7 ms·

And the cape is made out of run dry riverbeds of cooling water. Not to mention that waste handling is still not a solved problem, but sure, let's put all our eg

And the cape is made out of run dry riverbeds of cooling water. Not to mention that waste handling is still not a solved problem, but sure, let's put all our eggs into a single danger-basket of extinction (again) - what could possibly go wrong?

melling 4y ago
After 40 years, perhaps the anti-nuclear movement could realize they were wrong. Burning all that coal for the past half century was a really bad idea. In the meantime, we patiently wait for another solution. Today we could be talking about being carbon neutral by 2070 instead of 2050 but we decided to wait. Now we need to spend money to “adapt” to climate change. https://hbr.org/2022/08/its-time-to-invest-in-climate-adaptation https://hbr.org/2022/08/its-time-to-invest-in-climate-adapta...
- ncmncm 4y ago
  After 60 years perhaps the nuke-boosters can admit that nukes were never a good idea. They have always depended on massive public subsidy to appear competitive. Now nukes are radically more expensive than alternatives even neglecting the massive subsidies. Each dollar diverted from renewables to nukes brings climate catastrophe nearer.
  - treeman79 4y ago
    - dang 4y ago
      Breaking the site guidelines like this will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. We've had to warn you about this kind of thing more than once in the past. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
  - bogantech 4y ago
    Yeah thank god we went with the cheaper option that instead will make large parts of the planet uninhabitable /s
    - monkaiju 4y ago
      ?
  - kennend3 4y ago
    Time will tell... My province (Ontario) use to have one of the largest coal plants in the world (Nanticoke 3964 MW). It was finally shutdown and now most of our power is "green" 59% from nuclear, 24% from hydroelectricity, 8% from wind, and 1% from solar. Curious.. if "solar" and "wind" are so great why is Nuclear producing 59% of our energy? Perhaps because our climate isnt great for solar (dark winters)? No matter the energy source, NIMBY will be there to protest. when we built wind farms the protesters claimed it "made them sick"?? "Wind turbines making us sick: Protesters" When we built solar, they protested that too: "Solar project demonstration in Tay Township" Everyone LOVES the convenience of power, as long as the generation is not near them? I live within 10KM of a rather large (3,100 MW) nuclear plant, i have no issues with it as it is cleaner vs most sources and delivers reliable power.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      It costs more to operate nukes than renewables, even neglecting the staggering capital expenditure nukes cost. As a result, existing nukes will be mothballed as they become unable to sell power at a price that enables them to continue operating. Financing to build new ones is already prohibitive, except under government coercion.
      - kennend3 4y ago
        Odd.. because this is NOT what took place here (Ontario) where our government pushed us to near-bankruptcy debt by signing long-term contracts to build "green energy". it cost them an election, and many years later the party responsible for those decisions (among others) have yet to gain "party status". Can you show us any "renewables" that were not government subsidized as well? https://www.fao-on.org/en/Blog/Publications/2021-commercial-industrial-electricity#:~:text=The%20renewable%20generation%20subsidy%20will%20subsidize%20%241.8%20billion%20in%20electricity,portion%20of%20their%20electricity%20bills https://www.fao-on.org/en/Blog/Publications/2021-commercial-.... Seems "renweables" love the government subsidy bandagon as well? Speaking of "government coercion" - this is exactly how Ontario got green energy in the first place. First they mandated it, then they forced people to accept the wind farms despite their numerous protests. take a read: https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-wind-power-opponents-protest-in-toronto-1.791208 https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-wind-power-opponents-prot... As i posted above, no matter the power source, you can be 100% confident NIMBY will be there to protest it. In Ontario, the cost to generate power is : - Hydroelectric (5cents) - Wind (8.6 cents) - Solar (15.7 cents) - Nuclear (16.5 cents). Added bonus, nuclear produces power 24x7, when it is raining or cloudy, when we have a heat wave and zero winds.. in the cold dark winter nights... If renewables are such a good deal, why is there so little of it? As i posted, Ontario gets 59% of its power from nuclear, 5% from wind and 1% from solar...
