Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you talking about lithium batteries? Why on earth?
Not specifically. Energy storage?
The cheapest storage of energy is gas cavernes underground
Nuclear energy is clean
221–230 of 709 posts
Re: Nuclear energy is clean
#222We 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…
In peace time CO2 emissions from nuclear are at the same order of magnitude as hydro. Similarly, the number of deaths per twh produced is also similar to hydro. Both are at least an order of magnitude lower than coal. A hydro plant can be attacked in a war situation just as much as a nuclear plant, so I don't see how that should be weighted as highly as you seem to imply. In fact, I'd argue that energy dependence on…
Also, we can build a nuclear plant in a desert country (where I live), but not much hydro. In fact, our hydro plants are generating less and less energy every year as our rivers are drying up.
Re: Nuclear energy is clean
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
> many people are used to floods caused by heavy rain, and the danger feels similar. I don't know what "people feel", but the reality of a large dam that is blown up is more like a tsunami than a normal flood. If it hits a city, casualties can easily reach the 10s or 100s of thousands, instantly. In a way, an upstream dam is a health hazard for anyone in the area that might be flooded that should be concerning at the…
For a busted dam to destroy a city, the city necessarily would have been built on land that was literally underwater until before the dam. This isn’t common, to say the least.
This presumes the gigantic water mass in the dam would stay within the downstream river banks when released.
Water is not that polite...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_d...
Re: Nuclear energy is clean
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are better solutions for low-carbon, dispatchable, high power electrical energy generation?
Wind and solar coupled with energy storage systems, all of which have been plunging in price like a rock over the last twenty years.
Energy storage systems that do not currently exist? Or that would cost more than nuclear does currently?
Re: Nuclear energy is clean
#225There 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…
Do you have any sources for utility scale batteries with reasonable cost? The biggest I know of are in Australia and are extremely expensive, and provide such little reserve they are basically a rounding error.
Not to mention they employ batteries fabricated with toxic chemicals. It’s going to be tragic watching folks try to figure out how to safely dispose of these batteries 20 years from now. Not to mention the carbon that will be emitted to make them in the first place.
Re: Nuclear energy is clean
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
100% correct. Not only have nuclear costs not improved in the three quarters of a century it has existed, it's only gotten more expensive while wind and solar have plunged, dramatically, in costs. In the US, nuclear capacity is being replaced by wind and solar at six times the rate it's being "lost"; the hysterics you read here on HN and reddit are just that. And the rate of solar and wind deployment is skyrocketing.…
> We need the very fastest ways to reduce carbon generation Why does Germany performs abysmally wrt. electrical production carbon intensity despite having enough wind/solar installed capacity to cover their consumption?
Yeah, it’s nice how he just glosses over the impact of subsidies for wind and solar.
We could power the whole grid with wood stoves and steam turbines with big enough subsidies. The fact that a heavily subsidized energy production method outperforms a heavily regulated and unsubsidized one shouldn’t be surprising to anyone.
Re: Nuclear energy is clean
#227There 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…
> The costs of solar, wind and batteries are dropping exponentially but the costs of nuclear are not improving.
So where can I see a cost comparison that factors in the cost of storage? I've probably seen 20 people say this exact same thing and have never been able to find an actual cost breakdown that supports it.
Re: Nuclear energy is clean
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
> nuclear accidents are almost entirely hypothetical Nothing to see here. > Serious nuclear power plant accidents include the Fukushima nuclear disaster (2011), the Chernobyl disaster (1986), the Three Mile Island accident (1979), and the SL-1 accident (1961).
All of those accidents combined killed less than 10% of the people that are killed by fossil fuel pollution every single year. Most nuclear accidents are entirely hypothetical.
If we remove Chernobyl from this list, we'll find that probably just 1 person died from radiation after power plant accidents.
Fossil plants are killing millions of people every year.
During heatwave this year, when we had temperatures around 43C for almost 2 weeks, hundreds of people died in my country because our energy grids were overloaded and ACs turned off. And many people can't even afford to pay for AC energy bills anyway so they don't use it. Our energy needs are growing every year and energy production can't keep up.
We NEED cheap energy that nuclear can give. This is the matter of survival at this point.
Re: Nuclear energy is clean
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
The other issue with solar/wind of course being that it’s not a suitable electricity source for base load on a grid :-/
If one more reactor goes down nuclear isn’t either in your country. Germany has to run their load balancing gas plants right now to fix your nuclear fever dreams.
And what is the probability of a reactor going down unexpectedly versus a weather event that causes renewable sources to stop producing?
I think we learned the answer to that question last winter down in Texas.
Re: Nuclear energy is clean
#230There 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…
And again, the article does the same mistake they always do: attack wind and solar more than fossil or hydro. Instead of selling nuclear as the ideal companion to solar, it's always a sad try to convince us that we are wrong investing in solar and eolic, and the money should be going to more nuclear.
My guess is that utilities are not happy with the decentralization of PV. They like fossils, hydro and nuclear because you can't run them in you backyard at competitive prices. But you can buy PV and thermosolar on friday at Home Depot, slap it to the roof, and have a better ROI than any utility starting sunday. Get a Powerball or something similar, and they would never see another dollar from your pocket.
They, nuclear lobby, are known to be maneuvering to get more nuclear reactors installed quickly before is too late, but on conditions like: 1) government subsidizes the costs, 2) they assume possible overbudgets, 3) insures the plants for 100 years or so, and 4) guarantee an income for 50 years, in concept of "backup". For that they need a favorable public opinion, begging for more nuclear plants, and the politics would abide.