Nuclear Should Be Considered Part of Clean Energy Standard, White House Says (arstechnica.com) 274
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: More details have emerged about the climate and energy priorities of President Joe Biden's infrastructure plan, and they include support for nuclear power and carbon capture with sequestration (CCS). In a press conference yesterday with reporters, White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy said the administration would seek to implement a clean energy standard that would encourage utilities to use greener power sources. She added that both nuclear and CCS would be included in the administration's desired portfolio. The clean energy standard adds a climate dimension to the Biden administration's recently announced infrastructure plan, seeking to put the US on a path to eliminating carbon pollution.
"We think a CES is appropriate and advisable, and we think the industry itself sees it as one of the most flexible and most effective tools," McCarthy told reporters. "The CES is going to be fairly robust and it is going to be inclusive." McCarthy did not provide details about how far a CES would go in supporting nuclear power. It's possible that the policy may only cover plants that are currently operating, but it may also extend to include new plants. The former is more likely than the latter, though, given the challenges and costs involved in building new nuclear capacity. CCS is another technology mentioned, which involves capturing carbon dioxide from power plant exhaust streams and sequestering it underground. "The technology has been condemned for prolonging reliance on fossil fuels, and no commercial power plant in the US currently uses CCS," notes Ars.
McCarthy added that they aren't ruling out a carbon tax or fee to get to net-zero.
"We think a CES is appropriate and advisable, and we think the industry itself sees it as one of the most flexible and most effective tools," McCarthy told reporters. "The CES is going to be fairly robust and it is going to be inclusive." McCarthy did not provide details about how far a CES would go in supporting nuclear power. It's possible that the policy may only cover plants that are currently operating, but it may also extend to include new plants. The former is more likely than the latter, though, given the challenges and costs involved in building new nuclear capacity. CCS is another technology mentioned, which involves capturing carbon dioxide from power plant exhaust streams and sequestering it underground. "The technology has been condemned for prolonging reliance on fossil fuels, and no commercial power plant in the US currently uses CCS," notes Ars.
McCarthy added that they aren't ruling out a carbon tax or fee to get to net-zero.
Correct. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Correct. (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe we just need smaller reactors for industrial needs.
Re: Correct. (Score:3)
Smaller reactors means less electrical generation but all of the same "regulatory" bs.
Re: Correct. (Score:4, Informative)
Smaller reactors for limited generation can make a case for easier regulations for reactors of that size range.
Re: Correct. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: Correct. (Score:5, Insightful)
Smaller reactors allows for assembly line construction, which will lower the costs of the "regulatory BS". For decades each new reactor has been a first of a kind, which has lead to all kinds of overhead in verifying them as safe. Build a hundred of them, or a thousand, and that regulatory overhead starts to get real small.
A passenger jet will have similar capital costs, labor, and complexity of a nuclear power reactor. The FCC isn't going to run the 100th Boeing 767 through the same inspections as the first. So long as Boeing can show consistency in their production each new 767 gets approval to fly with a very minimal check of its construction quality. We are learning to do this with nuclear power reactors. One thing that makes this easier is to make the reactor closer in size to that of a passenger jet than an aircraft carrier. Even that's a poor analogy because the US Navy has brought down the costs of a nuclear powered aircraft carrier considerably by making roughly a dozen of each generation of carriers. The US Navy has been producing small modular nuclear fission power plants in a near assembly line manner for a very long time. It's not some huge leap to bring small modular reactors to civil power plants. We need only ask the Navy contractors to show everyone how it's done.
I expect this to come back around, with the US Navy using nuclear power for more of their ships once the small modular reactor comes to civil power plants. The Navy builds reactors for subs and carriers, from this the civilian market learns to adapt this to power on the grid. As that market grows the Navy will find costs of nuclear powered cruisers and destroyers come down, meaning we get the "nuclear navy" that was promised to us a half century ago.
It won't be long before a new nuclear power plant opening will be no more notable than one of your neighbors putting solar PV panels on their roof.
Re: Correct. (Score:2)
Size has absolutely nothing to do with assembly-line construction techniques. It's standardization that's the key. US reactors built for power generation weren't standardized.
But before we go down this road in any significantly substantive scale we need to solve Yucca Mountain and all the uneducated NIMBYs.
Re: (Score:3)
It's standardization that's the key.
We do have a standard: AP1000 [wikipedia.org].
The problem is that standardization did not lead to cost savings. AP1000s have had the same construction delays and cost overruns as non-standardized designs.
Vogtle [wikipedia.org] is based on AP1000s. A decade behind schedule. Triple the original cost.
Re: Correct. (Score:3)
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Navy reactors are a complete different beast than civilian ones.
I doubt they ever will be adopted for civilian power generation.
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Navy reactors are a complete different beast than civilian ones. I doubt they ever will be adopted for civilian power generation.
In fact that's the problem with civilian reactors. They still largely use a design originally created for submarines. If we had reactors designed specifically for civilian use, they would be very different than the Gen III reactors we currently use.
Re: (Score:2)
No, they don't. Submarine reactors and civilian reactors are as different as night and day....
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Submarine reactors and civilian reactors are as different as night and day....
They are both PWRs.
PWRs make sense for subs because they are small and power-dense.
They don't make much sense for civilian reactors because power density is less important and PWRs are not inherently safe.
Re: (Score:2)
A passenger jet will have similar capital costs, labor, and complexity of a nuclear power reactor. The FCC isn't going to run the 100th Boeing 767 through the same inspections as the first.
That's because the FCC is in charge of the airwaves, not the airlines.
Re: (Score:3)
That's what get for drinking and posting. It the inability to fix brain farts like this that Slashdot needs to allow edits to poasts.
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Not necessarily, a smart reactor design would be compact, put out only a moderate amount of energy but do so without refuelling, one load of fuel for the life of the reactor, something between 25 and 50 years. You have pulse that energy out so you are not overloading the reactor and unnecessarily shortening the life of the fuel of course it means 200 reactor power stations chugging along like old farm tractors, rather that 2 or 3 running at the edge of disaster, needing to be refuelled, really bad engineeri
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Not quite, some places don't have the geography for renewables, nuclear is still useful there.
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If they don't have the geography for renewables then they probably don't have the geography for nuclear either. Perhaps you could give us an example of somewhere that does, but generally speaking the need for isolation, a supply of cooling water, seismic stability, shelter from extreme weather. and connectivity to the grid limits the number of possible sites for nuclear far more than it does for renewables.
Re:Correct. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Well the other big disadvantage is that it has to be built on-shore, where as with wind you can have huge amounts of it in otherwise unused ocean.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There needs to be regulation, which goes without saying, but a lot of regulation in the US was enacted due to fear-mongering, back in the days of Dr. Strangelove, 3MI, and the anti-nuke crowd pumping out the fear. It worked... few reactors have been made since the 1970s.
However, things change. Thorium reactors are on the horizon. Breeder reactors can take the "high level waste" and keep using it. Reactors are made in a factory, hauled on site, and assembled, minimizing the idiot quotient, and allowing i
Re:Correct. (Score:4, Interesting)
It worked... few reactors have been made since the 1970s.
Bad science, but unfortunately, the correct result. Imagine if we had many times as much 1970s era reactors still operational today - we'd never get rid of them for something newer and safer.
A ship that skims garbage, depolymerizes the plastic back into short-chain monomers. A desalination plant can pump water inland, mitigating desertification of regions.
such as pulling CO2 out of the air and turning it into a synthetic fuel can be possible.
I had been thinking about that, that's why I suggested there's still a place for smaller reactors for industrial purposes, such as these you mention. For powering residential and commerce, I think wind and solar still wins out in the end because no matter how much cheaper, faster and safer you can build new nuclear plant designs, even if you remove most of the regulatory overhead, it would still be far easier and cheaper to just throw up more solar and wind farms by comparison.
Just one of those huge wind turbines can power a small town (quick search says they're 15MW; 20,000 homes per year). Nuclear can never be as responsive as erecting one more of those.
Solar power is shit (Re:Correct.) (Score:4, Interesting)
Just one of those huge wind turbines can power a small town (quick search says they're 15MW; 20,000 homes per year). Nuclear can never be as responsive as erecting one more of those.
Never say never. NASA is working on small reactors for space exploration which have been operating under the names KRUSTY and Kilopower. These are reactors that produce somewhere around 1 to 10 kW of power. The US Navy has submarine reactors for submarines that produce power in the 15 MW range, and aircraft carrier reactors that are in the 100 MW range. We know how to build nuclear fission power reactors in sizes other than the 1.21 gigawatt size that has dominated the civilian market for decades. Issues of matching production to demand is resolved the same way as it would for wind and solar. We can use batteries, load shedding, "smart" grids and "smart" appliances, and whatever else advocates of wind and solar power come up with in response to concerns of the intermittency of these energy sources.
Not only can nuclear power be as responsive as wind and solar to the demands of the grid but this has already been the case for decades. A nuclear reactor on a US Navy submarine or aircraft carrier will respond quickly to demand, the more power drawn from the reactor the more power it produces. These are safe enough that sailors are effectively sleeping on top of them for months at a time with no ill effects.
We can mass produce civilian nuclear power plants in this 15 MW range just like we've been doing with nuclear power plants on US Navy vessels. Economy of scale can bring down costs of nuclear power just like we've seen with wind power. The difference is that nuclear power is not dependent on the weather on how much power is produced, and that reliabilty brings down costs since there's less of a need for batteries, load shedding, and so forth.
Wind and solar power will not "win out in the end" because wind and solar take more material, land, and labor for the same power and energy over nuclear power. Wind and solar will have a place on the kilo to micro scale but for a small community in need of reliable electrical supply they will want nuclear power. Solar power is such a steaming pile for electrical power that the solar power industry would collapse tomorrow if the government subsidies ended today. Solar is nice for pocket calculators and communication satellites but shit for just about anything else.
Re:Solar power is shit (Re:Correct.) (Score:4, Interesting)
We can mass produce civilian nuclear power plants in this 15 MW range just like we've been doing with nuclear power plants on US Navy vessels.
Yeah, how long does that take, compared to one of those massive wind turbines? Then, how do you also plan for the safe transport of fuels, and then safe storage of the waste?
wind and solar take more material, land, and labor for the same power and energy over nuclear power.
Nonsense. You are heavily neglecting things like security and maintenance. Sure, the 15MW nuclear reactor itself can fit on a submarine. But it's also on a submarine where most people can't get to it, and it's protected by a metal casing. How much land would you actually need to accommodate the security (we're talking about both people, and storage facilities) for just one reactor?
The wind turbine for the 15MW has a 230ish metres diameter. If you space them 2km, that's not so far away as to make erecting a new one to increase immediate capacity pointless. Compare that to nuclear plant. How close together do you want to place them together that's not going to be as dangerous as fuck if one of them starts leaking? You really think that you can simply place another 15MW nuclear power plant with as much ease as one extra wind turbine?
So no, your claim is just nonsense on the face of it because it's obviously missing consideration of a whole host of factors. Your perceived advantage basically ends with the requirement of adding one extra 15MW generator.
Re: (Score:3)
Realistic threat or not, I don't think any nuclear powerplant will be approved that doesn't have some acceptable level of protection against a terrorist attack. Outside of the military I don't see small scale nuclear being economically realistic for that reason alone.
Terror (Re:Solar power is shit (Re:Correct.)) (Score:2)
If you can't see it then that only shows your lack of imagination.
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When you can find a place that runs entirely on solar/wind, then you can forget about nuclear.
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Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
compared to all the (necessary) hoops to jump through to get new nuclear plants up and running, maybe the time has passed.
Why are all the hoops necessary? The amount of time to get a reactor approved is insane. More than a decade.
Why aren't we just doing cookie-cutter power plants? One design, vetted, approved, and then built in multiples? Or maybe two designs.. or 3.. Whatever.. But there's no damn reason it should be so hard.
We have the technology, today, to build fail-safe plants. Pebble-bed reactors. Meltable plugs that dump all the fuel into a neutron absorber.. Etc etc.
We aren't dealing with 3-Mile Island techn
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why are all the hoops necessary? The amount of time to get a reactor approved is insane. More than a decade.
For safety. Really, we should be asking why aren't coal plants subject to more regulatory oversight, given how much safety (including health) issues they are actually responsible for.
Why aren't we just doing cookie-cutter power plants? One design, vetted, approved, and then built in multiples? Or maybe two designs.. or 3.. Whatever.. But there's no damn reason it should be so hard.
Because location plays into it. I'm not suggesting everywhere is a Fukushima, but Fukushima demonstrates that nuclear plants a required to take into account local potential disasters (for a disaster-specific definition of local). Unlike software, designing things like nuclear power plants is itself an expensive undertaking. Pla
Re: (Score:2)
Why aren't we just doing cookie-cutter power plants?
Because that doesn't work for nuclear. For example you need a supply of water to cool the reactors, so you have to build near the sea or near a river/lake. Thus you have to work with whatever geography that gives you, and local environmental challenges like keeping fish from swimming into your cooling system and dealing with salt water and the potential for tsunamis.
You also need to have infrastructure to keep the plant supplied and provide rapid access for emergency services, which again can't be standardi
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
It's possible to do a lot better than the USA did [scientificamerican.com] in this regard though.
France standardized its reactor designs (and the design of the plant around it), its licensing process and its operations. In the USA, each plant was treated as a one-off.
Re:Correct. (Score:4, Informative)
The title of the article you linked to is "France Loses Enthusiasm for Nuclear Power", and it's all about how the high cost and the fact that it basically became corporate welfare for energy companies means that nuclear isn't the future for France.
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Fusion reactors take a lot of power to jump-start. (And, yes, they now think they have a viable design.) You're going to want fission reactors as a starter motor.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We need to stop burning fuel, very soon.
One nit. We want to stop getting fuel from the ground. Synthetic Fuel is just fine. Also, unless you really want nuclear reactors scattered all over the place, fuel allows a few large nuclear plants to service the entire world. It allows time shifting of the power much better and for much longer and transports quite cheaply. And its a far better choice than batteries which are large, metal and expensive.
Re:Correct. (Score:4, Interesting)
In fact, depending on where you live, you might even be restricted on what you can do with the rainwater that falls on your property. Rainwater Harvesting [worldwaterreserve.com]
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I'm horrified by the over-regulation and the complex tax code we have here in Germany.
I believe this is the main problem in Germany, will lead to the countries decline, and makes it incapable of dealing with the challenges of the present and future.
But then I see a post and link like yours, and realize that there are still regulations in other countries that fortunately don't exist here.
Re: (Score:2)
Unless I'm mistaken, the power reactors in common use, PWRs and BWRs, both already have negative void coefficients. I've seen some statements to that effect and it's what you'd expect -- if the water is the moderator, the more bubbles in it the less moderation and the less reaction.
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The fact that almost nobody seems to know that Canada has a big nuclear power industry and has been designing and building CANDU reactors around the world (e.g. Pakistan & China) should indicate that negative vs positive void coefficient isn't a problem by itself.
Re: Correct. (Score:2)
*laughs in future US radiation wasteland surveyor*
Don't think we'll gonna come run to help when it turns out this plan is literally cancer.
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*laughs in future US radiation wasteland surveyor*
Don't think we'll gonna come run to help when it turns out this plan is literally cancer.
Exactly what I'd expect someone to say who hasn't got a clue about modern nuclear technology.
Re:P.S.: (Score:5, Insightful)
Without reliable generation capability when renewables are inadequate, our national power grid would be at risk. In these cases we would need to balance nuclear against natural gas powered generation as our least harmful alternative.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So what you're saying is you didn't invest in any kind of storage? I mean do you build a gaming PC without a GPU as well? We have many ways of achieving storage of power for renewables. You counteract the variability of renewables with *dispatchable* energy, not baseload. Batteries, pumped hydro, or use renewables to store energy directly through melting salt.
To be clear, we absolutely should be investing in nuclear baseload for other reasons, but this stupid meme of a windless night causing our lights to g
Re:P.S.: (Score:5, Informative)
There is no wind tonight so no help there.
That literally never happens. There is always wind somewhere, always enough. Just need to put the windmills in the right place and build some HVDC lines to carry it where it's needed.
Besides you have the same problem with nuclear plants. It's too hot, the reservoirs are too low, so there isn't enough cooling water available and either you shut them down or start killing huge amounts of wildlife by dumping hot water out. This has happened in France more than once, and France isn't a particularly hot climate.
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Mockery is the resort of those who lack facts and logic.
Solar and wind have their place, as well as their limits. Dam failures are historically far more deadly than reactor failures.
And every dam operating normally makes a large area uninhabitable, each larger than the Fukushima exclusion zone.
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But dams are most of the time *not* build primarily for power generation but for water management (flood prevention, as a reservoir for droughts, etc.) - this is true especially for those dams which then have the potential to flood a large area. For power generation you do not need large reservoirs.
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For power generation you do not need large reservoirs.
Not always, but in most places, if you have any potential for hydro at all, rain is seasonal, so you do need large reservoirs for year-round baseload power.
But yes, if you can build large-scale new hydro capacity without inundating towns or rare pristine valleys, then what are you waiting for?
Norway does not need nuclear, but most of us are not so fortunate. Both hydro and nuclear are far safer than coal, as well as low-carbon.
Re:Correct. (Score:5, Interesting)
Negative Void Coefficient means it can't melt down if not powered. Outside of outdated reactors like Fukushima (which would've been illegal in the US - needed a protected power source), only really CANDU run a positive coefficient and they have careful monitoring. Even better are fast nuclear reactors that raise fertile uranium or fertile thorium to fissile plutonium or fissile uranium. Basically, it burns nuclear waste to create power. It also can make the waste problem MUCH shorter, like a couple hundred years instead of millennia (depends on reprocessing). Some designs like molten salt can be shut off and on depending on demand, which is a huge issue in nuclear. There are literally no downsides to developing Gen IV nuclear and we should.
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Other forms of energy are becoming more cost effective. Storage has been and is viable. Tesla has been very successful with its battery systems. Virginia's S
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No, it should not.
Our current method of treating nuclear waste is: pile it up, and hope nothing bad happens.
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No, it should not. Our current method of treating nuclear waste is: pile it up, and hope nothing bad happens.
And whose fault is that? It has nothing to do with technology or cost.
Pull the oil & gas subsidies (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically, if oil and gas can't externalize their costs they're not a good deal anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
Universal healthcare after the Fauci/CCP fiasco. Really?
I don't know what the Fauci/CCP fiasco is. Is this another of those things which only makes sense if you kill your brain cells with red pills, Newsmax and space lasers? Don't do that; injecting bleach is healthier.
I know who Fauci is; he's been pretty honest about the science about covid (note that the science has changed as we went from "wild-ass guesses" to "informed guesses" to "some proven science with informed guesses for the rest"). He also disagreed with Trump a lot, which pissed off idiots who wo
generation and disposal colocation (Score:2)
I say put generation and disposal in the same location. Use high voltage DC to move the power where its needed.
w00t (Score:4, Interesting)
CSS that isn't just planting trees is a joke, but nuclear is serious stuff and I'm glad it's recovered some measure of bipartisan support at the federal level.
Now if only they could convince Big Environmentalism and its adherents that nuclear power is not synonymous with Homer Simpson at the controls. I won't hold my breath.
Long term research project (Score:5, Interesting)
It's useful to distinguish between capturing CO2 at the point it's being produced vs trying to pull it "out of thin air".
With the current technology and techniques, carbon capture only makes sense at the point of production. Some steel plants and power plants, for example, capture the CO2 as it's being produced. At least one actually captures the CO2 *before* the fuel is burned (producing hydrogen, which is immediately burned). That kind of capture can make sense with current methods.
We don't have time to wait to see if very clever people eventually come up with an efficient way to take C02 directly out of the air (other than via forests). We shouldn't bet on that happening any time soon. However, it would be really, really great if we could eventually do that - it would be a really big deal. So I think it's worth some more research. Just don't bet the farm on it.
Nuclear power, in the other hand, is a reality and has been for a long, long time. We know nuclear power works, without producing CO2. We know it works reliably. There is just one major problem with nuclear power. Because the leading environmentalist organization once shared office space with activists fighting against the development of nuclear weapons, we ended up with Greenpeace. An alliance between the environmentalists (green) and the peace activists (green peace). That created a political problem with nuclear power. However, now that leading environmentalists are regretting the last 60 years of coal power that resulted from that, many are now openly supporting nuclear power. Including one of the co-founders of Greenpeace.
Re: Long term research project (Score:3)
If you're pulling co2 out of the air as you produce it, then you don't have a power plant, you have an expensive chemistry demonstration about the conservation of energy.
And the heads of some environmentalist organizations may be for nuclear now, but a whole hell of a lot of rank and file types as well as ordinary people are scared to death of it. Fud works, otherwise no one would try it.
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If you're pulling co2 out of the air as you produce it, then you don't have a power plant, you have an expensive chemistry demonstration about the conservation of energy.
Not quite. You can pump CO2 into underground reservoirs, without chemically reducing it back to carbon. This still produces net energy.
