[HN Gopher] Japan to invest on nuclear energy in major policy shift
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Japan to invest on nuclear energy in major policy shift
Author : geox
Score : 495 points
Date : 2022-12-22 13:18 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (eandt.theiet.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (eandt.theiet.org)
| ls15 wrote:
| Frustrated German here, hoping that the government will at some
| point realize that investing in nuclear is more useful than
| dismantling the German economy, so that others will burn the
| fossil fuels that Germany does not need then anymore.
| DisjointedHunt wrote:
| They're too busy at the EU commission checking to see if
| websites have the right cookie strings on them.
|
| The EU astonishes me to how such a brilliant citizenry puts up
| with bureaucratic assholes running the show.
| justin66 wrote:
| Somehow France manages to get most of its electricity from
| nuclear reactors.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Well, thats a good point: they don't. Germany had to
| produce a lot of extra electricity to fill the gap left by
| too many French nuclear power plants not working.
| Fortunately they got some more back to the grid recently,
| but far too many are still out of order. And their only
| attempt at building a new reactor is many years late and
| over budget.
| delroth wrote:
| They absolutely do. Looking at November, https://www.rte-
| france.com/en/eco2mix/cross-border-electrici... will show
| you that Nov 19th was peak import with about 8GW net
| import at peak. On that day the French NPPs were on
| average producing 30GW of electricity out of a 55GW peak
| demand.
|
| When looking at electricity imports/exports it's also
| important to remember that France is a pretty big
| interconnect between the UK, Spain, Italy, Switzerland,
| Belgium and Germany. A bunch of electricity might be
| imported in France just to resell it to Italy, which is
| notoriously lacking in electricity production.
| _ph_ wrote:
| I am confused. You say yourself, that in November they
| needed to import 8GW. Which was necessary because the
| nuclear power plants didn't produce enough electricity.
| It was even worse in summer, where they were not only
| dealing with reactors down for repairs but also reactors
| with reduced power/shut down due to lack of cooling
| water.
|
| So yes, France has a huge nuclear peak capacity, as they
| built a lot of reactors up to the 80ies. But basically
| none still then which means that they are increasingly
| fighting with keeping the old reactors running. Perhaps I
| was a bit short in my first post here, but they don't
| really have a strategy to deal with the situation. They
| would need to replace at least 50 power plants over the
| next 20 years to have a really good perspective, but no
| such plans in sight.
| delroth wrote:
| justin66: > Somehow France manages to get most of its
| electricity from nuclear reactors.
|
| you: > Well, thats a good point: they don't.
|
| The data I linked to you absolutely proves that they do,
| nuclear is the majority of electricity production in
| France even in its current production crisis state.
|
| You are moving the goalposts in your reply, and I'm not
| interested in engaging any further given your dishonesty.
| oblio wrote:
| The EU does many things in parallel and it has arms financing
| of green energy to the tune of many billion EUR.
| wazoox wrote:
| Interesting video on the subject:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uTZWaJU6ho
| rdtwo wrote:
| Yeah operating old reactor is a instance policy not an investment
| rob74 wrote:
| > _" Japan has adopted a new policy" [...] "The proposed
| legislation..."_
|
| Which is it now? Is it adopted, or just proposed? Ok, a few
| paragraphs later it becomes clearer:
|
| > _The policy was approved on Wednesday by the watchdog Nuclear
| Regulation Authority, paving the way for the policy to be
| adopted._
|
| Also, I'm not a nuclear fan, but the hero image above the article
| looks a bit too ominous even for my taste...
| poszlem wrote:
| There is a geopolitical component to that as well. The
| geopolitical landscape, including the rise of China and the
| weakening of the US, as well as the uncertain peace in Ukraine,
| may lead to an increase in the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
| This is because the situation in Ukraine demonstrates that even
| if a country is able to win on the battlefield, they may still be
| forced to make concessions when facing a nuclear-armed adversary.
|
| As a result, it is reasonable for countries like Japan to
| consider investing in nuclear energy as a potential means of
| securing their own nuclear weapons in the future, should the need
| arise. It's much easier to "pivot" into weapons than to start
| everything from zero.
| wbl wrote:
| Japan already has several tones of plutonium sitting around as
| well as a solid fuel rocket system that can put things in
| orbit.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Japan's breeder program can be thought of as providing a
| rationale for accumulating thousands of weapons worth of
| reactor-grade plutonium (and yes, reactor grade Pu can be
| used in weapons, with some effort.)
| peterfirefly wrote:
| Given its neighbours, I'd say that is an extraordinarily
| happy coincidence...
| m4rtink wrote:
| And the solid fuel space launch rocket is even consistently
| advertised as highly automated & requiring minimal personnel
| to launch. Wink wink, nudge nudge. ~_^
| eloff wrote:
| Japan is already in this position. I don't think the change is
| about weapons.
| totetsu wrote:
| Japan.. having nuclear weapons.. that's not a pivot.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| I think you make valid points. I'm curious about "peace in
| Ukraine", given Zalinskyy's speech before US Congress just last
| night. I'm not an expert but it seems to me there's still a
| shooting war in progress in Ukraine. What am I missing?
| poszlem wrote:
| Ukraine's goal is to regain control of territory currently
| occupied by Russia, including Crimea, and potentially see
| Russia break up into smaller countries. Meanwhile, the United
| States aims to weaken Russia as a potential threat to NATO
| countries, but not to the point of its collapse, as they
| prefer to avoid having Russia become dominated by China.
| While some NATO countries, particularly those in Eastern
| Europe and the UK, may support Ukraine in its efforts, others
| would have been quite content with Russia taking over much of
| Ukraine and ending the conflict in March 2022.
|
| There are powerful forces at play that are attempting to
| pressure Ukraine into accepting a compromised peace out of
| fear of a nuclear conflict with Russia. There are concerns
| that the support provided by the United States may not be
| sustained in the long term. As a result, Ukraine has
| considered adopting a more self-reliant approach to defense,
| similar to that of Israel, which is known for being proactive
| in its self-defense efforts. Those same ideas are now
| circulating in much of Eastern Europe, and I suspect in many
| other middle size countries.
|
| The message is clear as day, if you want to be safe, you too
| have to have nuclear weapons.
| londons_explore wrote:
| _uncertain_ peace...
|
| I think it's clear this will be a simmering low-intensity war
| for many years to come.
| twelve40 wrote:
| I thought so too until recently, but they are raising the
| stakes with Patriot missiles and "need to win" rhetoric, so
| there is a certain chance it will keep escalating.
| jeromegv wrote:
| The "need to win" rhetoric... its an odd way of looking
| at it. Ukraine territory is invaded. What do you expect
| them to do.. just surrender? Of course they need to win.
| It's their home, their land, there is no reason
| whatsoever why it should become Russian territory.
| twelve40 wrote:
| no, i don't expect them to surrender or any of what you
| mentioned. The US is continuously escalating by now
| supplying Patriot missiles - just the most recent in a
| sequence of more and more destructive weapons - and
| drumming up the "need to win" rhetoric.
|
| So, back to the point, it might not just be a "long-
| simmering", this one.
| sofixa wrote:
| > The US is continuously escalating by now supplying
| Patriot missiles - just the most recent in a sequence of
| more and more destructive weapons
|
| An anti-air system is not really a destructive weapon,
| it's for self-defence. And saying the US is escalating is
| really weird considering Russia is the one invading and
| escalating with brutal attacks on civilians and civilian
| infrastructure.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The whole US war machine is called the "Department of
| Defence". And they have defended halfway around the world
| in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc. But obviously that
| isn't destruction, it's just defence. /s
| sofixa wrote:
| Are you claiming that Ukraine aren't defending
| themselves? Or that an anti-air system, one that shoots
| down planes or missiles around a limited range (over your
| own territory), isn't defensive?
| m4rtink wrote:
| I don't think this is really suistainable long term for
| Russia, with all the sanctions, international isolation,
| let alone all the people the front consumes even when
| relatively static.
|
| Not to mention the already disastrous demograhic curve in
| Russia before this all started.
| fyfirhffuug wrote:
| Energy independence is rapidly being realized for it's value I
| agree but I don't think it has much to do with a weakening USA.
| I'd argue it's more to do with a shift in national strategic
| considerations around the globe towards a model that
| acknowledges energy independence as a component of maintaining
| sovereignty. If anything the situation in Ukraine shows that
| with even limited American material support a small nation can
| make a go of defending itself from a nuclear armed adversary as
| long as that adversary isn't part of NATO. The Russians were
| originally saying they'd be done by Christmas.
| poszlem wrote:
| The shift towards energy independence can be seen as a
| response to the crumbling global order, particularly in the
| context of America's role in enforcing this order after World
| War II.
|
| The global order that emerged after World War II was largely
| shaped by the United States and its allies, who established
| institutions and frameworks that facilitated globalization
| and economic interdependence. As a result, many countries
| became reliant on the global supply chain and the free flow
| of goods and services.
|
| The current situation can be attributed in part to the damage
| done to the United States' reputation as a security guarantor
| due to the failure to deter Russia from attacking Ukraine and
| the negative outcome of the Afghanistan disastrous
| withdrawal.
|
| From my personal experience and through my connections with
| people in Eastern Europe, I have noticed a shift in the
| perception of the United States and NATO as reliable sources
| of security. While there was previously a belief that these
| countries could always be relied upon for protection, there
| is now a sense of uncertainty and concern following the
| failure to deter Russia and the refusal to provide offensive
| weapons. This has led to a greater focus on acquiring their
| own weapons for self-defense (including ! talks about
| acquiring nuclear weapons). I very much doubt things are much
| different in Japan.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Civilian nuclear energy has little to do with nuclear weapons.
| If the goal was nuclear weapons, you would do it very
| differently. This is not about nuclear weapons.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| It is all about creating the industrial base with people
| going through university specializing in it. In 2017 this
| angle was up in the news in the UK. Take the responses as you
| like.
|
| > The government is using the "extremely expensive" Hinkley
| Point C nuclear power station to cross-subsidise Britain's
| nuclear weapon arsenal, according to senior scientists.
|
| > In evidence submitted to the influential public accounts
| committee (PAC), which is currently investigating the nuclear
| plant deal, scientists from Sussex University state that the
| costs of the Trident programme [1] could be "unsupportable"
| without "an effective subsidy from electricity consumers to
| military nuclear infrastructure".
|
| > [...]
|
| > This week, the Green MP Caroline Lucas asked the government
| about the Ministry of Defence and the business department
| discussing the "relevance of UK civil nuclear industry skills
| and supply chains to the maintaining of UK nuclear submarine
| and wider nuclear weapons capabilities".
|
| > Harriett Baldwin, the defence procurement minister,
| answered that "it is fully understood that civil and defence
| sectors must work together to make sure resource is
| prioritised appropriately for the protection and prosperity
| of the United Kingdom".
|
| > [...]
|
| > At the PAC hearing, the Labour MP Meg Hillier asked whether
| "Hinkley is a great opportunity to maintain our nuclear
| skills base".
|
| > Lovegrove answered: "We are completing the build of the
| nuclear submarines which carry conventional weaponry. So
| somehow there is very definitely an opportunity here for the
| nation to grasp in terms of building up its nuclear skills. I
| don't think that's going to happen by accident. It is going
| to require concerted government action to make that happen."
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-
| news/2017/oct/12/electricity-...
|
| > Andrew Stirling believes that there was a crucial, largely
| unspoken, reason for the government's rediscovered passion
| for nuclear: without a civil nuclear industry, a nation
| cannot sustain military nuclear capabilities. In other words,
| no new nuclear power plants would spell the end of Trident.
| "The only countries in the world that are currently looking
| at large-scale civil power newbuild programmes are countries
| that have nuclear submarines, or have an expressed aim of
| acquiring them," Stirling told me.
|
| > Building nuclear submarines is a ferociously complicated
| business. It requires the kind of institutional memory and
| technical expertise that can easily disappear without
| practice. This, in theory, is where the civil nuclear
| industry comes in. If new nuclear power plants are being
| built, then the skills and capacity required by the military
| will be maintained. "It looks to be the case that the
| government is knowingly engineering an environment in which
| electricity consumers cross-subsidise this branch of military
| security," Stirling told me.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/21/hinkley-
| point-c...
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_(UK_nuclear_programme)
| panick21_ wrote:
| So basically what you are pointing out is that a bunch of
| people believe this, people who are high up in the
| government and the best they came up with is this:
|
| "So somehow there is very definitely an opportunity here
| for the nation to grasp in terms of building up its nuclear
| skills."
|
| Must be sad to have to base claims on so little evidence.
| indymike wrote:
| Oh, boy. This is 1950s propaganda against nuclear weapons
| and is 180 degrees from what hapend, and is just an attempt
| to create a chicken and egg circular argument. The military
| investment is what enabled widespread civilian nuclear
| power - for example, the US Navy trained thousands of
| engineers, operators, technicians and electricians who made
| it possible to build and staff civilian reactors.
|
| There are many industries like nuclear where the drive for
| military superiority led to the birth, acceleration, and
| sustenance of entire industries. We don't like to admit it
| sometimes, but if you look at Silicon Valley, you can see
| the military roots that gave rise to the semiconductor
| industry and internet industries in plain sight.
|
| Arguing that nuclear submarines are somehow subsidized in
| your electric bill is a far, far stretch - if anything
| those submarines are subsidizing the utility company,
| training their future employees and most importantly
| guaranteeing the viability of the government that issued
| the bonds to build the power plant, and guarantees the
| safety of it's operation.
|
| > Andrew Stirling
|
| Is an antinuclear activist, a former board member of Soviet
| funded Greenpeace and is not a credible name to raise in
| any argument about energy policy, save raising money for
| anti-nuclear groups.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| You are missing the forest for the trees in your blind
| defense of everything nuclear. There is no problem with
| the fact that the civilian nuclear programs came from the
| military ones.
|
| The point is that we have come full circle. For a nation
| not the size of the US, you today need to have a civilian
| nuclear program to have the industrial base to enable the
| military ambitions.
|
| Look at Sweden, a country once capable of building
| nuclear reactors. Today you can not even study nuclear
| engineering at any of the universities at the graduate
| level. The demand does not exist, so the programs died
| out.
|
| That is why you need to civilian complement. Otherwise,
| it is simply too costly.
| indymike wrote:
| I think you'd be better served by a different argument
| served with a lot less bluster directed at me (forest for
| the trees, blind defense, etc...).
|
| What you are arguing is that an industrial sector that
| was created with military funds, has a market far bigger
| than it's original military application. Nuclear is no
| different than nearly every other industry that relied on
| military research money, then early purchases that fueled
| initial industry growth, followed by growth where the
| sector's market grew to dwarf it's military purchases. In
| all cases, the military does benefit from less expensive
| chips, or pre-built utility communications
| infrastructure, or even less expensive fuel for
| submarines -- it is a simple and natural economic effect
| of scale.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Again, the market does not exist anymore. That is the
| point you are missing.
