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I've been saying for years that we'll know the world is serious about energy when we see big pushes into nuclear power. We're here now. This is the point at whi

I've been saying for years that we'll know the world is serious about energy when we see big pushes into nuclear power. We're here now. This is the point at which all the dumb "but what about a gorillion turbines and solar panels" start to die off (except for where they're legitimately a great solution) and talk about the only viable power source moving forward will start to grow. This is super exciting to me.

threeseed 2y ago
There are no big pushes into nuclear power. These are all tiny deployments that may never even happen. And those dumb turbines and solar panels produce power at a fraction of the cost of nuclear. And every year they get cheaper and more efficient. Which is why the market has continually decided over and over again to go in this direction.
- m101 2y ago
  Solar and wind emit a lot of CO2 upfront relative to the energy they produce down the line.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    So does nuclear, and in much larger absolute extent: production of steel and concrete, used copiously in NPP construction, inevitably releases a lot of CO2. Melting silicon or smelting aluminum, not nearly as much. (IDK about epoxy resin production.) I suppose that instead of eliminating the processes that produce large amounts of CO2, we should embrace them, learn to capture the CO2 where it's produced in high concentrations (like steel plants or cement furnaces), and either bind the carbon in non-volatile ways, like in plastics, or produce fuel from it again and close the loop.
    - UltraSane 2y ago
      [dead]
    - m101 2y ago
      It's not about absolute but about relative to the amount of energy produced. Energy return in investment is <10x for solar, but more like 100x for nuclear. We have an energy budget to solver climate change. This is nothing to do with how much things cost.
  - Angostura 2y ago
    Now run that in comparison to building and decommissioning a nuclear power station
    - m101 2y ago
      It works out even with that. It's actually better than that - many nuclear plants work well past their initial design lifetimes.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    "A lot" is really subjective, so I'll link this chart instead: https://assets.solar.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Carbon-footprint-of-solar-panels.png https://assets.solar.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Carbon-f... I'd say 1-5% of coal is pretty good. Also as we make the power grid cleaner and switch to electric vehicles, the CO2 used in manufacturing goes down.
    - m101 2y ago
      It's not about comparing to coal but rather about comparing to other good alternatives, with that being nuclear. Energy return in investment is <10x for solar, but more like 100x for nuclear. We have an energy budget to solver climate change. This is nothing to do with how much things cost.
      - Dylan16807 2y ago
        You said solar and wind emit a lot, but according to the chart wind and nuclear are tied. Rooftop solar is worse, but 4x worse than wind/nuclear is still quite good (and non-rooftop solar is almost certainly better than that). Solar's energy return on investment is higher than 10x by my searching, and we should be mass producing all three technologies at this point.
  - Ghaenergyyy 2y ago
    Its not a lot. Pls don't repeat this. Wind and solar turnaround is very fast...
    - m101 2y ago
      Energy return in investment is <10x for solar, but more like 100x for nuclear. We have an energy budget to solver climate change. This is nothing to do with how much things cost.
      - Ghaenergyyy 2y ago
        That was not my point. A solar panel is co2 neutral after 3 years and wind in a year. And if we could build nuclear properly in a reasonable fast way around the globe, i would be for investing it heavily anyway i'm just not controling it in anyway and the only thing actually working is solar, wind and battery. Low risk, broad spectrum investment (private, small companies, big, basically everyone can)
- nine_k 2y ago
  > produce power at a fraction of the cost Sadly, also for a fraction of the time. Until storage is solved in a satisfactory way, solar and wind will remain auxiliary. And the capacity should be in gigawatt-days.
  - threeseed 2y ago
    Well that fraction coincides with when demand is the highest. And storage is being solved as we have more batteries being deployed and grid supply capable EVs becoming more popular. The market is deciding where money should be allocated and it's simply not going towards nuclear.
    - abfan1127 2y ago
