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Have we not learnt our lesson? Nearly 70 years of massive global subsidies have gone by and yet the nuclear industry has not been able to produce anything compe

by ricw 7y ago

Have we not learnt our lesson? Nearly 70 years of massive global subsidies have gone by and yet the nuclear industry has not been able to produce anything competitive, let alone anything that doesn’t require government guarantees / externalisation of costs. I love the idea of nuclear, but it just hasn’t worked out. Solar and wind already are cheaper than anything else out there, and they are still regularly falling in cost. We can invest our money better elsewhere. The nuclear age has come and passed.

sillysaurusx 7y ago
Some of the most important advances came from making previously expensive things cheaper. Your argument could have applied to the space industry, for example. Then SpaceX happened.
Gravityloss 7y ago
It has one massive advantage though. It's perceived to be "hated by the greenies". That makes some circles really love it - and that could make it very viable where those demographics wield enough power.
- mc32 7y ago
  It’s sadly ironic that the greens historically opposed nuclear and thus share partial responsibility for where we are with respect to our energy production mix. But I don’t see them flagellating themselves over this flagrant mis-step they share responsibility for. It’s unfortunate that people who become activists are often (but not always) more dogmatic than scientific in their approach to dealing with issues. I think, looking retroactively, that there was an opportunity to coöperate with industry to address issues and work towards a working solution. I mean Yucca mountain. Where would France be if they had capitulated to this thinking.
  - Gravityloss 7y ago
    There is some movement around small modular reactors. I hope they could be done in a fast and safe way. Even just heating cities could provide a huge saving in emissions. The reactor design simplifies and the whole facility simplifies even more massively if you forgo power generation. You can operate with low pressures and temperatures.
- Klinky 7y ago
  The same people who are pro-nuclear don't want it in their backyard, nor to worry about future waste storage sites, or invest more heavily in the current Superfund clean up aftermath from previous nuclear-related projects. Usually they talk about how the newest reactors are more efficient and reliable than ever, but still cost billions to manufacturer and maintain, and only if liabilities are removed from those involved with building it.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    What? According to whom? That's all just made-up FUD.
    - Klinky 7y ago
      Because solutions to those issues never seem to come up in pro nuclear posts, only that the new reactors are safer and more efficient, while ignoring the issues of waste storage, expensive proprietary fuel and liability concerns.
  - Accujack 7y ago
    >nor to worry about future waste storage sites Why would we need more than one waste storage site? All the waste produced by power generating reactors in the US ever would fit on a US football field and be about 30 feet deep. That's less waste than one coal plant produces in a decade. All that waste we can't figure out what to do with, that no one wants to store or transport? That's from making nuclear weapons. No one sane wants more of those.
    - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
      Sure the waste is miniscule. However I don't trust the corporations in running it. When profit motive rears its ugly head, bad semihidden shit happens. I'd trust the military in running it. They do have operational nuclear knowledge.
      - Accujack 7y ago
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
> Solar and wind already are cheaper than anything else out there, and they are still regularly falling in cost. But they can't provide stable baseline power without storage. Storage is not yet cheap enough to be cost competitive with fossil fuel solutions hence why we are still running old coal plants and building new natural gas plants. This is why people are still talking about nuclear. It can provide baseline power but without crapping carbon into the atmosphere. Yes we will have less use for power that cannot be throttled in the future as more of the grid is wind/solar but newer reactor designs can be throttled. Edit: Yes I know that natural gas is traditionally for peak load but that is changing. See my reply to bryanlarsen's comment.
