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I find the debate over nuclear energy an interesting topic. From the information and evidence provided by the Environmentalists for Nuclear [1], from which Loel

by tcgv 4y ago

I find the debate over nuclear energy an interesting topic. From the information and evidence provided by the Environmentalists for Nuclear [1], from which Loelock was a member, I find it hard to understand why there's still so much opposition to nuclear energy. I'm not sure if I'm missing something (I'm open minded for valid arguments/evidence on either side) or if it's just that lobby and disinformation campaigns to preserve the status quo in favor of fossil fuel companies are really effective in turning the masses against nuclear energy (which would be very sad with respect to our potential to evolve as a civilization). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmentalists_for_Nuclear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmentalists_for_Nuclear

pfsalter 4y ago
I think it's mostly down to Chernobyl and the cold war. Speaking to people in their 60's (anecdotally) they seem to overestimate the risks of nuclear power and underestimate climate change. This is probably because there's such strong visual evidence for problems with the former. I'd also say that fossil fuels are very simple to understand; burn thing, generate power. Nuclear is much more 'magic'. And I don't doubt that the fossil fuel lobby is drastically larger than the nuclear power one, just so much more money in it
dane-pgp 4y ago
I think one basic argument against nuclear is that it can't produce energy as cheaply as renewables (and nuclear energy is getting more expensive while renewables are getting cheaper). If we had decided to invest heavily in nuclear 20 years ago, we might not be in the mess we're in now, but it's probably too late for nuclear to help now. Look at Flamanville unit 3, for example. They started building it in 2007, and it still isn't producing power (in fact just this year they announced more delays to its start date). Even if we abandoned all concerns about where they were built, and started building a load of them today, they probably wouldn't all be ready until after 2040 because there probably isn't enough spare capacity in skilled nuclear engineers to parallelise their production. By that time, batteries and power-to-gas could be cheaply supplying reliable energy to a grid that's over-provisioned with renewables, without having to worry about storing radioactive waste for thousands of years or proliferation risks.
- StillBored 4y ago
  Except we have been saying the same thing for 20-30 years. And when you actually look at the costs of wind/solar (although maybe solar thermal might be useful, but for various reasons its been abandoned) they aren't as cheap as the cost to install them because they have external costs which never get accounted for. Starting with the fact that the cheapest way to build them is to build a KW of wind/solar and match it with a KW of natural gas. When you start looking at overbuilding them to supply some kind of energy storage, or to meet even their nameplate capacity 100% of the time on average they suddenly become a lot more expensive. I posted elsewhere (and was downvoted) for posting one of the many studies of how much it actually costs to build a KW of energy using particular technologies in various countries, and it turns out that those numbers, can be summarized as: Nuke plants are expensive because we want them to be, they aren't as expensive in countries (South Korea, China, etc) where random people don't (or cant) sue to stop construction even when the reactors are the exact same technology being proposed in the US/Europe (because they parent company doing the design and construction is frequently US/European) Followed by, wind farm's aren't cheap, and the prices only go up when you start talking about offshore and on the tops of mountain ranges. So, its no surprise that people who just want cheap energy will continue to pick carbon sources. Some people look at this differently, There are fundamental laws around energy density which tend to inform the economics (aka dig a ton a uranium and process it, or dig 10T to extract Neodymium, Lithium, etc and then built something that has 1/1000000th the energy density). So, one can claim wind/solar are cheaper and getting cheaper, but its like comparing apples to oranges, there is a reason places like TX, which have a world leading level of wind installed, also have some of the dirtiest power around. Sorta the computer equivalent of building ones datacenter around the raw price/perf of a given CPU/SoC, while ignoring every other variable. Then wondering why the HW ends up costing more per unit perf (cause maybe the motherboards cost more) and why the energy bill is eating your lunch (cause the cores are running at some extreme clock rate, and burning power). Finally, to summarize, you simply cannot hand wave the largest problem with wind/solar away, which is the fact that they are not on demand dispatchable. To get reliable power of of them easily adds a good 10x cost multiplier or more if your not willing to use a carbon source as a backup. So, basically standing around yelling wind and solar, is the same as asking for more carbon. And using wind+solar+NG is cleaner than just NG along, but it actually costs just as much as Nukes built in countries without regulatory bodies setup to stop the construction of Nuke plants. Despite the fact that even plants built 50 years ago are the safest form of energy production in existence (safer than wind for sure) when measured by deaths per MWh.

