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I'm very hopeful that within a hundred years this madness will stop and nuclear power will be common place. It's evolved and come along way since Chernobyl...

by pookha 3y ago

I'm very hopeful that within a hundred years this madness will stop and nuclear power will be common place. It's evolved and come along way since Chernobyl... Small modular reactor's and molten salt reactors can pump out more than enough clean energy and without the fear mongering and waste side effects. Apologies to British Petroleum

myrmidon 3y ago
What exactly gives you any confidence that nuclear power will ever experience a resurgence in the future? To me, it appears to be a niche technology with a host of problems (fuel mining, decomissioning and fuel reprocessing are dirty and expensive) that is completely incapable of competing with renewable power on cost already, and current trendlines (plant vs. wind/solar/battery costs) are absolutely NOT favorable. I encounter this highly (and IMO irrationally) favorable view of nuclear power very frequently on HN and would really like to understand why this is so prevalent...
- pookha 3y ago
  The newer breed of reactors should win out... For example MSR's can operate at very high temperatures, can recycle nuclear waste, don't use fuel-rod's and can be made to be smaller and more economical than the older pressurized water reactors that you're referring too. https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/spotlight-on-innovation-molten-salt-reactors-for-a-sustainable-clean-energy-transition https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/spotlight-on-innovation...
  - myrmidon 3y ago
    That reads like a fluff piece to me, which seems unsurprising considering the source; my understanding is that all we have right now are research reactors, i.e. the things are not really suitable for commercial use even if they could already be built/deployed quickly and at scale (which they can't). And that makes the economics just wishful thinking-- to back them up, we would need first a finalized, commercial design, then to actually build it in some numbers, and verify cost effectiveness. And this is a point that renewables already reached a decade ago, while still getting cheaper... Nuclear power in general also suffers from the big problem that it becomes even less attractive the more cheap intermittent power is available, because all the costs are fixed; just turning these on when there is no wind/sun makes the already bad cost efficiency even worse...
    - pookha 3y ago
      This wind-and-solar religious argument isn't necessary and I'm guessing it's based in European poltics. I'm OK with wind and solar but not at the scale where it's the only option... And that's because it doesn't work at scale... As Germany found out you can't meet peek demand with just wind and solar: https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-failure-on-the-road-to-a-renewable-future-a-1266586.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-failure-... They have "dark doldrums" and have to revert to natural gas and diesel power plants (which is why BP and American energy companies push wind and solar). On top of that you can't just cover the entire countryside in massive wind turbines or solar panels. You've got protected species and you've got NIMBY. Why push the endless political pissing matches when you could easily develop nuclear power too? Do both. Let nuclear power handle the doldrums.
      - myrmidon 3y ago
        The article you linked is full of opinionated pessimistic whining, but since its over 3 years old its easy to compare its negative outlook on renewable focused policy with actual results: According to https://energy-charts.info/charts/renewable_share/chart.htm https://energy-charts.info/charts/renewable_share/chart.htm, current german electricity mix is ~50% renewable since beginning of the year. Used to be 35% in 2018. So the "unreachable" target of 80% in 2050 seems completely trivial; just keep doing things at a similar rate and that target is in reach within a single decade (!!). Intermittency of renewable sources is a problem that has multiple perfectly viable solutions, namely overprovisioning, storage, grid connectivity and peaker plants. Finding the most cost effective mix of those (and adjusting it over time as technology evolves) is a problem that the free market is perfectly equipped to solve. Area consumption is not a big issue, neither for solar nor for wind, because roofs