7 ms·

Nuclear power may be the key to least-cost, zero-emission electricity systems

34 points by rustoo 5y ago

thejackgoode 5y ago
I am curious if there is anyone here who can answer this here. What will happen if a fission reactor is blown as a result of warfare (by a bomb or missile)? Is it Chernobyl-grade hazard or not? Also, how strongly does the danger correlate with reactor size?
- IAmNotAFix 5y ago
  They're designed to sustain an airliner crashing into it so I guess bomb or missile is okay, although that's another story if that would happen from inside the reactor.
  - thejackgoode 5y ago
    Interesting, but I doubt these are a majority. I also don't think a plane is comparable to warfare in this aspect, a falling plane is an accident (or a relatively cheap act of terror), a missile can be a ballistic one, I don't think you can protect anything above ground from targeted destruction intent
- Turing_Machine 5y ago
  What happens if, say, the Three Gorges Dam is blown as a result of warfare?
deusum 5y ago
Why is it so hard to grasp: we don't want to trade our toxic carbon byproduct for toxic fission byproduct?
- fsflover 5y ago
  There must be some stable backup for renewables. Nuclear is not perfect, but it's the best by a long shot compared to anything else, according to statistics (including all disasters!).
  - bipson 5y ago
    Nuclear is a terrible "backup" for renewables. Renewables fluctuate. Nuclear is not great at scaling, and most reactors cannot be shut down without taking weeks and months for safe re-starting. Nuclear is good for base load. And countries that have a lot of (really expensive) nuclear to cover their base load, have zero incentive to invest into renewables, since its output would just become surplus. For broad adoption of renewables, we need to accompany it with (hopefully clean) solutions that can buffer and restore surplus energy efficiently and most importantly scale up and down really fast, to smooth out the fluctuations. Keeping a constant 50 Hz is becoming increasingly difficult with renewables. In the past Austria used to store (nightly) surpulus energy from german nuclear reactors and (more recent also renewables) and getting paid to do so, to feed it into the own network and also selling abroad during daytime. This was stopped because it was putting a lot of strain on the north-south bottlenecks in the German power network, aggravated by large wind farms in the north, that became capable of covering the whole German power use for short periods of time.
    - adrianN 5y ago
      Modern nuclear is actually reasonably good at scaling. It's just that the capital costs are so damn high that you want to run your reactors at 100% all the time to have a chance of making profits.
      - sokoloff 5y ago
        It seems like subsidies (perhaps in the form of carbon taxes) could solve that problem entirely.
    - fsflover 5y ago
      > countries that have a lot of (really expensive) nuclear to cover their base load, have zero incentive to invest into renewables Nuclear energy is green energy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26673987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26673987
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rini17 5y ago
  Because there's million times smaller amount of the fission byproducts for same energy produced? And all the arguments why it's worse than coal are political.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Why not? It is not so bad deal... Also what other options we have, trade to toxic byproducts of renewables?
  - shafyy 5y ago
    Are you seriously comparing the byproducts of creating renewable energy to the byproducts of nuclear energy? If you ask 100 people, 99 will tell you that they rather live next to a solar panel or a silicon extraction mine than next to a nuclear power plant or a uranium mine.
    - Nemrod67 5y ago
      and they might be wrong in thinking that
    - glogla 5y ago
      So? If you ask 100 people, 99 will tell you they would rather buy new electronics every year and throw away the old, and they would rider drive a huge SUV than walk or bike. That doesn't mean it's a good thing.
      - shafyy 5y ago
