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

#481

Post by theshrike79 » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 10:52 AM UTC

the_why_of_y wrote: post #456

theshrike79 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you can't run steel mills and other big energy consumers with solar or wind. These require power in the scale of Terawatts each year. 24/7. Renewables like solar and wind are decent for offsetting peaks and maybe generate some household electricity, but you're delusional if you think they can be used to replace coal or nuclear in the next decade. Or even quarter century. Until we make giant leaps in energy st…

What is needed as a complement to renewable energy is dispatchable generation, i.e., plants that can be quickly turned on and off as the supply from renewables changes. Nuclear (and also coal) is a really bad option for this because the time to turn these plants on an off is measured in days.

There really aren't any of these in the scale we need, they're used even today to offset peak loads. And all of them still burn fossil fuels.

The US has a fancy water pumping station in the scale we'd need (3000MW)[0], but it relies heavily on the local geography and wouldn't be economically feasible in the Netherlands for example.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Sta...

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

#482

Post by DennisP » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 10:53 AM UTC

Tomte wrote: post #384

TomMarius wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that kind of reactor is never going to be built again - its design was very outdated and outright bad. Today we can build reactors where any failure that would result in an explosion of any kind is physically nearly impossible.

That exact same argument was made back then. You need to accept that all trust is lost. You cannot take backsies every few decades and expect people to trust you that this time you really know what you#re talking about.

Do you have a source for that? Because I seriously doubt that anyone made that argument for Chernobyl's reactor design.

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

#483

Post by Gravityloss » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 10:54 AM UTC

theshrike79 wrote: post #433

progfix wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I am flabbergasted (again) because of the pro nuclear power comments. Why should we create energy from something so complicated and hard to control when we have something simple and easy to grasp like water, solar and windpower? I understand statistically speaking a nuclear power plant is save, but the risk is calculated by multiplying propability of occurance and potential loss. The potential loss in a maximum c…

Because you can't run steel mills and other big energy consumers with solar or wind. These require power in the scale of Terawatts each year. 24/7. Renewables like solar and wind are decent for offsetting peaks and maybe generate some household electricity, but you're delusional if you think they can be used to replace coal or nuclear in the next decade. Or even quarter century. Until we make giant leaps in energy st…

Modern electric arc steel mills can be stopped and started easily.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_mill#Minimill

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

#484

Post by kuzehanka » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 10:55 AM UTC

aurelwu wrote: post #478

vlehto wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://withouthotair.com/ "A vital tool agains global warming" means that it's our only possibility. It's not about cost, it's about what is physically possible.

It's always about cost, if it wasn't about cost we could just build so much PV/Wind + Power to Gas/Liquid Facilities as we need and be done with it. And building new nuclear is way more expensive than projected in your link , (No blame to the authors, 10 years ago they couldn't know that those numbers are not realistic) while Wind/PV are still becoming cheaper every year) they assume ~1,3 Billion per 1 GW nuclear cap…

> It's always about cost

As the direness of the climate situation becomes more and more urgent, cost becomes irrelevant.

During times of emergency and total war, dollars don't mean anything. If you have the manpower and the raw resources to do something, it gets done.

Ignoring the politics and economics of energy production, from a physics standpoint nuclear is a high outlier in terms of energy density per resource spent or per unit climate change impact, and that fact will increasingly override dollar costs or public perception as the the climate gets increasingly hostile.

Until the crisis becomes apparent, I am sure nuclear will continue to be a mostly ignored option across europe and the west while political forces dominate the issue. China on the other hand isn't bothered by public sentiment[1]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/china-nuclearpower/china-lik...

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

#485

Post by gambiting » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 10:56 AM UTC

v_lisivka wrote: post #443

theshrike79 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Coal plant deaths are local news. A nuclear power plant failure (however minor) is global news for weeks and weeks.

Nuclear power plant failure, like Chornobyl, _can_ make whole continent inhabitable for thousands of years.

Chernobyl made a large area a restricted zone, but nowhere near a continent scale. Besides, I really dislike people bringing up Chernobyl as an example of dangers - the RBMK reactor type like the one in Chernobyl still operates in 10 reactors producing electricity(and they will until 2024 at least). Even Chernobyl itself operated into 2000s before the last reactor block was shut down. And the only catastrophic fault with them happened because of an idiotic test that basically was meant to test what happens if you switch off all cooling and disable all safeguards - well, the reactor explodes, that's what. The test itself was criminal.

