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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

#381

Post by emsign »

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…

I don't know in what parallel reality you live, but France is having massive energy problems due to their reliance on nuclear right now. And it's only getting worse with rivers drying up more and more and power plants needing more and more maintance as they age. Building new plants is hugely expensive unless you lower standards, and security is already worse in reality than in the books as of now, you don't want to go lower than that and cut more corners.

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

#382

Post by _heimdall »

evilos wrote: post #336
AnonCoward42 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Coal has killed tens of millions from air pollution alone. Civilian nuclear power has probably killed on the order of a few thousand, at most. The studies that say millions have died as a result from Chernobyl is propaganda funded by Greenpeace and friends.

> Coal has killed tens of millions from air pollution alone.

That stat is effectively impossible to nail down after the fact. Air pollution is one metric of am extremely complex system, and coal or any other energy source is one of countless inputs impacting the environment simultaneously. At best we can design and run models to help get clues on what impact any one input has, but those models will always be rough hints at correlation with results that are heavily influenced by the assumptions used when designing the model.

You are correct that any studies claiming to put a number on how many deaths should be attributed to Chernobyl is propaganda. That holds true for the rest as well though, including any claims of exactly how many have died due to coal or cow farts for example.

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

#383

Post by reso »

Drybones wrote: post #328
jillesvangurp wrote: post #310

Except in the real world where wind + solar account for the vast majority of GW added. Nuclear just doesn't matter. It's 2023, there's an energy crisis on. Where are the new nuclear plants in Europe? Where are the GW of power saving us from rolling blackouts in Europe? Nuclear is a no show. It didn't happen. Not even a little bit. It didn't matter. Too little (well barely anything at all), too late. There's this pesk…

The cost of nuclear today has more to do with the fact that we aren’t building nuclear plants. There are minimum companies with small operations making nuclear reactor technologies for just maintenance of existing ones and military contracts. If we were building new nuclear plants with modern reactors, the costs wouldn’t be a big deal anymore because the production of them would have scaled better. But instead we’re…

The argument that costs will come down if we build more nuclear worked in the 1950s, but we know now where that goes now. Build More nuclear and costs come down. With more plants there are inevitably more nuclear incidents, the public realizes these things can make entire nations uninhabitable if they fail, and then they demand a halt to nuclear, pushing prices back up.

Nuclear prices have baked in the public sentiment on the risk of meltdowns. The prices are efficient.

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

#384

Post by evilos »

epistasis wrote: post #368
evilos wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you think the Koreans and Chinese are just fundamentally different from everyone else then because they're pumping out reactors just fine, today. The French, Americans, Russians, and Japanese have all had periods of time where they built them quickly and cost effectively too. But then various institutional rot sets in. We're going to have to keep building big things anyways so it's not like having that capabi…

There definitely are fundamental differences in our capabilities here, and you seem to believe the same too. Look, for example, at the challenges that are being experienced as we try to build chip fabs in the US. Instintutional knowledge and capability are real things. And I definitely think that construction capability is an important thing to build. But let's improve our construction capability on building real thi…

We already paid the first of a kind cost at Votgle, ordering several more AP1000s is exactly what we should do at this point. We now have a workforce that has made the mistakes and knows what not to do.

If you don't want to do that, you can do what the UAE did and hire the Koreans to teach you how to build plants. They went from no nuclear program to 5.4 GW of clean energy in 10 ish years.

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

#385

Post by dalyons »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #310

Except in the real world where wind + solar account for the vast majority of GW added. Nuclear just doesn't matter. It's 2023, there's an energy crisis on. Where are the new nuclear plants in Europe? Where are the GW of power saving us from rolling blackouts in Europe? Nuclear is a no show. It didn't happen. Not even a little bit. It didn't matter. Too little (well barely anything at all), too late. There's this pesk…

Well said. You can browse through the replies in the threads on this post, and see where all the cost questions go unanswered. Cost and the basic economics of trying to run a really expensive power source at a fixed high price over 40+ years when the competition gets cheaper every day. That’s the major why virtually none get built anymore. And it’s not going to change.

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

#386

Post by Krasnol »

the_third_wave wrote: post #101
lispm wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can import electricity from the European grids we are connected to. For example my region has recently brought up a 1.4 GW HVDC underwater cable, which can be used in both directions. It connects North Germany to Hydro power in Norway.

We - in Sweden - noticed this when we saw our electricity prices go through the roof due to those interconnects enabling German prices to trickle back up the lines. Thanks to the boneheaded "green" politicos in Germany shutting down nuclear power plants we'll be paying more for our electricity in the coming years. Please, German neighbours, vote out those watermelons and put some sense back in to the Bundestag.

Back? Are you even aware that no party besides a small fascist party want nuclear back or did anything in recent years to stop the exit? The previous Government (today's largest opposition) had 16 years to stop the nuclear exit. They didn't. Even before Fukushima.

I wonder where you got this approach from since you've obviously not come up with it by yourself through research.

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

#387

Post by evilos »

_heimdall wrote: post #382
evilos wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coal has killed tens of millions from air pollution alone. Civilian nuclear power has probably killed on the order of a few thousand, at most. The studies that say millions have died as a result from Chernobyl is propaganda funded by Greenpeace and friends.

> Coal has killed tens of millions from air pollution alone. That stat is effectively impossible to nail down after the fact. Air pollution is one metric of am extremely complex system, and coal or any other energy source is one of countless inputs impacting the environment simultaneously. At best we can design and run models to help get clues on what impact any one input has, but those models will always be rough hi…

> That stat is effectively impossible to nail down after the fact

Sure, but given how long we've been burning coal and how dirty it is I'm positive that tens of millions is a gross undercount. It's not about getting an exact number. We're looking for orders of magnitudes here.

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

#388

Post by Kon5ole »

Manuel_D wrote: post #247
dale_glass wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Buildin…

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

You can't build a building that contains a steam explosion from a runaway reactor. If you could, the reactor could be made indestructible in the first place.

Chernobyl has cost over 600 bn since 1986 and costs billions per year still, and will do so for the foreseeable future. The same goes for Fukushima.

Such costs could appear at any time, anywhere in the world that has a nuclear reactor. For example due to negligence, acts of war or terrorism. No earthquake required.

>Hydro storage is geographically dependent: you essentially need to be able to create an artificial alpine lake

True if you want to create it from scratch, but many countries already have lots of hydro that could be increased by adding pumps to existing dams. Other countries can use other methods, like store heat, for example in molten salt. Thermal solar power plants generate power even during the night. Or you can generate Hydrogen or Nitrogen. Or you can store pressurized air on the ocean floor. Or you can use batteries.

There are a number of options, and they all have the benefit of being safe enough and cheap enough that they can be made by anyone anywhere, even at small scale.

I personally think that the ease of deployment will be the killer feature for storage, as it was for solar.

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

#389

Post by Krasnol »

the_third_wave wrote: post #278
lispm wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

So it actually showed the real price of nuclear since dismantling is part of it.

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

#390

Post by Krasnol »

illiarian wrote: post #78
Krasnol wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear only factors in decommissioning in the way that it gives the responsibility away to future generations...

Nuclear waste decommissioned from nuclear plants is very compact, almost completely safe at our current levels of handling it, and a lot of bruhaha around it is strictly political.

I don't know "compact" makes anything better about it. Germany has been searching for a hole safe and deep enough for it for years. It costs taxpayer money and they still haven't found one. Meanwhile, the stuff is stored near the plants. Which is not safe. Also stuff which has been considered "safely stored" years ago needs to be dug out again. Which again costs taxpayer money.
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