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A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

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Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#21

Post by toomuchtodo »

thatcat wrote: post #17
imtringued wrote: post #14

With a new projected cost of 25 billion USD the cost overruns of the Vogtle Plant are worse than I thought. There is a reason why nuclear is losing to natural gas and coal. It's too damn expensive and takes too long. If this money was instead spent on building more storage capacity we'd have solved our energy problems a long time ago and even if we started today we'd be done long before the nuclear plant is online. T…

Your cost analysis neglects replacement, disposal costs for batteries, long term costs of carbon emission, and coal flyash disposal. The only reason nuclear is losing to gas and coal is because the externalities of the mess they make are dumped on the public, whereas nuclear pollution and waste processing is heavily regulated.

Batteries can be recycled, nuclear waste is stockpiled with no permanent disposal or recycling plan in sight.

Solar and wind, unsubsidized, with storage, are already cheaper than nuclear. Those costs will continue to plummet, especially as EV battery demand ramps (rapidly expanding battery manufacturing capacity).

Nuclear lost because it’s too expensive, and has its own externalities to ignore (decommissioning, waste disposal, liability insurance).

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#22

Post by misiti3780 »

nickik wrote: post #9
kartan wrote: post #3

I'm writing this from Japan. I do not have the numbers, but as I cross the country in the Shinkansen I see a sea of solar panels. Fukushima has been a lesson here. Strategically, Japan has to import it's energy, except for solar energy. With a float of trains electricity is already at the core of their transportation system. Here, at least, nuclear doesn't look like it's the future.

People live in a fantasy world when thinking about solar. Solar is nicely visible and gives people a worm heard. The reality is that solar is a tiny part of global energy and even in countries like Japan it did not even come close to replacing nuclear. Japan will have nuclear future because they simply have to much capacity already. However the poplar nature of nuclear politics makes it a problem, they will continue…

Not sure why you are getting downvoted --- solar and wind account for 1.5% of total, taken from Enlightenment Now by Steve Pinker:

> A second key to deep decarbonization brings up an inconvenient truth for the traditional Green movement: nuclear power is the world’s most abundant and scalable carbon-free energy source. Although renewable energy sources, particularly solar and wind, have become drastically cheaper, and their share of the world’s energy has more than tripled in the past five years, that share is still a paltry 1.5 percent, and there are limits on how high it can go. The wind is often becalmed, and the sun sets every night and may be clouded over. But people need energy around the clock, rain or shine. Batteries that could store and release large amounts of energy from renewables will help, but ones that could work on the scale of cities are years away. Also, wind and solar sprawl over vast acreage, defying the densification process that is friendliest to the environment.

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#23

Post by roenxi »

charlesju wrote: post #15
kartan wrote: post #3

I'm writing this from Japan. I do not have the numbers, but as I cross the country in the Shinkansen I see a sea of solar panels. Fukushima has been a lesson here. Strategically, Japan has to import it's energy, except for solar energy. With a float of trains electricity is already at the core of their transportation system. Here, at least, nuclear doesn't look like it's the future.

I was interested in your statement, and a brief search on wikipedia says that Japan has slowly been restarting their nuclear power plants and is planning on growing nuclear power as a total percentage of power over the next several decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan I don't think the sentiment on nuclear power, even after Fukushima, is as clear…

Can you pick out a particular section?

I'm about as pro-nuclear as they get, but the Wikipedia articles seem to support a story of the Japanese government shutting down nuclear and being very tentative restarting the existing reactors [0].

It is difficult to guess what is going on in a country that doesn't report in English, but the info in Wikipedia (mostly a little dated) seems to support a rollback of nuclear. Reduced generation, limited new developments. Either they are using less energy or something else is filling the void left by nuclear plant shutdowns.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan#Nuclear...

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#24

Post by jws »

nickik wrote: post #10
mimixco wrote: post #2

No. Nuclear power creates the most dangerous waste known to mankind and we have no way of mitigating or eliminating it. Nuclear isn't cost effective on an ongoing operating basis (compared with natural gas). When you add the costs of closing and "cleaning up" a plant site, which run into the billions of dollars for each plant, nuclear just doesn't make sense. Nuclear is far from "carbon neutral." The process of extra…

This is mostly wrong. > No. Nuclear power creates the most dangerous waste known to mankind and we have no way of mitigating or eliminating it. Nuclear waste is incredibly well controlled, unlike waste from solar, wind or fossil. Most Western countries didn't have contamination from civil nuclear waste at all and specially not in the last 30 years. Civilian Nuclear waste has basically killed nobody. Calling it the 'm…

One hand full of uranium is enough for a whole human live inclusive transportation heating and so on. Now compare this to the literal mountain of solar panels that would have to be produced…

1.1 billion hectares of land are farmed to feed the 7.5 billion people. That works out to 2000 square meters per person.

World energy consumption (all sources) runs about 18 terawatts, or 2400 watts per person. That is 58kWhr per day. Using an insolation factor of 3.0 (that is a 1W solar panel averages 3Whrs per day) each person will require 20kW of solar panels to replace ALL sources of energy. That is about 100 square meters of panels per person.

That's a lot, but not unthinkable. You could buy 8 pallets of panels today for $13k and cover a person, and it only takes 5% as much land as the land used to feed that person.

