5 ms·

The problem is that people who are anti-nuclear are often also anti-coal and anti-fossil-fuel and anti-everything-that-actually-sustains-current-human-level-of-

The problem is that people who are anti-nuclear are often also anti-coal and anti-fossil-fuel and anti-everything-that-actually-sustains-current-human-level-of-development. For those people, it has to be "clean renewables", with the speculation being that technology will fix all the issues with it. That ignores that maybe technology can also fix the issues with nuclear - and more readily so.

jayd16 7y ago
This is really not compelling. If you can't provide any more compelling evidence for nuclear vs clean energy improvements, why not gamble on the currently safer/cleaner bet?
- gridlockd 7y ago
  My impression is that nuclear works right now and that the risk is overblown, relative to all the other risks we incur. Renewables are not working right now (see Germany) and they aren't necessarily cleaner, considering that all this infrastructure needs to be produced with ordinary industrial processes. Of course it's not an either-or, renewables can make more sense in some places and not so much in others.
  - jayd16 7y ago
    >and that the risk is overblown I like nuclear but c'mon. Its clear that its not at an acceptable level of safety. Large scale disasters like Fukushima can't be hand waived away. >Renewables are not working right now (see Germany) What am I supposed to see from Germany? They're the largest electricity exporter in Europe. > considering that all this infrastructure needs to be produced with ordinary industrial processes. Is this not true of nuclear power?
    - kyberias 7y ago
      Fukushima was caused by an earthquake that directly caused much more damage than the reactor blowing up.
      - jayd16 7y ago
        Whats your point exactly? Earthquakes and other natural disasters will continue to happen. Until catastrophic failure can be eliminated or the scope of the damage can be reduced, nuclear power will not be considered safe. Saying "ok that happened but it won't happen again" is simply not acceptable.
        gambiting 7y ago
        Sure, but people saying they don't want nuclear power in Germany "because of Fukishima" is absurd. No power plant is Germany is at a risk of tsunami or a major earthquake. Should Japan be building nuclear power plants in areas which are at risk of both? Probably not. Should that be stopping countries like Germany fro building them? Also not. The same standard doesn't have to apply everywhere.
        Brometheus 7y ago
        Yeah, and they did not expect the earth quake in case of "Fukishima" to become that big either, but than again it did. There are unknown unknowns.
        kyberias 7y ago
        The cost of nuclear disaster in Fukushima was only a small part of the total cost. There were zero deaths caused by the accident but about 20 000 deaths from the whole disaster.
    - gridlockd 7y ago
      > Its clear that its not at an acceptable level of safety. I am no nuclear safety inspector, but I would argue that there's large variance in terms of safety in different nuclear installations. Not putting a nuclear plant next to a Tsunami-coast would be a major factor here. > Large scale disasters like Fukushima can't be hand waived away. Neither can the Bhopal disaster, yet we continue to engage in large-scale chemical production. It needs to be put into perspective. > What am I supposed to see from Germany? They're the largest electricity exporter in Europe. In terms of kilowatts, perhaps, but not economically. Energy prices in Germany are almost double those in France. Germany exports a lot of surplus wind energy, sometimes for negative prices just to keep the powerlines from overloading. Lack of wind needs to be compensated by dirty coal (50% of their energy mix) or import of (likely nuclear) energy from neighboring countries. Without coal (or nuclear from the neighbors) the system would collapse. There are no means of storing the wind energy in a remotely economical fashion on the horizon and there are no obvious alternatives to wind (at least for Germany). > Is this not true of nuclear power? Yes, but nuclear power isn't considered "clean".
