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Activists who embrace nuclear power

newyorker.com

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Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#61

Post by afterburner »

armada651 wrote: post #43
afterburner wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just buy solar and wind, avoid both.

You're never going to have a powermix that's 100% renewables. There will always be a few power plants to pick up the slack if weather conditions are unfavorable for a long period of time. Should these plants use coal, gas or nuclear?

You can overbuild solar and wind to cover all needs, with grid and storage construction (batteries, water or other reservoirs).

I'm not advocating shutting down working reactors until their planned end of life, so we already have a built-in phasing out schedule, measured in decades.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#62

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#63

Post by rpiguyshy »

throw0101a wrote: post #39
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…

Princeton did a study, and found to get to net zero by 2050, the US could do it with only renewables (the "E+ RE+" scenario). To accomplish that: > Cumulative total wind and solar farm area in E+ RE+ by 2050 is ~1 million km^2, or roughly an area the size of AK, IA, KS, MO, NE, OK, and WV combined (with an additional 64,000 km^2 of offshore wind); directly impacted lands total 70,000 km^2, an area larger than WV. * P…

i dont want to be contrarian, but this is wrong. you get 150-100 w per square meter. what am i missing?

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#64

Post by abernard1 »

throw0101a wrote: post #39
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…

Princeton did a study, and found to get to net zero by 2050, the US could do it with only renewables (the "E+ RE+" scenario). To accomplish that: > Cumulative total wind and solar farm area in E+ RE+ by 2050 is ~1 million km^2, or roughly an area the size of AK, IA, KS, MO, NE, OK, and WV combined (with an additional 64,000 km^2 of offshore wind); directly impacted lands total 70,000 km^2, an area larger than WV. * P…

I do not know if this is pro or anti-, but I thank you for your statistic.

The land required for this is absolutely insane. Insane.

I challenge anyone with a straight face to argue that utilizing 6 huge to medium size states out of the 50 is an efficient use of land or physical resources. We can't recycle ordinary trash correctly without throwing it to developing countries, who are rejecting it. We don't recycle wind turbines at all. But we're supposed to be able to routinely recycle six whole states worth of panels and turbines?

It's madness.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#65

Post by orwin »

mrec wrote: post #38
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)

What's "pilotability" in this context?

You can make electricity usage predictions, depending on the time of the day, and the time of the year. Reversible dams pump water at night (in France at least), or when our northern neighbors have a bit to much wind power and need help dispatching this power without disconnecting their wind plants. This is what i mean (i honestly thought the word existed in english, it doesnt, sorry :/)

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#66

Post by StreamBright »

fulafel wrote: post #51
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.

Exactly. Judging nuclear safety based on Chernobyl is the same as judging fire safety based on a camp fire in a cave during in 15_000 BCE.

I understand that is was bad and it could have been much worse, but we are not stopping flying with airplanes because the mishaps of Boeing 737 MAX 8.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#67

Post by rpiguyshy »

reedjosh wrote: post #40
mbgerring wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Interesting. Can you please provide a source? I've never heard as such, but would be glad to find otherwise.

there are many huge packs. tesla has built some of the biggest ones.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#68

Post by afterburner »

vlovich123 wrote: post #60
afterburner wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

You know deserts are BIG, right?

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#69

Post by airhead969 »

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 worked in nuclear. There's definitely no way now to insure a new plant and make money. Try as they may, even Duke couldn't break ground on any new US project because there hasn't been money in it for about 40 years. The economics kill it and there aren't going to be anymore PWR/BWRs, with the possible exceptions of BCH, 2 PWRs at Turkey Point, and 1 ESBWR at North Anna. Renewables will likely undercut them all to cancellation.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#70

Post by afterburner »

hntrader wrote: post #50
afterburner wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? What the hell are you talking about.

Solar doesn't provide off peak power without storage. So comparing nuclear directly to solar in the way you've done makes no sense.

I believe solar and wind can provide for ALL power. Same as nuclear. That is the basis for my comparison.
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