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Activists who embrace nuclear power

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Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#121

Post by p_l »

afterburner wrote: post #56
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.

Interestingly enough, CO2g per W of energy is considered much higher (4 times?) for PV than for nuclear, at least in common statistics used to evaluate power plant emissions (12 gCO2eq/kWh for nuclear, 11g for wind, 24g for hydro and 45g for solar - source:IPCC2014).

Most nuclear waste can be reprocessed and burned further down (that's the strategy that was used by France). A big issue with that is the effective voiding of non-proliferation treaty by, among other, USA - nothing scares them more than a country running plutonium economy, thus proposals of designs with remote kill switches operated by USA and other imperialistic moves like it.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#122

Post by undefined1 »

airhead969 wrote: post #114
undefined1 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're setting up and attacking a strawman. didn't say all regs are bad. obviously you have to identify which regulations are good and which are not, or those no longer necessary, and find a balance so you don't quash innovation. like the example I gave with Bill Gates nuclear project.

Oh so now some nuclear industry regulations are "bad." Then who knows better than NRC engineers and scientists, legitimately aiming to ensure the industry doesn't die from mass-casualty events, public harm, or unworkable costs? Maybe before throwing shade on something you know nothing about, it's often best to not prove that you're speaking from your tail end. ; ) EDIT: You made a bunch of edits. No, you in particula…

in a time when institutions and experts are failing all around us, I appreciate your optimism. but it's too much like a blind faith and devotion to priests for my tastes.

and maybe they are right about every regulation, that's a possibility! but clearly something has gone wrong when we could have had a clean grid powered via nuclear energy by now. so I think it would be wise to question everything in the chain.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#124

Post by pfdietz »

simplicio wrote: post #93
zaik wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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! :)

That was a very good one. :)

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#125

Post by pfdietz »

hntrader wrote: post #117
cygx wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear reactors don't make sense as peaker plants, hence are not a battery replacement as such. You're correct that one should factor in the cost of storage if one wants to considers renewables as an alternative to nuclear for providing base load power.

Thanks. Any ideas how storage impacts the total cost of using only solar+wind?

https://model.energy/

Play with the assumptions and see for yourself.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#126

Post by pfdietz »

vlovich123 wrote: post #44
bryanlarsen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My (perhaps erroneous) understanding nuclear is the only power source that can generate the power/heat that many very heavy industrial use cases need can’t be supplanted with renewables, no matter how inexpensive/efficient they are. That’s why countries like France have significantly lower coal usage whereas Germany has higher, even though both have similar levels of renewables.

That's obviously not true, since electricity can always be converted to heat.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#127

Post by vkou »

epistasis wrote: post #85
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…

Compare your best estimates of land usage to the amount of land the US uses to grow corn for ethanol. Or compare it to the amount of land used for parking. Or for roads. Or for roofs of buildings. I've never, not once, ever seen a comparison of this sort that sounded the least bit scary. 2. I'm a bit flabbergasted that you think we can scar nuclear production to what we need. We can't even scale nuclear production to…

It's not that nuclear cannot be built. It's that America is incapable of building... Pretty much anything in the 21st century. If the interstate system were to disappear tomorrow, for example, we simply wouldn't be able to rebuild it.

It's not because concrete is some arcane technology that isn't cost effective, or doesn't work. It's because we just aren't very good at building things anymore.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#128

Post by pfdietz »

orwin wrote: post #53
bryanlarsen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Could you explain what units you were trying to use there? TW/h makes no sense.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#129

Post by pfdietz »

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…

Yes, they include the value of land. In Texas, for example, land cost for PV might be a couple percent of the cost of a PV field.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#130

Post by mannerheim »

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?

How many eagles are killed by housecats?
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