|
| The British taxpayers are set to lose ~PS50 billion in
| subsidies to Hinkley Point C because the government
| decided they needed a nuclear industry. [1]
|
| There is no market for nuclear except when you can tie
| them together with military ambitions or prestige
| projects in authoritarian countries.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear
| _power_...
| indymike wrote:
| The market exists, and nuclear power is expensive only
| because of artificial regulatory expense. Hinkley Point
| is the poster child for this. I'm sorry you feel so
| strongly about nuclear power. Since you raise the spectre
| of military ambitions, I'll point out that the war in
| Ukraine is an autocrat trying to control more of the
| world's oil and natural gas. Russia's war was financed
| largely by oil and gas and clearly is about controlling
| it's distribution. There's not one right answer to the
| world's energy needs. Nuclear is a part of it, as are
| renewables.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Which regulations should we remove then if it is that
| easy? We _tried_ to solve the climate crisis with nuclear
| energy 15-20 years ago. It was the right thing to do at
| the time but it did not work out, instead renewables have
| exceeded all possible expectations.
|
| Lets embrace that instead of living in the past and
| hoping another 40 years of taxpayer and ratepayer money
| into the blackhole that is nuclear is a worthwhile
| exercise.
|
| _All_ the current projects have gone horribly:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_P
| lan...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Pla
| nt
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_pow
| er_...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_
| Pla...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil_C._Summer_Nuclear_Ge
| ner...
|
| https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nuscale-nuclear-reactor-
| smr...
| poszlem wrote:
| I have no doubt in my mind that it is related to Japan's
| intention to prepare for the future where they might need to
| create their own nuclear weapons. While it is true that the
| processes and technologies used for producing electricity and
| weapons-grade materials are distinct, there is a clear link
| between the two. Many of the same principles and skills that
| are used in the civilian nuclear sector can be applied to the
| development of nuclear weapons, and countries with advanced
| civilian nuclear programs often have the technical
| capabilities and resources to pursue nuclear weapons if they
| so choose.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Yes just as there is a clear link between nuclear weapons
| and rockets. Just as there is clear link between nuclear
| weapons and computers. Just as there is a link between
| nuclear weapons and a logistical network of
| ports/trains/roads.
|
| Its almost like engineering is pretty universal and can be
| used many different ways.
|
| A country that has no nuclear power, but is advanced in all
| the other fields of engineering could probably slap
| together a nuclear weapon within a few years if they really
| needed to.
|
| So its pretty simply real, if you are an advanced
| industrial economy with lots of lots of engineering's, the
| science is there and you can just throw a lot of money on
| it.
|
| Japan already has developed all the 'secret' technology
| needed and could spin up a program quickly, if they had
| nuclear reactor or not.
| credit_guy wrote:
| I once heard former Defense Secretary Robert Gates saying that
| Japan can have nukes in a matter of weeks if they want.
| j-bos wrote:
| The post tsunami Fukushima disaster usually comes up as an
| example of nuclear disaster. And it is, but how much of the
| disaster was nuclear vs bureaucratic? I changed my perspectives
| on it, a little, after hearing this podcast episode, highly
| recommend: https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/cautionary-
| tales/a-tsunami-o...
| wkat4242 wrote:
| So what if the cause was bureaucratic rather than technical?
| That's worse in many ways. It means countries can't be trusted
| with making nuclear technology. All the flaws in the design and
| location of this plant were fully known and simply ignored.
| It's a fallacy to expect this won't happen in other places.
| DuskStar wrote:
| I think you're missing the distinction. It's not that
| bureaucracy caused the meltdown, it's that the bureaucratic
| reaction to the meltdown was the source of the damage.
| suction wrote:
| [dead]
| mrkramer wrote:
| What will Germany do now?
| tcfhgj wrote:
| finally invest in renewables instead of killing them off
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| That's a joke right? They're $500 billion into their
| investment in renewables, headed up to double that.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Energy diversification, not missions to end co2 emissions, should
| be prime energy policy. And every industry player in energy
| market should be put on notice. It's competition and innovation
| that will solve all sorts of problems from safety to emissions to
| efficiencies, in each of the respective energy sources.
|
| The Bush admin listened to established industry players (a key
| factor in their unpopularity) more than new innovative markets to
| determine policy. Obviously this was not the right way to go (at
| this time). The Obama era admin took enmity and idealism in
| energy policy to the forefront and that hurt a lot of people
| because it artificially put them out of business (and gave rise
| to Trumpian anger).
| fancyfredbot wrote:
| I don't understand why Japan doesn't make more use of geothermal
| power. There are numerous sources of geothermal power all over
| Japan but it's barely exploited at all.
| scythe wrote:
| Iceland is the geothermal poster child, which may cause this
| idea, since both countries are volcanic. But Japan's population
| density (330/km^2) is nearly 100 times larger than Iceland's
| (3.6/km^2). So the intensity of geothermal extraction must be
| correspondingly that much higher, which turns out to be
| impractical.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| [dead]
| thinkcontext wrote:
| No one has yet figured out how to scale it up.
| m4rtink wrote:
| IIRC the output of the geothermal wells is often quite
| corrosive & possibly prone to clogging due to all the
| contained minerals.
|
| Not insurmountable but still complicates things.
| logicchains wrote:
| Nuclear is less dangerous than people imagine. Studies on
| survivors of the atomic bombing of Japan
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4981260/ have shown
| that exposure to 1Gy of radiation (the equivalent of receiving
| ten thousand chest xrays simultaneously) only reduces lifespan by
| 1.3 years on average, and 0.1Gy of radiation only reduces it by
| 0.12 years.
| 93po wrote:
| Carbon producing power generation kills literally millions a
| year. Nuclear has killed 1 person in my living memory.
| rob74 wrote:
| _citation needed_ - and whenever I read this claim, I wonder:
| if a country is incapable of regulating its coal plants well
| enough so they don 't kill people via pollution, will it be
| capable of regulating its nuclear plants well enough so they
| don't blow up?
| kaushikc wrote:
| The fear for nuclear power is a manufactured one because there
| is almost no technological difference in the capabilities
| required to use nuclear power for energy and for weapons.
| Having many nuclear capable countries would mean a major shift
| in geopolitical situation of the planet, it would end up in
| choice of catastrophic destruction or permanent peace.
|
| I believe that countries that are already nuclear capable would
| always prefer to keep their advantage while using overblown
| fear propaganda about nuclear energy to create a deterrent for
| their population about nuclear power in order to maintain the
| status quo especially during difficult times.
| janef0421 wrote:
| Also, that is for acute radiation. Humans, and most other
| animals, appear to be far more resilient to continuous exposure
| to lower levels of radiation, which is the more common outcome
| for a major nuclear power accident.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| "Invest" means to spend money with a reasonable chance of a net
| return.
|
| There is no chance of a return here that outweighs the expenses.
| That's why Japan simple calls it spending. Maybe that spending is
| worth it for science or carbon neutrality or energy independence.
| Reasonable people may differ.
|
| But it is not an investment.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| A nation spending on its own energy infrastructure is an
| investment.
| vopoylovslov wrote:
| Said who? You?
| Gwypaas wrote:
| https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-
| energy-...
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| As more people are finally recognizing, LCOE is wholly
| unrelated to systems costs of large scale decarbonized
| systems. It assumes you have a free and giant fossil based
| grid hanging around to back you up when you hit a calm
| month.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| I do not get where you think that need of a fossil grid
| comes from? Seems like a hyperbole based on preconceived
| notions? Research has consistently shown that a 100%
| renewable grid is feasible and economically sound.
|
| > Much of the resistance towards 100% Renewable Energy
| (RE) systems in the literature seems to come from the
| a-priori assumption that an energy system based on solar
| and wind is impossible since these energy sources are
| variable. Critics of 100% RE systems like to contrast
| solar and wind with 'firm' energy sources like nuclear
| and fossil fuels (often combined with CCS) that bring
| their own storage. This is the key point made in some
| already mentioned reactions, such as those by Clack et
| al. [225], Trainer [226], Heard et al. [227] Jenkins et
| al. [228], and Caldeira et al. [275], [276].
|
| > However, while it is true that keeping a system with
| variable sources stable is more complex, a range of
| strategies can be employed that are often ignored or
| underutilized in critical studies: oversizing solar and
| wind capacities; strengthening interconnections [68],
| [82], [132], [143], [277], [278]; demand response [279],
| [172], e.g. smart electric vehicles charging using
| delayed charging or delivering energy back to the
| electricity grid via vehicle-to-grid [181], [280]-[282];
| storage (battery, compressed air, pumped hydro)[40]-[43],
| [46], [83], [140], [142], such as stationary batteries;
| sector coupling [16], [39], [90]-[92], [97], [132],
| [216], e.g. optimizing the interaction between
| electricity, heat, transport, and industry; power-to-X
| [39], [106], [134], [176], e.g. producing hydrogen at
| moments when there is abundant energy; et cetera. Using
| all these strategies effectively to mitigate variability
| is where much of the cutting-edge development of 100% RE
| scenarios takes place.
|
| > With every iteration in the research and with every
| technological breakthrough in these areas, 100% RE
| systems become increasingly viable. Even former critics
| must admit that adding e-fuels through PtX makes 100% RE
| possible at costs similar to fossil fuels. These critics
| are still questioning whether 100% RE is the cheapest
| solution but no longer claim it would be unfeasible or
| prohibitively expensive. Variability, especially short
| term, has many mitigation options, and energy system
| studies are increasingly capturing these in their 100% RE
| scenarios.
|
| https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910
|
| Or we can take a look at Wikipedia for an even broader
| view
|
| > 100% renewable energy means getting all energy from
| renewable resources. The endeavor to use 100% renewable
| energy for electricity, heating, cooling and transport is
| motivated by climate change, pollution and other
| environmental issues, as well as economic and energy
| security concerns.
|
| > Research into this topic is fairly new, with very few
| studies published before 2009, but has gained increasing
| attention in recent years. The majority of studies show
| that a global transition to 100% renewable energy across
| all sectors - power, heat, transport and desalination -
| is feasible and economically viable.[5][6][7][8] A cross-
| sectoral, holistic approach is seen as an important
| feature of 100% renewable energy systems and is based on
| the assumption "that the best solutions can be found only
| if one focuses on the synergies between the sectors" of
| the energy system such as electricity, heat, transport or
| industry.[9]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| > I do not get where you think that need of a fossil grid
| comes from?
|
| This comes from the assumptions made when computing LCOE.
| For example in Germany last month they ran on almost all
| fossil for a whole month. Paying for the ability to not
| do that is not included at all in Lazard LCOE numbers.
|
| Who cares if 100% renewable is _possible_. Of course it
| is. Things are either forbidden by the laws of physics,
| or possible. Things that are possible are not necessarily
| desirable or logical. For example, "renewable" is a
| meaningless term. Biofuel is included in renewable,
| though it leads to a high ("but stabilized!") atmospheric
| concentration of CO2 and deadly particulate emissions.
|
| Sustainable and low-carbon are much more specific, well-
| defined, and important characteristics for a future world
| energy system. If you go for 100% sustainable and low-
| carbon, nuclear is in and biofuel is out.
|
| The main people publishing 100% renewables papers are
| hardcore anti-nuclear leaders like MJZ. For every 100%
| renewable publication, there are many others showing that
| a judicious mix of 24/7 nuclear plus renewables is a far
| more flexible, resilient, robust, and cheap mix.
|
| https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2018.08.006
|
| https://unece.org/climate-change/press/international-
| climate...
|
| I don't understand why people want to fight nuclear so
| much. With so much fossil and biofuel in operation,
| there's way more than enough room to build everything
| that's low carbon, sustainable, and safe.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
|
| > I do not get where you think that need of a fossil grid
| comes from?
| posterboy wrote:
| > There is no chance of a return here that outweighs the
| expenses.
|
| Considering the risk?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Well, you get an economy out of it. Minus the economic utility
| of printing I Did That stickers.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Not if you could get the same economy out another much
| cheaper way. Which you can.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| Everything has trade-offs, there is no simply "better"
| option on the table, every option sucks. Fossil fuels have
| co2 emissions, price fluctuations and energy security as
| issues (as seen with Russia today who weaponised their
| supply), renewables have consistency problems which is
| problematic until we solve our energy storage issues,
| nuclear has massive issues around waste and runtime danger
| and hydro is limited by geography.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| I think the issues you list for nuclear are exaggerated.
| The real problem is the cost and complexity of
| construction, which could be solved with mini reactors
| where the technology is still not quite there for mass
| production. The licensing is also a problem at least in
| some countries, as getting a permit is very difficult it
| makes sense to only build massive power plants.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| > I think the issues you list for nuclear are
| exaggerated.
|
| I don't. Current estimates for the dismantlement of
| Sellafield in the UK is PS121 billion and that figure is
| likely somewhat lower than the final cost.
|
| Given that most proposals are created in order to be
| accepted there is a high chance the total costs of the
| plant (including decommissioning) are understated.
