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I really can't square this idea that "global warming will end civilization" if we don't reduce CO2 with not using nuclear power. (Even worse, shutting down exi

by timmg 3y ago

I really can't square this idea that "global warming will end civilization" if we don't reduce CO2 with not using nuclear power. (Even worse, shutting down existing, working plants.)

adventured 3y ago
It doesn't square, it's extraordinarily irrational. With a trillion dollars the US could build 40-60 new domestic nuclear power plants (we have 54 currently). We can afford it (witness stimulus programs, or the Ukraine v Russia war). What we can't afford is to not do it and to watch our nuclear power base vanish. And we should be going further than that. We should be leveraging the global reserve currency and trade agreements to assist other stable countries in more cheaply (as cheaply as is possible with nuclear) building their own nuclear power plants. We can help countries either skip the fossil fuel driven economic build-out phase (in regards to fairly stable developing nations), or accelerate their leap off of it. And it can be beneficial to the US economy: export our tech, develop it further, train domestic labor specifically for this program.
- taylodl 3y ago
  So you're volunteering to put the nuclear power station in your backyard? Because that's the problem - lots of people say they support nuclear power until you try to build a nuclear power station anywhere close to them. Which brings up another problem, you need to build a nuclear power station near a water source such as a lake, or a river, which, interestingly enough, are the same kinds of places where people want to live. The ship has sailed on the current generation of nuclear power.
  - Moldoteck 3y ago
    Yep, no problem?
    - taylodl 3y ago
      Then get your neighbors on board and petition your local utility to build. Point out they're not going to have to spend the millions of dollars it takes to fight the lawsuits from those trying to prevent you from building the nuclear power station. You have them covered!
  - adventured 3y ago
    > So you're volunteering to put the nuclear power station in your backyard? Sure. I have no problem with nuclear. Where can I sign?
- ianburrell 3y ago
  We could spend a trillion dollars on 50 nuclear reactors and increase the nuclear percentage to 30% (there are actually 92 nuclear reactors in US). Or we could spend a trillion dollars on 1TW of solar (400GW actual power). Or a mix of solar and wind, or solar and batteries for the off-peak usage. That is enough to wipe out coal. Enough to bankrupt nuclear power plants. Two trillion is probably enough to decarbonize electricity except for natural gas peaker plants that need for bad days.
  - nradov 3y ago
    How much battery capacity would that require to maintain grid stability? How many years will it take to manufacture those batteries? Where will the raw materials be mined?
    - ianburrell 3y ago
      Solar tends to be better for grid stability since it has stable frequency and can dispatch quickly. To deal with changes, like the evening peak, in the short-term we can keep using natural gas peaker plants. For longer term, we don't know if expensive batteries are solution. There are lots of groups working on storage, and it is possible that cheap batteries, pumped hydropower, something else, or all of the above will be the best solution. I think it isn't worth worrying about storage until we need it and know what to build. Also, we don't need that much short-term storage, enough to deal with the evening peak and other daily variations. Long-term storage can be dealt with by overcapacity in renewables, which allows making fuels. The remaining calm, winter days can be dealt with generated fuels or natural gas.
      - nradov 3y ago
        We are already at the point where we need grid scale storage to significantly expand renewable power. A few little gas turbine speaker plants aren't going to be sufficient. We're going to need much larger thermal gas plants for the foreseeable future. There are a variety of potential options for storage. None of them have proven to be economically viable at scale. Hopefully something will work well enough, but until we see solid evidence that's not a reasonable basis for planning.
viggity 3y ago
it's just this simple: They don't want to stop global warming. They want to control everything. Global warming is just the excuse.
ihsw 3y ago
It can be summed up into two key questions: is it necessary, and is it effective? One could argue it is necessary but it is undeniable that it is not effective -- nuclear power plants take decades to bring online and then they may never see break-even. Not only that but they require vast sums of water for the entire lifetime of the nuclear plant (which is fast becoming a scarcity, if not because of increased consumption but also because of changing water availability.) On the other hand, renewable (wind and solar) can be brought up MW by MW, on a much faster timescale, privately funded (all nuclear is publicly funded now), and it has much better unit economics even without subsidies. Renewable energy is here to stay, it is going to become more abundant, and it is going to become more reliable with each passing year. Nuclear is as unreliable as ever, even after 70 years of modernization, the economics of scale, and unlimited access to the public purse.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > nuclear power plants take decades to bring online This plant is already online. That’s what makes the debate interesting.
