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Sure, that's a good and fair point. I shouldn't say I oppose fusion R&D. I feel more like we should be more focused on deploying 100s of serialized LWR fission

Sure, that's a good and fair point. I shouldn't say I oppose fusion R&D. I feel more like we should be more focused on deploying 100s of serialized LWR fission plants right now alongside all the wind/solar/batteries/hydro to solve climate change, while also investing R&D into things like advanced fission and fusion, and geothermal. There's certainly an under-investment in low carbon energy tech in general compared to the world GDP imho. Still, I do feel that some fusion hype is partially due to people not giving fission enough credit though. Happy to be back, thanks!

godelski 4y ago
Yeah, then we're on the same page. But one note, I don't think fusion has the same uphill battle that fission does. You mentioned that the fission industry just hasn't been able to properly demonstrate what they can do, but I don't think this is entirely it. We do have to consider the decades worth of campaigning and lobbying by coal and gas that went after nuclear. That these campaigns even infiltrated the biggest green lobbying groups: Sierra Nevada and Green Peace. Fusion doesn't have this same battle to overcome. I'm in the state just south of you and we're very pro green, but our green politicians still talk about fission and "the dangers." Hanford is still discussed with a lot of fervor. Such history and momentum doesn't exist with fusion other than "20 years away." I understand why a lot of people have effectively given up and why a lot of climate scientists don't bring it up, but will admit that they aren't against fission (usually with that precise wording). Honestly, I think it is more on the climate scientists at this point to be vocal about it.
- smallnamespace 4y ago
  People are scared of the word nuclear, and that applies to fusion as well.
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  Honestly, I think it is more on the climate scientists at this point to be vocal about it. I think you hit the nail on the head here. It's understandable that science-illiterate, climate change-denier types fear fission. The fossil fuel industry has done an excellent job percolating their pro fossil-fuel agenda and fomenting fear of the unknown. This is the unavoidable enemy. The only way to counter this would be for green types (Greenpeace, etc, as you say) and climate scientists to unite and promote fission. I do not think this is remotely likely, but it is the only thing that would remotely stand a chance of countering the fossil fuel industry in the battle for public mindset and votes. I would be absolutely stunned if this happened before billions are displaced due to fossil fuel-caused climate change, and I actually don't think it will happen even then. The status quo will continue as long as the fossil fuel companies remain rich... so, basically until civilizational collapse. Simply put, fission got an extremely raw deal. It was stabbed in the back and buried by the people who should have supported it, based on their stated goals and beliefs. Nothing can survive that.
  - joak 4y ago
    This conversation seems to me a bit outdated: building a fission reactor takes one or two decades and its kWh is costlier than alternatives. To get something cheaper, we need to wait for the next gen of technology, in one or two decades. Lucky if we can compete with the costs of solar, wind and batteries in a decade. Even with the support of greens, government, scientists, etc this is going no where. Nuclear fission is dead, why trying to revive it? What's the point?
    - JohnBooty 4y ago
      building a fission reactor takes one or two decades and its kWh is costlier than alternatives It didn't and doesn't need to be that way. Obviously we need strong regulatory oversight over nuclear power, but a big part of the cost is the need to satisfy incredibly hostile regulations imposed by politicians who are (a) pandering to public fear (b) heavily influence by the fossil fuel industry. Also, talking about kWh cost in the short term is... missing a large portion of the point. Burning fossil fuels is only "cheap" if all the long term damage is ignored. Let's talk about how cheap it is once we start truly paying the price for climate change to the tune of billions of lives and many quadrillions of dollars.
      - logifail 4y ago
