7 ms·

It doesn't matter. Nuclear power generation is going nowhere because it's not economical and likely never will be. Modular reactors make no sense because large

by jmyeet 2y ago

It doesn't matter. Nuclear power generation is going nowhere because it's not economical and likely never will be. Modular reactors make no sense because larger reactors are more efficient. Nuclera plants ultimately just boil water and turn a turbine to generate power, just like any coal palnt. Coal plants burn coal to generate heat. A nuclear plant simply has a nuclear pile that generates heat. The failure modes are prohibitive. Just one incident (Fukushima) has a likely clean up cost of roughly $1 trillion [1] and will take decades, if not more than a century. Nearly 40 years later the absolutely exclusion zone for Chernobyl is still 1000 square miles. Chernobyl is hand waved away as "poor Soviet construction and management". Fukushima is hand waved away too. Massive failures are hand waved away by talking in terms of deaths. And, of course, fusion is a pipe dream. [1]: https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Fukushima-Anniversary/Fukushima-cleanup-costs-swell-with-no-end-in-sight https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Fukushima-Anniversary/Fuku...

insane_dreamer 2y ago
Has worked out just fine for France. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France
- natmaka 2y ago
  The real cost (including public money) of it is mind-boggling, and a serious accident cannot be ruled out. If uranium becomes difficult to import France will badly suffer. Then problems induced by real decommission costs and waste long-term management will hit.
  - insane_dreamer 2y ago
    And yet, electricity prices in France are lower than other large European countries: https://www.energycouncil.com.au/news/international-electricity-price-comparisons/ https://www.energycouncil.com.au/news/international-electric... It has 58 nuclear power plants without any serious accidents in the past 50+ years. That's a pretty good record. People always bring up Fukushima, but what killed ~20,000 people was the tsunami, not the reactor meltdown. The 2004 tsunami killed > 200,000 people. It hasn't stopped people worldwide from living near the coast.
    - natmaka 2y ago
      > electricity prices in France are lower than other large European countries Allow me to repeat: the taxpayer (France is the worldwide champ when it comes to taxes) pays a hefty part of it. See the Cour des comptes report published in 2012 At Fukushima the evacuation triggered by the nuclear major accident officially killed more than 2,200 persons ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties#Other_reports https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... ), moreover the cost of the cleanup is huge ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup ). One hardly sees how any renewable-based plant, even exposed to a tsunami, would have triggered such evacuation or cleanup.
      - insane_dreamer 2y ago
        > the evacuation triggered by the nuclear major accident officially killed more than 2,200 persons that's not what the article you linked to says
        natmaka 2y ago
        Please search and find in its main framed concise exposé: "Deaths 1 confirmed from radiation (lung cancer, 4 years later), and 2,202 from evacuation."
        Herz 2y ago
        Attributing deaths to nuclear power due to political choices makes no sense. These fatalities were completely unjustified and driven by baseless fears. Besides, what is the point of counting deaths? In Germany, an estimated 1,100 deaths per year result from the use of fossil fuels to replace the shutdown of nuclear power plants. https://academic.oup.com/jeea/article/20/3/1311/6520438 https://academic.oup.com/jeea/article/20/3/1311/6520438 Fatalities are strongly correlated with pollution, and deaths caused by hydroelectric power are significantly higher. Unfortunately, decarbonization is crucial. Otherwise, in the coming decades, we won't be discussing a few thousand deaths but several million. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy Nuclear power often faces harsh criticism, being labeled the worst of all energy sources. However, this perception changes when it's compared in context with other sources. We are in a critical period and cannot afford to exclude any energy sources simply because we like them less than others.