        > If you ask 100 people, 99 will tell you they would rather buy new electronics every year and throw away the old, and they would rider drive a huge SUV than walk or bike. I don't think that's true. Anyways. We are comparing nuclear, radioactive waste that has the potential to make whole areas of land unlivable for decades if it touches them and stays radioactive for a million years to cadmium, which is much less toxic than nuclear waste, has a shorter half life and in doesn't require us to find a solution to an unsovled problem to deal with it. How can you seriously compare the two on the same level?
        glogla 5y ago
        One of them is a potential, the other is a certainty. By comparing just the effect and not the likelihood, you are getting biased results.
- kvgr 5y ago
  Renewables also have toxic byproducts. And also destroy nature. It is mot like they are greenest green all the way.
  - kvgr 5y ago
    Why the download? Somebody must mine the heavy metals in solar panels, same way some one must mine uranium. Water dams destroy natural habitats of animals and people, I can continue. Nuclear plants take up quite a little of space compared to their output. And the fuel cycle is completely closed - meaning none of it leaks out by design(gas, coal). Not all countries in the world recycle or eco disposal the solar panels.
- xupybd 5y ago
  I do. I think it's worth the trade off.
- fdewnijfwg 5y ago
  We don't want the toxic waste from Solar panel production nor the industrial waste or the noise pollution from windmills either. At some point we'll have to chose the lesser evil, and most of the good rivers have already been dammed so more hydro isn't really the solution. A combination of renewables, nuclear base power, reduced power needs, smart grid load management, and synth fuel production during peak production seems like the best bet for something that might actually work.
  - Kelteseth 5y ago
    Solar panels are recyclable https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-releases/2022/solar-cells-from-recycled-silicon.html https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-releases/...
    - fdewnijfwg 5y ago
      And that is _excellent_ news! We're still in the expansion phase when it comes to Solar, though, and there's no way we'll be able to get rid of fossil fuels using renewables only. Sure, we do have new and exciting tech in the pipeline, and maybe one day they'll suffice. For now, we've got very few alternatives when it comes to base power generation. Biogas is probably one of the more interesting renewable power sources for base power (if we can ramp up production), but other than that, and leftovers from the wood industry, we're stuck at hydro and nuclear if we want to avoid fossil fuels. Last time I checked, there's no large-scale rollouts of modern power storage going on.
  - danbruc 5y ago
    We don't want the toxic waste from Solar panel production [...] I am really tempted to call this one bullshit. I will admit that I just started reading about this topic half an hour ago because of this thread, so I may be wrong and I will happily change my mind if someone makes the case. I just skimmed the first page of search results for toxic solar panel waste. They mostly seemed rather negative, so I don't think I only got to see the white washed numbers. However most numbers seemed a bit dated, 2016 was a year I repeatedly came across. I will not provide sources as I really just skimmed the articles and collected the numbers. Solar panels are recyclable but the costs of USD 20 to USD 30 per panel are considered prohibitiv. Doesn't seem to bad to me, it's not negligible but also not outrageous. High recycling costs are attributed to low recycling volume while on the other hand the problem is described as a gigantic pile of toxic waste. Europe seems to mandate the recycling because it is not economically attractive. For 2016 I found a number of 11,000 tons of lead, I am neither sure for what geographical area nor whether it is cumulative or for that one year. On the other hand I found that in the European Union an estimate 100,000 tons of lead are annually introduced into the environment from sport shooting, hunting, and fishing. Another thing that gets mentioned is silicon dust during production. Seems a manageable problem to me if we think we can manage the handling of radioactive compounds for nuclear plants. There is admittedly probably a difference in scale and volume, so this might have an impact. Nitrogen trifluoride also gets mentioned, especially because of its