Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 731 posts

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

#301

Post by zone411 »

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…

The most important question is if wind and solar capacity can come online sooner than nuclear in order to slow down stop global warming, which is estimated to cause 250,000 deaths/year worldwide 2030-2050 by the WHO. Solar and wind were only 9.2% of the U.S. total in 2018 and the US has very good conditions for them. Solar energy will have a harder time replacing base load plants. It might work out fine in the US but how about other countries? I think both renewables and nuclear will be needed. Carbon caputre technology would need to be ~5 times cheaper than currently to be viable.

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

#303

Post by aurelwu »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #108
aurelwu wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nuclear was being phased out before fukushima anyways in germany, it was just accelerated a few years. New nuclear power plants are just way too expensive - take a look at Flamanville, Hinkley point C, Olkiluoto 3, Wylfa Newydd and Hanhikivi and you'll see that they are just too expensive. You can argue for having the old ones run a bit longer but the older the plants become the more maintenance issues arise.

It's well established that the West has forgotten how to build nukes. But Hitachi, KEPCO, and the Russians have not forgotten, and can build them effectively today. Perhaps with some effort the West can re-learn how its done from these modern success stories.

Wylfa Newydd was a project by Hitachi before it got cancelled despite being guaranteed a higher-than-market compensation of £75 per MWh[0], yet despite those heavy subsidies it apparently is not worht it.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/17/hitachi-set...

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

#304

Post by perilunar »

elgenie wrote: post #265
wisty wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at Australia. We've been very easily influenced by the coal lobby. If there's plenty of jobs and investment flowing in, we'll do the same for nuclear.

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.

And some of that desert is already mildly radioactive, due to a. uranium deposits, and b. atmospheric nuclear tests in the 50s.

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

#305

Post by smueller1234 »

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…

Let me argue that there's at least one more design flaw: backup generators are generally not very reliable. So for any given plant, there's a comparatively high risk that they don't work when you need them. This risk is non trivial even when the generators are well taken care of (both maintenance and regular test runs) but it's very easy to skimp on the tests.

My knowledge is from another industry that relies heavily on backup generators.

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

#306

Post by _lbaq »

Nuclear power is nothing that can be trusted with private companies, the long term nature is directly incompatible with an entity that can go bankrupt and "die". Renewables connected with battery/pumped/hydrogen storage is by far our best bet.

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

#307

Post by specialist »

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.

Once Hanford's contaminated ground water reaches the Columbia River, it will render every place downstream uninhabitable. eg Portland OR.

I think that's a big problem.

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

#308

Post by petre »

option wrote: post #175
capsulecorp wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be rude but that seems like a silly qualification to be speaking on a matter. I grew up next to a Lockheed factory and my father worked for NASA, but I fail to see how that qualifies me to comment on what a "realistic" solution for interstellar travel would be.

Yes, this is anecdotal evidence. But having grew up there I obviously read up about it a lot and this is why I am speaking my opinion on this matter. Also, in my opinion, what I saw written about it in the US media is fear mongering or outright lies about death tolls, radiation levels in nearby areas, cancer rates, etc. To give you an example. Did you know that CNPP was profitably working until 2000 while the disaste…

Yes but the RBMK is still an irresponsible design: highly positive void coeficient, no containment, then the control rod misdesign which was fixed. VVER reactors (Russian PWRs) are much more safer by contrast. Of course it was profitable, it ran on natural Uranium and it was cheaper to build (no containnent).

You should watch the "A is for Atom" episode from Adam Curtis "Pandora's Box" series. It also talks about US designs and how they upscaled the naval PWRs to utility level which was not deemed safe by nuclear scientists of the time.

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

#309

Post by doomjunky »

cameldrv wrote: post #279
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'm pretty pro-nuclear. Nuclear power has proven to be extremely safe relative to the alternatives. In this specific case though, to say that there was one design flaw is failing to go beyond the first why. The second why is "why does the reactor require an uninterrupted supply of electrical power in order to not melt down? Gen 2 nuclear power is inherently dangerous, and is only made safe through active safety syste…

It's just a trade-off of mathematical probabilities. The alleged extreme safety comes with an extreme destructive disasters.

When it comes to risk management, the human brain that is bound by evolution to dangers close in time and location, is not capable of assessing the consequences of losing a piece of the planet earth's habitat for millions of years.

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

#310

Post by petre »

davrosthedalek wrote: post #147
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…

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…

A considerable part of the waste can be reprocessed and further burned in fast breeder reactors, creating fuel for the conventional ones. The rest can be vitrified and stored. Why we don't already do this? Fear of nuclear proliferation, breeders are quite expensive, anti nuclear sentiment.
Post reply on HN