Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by roenxi » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 7:48 AM UTC

asaddhamani wrote: post #348

masonic wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you unaware that more nuclear waste enters the environment from burning coal than from all nuclear plant incidents combined?

How is that?

We burn a tiny amount of fuel to get a lot of nuclear energy, and we burn a huge amount of coal to get a lot of thermal energy.

You need to consume orders of magnitude more coal than atomic fuel to get the same amount of energy; so the trace elements in coal become a big deal.

The radiation from coal isn't even the worst contaminant, you get all sorts of trace elements. Sulphur (causes acid rain around the power plant) leaps to mind, and there are other really nasty impurities. It is hard to understate the tiny, tiny nature of the nuclear waste 'problem'. Storm in a teacup stuff. It is barely an industrial quantity of dangerous material, and the energetic bits are Very Likely to be recyclable as diluted fuel for a more advanced reactor.

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

#362

Post by raz32dust » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 7:54 AM UTC

masonic wrote: post #346

dirkt wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are taken into account I don't know if you are old enough to remember it, but that's exactly what nuclear energy proponents said in the 70s. Since then, actual experience showed that about every 20 years, there has been a big incident with global impact, and it will take decades if not centuries until the affected area is usable again. And th…

Are you unaware that more nuclear waste enters the environment from burning coal than from all nuclear plant incidents combined?

I think the debate is now shifting from nuclear vs. coal to nuclear vs. solar/wind. In that context, this argument doesn't help. Especially recently, people have been really bullish about solar and wind power, and I think that has lead to weakening of the support for nuclear power.

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

#363

Post by morsch » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 7:54 AM UTC

realusername wrote: post #352

morsch wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany already spent more on renewable than the total French nuclear industry Source? What does that even mean? Where'd you find an honest assessment of the regulatory and construction costs for France's nuclear power plants, much less a sensible estimate for decommissioning plants that are still running? Does it include research and development in either case? Does it include maintenance, personnel, fuel, cleanup,…

Germany spent around around 250 billions euros since 2005 on renewables [1]. The french nuclear energy (total) had a cost of 228 billions euros [2]. Renewables are not nearly as cheap as people make you believe, they do have a lot of external costs. [1] CPI - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303286860_Policy_an... - page 6 in pdf pages or 1 with their numbers. [2] Cour des comptes - http://cpdp.debatpublic.fr…

The figure given for Germany is 150 billion for 2005-2015.

I can't tell from a quick glance how the French number comes to be, what's included and what isn't and who is the ultimate source.

Given the fraught nature of the subject, I'm taking any number with a grain of salt, especially if it purports to assign a single price tag to things.

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

#364

Post by radu_crisan » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 7:55 AM UTC

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…

My opinion is that you might underestimate the magnitude of potential nuclear accidents. I think that Germany's decision to decommission over time their nuclear power plants was pretty well studied. Please see: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2018/...

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

#365

Post by BluSyn » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 7:55 AM UTC

antt wrote: post #360

BluSyn wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both technologies are proven. One has proven to be cheaper than the other.

I'm from Australia, the only thing that a grid without nuclear or coal has proven is that it can't deal with sustained demand. This year we came perilously close to having to choose which hospitals to cut power to when the there were two 40C days in a row. If we have a week of that weather Mad Max will be a become a documentary.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/27/south-aus...

This is the solution, but currently only operating at a small scale. This is something that can be scaled up insanely quickly for a fraction the cost of alternatives. The success of this relatively small installation has already resulted in many more battery projects coming online this year.

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

#366

Post by macspoofing » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 7:56 AM UTC

BluSyn wrote: post #355

antt wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/log_scale_2x.png One should add wind and solar, both at around 0.5MJ/h per m2.

Energy density and cost have almost no correlation. Gasoline is less dense, but I can package a gas generator into a small box for very little cost. Uranium requires a giant reactor the size of a small town and costs billions. $/MWh is the only real metric that matters. Edit: http://solarcellcentral.com/images/avg_cost_of_energy.jpg

>$/MWh is the only real metric that matters.

Given this statement and the chart that shows solar and wind already being the cheapest energy sources this must mean we can just switch to solar and wind ... right?

Except we know we can't. We know that the variablity of solar and wind makes those impossible replacements for coal and gas. I guess price isn't the only metric that matters.

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

#367

Post by roenxi » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 7:59 AM UTC

doomjunky wrote: post #309

cameldrv wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The arctic and antarctic regions are literal ninth-circle hellscapes (the ninth circle of hell is the one that is frozen over). Significantly worse than the areas around Chernobyl which is apparently well on the way to becoming a national park.

I'm not sure that there is a 'risk' that the human brain can't process. Risk of what, exactly? Huge cost to the generation that has to move, massive risk if it hits farmland, sure. But even assuming that the 'millions of years' figure is factual - which I doubt - we are certainly going to run out of human race before we run out of land. The risks are all fairly short-term things.

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

#368

Post by BluSyn » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 7:59 AM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #315

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…

>Renewable energy is cheaper than nuclear, or will be imminently. Solar and wind are plenty cheap. That's not their problem. The problem, as the article stated, is that "they are not available around the clock, rain or shine, and batteries that could power entire cities for days or weeks show no sign of materializing any time soon." So now what do you do?

> batteries that could power entire cities for days or weeks show no sign of materializing any time soon.

This is simply untrue.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/pges-recording-...

The batteries have already materialized, and once they start installations at scale this will be taking over the energy market. This makes solar/wind viable as a base load power source virtually everywhere in the world. Even in places that get heavy cloud cover such as Northern Europe will start using these solutions at scale within the next few years.

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

#369

Post by lispm » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 8:00 AM UTC

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…

There were multitudes of design flaws.

* building reactors in areas with severe earthquakes and tsunamis was the main design flaw

* flood protection too low, even though this was known

* backup-generators not safe against flooding

* loss of outside electricity over a long period of time -> powerlines were not working, other sources of electricity on the grid were offline due to earthquake

* too long time to restore electricity, we are talking about many MWs for cooling and other purposes -> generators were difficult to bring in with further problems making them work

* various damage due to earthquake on reactors, buildings and infrastructure around the plant

* too much spent fuel in pools, required large amount of electricity for cooling

* spent fuel pools high in the buildings, hard to reach

* no cooling capability in case of days-long loss of electricity -> then needs to be cooled with seawater pumped with vehicles with concrete pumps (which were flown in from remote places, even from the US) -> caused structural damages to buildings and spread radiation

* no idea what to do with the contaminated cooling water

* no protection in main buildings against the explosions that happened

* no technology existed for a decade or more to deal with molten cores

* ineffective security/safety process -> the plant had checks a few months before the accident with no consequences

* unwillingness to invest major amounts of money into upgrades

* life extension for outdated reactors, due to economical pressure

* no independent controlling instances for the nuclear industry

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

#370

Post by antt » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 8:01 AM UTC

BluSyn wrote: post #365

antt wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from Australia, the only thing that a grid without nuclear or coal has proven is that it can't deal with sustained demand. This year we came perilously close to having to choose which hospitals to cut power to when the there were two 40C days in a row. If we have a week of that weather Mad Max will be a become a documentary.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/27/south-aus... This is the solution, but currently only operating at a small scale. This is something that can be scaled up insanely quickly for a fraction the cost of alternatives. The success of this relatively small installation has already resulted in many more battery projects coming online this year.

The Tesla battery stores enough energy to run the South Australian grid for 5 minutes and cost 40 million. It's only use is to keep the frequency of the grid from drifting.

This being my day job, it would add $8k to the electricity bill of the two child household in Australia if we used your solution to store the wind and solar power.