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The only thing that should be front and center for climate change is the large scale adoption of nuclear energy across the globe. And then, carbon recapture. E

by xwdv 5y ago

The only thing that should be front and center for climate change is the large scale adoption of nuclear energy across the globe. And then, carbon recapture. Everything else, is a pet project riding on the coat tails of a larger crisis.

boplicity 5y ago
Can't say I disagree!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
epistasis 5y ago
If you spend a small amount of time investigating nuclear and the recent failures in construction across the globe, and compare it to the successs of renewables and storage, I think you'd change yourself mind fairly quickly. Nuclear was a technology that was overhyped in the 20th century but never delivered on its promise. We have far better, cheaper, and more flexible tech now to replace it.
- AngryData 5y ago
  We do not have power storage facilities to run the globe off renewables, theoretically yes we could, but it is sort of depending on the tech improving in certain areas or large scale reservoir projects which themselves will take a decade or likely more to put into operation. Nuclear power is something we could have been running off right now, and something we know is feasible to build within or sooner than the same time spans that full renewable rollout will take. Not to mention it would allow us to shut down all these ancient ass reactors we got going now which is the equivalent of driving around in a Model-T because we can't be assed to get a newer car. I love renewables, but we still have a long ways to go in scaling renewables to not only provide global power demands, and we also need to be using ass tons of additional clean power just trying to stabilize the environment and sequester CO2.
  - epistasis 5y ago
    > Nuclear power is something we could have been running off right now, and something we know is feasible to build within or sooner than the same time spans that full renewable rollout will take. If we had built it in the 1980s, maybe we could be running off nuclear now, but the reactors would be reaching end of life. What we know about nuclear today is that it is not feasible to construct. This is the crucial road block to nuclear. There are lots of places begging for nuclear to be built, but it never works out, and causes tremendous disaster for all involved in construction. The two "success" stories are China and Russia's Rosatom, but it's unlikely that we could have them construct reactors in the US and succeed. For a while it was hoped that South Korea could build for the rest of the world, but it has become clear in recent years that there was corruption at the root of their inspection process. As for storage, it is getting deployed all the time, mostly in conjunction with new wind and solar installs (called "hybrid" in the field). It is unlikely that we could scale any sort of nuclear construction to catch the coattails of storage now, we are rolling out dozens of GW per year currently, and that will go up by a factor of 10 by 2026, and another factor of 10 by 2031, with an expected 10-30TWh of storage production annually. Nuclear can't scale like that.
    - goatlover 5y ago
      > If we had built it in the 1980s, maybe we could be running off nuclear now, but the reactors would be reaching end of life. And how much less CO2 would have been put into the atmosphere over that time period? Also, if we had scaled up to produce that many nuclear reactors, don't you think we'd be invested in new and better ones coming online? Or at least until solar and wind can solve their storage and transmission issues.
      - epistasis 5y ago
        We'd have extended our carbon budget quite a bit. However we must act now with our current best abilities. We do not have time to wait for the the nuclear construction industry to improve productivity to meet our current needs. And for that matter the construction industry has been stagnant in their productivity as a whole since the 1980s, not just the nuclear sector.
- Chris2048 5y ago
  renewables are better, cheaper, and more flexible tech; but they also take longer to develop so cannot replace current demand in time to stop GW, and have geological constraints such that they cannot be adopted by all.
  - epistasis 5y ago
