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This reads like a parody of every thread on nuclear technology on HN or, before it, slashdot. It’s always „decades away“, but there’s always pebble bed/molten

This reads like a parody of every thread on nuclear technology on HN or, before it, slashdot. It’s always „decades away“, but there’s always pebble bed/molten salt/thorium/whatever technology that’s far better, basically functional, mostly free, and only held up by those darn environmentalists/idiot politicians/liberals/oil lobby/NIMBYs/Elton John/… It feels like the tech community is forever trapped in the science fiction of the 50s, while actual science (and politicians) have created options that, frankly, are far better in every regard, including costs.

mywittyname 8y ago
A major issue is that people on HN are largely ignorant of nuclear power generation. It's largely a bunch of wikipedia-educated people debating youtube-educated people. So none of the discussions are realistic, because there's probably four people on HN with any real world subject matter knowledge. There's not the same blind-optimism to solar power generation.
- Pica_soO 8y ago
  We like big problems more then big solutions. What we like even less, are small solutions to big problems.
- ggm 8y ago
  There's not the same blind-optimism to solar power generation. Well.. it's hard to be overtly skeptical to a form of lower intensity power which works at scale, but lower intensity. The only claims to be rebutted are ones which overstate the pace of improvement to the forseen asymptote. What's more baffling is the constant jeremiad of hate against solar wind and battery because of prejudice favouring large centrally managed gigawatts. Nobody disputes big lumps of powerstation are good. What we're doing is fighting an ill informed skirmish inside the linear programming and O/R model of future power, rather pointlessly. I would like nuclear fusion and fission power research to continue. I would like the funding to lower intensity power to continue as well. I would like a grown up conversation about how much each should get annually as funding.
  - DennisP 8y ago
    What's similarly baffling to me is the constant jeremiad of hate against nuclear. Personally I'm a fan of any carbon-free power source. In particular solar and nuclear seem like they'd go together quite well: nuclear baseload, solar for extra daytime demand, and enough storage to handle the remaining discrepancy with the demand curve. (A couple years ago MIT had a grid simulation that let people try out different combinations to see the overall cost, and that was the cheapest I came up with.)
    - pfdietz 8y ago
      Nuclear was given the benefit of the doubt for decades. It failed. In particular, projections of its cost turned out to be self-serving lies. People get testy when they've been victims of fraud. Just ask the ratepayers in Georgia and South Carolina.
      - wbl 8y ago
        Meanwhile France is 80% nuclear power mix, and contained costs by building fleets of similar reactors. US construction industry is the issue here.
        pfdietz 8y ago
        France's costs were always opaque, since they mixed the civilian and military nuclear programs. In any case, France can not now build reactors cheaply. The recent attempts have experienced disastrous cost overruns (a factor of 3x for Flamanville). New nuclear has failed there just like it failed here in the US.
    - ggm 8y ago
      It's the unavoidable up front subsidy envy. That, and fears of statist controls obligated by unimaginable risks. The actual risks experienced being lower except when corporate greed behaviour goes Fukushima. Actual power cost and deaths per gigawatts? Unbeatable. I used to hate on nuclear, I changed my mind. End the lawsuits and let's get building again.
- Keyframe 8y ago
  That's really true. The issue is probably in natural curiosity within our (this) group. Personally, I don't have much experience outside of two areas of expertise, but I'm curious about many other areas, read about those, sometimes even dabble... but nowhere near the level to 'offer' solutions. Usually the case when you think something is obvious or trivial, you don't understand the problem(s)... usually.
jjeaff 8y ago
So is it incorrect that nuclear energy is currently the second cheapest per watt all in?
- pfdietz 8y ago
  Yes, that's very incorrect.
  - nradov 8y ago
    The correctness or lack thereof really depends on how you account for the externalities.
    - philipkglass 8y ago
