6 ms·

Rolls Royce makes small nuclear reactors for submarines, and naturally, their solution to the worlds climate crisis is for more people to buy their small modula

Rolls Royce makes small nuclear reactors for submarines, and naturally, their solution to the worlds climate crisis is for more people to buy their small modular nuclear reactors. Don't pay attention, this is just salesmanship. It is a little depressing to think that with the world at crisis, the best companies like Rolls Royce can respond is to think "well there must be some way to shoehorn our existing products into this existential crisis everyone is talking about". Small modular nuclear reactors are very dangerous because they are not secured under heavy concrete and thus can easily blow up when something goes wrong. And something usually goes wrong. Their reasoning for using nuclear is nonsensical. There is no reason why those green fuel generating facilities cannot be connected to the grid. And as far as building new power generation for the grid, renewable energy is already far cheaper than nuclear.

godelski 7y ago
The majority of climate scientists are pro nuclear. But that is just talking about grid energy. There's still a lot of problems in other industries (and sub problems within energy and transportation). There's no great green revolution in: - Flying - Shipping - Heat and A/C - Industry - Concrete/Steel/Construction - Agriculture and many more. We often talk about transportation and grid energy, but that isn't even half the problem. And the US is only 15% of global emissions and the EU-28 is 9%. What's happening here is that there is no good solution currently proposed. If you want to critique the proposed solution, that is welcomed. But critique it on its merits. But from your comment you seem to believe that all reactors are the same, that no advanced have been made since Chernobyl, and most importantly that you haven't read the article.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Tackling your problem areas, and yes, the challenges are extreme: Flight: Correct. Without some immense change in fuels, behaviours, or craft designs, air travel as we know it will be dead in a low-carbon economy. Battery-powered electric craft might fit a short-hop niche (they do better than I'd thought), but with ~100-300 miles range and low speeds. Ground rail is likely better. Ultralight drones could address numerous informational uses. Passenger and cargo, not so much. Airships can get off the ground, but frequently crash into it again. Shipping: Not quite so bleak as all that. There was wind, and ships have far more flexible fuel options than aircraft. A hybrid wind-power system (best of efficiency and discretionary power), and alternative fuels (alcohol, biodiesel, pelletised solid fuels, e.g., wood scraps) are at least viable. Heat and A/C: Here, as well as much urban / national transport, a radical rethinking of the built environment could offer tremendous gains. This would likely mean both land-use changes (greater density), passive designs, and district heating and cooling through thermal energy storage (both heat and cold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage) offer at least some options. Humidity/moisture control might be a larger challenge. Industry: Here specifics matter a great deal. Sourcing, raw-material processing, heating and cooling, refining, machining, treatments, etc., all have highly-specific demands. Interestingly, processing of petroleum itself consumes huge amounts of energy. Concrete/Steel/Construction: I'll generalise and say materials. The (possibly) bright spot is that the reason we rely on concrete, steel (and other materials such as aluminium) to the extent we do is because abundant cheap energy changed economics of materials sourcing. With higher energy costs (and concerns over CO2 emissions), we'll likely shift back to other alternatives, including stone, brick, possibly ceramics, wood, and potentially new/novel materials. Not to say the picture is rosy, but recognising that changing costs change the entire landscape is key. Agriculture: Most energy use is in nitrogen fixation (relying on natural gas, and the reason why some small, gas-rich countries, such as Trinidad and Tobago, have such huge CO2 emissions). There are some alternative nitrogen-fixation methods, and reliance on, say, solar thermal rather than natural gas might be successful. After chemicals, power inputs tend to be of planting and harvesting equipment, water pumping (a huge demand), transport, and cold-chain. Comparatively those are relatively small. Heating/cooling is likely the biggest demand after transport. There's ample low-hanging fruit, though most involve behavioural changes and a tremendous asset reallocation. Both are socially and politically exceedingly difficult. For those interested in the topic, Vaclav Smil has published numerous books looking at virtually all aspects of energy utilisation, including its history (Energy and Civilization), materials, transitions, and more. Very highly recommended: https://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q=au%3Asmil%2C%20vaclav https://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q=au%3As...
  - godelski 7y ago
    Awesome! Let's get down to some nuance! Flight: Rail is awesome! BUT they aren't in place. Besides that, they require a lot of steel and energy. Both of which are highly carbon intensive problems. Will they reduce the carbon load in total? Probably. Meaningfully? Probably not. Shipping: Alcohol, biodiesel, pelletised solid fuels like wood scraps, etc are not carbon neutral. Sure, they are less than diesel and we should take steps forward even if they are small, but the issue is that we don't have any idea of a real alternative that can scale. Heat and A/C: humidity and moisture control is literally the C in A/C. I'd challenge you to look into all the technologies listed under the wiki you linked. None are carbon neutral. I'll count concentrated solar as close enough. The issue here is that it doesn't scale well. Plus, we need both heating and cooling. Industry: I'm going to ignore this because I think we agree and yeah, it is highly convoluted and hard to get into in this discussion. Is this okay? (it is 21% though [0]) Concrete/Steel/Construction: Your alternatives are all carbon intensive. I'm not sure what your argument is here. I apologize, but it feels like you