  - jjk166 4y ago
    It's almost like a concerted effort over the past several decades to put up so many obstacles to nuclear construction that the cost of clearing such political hurdles can't be justified has worked. The fact that nuclear costs only skyrocketed in the US while they stayed relatively constant or decreased in other countries suggests quite strongly the issue is political, not technical. In countries like South Korea, the LCOE of nuclear is less than half that of solar.
- loopback_device 4y ago
  Where does this idea that the anti-nuclear movement advocated for fossil fuels come from? That's never been the case, as anyone who lived at the time of the early protests can tell you (or anyone who's parents did). Even Wikipedia has a whole section on that topic [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement#Nuclear-free_alternatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement#Nuclear-...
  - jjk166 4y ago
    The members of the anti-nuclear movement didn't intend to advocate for fossil fuels, but in practice that's exactly what they did. When the choice is between a nuclear plant and a coal plant, being anti nuclear is being pro coal. That's why many organizations opposing nuclear power received substantial donations from the fossil fuel industry - because they wanted their opponents to fight amongst themselves.
  - ttfkam 4y ago
    Everyone wants the lights and heat to stay on. If that isn't coming from nuclear, it has to come from somewhere, and for the first several decades, it couldn't come from solar and wind. Coal was the inevitable base load power source given a lack of alternatives. If you focus on limiting nuclear with far greater zeal than coal, this is the result. See: perfect is the enemy of good.
    - EricE 4y ago
      It still can't come from solar or wind. Even if we waved a magic wand and had infinite and free energy storage, scaling solar and wind for sustained base load support is still a pipe dream. We are struggling to recycle the minuscule waste stream for solar and wind right now. Heck for wind turbine blades we aren't even really doing anything meaningful - meanwhile they are stacking up. Without nuclear we are not getting off of fossil fuels - period.
  - throwawayffffas 4y ago
    I don't think anyone thinks the activists are pro fossil fuels, but by stopping the development of nuclear projects they essentially served the fossil fuels industry interests. It's not an accident for example that Friends of the Earth was founded by money from an oil magnate. From the groups wikipedia page: > stopped more than 150 destructive dams and water projects worldwide While I empathize with the desire to preserve waterways, you can be sure that for each one of these dams that didn't get built a coal or gas plant didn't shutdown.
mnw21cam 4y ago
Coal and gas power stations need cooling water in exactly the same way as nuclear. Regarding the waste, I'd much rather have the very small amount of nuclear waste produced by a nuclear power station kept somewhere nice and safe than the humongous amount of waste that coal and gas produce and spew out into our atmosphere. A coal power station releases more radioactive waste than a nuclear one. Even the renewables produce quite an impressive waste stream compared to nuclear
- kennend3 4y ago
  This! People like the person you responded to seem to think nuclear power plants are producing tons of high level waste per day. Fact is most of the used fuel for the operating reactors are safely stored ON SITE because there is actually very little "radioactive waste". If not for NIMBY disposing the waste would be fairly straightforward. were i live (canada) we have the "canadian shield" which contains rocks as old as 4 billion years. If we stored super-scary-plutonium there it would remain sealed long enough that all the plutonium would safely decay away. But the NIMBY state - "it isn't stable, it isn't safe, how do you now it will remain stable". Where exactly is all that rock going? why would it suddenly do this when it has remained in place for a few billion years so far?
  - loopback_device 4y ago
