Nuke Retirements Could Lead To 4 Billion Metric Tons of Extra CO2 Emissions, Says IEA (arstechnica.com) 200
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A report released today by the International Energy Agency (IEA) warns world leaders that -- without support for new nuclear power or lifetime extensions for existing nuclear power plants -- the world's climate goals are at risk. "The lack of further lifetime extensions of existing nuclear plants and new projects could result in an additional four billion tonnes of CO2 emissions," a press release from the IEA noted.
The report is the IEA's first report on nuclear power in two decades, and it paints a picture of low-carbon power being lost through attrition (due to the retirement of aging plants) or due to economics (extremely cheap natural gas as well as wind and solar undercutting more expensive nuclear power for years in some regions). Around the world, 452 nuclear reactors provided 2,700 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2018. This makes nuclear a significant source of low-carbon energy on a global level. While 11.2 gigawatts (GW) of nuclear power were connected to the grid last year, all of the new capacity was located in China or Russia. "Without additional nuclear, the clean energy transition becomes more difficult and more expensive -- requiring $1.6 trillion of additional investment in advanced economies over the next two decades," IEA says. "Critically, a major clean energy shortfall would emerge by 2040, calling on wind and solar PV to accelerate deployment even further to fill the gap."
The report is the IEA's first report on nuclear power in two decades, and it paints a picture of low-carbon power being lost through attrition (due to the retirement of aging plants) or due to economics (extremely cheap natural gas as well as wind and solar undercutting more expensive nuclear power for years in some regions). Around the world, 452 nuclear reactors provided 2,700 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2018. This makes nuclear a significant source of low-carbon energy on a global level. While 11.2 gigawatts (GW) of nuclear power were connected to the grid last year, all of the new capacity was located in China or Russia. "Without additional nuclear, the clean energy transition becomes more difficult and more expensive -- requiring $1.6 trillion of additional investment in advanced economies over the next two decades," IEA says. "Critically, a major clean energy shortfall would emerge by 2040, calling on wind and solar PV to accelerate deployment even further to fill the gap."
Sadly (Score:5, Insightful)
The immense negative exposure from the one-off nuclear accident is seen as a much greater threat than the slower polluting, carbon-releasing alternatives of burning coal and petroleum products for baseline electricity.
It's fitting for our recently evolved goldfish-like attention span, I suppose.
Coal is a non sequitur for the clown car set (Score:2)
Wind and solar have been cheaper than coal for years, and that was with allowing coal to externalize its pollution costs. And your baseline FUD applies much moreso to nuclear power than to wind and solar, as your preferred expensive and dangerous method of...heating water goes down for weeks months or even years at a time for maintenance. Which means you
Re:Sadly (Score:5, Insightful)
False dichotomy? You can't really be serious.
Nuclear FUD is most certainly still a huge political detractor, yet it remains one of the cleanest sources of the immense amounts of power needed to sidestep coal, even given that waste must properly addressed. There have even been multiple energy production studies showing that the Earth is quite literally power-fucked if we don't address the current nuclear stigma post-haste, and start building newer nuke plants. All of these studies have pointed to this exact issue, that existing plants have been built with technologies, which we not have even better designs to replace with, yet due to political stigma government regulators are making them a non-starter, which obviously makes serious investors scarce.
Go put your tinfoil hat back on and wait for the aliens to come abduct you. Again.
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And if your solar gigabattery fantasies don't scale like you hope what then? Would you choose nuclear or go back to fossil fuel burning or go for a world police state and pass a lot of laws against burning stuff and making homemade generator and hiding existing ones?
It is true that hydro and wind power are cheaper than nuclear but they are only available in limited areas and even in very windy places like Wyoming or Patagonia the wind doesn't blow all the time. Hydro in particular is practically free energy
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And if your solar gigabattery fantasies don't scale like you hope what then? Would you choose nuclear or go back to fossil fuel burning or go for a world police state and pass a lot of laws against burning stuff and making homemade generator and hiding existing ones?
No, we simply continue doing what we are doing already:
a) building overproduction
b) distribute it
c) increase the span of the grid
d) export the surplus using c)
e) import power from elsewhere using c)
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And if your solar gigabattery fantasies don't scale like you hope what then?
