4 ms·

"better safe than sorry" is the definition of a slippery slope. but I'm curious: what event do you think taught us that? IMO, there's far mode damage being do

"better safe than sorry" is the definition of a slippery slope. but I'm curious: what event do you think taught us that? IMO, there's far mode damage being done to the world by, say, mercury in batteries than by nuclear accidents (of which chernobyl is the only serious one).

tmpz22 2y ago
$PROBLEM_2 being worse than $PROBLEM_1 does not mean $PROBLEM_1 is over regulated. Nuclear Waste handling and disposal is a significant regulatory issue and includes many REACTIVE measures that have been hard-learned over the past century at sites like Pennsylvania, Fukushima, and Chernobyl. This blind lashing out at any and all forms of regulation is ignorant. Each of these situations needs to be considered thoughtfully and contextually to find a balance between short term and long term objectives.
- Hammershaft 2y ago
  We do not thoughtfully balance regulatory costs on nuclear vs say coal... Nuclear regulatory compliance is orders of magnitude more expensive despite being orders of magnitude safer for human health (on top of the climate).
  - KennyBlanken 2y ago
    90% of new electricity generation in the US is solar or wind. Coal generation has generally trended downward since the mid 2000s. We don't need nuclear to replace coal.
    - Recurecur 2y ago
      We certainly do need nuclear to replace coal. Coal and nuclear are both reliable sources of energy, unlike solar or wind. I'm sure you're about to go into some battery related hand waving, but that doesn't help in two ways. First, there will be intervals where the lull in production exceeds storage capacity, which means fatalities in many cases. Second, battery is expensive, so the total system cost can exceed the cost of nuclear (especially with sane regulation and continually improving engineering). Also, as far as "coal trending downward", that isn't the case outside the US. We're going to need a vastly increased energy supply in order to meet the world's needs. Nuclear fission absolutely needs to be part of that mix, as we work to master fusion and other advanced, safe, and environmentally responsible forms of energy production. Beyond that, high density energy sources are highly desirable off-planet. :-)
      - myrmidon 2y ago
        > Nuclear fission absolutely needs to be part of that mix, as we work to master fusion and other advanced, safe, and environmentally responsible forms of energy production. Relying on fusion power to clean up electricity generation is highly irresponsible, because in every remotely credible scenario, rollout is MUCH too slow to meaningfully affect climate change. But I'm interested in trying to understand your view, and also which fusion power approach you put your faith in (and generally discussing this). I strongly believe that nuclear power has no future, because it performs very poorly in an energy market where the marginal cost of producing is very frequently near-zero (thanks to renewables). Nuclear power is already quite expensive-- only running the plants half the time ruins cost competitiveness completely. You can see this happening already in countries like France and China, where nuclear and coal power plants are increasingly operating in load-following mode (i.e. not 100% all-the-time), which makes them even less cost competitive than in the past. > I'm sure you're about to go into some battery related hand waving, but that doesn't help in two ways. First, there will be intervals where the lull in production exceeds storage capacity, which means fatalities in many cases. Second, battery is expensive, so the total system cost can exceed the cost of nuclear (especially with sane regulation and continually improving engineering). Tow points here: Intermittency is a problem that actually shrinks at scale: The more spread out your wind parks/panels are, the smaller the periods where they provide unexpectedly little power (=> you need less buffering than you would naively assume). Second point: a 100kWh battery is already affordable for a single household right now (thats basically big electric car battery). Price trends only go one direction there... > Second, battery is expensive, so the total system cost can exceed the cost of nuclear (especially with sane regulation and continually improving engineering). From this I assume you believe that nuclear reactors are not cost competitive mainly because of safety regulations, and "simply" fixing those regulations would make them able to compete on cost? This is likely incorrect. Consider: Coal power plants are basically a minimally regulated, built-at-scale, super-simplified variant of a thermal power plant. They are the "ideal" that hyper-optimized nuclear reactor designs will never be able to reach (disregarding fuel costs here!). Even so: They struggle to compete with renewable on price already (disregarding fuel costs!). What are your thoughts on this? My personal favorite: Tax carbon emission, use gas turbines as peaker plants, store energy long term via synthetic hydrogen, which is needed for carbon-free steel production anyway (and can also be used by gas peaker plants). Then just let the market find out which fraction of batteries, wind, solar, carbon-taxed gas/coal, nuclear etc. works best.

