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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

#271

Post by haweemwho »

RC_ITR wrote: post #256
haweemwho wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you didn't actually address my comment, which had nothing to do with solar working at night or similar. It's useful to keep separate arguments separate since jumping around if something doesn't suit your liking is not a sincere discussion style. > If you believe that carbon emissions are an existential threat to human survival FWIW, I don't believe that. Humans will survive, unless we do something like a nuclea…

> unless we do something like a nuclear weapons armageddon FWIW, the only way nuclear weapons wipe out all of humanity is if they start unprecedentedly large fires that change the climate. At peak, we had about 80k nukes (way less now). That’s nowhere near enough to kill all 8bn people (as spread out as we are). The way nukes end humanity is blacking out the sun and reducing plant/food output.

> At peak, we had about 80k nukes (way less now). That’s nowhere near enough to kill all 8bn people (as spread out as we are).

Directly? Probably not. But the contamination from fallout is more than sufficient to poison a significant fraction of humans over a not-too-long time horizon and provide everybody else with a significant cancer risk. The ensuing chaos and resulting breakdown of civilization will do the rest. Don't believe it? Ever seen the panic when toilet paper is at risk to run out at Walmart?

Those who still remember the Chernobyl disaster are aware what that meant for Europe. A single plant, and everybody got warned and could take precautions.

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

#272

Post by 7952 »

kulahan wrote: post #98
tstrimple wrote: post #92

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.

You are talking about an amount of money that exceeds the easily available resources of the developer. That is true of nuclear but it is also completely normal in renewables. Projects if all types need financing. That could be a $200k anaerobic digester on a farm or a $7b offshore wind farm. But at every level the investor or bank will need to do due diligence and understand the risk.

Different types of project require different levels of expertise to do that.

A battery storage site is relatively simple and within the scope of smaller investors. An offshore wind farm might need large banks and energy companies. A nuclear power plant is in a completely different league in terms of expertise required. A bank will find it difficult to even understand the risk.

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

#273

Post by Manuel_D »

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…

The issue is that nuclear largely makes renewables redundant. Nuclear is just as cheap to run 24/7 as it is to run half the time, unlike fossil fuels.

Right now, the way we're using intermittent sources is to shut fossil fuel plants off when renewables are producing and turn them back on when they are not producing. Intermittent sources are essentially supplementing a grid based in fossil fuels.

If we use nuclear plants to fill in the gaps in intermittent sources' production curves, then we'd have already built enough nuclear capacity to run the grid without intermittent sources so we'd just run nuclear plants at full capacity and eliminate the need for intermittent sources.

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

#274

Post by haweemwho »

froh wrote: post #269
haweemwho wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

nope. you didn't miss anything. we'd already be there if Bavaria and similar states hadn't blocked building wind farms in Bavaria, because of the bad looks, or myth busted infrasound, or myth busted bird mass extinctions, or very real existential angst of Munich's Siemens...

Isn't Siemens in the wind power business as well?

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

#275

Post by epistasis »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #248
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.

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

I did see a more recent and very comprehensive paper that found a few countries where costs haven't ballooned, or even fallen by very tiny amounts. Whether those situations can be replicated is unclear.

But even if we get to the best case scenario of small cost drops, nuclear will never compete with the tech cruces of storage and solar. It does not have the characteristics of a tech with falling costs, without a complete revolution in its operation, the likes of which I have not seen imagined by anyone. Thorium and SMRs are minor tweaks that who not reach the type of tech revolution needed to make nuclear into a tech with falling costs.

There might be a few niche locations for which nuclear is the cheapest option, such as maybe Finland who was able to finally get their new single reactor online, a year delayed from the first time they declared it online. But these are the exceptions. Unclear is it a general purpose technology, it should be viewed as useful only in special circumstances where traditional tech fails.

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

#276

Post by AnonCoward42 »

tremon wrote: post #213
7952 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Can you give an example of a power source that is resilient to politics? I struggle to imagine what that would even look like.

Coal power plants, wind turbines and mostly anything else. They can end up catastrophic in a sense, but not to the same degree nuclear fission plants can end up.

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

#278

Post by the_third_wave »

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.

Nuclear power in Sweden was expensive due to the "effektskatt" [1] (power output tax) which was levied specifically on nuclear power, ostensibly to pay for dismantling nuclear power plants after they were shut down. This tax made up about 25% of the production costs in the end [2].

[1] https://naringslivets-medieinstitut.se/det-var-marknaden-som...

[2] https://skatteupproret.se/skatt-pa-karnkraft/

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

#279

Post by epistasis »

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?

Battery storage, solar, stored hydrogen, demand response, long distance HVDC, advanced geothermal.

The answer is tech from the 2000s, not 1900s tech.

Power industry folks are used to a field where tech hasn't changed for decades. It's time to get over that and use the new things that have been developed that will reduce the cost of energy, increase energy abundance, and advance society. We need to let go of the obsolete.

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

#280

Post by haweemwho »

tomp wrote: post #169
haweemwho wrote: post #81

> 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…

Probably a good idea to read the rest of the article. They explain why. > Whereas nuclear power accounts for all materials through the decommissioning phase—and surprisingly, 90 percent of all materials from a nuclear power plant can be recycled—compared to old wind and solar platforms, which generate millions of tons of waste

Again measuring with different standards. Depending on the design of a typical wind turbine, you can recycle 90-95% of those as well. And that's without a prime design criterion of maximizing recyclability, which could be mandated by law and then you'd achieve close to 100%.

The sentence is just as disingenuous as the initial sentence that I criticized.

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