9 ms·

What we've got right now is on the order of a million people dying prematurely every year because of the human issue of people worrying too much about concentra

by avar 8y ago

What we've got right now is on the order of a million people dying prematurely every year because of the human issue of people worrying too much about concentrated risk (nuclear) and not understanding the diffuse risk (coal). Sure, we can improve fission in various ways, but this sort of skepticism is way riskier in the aggregate as it translates into public policy.

est31 8y ago
Indeed, coal is even worse than nuclear. So let's have neither but renewables instead :). Compared to europe, the USA is a big country and it is also further in the south which means more sun for solar collectors.
- avar 8y ago
  Yeah that's fortunately increasingly an option we can take, but the world would sure suck less if we weren't dealing with the compounded effects of 50-70 years of the sort of nuclear skepticism expressed in your comment upthread. But still, even if we're going to aggressively build out renewables there's still room for a lot more nuclear in the energy mix. There's use-cases for it where solar, wind etc. isn't a substitute, e.g. shipping[1]. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/feb/13/climatechange.pollution https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/feb/13/climatec...
  - mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
    Are you willing to live next door to a nuclear plant? People don't experience coal related problems unless they live in areas that are heavily polluted. Sure it impacts them and everyone else but it's perceived less harmful.
    - TomMarius 8y ago
      > Are you willing to live next door to a nuclear plant? Most of the people in my friend group actually live next to one. Zero issues, and it's an old communist party-built one.
      - mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
        Where I'd you don't mind me asking?
        TomMarius 8y ago
        Temelin, Czech Republic
      - selimthegrim 8y ago
        Krško?
        tdj 8y ago
        Krško is a Westinghouse design. I've spent quite some time in the area, and nobody really worried about the power plant. The smell of the cellulose plant in the city center on the other hand, ...
    - loeg 8y ago
      I'd rather live "next to" nuclear than coal. (Neither of these are built abutting residential neighborhoods, so "next to" is a bit of a fallacy.)
      - mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
        There is an idle plant near San Diego they've been wanting to open for a long time but the residents in surrounding areas fight it tooth and nail. For a changebof scenery, residents in Nagasaki are fighting an ongoing battle (losing but trying) to shut down the plant in the area. I have yet to hear of other cases but so far it seems people living in the vicinity of nuclear plants are not happy.
        jacobolus 8y ago
        It’s at the southern tip of Orange County, not that far from both San Diego and Los Angeles, and there are millions of people nearby. It has been closed for about 7 years, and the claimed risks/fears seem plausible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_...
        stale2002 8y ago
        Ok, so what you are saying is that you would prefer to live next to a dirty coal power plant that is much more likely to cause you to get cancer or other horrible health effects?
        C_J_H 8y ago
        I would say that's a false equivalency because coal operators (until recently) were profitable enterprises whereas nuclear lobbyists are generally concerned not just with public tolerance but public funding.
        loeg 8y ago
        Coal is/was only profitable because externalities are not priced in. Everyone knows the externalities of nuclear power and it gets priced in to any discussion of new plants in 2019. The fear (about meltdowns) and concern (about waste) typically outsizes the actual risk substantially. But most people don't seem to realize that coal far more produces aerosolized radioactive waste, other carcinogens, and as a result, cancer, per watt, than nuclear. Even if you assume every single nuclear plant melts down. Burnt coal is just absymal for public health, but it doesn't get the scary branding that nuclear power does.
    - jpindar 8y ago
      I can see Seabrook Station from here, and there are houses within a mile of the reactor. The popular beach towns of Seabrook and Hampton beach are within two miles. AFAIK, neither my neighbors nor the tourists give it much thought.
  - epai 8y ago
    Isn’t that what the tesla semi electric truck and airbus e-fan x electric plane projects aim to help mitigate though: the reliance on gas for shipping/transportation? Just because some use cases are not practical for renewables now doesn’t mean they won’t be in the near future.
