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People say that about molten salt fission reactors too. The maintenance robots will need maintenance robots. Just sell the robots. Lots of people still in fiss

People say that about molten salt fission reactors too. The maintenance robots will need maintenance robots. Just sell the robots. Lots of people still in fission and fusion are assuming trouble with renewables related to intermittency, land use, grid integration, EROI, raw materials, etc. might arise as we approach deep decarb. If that doesn't happen, wonderful! If it does, then it may be nice to have some low-carbon atomic power stations on hand or in work to diversify the risk. It's basically the nuclear Pascal's wager. With a big risk like climate change, there's room for investors who choose to take an interest in nuclear. Fossil fuels still power the vast majority of the world. It's not yet clear that we're out of that woods. For instance, Japan just announced that they're building 33 new coal plants to replace their atomic power stations. How on earth does one reconcile this with the game-over-renewables-are-already-cheaper-than-everything popular narrative? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/climate/japan-coal-fukushima.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/climate/japan-coal-fukush...

m0zg 7y ago
If the climate change situation was really as dire as we're being told, we'd have nuclear coming out of our ears by now, and nothing whatsoever would be able to stop it. It doesn't have to be ultra-expensive if it's not bespoke every time you build it. The investment into fusion would also be 10x what it is today, and we'd already have a viable version of it, after a Manhattan-project style, do-or-die effort. What's puzzling to me is why the opposite seems to be happening: some parts of the world shut down completely carbon neutral stuff and build things that are going to emit gigatons of CO2 for decades to come. If we are to reach point of no return (or worse, have already reached it), the focus should be on building such an abundance of energy generation capacity that it would not only replace all carbon-emitting energy generation, but also help power atmospheric carbon capture at a scale that we'd need to avert the climate disaster.
- chrisco255 7y ago
  CO2 has a logarithmic effect on temps. Doubling the current PPM will have half as much of an effect. I don't think the situation is dire or critical at all. It's mild. And people instinctively believe this even if they overtly signal that they don't.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    > And people instinctively believe this even if they overtly signal that they don't. I think it's rather condescending to literally claim you know people's beliefs, even when they vehemently voice otherwise.
    - chrisco255 7y ago
      Yes, because I look at what people do rather than what they say.
      - pfdietz 7y ago
        For your next trick, you will claim that what people really did before the Clean Air Act proves they want air pollution. Or, maybe, individual actions and collective actions are different things.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > If the climate change situation was really as dire as we're being told, we'd have nuclear coming out of our ears by now, and nothing whatsoever would be able to stop it. The problem is that people aren't necessarily great at investing for the long term, especially if they think they'll be dead by the time the benefits arise. > What's puzzling to me is why the opposite seems to be happening: some parts of the world shut down completely carbon neutral stuff and build things that are going to emit gigatons of CO2 for decades to come. Because of flawed optics on nuclear, mostly.
- modo_mario 7y ago
  A lot of this tbh is probably because of infighting between renewables and nuclear. Fusion seems like a bit of a black box to throw money into which isn't appreciated. Throw too little and you don't get there. Throw enough and you don't know when you'll get there. Fission solves a lot of problems but nobody likes it in their back yeard and some countries have gotten a scare of it (japan, germany,etc) It also takes a very long time to build a new planet and there's many people saying gov should invest more in solar/wind/etc instead whilst we're in a time where a lot of nuclear plants are reaching their planned life time or have had it extended for a long time. Hell I think only the UK is planning a new one which is sad to see.
  - TimPC 7y ago
    Most renewables aren't viable for base load power. Nuclear is viable only for base load power. Realistically they are competing for different parts of the power utilization and shouldn't be infighting at all. You want nuclear for the amount of power that's always on the grid. You want renewables to be able to handle spiking. The hard part of renewables now is the unpredictable output from varying winds and levels of sunlight. The cost problem is solved. If someone could come up with a way to make renewables very consistent in power output they'd blow nuclear out of the water. One of the reasons hydroelectric is so effective is the amount of water going over a suitable waterfall has a viable minimum (it might sometimes increase after rains but even in dry periods it has a predictable power level).
    - m0zg 7y ago
      Not sure why this was downvoted. It's the truth. The two don't (or at least shouldn't) really compete, they (and especially solar) are almost exactly complementary to each other.
      - pfdietz 7y ago
        It's not the truth. The grid could be powered with no "base load sources" at all. Intermittent + dispatchable could cover everything.
    - 7y ago
- Mvandenbergh 7y ago
  >If the climate change situation was really as dire as we're being told, we'd have nuclear coming out of our ears by now, and nothing whatsoever would be able to stop it. It doesn't have to be ultra-expensive if it's not bespoke every time you build it. The investment into fusion would also be 10x what it is today, and we'd already have a viable version of it, after a Manhattan-project style, do-or-die effort. This assumes that behind the business and political worlds we actually personally participate in, there is some ultra-rational global they with long time preferences and everyone's collective best interests at heart. Why would "they" allow all this new coal construction? There is no "they". There is only "us". When you see your local congressman or MP or mayor speak and think, "what a dunce", as you well might, you need to remember that there is no hidden "adult in the room" who really runs things. This is it. Nobody will come and protect us from our collective decisions.
