A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by charlesju » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 12:04 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #23

charlesju wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Red…

"In June 2015, the Japanese government released an energy proposal that includes the revival of nuclear power to account for Japan's energy needs. The proposal calls for an increase of about 20% in nuclear energy by 2030.[2] This reverses a decision by the previous Democratic Party, the government will re-open nuclear plants, aiming for "a realistic and balanced energy structure"."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Japan

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

#212

Post by ThomPete » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 6:37 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #205

ThomPete wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what world do you not need power at night? That's the most absurd claim I have heard in a long time.

Peak load is aligned with sunlight. Depending on where you live, many of the on-demand power generators like gas and solar farms are idle.

Not if you go to Scandinavia.

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

#213

Post by ben-schaaf » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 8:56 AM UTC

richardburden wrote: post #184

ben-schaaf wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know others have addressed the dangers of this, but I had a little fun looking at the logistics. The UK alone produces 2Mt of radioactive waste[0] per year, ~9% is of "intermediate" level. Just sending those 18Mt into LEO would take 129,000 Saturn V launches per year. That's about one launch every 4 minutes. And LEO is not where we want to send anything. Lets assume a Trans-Lunar Injection is enough, bringing that…

2Mt is two metric tons, right? It surely is not 2 million metric tons. See the IAEA's estimates of total radwaste in storage or disposal worldwide: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fue... Because of the extremely high energy density of nuclear fuel, the amount of waste produced per Gigawatt-year of electricity generated is very small. A Saturn V has a payload of 140 Mt to low earth orbit. Tota…

2Mt is 2 mega tonnes. If you look at the source only 0.03% of radioactive waste in the UK is "High Level". The expended fuel itself is a tiny portion of the nuclear waste. At lot of things other than nuclear reactors also produce radioactive waste that requires proper disposing, as your source confirms.

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

#214

Post by ben-schaaf » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 9:09 AM UTC

gdpgreg wrote: post #113

ben-schaaf wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd consider them equally as silly, considering we're actually capable of launching rockets into space yet the closest we've gotten with a space gun is a measly 180km apogee @ 3.6km/s[0]. The original question was why we don't send our nuclear waste into space. We can't send our nuclear waste into space using a rail gun because we can't currently send anything into space with a rail gun. Otherwise here's a good discu…

Cause someone murdered the leading scientist in the field. Also there's concerns that it'd be too easy to turn it essentially into a very long range, highly effective weapon that could lob nuclear or conventional projectiles at countries on the other side of the planet with little to no warning.

We already have highly effective weapons that can lob nuclear or conventional projectiles at countries on the other side of the planet with little to no warning: ballistic missile subs.

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

#215

Post by sullyj3 » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 1:19 PM UTC

lando2319 wrote: post #163

Question, why do people talk so pessimistically about the potential for solar? I see lots of comments like, "there is not enough land for solar panels". People seem to have a fixed view about how much power can be drawn. Sure right now the payoff might be underwhelming in relation to the size requirements, but with more development wouldn't the technology improve? I imagine a future where the technology improves to t…

A certain number of photons will fall on any given square meter per second. You can't extract more energy from that square meter in a second than those photons provide.

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

#216

Post by pfdietz » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 1:40 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #206

pfdietz wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost no one reprocesses, because it doesn't make economic sense at current U prices. Even the french have admitted this. The US decision to not get the government pushing reprocessing was the correct one. You will notice that after Reagan lifted Carter's ban on reprocessing, no commercial firms here jumped into the market. That's because it's not economically justified. I don't think burying waste anytime soon at Y…

> The US decision to not get the government pushing reprocessing was the correct one. Not in context, because the context was that that decision was part of a general policy on the government's part to kill nuclear energy. If the government had wanted to help nuclear energy, it would have said, sure, reprocess if you want to, as long as you're willing to deal with whatever the economics of it turn out to be. (In the…

The context was that nuclear growth was going to slow down, both because electric power demand growth was slowing, and because nuclear power plants were even then experiencing large cost overruns. If the government pivoted away from nuclear, it wasn't some plan to kill nuclear, but rather a reaction to these market facts.

In that environment where nuclear growth did not match the central plans, reprocessing made no sense.

