An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse • Hacker News Board

Re: An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse

#171

Post by 2trill2spill » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 3:25 AM UTC

vcdimension wrote: post #167

2trill2spill wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Wind turbines use substantial sums of copper and that requires mining on a scale much larger than uranium mining.[1] [1]: https://copperalliance.org.uk/knowledge-base/education/educa...

That link doesn't mention anything about the amount of land required to mine the copper needed for wind turbines. It must be far less than is needed for mining the uranium needed to generate the same power. Think about it; the copper required for the wind turbines is a fixed one-off cost that lasts the lifetime of the turbine, and can be recycled. Nuclear reactors need a continual supply of uranium (about 27 tonnes p…

> It must be far less than is needed for mining the uranium needed to generate the same power. Think about it; the copper required for the wind turbines is a fixed one-off cost that lasts the lifetime of the turbine, and can be recycled. Nuclear reactors need a continual supply of uranium (about 27 tonnes per year for a 1GWe reactor: http://bit.ly/3voR0II).

A single wind turbine can contain 3.6 tons of copper[1], so using your source for uranium used by a nuclear power plant in one year. Just seven and a half wind turbines use as much copper as a nuclear power plant uses uranium in one year.

If you replaced the ~100GW of nuclear power capacity in the United States you would need about 360,000 tons of copper. It would take the current US nuclear fleet ~133 years to use the equivalent amount of uranium. The above also assumes that wind turbines runs at 100% capacity which we all know they won't. So your going to need an additional 2 - 4 times more turbines and copper to replace the current US nuclear fleet.

> Furthermore copper concentrations are typically around 100 times higher than uranium concentrations, which means you need far more uranium ore than copper ore to produce the same weight of metal. Copper has been extracted with relative ease for thousands of years.

Also copper concentrations in typical copper ore is not 100 time greater than uranium concentrations. Copper concentrations are about 0.6%[2] and uranium is 0.1% - 0.2%[3].

[1]: https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1281864/soaring-cop...

[2]: https://www.geo.arizona.edu/sites/www.geo.arizona.edu/files/...

[3]: https://www.ippnw.org/pdf/uranium-factsheet3.pdf

Re: An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse

#172

Post by stkdump » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 3:26 AM UTC

kristofferR wrote: post #165

ambyra wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think real world examples are always good. Germany went all solar, France all nuclear. Seems like France is winning (cheap clean energy).

Germany didn't go "all solar", they went "all coal and methane". https://grist.org/energy/the-cost-of-germany-going-off-nucle...

Same old lie. Check the actual numbers of electricity production.

Re: An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse

#173

Post by stkdump » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 3:29 AM UTC

cipher_system wrote: post #55

Everyone always says nuclear is expensive but what if the world (or significant portion of it) decided to go all in and build enough nuclear to replace fossil fuels in the next 2 decades. What would the price be then?

France tried to do exactly that, with the results mentioned in the article: massive subsidies, but future costs not covered by far.

Re: An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse

#174

Post by addicted » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 3:48 AM UTC

stevenwoo wrote: post #142

dividedbyzero wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I'm aware, dealing with the waste has cost taxpayers in Germany quite a lot over the last couple of decades, and all of the really hot stuff is sitting in glorified warehouses with no end in sight. I have a feeling this may still become a very significant part of the overall costs. Has any other country actually solved that problem?

Finland? They are still doing construction but it seems all the planning stages have been done, but haven't seen recent update. https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-07-31/finlands-solution-nuc... they generate the money to pay for the spent fuel disposal by taxing the revenue from the nuclear plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...

This is what the interviewee points to in the interview itself, but also adds that they mah not be the answer because there is evidence that original estimates for copper’s corrosion were far too optimistic.

Re: An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse

#175

Post by addicted » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 3:53 AM UTC

aksss wrote: post #89

toshk wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

:) fair play to you. At least the real estate prices will be good. I won't go for low risk when it comes to nuclear and not let my family grow up next to it. Only no risk would be acceptable to me when it comes to nuclear, quite some tail risk in this case.

Let’s keep in mind that not doing nuclear is subjecting you and your family (and subsequent generations) to the long term issue of ever-increasing CO2 output. While waiting for workable battery tech at 3% avg y/y improvement - which means a looong wait for truly reliable at-scale FF displacement. The promise of renewables is great, but planning for a battery miracle in the short term is no plan at all. IF we appropri…

Do people even read the ariticles they respond to?

