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

#681

Post by tim333 » Mon, Apr 08, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

doikor wrote: post #351

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,…

It really depends on the location if nuclear makes sense. For example to fully go solar here in Finland you would need enough storage to basically store 2 or 3 months of winter usage of power as the efficiency of the panels goes down to less then 5% of peak during winter as the sun just isn’t up and when it is it at such a low angle that it produces next nothing. So basically one would need a lot of overcapacity to b…

Or a power cable south to somewhere sunny.

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

#682

Post by dv_dt » Mon, Apr 08, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

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…

A tell is the comparison is always vs coal instead of natural gas or renewables ...

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

#683

Post by jki275 » Mon, Apr 08, 2019, 6:15 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #680

jki275 wrote: post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The French reprocess all their fuel as I understand it. We could do the same, we choose not to. That's probably the wrong choice.

The french choice was clearly the wrong one. It's a net economic loss for them. It was predicated on the use of the separated Pu in fast reactors, but their experience with fast reactors was dismal.

It's not about whether it makes money.

It's a way to drastically reduce the waste from the process.

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

#684

Post by tekknik » Mon, Apr 08, 2019, 6:37 PM UTC

dirkt wrote: post #278

scarygliders wrote: post #128

Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant? Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was because of one design flaw... Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor buildings. DERP. Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not s…

> My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are taken into account I don't know if you are old enough to remember it, but that's exactly what nuclear energy proponents said in the 70s. Since then, actual experience showed that about every 20 years, there has been a big incident with global impact, and it will take decades if not centuries until the affected area is usable again. And th…

This is interesting because you blame human error or malice on the failure of a reactor causing a potentially global issue. For about 60 years now we’ve had nuclear powered ships without a single issue (with exception to the russian subs rusting and decaying while waiting for decommissioning). Wouldn’t malice or human error be more of an issue here vs a land based reactor? I think most enemies would rather bring down a military naval ship over a land based reactor unless causing terror is their goal. Either way, the reactors generally manage themselves, get replaced every few years but overall are very stable and safe. Nuclear is here to stay in ships and the potential to irradiate the world is much higher when you’re floating in water.

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

#685

Post by ci5er » Mon, Apr 08, 2019, 6:55 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #408

roenxi wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We burn a tiny amount of fuel to get a lot of nuclear energy, and we burn a huge amount of coal to get a lot of thermal energy. You need to consume orders of magnitude more coal than atomic fuel to get the same amount of energy; so the trace elements in coal become a big deal. The radiation from coal isn't even the worst contaminant, you get all sorts of trace elements. Sulphur (causes acid rain around the power plan…

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

It's a huge issue that I work with an international team on. It's also almost politically impossible to address in the us. Technology (for safe isolation of waste) is not the problem. Democracy is. So, it collects in aging leaky dams around each plant because it can not be moved and can not be centrally disposed of.

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

#686

Post by macspoofing » Mon, Apr 08, 2019, 7:14 PM UTC

BluSyn wrote: post #368

macspoofing wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Renewable energy is cheaper than nuclear, or will be imminently. Solar and wind are plenty cheap. That's not their problem. The problem, as the article stated, is that "they are not available around the clock, rain or shine, and batteries that could power entire cities for days or weeks show no sign of materializing any time soon." So now what do you do?

> batteries that could power entire cities for days or weeks show no sign of materializing any time soon. This is simply untrue. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/pges-recording-... The batteries have already materialized, and once they start installations at scale this will be taking over the energy market. This makes solar/wind viable as a base load power source virtually everywhere in the world. Even in…

>This is simply untrue.

No. That's the entire problem. There are no batteries that can scale to city needs.

What you're citing is a completely different use case. There is very good case to be made that battery farms can replace gas-burning power ONLY when they are used as a way to quickly scale power production. Battery farms also make sense to even out supply and demand (i.e. serve as a place to dump excess power, or provide stored energy when supply temporarily drops).

ALL new battery projects are around those two use cases. And that's great!! It isn't nothing, and it's a great technology solution for a very real need.

HOWEVER, it's one thing for a battery farm to supply power for seconds or minutes in specific cases, it's another for a battery farm to provide hours or days of constant supply ... every day. Not only is it expensive because you need to over-provision your generation and storage capacity (i.e. in order to provide power for 1 hour at night, you actually need solar to produce 1.5-2 hours of surplus energy). Worse, because wind/solar power generation output is affected by seasons, you'll actually have to over-provision just to match peak seasonal output, meaning that in-season, you invested in infrastructure that's sitting around doing nothing. Then there are also major durability issues. Current battery tech is simply not durable enough and will never be durable enough to solely backup wind and solar in a cost effective way. We're talking about batteries needing to operate for days and weeks when wind and solar output dips (or drops to nothing) at huge scale.

This article goes into some details:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611683/the-25-trillion-re...

This is why no nation is actually replacing any nuclear or fossil-fuel-based power with SOLELY wind/solar+battery solution.

There are other issues that are typically glossed over, such as the fact that solar, wind and battery tech are typically environmentally destructive to make (requiring mining, and complex refining processes), and are very hard and expensive to recycle.

It's possible that some battery-tech breakthrough occurs and changes this (and the article references tech like using surplus power to create molten-salt to use as a storage medium), but the reality is that today, we don't have the technology that is anywhere close to cost-effective, and it isn't clear if there will be one in the next X years.

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

#687

Post by kpennell » Mon, Apr 08, 2019, 8:56 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #328

grecy wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also interesting to note the headline is "Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions.." Even if the US was totally committed, and decided to build a brand new reactor right now, how long would it take? A decade? We can slap up renewables in a fraction of that time, and spend the next decade reaping the rewards, not sitting around waiting for the magical payoff of a reactor that will cost…

> Even if the US was totally committed, and decided to build a brand new reactor right now, how long would it take? A decade? Totally committed? You sure? Ok. The US could bring at least two dozen new nuclear power plants online per year. It could do that with only modest impact on its massive economy. National security declaration (probably numerous). Bypass all environmental building concerns and impact reviews. Pu…

i enjoyed this thought exercise.

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

#688

Post by pfdietz » Mon, Apr 08, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

jki275 wrote: post #683

pfdietz wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The french choice was clearly the wrong one. It's a net economic loss for them. It was predicated on the use of the separated Pu in fast reactors, but their experience with fast reactors was dismal.

It's not about whether it makes money. It's a way to drastically reduce the waste from the process.

If they weren't going to use the plutonium immediately, reprocessing was stupid. Spending the money they didn't have to, in order to make Pu they didn't need, just to have the Pu sit around, made no economic sense. And no, it doesn't improve the economics of waste disposal.

Understand where reprocessing came from. Way back then, the story was that nuclear was going to be dirt cheap, but would ultimately be limited by the cost of uranium. The solution was breeding, to provide all the expensive fuel those thousands of cheap reactors would need. Reprocessing was needed to close this fuel cycle.

But this story bears no resemblance to reality. Reactors turned out to be expensive, the number of installed reactors was far below projections, and uranium is not in short supply.

One still hears echoes of this old narrative from people who don't really understand where it came from, and why it doesn't apply.

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

#689

Post by blablabla123 » Mon, Apr 08, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #640

blablabla123 wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - coal produce radioactive waste too That's quite a statement. Do you have references? I mean the nuclear waste from nuclear power plants is ridiculously difficult to handle because of its high temperature. It has to be wrapped in layers of containers - after cooling off for months (years?) in a water bath. > It boggles my mind that Germany made a great effort on renewable, and used this extra energy to close nucle…

> That's quite a statement. Do you have references? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-... https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html > Coal is largely composed of organic matter, but it is the inorganic matter in coal—minerals and trace elements— that have been cited as possible causes of health, environmental, and technological problems associated with the use of coal. Some trace…

Okay, that's surely a thing. In some regions like Southern Germany there is increased natural radioactivity in cellars that leads to more cases of lung cancer as far as I have heard.

But I'm quite sure this is still a completely different radioactivity problem one needs to cope with: hot, long living and very active material vs. cold, rather inactive material with short range radiation.

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

#690

Post by runjake » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 12:40 AM UTC

dirkt wrote: post #278

scarygliders wrote: post #128

Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant? Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was because of one design flaw... Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor buildings. DERP. Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not s…

> My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are taken into account I don't know if you are old enough to remember it, but that's exactly what nuclear energy proponents said in the 70s. Since then, actual experience showed that about every 20 years, there has been a big incident with global impact, and it will take decades if not centuries until the affected area is usable again. And th…

Tack onto this you’ll have eras of better and worse regulation and privatization (with the accompanying emphasis on profit over all else), depending on which parties are in office.

I think it’s inevitable you will have bad disasters. The human race is not smart nor mature enough.