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

Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

austinvernon.site

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

611–620 of 672 posts

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#611

Post by TrispusAttucks »

TrispusAttucks wrote: post #23

Nuclear is not popular because the fossil fuel industry co-opt the environmentalist to fight on their behalf. We should have better developed nuclear for the last few decades and we would be in a much better energy posture. Especially for an EV future.

Since fossil fuels campaigning against nuclear is a "conspiracy theory". Here are some threads to pull on.

--

"At the top of the list of sources of antinuclear rumblings is, not surprisingly, the fossil fuel industry itself. There’s been a long and rather nefarious history of attacks from the fossil fuel industry against both supporters of nuclear power and the industry itself. We’ve seen documented instances of the funding of ads opposing nuclear power plants, such as this one by the Oil Heat Industry opposing the construction of the Shoreham Nuclear Power Station by LILCO, using the deceptive slogan “SOLAR, NOT NUCLEAR.”"

"Instead of actively engaging in the almost-expected business behaviour of criticising and opposing market competitors, they have followed a strategy of allowing surrogates to be the public faces of the opposition to nuclear energy.

As anti-nuclear surrogates successfully waged battles over safety, nuclear waste, siting, financing, regulations, radiation protection and exports constraints justified by carefully stoked fears of nuclear weapons proliferation, the fossil fuel industry took advantage of a slowing competitor."

[1] http://climatecoalition.org/how-american-petroleum-institute...

[2] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/V-Gloves-are-off-in-fossi...

[3] https://nonukebailoutpa.com/

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#612

Post by TrispusAttucks »

Krasnol wrote: post #357
SemanticStrengh wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason we don't have reactors that recycle nuclear wastes is because ecologists have attacked the next-gen model with a bazooka. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix#Rocket_attack This is why we can't have nice things, the ecologists have prevented the solutions from the issues that legitimate their political existence. In germany and in the U.S the shutdown of nuclear has been a blatant lobby too.

I've asked for sources on OPs conspiracy. Not for even more conspiracies.

Wow. I guess energy markets competing is a conspiracy. Pretty low bar.

Here you go:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31474041

Dig away

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#613

Post by pdonis »

Joeri wrote: post #251
pdonis wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only future for nuclear is going to be small, cheaper reactors that are quick to construct But even those will be nonstarters unless the regulatory environment is fixed. Nuclear has always been held to much, much stricter standards than any other energy source, for no good reason.

As far as I understand the regulation that exists was added to prevent disasters of the kind that occurred previously. You seem to be arguing some of the added regulations were unnecessary for safety? Which ones are they, and how much money can be saved by getting rid of them?

> As far as I understand the regulation that exists was added to prevent disasters of the kind that occurred previously.

What "disasters" are these that you speak of? In the US, which is the country with the most dysfunctional regulatory requirements on nuclear power, there have been no incidents with commercial nuclear reactors that have caused harm to the general public. The worst US incident, Three Mile Island, caused harm to a fair number of plant workers, but no members of the general public were harmed.

In comparison to the harm done by fossil fuel energy sources, nuclear isn't even in the same ballpark. For example, orders of magnitude more coal miners have been killed or severely injured than nuclear plant workers, even if we normalize by units of energy generated. Plus, if we take into account things like air pollution and its contribution to respiratory illness, there has been significant harm done to the general public by fossil fuels. Yet fossil fuels are regulated much less strictly than nuclear.

> You seem to be arguing some of the added regulations were unnecessary for safety?

I am saying that if we were really concerned about safety, we would have looked objectively at the harms caused by each energy source per unit of energy generated, and regulated them accordingly. That would have meant we would have shifted a large fraction of our base load power generation to nuclear energy decades ago, since per unit of energy generated it causes much less harm than fossil fuels. And when an incident like Three Mile Island happened, instead of panicking and acting like it was a world-shaking disaster, we would have looked objectively at what flaws in the plant design and operation the incident exposed, and fixed them, and gone on with nuclear power.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#614

Post by pdonis »

cycomanic wrote: post #248
pdonis wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only future for nuclear is going to be small, cheaper reactors that are quick to construct But even those will be nonstarters unless the regulatory environment is fixed. Nuclear has always been held to much, much stricter standards than any other energy source, for no good reason.

That's a myth. Regulatory requirements for all large scale power generation have to deal with very similar regulatory requirements, which typically scales with size of the project. In fact wind had likely to deal with more restrictions than nuclear (largely to protect the nuclear investments of operators), let's not even talk about certain housing communities not allowing rooftop solar for aesthetic reasons.

