10 ms·

I don't know about others, but I have had a lot of stuff about nuclear power make its way into my YouTube feed in the last few years. Once I learned more about

I don't know about others, but I have had a lot of stuff about nuclear power make its way into my YouTube feed in the last few years. Once I learned more about it, it is clear that it is by far the cleanest energy we currently know how to capture. Everything has a footprint: solar power has panels and other components that last 10-30 years, hydroelectric is often terrible for local biodiversity, windmills have huge blades that wear out, etc. Nuclear creates far less waste and spent nuclear fuel can be recycled even. I wish the US had gone all in on nuclear like France.

bryanlarsen 3y ago
It'll cost several trillion dollars more to switch the US to nuclear electricity than it would to switch to renewable electricity. Those trillions of dollars could clean up a lot of waste if that is your primary concern.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  Will we be able to replace current loads with renewable power? All I know is that France has effectively been GHG neutral for decades because they invested in this. I know renewables have gotten way cheaper, but if GHG neutral is so achievable with them why haven't we just done it?
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    We are doing it. We're doing it at a rate of about 5% per year, and that rate is increasing every year. Given how big our grid is, 5% per year is pretty massive.
    - coding123 3y ago
      Nuclear is at 20% of total US grid power. So 4 years ago it was 0%? This graph is showing nuclear as being pretty flat GW production last 10 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_St...
  - seadan83 3y ago
    France gets a large portion of electricity from Nuclear, though the data I could find does not say France is GHG neutral. The second largest source looks to be oil at around 35% [1] This source, [2], goes on to state: "In 2022, France's power sector carbon emissions nearly reached 40 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e), down from a century-peak of over 50 million tons recorded in 2005" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France#/media/File:Energy_mix_in_France.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France#/media/File:E... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1290541/power-sector-carbon-emissions-france/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1290541/power-sector-car...
    - whimsicalism 3y ago
      Energy != electricity That said, what I probably should have said is the capability to go GHG neutral. I believe that France has more domestic nuclear capacity than its domestic electrical conception.
      - seadan83 3y ago
        This is a good resource looking at the energy capacity of france: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil... This resource describes France's nuclear sector as aging: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55259 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55259. Between those two, it's not obvious to me that France could enable more nuclear capacity to account for the rest of their energy needs. I'm not sure I would even agree that GHG neutral is even a thing. Just because a person plants 1000 trees to account for emitting 10 tons of carbon today, the 10 tons of carbon were still emitted today while those trees need decades to even get close to break-even (and in the meantime they can burn, contribute to mono-cultures, possible not grow at all, be double sold as offsets, etc..) More concretely, I think it's like calling a Geothermal plant GHG neutral if it powers a facility that pulls down as much carbon as the thermal plant emits. As an aggregate, there is actually a true net zero there, but the thermal plant is still a positive contributor to emissions.* The first resource linked earlier states it pretty well: "As a result of the 1974 decision, France now claims a substantial level of energy independence and an extremely low level of carbon dioxide emissions per capita from electricity generation, since over 80% of its electricity is from nuclear or hydro." "an extremely low level of carbon dioxide emissions per capita" is AFAIK as good as it gets. I'm not sure why/where the energy vs electricity different really matters here. Perhaps you can help me out? Googling for some other numbers, it looks like France's total emissions are 270M tons, with an energy sector emitting 40M tons, even if that energy sector were zero'd out - France would still emit 230M tons of GHG. *Low carbon != zero carbon output. This resource shows nuclear as being a very low carbon source of electricity, akin to wind and solar (and even less than geothermal, all quite surprising to me): https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/how-can-nuclear-combat-climate-change.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/how-can-nuclear... I think I might be extra sensitive to the phrase "GHG neutral", I believe that phrase is very often 100% PR and 0% reality.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    > why haven't we just done it because fossil fuel companies engage in grand fraud, for example they create astroturfing groups like 'citizens for responsible solar' which go around the country and file objection to every solar project that needs planning permission. They got on-shore wind turbines banned in Britain. They got construction of solar panels banned on all land except low-grade non-agricultural land, so like steep hills of Scotland where it is impractical. The underground power cable to France was blocked because it would 'ruin the landscape'.