  - worik 3y ago
    They take millenia to take off line Better get started
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > take millenia to take off line Don’t look too closely at how solar panels are fabricated.
  - kagakuninja 3y ago
    The plant is old and past its expected lifetime. As a result it will be more expensive to operate and less safe. It was planned for decommission, precisely because it is old.
- Moldoteck 3y ago
  Aren't solar and wind using water dams to store energy
theptip 3y ago
Even if we don’t think global warming ends civilization, keeping existing plants running requires a lot of mental gymnastics to oppose. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to oppose new nuclear on cost grounds; solar/wind are really cheap now. But lots of people seem to oversimplify to “nuclear bad”.
- nradov 3y ago
  I don't understand why people keep claiming that solar and wind are "cheap". That is only true at limited times on the spot market. The cost goes way up once you include enough storage and long-range transmission to maintain grid stability. It's like claiming that owning a car is cheap, without counting the cost of auto insurance.
  - MostlyStable 3y ago
    It's also ignoring that we have chosen to make nuclear expensive. There are a variety of points on the cost-safety tradeoff curve. We have continuously chosen to push ourselves as far along that curve as we know how to reach, with us moving farther each time a new technology allows it. We have never stopped to ask "how does this amount of safety compare to other forms of power generation" or "how much additional safety are we getting for the cost to implement that safety".
  - cesarb 3y ago
    > I don't understand why people keep claiming that solar and wind are "cheap". It's simple: they're looking at the incremental cost of adding one more solar panel string or one more wind turbine, compared to generating that same amount of power with the already existing power plant mix. > The cost goes way up once you include enough storage and long-range transmission to maintain grid stability. That cost exists only if you for some reason insist on 100% solar and wind. If you keep already existing power plants (including gas and hydro), the cost to maintain grid stability is much lower. This can easily be shown to be the case in practice: a large portion of the solar and wind power in the world was added to the grid without adding any extra storage or long-range transmission, reducing the fuel costs (or water usage) of existing power plants but not replacing them. Having a 100% pure solar or 100% pure wind grid is an interesting thought experiment, to probe the limits of what's possible, but it's not very relevant in the real world except on remote areas where delivering fuel is expensive, connecting to a wider grid is not viable, and there's no hydraulic or geothermal alternative.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
worik 3y ago
Why should the next thousand generations pay to prop up our greed and consumption for another fifty years? Climate collapse will cripple us, but the system is self correcting. The next civilisation will do it better In the time scales of pollution that nuclear power entails there is room for many such cycles I really cannot square the greed of "consume now" and "pay for a thousand generations" with any moral framework We should pay the price ourselves for what we have done to the climate and leave room for the future
- irae 3y ago
  What you just said can be applied for any sides of any infrastructure political discussion. If we leave nuclear waste (which is already proven not problem over and over) the next generations will come up with solutions we don’t know yet. If we leave the climate worst, by not doing what we should, they will also figure it out. The discussion right now is about getting to a reduced carbon footprint per country fast (nuclear, in 10 or 20 years) or keep betting renewables will take less than 50 years to make an impact in reducing carbon emissions.
MrPatan 3y ago
I can, the moment I realized it's not about any technical problem, about energy or about the environment. It's about sin, penitence, redemption, guilt, shame, lack of self-awareness and too much free time. There's always been people with those kind of needs and impulses, and they had non-civilization-destroying outlets to safely discharge them. Now we don't. Ah well, it will work out or it won't, one way or another Darwin will collect.
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
Maybe it's all the Republican and floating voters in California who've been told repeatedly by their trusted tribe members that climate change isn't a real problem that have moved onto the next thing on their list.
- timmg 3y ago
  I mean, it's nice to blame Republicans. But they are more likely to support nuclear than the Dems. So...

