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

An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse

m.dw.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 247 posts

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

#211

Post by pydry »

rich_sasha wrote: post #209
pydry wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in Poland renewables dominate new sources of electricity generation.

Sort of. Poland has traditionally relied heavily on coal. Now for a variety of economic, ecological and political reasons, there are no new coal plants being installed, and old ones reaching EOL. There is no nuclear, despite half-hearted attempts to bring that about. Gas has mostly been imported from Russia, with constant concerns about continued supplies being used as a political tool, so no significant gas plants e…

You likely could eventually. All current projections point that way.

Poland already has a significant advantage with respect to intermittency being connected to an EU wide grid and being able to import/export power easily across a well oiled market. Hawaii may have sun but it can't do that.

The intransigence of the country itself (it loves its coal) is probably the biggest impediment, not Geography. If Germany can do it (and they can and do) so can Poland.

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

#212

Post by sofixa »

bigfudge wrote: post #207
mlyle wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power plants in the US have been charged massive fees to establish funds for decommissioning. The cost is baked into the energy, even if the political will to spend the funds and store the waste isn't. https://www.nrc.gov/waste/decommissioning/finan-assur.html

That isn't true in Europe, but even accepting your argument: this is a problem for the nuclear industry. Unless we can see evidence that the system as a whole (i.e. nuclear industry plus government of various levels of corruption) can function to process and store waste safely, this is a black mark against the nuclear industry. It doesn't matter if this is 'unfair' in some sense... at the end of the day the waste wil…

You're wrong, here's all the details for Hinkley Point C:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hinkley-point-c-f...

EDF have already planned spent fuel storage and decomissioning, and it's provided for in the prices.

That's just one example, but it's been the standard practice across nuclear projects for decades now in most of Europe.

> Unless we can see evidence that the system as a whole (i.e. nuclear industry plus government of various levels of corruption) can function to process and store waste safely, this is a black mark against the nuclear industry.

It is being done today, and there are multiple projects that intend to improve upon it ( by recycling or cold underground permanent storage). What kind of evidence do you need? For it to be done over a 100 years? It'd be far too late then.

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

#213

Post by pydry »

treesprite82 wrote: post #168
lamontcg wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is possible to be both biased and correct. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_bias

Noting an author's biases/motives, like agarttha did, is useful. It's not the same as asserting that a conclusion is logically false because of the biases of the person who argued it.

In this case I thought it was rather obvious what the author's bias was and he doesnt't try to hide it.

It might be useful if they tried to conceal it. E.g tried to present themselves as an objective researcher at a think tank that takes money from general dynamics/lockheed or a journalist who clearly hastily rewrote a press release.

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

#214

Post by sofixa »

bigfudge wrote: post #205
sofixa wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the main arguments against nuclear power are around cost, it's entirely reasonable to point out costs and inconveniences around alternative power generation sources, which for renewables are mostly around land use, rare and bad to mine materials used in construction, pollution around them and potential recycling, and the lack of stability. All those bring costs up, and some are outright ignored when arguing nucl…

The difference is, most of these costs _are_ factored in to renewable costs because there are few subsidies (at least at grid level). In contrast, there is a huge implicit subsidy to nuclear by punting the issue of nuclear waste storage to future generations. I just don't understand why we're still talking about this when nuclear storage costs, even when included, are laughably optimistic. None of the long term stora…

> The difference is, most of these costs _are_ factored in to renewable costs because there are few subsidies (at least at grid level

It will depend on location, but across the EU there are massive subsidies. Furthermore, recycling costs aren't included and are just starting to come to light with the decomissioning of the first generation of solar and wind generation platforms. Their limited useful life,bserious recycling costs and related pollution, and all of those on the energy storage required to actually make them useful for bade load are rarely a part of the discourse.

> I just don't understand why we're still talking about this when nuclear storage costs, even when included, are laughably optimistic

How so? Most of the problems around long term storage are political. The temporary swimming pools are still good enough for decades or even centuries to come, while projects on underground permanent storage are advancing ( most notably Finland iirc).

