Who really killed nuclear power? I bet if you traced all the financial donations to all the environmental groups and people who have opposed nuclear power, you will find a lot of oil dictatorships and oil companies. Follow the money...
Implicit in that paranoia is the assumption that environmental groups are what stopped nuclear. But that's really just a dubious right wing talking point. Nuclear appears to have shot itself in the foot all on its own.
Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it
171–180 of 277 posts
Re: Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it
#172"today’s so-called environmentalists" The nuclear industry had decades to fix its economic, safety and environmental issues but sat on its hands instead. If half of the subsidies they received over that time when into research we would have fixed the renewable storage problem a decade ago. There is not and never will be enough uranium on this planet to completely power humanity for more than a few decades. Fission wa…
Re: Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
At least battery storage seems to be unrealistic solution. The needed amount of energy storage for several months is enormous and in addition to that problem, batteries tend to self-discharge. Geothermal energy and hydro storage are not without problems either. I am not sure about ammonia storage, but it would be interesting to see some calculations about the feasibility of storing so much energy by using hydro or am…
I don't understand how the Green Party could have influenced the choice of using France's EPR versus other tech. Areva designed the large EPR because larger reactors are supposed to be more cost effective than smaller reactors. How has the Green Party dragged on the process of construction? What delays did they cause? I ask because I don't know the specific causes of all the delays, even the latest since it was first…
And because of the foot dragging by greens the other new reactor project failed. They managed to slow the process long enough that the German reactor was of the table (thanks to the foolish politics of Merkel in Germany) and then only Russian reactor was available. And after Russia started war on Ukraine that Russian reactor project was canceled.
Re: Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it
#174While this is a compelling tale of culture war in the US, I think that the culture war aspect has little to do with nuclear's failure, if anything at all. I am continually offended as I encounter people with Ehrlich's 1970s Malthusianism, but these are not the folks stopping nuclear. Look to France, which has a huge nuclear fleet. Look at what's happened at Flamanville, with a supportive population. What sort of cult…
> What sort of culture war or regulatory arguments could be made to explain France's failures with the EPR design, that so closely mirror the US's failure with the AP1000 design in the past decade? Nuclear plants are massive, complex, tightly regulated capital projects. These require strong project management capacity. Most Western democracies have spent decades systematically outsourcing project management to variou…
I lived there for some time so I know a lot of details about this; and I have to disagree with your statement.
This wasn't a lack of knowledge - quite the contrary. "Stuttgart 21" (the core in Stuttgart itself, not the smaller sub-projects in the surroundings) is nothing more than a prestige project and most of the local politicians and a lot of the business folks wanted it, e.g. to have some new area for buildings and to have something special in Stuttgart to attract people, tourists, plus more advertising for the city.
But they ignored _all_ warnings about the unsuitable rock layers for an underground rail station, the shortcomings of the rescue system in the tunnels itself, the too steep slope of the platforms, the decreased amount of trains, the accessibility problems, the water problems, and so on - which all became clear in very early discussions, as some folks (including railway enthusiasts, as well as scientists such as structural engineers and geologists) formed a small club against the project and also did a lot of lectures to inform the public. This all was years before it even was announced widely.
Later all of these warnings came to be true, hence the multiple cost explosions.
Re: Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it
#175Anti nuclear fearmongering is based on ignorance for the most part, and a kind of exploitative cynicism on the other. Most people just don’t know how safe nuclear power is. I worked on a nuclear reactor personally. We used to joke that the safest thing we had in the power plant was the radiation. I received less operational exposure in 6 years than typical nuclear medicine procedures create. The other source is entre…
Nuclear had decades to become affordable, safer and sustainable. Instead plants have remained hugely expensive and slow to commission, intrinsically safe reactors are still a pipe dream, the environmental impact of building plants and mining and refining uranium is still large when only 1% of it is used, thorium reactors are a rarity and there is only one dependable, permanent waste depot in operation. Economics is n…
Nuclear provided 50 years of low cost energy to France despite an uphill battle in the public opinion. Renewable energy is failing to save Germany this winter despite being hailed as the holy grail for the past few decades.
