8 ms·

Fracking is the primary reason a bunch of *nuclear power plants in the USA are shutting down early. The over-supply of gas from fracking, plus the inherent simp

Fracking is the primary reason a bunch of *nuclear power plants in the USA are shutting down early. The over-supply of gas from fracking, plus the inherent simplicity and efficiency of gas turbines makes them crazy hard to compete with. The carbon-free nuclear plants weren't overly expensive to operate, but when the electricity revenue dropped (especially in deregulated markets), they started struggling mightily. Nukes produce 60% of the carbon-free energy in the USA. As they shut down, they're often replaced with natural gas, which locks in carbon emissions and indirect emissions from pipelines and the wellheads. It's on the nuclear people to figure out how to get operating costs safely down. But boy howdy it'd be nice if their carbon-free nature could be valued higher, or if fracking could be made more expensive. This is also a big part of why coal is struggling, but this doesn't bother me because coal is high carbon and high in killer air pollution (especially outside the US. Air pollution kills 4 million people/year globally [1]). [1] https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/ https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/

aldoushuxley001 7y ago
I've never heard anyone refer to nuclear power plants as simply "nukes"; just a heads up that that's very confusing as most people will think of "nukes" as nuclear warheads instead.
- atombender 7y ago
  I've never heard that use before either, and I was surprised to find that according to both the OED and Webster [1], "nuke" can be a shorthand for "nuclear power station". It doesn't really work for me, either. [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nuke https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nuke
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  Thanks. In the industry it's common but glad to hear this feedback. I edited above.
  - aldoushuxley001 7y ago
    Absolutely and thanks, I didn't realize it was so common, but sounds like it is very widely used within the industry.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- sjwright 7y ago
  As a layperson in Australia, I absolutely have heard "nukes" used non-derogatively as short hand for a nuclear power station.
Jedd 7y ago
I challenge the claim that nuclear (fission) reactors are carbon-free. Like coal, many of the costs are externalised or simply ignored by advocates, especially the decommissioning and waste disposal. Getting good/accurate figures for lifetime carbon emissions from nuclear power plants is very difficult, as this [1] article concedes, but quoting from same: "The conclusion from the eight most rigorous LCAs is therefore that it is as likely that the carbon footprint of nuclear is above 50 gCO2/kWh as it is below." They touch on build costs, and the likely correlation between larger CO2 emissions compared to similar power generation from hydro structures. I can't find good data on manufacturing and embedded energy costs of the vast quantities of concrete needed to construct a nuclear power plant -- I suspect it is not flattering to the industry. [1] https://theecologist.org/2015/feb/05/false-solution-nuclear-power-not-low-carbon https://theecologist.org/2015/feb/05/false-solution-nuclear-... [EDIT] improved the politeness of the first sentence.
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  There's quite good consensus on the low-carbon nature of nuclear. 12 gCO2-eq/kWh is what the IPCC group of scientists recommend [1]. That's the lowest of any form of energy, except for wind, which is at 11. Solar PV's around 40. Coal is 820. Waste disposal and decommissioning are factored into this number, of course. It's lifecycle analysis. Recall that the beauty of nuclear energy is energy density: there is 2 million times more energy in a uranium nucleus than in any chemical's electron shell. An average american can get 100% of their total primary energy for an entire 88 year lifetime and only use 300 grams of nuclear fuel. At that kind of fuel/waste footprint, it's relatively easy to have a low carbon footprint. And the data is in. The number is 12 gCO2-eq/kWh. [1] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5_annex-iii.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5...
  - Jedd 7y ago
    > There's quite good consensus on the low-carbon nature of nuclear. There's quite good consensus on the low-carbon nature of nuclear. I'm aware that it's low-carbon. Your original claim - made twice in your earlier post - is that it's 'carbon-free'. This is what I was suggesting was not entirely accurate.
aussieguy1234 7y ago
The idea nuclear plant cutting costs scares me, especially if it comes from the safety budget.
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  What if I told you that, if you look at the data, nuclear is the safest form of energy known to humanity [1]. It's on par with passive energy collectors like wind and solar where a tiny number of people die installing things on roofs or doing maintenance. How much extra money should we be spending to keep saving so many millions of lives simply by displacing air pollution? Obviously we can't be cavalier with radiological hazards, but we don't have to make it as expensive as we've chosen to. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy Nuclear is like a lot like air travel. More people are afraid of it, but it's statistically very safe. Human minds, unfortunately, don't work like this. I fully understand that saying this doesn't make you or anyone else feel any better about cutting costs at nuclear plants. It just seems weird to have this demonstrably excellent energy source sitting here ready to decarbonize the world rapidly (as done in France in the 1980s), and have everyone be more influenced by pop culture and the media than by simple comparative analysis. I wish I knew how to change people's minds here but I fear we're up against some evolved human nature, and it's an uphill battle. Fukushima death rate from radiation? 0 (maybe 1, but highly debated). Deaths from air pollution this year? 4.3 million. Future deaths from climate change? Potentially hundreds of millions. In this real world, I'll take my low-carbon nuclear energy any day.
  - digitaltrees 7y ago
    I am less concerned with the immediate safety and more concerned with the long term waste that we don’t really adequately deal with.
    - acidburnNSA 7y ago