      - petre 7y ago
        Germany is lucky they're neighbours with France, which has >70% nuclear in its power generation mix. They are planning to reduce this to 50% by 2035 and cap nuclear power in the mix, however it's not very clear what they will replace it with (renewables but no details given). https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...
        Krasnol 7y ago
        Yeah they are so lucky...the happiness regarding old and breaking nuclear reactors (Fessenheim & Cattenom) just behind the border is overwhelming. Cattenom is especially great for Luxembourg as it's the only country on this planet which is threatened in it's entirety by a nuclear disaster from a single nuclear reactor.
        petre 7y ago
  - nl 7y ago
    My impression is that nuclear works right now and that the risk is overblown, relative to all the other risks we incur. The peer reviewed study I posted right here said the risks are underestimated.
- petre 7y ago
  It's not a bet or a gamble. It's always a mix. Renewables other than geothermal and solar-thermal + molten salts cannot currently provide base load power. They have something like 0.2..0.5 capacity factor, meaning that 50 to 80% of the operational lifetimes of the power generation facilities are spent idling. Those two that can provide base load power that are very location specific (volcanic area or desert). So rather than mix coal with renewables it's preferable to mix nuclear with renewables since it's much cleaner.
  - rocqua 7y ago
    Hydro can also provide base-load. Especially when used as storage for overproducing intermittent renewables. It is still highly location specific though. Might there be value in efficient energy transport using high voltage DC? There is probably a lot less fluctuation in power supply and usage if you sum up over larger areas (especially east-west, as you average out time-of-day effects)
    - petre 7y ago
      Everything else apart from solar is generating AC. You'd need expensive converters and more expensive switching equipment with arc supression in order to transport DC. HVDC is mainly used for underwater cables because it's more efficient to transport DC than AC by cable. We'd probably benefit by interconnecting these cables coming from offshore wind farms and imports with parallel land based HVDC infrastucture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
      - rocqua 7y ago
        I was thinking of cables like NorNed for moving surplusses around. Especially if such a cable runs east-west and can ease some of the temporal effects due to both people's living pattern, and solar intensity.
        petre 7y ago
        Yes, that's what Renewable electricity superhighways in the Wikipedia link basically refers to. But it's a bit ahead of its time and there are still challenges to overcome and more renewable capacity to be built in order for HVDC ground based networks to be viable economically. I’ m sure we'll see it being built in the next 20 or 30 years.
caymanjim 7y ago
Funny how they're never anti-using-electricity themselves, though.
- dagw 7y ago
  Doesn't match my experience. The "clean renewable" crowd also tends to be on the forefront of cutting down their electricity usage as well.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

