7 ms·

I don't know, and I have been wondering whether much of the evident pro-nuclear lobbying recently (it seems apparent on many threads here related to energy gene

by jka 6y ago

I don't know, and I have been wondering whether much of the evident pro-nuclear lobbying recently (it seems apparent on many threads here related to energy generation) might be due to the nuclear industry being in serious threat of becoming obsolete. I've harped on about this many times before, but the levelized cost of energy[1] for renewables like solar and wind power is substantially cheaper than nuclear power nowadays. That, combined with the problems of long construction times, population unease with nuclear, and nuclear waste as you mention, seem like they should limit nuclear power in the near-term, and perhaps eliminate it in the mid-to-long-term. There seems to be a valid question around how to store energy from renewable sources given that they have a tendency to fluctuate in terms of generation output - but it seems to me that storage is a safer, more tractable problem to solve than the issues surrounding nuclear (fission) energy. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_energy

cmehdy 6y ago
I'll alleviate your concerns: it is not due to a big nuclear conspiracy aiming at making Big Nuclear fill its pockets, but by people who look at what physics dictates and notice that with our energy consumption things just don't add up. So you will see an increasing amount of (1) posts about nuclear, and (2) posts about de-growth or accepting to shrink economies through less consumption and production, not because there's a malevolent lobby but because people are becoming increasingly alarmed at the fantastically huge wave of problems already present due to climate change, and are acknowledging that the biggest mid-term effect is CO2 emissions (short term is water vapour and methane for what it's worth). Side note: if you pick a conspiracy to get rich or defend "big money" interests or get swindled by, you're way better off continuing to side with oil and coal and denying that climate change is a thing - since nuclear takes gigantic initial investments and is not stock-market friendly but much more about countries' political will (and I got downvoted on previous discussions where I brought that up).
- epistasis 6y ago
  There is absolutely no "physics" that goes into those postings. It's just some gut feelings. I've come across this at least a dozen times, with people just sure that "physics" says something, but there is no physical principle that requires we decrease energy use to power the entire world with renewables and storage and possibly hydrogen or other synthetic carbon fuels. We can power all of the developing world at Western energy levels with renewable energy. Our GDP is increasing even as the amount of primary energy per person decreases. It's no longer the 1970s and a lot of assumptions from then have been proven to be very very wrong.
  - cmehdy 6y ago
    I can't help you if you don't even understand the scale of renewability of resources such as oil and gas, the ratio of energy extracted to energy put into the various kinds of machines that produce what we need to keep our energy consumption up, the limits to energy extraction for solar power, the lack of predictability and controllability of energy sources other than gas-oil-coal-nuclear, and the CO2-related effects on the atmosphere for the first three out of those four, the depletion of current controllable energy sources, and the energy available in the various kinds of uranium-plutonium-thorium isotopes which lead to the different kinds of nuclear power plants. Amongst other things which take hours of actually trying to wrap your head around the problem instead of putting your fingers in your ears and screaming bloody murder. Because apparently you seem to believe that "there is absolutely no 'physics'" in all of this. edit: as a side-note, take a look at all the countries that have increased their renewables energy consumption and show me that it corresponds to a decrease in production and investments of {oil or gas or coal or nuclear}, i.e. controllable energy sources. You will soon see that the sources that cannot be predicted in a way that ensures your fridge continuously works and you can take a hot shower at all hours of the day are only secondary sources that people are happy to have (and renewables are a great thing to invest in) but that in itself is not enough - unless, again, one accepts that their patterns of behaviour and consumption would change drastically, which is only one of the many possible discussions around the evolution of our societies that you seem to be so anxious to sweep under the rug.
    - epistasis 6y ago
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> the levelized cost of energy[1] for renewables like solar and wind power is substantially cheaper than nuclear power nowadays. The reason for this is that they're backstopped by fossil fuels. You install solar, it generates power when the sun shines and you burn coal or natural gas when it's cloudy or nighttime. The energy they produce is thereby cheaper, but can only satisfy so much of the total demand before requiring energy storage, which dramatically increases the cost. Satisfying the remaining demand with nuclear is better than satisfying it with fossil fuels.
- pfdietz 6y ago
