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This could be good for the world when it comes to climate change, nuclear being the most powerful way to cut emissions and China being one of the biggest pollut

This could be good for the world when it comes to climate change, nuclear being the most powerful way to cut emissions and China being one of the biggest polluters right now.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
How are we measuring "powerful" here? It's widely accepted that renewables, efficiency, carbon fees and global legislation are the leading ways to cut emisions. Nuclear is cool tech, it just seems people are strangely monomaniacal about it and I've never understood why. Maybe it's like "flying cars" and it caught people's attention at an early age and persists as a idea even when it's not actually as generally useful as decent public transport and city planning.
- oytis 5y ago
  > It's widely accepted By whom? The benefit of nuclear power is that it is low on CO2 emissions (unlike fossil fuels) and can produce sufficient amount of power for an industrial society (unlike renewables)
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    No one important, just every government in the world. I agree on your first point (and posted some stats that back it up) but not on your second. Just stop for a moment and ponder, who has a strong financial motive to spread the idea that renewable energy (and carbon fees and all that other stuff) is not a good solution. Have you noticed that the thing that links nuclear boosters is their opinion on renewables being useless?
    - oytis 5y ago
      > who has a strong financial motive to spread the idea that renewable energy (and carbon fees and all that other stuff) is not a good solution. Do you mean that renewables (wind, solar, what else?) can't produce enough energy for the industry is just an opinion not a fact? I'm happy to see the data that would refute it.
      - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
        I'm not sure what fact you're claiming is just my opinion, but I'll happily look up reliable sources for you if you have a specific question.
        oytis 5y ago
        The fact that currently available renewable energy technologies can't produce enough energy for currently existing industrial societies.
        ZeroGravitas 5y ago
        Okay so we agree on that fact. I think we need to build lots more renewables, and every government in the world has plans to do so, which is a good thing. It seems a weird stance to take though, since existing nuclear also can't do that and would similarly need built out. Are you sure you're trying to support nuclear? Because that sounds like an argument for the fossil fuel status quo.
        oytis 5y ago
        I mean technologies, not capacities. Yes, we'll need to build more nuclear plants to cover the needs of the society, but the technology used would be roughly the same. But the same trick will not work with renewables to my best knowledge. We can't realistically place enough wind turbines or solar panels, say, in Germany or in France to cover their energy consumption.
        ZeroGravitas 5y ago
        Oh, right I misunderstood. So no, we don't agree on that then. Renewables and related tech is more than capable of powering a modern civilization. In fact it's better at doing that than any other option, including a nuclear heavy mix. Ironically, the bits that I'm most fuzzy about renewables working well for (because they're not the low hanging fruit that we can immediately do) would also need to be done to move to a mostly nuclear powered civilization since it's basically about electrification of fossil-carbon-based process. You don't hear much talk about it because absolutely no-one, especially the people who bang on about it on internet forums, thinks there's any chance at all of nuclear being a potential replacement for all fossil fuels, so it would be a waste of time to even draw up such plans. Luckily, you can just take all the renewable plans drawn up by the actual governments for their actual plans and then just scale up the nuclear element and scale down the renewables to get some idea if it would work. And it would work, at much greater cost in money, carbon, time and blood than doing it with renewables. Which people seem to know on some level, but argue about trivialities and gotchas as if they didn't. If you have any specific concern about what renewables can't do, I'll happily provide some sources to show why you're misinformed, and why a heavily nuclear grid will hit the same issues at a greater cost.
    - Aachen 5y ago
      > who has a strong financial motive to spread the idea that renewable energy (and carbon fees and all that other stuff) is not a good solution. Idk, Europe? Since we're buying those solar panels from China it can't possibly be China right? (Or just say what you mean so we don't have to guess at it)
      - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
        I was suggesting that the people you see around online who claim very vocally to like nuclear power, actually can't help but undermine their own message because they feel the need to bash reneweables at the end of their comments. They almost certainly get their news via a fossil-fuel funded media-political complex that has a long and very well-documented history of lying about climate change, its causes and its solutions. And the propaganda has worked. Even when they think they're defending nuclear power and being rational most of their talking points don't even make sense except from the point of view of maintaining the fossil fuel status quo. It's all very weird and fascinating.
