35 ms·

U.S. Nuclear Power Plants Weren’t Built for Climate Change

99 points by aburan28 8y ago

oneplane 8y ago
Why are they even trying to make this a law/politics based tug-of-war, it's literally pure science. The only non-science parts you'd expect some old men to have a fit about would be profit, how many people are allowed to die (in the event of a disaster/during construction/during maintenance) and for how long the rules can be left as-is. This whole deal seems like the opposite.
trimbo 8y ago
> "Nuclear power is weird—it exists to produce electricity, and at the same time it can’t exist without electricity... Plants need constant power to pump cool water into a reactor’s core" Well... 50-60 year old designs can't exist without electricity to the pumps.
- acidburnNSA 8y ago
  Ironically, the EBR-II reactor in Idaho was the first to demonstrate true passive shutdown and cooling in 1986. It first operated in 1964, 55 years ago! Unfortunately, we shut this reactor and the research surrounding it down in '94. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_I...
  - crakenzak 8y ago
    Very fascinating, why was it shut down tho?
    - acidburnNSA 8y ago
      Basically because we as a nation had largely given up on nuclear energy back then. Almost all research on advanced reactors was canned by Clinton at this time. The people who worked on it were mortified: "Doesn't the country know what of has here?" they wondered.
    - Someone 8y ago
      Probably a combination of the bullet points in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Discussion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Discussion
    - pfdietz 8y ago
      Breeders were based on unrealistic projections of there being a thousand reactors in the US by the year 2000. Under such extreme growth, uranium would be getting scarce, so breeding would be needed. But that didn't happen, and, absent uranium shortages, breeder reactors are more expensive than ordinary thermal reactors. There's also the small problem of fast breeders being potentially subject to prompt fast supercriticality during a meltdown. That's one of the few ways to make an accident worse than Chernobyl.
- pjc50 8y ago
  > "Nuclear power is weird—it exists to produce electricity, and at the same time it can’t exist without electricity. This is a problem for a lot of power plants, although most non-nuclear ones can safely survive a sudden shutdown. Starting up after a total shutdown is known as "black start" and an important part of contingency planning: https://www.drax.com/technology/black-start-important-back-plan-youve-never-heard/ https://www.drax.com/technology/black-start-important-back-p...
petre 8y ago
More reason to push for SMRs (Small Modular Reactors) until Thorium and other technologies become available. Eventually these utility scale reactors would need to be decomissioned and building new ones isn't quite so attractive today. OTOH deploying a fleet of 10 to 12 SMRs would cover for an utility scale reactor.
- acidburnNSA 8y ago
  Just an aside, Thorium fuel in itself doesn't actually offer safety advantages. The cooling configuration largely determines the safety characteristics of any reactor, and decay heat removal after shutdown has been the biggest challenge (Fukushima, TMI). Coolants that can move heat with passive natural circulation give the "walk-away" safety that Gen-IV reactors flout. This was demonstrated in the EBR-II sodium metal cooled reactor in 1986, (mere weeks before Chernobyl), and it is game changing. Any reactor with low-pressure coolant and some gas-cooled reactors can achieve this passive decay heat removal without backup power. Options include sodium metal coolant, molten salt coolant (fluoride or chloride, note: very different from sodium metal), lead metal, lead-bismuth eutectic, etc. People often think of Thorium reactors in the molten salt configuration (i.e. the Thorium-MSR), which should be very safe. The Thorium gets conflated with the molten salt, but there are uranium MSRs too which are just as safe.
  - Johnny555 8y ago
    There are some other advantages to Thorium fuel besides the inherent safety of the plant design. It's harder to turn Thorium into nuclear weapons, so a nuclear state could provide fuel to a non-nuclear state. Thorium is more abundant and easier to mine. There's much less nuclear waste from a Thorium plant and it decays to safe levels of radiation in a few hundred years making safe storage easier.
    - acidburnNSA 8y ago
      Partially true on all accounts. See [1]. [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html
djrobstep 8y ago
Is there a good comparative analysis somewhere of nuclear vs renewables that looks at how we should best be focusing on each to beat climate change? I'd be super interested to read it.
- acidburnNSA 8y ago