  They are backstopped by fossil fuels because that's currently cheapest. But fossil fuels are not NECESSARY to backstop renewables. A combination of short and long term storage technologies could do it, and likely could do it more cheaply (on the time scale of any reactor that we could start building today) than with a system including nuclear. A key is to use hydrogen for long term storage/backup. https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/
rtx 6y ago
>it seems apparent on many threads here related to energy generation It might be due to informed people reaching the same conclusion.
lucb1e 6y ago
I'm a little disappointed that the Levelized cost of energy link does not include, you know, the levelized cost of various energy sources. Also, it doesn't include the number of hours needed to find and debate a place where you can actually put down renewables. Places using the most power (those most densely populated, like the Netherlands where I come from) have enough space for nuclear reactors to keep the country running (if base load was all we needed; it's just for comparison). However, if we need to do it all renewable, we're going to be hard-pressed and perhaps dependent on other countries. It's always someone's back yard or a nature reserve and people are almost always going to protest it. Germany has certainly more space so it's not as if we need to bring it all the way up from Spain or even Africa, but is by no means as sparsely populated as the USA (232/km² in Germany vs 34/km² in the USA). The USA also gets way more sun than most of western Europe. I'm not saying "you have it all easy" but... you're definitely in an easier position to make it work.
- projektfu 6y ago
  There’s really no reason why Netherlands can’t import power from its allies. It already does.
  - lucb1e 6y ago
    Huh, where did I give the impression that we can't? I'm saying that we'd be dependent, implying that we can because otherwise we couldn't be dependent. Today we might import power because it's cheaper, but we can build another coal or nuclear plant and produce that 10% we're currently importing. Building enough solar panels or wind turbines, on the other hand, to produce 1093TWh/year (2014 figure) is going to be difficult. Even if it's only about electricity and we keep on heating with oil and driving oil-powered cars, we need 112TWh/year (2014) of electricity. Yes, we're building wind turbine farms in sea, but "we're hoping that'll get us from 14% to 16% renewable energy by 2023"[1]. It's more than a rounding error, but not by much. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_Netherlands
    - projektfu 6y ago
godelski 6y ago
> have been wondering whether much of the evident pro-nuclear lobbying recently (it seems apparent on many threads here related to energy generation) I think you are misunderstanding the selection bias. We're on HN, the selection bias here is that people tend to be more tech savvy and more informed. We have nuclear scientists here. You typically see acidburnNSA commenting in all these posts. I myself did radiation shielding research for NASA at a previous job. There's an old saying in the nuclear industry "Those that know the most, fear the least." I do not think it is "big nuclear" but rather that we're on a tech savvy forum. Take this to Reddit. You'll find more generalized forums are pretty anti-nuclear and more scientific forums are pro nuclear[0]. It really seems to come down to more where the conversation is taking place. I've met and worked with many climate scientists. I haven't met one that is anti-nuclear (I've met a few that think we don't need it if things keep progressing). If you press them on the subject most will just say they gave up because there is no support. [0] I'll add that there's a lot of armchair talk and just ignore people that scream that Thorium is the answer. Easy way to pick out an armchair scientist. (Yes, I get frustrated with the armchair scientists that are even in my camp. Really moreso)
- jka 6y ago
  Thanks for the thoughtful reply. There's definitely more tech-savvy on HN than many other places, but there's also a certain element of desire to find innovative and exciting solutions, especially when they alter or disrupt some existing industry. Simultaneously - and partly thanks to that skew - I think this is an influential forum and the likelihood for discussions and radical ideas that are shared here to shape real-world policy is outsized. I also agree that experts will understand the safety properties of their field better than anyone else. The risk is the skip-level that HN introduces. Rather than those experts informing policy decision-making directly, we have an easy, accessible, open (all beneficial properties in themselves) forum where decision-makers-and-influers could cherry-pick technology tangents they like the sound of, and likely find rational-sounding support for them. As someone who is risk-averse (which includes optimism that society can collectively steer away from the worst effects of climate change, and also avoid future populations being left to deal with the problems of long-term nuclear waste under world conditions that we can't yet predict), and someone who believes that cost, simplicity and reduction of negative externalities are positive indicators, renewables seem like the way to go, and so I think it's worth keeping that line of argument present. You're correct that I shouldn't assume that any of the discussion is industry-led; an assumption that it's genuine technology interest is fair. It can be hard to determine where (and if) the distinction exists when the stakes are high.

