I changed my mind about nuclear waste • Hacker News Board

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#301

Post by horsawlarway » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 8:52 PM UTC

throwaway744678 wrote: post #260

dauertewigkeit wrote: post #222

I wonder how much The Simpsons contributed to nuclear fear. No, but seriously, I only have one criticism. What about all the rest of the world? The developed world and the big developing countries might be trusted with nuclear fission, but there are still a whole bunch of countries who cannot be. So in some sense this debate is stupid. Deploy nuclear were it makes sense, but there are definitely places where renewabl…

This comment, and a few of its siblings, kind of smell like: "Look, I'm not racist, but can we trust these guys with this technology?" Some of them can read, you know. Event count.

Why prefer a technology that needs such trust in the first place?

Hell - we don't even trust Russia with reactors in Ukraine right now, why should we have any sort of realistic trust for places that are less stable?

Especially when we actually have alternative green energy at this point.

Say what you will about solar, but it doesn't explode and contaminate large areas when bombed or improperly maintained, and you can't get incredibly effective bombs as a side effect of deploying solar.

All that aside - I think solar/wind just out compete nuclear on costs, and that's really the sticking point. And solar at least just keeps getting cheaper. We're really not that far off from a point where excess solar can just be used to create hydrocarbons on demand that can act as base load during off hours and inclement weather.

To compare - solar is down near 3 cents/kwh for utility scale. Nuclear is sitting at ~46 cents/kwh.

So nuclear is 15 times more expensive, and solar costs are STILL GOING DOWN.

Residential solar installs do better than nuclear (7 to 8 cents/kwh) - by a factor of SIX!

Frankly - I'd really rather push the solar button as hard as possible and continue experimenting with base load providers. who knows - We may actually get fusion (definitely feels closer than it used to) and then fission becomes a military only affair.

And while I'm certainly not opposed to the creation of nuclear in a lot of places - I think the tech has a lot of downsides (again - not the least of which is cost) that really cripple it.

Long comment short - If I have to pick between coal and nuclear... sign me up for nuclear. If I have to pick between nuclear and solar... I'm hitting the solar button as fast and hard as possible.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#302

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 8:54 PM UTC

connorgutman wrote: post #288

shawnz wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's more concerning, a corrupt or incompetent government mishandling one ton of nuclear fuel, or the same corrupt/incompetent government mishandling the one million tons of coal that would be needed to replace it? (which by the way, would have approximately the same amount of radioactive potential due to the natural radioactive contaminants that will get concentrated as you use it)

My entire point was that we should strive for neither. We could half per-capita energy consumption in the US and still consume twice as much as Brazil. If everyone in rich countries stopped being greedy we could easily meet global demands with renewables alone.

[deleted]

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#303

Post by zizee » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 8:54 PM UTC

aeonik wrote: post #16

I've been a bit of a nuclear nerd for a long time, and somehow the author still shares information that is new to me: I had no idea how quickly high-level waste dissipated, love the plots of the radioactive decay. > The decay of heat and radioactivity over time means that after only forty years, the radioactivity of used fuel has decreased to about one-thousandth of the level at the point when it was unloaded. Less t…

It's an often (deliberately?) overlooked aspect of nuclear waste discussions. People will loudly say "radioactive waste needs to be stored for thousands of years", and "you go near some radioactive waste, you will surely die from radiation exposure". This gets combined into something like "This highly dangerous stuff, that you cannot approach stays highly dangerous and unapproachable for 10k years". Then people say "how can we possibly hope to store this incredibly dangerous stuff for 10k years, it's such a hard problem to solve, better not create this stuff in the first place, no more nuclear!".

But the stuff that lasts 10k years is a very different beast from the stuff that kills you quickly from just being near it. The supremely radioactive stuff tends to have a very short half-life. We can think about storage methods in very human time-frames, it's much more achievable. The other, long half life stuff needn't be stored with nearly the same extremly stringent standards, because it just isn't so extremely dangerous.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#304

Post by MikePlacid » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 8:54 PM UTC

DiabloD3 wrote: post #277

KptMarchewa wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually just by russia.

I'd like to also echo this. Best analysis of the history behind the anti-nuclear craze of the 60s and 70s is basically Russia infiltrated the Hippie Movement of the 60s to exploit the "government is bad" soft anarchism (=minarchism) in the movement to delay America from getting a leg up. For the past 100+ years, Russia has been one of the largest energy players in the world, bigger than Saudi Arabia. You can see this…

Russia produce not only oil and gas but also is one of the biggest nuclear plant equipment exporters. If I were them I would rather sponsor articles on how it is hard to dispose of solar panels…

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#305

Post by dools » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 8:55 PM UTC

nomel wrote: post #114

lanstin wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we had started a serious decarbonization 20 yeats ago, sure, but solar is now so cheap and easy that it will be harder for large scale nuclear to ramp up in time to matter. Maybe those container nuclear plants and maybe the last 20% of base capacit by 2040. But slowing solar in deference to nuclear would prolong the era of high atmospheric carbon.