carbon dioxide equivalent of about 17,000. I did however not notice any numbers about the amounts used or released. But this again seems not like an unmanageable problem. Cadmium is also usually mentioned, about one percent of the amount of lead, but there is not much more information than that it is carcinogenic. Finally rare earths are often mentioned and their limited supply, the production condition, and so on just as in the discussion of semiconductor and electronics manufacturing in general. If I am not misremembering the easily accessible supply of uranium ores is also quite limited, especially if one considers a substantial expansion of nuclear power production.
- cameldrv 5y ago
  Yes we do want to trade that. The toxic carbon byproduct goes into the air and causes massive disruption to the lives of billions of people. The toxic fission byproduct is tiny and goes underground in the middle of the desert and disrupts zero people's lives.
  - shafyy 5y ago
    Because constructing nuclear power plants and mining uranium don't have toxic carbon byproducts? What are the toxic byproducts you are talking about specifically? > The toxic fission byproduct is tiny and goes underground in the middle of the desert and disrupts zero people's lives. Haha, if it were that easy. Nuclear waste can be radioactive up to 1 million years. Can you give me an example of a successful long-term nuclear storage facility that exists today? All we're doing currently is storing nuclear waste in temporary storage and rolling over the need to deal with this problem to future generations.
    - iamstupidsimple 5y ago
      > Can you give me an example of a successful long-term nuclear storage facility that exists today? Sure. The earth is full of radioactive material (also known as rocks) that have been 'stored' successfully for millions of years.
    - ls15 5y ago
      > Can you give me an example of a successful long-term nuclear storage facility that exists today? There are natural deposits of radioactive material and there have been natural nuclear reactors on our planet.
    - Fishman343 5y ago
      Nuclear power may be kicking the can down the road, but burning coal is just leaving the can for our immediate offspring already in their 20s and 30s. The article says least-cost, we're fresh out of perfect solutions.
      - shafyy 5y ago
- emkoemko 5y ago
  you do know this "toxic fission product" is natural? so why would it bother you if we just put it back from where it came from originally? unless you think nuclear material comes out of thin air.
- weruiojkl24 5y ago
  Why is everyone always complaining of what they _dont_ want, instead of saying what they want more of?
- FBISurveillance 5y ago
  We want that - amounts of fission byproduct are so much smaller in comparison to what you get by burning coal. Finland has one of the most advanced fission byproduct storages in the world and they are so freaking compact. Like, it's nothing like that green glowing substance they show in movies. Oh, and they will make money on it fast forward few decades, that fission byproduct will be fuel for future generation stations.
- glogla 5y ago
  "But what about the nucelar waste!" is not hard to grasp, it is a well known misinformation that some people are refusing to let go.
- IAmNotAFix 5y ago
  Contrarily to carbon byproduct, we know how to confine fission byproduct, at least short term (which is still better than neither short term nor long term).
- lm28469 5y ago
  But since we're not 3 years old toddlers and live in reality we still have to make decisions based on real life possibilities and not based on hippy pipe dreams. > we don't want We very much want (need) constant/on demand/large scale energy sources and renweables aren't up for that
- Turing_Machine 5y ago
  Who is "we" in this sentence, and why do you get to speak for "them"?
kieranmaine 5y ago
These sentences sum up the article quite well: "Previous studies have shown that curbing 80 percent of carbon emissions can be achieved by ramping up wind and solar power harvesting installations" and "To nail down that last 10 or 20 percent of decarbonization, we need to have more tools in our toolbox, and not just wind and solar," The "more tools" may be nuclear or it may be storage, depending on the cost of both technologies in the future: "Added Caldeira: “Our analysis looked at the cheapest way to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions assuming today’s prices..at today’s price, nuclear is the cheapest way to eliminate all electricity-system carbon emissions nearly everywhere...if energy storage technologies became very cheap, then wind and solar could potentially be the least-cost path to a zero-emission electricity system.”" IMO, it seems too early to bet on either, so carry on developing both until more data is available.
