Activists who embrace nuclear power • Hacker News Board

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#91

Post by afterburner » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #72

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?

Desert solar is certainly going to be part of the story, but I can’t imagine that we can feasibly power the whole country with desert solar alone, and I don’t think residential solar will be a significant contributor because you lose the efficiencies of scale afforded by acres and acres of collocated, homogeneous, ground-level panels for construction, maintenance, and operation. Consider even the overhead of dealing…

All those individuals will respond to the incentive of cheaper energy bills by installing roof solar voluntarily. Provided their government doesn't pass pro-fossil fuel legislation that actively punishes that decision, as some have.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#92

Post by maxerickson » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #58

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 ab…

Winter is hard to store for, but in general there aren't times where both sun and wind are low production across wide areas.

Of course solar isn't operating at night, but wind keeps blowing.

One way to check this would be to find a wind farm that publishes their output over time. Looks like NREL has some good resources: https://www.nrel.gov/grid/wind-toolkit.html

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#93

Post by simplicio » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

zaik wrote: post #27

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.

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.

Obviously what we need is some sort of "Manhattan Project" for nuclear energy! :)

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#94

Post by throw_nbvc1234 » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

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 flint's heat is still natural gas based then lights going out is the worst thing. I'm guessing an average winter in flint (if it's not then shift my statement to MN where it is) is much colder then the mess Texas just went through. Things just break when things are that colder, particularly electricity. Just try starting your car when it's -30F.

Power generation for Billions of people seems like a complex problem that everyone seems very willing to boil down to solving with "Just focus on electricity and use wind, solar, and batteries." Sounds a lot like the "just use mongoDB" talk from 6-7 years ago.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#95

Post by ktaylora » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 4:56 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?

The direct impact of turbines on wildlife (e.g., from direct strikes) may be negligible. But the secondary effects of carving-up large blocks of intact grasslands in the Great Plains with infrastructure like service roads, wallpapering desert soils with panels, or placing high-capacity transmission lines, are not. This clearly contributes to habitat fragmentation and scientists have not thoroughly studied how recent infrastructure change is influencing habitat for wildlife.

I'm not arguing that increasing green energy production like wind and solar should stop. Because climate change is arguably a larger existential threat to the planet. But we do need to do a better job planning where infrastructure lands so we can mitigate habitat fragmentation. Habitat fragmentation doesn't really factor into the planning calculus at all.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#96

Post by afterburner » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

hntrader wrote: post #81

afterburner wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Still doesn't make sense. Even if what you say is true, then the valid comparison is to compare nuclear to wind rather than nuclear to solar.

Again, what the hell are you talking about. These are bad faith arguments. Moving goalposts, redefining everything. What a joke.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#97

Post by epistasis » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

undefined1 wrote: post #89

airhead969 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

how much of that is due to regulations or other overhead or inefficiencies? e.g., "China Tariffs Blocked Bill Gates’ Plan for Safe Nuclear Power" https://futurism.com/trump-china-tariffs-bill-gates-nuclear-... also, SpaceX managed to make reusable rockets, I just have to imagine we could make nuclear energy feasible if we approached it from first principles and took a hard look at the entire process.

I always ask: what regulation would you change? Nobody in the nuclear industry has suggestions for what is unnecessary, as far as I can tell.

And as Texas showed us last week, without regulations, profit motive alone is not enough to maintain proper equipment. The nuclear plant that tripped off could have made months worth of profit in less than a day. Yet they did not do simple weatherization preparations that they knew they should have based on 2011's events.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#98

Post by afterburner » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

Enginerrrd wrote: post #45

afterburner wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're worried about attacks, you should be even more worried about nuclear.

Not really. This is actually a primary design consideration taken very seriously at nuke plants. The same can NOT be said about the rest of the grid, and renewable generation facilities.

> This is actually a primary design consideration taken very seriously at nuke plants.

Yeah, because they're so dangerous.

If you're worried about the grid, you were always worried. We use a grid now, and in the past. Massive near-continent wide failures happened before major renewable use.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#99

Post by cygx » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

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're never going to have a powermix that's 100% renewables

There have been a whole bunch of studies that say you could, in principle. If things like power-to-gas or cryogenic storage panned out, going from 'in principle' to 'in practice' would no longer seem particularly far-fetched to me...

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#100

Post by orwin » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

croes wrote: post #47

orwin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer1: I'm "pro" nuclear (as a baseline to supplement hydro), and i think nuclear is the 3rd best option (behind hydro and reducing consumption) Disclaimer2: i have investissment in veolia Panels do decline, a lot, and especially older panels, but also most newer industrial solar PV are using heavy metals that can burn land (I mean, go to indonesia and look at farmland or even forest near communities were ONG i…

Why is it not possible?

Well, it is tbh, but not right now, and not in the US. It would probably be doable in Europe if we massively overbuilt?

You want to have a stable baseline because you want to be able to provide electricity to some services in worst case situation. Those services often have backup generators, but in worst case scenarii, the generator is too cold/old/dirty, and you don't take risks. In France we had a scenario were our grid managing center is under attack and cannot indicate who dispatch power to who, and to respond to that you can't not have a base load. But also, having a base load that can fluctuate daily permit emergency maintenance on multiple electricity production site.