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To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

nytimes.com

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Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

#321

Post by p0nce »

smaddox wrote: post #72
DennisP wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been splitting atoms for 70 years. France has run its electric grid on 80% nuclear power. What's our track record on reducing consumption and population? Not saying we shouldn't do them all, but I don't think nuclear is the most difficult of these three.

France was able to run at 80% fission because they were selling excess production at low domestic demand times to adjacent territories. If you want to use nuclear for more than base load, you run into similar storage/transmission issues to solar/wind. Either way, we need a larger and more capable grid, so that production and demand can be balanced over larger areas.

Yes we have to support nuclear over-production during summer and store it with dams. Yet this winter we'll be under-capacity, lots of reactors are currently shutdown because of maintenance.

Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

#322

Post by spangry »

robryk wrote: post #238
jsilence wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"renewables' are also highly subsidized" Only this not true any more. Over the last decade Solar has become price competitive sans subsidies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmyrbKBZ6SU Even before that the subsidies for solar have been dwarfed by the subsidies that are in place for nuclear power. Recently in Germany the nuclear companies' lobbyists managed to get rif of the problem of end storage of nuclear waste by…

> Over the last decade Solar has become price competitive sans subsidies (...) // I haven't watched the video. Would love to see a text version thereof if it exists. Is it per unit of power that can be produced under optimal conditions or per unit of power averaged over a year? Note that half of the time in a year it's dark, so in order to produce the same amount of energy in a year you need a solar power plant with…

It gets worse. Unless we develop viable (and affordable) grid-level battery technology, the intermittency problem of renewables makes most of them a non-starter from a cost perspective. To cover 'always on' baseload demand, you need about 5-6 time that amount of maximum generating capacity, optimally geographically dispersed to ensure at least one or a few are producing sufficient power while the others are essentially 'off'.

This also means you need 5-6 times the amount of transmission infrastructure compared to if you have centralised power generation that can be rapidly scaled up and down. Burning coal is one such solution (obviously a terrible one given climate change). Gas is good for intermittent 'peaker' plants, but it's not exactly cheap nor co2 free.

Contrary to what's being said above, I think fission absolutely must be explored to avoid a climate catastrophe. Our current fission reactor tech is basically the same tech we had in the 50s and 60s, which manages about 3% fuel efficiency (mostly due to the use of solid fuels). Despite this, it's still at least 'in the ballpark' cost-wise, and also the second safest form of power generation, according to the IPCC, over its entire life-cycle (from mining to waste disposal and remediation). Incidentally, hydro is the first.

If we could invest even just a little bit of money into furthering fission research, we could very well end up with an abundant, cheap and safe method of generating baseload power. Or we could yammer on about the cost of 'political capital' and accept a much higher probability of extinction because a section of the population are either misinformed or just flat out ignorant. Yeah, let's do that.

Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

#323

Post by makomk »

barney54 wrote: post #100
smaddox wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a perfectly valid complaint, but it's not necessarily a good argument for nuclear, since nuclear has similar issues, I.e. controlling production to meet demand. In particular, nuclear cannot provide more than the minimum base load without huge investments in storage and/or transmission.

No, nuclear would provide all the base load and it can we ramped up and down some too. Solar is far more limited.

Solar can be ramped down pretty trivially, we just don't currently because we want to use solar in preference to other power sources for environmental reasons and the contractual and communications structures to do it aren't there yet.

Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

#324

Post by Twisell »

ludston wrote: post #293
Twisell wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the ressource I'll definitely have a look. However the fact that it's price competitive still don't imply that it's enough to counter climate change. In a worst case scenario, if we go full solar, but are unable to slow a climat change that induce more cloudy weather (because more global evaporation) we are actually solving nothing. Nuclear have a lots of cons, but the one of the pro is that we know them,…

> In a worst case scenario, if we go full solar, but are unable to slow a climat change that induce more cloudy weather (because more global evaporation) we are actually solving nothing. In the worst case scenario, all of the nuclear reactors simultaneously explode (because more earthquakes), raining down a radioactive armageddon on the hordes of screaming peasants below.

Except that Clouds are the actual big unknown in climat change equation. You can found a lot of articles about that I'll quote this one but you should look and document by yourself.

http://m.nautil.us/issue/25/water/the-hidden-importance-of-c...

