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Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

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Re: Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

#241

Post by evilos »

derriz wrote: post #55
pif wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't understand the downvotes you got. You pushed may be a bit on political stereotypes, but other than that you just stated the facts.

Are the downvotes really hard to understand? Claiming that renewables are untenable without unavailable fantasy technology is clearly ill-informed. Renewables are already contributing a significant proportion of generated electricity globally - even in the US it's over 20% versus 8% for nuclear. In many European countries, renewables provide over 30% of the consumed electricity. Renewables are already a big part of e…

You can have a big part of your energy generation come from renewables easily (as you pointed out). The hard/impossible part is making renewables the main or only source of power.

That requires an insane amount of energy storage capacity, or an amazing electric grid or some combination of these. The US uses 11 Terawatt hours of electric energy every day. Studies project that 80% renewable generation would require 12 hours of battery storage, so 5.5 TWHrs of battery storage. 100% renewable energy needs 3 weeks of storage. Current global production of battery capacity is 300 GWHrs per year. Production is expected to quadruple in 10 years. By these numbers producing enough batteries for the world is not feasible. Also consider that these batteries will need to be recycled and this is a pretty dirty process (currently).

Personally, I think the best plan for now is a mix of base load nuclear power(maybe like 20 to 30% of peak demand) and the rest being solar/wind. In the US we'd need to build out thousands of miles of HVDC transmission lines and build lots of battery banks.

Re: Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

#242

Post by [deleted] »

corty wrote: post #166
kdtsh wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a synchronous grid? Unless the capacity of the nuclear plant is tiny (which means the economy of scale is lost - who is building a nuclear plant in the area of 10s of MW?), you instantly have voltage instability if you lose supply, and yes, bringing the network back to synchronicity can take days or weeks. This is the same issue we have with coal, which is part of the reason we are trying to diversify the grid (la…

Yes, on a synchronous grid. Yes, everyone does it. Yes, it works. You seem to be thinking in a binary manner, the plant is either on or off and there is some big central regulator doing the switching. But that isn't how it works. Plants, through their grid connection, 'see' the grid frequency of 50.00Hz. If the frequency now deviated to 49.99Hz because consumption increased, the generators will be slowed down a littl…

[deleted]

Re: Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

#243

Post by DrBazza »

notacoward wrote: post #226
DrBazza wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of anti-nuclear sentiment on HN. Anyone that's in favour of it seems to always get downvoted.

Is that due to a high prevalence of anti-nuclear sentiment, or due to a high prevalence of enthusiastic, dismissive, and possibly inauthentic pro-nuclear sentiment? Either could explain the observed effect. There are plenty of pro-nuclear comments that aren't being downvoted. I suggest you consider that others are for reasons beyond their basic premise.

It's probably nothing more than "science don't care what you believe".

There's a lot of nuance lost in writing plain text on the Internet vs. having a physical conversation with one. Few people, if any, have ever been convinced to change their view point based on Internet discussion.

People mostly choose their beliefs regardless of facts or science.

Re: Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

#244

Post by mFixman »

fsflover wrote: post #225
mFixman wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there any serious unpredictable danger for people living near Chernobyl? The towns surrounding Chernobyl were completely evacuated. This can happen again. In Germany, the government of Aachen is giving iodine tablets and asked its people to prepare for an eventual nuclear catastrophe because of the nearby nuclear power plant behind the border with Belgium [1]. The nuclear power station was designed to run 30 yea…

> The towns surrounding Chernobyl were completely evacuated. This can happen again. This is just FUD. There is no reasonable possibility of that.

I might be missing some information, but why not?

The Chernobyl disaster happened on a world power with strong scientific and engineering capabilities. I don't see how a power plant that's 15 years over expiration date like Tihange couldn't be a couple of serious mistakes away from a similar catastrophic meltdown.

This is not "Tihange will definitely melt down". This is "there's a small chance Tihange might melt down and render a significant part of Belgium and Germany uninhabitable like parts of Ukraine and Belarus are uninhabitable now" which to me is unacceptable.

Re: Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

#245

Post by fsflover »

mFixman wrote: post #244
fsflover wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The towns surrounding Chernobyl were completely evacuated. This can happen again. This is just FUD. There is no reasonable possibility of that.

I might be missing some information, but why not? The Chernobyl disaster happened on a world power with strong scientific and engineering capabilities. I don't see how a power plant that's 15 years over expiration date like Tihange couldn't be a couple of serious mistakes away from a similar catastrophic meltdown. This is not "Tihange will definitely melt down". This is "there's a small chance Tihange might melt down…

We know pretty well what happened with Cehrnobyl and why and the current state of the reactor. There is no magic there, just science.

Re: Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

#246

Post by paranoidrobot »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #232
hntrader wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think of the claims of user "corty" elsewhere in this thread, who seems to say that nuclear isn't unsuitable for this situation?

The primary problem with nuclear is the fact that it's insanely expensive. If you're not running it flat out 24/7, then the cost per MWh goes up dramatically.

Of all the other energy sources, it's the only one where we have to put serious consideration into warning people not to dig up the waste, and how to keep them from doing it thousands of years from now.

Re: Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

#247

Post by pfdietz »

mpweiher wrote: post #171
bjourne wrote: post #50

The article does not explain why nuclear must be part of the energy solution. In fact, the argument seem to be that nuclear has been the target of fear mongering from environmentalists and therefore nuclear must be a part of the energy solution which is a fallacy. Germany has decommissioned numerous nuclear plants (Energiewende) and yet its GDP is up and its coal consumption down. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/fact…

> The article does not explain why nuclear must be part of the energy solution. 1. "it generates baseload electricity with no output of carbon," 2. "nuclear power plants operate at much higher capacity factors than renewable energy sources or fossil fuels." 3. "Third, nuclear power releases less radiation into the environment than any other major energy source. " Now you might not agree with the explanations, but to…

Non sequiturs are not explanations. None of those claims imply nuclear must be part of the energy solution.

Re: Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

#248

Post by opo »

justatdotin wrote: post #76
konjin wrote: post #2

No other fuel has the energy density of nuclear, no other source has the capability to run 24/7/365. Renewables are based on the hope that one day we will either had transcontinental grids, which no one has managed to build, or get batteries with energy storage seen only in Star Trek. Nuclear on the other hand has been here for 50 years and could have already solved our CO2 problems. But because it's unfashinable to…

nuclear doesnt run 24/7/365

It is pretty close to that and very good compared to other sources of power:

>...Nuclear has the highest capacity factor of any other energy source—producing reliable, carbon-free power more than 92% of the time in 2016. That’s nearly twice as reliable as a coal (48%) or natural gas (57%) plant and almost 3 times more often than wind (35%) and solar (25%) plants.

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity

Re: Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

#249

Post by pfdietz »

DrBazza wrote: post #46
pif wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't understand the downvotes you got. You pushed may be a bit on political stereotypes, but other than that you just stated the facts.

There's a lot of anti-nuclear sentiment on HN. Anyone that's in favour of it seems to always get downvoted.

There's a lot of aggressively clueless pro-nuclear sentiment. It gets downvoted because of the cluelessness, not because it's pro-nuclear.

One does wonder why the pro-nuclear arguments are so often so egregiously flawed. It's almost as if good arguments for nuclear are difficult to find.

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