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/15/d
| ismantl...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Reading the article, you can see why it's not an honest
| example to back up your point. Sellafield was built
| partly without decommissioning in mind, it was originally
| used for something else (making plutonium for weapons)
| and still has 140 tonnes of that plutonium on site. It
| was built with world war 3 in mind. It's not a modern
| nuclear reactor.
|
| Sellafield has more unknowns that most, but I doubt it's
| been underbid. I think nuclear proposals undergo a great
| deal of scrutiny and are some of the most cost-complete
| in existence. Hinkley Point C in the UK, its masterful
| government negotiation aside, has I believe a total
| lifetime cost of around PS40bn.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| You're not wrong, but that's not my point. If people want
| to spend money on X, that's up to them. But it isn't an
| investment unless they expect to make their cash back
| plus a profit. So as soon as people want to pretend it is
| an "investment" there very much is a simple better
| option: whatever costs less and generates more revenue.
| On that basis Nuclear is never the right answer.
| [deleted]
| lelanthran wrote:
| > But it isn't an investment unless they expect to make
| their cash back plus a profit.
|
| If that is the bar you're going to use for "investment",
| then no power generation spending is ever an investment.
| Not coal, not batteries, not geothermal, not renewables,
| nothing...
|
| Because none of the above make their cash back plus a
| profit; they're all subsidised by taxpayers.
| ChefboyOG wrote:
| This is pedantry, and incorrect at that. To invest in
| something simply means to spend some resources and expect
| a material result. Energy independence, carbon
| neutrality, scientific progress, etc. are all material
| results one could hope for while "investing".
|
| If you think another form of energy production is better,
| that's a perfectly reasonable objection. Twisting the
| discussion into a debate over the precise definition of
| "investment" is silly.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| You're taking too narrow a definition.
|
| Investment:
|
| > Property or another possession acquired for future
| financial return or benefit.
|
| Invest:
|
| > to commit (money) in order to earn a financial return
|
| > to make use of for future benefits or advantages
| invested her time wisely
|
| > to involve or engage especially emotionally were deeply
| invested in their children's lives
|
| Clearly you can outlay capital now for a future benefit
| tomorrow that isn't just your original capital back + the
| investment. Making sure you're energy supply is stable so
| that your economy is working better and your national
| security is a bit more stable seems like a clear ROI even
| if you don't make your capital back + profit directly (it
| does have potential indirect financial benefits too
| though).
| Retric wrote:
| Last numbers I looked at had Unsubsidized Battery backed
| solar as already significantly cheaper than unsubsidized
| nuclear at scale.
|
| Things presumably look slightly different in Japan, but
| this is looking like political rather than an economic
| decision. Right this moment they have some cover to save
| the industry even if little is going to change any time
| soon.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Last numbers I looked at had Unsubsidized Battery
| backed solar as already significantly cheaper than
| unsubsidized nuclear at scale.
|
| That's interesting. Two queries: Are they real world
| numbers or projections vs real numbers? And are they done
| in the sort of setup that we have in the UK, where
| renewable is soft-subsidised by always winning the bids
| for demand when it's available, and non-renewable gets
| what's left.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Those are LCOE marginal numbers that don't consider
| systems costs like overbuilding capacity to charge
| batteries, extra transmission, long-term backup capacity,
| etc.
|
| LCOE is unrelated to systems costs.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| > LCOE is unrelated to systems costs.
|
| Yeah, imagine how great it will be when we can dimension
| the electricity grid for the average consumption rather
| than peak due to distributed generation and storage.
| raspberry1337 wrote:
| Last numbers I looked at had nuclear much more profitable
| than solar, especially during winter, hence why China is
| currently installing 20 new reactors, with a goal for
| much more in the future.
| Retric wrote:
| China has been adding _VASTLY_ more solar than nuclear.
| 20 new reactors is only something like 5GW /year because
| of how long it takes to build nuclear.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Sure, but why do you think they'd adding _both_? Solar
| for intermittent, and nuclear for base.
| Retric wrote:
| Finite manufacturing capacity is a factor.
|
| 5GW / year @ 90% capacity factor ~= 3 million 200W panels
| @ 30% capacity factor + 40-60GWh of batteries. It's not
| completely equivalent, but they both need roughly the
| same amount of peaking power plants to make up the
| difference.
|
| Plus Solar's costs are front loaded, with China's rapidly
| growing economy they can ignore decommissioning or even
| long term operating costs as largely irrelevant.
| willcipriano wrote:
| > nuclear has massive issues around waste
|
| The waste issue has been solved.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/06/24/deep-
| bore...
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| I wouldn't consider the existence of a start-up proof
| that a problem has been solved, especially given the need
| of hyping one's own product (and possibly downplaying any
| remaining challenges) as a nascent organisation.
| willcipriano wrote:
| This isn't new stuff[0], just made more affordable by
| some technology from the fracking industry. It's Yucca
| Mountain without the mountain.
|
| [0]https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2015/03/05/can
| t-we-j...
|
| [0-1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_dispos
| al
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| Sure but until it is actually utilised and proven to work
| on the scales required for existing nuclear deployments
| it still remains an estimate and not a precise cost.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Now do grid scale batteries. "Renewables" have the same
| issue and are looked at rather uncritically. We dig
| boreholes like this on a regular basis, all that's left
| is tossing the waste containers in.
| HPsquared wrote:
| That really depends on future energy prices; it's always a bit
| of a gamble.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Not really. Even if you assume crazy high energy prices in
| the future you get a larger return on your investment using
| cheaper technology.
|
| https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-
| energy-...
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Japan's solar and onshore wind resources are pretty abysmal
| and their ocean shelf is steep. Unless you expect them to
| cover the entire early adopter costs of floating offshore
| wind (and too quickly for the devopment money to be
| efficient), then there's not really a viable renewable
| option for bulk power the next 8 years or so.
|
| Even if it costs on the order of $150US/MWh to restart
| their reactors it makes sense.
| pfdietz wrote:
| If Japan is forced to go with nuclear they are still
| competing with cheap renewables elsewhere in the world.
| This is bad news for Japanese heavy industry. In a
| defossilized world some places will be energy ghettos.
| This is probably bad news for Europe, too.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| The latest floating off-shore wind pilot project in UK
| went for PS87.30/MWh = $105US/MWh.
|
| This is a super low scale project so if it works out we
| can expect costs to reduce quite drastically when scaling
| it up.
|
| https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploa
| ds/...
|
| https://www.twinhub.co.uk/
|
| Company building the floating foundation:
|
| https://www.hexicongroup.com/
| throwuwu wrote:
| Do some research into Japans track record on building Nuclear.
| They're one of the few countries that didn't let green peace
| idiots ruin their regulatory bodies so they're still able to
| build nuclear plants in the same amount of time it takes to
| build a coal burning plant.
| pfdietz wrote:
| This is an interesting take when regulatory capture enabled
| TEPCO to keep operating those plants that melted down even in
| the face of what should have been clearly dangerous
| compromises.
|
| People who complain about nuclear regulation are really just
| saying "let us have some meltdowns, they aren't really that
| bad." That's also why they go on saying mixed up nonsense
| about radiation hormesis.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| They're going to spend well over $100B and potentially up to
| $1T cleaning up Fukushima.. either figure would've been
| better spent on literally anything else.. hard to call
| Japan's nuclear regulatory backdrop a success story. And I'm
| sorry, there's absolutely no chance that the next reactor is
| built in under a decade. Working on Vogtle bankrupted
| Toshiba's nuclear unit.
| koheripbal wrote:
| This is a pointless semantic argument, that it's even correct.
| [deleted]
| vagrantJin wrote:
| I wonder why nuclear gets so much hate and fearmongering. Its a
| marvel of engineering and long term energy solutions lie just
| within our grasp.
|
| I don't get the fear. Any anti-nuclear POV, however casual, is
| welcome.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| My disillusionment with the promises of nuclear actually came
| from hearing a professor of nuclear energy speak. He himself
| was brilliant and staunchly pro-nuclear, but his rhetoric
| turned me off it, probably forever. Here's what happened: He
| was holding a presentation on nuclear power and mentioned
| safety, claiming that according to the best models there would
| be one large nuclear accident every million years. This was
| shortly after Fukishima, and counting that along with three
| mile island and Chernobyl, it's clear that the actual number is
| closer to every twenty years. To have someone with a higher IQ
| than me talk about a model off by a factor of 50 000 and
| indicate no need to update it tells me this is an industry with
| way too much kool-aid.
|
| My low opinion was solidified when in the same year I overheard
| a nuclear proponent criticizing Japanese 'housewives' who had
| the temerity to get their own Geiger counters after Fukishima
| and note when radiation levels passed the official guidelines
| in their area. I'm sorry, but if you're against a citizenry
| informing itself you're against democracy, and the industry you
| advocate for is going to take a hit by association with you.
| You might say that these two examples aren't representative of
| the industry as a whole, but they're the representatives I met
| and I've yet to see a good counterexample.
|
| A couple other criticisms:
|
| -Refining nuclear material for peaceful purposes does make it
| easier to refine it for less peaceful ones. This is probably
| the source of the 'fear' you're referring to.
|
| -Nuclear is nonrenewable, fissionable material will run out in
| time like fossil fuels
|
| -focusing on EROI hides the cost of capital, which is
| substantial. Investing in nuclear requires a huge concentration
| of capital and risk. Capital isn't free, something the economic
| arguments for Nuclear tend to gloss over.
|
| -I don't see how that much concentration of capital and hence
| payback can avoid increasing wealth inequality. With solar
| there's a plausible and peaceful way for the poorest people to
| eventually own the means of production - not a share where
| their votes don't count but the physical tool that creates
| energy. That can't happen with a nuclear economy, it will
| always be owned by an elite, managed by an elite, and leave
| most people as unimportant economic actors.
|
| -Pro-nuclear arguments frequently insult the opposition. It
| gives a bad impression.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > He was holding a presentation on nuclear power and
| mentioned safety, claiming that according to the best models
| there would be one large nuclear accident every million
| years.
|
| This part reminds me of how NASA's calculations for
| crashes/failures were _very_ low, like 1 in a million
| officially, but when casually asked most engineers estimated
| it at 1 in a few /one hundred (my memory is fuzzy) - which
| was about the actual rate of crashes.
|
| Humans, even smart ones, have biases unfortunately. (I
| personally still think nuclear is the best, even if we end up
| with ~3 more medium accidents in the 21st century.)
| z3c0 wrote:
| So your critique of nuclear energy (a position) is somebody
| who over-zealously evangelized the technology (their
| character)? This is about as ad hominem as stances come.
| axus wrote:
| Sort of like arguing that Trump and his supporters would
| make a bad president, based only on the crazy things they
| say
| z3c0 wrote:
| No, it is not, and I'll go so far as to suggest that you
| actually know that but are choosing to misrepresent the
| perspective (aka a strawman fallacy). The value of a
| politician is very much measured by the nature of their
| rhetoric, and it's very often not indicative of their
| underlying character. To point out deliberately vitriolic
| rhetoric in politics is _not_ an ad hominem.
|
| To say that Trump was a bad president because he's a
| misogynistic egoist _would_ be an ad hominem, no matter
| how true it is.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| I also have all the practical concerns I put in bullet form
| at the end of my post. The characters I met in the nuclear
| lobby just motivated me to think about it.
| 93po wrote:
| > -Nuclear is nonrenewable, fissionable material will run out
| in time like fossil fuels
|
| There are enough raw materials to run breeder-style reactors
| for literally billions of years
| TheCleric wrote:
| I'm not anti-nuclear, but here's how I see it. It has many
| upsides, but it has two major downsides:
|
| 1) You have to handle the spent fuel (either by storage or
| recycling, neither of which is easy). 2) When it goes wrong, it
| goes WRONG. See Chernobyl and Fukushima.
| z3c0 wrote:
| Both your points are valid (and highly common) talking points
| in the debate, but coal and petrol aren't exempt from these
| matters.
|
| 1) There is no handling of spent fuel. The atmosphere handles
| it. At least nuclear lets us capture and store it for
| handling it later.
|
| 2) Oil drilling and coal mining both go wrong constantly,
| with enough deaths and environmental impact to swallow
| nuclears' very short list of disasters
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d.
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_gas_and_oil_pr.
| ..
|
| 3) Even when things _aren 't_ going wrong, people still die
| working on oil rigs.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6420a4.htmt
|
| I'll add that these numbers are likely deflated due to me
| mostly focusing on US stats. Dare I say that the problem is
| even worse than these articles portray.
| z3c0 wrote:
| My last link got an extra "t" appended:
| https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6420a4.htm
| s_dev wrote:
| At least the disaster is localized to a single terrible
| place. With coal and gas it undermines the integrity of the
| planet contributing to climate change.
| Kon5ole wrote:
| Nuclear disasters are not localized. Geographically the
| radioactive release travels large distances with the wind
| and causes severe radiation effects hundreds of miles away.
| Chernobyl was basically a prevented disaster (the worst we
| have seen but nowhere near a worst-case scenario) and the
| effects are still costing money to deal with today hundreds
| of miles from the site.
|
| https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/cloud-of-
| ra...
|
| But the main problem is that it's not localized in time.
| Chernobyl is a problem for several countries still to this
| day, and the actual site itself will continue to be a
| problem for generations to come.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| 1. Is not a real problem because it doesn't take up much
| space.
|
| 2. The total death toll from the Fukushima incident is 1 (so
| far). For comparision, the tsunami & earthquake that caused
| Fukushima to meltdown killed 20000 and injured 6000 more.
|
| And Chernobyl doesn't really count, as no reactor worldwide
| is capable of Chernobyling, and hasn't been for the past 25
| years at least.
|
| Chernobyl is a horror story that can be told to childen about
| Soviet/Russian incompetence, not as a valid example about the
| dangers of nuclear energy.
|
| Likewise, Fukushima can be used as an example about how safe
| a worst case scenario actually is.
| clnq wrote:
| Looking at Wikipedia, there are still a few RBMK reactors
| in Russia -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK#List_of_RBMK_reactors.
|
| Some of the design flaws of RBMK were retroactively
| addressed in existing reactors post-Chornobyl. In
| particular, the flawed control rod mechanism was addressed.
| It would cause power excursions/criticality when the rods
| were inserted. However, neither the high positive void
| coefficient nor the lack of containment buildings was
| addressed in RBMK. These unsafe features of the reactors
| led to the shutdown of the only two RBMKs that were ever in
| the EU (in Ignalina NPP).
|
| While it is difficult to argue the idea that no reactor is
| capable of "Chernobyling", as "Chernobyling" is a very
| particular scenario, RBMKs are generally considered unsafe.
| The lack of containment buildings is particularly
| concerning because, without containment failure, we would
| not have had either the Chornobyl or the Fukushima Daiichi
| disaster.
|
| While RBMKs are not built anymore, and the new Russian VVER
| reactors are much safer, they still don't meet EU safety
| requirements. A future evolution of VVER-1200 called
| MIR-1200 should, although it is difficult to find much
| information about this.
|
| Overall, I am saying that "Chernobyling" can mean different
| things as several design and operation faults needed to
| align for that disaster to happen. Some design faults in
| Russian NPP reactors have been addressed, some not.
| Overall, VVERs look very safe as they address all major
| RBMK design faults, but for some reason still don't meet EU
| safety requirements. So I wonder what design faults
| persist. I do agree that Gen 3+ reactor designs look very
| safe.
| m4rtink wrote:
| I wonder if RBMK with a containment would help - the
| power spike they managed to trigger in Chernobyl was
| couple orders of magnitude over the design specifications
| so I wonder if any realistic containment building would
| be able to handle that withou still bursting in the end.
| the8472 wrote:
| Why stop at a containment _building_? It 's economical to
| build underground mines to extract coal and minerals.
| Might as well build mines to house nuclear reactors in
| stable geologic structures. If it goes wrong seal it and
| return a hundred years later to scoop out the corium and
| burn it in a breeder reactor.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > The total death toll from the Fukushima incident is 1 (so
| far), and Chernobyl doesn't really count, as no reactor
| worldwide is capable of Chernobyling, and hasn't been for
| the past 25 years at least.
|
| Except the 8 RBMKs still in service perhaps? Their problems
| were only partially fixed.
| dustincoates wrote:
| Of course, the alternative of this is that burning coal goes
| really wrong when it goes right--coal leads to 1,000 times
| more death per kWh than nuclear.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| no, it is not.
|
| The alternative is renewable energy.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| Well more people die from workplace accidents installing
| solar than from nuclear
| pitaj wrote:
| I think it's a little odd that people always loop in
| Fukushima with Chernobyl. The Chernobyl accident was at least
| an order of magnitude worse.
