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I feel like nuclear is the only (realistic) option we really have that'll help us navigate the gap between our current, and a more sustainable, less pollutant f

I feel like nuclear is the only (realistic) option we really have that'll help us navigate the gap between our current, and a more sustainable, less pollutant form of energy use. It's a shame there's such a fear of it. I really think that most if not all energy efforts should be invested into nuclear immediately. That'll help buy us the time we need to get to sustainable renewables, or push us to master nuclear to the point that energy traded off against safety is no longer a concern.

WalterBright 7y ago
Shows like "Chernobyl" aren't going to help: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/06/06/why-hbos-chernobyl-gets-nuclear-so-wrong/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/06/06...
- trickstra 7y ago
  news outlets like Forbes aren't going to help
- arethuza 7y ago
  One thing that puzzles me after reading that article: if the bodies of the men like Vasily Ignatenko weren't dangerous why did the authorities bury them inside zink caskets under a layer of concrete? Edit: I guess one answer is that they were scared/ill-informed - but the Soviet authorities seemed to be doing everything they could do downplay the risks from radiation - so why would they do that?
legulere 7y ago
Have you not seen the catastrophe that new nuclear construction is?
- hannob 7y ago
  Not sure why it's getting downvoted. The Olkiluoto 3 plant in Finland was planned to open in 2011. It's still not running, massive cost overrun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant Flamanville in France was planned to open in 2012. Still not running, massive cost overrun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan... Hinkley C in UK only could start construction because it got promised massive overpriced payment for electricity by the government. Speculation is this largely happens to cross-subsidize UKs nuclear weapons program. This is all in countries that are politically relatively pro nuclear, this isn't because environmentalists are blocking the efforts.
  - shawnz 7y ago
    Those articles indicate they are both partially running and both outputting more power right now individually, in their partially operational state, than any of the largest solar plants on earth. They also beat all wind plants except the largest.
    - bennofs 7y ago
      But solar can be much more decentralised than nuclear. So comparing single plants by power doesn't seem fair to me, at the very least you also need to compare costs.
      - AngryData 7y ago
        Decentralized solar also requires extensive upgrades and smarter and more robust electrical network. Electrical storage facilities will also still be centralized and you will have even more losses from bringing power in from long distances, and then releasing it back over similar distances again. A central plant is only one way, instead of both ways.
  - wbl 7y ago
    Taishan 1 is the same type and opened on time.
adrianN 7y ago
It's probably too late for a full-on nuclear rollout. We need to reduce global carbon emissions really quickly, at least 5% (18%) per year starting right now [1,2] if we want a chance of staying below 2° (1.5°). Building nuclear power plants takes years even at the current rate of construction, if were to replace all fossil fuel by nuclear over the next fifteen to twenty years we would definitely run into capacity constraints, for example for manufacturing pressure vessels, or just having enough qualified personnel to build and run the things. On the other hand, with the same money we could start building ridiculous amounts of wind, solar, and an improved grid and get immediate payoff, without having to wait years of unmitigated emissions for reactors to come online. [1] http://folk.uio.no/roberan/img/GCB2018/PNG/s00_2018_Mitigation_Curves_2.0C.png http://folk.uio.no/roberan/img/GCB2018/PNG/s00_2018_Mitigati... [2] http://folk.uio.no/roberan/img/GCB2018/PNG/s00_2018_Mitigation_Curves_1.5C.png http://folk.uio.no/roberan/img/GCB2018/PNG/s00_2018_Mitigati...
- 08-15 7y ago
  > We need to reduce global carbon emissions really quickly... I've been hearing this argument for at least 15 years now, and it's always followed by the assertion that nuclear plants are slow to build while solar and wind are quick to deploy. And yet here we are, nothing has changed, the same arguments are repeated, only louder. Germany has shut down half her nuclear fleet, has very slowly built up renewable generation to maybe 30% of electricity production (only possible by abusing her neighbors' grid as a virtual battery), but has scarcely brought down her CO2 emissions, which are still more than twice those of France per capita. And to think this blunder is celebrated as a success! It's not. If time was really of the essence, we'd do what France did between 1975 and 1985. Nuclear can be built quickly---they already did it, it can be done again.
- elproxy 7y ago
  Your math is off on the current scale of wind and PV and the time it takes to get it anywhere significant. Plus you are forgetting storage and infrastructure costs due to the intermittent nature of these sources and the imposed load factor. See https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/renewables/100-renewable-electricity-at-no-extra-cost-a-piece-of-cake/ https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/renewables/100-re...
ZeroGravitas 7y ago
This might sound cheeky, but it's a serious question: Where do you get this idea from? There seems to be a lot of people who are strongly pro-nuclear primarily because they're pessimistic about renewables. Whereas from my perspective, renewable tech is doing well enough that I consider climate change to be purely a political problem now. Unfortunately that same politics has generated an absurd amount of informational chaff. There's multiple layers: climate change is a hoax, it's just cycles, it's actually beneficial, it won't be that bad, solar is a net waste of energy, you can't run a grid on more than 30% renewable and so on and so on. It seems to me that the people that are enthusiastic about nuclear are coming from that same information bubble, possibly via American libertarianism, where they've been exposed to anti-renewable propaganda for years. They probably have internalized lots of misconceptions as a result. It's just that being vocally pro nuclear is a bit more of a rational and socially acceptable position to take than most of the other propaganda so as long as they stick to that it's hard to tell. However, it's still wrong. I don't consider myself anti-nuclear, but it's just not the most cost effective way to generate low carbon energy. And that rollout of cheaper options would happen slightly faster if people like yourself (and Bill Gates) stopped acting like it was some impossible pipe dream and that we need to wait for nuclear to save us.
- YjSe2GMQ 7y ago
  Renewables are great, but not deployed nearly quick enough: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption Not an expert, but right now I only believe in solar geo-engineering. And, of course, never buying a waterfront property, since at this point we'll almost certainly go above 2*C. PS. It's fascinating to see Miami real estate prices completely ignoring the incoming doom: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MIXRNSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MIXRNSA
- cheerlessbog 7y ago
  Hydro is mostly built out. Scalable storage isn't proven. How does renewable replace base load?
  - jacobush 7y ago