    There are very very very few nations that could not serve their needs with renewable electricity. The UK was thought to be one of the more challenging countries, but recent offshore wind developments will make cheap power abundant soon. Japan may have a difficult time, which is why they have been so fond of hydrogen, but I have a feeling that they may find some other solutions. Deep-sea floating turbines are falling in price all the time.
    - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
      > Japan may have a difficult time, which is why they have been so fond of hydrogen, but I have a feeling that they may find some other solutions. Deep-sea floating turbines are falling in price all the time. I think we need a bit more than feelings and faith to solve climate change. Nuclear buys us time to work out the issues with renewable energy, as long as it takes. And in certain cases, it just might not. That's the nature of renewable energy, much like oil deposits or rare-earth deposits aren't available everywhere in the world.
      - epistasis 5y ago
        If you want to go on more than feelings, then look at the data. Floating wind is falling cost all the time. Nuclear's cost is going up all the time. "Feelings" are the only reason people think nuclear is possible. Those that have been trying it in the past decade have shown it to not be competitive. Usually HN is good at thinking like engineers, but for some reason nuclear seems to get very little critical thought, and renewables get very little consideration for their actual reality. There is not a carbon-free grid model out there that uses nuclear except as a tiny tiny fraction of grid power. Literally none!! Yet somehow comments about needing to build lots of nuclear get treated as serious statements that could hold some water. Nuclear will not be the backbone of any future grid for at least 50 years, and most likely never again in human history.
Valgrim 5y ago
I agree nuclear could be part of the solution, but nuclear is a dead horse and we can't just continue to beat it. It won't be revived as long as people don't feel secure about it. Beside the obvious reasons for it's rejection (catastrophic failure modes, WMD proliferation, costs overruns, building delays, waste management, vulnerability to social instability, rising sea levels and freshwater shortage), we have to think about what it means to go full-on nuclear and enable the same kind of consumption growth that put us in this position in the first place. We're just going to create another environmental crisis down the road (which may or may not be related to all those reactors). We need to find how we can continue to improve our quality of life while reducing our consumption.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  > We're just going to create another environmental crisis down the road (which may or may not be related to all those reactors How? What other environmental crisis do you see happening if we embrace nuclear? > We need to find how we can continue to improve our quality of life while reducing our consumption. It seems short-sighted to focus _all_ of our efforts on holding quality of life the same as reduce consumption. I certainly agree that this will be a part of the solution, but by constraining the problem thusly we make it much harder to solve. A robust mix of nuclear, renewables, and efficient consumption is much more likely to work than any of these three options alone.
  - Valgrim 5y ago
    Of course I'm not saying it should be our one and only focus, but it should be our primary objective. I don't see into the future better than anyone else, but my guess? The sheer amount of resources we need and the waste we create is drastically reducing biodiversity around the globe, and keystone plant and animal species are on the verge of becoming extinct. This will cause a cascading ecological collapse, including our own food chain.
    - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
      > The sheer amount of resources we need and the waste we create is drastically reducing biodiversity around the globe, and keystone plant and animal species are on the verge of becoming extinct. But why? I'm not arguing that our current lifestyle in heavily developed countries is sustainable, but what makes you certain that we can't form sustainable habits? As long as humans have existed on the planet, we've become better at using available resources (though many of us have certainly died trying, as evidenced by the decline/collapse of many pre-Industrial civilizations through environmental damage). What about this moment in time marks the end of our ability to become more efficient?