        > > building a fission reactor takes one or two decades and its kWh is costlier than alternatives > It didn't and doesn't need to be that way [..] a big part of the cost is the need to satisfy incredibly hostile regulations [..] (Alleged over-)regulation is only part of the story. "analysis, done by a team of researchers at MIT, is remarkably comprehensive. For many nuclear plants, they have detailed construction records, broken out by which building different materials and labor went to, and how much each of them cost. There's also a detailed record of safety regulations and when they were instituted relative to construction. Finally, they've also brought in the patent applications filed by the companies who designed the reactors. The documents describe the motivations for design changes and the problems those changes were intended to solve."[0] "while safety regulations added to the costs, they were far from the primary factor. And deciding whether they were worthwhile costs would require a detailed analysis of every regulatory change in light of accidents like Three Mile Island and Fukushima" [0] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/why-are-nuclear-plants-so-expensive-safetys-only-part-of-the-story/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/why-are-nuclear-plan...
- jabl 4y ago
  > Fusion doesn't have this same battle to overcome. Ha ha, Greenpeace has already per-emptively decided they hate fusion too.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Greenpeace gives no shit about Emperors having no clothes, so they've been pointing out the grave economic barriers to DT fusion, and also the implications of fusion for proliferation. And they're entirely right about that.
Retric 4y ago
The issue when you say let’s build X00 new LWR is just cost vs benefit. Something like 5 Trillion in additional nuclear subsidies might slow down climate change a low single digit percentage over the next 30 years. This relates not just to the high cost of nuclear but also the delay between deciding to build nuclear and actually getting low carbon energy from a nuclear reactor. Spend 1/4th that on solar or wind subsidies and you get vastly more carbon free energy sooner without any concerns for politically inconvenient disasters. 1 nuclear reactor can be quite safe, but 500 of them is 500 times the risk. Even a largely non issue Fukushima style disaster is still a major political and economic issue. Fission is quite useful, and I hope it continues to provide largely carbon free energy into the future. It’s just not a great use of the resources required to make a real difference. The outlook for Fusion over the next few decades doesn’t look very good, but it’s also received vastly less investment. It’s IMO a low odds but low cost bet that might pay off but probably won’t.
- justforthisandn 4y ago
  People have issues with really visualizing and understanding order of magnitudes, I get it. > Spend 1/4th that on solar or wind subsidies and you get vastly more carbon free energy Have you done the math, or are you just making that figure up? One single LWR generates from 1GW onwards. Do you know how much solar you need to generate the same amount of power? And that's disregarding the obvious issues with non-constant energy output. Plus - solar and wind, if you factor in the energy required to manifacture the components necessary for their operation, have negative EROI. https://energyeducation.se/wind-and-solar-energy-are-neither-renewable-nor-sustainable/ https://energyeducation.se/wind-and-solar-energy-are-neither... I have literally no idea why people think that solar and wind are a solution to the energy problem. It's like nobody has actually looked into the math and said "wow this makes me feel good so I'll support it". Let me repeat it, solar and wind have _negative_ EROI. If you invest in solar and wind, you're net losing energy. > 1 nuclear reactor can be quite safe, but 500 of them is 500 times the risk Modern nuclear is exceptionally safe. Europe is switching to freaking _coal_ in an effort not to freeze this winter. Statistically, they're killing hundreds of times more people than if they switched to nuclear at the right time. They're shutting down most of their nuclear for unknown reasons as well.
cinntaile 4y ago
> Still, I do feel that some fusion hype is partially due to people not giving fission enough credit though I wonder if this is more a marketing thing. Fission has a bad rep so people try to evade it by getting funding for fusion or SMRs (I know this is fission too) instead. Which people don't associate with classical nuclear reactor tech. Even though it's probably better to just put that money towards a new AP1000 from a cost perspective.
- thinkcontext 4y ago
  It's extremely unlikely any more AP1000s will be built in the US. All projects that were in the development pipeline have been cancelled due to the spectacular financial failures that Summer and Vogtle have been. The only way it could happen is if the feds took on construction risk.
  - cinntaile 4y ago
    That's a fair point, I don't know if there are any other fission reactor candidates that have a better shot at succeeding? Maybe SMRs are the only possible candidates even though the economics ($/kWh) are likely worse, if they can build them on time then at least we're working with a predictable outcome.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

