Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online • Hacker News Board

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#341

Post by ars » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 12:17 AM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #302

ars wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A hundered thousand years of safe storage is not part of the calculation of the energy price. It's completely unnecessary to do that. So many people have this misconception. If you combine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor you burn up everything, leaving very little waste.

From your very own linked Wikipedia page: > In 2010 the International Panel on Fissile Materials said "After six decades and the expenditure of the equivalent of tens of billions of dollars, the promise of breeder reactors remains largely unfulfilled and efforts to commercialize them have been steadily cut back in most countries".

Like many energy things, this is a money question, not a technology question. (There are functioning breeder reactors today, but they cost more.)

If it was important enough we could do it. The government could also mandate it, and we could feed them all the existing nuclear waste.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#342

Post by fomine3 » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 12:25 AM UTC

loeg wrote: post #135

ashtonkem wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re being glib, but the issue is that you can’t guarantee the alignment of sun and wind to match demand. Sometimes the wind blows at night, yes, but sometimes it does not. On a pure renewable grid, no wind at night means rolling brownouts or blackouts. This is particularly problematic during the summer when people want to run AC in order to sleep, and will also be an issue when people move to electric heat…

> Right now the choice is between a nuclear power plant during these moments, or a natural gas one. Well, gas and coal. Germany is still ~26% coal in 2021[1]. Edit: Maybe 50% coal if you look at consumption, not just generation, per 'incrudible[2]. [1]: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g... (Lignite is a kind of coal) [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28857398

In this future use case, is coal plant really evil, or acceptable?

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#343

Post by rob_c » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 12:29 AM UTC

legulere wrote: post #52

rob_c wrote: post #2

Wish it was invest and expand and not please don't decommission. It's a win, win, win when played right...

That would be unwise though, considering that building nuclear power plants is slower and more expensive than wind and solar in Europe.

That's a very poor argument against a very viable low carbon power source

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#344

Post by rob_c » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 12:33 AM UTC

asdff wrote: post #130

Nasrudith wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soon isn't a thing that happens with power grids in any normal sense. The big capex in creation means that you need big differences in cost to justify an early shutdown. You also have to the new working before turning off the old, contrary to political preferences to destroy the old and then try to make the new work. Plant modifications are smaller in cost usually - so swapping a coal plant to burn natural gas becaus…

What happens when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine? Where does the energy come from? Today, when that happens, the energy comes from natural gas and coal during these times when European renewables are unable to generate much power. All this expectation that we will be on renewables by X date hinges upon developments in battery storage capabilities by X date that have yet to materialize. On the other h…

Not too mention the problems with various batteries such as longevity, capacity, location and safety. Applies to gravity, ion and gas energy storage unfortunately, not as easy as lower and raise the control rods in a predictable manner unlike our eastern European friends.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#345

Post by ashtonkem » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 12:34 AM UTC

fulafel wrote: post #275

ashtonkem wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An observation of Griddy during the Texas disaster shows that we should be very careful in designing a real time price mechanism that’s applied to consumers. In the worst case this can take the form of passing all the risk and cost onto consumers who cannot handle this. This is particularly pernicious for HVAC, because during outages this puts consumers in the un-enviable position of deciding between their savings an…

The disaster scenario "no matter what" power can come from regulated backup turbines and emergency (fossil) fuel reserves I think. It's a separate/saparable subproblem. Just make the normal power companies pay a lot for tapping it, so there is disincentive to purpousefully use it.

That plan only works if we still have a functioning oil extraction and refinement system, which is something we’re obviously trying to get away from. Given how hard petroleum products are to store, these “just in case” power generation systems would require an entirely redundant but ready to operate fuel production process in the case renewables failed. It’s doable, but the cost would be absurd.