  - throwaway92384 7y ago
    You are assuming your lack of agency extends to people much higher than you in society, without evidence and against my experience (leaders in organizations have different views -- about their organization's purpose, for example -- than the people under them, views they only share with other leaders, or free agents, if they even ever do share them). I'd say there are multiple adults in the room, and they sometimes fight, sometimes form alliances. They often do not care what you think is rational, your tribe's word for "good", because they are not of your tribe. Some have long time preferences but "collective best interests" to them means "civilization still stands somewhere on the planet".
    - Mvandenbergh 7y ago
      Well, "throwaway92384", I am not assuming any such thing. I personally know a number of people who are or have been MPs in the UK and the Netherlands, senior civil servants as well as many people in leadership roles in the private sector. I don't think this makes me particularly special incidentally, the same thing is true for many people who are actively engaged in policymaking. My comment is based on extensive professional and social interactions with other people in leadership roles. It is very frequently the case that such people, including government ministers simply don't have as much independent power of action as you think. The original parent comment said that if things were really so bad, then something would be done with the implication that since not much is being done, things cannot be so bad. Since we are not mass-building PWRs and running five parallel crash fusion programmes, it must follow that someone has examined the evidence and decided that the problem of climate change is not so bad and therefore we are not doing those things. The problem with this view is the assumption that there is a someone or a group of someones who sit back, review IPCC reports and then have the ability to collectively compel the political leaders of the world to act rationally. If there was such a group then their lack of action would indicate that they had made a rational decision not to act. My point is that there are no such people. The powerless enjoy the fantasy of conspiracy because it means that all it would take to solve our problems is some kind of board room coup of the Majestic 12 standing committee. The reality is that everyone in the system has to act within their roles in the system. Executives at oil companies will say that they wouldn't mind a carbon tax, as long as it was equally applied to all companies. That's logical as they would continue to have a level playing field with the other oil producers and it will take years for us to get off oil as a species anyway. Oh but they don't have the power to pass an oil tax, that's for government. Politicians in smaller countries will say, they would love to pass such a tax but unfortunately it needs to be global or it will just erode their competitive advantage without reducing emissions. Only if large trading blocs like the EU and US united on enforcing such a system could it be done. American politicians might say that they personally would love to but they'd need a majority in the Senate, the House, and the right person in the White House. None of these people are being disingenuous, they all have an accurate view of the limits of their own power within the system. My point is that there is no "outside the system" which can update the system to work better for large collective action problems or force a solution. It's cogs in the machine all the way up. Even the power of Donald Trump, as leader of by far the world's most powerful nation has substantial limits to his freedom of action.
pfdietz 7y ago
> Lots of people still in fission and fusion are assuming trouble with renewables related to intermittency, land use, grid integration, EROI, raw materials That's whistling past the graveyard, I think. Land use is demonstrably not a problem. Grid integration has long history of naysayers drawing a line in the sand and renewables blowing past it. EROI is just fine and getting better. Raw materials are also not a problem (lies that solar uses rare earths notwithstanding). Intermittency remains an issue, but it looks easier to solve than making fission (or, to an even greater extent, fusion) practical. Combinations of storage, transmission and dispatch technologies are likely to get us to 100% renewable at a cost fission will have trouble matching, especially if industrial users of thermal energy (which is highly storable) can be brought on board.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  I wouldn't say 100%, best case economically is somewhere closer to 60% unless you build huge hydropower. With that, 100% is feasible. That said, do you know what's the highest uptake (in percentage power capacity) of renewables not including hydroelectric nor biofuels in your country? Here in Poland it is laughably low. Germany is not doing much better either. So "we theoretically could" does not mean we will.
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    No, you can get to 100%. A key is hydrogen (or perhaps ammonia) to handle rare long lulls in production. The round trip efficiency on that is lousy, but the capital cost is low (which is more important for that segment). A simple cycle gas turbine plant is only 5% of the cost of a nuclear plant of the same rated power. Try playing with this online modeling tool: https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ With the plausible numbers there, new nuclear is optimized out of the mix. This will be more expensive than fossil fuels with free CO2 release, but presumably CO2 taxes get ramped up to the point that's no longer true.
- awshepard 7y ago
  > Raw materials are also not a problem Knowing very little about the topic, I recently saw an article talking about how the first wave of wind turbine blades was starting to be decommissioned, and running into difficulties with what to do with them. While they're no longer useful on the tower, since they're designed to withstand incredible forces, it's difficult to destroy, recycle, or otherwise dispose of them, and indicated they're ending up in storage. Do you happen to know more about this particular phenomenon and what the end game is for that? Granted, this is likely less of a concern than the waste that coal creates, or the long term storage of spent nuclear fuel. I'm just curious about it.