jayd16 7y ago

This is really not compelling. If you can't provide any more compelling evidence for nuclear vs clean energy improvements, why not gamble on the currently safer/cleaner bet?

gridlockd 7y ago
My impression is that nuclear works right now and that the risk is overblown, relative to all the other risks we incur. Renewables are not working right now (see Germany) and they aren't necessarily cleaner, considering that all this infrastructure needs to be produced with ordinary industrial processes. Of course it's not an either-or, renewables can make more sense in some places and not so much in others.
- jayd16 7y ago
  >and that the risk is overblown I like nuclear but c'mon. Its clear that its not at an acceptable level of safety. Large scale disasters like Fukushima can't be hand waived away. >Renewables are not working right now (see Germany) What am I supposed to see from Germany? They're the largest electricity exporter in Europe. > considering that all this infrastructure needs to be produced with ordinary industrial processes. Is this not true of nuclear power?
  - kyberias 7y ago
    Fukushima was caused by an earthquake that directly caused much more damage than the reactor blowing up.
    - jayd16 7y ago
      Whats your point exactly? Earthquakes and other natural disasters will continue to happen. Until catastrophic failure can be eliminated or the scope of the damage can be reduced, nuclear power will not be considered safe. Saying "ok that happened but it won't happen again" is simply not acceptable.
      - gambiting 7y ago
        Sure, but people saying they don't want nuclear power in Germany "because of Fukishima" is absurd. No power plant is Germany is at a risk of tsunami or a major earthquake. Should Japan be building nuclear power plants in areas which are at risk of both? Probably not. Should that be stopping countries like Germany fro building them? Also not. The same standard doesn't have to apply everywhere.
        Brometheus 7y ago
        Yeah, and they did not expect the earth quake in case of "Fukishima" to become that big either, but than again it did. There are unknown unknowns.
      - kyberias 7y ago
        The cost of nuclear disaster in Fukushima was only a small part of the total cost. There were zero deaths caused by the accident but about 20 000 deaths from the whole disaster.
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    > Its clear that its not at an acceptable level of safety. I am no nuclear safety inspector, but I would argue that there's large variance in terms of safety in different nuclear installations. Not putting a nuclear plant next to a Tsunami-coast would be a major factor here. > Large scale disasters like Fukushima can't be hand waived away. Neither can the Bhopal disaster, yet we continue to engage in large-scale chemical production. It needs to be put into perspective. > What am I supposed to see from Germany? They're the largest electricity exporter in Europe. In terms of kilowatts, perhaps, but not economically. Energy prices in Germany are almost double those in France. Germany exports a lot of surplus wind energy, sometimes for negative prices just to keep the powerlines from overloading. Lack of wind needs to be compensated by dirty coal (50% of their energy mix) or import of (likely nuclear) energy from neighboring countries. Without coal (or nuclear from the neighbors) the system would collapse. There are no means of storing the wind energy in a remotely economical fashion on the horizon and there are no obvious alternatives to wind (at least for Germany). > Is this not true of nuclear power? Yes, but nuclear power isn't considered "clean".
    - petre 7y ago
      Germany is lucky they're neighbours with France, which has >70% nuclear in its power generation mix. They are planning to reduce this to 50% by 2035 and cap nuclear power in the mix, however it's not very clear what they will replace it with (renewables but no details given). https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...
      - Krasnol 7y ago
        Yeah they are so lucky...the happiness regarding old and breaking nuclear reactors (Fessenheim & Cattenom) just behind the border is overwhelming. Cattenom is especially great for Luxembourg as it's the only country on this planet which is threatened in it's entirety by a nuclear disaster from a single nuclear reactor.
        petre 7y ago
- nl 7y ago
  My impression is that nuclear works right now and that the risk is overblown, relative to all the other risks we incur. The peer reviewed study I posted right here said the risks are underestimated.
petre 7y ago
It's not a bet or a gamble. It's always a mix. Renewables other than geothermal and solar-thermal + molten salts cannot currently provide base load power. They have something like 0.2..0.5 capacity factor, meaning that 50 to 80% of the operational lifetimes of the power generation facilities are spent idling. Those two that can provide base load power that are very location specific (volcanic area or desert). So rather than mix coal with renewables it's preferable to mix nuclear with renewables since it's much cleaner.
- rocqua 7y ago
  Hydro can also provide base-load. Especially when used as storage for overproducing intermittent renewables. It is still highly location specific though. Might there be value in efficient energy transport using high voltage DC? There is probably a lot less fluctuation in power supply and usage if you sum up over larger areas (especially east-west, as you average out time-of-day effects)
  - petre 7y ago
    Everything else apart from solar is generating AC. You'd need expensive converters and more expensive switching equipment with arc supression in order to transport DC. HVDC is mainly used for underwater cables because it's more efficient to transport DC than AC by cable. We'd probably benefit by interconnecting these cables coming from offshore wind farms and imports with parallel land based HVDC infrastucture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
    - rocqua 7y ago
      I was thinking of cables like NorNed for moving surplusses around. Especially if such a cable runs east-west and can ease some of the temporal effects due to both people's living pattern, and solar intensity.
      - petre 7y ago
        Yes, that's what Renewable electricity superhighways in the Wikipedia link basically refers to. But it's a bit ahead of its time and there are still challenges to overcome and more renewable capacity to be built in order for HVDC ground based networks to be viable economically. I’ m sure we'll see it being built in the next 20 or 30 years.

caymanjim 7y ago

Funny how they're never anti-using-electricity themselves, though.

dagw 7y ago
Doesn't match my experience. The "clean renewable" crowd also tends to be on the forefront of cutting down their electricity usage as well.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]