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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

#611

Post by [deleted] »

rootusrootus wrote: post #94
rectang wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[deleted]

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

#612

Post by ncmncm »

Manuel_D wrote: post #360
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…

The Chernobyl miniseries greatly distorted the impact of the meltdown. They cited the "bridge of death" where everyone supposedly died. In reality there are zero known deaths among people who watched the meltdown from that overpass, and there's even interviews with people who were there. They cited a death estimate of 60,000 when reputable sources estimate 200-1,700 deaths.

False. Cancer rates downwind are sharply elevated.

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

#613

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

pfdietz wrote: post #546
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an abundance of data, if one is willing to look. Just first links from DDG: "Has Russia Been Financing Western Environmentalism?" (2022) [1] "Putin Is Funding Green Groups to Discredit Natural Gas Fracking" (2017) [2] "German green group branded a Russian ‘puppet’ over Nord Stream II gas pipeline" (2021) [3] [1]: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18330/russia-funding-envi... [2]: https://www.newsweek.com/pu…

This is a load of conspiracy theoretic BS, starting from the nonsense position that environmental groups are the source of nuclear's failure.

Yeah right, "Independent fact-checkers said the information is false".

The greens in Germany have consistently worked on destroying Germany's nuclear energy generation, and now it is completely dependent on gas import from Russia, funding Putin's war with Ukraine.

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

#614

Post by ncmncm »

legulere wrote: post #126
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 economic problems with nuclear are there because of political reasons. France gets ~75% of its power from nuclear, safely and economically. EDF, Areva have a long history of bailouts, buyouts and subsidies by the French government. You are right that it's a political decision that France has so much nuclear, but it is not an economical one. Even though they decided to replace old reactors with new ones, they do…

The most reliable output of the nuke industry has always been dishonesty and corruption. Power is a distant second.

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

#615

Post by ncmncm »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #291
dukoid wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fossil and bio fuel are not what nukes and nuke construction are competing with, so mentioning them at all is an attempt to distract.

We are not distracted.

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

#616

Post by ncmncm »

sofixa wrote: post #72
pydry wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France has nuclear plants because in the 1970s it decided it didnt want to be dependent on middle eastern oil. It was very very expensive. It was also nothing to do with global warming. Those plants are fully paid off but nearly all close to death. Replacing them will still be very very expensive. Extending their lives will be dangerous. France isnt quite sure what to do. If there's unlimited money and patience for y…

> France isnt quite sure what to do. Yes it is ( big nuclear buildout to replace most of the current fleet, while also doing lots of renewables and experimenting with small modular reactors): https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20220210-announcing-new-r...

The usual outcome lately is to cancel construction after billions of euros are spent, as it is realized the result will be unable to be competitive.

Occasionally, ratepayers are forced to pay far above market rates in order to keep the plants in operation.

Coercing users does not make nukes look more viable.

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

#617

Post by ncmncm »

sofixa wrote: post #220
phh wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We know what to do, every single scientist from the ASN knows what to do, every economist knows what to do. The ones who underestimated Flamanville's cost by 80%? (and it's still not in production) Let's maybe not trust them completely, and have our eggs in other baskets as well.

> The ones who underestimated Flamanville's cost by 80%? (and it's still not in production) It's an entirely new design of a complicated piece of technology, of course it will be over budget and delayed. Grand Paris Express and the Paris Philharmonic were also over budget and delayed, does that invalidate the opinion of all experts involved in both projects?

Being over budget and off schedule is most of the purpose. Once a plant is delivered, the gravy train stops. No one actually involved wants that.

The Finns recognized the gravy train would stop soon, anyway, and elected to deliver a (more-or-less) working reactor, after consuming 5B euros beyond the 3B quoted cost, more than a decade late. In the US, corruption is secure enough to go far, far beyond that price, with no demand to deliver.

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

#618

Post by acidburnNSA »

ncmncm wrote: post #615
acidburnNSA wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fossil and bio fuel are not what nukes and nuke construction are competing with, so mentioning them at all is an attempt to distract. We are not distracted.

The entire energy project right now is to decarbonize rapidly. The world energy mix is more than 80% fossil and biofuel. Nuclear is competing with fossil and biofuel.

https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix

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

#619

Post by cthalupa »

cycomanic wrote: post #185
adrianN wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well nuclear proponents handwave away the massively higher costs, the still unsolved long term storage problem (it's been >70 years of nuclear power and there still does not exist a long term storage facility in the world), and insurance for the case of a disaster.

>the still unsolved long term storage problem (it's been >70 years of nuclear power and there still does not exist a long term storage facility in the world)

Storage has /been solved/ for decades.

High Level Waste is only a tiny fraction of total waste. As it stands, all of the HLW created by all the nuclear plants in the world could be kept in a football field sized area. The vast majority of the rest of the generated waste will decay to to harmlessness during the lifetime of a plant.

HLW regulations around transport are so high in most countries that the standards for transport casks has made them practically indestructible. They can literally be hit by trains and no be breached. Solutions like those developed by Deep Isolation also effectively solve any long term storage problem for the HLW.

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

#620

Post by ncmncm »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #308
phh wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We know what to do, every single scientist from the ASN knows what to do, every economist knows what to do. The ones who underestimated Flamanville's cost by 80%? (and it's still not in production) Let's maybe not trust them completely, and have our eggs in other baskets as well.

No, you don't know what you are talking about. The budget, that's EDF. EDF builds things, the ASN ensures the safety is up to standards. Hell, the ASN _is_ responsible for these costs because they are the ones ensuring everything is up to par. There are many EPRs running, in Finland, in China, but none of these have safety requirements as drastic as the Flamanville EPR. Additionally, EDF offered multiple estimates at…

Anything that results in fewer nukes at minimal cost is a net good.

In the US, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission employs 2000 people to reject nuke construction plans. They are cheap at the price.

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