[HN Gopher] Majority in Japan backs nuclear power for first time...
___________________________________________________________________
Majority in Japan backs nuclear power for first time since
Fukushima
Author : karaokeyoga
Score : 553 points
Date : 2022-03-28 15:24 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.japantimes.co.jp)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.japantimes.co.jp)
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| They would say that.
| trhway wrote:
| The opinion may globally change depending on what happens to the
| military base, and especially munition stores, Russia has made
| right at the Chernobyl power plant - it is conveniently located
| to provide supplies to the Russian forces attacking Kiev, and is
| "protected" by the power plant as Ukraine, who otherwise has been
| tearing Russian forces supply logistics apart, is naturally not
| able to directly attack those stores because of the associated
| danger of damage to the power plant objects like for example the
| reactors, spent fuel storage, overall radioactive soil/dust
| around which you don't want to blast into the air ... And even
| without any military action - there are fires right now in the
| forests around Chernobyl, and Russian temporary as well as
| permanent munition stores have a history of catching fires and
| blowing up.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Finally, after decades of phobias and burning 'green' gas, people
| are coming to their senses!
| whatever1 wrote:
| Nuclear power in a world of military conflicts sounds like a bad
| joke.
| wbear wrote:
| Though both have the word "nuclear" in the name, nuclear power
| and nuclear bombs are not the same thing.
| sebow wrote:
| Layman question I have when I constantly see (what i perceive as)
| misguided fear towards nuclear energy: Is is "that" easy to use
| nuclear energy facilities to manufacture or empower nuclear
| weapons? My gut says no, but I feel some people think nuclear
| weapons are easily made from nuclear power plants just because
| they have a common word.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Both uranium based power plants and bombs require refining the
| fuel. While weapons need higher refinement, the process to
| refine uranium is the same for both fuel and weapons grade.
|
| Similarly, for plutonium based bombs, reactors will naturally
| produce plutonium. Typically reactors produce plutonium 239
| (fissable) which then absorbs more neutrons to become plutonium
| 240. Making the mixture not weapons grade. However, if you swap
| out the fuel rods frequently enough you can increase the purity
| of Pu239 to weapons grade.
|
| Essentially, nuclear waste from power plants is not weapons
| grade, but the infrastructure of the plant and supply chain is
| essentially the same infrastructure you would use to create
| weapons grade materials.
|
| Also, even none weapons grade materials can ge used in dirty
| bombs.
| bun_at_work wrote:
| As far as I know it comes down to enrichment levels of the
| nuclear material used (Uranium?). Nuclear power requires much
| lower enrichment levels.
|
| > Most nuclear reactors that produce electricity only require
| fuel that is enriched to between 3-5% U-235.
|
| > This fuel does not represent a proliferation threat primarily
| because of the critical mass issue -- the amount of material
| necessary to maintain a self-sustaining neutron chain reaction.
| If the level of enrichment is low, then it holds that the
| amount of the material must go up in order for a chain reaction
| to be sustained. The size can quickly become impractical for
| weapons delivery, so low enriched uranium (LEU) is not a
| threat.
|
| > Highly enriched uranium (HEU) is anything enriched above 20%
| and weapon-grade uranium is commonly considered to have been
| enriched above 90% U-235. However, some research reactors use
| 90% enriched U-235 to produce medical isotopes, so there are
| civilian applications for this fuel too.
|
| From: https://armscontrolcenter.org/uranium-enrichment-for-
| peace-o...
| mywittyname wrote:
| The process used to enrich uranium/plutonium for use in
| reactors is the same process used to enrich it for use in
| weapons, the difference is merely scope. The "waste" from
| nuclear plants are also problematic. Plutonium can be obtained
| from spent fuel rods in a number of ways and it is easier to
| yield "weapons grade" enrichment levels with plutonium.
|
| Plus, once enough fuel has been accumulated, a breeder reactor
| can be set up to generate the necessary Pu238 & Pu239. This is
| something a nuclear power would want to do for legitimate
| purposes because plutonium yields are far higher than uranium.
|
| So in some ways, yes, nuclear reactors make it "that easy" to
| manufacture nuclear weapons. Especially plutonium-based
| weapons. There's still the work needed to create a weapon from
| the source material, but that's an easier problem to solve.
| ericmay wrote:
| Genuine question: why nuclear over mass solar? Panels on every
| house, decentralized, etc.
|
| I was having a discussion with a friend recently about this and
| he was very much pro-solar and thought nuclear wasn't the right
| way to go from a cost/centralization perspective. Figured smart
| people here might be able to color this a bit better.
|
| -edit-
|
| Ty to everyone who responded here. It's enjoying to read these
| different perspectives.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| The one others haven't mentioned is that Solar/Wind can't
| generate enough heat to power many industrial use-cases. If you
| truly want to completely decarbonize, nuclear is the only
| option (well, and geothermal, but that's not necessarily always
| available).
|
| France vs Germany is a good example of the decarbonization each
| has been able to attain. France is near 0 in terms of energy
| production whereas Germany has struggled despite having (one
| of?) the largest Solar and Wind installations.
|
| Solar can sometimes reach the high temperatures needed but it's
| not reliable and batteries can't backfill this ever (it's not
| solar panels - there's concentrated mirrors to generate the
| heat). Nuclear reactor designs are also being explored where
| the waste heat from the reactor is directly used for industrial
| purposes. That will significantly cut down on the heavy water
| required to cool the reactors and make things more efficient,
| but that's an optimization on top of what solar already can't
| deliver.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| It is extremely expensive to get significant amount of energy
| from roof mounted solar. Solar doesn't shine all of the time.
| Storage is extremely hard. Japan does not have a lot of
| wastelands to spare on mass solar power farms.
|
| Nuclear, on the other hand, just works, 24/7.
| ericmay wrote:
| Is storage becoming less hard with battery backup systems?
| And from a cost perspective won't these come down, and from a
| total social spending amount couldn't rooftop solar
| eventually be cheaper than nuclear plants, scientists,
| infrastructure, etc. that has to go into it?
|
| Just to note I've been coming from the perspective that
| nuclear + "renewables" is the right approach, but wanted to
| learn a little more.
| sofixa wrote:
| > And from a cost perspective won't these come down
|
| No. Even discounting the explosion of prices of lithium,
| nickel and other materials needed in batteries due to wars
| and what not, there's already significant demand for
| batteries ( mostly to convert vehicles to EVs), which far
| outstrips supply. That's unlikely to change in the
| foreseeable future ( like a decade), so no, batteries won't
| continue to get cheaper.
| ericmay wrote:
| Doesn't it take around a decade to build a new reactor?
| Just wondering if by the time new reactors are built,
| they're overtaken by cheaper battery storage and solar
| rooftops.
| forum_ghost wrote:
| Some current traditional reactor designs take 5 years.
| Some SMR designs from 500 days to 2-3 years.
|
| In any case, let's assume for the sake of the argument,
| that our industrial goes up 100x in energy: https://en.wi
| kipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale#Type_I_civiliz...
|
| Can you run that on batteries, that are fundamentally
| constrained due to ion weight, and therefore are
| ultimately capped(page 2): https://iopscience.iop.org/art
| icle/10.1088/1755-1315/781/4/0...
|
| Any significantly sized industry will require dense
| energy, situated nearby. There is a reason why China is
| building more nukes in the next 15 years, than the
| totality in existence globally today. Any other approach
| is Malthusianism.
| sofixa wrote:
| Battery storage is still hugely impractical on the scale
| required to keep a grid stable, even if we assume ( huge
| assumptions) that battery building capacity can keep up
| and be affordable. Also, batteries need to be changed due
| do depletion much more frequently than a nuclear reactor.
| ericmay wrote:
| I'm thinking every house has its own panels, and its own
| batteries. Grid is optional. You'll have to be more
| careful about energy usage perhaps, and maybe personally
| invest up-front for enough battery and power storage.
| Maybe the grid is still connected and you can sell excess
| power, or connect in an emergency (maybe it's
| expensive?).
|
| I do have very little reason to doubt that costs for
| batteries won't come down drastically in the future. If
| it doesn't, it might just be an investment you make when
| owning a home.
|
| Just thinking out loud here.
| poutine wrote:
| The US Navy has built hundreds of nuclear reactors in
| much shorter timeframes. There's nothing intrinsic about
| nuclear that demands such long builds. It'd need to be
| done at a societal level with some sort of
| standardization and mass industrial process. The French
| more or less did this for their nukes for instance.
| forum_ghost wrote:
| The reason for long duration is regulations and
| inspections. Navy has a lot fewer constraints in that
| aspect.
| jwagenet wrote:
| Nuclear doesn't require batteries for overnight power. It's an
| energy dense, clean process, where the primary externality is
| some nuclear waste.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| The witty answer is: "nuclear works in the dark".
|
| For most renewable energies, you need a baseline power plant
| that can stand in when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't
| shining. Often that is coal or gas.
|
| Nuclear is cheap and has low emission, so it is a great
| candidate for such a role.
|
| Distributed solar needs a huge rework of the electrical grid,
| if you want the panels to be able to give back power. The
| current power grid is setup to handle large power plants.
| kube-system wrote:
| We need both. Solar is great but it's hard to beat the capacity
| of nuclear.
| VintageCool wrote:
| If you made up your mind on this issue ten or fifteen years ago
| then it is probably wrong now, because things have changed.
|
| The cost of PV solar farms dropped by 90% from 2010 to 2020.
| The cost of lithium ion batteries also dropped 89% in a decade.
|
| The cost of wind has also fallen (though not as spectacularly,
| something like 30%) and new wind turbines produce electricity
| much more reliably and consistently than they used to because
| the new turbines are taller and access steadier winds.
|
| Meanwhile the cost of building new nuclear has doubled in the
| past decade (at least in the West, for plants like Vogtle 3&4
| and Flamanville and Olkiluoto).
|
| The result is that, although imho it makes sense from a
| "minimize atmospheric CO2" perspective to continue using
| existing nuclear power plants (or to restart ones that have
| recently been shut down like in Japan or Germany), the quickest
| and most cost-effective path to decarbonization now runs
| through wind and solar. That is why the US built 17 GW of wind
| capacity last year and is building 21 GW of solar capacity this
| year, along with 5 GW of battery storage capacity.
|
| https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46416
| zamadatix wrote:
| For nuclear you can generate as much power as you want wherever
| you want whenever you want. The downsides are it's highly
| centralized, extremely high up front investment, and generates
| nuclear waste and failure concerns.
|
| For solar generating power itself doesn't generate waste and
| you can do it centralized, distributed, or a mix. The downsides
| are you either need to pay for backup systems that can take
| full load or enormous energy storage facilities. If a mixed
| model is at play then you need specialized equipment at each
| distributed location and you lose economies of scale in
| implementation/maintenance cost as a tradeoff for flexibility
| but still rely on a transmission infrastructure for when the
| sun doesn't shine. In a full distributed model the same applies
| but you lose economies of scale on generation/storage and
| margins thereof as well at the gain of not having transmission
| infrastructure. In all cases it's not an option for extreme
| latitudes. Also panels and storage technology do not last
| forever resulting in waste. Depending on technologies involved
| that can be anything from materials in the panel to whatever
| chemicals are in the old batteries.
|
| A lot of the complexity and limitation in the solar option is
| inherent to all renewables of today not necessarily something
| with solar itself. In all moving to any solution that isn't
| burning coal or gas is probably a net improvement though. If I
| were to pick a magic solution that checks every box reasonably
| well compared to alternatives I'd have to pick a future tech
| like fusion or similar that doesn't actually exist as there
| isn't a single answer today that has no downsides in the
| generation of power.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I'm not an expert, but solar has to be augmented by something
| else or combined with extensive energy storage. Otherwise,
| where do you get power at night?
| sofixa wrote:
| Because mass solar doesn't work reliably on a grid scale
| without massive storage, which is
| impossible/impractical/extremely expensive, especially in
| countries with seasons.
| markvdb wrote:
| Green hydrogen and derived hydrocarbons from areas with
| sufficient insolation are expected to be very much cost
| competitive within 3-5 years. [0] Locally produced green
| hydrogen in areas with less optimal insolation is projected
| to stay more expensive.
|
| [0] Please do a web search for green hydrogen cost forecast .
| poutine wrote:
| The neat thing about hydrogen is that in the short term you
| can supplement natural gas with hydrogen using the same or
| similar generation plants. In the long term deploying
| hydrogen infrastructure is pretty similar to managing
| natural gas which we already do at scale.
|
| Solar + hydrogen storage probably is the only long term
| mass scale alternative to nuclear short of fusion.
| forum_ghost wrote:
| >In the long term deploying hydrogen infrastructure is
| pretty similar to managing natural gas which we already
| do at scale.
|
| 100%. absolutely. wrong.
|
| Hydrogen destroys metal pipes, makes them brittle. It
| leaks thru solid metal steel walls. Hydrogen fires are
| invisible. Explosions can launch you into the orbit.
|
| It's nothing like methane at scale, and will most likely
| simply be converted to some hydrocarbons.
| poutine wrote:
| With solar you need to store for use when there's no sun.
| Relatively doable for overnight with batteries. Outside of
| niche solutions like pumped hydro it's practically impossible
| for longer periods such as during the winter or just a string
| of overcast days.
|
| Green hydrogen has some promise, we'll see over then next
| decade or so.
| QuikAccount wrote:
| It doesn't surprise me that HN is so pro nuclear but I am very
| skeptical about reactor safety. I know I will get inundated with
| comments about how modern reactors are so safe and if everything
| is done correctly then there is no problem. Things are never done
| 100% correctly and with as seismically active Japan is, I would
| approach this very carefully because the worst case when things
| go wrong is very bad. Fukushima would've been 100x worse if it
| wasn't for brave people sacrificing themselves.
| sigstoat wrote:
| > how modern reactors are so safe and if everything is done
| correctly then there is no problem
|
| nobody is making that claim, because it is clear that people
| make errors. this isn't some wild revelation to engineers that
| they've all missed.