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  We're building new natural gas plants to provide peaking power, not to provide baseline power. Conventional nuclear plants can't provide peaking power, although there are designs that can.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    >We're building new natural gas plants to provide peaking power True, kinda, but that has more to do with there being no good reason to build a natgas plant that can't be throttled in response to demand. You can use anything for base load if you want but economically it makes more sense to use the cheapest stuff possible for base and more expensive stuff for daily fluctuations and peak. But coal is getting more expensive and gas is cheap so we see more and more base load taken up by gas. Instead of idling in off hours more and more gas plants are running at low capacity to provide a little bit of base power. The whole base load/peak way of discussing things is slowly going out the window as more and more power comes from renewable since even base load is going to fluctuate around the grid based on the availability of sun/wind and something (currently gas, maybe storage in the future) has to absorb that load. I really should have framed things in terms of stability rather than base load. With wind/solar you can't be sure you'll have wind/sun when everyone wants power some arbitrary date in the future which is where storage/gas come in. You have a base load but solar/wind can't be guaranteed to provide base power so gas/storage spins up. From a gas plant or battery point of view a dip in solar/wind capacity is no different than a demand peak on an otherwise coal grid.
realusername 7y ago
> I love the idea of nuclear, but it just hasn’t worked out. Solar and wind already are cheaper than anything else out there, and they are still regularly falling in cost. We can invest our money better elsewhere. You should not compare raw prices but what's required to use it for an actual load, those figures look pretty different.
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  Intermittent renewables are making less than 5% of our primary energy today. At scale, the intermittency problem becomes significant because you have to build all this storage. The energy required to build the storage reduces the total Energy Return on Investment below what is necessary to sustain industrialized civilization. Nuclear EROI is about 50:1, well into the safe range. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X19300926 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X1...
Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
> Solar and wind already are cheaper than anything else out there Yes if you conveniently choose to ignore the availability problems (in the night and in no wind). And that no scalable battery/storage solution exists yet?
- adrianN 7y ago
  How are batteries, power-to-gas, and solar-thermal with molten salt not scalable?
  - sanxiyn 7y ago
    They probably can scale, but haven't scaled yet. The only proven solution today is pumped storage, which is not available everywhere. Pumped storage accounts for >95% of world's installed energy storage capacity.
    - adrianN 7y ago
      Not being needed to scale yet and not being able to scale are two completely different things though.
  - acidburnNSA 7y ago
    Simple: because at high levels of intermittent penetration, you have to build so much "non-productive" storage technology that the Energy Return on Investment is below the level thought necessary to sustain industrial civilization. For example, this was just published last week: [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X19300926 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X1... (Iñigo Capellán-Pérez, Carlos de Castro, Luis Javier Miguel González, Dynamic Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROI) and material requirements in scenarios of global transition to renewable energies, Energy Strategy Reviews, Volume 26, 2019, 100399, ISSN 2211-467X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esr.2019.100399. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esr.2019.100399.)
    - olau 7y ago
mytailorisrich 7y ago
It does not really matter whether nuclear requires government backing, it's the role of the state to back things that may not be viable otherwise. Actually, currently renewables receive massive amounts of subsidies. Nuclear works. The important points for our current problems is that it is low emission and that it can guarantee vast amounts of electricity 24/7. In order to drastically reduce emissions while meeting demand, not least the upcoming demand from electric vehicles, there is simply no alternative. This does not mean that renewables should not be pushed as much as possible as well.
Accujack 7y ago
Your post is an anthology of myths and incorrect information. Some facts: * Nuclear energy has received less than 50% of the subsidies that renewables have. Renewables only recently ceased to "need" this, and they've been under development for decades. Nuclear power hasn't had investment in significant research since about 1970. * Nuclear reactors are competitive in many countries, and in fact they are too in the US. Nuclear is the cheapest power per kilowatt-hour except when direct access to nearby fossil fuel sources is available, even using 40-50 year old reactor designs. Newer designs would be even cheaper. In fact this is irrelevant, however, because we're not looking for the cheapest power, we're looking for a way to supplement renewables with always-on electricity that doesn't fuel climate change. Newer reactor designs will be safer, cheaper, and less expensive to build. They may even use something other than Uranium as a fuel. They will not contribute to nuclear weapons proliferation and they will not produce large amounts of waste. They will release less radiation into the environment than current coal plants do. If all the people who believe 40 years of propaganda and misinformation spread by self righteous willfully ignorant individuals can do so, we can work toward a clean energy future using renewables and nuclear in time to limit global warming. If we can't, once we start having wars over water and the world starts boiling in the heat of rising seas, we'll start building nuclear reactors after the fact. Assuming we survive that long. Sources: https://nuclear.duke-energy.com/2019/01/23/debunking-9-myths-about-nuclear-energy https://nuclear.duke-energy.com/2019/01/23/debunking-9-myths... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidy https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-a...