      I am glad you asked because this is an interesting time in the nuclear waste world. The simple answer is that you put it deep underground in geologically stable places like crystalline bedrock or salt beds where it will sit out of danger until after at least 100,000 years, when it will have released all of its excess energy and reached stability. For example, the Finns, being a pragmatic people, decided collectively to build and operate a deep geologic repository for nuclear waste called Onkalo. It's mostly complete and has test canisters in place as we speak. [1] [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-finland-nuclear-waste/worlds-first-underground-nuclear-waste-storage-moves-forward-in-finland-idUSKCN1TQ1NL https://www.reuters.com/article/us-finland-nuclear-waste/wor... Relatedly, a company in Berkeley called Deep Isolation is now working to commercialize a new waste disposal technique called deep borehole disposal. Rather than mining out something a few hundred meters deep, you use modern oil/gas techniques (ironically, the same tech that allows fracking) to cheaply drill down 5-8 km and put the spent fuel down there where it really has no credible way of making it back up. This particular company is run by a woman and they focus on community outreach first. It looks to be a good approach [2]. [2] https://www.deepisolation.com/technology/ https://www.deepisolation.com/technology/ Also worth noting is that once it's out of the reactor, there's no more high pressure coolant or nuclear chain reaction to drive its dispersal. It sits in incredibly robust canisters on parking lots at the plants where it's almost impossible to imagine anything going wrong. See my buddy Jim doing a walk-through in Washington state to get a visual [3]. [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUvvIzH2W6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUvvIzH2W6g The comparison of risk between stored nuclear waste vs. things like air pollution and climate change is astronomical: nuclear waste risk is incredibly low. In a high-carbon, high air pollution world, it's hardly a footnote in the world risks. Yet, for every person I talk to, this is the primary concern. I feel like we've let too many MacGyvers and Captain Planets and Simpsons and HBO's run wild without correction. Nuclear PR people have been hiding under rocks since Three Mile Island. The millennial new nuclear people are much more aggressive because we got into this to cut carbon emissions, and this appears to be pretty urgent.
beefield 7y ago
> It's on the nuclear people to figure out how to get operating costs safely down. But boy howdy it'd be nice if their carbon-free nature could be valued higher, or if fracking could be made more expensive. Well, it is not like there is a law of physics prohibiting a carbon tax (and dividend) scheme...
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  > Well, it is not like there is a law of physics prohibiting a carbon tax (and dividend) scheme... After trying twice and failing twice in WA state, it sure feels like there is! Doing this on the national or international level seems even harder. I guess we may have to wait and see some more serious climate effects to get people onboard. I've heard a few anecdotal stories of climate change deniers quickly changing their minds after hurricanes/floods that haven't happened in 50 years take out their homes.
  - hannob 7y ago
    As far as I'm aware there's a good reason why the carbon tax in washington failed: They didn't implement a mechanism to give back the money to citizens. However this is a key part of what many believe a carbon tax should contain, so it doesn't look like a "government wants more money" scheme. Most carbon tax schemes proposed by economists explicitly have this built in, see e.g.: https://futurism.com/the-byte/carbon-tax-give-citizens-money https://futurism.com/the-byte/carbon-tax-give-citizens-money
    - acidburnNSA 7y ago
      I-732 was the first attempt, designed by some real pros and supported by James Hansen [1], who tends to agree with your assertion that revenue neutral approaches are the only way to navigate the politics. It got weird and lost support from prominent organizations related to not being inclusive enough in its design... or something. The more inclusive follow-initiative (I-1631) was worse from a neutrality perspective and lost. [1] https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/washington-can-lead-on-climate-change-by-passing-i-732/ https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/washington-can-lead-on-...
kromem 7y ago
Something like making the producer of the thing causing remnant environmental leftovers fiscally responsible for cleaning them up? That would price cleanup into the sticker price. Should probably be a thing for plastics, coal, natural gas, meat, etc. But hey - that would undo the indirect subsidy of offloading pollution onto governments and future generations, and we can't have that now... Man, the biggest con these companies played was dodging upstream responsibility by pushing PSAs of individual personal responsibility while lobbying frantically to avoid actual regulation. "Dear consumer, turn off your A/C when in the other room to save the environment, rainbows, and cute furry creatures" instead of "hey energy company, clean up your crap."
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  Yeah that would do it. Can you imagine fossil fuel power plants paying a cut of their electricity revenues into a "Climate Change Fund" that accumulated over decades to help solve the problem? I'd love that. In 1982 the Nuclear Waste Policy Act established the Nuclear Waste Fund which does exactly this, but for nuclear waste. Rate payers have been paying for nuclear waste disposal ever since, and it's up to around $40B! [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Fund#Nuclear_Waste_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Fund#Nuclear_Was...
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    I can't imagine it, but that's exactly the sort of thing we need for coal, oil, gas and nuclear. Well everything really, to solve the incessant tendency to fail the business and let the state sort (or not) the cleanup adequately. Whatever way it's done needs to provide a level playing field to permit real comparisons of cost, environmental impact, and real consequences for not bothering to fix the pipeline leak etc. If you want to subsidise green energy (or fossil), it should be a visible layer on top, not baked in so you can't easily compare. Maybe then, markets could start giving the correct answers...
    - mattmanser 7y ago
      It won't work, as when it comes time to pay for the cleanup the parent company will go 'bust', and like a phoenix a new company will rise from the ashes with the same owners.
ptah 7y ago
yip, it looks like shale gas is just another example of "penny smart pound stupid"

