4 ms·

Non of this thinking is even futuristic. It was futuristic in 50s. Look at France. They solved this problems in the 70/80 with technology from the 50/60. The

by nickik 8y ago

Non of this thinking is even futuristic. It was futuristic in 50s. Look at France. They solved this problems in the 70/80 with technology from the 50/60. The problem is utter stupidity of both the population and politics. There is absolutely no problem. Nuclear energy is utterly inexhaustible for the next 1000 years, it uses almost no resources (in terms of land, steel, water) it causes absolutely no pollution at all. https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false&countryCode=FR https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&rem... Why not copy what clearly works? Why does everybody invent something new when we invented something 70 years ago. We would finally have the energy to do things like desalinate sweetwater and synthetic fuels.

cfadvan 8y ago
I’m very very pro nuclear, but you’re sort of bullshitting here. No pollution? Most people would consider nuclear waste to be polluting, and nothing is perfect, sometimes you get a Fukushima. It also pollutes down the line when you’remining Uranium and processing fuel, and for now even with perfect safety that’s unavoidable. It’s still a much better choice than anything else, and it pollutes less, and modern designs can be very safe. We’d actually be safer, since we could replace older, unsafe designs with modern ones. We still need a political solution to the waste problem though, and I have no idea how that can be done.
- nickik 8y ago
  > Most people would consider nuclear waste to be polluting Then 'most people' don't know what pollution means. Nuclear 'waste' is a controlled output of a process that can and is controlled to not effect the environment in any way. In terms of nuclear arguing what 'most people' believe is utterly pointless because 'most people' don't understand even the basics of nuclear physics. > and nothing is perfect, sometimes you get a Fukushima Nothing is perfect. But somehow people don't point to all the deaths that happen on solar installations and so on. The fact is that nuclear is the safest form of energy.
  - cfadvan 8y ago
    That’s a very selective response, but ok, I can do that too. In terms of nuclear arguing what 'most people' believe is utterly pointless because 'most people' don't understand even the basics of nuclear physics. It’s The point, because it’s their representatives that have stopped all progress in the space for decades. We’re not getting our nuclear power unless they change their minds en masse, period.
    - nickik 8y ago
      I agree with that. But that's the original point why I wrote my main comment in this thread. The solution is there but the media and the liberal elites rather spend their time promoting solar and batteries.
  - soundwave106 8y ago
    People are somewhat irrational in nature and fear rare, but spectacular events more than the mundane. This is the number one problem with nuclear that I see it: no other power source has had anything on the scale of Chernobyl. The only thing that I think offhand could come close as far as potential deaths is a hydro dam collapse. The reality is, we are all human, the world loves to throw unexpected surprises at us (such as the tsunami that helped cause Fukushima). So a Level 7 event is always a small probability. Even if it is much less of a probability than fossil electricity accidents and the issues from pollution overall are worse for fossil fuel, it's a hard sell because of the ways humans are wired. It also doesn't help that the technology is mysterious to a lot of people as you mention. "Flammable material burns, makes energy" is somewhat intuitive to most people. Nuclear is not intuitive at all. Just think at how Hollywood tends to depict nuclear in the popular lore. :) At any rate, my personal reason I think nuclear will never gain much traction in this modern world is that one of those "potential surprises" is terrorism. Nuclear plants are an acknowledged target. So at the very least, you have to add costs to safeguard the structure and really beef up the security around the plant these days. IMHO this would make any big central nuclear power solution quite a bit much less attractive.
    - vkou 8y ago
