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Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

nytimes.com

81–90 of 818 posts

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

#81
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reasons are political… just like in the United States. HBO with their Chernobyl miniseries single-handedly undid years of progress in the perception of nuclear energy.

Or perhaps the reasons are economical. Recently nuclear construction projects became a lot more expensive and took a lot longer than initially planned.

Some of those economical problems are burdened on the nuclear industry because of political problems.

For example, because everyone is terrified of nuclear, regulations may require an absurd level of safety expenses that no other energy producer is burdened with. If the political climate lead to burdening fossil fuel burners with costs to reduce their pollution and GHG emissions that directly and indirectly lead to orders of magnitude more deaths than nuclear ever has, then nuclear might actually be price competitive.

As another example, since the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the US started in 1975, they have never, not once, approved the construction of a new nuclear site in the US. They've approved expansion of existing sites, but never a new one. In fact, it was a huge deal when the NRC approved the expansion of a site several years ago, for the first time in 30 years, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nuclear-license/nrc-a...

How much pain and death is the NRC ultimately responsible for for holding nuclear energy to such a high safety standard that it's been literally impossible to build a new site for almost 50 years? Because all that means, is that we've burned drastically more fossil fuel than necessary over the past 50 years.

Shame on the NRC and the US government for using irrational fear to protect the fossil fuel industry at the expense of nuclear energy. And shame on environmentalists for falling for the same trap and failing to think holistically and systemically.

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

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wind and solar are fighting very hard to replace existing supply at a comparable cost. It's a luxury substitute. We need more supply for cheaper.

Is Nuclear cheaper?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_sourc... Depends. With just the cost per kWh is photovoltaic cheaper, but you would need additional storage for the nighttime, so it would become more expensive than nuclear. Also this didn’t account for winter time (in Germany photovoltaic make 5-10% compared to summer) and storing a half year worth of energy is going to be funny.(this will cost way way more than nuclear) A nuclear power plant could run 24/7 the whole year.

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

#84
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.

Your article links to capacity not effective production when customer needs it. The issue with electricity production resides in being able to reliably produce electricity when customer needs it, not when planet aligns for [insert preferred electricity production method].

It's great to say "I can produce 100Gw of green electricity", but if I ask you "Give me 30GW now" and you tell me "Best I can do now is 5GW, there are clouds in the sky", I'll kindly ask you to shut up about your "100GW capacity".

As the recent price hikes in Europe have shown, the prices paid by customers is dictated by the cost of the most expensive megawatts. Solar and wind have not suddenly become pricier, but gas has. And as a consequence, prices paid by customers have increased proportionally.

Batteries might seem like a good answer, but basic physics shows us that it is not remotely doable on a large scale, if we want to guarantee reliable supply. The energy density simply isn't there.

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

#85

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…

France is not using their reactors economically. They have been told multiple times by the EU that the reserves that operators have to provide for decommissioning of plants are much too low. So this means that the government/the taxpayers have to foot the bill. And we have not even talk about long term storage cost which are typically never taken into account.

So yes it is a political decision, France is willing to highly subsidise their nuclear industry.

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

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reasons are political… just like in the United States. HBO with their Chernobyl miniseries single-handedly undid years of progress in the perception of nuclear energy.

> HBO with their Chernobyl miniseries single-handedly undid years of progress Wait, seriously? That miniseries was not perfect, but I thought it did a pretty good job of pointing out the issues with Chernobyl were largely political and not technical. (Sure the RBMK reactors were flawed, that is a technical issue. But the only reason that escalated into a disaster was due to gross mismanagement and flagrant disregard…

> gross mismanagement and flagrant disregard of safety systems...

Gross mismanagement and flagrant disregard of safety systems are inevitable, inherent features of power utilities. If your technology is disastrous without perfect handling, your technology is disastrous.

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

#87

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…

As far as life-cycle costs go: what about end of life? That's the big elephant in the room.

Over the past decades, a couple of hundreds of plants have been build globally. Doing nuclear fission safely is a massively complex technological undertaking. While the basic principles are by and large the same, the concrete designs of each of those plants aren't similar. Therefor, decommissioning a nuclear plant is equally complex and expensive, and requires a per-case approach. And currently, there is a growing number of plants which are pretty much EOL, where upkeep costs outstrip revenue.

Sure, there's an argument to be made about the operational costs per kWh between solar / wind / nuclear relative to the revenue they generate over their lifespan. But compared to solar / wind, the perceived economical benefits of those solutions are also offset by their initial cost of construction and their decommissioning.

If consumers / voters / taxpayers assume that they get to enjoy cheap power while the costs of those won't ever land on their doorstep, they are in for a surprise.

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

#88

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…

France is not using their reactors economically. They have been told multiple times by the EU that the reserves that operators have to provide for decommissioning of plants are much too low. So this means that the government/the taxpayers have to foot the bill. And we have not even talk about long term storage cost which are typically never taken into account. So yes it is a political decision, France is willing to h…

> have been told multiple times by the EU that the reserves that operators have to provide for decommissioning of plants are much too low

Why is the EU more trustworthy on these estimates than the French?

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

#90
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HBO with their Chernobyl miniseries single-handedly undid years of progress Wait, seriously? That miniseries was not perfect, but I thought it did a pretty good job of pointing out the issues with Chernobyl were largely political and not technical. (Sure the RBMK reactors were flawed, that is a technical issue. But the only reason that escalated into a disaster was due to gross mismanagement and flagrant disregard…

> gross mismanagement and flagrant disregard of safety systems... Gross mismanagement and flagrant disregard of safety systems are inevitable, inherent features of power utilities. If your technology is disastrous without perfect handling, your technology is disastrous.

> your technology is disastrous without perfect handling, your technology is disastrous

Did we watch the same miniseries? Chernobyl went beyond gross negligence. To say nothing of perfection. In the reactor design, in its operation and in post-crisis management.

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