|
| rather, the claim is that modern reactor designers are safe(r)
| now _because_ they don't require everything be done right.
| Aachen wrote:
| And because we have hundreds of running reactors, virtually
| all of them older generations than what we'd build today, and
| yet by statistics it's still one of the safest energy
| sources. Safety is just not a reason to reject fission
| energy.
| kortex wrote:
| > Things are never done 100% correctly
|
| Risk is rarely phrased in terms of "100% correct" because risk-
| management in engineering is well aware of the "swiss cheese
| model" of failure. More accurately, disaster occurs not when
| things go less than 100% perfect, but when things start
| approaching _100% wrong_. All of the redundant layers of safety
| have to fail such that catastrophic failure is the outcome.
|
| The real question is how many layers of safety is enough?
| Chernobyl, clearly insufficient. Fukushima, still flawed, and
| folks knew so at the time. The high water mark is such that
| none of the mistakes of Chernobyl or Fukushima would ever be
| made again, and we have not one, but two generations and 50
| years of improved designs since Fukushima.
| wins32767 wrote:
| Is the full lifecycle of the power plant less, equal, or more
| risky than alternative forms of power generation? Oil or
| natural gas require funding terrible regimes, hydro has
| environmental impacts and is close to being tapped out, and
| coal emits tons of pollution and radioactivity. It's not enough
| to say "this is bad", you have to look at what you're going to
| replace it with.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Any discussion of Fukushima must include the incredibly
| destructive earthquake and tsunami that precipitated it. 20,000
| people died and hundreds of thousands were displaced. The
| economic consequences, from Wikipedia:
|
| _Early estimates placed insured losses from the earthquake
| alone at US$14.5 to $34.6 billion. The Bank of Japan offered
| Y=15 trillion (US$183 billion) to the banking system on 14
| March 2011 in an effort to normalize market conditions. The
| World Bank 's estimated economic cost was US$235 billion,
| making it the costliest natural disaster in history. According
| to a 2020 study, "the earthquake and its aftermaths resulted in
| a 0.47 percentage point decline in Japan's real GDP growth in
| the year following the disaster."_
|
| Yes, we can and should make nuclear power safer - but let's not
| overstate the risk. The reactor failures were a tiny part of an
| _enormous_ disaster, and not by any means the worst part of it.
| alephnan wrote:
| What's the nearest nuclear plant to San Francisco or is it
| NIMBY?
| renewiltord wrote:
| The nearest one is 5 hrs south, near Morro Bay: Diablo
| Canyon. It's being shut down soon. There was a nearer one at
| Rancho Seco but it was shut down. There's another one in
| SoCal at San Onofre but that one is shut down too.
|
| Oh and I remember that Berkeley is a "Nuclear-free Zone"
| (you'll see the signs as you enter) but that they once had a
| research reactor :D
| colechristensen wrote:
| https://www.google.com/search?tbs=lf:1,lf_ui:2&tbm=lcl&q=cal.
| ..]
|
| Two not so far away, but it would take an incident worse than
| Chernobyl to create long term issues for the bay area (one
| could perhaps debate the threshold of what a long term issue
| might be)
| dont__panic wrote:
| It does surprise me -- HN is a really skeptical audience, or at
| least has a highly skeptical subset. Think about how bearish HN
| is on autonomous vehicles: sure, there's a group who worship
| Elon, and believe that autonomous vehicles are perpetually on
| the brink of mass adoption. But most autonomous vehicle
| discussions come with a HUGE grain of salt, with a lot of folks
| pointing out edge cases that will prevent mass adoption for the
| forseeable future.
|
| I think nuclear is just so complex it's too hard/easy to make
| viable arguments in either direction, and things just boil down
| to "danger" and "cost". My skeptical bone points out that
| implementation is _always_ messy compared to theory, so we
| should expect building flaws /design compromises/flawed
| processes to result in failures at some small percent of
| nuclear facilities. And given how catastrophic those failures
| can be, it's hard to justify it. But the climate side of the
| argument is equally scary: if we _don 't_ switch away from
| carbon-based power sources, massive areas of our world are
| going to become uninhabitable, underwater, or dramatically
| change in ways that destroy life as we know it. So maybe that
| small fraction of failures is acceptable? And in all fairness,
| the major nuclear failures I can think of -- Fukushima,
| Chernobyl -- came with comparatively few deaths, and a moderate
| cost of now-uninhabitable land. Perhaps less than climate
| change will come with over the coming decades.
| namdnay wrote:
| It's not perhaps less, it's definitely yes. Burning fossil
| fuels kills more people in a year than the entire history of
| nuclear power
| eldaisfish wrote:
| we should take comfort in the fact that nuclear power is one
| of the few industries that designs for the worst case
| scenario and that is actively regulated in most western
| countries. The quality of that regulation can be improved but
| it is far better than the other use case of nuclear
| technology - weapons. We have no idea how effective or
| functional the safety systems in place for the world's
| nuclear arsenal are or how antiquated they are.
| dv_dt wrote:
| In my lifetime, I have seen the quality of western
| regulation and institutions consistently decline.
| Particularly the more money enters into a given industry.
| It's one of the reasons I'm skeptical of nuclear power.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| then you should be equally sceptical of the claim that
| wind and solar are the future. There is no scalable
| solution to their volatility and magical battery tech is
| always just around the corner.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Wind and solar do not require the same quality of
| regulation as nuclear. Nor do they have the same long
| term security and stability commitments - e.g. see
| nuclear reactor sites in the Ukraine conflict.
| hardolaf wrote:
| > and a moderate cost of now-uninhabitable land
|
| Most of the land is actually inhabitable but they just keep
| people away because it's safer to err on the side of caution.
| When it comes to Fukushima Daichii, more people died in the
| evacuation than will ever die or have ever died from the
| radiation exposure that occurred.
| redwall_hp wrote:
| And over twenty thousand people died from the
| earthquake/tsunami. That's one of my pet peeves: the 2011
| Touhoku earthquake was one of the first major natural
| disasters that was all over social media, and people in the
| west quickly swept it under the rug in their haste to focus
| on fearmongering about Fukushima Daichii and how it might
| somehow impact California.
|
| A massive tragedy had just happened, and people basically
| ignored that and focused on the cable news hype about a
| total non-issue.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| You should look up how many people are killed per MWh produced
| by coal and natural gas. People overweight on rare, high impact
| disasters and underweight things that quietly kill people in a
| dispersed way.
|
| Related fact, roof top solar actually kills more people per MWh
| than nuclear, and that is entirely due to installation
| accidents.
| tommiegannert wrote:
| I'm pro-nuclear power, for the time being.
|
| What worries me is that we need to have MTBF go down as the
| number of plants go up, otherwise we're making planet-wide
| safety worse. And I'm expecting full-system MTBF to be really
| hard to measure, let alone guarantee improvements on. Hence,
| I'm going to assume we're on path to making nuclear power
| riskier by scaling it up.
|
| We've only been splitting atoms for a hundred years. It's very
| unlikely that we've seen the worst-ever accident yet, or the
| last bomb ever dropped. I have no idea what to do with this
| feeling, but I am happy my time on Earth is bounded.
| anonporridge wrote:
| The question is not whether nuclear reactors are safe. They are
| dangerous and cause accidents that cause death and injury.
|
| But, that's true of literally _every_ source of energy. You
| have to look at the danger posed holistically.
|
| And the fact is, the actual realized danger posed by old
| generation nuclear is orders of magnitude less dangerous than
| every fossil fuel source, even when accounting for major
| disasters like Chernobyl and Fukishima.
| https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
|
| In light of this data, it seems to me that any decision to
| avoid nuclear that leads to more fossil fuel burning, which is
| almost always what happens when we prematurely shut down
| nuclear plants, is almost criminally the wrong choice.
| hardolaf wrote:
| Our World in Data included the entire lifecycle and the most
| pessimistic models for nuclear as part of that analysis, if
| you use the same methods for every single source, wind and
| solar are an entire order of magnitude higher. Alternatively,
| if you use the UN's official estimates of the same thing,
| nuclear is an entire order of magnitude lower than where it
| is in Our World in Data's chart. Gotta love when they put
| bias into how they present the numbers.
| croes wrote:
| Are you sure? What about wars?
| woodruffw wrote:
| Here's what I'll say: it's perfectly understandable to fear
| nuclear power. Radiation ticks all of the ultimate boxes for
| psychological terror: it's deadly, invisible, undetectable with
| human senses, and abstruse (unlike burning oil or coal).
|
| Fear is of these things is natural, but it needs to be
| moderated. Specifically, it needs to be moderated against the
| _actual_ danger of nuclear power plants, which is
| _astonishingly_ small: the number of _direct_ victims of
| nuclear power accidents is under 100, and the number of
| _indirect_ victims is similarly small. This is in contrast to
| coal- and oil-fired power plants, which directly contribute to
| the deaths of over 100,000 people in _India alone_ [1].
|
| Nuclear power is, on face value, very scary. But it's a lot
| less scary than just about everything else (modulo wind and
| solar power) we do to generate electricity, and has _far_
| better human and environmental outcomes even in its worst cases
| (Chernobyl).
|
| [1]: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2017936118
| agumonkey wrote:
| I'm personally more worried about current management
| practices (short term and absurd metric oriented) that would
| not be up to the risk involved.
| tomatowurst wrote:
| again the parent and my concern is that Japan is a whole new
| ball park in terms of earthquakes and none of the examples
| you cite here is relevant in addressing the seismological
| risks that is unique to Japan.
|
| Just have a look at the historical earthquake diagram from
| the official Japanese Meteorlogical Agency and compare it to
| its neighbor, the difference is night and day and so is the
| obvious risks...
| sosborn wrote:
| Japan has had 50-ish reactors online for quite a while, and
| the only issue they experienced was Fukushima, which should
| have been avoided: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_
| nuclear_disaster#Pri...
| Loughla wrote:
| I'm not sure the argument you're trying to make is as
| impactful as what you think it is.
|
| It _should_ have been avoided, and wasn 't. How does that
| make anyone feel more secure that other plants _will be
| any safer at all_? I argue that it does not.
|
| If anything, that statement only solidifies the other
| posts in this thread who talk about businesses focus on
| short term metrics and profit margins calling all safety
| into question.
| sosborn wrote:
| Are you saying that it is impossible to learn from
| mistakes?
| hardolaf wrote:
| > wind and solar power
|
| More people die yearly from wind and solar power during
| manufacturing and installation than have died directly due to
| nuclear energy in its entire history as a power source. And
| yes, those direct numbers for nuclear include the entire
| supply chain for it if you weren't aware.
| woodruffw wrote:
| That's a good point. I hadn't realized the nuclear numbers
| included the supply chain; I thought it was just
| operational fatalities.
|
| It would be interesting to see whether the number of deaths
| in wind and solar manufacturing are higher or lower than
| similar heavy industries and operations (e.g. linemanning,
| heavy fabrication). In any case, it all pales compared to
| the death and diminished quality of life that we just
| accept with coal and oil burning.
| hardolaf wrote:
| Yeah, they always include the full supply chain for
| nuclear to make it appear believable but they don't do
| the same thing for anything else. Heck, some people
| include the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
| the numbers too just to make the comparison more "fair"
| to every other power source in the world. By the way,
| that barely moves the numbers for nuclear. We don't do
| that for any other power source. The closest we get is
| installation deaths for solar and wind. But we still
| ignore all of the supply chain deaths for both.
|
| All that said, literally anything is better and safer
| than burning dinosaurs or biomatter. And the future
| really does need to be a mix of nuclear and geothermal
| (where available) for baseload demand with wind and solar
| combined with non-battery storage for peak demand
| smoothing.
| croes wrote:
| But we would build more power plants, this would mean more
| construction related deaths.
| baby wrote:
| video with sources:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnTzsWM_gbQ
| sosborn wrote:
| Fukushima might not have had any problems at all had it been
| built as it was supposed to be:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_disaster#Pri...
| hardolaf wrote:
| Fukushima's defect was actually going to be fixed in the next
| refueling but a tsunami hit it first.
| aaronmdjones wrote:
| It had many defects which contributed to the disaster; from
| the inadequacy of its seawall, to the location of its
| emergency power switch-gear, to the vulnerability of its
| seawater pumps. Every single one of these things
| contributed to the disaster, and you'd have had to fix all
| of them for it to not have occurred. I highly doubt they
| would have accomplished all of that in one go.
|
| EDIT: And they were already at least 11 years behind on
| that work at that point.
| goodpoint wrote:
| And yet again the whole conversation on HN is around alleged
| "irrational fear".
|
| There are other risks to be considered: centralization.
|
| The world is facing climate change and potential social unrest.
| Democratized and hyper-local energy production creates resilient
| communities.
|
| Highly centralized power generation increases risks of government
| corruption, terrorism or just plain failures (like Fukushima)
| leading to power failures.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Small scale nuclear reactors (and microreactors) would be a
| solution to that centralization problem. I know that NuScale
| had some controversy a couple years ago; not sure how that
| shook out. Whether that design should be modified or not, in
| theory there's nothing stopping reactors generating community-
| level power, except that nobody wants a reactor in their back
| yard. Not saying anyone would want a coal plant in their
| backyard either, but given the choice it seems like they'd
| choose the coal because it scares them less while hurting them
| more. I hate to say it, but it does really does seem to come
| down to dealing with irrational fear a lot of the time.
| goodpoint wrote:
| Good luck operating them [safely] in case of social unrest or
| terrorism.
|
| After the collapse of USSR a lot of RTGs where stripped and
| used a scrap metal by people completely unaware of the risks.
| Luckily, RTGs have moderate amounts of active fuel.
|
| > it seems like they'd choose the coal because it scares them
| less while hurting them more
|
| Who is "they"? An imaginary group of people that you disagree
| with?
|
| > I hate to say it, but it does really does seem to come down
| to dealing with irrational fear a lot of the time.
|
| And once again HN claims to be rational...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > And once again HN claims to be rational...
