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Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

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Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#71

Post by defrost »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #67
TheRoque wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really a game changer though ? AFAIK countries that made the shift to solar and wind can't still store they energy and have to rely on fossil still to power they country (e.g. Germany). On top of that, if the whole world made the shift to solar, wind and batteries, I assume the scarcity of some materials will become an issue. According to this [1] Lithium for example is expected to have a shortage by 2025. Ther…

Watching what China does is always instructive. Despite platitudes to the contrary, climate change is a tertiary concern of theirs. What they care most about is (1) energy independence and (2) cost. So 10-15 years ago they started building a lot of nuclear, solar and coal. As the cost of solar plummeted and nuclear went up they significantly scaled back their nuclear ambitions. For the last 5 years they've built seve…

> they significantly scaled back their nuclear ambitions.

Currently (June 2024) they're all the way down to:

    China intends to build 150 new nuclear reactors between 2020 and 2035, with 27 currently under construction and the average construction timeline for each reactor about seven years, far faster than for most other nations.

    China has commenced operation of the world’s first fourth-generation nuclear reactor, for which China asserts it developed some 90 percent of the technology.

    China is leading in the development and launch of cost-competitive small modular reactors (SMRs).

    From 2008 to 2023, China’s share of all nuclear patents increased from 1.3 percent to 13.4 percent, and the country leads in the number of nuclear fusion patent applications.
~ https://itif.org/publications/2024/06/17/how-innovative-is-c...

Which is quite the wind down from . . . ?

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#72

Post by ZeroGravitas »

robertlagrant wrote: post #66
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone in Germany pointed out that on their TV coverage of Fukushima they had German Nuclear Scientists who were correctly describing based on 3rd party observations what was happening while official spokespeople were claiming there was no issue and downplaying risks. That's a killer blow to credibility, doubly so if you have a high respect for Japanese industry. If they're lying/mistaken about stuff obvious to scie…

Sure, but this is you finding very specific stuff. Most of the world wasn't watching German TV and seeing that difference.

There's only so many countries with nuclear and that the two most technically respected countries in the world both shut their entire fleets down as a result of Fukishima is a fairly strong signal even for those not paying attention.

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#73

Post by ponorin »

ekianjo wrote: post #57
ponorin wrote: post #50

The article is too US-centric to a fault. Basically all project's costs after 1970s balloon to an extent. Japan's cost has risen. French, while only slightly, has risen. Same for India. Only S. Korea have seen construction prices fall, but notice the price bottoming out after the 1990s. It's only maintaining the price, not getting lower. Regardless, these other countries didn't contribute that much to increase global…

> Japan (rightfully) has lost trust on nuclear and decided to reset their entire nuclear generation capacity. bullshit. Japan is in the process of restarting all of their nuclear plants. Price of energy had doubled after the grid went off nuclear.

I have clarified my original comment. Regarding your comment:

> Japan is in the process of restarting all of their nuclear plants.

They are still "in the process" after 12 years, and their capacity is still less than half of pre-Fukushima level. Japan has had more solar generation than nuclear since 2014.

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#74

Post by bryanlarsen »

defrost wrote: post #71
bryanlarsen wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching what China does is always instructive. Despite platitudes to the contrary, climate change is a tertiary concern of theirs. What they care most about is (1) energy independence and (2) cost. So 10-15 years ago they started building a lot of nuclear, solar and coal. As the cost of solar plummeted and nuclear went up they significantly scaled back their nuclear ambitions. For the last 5 years they've built seve…

> they significantly scaled back their nuclear ambitions. Currently (June 2024) they're all the way down to: China intends to build 150 new nuclear reactors between 2020 and 2035, with 27 currently under construction and the average construction timeline for each reactor about seven years, far faster than for most other nations. China has commenced operation of the world’s first fourth-generation nuclear reactor, for…

If they want 150 online by 2035, most of them would have been started by now and/or you would expect to see capacity accelerating. Instead, capacity additions appear to be slowing down, in contrast to the massive additions in the 2010's.

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#75

Post by ZeroGravitas »

defrost wrote: post #71
bryanlarsen wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching what China does is always instructive. Despite platitudes to the contrary, climate change is a tertiary concern of theirs. What they care most about is (1) energy independence and (2) cost. So 10-15 years ago they started building a lot of nuclear, solar and coal. As the cost of solar plummeted and nuclear went up they significantly scaled back their nuclear ambitions. For the last 5 years they've built seve…

> they significantly scaled back their nuclear ambitions. Currently (June 2024) they're all the way down to: China intends to build 150 new nuclear reactors between 2020 and 2035, with 27 currently under construction and the average construction timeline for each reactor about seven years, far faster than for most other nations. China has commenced operation of the world’s first fourth-generation nuclear reactor, for…

They were aiming for 15% by 2035, 25% in 2050 then ramping up to 45%.