WalterBright 7y ago

Shows like "Chernobyl" aren't going to help: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/06/06/why-hbos-chernobyl-gets-nuclear-so-wrong/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/06/06...

trickstra 7y ago
news outlets like Forbes aren't going to help
arethuza 7y ago
One thing that puzzles me after reading that article: if the bodies of the men like Vasily Ignatenko weren't dangerous why did the authorities bury them inside zink caskets under a layer of concrete? Edit: I guess one answer is that they were scared/ill-informed - but the Soviet authorities seemed to be doing everything they could do downplay the risks from radiation - so why would they do that?

legulere 7y ago

Have you not seen the catastrophe that new nuclear construction is?

hannob 7y ago
Not sure why it's getting downvoted. The Olkiluoto 3 plant in Finland was planned to open in 2011. It's still not running, massive cost overrun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant Flamanville in France was planned to open in 2012. Still not running, massive cost overrun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan... Hinkley C in UK only could start construction because it got promised massive overpriced payment for electricity by the government. Speculation is this largely happens to cross-subsidize UKs nuclear weapons program. This is all in countries that are politically relatively pro nuclear, this isn't because environmentalists are blocking the efforts.
- shawnz 7y ago
  Those articles indicate they are both partially running and both outputting more power right now individually, in their partially operational state, than any of the largest solar plants on earth. They also beat all wind plants except the largest.
  - bennofs 7y ago
    But solar can be much more decentralised than nuclear. So comparing single plants by power doesn't seem fair to me, at the very least you also need to compare costs.
    - AngryData 7y ago
      Decentralized solar also requires extensive upgrades and smarter and more robust electrical network. Electrical storage facilities will also still be centralized and you will have even more losses from bringing power in from long distances, and then releasing it back over similar distances again. A central plant is only one way, instead of both ways.
- wbl 7y ago
  Taishan 1 is the same type and opened on time.