      why would you want to share your EV battery capacity with the grid? I don't understand this. Range is entirely dictated by your EV capacity and you're going to "rent" back the capacity (and battery cycles) for night time hours? I don't understand how this would work at scale.
      - crazygringo 2y ago
        > why would you want to share your EV battery capacity with the grid? Because you'd get paid for it, and you like free money. And it should be pretty trivial to set an option to ensure you always have the necessary range for your daily commute by a little bit before you leave your home.
        abfan1127 2y ago
        if services like Uber have shown anything, its that you can sell your vehicle's intrinsic value, depreciating it's value in the process. But will you be net positive after depreciated value?
        crazygringo 2y ago
        Obviously almost nobody would do it if it weren't net positive. And why wouldn't it be? The whole point here is for power companies to avoid buying as many batteries themselves, and their own batteries depreciate too. This isn't hard -- the power company adjusts the price it pays minute per minute, and you set the threshold at which it is profitable for you, taking battery cycles into account. And it becomes a classic supply and demand curve -- it's Econ 101.
- canadianfella 2y ago
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psunavy03 2y ago
If you're not serious about nuclear, you're not serious about climate change.
- barbazoo 2y ago
  Source?
  - atomic128 2y ago
    Germany is a tragic real-world example. Take a look at what Germany did to itself. Compare France. The anti-nuclear wind/solar proponents are dangerously wrong.
    - _aavaa_ 2y ago
      That Germany's early retirement of its fleet was a bad idea does not mean that building more is a good idea.
    - barbazoo 2y ago
      Germany has been reducing its carbon emissions by increasing the ratio of renewable energy, year after year despite the exit from nuclear power. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... Isn't that the goal? If they can do that without nuclear power - great. Despite France's >50% nuclear power they have a much higher ratio of "dirty" power compared to Germany. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France
      - emptyfile 2y ago
        [dead]
      - Manuel_D 2y ago
        Germany's energy industry emits 6 times as much greenhouse gases per MWh of electricity generated than France: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2024/09/08/france-vs-germany-which-country-is-better-at-reducing-greenhouse-gas-emissions-from-its-factories_6725219_19.html#:~:text=Germany's%20mix%20has%20a%20higher,require%20significant%20electrification%20of%20processes https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2024/09/08/france-.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:Energy_mix_in_Germany.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:... Germany's energy is 80% fossil fuels. France's is 50%. I'm not sure how you reached the conclusion that Germany's energy mix is less "dirty" than Frances.
nine_k 2y ago
Wind and especially solar are also serious. But their applications are different; they can offset the load when the sun shines, or the wind blows, but can't provide a stable source. If you need baseload, and need it carbon-free, your only option currently is nuclear. It's terribly encumbered, but apparently it's still less of an impasse that large-scale electricity storage currently is.
- barbazoo 2y ago
  > If you need baseload, and need it carbon-free, your only option currently is nuclear What about geothermal, tidal, hydro, etc?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - nine_k 2y ago
    Good, given the right geography. - Hydrothermal: great if you're in Iceland, or near Yellowstone, or other such place blessed by heated rock being close to the surface. Not as great if you need to drill 7 km to reach it. - Hydro: great if you have a lot of mountains and rivers, like Switzerland or Norway. Harder if you don't, like in much of Texas, to say nothing of Florida. - Tidal: great if you have a sea shore, preferably with narrow bays / fjords. But if you're in a place like Turkmenistan (one of the two doubly-landlocked countries), you resort to drilling for and burning methane %)
    - bobthepanda 2y ago
      Hydro has a bunch of problems. * most of the "good sites" have already been taken * hydro will regularly silt up, requiring constant dredging * hydro does not work as well or at all in drought conditions, which are increasingly common * hydro dams require reservoirs, which in addition to the obvious disruption of the displacement of thousands or even a million plus people in the case of Three Gorges, can end up emitting large amounts of carbon as flooded vegetation decomposes. * hydro is extremely disruptive to migratory fish. the success rate of interventions like fish ladders is in the low single digit percents. so you can get a bunch of carbon free power but also destroy an ecosystem in the process, not to mention any downstream fishing. and you see similar effects with other things that downstream users might want from the river like fresh silt.
