Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by mech7654 » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:13 PM UTC

Nodraak wrote: post #159

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…

> one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material Please share numbers demonstration health hazards. For ex, bananas are radioactive. Should we outlaw bananas? > rivers are getting too hot to cool down nuclear plants correctly That's wrong. In 2022, the power output had to be reduced by 0.18% (not a typo) ( https://twitter.com/energybants/status/1645696906327388160 ). In addition, Nuclear plants can work even i…

To be fair the french have had some massive problems with their fleet recently. There were issues discovered where (IIRC) a supplier that made pressure vessels used steel that was not of sufficient quality and covered it up for decades, only to be discovered recently- this required major downtime and expense. Other issues have resulted in lots of nuclear plant downtime in france as well recently.

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

#242

Post by nborwankar » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:14 PM UTC

llsf wrote: post #137

KennyBlanken wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

A counterintuitive alternative is to invest a fraction of the costs of nuclear in cleaning up emissions from coal plants. We seem to have swung too far by shutting down a reliable source of energy when mitigating technologies to filter emissions [1] and next generation cleaner extraction technologies [2] are coming online to massively improve coal driven electric power generation. These technologies are DoE funded and patented the former has been deployed in production at a 100 Mw plant the latter is at a pilot stage in a 30Mw research generator at a university.

In any case coal is not going away and there is no single “answer” to the planet’s energy needs. A resilient grid requires a portfolio of energy sources including nuclear but it’s by no means the single answer as the title of the post suggests.

Uranium is “carbon free” but “radioactive waste full” and creates multigenerational environmental debt in the form of waste - nuke proponents usually hand wave and talk in generalities when it comes to this topic. Note the comment that “90% of materials in a nuclear reactor can be recycled” deftly sidestepping the 10% that will live on in deadly form for thousands of years with no solution in sight.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3568623/

Google “Biswas Washington University Enhanced Electrostatic Precipitation” for more

[2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3817794

Google “Axelbaum Washington University staged pressurized oxy combustion” for more

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

#243

Post by briffle » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:14 PM UTC

KennyBlanken wrote: post #97

illiarian wrote: post #56

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…

> 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.

That is completely false. Most Gen4 reactors are passively cooled. And even older ones, not all require 'once through' water cooling. there are other options: https://world-nuclear.org/our-association/publications/techn...

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

#244

Post by jpgvm » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:14 PM UTC

lispm wrote: post #224

mdp2021 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That authoritarian countries are the main deployers and providers of nuclear is no surprise. The central government decides and there is no opposition. In most democratic countries nuclear is not competitive in the market anymore. For a country like Russia it's much easier to sell nuclear cheap into the market: they want to make European countries dependent on their energy delivery. Western countries have much higher…

It can be competitive, it's not politically tenable. Because it's not politically tenable it can't be allowed to be commercially competitive, the forces raising the prices will simply increase until it's priced out - such is the way of politics.

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

#245

Post by vesche » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:14 PM UTC

bottlepalm wrote: post #196

vesche wrote: 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-…

I think fear-mongering about nuclear power risks is really unfortunate. The rewards far outweigh the risks. Sure, we could live in a world where we could tell everyone to stop using so much damn energy- but that's not our reality. There's some really good data and charts here (especially the "What is the safest and cleanest source of energy?" diagram at the top) - https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth

In the USA we've poured an incredible amount of money into wind energy and it simply hasn't been very effective relative to the cost.

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

#246

Post by Brusco_RF » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:16 PM UTC

UncleEntity wrote: post #172

jltsiren wrote: post #147

Nuclear power can be an answer, but it's not flexible enough to be the answer. 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…

There are many, many industries that could benefit from electricity being “too cheap to meter” that could suck up the excess production. Maybe they train GPT-25 only when the demand is low enough the power producers basically give it away?

I heard the other day that many Saudi's leave their AC running when they leave SA for the summer months. Power is THAT cheap.