What fantasies? Batteries are a mature, widely used technology. They've now gotten cheap enough that they're often economical even without subsidies or carbon taxes. Prices have been falling steadily for years, and there's every reason to expect that to continue in the future, but even at current prices they're up to the job. The market is growing exponentially (and yes, I know what that word means and I'm using it in the literal sense).
It's also very easy to use electricity to manufacture chemical fuel
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What fantasies? Batteries are a mature, widely used technology.
Yes and so is solar power, but not at planetary scales. The sheer size of a battery pack to power an entire country or city or region for 18 hours every day is absurdly massive. Will it require billions of amp-hours or trillions perhaps? Maybe more. I mean I guess that is sort of a cost issue assuming we even have enough raw materials to make so many batteries. And then we have to replace them when they inevitably wear out. It's an engineering nightmare and not something that has ever been tried. I must adm
Yes there are alternatives, like Banqiao (Score:5, Interesting)
I always thought it fascinating that people who worry so much about an extremely unlikely energy disaster never think about the worst energy related disaster in human history.
But then again, I know some history about why none of the anti-nuclear crowd knows about the hundreds of thousands of people killed and millions left homeless by Banqiao.
Back in the 1960s, there was a political alliance of convenience between the anti-war crowd and the green crowd. They created organizations such as Greenpeace. (The name isn't an accident.). The anti-war half of Greenpeace and friends wanted very much to halt the development of nuclear weapons, so they were very much against nuclear research. In the next cubicle over, the greeny couldn't exactly be advocating for replacing coal with the much cleaner nuclear power.
One of the founders of Greenpeace has come out saying that was a huge mistake, that we need to get off carbon fuels, and especially coal, right NOW, not wait another few decades hoping that solar and wind will work just great any day now. The way to stop carbon emissions *today* is with nuclear power, he says.
For scale: 100,000 times worse than Chernobyl (Score:2)
For scale, Banqiao had about 100,000 times as many causalities as Chernobyl. If Chernobyl had happened EVERY DAY for the last 20 years, nuclear would still be safer than hydro.
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Oh, nonsense! It only had 10,000 times as many casualties as Chernobyl.
And do remember that your chances of dying in a traffic accident on any random day are higher than your chances of dying in a nuclear power accident (based on USA annual traffic fatalities (>100 per day in 2017) and worldwide annual nuclear power fatalities (1 per year, counting both Chernobyl and Fukushima))
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> Oh, nonsense! It only had 10,000 times as many casualties as Chernobyl.
You are correct.
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
Yes. 2 immediate, 29 later (Score:3)
That's right, two people died in the accident itself, 29 later.
However, I mixed up my Banqiao numbers - it was only about 10,000 times worse. 26,000 immediate deaths, about 230,000 total.
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That's right, two people died in the accident itself, 29 later.
Well, yes and no. It's true that there were only 31 direct deaths from the explosion itself (2) and radiation poisoning (29, or possibly closer to 50; records aren't clear). But the UN estimates 4,000 additional deaths due to things like cancer as a result of exposure, and some estimates from other organisations are considerably higher than that. With long-tail risk it's often hard to come up with a definitive number. Even so, you're right that there is no doubt that Banqiao was worse - just, not 10,000 tim
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I believe you are referring to this UN report:
--
The international expert group predicts that among the 600 000 persons receiving more significant exposures (liquidators working in 1986-87, evacuees, and residents of the most âoecontaminatedâ areas), the possible increase in cancer mortality due to this radiation exposure might be up to a few percent. This might eventually represent up to four thousand fatal cancers in addition to the approximately 100 000 fatal cancers to be expected due to all ot
Btw UN said "might up to 4,000" (Score:2)
Btw note the UN study said "this might eventually represent up to four thousand".
And my ISP says I might get up to 20 Mbps.
That's what they think the maximum limit is, not the most likely number.
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Nuclear powers decline has very little to do with anti-nuclear forces, it's decline is directly related to the current economics. New nuclear power costs more than $.30 a kwh to build a plant that will generate power for 70 years. Those costs are valid across more than 4 different countries on 3 continents.
New nuclear costs almost 10 times the cheapest generation and more than double the second most expensive. Those economics are simply insurmountable. Until someone comes up with a way to build, fuel and ma
Re:Yes there are alternatives, like Banqiao (Score:5, Insightful)
That's if you build nuclear plants one at a time, each to slightly different specifications that need to be separately tested and approved. Instead, do what France did: pick one design, get it approved, and plug them in all over the country. Today we have the opportunity to pick a Gen IV design to mass-produce this way.
