Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals • Hacker News Board

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#131

Post by snowwrestler » Tue, May 28, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #81

NotPaidToPost wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err, they say production grew by 580 GW in the past 20 years and that it must grow by another 5x580=2,900 GW in the next 5 years. Nothing misleading and indeed an unprecedented production increase. It's not the ratio that is hard, it's the raw amount.

You've picked the wrong number of years, the article says But over the next 20 years, nearly five times that amount would need to be added. The current linear growth trajectory is 2,000 GW over 20 years, and that is likely to be a hilarious underestimate.

Why is it likely to be a hilarious underestimate? That seems like a statement that needs some support. Graphs don't go up forever; growth curves level off; growth gets harder the bigger you get. Linear growth forever should not be the default assumption for any energy technology, even one that is growing fast now.

Or do I misunderstand what you're saying?

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#132

Post by rakoo » Tue, May 28, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

dreamcompiler wrote: post #116

mncolinlee wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of news pieces about nuclear are unrealistically rosy. Waste reprocessing isn't really all that new and it doesn't really get rid of waste. It replaces much of the solid waste with even more liquid waste. The problem with having any discussion of nuclear is agreeing upon the facts. It's crazy hard to find an unbiased source. If you asked a random bystander why we haven't built nuclear reactors in recent years,…

Exactly. Solar is winning because of economics. Nuclear is losing because of economics.

And yet, for the same quantity of energy over the same timeframe, nuclear is cheaper. It's not so much that it loses because of economics, it's losing because of the perceived uncertainty of the economics.

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#133

Post by Ygg2 » Tue, May 28, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

Tepix wrote: post #11

umvi wrote: post #4

Haven't nuclear waste recycling and safety features gotten really good in the past few decades? I feel like not many people know just how little waste is created with modern recycling and just how safe nuclear is with modern safety features. Seems like we need a positive PR campaign to help convince folks that nuclear is way better than fossil fuels. This could easily be bipartisan.

No, quite the contrary. Just as an example, in Germany the search for the ultimate disposal place has just started over from scratch after decades of failed attempts. In the US, a nuclear waste dome is leaking in to the Pacific: https://www.civilbeat.org/beat/a-dome-holding-nuclear-waste-... Here's another story from 12 days ago: "Years of mismanagement, delays at nuclear waste sites could pose risk, report says" htt…

Did you read your link? Honest question.

Here is a quote:

    A concrete dome containing radioactive waste on the
    Marshall Islands is cracking open, The Washington 
    Post reported Monday.

    The U.S. conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall
    Islands in the 1940s and 1950. The dome was built decades     later to cover remaining fallout debris

To put it in perspective, that's like closing solar power plant, because a star went supernova in another galaxy.

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#134

Post by sprash » Tue, May 28, 2019, 5:49 PM UTC

bcatanzaro wrote: post #110

sprash wrote: post #86

Looking at mid term solutions: Nuclear fission is just not cost effective if you factor in all total cost of a building a secure nuclear power plant and safely dismantling it after its lifetime. Also uranium ore is a limited non renewable resource. Nuclear fusion looks similarly bad but at least deuterium and tritium is rather abundant. Looking at ultra long term solutions: Wind power is nothing else than reducing th…

Nuclear looks bad if you restrict it to 1940's technology. Which we have done. We don't allow ourselves to dream any more when it comes to nuclear. We are still building the same plants we designed for submarines and bombs, and wondering why they aren't great for power. There are safer, cheaper, lower waste alternatives if we'd allow ourselves to try them (Thorium reactors, for example). Does wind power really reduce…

> Nuclear looks bad if you restrict it to 1940's technology.

The research in nuclear is still been done very actively. My country is putting hundreds of millions per year into nuclear research. But even the new technologies are not competitive. The infrastructure and maintenance required for nuclear technologies is vastly more expensive than solar. The thorium hype is moot because nobody ever demonstrated a working molten salt reactor. And even if it works it is still very expensive, suffers from corrosion and produces radioactive waste that is expensive to dispose of. Nuclear technology is old. All the physics behind it is more or less known for 60 years. Very smart people had a lot of money available to come up with something during that whole time. I don't expect any ground braking innovation in that field any more.

> Does wind power really reduce the speed of the earth?

You can measure that by yourself. In my location the if you average over all wind directions during a year you clearly get very west wind bias. That is the amount of Energy you take from earths rotation.

> I saw the most beautiful farmland in Italy this month smothered under sterile black waves of solar panels.

Of course it is stupid to put solar panels on farmland. But there are so many desserts in America that America alone could power three globes only with solar power. Only half of the roof of my house is covered with solar panels and I would easily get through the summer. If I populate the rest of the roof I would get through the winter if there was a possibility for cheap storage that lasts half a year.

Also I find wind farms in nature equally disturbing.

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#135

Post by benj111 » Tue, May 28, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

joycian wrote: post #104

benj111 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"create a warehouse large enough to handle 200 years worth of waste" 200 years ago the world was a very different place. I'm struggling to think of any building not including houses still used for their original purpose, from that long ago. So while I don't doubt that we could build a structure that lasts 200 years, I doubt we could build some kind of continuously used industrial building without it becoming some kin…

An example of a building: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter%27s_Basilica

Yes, and I suppose many churches in general.

In the UK theres still some covered market square buildings that still hold markets also.

http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/whitby-blog/whitby-marketp...