> so cheap and easy I think this is a little misleading, unless there' a good story for storage and long distance power transmission, which I haven't seen yet.

China’s doing amazing work on long distance transmission using high voltage DC:

https://youtu.be/rThkjp-bp8M

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#306

Post by rayiner » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 9:02 PM UTC

geysersam wrote: post #219

rayiner wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Extinction rebellion have a page on her (NSFW warning for some nudity in the banner image Controversial opinion: by scaremongering about nuclear power—which the west could have started adopting in the 1970s like France did—the naked tree huggers did as much to set back climate change mitigation efforts as the oil lobby. At least with the oil folks, they were pushing a status quo that was likely to stand until today…

There is so much wrong with this comment I'm not sure where to begin. 0. Nuclear is not forbidden. 1. Nuclear power is exceedingly common in many countries. 2. Electricity production is not (by far) the only source of carbon emissions. Why have we also not seen any major action to reduce emissions from other sources? Or did the treehuggers also force people to fly, eat meat and drive large cars? 3. > Last best hope.…

> But sure, go ahead and blame environmentalists for the destruction profit driven market capitalism caused. If that soothes your cognitive dissonance

This is laughable. I come from a country that’s officially socialist. But even people from there want to come to Texas and drive a big SUV and live in a big house with a pool. Better yet, they want to attain that same standard of living in their own country.

If environmentalists tell people to turn down the thermostat and stop eating meet and crowd into public transit, they will lose every time.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#307

Post by hosh » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 9:03 PM UTC

While nuclear power can give us the most bang for the buck, it's main flaw has to do with the degree of centralization it requires. It takes the infrastructure of an advanced civilization to not only design, build, and maintain the facilities and equipment, it also requires the educational infrastructure to produce the personnel needed to operate them safely. This means that it requires a degree of centralization, and the centralization of political and economic power to go with it. Futhermore, it also requires the grid needed to transmit the power have to take in demand surges into account.

Perhaps the miniaturization efforts for nuclear power would mean a neighorhood, or even a site-level nuclear power. At this point, though, solar allows community-scale or site-scale deployments (but not necessarily community-scale manufacturing). Micro-grids, sized to the local demand surge can be deployed.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#308

Post by anonymouskimmer » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 9:03 PM UTC

LarryMullins wrote: post #216

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Just like the black death was temporary damage. Fission waste is truly long term. Just like desertification.

All deaths are permanent. Count them up and the result is clear.

All we are is dust in the wind.

I agree with you.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#309

Post by horsawlarway » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 9:04 PM UTC

helf wrote: post #50

the fearmongering and all around nuclear is deeply ingrained in the public consciousness. It will be hard to kill it. Sadly. There are all sorts of designs that are awesome but havent been put to wide use because its insanely expensive to even get permits for a nuclear plant (if it is even possible) not to mention the insane costs to actual build one. Economies of scale never took hold due to a couple of incidents (o…

Say what you will, but I don't think you'll ever get economies of scale in nuclear like you will with solar (or even wind). You can certainly get some economies of scale, but those cost benefits are almost always a function of number of units produced.

Nuclear just doesn't need that many units produced - so it will never get the same functional benefit.

Unless you're planning on going down to Asimov-esque wearable reactors (and I don't realistically think you are) nuclear just doesn't make enough units to really get the same benefits from scale.

Solar on the other hand... each unit is producing 100watts of power, and you're making a literal shit load of units. Production numbers are very high, and it benefits enormously from economies of scale.

Basically - even the smallest reactor designs we're talking about for nuclear are in the 20mw range/unit.

Solar is 100-300w/unit. (watts - not megawatts). We're making nearly 70 THOUSAND units of solar for every unit of nuclear, at nuclear's smallest size.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#310

Post by MikePlacid » Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 9:05 PM UTC

bboygravity wrote: post #198

rayiner wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Extinction rebellion have a page on her (NSFW warning for some nudity in the banner image Controversial opinion: by scaremongering about nuclear power—which the west could have started adopting in the 1970s like France did—the naked tree huggers did as much to set back climate change mitigation efforts as the oil lobby. At least with the oil folks, they were pushing a status quo that was likely to stand until today…

Not sure if that's controversial? I don't think the fossil fuel industry (or Putin) could've wished for better allies than the Energiewende (anti-nuclear, pro Russian gas with a bit of solar and wind) supporters in Europe. Whoever was behind it successfully managed to delay nuclear fission adoption by about 60 years for all of the EU and UK except France causing massive amounts of totally unnecessary CO2 emissions in…

Putin is an omni-present monster, sure, and an oil and gas monster to that. But he also is THE biggest nuclear power monster:

[Rosatom] ranks first in the overseas NPP construction, responsible for 76% of global nuclear technology exports: 35 nuclear power plant units, at different stages of development, in 12 countries, as of December 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosatom