141–150 of 568 posts
> Only nuclear power is carbon-free [...] You can stop reading right there as this immediately identifies this piece as disingenuous at best, more likely though propaganda. The whole process is definitely not "carbon-free". Uranium extraction, transport and processing produce emissions. Building the plants and maintaining them does. Eventually demolishing does. Transporting the used fuel as well as building and maint…
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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-…
1.5 million litres of radioactive water (tritiated water) sounds scary, but they don't report the concentration, so it's meaningless
if it was 1.5 billion litres with the same radiological content it would be less dangerous
a load of coal ash getting into a river is likely worse radiologically and chemically than some tritiated water escaping
> 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.
reliability
if you want the lights to stay on at night when the wind drops then you need nuclear
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> 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, th…
That person is really just spreading FUD: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35659262
> 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?
Of course we do
> We need storage.
Yes. And it's non-existent. There are literally no grid-scale strage solutions in existence.
> 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?
Neither are particularly true statements. Also, what do you think grid-scale storage would do if not inject gigawatts of power into a grid when needed?
> Nuclear capacity takes a minimum of ten years, more like 20,
Fuqing Nuclear Power Plant in China: 6.1 GW nameplate capacity. Built over 14 years at 1 reactor per 6 years. Operational.
Meanwhile the very distributed Xlinks Morocco-UK Power Project was founded in 2018, and is promised to start powering Britain in 2030.
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Of the megaprojects surveyed, 64% were delayed and 57% were over budget.
https://www.offshorewind.biz/2016/12/02/offshore-wind-projec... --- end quote ---
So we know how that will go.
> Nuclear plants require a continuous, expensive, complicated supply chain and hundreds of people supervising and maintaining it.
> 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.
Of course it's not just a tal stick. It's a rather complicated machine that you can't even safely get to since it's so tall. And that's before we start talking about offshore wind farms like Hornsea 2. Yo need a lot of specialist equipment to maintain those.
There are 500 to 800 people working on a nuclear power plant.
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Each windfarm tends to have between 7 and 11 employees per 100 MW
https://graham.umich.edu/media/pubs/Wind-Turbine-Economic-Im...
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So while fewer than per a nuclear plant, you still have to keep in mind that you need to massively overbuild renewables because their generation fluctuates.
> Only nuclear power is carbon-free [...] You can stop reading right there as this immediately identifies this piece as disingenuous at best, more likely though propaganda. The whole process is definitely not "carbon-free". Uranium extraction, transport and processing produce emissions. Building the plants and maintaining them does. Eventually demolishing does. Transporting the used fuel as well as building and maint…
What are the total carbon emissions over the life time of usage including construction, operation, maintenance, and destruction of a nuclear plant vs a fossil plant?
I wouldn't be surprised if a nuclear plant emits far less carbon overall than a fossil-powered plant while operational for the same power generation and lifetime of use when considering those factors.
I mean, certainly. Well, maybe not the answer, but whatever. However, are we actually capable of building new reactors and managing their operation in the private sector? I’m not talking about possibly maybe here. Are we actually ready, today, to build a new reactor within reasonable time at reasonable cost? I don’t know, but my gut feeling says no. We cannot even build roads like that. Furthermore, is operating thes…
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Look for the Tricastin plant I don't know enough to answer precisely but it has leaked recently and a few years ago. Of course it doesn't leak uranium, but other byproducts, which not a sign of a well managed plant. Some were stopped not just maintenance but the discovery of micro-breaches caused by maintenance decades ago. That's actually a sign of proper management, but a counter-argument to reliability.
Yep, a 1980 PWR... sounds about right. Modern reactor designs are so much better. They are also basically nonexistent because everyone stopped building reactors :(
The French fleet has been running around 65-70 % CF for years, pretty bad, but clearly not root caused by the tech branch.
The demand for power is variable, and the difference between base demand and peak demand can be 2x or even 2.5x. While nuclear power can be viable for satisfying the base demand, it's viability for the variable part is another question.
Then there are cheap renewables. If you don't constrain the market artificially, it tends to build solar and wind until nobody knows what to do with the excess electricity. That makes power cheap on the average but potentially very expensive when the demand is high and the generation is low. Nuclear power, with its high capital costs but low operating costs, does not seem to be the right answer to this variable demand / variable generation problem.
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Let me fix that quote for you: "Almost three-quarters of hydropower, water, coal and nuclear infrastructure projects were over budget by 49% on average,". ALL OF THEM. Not just nuclear.
You're the one promoting nuclear as if it's better than the rest in this regard. Nuclear is… just another mega project, just like the rest. You don't get to use that quote to say everything else is more expense when it's everything including your darling.
Do not ascribe words to me that I didn't say or imply
> You don't get to use that quote to say everything else is more expense
I literally said nothing of the kind
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No we won't. There are plenty of studies on the topic. Those areas are there and already identified. Wind alone would just double to manage the Energiewende by 2050: https://www.naturschutz-energiewende.de/aktuelles/flaechenve... I don't get your other argument. If you push for renewables instead of wasting money on over due and over budget nuclear reactors, you can create an industry at home. Create massive amounts…
So you chose to ignore his points re: the required fossil fuel inputs to create these clean renewable sources?
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…
France has been mismanaging its fleet and signally for years that they want to move away from it, under-investing in it, etc. It's not the technology's fault. Germany had some of the best managed plants in the world -- until they decided to shut them down, leading to more coal being burned and more dependence on other countries like Russia...
Gas and coal imports from Russia stopped completely. But guess what still depends on Russia: The nuclear industry in Europe and the US.