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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

#191
This is objectively false and I always have a hard time believing that this is an organic opinion free of industry influence.

Nuclear power is the power industry's answer to "clean" energy because it preserves the centralized delivery system in place. It does not disrupt the current distribution model.

No matter what you think of the safety of nuclear power, what I said is a fact and the industry spends billions on PR, lobbying, and even online trolls, trying to get people to agree.

Nuclear power is objectively not safe, with the one caveat that we are talking about long term. In the long term even one accident is absolutely devastating to entire regions of the planet. This risk is simply NOT acceptible.

In other words, even if wind and solar are more expensive or less profitable, they are simply better alternatives from the standpoint of humanity's continued existence on the planet.

There is no effective argument about this. I always get hit with the safety argument when I say this, but it's just all fully false. There is no safety argument because even an outlying and unlikely scenario is too devastating. And these scenarios, given enough time, simply will occur.

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

#192
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have solar on every domestic rooftop, you can't bomb all of them. I mean, you can try, but then energy shortage is not on top of the list of problems that the population has.

If you have solar on every domestic rooftop, that also doesn't actually let you address realistic power consumption patterns. If we're talking about not-yet-extant technology that would allow solar to meet 24/7 demand at grid scale (like power storage that costs 1% as much as it does now), we might as well be talking about small-scale-fusion power, which is also resistant to being bombed and is generally better than…

No? How many ovens, washing machines and dryers usually run at 2am when it's dark?

Sure people don't charge their Tesla at noon when solar production peaks, but saving that until the evening when the 15 miles use of the car battery need to refill is not a significant engineering challenge. Running a nuclear power plant is magnitudes harder.

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

#193

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…

Agreed, there are many concerns. But there are many concerns with every kind of energy generation, and for any of them, problems have to be solved and the system maintained. We, the people, have to take our own responsibility to hold our governments and companies accountable, if we care about the consequences. ....we could also choose to just use less energy and become more efficient. but my guess is nobody would acc…

Very true, and important to understand. Any energy transformation would result in production of stuff we do not like (trash). The Sun generates tons of trash (luckily for us for most localized on the Sun). Nothing is magically 100% clean.

Reducing the energy consumption could be done, but few government would like it, as there is a direct relationship between energy consumption and GDP.

If you want to produce anything (even services) you need energy. Cheap and abundant energy will make your economy thrive. If we want to power the next GPT and our current life style, we would need lots of cheap energy. I can see how nuclear could be tempting to use to boost the GDP with a minimal environmental impact.

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

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Someone from France is telling you that actually, it's really not that great...

If there is one immutable truth about the French psyche, it’s that things are always “really not that great”.

Source: I am French, and left France because of that state of mind.

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

#195
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, intermittent (sun/wind) only could work with enough storage. Do you know if/when we could get enough safe storage ? My understanding is batteries is not possible at the scale we would need. Pumping water where it is possible would be nice, but not sure if it would be enough. Do we know the storage capacity than US for instance would need, if only using solar and wind ? Note that the cooling argument would be the…

Wonder if this could help: Iron-Air Batteries Are Here. They May Alter the Future of Energy. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a42532492/ir...

Maybe - but remember that lithium ion batteries were first developed in the 1970s. It wasn't until the 2010s that they became so widespread and cheap.

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

#196
post #180

It's clear that nuclear power is superior to gas, coal, wind, solar, etc. However... nuclear power plants are expensive build, they take a very long time to build, and many countries are in the process of retiring their infrastructure [0]. The vast majority of active nuclear power plants in the USA were built in the late 60s to late 70s and typically took 10 years from the initial construction before they became oper…

A power generation system that can't lose power itself without resulting in a major disaster is far from 'superior'.

What I mean is the spent nuclear fuel must be kept cool at all costs, backups are finite. There's already been a few accidents and many close calls, none as bad as they could of been. Scale up nuclear to find how to bad it can get.

The NRC said so itself - https://www.science.org/content/article/spent-fuel-fire-us-s...

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

#197
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> We need power sources that have some resilience to those things.

None of the power sources have resilience to politics.

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

#198
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What about microreactors?

> The 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) requests a pilot program to construct a microreactor for energy resilience by 2027. Also, the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office is seeking proposals for a mobile microreactor demonstration

> A recent report ... estimates the cost to generate electricity from the first microreactor will be between $0.14/kWh and $0.41/kWh. [...] Future costs are estimated to decrease to between $0.09/kWh and $0.33/kWh. Costs are expected to decrease after demonstration, licensing and initial deployment and will depend on the location and type of owner, whether private or public

https://inl.gov/trending-topic/microreactors/frequently-aske...

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

#199
post #11

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

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...

> Nuclear produced only half of that in recent years.

It would have produced a lot more if German didn't shut down it's nuclear reactors. Plus, France produces over 70% of it's electricity from nuclear, sometimes over 80%.

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

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Why would you expect modern nuclear plants to be more profitable? Most of the costs of a nuclear plant are capital costs, which have been increasing faster than the increases in what the generated electricity can be sold for.
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