DCH3416 2y ago
> "but what about a gorillion turbines and solar panels" It's a good thing to have a diverse portfolio of energy solutions to help avoid single points of failure in the network. Especially as something like solar continues to become more and more efficient.
- fraboniface 2y ago
  I don't really understand this argument. How are dozens of nuclear power plants a single point of failure? Because of the uranium mining and processing? Then we can invest in fast reactors, which consume 100x less and require less R&D than renewables have benefited from in the last decades. Or seawater uranium, another 100x in reserves, distributed all around the world.
  - robryan 2y ago
    The problem is more our lack of ability to build them quickly and in a cost effective way. An investment in solar will much more reliably and quickly turn into a certain amount of power generation. Hopefully this changes once every nuclear project isn't some complex bespoke thing that is likely to be late and over budget.
    - panick21_ 2y ago
      And yet UAE a country without any technical knowlage built them in a cost effective way and quickly. In fact, any country that has built them in mass figured out how to do it cost effective and quickly. The reality is, its only not cost effective and quick when a country only builds a single reactor as a vanity project to keep the industry alive. No country that seriously tried to quickly increase production with nuclear has failed.
      - ceejayoz 2y ago
        The UAE spent $30B and a decade building one nuclear plant. The technical knowledge (and the design, and the construction) came from South Korea.
hindsightbias 2y ago
I’ve been saying for years that new nuclear plant development will be evidence of an AGI fufilling its physiological hierarchy of needs. I see Starship as another requirement.
- epistasis 2y ago
  How are any of these things connected?
AtlasBarfed 2y ago
The basic economics of power generation do not agree with your contention. The reality is that this is all nuclear can rest its hopes on. Industry specific applications, because for general electricity generation it is hopelessly non-competitive.
cyanydeez 2y ago
Unfortunately, this isnt to sustain exiwting enetgy, its to add powER TO AI GIGO.
xinayder 2y ago
I just wish this brings more research into Thorium based reactors, as they seem to be the future of sustainable nuclear power. Maybe a SMR powered by Thorium in the future? Who knows.
- tim333 2y ago
  Thorium based seems to be a conventional nuclear reactor with added complications. Getting conventional made is hard enough. There's a good article on the technical problems here https://thebulletin.org/2022/06/molten-salt-reactors-were-trouble-in-the-1960s-and-they-remain-trouble-today/ https://thebulletin.org/2022/06/molten-salt-reactors-were-tr... One quote from that: >During its operational lifetime, the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment was shut down 225 times. Of these 225 interruptions, only 58 were planned. The remaining interruptions were due to various technical problems, including: “chronic plugging” of the pipes... >...These problems remain relevant. Even today, no material can perform satisfactorily in the high-radiation, high-temperature, and corrosive environment inside a molten salt reactor. I'm not sure anyone has made one that powered anything or produced electricity. The MSRE just intermittently heated the air when it was working. Apparently although it only ran from 1965 to 1969 and produced a peak of 8MW, it's still costing about $10m per year to manage the waste produced. In the 1990s they found uranium in the waste had migrated leading to the possibility of an accidental criticality. Still the Chinese supposed to be running an experimental one similar to the MSRE in the Gobi desert next year. I'm not holding my breath for commercial operation though.
- preisschild 2y ago
  Doesn't even neccessarily need to be Thorium-232, we also have a lot uf Uranium-238 that isn't really used efficiently. Thermal/Fast Breeders are needed to use those fuel sources. Only Russia commercialiced them, because western nations stopped funding r&d (EBR2 in the US and Superphênix in France)
tim333 2y ago
Some stats. Solar install 2024 593GW, nuclear install per year about 8GW. Solar growing about 30% a year, nukes about 0%. Storage is coming along too. (some source stuff https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41601621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41601621)
Ghaenergyyy 2y ago
[dead]

