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

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

#171

Post by asdff »

rakoo wrote: post #132
dreamcompiler wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does that factor in the upfront cost of building the reactor? IIRC it takes 30 years to get a return on investment for reactors, which is a non issue if the reactors are public but definitely a tough pill for the private sector to swallow.

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

#172

Post by asdff »

_ph_ wrote: post #121
C1sc0cat wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a panic over a Tsunami - note that Germany doesn't have a coast to speak off and is not prone to tsunamis. It was also used to keep the Greens on side though you do have to ask who benefits and is keeping coal plant open longer really a green solution.

German here - it is not because of panic over a tsunami, but about the complete incompetence shown in the Fukushima disaster. The plant had construction faults, the operations after the disaster failed to prevent a preventeable disaster. Yes, we won't have a tsunami at any our nuclear power plants. But whatever else has been overlooked during their construction, where are the operating companies maybe cutting too man…

I assume you've stopped flying on airplanes decades ago.

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

#173

Post by asdff »

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.

Orders of magnitude different amounts of waste. The dose makes the poison.

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

#174

Post by imtringued »

Ygg2 wrote: post #126
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Here is a link: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fue... > Battery waste: empty, disassemble and reuse. Health risk: very moderate. How long are rare metals (used in some battery/electronics) toxic for? Indefinitely. How long is nuclear waste toxic? 92% for 40 years, 0.2% for thousands of years.

Let me pull a pro nuclear style argument. Future batteries won't need rare earth metals. Actually this isn't a fair comparison. Batteries that don't need rare earth metals already exist today. Thorium reactors or next gen nuclear plants don't exist at all.

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

#175

Post by asdff »

nickik wrote: post #33

Nuclear power was once the fasted growing energy producer in world history. Adoption happened faster then coal, faster then oil or pretty much anything else. The world was on track to essentially replace fossil fuels with nuclear on a pace that was outside of human experience. Humanity was quickly entering a new age. But then a small number of accidents lead to a political change, witch lead to regulatory changes tha…

This is what happens when the free market is the only method to drive change. The only thing stopping the US from using the navy to produce reactors for cities and not battleships is lobbyists from the oil industry threatening to primary any elected official who goes against good old fashion american capitalism for the sake of public good. I can see the attack ad now.

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

#176

Post by beat »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #166
beat wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter if it's technically correct, from a certain perspective. What matters is that when you say something like that, you come off like a smug mansplaining dudebro who treats anyone who disagrees like they're an idiot. It's not a science problem, it's a sales problem. And if you want concerned environmentalist-oriented people to come to your side, you do not do it by mocking their stupidity with a ridicul…

OK well I can agree with that! I have never converted an antinuke with that fact. I have converted dozens (at least from absolute rejection to cautious optimism) with 10-15 minute in-person discussions. I have not found out how to scale that. Indeed, this is a sales problem.

The pro-nuclear advocates are usually their own worst enemies. That smug dudebro points-scoring is a huge problem. Then again, I think most people would be a lot more effective at life if they'd sit down and read How to Win Friends and Influence People and other basic sales texts.

I'm generally anti-nuclear, but not for safety reasons. I'm sure we can build safe plants. Rather, I distrust institutions, whether governments or giant corporations. I'm also concerned about the impact of nuclear power on inequality, as it's simply not available to the poorer nations, for reasons both good (proliferation, terrorism) and bad (lack of infrastructure).

Renewable power is so good in terms of fundamentals, particularly accessibility to poor nations and difficulty in using it for state-level violence, that I no longer see good reason to even attempt scaling up nuclear power. A meaningful scaling would take decades of effort and trillions of dollars worldwide. In that time, we'll grow a renewable infrastructure of the same scale profitably and organically.

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

#177

Post by imtringued »

gamegoblin wrote: post #136
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seeing that completely dishonest article over and over again gets tiring. Cadmium telluride solar cells only make up 5% of the market and there is no reason they couldn't just be banned outright so that we only use the more environmentally friendly crystalline solar cells (which we already do).

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

#178

Post by asdff »

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…

You said it yourself, nuclear is bad for the private sector as they can't rake the same returns as dirtier technologies. So why shouldn't we just let the public government do it? The U.S. Navy has more nuclear reactor experience than any entity in the world.

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

#179

Post by Ygg2 »

imtringued wrote: post #174
Ygg2 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a link: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fue... > Battery waste: empty, disassemble and reuse. Health risk: very moderate. How long are rare metals (used in some battery/electronics) toxic for? Indefinitely. How long is nuclear waste toxic? 92% for 40 years, 0.2% for thousands of years.

Let me pull a pro nuclear style argument. Future batteries won't need rare earth metals. Actually this isn't a fair comparison. Batteries that don't need rare earth metals already exist today. Thorium reactors or next gen nuclear plants don't exist at all.

Kinda missing the point. We already live with way more dangerous material than nuclear. Only difference is that most toxic stuff kills us slowly, so we don't notice.

Even if new batteries are made of non toxic and recyclable materials, our phones, our electronic is littered with it. And future materials are probably going to be even more exotic.

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

#180

Post by nickik »

asdff wrote: post #175
nickik wrote: post #33

Nuclear power was once the fasted growing energy producer in world history. Adoption happened faster then coal, faster then oil or pretty much anything else. The world was on track to essentially replace fossil fuels with nuclear on a pace that was outside of human experience. Humanity was quickly entering a new age. But then a small number of accidents lead to a political change, witch lead to regulatory changes tha…

This is what happens when the free market is the only method to drive change. The only thing stopping the US from using the navy to produce reactors for cities and not battleships is lobbyists from the oil industry threatening to primary any elected official who goes against good old fashion american capitalism for the sake of public good. I can see the attack ad now.

This is 100% wrong. The free market was driving the change pretty quickly and then regulations came in and made it illegal to do most of those things.

Illegal to produce a proper prototype, incredibly restricted access to materials, incredibly high cost to entry and pretty much every other regulatory burden that exists. The nuclear industry is probably one of the un-freest markets ever.

And whats stopping the Navy from doing these things is not oil lobbyists, but rather the Navy having no interest in such tasks and that such tasks are not in their political mandate from congress. That's what the DoE and others are for (in theory). Not to mention that the Navy doesn't really care that much about cost.

I don't think you need a free market, if government wants to drive energy policy, then they can do it successfully with nuclear as well, see France. At least successful compared to most nations.

Either method works fine, specially in a market the size of the US. Currently both paths are blocked.

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