    People like me don't think they produce massive amounts of waste. I am well aware how "little" waste material they produce. The issue is not the volume, but that you only need very little of it to completely deny a large area to living organisms like us for a very long time. Also, the on site storage facilities for spent fuel are only temporary holding pools until it goes off to a treatment facility, to then either be reprocessed for re-use or to be disposed of. Safety concerns with this stuff are not necessarily about the short term storage. Not that there aren't any risks associated with that – let's say, for example, a nuclear power plant being shot at with heavy artillery by a certain military? That'll certainly do. There's this mind-boggling hubris that these materials can be kept safe and controlled under all circumstances, for all of their decay time. Sure, burying it under that mountain or in a salt mine is going to help, until you find that the containers have corroded, and you've now got it in your ground- and drinking-water. [1] [1]: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0579-x https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0579-x EDIT: Missing link
exabrial 4y ago
For FUCKS SAKE: Nuclear waste is a non issue. You dedicate once, EXACTLY ONE, swimming pool to store spent fuel for an entire country. The lie of nuclear waste has been repeated so many time by uneducated fossil fuel lovers we’ve missed hundreds of opportunities to provide clean sustainable power for generations. There are some logistic and construction problems that need optimization, but waste is the least of them.
- loopback_device 4y ago
  Not sure how regarding nuclear fission as reasonably dangerous automatically makes you a "fossil fuel lover", but okay. It's not like there aren't any other options out there. They just haven't received much investment in the past decades (except for a few places, i.e. geothermal in Iceland). I'd like to be educated about that radioactive waste lie – I've not seen it work (meaning no-maintenance, safe, long-term or permanent storage) yet anywhere. And yet, supposedly a solved problem. Waste processing & storage has a long history of irradiating, or even leaking into the environment – one that immediately comes to mind is Sellafield [1], which is a repeat offender. Gorleben [2], another more recent example of how the "solved problem" turned out to be mainly money in other people's pockets. In the US, they recently had an issue with waste stored on the surface [3]. The list is long, and growing – yet not a single storage facility exists that is deemed permanently safe? I also don't know of any such facility currently under construction. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield#Incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield#Incidents [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorleben_salt_dome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorleben_salt_dome [3]: https://nypost.com/2021/04/03/leak-of-radioactive-wastewater-plant-in-florida-imminent-officials/ https://nypost.com/2021/04/03/leak-of-radioactive-wastewater...
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    Finally someone with a realistic view on the waste problem. To me it just seems we're exchanging the results of not tackling one long-term problem (climate change) with another even longer term problem. Externalizing to the future. We don't seem to have any other ideas.
  - exabrial 4y ago
rekabis 4y ago
>waste handling is still not a solved problem Yes, yes it is. 1. There are a number of sites that have the geological stability and impermeability for long term storage. 2. Thorium reactors can take nuclear waste products and re-process them down (along side their standard thorium fuel) into “radioactive waste” that only needs a century or two of minimal safe storage before it’s harmless. 3. Modern _non-breeder_ reactors produce very little of the severe waste that needs billions of years of storage. Problem is, many current reactors in the States are breeder reactors that are _meant_ to help build nuclear weapons, and so are optimized to produce massive amounts of highly radioactive waste.
- loopback_device 4y ago
  > 1. There are a number of sites that have the geological stability and impermeability for long term storage. And yet, not one of them has been developed into a storage facility so far. Also, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32471115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32471115 – having prospective storage sites that look nice and stable is great and all, just not the current reality, and likely also not a near-future reality. > 2. Thorium reactors can take nuclear waste products and re-process them down Would be good to have them, not a single one commercially operating at the moment though. China has apparently built a test reactor recently – curious to see how that develops.
  - EricE 4y ago
    Better hope China doesn't do more than build a test reactor. Cheap and abundant energy is what built the west. China is poised to severely lap the rest of the world while we continue to point fingers and argue :p
EricE 4y ago
Waste handling? Burn it in newer, modern designs instead of (stupidly) burying it.