|
| If you have an alternative theory as to why people prefer
| coal to nuclear, that would be useful. Commenting line by
| line with silliness isn't.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Or just renewables with storage? Why must the alternative
| always be fossil fuels?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| That seems not relevant to my point, which is that semi-
| namecalling commentary is pointless. If you have a real
| point of any sort that would be better be it addressing
| the point that people prefer coal to nuclear, or changing
| the topic to "why oh why can't we offer an alternative
| base load generator?"
| karaterobot wrote:
| Hello, I'm the person whose comment this is in response to.
|
| You're right that I was referring to an imaginary group of
| people. I am not aware of any surveys that specifically ask
| the question "would you rather live near a coal plant or a
| nuclear plant", so the best I can do is go off my
| intuition. I thought that was clear, but evidently I was
| wrong. If you disagree with my conclusion, that's fine.
|
| > And once again HN claims to be rational...
|
| I never said that, and I don't speak for HN.
| Loughla wrote:
| >And once again HN claims to be rational...
|
| Remember that the people here are tech focused, for the
| most part. Few, if any, have any experience at all with
| power generation, let alone nuclear power generation.
|
| When was the last time you saw an intelligent, rational,
| and unbiased discussion here about something that you had
| intimate knowledge of? I've worked in higher ed for
| decades, and sister let me tell you, the threads on here
| about higher ed are full of very short-
| sighted/anecdotal/ignorant statements.
|
| I just have to assume this thread is the same as that. It's
| easy to have an opinion about something when you don't know
| very many details.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > unbiased discussion here about something that you had
| intimate knowledge of? [...] threads on here about higher
| ed are full of very short-sighted/anecdotal/ignorant
| statements.
|
| You are spot on!
| ashtonkem wrote:
| The current war and gas crisis in Europe is finally underscoring
| one of the points that's been ignored for a long time; depending
| on unstable rentier states to secure the energy required for HVAC
| and transit is unbelievably foolish national policy. Nuclear is
| really expensive to build, both in terms of money and political
| capital, but the benefits are more apparent once crisis hits oil
| producing states, which was always inevitable.
| alexott wrote:
| I wish that it would happen in Germany :-( Even in current
| situation, government is reluctant to open existing stations
| it_citizen wrote:
| The energy transition show made an episode on it recently:
| https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-154-japans-nuclea...
|
| Japan really is a country to watch in term of energy transition.
| They will have to take bold steps to meet their energy demand
| while curbing their CO2 emissions. I expect them to see some
| great projects around offshore wind but I think nuclear will have
| to be a part of the solution if they want to get anywhere close
| to the paris targets.
|
| Unfortunately, having a majority of japanese backing nuclear is
| not going to be enough. Last I checked most of the initiatives to
| bring back nuclear were stalled. The anti nuclear sentiment in
| japan leads a lot of communities to go to court to try to block
| building or reopening existing nuclear power plants.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I know a lot of people who are worried about Nuclear energy
| because, "What if a plant explodes?" but are unaware that they
| likely live A LOT closer to a plant than they think. There are
| quite a few nuclear energy plants across the US. Pull up a map
| and check it out sometimes. It helps with that fear because
| people realize they have been living with that threat most of
| their life and just didnt know.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| The big problem with older reactors is that they need active
| cooling for awhile after they are shut down.
|
| That's why Fukushima exploded. The diesel generators flooded
| and couldn't run the cooling pumps. Chernobyl happened during
| an experiment shutting down the plant using the momentum in the
| generator to cool the plant.
|
| Newer reactor designs can shut down safely without active
| cooling.
| ngngngng wrote:
| I would have to drive for ten hours to reach one, that's pretty
| much what I assumed anyway. There are a ton more plants in the
| eastern US than I would have guessed though.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Yeah. This is my point exactly. Most people don't realize
| there is one close by and once they do the fear of one
| popping up next door tends to go away.
| haydenchambers wrote:
| belorn wrote:
| The article is pretty clear why peoples interests in nuclear
| power has gone up. Natural gas prices have gone up and as a
| result the energy price that customers has to pay is swinging up
| and down based on supply and demand. It the same story as in many
| other places in the world. Nuclear represent a stable price of
| energy that doesn't get impacted by changing fossil fuel prices,
| and while the initial capital cost is high, stability and freedom
| from fossil fuels has their benefits. Especially since fossil
| fuel and wars tend to be associated with each other. It is a bit
| indicative of the global age we live in that a war between Russia
| and Ukraine is dictating what a Japanese citizen is paying for
| electricity.
| hardolaf wrote:
| "Nuclear is super expensive!" they keep screaming as I've been
| living in places with primarily nuclear power for the vast
| majority of my life. The only 3 years when I didn't, I really
| felt the price of dinosaur-fuel even though it was at rock-
| bottom prices for all 3 years. Illinois is majority nuclear and
| is one of the cheapest stats in the USA when it comes to
| electricity rates all because of nuclear. And I grew up in
| Cleveland which was also primarily nuclear and electricity was
| so cheap there, the power and gas company was paying people to
| switch their entire homes from LNG heating to electric heating
| for about 3 decades.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Nuclear is cheap in Illinois because Exelon, the company that
| runs the Nuclear plants, bribed the state to give their
| plants subsidies.
| https://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/news/2020/11/19/ex-
| comed...
| doikor wrote:
| Nuclear is competing against solar, wind, gas, coal and oil
| which all get massive subsidies. Why should nuclear be the
| only one left out that does not?
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Wind and solar don't anymore. They are completely self
| sustaining industries. In New York for example there was
| a bidding war to get the rights to develop off shore
| power.
|
| > After three days and 64 rounds of bidding, the U.S.
| Department of the Interior Bureau of Offshore Energy
| Management (BOEM) on Friday concluded the nation's
| highest-grossing offshore energy lease sale ever, with
| winning bids from six companies totaling approximately
| $4.37 billion.
|
| > Not only does the amount raised in the New York Bight
| lease sale far exceed the more than $400 million raised
| during the previous offshore wind sale in 2018, it even
| surpasses the highest amount raised during any offshore
| oil and gas lease sale ever in U.S. history.
|
| > The results are a major milestone in the Biden-Harris
| administration's goal of reaching 30 gigawatts of
| offshore wind energy by 2030.
|
| https://gcaptain.com/new-york-bight-offshore-wind-lease-
| auct...
| VintageCool wrote:
| Exelon was going to shut down the plants (instead of
| refueling them) if they didn't get subsidies from
| Illinois. They got subsidies from Ohio and New Jersey.
| They didn't get subsidies from Pennsylvania and shut down
| TMI 1. If existing, fully paid off nuclear power plants
| are uneconomic to run without subsidies, that really
| undercuts the narrative the narrative that "construction
| is expensive and operation is cheap".
|
| And given that construction is so expensive, it ruins the
| economic case for building new nuclear plants (imho).
| tomp wrote:
| Sounds like a good plan for the rest of the world to adapt,
| instead of subsidising coal, Saudi Arabia's dictatorship,
| and Russian tanks.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| > An empirical survey of the 674 nuclear power plants that
| have ever been built showed that private economic motives
| never played a role. Instead military interests have always
| been the driving force behind their construction. Even
| ignoring the expense of dismantling nuclear power plants and
| the long-term storage of nuclear waste, private economy-only
| investment in nuclear power plant would result in high
| losses-- an average of five billion euros per nuclear power
| plant, as one financial simulation revealed.
|
| https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.67058.
| ..
| belorn wrote:
| How does that explain countries with a lot of nuclear power
| plants that been operating for several decades, and yet no
| military application.
|
| To take an specific example, the Swedish nuclear weapon
| program was decommissioned 1968 and official ended 1972.
| Sweden first commercial operated nuclear plant was built
| 1972. Sweden has shown no military interests in nuclear
| weapons for as long the power plants has existed, and
| nuclear power was built up to 50% of Swedish energy demands
| by around 1985, and kept nuclear power plants operated
| since then. 4 nuclear plants, 12 reactors, and 0 bombs, all
| built between 1972 and 1985.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Anchored in the previous weapons program. Sold as the
| energy source of the future. Which as we know today did
| not pan out without huge subsidies. It's like renewables
| from 1990-2010, the difference being they entered escape
| velocity and now stand on their own legs.
|
| The ones still investing all have nuclear military
| ambitions and want to share the costs and industry with
| the civilian side.
| belorn wrote:
| Anchored in what way? The military did many concepts
| during the 1960s, like training pinniped to attack
| military subs. They didn't pan out. The plants that were
| built, especially those during the 1980, had nothing to
| do with the failed projects for nuclear weapons 2 decades
| earlier.
|
| > Which as we know today did not pan out without huge
| subsidies.
|
| Feel free to look up Swedish subsidies in the energy
| sector. Renewables get much more each year, as does
| fossil fuel. Nuclear power is currently the energy source
| in Sweden that get taxed highest per watt produced.
| Considering that those plants been operating for 40-50
| years non-stop delivering consistently energy without
| releasing greenhouse gases, is taxed more than any other
| energy source, the claim of "huge subsidies" is plainly
| false in context of Swedish nuclear plants.
|
| No nuclear bombs, less subsidies than any other energy
| source, no greenhouse gases. The military did not help
| fund the construction for them, nor are they using any
| aspect of the operation to research or build weapons.
| Sweden signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of
| Nuclear Weapons in 1968, 4 years before the first
| commercial nuclear plant. Sweden has been an active
| advocate for the Non-Proliferation Treaty for 50 years
| now.
|
| Countries that combine nuclear power and nuclear weapons
| are those who refuses to sign the treaty, like the US,
| UK, France, China, Russia, India, Israel, Iran, Pakistan,
| North Korea. Sweden is not on that list.
| banku_brougham wrote:
| Hanford still not cleaned up decades later, those unpaid
| costs are part of the societal total cost.
| tomatowurst wrote:
| I'm all for clean nuclear power. I was very disappointed when
| Merkel decided to go all in on banishing it for more gas but
| one thing that puzzles me is that Japan is seismologically
| active so I am curious to exactly the nature of this survey.
| What was the sample size and who was behind it?
|
| The article makes it seem like most of Japan is over Fukushima
| disaster but in reality speaking with colleagues who are there
| and have better sense of the local's consensus do not reflect
| what is being highlighted in this survey.
|
| Most certainly the reactors would be located near the coast
| line and from this historical earthquake chart you can see why
| there would be widespread concern about building even more
| nuclear power plants.
|
| https://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/Activities/image/earth-fig01.pn...
| [1]
|
| So again I'm quite skeptical of this article and it's survey
| that its citing. Even more weird are the comments that seem to
| be completely oblivious to what the actual perception is
| amongst Japanese citizens, and some even seem primarily
| motivated financially somewhat using languages like "bulls" and
| "FUD". Just very bizarre to see wallstreetbet linguo
| discounting the very real opposition to nuclear power in Japan
| (due to the seismological risks).
|
| ---
|
| 1. Japan Meteorological Agency
| baby wrote:
| If you can, watch this video with the english subtitles:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnTzsWM_gbQ
|
| It's a great short investigation in the numbers, and how damaging
| different source of energies have been.
| ffeiek wrote:
| Last year, the 44-year-old nuclear power plant resumed generating
| power. But most of the nuclear plants are over 40 years old, and
| even worse, some of them were built on active faults.
|
| Even after two atomic bombings and the worst nuclear accident, we
| still don't understand the threat of radiation.
| jollybean wrote:
| Oil is not not just about 'The Environment' but it's 'Major War'.
|
| So the calculus is palpitate.
|
| Iraq 1 and 2, Iran sanctions, Saudi/Yemen, rise of Chavismo, now
| Russia, so much of it is Oil driven.
|
| But with Nuclear, guess who is the #1 source of Uranium? Russia!
|
| That said, Canada and Australia have plenty. And those are 'Good
| Places'.
| londons_explore wrote:
| While public opinion swings back and forth every few decades, I
| guess there is an opportunity for businesses to be ready to get
| nuclear powerplants built rapidly as soon as public opinion
| swings enough to be able to get permission to build in any given
| location.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| Capitalism is absurdly inneficient for maintaining long term
| humanity interests, e.g. the U.S became a third world country
| since they let westinghouse dies in darkness.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/business/westinghouse-tos...
| mywittyname wrote:
| The USA is, by definition, the first world. First world
| means, USA or it's NATO allies.
|
| The second world is USSR and associated allies.
|
| The third world is everyone else. Implying they are too
| insignificant to be allied to either. Which isn't necessarily
| the case. Finland and Sweden are technically "third world"
| countries, as they are not NATO members.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| bruh what I meant is obvious no need for such truisms.
| Third world can be intended to mean a pejorative
| qualiticative of weakness, here the U.S has become third
| world-like regarding nuclear energy knowledge and
| production, basically synonymous to irrelevant. Aso your
| rigid and off-topic definition does not scale in a
| multipolar world with new powers and changing dynamics, e.g
| China
| mywittyname wrote:
| It's in poor taste to use the term "third world" in a
| pejorative way.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| The ends justify the means and the world definitely would
| benefit from a pro-nuclear psy-ops
| arcticbull wrote:
| Finally folks are overcoming their fear of the spicy rocks.
|
| Once we get to economical seawater extraction of Uranium, we'll
| have virtually unlimited renewable energy. [1]
|
| [1] https://engineering.stanford.edu/magazine/article/how-
| extrac...
| eunos wrote:
| Cost is said about 10x higher than land based Uranium
| extraction. However uranium cost proportion of nuclear energy
| cost is rather low (10%).
