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We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

thebellows.org

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Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#131

Post by jka »

hprotagonist wrote: post #116
jka wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hell, even greenpeace has been pro-reactor for a while now. Hrm. Do you have a reference for where you read about Greenpeace's stance on reactor development? Their nuclear energy page[1] currently says: "Nuclear energy has no place in a safe, clean, sustainable future." [1] - https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/issues/nuclear...

i think i misremembered. Weird!

It happens to all of us :)

In retrospect my comment might have read unintentionally sternly; I was just curious in case it was possible to track down where their policies were misrepresented originally.

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#132

Post by epistasis »

mulmen wrote: post #107
epistasis wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a weird world view. University of Sussex researchers are "biased" but you link to the Nuclear Innovation Alliance?

I think the implication is that the Nuclear Innovation Alliance is biased but still making a good point.

It would be good to do a bit more work to justify that, then.

The NIA blog post doesn't even address the core point of the paper. It looks at a correlation of existing energy by US states, where our nuclear was largely built in the 1970s and 1980s.

In contrast, the academic paper looks at what has happened to countries , globally, that have tried to build nuclear since the 1990s.

And this is a crucial distinction, because the problem with nuclear is that economies have changed since the 1970s and we have new technologies with different costs.

So what if we look at what has happened to US states that, since 1990, have tried to build nuclear versus those that have tried to build renewables?

Nuclear has failed since the 1990s in the US, even with construction project with very strong community support and federal regulatory support from the NRC.

So when you ask the question that the paper asks: "does building new nuclear or renewables decrease carbon more with modern economies?" We see that the US recapitulates the same correlation that researchers found globally.

This huge bias of nuclear proponents, the inability to address the cost issue and very basic construction issues, is far more problematic for nuclear than a corrective analysis of what has happened to grids that have pursued different strategies.

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#133

Post by polote »

pydry wrote: post #7

Why Renewables Aren't the Reason for California Blackouts: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/08/why-renew... LCOE of various energy sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#... https://neon.energy/Hirth-Ueckerdt-Edenhofer-2015-Integratio... suggests that wind energy has up to 50% higher "real" cost than typical LCOE measurements because of variability, however, this still put…

You can't compare nuclear and wind/solar, how are you going to power the lights at night when there is a no wind ?

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#134

Post by eeZah7Ux »

tertiary wrote: post #30

First off, you can have both. Green new deal doesn't ban reactors or anything. Second, I'm on the fence over whether I support more reactors and not because nuclear==bad. I trust the technology, but my concern is whether we can maintain a stable political environment for the decades/hundred years required to responsibly take care of nuclear. Buying into a fission reactor means you pay billions up front, but you also…

> my concern is whether we can maintain a stable political environment for the decades/hundred years required to responsibly take care of nuclear.

Spot on. People often ignore the political problems of nuclear power:

- Centralization of control encourages corruption and the hiding of incidents

- Power stations make excellent targets in case of war. The bigger they are, the bigger the impact

- Nuclear power stations also cause social panic if hit, even if the damage is minimal

- The last two points apply to war but also to terrorism

If we want political stability (aka no wars) we need reasonably decentralized access to food, water, energy and information.

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#135

Post by pfdietz »

ttul wrote: post #5

Tax carbon at $200 per ton and magically the financing for nuclear will appear.

The president of Exelon stated that CO2 taxes would have to reach $300-400/ton for new nuclear to compete with NGCC in the US. Renewables would likely be used instead. For nuclear to replace intermittent, gap-filling NG generators would require far higher taxes.

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4088

CO2 taxes could keep existing reactors operating, though.

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#137

Post by eeZah7Ux »

arcticbull wrote: post #42
brazzy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy fucking shit are you nuclear fanboys delusional (or well paid).

No my dude, you can find yourself on the other side of an argument without your opponents needing to be well-paid and delusional ;) Nuclear energy accounts for about 6% of the world's energy mix. It is the safest source of carbon-free energy in terms of deaths per TWh in the world, leading to half a many deaths as industrial solar, 1/4 as many as wind and 1/10th as many as rooftop solar. [1] The genuinely tiny amount…

> Nuclear energy accounts for about 6% of the world's energy mix. It is the safest source of carbon-free energy in terms of deaths per TWh in the world,

...as long as you completely ignore the risk of large catastrophic events. Like nuclear power plants being targeted during a war.

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#138

Post by manfredo »

pfdietz wrote: post #120
OneGuy123 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article makes some good points but forgets this: our knowledge increases constantly. So today's reactors might not be able to scale well, but the more we build the better we are at it.

Some knowledge we gain is negative. We've learned nuclear wasn't as promising as had been claimed. More generally, in engineering most technologies must fail. That's because there are multiple technologies that can solve any given problem, and only one can come out on top. The number of niches If you think just wait, we'll learn more and nuclear wins, why doesn't that same argument apply to the technologies nuclear i…

You've got it backwards. We've built nuclear plants. We've encountered unknown difficulties and overcome them. Our cost estimates for nuclear power are historical estimates. We did built nuclear at scale before, and it did cost less.

By comparison, the cost estimates for building things like massive amounts of energy storage are cost projections. These costs represent what we think these projects will cost. But these projections, by definition, don't account for unforseen engineering challenges. Historical costs do.

Comparing the two is apples to oranges. Historical costs include the cost of engineering challenges, cost projections for new technologies do not.

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#140

Post by piva00 »

pfdietz wrote: post #108
est31 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power isn't very "dispatchable", it takes long times to be turned on vs off. But it might be useful for seasonal use in the winter when there is less sun.

No. Unless you run your nuclear power plant at high capacity factor, the cost of power from it inflates unacceptably. It's an economic issue, not a technical issue.

That's the whole point of nuclear, hydro or coal though, they need to be run at high capacity to be economically viable, have long spin up and down times and are costly to maintain. You use them as the basis of the grid and use wind and solar that are more prone to fluctuations to fill up the demand when necessary, less batteries needed as the base load can always be delivered by nuclear/hydro. Coal is basically dead in the next decade or so.
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