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Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

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Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#361

Post by q1w2 »

mathiasgredal wrote: post #126
lawrenceyan wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear fusion will be the answer to baseload energy requirements without the need to worry over meltdown concerns. There will be no need to do city or urban planning around radioactive fallout or leaks because fusion simply doesn't have those problems.

How does nuclear fusion solve the issue of rivers getting too hot, such that the plant has to shut down?

That isn't much of an issue unless the river is extremely small. The huge amount of water traveling on most rivers with nuclear plants is orders of magnitude more than what's used in to do the heat transfer in the reactor.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#362

Post by [deleted] »

llsf wrote: post #209
m_a_g wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are fusion reactor designs that don't use water. They directly convert to electricity with magnetic fields.

Are you sure about this ? Not heat is produced ? Cold fusion has been controversial in the 80's ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion ) and never really escape the lab.

[deleted]

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#363

Post by Retric »

evilos wrote: post #333
Retric wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and that looks great wind, hydro, and nuclear providing 100% of power at 3pm on a Friday at 2.5c/kWh. But what happens on the weekend when demand for power drops even more? Unfortunately the nuclear power plant operator losses money even faster than they are right now.

Based on the graphs from that site, demand never drops low enough to need to lower the output of the nuclear plants.

Nuclear isn’t the only type of power that has low marginal costs. Curtailing wind for nuclear is just as much an economic loss as curtailing nuclear for wind.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#364

Post by cesarb »

Manuel_D wrote: post #247
dale_glass wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't believe that modern nuclear plants wouldn't be dramatically more profitable. I can. First, nuclear doesn't always get cheaper. Chernobyl happened, how do we fix that? Containment building. That costs money. Fukushima happened, how do we fix that? Better backup plans. That costs money. Renewables skip this completely. Second, renewables also benefit from progress, but a lot more. Solar and wind are mass indu…

> First, nuclear doesn't always get cheaper. Chernobyl happened, how do we fix that? Containment building. That costs money. Western nuclear power plants always had containment buildings, so no, this isn't a factor. > Fukushima happened, how do we fix that? Better backup plans. Most places aren't subject to magnitude 9.1 earthquakes, so no such plans are needed. Nuclear power benefits from economies of scale. Buildin…

> Most places aren't subject to magnitude 9.1 earthquakes, so no such plans are needed.

I've seen this argument repeated a lot lately, and it's annoying, because it focuses entirely on the wrong thing. What went wrong with Fukushima was not the earthquake itself, but the flooding caused by it. A lot more places in the world are vulnerable to flooding than they are to earthquakes (I myself live in one of these: zero noticeable earthquakes, a lot of rain-caused flooding and landslides, and next to a nuclear power complex). And AFAIK, all or nearly all nuclear power plants in the world reviewed their backup power systems after Fukushima, to make sure their generators and power switches are not in an area of the plant which could be flooded.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#365

Post by cyanydeez »

throw-4e451c8 wrote: post #348
Always42 wrote: post #345

The comment quality in this thread is comparable to the average reddit thread. My lack of faith in humanity is restored.

I really thought HN was smarter than that french anti-nuclear college kid trying so very hard to appear super vague/undecided... but still clearly anti. Guess not.

Or the pro nuclear egos who knows nothing about the poor state of almost every nuclear waste disposal plan

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#366

Post by _ph_ »

the_third_wave wrote: post #101
lispm wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can import electricity from the European grids we are connected to. For example my region has recently brought up a 1.4 GW HVDC underwater cable, which can be used in both directions. It connects North Germany to Hydro power in Norway.

We - in Sweden - noticed this when we saw our electricity prices go through the roof due to those interconnects enabling German prices to trickle back up the lines. Thanks to the boneheaded "green" politicos in Germany shutting down nuclear power plants we'll be paying more for our electricity in the coming years. Please, German neighbours, vote out those watermelons and put some sense back in to the Bundestag.

