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Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

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Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#541

Post by locallost »

TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #537
locallost wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want you to feel gaslighted, but you are objectively very lazy and have an opinion without checking any data. This Reuters article doesn't deal with it, but with a short term situation in the summer. You probably didn't even read past the headline. If you had, you probably would've noticed this quote: "Since Destatis started compiling statistics in 1990, 2022 will likely be the first that Germany will be a ne…

And then we will look into Germany's CO2 per kWh and it is one of the dirtiest in Europe. That's probably because they have so much renewables. Or so little. I might be lazy, but you are outright dishonest.

Your claim was that coal use is going up. Are you finally giving up that claim?

CO2 per kWh is also going down as renewables went up. Also easy to check in the data. You haven't done that either.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#542

Post by Krasnol »

illiarian wrote: post #515
Krasnol wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I guess the German government should have just asked evilos on the internets and not bother with all those scientists and regulations. Crazy them.

That is exactly what they did. Instead of asking people who know their shit they went ahead with populism, emotions, and scare tactics.

Sure, other random internets person.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#543

Post by Krasnol »

illiarian wrote: post #514
Krasnol wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not only high level long-live which has to be stored deep and safe. Your source shows it pretty good, and therefore it's not "just" 0,2% but 9% + an unknown amount of VLLW. However, the best thing about this "report" is what's not in there: DECOMISSIONING :D France will be so full of nuclear waste at the end of this ridiculous era, they're going to protests about that over and over. Mo matter where anybody decid…

> It's not only high level long-live which has to be stored deep and safe. Your source shows it pretty good, and therefore it's not "just" 0,2% but 9% + an unknown amount of VLLW. See, again you're bunching very different types of waste together as if they were the same thing. VLLW is "Very Low Level Waste". Disposal: Existing surface disposal. And yet, you're bunching it up with high-level waste. So, to correct my c…

This thread is about decommissioning so I'm not allowed to mention decomissioning because it breaks your own FUD?

lol...I showed actual numbers above.

We have HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF TONS OF HAZARDOUS WASTE WE DON'T HOW TO DEAL WITH in Germany alone.

This is the situation today.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#544

Post by eftychis »

Gelenoto wrote: post #474
formerly_proven wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the consumers to pay an extra price The (botched) green energy transformation has given the country I live in top 3 highest electricity prices in the world and it's not even particularly green at all. Literally cannot get worse. And it seems to me that one half doesn't understand how incredibly bad high energy prices are both for people and industry, while the other half cheers at the prices because it causes deind…

If you talk about Germany than this has nothing to do with nuclear.

I will agree with the sibling comment -- as an anecdotal opinion I guess. It has everything to do with nuclear.

Since a few days ago, Germany's policy to reduce or keep energy prices and meet demand depends inextricably to France's building more nuclear reactors. (I am talking about the last industrial nuclear reactors going offline, and the future energy budget planning related to that.)

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#545

Post by Manuel_D »

Kon5ole wrote: post #491
Manuel_D wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't build a building that contains a steam explosion from a runaway reactor. If you could, the reactor could be made indestructible in the first place. Wrong: we can, and do, build concrete domes that contain a potential steam explosion. The pressure vessel has to connect to steam generators, control rods, and more whereas the secondary containment does not. Furthermore, once the pressure vessel explodes, the…

> Got a source for these claims? Sure! If you are honestly interested in the truth, it's quite easy to find information about all things nuclear. The veneer of falsehoods causing people to believe that nuclear is cheap and safe when it clearly isn't is very thin and will only affect those who don't really want to know. Here's an estimate from 2016 for Chernobyl, the total back then was estimated to be around 700 bn U…

Unsurprisingly, as per your source the figures for 600 billion for Chernobyl are not in the form of actual spending: this figure comes in the form of estimated economic impact. This is a drastically different figure, one that encompasses things far beyond actual spending. Fossil fuels have an estimated economic impact of over a trillion dollars every year. Figures for estimated economic impact are also hugely variable since study authors can apply analysis that includes more and more layers of indirection.

The costs for Fukushima are also not bearing out as you seem to claim: the bulk of that 82 billion came in the form of disaster relief (more than half), land remediation. and decommissioning the plant. Storage of the waste water from continued maintenance of the failed reactor is a slim minority less than 3%. So I'm not sure why you seem to be under the impression that there will be so much more expense, when the most expensive steps - namely resettlement and cleanup - have already been completed. 10 trillion yen out of the 12 trillion are for disaster relief payments and decontamination - both of which are already done. You have demonstrated the ability to perform division when you calculate that 82 billion over 11 years works out to about 7.5 billion per year - but you're missing the fact that this spending was heavily frontloaded during the immediate disaster response.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#546

Post by Manuel_D »

Gwypaas wrote: post #467
Manuel_D wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there are plenty of real disasters that were several times deadlier than Chernobyl, yet I doubt most readers have heard of them since they don't involve the term "nuclear" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure Nuclear is one of the safest form of electricity generation, even though plants built before 1980 account for most electricity production.…

Stop engaging in whataboutism and answer the point instead.