threeseed 2y ago

There are no big pushes into nuclear power. These are all tiny deployments that may never even happen. And those dumb turbines and solar panels produce power at a fraction of the cost of nuclear. And every year they get cheaper and more efficient. Which is why the market has continually decided over and over again to go in this direction.

m101 2y ago
Solar and wind emit a lot of CO2 upfront relative to the energy they produce down the line.
- nine_k 2y ago
  So does nuclear, and in much larger absolute extent: production of steel and concrete, used copiously in NPP construction, inevitably releases a lot of CO2. Melting silicon or smelting aluminum, not nearly as much. (IDK about epoxy resin production.) I suppose that instead of eliminating the processes that produce large amounts of CO2, we should embrace them, learn to capture the CO2 where it's produced in high concentrations (like steel plants or cement furnaces), and either bind the carbon in non-volatile ways, like in plastics, or produce fuel from it again and close the loop.
  - UltraSane 2y ago
    [dead]
  - m101 2y ago
    It's not about absolute but about relative to the amount of energy produced. Energy return in investment is <10x for solar, but more like 100x for nuclear. We have an energy budget to solver climate change. This is nothing to do with how much things cost.
- Angostura 2y ago
  Now run that in comparison to building and decommissioning a nuclear power station
  - m101 2y ago
    It works out even with that. It's actually better than that - many nuclear plants work well past their initial design lifetimes.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  "A lot" is really subjective, so I'll link this chart instead: https://assets.solar.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Carbon-footprint-of-solar-panels.png https://assets.solar.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Carbon-f... I'd say 1-5% of coal is pretty good. Also as we make the power grid cleaner and switch to electric vehicles, the CO2 used in manufacturing goes down.
  - m101 2y ago
    It's not about comparing to coal but rather about comparing to other good alternatives, with that being nuclear. Energy return in investment is <10x for solar, but more like 100x for nuclear. We have an energy budget to solver climate change. This is nothing to do with how much things cost.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      You said solar and wind emit a lot, but according to the chart wind and nuclear are tied. Rooftop solar is worse, but 4x worse than wind/nuclear is still quite good (and non-rooftop solar is almost certainly better than that). Solar's energy return on investment is higher than 10x by my searching, and we should be mass producing all three technologies at this point.
- Ghaenergyyy 2y ago
  Its not a lot. Pls don't repeat this. Wind and solar turnaround is very fast...
  - m101 2y ago
    Energy return in investment is <10x for solar, but more like 100x for nuclear. We have an energy budget to solver climate change. This is nothing to do with how much things cost.
    - Ghaenergyyy 2y ago
      That was not my point. A solar panel is co2 neutral after 3 years and wind in a year. And if we could build nuclear properly in a reasonable fast way around the globe, i would be for investing it heavily anyway i'm just not controling it in anyway and the only thing actually working is solar, wind and battery. Low risk, broad spectrum investment (private, small companies, big, basically everyone can)
nine_k 2y ago
> produce power at a fraction of the cost Sadly, also for a fraction of the time. Until storage is solved in a satisfactory way, solar and wind will remain auxiliary. And the capacity should be in gigawatt-days.
- threeseed 2y ago
  Well that fraction coincides with when demand is the highest. And storage is being solved as we have more batteries being deployed and grid supply capable EVs becoming more popular. The market is deciding where money should be allocated and it's simply not going towards nuclear.
  - abfan1127 2y ago
    why would you want to share your EV battery capacity with the grid? I don't understand this. Range is entirely dictated by your EV capacity and you're going to "rent" back the capacity (and battery cycles) for night time hours? I don't understand how this would work at scale.
    - crazygringo 2y ago
      > why would you want to share your EV battery capacity with the grid? Because you'd get paid for it, and you like free money. And it should be pretty trivial to set an option to ensure you always have the necessary range for your daily commute by a little bit before you leave your home.
      - abfan1127 2y ago
        if services like Uber have shown anything, its that you can sell your vehicle's intrinsic value, depreciating it's value in the process. But will you be net positive after depreciated value?
        crazygringo 2y ago
        Obviously almost nobody would do it if it weren't net positive. And why wouldn't it be? The whole point here is for power companies to avoid buying as many batteries themselves, and their own batteries depreciate too. This isn't hard -- the power company adjusts the price it pays minute per minute, and you set the threshold at which it is profitable for you, taking battery cycles into account. And it becomes a classic supply and demand curve -- it's Econ 101.
canadianfella 2y ago
[dead]

psunavy03 2y ago

If you're not serious about nuclear, you're not serious about climate change.

barbazoo 2y ago
Source?
- atomic128 2y ago
  Germany is a tragic real-world example. Take a look at what Germany did to itself. Compare France. The anti-nuclear wind/solar proponents are dangerously wrong.
  - _aavaa_ 2y ago
    That Germany's early retirement of its fleet was a bad idea does not mean that building more is a good idea.
  - barbazoo 2y ago
    Germany has been reducing its carbon emissions by increasing the ratio of renewable energy, year after year despite the exit from nuclear power. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... Isn't that the goal? If they can do that without nuclear power - great. Despite France's >50% nuclear power they have a much higher ratio of "dirty" power compared to Germany. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France
    - emptyfile 2y ago
      [dead]
    - Manuel_D 2y ago
      Germany's energy industry emits 6 times as much greenhouse gases per MWh of electricity generated than France: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2024/09/08/france-vs-germany-which-country-is-better-at-reducing-greenhouse-gas-emissions-from-its-factories_6725219_19.html#:~:text=Germany's%20mix%20has%20a%20higher,require%20significant%20electrification%20of%20processes https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2024/09/08/france-.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:Energy_mix_in_Germany.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:... Germany's energy is 80% fossil fuels. France's is 50%. I'm not sure how you reached the conclusion that Germany's energy mix is less "dirty" than Frances.

nine_k 2y ago

Wind and especially solar are also serious. But their applications are different; they can offset the load when the sun shines, or the wind blows, but can't provide a stable source. If you need baseload, and need it carbon-free, your only option currently is nuclear. It's terribly encumbered, but apparently it's still less of an impasse that large-scale electricity storage currently is.

