Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

hcn.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 231 posts

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#161

Post by pfdietz »

jws wrote: post #75
ImprovedSilence wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All land doesn't receive the same quality or quantity of sunlight.

That is the 3.0 insolation I chose. It’s reasonably representative of areas of northern hemisphere cities. The United States average by population is probably between 4 and 5 according to this map, but winter is lower and you have to plan for that. https://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/eere_pv/national_photovoltai... Here is a map of the world… https://globalsolaratlas.info/downloads/world Northern Europeans are going to w…

I sometimes wonder if some of the resistance to a solar-powered world stems from their discomfort with the implied economic shift of heavy industry to brown-skinned countries.

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#162

Post by cesarb »

jabl wrote: post #117
justtopost wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the network effects and efficencies, solar absolutly needs a grid. If not a grid, you need local storage, another inefficiency.

IIRC there was some article linked to on hn some time ago where it was explained that most rooftop solar installations actually don't work at all without a grid. If the grid goes down, so does the solar. It's of course technically possible to fix, but costs more.

The article you're thinking of was probably this one: https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2018/05/why-typical-home-solar-s...

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#163

Post by lando2319 »

Question, why do people talk so pessimistically about the potential for solar? I see lots of comments like, "there is not enough land for solar panels". People seem to have a fixed view about how much power can be drawn. Sure right now the payoff might be underwhelming in relation to the size requirements, but with more development wouldn't the technology improve?

I imagine a future where the technology improves to the point where people who live in cloudy areas can still generate plenty of power. Is that unrealistic?

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#164

Post by richardburden »

lando2319 wrote: post #163

Question, why do people talk so pessimistically about the potential for solar? I see lots of comments like, "there is not enough land for solar panels". People seem to have a fixed view about how much power can be drawn. Sure right now the payoff might be underwhelming in relation to the size requirements, but with more development wouldn't the technology improve? I imagine a future where the technology improves to t…

Why not imagine a future where fusion technology improves to the point that there's no point in using anything else? With fission, we're already there, and taking full advantage of fission now, with breeder reactors and spent fuel reprocessing made legal again, will give us the energy to pursue fusion worldwide with a budget similar to the U.S. defense budget. Sticking to solar and other "green" energy means mass-homicidal energy austerity!

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#165

Post by Twisell »

lando2319 wrote: post #163

Question, why do people talk so pessimistically about the potential for solar? I see lots of comments like, "there is not enough land for solar panels". People seem to have a fixed view about how much power can be drawn. Sure right now the payoff might be underwhelming in relation to the size requirements, but with more development wouldn't the technology improve? I imagine a future where the technology improves to t…

The point is that climat change is real and it’s coming fast. So from a purely pragmatic standpoint it seems more reasonable to deploy solutions as soon as possible with available technologies than to wait for a plausible technology improvements.

Otherwise you risk being almost as inactive in the required efforts than an average climat change denier.

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#166

Post by erikpukinskis »

pvaldes wrote: post #57
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because a misfire would result in a fine mist of nuclear fallout spread over the entire planet

We'll have to pack it very carefully in any case. Perhaps we should assume that this will happen and work with that scenery in mind. The concept of a fire resistant box is not new at a smaller scale; We can vitrify the less dangerous waste and store the crystal in steel containers. Then we could theoretically design explosion-proof containers for it with some outer sacrificial disposable layers made of a plastic clay…

There’s some more weight.

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#167

Post by jabl »

cesarb wrote: post #162
jabl wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC there was some article linked to on hn some time ago where it was explained that most rooftop solar installations actually don't work at all without a grid. If the grid goes down, so does the solar. It's of course technically possible to fix, but costs more.

The article you're thinking of was probably this one: https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2018/05/why-typical-home-solar-s...

Yes, exactly! I briefly tried to search for it, but failed. Thanks for digging it up!

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#168

Post by erikpukinskis »

strainer wrote: post #141
imtringued wrote: post #14

With a new projected cost of 25 billion USD the cost overruns of the Vogtle Plant are worse than I thought. There is a reason why nuclear is losing to natural gas and coal. It's too damn expensive and takes too long. If this money was instead spent on building more storage capacity we'd have solved our energy problems a long time ago and even if we started today we'd be done long before the nuclear plant is online. T…

> assume that we need 24 hours of storage or roughly 57600MWh. A modern redox flow or lithium ion battery can cost as little as $100 per kWh I think the flow battery can get even cheaper than this for 24hr storage. Recent price claims[1] were $150/kWh at 4hr, and $100/kWh at 8hr - this puts the cost of charge/discharge rate at $400/kW and the cost of the energy storage at $50/kWh. 1kW @ 4hrs = (400+ 50* 4) /4 = 150$…

Is it really sensible to believe any press release about future batteries?

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#169

Post by Spooky23 »

pfdietz wrote: post #158
Spooky23 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You use it as baseload to replace coal. The problem with renewables is the variability, which would lead to overcapacity or other issues as it scales up.

When we say a source is "baseload", we're not saying something good about it. What that means is that source's business case depends on being able to sell its output most of the time. It's a word describing economic inflexibility. There is no reason why a grid needs any baseload sources whatsoever.

It’s not good or bad, it’s just the nature of the beast.

The nature of a nuclear plant is that it is incredibly capital intensive, and needs to operate at capacity to work financially.

Solar is interesting because it’s peak output aligns with peak demand. Your solar farm isn’t going to do much for you st night, but that’s ok because you don’t need the power!

Post reply on HN