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#25

Post by fogetti »

charlesju wrote: post #15
kartan wrote: post #3

I'm writing this from Japan. I do not have the numbers, but as I cross the country in the Shinkansen I see a sea of solar panels. Fukushima has been a lesson here. Strategically, Japan has to import it's energy, except for solar energy. With a float of trains electricity is already at the core of their transportation system. Here, at least, nuclear doesn't look like it's the future.

I was interested in your statement, and a brief search on wikipedia says that Japan has slowly been restarting their nuclear power plants and is planning on growing nuclear power as a total percentage of power over the next several decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan I don't think the sentiment on nuclear power, even after Fukushima, is as clear…

It's very clear cut. The sentiment is the same. I don't know where you got it that it's not clear cut. The only thing which is not clear from your article is how will Abe and his corny friends shove their nuclear-friendly world-of-view down the Japanese people's throat.

And your claim that Japan is planning on growing might mislead some readers to think that they are expanding the nuclear capacity in Japan. Which is not the case at all. They signed the Paris agreement and unlike the US they try to keep their promise. But they are not expanding any capacity to do this. They simply restart their reactors (which by the way if they might be able to do so is to be seen).

What actually happened is that they started to decommission the Genkai 1, Mihama 1 and 2, Shimane 1 and Tsuruga 1 reactors while they completely abandoned the plan to build Fukushima Daiichi Unit 7 & 8 for obvious reasons among others.

So if anything than the exact opposite can be said that you implied: Japan is slowly but surely phasing nuclear energy out.

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#26

Post by selimthegrim »

imtringued wrote: post #14

With a new projected cost of 25 billion USD the cost overruns of the Vogtle Plant are worse than I thought. There is a reason why nuclear is losing to natural gas and coal. It's too damn expensive and takes too long. If this money was instead spent on building more storage capacity we'd have solved our energy problems a long time ago and even if we started today we'd be done long before the nuclear plant is online. T…

The other one in South Carolina was mothballed because they couldn’t find any lenders to finance the rest of it at <30% interest

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#27

Post by v_lisivka »

mikestew wrote: post #4
mimixco wrote: post #2

No. Nuclear power creates the most dangerous waste known to mankind and we have no way of mitigating or eliminating it. Nuclear isn't cost effective on an ongoing operating basis (compared with natural gas). When you add the costs of closing and "cleaning up" a plant site, which run into the billions of dollars for each plant, nuclear just doesn't make sense. Nuclear is far from "carbon neutral." The process of extra…

Nuclear power creates the most dangerous waste known to mankind From what I've been reading, seems CO2 tops that list. One can bury nuclear waste in the Nevada desert, keep everyone a few hundred miles away, and it'll be fine. From what I learned in high school chemistry class, a gas wants to expand to fill its container, so the CO2 produced by Chinese coal-fired plants eventually makes its way to me. The process of…

We can build one CO2 capture factory in Nevada desert to capture excessive CO2 and bury it there. I see no difference.

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#28

Post by lucb1e »

I see so many people against nuclear but I wonder if they read books such as Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air. As I understand it, either we kill ourselves fast, or we use this as a stop-gap until we can figure it out for real. With newer reactors being much better, maybe another generation (helped by more implementations) will even be good enough not to have to be a stop-gap solution.

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#29

Post by fogetti »

misiti3780 wrote: post #22
nickik wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People live in a fantasy world when thinking about solar. Solar is nicely visible and gives people a worm heard. The reality is that solar is a tiny part of global energy and even in countries like Japan it did not even come close to replacing nuclear. Japan will have nuclear future because they simply have to much capacity already. However the poplar nature of nuclear politics makes it a problem, they will continue…

Not sure why you are getting downvoted --- solar and wind account for 1.5% of total, taken from Enlightenment Now by Steve Pinker: > A second key to deep decarbonization brings up an inconvenient truth for the traditional Green movement: nuclear power is the world’s most abundant and scalable carbon-free energy source. Although renewable energy sources, particularly solar and wind, have become drastically cheaper, an…

Net wind energy percentage in Germany in 2017 was 18.9%. And that's a fact. Which clearly voids your argument. Yes, there are limitations how high it can go and I don't expect it to be anywhere near 100%. But it's clearly a huge source of energy already and it will increase even more in the coming years.

The reason why it totals 1.5% is because it costs money to replace existing power sources and the lobby power of the coal industry is still huge. It has nothing to do with solar energy itself.

Re: A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power

#30

Post by beaconstudios »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #21
thatcat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your cost analysis neglects replacement, disposal costs for batteries, long term costs of carbon emission, and coal flyash disposal. The only reason nuclear is losing to gas and coal is because the externalities of the mess they make are dumped on the public, whereas nuclear pollution and waste processing is heavily regulated.

Batteries can be recycled, nuclear waste is stockpiled with no permanent disposal or recycling plan in sight. Solar and wind, unsubsidized, with storage, are already cheaper than nuclear. Those costs will continue to plummet, especially as EV battery demand ramps (rapidly expanding battery manufacturing capacity). Nuclear lost because it’s too expensive, and has its own externalities to ignore (decommissioning, waste…

this might sound silly (and it probably is), but I don't understand why we don't build a hulking great cannon and shoot our nuclear waste into space.
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