4 ms·

What's wrong with nuclear power? Seems to work well enough for the US, for India, for China, for France, and a bunch of other places. I'm puzzled why we'd have

What's wrong with nuclear power? Seems to work well enough for the US, for India, for China, for France, and a bunch of other places. I'm puzzled why we'd have to enter into a relationship with Morocco when nuclear power is proven clean tech, at least a hundred years old. Am I missing something?

stavros 3y ago
There's nothing wrong with nuclear power, but it's not an either/or question. We need all the clean energy we can get.
ragebol 3y ago
As you might have noticed, nuclear power is not free of any downsides. But neither is wind, solar, fossil fuels, but especially with nuclear there's about 40-50 years of momentum against them in the public opinion, rational or not. So there's that. The bigger problem is we only want things without downsides, which don't exist.
- mdp2021 3y ago
  > things without downsides Moebius things? (I suppose they will be both "all upside" and "all downside". Does not work.)
  - ragebol 3y ago
    I bet there's companies eager to do Möbius strip mining. Could go on forever!
tete 3y ago
> Seems to work well enough [...] for France I am not so sure about that. At least not if you ONLY rely on nuclear. https://www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/electricity-exporter-for-42-years-france-became-a-net-importer-in-2022/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/electricit... France massively profits from being part of the European grid. While the above is about a year time frame, France is frequently an importer. That's why there's big grids with different producers, consumers, and forms of storage, like pumped-storage. Having just nuclear power would be really dumb. Just like just solar, just wind, etc.
SilverBirch 3y ago
Sure, there's plenty of reasons not to build nuclear. Firstly, it's not cheap compared to modern solar and that trend is likely to continue. Secondly, it's not a responsive source of electricity - so you can't modulate the output easily. Thirdly, it takes a long time to bring on line, especially the more modern reactors have been prone to massive delays with an EPR reactor in Finland being over a decade late and Hinkley Point C in the UK, and Flamanville in France both being massively late, massively over budget and still unfinished. Fourthly, as we found last year, during heat waves rivers can run dry causing a shortage of water to cool the plants forcing them to go offline. I'm not saying there's no benefit to Nuclear, there definitely is, and it should be part of the mix, but it's not a replacement for a decent investment in Solar.
- ptero 3y ago
  Much of the nuclear delays are due to political ambivalence, not technical issues. Once there is a clear will to move, they can move very fast. Finland that you quote was marinating it's Olkiluoto reactor for many years. Then Russia invaded Ukraine and Olkiluoto got from "let's think about approvals for a few more years" to pumping out electricity in a flash.
- pydry 3y ago
  Not just not cheap. 5x more expensive. It doesnt really matter what kind of storage you have to pair with solar (batteries, pumped storage, windgas) it still delivers cheaper power.
- illiarian 3y ago
  > Secondly, it's not a responsive source of electricity - so you can't modulate the output easily. Yes. Yes, you can. --- start quote --- Modern nuclear plans with light water reactors are designed to have strong manoeuvring capabilities. Nuclear power plants in France and in Germany [ report from 2011 ] operate in load-following mode, i.e. they participate in the primary and secondary frequency control, and some units follow a variable load programme with one or two large power changes per day. Most of the modern designs implement even higher manoeuvrability capabilities, with the possibility of planned and unplanned load-following in a wide power range and with ramps of 5% Pr [rated power] per minute. --- end quote --- https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12/technical_and_economic_aspects_of_load_following_with_nuclear_power_plants.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12... > the more modern reactors have been prone to massive delays with an This is mostly a political issue. China and South Korea are bringing reactors online faster. > Fourthly, as we found last year, during heat waves rivers can run dry causing a shortage of water to cool the plants forcing them to go offline. Again, that was a combination of things, including politically-motivated underinvestment in maintenance of nuclear power plants
dncornholio 3y ago
France has had huge issues keeping their reactors cool last year.
rswskg 3y ago
Yeah the german green partys entire existence is based on advocating for getting rid of nuclear. Go from there.
tonyedgecombe 3y ago
>What's wrong with nuclear power? It's risky to put all your eggs in one basket.
Tade0 3y ago
Nothing wrong per se, it's just a logistical nightmare. The other day Finland finally connected its latest nuclear power plant - Olkiluoto 3 to the grid. It will play a crucial role in securing the country's access to energy. Took 18 years instead of the 5 originally planned and €11bln instead of €3bln. Mind you, it was still worth it, but given the upfront cost it's hard to work on several such projects in parallel. And this here is a success story - Hinkley Point C is still in development despite consuming over £30bln. China is doing great regarding nuclear, but after 20 years of intensive development they still don't have the capacity of France - a country with a single digit percentage fraction of the population.
pjc50 3y ago
> proven clean tech It's still horribly expensive and slow to build. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_... : approval in 2012, 50% cost overrun, projected completion in 2027. People will counter that with various other reactor designs, but if it's a new design, it no longer counts as "proven", does it? Not until the first one is running. Then there are two other risks: - the "black swan" disaster, where a Chernobyl cloud takes out European agricultural production for months and in a few places years. Very low probability, but things can go wrong; the shelling near the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, for example. - nuclear proliferation. Everyone's forgotten about this since we're fine with the existing nuclear powers, but does that apply to every country?
- illiarian 3y ago
  > It's still horribly expensive and slow to build. Many of those delays are political rather than technical. On top of that, imagine if instead of deriding, denigrating and spreading FUD about nuclear energy for the past 20-30 years we would instead invest in it and improve it. > the "black swan" disaster, Literally yesterday there was a black swan for renewables in Germany. They shut down the last reactors and... https://twitter.com/energybants/status/1647799729734971396 https://twitter.com/energybants/status/1647799729734971396 --- start quote --- Germany's 66.5 GW of installed wind is only producing as much as the 3 reactors that turned off last night used to produce. 400% expansion of wind would only provide half present need --- end quote --- But of course no renewables proponent will ever mention this as a black swan event. Because "sometime 40 years from now, maybe, we will have overbuilt all the renewables and energy storage we need"
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > Many of those delays are political rather than technical. You're not wrong, but that also applies to, for example, an international collaboration to build a global HVDC power grid that can shift enough power from antipodes that we could do a pure PV electricity supply without any storage. Would only take, like, a decade of global metal production, making it faster than that specific reactor. But hey, politics. > But of course no renewables proponent will ever mention this as a black swan event. That's a misuse of the term, black swans are the unknown-unknowns, not predictable bad things. Also, at current rates, more like 10 years. Electric cars use so many batteries that having the capability to make all-electric road transport necessarily also makes grid storage trivial.
brohee 3y ago
Cost, unlike solar, batteries and HVDC nuclear has a negative learning curve (gets more expensive over time as we learn over time to build it with more safety features, and retrofit them on existing plants) and takes too long for proper learning to happen.

