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Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

allianceforscience.cornell.edu

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Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#91

Post by kalleboo »

actionfromafar wrote: post #41
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…

Base power is nice, but I think we need to be more creative in setting up infrastructure that can work with varying price.

So in the winter everyone just freezes to death since they can't afford heat? That's a solution?

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#92

Post by PaulHoule »

qiskit wrote: post #84
PaulHoule wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy biomass is 5% of "clean energy" which includes a 28% share of nuclear. Hydro is 43% and clearly dominates.

Interesting. I thought "clean energy" generally didn't include nuclear. Also, is hydro really "clean energy"? In the US at least, biomass is the largest source of "clean energy". I'm betting it's even more for germany as they don't have the rivers we do to generate hydro power. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/

No, if you look at the pie chart in the Wikipedia article solar and wind are bigger than biomass.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#93

Post by automatic6131 »

goodpoint wrote: post #82
automatic6131 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You made a false quote including "These people should be ignored. They are not serious people." as if I wrote it.

My mistake, definitely my opinion that.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#94

Post by dahfizz »

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…

> Deploying 5GW of solar and storage, or 3-4GW of wind, is far easier, faster, and cheaper than trying to build a new reactor,

Source? The largest grid scale batteries to date don't come close to the numbers you are talking about. The largest operational deployment gives a paltry 0.4 GW and can only sustain that for a few hours[1].

People love to hand wave away storage, but it is a monumental and unsolved problem.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_storage_power_statio...

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#95

Post by hgomersall »

Tade0 wrote: post #62
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…

> 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 t…

Do you have some references about cheap storage. I'm keen to learn more about the current state of the art.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#96

Post by bayesian_horse »

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.

Germany is a lot bigger, and for Germany nuclear power certainly isn't sustainable. The population isn't on board for one thing. For another, the supply chain and the complicated life cycle has a tendency to bind huge amounts of resources and manpower that can't be easily used elsewhere in the economy, if you can find it in the first place (France has a shortage of nuclear engineers for example). Add to that the impossible and horrendously complicated nature of the risk management calculations.

If we started now, we might replace Russian gas in 20 years. We can do that in a year or two with renewable energy and other means while avoiding a lot of the other problems.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#97

Post by teakettle42 »

goodpoint wrote: post #82
automatic6131 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You made a false quote including "These people should be ignored. They are not serious people." as if I wrote it.

Thanks for pointing out his typo.

He is correct, though. These people should be ignored and they are not serious people.

“Humanity should change its baseline behavior“ is a sign of someone who is more interested in decrying the status quo than they are in fixing anything.

You cannot fundamentally change humanity. Next proposal, please.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#98

Post by bayesian_horse »

toxik wrote: post #6

The big problem for nuclear in Sweden at least is that no new staff has been trained for a long time. We couldn’t really run our shutdown reactors if we tried.

This even applies to France. France is running into a shortage of trained labor in that field.

Nuclear power binds a huge, highly specialized workforce, which is a big problem on its own.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#99

Post by 0xTJ »

Uh, yeah, so should every green-type party. It's ridiculous to not be encouraging nuclear power when there are plenty of fossil-fuel power plants (especially coal) being operated and built. We can talk about switching away from nuclear when that's done. Nuclear power generation is far better for the environment and far safer (having cause many, many fewer deaths in history, per unit of power generated).

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#100

Post by bayesian_horse »

DeathArrow wrote: post #52

If we would pour into nuclear research the kind of money we pour into renewables, nuclear power would become safer and cheaper.

You still have to haul around huge amounts of radioactive materials with whatever technology. That alone is a big factor in the impossible risk calculations.

So far there has never been a dirty bomb. What if the pro-nuclear fanboys get their wish and we solve the energy problems of the developing world using nuclear power? What if a modestly developed country gets overrun or overturned? I don't like the odds. Most risk calculations don't take into account that people seem to make mistakes or might eventually even blow up a reactor intentionally. It's unthinkable until it happens.

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