aldoushuxley001 7y ago

I've never heard anyone refer to nuclear power plants as simply "nukes"; just a heads up that that's very confusing as most people will think of "nukes" as nuclear warheads instead.

atombender 7y ago
I've never heard that use before either, and I was surprised to find that according to both the OED and Webster [1], "nuke" can be a shorthand for "nuclear power station". It doesn't really work for me, either. [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nuke https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nuke
acidburnNSA 7y ago
Thanks. In the industry it's common but glad to hear this feedback. I edited above.
- aldoushuxley001 7y ago
  Absolutely and thanks, I didn't realize it was so common, but sounds like it is very widely used within the industry.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
sjwright 7y ago
As a layperson in Australia, I absolutely have heard "nukes" used non-derogatively as short hand for a nuclear power station.

Jedd 7y ago

I challenge the claim that nuclear (fission) reactors are carbon-free. Like coal, many of the costs are externalised or simply ignored by advocates, especially the decommissioning and waste disposal. Getting good/accurate figures for lifetime carbon emissions from nuclear power plants is very difficult, as this [1] article concedes, but quoting from same: "The conclusion from the eight most rigorous LCAs is therefore that it is as likely that the carbon footprint of nuclear is above 50 gCO2/kWh as it is below." They touch on build costs, and the likely correlation between larger CO2 emissions compared to similar power generation from hydro structures. I can't find good data on manufacturing and embedded energy costs of the vast quantities of concrete needed to construct a nuclear power plant -- I suspect it is not flattering to the industry. [1] https://theecologist.org/2015/feb/05/false-solution-nuclear-power-not-low-carbon https://theecologist.org/2015/feb/05/false-solution-nuclear-... [EDIT] improved the politeness of the first sentence.

