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I am a fan of nuclear energy for various reasons, and it's obvious that the safety and waste problems can be solved with new technology like small modular react

by driest 5y ago

I am a fan of nuclear energy for various reasons, and it's obvious that the safety and waste problems can be solved with new technology like small modular reactors with inherently safe designs. However, even I realize that nuclear energy is not viable to significantly combat climate change due to the following reasons: * The technology is not there yet. There are a lot of promising companies that are trying to solve the safety problem, and there is a lot of research on how to better deal with the waste, but due to the inherent dangers it will take decades to prove these designs are safe, work as intended and can be produced at a significant scale at the promised cost. Sadly, we don't have decades, we need to start replacing coal right now. * nuclear energy is way to expensive. Wind and solar are much cheaper. current numbers are roughly 50% cheaper for renewables, and while lots of companies promise cheaper nuclear design, these claims are unproven and the renewables are also still significantly improving in cost. The nuclear cost models I've seen also ignore most of the storage and security cost for handling the waste for millenia. There are cheaper alternatives with existing and proven technology. Power to gas for example has an efficiency of roughly 50%. which funny enough corresponds to its cost advantage over nuclear. simply building a lot more wind and solar capacity and using power to gas to fill existing gas storage systems with excess energy from renewables has roughly the same cost as nuclear, without the safety and proliferation headache, and the added advantage of long term storage. * proliferation. even if we could solve the problem of safeguarding thousands of SMR in developed countries, you can't just export them to every country on earth. however, that's a requirement for replacing coal, as those countries need to reduce emissions, too. So yeah, I'd love molten salt SMR to be a thing, and they probably will be in some applications in developed countries in 10-20 years, but the value of this to combat climate change is minimal and people who think otherwise are ignoring the previously mentioned facts.