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What will happen to the cost of solar and wind if every time you tried to build you were tied up in court with frivolous lawsuits designed to delay construction and increase costs?
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> has very little to do with anti-nuclear forces
That's funny because when I looked at the NRC and their list of proposed reactors that failed all them failed because the company building them was sued into oblivion by ideological activists.
If frivolous lawsuits that can stop construction and increase costs to the point of bankruptcy then it sounds like the problem is anti-nuclear ideological activists not the economics of building and operation.
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I always find it sad that people promoting nuclear power have to carefully cheery pick their examples and ignore things that undermine their arguments.
No-one is suggesting building another massive dam. No-one is suggesting replacing nuclear with the dirtiest of dirty coal plants. No-one is suggesting releasing 4 billion metric tonnes of CO2.
The cheapest forms of electricity generation now are gas and wind. Wind is the biggest growth area and costs are still falling rapidly. It attracts a lot of investment a
It's called "pumped storage" (Score:3)
> No-one is suggesting building another massive dam.
Using pumped storage to power a country like the United States, as opposed to perhaps a campus, would require dams that make Banqiao look like a puddle. In the case of the US, approximately 1/3rd of the continental United States would need to be flooded.
> No-one is suggesting replacing nuclear with the dirtiest of dirty coal plants. No-one is suggesting releasing 4 billion metric tonnes of CO2.
That's precisely what Greenpeace et al have DONE over the
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In the case of the US, approximately 1/3rd of the continental United States would need to be flooded. ....
You must be a very special kind of a retard
They chose to stop nuclear power, thereby ensuring we remained on coal.
That is wrong. Greenpeace always advocated heat pumps, solar and wind.
How did that work out? (Score:2)
> Greenpeace always advocated heat pumps, solar and wind.
And the result of 40 years of that is 81% of US energy is fossil fuels.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinene... [eia.gov]
GP has chosen to continue advocating the fantasy while blocking actual clean energy that works.
It's been 40 years, we KNOW the results, we've known the results for decades. Yet GP continues to try to block carbon-free energy. We could have largely gotten rid of fossil fuels 40 years ago; Greenpeace made sure that didn't happen, and continues to
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Fossil fuels could be 8%, with nuclear 80%. Greenpeace made sure nuclear is only 8%, which leaves 81% on fossil fuels. ... and if you want more hydro ...
No it did not. The US government did. And the industry. You could have done what Germany does: install wind and solar
Your energy situation has absolutely nothing to do with GP. And not even the US produces 81% of its electricity with fossil fuels. Or are you suddenly dropping all kinds of energies together like fuel for cars? Do you really think you had mor
Trillions of dollars. Trump is president of ngland (Score:2)
> Reality is that 40 years of Republican
The Democrats controlled the house, uninterrupted, from 1955 to 1997. Of those 42 years, they also controlled the senate 34 years. 34 years of total Democrat control of Congress.
> Guzzling Fossil Fuel cash last century caused there to be near zero research into batteries, solar, or wind.
Right, zero research into batteries, solar, and wind, worldwide. Never mind that considering only direct government financing, even is just one single year, taxpayers paid $92 b
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Using pumped storage
Is not something that is being suggested, not on that scale. Stop inventing strawman arguments.
That's precisely what Greenpeace et al have DONE over the last 50-60
Greenpeace came out with their fully costed, existing technology plan to move to 100% renewable energy some 20 odd years ago. I don't have publications before that to hand, but I'm pretty sure their argument wasn't more coal.
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> I'm pretty sure their argument wasn't more coal.
Their argument, such as it was and continues to be, is sowing FUD for about nuclear, especially by conflating totally separate kinds of nuclear materials, intentionally confusing people.
The result of 40 years of that is 81% of US energy is still fossil fuels.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinene... [eia.gov]
GP has chosen to continue advocating the fantasy while blocking actual clean energy that works.
It's been 40 years, we KNOW the results of blocking nuclear and hoping
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Nuclear isn't carbon free. Depending on where the fuel comes from and where it is stored the emissions can be rather high.
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It's as carbon-free or more than hydro, solar electric, etc.
