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Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

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Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#271

Post by ZeroGravitas »

It's a shame that this totally genuine supporter of nuclear power doesn't believe in electric vehicles. You'd think EVs and nuclear would make a great pairing. But no, strangely, in his opening paragraph in this very honest attempt to sell nuclear power to a skeptical public he's more worried about gasoline costs and silly politicians subsidizing uneconomic cars. Hmmm, whatever could he mean by that surprisingly vague swipe.

> The United States has only 241 coal units in operation, so shuttering them would be a meaningless exercise in virtue-signaling.

I'm beginning to doubt the authors sincerity in seeking solutions to this problem.

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#272

Post by ojosilva »

stavros wrote: post #244
shirro wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hedging bets is fine but there is a lot of money and influence using nuclear to muddy the climate debate and reframe the the issue as nuclear power vs greens/environmentalists. People should be aware of how the debate is being manipulated by fossil fuel apologists/lobbyists. The moment people blame things on tree huggers they have fallen into the trap. Tree huggers are not the problem. The problem is carbon emissions…

I know people that do this. No amount of "fossil is the enemy, not solar" can convince them, and they keep posting anti-solar/pro-nuclear propaganda.

This is what I tell them pro-nuclearists, who mostly, in my circles, tend to be engineers or tech-savy minds with a better-is-better mindset:

Nuclear is the mainframe. Let's just concede, for the sake of argument: the hands-down better, more reliable tech.

Renewables is the distributed. Worse but worse-is-better [1]. Setup and investment is incremental. Take down and/or upgrading is also simpler. There's huge traction in the battery and renewable tech ecossystem. The lower entry barrier makes it a competitive, highly decentralized market where costs are going down fast. There are "killer apps" and a constant flow of innovation happening everywhere else too, outside of power generation: from cars, to airplanes to homes. And it's all that swarm, and not a single "because it's better", that makes the renewable+battery duo the winner.

Maybe nuclear could have been that distributed, pop energy too, but the fact today, for various well-known reasons (regulation, monopoly, distrust...) it isn't. And, by the looks of it, it probably won't be in the future. Nuclear failed to capture the traction in the West for decades already. Just like the IBM mainframe it's not going away, and it's a perfectly good solution for some people (banks for the mainframe, China for nuclear in this metaphore). But most of us are heading into a "cloud" of multi-tiered renewable tech solutions and nothing can stop it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#273

Post by Krasnol »

opo wrote: post #203
KarlKemp wrote: post #35

The International Monetary Fond, not known to be populated by treehugging hippies with naturalistic fallacies as a major character trait, published this beautiful graph: https://blogs.imf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/eng-april-4... Nuclear now costs three times as much as solar & wind! And that data ist from 2017. Both technologies are also not showing any slowdown in improvements, while nuclear tends to get more e…

Cost should always be a consideration, but when you see people conveniently ignore some costs and focus on others, it does a disservice to the goal of decarbonizing the grid and it isn't clear what they are really trying to accomplish. The levelized cost for residential rooftop solar is about as high as nuclear, but that cost doesn't seem to matter to some advocates and they continue to strongly support subsidizing i…

I like how you talk about ignoring costs but don't even scratch on that nuclear waste burden which generations will have to carry.

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#274

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

gefhfff wrote: post #144
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is more expensive mostly because the government creates economic incentives for renewables, and disencentivises nuclear. Politicians act this way because public was taught by the militant ecoactivists that nuclear energy is baaaaaaad (better use coal, right), and now vote against politicians that support it.

Look at global prices: https://amp.dw.com/en/nuclear-climate-mycle-schneider-renewa...

That +33% rise in nuclear energy prices is precisely what I'm talking about. It is a product of relentless attacks on nuclear power. Had it seen the same promotion and investment as solar/wind over the last 20 years, it would be -90% too.

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#275

Post by fsflover »

sfifs wrote: post #148
shirro wrote: post #40

Nuclear is one of a number of alternatives that needs to be seriously considered but due to the long timelines and high costs of nuclear it is also one of the best stalling tactics for the fossil fuel industry seeking to extend the life of their assets. Possible increased adoption of nuclear in the future is not a reason to avoid setting sunset dates for emitting technologies now and commence transition to whatever l…

Nuclear is socially and therefore politically non-viable because (1) When nuclear accidents happen, they suddenly overturn the lives of a LOT of commoners all at once as opposed to slow and creeping and often "statistically determined" impact of other energy tech (2) technocrats have consistently failed to demonstrate the ability to create organisations that over the long term prioritize safety and the ability to pre…

Planes are socially and therefore politically non-viable because

(1) When flight accidents happen, they suddenly overturn the lives of a LOT of commoners all at once as opposed to slow and creeping and often "statistically determined" impact of cars

(2) technocrats have consistently failed to demonstrate the ability to create organisations that over the long term prioritize safety and the ability to prevent accidents over all else

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#276

Post by CapricornNoble »

throwoutway wrote: post #156
sfifs wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is socially and therefore politically non-viable because (1) When nuclear accidents happen, they suddenly overturn the lives of a LOT of commoners all at once as opposed to slow and creeping and often "statistically determined" impact of other energy tech (2) technocrats have consistently failed to demonstrate the ability to create organisations that over the long term prioritize safety and the ability to pre…

> (maybe with the exception of US Naval Reactors org - but who knows given the secracy) Then perhaps the US Navy and their US Navy Corps of Engineers need to be tasked with building & maintaining a system of land-based reactors

I said the same a few months ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28219660 ). Maybe if we keep repeating this the idea can gain some traction.