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

#486

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 10:56 AM UTC

vlehto wrote: post #476

lispm wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

repeated appeals were not what I was looking for. where are the numbers which describe the the contribution of nuclear power to control global warming? How many? What timeframe? Costs? Who builds them? Which models? Where do we build them? What effects does it have when? What are possible scenarios? If nuclear proponents want to be taken serious, they need to answer those kinds of questions. Currently nuclear is stag…

If you take climate change stuff seriously, then the answers are these: >How many? As many as you can build. You run out of engineers and carpenters before you make too many reactors in time. >What timeframe? Now. >Costs? Doesn't matter that much. Easily cheaper than climate change. >Who builds them? Whoever can. >Which models? Hardly matters, any model is safer than burning coal. >Where do we build them? Doesn't mat…

[deleted]

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

#487

Post by Gondolin » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 10:56 AM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #454

lazyjones wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we are headed for at last a 3°C increase. This is way way worse than a 1°C increase. I am not joking about billions of death if we reach this point. What is borderline insane is not realizing the impact that climate change is going to have is nothing is done. It's beyond borderline insane how people make up these "billions of deaths" numbers with a straight face.

Then you should read the book Six Degrees by Mark Lynas, who read 3000 peer-reviewed papers on the effects of climate change and summarized them, one chapter per degree. Billions of deaths at three degrees is probably overstating things, but three degrees does bring massive food shortages and hundreds of millions of refugees. At four degrees, billions of deaths doesn't look that unlikely, and it starts getting hard t…

Of course I am not stating that billions of death would happen overnight, like if we had a supervolcano explosion.

Instead, it would be gradual, over 20-25 years. But you are right that I am overstating things, when I write billions I think 'between 100 Millions and 1 Billion'. (Recalling that over 25 years, air pollution alone is responsible for around 100 millions deaths). It would depend on the exact temperature change: 3°C or 3.5C.

And total civilisation collapse in unlikely (I hope!), except if there is a feedback factor in global warming and we head for 4°C or more.

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

#488

Post by wtallis » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 10:58 AM UTC

xlog wrote: post #445

agumonkey wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, wasn't fukushima tsunami the 'biggest' in recent centuries ?

In Japan? Maybe. Globally? Not even close. As recently as 2004, there was a tsunami in the Indian Ocean that caused over 200,000 casualties (compared to the 15,000-20,000 casualties of the 2011 Japanese tsunami).

Death toll really isn't a good number to use for gauging the risk to nuclear reactors. Indonesia was more vulnerable to tsunami damage and deaths than Japan for basically the same reasons why Japan has nuclear power plants and Indonesia doesn't.

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

#489

Post by tramav » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 10:59 AM UTC

stingraycharles wrote: post #459

tramav wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It boggles my mind that Germany made a great effort on renewable, and used this extra energy to close nuclear plants rather than coals ones. Today Germany is still affected by the radioactive fallout (Chernobyl). For example many wild boars in Thuringia are radioactively contaminated with caesium-137. It will still take about 300 years until the radioactive caesium-137 vanishes.

A banana is radioactive as well. What is the exact negative effect compared to coal?

Don't you think it's a little short-sighted to think just in categories like black and white (i.e. coal and nuclear energy)? Coal is also very bad in my opinion. We should work towards using more renewable energy and its research. And what about reducing energy consumption?

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

#490

Post by Xylakant » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 11:03 AM UTC

stingraycharles wrote: post #459

tramav wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It boggles my mind that Germany made a great effort on renewable, and used this extra energy to close nuclear plants rather than coals ones. Today Germany is still affected by the radioactive fallout (Chernobyl). For example many wild boars in Thuringia are radioactively contaminated with caesium-137. It will still take about 300 years until the radioactive caesium-137 vanishes.

A banana is radioactive as well. What is the exact negative effect compared to coal?

I hate the banana equivalent dose. It entirely papers over the substantial difference between alpha, beta and gamma radiation, ignores where radioactive substances accumulate in the body and what effect those differences on the actual inflicted damage have. It’s a cheap stunt to dismiss any sort of reasonable debate. If you cite it in defence of any actual nuclear fallout pollution, I personally consider it as proof that you’ve just disqualified in this discussion.