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

Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

allianceforscience.cornell.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 306 posts

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#61

Post by nabla9 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #51
nabla9 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have said, nuclear not is comparable to wind and solar. Nuclear provides base load, something that wind or solar can't do. Here is a graph: https://i.imgur.com/SaC1HR4.jpeg Wind electricity production in x-axis (MWh/h), y-axis is consumption of electricity (MWh/h). Each do is one hour, dot color is a month. There is no correlation. Here is great summary of how Finland can go 100% fossil fuel free electricit…

No generator provides base load, because load is usage, not power. Lots of places in the world satisfy base load with dispatchable power.

> dispatchable power.

Using hydrocarbons. The very thing nuclear power avoids.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#62

Post by Tade0 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #30
epistasis wrote: post #16

This is great, and hopefully it will stop the premature shutdown of existing nuclear reactors. But it's pretty tiny climate news overall. Nuclear reactors are aging out and nobody in Western Europe or the US seems to know how to build in a cost competitive way anymore. Deploying 5GW of solar and storage, or 3-4GW of wind, is far easier, faster, and cheaper than trying to build a new reactor, which won't come on line…

It's not that simple. People quote low prices for renewables today that we might be scoffing at in 50 years just like we scoff at the early claim that "nuclear power is too cheap to meter" Specifically, you can't compare a nuclear reactor that delivers predictable power to solar and wind systems that deliver power when they want to deliver power. Germany has already had episodes where the spot price for electricity w…

> The story for storage looks better than it ever has but it is still orders of magnitude more expensive more expensive than it needs to be to be practical.

Storage is already cheaper than peaker plants and that's all it needs to be for now.

Meanwhile HVDC lines appear to also be a viable solution:

https://www.power-technology.com/projects/morocco-uk-power-p...

Not mentioned in this article is the projected cost of this system, which is $22bln.

That's actually less than the yet to be finished Hinkley Point C.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#64

Post by PaulHoule »

pydry wrote: post #43
PaulHoule wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that simple. People quote low prices for renewables today that we might be scoffing at in 50 years just like we scoff at the early claim that "nuclear power is too cheap to meter" Specifically, you can't compare a nuclear reactor that delivers predictable power to solar and wind systems that deliver power when they want to deliver power. Germany has already had episodes where the spot price for electricity w…

Pumped storage combined with solar and wind isnt orders of magnitude more than nuclear power. It's still cheaper. Fengning is less than half the cost of a nuclear plant and delivers twice as much power. It's a very effective battery. Pumped (or indeed, any kind of) storage just isnt very economic when youve got oodles of cheap, dispatchable gas. Nuclear power almost always exists to help prop up military nuclear requ…

Where do you get the water for pumped storage and where do you put it?

I have a hill that goes up about 300 feet on my farm. I've done the math on the volume of a reservoir for a pumped storage system and it is pretty shocking.

The US has domestic production of natural gas, the EU has some domestic production and imports from Russia. Japan imports a lot of LNG.

There are many countries that don't use natural gas but they don't use pumped storage, instead they use some combination of: oil, very high prices, rolling blackouts.

The military connection is bogus. The size of the domestic nuclear industry is much much larger than plutonium production or uranium enrichment for weapons. Fuel is irradiated for such a long time in commercial reactors that the resulting product contains like amounts of Pu240 which contaminates the desired Pu239 and makes it undesirable for weapons.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#65

Post by projektfu »

jansan wrote: post #50
csours wrote: post #10

If Germany's Green Party takes the same line, I think it will be a huge blow to Russia. Also, it's about time.

The German green party demanded a ban on sending weapons to conflict zones just at the end of last year, now they would love to send all our army's equipment to Ukraine immediately. They fought tooth and nail for the ban of genertical modified food, but now are in favor of a mandatory mRNA vaccination even for young people. So why shouldn't they make another 180 on their fight against nuclear power, for which they co…

> They fought tooth and nail for the ban of genertical modified food, but now are in favor of a mandatory mRNA vaccination even for young people.

