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Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

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Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#791

Post by Cwizard »

fireant wrote: post #746
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 I also used to believe that but now I'm not so sure. Nuclear carries massive and unpredictable risks on failure. We can fairly well predict what will happen on catastrophic wind turbine failure, but with nuclear it is much more difficult. And what is arguably worse is that nuclear catastrophic failures are very infreque…

Serious question, when has there been a serious nuclear accident? Fukushima was caused by a natural disaster that killed far more people than the nuclear failure did. Chernobyl was pure communist stupidity. This level of incompetence would never happen in a well functioning country. So that leaves Three Mile island?

Meanwhile coal kills millions each year (mostly the old and children).

And what are these predictable green alternatives? Only hydro is reliable and is heavily restricted by geo. We’d need massive breakthroughs in battery technology to make solar and wind reliable in most of the world (by population).

Look up historical weather patterns days with no sun and no wind, you need massive, massive amounts of energy storage.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#792

Post by ben_w »

simplyluke wrote: post #572
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> suggest climate change only exists if you like nuclear That is a very uncharitable reading of what I'm saying. What I am saying is that if you're serious about believing climate change is a large threat (I do), you should be all-in on known solutions for reliable grid-level power. The current fallback for when renewables can't meet grid demand is burning natural gas in modernized grids and coal in grids stuck in th…

> How much of that expense is based on endless lawsuits from environmental groups and weaponized environmental laws? Why can the navy without those restrictions build safe reactors for ~$2million/megawatt?

Fundamentally, unless you know the Navy's answer and can apply it to override those lawsuits, it doesn't matter: politics can't be wished away just because the wrong people have power.

> The current fallback for when renewables can't meet grid demand is burning natural gas in modernized grids and coal in grids stuck in the 1800s.

Increasingly not; as with all things, you have to aim for where the ball will be rather than where it is, and for this topic that implies that for any given proposed new gas (or nuclear) plant you have to ask about the alternatives, which also include "how fast you we build energy storage, and what would it cost?"

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#793

Post by RobotToaster »

echelon wrote: post #660
avianlyric wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have done. The Three Mile Island accident happened when it was being operated by Navy vets [1]. Simple training isn’t enough. During the investigation of the accident the Admiral that built and ran the Navy nuclear program was asked how the Navy had managed to operate accident free, and what others could learn. This was his response: > Over the years, many people have asked me how I run the Naval Reactors Progra…

How many people have died on account of nuclear accidents? Vs. coal? Vs. not having enough energy? (eg. blackouts killing hospital ventilators, etc.) ----- Edit: because of HN rate limits, I can't respond to a sibling comment. I'll do that here: > Their safety record is good, but can they generate power at a cost that's commercially competitive? If it's too expensive then the plan doesn't work. Is a purely wind/solar…

Per TWh, nuclear kills fewer people than solar, mostly because roofing is dangerous.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-ener...

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#794

Post by Cwizard »

taegee wrote: post #778
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.

Here we go again ... Did those plants suddenly became manageable? No. Did those plants suddenly became cheap? No. Do we suddenly have a solution for the waste? No. Have new uranium deposits suddenly been discovered? No.

Why are they unmanageable?

They are only expensive because externalities of other solutions are not captures or are subsidised. Wind and solar are expensive if battery storage is included in most of the world.

Waste is mostly a solved problem. Much more solved that waste management for coal plants in any case (whom also produce a lot of radioactive waste in addition to producing tons and tons of co2)

We have more than enough uranium. Currently only a small fraction is economically mineable but we have played that game before with oil.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#795

Post by maybewhenthesun »

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.

The engineering side might be a theoretically solved problem, anybody looking at belgium's crumbling nuclear powerplants can help but feeling slightly nervous!

I agree we probably need nuclear to bridge the gap until solar or wind can take over fully, but there are a lot of problems with nuclear and the most pressing ones are connected to the unwillingness of people to spend money before a disaster happens.

