Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution • Hacker News Board

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#261

Post by Gwypaas » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 10:43 AM UTC

mrjangles wrote: post #111

ekianjo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> d be fine with more nuclear power plants, but if wind/solar plus batteries are cheaper Cost is not just a single factor. Energy density is very important too. Solar farms take huge amounts of space to produce very little energy compared to a nuclear plant.

A solar farm that produces the same power as a nuclear power station (1GW) requires 1000 3MW turbines (33% efficiency) at 700 meters apart. That's 500 square kilometers of turbines (something like 200 square miles). I once did the calculation and it came out to something like 10 times as much concrete and steel to build the turbines as it would have taken to build the nuclear power plant.

60-64% capacity factor, 14MW.

https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/offshore-wind...

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#262

Post by andygates » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 11:00 AM UTC

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #15

kitsune_ wrote: post #6

We can't build reactors fast enough. And electricity is only a part of what generates emissions. It's no where close to a solution. Looking up the world's energy numbers, how much of total energy production and emissions are from electricity, how long it takes to build a nuclear power plant, how many nuclear power plants are built per year etc. will show you this.

If it were important to us, we could build modular reactors on a massive scale. There are several manufacturers with serious designs. And yes, electricity is "only a part", but it's a big part. A solution needn't be a singular one to make a huge difference. Personally, I think nuclear isn't our best choice. But it is a viable choice and we could make it work.

"Serious designs" are nice but no pathfinder demo plants yet. And all that stretches the timescales.

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#263

Post by andygates » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 11:02 AM UTC

erentz wrote: post #86

weatherlight wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ This. Also, It's the Wall Street Journal, so consider the source, its own by Rupert Murdoch, whose media companies, until very recently were climate change deniers, so from a rather crude sort of climate denialism, they will likely move to supporting technical "climate fixes" spruiked by the fossil fuel industries. This is a more subtle way of sabotaging real climate action.

Why do you think the fossil fuel industry wants nuclear power? How do they benefit? They appear to have gained immensely from the halt of nuclear power deployment in the west. E.g. France famously decarbonised it's electric grid in a couple of decades after 1970s due to the energy crisis using nuclear power. How did this help fossil fuel companies? On the other hand, Germany has continued to be more reliant on coal a…

The carbon industry wants delay on decarbonisation. New nuclear projects are poster children for delay, because the industry has been mostly incompetent at shipping and lacks urgency.

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#264

Post by andygates » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 11:07 AM UTC

engineer_22 wrote: post #33

gefhfff wrote: post #14

Not true, it's too late for nuclear power. Additionally it is quite expensive compared to renewables and makes the burden on future generations even bigger. Anyway, don't shut down any working plant early... We need everything we have atm

The dirty little secret is that renewables are consumable. They wear out and have to be replaced. Like discount shoes: they're cheap, they don't look good, and you throw them away after a while.

Interesting word choice "consumable" versus "parts require maintenance".

One suggests a lie, the other is just SOP in any plant with moving parts. Are you sure you're an engineer?

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#265

Post by andygates » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 11:14 AM UTC

rob_c wrote: post #175

Good article nice reading. Once built nuclear plants are basically giant nuclear batteries which we can run up or down on demand which is easier and probably more efficient than storing a huge excess of renewable surplus at creation.

Nuclear power stations have very slow demand response. That used to be done by gas peakers and hydro; in a decarbonised world that changes to battery peakers and hydro.

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#266

Post by andygates » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 11:16 AM UTC

Rebelgecko wrote: post #69

KarlKemp wrote: post #35

The International Monetary Fond, not known to be populated by treehugging hippies with naturalistic fallacies as a major character trait, published this beautiful graph: https://blogs.imf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/eng-april-4... Nuclear now costs three times as much as solar & wind! And that data ist from 2017. Both technologies are also not showing any slowdown in improvements, while nuclear tends to get more e…

I think it's misleading to compare peak nuclear generation against peak solar/wind- in order to be comparable with nuclear's baseload, renewables need to be built in conjunction with a boatload of batteries. Otherwise you just end up burning fossil fuels at night time.

Variability is smoothed with diverse overbuild and robust inteconnects (sorry, Texas).

Batteries are needed for peaker plants, like gas is used now. But they don't need to be everywhere.

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#267

Post by andygates » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 11:17 AM UTC

corban1 wrote: post #56

KarlKemp wrote: post #35

The International Monetary Fond, not known to be populated by treehugging hippies with naturalistic fallacies as a major character trait, published this beautiful graph: https://blogs.imf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/eng-april-4... Nuclear now costs three times as much as solar & wind! And that data ist from 2017. Both technologies are also not showing any slowdown in improvements, while nuclear tends to get more e…

So you are comparing two energy sources, one that provides constant power 99.999% of the time and one that provides volatile power ~35% (if best) of the time? These price graphs hide the obvious fact. Normalize solar and power by adding the price to make the source constant(shitload of ESS maybe?) and removing government incentives.