  - cam_l 8y ago
    We have had 30+ years of skepticism in coal power, which made near enough to approximately fuck all difference (until perhaps very recently). I would suggest the historical stagnation of nuclear has sfa to do with activism and quite a lot to do with the astronomical costs of building, mining and operation. Also just a thought re. your eg. on shipping.. I read a random blog a while back that suggested that a couple of large cargo ships go missing every week (sinking or piracy mostly). Not a thing I would like to see with nuclear reactors and material on board. http://actuarialeye.com/2014/03/30/how-many-ships-disappear-each-year/ http://actuarialeye.com/2014/03/30/how-many-ships-disappear-...
- roenxi 8y ago
  Hang on, are you absolutely sure that renewables are less damaging than nuclear? The footprint for nuclear is tiny, it might be competitive. Fukashima was a level 7 nuclear distaster, so that is as bad as it gets. The actual damage done is objectivly not that bad compared to a lot of things we have accepted in the past with only increased safety regulation (like dam failures). 2 lvl 7 accidents in 35 years; and design standards generally go up in civilised countries. The footprint of nuclear is so tiny that might be competitive with renewables, accounting for the fact that the reacion to nuclear disasters is paranoid but the response to environmental damage by renewables is basically to ignore it. Renewables need materials, which are mined, and need to be installed, which creates hazards, and use land/airspace, which is costly. I believe some highly questionable rare earths are used too where the environmental impacts are not usually accounted for because it happens in China. Purely in non-human terms, the land clearing for a solar plant is definitely worse than a nuclear disaster, because a level 7 nuclear disaster is net-positive for biodiversity ("suggest biodiversity around the massive radioactivity release has increased" [0]). Ie, humans are worse than a nuclear disaster if they happen to want space for their own use. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_Chernobyl_disaster#Long-term_health_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_Chernobyl_disas...
  - candiodari 8y ago
    Actually renewables are rather famous for not being very safe at all. Turns out that mounting heavy glass plates on rooftops ... can end with a very quick trip to ground with a heavy (and if broken: sharp) glass plate right behind you. Example [1]. Wind turbines need a lot of mechanical components mounted 50 meters (up to 150) off the ground. Needless to say, these components aren't what anyone would call roomy. One component is a big gearbox, or as the technicians call it a "meatgrinder" [2]. TLDR: Nuclear: 0.1 deaths/PWh (US) 90/PWh (global). Wind: 150 deaths/PWh Solar: 440 deaths/PWh [3] Note that Coal and Oil numbers exclude health impact of the intoxication that is highly visible in places like India and China, but really also plays in many US cities. Even if they're not quite at the point where the sky turns brown and acutely toxic. Only Hydro power is even remotely competitive with nuclear power in deaths. (global for nuclear means believing the numbers claiming Chernobyl caused more deaths than 2 US nuclear bombs, or you could more reasonably interpret it as including all deaths due to nuclear weapons. You can freely add in all deaths due to radiation research (low 3 digits), it won't affect the numbers) In a way it's funny. Solar has already killed more people than nuclear (realistic Chernobyl numbers), including the 2 bombs. And will pass the threshold of adding all numbers together just after this decade ends. Somehow that's never mentioned. So taking the most pessimistic numbers, Nuclear is 60% safer than Wind turbines, and a staggering 500% safer than solar power. If taking the optimistic numbers for nuclear ... it's absolutely ridiculous. [1] https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20171019/corona/corona-50th-avenue-construction-accident-deadly-killed/ https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20171019/corona/corona-50th... [2] https://www.healthandsafetyatwork.com/content/siemens-technician%E2%80%99s-harness-snared-wind-turbine-gearbox https://www.healthandsafetyatwork.com/content/siemens-techni... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
- antt 8y ago
  I currently work in data science for an Australian power company. Renewables are the reason why we had electricity spot prices of A$14500/mwh three days in a row, rolling blackouts and the grid being nationalized for several hours. Because of the unregulated attachment of intermittent power sources South Australia has no base load generation any more, this is coal or nuclear stations. Victoria had an incident with one coal plant shutting down on Tesday which was the first $14500 spot price hike. Then because of weather and plant maintenance the same thing happened for two more days in a row with the power regulator stepping in when the rolling blackouts started on Friday telling everyone to run everything at full blast. A renewable only grid will cost an order of magnitude more to run than one based on coal or nuclear, if not more. The above is hugely simplified for obvious reasons and only my opinion and not that of my employer.