are suggesting that old methods equates to less carbon intensive methods. And can we just put this myth to rest? Wood is carbon neutral, at best! But there's a big reason we don't use wood a lot. You can't build sky scrapers with them. (There's a long discussion here about how actually concentration of populations decreases emissions because it radically reduces logistics costs, but that is also highly convoluted and deserves several posts on its own). Agriculture: I'm surprised you didn't say it, but the best alternative here is gene editing. You're also acting like agriculture isn't 25% of emissions[0]. The biggest issue here is a growing population. Just like fertilizer was one of the most important discoveries in human history (please read the history here), the next thing that allows us to get to 10bn people (my guess is gene editing) will be equally as important. But we need to look at low emission options, let along realize people have emission problems on their own (we're not Hitler and not just going to kill everyone. We aren't Mao and going to limit populations (like we can, HA!) Heating/cooling: I combined this above. See above. There is no low-hanging fruit. Please provide reference on this. You reference Smil, but I'm talking about issues he himself is concerned about. He is highly concerned with iron (and steel), cement, and plastics. He is very aware that we don't have great alternatives. It is rather distasteful to reference someone so skeptical of advancement while claiming that we're rather close to solving the problem. Smil is highly skeptical. Quoting him: "I have never been wrong on these major energy and environmental issues because I have nothing to sell."[1] If you're going to quote someone, for the love of god, don't quote someone that is counter to your position. [0] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20180322234243/http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6382/1320.full https://web.archive.org/web/20180322234243/http://science.sc...
- Krasnol 7y ago
  > The majority of climate scientists are pro nuclear. Do you have any credible sources on that?
  - godelski 7y ago
    I commonly quote IPCC recommendations because this is an easy reference with recommendations in several releases, but people rather don't like this and claim bureaucracy (this is easy to find and can be found from emission reports to the climate summits. I can explain some nuance if there are actual questions here). I can also anecdotally, working in HPC, tell you that I have yet to meet a climate scientist that is anti-nuclear or anti-sequestration (a politician that I really like sadly calls these "false solutions"). By anecdotally I mean that I talk to these people. https://world-nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/WNA/Publications/Working_Group_Reports/comparison_of_lifecycle.pdf https://world-nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/WNA/Publications... https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/SRREN_Full_Report-1.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/SRREN_Full_R... (you'll notice a lot of talk about "continuous energy" here and notice quite a lot of graphs about emission comparisons) https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/57187.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/57187.pdf I can provide more, if needed.
    - Krasnol 7y ago
      The first compilation is highly selective (what are those Swedish Environmental Management Council sources for example? None of them are available and all lead to a page that is not the SEM council) in it's sources and would not even closely cover either the statement "pro nuclear" nor any "majority" and it's been selected for this publication by the World Nuclear Association... The second one consist sentences like: "Increasing the installed capacity of RE power plants will reduce the amount of fossil and nuclear fuels that otherwise would be needed in order to meet a given electricity demand." or "There are multiple means for lowering GHG emissions from the energy system while still providing desired energy services." where nuclear is just one option among many others or "There have been significant power reductions from nuclear and coal plants during drought conditions in the USA and France in recent years." and so on. The focus is clearly on RE and I don't see a clear "pro nuclear" message there. The third one is focused on emissions based upon unnamed sources from an unknown time range (which is relevant for RE as there is rapid development unlike in nuclear) ignoring relevant topics like nuclear waste management (https://worldnuclearwastereport.org/ https://worldnuclearwastereport.org/) and seems to end up being pro wind. I tried to find some more data on nuclear energy on their page but it seems they are not considering it at all: https://www.nrel.gov/research/data-tools.html https://www.nrel.gov/research/data-tools.html So yeah, you could provide something that focuses on that "majority" and "pro nuclear" parts. That would be nice. And please spare me nuclear lobby groups. We had enough of their marketing efforts in the recent months here.
acidburnNSA 7y ago
That accusation is difficult to justify. There are plenty of characteristics of nuclear heat that warrant a look. * They are not intermittent * They can directly produce a continuous stream of high-grade heat for industrial processes * They have very high energy density and don't take up much space or use much raw materials * Their lifecycle energy return on investment is huge, over 50. Compare with ~8 for wind and ~4 for solar. This matters. The SMR being dangerous claim is unsubstantiated. Being smaller means they have smaller radiological source terms and are easier to cool. SMRs have been prowling around in our seas for decades with very few radiological accidents. Nuclear in general is orders of magnitude safer than combustion-based energy sources. This sounds wrong but is largely uncontested. https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy Furthermore, you should check into the sector-size pricing model used in coal, nuclear, and hydro. It shows that as a sector grows, regulations and NIMBY associated with it grows, increasing costs. There are now some indications that costs will increase around wind and solar not for safety or air quality reasons, but due to how much land and raw materials they require.

