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Well, if you produce fuel with the carbon you capture you still release it into the atmosphere, so there's no benefit there. Plus you have to add the carbon and

Well, if you produce fuel with the carbon you capture you still release it into the atmosphere, so there's no benefit there. Plus you have to add the carbon and the cost of developing/manufacturing/operating your insanely large nuclear reactor (including mining the uranium), you still have to transport your fuel around the world, and now you have to deal with nuclear waste, proliferation issues, vulnerability to attacks and environmental catastrophes. On the scale of bad solutions from 1 to 10, this probably reach 11.

jjoonathan 6y ago
> Well, if you produce fuel with the carbon you capture you still release it into the atmosphere, so there's no benefit there. It's just like EVs in that regard. Unlike EVs, it ramps DCC tech to industrial scale, making it dirt cheap to go carbon negative if we can ever work up the political will. > Plus you have to add the carbon and the cost of developing/manufacturing/operating your insanely large nuclear reactor (including mining the uranium) Whether you're building a nuclear plant or a wind mill, either way you build a gigantic edifice of steel and concrete, but if it's a wind mill it will power a neighborhood some of the time and if it's a nuclear plant it will power a city, a large one, all of the time. > On the scale of bad solutions from 1 to 10, this probably reach 11. 20% of our power already comes from nuclear. Solar only broke 1% in the last year or two. If we hadn't stopped deploying nuclear in the 80s, our energy would be roughly carbon neutral today. Not 50 years from now, today. Instead, we pumped the atmosphere full of CO2 for 40 years (optimistically, 60 by the time solar is deployed), waiting for solar to become economical, all while we had a perfectly workable solution in hand that self-styled environmentalists effectively torpedoed. On the scale of bad solutions from 1 to 10, that probably reaches 11.
- Valgrim 6y ago
  I fail to grasp how EV are "just like" releasing captured carbon in the atmosphere. Sure, building them has a carbon footprint, but so does an ICE vehicle, and over it's lifecycle an EV release a fraction of the carbon of a traditional car. In any case the best solution to transport-related carbon release is not to simply replace ICE vehicles by EV, it's to reduce car and plane usage massively, and promote walking, bicycling, public transport, remote working and shared rides. Wind mills and solar farms are built today much faster and at a cheaper price and carbon emissions than nuclear stations. We are not 50 years ago, we are now. Combined with existing hydroelectric dams, which act as giant batteries, and other forms of utility scale power storage (actual batteries), existing renewable energy grids have proven to be just as dependable as other sources of energy. I'm not fundamentally opposed to nuclear either. Give me a secure design that can be built in less than 10 years, with reasonable costs, that private insurers will accept to cover, with proper waste management and control of nuclear proliferation, total operating transparency, that is actually possible to dismantle at the end of it's lifecycle, and a strong risk mitigation plan in case of external events (earthquake, floods, droughts, bombing), and I'll say sure, bring it on. In the meantime blaming environmentalism for climate change is a bit far-fetched. Nuclear energy has been effectively torpedoed by itself, due to bad management, the fossil fuel industry and spiraling costs, much more than environmentalists (is there any place in the world where Greens have significant political power?) The bad solution I was referring to is about building a giant barge loaded with nuclear stations in the middle of the Pacific ocean capturing atmospheric CO2 in order to convert it into fuel that is going to be released in the atmosphere again a few days later. Let's just say there's fundamental inefficiencies in that plan.

jjoonathan 6y ago

> Well, if you produce fuel with the carbon you capture you still release it into the atmosphere, so there's no benefit there. It's just like EVs in that regard. Unlike EVs, it ramps DCC tech to industrial scale, making it dirt cheap to go carbon negative if we can ever work up the political will. > Plus you have to add the carbon and the cost of developing/manufacturing/operating your insanely large nuclear reactor (including mining the uranium) Whether you're building a nuclear plant or a wind mill, either way you build a gigantic edifice of steel and concrete, but if it's a wind mill it will power a neighborhood some of the time and if it's a nuclear plant it will power a city, a large one, all of the time. > On the scale of bad solutions from 1 to 10, this probably reach 11. 20% of our power already comes from nuclear. Solar only broke 1% in the last year or two. If we hadn't stopped deploying nuclear in the 80s, our energy would be roughly carbon neutral today. Not 50 years from now, today. Instead, we pumped the atmosphere full of CO2 for 40 years (optimistically, 60 by the time solar is deployed), waiting for solar to become economical, all while we had a perfectly workable solution in hand that self-styled environmentalists effectively torpedoed. On the scale of bad solutions from 1 to 10, that probably reaches 11.

Valgrim 6y ago
I fail to grasp how EV are "just like" releasing captured carbon in the atmosphere. Sure, building them has a carbon footprint, but so does an ICE vehicle, and over it's lifecycle an EV release a fraction of the carbon of a traditional car. In any case the best solution to transport-related carbon release is not to simply replace ICE vehicles by EV, it's to reduce car and plane usage massively, and promote walking, bicycling, public transport, remote working and shared rides. Wind mills and solar farms are built today much faster and at a cheaper price and carbon emissions than nuclear stations. We are not 50 years ago, we are now. Combined with existing hydroelectric dams, which act as giant batteries, and other forms of utility scale power storage (actual batteries), existing renewable energy grids have proven to be just as dependable as other sources of energy. I'm not fundamentally opposed to nuclear either. Give me a secure design that can be built in less than 10 years, with reasonable costs, that private insurers will accept to cover, with proper waste management and control of nuclear proliferation, total operating transparency, that is actually possible to dismantle at the end of it's lifecycle, and a strong risk mitigation plan in case of external events (earthquake, floods, droughts, bombing), and I'll say sure, bring it on. In the meantime blaming environmentalism for climate change is a bit far-fetched. Nuclear energy has been effectively torpedoed by itself, due to bad management, the fossil fuel industry and spiraling costs, much more than environmentalists (is there any place in the world where Greens have significant political power?) The bad solution I was referring to is about building a giant barge loaded with nuclear stations in the middle of the Pacific ocean capturing atmospheric CO2 in order to convert it into fuel that is going to be released in the atmosphere again a few days later. Let's just say there's fundamental inefficiencies in that plan.