- djsumdog 7y ago
  One of your sources is literally a power company.
  - Accujack 7y ago
    You could argue that they're biased, but you could also argue that they're the most knowledgeable people available. If you don't like those sources, look around. There are lots of government studies in many countries available. If you are willing to read them, that is.
belorn 7y ago
With current energy grids that are used in the world as a template, you can have one of two grid. 1) Nuclear, with the high building cost and externalization of spent fuel. 2) Renewable, with cheap building costs and externalization of variable production rate which is solved by burning fossil fuels like natural gas or coal. If we look beyond current grids and look into the future there is solutions to those externalizations. Renewable could use batteries rather than burning fossil fuels, but the current best bet is to build enough hydro powerplants and dams to fully support the energy grid during low production periods, and pumping back the water during high production. This will cost a lot of land and put a lot of greenhouse gases into the air, in particular because putting a lot of land under water tend to create a lot of methane. The cement for the dams are just like the cement in nuclear plants a major contributor to greenhouse gas production. Personally, I just would declare that the age of burning fossil fuel to manage the energy grid has come and passed. By 2020 we should not build any new natural gas power plants. by 2030 we should have decommissioned 90% of all fossil burning plants, and by 2040 a complete ban of burning fossil fuel for electricity for any scale larger than a hospitals backup generator. With those decision in place I trust that investors will figure out if nuclear is profitable or not, and I personally do not care. For the climate sake my only wish is that we stop burning fossil fuels.
- olau 7y ago
  Current grids are or have been mostly fossil fuels. You can displace a lot of those with renewables, no problem. It's true that to get to 100%, or to start a new grid, you need to have something to fill in the gaps. Here there's a wide array of options, of which the most deployed at the moment are hydro and biomass AFAIK. But there are other proposals. In the past it mostly didn't make sense to store electricity, not when you are paying for coal or gas and could as well store that. So many of the latest proposals are not fully developed and operating at a massive scale yet.
  - belorn 7y ago
    For the US grid that is very true. There are nations which has reached closer to peak renewable and a good example is Denmark. At peak time wind production is almost 100% and if I remember right they export a lot when that happen, but then we have times like right now (when this comment is posted) and wind production is less than 10% of total usage and both natural gas and coal produce sits above 10% to compensate, in combination with imports from Germany which is also right now mostly produced from coal. (https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false&countryCode=DK-DK1 https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&rem...) Hydro as a natural resource is not a perfect fit to use in case like this as natural lakes can only take so much changes in water levels, and in many cases you have chains of hydro plants and lakes which mean dumping a lot of water in one place means you have to dump a lot of it further down without causing flooding. Hydro plants must also manage how much water they have available. Swedish power prices is notorious effected by how much water winter/fall periods produce.
627467 7y ago
Can't you replace "nuclear" with almost any of the staple renewable energy dujour and your comment remains valid? Solar and wind have massive externalities specially when you factor in lifecycle of batteries.
johnjungles 7y ago
https://terrapower.com https://terrapower.com https://terrapower.com/updates/netflix-documentary-on-terrapower-co-founder-and-chairman-released-inside-bills-brain-decoding-bill-gates/ https://terrapower.com/updates/netflix-documentary-on-terrap... Terrapower is one of Bill Gate’s active developments. There are immense amounts of depleted uranium that the gov thinks is waste sitting in fields. Terrapower can build nuclear reactors that can run and power the entirety of the US for 100 years. You’re right that most nuclear reactors haven’t made significant improvements which is why they’ve made considerable technological advancements for example no human operators (use AI like google to run their entire facilities) and liquid metal instead of water and disaster proof. Watch this documentary for more insight!
- ghostly_s 7y ago