- glogla 5y ago
  I'm happy that this is getting some attention. There will never he "just renewable" power grid due to renewables intermittency. The realistic options are renewables + some other energy source, or renewables + a lot of storage. Renewables + storage has a problem: energy storage at scale is not a solved problem at all, either it is hard to build (pumped hydro) not scalable (batteries) or barely in PoC stages (various air storages and trains going uphill or whatever). Renewables + other energy source has the problem of "what is the other energy source" and right now, that is fossil fuels - there's a lot of greenwashing going on with natural gas, for example, which is as bad as coal with regards to carbon due to all the methane escaping along the way. Now the argument here is that without the storage being available, there has to be other energy source and in that case, the other energy source should be nuclear. Because the storage just doesn't exist so if the other energy source is not nuclear, it is going to be coal and gas. But of course, people are just going to ignore the situation and parrot FUDs like "nuclear is too expensive" and "what about the waste", effectively pushing for coal and gas.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - pydry 5y ago
LatteLazy 5y ago
As always with nuclear the questions are cost, time and waste. Until there is an actual breakthrough on (at least) one of those three issues we're going no where.
- Tepix 5y ago
  There are also safety and corruption. Even in government owned nuclear plants (TEPCO) that don't have to optimize for profits we see these issues.
- fsflover 5y ago
  Those are non-problems: https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html and https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html.
  - Tepix 5y ago
    Let's see, quoting from the second page you linked, under "New builds": Recent new construction of nuclear plants in the west has been fraught with boondoggle. The troubles with the Westinghouse AP1000 have been the most distressing to me personally, since the design was to be the conquering hero of the Nuclear Renaissance I was so excited about in nuclear engineering undergrad back in the mid-2000s. The July 2017 cancellation of the two AP1000s at VC Summer, the astronomical delays and overruns at Plant Vogtle, and the bankruptcy of Westinghouse were all devastating. Non-problems?
    - fsflover 5y ago
      The reason is cheap coal, not expensiveness of nuclear: If markets valued the low-CO2 nature of nuclear, they’d be doing better
- lm28469 5y ago
  This red cube (each side is 16m) represent every nuclear waste generated by france power plants during the last 60 years, it really isn't as hard to process as people make it. It's a problem but not a deal breaker https://twitter.com/laydgeur/status/1433463215321669633/photo/1 https://twitter.com/laydgeur/status/1433463215321669633/phot...
marmarama 5y ago
By the time any country in the west actually gets round to finishing enough grid-connected reactors to make a difference, we will be storing enough renewable energy through batteries and green hydrogen from seawater that the reactors will be expensive white elephants. The ramp-up time on reactors is just too long, the capital investments too big, and the reactors themselves too inflexible. Combined with the lack of appetite from the public for new reactors, it's just not worth it. Just like how wind and solar became cheap and widespread over the last decade, grid-scale energy storage is going to be the big change in the energy market over the coming decade. Surprisingly, it's going to be the fossil fuel industry that will make it happen, because they have the money and the will, and because selling green hydrogen and gas turbine electricity generation capacity allows them to transition to a low carbon future without changing their business model much.
rswskg 5y ago
ALWAYS WAS