  - throwaway210222 5y ago
    Just a comment, another benefit of this kind of molten-salt reactor is that it is very hot: ~650°C c.f. ~150°C for steam. So not only does it theoretically produce electricity better using e.g. CO2 in the Brayton cycle, but the heat can be used - possible in conjunction with a turbo air heater - to use for industrial heat. There are a lot of very lucrative industrial processes that need high temperatures.
    - tuatoru 5y ago
      Modern steam turbines use pressurised steam at about 600 - 650°C, so the 650°C is not by accident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_turbine#Thermodynamics_of_steam_turbines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_turbine#Thermodynamics_o...
      - throwaway210222 5y ago
        > so the 650°C is not by accident. Yip, above that temperature metal alloys start corroding quickly.
  - natmaka 5y ago
    The challenge for renewables isn't to produce an aggregated sufficient amount of power, but production intermittency. In Europe wind alone has many times the capacity (see https://www.sussex.ac.uk/news/media-centre/press-releases/id/49312 https://www.sussex.ac.uk/news/media-centre/press-releases/id... ) Production intermittency will solved thanks to continent-scale deployment, storage, smartgrid...
- tremon 5y ago
  Harnessing energy from renewables is eventually a zero-sum game: you can never generate more energy than the sun inputs into Earth's atmosphere, and every bit of energy we extract is no longer available for nature to use. It's not a sustainable practice if we assume that as a society advances technologically, it requires ever more energy per citizen (and no, the various green initiatives have not disproven that assumption -- they reduce energy waste, not energy usage). Unlike renewables, fuel-based energy sources like nuclear (and coal/gas) do not reduce the amount of energy available to Earth's biosphere.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    > you can never generate more energy than the sun inputs into Earth's atmosphere This is 100% a feature and not a bug. > It's not a sustainable practice The very opposite. If we want to slow down climate change we need exactly zero-sum energy sources that do not release extra heat into the atmosphere. > if we assume that as a society advances technologically, it requires ever more energy per citizen Nothing in your claims indicates that is not possible to produce more energy using renewables. > if we assume that as a society advances technologically, it requires ever more energy per citizen (and no, the various green initiatives have not disproven that assumption Citation needed.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    The sun provides such ridiculous amounts of energy that we needn't worry about that limit for quite some time. Also, the assumption that we need more and more energy per citizen as we advance seems dubious. In developed countries energy use per citizen has been stable or declining for quite some time now.
  - CorrectHorseBat 5y ago
    Renewables don't compete with nature, there is more than enough energy from the sun. It's in fact the opposite, the sun radiates too much energy, that's how we get to global warming when not enough gets radiated back into space. Using nuclear adds even more energy, renewables don't.
- lenkite 5y ago
  > It's widely accepted that renewables, efficiency, carbon fees and global legislation are the leading ways to cut emisions. Coal tops Wind as primary electricity source in Germany presently. https://www.dw.com/en/germany-coal-tops-wind-as-primary-electricity-source/a-59168105 https://www.dw.com/en/germany-coal-tops-wind-as-primary-elec... https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/coal-overtakes-wind-become-germanys-top-electricity-source https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/coal-ov... When you close your nuclear reactors, say hello to Coal.
  - fsh 5y ago
    This is just cherry-picking from noisy data in order to tell a misleading narrative. If you look at the actual development of electricity generation in Germany [1], it is very clear that nuclear power (pink) was replaced by renewables (bright green) and not by coal (brown and dark green). [1] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/384/bilder/3_abb_bruttostromerzeugung-et_2021-05-10.png https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/38...
    - Aachen 5y ago
      That's excellent, but we should be replacing coal, not nuclear. At least not in this order. By having renewable replace nuclear you win nothing and coal keeps polluting just as much as it did before because you're not replacing coal. So yes, killing nuclear first obviously causes more pollution from coal.
      - fsh 5y ago
        Please have a careful look at the plot again. The electricity production from coal dropped by something like 50% in the last 10 years. Of course Germany's ancient nuclear reactors could have been kept running by a bit longer, but the overall effect would not have been dramatic. On the other hand, old GE-designed boiling water reactors suffered a bit of an image problem after three of them melted down in Fukushima.
