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Nuclear energy is clean

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Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#51

Post by bob1029 »

bad_alloc wrote: post #9

We saw another downside of nuclear power in Ukraine: When Russian troops attacked towards Enerhodar and there was shelling in the area the safety of the reactor could not be guaranteed. In the end, containment can be guaranteed w.r.t to internal accidents but no facility can ever be safe from outside issues like war, natural disaster or politics. Solar has less single points of failure and if it fails not much happen…

> Solar has less single points of failure and if it fails not much happens

On the surface this is very true. However, types of solar have caveats that do not manifest until you have a certain amount of utilization in the grid. Photovoltaics do not contribute to inertia. This is the Newtonian concept that ensures instantaneous voltage stability separate from any active demand/generation management functions. The more inertia you have, the more work it takes to speed up or slow down the grid.

Hypothetically, a grid that is 50% PV solar and 50% others would experience severe stability issues if the other class of generation were to be substantially impacted (i.e. your big-bang-for-buck military targets).

You cannot run a power grid on PV solar alone. It just won't work at scale.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#52

Post by RaitoBezarius »

Flankk wrote: post #37
anonporridge wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the few good arguments against nuclear, especially large installations that produce a huge percentage of a region's power. Even if you can design it in such a way that an external attack is very unlikely to cause a meltdown, it's a juicy and easy target for an adversary to cripple your electricity production. A few dozen well placed missiles might be all you need to take an entire nation that's heavily…

Nuclear power plants create large amounts of waste that remain radioactive for thousands of years. In the United States, most nuclear waste is stored on site at the plant. This is because there is simply nowhere else to put it. Uranium is a natural material and will eventually run out, much like fossil fuels. In other words, cross nuclear off the list of sustainable energy. Solar energy would be the most obvious sust…

No post body was provided.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#53

Post by criley2 »

bad_alloc wrote: post #9

We saw another downside of nuclear power in Ukraine: When Russian troops attacked towards Enerhodar and there was shelling in the area the safety of the reactor could not be guaranteed. In the end, containment can be guaranteed w.r.t to internal accidents but no facility can ever be safe from outside issues like war, natural disaster or politics. Solar has less single points of failure and if it fails not much happen…

It's a weird argument to say "Nuclear does this, solar does not" as if the two are against one another and you are comparing them.

Here, I'll do the same thing: "Nuclear produces power 24/7, while solar can only usefully produce power for ~8 hours a day, or 1/3 of the day".

Sure, for that 1/3 of the day, solar does not have political problems like being shut down for danger. However, for 2/3 of the day, nuclear does not have the physics problem of being useless.

Each solution has pros and cons and I want my power to come from both.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#54

Post by otikik »

Flankk wrote: post #37
anonporridge wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the few good arguments against nuclear, especially large installations that produce a huge percentage of a region's power. Even if you can design it in such a way that an external attack is very unlikely to cause a meltdown, it's a juicy and easy target for an adversary to cripple your electricity production. A few dozen well placed missiles might be all you need to take an entire nation that's heavily…

Nuclear power plants create large amounts of waste that remain radioactive for thousands of years. In the United States, most nuclear waste is stored on site at the plant. This is because there is simply nowhere else to put it. Uranium is a natural material and will eventually run out, much like fossil fuels. In other words, cross nuclear off the list of sustainable energy. Solar energy would be the most obvious sust…

Large amounts of low radioactive waste that is safe to discard in 1 year.

The highly radioactive waste that lasts thousands of years is actually quite small.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#55

Post by tehsauce »

lioeters wrote: post #35
tehsauce wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the numbers though. Fossil fuels kill many people every year, while nuclear accidents are almost entirely hypothetical. The point of the article is to show that fears like the ones expressed above just aren’t supported by the data.

> nuclear accidents are almost entirely hypothetical Nothing to see here. > Serious nuclear power plant accidents include the Fukushima nuclear disaster (2011), the Chernobyl disaster (1986), the Three Mile Island accident (1979), and the SL-1 accident (1961).

All of those accidents combined killed less than 10% of the people that are killed by fossil fuel pollution every single year. Most nuclear accidents are entirely hypothetical.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#56

Post by timr »

anonporridge wrote: post #18
bad_alloc wrote: post #9

We saw another downside of nuclear power in Ukraine: When Russian troops attacked towards Enerhodar and there was shelling in the area the safety of the reactor could not be guaranteed. In the end, containment can be guaranteed w.r.t to internal accidents but no facility can ever be safe from outside issues like war, natural disaster or politics. Solar has less single points of failure and if it fails not much happen…

This is one of the few good arguments against nuclear, especially large installations that produce a huge percentage of a region's power. Even if you can design it in such a way that an external attack is very unlikely to cause a meltdown, it's a juicy and easy target for an adversary to cripple your electricity production. A few dozen well placed missiles might be all you need to take an entire nation that's heavily…

> it's a juicy and easy target for an adversary to cripple your electricity production. A few dozen well placed missiles might be all you need to take an entire nation that's heavily nuclear dependent to its knees.

This is true for any other system of centralized energy production, including, notably, the one we have right now.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#57

Post by lmm »

Flocular wrote: post #46

A good estimate to gauge the societal investment needed to generate electricity in a certain way, is to look at its total cost in dollar/MWh. Wikipedia has a nice graphic prepared for just that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#... (which ignores externalized costs like CO2 or nuclear waste) You can see in there that nuclear has triple the cost compared to solar. As we need to replace as mu…

And how does that compare to the business-as-usual shutdowns of solar (every night, cloudy days, winter as a whole) which unlike nuclear are highly correlated between separate plants?

If storage is cheap enough then solar will be an important part of the mix. But unless you have the right geography for geothermal or hydro (which probably means flooding a bigger area than the chernobyl exclusion zone before you've even started, but leaving that aside), nuclear is still the only viable option for clean, reliable baseline power. It's not an either/or, we should be building both.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#58

Post by otikik »

peppertree wrote: post #14
bad_alloc wrote: post #9

We saw another downside of nuclear power in Ukraine: When Russian troops attacked towards Enerhodar and there was shelling in the area the safety of the reactor could not be guaranteed. In the end, containment can be guaranteed w.r.t to internal accidents but no facility can ever be safe from outside issues like war, natural disaster or politics. Solar has less single points of failure and if it fails not much happen…

Nuclear energy is safe but humans are not.

We have people dying of breathing complications right now and we have so much CO2 in our atmosphere that we're changing the weather.

We need nuclear energy precisely because humans are not safe.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#59

Post by SapporoChris »

bad_alloc wrote: post #9

We saw another downside of nuclear power in Ukraine: When Russian troops attacked towards Enerhodar and there was shelling in the area the safety of the reactor could not be guaranteed. In the end, containment can be guaranteed w.r.t to internal accidents but no facility can ever be safe from outside issues like war, natural disaster or politics. Solar has less single points of failure and if it fails not much happen…

You do have a relevant point. In time of war safety of many things cannot be guaranteed. However, I promise you, for the Ukrainians the bigger issue is not the reactor. It is a concern, but it is not the major concern.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#60

Post by more_corn »

Except when it isn’t. Granted it’s cleaner than coal and gas. But there’s the pesky problem of waste, plants that cost billions, decom is not cheap, easy or clean. Oh and the financial incentives to operate longer and cheaper than is safe.
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