melling 4y ago

After 40 years, perhaps the anti-nuclear movement could realize they were wrong. Burning all that coal for the past half century was a really bad idea. In the meantime, we patiently wait for another solution. Today we could be talking about being carbon neutral by 2070 instead of 2050 but we decided to wait. Now we need to spend money to “adapt” to climate change. https://hbr.org/2022/08/its-time-to-invest-in-climate-adaptation https://hbr.org/2022/08/its-time-to-invest-in-climate-adapta...

ncmncm 4y ago
After 60 years perhaps the nuke-boosters can admit that nukes were never a good idea. They have always depended on massive public subsidy to appear competitive. Now nukes are radically more expensive than alternatives even neglecting the massive subsidies. Each dollar diverted from renewables to nukes brings climate catastrophe nearer.
- treeman79 4y ago
  - dang 4y ago
    Breaking the site guidelines like this will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. We've had to warn you about this kind of thing more than once in the past. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
- bogantech 4y ago
  Yeah thank god we went with the cheaper option that instead will make large parts of the planet uninhabitable /s
  - monkaiju 4y ago
    ?
- kennend3 4y ago
  Time will tell... My province (Ontario) use to have one of the largest coal plants in the world (Nanticoke 3964 MW). It was finally shutdown and now most of our power is "green" 59% from nuclear, 24% from hydroelectricity, 8% from wind, and 1% from solar. Curious.. if "solar" and "wind" are so great why is Nuclear producing 59% of our energy? Perhaps because our climate isnt great for solar (dark winters)? No matter the energy source, NIMBY will be there to protest. when we built wind farms the protesters claimed it "made them sick"?? "Wind turbines making us sick: Protesters" When we built solar, they protested that too: "Solar project demonstration in Tay Township" Everyone LOVES the convenience of power, as long as the generation is not near them? I live within 10KM of a rather large (3,100 MW) nuclear plant, i have no issues with it as it is cleaner vs most sources and delivers reliable power.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    It costs more to operate nukes than renewables, even neglecting the staggering capital expenditure nukes cost. As a result, existing nukes will be mothballed as they become unable to sell power at a price that enables them to continue operating. Financing to build new ones is already prohibitive, except under government coercion.
    - kennend3 4y ago
      Odd.. because this is NOT what took place here (Ontario) where our government pushed us to near-bankruptcy debt by signing long-term contracts to build "green energy". it cost them an election, and many years later the party responsible for those decisions (among others) have yet to gain "party status". Can you show us any "renewables" that were not government subsidized as well? https://www.fao-on.org/en/Blog/Publications/2021-commercial-industrial-electricity#:~:text=The%20renewable%20generation%20subsidy%20will%20subsidize%20%241.8%20billion%20in%20electricity,portion%20of%20their%20electricity%20bills https://www.fao-on.org/en/Blog/Publications/2021-commercial-.... Seems "renweables" love the government subsidy bandagon as well? Speaking of "government coercion" - this is exactly how Ontario got green energy in the first place. First they mandated it, then they forced people to accept the wind farms despite their numerous protests. take a read: https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-wind-power-opponents-protest-in-toronto-1.791208 https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-wind-power-opponents-prot... As i posted above, no matter the power source, you can be 100% confident NIMBY will be there to protest it. In Ontario, the cost to generate power is : - Hydroelectric (5cents) - Wind (8.6 cents) - Solar (15.7 cents) - Nuclear (16.5 cents). Added bonus, nuclear produces power 24x7, when it is raining or cloudy, when we have a heat wave and zero winds.. in the cold dark winter nights... If renewables are such a good deal, why is there so little of it? As i posted, Ontario gets 59% of its power from nuclear, 5% from wind and 1% from solar...
- jjk166 4y ago
  It's almost like a concerted effort over the past several decades to put up so many obstacles to nuclear construction that the cost of clearing such political hurdles can't be justified has worked. The fact that nuclear costs only skyrocketed in the US while they stayed relatively constant or decreased in other countries suggests quite strongly the issue is political, not technical. In countries like South Korea, the LCOE of nuclear is less than half that of solar.
loopback_device 4y ago
Where does this idea that the anti-nuclear movement advocated for fossil fuels come from? That's never been the case, as anyone who lived at the time of the early protests can tell you (or anyone who's parents did). Even Wikipedia has a whole section on that topic [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement#Nuclear-free_alternatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement#Nuclear-...
- jjk166 4y ago
  The members of the anti-nuclear movement didn't intend to advocate for fossil fuels, but in practice that's exactly what they did. When the choice is between a nuclear plant and a coal plant, being anti nuclear is being pro coal. That's why many organizations opposing nuclear power received substantial donations from the fossil fuel industry - because they wanted their opponents to fight amongst themselves.
- ttfkam 4y ago
  Everyone wants the lights and heat to stay on. If that isn't coming from nuclear, it has to come from somewhere, and for the first several decades, it couldn't come from solar and wind. Coal was the inevitable base load power source given a lack of alternatives. If you focus on limiting nuclear with far greater zeal than coal, this is the result. See: perfect is the enemy of good.
  - EricE 4y ago
    It still can't come from solar or wind. Even if we waved a magic wand and had infinite and free energy storage, scaling solar and wind for sustained base load support is still a pipe dream. We are struggling to recycle the minuscule waste stream for solar and wind right now. Heck for wind turbine blades we aren't even really doing anything meaningful - meanwhile they are stacking up. Without nuclear we are not getting off of fossil fuels - period.
- throwawayffffas 4y ago
  I don't think anyone thinks the activists are pro fossil fuels, but by stopping the development of nuclear projects they essentially served the fossil fuels industry interests. It's not an accident for example that Friends of the Earth was founded by money from an oil magnate. From the groups wikipedia page: > stopped more than 150 destructive dams and water projects worldwide While I empathize with the desire to preserve waterways, you can be sure that for each one of these dams that didn't get built a coal or gas plant didn't shutdown.

