All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected • Hacker News Board

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#51

Post by beders » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 6:52 AM UTC

mlindner wrote: post #42

pickledolives wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don‘t forget all the CO2 emitted a) at mining and enriching uranium and b) in storing nuclear waste for 100000 years and c) in tearing down highly radioactive retired nuclear power plants. In Germany we started tearing down the GDRs only nuclear power plant in the early 90s and we‘re still not done. 30+ years of daily ops of a highly specialised destruction company operating heavy machinery requiring insulation from…

CO2 is only emitted during mining and refining because the grid itself isn't clean. The same thing is true of solar panels and batteries until the grid is made green. But you can't say "we can't make green tech because it would produce CO2" as it completely ignores the lifetime of things. > in storing nuclear waste for 100000 years That's a red herring. You only need to store nuclear waste for around 100 years (or le…

oh yeah, the French are so confident with their nuclear power plants they built many of them on their eastern border (with mostly west winds blowing any fall out nicely into Belgium and Germany)

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#52

Post by ddulaney » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 6:53 AM UTC

japanuspus wrote: post #10

arrrg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With renewables baseline doesn’t make sense. Nuclear doesn’t combine well with renewables, not in a way that would complete the picture. Meaning: you can’t build something that works with only those two building blocks. Even more: baseline is not at all needed with renewables. Renewables need to be combined with power sources that can be turned on and off quickly and on demand. Nuclear emphatically cannot provide tha…

This argument does not make a lot of sense without detailing which power sources that can turn on and off quickly you are talking about. The only ones I can think of are hydro and gas-powered thermal? So you want natural gas over nuclear? On the other hand, your comment presumes that there is such a thing as too much power. Once hydrolyzers mature, we could use all of the current renewable power in Europe just for pr…

In addition to hydro and fossil fuels, (most) energy storage setups are quickly dispatchable.

I don’t think the question is “is natural gas better than nuclear?”. It’s more “nuclear isn’t quickly dispatchable, which is what we need”. It’s not that gas is better than nuclear, it’s that they solve two different problems. Solar and wind need something to fill gaps when production fluctuates. Today that can be hydro or fossil fuels. In the near future, that will also be storage. For the foreseeable future, nuclear can’t fill that role.

Demand response is an interesting concept, and a subset of researchers have been pushing it for years. I’m skeptical that the economics would work out (large fixed costs mean that there’s pressure to run 24/7 and eat the high electricity prices), but I’d be happy to be proven wrong. That said, it doesn’t fix the fundamental problem that sometimes the wind dies at night, and something needs to turn on in the next 5 minutes or streetlights start going out. Right now, nuclear isn’t capable of filling that niche.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#53

Post by badmadrad » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 6:54 AM UTC

SllX wrote: post #8

whatever1 wrote: post #5

Neither the technology nor the fuel for nuclear plants are abundant or renewable. For example, can Iran build its own reactors? No. Can Somalia run its hypothetical reactors? No. Can Syria import enriched uranium? No. Can we have reactors without them blowing up every 50 years? No. Do we have a solution for containing nuclear waste without leaks and without ruining the local communities? No. Enough with this joke of…

Nuclear is essentially my canary in the coal mine for whether an American politician is taking climate change specifically seriously. If they’re not, then pretending to care is most likely cover for a whole bunch of other stupid crap. Unfortunately proliferation actually is a solid argument against nuclear fission outside of countries that are already nuclear-capable, but the major powers that are don’t really have t…

almost all politicians are using "climate change" as a fear based method of controlling the masses. nuclear would do to much damage to the narrative.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#54

Post by beders » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 6:54 AM UTC

rsj_hn wrote: post #50

beders wrote: post #46

Good. Focus on renewables + storage. Anything else is too costly and too late. (BTW, 10 countries are running on 95%-100% renewables now. Why can't the US?)

Maybe because the U.S. isn't Iceland or Norway? No country is actually running on solar and wind -- it's too variable. Norway is running on Hydro, Iceland is running on geothermal.

Newer data says otherwise. https://twitter.com/mzjacobson/status/1452771074119135237

And variability is easy to deal with: overbuild and/or storage. Southern Australia shows how it is done.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#55

Post by mlindner » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 6:54 AM UTC

What a dissappointment. Nuclear (of some kind, hoping for Fusion later) is a key component of any plan to stop global warming. Solar and Wind can get you to a greater than 50% green power production, but as you get closer to 100% you need exponentially more and more production and more and more transmission lines to handle dips and avoid blackouts from rare situations. You need a power generation source that is consistent.