34 points by rustoo 5y ago

I am curious if there is anyone here who can answer this here. What will happen if a fission reactor is blown as a result of warfare (by a bomb or missile)? Is it Chernobyl-grade hazard or not? Also, how strongly does the danger correlate with reactor size?

IAmNotAFix 5y ago
They're designed to sustain an airliner crashing into it so I guess bomb or missile is okay, although that's another story if that would happen from inside the reactor.
- thejackgoode 5y ago
  Interesting, but I doubt these are a majority. I also don't think a plane is comparable to warfare in this aspect, a falling plane is an accident (or a relatively cheap act of terror), a missile can be a ballistic one, I don't think you can protect anything above ground from targeted destruction intent
Turing_Machine 5y ago
What happens if, say, the Three Gorges Dam is blown as a result of warfare?

deusum 5y ago

Why is it so hard to grasp: we don't want to trade our toxic carbon byproduct for toxic fission byproduct?

fsflover 5y ago
There must be some stable backup for renewables. Nuclear is not perfect, but it's the best by a long shot compared to anything else, according to statistics (including all disasters!).
- bipson 5y ago
  Nuclear is a terrible "backup" for renewables. Renewables fluctuate. Nuclear is not great at scaling, and most reactors cannot be shut down without taking weeks and months for safe re-starting. Nuclear is good for base load. And countries that have a lot of (really expensive) nuclear to cover their base load, have zero incentive to invest into renewables, since its output would just become surplus. For broad adoption of renewables, we need to accompany it with (hopefully clean) solutions that can buffer and restore surplus energy efficiently and most importantly scale up and down really fast, to smooth out the fluctuations. Keeping a constant 50 Hz is becoming increasingly difficult with renewables. In the past Austria used to store (nightly) surpulus energy from german nuclear reactors and (more recent also renewables) and getting paid to do so, to feed it into the own network and also selling abroad during daytime. This was stopped because it was putting a lot of strain on the north-south bottlenecks in the German power network, aggravated by large wind farms in the north, that became capable of covering the whole German power use for short periods of time.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    Modern nuclear is actually reasonably good at scaling. It's just that the capital costs are so damn high that you want to run your reactors at 100% all the time to have a chance of making profits.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      It seems like subsidies (perhaps in the form of carbon taxes) could solve that problem entirely.
  - fsflover 5y ago
    > countries that have a lot of (really expensive) nuclear to cover their base load, have zero incentive to invest into renewables Nuclear energy is green energy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26673987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26673987
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rini17 5y ago
Because there's million times smaller amount of the fission byproducts for same energy produced? And all the arguments why it's worse than coal are political.
Ekaros 5y ago
Why not? It is not so bad deal... Also what other options we have, trade to toxic byproducts of renewables?
- shafyy 5y ago
  Are you seriously comparing the byproducts of creating renewable energy to the byproducts of nuclear energy? If you ask 100 people, 99 will tell you that they rather live next to a solar panel or a silicon extraction mine than next to a nuclear power plant or a uranium mine.
  - Nemrod67 5y ago
    and they might be wrong in thinking that
  - glogla 5y ago
    So? If you ask 100 people, 99 will tell you they would rather buy new electronics every year and throw away the old, and they would rider drive a huge SUV than walk or bike. That doesn't mean it's a good thing.
    - shafyy 5y ago
      > If you ask 100 people, 99 will tell you they would rather buy new electronics every year and throw away the old, and they would rider drive a huge SUV than walk or bike. I don't think that's true. Anyways. We are comparing nuclear, radioactive waste that has the potential to make whole areas of land unlivable for decades if it touches them and stays radioactive for a million years to cadmium, which is much less toxic than nuclear waste, has a shorter half life and in doesn't require us to find a solution to an unsovled problem to deal with it. How can you seriously compare the two on the same level?
      - glogla 5y ago
        One of them is a potential, the other is a certainty. By comparing just the effect and not the likelihood, you are getting biased results.
kvgr 5y ago
Renewables also have toxic byproducts. And also destroy nature. It is mot like they are greenest green all the way.
- kvgr 5y ago
  Why the download? Somebody must mine the heavy metals in solar panels, same way some one must mine uranium. Water dams destroy natural habitats of animals and people, I can continue. Nuclear plants take up quite a little of space compared to their output. And the fuel cycle is completely closed - meaning none of it leaks out by design(gas, coal). Not all countries in the world recycle or eco disposal the solar panels.
xupybd 5y ago
I do. I think it's worth the trade off.
fdewnijfwg 5y ago
We don't want the toxic waste from Solar panel production nor the industrial waste or the noise pollution from windmills either. At some point we'll have to chose the lesser evil, and most of the good rivers have already been dammed so more hydro isn't really the solution. A combination of renewables, nuclear base power, reduced power needs, smart grid load management, and synth fuel production during peak production seems like the best bet for something that might actually work.
- Kelteseth 5y ago
  Solar panels are recyclable https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-releases/2022/solar-cells-from-recycled-silicon.html https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-releases/...
  - fdewnijfwg 5y ago
