8 ms·

Three Mile Island closes for good

45 points by tannhaeuser 7y ago

erikrothoff 7y ago
Replaced by natural gas? Excuse me, I’ll just go cry in a corner.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Vote for people who want to ban fracking. Buy renewables with your power bill (no way to specify nuclear unfortunately); it’s usually very little more per kWh, check with your utility. If you can, run for office.
  - goodells 7y ago
    I just looked and it will add ~$3 to my electric bill to only use wind and solar. Thanks for the tip.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      Happy to help.
  - Grue3 7y ago
    Vote for Bernie and Warren who want to close all nuclear plants? Which inevitably lead to rise of carbon emissions in every single country doing that.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      Nuclear is end of life, full stop. Would I love to stall it from happening? Sure, but the economics of renewables are going to steamroll nuclear, natural gas, and coal regardless (doesn’t even need to be baseload when you overbuild renewables and simply curtail when you have excess power).
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
CydeWeys 7y ago
Nuclear is, unfortunately, way too expensive to operate. It's hard enough to keep some existing plants running, let alone build new ones, just based on the economics of it alone. Solar and wind, meanwhile, are cheap enough that they're being built in massive numbers even without subsidies. We just need to solve the energy storage gap.
- sword_smith 7y ago
  "just" might not be the right word here. Electric cars existed in the 1890s but their range was too short. Which is exactly the same problem they have today. The problem of non-existent cheap energy storage has been around for more than a century.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Battery backup seems to mostly be there in terms of daily storage. “1.997 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) for the solar power and 1.3 cents per kWh for the battery.“ https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/giant-batteries-and-cheap-solar-power-are-shoving-fossil-fuels-grid https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/giant-batteries-and-... Seasonal issues are more complex and likely involve other sources like Wind/Hydro/etc.
  - skybrian 7y ago
    Do you really think there has been no progress making electric cars better? I don't think you've been paying attention.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    A tremendous amount of progress has been made in battery technology since the 1890s. We're the vast majority of the way there in terms of total progress and development that needs to be made on the technology. And you can get EVs today that have the same range as petroleum-powered vehicles, which is much, more longer than the average trip. EVs have well over 20X the range they did a century ago, so no, they don't have "exactly the same problem today".
- melling 7y ago
sword_smith 7y ago
I was studying nuclear engineering in Finland in 2011, and by reading BP's Statistical Report on World Energy I came to a conclusion which dismissed the reason that I had opted to go into the energy sector: the belief that we are running out of fossil fuels. The specific numbers that convinced me that there was no shortage in fossil fuels was the known oil reserves vs time and consumption vs time. In the 25 years from 1985 to 2010 humanity was discovering oil reserves faster than we were increasing production! This ran counter to the narrative of Peak Oil at the time (noticed how no one talks about that anymore?) I only saw part of the picture, though. I didn't spot the revolution in natural gas extraction that was occurring and which is the interesting part of this story: nuclear power can't compete with natural gas! The prices of fossil fuels are simply too low. This makes me happy that I chose a career in programming and crypto currency instead of trying to solve a problem that wasn't there.
- mikeash 7y ago
  There are plenty of fossil fuels available. Far too much. If we burn it all, or even a decent fraction of it all, we’ll wreck the world. We must leave the vast majority of it in the ground. We’d be much better off if, in fact, we were running out.
- askvictor 7y ago
  Oil, gas and coal are all quite different beasts. Oil is the scarcest, and is still running out (hence looking at more expensive fields in remote places, and tar sands). Gas has only recently (last couple of decades) been 'tamed' (i.e. capable of being stored and transported long distances). I have no idea what gas reserves are like. There is _heaps_ of coal. Which is the problem for climate change. And that's also why no-one talks about peak oil anymore.
  - mrep 7y ago
