Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize • Hacker News Board

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

#591

Post by ftr45 » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 3:05 PM UTC

pytester wrote: post #524

ElBarto wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calculate how many wind generators you need to guarantee the same production as Hinkley point and you'll see that it is not really realistic. Then, take into account the goal of making of vehicles electric in the next 20 years. There is no viable alternative to nuclear as of today even if renewables should of course be pushed as much as possible. Germany is emitting heavily because most of its electricity comes from…

>Calculate how many wind generators you need to guarantee the same production as Hinkley point Hinkley Point = 3200 MW Average wind turbine generates = 3 MW That's about 1,100 wind turbines at current tech. GE is working on a 12 MW wind turbine - it would take 270 of them would replace Hinkley point.

>Average wind turbine generates = 3 MW

it doesn't work like that , capacity factor of wind is almost half of the capacity factor of nuclear

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

#592

Post by acidburnNSA » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #101

acidburnNSA wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The consensus solution to nuclear waste is to put it in geologic repositories where it will be safely out of the biosphere until well after it decays to stability. This issue of a toxic but carefully handled substance is very small compared to the looming threat of climate change. As far as I'm aware, commercial nuclear waste in storage has never injured a single person.

> As far as I'm aware, commercial nuclear waste in storage has never injured a single person You'd be surprised: By October several thousand shipments were illegally dumped at the landfill in north St. Louis County, in violation of federal standards; they contained an estimated 43,000 tons of radioactive uranium processing wastes and contaminated soil. (...) No strangers to advanced statistical tools, within two year…

Acute high-dose radiation is a significant health hazard. We know this from atomic bomb survivors, the Chernobyl first-responders, and some other instances, and it's horrible.

However, lots of people have gone around into low radiation zones and found really sick people with horrible diseases, and claimed it was linked to the radiation. What they haven't done is linked those diseases to low-dose radiation with anything near scientific rigor. It's very often just confirmation bias. "There's low-dose radiation here, and cancer, therefore low-dose radiation caused this cancer."

I'm not saying we have enough data to show that low-dose radiation causes no cancer. It just doesn't cause an easily-measurable amount, if any. A counterexample is places like Ramsar, Iran, where the natural background radiation is 80x higher than average. Would you guess that the cancer rate is higher than average?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar,_Mazandaran#Radioactivi...

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

#593

Post by ace_of_spades » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 3:08 PM UTC

Tomte wrote: post #395

ace_of_spades wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I am not really pro- or con- nuclear energy but try to keep an open mind. How does what you are saying not apply to any other technology? Cars are “save” but kill more people than all nuclear power plants and accidents combined. Still we say to ourselves we can deal with the risk, which is obviously the case for lot’s of cases but might not be in some exceptions. I think your reaction seems a little bit t…

You're right. It fully applies to cars, as well. That's why we have those "more bikes" discussions here every now and then. But that's no reason not to point out the obvious flaws in the comment I replied to. And re: emotionality: you can wish it away, but it is real. Nuclear fans always act as if they only had to show this one scientific study to citizens, and everyone would immediately fall in line. That's hilariou…

Yeah, you have point. I am certainly not in favor of large energy companies stealing their way around paying for the long-term containment of spent fuel rods for example. People should be held accountable for the damage they do and the waste that they cause. Offloading of negative externalities should be reduced as much as possible. For example, meaningful taxation of carbon emissions or the set up of a nuclear waste recycling and emergency fund where required contributions are determined by external auditors.

However, I am still a staunch defender of differentiated learning from the past and rational planning of the future. Given the information we have right now, nuclear might actually be an important (probably temporary) piece of a rational plan for a good future. Moving forward means setting the stage and right incentives for people to learn from mistakes, improve and grow.

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

#594

Post by ftr45 » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 3:09 PM UTC

hope people will listen this obvious article , nuclear is cheaper, safer and need less resource's than any other type of energy

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/09/frances-nuclear-clean-...

https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2015/7057-proj-costs-elect...

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

#595

Post by lispm » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 3:10 PM UTC

Gondolin wrote: post #584

lispm wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have invested decades ago in new nuclear (pebble bed reactor, breeder, reprocessing, ...) and it was a costly failure. Why should we keep making mistakes? Look at France, they have zillions Euros to invest to get ONE EPR reactor online. They are losing huge amounts of money on another one they are building in Finland. Germany lost a lot of money on the EPR, too. The EPR France builds in the UK will be the most exp…

So still 35% coming from fossil if the remaining nuclear plants are shut down. Again, Germany goals and effort are laudable, but you miss my point, it is not about nuclear vs renewable, but nuclear vs fossils as a complement to renewable. Why didn't Germany close its coal plants first? This would have saved several Metric Tons of CO2 and saved the life of a few thousands people (due to air pollution). When is Germany…

> but you miss my point, it is not about nuclear vs renewable, but nuclear vs fossils as a complement to renewable.

