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

Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 731 posts

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#181

Post by jacques_chester »

epistasis wrote: post #54
quelsolaar wrote: post #31

Nuclear is not a viable solution, due to public opinion. A nuclear reactor has an incident once every 10.000 years. If we divide that with the number of reactors we get an accident every 30 or so years. (Harrisburg, Chernobyl, Fukusima, ligns up well with that) Every time there is an accident, the public turns against nuclear for 5-10 years. Add to that that it takes a decade to plan and build a reactor, and you real…

In the US, public opinion has nearly nothing to do with the lack of new construction. The problem is far simpler here: nobody can build a reactor reliably without going vastly over budget, or off schedule. Going off schedule also means going off budget because costs are front loaded over the 40-60 year lifespan and therefore every year of delay costs massive amounts of interest. There are plenty of viable sites for n…

Part of this came down to the logic of pursuing economies of scale. It costs a lot to build a 750MW plant, but not twice as much to build a 1500MW plant. So the utilities leaned towards bigger plants (for everything, not just nuclear).

But bigger plants take longer, overall. That means you need more capacity in the development pipeline, because you're forecasting that the market is growing. Soon you're needing to have finance and regulatory movement for multiple gigawatts of capacity at all times to keep up with what you think is coming.

If you then find you've overshot demand, you are in an ugly position.

Utilities that did the "dumb" thing and prioritised smaller plants, which are ostensibly more expensive per kwh, tended to do better because they didn't need to tie up so much capital at any given time. Bringing a gigawatt online in five years as a single plant is very different from bringing 200MW a year online. Especially if it turns out in the third year that 600MW was as much as the market wanted to buy.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#182

Post by bjourne »

ineedasername wrote: post #95
Ericson2314 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US cannot do infrastructure, or really any serious investment, period. Our laughable incompetance would seriously hinder any strategy. With other strategies, that is one of many impedements. With nuclear that is the only impedement. Hopefully US figures that our rampent cost diesese on sll the things is just embarrassing, and we need a "time out", a throwing away of the actuarial pessimism, and a command economy…

I don't think it's incompetence, it's a lack of political will. On energy, entrenched interests win out through regulatory capture and lobbying. On other infrastructure issues, most people and politicians simply don't care. Maybe once we get to a few bridge collapse per week.

That is untrue. The Vogtle 3 and 4 construction project has received $12 billion in federal loan guarantees over the last ten years. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/22/reuters-america-update-1-u-s... The project is a complete clusterfuck and I think the cost overruns is about 300% or so of original estimates. The evidence clearly shows that US politicians love nuclear power. Despite that love they can't get nuclear reactors built. That is telling!

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#183

Post by BurningFrog »

davrosthedalek wrote: post #147
scarygliders wrote: post #128

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…

The problem is that "taking all disaster scenarios into account" is easy in hindsight, but maybe not in planning. But I believe that modern nuclear power reactors can be build intrinsically safe. For me, the real problem begins with the treatment of the waste: It's hard to find a good place to store it or reprocess it. Not so much because finding the actual place is hard, but because using that place will face hard o…

The obvious solution is to store it in an unpopulated location. Only 15% of the Earth's surface is populated.

Yes, observant reader, parts of the ocean floor are some of the best candidate areas.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#184

Post by abtinf »

scarygliders wrote: post #128

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…

Your post makes it sound like Fukushima failed in a catastrophically unsafe manner. I think it’s important to be explicit about the casualties that resulted from the disaster. The death toll currently stands at... maybe 1. A plant worker died of lung cancer in September 2018–over 7 years after the incident—and the government thinks it might have been caused by the plant.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#185

Post by BurningFrog »

est31 wrote: post #84
ianai wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Chernobyl in 1986, the result of extraordinary Soviet bungling, which killed 31 in the accident and perhaps several thousand from cancer, around the same number killed by coal emissions every day.” just that is all I need to know to prefer nuclear to coal.

You shouldn't just count deaths and conclude that a nuclear catastrophy isn't that bad. Far more people had to evacuate their home, having to leave most of their belongings behind. And most times with no or too little compensation. Sure, nuclear is prefferable to coal but that doesn't mean that both shouldn't be gotten rid of.

Do you understand that without any energy production the vast majority of humanity also dies?

Electricity isn't some luxury we can get rid of if there are a few thousand deaths here and there associated with the production.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#186

Post by bjourne »

fakwandi_priv wrote: post #5

>Germany’s rate of adding clean energy relative to gross domestic product, it would take the world more than a century to decarbonize, even if the country wasn’t also retiring nuclear plants early. Why doesn't the article explain why the Germans are retiring their plants? I think these articles should go more in-depth regarding the pro's and con's. From what I read and hear Nuclear power is a great source of energy b…

Most of Germany's plants were built in the 1970s and were reaching end of life dates anyway. They probably would have been decommissioned in the early 2020s but Merkel accelerated the process due to the Fukushima disaster.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#187

Post by ilitirit »

scarygliders wrote: post #128

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…

> My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are taken into account

To be honest, you could probably make that argument for anything under question in any scenario. But even if we were to skip the logical loopholes ("We took it into account, but we decided the benefits outweighed the costs because of "), let's just look at the raw numbers or simply just historical facts. Have any disasters at coal plants rendered areas uninhabitable for centuries? OK, take one step back. Would those disasters have occurred if "all disaster scenarios [were] taken into account"?

The reality is that we have no one good and practical energy solution for the world. And even though I believe that there's no practical solution that can beat a tried and tested solution like nuclear in terms of efficiency, I also believe that there's been no tried and tested solution that's been worse in terms of failure.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#188

Post by gwbas1c »

jacques_chester wrote: post #179
desuyone wrote: post #133

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…

> How about we put the reactors in the middle of the desert 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.

Deserts get cold at night, and some even have rain. (Just go to Burning Man!)

I suspect someone could figure out some kind of a heat sink that works without lots of fresh water.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#189

Post by msbarnett »

pdevine wrote: post #124

Can we talk about the waste that’s cast off when the reactor has finished its use of it? I understand the material will remain radioactive for centuries. Nobody wants that in their backyard.

Nuclear waste is a locally-contained problem that we don’t know how to solve.

CO2 emissions are a globally-uncontainable problem that we don’t know how to solve.

Nuclear is strictly better on the scale of waste problems.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#190

Post by ianai »

lstodd wrote: post #163
est31 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If this bullshit cloud over nuclear got dissolved they'd be replaced with much more safe design. I've outlined above why this doesn't happen. Japan has been severely pro-nuclear in the 80s and 90s, and built tons of reactors, yet they only decommisioned a single old reactor in the 80s and 90s, according to this list [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors#Japan

> I've outlined above No, you didn't. If anything, you supported my line of reasoning - if the insane push against nuclear didn't happen, then the plants would have been modernised or rebuilt and there would not have been a Fukushima.

I wonder whether the tsunami would have been so bad if not for the effects of climate change on sea levels. A literally physical attack on nuclear from fossil fuels.
Post reply on HN