and agriculture (and the off-shore option in the case of wind). Nuclear power is a bad mix with renewables because it's already too expensive and building it for peak loads makes that drastically worse since it's all fixed cost basically. Gas powered plants are super attractive with renewables because of the very same dynamics (cheap installation costs and variable costs that largely depend on actual utilization). In the extremely unlikely case that battery technology fails completely it would always be possible to use hydrogen as energy storage in combination with refitted gas peaker plants. But that scenario appears unlikely to me. Also note that renewables have already overtaken nuclear power in the US, too; given recent experiences with the nuclear industry it seems EXTREMELY unlikely to me that this trend would ever reverse.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Certain people push this narrative that renewables cannot meet any need, basically at all, and are pushing that we should invest in nuclear instead, precisely because it is expensive and will go no where for quite some time so that fossil fuels continue to be needed for longer. It's intentionally done to try to handicap renewable energy progress.
  - inkcapmushroom 3y ago
    Renewables have obvious deficiencies which are not resolved simply by having more of them. By shunning nuclear you choose to have fossil fuel power plants everywhere to keep the flow of power consistent and matching demand. Grid-level storage is just as much of an unsolved problem as affordable nuclear, but while getting nuclear costs down is a matter of iterating and improving existing technologies, grid-level storage will likely require brand new technologies which are far from guaranteed. At this point I don't think nuclear is the way; I think it's got too many hurdles and we don't have enough time to figure it out in a safe way, if we ever can get the costs down and improve safety at the same time. But it's undeniably attractive as a nearly carbon-free energy source. Deciding that anyone with a different opinion than yours on a complex topic must be some kind of shill for big oil is doing yourself a disservice.
    - KennyBlanken 3y ago
      > By shunning nuclear you choose to have fossil fuel power plants everywhere to keep the flow of power consistent and matching demand. Nuclear is base load - it takes days to change power levels - and cannot be a substitute for fast-reacting power sources If I had a penny for every HNer who opens their mouth to pontificate about how turning off nukes means a less reliable grid or "we'll need fossil fuel plants to make the grid reliable", I'd be a very rich person.
      - Ekaros 3y ago
        Nope "modern" plants do it just fine. Something like 30-100% capacity is scalable at 5% a minute or over hundred Megawatts.
anigbrowl 3y ago
The madness is people in charge of nuclear facilities being able to cover up accidents with the complicity of governments. Windscale is now called Sellafield because it had acquired such a bad reputation that the UK government decided to just give it a nicer name as a PR move. In addition to incidents described in OP's article, operators dumped ~200kg of plutonium into the Irish Sea in the 1950s, as well as other waste byproducts subsequently. These quantities are probably small enough not to present any great risk to life or local ecology, but using a small sea as a dumping ground without the agreement or even awareness of neighbors hardly builds confidence. There have also been numerous smaller scale incidents over the years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield#Incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield#Incidents I'm pro-nuclear and share your optimism about small modern reactor designs. But any nuclear proposal that doesn't include safety and transparency as core values that take priority over all other considerations deserves to be rejected. There's a reason that people have grave doubts about the integrity of the nuclear industry, and it's not technical but social. There are way too many nuclear proposals that lead off with happy talk about the benefits, and defer discussion of safety, transparency, cost and so on until those issues are raised as objections. It's a PR strategy and I automatically distrust it, because that 'good vibes only' mindset is likely to embed itself in the subsequent management of the plant and lead to cover-your-ass style decision-making. tl;dr I like nuclear technology, it's the operators I don't trust.