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

#217

Post by pfdietz » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 1:47 PM UTC

bovine3dom wrote: post #195

pfdietz wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument that governments aren't letting reactors melt down enough is a nonstarter. If nuclear proponents have to resort to that, you might as well give up. I suggest instead pushing for designs that can achieve acceptable levels of safety at lower cost. In particular, molten salt designs, such as the one from Moltex, that allow the size of the containment building to be shrunk by a factor of five from that of an…

It isn't just the reactor that is over-specced - anything to do with nuclear is held to a much higher standard than anything else, relative to the actual risks. Thorium molten salt reactors have been bandied around for a while, especially in India due to necessity, but I fully expect governments to still make unrealistic demands of them, and therefore drive them up to unrealistic prices. Stuff like this depresses me…

When it comes to MSRs, thorium is a distraction. The benefits of MSRs have very little to do with the presence of thorium.

It's important for MSR proponents to focus on the actual benefits, rather than fake benefits, so they don't make bad engineering tradeoffs.

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

#218

Post by pfdietz » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 3:11 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #201

pfdietz wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can, when teamed with dispatchable sources, destroy the economic case for expensive baseload sources. This is why you're not seeing new nuclear plants much in the west. The decision makers know they face huge risk from future cost declines of renewables which, combined with gas, would leave those reactors unable to amortize their construction, financing, and fixed operating costs. There are other solutions for l…

I don't see nuclear plants much in the west because of political opposition and public ignorance nothing else.

I see plenty of self-inflicted damage. Inability to meet cost estimates for new nuclear plants, for example. If nuclear had been as great as the salesmen had told us, the opposition would have been much less, and would likely have been steamrolled. As it stands, utilities largely don't want to build new nuclear plants. They even shit talk it in public. They aren't doing this because they are secret radical ecoterrorists; they are doing it because they are hard nosed business people with no time for failures.

This is nothing new. As the Forbes cover story on Feb. 11, 1985 said: “The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale… only the blind or the biased can now think that the money has been well spent.”

In recent years, they gave nuclear another chance. And it failed again. You are unlikely to get a third chance anytime soon.

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

#219

Post by ThomPete » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:38 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #218

ThomPete wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see nuclear plants much in the west because of political opposition and public ignorance nothing else.

I see plenty of self-inflicted damage. Inability to meet cost estimates for new nuclear plants, for example. If nuclear had been as great as the salesmen had told us, the opposition would have been much less, and would likely have been steamrolled. As it stands, utilities largely don't want to build new nuclear plants. They even shit talk it in public. They aren't doing this because they are secret radical ecoterrori…

So by that argument if wind and solar where so great it wouldn't only be supplying around 1.5% of our energy and growing much more rapidly than it does.

You can't both have your cake and eat it.

The difference is that we KNOW that nuclear can deliver way more energy per m2 than wind and solar can. We know how to get it to work and we know that the primary cost of nuclear is political NOT technical completely opposite wind and solar which have technical issues to provide as much as nuclear or coal or oil can.

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

#220

Post by pfdietz » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:52 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #219

pfdietz wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see plenty of self-inflicted damage. Inability to meet cost estimates for new nuclear plants, for example. If nuclear had been as great as the salesmen had told us, the opposition would have been much less, and would likely have been steamrolled. As it stands, utilities largely don't want to build new nuclear plants. They even shit talk it in public. They aren't doing this because they are secret radical ecoterrori…

So by that argument if wind and solar where so great it wouldn't only be supplying around 1.5% of our energy and growing much more rapidly than it does. You can't both have your cake and eat it. The difference is that we KNOW that nuclear can deliver way more energy per m2 than wind and solar can. We know how to get it to work and we know that the primary cost of nuclear is political NOT technical completely opposite…

What? No, that argument is nothing like the claim you are trying to make in that first paragraph. Please stick to actual working logic.

Yes, nuclear can deliver more energy per m2. But this is irrelevant, since we have no shortage of m2. What we have limits on is $$$. On the metric of energy/$, nuclear fails. And no, we do not know that the problem with nuclear is political. You can keep repeating that, but it doesn't make you any less wrong.