  - Qwertious 3y ago
    >but if GHG neutral is so achievable with them why haven't we just done it? Because France's energy system is/was largely publicly run, and I expect the US coal lobby would have objected pretty strongly to direct competition against coal plants being paid for and subsidized by government money.
    - kevincox 3y ago
      The fact that a few coal billionaires have any notable influence on public policy is a failing of democracy. They are literally poisoning the air we breathe and killing many thousands of people a year but our government is bribed to do what they want.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  Can you provide a citation explaining why this a definite fact? Sounds very untrue considering we still have problems to solve to go 100% renewable which requires R&D
- XorNot 3y ago
  Do you have any research which supports those numbers? Because I haven't seen a single analysis of renewable energy which manages to come up with a plausible figure for solving the energy storage problem with realistic assumptions about overbuild (i.e. a pumped hydro storage system which only holds 1 day of energy isn't robust if you have a grid which doesn't have fossil fuel fallbacks).
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545044/electrify/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545044/electrify/
  - crote 3y ago
    The overnight cost of building nuclear is about $7000 / kW. Wind and solar are closer to $1500 / kW before taking storage into account. That's plenty of margin for a wide variety of storage solutions - including simply building a huge overcapacity and letting it idle, or doing carbon capture on a peaker gas plant.
    - XorNot 3y ago
      But there isn't, is the thing. Nuclear might cost $7000/kW but it has a capacity factor of 80%[1]. Solar has a capacity factor of 25%. So while nuclear is closer to $8750/kW after capacity factor, solar is $6000/kW after capacity factor...before storage. And storage doesn't have a simple analysis: you can only charge pumped hydro at a certain rate, so on any given day if you don't have excess solar, you might not fully recharge at all (and that's before the problems of storing exactly 1 day's worth of excess energy when you don't have a large, dispatchable fossil fuel grid to fall back on). And how much is pumped hydro per kW, naively? Varies - an optimistic assessment is $1500 per kW, potentially as high as $5,505 per kW (in capex)[2]. [1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2205429119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2205429119 [2] https://www.hydroreview.com/business-finance/business/nrel-includes-pumped-storage-in-2022-electricity-technology-baseline-report/ https://www.hydroreview.com/business-finance/business/nrel-i...
      - 3y ago
- rayiner 3y ago
  Except we could have avoided enormous amounts of emissions if every first world country had followed France’s lead back in the 1970s. By the time renewables technology advances sufficiently (grid-scale storage is still a necessary but unsolved piece of the puzzle) we will have wasted a 50+ year hard start we could’ve had with nuclear.
  - crote 3y ago
    Unfortunately most countries didn't follow France, and unless you have a time machine that is going to be quite difficult to change. When it comes to climate change, the most important goal is to reduce emissions as quickly as possible. This means switching from 100 units gas to 90 units renewable 10 units gas in 5 years is way better than switching to 100 units nuclear in 15 years. If you figure out a solution to the remaining 10 units of gas somewhere within 100 years, you end up ahead!
    - hackerlight 3y ago
      > When it comes to climate change, the most important goal is to reduce emissions as quickly as possible. This means switching from 100 units gas to 90 units renewable 10 units gas in 5 years is way better than switching to 100 units nuclear in 15 years. If you figure out a solution to the remaining 10 units of gas somewhere within 100 years, you end up ahead! This is an important refutation of "we need grid-scale storage before we can build out renewables". The total area under the curve is all that matters. 90% renewables + 10% gas can mean less overall emissions than 100% nuclear if it occurs sufficiently faster.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    Yes, in 1980 or 2000 or 2010 or even maybe 2015 it would have been a fabulous idea to start a whole bunch more nuclear plants. But in 2023 we have better options.
    - evilos 3y ago
      We've been saying this for decades. It's still not true because we haven't figured out massively scalable grid scale energy storage. The only thing that gets close is PHES and we don't have enough of it.
stephenr 3y ago
> spent nuclear fuel can be recycled even Where has this shown to be realistic at scale? Every "pro nuclear" argument always seems to include some experimental technology that's either never been made cost effective or never made it out of the lab. > components that last 10-30 years, It's not like nuclear plants last forever. Most seem to run for about 50 years and then need another 50 to decontaminate. The only reason there's not an existing industry to mass process old solar cells and windmill parts is that they've only recently started mass adoption - there weren't enough being decommissioned for an industry to exist around it yet.
