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Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

nytimes.com

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Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#31

Post by politician »

photochemsyn wrote: post #12

Funny article in that it doesn't discuss lifecycle costs. A side-by-side comparison of the cost of grids powered by nuclear power plant relative to those powered by wind/solar/storage is what I'd expect to see from a 'paper of record' like the NYTimes. Except in some specific cases (Finland, other Arctic regions with long periods of low sunlight) I'm pretty sure this cost comparison comes down firmly on the side of w…

Is the environmentalist lobby ready to allow the amount of mining required to produce the copper, nickel, cobalt, and aluminum needed to support going "100% renewable asap"?

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#32

Post by unchocked »

I will hazard that the problems with nuclear are not technological but political, and the economic problems with nuclear are there because of political reasons.

France gets ~75% of its power from nuclear, safely and economically. France inhabits the same physical world as the rest of us, but is different politically.

If there were a will, there would be a way. If the environmental movement had paid more attention to James Hansen's testimony in 1989 than it did to Chernobyl in 1986 then we would be living in a different world.

There is no amount of damage from nuclear accidents that will be worse than what we are suffering from climate change, with no end in sight. Proliferation is another story, but how's that going anyway...?

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#33

Post by Phlogistique »

jeffbee wrote: post #4

I know HN is just desperate for that i-told-you-so moment when fission rises from irrelevancy to save us all from climate change, but it's just not going to happen. Look at this figure [1]. The amount of proposed solar and wind and battery projects in the United States at the end of 2021 was 1000s of time larger than the amount of proposed nuclear power projects. And one big difference is the renewables are actually…

Did you mean fusion? Fission is certainly not irrelevant today!

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#34

Post by adrianN »

philwelch wrote: post #22
photochemsyn wrote: post #12

Funny article in that it doesn't discuss lifecycle costs. A side-by-side comparison of the cost of grids powered by nuclear power plant relative to those powered by wind/solar/storage is what I'd expect to see from a 'paper of record' like the NYTimes. Except in some specific cases (Finland, other Arctic regions with long periods of low sunlight) I'm pretty sure this cost comparison comes down firmly on the side of w…

> ... I'm pretty sure this cost comparison comes down firmly on the side of wind/solar/storage. Storage is the main cost barrier for 100% renewable-powered grids, but this is also an area where technological development is possible. Sure, if you handwave the unsolved-at-scale technical problems with grid energy storage and make a series of generous assumptions about future technology, that's probably true. Nuclear te…

How is energy storage at scale unsolved when we can synthesize Methane quite easily? Grid scale storage is just a matter of cost. It's unclear which technology will be the most cost effective, but if we wanted to we could just store energy as Methane and pay the 50% efficiency cost.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#35

Post by jeffbee »

nabla9 wrote: post #19
jeffbee wrote: post #4

I know HN is just desperate for that i-told-you-so moment when fission rises from irrelevancy to save us all from climate change, but it's just not going to happen. Look at this figure [1]. The amount of proposed solar and wind and battery projects in the United States at the end of 2021 was 1000s of time larger than the amount of proposed nuclear power projects. And one big difference is the renewables are actually…

You make huge order of magnitude errors in your thinking Nuclear provides the so called base load (the minimum level of electricity demand required). To replace base load with renewables + energy storage requires so much CAPEX and battery manufacturing that you don't have money to fill gaps between caseload needs and renewable energy production.

The state of California has built more battery capacity in the last six months than the entire nation has built of fission power plants in the last 25 years. It is extremely easy to build batteries for fixed service, and bulk semiconductor manufacturing is the #1 thing that humans are good at. These problems are absolutely solved, the whole industry thinks so, that's why the whole industry is behind pv+wind+storage, as demonstrated at that link I posted.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#36

Post by gfodor »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #20

Please can the nuclear industry stop paying PR consultants. We have one use for the nuclear industry - building scientists who can then build nuclear bombs. IMO this is a reasonable use of public funds - the strategic needs of nuclear weapons are not going away. But please please just accept that and move on. Stop getting in a vital public debate. Nuclear fission is a terrible civilian technology - vastly expensive,…

China is going to do it, and you seem to believe the safety profile of nuclear energy technology has been frozen for 50 years. It's extremely strange to think something as broad as the process of nuclear fission can be spoken about as having a universal, never changing risk-profile, regardless of technological advancement. We don't do this for any other technology.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-cli...

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#37

Post by shepherdjerred »

outside1234 wrote: post #5
impostervt wrote: post #3

I just finished Bill Gates' "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster". Very good book, and it makes two points (among many others): - To reduce carbon in the air, getting clean electricity is key. If we can do that, we can more easily reduce emissions from other areas. - There are no paths to clean energy by 2050 without nuclear power.

* No paths to nighttime clean energy without nuclear power

That’s the same thing

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#38

Post by pydry »

mgfist wrote: post #27
jeffbee wrote: post #4

I know HN is just desperate for that i-told-you-so moment when fission rises from irrelevancy to save us all from climate change, but it's just not going to happen. Look at this figure [1]. The amount of proposed solar and wind and battery projects in the United States at the end of 2021 was 1000s of time larger than the amount of proposed nuclear power projects. And one big difference is the renewables are actually…

> The amount of proposed solar and wind and battery projects in the United States at the end of 2021 was 1000s of time larger than the amount of proposed nuclear power projects Because the public has been anti nuclear energy for the past 4 decades. > And one big difference is the renewables are actually built, while the fission projects never make progress. Nuclear energy regulations are an absolute nightmare and mak…

It was always too expensive. It wasnt hippy peaceniks that killed it. It was money.

The odd catastrophe didnt help though.

Why there is a resurgence of interest now when dirt cheap solar and wind have effectively rendered it a costly relic of the past is somewhat puzzling.

I guess PR campaigns like the OP's link are one reason.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#39

Post by defterGoose »

outside1234 wrote: post #5
impostervt wrote: post #3

I just finished Bill Gates' "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster". Very good book, and it makes two points (among many others): - To reduce carbon in the air, getting clean electricity is key. If we can do that, we can more easily reduce emissions from other areas. - There are no paths to clean energy by 2050 without nuclear power.

* No paths to nighttime clean energy without nuclear power

You both just said the same thing.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#40

Post by goneri »

adrianN wrote: post #29
nonethewiser wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sunlight and wind distribution is quite uneven.

Uranium ore distribution is also quite uneven. Fossil fuel distribution is also quite uneven.

Thorium is an abundant alternative to uranium, and the technology to use it has existed since the 1960s.
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