- dalbasal 8y ago
  Can be safe and will be safe, if the world at large commits to massive expansion of nuclear fuel production are two different things. Theory and practice. Modern IT systems also guarantee full recovery from any data loss. That doesn't mean data loss never happens. In reality, we will have fuckups. More worryingly, nuclear as the fuel of the future has security implications. The fact that the problem is theoretically solvable is important. I'm with you, the answer depends on the specifics.
  - nickik 8y ago
    While 100% can never happen nuclear is a well know technology with a record of safety better then anything else. In any category you measure environment or safety. Modern reactors that we would build in the future are a fair bit more secure. > More worryingly, nuclear as the fuel of the future has security implications. While true in a global context most countries that use massive amounts of carbon already have some sort of nuclear industry anyway.
Brakenshire 8y ago
Nuclear is too expensive, the French option is massive centralised planning for scale, combined with subsidy to encourage an export market, neither of which are palatable in much of the developed world. There’s also the proliferation risk, in combination it’s just not going to do what we need it to do.
- nickik 8y ago
  France did it with 50/60 technology in 70. France did it fairly centralized but there are other options to get to a similar place. Today its far easier to mass produce and scale. Modern reactors are better design for this. Nuclear growth in the developed world would actually be possible. That is actually what China is planning to do. They want to sell reactors and get fuel contracts to control people infrastructure. Most experts agree that civil nuclear power actually helps proliferation. My problem is this. You read news article after article about how horrible and disastrous climate change already is and will be even worse very soon. WE NEED TO ACT NOW. When you then go to the same newspapers and people, they are talking about how solar is coming along nicely and with government support in 20 years it be relevant. Nuclear could have been adopted (or continued) 30 years ago. Carbon would never even have been a large problem. Only having to change transportation would have been far easier once you have non-carbon energy.
  - philipkglass 8y ago
    Nuclear construction is great for energy supply throughput, terrible for latency. Today its far easier to mass produce and scale. Modern reactors are better design for this. This is not supported empirically. France's Generation III reactor design, the EPR, is proving slower to build than Generation II reactors in the 1970s. The first French EPR, Flamanville 3, is currently on month 102 of construction, when it was originally supposed to be complete after 54 months. The two Generation III AP1000 reactors under construction in the USA are now expected to be completed in 2021 and 2022 after 9 years of construction. They were originally supposed to be completed in 2016 and 2017. Two others were cancelled after years and billions of dollars were spent because they could not meet schedules. Note that EPR and AP1000 reactors are also under construction in China and they are years late there too. These dreadful mis-estimates can't be laid solely on Western laws or environmental activists. Before construction actually started on EPR and AP1000 reactors in the West, project boosters were claiming that Generation III reactors would be safer, have predictable construction schedules, and be affordable. None of those boasts have been affirmed yet. Nuclear boosters sometimes excuse this with "the first of a kind is always slow." But then talk of "fast" nuclear construction is even less realistic. It takes a decade to build the first of a kind. Then if the debugged construction process gets down to a brisk 4.5 years per reactor, like China has managed, it's about 15 years before you see any kind of fast decarbonization progress from a commitment to build a new generation of nuclear reactors. I think that the US should keep reactor construction alive so that the know-how isn't entirely lost again, and certainly should not shut down already-built reactors that are still in good working order. But that still wouldn't be a fast fix for cutting emissions.