  Phwew if only there was a reasoned thing to read on this topic. People on many sides of these issues are saying a lot very strongly that is in strong conflict, so it's not a great time to find something totally trustworthy. Most people agree with the consensus that nuclear and some renewables (wind/solar/hydro) are low carbon. Other renewables (biomass) are not low carbon. Then we quickly descend into a debate that effectively comes down to energy storage for the intermittent renewables vs. the cost of nuclear. Wind is at full power ~35% of the time in the US, solar is at full power ~25% of the time in the US. Recent nuclear builds in the US and Europe have been absolute boondoggles, though S. Korea remembers what the learned from Combustion Engineering and can build standard reactors very well now. Energy storage discussions span daily fluctuations (e.g. the duck curve) and batteries to seasonal fluctuations (much more challenging for know storage tech). Nuclear discussions also inevitability dip into nuclear waste (which has a scientific consensus solution in the deep geologic repository) to safety (where more people die every day from coal as-normal emissions than have been killed by nuclear accidents ever). Renewable discussions dip into land use, San Bernardino Co's recent ban on new large solar in the desert, migratory Hoary bats getting their lungs ripped out by wind turbines, and so on. I consider nuclear a total underdog right now because Wind and Solar are kicking butt while nuclear plants are getting shut down early. Because of this dynamic, I advocate for nuclear as part of the low carbon future. I wrote a thing about these topics in more detail here [1]. Bill Gates recently said that the people who say solving climate change will be easy are now more of a problem than people who outright deny climate change [2]. I agree with him. Lots of headlines you see on /r/Futurology and /r/energy make it seem that decarbonized world is right ahead of us. It's not, and cheap fracked natural gas is enemy number one. Sure, it's half the CO2 of coal, but that's still an order of magnitude too high! Many pro-nuclear people like myself are also very pro low-carbon renewables. The one vs. the other mentality is strong in both camps, but there's a growing number of "centrists". [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2017-12-17-primer-on-energy-ghg-intermittency-and-nuclear.html https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2017-12-17-primer-on-energy-g... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1EB1zsxW0k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1EB1zsxW0k
hamilyon2 8y ago
Privately owned nuclear power is borderline insanity to me. What if it is not profitable any more? Who would deal with the mess? Of course, public! Bit if it public who owns the risk, why is the "good part" owned by some private interest?
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > What if it is not profitable any more? The main cost of a nuclear plant is the initial construction. Once you've paid that as a sunk cost, the cost of continued operation is tough to beat. There is a reason the older reactors operate for so long and it's not because continuing to operate them isn't cost competitive. > Who would deal with the mess? Nuclear plants are required to put money into a decommissioning fund for this. (Notably nothing else requires this. Who pays to deal with recycling old solar panels? Coal mines? Hydro dams?) > Bit if it public who owns the risk, why is the "good part" owned by some private interest? Because they supplied the money to build the plant.
  - tmh79 8y ago
    > The main cost of a nuclear plant is the initial construction the main cost is storing the waste for 10k+ years with zero defect rate
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      Newer reactors don't produce long-lived waste, and for that matter can use the waste from existing reactors as fuel. So if you don't like the nuclear waste we already have, build newer reactors to get rid of it.
      - carlisle_ 8y ago
        That's pretty neat, what makes the newer reactors able to use old waste as fuel?
        8y ago
mavhc 8y ago
We need 70 times more nuclear power than we have now to replace 50% of fossil fuel usage. Other 50% can be renewable
- vbuwivbiu 8y ago
  or 100% renewable
  - imtringued 8y ago
    Let's be honest 100% renewable is going to be expensive. I'd say 80% is the limit unless power2gas becomes economical.
    - mempko 8y ago
      You are right. We have this system where people use digital points to buy things. Where are we going to get enough digital points to do 100% renewable?! I don't think there is enough Atom or VS code uninstalls to free up the bits!
    - vbuwivbiu 7y ago
      it gets cheaper the more it's used
- maxnoe 8y ago
  The article states, that 19 percent of power was provided by nuclear plants in the US. For what is your factor of 70?
  - mavhc 7y ago
    Because we also need to replace all fossil fuels used to move things, heat things, etc. 100% renewable would require something like 10000 gigafactories to make batteries, probably not sensible. 50% means we don't need trillions of batteries. that's assuming everyone moves to only use 2kW of energy, instead of 6 for North America and 4 for Europe. Hopefully switching to electricity will account for most of those savings.
mizchief2 7y ago
If we build enough Nuclear power plants climate change wouldn't be an issue