godelski 7y ago

The majority of climate scientists are pro nuclear. But that is just talking about grid energy. There's still a lot of problems in other industries (and sub problems within energy and transportation). There's no great green revolution in: - Flying - Shipping - Heat and A/C - Industry - Concrete/Steel/Construction - Agriculture and many more. We often talk about transportation and grid energy, but that isn't even half the problem. And the US is only 15% of global emissions and the EU-28 is 9%. What's happening here is that there is no good solution currently proposed. If you want to critique the proposed solution, that is welcomed. But critique it on its merits. But from your comment you seem to believe that all reactors are the same, that no advanced have been made since Chernobyl, and most importantly that you haven't read the article.

dredmorbius 7y ago
Tackling your problem areas, and yes, the challenges are extreme: Flight: Correct. Without some immense change in fuels, behaviours, or craft designs, air travel as we know it will be dead in a low-carbon economy. Battery-powered electric craft might fit a short-hop niche (they do better than I'd thought), but with ~100-300 miles range and low speeds. Ground rail is likely better. Ultralight drones could address numerous informational uses. Passenger and cargo, not so much. Airships can get off the ground, but frequently crash into it again. Shipping: Not quite so bleak as all that. There was wind, and ships have far more flexible fuel options than aircraft. A hybrid wind-power system (best of efficiency and discretionary power), and alternative fuels (alcohol, biodiesel, pelletised solid fuels, e.g., wood scraps) are at least viable. Heat and A/C: Here, as well as much urban / national transport, a radical rethinking of the built environment could offer tremendous gains. This would likely mean both land-use changes (greater density), passive designs, and district heating and cooling through thermal energy storage (both heat and cold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage) offer at least some options. Humidity/moisture control might be a larger challenge. Industry: Here specifics matter a great deal. Sourcing, raw-material processing, heating and cooling, refining, machining, treatments, etc., all have highly-specific demands. Interestingly, processing of petroleum itself consumes huge amounts of energy. Concrete/Steel/Construction: I'll generalise and say materials. The (possibly) bright spot is that the reason we rely on concrete, steel (and other materials such as aluminium) to the extent we do is because abundant cheap energy changed economics of materials sourcing. With higher energy costs (and concerns over CO2 emissions), we'll likely shift back to other alternatives, including stone, brick, possibly ceramics, wood, and potentially new/novel materials. Not to say the picture is rosy, but recognising that changing costs change the entire landscape is key. Agriculture: Most energy use is in nitrogen fixation (relying on natural gas, and the reason why some small, gas-rich countries, such as Trinidad and Tobago, have such huge CO2 emissions). There are some alternative nitrogen-fixation methods, and reliance on, say, solar thermal rather than natural gas might be successful. After chemicals, power inputs tend to be of planting and harvesting equipment, water pumping (a huge demand), transport, and cold-chain. Comparatively those are relatively small. Heating/cooling is likely the biggest demand after transport. There's ample low-hanging fruit, though most involve behavioural changes and a tremendous asset reallocation. Both are socially and politically exceedingly difficult. For those interested in the topic, Vaclav Smil has published numerous books looking at virtually all aspects of energy utilisation, including its history (Energy and Civilization), materials, transitions, and more. Very highly recommended: https://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q=au%3Asmil%2C%20vaclav https://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q=au%3As...
- godelski 7y ago
  Awesome! Let's get down to some nuance! Flight: Rail is awesome! BUT they aren't in place. Besides that, they require a lot of steel and energy. Both of which are highly carbon intensive problems. Will they reduce the carbon load in total? Probably. Meaningfully? Probably not. Shipping: Alcohol, biodiesel, pelletised solid fuels like wood scraps, etc are not carbon neutral. Sure, they are less than diesel and we should take steps forward even if they are small, but the issue is that we don't have any idea of a real alternative that can scale. Heat and A/C: humidity and moisture control is literally the C in A/C. I'd challenge you to look into all the technologies listed under the wiki you linked. None are carbon neutral. I'll count concentrated solar as close enough. The issue here is that it doesn't scale well. Plus, we need both heating and cooling. Industry: I'm going to ignore this because I think we agree and yeah, it is highly convoluted and hard to get into in this discussion. Is this okay? (it is 21% though [0]) Concrete/Steel/Construction: Your alternatives are all carbon intensive. I'm not sure what your argument is here. I apologize, but it feels like you are suggesting that old methods equates to less carbon intensive methods. And can we just put this myth to rest? Wood is carbon neutral, at best! But there's a big reason we don't use wood a lot. You can't build sky scrapers with them. (There's a long discussion here about how actually concentration of populations decreases emissions because it radically reduces logistics costs, but that is also highly convoluted and deserves several posts on its own). Agriculture: I'm surprised you didn't say it, but the best alternative here is gene editing. You're