Ultra Safe Nuclear • Hacker News Board

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#51

Post by beders » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:58 PM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #10

xibalba wrote: post #3

Assuming nuclear truly can be ultra safe, how do you convince a public that has seen Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima to get on board? Particularly when the "competition" (solar, wind, etc) has such a strong tailwind.

First, point out that Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, and Fukushima amount to extremely small numbers of deaths relative to the power these plants generated. For three mile island and Fukushima this figure is zero among the public. Less than two dozen among the plant workers (all of which died due to the hydrogen explosion not radiation). The areas that were evacuated are now safe to return. Chernobyl was worse, but th Sov…

> First, point out that Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, and Fukushima amount to extremely small numbers of deaths relative to the power these plants generated.

I keep seeing justifications like that and it makes me want to puke. First of all: The total number of victims is unknown and it is still rising. Even for Chernobyl.

Second: It costs tens of billions of dollars to clean up these messes. Paid for by the cow you can milk forever: tax payers.

In short, if the goal is decarbonization wind and solar are the only game in town. Add medium and long-term storage to the mix and there's nothing stopping us from a truly green future other than politics.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#52

Post by zaroth » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:58 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #34

nimish wrote: post #18

Safety is no longer the reason Nuclear is not worth it. The sun is a giant, free nuclear fusion plant in the sky. We can capture 1/5th of its output per square meter. For free! The wind -- caused by solar heating -- also generates free power. The cost of harvesting it is now so low, and will always continue to decline as any technology will, that any fuel-based generation mechanism is going to be rendered uneconomic…

> Investing in any such generator needs to be for other reasons like land scarcity. Yeah, there's no upper limit on energy usage. In several decades, mark my words, we will have a solar panel related deforestation problem.

This is mathematically impossible. The entire world could be powered with 200,000 square miles of solar panels.

Since 1990 we’ve lost ~2.5x that amount of land to deforestation, approximately zero of which was due to building solar.

We have a deforestation problem, but it has nothing to do with solar.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#53

Post by adrianN » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #34

nimish wrote: post #18

Safety is no longer the reason Nuclear is not worth it. The sun is a giant, free nuclear fusion plant in the sky. We can capture 1/5th of its output per square meter. For free! The wind -- caused by solar heating -- also generates free power. The cost of harvesting it is now so low, and will always continue to decline as any technology will, that any fuel-based generation mechanism is going to be rendered uneconomic…

> Investing in any such generator needs to be for other reasons like land scarcity. Yeah, there's no upper limit on energy usage. In several decades, mark my words, we will have a solar panel related deforestation problem.

That is extremely unlikely. You need to cover single digit percentages of the world with solar panels (depending on latitude) to cover all our energy needs.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#54

Post by mdorazio » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #33

nimish wrote: post #18

Safety is no longer the reason Nuclear is not worth it. The sun is a giant, free nuclear fusion plant in the sky. We can capture 1/5th of its output per square meter. For free! The wind -- caused by solar heating -- also generates free power. The cost of harvesting it is now so low, and will always continue to decline as any technology will, that any fuel-based generation mechanism is going to be rendered uneconomic…

The glaring problem (pun intended) with solar and wind is that the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow and we don't have a good way to store energy for those sunless and windless intervals.

We do have a good way to store energy. It's called batteries, they are already cost effective in several use cases, and their cost is going down about 5% per year.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#55

Post by V6HBGNQHU » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

nimish wrote: post #18

Safety is no longer the reason Nuclear is not worth it. The sun is a giant, free nuclear fusion plant in the sky. We can capture 1/5th of its output per square meter. For free! The wind -- caused by solar heating -- also generates free power. The cost of harvesting it is now so low, and will always continue to decline as any technology will, that any fuel-based generation mechanism is going to be rendered uneconomic…

Land usage is a big factor. Most people are interested in solar because they care about the environment so taken up vast swathes of land for all the solar panels, destroying habits, is counter productive. Another downside of solar or wind is that it is intermittent and thus will require massive battery systems or alternative conventional power plants to provide energy the rest of the time.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#56

Post by beders » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:00 PM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #17

grawprog wrote: post #8

So why has nuclear waste become a thing that's not mentioned anymore? It was a pretty big thing in the 90's, now it seems to get brushed under the rug for all this 'safe' nuclear power marketing. It's mot just meltdowns and containment breaches that are a problem with nuclear power. None of the renewable alternatives produce radioactive waste that needs to be stored and dealt with. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rad…

Because it's not a problem. There's actually very little of it. It occupies a volume the footprint of a football field and 10 yards high [1]. Storing it is pretty foolproof: bury it in an area with no aquifer. The main risk of contamination is getting into the groundwater. If there's no groundwater the risk of contamination is eliminated even if the containers decay over time. And lastly, it doesn't make sense to bur…

> Because it's not a problem.

Have you seen John Oliver's piece about that and can you point out the flaws?

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#57

Post by RobertoG » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:00 PM UTC

Konohamaru wrote: post #35

nimish wrote: post #18

Safety is no longer the reason Nuclear is not worth it. The sun is a giant, free nuclear fusion plant in the sky. We can capture 1/5th of its output per square meter. For free! The wind -- caused by solar heating -- also generates free power. The cost of harvesting it is now so low, and will always continue to decline as any technology will, that any fuel-based generation mechanism is going to be rendered uneconomic…

Nuclear power provides enough megawatts for creating sustainable, electricity based heavy industry. If we're going to become zero carbon, that means we also need a system to fuel steel foundries, chemical manufacuring, and cement mixers without coal.

Not that I oppose to nuclear in principle, I only wanted to point that for heavy industry there are clean alternatives in development using mirrors.

https://heliogen.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21955247

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#58

Post by dangerface » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

V6HBGNQHU wrote: post #55

nimish wrote: post #18

Safety is no longer the reason Nuclear is not worth it. The sun is a giant, free nuclear fusion plant in the sky. We can capture 1/5th of its output per square meter. For free! The wind -- caused by solar heating -- also generates free power. The cost of harvesting it is now so low, and will always continue to decline as any technology will, that any fuel-based generation mechanism is going to be rendered uneconomic…

Land usage is a big factor. Most people are interested in solar because they care about the environment so taken up vast swathes of land for all the solar panels, destroying habits, is counter productive. Another downside of solar or wind is that it is intermittent and thus will require massive battery systems or alternative conventional power plants to provide energy the rest of the time.

If you are short on space for your solar panels put them on your roof, problem solved. There are cheaper better ways of storing electricity like water stores, and this is what they use not batteries, they have never used batteries thats just a Tesla thing.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#59

Post by karpierz » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:03 PM UTC

VBprogrammer wrote: post #4

I once wondered if it would be possible to have a nuclear power station which operated subcritically with extra neutrons injected from an outside source. The advantage I saw was that turning off the outside source would instantly stop the reaction, no worrying about articulating fuel rods and poison injectors. Unfortunately decay heat is still an issue. Turns out it's potentially a thing but has some technical challe…

How would you turn off the outside source, and how would the mechanism differ from existing safety features?

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#60

Post by ceilingcorner » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:03 PM UTC

I find it a little odd that a site called Hacker News is so bullish on nuclear power. Could there be anything less hacker than a centralized, exclusively government owned and operated source of power?

No thanks. I’d rather put more resources into solar, wind, and other sources of power that don’t depend on the government to not explode and irradiate the immediate area for hundreds of years.