by nickik 8y ago

cfadvan 8y ago

I’m very very pro nuclear, but you’re sort of bullshitting here. No pollution? Most people would consider nuclear waste to be polluting, and nothing is perfect, sometimes you get a Fukushima. It also pollutes down the line when you’remining Uranium and processing fuel, and for now even with perfect safety that’s unavoidable. It’s still a much better choice than anything else, and it pollutes less, and modern designs can be very safe. We’d actually be safer, since we could replace older, unsafe designs with modern ones. We still need a political solution to the waste problem though, and I have no idea how that can be done.

nickik 8y ago
> Most people would consider nuclear waste to be polluting Then 'most people' don't know what pollution means. Nuclear 'waste' is a controlled output of a process that can and is controlled to not effect the environment in any way. In terms of nuclear arguing what 'most people' believe is utterly pointless because 'most people' don't understand even the basics of nuclear physics. > and nothing is perfect, sometimes you get a Fukushima Nothing is perfect. But somehow people don't point to all the deaths that happen on solar installations and so on. The fact is that nuclear is the safest form of energy.
- cfadvan 8y ago
  That’s a very selective response, but ok, I can do that too. In terms of nuclear arguing what 'most people' believe is utterly pointless because 'most people' don't understand even the basics of nuclear physics. It’s The point, because it’s their representatives that have stopped all progress in the space for decades. We’re not getting our nuclear power unless they change their minds en masse, period.
  - nickik 8y ago
    I agree with that. But that's the original point why I wrote my main comment in this thread. The solution is there but the media and the liberal elites rather spend their time promoting solar and batteries.
- soundwave106 8y ago
  People are somewhat irrational in nature and fear rare, but spectacular events more than the mundane. This is the number one problem with nuclear that I see it: no other power source has had anything on the scale of Chernobyl. The only thing that I think offhand could come close as far as potential deaths is a hydro dam collapse. The reality is, we are all human, the world loves to throw unexpected surprises at us (such as the tsunami that helped cause Fukushima). So a Level 7 event is always a small probability. Even if it is much less of a probability than fossil electricity accidents and the issues from pollution overall are worse for fossil fuel, it's a hard sell because of the ways humans are wired. It also doesn't help that the technology is mysterious to a lot of people as you mention. "Flammable material burns, makes energy" is somewhat intuitive to most people. Nuclear is not intuitive at all. Just think at how Hollywood tends to depict nuclear in the popular lore. :) At any rate, my personal reason I think nuclear will never gain much traction in this modern world is that one of those "potential surprises" is terrorism. Nuclear plants are an acknowledged target. So at the very least, you have to add costs to safeguard the structure and really beef up the security around the plant these days. IMHO this would make any big central nuclear power solution quite a bit much less attractive.
  - vkou 8y ago
dalbasal 8y ago
Can be safe and will be safe, if the world at large commits to massive expansion of nuclear fuel production are two different things. Theory and practice. Modern IT systems also guarantee full recovery from any data loss. That doesn't mean data loss never happens. In reality, we will have fuckups. More worryingly, nuclear as the fuel of the future has security implications. The fact that the problem is theoretically solvable is important. I'm with you, the answer depends on the specifics.
- nickik 8y ago
  While 100% can never happen nuclear is a well know technology with a record of safety better then anything else. In any category you measure environment or safety. Modern reactors that we would build in the future are a fair bit more secure. > More worryingly, nuclear as the fuel of the future has security implications. While true in a global context most countries that use massive amounts of carbon already have some sort of nuclear industry anyway.

Brakenshire 8y ago

Nuclear is too expensive, the French option is massive centralised planning for scale, combined with subsidy to encourage an export market, neither of which are palatable in much of the developed world. There’s also the proliferation risk, in combination it’s just not going to do what we need it to do.

nickik 8y ago
France did it with 50/60 technology in 70. France did it fairly centralized but there are other options to get to a similar place. Today its far easier to mass produce and scale. Modern reactors are better design for this. Nuclear growth in the developed world would actually be possible. That is actually what China is planning to do. They want to sell reactors and get fuel contracts to control people infrastructure. Most experts agree that civil nuclear power actually helps proliferation. My problem is this. You read news article after article about how horrible and disastrous climate change already is and will be even worse very soon. WE NEED TO ACT NOW. When you then go to the same newspapers and people, they are talking about how solar is coming along nicely and with government support in 20 years it be relevant. Nuclear could have been adopted (or continued) 30 years ago. Carbon would never even have been a large problem. Only having to change transportation would have been far easier once you have non-carbon energy.
- philipkglass 8y ago
  Nuclear construction is great for energy supply throughput, terrible for latency. Today its far easier to mass produce and scale. Modern reactors are better design for this. This is not supported empirically. France's Generation III reactor design, the EPR, is proving slower to build than Generation II reactors in the 1970s. The first French EPR, Flamanville 3, is currently on month 102 of construction, when it was originally supposed to be complete after 54 months. The two Generation III AP1000 reactors under construction in the USA are now expected to be completed in 2021 and 2022 after 9 years of construction. They were originally supposed to be completed in 2016 and 2017. Two others were cancelled after years and billions of dollars were spent because they could not meet schedules. Note that EPR and AP1000 reactors are also under construction in China and they are years late there too. These dreadful mis-estimates can't be laid solely on Western laws or environmental activists. Before construction actually started on EPR and AP1000 reactors in the West, project boosters were claiming that Generation III reactors would be safer, have predictable construction schedules, and be affordable. None of those boasts have been affirmed yet. Nuclear boosters sometimes excuse this with "the first of a kind is always slow." But then talk of "fast" nuclear construction is even less realistic. It takes a decade to build the first of a kind. Then if the debugged construction process gets down to a brisk 4.5 years per reactor, like China has managed, it's about 15 years before you see any kind of fast decarbonization progress from a commitment to build a new generation of nuclear reactors. I think that the US should keep reactor construction alive so that the know-how isn't entirely lost again, and certainly should not shut down already-built reactors that are still in good working order. But that still wouldn't be a fast fix for cutting emissions.