by timmg 3y ago

I really can't square this idea that "global warming will end civilization" if we don't reduce CO2 with not using nuclear power. (Even worse, shutting down existing, working plants.)

adventured 3y ago

It doesn't square, it's extraordinarily irrational. With a trillion dollars the US could build 40-60 new domestic nuclear power plants (we have 54 currently). We can afford it (witness stimulus programs, or the Ukraine v Russia war). What we can't afford is to not do it and to watch our nuclear power base vanish. And we should be going further than that. We should be leveraging the global reserve currency and trade agreements to assist other stable countries in more cheaply (as cheaply as is possible with nuclear) building their own nuclear power plants. We can help countries either skip the fossil fuel driven economic build-out phase (in regards to fairly stable developing nations), or accelerate their leap off of it. And it can be beneficial to the US economy: export our tech, develop it further, train domestic labor specifically for this program.

taylodl 3y ago
So you're volunteering to put the nuclear power station in your backyard? Because that's the problem - lots of people say they support nuclear power until you try to build a nuclear power station anywhere close to them. Which brings up another problem, you need to build a nuclear power station near a water source such as a lake, or a river, which, interestingly enough, are the same kinds of places where people want to live. The ship has sailed on the current generation of nuclear power.
- Moldoteck 3y ago
  Yep, no problem?
  - taylodl 3y ago
    Then get your neighbors on board and petition your local utility to build. Point out they're not going to have to spend the millions of dollars it takes to fight the lawsuits from those trying to prevent you from building the nuclear power station. You have them covered!
- adventured 3y ago
  > So you're volunteering to put the nuclear power station in your backyard? Sure. I have no problem with nuclear. Where can I sign?
ianburrell 3y ago
We could spend a trillion dollars on 50 nuclear reactors and increase the nuclear percentage to 30% (there are actually 92 nuclear reactors in US). Or we could spend a trillion dollars on 1TW of solar (400GW actual power). Or a mix of solar and wind, or solar and batteries for the off-peak usage. That is enough to wipe out coal. Enough to bankrupt nuclear power plants. Two trillion is probably enough to decarbonize electricity except for natural gas peaker plants that need for bad days.
- nradov 3y ago
  How much battery capacity would that require to maintain grid stability? How many years will it take to manufacture those batteries? Where will the raw materials be mined?
  - ianburrell 3y ago
    Solar tends to be better for grid stability since it has stable frequency and can dispatch quickly. To deal with changes, like the evening peak, in the short-term we can keep using natural gas peaker plants. For longer term, we don't know if expensive batteries are solution. There are lots of groups working on storage, and it is possible that cheap batteries, pumped hydropower, something else, or all of the above will be the best solution. I think it isn't worth worrying about storage until we need it and know what to build. Also, we don't need that much short-term storage, enough to deal with the evening peak and other daily variations. Long-term storage can be dealt with by overcapacity in renewables, which allows making fuels. The remaining calm, winter days can be dealt with generated fuels or natural gas.
    - nradov 3y ago
      We are already at the point where we need grid scale storage to significantly expand renewable power. A few little gas turbine speaker plants aren't going to be sufficient. We're going to need much larger thermal gas plants for the foreseeable future. There are a variety of potential options for storage. None of them have proven to be economically viable at scale. Hopefully something will work well enough, but until we see solid evidence that's not a reasonable basis for planning.

viggity 3y ago

it's just this simple: They don't want to stop global warming. They want to control everything. Global warming is just the excuse.