by jka 6y ago

cmehdy 6y ago

I'll alleviate your concerns: it is not due to a big nuclear conspiracy aiming at making Big Nuclear fill its pockets, but by people who look at what physics dictates and notice that with our energy consumption things just don't add up. So you will see an increasing amount of (1) posts about nuclear, and (2) posts about de-growth or accepting to shrink economies through less consumption and production, not because there's a malevolent lobby but because people are becoming increasingly alarmed at the fantastically huge wave of problems already present due to climate change, and are acknowledging that the biggest mid-term effect is CO2 emissions (short term is water vapour and methane for what it's worth). Side note: if you pick a conspiracy to get rich or defend "big money" interests or get swindled by, you're way better off continuing to side with oil and coal and denying that climate change is a thing - since nuclear takes gigantic initial investments and is not stock-market friendly but much more about countries' political will (and I got downvoted on previous discussions where I brought that up).

epistasis 6y ago
There is absolutely no "physics" that goes into those postings. It's just some gut feelings. I've come across this at least a dozen times, with people just sure that "physics" says something, but there is no physical principle that requires we decrease energy use to power the entire world with renewables and storage and possibly hydrogen or other synthetic carbon fuels. We can power all of the developing world at Western energy levels with renewable energy. Our GDP is increasing even as the amount of primary energy per person decreases. It's no longer the 1970s and a lot of assumptions from then have been proven to be very very wrong.
- cmehdy 6y ago
  I can't help you if you don't even understand the scale of renewability of resources such as oil and gas, the ratio of energy extracted to energy put into the various kinds of machines that produce what we need to keep our energy consumption up, the limits to energy extraction for solar power, the lack of predictability and controllability of energy sources other than gas-oil-coal-nuclear, and the CO2-related effects on the atmosphere for the first three out of those four, the depletion of current controllable energy sources, and the energy available in the various kinds of uranium-plutonium-thorium isotopes which lead to the different kinds of nuclear power plants. Amongst other things which take hours of actually trying to wrap your head around the problem instead of putting your fingers in your ears and screaming bloody murder. Because apparently you seem to believe that "there is absolutely no 'physics'" in all of this. edit: as a side-note, take a look at all the countries that have increased their renewables energy consumption and show me that it corresponds to a decrease in production and investments of {oil or gas or coal or nuclear}, i.e. controllable energy sources. You will soon see that the sources that cannot be predicted in a way that ensures your fridge continuously works and you can take a hot shower at all hours of the day are only secondary sources that people are happy to have (and renewables are a great thing to invest in) but that in itself is not enough - unless, again, one accepts that their patterns of behaviour and consumption would change drastically, which is only one of the many possible discussions around the evolution of our societies that you seem to be so anxious to sweep under the rug.
  - epistasis 6y ago

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> the levelized cost of energy[1] for renewables like solar and wind power is substantially cheaper than nuclear power nowadays. The reason for this is that they're backstopped by fossil fuels. You install solar, it generates power when the sun shines and you burn coal or natural gas when it's cloudy or nighttime. The energy they produce is thereby cheaper, but can only satisfy so much of the total demand before requiring energy storage, which dramatically increases the cost. Satisfying the remaining demand with nuclear is better than satisfying it with fossil fuels.

pfdietz 6y ago
They are backstopped by fossil fuels because that's currently cheapest. But fossil fuels are not NECESSARY to backstop renewables. A combination of short and long term storage technologies could do it, and likely could do it more cheaply (on the time scale of any reactor that we could start building today) than with a system including nuclear. A key is to use hydrogen for long term storage/backup. https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/

rtx 6y ago

>it seems apparent on many threads here related to energy generation It might be due to informed people reaching the same conclusion.