      It also depends on how you define "is currently." If you only count the reactors that are already built and still operating, they are pretty cheap sources of electricity. The old nuclear projects that were abandoned before completion won't be part of your "power per dollar" denominator. The reactors that were shut down 10 years ago because they were too expensive to keep running will also be missing from the denominator. The late and over-budget reactors that have yet to enter service will be missing from the cost denominator as well. Once you limit the field of inquiry to the surviving, operating nuclear plants, they're pretty affordable. If you interpret the question as meaning "nuclear energy is currently the second cheapest per watt [to add to a nation's electricity supply]" -- no, that's incorrect for anywhere with half-decent wind or solar resources. The final question that prevents me from being a 100% renewables triumphalist: what happens to the relative cost of nuclear vs. more renewables + storage as renewable penetration rises? Storage is hardly needed at present penetration levels. Only a modest amount of storage (overnight) may be needed for 50% or even more penetration. But what happens at 80%, 90%, 100% decarbonization of the electricity supply? It's possible that even expensive new reactors will be cheaper than reaching 100% with storage and renewables alone. It remains an open question.
      - pfdietz 8y ago
        To answer your last question: As renewables, getting cheaper, are added and longer term storage becomes needed, nuclear is placed in a horrible position. That's because nuclear needs to sell its power a high percentage of the time or its economics become ridiculously bad. So what happens when solar/wind/short term storage are covering things 80% of the time, at a cost (during that period) the nuclear reactor cannot come close to, on a levelized basis? The cost of power from the nuke goes up by a factor of as much as five. Nuclear plants are horrible as intermittent fill-in sources. It instead becomes more economical to add low-efficiency long term storage options (like hydrogen) and to just overbuild the intermittent sources.
vertexFarm 8y ago
Better in every regard including -immediate- costs, maybe. If we go worst-case climate change in 40 years, not putting massive development into fission and fusion power will clearly become the most costly mistake we've ever made as a species. Yes, we've got some promising renewables, but they are coming in the eleventh hour and it may be too late. We could have nipped this in the bud half a century ago. Your style of reasoning has been trotted out as a common-sense justification not to stave off the literal apocalypse for all those intervening decades, and here we are. I don't think this can be overstated enough. Yearly budgets and disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima are important, sure, but they're on an entirely different tier from what we're about to wreak on ourselves. We're evaluating the risk of these technologies all wrong. Accidents and sacrifices would have been worth it. Even nuclear proliferation leading to all-out nuclear war would have been preferable to what we're about to experience. And that is truly harrowing.
- foota 8y ago
  Hm, I think I'll take even the most drastic climate change projections over nuclear war.
- gregw2 8y ago
  How could cheap/free energy ever not lead to global warming, given the second law of thermodynamics?
  - ben_w 8y ago
    Sunlight is ~1kW/m^2. That’s solar aligned area rather than land area, so you need to generate about 10^17 watts before the laws of thermodynamics become something you cannot deal with just by using your astronomical supply of cheap energy to cheaply manufacture and install a sun shade at L1.
ForHackernews 8y ago
It's too late. If we really believe the predictions [0] then we need to go all-in on fission like 10 years ago. Yes, there are risks to nuclear power. I'll take risks of localized disaster over the certainty of a global catastrophe. [0] https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=8433 https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=8433
- natmaka 8y ago
  Most accept a potential "localized disaster"... as long as they aren't at risk themselves ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY ). Always letting the poorest directly assume such risk may be a good recipe for a global social catastrophe.
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    NIMBY doesn't automatically imply poorest. Regardless, I volunteer for the danger zone. The 99% worst case is merely evacuation, and expensive power plants pay for lots of nice thing with their taxes. Also insurance is a perfectly viable way to spread out risk so that no group of people is disadvantaged.
    - natmaka 8y ago
      The fact that you are not in NIMBY is possible, your arguments, albeit debatable (no insurance company offers any policy related to large-scale nuke risk), are acceptable, but nonetheless you sit in a tiny minority thinking this way. AFAIK everywhere the majority is stuck in NIMBY mode.
      - Dylan16807 8y ago
        If you were going to make a thousand power plants, I bet you could easily create such an insurance. But people are always going to be unrealistic about risk. So I dunno, ask people if they accept a tiny chance of localized disaster, and then ignore everything they say about their own location.
  - 8y ago