    And that is _excellent_ news! We're still in the expansion phase when it comes to Solar, though, and there's no way we'll be able to get rid of fossil fuels using renewables only. Sure, we do have new and exciting tech in the pipeline, and maybe one day they'll suffice. For now, we've got very few alternatives when it comes to base power generation. Biogas is probably one of the more interesting renewable power sources for base power (if we can ramp up production), but other than that, and leftovers from the wood industry, we're stuck at hydro and nuclear if we want to avoid fossil fuels. Last time I checked, there's no large-scale rollouts of modern power storage going on.
- danbruc 5y ago
  We don't want the toxic waste from Solar panel production [...] I am really tempted to call this one bullshit. I will admit that I just started reading about this topic half an hour ago because of this thread, so I may be wrong and I will happily change my mind if someone makes the case. I just skimmed the first page of search results for toxic solar panel waste. They mostly seemed rather negative, so I don't think I only got to see the white washed numbers. However most numbers seemed a bit dated, 2016 was a year I repeatedly came across. I will not provide sources as I really just skimmed the articles and collected the numbers. Solar panels are recyclable but the costs of USD 20 to USD 30 per panel are considered prohibitiv. Doesn't seem to bad to me, it's not negligible but also not outrageous. High recycling costs are attributed to low recycling volume while on the other hand the problem is described as a gigantic pile of toxic waste. Europe seems to mandate the recycling because it is not economically attractive. For 2016 I found a number of 11,000 tons of lead, I am neither sure for what geographical area nor whether it is cumulative or for that one year. On the other hand I found that in the European Union an estimate 100,000 tons of lead are annually introduced into the environment from sport shooting, hunting, and fishing. Another thing that gets mentioned is silicon dust during production. Seems a manageable problem to me if we think we can manage the handling of radioactive compounds for nuclear plants. There is admittedly probably a difference in scale and volume, so this might have an impact. Nitrogen trifluoride also gets mentioned, especially because of its carbon dioxide equivalent of about 17,000. I did however not notice any numbers about the amounts used or released. But this again seems not like an unmanageable problem. Cadmium is also usually mentioned, about one percent of the amount of lead, but there is not much more information than that it is carcinogenic. Finally rare earths are often mentioned and their limited supply, the production condition, and so on just as in the discussion of semiconductor and electronics manufacturing in general. If I am not misremembering the easily accessible supply of uranium ores is also quite limited, especially if one considers a substantial expansion of nuclear power production.
cameldrv 5y ago
Yes we do want to trade that. The toxic carbon byproduct goes into the air and causes massive disruption to the lives of billions of people. The toxic fission byproduct is tiny and goes underground in the middle of the desert and disrupts zero people's lives.
- shafyy 5y ago
  Because constructing nuclear power plants and mining uranium don't have toxic carbon byproducts? What are the toxic byproducts you are talking about specifically? > The toxic fission byproduct is tiny and goes underground in the middle of the desert and disrupts zero people's lives. Haha, if it were that easy. Nuclear waste can be radioactive up to 1 million years. Can you give me an example of a successful long-term nuclear storage facility that exists today? All we're doing currently is storing nuclear waste in temporary storage and rolling over the need to deal with this problem to future generations.
  - iamstupidsimple 5y ago
    > Can you give me an example of a successful long-term nuclear storage facility that exists today? Sure. The earth is full of radioactive material (also known as rocks) that have been 'stored' successfully for millions of years.
  - ls15 5y ago
    > Can you give me an example of a successful long-term nuclear storage facility that exists today? There are natural deposits of radioactive material and there have been natural nuclear reactors on our planet.
  - Fishman343 5y ago
    Nuclear power may be kicking the can down the road, but burning coal is just leaving the can for our immediate offspring already in their 20s and 30s. The article says least-cost, we're fresh out of perfect solutions.
    - shafyy 5y ago
emkoemko 5y ago
you do know this "toxic fission product" is natural? so why would it bother you if we just put it back from where it came from originally? unless you think nuclear material comes out of thin air.
weruiojkl24 5y ago
Why is everyone always complaining of what they _dont_ want, instead of saying what they want more of?
FBISurveillance 5y ago
We want that - amounts of fission byproduct are so much smaller in comparison to what you get by burning coal. Finland has one of the most advanced fission byproduct storages in the world and they are so freaking compact. Like, it's nothing like that green glowing substance they show in movies. Oh, and they will make money on it fast forward few decades, that fission byproduct will be fuel for future generation stations.
glogla 5y ago
"But what about the nucelar waste!" is not hard to grasp, it is a well known misinformation that some people are refusing to let go.
IAmNotAFix 5y ago
Contrarily to carbon byproduct, we know how to confine fission byproduct, at least short term (which is still better than neither short term nor long term).
lm28469 5y ago
But since we're not 3 years old toddlers and live in reality we still have to make decisions based on real life possibilities and not based on hippy pipe dreams. > we don't want We very much want (need) constant/on demand/large scale energy sources and renweables aren't up for that
Turing_Machine 5y ago
Who is "we" in this sentence, and why do you get to speak for "them"?

