5 ms·

Nuclear is cheaper than coal, which is why coal market share is collapsing way faster than nuclear’s is shrinking. But they’re both having trouble competing aga

by yaacov 5y ago

Nuclear is cheaper than coal, which is why coal market share is collapsing way faster than nuclear’s is shrinking. But they’re both having trouble competing against cheap gas and solar.

cameldrv 5y ago
Nuclear is cheaper to operate, so existing reactors mostly keep running. Construction costs are high for nuclear though. Given the current interest rate environment, nuclear should be looking more attractive.
- periheli0n 5y ago
  What is the TCO of nuclear, factoring in waste disposal and eventually cleaning up the site? The one thing Germany learnt from exiting nuclear, is that proper demolishing and removal of nuclear power plants is quite costly. Plus, there's nowhere to safely store the waste.
  - ryan93 5y ago
    You can easily store waste underground, the democrats wouldnt allow it in arizona.
    - periheli0n 5y ago
      Storing nuclear waste safely underground requires having a rock formation that is geologically stable over 100,000+ years. Not easy to find. Otherwise the waste will eventually enter ground water and from there inevitably the food chain.
      - cameldrv 5y ago
        For the sake of argument, suppose it leaks after only 1000 years. The radioactivity will have diminished dramatically, although it will be quite a bit higher than background. It's possible that it would contaminate the local water table somewhere in the middle of the desert. This assumes that the people 1000 years from now won't be much more technologically sophisticated than us and figure out a better way to deal with it in the meantime. If that's true, and there are humans, but something terrible has happened in the meantime, my guess is that they would much rather some aquifer in the middle of nowhere be polluted than have massive global ecosystem devastation due to pumping CO2 into the air. In general, the risks from nuclear power are not something to dismiss, but they pale in comparison to the risks of currently acceptable alternatives. Even the very fact that radioactivity decays over some time scale seems to be used against nuclear -- if you pollute the groundwater with cadmium or lead or some other heavy metal, it literally never goes away, so we just accept the risk since no containment can last forever. If fission products decay after 100,000 years though, we have to guarantee containment for that length of time.
  - molszanski 5y ago
    Didn't France, a nuclear power plant "superpower" produce like only a half of Wembley Stadium of waste in like 50 years? If this is a price of clean air and pushing the global warming further into the future we can build a couple of mini pyramids of nuclear doom and call it day.
    - betterunix2 5y ago
      I am pretty sure the reason is that France did not ban nuclear fuel reprocessing for several decades, and thus recycled large amounts of spent fuel elements. In the US reprocessing was banned and power plants built up large piles of spent fuel rods as a result.
      - pfdietz 5y ago
        Reprocessing was banned in the US for a few years. Carter banned it, Reagan lifted the ban. But reprocessing didn't pick up again because it's economically absurd. The plutonium separated from spent fuel has negative value -- it costs more to produce fuel rods containing it than you save in enriched uranium. Reprocessing may have made sense in a world where enrichment was expensive, uranium resources becoming limited, and fast reactors practical. We do not live in a world with any of those properties. Enrichment prices crashed with gas centrifuges; uranium resources are ample; and fast reactors have turned out to be difficult to make competitive even with thermal nuclear reactors.
    - periheli0n 5y ago
      Still you have to put that half Wembley stadium somewhere. It's not like you can just put it in landfill with the toxicity levels you get from some of the stuff is in the micrograms.
      - Manuel_D 5y ago
        You dig a hole into impermeable bedrock, and put the waste there. Or if you're the Soviets, you just dump it into the Arctic ocean.
      - 5y ago
  - Manuel_D 5y ago
    > Plus, there's nowhere to safely store the waste. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository#Nuclear_repository_sites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository#Nuc... There's also no good reason to dispose of waste at the moment, since we don't reprocess our nuclear fuel. Existing waste is a future source of fuel.
theandrewbailey 5y ago
Where I live, coal is being used less not because of nuclear, but because of natural gas.

by yaacov 5y ago

Nuclear is cheaper than coal, which is why coal market share is collapsing way faster than nuclear’s is shrinking. But they’re both having trouble competing against cheap gas and solar.

cameldrv 5y ago

Nuclear is cheaper to operate, so existing reactors mostly keep running. Construction costs are high for nuclear though. Given the current interest rate environment, nuclear should be looking more attractive.

periheli0n 5y ago
What is the TCO of nuclear, factoring in waste disposal and eventually cleaning up the site? The one thing Germany learnt from exiting nuclear, is that proper demolishing and removal of nuclear power plants is quite costly. Plus, there's nowhere to safely store the waste.
- ryan93 5y ago
  You can easily store waste underground, the democrats wouldnt allow it in arizona.
  - periheli0n 5y ago
    Storing nuclear waste safely underground requires having a rock formation that is geologically stable over 100,000+ years. Not easy to find. Otherwise the waste will eventually enter ground water and from there inevitably the food chain.
    - cameldrv 5y ago
      For the sake of argument, suppose it leaks after only 1000 years. The radioactivity will have diminished dramatically, although it will be quite a bit higher than background. It's possible that it would contaminate the local water table somewhere in the middle of the desert. This assumes that the people 1000 years from now won't be much more technologically sophisticated than us and figure out a better way to deal with it in the meantime. If that's true, and there are humans, but something terrible has happened in the meantime, my guess is that they would much rather some aquifer in the middle of nowhere be polluted than have massive global ecosystem devastation due to pumping CO2 into the air. In general, the risks from nuclear power are not something to dismiss, but they pale in comparison to the risks of currently acceptable alternatives. Even the very fact that radioactivity decays over some time scale seems to be used against nuclear -- if you pollute the groundwater with cadmium or lead or some other heavy metal, it literally never goes away, so we just accept the risk since no containment can last forever. If fission products decay after 100,000 years though, we have to guarantee containment for that length of time.
- molszanski 5y ago
  Didn't France, a nuclear power plant "superpower" produce like only a half of Wembley Stadium of waste in like 50 years? If this is a price of clean air and pushing the global warming further into the future we can build a couple of mini pyramids of nuclear doom and call it day.
  - betterunix2 5y ago
    I am pretty sure the reason is that France did not ban nuclear fuel reprocessing for several decades, and thus recycled large amounts of spent fuel elements. In the US reprocessing was banned and power plants built up large piles of spent fuel rods as a result.
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      Reprocessing was banned in the US for a few years. Carter banned it, Reagan lifted the ban. But reprocessing didn't pick up again because it's economically absurd. The plutonium separated from spent fuel has negative value -- it costs more to produce fuel rods containing it than you save in enriched uranium. Reprocessing may have made sense in a world where enrichment was expensive, uranium resources becoming limited, and fast reactors practical. We do not live in a world with any of those properties. Enrichment prices crashed with gas centrifuges; uranium resources are ample; and fast reactors have turned out to be difficult to make competitive even with thermal nuclear reactors.
  - periheli0n 5y ago
    Still you have to put that half Wembley stadium somewhere. It's not like you can just put it in landfill with the toxicity levels you get from some of the stuff is in the micrograms.
    - Manuel_D 5y ago
      You dig a hole into impermeable bedrock, and put the waste there. Or if you're the Soviets, you just dump it into the Arctic ocean.
    - 5y ago
- Manuel_D 5y ago
  > Plus, there's nowhere to safely store the waste. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository#Nuclear_repository_sites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository#Nuc... There's also no good reason to dispose of waste at the moment, since we don't reprocess our nuclear fuel. Existing waste is a future source of fuel.

theandrewbailey 5y ago

Where I live, coal is being used less not because of nuclear, but because of natural gas.