Manufacturing and transporting things, whether they be wind turbines or nuclear steam pipes, releases CO2 (81% of the time).
Re:Sadly (Score:4, Insightful)
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Solar is better than wind, because in any given place it fluctuates in a more predictable manner, with interruptions as weather passes through. PV panels, even the tracking kind, have fewer moving parts than wind turbines. Most importantly, solar integrates well with the built environment, while other energy sources need dedicated space. It's particularly sad seeing those West Virginia mountain ridges that have been so proudly saved from coal stripping be logged off to install rows of wind turbines.
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Solar is better than wind, because in any given place it fluctuates in a more predictable manner
Nonsense. You won't know from one day to the next if it will be cloudy during the two or three hour window that the solar panels have a chance of generating usable power. Wind is far more predictable. Nuclear is more predictable than anything else.
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Nonsense. You won't know from one day to the next if it will be cloudy during the two or three hour window that the solar panels have a chance of generating usable power. Wind is far more predictable. Nuclear is more predictable than anything else.
The usability of any of the small renewables depends on where you are. What you say of solar may be true in Germany, where huge tariff-subsidized panels sit on top of apartment buildings under leaden skies (I have inlaws in Bavaria) collecting drifts of fallen leaves. But in Arizona, with 350 days a year of hard clean sunshine at the latitude of Libya, and where most of the housing is rural and suburban sprawl, it's a much better idea.
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You know what wind and solar are? Also low-carbon power. In fact, both are lower-carbon than nuclear [carbonbrief.org]. PV is only slightly lower-carbon, but wind is drastically so.
Thanks for suggesting that I read the story, which really rammed home the fact that I was correct.
That's nice. The problem isn't cost. Its scaling that power source up. Its that there simply isn't enough rare earths mined to make enough windmills to replace fossil fuels. If you add up all the renewables and try to scale them up with every economic resource you still wouldn't even scratch the surface of the problem. And you would likely do a tremendous amount of environmental damage in the form of mining to do this. Or we could use a few box cars of Thorium at year to replace all our fossil fuel so
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Its that there simply isn't enough rare earths mined
You are an idiot.
Windmills don't need rare earths. They are used in the magnets for convenience reason: because they are cheaply available. Hint: they only use Niob, and that is a waste product of iron mining.
PV and Wind are about 1/1000th the energy density of fossil fuels.
You are indeed an idiot. How do you want to compare "energy density" of wind and PV solar power with a chemical energy source that is combusted is beyond me? By weighting the weight of
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In this case, I actually prefer the black-or-white fallacy, since the omitted energy-generating alternatives kind of fall into a gray area; whether they can replace nuclear and carbon for baseline electrical generation, considering uncertain population expansion and per capita kwH demands.
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Why do you need to predict demand when you can manage [wikipedia.org] it? Managing demand is how eBay prevents too many people from winning the same auction, and how airlines prevent too many people from boarding the same plane. It also works well in preventing traffic congestion [wikipedia.org] and keeping parking lots nearly but not completely full [citylab.com].
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Radionuclide propagation through the environment is extremely slow. Is it possible that is why you don't see nuclear it as a threat? ... we actually believed we had an accident at our own facillities until we realized the radiation came from outside). ...
Strange.
Chernobyl showed up in Italy after 2 days (Ispra), in Germany after 3 (Karlsruhe
Fukushima showing up in Californien waters only took a few month
Why post when you have no clue?
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Wildlife have returned to Chernobyl with no ill effects. In fact the Chernobyl ecosystem is healthier and more diverse now than it ever has been. Fish, mammals, and birds thrive, as do plant life of fall kinds.
Once again the fear mongers have been proven wrong by real science, scientific fact, not fiction.
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Wildlife have returned to Chernobyl with no ill effects.
That is wrong. Everything living long has a high cancer rate.
In fact the Chernobyl ecosystem is healthier and more diverse now than it ever has been.
That is wrong, too. Before the incident the area around the power plant was the same wilderness it is right now.
Once again the fear mongers have been proven wrong by real science, scientific fact, not fiction.
You don't post science, you post your ignorant opinion.
Re:Eden? (Score:2)
This is a misleading myth. Doesn't it seem a little odd that nature is doing better "than it has ever been"? Do you think it's the healthful effects of radiation or the elimination wildlife's #1 enemy, humans? Yes, in a weird way it is like an irradiated garden of eden.
