Once you start to compare apples to apples it is very competitive. What do I mean by this?

People like to compare nuclear to wind or solar. There is a fundamental difference. Wind or solar is not controlled by the energy demand while a nuclear power plat's energy production is. This is why you cannot compare them. If you talk about solar or renewables you should talk about:

- the production part (solar panels or wind mills)

- the energy storage part (some sort of batteries or pumped-storage hydroelectricity)

- if you do not want to build either batteries of pumped-storage then you have to build in the same amount of quickly accessible power source (this is natural gas turbines mostly)

There are few other challenges:

- solar or windmills require massive amount of construction because the energy density is very low

- the damage to nature with windmills especially is bad (there is preemptive maintenance during animal activity for many of the windmills)

- weather can damage these facilities

- the lifetime of windmills or solar panels are much shorter than nuclear power plant lifetimes

Given all these and the general public's hatred towards nuclear energy largely fuelled by politicians many countries shut down research into nuclear with very few exceptions. Instead, these countries invested billions into renewables without much success yet. I think soon we are going to be at a tipping point when this whole circus ends and we are going to get back on track with nuclear which is much needed in the coming of space era.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#53

Post by orwin » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #36

orwin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Base load power is unnecessary. The only type of power that's required is dispatchable power. If you have enough dispatchable power to meet peak demands you don't need anything else. For example, the northern towns served by a diesel generator. Other types of power are optional, but should be thrown into the mix for cost, reliability or environmental reasons.

It is though, unless we had a major breakthrough in the last decade i'm not aware of, you can't just "plug in" 1 TW/h of solar pannels on a power grid when you need to. You can however start a generator, an eoliene, a turbine. PV don't offer that, although other kind of solar can.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#54

Post by simplicio » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

afterburner wrote: post #22

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 .

Yea, plus we've reached the point where even if you do believe the most optimistic timelines for fusion power development, its not going to come in time to make a meaningful contribution to fighting climate change.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#55

Post by orwin » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

afterburner wrote: post #29

orwin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626191...

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#56

Post by afterburner » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

mcenedella wrote: post #3

According to the Department of Energy, nuclear energy creates minimal waste, has a small land footprint, and is cleaner for the air. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/3-reasons-why-nuclear-cle... Interestingly: “ All of the used nuclear fuel produced by the U.S. nuclear energy industry over the last 60 years could fit on a football field at a depth of less than 10 yards!”

Cleaner than than the air compared to what? Coal? No shit.

How about the cost compared to solar and wind? Oh, don't want to talk about that? I wonder how much nuclear waste solar and wind creates.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#57

Post by js2 » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 4:38 PM UTC

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…

> steam based thermodynamic cycles

Technical question: my understanding is that the frequency of an electrical grid is literally related to the RPM of turbines providing power, and that over/under frequency are related to supply and demand.

https://www.brighthubengineering.com/power-plants/45640-grid...

If we hypothetically had a grid that was 100% solar, presumably there'd no longer be any spinning turbines. At that point, would the grid frequency be completely synthetic? How would supply/demand impact the frequency in that case?

Edit: partially answered here ("smart inverters):

https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-integration-inverter...

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#58

Post by throwaway894345 » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 4:38 PM UTC

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…

Do solar and wind cost estimates account for the sheer volume of land? How much land would be required to convert us fully to green energy (where “fully” means not only replacing existing electrical applications but also transforming other fossil-fuel operations such as transport and various heavy industry applications and residential/commercial heating and etc)? Also, don’t we need more storage than 4 hours? What about those times when weather patterns mean little sun or wind for days or weeks on the scale of the whole country? I’m not trying to be a wind/solar pessimist; these seem like important questions and I don’t hear them discussed often.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#59

Post by JohnJamesRambo » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 4:38 PM UTC

Daniel_sk wrote: post #20

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…

The issue with radioactive waste is more of a political and emotional problem than a real one. The amount of waste is rather small and it's not like it will irradiate you from a kilometre away :-). It can be stored in safe containers and buried in stable geological sites or even stored temporarily for many years in storage houses and maybe later re-used in types of reactors that will be able to recycle the spent fuel…

The issue for me is not quantity but time. 1000-10,000 (or even much longer) years for decay is an incredible amount of time for the human race. Written language only appeared ~5500 years ago.

Let’s say ancient Rome 2,000 years ago made and stored a substance that kills everyone exposed to it, would we expect that substance to still be intact and unblemished right now?

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#60

Post by vlovich123 » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

afterburner wrote: post #37

biren34 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 som…

You're worried about birds? Better raze all buildings and kill all the cats. Wind turbine bird deaths are negligible. https://www.evwind.es/2020/10/01/the-realities-of-bird-and-b... You know you can set up solar panels on roofs, and in the desert, right?

Deserts are not ecosystems devoid of all life. Here’s a life long anti-nuclear activist talking about how his direct experience in this space evolved as he started looking into the data more:

https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shellenberger_why_i_change...