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Nuclear energy is clean

collectifission.nl

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Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#2

Post by JanisErdmanis »

I find it asonishing that only now I learn that radioactive waste stays much longer radioactive than being dangerous. Also other good arguments are put forward by normalizing material costs VS expected energy production capacity.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#3

Post by epistasis »

> But the amount of concrete and steel for sun and wind is striking. This has to do with the low energy density of these two.

No, it's not striking at all, and this is just as BS argument as the people arguing that nuclear isn't clean. As far as the energy density, include all the steel and concrete used outside of the reaction chamber, and you will find that nuclear and solar are pretty much on the same order of magnitude, and that's using the numbers from newer reactor designs that have consciously tried to reduce the amount of concrete by a factor of two.

But of course, all this is misdirection from the real challenges of nuclear, which is finding somebody who can build it and somebody who is willing to take the financial risk of nuclear, when it looks like a terribles mis allocation of capital, if one's goal is to decarbonize energy.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#4

Post by elietoubi »

Super interesting how there is a big push for nuclear in the tech world right now. To play the devils advocate, there are some pretty solid reasons why Nuclear is not ideal.The biggest one to me is the risk or nuclear material proliferation: Iran for instance is hiding their military nuclear program behind a civilian nuclear goal.

Nuclear is probably net better than coal but it's not the (only) solution to climate change.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#6

Post by ggm »

epistasis wrote: post #3

> But the amount of concrete and steel for sun and wind is striking. This has to do with the low energy density of these two. No, it's not striking at all, and this is just as BS argument as the people arguing that nuclear isn't clean. As far as the energy density, include all the steel and concrete used outside of the reaction chamber, and you will find that nuclear and solar are pretty much on the same order of mag…

To me, it's about the shape of the logistic curve from planning, through construction to supply, and it's lifetime.

We should start nuclear construction now, but for supply in 8+ years time. And therefore we should start increasing construction of wind, solar, pumped hydro and battery now, to supply lower watts, but useful watts inside the 8 year window. As supply matches demand we can remove coal and gas, and when the nuclear comes on line, increase the pace of their removal and repurpose surplus wind and solar to hydrogen production for ammonia, and hydrogen fuel cells, and domestic gas replacement.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#9

Post by bad_alloc »

We saw another downside of nuclear power in Ukraine: When Russian troops attacked towards Enerhodar and there was shelling in the area the safety of the reactor could not be guaranteed. In the end, containment can be guaranteed w.r.t to internal accidents but no facility can ever be safe from outside issues like war, natural disaster or politics.

Solar has less single points of failure and if it fails not much happens, like in the case of the stolen solar power plant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokmak_Solar_Energy).

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