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Nuclear energy is clean

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Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#601

Post by pvaldes »

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?

We talk about humans, is guaranteed that they will lick the warm shiny stones behind a huge "don't lick this" banner.

But they will learn eventually after a couple of deaths, as we did every single time. We are trying to solve the wrong problem here; Is the population what counts.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#602

Post by pvaldes »

themaninthedark wrote: post #231
purerandomness wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This will not be a problem at all, there will not be a lot of edible freshwater molluscs around. They are going extinct really fast.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#603

Post by ncmncm »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #580
ncmncm wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have maxed out only hydro power dams. Pumped storage is not limited to hydro power dams. All you really need is a hill and water, although it costs less with a depression near the hilltop. No watershed needed. Actually you do not need the hill. An underground cavity suffices. And, there are numerous other cheap alternatives.

How many joules would your hill/cavity-and-water (or any of your "numerous cheap alternatives" for that matter) would hold for each dollar spent? How would that compare to actual dams? I need sources & links. Right now I would bet on a highly unfavourable comparison to be honest. Dams have the overwhelming advantage of letting you build a relatively small wall (compared to the lake you're holding), to hold a gigantic…

Ask the people who build them.

Hydro power systems need to store a year or more. Utilities will need at most a few weeks. You don't need or want a river. Dams are f'ing expensive because they need geological support for extreme pressure. An earthen dike suffices if you don't already have a depression.

Only the penstock needs to hold back high pressure.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#604

Post by pfdietz »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #568
nl wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are handwaving away the nonexistent storage tech required to stand up a power grid. Please stop. This isn't true. If you accept 5% non-renewable power generation (which - lets face it - will be with us for a while!) you need storage at $150/kWh to use renewables for everything else[1]. This price is available now (and forecast to drop below $100/kWh next year)[2]. [1] https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4…

Your first article is all hypothetical about the costs of storage tech rather than reality based.

Ah yes, the usual passive aggressive approach of dismissing contrary ideas that have not been fully confirmed with 100% certainty. And yet you guys never apply this to nuclear.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#605

Post by ETH_start »

ncmncm wrote: post #499
robertlagrant wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you add in "rebuild all the transmission lines" to the cost then that would be good. Comparing some costs of renewables to total cost of nuclear is a fun pastime, but doesn't help the debate.

Nukes also involve big transmission line projects, so it is a wash,.

Not nearly as much as requires to overcome the intermittency issue of renewable power sources.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#606

Post by ETH_start »

ncmncm wrote: post #447
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…

Plants planned or under construction will be cancelled anywhere they are not massively subsidized by government coercion of tax- or ratepayers, as energy prices continue downward. They will be recognized as unable to compete. Existing plants will be mothballed as energy prices drop below the level needed to continue operating, again except where coerced.

Nuclear power is the cheapest option:

https://www.oecd-nea.org/lcoe/

And it is far more reliable than renewables.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#607

Post by jaredklewis »

TedShiller wrote: post #548
jaredklewis wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 countles…

> In the literal backyard of my house? No. Ok, so storage is a problem.

Do you not throw anything away? All the trash you've ever created is kept in a landfill on your own property? Impressive!

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#608

Post by credit_guy »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #519
credit_guy wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all overbuilding is the same. This link [1] shows that solar energy generation is 6 times higher in the summer than in the winter in Germany. The total electricity consumption varies is about 1.5 times higher in the winter than in the summer [2]. In other words, you need to overbuild nuclear by a factor of 1.5, and solar by a factor of 9. [1] https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/monthly-gener... [2] htt…

You're so confident about nuclear that you feel you need to compare it to purely solar in Germany to make a good case for it? Doesn't this just show that you know it can't compete with solar in equatorial regions or wind in the UK, never mind appropriate combinations of the two across Europe and the rest of the world? And you didn't even compare price. Solar would only need to be 6x cheaper to still win that rigged c…

I'm not so confident about nuclear. Nuclear power generation is a very high end technology, where humankind instead of climbing the learning curve, somehow managed to go in the opposite direction. However, Elon Musk has demonstrated that you can take a technology where costs are going up, and make it do a 180, and take down costs by a factor of 10 and then 100. Can nuclear power generation get to be 100 times cheaper? I think so.

Do we absolutely need nuclear energy to combat climate change? I don't think so.

I do think a solution could be based on huge arrays of solar panels in countries like Australia, Mexico, Morroco or South Africa, and shipments of liquefied hydrogen to countries like Germany, China, Japan or Canada. The US can be quite self-sufficient, with solar panels in California, Nevada, Arizona, and wind turbines in Texas, Oklahoma and the rest of the wind corridor, and pipes of hydrogen from one state to another. I can even see the US exporting liquefied hydrogen as a natural succession from exporting LNG now.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#609

Post by nl »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #568
nl wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are handwaving away the nonexistent storage tech required to stand up a power grid. Please stop. This isn't true. If you accept 5% non-renewable power generation (which - lets face it - will be with us for a while!) you need storage at $150/kWh to use renewables for everything else[1]. This price is available now (and forecast to drop below $100/kWh next year)[2]. [1] https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4…

Your first article is all hypothetical about the costs of storage tech rather than reality based.

Do you have substantive critics of the modelling done?

Because anytime you work with something happening in the future you have to model it.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#610

Post by nl »

modo_mario wrote: post #386
nl wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very many places. Germany: 41% of all power was from renewables in 2021 https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/topics/climate-energy/rene... UK: 43.1% of all power was from renewables in 2020 https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/how-mu... Australia: 32.5% (2021): https://apo.org.au/node/317318 US: 22% expected in 2022: https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/electricity.php

You're arguing for him. Those places do not go anywhere close to full renewable. Germany being one of your best examples has put out vaaastly more CO2 than let's say France. This because it needs variable output to cover the variable output of it's renewables and as their share of the pie grows so do the costs of providing either storage or variable output. The strategy of our Greens in Belgium too was to build gas p…

> Germany being one of your best examples has put out vaaastly more CO2 than let's say France.

Or look at Spain. 43% renewable power, less CO2 than France, and shutting down 4 out of 7 nuclear power stations by 2030.

The solution to intermittent power is transmission lines, not nuclear.

https://www.statkraft.com/newsroom/news-and-stories/archive/...

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