  Yes, they've been touting these for 15 years now and still don't have any plans for a prototype. The nuclear industry always seems to have some game-changing innovation just around the corner. I'm all for aggressively funding the research, but these new designs are all hypothetical, not existing solutions.
  - dobleboble 7y ago
    There are plans to build a prototype but the Trump administration blocked them: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a25728221/terrapower-china-bill-gates-trump/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a25728221/te...
    - ghostly_s 7y ago
      Right, hence, no current plans for a prototype.
      - dobleboble 7y ago
        The plans are made and ready to go as soon as a president who isn't loyal to the fossil fuel industry is in office. This technology could literally save our species and the planet and it got spiked to protect dinosaur industries. You can watch the documentary "Inside Bill's Brain" on Netflix for more information, specifically episode 3.
orangecat 7y ago
There are two common environmentalist arguments: 1. Climate change is an existential threat to humanity, and we must make radical changes to our lifestyles and economies immediately. 2. Wind and solar are now so cheap that there's no need for nuclear. How can both of those be true? If wind and solar are really that cheap, great! Build enough of them to replace all existing fossil fuels and nuclear plants, and we're done. The fact that this has not happened even in enlightened countries makes me question that claim.
- vajrabum 7y ago
  How long has solar been that competitive? Less than a decade. How much power infrastructure is there in the world--a huge amount. How long will it take to retire and replace all that infrastructure? Decades at best.
- ghostly_s 7y ago
  Neither technology is so cheap as to make it economical to replace our entire energy system through market forces. That's why the climate crisis is not magically solving itself. That does not contradict the argument that nuclear, for cost reasons, is poorly-positioned to be the main player in a subsidized transition to a post-carbon economy.
charlesju 7y ago
70 years is not enough time to fully flush out the potential of nuclear power. We're already on the cusp of breakthroughs with Thorium (cleaner) and Fusion (more and cleaner) power that are derivatives of the science from nuclear. There are several countries that rely heavily on nuclear today and have done so successfully and in a way that has helped curb their greenhouse gases: France being one (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France) Additionally, nuclear has unlocked insane potential in the military with nuclear subs and ships. They can go a whole year without refueling and at the micro level they are very effective. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion) So to your first rhetorical question. What lesson have you learned from Nuclear the last 70 years? What I have learned is that it's an incredibly effective and green source of energy. It's a type of power that we should invest more money into not only for green energy production, but also for the future potential derivative technology. We can solve climate change tomorrow (in the sense that next 30 years is tomorrow) if everyone made a conscious effort to adopt nuclear in all forms of energy consumption. No one in Nuclear is saying no wind/solar/batteries, everyone in Nuclear is saying we should do everything that doesn't catastrophically harm the environment and we should invest more into a very powerful and ultimately useful technology. Imagine a world where energy is functionally free and robots have enough AI to do most basic motor tasks, they can grow and deliver crops start to finish, run stores and shops, build houses and provide the materials necessary to do that. We're not that far from that reality and pushing the human cost to have basic living standards met down to near zero. We're also looking into nuclear as a primary fuel source for space travel, traveling to mars right now takes 9 months, that's an incredibly amount of time round trip for a human, just look up humans that went to the space station for 12 months, you need to spend about 3x that time to go to mars, that's incredibly harmful, if we had nuclear, we might be able to dramatically shorten that. (https://www.space.com/nuclear-propulsion-future-spacecraft-nasa-chief.html https://www.space.com/nuclear-propulsion-future-spacecraft-n...) I know you think Nuclear is scary because sometimes things go wrong, we have to figure out a better way to deal with the waste, but in this science based community lets try to be the first to promote more science first and not let the fear of what could happen stymied the progress we all need.
petre 7y ago
Rooftop solar is available, but you can't exactly get a 30 kW washing machine sized nuclear power plant to install in your basement, can you? It's mainly due to non-proliferation risks. Remove some of the regulatory hurdles, like requiring airplane impact proof reactor containments (after 9/11 of course) and we'll see a boomibg nuclear industry. https://www.troutmansandersenergyreport.com/2009/02/nrc-requires-reactors-to-withstand-airplane-crashes/ https://www.troutmansandersenergyreport.com/2009/02/nrc-requ...

