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

#491

Post by imtringued » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 11:05 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…

Intermittency is completely irrelevant because reductions in CO2 can still happen if you switch from coal baseload to load following gas which produces half as much Co2 and is only used when renewables don't produce energy.

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

#492

Post by lispm » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 11:10 AM UTC

kuzehanka wrote: post #484

aurelwu wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

just claiming that without any numbers and without scenarios to back it up will convince no one.

You'll need to answer real practical questions like the UK currently faces: who will build the proposed reactors and who will pay how much for it. It's not like this is an easy question, just check the news the UK from the past few years, with Hitachi and Toshiba giving up.

France's state owned nuclear industry builds another plant in the UK - with a proposed cost of 20bn pounds... The decision for this reactor took almost ten years.

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

#493

Post by imtringued » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 11:10 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.

It's not inhabitable but if you have a choice between living in a contaminated area or a non contaminated area then you will always choose the latter. The animals ib chernobyl actually thrive because of the lack of human intervention.

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

#494

Post by j16sdiz » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 11:11 AM UTC

doe88 wrote: post #465

Gondolin wrote: post #400

I am flabbergasted that some commenters here argue against nuclear because of waste and accidents, while ignoring that - coal produce radioactive waste too - it kills a lot more persons (without taking into account global warning) due to air pollution - the economic cost of nuclear may be underestimated, but this is nothing compared to the economic cost of global warming. Renewable (wind and solar) are extremely impo…

I'm pro-puclear energy, but I also have enough experience and cynicism in life to also know that the biggest danger of nuclear is the human factor itself. As long as men and women will be men and women, there will be errors, malice, corruption, and all kind of factors that will affect our safety. Applying strict measures and processes will limit these risks but the current opacity of this industry is already a bad st…

Nuclear energy need long term commitment. You can't simply shut it down by stop funding it.

This is not something I trust our government can do.

Other then that, nuclear is very clean and safe.

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

#495

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

icelancer wrote: post #201

pfdietz wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advantage of MSRs is not that they can't melt down (or that they could use thorium; that's vastly overhyped), it's that there's no volatile material in the containment building. The containment of a LWR has to be large because it fills with radioactive steam in an accident. It has to be able to contain this steam, which means at least a certain amount of structure to withstand its pressure. But MSRs don't use wat…

> By that time, renewables will have marched down their experience curves to an economic position that will likely be unassailable. You're posting this and statements like it all over this thread without a lot of supporting evidence that indicates very strong probability of it happening. Hacker News currently has a highly-ranked article on the main page regarding how there are massive battery and energy storage probl…

The reason to be optimistic about renewables is they have a proven track record of improvement. These experience curve effects are somewhat mysterious, but they've been shown to occur in a wide variety of industries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects#The_e...

Solar has declined in price by 20% (or perhaps a bit more) for each doubling of cumulative production. This empirical observation has been sustained over a history during which solar's cost has declined by more than two orders of magnitude. Wind has showed similar learning effects.

Nuclear, on the other hand, has not shown consistent experience effects (or, arguably, any, if one discard as unreliable the numbers from South Korea).

Talk is cheap, but renewables have actually demonstrated, in the real world, that they get cheaper as they are built out (and, if anything, the learning rate has increased recently). Nuclear proponents are hanging the future of their technology on the assumption, unsupported by much of anything, that these real world trends will suddenly switch places.

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

#496

Post by pfdietz » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 11:14 AM UTC

loeg wrote: post #152

pfdietz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. If renewables are cheap, then batteries and other storage will just serve to reduce the fraction of time renewables are not covering demand (why charge the batteries with nuclear if cheaper renewable power is available?) The smaller this fraction is, the worse nuclear does economically.

Renewables (and batteries) simply aren't that cheap. Even ignoring externalities like disposing of EOL solar panels.

Not yet. But if you extrapolate out the cost of solar. using the historical experience curve, as it builds toward tens of TW of installed global capacity it could get there.

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

#497

Post by imtringued » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 11:19 AM UTC

scarygliders wrote: post #128

Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant? Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was because of one design flaw... Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor buildings. DERP. Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not s…

Of course it's possible to make nuclear safer. But how do you make the dumb humans that design them safer?

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

#498

Post by pfdietz » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 11:20 AM UTC

sanxiyn wrote: post #208

pfdietz wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Korea's numbers lack transparency, and I believe they assume very low interest rates (that is, they socialize the financial risk.) Is there a POSSIBILITY of much cheaper nuclear? Sure, anything is POSSIBLE. Is it LIKELY? Experience says "no". And surely it's not possible in the US right now. Who is going to suddenly build these much cheaper nukes here, the Nuclear Power Plant Fairy? The SMR companies are not in…

> Who is going to suddenly build these much cheaper nukes here, the Nuclear Power Plant Fairy? There actually is a simple solution: follow UAE and let Koreans build standardized APR-1400.

"Robin Mills, CEO of Dubai-based energy consultancy Qamar Energy, has projected that Barakah will supply energy at a cost of roughly 11 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour, assuming the startup delays are not substantial. (All four reactors are scheduled to be operating by 2021.) Mills regards that as inexpensive for low-carbon power that can be ramped up as demand increases. But solar is now even cheaper in the Gulf region, where the same intense sun that keeps the seawater hot puts solar power plants on steroids. “Solar has become the lowest-cost source of electricity compared to pretty much anything,” says Mills."

https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/the-united-arab-emi...

At the same time, solar PPAs in the US are falling so fast it's hard to keep track of the record holder. Here's one from last year for $0.023/kWh.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/nevada-beat-ari...

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

#499

Post by aurelwu » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 11:25 AM UTC

kuzehanka wrote: post #484

aurelwu wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

the energy density would be a factor if we had any actual space issues. But the area needed for solar and wind is not what is the problem. I agree with you that it is an emergency where not enough action is taken, but even then why not go for 100% Renewables (with Battery, Power-To-Gas, Power-To-Liquid etc. as storage) when that is cheaper than nuclear.

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

#500

Post by Gravityloss » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 11:26 AM UTC

The 1.6 gigawatt Olkiluoto 3 EPR has cost 5.5 billion and the building has taken 14 years so far (it's not ready yet). And this is happening in a high functioning low corruption country.

The lightbulb wasn't the real invention - it was the lightbulb making machine that had the real impact on the world.

The same way, we need a way to safely, quickly and cheaply build and operate nuclear power plants. The way might be small modular reactors, something like 200 megawatt sized. They can be built in well controlled circumstances in a factory. Installation on site should be fast. Currently, a nuclear power plant construction requires lots of welding and concrete casting. In these projects it is slow and expensive because of extra safety needs and regulations. On site construction should be minimized instead.

One could run multiple smaller reactors in one site so safety areas would not be greatly increased. Emergency and maintenance shutdowns would have smaller impact on the grid than currently with multiple gigawatt sizes.

With smaller reactors, innovation and experimentation should also be a lot faster. If you build one reactor every 20 years, you don't get a lot of incremental innovation.