mywittyname 8y ago

A major issue is that people on HN are largely ignorant of nuclear power generation. It's largely a bunch of wikipedia-educated people debating youtube-educated people. So none of the discussions are realistic, because there's probably four people on HN with any real world subject matter knowledge. There's not the same blind-optimism to solar power generation.

Pica_soO 8y ago
We like big problems more then big solutions. What we like even less, are small solutions to big problems.
ggm 8y ago
There's not the same blind-optimism to solar power generation. Well.. it's hard to be overtly skeptical to a form of lower intensity power which works at scale, but lower intensity. The only claims to be rebutted are ones which overstate the pace of improvement to the forseen asymptote. What's more baffling is the constant jeremiad of hate against solar wind and battery because of prejudice favouring large centrally managed gigawatts. Nobody disputes big lumps of powerstation are good. What we're doing is fighting an ill informed skirmish inside the linear programming and O/R model of future power, rather pointlessly. I would like nuclear fusion and fission power research to continue. I would like the funding to lower intensity power to continue as well. I would like a grown up conversation about how much each should get annually as funding.
- DennisP 8y ago
  What's similarly baffling to me is the constant jeremiad of hate against nuclear. Personally I'm a fan of any carbon-free power source. In particular solar and nuclear seem like they'd go together quite well: nuclear baseload, solar for extra daytime demand, and enough storage to handle the remaining discrepancy with the demand curve. (A couple years ago MIT had a grid simulation that let people try out different combinations to see the overall cost, and that was the cheapest I came up with.)
  - pfdietz 8y ago
    Nuclear was given the benefit of the doubt for decades. It failed. In particular, projections of its cost turned out to be self-serving lies. People get testy when they've been victims of fraud. Just ask the ratepayers in Georgia and South Carolina.
    - wbl 8y ago
      Meanwhile France is 80% nuclear power mix, and contained costs by building fleets of similar reactors. US construction industry is the issue here.
      - pfdietz 8y ago
        France's costs were always opaque, since they mixed the civilian and military nuclear programs. In any case, France can not now build reactors cheaply. The recent attempts have experienced disastrous cost overruns (a factor of 3x for Flamanville). New nuclear has failed there just like it failed here in the US.
  - ggm 8y ago
    It's the unavoidable up front subsidy envy. That, and fears of statist controls obligated by unimaginable risks. The actual risks experienced being lower except when corporate greed behaviour goes Fukushima. Actual power cost and deaths per gigawatts? Unbeatable. I used to hate on nuclear, I changed my mind. End the lawsuits and let's get building again.
Keyframe 8y ago
That's really true. The issue is probably in natural curiosity within our (this) group. Personally, I don't have much experience outside of two areas of expertise, but I'm curious about many other areas, read about those, sometimes even dabble... but nowhere near the level to 'offer' solutions. Usually the case when you think something is obvious or trivial, you don't understand the problem(s)... usually.

jjeaff 8y ago

So is it incorrect that nuclear energy is currently the second cheapest per watt all in?