mlindner 5y ago
> * nuclear energy is way to expensive. Wind and solar are much cheaper. current numbers are roughly 50% cheaper for renewables, and while lots of companies promise cheaper nuclear design, these claims are unproven and the renewables are also still significantly improving in cost. The nuclear cost models I've seen also ignore most of the storage and security cost for handling the waste for millenia. There are cheaper alternatives with existing and proven technology. Power to gas for example has an efficiency of roughly 50%. which funny enough corresponds to its cost advantage over nuclear. simply building a lot more wind and solar capacity and using power to gas to fill existing gas storage systems with excess energy from renewables has roughly the same cost as nuclear, without the safety and proliferation headache, and the added advantage of long term storage. Wind and solar aren't that much cheaper (or actually usually much more expensive), when you include the batteries that are required for them to operate as the entire grid. Right now they can only displace SOME not ALL of the energy generation of a country (unless you have huge natural resources of hydro or geothermal energy that can act as that base load). Nuclear is needed for that baseload, or tons and tons of batteries. Taken in that respect Nuclear is cheaper than solar and wind, for that purpose. Grids will eventually need to go somewhere around 80% solar/wind and 20% nuclear/geothermal/hydro (+/- 15%).
- driest 5y ago
  You do realize that batteries are not the only method of energy storage? In fact, there are lots of better ways to store excess energy from renewables over longer periods of time, but power to gas was mentioned as an example that works everywhere, and can use abundant existing storage and distribution systems. Lets add a reference to get some actual numbers to play with: The US Energy Information Administration has published a report reasoning about the levelized cost of electricity (LCOS) for new power plants of different energy sources [1]. According to page 8 of this report, the LCOS of one megawatt hour of nuclear energy is around 69 USD, while solar is around 33 USD and onshore wind is 37 USD. If you factor in a 50% loss in converting the renewable energy to gas and back to electricity you end up in the same ball park as nuclear, but without the proliferation, safety, and waste problems. [1] https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation....
adev_ 5y ago
> I am a fan of nuclear energy for various reasons, and it's obvious that the safety and waste problems can be solved No you don't from your arguments. > The technology is not there yet. There are a lot of promising companies that are trying to solve the safety problem.[...], we don't have decades, we need to start replacing coal right now. That's bullshit. Even nuclear reactors designs from the 70s are statistically safer than coal. And kill a lot less than coal. > * nuclear energy is way to expensive. France had one of the cheapest electricity in Europe for 3 decades. Cheaper than anything produced by renewable right now. Nuclear is cheap but at the condition of government loans at very low interest rate and for multiple decades. That's has been analysed and reported many times already. > Power to gas for example has an efficiency of roughly 50%. There is today not a single installation world wide existing of power to gas to the scale it would be needed. And that would anhiliate any hypothetical cost of the renewable energy anyway.
- driest 5y ago
  > No you don't from your arguments. One can be a fan of something without trying to blindly apply it to areas where it doesn't make sense. > nuclear reactors designs from the 70s are statistically safer than coal. And kill a lot less than coal. That's a strawman's argument, I'm not arguing for coal, I'm arguing for storage of renewables. > France had one of the cheapest electricity in Europe for 3 decades [...] Nuclear is cheap [...] That is simply false. The levelized cost of nuclear is about twice as high as that of solar or wind, see page 8 of the referenced EIA report [1]. > There is today not a single installation world wide existing of power to gas to the scale it would be needed Again, strawman's argument. The discussion is about what should be built, not what has been built. There are already megawatt scale plants running for years without problems [2], and there are shipping container scale demonstrators for higher efficient versions [3]. So it's pretty obvious that the technology around power to gas is well understood, and ready for mass production and deployment. > And that would anhiliate any hypothetical cost of the renewable energy anyway Again, this is false. As explained above, nuclear energy is twice as expensive as renewables, and power to gas has an end to end loss of roughly 50%. So in reality, renewables + power to gas has roughly the same cost as nuclear, without the proliferation, safety, security, and waste problems. And as an added bonus every MWh you use while renewables are producing costs half of nuclear ;). [1] https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.... [2] http://hybalance.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Large-scale-PEM-electrolysis.pdf http://hybalance.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Large-scale-P... [3] http://www.helmeth.eu/images/joomlaplates/documents/Publishable_summary.pdf http://www.helmeth.eu/images/joomlaplates/documents/Publisha...
ninkendo 5y ago
Something I’ve never understood about the anti-proliferation arguments of small reactors. Ostensibly the reason why bad actors (“terrorists” etc [0]) don’t have nukes today is because it’s hard to enrich the fuel. Because small reactors with safer designs often have a side effect of creating enriched fuel as intermediary product. (Meaning such designs would make it easier to enrich fuel than building thousands of centrifuges.) So, we decide not to build them. But, what’s stopping the bad actors from building the smaller reactors themselves, as an “easier than building thousands of centrifuges” method of enriching fuel? In other words, why would preventing the bad guys from using such tech, be a reason for the good guys to avoid building such tech? If it really does make enriching fuel easier, couldn’t the bad guys just build the reactors themselves? If we were serious about non-proliferation, and the breeder/thorium/molten-salt/etc designs make enriching fuel easier… wouldn’t the idea of a reactors be the thing we want to protect? Rather than just the physical reactors themselves? [0] Substitute “bad guys” and “good guys” with whatever group you want, the point is the same.
- doomleika 5y ago
  The real reason is two fold: 1. Developed countries want to keep the developing country poor, by setting the narrative and keep nuclear: the cheapest/most efficient energy out of competitor's hand so they can stay poor. 2. Nuclear bomb ready country want to shut out every possibility for others to get a hands on them. Most nuclear warhead program started by using nuclear powerplant as disguise. The environment problem is unsolvable because no one with the power want to solve them

by driest 5y ago

mlindner 5y ago

> * nuclear energy is way to expensive. Wind and solar are much cheaper. current numbers are roughly 50% cheaper for renewables, and while lots of companies promise cheaper nuclear design, these claims are unproven and the renewables are also still significantly improving in cost. The nuclear cost models I've seen also ignore most of the storage and security cost for handling the waste for millenia. There are cheaper alternatives with existing and proven technology. Power to gas for example has an efficiency of roughly 50%. which funny enough corresponds to its cost advantage over nuclear. simply building a lot more wind and solar capacity and using power to gas to fill existing gas storage systems with excess energy from renewables has roughly the same cost as nuclear, without the safety and proliferation headache, and the added advantage of long term storage. Wind and solar aren't that much cheaper (or actually usually much more expensive), when you include the batteries that are required for them to operate as the entire grid. Right now they can only displace SOME not ALL of the energy generation of a country (unless you have huge natural resources of hydro or geothermal energy that can act as that base load). Nuclear is needed for that baseload, or tons and tons of batteries. Taken in that respect Nuclear is cheaper than solar and wind, for that purpose. Grids will eventually need to go somewhere around 80% solar/wind and 20% nuclear/geothermal/hydro (+/- 15%).

