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Google to back three new nuclear projects

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Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#331

Post by natmaka »

CurtHagenlocher wrote: post #46
pjc50 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminder that anti-nuclear activism started against nuclear weapons and nuclear dumping, and then after Chernobyl the realization that it was possible to mess up agriculture across a continent from the failure of a single plant. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-36112372 Greenpeace spent years campaigning against dumping waste at sea. In a reasonably free market, which doesn't exist for electricity, solar would win…

In the United States, anti-nuclear activism predates both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clamshell_Alliance and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abalone_Alliance for two examples.

Indeed, however it was deemed way more convincing by more and more people after each nuclear accident.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#332

Post by natmaka »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #28
adventured wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replacement isn't remotely close to good enough. We need a massive increase in the supply of energy. Nuclear is the only viable path for that. We can do more than one thing at a time, we have the resources.

This seems to be working backward from having decided that we must handout untold trillions to the comparatively insignificant nuclear industry. In 2024 we, as in globally, completed about 5 GW of new built nuclear. Let’s compare to renewables: - 600 GW solar PV added [1] - 117 GW wind power [2] - ~100 GW battery storage Even when adjusting for TWh the disparity is absolutely enormous. We’re talking a ~50x difference…

When it comes to building nuclear plants China is, by far, the pack leader.

However its results are dwarfed by the results of its renewables projects: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewa...

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#333

Post by natmaka »

SoftTalker wrote: post #40
bryanlarsen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we need a massive increase in the supply of energy. Solar is the only way we're going to get it. We're adding solar at a 1TW / year rate. We're adding nuclear at a rate of ~30 GW / year.

So why is Microsoft spending billions to restart three mile island rather than just installing some solar panels?

Is TMI up and running?

On the other side: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/micros...

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#334

Post by natmaka »

nandomrumber wrote: post #39
bee_rider wrote: post #5

Personally I’m skeptical of nuclear power given how much easier it is to incrementally add renewable capacity (sure, intermittence is a problem, but I think we can deal with it by being cleverer). But anyway, if anybody (other than the government, which gave up long ago) can pay the upfront costs of nuclear, it is the big tech companies like Google. > […] Google has set 2030 goals to reach net zero emissions across i…

You’re skeptical of nuclear, a proven technology with excellent safety record, the only power generation that has a completely closed fuel life cycle, and believe in a technology we don’t have. If we (the West) had built out nuclear to satisfy our electricity needs, implementing new nuclear power tech as it improved, we could have electricity subscriptions like we have mobile / home internet planes. You’d just pay fo…

> proven technology with excellent safety record

The real long-term effect of past nuclear accidents is a subject of debate, and the potential worst case a concern for all.

> the only power generation that has a completely closed fuel life cycle

Not at industrial-scale.

> and believe in a technology we don’t have.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewa...

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#335

Post by brettermeier »

neural_thing wrote: post #59
floxy wrote: post #56

I suppose like anything there are multiple reasons, but what are the top 3 why California electric rates are so high (compared to the rest of the U.S.)? https://www.chooseenergy.com/electricity-rates-by-state/ Why doesn't the state encourage more capacity to bring costs down? (to encourage electrification/EVs, etc.) Is it because they are phasing out natural gas? Is it to encourage roof top solar? Or trying to reduce…

It's because the California government doesn't believe in markets, prices as incentives or anything like that. California govt believes in state mandates

Not believing in "free" markets but in state mandates would lead to stable prices.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#336

Post by natmaka »

derriz wrote: post #259
belorn wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to present the plan as renewables and subsidized natural gas as being better than nuclear than be open about it and present it as that. It is not the same as a subsidize free renewables and storage solution. Those 97.5% sounds very nice. Denmark has well over 100% renewables production from wind and solar, but in terms of consumption only get around 50%. The rest they need to import. 97.5 vs 50 means ther…

You're including a bunch of different generation technologies which have vastly different operating characteristics which means they are not substitutes for each other. For example, nuclear takes days to start from cold and is really only economic if operating at a constant output. Thus you need complimentary sources to help meet changes in demand. These days, typically this means gas turbines. Whether your grid has…

> Whether your grid has nuclear or renewables, it will also have natural gas capacity.

No, turbo-alternators 'burning' hydrogen do exist. And green hydrogen (produced by renewables) is cheaper than pink hydrogen (produced by a nuclear reactor) because the total cost of renewables' electricity is lower than nuclear's.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#337

Post by sunaookami »

ziml77 wrote: post #85
melling wrote: post #3

Do the “no nuclear, renewables are the future” people have any comments? We burned a few decades saying solar and wind are the solution. This set us back greatly in the struggle to reduce greenhouse emissions.

Many of us who care about the environment have hated the widely-held anti-nuclear stances. It's a very clean source of energy. Renewables ended up being the focus because they had to be. There was no chance of pushing nuclear forward when the general sentiment was that we needed to regress on nuclear.

>Many of us who care about the environment have hated the widely-held anti-nuclear stances

Don't try to position yourself as the majority voice. Nuclear energy is all but clean and I don't understand the odd push in the last few years to go all in on nuclear even though there was a common understanding that it should not be the future.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#338

Post by natmaka »

ttfkam wrote: post #116
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A case study for Denmark. Not even using the latest plummet in price of BESS. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192... Generally: Renewables and storage solve somewhere high in the 90s percent. Then throw some gas turbines on it. Low CAPEX high OPEX. Just like we’ve done for the past decades with the previous ”base load and peaking” paradigm. Those gas turbines will be a minuscule part of the t…

I love how green hydrogen is assumed to become abundant and trivially easy to retrofit into existing infrastructure but fast neutron reactors are automatically considered infeasible by comparison. Or that by far the easiest way to produce massive amounts hydrogen without emitting carbon into the atmosphere is… wait for it… nuclear power.

Hydrogen is already used in many industrial processes (~1e8 metric tons/year), including turbo-alternators, while there is not a single ready-to-be-built model of industrial breeder reactor.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#339

Post by pfdietz »

rockemsockem wrote: post #240
pfdietz wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear (hopefully fusion at some point) is the only plausible way to meet energy needs in the future (that we currently know of). This is simply false. At this point, its falsity has been sufficiently well demonstrated and communicated that you should have known it was false. If you are not deliberately lying, it's only because you steered yourself away from learning the truth.

I think you probably just disagree with OP about the levels of our energy needs in the future. If we just sustain human life and pleasure then yeah renewables are probably fine. If we want to pursue highly energy intensive applications and then further if we want to pursue those applications with mobility then we need nuclear.

We can pursue high energy intensive activities with renewables, higher than if we use fusion.

On Earth, solar allows high energy use before we run into limits from direct thermal pollution, since it uses energy already hitting the planet rather than introducing new energy.

In space, the energy available from sunlight vastly exceeds any available from fusion, and the feasibility difference tilts even more toward solar.

For mobility in space, beamed power will be best, and solar works with that just fine, even out to interstellar distances.

Re: Google to back three new nuclear projects

#340

Post by looofooo0 »

seatac76 wrote: post #252
muth02446 wrote: post #65

I view nuclear as a prudent diversification of energy sources: What happens if some supervolcano erupts, and because of the ashes significantly less sunlight reaches the surface of the earth. Presumably, there will also be less wind then.

If that is your concern, then the thing to worry about is dramatic loss in food production before energy becomes an issue.

we can make food from oil, gas and other hydrocarbons.
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