stavros 3y ago

There's nothing wrong with nuclear power, but it's not an either/or question. We need all the clean energy we can get.

ragebol 3y ago

As you might have noticed, nuclear power is not free of any downsides. But neither is wind, solar, fossil fuels, but especially with nuclear there's about 40-50 years of momentum against them in the public opinion, rational or not. So there's that. The bigger problem is we only want things without downsides, which don't exist.

mdp2021 3y ago
> things without downsides Moebius things? (I suppose they will be both "all upside" and "all downside". Does not work.)
- ragebol 3y ago
  I bet there's companies eager to do Möbius strip mining. Could go on forever!

tete 3y ago

> Seems to work well enough [...] for France I am not so sure about that. At least not if you ONLY rely on nuclear. https://www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/electricity-exporter-for-42-years-france-became-a-net-importer-in-2022/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/electricit... France massively profits from being part of the European grid. While the above is about a year time frame, France is frequently an importer. That's why there's big grids with different producers, consumers, and forms of storage, like pumped-storage. Having just nuclear power would be really dumb. Just like just solar, just wind, etc.

SilverBirch 3y ago

Sure, there's plenty of reasons not to build nuclear. Firstly, it's not cheap compared to modern solar and that trend is likely to continue. Secondly, it's not a responsive source of electricity - so you can't modulate the output easily. Thirdly, it takes a long time to bring on line, especially the more modern reactors have been prone to massive delays with an EPR reactor in Finland being over a decade late and Hinkley Point C in the UK, and Flamanville in France both being massively late, massively over budget and still unfinished. Fourthly, as we found last year, during heat waves rivers can run dry causing a shortage of water to cool the plants forcing them to go offline. I'm not saying there's no benefit to Nuclear, there definitely is, and it should be part of the mix, but it's not a replacement for a decent investment in Solar.