by tcgv 4y ago

pfsalter 4y ago

I think it's mostly down to Chernobyl and the cold war. Speaking to people in their 60's (anecdotally) they seem to overestimate the risks of nuclear power and underestimate climate change. This is probably because there's such strong visual evidence for problems with the former. I'd also say that fossil fuels are very simple to understand; burn thing, generate power. Nuclear is much more 'magic'. And I don't doubt that the fossil fuel lobby is drastically larger than the nuclear power one, just so much more money in it

dane-pgp 4y ago

I think one basic argument against nuclear is that it can't produce energy as cheaply as renewables (and nuclear energy is getting more expensive while renewables are getting cheaper). If we had decided to invest heavily in nuclear 20 years ago, we might not be in the mess we're in now, but it's probably too late for nuclear to help now. Look at Flamanville unit 3, for example. They started building it in 2007, and it still isn't producing power (in fact just this year they announced more delays to its start date). Even if we abandoned all concerns about where they were built, and started building a load of them today, they probably wouldn't all be ready until after 2040 because there probably isn't enough spare capacity in skilled nuclear engineers to parallelise their production. By that time, batteries and power-to-gas could be cheaply supplying reliable energy to a grid that's over-provisioned with renewables, without having to worry about storing radioactive waste for thousands of years or proliferation risks.

StillBored 4y ago
Except we have been saying the same thing for 20-30 years. And when you actually look at the costs of wind/solar (although maybe solar thermal might be useful, but for various reasons its been abandoned) they aren't as cheap as the cost to install them because they have external costs which never get accounted for. Starting with the fact that the cheapest way to build them is to build a KW of wind/solar and match it with a KW of natural gas. When you start looking at overbuilding them to supply some kind of energy storage, or to meet even their nameplate capacity 100% of the time on average they suddenly become a lot more expensive. I posted elsewhere (and was downvoted) for posting one of the many studies of how much it actually costs to build a KW of energy using particular technologies in various countries, and it turns out that those numbers, can be summarized as: Nuke plants are expensive because we want them to be, they aren't as expensive in countries (South Korea, China, etc) where random people don't (or cant) sue to stop construction even when the reactors are the exact same technology being proposed in the US/Europe (because they parent company doing the design and construction is frequently US/European) Followed by, wind farm's aren't cheap, and the prices only go up when you start talking about offshore and on the tops of mountain ranges. So, its no surprise that people who just want cheap energy will continue to pick carbon sources. Some people look at this differently, There are fundamental laws around energy density which tend to inform the economics (aka dig a ton a uranium and process it, or dig 10T to extract Neodymium, Lithium, etc and then built something that has 1/1000000th the energy density). So, one can claim wind/solar are cheaper and getting cheaper, but its like comparing apples to oranges, there is a reason places like TX, which have a world leading level of wind installed, also have some of the dirtiest power around. Sorta the computer equivalent of building ones datacenter around the raw price/perf of a given CPU/SoC, while ignoring every other variable. Then wondering why the HW ends up costing more per unit perf (cause maybe the motherboards cost more) and why the energy bill is eating your lunch (cause the cores are running at some extreme clock rate, and burning power). Finally, to summarize, you simply cannot hand wave the largest problem with wind/solar away, which is the fact that they are not on demand dispatchable. To get reliable power of of them easily adds a good 10x cost multiplier or more if your not willing to use a carbon source as a backup. So, basically standing around yelling wind and solar, is the same as asking for more carbon. And using wind+solar+NG is cleaner than just NG along, but it actually costs just as much as Nukes built in countries without regulatory bodies setup to stop the construction of Nuke plants. Despite the fact that even plants built 50 years ago are the safest form of energy production in existence (safer than wind for sure) when measured by deaths per MWh.