Nuclear Power in France • Hacker News Board

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#61

Post by olivermarks » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

i think advanced modular small nuclear reactors are the only viable way forward if we are to have a predominantly electrically powered future society.

'The term “modular” in the context of SMRs refers to the ability to fabricate major components of the nuclear steam supply system in a factory environment and ship to the point of use. Even though current large nuclear power plants incorporate factory-fabricated components (or modules) into their designs, a substantial amount of field work is still required to assemble components into an operational power plant. SMRs are envisioned to require limited on-site preparation and substantially reduce the lengthy construction times that are typical of the larger units. SMRs provide simplicity of design, enhanced safety features, the economics and quality afforded by factory production, and more flexibility (financing, siting, sizing, and end-use applications) compared to larger nuclear power plants. Additional modules can be added incrementally as demand for energy increases'.

https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-small-modular-reactors-sm...

Most people are still thinking last century enormous reactors. Electricity does not travel well and a network of modular reactors provides enormous opportunity for housing development in areas that are hard to get power to.

I am no longer enthusiastic about solar or wind power except for fringe augmentation of grids

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#62

Post by lazide » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

cogman10 wrote: post #35

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is always touted as such a good idea on this site, but I want to take the opposite stance. - Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%. If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. - Nuclear waste is difficult t…

Of the things you've listed, I think the costs are really the only argument against nuclear. The inherit risks are supremely low and the catastrophic failure mode for nuclear plants isn't a nuclear winter, in the absolutely worst case it's a contamination of the area where the plant was built (Modern nukes are all about containing failures. So even while they've optimized for not failing, they've also optimized for w…

Even crazier - attacking the power lines doesn’t even require bolt cutters. A ballon or toy drone and some aluminized string or thin wire is more than enough to have it blow itself up.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#63

Post by lm28469 » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #19

redm wrote: post #2

"Government policy is to reduce this to 50% by 2035." I'm no expert on Nuclear power but it seems to me were going in the wrong direction. At a time when we're investing so much money in other fuels, we could be investing that in better nuclear power, like Small Modular Reactors [1], Sodium Cooled Fission, Small Pellet reactors, etc. [2] [1] https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-small-modular-reactors-sm... [2] https://…

Nuclear is always touted as such a good idea on this site, but I want to take the opposite stance. - Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%. If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. - Nuclear waste is difficult t…

> Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%

You're breathing coal and gas byproducts every single day, byproducts which are taking years of life expectancy, and it doesn't seem to bother anyone, but oh god "Chernobyl bad, let's close perfectly safe and working nuclear reactors". Germany is firing up coal plants because they're decomissining their nuclear reactors in favour of intermittent energy sources (Germany kwh price is 2x compared to France), we simply don't have time to do both at the same time

> Nuclear waste is difficult to deal with.

Intermittent energy sources produce a huge amount of waste and are a pain in the ass to recycle, not even talking about how to store that energy for later use.

> Nuclear is centralized, and vulnerable to attack.

Sure, but if a country is bold enough to start attacking nuclear reactors you can be sure you're not too far from full scale war and at that point it'll just be a small detail in the vast amount of violence and destruction that will ensue.

> Nuclear plants take ages to build, and are insanely expensive.

There is no magic bullet here, solar and wind are also a major pain in the ass to build and maintain. We have 8000 windmills in France, we'd need 55 000 running at 100% to produce enough energy for our current use

> I cannot fathom why nuclear is preferred to a safe, distributed, clean grid of solar panels.

Because there is no such thing

Intermittent energy sources only work if we stop using more and more energy, but since GDP = energy we're fucked [0]. We can't decommission both gas and nuclear at the same time and keep the same quality of life / growth expectations with solar and wind.

[0] https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/energy-and-us/wha...

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#64

Post by ZetaZero » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

orangepurple wrote: post #29

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is always touted as such a good idea on this site, but I want to take the opposite stance. - Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%. If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. - Nuclear waste is difficult t…

If nuclear core meltdowns can be fully contained by design the risk is mitigated. For instance with newer designs of smaller portable reactors by NuScale

"That’s impossible, an RBMK reactor can’t explode."

