[HN Gopher] An argument that nuclear power makes the climate cri...
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An argument that nuclear power makes the climate crisis worse
Author : stadia42
Score : 50 points
Date : 2021-03-14 16:24 UTC (6 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (m.dw.com)
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| >However, many of the measures needed for energy efficiency are
| now cheaper than the basic operating costs of nuclear power
| plants.
|
| Yes, blackouts are cheaper than electricity.
|
| >The second point is that renewables today have become so cheap
| that in many cases they are below the basic operating costs of
| nuclear power plants.
|
| Prohibiting new plants by law has a way of doing that, with aging
| mechanisms that fail catastrophically instead of being gracefully
| shut down in favor of new ones.
|
| And his explanation isn't to justify these claims, but to blame
| political opponents. Sad!
| robocat wrote:
| Nuclear friendly countries are struggling with the costs.
|
| Multiple examples of problems were given for France, yet the
| French government likes nuclear power.
| namdnay wrote:
| Electricity in France is so cheap that EDF has had to raise
| domestic electricity prices in order to make it possible for
| other providers to compete
| Hammershaft wrote:
| In the short term nuclear is undoubtedly expensive, but
| when the debt from construction is payed off, it becomes an
| incredibly cheap and reliable source of energy.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY
| throw0101a wrote:
| Not disputing, but in the interests of full disclosure,
| the presenter is (per YT About):
|
| * Professor David Ruzic
|
| * Abel Bliss Professor of Engineering
|
| * Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological
| Engineering
|
| * University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| As far as I'm aware, dealing with the waste has cost
| taxpayers in Germany quite a lot over the last couple of
| decades, and all of the really hot stuff is sitting in
| glorified warehouses with no end in sight. I have a
| feeling this may still become a very significant part of
| the overall costs. Has any other country actually solved
| that problem?
| pydry wrote:
| They're good until 2030 and then they're all going to start
| aging out at more or less the same time.
|
| Nuclear power is extraordinarily capital intensive but
| fairly reasonably priced to run once it's built.
|
| This also creates a strong incentive to run plants beyond
| their operating lifetime, which France may do. That takes
| us into exciting new territory safety-wise.
| Trombone12 wrote:
| And then it becomes comes time to dismantle them, and
| they turn capital intensive again.
| fuoqi wrote:
| It does not look to me like Russia is struggling with
| exporting its reactors and building them domestically.
| Areva's issues look to me as purely organizational and
| political, not technical.
| toshk wrote:
| To everyone being a proponent of this modern new nuclear plants
| you dream about I ask: would you want to live in a village
| where they would build a new nuclear plant next to it?
| samatman wrote:
| Yes.
| Hammershaft wrote:
| If it is replacing the asthmatic toxins from fossil fuel
| (almost everywhere in the world), then absolutely yes.
| paholg wrote:
| Sure.
| aksss wrote:
| I would have no problem with building one outside our city.
| And frankly compared the land clearing one would need for
| solar/thermal or the blight of enormous windmills, I'd prefer
| it. What you may be really asking is whether people are
| comfortable with the risk of turning into the next Chernobyl.
| I feel that risk is quite low, especially for new builds.
| toshk wrote:
| :) fair play to you. At least the real estate prices will
| be good.
|
| I won't go for low risk when it comes to nuclear and not
| let my family grow up next to it. Only no risk would be
| acceptable to me when it comes to nuclear, quite some tail
| risk in this case.
| [deleted]
| aksss wrote:
| Let's keep in mind that not doing nuclear is subjecting
| you and your family (and subsequent generations) to the
| long term issue of ever-increasing CO2 output. While
| waiting for workable battery tech at 3% avg y/y
| improvement - which means a looong wait for truly
| reliable at-scale FF displacement. The promise of
| renewables is great, but planning for a battery miracle
| in the short term is no plan at all. IF we appropriately
| monetize the cost of going deeper into fossil fuels every
| day (which is what the globe is doing right now, still),
| I think the risk of nuclear is put in a better context.
| So it seems to me we're talking about the global risks of
| continuing on current track or localized risk of nuclear
| plant accident. Out of 440 operable on-grid plants, how
| many accidents have you heard of that would have impacted
| you or your family?
|
| I don't think "no-risk" exists for any power gen tech,
| fwiw. There are always going to be trade-offs.
| the_why_of_y wrote:
| > Yes, blackouts are cheaper than electricity.
|
| Texas has demonstrated that you can have blackouts and
| expensive at the same time if only you cut enough regulations.
|
| https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/how-and-why...
| cheaprentalyeti wrote:
| Funny, everyone was happy about how Texas scrapped so many
| coal plants and built so many windmills until it reached a
| cascade failure point and then the narrative shifted to "OMG,
| look at all the deregulation!"
| Trombone12 wrote:
| Texas had no power because they forgot everything they
| learnt the hard way from their "once-in-a-decade snow
| storm" they had 2011.
|
| Coal piles freezing solid because there is no roof, gas
| valves impossible to operate because nobody would put a box
| around them, no water too cool reactor cores because the
| pipes froze: these are _not_ failures somehow cascading
| from the fact they build some windmills.
| cipher_system wrote:
| Everyone always says nuclear is expensive but what if the world
| (or significant portion of it) decided to go all in and build
| enough nuclear to replace fossil fuels in the next 2 decades.
| What would the price be then?
| rich_sasha wrote:
| So... it's a massive problem that there is no storage for nuclear
| waste (mostly agree) but not even worth mentioning there is no
| _energy_ storage for renewables?
|
| Coming from a cold, dark country with long and cloudy winters and
| no oceanic coast, it drives me mad when people point at the Med
| or California and say "look how cheap solar and wind is".
| fuoqi wrote:
| Lack of storage in the US is a purely political issue, not a
| technical one. Other countries are either successfully building
| such storage (Finland) or invest into fuel recycling and
| breeder technologies (France and Russia), which significantly
| reduce amount of waste which has to be stored and its long-term
| danger.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Yes, hence the "mostly". For a variety of blocking reasons
| though, this is an unresolved (if not unresolvable) problem.
| vimy wrote:
| I don't think we even need to store it. Nuclear waste has
| been sitting in regular storage for over 50 years now,
| seems to be perfectly safe. We should just keep doing what
| we're doing. Why do we even need to bother putting it
| underground except for some unlikely what if scenarios 1000
| years in the future.
| worik wrote:
| Yes there is.
|
| Two sorts of grid storage batteries: Elon Must has made Lithium
| batteries work on grid scale. Flow batteries or fuel cells, are
| probably more economic. And then there is pumped hydro
| akvadrako wrote:
| Elon didn't make any grid-scale energy _storage_. The largest
| grid battery installation in the world can only supply power
| for a couple minutes - that 's a buffer at most.
|
| Edit: removed first sentence.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| It's hours, not minutes. Elon Musk ships MWH solutions
| conveniently packaged as in container form. The largest
| battery currently being planned is a 1.2GW setup in
| Australia. That's a big buffer.
|
| Demand for solutions providing power for days simply does
| not exist currently. Hours is good enough. This business is
| about providing lots of power quickly.
|
| You are right that they typically are only used for a few
| minutes to deal with peaks in demand. That's because they
| are only needed for that long and because you can turn them
| on and off pretty much instantly. You don't have that
| choice with traditional solutions like gas plants.
|
| Which is why despite battery cost, this type of battery is
| very successful at largely removing the need for having
| peaker plants. It also seems to be very successful at
| getting rid of blackouts because there were never enough of
| those peaker plants to begin with in Australia. Another
| advantage is that you can put these batteries all over the
| place. Many small installations make up for a lot of
| aggregate capacity. You can put them in buildings even; and
| people do.
|
| Musk is also building factories that are producing
| batteries by the GWH per year per factory and soon TWH per
| year. He's not alone of course and basically there are
| quite many other companies now planning their own little
| GWH production facilities. There are tens of billions being
| invested in that stuff in the next few years. There will be
| hundreds or thousands of these factories in a few decades
| churning out many TWH of storage annually.
|
| That battery capacity is of course mostly intended for the
| transport sector and not for grid storage. But if you are
| worried about having enough storage capacity on the grid,
| there will be multiple TWH of batteries driving around on
| roads in most countries by the end of the decade. Basically
| 2M cars with 50KWH batteries == 1TWH. That's a lot of
| distributed and mobile storage. All we need to do is plug
| it in.
|
| Of course there will be more optimal solutions as well. But
| it's capacity we'll have none the less.
| dang wrote:
| If you can't resist swipes like the first sentence (it
| happens), please edit them out later. They only evoke worse
| from others.
|
| Your comment would be fine without the first sentence.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| pydry wrote:
| Where are you from that has no wind or sun?
| lukifer wrote:
| Renewables are cost-competitive, but not by an order of
| magnitude. If wind and solar net 1/3rd each of CA, it no
| longer makes economic sense to build them.
| Sudophysics wrote:
| Solar and off loading batteries from like Ambri is probably a
| good idea. Nuclear is great, but is simply annoying in every
| right despite being an existing "throw megawatts at it" solution
| that's also not spewing gas.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jswizzy wrote:
| Good look getting to Mars or exploring space without nuclear
| power of some sort. It's the safest and cleanest energy source we
| have have.
| imtringued wrote:
| Renewables fail at heating in the winter because they generate
| electricity directly. SMR nuclear district heating might be the
| only way to cover the shortfall. Thermal power plants have an
| inherent advantage when it comes to producing heat.
| nabla9 wrote:
| It's infatuating that all arguments pro- and against nuclear
| energy are so selective. It's very hard to get unbiased view.
|
| The article starts with proper framing. You must think in terms
| of lifetime capital costs and opportunity cost. Then it chooses
| numbers selectively to make the argument stronger than it is.
| Nuclear and renewable energy production can't be compared
| directly with price per kWh.
|
| Nuclear energy is 24/7 from the start. Currently Nuclear/coal/gas
| provides base load that enables cheap renewables (base load is
| the minimum level of demand on an electrical grid over a span of
| time. Day, week, months)
|
| Supplying same base load with renewables means energy production
| + large scale energy storage + grid investments. You need
| overcapacity in production and the grid to even out time and
| geographical variability of renewables.
|
| I have not seen any honest cost comparison that counts in
| everything.
| mattnewton wrote:
| There is a mention of the costs needed for storage in
| renewables that would keep the electricity under the operating
| cost of nuclear, albeit in a somewhat indirect way-
|
| > It would often even be affordordable to pay 1 - 1.5 cents per
| kilowatt hour for electricity storage in addition to the
| generation costs for wind and solar power and still be below
| the operating costs of nuclear power plants. And here we have
| to ask the same question: How many emissions can I avoid with
| one euro, one dollar or one yuan?
|
| I read that as meaning there is probably enough margin in the
| renewable cost to actually make money while storing electricity
| in batteries from wind and solar and selling it as a price
| below what nuclear costs to keep running. Unfortunately I am
| having trouble translating 1-1.5 cents/Kwhr to the current
| price of battery storage tech, and this doesn't factor in the
| costs of creating these batteries at scale either, but the
| argument does say that's likely to be cheaper.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| My guess is that the article is thinking of other kinds of
| storage, such as water pumping. I very much doubt battery
| storage could be cost effective at this time.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Battery storage is cheaper than HVDC power lines.
|
| https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/12/27/the-future-
| of-...
| aksss wrote:
| Right, I think hydro is about as close to at-scale 24/7 always-
| on generation as you can get with renewables right now. Even
| with that, everywhere I've lived with hydro power had backup
| fossil fuel generation, which _was_ periodically used, though
| rarely.
|
| Arguments for all other forms of renewables at scale right now
| seem to depend on having/maintaining fossil fuel power
| generation just to satisfy daily demand reliably, so you end up
| with two sets of power generation infrastructure designed to
| meet peak capacity (so effectively double capacity of what's
| needed), which is extraordinarily expensive.
|
| Advocacy for non-hydro renewables requires heaping doses of
| "hope" that new technologies will be developed one day to
| deprecate the side-by-side ff power-generation.
|
| That hope and risk has to be priced in to the comparisons with
| nuclear for supplying electric grids, or the debate isn't
| "nuclear vs renewables" it's "nuclear vs. (renewables + fossil
| fuel generation)". At that point it even makes sense to think
| of "nuclear vs. (renewables + nuclear)".
|
| If you want the cost of CO2 and its global impact priced into
| using fossil fuels, perhaps that's what the cost of nuclear
| should be compared to.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| If the world was completely solar, we'd need 30TWh of
| batteries, which would cost about $3T. [0]
|
| $3T would buy 200 GW of nuclear power plants, about 3% of
| what's needed.
|
| 0: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/06/21/is-nuclear-
| pow...
| bdauvergne wrote:
| Previous generation of nuclear reactors in France were
| built for less than 2 billion euros (constant euro) per GW
| (sorry it's in french, you can see the numbers here http://
| i-tese.cea.fr/_files/LettreItese18/ECLAIRAGES/REP.pdf on
| page 10). There were 50 reactors of three types (900, 1300
| then 1450 GW). If we had kept this technology instead of
| losing the know-how and developing a new program, we could
| certainly build 1500 GW for those 3T. Don't know if any
| other country ever achieved such economy scale on its civil
| nuclear program, maybe South-Korea as like France they have
| only one nuclear company, and even more reactors per sites
| of few different models.
| akvadrako wrote:
| Current all-in battery costs are about $200/kWh. Daily
| global energy use is about 400 TWh. That would be an 80
| trillion dollar battery for just one day of backup.
|
| That just isn't feasible to build near term and it isn't
| even enough to prevent blackouts. Plus the current methods
| probably don't scale that far, so the cost is even higher.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Finally and (slightly) anti-nuclear piece worth reading.
| Yes, solar is easy for capitalism, but I'm not sure
| building all those batteries is. Building smaller pre-fab
| nukes vs building larger battery arrays seem pretty close
| in terms of challenges.
|
| You don't have a citation on "$3T would buy 200 GW of
| nuclear power plants", and I very much doubt that
| extrapolation, because if any sane planner got the $3T
| budget, the first thing they would do is invest heavily in
| pre-fab.
| mattashii wrote:
| > Right, I think hydro is about as close to at-scale 24/7
| always-on generation as you can get with renewables right
| now.
|
| There are quite some solar-thermal installations of >100MW,
| which store solar energy in a thermal buffer to later convert
| this to electrical power, creating an effective 24/7 stable
| supply of power, weather permitting.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Couple of years ago I tried comparing the cost of a solar
| thermal plant with PV solar. Claimed advantage of solar
| thermal is the ability to store energy as molten salt. The
| cost differential though means it'd be cheaper to use PV
| Solar to heat phase change materials.
| aksss wrote:
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/green-
| tech/solar/china-...
| pedrocr wrote:
| > Even with that, everywhere I've lived with hydro power had
| backup fossil fuel generation, which was periodically used,
| though rarely.
|
| > Arguments for all other forms of renewables at scale right
| now seem to depend on having/maintaining fossil fuel power
| generation just to satisfy daily demand reliably, so you end
| up with two sets of power generation infrastructure designed
| to meet peak capacity (so effectively double capacity of
| what's needed), which is extraordinarily expensive.
|
| I'm by no means an expert on this but I've been trying to
| learn more about it recently. From what I gather the end-
| state can be 100% renewables in different ways:
|
| 1) Have enough hydro that can be turned into pumped storage
| that a complete grid mix can be done with just
| hydro+solar+wind with very little overbuild. Portugal has
| very good conditions for this and back of the envelope
| calculations tell me it's possible with just 15% overbuild.
| All of the extra is solar which is very cheap[1]. With a
| better interconnected European grid it may be possible to do
| that across the whole continent.
|
| 2) Overbuild solar and wind by a large amount since they're
| so cheap, supplement that with some expensive batteries, and
| allow energy prices to go to zero and even negative at times
| to see if anyone has a use for the excess energy. We're
| talking something like 3-5x overbuild and then having so much
| excess energy that you start disrupting other fossil fuel
| usage[2].
|
| If you have a seasonal storage breakthrough you're back at 1)
| with just another technology in place of hydro. Financing
| hydrogen generation seems to me like picking winners within
| 2). Both scenarios can be supplemented if shaping demand can
| be made at scale. Things like heating buildings and charging
| EVs can be shifted a few hours during the day without much
| inconvenience and possibly allow shaving off some important
| peaks.
|
| Most of this discussion would be avoided if we just put a
| steadily increasing price on carbon, remove all other
| subsidies, and let the market shake things out.
|
| [1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UTUjhrBF04MP38b4W
| lQx...
|
| [2] https://static1.squarespace.com/static/585c3439be65942f02
| 2bb...
| aksss wrote:
| If the issue is cutting CO2 with a power generating
| solution that's highly, highly reliable, renewables like
| solar+wind have an uphill battle to fight. Their load
| factor is abysmally low, and storage tech at scale just
| isn't here to sustain daily demand for 72 hrs.
