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Nuclear power may be the key to least-cost, zero-emission electricity systems

carnegiescience.edu

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Re: Nuclear power may be the key to least-cost, zero-emission electricity systems

#31

Post by poooogles »

shafyy wrote: post #11
Ekaros wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? It is not so bad deal... Also what other options we have, trade to toxic byproducts of renewables?

Are you seriously comparing the byproducts of creating renewable energy to the byproducts of nuclear energy? If you ask 100 people, 99 will tell you that they rather live next to a solar panel or a silicon extraction mine than next to a nuclear power plant or a uranium mine.

>99 will tell you that they rather live next to a solar panel or a silicon extraction mine than next to a nuclear power plant or a uranium mine.

I'd guess that most people would rather live near a solar panel or a nuclear plant than a mine. One is potentially dirty and disruptive, the other IS dirty and disruptive.

Re: Nuclear power may be the key to least-cost, zero-emission electricity systems

#32

Post by fsflover »

bipson wrote: post #13
fsflover wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There must be some stable backup for renewables. Nuclear is not perfect, but it's the best by a long shot compared to anything else, according to statistics (including all disasters!).

Nuclear is a terrible "backup" for renewables. Renewables fluctuate. Nuclear is not great at scaling, and most reactors cannot be shut down without taking weeks and months for safe re-starting. Nuclear is good for base load. And countries that have a lot of (really expensive) nuclear to cover their base load, have zero incentive to invest into renewables, since its output would just become surplus. For broad adoption…

> countries that have a lot of (really expensive) nuclear to cover their base load, have zero incentive to invest into renewables

Nuclear energy is green energy:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26673987

Re: Nuclear power may be the key to least-cost, zero-emission electricity systems

#33

Post by ls15 »

shafyy wrote: post #14
cameldrv wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes we do want to trade that. The toxic carbon byproduct goes into the air and causes massive disruption to the lives of billions of people. The toxic fission byproduct is tiny and goes underground in the middle of the desert and disrupts zero people's lives.

Because constructing nuclear power plants and mining uranium don't have toxic carbon byproducts? What are the toxic byproducts you are talking about specifically? > The toxic fission byproduct is tiny and goes underground in the middle of the desert and disrupts zero people's lives. Haha, if it were that easy. Nuclear waste can be radioactive up to 1 million years. Can you give me an example of a successful long-term…

> Can you give me an example of a successful long-term nuclear storage facility that exists today?

There are natural deposits of radioactive material and there have been natural nuclear reactors on our planet.

Re: Nuclear power may be the key to least-cost, zero-emission electricity systems

#34

Post by glogla »

kieranmaine wrote: post #17

These sentences sum up the article quite well: "Previous studies have shown that curbing 80 percent of carbon emissions can be achieved by ramping up wind and solar power harvesting installations" and "To nail down that last 10 or 20 percent of decarbonization, we need to have more tools in our toolbox, and not just wind and solar," The "more tools" may be nuclear or it may be storage, depending on the cost of both t…

I'm happy that this is getting some attention.

There will never he "just renewable" power grid due to renewables intermittency. The realistic options are renewables + some other energy source, or renewables + a lot of storage.

Renewables + storage has a problem: energy storage at scale is not a solved problem at all, either it is hard to build (pumped hydro) not scalable (batteries) or barely in PoC stages (various air storages and trains going uphill or whatever).

Renewables + other energy source has the problem of "what is the other energy source" and right now, that is fossil fuels - there's a lot of greenwashing going on with natural gas, for example, which is as bad as coal with regards to carbon due to all the methane escaping along the way.

Now the argument here is that without the storage being available, there has to be other energy source and in that case, the other energy source should be nuclear. Because the storage just doesn't exist so if the other energy source is not nuclear, it is going to be coal and gas.

But of course, people are just going to ignore the situation and parrot FUDs like "nuclear is too expensive" and "what about the waste", effectively pushing for coal and gas.

Re: Nuclear power may be the key to least-cost, zero-emission electricity systems

#35

Post by fsflover »

LatteLazy wrote: post #26

As always with nuclear the questions are cost, time and waste. Until there is an actual breakthrough on (at least) one of those three issues we're going no where.

Those are non-problems: https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html and https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html.

Re: Nuclear power may be the key to least-cost, zero-emission electricity systems

#36

Post by fsflover »

shafyy wrote: post #23
Fishman343 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power may be kicking the can down the road, but burning coal is just leaving the can for our immediate offspring already in their 20s and 30s. The article says least-cost, we're fresh out of perfect solutions.

What are you talking about? Of course coal is worse than nuclear power. The discussion is about renewables vs. nuclear.

There is no fight between renewables and nuclear. They need each other. It's a fight against coal.

Re: Nuclear power may be the key to least-cost, zero-emission electricity systems

#37

Post by Tepix »

LatteLazy wrote: post #26

As always with nuclear the questions are cost, time and waste. Until there is an actual breakthrough on (at least) one of those three issues we're going no where.

There are also safety and corruption.

Even in government owned nuclear plants (TEPCO) that don't have to optimize for profits we see these issues.

Re: Nuclear power may be the key to least-cost, zero-emission electricity systems

#38

Post by bipson »

fsflover wrote: post #32
bipson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is a terrible "backup" for renewables. Renewables fluctuate. Nuclear is not great at scaling, and most reactors cannot be shut down without taking weeks and months for safe re-starting. Nuclear is good for base load. And countries that have a lot of (really expensive) nuclear to cover their base load, have zero incentive to invest into renewables, since its output would just become surplus. For broad adoption…

> countries that have a lot of (really expensive) nuclear to cover their base load, have zero incentive to invest into renewables Nuclear energy is green energy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26673987

Let's say there are different opinions on that.

I won't adopt definitions forced by countries that also want natural gas plants to be categorized as "green" ("who cares what they emit?!")

Re: Nuclear power may be the key to least-cost, zero-emission electricity systems

#39

Post by glogla »

shafyy wrote: post #29
glogla wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? If you ask 100 people, 99 will tell you they would rather buy new electronics every year and throw away the old, and they would rider drive a huge SUV than walk or bike. That doesn't mean it's a good thing.

> If you ask 100 people, 99 will tell you they would rather buy new electronics every year and throw away the old, and they would rider drive a huge SUV than walk or bike. I don't think that's true. Anyways. We are comparing nuclear, radioactive waste that has the potential to make whole areas of land unlivable for decades if it touches them and stays radioactive for a million years to cadmium, which is much less tox…

One of them is a potential, the other is a certainty. By comparing just the effect and not the likelihood, you are getting biased results.

Re: Nuclear power may be the key to least-cost, zero-emission electricity systems

#40

Post by fdewnijfwg »

Kelteseth wrote: post #24
fdewnijfwg wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't want the toxic waste from Solar panel production nor the industrial waste or the noise pollution from windmills either. At some point we'll have to chose the lesser evil, and most of the good rivers have already been dammed so more hydro isn't really the solution. A combination of renewables, nuclear base power, reduced power needs, smart grid load management, and synth fuel production during peak production…

Solar panels are recyclable https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-releases/...

And that is _excellent_ news! We're still in the expansion phase when it comes to Solar, though, and there's no way we'll be able to get rid of fossil fuels using renewables only. Sure, we do have new and exciting tech in the pipeline, and maybe one day they'll suffice.

For now, we've got very few alternatives when it comes to base power generation. Biogas is probably one of the more interesting renewable power sources for base power (if we can ramp up production), but other than that, and leftovers from the wood industry, we're stuck at hydro and nuclear if we want to avoid fossil fuels. Last time I checked, there's no large-scale rollouts of modern power storage going on.

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