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I think it's disingenuous to argue the economics of nuclear without mentioning: "DOE reported that it faced an estimated $494 billion in future environmental c
by marshray 6y ago
I think it's disingenuous to argue the economics of nuclear without mentioning:
"DOE reported that it faced an estimated $494 billion in future environmental cleanup costs — a liability that roughly tripled during the previous 20 years."
https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/696956.pdf https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/696956.pdf
- draugadrotten 6y agoHow much is the future environmental cleanup costs of coal and oil?
- xigency 6y agoIf you consider the climate, about 100 times that.
- vlovich123 6y agoIs there a paper on that? 40 trillion sounds like a lot and I’m curious how that number is generated.
- xigency 6y agoIf you could solve climate change for less than that, I think it would be splendid. To put that number in context, which is just an order of magnitude, it's $5,000 for every person on Earth, about 1.5x the current US national debt, and just under the combined market cap of NYSE+NASDAQ. As an existential problem for humanity that doesn't currently have a solution, I think that's a decent cost estimate.
- Retric 6y agoClimate change his hardly an existential threat for humanity. We survived the last ice age with stone tools, this is a less severe change. Economic impacts from things like rising sea levels really depend on how much we spend on maintaining things as they currently are vs adapting to the new normal. Aka do you live below sea level, raise the city, or move somewhere else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago
- manfredo 6y agoThe last ice age occurred gradually over the span of millennia. Anthropic climate change is occurring in an instant by comparison. Not to mention, humanity survived by mass migration, something that's a lot harder for integrated global economies to do. Few believe humanity is going to go extinct. But extinction of industrialized civilization is a more real concern. And the collapse of industrialized civilization will undoubtedly entail the death of over 90% of the human population.
- Retric 6y agoAn instant in geological time not a literal instant. Death of modern civilization is always a risk, but not directly from climate change. The global food surplus is projected to continue even in the worst case. Energy and raw material production is similarly not a major concern. People continue to live in Dubai which demonstrate how extreme local conditions can get without forcing exodus. Further, few places are expected to get even that bad. Yes, changes to weather patterns, sea levels, invasive species, even diseases are likely. But, collapse of civilization is only really a risk if WWIII kicks off.
- sergeykish 6y agoI like your optimism, people would just live in inhabitable places or relocate and would be welcome, such gentlemen. I expect WWIII.
- Retric 6y agoWhat specifically is going to cause mass migrations in your mind, and on what time scale? Sea level rise on the order of 5 feet in 80 years is hardly going to make most countries uninhabitable. Over longer time scales will see much larger increases, but the yearly change is never projected to be that rapid. Water availability is a concern for farming and industry, but not really people. Desalination is cheap enough for personal use even in India. Every 10 gallons a day is an extra ~4$ per year. Projecting US use age on global poor is unaffordable, but the global poor don’t use nearly that much water.
- karaterobot 6y agoThis is in no way to disagree with your overall point, but marine cloud brightening looks like it might be a fairly cost-effective solution to climate change. It's unproven, but not an insane gamble either, and it has little risk of second-order consequences if it doesn't work. All that at a cost of single-digit billions per year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_cloud_brightening#Costs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_cloud_brightening#Costs
- Forbo 6y agoIt seems to me to make more sense combating the problem at the source. This just seems to add more complexity to the problem. Did anyone else think of Snowpiercer when they saw this?
- dylan604 6y agoNot from seeing Snowpiercer, but from everytime I hear some other crazy science scheme. It's like the pharma industry creating ways of dealing with symptoms rather than the cause of the symptoms. It's the ultimate Old Lady Swallowed a Fly.
- virtue3 6y agoI think we can look to austrailia for many many many examples where we thought something would work out when we fucked with nature on a large scale without really studying it. IE. Canetoads.
- runarberg 6y agoWe have many proven solutions to the climate disaster, including, carbon tax, renewable energy, cleaner and more efficient infrastructure, telecommuting, international agreements, etc. Going after a single unproven solution (yes this includes non-existing types of nuclear energy too) is just magic at this point and it doesn’t work.
- karaterobot 6y agoI wouldn't say those approaches have turned out to be sufficient by themselves, so far. Why not keep improving them, and try additional measures with some hope of success and little risk?