> Regulatory requirements for all large scale power generation have to deal with very similar regulatory requirements

As far as the general regulatory requirements for large scale power generation, that may be true. But there are additional requirements that nuclear has to meet that no other power source does. One is the completely irrational requirement for a waste disposal plan that has to last ten thousand years or more--instead of just reprocessing the waste, which is what every other country that uses nuclear energy does. That requirement alone basically killed nuclear power in the US for several decades.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#615

Post by Drblessing »

freemint wrote: post #595
Drblessing wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to estimate that, when putting $10^x into nuclear for serious R&D may yield surprising results. Also, why not benchmark $10^x in nuclear vs. $10^x in coal or fossil fuels?

> Hard to estimate that, when putting $10^x into nuclear for serious R&D may yield surprising results. It might however that money could spend making solar panel factories for enxt gen solar cells which yields real results. > Also, why not benchmark $10^x in nuclear vs. $10^x in coal or fossil fuels? You can do that comparison, however since coal is not competitive in that metric you will not learn anything about how…

Considering the current energy situation in Europe and America, I foresee $10^x going into coal/gas/fossil fuels soon.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#616

Post by Iwan-Zotow »

bbu wrote: post #180

Has anyone built a facility to store the waste for 1 million years yet? I think Finland is the only country in earth who started for real. It is mind boggling to me that people even consider building more waste before having the slightest idea what to do with nuclear waste. And the talking about how clean it is. Lol.

No. China, Russia and India are the only countries who started for real. Thermals reactors waste to fuel fast reactors. France used to be, but dropped out of the race

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#617

Post by Iwan-Zotow »

likecarter wrote: post #33
SemanticStrengh wrote: post #27

Russophobia aside, the next-gen russian nuclear model (first exporter in the world, of nuclear plants) is built in 3.5 years, which is state of the art. And at the same time has a high throughput (1300MWe) (much higher than the billion dollar mini-reactor fad) and state of the art longevity. It's very difficult for me to find the actual prices, of the different nuclear plants models competitors, but since most of the…

No EU or CANZAUKUS country would import a Russian design in the current environment or foreseeable future, as the Russians will be the ones to have the expertise to maintain it.

Ha-ha-ha-ha, ever heard about Hungary?

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#618

Post by DennisP »

LegitShady wrote: post #545
cnlevy wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At home, I have a water pressure regulator. It came welded shut by the manufacturer because, no water flowing at all means no risk of overpressure at all. Regulation doesn't means only hindering the industry, but accompanying its development safely through overseeing.

now you're doing the same conflating words game with the word "regulator" as if a regulator on a pipe is the same as a regulatory agency. Can you not just make a logical persuasive argument that doesn't rely on conflating two things that aren't the same?

I think the point is a valid one. Not all nuclear regulators are as blinkered as the NRC. Canada, for example, has a very effective regulatory regime, while being much friendlier to new technology. Terrestrial Energy, a molten salt reactor company in Canada, is making good progress and has spoken highly of their regulators. But I don't think anyone would say that Canada makes unsafe reactors.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#619

Post by natmaka »

Gwypaas wrote: post #501
natmaka wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, "vehicle-to-grid" has a huge potential: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid

I would say no. Your expensive battery on wheels with a complete integrated system is not something you want to abuse. Unless it can take for the entire lifetime of the car without significant degradation. Compare this to racks on land with far less stringent requirements. One the other hand, EVs can fill the same role by simply being smart consumers. You don't even lose any round trip efficiency - because storing en…

Discharged electricity will be of higher value than it was while charging, largely compensating for the "abuse".

Deploying dedicated racks-on-land with the proper total capacity and throughput would be a nightmare, without even considering locality.

And yes, a "minimal charge-level" parameter will be enforced.

Dynamic demand offers low-hanging fruits, and then it becomes more and more a constraint... alleviated by dispatchable energy.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#620

Post by natmaka »

lazide wrote: post #554
natmaka wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seawater: "pumping the seawater to extract this uranium would need more energy than what could be produced with the recuperated uranium" Source: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/jones-j2/docs/e...

I’ve usually heard it in reference to an add on process to other reasons we move seawater around - desalination, power plant cooling, etc. very good point though on end cycle efficiencies!

Indeed, and there AFAIK were some "tandem" (desalination+uranium) projects, however nothing appeared therefore there may be severe practical constraints or technical hurdles. Maybe later(?)
Post reply on HN