6 ms·

Coal emissions kill... which is why zero-cabon-emission nuclear power is essential for powering the base load of the green future. Though if the current rules

by mikece 8y ago

Coal emissions kill... which is why zero-cabon-emission nuclear power is essential for powering the base load of the green future. Though if the current rules prohibiting the recycling of partially spent fuel, lack of incentives for LFTR reactor research, streamlining regulations and environmental studies, and moving from gigawatt-scale reactors to designs using a cluster of SMR (small, modular reactors) isn't pursued then, unfortunately, it's probably better to ignore nuclear.

british_india 8y ago
Unfortunately, nuclear has other, just-as-bad waste products that have still not been dealt with. You must know, after Fukushima Daichi and Daimo, no one is going to be comfortable with nuclear--ever.
gameswithgo 8y ago
or large scale energy storage. is that hard to do? yes, it is also hard to do nuclear power safely, and also hard to build huge offshore oil rigs, but we can do all of these things.
mchannon 8y ago
Zero carbon emissions? The uranium drag line, trucks, ships, trains, and smelters are all fossil fuel powered, and that doesn't include the prodigious amounts of steel and cement needed for a nuclear plant. It might be less carbon-intensive than, say, oil, but it's certainly nowhere near zero. LFTR reactors, if they actually had significant economic potential, wouldn't need incentives. India or China would have gone all-out on them, but the fact is they still require Uranium to get started, and even in theory they aren't much better than what we're currently using for fission-based power. Ignoring both coal and nuclear is pretty much inevitable, as long as natural gas and renewables stay this cheap or cheaper.
- cornholio 8y ago
  > The uranium drag line, trucks, ships, trains, and smelters are all fossil fuel powered, and that doesn't include the prodigious amounts of steel and cement needed for a nuclear plant. There is considerably less ore mining and refining involved in nuclear compared to renewable, due to the orders of magnitude higher energy density. It's fallacious reasoning, because by that standard, NOTHING produced by the current society is zero carbon. Nuclear itself is zero carbon, just like wind or solar. But all three require material that could conceivably be produced in a zero carbon / 100% offset regimen. So the correct approach is to push for zero carbon transport, zero carbon cement etc. Or just tax the carbon to get it to a planetary safe level and let the market allocate.
- greedo 8y ago
  Natural gas needs to be phased out due to CO2.
  - st26 8y ago
    Eventually, but for now it's a 50% reduction over coal.
  - greglindahl 8y ago
    Eventually, yes. One nice thing about the US natural gas boom is that power plants for natural gas have much lower capital costs than coal plants, so there will be less screaming when they are eventually shut down.
  - grizzles 8y ago
    There are several ways now to burn natural gas without releasing even a single ounce of CO2 into the atmosphere. For example, one way cracks natural gas into hydrogen and into solid black carbon which is a fine powder, and easy to store away. Natural gas will be an integral of the energy mix for the next 50 years at least.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
pjc50 8y ago
Nuclear power is now arguably too late. We've got enough renewables manufacturing capabity to add a lot every year, while nuclear power plant starting now (e.g. Hinkley Point C, which has been in planning since 2008) won't be ready for at least 5 years.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
chris_va 8y ago
I work in a Climate and Energy R&D group, so while I agree it would be great if nuclear power was resurrected (being safer and cleaner than any other form of power, solar included, despite its representation in the media), it very likely will never happen--purely for economic reasons. Ironically, it's wind and solar that finished off nuclear power. Renewable energy has high variability in supply, but sells power at zero marginal cost. That means grid demand becomes highly variable during the day. Nuclear (and coal) are both systems with high capital costs and very low marginal cost. To be cost competitive, they both need to produce power 90%+ of the time to amortize the initial capital. However, with the current variability in demand, they can't get anywhere close to 90% demand from the grid. This leaves a market opening for peaker plants with very low capital costs, notably natural gas and hydro in the US. Hydro is saturated, and combined with low-cost fuel due to the fracking boom, natural gas is exploding. Basically, the net result of wind/solar is actually a wash, from an environmental standpoint. That will get better with HVDC interconnects (reduces variability of wind), but in general it is not happy outcome.
- pm90 8y ago
  I hope you can answer a theoretical question I've had about Nuclear energy for a long time: if instead of stopping the construction of new Nuclear plants, the US had continued to build more of them, would that have lead to a decrease in capital costs and enough of a Nuclear Energy Ecosystem that it would be cost-competitive with Coal, if not with Renewables? Or are the costs of safety-measures the main cost center for building new reactors?
  - beat 8y ago
    I find it helpful to look at how other countries handle nuclear, not just the US - particularly China and Russia, where "safety" and the usual fingerpointing about those treehugger liberal regulations simply don't apply. Did they scale out nuclear much more than we did? How much? With what technical innovations, if any? And if their nuclear ambitions, in the end, didn't come to a whole lot more than ours did... well, why not? It wasn't "regulation", so there must be other structural factors at work, which may or may not be the same as ours.
spoiledtechie 8y ago
Why does it always need to be one or the other? You are allowed to have a variety of different powering tech. Just like programming languages, one language does not have to be the only one. Stop thinking singular. Choice are the most successful here.
- Kalium 8y ago
  As a political matter, energy policy tends to make either/or choices. As you say, this is definitely not ideal.
bingobob 8y ago
I found this video pretty good asking the question about baseload https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-5VkFo-fsg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-5VkFo-fsg

by mikece 8y ago

british_india 8y ago

Unfortunately, nuclear has other, just-as-bad waste products that have still not been dealt with. You must know, after Fukushima Daichi and Daimo, no one is going to be comfortable with nuclear--ever.