"No ill effects" is also false.
Mod parent up (Score:2)
https://youtu.be/h0MJ0zNNAg4
*Very* informative!
Thank you Mr. AC.
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Indeed it is but I'm wondering... I myself knew for decades that Chernobyl's incident affected most of Europe. In Switzerland we were told to not eat mushrooms and for a time salad if I recall correctly,
This video puts it like "oh we've never been told how bad it really was" when all I remember is that nuclear catastrophes were THE boogie man of my childhood. That or nuclear war.
So something doesn't add up here.
Also thyroid cancer has tripled she says.Google says there are 56'000 cases of thyroid cancer eac
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Addendum: 56'000 cases in the US.
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Germany had a huge program to treat Russian and Ukrainian children against thyroid cancer, close to 100,000 if I recall right. Most payed by collecting charity money. Many kids stayed about 5 years in host families as it was not save to sent them home.
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is seen as a much greater threat than the slower polluting, carbon-releasing
Radionuclide propagation through the environment is extremely slow. Is it possible that is why you don't see nuclear it as a threat?
Strange. Chernobyl showed up in Italy after 2 days (Ispra), in Germany after 3 (Karlsruhe ... we actually believed we had an accident at our own facillities until we realized the radiation came from outside).
Fukushima showing up in Californien waters only took a few month ...
Whilst I agree with your statements about fallout from nuclear disasters, the context of the discussion is the persistence of man made radio-isotopes in the environment.
Your statement draws people to believe that radio-isotopes disappear from the environment after a few days. Your point is radio-isotope fallout from a nuclear disaster is a immediate threat at the time. My point is bio-accumulation of radio-isotopes occurs slowly and is a persistent long term threat to the human genome.
Why post when you have no clue?
Your obstinance a
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Your statement draws people to believe that radio-isotopes disappear from the environment after a few days.
No it does not, why would it?
FYI: in south Germany it is still not recommended to collect and eat mushrooms in the woods, because of unsafe levels of "radiation" from Chernobyl.
Is there anything about my statement Radionuclide propagation
It seems I quoted wrong, or even answered to the wrong post, I did not plan to answer to that.
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Radionuclide propagation through the environment is extremely slow. Is it possible that is why you don't see nuclear it as a threat?
Nope, we don't see nuclear as a threat because it has shown to not be a threat despite all those nasty sounding things you've mentioned. A few people were displaced, a bit of farm land ruined.
Still less deaths than any other industry. ... well everything else.
Still less birth defects than a single chemical attack carried about during the war.
Still less CO2 than
Still more reliable than any other source of electricity.
But sure, be afraid of the boogeyman.
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I agree that we should be using more nuclear power. But we need to put the proper protections in place (learn from Fukishima) and better waste management.
I see US waste leakage issues every now and then,but never hear of problems in France, Russia, or China. (Part of that is our international news system, but just wondering if others have figured it out and we just aren't keeping up.)
Nuke? (Score:2)
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I'm sorry, how much does a new Earth cost again after global warming kills us all?
How does that compare to the cost of nuclear again?
It does not really matter if you get killed by global warming or nuclear power. From the first you at least theoretically can run awy!
So...you want MORE subsidies for nuclear? (Score:3, Informative)
Really, it's a question of money. As the article makes clear, nuclear is on life support not so much because of much-maligned activists and benighted citizens, but because like coal it can't compete in the market. Nuclear already benefits from a long history of billions of dollars in subsidies including tax credits and exemption from liability and the vague notion that the government will take up any extraordinary costs (which can be considerable -- the Fukushima cleanup decade is currently projected to last decades and cost over $200b...whatever the utility absorbs will surely come around to haunt tax/rate payers).
At most article seems to srgue for extending the life of some reactors, presumably with subsidies ro competsate for competition from much cheaper solar, wind, and gas -- note that 2 out of 3 are already carbon friendly. So the choice is whather to shore up old tech or pour on the carbon-free gas (ha) for the next generation. Building new reactors is a non-starter: it can't be done fast enough and reactors have a long history f cost overruns and delays. This is all without mentioning that, yes, there are unique safety concerns with nuclear.