  - eigenvector 8y ago
    First of all, a high spot price is not in itself a problem as long as the high price lasts only for a short time and effectively brings needed capacity online. Where you have a serious problem is when spot prices spike, no one responds and load-shedding starts. I appreciate that SA has actually got to the point of load-shedding several times now, which is indicative of a severe problem. However, saying that renewables are the cause of this is the same as saying that nuclear is the cause of Chernobyl. Nuclear plants don't inherently melt down if they are properly designed and operated and renewables don't inherently cause load-shedding if they are integrated to a properly planned and operated bulk power system. What is occurring in SA is a power system planning and market design failure that is not inherent to any one technology. It seems the system operator has been relying on reliability services provided by large synchronous generators without actually pricing and creating a market for those services, which has caused them to disappear with coal retirements and leave the power system in a chronically insecure state. In order for the market to ensure both day-ahead generation adequacy and as well as real-time operating reserve margin for unit contingencies, generators need to be able to get paid for providing those services, at a level that makes it economical to invest in new assets or maintain existing ones. This is a policy problem, not a technical one. FWIW I work for the company that owned the now decommissioned Hazelwood coal plant in Victoria, but I'm not involved with that plant at all.
- briandear 8y ago
  Do solar farms and windmills harm birds? How many birds are killed each year compared to how many die from nuclear? The flippant “lets do renewables” ignores that plastering the landscape with windmills and solar panels has some significant effects on wildlife that would exponentially increase with more widespread deployment. How many birds have died in France as a result of nuclear power? Perhaps the answer is to not put nuclear plants in seismic areas and instead improve storage and transmission technology so that nuclear can be used more. Putting a reactor on a fault line, in a tsunami zone isn’t necessarily a beat practice, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Solar farms and windmills are ugly and environmentally harmful.
  - VyperCard 8y ago
    Cats kill magnitudes more..
- ip26 8y ago
  I'd love to see a future with all renewables. But nuclear seems like a good hedge bet, or even just an interim.
- kbad1000 8y ago
  Yes, the real solution is solar energy combined with a world Power grid.
- pimmen 8y ago
  Some people die every year from wind and hydropower [1]. If we measure lives lost per unit of energy, nuclear power is orders of magnitude better than wind or hydropower. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#da0b5d4709b7 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...
  - VyperCard 8y ago
    So far..
- stale2002 8y ago
  That is never the option. You choice is either to switch to nuclear or continue using coal. Arguing for solutions that are never going to happen, is equivalent to arguing in favor of the status quo (and the status quo is horrible).
joe_the_user 8y ago
Yes, fossil fuels are an ongoing disaster, one that in the form of global warming has a capacity to possibly make the planet unlivable. But all the disasters of fossil fuels are invisible and thus provoke little reaction in the public - and moreover, fossil fuels have vast vested interests protecting them. We need to come up with an alternative to this. Nuclear in the ideal could be that. But nuclear's track record is murky, nuclear's cost is murky. For all I know, solar and wind are X times less effective than nuclear though as mentioned real world costs versus theoretical costs are still problem. I mean, consider raw solar now is the cheapest energy source but maybe solar plus reverse hydro would be some proportion more expensive. Thus if we're creating an alternative to fossil fuels, solar and wind seems like a clear real world win. An nuclear requires huge upfront money because it requires huge upfront energy investment. This risk of nuclear isn't just disaster, it's that this huge investment fails to pay as calculated and this is a risk that's materialized in the past.
- belorn 8y ago