    Oil will never run out in our lifetime. The green River formation in the us alone has 3 trillion barrels worth of shale oil with half expected to be recoverable. At 100 million barrels of oil usage per day for the globe, it could support the world's oil usage by itself for over 40 years. Factor in all of the other resources, and it will be a long time before we run out.
sword_smith 7y ago
People worried about rising CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere should note that gas is not just out competing nuclear power but also coal which emits twice the amount of CO2 per energy unit produced. All in all it is probably a net positive wrt. decreasing CO2 emissions.
- erentz 7y ago
  The massive natural gas boom has increased US methane emissions. Given methane’s vastly increased greenhouse potency (albeit for a shorter time) it may be possible that the big switch we are seeing to gas isn’t actually an improvement. I’d like to see something that takes these methane emissions of the fracking, extraction, shipping, storing into account when comparing natural gas to coal.
  - barney54 7y ago
    This is not accurate. US methane emissions have fallen, even as natural gas production has increased. From 1990 to 2017, total emissions of methane decreased by 15.8 percent. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2019-04/documents/us-ghg-inventory-2019-main-text.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2019-04/documents... See page 2-2.
    - erentz 7y ago
      There are a lot of articles around about how the natural gas boom is releasing methane. So unless that’s all untrue then it’s fair to say it’s increased our emissions. We would have had lower methane emissions if we hadn’t started the shale gas boom and big switch from coal. So in evaluating coal vs natural gas in the US we commonly see the number quoted that it released 50% less CO2 at the pipe. But we never see the amount of methane included that otherwise wouldn’t be released. I would like to see something that compares the total effect of all greenhouse gases from coal vs natural gas not just the CO2 number. Gas may still be better. But it just obviously wouldn’t be the 50% that everyone loves to quote.
- loeg 7y ago
  I agree it is a positive for gas to supplant coal (at least simplistically, from a pure plant emissions perspective). It's the lesser of those two evils. But we've still got to cease use of gas for electricity at some point. However, it's not a net positive for carbon emissions if it replaces nuclear, which is what's described in the article.
eddiezane 7y ago
Really great talk [0] from RailsConf about some lessons learned from Three Mile Island. Has stuck with me. 0: https://youtu.be/YBRiffheLXE https://youtu.be/YBRiffheLXE
mabbo 7y ago
Ontario has made nuclear work. But it's hard to do. There are three types of energy production, as I see it: those that have little control of their production (wind, solar); those that have control of their production but are hard to change (nuclear); and those that can rapidly change their production (fossil fuels, hydro-electric). Demand, on the other hand, fluctuates based on all the wants and needs of humans. You need a mix of all three. http://www.ieso.ca/power-data http://www.ieso.ca/power-data (the supply graph over the last week is the most interesting). Ontario has made nuclear work by demanding from it what it is absolutely best at: an unchanging, fixed supply of a large amount of electricity. 10.3-10.6 GW at all times for the last week (and probably a lot longer). Wind and solar help, but their inputs are so variable that they can't suffice. Gas and hydro make up the rest because it's easy for them to adjust their production. Nuclear can work and be profitable, but only as a piece of the puzzle.
- pfdietz 7y ago
  And by subsidizing the heck out of it. Oh, and by not buying any more when recently it came in at 3x the cost of other energy options (after which they sold the Candu IP to a private firm for $15M). https://www.thestar.com/business/2009/07/14/26b_cost_killed_nuclear_bid.html https://www.thestar.com/business/2009/07/14/26b_cost_killed_...
- gizmo686 7y ago
  Demand can also be broken up into those same categories.
- worik 7y ago
  Do you really think that "nuclear can... be profitable" if the operators have to pay insurance premiums against the possibility of catastrophic failure? What about paying to store the (albeit small amount of) long lived waste? What is the cost of permanently, and safely, storing a tonne of very poisonous material for hundreds of thousands of years? And do not say " deep-geologic placement" as there is no geological structure that we know of that is stable and seperated from the biosphere for those periods. Nuclear power is socialising extraordinary risk and making future generations pay for today's energy. Yes it can be profitable. But never moral