by ricw 7y ago

sillysaurusx 7y ago

Some of the most important advances came from making previously expensive things cheaper. Your argument could have applied to the space industry, for example. Then SpaceX happened.

Gravityloss 7y ago

It has one massive advantage though. It's perceived to be "hated by the greenies". That makes some circles really love it - and that could make it very viable where those demographics wield enough power.

mc32 7y ago
It’s sadly ironic that the greens historically opposed nuclear and thus share partial responsibility for where we are with respect to our energy production mix. But I don’t see them flagellating themselves over this flagrant mis-step they share responsibility for. It’s unfortunate that people who become activists are often (but not always) more dogmatic than scientific in their approach to dealing with issues. I think, looking retroactively, that there was an opportunity to coöperate with industry to address issues and work towards a working solution. I mean Yucca mountain. Where would France be if they had capitulated to this thinking.
- Gravityloss 7y ago
  There is some movement around small modular reactors. I hope they could be done in a fast and safe way. Even just heating cities could provide a huge saving in emissions. The reactor design simplifies and the whole facility simplifies even more massively if you forgo power generation. You can operate with low pressures and temperatures.
Klinky 7y ago
The same people who are pro-nuclear don't want it in their backyard, nor to worry about future waste storage sites, or invest more heavily in the current Superfund clean up aftermath from previous nuclear-related projects. Usually they talk about how the newest reactors are more efficient and reliable than ever, but still cost billions to manufacturer and maintain, and only if liabilities are removed from those involved with building it.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  What? According to whom? That's all just made-up FUD.
  - Klinky 7y ago
    Because solutions to those issues never seem to come up in pro nuclear posts, only that the new reactors are safer and more efficient, while ignoring the issues of waste storage, expensive proprietary fuel and liability concerns.
- Accujack 7y ago
  >nor to worry about future waste storage sites Why would we need more than one waste storage site? All the waste produced by power generating reactors in the US ever would fit on a US football field and be about 30 feet deep. That's less waste than one coal plant produces in a decade. All that waste we can't figure out what to do with, that no one wants to store or transport? That's from making nuclear weapons. No one sane wants more of those.
  - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
    Sure the waste is miniscule. However I don't trust the corporations in running it. When profit motive rears its ugly head, bad semihidden shit happens. I'd trust the military in running it. They do have operational nuclear knowledge.
    - Accujack 7y ago

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

> Solar and wind already are cheaper than anything else out there, and they are still regularly falling in cost. But they can't provide stable baseline power without storage. Storage is not yet cheap enough to be cost competitive with fossil fuel solutions hence why we are still running old coal plants and building new natural gas plants. This is why people are still talking about nuclear. It can provide baseline power but without crapping carbon into the atmosphere. Yes we will have less use for power that cannot be throttled in the future as more of the grid is wind/solar but newer reactor designs can be throttled. Edit: Yes I know that natural gas is traditionally for peak load but that is changing. See my reply to bryanlarsen's comment.

bryanlarsen 7y ago
We're building new natural gas plants to provide peaking power, not to provide baseline power. Conventional nuclear plants can't provide peaking power, although there are designs that can.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >We're building new natural gas plants to provide peaking power True, kinda, but that has more to do with there being no good reason to build a natgas plant that can't be throttled in response to demand. You can use anything for base load if you want but economically it makes more sense to use the cheapest stuff possible for base and more expensive stuff for daily fluctuations and peak. But coal is getting more expensive and gas is cheap so we see more and more base load taken up by gas. Instead of idling in off hours more and more gas plants are running at low capacity to provide a little bit of base power. The whole base load/peak way of discussing things is slowly going out the window as more and more power comes from renewable since even base load is going to fluctuate around the grid based on the availability of sun/wind and something (currently gas, maybe storage in the future) has to absorb that load. I really should have framed things in terms of stability rather than base load. With wind/solar you can't be sure you'll have wind/sun when everyone wants power some arbitrary date in the future which is where storage/gas come in. You have a base load but solar/wind can't be guaranteed to provide base power so gas/storage spins up. From a gas plant or battery point of view a dip in solar/wind capacity is no different than a demand peak on an otherwise coal grid.