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| but is uranium cost is 10% and you suddenly make it 10x as
| expensive, didn't you just essentially almost double the cost
| of the enterprise as a whole?
|
| say current costs:
|
| $10 is my uranium cost
|
| $90 is the rest
|
| total = $100
|
| ocean extracted uranium:
|
| $100 is my new uranium cost
|
| $90 (as before)
|
| total = $190
| eunos wrote:
| I think the idea is that hoping that scaling seawater
| uranium extraction will drive down the cost further.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Probably easier to just process all the fallout of the
| fukushima black bag piles
| KarlKemp wrote:
| The availability of uranium really isn't the problem.
|
| And I know the tech community loves thinking of themselves as
| supremely rational scientists immune to the follies of
| emotions. But no actual physicist (or physician) thinks a fear
| of radioactivity is something that needs to be _overcome_.
| Those that work with such material respect the inherent danger.
| They try to overcome the danger, using a bit of fear to stay
| concentrated (and get the funding).
|
| Declaring your willingness to install a mini-reactor in your
| garden shed, as sometimes happens in these discussions, is the
| hallmark of _scientism_.
|
| Really the whole debate is mostly scientism: nuclear power
| didn't lose because it was too dangerous. It lost because it is
| too expensive. These days, it's still too expensive, but now it
| also just takes too long for it to be useful for the climate
| emergency.
|
| Actual scientists and competent tech people have driven the
| costs of solar and wind power, as well as storage, down by
| several orders of magnitude. But tech bros are emotional: they
| consider those technologies to be girly, and therefore still
| bring up big hairy nuclear reactors whenever anyone fails at
| avoiding them at parties.
|
| Nuclear power is not a technology of the future, it is just a
| technology of _a_ future, specifically the future of the 1960s
| or so. It 's funny how your forward-looking worldview can turn
| all retro on you within just a few decades.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| It was made too expensive due to people who don't understand
| of it and are scared of it.
| NumberWangMan wrote:
| Hmm, my understanding was that when you dig into _why_
| nuclear is expensive, it can be roughly broken into two
| parts. One part is the intrinsic costs of building a
| functional power plant. The other part is making things safe,
| and that 's where we've pushed our regulation far past "safe
| enough" (compared to other sources of power) and into the
| realm of absurdity, because we're looking at absolute safety
| and not relative safety. I found the post where I originally
| read about this (https://rootsofprogress.org/devanney-on-the-
| nuclear-flop) -- basically, nuclear power is required to be
| "as safe as possible", implying that if you have money left
| in your budget and you could have spent it on improving
| safety, you've failed, even if it's already far, far safer
| than any other thing humans build. Which, according to the
| author of the article, means that you can never try to build
| a more cost-efficient nuclear plant, you always have to blow
| all your money on safety, and that's why costs keep rising. I
| found it pretty convincing.
|
| That said, it's likely we can't fix our regulation AND build
| new plants in time to fix climate change, so I agree with you
| there. I don't have any agenda about what tech we use to
| solve this problem -- I'm perfectly happy with solar, wind,
| or flower power if that's what it takes :)
| IMTDb wrote:
| > Actual scientists and competent tech people have driven the
| costs of solar and wind power, as well as storage, down by
| several orders of magnitude
|
| Yet have been incapable of offering a way to power my oven on
| a cold windless night without burning something.
|
| Virtually _all_ solar and wind installation are accompanied
| by a thermal power plant (usually gas) that 's supposed to
| takeover when renewable can't be trusted. Yet the eco crowd
| refuses to factor in the cost of these - otherwise completely
| useless - backup power plants in the cost of their magical
| solution. They also conveniently refuse to look at the CO2
| produced when using those.
|
| In short, renewables are cheap (if you forget that you also
| have to create a full backup system) and produce no CO2 (if
| you forget to measure what's produced by the backup system).
| Selective memory at it's finest.
|
| Yes, I know, batteries are coming. There is a new
| breakthrough that will made this practical every 5 year. We
| have been hearing that same song for the past 4 decades. In
| reality, energy storage is quite close to optimal. There are
| _some_ improvements made here and there, but nothing that
| will be a game changer: if it does not work now (it doesn
| 't), it probably won't in a near future.
| markvdb wrote:
| That is why green hydrogen derivatives are so important.
| ZetaZero wrote:
| Batteries were $2,152 per KWh as of 2015, and now go for
| $137 KWh. That's a 15x improvement in 7 years.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Nuclear has the same problem though. It takes on the order
| of days to change the power output of a nuclear plant. You
| can't just run it at night or when the wind dies down like
| you can with a fossil fuel plant.
| cwillu wrote:
| "Modern nuclear plants with light water reactors are
| designed to have maneuvering capabilities in the 30-100%
| range with 5%/minute slope, up to 140 MW/minute.[7]
| Nuclear power plants in France and in Germany operate in
| load-following mode and so participate in the primary and
| secondary frequency control. Some units follow a variable
| load program with one or two large power changes per day.
| Some designs allow for rapid changes of power level
| around rated power, a capability that is usable for
| frequency regulation.[8] A more efficient solution is to
| maintain the primary circuit at full power and to use the
| excess power for cogeneration.[9]"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load-
| following_power_plant#Nuc...
| Gwypaas wrote:
| And now your nuclear plant which is a net loss running at
| 100% became an even larger liability.
| [deleted]
| VintageCool wrote:
| 1. the natural gas backup system already exists; it is our
| current infrastructure
|
| 2. batteries are already here. The US built 3.1 GW of grid-
| scale batteries in 2021, and utilities have filed with the
| EIA that they are building 10 GW of batteries in 2022-2023.
|
| https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=51518
|
| 3. the market for grid-scale batteries scarcely existed
| before the explosive build-out of solar in the past 3
| years. Before recently, the only economic use of grid-scale
| energy storage was to store excess electricity produced
| overnight by nuclear power plants at places like the Bath
| County Pumped Hydro plant, or the "store nuclear-produced
| energy and release it during commercial breaks of
| EastEnders" pumped hydro plants in the UK.
|
| This means that there is suddenly a huge market incentive
| to develop new energy storage tech, and the market
| incentive simply didn't exist 10 years ago. I expect that
| to produce dividends.
| Karunamon wrote:
| >...the CO2 produced when using those.
|
| Isn't that still a net win? If you're burning N tons of CO2
| now, you're burning N-Y during the hours when you don't
| have to be running the fossil plant. Bonus points if your
| new backup plant is cleaner (say, NG vs coal)
| IMTDb wrote:
| It's absolutely a net gain when compared to running
| gas/coal only. But unfair to say that this produces 0
| CO2, like it's often claimed. And this backup CO2
| production is very far from negligible.
|
| Similarly, the cost of running gas only should be
| computed as: cost of gas power plant + cost of gas. And
| the cost of the renewable option should be computed as :
| cost of renewable power plan + cost of backup gas power
| plant + cost of backup gas. You can't magically exclude
| the backup from the calculation. And suddenly the
| renewable option sounds way more expensive.
| bliteben wrote:
| Exponential growth is the true problem and most of the
| technologies we are currently looking towards will only be
| temporary solutions. Even Fusion could only solve the
| problems exponential growth will throw at us in both
| population increases and energy usage increases.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Population isn't growing exponentially and is expected to
| peak around 9.7 billion in the 2060s and declined by about
| 0.9 billion in the subsequent 40 years.
| bliteben wrote:
| Just because the growth rate isn't constant, does not
| make it not exponential. I do acknowledge that there are
| smart people forecasting the end of exponential growth,
| but who is to say a cultural or technological phenomena
| will not change this path?
|
| It is currently exponential, anything else is a lie, and
| I don't even know what the intentions would be of someone
| perpetuating such nonsense. Now there will easily be at
| least a whole generational period in which we don't
| really know for sure if we have leveled off, that is just
| the nature of human reproduction, seems safer to wait at
| least 1 generation before we have declared victory on our
| biggest enemy.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| The current population growth rate globally is 1%[1],
| which is definitionally not exponential. World population
| has doubled since 1970, but the rate has been declining
| since.
|
| [1]https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/popula
| tion-g...
| bliteben wrote:
| It would be exponential if the net growth rate was 0.1%.
| If your savings account produces 0.1% interest that is
| still exponential growth. According to the rule of 70
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_72) it would
| double in 700 years. That is exponential!
| ch4s3 wrote:
| The growth rate is trending down and will probably go
| negative, it's unlikely to ever double again over any
| time horizon we can reasonably project.
| bliteben wrote:
| I think this would be a good thing, but if it were
| reality, I think many countries would encourage births
| before we got even close to net 0. This part we cannot
| really know.
|
| Singapore is just one example that has been discouraging
| population increase then switching to encouraging
| population increase. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popula
| tion_planning_in_Singapo... Yet there is still a net
| increase during all this time. https://www.macrotrends.ne
| t/countries/SGP/singapore/populati...
|
| I think asking the world to agree on something this
| potentially controversial, when you and I can't even
| agree on the nature of the increase, is asking too much.
| kortex wrote:
| > Just because the growth rate isn't constant, does not
| make it not exponential.
|
| That's literally what makes it not exponential (I.e. when
| it falls low enough that it is no longer proportional to
| the derivative). Sigmoid functions, catenary functions
| (hyperbolic trig), even the complex exponential (regular
| trig), and the like all have exponential terms. We don't
| use the term "exponential growth" in any of these cases
| unless there is growth without bounds - aka the real
| coefficients are positive.
| bliteben wrote:
| To argue anything other than its exponential is to zoom
| into an area of the curve that is meaningless.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimates_of_historical_wor
| ld_...
|
| I found the actual population estimate he seems to be
| referencing are from the Lancelet https://en.wikipedia.or
| g/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow... There are enough
| referenced facts on that wiki page to know that is not a
| certainty.
|
| Human population is obviously not strictly exponential,
| as there have been worldwide phenomena that lower it
| globally, and these will happen again in the future, but
| if the net growth rate is even 0.1% it is not linear, it
| is exponential. Only when the growth rate equals the
| replacement rate (deaths) will it suddenly be static, but
| if it increases even a hair over that its exponential at
| that moment (because new humans produce more new humans).
|
| Also as we know from microbiology human population with
| finite resources can't be exponential in the long run as
| resources will limit it, so sure its not an exponential
| function because it obviously is a logarithmic function
| (likely with a whole other side to the graph once it
| reaches its peak). Sure maybe we are smarter than this,
| but it does seem like a leap to get there. So yes
| technically you are 100% right human population is not
| and cannot be exponential, it just has been for the past
| few centuries, and there isn't a good reason to expect it
| not to be in the future.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| This argument sounds rational but isn't. It ignores some huge
| problems - fossil fuels have been subsidised for decades.
| They will obviously appear to be cheaper than nuclear which
| is one of the few industries that designs for the worst case
| scenario.
|
| Wind and solar are also subsidised - by electricity
| consumers. Their volatility has a price that is currently
| absorbed by the grid and is ultimately paid for by you and I.
| mbbutler wrote:
| This is the best comment in the thread and it's somehow being
| downvoted.
|
| Physics grad student here and I agree with this comment
| whole-heartedly. I love the idea of nuclear power but I also
| understand that it requires enormous CapEx and that the time
| to get a reactor up, running, and carbon neutral is much too
| long to address the climate crisis. We absolutely shouldn't
| be shutting down nuclear plants but any money spent on new
| plants is money that could otherwise be spent generating
| lower cost Wind/Solar in a shorter period of time.
| thingification wrote:
| Taking the view for a moment of somebody who thinks we
| won't have a solution until we have plenty of nuclear
| power,
|
| > the time to get a reactor up, running, and carbon neutral
| is much too long to address the climate crisis
|
| In _that particular_ sense, it 's not a crisis: if you
| think N megadeaths will occur in time T as a result of
| climate change (making no comment on that because I don't
| know much about N as a function of T), there are still
| (10000 - N) million humans around at time T to suffer from
| lack of a solution. In that situation, it doesn't make
| sense to say "it's a crisis, so a solution that helps after
| time T can't possibly help"?
|
| So for people who think that we won't have a solution until
| we build a lot of nuclear power, the slogan "climate
| crisis" seems likely to badly damage those 10000-N million
| humans because it gives us an excuse to never solve the
| problem. People could reasonably disagree with the
| antecedent ("won't have a solution until we build
| nuclear"), but I hope you see a bit how the other side sees
| it?
|
| Greetings from an ex-Physics grad student on the other side
| by the way! Other side both of this debate and of being a
| grad student I suppose. Have a nice day over there :wave:
| eldaisfish wrote:
| have you noticed how the mythical future where the bulk of
| energy is supplied by wind and solar is always at an
| indeterminate point in the future? There is currently no
| gigawatt scale power grid anywhere in the world that
| supplies more than 20-30% of annual energy from variable
| energy sources like wind and solar.
|
| Meanwhile, France enjoys a low carbon grid together with
| low energy prices as do many parts of Canada, parts of
| eastern europe and so on.
|
| It is wrong to frame the argument as wind/solar versus
| everything else. The argument should be carbon versus no
| carbon. Period.
| VintageCool wrote:
| I realize that you won't be impressed, but 20% of
| electricity in Texas came from wind in 2019 (plus 1%
| solar) [1].
|
| Texas has been building wind and solar like crazy since
| then, such electricity in Texas in 2021 was 24% wind + 4%
| solar [2].
|
| Texas is building 6.1 GW of solar in 2022 and 3.8 GW of
| wind [3]. So that indeterminate point in the future where
| ERCOT is more than 30% wind+solar is probably 2023 or
| 2024. It might even be 2022.
|
| [1] https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/fiscal-
| notes/2020/augu... [2]
| https://www.ercot.com/gridinfo/generation [3]
| https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50818
| cellshade wrote:
| Ireland is gigawatt-scale, over 36% wind energy, and
| growing rapidly. Well beyond your stated 20-30% figure.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Ireland
| eldaisfish wrote:
| >. Well beyond
|
| Is it? This adds nothing to the discussion. If it were
| actually 50% and i claimed 30%, that would be a
| distinction worth pointing out.
|
| Since we are being pedantic, you should really look up
| the figures for energy share from wind in 2021 in
| Ireland. It fell to 29% which completely negates your
| claim of it growing rapidly.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Look no further than South Australia with a 65.7%
| renewable utilization for the 2021. Sure you can shift
| the goal posts to include total energy usage instead of
| simply electricity, but that also makes it easier since
| now you have a whole load of possible smart consumers in
| for example the transportation industry.
|
| https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/resources/record-year-
| rene...
