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

nytimes.com

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

#511

Post by wtallis »

Xylakant wrote: post #490
stingraycharles wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think you've somehow ended up with the exact opposite understanding of what the banana equivalent does is intended for. It serves to call attention to the fact that measurable radioactivity is not necessarily dangerous enough to worry about, and that an actual safety assessment requires more detail than just pointing out that something is radioactive.

Similarly, pointing out that there is a measurable amount of Cs-137 in wildlife in Germany is not a statement about safety. More context and more quantification is required to make it anything other than sensationalism.

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

#512

Post by wtallis »

pfdietz wrote: post #503
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…

| Because you can't run steel mills and other big energy consumers with solar or wind. Ah, the Argument from Bad Engineering. If you stop and think real hard I'm sure you could imagine many ways to do this. And they'd be cheaper than trying to run steel mills off nuclear reactors.

Ok, then: What's you're preferred form of industrial-scale energy storage?

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

#513

Post by jki275 »

BluSyn wrote: post #354
rocqua wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is storage a solved problem yet? Afaik, dams are the only viable option, and not universally available. I thought batteries just weren't there yet. Especially if you take wear cycles into account.

Batteries are much farther along than most realize, and decreasing in cost rapidly. 2019 will see the first GWh-scale battery installations (plural, as in multiple of them). Grid-scale lithium-ion battery storage is at the beginning of an exponential growth curve.

What is the environmental cost of mining that lithium?

How much lithium is there, actually?

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

#514

Post by jki275 »

rocqua wrote: post #322
BluSyn wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody gets it! It makes absolutely no sense to start building nuclear now. Even if you could guarantee 10 year build time at a fixed cost today (which you can't), by the time it is operational solar+storage will be even more economical than it is today. The cost curves are simply too favorable for any private market to favor nuclear over solar currently. Everyone in this thread keeps talking about the technology,…

Is storage a solved problem yet? Afaik, dams are the only viable option, and not universally available. I thought batteries just weren't there yet. Especially if you take wear cycles into account.

It’s not, and likely never will be.

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

#515

Post by Krasnol »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #149
Krasnol wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Old? Unlocking the energy of the nucleus is certainly our most recent energy resource, by any measure. Old as in "outdated". > hydro dam failures have killed 100k in one incident Yeah flooding are surely more dramatic than a slow death through cancer, I give you that...and it's such a good selling point isn't it? You just can't see it or put a finger on it. Some numbers are far less dramatic then a flood. Too bad N…

Nuclear hype is timeless, it's caused by the fact that there are 2 million times more Joules in each kg of uranium than in any chemical fuel. This natural resource is astounding, and it's a very human thing to try to put it to work for the good of humankind. Anti-nuclear media is also status quo. The industry has been dealing with it for decades. I don't think the HBO thing is going to tip the scale too much. There a…

> Nuclear hype is timeless

The only timeless thing about nuclear is the the waste. Something many future generations can have to be pissed about us.

Nobody was talking about nuclear for years before that new hype started a few months ago and suddenly it's allover the place. Come on...

> Thus we have a public education issue.

No we don't and painting the opposition to the hype as stupid or uneducated only hurts nuclear. It's been a constant mistake by the nuclear lobby throughout their history and it's one more reason why the hype will fail in the end. The lobby can scream as loud as they want it won't be louder as the rapid development in renewables and the unwillingness of the whole world to invest into a dead technology nobody outside the hype wants. The investors jumped off already years ago. Get over it.

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

#516

Post by Amygaz »

lispm wrote: post #413
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 find it puzzling that proponents of nuclear technology make various claims without any calculations to back that up. 'a vital tool agains global warming'? What does that mean in numbers? How many nuclear power plants of what types for what amount of effort would be built in what timeframe for to make any sizeable contribution? How would it work? A single reactor in the west is >10bn $ and takes a decade or more to…

There isn’t a single line in OP’s post that isn’t wrong. He gets the costs wrong, he gets the deployment wrong, he gets efficiencies wrong, he get political stories wrong. If a post is not going to get downvoted, HN should at least have a way to label it as incorrect.