- GeneralMayhem 3y ago
  > Where has this shown to be realistic at scale? France. But also, even if the fuel isn't optimally recycled, nuclear power is realistic. "Put it in a can and bury it under a mountain" is a sufficient waste disposal strategy for a pretty long time, and certainly much less damaging that the current fossil fuel "strategy" of "blast it all into the atmosphere and let God sort it out". The US produces about 18% of its energy from nuclear today, and generates about 2000 tons of waste per year. Presumably that means that going all-nuclear would generate about 11,000 tons per year. The Yucca Mountain facility alone had a capacity of 77,000 tons - so about 7 years' worth of powering the whole country.
  - foolfoolz 3y ago
    nuclear has been declining in france for 20 years
    - para_parolu 3y ago
      And now they have to play putin games because they need gas.
      - crote 3y ago
        Not really. Pre-war it only imported 17% from Russia, and like most European countries it has since switched to other suppliers. Turns out bringing LNG regasification plants online can be done in a few months, and plenty of countries are willing and able to supply that.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
I don't disagree with what you've said, but in many ways I think it's "too late" for nuclear. There was a good article I read recently that made the argument that the gargantuan cost of nuclear, coupled with long regulatory lead times and lots of local opposition make it much too slow to deploy, when we need drastic changes ASAP. Deployment of solar and wind is just much faster and ends up being much more cost competitive. "Overbuilding" renewables, coupled with multiple storage technologies, is a better option than nuclear at this point.
- dataflow 3y ago
  This doesn't make sense. I suppose it depends what your goals are? It might be "too late" if your goal is to stay below N degrees, but that doesn't mean you should give up on it. It could still be the way to prevent N + 1 degrees.
- bastawhiz 3y ago
  > Deployment of solar and wind is just much faster and ends up being much more cost competitive. There's literally nothing stopping us from building _both_ solar+wind and nuclear. There's no shortage of construction workers or materials. And it avoids the need to build large, expensive, and relatively short-lived (and resource-intensive) battery installations that are needed to displace fossil fuel-based energy generation. Solar and wind have an 80/20 problem, and nuclear easily slots in as a great solution for that 20%.
  - crote 3y ago
    > There's no shortage of construction workers or materials. In many countries there is a shortage, actually. Especially for construction workers. And a big limiting factor is the lack of money: money isn't unlimited and you can only spend each dollar once. You have to choose, so better spend it on the option with the biggest impact.
  - XorNot 3y ago
    While true, there's a question of why would you bother if you can build nuclear? 60-70% of my states' electricity use is 24/7 constant. Outside of that number, the downward slope between maxium and minimums is very long, and very slow and mostly at night. Nuclear plants are easily variable in fuel burn over these sorts of rates. The problem with solar and wind is that they can trip offline from the grid very quickly, so the entire question is whether you can plausibly backstop the grid for long enough without the need to spin up an extra powerplant. With a frontloaded capex asset like nuclear, once you are building it there's a big question as to how much value you get from not using it - i.e. the main benefit of solar and wind is if with storage they stop you needing to build a new nuclear plant. I would contend that the storage answer is very inadequate: it's not nearly good enough to have a grid which is only running with 1 day worth of banked power when you could have much longer periods of underproduction (which is the way most solar/wind storage solutions are presented). To safely have a distributed grid, you need months worth of stored power to average out the fluctuations. Storage just isn't cheap enough at that scale compared to nuclear reactors.
rayiner 3y ago
Fun fact: if everyone in earth had the same carbon footprint as folks in France, we could bring the entire third world up to first world living standards without increasing the world’s total carbon emissions.
rtpg 3y ago
