Nuclear energy is clean • Hacker News Board

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#171

Post by kitkat_new » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:06 AM UTC

tedk-42 wrote: post #61

jmyeet wrote: post #26

Ok, so another pro-nuclear puff piece. Why do I say that? Because it talks about nuclear waste without ever mentioning the other kind: fuel processing waste. Nuclear fuel needs to be enriched. Enriching is simply upping the percentage of U-235 (the rest is mostly U-238). Civilian reactors tend to have relatively low enrichment rates. So-called weapons grade is enriched to a very high percentage and requires different…

How many years have France been safely operating their Nuclear plants? Germany too? You speak of a Chernobyl exclusion zone, but I don't see anyone living where they've put up large scale solar farms or next to wind turbines. You're right about humans not managing long term consequences well. From lead poisoning 40 years ago to 20 years from now when we have to deal with the waste of solar left behind (perhaps toxic…

> We need nuclear now. No nonsense blockers. Build more plants and replace the coal, oil and gas base load stations we're running now to try slow the rate of carbon we're throwing into the sky.

you can't get it now. You have to wait at least 10 years to get a plant up & running.

solar and wind - doesnt take even a year

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#172

Post by dotnet00 » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:06 AM UTC

purerandomness wrote: post #77

Animats wrote: post #41

Waste disposal isn't that hard. The Onkalo nuclear waste repository in Finland pretty much has it covered. First, you find a hard-rock mountain where geology shows nothing much happening in the last few million years, and there's nothing worth mining. Worldwide, there are many mountain ranges like that. Then tunnel way down, but preferably above the water table. Drill holes in the tunnel floor. Put waste in suitable…

How do we communicate to civilisations in the future what we did in that mountain?

This is for the most part not a realistic practical issue. Either the civilizations in the future are continuations of our current civilization and have records or they're advanced enough to have the ability to detect radiation thus making the issue moot or they've regressed enough to lose that knowledge and people stumbling into a radioactive waste storage facility is the least of our concerns.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#173

Post by edgyquant » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:07 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #75

kuhewa wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypothetical, but the occurrence of future large scale conflict is overwhelmingly likely. This will remain a valid concern - not just accidents, but intentional attacks - until design of plants advances to be robust against strikes to failsafe without active management

> Hypothetical, but the occurrence of future large scale conflict is overwhelmingly likely. If you are worrying about future large scale conflict then nuclear plants will be the least of your problems causing death and other things.

State level conflict has been the norm since the rise of agriculture. Not worrying about it would be gross incompetence.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#174

Post by p_l » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:08 AM UTC

Flocular wrote: post #68

lmm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how does that compare to the business-as-usual shutdowns of solar (every night, cloudy days, winter as a whole) which unlike nuclear are highly correlated between separate plants? If storage is cheap enough then solar will be an important part of the mix. But unless you have the right geography for geothermal or hydro (which probably means flooding a bigger area than the chernobyl exclusion zone before you've eve…

That is just to show that nuclear isn't a magical always-on power source that some of the pro-nuclear folks make it out to be. Also: we can install twice the capacity in MW for solar and still have money left over to put into a smarter grid or storage compared to nuclear.

Except for quite a lot of places, we need to put 10-20x times the capacity plus storage system.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#175

Post by kitkat_new » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:09 AM UTC

tremon wrote: post #111

stevenjgarner wrote: post #94

Before we get all gung-ho on nuclear power, perhaps we could try solving the existential nuclear problems we already have. FACTS [0]: 1. The nuclear industry still has no solution to the 'waste problem'. 2. The transport of this waste poses an unacceptable risk to people and the environment. 3. Plutonium is the most dangerous material in the world. 4. Nuclear waste is hazardous for tens of thousands of years. This cl…

1. The fossil fuel industry still has no solution to the 'CO2 problem' 2. The continuous emission of this gas poses an unacceptable risk to people and the environment. 3. There are many compounds more dangerous than plutonium, which we happily use in day-to-day life: botulinum, ricin, hydrazine. 4. A runaway greenhouse effect is hazardous for tens of thousands of years, if not permanent. This clearly is unprecedented…

1. so what? society has renewables which don't care about what the fossil industry has

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#176

Post by epistasis » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:11 AM UTC

AinderS wrote: post #159

epistasis wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time to start nuclear to address climate change was the mid-2000s. And we did start four reactors, with many more planned! However they are all construction failures, and the two at Summer were actually even abandoned half completed, it was so bad. And executives our going to jail for their lies during the construction process. That's what I mean when I say nobody knows how to build it. We will likely never…

> That's what I mean when I say nobody knows how to build it. During China's 13th Five-Year Plan period from 2016 to 2020, the country built 20 new nuclear power generators with a total capacity of 23.44 million kilowatts - https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-04-14/China-has-most-nuclear... So clearly it's possible. With the right policy incentives, there's no reason to believe the US can't replicate China's success in t…

There's plenty of reason to believe that we can't replicate those numbers, because we have vastly different labor costs, vastly different technological skill sets. Plus, costs in China are always a bit of a mystery. Russia or South Korea may also provide potential routes towards cheaper construction, but South Korea's success was based on at least a bit of corruption. And who knows what's actually going on at Rosatom.