also acting like agriculture isn't 25% of emissions[0]. The biggest issue here is a growing population. Just like fertilizer was one of the most important discoveries in human history (please read the history here), the next thing that allows us to get to 10bn people (my guess is gene editing) will be equally as important. But we need to look at low emission options, let along realize people have emission problems on their own (we're not Hitler and not just going to kill everyone. We aren't Mao and going to limit populations (like we can, HA!) Heating/cooling: I combined this above. See above. There is no low-hanging fruit. Please provide reference on this. You reference Smil, but I'm talking about issues he himself is concerned about. He is highly concerned with iron (and steel), cement, and plastics. He is very aware that we don't have great alternatives. It is rather distasteful to reference someone so skeptical of advancement while claiming that we're rather close to solving the problem. Smil is highly skeptical. Quoting him: "I have never been wrong on these major energy and environmental issues because I have nothing to sell."[1] If you're going to quote someone, for the love of god, don't quote someone that is counter to your position. [0] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20180322234243/http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6382/1320.full https://web.archive.org/web/20180322234243/http://science.sc...
Krasnol 7y ago
> The majority of climate scientists are pro nuclear. Do you have any credible sources on that?
- godelski 7y ago
  I commonly quote IPCC recommendations because this is an easy reference with recommendations in several releases, but people rather don't like this and claim bureaucracy (this is easy to find and can be found from emission reports to the climate summits. I can explain some nuance if there are actual questions here). I can also anecdotally, working in HPC, tell you that I have yet to meet a climate scientist that is anti-nuclear or anti-sequestration (a politician that I really like sadly calls these "false solutions"). By anecdotally I mean that I talk to these people. https://world-nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/WNA/Publications/Working_Group_Reports/comparison_of_lifecycle.pdf https://world-nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/WNA/Publications... https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/SRREN_Full_Report-1.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/SRREN_Full_R... (you'll notice a lot of talk about "continuous energy" here and notice quite a lot of graphs about emission comparisons) https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/57187.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/57187.pdf I can provide more, if needed.
  - Krasnol 7y ago
    The first compilation is highly selective (what are those Swedish Environmental Management Council sources for example? None of them are available and all lead to a page that is not the SEM council) in it's sources and would not even closely cover either the statement "pro nuclear" nor any "majority" and it's been selected for this publication by the World Nuclear Association... The second one consist sentences like: "Increasing the installed capacity of RE power plants will reduce the amount of fossil and nuclear fuels that otherwise would be needed in order to meet a given electricity demand." or "There are multiple means for lowering GHG emissions from the energy system while still providing desired energy services." where nuclear is just one option among many others or "There have been significant power reductions from nuclear and coal plants during drought conditions in the USA and France in recent years." and so on. The focus is clearly on RE and I don't see a clear "pro nuclear" message there. The third one is focused on emissions based upon unnamed sources from an unknown time range (which is relevant for RE as there is rapid development unlike in nuclear) ignoring relevant topics like nuclear waste management (https://worldnuclearwastereport.org/ https://worldnuclearwastereport.org/) and seems to end up being pro wind. I tried to find some more data on nuclear energy on their page but it seems they are not considering it at all: https://www.nrel.gov/research/data-tools.html https://www.nrel.gov/research/data-tools.html So yeah, you could provide something that focuses on that "majority" and "pro nuclear" parts. That would be nice. And please spare me nuclear lobby groups. We had enough of their marketing efforts in the recent months here.

acidburnNSA 7y ago

That accusation is difficult to justify. There are plenty of characteristics of nuclear heat that warrant a look. * They are not intermittent * They can directly produce a continuous stream of high-grade heat for industrial processes * They have very high energy density and don't take up much space or use much raw materials * Their lifecycle energy return on investment is huge, over 50. Compare with ~8 for wind and ~4 for solar. This matters. The SMR being dangerous claim is unsubstantiated. Being smaller means they have smaller radiological source terms and are easier to cool. SMRs have been prowling around in our seas for decades with very few radiological accidents. Nuclear in general is orders of magnitude safer than combustion-based energy sources. This sounds wrong but is largely uncontested. https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy Furthermore, you should check into the sector-size pricing model used in coal, nuclear, and hydro. It shows that as a sector grows, regulations and NIMBY associated with it grows, increasing costs. There are now some indications that costs will increase around wind and solar not for safety or air quality reasons, but due to how much land and raw materials they require.