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Nuclear energy is clean

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Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#371

Post by idlehand »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #343
joak wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar and wind have these economic properties: - the marginal cost of energy is zero (once the investment made producing a kWh is free) - fix costs are almost zero For the nuclear energy we have the following: - the marginal cost of energy is low (the cost of the uranium mostly) - the fix costs are incredibly high (wether the reactor produce or not, the payroll is the same, the maintenance cost are the same, etc...)…

No one is going to build 10x as many wind turbines as they need to make sure the grid is still up. It's not going to happen unless someone comes up with grid scale storage that can power the entire electric grid for at least 12 hours and in a lot of places 16 hours when the sun/wind isn't available. Nuclear is the only reasonable option we have.

On a continent-wide grid, there will likely be some wind somewhere, and some pumped hydro ready to take advantage of the low prices.

We'll also see micro-storage developing to take advantage of electricity price variability. EVs will charge when electricity is cheapest, household water might be warmed during the day when solar energy is available, etc.

Unfortunately losing nuclear means that we lose the potential for a self-sufficient regional grid. But since the costs of losing base load power are largely offloaded from national budgets, instead showing up as new costs for consumers and companies, it's a lot easier for a politician to advocate for renewables. No need to spend taxpayer money on a project that won't be finished in the 4 years that matter to your government.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#372

Post by loup-vaillant »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #357
jokoon wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables are not baseload. If you add batteries to the mix, nuclear is better. Not to mention the quantity of power produced. Nuclear is expensive because it's long term investment. Renewables also cost more in resources (concrete, steel, copper), there are sourced charts about this. Renewables are better than coal and gaz, but not better than nuclear. There's nothing wrong with renewables, but it's not enough to o…

It doesn't have to be batteries, it can be pump storage plant or similar installations. Problem that those don't work aren't technical. There are often legislative in nature or the infrastructure for energy transportation is inadequate. We don't know how feasibly we can get Uranium. The market is unstable right now because of political problems. The topic is very complex, there are disadvantages with every form of en…

> it can be pump storage plant or similar installations.

Not sure about the rest of the world, but in the EU we basically maxed out those years (decades?) ago. We won't be getting much more. (I mean, without actual mountains, your pump storage plant is going to be prohibitively expensive.)

> The topic is very complex, there are disadvantages with every form of energy production

True. In France, we had a very recent report[1] that outlines various scenarios towards 2050, and it appeared that the least risky ones involved a fairly diverse energetic mix.

[1]: https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2022-01/Energy%20p...

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#373

Post by hansihe »

addicted wrote: post #199
trashtester wrote: post #123

Earlier 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 is not true.

Rivers are often dammed to create an artificial body of water that can be used for power generation. You are storing water from the river when it has a high flow rate, in order to be able to generate power when needed.

There is nothing that requires the area downstream from the dam to have been previously underwater.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#374

Post by modo_mario »

otherme123 wrote: post #238
m2fkxy wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

>Something being built means little when the time from "start" and "end" is meassured in decades.

If you'd go to check for the average build time of a nuclear reactor or the new reactors that come into service you'd notice they're often/typically connected and running 5-6 years after they start building. A lot of that is helped by china and the likes not having horror stories like Finland.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#375

Post by Kon5ole »

anonporridge wrote: post #29
I_am_tiberius wrote: post #17

I think nuclear power plants aren't worth the risk. I often hear arguments such as that modern reactors don't have the issues old ones had etc.. As long as it can't be guaranteed to me that e.g. a terror attack doesn't cause a 1000 km2 area around the plant to be unlivable for 100 years, I most likely won't change my opinion. I think living in the stone age is better than taking the risk.

I think this line of thinking has defaulted us onto a path of drastically increased carbon in the atmosphere, with no signs of stopping, which is at best going to drastically change the world and take centuries to remove, and at worst could trigger a massive biosphere collapse that drives our species to extinction. The Earth has 150 MILLION km2 of land. We could literally have hundreds of reactors blow causing 1000 k…

>We could literally have hundreds of reactors blow causing 1000 km2 unlivable patches of ground and still be perfectly fine.