Re:So...you want MORE subsidies for nuclear? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Thank you for using sarcasm as a substitute for facts. But no, it has nothing to do with the cost of litigation (which you assert but conveniently fail to provide any evidence for). Fortunately, the US government provides data on the actual costs of constructing and operating [eia.gov] many different power sources. Look at table 3, and notice that wind and solar PV totally crush nuclear in every single region of the country. Nothing to do with lawsuits. This is just the cost of building nuclear plants, buying fu
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Who cares about that, except idiots like you?
Solar power usually produces nameplate capacity during noon, in case the panels show south. Or during another time if they show else where. Wow, that was simple, wasn't it?
Wind often produces above nameplate, usually in Germany during autumn and winter and early spring. But that is to difficult to grasp for you, so I spare me trying to explain to you how a power plant can produce above nameplate ...
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You can calculate that your self.
Suppose the lowest recorded input of your renewables into the grid is 20% of your highest load. Then obviously you need an overcapacity of a factor 5. Wow that was easy again.
Why you keep insisting calling some power plants "back up" is beyond me. The official terms are "reserve power" ... and they are not back ups for renewables but unexpected downtimes of _any_ power plant.
Why you believe anyone needs back up power plants in a continent spanning power grid is beyond me as
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Wait - you mean you have a continent spanning grid that has a massive input of NUCLEAR power? All that low-cost power from France?
And you don't see any issues with buying trees in the US, having them ground up into pellets, loaded on to bunker-fuel burning freighters, shipped across the ocean, unloaded with huge front loaders, then burned - all because you've already decimated your own forests?
No wonder the Germans pay the most for power (well, except for those folks in Denmark who have even MORE of your "
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I see you are already getting "overrated" mods, so I'd like to ask the nuke-fans something:
What is your realistic, practical plan to make nuclear an attractive option again? What laws and rules would you change, what subsidies would you offer? Are you planning to fund long term research projects into new types of reactor?
Tell us your plan.
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I see you are already getting "overrated" mods, so I'd like to ask the nuke-fans something:
What is your realistic, practical plan to make nuclear an attractive option again? What laws and rules would you change, what subsidies would you offer? Are you planning to fund long term research projects into new types of reactor?
Tell us your plan.
I would make it illegal for you and your ilk to file nuisance lawsuits any time someone tries to build a new nuclear plant. We would also ignore your input on every aspect of the design and placement of the plants.
Yes, I'm serious.
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Tried that, the UK didn't have any NIMBY lawsuits over Hinkley C, and it's still by far the most expensive form of energy in the land.
Next suggestion?
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> practical plan to make nuclear an attractive option again?
Right now let the industry build new reactors and issue combined construction and operation licenses.
> laws and rules would you change
No new laws are needed. Only rules that protect builders and operators from frivolous lawsuits which means follow existing law and let science, not emotion, dictate what we do.
>Are you planning to fund long term research projects into new types of reactor?
Already happening. There are research grants but beca
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All this is happening. In the UK and China there are no frivolous lawsuits but the costs are still high. In the UK it's by far the most expensive form of electricity generation. They had to actually bribe the companies to take the operator licences.
"If things go well" and "by 2027" for the first demonstrator to be operational, which presumably will take time to prove and develop into a commercial product, is no good. We need solutions sooner than that, and investors need certainty to be throwing billions of
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UK is fucked beyond anything rational and I don't think anything they do is in any relation to reality. You got a loicense for dat spoon.
China is building nuclear power.
>We need solutions sooner than that
We don't have time to build a plant that can actually help with short building times and low costs that can compete against existing energy sources but we have time to destroy hundreds and thousands of miles of ecosystems hoping your solution scales and praying for a battery solution to come soon (tm)?
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It's not just the UK, other EU countries are in the same position.
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Misery loves company. EU is fucked.
If China wasn't building them I might take it seriously.
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What is your realistic, practical plan to make nuclear an attractive option again?
Good and fair question. At the end, I want to turn the question around to you.
First, let me echo what Applehu Akbar [slashdot.org] pointed out, which is stop making one-off nuclear plants and start using stable designs. I would add to that making smaller plants rather than large ones. Yes, the large ones scale better in theory, but in reality I think it increases the regulatory process disproportionately. I will add what Trailer Trash [slashdot.org] said in his reply as well.
