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Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

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

#121

Post by ben_w »

kulahan wrote: post #15
bitwize wrote: 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…

"Only" is much too strong a word.

Geothermal and tidal are both as reliable as it gets.

A global HVDC grid with PV in the deserts will get you 100% renewable all by itself (probably not the cheapest and it would take a decade of current global metal production, but it would work and the resistance losses aren't bad enough to veto that idea).

Nuclear is safest though; or at least it was when most PV was rooftop, I don't know if the assumption used in the "deaths per TWh" chart are still valid.

Also:

> Maybe there's a massive drought upstream.

You're not wrong, but when that happens, lots of people will starve because the farms don't get the water that the hydro dam would normally store but in this hypothetical never received in the first place.

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

#122

Post by chronicsonic »

haweemwho wrote: post #89
timellis-smith wrote: post #26

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.

It's rare to see flaute all over Europe at the same time. You just need some ways to transport energy as well as supplement that with storage and you can compensate most of this. If this sounds too complicated an engineering challenge then let's not even start to talk about the engineering challenges that would make nuclear safer than it is today. That's a whole different ballpark.

What if Europe is at war and some infrastructure gets destroyed. Don’t we need extra buffer capacity in case we’re experience what Ukraine had where power stations are actively targeted. Or undersea windmill park power cables are threatened to be cut.

Unlikely but there is someone with aspirations somewhere in Russia.

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

#123

Post by stefan_ »

illiarian wrote: post #2

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

Relevant, for when you are a simpleton that believes in cherry-picked data.

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

#124

Post by 7952 »

illiarian wrote: post #56
eric-burel wrote: post #12

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…

Blaming things on neglect or politics just isn't useful. We need power sources that have some resilience to those things.

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

#125

Post by blibble »

fsh wrote: post #114
blibble wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all nuclear power stations emit small amounts of liquid and gas radwaste as part of normal operation mostly tritium and tritiated water that has been activated in the coolant circuits (practically impossible to separate) but some other isotopes (carbon-14, caesium-137) here's the environmental permit for the UK's most modern power station: https://consult.environment-agency.gov.uk/nuclear/consultati... solid radwaste…

No, coal is barely radioactive at all. The small traces of Thorium and Uranium are completely negligible. An old study from 1978 has estimated that nuclear reactors emit somewhat more radiation than coal power plants, but the levels are overall insignificant [1]. This is only about emissions though. The radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants has many many orders of magnitude more activity than the emissio…

> This is only about emissions though. The radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants has many many orders of magnitude more activity than the emissions.

yes I should have probably said "emission" not waste

> No, coal is barely radioactive at all.

but you need to burn orders of magnitude more of it, producing literal mountains of coal ash and exhaust emissions

whereas for nuclear the waste is an extremely small volume, of which almost 100% of is captured

scrubbing technologies have also improved since 1978, and scrubbing not-very-much thoroughly is a much easier than scrubbing vast amounts not-very-well

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

#126

Post by mathiasgredal »

lawrenceyan wrote: post #107
eric-burel wrote: post #12

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 fusion will be the answer to baseload energy requirements without the need to worry over meltdown concerns. There will be no need to do city or urban planning around radioactive fallout or leaks because fusion simply doesn't have those problems.

How does nuclear fusion solve the issue of rivers getting too hot, such that the plant has to shut down?

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

#127

Post by RandallBrown »

dale_glass wrote: post #90
Lacerda69 wrote: post #28

Cue the atomic fanatics vs the renewable cult discussion. Has been discussed a thousand times on HN recently and it always seems both are just shouting how the other side can not see the obvious superiority of their fav energy source. why cant we have a bit of both? renewable seems very good long term and nuclear is also nice for transition. but I wouldnt want to live next to one of those crappy leaky french reactors…

> why cant we have a bit of both? Because they're economically incompatible. Nuclear is very expensive to build, and wants to run 24/7 to offset costs. They also want to run continuously. The problem is that renewables are cheap, but intermittent. So take an economically rational marketplace. I can either buy the same amount of power for $1, or for $2, what do you think I'd choose? $1 of course. Power is power, I don…

The average age of nuclear plants in the US is 40 years old.

I can't believe that modern nuclear plants wouldn't be dramatically more profitable.

Even if they weren't, it would be worth government incentives to prevent grid destabilization as wind and solar take over as the main sources.

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

#128

Post by WheatMillington »

retrac wrote: post #73
rullelito wrote: post #46

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

Wind goes well with gas turbine generators, since they can match their output to demand and the supply of wind. Every watt-hour of wind energy you capture, is a watt-hour of gas you don't burn. Worst case scenario is no wind and you're burning gas -- which is already a main electric source. Taken too far you would get into this weird situation of over-spending for capacity, and having surplus wind energy when it's wi…

Hanging your hat on fossil fuel base load generation seems unwise.

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

#129

Post by mdp2021 »

lispm wrote: post #66
option wrote: post #3

and is a way to significantly reduce dependence on fundamentally authoritarian regimes in Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, etc. One of the reasons France is like 75% nuclear generation was response to arab oil crisis in 70ies

Europe has a large dependence on Russia for nuclear technology. There are also Russian reactors in Europe. The countries who currently lead the deployment of nuclear technology are China and Russia, two authoritarian countries. https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-just-cant-quit-russia...

> Europe has a large dependence on Russia for nuclear technology. There are also Russian reactors in Europe

That seems to be a legacy, not a necessary constraint.

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

#130

Post by KennyBlanken »

blibble wrote: post #70
kvgr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can it leaks? Do you have any source? Well you had some of them turned off for maintanance, that happens.

all nuclear power stations emit small amounts of liquid and gas radwaste as part of normal operation mostly tritium and tritiated water that has been activated in the coolant circuits (practically impossible to separate) but some other isotopes (carbon-14, caesium-137) here's the environmental permit for the UK's most modern power station: https://consult.environment-agency.gov.uk/nuclear/consultati... solid radwaste…

"Small amounts"?

https://www.ap.org/press-releases/2012/part-ii-ap-impact-tri...

45 out of 65 sites had significant tritium leaks, some were migrating off site, some were starting to contaminate public drinking water.

The nuclear industry is so loosely regulated that a half million gallon leak of radioactive water recently apparently didn't require them to notify anyone https://apnews.com/article/xcel-energy-nuclear-leak-tritium-...

Also: "it's better than coal!"...no kidding. It's not better than wind and solar. Not in terms of price, time to install, time for carbon payback, waste issues, or safety.

That's why grid operators are shutting down both coal and nuclear in the US, and replacing it with solar and wind (the US has in recent years installed 6x more renewables-based capacity than nuclear capacity that has been shut down)

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