realusername 7y ago

> I love the idea of nuclear, but it just hasn’t worked out. Solar and wind already are cheaper than anything else out there, and they are still regularly falling in cost. We can invest our money better elsewhere. You should not compare raw prices but what's required to use it for an actual load, those figures look pretty different.

acidburnNSA 7y ago
Intermittent renewables are making less than 5% of our primary energy today. At scale, the intermittency problem becomes significant because you have to build all this storage. The energy required to build the storage reduces the total Energy Return on Investment below what is necessary to sustain industrialized civilization. Nuclear EROI is about 50:1, well into the safe range. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X19300926 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X1...

Erlich_Bachman 7y ago

> Solar and wind already are cheaper than anything else out there Yes if you conveniently choose to ignore the availability problems (in the night and in no wind). And that no scalable battery/storage solution exists yet?

adrianN 7y ago
How are batteries, power-to-gas, and solar-thermal with molten salt not scalable?
- sanxiyn 7y ago
  They probably can scale, but haven't scaled yet. The only proven solution today is pumped storage, which is not available everywhere. Pumped storage accounts for >95% of world's installed energy storage capacity.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    Not being needed to scale yet and not being able to scale are two completely different things though.
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  Simple: because at high levels of intermittent penetration, you have to build so much "non-productive" storage technology that the Energy Return on Investment is below the level thought necessary to sustain industrial civilization. For example, this was just published last week: [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X19300926 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X1... (Iñigo Capellán-Pérez, Carlos de Castro, Luis Javier Miguel González, Dynamic Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROI) and material requirements in scenarios of global transition to renewable energies, Energy Strategy Reviews, Volume 26, 2019, 100399, ISSN 2211-467X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esr.2019.100399. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esr.2019.100399.)
  - olau 7y ago

mytailorisrich 7y ago

It does not really matter whether nuclear requires government backing, it's the role of the state to back things that may not be viable otherwise. Actually, currently renewables receive massive amounts of subsidies. Nuclear works. The important points for our current problems is that it is low emission and that it can guarantee vast amounts of electricity 24/7. In order to drastically reduce emissions while meeting demand, not least the upcoming demand from electric vehicles, there is simply no alternative. This does not mean that renewables should not be pushed as much as possible as well.

Accujack 7y ago

Your post is an anthology of myths and incorrect information. Some facts: * Nuclear energy has received less than 50% of the subsidies that renewables have. Renewables only recently ceased to "need" this, and they've been under development for decades. Nuclear power hasn't had investment in significant research since about 1970. * Nuclear reactors are competitive in many countries, and in fact they are too in the US. Nuclear is the cheapest power per kilowatt-hour except when direct access to nearby fossil fuel sources is available, even using 40-50 year old reactor designs. Newer designs would be even cheaper. In fact this is irrelevant, however, because we're not looking for the cheapest power, we're looking for a way to supplement renewables with always-on electricity that doesn't fuel climate change. Newer reactor designs will be safer, cheaper, and less expensive to build. They may even use something other than Uranium as a fuel. They will not contribute to nuclear weapons proliferation and they will not produce large amounts of waste. They will release less radiation into the environment than current coal plants do. If all the people who believe 40 years of propaganda and misinformation spread by self righteous willfully ignorant individuals can do so, we can work toward a clean energy future using renewables and nuclear in time to limit global warming. If we can't, once we start having wars over water and the world starts boiling in the heat of rising seas, we'll start building nuclear reactors after the fact. Assuming we survive that long. Sources: https://nuclear.duke-energy.com/2019/01/23/debunking-9-myths-about-nuclear-energy https://nuclear.duke-energy.com/2019/01/23/debunking-9-myths... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidy https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-a...