On top of that, uranium is a limited resource, it's extraction is (energetically) expensive and dirty and the storage of the nuclear waste is very far from a solved engineering problem. Storing safely stuff for thousands of years is just not a realistic scenario whatsoever.

All this is not to say we should just skip on nuclear power altogether, we can't afford that I think and burning all the fossil fuels will probably have more disastrous consequences. But we shouldn't close out eyes to the problems either.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#796

Post by ben_w »

idiotsecant wrote: post #755
ak217 wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is a purely wind/solar + battery grid viable? Yes. (I don't disagree that a diverse mix is good, and I'm all for nuclear, I'm just saying the old "it's intermittent and can't grid form" boogeyman is no longer true. It would also really behoove Western countries to start manufacturing batteries at scale if we don't want to get a bloody nose in the future, because they're good for more than just the grid)

If it was viable it would have happened already. We have a massive oversupply of solar and wind, particularly on the west coast. Generation is the easy part. We have terrible storage and transmission, the parts that are actually expensive.

> If it was viable it would have happened already.

It is happening, all over the world, with a persistent and rapid growth curve.

> We have terrible storage and transmission, the parts that are actually expensive.

Better cut those tariffs on cheap Chinese batteries (and aluminium for the transmission).

Not that anyone would build one in the current political reality, but China produces enough aluminium that it would be viable to make a genuinely planet-spanning 1Ω power grid connecting your midwinter nights to someone else's midsummer days.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#797

Post by spixy »

adev_ wrote: post #116
716dpl wrote: post #31

The EU also released a plan in the past week to accelerate the deployment of both nuclear and renewable energy. This oil shock is going to have lasting impacts. https://energy.ec.europa.eu/publications/accelerateeu-energy...

> This oil shock is going to have lasting impacts. It is not only the oil shock. Most of the nuclear initiatives at the EU level have been mostly blocked by the German government for the last 15y. The Russian gas crisis in 2022 reshuffled the cards entirely: Germany realized that constructing its entire energy policy on a foreign asset (Russian Gas) was not really a smart move. The German position changed significant…

Austria is also trying to block nuclear, at least in Czechia and Slovakia.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#798

Post by ben_w »

maybewhenthesun wrote: post #795
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.

The engineering side might be a theoretically solved problem, anybody looking at belgium's crumbling nuclear powerplants can help but feeling slightly nervous! I agree we probably need nuclear to bridge the gap until solar or wind can take over fully, but there are a lot of problems with nuclear and the most pressing ones are connected to the unwillingness of people to spend money before a disaster happens. On top of…

> and the storage of the nuclear waste is very far from a solved engineering problem. Storing safely stuff for thousands of years is just not a realistic scenario whatsoever.

More of a political problem, from what I hear. This is, if anything, worse: simply not knowing is a research problem, but knowing how to do it and yet having an influential group saying "no because reasons" could be genuinely insurmountable.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#799

Post by yvdriess »

maybewhenthesun wrote: post #795
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.

The engineering side might be a theoretically solved problem, anybody looking at belgium's crumbling nuclear powerplants can help but feeling slightly nervous! I agree we probably need nuclear to bridge the gap until solar or wind can take over fully, but there are a lot of problems with nuclear and the most pressing ones are connected to the unwillingness of people to spend money before a disaster happens. On top of…

Just to highlight: in contrast with fossil fuels, at least nuclear waste is something we can capture, creating a storage problem.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#800

Post by pjc50 »

maybewhenthesun wrote: post #795
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.

The engineering side might be a theoretically solved problem, anybody looking at belgium's crumbling nuclear powerplants can help but feeling slightly nervous! I agree we probably need nuclear to bridge the gap until solar or wind can take over fully, but there are a lot of problems with nuclear and the most pressing ones are connected to the unwillingness of people to spend money before a disaster happens. On top of…

Given the actual build times of nuclear plants in Europe, vs the renewables build out rate, we need solar and wind to tide us over for a decade or more before the nuclear plants come on line.
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