by xwdv 5y ago

boplicity 5y ago

Can't say I disagree!

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

epistasis 5y ago

If you spend a small amount of time investigating nuclear and the recent failures in construction across the globe, and compare it to the successs of renewables and storage, I think you'd change yourself mind fairly quickly. Nuclear was a technology that was overhyped in the 20th century but never delivered on its promise. We have far better, cheaper, and more flexible tech now to replace it.

AngryData 5y ago
We do not have power storage facilities to run the globe off renewables, theoretically yes we could, but it is sort of depending on the tech improving in certain areas or large scale reservoir projects which themselves will take a decade or likely more to put into operation. Nuclear power is something we could have been running off right now, and something we know is feasible to build within or sooner than the same time spans that full renewable rollout will take. Not to mention it would allow us to shut down all these ancient ass reactors we got going now which is the equivalent of driving around in a Model-T because we can't be assed to get a newer car. I love renewables, but we still have a long ways to go in scaling renewables to not only provide global power demands, and we also need to be using ass tons of additional clean power just trying to stabilize the environment and sequester CO2.
- epistasis 5y ago
  > Nuclear power is something we could have been running off right now, and something we know is feasible to build within or sooner than the same time spans that full renewable rollout will take. If we had built it in the 1980s, maybe we could be running off nuclear now, but the reactors would be reaching end of life. What we know about nuclear today is that it is not feasible to construct. This is the crucial road block to nuclear. There are lots of places begging for nuclear to be built, but it never works out, and causes tremendous disaster for all involved in construction. The two "success" stories are China and Russia's Rosatom, but it's unlikely that we could have them construct reactors in the US and succeed. For a while it was hoped that South Korea could build for the rest of the world, but it has become clear in recent years that there was corruption at the root of their inspection process. As for storage, it is getting deployed all the time, mostly in conjunction with new wind and solar installs (called "hybrid" in the field). It is unlikely that we could scale any sort of nuclear construction to catch the coattails of storage now, we are rolling out dozens of GW per year currently, and that will go up by a factor of 10 by 2026, and another factor of 10 by 2031, with an expected 10-30TWh of storage production annually. Nuclear can't scale like that.
  - goatlover 5y ago
    > If we had built it in the 1980s, maybe we could be running off nuclear now, but the reactors would be reaching end of life. And how much less CO2 would have been put into the atmosphere over that time period? Also, if we had scaled up to produce that many nuclear reactors, don't you think we'd be invested in new and better ones coming online? Or at least until solar and wind can solve their storage and transmission issues.
    - epistasis 5y ago
      We'd have extended our carbon budget quite a bit. However we must act now with our current best abilities. We do not have time to wait for the the nuclear construction industry to improve productivity to meet our current needs. And for that matter the construction industry has been stagnant in their productivity as a whole since the 1980s, not just the nuclear sector.
Chris2048 5y ago
renewables are better, cheaper, and more flexible tech; but they also take longer to develop so cannot replace current demand in time to stop GW, and have geological constraints such that they cannot be adopted by all.
- epistasis 5y ago
  There are very very very few nations that could not serve their needs with renewable electricity. The UK was thought to be one of the more challenging countries, but recent offshore wind developments will make cheap power abundant soon. Japan may have a difficult time, which is why they have been so fond of hydrogen, but I have a feeling that they may find some other solutions. Deep-sea floating turbines are falling in price all the time.
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    > Japan may have a difficult time, which is why they have been so fond of hydrogen, but I have a feeling that they may find some other solutions. Deep-sea floating turbines are falling in price all the time. I think we need a bit more than feelings and faith to solve climate change. Nuclear buys us time to work out the issues with renewable energy, as long as it takes. And in certain cases, it just might not. That's the nature of renewable energy, much like oil deposits or rare-earth deposits aren't available everywhere in the world.
    - epistasis 5y ago
      If you want to go on more than feelings, then look at the data. Floating wind is falling cost all the time. Nuclear's cost is going up all the time. "Feelings" are the only reason people think nuclear is possible. Those that have been trying it in the past decade have shown it to not be competitive. Usually HN is good at thinking like engineers, but for some reason nuclear seems to get very little critical thought, and renewables get very little consideration for their actual reality. There is not a carbon-free grid model out there that uses nuclear except as a tiny tiny fraction of grid power. Literally none!! Yet somehow comments about needing to build lots of nuclear get treated as serious statements that could hold some water. Nuclear will not be the backbone of any future grid for at least 50 years, and most likely never again in human history.

Valgrim 5y ago

I agree nuclear could be part of the solution, but nuclear is a dead horse and we can't just continue to beat it. It won't be revived as long as people don't feel secure about it. Beside the obvious reasons for it's rejection (catastrophic failure modes, WMD proliferation, costs overruns, building delays, waste management, vulnerability to social instability, rising sea levels and freshwater shortage), we have to think about what it means to go full-on nuclear and enable the same kind of consumption growth that put us in this position in the first place. We're just going to create another environmental crisis down the road (which may or may not be related to all those reactors). We need to find how we can continue to improve our quality of life while reducing our consumption.

Karrot_Kream 5y ago
> We're just going to create another environmental crisis down the road (which may or may not be related to all those reactors How? What other environmental crisis do you see happening if we embrace nuclear? > We need to find how we can continue to improve our quality of life while reducing our consumption. It seems short-sighted to focus _all_ of our efforts on holding quality of life the same as reduce consumption. I certainly agree that this will be a part of the solution, but by constraining the problem thusly we make it much harder to solve. A robust mix of nuclear, renewables, and efficient consumption is much more likely to work than any of these three options alone.
- Valgrim 5y ago
  Of course I'm not saying it should be our one and only focus, but it should be our primary objective. I don't see into the future better than anyone else, but my guess? The sheer amount of resources we need and the waste we create is drastically reducing biodiversity around the globe, and keystone plant and animal species are on the verge of becoming extinct. This will cause a cascading ecological collapse, including our own food chain.
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    > The sheer amount of resources we need and the waste we create is drastically reducing biodiversity around the globe, and keystone plant and animal species are on the verge of becoming extinct. But why? I'm not arguing that our current lifestyle in heavily developed countries is sustainable, but what makes you certain that we can't form sustainable habits? As long as humans have existed on the planet, we've become better at using available resources (though many of us have certainly died trying, as evidenced by the decline/collapse of many pre-Industrial civilizations through environmental damage). What about this moment in time marks the end of our ability to become more efficient?