  - akvadrako 2y ago
    Uranium exists almost in every country and is like 1% of the cost of nuclear power. It's availability is not a risk. There is enough of it to power Earth for millions of years.
    - natmaka 2y ago
      Nope. "As of 2017, identified uranium reserves recoverable at US$130/kg were 6.14 million tons (compared to 5.72 million tons in 2015). At the rate of consumption in 2017, these reserves are sufficient for slightly over 130 years of supply." Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining#Peak_uranium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining#Peak_uranium Nuclear produces about 9% of electricity worldwide ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_mix#World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_mix#World ), which in turn is about 22% of the consumed (final)) energy. Nuclear produces less than 2% of our energy. This is roughly linear: 130 years at 2%, therefore 65 years at 4% (and no one will nowadays invest in a reactor with no hope to exploit it for at the very least 60 years) Exploiting uranium ore of a lesser grade is possible but quickly gets more expensive and adds to nuclear greenhouse-gas emissions ( see the study "Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Nuclear Electricity Generation" in "Journal of Industrial Ecology" (2012, Warner, Heath)): up to 110g eqCO2/KWh .
      - insane_dreamer 2y ago
        Those are _identified_ reserves. The same was said about peak oil until much larger deposits were found and/or new extraction methods discovered. Not saying it's unlimited, but at current consumption rates we're much more likely to run out of petroleum than uranium[0]. But of course we've been saying we have "50 years left" of petroleum for decades, so who knows. And that doesn't account for alternative fuel sources such as thorium[1] [0] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=38&t=6 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=38&t=6 [1] https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/thoriums-long-term-potential-in-nuclear-energy-new-iaea-analysis https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/thoriums-long-term-pote...
        natmaka 2y ago
Ziggy_Zaggy 2y ago
Yet nuclear still seems to be a front-runner candidate for net-zero-carbon solutions in the arena of "almost always online" base-load. AKA - what solutions are best at carrying the base-load in low-daylight or low-wind scenarios...? And datacenters for LLM applications...? How much land will be required to build a power plant facility to power each new LLM datacenter...? What solution carries that base-load during the low-light or low-wind time-periods...? If this is the status-quo in the US now regarding nuclear fission tech then don't look now but NASA and other nations R&D sectors are already making significant progress towards anti-matter solutions. Luddites beware - the risks with new high-energy tech doesn't get any less scary moving forward but they DO score better on net-zero-carbon metrics.
- XorNot 2y ago
  I cannot stress this enough: anti-matter is not a power source. It never will be, on account of "it doesn't exist in our universe naturally". You cannot mine anti-matter, you cannot even efficiently make it and you certainly can't store it.
  - akvadrako 2y ago
    You can mine antimatter, in particle accelerators. One can think of energy as made up of matter and antimatter, it just needs to be separated. And of course they do store it. Charged antimatter can be stored in magnetic fields, for example.
    - XorNot 2y ago
      No, you can't. Particle accelerators make anti-matter. And they do so extremely inefficiently. This is not an energy source: it's at best, a conversion or storage system. Making anti-matter is an inefficient, energy losing process, it is not a fuel source. And the storage sucks: the longest anti-matter confinement time is 405 days in a Penning trap and we've only done so for amounts measured in total count of atoms, in the thousands. Not even micrograms.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter

by jmyeet 2y ago

insane_dreamer 2y ago

Has worked out just fine for France. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France

natmaka 2y ago
The real cost (including public money) of it is mind-boggling, and a serious accident cannot be ruled out. If uranium becomes difficult to import France will badly suffer. Then problems induced by real decommission costs and waste long-term management will hit.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  And yet, electricity prices in France are lower than other large European countries: https://www.energycouncil.com.au/news/international-electricity-price-comparisons/ https://www.energycouncil.com.au/news/international-electric... It has 58 nuclear power plants without any serious accidents in the past 50+ years. That's a pretty good record. People always bring up Fukushima, but what killed ~20,000 people was the tsunami, not the reactor meltdown. The 2004 tsunami killed > 200,000 people. It hasn't stopped people worldwide from living near the coast.
  - natmaka 2y ago
    > electricity prices in France are lower than other large European countries Allow me to repeat: the taxpayer (France is the worldwide champ when it comes to taxes) pays a hefty part of it. See the Cour des comptes report published in 2012 At Fukushima the evacuation triggered by the nuclear major accident officially killed more than 2,200 persons ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties#Other_reports https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... ), moreover the cost of the cleanup is huge ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup ). One hardly sees how any renewable-based plant, even exposed to a tsunami, would have triggered such evacuation or cleanup.
    - insane_dreamer 2y ago
      > the evacuation triggered by the nuclear major accident officially killed more than 2,200 persons that's not what the article you linked to says
      - natmaka 2y ago
        Please search and find in its main framed concise exposé: "Deaths 1 confirmed from radiation (lung cancer, 4 years later), and 2,202 from evacuation."
        Herz 2y ago
        Attributing deaths to nuclear power due to political choices makes no sense. These fatalities were completely unjustified and driven by baseless fears. Besides, what is the point of counting deaths? In Germany, an estimated 1,100 deaths per year result from the use of fossil fuels to replace the shutdown of nuclear power plants. https://academic.oup.com/jeea/article/20/3/1311/6520438 https://academic.oup.com/jeea/article/20/3/1311/6520438 Fatalities are strongly correlated with pollution, and deaths caused by hydroelectric power are significantly higher. Unfortunately, decarbonization is crucial. Otherwise, in the coming decades, we won't be discussing a few thousand deaths but several million. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy Nuclear power often faces harsh criticism, being labeled the worst of all energy sources. However, this perception changes when it's compared in context with other sources. We are in a critical period and cannot afford to exclude any energy sources simply because we like them less than others.
- akvadrako 2y ago
  Uranium exists almost in every country and is like 1% of the cost of nuclear power. It's availability is not a risk. There is enough of it to power Earth for millions of years.
  - natmaka 2y ago
    Nope. "As of 2017, identified uranium reserves recoverable at US$130/kg were 6.14 million tons (compared to 5.72 million tons in 2015). At the rate of consumption in 2017, these reserves are sufficient for slightly over 130 years of supply." Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining#Peak_uranium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining#Peak_uranium Nuclear produces about 9% of electricity worldwide ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_mix#World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_mix#World ), which in turn is about 22% of the consumed (final)) energy. Nuclear produces less than 2% of our energy. This is roughly linear: 130 years at 2%, therefore 65 years at 4% (and no one will nowadays invest in a reactor with no hope to exploit it for at the very least 60 years) Exploiting uranium ore of a lesser grade is possible but quickly gets more expensive and adds to nuclear greenhouse-gas emissions ( see the study "Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Nuclear Electricity Generation" in "Journal of Industrial Ecology" (2012, Warner, Heath)): up to 110g eqCO2/KWh .
    - insane_dreamer 2y ago
      Those are _identified_ reserves. The same was said about peak oil until much larger deposits were found and/or new extraction methods discovered. Not saying it's unlimited, but at current consumption rates we're much more likely to run out of petroleum than uranium[0]. But of course we've been saying we have "50 years left" of petroleum for decades, so who knows. And that doesn't account for alternative fuel sources such as thorium[1] [0] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=38&t=6 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=38&t=6 [1] https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/thoriums-long-term-potential-in-nuclear-energy-new-iaea-analysis https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/thoriums-long-term-pote...
      - natmaka 2y ago

Ziggy_Zaggy 2y ago

Yet nuclear still seems to be a front-runner candidate for net-zero-carbon solutions in the arena of "almost always online" base-load. AKA - what solutions are best at carrying the base-load in low-daylight or low-wind scenarios...? And datacenters for LLM applications...? How much land will be required to build a power plant facility to power each new LLM datacenter...? What solution carries that base-load during the low-light or low-wind time-periods...? If this is the status-quo in the US now regarding nuclear fission tech then don't look now but NASA and other nations R&D sectors are already making significant progress towards anti-matter solutions. Luddites beware - the risks with new high-energy tech doesn't get any less scary moving forward but they DO score better on net-zero-carbon metrics.

XorNot 2y ago
I cannot stress this enough: anti-matter is not a power source. It never will be, on account of "it doesn't exist in our universe naturally". You cannot mine anti-matter, you cannot even efficiently make it and you certainly can't store it.
- akvadrako 2y ago
  You can mine antimatter, in particle accelerators. One can think of energy as made up of matter and antimatter, it just needs to be separated. And of course they do store it. Charged antimatter can be stored in magnetic fields, for example.
  - XorNot 2y ago
    No, you can't. Particle accelerators make anti-matter. And they do so extremely inefficiently. This is not an energy source: it's at best, a conversion or storage system. Making anti-matter is an inefficient, energy losing process, it is not a fuel source. And the storage sucks: the longest anti-matter confinement time is 405 days in a Penning trap and we've only done so for amounts measured in total count of atoms, in the thousands. Not even micrograms.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter