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Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

nationalinterest.org

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Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#91
The author's previous article is slightly less guarded in his support for fossil fuels:

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/joe-bidens-little-known...

> The United States under a Biden administration, similar to the British, would move towards an unsustainable, and national security risk by eliminating fossil fuels, and killing people who need electricity and global security the West provides.

And weirdly, for someone so excited about nuclear power, he has no idea where we could generate the electricity needed by EVs, so we should just stick to fossil fuels there too.

Does anyone else begin to see a pattern emerge?

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#92
post #15
post #7

Renewables are cheap and far less risk-prone. Not going all in on renewables is a footgun for industrial societies.

Renewables are absolutely not less risk-prone. Per kw generated, nuclear energy is the safest and it's not even kinda close. Renewables also cannot output a steady amount of energy. Maybe there's a massive drought upstream. Maybe there's no wind today. Maybe it's a cloudy day. Nuclear is THE ONLY SOLUTION. We would need such a hilarious, painful amount of renewable energy sources just to survive, let alone thrive. Or…

Risk isn't only measured in physical danger, but also financial risk. Which is exactly why for-profit energy companies aren't investing in nuclear. It's economically the worst possible approach when your concern is profit.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#93

Relevant: "Germany's 66.5 GW of installed wind is only producing as much as the 3 reactors that turned off last night used to produce." https://twitter.com/energybants/status/1647799729734971396

On a night when wind output was particularly low. Another way to put this is that variable sources of energy are variable.

Until we have energy storage orders of magnitude cheaper than we do now, a power source is only as good as its minimum output.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#94

To every windpower fanatic in the comments. What is the plan for days when there is little wind? I guess coal?

1. There's a lot of ways to store energy

2. There's a few ways to transport power

3. Wind isn't the only renewable, though it can be really cheap

At this point, I'm having to remind myself of the xkcd lucky 10,000, because it feels disingenuous to even need to ask.

And I'm saying that as someone who really hopes the new fusion companies succeed, and that nuclear should have been used to move the world away from coal (and ship fuel) in the 60s onwards, and lament the risks and accidents were handled so poorly by the politicians.

But now? Meh.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course and that needs to be factored into renewable supplies which massively increases their cost. When you have periods of Dunkelflaute you potentially need to have full grid redundancy either through inter-connects, other energy generation sources or battery backup, none of which are cheap.

Oh and while we're about it interconnects just increase the systemic risk of multiple regions experiencing Dunkelflaute at the same time. And it's not enough to say that this almost never happens because in a system that expects many 9s of availability almost never is just not acceptable.

Storage can provide base load and for anything non-critical you have flexible pricing that automatically lets people stop doing things that can be done later the week, like charging your Tesla. Markets work. Use them.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#96

Nuclear reactors are desirable targets for hostile forces, like Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant which was targeted by Russia. [0] [0] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-ukraine-she...

Any electrical infrastructure is a strategic target. If it's not a power plant, it's a substation.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#97

As a French not expert in the matter but living near nuclear plants: - one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material - rivers are getting too hot to cool down nuclear plants correctly - nuclear plants are very unreliable, we almost got out of power this winter and next winter will be equally tough (only an abnormally hot winter avoid cuts...) - the government wants to simplify control organism and laws around…

> nuclear plants are very unreliable You mean, they are the most reliable base load and load-following power sources we know. > References are easy to find if you want confirmation It's just as easy to find confirmation that all the problems you listed are the result of neglect and politics of the past 20-30 years. > it has to be done properly and safely, which is certainly not the case around here. As in: France has…

Nuclear proponents when trying to sell nuclear love to shout about how successful France is.

Someone from France is telling you that actually, it's really not that great...and now France's nuclear program is terrible and the result of 20-30 years of neglect and politics? Also, which part of "nuclear plants are sensitive to environmental changes" didn't you get? If there's no cooling water, or the water is too hot, the plant can't run.

How many times do people need to be told that with all the renewables coming onto the grid, we don't need more base load? We need storage. Also, wind keeps working just fine when the sun goes down.

Do any of you geniuses realize that it's a lot more difficult for the grid to accommodate the injection of tens of gigawatts of power, than it is to handle tens of gigawatts of highly distributed generation and storage across a large region?Guess where utility companies are spending their money? Hint: not on nuclear.

Nuclear is the most expensive form of electrical generation while wind and solar are the cheapest.

Nuclear capacity takes a minimum of ten years, more like 20, to come online and then takes decades longer to go carbon-neutral.

Solar and wind take months to deploy and are carbon neutral within a few years.

Nuclear plants require a continuous, expensive, complicated supply chain and hundreds of people supervising and maintaining it.

Solar farms require maintenance that just about any asshole with an electrician's license can handle, the panels last for decades, and can be recycled. Wind turbines require more maintenance but it's standard industrial electrical/mechanical stuff, just on a tall stick.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#98
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables are absolutely not less risk-prone. Per kw generated, nuclear energy is the safest and it's not even kinda close. Renewables also cannot output a steady amount of energy. Maybe there's a massive drought upstream. Maybe there's no wind today. Maybe it's a cloudy day. Nuclear is THE ONLY SOLUTION. We would need such a hilarious, painful amount of renewable energy sources just to survive, let alone thrive. Or…

Risk isn't only measured in physical danger, but also financial risk. Which is exactly why for-profit energy companies aren't investing in nuclear. It's economically the worst possible approach when your concern is profit.

Well no, it's because the upstart cost is insane. I could build a bunch of wind turbines for a few million, or drop BILLIONS into an already-existing reactor design, or even more money into getting a new design approved.

If SMRs were more of a thing, a town could build their own power plant for a few million bucks, removing the natural monopoly that exists.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#99
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wind alone produces ~20% of the recent years electricity in Germany. Nuclear produced only half of that in recent years. The whole renewable energy production covers ~40% of all the energy produced. Despite 16 years of almost full stop of expansion. https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-Unternehmen/Energ...

Soon you're going to run out of land for your renewables. Plus renewables are extremely intermittent power sources. Nuclear solves both the land-use and consistency problems. Plus, from the article: "...to build enough wind turbines and solar panels to supply at least half the electricity needed for global consumption 'would require two billions tons of coal to produce the concrete and steel, along with two billion b…

> Soon you're going to run out of land for your renewables.

Ramping up from 40% to 100% increases land use by orders of magnitude? Did I miss something?

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#100
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wind alone produces ~20% of the recent years electricity in Germany. Nuclear produced only half of that in recent years. The whole renewable energy production covers ~40% of all the energy produced. Despite 16 years of almost full stop of expansion. https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-Unternehmen/Energ...

> Wind alone produces ~20% of the recent years electricity in Germany. Yearly production means nothing on the night when it produces single-digit percentages of its installed capacity, does it?

> Yearly production means nothing on the night when it produces single-digit percentages of its installed capacity, does it?

It's even worse than that actually because the electricity demand isn't linear during the year.

So technologies which can produce reliably during the high loads are inherently worth more than the others.

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