Probably easier to leave a bunch of nuclear power plants in standby, actually.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#346

Post by andbberger » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 12:37 AM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #336

andbberger wrote: post #261

All the nuclear threads here are the same, and they're all deeply frustrating. HN isn't exactly a bastion of liberal speech (here fucked up conservative hot takes reign supreme) - but ostensibly the populace is more technically literate than average. Yet it's the same stupid bullshit every time. It's dangerous!!11!! fukushima! chernobyl!1!! > nope look at some statistics it's very safe ok, the waste!11! scary spicy r…

We've had nuclear power for 70 years and it hasn't exactly stopped CO2 emissions or made electricity too cheap to meter, and is much the same deal as it was 20 years ago. Solar etc. on the other hand is growing rapidly and exponentially.

what are you talking about the nuclear power plants of the world have prevented gigatons of CO2 emissions and could have gone a lot further if the decision makers weren't a bunch of nincompoops who share a bed with the oil lobby.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#347

Post by mistrial9 » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 12:41 AM UTC

Turing_Machine wrote: post #339

mistrial9 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a pinhead emits less light than the sun, too

I'm not really sure what you're driving at here. While there are certainly other nuances involved such as what kind of radiation is emitted (alpha, beta, gamma, neutron), and what the immediate fission products are, if all other factors are equal, the longer the half life, the less radioactive the material is. That's literally the definition. The really nasty isotopes are ones like Iodine-131 (half-life 8 days, has a…

your half-life example is technically correct, yet by making a fanciful example of "forty million billion trillion" rhetorically, it makes the statement of harm sound like "oh, 21,000 years of half-life is not at all harmful" .. I think you are aware that spent nuclear fuel is poisonous by any definition.

Second, the amount of material is not at all mentioned in your definition. One half of one gram of material, is not the same as the many kilograms of spent fuels from a working reactor, or the 2000 metric tons of spent fuel generated now in the USA each year. So I ridicule that in an unexpected way, with another extreme example, comparing something tiny, to something massively large that everyone knows.

There is some false confidence in my opinion, about "know the facts" of radiactive materials.. when bio-accumulation in the food chain, uncontained dispersion, poisoning fresh or salt waters where life exists, and human exposure over time, and repeated exposure, are serious things.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#348

Post by mistrial9 » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 12:54 AM UTC

baq wrote: post #235

LatteLazy wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear has basically three issues: Cost, Waste and Safety. Cost is already a lost cause for the new reactors. No one making them expects to break even without subsidies. For waste and safety, we'll see. But given it will take 40 years to tell and the last generations except the first were all sold as completely waste free and impervious to any incident... This is the big issue with nuclear: it will take 40 years and…

And the elephant in the room: we don’t have 40 years. We need those reactors today, at most in 5 or so years. Afterwards, they are too late. I’ve yet to see a reactor selling power to the grid 5 years after construction approval.

> We need those reactors today

conservation and efficiency are huge opportunities being squandered right now. "We need McDonalds right now" is almost similar -- superficial and demanding. Spend your own money on nukes then, tell everyone about how great they are

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#349

Post by ilyich » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 2:15 AM UTC

andbberger wrote: post #261

All the nuclear threads here are the same, and they're all deeply frustrating. HN isn't exactly a bastion of liberal speech (here fucked up conservative hot takes reign supreme) - but ostensibly the populace is more technically literate than average. Yet it's the same stupid bullshit every time. It's dangerous!!11!! fukushima! chernobyl!1!! > nope look at some statistics it's very safe ok, the waste!11! scary spicy r…

I wish I could upvote your comment a hundred times. I am astonished to see such technically literate populace just repeating mainstream bullshit propaganda instead of having their own thoughts. And it's not only regarding the nuclear but also about many other topics, especially politically charged.

Re: Intellectuals urge Germany to keep nuclear plants online

#350

Post by legulere » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 2:55 AM UTC

asdff wrote: post #82

legulere wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be unwise though, considering that building nuclear power plants is slower and more expensive than wind and solar in Europe.

Wind and solar in europe aren't going to get them off of fossil fuels anytime soon, while nuclear has had that capability since its inception.

That is factually incorrect. Even though politics blocked a faster increase of renewables Germany was able to greatly reduce fossil fuels usage for electricity production even while exiting nuclear: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Energiemix_Deutschland...

Nuclear currently is not able to that because of cost: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20201019_Levelized_C...

Also new nuclear reactor projects are getting finished too slow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#Plants_u...