Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#541

Post by danhor » Sun, May 22, 2022, 2:57 PM UTC

stepanhruda wrote: post #500

nycdatasci wrote: post #496

The Lazard report cited is two years old. There’s an updated version here: https://www.lazard.com/media/451881/lazards-levelized-cost-o... Better visualization of the key chart here: https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2022/~/media/Im...

Solar/wind will always fluctuate - nuclear can provide a guaranteed output to smoothen the need for massive batteries.

Most nuclear power plants are designed for constant power output, so they still need some other thing (like batteries?).

Some are engineered for changing their output power quicker, but that means higher costs (lower usage), more complicated design and for short periods (<30 Minutes) some other energy source/sink while the power is adjusted.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#542

Post by runarberg » Sun, May 22, 2022, 3:15 PM UTC

icelancer wrote: post #294

runarberg wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not an expert but I feel like there is an actual merit behind these regulations. I mean I just did a quick google for "Hanford Cancer Rate" and immediately see stuff like: > study shows that Hanford workers were 11 times more likely to develop mesothelioma, a cancer of the lungs strongly tied to asbestos exposure, than in the general population. I know that Hanford was an exceptionally bad Nuclear Plant, but it i…

> mesothelioma What does this have to do with nuclear energy? This was almost certainly due to asbestos, which affected tons of other industries equally.

I literally just took the first search result. If you go down the list there is no shortage of studies linking cancer to nearby residents and workers. E.g. the same study which found the mesothelioma at 11× also found multiple myeloma at 3× the risk along the same workers. My second search result shows a study linking thyroid cancer to downwind residence.

Cancer risk is not the only thing that made Hanford a terrible site. They also systematically leaked radioactive water into the Columbia river for over 25 years. The cleanup effort is now one the the biggest employer in the region and the cost is estimated at $113.6 billion

I would expect that if the nuclear industry wasn’t as regulated that we would see numbers like these (including the deaths by asbestos) throughout the country.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#543

Post by teslaberri » Sun, May 22, 2022, 3:16 PM UTC

Having Studied this for decades, It is on purpose and through sheer incompetence.

1) the 'greens' in the 60's were authentic but then they were co-opted by fossil fuel and military industrial complex that didn't WANT competitive nuclear power construction industry.

2) corruption and incompetence: unions killing big construction in general. when is the last major water project...dam or otherwise (alaskan water pipeline project planned since 1950's) that the u.s. was able to pull off. ?

3) conspiracy: the only thing really stopping nuclear power being built all over the west , and being built properly in the east ( there is a construction explosion in india/china) ---is proper spent fuel reprocessing.

nuclear spent fuel is the biggest impediment to building plants. and despite how seemingly simply the problem would be to solve if you threw enough money and regulatory power at it----it is still 'unsolved'. this is ridiculous. and the solution is not 'thorium' or other as of yet unproven technologies. it's just 'processing' the waste in any number of existing processes--that are feasible if the engineering is built out. but it's not.

the opposite. yucca mountain used the idea of 'burying the fuel' to steal money for skunkworks in a tunnel, or just for more tunnels.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#544

Post by marcosdumay » Sun, May 22, 2022, 3:30 PM UTC

holoduke wrote: post #338

jillesvangurp wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany can't wave a magic wand and switch off Russian imports overnight. But they did just commit a few hundred billion to accelerate their plans to get rid of coal and gas based generation. That's a direct consequence of the Ukrainian situation. Like the US, Germany was overly depending on cheap gas until recently. Now that it has to import the gas in liquid form from the US (and a few other places), it's going to…

And those plans will be reconsidered in 5 years from now. Cheap Russian gas will likely flow again. And don't forget Ukrainian recent found giant gas reserves. One of the reasons for this conflict.

After you invest a ton of money into a sustainable solution, the one thing you won't do is invest all that money again replacing it with a temporary one.

If the war lasts for long, that gas can easily become uneconomical.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#545

Post by LegitShady » Sun, May 22, 2022, 3:32 PM UTC

cnlevy wrote: post #223

LegitShady wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in service of the public good. being in service of the public good is not offering a service. Their job is to regulate industry, not offer it a service. If you want a service you hire someone to fulfill it. The US government created the 'service' but not for industry, but for the regulation of industry. The 'service' isn't offered to industry for the good of industry. It's the opposite of a normal understanding of…

At home, I have a water pressure regulator. It came welded shut by the manufacturer because, no water flowing at all means no risk of overpressure at all. Regulation doesn't means only hindering the industry, but accompanying its development safely through overseeing.

now you're doing the same conflating words game with the word "regulator" as if a regulator on a pipe is the same as a regulatory agency.

Can you not just make a logical persuasive argument that doesn't rely on conflating two things that aren't the same?

