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

#471

Post by illiarian » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 6:08 AM UTC

Krasnol wrote: post #421

evilos wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dry cask storage on site is absolutely safe. It's dry waste, there's nothing to leak. It sits in reinforced concrete casks that are rated to last over a hundred years. After that, you can just put it in a new cask and repeat. There's not very much of it so you can just keep it at the site.

Germany alone has 120.000m³ low and mid waste which needs to be stored. However only a small part of it is ready to be stored (in the safe and deep hole Germany still couldn't find). 2016 they had 15.000t of spend fuel. When all the plants are gone, Germany will have 300.000m³ of waste which needs to disappear for a long time in hope that nobody will ever get the idea of digging it out again. No nuclear company will…

In France, for example, only 0.2% of nuclear waste is high level long-live waste and needs to be disposed of somewhere deep and safe.

The absolute vast majority is low-level waste that we have not trouble with. See report on nuclear inventory: https://international.andra.fr/sites/international/files/202... page 14

The FUD around nuclear waste is FUD and politics

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

#472

Post by illiarian » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 6:13 AM UTC

locallost wrote: post #470

illiarian wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35660264

So it matters when wind is providing 20%, but it doesn't matter when it's providing 100%. Thus, even though coal use is at a historic low, it's actually increasing, and in other news water is dry and grass is red.

> So it matters when wind is providing 20%, but it doesn't matter when it's providing 100%.

Of course. Because when there's no electricity, there's no electricity.

> even though coal use is at a historic low, it's actually increasing

You pretend this is a contradiction when it's not. Germany has just shut down its last reactors. So yes, the usage of coal will increase because when renewable generation is low you still need to provide electricity. Guess what provides that electricity.

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

#473

Post by Kon5ole » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 6:21 AM UTC

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?

I base it on common sense and several known examples. The common sense part is that we know that we have to keep managing the waste after the plants no longer produce any energy, or money. Managing the waste costs money, and since we can't make estimates for even a decade into the future it's self-evident that we don't know what 500 years of storage will cost.

Secondly from known examples where the logic has already proven itself in practice.

One example is France, where the taxpayers have recently had to pay over 50 bn euros in costs that were never planned or paid for by the operator.

Another example is the cleanup costs for the German Asse II storage site. Several billion Euros for the cleanup alone, and the things you extract from that site will have to be stored someplace else at high cost as well, so the costs will keep ticking. Operators don't pay that either, taxpayers do.

Another example is Sweden, where they have a storage facility for second-rate waste, (i.e. low-intensity waste), which is mandated to operate for at least 500 years. It is currently employing over 100 highly qualified people and is going to grow over the next few decades.

This facility is currently underfunded for its planned operations, and please note that this is not even accounting for the costs of handling high-intensity waste. This site will only manage secondary waste, like contaminated pipes, pumps, filters and such - so the actual total costs are severely underestimated. Taxpayers in Sweden will have to pay these costs in the years to come.

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

#474

Post by Gelenoto » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 6:22 AM UTC

formerly_proven wrote: post #325

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…

> the consumers to pay an extra price The (botched) green energy transformation has given the country I live in top 3 highest electricity prices in the world and it's not even particularly green at all. Literally cannot get worse. And it seems to me that one half doesn't understand how incredibly bad high energy prices are both for people and industry, while the other half cheers at the prices because it causes deind…

If you talk about Germany than this has nothing to do with nuclear.

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

#475

Post by TheLoafOfBread » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 6:28 AM UTC

artemonster wrote: post #332

formerly_proven wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the consumers to pay an extra price The (botched) green energy transformation has given the country I live in top 3 highest electricity prices in the world and it's not even particularly green at all. Literally cannot get worse. And it seems to me that one half doesn't understand how incredibly bad high energy prices are both for people and industry, while the other half cheers at the prices because it causes deind…

Germany?

Could be Denmark too.

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

#476

Post by TheLoafOfBread » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 6:30 AM UTC

locallost wrote: post #465

cyberax wrote: post #335

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). 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…

It's been proven to work and the only able to displace fossil fuels, yet it's existed for 70 years and not even reduced the amount of fossil fuels used in electricity production. Renewables have been pushed for 20 years and have started to accelerate only 10 years ago, yet they are already displacing fossil fuels in many countries.