ihsw 3y ago

It can be summed up into two key questions: is it necessary, and is it effective? One could argue it is necessary but it is undeniable that it is not effective -- nuclear power plants take decades to bring online and then they may never see break-even. Not only that but they require vast sums of water for the entire lifetime of the nuclear plant (which is fast becoming a scarcity, if not because of increased consumption but also because of changing water availability.) On the other hand, renewable (wind and solar) can be brought up MW by MW, on a much faster timescale, privately funded (all nuclear is publicly funded now), and it has much better unit economics even without subsidies. Renewable energy is here to stay, it is going to become more abundant, and it is going to become more reliable with each passing year. Nuclear is as unreliable as ever, even after 70 years of modernization, the economics of scale, and unlimited access to the public purse.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> nuclear power plants take decades to bring online This plant is already online. That’s what makes the debate interesting.
- worik 3y ago
  They take millenia to take off line Better get started
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > take millenia to take off line Don’t look too closely at how solar panels are fabricated.
- kagakuninja 3y ago
  The plant is old and past its expected lifetime. As a result it will be more expensive to operate and less safe. It was planned for decommission, precisely because it is old.
Moldoteck 3y ago
Aren't solar and wind using water dams to store energy

theptip 3y ago

Even if we don’t think global warming ends civilization, keeping existing plants running requires a lot of mental gymnastics to oppose. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to oppose new nuclear on cost grounds; solar/wind are really cheap now. But lots of people seem to oversimplify to “nuclear bad”.

nradov 3y ago
I don't understand why people keep claiming that solar and wind are "cheap". That is only true at limited times on the spot market. The cost goes way up once you include enough storage and long-range transmission to maintain grid stability. It's like claiming that owning a car is cheap, without counting the cost of auto insurance.
- MostlyStable 3y ago
  It's also ignoring that we have chosen to make nuclear expensive. There are a variety of points on the cost-safety tradeoff curve. We have continuously chosen to push ourselves as far along that curve as we know how to reach, with us moving farther each time a new technology allows it. We have never stopped to ask "how does this amount of safety compare to other forms of power generation" or "how much additional safety are we getting for the cost to implement that safety".
- cesarb 3y ago
  > I don't understand why people keep claiming that solar and wind are "cheap". It's simple: they're looking at the incremental cost of adding one more solar panel string or one more wind turbine, compared to generating that same amount of power with the already existing power plant mix. > The cost goes way up once you include enough storage and long-range transmission to maintain grid stability. That cost exists only if you for some reason insist on 100% solar and wind. If you keep already existing power plants (including gas and hydro), the cost to maintain grid stability is much lower. This can easily be shown to be the case in practice: a large portion of the solar and wind power in the world was added to the grid without adding any extra storage or long-range transmission, reducing the fuel costs (or water usage) of existing power plants but not replacing them. Having a 100% pure solar or 100% pure wind grid is an interesting thought experiment, to probe the limits of what's possible, but it's not very relevant in the real world except on remote areas where delivering fuel is expensive, connecting to a wider grid is not viable, and there's no hydraulic or geothermal alternative.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

worik 3y ago

Why should the next thousand generations pay to prop up our greed and consumption for another fifty years? Climate collapse will cripple us, but the system is self correcting. The next civilisation will do it better In the time scales of pollution that nuclear power entails there is room for many such cycles I really cannot square the greed of "consume now" and "pay for a thousand generations" with any moral framework We should pay the price ourselves for what we have done to the climate and leave room for the future

irae 3y ago
What you just said can be applied for any sides of any infrastructure political discussion. If we leave nuclear waste (which is already proven not problem over and over) the next generations will come up with solutions we don’t know yet. If we leave the climate worst, by not doing what we should, they will also figure it out. The discussion right now is about getting to a reduced carbon footprint per country fast (nuclear, in 10 or 20 years) or keep betting renewables will take less than 50 years to make an impact in reducing carbon emissions.

MrPatan 3y ago

I can, the moment I realized it's not about any technical problem, about energy or about the environment. It's about sin, penitence, redemption, guilt, shame, lack of self-awareness and too much free time. There's always been people with those kind of needs and impulses, and they had non-civilization-destroying outlets to safely discharge them. Now we don't. Ah well, it will work out or it won't, one way or another Darwin will collect.

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

Maybe it's all the Republican and floating voters in California who've been told repeatedly by their trusted tribe members that climate change isn't a real problem that have moved onto the next thing on their list.

timmg 3y ago
I mean, it's nice to blame Republicans. But they are more likely to support nuclear than the Dems. So...