ptero 3y ago
Much of the nuclear delays are due to political ambivalence, not technical issues. Once there is a clear will to move, they can move very fast. Finland that you quote was marinating it's Olkiluoto reactor for many years. Then Russia invaded Ukraine and Olkiluoto got from "let's think about approvals for a few more years" to pumping out electricity in a flash.
pydry 3y ago
Not just not cheap. 5x more expensive. It doesnt really matter what kind of storage you have to pair with solar (batteries, pumped storage, windgas) it still delivers cheaper power.
illiarian 3y ago
> Secondly, it's not a responsive source of electricity - so you can't modulate the output easily. Yes. Yes, you can. --- start quote --- Modern nuclear plans with light water reactors are designed to have strong manoeuvring capabilities. Nuclear power plants in France and in Germany [ report from 2011 ] operate in load-following mode, i.e. they participate in the primary and secondary frequency control, and some units follow a variable load programme with one or two large power changes per day. Most of the modern designs implement even higher manoeuvrability capabilities, with the possibility of planned and unplanned load-following in a wide power range and with ramps of 5% Pr [rated power] per minute. --- end quote --- https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12/technical_and_economic_aspects_of_load_following_with_nuclear_power_plants.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12... > the more modern reactors have been prone to massive delays with an This is mostly a political issue. China and South Korea are bringing reactors online faster. > Fourthly, as we found last year, during heat waves rivers can run dry causing a shortage of water to cool the plants forcing them to go offline. Again, that was a combination of things, including politically-motivated underinvestment in maintenance of nuclear power plants

dncornholio 3y ago

France has had huge issues keeping their reactors cool last year.

rswskg 3y ago

Yeah the german green partys entire existence is based on advocating for getting rid of nuclear. Go from there.

tonyedgecombe 3y ago

>What's wrong with nuclear power? It's risky to put all your eggs in one basket.

Tade0 3y ago

Nothing wrong per se, it's just a logistical nightmare. The other day Finland finally connected its latest nuclear power plant - Olkiluoto 3 to the grid. It will play a crucial role in securing the country's access to energy. Took 18 years instead of the 5 originally planned and €11bln instead of €3bln. Mind you, it was still worth it, but given the upfront cost it's hard to work on several such projects in parallel. And this here is a success story - Hinkley Point C is still in development despite consuming over £30bln. China is doing great regarding nuclear, but after 20 years of intensive development they still don't have the capacity of France - a country with a single digit percentage fraction of the population.

pjc50 3y ago

> proven clean tech It's still horribly expensive and slow to build. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_... : approval in 2012, 50% cost overrun, projected completion in 2027. People will counter that with various other reactor designs, but if it's a new design, it no longer counts as "proven", does it? Not until the first one is running. Then there are two other risks: - the "black swan" disaster, where a Chernobyl cloud takes out European agricultural production for months and in a few places years. Very low probability, but things can go wrong; the shelling near the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, for example. - nuclear proliferation. Everyone's forgotten about this since we're fine with the existing nuclear powers, but does that apply to every country?

illiarian 3y ago
> It's still horribly expensive and slow to build. Many of those delays are political rather than technical. On top of that, imagine if instead of deriding, denigrating and spreading FUD about nuclear energy for the past 20-30 years we would instead invest in it and improve it. > the "black swan" disaster, Literally yesterday there was a black swan for renewables in Germany. They shut down the last reactors and... https://twitter.com/energybants/status/1647799729734971396 https://twitter.com/energybants/status/1647799729734971396 --- start quote --- Germany's 66.5 GW of installed wind is only producing as much as the 3 reactors that turned off last night used to produce. 400% expansion of wind would only provide half present need --- end quote --- But of course no renewables proponent will ever mention this as a black swan event. Because "sometime 40 years from now, maybe, we will have overbuilt all the renewables and energy storage we need"
- ben_w 3y ago
  > Many of those delays are political rather than technical. You're not wrong, but that also applies to, for example, an international collaboration to build a global HVDC power grid that can shift enough power from antipodes that we could do a pure PV electricity supply without any storage. Would only take, like, a decade of global metal production, making it faster than that specific reactor. But hey, politics. > But of course no renewables proponent will ever mention this as a black swan event. That's a misuse of the term, black swans are the unknown-unknowns, not predictable bad things. Also, at current rates, more like 10 years. Electric cars use so many batteries that having the capability to make all-electric road transport necessarily also makes grid storage trivial.

brohee 3y ago

Cost, unlike solar, batteries and HVDC nuclear has a negative learning curve (gets more expensive over time as we learn over time to build it with more safety features, and retrofit them on existing plants) and takes too long for proper learning to happen.