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China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

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Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#41

Post by dyauspitr »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #20
pfdietz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safety features aren't essential to power generation?

Yes, but after a certain point it becomes a matter of risk tolerance. Apparently some radiation standards in nuclear power plants work out at millions/billions of dollars per year per life saved https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/nuclear-power-is-too-saf...

I would say the risk tolerance with nuclear should be very low. It’s going to take one major disaster to ruin hundreds of thousands of square miles of land for the foreseeable future if something goes wrong.

Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#42

Post by maxerickson »

janalsncm wrote: post #18
tomohawk wrote: post #8

China is building a lot of coal power plants. https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/chinas-new-coal-po... And industrializaing vast swaths of land by covering it with solar panels. https://www.facebook.com/XinhuaSciTech/videos/solar-panels-o...

The undeniable fact is that humans are very electricity hungry. Cheap electricity opens up tons of downstream benefits. I am envisioning something like an international market for clean electricity. Something like an internet for power. This would enable developing countries to leapfrog dirty methods like coal, similar to how many countries leapfrogged over credit cards and cheques we still have in the US. Of course…

Solar panels approximate an international market for clean electricity (there's just quite some lag).

Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#43

Post by sottol »

janalsncm wrote: post #33
henry2023 wrote: post #19

To this day I think that nuclear is the best way to produce clean and abundant energy. There only one problem. Only governments build nuclear reactors and if you want to innovate in this space you need to deal with these institutions which adds a lot of complexity. Solar on the other hand appeals to the public and can be deployed in large scale facilities. Large scale economics apply directly and we can see that by l…

Aside from the complexity, part of the issue when comparing nuclear and solar is this: In the US we like to externalize our environmental damage as much as possible, which was one of the “benefits” of moving manufacturing to China. This has been one of the main effects of the environmental movement in the US, simply making a lot of things infeasible. As long as the US environment is clean, damage elsewhere is tolerat…

Imo it just all stems from seeking maximum profits - externalizing environmental damage is just one facet of it. If China enacted strict penalties for environmental damage and it'd be cheaper to manufacture panels in Texas while polluting there, I don't have a doubt we'd build all of our panels in Texas.

Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#44

Post by com2kid »

loeg wrote: post #34
WalterBright wrote: post #12

In the Pacific Northwest, I see rooftop solar panels half-covered with mildew. I wonder how that affects the power generation, and how often one would have to climb up on the roof to scrape them clean.

Yes, rooftop home solar doesn't make a ton of sense at this latitude and especially not adjacent to this much hydro power.

> Yes, rooftop home solar doesn't make a ton of sense at this latitude and especially not adjacent to this much hydro power.

I know people in Seattle who run their entire house off solar for 6-8 months on the year (important now that AC is increasingly needed around here...) and who don't fully deplete the credit they've saved up with the power company until January.

Also only Seattle gets the majority of their energy Hydro Power, anyone in King County but outside of Seattle is getting a mix[1] including around 46% from coal + natural gas.

https://www.pse.com/en/pages/energy-supply/electric-supply

Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#45

Post by cash-MeOutside »

tomohawk wrote: post #8

China is building a lot of coal power plants. https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/chinas-new-coal-po... And industrializaing vast swaths of land by covering it with solar panels. https://www.facebook.com/XinhuaSciTech/videos/solar-panels-o...

[flagged]

Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#46

Post by shrimp_emoji »

cash-MeOutside wrote: post #45
tomohawk wrote: post #8

China is building a lot of coal power plants. https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/chinas-new-coal-po... And industrializaing vast swaths of land by covering it with solar panels. https://www.facebook.com/XinhuaSciTech/videos/solar-panels-o...

[flagged]

CHINA NUMBA ONE

USA NUMBA TW--RUSSIA NUMBA TWO

USA NUMBA.. NUMBA EIGHT, OK?

Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#47

Post by sottol »

bboygravity wrote: post #24
spacebanana7 wrote: post #10

It’s very difficult to estimate the true cost of nuclear power because so many resources are spent on safety features rather than the basic stuff essential to power generation. New construction cost per energy out can vary by 5x, even against the grain of expected purchasing power parity advantages: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-britain-is-building-...

It's also very difficult to estimate true cost of solar at a massive scale. Most/all solar panels that exist currently can not be recycled in a way that makes ecological or economical sense. Their operational lifetime is NOT "sustainable", nor is their economical lifetime. Then there's death's per kWh, required energy storage (with its own ecological and economical issues), mining, transportation, CO2 per kWh, etc et…

Can the same not be said of nuclear to a degree? My knowledge may be outdated but afaik proper, long-term nuclear waste storage is still an open question.

Nuclear waste persists and remains dangerous for a long time and it's easy to forget and just burden future generations with it.

Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#48

Post by roenxi »

opmac wrote: post #27
henry2023 wrote: post #19

To this day I think that nuclear is the best way to produce clean and abundant energy. There only one problem. Only governments build nuclear reactors and if you want to innovate in this space you need to deal with these institutions which adds a lot of complexity. Solar on the other hand appeals to the public and can be deployed in large scale facilities. Large scale economics apply directly and we can see that by l…

There's a lot of inconvenient truths one needs to accept if they want to advocate for widespread nuclear energy. Specifically, there are very real nuclear proliferation concerns which cannot be ignored. Alternative clean energy sources, which are safe on the global scale, can made widely available with proper investment. That should be the future.

> Specifically, there are very real nuclear proliferation concerns which cannot be ignored.

The countries with the #1 and #2 sized nuclear arsenals are currently at war. A war that, as far as I can tell, is continuing to escalate.

The countries ranked #2 and #3 (China has been busy building them) are preparing for war with each other.

We're seeing ongoing evidence around the world that nuclear weapons are the only thing that can deter a big player from launching an invasion of a country.

We could plausibly be looking at the opening stages of WWIII and while there is a lot of concern it isn't enough to jolt people out of their normal routines and the political impacts have been relatively muted. The situation is so bad right now I'm not sure what the proliferation concerns are supposed to be. It is already just a matter of time until something goes terribly wrong. How much is prosperity energy generation supposed to make the situation? If anything it might stabilise the military situation.

Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#49

Post by [deleted] »

com2kid wrote: post #44
loeg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, rooftop home solar doesn't make a ton of sense at this latitude and especially not adjacent to this much hydro power.

> Yes, rooftop home solar doesn't make a ton of sense at this latitude and especially not adjacent to this much hydro power. I know people in Seattle who run their entire house off solar for 6-8 months on the year (important now that AC is increasingly needed around here...) and who don't fully deplete the credit they've saved up with the power company until January. Also only Seattle gets the majority of their energ…

[deleted]

Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#50

Post by h0l0cube »

dyauspitr wrote: post #35
hangonhn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say... if a country like China, with its massive engineering/building capacity and authoritarian "efficiency" cannot hit their nuclear construction targets, it is quite telling how difficult it must be in reality to build nuclear reactors in general. I am still very pro-nuclear but it seems PV + wind + battery storage are coming down in price much faster than people expected and it just makes sense to…

Renewables plus nuclear should be the way of the future. Nuclear power when renewables are not available and some sort of storage (pumped hydro, heat in salt etc) when renewables are active.

Nuclear is great as a baseload, but as wind and solar reach overcapacity, peakers will be more useful to react to changes in weather. But by then, energy storage will be economical and scalable enough to obviate gas and coal for this purpose. Renewable takeover is a foregone conclusion at this point.

That said, from a conservation point of view, nuclear is something I’m in favor of

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