pfdietz 8y ago
Yes, that's very incorrect.
- nradov 8y ago
  The correctness or lack thereof really depends on how you account for the externalities.
  - philipkglass 8y ago
    It also depends on how you define "is currently." If you only count the reactors that are already built and still operating, they are pretty cheap sources of electricity. The old nuclear projects that were abandoned before completion won't be part of your "power per dollar" denominator. The reactors that were shut down 10 years ago because they were too expensive to keep running will also be missing from the denominator. The late and over-budget reactors that have yet to enter service will be missing from the cost denominator as well. Once you limit the field of inquiry to the surviving, operating nuclear plants, they're pretty affordable. If you interpret the question as meaning "nuclear energy is currently the second cheapest per watt [to add to a nation's electricity supply]" -- no, that's incorrect for anywhere with half-decent wind or solar resources. The final question that prevents me from being a 100% renewables triumphalist: what happens to the relative cost of nuclear vs. more renewables + storage as renewable penetration rises? Storage is hardly needed at present penetration levels. Only a modest amount of storage (overnight) may be needed for 50% or even more penetration. But what happens at 80%, 90%, 100% decarbonization of the electricity supply? It's possible that even expensive new reactors will be cheaper than reaching 100% with storage and renewables alone. It remains an open question.
    - pfdietz 8y ago
      To answer your last question: As renewables, getting cheaper, are added and longer term storage becomes needed, nuclear is placed in a horrible position. That's because nuclear needs to sell its power a high percentage of the time or its economics become ridiculously bad. So what happens when solar/wind/short term storage are covering things 80% of the time, at a cost (during that period) the nuclear reactor cannot come close to, on a levelized basis? The cost of power from the nuke goes up by a factor of as much as five. Nuclear plants are horrible as intermittent fill-in sources. It instead becomes more economical to add low-efficiency long term storage options (like hydrogen) and to just overbuild the intermittent sources.

vertexFarm 8y ago

Better in every regard including -immediate- costs, maybe. If we go worst-case climate change in 40 years, not putting massive development into fission and fusion power will clearly become the most costly mistake we've ever made as a species. Yes, we've got some promising renewables, but they are coming in the eleventh hour and it may be too late. We could have nipped this in the bud half a century ago. Your style of reasoning has been trotted out as a common-sense justification not to stave off the literal apocalypse for all those intervening decades, and here we are. I don't think this can be overstated enough. Yearly budgets and disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima are important, sure, but they're on an entirely different tier from what we're about to wreak on ourselves. We're evaluating the risk of these technologies all wrong. Accidents and sacrifices would have been worth it. Even nuclear proliferation leading to all-out nuclear war would have been preferable to what we're about to experience. And that is truly harrowing.

foota 8y ago
Hm, I think I'll take even the most drastic climate change projections over nuclear war.
gregw2 8y ago
How could cheap/free energy ever not lead to global warming, given the second law of thermodynamics?
- ben_w 8y ago
  Sunlight is ~1kW/m^2. That’s solar aligned area rather than land area, so you need to generate about 10^17 watts before the laws of thermodynamics become something you cannot deal with just by using your astronomical supply of cheap energy to cheaply manufacture and install a sun shade at L1.

ForHackernews 8y ago

It's too late. If we really believe the predictions [0] then we need to go all-in on fission like 10 years ago. Yes, there are risks to nuclear power. I'll take risks of localized disaster over the certainty of a global catastrophe. [0] https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=8433 https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=8433

natmaka 8y ago
Most accept a potential "localized disaster"... as long as they aren't at risk themselves ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY ). Always letting the poorest directly assume such risk may be a good recipe for a global social catastrophe.
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  NIMBY doesn't automatically imply poorest. Regardless, I volunteer for the danger zone. The 99% worst case is merely evacuation, and expensive power plants pay for lots of nice thing with their taxes. Also insurance is a perfectly viable way to spread out risk so that no group of people is disadvantaged.
  - natmaka 8y ago
    The fact that you are not in NIMBY is possible, your arguments, albeit debatable (no insurance company offers any policy related to large-scale nuke risk), are acceptable, but nonetheless you sit in a tiny minority thinking this way. AFAIK everywhere the majority is stuck in NIMBY mode.
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      If you were going to make a thousand power plants, I bet you could easily create such an insurance. But people are always going to be unrealistic about risk. So I dunno, ask people if they accept a tiny chance of localized disaster, and then ignore everything they say about their own location.
- 8y ago