Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable • Hacker News Board

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#101

Post by p_l » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:15 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #20

daneel_w wrote: post #16

In Europe everyone knows that. Even the craziest of our "greens" who insist on complete domestic decommissioning know it. The reason a few European countries are shutting their nuclear power plants down isn't because they think they are unsustainable, but because they fear they may be targeted and attacked. They currently view them as the combination of a sitting duck and a powder keg.

And not as cost efficient as renewables, which they all plan to continue expanding rapidly.

Cost efficiency of renewables is a problematic topic, because it tends to avoid discussing their intermittency, only how much power costs when they happen to work (which isn't under control).

So you have other side of the coin where renewable buildup ends up with fossil fuel burning to cover the inevitable shortages, while peak renewable low costs are used to badger dispatchable tech into non-existence

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#102

Post by bryanlarsen » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:15 PM UTC

p_l wrote: post #76

cedilla wrote: post #27

Nuclear energy is sustainable only with technology we don't have yet. All the affordable reactor designs with no risk of accidents or proliferation are just 10 years away like they have been for four decades. And the sea water plan relies on technology that has been shown to be theoretically possible but not yet shown to be remotely feasible. At the proposed scale of kilotons per year, this would require filtering hu…

A lot of the time it's because they are stuck in the same point for the last 10 years - "no funding for finishing 95% done tech because non-existant future storage tech will make renewables reliable"

Reliable solar power for $40/MWh:

https://www.energy-storage.news/developer-8minute-says-more-...

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#103

Post by jabl » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:16 PM UTC

p_l wrote: post #47

throwaway5752 wrote: post #6

1) there are no working thorium reactors 2) breeder reactors are hazardous 3) uranium seawater extraction doesn't exist 4) if uranium seawater extraction were made to work it would use enormous amounts of energy not reflected in this. The depressing truth is this shows that current uranium oxide reserves and nuclear tech could supply global energy needs for only 6 years.

1) Because we got rid of them for being annoying 2) Untrue. There are even breeder reactors with passive safety and very nice safety records, waylaid only by funding and partially by geopolitics (ok, coolant is expensive as hell, but that's because we don't mine enough bismuth) 3 & 4) Won't cover, not my area The thing is, where are you picking up ridiculous 6 years amount? Because it sounds like very, very cherry-pi…

> There are even breeder reactors with passive safety and very nice safety records, waylaid only by funding and partially by geopolitics (ok, coolant is expensive as hell, but that's because we don't mine enough bismuth)

Reactors cooled with lead-bismuth eutectic have a somewhat nasty problem of polonium production. To the extent we'll see lead-cooled reactors I'm more hopeful about plain lead. It has a higher melting temperature yes, but it seems workable. There are a couple of promising efforts in this direction.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#104

Post by fsh » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:16 PM UTC

Ottolay wrote: post #75

If only the world would have followed Sweden and France [1] and largely de-carbonized their electrical grid by the 90s using primarily nuclear, we would be in a much better situation when it comes to global warming. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France#/... It's 30 years later and countries which push renewables heavily like Germany still have over 40% of their electricity produced from carb…

According to TFA, conventional nuclear power plants would exhaust the available uranium resources in 5.7 years if used to provide 100% of the world primary energy. The world could not possibly have followed Sweden and France even if it wanted to.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#105

Post by cedilla » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:17 PM UTC

BitwiseFool wrote: post #85

Tepix wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the massive footprint you talk about? If we put enough solar panels to provide electricity for all humans into the Sahara desert, it only covers a small area.

When I say footprint, I'm alluding to installations like the Taihang Solar Farm in China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n731JjYSySY And, by footprint I mean the amount of space these panels occupy on the landscape. Putting solar farms in a desert is an attractive idea and way less impactful than covering hillsides in green and temperate areas. My understanding, though, is that the transmission of all that energy is…

Even if we created all our power from solar, it's negligible in land use compared to things like roads or agricultural land.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#106

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:17 PM UTC

Tepix wrote: post #69

dodobirdlord wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear energy is already sustainable with technology we have, breeder reactors and fuel reprocessing. They have been built since the 60s, some are still in operation, and more are under construction in India and China, where there is still an appetite for nuclear power.

We have this stuff on paper. Stuff tends not to work out in practise. It costs more, it's unreliable etc. If this were a solved problem why is there so much nuclear waste that has not been bred and reprocessed?

[deleted]

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#107

Post by Zigurd » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:17 PM UTC

andbberger wrote: post #57

mekkkkkk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever since Chernobyl nuclear power has been voter kryptonite. Trying to explain how all these fancy terms changes the equations won't do anything for those who recoil just by mentioning the term. Nuclear had its run and we blew it. Literally.

There have been plenty of environmental disasters caused by oil production and that's still going strong. Ongoing use of coal for power production emits radiation far exceeding that of Chernobyl and that's still going strong. Is it really political kryptonite or is that the oil lobby owns all of the politicians

Oil extraction is impressive as hell in terms of the capital that goes into it. It entails some of the most amazing engineering ever done. But the fact is that renewables capex is now almost as big and growing about as fast, at 15%, as oil capex is declining.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#108

Post by p_l » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:17 PM UTC

Ottolay wrote: post #25

mikepurvis wrote: post #7

Aren't breeder reactors mostly still on the drawing board? I get that they're very promising, but my understanding is that there remain some non-trivial issues to work out around corrosion and so on. Anyway, I'm totally a believer in nuclear power for a greener future (yay Michael Schellenberger), but we need to keep these discussions honest: the path forward is to right now be building hundreds of copy-paste instanc…

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor Japan and India also have them. The problem seems to be that at least the Sodium type are more expensive to operate than traditional nuclear plants, so even though the technology has been around for a while, no countries are building very many of them.

Another is the small modular SVBR-100, which is essentially civilian version of submarine reactor that could be packed onto single rail car, and has no sodium nor fluoride involved.

The problem is that since 1995 or so there was never enough funding to go to production.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#109

Post by ZeroGravitas » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:18 PM UTC

p_l wrote: post #70

dvh wrote: post #49

Right now, today, small village can take $30k from their budget and build small solar plant in their backyard in month or two, and then scale it up next year, and the next year. No multi-decade committees and multinational efforts needed. Nuclear will never be cheaper, solar is practically infinitely scalable. Time for nuclear was in the 80s, now that we have better options, we should pool all our resources into sola…

And that power will be uncontrollable, annoying on the grid (demand and supply must be in sync otherwise !FUN! happens), and costs of storage that make for fully renewable grid quickly eclipse costs of the more expensive nuclear options.

How would you build a fully nuclear grid without storage?

Seems a really weird thing for nuclear enthusiasts to mention.

It's like you're just passing on fossil fuel talking points without even reflecting on whether they make sense for nuclear.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#110

Post by mro_name » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:19 PM UTC

I find it amusing how easy we leave waste and decide for generations to come to deal with.

Plutonium has a half-life of 24110 years – it will take about ten of them until it's gone.

Just imagine the provision for 1 security guard's toilet paper for a quarter of a million of years.

It's always pipe-dreams like 'somebody will eventually have a genius idea about it'.