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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

#291

Post by acidburnNSA »

dukoid wrote: post #107
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…

If you can't insure something reasonably it's not economical. The risk is just externalized.

If fossil and biofuel had to insure against air pollution health effects they directly cause (8 million deaths/yr according to WHO), and climate change, then clean/carbon-free nuclear fission would absolutely dominate today.

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

#292

Post by trashtester »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #264
user_7832 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Stupidly wrong, it seems to be placing some entirely unwarranted implication that without nuclear we'd be lost, when most serious analysis agree that renewables will be about 80% of energy production, which doesn't really leave much room for nuclear to take all the credit. >IEA's net zero roadmap... I'd like to make a slightly vague rebuttal to your slightly vague rebuttal (ofc not your fault if the IEA doesn't expl…

It gets a mention, just not a starring role: > By 2050, almost 90% of electricity generation comes from renewable sources, with wind and solar PV together accounting for nearly 70%. Most of the remainder comes from nuclear. So "no path to clean energy without solar" and "no path to clean energy without wind" are a bit more defensible, though in both cases, we'd just build more of the other one. "no path to clean ener…

> By 2050, almost 90% of electricity generation comes from renewable sources, with wind and solar PV together accounting for nearly 70%. Most of the remainder comes from nuclear.

In other words, IPCC counts nuclear as "renewable"?

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

#293

Post by ben_w »

chelical wrote: post #221
ben_w wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I don't understand why people don't talk about the water usage involved in pumped hydro when the vast majority of the Western United States is dealing with record low water levels + sinking due to groundwater usage.

PV can be used to desalinate sea water as well as pumping it up to the top of the reservoirs. It's also possible to extract energy from fresh water as it mixes with sea water to improve the system efficiency, but I don't want to even guess if that's better or worse overall than just cleaning the water and reusing it.

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

#294

Post by jhallenworld »

q1w2 wrote: post #127
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China mostly: 2021 figures: > China was the biggest contributor, adding 121 GW to the continent’s new capacity. Europe and North America—led by the USA—took second and third places respectively, with the former adding 39 GW, and the latter 38 GW. 81% of new electricity generaton build globally was renewables last year.

That does not discuss storage AT ALL. True solar with storage is not economical.

PV + storage is cheaper than nuclear:

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...

(you have to compare cost of nuclear on first page with wholesale PV+storage energy on subsequent pages).

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

#295

Post by goodpoint »

It's appalling how these conversation on HN are made of people endlessly repeating only a handful of pros and cons.

No progress in the conversation and no discussion of more subtle aspects, like centralization of control/power, systemic risk, nuclear proliferation etc.

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

#296

Post by ElectronCharge »

q1w2 wrote: post #133
fallingknife wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody always says that solar + storage is cheaper. And sometimes there are even studies to support it. But if that's true where is it ?

In fact, there are NO studies that demonstrate that solar or wind AND STORAGE, are able to produce CONSISTENT power for a full year anywhere. The only studies you'll see are that they proved to be economical on a certain day, or maaaybe overnight. ...but there are zero studies that any solar and/or wind (even combined), can provide consistent power for a full year. ...because that is not currently possible with econo…

It’s worse than that. Storage can, at best, provide for some interval of backup while wind/solar aren’t providing enough power.

The problem is that “100 year”, “1,000 year” or worse events will require more than currently stored. Then, potentially millions of people will be at risk of injury or death from cold or heat.

Reliable generation of at least enough to cover survival seems necessary.

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

#297

Post by lelag »

ncmncm wrote: post #259
lelag wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Falsehood ? What do you know about building windmills ?

I admit that I don't myself know much, but I can tell you that you need at least:

- A modern metallurgy industry using coal to make steal

- Possibly a chemical industry to make composite material

- A logistic industry to move components around the world using petrol (all the solar and wind renewable production is based in china)

- Cement to build your fondation (using gas)

Remove all this and try to build it locally and see how much they cost you...

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

#298

Post by ncmncm »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #116
boringg wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

> not viable if you include the total life cycle cost of the system (i.e. nuclear waste storage and dismantling the asset. On the contrary! Nuclear plants pay a fraction of their revenue through their life into special decommissioning funds that have so far been more than enough to perform full greenfield decommissioning. For waste, there's a separate fund called the Nuclear Waste Fund in the US (and other nuclear-op…

US nukes are, in fact, not paying into any waste fund. Operators are actually being paid out of the previous balance from the previous waste fund.

Legal shenanigans. They got a court decision declaring the waste fund as a lie because there is no viable plan for waste.

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

#299

Post by ncmncm »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #104
CaptArmchair wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Nuclear plants pay a fraction of their revenue through their life into special decommissioning funds that have so far been more than enough to perform full greenfield decommissioning. For waste, there's a separate fund called the Nuclear Waste Fund in the US (and other nuclear-operating countries) that has a current balance of $55B.

False. They are collecting from the fund, instead.

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

#300

Post by yohannparis »

BenoitP wrote: post #201
cycomanic wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Nuclear is not an load following source In France it is, and has been successfully for more than 33 years [1] [1] https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01977209/

Thank you for providing a trustable source.
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