Your numbers are off by orders of magnitude. The exclusion zone for Chernobyl alone is 2600 km2, the areas immediately affected in the 3 neighboring countries is 130 000 km2, food and livestock in areas over 3000 km from the site have to be fed special food supplements in order to pass regulation for human consumption to this day.

And this was despite the fire in Chernobyl being handled, limiting the actual amount of fallout released into the atmosphere.

IMO, correctly prioritizing our fears means we should put all efforts towards solar and energy storage solutions. That's the optimal solution after all, aiming for anything else is like playing not to win.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#376

Post by modo_mario »

runarberg wrote: post #309
ip26 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Currently nuclear reactors take well over a decade from construction to start of operation. I think few are willing to bet that storage will still be a problem 10 years from now. Carbon capture from gas natural gas (also an alternative that exists today) is another technology you’d have to bet won’t become economically feasible by the time your nuclear power plant finally becomes operational. Honestly a base-load alt…

>Currently nuclear reactors take well over a decade from construction to start of operation.

If I look at recent ones that went online over the past years most took 5 years.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#377

Post by bilekas »

Krasnol wrote: post #367
bilekas wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don't believe nuclear waste would pose a significant problem. There are many ways of containing waste as well as reducing. Plasma disposal is also feasable for reducing the waste even further. RE : https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... Fossil fuels release about 33 billion tonnes annually in co2 release. And that's not even possible to contain. https://www.world-nuclear.org/informatio…

> I also don't believe nuclear waste would pose a significant problem. There are many ways of containing waste as well as reducing. And than all you bring up is some technology which is in testing proving OPs argument. Sure there are ways of reducing highly radioactive waste...at the cost of creating more waste you still have to store...and yeah sure you can dispose some of it in the sea. Also it costs a hell lot of…

> The topic is renewables vs. nuclear though.

I'm only commenting on a portion of the argument against nuclear based on its waste.

The fact is the waste is negligible. Esspecially so when you consider the return of energy from a nuclear reactor Per square meter of real estate versus most viable renewables

I'm personally of the opinion why not both. So I'm biased of course, but nuclear isn't something to be afraid of. Purely BECAUSE of technology.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#378

Post by d--b »

The article makes its point well, but its title is unnecessarily polarizing.

However little, fission does produce dangerous materials that need to be handled very carefully and stored in places where nobody cares that they are actually radioactive. What if fission was to replace 90% of other energy sources. Would you trust everyone in the world to dispose of their waste responsibly?

And while Chernobyl is far in the rear-view mirror, Fukushima is not. So while improbable, it is hard to argue that catastrophic nuclear events won't happen again.

Why not acknowledge the tradeoff in the title and say it's one of the cleanest and safest. People get the point about air travel: "it seems riskier because catastrophic failures are much more spectacular, but overall air travel is a lot safer than car travel". No one is saying "planes don't crash"

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#379

Post by loup-vaillant »

Krasnol wrote: post #367
bilekas wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don't believe nuclear waste would pose a significant problem. There are many ways of containing waste as well as reducing. Plasma disposal is also feasable for reducing the waste even further. RE : https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... Fossil fuels release about 33 billion tonnes annually in co2 release. And that's not even possible to contain. https://www.world-nuclear.org/informatio…

> I also don't believe nuclear waste would pose a significant problem. There are many ways of containing waste as well as reducing. And than all you bring up is some technology which is in testing proving OPs argument. Sure there are ways of reducing highly radioactive waste...at the cost of creating more waste you still have to store...and yeah sure you can dispose some of it in the sea. Also it costs a hell lot of…

The figures I have for France (from Jean-Marc Jancovici) are that for the entire history of French nuclear energy, the total volume of long term, high-intensity nuclear waste is that of a single gymnasium.

And we went pretty heavy on Nuclear. Overall, I wouldn't say the problem is insignificant. But it is certainly a small problem, compared to building, maintaining, and renewing all the nuke plants themselves.

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