|
| More people died simply because of the evacuation than from
| the effects of the Fukushima accident.
| cma wrote:
| Chernobyl isn't necessarily over yet. It's the first
| entombed nuclear disaster to be part of a conventional war.
| pretendscholar wrote:
| I'm pretty pro nuclear but you have to count the deaths
| from the evacuation because it is an direct consequence of
| the accident.
| jayant_kaushik wrote:
| > 1) You have to handle the spent fuel (either by storage or
| recycling, neither of which is easy).
|
| This is easy to solve. Just launch the waste into Space. A
| typical large reactor produces 25-30 tonnes of used fuel per
| year. That'll take one space trip for Falcon 9 to launch it
| into Space on a trajectory to nowhere. It'll destroy itself
| over millions of years or immediately. Either I make no sense
| at all or why else has no one tried it yet?
| chris_va wrote:
| Two reasons:
|
| 1) Because storing spent nuclear fuel on earth isn't
| actually hard, it is just brought up anytime people talk
| about nuclear because it's the obvious thing to talk about.
|
| 2) Rocket fleets have a ~97% success rate (e.g. see Vega C
| this week). Spreading 3% of the radioactive material
| globally isn't a great idea.
| somedude895 wrote:
| > A typical large reactor produces 25-30 tonnes of used
| fuel per year.
|
| Falcon 9 carries that to Low Earth Orbit. You do not want
| the waste hanging around there. To get it out of earth's
| orbit, F9 can do 8 tons.
|
| That's 3 - 4 flights per year per reactor, so about $250m
| per year. Plus Falcon 9 did 60 flights this year, so this
| even capacity-wise this would only be enough for 20
| reactors worldwide.
|
| Plus like other commenters mentioned, a launch failure
| would be catastrophic.
| holbrad wrote:
| What happens on a failed launch ?
| numpad0 wrote:
| No, that's the other way around. We should be building and
| launching reactors from low/microgravity into microgravity,
| and somehow bring down only the energy e.g. as synthetic
| fuel. We shouldn't be building and operating fission
| reactors on Earth, where we eat and sleep, for long.
| mbernstein wrote:
| It's worth noting we're really bad as a species in judging
| long term negative impacts and hyper focus on short term
| tragedy. Point 1 is fair, but how wrong coal burning has been
| over an extended time frame is far worse than all of nuclear.
| It's the whole plane crash vs car crash issue.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| > When it goes wrong, it goes WRONG. See Chernobyl and
| Fukushima.
|
| This is a very weak argument. It's akin to comparing driving
| vs flying in terms of safety. Flying also goes WRONG when it
| goes wrong. But how would a comparison based on energy output
| vs material/human damage look like? I mean coal also goes
| WRONG, see the Aberfan disaster.
| [deleted]
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| Large coal interests have funded a large, decades long FUD
| campaign against nuclear via so called "environmental" groups.
| u_1f4a9 wrote:
| can you give some examples where this happened? i had a hard
| time googleing it without knowing what to search for
| weberer wrote:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-
| f...
|
| https://atomicinsights.com/smoking-gun/
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Coal interests are nukes' biggest boosters now.
|
| They know coal is doomed. But each nuke start guarantees a
| decade's extension on the coal contract. It furthermore burns
| capital that could build out several times as much wind and
| solar generating capacity, that would start displacing all
| that coal almost immediately.
|
| Big coal _loves_ nukes.
| jpgvm wrote:
| Nope.
|
| They love solar and wind because both result in a grid that
| for the forseeable future requires peaker plants. Usually
| LNG which they see as their greenwashed future.
|
| They hate hydro for the same reason they hate nukes, they
| are too damn stable, entirely removing the possible need
| for fossil fuel based plants in base load generation or
| grid stability.
|
| Lets build solar, wind, hydro and nuclear. If you can't
| build hydro though nukes really are the best alternative
| and the sooner people come around to that idea the sooner
| fossil fuels die.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Hint: peaker plants do not burn coal.
|
| Hydro is moot. There is noplace left to build hydro
| generation (storage is completely different), so there is
| no reason to mention it, except to note that an existing
| reservoir is an excellent place to float a solar farm.
| jpgvm wrote:
| Yeah they don't burn coal, they are hoping to transition
| to natural gas and we shouldn't stand for that shit. That
| is literally the whole point of my comment.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| NG will be displaced by cheaper synthetic fuel, in time.
|
| Demand for NG will fall off relentlessly as it is
| displaced by renewables and storage, and finally be
| pinched off by synthetics generated from renewables'
| surpluses.
| dale_glass wrote:
| I think the tech is fine, but obsolete at this point. It's just
| won't work economically or politically.
|
| Economically speaking it's too expensive to build. It doesn't
| compete well with renewables and is a very long term plan,
| which is bad news if you're on shaky ground to start with. It
| may never pay off if you build it today. So nobody is rushing
| to build them on their own. Now maybe with government help,
| but...
|
| Politically, it takes way too long to build. So even if you
| expend the political effort on making it happen, you likely
| won't be around to reap the benefits, which makes it a bad
| political project. It also tends to be late, and more expensive
| than planned.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| I'm very anti-nuclear, but not for technological reasons. It's
| purely political, but I'll try to be as neutral as possible.
|
| The baseline is that the probability of failure is so low, but
| the effects are devastating, which gives a company (or a state,
| for that matter) all the incentive to focus on short-term
| savings, while increasing the tiny probabilities, because in
| all likelihood, the people taking the decisions today will
| never see the effects of it.
|
| Yes, from a technological standpoint, we could build safe
| nuclear, but we haven't found a political system to do it yet.
| jmull wrote:
| I don't think this should get downvoted.
|
| We all get that Fukushima was preventable... but it _wasn 't_
| prevented.
|
| A lot of pro-nuclear people just blow off Fukushima, which
| tells me you just aren't really engaging seriously.
|
| (BTW, I lean pro-nuclear... but a lot of the pro-nuclear
| comments here on the risks amount to "don't worry about it"
| and whaddaboutism. This is not remotely compelling.)
| Manuel_D wrote:
| And a lot of renewable activists just blow off the Banqiao
| dam catastrophe that killed hundreds of thousands. And
| rightly so: averages, not outliers, are what matter.
| chris_va wrote:
| It was one of the worst accidents in nuclear history. ...
| that killed ~1 person.
|
| I think the disconnect here is that the "whaddaboutism"
| type arguments are actually relevant for once. Arguing
| against nuclear (or anything else) is implicitly an
| argument to use alternative sources of power, as society
| isn't generally leaving people in the dark with no
| electricity. If the Fukushima reactor hadn't been there,
| then it would have bean a coal or natural gas plant. Both
| would have killed far more people over the lifetime of the
| plant.
|
| I think people have an allergic reaction to nuclear power
| that goes beyond rational, given the underlying statistics
| deaths/TWh. Having a single terrifying moment certainly
| imprints a lot more heavily on people's minds, though, than
| distributed deaths.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| A whole region where 170 000 people lived was evacuated,
| some of them were not able to return for years. That has
| a cost as well, one that is hard to quantify.
|
| Replacing nuclear with coal is obviously a bad idea. But
| replacing it with hydro, wind, solar power is so much
| better.
| jmull wrote:
| My point is to _not_ blow off Fukushima... and you
| respond by blowing off Fukushima.
|
| Maybe approach it from the other direction: what _was_
| the impact of Fukushima?
|
| (You wouldn't really argue the sum total impact was one
| human life, right?)
| chris_va wrote:
| I think perhaps you didn't take the "one of worst nuclear
| accidents in history" part as much of an acknowledgement
| as intended. Disasters are not the norm, so focusing on
| the disaster intrinsically misses the global cost/benefit
| trade-off, which I think seems more important to people
| trying to have broad policy discussions.
|
| To your point, the primary impact was the large scale
| evacuation. Horrible for anyone living immediately
| nearby. On the scale of terrible power-plants, maybe
| worse than living next to an active coal plant, but
| better than living downstream of a collapsed hydro-dam.
| user_7832 wrote:
| I'm extremely uninformed about this, but isn't it the purpose
| of international atomic energy boards to physically review
| all plants frequently to reduce this? I'm not suggesting it's
| a perfect solution, and I suppose Fukushima proves that, but
| the incentives are a much lesser issue than otherwise.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Because nuclear is enormously expensive and has always been
| subsidized by taxes or ratepayers. Subsidizing nuclear made
| sense when we were in the first R&D and commercialization phase
| 60 years ago. The idea to keep shoveling money into that black
| hole stopped making sense decades ago.
|
| Coal and nuclear are uncompetitive simply from the cost of the
| steam side. Today you can just about give a steam plant free
| energy, and it still makes a loss.
|
| Solar or wind does not have this limitation. CCGT gas plants
| get around it by having a turbine giving raw mechanical power
| and then utilizing the same awful steam side to get the last
| percentage points of efficiency at a much smaller required
| scale.
|
| Coal still gets built where gas infrastructure does not exist,
| but that's about it.
| scythe wrote:
| >Because nuclear is enormously expensive
|
| I've seen the LCoE numbers [1] everyone uses to argue that
| solar + storage is cheaper than nuclear. It does show a price
| premium for nuclear. But it is not "enormous" (it's maybe
| 2-3x more expensive). It's also plausible that nuclear, being
| an older technology, is less likely to run into unexpected
| costs, particularly those associated with the rate of
| implementation -- production bottlenecks, increased land
| prices, etc.
|
| 1: https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generatio
| n....
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Given the outcome of Flamanville 3, Olkiluoto 3, Hinkley
| Point C, Vogtle, Virgil C. Summer and NuScale that
| predictability leans heavily towards renewables. They get
| built on time and within budget.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Pla
| n...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power
| _...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pl
| a...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil_C._Summer_Nuclear_Gene
| r...
|
| https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nuscale-nuclear-reactor-
| smr...
| scythe wrote:
| The EPA numbers are from 2022, so assuming a modestly
| competent methodology they've already taken these issues
| into account. Choosing the six worst projects you can
| find is hardly a good analysis.
|
| The scale-up issues I mentioned would not be applicable
| until you actually have very high construction volume,
| which currently does not exist anywhere. For example, the
| US built some 20 GW of PV in 2021, which is worth about
| 40 TWh/year assuming a typical capacity factor. But at
| that rate it would take some 90 years to build enough for
| the whole country, ignoring a likely increase in
| electricity consumption for heating and transportation
| (displacing gas), and ignoring any replacement. So the
| actually needed rate of solar installation is probably
| around five to ten times the current rate. Certainly,
| there is plenty of land and silicon in the long run. But
| there is still the question of whether it will be bought
| and produced at similar prices when the market pressures
| are that much larger. And the US still beat e.g. Germany
| in PV installs per capita in 2021.
|
| The goal is not only to get off fossil fuels, but to do
| it fast.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Are you sure we aren't still in that "first R&D and
| commercialization phase"? One might argue that we never moved
| beyond that point, after disasters caused by early reactor
| designs killed any interest in further advancements.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| That's a bit hard to argue. There were plenty of early
| meltdowns in the 1950s and we kept on going. Now as we add
| it all up we see that fossil and biofuel combustion kills
| the entirety of commercial nuclear power industry's
| lifetime death toll ever 8 hours. And nuclear is low carbon
| and 24/7 and low footprint. So yeah it still looks pretty
| darn good. Hence Japan's announcement.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| The great thing today is that fossil and biofuels are not
| alternatives today. It is renewables. So no point arguing
| a straw man.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Renewables don't yet exist with the capability to do all
| season power. See Germany last month. Notice also how
| much gas is being built as we speak. So the straw man is
| actually renewables. Also the world is about 82% fossil
| and biofuel.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| So it is impossible until it is possible? Gotta prove it
| physically instead of engineering a system that is known
| to work.
|
| > Also the world is about 82% fossil and biofuel.
|
| Primary energy usage, so an utterly irrelevant metric.
| With a completely electrified society, the primary energy
| use decreases heavily. As we all know, heat engines throw
| away 65-80% of the incoming energy as heat leading to
| that number.
| tcgv wrote:
| > Coal and nuclear are uncompetitive simply from the cost of
| the steam side
|
| Do you have any reference regarding this claim?
|
| Like the ROI for each kind of energy source, or the payback
| time for the investment to build the energy plant.
| h1fra wrote:
| Nuclear is expensive to build yet it's the most efficient
| solution.
|
| Electricity (and water, school, roads, etc...) is a
| requirement to live a decent life. The fact that is
| unthinkable for you that it could be done without profit is
| saying a lot.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| > Because it is enormously expensive and have always been
| subsidized by taxes or ratepayers.
|
| I don't understand what this means. Are you suggesting there
| are utilities not funded by taxes?
|
| Power generation will always be expensive and heavily
| subsidized by the state along with Water and agriculture.
|
| Coal is the next best thing. Plentiful, cheap, super
| polluting.
|
| I'm not sure a grid can rely on solar and wind. They are
| getting cheaper ofcourse but they need a lot of land, high
| maintenance, and not exactly the most reliable. We wil figure
| it out eventually.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Usually electricity _transmission_ is funded by taxes since
| that is centralized infrastructure. Production is often a
| commercial endeavor where energy is trade by the hour, or
| through longer contracts, on open markets. This depends on
| the country though.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Pool
| throwuwu wrote:
| [flagged]
| Mrdarknezz wrote:
| Thank god
| traceroute66 wrote:
| I see some comments further down that say "Japan should have
| avoided Fukushima because they knew the Tsunami and earthquake
| risk".
|
| On the subject of earthquakes, I think it's fair to say that
| Fukushima, like all other buildings in Japan will certainly have
| been designed with earthquake risks. Japan has a long and proven
| history of constructing buildings that are safe in earthquakes.
|
| On the subject of Tsunamis, all I will say is that I have been
| fortunate enough to be able to visit part of the affected stretch
| of coastline. All I will say is that you really don't comprehend
| what a Tsunami is until you go there and you see 4/5 story
| apartment blocks, some of which are maybe up to 1 - 1.5km (appx
| 0.5 - 1 mile) inland which have clearly suffered substantial
| Tsunami caused damage on their _UPPER_ floors. Then you
| extrapolate in your mind, that if this was the upper floors
| inland, then just imagine the sheer wall of water that you would
| be facing at the water 's edge, which is where a nuclear plant
| would be !
|
| At great local controversy, and great expense (appx 12 billion US
| dollars) in order to encourage re-population by residents and
| businesses, the Japanese have been busy building a massive wall
| along that stretch of coastline. The pictures you can find on the
| internet[1] don't do it justice. This is not a US or Israel style
| wall built purposely high in order to stop people climbing it, it
| is built so high because that represents the size required to
| break up a full-scale Tsunami wave. Again, going there and
| standing next to the wall, it really drives home to you the sheer
| scale and might of a Tsunami !
