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Nuclear energy is clean

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Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#231

Post by themaninthedark »

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?

How do we communicate with civilizations in the future to not eat the fish and mollusks out of the rivers. You know, the ones that are currently being contaminated with mercury and other forever chemicals from both coal ash and rare earth tailing?

Please, let us know your plan.

P.S. This is not a hypothetical problem, like the demands you are making of nuclear. This is a current and ongoing one. Your green energy isn't as green as you claim it is, please tell us your solution.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#232

Post by adastra22 »

epistasis wrote: post #126
losteric wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I have read that there is much more nuance in nuclear pricing. Past projects were bespoke and subject to changing bureaucratic requirements. There a…

Yes, SMRs are the hope, but it's just a hope. It's the right idea to switch away from construction to manufacturing, but it's unclear how quickly the manufacturing process could scale.

With the approval of a SMR design, isn’t this no longer just hope?

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#233

Post by [deleted] »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #205
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…

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.…

[deleted]

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#234

Post by yellowapple »

afterburner wrote: post #190
jaredklewis wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oil refineries also take years to build and are built on site. The difference is that oil goes onto open markets and it is thus possible for oil refiners to get a return on their investment. We don’t need innovation in nuclear. The nuclear technology we have today is already a miracle technology. Can’t speak to Europe but in the US the issue absolutely is regulation. The exact regulations vary by state, but energy gr…

> We don’t need innovation in nuclear The Nuclear industry will need that innovation, in order to remain even remotely competitive with the alternatives. It's not improving faster than those alternatives though.

Nuclear is already more than competitive. The appearance otherwise is overwhelmingly artificial.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#235

Post by readams »

hackerlight wrote: post #227
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…

> 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.

Nobody knows what storage would cost because there is no technology that currently exists to make storage possible. Battery technology helps a lot to stabilize the grid over seconds to minutes or even hours, but the kind of storage that would be needed to be 100% solar and wind just doesn't exist. Pumped hydro is great but there are not many places where it is feasible.

So the reality of the current situation is that solar and wind are cheap now since when they are a relatively small percentage of the power and you can fall back on gas and coal storage isn't really needed. But in the future the costs of solar and wind will skyrocket since you'll need to overbuild the capacity by a huge amount, plus build lots of expensive transmission infrastructure, to work around the fact that storage technology at the appropriate scale doesn't exist yet.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#236

Post by ip26 »

otherme123 wrote: post #230
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…

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…

Ironically, to me their best play is to board the renewable train as a base load alternative to storage, which is not yet mature.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#237

Post by phyzome »

throw827474737 wrote: post #76
bob1029 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Solar has less single points of failure and if it fails not much happens On the surface this is very true. However, types of solar have caveats that do not manifest until you have a certain amount of utilization in the grid. Photovoltaics do not contribute to inertia. This is the Newtonian concept that ensures instantaneous voltage stability separate from any active demand/generation management functions. The more…

> Photovoltaics do not contribute to inertia. This is the Newtonian concept that ensures instantaneous voltage stability separate from any active demand/generation management functions. Wait what, Newton's inertia was about physical objects, not voltage stability? You talking base vs peak demand or what?

That voltage stability is electromagnetically coupled to huge chunks of spinning iron. That's your inertia. It buffers voltage spikes. Solar, and surprisingly enough wind as well, do not contribute to this stability. It's one of the big challenges we need to figure out.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#238

Post by otherme123 »

m2fkxy wrote: post #179
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 co…

That table doesn't support your thesis, specially when you think of the one reactor being built in France.

Something being built means little when the time from "start" and "end" is meassured in decades. A better table would be "increase in nuclear output". E.g. fully self driving vehicles are being built, but little or none see the street, much less have a positive ROI.

Planned and proposed is even worse. A lot of them would never leave that status. Only energy super eager countries like China or India are effectively increasing nuclear capacity, and in a way that nobody knows if they are financially sound investments.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#239

Post by MisterMower »

epistasis wrote: post #113
TheDudeMan wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> willing to take the financial risk of nuclear There are multiple nuclear (fission) startups in the last decade or so. My understanding is that financial backing is not their problem; outdated regulations are. And fear stokes outdated regulations.

It's one thing to spend a fraction of $1B backing a startup that says it has a new small modular design that will finally turn around the economics, and have a big upside. It's a far far more difficult thing to risk $10B on a reactor that may or may not actually ever complete construction, and has no potential for growth in value. People never seem to cite which regulations they want to change. The NRC allowed the AP…

To be fair, they have a lot to complain about.

You know how they discovered radon gas was a problem in basements? A guy working at a nuclear power plant showed up at work one day and tripped their radiation detectors.

There was more radiation in a random guy’s basement than at the entire nuclear plant.

Meanwhile, the Chinese are soaking up US subsidy money for producing solar panels using slave labor. They strip mine for toxic rare earth metals to do it, destroying the environment and using coal power to boot.

I think their complaints are justified.

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