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| South Australia gets rather more sunshine than the
| regions of the world where people actually live.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| With the exponential lowering of the costs of wind power,
| solar and storage that band should increase every year
| right?
|
| South Australia is 25 to 37 degrees south. The longest
| HVDC line (in China) is 3300 km, that is 30 degrees.
|
| So now based on existing HVDC lines and South Australian
| circumstances we can say that we should reliably be able
| to supply somewhere up to 55 to 67 degrees from the
| equator, in general. Do you know what is at 66 degrees
| north? The arctic circle. That is how far north we end
| up.
|
| This is not even considering that closer to the poles
| have much better wind resources, especially in winter
| time.
|
| So, the 4 million people living north of the Arctic
| circle might have a harder time. But it would seem that
| it is a trivially easy to solve edge case when the rest
| of the world has a solution.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Circle#Human_habitat
| ion
|
| This of course discounts any geopolitical concerns, which
| makes it harder. But on a US or EU continental we easily
| have the technology today.
| mbbutler wrote:
| > It is wrong to frame the argument as wind/solar versus
| everything else. The argument should be carbon versus no
| carbon. Period.
|
| I am framing it as carbon vs no carbon. A new nuclear
| plant's timeline to carbon-neutrality compared to the
| counterfactual where an equal capital investment is made
| in solar/wind is well over a decade. Given the time
| crunch we are on to lower emissions, I simply do not
| think we have the time to waste building new plants. That
| said, we should not be decommissioning plants that are
| still operable.
| catskul2 wrote:
| > they consider those technologies to be girly, and therefore
| still bring up big hairy nuclear reactors whenever anyone
| fails at avoiding them at parties.
|
| I don't think this is really a thing, and I suspect this
| appeal to ridicule is being made in bad faith.
|
| My impression is that there's currently an active and honest
| debate going on right now on whether nuclear is necessary or
| not.
|
| https://www.factcheck.org/2019/11/what-does-science-say-
| abou...
|
| Every argument I've heard about nuclear was about getting to
| carbon neutral or negative fast enough to avert climate
| disaster, and providing a stable base load in light of
| generation fluctuation of solar and wind, and current lack of
| sufficient storage to smooth load - generation curves.
| thingification wrote:
| > Really the whole debate is mostly scientism: nuclear power
| didn't lose because it was too dangerous. It lost because it
| is too expensive.
|
| If I understand correctly, in saying that this is scientism,
| you're saying something like that people on the other side of
| this debate think science and technology are the only
| relevant things going on here? Another possibility is that
| they do think other things are relevant (cost, political
| considerations, ...) but that they think that the expense is
| not intrinsic to the technology.
|
| While I'm sure you've heard the "but it's expensive because
| of the anti-nuke people!" claim many times and have your own
| well-considered reasons to think that mistaken in some sense
| -- if I'm wrong and it turns out that it being expensive has
| nothing very much to do with anti-nuke protests, does that
| really make me a scientist? "Scientist", the way you're using
| it, is a statement about somebody's epistemelogical beliefs,
| I think?
|
| > It's funny how your forward-looking worldview can turn all
| retro on you within just a few decades.
|
| This could be seen as ad hominem and could usefully have been
| omitted I think
| inapis wrote:
| >Really the whole debate is mostly scientism: nuclear power
| didn't lose because it was too dangerous. It lost because it
| is too expensive. These days, it's still too expensive, but
| now it also just takes too long for it to be useful for the
| climate emergency.
|
| It's expensive because Chernobyl caused the whole world to
| develop cold feet. Innovation stopped and funding for nuclear
| dried up after 2-3 accidents. Solar and wind were super
| expensive (vis-a-vis coal or gas) in 2010 and before compared
| to 2022 and people were railing against solar for that reason
| alone. But only a decade later, the cost has fallen by an
| order of a magnitude, making it far more practical and a
| valuable source of energy because society invested money and
| resources to bring the cost down.
|
| Imagine having 3 children and lavishing all your attention
| and resources on two of them, leaving one to fend for itself
| and then turning around and saying that the aloof one has no
| talent, skills and is basically a burden on the society.
|
| Nuclear is not a panacea but railing against the technology
| because humans goofed up, then refused to pay more attention
| and do things correctly in the future is an irrational
| stance.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| > Nuclear is not a panacea but railing against the
| technology because humans goofed up, then refused to pay
| more attention and do things correctly in the future is an
| irrational stance.
|
| But we didn't even become more careful with existing
| reactors. The companies running them kept being textbook
| capitalists and cut costs wherever possible. Outsource
| maintenance to questionable Eastern European workers.
| Inspections reveal unexplainable micro fractures near the
| reactor core? Just declare it safe and carry on. Workers
| on-site monitoring the operations are retrained
| electricians, because well, both things have something to
| do with electricity right?
|
| I'm not afraid the technology is inherently unsafe. I'm
| worried because it's run by companies maximizing profit,
| and regulated (indirectly) by politicians caring about
| getting re-elected, and maybe about their
| hometown/electoral district.
| inapis wrote:
| Fair point but I am not sure how it is any different from
| other risky industries. Aviation became safer (current
| Boeing fiascos not withstanding) over the past 2-3
| decades where today an airliner crash makes global news.
|
| Humans being terrible at something, at some time in the
| past, is not a sole reason to write off the technology.
| The response should be to rather focus on improving the
| process and policy rather than shrugging off nuclear
| which IPCC has admitted is necessary to meet our climate
| goals.
|
| Most American's are very worried about dying from
| terrorism while most are actually being killed by heart
| attacks.
|
| At a certain point it is a matter of what people want to
| believe and what is actually happening on the ground.
| VintageCool wrote:
| The Davis-Beisse reactor in Ohio was found in 2002 to
| have a boric acid leak that ate through 6 inches of
| steeling cladding, leaving only 3/8ths inch of steel
| holding in the high-pressure coolant.
|
| A few months earlier, the company had claimed that "oh
| yeah, we checked that, everything's fine!" and employees
| were later convicted for providing false information to
| and hiding evidence of the leak from government
| inspectors.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis%E2%80%93Besse_Nuclear
| _Po...
| Gwypaas wrote:
| You're off by a decade, three-mile island, Chernobyl,
| Fukushima and all other accidents which "would never happen
| if you had actually been smart" only added dead weight to
| an already completely uncompetitive business.
|
| There hasn't ever been a nuclear plant built which was not
| subsidized. Wind and solar needed a kick-start, now they
| bid to even get permission to build off-shore wind power.
|
| > By the mid-1970s it became clear that nuclear power would
| not grow nearly as quickly as once believed. Cost overruns
| were sometimes a factor of ten above original industry
| estimates, and became a major problem. For the 75 nuclear
| power reactors built from 1966 to 1977, cost overruns
| averaged 207 percent. Opposition and problems were
| galvanized by the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.[48]
|
| > Over-commitment to nuclear power brought about the
| financial collapse of the Washington Public Power Supply
| System, a public agency which undertook to build five large
| nuclear power plants in the 1970s. By 1983, cost overruns
| and delays, along with a slowing of electricity demand
| growth, led to cancellation of two WPPSS plants and a
| construction halt on two others. Moreover, WPPSS defaulted
| on $2.25 billion of municipal bonds, which is one of the
| largest municipal bond defaults in U.S. history. The court
| case that followed took nearly a decade to
| resolve.[49][50][51]
|
| > A cover story in the February 11, 1985, issue of Forbes
| magazine commented on the overall management of the nuclear
| power program in the United States:
|
| > "The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as
| the largest managerial disaster in business history, a
| disaster on a monumental scale ... only the blind, or the
| biased, can now think that the money has been well spent.
| It is a defeat for the U.S. consumer and for the
| competitiveness of U.S. industry, for the utilities that
| undertook the program and for the private enterprise system
| that made it possible.[55]"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_S
| t...
| inapis wrote:
| >There hasn't ever been a nuclear plant built which as
| not subsidized. Wind and solar needed a kick-start, now
| they bid to even get permission to build off-shore wind
| power.
|
| I am not sure why nuclear needs to be perfectly
| competitive to be a valuable option. Govts worldwide
| subsidize infrastructure programs to varying degrees.
| Roads are subsidized. Water treatment plants are
| subsidized. Hell, agriculture and farming cannot survive
| a free market without government subsidies in most of the
| planet. Companies like Apple and Tesla won't build
| manufacturing plants without tax breaks (effectively a
| subsidy.) Amazon won't build an office without asking for
| a tax break from the cities.
|
| The expectations of nuclear are irrationally high.
|
| And your quotes all point to policy issues which can be
| fixed with proper governance. Just because it "became"
| non-competitive 5 decades ago is no reason to not pursue
| it going forward given that any help against the climate
| emergency is welcome. Even IPCC in a report some time
| back accepted that meeting the climate target is not
| possible without the help of nuclear and in a good policy
| environment nuclear can be cost competitive.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Why not put it into long-term storage for emergencies
| based on hydrogen instead? Why this fixation on nuclear
| as the one true savior?
|
| Today you can use solar to produce hydrogen which you
| then burn and still economically come out ahead of
| nuclear. Not that it would be sane to do which is why it
| haven't been adopted.
| Bud wrote:
| It's not clear to me why we should care whether nuclear
| is "subsidized", given that all of our dominant fossil-
| fuel infrastructure is also massively subsidized, in
| addition to it doing a great job of rapidly killing the
| entire planet.
|
| Similarly, I'm not sure that for decisions in 2022-2050,
| we should be relying on lessons learned half a century
| ago in the 1970s about tech which was designed and
| deployed even earlier than that, during the absolute
| infancy of nuclear power tech.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Given the state of Vogtle, Virgil C. Summer, Flamanville,
| Olkilouto today and so on the lessons learned in the
| 1970s were the nice rosy days. Productionizing the
| research from the 50s and 60s.
|
| Renewables are here and vastly cheaper. Steam based
| plants like nuclear and coal lost their competitiveness
| with the advent of the CCGT plants in the 80s. Both are
| dead simply due to their shared thermodynamic cycle.
| Renewables are pushing CCGT plants more and more towards
| only existing as peakers.
| bliteben wrote:
| "unlimited"? no it will just be limited by the next thing. At
| current rates we are what 400 years out from using all the
| energy that reaches earth from the Sun.
|
| https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m#page=26
|
| I definitely would argue we need improved nuclear power even if
| just for improving space exploration, but we also need to
| accept that our whole current way of thinking with regards to
| growth is doomed and we cannot just innovate our way out of it
| without at least changing the rules.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _our whole current way of thinking with regards to growth
| is doomed_
|
| Having to find extraterrestrial and/or extrasolar sources of
| power four hundred years from now is far from doom.
| bliteben wrote:
| or just drastically slow our increase in energy usage.
|
| Further in the same ridiculous analogy that book points out
| if we built Dyson spheres around every star in the Milky
| Way we could get along for 2500 years at our current energy
| consumption growth rates.
|
| Doomed is not really the right word you are correct,
| because it just won't happen, we will meet the limit of
| physics and realize we can't keep increasing our energy
| usage even if we wanted to. But our desire to have GDP
| monotonically increasing is doomed for sure.
| scythe wrote:
| It's important to remember that Cohen's renewable argument
| applies only to breeder reactors. Other types of nuclear
| reactors are not sufficiently efficient to be "renewable"
| (which Cohen uses to mean "lasting as long as the Sun"). Still,
| nuclear is a huge step forward over combustion-based
| generation.
| croes wrote:
| Does your assessment of nuclear energy include incompetent and
| bad people?
|
| We don't fear that russian rockets hit WEC.
| yodelshady wrote:
| I don't fear that.
|
| I *know* that the money I've given to a gas company to cover
| periods of low wind and solar in the last twelve months has
| funded those rockets, and the emissions have turned fertile
| ground into desert, the latter being if anything more lethal.
|
| That is a cold certainty.
|
| And I came off a conference call on battery tech today. So
| let me say this: anyone who says batteries will replace that
| blood money is a liar.
| Bud wrote:
| So you were "on a conference call" and that makes you
| universally more able to assess current and near-future
| battery tech better than everyone else in the world
| combined, and also able to read their minds so as to
| discern whether they are "liars"?
|
| Those are extraordinary claims. I'd require a bit more
| support.
| mixermachine wrote:
| What was told on the conference call?
| planetsprite wrote:
| >Once we make X economical, we will have all the Y we want
|
| True for like 99% of things that could ever exist. The big
| question is is it possible, and is that really the only hurdle.
| IMO Uranium extraction isn't the bottleneck to nuclear power,
| building and maintaining the plants is.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Nuclear power has gone up in cost while wind and solar have
| _plunged_ in cost. Solar panels cost 10% of what they did ten
| years ago.
|
| Wind's currently cheapest, but solar will likely catch up
| pretty soon...
| Out_of_Characte wrote:
| You still need a reliable power source, energy consumption
| isn't related to the wind speed. That'll limit the amount
| of energy solar/wind can replace.
| mixermachine wrote:
| Nuclear has this problem too (in a lesser form though).
| Most reactors mainly run at 100%. Regulating them down
| takes quite some time and also wears down some materials
| inside.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Regulating them down is done by more aggressively cooling
| the reactor. The thermal energy output is unchanged, but
| less of that thermal energy is transformed into
| electricity. This doesn't wear down any materials, but it
| does waste fuel. Grated, fuel is a tiny faction of
| nuclear's cost. Furthermore, the gap between peak and
| minimum electricity consumption isn't that large. It's
| usually 10-20%.
| [deleted]
| Retric wrote:
| It's mostly a cost problem, idling a reactor for 12 hours
| produces 1/2 the power per day at 95% of the cost. Aka
| your cost per kwh basically doubles.
|
| France largely got around this by exporting power, but
| that obviously doesn't scale if everyone tries to export
| power on the weekends nobody wants to import it.
| Teever wrote:
| Throw the excess power into on demand carbon negative
| activities and call it a day.
| p1mrx wrote:
| That only helps if your desalinator/electrolyzer/etc. has
| a low enough capital cost to let it sit idle most of the
| time.