99 points by aburan28 8y ago

Why are they even trying to make this a law/politics based tug-of-war, it's literally pure science. The only non-science parts you'd expect some old men to have a fit about would be profit, how many people are allowed to die (in the event of a disaster/during construction/during maintenance) and for how long the rules can be left as-is. This whole deal seems like the opposite.

trimbo 8y ago

> "Nuclear power is weird—it exists to produce electricity, and at the same time it can’t exist without electricity... Plants need constant power to pump cool water into a reactor’s core" Well... 50-60 year old designs can't exist without electricity to the pumps.

acidburnNSA 8y ago
Ironically, the EBR-II reactor in Idaho was the first to demonstrate true passive shutdown and cooling in 1986. It first operated in 1964, 55 years ago! Unfortunately, we shut this reactor and the research surrounding it down in '94. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_I...
- crakenzak 8y ago
  Very fascinating, why was it shut down tho?
  - acidburnNSA 8y ago
    Basically because we as a nation had largely given up on nuclear energy back then. Almost all research on advanced reactors was canned by Clinton at this time. The people who worked on it were mortified: "Doesn't the country know what of has here?" they wondered.
  - Someone 8y ago
    Probably a combination of the bullet points in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Discussion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Discussion
  - pfdietz 8y ago
    Breeders were based on unrealistic projections of there being a thousand reactors in the US by the year 2000. Under such extreme growth, uranium would be getting scarce, so breeding would be needed. But that didn't happen, and, absent uranium shortages, breeder reactors are more expensive than ordinary thermal reactors. There's also the small problem of fast breeders being potentially subject to prompt fast supercriticality during a meltdown. That's one of the few ways to make an accident worse than Chernobyl.
pjc50 8y ago
> "Nuclear power is weird—it exists to produce electricity, and at the same time it can’t exist without electricity. This is a problem for a lot of power plants, although most non-nuclear ones can safely survive a sudden shutdown. Starting up after a total shutdown is known as "black start" and an important part of contingency planning: https://www.drax.com/technology/black-start-important-back-plan-youve-never-heard/ https://www.drax.com/technology/black-start-important-back-p...

petre 8y ago

More reason to push for SMRs (Small Modular Reactors) until Thorium and other technologies become available. Eventually these utility scale reactors would need to be decomissioned and building new ones isn't quite so attractive today. OTOH deploying a fleet of 10 to 12 SMRs would cover for an utility scale reactor.

acidburnNSA 8y ago
Just an aside, Thorium fuel in itself doesn't actually offer safety advantages. The cooling configuration largely determines the safety characteristics of any reactor, and decay heat removal after shutdown has been the biggest challenge (Fukushima, TMI). Coolants that can move heat with passive natural circulation give the "walk-away" safety that Gen-IV reactors flout. This was demonstrated in the EBR-II sodium metal cooled reactor in 1986, (mere weeks before Chernobyl), and it is game changing. Any reactor with low-pressure coolant and some gas-cooled reactors can achieve this passive decay heat removal without backup power. Options include sodium metal coolant, molten salt coolant (fluoride or chloride, note: very different from sodium metal), lead metal, lead-bismuth eutectic, etc. People often think of Thorium reactors in the molten salt configuration (i.e. the Thorium-MSR), which should be very safe. The Thorium gets conflated with the molten salt, but there are uranium MSRs too which are just as safe.
- Johnny555 8y ago
  There are some other advantages to Thorium fuel besides the inherent safety of the plant design. It's harder to turn Thorium into nuclear weapons, so a nuclear state could provide fuel to a non-nuclear state. Thorium is more abundant and easier to mine. There's much less nuclear waste from a Thorium plant and it decays to safe levels of radiation in a few hundred years making safe storage easier.
  - acidburnNSA 8y ago
    Partially true on all accounts. See [1]. [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html

djrobstep 8y ago

Is there a good comparative analysis somewhere of nuclear vs renewables that looks at how we should best be focusing on each to beat climate change? I'd be super interested to read it.