godelski 4y ago

Yeah, then we're on the same page. But one note, I don't think fusion has the same uphill battle that fission does. You mentioned that the fission industry just hasn't been able to properly demonstrate what they can do, but I don't think this is entirely it. We do have to consider the decades worth of campaigning and lobbying by coal and gas that went after nuclear. That these campaigns even infiltrated the biggest green lobbying groups: Sierra Nevada and Green Peace. Fusion doesn't have this same battle to overcome. I'm in the state just south of you and we're very pro green, but our green politicians still talk about fission and "the dangers." Hanford is still discussed with a lot of fervor. Such history and momentum doesn't exist with fusion other than "20 years away." I understand why a lot of people have effectively given up and why a lot of climate scientists don't bring it up, but will admit that they aren't against fission (usually with that precise wording). Honestly, I think it is more on the climate scientists at this point to be vocal about it.

smallnamespace 4y ago
People are scared of the word nuclear, and that applies to fusion as well.
JohnBooty 4y ago
Honestly, I think it is more on the climate scientists at this point to be vocal about it. I think you hit the nail on the head here. It's understandable that science-illiterate, climate change-denier types fear fission. The fossil fuel industry has done an excellent job percolating their pro fossil-fuel agenda and fomenting fear of the unknown. This is the unavoidable enemy. The only way to counter this would be for green types (Greenpeace, etc, as you say) and climate scientists to unite and promote fission. I do not think this is remotely likely, but it is the only thing that would remotely stand a chance of countering the fossil fuel industry in the battle for public mindset and votes. I would be absolutely stunned if this happened before billions are displaced due to fossil fuel-caused climate change, and I actually don't think it will happen even then. The status quo will continue as long as the fossil fuel companies remain rich... so, basically until civilizational collapse. Simply put, fission got an extremely raw deal. It was stabbed in the back and buried by the people who should have supported it, based on their stated goals and beliefs. Nothing can survive that.
- joak 4y ago
  This conversation seems to me a bit outdated: building a fission reactor takes one or two decades and its kWh is costlier than alternatives. To get something cheaper, we need to wait for the next gen of technology, in one or two decades. Lucky if we can compete with the costs of solar, wind and batteries in a decade. Even with the support of greens, government, scientists, etc this is going no where. Nuclear fission is dead, why trying to revive it? What's the point?
  - JohnBooty 4y ago
    building a fission reactor takes one or two decades and its kWh is costlier than alternatives It didn't and doesn't need to be that way. Obviously we need strong regulatory oversight over nuclear power, but a big part of the cost is the need to satisfy incredibly hostile regulations imposed by politicians who are (a) pandering to public fear (b) heavily influence by the fossil fuel industry. Also, talking about kWh cost in the short term is... missing a large portion of the point. Burning fossil fuels is only "cheap" if all the long term damage is ignored. Let's talk about how cheap it is once we start truly paying the price for climate change to the tune of billions of lives and many quadrillions of dollars.
    - logifail 4y ago
      > > building a fission reactor takes one or two decades and its kWh is costlier than alternatives > It didn't and doesn't need to be that way [..] a big part of the cost is the need to satisfy incredibly hostile regulations [..] (Alleged over-)regulation is only part of the story. "analysis, done by a team of researchers at MIT, is remarkably comprehensive. For many nuclear plants, they have detailed construction records, broken out by which building different materials and labor went to, and how much each of them cost. There's also a detailed record of safety regulations and when they were instituted relative to construction. Finally, they've also brought in the patent applications filed by the companies who designed the reactors. The documents describe the motivations for design changes and the problems those changes were intended to solve."[0] "while safety regulations added to the costs, they were far from the primary factor. And deciding whether they were worthwhile costs would require a detailed analysis of every regulatory change in light of accidents like Three Mile Island and Fukushima" [0] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/why-are-nuclear-plants-so-expensive-safetys-only-part-of-the-story/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/why-are-nuclear-plan...
jabl 4y ago
> Fusion doesn't have this same battle to overcome. Ha ha, Greenpeace has already per-emptively decided they hate fusion too.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Greenpeace gives no shit about Emperors having no clothes, so they've been pointing out the grave economic barriers to DT fusion, and also the implications of fusion for proliferation. And they're entirely right about that.

Retric 4y ago

The issue when you say let’s build X00 new LWR is just cost vs benefit. Something like 5 Trillion in additional nuclear subsidies might slow down climate change a low single digit percentage over the next 30 years. This relates not just to the high cost of nuclear but also the delay between deciding to build nuclear and actually getting low carbon energy from a nuclear reactor. Spend 1/4th that on solar or wind subsidies and you get vastly more carbon free energy sooner without any concerns for politically inconvenient disasters. 1 nuclear reactor can be quite safe, but 500 of them is 500 times the risk. Even a largely non issue Fukushima style disaster is still a major political and economic issue. Fission is quite useful, and I hope it continues to provide largely carbon free energy into the future. It’s just not a great use of the resources required to make a real difference. The outlook for Fusion over the next few decades doesn’t look very good, but it’s also received vastly less investment. It’s IMO a low odds but low cost bet that might pay off but probably won’t.

justforthisandn 4y ago
People have issues with really visualizing and understanding order of magnitudes, I get it. > Spend 1/4th that on solar or wind subsidies and you get vastly more carbon free energy Have you done the math, or are you just making that figure up? One single LWR generates from 1GW onwards. Do you know how much solar you need to generate the same amount of power? And that's disregarding the obvious issues with non-constant energy output. Plus - solar and wind, if you factor in the energy required to manifacture the components necessary for their operation, have negative EROI. https://energyeducation.se/wind-and-solar-energy-are-neither-renewable-nor-sustainable/ https://energyeducation.se/wind-and-solar-energy-are-neither... I have literally no idea why people think that solar and wind are a solution to the energy problem. It's like nobody has actually looked into the math and said "wow this makes me feel good so I'll support it". Let me repeat it, solar and wind have _negative_ EROI. If you invest in solar and wind, you're net losing energy. > 1 nuclear reactor can be quite safe, but 500 of them is 500 times the risk Modern nuclear is exceptionally safe. Europe is switching to freaking _coal_ in an effort not to freeze this winter. Statistically, they're killing hundreds of times more people than if they switched to nuclear at the right time. They're shutting down most of their nuclear for unknown reasons as well.

cinntaile 4y ago

> Still, I do feel that some fusion hype is partially due to people not giving fission enough credit though I wonder if this is more a marketing thing. Fission has a bad rep so people try to evade it by getting funding for fusion or SMRs (I know this is fission too) instead. Which people don't associate with classical nuclear reactor tech. Even though it's probably better to just put that money towards a new AP1000 from a cost perspective.

thinkcontext 4y ago
It's extremely unlikely any more AP1000s will be built in the US. All projects that were in the development pipeline have been cancelled due to the spectacular financial failures that Summer and Vogtle have been. The only way it could happen is if the feds took on construction risk.
- cinntaile 4y ago
  That's a fair point, I don't know if there are any other fission reactor candidates that have a better shot at succeeding? Maybe SMRs are the only possible candidates even though the economics ($/kWh) are likely worse, if they can build them on time then at least we're working with a predictable outcome.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]