45 points by tannhaeuser 7y ago

erikrothoff 7y ago

Replaced by natural gas? Excuse me, I’ll just go cry in a corner.

toomuchtodo 7y ago
Vote for people who want to ban fracking. Buy renewables with your power bill (no way to specify nuclear unfortunately); it’s usually very little more per kWh, check with your utility. If you can, run for office.
- goodells 7y ago
  I just looked and it will add ~$3 to my electric bill to only use wind and solar. Thanks for the tip.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Happy to help.
- Grue3 7y ago
  Vote for Bernie and Warren who want to close all nuclear plants? Which inevitably lead to rise of carbon emissions in every single country doing that.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Nuclear is end of life, full stop. Would I love to stall it from happening? Sure, but the economics of renewables are going to steamroll nuclear, natural gas, and coal regardless (doesn’t even need to be baseload when you overbuild renewables and simply curtail when you have excess power).
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]

CydeWeys 7y ago

Nuclear is, unfortunately, way too expensive to operate. It's hard enough to keep some existing plants running, let alone build new ones, just based on the economics of it alone. Solar and wind, meanwhile, are cheap enough that they're being built in massive numbers even without subsidies. We just need to solve the energy storage gap.

sword_smith 7y ago
"just" might not be the right word here. Electric cars existed in the 1890s but their range was too short. Which is exactly the same problem they have today. The problem of non-existent cheap energy storage has been around for more than a century.
- Retric 7y ago
  Battery backup seems to mostly be there in terms of daily storage. “1.997 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) for the solar power and 1.3 cents per kWh for the battery.“ https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/giant-batteries-and-cheap-solar-power-are-shoving-fossil-fuels-grid https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/giant-batteries-and-... Seasonal issues are more complex and likely involve other sources like Wind/Hydro/etc.
- skybrian 7y ago
  Do you really think there has been no progress making electric cars better? I don't think you've been paying attention.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  A tremendous amount of progress has been made in battery technology since the 1890s. We're the vast majority of the way there in terms of total progress and development that needs to be made on the technology. And you can get EVs today that have the same range as petroleum-powered vehicles, which is much, more longer than the average trip. EVs have well over 20X the range they did a century ago, so no, they don't have "exactly the same problem today".
melling 7y ago

sword_smith 7y ago

I was studying nuclear engineering in Finland in 2011, and by reading BP's Statistical Report on World Energy I came to a conclusion which dismissed the reason that I had opted to go into the energy sector: the belief that we are running out of fossil fuels. The specific numbers that convinced me that there was no shortage in fossil fuels was the known oil reserves vs time and consumption vs time. In the 25 years from 1985 to 2010 humanity was discovering oil reserves faster than we were increasing production! This ran counter to the narrative of Peak Oil at the time (noticed how no one talks about that anymore?) I only saw part of the picture, though. I didn't spot the revolution in natural gas extraction that was occurring and which is the interesting part of this story: nuclear power can't compete with natural gas! The prices of fossil fuels are simply too low. This makes me happy that I chose a career in programming and crypto currency instead of trying to solve a problem that wasn't there.

mikeash 7y ago
There are plenty of fossil fuels available. Far too much. If we burn it all, or even a decent fraction of it all, we’ll wreck the world. We must leave the vast majority of it in the ground. We’d be much better off if, in fact, we were running out.
askvictor 7y ago
Oil, gas and coal are all quite different beasts. Oil is the scarcest, and is still running out (hence looking at more expensive fields in remote places, and tar sands). Gas has only recently (last couple of decades) been 'tamed' (i.e. capable of being stored and transported long distances). I have no idea what gas reserves are like. There is _heaps_ of coal. Which is the problem for climate change. And that's also why no-one talks about peak oil anymore.
- mrep 7y ago
  Oil will never run out in our lifetime. The green River formation in the us alone has 3 trillion barrels worth of shale oil with half expected to be recoverable. At 100 million barrels of oil usage per day for the globe, it could support the world's oil usage by itself for over 40 years. Factor in all of the other resources, and it will be a long time before we run out.

