11 ms·

Another article from five days ago: Nuclear energy too slow, too expensive to save climate: report https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nucl

Another article from five days ago: Nuclear energy too slow, too expensive to save climate: report https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nuclear-energy-too-slow-too-expensive-to-save-climate-report-idUSKBN1W909J https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nucle... Fusion is even further out than fission.

The_rationalist 7y ago
This is bullshit. Nuclear is one of the most economical way to create energy, despite current overengineered safety specs. https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-a...
- hanniabu 7y ago
  > despite current overengineered safety specs Yeah you're right, they should remove all redundancies, ridiculous factor of safeties, and over the top safety measures /s
  - ajuc 7y ago
    Coal powerplants kill orders of magnitude more people and nobody cares. What makes safety of thousands of people threathened by nuclear powerplants worth so much more than the safety of millions of people threathened by the coal powerplants? Because that's what we're doing in practice - assigning vastly different value for lives of people depending whether they live near a nuclear or a coal powerplants. And then complaining that nuclear power cannot compete on cost :) Oh, BTW, renewables kill more people per MWh generated than nuclear, too :) Energy Source Mortality Rate (deaths/trillionkWhr) Coal – global average 100,000 (41% global electricity) Coal – China 170,000 (75% China’s electricity) Coal – U.S. 10,000 (32% U.S. electricity) Oil 36,000 (33% of energy, 8% of electricity) Natural Gas 4,000 (22% global electricity) Biofuel/Biomass 24,000 (21% global energy) Solar (rooftop) 440 (< 1% global electricity) Wind 150 (2% global electricity) Hydro – global average 1,400 (16% global electricity) Hydro – U.S. 5 (6% U.S. electricity) Nuclear – global average 90 (11% global electricity w/Chern&Fukush) Nuclear – U.S. 0.1 (19% U.S. electricity) Source (2012): https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#4d114152709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d... It's so frustrating how irrational people can be with good intentions... If you demanded same safety factors from other power sources as from nuclear - they couldn't compete with nuclear on cost. But people killed by radiation are much more important than people killed by falling from their roof while installing a solar panel :)
    - digianarchist 7y ago
      Human cost factors as well as CO^2 are not priced in. If they were then nuclear might make more sense economically.
    - The_rationalist 7y ago
      Humanity would be saved if political parties had your understanding. In other words, humanity would be saved if politics became a science.
    - hanniabu 7y ago
      Okay, so your argument for not making nuclear safe is that coal kills a lot of people? Nice one, that's about as sound of an argument as killing somebody and then saying the military kills more people so what's the big deal.
      - ajuc 7y ago
        Misleading analogy. You don't need to murder people, so the alternative to murdering someone is not murdering anyone. You need baseload power anyway, so you have to choose some way to generate power. Nuclear kills the least number of people per MWh. So not choosing nuclear kills people and choosing nuclear saves people. Even if you decided to return to the pre-industrial era and not generate power at all - that would kill even more people, so going nuclear is still better. You need to look at alternative costs when comparing your options, you cannot just look at bad sides of one option and good sides of the other.
- rplst8 7y ago
  ...and the over-engineered solutions are over-engineering outdated, inherently unsafe designs.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  Overengineering is not a bad thing in real-world engineering, to be clear.
  - ajuc 7y ago
    It is when you overengineer safety for 1 technology and ignore it for the alternatives, and then compare the costs ignoring the safety record. Energy Source Mortality Rate (deaths/trillionkWhr) Coal – global average 100,000 (41% global electricity) Coal – China 170,000 (75% China’s electricity) Coal – U.S. 10,000 (32% U.S. electricity) Oil 36,000 (33% of energy, 8% of electricity) Natural Gas 4,000 (22% global electricity) Biofuel/Biomass 24,000 (21% global energy) Solar (rooftop) 440 (< 1% global electricity) Wind 150 (2% global electricity) Hydro – global average 1,400 (16% global electricity) Hydro – U.S. 5 (6% U.S. electricity) Nuclear – global average 90 (11% global electricity w/Chern&Fukush) Nuclear – U.S. 0.1 (19% U.S. electricity) Source (2012): https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#4d114152709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d... If people wanted solar power to be as safe as nuclear powerplants it would have to be much more expansive than it is now. But apparently deaths are ok as long as it's not from nuclear powerplants :/