| Supplementing with hydro instead of gas/coal to pick up the
| slack probably implies some massive "three-gorges" style
| damming projects. How feasible that is varies by region.
| What do you think about the feasibility of building that
| much hydro capacity in a way that can sustain Europe's
| daily need for three days running? If you had that, why
| even bother with solar+wind except maybe as localized off-
| grid solutions? Somewhere out there is also a question of
| hardening generating capacity against kinetic attack, but
| that's a whole separate thing. I only think of it because
| dams seem pretty vulnerable, especially massive ones.
| 2trill2spill wrote:
| Wow, what a simplistic look at nuclear vs renewables. They don't
| even begin to look into the "hidden" costs of renewable energy.
| They fail to mention or include the costs of new transmissions
| lines, bringing new mines onboard, building grid storage, etc.
|
| If we forgo nuclear power the only other currently viable carbon
| free, stable, energy source is hydro power, which has huge
| environmental costs and immense public resentment/push back. For
| example look at the James bay hydro project[1]. 11,500 km2 of
| land flooded, intense protest from the Cree and other first
| nations as well as conservation groups, increases in mercury
| levels in fish populations, etc. Expanding hydro power enough to
| handle base load energy use is unlikely, due to the above costs
| and push back.
|
| So if we can't expand hydro or nuclear then we have to go all in
| on wind and solar plus grid storage. We could use pumped hydro
| but that brings about many of the same costs/problems as hydro
| power. That leaves us with over building wind and solar, and
| adding huge amounts of transmission lines and batteries to
| account for the variability. Add in the switch from ICE cars to
| electric and the amount of new metals needed is going to be
| immense.
|
| I've also noticed that every time a new transmission line or mine
| is purposed in the United States their is immense push back from
| environmental and conservation groups, and from the public as a
| whole. For examples of this look at the fight over adding new
| transmissions lines in southern Wisconsin[2] or the intense
| opposition to mining the Duluth complex[3] in northern
| Minnesota[4]. The Duluth complex is the largest untapped copper
| and nickel resource in the world and Polymet has been trying to
| get permits for well over a decade to mine. Copper and nickel are
| greatly needed for renewable energy and batteries, and it could
| still be another 4 or 5 years if it ever happens.
|
| Not using nuclear energy is just going to massively exacerbate
| the transmission line and mining problems as well as increase the
| prices of renewable energy. Wind and solar is "cheap" because we
| don't factor in the added transmission lines, and natural gas
| peaker planets needed to currently make it happen. Also many of
| the groups pushing for wind and solar + batteries also happen to
| be against adding additional mines and transmission lines
| required to make it happen, and honestly you cant really blame
| them, mines can pollute local water supplies and transmission
| lines are ugly.
|
| All and all a balanced approach is probably the cheapest and most
| viable path forward, solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, grid storage
| all working together on the grid.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bay_Project
|
| [2]: https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-
| politics/cardina...
|
| [3]: http://www.miningminnesota.com/duluth-complex/
|
| [4]: https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2020/06/polymet-copper-
| nickel-...
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| What about the hidden cost of nuclear? The waste storage. The
| security measures (can't have terrorists walking off with the
| nuclear waste). The constant need for inspections, audits, etc.
| And that's before you consider the corruption and the gravy
| train that is basically associated with funding existing plants
| using massive amounts of public funding.
|
| Nuclear being too expensive is the main point of this article.
| That seems upsetting to a lot of nuclear proponents. But I
| don't see a lot of arguments to counter that core point.
|
| Nuclear the most expensive option in the German market. This is
| a completely uncontroversial fact. You can verify it in
| countless publications. You can argue whether it is 3x more
| expensive (according to the article) or a maybe a bit more when
| you consider all the hidden cost. IMHO 3X actually a very
| friendly assessment considering bids for solar and wind are
| trending very much below the cited cost in the article by about
| 2-5x. The point is that it is expensive by a quite significant
| factor.
|
| I don't get your argument about mining. Yes policy making in
| the US is a problem (hence the Texas situation a few weeks
| ago). Nuclear does not solve that political mess; it just adds
| to it. I don't think the US is actually capable at this point
| of building nuclear cheaply. There are just too many
| stakeholders drooling over the multi billion $ budgets for that
| ever to make sense economically. And in any case the glacial
| decision making ensures it will be too little too late even if
| they by some miracle stick to budgets, which I would argue is
| pure fantasy. Too little, too late, for way too much is not
| what the world needs.
| sofixa wrote:
| What do you mean _hidden_ costs of nuclear? All of those you
| listed are a well defined part in the costs, and considered
| from the start of a nuclear power plant, with provisions
| required for decomissioning and storage.
|
| As for Germany, nuclear is their only CO2-free base load
| power option, so comparing costs to solar that only works
| when sun shines isn't apt. A good winter storm and tidal,
| wind and solar are out for hours - what do you do then? Coal?
| Gas? Or just have nuclear for base to start with? And yes,
| one day there could be massive grid-scale storage, maybe.
| FooHentai wrote:
| "Decommissioning options for a retired nuclear plant may be
| chosen based on _availability of decommissioning funds_ ,
| operation of other reactors at the same site, or
| availability of waste disposal facilities."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAFSTOR
|
| Today, about half the EoL reactors in the USA are on the
| SAFSTOR track instead of the one where they are immediately
| decommissioned. There is a single waste disposal site
| available, WIPP, that will close in the next couple of
| years. Only a handful of reactors on the SAFSTOR track are
| there because they sit adjacent to operational reactors.
|
| So plans are one thing, reality is quite another.
| pydry wrote:
| Germany uses a combination of demand shifting,
| overproduction, imported power and dispatchable power.