| Bud wrote:
| The word "throw" is doing a lot of work in this sentence,
| since said throwing is both complex and expensive.
| jccooper wrote:
| Nuclear is fine with load following. Most plants run as
| baseload because it makes sense for them to do so, given
| the surrounding energy mixture and capital costs, etc,
| but it's not some sort of immutable law of the
| technology. Many existing designs have that capability
| even if it's not used much. They're not great for peak
| generation, but if you're price insensitive, or could
| lower the capital costs enough for it to make sense, they
| could do that too.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Well, that's what it would take to make it renewable.
| Political will and what we have today is all it would take to
| make it viable. And potentially shifting the $0.5T in annual
| global fossil fuel subsidies to nuclear wouldn't hurt.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I think it's actually false 99% of the time, because as soon
| as we get Y for cheap, we start consuming it more, and we are
| back to not having enough Y.
| CaioAlonso wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Not quite the same; Jevons Paradox notes that increased
| efficiency of use is an effective reduction in cost. The
| fact that when you make something cheaper to use it gets
| used more is just simple supply and demand.
| nxmnxm99 wrote:
| Correct. We'll all be driving nuclear jet aircraft in 70
| years as global uranium reserves deplete.
| FrenchDevRemote wrote:
| can't we use many different things for nuclear
| though?(and uranium is just the most efficient?)
|
| +in 70 years we'd probably have fusion
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > can't we use many different things for nuclear
| though?(and uranium is just the most efficient?)
|
| Strictly speaking, U-235 is the only fissile isotope of
| any element that is found in any significant amounts in
| nature. However, breeder reactors can also be useful. The
| only two starter points I'm aware of in nature for
| significant energy extraction are U-238 and Th-232. U-238
| breeder reactors are politically complicated because they
| can relatively easily be used to generate significant
| amounts of Plutonium which is usable in bombs.
|
| Th-232 reactors have technical hurdles that are probably
| surmountable; specifically the neutron economy is
| significantly tighter than U-238 breeder reactors (this
| is why you often see liquid-salt reactors proposed for
| Th; chemically separating the decay products gives plenty
| of breathing room in the neutron economy). The U-233 it
| generates is also usable in bombs, but since it will tend
| to also generate U-232, which is both difficult to work
| with and easy to detect, it's considered less of a
| proliferation risk.
|
| This all misses my original point though. At any point in
| the first half of the 20th century we had enough oil to
| last us for _centuries_ at then-present day usage. Yet
| here we are.
| r00fus wrote:
| Clearly the shielding problem will have been resolved by
| then as well (or we have genetically adapted our
| grandchildren to be rad-hardened).
| baryphonic wrote:
| 99% of the time seems excessively high. The changes in
| demand are really dependent on the properties of the good
| in question.
|
| Also, this phenomenon is called the "income effect"[0]: as
| the price of a good Y falls relative to other goods,
| consumers' "income" will increase in a real sense (i.e.
| they'll be able to consume more of all goods), so they may
| increase consumption of Y, depending on whether Y is
| "inferior," "normal" or "luxury." The definitions of these
| concepts have to be made carefully to avoid circularity,
| but suffice it to say that 99% of goods are not normal.
|
| Energy, however, is a normal good when measured, though a
| 2x increase in income leads to less than a 2x increase in
| energy consumption for a sufficient starting level of
| income. (If you were living in a remote village that was
| only recently electrified, for instance, electricity would
| be a luxury good: increases in income would lead to
| significant increases in consumption of electricity up to a
| certain point.)
|
| What's more interesting is how firms react. Decreases in
| energy costs could lead to significant increases in
| productivity for firms, allowing for economies of scale
| that did not exist ex ante. This isn't really "consumption"
| per se, as energy is being "converted" into another good.
| But it seems likely that firms' demand for energy could
| increase quite a bit as the price for energy decreases.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_choice#Income_effect
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Correct. An even though fuel costs are significant, it's
| mostly the enrichment that drives up the cost. Even at the
| present un-economical seawater extraction rates, the overall
| cost increase would be negligible: https://www.forbes.com/sit
| es/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-s...
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| "Fear of spicy rocks" is an odd way of saying "one of the
| highest costs per GW/hr _and rising despite almost a century of
| enormously subsidized R &D_, and oh by the way, it's also a
| major pain in the ass to operate and decommission and there's
| also all this toxic waste....which catches on fire if you don't
| cool it for months/years first..."
|
| Wind turbines and solar are cheaper _and getting cheaper every
| year_ and they don 't have anywhere near the myriad of problems
| nuclear does.
|
| That's why we had 30GW of renewables deployed in 2021 in the
| US, while 5GW of nuclear shut down in the same time period.
| We're replacing nuclear power generation capacity _six times
| faster than we 're losing it_, with wind and solar. Because
| it's cheaper and easier. Investors, industry, and governments
| consider "what is the way forward for generation?" solved and
| are focusing on energy storage and grid modernization.
|
| You know what nobody has said in the history of mankind?
|
| "Oh fuck, that crazy dictator is shooting his tanks at that
| wind farm! Will this cause a nation-scale disaster?"
|
| "Oh fuck, terrorists are trying to steal old solar panels!"
|
| "That country developing wind power generation will politically
| destabilize the entire region."
|
| "It's so sad that thirty years after that solar farm fire
| disaster, kids within hundreds of miles from it still have
| significantly higher cancer rates."
|
| "Oh fuck, that tsunami damaged that wind farm, we need to
| evacuate people from thousands of square kilometers of area
| around it and not allow fishing anywhere near it"*
|
| (By the way, more than ten years later, there is still a no-
| entry zone approximately half the size of Tokyo.)
| deadbeeves wrote:
| My understanding is that both wind and solar can't just
| placed anywhere, while a nuclear reactor can. A nuclear
| reactor is also more efficient in terms of GW per surface
| area.
|
| >We're replacing nuclear power generation capacity six times
| faster than we're losing it
|
| That's a rather odd metric, don't you think? "We haven't
| added or removed a single reactor, and we added a wind
| turbine. We're adding infinitely-many wind turbines for every
| reactor we're losing!"
|
| >"Oh fuck, that crazy dictator is shooting his tanks at that
| wind farm! Will this cause a nation-scale disaster?"
|
| The same can't be said for, say, hydroelectric dams. Those
| are arguably even more dangerous than nuclear plants.
|
| >"Oh fuck, terrorists are trying to steal old solar panels!"
|
| Oh, no. Now all they need to do is separate the uranium from
| the graphite in the fuel pellets and enrich it in centrifuges
| and figure out how to build nuclear bombs.
|
| >"It's so sad that thirty years after that solar farm fire
| disaster, kids within hundreds of miles from it still have
| significantly higher cancer rates."
|
| I really don't think that's true of Chernobyl.
|
| >"Oh fuck, that tsunami damaged that wind farm, we need to
| evacuate people from thousands of square kilometers of area
| around it and not allow fishing anywhere near it"*
|
| You need to evacuate because there was a tsunami and
| flooding. Look up how many people died as a result of the
| tsunami and as a result of the nuclear accident.
| cesarb wrote:
| > My understanding is that both wind and solar can't just
| placed anywhere, while a nuclear reactor can.
|
| A nuclear reactor has the same placement restrictions as
| any other thermal power plant: it needs significant
| cooling, which usually means a nearby large body of water.
| Since wind and solar need almost no cooling, they can be
| placed in some locations where a nuclear power plant can't.
| There's also other restrictions due to size and safety
| which limit nuclear power plant placement even more.
| mixermachine wrote:
| > The same can't be said for, say, hydroelectric dams.
| Those are arguably even more dangerous than nuclear plants.
|
| Imagine a hydroelectric dam "Chernobyl". At least the mid
| to longterm consequences would be softer. I think they
| would have figured out a few years later how to rebuild
| everything.
|
| Chernobyl (>35 years ago) on the other side is still
| buzzing and the rebuilding of the sarcophagus is ongoing
| and will be for a long time
| nwiswell wrote:
| > Imagine a hydroelectric dam "Chernobyl". At least the
| mid to longterm consequences would be softer.
|
| Well except the millions of people with emotional scars
| because their relatives died and they were displaced.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Yellow_River_flood
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
| deadbeeves wrote:
| Did you not see the predictions of what would have
| happened if the Three Gorges Dam had failed? A dam
| failing is utterly catastrophic. Chernobyl by comparison
| is small potatoes, even if no one had done anything.
|
| (Also, the comparison isn't 1-to-1, since Chernobyl
| wasn't attacked. I have no idea what the failure modes of
| modern reactors are when damaged by munitions.)
| VintageCool wrote:
| Estimated death toll from the Banqiao Dam failure ranges
| from 26,000 to 240,000.
| andbberger wrote:
| wrong nuclear is actually the cheapest by a mile but is
| crippled by financing
| jollybean wrote:
| ? In the meantime there's plenty of Uranium in Canada and
| Australia (and Russia) just 'sitting there', and so there's no
| need for complicated extraction.
| throw82473751 wrote:
| and unlimited problems as before
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| It might be abundant and clean, but it's not renewable, and
| like _every_ energy source, nuclear has associated capital and
| operational costs.
| arcticbull wrote:
| It's renewable in the sense that there's a massive geological
| reservoir which replenishes the uranium dissolved in the
| seawater. There's 4 billion tons dissolved right now in the
| ocean (enough to run 1,000 reactors for 100,000 years) but
| that is replaced as it's extracted. [1]
|
| It's about as renewable as solar, which is to say, we will
| eventually run out - but at that point the heat death of the
| universe is a more pressing concern.
|
| [1] https://cna.ca/2016/07/27/theres-uranium-seawater-
| renewable/
| krisoft wrote:
| > It's about as renewable as solar, which is to say, we
| will eventually run out - but at that point the heat death
| of the universe is a more pressing concern.
|
| Nitpicking:
|
| The sun is expected to stop fusing helium in about 8x10^9
| years [1]. The heat death will occur in around 1.7x10^106
| years [2]. (if at all, there are some uncertainties around
| that)
|
| Which means that while they are both far, the heat death as
| predicted is much much further than the other. In short,
| the heat death of the universe won't be a pressing concern
| at all when we run out of solar.
|
| 1:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_dwarf#Future_of_the_Sun
| 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_timeline_from_Bi
| g_Ba...
| Aeolun wrote:
| It's oddly reassuring to know that we'll actually have
| some time to stay a spacefaring civilization after the
| sun runs out.
| Smithalicious wrote:
| I wonder, does the sun /have/ to run out? Could we find a
| bunch more hydrogen from outside the solar system and
| dump it into the sun to recharge it?
| infogulch wrote:
| Stars fail when the elements in their cores stop
| releasing net energy when fused. This crossover occurs at
| iron. Adding more mass will just make it's death more
| violent.
|
| Also the sun contains 99% of the mass of the solar
| system. The remaining 1% includes Jupiter. I'm not sure
| how much effect we can have when only leveraging 1% of 1%
| of the solar systems mass.
| Out_of_Characte wrote:
| I also wonder how one removes mass from the sun. Its the
| biggest gravity well in the solar system and our biggest
| power source is the sun itself.
| varajelle wrote:
| Transform the mass into energy, and radiate it.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Proper management of star lifetime actually requires the
| _opposite_ approach: subtract mass from the star, so that
| the star "core" where actual fusion happens can steadily
| mix with a larger fraction of the remaining mass. The
| harvested mass can then be stored away as gas-giant
| planets, and used for miscellaneous purposes.
| Teever wrote:
| This is fascinating. Do you have any recommendations for
| sources so I can learn more about megascale engineering
| projects to maximize the life of a star?
| Jerrrry wrote:
| warning: Isaac Arthur is like crack to sci-
| fi/intellectuals.
|
| binge at your own risk:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzuHxL5FD5U
| throwntoday wrote:
| Assuming we possesed that capability it seems like it
| would be simplet to build a dyson sphere around another
| star and setup shop on a nearby planet.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I suspect human will have LONG since destroyed themselves
| by the time the sun dies, probably before we're
| spacefaring and out of the solar system.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| I remember reading some time ago that after the Sun runs
| out there's only enough energy in a state fit for fusion
| for like one or two more generations of stars in the
| universe, and after that the universe will go dark
| forever.
| dysfunction wrote:
| That may be true, but it's worth noting that the length
| of a "generation" of stars varies wildly depending on the
| type of star. Stars like our Sun might only live 10
| billion years or so, but red dwarfs live 100 billion
| years or more so we could presumably live around them
| long after all the Sun-like stars have burned out.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Can't we dump matter into black holes to draw things out
| for a while even after that?
| deadbeeves wrote:
| From where are you getting the energy to do that?
| NeutronStar wrote:
| 7952 wrote:
| The distinction is that wind/solar arrive for free without
| any effort. That just isn't true of nuclear fuel. I don't
| think that is a problem particularly. More that "renewable"
| is the wrong word.
| appletrotter wrote:
| I don't think the word "renewable" implies anything about
| effort involved?
| zsombor wrote:
| You have to build solar panels and wind turbines. Then
| have connecting service roads able to carry heavy
| equipment. Wash the panels frequently or watch their
| performance plummet. Grease moving parts to avoid
| friction losses. Maintain the rotor blades at the cost of
| significant downtimes. Replace everything after 20 years
| as that is their average lifespan. Deal with all poorly
| recyclable waste you have created. Overbuild all
| transmission lines by a wide margin, to compensate for
| the low density and intermittent nature of wind and
| solar. Accept that what could have been truly space
| reserved for wild nature is now used for low density
| energy farming. I really don't see how wind and solar are
| renewable in the true sense of the word. From an
| ecological perspective the point should be to use our
| resources efficiently so as to return large swaths of
| land to pristine nature. Currently you can do this two
| ways: one use high density technologies like nuclear, the
| other is to go extinct voluntarily. My choice was made
| after becoming a parent.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Wind generators aren't free. Solar cells aren't free. And
| (even more importantly) backing storage for when the sun
| isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing is most
| definitely not free.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I don't understand what you mean by "arrive for free". We
| have to capture it. It is not free of any externalities.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| You don't have to produce/extract/manufacture anything to
| make the wind blow or the sun shine. We capture them as
| they are.