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They're scared because a lot of previous reactor owners turned out to be criminals on steroids. Poor designs, poorer maintenance, dumping of high-grade waste out to sea (Sellafield, we're looking at you), dangerous levels of contamination in supposedly safe areas, fake cost per watt values, things that generally don't go down well with Joe and Jane Scientist, let alone Joe and Jane Public.
However, and this has been known a long time, you can design reactors to be much safer for the locals, the environment a
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If you're pulling co2 out of the air as you produce it, then you don't have a power plant, you have an expensive chemistry demonstration about the conservation of energy.
You think it takes as much energy to pull CO2 out of the tail gas of whatever plant you're running as you're generating? Where the fuck did you read that, some hippy magazine that even greenpeace considers extreme?
Why do you think companies specialising in chemical engineering are investing in this? I suspect you think they don't have any actual engineers looking at the viability of their multi billion dollar projects? I'm sure they are very happy to be saved from their mistake by some self proclaimed right
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We know nuclear power works, without producing CO2. We know it works reliably.
Only if you do not count mining, transportation, the concrete used and the save disposal of waste.
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We know nuclear power works, without producing CO2. We know it works reliably. Only if you do not count mining, transportation, the concrete used and the save disposal of waste.
And what do you make windmills and batteries from? Unicorn dust? 70's era Nuclear is more efficient than renewables and newer reactors are 25x more efficient than the current gen plants. This is an optimization problem. Doing the most with the least. Nuclear is the most. Renewables are the least according to the science. And to put it in perspective, nuclear is 8 orders of magnitude more power per input volume (with oil being 3 orders greater than renewables but 5 less than nuclear). All the nuclear
Re: (Score:2)
Renewables are cheaper than nuclear. I like nuclear in two respects only - firstly, smaller ground footprint reduces environmental damage. Secondly, they deliver a lot of energy, so energy-intensive activities like particle physics and fusion research (I suppose I could include bitcoin mining) can be given that power without placing excessive strain on batteries.
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It's not "Big Environmentalism", whatever the fuck that is supposed to be, that you need to convince. It's investors.
They see a choice between cheaper, rapidly growing renewable energy and expensive, dying nuclear that takes decades to offer an ROI and half the time gets cancelled or doubles in price anyway. They see that the electricity produced by nuclear isn't competitive today, let alone tomorrow.
If you can figure out a way to convince them that nuclear is a good investment you will get the development
Of course. (Score:5, Interesting)
Listen - nuclear power is a real resource. Well worth considering seriously.
I just see it as a less net efficient resource to go towards.
Not that it's worse than fossil fuels - goodness no, most estimates put the net deaths across any timescale as much worse for fossil fuel side effect much more than the power side of nuclear energy at least.
My problem isn't that I find nuclear power spooky or scary - it's that with the same time and resources it would take to make nuclear power overcome all its current limitations, and root all the corruption around the corporate side of managing nuclear power... we'd be much better off putting that same shared opportunity towards adapting the same batteries and land towards solar panels over that same time period.
We've got practically speaking, infinitely accessible energy raining down on us, every day. We'll need the same battery technology. Solar power will scale better, and won't face the same constant increase in cost of extracting fuel.
Either way - we've only got so much time before fossil fuels we do things with aren't practical anymore. Nuclear is a fallback - but it can't replace fossil fuels anymore than solar can.
It's not a game of either or - but given there is such a thing as priorities - I'd much rather give priority to solar as a cultural focus, and I think that's what our own future generations choose too.
That, and I think we'll find better uses for those same nuclear materials - in the same sense that I think we'll have better uses for petroleum as we use the big obvious energy source in the sky more reliably.
Ryan Fenton
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
One issue though is that as humans we kinda crave natural spaces. We don't want everything covered in concrete and asphalt. Now in a large place like USA, it may seem like there's plenty of space somewhere else to put vast arrays of solar and wind. But many places in the world, where people live, and live in higher density, where there's nowhere else to go, we are all a bit desperate to keep things green. Wind and solar may look beautiful as pictured in the distance in a magazine, but nobody wants to go out
Re:Of course. (Score:4, Informative)
"Nuclear is very compact. Nuclear lets you keep green valleys with crops and cows and sheep and woodlands and stuff."
