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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

#341

Post by epistasis »

scythe wrote: post #324
epistasis wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we can't have a bit of both, because despite heroic efforts with tens of billions of dollars being dumped into nuclear since 2008, it hasn't produced. We tried four reactors back then, using a new regulatory process that was supposed to speed construction and reduce costs. Instead, costs and timelines ballooned 3x. Two of the four reactors were abandoned half-way through construction, resulting in rate payers hol…

>We tried four reactors back then, using a new regulatory process that was supposed to speed construction and reduce costs. Instead, costs and timelines ballooned 3x. Two of the four reactors were abandoned half-way through construction, resulting in rate payers holding the bag for billions of dollars and no Wh delivered to the grid. These were the Westinghouse AP1000 units to be installed in Georgia and South Caroli…

We go into the energy transition with the economy and construction capacity we have, not the construction capacity we wish we had.

The time to transition is now, and making that transition with the ample tools we have right now is a good thing. It's not an argument that we shouldnt improve construction. It's an argument that we should at a minimum do what we know how to do.

If you have ideas on how to improve construction efficiency in the US, it's an absolutely massive addressable market that gets too little attention, and should definitely be addressed. I would love to go work for somebody that is fixing construction, if I had the right skills. I would love even more to do it myself, but I have zero experience or ideas.

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

#342

Post by evilos »

eric-burel wrote: post #297
flavius29663 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - 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

You'd hate to be anywhere near a coal plant then. They absolutely spew radiation and don't even really try to contain it.

Fact is, every kind of energy is dirty in some way. Nuclear energy is one of the cleanest kinds of energy we have by far. It's just people have been taught to have an irrational fear of radiation. They don't realize they are constantly surrounded by it already.

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

#343

Post by zdragnar »

dale_glass wrote: post #268
Manuel_D wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Buildin…

> Western nuclear power plants always had containment buildings, so no, this isn't a factor. The point is that nuclear is safe because we've been making it safer over time, and that rarely makes it cheaper. The specific ways in which that's done isn't the point. Mass production in general is made cheaper by simplifying and cutting corners. Nuclear isn't terribly friendly towards this, you can't just go "How about we…

> Mass production in general is made cheaper by simplifying and cutting corners

This is painfully wrong. Go shopping for pretty much any industrial part, and you'll pay through the nose for a few. Order a few dozen, and you get massive discounts in price for identical products.

It takes time and effort to configure machines and tooling to produce something. Those are fixed costs- the more you order, the per-unit price of those fixed costs drops.

> Once the shit hits the fan

That's not gonna happen. No climate model is predicting a doomsday event. It's going to continue to be a slow, gradually worsening crisis at worst. From a political perspective, it'll never need an urgent solution, because next year isn't going to be significantly different from this year- just a little bit. Even for those people who finally realize they're going to be displaced, no urgent solution could possibly turn back the clock, short of a massive deployment of C02 removal from the atmosphere.

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

#344

Post by forgetfreeman »

evilos wrote: post #331
Kon5ole wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Still, amortized over more than half a century they've ended up being the second-cheapest source of power in the province Even after 50 years you have accumulated only a small percentage of the total costs related to the plant. They will most likely cost more money after they have been decommissioned than they did during operation.

What are you basing these statements on?

Without doing a lick of research into the particulars of this plant the statement scans based on storage requirements for high level radioactive waste alone. Some of this shit has to be stored for several multiples of recorded civilization before it becomes anything like safe. We're talking borderline geologic time scales.

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

#346

Post by formerly_proven »

cyberax wrote: post #335
otherme123 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By reliability he refers to french nuclear plants stopped for months due to mantainance and repairs (mainly leaks that couldn't be scheduled). Painting nuclear as a 100% free of problem energy makes people sound as car salesmans. As of today, nobody want to finance or insure them. As soon as you say "ok, build them reactors if they are so perfect", nuclear advocates want the state to jump in and asume the costs, the…

> By reliability he refers to french nuclear plants stopped for months due to mantainance and repairs (mainly leaks that couldn't be scheduled). That's not quite correct. France deferred maintenance during COVID and scheduled the downtime in advance. The inspections then found potential problems, so other reactors did additional maintenance and checks. They could have been deferred further if needed, but politicians…

Nuclear is not really suitable for load-following, at least not the installed capacity. Some are technically capable but load-following seems to be quite taxing on the equipment due to pressure and temperature cycling.

However it is very suitable for base load generation, there's a reason why oil and coal companies lost their marbles in the 50s and astroturfed anti-nuclear into existence.

I'm not sure if that's their most-effective campaign ever or if it's a tie with BP's popularization of the carbon footprint, which atomizes responsibility for climate change and has successfully delayed systematic action for decades. And even managed to get greens and climate change activists to do their work for them. Just like with nuclear. It's actually, genuinely incredible.

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

#347

Post by cyberax »

Kon5ole wrote: post #318
retrac wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power supplies about 50 - 60% of electric energy in Ontario, with 18 reactors currently operating, built 1970s - 1990s. Activated water with tritium in it has been released accidentally a number of times, and small amounts of tritium and other gasses are released by any reactor, but no unapproved leaking besides that has ever been made public. There are of course ecological problems with the heat, but all the…

>Still, amortized over more than half a century they've ended up being the second-cheapest source of power in the province Even after 50 years you have accumulated only a small percentage of the total costs related to the plant. They will most likely cost more money after they have been decommissioned than they did during operation.

This is a straightforward lie. Decommissioning a nuclear power plant down to a "brown field" can cost about 10% of its construction cost. Even grossly mismanaged decommissioning projects are at about 25%.

For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancho_Seco_Nuclear_Generating...

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

#348

Post by throw-4e451c8 »

Always42 wrote: post #345

The comment quality in this thread is comparable to the average reddit thread. My lack of faith in humanity is restored.

I really thought HN was smarter than that french anti-nuclear college kid trying so very hard to appear super vague/undecided... but still clearly anti. Guess not.

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

#349

Post by k8wk1 »

Retric wrote: post #211
throw0101b wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear power supplies about 50 - 60% of electric energy in Ontario, with 18 reactors currently operating, built 1970s - 1990s. Cf, "Supply" tab: * https://www.ieso.ca/en/Power-Data

Yep, and that looks great wind, hydro, and nuclear providing 100% of power at 3pm on a Friday at 2.5c/kWh. But what happens on the weekend when demand for power drops even more? Unfortunately the nuclear power plant operator losses money even faster than they are right now.

Low electricity costs are a problem for all electricity plans, not only nuclear.

Renewables are even more susceptible to this because the weather affects all renewable plants of the same type similarly across wide geographic areas, so there will be times when they all generate more than is needed and nothing can be done about it. What's worse, the output is unpredictable, so there's little opportunity for some business to base its operation on renewable electricity generation patterns.

At least the weekend demand drop is predictable, so businesses can use this predictable opportunity to reduce their costs and thus reduce the impact the weekends have on the profitability of nuclear and similar dispatchable plants.

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

#350

Post by forgetfreeman »

7952 wrote: post #124
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…

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

Name a thing that is resilient to both neglect and human politics. We'll wait.
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