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

nytimes.com

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

#291

Post by ljf »

jhayward wrote: post #205
istjohn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTA: New nuclear power plants are hugely expensive to build in the United States today. This is why so few are being built. But they don’t need to be so costly. The key to recovering our lost ability to build affordable nuclear plants is standardization and repetition. ... Currently, as M.I.T.’s Richard Lester, a nuclear engineer, has written, a company proposing a new reactor design faces “the prospect of having to…

If you keep comparing nuclear to coal, you have declared yourself the loser. You have to compare nuclear against the best alternative, not the worst. This is just kindergarten-level debate.

This! Totally correct. Check out the a mount of coal the UK is using for energy generation right now: https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk - tiny amounts and that will only get smaller.

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

#292

Post by BluSyn »

wiggler00m wrote: post #207

Renewable energy is cheaper than nuclear, or will be imminently. Proponents of nuclear tend to ignore the long-run costs associated with nuclear (eg. waste transport and storage), and the potential for cost blowouts due to acute disasters like Fukushima (estimated cost to taxpayers: USD $100 Billion). The fact tax money is going towards Fukushima highlights another problem with nuclear power: the agency problem. The…

Somebody gets it!

It makes absolutely no sense to start building nuclear now. Even if you could guarantee 10 year build time at a fixed cost today (which you can't), by the time it is operational solar+storage will be even more economical than it is today. The cost curves are simply too favorable for any private market to favor nuclear over solar currently. Everyone in this thread keeps talking about the technology, but it's purely about the economics. Solar+storage at grid-scale will be cheaper than basically all other forms of power generation within 5 years based on current cost curves. Within 10 years the cost of new solar+battery will be cheaper than the operational cost of nuclear, not even accounting for the billions in construction costs over decades.

If the billions spent on nuclear plants now was instantly diverted to solar, we'd have way more clean energy in the grid on a way shorter timeline. That's the reality today. It's time to stop arguing and stop wasting money. Nuclear is dead.

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

#293

Post by learc83 »

kenneth wrote: post #229
davrosthedalek wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that "taking all disaster scenarios into account" is easy in hindsight, but maybe not in planning. But I believe that modern nuclear power reactors can be build intrinsically safe. For me, the real problem begins with the treatment of the waste: It's hard to find a good place to store it or reprocess it. Not so much because finding the actual place is hard, but because using that place will face hard o…

I'm not so sure I'd pick Democracy over nuclear power. Recent years have made me question our idea of the absolute superiority of Democracy. Look at the clusterfuck that is the US "democracy" vs the success of Singapore or even China. The rest of the Western world in Europe is barely better off than the US. On the other hand, not getting nuclear power deployed ASAP everywhere essentially means the long term destructi…

>Look at the clusterfuck that is the US "democracy" vs the success of Singapore or even China

Tell that to the millions of people in concentrations camps because they practice the wrong religion or were born into the wrong ethnic group.

China also produces more carbon dioxide emissions than the US and Europe combined and it's growing at a faster rate, so I don't think you can say that the Chinese model is offering up a better solution for climate change.

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

#294

Post by option »

dorgo wrote: post #289
option wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

less deaths. I was myself surprised when I learned this, but apparently people fall off while installing solar and wind; combine that with much smaller energy output and you'll get nuclear to be the safest

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

#295

Post by antpls »

nwallin wrote: post #233
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…

> in Fukushima Dai-ichi's case, for some reason (possibly financial?), it was decided that the tsunami barrier was sufficient (it wasn't) for the job, Plate tectonics was not understood or scientifically described until 65-67. It was not a widely accepted theory until later, at least the 70s. By that point, Fukushima had already been permitted and built. Without plate tectonics to create the plate shift earthquake wh…

> When later scientific theory showed that larger tsunamis were not just possible, but inevitable, the plant was not retrofitted to deal with the new reality.

You are saying the process of risk assessment and mitigation was not regularly actualized with new scientific knowledge. How is that possible ? Is there communication issue between different fields ?

For our information, does someone know : As soon as the engineers / executives were informed of this new risk, what was their decision at the time ? (Maybe this was asked during a court hearing)

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

#296

Post by tathougies »

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.

> 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.

Then move the plant farther away?

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

#297

Post by tathougies »

djakjxnanjak wrote: post #151
desuyone wrote: post #133

How about we put the reactors in the middle of the desert, then there is no danget of killing a city and no risk of nuclear material leaking into the sea. You really don't need that many people to staff a reactor and if you really do, you can always build a train so people don't need to live close. I know power transmission is an issue. But we have gotten a lot better at that as well, with things like that big DC und…

Is the resistance to nuclear power mostly at the state/local level or is there also a lot of federal opposition? I wonder if some western state with unpopulated land could make a lot of money by doing a huge nuclear project and sell the power to California with UHV lines. The politics seem kind of similar to pipeline projects, but the ultimate goal would be to save the earth rather than burn it down so maybe there wo…

> I wonder if some western state with unpopulated land could make a lot of money by doing a huge nuclear project and sell the power to California with UHV lines.

You mean California? California is mostly empty, unused space.

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

#298

Post by dorgo »

BurningFrog wrote: post #183
davrosthedalek wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that "taking all disaster scenarios into account" is easy in hindsight, but maybe not in planning. But I believe that modern nuclear power reactors can be build intrinsically safe. For me, the real problem begins with the treatment of the waste: It's hard to find a good place to store it or reprocess it. Not so much because finding the actual place is hard, but because using that place will face hard o…

The obvious solution is to store it in an unpopulated location. Only 15% of the Earth's surface is populated. Yes, observant reader, parts of the ocean floor are some of the best candidate areas.

Lol, plant a reactor on the ocean floor and then let's compare cost/kw to wind and solar..

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

#299

Post by rndgermandude »

option wrote: post #150
davrosthedalek wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that "taking all disaster scenarios into account" is easy in hindsight, but maybe not in planning. But I believe that modern nuclear power reactors can be build intrinsically safe. For me, the real problem begins with the treatment of the waste: It's hard to find a good place to store it or reprocess it. Not so much because finding the actual place is hard, but because using that place will face hard o…

nuclear waste is not as big of a problem as most people think.

As long as shit like this happens, I consider it a big problem:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/recycling-atomic-...

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

#300

Post by itsthewrongway »

If we are talking purely about reducing greenhouse gasses regardless of sector, the fastest way to do so is if we just quit eating meat. And there is no new technology needed :).

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelpellmanrowland/2018/06/1...

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