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Activists who embrace nuclear power

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Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#241

Post by rpiguyshy »

throw0101a wrote: post #83
rpiguyshy wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Talk to the PhDs at Princeton and their collaborators: * https://environmenthalfcentury.princeton.edu/experts I'm just copying and pasting the December 2020 report. Off the top of my head, renewables (in the US) only produce electricity about 30% of the time, so you have to 'over build': * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor They have energy storage experts, so I'm sure batteries and such are taken into acc…

total power requirement of the united states / amount of average power including weather and TOD produced by a square meter of land + amount of land to store necessary batteries = a corner notched out of nevada. not multiple states. i dont think you need a phd to see this, and elon musk also agrees with this and i think he is knowledgeable enough about solar and batteries. plus, there are lots of efficiency gains still in the pipes that will reduce our power consumption. when all houses are properly insulated, heated with a heat pump, have efficient appliances, thermal loops and have solar on their roofs then all of this becomes even more feasible. and thats not even including wind, hydro or thermal.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#242

Post by Nasrudith »

sudosysgen wrote: post #227
epistasis wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You plan for the worst case, same as we do now.

Sure, but solar plus wind does not allow the flexibility to plan for the worst case and come out ahead.

Wind across enough longitude is impossible to not exist at all given temperature differentials creating wind and the rotation of the earth. Wind compliments solar beautifully because things cool off at night from the lack of sun making it produce more power then. If the earth no longer rotates across the axis or the sun goes out the lack of power is irrelevant to in that worsr case scenario.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#243

Post by BalinKing »

dane-pgp wrote: post #228
undefined1 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> institutions and experts are failing all around us Is that what we're seeing? Which institutions and experts do you think are failing us? Could it actually be the case that institutions and experts are 99% accurate in their output, but the information ecosystem around us is highlighting the 1% of inaccuracies and presenting them as fatal flaws (while ignoring the fact that the alternatives to these institutions and…

> Certainly you could make the case that there are some people with an ideology and/or incentives to make sure that governments don't work for the benefit of the people they are supposed to serve, but if that's the threat model then all proposed plans need to be considered against that threat.

I agree, and I think all proposed plans should absolutely be considered against that threat. I certainly hope that's not a radical take on my part....

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#244

Post by rpiguyshy »

abernard1 wrote: post #139
rpiguyshy wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ok well lets settle it. how much waste would be produced if the whole country ran on nuclear? regardless of the volume of waste, how serious is a breach of containment? is the waste a target for terrorists? can it be weaponized?

> ok well lets settle it. how much waste would be produced if the whole country ran on nuclear? That waste goes into Yucca mountain, and it's behind / underneath 100s of meters of neutron heavy metals. If we were exclusively powered by nuclear power for a century without recycling, it'd be something like 100 football fields. Absolutely, completely, utterly inconsequential. 1 inch of neutron-heavy lead is enough to di…

ok but i just have doubts. you say that buried nuclear waste is safe but i need more detail. what if it leaks into ground water? can it leak? what kind of containment is necessary? and does it need to be guarded? do people want the stuff for bombs or something? i just have a bunch of doubts and i think they are reasonable.

and meanwhile solar is simple and there are no doubts about it. probably much easier to do cleanly. nuclear people want us to hold out for this miracle reactor that cant melt down, but they are too impatient for a panel that doesnt have heavy metals?

and its not embarrassing, i just think solar edges out nuclear. im not dogmatically against nuclear.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#245

Post by YarickR2 »

vbezhenar wrote: post #182
epistasis wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Correct answer. Floating nuclear power plant recently went operational , supplying arctic city with electricity ; it was built in two years, top to bottom. I wonder if couple of those in the Gulf of Mexico could've secured oil refineries' energy supply, allowing grid operators to divert more conventionally generated power to residential areas, diminishing blackouts

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#246

Post by macspoofing »

We're going to have to build up our Nuclear infrastructure eventually because outside of fossil fuels, geothermal and hydro (both of which need particular geography so they can never be the final answer) there is nothing else.