m0zg 7y ago

If the climate change situation was really as dire as we're being told, we'd have nuclear coming out of our ears by now, and nothing whatsoever would be able to stop it. It doesn't have to be ultra-expensive if it's not bespoke every time you build it. The investment into fusion would also be 10x what it is today, and we'd already have a viable version of it, after a Manhattan-project style, do-or-die effort. What's puzzling to me is why the opposite seems to be happening: some parts of the world shut down completely carbon neutral stuff and build things that are going to emit gigatons of CO2 for decades to come. If we are to reach point of no return (or worse, have already reached it), the focus should be on building such an abundance of energy generation capacity that it would not only replace all carbon-emitting energy generation, but also help power atmospheric carbon capture at a scale that we'd need to avert the climate disaster.

chrisco255 7y ago
CO2 has a logarithmic effect on temps. Doubling the current PPM will have half as much of an effect. I don't think the situation is dire or critical at all. It's mild. And people instinctively believe this even if they overtly signal that they don't.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > And people instinctively believe this even if they overtly signal that they don't. I think it's rather condescending to literally claim you know people's beliefs, even when they vehemently voice otherwise.
  - chrisco255 7y ago
    Yes, because I look at what people do rather than what they say.
    - pfdietz 7y ago
      For your next trick, you will claim that what people really did before the Clean Air Act proves they want air pollution. Or, maybe, individual actions and collective actions are different things.
saagarjha 7y ago
> If the climate change situation was really as dire as we're being told, we'd have nuclear coming out of our ears by now, and nothing whatsoever would be able to stop it. The problem is that people aren't necessarily great at investing for the long term, especially if they think they'll be dead by the time the benefits arise. > What's puzzling to me is why the opposite seems to be happening: some parts of the world shut down completely carbon neutral stuff and build things that are going to emit gigatons of CO2 for decades to come. Because of flawed optics on nuclear, mostly.
modo_mario 7y ago
A lot of this tbh is probably because of infighting between renewables and nuclear. Fusion seems like a bit of a black box to throw money into which isn't appreciated. Throw too little and you don't get there. Throw enough and you don't know when you'll get there. Fission solves a lot of problems but nobody likes it in their back yeard and some countries have gotten a scare of it (japan, germany,etc) It also takes a very long time to build a new planet and there's many people saying gov should invest more in solar/wind/etc instead whilst we're in a time where a lot of nuclear plants are reaching their planned life time or have had it extended for a long time. Hell I think only the UK is planning a new one which is sad to see.
- TimPC 7y ago
  Most renewables aren't viable for base load power. Nuclear is viable only for base load power. Realistically they are competing for different parts of the power utilization and shouldn't be infighting at all. You want nuclear for the amount of power that's always on the grid. You want renewables to be able to handle spiking. The hard part of renewables now is the unpredictable output from varying winds and levels of sunlight. The cost problem is solved. If someone could come up with a way to make renewables very consistent in power output they'd blow nuclear out of the water. One of the reasons hydroelectric is so effective is the amount of water going over a suitable waterfall has a viable minimum (it might sometimes increase after rains but even in dry periods it has a predictable power level).
  - m0zg 7y ago
    Not sure why this was downvoted. It's the truth. The two don't (or at least shouldn't) really compete, they (and especially solar) are almost exactly complementary to each other.
    - pfdietz 7y ago
      It's not the truth. The grid could be powered with no "base load sources" at all. Intermittent + dispatchable could cover everything.
  - 7y ago
Mvandenbergh 7y ago
>If the climate change situation was really as dire as we're being told, we'd have nuclear coming out of our ears by now, and nothing whatsoever would be able to stop it. It doesn't have to be ultra-expensive if it's not bespoke every time you build it. The investment into fusion would also be 10x what it is today, and we'd already have a viable version of it, after a Manhattan-project style, do-or-die effort. This assumes that behind the business and political worlds we actually personally participate in, there is some ultra-rational global they with long time preferences and everyone's collective best interests at heart. Why would "they" allow all this new coal construction? There is no "they". There is only "us". When you see your local congressman or MP or mayor speak and think, "what a dunce", as you well might, you need to remember that there is no hidden "adult in the room" who really runs things. This is it. Nobody will come and protect us from our collective decisions.
- throwaway92384 7y ago
  You are assuming your lack of agency extends to people much higher than you in society, without evidence and against my experience (leaders in organizations have different views -- about their organization's purpose, for example -- than the people under them, views they only share with other leaders, or free agents, if they even ever do share them). I'd say there are multiple adults in the room, and they sometimes fight, sometimes form alliances. They often do not care what you think is rational, your tribe's word for "good", because they are not of your tribe. Some have long time preferences but "collective best interests" to them means "civilization still stands somewhere on the planet".
  - Mvandenbergh 7y ago
    Well, "throwaway92384", I am not assuming any such thing. I personally know a number of people who are or have been MPs in the UK and the Netherlands, senior civil servants as well as many people in leadership roles in the private sector. I don't think this makes me particularly special incidentally, the same thing is true for many people who are actively engaged in policymaking. My comment is based on extensive professional and social interactions with other people in leadership roles. It is very frequently the case that such people, including government ministers simply don't have as much independent power of action as you think. The original parent comment said that if things were really so bad, then something would be done with the implication that since not much is being done, things cannot be so bad. Since we are not mass-building PWRs and running five parallel crash fusion programmes, it must follow that someone has examined the evidence and decided that the problem of climate change is not so bad and therefore we are not doing those things. The problem with this view is the assumption that there is a someone or a group of someones who sit back, review IPCC reports and then have the ability to collectively compel the political leaders of the world to act rationally. If there was such a group then their lack of action would indicate that they had made a rational decision not to act. My point is that there are no such people. The powerless enjoy the fantasy of conspiracy because it means that all it would take to solve our problems is some kind of board room coup of the Majestic 12 standing committee. The reality is that everyone in the system has to act within their roles in the system. Executives at oil companies will say that they wouldn't mind a carbon tax, as long as it was equally applied to all companies. That's logical as they would continue to have a level playing field with the other oil producers and it will take years for us to get off oil as a species anyway. Oh but they don't have the power to pass an oil tax, that's for government. Politicians in smaller countries will say, they would love to pass such a tax but unfortunately it needs to be global or it will just erode their competitive advantage without reducing emissions. Only if large trading blocs like the EU and US united on enforcing such a system could it be done. American politicians might say that they personally would love to but they'd need a majority in the Senate, the House, and the right person in the White House. None of these people are being disingenuous, they all have an accurate view of the limits of their own power within the system. My point is that there is no "outside the system" which can update the system to work better for large collective action problems or force a solution. It's cogs in the machine all the way up. Even the power of Donald Trump, as leader of by far the world's most powerful nation has substantial limits to his freedom of action.

