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There is a really unfortunate assumption about nuclear baked into the engineering mindset -- and this piece is a perfect example of an engineering mindset. All
by barathr 3y ago
There is a really unfortunate assumption about nuclear baked into the engineering mindset -- and this piece is a perfect example of an engineering mindset.
All complex technologies are really best understood as socio-technical systems. They depend on people and machines, data and economics, and, in the case of nuclear, especially fickle things like geopolitics and warfare. It's all about unknown unknowns, and not the engineering kind.
If it weren't for the unknown unknowns we are going to face in the 21st century from climate change alone (and not just the first order effects, but the second and third order effects on economics and geopolitics, which are basically unknowable), nuclear might make sense. But we have cheaper (solar PV + storage is cheaper, soon others will be too) and safer alternatives.
The easy test is this: if a country has a currency crisis, a coup, two back to back 1000-year storms, another pandemic, or any number of other major events, and the plant gets damaged and nobody shows up to work for a month, is everything going to be fine? Will someone break in and steal something dangerous? Will something dangerous leak out? With modern renewables the cost is low, the tail risk is basically zero, and the power is compatible with hard times.
- Georgelemental 3y ago> But we have cheaper (solar PV + storage is cheaper, soon others will be too) and safer alternatives. It is not, not at the scale needed to reliably replace fossil fuels. This just isn't true.
- barathr 3y agoNeither is nuclear. And solar PV is vastly easier to scale up. The peak rate of fission power plant nameplate capacity construction was ~1985 and at that peak rate it would take something like 60 years to build what is needed globally.
- Georgelemental 3y agoYou can't "scale up" the frequency and regularity of sunny days in a year, the weather is beyond your control. In contrast, nuclear fission is one of the most predictable physical processes known to science; you just need to build the plants.
- tetris11 3y agoYou can scale with the average number of sunny days in a season or year, and with improving grids and longer batteries, why not?
- Georgelemental 3y ago"Average" is great until you get a two or three-sigma week.
- ftth_finland 3y agoBecause there are no batteries that can run a country for five months. In the Nordics, there is no PV production for five months of the year. Two months have marginal production rates. Zero times any large number is still zero.
- enslavedrobot 3y agoSolar and storage get cheaper as they scale because they are highly iterable simple technologies with low consequences of failure. Solar has gotten cheaper by 15% compounded over the last 30 years. Batteries are getting cheaper by ~20% per year for the last 20 years. This trend is likely to continue. Nuclear does not enjoy the benefit of scalability because it is complex, highly regulated, and the risks associated with failure are large.
- jcarrano 3y agoI you have such an unfortunate chain of events, then a bit of radiation leaking out will not be as significant.