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The recent rise of interest in nuclear energy is producing interesting designs, but ignores the reality that solar is already the cheapest source of energy in h

The recent rise of interest in nuclear energy is producing interesting designs, but ignores the reality that solar is already the cheapest source of energy in history. It's a source that can also be deployed _now_, instead of 10 years from now. At that time there will be a surplus of energy, and no nuclear plants will be needed. Those will be highly undesirable toxic waste generators once they come online, even the new safe ones. Except for this one. Pinky promise. Source: rethinkx.com

jjeaff 4y ago
I read an interesting factoid about nuclear waste. It was that the amount of energy that an average human will use over their entire lifetime would create about a soda can full amount of nuclear waste. I'm guessing the solar panel waste would be quite a bit more.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Guess again. The solar panel can be made into more solar panels (or bottles or any other use for glass which is 95% of the material) at a profit. One person needs 1-3t of them to exist (about 9t if you throw them all away) to provide their energy plus about 1-3t of some kind of frame (usually steel). The kg or so of uranium is spent fuel which is the really dangerous stuff. Then you have 10-100x as much moderate level waste. 10kg of depleted uranium (still a toxic heavy metal) and 30 tonnes of mining tailings including 1t of ultra toxic heavy metal sulfuric acid sludge and 2-4 tonnes of the reactor itself (of which about half is recyclable).
  - jjeaff 4y ago
    Except 90% of solar panels don't get recycled. Only hypothetically could be. If we are going to play hypotheticals, there are viable nuclear technologies that produce almost no waste and can even harvest radioactive material from ocean water. Add to that, with solar, you will also need a lot of lithium and whatever other noxious chemicals for all the batteries for when the sun isn't out.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      > Except 90% of solar panels don't get recycled. There isn't much of a solar recycling industry because there are very few worn out Monocrystalline solar panels (the type that makes up the majority of installed panels and almost all new production have only been common for 10 years, they haven't worn out yet). And it's not hypothetical, it's legally mandated and there are companies scaling up to deal with it now http://www.solarwaste.eu/in-your-country/united-kingdom/ http://www.solarwaste.eu/in-your-country/united-kingdom/ Unlike the nuclear industry that doesn't even have a permanent plan for burying the much larger quantity of waste it generates (much of which is still long lived low level waste). > Add to that, with solar, you will also need a lot of lithium and whatever other noxious chemicals for all the batteries for when the sun isn't out. A kilogram of lithium is much less toxic to mine than a kilogram of natural uranium. 1kg of natural uranium can provide about 150g of fuel producing 1kW for 6 years and then it's high level waste that has to be handled for millenia. The lithium on the other hand can provide about 8kWh of storage for 10 years and non toxic prussian blue/sodium ion batteries are having 100s of GWh/yr of production built out for 2026. At the end you still have it if needed (or you can just leave it somewhere until you do need it).
mrbadideas 4y ago
danboarder 4y ago
From the article, regarding valuable waste byproducts: ...the molten salt nuclear reactor design not only has the potential to eliminate dangerous nuclear waste but turn its byproducts into valuable commodities that can be harvested from the salt and sold. Molybdenum-99, for example, is an extremely expensive element — $30 million per gram — that can only be bought from the Netherlands and is used in approximately 20 million medical imaging procedures and scans each year. It can be extracted with Memmott's design. "We can now go to that salt and apply specific electrochemistry to pull out pieces one at a time, or groups at a time. So this nuclear waste — which is really just a mix of uranium and all these different components — we can now pull those out and separate and sell them," Memmott said. "Not only do we have a reactor that's really resistant to accidents, but now we can actually separate out those components and sell them and make a profit from the other pieces and then we're left, potentially, with no nuclear waste."
credit_guy 4y ago
But solar did not get cheap overnight by some miracle. It got cheap because people iterated on it. Many decades. Many decades ago people stopped iterating on nuclear. There is no law of nature that says nuclear can't get cheaper by a factor of 100. It's just technology. As for safety, I personally trust the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission). If they say something it's safe, I'll take them at their word. There's no need for any pinky promise on the side of the industry. If you can find any source that claims the NRC are lax, I'd like to see that. Everywhere I looked I saw the opposite complaint, that they are unreasonably strict. I'm personally ok with them being too conservative. I looked at the documents related to the safety approval of NuScale's SMR [1], and they seem competent to me. [1] https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/smr/licensing-activities/nuscale/documents.html https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/smr/licensing-acti...
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  > Many decades ago people stopped iterating on nuclear. There is no law of nature that says nuclear can't get cheaper by a factor of 100. It's just technology. This is patently untrue, countless billions have been spent on molten salt and molten sodium reactors. Almost as much has been spent on various breeder reactors that don't work or have never been used for breeding like Superphenix, IFR and the BN program as was spent on the entire PV revolution (except PV as actually generated some power with their subsidies unlike breeder programs). More time and money spent on fission just reveals more ways it is dangerous and reveals previously hidden costs of keeping them safe. If you want an undeveloped technology that will improve with investment go put a single nuclear reactor's worth of money into tidal.
  - credit_guy 4y ago
    Superphenix was closed more than 30 years ago. In the West there was virtually zero investment in advanced nuclear power reactors in these 3 decades. But China did invest. It hooked up a high temperature gas cooled reactor to the grid one year ago [1]. It is not talked about a lot, but this is leapfrogging the West by 20 years. [1] https://www.powermag.com/china-starts-up-first-fourth-generation-nuclear-reactor/ https://www.powermag.com/china-starts-up-first-fourth-genera...

