8 ms·

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

by deusum 5y ago

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
    - bipson 5y ago
      Let's say there are different opinions on that. I won't adopt definitions forced by countries that also want natural gas plants to be categorized as "green" ("who cares what they emit?!")
      - fsflover 5y ago
        This is ad hominem. Nuclear doesn't generate the CO2.
        bipson 5y ago
        Hm, no, I don't think that's ad hominem. I didn't say nuclear does generate CO2. I said it produces waste, and that I have a definition of renewable that does not include nuclear. You first shifted the goalposts and said it is "green" (what is "green"?? who defines "green"?), citing sources. I discredited the sources, since it these are just announcements, made by (political) institutions, where politicians lobby for a re-labeling of certain energy sources, because it suits their agenda. None of this makes nuclear "renewable" in my book. IMO the world renewable implies something in the line of "self-regenerating"/"grows naturally"/"replenishes" and producing toxic waste in my world-view is orthogonal to that meaning. And don't try to explain that nuclear waste is non-toxic, I think my interest in discussing this really ends there.
  - tremon 5y ago
    most reactors cannot be shut down without taking weeks and months for safe re-starting. That's a design issue, not an inherent problem. There is no reason (other than cost) why the steam turbine can't be temporarily decoupled from the generator -- instant shutdown. You could even design a generator where the rotor can be (partially) retracted from the stator coils. Retracting or inserting more of the rotor would give you continuously variable control over the conversion factor from steam pressure to electrical power.
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"?

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

by deusum 5y ago

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

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
  - bipson 5y ago
    Let's say there are different opinions on that. I won't adopt definitions forced by countries that also want natural gas plants to be categorized as "green" ("who cares what they emit?!")
    - fsflover 5y ago
      This is ad hominem. Nuclear doesn't generate the CO2.
      - bipson 5y ago
        Hm, no, I don't think that's ad hominem. I didn't say nuclear does generate CO2. I said it produces waste, and that I have a definition of renewable that does not include nuclear. You first shifted the goalposts and said it is "green" (what is "green"?? who defines "green"?), citing sources. I discredited the sources, since it these are just announcements, made by (political) institutions, where politicians lobby for a re-labeling of certain energy sources, because it suits their agenda. None of this makes nuclear "renewable" in my book. IMO the world renewable implies something in the line of "self-regenerating"/"grows naturally"/"replenishes" and producing toxic waste in my world-view is orthogonal to that meaning. And don't try to explain that nuclear waste is non-toxic, I think my interest in discussing this really ends there.
- tremon 5y ago
  most reactors cannot be shut down without taking weeks and months for safe re-starting. That's a design issue, not an inherent problem. There is no reason (other than cost) why the steam turbine can't be temporarily decoupled from the generator -- instant shutdown. You could even design a generator where the rotor can be (partially) retracted from the stator coils. Retracting or inserting more of the rotor would give you continuously variable control over the conversion factor from steam pressure to electrical power.

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"?