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Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

nytimes.com

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Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#141

Post by lstodd »

hugi wrote: post #24
cm2187 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much because Merkel decided so in the days following Fukushima. Not exactly the result of long term strategy.

Fukushima was an excellent demonstration of what can happen. You devastate huge areas of land and make them unlivable for generations. This is especially applicable to the United States that has proven entirely unable to handle it's own nuclear waste and just accumulates it at the sites where it's generated, waiting for disaster to happen.

This point about devastating huge areas of land re Fukushima is so wrong I don't even. It was idiocy and blame-shifting from top to bottom. And yes people die from other people's idiocy in rather much bigger numbers.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#142

Post by acidburnNSA »

_ph_ wrote: post #99
acidburnNSA wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The consensus solution to nuclear waste is to put it in geologic repositories where it will be safely out of the biosphere until well after it decays to stability. This issue of a toxic but carefully handled substance is very small compared to the looming threat of climate change. As far as I'm aware, commercial nuclear waste in storage has never injured a single person.

Is there any geologic repository in existance and operating though? At least in Europe, I am aware of none. Even worse, the one in Germany, which was used for a limited amount of waste (Schachtanlage Asse) got flooded by water and the cleanup cost of that has been estimated to be 6 billion. If there are no cost overruns...

Well there's WIPP. [1]

In Europe, Finland has one under construction, not in operation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#143

Post by pfdietz »

wongarsu wrote: post #113
ianai wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Chernobyl in 1986, the result of extraordinary Soviet bungling, which killed 31 in the accident and perhaps several thousand from cancer, around the same number killed by coal emissions every day.” just that is all I need to know to prefer nuclear to coal.

Nuclear may well be better than coal, but coal isn't the plant of choice if you build something today. Coal is more expensive than natural gas, too expensive and slow to turn on and off (which is an increasing requirement as solar and wind become more common) and are opposed by the population for health reasons. To be a viable alternative beating coal is irrelevant, nuclear would have to be at least better than natur…

The president of Exelon, a US corporation that operates 23 nuclear power reactors here, has stated that for new nuclear to be competitive with gas in the US the effective CO2 tax would have to be $300/ton or more.

Exelon is focusing on NG w. CO2 capture and renewables/storage for new capacity.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#144

Post by option »

scarygliders wrote: post #128

Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant? Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was because of one design flaw... Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor buildings. DERP. Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not s…

I grew up near Chernobyl. My parents still work on CNPP (which was closed in 2000 but still needs personnel). In my opinion nuclear is the only reallistic solution to solve global warming. Per kw produced it is safer than even solar or wind and modern reactors are even safer. I now live in bay area and have high end solar panels. While this is a nice thing, looking at their output - it is just not enough (covers our family consumption at about 70%, this is house plus electric cars, but, obviously, not including products consumed and long distance travel. And this is California)

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#145

Post by mixmastamyk »

istjohn wrote: post #22
addicted wrote: post #15

Nuclear power can save the world.... If the US can build reactors at 1/10th the cost they do right now. That’s the solution. Not the much cheaper clean energy sources that already exist and are being built out in record numbers... Nuclear is great. It just loses out because it’s too expensive and worse, it gets more expensive with time. If the reasoning behind that is based on irrational human fears then first propos…

FTA: New nuclear power plants are hugely expensive to build in the United States today. This is why so few are being built. But they don’t need to be so costly. The key to recovering our lost ability to build affordable nuclear plants is standardization and repetition. ... Currently, as M.I.T.’s Richard Lester, a nuclear engineer, has written, a company proposing a new reactor design faces “the prospect of having to…

Others were buried like the SSFL. No doubt many more events buried like soviet submarines. Deaths within a few weeks don’t count all the cancer deaths in the area for generations.

I’m in favor of nuclear research and improvements, but let’s be honest.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#146

Post by village-idiot »

Retric wrote: post #86
pdonis wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US never had the ability to build affordable nuclear plants. Sure it has. They're just getting used by the Navy, not by civilians. There's no reason why the same methods that have been successfully used to control cost and schedule for those reactors couldn't be used for civilian reactors.

