171–180 of 731 posts
It is always interesting when the NYT and WSJ agree: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-climate-needs-nuclear-power...
Both the OP and the WSJ article are op-eds, written by people who are not paid by the publications. Op-Eds get their name from the phrase, “opposing/opposite the editorial page”, so it’s not particularly accurate to think of this as the NYT and WSJ stating a position.
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…
But two other things against them ... 1. They take a long time to build 2. They provide a large base power and are costly to stop and start.
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…
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Just a month before Chernobyl happened, the staff at the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II in Idaho successfully demonstrated something new and incredible: passive shutdown. They had the reactor at full power and killed the pumps. It shut down and started cooling itself with natural circulation (no external/backup power needed). No control rods were inserted. This state would last indefinitely. Then they did it again,…
I wonder why nuclear rectors were ever built without the ability to shutdown passively in case of power and equipment failure.
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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…
Not to be rude but that seems like a silly qualification to be speaking on a matter. I grew up next to a Lockheed factory and my father worked for NASA, but I fail to see how that qualifies me to comment on what a "realistic" solution for interstellar travel would be.
To give you an example. Did you know that CNPP was profitably working until 2000 while the disaster was in 1986?
Or another, fact - CNPP is an almost exact copy of an older nuclear plant which still profitably produces clean energy near St. Petersburg in Russia
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Two points: 1: France is 75% nuclear and has some of the cheapest electricity. 2: there are a ton of small reactor designs that would be substantially cheaper and quicker to build. Problem is that you can't get them out of research labs.
France always also consumes 80% of the known uranium reserves in the world. we just don't have enough uranium to have two Frances!
Uranium is not very expensive right now, so a lot of mines have closed or mothballed. That doesn't mean there's any shortage of the stuff. Australia's known reserves are enormous. Throw a dart at a map of northern Australia and you'll probably hit an orebody.
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…
Without that law there wouldn't be any. The law was passed because no insurance company would agree to insure a nuclear plant, precisely because of the crazy exposure if anything went wrong.
I think the insurers have a good point. And that's why I don't think we should subject our civilian population to risks which the experts in risk (actuaries) have decided are so bad that they refused to touch them.
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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.
How about we put the reactors in the middle of the desert, then there is no danget of killing a city and no risk of nuclear material leaking into the sea. You really don't need that many people to staff a reactor and if you really do, you can always build a train so people don't need to live close. I know power transmission is an issue. But we have gotten a lot better at that as well, with things like that big DC und…
Nuclear reactors, much like other kinds of industrial power stations, require enormous amounts of water for cooling towers. They don't put them next to rivers because it looks cool.
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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…
Not to be rude but that seems like a silly qualification to be speaking on a matter. I grew up next to a Lockheed factory and my father worked for NASA, but I fail to see how that qualifies me to comment on what a "realistic" solution for interstellar travel would be.
Sure that doesn’t qualify as expert opinion, but that also only gets you so far. In a debate that gets emotional it can’t hurt to have someone stand up and say “yes, bad things can happen. It happened to me and my family, but I still support it because it makes sense overall”