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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

#751

Post by ethbr0 »

cycomanic wrote: post #386
philwelch wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's been >70 years of nuclear power and there still does not exist a long term storage facility in the world It's bizarre how anti-nuclear activists point at problems caused by anti-nuclear activism and ask, like Eric Andre, "how could nuclear power do this?"

Even a superficial glance would tell you that this doesn't make sense. We have had >70 years of peaceful nuclear power. A significant anti nuclear movement has existed for maybe 40 years and it has clearly not been influencial until maybe the last 20 years. So why has the nuclear power industry not solved the issues in the first 30 years? Moreover, why has France which hasn't had a significant antinuclear movement ev…

> A significant anti nuclear movement has existed for maybe 40 years and it has clearly not been influencial until maybe the last 20 years.

O_o There's been a significant and influential anti-nuclear movement for the last 60 years...

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

#752

Post by ncmncm »

thereddaikon wrote: post #717
ncmncm wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you can deliver that renewable power wherever it is needed, for a one-time up-front cost, free thereafter.

No you can't. Transmission lines have upkeep.

You have to clear brush periodically, and repair them when they break.

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

#753

Post by barfingclouds »

ncmncm wrote: post #721
kwere wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you know that "nuclear energy fear" is conceptually equal to "airplane fear" in trasportation?. Both are the most safe by output (kwh vs miles travelled) against deaths in their own categories.

Rendering large areas uninhabitable is plenty of harm. And death is not the only detrimental health impact.

Santa susana is bad and something I’m even vocal about, but that was nuclear experiments, not nuclear power

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

#754

Post by nine_k »

belorn wrote: post #723
nine_k wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a number of battery chemistries more cheap and even efficient than Lithium-based, but with lower energy density. High energy density is important for handheld devices, for flying devices, even for cars. But stationary energy storage can be much heavier and bulkier per kWh stored, as long as it's cheaper, and can sustain more than a few thousand recharge cycles. Lithium batteries have the momentum and are dro…

Since you are 100% certain that such technology will emerge in an economical viable state to solve the storage problem for Europe, could you please provide a date so we can draft a EU law that forbids burning of fossil fuel in the European market by that date. If you can do it by this winter it would solve inflation, enable a complete sanction packet against Russian oil and gas, solve several political conflicts with…

Alternative chemisitries are many, and are actively developed; here's a 2021 overview: https://www.mining.com/non-lithium-battery-chemistries-to-gr...

What I can't predict is when some of them will become competitive enough to matter, and thus used in some large infrastructure projects.

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

#755

Post by sanderjd »

ncmncm wrote: post #680
qsdf38100 wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s actually not a good idea at all. When you do the math ( or rather the physics) gravity batteries need so much mass and height to compete with other technologies that it’s just not worth it. Except if water, pipes and pumps are used, as water is heavy, and pipes and pumps can transport a lot of it very efficiently and cheaply. That’s called pumped hydro storage and is currently the #1 grid scale storage in the wo…

You need a very, very large mass, and then rails and rolling stock to carry it. That is why vertical motion in a disused mineshaft is attractive. A single 10,000t weight hanging from a winch has just one moving part, the winch, and cable all in tension, with no preparation of the shaft sides; everything is concentrated at the top. The mineshaft provides isolation from environmental disruption. You get much the same e…

I hadn't heard this sea float / winch idea before! Any links you could dig up for me? Anyone operationalizing this yet?

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

#756

Post by sanderjd »

ncmncm wrote: post #659
sanderjd wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested in those alternative technologies, but I suspect they won't scale as well as batteries. Pumped hydro has been around a long time but it hasn't scaled because it is just very geographically specific.

Pumped hydro is far, far less geographically specific than always assumed. This is partly because it needs no watershed, and partly because transmission lines mean it need not be local. Anyway pumped hydro is only one of many equally viable alternatives. All will be used. Eventually which ones are cheapest will become clear.

I think my assumption with pumped hydro is that there must be something holding it back because it's been mature for a long time, so if it were as useful and scalable as you say, I think it would have been scaled a lot more by now.

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

#757

Post by thehappypm »

Manuel_D wrote: post #728
thehappypm wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two flaws with your argument. First, it’s actually somewhat unlikely that lithium ion batteries are going to be the cheapest grid storage. Second, natural resources almost always get cheaper to extract as demand increases, especially when they’re not actually scarce (there’s tons of Lithium out there).

> First, it’s actually somewhat unlikely that lithium ion batteries are going to be the cheapest grid storage Then please share what storage mechanism is going to be cheaper. > Second, natural resources almost always get cheaper to extract as demand increases, especially when they’re not actually scarce (there’s tons of Lithium out there). Incorrect, as easily accessible reserves get depleted more and more remote res…

You’d think so but in reality extraction costs just drop as technology improves. For example, lithium..

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

#758

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

pfdietz wrote: post #735
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can hardly call nuclear energy to be a 'global failure'. True, 'green' groups had some success with scaremongering people to be afraid of nuclear energy, but it is generating 10% of energy globally (projected to rise to 15% by 2030 [1] ), with much higher shares in developed countries. If anything, the Fukushima effect has finally weared out, and we'll see new plants constructed which were halted because of that sc…

Well, it obviously is a global failure. It exists in places where people can be forced to pay for it. There is not a single competitive energy market where merchant nuclear reactors have been built to compete in that market. That's because it's just too expensive. Sure, reactors have been built to exploit monopolies, and where political considerations trump economic ones. That's nothing to be proud of.

Just because you repeat it again and again, and use the word "obvious", nuclear power does not become a 'global failure'. I fail to see any arguments in your posts, just NUCLEAR BAD slogans.

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

#759

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

ncmncm wrote: post #742
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Germany elected to build out a great deal of wind generation capacity rather than refurbish a much smaller capacity of aged, ramshackle nukes. That has worked out extremely well, and they continue. Really? It has worked really well?? Thanks to these really well policies, Germany has an unbreakable dependence on Russian has [1] and has paid billions of euros to Putin's murderous regime since the start of the war wit…

Germany was dependent on fossil imports all along. What has changed is they import less, now, than when they ran the nukes. They will import decreasing amounts as they build out more renewables. It is a fact that the nukes shut down would have needed a great deal of expensive work to continue operating. Germany elected to spend the money on wind, instead, and it bought them more actually delivered wattage than the sh…

Are you really arguing that they'd import more gas now if they hadn't shut down the nuclear plants?

Everyone including Germans have understood by now that phasing out nuclear was a mistake, but you still repeat that no, gas dependency good, nuclear power independence bad.

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

#760

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

pfdietz wrote: post #738
orthecreedence wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, at the current scale. Can it scale up to the task of entirely replacing fossil fuels before we can build the nuclear plants that can give the same output?

Yes. Scaling up solar and wind is much easier. Nuclear reactors require very heavy industry (look at what's needed to forge the reactor pressure vessel of a PWR). Nuclear also requires much higher quality manufacturing. A 1% failure rate on PV modules is acceptable. A 1% failure rate on reactor components is not. Installing wind and solar is also much easier than installing NPPs. Solar installation does not require e…

> Solar installation does not require expensive highly trained labor

That's why the number of solar power related deaths (Mainly, falling from roofs) far exceeds the single fatality from nuclear related incidents we had this century.

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