    - jeremyjh 7y ago
      So you are going to use the official Soviet figures for deaths due to Chernobyl? That does not lend credibility to your argument. Also keep in mind, that accident could have been much, much worse and nearly was so. It could have rendered much of Europe uninhabitable for centuries.
      - roenxi 7y ago
        What do you want to use instead? If you like you can increase the Chernobyl number by 1,000x. The point still stands; nuclear is measurably, unambiguously and has proven to be safer than coal in every way that effects humans. Except evacuation risk. Which is still tiny vs any reasonable standard. Plus the modern designs are different from the Soviet designs. They have improved. We have Computer-aided design now.
- pjc50 7y ago
  So why is Hinckley Point C three times as expensive as wind farms?
  - roenxi 7y ago
    There is at least one source claiming that the UK potentially has the worst track record in the world for installing cost-effective nuclear plants [0]. I'm not sure what they are doing wrong, but it probably isn't inherent to nuclear power. [0] http://www.globalconstructionreview.com/sectors/report-claims-uk-nuclear-costs-hi7g7he7st-world/ http://www.globalconstructionreview.com/sectors/report-claim...
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    > So why is Hinckley Point C three times as expensive as wind farms? That's an Apples to Oranges comparison. Nuclear provides stable energy, wind provides volatile energy. You need to factor in the cost of buffering that volatility, which will likely be natural gas, in which case you should be fair and put a price on that CO2 as well.
missosoup 7y ago
Fission isn't far out. Fission has been a readily available solution for decades. The only obstacle is political. The only reason fission is expensive is political. As the climate situation worsens, more and more nations will overlook that obstacle and roll out large scale nuclear. The only question is, will they be able to do it quickly enough. I feel like I'm the only person in the room missing something when watching the world focus on 'renewable' technology when a much less resource/labour intensive and much higher energy dense power source is already available. And it's safer too. [1] Why is renewable in quotes? Because we don't actually have a way to recycle solar and wind installations[2][3]. Nuclear is the only currently available large scale power source that doesn't require a large and continuous supply of mined materials. Am I missing something? Am I an idiot? Why is everyone so anti nuclear and pro 'renewable' when nuclear is significantly better by every objective metric? Looks like the 'ban plastic straws' activism which ignored that straws make up an insignificant fraction of ocean waste and the vast majority of it is discarded fishing equipment. Inconsequential feel-good activism is a higher priority goal than more difficult but effective solutions? [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#453cd006709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d... [2] https://recyclinginternational.com/editors-top-picks/critical-question-how-to-recycle-12-000-wind-turbines/26883/ https://recyclinginternational.com/editors-top-picks/critica... [3] https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/waste-crisis-looms-as-thousands-of-solar-panels-reach-end-of-life-20190112-p50qzd.html https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/waste-crisis-looms-a...
- ZeroGravitas 7y ago
  You're not the only one missing this. It seems very common to miss, but I can point out what you're missing. Your link number 1 is supposed to support nuclear being safer than renewables, and it simply doesn't do that. There's a few links that regularly get shared, intending to make that point and they all don't actually make it. The list of things that nuclear is safer than, is notably missing grid scale wind and solar. What a mysterious ommision from something that is trying to argue they are not safe. Having read your link 2 and 3, I see they also don't support the point you are making (the first describes how to recycle turbine blades into concrete and is looking for more applications, the second says solar panels are 90% recyclable and just wants some government policies to ensure this happens), which makes me wonder if you're arguing in good faith here?
dahdum 7y ago
The nuclear industry report cited in that article (WNSIP) is written by an anti-nuclear activist (Mycle Schneider). His whole career is defined by it.
yyyk 7y ago
That's two very different kinds of 'slow'. Nuclear Fission might be too slow to build - at least that's what the report claims. That would not be a problem with Fusion - its energy output should be so high that building it should still be worth it. The 'slow' regarding Fusion is the time taking to research it. IMHO, researching Fusion is worth it, but we can't rely on it at all for solving our problems, since it's unlikely to be available in time. We'll have to handle our climate problem with more ordinary means.

