Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 5:23 AM UTC

icelancer wrote: post #197

ajross wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US needs to find a way to make building reactors affordable. Early reactors were hailed as paragons of safety too. Fukushima, remember, had a triply-redundant (or whatever) power supply to ensure that cooling power could be provided even in the event of a simultaneous meltdown and grid failure. Oops. I mean, look. It's... fine. Go nuclear. I agree with you, that these are probably safe designs and are probably…

> Fukushima, remember, had a triply-redundant (or whatever) power supply to ensure that cooling power could be provided even in the event of a simultaneous meltdown and grid failure. Oops. Yeah, and then they installed the backups below where the main plant was, rendering them completely useless. Oops. This was a human failure. Not a technological one.

[deleted]

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

#282

Post by hairytrog » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 5:24 AM UTC

Gatsky wrote: post #269

With nuclear energy, the cost and hazards of waste are explicit and priced into running costs. This is as it should be. Fossil fuels get a free ride by comparison. The more I look I see there are two types of industries out there... those that profit by creating value, and those that profit by shifting the cost onto someone else.

It doesn't stop there. I don't think solar and wind have decommissioning and waste costs built in.

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

#283

Post by beders » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 5:26 AM UTC

Can we get something straight about nuclear power?

A 1% failure rate is not acceptable.

We don't need nuclear power. Renewables are cheaper, storage solutions are available and there are whole countries on close to 100% renewable power.

There are still radioactive boars running around in Bavaria as a result of the Chernobyl incident.

It is still unclear how many billions of dollars of cleanup costs for Fukushima the Japanese tax payer has to spend. And how many will die of the aftereffects.

Why would anyone sane invest in a power technology with such a destructive potential? Especially if the alternative are far safer, easier to produce and easier to decommission. (another dirty secret of the nuclear industry: Who is going to pay for the decommissioning of old power plants and the cleanup: Yup, it's you, because the funds allocated for it are not sufficient). The $500m spent on decommissioning the Brennilis Nuclear Reactore in France could buy how many wind turbines and solar cells?

Keep it in the ground. Not just the oil, but also the uranium.

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

#284

Post by hairytrog » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 5:26 AM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #65

hannob wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I agree that the devastation of huge areas of land is a problem, but let's also keep in mind that the reactors that blew up where early generations reactors. With "early generation reactors" you mean all the ones that exist. The whole "next generation reactor" / "generation 4 reactor" thing is at this point nothing more than vague plans for what could be.

That's overstating things. Fukushima was built in the 70s. A nearby reactor faced the same challenges but was built a decade later, and it was fine. That's just a GenII, still not as safe as the GenIII+ we're building now. Chernobyl, of course, was a horrific design that didn't even have a containment dome. Nobody builds reactors like that anymore. And GenIV is a little more than vague plans; e.g. Terrestrial Energy'…

They have to secure a few B$ in funding. lol.

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

#285

Post by 7952 » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 5:27 AM UTC

kristopolous wrote: post #243

gruez wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>their liability was artificially limited to $450M per plant [...] The law was passed because no insurance company would agree to insure a nuclear plant, precisely because of the crazy exposure if anything went wrong. Is there a reason why coal powerplants which emit pollution (known to cause lung cancer) as part of normal operation aren't liable? It seems like the legal system punishes catastrophic failures, but som…

Alright sure. Coal is also a terrible idea for energy and we also shouldn't be having coal. Pro nuclear people have this bizarre dichotomy as if it's either Charles Dickens 1840 style coal or Star Trek style nuclear. In reality, cost in storage and renewables are dropping like Moore's law (they have their own thing called Swanson's law) and even if you did everything right with nuclear you'd be losing money on it in…

The best is the enemy of the good.

I used to work on design of onshore wind farms. Protecting the public was as simple as measuring the distance to the closest road or building. So that if the turbine failed catastrophically it would not hurt anyone. Add a big red flashing light and aviation is safe. Compare this to nuclear where you need to understand an incredibly complex machine and how it interacts with an unpredictable environment and people. And you need to employ expensive nuclear engineers and scientists to do the work, and then check the work repeatedly. Sounds expensive!

I would love it if nuclear energy could be a success. But why not do wind/solar/battery as well in the meantime.

