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The Nuclear Option

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51–60 of 187 posts

Re: The Nuclear Option

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power is cost prohibitive. Additionally, it's hard to predict and account for that one-in-a-million catastrophe that creates a nuclear wasteland. The sample size is too small.

Nuclear power is cost prohibitive. Really, because it’s widely employed around the world. If you have some evidence that it’s “cost prohibitive” though I’d love to see it. Evidence mind you, not flat declarations devoid of substance. Additionally, it's hard to predict and account for that one-in-a-million catastrophe that creates a nuclear wasteland. The sample size is too small. Many decades and thousands of reactor…

A weaker statement than a flat out "nuclear power is cost prohibitive": current-gen nuclear power seems to be having serious cost problems, even in countries that previously successfully built out nuclear, and even where there is a relatively favorable political environment. Whether this is due to fundamental reasons or not is of course another question.

One example is the new-generation Électricité de France EPR design, where the first unit scheduled to be completed, at Flamanville, is way late and over budget. France has almost 100% nuclear power and has both a good safety and cost record historically, so the seeming lack of success of this project has dismayed many people: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-edf-flamanville/edfs-flam...

It's not quite as positive a political environment overall, but Westinghouse also had strong local and state-level support for its new unit in Georgia (the U.S. state), but ended up going bankrupt after cost overruns: https://www.ajc.com/business/power-seeks-best-path-forward-p...

Obviously cost overruns at two plants is a very small sample size, so it could be due to non-fundamental features, like severe mismanagement. But given that there aren't that many large-scale projects going on, the two biggest Western ones both running into major trouble has really hurt prospects for more funding/support. If even one of these had been a clear success, the outlook would be much better.

Re: The Nuclear Option

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC the control rods were also bizarre and had graphite bottoms, so the first part of a trip (scram) was adding reactivity. Prompt critical is prompt.

I believe the rods were graphite, just like the moderators. Of course the problem with that was that by the time they were inserted the reactor was already out of control. All the graphite rods did was burn, which certainly didn’t help matters! Worse, after a while the blocks of graphite used as the moderator also burned, and was difficult to extinguish. What they needed (other than better reactor design) was a ready…

Chernobyl didn't have a containment or shield building. Manually disabling the safety systems didn't help.

Re: The Nuclear Option

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power is cost prohibitive. Additionally, it's hard to predict and account for that one-in-a-million catastrophe that creates a nuclear wasteland. The sample size is too small.

Nuclear power is cost prohibitive. Really, because it’s widely employed around the world. If you have some evidence that it’s “cost prohibitive” though I’d love to see it. Evidence mind you, not flat declarations devoid of substance. Additionally, it's hard to predict and account for that one-in-a-million catastrophe that creates a nuclear wasteland. The sample size is too small. Many decades and thousands of reactor…

>The worst nuclear disaster, one singular in its extremity, has led to something far from a wasteland

I believe the phrase you are looking is "wildlife sanctuary". By far the biggest effect that nuclear disasters have on the environment is their function as a human repellent.

Re: The Nuclear Option

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always going to be a matter of economics.

Climate is a matter of economics though. The difference is that the cost is in the future. That's why the poster was talking about the cost of climate and if you consider it an existential crisis. I guess it also matters if you care about current costs vs future costs.

As a sidenote. I also have trouble understanding the mindset of people who argue purely on economic basis.

It seems that telling out grandchildren "Sorry you inherited a ruined climate, but we didn't want to spend the money at the time to avoid it" is a rational decision. (And hey, maybe some people think it is; but I can't)

Re: The Nuclear Option

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not the right metric. I guess that opinion comes down to whether you think Climate Change is an existential threat to our civilisation or not. If you are of the opinion that it is then costs be damned and build everything: Renewables, Storage, Nuclear. If we end up with more power than we need then we can shutdown excess or funnel that into powering carbon capture technologies if we ever get there. If you ar…

It's always going to be a matter of economics.

Not as much as you think. When countries decide that there is an existential threat that they must fight, they can mobilize enormous resources. Look at what happened during the last World War. Imagine what we could do if we decided that Global Warming is as much of a threat as Germany was in 1939.

Re: The Nuclear Option

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can get the "We cannot build them in time" part but the whole "It is not economical to build them" strikes me as a pretty crazy position to take. Uneconomical compared to the massive disruption that climate change will bring to our civilization? Are we fighting to save our future or not? Discarding a proven technology that will massively reduce our carbon emission for an unproven "We still have problems to solve ar…

Renewables will replace the most expensive fossil plants before the cheaper ones, which will make the base load price to compete with pretty hard for nuclear to match.

Right now it looks like the opposite is true. Due to a lack of storage we need more expensive gas plants instead of cheap coal plants that can't follow demand as quickly.

Re: The Nuclear Option

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do have a very simple large-scale storage system that's already in use across the world: pumping water uphill. It's just not as economical as rain when you factor in the efficiency losses from generating and transferring power twice.

And pumping water uphill is a regional solution that requires specific regional geography, to me that does not class as "scalable". I should be more specific in that to me "scalable" is a solution that can be deployed anywhere without require specific regional properties. Maybe you think this is unneeded and that a lot of region specific solutions can cover the storage requirements. However another posted did point o…

Unless there is big improvements in battery tech I don't see it as a solution. Lithium batteries have their own environmental problems and die after 10 years.

Pumped hydro requires the geography, building new capacity tends to flood large areas and release huge amounts of greenhouse gases initially.

Simply lifting weights on cranes or rail tracks is looking more efficient and can be adapted anywhere. It will probably win out in many cases.

Re: The Nuclear Option

#58
What stinks about nuclear is it got too big too fast. There was a massive buildout of these 1950s-1960s reactor designs, before we had time to fully realize the full cost lifecycle of said designs, and their failure modes. I guess it didn't help at the time we were facing nuclear obliteration between two super powers :/

Still I really wish people could differentiate the risks behind a PWR, BWR, Liquid Metal cooled, the AP-2000 design, and a thorium cycle. They're all kind of lumped together unfortunately.

Re: The Nuclear Option

#59
post #18

Just about every builder and operator of large nuclear fleets of reactors have all outright said or implied by their actions that nuclear is uneconomical vs renewable power options. The massive bulge of capital and scheduling needed points to humans not being able to build a next generation of nuclear plants in time to head off the worst climate change, and renewable energy sources being both faster and cheaper to bu…

I can get the "We cannot build them in time" part but the whole "It is not economical to build them" strikes me as a pretty crazy position to take. Uneconomical compared to the massive disruption that climate change will bring to our civilization? Are we fighting to save our future or not? Discarding a proven technology that will massively reduce our carbon emission for an unproven "We still have problems to solve ar…

[deleted]

Re: The Nuclear Option

#60
post #9
post #5

Sigh. I've been arguing this for so long, and gave up about 5 years ago. I can't think of a more scalable way than fission to combat carbon, yet it won't happen for so many reasons. * There are too many solar and wind success stories to point to. "Why can't NYC be like Scotland with wind power?!" You start to list the reasons and the response is "we can accomplish it if we put our minds to it!". It's an endless cycle…

I agree with most of your points, however: most of the accidents have more to do with flaws in regulations than mistakes from the nuclear engineers. Chernobyl, which is arguably the worst and most iconic nuclear disaster of all times was mostly caused by a severe violation of procedures. When you take into account he amount of energy that has been produced by nuclear power since the 50s, I'd say we have a pretty good…

Chernobyl was a "military reactor", ie. could produce plutonium. Normal reactors don't even have the same failure mode possible. So you can blame the accident on the cold war or something, not nuclear in general.

http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter7.html

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