tmpz22 2y ago

$PROBLEM_2 being worse than $PROBLEM_1 does not mean $PROBLEM_1 is over regulated. Nuclear Waste handling and disposal is a significant regulatory issue and includes many REACTIVE measures that have been hard-learned over the past century at sites like Pennsylvania, Fukushima, and Chernobyl. This blind lashing out at any and all forms of regulation is ignorant. Each of these situations needs to be considered thoughtfully and contextually to find a balance between short term and long term objectives.

Hammershaft 2y ago
We do not thoughtfully balance regulatory costs on nuclear vs say coal... Nuclear regulatory compliance is orders of magnitude more expensive despite being orders of magnitude safer for human health (on top of the climate).
- KennyBlanken 2y ago
  90% of new electricity generation in the US is solar or wind. Coal generation has generally trended downward since the mid 2000s. We don't need nuclear to replace coal.
  - Recurecur 2y ago
    We certainly do need nuclear to replace coal. Coal and nuclear are both reliable sources of energy, unlike solar or wind. I'm sure you're about to go into some battery related hand waving, but that doesn't help in two ways. First, there will be intervals where the lull in production exceeds storage capacity, which means fatalities in many cases. Second, battery is expensive, so the total system cost can exceed the cost of nuclear (especially with sane regulation and continually improving engineering). Also, as far as "coal trending downward", that isn't the case outside the US. We're going to need a vastly increased energy supply in order to meet the world's needs. Nuclear fission absolutely needs to be part of that mix, as we work to master fusion and other advanced, safe, and environmentally responsible forms of energy production. Beyond that, high density energy sources are highly desirable off-planet. :-)
    - myrmidon 2y ago
      > Nuclear fission absolutely needs to be part of that mix, as we work to master fusion and other advanced, safe, and environmentally responsible forms of energy production. Relying on fusion power to clean up electricity generation is highly irresponsible, because in every remotely credible scenario, rollout is MUCH too slow to meaningfully affect climate change. But I'm interested in trying to understand your view, and also which fusion power approach you put your faith in (and generally discussing this). I strongly believe that nuclear power has no future, because it performs very poorly in an energy market where the marginal cost of producing is very frequently near-zero (thanks to renewables). Nuclear power is already quite expensive-- only running the plants half the time ruins cost competitiveness completely. You can see this happening already in countries like France and China, where nuclear and coal power plants are increasingly operating in load-following mode (i.e. not 100% all-the-time), which makes them even less cost competitive than in the past. > I'm sure you're about to go into some battery related hand waving, but that doesn't help in two ways. First, there will be intervals where the lull in production exceeds storage capacity, which means fatalities in many cases. Second, battery is expensive, so the total system cost can exceed the cost of nuclear (especially with sane regulation and continually improving engineering). Tow points here: Intermittency is a problem that actually shrinks at scale: The more spread out your wind parks/panels are, the smaller the periods where they provide unexpectedly little power (=> you need less buffering than you would naively assume). Second point: a 100kWh battery is already affordable for a single household right now (thats basically big electric car battery). Price trends only go one direction there... > Second, battery is expensive, so the total system cost can exceed the cost of nuclear (especially with sane regulation and continually improving engineering). From this I assume you believe that nuclear reactors are not cost competitive mainly because of safety regulations, and "simply" fixing those regulations would make them able to compete on cost? This is likely incorrect. Consider: Coal power plants are basically a minimally regulated, built-at-scale, super-simplified variant of a thermal power plant. They are the "ideal" that hyper-optimized nuclear reactor designs will never be able to reach (disregarding fuel costs here!). Even so: They struggle to compete with renewable on price already (disregarding fuel costs!). What are your thoughts on this? My personal favorite: Tax carbon emission, use gas turbines as peaker plants, store energy long term via synthetic hydrogen, which is needed for carbon-free steel production anyway (and can also be used by gas peaker plants). Then just let the market find out which fraction of batteries, wind, solar, carbon-taxed gas/coal, nuclear etc. works best.