Nuclear energy is clean • Hacker News Board

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#521

Post by criley2 » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:13 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #494

criley2 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a weird argument to say "Nuclear does this, solar does not" as if the two are against one another and you are comparing them. Here, I'll do the same thing: "Nuclear produces power 24/7, while solar can only usefully produce power for ~8 hours a day, or 1/3 of the day". Sure, for that 1/3 of the day, solar does not have political problems like being shut down for danger. However, for 2/3 of the day, nuclear does…

Solar + storage produces 24/7, overwhelmingly cheaper and without risk of regional poisoning.

Real world grid scale solar + storage is not cheaper, and humanity doesn't even have the battery capacity and won't for some time longer.

And speaking of regional poisoning, I guess all of those heavy metal mines in poorer countries creating some quite dystopian scenes of large scale ecological destruction leading to total ecosystem collapse are OK because "NIMBY"! Can't wait to 10X that, especially when I remember that the energy density of nuclear fuels is so insanely high that the mining impact for powering all of humanity on it is something like 50X less than powering all of humanity on lithium batteries!

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#522

Post by arinlen » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:13 PM UTC

jpgvm wrote: post #514

kubami wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the article you'd see it's not "million years" but ~300.

Even if it was a million years it wouldn't matter. The US has the Nevada desert which is effectively a barren wasteland, just shove it in a bunch of containers and leave it there. They already do that for removed nuclear reactors from military vessels (which is actually so it can be seen in satellite imagery to fulfill international treaty requirements.

> Even if it was a million years it wouldn't matter.

This take is absurd. Humanity barely exists for a few thousand years and you somehow assume that it's feasible and economically justifiable to create a health and security hazard that will exist until the end of times.

And all for what? Because you want to shave off a few cents from an energy bill?

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#523

Post by Gwypaas » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:17 PM UTC

largolagrande wrote: post #467

mytailorisrich wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If workable (obviously crucial point!), I like the idea of using renewables, e.g. offshore wind farms, to produce hydrogen. This would solve storage issues, vehicles could be refilled pretty much the way they are now, gas boilers could be swapped for hydrogen, no need for polluting batteries, no major upgrades of electric grid, etc.

Not workable. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and is found in great abundance in all galaxies. It is particularly present in the Sun, which is problematic because it is not very accessible to us :) On Earth, there is also a lot of hydrogen in water and in hydrocarbons. However, it does not exist in free form, i.e. just hydrogen. It is always associated with something else, for example with oxyge…

> Something like a thousand wind turbines would be needed to replace a nuclear plant (and remember: wind turbines does not work all the time)

Your calibration is off by quite a few years. The current off-shore turbines being built are 15 MW with capacity factors of around 60%.[1] So lets do 50% for wind and 90% for nuclear.

Wind: 1,000 * 15 MW * 0.5 = 7.5 GW

Nuclear: 1 * 1650 MW (EPR) * 0.9 = 1.485 GW

The HYBRIT plant, a pilot project for fossil free steel is going to utilize an over sized green hydrogen production side to enable it to work as a smart consumer and therefore balance the grid. Thus it is completely dependent on cheap renewables to operate and enables deeper penetration of renewables.

> The HYBRIT initiative was launched in 2016 by the three owners; SSAB, LKAB and Vattenfall. The hydrogen storage facility will play a very important role in the overall value chain for fossil-free iron and steel production. Production can take place without a storage facility, but storage provides the opportunity to vary the demand for electricity and ensure stable production. By producing hydrogen gas when there is a lot of electricity, for example when there is a lot of wind, and using stored hydrogen gas when the electricity system is under strain, will ensure production.

> “The hydrogen storage facility has a stabilising effect on the electrical system. It reduces the risk of the system overloading. We want to develop HYBRIT technology so that it is in line with the future electricity system with more weather-dependent electricity generation,” says Mikael Nordlander, Development Manager for Vattenfall’s industrial partnerships.

https://www.hybritdevelopment.se/en/hybrit-a-unique-hydrogen...

[1]: https://www.vestas.com/en/products/offshore/V236-15MW/V236-1...