by pookha 3y ago

myrmidon 3y ago

What exactly gives you any confidence that nuclear power will ever experience a resurgence in the future? To me, it appears to be a niche technology with a host of problems (fuel mining, decomissioning and fuel reprocessing are dirty and expensive) that is completely incapable of competing with renewable power on cost already, and current trendlines (plant vs. wind/solar/battery costs) are absolutely NOT favorable. I encounter this highly (and IMO irrationally) favorable view of nuclear power very frequently on HN and would really like to understand why this is so prevalent...

pookha 3y ago
The newer breed of reactors should win out... For example MSR's can operate at very high temperatures, can recycle nuclear waste, don't use fuel-rod's and can be made to be smaller and more economical than the older pressurized water reactors that you're referring too. https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/spotlight-on-innovation-molten-salt-reactors-for-a-sustainable-clean-energy-transition https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/spotlight-on-innovation...
- myrmidon 3y ago
  That reads like a fluff piece to me, which seems unsurprising considering the source; my understanding is that all we have right now are research reactors, i.e. the things are not really suitable for commercial use even if they could already be built/deployed quickly and at scale (which they can't). And that makes the economics just wishful thinking-- to back them up, we would need first a finalized, commercial design, then to actually build it in some numbers, and verify cost effectiveness. And this is a point that renewables already reached a decade ago, while still getting cheaper... Nuclear power in general also suffers from the big problem that it becomes even less attractive the more cheap intermittent power is available, because all the costs are fixed; just turning these on when there is no wind/sun makes the already bad cost efficiency even worse...
  - pookha 3y ago
    This wind-and-solar religious argument isn't necessary and I'm guessing it's based in European poltics. I'm OK with wind and solar but not at the scale where it's the only option... And that's because it doesn't work at scale... As Germany found out you can't meet peek demand with just wind and solar: https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-failure-on-the-road-to-a-renewable-future-a-1266586.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-failure-... They have "dark doldrums" and have to revert to natural gas and diesel power plants (which is why BP and American energy companies push wind and solar). On top of that you can't just cover the entire countryside in massive wind turbines or solar panels. You've got protected species and you've got NIMBY. Why push the endless political pissing matches when you could easily develop nuclear power too? Do both. Let nuclear power handle the doldrums.
    - myrmidon 3y ago
      The article you linked is full of opinionated pessimistic whining, but since its over 3 years old its easy to compare its negative outlook on renewable focused policy with actual results: According to https://energy-charts.info/charts/renewable_share/chart.htm https://energy-charts.info/charts/renewable_share/chart.htm, current german electricity mix is ~50% renewable since beginning of the year. Used to be 35% in 2018. So the "unreachable" target of 80% in 2050 seems completely trivial; just keep doing things at a similar rate and that target is in reach within a single decade (!!). Intermittency of renewable sources is a problem that has multiple perfectly viable solutions, namely overprovisioning, storage, grid connectivity and peaker plants. Finding the most cost effective mix of those (and adjusting it over time as technology evolves) is a problem that the free market is perfectly equipped to solve. Area consumption is not a big issue, neither for solar nor for wind, because roofs and agriculture (and the off-shore option in the case of wind). Nuclear power is a bad mix with renewables because it's already too expensive and building it for peak loads makes that drastically worse since it's all fixed cost basically. Gas powered plants are super attractive with renewables because of the very same dynamics (cheap installation costs and variable costs that largely depend on actual utilization). In the extremely unlikely case that battery technology fails completely it would always be possible to use hydrogen as energy storage in combination with refitted gas peaker plants. But that scenario appears unlikely to me. Also note that renewables have already overtaken nuclear power in the US, too; given recent experiences with the nuclear industry it seems EXTREMELY unlikely to me that this trend would ever reverse.
mrguyorama 3y ago
Certain people push this narrative that renewables cannot meet any need, basically at all, and are pushing that we should invest in nuclear instead, precisely because it is expensive and will go no where for quite some time so that fossil fuels continue to be needed for longer. It's intentionally done to try to handicap renewable energy progress.
- inkcapmushroom 3y ago
  Renewables have obvious deficiencies which are not resolved simply by having more of them. By shunning nuclear you choose to have fossil fuel power plants everywhere to keep the flow of power consistent and matching demand. Grid-level storage is just as much of an unsolved problem as affordable nuclear, but while getting nuclear costs down is a matter of iterating and improving existing technologies, grid-level storage will likely require brand new technologies which are far from guaranteed. At this point I don't think nuclear is the way; I think it's got too many hurdles and we don't have enough time to figure it out in a safe way, if we ever can get the costs down and improve safety at the same time. But it's undeniably attractive as a nearly carbon-free energy source. Deciding that anyone with a different opinion than yours on a complex topic must be some kind of shill for big oil is doing yourself a disservice.
  - KennyBlanken 3y ago
    > By shunning nuclear you choose to have fossil fuel power plants everywhere to keep the flow of power consistent and matching demand. Nuclear is base load - it takes days to change power levels - and cannot be a substitute for fast-reacting power sources If I had a penny for every HNer who opens their mouth to pontificate about how turning off nukes means a less reliable grid or "we'll need fossil fuel plants to make the grid reliable", I'd be a very rich person.
    - Ekaros 3y ago
      Nope "modern" plants do it just fine. Something like 30-100% capacity is scalable at 5% a minute or over hundred Megawatts.

anigbrowl 3y ago

The madness is people in charge of nuclear facilities being able to cover up accidents with the complicity of governments. Windscale is now called Sellafield because it had acquired such a bad reputation that the UK government decided to just give it a nicer name as a PR move. In addition to incidents described in OP's article, operators dumped ~200kg of plutonium into the Irish Sea in the 1950s, as well as other waste byproducts subsequently. These quantities are probably small enough not to present any great risk to life or local ecology, but using a small sea as a dumping ground without the agreement or even awareness of neighbors hardly builds confidence. There have also been numerous smaller scale incidents over the years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield#Incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield#Incidents I'm pro-nuclear and share your optimism about small modern reactor designs. But any nuclear proposal that doesn't include safety and transparency as core values that take priority over all other considerations deserves to be rejected. There's a reason that people have grave doubts about the integrity of the nuclear industry, and it's not technical but social. There are way too many nuclear proposals that lead off with happy talk about the benefits, and defer discussion of safety, transparency, cost and so on until those issues are raised as objections. It's a PR strategy and I automatically distrust it, because that 'good vibes only' mindset is likely to embed itself in the subsequent management of the plant and lead to cover-your-ass style decision-making. tl;dr I like nuclear technology, it's the operators I don't trust.