sword_smith 7y ago

People worried about rising CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere should note that gas is not just out competing nuclear power but also coal which emits twice the amount of CO2 per energy unit produced. All in all it is probably a net positive wrt. decreasing CO2 emissions.

erentz 7y ago
The massive natural gas boom has increased US methane emissions. Given methane’s vastly increased greenhouse potency (albeit for a shorter time) it may be possible that the big switch we are seeing to gas isn’t actually an improvement. I’d like to see something that takes these methane emissions of the fracking, extraction, shipping, storing into account when comparing natural gas to coal.
- barney54 7y ago
  This is not accurate. US methane emissions have fallen, even as natural gas production has increased. From 1990 to 2017, total emissions of methane decreased by 15.8 percent. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2019-04/documents/us-ghg-inventory-2019-main-text.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2019-04/documents... See page 2-2.
  - erentz 7y ago
    There are a lot of articles around about how the natural gas boom is releasing methane. So unless that’s all untrue then it’s fair to say it’s increased our emissions. We would have had lower methane emissions if we hadn’t started the shale gas boom and big switch from coal. So in evaluating coal vs natural gas in the US we commonly see the number quoted that it released 50% less CO2 at the pipe. But we never see the amount of methane included that otherwise wouldn’t be released. I would like to see something that compares the total effect of all greenhouse gases from coal vs natural gas not just the CO2 number. Gas may still be better. But it just obviously wouldn’t be the 50% that everyone loves to quote.
loeg 7y ago
I agree it is a positive for gas to supplant coal (at least simplistically, from a pure plant emissions perspective). It's the lesser of those two evils. But we've still got to cease use of gas for electricity at some point. However, it's not a net positive for carbon emissions if it replaces nuclear, which is what's described in the article.

eddiezane 7y ago

Really great talk [0] from RailsConf about some lessons learned from Three Mile Island. Has stuck with me. 0: https://youtu.be/YBRiffheLXE https://youtu.be/YBRiffheLXE

mabbo 7y ago

Ontario has made nuclear work. But it's hard to do. There are three types of energy production, as I see it: those that have little control of their production (wind, solar); those that have control of their production but are hard to change (nuclear); and those that can rapidly change their production (fossil fuels, hydro-electric). Demand, on the other hand, fluctuates based on all the wants and needs of humans. You need a mix of all three. http://www.ieso.ca/power-data http://www.ieso.ca/power-data (the supply graph over the last week is the most interesting). Ontario has made nuclear work by demanding from it what it is absolutely best at: an unchanging, fixed supply of a large amount of electricity. 10.3-10.6 GW at all times for the last week (and probably a lot longer). Wind and solar help, but their inputs are so variable that they can't suffice. Gas and hydro make up the rest because it's easy for them to adjust their production. Nuclear can work and be profitable, but only as a piece of the puzzle.

pfdietz 7y ago
And by subsidizing the heck out of it. Oh, and by not buying any more when recently it came in at 3x the cost of other energy options (after which they sold the Candu IP to a private firm for $15M). https://www.thestar.com/business/2009/07/14/26b_cost_killed_nuclear_bid.html https://www.thestar.com/business/2009/07/14/26b_cost_killed_...
gizmo686 7y ago
Demand can also be broken up into those same categories.
worik 7y ago
Do you really think that "nuclear can... be profitable" if the operators have to pay insurance premiums against the possibility of catastrophic failure? What about paying to store the (albeit small amount of) long lived waste? What is the cost of permanently, and safely, storing a tonne of very poisonous material for hundreds of thousands of years? And do not say " deep-geologic placement" as there is no geological structure that we know of that is stable and seperated from the biosphere for those periods. Nuclear power is socialising extraordinary risk and making future generations pay for today's energy. Yes it can be profitable. But never moral