Increasing of earthquake on the other hand is a far as I know a scenario you just made up, but feel free to elaborate.

Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

#325

Post by spsgtn »

niels_olson wrote: post #3

My undergrad is in Physics and I took engineering classes in Rickover Hall. I was stationed on a nuclear ship. Even after deploying for the Fukushima disaster, I am a fan of nuclear power. But I have a hard time justifying new investment in an era where solar is competitively priced. The downside of solar is approximately 0 compared to the downside of a reactor accident. I'll even allow for the high, high likelihood…

Don't forget wind energy as being price competitive for large utility scale renewable energy. Innovation is slower than solar, but in the near future we will be able to build wind farms in lower wind speed areas and offshore.

Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

#326

Post by damptowel »

ekianjo wrote: post #174
adwn wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to see "societies" making decisions every single day, look at the market. Not so irrational at all, though. Except for the stock market crashes of 1929 and 1987, the dot-com bubble, the housing bouble followed a crash, the tulip mania, ... Markets are not always rational.

>Except for the stock market crashes of 1929 and 1987, the dot-com bubble, the housing bouble followed a crash, the tulip mania, ... Markets are not always rational. Crashes are expected in the market theory. Crashes are actually healthy outcomes that get rid of mal-investment. There could have been much less severe crashes in the situations you described if there has been less government involvement (there is ample…

Rational markets fly in the face of complexity theory. I would very much like to see the evidence.

Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

#327

Post by damptowel »

ianai wrote: post #169
ekianjo wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Human societies, en masse, are terrible rational decision makers. Never seen "societies" making any decision. Most of the time, there are very few people in positions of power who make such decisions. If you want to see "societies" making decisions every single day, look at the market. Not so irrational at all, though.

The paradox of the efficient market hypothesis disagrees with you. For EHM to hold enough people must be acting irrationally.

And it's called a hypothesis for a very good reason.

Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

#328

Post by legulere »

avar wrote: post #289
Qwertious wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No matter how detailed your design, or solid your physics and mathematics, they cannot win an argument with someone who is simply afraid of the concept." Yes, politics muddy the water rather badly for fission. Let me offer a much more rational drawback: Time. Nuclear plants take a decade to build (on paper; in reality they miss deadlines constantly and you're lucky if it's done within 20 years). A PV solar farm take…

> Nuclear plants take a decade to build That very much depends on the country & regulatory environment. If you browse through the ones China has been building [1] it seems to be taking them around 5-7 years from breaking first ground [2] and 5 years or so to add additional reactors to an existing site [3]. You can browse through other countries on that site & Wikipedia to see how long these things take to build. The…

One example how the regulatory environment hinders faster construction: In olkiluoto some contractor used some cheap concrete instead of the special one that was supposed to be used for safety reasons. The concrete was pulled out again and the right one used afterwards. What of this would have happened differently in China do you think?

Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

#329

Post by grzm »

spangry wrote: post #322
robryk wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Over the last decade Solar has become price competitive sans subsidies (...) // I haven't watched the video. Would love to see a text version thereof if it exists. Is it per unit of power that can be produced under optimal conditions or per unit of power averaged over a year? Note that half of the time in a year it's dark, so in order to produce the same amount of energy in a year you need a solar power plant with…

It gets worse. Unless we develop viable (and affordable) grid-level battery technology, the intermittency problem of renewables makes most of them a non-starter from a cost perspective. To cover 'always on' baseload demand, you need about 5-6 time that amount of maximum generating capacity, optimally geographically dispersed to ensure at least one or a few are producing sufficient power while the others are essential…

Unless we develop viable (and affordable) grid-level battery technology

Do you think grid-level energy storage needs to be batteries, as opposed to other forms? If so, why?

Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)

#330

Post by legulere »

hokkos wrote: post #301
lispm wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article is false. > 2013, Germany’s electrical production required a 44 percent rise in coal power. That's total nonsense. Actually coal is under a lot of pressure in Germany. It helps a lot that Nuclear power in France is in such a bad shape: Germany can export a lot of surplus electricity during a cold winter to France.

France is a net exporter of electricity in all months : https://opendata.rte-france.com/chart/embed/?dataChart=eyJ0a...

France is a net importer to Germany though.
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