acidburnNSA 7y ago
There's quite good consensus on the low-carbon nature of nuclear. 12 gCO2-eq/kWh is what the IPCC group of scientists recommend [1]. That's the lowest of any form of energy, except for wind, which is at 11. Solar PV's around 40. Coal is 820. Waste disposal and decommissioning are factored into this number, of course. It's lifecycle analysis. Recall that the beauty of nuclear energy is energy density: there is 2 million times more energy in a uranium nucleus than in any chemical's electron shell. An average american can get 100% of their total primary energy for an entire 88 year lifetime and only use 300 grams of nuclear fuel. At that kind of fuel/waste footprint, it's relatively easy to have a low carbon footprint. And the data is in. The number is 12 gCO2-eq/kWh. [1] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5_annex-iii.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5...
- Jedd 7y ago
  > There's quite good consensus on the low-carbon nature of nuclear. There's quite good consensus on the low-carbon nature of nuclear. I'm aware that it's low-carbon. Your original claim - made twice in your earlier post - is that it's 'carbon-free'. This is what I was suggesting was not entirely accurate.

aussieguy1234 7y ago

The idea nuclear plant cutting costs scares me, especially if it comes from the safety budget.

acidburnNSA 7y ago
What if I told you that, if you look at the data, nuclear is the safest form of energy known to humanity [1]. It's on par with passive energy collectors like wind and solar where a tiny number of people die installing things on roofs or doing maintenance. How much extra money should we be spending to keep saving so many millions of lives simply by displacing air pollution? Obviously we can't be cavalier with radiological hazards, but we don't have to make it as expensive as we've chosen to. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy Nuclear is like a lot like air travel. More people are afraid of it, but it's statistically very safe. Human minds, unfortunately, don't work like this. I fully understand that saying this doesn't make you or anyone else feel any better about cutting costs at nuclear plants. It just seems weird to have this demonstrably excellent energy source sitting here ready to decarbonize the world rapidly (as done in France in the 1980s), and have everyone be more influenced by pop culture and the media than by simple comparative analysis. I wish I knew how to change people's minds here but I fear we're up against some evolved human nature, and it's an uphill battle. Fukushima death rate from radiation? 0 (maybe 1, but highly debated). Deaths from air pollution this year? 4.3 million. Future deaths from climate change? Potentially hundreds of millions. In this real world, I'll take my low-carbon nuclear energy any day.
- digitaltrees 7y ago
  I am less concerned with the immediate safety and more concerned with the long term waste that we don’t really adequately deal with.
  - acidburnNSA 7y ago
    I am glad you asked because this is an interesting time in the nuclear waste world. The simple answer is that you put it deep underground in geologically stable places like crystalline bedrock or salt beds where it will sit out of danger until after at least 100,000 years, when it will have released all of its excess energy and reached stability. For example, the Finns, being a pragmatic people, decided collectively to build and operate a deep geologic repository for nuclear waste called Onkalo. It's mostly complete and has test canisters in place as we speak. [1] [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-finland-nuclear-waste/worlds-first-underground-nuclear-waste-storage-moves-forward-in-finland-idUSKCN1TQ1NL https://www.reuters.com/article/us-finland-nuclear-waste/wor... Relatedly, a company in Berkeley called Deep Isolation is now working to commercialize a new waste disposal technique called deep borehole disposal. Rather than mining out something a few hundred meters deep, you use modern oil/gas techniques (ironically, the same tech that allows fracking) to cheaply drill down 5-8 km and put the spent fuel down there where it really has no credible way of making it back up. This particular company is run by a woman and they focus on community outreach first. It looks to be a good approach [2]. [2] https://www.deepisolation.com/technology/ https://www.deepisolation.com/technology/ Also worth noting is that once it's out of the reactor, there's no more high pressure coolant or nuclear chain reaction to drive its dispersal. It sits in incredibly robust canisters on parking lots at the plants where it's almost impossible to imagine anything going wrong. See my buddy Jim doing a walk-through in Washington state to get a visual [3]. [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUvvIzH2W6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUvvIzH2W6g The comparison of risk between stored nuclear waste vs. things like air pollution and climate change is astronomical: nuclear waste risk is incredibly low. In a high-carbon, high air pollution world, it's hardly a footnote in the world risks. Yet, for every person I talk to, this is the primary concern. I feel like we've let too many MacGyvers and Captain Planets and Simpsons and HBO's run wild without correction. Nuclear PR people have been hiding under rocks since Three Mile Island. The millennial new nuclear people are much more aggressive because we got into this to cut carbon emissions, and this appears to be pretty urgent.

beefield 7y ago

> It's on the nuclear people to figure out how to get operating costs safely down. But boy howdy it'd be nice if their carbon-free nature could be valued higher, or if fracking could be made more expensive. Well, it is not like there is a law of physics prohibiting a carbon tax (and dividend) scheme...

acidburnNSA 7y ago
> Well, it is not like there is a law of physics prohibiting a carbon tax (and dividend) scheme... After trying twice and failing twice in WA state, it sure feels like there is! Doing this on the national or international level seems even harder. I guess we may have to wait and see some more serious climate effects to get people onboard. I've heard a few anecdotal stories of climate change deniers quickly changing their minds after hurricanes/floods that haven't happened in 50 years take out their homes.
- hannob 7y ago
  As far as I'm aware there's a good reason why the carbon tax in washington failed: They didn't implement a mechanism to give back the money to citizens. However this is a key part of what many believe a carbon tax should contain, so it doesn't look like a "government wants more money" scheme. Most carbon tax schemes proposed by economists explicitly have this built in, see e.g.: https://futurism.com/the-byte/carbon-tax-give-citizens-money https://futurism.com/the-byte/carbon-tax-give-citizens-money
  - acidburnNSA 7y ago
    I-732 was the first attempt, designed by some real pros and supported by James Hansen [1], who tends to agree with your assertion that revenue neutral approaches are the only way to navigate the politics. It got weird and lost support from prominent organizations related to not being inclusive enough in its design... or something. The more inclusive follow-initiative (I-1631) was worse from a neutrality perspective and lost. [1] https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/washington-can-lead-on-climate-change-by-passing-i-732/ https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/washington-can-lead-on-...

kromem 7y ago

Something like making the producer of the thing causing remnant environmental leftovers fiscally responsible for cleaning them up? That would price cleanup into the sticker price. Should probably be a thing for plastics, coal, natural gas, meat, etc. But hey - that would undo the indirect subsidy of offloading pollution onto governments and future generations, and we can't have that now... Man, the biggest con these companies played was dodging upstream responsibility by pushing PSAs of individual personal responsibility while lobbying frantically to avoid actual regulation. "Dear consumer, turn off your A/C when in the other room to save the environment, rainbows, and cute furry creatures" instead of "hey energy company, clean up your crap."

acidburnNSA 7y ago
Yeah that would do it. Can you imagine fossil fuel power plants paying a cut of their electricity revenues into a "Climate Change Fund" that accumulated over decades to help solve the problem? I'd love that. In 1982 the Nuclear Waste Policy Act established the Nuclear Waste Fund which does exactly this, but for nuclear waste. Rate payers have been paying for nuclear waste disposal ever since, and it's up to around $40B! [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Fund#Nuclear_Waste_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Fund#Nuclear_Was...
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  I can't imagine it, but that's exactly the sort of thing we need for coal, oil, gas and nuclear. Well everything really, to solve the incessant tendency to fail the business and let the state sort (or not) the cleanup adequately. Whatever way it's done needs to provide a level playing field to permit real comparisons of cost, environmental impact, and real consequences for not bothering to fix the pipeline leak etc. If you want to subsidise green energy (or fossil), it should be a visible layer on top, not baked in so you can't easily compare. Maybe then, markets could start giving the correct answers...
  - mattmanser 7y ago
    It won't work, as when it comes time to pay for the cleanup the parent company will go 'bust', and like a phoenix a new company will rise from the ashes with the same owners.

ptah 7y ago

yip, it looks like shale gas is just another example of "penny smart pound stupid"