|
| Could they have protected the nuclear plant by building a wall at
| the time of construction ? I don't know, I'm not a subject-matter
| expert, but after visiting the region, I think its safe to say
| its probably one of those "its not that easy" problems.
|
| [1]
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2018/mar/09/after-...
| jchw wrote:
| Contrary to the cynical takes so far here, this is both good news
| and logical.
|
| Nuclear fission does come with risks. Japan already paid the
| price of one costly lesson with the Fukushima Daiichi incident.
| Whatever your thoughts are on the incident, one thing is clear;
| it was absolutely preventable, and they had the means to do so.
| There's ample evidence of that, it's not very controversial. Like
| most incidents, it was a combination of factors, including some
| preconditions (the inadequate sea wall, old reactor design), some
| operational mistakes, and a massive and still unlikely to repeat
| soon event. Humans are, of course, likely to continue to make
| mistakes, so the best way forward is of course to try to prevent
| similar scenarios from happening and invest in safer designs.
| Things that can be done.
|
| Of course, many would argue now is the right time to instead
| invest in solar and wind power. I mean, sure. But Japan has
| multiple nuclear fission power plants currently not in operation
| mainly just because of fear after Fukushima Daiichi. I'm not a
| civil engineer of any sort, so I have no idea how plausible it is
| to implement comparable solar and wind capabilities along with
| battery storage to make it reliable, in Japan. I know Japan is
| larger than map projections would have you believe, but it still
| seems like there could be practical problems. Even if that really
| were the future, though, today the present is this: they already
| have fission plants that could be generating cleaner energy, and
| with rising gas prices, it doesn't seem all that illogical to me.
| zzzeek wrote:
| > Whatever your thoughts are on the incident, one thing is
| clear; it was absolutely preventable, and they had the means to
| do so.
|
| this is the whole thing about nuclear power. There's always
| plenty of data on how, from a technical standpoint, nuclear
| energy can be generated completely safely. There's always the
| hindsight observations how, none of this had to happen. But
| implementing technical solutions requires institutional
| capabilities to pull it off.
|
| Case in point if you google for "Fukushima Was Preventable" you
| get a ton of hits that refer to well regarded studies,
| interviews, and journalism that refers to the ways in which
| TEPCO failed to plan and respond appropriately to the disaster.
|
| But if you google for "Fukushima Was Not Preventable" then you
| get this:
| https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/2022-06-18/fuk...
| just this year, Japan's legal system still claiming it was
| _not_ preventable. It 's easy to read between the lines on
| that, as the reason they decided this is because they are
| avoiding paying out damages to thousands of people harmed by
| this negligence. That is, they are lying.
|
| From this, I draw the same conclusion I always have about
| nuclear power. Sure it can be done safely. But who is actually
| willing to do that enormous, massive effort, without cutting
| corners, covering up problems, acting negligently, and then ten
| years later just continuing to lie about it? Private companies?
| no way. Governments? we would hope, but wow, nuclear is really
| , really expensive and complicated to get right, and often not
| sufficient as practiced by mere human instutitions.
| irchans wrote:
| I agree with you. (I was a nuclear engineer for a few years.)
| The problem seems to be human institutions. There always
| seems to be corruption and stupidity.
|
| Chernobyl was pretty stupid. Bad reactor design and rather
| bad operator decisions.
|
| Part of the Fukushima problem was an insufficient sea wall.
| They did get unlucky with a 7.4 magnitude quake. It was
| stupid to put the back up generators in the basement where
| they were flooded. There is a summary of some of the human
| errors and corruption here
|
| https://escholarship.org/uc/item/30x14946
|
| Three mile island was largely operator error. There also
| appeared to be corruption during the clean up.
|
| Private companies are always trying to cut costs. Government
| organizations are often subverted by the industry. America
| and Western Europe have a fairly decent nuclear safety
| record. I think it is just plain difficult to avoid
| corruption for any regulatory organization.
|
| The potential for a serious nuclear incident involving
| 100,000+ deaths exists. Both Chernobyl and Three mile island
| could have been much worse. If things had been worse, there
| was a potential for hundreds of square miles to be
| contaminated for several decades.
|
| It is very difficult to design a nuclear reactor the can
| survive operator error and government corruption. There is
| also the potential for terrorist attacks on reactors.
|
| On the other hand, we do seem to have a very big CO2 problem
| and maybe we need to take the nuclear risk. As far as I can
| tell, we cannot rely on solar and wind for more than 70 or 80
| percent of our energy needs. Maybe geothermal or wave power
| combined with solar and wind could be used to eliminate the
| need for fission nuclear power.
| delroth wrote:
| > They did get unlucky with a 7.4 magnitude quake.
|
| Magnitude 9.1, actually.
| irchans wrote:
| Thank you! Huge difference! Lack of research on my part.
| Sorry
| moloch-hai wrote:
| The "very big CO2" problem is _another_ argument against
| nukes: you displace much more CO2, and notably sooner, by
| spending the money building out renewables instead.
|
| Furthermore, the near-zero opex for renewables frees up
| more money to build out more renewables and eventually,
| when needed, storage.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| Agree. I majored in physics with the plan of working on
| reactor plants. Not how the cards played out, but I still
| got the degree and have seen reactor operations up close
| for years.
|
| My general position is that even if many more people die
| installing rooftop solar and wind turbines, just falling
| off roofs and ladders, it's a better plan, politically,
| than nuclear. Not that nuclear can't be done safely, but
| that even done safely, the optics of single-point failures,
| which _will_ happen, are so bad that nuclear becomes
| political loser. Just build more wind and solar and the
| distribution infrastructure to move it around.
| zzzeek wrote:
| the people who were just denied damages from a court in
| Japan aren't "optics". They are real people, harmed,
| denied justice. Due to nuclear being just too big a fish
| to catch for an institution like Japans' nuclear industry
| and too big to admit it by their judicial branch.
| sandos wrote:
| Why can we only rely on wind and solar to 70 or 80%? South
| Australia had more than a week of more than 100% net
| wind+solar generation without much tranmission or storage
| or hydro, and they're still building more!
|
| Overbuilding, storage and transmission for sure allows very
| close to 100% renewable generation. It will not be as
| _cheap_ as it is today though.
| nradov wrote:
| The available amount of economically viable geothermal and
| wave power available in the US is pretty limited. Those
| sources should certainly be part of the mix, but they
| aren't scalable and won't replace the long-term need for
| fission power to deliver the base load.
| oblio wrote:
| > I know Japan is larger than map projections would have you
| believe.
|
| Off-topic: Japan is small by country standards :-)
|
| Only 377,975 sqkm. That's about the same size as Montana. Or
| about half of France + Belgium combined.
| DrBazza wrote:
| > Japan already paid the price of one costly lesson with the
| Fukushima Daiichi incident
|
| Once again 'paid the (nuclear) price', is 1 death. *One*.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...
|
| Compare that to the daily deaths due to mining coal, extracting
| gas, shipping those to the fossil fuels to power stations, and
| the deaths due to fossil fuel pollution including those from
| climate change. Which likely numbers thousands if not tens of
| thousands of people per day.
|
| > Contrary to the cynical takes so far here, this is both good
| news and logical.
|
| My slightly cynical take on this is that they're also securing
| their energy future because of the two elephants in the room -
| China, and to a lesser extent, Russia. China might one day
| blockage Japan. Then again it might not. Ukraine might never
| have been invaded. Taiwan, might not get invaded.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| Uranium also needs to be mined actually and there are also
| fatalities.
|
| > Once again 'paid the (nuclear) price', is 1 death. _One_.
|
| Claiming a really low number of fatalities has almost become
| a meme for every nuclear catastrophe. I remember reading
| articles of people claiming really few fatalities related to
| Chernobyl. But if you've watched the Netflix series, you can
| easily see that this cannot be further from the truth
|
| By the way, in the same article it's also written that
| 'Predicted future cancer deaths due to accumulated radiation
| exposures in the population living near Fukushima have
| ranged[14] in the academic literature from none[15] to
| hundreds.[12]' ... 'For long-term displacement, many people
| (mostly sick and elderly) died at an increased rate ... As of
| 27 February 2017, the Fukushima prefecture government counted
| 2,129 "disaster-related deaths" in the
| prefecture.[21][19][22][23] This value exceeds the number
| that have died in Fukushima prefecture directly from the
| earthquake and tsunami.[24]'
| jupp0r wrote:
| Even the most pessimistic predictions are dwarfed by the
| missions of people who die from pollution by fossil fuel
| plants every year. It's less of a headline grabbing shock
| accident and human psychology is not good at rationally
| comparing the two. Rare catastrophic events are given
| disproportionate relevance by our minds.
| simondotau wrote:
| > Uranium also needs to be mined actually and there are
| also fatalities.
|
| Rooftop solar needs to be installed on roofs and there are
| also fatalities.
|
| Hydroelectric dams can fail and there can be thousands of
| fatalities.
|
| Pretty much every method of energy generation needs mine-
| sourced minerals, where mining has fatalities.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| More people died from the Fukushima area evacuations than the
| meltdown.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Impossible, they are the same event.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| That's the reason why more didn't die from them meltdown.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I've tried googling this but couldn't understand. How
| exactly did evacuations kill people? Was it just people
| being moved out of hospitals that needed to be in
| hospitals?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The statistics is largely bunk. Out of 300k people, 1,600
| died of old age. News outlets just assumed that all these
| people died due to the evacuation. The original research
| was retracted:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34096908
| jvanderbot wrote:
| This is excellent to know! Thank you.
| grozzle wrote:
| Yes, and the stress of being uprooted. There was a large
| surplus of deaths in the evacuated population over the
| next year, without any sign of a radiogenic disease.
| Communities being scattered suddenly, the stress of
| losing homes and homeland.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Do you have any reliable statistics showing that there
| were surplus deaths? Most of the research I've read
| showed ~1,500 deaths - mostly among aged 75+ people -
| over 6 months out of a cohort of 300,000 people. This is
| not a surplus over normal death rates.
| taylorius wrote:
| But the evacuation wasn't an unrelated event. It was a
| direct result of the meltdown, so evacuation deaths can be
| attributed to it.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| The tsunami caused the evacuation and the meltdown.
| taylorius wrote:
| Indeed - and it has long been known that Japan is in an
| earthquake zone, and can suffer Tsunamis, so...
| jchw wrote:
| Well, to be fair. There was also that whole thing that
| _caused_ the meltdown as well.
|
| It's pretty much impossible to get an exact pulse on how
| many people died indirectly as a result of the Fukushima
| Daiichi disaster evacuation specifically who would've
| lived if it were not for that. Particularly because most
| of the deaths attributed to the disaster were elderly to
| begin with.
|
| Not trying to downplay the cost of human life, it's
| really terrible when preventable scenarios or mistakes
| lead to any cost. With that having been said, there are
| sometimes going to be events where evacuations are
| necessary, and some of them we can't prevent. No doubt
| there were many thousands of deaths unrelated to
| Fukushima Daiichi due to the massive earthquake and
| tsunami.
|
| I believe it is estimated that around 1,000-2,000 people
| died as part of the evacuation efforts, but I am not sure
| what a good source is, so take that with a grain of salt.
| If you want to go really deep, it'd be wise to consider
| the burden that it may have caused psychologically too,
| but that's even harder to exactly ascertain, especially
| since it is likely nothing compared to what happened as a
| result of the earthquake and tsunami.
|
| If the point of this is to compare safety though,
| factoring this in still would place nuclear fission power
| plants very low in terms of how much cost of human life
| they cause overall.
| taylorius wrote:
| That's true - but it's not like the potential for such a
| natural disaster wasn't well known. The word we use for
| such devastating tidal waves kind of gives that game
| away.
| jchw wrote:
| Yes, sure. But let's not understate how unusually bad the
| disaster really was; a 9.0 earthquake and equally severe
| tsunami. That's not exactly a common event, and it
| probably won't be one even in a world with much more
| volatile weather conditions.
|
| And yet, despite that, it is in fact possible to make
| nuclear fission power plants survive this kind of
| disaster, and especially possible to prevent the meltdown
| that eventually occurred; Fukushima Daiichi is not the
| only fission plant in Japan, and not the closest to the
| epicenter of the disaster either. I think it's fair to
| say given the evidence that the problems that need to be
| solved with regards to Fukushima Daiichi are the systemic
| issues that led to the inadequate safety measures and the
| unfortunate decisions made leading up to the meltdown.
| Whether the issues be operational complacency,
| corruption, etc.
|
| It'd be nice to have a way to simply be robust to those
| issues, but in the end it's always going to be dangerous
| to human life if the people in charge of decisions that
| could endanger human life are not adequately responsible.
| That would still be the case in absence of nuclear power,
| natural disasters, evacuations, etc.
| reef84_ wrote:
| Why would weather have any effect on earthquakes?
| yunwal wrote:
| It likely wouldn't. But natural disasters, like tsunamis,
| on a similar scale large enough to threaten well-
| engineered power plants may become more common.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Only if the decision to evacuate was necessary. I wonder,
| but don't know
| LightG wrote:
| Many people here are talking like the government forced
| them to evacuate. Perhaps they did. But if your family
| was there, would you stick around?
|
| I'd be getting my family the flying f outta there. Not
| logically deducing outcomes and risk factors on HN.
|
| Hindsight is 20 20...
| tomp wrote:
| The government and media can also just lie to people to
| influence their actions.
|
| E.g. due to propaganda, people thought that Covid is 100x
| as deadly as it actually is (people estimated on average
| that infection fatality rate was 10%, when in reality
| it's ~ 0.1%)
| jchw wrote:
| Yes, it is probably important to highlight the fact that it
| was not an event that led to much loss of human life, unlike
| the normal operation of coal and even natural gas. I agree. I
| don't think too many people realize this, because the deaths
| resulting from pollution are both normalized and indirect.
|
| However, when I said costs, I meant it more literally. Aside
| from the obvious cost of relocating all of those people,
| cleanup efforts, and so forth, it's also only fair to include
| the psychological toll as well. It certainly didn't help atop
| the massive tragedy that was already sweeping away lives and
| homes.
| DrBazza wrote:
| > when I said costs
|
| Sure :) I probably came across as a bit argumentative.
|
| I also meant to add that this was caused by a _natural_
| disaster as well, unlike Chernobyl. So nuclear is arguably
| even safer.
|
| Again, drawing a parallel with fossil fuels - when a
| hurricane strikes the Gulf of Mexico and causes some sort
| of oil slick and kills wildlife, it barely hits the news.
|
| Also, whilst writing this, I wondered what the fossil fuel
| toll was for the Japanese tsunami, and the Boxing Day one,
| for that matter. It's not something that seems to have
| concerned people despite the sheer number of cars, bikes,
| lorries etc. that contained oil, and were destroyed. And
| that's just the first thing that comes to mind. Oil
| refineries on the Asian coasts must have been hit. What
| happened there?
|
| I guess my rambling point is, we really need to compare
| nuclear to fossil fuels, like-for-like.
|
| And "we", in particular the media, don't do that, because
| it's hard work to tally up a distributed fossil fuel
| infrastructure versus one big nuclear power station that
| was very visibly destroyed.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| And not even one natural disaster, TWO. First an
| earthquake, then a tsunami. Both at record levels.
|
| Fukushima was an ancient nuclear plant, WAY over its
| projected lifetime.
|
| And still we only got one direct death.
| est31 wrote:
| > Once again 'paid the (nuclear) price', is 1 death. _One_.
|
| The price in terms of deaths was low thankfully, but not
| because the released material was not dangerous, but because
| they have done an unprecedented cleaning project. 150k people
| had to leave their homes because they were not safe. Hundreds
| of people died during the evacuation, but if they had not
| been evacuated that death toll of one would have been higher
| too. Also, cancer can show up years/decades later, and
| linking it to radiation exposure might not be easy. Basically
| the dying with vs from covid discussion :).
|
| This entire cleanup project is estimated to cost in the high
| three digit range of USD billions: https://en.wikipedia.org/w
| iki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup#Cos...
|
| Nuclear is safe if done right, but the Fukushima accident was
| definitely a big catastrophy, even if the death toll wasn't
| large.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| This is extremely misleading. The death rates among
| evacuees was not significantly different from the death
| rates among the general population in the same time frame.
| Dig into the stated causes of deaths and it's usually vague
| things like "exhaustion".
|
| Out of 300k people 1,400 died over the span of 6 months
| [1]. Assume everyone lives to 100 and a uniform age
| distribution (both of these are actually generous: life
| expectancy is lower and age distribution skewed older in
| Japan), and 1500 people dying in 6 months is exactly on the
| mark for old age deaths. Even more telling, actually try
| and click on the link to the primary source in Mainichi
| Shimbun and it 404s.
|
| 1. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/fukushima-evacuation-
| has-...