driest 5y ago
You do realize that batteries are not the only method of energy storage? In fact, there are lots of better ways to store excess energy from renewables over longer periods of time, but power to gas was mentioned as an example that works everywhere, and can use abundant existing storage and distribution systems. Lets add a reference to get some actual numbers to play with: The US Energy Information Administration has published a report reasoning about the levelized cost of electricity (LCOS) for new power plants of different energy sources [1]. According to page 8 of this report, the LCOS of one megawatt hour of nuclear energy is around 69 USD, while solar is around 33 USD and onshore wind is 37 USD. If you factor in a 50% loss in converting the renewable energy to gas and back to electricity you end up in the same ball park as nuclear, but without the proliferation, safety, and waste problems. [1] https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation....

adev_ 5y ago

> I am a fan of nuclear energy for various reasons, and it's obvious that the safety and waste problems can be solved No you don't from your arguments. > The technology is not there yet. There are a lot of promising companies that are trying to solve the safety problem.[...], we don't have decades, we need to start replacing coal right now. That's bullshit. Even nuclear reactors designs from the 70s are statistically safer than coal. And kill a lot less than coal. > * nuclear energy is way to expensive. France had one of the cheapest electricity in Europe for 3 decades. Cheaper than anything produced by renewable right now. Nuclear is cheap but at the condition of government loans at very low interest rate and for multiple decades. That's has been analysed and reported many times already. > Power to gas for example has an efficiency of roughly 50%. There is today not a single installation world wide existing of power to gas to the scale it would be needed. And that would anhiliate any hypothetical cost of the renewable energy anyway.

driest 5y ago
> No you don't from your arguments. One can be a fan of something without trying to blindly apply it to areas where it doesn't make sense. > nuclear reactors designs from the 70s are statistically safer than coal. And kill a lot less than coal. That's a strawman's argument, I'm not arguing for coal, I'm arguing for storage of renewables. > France had one of the cheapest electricity in Europe for 3 decades [...] Nuclear is cheap [...] That is simply false. The levelized cost of nuclear is about twice as high as that of solar or wind, see page 8 of the referenced EIA report [1]. > There is today not a single installation world wide existing of power to gas to the scale it would be needed Again, strawman's argument. The discussion is about what should be built, not what has been built. There are already megawatt scale plants running for years without problems [2], and there are shipping container scale demonstrators for higher efficient versions [3]. So it's pretty obvious that the technology around power to gas is well understood, and ready for mass production and deployment. > And that would anhiliate any hypothetical cost of the renewable energy anyway Again, this is false. As explained above, nuclear energy is twice as expensive as renewables, and power to gas has an end to end loss of roughly 50%. So in reality, renewables + power to gas has roughly the same cost as nuclear, without the proliferation, safety, security, and waste problems. And as an added bonus every MWh you use while renewables are producing costs half of nuclear ;). [1] https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.... [2] http://hybalance.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Large-scale-PEM-electrolysis.pdf http://hybalance.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Large-scale-P... [3] http://www.helmeth.eu/images/joomlaplates/documents/Publishable_summary.pdf http://www.helmeth.eu/images/joomlaplates/documents/Publisha...

ninkendo 5y ago

Something I’ve never understood about the anti-proliferation arguments of small reactors. Ostensibly the reason why bad actors (“terrorists” etc [0]) don’t have nukes today is because it’s hard to enrich the fuel. Because small reactors with safer designs often have a side effect of creating enriched fuel as intermediary product. (Meaning such designs would make it easier to enrich fuel than building thousands of centrifuges.) So, we decide not to build them. But, what’s stopping the bad actors from building the smaller reactors themselves, as an “easier than building thousands of centrifuges” method of enriching fuel? In other words, why would preventing the bad guys from using such tech, be a reason for the good guys to avoid building such tech? If it really does make enriching fuel easier, couldn’t the bad guys just build the reactors themselves? If we were serious about non-proliferation, and the breeder/thorium/molten-salt/etc designs make enriching fuel easier… wouldn’t the idea of a reactors be the thing we want to protect? Rather than just the physical reactors themselves? [0] Substitute “bad guys” and “good guys” with whatever group you want, the point is the same.

doomleika 5y ago
The real reason is two fold: 1. Developed countries want to keep the developing country poor, by setting the narrative and keep nuclear: the cheapest/most efficient energy out of competitor's hand so they can stay poor. 2. Nuclear bomb ready country want to shut out every possibility for others to get a hands on them. Most nuclear warhead program started by using nuclear powerplant as disguise. The environment problem is unsolvable because no one with the power want to solve them