|
| >A good winter storm and tidal, wind and solar are out for
| hours - what do you do then?
|
| Design for the storm. In Texas everything except solar
| could in theory have worked fine (wind often overproduces
| in storms) and yet every power source failed.
| 2trill2spill wrote:
| > What about the hidden cost of nuclear? The waste storage.
| The security measures (can't have terrorists walking off with
| the nuclear waste). The constant need for inspections,
| audits, etc. And that's before you consider the corruption
| and the gravy train that is basically associated with funding
| existing plants using massive amounts of public funding.
|
| Nothing wrong with pointing out issues/costs with nuclear, in
| fact it's good to point out the issues with nuclear so it can
| be properly weighed. I'm just trying to point out
| issues/costs of only using renewables, so we can weigh those
| as well.
|
| > Nuclear being too expensive is the main point of this
| article. That seems upsetting to a lot of nuclear proponents.
| But I don't see a lot of arguments to counter that core
| point.
|
| I think your missing the point. If you ran your entire grid
| on just solar and wind, no nuclear, or coal or natural gas
| peaker plants, you'll find that wind and solar is no longer
| cheap, and is much less resilient to exceptional
| circumstances.
|
| > I don't get your argument about mining.
|
| My point about mining is, our current course to fighting
| climate change relies entirely on mining, were making the
| switch from the Oil and Gas industry to the Mining industry
| for our energy and transportation markets. This change is
| going to have huge impacts on the world, mines are quite
| capable polluters of the local environment, setting up mines
| in developed countries can take a decade or more, which is
| the same problem nuclear plants face. Mining is also quite
| controversial for many good reasons, so there is significant
| push back from locals and environmental groups whenever and
| wherever a mine is proposed. All of this means a huge portion
| on mining takes places in countries with lax environmental
| and or human rights standards, which just exacerbates the
| problems.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Why do all the anti-nuclear people just through out the marginal
| cost and then move on...
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _Why do all the anti-nuclear people just through out the
| marginal cost and then move on..._
|
| In the article, the interviewee didn't -- he specifically
| talked about decommissioning costs.
| mimixco wrote:
| For anyone interested in more depth, the full report linked in
| the article is worth looking at. In general, it's not been a good
| year for the industry. Uneconomical plants in operation, stalled
| and cancelled projects, criminal fraud and theft of public money,
| and the unsolved problem of how to decommission anything plague
| the business. If the real costs were addressed, it seems many
| more plants would have shut down by now. The report does a great
| job of linking to original sources and it would be hard to find
| fault with the facts in it. TLDR, nuclear is in decline worldwide
| and maybe completely over in the US as far as new construction.
| The proposed new modular reactor designs have safety issues that
| keep them from being a quick fix.
| specialist wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| Saul Griffith has been making the same points.
|
| TLDR: Based on opportunity costs and urgency, renewable
| generation capacity is both much quicker and cheaper.
|
| However, we must also invest (R&D) in next generation nuclear.
| eg micro reactors and liquid sodium. And hope like hell that
| any of the 50 long shot bets wins biggly. Because we're still
| going to need it.
| c1ccccc1 wrote:
| > The proposed new modular reactor designs have safety issues
| that keep them from being a quick fix.
|
| That's interesting, I didn't know that. Where can I read more
| about this?
| mimixco wrote:
| Here's the report PDF link:
| https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/-World-Nuclear-
| Industry-S...
| hodgesrm wrote:
| I guess I don't understand how nuclear power can run a
| submarine but can't be harnessed to provide power on land.
| Nuclear power seems to work pretty well in ships. It seems as
| if we're not framing the problem correctly.
| fuoqi wrote:
| Submarine, aircraft, and icebreaker reactors usually operate
| on military-grade fission materials. You don't want those to
| be exported all over the world. And a bigger reason is that
| they simply can not compete with bigger plants. 1 GW class
| nuclear reactors generate much cheaper electricity even after
| factoring in their huge CAPEX. There is one example of using
| a small nuclear ship-scale reactor for civilian power
| generation in Russia [0], but I would say it's a very edge
| scenario, not applicable to the most of the world.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_p
| ower...
| aksss wrote:
| Money is no object when making a military submarine that
| doesn't have to surface to resupply batteries with diesel
| generators. Makes for a hard comparison to at-scale public
| utility construction.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| The solution is smaller, modular nuclear reactors. Run them for
| 30 years, and then just leave them in place- waste included -
| forever.
|
| Eventually we can probably figure out how to operate them for 50,
| then 100 years.
|
| The downsides of this are much less than the potential downsides
| of excess CO2 in the atmosphere, which are civilization-ending.
| agarttha wrote:
| Looks like Mycle Schneider, the lead author, is a founding member
| of WISE-Paris, which is the French branch of the anti-nuclear
| group WISE, which he directed from 1983 to 2003. [wikipedia]
| pydry wrote:
| Is it particularly noteworthy that an anti nuclear article was
| written by an anti nuclear author or am I missing something?
| sneak wrote:
| I believe that GP intended to imply ideological bias.
| ingsoc79 wrote:
| Yes, as it establishes the potential bias of the article
| author. If this article was written by typically a pro-
| nuclear author it would be much more noteworthy.
| pydry wrote:
| That was the idea behind this nuclear industry PR piece
| from a few weeks ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26213984
|
| Predictably, it didn't bring up the costs (though of course
| the first comment on HN did) but it tried to play the
| "environmentalist who has seen the light" angle pretty
| hard.
|
| It's actually kind of weird how many articles like this do
| get submitted to hacker news. Link says it's safe, comments
| say it's just not economic <- this has happened quite a few
| times.
| wernercd wrote:
| I'm going to hesitate to say this article is very short
| sighted... it talks about "nuclear is expensive, renewables are
| cheap and we don't know how to store nuclear waste".
