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Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)
31–40 of 105 posts
Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)
#32Here in the UK it would be super convenient if cost-effective nuclear power plants could be built.
After all, to decarbonise the economy we need to replace petrol cars with EVs, and gas-fired central heating with heat pumps - which will mean a big increase in demand for electricity. A lot of that heat demand will be in winter, when solar output is at its lowest. And a lot of our existing power plants are past the end of their designed life.
The problem is we're trying to build one nuclear power plant, and it's going pretty badly.
It's an extra reactor on an existing site - that should make things easy, right? And it's being built by the French who operate loads of nuclear power plants - should be experienced specialists building a cookie-cutter replica of a proven design, right? And it's using private-sector finance with the government just guaranteeing an electricity purchase price - should remove the incentive for delays and cost over-runs that plague cost-plus contracts used in things like defence procurement, right?
But it turns out none of these tricks was able to overcome the curse of large infrastructure projects, and it's going to be delayed and expensive. And all the time the cost of the project has been going up, the cost of renewables has been falling.
I can understand the argument for building fewer and larger nuclear power plants - you only have to get one set of locals to support you, do all the impact assessment paperwork once and so on - but I can't help but wonder what would have happened if we'd instead set out to build ten nuclear power plants, each one tenth the size, so there weren't so many things being done for the first time in a generation.
Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
? Those are very much two of the world's most pressing problems, both accelerating currently. Though I'd phrase the 'poverty' one as 'wealth inequality' instead as whilst people are getting poorer their access to resources has been scaling well enough to keep them above the poverty line. That may not remain true for much longer though. And the article is about nuclear energy and the premise of it being a flop and why…
> whilst people are getting poorer their access to resources has been scaling well enough to keep them above the poverty line Defining poverty as "wealth relative to the richest person on earth" or whatever you're doing here is unproductive crab-bucket envy, not a useful definition. If you're talking about wealth, all that matters is if the baseline is going up. If you're talking about status, be honest and say that…
Wealth distribution is important, because very rich people disproportionately buy up limited-supply assets in order to earn passive income on them. In densely populated places, that includes assets like homes, which pushes up housing costs.
Housing costs often aren't included in popular measures of inflation. If you do use an inflation measure that includes housing and all other everyday expenditure, then I think it's a reasonable to argue the baseline going up is good enough.
Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
? Those are very much two of the world's most pressing problems, both accelerating currently. Though I'd phrase the 'poverty' one as 'wealth inequality' instead as whilst people are getting poorer their access to resources has been scaling well enough to keep them above the poverty line. That may not remain true for much longer though. And the article is about nuclear energy and the premise of it being a flop and why…
> whilst people are getting poorer their access to resources has been scaling well enough to keep them above the poverty line Defining poverty as "wealth relative to the richest person on earth" or whatever you're doing here is unproductive crab-bucket envy, not a useful definition. If you're talking about wealth, all that matters is if the baseline is going up. If you're talking about status, be honest and say that…
I think you missed my definition by a wide mile.
On a world-scale we've been reducing the overall number of people below the poverty line each decade, however there is a discussion to be had around inflation and whether the poverty line itself needs to move (there a re lots of poverty lines used in analysis, I'm not referring to any single definition).
And I'm not talking specifically about wealth. Wealth is fine in a vacuum. Looking at excessive wealth and means to recirculating it can be helpful when addressing the issues the poorest people in society are facing.
And I'm not talking about status, no idea how you got that impression. I'm re-reading my comment and trying to figure out where you got that fantasy from.
Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)
#35too expensive and never built on time, only countries where it's cheap are dictatorships where you can hide problems
France?
They were able to build them in the past. It is unclear if they can still do it. It seems even for France the issues are piling up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France
Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)
#36The 1970s: When you have cheap coal and gas it would be financially stupid to invest in nuclear. Which is why most countries never did.
Today: when a single nuclear powerplant is estimated at 20 billion you calculate how many windmills you can build for that money. Ironically wind power is now the proven technology.
Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)
#37The conclusions of the article is very good. I mostly agree with them. But there are two major flaws in the article: 1. “we need more like 25 TW”. That seems too high to me. Is that based on a direct conversion of the primary energy consumption today? The alternatives solutions needed for decarbonisation is generally much more energy efficient than the fossil fuel based solutions we use today. In addition, the energy…
Have you got some sources for that? Thermal forcing from existing plants (and thermal sink from their energy output) seems like it'd be tiny compared to solar thermal forcing.
I realise GHG from their waste gases is a huge problem, but direct thermal forcing?
Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)
#38> There is a great conflict between two of the most pressing problems of our time: poverty and climate change. This wasn't true in 2021 and has been getting less true over time. Not one mention of Solar or Wind in the whole article.
I agree that it's stupid not to take the game-changer of solar and wind (and batteries) into account. Even though I believe that nuclear no longer has a role in energy (fuel sources, disposal, concentration of risk into few small units), the statement is still correct and it has another dimension: There is a conflict between poverty, climate change, gravity of climate change harms and the speed at which we can reduce…
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Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)
#39Something I haven’t seen discussed in the nuclear debate is that NPPs become a high risk target in times of war. Look at what’s happened in Ukraine regarding the Zaporizhzhia power plant. The IAEA has been crapping itself the entire time while both Ukraine and Russia have haphazardly been shooting and bombing around it. If Russia were forced out of their position, they could adopt a scorched earth policy and destroy…
Fully agreed. When the Ukraine war broke out, in Germany we had discussions how we could no longer rely on cheap russian gas and there we politicians actively demanding NPP to be reactivated. At the same time our government decided to spent 100 bilion € for the military and defense. This is surreal, when experts explain how "safe" NPPS are, the safety assumptions never asume a war going on around that NPP. If you fac…
Making your plans around existential crises happening to your nation is foolish.
There isn't going to just be "a war" in Germany - there never was. A war in germany is a war with NATO, which is a nuclear war, and thus "what if the nuclear powerplant is hit" is rather mundane compared to "our cities and citizens have been incinerated".
Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)
#40Something I haven’t seen discussed in the nuclear debate is that NPPs become a high risk target in times of war. Look at what’s happened in Ukraine regarding the Zaporizhzhia power plant. The IAEA has been crapping itself the entire time while both Ukraine and Russia have haphazardly been shooting and bombing around it. If Russia were forced out of their position, they could adopt a scorched earth policy and destroy…
This sounds like typical security fearmongering using a lot of scarewords and little base. Why exactly is this a concern that is somehow different than for other big infra projects? ThE zaporozhnia powerplant is still standing despite the war.