Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

whatisnuclear.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 182 posts

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#161

Post by domsom »

p_l wrote: post #111
bryanlarsen wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Or you build a bit more capacity and use excess production on good days to produce co2 neutral gas (power to hydrogen to methan) that can also be stored in existing infrastructure.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#162

Post by p_l »

domsom wrote: post #161
p_l wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Or you build a bit more capacity and use excess production on good days to produce co2 neutral gas (power to hydrogen to methan) that can also be stored in existing infrastructure.

if by bit more you mean 10x, sure, and that's only cheaper than nuclear if you have convenient geological storage.

Overground storage quickly goes more expensive than nuclear.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#163

Post by p_l »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #154
p_l wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need large amounts of storage for nuclear-based power grid, only enough to provide frequency maintenance buffer while you change power output on the plant. You need huge storage amounts for renewables just to make sure you don't have rolling blackouts (undersupply vs. nuclear's oversupply) or, what happens in reality, fossil fuel backup. There is an equivalent of small village with fully renewable power gri…

Even coal or nuclear heavy grids have traditionally needed gas or pumped hydro to meet peaky demand. France got to like 75% of their electricity nuclear, with 10% hydro, but only 20% of heating electrified, giving about 2/5ths of total energy (though that's misleading as about half of fossil fuels is wasted as heat, so lets say they got over 50%), I don't think we can just handwave the other half away. So, clearly yo…

Nuclear is easier to dispatch than building enough storage. Fossil peakers are just cheaper and we are still operating on what brings most profit, not what's best for us long term.

Thing is, if you do have option for new pumped hydro, go for it. It's usually less problematic than normal hydrogeneration, and it's great storage system. I'm all for it where possible. For smoothing lead-following reactors, the storage tech we have is pretty good. More can be gained by moving inelastic but high inertia sinks to nuclear power - various material processing (steel, aluminum, etc.) as well as making green hydrogen (necessary not just for storage, but also for smelting - renewables really don't look good on green hydrogen without nuclear) and so on.

My imaginary best option is switching the financials of power generation to benefit any fully dispatchable sources - This is easier to do with nuclear or classic hydropower, but such categorisation would also allow for renewable Virtual Power Plants (i.e. mixed renewables and storage, possibly with some demand control). At the same time this would cut down on instability caused by peak renewable production cratering prices for everyone else.

At the same time, let's target for grid that has oversupply and switchable sinks like green hydrogen, climate-neutral fuels for things that can't be easily powered by grid, etc.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#164

Post by caeril »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #54
fsflover wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you care about a thousand-year problem but forget about the 50-year problem (climate change).

50 year problem? Climate change is an 8 year problem. That's the main reason that nuclear is infeasible, we can't do it in 8 years. We should have started building 100s of nuclear reactors 20 years ago. Doing it now is too late. Wind & solar + batteries can be built much quicker.

Our very first production civilian reactors went from no design and bare land to production in about 4.5 years.

Modern engineering, siting, and construction is tied up with regulatory approval processes, safety protocols, diversity and inclusion quotas, and NIMBYism that occupy the vast majority of timelines.

A prior civilization would have looked at a literal existential threat and been willing to risk a few desert turtles, a few extra construction workers' lives, and ignored some Karens to get the job done.

But we don't have that kind of civilization anymore. Regulation and safety protocols are great for societies not sitting at the edge of the Seneca Cliff, but they're pretty terrible when the ELE meteorite is en route.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#165

Post by caeril »

Tenoke wrote: post #11
OscarCunningham wrote: post #3

The calculations don't take into account growing energy usage. But anyone who understands exponential growth already knew that from looking at the title. EDIT: Title on the article is currently 'Nuclear fuel will last us for 4 billion years'. I recall that that was also the HN title when I wrote this comment, but I could have got mixed up.

Energy consumption seems to be increasing linearly since the 40s not exponentially and the increase has been slowing down - to 1-2% increase per year. https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption

We'll probably see that trend tick up again soon. Maybe you haven't been paying attention to the political climate, but there is a huge push to increase the living standards of 6 billion people up to the level of the 1 billion currently living in developed countries, whether through immigration or aid.

The relationship between living standards and energy use/carbon emissions is not exactly 1:1, but it's pretty close (net of offshoring one's personal emissions to China, India, etc). Get ready for about a 4x increase in carbon emissions if our suicidal empathy trend continues.

What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship's axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides.

― Pentti Linkola

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#166

Post by mro_name »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #153
mro_name wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

radioactivity isn't the only problematic property of plutonium.

But it's the one you mentioned. You're just trying to move the goal posts now.

strictly spoken: no. I mentioned the time it is around and not decayed yet. I didn't stress radiation, did I? Plutonium is very toxic. No more after decay, I guess. But that takes time as mentioned.

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#167

Post by Turing_Machine »

mro_name wrote: post #166
Turing_Machine wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's the one you mentioned. You're just trying to move the goal posts now.

strictly spoken: no. I mentioned the time it is around and not decayed yet. I didn't stress radiation, did I? Plutonium is very toxic. No more after decay, I guess. But that takes time as mentioned.

So is lead, and it has a half-life of infinity.

You were clearly using "long half-life" to imply "super bad!" when in actuality "long half-life" means "not very radioactive at all".

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#168

Post by nullsmack »

belorn wrote: post #159
jagermo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus, you know, storing the waste for thousands of years without a good place to do so. Payed for by the public.

They could have looked at the fossil fuel industry and released the waste into the air. Spread it out over a large enough area and people don't seem to mind as much, and living near such plant would possible be safer than living near a coal plant. The problem is that they stockpiled it, having the public pay the storage cost with taxes rather than with their health.

WTF No, this is how you kill a huge population with cancer at best and radiation sickness is still far more likely. What is wrong with you?

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#169

Post by ben_w »

p_l wrote: post #80
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.

And you would cause untold destruction to amazon rainforests, among other things. No, you can't just pave desert with panels and magically solve power generation without ugly environmental consequences, that doesn't work even in computer games.

> And you would cause untold destruction to amazon rainforests, among other things.

Why would putting all the panels in a desert do that to a rainforest on a different continent?

And how much of the Sahara do you think we’d need to cover in PV if for some strange reason we didn’t put any on rooftops, brownfield land, parking lots, car bodies, and (for most of the world) closer deserts?

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=area%20sahara%20%2F%20%...

Re: Nuclear energy is long-term sustainable

#170

Post by ben_w »

Vox_Leone wrote: post #53
dr_orpheus wrote: post #13

"However, billion-year sustainability does require advances in seawater uranium extraction..." This seems like a HUGE understatement. The calculations for the billion-year sustainability basically assume we have extracted every single bit of uranium from seawater. We have demonstrated extracting uranium from seawater [0] using plastic fibers with a compound that attracts the uranium+oxygen ions. But this would basica…

Anyway, mankind doesn't have 5Gy. In a mere 500My the sun`s output should make the planet uninhabitable. Even so, it's enough time for us to have two more pangeas.

Surprisingly, we can move the plant.

At least we could if we last that long and didn’t mess up the process, neither of which I would count on.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2001/jun/10/globalwa...

Post reply on HN