Before new nuclar reactors are built, the long term storage problem needs to be solved. It's just unacceptable for future generations and makes cost estimates impossible. For all we know, it will never be a solved problem and the world will grow more unstable making highly radioactive nuclear waste something that has to be heavily guarded, making it even more expensive.
To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)
411–420 of 666 posts
Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
First, there can be little doubt that a substantial fraction of the high cost of nuclear is down to almost the entire west being scared stiff of the stuff for thirty years. If we gave actual scientists and engineers a real mandate to come up with a pragmatic, realistic (ie accepting a small amount of risk as acceptable, perhaps something on the scale of a single Fukushima every 30 years, just like we accept a small a…
In 30 years, solar will have taken over. Using safe existing nuclear power plants is OK for me, building new ones seems stupid. For some countries, replacing an old unsafe one with a good new one seems plausible, but more seems a bad choice.
Perhaps the train has indeed left the platform, but the inflection point for solar only happened this year. If the parties to Kyoto had gone home back then and created said regulatory environment for nuclear and gotten on with it, we'd be looking at a 80-90% carbon emissions free electrical grid across the entire western hemisphere today. Climate change would have been more or less solved, and yes, we knew that then, this is not benefit-of-hindsight stuff.
There's a lot of histrionics around putting oil companies in the dock for crimes against humanity, but anyone who's campaigned against nuclear in the last 30 years can go right up and sit next to them.
Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't even bother talking about political capital. Nuclear is a worse option because it is overpriced, period. It's not just the downsides that are subsidized by the government, the actual running cost is hidden behind reams of bureaucracy, hidden program budgets, optimistic amortizations, and underestimated decommissioning costs. And even then the reactors still manage to go massively over budget with the initial co…
Most estimates are inflated. From 2002 to 2008 UCS's estimate for a nuclear plant went from $2 to $8 million, for no real reason. Actual, real-life plants (like from the 60s) have much lower costs than recent estimates have claimed (adjusted for inflation).
There's one ongoing nuclear power plant construction project in Finland, and the current estimate is at around €8.5 billion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...
Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
We've been splitting atoms for 70 years. France has run its electric grid on 80% nuclear power. What's our track record on reducing consumption and population? Not saying we shouldn't do them all, but I don't think nuclear is the most difficult of these three.
France was able to run at 80% fission because they were selling excess production at low domestic demand times to adjacent territories. If you want to use nuclear for more than base load, you run into similar storage/transmission issues to solar/wind. Either way, we need a larger and more capable grid, so that production and demand can be balanced over larger areas.
Modern nuclear plants are able to load follow [1]. The main reason we use them for base load is that nuclear's cost is mainly fixed, so it makes economic sense to run them at full capacity and follow demand with fossil, which has lower fixed costs and higher variable costs.
Molten salt reactors would be quite good at load following, because the reaction rate slows down so much as the fuel temperature increases. If you draw less power, you apply less cooling, so the fuel heats and the power output goes down. For example, the IMSR, likely the first MSR to be commercialized, is naturally a load-following reactor [2].
This doesn't mean it wouldn't make economic sense to, say, run nuclear for baseload, add solar for extra daytime demand, and use storage to smooth out the remaining demand mismatch. But that's a matter of economic optimization, not a technical limitation of nuclear.
[1] http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2013/02/14/responding-to-system-de...
Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The downside of solar is approximately 0 compared to the downside of a reactor accident. ... The political capital lost in a reactor accident isn't worth it. The lost of faith in technology, the loss of trust in science That omits what is by far the largest risk and issue, climate change. The cost of climate change dwarfs the risks mentioned above. If solar or other renewable sources can't prevent climate change, t…
Are you sure about that? Wouldn't a 1 or 2 degrees temperature increase be preferable to nuclear meltdowns becoming more frequent because we get much more nuclear power plants?
The effect of the Fukushima meltdown was that 156,000 people were displaced, although some people say that this was an over-reaction and the exclusion zone could be much smaller [1,2]. Climate change is expected to displace 150 - 200 million people by 2050 [3], so it corresponds to about a thousand meltdowns.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_the_Fuk... [2] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35761136 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_migrant#Enumerat...
Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
In 30 years, solar will have taken over. Using safe existing nuclear power plants is OK for me, building new ones seems stupid. For some countries, replacing an old unsafe one with a good new one seems plausible, but more seems a bad choice.
Perhaps the train has indeed left the platform, but the inflection point for solar only happened this year. If the parties to Kyoto had gone home back then and created said regulatory environment for nuclear and gotten on with it, we'd be looking at a 80-90% carbon emissions free electrical grid across the entire western hemisphere today. Climate change would have been more or less solved, and yes, we knew that then,…
I prefer not having fukushima events and I'm happy to wait and use coal in the meantime
Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)
#417My undergrad is in Physics and I took engineering classes in Rickover Hall. I was stationed on a nuclear ship. Even after deploying for the Fukushima disaster, I am a fan of nuclear power. But I have a hard time justifying new investment in an era where solar is competitively priced. The downside of solar is approximately 0 compared to the downside of a reactor accident. I'll even allow for the high, high likelihood…
Price is not the only factor if we seriously want to fight global warming. 1. What is the energy ROI? (ie how much energy does it cost to build a station) 2. At what speed can we transition out of fossil fuel? Germany tried to phase out of nuclear. What happened? They raised their part of renewable sources a lot, but that still amounted to only about 15-20% of their national needs. They ended up reopening coal plants…
> (No, uranium is not a fossil resource)
Could you elaborate?
Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
And the interesting thing is that no nuclear plant built starting today would have any of the issues that hit Fukishima, Chernobyl, or Three Mile Island. Both because the material safety is better today, and we better understand how to engineer these to passively fail safe rather than have safety systems that can themselves fail. But the political will is hard to muster. And even though something like the traveling w…
> And the interesting thing is that no nuclear plant built starting today would have any of the issues that hit Fukishima, Chernobyl, or Three Mile Island. This might be true and is obviously a good thing but it does not make a good basis for your argument. That we have more faith in our designs now does not mean they are safe. There is still risk. I think there is a real possibility that nuclear may be necessary (du…
> Let me ask you, what are your concerns about nuclear power?
I am concerned that new (US) plant construction would happen in a different cultural mindset from that which constructed the old plants -- a culture more tilted toward profit than safety; a culture of deskilled labor, corner-cutting, NIMBY injustice, regulatory corruption, and general passing of blame.
Done right, I'd be for it. I don't believe we will do it right.
Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nuclear is a mess. You either are left with a waste problem that doesn't go away or a proliferation risk. The US government or successors will be subsidizing 20th century waste for hundreds of years. Energy storage is a problem, but a transient problem that can be addressed with a variety of storage techniques and backed up by natural gas.
Not all reactors result in long term storage of waste, I believe some designs can use existing spent fuel even. I would really like to see investment in other types of reactors such as pebblebed, molten salt etc. If we don't build the stations to create nuclear missiles, we can make them much more 'friendly'.
> Not all reactors result in long term storage of waste, I believe some designs can use existing spent fuel even.
Yes, those are the ones that have proliferation problems.
Re: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)
#420My undergrad is in Physics and I took engineering classes in Rickover Hall. I was stationed on a nuclear ship. Even after deploying for the Fukushima disaster, I am a fan of nuclear power. But I have a hard time justifying new investment in an era where solar is competitively priced. The downside of solar is approximately 0 compared to the downside of a reactor accident. I'll even allow for the high, high likelihood…
> The downside of solar is approximately 0 compared to the downside of a reactor accident. ... The political capital lost in a reactor accident isn't worth it. The lost of faith in technology, the loss of trust in science That omits what is by far the largest risk and issue, climate change. The cost of climate change dwarfs the risks mentioned above. If solar or other renewable sources can't prevent climate change, t…
http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0810/full/climate.2008.99...
Unless this 2008 article has been debunked or something, it doesn't sound like nuclear power is GHG free.