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

#247

Post by Manuel_D » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:16 PM UTC

dale_glass wrote: post #176

RandallBrown wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I can't believe that modern nuclear plants wouldn't be dramatically more profitable. I can. First, nuclear doesn't always get cheaper. Chernobyl happened, how do we fix that? Containment building. That costs money. Fukushima happened, how do we fix that? Better backup plans. That costs money. Renewables skip this completely. Second, renewables also benefit from progress, but a lot more. Solar and wind are mass indu…

> First, nuclear doesn't always get cheaper. Chernobyl happened, how do we fix that? Containment building. That costs money.

Western nuclear power plants always had containment buildings, so no, this isn't a factor.

> Fukushima happened, how do we fix that? Better backup plans.

Most places aren't subject to magnitude 9.1 earthquakes, so no such plans are needed.

Nuclear power benefits from economies of scale. Building a nuclear power plant involves constructing things like pressure vessels and steam generators that have no market outside of nuclear power construction. The price history of nuclear plants demonstrates this: The plants built during the nuclear boom during the late 60s and early 70s were some of the cheapest forms of decarbonized energy production [1]. Producing a run of 40 steam generators [2] is a lot cheaper than a run of 4 steam generators. Same with pressure vessels, and other costly components. Serialized production of the same design yields cost savings.

> Same goes for say, pumped hydro and battery storage. Those things can already be done, and you can start doing it much faster than you'll get nuclear built.

No, we can't. This is just hand-waving away the biggest obstacle to widespread deployment of intermittent sources. Hydro storage is geographically dependent: you essentially need to be able to create an artificial alpine lake, and it needs to be close to an existing lake or river in order to fill it.

Battery storage remains prohibitively expensive. The actual cost of battery storage is much higher than the raw cost of lithium batteries [3]. Labor, installation, and DC to AC conversion equipment leads to net costs of ~$500/KWh.

This is why plans for a grid primarily powered intermittent sources assume that some other battery chemistry or hydrogen storage will make energy storage essentially free.

1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_generator_(nuclear_power...

3. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/new-york-battery-storage-co...

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

#248

Post by HDThoreaun » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:16 PM UTC

RandallBrown wrote: post #127

dale_glass wrote: post #90

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.

Nuclear has only ever gotten more expensive, never cheaper. SMRs seem interesting, but at this point they're more science fiction than reality.

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

#249

Post by ben_w » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:16 PM UTC

illiarian wrote: post #185

ben_w wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even ignoring all those words you used meaning to me what I said they mean (and hence unavoidably "implying" even if you now wish to say you were misunderstood, which is totally a thing I get and have experienced in reverse): You know we can see your comments, right? https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=illiarian And you've got a… distinct… writing style, so I recognised you from a few days ago before seeing your…

> You know we can see your comments, right? Yes, I do. > And you've got a… distinct… writing style Ad hominem is not as good an argument as you think it is. So. This is what I actually wrote, and not what you pretend I wrote. The original statement was this: "If you push for renewables instead of wasting money on over due and over budget nuclear reactors" To which I replied: "Almost three-quarters of hydropower, wate…

This:

> Ad hominem is not as good an argument as you think it is.

Makes this:

> is totally a thing I get and have experienced in reverse

A case in point.

I'm not even going to bother now with the rest; the abrasiveness you approach this topic with is uninteresting to me, and does not help me learn new things.

That's also not an ad hominem, by the way; it's a critique, sure, but not even intended as a response to the attempted argument.

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

#250

Post by illiarian » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:17 PM UTC

lispm wrote: post #219

illiarian wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politics. Then politics. Then FUD and more politics. As a result last year energy prices shot up and there was nothing to counterbalance energy shortages.

Energy is always politics. Nuclear has been expensive in Sweden.

And yet power plant closures were entirely due to politics, not the cost.

Now the price of energy in Sweden quintuples depending on demand: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1271491/sweden-monthly-w... I am just so glad that the expensive energy is out of the picture. (That was sarcasm, I chose to pay for electricity coming from nuclear, and it's not meanigfully more expensive than other types)