  It would be ideal if we could replace fossil fueled power plants with solar and wind, but it is not currently technically possible and as they provide different forms of services. Fossil fueled power plants generate power based on demand. Solar and wind generate power based on weather. With current technology we really only have two distinct options. We can use solar and wind when the weather allows for it and then burn coal, gas and oil when it doesn't. The global warming impact is the combined result averaged over the year, and the energy cost is similar to the combined price. The other option is nuclear which has the huge upfront cost and nuclear waste, but with minimal global warming. In the future we could get more alternatives. Different form of batteries (like reverse hydro) would allow solar and wind to be separated from on-demand fossil fueled power plants, and dynamic energy market could change demand based on supply so that a lower base generation from nuclear and regular hydro would work in combination with wind and solar.
  - joe_the_user 8y ago
    The other option is nuclear which has the huge upfront cost and nuclear waste, but with minimal global warming. I don't see why the various battery types aren't practical today. Unlike nuclear, there's no huge political resistance and once solar and wind are online, investment in energy storage becomes online energy fairly quickly. Moreover, the huge energy include huge uncertainties, uncertainties whether the plant will shutdown early, especially. Remember, the huge upfront costs of nuclear includes energy expenditure and as you're pointing out, expending more energy means more global warming until we have fully replaced fossil fuel. Long ago, solar and wind advocates were derided for contrasting hypothetical ideals with current realities. Nuclear proponents now seem much closer to doing that.
addicted 8y ago
Most nuclear renewable energy competitors are cheaper than nuclear. Sure, nuclear provides baseload energy in a way its cheaper competitors cannot, but as long as you have more than 20-30% fossil fuel the baseload is not really a concern anywhere. It seems foolish to divert money intended to reduce polluting sources of energy into the more expensive nuclear alternative, until the share of coal and natural gas is low enough that more stable sources of energy are neeeded.
- vkou 8y ago
  All non-nuclear renewable energy competitors require us to derive ~40-60% of our energy generation from burning natural gas, that generates GHGs. This natural gas comes from either fracking, or Russia. Climate change is an exsistential threat to our way of life. > Sure, nuclear provides baseload energy in a way its cheaper competitors cannot, but as long as you have more than 20-30% fossil fuel the baseload is not really a concern anywhere. Yes, it is a concern. We need to hit net zero emissions in the next five years, or net negative emissions, with massive carbon sequestration, in the next 15. How exactly are we going to do that between shipping, air travel, AND fossil-fuel baseload power?
- jabl 8y ago
  It's a question of path dependency. A least-cost grid with 80% less GHG emissions than current will likely be, depending on the location, lots of wind and solar, improved transmission, a little bit of batteries and demand response, and then NG backup. For a deep decarbonized grid (95%+ less emissions), the least-cost will OTOH likely involve a rather high fraction of nuclear, plus a somewhat smaller fraction of the aforementioned wind, solar, transmission, demand response, batteries on top. Dealing with climate change requires a deep decarbonized grid. So while most grids can take a lot more wind and solar than currently, if we overbuild those sources we can get locked into higher emissions long-term.
audunw 8y ago
As an engineer I do feel that just because a risk is diffuse, doesn't make it better. I.e. if coal kills more people, it's objectively worse. But I'm not sure if you can say that definitively. Peoples feeling of the "badness" of an outcome matters. And you also have to consider that dying a bit earlier might not be as bad as some of the immediate consequences a nuclear disaster can have to people of all ages. I'd be all for building more nuclear, but I feel like it's just unrealistic to expect a sudden revival of nuclear. I think it's likely more productive to focus more R&D and investment on solar/wind and storage. Solar/wind+storage also has some really nice benefits like being more decentralised and does not depend on a steady source of fuel. This has big benefits for developing nations as they don't need to build out big centralised grids. Accelerating solar/wind+storage could have a bigger impact on the developing areas in e.g. Africa, as if their choice is between coal and nuclear, they may be more likely to go for coal as it's just much simpler for a nation that's not as advanced.