Unfortunately the cultural push is for wind and solar, so it looks like we're going to have to give wind and solar the 'old college try' and lose precious decades before we realize we need nuclear.

It would have been nice to invest in Nuclear in the 70s to the same level as France, for example, and thereby prevent trillions of tons of CO2 that were emitted between the 70s and today from being emitted, and the trillions more between now and whenever we wake up to the fact that wind and solar just can't scale. I suspect future generations will take a dim view of the anti-nuke environmental movement.

Worse, though wind and solar collectors may reduce CO2 emissions they are incredibly environmentally destructive in other ways. Let's keep mind that global warming is only one aspect of environmental destruction. The other is regular habitat and ecosystem collapse due support of human civilization (cities, agriculture, transportation etc.). Solar and wind collectors have horrendous land-use requirements (land-use around mining for necessary materials, deployment of the collectors, and finally land-fill once out of use). So when it comes to ecosystem destruction, solar and wind make it worse on all counts.

I have no fuckin clue what environmentalists think will happen to the environment when we increase Solar and Wind collectors by several orders of magnitude (which would be necessary to support 7-10 billion people move partially from fossil fuels). Pure Insanity.

Oh well. It is what it is.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#247

Post by philipkglass »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #230
philipkglass wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still the country building the most new nuclear power, but it's also reducing ambitions from just a few years ago. From your own link: The 13th Five-Year Plan formalized in March 2016 included the following nuclear projects and aims: ... Reach target of 58 GWe nuclear operational by end of 2020, plus 30 GWe under construction then. China actually has 47.5 GWe operational now. See table "Operable nuclear power re…

Falling 20% short of a five year plan that included 2020 is not strong evidence they're pulling back.

That 58 gigawatt goal for 2020 was already less ambitious than the goal of 70 GW by 2020 from 2012.

"China may resume approving nuke plants in H1" (January 2012)

https://www.reuters.com/article/china-nuclear/china-may-resu...

The government will resume approving new plants after the announcement of the nuclear safety plan which recently won clearance from the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), the China Securities Journal said.

The report also said in order to meet the government-set target of having non-fossil fuels to supply 15 percent of China’s primary energy use by 2020, the total installed nuclear capacity should not fall under 70 gigawatts (GW) by then.

That in turn was less ambitious than the 2020 nuclear goals China had before the Fukushima accident.

"Nuclear power to rise 10-fold by 2020" (July 2009)

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-07/02/content_83464...

China is planning for an installed nuclear power capacity of 86 gigawatts by 2020, up nearly 10-fold from the 9 GW capacity it had by the end of last year, two people familiar with the matter said.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#248

Post by Daho0n »

macspoofing wrote: post #246

We're going to have to build up our Nuclear infrastructure eventually because outside of fossil fuels, geothermal and hydro (both of which need particular geography so they can never be the final answer) there is nothing else. Unfortunately the cultural push is for wind and solar, so it looks like we're going to have to give wind and solar the 'old college try' and lose precious decades before we realize we need nucl…

Citation needed.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#249

Post by Zigurd »

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" is just the tip of the financial iceberg. Nukes are no longer price competitive, if they ever were, even with all the unpaid externalities: Waste containment and storage is a public sector megaproject. Nuclear plants are not insurable. Set-asides for decommissioning are gamed by selling plants nearing EOL.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#250

Post by Daho0n »

sudosysgen wrote: post #211
smallnamespace wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your grid covers a large region and you have sufficient transmission, then somewhere , there is excess electricity from wind/solar that you can bring in. Remember, we're talking about a world where building renewables to 4x peak demand would be actually economical. This works on the same principle as an insurance market: it's likely that even at 4x capacity, your local solar farm has a few cloudy days. It's highly…

This is a dangerous and wrong assumption. Weather events can have high area. What do you do if a hurricane comes at the same time as high cloud cover?

What do you do if you have to shut down the nuclear power plant in bad weather for some reason? Build a new one as a backup? There's always a weak link if you want to find one, nuclear, wind or whatever.
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