- runarberg 6y agoThis rhetoric of new nuclear is gonna solve the climate crises reminds of how GMO was poised to increase our food safety and end world hunger. It didn’t. And since I’ve learned that new technology doesn’t save us when there is an underlying social issue that is causing it. With GMO the issue is food distribution. In the climate disaster the cause is a little more complex but undeniably a few actors are making an unfair amount of money while polluting the climate for the rest of us. I find more hope in solutions like carbon tax, international agreements, greener infrastructure, and general climate justice, then for an unproven magical technology that will be deployed on top of the existing social problems. Never underestimate the tendency of the rich to shift the cost to others while keeping the profit. New nuclear is not going to change that.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoYou ever notice that the countries where the people are pissed off at the rich for taking too much, pissed of at the government and pissed off about climate change are all countries where basically everyone is fed, clothed and has running water and stable electric power? Advancements in technology (including GMO crops) and productivity in general have massively raised standards of living in the developing world. Raised standards of living are what permit people to give a crap about things like oppressed people in the next village over and climate change. Reducing the cost of commodities, like energy and grain, by any means raises standards of living, especially at the margins, and is what permits more people to care about abstract things.
- runarberg 6y agoI’m not sure anything you say here is true: * I really doubt GMO has raised the standard of living for the average person. * I really doubt people in less then stable economy have any less salt towards the rich, the government, or polluters. * I really doubt there is a correlation between the standard of living caring about your neighbors. So to answer your question. No. I have never noticed that countries where people are pissed at the rich are the people that live in stable economy. To prove you wrong, take a look at Greta Thunberg’s twitter feed. She is constantly retweeting people from poorer countries being pissed at the rich for ruining our climate.
- godelski 6y agoI can't think of a specific paper/s off hand but having been at labs where they do climate modeling and going to every talk I could I've heard estimates of tens of trillions to hundreds. So the ballpark at least passes my sniff test, though I know that this isn't a hard source. It is also difficult to estimate the damages and costs of climate change which is part of why costs vary so widely. (e.g. do you include events like Katrina?)
- vlovich123 6y agoJust because someone modeled isn’t particularly compelling. Peer review, meta studies, and testable predictions are critical.
- ogre_codes 6y agoMillion acre forest fires are expensive to deal with. Likewise, drought, relocating billions of people displaced by sea level increase. Might be an under-estimate.
- koheripbal 6y ago.... or even any other power plant or hydroelectric dam.
- RhodesianHunter 6y agoThis is IMO a positive for nuclear, not a negative. You're forced to confront the cleanup as opposed to fossil fuels, where you just blow your waste out into the atmosphere and make it the commons' problem.
- marshray 6y agoIf only a method for permanent disposal of nuclear waste actually existed.
- acidburnNSA 6y agoThere are good permanent disposal methods available. The deep geologic repository under construction in Finland is probably the best example. More info here: https://whataboutthewaste.com https://whataboutthewaste.com People use "what about the waste" as a reason to not use nuclear. Yet, fossil and renewable biofuel waste is (as mentioned) just dumped into the biosphere where it ends and estimated 8 million lives early per year, according to the WHO. https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution
- e12e 6y agoUnfortunately that doesn't quite solve the problem of getting waste from reactor to storage site.
- dodobirdlord 6y agoIt’s not really much of a problem. You leave the waste in a cooling pond at the plant for a couple of decades while you wait for all the really threatening stuff to decay, and then drive it where it needs to go in a truck. It’s a bunch of big metal rods in canisters. It can’t really “spill” and if it does you just pick it up and put it back in the truck. Uranium and plutonium are really not very threatening to human life.
- liability 6y agoBesides the obvious NIMBY problems, are there any problems with sealed casks transported by train?
- godelski 6y agoMy understanding is that these DoE sites are weapon sites, such as Hanford. These are a different ball game than power plants. They use different technologies and have different kinds of waste. Sure apples and oranges are both round fruits, but aren't one to one comparisons. List of sites https://www.dnfsb.gov/doe-sites https://www.dnfsb.gov/doe-sites
- marshray 6y ago"In 2015, President Obama found that a separate repository for defense-related radioactive waste was required. DOE reported that defense waste is smaller in volume, less radioactive, and thermally cooler than commercial spent nuclear fuel, stating that a defense repository may be easier to develop." https://www.gao.gov/key_issues/disposal_of_highlevel_nuclear_waste/issue_summary https://www.gao.gov/key_issues/disposal_of_highlevel_nuclear...