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

#517

Post by imtringued »

kortilla wrote: post #334
wiggler00m wrote: post #207

Renewable energy is cheaper than nuclear, or will be imminently. Proponents of nuclear tend to ignore the long-run costs associated with nuclear (eg. waste transport and storage), and the potential for cost blowouts due to acute disasters like Fukushima (estimated cost to taxpayers: USD $100 Billion). The fact tax money is going towards Fukushima highlights another problem with nuclear power: the agency problem. The…

Proponents of renewables fail to take into account the need for baseload. It’s nowhere near being cheaper when you take into account the over provisioning and storage costs required to actually compete with the reliability of nuclear (and coal/gas).

The planet doesn't care about intermittency. It only cares about total emissions.

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

#518

Post by orbifold »

lispm wrote: post #413
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 find it puzzling that proponents of nuclear technology make various claims without any calculations to back that up. 'a vital tool agains global warming'? What does that mean in numbers? How many nuclear power plants of what types for what amount of effort would be built in what timeframe for to make any sizeable contribution? How would it work? A single reactor in the west is >10bn $ and takes a decade or more to…

People have done these calculations. They come out in favor of nuclear in terms of area efficiency and price per kilowatt hour. It is just that politically it is a hard sell in a lot of countries.

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

#519

Post by pytester »

belorn wrote: post #424
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's nothing like that - although it might be like refusing to fly in a 737 MAX. First, any coal analogy is out of date. Only the coal lobby wants to continue burning coal. Everyone else is like "No, that's stupid and self-harming, let's just not." Secondly, plane crashes don't make entire areas uninhabitable for long periods. Third, the problem with nuclear isn't the engineering, it's the management. The nuclear…

> Only the coal lobby wants to continue burning coal. Everyone else is like "No, that's stupid and self-harming, let's just not." How I wish that was true. What they actually do is preferring to not burn coal, but when the choice is between blackouts or burning coal for power even the most environmentalist governments in Europe prefer burning coal. As an example, when the choice is between being cold in Stockholm (Sw…

>How I wish that was true.

>What they actually do is preferring to not burn coal, but when the choice is between blackouts or burning coal for power even the most environmentalist governments in Europe prefer burning coal.

It is true.

Germany has already built its last coal fired power plant and has already mandated the closure of all 84 plants by 2020.

Germany is already shifting to generating by renewables, demand shifting to deal with fluctuations in the cost of power, overproduction and pumped water / batteries to make up the rest of the difference.

>It is a bit strange political situation where those in favor of renewable do not want a full ban of burning coal, gas and oil, while those in favor of nuclear do want it.

It'll happen eventually. Nuclear is in no position to make it happen any quicker than renewables are though.

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

#520

Post by _ph_ »

godelski wrote: post #132
detaro wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's for a 200g portion of (relatively highly contaminated) mushrooms, not a timescale.

I'm going to save everyone some time here. acidburnNSA is a reactor scientist (he pops up in most of these nuclear threads). He's leading you on because your information is bad. Fact is that food didn't get to dangerous levels. (I'd trust the domain expert) Pulling from __ph__'s link (and a google translate). > The consumption of 200 grams of mushrooms containing 3,000 becquerels of cesium-137 per kilogram results in…

The website I linked is the federal agency for nuclear safety.

Depends entirely what you mean by "dangerous levels". It is contaminated enough, that mushrooms from the forests are not allowed to be sold as food. Yes, a single serving won't have a significant impact on your health, but it is recommended not to eat much of them. The situation is worse with some wild boar, which eat a lot of those mushrooms and accumulate cesioum over many years.

And perhaps a relevant information: the Bavarian forests are about 600 miles from the Chernobyl site.

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