Yes
Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?
291–300 of 619 posts
Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?
#292Do we stress about the risks nuclear power far out of proportion to how safe it is? Yes. Even accounting for the worst accidents, it kills a very low number of people per TWh. Do we ignore the risks of fossil fuels far out of proportion to how dangerous they are? Also yes. They kill an absurdly high number of people per TWh; by most estimates coal is several hundred times more dangerous than nuclear. Does that mean n…
> Does that mean nuclear is just a totally great idea? No; the issue with nuclear is cost. Historically it has been quite expensive, but subsidised in opaque ways. In a zero carbon world, it might make sense for baseline generation even if it's expensive; in the world we live in it needs to compete on price. Can it?
We are still using basically 1960 tech, that's why its expensive. As Elon Musk pointed out often, what matters is pace of innovation.
Nuclear has a pace of innovation that is almost inperceptable. The reasons are that its almost impossible for a startup to do anything, without 10s of millions or better 100s you don't even have to start. The existing reactors last for 60-100 years, so if the country built some in the 1970-1980, it might be enough for multible generations.
You don't have a large industry that can substain itself on building reactors. Industry basically makes money with the fuel dilivery, but those companies have no insentive to innovate on the reactor.
You can not even build a prototype or experimete. A university level research reactor is not enough to validate a real reactor. And the only other thing is a full commercial reactor.
This means companies are forced to develop everything on paper, long before they even get some uranium to play with. That is an insnaly difficult way to build anything, compare that to SpaceX Starship development.
I am a huge fan of nuclear, and we really did have the technology in the 1970 to basically solve climate change as France basically showed. I believe one 'gigafactory' that mass produces small or medium reactors and a appropritae fuel cycle would be by far the cheapest long term solution. Sadly I see no way how we can get to that situation, a single sighting project takes many, many years.
Also, the concept of 'baseload' is dead. If you only produce when renewables are not needed you are in a horrible market situation. Even if you wanted to be dynamic, current tech can't be. This is not an issue with nuclear in general, but the current generation. A load following nuclear reactor is possible, but even that will simply lead to an underutilized resource.
That is why companies like Moltex Energy are designing their reactor more like CSP installation. Where the nuclear reactor has a 'heat-battery' and multible CCGT so that when there is money to be made, you actually triple the output of the reactor for when prices are high. It also leads to the nuclear part of the investment being only like 30% and the rest is known cost, but of course it requries a pretty large scale of project to work.
All in all, I hope the best for nuclear, it would have been the right solution, but its unfortunate history and properties just didn't fit in socity correctly for many reasons. I hope by the end of the decade we have some advanced nuclear, but unfortunatly I now beleive the majority of 'green' energy will have to come from gathering up wind and solar power on massive scale, plus Terrafactories worth of battery production with some gas backup plants.
Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also the nuclear waste problem. Nuclear reprocessing looks nice on paper, but the technical implementation is problematic, it's chemistry but in a radioactive environment. If something catches on fire there's problems.
France has successfully processed 23,000 tons of spent fuel, or 14 years worth. With zero incidents. In fact it works so well, they process other countries' spent fuel, too. https://www.heritage.org/environment/commentary/recycling-nu...
They have also very successfully "outsourced" part of the reprocessing to eastern Europe… there have been documented reports of storage in huge open vats of fuel officially sent for reprocessing.
Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?
#294Do we stress about the risks nuclear power far out of proportion to how safe it is? Yes. Even accounting for the worst accidents, it kills a very low number of people per TWh. Do we ignore the risks of fossil fuels far out of proportion to how dangerous they are? Also yes. They kill an absurdly high number of people per TWh; by most estimates coal is several hundred times more dangerous than nuclear. Does that mean n…
Strong disagree. And the brushing off of large scale risks from current technology, fail-deadly nuclear is very irresponsible. Nuclear has the possibility for point-scale accidents to render large areas permanently uninhabitable. Given the fallibility of human social organizations point scale accidents are guaranteed in all domains. Therefor using nuclear power is conceding areas will be rendered uninhabitable. As we…
>Nuclear has the possibility for point-scale accidents to render large areas permanently uninhabitable
I disagree with your point, but on a tangent, didn't US(and others) explode nuclear bombs in caves,deserts, space etc so maybe there are such desert areas where you can have nuclear plants where nobody would be affected.
Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?
#295BBC on nuclear: asking the questions that don't matter. You know what the real problem with nuclear is? It's not economically competitive. What if I told you: you can invest in a project that will tie up your money for 10+ years and once it's completed will provide energy for 10x the current cost of solar/wind. And while youre building this plant, solar/wind and batteries will keep getting cheaper.. and by the time y…
There's a significant risk of that price difference expanding to two orders of magnitude. There is a lot of research around solar that is basically about potentially delivering 10x improvements potentially (cumulatively). At a 100x cost differential, things are going to be brutal for investors with sunk investments in legacy power generation. We're talking electricity prices dropping to tenths of a dollar cent per kwh. Considering solar bids are going out for 1.3 cents right now, that could happen relatively quickly.
IMHO nuclear could actually work but it will need a much more ambitious agenda than merely matching price levels of already too expensive gas plants. Fusion is the interesting thing to keep an eye on. Perpetually decades out but it at least offers the right orders of magnitude improvements we actually need; on paper.
Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those are held to a much lower standard. I've seen people on HN seriously argue that we need to isolate nuclear waste from the biosphere for multiple generations, including contingencies for the collapse of English as a comprehensible language. What is the plan to isolate the poisonous meals in a solar panel for multiple generations? There isn't one. It just goes in landfill, I expect with relatively little concern f…
Radioactive material is treated differently because it is dangerous at a distance . You don't need to eat it or even touch it. Simply standing close enough to it is enough to be harmful. It's just not comparable to anything in a solar panel. After decommissioning a solar farm, at worst the soil might not be suitable for farming but nobody would complain about building a house there. For the same to be true of a nucle…
The second hand market for decommissioned panels is now strong enough that it has gotten hard to source them by the container load.
This used to be a great way of sourcing solar panels for off grid applications where a small drop in efficiency was totally offset by the low cost.
I think we can also safely assume used lithium batteries will similarly remain in high demand.
Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Does that mean nuclear is just a totally great idea? No; the issue with nuclear is cost. Historically it has been quite expensive, but subsidised in opaque ways. In a zero carbon world, it might make sense for baseline generation even if it's expensive; in the world we live in it needs to compete on price. Can it? Compete against fossil fuels? No, but neither can solar and wind. Nuclear power also loses out against…
The economic reality is that battery on the grid is out-competing gas peaker plants in a lot of places because even with the current scarcity and price levels in the battery market, it seems economical to buy them by the MWH. Technically, peak prices dropping because of solar/wind is a problem of everything else being too expensive. Battery storage solves that problem by being cheaper. Of course we'll need many TWH a…
The problem is there simply are not that many batteries. On a small scale the Tesla Australia battery is making money nad its out-competing gas peakers. But we don't jet have batteries of the scale to cover the really long substained drops.
Even the most optimistic projections about battery fall short of what is needed to replace gas peakers.
Lets hope Tesla, LG, CATL can spit out insane amounts of batteries and we maybe get some dispatchable CSP.
Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have evidence that batteries are cheaper than say nuclear? I only heard of the opposite, batteries are prohibitively expensive.
Batteries are only the most of expensive of many candidates for energy storage. But, as was demonstrated in Australia, adequate.
Australia has a tiny (on grid scale) battery used to stabilize the grid, not for long term storage like you would need for relying on solar energy in place that actually has winters.
Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have evidence that batteries are cheaper than say nuclear? I only heard of the opposite, batteries are prohibitively expensive.
Batteries are only the most of expensive of many candidates for energy storage. But, as was demonstrated in Australia, adequate.
> Batteries are only the most of expensive of many candidates for energy storage.
Maybe. But nuclear does not require batteries.
> But, as was demonstrated in Australia, adequate.
I do don’t have the numbers from Australia at hand. Do you? Is it really cheaper than nuclear, or they heavily overpaid for them, or Telsa sold it with large discount?
Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?
#300I can’t really reconcile people who genuinely, in their heart of hearts, believe we’re on the precipice of doom because of carbon emissions, and are at the same time strongly against nuclear power. Can someone who feels this way chime in and help me understand? I’m genuinely curious how these two ideas fit together.
I believe we're heading for a very rough time if we can avoid collapse. In an unstable society, I want energy production that is simple and decentralized. Nuclear energy does not fit that bill.