I am indeed engaging with the point: Nuclear power's safety record is very good, and better than most other energy sources. Providing examples of other industrial disasters that don't have nearly the same recognition of nuclear accidents that harmed much fewer people serves to demonstrate just how strong of a double standard people apply to nuclear technology.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#547

Post by reso »

godelski wrote: post #445
reso wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument that costs will come down if we build more nuclear worked in the 1950s, but we know now where that goes now. Build More nuclear and costs come down. With more plants there are inevitably more nuclear incidents, the public realizes these things can make entire nations uninhabitable if they fail, and then they demand a halt to nuclear, pushing prices back up. Nuclear prices have baked in the public sentime…

> With more plants there are inevitably more nuclear incidents Can we stop making this argument? It is an extremely bad faith argument. There have only been two accidents of commercial reactors in the history of nuclear power that led to the loss of lives. The likely value is well under 10k ( Yes, there's more nuance to this, but we also need to recognize the actual level of danger. These arguments pretend that scien…

No, we cannot stop talking about the danger of meltdowns, because it is a proven danger, and a uniquely catastrophic one. Approximately once per decade, a nuclear reactor melts down and either does (Chernobyl) or nearly does (Fukishima) make a nation-sized area of earth uninhabitable. Asking people to ignore this fact when they consider building nuclear plants in their region is silly.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#548

Post by reso »

fsh wrote: post #485
godelski wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With more plants there are inevitably more nuclear incidents Can we stop making this argument? It is an extremely bad faith argument. There have only been two accidents of commercial reactors in the history of nuclear power that led to the loss of lives. The likely value is well under 10k ( Yes, there's more nuance to this, but we also need to recognize the actual level of danger. These arguments pretend that scien…

It is quite misleading to only focus on deaths due to nuclear accidents. Fukushima may not have (directly) killed anyone, but the cleanup is hideously expensive (estimates say many hundred billion dollars). Containing Chernobyl costed a few percent of Ukraine's pre-war annual budget. So far, roughly one in a hundred power reactors have blown up. If this is priced in, the economics get even less favorable.

Yes, and these death-based analysis' also ignore the fact that both Fukishima and Chernobyl could have been much, much worse if major interventions were not made at the right moment. I always think about the Fukishima engineers who got the instruments in the control room to turn on by wiring them up to car batteries. If the team on duty that day was just a little less resourceful, the story gets much worse. Those incidents should be seen as a lower-bound to the danger not an upper bound.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#549

Post by _a_a_a_ »

ben_w wrote: post #535
_a_a_a_ wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seemed to be saying that the standards nuclear is held to is higher than is necessary. Compared to what? Was my question. I asked about the cost of Chernobyl, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disasters_by_cost $790 billion at 2021 cost so my point was perhaps it is being held to a higher standard for a very good reason. (NB. I'm not automatically against nuclear power, but I seriously question their pot…

Sure, it's a perfectly reasonable question and I ought to have justified it better. Ok, so, total energy produced to by all nuclear reactors in the world in 2021 was apparently 2,653,344 GWh[0]; if there was a Chernobyl-scale disaster every year, that would add just under $0.30/kWh to the cost of electricity[1]. As reactors didn't have such a poor MTBF even then, I think a decade is a less unreasonable guess for rate…

A commendable answer, thanks. The issue of lives I skipped as the deaths from chernobyl were counted in wiki as 60 to 60,000. Can't really conclude much from an error bar of 3 orders of magnitude.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#550

Post by robomartin »

robomartin wrote: post #163

I've had an evolution in thinking over the last few years. I did a deep dive on both atmospheric CO2 reduction and energy requirements for full electrification of transportation, homes and industry. At the time (5 to 10 years ago) it seemed like a very large deployment of nuclear power generation had to be a significant part of the solution. That isn't at all what I think in today's context. At grid scale, today, I t…

Made a mistake, these two numbers are reversed:

    Initial investment in factories:
        Solar: $ 11 billion
        Wind:  $212 billion
The correct version is:

    Initial investment in factories:
        Solar: $212 billion
        Wind:  $ 11 billion
Source: Tesla Master Plan Part 3
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