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

171–180 of 818 posts

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

#171

Post by tptacek »

jnsaff2 wrote: post #150

I recently read the Serhii Plokhy book Atoms and Ashes, where he discusses 6 most notable nuclear accidents in depth. And his conclusion was pretty grim. Paraphrasing: If we bet on nuclear for mitigation of climate change, it is inevitable that nuclear accidents will happen more often. Also each accident causes a major setback in peoples minds regarding nuclear safety and the next Fukushima might kill off a lot of pr…

It sounds like the argument presented here is that if we actually use nuclear power, there will be more accidents, which will cost us the opportunity of actually using nuclear power.

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

#172

Post by BenoitP »

adrianN wrote: post #140
philwelch wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French electrical power is 70% nuclear and has an installed capacity of 135 GW of power today. That comes out to 94.5 GW of nuclear power in France alone. Is there any country in the world that can supply hundreds of gigawatts to the grid from batteries today? If not, then the problem of grid power storage is unsolved at scale compared to nuclear.

I don't think that's a common use of "unsolved at scale". We know how to do it, it just doesn't make economic sense right now. I mean, suppose you have hundreds of GW of storage of some form installed. You could just claim it's still not "solved at scale" because the global energy consumption is even higher.

At scale means with mining requirements as well.

With current and projected reserves we can manage intra-day requirements for the whole world. This is the we mine it all option.

But we need intra-year storage capacity.

Nuclear is clearly the easier and only option (and the most environment-friendly to me, considering the mining requirements)

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

#173

Post by mwint »

losvedir wrote: post #166

One thing I don't understand is the uninhabitable zone around Chernobyl is not that big, and the U.S. has plenty of space. And electricity can be transmitted decently far, right? So... is it unreasonable to have lots of fairly low-regulated nuclear power plants in, say, 50 mile uninhabited areas (maybe even make it a nature preserve or something for animals)? And if one or two meltdown, oh well?

Probably the issue is that access to water (for cooling) correlates highly with access to water (for human civilization).

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

#174

Post by otherme123 »

IMTDb wrote: post #117
otherme123 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulations are a nightmare for good reasons. Nuclear power is safe because regulations are a nightmare. Yes, we could build Chernobyl-like power plants with soviet-like regulations, that are cheap. That leads sooner or later to Chernobyl-like accidents. If nuclear power depends on lowering the safety regulations to be economically viable, it is not economically viable, at least for now. Take for example the infamous…

The problem isn't the safety regulation, but the opening authorisation regulations. Because we basically forbid the opening of new reactors regardless of their safety we have said to all people with nuclear expertise "Go find another job, you industry is a dead end". Instead of saying to welders "Learn nuclear grade welding, develop a valued expertise and you are going to have a safe, well paying job for the next 30…

I don't know who you are referring with "we forbid". Certainly not we Europe, because there are 3 reactors currently being built, 7 planned and 16 proposed. Again, Flamanville is delayed mainly because of safety issues, and not regardless.

Industries rise and fall. Coal is largely being phased out (in Europe), so coal miners are expected to lose their jobs and certainly their sons are not going to be miners. Of course they sang the same tune "we need guaranteed and well paid jobs for the next 30 years, and then for our youth", but sadly no industry is free from falling.

If nuclear power cannot teach their people to weld properly, they cannot exist. If their plan is to wait for the state to send them fully formed, the plan is flawed. It's like tomorrow Google or Facebook cries because MIT isn't teaching how to harvest data properly.

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

#175

Post by DennisP »

colinmhayes wrote: post #115
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm pretty sure this cost comparison comes down firmly on the side of wind/solar/storage. Very unlikely. Nuclear costs are sky high only because in the last decades it was suppressed rather than invested in and improved. Had it seen the same level of support the wind and solar energy have, we'd have a dirt-cheap abundance of nuclear power, with very little carbon emissions. Take away the red tape and scaremongering…

South Korea has been constantly building nuclear for decades. The price has come down marginally, renewables are still far cheaper. Yes, the problem is largely political, I don't see a solution to that though.

Renewables are far cheaper on the margins but not necessarily if you want them to provide all your power needs.

Nuclear cost in South Korea, Japan, and India is generally under $3000/kW, according to this peer-reviewed study. See Figure 12: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151...

Now let's model overall grid costs, here: https://model.energy/

Pick a country and "fetch wind and solar." By default the modeler doesn't include nuclear, so click "show advanced assumption settings." Check "dispatchable technology 2."

This defaults to a nuclear cost of $6000/kW. Leave it there or try $3000. It assumes a nuclear plant lifespan of only 25 years; the average plant age in the US is 40 years and expected lifespan for many plants is 60 years, so set it to whatever you think is more realistic. The default also sets the discount rate for nuclear to twice what it has for everything else, so fix that.

Run the model. With any reasonable assumptions, many countries end up with at least some nuclear on their grid, and some get their lowest grid cost with all nuclear. The US has some of the best wind and solar resources and relatively high nuclear costs (for now anyway), but the US situation doesn't generalize to the whole world.

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

#176

Post by 01100011 »

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,

How is this possible, technologically or economically? It sounds like absolute fantasy in anything less than a decade.

> plausibly due to exports of crude oil from the USA

Our refineries are at max capacity. How is hoarding crude going to help anything? Exporting crude allows foreign refineries to assist with relieving the global shortage of refined products.

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

#177

Post by philwelch »

losvedir wrote: post #166

One thing I don't understand is the uninhabitable zone around Chernobyl is not that big, and the U.S. has plenty of space. And electricity can be transmitted decently far, right? So... is it unreasonable to have lots of fairly low-regulated nuclear power plants in, say, 50 mile uninhabited areas (maybe even make it a nature preserve or something for animals)? And if one or two meltdown, oh well?

The Chernobyl power plant did not have a containment building around the reactors until after the meltdown. Every Western nuclear power plant has a containment building around the reactors. That's the single biggest factor.

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

#178

Post by neysofu »

BatFastard wrote: post #75
defterGoose wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You both just said the same thing.

poster added provision Nighttime energy.

I believe parent was making a point that the nighttime vs daytime distinction is irrelevant, because the grid never goes to to sleep. Having sufficient clean energy during daytime only is not acceptable.

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

#179

Post by fallingknife »

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…

Well that probably won't happen. The I told you so moment will be more like in 20 years when we didn't build nuclear, still don't have economically viable tech for a renewal only grid, and are still burning fossil fuels.

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

#180

Post by cycomanic »

philwelch wrote: post #112
photochemsyn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'handwave the unsolved-at-scale' ? All you have to do is look at Australia: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/08/10/worlds-largest-grid-f... > Battery rollout: "AGL Energy has committed to build 850 MW of battery-based assets by 2024. To that end, Torrens Island marks the first project to be constructed at the site of a fossil-fuel power plant. It won’t be the last, however, as big batteries are planned for New South…

French electrical power is 70% nuclear and has an installed capacity of 135 GW of power today. That comes out to 94.5 GW of nuclear power in France alone. Is there any country in the world that can supply hundreds of gigawatts to the grid from batteries today? If not, then the problem of grid power storage is unsolved at scale compared to nuclear.

Why would you need 100% storage supply. Also note if France would go 100% nuclear they would need either significant overprovisioning or storage as well. Nuclear is not an load following source. Even less so if you want to operate economically.
Post reply on HN