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Compared to the eco footprint of a nuclear plant with fuel and waste handling, or coal plant with associated mining and transport? I'd be astonished if it wasn

Compared to the eco footprint of a nuclear plant with fuel and waste handling, or coal plant with associated mining and transport? I'd be astonished if it wasn't clearly the least impactful. What the world needs is easier ability to compare true impact of building, and running our stuff. Without all the hidden externalities and hidden subsidies.

baldfat 10y ago
> Compared to the eco footprint of a nuclear plant with fuel and waste handling, Nuclear is a close third with waste included for ecological foot print including waste. Its a $$$ game that Nuclear losses. http://www.nei.org/News-Media/News/News-Archives/Nuclear-Power-Plants-Are-Compact,-Efficient-and-Re http://www.nei.org/News-Media/News/News-Archives/Nuclear-Pow... (Has a strong bias towards nuclear) Nature article shows its the money and lead time that kills nuclear. "Add to that the high costs and long lead times for building a nuclear plant about $3 billion for a 1,000 megawatt plant, with planning, licensing and construction times of about 10 years and nuclear power is even less appealing." (2008) And now the cheap cost of solar and other alternative energy shows that it makes financially cense to use renewable over traditional carbon fuels. http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0810/full/climate.2008.99.html http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0810/full/climate.2008.99...
- hueving 10y ago
  What is your replacement for baseline load? Solar alone isn't enough and the cost changes if you need battery infrastructure to handle dark times. Nuclear power doesn't stop when the weather changes.
  - baldfat 10y ago
    I think the cost for nuclear and lead time will have gas powered and coal plants for dark times. The issue is the cost for these dark time power will go up. I have a friend who is a Wheelwright and he states that backup plants that only come online 3 days a month makes more money then if it was running 100% of the time. http://energypost.eu/battery-storage-will-take-backup-power-plants/ http://energypost.eu/battery-storage-will-take-backup-power-... In the next 10 years batteries will have a larger role and about 25% of coal power plants will be retired by 2020 in US and Europe.
    - akiselev 10y ago
      That profitability is the consequence of regulation. Utilities are generally a government granted monopoly so any failure to provide service (brown or blackouts) comes with huge fines. Last I checked, the fine for a utility in Southern California for a blackout in the LA metro area could be as much as several hundred million dollars. That would wipe out the profitability for the year so the vast majority of utilities in the US own or contract out to "peaker" plants that are on standby but ready to quickly spin up. If these regulations were updated to require less polluting peaker plants, nuclear might be the only option because the economics are government mandated. I wouldn't be surprised if California started moving this direction by 2050 if it can give up the Nat gas addiction.
contingencies 10y ago
What the world needs is easier ability to compare true impact of building, and running our stuff. Without all the hidden externalities and hidden subsidies. Yeah. I tried to create a (potential) transaction-oriented economic 'markup' system a few years ago... http://www.ifex-project.org/our-proposals/ifex http://www.ifex-project.org/our-proposals/ifex ... despite some early interest via the IRTF, it never received any other developers and my then-employer asked me to focus elsewhere. The idea was basically that you built a risk model and then formally described enough properties of a potential transaction to enable automated routing of transactions even across multi-hop, multi-settlement-system, multi-asset topologies. I'd be willing to pick it up again as a group if anyone wanted to combine efforts. I came around to the area because we were building a crypto-currency exchange (Kraken) and the availability (24x7x365) and risk management (re: gray settlement periods, exchange rate exposure, per-transaction and/or per-subsystem critical failure scenarios) profiles were therefore fairly extreme. It occurred to me that a decently generic solution in this space was not limited to conventional or digital assets and could apply with equal utility to physical goods and services. Everything I've done since I have always regretted not finishing that project because I felt it would have been useful. This strongly suggests to me that there really is an opportunity to produce something in this space for wide adoption.

baldfat 10y ago

> Compared to the eco footprint of a nuclear plant with fuel and waste handling, Nuclear is a close third with waste included for ecological foot print including waste. Its a $$$ game that Nuclear losses. http://www.nei.org/News-Media/News/News-Archives/Nuclear-Power-Plants-Are-Compact,-Efficient-and-Re http://www.nei.org/News-Media/News/News-Archives/Nuclear-Pow... (Has a strong bias towards nuclear) Nature article shows its the money and lead time that kills nuclear. "Add to that the high costs and long lead times for building a nuclear plant about $3 billion for a 1,000 megawatt plant, with planning, licensing and construction times of about 10 years and nuclear power is even less appealing." (2008) And now the cheap cost of solar and other alternative energy shows that it makes financially cense to use renewable over traditional carbon fuels. http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0810/full/climate.2008.99.html http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0810/full/climate.2008.99...

hueving 10y ago
What is your replacement for baseline load? Solar alone isn't enough and the cost changes if you need battery infrastructure to handle dark times. Nuclear power doesn't stop when the weather changes.
- baldfat 10y ago
  I think the cost for nuclear and lead time will have gas powered and coal plants for dark times. The issue is the cost for these dark time power will go up. I have a friend who is a Wheelwright and he states that backup plants that only come online 3 days a month makes more money then if it was running 100% of the time. http://energypost.eu/battery-storage-will-take-backup-power-plants/ http://energypost.eu/battery-storage-will-take-backup-power-... In the next 10 years batteries will have a larger role and about 25% of coal power plants will be retired by 2020 in US and Europe.
  - akiselev 10y ago
    That profitability is the consequence of regulation. Utilities are generally a government granted monopoly so any failure to provide service (brown or blackouts) comes with huge fines. Last I checked, the fine for a utility in Southern California for a blackout in the LA metro area could be as much as several hundred million dollars. That would wipe out the profitability for the year so the vast majority of utilities in the US own or contract out to "peaker" plants that are on standby but ready to quickly spin up. If these regulations were updated to require less polluting peaker plants, nuclear might be the only option because the economics are government mandated. I wouldn't be surprised if California started moving this direction by 2050 if it can give up the Nat gas addiction.

contingencies 10y ago

What the world needs is easier ability to compare true impact of building, and running our stuff. Without all the hidden externalities and hidden subsidies. Yeah. I tried to create a (potential) transaction-oriented economic 'markup' system a few years ago... http://www.ifex-project.org/our-proposals/ifex http://www.ifex-project.org/our-proposals/ifex ... despite some early interest via the IRTF, it never received any other developers and my then-employer asked me to focus elsewhere. The idea was basically that you built a risk model and then formally described enough properties of a potential transaction to enable automated routing of transactions even across multi-hop, multi-settlement-system, multi-asset topologies. I'd be willing to pick it up again as a group if anyone wanted to combine efforts. I came around to the area because we were building a crypto-currency exchange (Kraken) and the availability (24x7x365) and risk management (re: gray settlement periods, exchange rate exposure, per-transaction and/or per-subsystem critical failure scenarios) profiles were therefore fairly extreme. It occurred to me that a decently generic solution in this space was not limited to conventional or digital assets and could apply with equal utility to physical goods and services. Everything I've done since I have always regretted not finishing that project because I felt it would have been useful. This strongly suggests to me that there really is an opportunity to produce something in this space for wide adoption.