371–380 of 437 posts
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.
Especially when the incumbent, fossil fuel energy, has been propped up by subsidies and unpaid externalities for centuries.
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>the long-term benefit should be what it is held up against. how about the long term risk? we havent even figured out how to deal with plastics in the ocean and in our bodies let alone responsibly harness the atom. we're talking about a waste product that does not cease to create a danger for hundreds of years at minimum. Reactor 4 at chernobyl is predicted to be "safe" in 20,000 years and before you say thats an exc…
This is anti-science fear mongering for a variety of reasons. Most importantly, we need to consider the risks of NOT investing in nuclear, which are that we continue to burn fossil fuels while we pray for a solution for the renewable storage problem. This is a civilization-ending risk by which the worst nuclear disaster pales in comparison. > we havent even figured out how to deal with plastics in the ocean and in ou…
There is a lot of uranium ore in the ground already, much of it radioactive enough that it will absolutely cause illness if you live or work in its proximity (not even counting the radon it gives off).
Any analysis of the dangers of long term disposal shouldn't concern itself with risks comparable to that given by rich natural deposits of radioactive materials.
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Why compare against coal? It's all about to be phased out simply due to the cost of the steam side, which nuclear shares. Compare against wind and pv.
China is shifting their entire coal production to nuclear. America is shutting down nuclear and replacing it with? Coal. Wind and PV cannot handle the load requirements so you end up having to build coal anyway. I’m not against wind and PV. I’m just realistic about where the energy mixture has to look like to actually accomplish the goal of sustainable energy production. The earth can’t handle us dithering yet more o…
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HVDC transmission, pumped storage where the geography allows for it, and grid interconnectors allow for moving power between geographies. Seasonal deltas are solved for with overbuilding renewables and curtailment when there is oversupply. If nuclear was easy, it’d be done, but it isn’t because it is the more complex, more expensive technology. The sun is free and requires no human management. I cannot stress enough…
> If nuclear was easy, it’d be done It is done? It is easy? My power needs are completely served right now by hydroelectric and nuclear. Just because you don't have nuclear reactors in your neighborhood doesn't mean they're more out of reach than solar. HVDC is already widely available. Grid interconnects are mostly political. We looked at installing PV on a semi-remote home and it was not feasible. The roof was only…
That particular home design-- its siting, dimensions, energy usage, etc-- were just not viable in a particular energy environment. That doesn't mean that grid detached PV isn't viable-- many parties use it today-- it means it wasn't viable for that design.
A mostly insulated home wouldn't be a viable design in the arctic but they're acceptable designs in places with mild climates.
As the energy landscape changes some designs and locations that were viable in the past won't be viable anymore. There is no natural law entitlement for a given set of choices to work out. :)
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Earth gets hit by 170 000 TW of sunshine every hour. That's more than the yearly global consumption of energy. If we could capture only 1% of that, we'd have 80 times more than we need, from just the sunshine reaching earth. This makes the photovoltaic cell and related technologies more interesting than nuclear to me. A way more abundant energy source with none of the downsides of nuclear is clearly within our reach.…
You're missing a real technical limitation there, it's often call "the night". But eh, we will create some hydrogen-lithium batteries to store all this energy we need when we have "the night" (that seems to happen quite often).
Of course we need to build things, that goes without saying, but it's not "unknown imaginary things", we know how to store energy.
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Why compare against coal? It's all about to be phased out simply due to the cost of the steam side, which nuclear shares. Compare against wind and pv.
China is shifting their entire coal production to nuclear. America is shutting down nuclear and replacing it with? Coal. Wind and PV cannot handle the load requirements so you end up having to build coal anyway. I’m not against wind and PV. I’m just realistic about where the energy mixture has to look like to actually accomplish the goal of sustainable energy production. The earth can’t handle us dithering yet more o…
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...
Fossil generation peaked in 2007, as did generation from coal.
Coal plus gas generation in 2007 was 2913 TWh, composed of 2016 TWh from coal, 897 TWh from gas. In 2020 gas generation was up to 1617 TWh and coal was down to 774 TWh for a total of 2391 TWh (-522 from 2007).