As long as you ignore the toxic mining and byproducts involved in nuclear [re]fueling, which is easy because it is far away in someone else's country.
Solar power is shit on the grid (Re:Of course.) (Score:2)
Solar power is a very bad idea for power on the grid. The amount of labor, land, and materials compared to the energy return of solar power is shit compared to nuclear power. And it's not even close.
Some sources:
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2... [blogspot.com]
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co... [roadmaptonowhere.com]
https://withouthotair.com/ [withouthotair.com]
The data from Dr. MacKay in his Without Hot Air book/website/paper makes this quite clear just how shitty solar power is on the grid. The noonday sun will provide 1000 watts per square meter in power but a
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that alternative energy sources should be the end-game. I'd argue that you need a bit in the middle, the raw survival bit, that takes us from suicide squad systems like coal and oil towards clean alternatives. We've left it far too late to simply migrate. Research for renewables and fusion have all been starved of funds. Abolishing subsidies for coal and oil will free up more than enough to fix that, but research takes time. Fission is a stop-gap, not a solution. It buys us time.
Thanks Joe (Score:3, Insightful)
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It's reassuring to see that countries like Hungary, Poland and also the Netherlands are looking at nuclear power now to decarbonise their grids. At the current rate they'll have reached their cl
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Here are the numbers for actual production in Germany. As you can see Germany is rapidly removing coal and lignite from the grid and replacing it by renewables. It also achieved its CO2 emission target for 2020.
2010 -> 2020
lignite: 146 TWh -> 92 TWh (-54 TWh)
coal: 117 TWh -> 43 TWh (-74 TWh)
nuclear: 141 TWh -> 64 TWh (-77 TWh)
gas 89 TWh -> 92 TWh (+3 TWh)
renewables: 105 TWh -> 255 TWh (+150 TWh)
(source: https://www.ag-energiebilanzen... [ag-energiebilanzen.de])
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Germany on a sunny day like today still has a carbon intensity of 174 grams right now: https://www.electricitymap.org... [electricitymap.org]. Often Germany's carbon intensity is between 200-400 grams, so today is a pretty good day, relatively speaking.
France is 26 g
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If we had pursued nuclear energy decades ago we would have saved millions more from air pollution, mitigated climate change and reduced poverty.
The same is true for solar, wind and batteries.
Not really, because reliability matters. (Score:3)
If we had pursued nuclear energy decades ago we would have saved millions more from air pollution, mitigated climate change and reduced poverty.
The same is true for solar, wind and batteries.
Solar, wind & batteries can't provide the same quality of life improvement nuclear can. I'll tell you why.
You can't add enough batteries to solar and wind to make them reliable. Nuclear has the advantage of being reliable. For every huge windfarm or solar farm built, you need a large, fast-acting natural gas plant in spinning reserve ready to take up the slack. That also means that solar and wind will be limited to a small fraction of electrical generation, because all the other sources have to be read
CCS already is happening - Naturally! (Score:2, Insightful)
All we have to do is stop destroying all the natural carbon sinks.
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Then we're all doomed.
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Yes we can. No country is isolated. The countries in the Amazon basin use the land cleared for short-lived farms to provide meat - some for fast food places in the US, most for home consumption. If synthetic meat is as cheap and as good as is claimed, undercut the market. The metals that are illegally mined in the Amazon are all high-demand and could all be extracted from eWaste and landfills. Potentially at a much lower cost. Again, destroy the market.
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All we have to do is stop destroying all the natural carbon sinks.
Not at the rate we need. We're pumping out far more CO2 than the carbon sinks would have been able to sink even in the 1800s.
Thats a grave error (Score:2)
Last year , in the exclusion zone near the Chernobyl Disaster there was a forest fire.
While this fire was narrowly averted - had it not been averted the result of course would be radioactive ash being re-introduced into the atmosphere.
Fukushima went into melt down over a decade ago and is still sterilising the ocean as radioactive contaminants have continued to leak from the reactor into our already dying oceans. You might think it couldnt happen twice in the same place , but it did, very recently an earthq
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Both were terrible, outmoded, designs. Both were incompetently maintained. Both were mismanaged. Fukushima was deliberately built in an area vulnerable to earthquakes and severe tsunamis. (Indeed, the worst recorded for that precise area was far more severe than the one that took out the plant.) Both were run well beyond the time they were even remotely safe to operate. Both were run by regimes hell-bent on ignoring risks and hiding facts.
