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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

#291

Post by oceanplexian »

llsf wrote: post #193
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anythin…

Nuclear waste isn’t even trash, it’s a resource. Anything that’s energetic enough to be radioactive is also a massive source of untapped energy when processed and burned. In fact a hundred years from now we might be digging up the “trash” as a cheap source of fuel.

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

#292

Post by lispm »

jpgvm wrote: post #244
lispm wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It can be competitive,

Not without market intervention of the government. In France the nuclear industry (EDF) is state owned.

> it's not politically tenable.

France. Pro nuclear country with a large fleet of aging reactors. -> huge costs of maintaining the reactors, large parts of the fleet is offline in the last months, building reactors is extremely costly and takes a long time, industry had to be rescued by the government.

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

#293

Post by jonahx »

haweemwho wrote: post #254
jonahx wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a species that mostly doesn't care about other species survival. As opposed to which species that do?

Geez, I'm really worried about discussion styles here. Nobody claimed that other species do. That has little to do with the question of why I should care about our's surviving.

Your argument is "Why care about a selfish species that kills other species indiscriminately while pursuing its own ends?"

But that is every species. So why care about any of them? Why even care that we are killing off the gorillas or fish? They are equally selfish -- only less powerful.

And if your answer is that you don't, then you're just arguing for nihilism. If you do, then again: what do you think is so specially evil about humans?

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

#294

Post by eric-burel »

throw-4e451c8 wrote: post #229
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…

"I am not against nuclear power" - this is litterally the calling card of a tactical hit, forum-wise. It very obviously means the opposite of what it says. I generally look at how people perceive things like this as an IQ test. At the moment the HN visitors upvoting/downvoting things in this thread have failed my baseline IQ test. How I wish all presumably well-intentioned but badly informed and ill-educated people w…

:( no really I try to stay open-minded and found contradictory answers interesting, if only because they are well documented. My reply is also to the initial article, which is on the contrary way too optimistic. Nuclear energy is not black or white, I think sharing personal experience as someone living near a plant, in a country relying mostly on nuclear energy, is relevant.

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

#295

Post by llsf »

nborwankar wrote: post #242
llsf wrote: 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…

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 an…

The radioactive waste is fairly small. US is the country in the world with the most nuclear power plants. US produces yearly: " The amount is roughly equivalent to less than half the volume of an Olympic-sized swimming pool" source: https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...

"More than 90% of its potential energy still remains in the fuel, even after five years of operation in a reactor.

The United States does not currently recycle spent nuclear fuel but foreign countries, such as France, do."

But even if like US does (i.e. does not re-use the waste), less than half of olympic pool is pretty small given the amount of energy produced. Ideally US would re-use the waste, and vitrified the final waste, and then producing even less volume of waste.

Then store it. Properly packed it is not "in deadly form for thousands of years with no solution in sight". Most countries store it deep for 50 years, and then it is safe to dispose on near-surface disposal at ground level, or in caverns below ground level.

Radioactivity is everywhere e.g. with radon (https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2018-12/documents/ra...) at 4 pCi/L 7 our 1000 people will develop lung cancer. Flight attendants get their fair share too. Our body is prepared to fix itself when attacked by radiation. https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/

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

#296

Post by eric-burel »

oceanplexian wrote: post #291
llsf wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anythin…

Nuclear waste isn’t even trash, it’s a resource. Anything that’s energetic enough to be radioactive is also a massive source of untapped energy when processed and burned. In fact a hundred years from now we might be digging up the “trash” as a cheap source of fuel.

Fun fact, we do send some of this trash to Russia, that is able to recycle it and send back enriched uranium.

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

#297

Post by eric-burel »

flavius29663 wrote: post #234
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 You need to quantify whenever talking about radiation, otherwise it's meaningless. Granite countertops also leak radiation, same as bananas. Also, coal powered plants leak radiation every time they burn coal...because coal is radioactive too. They also release mercury, which is why we can't eat too much tuna fish.

I mean, accidental leak and nuclear plants are not my fav word combination, even when it's limited quantities of tritium

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

#298

Post by epistasis »

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?

That only makes sense if the idle capital of GPUs is cheaper than the energy powering them.

There are very few applications like this, and even fewer that are easily distributed to that you don't have to use expensive transmission lines to power them.

For example, most new hydrogen electrolysis facilities are planning to build direct-connected solar without even connecting to the grid, and using the energy directly, because letting electrolyzes sit idle for a week is not cost effective. And the grid cost would be expensive too. So building utility-scale solar without a grid connection makes the most financial sense.

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

#299

Post by lispm »

option wrote: post #255
lispm wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were 'not stupid' they wouldn't have invaded Ukraine and caused a massive reaction in Europe for independence of Russian energy. If they were 'not stupid' and 'not evil', they wouldn't attack a nuclear power plant in the Ukraine. Russia is both stupid and evil with its current invasion of its neighbor country. The amount of environmental damage caused by this war is extremely high. Russian nuclear technology…

you are making a stupid mistake 99% of Westerners make when dealing with Russia. You are projecting your values and rationality on them. I am actually from Ukraine, my family is still there and I now leave in USA. I hate russian gov just as much or more as any normal human being. The Western view is that West and Ukraine are winning because of costs russian people and army are suffering. But another view, closer to r…

I don't talk about winning. Russia lost almost all political influence in Europe. In exchange for small parts of the Ukraine which are now minefields.

> their original goal

Their original goal was to conquer the whole of the Ukraine in a few days.

What happened was that the parts they have conquered are destroyed. They lost >100k soldiers (dead or wounded). They exposed their military capabilities to be way worse than claimed. They exposed their intelligence service, the military and the government to be even more incompetent than thought. They gave NATO a welcome boost with lots of investments, new members, a common enemy. They lost large parts of the European market for import and export.

Russia beamed itself twenty years backwards. How stupid is that?

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

#300

Post by richardw »

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…

One alternative is that you overbuild and connect very widely. China has 3000+km power connections. If you do that you can connect to remote wind, which is never not blowing somewhere within 3000km of you. During the day, solar nearer the equator could power areas further away. That’s not the full answer but definitely a useful addition to storage.

There are also battery tech like liquid metal that is being more widely tested and suits grid storage. That scales like crazy if it works.

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