Activists who embrace nuclear power • Hacker News Board

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#181

Post by jasonwatkinspdx » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 7:57 PM UTC

biren34 wrote: post #26

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 som…

On point 2, you're ignoring that nuclear has the same problem only even worse. There are very few companies in the world that can make reactor vessels and related stuff. In particular a lot of projects are bottlenecked on one company in Japan.

In any case, I think it's a weak point. We can scale up battery production. I'm not a fan of the Elon Hype Squad, but he's right about this point.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#182

Post by vbezhenar » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 7:57 PM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #165

vlovich123 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is actually intentionally crippled through legislation under over-hyped concerns over dirty bombs accidents (for the right and left politically inclined respectively). Nuclear can be done safe, efficient, cheap and at-scale. All it requires is to allow for the secondary market of spent fuel like was originally started when nuclear first starting to get rolled out. The security concerns can be handled in other…

Can you explain this a bit more? I don't see how these things could have helped any of the construction failures that have plagued all nuclear attempts. Operating costs are low for nuclear, it's the construction that is the problem.

Pay money to Rosatom, they'll build nuclear plants for you. If US lost its nuclear competency, it does not mean that everyone else lost.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#183

Post by solstice » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 7:57 PM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #165

vlovich123 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is actually intentionally crippled through legislation under over-hyped concerns over dirty bombs accidents (for the right and left politically inclined respectively). Nuclear can be done safe, efficient, cheap and at-scale. All it requires is to allow for the secondary market of spent fuel like was originally started when nuclear first starting to get rolled out. The security concerns can be handled in other…

Can you explain this a bit more? I don't see how these things could have helped any of the construction failures that have plagued all nuclear attempts. Operating costs are low for nuclear, it's the construction that is the problem.

... Not to mention the decommissioning costs

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#184

Post by Wowfunhappy » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 7:57 PM UTC

BillyTheKing wrote: post #178

vlovich123 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is actually intentionally crippled through legislation under over-hyped concerns over dirty bombs accidents (for the right and left politically inclined respectively). Nuclear can be done safe, efficient, cheap and at-scale. All it requires is to allow for the secondary market of spent fuel like was originally started when nuclear first starting to get rolled out. The security concerns can be handled in other…

I used to be of the same opinion, but I gotta say that Fukushima really did have an impact on me (on the long-run, it didn't have an immediate impact). But I have been wondering, if an incredibly advanced nation such as Japan faces very serious issues with their nuclear power-plants, is it really the right choice? Can we really guarantee that nothing goes seriously wrong, ever? Cause that's the standard those plants…

It's worth noting that, even taking second-order effects into account, the total number of deaths from nuclear accidents is actually quite low compared to other methods of generating electricity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM

Nuclear seems more dangerous for the same reason planes seem more dangerous than cars—when something goes wrong, it's a big news event.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#185

Post by jessaustin » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 8:01 PM UTC

mannerheim wrote: post #130

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?

How many eagles are killed by housecats?

Bald eagles, if that's what you mean, are a "least concern" species. That makes sense, because while in my neighborhood we never saw them several decades ago, now I see them multiple times a month. The other day I saw a family of four perched in a dead tree. Somehow they've overcome the dual menace of housecats and wind generation. Now that we've scaled back on DDT, the bald eagle is fine.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#186

Post by jasonwatkinspdx » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 8:04 PM UTC

vlovich123 wrote: post #138

epistasis wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nuclear is actually intentionally crippled through legislation under over-hyped concerns over dirty bombs accidents (for the right and left politically inclined respectively). Nuclear can be done safe, efficient, cheap and at-scale. All it requires is to allow for the secondary market of spent fuel like was originally started when nuclear first starting to get rolled out. The security concerns can be handled in other…

Nuclear loses to alternatives on a pure ROI basis. Even in places where political opposition or legislation is a total non issue (eg China) you see exactly the same bad math when it comes to the $.

I feel like a broken record posting this in every thread about nuclear. There's too many people on this forum that have some sort of smug attitude about not being "scared" of nuclear power and don't bother to learn what's actually constraining things.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#187

Post by FooHentai » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 8:04 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #141

afterburner wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m not talking about persuading people to install solar, I’m talking about the sheer bureaucratic work (on the part of the utility) to manage contracts with thousands of property owners instead of just one. Similarly, the overhead of servicing thousands of roof-top installations (scheduling appointments, driving to sites, climbing onto the roof, etc) versus a single contiguous site at ground level. I don’t think res…

I don’t follow. You could make the same argument about communal water heating versus having a heater in each home, yet of course such a position would be absurd.

Millions of individual homes running their own solar, even with everybody hooked up for exporting, is quite feasible. It’s happening today.

Having it be an arrangement where a power provider owns and maintains the panels isn’t necessary or desirable. Lease-to-own or outright purchase by homeowners works fine.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#188

Post by giantrobot » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 8:04 PM UTC

biren34 wrote: post #26

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 som…

Land usage is not much of an actual problem. For one sunlight falls pretty much everywhere. You don't need to put a solar plant out away from cities like coal and oil plants. You can cover the acreage of a city with solar panels. Just putting panels up over parking lots in suburbs/exurbs contributes significantly to the area's power needs.

Offshore wind is also extremely productive and eats up no arable/useful land. Farmland is also great siting for wind because there's enough uninhabited acreage to safely put up large turbines. A lot of wind power in Texas for instance comes from turbines on farms and ranches.

That's in addition to more site limited renewables like hydro, tidal, and geothermal.

There's lots and lots of untapped energy hitting the Earth every day. The Earth is also really big. To handle a few integer multiples of human power needs with renewables by tapping a tiny fraction of that is not outside the realm of possibility or even all that difficult. It's more a question of will than technical capability.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#189

Post by epistasis » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 8:04 PM UTC

slfnflctd wrote: post #180

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…

> Attaching four hours of storage to a solar generation farm, just enough to get through the duck curve, is now slightly cheaper than coal This completely ignores scenarios of extended cloud cover, cold temperatures and low wind (somewhat like we just saw in Texas) where properly winterized baseline power would be the only way to keep everything up the whole way through. Barring future unknown tech, we will always ne…

If I were in Texas last week, I would have loved to have a home solar system with a battery that let me island from the grid. This is definitely practical and happening even at today's high prices.

In a decade, ERCOT will look nothing like it does today. It will have massive amounts of solar and storage, and even more wind. This is replacing gas plants as they age out.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#190

Post by nippoo » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 8:06 PM UTC

biren34 wrote: post #26

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 som…

About 0.5% of the US needs to be covered in solar panels to meet the US's current energy requirements (about the size of the Mojave desert).

About the size of New Mexico needs to be covered to meet the whole world's energy consumption.

In the grand scale of things, and considering how much sunny, arid desert land there is in the world (and without even thinking of floating solar farms) that's really not a lot...