Displacing? I see increasing use of fossil fuels to backup up renewables.

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

#477

Post by locallost » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 6:36 AM UTC

TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #476

locallost wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been proven to work and the only able to displace fossil fuels, yet it's existed for 70 years and not even reduced the amount of fossil fuels used in electricity production. Renewables have been pushed for 20 years and have started to accelerate only 10 years ago, yet they are already displacing fossil fuels in many countries.

Displacing? I see increasing use of fossil fuels to backup up renewables.

Check numbers for Germany, Denmark, Scotland, Portugal etc.

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

#478

Post by locallost » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 6:39 AM UTC

illiarian wrote: post #472

locallost wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it matters when wind is providing 20%, but it doesn't matter when it's providing 100%. Thus, even though coal use is at a historic low, it's actually increasing, and in other news water is dry and grass is red.

> So it matters when wind is providing 20%, but it doesn't matter when it's providing 100%. Of course. Because when there's no electricity, there's no electricity. > even though coal use is at a historic low, it's actually increasing You pretend this is a contradiction when it's not. Germany has just shut down its last reactors. So yes, the usage of coal will increase because when renewable generation is low you stil…

No. Germany already began shutting down reactors in 2011 and coal use continued to go down. The proof is in the pudding -- data beats predictions.

The rise in renewables will continue to decrease coal use. Deadline for coal is 2038, with possibly moving it to 2030.

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

#479

Post by froh » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 6:46 AM UTC

haweemwho wrote: post #274

froh wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

nuclear transforms mining rights into money, so does coal or oil or gas.

wind transforms the decentralized location of the plant into energy, so does solar. wind and solar transfer the heart of the profits from mining to decentralized, local communities.

in that context Siemens is publicly traded, and does what the board wants it to do. they had fig leave wind investments.

Germany has divested from solar production, battery production and wind plant production. _di_-vested.

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

#480

Post by evilos » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 7:04 AM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #457

evilos wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reached the thread length limit. With regard to your last comment: > It's most definitely not the case that successive reactors are cheaper or faster, that's a myth that gets told but the data says otherwise both in the US and France and many other countries (but not all). Maybe, but Votgle is a massive outlier and successive plants of the same design are all but guaranteed to be faster and cheaper. You don't make th…

Vogtlr is the norm for advanced developed countries. Look at France's attempt at Flamanville. Or the EPR at Olkiluoto. Look at Summer in South Carolina. Look at all the Us construction projects from the 70's, before Three Mile Island. 2-4x the budget and 2-4x the timeline should be the expectation. Just because something was done in a particular time and place doesn't mean that the same thing can be achieved again, o…

> Vogtlr is the norm for advanced developed countries.

It is for countries that only build a few reactors. Again, China and Korea don't have this problem because they build lots of reactors. They aren't aliens. China doesn't even have cheap labor these days. The South Koreans are an advanced economy like us. They got good at it by doing it. There is no reason why we couldn't do that. We just don't want to and then we say it's not possible because we aren't good at it. It's circular logic. We've been saying it takes too long for decades when that is plenty of time to rebuild those skills and then build reactors quickly. We could've been done by now.

> Look at all the Us construction projects from the 70's, before Three Mile Island.

The chart in my last comment shows those reactors were built economically. If you look at the reactor build times at PRIS you can see the build times are quite impressive too: https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/CountryDetails....

> I haven't heard anyone suggest that we should get rid of ALARA that works in the field

Why is that surprising? They are trained and educated that this is the correct and lawful standard to which they must operate. It's baked in to the institutions.

> You'll never convince me that's a sane way to make massive capital allocations.

The alternative will be even more capital intensive and it's completely unproven. You need to build out thousands of miles of high voltage transmission and TWhs of battery/hydrogen/hydro storage. It's unproven. No nation has a majority wind/solar grid without fossil fuel backup. Some places are blessed with enough hydro resources but that won't work in the US. We already know you can mostly decarbonize a grid with nuclear because France did it 40 years ago.