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| >150k people had to leave their homes because they were not
| safe
|
| Because overly cautious governments told them so.
| varajelle wrote:
| > 150k people had to leave their homes because they were
| not safe.
|
| The fact that they were not safe is disputed. There are
| claim that there was some over-reaction and that the
| evacuation was actually counter-productive.
| UlisesAC4 wrote:
| David Jimenez Ex Director of the Spanish Newspaper El
| Mundo was there in Fukushima. In one of his commentaries
| (extracted mainly from his interview in the podcast of
| Jordi Wild) explains that he encountered rescuers who
| showed him Geiger instruments measuring unsafe levels of
| radiation.
|
| And a really gossip comment comes from JDM car lovers
| that have gone to Fukushima and show abandoned cars with
| again unsafe radiation levels.
|
| It is not easy to react to a possible nuclear disaster
| after a heavy earthquake anyways.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Unsafe based on standards made incredible extreme because
| of the anti nuclear movement in the 70s based on false
| science.
|
| This was the great trick the environmental movement
| bulled, they made so much panic about radiation that
| acceptable amounts were lowered to absurd levels. This
| was all based on suds-science. If this science were even
| remotely true, people in Denver would by dying of cancer
| at incredible rates.
|
| There are also lots of places that have more radiation
| because sand beaches (historically associated with
| healing sands). People living in that region for 100s of
| years should also suffer from higher cancer rates and
| don't.
|
| There are still people in Germany flipping out about the
| fact that some mushrooms have 'unsafe levels of
| radiation' and yet lots of people eat them and it has no
| effect what so ever.
| readams wrote:
| In retrospect there's no doubt the evacuation was an
| overreaction. Of course, in the moment, it's a harder
| decision since you have to act on incomplete information.
| concordDance wrote:
| A big issue with those numbers is that they are actually
| trying to clean up even when its very much not cost
| effective. There's still an exclusion zone around Fukishima
| even though everyone moving back to where they were would
| result in a cancer death toll that rounds to zero.
|
| Spending a billion dollars to avoid a radiation caused
| cancer death is a very poor use of resources given you
| could save a hundred lives with other causes of death with
| that amount.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The exclusion zone has actually since been lifted: https:
| //english.kyodonews.net/news/2022/06/cdd1d2ce1e47-evac...
| Retric wrote:
| While true, 11 years of neglect has it's own costs. Even
| if people can move back there is little reason for most
| people to move back.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Any industrial accident causes pollution that has to be
| cleaned up and has an annular ring around the site you
| shouldn't be in. There are 1334 superfund cleanup sites
| in the US. Fukushima is in no way unusual in this regard
| except that nuclear waste is really easy to detect - with
| a geiger counter for instance - whereas something like
| PFAs aren't. We just don't call the area around superfund
| sites "exclusion zones."
|
| We learn and we improve for next time.
| [deleted]
| yunohn wrote:
| > Spending a billion dollars to avoid a radiation caused
| cancer death is a very poor use of resources
|
| Not everything can be calculated so coldly! The gov
| absolutely has a responsibility to help people in an
| actual extreme situation like this versus the theoretical
| saving of people in future normal situations.
| 93po wrote:
| Compared to the literally millions that die every year from
| carbon-producing power sources and resulting air pollution,
| no, Fukushima was still not a catastrophe
| WalterBright wrote:
| I'm not so sure the cleanup was even necessary. It didn't
| seem to make anything safer. Leave radiation alone, and it
| will decay to irrelevance on its own.
| grozzle wrote:
| Media hyperbole and shrieking fear-mongering should carry
| most of those hundreds of the evacuation's death toll. The
| panic and stress were fatal. A smaller, slower, calmer
| reaction was what the region needed.
|
| Even to this day, Fukushima-ken agricultural producers
| can't compete fairly on their quality, due to the lingering
| stigma with a half-life longer than any detectable isotope.
|
| These lasting effects of hysteria are vastly worse for the
| health, prosperity, and wellbeing of the region than the
| actual becquerels released 11 years ago.
| panick21_ wrote:
| > but because they have done an unprecedented cleaning
| project
|
| That is nonsense. Most of that cleaning prevents nothing.
| Its mostly political posturing to show that they are doing
| something.
|
| > Hundreds of people died during the evacuation
|
| Evacuations that were mostly unnecessary.
| jchw wrote:
| To be fair, estimations of future cancer deaths are near
| zero. Some estimations are literally zero, particularly
| from the WHO and Tokyo University. This is very fortunate
| of course. The truth is, the trauma from the evacuations is
| a much bigger concern, or at least it should be, in my
| opinion.
| adastra22 wrote:
| The evacuations were largely unnecessary in retrospect.
| That's not to say they shouldn't have happened though,
| given what we knew at the time. But there was almost
| certainly more evacuations than were strictly necessary.
| analyte123 wrote:
| The global policy impact of Fukushima would have been so much
| less if it just didn't have "-shima" in the name.
| glhaynes wrote:
| That's an interesting point, and I'm not disputing it, but
| I don't recall ever having noticed that similarity.
| kortex wrote:
| "-shima" is just Dao 'island'. See also Oshima, Mishima,
| Fujishima, Furushima, Hiroshima, and even Iwo Jima (Liu
| Huang Dao , "Shima" is sometimes pronounced "Jima" in
| Japanese for some reason).
|
| Note that Fukushima isn't a "true" island, though some
| think it might come from a block of land isolated by
| rivers.
| tomatbebo wrote:
| Not saying one is better than the other but there were other
| costs too. Like the people displaced from their homes, the
| environmental clean up costs, etc.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Once again 'paid the (nuclear) price', is 1 death. _One_. "
|
| Especially compared to the 19.700 deaths the tsunami took all
| in all.
|
| But it is still not so simple. There are long term effects of
| radiation, many people likely will get cancer sooner and the
| whole mess is still not cleaned up.
|
| And here where I live in germany, it is still advised against
| regulary eating mushrooms from the wood, because of one
| incident that took place 36 years ago.
|
| But yes, the coal plants around here contributed worse, so I
| also believe it is wiser to not replace fission with coal.
| concordDance wrote:
| > many people likely will get cancer sooner
|
| Where did you get this from?
|
| One of the nice things about nuclear is that you can
| literally Google radiation maps from various time period,
| plug that in to demographic maps and plug those numbers
| into the radiation->excess death models.
|
| Turns out, lightning is something you should be worrying
| about more than living 10 miles from Fukishima.
| Herz wrote:
| In the same report compiled by a WHO body, it is also said
| that there is no statistical evidence in the increase of
| cancers in the area. This is science and statistics,
| everything else is speculation based on nothing, fantasy
| stories.
|
| I am an Italian living in Germany. The German approach to
| nuclear power is totally propagandistic and anti-
| scientific, a very un-German approach to the subject.
|
| https://www.unscear.org/unscear/uploads/documents/unscear-
| re...
| varajelle wrote:
| I mean, there might be effect, but do you have a
| quantification of these. Like maybe you get 0.1% more
| likely to catch cancer if you eat these mushroom, but when
| you compare that to the 300% more likely if you smoke then
| I think you're safe.
|
| Why do we allow smoking but are scared of low dose
| radiations?
| cturner wrote:
| Australia is a gas supplier to Japan and has headed down the
| road towards nationalising its gas sector recently,
| indirectly through local supply mandates and price fixing.
| Exploration projects have been canceled and frozen there in
| the last week. Japan may feel uncertain about its ability to
| source gas on the open market.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Supply mandates and price fixing. Good ole' central
| economic planning. What's the inevitable result? Shortages.
| rgmerk wrote:
| This is hyperbole.
|
| The Australian government is bringing in a price cap of $12
| per gigajoule (well above historical gas prices, and well
| above long-term contract prices for Australian LNG in
| Japan) for domestic customers.
|
| Whatever the merits of this action, it's a very very very
| long way from "nationalising the sector". The Western
| Australian gas industry (on the other side of the country
| on a completely separate grid) has long had a regulation
| mandating a minimum proportion of WA's gas must be sold to
| domestic customers, meaning local gas prices there are
| unaffected by the global shifts in prices. Heck, that
| bastion of capitalism, the United States of America,
| completely banned the export of natural gas and oil until
| 2015.
| kaushikc wrote:
| Many have unaddressed safety concerns that could
| potentially lead to a disaster. They are exporting at the
| highest rates while having the local markets vulnerable to
| the price shocks.
|
| https://www.upstreamonline.com/lng/shells-prelude-flng-
| facil...
| ericbarrett wrote:
| 1 death, but also 110,000 permanently evacuated and their
| homes lost as if burned to the ground, and many billions
| already spent, with more to come, on a multi-generational
| clean-up project. I'm generally pro-nuclear but let's not
| understate the impact of Fukushima.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The cleanup is actually done, I am routinely impressed that
| people think it's going to be cordoned off for generations:
| https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2022/06/cdd1d2ce1e47-eva
| c...
| concordDance wrote:
| Thing is, they don't actually need to still be evacuated.
|
| Check out the radiation map of Japan:
| https://jciv.iidj.net/map/
|
| Look up where the evacuation zone is and the pre evacuation
| population numbers.
|
| Then plug those numbers into the linear no threshold model
| (which is thought to overestimate risk).
|
| I'm away from my computer for the holidays, but when I did
| the numbers you're looking at QALY losses an order of
| magnitude lower than that caused by the loss of home.
|
| In general people (govs included) drastically overreact to
| radiation deaths. It makes no sense to spend a billion
| dollars to avoid one nuclear accident death when you can
| spend a billion dollars to avoid 100 prostate cancer
| deaths. Its literally not worth doing the remaining cleanup
| by any metric.
| Herz wrote:
| You are right, but these are political reasons that have to
| do with the fear of nuclear power in people, not an
| inherent problem with nuclear power.
|
| The Fukushima plant was one of the oldest plants in the
| world, and not up to modern standards. If this is what can
| happen in the worst case scenario.... Then it's our problem
| that we can't accept it.
|
| https://rchoetzlein.com/theory/wp-
| content/uploads/2011/03/ra...
| Kon5ole wrote:
| >Once again 'paid the (nuclear) price', is 1 death. _One_.
|
| Also USD 82 billion and counting. https://www.asahi.com/ajw/a
| rticles/14762193#:~:text=Around%2....
| cryptonector wrote:
| > Once again 'paid the (nuclear) price', is 1 death. _One_.
|
| The economic cost, however, is huge.
|
| > My slightly cynical take on this is that they're also
| securing their energy future
|
| Why is this a cynical take? What's so bad about that about
| Japan wanting to secure their energy supply?
| ben_w wrote:
| Averaged over all nuclear power, it (even combined with
| Chernobyl) is a surprisingly small extra cost. I'm not sure
| world governments will be able to coordinate a mutual
| insurance policy between each other over this, which is an
| important factor at this scale, but IMO the economic cost
| for nuclear is that it's now kinda meh vs. using LiIon to
| balance PV.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Small cost for the whole world, heap big cost for one
| country.
| ben_w wrote:
| Exactly. Hence mutual insurance.
| korroziya wrote:
| >Compare that to the daily deaths due to mining coal,
| extracting gas, shipping those to the fossil fuels to power
| stations, and the deaths due to fossil fuel pollution
| including those from climate change
|
| Oh go join Greenpeace already.
|
| I really get fatigued seeing people bash oil and gas as if it
| has zero value. The human population wouldn't have hit 8
| billion but for natgas feedstock for nitrogen* fertilizer.
| People would still be heating their homes with dried animal
| feces and wood but for propane. We'd still be hunting whales
| but for kerosene. And damn sure, the ability to enjoy a high
| quality of life with a relatively modest cost would be all
| but impossible but for the myriad of uses for petroleum
| products in general.
|
| But you didn't feel the need to point any of that out, and
| instead parroted the tired, cliched stance of a stereotypical
| progressive.
| woah wrote:
| Wow thanks for opening my eyes. I'm now ready to get out
| there and start enjoying all the myriad ways that petroleum
| makes our lives better.
| darth_aardvark wrote:
| They never said oil and gas had zero value. They never
| advocated for going back to wood and poo and whalefat. They
| actually didn't say any of the stuff you're mad at them for
| saying, and the stuff you're mad at them for not saying
| isn't really relevant to their point. I think most people
| reading these comments know oil and gas provide lots of
| energy we couldn't get from wood/poo/whalefat.
|
| If you see gas and oil as an improvement to w/p/w, why
| can't nuclear be an improvement on oil gas?
| korroziya wrote:
| You can tell from their wording that they have a
| "renewables good, oil bad" mantra. Like I said, they're
| happy to mention deaths stemming from fossil fuels, but
| not mention the lives that were helped by that form of
| energy. It's a tired narrative of people who are too lazy
| and/or uneducated to discuss the complicated issue of the
| pros/cons for fossil fuels.