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#524

Post by ncmncm » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:19 PM UTC

criley2 wrote: post #521

ncmncm wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar + storage produces 24/7, overwhelmingly cheaper and without risk of regional poisoning.

Real world grid scale solar + storage is not cheaper, and humanity doesn't even have the battery capacity and won't for some time longer. And speaking of regional poisoning, I guess all of those heavy metal mines in poorer countries creating some quite dystopian scenes of large scale ecological destruction leading to total ecosystem collapse are OK because "NIMBY"! Can't wait to 10X that, especially when I remember t…

Heavy metal mines, like uranium? Because what other heavy metals are you imagining?

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#525

Post by pydry » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:28 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #497

pydry wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Please provide a link to a pumped storage that buy green wind power when the price is low and sell it when the price is high. Not sure what you mean here. Like, a link to fengning? Kaprun? Snowy 2? Also you dont buy "green power" on the grid. You just buy power. We dont have much pumped storage right now coz (at least until feb) basically nothing could compete with gas as a peaker. Some is under construction though…

> Not sure what you mean here. Like, a link to fengning? Kaprun? Snowy 2? Provide a source that shows a company which business model is to buy renewable energy when the price is low and then sells it when the price is high, recovering the cost of investment and operations by the margin between the low and high price point. Shouldn't be hard. I can provide a link of a company which business model is to buy groceries a…

>Provide a source that shows a company which business model is to buy renewable energy when the price is low and then sells it when the price is high, recovering the cost of investment and operations

If you read the literature of any of the three projects I just mentioned it will give the numbers.

>What does not count is a pumped storage that operate as a grid balancer, where the profits is not from the margins between price points but rather to provide a service of keeping the grid balanced when other power plants are ramping down or ramping up.

The 350GWh of storage provided by, for example, snowy 2 puts it just a little bit beyond what would be required for adjusting the frequency of the grid.

>There is statistics about this

Yeah, this is an interesting conversation that only ever seems to happen seven thread layers deep into the 1,543rd article about how nuclear is totally truly 100% the future and just like, so safe.

It definitely deserves its own thread.

>More commonly there are periods of low wind lasting weeks to months

More like days. We dont need months of storage. Anyway, whilst Id love to refute the same FUD i encountered two weeks ago on a complex topic six levels down in Yet Another Hacker News link started about how Nuclear Power is Just The Best Thing Ever im afraid I am rather busy today.

If you scroll through my history you should see that i have addressed this before though and posted research.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#526

Post by jaredklewis » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:33 PM UTC

TedShiller wrote: post #381

jaredklewis wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with some of your criticism of the article, but I disagree that nuclear waste is a problem. Yes, we have to store it somewhere. But all US plants combined make ~5k cubic meters of nuclear waste a year. To put that in perspective, the strategic oil reserve is 100 million cubic meters. A single aircraft carrier is 2 million cubic meters. Political will aside, finding a place to store this stuff doesn’t seem lik…

> Political will aside, finding a place to store this stuff doesn’t seem like a massive problem. How about your backyard?

In what sense?

In the literal backyard of my house? No. Of course, I also support windmills, water reservoirs, lithium mining, and electric car factories and don't want any of those in my literal backyard either. The idea that it is hypocritical to advocate anything you wouldn’t want on your own residential property seems like such an obviously ridiculous idea, I'm not sure it makes sense to rebut. There are countless things society wants (factories, mines, landfills, warehouses, etc…) that don’t make sense to do in residential areas.

In my figurative backyard, like the state I live in? Sure, I would definitely support California creating a nuclear waste storage facility.

This isn't really anything groundbreaking. We already have millions of acres of landfills in the US. Like radioactive waste, trash is basically permanent and will be decomposing for at least hundreds of years. And no one wants a landfill "in their backyard," but somehow we still managed to create the thousands of landfills we have today. We can spare a few dozen acres to build a nuclear waste facility.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#527

Post by cycomanic » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:33 PM UTC

josephcsible wrote: post #321

cycomanic wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, your comparison between planes and cars is quite adapt. The airline industry likes to use death per km as a measure and you are correct they come out very safe with that measure. However, experts have argued that it is a very flawed metric because of the vary different distances covered by both means and the way risk is distributed (i.e. for flying the risk is almost entirely in the starti g and landing pha…

But people generally aren't choosing between driving somewhere 120 miles away or flying somewhere 1150 miles away. Generally, someone already has a destination in mind, and then chooses whether to drive or fly to get there. That makes deaths by time an extremely flawed metric, and deaths by distance the correct one to use.