- manfredo 6y agoBut crucially, commercial spent nuclear fuel is in containers. Spent waste from weapons development was often just dumped in a pit and buried. Our priorities were very different in the 1940s and 50s. Seriously look at this picture [1]. That encapsulates the attitude towards nuclear safety during the early cold war. The soviets just dumped their waste into a lake [2]. Not to mention we detonated a thousand or so nuclear bombs, many of them above ground. 1. https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/History_of_Nevada/Nevada_and_the_American_Dream_(1945-present)#/media/File%3ANNSA-NSO-787.jpg https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/History_of_Nevada/Nevada_and... 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay
- godelski 6y agoThis doesn't really counter my argument. The key part is that it has different kinds of waste. There are more factors than the radioactivity. For example sites like Hanford have melted fuel, which might have inspired that green goo that people associate with nuclear waste, but a power plant only produces solid waste. Aerosols and liquids have vastly different storage requirements and added complexity requirements than storing the typical fuel pellets and solid matter from power generating reactors.
- Wohlf 6y agoAh yes, the perfect is the enemy of the good.
- nickik 6y agoIt disingenous of you to argue that all DoE cost from the last 60 years have any implication on a modern nuclear site build. When nuclear started they had no idea how to do things and had to do a lot of things very fast. The waste majority of those cost are not because of civilian nuclear reactor, but rather creation of nuclear weapons. Site cleanup cost are a factor, but not a huge one considering a site can be active for 60-100 years.
- erentz 6y agoYes. It appears to very explicitly is about DOE sites, national labs with waste dating back to the Manhattan project and Cold War. This figure would seem to be better described as the clean up cost for our nuclear weapons programs with maybe a small side dish of reactor research in places like INL.
- marshray 6y agoThe defense waste is just a fraction of the total: "The U.S. commercial power industry alone has generated more waste (nuclear fuel that is "spent" and is no longer efficient at generating power) than any other country—nearly 80,000 metric tons. This spent nuclear fuel, which can pose serious risks to humans and the environment, is enough to fill a football field about 20 meters deep. The U.S. government’s nuclear weapons program has generated spent nuclear fuel as well as high-level radioactive waste and accounts for most of the rest of the total at about 14,000 metric tons, according to the Department of Energy (DOE). For the most part, this waste is stored where it was generated—at 80 sites in 35 states. The amount of waste is expected to increase to about 140,000 metric tons over the next several decades. However, there is still no disposal site in the United States." https://www.gao.gov/key_issues/disposal_of_highlevel_nuclear_waste/issue_summary https://www.gao.gov/key_issues/disposal_of_highlevel_nuclear...
- erentz 6y agoOk now you’re conflating two separate things. The link and original figure you shared was about DOE sites. From your link: “EM’s mission is to complete the cleanup of nuclear waste at 16 DOE sites...” You suggested this was connected with commercial reactor waste, it wasn’t about that. Commercial reactor waste is not anywhere near the same kind of beast. It’s contained and easily disposed of when the US eventually embraces science again. Other countries don’t have as much problem and are building deep geologic repositories. Canada even let local communities bid to take the waste. If your in the PNW take a visit to Hanford when you can. What they did on these DOE sites during the nuclear weapons programs is absurd to think about with what we know today. They just buried all kinds of random toxic stuff everywhere and didn’t even keep records.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- manfredo 6y agoIs this the cleanup cost for civilian power generation? Or for military reactors and nuclear weapons, too? Because all the nuclear waste from civilian power generation occupies a volume the size of a football field in footprint and less than 10 yards high. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...
- SamBam 6y agoHow many pecks is that?
- koheripbal 6y agoShow me the cleanup cost plan for the Hoover dam, or literally any other major infra project. This is a roadblock put up against nuclear power plants alone.
- AtlasBarfed 6y agoCan LFTR reactors rebreed/run on spent fuel waste, and has a cycling process for filtering out inert elements? Seems like we should be running those just for those.
- DrBazza 6y agoThat's also an 'if we clean it up'. Nuclear waste decays, and there is not a lot you can do about that. If reactors, or the placement of them, are designed to be left in-situ after decommissioning, then the cost becomes a lot less. Moving spent fuel from one site to another makes little sense when the original site has already been designated nuclear. As others have said, this kind of number is always pitched at nuclear, and not hydro, or coal, or any other form of power.
- 36337827336 6y agoCleanup and storage is easy in the technical sense, over those timescales and for what's being gained we end up ahead. I say leave storage to the spooks to circumvent the nimbys and call it a win. Let congress argue after they've had a taste of the results.