by avar 8y ago

est31 8y ago

Indeed, coal is even worse than nuclear. So let's have neither but renewables instead :). Compared to europe, the USA is a big country and it is also further in the south which means more sun for solar collectors.

avar 8y ago
Yeah that's fortunately increasingly an option we can take, but the world would sure suck less if we weren't dealing with the compounded effects of 50-70 years of the sort of nuclear skepticism expressed in your comment upthread. But still, even if we're going to aggressively build out renewables there's still room for a lot more nuclear in the energy mix. There's use-cases for it where solar, wind etc. isn't a substitute, e.g. shipping[1]. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/feb/13/climatechange.pollution https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/feb/13/climatec...
- mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
  Are you willing to live next door to a nuclear plant? People don't experience coal related problems unless they live in areas that are heavily polluted. Sure it impacts them and everyone else but it's perceived less harmful.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    > Are you willing to live next door to a nuclear plant? Most of the people in my friend group actually live next to one. Zero issues, and it's an old communist party-built one.
    - mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
      Where I'd you don't mind me asking?
      - TomMarius 8y ago
        Temelin, Czech Republic
    - selimthegrim 8y ago
      Krško?
      - tdj 8y ago
        Krško is a Westinghouse design. I've spent quite some time in the area, and nobody really worried about the power plant. The smell of the cellulose plant in the city center on the other hand, ...
  - loeg 8y ago
    I'd rather live "next to" nuclear than coal. (Neither of these are built abutting residential neighborhoods, so "next to" is a bit of a fallacy.)
    - mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
      There is an idle plant near San Diego they've been wanting to open for a long time but the residents in surrounding areas fight it tooth and nail. For a changebof scenery, residents in Nagasaki are fighting an ongoing battle (losing but trying) to shut down the plant in the area. I have yet to hear of other cases but so far it seems people living in the vicinity of nuclear plants are not happy.
      - jacobolus 8y ago
        It’s at the southern tip of Orange County, not that far from both San Diego and Los Angeles, and there are millions of people nearby. It has been closed for about 7 years, and the claimed risks/fears seem plausible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_...
      - stale2002 8y ago
        Ok, so what you are saying is that you would prefer to live next to a dirty coal power plant that is much more likely to cause you to get cancer or other horrible health effects?
        C_J_H 8y ago
        I would say that's a false equivalency because coal operators (until recently) were profitable enterprises whereas nuclear lobbyists are generally concerned not just with public tolerance but public funding.
        loeg 8y ago
        Coal is/was only profitable because externalities are not priced in. Everyone knows the externalities of nuclear power and it gets priced in to any discussion of new plants in 2019. The fear (about meltdowns) and concern (about waste) typically outsizes the actual risk substantially. But most people don't seem to realize that coal far more produces aerosolized radioactive waste, other carcinogens, and as a result, cancer, per watt, than nuclear. Even if you assume every single nuclear plant melts down. Burnt coal is just absymal for public health, but it doesn't get the scary branding that nuclear power does.
  - jpindar 8y ago
    I can see Seabrook Station from here, and there are houses within a mile of the reactor. The popular beach towns of Seabrook and Hampton beach are within two miles. AFAIK, neither my neighbors nor the tourists give it much thought.
- epai 8y ago
  Isn’t that what the tesla semi electric truck and airbus e-fan x electric plane projects aim to help mitigate though: the reliance on gas for shipping/transportation? Just because some use cases are not practical for renewables now doesn’t mean they won’t be in the near future.