|
| Nabla's comment is a good start on the conversation (good frame
| but no real apples to apples comparisons).
|
| Personally, with the talk about "what about all that nuclear
| waste"...
|
| where's the talk about the recyclable waste? Batteries, solar
| panels, wind mills are all very hard to recycle and add "after
| the fact" costs like nuclear does that's being unaccounted for -
| and is happening at a MUCH larger scale currently.
|
| Where's the talk about all the "rare earth minerals" that's going
| to have to be strip mined around the world to keep up with "clean
| energy"?
|
| I think this article has some valid points wrapped up in talking
| points to strengthen its argument while ignoring massive talking
| points that go unmentioned (True comparisons of costs,
| storage/recycling of materials and the massive increase in
| "plundering" Earth goes unmentioned... to name a few).
|
| Edit: Not saying I'm "pro nuclear" or "anti renewable"... I'm
| more of a balanced approach person - I think the future will
| include Coal, Gas, Nuclear, Solar, hydro and various mixes there-
| of and we need to work on making all of them better because none
| of them are going anywhere any time soon - and they ALL have
| strengths and weaknesses.
|
| https://fee.org/articles/the-environmental-costs-of-renewabl...
|
| > Far from it. The transition to renewables is going to require a
| dramatic increase in the extraction of metals and rare-earth
| minerals, with real ecological and social costs.
|
| https://www.futurity.org/nuclear-waste-recycling-2355402-2/
|
| New, better ways of recycling Nuclear "waste" is being researched
| constantly
|
| > A new simple, proliferation-resistant approach offers a way to
| reduce nuclear waste, researchers say.
|
| https://fortune.com/2020/02/05/wind-turbine-fiberglass-landf...
|
| > Tens of thousands of aging blades are coming down from steel
| towers around the world and most have nowhere to go but
| landfills. In the U.S. alone, about 8,000 will be removed in each
| of the next four years. Europe, which has been dealing with the
| problem longer, has about 3,800 coming down annually through at
| least 2022, according to BloombergNEF. It's going to get worse:
| Most were built more than a decade ago, when installations were
| less than a fifth of what they are now.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/23...
|
| > The problem of solar panel disposal "will explode with full
| force in two or three decades and wreck the environment" because
| it "is a huge amount of waste and they are not easy to recycle."
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > Batteries, solar panels, wind mills are all very hard to
| recycle
|
| Everything the world creates is unprofitable to recycle except
| for aluminum soda cans. Compared to the average commercial
| waste, batteries, solar panels and wind blades are
| straightforward to recycle.
|
| > Where's the talk about all the "rare earth minerals" that's
| going to have to be strip mined around the world to keep up
| with "clean energy"?
|
| There's no talk because the commonly used batteries and solar
| panels don't contain any.
|
| A lifepo4 battery consists of Lithium, Iron and Phosphate, all
| of which are abundant.
|
| > about 8,000 will be removed in each of the next four years.
|
| IOW, about 40,000 tonnes of waste. About the same amount of
| waste as a small town.
| wernercd wrote:
| > straightforward to recycle
|
| Except they aren't.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-
| turb...
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2018/09/04/innovati.
| ..
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/23.
| ..
| Shadonototro wrote:
| Haha sure..
|
| What's your alternative? American Nuclear Fusion?
|
| This kind of people aren't european, they worship america, and
| want us to depend more and more on their companies
|
| I'm tired of hearing the same people saying we should exit
| nuclear energy, this is beyond crazy
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| He says renewables. Fusion isn't mentioned. America isn't
| mentioned. What are you talking about?
| Shadonototro wrote:
| i know what i'm talking about, you'll see in 10 years, and
| you'll say "yep that random guy was right"
|
| renewables, sure
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. We're trying for
| something different here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| huffmsa wrote:
| > The second point is that renewables today have become so cheap
| that in many cases they are below the basic operating costs of
| nuclear power plants.
|
| Because nukes have stagnated for close to half a century. Bit of
| a head slapper.
| grawprog wrote:
| One thing I never really see brought into the nuclear energy
| equation that's fairly environmentally bad is uranium mining.
|
| http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/longstaff1/
|
| >Uranium mining facilities produce tailings that generally are
| disposed of in near surface impoundments close to the mine. These
| tailings pose serious environmental and health risks in the form
| of Randon emission, windblown dust dispersal and leaching of
| contaminants including heavy metals and arsenic into the water.
|
| https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactive-waste-uranium-mining...
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK201052/
|
| Nuclear energy still requires fuel. The impacts and costs from
| mining operations and refining should be taken into account when
| comparing to other energy sources. They are part of it. Nuclear
| energy can't exist without it.
| masklinn wrote:
| > One thing I never really see brought into the nuclear energy
| equation that's fairly environmentally bad is uranium mining.
|
| If you are going to make that argument, then you need to make
| the same about the materials and fuels involved in other
| electricity generation methods as well, and things get
| complicated rather quickly e.g. offshore turbines use a fair
| amount of neodymium and dysprosium, thin-film solar panels need
| tellurium, cadmium, and indium, ... and many of these rare
| earths or elements are either often contaminated with
| radioactive elements (which end up in tailings) or are produced
| as part of (and ecologically indistinguishable from) other
| mining operations e.g. tellurium from copper and cadmium from
| zinc.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Is there an argument to be made about volumes? Eg let's say it
| is 5x worse than mining coal, but you need 100x less of it, is
| it net less bad?
|
| I clearly made up the numbers, just curious.
| grawprog wrote:
| I'm not sure how directly comparable they are. How do you
| compare radioactive and chemical contamination to the kind of
| contamination from coal mines?
|
| Pollution isn't always a thing you can measure on a scale
| from bad to less bad. There's long term systemic effects from
| the countless contaminants released by industries around the
| world we barely have any idea about.