I don't really feel the need to shut down nuclear stuff, but my impression from the past couple of years of these discussions is that nuclear is not only super costly, but logistically very hard (ignoring regulatory environment issues! Just logistics), and is just super hard to pull off. Meanwhile lots of other things have shown up, are very cheap, don't necessarily require huge water inputs, etc. France is the nuclear success story, of course! But the irony is that these power generators can only make money when used at 80-90% capacity. France's reactors don't get that high, and so they're quite a money pit. There's the argument that "losing money" generating power is fine (we don't expect to make money on libraries or streets), but it's important when people argue about regulation being the problem. The most open and willing ecosystem for nuclear power is one that exists due to massive state subsidies. Yeah lots of renewables aren't 100%, but power is power is power, and it feels like doing a bunch of easy stuff that also happens to make money for private actors (sidestepping some of the trickiness of larger gov't-funded projects) is a thing that our modern society is well oriented towards. EDIT: to be clear, if there was a huge pro-nuclear movement that showed up tomorrow that could get things done, I'd be all for it. I just like the idea of doing easy things that are accepted by wide swaths of the population rather than just sitting around lamenting that people are "being irrational" or w/e
mc32 3y ago
Yeah… there was one movie star who was heavily influenced by a movie she was in and became an activist against nuclear despite not having any background in nuclear power. Yet, ironically, many environmental movements and organizations hopped on her[1] bandwagon. Most have realized the error in judgement. Better late than never. She raised the anti-nuke monster that is only now being neutralized. That’s forty years lost right there. [1] Jane Fonda.
car 3y ago
Let’s consider, that France is importing power from Germany, since at times more then half of it’s nuclear power plants are off-line. Many for months on end, due to their dated and complex technology and lately corrosion problems. Some during the dry summers months, since not enough water is available for cooling. Edit: Added english article. Thanks for the downvotes. [0]https://www.grs.de/en/news/situation-nuclear-power-plants-france-how-has-situation-evolved-our-neighbouring-country https://www.grs.de/en/news/situation-nuclear-power-plants-fr... In German: [1]https://www.iwr.de/news/stromausfall-edf-abgeschaltete-atomkraftwerke-in-frankreich-kosten-knapp-30-milliarden-euro-news38076 https://www.iwr.de/news/stromausfall-edf-abgeschaltete-atomk...
- r00fus 3y ago
  Just a nitpick on the "half its power plants are offline" bit - Macron administration decided to finally retrofit a lot of the reactors and thus they've been offline during a critical time (with climate change - fueled heatwaves and Russia/Ukraine war). They likely decided for a drastic move since the legislature is no longer centrist majority. I don't think France's nuclear situation is as dire, but it does expose some of nuclear's weaknesses: need for fresh water, and maintenance (which was overdue).
- lostlogin 3y ago
  Could someone who disagrees with the above comment explain what’s wrong with it? Edit: it was downvoted but seems to have come back up.
  - epistasis 3y ago
    I didn't disagree with the comment, but I fear that pro-nuclear advocates have become almost as irrational as the far more irrational anti-nuclear advocates that they fight against all the time. Wrestling with pigs makes you muddy too, after all. Disclaimer: I wouldn't consider myself anti-nuclear according to any of the standard anti-nuke arguments, and was extremely pro-nuclear power in the US in the 2000s. However the experiences of advanced economies with very high productivity and labor costs (France, US, Finland) have completely soured me on the possibility of nuclear in the future, as the tech doesn't work that well and is very expensive. Even the country very best at construction, China, is only planning another 50GW or so, which is a tiny tiny fraction of any other new energy source that they are investing in. And if the best in the world at large construction projects is only putting in a token effort, I don't know why we in the US, who suck at large construction, should attempt more boondoggles. And in researching the history of nuclear, I find that it has always been this way, not so great. I think it only gets ardent supporters these days because of its prominence in SF.
scrum-treats 3y ago
France going nuclear [1]: "France’s championing of nuclear power as a way of ensuring its energy sovereignty sounds great. But a group of researchers says it's a red herring given France imports all its uranium." The push for nuclear in the US is a strategic maneuver to increase our position in Africa. It is not about increasing "clean" energy production. What else can you make with uranium and plutonium?? Hmm... Further, France is slowing nuclear power generation due to heat waves [2]. Further evidence that the nuclear path is not a scalable, viable solution. Meaning, it's a bad idea to invest nuclear energy, let alone for the purpose of transitioning off fossil fuels. [1]https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20220223-does-nuclear-power-guarantee-france-s-energy-independence-uranium-imported-niger-macron-russia https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20220223-does-nuclear-power-gua.... [2]https://efe.com/en/economia/2023-08-17/france-to-reduce-nuclear-power-generation-due-to-heat-wave/ https://efe.com/en/economia/2023-08-17/france-to-reduce-nucl...
- Paradigma11 3y ago
  Why would you not build new reactors at sites that account for the changed climate, maybe with adjacent cooling lakes? Yes, Uranium is imported but fuel costs and volume is a pretty irrelevant factor with nuclear energy. You can buy it somewhere else in strategic quantities and store it at home. But sure, there can be short term difficulties.

