Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable • Hacker News Board

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#111

Post by p_l » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #96

BitwiseFool wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"But the problem nuclear is that either way, it's far too late." Sadly I see no other viable alternative. Wind and Solar are seemingly clean but require a ton of resources, have a massive footprint, and just don't scale with on-demand needs during bad weather. >"All the affordable reactor designs with no risk of accidents or proliferation are just 10 years away like they have been for four decades." No risk of accid…

> Wind and Solar are seemingly clean but require a ton of resources, We pull 700 million tonnes of oil out of the ground every year. The resources required to build a clean energy infrastructure is significantly less than that. > have a massive footprint, Powering the US with solar requires a smaller footprint than footprint of parking lots in the US. Wind is even less because while a wind farm is massive, it doesn't…

Except we need to ban also the gas peaker, and suddenly calculations might show that a) storage isn't as easy b) a lot of locations might need overbuilding on ratio of 10x IF there was good storage c) that gas peaker is going to run quite a lot otherwise

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#112

Post by mro_name » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:21 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…

France has an ugly war in Mali because of their dependance on yellowcake AFAIK.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#113

Post by oceanplexian » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #28

nine_k wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be pretty hard to advance the civilization from coal-based energy straight into nuclear / solar, without all the carbohydrates-powered cars, trucks, and airplanes in the meantime.

Has anyone actually looked into this in depth? It feels like a cheap throwaway line that you can use against new tech that's not really caught on yet, but as we're here in 2021 with EVs and nuclear power and wind turbines etc., what was actually stopping us getting there faster if we weren't distracted by oil? (either it magically didn't exist or somehow even more magically people succesfully priced in the carbon fro…

As crazy as it sounds, I think without oil civilization would have been set back 1000 years or more. We went from horse and buggy to space travel in a few decades, due in no small part to having a cheap, storable, high-density energy source that literally comes out of the ground.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#114

Post by p_l » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:22 PM UTC

cedilla wrote: post #92

rich_sasha wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All the affordable reactor designs with no risk of accidents or proliferation are just 10 years away like they have been for four decades. So, like storage for renewables? Seems to me, we're not concerned on R&D budgets, so we should pursue all relevant methods of decarbonisation, of which nuclear is a very promising one.

We are concerned on R&D budgets. Costs matter because costs represents material and personnel that needs to be devoted. We are also tight on time. Nuclear reactors take at least a decade to build. Oh, and while we have lots and lots of people and know-how in renewables, battery tech and transmission technology. We don't have that many people who can build reactors, due to the anti-nuclear trend of the last three deca…

We also have a) existing working designs for nuclear power b) existing paper designs for improved nuclear power.

Meanwhile c) we are working on getting paper designs for storage that might or might not work to get renewables good enough.

The starting point is vastly different.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#115

Post by ben_w » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

fsh wrote: post #104

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.

Breeder reactors are a thing. I think the reason we lost interest was down to not needing them rather than anything else, but am prepared to be wrong if that turns out to be an urban legend.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#116

Post by bryanlarsen » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:24 PM UTC

zeryx wrote: post #9

It's incredibly frusturating that this isn't part of the public discourse, where are the pro-nuclear candidates? Which parties are pro-nuclear?

Al Gore (as the representative for Oak Ridge) was pro-nuclear in 2000. If it wouldn't have been for hanging chads he probably would have started building some reactors because climate change was a big deal to him.

He's since changed his tune for the same reason I have -- nuclear is too expensive and too slow.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#117

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:25 PM UTC

fsh wrote: post #104

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.

[deleted]

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#118

Post by p_l » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:26 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #102

p_l wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

And it requires the exclusive use of very favourable terrain (for solar, which isn't available in many places) to provide what, 1/5th of what same sized nuclear facility could do (and that's me underplaying the capacity of the nuclear facility, it's even worse if you go for what's possible)

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#119

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #94

dahart wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your news article link appears to state that China hopes to build a thorium reactor. It doesn’t seem say one is up and running, does it, or did I miss something?

They’ve built one and plan to switch it on now, this month, and may have done so already. But the list of nuclear reactors that have used thorium as at least part of their fuel is surprisingly long. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#List_of_tho... I generally discount arguments that are in the form of: “we cannot commercialize this because it has not yet been commercialized.” But do thorium fueled reac…

[deleted]

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#120

Post by Ottolay » Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

fsh wrote: post #104

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.

Citation?