barbazoo 2y ago
> If you need baseload, and need it carbon-free, your only option currently is nuclear What about geothermal, tidal, hydro, etc?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- nine_k 2y ago
  Good, given the right geography. - Hydrothermal: great if you're in Iceland, or near Yellowstone, or other such place blessed by heated rock being close to the surface. Not as great if you need to drill 7 km to reach it. - Hydro: great if you have a lot of mountains and rivers, like Switzerland or Norway. Harder if you don't, like in much of Texas, to say nothing of Florida. - Tidal: great if you have a sea shore, preferably with narrow bays / fjords. But if you're in a place like Turkmenistan (one of the two doubly-landlocked countries), you resort to drilling for and burning methane %)
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    Hydro has a bunch of problems. * most of the "good sites" have already been taken * hydro will regularly silt up, requiring constant dredging * hydro does not work as well or at all in drought conditions, which are increasingly common * hydro dams require reservoirs, which in addition to the obvious disruption of the displacement of thousands or even a million plus people in the case of Three Gorges, can end up emitting large amounts of carbon as flooded vegetation decomposes. * hydro is extremely disruptive to migratory fish. the success rate of interventions like fish ladders is in the low single digit percents. so you can get a bunch of carbon free power but also destroy an ecosystem in the process, not to mention any downstream fishing. and you see similar effects with other things that downstream users might want from the river like fresh silt.

DCH3416 2y ago

> "but what about a gorillion turbines and solar panels" It's a good thing to have a diverse portfolio of energy solutions to help avoid single points of failure in the network. Especially as something like solar continues to become more and more efficient.

fraboniface 2y ago
I don't really understand this argument. How are dozens of nuclear power plants a single point of failure? Because of the uranium mining and processing? Then we can invest in fast reactors, which consume 100x less and require less R&D than renewables have benefited from in the last decades. Or seawater uranium, another 100x in reserves, distributed all around the world.
- robryan 2y ago
  The problem is more our lack of ability to build them quickly and in a cost effective way. An investment in solar will much more reliably and quickly turn into a certain amount of power generation. Hopefully this changes once every nuclear project isn't some complex bespoke thing that is likely to be late and over budget.
  - panick21_ 2y ago
    And yet UAE a country without any technical knowlage built them in a cost effective way and quickly. In fact, any country that has built them in mass figured out how to do it cost effective and quickly. The reality is, its only not cost effective and quick when a country only builds a single reactor as a vanity project to keep the industry alive. No country that seriously tried to quickly increase production with nuclear has failed.
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      The UAE spent $30B and a decade building one nuclear plant. The technical knowledge (and the design, and the construction) came from South Korea.

hindsightbias 2y ago

I’ve been saying for years that new nuclear plant development will be evidence of an AGI fufilling its physiological hierarchy of needs. I see Starship as another requirement.

epistasis 2y ago
How are any of these things connected?

AtlasBarfed 2y ago

The basic economics of power generation do not agree with your contention. The reality is that this is all nuclear can rest its hopes on. Industry specific applications, because for general electricity generation it is hopelessly non-competitive.

cyanydeez 2y ago

Unfortunately, this isnt to sustain exiwting enetgy, its to add powER TO AI GIGO.

xinayder 2y ago

I just wish this brings more research into Thorium based reactors, as they seem to be the future of sustainable nuclear power. Maybe a SMR powered by Thorium in the future? Who knows.

tim333 2y ago
Thorium based seems to be a conventional nuclear reactor with added complications. Getting conventional made is hard enough. There's a good article on the technical problems here https://thebulletin.org/2022/06/molten-salt-reactors-were-trouble-in-the-1960s-and-they-remain-trouble-today/ https://thebulletin.org/2022/06/molten-salt-reactors-were-tr... One quote from that: >During its operational lifetime, the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment was shut down 225 times. Of these 225 interruptions, only 58 were planned. The remaining interruptions were due to various technical problems, including: “chronic plugging” of the pipes... >...These problems remain relevant. Even today, no material can perform satisfactorily in the high-radiation, high-temperature, and corrosive environment inside a molten salt reactor. I'm not sure anyone has made one that powered anything or produced electricity. The MSRE just intermittently heated the air when it was working. Apparently although it only ran from 1965 to 1969 and produced a peak of 8MW, it's still costing about $10m per year to manage the waste produced. In the 1990s they found uranium in the waste had migrated leading to the possibility of an accidental criticality. Still the Chinese supposed to be running an experimental one similar to the MSRE in the Gobi desert next year. I'm not holding my breath for commercial operation though.
preisschild 2y ago
Doesn't even neccessarily need to be Thorium-232, we also have a lot uf Uranium-238 that isn't really used efficiently. Thermal/Fast Breeders are needed to use those fuel sources. Only Russia commercialiced them, because western nations stopped funding r&d (EBR2 in the US and Superphênix in France)

tim333 2y ago

Some stats. Solar install 2024 593GW, nuclear install per year about 8GW. Solar growing about 30% a year, nukes about 0%. Storage is coming along too. (some source stuff https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41601621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41601621)

Ghaenergyyy 2y ago

[dead]