Nothing runs at 99.99; 85% is a realistic nuclear reactor uptime. And remember to have multiple gensets so you can take them offline for maintenance.

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#268

Post by qwytw » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 11:22 AM UTC

another_story wrote: post #206

portpecos wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The moment people blame things on tree huggers https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/educational-magazin... The late 1960s through 1980s saw a shift in the antinuclear movement toward protesting the development of nuclear power as an energy source. The antinuclear movement succeeded in virtually halting the governments' development of nuclear power.

How does one manage to stop nuclear energy but not fossil fuel use? These are arguably the same sorts of groups, with probably a large overlap. How did they have such power in one area, but not in another? If there is lack of lobbyist or industry pressure pushing for it, then we have to wonder why? Nuclear isn't cost effective as a business is the likely answer, and under our current system that drives most of the de…

Politically it's was infinitely easier to stop expansion of nuclear power than to stop using fossil fuels. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was issuing more than 12 permits to build new reactors on average every year prior to 1979 (the year Three Mile Island accident occured) guess how many were issued between 1979 and 2012? Zero...

And I'm not even sure the people in the anti-nuclear movements were really that concerned about CO2 emissions in the 70's or 80's. While currently renewables are much cheaper than nuclear that wasn't the case 30 or 40 years ago. Without the absurdly irrational reactions to TMI and Chernobyl a few years later, we would have been much better situated to considerably reduce CO2 emissions but sure blame the oil lobby (of course there are plenty other things to blame them for) ...

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#269

Post by stavros » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 11:50 AM UTC

thedrbrian wrote: post #259

stavros wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Far sooner than I'd expect to see solar have a similar impact. Sure, and there's no reason we can't have both, that's my point. > A dirty bomb could be an environmental disaster. I live in an area with ~20 coal plants in a 15-minute radius and, let me tell you, a dirty bomb would probably have been cleaner.

Ok I’m curious. What sort of industrial area needs 20 coal power plants in a 15 minute ?drive? Major aluminium production and mining , chinese crypto hub ?

No, nothing like that. There are just large coal reserves and this area powers much of Greece's electricity.

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#270

Post by Krasnol » Sat, Nov 06, 2021, 11:59 AM UTC

NaNDude wrote: post #201

Krasnol wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We know the French model works really well It works so "well" that the French taxpayer will have to pay the UK so they can deliver their guaranteed energy prices the over-due and over budget reactor they desperately try to finish will generate. It's so fantastic that every summer they have to buy dirty coal energy from Germany because their rivers get too hot and every winter because...it's too cold and their agein…

looks like you missed the most important part of your own source : "Atomic power from France’s 58 reactors accounts for over 75 percent of its electricity needs. Available nuclear power supply was down 1.4 percentage points at 65.3% of total capacity compared with Wednesday." this missing capacity is less the usual slowdown of reactors because of the hot rivers (which by the way is done for environmental and not tech…

> this missing capacity is less the usual slowdown of reactors because of the hot rivers (which by the way is done for environmental and not technical concern) and maintenances process, than a consequence of a previous nuclear plant closing (for political/electoral reasons). another consequence of this missing plant was to reopen two charcoal power plant _this_winter_.

The report was from 2019 because it was the first search result. This is an ongoing issue and not getting better: https://www.montelnews.com/news/1198233/heatwave-impact-on-f...

Also:

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-france-power-winteroutloo...

https://www.montelnews.com/news/1266598/-france-faces-winter...

https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/People-in-France...

https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2113554-french-tso-rules-...

This is why you diversify your energy.

And I mean seriously...this is France we're talking about. Those informations are easy to google. Please stop spreading misinformation.

> a large part of the EPR slowdown in fr is due to security concern that changed while the project was already started, china EPRs which was similar but a lot less constrained was done in time.

Yeah they should just look away more like in China...it's just a nuclear reactor after all! France should also get some Tofu-dreg experience from China. This is the way.

Sorry...but I can't take such statements seriously. It's madness.

> funny fact: replacing ALL the current transport and electric energy supply in fr by wind turbines has been evaluated to require one of the most efficient available turbine for each km² on ALL the french territory...

Why would you even evaluate such a narrow scenario? This is beyond stupid. Renewables are not just wind.

Also I doubt this has been done seriously since there was a study years ago that you could power the whole of Europe if you take just the available building space on the coast and use wind.