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#277

Post by throwoutway »

naasking wrote: post #128
stjohnswarts wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't afford to wait or not to hedge our bets. Nuclear is a hell of a hedge since we know it works. We know the French model works really well, but for some reason we, the country with the most heavily armed forces in the world, can't "protect" it. BS, moneyed interests and tree huggers are keeping us from fixing the problem until fusion comes along or uber cheap battery density 100x better than what we have curre…

Easily processed uranium will last us 80 years at current consumption rates. If you start building current nuclear reactor designs everywhere, we'll run out of it in less than 40 years. Then the price will skyrocket, and nuclear is already more expensive than renewables. We need different nuclear reactors, fast reactors or thorium that use uranium more efficiently to stave this off, but they're more dangerous and sti…

> we'll run out of it in less than 40 years.

This isn't a reason to not do it. That gives us 40 years to figure out alternative processing patterns or alternative energy production.

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#278

Post by mrjangles »

7952 wrote: post #256
mrjangles wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar, wind plus batteries (and other intermittent sources) are only cheaper because it is subsidized by the base power stations. Only about 20% of the cost of coal and 5% of nuclear comes from the fuel. Almost all costs are fixed costs. They need to be paid regardless of whether people use the power or not. But in the current system, those who use solar or wind and only use base power occasionally aren't paying thos…

What you are talking about is the marginal cost of producing an extra kWh of electricity. That does vary between different sources. For nuclear, solar and wind it is exceptionally low. For gas and coal it is higher due to fuel costs and market volatility (see gas prices now). A further factor is how quickly a generator can turn on, maintenance costs, and fuel efficiency. Also, different locations have better grid con…

While it's nice to believe that through the magic of the market, everything just evens out, a simple thought experiment easily shows this isn't the case.

Take the simplest case and ignore CO2 and carbon tax for now. The base power stations have to be sufficient to supply the whole power grid when the wind doesn't blow, and the sun doesn't shine. Ok, so now imagine what happens if we simply remove all the solar panels and all the wind turbines. What happens? Nothing happens. The grid still works normally. In other words the cost of all those windmills, solar panels, their construction, their maintenance, etc, it is all extra cost that the consumer has to pay somehow.

So isn't the magic market supposed to fix all this? Why doesn't market dynamics take care of this? Because government regulation doesn't allow fixed power plants to charge a fixed yearly fee. If the government did allow this then the market would indeed price everything correctly.

Now if you add a carbon tax, having a number of windmills on the side does eventually become advantageous, but never compared to non-intermittent sources of renewable power like hydro or nuclear which could also charge this fixed yearly fee.

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#279

Post by mrjangles »

yellowapple wrote: post #186
mrjangles wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A solar farm that produces the same power as a nuclear power station (1GW) requires 1000 3MW turbines (33% efficiency) at 700 meters apart. That's 500 square kilometers of turbines (something like 200 square miles). I once did the calculation and it came out to something like 10 times as much concrete and steel to build the turbines as it would have taken to build the nuclear power plant.

Did you mean wind instead of solar? Or panels instead of turbines?

yes, I mean wind, thank you.

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#280

Post by moogly »

mrjangles wrote: post #96
bobthepanda wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Affordable by looking at any other measure than the balance sheet, maybe. Nuclear plants that are on time and on budget are exceptions, not the rule.

I read an excellent article written in Physics Today by a nuclear physicist once. For the life of me I have never been able to find it again. But he describes this in detail. Basically, in his description this is entirely due to the environmental movement. Any time a nuclear plant gets planned the green groups move in a mountain of lawyers and lock down the process for years and years. The costs this adds to the proj…

> In Europe, people have no problem building nuclear cheaply and on time

Very much no.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...

"The main contractor, Areva, is building the unit for a fixed price of €3 billion, so in principle, any construction costs above that price fall on Areva." [...] "The total cost of the project, therefore, is estimated to be €11 billion."

Since it's hard for me to track the scandals surrounding Areva and the different ownership structures of it, involving EDF, Framatome, TVO and who-knows-what-else, take this with a grain of salt, but I think the cost overruns may ultimately have to be paid by French tax payers?

"The construction of the unit began in 2005. The start of commercial operation was planned for 2010,[19] but has been pushed back several times.[20] As of August 2020, the estimate for start of regular production is June 2022.[21]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

"EDF estimated the cost at €3.3 billion[4] and stated it would start commercial operations in 2012, after construction lasting 54 months.[5] The latest cost estimate (July 2020) is at €19.1 billion, with commissioning planned tentatively at the end of 2022.[6][2]"

And there were also problems with the EPR reactor containment vessel EDF/Areva/Framatome delivered to China.

This is all from the foremost "experts" at fission plant production in France.

To my knowledge, only China has successfully (that we know) built new reactors lately.

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