jjeaff 4y ago

I read an interesting factoid about nuclear waste. It was that the amount of energy that an average human will use over their entire lifetime would create about a soda can full amount of nuclear waste. I'm guessing the solar panel waste would be quite a bit more.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
Guess again. The solar panel can be made into more solar panels (or bottles or any other use for glass which is 95% of the material) at a profit. One person needs 1-3t of them to exist (about 9t if you throw them all away) to provide their energy plus about 1-3t of some kind of frame (usually steel). The kg or so of uranium is spent fuel which is the really dangerous stuff. Then you have 10-100x as much moderate level waste. 10kg of depleted uranium (still a toxic heavy metal) and 30 tonnes of mining tailings including 1t of ultra toxic heavy metal sulfuric acid sludge and 2-4 tonnes of the reactor itself (of which about half is recyclable).
- jjeaff 4y ago
  Except 90% of solar panels don't get recycled. Only hypothetically could be. If we are going to play hypotheticals, there are viable nuclear technologies that produce almost no waste and can even harvest radioactive material from ocean water. Add to that, with solar, you will also need a lot of lithium and whatever other noxious chemicals for all the batteries for when the sun isn't out.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    > Except 90% of solar panels don't get recycled. There isn't much of a solar recycling industry because there are very few worn out Monocrystalline solar panels (the type that makes up the majority of installed panels and almost all new production have only been common for 10 years, they haven't worn out yet). And it's not hypothetical, it's legally mandated and there are companies scaling up to deal with it now http://www.solarwaste.eu/in-your-country/united-kingdom/ http://www.solarwaste.eu/in-your-country/united-kingdom/ Unlike the nuclear industry that doesn't even have a permanent plan for burying the much larger quantity of waste it generates (much of which is still long lived low level waste). > Add to that, with solar, you will also need a lot of lithium and whatever other noxious chemicals for all the batteries for when the sun isn't out. A kilogram of lithium is much less toxic to mine than a kilogram of natural uranium. 1kg of natural uranium can provide about 150g of fuel producing 1kW for 6 years and then it's high level waste that has to be handled for millenia. The lithium on the other hand can provide about 8kWh of storage for 10 years and non toxic prussian blue/sodium ion batteries are having 100s of GWh/yr of production built out for 2026. At the end you still have it if needed (or you can just leave it somewhere until you do need it).

mrbadideas 4y ago

danboarder 4y ago

From the article, regarding valuable waste byproducts: ...the molten salt nuclear reactor design not only has the potential to eliminate dangerous nuclear waste but turn its byproducts into valuable commodities that can be harvested from the salt and sold. Molybdenum-99, for example, is an extremely expensive element — $30 million per gram — that can only be bought from the Netherlands and is used in approximately 20 million medical imaging procedures and scans each year. It can be extracted with Memmott's design. "We can now go to that salt and apply specific electrochemistry to pull out pieces one at a time, or groups at a time. So this nuclear waste — which is really just a mix of uranium and all these different components — we can now pull those out and separate and sell them," Memmott said. "Not only do we have a reactor that's really resistant to accidents, but now we can actually separate out those components and sell them and make a profit from the other pieces and then we're left, potentially, with no nuclear waste."

credit_guy 4y ago

But solar did not get cheap overnight by some miracle. It got cheap because people iterated on it. Many decades. Many decades ago people stopped iterating on nuclear. There is no law of nature that says nuclear can't get cheaper by a factor of 100. It's just technology. As for safety, I personally trust the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission). If they say something it's safe, I'll take them at their word. There's no need for any pinky promise on the side of the industry. If you can find any source that claims the NRC are lax, I'd like to see that. Everywhere I looked I saw the opposite complaint, that they are unreasonably strict. I'm personally ok with them being too conservative. I looked at the documents related to the safety approval of NuScale's SMR [1], and they seem competent to me. [1] https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/smr/licensing-activities/nuscale/documents.html https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/smr/licensing-acti...

Schroedingersat 4y ago
> Many decades ago people stopped iterating on nuclear. There is no law of nature that says nuclear can't get cheaper by a factor of 100. It's just technology. This is patently untrue, countless billions have been spent on molten salt and molten sodium reactors. Almost as much has been spent on various breeder reactors that don't work or have never been used for breeding like Superphenix, IFR and the BN program as was spent on the entire PV revolution (except PV as actually generated some power with their subsidies unlike breeder programs). More time and money spent on fission just reveals more ways it is dangerous and reveals previously hidden costs of keeping them safe. If you want an undeveloped technology that will improve with investment go put a single nuclear reactor's worth of money into tidal.
- credit_guy 4y ago
  Superphenix was closed more than 30 years ago. In the West there was virtually zero investment in advanced nuclear power reactors in these 3 decades. But China did invest. It hooked up a high temperature gas cooled reactor to the grid one year ago [1]. It is not talked about a lot, but this is leapfrogging the West by 20 years. [1] https://www.powermag.com/china-starts-up-first-fourth-generation-nuclear-reactor/ https://www.powermag.com/china-starts-up-first-fourth-genera...