The_rationalist 7y ago

This is bullshit. Nuclear is one of the most economical way to create energy, despite current overengineered safety specs. https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-a...

hanniabu 7y ago
> despite current overengineered safety specs Yeah you're right, they should remove all redundancies, ridiculous factor of safeties, and over the top safety measures /s
- ajuc 7y ago
  Coal powerplants kill orders of magnitude more people and nobody cares. What makes safety of thousands of people threathened by nuclear powerplants worth so much more than the safety of millions of people threathened by the coal powerplants? Because that's what we're doing in practice - assigning vastly different value for lives of people depending whether they live near a nuclear or a coal powerplants. And then complaining that nuclear power cannot compete on cost :) Oh, BTW, renewables kill more people per MWh generated than nuclear, too :) Energy Source Mortality Rate (deaths/trillionkWhr) Coal – global average 100,000 (41% global electricity) Coal – China 170,000 (75% China’s electricity) Coal – U.S. 10,000 (32% U.S. electricity) Oil 36,000 (33% of energy, 8% of electricity) Natural Gas 4,000 (22% global electricity) Biofuel/Biomass 24,000 (21% global energy) Solar (rooftop) 440 (< 1% global electricity) Wind 150 (2% global electricity) Hydro – global average 1,400 (16% global electricity) Hydro – U.S. 5 (6% U.S. electricity) Nuclear – global average 90 (11% global electricity w/Chern&Fukush) Nuclear – U.S. 0.1 (19% U.S. electricity) Source (2012): https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#4d114152709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d... It's so frustrating how irrational people can be with good intentions... If you demanded same safety factors from other power sources as from nuclear - they couldn't compete with nuclear on cost. But people killed by radiation are much more important than people killed by falling from their roof while installing a solar panel :)
  - digianarchist 7y ago
    Human cost factors as well as CO^2 are not priced in. If they were then nuclear might make more sense economically.
  - The_rationalist 7y ago
    Humanity would be saved if political parties had your understanding. In other words, humanity would be saved if politics became a science.
  - hanniabu 7y ago
    Okay, so your argument for not making nuclear safe is that coal kills a lot of people? Nice one, that's about as sound of an argument as killing somebody and then saying the military kills more people so what's the big deal.
    - ajuc 7y ago
      Misleading analogy. You don't need to murder people, so the alternative to murdering someone is not murdering anyone. You need baseload power anyway, so you have to choose some way to generate power. Nuclear kills the least number of people per MWh. So not choosing nuclear kills people and choosing nuclear saves people. Even if you decided to return to the pre-industrial era and not generate power at all - that would kill even more people, so going nuclear is still better. You need to look at alternative costs when comparing your options, you cannot just look at bad sides of one option and good sides of the other.
rplst8 7y ago
...and the over-engineered solutions are over-engineering outdated, inherently unsafe designs.
gridlockd 7y ago
Overengineering is not a bad thing in real-world engineering, to be clear.
- ajuc 7y ago
  It is when you overengineer safety for 1 technology and ignore it for the alternatives, and then compare the costs ignoring the safety record. Energy Source Mortality Rate (deaths/trillionkWhr) Coal – global average 100,000 (41% global electricity) Coal – China 170,000 (75% China’s electricity) Coal – U.S. 10,000 (32% U.S. electricity) Oil 36,000 (33% of energy, 8% of electricity) Natural Gas 4,000 (22% global electricity) Biofuel/Biomass 24,000 (21% global energy) Solar (rooftop) 440 (< 1% global electricity) Wind 150 (2% global electricity) Hydro – global average 1,400 (16% global electricity) Hydro – U.S. 5 (6% U.S. electricity) Nuclear – global average 90 (11% global electricity w/Chern&Fukush) Nuclear – U.S. 0.1 (19% U.S. electricity) Source (2012): https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#4d114152709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d... If people wanted solar power to be as safe as nuclear powerplants it would have to be much more expansive than it is now. But apparently deaths are ok as long as it's not from nuclear powerplants :/
  - jeremyjh 7y ago
    So you are going to use the official Soviet figures for deaths due to Chernobyl? That does not lend credibility to your argument. Also keep in mind, that accident could have been much, much worse and nearly was so. It could have rendered much of Europe uninhabitable for centuries.
    - roenxi 7y ago
      What do you want to use instead? If you like you can increase the Chernobyl number by 1,000x. The point still stands; nuclear is measurably, unambiguously and has proven to be safer than coal in every way that effects humans. Except evacuation risk. Which is still tiny vs any reasonable standard. Plus the modern designs are different from the Soviet designs. They have improved. We have Computer-aided design now.
pjc50 7y ago
So why is Hinckley Point C three times as expensive as wind farms?
- roenxi 7y ago
  There is at least one source claiming that the UK potentially has the worst track record in the world for installing cost-effective nuclear plants [0]. I'm not sure what they are doing wrong, but it probably isn't inherent to nuclear power. [0] http://www.globalconstructionreview.com/sectors/report-claims-uk-nuclear-costs-hi7g7he7st-world/ http://www.globalconstructionreview.com/sectors/report-claim...
- gridlockd 7y ago
  > So why is Hinckley Point C three times as expensive as wind farms? That's an Apples to Oranges comparison. Nuclear provides stable energy, wind provides volatile energy. You need to factor in the cost of buffering that volatility, which will likely be natural gas, in which case you should be fair and put a price on that CO2 as well.

missosoup 7y ago

Fission isn't far out. Fission has been a readily available solution for decades. The only obstacle is political. The only reason fission is expensive is political. As the climate situation worsens, more and more nations will overlook that obstacle and roll out large scale nuclear. The only question is, will they be able to do it quickly enough. I feel like I'm the only person in the room missing something when watching the world focus on 'renewable' technology when a much less resource/labour intensive and much higher energy dense power source is already available. And it's safer too. [1] Why is renewable in quotes? Because we don't actually have a way to recycle solar and wind installations[2][3]. Nuclear is the only currently available large scale power source that doesn't require a large and continuous supply of mined materials. Am I missing something? Am I an idiot? Why is everyone so anti nuclear and pro 'renewable' when nuclear is significantly better by every objective metric? Looks like the 'ban plastic straws' activism which ignored that straws make up an insignificant fraction of ocean waste and the vast majority of it is discarded fishing equipment. Inconsequential feel-good activism is a higher priority goal than more difficult but effective solutions? [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#453cd006709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d... [2] https://recyclinginternational.com/editors-top-picks/critical-question-how-to-recycle-12-000-wind-turbines/26883/ https://recyclinginternational.com/editors-top-picks/critica... [3] https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/waste-crisis-looms-as-thousands-of-solar-panels-reach-end-of-life-20190112-p50qzd.html https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/waste-crisis-looms-a...

ZeroGravitas 7y ago
You're not the only one missing this. It seems very common to miss, but I can point out what you're missing. Your link number 1 is supposed to support nuclear being safer than renewables, and it simply doesn't do that. There's a few links that regularly get shared, intending to make that point and they all don't actually make it. The list of things that nuclear is safer than, is notably missing grid scale wind and solar. What a mysterious ommision from something that is trying to argue they are not safe. Having read your link 2 and 3, I see they also don't support the point you are making (the first describes how to recycle turbine blades into concrete and is looking for more applications, the second says solar panels are 90% recyclable and just wants some government policies to ensure this happens), which makes me wonder if you're arguing in good faith here?

dahdum 7y ago

The nuclear industry report cited in that article (WNSIP) is written by an anti-nuclear activist (Mycle Schneider). His whole career is defined by it.

yyyk 7y ago

That's two very different kinds of 'slow'. Nuclear Fission might be too slow to build - at least that's what the report claims. That would not be a problem with Fusion - its energy output should be so high that building it should still be worth it. The 'slow' regarding Fusion is the time taking to research it. IMHO, researching Fusion is worth it, but we can't rely on it at all for solving our problems, since it's unlikely to be available in time. We'll have to handle our climate problem with more ordinary means.