bryanlarsen 3y ago

It'll cost several trillion dollars more to switch the US to nuclear electricity than it would to switch to renewable electricity. Those trillions of dollars could clean up a lot of waste if that is your primary concern.

whimsicalism 3y ago
Will we be able to replace current loads with renewable power? All I know is that France has effectively been GHG neutral for decades because they invested in this. I know renewables have gotten way cheaper, but if GHG neutral is so achievable with them why haven't we just done it?
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  We are doing it. We're doing it at a rate of about 5% per year, and that rate is increasing every year. Given how big our grid is, 5% per year is pretty massive.
  - coding123 3y ago
    Nuclear is at 20% of total US grid power. So 4 years ago it was 0%? This graph is showing nuclear as being pretty flat GW production last 10 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_St...
- seadan83 3y ago
  France gets a large portion of electricity from Nuclear, though the data I could find does not say France is GHG neutral. The second largest source looks to be oil at around 35% [1] This source, [2], goes on to state: "In 2022, France's power sector carbon emissions nearly reached 40 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e), down from a century-peak of over 50 million tons recorded in 2005" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France#/media/File:Energy_mix_in_France.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France#/media/File:E... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1290541/power-sector-carbon-emissions-france/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1290541/power-sector-car...
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    Energy != electricity That said, what I probably should have said is the capability to go GHG neutral. I believe that France has more domestic nuclear capacity than its domestic electrical conception.
    - seadan83 3y ago
      This is a good resource looking at the energy capacity of france: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil... This resource describes France's nuclear sector as aging: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55259 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55259. Between those two, it's not obvious to me that France could enable more nuclear capacity to account for the rest of their energy needs. I'm not sure I would even agree that GHG neutral is even a thing. Just because a person plants 1000 trees to account for emitting 10 tons of carbon today, the 10 tons of carbon were still emitted today while those trees need decades to even get close to break-even (and in the meantime they can burn, contribute to mono-cultures, possible not grow at all, be double sold as offsets, etc..) More concretely, I think it's like calling a Geothermal plant GHG neutral if it powers a facility that pulls down as much carbon as the thermal plant emits. As an aggregate, there is actually a true net zero there, but the thermal plant is still a positive contributor to emissions.* The first resource linked earlier states it pretty well: "As a result of the 1974 decision, France now claims a substantial level of energy independence and an extremely low level of carbon dioxide emissions per capita from electricity generation, since over 80% of its electricity is from nuclear or hydro." "an extremely low level of carbon dioxide emissions per capita" is AFAIK as good as it gets. I'm not sure why/where the energy vs electricity different really matters here. Perhaps you can help me out? Googling for some other numbers, it looks like France's total emissions are 270M tons, with an energy sector emitting 40M tons, even if that energy sector were zero'd out - France would still emit 230M tons of GHG. *Low carbon != zero carbon output. This resource shows nuclear as being a very low carbon source of electricity, akin to wind and solar (and even less than geothermal, all quite surprising to me): https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/how-can-nuclear-combat-climate-change.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/how-can-nuclear... I think I might be extra sensitive to the phrase "GHG neutral", I believe that phrase is very often 100% PR and 0% reality.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > why haven't we just done it because fossil fuel companies engage in grand fraud, for example they create astroturfing groups like 'citizens for responsible solar' which go around the country and file objection to every solar project that needs planning permission. They got on-shore wind turbines banned in Britain. They got construction of solar panels banned on all land except low-grade non-agricultural land, so like steep hills of Scotland where it is impractical. The underground power cable to France was blocked because it would 'ruin the landscape'.