djsumdog 7y ago
One of your sources is literally a power company.
- Accujack 7y ago
  You could argue that they're biased, but you could also argue that they're the most knowledgeable people available. If you don't like those sources, look around. There are lots of government studies in many countries available. If you are willing to read them, that is.

belorn 7y ago

With current energy grids that are used in the world as a template, you can have one of two grid. 1) Nuclear, with the high building cost and externalization of spent fuel. 2) Renewable, with cheap building costs and externalization of variable production rate which is solved by burning fossil fuels like natural gas or coal. If we look beyond current grids and look into the future there is solutions to those externalizations. Renewable could use batteries rather than burning fossil fuels, but the current best bet is to build enough hydro powerplants and dams to fully support the energy grid during low production periods, and pumping back the water during high production. This will cost a lot of land and put a lot of greenhouse gases into the air, in particular because putting a lot of land under water tend to create a lot of methane. The cement for the dams are just like the cement in nuclear plants a major contributor to greenhouse gas production. Personally, I just would declare that the age of burning fossil fuel to manage the energy grid has come and passed. By 2020 we should not build any new natural gas power plants. by 2030 we should have decommissioned 90% of all fossil burning plants, and by 2040 a complete ban of burning fossil fuel for electricity for any scale larger than a hospitals backup generator. With those decision in place I trust that investors will figure out if nuclear is profitable or not, and I personally do not care. For the climate sake my only wish is that we stop burning fossil fuels.

olau 7y ago
Current grids are or have been mostly fossil fuels. You can displace a lot of those with renewables, no problem. It's true that to get to 100%, or to start a new grid, you need to have something to fill in the gaps. Here there's a wide array of options, of which the most deployed at the moment are hydro and biomass AFAIK. But there are other proposals. In the past it mostly didn't make sense to store electricity, not when you are paying for coal or gas and could as well store that. So many of the latest proposals are not fully developed and operating at a massive scale yet.
- belorn 7y ago
  For the US grid that is very true. There are nations which has reached closer to peak renewable and a good example is Denmark. At peak time wind production is almost 100% and if I remember right they export a lot when that happen, but then we have times like right now (when this comment is posted) and wind production is less than 10% of total usage and both natural gas and coal produce sits above 10% to compensate, in combination with imports from Germany which is also right now mostly produced from coal. (https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false&countryCode=DK-DK1 https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&rem...) Hydro as a natural resource is not a perfect fit to use in case like this as natural lakes can only take so much changes in water levels, and in many cases you have chains of hydro plants and lakes which mean dumping a lot of water in one place means you have to dump a lot of it further down without causing flooding. Hydro plants must also manage how much water they have available. Swedish power prices is notorious effected by how much water winter/fall periods produce.

627467 7y ago

Can't you replace "nuclear" with almost any of the staple renewable energy dujour and your comment remains valid? Solar and wind have massive externalities specially when you factor in lifecycle of batteries.

johnjungles 7y ago

https://terrapower.com https://terrapower.com https://terrapower.com/updates/netflix-documentary-on-terrapower-co-founder-and-chairman-released-inside-bills-brain-decoding-bill-gates/ https://terrapower.com/updates/netflix-documentary-on-terrap... Terrapower is one of Bill Gate’s active developments. There are immense amounts of depleted uranium that the gov thinks is waste sitting in fields. Terrapower can build nuclear reactors that can run and power the entirety of the US for 100 years. You’re right that most nuclear reactors haven’t made significant improvements which is why they’ve made considerable technological advancements for example no human operators (use AI like google to run their entire facilities) and liquid metal instead of water and disaster proof. Watch this documentary for more insight!