Just to avoid any misunderstandings, the schedule to close all nuclear reactors in Germany by the end of 2022 was set by CDU/CSU together with the FDP. Which then went on to curb the buildup of renewables.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#367

Post by cyberax »

formerly_proven wrote: post #346
cyberax wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By reliability he refers to french nuclear plants stopped for months due to mantainance and repairs (mainly leaks that couldn't be scheduled). That's not quite correct. France deferred maintenance during COVID and scheduled the downtime in advance. The inspections then found potential problems, so other reactors did additional maintenance and checks. They could have been deferred further if needed, but politicians…

Nuclear is not really suitable for load-following, at least not the installed capacity. Some are technically capable but load-following seems to be quite taxing on the equipment due to pressure and temperature cycling. However it is very suitable for base load generation, there's a reason why oil and coal companies lost their marbles in the 50s and astroturfed anti-nuclear into existence. I'm not sure if that's their…

> Nuclear is not really suitable for load-following, at least not the installed capacity.

That's not quite the case. You can load-follow with nuclear, but it requires reactors to be designed for that. France does this, for example.

You also can simply keep reactors working at a constant level and just dump excess power into their cooling system. This is not as bad as it sounds, because fuel is just about ~5% of the total cost of the produced nuclear energy.

Most nuclear power plants do not do this because they don't need to do it.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#368

Post by epistasis »

evilos wrote: post #356
epistasis wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we can't have a bit of both, because despite heroic efforts with tens of billions of dollars being dumped into nuclear since 2008, it hasn't produced. We tried four reactors back then, using a new regulatory process that was supposed to speed construction and reduce costs. Instead, costs and timelines ballooned 3x. Two of the four reactors were abandoned half-way through construction, resulting in rate payers hol…

I guess you think the Koreans and Chinese are just fundamentally different from everyone else then because they're pumping out reactors just fine, today. The French, Americans, Russians, and Japanese have all had periods of time where they built them quickly and cost effectively too. But then various institutional rot sets in. We're going to have to keep building big things anyways so it's not like having that capabi…

There definitely are fundamental differences in our capabilities here, and you seem to believe the same too.

Look, for example, at the challenges that are being experienced as we try to build chip fabs in the US.

Instintutional knowledge and capability are real things. And I definitely think that construction capability is an important thing to build.

But let's improve our construction capability on building real things that get built and improve our capabilities, such as battery factories or solar panel factories or transmission lines or other things that get build closer to on-time, and then use those contractors that succeed to try more ambitious projects.

Let's not piss away billions of dollars with no sustained knowledge growth or construction capacity improvement. Trying to build even, say, 10GW of new nuclear right now would be posing away 90% of the capital. We don't even know who we would really hire for this!

Until we have a track record that's strong enough to attract investment, I don't see the rush to burn money on nuclear builds. It won't help the climate, and it doesn't even help the nuclear industry.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#369

Post by Manuel_D »

cesarb wrote: post #364
Manuel_D wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, nuclear doesn't always get cheaper. Chernobyl happened, how do we fix that? Containment building. That costs money. Western nuclear power plants always had containment buildings, so no, this isn't a factor. > Fukushima happened, how do we fix that? Better backup plans. Most places aren't subject to magnitude 9.1 earthquakes, so no such plans are needed. Nuclear power benefits from economies of scale. Buildin…

> Most places aren't subject to magnitude 9.1 earthquakes, so no such plans are needed. I've seen this argument repeated a lot lately, and it's annoying, because it focuses entirely on the wrong thing. What went wrong with Fukushima was not the earthquake itself, but the flooding caused by it. A lot more places in the world are vulnerable to flooding than they are to earthquakes (I myself live in one of these: zero n…

To be more specific, the tsunami caused by it. And without the massive 9.1 earthquake there would have been no tsunami. Flooding from rain or snowmelt is far more gradual.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#370

Post by moffkalast »

Always42 wrote: post #345

The comment quality in this thread is comparable to the average reddit thread. My lack of faith in humanity is restored.

If having any faith in humanity was justified we wouldn't be in this climate mess in the first place.
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