- Qwertious 3y ago
  >but if GHG neutral is so achievable with them why haven't we just done it? Because France's energy system is/was largely publicly run, and I expect the US coal lobby would have objected pretty strongly to direct competition against coal plants being paid for and subsidized by government money.
  - kevincox 3y ago
    The fact that a few coal billionaires have any notable influence on public policy is a failing of democracy. They are literally poisoning the air we breathe and killing many thousands of people a year but our government is bribed to do what they want.
edgyquant 3y ago
Can you provide a citation explaining why this a definite fact? Sounds very untrue considering we still have problems to solve to go 100% renewable which requires R&D
XorNot 3y ago
Do you have any research which supports those numbers? Because I haven't seen a single analysis of renewable energy which manages to come up with a plausible figure for solving the energy storage problem with realistic assumptions about overbuild (i.e. a pumped hydro storage system which only holds 1 day of energy isn't robust if you have a grid which doesn't have fossil fuel fallbacks).
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545044/electrify/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545044/electrify/
- crote 3y ago
  The overnight cost of building nuclear is about $7000 / kW. Wind and solar are closer to $1500 / kW before taking storage into account. That's plenty of margin for a wide variety of storage solutions - including simply building a huge overcapacity and letting it idle, or doing carbon capture on a peaker gas plant.
  - XorNot 3y ago
    But there isn't, is the thing. Nuclear might cost $7000/kW but it has a capacity factor of 80%[1]. Solar has a capacity factor of 25%. So while nuclear is closer to $8750/kW after capacity factor, solar is $6000/kW after capacity factor...before storage. And storage doesn't have a simple analysis: you can only charge pumped hydro at a certain rate, so on any given day if you don't have excess solar, you might not fully recharge at all (and that's before the problems of storing exactly 1 day's worth of excess energy when you don't have a large, dispatchable fossil fuel grid to fall back on). And how much is pumped hydro per kW, naively? Varies - an optimistic assessment is $1500 per kW, potentially as high as $5,505 per kW (in capex)[2]. [1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2205429119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2205429119 [2] https://www.hydroreview.com/business-finance/business/nrel-includes-pumped-storage-in-2022-electricity-technology-baseline-report/ https://www.hydroreview.com/business-finance/business/nrel-i...
    - 3y ago
rayiner 3y ago
Except we could have avoided enormous amounts of emissions if every first world country had followed France’s lead back in the 1970s. By the time renewables technology advances sufficiently (grid-scale storage is still a necessary but unsolved piece of the puzzle) we will have wasted a 50+ year hard start we could’ve had with nuclear.
- crote 3y ago
  Unfortunately most countries didn't follow France, and unless you have a time machine that is going to be quite difficult to change. When it comes to climate change, the most important goal is to reduce emissions as quickly as possible. This means switching from 100 units gas to 90 units renewable 10 units gas in 5 years is way better than switching to 100 units nuclear in 15 years. If you figure out a solution to the remaining 10 units of gas somewhere within 100 years, you end up ahead!
  - hackerlight 3y ago
    > When it comes to climate change, the most important goal is to reduce emissions as quickly as possible. This means switching from 100 units gas to 90 units renewable 10 units gas in 5 years is way better than switching to 100 units nuclear in 15 years. If you figure out a solution to the remaining 10 units of gas somewhere within 100 years, you end up ahead! This is an important refutation of "we need grid-scale storage before we can build out renewables". The total area under the curve is all that matters. 90% renewables + 10% gas can mean less overall emissions than 100% nuclear if it occurs sufficiently faster.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Yes, in 1980 or 2000 or 2010 or even maybe 2015 it would have been a fabulous idea to start a whole bunch more nuclear plants. But in 2023 we have better options.
  - evilos 3y ago
    We've been saying this for decades. It's still not true because we haven't figured out massively scalable grid scale energy storage. The only thing that gets close is PHES and we don't have enough of it.

stephenr 3y ago

> spent nuclear fuel can be recycled even Where has this shown to be realistic at scale? Every "pro nuclear" argument always seems to include some experimental technology that's either never been made cost effective or never made it out of the lab. > components that last 10-30 years, It's not like nuclear plants last forever. Most seem to run for about 50 years and then need another 50 to decontaminate. The only reason there's not an existing industry to mass process old solar cells and windmill parts is that they've only recently started mass adoption - there weren't enough being decommissioned for an industry to exist around it yet.

GeneralMayhem 3y ago
> Where has this shown to be realistic at scale? France. But also, even if the fuel isn't optimally recycled, nuclear power is realistic. "Put it in a can and bury it under a mountain" is a sufficient waste disposal strategy for a pretty long time, and certainly much less damaging that the current fossil fuel "strategy" of "blast it all into the atmosphere and let God sort it out". The US produces about 18% of its energy from nuclear today, and generates about 2000 tons of waste per year. Presumably that means that going all-nuclear would generate about 11,000 tons per year. The Yucca Mountain facility alone had a capacity of 77,000 tons - so about 7 years' worth of powering the whole country.
- foolfoolz 3y ago
  nuclear has been declining in france for 20 years
  - para_parolu 3y ago
    And now they have to play putin games because they need gas.
    - crote 3y ago
      Not really. Pre-war it only imported 17% from Russia, and like most European countries it has since switched to other suppliers. Turns out bringing LNG regasification plants online can be done in a few months, and plenty of countries are willing and able to supply that.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

I don't disagree with what you've said, but in many ways I think it's "too late" for nuclear. There was a good article I read recently that made the argument that the gargantuan cost of nuclear, coupled with long regulatory lead times and lots of local opposition make it much too slow to deploy, when we need drastic changes ASAP. Deployment of solar and wind is just much faster and ends up being much more cost competitive. "Overbuilding" renewables, coupled with multiple storage technologies, is a better option than nuclear at this point.

dataflow 3y ago
This doesn't make sense. I suppose it depends what your goals are? It might be "too late" if your goal is to stay below N degrees, but that doesn't mean you should give up on it. It could still be the way to prevent N + 1 degrees.
bastawhiz 3y ago
> Deployment of solar and wind is just much faster and ends up being much more cost competitive. There's literally nothing stopping us from building _both_ solar+wind and nuclear. There's no shortage of construction workers or materials. And it avoids the need to build large, expensive, and relatively short-lived (and resource-intensive) battery installations that are needed to displace fossil fuel-based energy generation. Solar and wind have an 80/20 problem, and nuclear easily slots in as a great solution for that 20%.
- crote 3y ago
  > There's no shortage of construction workers or materials. In many countries there is a shortage, actually. Especially for construction workers. And a big limiting factor is the lack of money: money isn't unlimited and you can only spend each dollar once. You have to choose, so better spend it on the option with the biggest impact.
- XorNot 3y ago
  While true, there's a question of why would you bother if you can build nuclear? 60-70% of my states' electricity use is 24/7 constant. Outside of that number, the downward slope between maxium and minimums is very long, and very slow and mostly at night. Nuclear plants are easily variable in fuel burn over these sorts of rates. The problem with solar and wind is that they can trip offline from the grid very quickly, so the entire question is whether you can plausibly backstop the grid for long enough without the need to spin up an extra powerplant. With a frontloaded capex asset like nuclear, once you are building it there's a big question as to how much value you get from not using it - i.e. the main benefit of solar and wind is if with storage they stop you needing to build a new nuclear plant. I would contend that the storage answer is very inadequate: it's not nearly good enough to have a grid which is only running with 1 day worth of banked power when you could have much longer periods of underproduction (which is the way most solar/wind storage solutions are presented). To safely have a distributed grid, you need months worth of stored power to average out the fluctuations. Storage just isn't cheap enough at that scale compared to nuclear reactors.

rayiner 3y ago

Fun fact: if everyone in earth had the same carbon footprint as folks in France, we could bring the entire third world up to first world living standards without increasing the world’s total carbon emissions.

rtpg 3y ago

I don't really feel the need to shut down nuclear stuff, but my impression from the past couple of years of these discussions is that nuclear is not only super costly, but logistically very hard (ignoring regulatory environment issues! Just logistics), and is just super hard to pull off. Meanwhile lots of other things have shown up, are very cheap, don't necessarily require huge water inputs, etc. France is the nuclear success story, of course! But the irony is that these power generators can only make money when used at 80-90% capacity. France's reactors don't get that high, and so they're quite a money pit. There's the argument that "losing money" generating power is fine (we don't expect to make money on libraries or streets), but it's important when people argue about regulation being the problem. The most open and willing ecosystem for nuclear power is one that exists due to massive state subsidies. Yeah lots of renewables aren't 100%, but power is power is power, and it feels like doing a bunch of easy stuff that also happens to make money for private actors (sidestepping some of the trickiness of larger gov't-funded projects) is a thing that our modern society is well oriented towards. EDIT: to be clear, if there was a huge pro-nuclear movement that showed up tomorrow that could get things done, I'd be all for it. I just like the idea of doing easy things that are accepted by wide swaths of the population rather than just sitting around lamenting that people are "being irrational" or w/e