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#546

Post by marcosdumay » Sun, May 22, 2022, 3:41 PM UTC

concordDance wrote: post #377

arinlen wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apparently , wind+solar don't work at night (...) This line of argument is either disingenuous or ignorant. https://m.dw.com/en/new-energy-storage-facilities-in-high-de... https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-storage

Here's what types of storage we have available and their costs and benefits: https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2019/07/f65/Stora... Depending on how reliable you need your energy you'll need various energy storage mixes. Judging by the uk, wind can spend an entire month producing at 15% of it's normal output and can spend days at 3%. So you need a LOT of storage if you want to be sure the lights stay on. In…

There have been nearly no investment on energy storage in our history (for very obvious reasons). Thus, any such report done with information collected by looking at history is prone to be completely wrong.

(And yes, we are going to need a lot of storage. On amounts close to 1/3 of our daily generation capacity. We also need some long-term and transportable solutions. And yes, there are currently no options on the market, for very obvious reasons. All of those can be done.)

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#547

Post by runarberg » Sun, May 22, 2022, 3:44 PM UTC

rich_sasha wrote: post #318

runarberg wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not an expert but I feel like there is an actual merit behind these regulations. I mean I just did a quick google for "Hanford Cancer Rate" and immediately see stuff like: > study shows that Hanford workers were 11 times more likely to develop mesothelioma, a cancer of the lungs strongly tied to asbestos exposure, than in the general population. I know that Hanford was an exceptionally bad Nuclear Plant, but it i…

Just going off your quote, I’d say asbestos exposure has little to do with radiation exposure? I’d imagine where there is radiation, there may also be asbestos, but that’s about it. How many people working in that facility, too? Without ignoring safe working environments, his is a somewhat rare cancer and making precise statements about incidence may be tricky. Finally, regardless of any of this, I’d probably rather…

> I’d probably rather work at a nuclear plant than a coal mine or oil platform.

For what it’s worth. You might only be saying that because the nuclear industry is regulated. Nuclear workers aren’t dying of new asbestos exposures any more (but the would be barring regulations). The coal and the oil industry are notorious for their lax regulations. Environmental disasters and bad working conditions are aplenty.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#548

Post by marcosdumay » Sun, May 22, 2022, 3:55 PM UTC

jiggawatts wrote: post #378

Maursault wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except, it was never the regulations. A nuclear power plant costs between $6B - $9B to build, before it generates any electricity, that is just the construction cost these days for a 1100MW plant Regulatory costs for a nuclear power plant will range between $7M - $15M annually. Do the math: it is definitely not the regulations. Any time someone complains about regulations, you know there is a Republican agenda. We ne…

This is disingenuous. A nuclear power plant is "just" a steel cylinder in a concrete building, attached to a very ordinary steam turbine hall and a set of transformers. The expensive part is not the building! That steel is not some unobtanium, and while the concrete is the highest grade, it's not $billions expensive. The fuel pellets are surprisingly cheap also. That's... kind-of the point! You're not burning thousan…

> A nuclear power plant is "just" a steel cylinder in a concrete building, attached to a very ordinary steam turbine hall and a set of transformers.

If you save the quite expensive steel cylinder and concrete casing, that quite ordinary steam turbine and set of transformers can run on coal just by themselves. And guess what, this is already too expensive to compete with the alternatives nowadays.

(And no, there is nothing ordinary about that steel cylinder.)

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#549

Post by kyrra » Sun, May 22, 2022, 4:09 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #384

kyrra wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an expert here, but from a commentary piece from 2021: https://www.wsj.com/articles/nuclear-regulatory-council-nrc-... > In 1957 the internationally recommended limit for radiation exposure was about 15 times the natural background radiation that people absorb from rocks and cosmic rays. Without evidence of harm from exposures within the 1957 limits, the U.S. had by 1991 ratcheted its public limits down to less t…

Maybe low carbon power sources like nuclear would have done better if the WSJ hadn't been telling people that Climate Change didn't exist/wasn't a problem/wasn't caused by humans/was being pushed by communist beaurocrats for their own devilish purposes.

That's not their opinion as far as I can tell. They have published Lomborg a lot that mainly says that it is changing, but the impact won't be that bad and can be mitigated. Holman Jenkins also has a similar stance.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Bj%C3%B8rn+Lomborg+site%3Aws...

https://www.google.com/search?q=jenkins+climate+site%3Awsj.c...

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#550

Post by Manuel_D » Sun, May 22, 2022, 4:17 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #367

Manuel_D wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geothermal is popular in more or less every area that has the right geology for it. It's just that those faults that being usable thermal energy close to the surface are few and far between.

Almost all geothermal was, like nukes, built long before renewables got so much cheaper that literally anything else.

Quite the contrary. Places where geothermal is accessible, like Iceland, have extremely cheap Energy costs. That's why they export a lot of bulk aluminum [1]. It's very energy intensive - it basically involves arcing electricity through rocks - so much so that aluminum ore is shipped to Iceland to get processed there.

1. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iceland_Export_Tre...