At some point in the future we may have enough battery production for grid energy storage such that nuclear is not needed, but we are a long long way from that. Battery supply is growing rapidly, but not nearly rapidly enough.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#56

Post by Azsy » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 6:54 AM UTC

japanuspus wrote: post #10

arrrg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With renewables baseline doesn’t make sense. Nuclear doesn’t combine well with renewables, not in a way that would complete the picture. Meaning: you can’t build something that works with only those two building blocks. Even more: baseline is not at all needed with renewables. Renewables need to be combined with power sources that can be turned on and off quickly and on demand. Nuclear emphatically cannot provide tha…

This argument does not make a lot of sense without detailing which power sources that can turn on and off quickly you are talking about. The only ones I can think of are hydro and gas-powered thermal? So you want natural gas over nuclear? On the other hand, your comment presumes that there is such a thing as too much power. Once hydrolyzers mature, we could use all of the current renewable power in Europe just for pr…

You're missing a lot of background on how these markets work. And i'm not remotely qualified to explain them.

But, very broadly and simplistically speaking.

We are not even remotely close to living in a "We have too much power" world. ( Markets will change drastically then.)

All the nuclear supply has already been sold and is being constantly used 100% of the time. It never makes sense to turn off the nuclear power plant.

There is more demand then that, not meeting the demand is catastrophic.

If a popular sports is on TV and halftime everybody boils water, or the wind is unexpectedly low, or some part of the grid is having trouble.

We must still meet the demand.

Turning on a gas plant is the cheapest solution we have at the moment.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#57

Post by kergonath » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 6:55 AM UTC

arrrg wrote: post #6

chuckee wrote: post #3

It's so frustrating seeing nuclear pitted against renewables, while fossil fuel powerplants are still operating/being built, whose baseline power could be replaced by nuclear. But somehow the idea took hold that nuclear would be built instead of solar, and not instead of coal.

With renewables baseline doesn’t make sense. Nuclear doesn’t combine well with renewables, not in a way that would complete the picture. Meaning: you can’t build something that works with only those two building blocks. Even more: baseline is not at all needed with renewables. Renewables need to be combined with power sources that can be turned on and off quickly and on demand. Nuclear emphatically cannot provide tha…

Renewables and gas are not enough either: you need lots of storage anyway. Plus, at this point you’ve lost the plot because you are still burning fossil fuels. Without nuclear there is no scenario in which we stop carbon emissions without seriously decreasing energy consumption (about an order of magnitude in 50 years) or paying significantly more (tens of billions per year) and relying on hypothetical future technologies.

The arguments against nuclear are not really technical, and are overall incompatible with our energy supply getting rid of fossil fuel in the near term.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#58

Post by holomorphically » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 6:55 AM UTC

6510 wrote: post #37

holomorphically wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this good?

Nuke plants make great targets to bomb.

If the assumption is that the major world powers don't cooperate enough to tackle a global existential crisis then we're fucked even without someone bombing a nuclear power plant.

Nuclear is currently the only viable option for buying enough time to address all the other negative consequence of 2C+ of warming. All the other plans currently on the table are accelerating us towards 3C of warming and that essentially means human civilization as we now know it is over.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#59

Post by beders » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 6:56 AM UTC

beders wrote: post #46

Good. Focus on renewables + storage. Anything else is too costly and too late. (BTW, 10 countries are running on 95%-100% renewables now. Why can't the US?)

and the pro nuclear hacker news cohorts are already on their way down voting.

Do me a favor and google nuclear power plant opportunity cost and read.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#60

Post by mlindner » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 6:56 AM UTC

Goety wrote: post #19

Nuclear is not a palatable political solution for a lot of people and it is easily simpler to reject the proliferation of such materials. The current 'theater' from a geopolitical standpoint for nuclear is China and it does not appear to be succeeding well. I don't expect France to succeed given all that has occurred. Smaller nuclear devices will need constant care and monitoring that it is highly likely people will…

It's not palatable because of poor education. We need to be including nuclear in the list of green technologies in basic school science textbooks. We don't.