mc32 3y ago

Yeah… there was one movie star who was heavily influenced by a movie she was in and became an activist against nuclear despite not having any background in nuclear power. Yet, ironically, many environmental movements and organizations hopped on her[1] bandwagon. Most have realized the error in judgement. Better late than never. She raised the anti-nuke monster that is only now being neutralized. That’s forty years lost right there. [1] Jane Fonda.

car 3y ago

Let’s consider, that France is importing power from Germany, since at times more then half of it’s nuclear power plants are off-line. Many for months on end, due to their dated and complex technology and lately corrosion problems. Some during the dry summers months, since not enough water is available for cooling. Edit: Added english article. Thanks for the downvotes. [0]https://www.grs.de/en/news/situation-nuclear-power-plants-france-how-has-situation-evolved-our-neighbouring-country https://www.grs.de/en/news/situation-nuclear-power-plants-fr... In German: [1]https://www.iwr.de/news/stromausfall-edf-abgeschaltete-atomkraftwerke-in-frankreich-kosten-knapp-30-milliarden-euro-news38076 https://www.iwr.de/news/stromausfall-edf-abgeschaltete-atomk...

r00fus 3y ago
Just a nitpick on the "half its power plants are offline" bit - Macron administration decided to finally retrofit a lot of the reactors and thus they've been offline during a critical time (with climate change - fueled heatwaves and Russia/Ukraine war). They likely decided for a drastic move since the legislature is no longer centrist majority. I don't think France's nuclear situation is as dire, but it does expose some of nuclear's weaknesses: need for fresh water, and maintenance (which was overdue).
lostlogin 3y ago
Could someone who disagrees with the above comment explain what’s wrong with it? Edit: it was downvoted but seems to have come back up.
- epistasis 3y ago
  I didn't disagree with the comment, but I fear that pro-nuclear advocates have become almost as irrational as the far more irrational anti-nuclear advocates that they fight against all the time. Wrestling with pigs makes you muddy too, after all. Disclaimer: I wouldn't consider myself anti-nuclear according to any of the standard anti-nuke arguments, and was extremely pro-nuclear power in the US in the 2000s. However the experiences of advanced economies with very high productivity and labor costs (France, US, Finland) have completely soured me on the possibility of nuclear in the future, as the tech doesn't work that well and is very expensive. Even the country very best at construction, China, is only planning another 50GW or so, which is a tiny tiny fraction of any other new energy source that they are investing in. And if the best in the world at large construction projects is only putting in a token effort, I don't know why we in the US, who suck at large construction, should attempt more boondoggles. And in researching the history of nuclear, I find that it has always been this way, not so great. I think it only gets ardent supporters these days because of its prominence in SF.

scrum-treats 3y ago

France going nuclear [1]: "France’s championing of nuclear power as a way of ensuring its energy sovereignty sounds great. But a group of researchers says it's a red herring given France imports all its uranium." The push for nuclear in the US is a strategic maneuver to increase our position in Africa. It is not about increasing "clean" energy production. What else can you make with uranium and plutonium?? Hmm... Further, France is slowing nuclear power generation due to heat waves [2]. Further evidence that the nuclear path is not a scalable, viable solution. Meaning, it's a bad idea to invest nuclear energy, let alone for the purpose of transitioning off fossil fuels. [1]https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20220223-does-nuclear-power-guarantee-france-s-energy-independence-uranium-imported-niger-macron-russia https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20220223-does-nuclear-power-gua.... [2]https://efe.com/en/economia/2023-08-17/france-to-reduce-nuclear-power-generation-due-to-heat-wave/ https://efe.com/en/economia/2023-08-17/france-to-reduce-nucl...

Paradigma11 3y ago
Why would you not build new reactors at sites that account for the changed climate, maybe with adjacent cooling lakes? Yes, Uranium is imported but fuel costs and volume is a pretty irrelevant factor with nuclear energy. You can buy it somewhere else in strategic quantities and store it at home. But sure, there can be short term difficulties.