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Nuclear energy is clean

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Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#251

Post by pfdietz »

tehsauce wrote: post #55
lioeters wrote: post #35

Earlier 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 you have to resort to "it's better than fossil fuels" you have damned nuclear with faint praise. And you have also wasted our time, because nuclear is competing with renewables now, not with fossil fuels.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#252

Post by pfdietz »

mjhay wrote: post #148
aet wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few? Here is another: mining “Many Navajo people have died of kidney failure and cancer, conditions linked to uranium contamination. And new research from the CDC shows uranium in babies born now.” https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/04/10/4735472...

Solar panels and batteries require the damaging mining of all sorts of rare and/or nasty materials. This kills a lot of people, although predominantly in other countries nowadays. It's an argument that could be applied to nearly any mineral resource, and is more of an indictment of unsafe mining practices and capitalist exploitation. If we allowed practical research on breeder reactors, the need for uranium mining wo…

Which rare/nasty mined material is required for solar panels? Be specific, and be sure you're talking about silicon, which is 95% of the PV market.

(Spoiler: there is no such material.)

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#253

Post by agentultra »

kuhewa wrote: post #134
TheDudeMan wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say "nuclear", do you mean all forms of fission reactors? Or do you mean today's inferior designs? Your comment makes sense in the context of conventional light-water reactors. However, there exist more advanced reactor designs that are essentially meltdown-proof.

How close are they to commercial implementation

There are several that will be deployed in Canada over the next few years [0] and the government seems committed to investing in SMR technology [1]

[0] https://x-energy.com/media/news-releases/x-energy-canada-and...

[1] https://smrroadmap.ca/

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#254

Post by pfdietz »

credit_guy wrote: post #151
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…

> 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…

> You can store electricity from day to night, but not from Summer to Winter.

Hydrogen can do that.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#255

Post by mcronce »

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…

This presupposes that economics are the most important thing.

That isn't really the case.

It doesn't matter how much money you have when the climate burns to the ground around you, while energy sources that work when they want to fail to provide for your needs.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#256

Post by pfdietz »

indymike wrote: post #195
vlunkr wrote: post #78

Really interesting to see how much people fight nuclear power. We’ve been complaining about fossil fuels for decades, and now that the US seems to be seriously exploring a viable alternative you’re going to complain about it? I get that there are issues and unknowns, but it’s better than the current death march, isn’t it?

> I get that there are issues and unknowns, but it’s better than the current death march, isn’t it? This is really what the whole argument boils down to: nuclear, or global warming. There's really not real, feasible renewable answer. It takes over 1300 wind turbines to match the power output of a single reactor. Solar? 1-3 Million panels. Most civilian facilities operate 3-6 reactors. Fission is the only technology t…

> There's really not real, feasible renewable answer.

But there is, and it's likely cheaper than the nuclear answer.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#257

Post by runarberg »

lmm wrote: post #243
runarberg wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard somewhere that the base load of power is an mostly an outdated concern at this point. As more homes get solar and offload their excess power back into the grid during the the daytime. Reducing the baseload to negative. https://www.nrdc.org/experts/kevin-steinberger/debunking-thr...

You have to read these partisan pieces carefully. When they say "a mix of renewables and natural gas can x", they actually mean "natural gas can x" - but burning natural gas emits CO2. And a 30% wind grid in Texas worked out right until it didn't (the media blamed it all on lack of "winterization" which may be the immediate cause, but the fact is that the high wind mix meant the grid was having to work a lot harder a…

Agreed. Natural gas is not a feasible alternative to coal and oil on its own as the greenhouse emissions are simply to high. However, a natural gas power plant that runs only when demand calls for it and renewables (+ stored renewables) are unable to supply is not an end of the world scenario (which our current climate trajectory certainly is).

I’m even hopeful of a future where these natural gas plants will have carbon capture employed. But you are right, as it stands natural gas power plant is not a solution to the climate crisis.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#258

Post by mcronce »

pfdietz wrote: post #248
MisterMower wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Globally solar and wind are blowing away the competition. Is that ALL subsidized? Of course not. They have really gotten cheaper.

If you ignore the fact that wind and solar work when they want to, you're absolutely right.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#259

Post by Retric »

cowtools wrote: post #183
Retric wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydroelectric dams actively save lives by reducing flooding. It’s the only power source with net negative death rates and as such doesn’t see the same kind of pushback from disasters.

Okay, but wouldn't a hydroelectric dam encourage people to build in areas that would be otherwise unsafe, thus putting them at risk of a terrorist attack on the dam?

That’s tricky as people have a shocking propensity to build in flood plains either way and dams only mitigate flooding rather than prevent it. I personally doubt that many people are going to change their mind because the location they want to build their home likely floods every 90 years vs every 30.

Bill a friend of mine built a large addition on a house which had flooded twice while he had been living there, once actually reaching the second story. In his mind it’s picture perfect 99.9% of the time so what’s an inconvenience every few decades. In the end he died before the next flood, but now there is a nice house in a flood plain.

This isn’t reserved to individuals, companies didn’t abandon large areas of NYC after the last flood. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/data-maps/flood-hazard-ma...

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#260

Post by pfdietz »

nimbius wrote: post #27

I really want to believe nuclear is as clean as the author says, but the biggest challenge is storing the waste for three hundred years. were talking small amounts, sure, but contamination of groundwater and surrounding soil isn't something we in the US have a stellar track record with. camp lejunes benzene contaminated drinking water happened in only a 29 year span, and the only real remedy is a class action lawsuit…

Storing waste for 300 years isn't a huge problem. Dry casks shouldn't go anywhere.

The problem is dealing with the waste at that point, because it's so radiologically cold an amateur terrorist group could extract the plutonium, which is almost entirely still there.

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