Now they're aiming for 18% by 2060, by which time they will also be net zero carbon.

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#76

Post by cedws »

ekianjo wrote: post #59
cedws wrote: post #14

Something I haven’t seen discussed in the nuclear debate is that NPPs become a high risk target in times of war. Look at what’s happened in Ukraine regarding the Zaporizhzhia power plant. The IAEA has been crapping itself the entire time while both Ukraine and Russia have haphazardly been shooting and bombing around it. If Russia were forced out of their position, they could adopt a scorched earth policy and destroy…

> d it. If Russia were forced out of their position, they could adopt a scorched earth policy and destroy it, potentially irradiating the area. thats not how nuclear power plants work. bombing them dont magically turn them into nuclear bombs or something.

That is literally what I stated in the following sentence.

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#77

Post by 486sx33 »

Ok, this is crazy. I stopped reading when the author says evacuating the people from Fukushima was unnecessary. Of course it is necessary. What good is a world where everyone is irradiated and dying of cancer ? We have enough already. This guy is either on Westinghouse’s payroll or some kind of pharmaceutical company about to release a new injectable therapy.

Fukushima proved that the nuclear industry in fact isn’t designing reactors safe ENOUGH and that Mother Nature is very difficult to predict. Everything needs redundancies and even higher levels of safety as a nuclear “incident” large enough could destroy humanity.

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#78

Post by cedws »

gizmo wrote: post #51
cedws wrote: post #14

Something I haven’t seen discussed in the nuclear debate is that NPPs become a high risk target in times of war. Look at what’s happened in Ukraine regarding the Zaporizhzhia power plant. The IAEA has been crapping itself the entire time while both Ukraine and Russia have haphazardly been shooting and bombing around it. If Russia were forced out of their position, they could adopt a scorched earth policy and destroy…

Russia has five thousand nuclear warheads. If they want to turn Ukraine into a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland they can do so today. A nuclear plant getting bombed would result in some nuclear contamination but not _that_ much, and accidental bombing of a nuclear power plant won't result in a mushroom cloud. Taking a nuclear plant out of commission with bombs is easy, re-creating Chernobyl is very hard even if you…

>Russia has five thousand nuclear warheads

Nuclear weapons are barely relevant to the conversation other than that they also use fissile material.

>accidental bombing of a nuclear power plant won't result in a mushroom cloud

Yes... as I stated.

>Nuclear plants are not weapons of war and they serve no military purpose

That's incorrect. Once again, the Zaporizhzhia NPP has played quite a large role in the war in that region. Whether Russia intends to do anything is irrelevant, the threat implicitly limits Ukraine's military response. The plant itself can, and has been used as a military outpost, shielded from intense bombing.

Not only all this, but the loss of the power plant to Russia meant Ukraine lost 20% of it's total electricity generation at all once[0]. From an energy security POV this is a disaster. This would not be possible with distributed wind turbines or solar arrays.

[0]: https://www.gem.wiki/Zaporizhzhia_nuclear_power_plant#Backgr...

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#79

Post by ZeroGravitas »

jeltz wrote: post #15
philipwhiuk wrote: post #10

I don't really think he understands why the safety paradigm is the way it is. The problem is fear. Fear generated by individual incidents that have terrible local harmful effects. And the (perhaps inaccurate) perception that plants may still have issues. Plus the fairly unsolved waste storage problem. Fukushima, 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl were existential for the nuclear industry. Like it or lump it, they made nucle…

What terrible local harmful effects? Only Chernobyl had any and they were very modest. Compare that to the hydroelectric plants. There we can talk real incidents with harmful local effects. If people actually feared incidents they would campaign against hydroelectric power. And the last such incident was last year in Ukraine. Also just building a hydro plant can ruin the local ecosystem even if there is no incident.…

Nuclear, per TwH, is basically tied with solar and wind if you use decade old data.

Why do you think it's "by far the safest"?

https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#80

Post by the_third_wave »

berkeleynerd wrote: post #41
littlecranky67 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully agreed. When the Ukraine war broke out, in Germany we had discussions how we could no longer rely on cheap russian gas and there we politicians actively demanding NPP to be reactivated. At the same time our government decided to spent 100 bilion € for the military and defense. This is surreal, when experts explain how "safe" NPPS are, the safety assumptions never asume a war going on around that NPP. If you fac…

I wonder if it would make sense to house these reactors in underground facilities to the extent possible to harden them against at least accidental threats?

This was already done in Sweden [1] and is something the Swedish defence forces have suggested for the coming nuclear expansion in the country.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85gesta_Nuclear_Plant

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