    - unrealhoang 5y ago

This could be good for the world when it comes to climate change, nuclear being the most powerful way to cut emissions and China being one of the biggest polluters right now.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

How are we measuring "powerful" here? It's widely accepted that renewables, efficiency, carbon fees and global legislation are the leading ways to cut emisions. Nuclear is cool tech, it just seems people are strangely monomaniacal about it and I've never understood why. Maybe it's like "flying cars" and it caught people's attention at an early age and persists as a idea even when it's not actually as generally useful as decent public transport and city planning.

oytis 5y ago
> It's widely accepted By whom? The benefit of nuclear power is that it is low on CO2 emissions (unlike fossil fuels) and can produce sufficient amount of power for an industrial society (unlike renewables)
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  No one important, just every government in the world. I agree on your first point (and posted some stats that back it up) but not on your second. Just stop for a moment and ponder, who has a strong financial motive to spread the idea that renewable energy (and carbon fees and all that other stuff) is not a good solution. Have you noticed that the thing that links nuclear boosters is their opinion on renewables being useless?
  - oytis 5y ago
    > who has a strong financial motive to spread the idea that renewable energy (and carbon fees and all that other stuff) is not a good solution. Do you mean that renewables (wind, solar, what else?) can't produce enough energy for the industry is just an opinion not a fact? I'm happy to see the data that would refute it.
    - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
      I'm not sure what fact you're claiming is just my opinion, but I'll happily look up reliable sources for you if you have a specific question.
      - oytis 5y ago
        The fact that currently available renewable energy technologies can't produce enough energy for currently existing industrial societies.
        ZeroGravitas 5y ago
        Okay so we agree on that fact. I think we need to build lots more renewables, and every government in the world has plans to do so, which is a good thing. It seems a weird stance to take though, since existing nuclear also can't do that and would similarly need built out. Are you sure you're trying to support nuclear? Because that sounds like an argument for the fossil fuel status quo.
        oytis 5y ago
        I mean technologies, not capacities. Yes, we'll need to build more nuclear plants to cover the needs of the society, but the technology used would be roughly the same. But the same trick will not work with renewables to my best knowledge. We can't realistically place enough wind turbines or solar panels, say, in Germany or in France to cover their energy consumption.
        ZeroGravitas 5y ago
        Oh, right I misunderstood. So no, we don't agree on that then. Renewables and related tech is more than capable of powering a modern civilization. In fact it's better at doing that than any other option, including a nuclear heavy mix. Ironically, the bits that I'm most fuzzy about renewables working well for (because they're not the low hanging fruit that we can immediately do) would also need to be done to move to a mostly nuclear powered civilization since it's basically about electrification of fossil-carbon-based process. You don't hear much talk about it because absolutely no-one, especially the people who bang on about it on internet forums, thinks there's any chance at all of nuclear being a potential replacement for all fossil fuels, so it would be a waste of time to even draw up such plans. Luckily, you can just take all the renewable plans drawn up by the actual governments for their actual plans and then just scale up the nuclear element and scale down the renewables to get some idea if it would work. And it would work, at much greater cost in money, carbon, time and blood than doing it with renewables. Which people seem to know on some level, but argue about trivialities and gotchas as if they didn't. If you have any specific concern about what renewables can't do, I'll happily provide some sources to show why you're misinformed, and why a heavily nuclear grid will hit the same issues at a greater cost.
  - Aachen 5y ago
    > who has a strong financial motive to spread the idea that renewable energy (and carbon fees and all that other stuff) is not a good solution. Idk, Europe? Since we're buying those solar panels from China it can't possibly be China right? (Or just say what you mean so we don't have to guess at it)
    - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
      I was suggesting that the people you see around online who claim very vocally to like nuclear power, actually can't help but undermine their own message because they feel the need to bash reneweables at the end of their comments. They almost certainly get their news via a fossil-fuel funded media-political complex that has a long and very well-documented history of lying about climate change, its causes and its solutions. And the propaganda has worked. Even when they think they're defending nuclear power and being rational most of their talking points don't even make sense except from the point of view of maintaining the fossil fuel status quo. It's all very weird and fascinating.