lucb1e 6y ago

I'm a little disappointed that the Levelized cost of energy link does not include, you know, the levelized cost of various energy sources. Also, it doesn't include the number of hours needed to find and debate a place where you can actually put down renewables. Places using the most power (those most densely populated, like the Netherlands where I come from) have enough space for nuclear reactors to keep the country running (if base load was all we needed; it's just for comparison). However, if we need to do it all renewable, we're going to be hard-pressed and perhaps dependent on other countries. It's always someone's back yard or a nature reserve and people are almost always going to protest it. Germany has certainly more space so it's not as if we need to bring it all the way up from Spain or even Africa, but is by no means as sparsely populated as the USA (232/km² in Germany vs 34/km² in the USA). The USA also gets way more sun than most of western Europe. I'm not saying "you have it all easy" but... you're definitely in an easier position to make it work.

projektfu 6y ago
There’s really no reason why Netherlands can’t import power from its allies. It already does.
- lucb1e 6y ago
  Huh, where did I give the impression that we can't? I'm saying that we'd be dependent, implying that we can because otherwise we couldn't be dependent. Today we might import power because it's cheaper, but we can build another coal or nuclear plant and produce that 10% we're currently importing. Building enough solar panels or wind turbines, on the other hand, to produce 1093TWh/year (2014 figure) is going to be difficult. Even if it's only about electricity and we keep on heating with oil and driving oil-powered cars, we need 112TWh/year (2014) of electricity. Yes, we're building wind turbine farms in sea, but "we're hoping that'll get us from 14% to 16% renewable energy by 2023"[1]. It's more than a rounding error, but not by much. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_Netherlands
  - projektfu 6y ago

godelski 6y ago

> have been wondering whether much of the evident pro-nuclear lobbying recently (it seems apparent on many threads here related to energy generation) I think you are misunderstanding the selection bias. We're on HN, the selection bias here is that people tend to be more tech savvy and more informed. We have nuclear scientists here. You typically see acidburnNSA commenting in all these posts. I myself did radiation shielding research for NASA at a previous job. There's an old saying in the nuclear industry "Those that know the most, fear the least." I do not think it is "big nuclear" but rather that we're on a tech savvy forum. Take this to Reddit. You'll find more generalized forums are pretty anti-nuclear and more scientific forums are pro nuclear[0]. It really seems to come down to more where the conversation is taking place. I've met and worked with many climate scientists. I haven't met one that is anti-nuclear (I've met a few that think we don't need it if things keep progressing). If you press them on the subject most will just say they gave up because there is no support. [0] I'll add that there's a lot of armchair talk and just ignore people that scream that Thorium is the answer. Easy way to pick out an armchair scientist. (Yes, I get frustrated with the armchair scientists that are even in my camp. Really moreso)

jka 6y ago
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. There's definitely more tech-savvy on HN than many other places, but there's also a certain element of desire to find innovative and exciting solutions, especially when they alter or disrupt some existing industry. Simultaneously - and partly thanks to that skew - I think this is an influential forum and the likelihood for discussions and radical ideas that are shared here to shape real-world policy is outsized. I also agree that experts will understand the safety properties of their field better than anyone else. The risk is the skip-level that HN introduces. Rather than those experts informing policy decision-making directly, we have an easy, accessible, open (all beneficial properties in themselves) forum where decision-makers-and-influers could cherry-pick technology tangents they like the sound of, and likely find rational-sounding support for them. As someone who is risk-averse (which includes optimism that society can collectively steer away from the worst effects of climate change, and also avoid future populations being left to deal with the problems of long-term nuclear waste under world conditions that we can't yet predict), and someone who believes that cost, simplicity and reduction of negative externalities are positive indicators, renewables seem like the way to go, and so I think it's worth keeping that line of argument present. You're correct that I shouldn't assume that any of the discussion is industry-led; an assumption that it's genuine technology interest is fair. It can be hard to determine where (and if) the distinction exists when the stakes are high.