5 ms·
I highly encourage you to look at this factsheet I only just found today [1]. Some highlights: > - Levelized cost of energy (LCOE) includes the lifetime costs
by jmyeet 4y ago
I highly encourage you to look at this factsheet I only just found today [1]. Some highlights:
> - Levelized cost of energy (LCOE) includes the lifetime costs of building, operating, maintaining, and fueling a power plant. Estimated LCOE for plants built in the near future are: combined cycle natural gas: 3.71 ¢/kWh; advanced nuclear: 6.31 ¢/kWh; and biomass: 8.92 ¢/kWh
and
> - Spent fuel is placed in a storage pool of circulating cooled water to absorb heat and block the high radioactivity of fission products
> - Many U.S. spent fuel pools are reaching capacity, necessitating the use of dry cask storage.
This point is often overlooked. Nuclear waste generates heat. It needs to be actively cooled, possibly for a decade or longer, until it can be stored in dry storage. There's transportation risk there (for tens of thousands of tons per year at current rates) and facilities that need to be maintained to do that. Plus adding water increases the risk of site contamination.
Also consider:
> - ... Managing nuclear waste requires very long-term planning. U.S. EPA was required to set radiation exposure limits in permanent waste storage facilities over an unprecedented timeframe—one million years
> - The U.S. has no permanent storage site.
TIL:
> - The U.S. Price-Anderson Act limits the liability of nuclear plant owners if a radioactive release occurs to $450 million for individual plants and $13.5 billion across all plants.
WHY?
This is the big problem with nuclear: failure modes have incredibly high cost but relatively low likelihood. Companies have limited liability so they get to pocket the profits for under-maintaining plants and move the costs to the government.
In addition to being a bad idea this presents a falsely cheap picture of the true costs of nuclear power.
In this same vein:
> - The Nuclear Waste Policy Act required the U.S. federal government to begin taking control of spent nuclear fuel in 1998.
Another cost shifted to the government.
EDIT: over the years I've learned that the more rabid one side of an argument is, the more likely they are to simply downvote anything they disagree with, regardless of the merit. This, sadly, is my experience with nuclear on HN (which isn't plagued with downvote-as-disagreement like, say, Reddit is). It's not a reason to be anti-nuclear but it sure makes it hard to be swayed by pro-nuclear arguments.
[1]: https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/energy/nuclear-energy-factsheet https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/energy/nuclear...
- gautamcgoel 4y agoI don't necessarily agree with this comment, but I do agree that it's sad this is getting downvotes. The comment is thoughtful and I learned something from it. I support building more reactors but I don't support reflexively shouting down commenters which take the opposite stance.
- thrown_22 4y agoI support _every_ method of power generation getting this treatment. But it's only nuclear that's held to this standard. No other source routinely has all deaths in the life cycle from ground to ground counted as part of a piece that's essentially a press release. Imagine if we had a solar article that started with: >While promising the new solar cell tech does nothing to address the ever increasing number of deaths associated with roof top solar, which has surpassed Chernobyl as of 2015. You'd call that article a coal industry hit job. Yet this is exactly what the OP's article does.
- drran 4y agoThe difference is that installation of solar panels without adhering to industry safety standards affects the individual, which makes the decision and profits from it, only. In case of nuclear and coal, consequences are shifted from the individuals, which make decisions and profits from them, to completely innocent people. It's written in clear text about this responsibility shifting in the comment, but you continue to do that responsibility shifting. I'm affected by Chornobyl, my parents are affected by Choronobyl, my brothers are affected by Chornobyl, my children are affected by Chornobyl, while we have zero profit from nuclear energy, and nobody asked our consent when the nuclear station was constructed. Moreover, our then government (Moscow) tried to hide all facts about tragedy, while our current government postponing research about cancer induced by Chornobyl radioactive pollution, so people like you can continue to claim that only few people killed by Chornobyl while thousands die every year due to increased levels of cancer.
- thrown_22 4y agoThe difference is that the costs of solar are hidden behind flowery language. Until people become honest that solar without batteries is impossible and we don't have the technology to store a days worth of energy then any comparison is misleading at best and a disaster at worst. Germany is looking at a winter where people may well freeze to death if Putin decides they should. Nuclear might sound bad when you know all the details about it. Renewables are just propaganda until their downsides are aired just as publicly. We don't live in a world where we get everything we want. Nuclear accidents are the only way we can have a first world life style with current technology without killing billions in 30 years from climate change. The longer we keep lying about this the more people will die.