|
| I realize economic models, and fairly frighteningly,
| increasingly ecological models require easy to work with
| numbers that can be compared and contrasted to analyse cost
| vs benefit, but the real world does not work that way.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Using this comment to remind people that coal plants do
| produce radioactive exhaust:
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-
| more-...
| 2trill2spill wrote:
| Uranium mining seems hell of a lot better than Copper/Nickel
| mining[1]. Not only is the scale of copper and nickel needed
| for wind and solar vastly greater than the amount of Uranium
| needed, but Copper/nickel mines have all the same issues with
| leaching heavy metals and arsenic, just on a larger scale. And
| wind turbines use a lot of copper[2], so I'm fine with looking
| into the costs of nuclear energy through uranium mining if we
| also calculate the costs of mining from Wind, Solar and grid
| storage.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_mine_drainage
|
| [2]: https://copperalliance.org.uk/knowledge-
| base/education/educa...
| grawprog wrote:
| I guess the amount of copper used in nuclear waste disposal
|
| https://www.copper.org/publications/newsletters/innovations/.
| ..
|
| And nuclear plants in general would also need to be factored
| in.
|
| As well as the nickel used in corrosion proof alloys needed
| in nuclear facilities.
|
| https://nickelinstitute.org/about-nickel/nickel-alloys-in-
| oi...
| lousken wrote:
| why is nuclear waste such a big problem? in terms of m^3 the
| amount is rather small, and I feel like we're not discussing
| what's gonna happen with old solar panels. Is there a way to
| recycle them / how good is it? The article doesn't mention it. As
| for the nuclear storage problem, from my point of view it seems
| more like the biggest problem is that people don't want it near
| them even though it's stored hundreds of meters below surface,
| and they rather accept a factory and directly breathe the stuff
| from it
| [deleted]
| ic0n0cl4st wrote:
| When one plant's worth of solar panel waste is improperly
| discarded, does it ruin potable water supplies, airable land
| and the health of entire regions? Does that area become a no-
| man's land for decades /centuries, even after spending many
| billions to try and rectify the damage?
|
| There is absolutely no comparison to long term storage of
| nuclear waste and discarded solar panels.
| aksss wrote:
| If we're trying to be honest here, that's not an appropriate
| comparison. Properly disposed-of nuclear waste doesn't
| necessarily cause these problems either. When you look at the
| physical footprint disparities (land-clearing) needed for
| commensurate solar power generation, rendering such land
| unusable and ecologically disrupted/destroyed, solar doesn't
| come out smelling like roses these days either. If you're
| lucky it can be reclaimed more easily but in the daily
| operation _for its lifetime and beyond_ in the best case, the
| land occupation needed to power a small town exclusively with
| solar is pretty massive. Now do a country. Now do a
| continent.
| ic0n0cl4st wrote:
| Since you're going to go there, let's add in the damage
| from all the iron, that limestone and uranian required to
| build the nuclear plant? Also quite damaging.
|
| Photovoltaics, not the best. Now what about mirrors
| pointing at concrete towers moving liquid sodium around,
| like in Spain, or pointed at steel pipes filled with water.
|
| The pro-nuclear crowd have two things in common:
|
| 1. They have more faith in humanity than we have shown is
| warranted 2. They won't accept that Nuclear has failed to
| achieve the promised widescale adoption and economic
| benefits.
|
| We can't even contain plastic bags.
| orwin wrote:
| > When one plant's worth of solar panel waste is improperly
| discarded, does it ruin potable water supplies, airable land
| and the health of entire regions?
|
| Well, crush 100 acre of solar panels, put them in a landfill
| near a river, and tell me if cadmium, lead and mercury taste
| good and have a good effect on the fauna around. I'm not
| talking about batteries here.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041201.
| ..
|
| https://goodelectronics.org/chinese-workers-demand-
| compensat...
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6161498/
| ic0n0cl4st wrote:
| If a truck full of solar panels crashes on the highway,
| that highway doesn't become a superfund site. It doesn't
| cost hundreds of millions to clean up, the local community
| doesn't see a massive spike in cancer.
|
| You cannot say the same about nuclear waste.
| Nicksil wrote:
| >If a truck full of solar panels crashes on the highway,
| that highway doesn't become a superfund site. It doesn't
| cost hundreds of millions to clean up, the local
| community doesn't see a massive spike in cancer.
|
| >You cannot say the same about nuclear waste.
|
| Sure you can. Look-up transport casks.
| timthorn wrote:
| An account of the 1984 test:
| https://www.railmagazine.com/trains/heritage/it-s-a-
| lovely-d...
|
| And the BBC Six O'clock News report:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo22l4wJdx8
| lazide wrote:
| When has that happened with nuclear waste again?
| armada651 wrote:
| Ironically many countries are considering underground storage
| of CO2 to combat climate change.
| aksss wrote:
| Is carbon sequestration even remotely realistic though
| (beyond PoC, and at scale)?
| Hammershaft wrote:
| I reccomend Vaclav Smil's interviews on this subject. The
| short answer is no.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| Hard to say, its a big mega project, but then so is what we
| do today to keep getting more oil and gas. Same story goes
| for energy storage to make solar/wind workable at large
| scales. Very hard problem! So is sucking the last dregs of
| oil out of the ocean, or creating earthquakes to suck it
| out of the ground.