mnw21cam 4y ago

Coal and gas power stations need cooling water in exactly the same way as nuclear. Regarding the waste, I'd much rather have the very small amount of nuclear waste produced by a nuclear power station kept somewhere nice and safe than the humongous amount of waste that coal and gas produce and spew out into our atmosphere. A coal power station releases more radioactive waste than a nuclear one. Even the renewables produce quite an impressive waste stream compared to nuclear

kennend3 4y ago
This! People like the person you responded to seem to think nuclear power plants are producing tons of high level waste per day. Fact is most of the used fuel for the operating reactors are safely stored ON SITE because there is actually very little "radioactive waste". If not for NIMBY disposing the waste would be fairly straightforward. were i live (canada) we have the "canadian shield" which contains rocks as old as 4 billion years. If we stored super-scary-plutonium there it would remain sealed long enough that all the plutonium would safely decay away. But the NIMBY state - "it isn't stable, it isn't safe, how do you now it will remain stable". Where exactly is all that rock going? why would it suddenly do this when it has remained in place for a few billion years so far?
- loopback_device 4y ago
  People like me don't think they produce massive amounts of waste. I am well aware how "little" waste material they produce. The issue is not the volume, but that you only need very little of it to completely deny a large area to living organisms like us for a very long time. Also, the on site storage facilities for spent fuel are only temporary holding pools until it goes off to a treatment facility, to then either be reprocessed for re-use or to be disposed of. Safety concerns with this stuff are not necessarily about the short term storage. Not that there aren't any risks associated with that – let's say, for example, a nuclear power plant being shot at with heavy artillery by a certain military? That'll certainly do. There's this mind-boggling hubris that these materials can be kept safe and controlled under all circumstances, for all of their decay time. Sure, burying it under that mountain or in a salt mine is going to help, until you find that the containers have corroded, and you've now got it in your ground- and drinking-water. [1] [1]: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0579-x https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0579-x EDIT: Missing link

exabrial 4y ago

For FUCKS SAKE: Nuclear waste is a non issue. You dedicate once, EXACTLY ONE, swimming pool to store spent fuel for an entire country. The lie of nuclear waste has been repeated so many time by uneducated fossil fuel lovers we’ve missed hundreds of opportunities to provide clean sustainable power for generations. There are some logistic and construction problems that need optimization, but waste is the least of them.

loopback_device 4y ago
Not sure how regarding nuclear fission as reasonably dangerous automatically makes you a "fossil fuel lover", but okay. It's not like there aren't any other options out there. They just haven't received much investment in the past decades (except for a few places, i.e. geothermal in Iceland). I'd like to be educated about that radioactive waste lie – I've not seen it work (meaning no-maintenance, safe, long-term or permanent storage) yet anywhere. And yet, supposedly a solved problem. Waste processing & storage has a long history of irradiating, or even leaking into the environment – one that immediately comes to mind is Sellafield [1], which is a repeat offender. Gorleben [2], another more recent example of how the "solved problem" turned out to be mainly money in other people's pockets. In the US, they recently had an issue with waste stored on the surface [3]. The list is long, and growing – yet not a single storage facility exists that is deemed permanently safe? I also don't know of any such facility currently under construction. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield#Incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield#Incidents [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorleben_salt_dome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorleben_salt_dome [3]: https://nypost.com/2021/04/03/leak-of-radioactive-wastewater-plant-in-florida-imminent-officials/ https://nypost.com/2021/04/03/leak-of-radioactive-wastewater...
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  Finally someone with a realistic view on the waste problem. To me it just seems we're exchanging the results of not tackling one long-term problem (climate change) with another even longer term problem. Externalizing to the future. We don't seem to have any other ideas.
- exabrial 4y ago

rekabis 4y ago

>waste handling is still not a solved problem Yes, yes it is. 1. There are a number of sites that have the geological stability and impermeability for long term storage. 2. Thorium reactors can take nuclear waste products and re-process them down (along side their standard thorium fuel) into “radioactive waste” that only needs a century or two of minimal safe storage before it’s harmless. 3. Modern _non-breeder_ reactors produce very little of the severe waste that needs billions of years of storage. Problem is, many current reactors in the States are breeder reactors that are _meant_ to help build nuclear weapons, and so are optimized to produce massive amounts of highly radioactive waste.

loopback_device 4y ago
> 1. There are a number of sites that have the geological stability and impermeability for long term storage. And yet, not one of them has been developed into a storage facility so far. Also, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32471115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32471115 – having prospective storage sites that look nice and stable is great and all, just not the current reality, and likely also not a near-future reality. > 2. Thorium reactors can take nuclear waste products and re-process them down Would be good to have them, not a single one commercially operating at the moment though. China has apparently built a test reactor recently – curious to see how that develops.
- EricE 4y ago
  Better hope China doesn't do more than build a test reactor. Cheap and abundant energy is what built the west. China is poised to severely lap the rest of the world while we continue to point fingers and argue :p

EricE 4y ago

Waste handling? Burn it in newer, modern designs instead of (stupidly) burying it.