| darth_aardvark wrote:
| It seems like you've projected an entire personality and
| set of arguments onto this one point they made that
| wasn't present in their post.
|
| They compared fatalities between two energy sources. What
| do the relative benefits of those two sources have to do
| with their fatality rate?
| nicwolff wrote:
| I really get fatigued seeing people bash dried animal
| feces, wood, and whales as if they have zero value...
| Forbo wrote:
| Fossil fuels enabled overconsumption of resources at levels
| never before possible. Can't wait for next year's Earth
| Overshoot Day! Also, CFCs enabled some true miracles in
| refrigeration, we shouldn't demonize them. Damned bleeding
| heart tree huggers ruin everything. >:-(
| korroziya wrote:
| Just curious, how many "daily" deaths are there from
| extracting gas out of the ground?
| Forbo wrote:
| Depends, do you want to count the mass extinction event
| that we've created? If so, you're really not going to
| like the answer.
| korroziya wrote:
| It's sad that HN has been infested with this level of
| sensationalist ridiculouness.
| ben_w wrote:
| Daily? Odd unit given Fukushima was over a decade ago.
| Also, "extracting" gas would compare to mining uranium
| from the ground, not to running a plant.
|
| I'm only finding US statistics for the "extracting" part,
| and that looks like about 1000 dead in just the USA, just
| with regard to oil and gas extraction, in the last
| decade.
|
| But, given your style and the newness of your account, I
| find it very hard to trust that you're _really_ "just
| curious", rather than using the phrase to create
| rhetorical affect.
| glogla wrote:
| > Oh go join Greenpeace already
|
| Funny, because it's Greenpeace who is against nuclear power
| and thus pro-fossil fuels.
| greenthrow wrote:
| Fission power is much more expensive than wind and solar and
| takes way longer to get online. This move by Japan makes no
| rational sense. It is clearly driven by nuclear industry
| lobbying and constant spread of the canard that we "need"
| nuclear. There is no need in 2022 when renewables and storage
| are here today and cheaper.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >Fission power is much more expensive than wind and solar and
| takes way longer to get online
|
| It is also far more reliable, consistent, scaleable, and does
| not require grid scale energy storage. Wind and solar will
| always be just one piece of the puzzle until these issues are
| resolved.
| pfdietz wrote:
| On the very large scale is not as scalable with current
| technology compared to renewables, since the uranium runs
| out before access to sunlight runs out. Breeders are
| needed, and we have exactly two working commercial scale
| fast reactors in the world. For Japan alone that's not a
| problem though.
| cauch wrote:
| I think it's incorrect to say that nuclear does not require
| energy storage.
|
| The energy demand is not flat, it has peaks. If you don't
| flatten these peaks with storage, you need to build a
| production system that should be able to generate enough
| energy during the peak, but then, some of the generators
| will have to be turned off the rest of the time.
|
| To illustrate the idea, let me invent some numbers: with
| storage, you have, let's say, 10 power plants to build that
| are running relatively all the time, producing an
| integrated total of electricity of, let's say, 100. So, if
| you paid X$ for building the 10 power plants, you will have
| X/100 per unit of electricity. Without storage, you may end
| up with, let's say, 15 power plants, but some are turned
| off 90% of the time. At the end, you also produce an
| integrated total of electricity of 100 (the integral is the
| same, the time of consumption is just shifted to create
| peaks). The cost of build is now 1.5X, and you will have to
| 1.5X/100 per unit of electricity.
|
| On top of that, turning on and off a nuclear plant is less
| efficient than producing continuously, so the price of
| electricity increase even more.
|
| So, even with nuclear, storage needs to be built. Once the
| storage is built, it means that the problem of
| intermittence of renewable is way less problematic.
| neilwilson wrote:
| You export the electricity. Either directly, or by
| bottling it. Excess power always has a use.
| cauch wrote:
| Well, you cannot really export it if no one around needs
| it because they also are not in a peak. If they rely on
| importing electricity when in non-peak time, what do they
| do in peak time? By construction, the non-peak time is
| the worse time to export. Unless you export to a
| different part of the world, but then, the same argument
| works with renewable (said simply: if you can export at
| midnight to a country where it is 4pm, then you can use
| solar and import at midnight from a country where it is
| 4pm).
|
| What do you mean by "bottling it"? Do you mean storage?
| Because that's exactly what I'm saying.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >What do you mean by "bottling it"?
|
| Aluminum production, for one example.
|
| Bauxite is so cheap and abundant that the cost of
| aluminum is almost entirely in the electricity required
| for smelting. And because aluminum is such a critical
| material for industry, it is effectively equivalent to
| energy exportation. This is why tiny Iceland is a top 10
| global exporter of it: abundant free geothermal energy
| with nowhere else to go.
| cauch wrote:
| Yes. It's basically demand response based on turning on
| and off factories.
| nradov wrote:
| No one is going to invest in an aluminum plant unless
| they have some assurance of cheap electric power for many
| years. The capital expense and fixed operating costs for
| those plants are tremendous. It's not economical to start
| and stop production on a daily basis as power prices
| fluctuate. How would you even schedule the production
| workers? And you still have to pay things like property
| taxes and insurance whether the plant is producing or
| not.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Also the local district heating company installed an
| electric 30 MW water heating boiler recently, which they
| can run on excess electric power and throttle down the
| regular combined cycle plant powered by natural gas.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Also IIRC you can design the reactors to support a degree
| of output scaling, if not shutdown. IIRC French reactors
| are designed to do that - they have some issues right now
| with premature fatigue but I'm not sure it is related.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Operating a nuke at less than 100% is untenable: if run
| at 50%, each kWh costs twice as much as at 100%, but even
| running at 100%, it costs radically more than all other
| choices.
| cauch wrote:
| Yes, I believe it's the case. The French nuclear plants
| can do some load following. But they are not doing it,
| because it's more inefficient for a nuclear power plants,
| and as the nuclear is anyway not 100% of the mix, the
| load following is done by the other parts of the mix that
| don't have such problem.
|
| On my mind, the main problem of scaling down production
| for nuclear plant is that a nuclear plant is very
| expensive, and if it produces only at submaximal
| capacity, it means that the construction cost is spread
| on less electricity production.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Exactly. People who shout about how wind/solar are not
| reliable and need storage / fossil fuel backup and then
| spout about nuclear have no idea how grid-scale energy
| generation works.
|
| Nuclear takes hours to _days_ to respond to load change,
| so there has to be much more reactive power available.
| And nuclear plants need to be able to draw megawatts of
| power from the grid any time they 're not generating
| power. You can't "cold boot" a nuclear power plant
| without a massive external power supply and it takes days
| to weeks to do so.
|
| It's so bizarre hearing people advocating for nuclear
| talking about storage like it's some barely-understood,
| dangerous, hideously expensive sci-fi pipe dream. Grid-
| scale energy storage is almost 100 years old and battery
| based systems have been actively deployed for many years
| at all levels of the grid, right down to residential.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| > Nuclear takes hours to days to respond to load change
|
| Days? Seriously? You know that is not true, don't you?
| The French nuclear power plants are an existence proof of
| that.
|
| Nuclear does need to be supplemented with something else
| with low construction/fixed costs for handling the rare,
| extreme peaks. That will most often be some sort of gas-
| powered plants. This has nothing to do with nuclear
| powers "inability" to "respond to load change" and
| everything to do with the cost of building enough nuclear
| power capacity that will almost never be used.
|
| On the other hand, we are still very, very far from being
| able to do really large-scale battery storage. We don't
| have the manufacturing capacity for the enormous number
| of battery cells needed and even if we did, the cost
| would be prohibitive. This will of course change for the
| better in the future but that is how things are for now.
| cauch wrote:
| I thought French nuclear were only doing base load, the
| load following part being done by other sources.
|
| I believe the French facilities have the capacity of
| doing load following, but are not doing it because it is
| less efficient (and therefore more expensive). So I would
| also not say "days", but it is also true that one cannot
| directly take a situation where nuclear has, so far,
| being used only for base load and pretend that load
| following will work exactly the same way.
|
| I'm not sure why you say "rare, extreme peaks": the
| current demand is non-flat every day, with a difference
| between the trough and peak that is typically ~50% of the
| peak.
|
| I agree that large scale battery storage is challenging.
| Maybe the solution would be to have some storage and some
| "wasted efficiency" by using nuclear plants in load
| following and turning them in stand-by every day during
| off-peak hours.
| mlsu wrote:
| The entire United States has something like 3 _seconds_
| of energy storage, total.
|
| Just getting that to an hour means a three order of
| magnitude change in the amount of connected grid storage.
| Good luck finding that much pumped hydro! The easy spots
| are taken already!
|
| An hour is not enough, of course. That might handle some
| small variations in wind only. Of course, one diurnal
| solar cycle means you need to store power for 8-12 hours.
| That is another order of magnitude. So in order to do
| this, we need to increase our battery capacity by _four_
| orders of magnitude. Multiple days? Weeks?
|
| Now consider that the demand curve will become even more
| extreme, as climate change increases demand for electric
| heating and cooling. And consider that you will also need
| to account for electrifying the cars on the road (because
| building out storage like this is a multiple decades
| project), which will place additional capacity demands on
| the grid.
|
| The thing with storage is not that it's difficult, it's
| that it's _big._ Like the scale is you need to
| nationalize your extraction industries and turn your
| economy into a wartime economy whose singular purpose is
| producing batteries big. It 's not a Tesla or Google or
| even a DOE scale problem.
| cauch wrote:
| Well, 3 seconds if you turn everything off, but it is not
| what we are talking about here, especially if the
| question is peak shifting. The majority of peak shifting
| is done at local level, with solution like, for example,
| domestic wall battery like Tesla or electric-vehicle-to-
| grid. Still not ideal, but I don't think your depiction
| of the situation is very fair if it presents it in a
| totally unrealistic way.
|
| I also don't understand your argument about solar cycle:
| solar is producing close to peak hours, while nights are
| non-peak hours. So, in practice, it's not like you need
| to store the electricity locally for more than a couple
| of hours. I guess you are talking of a situation where
| the grid is 100% solar, but that's obviously a ridiculous
| scenario that no one has never pushed for.
|
| I agree with the fact that the demand curve will become
| more extreme, and it is exactly the reason of my
| intervention here: this is a complicated situation, and
| it does not matter if the grid is mainly nuclear or
| mainly renewable, it is still problematic.
|
| I agree that the storage problem is tricky and that the
| scale is a challenge. But this challenge still exist in
| full nuclear grid, unless we end up with a lot of idle
| nuclear plant running only few hours per day.
| scythe wrote:
| Nuclear power needs storage on the scale of a day or two.
| Wind needs storage on the scale of a few weeks. Solar
| needs storage on the scale of 3-6 months. You can work
| around this a bit with demand scheduling and it's much
| less of a problem in the tropics, but we're talking about
| Japan: it's northern, densely populated and cloudy.
|
| If you can turn a nuclear plant off (summer) and on
| (winter) once a year, the storage requirement for solar
| drops by a lot.
| cauch wrote:
| Sure, but
|
| 1) week storage and 3-6 months storage are extreme
| events, similar in probability as overlapping technical
| shutdowns in nuclear facilities. In practice, with
| interconnection, it is even arguable that such long term
| storage are even needed.
|
| 2) the technology built for short term storage is usually
| not that bad for medium term storage either. In any case,
| if you want a nuclear grid, you will need to invest in
| storage technology, and there is no reason the progress
| in those technology will only improve short term storage
| solutions.
|
| But I 100% agree: a nuclear plant turned on during winter
| will help. I'm not against nuclear, I just want to react
| to the incorrect view that storage is just a renewable
| problem.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| There is, in fact, no need for "a few weeks" of storage
| anywhere for any reason, never mind months.
|
| NG backup works fine, and will continue working fine
| indefinitely. Storage cuts the fraction of time the
| furnace needs to run.
|
| Eventually, synthetic fuel will displace NG. It will be
| imported at need, same as NG today, but with no
| possibility of cartels.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| I've been hearing this for decades.
|
| Yet somehow in 2022, peak coal is now in front of us again,
| and even at these unprecedented production levels, people are
| buying it for over $400 per tonne. Despite the fact that
| solar and wind were alleged to have killed coal 10 years ago
| when it cost $50/tonne. Coal was completely uneconomical,
| they said. Coal is a stranded asset, they said. How did so
| many of the "experts" get it so wrong?
|
| At this point it's clear that we can't keep waiting for
| renewables. You think nuclear takes way longer to get online,
| non-hydro renewables haven't even matched existing nuclear
| electricity production yet. They haven't even been able to
| halt the rise in demand for coal, let alone kill it, 10 years
| after it was supposed to be dead.
|
| The best time to stop listening to anti nuclear / pro fossil
| fuel propaganda and save the climate was in the 70s. The
| second best time is now.
| megaman821 wrote:
| Nuclear projects aren't getting financed due to propaganda
| against them, it is because they are bad investments. When
| people are putting their own money on the line, they don't
| believe nuclear will be cheaper than renewables + batteries
| in 10 years.
| belorn wrote:
| Grid stability is the real bad investment. In a free
| market we should have events where demand exceeds supply
| and when, and if the state didn't pump large amount of
| subsidies into grid stability we would see regular power
| outages. Those that would be hurt most by power outages
| would then invest into backup generators.
|
| Grid stability cost money and power companies do not want
| to carry that cost. It is a much better investment for
| them to let society carry those costs and simply produce
| as much energy when its most cost effective to do so.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Great, except it's more expensive for everyone to run a
| backup generator than for power companies to overbuild
| capacity and bundle it into the cost of electricity.
| Making "society carry the costs" makes everyone poorer so
| that power utilities can have a thicker profit margin.
|
| There's also a related problem: once everyone is already
| paying the cost to purchase and operate backup power on a
| regular basis, they're not going to bother paying their
| power bills. They're just going to disconnect from the
| grid, because people aren't paying them for "power when
| its most profitable". They're paying for "power when they
| need it". Grid stability is the literal job of your power
| company, arguably moreso than power generation.
| belorn wrote:
| It would indeed be a more expensive grid for everyone.
| However customers tend to pick which ever producer has
| the cheapest sticker price and a large number will not
| consider the cost associated with potential blackouts
| when going into contract. Those situations tend to result
| in a rush to the bottom if there is no other forces
| involved in the market. In a market where the government
| guaranties stability people think they are paying for the
| kw/h, not power when they need it. It only if they are
| somehow forced to to consider "power then they need it"
| that they consider such thing when deciding which power
| company is cheapest.
|
| Which returns back to investments. If consumers will
| reward companies based on the cost of kw/h, and they will
| assume that governments take care of balancing the grid,
| then companies that invest in technology that produce the
| cheapest kw/h and ignore grid stability. The only way out
| would be for governments to subsidize less economical
| ventures but which consider grid stability.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| Right, they're not getting financed because of things
| like government prohibitions (as in the case here) and
| unequal consideration making them bad or impossible
| investments. The propaganda is presumably to get the
| public to go along with it.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It is more that nuclear hasn't been competitive against
| natural gas in places that have natural gas since 1980.
|
| Betting on renewables + batteries in 2022 is like betting
| on the fast breeder reactor in 1955. There certainly is
| going to be development in batteries and other forms of
| storage in the next decade but we don't know where the
| minerals will come from, we'll have more grid scale
| batteries catch on fire, face more challenges siting
| solar farms because, as a major land use, they could
| affect endangered species, etc.
|
| There will be progress there but remember that
| decarbonization is not just replacing the current
| electricity grid but it also involves replacing gas
| appliances with electric appliances, using electricity
| for heat in buildings (probably with heat pumps),
| electric cars (that people will want to charge _at night_
| and thus require more grid storage as well as competing
| for battery materials), replacing industrial uses of
| energy, synthesizing e-fuels for aviation and other
| special applications, etc.
|
| Nuclear as we know it faces two problems: (1) the steam
| turbine and heat exchangers of the LWR are enormous such
| that an LWR would have a hard time competing even if the
| heat was free, (2) every country other than Russia has
| built LWRs sporadically and faced terrible project
| management problems; China is catching up with Russia
| with their Hualong One (4 completed in the past 2 years,
| 12 under construction now.) Long term the industry has to
| get rid of the water to get the temperature up so the
| powerset can be made more economical and you can use the
| heat for industrial applications such as thermochemical
| hydrogen, with the big plus that a reactor without a
| moderator can get roughly 50x the energy out of a pound
| of natural uranium than LWR.
| ikt wrote:
| This is a bit like saying mp3s will never take off after
| napster got shut down and cd sales briefly went back up
|
| You're using a black swan event (russian invasion of
| ukraine) like it's a baseline of what to expect in the
| future, ignoring that the world has invested more money
| into renewables this year than ever before
|
| The world is definitely moving on from coal and gas and I
| reckon this coal crisis will be the last, I expect to see a
| lot more articles like this coming up around the world:
|
| South Australia's remarkable 100 per cent renewables run
| extends to over 10 days
|
| https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australias-
| remarkable-100-...