I don't miss your point, I just don't think nuclear is a viable complement to renewable in Germany.

> Why didn't Germany close its coal plants first?

Because it wanted to get rid of nuclear first and as fast as possible. The reasons for that is all known and a little research can explain it to you - beyond the believe that it was 'irrational'. It's not that you need to agree with it, but people here had other priorities than you have.

Still CO2 emissions were reduced by 27% from 1990 to 2016.

The next two decades will bring the end of coal-based electricity.

> When is Germany going to reach no CO2 emissions?

When do you stop going to vacations via airplanes? Stop eating meat? Stop driving a car?

> Expanding nuclear along renewable would have meant it could have reached this goal right now

No, nuclear and renewable are not compatible. Nuclear is centralized monopolistic, mostly state-owned form of energy. I sucks up huge amounts of investments and corrupts everything around it.

> This cost is shared across the world

Germany invested into renewable energy and jump-started the PV business. That's equally important.

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

#596

Post by ftr45 » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 3:13 PM UTC

zone411 wrote: post #301

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…

The most important question is if wind and solar capacity can come online sooner than nuclear in order to slow down stop global warming, which is estimated to cause 250,000 deaths/year worldwide 2030-2050 by the WHO. Solar and wind were only 9.2% of the U.S. total in 2018 and the US has very good conditions for them. Solar energy will have a harder time replacing base load plants. It might work out fine in the US but…

maybe we can use carbon capture and nuclear to produce carbon neutral fuel

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

#597

Post by lispm » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 3:18 PM UTC

joss82 wrote: post #562

pytester wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Calculate how many wind generators you need to guarantee the same production as Hinkley point Hinkley Point = 3200 MW Average wind turbine generates = 3 MW That's about 1,100 wind turbines at current tech. GE is working on a 12 MW wind turbine - it would take 270 of them would replace Hinkley point.

3MW is the peak power when the wind is blowing constantly at the maximum speed the wind turbine was designed to operate (and not over, at which point the turbine enters safe mode and stops to prevent damage). Load factors for wind turbines are rarely over 40%. Nuclear's is 80%. So you'd need 2200 turbines to replace one Hinkley point. And all the gas power plants to make the energy when the wind is not blowing...

Germany has 30000+ wind turbines.

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

#598

Post by Faark » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 3:26 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #436

michaelmrose wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretending nuclear waste isn't an actual problem basically means your entire analysis is disastrously wrong. Consider contributing after doing further analysis.

It means my analysis is informed by a working knowledge of how we treat existing risk factors that affect human society. Everything I've seen suggests that in practice the macro-scale threat posed by radioactive material is similar to that posed by lead, but easier to deal with because the volumes are so tiny we can afford to isolate it completely from the biosphere. We produce tiny amounts of waste, I can't find a g…

Your numbers seem way off. My first google results [0] mentions a single plant producing more than 100,000m³ waste requiring special treatment. Most of it on the less bad end, though. Or are you just talking about fuel waste and conveniently ignore everything else?

[1] compares solid waste from different power sources. Little info for solar/wind. Both nuclear and coal seem bad. But none of us wants to build coal plants anyway. But i sure as hell also don't want lots of public resources spend for new nuclear that is decommissioned a few years later once more environmentally friendly alternatives go online. Especially if those resources could accelerate renewables in the first place. I have no problem with keeping existing nuclear plants running as long as they are safe.

I'd love read better concise summaries from official sources, if you can recommend some.

[0] https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... [1] https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/01/f34/Environm...

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

#599

Post by pytester » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 3:35 PM UTC

joss82 wrote: post #562

pytester wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Calculate how many wind generators you need to guarantee the same production as Hinkley point Hinkley Point = 3200 MW Average wind turbine generates = 3 MW That's about 1,100 wind turbines at current tech. GE is working on a 12 MW wind turbine - it would take 270 of them would replace Hinkley point.

3MW is the peak power when the wind is blowing constantly at the maximum speed the wind turbine was designed to operate (and not over, at which point the turbine enters safe mode and stops to prevent damage). Load factors for wind turbines are rarely over 40%. Nuclear's is 80%. So you'd need 2200 turbines to replace one Hinkley point. And all the gas power plants to make the energy when the wind is not blowing...

https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/offshore-wind...

Quite right, my mistake.

GE's new turbine has a 63% capacity apparently. So, 428 of them are needed, apparently.

Either way, I don't see what is so intrinsically unrealistic about setting up 500 of these things offshore as compared to a hinkley point.

Gansu Wind farm in China is 8,000MW - already 2.5x onen Hinkley.

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

#600

Post by beders » Sun, Apr 07, 2019, 3:39 PM UTC

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…

Renewables can replace all of those: coal, gas, nuclear, oil.

No reason to be flabbergasted.