acidburnNSA 8y ago
Phwew if only there was a reasoned thing to read on this topic. People on many sides of these issues are saying a lot very strongly that is in strong conflict, so it's not a great time to find something totally trustworthy. Most people agree with the consensus that nuclear and some renewables (wind/solar/hydro) are low carbon. Other renewables (biomass) are not low carbon. Then we quickly descend into a debate that effectively comes down to energy storage for the intermittent renewables vs. the cost of nuclear. Wind is at full power ~35% of the time in the US, solar is at full power ~25% of the time in the US. Recent nuclear builds in the US and Europe have been absolute boondoggles, though S. Korea remembers what the learned from Combustion Engineering and can build standard reactors very well now. Energy storage discussions span daily fluctuations (e.g. the duck curve) and batteries to seasonal fluctuations (much more challenging for know storage tech). Nuclear discussions also inevitability dip into nuclear waste (which has a scientific consensus solution in the deep geologic repository) to safety (where more people die every day from coal as-normal emissions than have been killed by nuclear accidents ever). Renewable discussions dip into land use, San Bernardino Co's recent ban on new large solar in the desert, migratory Hoary bats getting their lungs ripped out by wind turbines, and so on. I consider nuclear a total underdog right now because Wind and Solar are kicking butt while nuclear plants are getting shut down early. Because of this dynamic, I advocate for nuclear as part of the low carbon future. I wrote a thing about these topics in more detail here [1]. Bill Gates recently said that the people who say solving climate change will be easy are now more of a problem than people who outright deny climate change [2]. I agree with him. Lots of headlines you see on /r/Futurology and /r/energy make it seem that decarbonized world is right ahead of us. It's not, and cheap fracked natural gas is enemy number one. Sure, it's half the CO2 of coal, but that's still an order of magnitude too high! Many pro-nuclear people like myself are also very pro low-carbon renewables. The one vs. the other mentality is strong in both camps, but there's a growing number of "centrists". [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2017-12-17-primer-on-energy-ghg-intermittency-and-nuclear.html https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2017-12-17-primer-on-energy-g... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1EB1zsxW0k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1EB1zsxW0k

hamilyon2 8y ago

Privately owned nuclear power is borderline insanity to me. What if it is not profitable any more? Who would deal with the mess? Of course, public! Bit if it public who owns the risk, why is the "good part" owned by some private interest?

AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> What if it is not profitable any more? The main cost of a nuclear plant is the initial construction. Once you've paid that as a sunk cost, the cost of continued operation is tough to beat. There is a reason the older reactors operate for so long and it's not because continuing to operate them isn't cost competitive. > Who would deal with the mess? Nuclear plants are required to put money into a decommissioning fund for this. (Notably nothing else requires this. Who pays to deal with recycling old solar panels? Coal mines? Hydro dams?) > Bit if it public who owns the risk, why is the "good part" owned by some private interest? Because they supplied the money to build the plant.
- tmh79 8y ago
  > The main cost of a nuclear plant is the initial construction the main cost is storing the waste for 10k+ years with zero defect rate
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    Newer reactors don't produce long-lived waste, and for that matter can use the waste from existing reactors as fuel. So if you don't like the nuclear waste we already have, build newer reactors to get rid of it.
    - carlisle_ 8y ago
      That's pretty neat, what makes the newer reactors able to use old waste as fuel?
      - 8y ago

mavhc 8y ago

We need 70 times more nuclear power than we have now to replace 50% of fossil fuel usage. Other 50% can be renewable

vbuwivbiu 8y ago
or 100% renewable
- imtringued 8y ago
  Let's be honest 100% renewable is going to be expensive. I'd say 80% is the limit unless power2gas becomes economical.
  - mempko 8y ago
    You are right. We have this system where people use digital points to buy things. Where are we going to get enough digital points to do 100% renewable?! I don't think there is enough Atom or VS code uninstalls to free up the bits!
  - vbuwivbiu 7y ago
    it gets cheaper the more it's used
maxnoe 8y ago
The article states, that 19 percent of power was provided by nuclear plants in the US. For what is your factor of 70?
- mavhc 7y ago
  Because we also need to replace all fossil fuels used to move things, heat things, etc. 100% renewable would require something like 10000 gigafactories to make batteries, probably not sensible. 50% means we don't need trillions of batteries. that's assuming everyone moves to only use 2kW of energy, instead of 6 for North America and 4 for Europe. Hopefully switching to electricity will account for most of those savings.

mizchief2 7y ago

If we build enough Nuclear power plants climate change wouldn't be an issue