I certainly agree that large power companies can be unfair to the public. Particularly when renewables has such big upfront costs. It's like renting a house, paying off someone else's mortgage, and never getting to own anything. However, there is a huge benefit in connecting large generators because they are connected to the high voltage transmission system. Power can be exported to where it is needed. In comparison generation that is attached to low voltage networks are more limited in how much can be exported longer distance. Battery storage in particular is much more versatile when used at the grid level.

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

#286

Post by YjSe2GMQ » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 5:31 AM UTC

devwastaken wrote: post #280

jlebar wrote: post #275

Coal is literally 1000x more dangerous than nuclear power. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities Humanity's inability to understand basic math will be our downfall -- perhaps already has sealed our fate.

Though it's the most amount of deaths by year currently, their argument generally is about if a nuclear plant close to population pops off. A single city would be 1000x what coals killed.

It would not.

1. The grandparent's source quotes the coal death rate of ~100k/PWh.

2. Global coal processing is at ~50 PWh/year: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption

3. This means ~5M people die to coal each year.

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

#287

Post by elgenie » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 5:35 AM UTC

aryehof wrote: post #276

elgenie wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia has huge amount of unusable dessert on the interior of the continent that could easily be used to store spent nuclear fuel. It's honestly nuts that they use carbon-emitting fossil fuels at all given their nuclear, solar, and wind potential.

A colonialist perspective, would see it as "unusable desert" ready for nuclear waste. The original owners, Australian Aborigines, would certainly not.

Population density argues otherwise [0]. The aboriginal population of Australia pre-colonization is estimated to be around 750K spread out over nearly 3 million square miles.

There may be differing perspectives about how much of it is unusable, but the debate is between "most of the continent" and "even more than that". A nuclear waste storage facility in an unvisited portion of the outback would rank rather low on the list of bad things happening to the indigenous people of Australia, wouldn't you say?

[0] https://www.mapsofworld.com/australia/population.html

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

#288

Post by sbov » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 5:49 AM UTC

ilitirit wrote: post #194

leetcrew wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

coal is arguably worse even when it's working as designed. it's just amortized over a much larger area.

Anything is "arguably" worse or better. But honestly, I would challenge that point any day. As much as I'm against fossil fuels, coal powered plants only contribute a very minor part to global warming compared to lets say... ships, planes and cars. And my point is not about coal specifically - it was just mentioned because that's what the main opposition is to nuclear. Not solar/wind/water. My point is that failure o…

> As much as I'm against fossil fuels, coal powered plants only contribute a very minor part to global warming compared to lets say... ships, planes and cars.

Do you have a source behind this? From what I can tell this statement seems wrong. E.g.:

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...

https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-and-changing-en...

Coal is a huge source of energy. And the dirtiest available. And if electricity+heat production accounts for 25% of global greenhouse gasses, and transportation 14%, there's a decent chance coal power plants contribute just as much to global warming as all of transportation does, and basically zero chance that it plays a "very minor part" when compared to ships, planes, and cars.

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

#289

Post by dorgo » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 5:57 AM UTC

option wrote: post #144

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…

I grew up near Chernobyl. My parents still work on CNPP (which was closed in 2000 but still needs personnel). In my opinion nuclear is the only reallistic solution to solve global warming. Per kw produced it is safer than even solar or wind and modern reactors are even safer. I now live in bay area and have high end solar panels. While this is a nice thing, looking at their output - it is just not enough (covers our…

>Per kw produced it is safer than even solar or wind

how do you define "safer"?

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

#290

Post by ljf » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 5:58 AM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #122

est31 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I couldn't find a definite number, but the total number of people who evacuated are somewhere around 100-200k. (Every source has different numbers because the zone kept changing, I guess.) Meanwhile, coal emission kills ~1M every year, or ~100k every month. (I guess the numbers are just an order-of-magnitude estimate, so take them with a grain of salt.) So, during the month of Fukushima disaster (the second worst nuc…

Thankfully we are using far less coal now in the UK and plan to carry on using less.

Yes coal is terrible and the sooner the world stopa using it the better, but the answer isn't 'if we can't have nuclear then we can only have coal' is a lie.

https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk