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

nytimes.com

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

#691

Post by godelski »

peterashford wrote: post #644
kortilla wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany will just continue to cheat and import from France during lulls. Either that or they will just burn natural gas. Renewables (excluding dams because they aren’t supported by zealots) for base load are a complete fantasy. Pumped storage and batteries are so inefficient that we can’t switch without quintupling electricity costs for everyone. >It'll happen eventually. Nuclear is in no position to make it happen a…

Convenient to exclude hydro to make your argument where its what powers the existing the 100% renewable countries (either completely or nearly so).

Hydro is fantastic and we should use it wherever we can. Problem is the last part. We can't use it everywhere.

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

#692

Post by godelski »

peterashford wrote: post #645
Amygaz wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are mainly looking at an energy source for the downtimes, then there is currently enough hydro being generated to do that.

There are countries which are 100% renewable right now using hydro to do so, so yes.

Which countries? The closest I know of is Norway. But they do burn some gas and also import from Sweden (and others). Even if they didn't have gas I don't think it is fair to say that a country runs on 100% renewables if they import energy from a country that isn't 100% renewable.

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

#693

Post by godelski »

kortilla wrote: post #617
Amygaz wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here is the wiki page to answer how many since the 70’s (hint, it’s a lot): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accide...

I count 18 after the 70s. Do you realize how irrelevant that is given the millions per year coal is killing?

I've been trying to figure out this problem. It seems like people understand the dangers of nuclear (with some overstatement[0]). The problem I see is that people don't understand dangers of other sources. Like even solar kills more than nuclear (on a per kilowatt basis, and including predicted deaths from cancer of Fukushima and Chernobyl). Or they don't understand how small the waste is in comparison to other sources (~soda can a year compared to train fulls a day (coal)). I don't know if this is due to fear or humans having a hard time comparing large numbers. Or some combination.

[0] example being that meltdowns make a place inhospitable for centuries. Fukushima's exclusion zone is shrinking fast. And only Chernobyl and Fukushima have exclusion zones. Plus, those ares have thriving wildlife and vegetation.

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

#694

Post by godelski »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #398
jfnixon wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter risk is having the entire planet rendered uninhabitable for human life, right? Let's see, some area rendered uninhabitable versus the planet rendered uninhabitable... I'm going with A.

The worst of the lies about nuclear is that it can somehow help create a carbon-neutral economy. Of course it wouldn't. Designing a carbon-neutral economy is a much bigger problem that requires much broader strategic thinking. The levelized cost of renewables is already cheaper than the equivalent for nuclear power, with much smaller capital costs, much faster start-up and build costs, and no concerns about long-live…

Who says nuclear is carbon neutral? It definitely has a footprint. But so does solar, wind, and hydro. All 4 of which are extremely small though. The advantage nuclear has over the other two is that it can generate power 24/7, it can vary its output, and it has a small footprint on land usage per kilowatt-hour it produces.

AFAIK there are no high energy producers that are end-to-end carbon neutral (or negative). Doing so needs some type of sequestration.

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

#695

Post by godelski »

roenxi wrote: post #361
asaddhamani wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that?

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…

> the energetic bits are Very Likely to be recyclable as diluted fuel for a more advanced reactor.

~17% of France's electricity comes from recycled nuclear[0]. Just the recycled part (75% is from total nuclear).

[0] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...

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

#696

Post by godelski »

peterashford wrote: post #647
option wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

less deaths. I was myself surprised when I learned this, but apparently people fall off while installing solar and wind; combine that with much smaller energy output and you'll get nuclear to be the safest

Rooftop solar is quite different to industrial solar plants. The latter is on the ground, for example. Also, the installation of the latter is less ad-hoc and not done by small scale operators. I don't think the safety of a large power plant vs lots of home power installations is at all a fair metric.

The people falling off is just one example of death, not the only. You have to include total solar, industrial and home. But you get numbers that show that per kwhr nuclear results in less deaths (even when including predictions of deaths caused by future cancer incidents from Chernobyl and Fukushima). It honestly is a surprising result.

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

#697

Post by godelski »

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…

> Since then, actual experience showed that about every 20 years

That's not really a good metric. What you need to do is a time varying analysis and consider the total number of reactors (globally).

Eg. if we hold danger of reactors constant but we increase the number of reactors over time then you'd see disasters being more frequent (but the opposite is true).

Alternatively if we hold the number of reactors constant and pretend that all new reactors replace old reactors you can determine if new reactors are more, the same, or less dangerous.

But to do a real analysis you have to combine both of these (and some more stuff). Otherwise you're pretty much just saying that the average of the set {1,2,3} is 2. That 20 year thing is a bit contrived and I'm surprised it has popped up a few times.

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

#698

Post by doikor »

tim333 wrote: post #681
doikor wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ok so now we are beholden to whatever political powers that are south of us (or our friendly neighbor to the east "accidentally" cutting the sea cable). For now it is a bunch of friendly EU countries but putting the lives our citizens in their hands doesn't sound that nice. Freezing to death during winter if power gets cut for more then a day or two is a very real possibility in huge parts of the country as we have moved from oil/gas to electric heating.

You realize this is like the US saying "lets give money to Mexico to build all of our solar power there (it is closer to the equator and thus would provide more even output throughout the year and would make more econimical sense) and just rely on them selling it to us forever at a nice price as they are a friendly country at this very moment". Or even better would be the countries further south and build a sea cable on international waters so anyone with a sub can go and cut it to fuck with you,

From a national security perspective relying on such a vital resource as electricity on someone else is just plain stupid. I realize most countries are in such a relationship with oil/gas countries at the very moment but I think the goal should be to lessen this kind of relationships not increase them.

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

#699

Post by ElBarto »

lispm wrote: post #414
kuzehanka wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst nuclear accidents that could possibly happen have already happened. We couldn't have a worse nuclear power disaster than Lake Karachay even if we tried on purpose. And yet the sum damage they caused is a negligible blip compared to how many people die due to the use of fossil fuels on any given month of any given year. The environmental impact of nuclear power vs. fossil fuels or even renewables is just a n…

far from it. If nuclear fallout had been reached Tokyo, then we would talk about a much greater problem.

An accident in a nuclear plant that was constructed in a highly seismic and tsunami-prone area isn't an argument against nuclear power.

I'm sure that Germany can find a more suited location if they wanted...

Anyway, France is peppered with nuclear plants and Germany is right downwind from many of them.

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

#700

Post by ftr45 »

dirkt wrote: post #582
shanemhansen wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like it's bad to talk about safety of nuclear without comparing it to another option. What's the safety of fossil fuels? What bar would have to be met for nuclear to save lives when compared to alternatives? For the most part nuclear falls victim to the same human reasoning flaws that make us more worried about flying on a plane than driving even though driving is way riskier. For more info: https://en.wikiped…

Seeing the number of "nuclear energy is our saviour, and will solve all our problems, and is the only option" posts on the Internet, yes, the first step is to talk about the safety of nuclear without comparing it to other options. And no, the comparison to plane vs. car is not appropriate: In both kinds of accidents, a number of people get injured or killed. In case of a nuclear accident, a sizeable area becomes inha…

>a sizeable area becomes inhabitable for centuries

Well no, reactors in chernobyl remained operative until 2000 ,and chernobyl is not inhabitable look at all the animals that live there , the level of radiation is low.Regarding fukushima people are already returning in evacuated zones

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