| FooHentai wrote:
| >why is nuclear waste such a big problem? in terms of m^3 the
| amount is rather small
|
| The meme is that nuclear waste produced so far amounts to 'a
| football field worth' or some similar framing. But you could
| fit the entire earth into a football field if you're prepared
| to go quite deep. It's a deliberate trick to make it seem like
| a non-issue, and deflects from the serious challenge that is
| long-term handling of nuclear waste. Plus, this is the size of
| the problem if we stop tomorrow, just the amount produced in
| the 50 years nuclear power has been up and running. So you must
| multiply not only by the length of time to be stored but also
| future projections for continued operation. If you try and
| project that out to a rolling total, assumming you keep the
| level of waste production at it's current level and no greater,
| it's an enourmous quantity.
|
| Then there's looking at how well we're progressing with
| permanent, safe sequestration of existing nuclear waste. Not
| very well - There have only ever been three sites in the world
| for permanent waste disposal and only one of them is operating
| today (WIPP in the USA). The other two in Germany closed many
| years ago, and are costing billions in ongoing remediation
| costs as it turns out 'permanent' didn't pan out as well as
| hoped. Of course, no nations are accepting waste produced by
| other nations as that would be a political nightmare, and so
| each country is left to work out a plan on it's own.
|
| The USA has shut down something like 30 plants so far, but of
| those only about 10 have so far been decommissioned. Of those,
| about half were truly decommed and most of the rest were put in
| to the SAFSTOR programme, where they are left to decay for up
| to 60 years. Theory is they'll be a bit cheaper to decommission
| after that time, and the funds to decomm them up-front are not
| available. A handful opted for a third option of entombing the
| reactor in situ.
| stadia42 wrote:
| Note: I do not know if this argument against nuclear energy is
| valid. I'm submitting it in the hope that HN comments will help
| evaluate it.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| Unfortunately you're more likely to just find confirmation bias
| here. The HN community (and the tech community in general) is
| predominantly pro-nuclear.
|
| Personally, I think this article raises great points. If we
| could rewrite history and have built a thriving nuclear power
| industry 20 years ago, we'd probably be in much better shape
| now, at least with respect to climate change
|
| But that's not what happened. Given the current state of the
| industry we can't afford to spend decades trying to right the
| technical and regulatory wrongs of the past now that renewables
| are becoming truly viable.
| aksss wrote:
| At the 60-comment mark, I count 28 comments that are
| advocating nuclear or poking holes in assumptions about
| renewables. I'd say the debate is pretty equally represented
| in quantity if not quality.
| samatman wrote:
| People advocating for a reasonable position which they hold
| isn't confirmation bias. Reading a recitation of arguments
| you've already encountered shouldn't adjust your priors,
| that's for _new_ information.
| wernercd wrote:
| > Truly viable
|
| When you ignore the glaring problems with renewables? Sure...
| but why pay attention to rare earth minerals needed, massive
| problems creating massive amounts of PV panels, recycling
| issues, etc
|
| We can't afford to let the burgeoning "savior" of our world
| continue on it's destructive path because the Religion of
| Renewables won't admit to the fact that it's Priests are
| doing bad things with children...
|
| To many aspects and conversations turn into religious
| debates. PC? SJWs? Climate Change? Anti-Nuclear/Pro-
| Renewable? (or vice versa on all of them) all turn into
| religious debates with people who refuse to look at both
| sides of very complex issues.
| ruph123 wrote:
| > recycling issues
|
| You gotta love the whataboutism of the nuclear folks
| ranting about recycling issues of current renewable energy
| tech when nuclear leaves behind toxic material that has to
| be kept in a safe place for a long time surviving changes
| in government, potential revolutions, terrorist attacks,
| incompetence, greed, etc.
| sofixa wrote:
| When the main arguments against nuclear power are around
| cost, it's entirely reasonable to point out costs and
| inconveniences around alternative power generation
| sources, which for renewables are mostly around land use,
| rare and bad to mine materials used in construction,
| pollution around them and potential recycling, and the
| lack of stability. All those bring costs up, and some are
| outright ignored when arguing nuclear is too expensive.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| You know, you have some valid points. Unfortunately, due to
| your demeaning and dismissive tone, I don't feel there's
| any point in engaging with you further.
| mionhe wrote:
| You know, you have a point. Unfortunately, due to your
| demeaning and dismissive tone, I don't feel there's any
| point in engaging with you further.
| scythe wrote:
| His argument is highly contingent on a single premise: nuclear
| power is very expensive to build, making it uneconomical.
|
| However, it's extremely difficult to determine how much of this
| expense is necessary vs. due to over-regulation or lack of
| innovation. It's easy to say that some regulations on nuclear
| power are probably unnecessary (cf. widespread nuclear
| paranoia); it's much harder to say _which_. It 's easy to say
| that new kinds of reactors might be cheaper; it's harder to say
| _what kind_ or _how much cheaper_.
|
| ReBCO-stabilized fusion on the horizon throws another wrench in
| the prediction machine, as well. Who knows what that's worth?
| It was invented yesterday!
| mchusma wrote:
| Agree that his premise is entirely an economic one. From
| first principles, nuclear energys's marginal cost is very
| inexpensive (similar to renewables).
|
| What's basically needed to bring the cost of nuclear down is
| scale, investing more in production. This is why new
| approaches to mass producing small scale reactors is so
| interesting. It should allow nuclear to get competitive with
| renewables, and having a diverse energy base is definitely a
| good thing.
|
| Also, fusion holds the most hope for massively decreasing the
| cost of energy. It's a game changer, and it's close. It's
| possible that fusion allows things like mass carbon capture,
| powering reforestation efforts, and more.
| pydry wrote:
| >However, it's extremely difficult to determine how much of
| this expense is necessary vs. due to over-regulation or lack
| of innovation.
|
| The sheer capital intensity of nuclear is what hampers
| innovation, not safety regulations.
| rtx wrote:
| We will end up with nuclear, we can take as many different path
| as we wish. Any nation which goes full nuclear first will reap
| the benefits.
| jokoon wrote:
| I will not bother reading that article, sorry.
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