Everytime you listen to environmentalists talk you'd think we're already there, that countries are already covered with batteries for long term energy conservation, that a continental-wide energy grid has already been deployed (or will in the incoming week) so Finland can get electricity from solar pannels in Spain, that solar panels or wind turbines are great for our sovereignity when they're being produced in China, that they are infallible ecologically when they require rare materials and aren't systematically recycled.
No, green energy is not there yet, and it definitely won't before quite a bit of time. People failing to realize that and fighting teeth and nails against nuclear are gonna cause our demise if they keep at it.
Re: Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can't (isn't?) Finland's grid be connected to places where there is solar?
Perhaps in theory, although transmission losses would be large. But I wouldn't want to be on the mercy of distant countries, perhaps on different continent, for getting energy, especially during winter. And as there are other possibilities than solar energy, I don't see why to go for solar energy instead of the other alternatives.
Edit: looks like Finland does indeed have international grid connections and imports about 20% of its electricity
Re: Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nuclear power is cheaper when built in serial production. That's the basic conclusion of any analysis of the history of nuclear power construction. There's nuance as to why, but the basic pattern is that putting an order of 40 steam generators [1] is cheaper than a run of just 4 of them. Similar deal with specialized pumps and other nuclear power components. Suppliers can re-use infrastructure and expertise, and get…
> Nuclear power is cheaper when built in serial production. That's the basic conclusion of any analysis of the history of nuclear power construction. There's nuance as to why, but the basic pattern is that putting an order of 40 steam generators is cheaper than a run of just 4 of them. Similar deal with specialized pumps and other nuclear power components. Suppliers can re-use infrastructure and expertise, and get be…
https://twitter.com/autommen/status/1559097869940006916?s=21...
Re: Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it
#178The “safety” aspect of nuclear power is usually discussed in the most narrow sense. The regulatory burdens may be excessive but no other power source is a thermonuclear weapon in a “close to critical state” as its normal condition.
Yes, one could fly a small plane into one and maybe nothing will happen but as the Ukraine war points out military grade attacks are not counted in safety calculations. Nor are the impacts of natural disasters especially earthquakes. Cyberattacks are not counted either.
Therefore one needs to secure a nuclear power station to the same level of physical and cyber security as a military stockpile of nuclear weapons. With the added risk of direct takeover by live cyberattack or malware. Personnel hiring needs to be at the same level of background checks and security as a military nuclear reactor.
All this in a practical sense, and counterintuitively, means that the construction and operation of a nuclear power station with fissile Uranium needs more burdensome protocols not less.
Finally the calculations often talk in the language of probability but what is needed is to calculate or estimate Expectation. This sort of “it won’t happen because p ~= 0” thinking is also the kind of thinking that led to the 2008 stock market crash ie “house prices will never go down”. The Expectation calculation of what happens if/when they do was never really thought through. That tends to happen when humongous amounts of money are involved as is the case with energy.
We owe it to future generations to not create another multigenerational problem because we short circuited safety considerations trying to save the planet in the medium term.
Other than that - stay happy :-).
Re: Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
Political incompetency should really be baked in any discussion about pushing more nuclear. You can have miracle new reactor designs, but do you have a society that matches it and will properly manage the technology for the next 50 years ?
You could have stopped after the word "discussion".
Flying rockets requires a lot, and we can manage it. But also the earth won’t be a burning hell if tomorrow some new guy comes in and decides to scrap all human flight plans.
Re: Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it
#180I'm familiar with the argument that nuclear power is the answer to greenhouse gas emissions. Still, this article is the next level of pro-nuclear propaganda as it launches into quite the anti-environmentalist screed. For example: > The postwar American environmental movement began as an outgrowth from the eugenaics movement. and > Having fallen out of favor during World War II due to its associations with Nazism, eug…
I'm curious. Which grid-scale renewable energy project was built without massive government subsidy? Any? I don't know of any.