- cam_l 8y ago
  We have had 30+ years of skepticism in coal power, which made near enough to approximately fuck all difference (until perhaps very recently). I would suggest the historical stagnation of nuclear has sfa to do with activism and quite a lot to do with the astronomical costs of building, mining and operation. Also just a thought re. your eg. on shipping.. I read a random blog a while back that suggested that a couple of large cargo ships go missing every week (sinking or piracy mostly). Not a thing I would like to see with nuclear reactors and material on board. http://actuarialeye.com/2014/03/30/how-many-ships-disappear-each-year/ http://actuarialeye.com/2014/03/30/how-many-ships-disappear-...
roenxi 8y ago
Hang on, are you absolutely sure that renewables are less damaging than nuclear? The footprint for nuclear is tiny, it might be competitive. Fukashima was a level 7 nuclear distaster, so that is as bad as it gets. The actual damage done is objectivly not that bad compared to a lot of things we have accepted in the past with only increased safety regulation (like dam failures). 2 lvl 7 accidents in 35 years; and design standards generally go up in civilised countries. The footprint of nuclear is so tiny that might be competitive with renewables, accounting for the fact that the reacion to nuclear disasters is paranoid but the response to environmental damage by renewables is basically to ignore it. Renewables need materials, which are mined, and need to be installed, which creates hazards, and use land/airspace, which is costly. I believe some highly questionable rare earths are used too where the environmental impacts are not usually accounted for because it happens in China. Purely in non-human terms, the land clearing for a solar plant is definitely worse than a nuclear disaster, because a level 7 nuclear disaster is net-positive for biodiversity ("suggest biodiversity around the massive radioactivity release has increased" [0]). Ie, humans are worse than a nuclear disaster if they happen to want space for their own use. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_Chernobyl_disaster#Long-term_health_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_Chernobyl_disas...
- candiodari 8y ago
  Actually renewables are rather famous for not being very safe at all. Turns out that mounting heavy glass plates on rooftops ... can end with a very quick trip to ground with a heavy (and if broken: sharp) glass plate right behind you. Example [1]. Wind turbines need a lot of mechanical components mounted 50 meters (up to 150) off the ground. Needless to say, these components aren't what anyone would call roomy. One component is a big gearbox, or as the technicians call it a "meatgrinder" [2]. TLDR: Nuclear: 0.1 deaths/PWh (US) 90/PWh (global). Wind: 150 deaths/PWh Solar: 440 deaths/PWh [3] Note that Coal and Oil numbers exclude health impact of the intoxication that is highly visible in places like India and China, but really also plays in many US cities. Even if they're not quite at the point where the sky turns brown and acutely toxic. Only Hydro power is even remotely competitive with nuclear power in deaths. (global for nuclear means believing the numbers claiming Chernobyl caused more deaths than 2 US nuclear bombs, or you could more reasonably interpret it as including all deaths due to nuclear weapons. You can freely add in all deaths due to radiation research (low 3 digits), it won't affect the numbers) In a way it's funny. Solar has already killed more people than nuclear (realistic Chernobyl numbers), including the 2 bombs. And will pass the threshold of adding all numbers together just after this decade ends. Somehow that's never mentioned. So taking the most pessimistic numbers, Nuclear is 60% safer than Wind turbines, and a staggering 500% safer than solar power. If taking the optimistic numbers for nuclear ... it's absolutely ridiculous. [1] https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20171019/corona/corona-50th-avenue-construction-accident-deadly-killed/ https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20171019/corona/corona-50th... [2] https://www.healthandsafetyatwork.com/content/siemens-technician%E2%80%99s-harness-snared-wind-turbine-gearbox https://www.healthandsafetyatwork.com/content/siemens-techni... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
