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

Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 818 posts

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

#91

Post by photochemsyn »

phil21 wrote: post #52
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…

The primary cost of nuclear is politically driven. I don't know if that matters in a world of actual energy scarcity, I guess we'll be finding out. If you remove liability and the insanity of our current methods of waste storage the costs become outright cheap, especially in an imagined future where there is massive investment into new nuclear infrastructure. By the metrics people use to judge nuclear, hydro would be…

When you say 'primary cost' do you mean construction cost? Again, utility managers will be looking at lifecycle costs, from the cradle (construction) through use (fueling, security, cooling water, maintenance) to the grave (decomissioning).

The reason costs are high is not political, it's that the systems involved need to be over-engineered relative to say, a coal-fired power plant, where a breakdown or fire will create a big mess, but not a 100-year exclusion zone. Water pumps for nuclear reactor cooling systems, for example, are the most robustly engineered (and expensive) pumps ever built, as far as I know.

For example, California's decision to close the San Onofre reactor was mostly related to maintenance costs, as their steam generator system was shaking itself to pieces and had to be shut down due to the radioactive loop leaking into the non-radioactive steam generation system. The rational conclusion is that long-term maintenance of nuclear reactors is an expensive proposition, due to catastrophic failure modes:

https://www.fairewinds.org/nuclear-energy-education/san-onof...

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

#92

Post by ZeroGravitas »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #54
adrianN wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If this is so simple, why don't we do it? Or is that the question you're asking? Of course, that 50% efficiency cost seems like a bit of a bear in itself. If you lose half of the stored power, that would seem to significantly drive up the total lifecycle cost of a Watt of wind power. (Recognizing, of course, that not all of it must be stored.) The cost and inefficiency (==cost) of storage seems like an unfortunate th…

We do it already on a grand scale.

It's just that since we live in a world where we burn lots of gas, we don't need to do the "generate synthetic methane" step, we can just burn less of it.

Sure, we could spend billions on generating synthetic methane from renewables while at the same time burning natural methane, but that would be stupid.

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

#93

Post by anonporridge »

Retric wrote: post #74
Jorge1o1 wrote: post #56

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.

The reasons are economic. France has been heavily subsidizing nuclear for years and can swap to cheaper alternatives for less money. It’s not that nuclear is any worse, it’s just that the alternatives got better.

Wind and solar got better, but it seems fundamentally problematic to me to suggest that those are the alternatives to nuclear. They're not.

Fossil fuel is the alternative to nuclear (and possibly battery supported wind/solar) as the base load. Fossil fuels are fundamentally cheaper because they can more easily avoid paying the cost of their negative externalities than nuclear can. If we could actually internalize the negatives of fossil fuel burning (i.e. by carbon tax) then nuclear might actually be the most economical option for the base load with solar and wind picking up the slack.

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

#94

Post by rootusrootus »

rectang wrote: post #86
jlkuester7 wrote: post #71

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.

They didn't need perfect handling, just halfway competent.

But since the rest of the world doesn't build reactors of that type, and never built any without even a containment building AFAIK, it's not really applicable to modern nuclear power plant designs.

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

#95

Post by creato »

ben_w wrote: post #46
philwelch wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... 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…

> the unsolved-at-scale technical problems with grid energy storage What are these problems, exactly? I see videos and news stories about grid batteries being successfully deployed for short term management and how pumped hydro is basically a big cheap gravity battery, but I'm not a civil/electrical engineer, so I accept there could easily be elephants in the room here.

It’s just scale. Those batteries and pumped hydro stories seem big. Relative to your house, they are. Relative to the grid as a whole, they are small.

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

#96

Post by [deleted] »

unchocked wrote: post #32

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…

[deleted]

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

#97

Post by boringg »

unchocked wrote: post #32

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…

The problems with Nuclear are simple and straight forward: (1) Economic not viable if you include the total life cycle cost of the system (i.e. nuclear waste storage and dismantling the asset.

Theres a large difference between building new reactors vs running the old ones until the end of life (in terms of economics).

Also the modular reactors that are getting a lot of hype right now also still have a nuclear waste disposal issue.

I would like to see Nuclear thrive but until it gets the cost / waste disposal resolved it's a tough sell.

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

#98

Post by scoopertrooper »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #88
cycomanic wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well in fairness, the French government currently in power have an economic incentive to kick the can down the road to subsequent governments. Reduce reserve requirements now, next generation of taxpayers foot the bill later.

Does the EU have an incentive to inflate the reserve requirement?

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

#99

Post by nicoburns »

mgfist wrote: post #77
pydry wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's expensive when you rely on cheap Russian/ME fossil fuels > 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. If cheap solar/wind was enough right now Europe wouldn't be going through an energy crisis.

There isn't enough solar/wind or nuclear to power Europe right now. The question is which power mix will be best in a decade's time.

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

#100

Post by MisterTea »

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…

> A far better plan for Europe would be to go 100% renewable asap,

Something I've been thinking about for a while: the best course of action to secure a nation is to build out renewables until the need for external fossil fuels is zero. Even if that means using renewables to make fossil fuels via a process like Fischer–Tropsch as a stop gap.

I also think it would be advantageous to start thinking about how to drive the cost of generation and distribution down until electricity is free or nearly free. This might sound utopian but imagine how secure and prosperous a society could be if energy was super cheap or free? We are moving towards an electrified future and at some point we will have to heat homes and charge cars with electric that will place significant demand on an ageing grid.

Post reply on HN