adrianN 7y ago

It's probably too late for a full-on nuclear rollout. We need to reduce global carbon emissions really quickly, at least 5% (18%) per year starting right now [1,2] if we want a chance of staying below 2° (1.5°). Building nuclear power plants takes years even at the current rate of construction, if were to replace all fossil fuel by nuclear over the next fifteen to twenty years we would definitely run into capacity constraints, for example for manufacturing pressure vessels, or just having enough qualified personnel to build and run the things. On the other hand, with the same money we could start building ridiculous amounts of wind, solar, and an improved grid and get immediate payoff, without having to wait years of unmitigated emissions for reactors to come online. [1] http://folk.uio.no/roberan/img/GCB2018/PNG/s00_2018_Mitigation_Curves_2.0C.png http://folk.uio.no/roberan/img/GCB2018/PNG/s00_2018_Mitigati... [2] http://folk.uio.no/roberan/img/GCB2018/PNG/s00_2018_Mitigation_Curves_1.5C.png http://folk.uio.no/roberan/img/GCB2018/PNG/s00_2018_Mitigati...

08-15 7y ago
> We need to reduce global carbon emissions really quickly... I've been hearing this argument for at least 15 years now, and it's always followed by the assertion that nuclear plants are slow to build while solar and wind are quick to deploy. And yet here we are, nothing has changed, the same arguments are repeated, only louder. Germany has shut down half her nuclear fleet, has very slowly built up renewable generation to maybe 30% of electricity production (only possible by abusing her neighbors' grid as a virtual battery), but has scarcely brought down her CO2 emissions, which are still more than twice those of France per capita. And to think this blunder is celebrated as a success! It's not. If time was really of the essence, we'd do what France did between 1975 and 1985. Nuclear can be built quickly---they already did it, it can be done again.
elproxy 7y ago
Your math is off on the current scale of wind and PV and the time it takes to get it anywhere significant. Plus you are forgetting storage and infrastructure costs due to the intermittent nature of these sources and the imposed load factor. See https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/renewables/100-renewable-electricity-at-no-extra-cost-a-piece-of-cake/ https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/renewables/100-re...

ZeroGravitas 7y ago

This might sound cheeky, but it's a serious question: Where do you get this idea from? There seems to be a lot of people who are strongly pro-nuclear primarily because they're pessimistic about renewables. Whereas from my perspective, renewable tech is doing well enough that I consider climate change to be purely a political problem now. Unfortunately that same politics has generated an absurd amount of informational chaff. There's multiple layers: climate change is a hoax, it's just cycles, it's actually beneficial, it won't be that bad, solar is a net waste of energy, you can't run a grid on more than 30% renewable and so on and so on. It seems to me that the people that are enthusiastic about nuclear are coming from that same information bubble, possibly via American libertarianism, where they've been exposed to anti-renewable propaganda for years. They probably have internalized lots of misconceptions as a result. It's just that being vocally pro nuclear is a bit more of a rational and socially acceptable position to take than most of the other propaganda so as long as they stick to that it's hard to tell. However, it's still wrong. I don't consider myself anti-nuclear, but it's just not the most cost effective way to generate low carbon energy. And that rollout of cheaper options would happen slightly faster if people like yourself (and Bill Gates) stopped acting like it was some impossible pipe dream and that we need to wait for nuclear to save us.

YjSe2GMQ 7y ago
Renewables are great, but not deployed nearly quick enough: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption Not an expert, but right now I only believe in solar geo-engineering. And, of course, never buying a waterfront property, since at this point we'll almost certainly go above 2*C. PS. It's fascinating to see Miami real estate prices completely ignoring the incoming doom: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MIXRNSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MIXRNSA
cheerlessbog 7y ago
Hydro is mostly built out. Scalable storage isn't proven. How does renewable replace base load?
- jacobush 7y ago