For interviewee points to the fact that new nuclear is significantly more expensive than solar and wind. In fact, even existing nuclear’s base running costs are higher. And here’s the kicker. Solar/wind + existing battery tech is also cheaper than nuclear. And we don’t even need battery until solar/wind generation has increased by an order of magnitude.

So $1 spent on nuclear will do a lot less to reduce CO2 than $1 spent on wind/solar. Further, that $1 spent on nuclear will still take up to a decade to start helping reduce CO2, while the solar/wind options will likely be active within a year or so.

The article may be wrong about all these facts, but in a response to it one needs to at least show why they are wrong instead of pretending the claims were never made.

Re: An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse

#176

Post by behringer » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 3:57 AM UTC

robocat wrote: post #35

readflaggedcomm wrote: post #6

>However, many of the measures needed for energy efficiency are now cheaper than the basic operating costs of nuclear power plants. Yes, blackouts are cheaper than electricity. >The second point is that renewables today have become so cheap that in many cases they are below the basic operating costs of nuclear power plants. Prohibiting new plants by law has a way of doing that, with aging mechanisms that fail catastr…

Nuclear friendly countries are struggling with the costs. Multiple examples of problems were given for France, yet the French government likes nuclear power.

I don't think you're calculating climate change into the cost. We've got maybe 100 years left before things go nuts with the arctic completely melting.

Re: An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse

#177

Post by edbob » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 4:13 AM UTC

Jedd wrote: post #147

cheaprentalyeti wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, everyone was happy about how Texas scrapped so many coal plants and built so many windmills until it reached a cascade failure point and then the narrative shifted to "OMG, look at all the deregulation!"

This is a challenging position to take. The failure point was a repeat of previous cold events -- it wasn't really a cascade event, of course, given wind turbines provide only 20% of power on the ECOT mini-grid. Given there are similar capacity wind turbines running happily in Antarctica, and the heads-up from the 2011 & 2019 events to winterise the Texas fleet, it's difficult to see how this is a 'windmill problem'.

I wouldn't frame the blackouts as a "windmill problem" as they're primarily a "winterization problem", but having so much capacity invested in unreliable wind generation was a very significant contributor to the blackouts that should not be ignored. ERCOT is a world leader in wind production, and that was pretty punishing when its 25GW of wind capacity was producing 0. We invested billions into a generation source that at one point produced 0 and eventually "exceeded projections" by producing slightly more than 0. We could have invested those billions in basically any other source and had significantly more electricity available. Winterization would have helped somewhat with less turbines freezing, but it doesn't help at all when the wind stops blowing.

Re: An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse

#178

Post by edbob » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 4:19 AM UTC

pydry wrote: post #118

cheaprentalyeti wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, everyone was happy about how Texas scrapped so many coal plants and built so many windmills until it reached a cascade failure point and then the narrative shifted to "OMG, look at all the deregulation!"

Every power source failed in Texas.

Every power source had some failures, but the only power sources that dropped all the way to 0 were solar and wind. Nuclear operated at 75% of capacity, while fossil generation seems to have been around 60%. Wind recovered slightly and "exceeded projections" by producing in the 15-30% range, but closer to 15% at night when it's coldest.

Re: An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse

#179

Post by betwixthewires » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 4:41 AM UTC

Sensational title.

> every euro invested in new nuclear power plants makes the climate crisis worse because now this money cannot be used to invest in efficient climate protection options.

This is a weak argument.

The article makes a good point, which is that renewable costs in some countries are lower than nuclear operating costs. But this alone does not justify the claim that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse.

Then the article delves into politicking. I get the feeling that that was the original intended goal of the piece.

Re: An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse

#180

Post by betwixthewires » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 4:43 AM UTC

toshk wrote: post #67

readflaggedcomm wrote: post #6

>However, many of the measures needed for energy efficiency are now cheaper than the basic operating costs of nuclear power plants. Yes, blackouts are cheaper than electricity. >The second point is that renewables today have become so cheap that in many cases they are below the basic operating costs of nuclear power plants. Prohibiting new plants by law has a way of doing that, with aging mechanisms that fail catastr…

To everyone being a proponent of this modern new nuclear plants you dream about I ask: would you want to live in a village where they would build a new nuclear plant next to it?

I wouldn't mind if it were one of the modern meltdown resistant designs.