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Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

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Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#41

Post by berkeleynerd »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #21
cedws wrote: post #14

Something I haven’t seen discussed in the nuclear debate is that NPPs become a high risk target in times of war. Look at what’s happened in Ukraine regarding the Zaporizhzhia power plant. The IAEA has been crapping itself the entire time while both Ukraine and Russia have haphazardly been shooting and bombing around it. If Russia were forced out of their position, they could adopt a scorched earth policy and destroy…

Fully agreed. When the Ukraine war broke out, in Germany we had discussions how we could no longer rely on cheap russian gas and there we politicians actively demanding NPP to be reactivated. At the same time our government decided to spent 100 bilion € for the military and defense. This is surreal, when experts explain how "safe" NPPS are, the safety assumptions never asume a war going on around that NPP. If you fac…

I wonder if it would make sense to house these reactors in underground facilities to the extent possible to harden them against at least accidental threats?

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#43

Post by XorNot »

Earw0rm wrote: post #37
audunw wrote: post #9

The conclusions of the article is very good. I mostly agree with them. But there are two major flaws in the article: 1. “we need more like 25 TW”. That seems too high to me. Is that based on a direct conversion of the primary energy consumption today? The alternatives solutions needed for decarbonisation is generally much more energy efficient than the fossil fuel based solutions we use today. In addition, the energy…

Have you got some sources for that? Thermal forcing from existing plants (and thermal sink from their energy output) seems like it'd be tiny compared to solar thermal forcing. I realise GHG from their waste gases is a huge problem, but direct thermal forcing?

I don't know how this constantly comes up on HN but I have seen it mentioned across every type of energy thread.

And people could trivially disprove the notion in mere seconds by Googling the solar irradiance of the sun over the Earth, but for some reason they never do before posting.

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#44

Post by TomK32 »

maelito wrote: post #13

> Or they were—costs are so high now that we don‘t even build plants anymore. That's factually wrong. France has a program of nuclear building. We don't build a lot of plants in Europe, but we do.

The French nuclear program was started without public or parliamentary discussion, read up on the Messmer plan, it was a spontaneous reaction to the oil crisis of 1973 and new deployments haven't happened in the 25 years. France has a plan to extend it's nuclear plants by another 10 years, but really it would have to replace them sooner or later.

Even in France the trend visible in other European countries will happen: Wind, solar combined with large-scale batteries or pumped storage hydropower. Those are more simple to construct with less resistance from today's public.

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#45

Post by Earw0rm »

Festro wrote: post #34
wyager wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whilst people are getting poorer their access to resources has been scaling well enough to keep them above the poverty line Defining poverty as "wealth relative to the richest person on earth" or whatever you're doing here is unproductive crab-bucket envy, not a useful definition. If you're talking about wealth, all that matters is if the baseline is going up. If you're talking about status, be honest and say that…

I think you missed my definition by a wide mile. On a world-scale we've been reducing the overall number of people below the poverty line each decade, however there is a discussion to be had around inflation and whether the poverty line itself needs to move (there a re lots of poverty lines used in analysis, I'm not referring to any single definition). And I'm not talking specifically about wealth. Wealth is fine in…

Isn't the most useful definition of rich/poor how much access to resources you can buy?

As in, how can someone be both getting poorer but also enjoying increasing access to resources? Buying power is a pretty good measure here unless I've missed something?

(I'm talking about this in a global context where we can assume asset wealth is pretty much negligible, i.e. it's not a case of people burning through savings to access resources)

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#46

Post by actionfromafar »

audunw wrote: post #9

The conclusions of the article is very good. I mostly agree with them. But there are two major flaws in the article: 1. “we need more like 25 TW”. That seems too high to me. Is that based on a direct conversion of the primary energy consumption today? The alternatives solutions needed for decarbonisation is generally much more energy efficient than the fossil fuel based solutions we use today. In addition, the energy…

If the 25 TW can offset the current worldwide production which is 20 TW IIRC, is it such a big deal? Any greenhouse gas emission displaced is going to leverage thermal increase multiple times over.

Solar insolation is about 120 000 TW or something like that I think.

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#47

Post by DoctorOetker »

maelito wrote: post #13

> Or they were—costs are so high now that we don‘t even build plants anymore. That's factually wrong. France has a program of nuclear building. We don't build a lot of plants in Europe, but we do.

And this has absolutely nothing to do with having to maintain a nuclear stockpile, because France unlike other nations in the European Union doesn't have nuclear weapons. /s

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#49

Post by qwertox »

XorNot wrote: post #39
littlecranky67 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully agreed. When the Ukraine war broke out, in Germany we had discussions how we could no longer rely on cheap russian gas and there we politicians actively demanding NPP to be reactivated. At the same time our government decided to spent 100 bilion € for the military and defense. This is surreal, when experts explain how "safe" NPPS are, the safety assumptions never asume a war going on around that NPP. If you fac…

Making your plans around existential crises happening to your nation is foolish. There isn't going to just be "a war" in Germany - there never was. A war in germany is a war with NATO, which is a nuclear war, and thus "what if the nuclear powerplant is hit" is rather mundane compared to "our cities and citizens have been incinerated".

> A war in germany is a war with NATO, which is a nuclear war

Nuclear war is only one option of many, and the last one among all of them. It's a skewed perspective to think that NATO involvement would end up in a nuclear war.

Also, a nuclear war does not automatically mean the end of humankind, as some like to portray it. Most will still be alive, even lead a healthy, unaffected life. The negative effects of a broken internet and broken supply chains would be the bigger problems.

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#50

Post by ponorin »

The article is too US-centric to a fault. Basically all project's costs after 1970s balloon to an extent. Japan's cost has risen. French, while only slightly, has risen. Same for India. Only S. Korea have seen construction prices fall, but notice the price bottoming out after the 1990s. It's only maintaining the price, not getting lower.

Regardless, these other countries didn't contribute that much to increase global nuclear power capacity. In both India and China nuclear doesn't even count as the majority in their low-carbon energy mix, which is still dwarfed by the massive deployment of coal. S. Korea is slacking on low-carbon sources in general. Japan has lost trust (rightfully) on nuclear and decided to reset their entire nuclear generation capacity. No country has expanded their energy grid with nuclear. Except France, who only did it because of the oil crisis.

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