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Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

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Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#591

Post by Manuel_D »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #565
simplyluke wrote: post #556

Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind, and opposition to nuclear from environmentalist orgs should be viewed as a massive historical mistake as it set us back decades in moving the needle on carbon emissions. The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record.

Why do so many nuclear fans try to suggest climate change only exists if you like nuclear? It's very odd. Compare: If you believe COVID exists you need to use hydroxychloroquine. It makes you sound like you don't even believe in the problem you are proposing an (unpopular with experts) solution for.

The analogy breaks down because hydroxychloroquine does not effectively treat Covid. Whereas nuclear power is carbon free (to be pedantic, it's carbon intensity is on par with that of most renewables).

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#592

Post by sunaookami »

simplyluke wrote: post #556

Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind, and opposition to nuclear from environmentalist orgs should be viewed as a massive historical mistake as it set us back decades in moving the needle on carbon emissions. The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record.

>Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind

Yes hello, these are both my opinions, do I exist for you or not ;)? You can say that we are in a climate crisis AND be anti-nuclear.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#593

Post by Manuel_D »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #409
Alexsky2 wrote: post #253

A bit unrelated to the Belgium story but I recently visited Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near San Luis Obispo, CA and learned a ton about the technical details, safety systems, and policy decisions that go into operating a nuclear power plant. When operating at full capacity, it provides up to 10% of California power! While there is certainly always more such facilities can do for safety and efficiency, my impre…

I did some research about that nuclear power plant. In 1985 dollars, the total construction cost was 5.6B USD. That is an astonishing amount of money. That is at least 16B USD in 2026 money. If you also include decomissioning costs of about 4-5B USD... how the fuck does nuclear power make any economic sense? PV solar plus batteries: ALL THE WAY. To be clear, I am not anti-nuclear power by any means. I think it is a t…

It's a large amount of money, but the plants have a long service life. And once a nuclear plant is built, it's operational costs are much lower than other forms of electricity generation.

Simply saying "use PV plus batteries" really does not engage with the scale of storage required. The US uses 12,000 GWh of electricity per day. The world uses 60,000 GWh of electricity per day. Annual global battery production is around 1,500 GWh, and only ~300 GWh of that production is used for grid storage.

Even just provisioning enough batteries to satisfy the requirements for diurnal fluctuations of solar is far beyond the scale of what battery production can provide. Let alone fluctuations due to weather and seasonal output changes.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#594

Post by [deleted] »

trgn wrote: post #315
BirAdam wrote: post #299

Everyone focuses on the safety of power production, and I totally get that and think it's important, but the mining and enrichment of uranium should also be considered. Nuclear "disasters" aren't just 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. There are plenty of other disasters that aren't power plants. Growing up in the USA, my home town was contaminated with uranium, thorium, and radium due to a nearby uranium proce…

where was this?

[deleted]

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#595

Post by leonidasrup »

ardit33 wrote: post #562
simplyluke wrote: post #556

Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind, and opposition to nuclear from environmentalist orgs should be viewed as a massive historical mistake as it set us back decades in moving the needle on carbon emissions. The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record.

[flagged]

The root of the German Green party goes back to anti-nuclear and anti-war movements from 1960s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement

"Before the 1980s, it was unclear whether the warming effect of increased greenhouse gases was stronger than the cooling effect of airborne particulates in air pollution."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change

The original 1980 plan for the Energiewende "Energie-Wende: Wachstum und Wohlstand ohne Erdöl und Uran" called for Germany to move towards "coal+gas" or "coal+solar" scenario. Only later were added any consideration for climate change, but the highest priority, the big evil, was nuclear technology.

Greenpeace has it's roots also in the opposition to underground nuclear weapon tests. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenpeace#Origins

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#596

Post by shawabawa3 »

badc0ffee wrote: post #433
db48x wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't. Watts were a mistake by whatever committee it was that standardized unit names. Power should not have been given a unit; it should have been left as ∆energy/time just as velocity is distance/time.

It's shorthand for a Joule (unit of energy) per second (unit of time). Watt is the problem with that?

The real problem is the widespread usage of Wh as a unit of energy

It would make way more sense to use J and J/h instead

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#597

Post by BirAdam »

topspin wrote: post #351
trgn wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

where was this?

There are a small number of such sites in the US. One that fits closely with this description is a legacy of the Manhattan Project: Coldwater Creek, MO. The Mallinckrodt Chemical Works refined a lot of uranium, and waste handling was about what you would expect given the prerogatives of the 1940's and the Cold War. They carried on refining for power plants after WW2. Obviously, fuel refining hasn't just carried on li…

It carried on until at least 1989, and the effects were present majorly until around 2000, and the superfund site was completed in 2006. So, like, pretty darn recent on the scale of a human lifetime.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#598

Post by Manuel_D »

sunaookami wrote: post #592
simplyluke wrote: post #556

Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind, and opposition to nuclear from environmentalist orgs should be viewed as a massive historical mistake as it set us back decades in moving the needle on carbon emissions. The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record.

>Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind Yes hello, these are both my opinions, do I exist for you or not ;)? You can say that we are in a climate crisis AND be anti-nuclear.

Sure, someone can be both concerned about climate change and oppose nuclear power. But it's a largely self-defeating stance: nuclear is the only non-intermittent geographically independent form of clean energy. Dams and geothermal are geographically constrained. Solar and wind are intermittent, as well as varying in output depending on location.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#599

Post by CaptainPotatoe »

ardit33 wrote: post #562
simplyluke wrote: post #556

Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind, and opposition to nuclear from environmentalist orgs should be viewed as a massive historical mistake as it set us back decades in moving the needle on carbon emissions. The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record.

[flagged]

France did not get it totally right. We decomissionned superphénix for mostly dogmatic reasons, and also halted the Astrid project (although it look like it may be restarted we only lost 10 years)

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#600

Post by Manuel_D »

zekrioca wrote: post #428
graeme wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't generate power by burning carbon and is a grid replacement for carbon sources. Grid cost rise sharply on 100% solar. Taking china as an example they currently build solar, coal and nuclear. No country is building only solar/batteries. Further if we build more nuclear we'd be better at it and it would be cheaper.

You are talking only about the operations of the nuclear, and ignoring all the high energy process required to mine and process uranium before it can be used as a fuel, and after as waste. But let’s pass this problem to the next generation, they will know what to do :)

The energy density of uranium is such that the amount of energy required to mine and process uranium is trivial relative to the amount of power produced. The carbon intensity of nuclear power is lower than solar: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph240/kountz1/
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