antt 8y ago
I currently work in data science for an Australian power company. Renewables are the reason why we had electricity spot prices of A$14500/mwh three days in a row, rolling blackouts and the grid being nationalized for several hours. Because of the unregulated attachment of intermittent power sources South Australia has no base load generation any more, this is coal or nuclear stations. Victoria had an incident with one coal plant shutting down on Tesday which was the first $14500 spot price hike. Then because of weather and plant maintenance the same thing happened for two more days in a row with the power regulator stepping in when the rolling blackouts started on Friday telling everyone to run everything at full blast. A renewable only grid will cost an order of magnitude more to run than one based on coal or nuclear, if not more. The above is hugely simplified for obvious reasons and only my opinion and not that of my employer.
- eigenvector 8y ago
  First of all, a high spot price is not in itself a problem as long as the high price lasts only for a short time and effectively brings needed capacity online. Where you have a serious problem is when spot prices spike, no one responds and load-shedding starts. I appreciate that SA has actually got to the point of load-shedding several times now, which is indicative of a severe problem. However, saying that renewables are the cause of this is the same as saying that nuclear is the cause of Chernobyl. Nuclear plants don't inherently melt down if they are properly designed and operated and renewables don't inherently cause load-shedding if they are integrated to a properly planned and operated bulk power system. What is occurring in SA is a power system planning and market design failure that is not inherent to any one technology. It seems the system operator has been relying on reliability services provided by large synchronous generators without actually pricing and creating a market for those services, which has caused them to disappear with coal retirements and leave the power system in a chronically insecure state. In order for the market to ensure both day-ahead generation adequacy and as well as real-time operating reserve margin for unit contingencies, generators need to be able to get paid for providing those services, at a level that makes it economical to invest in new assets or maintain existing ones. This is a policy problem, not a technical one. FWIW I work for the company that owned the now decommissioned Hazelwood coal plant in Victoria, but I'm not involved with that plant at all.
briandear 8y ago
Do solar farms and windmills harm birds? How many birds are killed each year compared to how many die from nuclear? The flippant “lets do renewables” ignores that plastering the landscape with windmills and solar panels has some significant effects on wildlife that would exponentially increase with more widespread deployment. How many birds have died in France as a result of nuclear power? Perhaps the answer is to not put nuclear plants in seismic areas and instead improve storage and transmission technology so that nuclear can be used more. Putting a reactor on a fault line, in a tsunami zone isn’t necessarily a beat practice, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Solar farms and windmills are ugly and environmentally harmful.
- VyperCard 8y ago
  Cats kill magnitudes more..
ip26 8y ago
I'd love to see a future with all renewables. But nuclear seems like a good hedge bet, or even just an interim.
kbad1000 8y ago
Yes, the real solution is solar energy combined with a world Power grid.
pimmen 8y ago
Some people die every year from wind and hydropower [1]. If we measure lives lost per unit of energy, nuclear power is orders of magnitude better than wind or hydropower. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#da0b5d4709b7 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...
- VyperCard 8y ago
  So far..
stale2002 8y ago
That is never the option. You choice is either to switch to nuclear or continue using coal. Arguing for solutions that are never going to happen, is equivalent to arguing in favor of the status quo (and the status quo is horrible).