Name even oe of those attributes that is mandatory. Strange, I couldn
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"Both were terrible, outmoded, designs. Both were incompetently maintained. Both were mismanaged."
All reactors are managed by humans and some of them are shitheels.
You should hear the stories I've heard about the Humboldt bay plant cleanup. Good times.
Nuclear weapons is what's driving this... (Score:2)
Nuclear waste isn't any less dangerous than it was before. Without government subsides nuclear power generation is far more expensive than any other power generating methods.
The US military's plans to modernize it's nuclear weapons is what's driving this sudden love affair with nuclear power plants.
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Most reactors can't produce the isotopes needed for nuclear weapons. And, no, modern nuclear reactors are much safer. Well, with the caveat that the management isn't corrupt.
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All fast reactors (including MSR) can be modified for breeding isotopes for nuclear weapons if you leave a rogue nation alone with one for a few years. Easier than centrifuges.
Too late (Score:2)
Humanity needs to react to climate change rapidly. It is an urgent problem.
Building nuclear reactors just takes too long, so that is not a viable option now. Alternatives like solar and wind can be installed much faster. Just don't repeat Germany's mistake of decommissioning nuclear reactors when there are still coal-fired power plants running.
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One of the bigger problems in building a nuclear plant is that many western countries have lost the expertise to build them. Not really nuclear scientists, but engineers and contractors wh
Re: Yeah but it isn't. (Score:3, Informative)
The Chinese are building nuclear at a record pace. Second, nuclear power especially with new reactor design is very safe. A nuclear power plant releases less radiation than a coal power plant. Coal and other fossil fuels contain radiative elements. Nuclear is easily the cleanest form of energy. And with new generation designs it is also the safest.
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China is building nuclear at a record pace compared to everybody else. But much less than originally planned and much less than they build renewables
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Coal power plants do not "release" radiation.
Depending on coal, the ashes are radioactive, just by far not as much as nuclear waste.
If the ash is contaminated with Thorium it is safely deposited. Wow that was so easy.
Perhaps 30 - 40 years ago, before strict emission laws, fly ash getting out of the chimney could spread radioactivity, to small amount.
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Coal power plants do not "release" radiation. Depending on coal, the ashes are radioactive, just by far not as much as nuclear waste. If the ash is contaminated with Thorium it is safely deposited. Wow that was so easy.
Perhaps 30 - 40 years ago, before strict emission laws, fly ash getting out of the chimney could spread radioactivity, to small amount.
So environmentalists defend coal now?
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No, it really isn't safely deposited. It's scattered over the landscape. Coal is by far the worst polluter as far as radioisotopes are concerned.
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I'd rather BRICS countries all be given the latest and greatest nuclear power stations than to possess even one coal-fired power station. Far, far safer.
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They failed to follow US regulations put in place 15+ years before the accident. In the US, that specific reactor type had to have a generator protected from pretty much any disaster because it ran a positive void coefficient (meaning if it lost power it could not shut down on its own). Fukushima was literally building just that in a mountainside, but had only hooked up a couple reactors to it and the one that melted down was not one of them. Basically, they fucked up by not fixing this known problem sooner
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The only commercial reactor types to use a positive void coefficient are the Soviet RBMK (Chernobyl-type), which is graphite-moderated, and the heavy water-based Canadian CANDU reactor designs.
As noted in the Diet's 2012 report on the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, the plant's earthquake rating was too high, the sea wall too low, and the backup power options were inadequate, with even the external powe
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Basically, they fucked up by not fixing this known problem sooner. 100% of the blame goes to Japan's nuclear regulatory, which could have easily prevented this.
Japanese banks refuse to get off COBOL SVS, instead would rather pay IBM a premium to continue to support the language. They all agree they need to upgrade, but no one wants to be the one to pull the plug and be seen as the person responsible for breaking something that worked.
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A terrible design, with terrible maintenance. Pointing to that is like pointing to Comet aircraft and arguing that flying is dangerous.
Sorry, I dislike fission outside of special cases, and believe that if a fission program is undertaken it should be limited to where it has the greatest impact and phased out once alternatives with better energy density are available, but I'd rather have well-designed, well-managed fission than any sort of coal.
I'd also argue that fossil fuel subsidies (which run into the tr