This is a consistent position. mRNA vaccination is not genetic modification. On the other hand, adenoviral-vector vaccines are genetically modified organisms.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#66

Post by jansan »

projektfu wrote: post #65
jansan wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The German green party demanded a ban on sending weapons to conflict zones just at the end of last year, now they would love to send all our army's equipment to Ukraine immediately. They fought tooth and nail for the ban of genertical modified food, but now are in favor of a mandatory mRNA vaccination even for young people. So why shouldn't they make another 180 on their fight against nuclear power, for which they co…

> They fought tooth and nail for the ban of genertical modified food, but now are in favor of a mandatory mRNA vaccination even for young people. This is a consistent position. mRNA vaccination is not genetic modification. On the other hand, adenoviral-vector vaccines are genetically modified organisms.

Eating genetically modified food isn't genetic modification, either.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#67

Post by nabla9 »

jka wrote: post #59
nabla9 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have said, nuclear not is comparable to wind and solar. Nuclear provides base load, something that wind or solar can't do. Here is a graph: https://i.imgur.com/SaC1HR4.jpeg Wind electricity production in x-axis (MWh/h), y-axis is consumption of electricity (MWh/h). Each do is one hour, dot color is a month. There is no correlation. Here is great summary of how Finland can go 100% fossil fuel free electricit…

Is there a corresponding graph for solar electricity production, out of interest?

Heh. In Finland you have solar even in the night during summers and very little during winters.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Hourly-PV-output-for-Hel...

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#68

Post by kkfx »

PaulHoule wrote: post #30
epistasis wrote: post #16

This is great, and hopefully it will stop the premature shutdown of existing nuclear reactors. But it's pretty tiny climate news overall. Nuclear reactors are aging out and nobody in Western Europe or the US seems to know how to build in a cost competitive way anymore. Deploying 5GW of solar and storage, or 3-4GW of wind, is far easier, faster, and cheaper than trying to build a new reactor, which won't come on line…

It's not that simple. People quote low prices for renewables today that we might be scoffing at in 50 years just like we scoff at the early claim that "nuclear power is too cheap to meter" Specifically, you can't compare a nuclear reactor that delivers predictable power to solar and wind systems that deliver power when they want to deliver power. Germany has already had episodes where the spot price for electricity w…

The fantasy is storage: I have a small p.v. with lithium storage just as a protection against blackouts (AC coupled solar inverter to keep it on in case of no national grid frequency presence), in around a year battery capacity is already dropped to 99% and I do not allow more than 10% discharge since it's small, just enough for VMC + fridges/freezer + lights and computers, no main heating/cooling, cooking, washing machine etc from battery, except during sunny days eventually.

Synthetic fuels are not new, we have used them in WWII and probably earlier, they work but we simply can't produce enough of them in any sauce to power a generic usage. So no, so far the sole storage we have is classic mountain hydro witch is VERY good, only it demand waters and mounting, not that rare but definitively not everywhere.

Nuclear produce constant power witch is the perfect match for industry, that's the real main point, similarly low-enriched uranium (like French subs) is very usable on ships, we still miss the more important logistic mean: airplanes, but we can cover theoretically industry and rails and ships from nuclear witch is enough to add renewables locally just for resilience (not much sure if they are worth the investments, due to real energy price with a public nuclear but...). The anti-nuclear movement have a reason: it's not good for private profit and they (neoliberals) know that very well so they hate it.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#69

Post by jason0597 »

cpursley wrote: post #63
csours wrote: post #10

If Germany's Green Party takes the same line, I think it will be a huge blow to Russia. Also, it's about time.

Where do you think the fuel for the reactors will come from?

There are lots of uranium reserves around the world that are in classically Western countries

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#70

Post by automatic6131 »

goodpoint wrote: post #34
chadash wrote: post #3

I have heard a lot of chatter recently about how nuclear has fallen out of favor among certain circles on the left. Can someone explain what the reasons for that are?

It's difficult to have a rational discussion about nuclear power with all the pro-nuclear shilling and the anti-nuclear FUD. However the following concerns are standing: - Nuclear is becoming more expensive while solar and wind are becoming much cheaper. Nuclear and renewables compete for investments so people disagree on what to invest to. - Nuclear proliferation is an unsolved problem and the risk is growing due to…

> Many argue that society should address overproduction and overconsumption of goods, and therefore energy, rather than increasing energy production.

These people should be ignored. They are not serious people.

And, against these concerns, there are only two renewable sources that provide constant power and both are limited by geography: hydro and tidal. I'm not aware of any high output tidal in the first place, and both are extremely limited about where they can be built in the first place.

Post reply on HN