kieranmaine 5y ago

These sentences sum up the article quite well: "Previous studies have shown that curbing 80 percent of carbon emissions can be achieved by ramping up wind and solar power harvesting installations" and "To nail down that last 10 or 20 percent of decarbonization, we need to have more tools in our toolbox, and not just wind and solar," The "more tools" may be nuclear or it may be storage, depending on the cost of both technologies in the future: "Added Caldeira: “Our analysis looked at the cheapest way to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions assuming today’s prices..at today’s price, nuclear is the cheapest way to eliminate all electricity-system carbon emissions nearly everywhere...if energy storage technologies became very cheap, then wind and solar could potentially be the least-cost path to a zero-emission electricity system.”" IMO, it seems too early to bet on either, so carry on developing both until more data is available.

glogla 5y ago
I'm happy that this is getting some attention. There will never he "just renewable" power grid due to renewables intermittency. The realistic options are renewables + some other energy source, or renewables + a lot of storage. Renewables + storage has a problem: energy storage at scale is not a solved problem at all, either it is hard to build (pumped hydro) not scalable (batteries) or barely in PoC stages (various air storages and trains going uphill or whatever). Renewables + other energy source has the problem of "what is the other energy source" and right now, that is fossil fuels - there's a lot of greenwashing going on with natural gas, for example, which is as bad as coal with regards to carbon due to all the methane escaping along the way. Now the argument here is that without the storage being available, there has to be other energy source and in that case, the other energy source should be nuclear. Because the storage just doesn't exist so if the other energy source is not nuclear, it is going to be coal and gas. But of course, people are just going to ignore the situation and parrot FUDs like "nuclear is too expensive" and "what about the waste", effectively pushing for coal and gas.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pydry 5y ago

LatteLazy 5y ago

As always with nuclear the questions are cost, time and waste. Until there is an actual breakthrough on (at least) one of those three issues we're going no where.

Tepix 5y ago
There are also safety and corruption. Even in government owned nuclear plants (TEPCO) that don't have to optimize for profits we see these issues.
fsflover 5y ago
Those are non-problems: https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html and https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html.
- Tepix 5y ago
  Let's see, quoting from the second page you linked, under "New builds": Recent new construction of nuclear plants in the west has been fraught with boondoggle. The troubles with the Westinghouse AP1000 have been the most distressing to me personally, since the design was to be the conquering hero of the Nuclear Renaissance I was so excited about in nuclear engineering undergrad back in the mid-2000s. The July 2017 cancellation of the two AP1000s at VC Summer, the astronomical delays and overruns at Plant Vogtle, and the bankruptcy of Westinghouse were all devastating. Non-problems?
  - fsflover 5y ago
    The reason is cheap coal, not expensiveness of nuclear: If markets valued the low-CO2 nature of nuclear, they’d be doing better
lm28469 5y ago
This red cube (each side is 16m) represent every nuclear waste generated by france power plants during the last 60 years, it really isn't as hard to process as people make it. It's a problem but not a deal breaker https://twitter.com/laydgeur/status/1433463215321669633/photo/1 https://twitter.com/laydgeur/status/1433463215321669633/phot...

marmarama 5y ago

By the time any country in the west actually gets round to finishing enough grid-connected reactors to make a difference, we will be storing enough renewable energy through batteries and green hydrogen from seawater that the reactors will be expensive white elephants. The ramp-up time on reactors is just too long, the capital investments too big, and the reactors themselves too inflexible. Combined with the lack of appetite from the public for new reactors, it's just not worth it. Just like how wind and solar became cheap and widespread over the last decade, grid-scale energy storage is going to be the big change in the energy market over the coming decade. Surprisingly, it's going to be the fossil fuel industry that will make it happen, because they have the money and the will, and because selling green hydrogen and gas turbine electricity generation capacity allows them to transition to a low carbon future without changing their business model much.

rswskg 5y ago

ALWAYS WAS