Nuclear might start looking attractive again once the brow
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I'd start by looking at Greenpeace's plan to go 100% carbon neutral in a relatively short space of time. It's a big push but not unrealistic or unaffordable.
Given the nature of politics though I'd probably look to take what I can from that and figure out what is deliverable.
The core of it is wind, particularly off-shore wind, combined with a bit of storage and long distance DC transmission lines. When you have a vast amount of wind power over a large geographic area you actually don't need that much energy
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I agree that wind is the best possibility at this point, definitely for the UK and Western Europe. I'm not so sure about North America or the rest of Europe. The middle of the USA is pretty far from off-shore wind, but maybe they can build their own wind farms.
Side note: About a decade ago, I worked with a guy who was involved in a Canadian government research project where they looked into how much they could scale hydroelectric. They entertained the possibility of developing every possible source of hy
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Nuclear already benefits from a long history of billions of dollars in subsidies including tax credits and exemption from liability and the vague notion that the government will take up any extraordinary costs (which can be considerable -- the Fukushima cleanup decade is currently projected to last decades and cost over $200b...whatever the utility absorbs will surely come around to haunt tax/rate payers).
Only billions? What subsidies do fossil fuels and natural gas receive?
They have significant negative externalities which are not payed or rather, they are distributed and everybody pays. This not only includes released carbon dioxide but also radiation released by burning coal.
And then there are the wars. How many trillions did the US pay for wars in the Middle East? How many nuclear reactors would that have built? How many cleanups would it have funded? So I will call your billions and raise you tril
Inevitably (Score:3)
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How about replacing all the U.S. nuke plants with about 100 square miles of solar collectors and salt storage by having the government invest a few trillion dollars over a decade rather than war mongering? Is that retarded too?
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Seems retarded to me because I don't think solar will scale. Obviously you disagree. I just hope you have some data or evidence to support the idea of scaling solar power to generate electricity for the entire planet. You do, right?
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I was only speaking of USA though, it has plenty of land with abundant near constant sunshine
Solar is scaling just fine in other countries. Makes sense, since it is possible to build more collectors and more storage that means it scales. There is no technological barrier to scaling it.
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What country uses only solar power to generate its electricity? How do they store the electricity for use during the 20 hours a day when the sun isn't shining strongly enough or when it is cloudy or raining or snowing? You claim no tech barrier but you don't provide any examples or really anything at all to back that up. So you think New York City has abundant near constant sunshine and plenty of land?
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I'm talking of solar collecting in U.S. desert with abundant sunshine and very little rain, more than 4 hours sunshine, and distributing with UHVDC lines which can go over 2000 miles.
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Yes, that is retarded.
Remember that article talking about all the species going extinct? Habitat loss. You propose we destroy countless ecosystems in the hopes that somehow your choice energy source will scale because of fear.
If climate change is a problem to be solved then the only solution that will save the environment is nuclear. Everything else is window dressing and kicking the can down the road while destroying countless ecosystems.
Add some science to your life. It's a good thing.
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100 square miles of desert is nothing. That 100 square mile size was picked for a very specific reason, it could supply all energy needs of the USA.
no species that is significant will be extinct by doing this thing to a very tiny amount of land.
we destroy 100 square miles of fertile densely specied land for suburbs every few years.
Your stupid mentality is why we still have nuke plants and coal plants, you whine over real solution that will cost a tiny bit of land with some critters that won't be missed.
Gre
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>miles of desert is nothing.
Well since you say that ecosystem is nothing then who am I to argue. You must be a biologist. Did you know the largest contributor to species going extinct is habitat loss?
>no species that is significant will be extinct by doing this thing to a very tiny amount of land
Yes, "significant" species on a "tiny" amount of land. What's the point in saving the environment if you just going to destroy the environment.
> supply all energy needs of the USA.
Does that include the batt
Who'd a thunk it? (Score:2)
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Imagine how much worse global warming would be if nuclear power generation technology wasn't frozen at 1970's levels? Oh, wait....
It's amusing that you mention the 1970s, because PV solar panels could pay back their energy investment in less than seven years back then. Today, it's more like 3-5 depending on the technology. If we had spent the money since the 1970s building PV plants instead of wasting it on nuclear bullshit, how much PV generation capacity would we have today?
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Today, it's more like 3-5 depending on the technology.