gameswithgo 8y ago

or large scale energy storage. is that hard to do? yes, it is also hard to do nuclear power safely, and also hard to build huge offshore oil rigs, but we can do all of these things.

mchannon 8y ago

Zero carbon emissions? The uranium drag line, trucks, ships, trains, and smelters are all fossil fuel powered, and that doesn't include the prodigious amounts of steel and cement needed for a nuclear plant. It might be less carbon-intensive than, say, oil, but it's certainly nowhere near zero. LFTR reactors, if they actually had significant economic potential, wouldn't need incentives. India or China would have gone all-out on them, but the fact is they still require Uranium to get started, and even in theory they aren't much better than what we're currently using for fission-based power. Ignoring both coal and nuclear is pretty much inevitable, as long as natural gas and renewables stay this cheap or cheaper.

cornholio 8y ago
> The uranium drag line, trucks, ships, trains, and smelters are all fossil fuel powered, and that doesn't include the prodigious amounts of steel and cement needed for a nuclear plant. There is considerably less ore mining and refining involved in nuclear compared to renewable, due to the orders of magnitude higher energy density. It's fallacious reasoning, because by that standard, NOTHING produced by the current society is zero carbon. Nuclear itself is zero carbon, just like wind or solar. But all three require material that could conceivably be produced in a zero carbon / 100% offset regimen. So the correct approach is to push for zero carbon transport, zero carbon cement etc. Or just tax the carbon to get it to a planetary safe level and let the market allocate.
greedo 8y ago
Natural gas needs to be phased out due to CO2.
- st26 8y ago
  Eventually, but for now it's a 50% reduction over coal.
- greglindahl 8y ago
  Eventually, yes. One nice thing about the US natural gas boom is that power plants for natural gas have much lower capital costs than coal plants, so there will be less screaming when they are eventually shut down.
- grizzles 8y ago
  There are several ways now to burn natural gas without releasing even a single ounce of CO2 into the atmosphere. For example, one way cracks natural gas into hydrogen and into solid black carbon which is a fine powder, and easy to store away. Natural gas will be an integral of the energy mix for the next 50 years at least.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

pjc50 8y ago

Nuclear power is now arguably too late. We've got enough renewables manufacturing capabity to add a lot every year, while nuclear power plant starting now (e.g. Hinkley Point C, which has been in planning since 2008) won't be ready for at least 5 years.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

chris_va 8y ago

I work in a Climate and Energy R&D group, so while I agree it would be great if nuclear power was resurrected (being safer and cleaner than any other form of power, solar included, despite its representation in the media), it very likely will never happen--purely for economic reasons. Ironically, it's wind and solar that finished off nuclear power. Renewable energy has high variability in supply, but sells power at zero marginal cost. That means grid demand becomes highly variable during the day. Nuclear (and coal) are both systems with high capital costs and very low marginal cost. To be cost competitive, they both need to produce power 90%+ of the time to amortize the initial capital. However, with the current variability in demand, they can't get anywhere close to 90% demand from the grid. This leaves a market opening for peaker plants with very low capital costs, notably natural gas and hydro in the US. Hydro is saturated, and combined with low-cost fuel due to the fracking boom, natural gas is exploding. Basically, the net result of wind/solar is actually a wash, from an environmental standpoint. That will get better with HVDC interconnects (reduces variability of wind), but in general it is not happy outcome.

pm90 8y ago
I hope you can answer a theoretical question I've had about Nuclear energy for a long time: if instead of stopping the construction of new Nuclear plants, the US had continued to build more of them, would that have lead to a decrease in capital costs and enough of a Nuclear Energy Ecosystem that it would be cost-competitive with Coal, if not with Renewables? Or are the costs of safety-measures the main cost center for building new reactors?
- beat 8y ago
  I find it helpful to look at how other countries handle nuclear, not just the US - particularly China and Russia, where "safety" and the usual fingerpointing about those treehugger liberal regulations simply don't apply. Did they scale out nuclear much more than we did? How much? With what technical innovations, if any? And if their nuclear ambitions, in the end, didn't come to a whole lot more than ours did... well, why not? It wasn't "regulation", so there must be other structural factors at work, which may or may not be the same as ours.

spoiledtechie 8y ago

Why does it always need to be one or the other? You are allowed to have a variety of different powering tech. Just like programming languages, one language does not have to be the only one. Stop thinking singular. Choice are the most successful here.

Kalium 8y ago
As a political matter, energy policy tends to make either/or choices. As you say, this is definitely not ideal.

bingobob 8y ago

I found this video pretty good asking the question about baseload https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-5VkFo-fsg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-5VkFo-fsg