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#65

Post by eldaisfish » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

cogman10 wrote: post #51

shakow wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. We do people focus so much on the danger aspect of nuclear energy only? Why not the thousands of people who died of dam break, the millions who die of lung failure due to exposure to polluants, or, the elephant in the room, the dozens of millions whoe die and will die of climate change? Sure, it's very sad that a han…

> Ah yes, remind me how many windmills we would need to produce as much energey as a NPP? Here's an infographic on that very subject :) https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/infographic-how-much-powe...

this is an oversimplified and thus misleading comparison. A nuclear (or any fuel-controlled generator) can generate power at-will i.e. on demand.

No wind or solar generator can do this and before you say batteries, no battery in existence can power a medium-sized city for more than a few minutes.

These comparisons are usually presented as an aggregated amount of energy over a year and completely ignore the fact that at some points in time, the power output of entire fleets of wind and solar generators is zero.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#66

Post by lm28469 » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

shakow wrote: post #34

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is always touted as such a good idea on this site, but I want to take the opposite stance. - Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%. If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. - Nuclear waste is difficult t…

> If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. We do people focus so much on the danger aspect of nuclear energy only? Why not the thousands of people who died of dam break, the millions who die of lung failure due to exposure to polluants, or, the elephant in the room, the dozens of millions whoe die and will die of climate change? Sure, it's very sad that a han…

> We do people focus so much on the danger aspect of nuclear energy only?

Because nuclear = bad word / bombs / chernobyl

They don't mind living in cities and breathing cars exhaust all day long even though it shaves years of their lives though. Real world boiling frog situation

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#67

Post by pjscott » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #19

redm wrote: post #2

"Government policy is to reduce this to 50% by 2035." I'm no expert on Nuclear power but it seems to me were going in the wrong direction. At a time when we're investing so much money in other fuels, we could be investing that in better nuclear power, like Small Modular Reactors [1], Sodium Cooled Fission, Small Pellet reactors, etc. [2] [1] https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-small-modular-reactors-sm... [2] https://…

Nuclear is always touted as such a good idea on this site, but I want to take the opposite stance. - Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%. If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. - Nuclear waste is difficult t…

> - Nuclear plants take ages to build, and are insanely expensive.

If you look at the list of reactors in the article, most of them took only 5-6 years to build. Between 1977 and 1987, a ten-year span of time, they added 45 GW of nuclear power to the grid. Do nuclear plants really take ages to build?

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#68

Post by andrewxdiamond » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

shakow wrote: post #34

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is always touted as such a good idea on this site, but I want to take the opposite stance. - Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%. If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. - Nuclear waste is difficult t…

> If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. We do people focus so much on the danger aspect of nuclear energy only? Why not the thousands of people who died of dam break, the millions who die of lung failure due to exposure to polluants, or, the elephant in the room, the dozens of millions whoe die and will die of climate change? Sure, it's very sad that a han…

The tone here is much more patronizing than required.

> We do people focus so much on the danger aspect of nuclear energy only?

Because nuclear is the only one with multigenerational risks that can make entire regions inhabitable. A damn break is deadly, a nuclear meltdown is potentially significantly way worse.

> Such a way to waste my Sunday.

Hiding waste is not a viable solution to dealing with it, regardless of the risk of finding it. We used to be quite content with dumping regular trash into holes, until we realized that didn’t scale either.

> Ah yes, remind me how many windmills we would need to produce as much energey as a NPP?

Windmill vs nuclear powerplant space is not a 1:1 comparison. Windmill fields are very sparse, and you came safely use the land underneath for farming or other uses. Not to mention the ecological devastation related to ruining a square mile of land permanently for centuries. You cans just change an entire miles worth of drainage and soil without damaging the area around it.

Additionally, I said nothing about windmills. I said solar. We have millions of rooftops across the nation that have no solar yet would benefit. That land is free as far as space is concerned; it’s unused.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#69

Post by corban1 » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

Nuclear is clean, it is safe but it is not cheap. It's safe and clean because of it's moderately priced. I stand by nuclear because it's cleanness and safeness which can't be compared to anything else.

What will we generate electricity with in non-windy cloudy days? Coal? LNG? ESS? Note that all of those options are more dangerous, more expensive and more dirty than nuclear.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#70

Post by arrosenberg » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

beders wrote: post #6

Note how France conveniently placed many of their nuclear power plants close to their eastern border. With winds coming from the west most time of the year... Sneaky.

Those plants put out non-radioactive steam, while the Ruhr Valley coal that is used on the other side of the border puts out highly-radioactive fly ash.