Navy reactors are extremely expensive. They are worth it because of logistics around oil. Even when comparing to oil, Nuclear is still more expensive. “Specifically, total life-cycle costs would be 19 percent higher for a fleet of nuclear destroyers.” https://www.cbo.gov/publication/41454

Navy reactors are also designed differently due to the confined space in which they typically operate. This is why they use the much more expensive super grade plutonium, as it reduces the amount of heavy shielding required to protect crew who must live very close to their reactors.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#147

Post by davrosthedalek »

scarygliders wrote: post #128

Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant? Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was because of one design flaw... Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor buildings. DERP. Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not s…

The problem is that "taking all disaster scenarios into account" is easy in hindsight, but maybe not in planning. But I believe that modern nuclear power reactors can be build intrinsically safe. For me, the real problem begins with the treatment of the waste: It's hard to find a good place to store it or reprocess it. Not so much because finding the actual place is hard, but because using that place will face hard opposition of the locals, which leads, at least in a democracy, to a political compromise for the location (to see this in action, look at the story for long term storage in Germany). If I have to chose between nuclear power and democracy, my vote is on the latter.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#148

Post by sampo »

addicted wrote: post #15

Nuclear power can save the world.... If the US can build reactors at 1/10th the cost they do right now. That’s the solution. Not the much cheaper clean energy sources that already exist and are being built out in record numbers... Nuclear is great. It just loses out because it’s too expensive and worse, it gets more expensive with time. If the reasoning behind that is based on irrational human fears then first propos…

> clean energy sources that already exist and are being built out in record numbers

What is the fastest, new renewable power capacity any country has at any time build, in added W/year/capita? In both nominal and actual power generation? Or the fastest you can see or hope will happen in near future?

Sweden built 10850MW nuclear in 20 years from 1965 to 1985. This means about 68W per year per capita. How do the already existing, and potential future endeavors in building renewal capacity compare to this number?

The number is nominal, but for nuclear I'd guess the actual long term power output is about 90% of the nominal.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#149

Post by acidburnNSA »

Krasnol wrote: post #112
acidburnNSA wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old? Unlocking the energy of the nucleus is certainly our most recent energy resource, by any measure. Dangerous? Even though nuclear fails catastrophically, it does so very infrequently, and few people die relative to other energy sources (hydro dam failures have killed 100k in one incident, coal kills more each day than nuclear ever killed). Nuclear safety per TWh is on par with wind and solar (which kill very few…

> Old? Unlocking the energy of the nucleus is certainly our most recent energy resource, by any measure. Old as in "outdated". > hydro dam failures have killed 100k in one incident Yeah flooding are surely more dramatic than a slow death through cancer, I give you that...and it's such a good selling point isn't it? You just can't see it or put a finger on it. Some numbers are far less dramatic then a flood. Too bad N…

Nuclear hype is timeless, it's caused by the fact that there are 2 million times more Joules in each kg of uranium than in any chemical fuel. This natural resource is astounding, and it's a very human thing to try to put it to work for the good of humankind.

Anti-nuclear media is also status quo. The industry has been dealing with it for decades. I don't think the HBO thing is going to tip the scale too much. There are documentaries about plane crashes too, yet we still fly.

The key point I don't think you granted me is that the numbers are in, and nuclear is definitively and quantitatively a very safe form of energy. Certainly the perception is not in line with this, but if you look at the numbers it's clear.

Thus we have a public education issue.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#150

Post by option »

davrosthedalek wrote: post #147
scarygliders wrote: post #128

Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant? Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was because of one design flaw... Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor buildings. DERP. Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not s…

The problem is that "taking all disaster scenarios into account" is easy in hindsight, but maybe not in planning. But I believe that modern nuclear power reactors can be build intrinsically safe. For me, the real problem begins with the treatment of the waste: It's hard to find a good place to store it or reprocess it. Not so much because finding the actual place is hard, but because using that place will face hard o…

nuclear waste is not as big of a problem as most people think.
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