joe_the_user 8y ago

Yes, fossil fuels are an ongoing disaster, one that in the form of global warming has a capacity to possibly make the planet unlivable. But all the disasters of fossil fuels are invisible and thus provoke little reaction in the public - and moreover, fossil fuels have vast vested interests protecting them. We need to come up with an alternative to this. Nuclear in the ideal could be that. But nuclear's track record is murky, nuclear's cost is murky. For all I know, solar and wind are X times less effective than nuclear though as mentioned real world costs versus theoretical costs are still problem. I mean, consider raw solar now is the cheapest energy source but maybe solar plus reverse hydro would be some proportion more expensive. Thus if we're creating an alternative to fossil fuels, solar and wind seems like a clear real world win. An nuclear requires huge upfront money because it requires huge upfront energy investment. This risk of nuclear isn't just disaster, it's that this huge investment fails to pay as calculated and this is a risk that's materialized in the past.

belorn 8y ago
It would be ideal if we could replace fossil fueled power plants with solar and wind, but it is not currently technically possible and as they provide different forms of services. Fossil fueled power plants generate power based on demand. Solar and wind generate power based on weather. With current technology we really only have two distinct options. We can use solar and wind when the weather allows for it and then burn coal, gas and oil when it doesn't. The global warming impact is the combined result averaged over the year, and the energy cost is similar to the combined price. The other option is nuclear which has the huge upfront cost and nuclear waste, but with minimal global warming. In the future we could get more alternatives. Different form of batteries (like reverse hydro) would allow solar and wind to be separated from on-demand fossil fueled power plants, and dynamic energy market could change demand based on supply so that a lower base generation from nuclear and regular hydro would work in combination with wind and solar.
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  The other option is nuclear which has the huge upfront cost and nuclear waste, but with minimal global warming. I don't see why the various battery types aren't practical today. Unlike nuclear, there's no huge political resistance and once solar and wind are online, investment in energy storage becomes online energy fairly quickly. Moreover, the huge energy include huge uncertainties, uncertainties whether the plant will shutdown early, especially. Remember, the huge upfront costs of nuclear includes energy expenditure and as you're pointing out, expending more energy means more global warming until we have fully replaced fossil fuel. Long ago, solar and wind advocates were derided for contrasting hypothetical ideals with current realities. Nuclear proponents now seem much closer to doing that.

addicted 8y ago

Most nuclear renewable energy competitors are cheaper than nuclear. Sure, nuclear provides baseload energy in a way its cheaper competitors cannot, but as long as you have more than 20-30% fossil fuel the baseload is not really a concern anywhere. It seems foolish to divert money intended to reduce polluting sources of energy into the more expensive nuclear alternative, until the share of coal and natural gas is low enough that more stable sources of energy are neeeded.

vkou 8y ago
All non-nuclear renewable energy competitors require us to derive ~40-60% of our energy generation from burning natural gas, that generates GHGs. This natural gas comes from either fracking, or Russia. Climate change is an exsistential threat to our way of life. > Sure, nuclear provides baseload energy in a way its cheaper competitors cannot, but as long as you have more than 20-30% fossil fuel the baseload is not really a concern anywhere. Yes, it is a concern. We need to hit net zero emissions in the next five years, or net negative emissions, with massive carbon sequestration, in the next 15. How exactly are we going to do that between shipping, air travel, AND fossil-fuel baseload power?
jabl 8y ago
It's a question of path dependency. A least-cost grid with 80% less GHG emissions than current will likely be, depending on the location, lots of wind and solar, improved transmission, a little bit of batteries and demand response, and then NG backup. For a deep decarbonized grid (95%+ less emissions), the least-cost will OTOH likely involve a rather high fraction of nuclear, plus a somewhat smaller fraction of the aforementioned wind, solar, transmission, demand response, batteries on top. Dealing with climate change requires a deep decarbonized grid. So while most grids can take a lot more wind and solar than currently, if we overbuild those sources we can get locked into higher emissions long-term.

audunw 8y ago

As an engineer I do feel that just because a risk is diffuse, doesn't make it better. I.e. if coal kills more people, it's objectively worse. But I'm not sure if you can say that definitively. Peoples feeling of the "badness" of an outcome matters. And you also have to consider that dying a bit earlier might not be as bad as some of the immediate consequences a nuclear disaster can have to people of all ages. I'd be all for building more nuclear, but I feel like it's just unrealistic to expect a sudden revival of nuclear. I think it's likely more productive to focus more R&D and investment on solar/wind and storage. Solar/wind+storage also has some really nice benefits like being more decentralised and does not depend on a steady source of fuel. This has big benefits for developing nations as they don't need to build out big centralised grids. Accelerating solar/wind+storage could have a bigger impact on the developing areas in e.g. Africa, as if their choice is between coal and nuclear, they may be more likely to go for coal as it's just much simpler for a nation that's not as advanced.