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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

#251

Post by lelag »

thehappypm wrote: post #217
lelag wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/remindme in 80 years If I have to choose between an additional 3 Fukushima and the loss of thousands of costal cities due to sea level rise, I know what I'm choosing. This study predict than sea level could rise by 2m by 2100 displacing up to 187 million people. Fukushima displaced about 160 thousands. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6561295/ Pick your poison, wisely.

It’s probably easier to deal with sea level rise since it’s slow motion. If there’s a Fukushima every year.. wow.

I assumed 3 events in the next 80 years.

There's been 25 years between Chernobyl and Fukushima, and assuming we build new reactor, there is no reason to imagine it would happen more frequently. Why do you think there could be a catastrophe per year ?

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

#252

Post by Manuel_D »

ncmncm wrote: post #236
Manuel_D wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except those solar panels generate energy intermittently. Not just in the short term due to the day/night cycle, but also over the long term with weather and seasonal shifts. Nuclear is unique in that it's the only geographically independent, and non-intermittent energy source. Hydroelectricity and geothermal are non-intermittent but are geographically dependent. And also fossil fuels, but those emit carbon dioxide.

As has been explained to you numerous times, intermittency is a trivial technical matter that cannot justify diverting capital to nuke construction or operation. Repeating your falsehoods here does not make them true.

And as has been explained to you numerous times, intermittency is an incredibly difficult problem and cannot be solved without some miraculous storage mechanism that makes energy storage effectively free. It's so trivial to solve, yet you neglect to mention the solution.

As per your previous comments, you assume that hydrogen, compressed air, or some other form of energy storage will be this silver bullet. This is a very risky assumption. We have no cost history for these systems being built at scale. There's a massive difference between writing a white-paper promising a super cheap storage cost, and actually building an energy storage facility and looking at the bill.

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

#253

Post by ncmncm »

rib3ye wrote: post #55

Here is a 2016 map of Nuclear power plants operating and under construction. https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-the-worlds-nuclear-power-... Some things I found interesting: Under development: 11 in China, 3 in US Operating: Over 40 in the US and no major accidents since Three Mile Island (1979).

The US ones, anyway, will be cancelled. Each dollar poured down the rathole first, diverted from renewable build-out, brings climate catastrophe nearer. That has thus far not stoped the pouring.

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

#254

Post by goodpoint »

nonethewiser wrote: post #13

Small distributed reactors sound great, but don't they exacerbate the waste disposal problem? I think the logistics and politics would be easier to manage if the waste production was highly centralized.

Not to mention nuclear proliferation and risks of terrorism or social unrest...

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

#255

Post by nazgulnarsil »

adrianN wrote: post #158
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? They worked reliably and efficiently, and cost very little.

Maybe I'm misinformed. Which Thorium reactors worked reliably and cheaply?

You're not misinformed. Commercial thorium doesn't exist and prototypes have issues with proliferation risks and the lifecycle of the materials used to build the primary containment. It is promising and there are several groups working on these problems but it's a hard sell given that recent gen uranium reactors aren't gated by fuel costs and have established supply chains.

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

#256

Post by dane-pgp »

tomp wrote: post #132
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, meaning no need for fossil fuel imports from any party. “asap” LOL Here in the real world, we have Germany, which has the strongest pro-green anti-nuclear agenda in Europe, but is (1) building coal plants, (2) financing Russian war and (3) blocking sanctions on Russia to save its economy (along with Hungary who are doing it for political reasons). The…

> Germany ... is (1) building coal plants

That claim may be a little out of date, especially as the new government plans to phase out coal by 2030. It's true that a new coal power plant was opened in 2020, but it was "expected to be the last"[0]. Admittedly, it's also true that the country is temporarily reactivating old coal power plants to reduce Russian gas imports.[1]

[0] https://ifrf.net/combustion-industry-news/new-coal-power-pla...

[1] https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/germany-reactiv...

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

#258

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Manuel_D wrote: post #235
colinmhayes wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 only cheaper if you ignore the challenges of using an intermittent energy source. There's no real cost estimate for storing and re-distributing electricity, because there's no feasible plan to build an energy storage system at relevant scales. Attempting to build just one hour of storage via lithium ion batteries would case the cost of batteries to skyrocket because 1 hour of global electricity use equ…

Annual battery production for EVs is estimated to grow from 160 gigawatt-hours (GWh) today to 6 600 GWh in 2030 – the equivalent of adding almost 20 gigafactories each year for the next ten years.

So we're building those batteries anyway, because EVs are cheaper and better than ICE. It's just a bonus that they'll help roll out renewables too.

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

#259

Post by ncmncm »

lelag wrote: post #234
logifail wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the meantime, the french nuclear industry lost the competency to build new one as demonstrated by the struggling EPR project in Normandy. If the French (of all people) can no longer get it together to build new reactors even remotely on time and on budget, then maybe we just need to be honest and give up on the "build lots of new nuclear plants, quickly" as a credible medium-term component of a plan to deal with…

It's very possible that you are right, that it's too late, that we can't redevelop enough nuclear capacity in time, that we are doomed to see the world burn. That won't prevent me from blaming the anti-nuclear crowd that put us in that situation in the first place. Yes, nuclear is expensive, yes it can be messy but it was our best shot to produce abundant amount of low carbon power. All this talk about switching to w…

We are not doomed to see the world burn. We know what to do: just build renewables. It is dishonest to claim that using carbon to build them is a problem. The more we build, the less carbon is used on them.

When you need falsehoods to make your case, you have no case.

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

#260

Post by pfdietz »

IMTDb wrote: post #192
jeffbee wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain said "basic physics". I'll wait. California is building battery storage at a rate of ~2500MW/year. There are ZERO physics problems standing in the way of this. And there is considerable innovation in fixed batteries like iron-air flow batteries, ones that exist and aren't just VC scams like most of the nuclear stuff. https://www.energy-storage.news/california-utility-pge-propo...

Basic physics 101. The US produced 4 10^9 MWh in 2017 [1] That's roughly 11 10^6 MWh / day or 11 10^12 Wh /day So to power 50% of the US for half a day, we need : 11 10^12 Wh /day * 0.5 day * 0.5 = 2.75 10^12 Wh = 275 10^10 Wh The energy storage of a Lithium Ion battery is roughly 270 Wh / kg [2], let's round this up to 275, I am feeling nice here. This means we need : 275 10^10 Wh / 275 Wh / kg = 1 * 10^10 kg of Lit…

You do know that lithium is just a few percent of the mass of a lithium-ion battery, right?

Also, I didn't realize that Li-ion batteries were the only conceivable energy storage technology.

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