pfdietz 7y ago

> Lots of people still in fission and fusion are assuming trouble with renewables related to intermittency, land use, grid integration, EROI, raw materials That's whistling past the graveyard, I think. Land use is demonstrably not a problem. Grid integration has long history of naysayers drawing a line in the sand and renewables blowing past it. EROI is just fine and getting better. Raw materials are also not a problem (lies that solar uses rare earths notwithstanding). Intermittency remains an issue, but it looks easier to solve than making fission (or, to an even greater extent, fusion) practical. Combinations of storage, transmission and dispatch technologies are likely to get us to 100% renewable at a cost fission will have trouble matching, especially if industrial users of thermal energy (which is highly storable) can be brought on board.

AstralStorm 7y ago
I wouldn't say 100%, best case economically is somewhere closer to 60% unless you build huge hydropower. With that, 100% is feasible. That said, do you know what's the highest uptake (in percentage power capacity) of renewables not including hydroelectric nor biofuels in your country? Here in Poland it is laughably low. Germany is not doing much better either. So "we theoretically could" does not mean we will.
- pfdietz 7y ago
  No, you can get to 100%. A key is hydrogen (or perhaps ammonia) to handle rare long lulls in production. The round trip efficiency on that is lousy, but the capital cost is low (which is more important for that segment). A simple cycle gas turbine plant is only 5% of the cost of a nuclear plant of the same rated power. Try playing with this online modeling tool: https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ With the plausible numbers there, new nuclear is optimized out of the mix. This will be more expensive than fossil fuels with free CO2 release, but presumably CO2 taxes get ramped up to the point that's no longer true.
awshepard 7y ago
> Raw materials are also not a problem Knowing very little about the topic, I recently saw an article talking about how the first wave of wind turbine blades was starting to be decommissioned, and running into difficulties with what to do with them. While they're no longer useful on the tower, since they're designed to withstand incredible forces, it's difficult to destroy, recycle, or otherwise dispose of them, and indicated they're ending up in storage. Do you happen to know more about this particular phenomenon and what the end game is for that? Granted, this is likely less of a concern than the waste that coal creates, or the long term storage of spent nuclear fuel. I'm just curious about it.