Actually less than 2, and that includes the aluminium frames etc.
Thin films in a few month.
how much PV generation capacity would we have today?
Germany would have enough to power half of Europe.
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Imagine your first car was a $2.5 million Bugatti with no brakes or seat belts. Nuclear power was always bullshit, always too insanely expensive to justify.
Another reason I cannot take AGW people... (Score:2)
seriously. They rant and rave that the planet will end in a dozen years or so if we do not immediately take drastic action to limit CO2 emissions. When told that such actions will cause millions of people to lose their jobs, they will often reply that the reductions are so important that a little collateral damage (people losing their jobs, homes, possibly marriages... devestated families) is "worth it".
But then when you point out that nuke plants are vital to lowering ther carbon footprint, ooooooh noooooo
Here Is The Report (Score:2)
The TFS points to an IAEA press release, which links to a page for the free report, but requires an IAEA log in. here is the actual report for simple download [eenews.net].
The TFS, the press release, and the executive summary all unhelpfully talk about "4 billions tons" of CO2 being added, as if that was the end of story. This is the estimate of added CO2 from nuclear plant retirements to 2040, i.e., 20 years from now. This is heavily loaded toward the end of the period, when most of these projected plant retirements wi
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In fact in 2040 the additional CO2 load would be about 1.2 billion tons of CO2 per year, forever assuming that the lost production was replaced by the best combined cycle natural gas plants (a likely prospect).
Ah that's good to know, I tried to find the meaning of the numbers but didn't have the time to dig deep. Thanks.
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Yeah, I also always found it hard to believe that CO2 weights anything. ... wait, perhaps I should consult a doctor?
After all when I breath in and out I don't feel anything
Carbon claims of Nuclear Power (Score:2)
Examining the carbon claims of Nuclear leads you to mining uranium. This is a highly carbon intensive endeavor which consumes as much of a third of the expected output of an AP-1000 to fuel it.
The only reason the nuclear industry can make these carbon claims is because mining has been switched to in-situ acid leach mining which uses mega-liters of hydrogen-peroxide pumped into ore veins to extract the mineral. The by-product of this is hundreds of mega-liters of radioactive sulphuric acid that no one kno
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To be fair and balanced, we should also consider operating lifespan of the two deployed energy generating systems.
Photo voltaic cells are generally considered to depreciate 1% annually in efficiency, perhaps justifying replacement every 20-30 years when energy generation is between 70 & 80% of a new system. The large footprint of a solar farm is an important consideration.
One good thing to come of all this hemming and hawing about deploying new nuclear plant designs is that: Nuclear plants [scientificamerican.com] are outlasti
Re: Screw Microsoft, imma gonna go plant some tree (Score:2)
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I totally agree. Be the change that you want to see happening.
Here are some very useful videos about raising apple trees:
Growing Apple Rootstocks from Seed [youtube.com]
Cleft Grafting [youtube.com]
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CO2 is a growth factor, but other limiting factors kick in as it increases.
Water is often the limiting factor. When more CO2 is available, plants can absorb it with fewer pores in their leaves, thereby losing less water through evaporation [sciencedaily.com].
On the other hand, higher temperatures mean more water loss. So it isn't clear if higher CO2 is a net win for crop yields.
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Plant prickly pear (Opuntia). You can grill the pads, once they are despined, and the fruit makes good jam. It has beautiful yellow blossoms in June.
Or...we could go nuclear.
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https://www.co2.earth/daily-co2 [www.co2.earth]
Currently we are at 415ppm daily average at Mauna Loa. 1% = 10000ppm. So just divide the ppm number (415) by 10000. So currently 0.04% of the atmosphere is CO2. If things continue as they have been it will be 0.06% in 50 years and 0.08% in 100 years. Probably the computer models/simulations would predict much higher levels. Not sure what they are basing that on though. You'd have to read the code which is not easy to get. Several recent studies have shown that human cognition
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If things continue as they have been it will be 0.06% in 50 years and 0.08% in 100 years. Probably the computer models/simulations would predict much higher levels.
There are no useful computer models for CO2 concentration, because CO2 output is directly tied to human behavior and policy, which no one can predict. The global climate models just take CO2 concentration as an input parameter.
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I think 4th generation plants do take care nuclear waste.
Also, there is thorium.