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While I'm pro nuclear power, at what point do we say that nuclear isn't the way to go? The cost of solar panels and batteries are declining every year, and you
by jdhn 7y ago
While I'm pro nuclear power, at what point do we say that nuclear isn't the way to go? The cost of solar panels and batteries are declining every year, and you don't have to deal with the terrible stigma that nuclear power has. Sure, new reactors are "zero emission", but will people actually want them to be built?
- battery_cowboy 7y agoI love nuclear power, I used to be a 'nuke' in the Navy, but it's not feasible at today's tech level. There's too great a risk of nuclear accident right now, even if it's very uncommon (risk = severity x probability, if severity is 10/10 then any probability is too high, IMO). Someday, if the financials are right (if profit margins are good enough), or if we need it more than ever (if profit margins don't matter), someone will come up with a guaranteed safe and reliable reactor design, much like Google invented a much better search algorithm or Uber came up with a way to overcome the taxi coalition (I don't support Uber or Google today, but their ideas were revolutionary). Once that 'revolutionary' new nuclear tech comes, if it does, then I'll back it. Today's reactor designs aren't proven, not tested, and cost too much, so for now I will support renewable energy, like geothermal, solar, wind, etc, combined with storage like batteries, dams, gravity potential energy solutions, etc.
- wbl 7y agoThey already have lots of passively safe designs, but I don't need to tell you the difference between a real reactor and a designed reactor. With the economics of the power industry I doubt a lot of work will go into IFR commercialization.
- battery_cowboy 7y agoYea, that's what I'm saying, there's no financially viable solutions, and someday if we can make one, or if we stop caring about the cost for some reason, then it'll happen. Right now, the problem is that the "safe" designs aren't tested well and they're generally not commercially viable due to cost.
- exciaetcmyman 7y agoIt's great to have you around. I worked for CIA Blackwater etc in the old days, non nuclear though, but, I accept your fucking shit man. I know how this shit goes. Para etc yeah I'm legit dude. Fuck nuclear man. Especially now. Surf safely man. Watch out for the fucking napalm.
- viraptor 7y agoWhat do you mean by severity being 10/10? The issues we had in recent times were fairly mild. As long as they're not hidden and acted on quickly, we seem to cope well. Sure, people die, but it seems like severity 10 only because it all happens in one go. Take the deaths from air pollution, resources transport, mining, production, etc. involved in coal/gas/solar/wind, and put them in one day at the same rate as we had reactor failures - that would seem even more "not feasible".
- battery_cowboy 7y agoYou still don't understand that it's not financially feasible, for many reasons. I love nuclear, I fucking operated nuclear plants, but until we have passively safe designs that are tested and proven, it's not an option. You're totally correct on the facts, but no one is willing to fund it, that's the fact that killed nuclear.
- viraptor 7y agoI was not questioning the financial part. Just the severity of issues.
- battery_cowboy 7y agoThe problem is that there's tons of deaths from accidents that we can't quantify due to cancer or the like. If we expanded nuclear, who's to say the deaths from mining nuclear materials, cancer, etc wouldn't outstrip those of wind, solar, etc.? Severity and probability are hard to quantify, and with the financial argument, I'm kinda saying that it doesn't matter anyways because no one will fund one of the most expensive forms of energy that has high enough risk profiles that you cannot even insure it in many places.
- chrisco255 7y agoMore people have died from mining accidents than nuclear accidents.
- battery_cowboy 7y agoYou don't need to sell me on nuclear, I was a nuclear electrician's mate, I know it works, it's just not cost effective for the safe designs.
- pmarca 7y agoBuild those too!
- wbl 7y agoWhy wouldn't we build the more efficient one in terms of resources?
- pmarca 7y agoSolar and wind are great, but they don't provide continuous power. We need them, and nuclear.
- bryanlarsen 7y agoWe don't need continuous power. We need peaking power.
- adventured 7y agoNuclear provides guaranteed minimum power production, which is what you actually want. You also want a more diversified system than just eg solar and wind. It's not acceptable to depend on renewables like solar and wind to try to fill that minimum guaranteed role. They are low on the guaranteed scale, whereas nuclear is high on the guaranteed scale. Grid scale batteries do not fill that role either, not under any scenario short of magic batteries that self-fill perpetually. Paying the added cost for nuclear at 20-30% of total national energy production, is a reasonable price to pay for higher diversification and higher guaranteed minimum energy production. We should also boost the grid and build nuclear in low-risk weather locations and distribute from there to everywhere else. Climate change is going to hammer the coasts, right? Perhaps a super hurricane knocks out solar and wind across multiple states around Florida. We bring the lines back up and immediately have nuclear power flowing in from weather-safe foreign states to re-start everything with (those out of state nuclear plants are already handling 20-30% of Florida's power in this concept; if rebalanced properly, they could handle 50-60%+ of all the now-lower power demands in the early re-start phase after such an emergency). You can get high-concentration of power output capability in a weather-safe area with nuclear, in this model, which solar and wind can't even remotely come close to competing with.
- fastball 7y agoI want nuclear power because I want humanity to be a space-faring civilization, and we can't do that with just solar panels and wind farms. Why maintain the status quo with solar and wind when we can go far beyond it with nuclear?
- chrisco255 7y agoThis is correct. If we were to invest in a moonshot project for the future, my choice would be nuclear fusion.
- lukevdp 7y agoWhen there is a cheaper and cleaner alternative to base load power generation
- natch 7y agoBig construction corporations and bought-and-paid-for politicians will continue to love nuclear.