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

Nuclear energy is clean

collectifission.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 709 posts

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#351

Post by jokoon »

cycomanic wrote: post #289

This article perfectly exemplifies the arguments in discussions. Lets just concentrate on the waste discussion. The article says heavy metals in solar panels are a problem (I kind of agree, although the way it is described makes it out like we are talking about huge amounts, in reality the lead in solar panels is largely from soldering so very small amounts. Orders of magnitude more are being used for other applicati…

Renewables are not baseload.

If you add batteries to the mix, nuclear is better.

Not to mention the quantity of power produced. Nuclear is expensive because it's long term investment.

Renewables also cost more in resources (concrete, steel, copper), there are sourced charts about this.

Renewables are better than coal and gaz, but not better than nuclear.

There's nothing wrong with renewables, but it's not enough to offset co2 emissions.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#352

Post by shakow »

joak wrote: post #165

There is this idea that nuclear is not being deployed because people have a wrong perception of risks. However, the main reason is the economy. The costs of solar, wind and batteries are dropping exponentially but the costs of nuclear are not improving. We can blame regulation and the hypothetically wrong public perception about safety, but the reality is that costs cannot go down easily because of the innovation dyn…

> A nuclear reactor cannot be shipped

Have you ever heard of nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines?

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#353

Post by LatteLazy »

The killer for nuclear is the expense and the non-zero risk of catastrophe.

No one has a real plan to deal with the costs (it's a very large problem with political issues around waste costs). Modular reactors might help with this (small or not) but who wants to spend a trillion £/$/Euros to find out they don't? Most people insist on pretending the costs aren't prohibitive and that's not really a viable solution.

No one has a real plan to deal with risks:

* like it or not you cannot compare all risks on a simple probabilitycost basis. People treat a 1/1mil chance they will lose their homes more seriously than a 1/10 chance they will get lung cancer in 40 years.

the underlying issues are not technological, they're organisational and political (We've had safe reactor designs for decades, then someone comes along and disables all the safety features to get 5% more power to secure their quarterly bonus). So you cannot solve them with a redesign at a tech level.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#354

Post by shakow »

cycomanic wrote: post #308
m2fkxy wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What large scale energy storage systems are in operation today, or even ready to be rolled out? I quote myself under another of your comment: > Why does Germany performs abysmally wrt. electrical production carbon intensity despite having enough wind/solar installed capacity to cover their consumption?

Germany does not do absymmally. It could actually do much better if not for the coal and nuclear lobby trying to slow down the move towards renewables over the last 20 years. Talking about the regulation argument which people bring up for nuclear. The amount of regulations needed to follow for wind are insane in Germany. Essentially even if you want to put a small (5-10kW) turbine in rural yard you have to become a m…

Germany definitely does do abysmally w.r.t. the money they invested: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map

After billions over billions poured in wind & solar, they have roughly the same carbon-load on their electricity than US, Russia, or the Balkans.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#355

Post by shakow »

dabber21 wrote: post #291
m2fkxy wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What large scale energy storage systems are in operation today, or even ready to be rolled out? I quote myself under another of your comment: > Why does Germany performs abysmally wrt. electrical production carbon intensity despite having enough wind/solar installed capacity to cover their consumption?

Because dozens of france's nuclear plants are shutdown for an unexpected maintenance and Germany now has to burn more coal and gas again so france can keep their lights on.

Right now, France is importing ~4% of its electricity from Germany: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#356

Post by freeqaz »

smartmic wrote: post #347
jaredklewis wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with some of your criticism of the article, but I disagree that nuclear waste is a problem. Yes, we have to store it somewhere. But all US plants combined make ~5k cubic meters of nuclear waste a year. To put that in perspective, the strategic oil reserve is 100 million cubic meters. A single aircraft carrier is 2 million cubic meters. Political will aside, finding a place to store this stuff doesn’t seem lik…

You just considered one axis of the waste properties. It must also be in the equation that the waste will remain radioactive and toxic for thousands of years, far beyond the time horizon of what a normal human brain is capable of processing. Also, the effects (spatial, biological) if the waste is released for whatever reason (which we may not even know now). So the debt we transfer to future generations goes far, too…

I really like the argument of just keeping the waste on site at the reactors. They're already heavily guarded and everybody is trained to deal with the waste + safety inspections happen regularly.