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

#215

Post by anoncake »

2trill2spill wrote: post #154
jillesvangurp wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think your missing the point. If you ran your entire grid on just solar and wind, no nuclear, or coal or natural gas peaker plants, you'll find that wind and solar is no longer cheap, and is much less resilient to exceptional circumstances. That kind of is my point: countries are doing this and without blackouts and it's actually fine. You seem to be claiming nuclear is needed to provide an unspecified base load…

> Your points about mining are a bit beside the point. I don't actually disagree that the mining sector needs to be cleaned up. But our economy generates demand for lots of things we dig up out of the ground. If anything, it seems that the likes of Tesla are vaguely being responsible here and are actually making efforts to clean up that part of their business by working to source what they need in a sustainable way.…

Re batteries: For grid storage, you don't need "battery metals". Lead-based batteries are perfectly sufficient when you don't care about energy density. And that's ignoring other methods of storing energy.

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

#216

Post by rich_sasha »

pydry wrote: post #211
rich_sasha wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of. Poland has traditionally relied heavily on coal. Now for a variety of economic, ecological and political reasons, there are no new coal plants being installed, and old ones reaching EOL. There is no nuclear, despite half-hearted attempts to bring that about. Gas has mostly been imported from Russia, with constant concerns about continued supplies being used as a political tool, so no significant gas plants e…

You likely could eventually. All current projections point that way. Poland already has a significant advantage with respect to intermittency being connected to an EU wide grid and being able to import/export power easily across a well oiled market. Hawaii may have sun but it can't do that. The intransigence of the country itself (it loves its coal) is probably the biggest impediment, not Geography. If Germany can do…

Since pushing to use more renewables, Germany's CO2 emissions have increased.

Being able to import energy from elsewhere doesn't just solve the problem, you just have a bigger area to average over.

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

#217

Post by pydry »

rich_sasha wrote: post #216
pydry wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You likely could eventually. All current projections point that way. Poland already has a significant advantage with respect to intermittency being connected to an EU wide grid and being able to import/export power easily across a well oiled market. Hawaii may have sun but it can't do that. The intransigence of the country itself (it loves its coal) is probably the biggest impediment, not Geography. If Germany can do…

Since pushing to use more renewables, Germany's CO2 emissions have increased . Being able to import energy from elsewhere doesn't just solve the problem, you just have a bigger area to average over.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

??

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

#218

Post by vimy »

mlyle wrote: post #182
vimy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think we even need to store it. Nuclear waste has been sitting in regular storage for over 50 years now, seems to be perfectly safe. We should just keep doing what we’re doing. Why do we even need to bother putting it underground except for some unlikely what if scenarios 1000 years in the future.

1. Expecting current political and economic structures etc to remain for thousands of years is silly, so we do need a more permanent solution to a long-term problem. 2. Keeping lots of nuclear waste in spent fuel pools just increases the risk picture unnecessarily.

If society collapses a small uninhabitable region is the least of our problems.

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

#219

Post by jojobas »

estaseuropano wrote: post #195
jojobas wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These glorified warehouses are cheap. Also cheap are former mines where 50 year old spent fuel can be placed with risks below that of chemical plants.

That is simply wrong. Underground storage is not a panacea. Few mines are suitable and even those require expensive preparation and maintenance for coming decades or even centuries, with many hard to predict risks (think earthquake, flood).

Few mines is all we need. The entirety of the USA would need just one such site.

There's plenty of nasty natural stuff underground and a well-designed mine storage site would be a lesser risk than continuously radioactive coal power plants of today.

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

#220

Post by Trombone12 »

fuoqi wrote: post #132
Trombone12 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas had no power because they forgot everything they learnt the hard way from their "once-in-a-decade snow storm" they had 2011. Coal piles freezing solid because there is no roof, gas valves impossible to operate because nobody would put a box around them, no water too cool reactor cores because the pipes froze: these are not failures somehow cascading from the fact they build some windmills.

When I learnt that turbines on Texas nuclear plants stay under the open sky I was REALLY surprised. It was the reason behind the single failure, otherwise nuclear plants have weathered this crisis perfectly.

I guess the lesson is that not even Texans think nuclear is so safe it doesn't need weather protection, or maybe it's some pesky federal regulation that says that at least the reactor needs to be protected...
Post reply on HN