Between 2007 and 2020, renewables grew from 353 TWh to 792 TWh (+439 from 2007).
Read between the lines. It's not about the best solution(s), it's about _their_ solution. Nuclear solves the problem they champion, which means, it negates the need for their efforts and existence (economic). Ironically, the rejection of nuclear as a viable option seems to be the result of a psychological existential threat to the supposed "elite" of our world. The mask is off. Protecting the future of humanity isn't…
The reason nuclear is unpopular is that it is expensive. It's more expensive than coal and gas typically. It's also very slow to deploy. A decade is nothing. We'll hit 2035 when several countries are planning to be 100% renewable powered in about 13 years. That's not a lot of time to build a meaningful amount of nuclear plants. Nuclear plants coming online recently are not great examples of speedily execution on a ti…
It wouldn't be if coal and gas were forced to completely capture their carbon externalities-- (e.g. recapture and storage).
Since much of the energy we get from burning coal just comes from liberating the carbon from a nice stored form in the first place, I wouldn't even assume that in a no-carbon-externality-world if coal was even an energy source at all.
Here is a recent article rather than the linked statement by a lobby group: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/nuclear-power-s-awkward-role-in-... This provides a lot more information and context about what is actually happening as well as what the "green zone" is (as opposed to the "blue zone")... as well as maybe a bit of unnecessary editorializing too! (I would add that the HN link name is misleading here, what applicati…
The protests by this lobby group are targeted at the greenzone, yes, but the entirety of COP26 ignores Nuclear as a viable option. You may review the stated agendas of the leading participants or the goals they have published. The global minimum alternative tax is a higher priority this week than anything climate.
China is building a lot of plants now too, they will want to sell that technology and build for others.
I can understand why COP wouldn't be keen to have prominent nuclear stuff in the public areas, nuclear isn't very popular with the general public. But the host country is commissioning new plants right now, they obviously see it as a viable option, so it has a seat at the table at COP26.
I haven't heard a peep about global minimum taxes as it relates to COP26, maybe you are confused about the G20 meeting that just happened?
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Batteries turn on and off quickly
Because we all have enough batteries, right? You need enough batteries to provide hundreds of megawatts of quick power daily. See Figure E.2 https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2011/load-following-npp...
There are multiple utility scale competing battery technologies becoming quite mature and Thats a good thing. Especially if one or more of them are viable.
It’s almost certainly easier and faster to scale battery tech than it has been nuclear.
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> No you don't from your arguments. One can be a fan of something without trying to blindly apply it to areas where it doesn't make sense. > nuclear reactors designs from the 70s are statistically safer than coal. And kill a lot less than coal. That's a strawman's argument, I'm not arguing for coal, I'm arguing for storage of renewables. > France had one of the cheapest electricity in Europe for 3 decades [...] Nucle…
> One can be a fan of something without trying to blindly apply it to areas where it doesn't make sense. Starting a discussion with a "I'm a huge fan" before spending the next 10 min to debunk the thing is not "being a fan of" but just a sign of being hypocritical, or manuipulative or both. > That's a strawman's argument, I'm not arguing for coal, I'm arguing for storage of renewables. Renewable alone (Without Coal o…
> Renewable alone (Without Coal or Gas) implies nationally to have close to 100% of the production capacity in storage alone (Battery, power2Gas or hydro storage) to compensate solar / wind intermittency. Which no country on Earth is able to do right now
again, straw man's argument. No country is close to 100% nuclear power either. France is pretty far, and they are sitting at less than 70%. and the reactors they are trying to build to increase this number are plagued by budget and timescale overruns of massive proportions. See the new safer EPR designs they have been trying to build since 2005, which are still not finished and have already consumed more than 300% of the initial projected cost [1]. it is delusional to believe we can somehow quickly scale nuclear power to the capacity needed to combat climate change.
cursing and claiming that things are a joke that have already been successfully demonstrated is not going to help make your point...
[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a33499619/fr...