Just keep the waste on site and then, if a plant is decommissioned, add it to another reactor's pile.

It's not a permanent solution for millions of years, but it's also likely fine for the next 100 years and that's a reasonable tradeoff (imo).

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#357

Post by raxxorraxor »

jokoon wrote: post #351
cycomanic wrote: post #289

This article perfectly exemplifies the arguments in discussions. Lets just concentrate on the waste discussion. The article says heavy metals in solar panels are a problem (I kind of agree, although the way it is described makes it out like we are talking about huge amounts, in reality the lead in solar panels is largely from soldering so very small amounts. Orders of magnitude more are being used for other applicati…

Renewables are not baseload. If you add batteries to the mix, nuclear is better. Not to mention the quantity of power produced. Nuclear is expensive because it's long term investment. Renewables also cost more in resources (concrete, steel, copper), there are sourced charts about this. Renewables are better than coal and gaz, but not better than nuclear. There's nothing wrong with renewables, but it's not enough to o…

It doesn't have to be batteries, it can be pump storage plant or similar installations. Problem that those don't work aren't technical. There are often legislative in nature or the infrastructure for energy transportation is inadequate.

We don't know how feasibly we can get Uranium. The market is unstable right now because of political problems.

The topic is very complex, there are disadvantages with every form of energy production and nuclear isn't an exception. It is only clean if you reduce the question to CO2.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#358

Post by onethought »

jokoon wrote: post #351
cycomanic wrote: post #289

This article perfectly exemplifies the arguments in discussions. Lets just concentrate on the waste discussion. The article says heavy metals in solar panels are a problem (I kind of agree, although the way it is described makes it out like we are talking about huge amounts, in reality the lead in solar panels is largely from soldering so very small amounts. Orders of magnitude more are being used for other applicati…

Renewables are not baseload. If you add batteries to the mix, nuclear is better. Not to mention the quantity of power produced. Nuclear is expensive because it's long term investment. Renewables also cost more in resources (concrete, steel, copper), there are sourced charts about this. Renewables are better than coal and gaz, but not better than nuclear. There's nothing wrong with renewables, but it's not enough to o…

Why aren’t they base load?

If every country over provisioned renewables, then you have a transmission problem not a storage problem.

The sun does always shine, the wind does always blow.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#359

Post by bilekas »

cycomanic wrote: post #289

This article perfectly exemplifies the arguments in discussions. Lets just concentrate on the waste discussion. The article says heavy metals in solar panels are a problem (I kind of agree, although the way it is described makes it out like we are talking about huge amounts, in reality the lead in solar panels is largely from soldering so very small amounts. Orders of magnitude more are being used for other applicati…

I also don't believe nuclear waste would pose a significant problem. There are many ways of containing waste as well as reducing.

Plasma disposal is also feasable for reducing the waste even further. RE : https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/...

Fossil fuels release about 33 billion tonnes annually in co2 release. And that's not even possible to contain. https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and...

So the `~5k cubic meters of nuclear waste a year` mentioned elsewhere really is a grain of sand in comparison.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#360

Post by Kon5ole »

JanisErdmanis wrote: post #339
crmd wrote: post #47

The most interesting thing in the article for me was that the 250 reactors needed to power Europe would produce 1.3 cubic kilometers of nuclear waste per year. That’s actually way more waste volume than I assumed. I wonder what the figure is for the United States.

Your numbers are wrong. It is a known fact that France produces less than ~ 1 m^3 radioactive waste annually.

It is not not a known fact, it is in fact not true. France has over 1 million m3 of waste, and I assure you they have not been operating nuclear plants for over a million years. :)

Sources:

https://www.ompe.org/en/france-doesnt-know-what-to-do-with-i...

The La Manche facility had 527 000m3 of waste in 1994:

https://www.neimagazine.com/features/featuredisposal-of-shor...

Post reply on HN