Maybe yours is a US perspective, but I never decided between flying and driving. I fly when driving or the train typically does not make sense, i.e. flights over 800km. I'm not sure even in the US is such a decision, most people will not drive from the east to the west coast, while only a small percentage of people would take flying from e.g. LA to San Diego over driving

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#528

Post by pydry » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:36 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #504

pydry wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of governments are keen for this not to happen. For nuclear powers, a civilian nuclear industry is a strategic asset that sharply brings down the cost of maintaining nuclear weapons/subs/carriers. This is partly through skills exchange and partly due to the presence of a shared industrial ecosystem. For certain non nuclear powers (sweden, iran, south korea) an overpriced civvie nuclear industry is kind…

Well again, countries can choose between the non-fossil fuel options. I strongly doubt that nuclear powers will effect the choice in any major way. The biggest factor will be price. Either renewable + storage will be cheaper, renewables + nuclear power, or renewables and dependency on trade, or renewable + nuclear + storage + trade. Yes, governments are keen for this not to happen. Gas, oil and coal is still much che…

>Well again, countries can choose between the non-fossil fuel options. I strongly doubt that nuclear powers will effect the choice in any major way.

The media is, in general, oblivious about the connection between civilian nuclear power and military nuclear requirements in the west. They dont explicitly deny it but it would tend to be mentioned in passing in, like, congressional hearings not propaganda targeted at the general public (like the OP's link).

However, you might have noticed that when Iran tries to build a nuclear industry for peaceful purposes the propaganda outfits argue vociferously that We Definitely Do Not Believe Them.

And of course, they were entirely right. Iran did want a civilian nuclear industry for not entirely peaceful purposes - their economics didnt stack up either.

And that is why the cynical attempt to foment a split between anti nuclear campaigners and the green movement goes on. They want greens to be, well, pro nuclear-weapons as a condition of them being seen to be "green".

This propaganda attempt has been quite successful. Not a day goes by on hacker news when somebody doesnt take a dump on anti nuclear campaigners/the german green party while Poland's enormous coal industry that isnt going anywhere is ignored by the very same propaganda/people who listen to it.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#529

Post by donny2018 » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:37 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #479

donny2018 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but again there is Palo Verde nuclear plant that is located in the middle of the desert in Arizona and is cooled by sewage water from nearby cities. Some new fast reactor designs don't even need water for cooling. Also, China has built an experimental thorium reactor in Gobi desert which also doesn't need water for cooling. I believe a lot if interesting stuff is coming in a few years.

Just, not nuclear stuff.

What does that mean

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#530

Post by cycomanic » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 1:41 PM UTC

shakow wrote: post #354

cycomanic wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany does not do absymmally. It could actually do much better if not for the coal and nuclear lobby trying to slow down the move towards renewables over the last 20 years. Talking about the regulation argument which people bring up for nuclear. The amount of regulations needed to follow for wind are insane in Germany. Essentially even if you want to put a small (5-10kW) turbine in rural yard you have to become a m…

Germany definitely does do abysmally w.r.t. the money they invested: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map After billions over billions poured in wind & solar, they have roughly the same carbon-load on their electricity than US, Russia, or the Balkans.

Are you color blind? Germany is definitely a lighter shade of brown than the US on average (you should really also use a 5 year not 30 day average), also the amount of "billions" that Germany poured into solar and wind is still significantly below the subsidies that coal received (for largely political reasons), likely as many or more subsidies were also poured into US fossils.

It's amazing how all the nuclear proponents spend most of their time arguing against renewables, why is that? Maybe because it is to largely protect the large investments of electricity providers into large fossil and nuclear plants, while solar and wind disrupt these?