I would also point out that China's only planning something like 50GW of new reactors from here on out, but nearly TW of renewables, so new nuclear there is mostly coming from hedging their primary bets, not as a primary source of future electricity.

The US definitely does need to relearn how to do big construction projects. But I think that the limited construction capacity we have would be best spent on projects that have no replacement, like mass transit. Or on building factories to produce energy generating widgets, which has an exponential return on construction effort when compared to constructing energy generating widgets directly.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#177

Post by credit_guy » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:14 AM UTC

kitkat_new wrote: post #166

credit_guy wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and we have other options that we didn't have 20 years ago. We do, but those options are not enough. If they were, the Democrats in Washington would not have turned pro-nuclear. They saw the numbers. You can store electricity from day to night, but not from Summer to Winter. Months-long electricity storage will never make economic sense (or at least not in the next 30 years). Nuclear reactor construction is current…

> They saw the numbers. You can store electricity from day to night, but not from Summer to Winter. Months-long electricity storage will never make economic sense (or at least not in the next 30 years). where's your crystal ball?

It's just math. If you have a storage solution where you can recoup you capital costs by charging every day and selling electricity every night, you will recoup only one hundredth of that if you charge one day and sell 100 days later. Currently the capital costs of batteries add a few cents to the kWh (the average price of 1 kWh in the US in 2021 was 14 cents). If you multiply that number by one hundred, you end up with dollars for kWh, and you can sell that kWh, because nobody will buy it.

If you find a storage solution that adds only hundredths of cents to a kWh if sold daily, that would be absolutely fantastic. But no such solution is in sight.

The only long term storage solution that has a shadow of a chance to make it is hydrogen. But we are so, so much behind the plan in building green hydrogen production facilities. As for hydrogen liquefaction and shipping, that's just a distant plan.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#178

Post by robocat » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:14 AM UTC

Flocular wrote: post #68

lmm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how does that compare to the business-as-usual shutdowns of solar (every night, cloudy days, winter as a whole) which unlike nuclear are highly correlated between separate plants? If storage is cheap enough then solar will be an important part of the mix. But unless you have the right geography for geothermal or hydro (which probably means flooding a bigger area than the chernobyl exclusion zone before you've eve…

That is just to show that nuclear isn't a magical always-on power source that some of the pro-nuclear folks make it out to be. Also: we can install twice the capacity in MW for solar and still have money left over to put into a smarter grid or storage compared to nuclear.

No.

Firstly, you talk about $ per capacity in MW, however solar capacity factor is 20%. Only use a levelized cost per MWh.

Secondly, solar needs storage which you think is trivial, but which turns out to be wayyyy more expensive than the solar panels. Some reports[1] only compare short-term (peaker generation) for storage. Nuclear is expensive, but battery storage is far more expensive to cover daily or longer load variation (non-peaker). That report mentions in a footnote a levelized cost of storage of crazy high $1613/MWh to $3034/MWh.

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

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#179

Post by m2fkxy » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:15 AM UTC

joak wrote: post #165

There is this idea that nuclear is not being deployed because people have a wrong perception of risks. However, the main reason is the economy. The costs of solar, wind and batteries are dropping exponentially but the costs of nuclear are not improving. We can blame regulation and the hypothetically wrong public perception about safety, but the reality is that costs cannot go down easily because of the innovation dyn…

> In conclusion, (...) nuclear reactors are simply not going to be built because they are not competitive

What do you mean? 50+ reactors are under construction as we write [1], and almost twice as much are planned [2] (with even more proposed).

Furthermore:

> A nuclear reactor cannot be shipped

Marine nuclear reactors (of which 200-ish are in active service) and Chukotka's floating nuclear power plants are notable counter-examples. Especially with marine reactors being the baseline for the philosophy behind SMRs.

[1] https://pris.iaea.org/pris/worldstatistics/underconstruction...

[2] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu...

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#180

Post by Gatsky » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:16 AM UTC

bad_alloc wrote: post #9

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 happen…

A counterpoint is that wind and solar are impossible to defend in a conflict (especially off-shore wind), and can be irretrievably wrecked with minimal risk to the attacking force. I don't think this should be any sort of impediment to putting renewables everywhere we can though. If there is a war big enough that countries are destroying each other's energy infrastructure we'll almost all be dead anyway. Nuclear winters will kill solar production (and also most of the demand, I guess).