ghostly_s 7y ago
Yes, they've been touting these for 15 years now and still don't have any plans for a prototype. The nuclear industry always seems to have some game-changing innovation just around the corner. I'm all for aggressively funding the research, but these new designs are all hypothetical, not existing solutions.
- dobleboble 7y ago
  There are plans to build a prototype but the Trump administration blocked them: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a25728221/terrapower-china-bill-gates-trump/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a25728221/te...
  - ghostly_s 7y ago
    Right, hence, no current plans for a prototype.
    - dobleboble 7y ago
      The plans are made and ready to go as soon as a president who isn't loyal to the fossil fuel industry is in office. This technology could literally save our species and the planet and it got spiked to protect dinosaur industries. You can watch the documentary "Inside Bill's Brain" on Netflix for more information, specifically episode 3.

orangecat 7y ago

There are two common environmentalist arguments: 1. Climate change is an existential threat to humanity, and we must make radical changes to our lifestyles and economies immediately. 2. Wind and solar are now so cheap that there's no need for nuclear. How can both of those be true? If wind and solar are really that cheap, great! Build enough of them to replace all existing fossil fuels and nuclear plants, and we're done. The fact that this has not happened even in enlightened countries makes me question that claim.

vajrabum 7y ago
How long has solar been that competitive? Less than a decade. How much power infrastructure is there in the world--a huge amount. How long will it take to retire and replace all that infrastructure? Decades at best.
ghostly_s 7y ago
Neither technology is so cheap as to make it economical to replace our entire energy system through market forces. That's why the climate crisis is not magically solving itself. That does not contradict the argument that nuclear, for cost reasons, is poorly-positioned to be the main player in a subsidized transition to a post-carbon economy.

charlesju 7y ago

70 years is not enough time to fully flush out the potential of nuclear power. We're already on the cusp of breakthroughs with Thorium (cleaner) and Fusion (more and cleaner) power that are derivatives of the science from nuclear. There are several countries that rely heavily on nuclear today and have done so successfully and in a way that has helped curb their greenhouse gases: France being one (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France) Additionally, nuclear has unlocked insane potential in the military with nuclear subs and ships. They can go a whole year without refueling and at the micro level they are very effective. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion) So to your first rhetorical question. What lesson have you learned from Nuclear the last 70 years? What I have learned is that it's an incredibly effective and green source of energy. It's a type of power that we should invest more money into not only for green energy production, but also for the future potential derivative technology. We can solve climate change tomorrow (in the sense that next 30 years is tomorrow) if everyone made a conscious effort to adopt nuclear in all forms of energy consumption. No one in Nuclear is saying no wind/solar/batteries, everyone in Nuclear is saying we should do everything that doesn't catastrophically harm the environment and we should invest more into a very powerful and ultimately useful technology. Imagine a world where energy is functionally free and robots have enough AI to do most basic motor tasks, they can grow and deliver crops start to finish, run stores and shops, build houses and provide the materials necessary to do that. We're not that far from that reality and pushing the human cost to have basic living standards met down to near zero. We're also looking into nuclear as a primary fuel source for space travel, traveling to mars right now takes 9 months, that's an incredibly amount of time round trip for a human, just look up humans that went to the space station for 12 months, you need to spend about 3x that time to go to mars, that's incredibly harmful, if we had nuclear, we might be able to dramatically shorten that. (https://www.space.com/nuclear-propulsion-future-spacecraft-nasa-chief.html https://www.space.com/nuclear-propulsion-future-spacecraft-n...) I know you think Nuclear is scary because sometimes things go wrong, we have to figure out a better way to deal with the waste, but in this science based community lets try to be the first to promote more science first and not let the fear of what could happen stymied the progress we all need.

petre 7y ago

Rooftop solar is available, but you can't exactly get a 30 kW washing machine sized nuclear power plant to install in your basement, can you? It's mainly due to non-proliferation risks. Remove some of the regulatory hurdles, like requiring airplane impact proof reactor containments (after 9/11 of course) and we'll see a boomibg nuclear industry. https://www.troutmansandersenergyreport.com/2009/02/nrc-requires-reactors-to-withstand-airplane-crashes/ https://www.troutmansandersenergyreport.com/2009/02/nrc-requ...