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#136

Post by gamegoblin » Tue, May 28, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #113

Meandering wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the issues with solar power that gets overlooked. The physical 'stuff' needed to build a large solar farm is far more than a base nuclear plant. After a quick search: Solar Panels Lifespan - ~25 years - Good Grid Battery Lifespan - 5-10 years - ehh.. If we switched to 100% solar, with a majority of the equipment probably manufactured in China, there would be an orders of magnitude more physical product…

Simply comparing lifespans is extremely misleading. We need to look at the potential risk associated with waste. Solar panel waste: grind and reuse. Health risk: negligible. Battery waste: empty, disassemble and reuse. Health risk: very moderate. Nuclear waste: highly radioactive for thousands of years. No way to recovery leaks in the environment. Health risk: very high.

> Solar panel waste: grind and reuse. Health risk: negligible.

Do you have a source that solar panels can simply be ground up and reused? The article linked in the top level comment implies that recycling solar panels is much harder that one might think, and that solar panels are full of toxic heavy metals that are not "negligible" health risk.

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#137

Post by Ygg2 » Tue, May 28, 2019, 5:58 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #44

ekianjo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greenpeace has successfully spent several decades painting nuclear power as Evil so its going to be difficult to convince voters to support it from now on.

Hoisting my previous comment on Greenpeace from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17774347 The backlash against nuclear comes from four points and a meta-point: 1) Weapons proliferation. The standard fission cycle is just too convenient for this (after all, that's why it was developed) and so an international infrastructure needs to be developed around restricting this. See Iran for example. This also prompted a l…

Ok, let's analyze it.

1) Ok, this can be a problem. 2) Citation needed. It has lowest number of deaths per kWh. By your logic, planes fall out of the sky, and many people die, so we should never use planes and rely on more deadly methods.

As for pebble bed reactors, mistakes are normal when doing something novel. See the problems LHC faced. Luckily LHC had better funding than nuclear.

3) It's a thousand year problem. The rare metals in average phone are a more of a forever problem. They will never decay to a less toxic compound.

4) Yeah, this is true.

5) Not sure about this one, I see lots of FUD on all sides.

To clarify, I'm not claiming nuclear power is an angel that will save us. But it's a devil we'll probably have to live with if we are to go 0 carbon in near future. Going 100% renewables requires a revolution in battery tech, and a revolution in how electric grid distributes electricity.

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#138

Post by DubiousPusher » Tue, May 28, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #21

gravy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is kind of why I'm a little concerned with how well HBO's Chernobyl is being received...I really hope it doesn't lead to widespread fears of nuclear plants.

HBO's Chernobyl really is very good, but the writer made an execellent point: "The lesson of Chernobyl isn't that modern nuclear power is dangerous. The lesson is that lying, arrogance and suppression of criticism is dangerous. The flaws that led to Chernobyl are the same flaws shown by climate change deniers today." https://twitter.com/clmazin/status/1115135743045718016?lang=... Edit: Purely by coincidence I read "C…

Regardless of the writer's intentions it is probably having an effect. I was formerly fairly pro-nuclear and since watching the show I've begun reconsidering my position.

It isn't that the plant failed and the vivid depictions of that which have most affected me. It's the depictions of the knock on effects which were barely stemmed after the failure that have caused me to reconsider.

The most concerning thing about Chernobyl is not the initial explosion. It's the impact the secondary and tertiary disasters could have had if the Soviet government had not acted to mitigate them. Those are cases in which millions of people are affected and regions the size of Alabama become uninhabitable. I personally was not aware that a failure at a plant could cascade into those kind of issues. I didn't realize that Chernobyl could have been much much worse.

And that is my problem. I believe fundamentally in human fallibility. We and our best machines will always find new ways to fail. Always.

In some cases, the risks are acceptable. Such is the case with flying in a plane. No matter how good aircraft and our safety procedures get. The loss of a plane, however tragic does not impact the future of our planet of our species.

What's more, the law of large numbers says if you make nuclear power ubiquitous, it's almost a guarantee that some 1/1000, 1/10000, or even 1/1000000, event will occur.

For me, I'm not against nuclear now but I am much less gung-ho and that's due to this show. I look forward to learning more though and perhaps my opinion will sway back.

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#139

Post by benj111 » Tue, May 28, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #91

benj111 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All reasonable points, but would you not agree that in the here and now, our first priority should be replacing that coal power station with renewables, and then the gas, then the nuclear?

That seems reasonable - no point in closing functioning, safe, carbon free plant that's already been paid for. The UK has already almost entirely replaced coal.

"The UK has already almost entirely replaced coal"

Indeed. I'd rather take a global approach to what is a global problem though. Germany and Eastern Europe are still burning plenty of coal that could be offset. We are all on the same grid I believe.

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#140

Post by gwbas1c » Tue, May 28, 2019, 6:09 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #128

jessaustin wrote: post #31

If other low-carbon sources, namely wind and solar PV, are to fill the shortfall in nuclear, their deployment would have to accelerate to an unprecedented level. In the past 20 years, wind and solar PV capacity has increased by about 580 gigawatts in advanced economies. But over the next 20 years, nearly five times that amount would need to be added. This is misleading enough to make one question every "fact" stated…

> 20 years ago was essentially a zero point for the statistic they cite. It was less than 5 gigawatts, anyway. It grew by over 100 times in that 20 years, and it will be "unprecedented" to grow by 5 times in the next 20? Do you expect the growth rate of Google over the next 20 years will be the same as it was between 1999 and today? As things mature you don't get the same level of exponential growth. Meanwhile the su…

Don't forget that part of moving away from carbon is replacing oil and gas heat with heat pumps (or resistive heat.)

And furthermore, heating is needed when days are the shortest.

We aren't going to heat our homes with solar power.