|
| Edit: let's see how many people will continue to ignore
| other comments to get the same point in I guess.
| appletrotter wrote:
| You don't have to produce/extract/manufacture anything to
| make the ocean hold uranium for us.
| akvadrako wrote:
| You don't have to build anything to make uranium radiate.
|
| That's a pointless argument and unrelated to "renewable",
| which means it won't get used up.
| [deleted]
| redweer wrote:
| the solar panels and wires and plastic that hook these
| systems up to the grid/end-user require a lot of
| producing/extracting/manufacturing
| [deleted]
| codelord wrote:
| Why is that an important difference? To capture wind and
| solar you have to build turbines and solar panels which
| aren't free. You also have to have batteries to store
| them because of seasonal nature of these sources. You
| also need to transmit the energy thousands of miles
| through electrical grid because these sources of energy
| are limited to certain areas. Building the electrical
| grid itself just needs cutting out millions of more
| trees. So overall, the environmental impact of going full
| solar/wind would be worse than a combination of solar,
| wind, nuclear, and even maybe natural gas.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| No one is denying you need those things. We're talking
| about a specific step that doesn't exist for solar/wind
| akin to being able to drink water you find vs. having to
| make it clean.
| codelord wrote:
| I understand what you are saying, and I'm saying it's a
| pointless argument which doesn't add any value to the
| discussion.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Duly noted.
| boredumb wrote:
| We need tons of coal and plastics to capture the sun
| shine.
| SllX wrote:
| If we ran the entire world off of nuclear reactors, we
| could increase the energy we used and still not worry
| about exhausting the amount of uranium available to us.
| Proliferation would be a concern though.
|
| That said, why would we run the entire world on nuclear,
| or go for a nuclear-only strategy when we _also_ have
| solar and wind and geothermal and hydroelectric? For that
| matter, why should we exclude nuclear from the energy mix
| available to us?
|
| Different sources of power have different properties with
| different tradeoffs, but if you can cover your bases with
| multiple types, why wouldn't you?
| arcticbull wrote:
| Hydro is actually not a particularly good choice in most
| cases. Some hydro installations can actually produce just
| as much global warming impact as a fossil fuel plant
| (largely methane produced in the flooded area - which has
| a far greater impact than CO2; about 80X greater). They
| also have significant ecological impact that isn't
| usually accounted for in folks mental models. [1, 2]
| Hydro isn't really green energy.
|
| Geothermal I think only works in some places without
| causing earthquakes. [3]
|
| Wind and solar are good, though.
|
| [1] https://www.science.org/content/article/hundreds-new-
| dams-co...
|
| [2] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/hydropower-
| emissions-fossil...
|
| [3] https://news.stanford.edu/2019/05/23/lessons-south-
| korea-sol...
| namdnay wrote:
| The massive advantage of hydro is that it also serves as
| energy storage. Too much wind today? Just use the excess
| electricity to pump water back up
| SllX wrote:
| From a Californian perspective, hydro and geothermal are
| basically tapped as far as I know, in-State anyway. The
| plants that are operational already is about the extent
| of what we can probably build.
|
| Actually something of a dream of mine is to see nuclear
| reactors eventually replace some of our dams, maybe
| restore some of the lakes and tributaries that have been
| lost, but presently new reactor construction is
| prohibited here per a ballot initiative from before I was
| born.
|
| My larger point is that society is going to continue to
| demand increased electricity generation, which means new
| plants and installations. It's one thing to want to
| replace existing installations but if you're going to
| service future demand, then new sources of multiple types
| have to remain on the table. I would take nuclear over
| gas-fired plants, but I would take gas-fired plants over
| coal-fired plants.
| sampo wrote:
| > From a Californian perspective, hydro and geothermal
| are basically tapped as far as I know
|
| For what I understand, the California State Water Project
| as visioned in the 1960s, had Stage I and Stage II. Only
| Stage I was built. Then from the 1980s onward, there was
| political opposition and Phase II was never started.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Water_Proj
| ect...
| fsflover wrote:
| > Proliferation would be a concern though.
|
| https://whatisnuclear.com/non-proliferation.html
| SllX wrote:
| Non-proliferation as a movement is only as strong a
| movement as nuclear-equipped nations are willing to
| enforce it. I'm not willing to hold up deploying reactors
| in the US over it, but proliferation is a legitimate
| concern.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I'm more concerned about global warming personally...
| 0ldskool wrote:
| What happens when every country has nuclear weapons at
| the ready and dictators in power? Pretty sure global
| warming (Climate change) won't be as disastrous as a
| nuclear winter.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Really, this week? With nuclear war looming over us all?
|
| Also lets put things in perspective, Global Warming means
| future generations will need to adapt to new weather
| patterns. Some animal and plant species will become
| extinct, others may thrive.
|
| Nuclear war will end civilization and make many parts of
| the world completely uninhabitable.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| There is nothing we can do if Putin decides to push the
| button. The world as we know it ends at that point
| because the USA won't hesitate to answer with our own
| nukes, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I don't
| worry about things that I could never have any control
| over. I am worried about global warming per this
| conversation about energy sources that won't destroy
| human civilization via natural disasters.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > Really, this week? With nuclear war looming over us
| all?
|
| Nuclear war has been looming over us all since 1949, this
| week is no different than last week or 10 years ago.
| cm2187 wrote:
| By that standard, solar isn't renewable either, since the sun
| is decaying. Nuclear is renewable in human civilisation time
| scale.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| Well it depends on the course of human civilisation. If we
| wipe ourselves out in WWIII then we won't run out of coal.
| If we continue to grow exponentially then we will quickly
| run out of solar.
| e2le wrote:
| By that logic, solar isn't renewable because it'll "run out"
| in 5 billion years.
| Jweb_Guru wrote:
| Nuclear will run out much, _much_ faster, though,
| particularly when it comes to uranium we actually know how
| to extract economically. People 's proposals for things
| like extracting uranium from seawater have not even reached
| the prototyping stage--we don't even know if it's possible
| to do at the scale required to support modern civilization
| --but people are already willing to treat it as a done
| deal. It's one of the reasons I'm not nearly as
| enthusiastic about nuclear as many people here. For some
| reason, people seem very quick to point out at extremely
| minor problems with solar, which is technically pretty much
| already there and which we _know_ can work, and has
| improved by leaps and bounds in a short amount of time, or
| argue that it can 't work because of the storage problem
| (even though we already _know_ how to build big batteries--
| pumped storage isn 't sexy, but it works and can be
| produced at scale without requiring exotic materials or
| anything like that). But those same people are happy to use
| as-yet-unrealized technological leaps to deflect concerns
| about the sustainability and expense of nuclear power, even
| though nuclear power is a much older and better-understood
| technology and many of the breakthroughs being cited (like
| thorium breeder reactors etc.) have been studied and
| promised for decades without significant progress.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| We know we could extract uranium from seawater. The
| prototypes would scale. The reason we don't do that is
| that there is no economic reason to do that: it would be
| more expensive than mining, so why bother? However, even
| at that higher cost, it would still be plenty cheap
| enough to use in our power plants.
|
| You complain about people overblowing a minor concern
| with solar, but you do the same with uranium extraction.
|
| Also, I take issue with your suggestion that we can do
| pumped storage at scale: we can't. There are not a lot of
| suitable sites for that: we either lack enough altitude
| delta, or lack water, or would have to flood huge swaths
| of land, often already more productively used. I like
| hydro, and I like pumped storage, but unlike nuclear, you
| can't do it just about anywhere.
|
| US is actually particularly lucky when it comes to hydro:
| most other countries are too flat, too dry, or too short
| on wastelands. Even if we could pull it off, most can't,
| and they need power too.
| zweifuss wrote:
| If I remember correctly the tested uranyl ion collectors
| were not very specific and they concentrated other
| radioactive heavy elements to a dangerous degree for the
| lifeforms flowing through.
| 0ldskool wrote:
| Pumped storage is simply a gravity battery. There are
| vertical gravity batteries that can be built anywhere.
| Basically they are giant cranes that lift heavy blocks
| high up. This is the storage component and requires
| electricity. When we need to drain electricity they move
| the high blocks to a lower elevation using the crane.
| This generates electricity. This seems like the perfect
| type of battery to me for urban cities with large towers
| already.
| Jweb_Guru wrote:
| Pumped storage can be constructed out of concrete. It's
| not necessary for there to be a preexisting basin. This
| isn't often done because there's not much demand for it
| and it's very expensive compared to fossil fuels (which
| pretty much everything is), but it is entirely
| industrially feasible and is still generally cheaper than
| any other kind of battery. I realize you are arguing that
| extracting uranium from seawater is in the same category,
| but it's not: there are no industrial scale mining
| operations extracting uranium from seawater, and there is
| no evidence that existing prototypes would scale up to
| global power requirements (in addition to the other
| issues mentioned by the neighboring comment).
| xyzzyz wrote:
| > but it is entirely industrially feasible and is still
| generally cheaper than any other kind of battery.
|
| Really? That sounds interesting. Can you send me some
| materials on this?
|
| > there are no industrial scale mining operations
| extracting uranium from seawater, and there is no
| evidence that existing prototypes would scale up to
| global power requirements
|
| This is true, but again, hardly relevant, because nobody
| really tried to do that at scale, as there is no good
| reason for it for as long as mined uranium is cheap.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Sure, nuclear will run out much faster than the sun. But
| that "much faster" is still on the order of magnitude as
| the age of human civilization.
|
| And no, pumped storage is nowhere near on the scale
| required to make renewables feasible. For example, the US
| uses about 500 GWh of electricity every hour, but only
| ~20GWh of pumped storage. The pumped storage facilities
| take about as long to build as nuclear power plants.
| Storage is also just one of the challenges to making
| renewables feasible. The fact that renewables are
| geographically dependent means we'll also have to make
| large expansions to transmission infrastructure [1].
|
| 1. https://www.vox.com/videos/22685707/climate-change-
| clean-ene...
| Jweb_Guru wrote:
| > Sure, nuclear will run out much faster than the sun.
| But that "much faster" is still on the order of magnitude
| as the age of human civilization.
|
| Not with what we actually know how to economically
| recover, AFAIK, though sources vary widely on such
| figures.
|
| And yes, pumped storage takes a long time to build, but
| that is not a disadvantage compared to nuclear plants, as
| you note. Expanding transmission infrastructure also
| falls under the line of boring things we know how to do,
| if the political will is there. I am mostly just pointing
| out that while both require massive infrastructure
| investments, making nuclear truly sustainable relies
| essentially on speculative research in a way that solar +
| pumped storage does not. Plus, nuclear has other
| advantages (like being usable in deep space, under the
| ocean, etc.), which makes it feel a little wasteful to
| use for power generation on a planet bathed in sunlight.
| So I don't really understand the strong preference for
| nuclear that a lot of people seem to espouse.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Massive expansions of electricity transmission, and huge
| energy storage projects - several hundred times the size
| of what we have currently - cannot just be hand-waved
| away "boring things we know how to do". Hydroelectric
| storage is geographically limited, which leaves large
| areas without a storage solution. The strong preference
| for nuclear is because it avoid these difficulties which
| are typically ignored when renewable plans for
| decarbonization are proposed.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > Nuclear will run out much, much faster, though,
| particularly when it comes to uranium we actually know
| how to extract economically.
|
| With breeder reactors there is enough economically usable
| fuel to last billions-with-a-b of years.
| Jweb_Guru wrote:
| As I mentioned in my post, people are very quick to bring
| up breeder reactors, despite the fact that no commercial
| prototypes that can recycle fuel to that degree actually
| exist. I have nothing against nuclear power as a short-
| term stopgap to deal with climate change, but we should
| stick to technology that actually exists if we're talking
| about using it as a primary power source into the
| indefinite future.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| There are no wind or solar installations that can come
| anywhere close to providing the base load power for the
| United States, either.
|
| According to what I'm seeing, there are only 5 solar
| plants that produce > 1 GW in the entire world. 1 GW is
| very small by the standards of nuclear or even large
| hydro installations.
| Jweb_Guru wrote:
| If electricity/m^2 or per site is your metric of choice,
| solar isn't going to do well. However, this is an
| uninteresting metric in a world with so much unused land,
| and with a technology that doesn't gain significant
| efficiency improvements from being deployed at a large
| farm vs. in smaller installations. I don't think anybody
| seriously disputes at this point that solar can generate
| enough electricity to power the world (with suitable
| investments in transmission infrastructure)--and at far
| lower prices than nuclear for the same amount of
| electricity. Storage is _the_ problem proposals for
| significant portions of the grid being solar has to deal
| with.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > However, this is an uninteresting metric in a world
| with so much unused land
|
| What do you suppose environmentalists are going to say
| when you start covering all that "unused land" (which
| they call "wilderness") with solar plants?
|
| You're shifting goalposts here.
|
| The technology you favor doesn't exist on the scale
| needed, any more than breeder reactors do. The French
| Superphenix experimental breeder reactor produced 1.2 GW
| of electricity, in _1985_. That 's more than any solar
| installation in the world except for one.
| asciimov wrote:
| Nothing is truly renewable as entropy gets us all in the end.
|
| Now maybe someone or something will answer "The Last
| Question" one day and solve that problem. I wager we wont be
| around to see it.
| nightski wrote:
| By that definition I don't think there is such a thing as
| renewable yet considering you need storage/batteries for just
| about any "renewable" energy source out there. Energy will
| always cost us something imho.
| nanomonkey wrote:
| Gasification of woody biomass waste streams (walnut shells,
| wood chips, corn stover, bigasse) is quite renewable, and
| can be run 24/7 regardless of weather. The CO2 emmitted
| comes from the atmosphere and therefore is cyclical in
| nature (thus sustainable). If you take biochar into account
| the carbon generation is actually negative, as you have
| carbon left over that can be used for other things or put
| back into the soil in a form that is stable for thousands
| of years and beneficial to the soil quality for life.