- throwaway210222 5y ago
  Just a comment, another benefit of this kind of molten-salt reactor is that it is very hot: ~650°C c.f. ~150°C for steam. So not only does it theoretically produce electricity better using e.g. CO2 in the Brayton cycle, but the heat can be used - possible in conjunction with a turbo air heater - to use for industrial heat. There are a lot of very lucrative industrial processes that need high temperatures.
  - tuatoru 5y ago
    Modern steam turbines use pressurised steam at about 600 - 650°C, so the 650°C is not by accident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_turbine#Thermodynamics_of_steam_turbines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_turbine#Thermodynamics_o...
    - throwaway210222 5y ago
      > so the 650°C is not by accident. Yip, above that temperature metal alloys start corroding quickly.
- natmaka 5y ago
  The challenge for renewables isn't to produce an aggregated sufficient amount of power, but production intermittency. In Europe wind alone has many times the capacity (see https://www.sussex.ac.uk/news/media-centre/press-releases/id/49312 https://www.sussex.ac.uk/news/media-centre/press-releases/id... ) Production intermittency will solved thanks to continent-scale deployment, storage, smartgrid...
tremon 5y ago
Harnessing energy from renewables is eventually a zero-sum game: you can never generate more energy than the sun inputs into Earth's atmosphere, and every bit of energy we extract is no longer available for nature to use. It's not a sustainable practice if we assume that as a society advances technologically, it requires ever more energy per citizen (and no, the various green initiatives have not disproven that assumption -- they reduce energy waste, not energy usage). Unlike renewables, fuel-based energy sources like nuclear (and coal/gas) do not reduce the amount of energy available to Earth's biosphere.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  > you can never generate more energy than the sun inputs into Earth's atmosphere This is 100% a feature and not a bug. > It's not a sustainable practice The very opposite. If we want to slow down climate change we need exactly zero-sum energy sources that do not release extra heat into the atmosphere. > if we assume that as a society advances technologically, it requires ever more energy per citizen Nothing in your claims indicates that is not possible to produce more energy using renewables. > if we assume that as a society advances technologically, it requires ever more energy per citizen (and no, the various green initiatives have not disproven that assumption Citation needed.
- adrianN 5y ago
  The sun provides such ridiculous amounts of energy that we needn't worry about that limit for quite some time. Also, the assumption that we need more and more energy per citizen as we advance seems dubious. In developed countries energy use per citizen has been stable or declining for quite some time now.
- CorrectHorseBat 5y ago
  Renewables don't compete with nature, there is more than enough energy from the sun. It's in fact the opposite, the sun radiates too much energy, that's how we get to global warming when not enough gets radiated back into space. Using nuclear adds even more energy, renewables don't.
lenkite 5y ago
> It's widely accepted that renewables, efficiency, carbon fees and global legislation are the leading ways to cut emisions. Coal tops Wind as primary electricity source in Germany presently. https://www.dw.com/en/germany-coal-tops-wind-as-primary-electricity-source/a-59168105 https://www.dw.com/en/germany-coal-tops-wind-as-primary-elec... https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/coal-overtakes-wind-become-germanys-top-electricity-source https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/coal-ov... When you close your nuclear reactors, say hello to Coal.
- fsh 5y ago
  This is just cherry-picking from noisy data in order to tell a misleading narrative. If you look at the actual development of electricity generation in Germany [1], it is very clear that nuclear power (pink) was replaced by renewables (bright green) and not by coal (brown and dark green). [1] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/384/bilder/3_abb_bruttostromerzeugung-et_2021-05-10.png https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/38...
  - Aachen 5y ago
    That's excellent, but we should be replacing coal, not nuclear. At least not in this order. By having renewable replace nuclear you win nothing and coal keeps polluting just as much as it did before because you're not replacing coal. So yes, killing nuclear first obviously causes more pollution from coal.
    - fsh 5y ago
      Please have a careful look at the plot again. The electricity production from coal dropped by something like 50% in the last 10 years. Of course Germany's ancient nuclear reactors could have been kept running by a bit longer, but the overall effect would not have been dramatic. On the other hand, old GE-designed boiling water reactors suffered a bit of an image problem after three of them melted down in Fukushima.
  - unrealhoang 5y ago