| mattferderer wrote:
| One alternative approach to storage/batteries is trying to
| provide over 100% of the average daily demand of
| electricity. Excess electricity could be priced lower.
| Consumers & industries could use those cheaper hours for
| certain tasks. This is already done in many areas. Run your
| dishwasher, charge your car, etc. at night.
|
| Which leads me to think storage/batteries is not the issue
| & that manufacturing, installation & infrastructure is. I
| also imagine getting land permits, regulations, politics,
| etc. is also a huge factor.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Not all energy uses can be shifted. IT infrastructure,
| the pumps delivering plumbing to your house,
| streetlights, HVAC, all needs to be running at all times.
| Furthermore, if shifting energy demand is the plan, then
| renewables need to factor in the cost of shifting that
| energy demand into the equation.
| andbberger wrote:
| someone watches wtypp
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Doesn't Australia have enough Uranium to power the world
| several times over?
| adventured wrote:
| Most likely the US, Canada and Australia each have enough
| uranium to power the world (we know for certain that Canada
| and Australia do, their known deposits are massive). The US
| doesn't even bother to look for uranium deposits, it has no
| intention of aggressively mining for it domestically.
| hardolaf wrote:
| France has enough known deposits to power all of the world
| for the next 20 years if we switched to 100% nuclear,
| worldwide today.
| weberer wrote:
| Are you talking about several years? Decades?
| akvadrako wrote:
| Lets first consider all Uranium in Earth's crust, about 65
| trillion tons. So given, - 65e15 kg =
| Uranium in Earth's crust - 709000 = 709,000 MJ/kg
| energy density of natural U2 - 500e12 MJ = 500
| million TJ annual global energy usage - 92e6 = 65e15
| x 709e3 / 500e12
|
| So 92 million years.
|
| Australia has about 1.7e9 kg of reserves at current
| prices1. That comes to 2.4 years.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium [2]
| https://www.plux.co.uk/energy-density-of-uranium/
| alberth wrote:
| EVs
|
| Seeing how US automakers have nearly unanimously announced a
| complete EV future, I don't see any other alternative options
| other than nuclear that will allow us to keep up with electricity
| demands.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| Do they want to transition to it for energy or for weapons?
|
| Nuclear power takes long time to adapt to. Why hurry now? It's
| not like the public started caring about it now. And not like
| renewables aren't an option.
|
| Edit: While I think fear of nuclear power is misguided, I am
| against it if it will be used for more nukes.
| colechristensen wrote:
| You don't need full scale power plants to produce weapons grade
| material.
|
| The reasons for anti-proliferation targeting of power plants is
| countries that want to hide their weapons programs in
| commercial power plants.
|
| Japan isn't Iran, the thing to fear from Japan arming is the
| short-term response from China, et al. and other less allied
| countries wanting to follow suit. Long term, a nuclear Japan
| might be a good thing for regional stability.
|
| It is very possible that Japan already has nuclear weapons or
| production is simply a matter of assembly.
|
| They have thousands of pounds of weapons grade or very-easy-to-
| change-into-weapons-grade nuclear materials, enough for
| thousands of bombs. Additional power infrastructure would have
| no effect on their readiness to become armed.
| sigstoat wrote:
| you don't need to build large commercial nuclear plants if you
| just want material for weapons. that kind of thing can be built
| on a military base where nobody hears about it, and nobody gets
| to file environmental impact lawsuits.
| p_l wrote:
| Japan is already in the position of having nuclear-tipped ICBMs
| essentially "whenever it wants". The conservative time period
| from decision to arm with nuclear weapons and having ICBMs with
| usable nuclear warheads was estimated by (public) CIA documents
| at 1 year. That's less than it takes to make a new power plant.
| woodpanel wrote:
| And this is how you spot the difference between grown-up
| leadership and an infantile one:
|
| 1) Japan kept its longterm energy policy goals despite of
| temporary unpopularity and is now reaping the rewards of having
| reliable energy and giving the voters what they, eventually, want
|
| 2) Germany nixed its complete nuclear energy production, because
| of a temporary outrage, despite having neither earthquakes nor
| tsunamis.
| forum_ghost wrote:
| Japan never had other real options.
|
| Their natgas imports was only ever going to be a temporary
| duct-tape solution.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| Nuclear power is not bad. Using nuclear power for making weapons
| of mass destruction is bad.
|
| Stop spreading FUD over it.
| tomatowurst wrote:
| Nobody is arguing against nuclear power but that it's
| shortsighted that a uniquely seismologically active and
| volatile region would be the champions for it, especially in a
| country that takes extreme measures to safety (largely result
| of frequent earthquakes).
| zamadatix wrote:
| IMO it's either able to be made safe or it's not. If
| achieving safety requires the precondition that unsafe
| situations never occur then it's the solution that's
| shortsighted not the location it was implemented.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| It's not bad and any other time l would have welcomed it.
|
| But timing of it is bad, and makes me think they might be
| looking for easy path to weaponization.
| p_l wrote:
| They already have all they need if they want weapons.
| tomatowurst wrote:
| Really bizarre why you would continue to push this narrative,
| Japan isn't out to develop nuclear warheads. It certainly
| possess the capacity to do so if it desired and is considered
| a "nuclear threshold state" similar to Canada.
|
| The odds of Taiwan and South Korea going nuclear is far more
| likely as something like 3/4 of SK citizens support having
| nuclear weapons.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| I don't believe that US will allow Japan to become nuclear.
|
| Though, russian actions might have made them desperate.
| 0des wrote:
| > I don't believe that US will allow Japan to become
| nuclear.
|
| Why?
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| It would become too independent.
|
| Plus, it has a very powerful economy. Currently, it is
| occupied by the US, which bombed it in the past with
| nuclear weapons.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Nuclear weapons bring peace.
|
| Russia's actions in Ukraine would likely have sparked a world
| war already if it wasn't for nuclear weapons.
| emteycz wrote:
| It's "peace" at the expense of Ukraine, though.
| naoqj wrote:
| Yeah, well.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Small wars are better than big ones. NATO getting dragged
| into a big war wouldn't be better so the "at the expense"
| bit is doubtful, these things would still happen but be
| orders of magnitude worse.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| Say "thank you" to the US for the 2014th regime change. It
| all started with that little forgotten incident.
|
| Please.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Nah, it all started when Ukraine gave up its nukes in
| 1994. It was naive to think that Russia would honour the
| Budapest Memorandum.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| In that case, it was a doubly stupid move to antagonize
| Russia against denuclearized Ukraine.
|
| Unless it was done on purpose.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Based on how little progress Russia is making and how little
| backing they have, with nuclear weapons out of the way I
| can't see Russia making any progress against the EU, let
| alone if you include Britain and the US.
|
| Meanwhile China will be looking at the US and weighing up
| Taiwan. North Korea will be weighing up South Korea. There
| have been some very unhappy editorials in Pakistan after the
| recent misfire from India.
|
| It's possible we're at the start of ww3 now. When do US
| schools say WW2 started? 1937? 38? 39? 41?
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| "Based on how little progress Russia is making..."
|
| I see this narative everywhere, but I wouldn't call it
| "little progress" when the land occupied in a mere month is
| the size of the UK.
|
| It took NATO 78 days of intense bombing of a much weaker
| and smaller Serbia to make any kind of progress. They even
| avoided the ground offensive. Imagine the disaster if the
| US went in with the ground forces.
|
| The US first spent months clearing out Iraq, then it spent
| years trying to hold it by a thread. Still we don't have
| the right number of casualties from that war.
|
| Russia could have just carpet bombed the entire Ukraine
| like it did with Mariupul recently. Why it didn't do it, we
| can only guess.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| >Why it didn't do it, we can only guess.
|
| Because strategic bombers are extremely expensive, and
| way more susceptible to long-range SAM systems that
| Ukraine still operates.
| adastra22 wrote:
| 1937 with the Japanese invasion of China.
| vmception wrote:
| 39 for the dual attack on Poland and Britain
|
| and 42 for US involvement after Pearl Harbor
|
| no mention of the financial support of specific sides for
| years before either date
|
| In my experience they cover rise of national socialist
| germany, like stuff in 1932 like reichstag fire, night of
| broken glass
|
| Very piecemeal and as a chronology after WW1 but not sure
| what level of detail is really relevant
|
| The main parallel i could see is that the russia military
| advances on ukraine wouldnt be a US start date of the
| conflict and that it wont be over in months but maybe we'll
| get an official start date in 3-5 years
|
| The other parallel is that I always noticed it was a choice
| to protect nations you promised to protect, britain could
| have just ... not backed poland, and a preemptive attack on
| the british to slow British retaliation maybe wouldn't have
| occurred or could have been talked out of. Two months ago
| that would have been seen as "edgy", but yeah nobody wants
| to actually back ukraine so looks like people were thinking
| it for some time.
| mola wrote:
| Some peace the Ukrainians got...
| boredtofears wrote:
| ..which you could easily argue is a direct result of NATO
| denuclearizing Ukraine in the 90's.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Is unclear how this will end still. A Russian army full of
| young and demotivated people keeping control over the biggest
| nuclear plants is a -huge- problem.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Nuclear weapons bring peace._
|
| Only because "mutually-assured destruction favors please".
| We'd be safer if they didn't exist*, but Pandora's Box, etc.
|
| *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
| arberx wrote:
| This is awesome. But nuclear bulls should remember it takes half
| a decade or so to build up nuclear power plants.
|
| Newer reactors (SMRs) will probably take even longer.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I thought the point of SMRs is that they can be built more
| quickly?
| arberx wrote:
| Regulatory approval still lacking + most are untested.
| baq wrote:
| Half a decade? That isn't happening even in China...
| eunos wrote:
| Hualong One reactor construction time is around 5-6 years but
| pandemic slow things down.
| arberx wrote:
| Median construction time is 7 years:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/712841/median-
| constructi...
| XorNot wrote:
| If we never start, we'll never finish. The "too late for
| climate change argument" is stupid because it's abundantly
| clear we're going to miss that by half a century anyway (looks
| at own country's politicians still spruiking coal and using tax
| payer money to prop up the industry).
| gwbennett wrote:
| The US Navy builds new nuclear reactors every year. It takes 5+
| years to build commercial plants because of government
| bureaucrats, endless regulations and every new nuke plant is a
| new, non-standard design.
| [deleted]
| bun_at_work wrote:
| I think a lot of the time is spent dealing with local
| regulatory issues, at least in the US. Non-standard models for
| nuclear power plants lead to long approval times, which have to
| be more or less restarted each time there is a design change.
| This is a huge contribution to the time it takes getting a
| nuclear power plant online.
|
| As another commenter pointed out, it's not the same in China,
| where regulation is far more lax than in the US.
| kkfx wrote:
| IMVHO:
|
| - we need energy and people start feeling risk of blackouts;
|
| - we can't made except for limited cases a society that live on
| renewables, not with today tech at least;
|
| - it's hard to know how much "underground" resources we really
| have but it's clear that oil and gas will came to scarcity at a
| certain point in time and we need oil for too many things, from
| tissues to joints to lubricant, electrical insulation, plastic,
| ... without something able to replace it on scale.
|
| Nuclear so far _seems_ to be able to run for many decades, so we
| probably can became all-electric (except for metallurgy and few
| other industrial domains) with nuclear and slowly integrate
| renewables as needed. That 's not good since that's probably the
| need of _much_ nuclear now (and now means in 10+ years, no less)
| and then we will not profit much from it but that 's is. I
| honestly see no other realistic options.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > we need oil for too many things, from tissues to joints to
| lubricant, electrical insulation, plastic, ... without
| something able to replace it on scale
|
| This is right. The next thought I had in this line of thinking
| is: how much will it cost to extract oil when it's only for
| these things? What will that do to their price?
| kkfx wrote:
| I can't answer beside the obvious hyper-inflation BUT in
| human history we generally have changed (almost) "in time"
| depending on the what we can source in nature, so if oil it's
| almost depleted today we are just dead, but in 40-50 years
| maybe we will have had enough time to substitute it gradually
| for almost all applications.
|
| Actually we know how to substitute oil for most applications
| but nothing that scale, for instance we can just switch from
| plastic packaging, common containers, car's part etc with
| various other things, from bamboo to paper to metals and
| glass but we can't meet the demand, no matter the price.
| Perhaps in a significantly far future, but still in time the
| actual society have changed to a different one with different
| needs and basic resources, something we already see: Green
| New Deal is an example.
|
| We are substituting ICEs cars for electric ones, we already
| state that most EVs we be just "glorified golf carts" to be
| "cheap enough", railroads will probably get expanded, dense
| cities for poor people will be even more dense etc that's
| already a very big shift and happen at a certain speed.
| Perhaps in 30 years nuclear and renewables have substituted
| completely the need of oil for grid-scale electricity
| generation and industrial electricity usage grow to cover
| many more usage (perhaps also for most metallurgical
| activities) and perhaps in 50 years nuclear fusion will be
| developed enough to became a common means for electricity
| production. That's still do not solve the oil usage for
| plastic etc issues BUT lower much oil usage. A new economy,
| less centralized, might reduce packaging much and in 100
| years we will have something to substitute oil entirely just
| in time. I do not have the crystal ball (unfortunately) but
| I'm pretty sure that for a reason or another the push against
| oil it's here to stay and the push to renewables can't really
| work at a society scale. What I imaging for the not-that-
| short term is nuclear for industries who need near-constant
| 24/7/365 energy and renewables for civil usages. Speculate
| further is more a game than a real prediction so I have to
| pass...
| godelski wrote:
| Title is misleading and I think many commenters are missing the
| point. This is support for * _restarting existing reactors*_ and
| not really a support for nuclear in general. This may lead to the
| latter, but it is very different turning on reactors that already
| exist (meaning some danger already exists) compared to creating
| more.
|
| Proposed title change:
|
| > Majority in Japan backs restarting existing nuclear reactors
| nixass wrote:
| lol what?
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