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| > You're using a black swan event (russian invasion of
| ukraine) like it's a baseline of what to expect in the
| future, ignoring that the world has invested more money
| into renewables this year than ever before
|
| No I'm not. Coal went to record highs almost a year
| before Ukraine was invaded and before any disruption to
| fossil fuel exports from the region, and many many years
| after renewables were said to have killed it. Do you
| really not remember? Stranded assets? Coal is not price
| competitive at $50/tonne?
|
| > The world is definitely moving on from coal and gas and
| I reckon this coal crisis will be the last, I expect to
| see a lot more articles like this coming up around the
| world:
|
| Not _moving_ on, as record production and demand shows.
| Will one day in the future move on and won 't move back,
| hopefully according to experts and random internet
| commentators who said it was definitely dead 10 years ago
| -- is not going to cut it for climate change though. We
| obviously need more baskets to put the eggs into.
|
| > South Australia's remarkable 100 per cent renewables
| run extends to over 10 days
|
| One tiny state with almost unlimited solar and wind
| resources in one small country? That's great. Doesn't
| change the fact that we've run out of time waiting for
| wind and solar and they've still barely cracked 10%
| globally yet.
|
| That's it's also hilariously weasel worded -- obviously
| that state is still burning a lot of gas to generate
| electricity. Strange why they don't feel they can be
| honest and up front with the public, why are they still
| trying to fool people about those things? Doesn't really
| lend a lot of credibility or confidence to what they're
| selling.
| tokai wrote:
| Autocratic countries with natural resources being
| dangerous and unreliable is not a black swan event.
| That's their normal mode of operating. Russia has always
| been behaving like they are now. The west could just
| ignore Chechnya, Dagestan, Georgia, and Ukraine (the
| first time). This time around the west woke up and pushed
| back. But we could have had an energy crisis and economic
| warfare from multiple of the other russian conflicts. If
| we had minded to intervene.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| [dead]
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Nuclear is not appealing in North America because we have large
| supplies of cheap natural gas here and it can be burned in gas
| turbines or combined-cycle turbines that have a low capital
| cost. We haven't built many coal burning power plants since
| 1980 for the same reason we haven't built nuclear plants. When
| it comes to the intermittent nature of renewables, it has been
| natural gas that fills the gap.
|
| Japan has to import liquefied natural gas at great expense so
| the economics look different to them. The "plutonium economy"
| where fast reactors are used to breed fuel from the common 238U
| is particularly appealing to them because they have at least a
| century worth of fuel mined and above ground, some of which is
| labeled as "nuclear waste". Such a system uses uranium so
| efficiently it seems it could be made sustainable by extracting
| uranium from seawater.
|
| The last round of interest in fast reactors was mainly about
| fuel economy and people believed then that fast reactors would
| have a higher capital cost, but the next generation of nuclear
| plants has to be economically competitive and that's not going
| to happen so long as the powerset is a steam turbine so the
| main appeal of alternative reactor types today is getting rid
| of the water so you can run at higher temperatures with a
| dramatically smaller and potentially cheaper gas turbine
| powerset.
|
| Such "5k generation" reactors are still under development and
| won't be making a contribution to the grid for a decade, but
| clean energy is a marathon and not a sprint.
| xorcist wrote:
| > won't be making a contribution to the grid for a decade
|
| Or ever. Breeder reactors aren't a new idea. The concept has
| been around half a century, and they were put in commercial
| use 35 years ago. Thus far with enormous cost overruns and
| spectacularly bad uptime.
|
| It's good that we research these things, but we shouldn't
| base our energy infrastructure on things which aren't
| commercially available for good reasons.
|
| It's sad for everyone that energy infrastructure turned out
| to be a really, really hard problem, but wishful thinking
| doesn't make it go away.
| nine_k wrote:
| I thought that the main problem with the breeder reactor
| design is the proliferation risk, because they also produce
| (and can burn) plutonium usable for building a bomb.
|
| I frankly think that these considerations are exaggerated
| in countries which already have nuclear bombs (like USA,
| Russia, China, France, UK, India, Pakistan, Israel,..).
| Japan does not have a nuclear arsenal, but, frankly, a
| normal nuclear power plant can also produce plutonium,
| maybe only somehow more visibly, so Japan might have built
| nuclear warheads on a year or so, had they decided to do so
| (and violate their Constitution).
| narrator wrote:
| Somehow, the Russians got breeder reactors to work. They
| have two currently running and are planning a new 1200 GW
| one. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-Reactor
| xorcist wrote:
| There is nothing to suggest these reactors technically
| can't be built, but that the upsides are heavily
| outweighed by the increased cost and reliability issues.
|
| We have several decades of empirical data to suggest
| this. A regime that has other basis of considerations can
| of course do what they want.
| philipkglass wrote:
| The current plan is to have a BN-1200 built by 2035:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-1200_reactor
|
| _In 2015, after several minor delays, problems at the
| recently completed BN-800 indicated a redesign was
| needed. Construction of the BN-1200 was put on
| "indefinite hold", and Rosenergoatom stated that no
| decision to continue would be made before 2019. In
| January 2022, Rosatom announced that a pilot BN-1200M
| would be built by 2035._
|
| The BN-800 reactor connected to the grid in 2015. That's
| a gap of 20 years between building more BN-series
| reactors.
|
| Meanwhile Russia has completed 6 conventional pressurized
| water reactors in the last 5 years:
|
| https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/CountryDetai
| ls....
|
| I think it's fair to say that breeders are still too
| expensive and complicated to compete with conventional
| reactors. The money saved on fuel is just not enough to
| justify the extra complications considering how
| inexpensive uranium remains.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| EBR II, FFTF and some Russian reactors have a very good
| record for reliability. Moju, Superphenix, not so much.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Natural gas is attractive from a capital, operations, and
| expense perspective _because_ we wave away most of the real
| cost as something we don 't need to care about. Pesky
| externalities like carbon emissions are someone else's
| problem. If we accounted for them in the same way we account
| for the costs of storing spent nuclear fuel natural gas
| generation would be extraordinarily expensive. We basically
| let natural gas plants dispose of their waste product by
| venting it into our communities and then claim that natural
| gas is less expensive.
|
| Well, duh. Of course it's less expensive if you only have to
| care about the lifecycle of half of your process.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Natural gas emits half the CO2 than coal for the same
| amount of energy.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| It evens out a little if you include GHG effects of
| methane leaked during extraction. Recent work suggests we
| might have been undercounting that.
|
| Gas still leads coal and is cleaner burning so less
| polluting in othet ways but its not quite the GHG slam
| dunk it is if you just compare CO2 from combustion.
|
| Renewables and nuclear are way ahead of both.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Natural gas is better than coal. That's a low bar.
| cryptonector wrote:
| It's better than any other carbon fuel that we could use,
| and not by a little but by a lot because emissions of
| mercury and other very bad things are much much lower
| with natural gas than with other carbon fuels. It's not
| just a bit better than coal.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I'm not sure why people are replying to this thread to
| talk about coal, other than GP post the entire discussion
| is about nuke and natural gas. Yes. Coal is very bad.
| Natural gas is less bad. Literally nobody is arguing
| against this point. Both are very bad.
| WalterBright wrote:
| 50% less CO2 emissions is a big deal.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| The argument about north america having natural gas is
| flawed, on several fundamental levels. Gas is traded
| internationally and north americans are generally not
| insulated from global prices. The reserves being in north
| america has almost zero bearing on this.
|
| Second, natural gas is a finite resource and the vast
| reserves are vast... for now.
|
| What north america also has are vast tracts of land. The
| ideal place for nuclear reactors since large bodies of water
| are often close by. Same argument for wind turbines.
| DennisP wrote:
| Gas is not a global market like oil. Gas is traded
| internationally only in two ways: one is if you have a
| direct pipeline, e.g. from Russia to Europe. That's a very
| localized market. The only real global market is liquified
| natural gas, transported by those ships with giant
| spherical tanks, requiring specialized terminals on both
| ends. That's way more expensive than pipelines. The US
| exports a fair amount of LNG, especially right now to
| Europe, but for its domestic gas it pays far lower prices
| than LNG, and significantly less than most countries with
| less abundant gas resources.
|
| I wish we would move from gas to nuclear since gas has a
| major climate impact, but low US gas prices do make that
| more difficult.
|
| The US also happens to be especially well situated for
| solar and wind, making life even harder for nuclear. That
| comes with some bad news too, because we don't really have
| great storage solutions yet and we're terrible at building
| long-distance transmission.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| It's not as clean as you describe - natural gas is
| certainly a global market, as demonstrated by the price
| correlations: futures in the united states are typically
| based on the henry hub price, as determined by the price
| at the henry hub located in Erath, Louisiana. If we
| compare this to rates found at, for example, the UK
| national balancing point, we will find that there is a
| definite correlation. The international trade in natural
| gas is definitely non-trivial. Grandparent post is making
| the claim that gas is traded internationally and north
| Americans are generally not insulated from global prices.
| This is demonstrably true.
|
| https://www.theice.com/products/910/UK-NBP-Natural-Gas-
| Futur... https://ycharts.com/indicators/henry_hub_natural
| _gas_spot_pr...
| DennisP wrote:
| Sure, I'm not saying they're completely separate. If
| demand for LNG increases a lot (as happened recently)
| then some US gas is going to go that way. But a country
| like Japan, subsisting on imported LNG, is still paying
| way more for its gas than domestic consumers in the US,
| and that's the point that matters if we're discussing
| nuclear's market challenges in Japan vs. the US.
| danenania wrote:
| "Gas is traded internationally and north americans are
| generally not insulated from global prices. The reserves
| being in north america has almost zero bearing on this."
|
| The difference when you have your own supply is that the
| price becomes a policy choice. The government can easily
| decide to prioritize the domestic market and limit exports.
| geertj wrote:
| > The government can easily decide to prioritize the
| domestic market and limit exports.
|
| They can, and have done this in the past, e.g. the US ban
| on export of crude oil.
|
| But this does not change the point materially. Not
| exporting and consuming gas domestically at lower prices
| incurs an opportunity cost as the same gas could have
| been sold for more aboard. So net-net the people will pay
| for such a policy choice.
| danenania wrote:
| "Not exporting and consuming gas domestically at lower
| prices incurs an opportunity cost as the same gas could
| have been sold for more aboard. So net-net the people
| will pay for such a policy choice."
|
| I don't think it's so simple. Cheap energy can make
| entire industrial sectors viable that otherwise wouldn't
| be. You could easily end up ahead by putting that energy
| into production of goods that are higher up on the value
| chain rather than exporting it directly.
| geertj wrote:
| > I don't think it's so simple.
|
| There will be higher order effects, there always are. I
| don't think the second order you brought up above changes
| the argument either. If investing in a certain industrial
| sector is desirable, then why not sell gas at the
| international market price, and use the extra proceeds to
| do the investment at the level that makes sense. That way
| you can at least tune the investment to a level that
| makes sense, rather than having it depend on the delta
| between the local and global market price which will
| depend on a ton of other factors.
|
| Note that I'm not saying that's always bad to protect a
| local market. The assertion was that North America has
| enough gas causing it to be isolated from the global
| market pricing, and I'm still very skeptical about that
| claim.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Gas is traded internationally and north americans are
| generally not insulated from global prices.
|
| It is traded internationally, but oceanic shipping of
| natural gas is expensive, and capacity is limited (export
| ports, import ports, vessels), so the domestic market
| doesn't see the full effect of international pricing
| either.
| msh wrote:
| Nuclear power kills people when things go wrong and accidents
| happen. Coal, oil and gas kills people when things are running
| perfectly.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| And, renewables don't kill people either way.
|
| Nukes are not competing with carbon sources. Against
| renewables (+storage, eventually) nukes lose on _every_ axis:
| safety, capex, opex, construction time, other environmental
| impact (e.g. U vs other mining).
|
| There is no place where nukes come out ahead, so no place
| where building more is the right choice. Continuing to
| operate them where they are can be OK, for now.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Ackshually the death toll for wind farms is higher than
| nuclear.
|
| Mostly it's people falling off them when installing or
| maintaining them.
| msh wrote:
| There are locations where renewables cannot provide base
| load all year round.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Those places can continue burning cheap NG _as they do
| today_ , during times when renewables flag, and upgrade
| to cheap synthetic fuel, imported from the tropics, as it
| becomes available.
|
| Whatever renewables + storage they build reduces their
| operating cost.
| linhns wrote:
| Finally someone gets it. I highly doubt Japan is going to make
| the same mistakes again and they're just utilising what they
| have already built. A great step towards green, efficient and
| abundant energy.
| kqr wrote:
| Worth noting from a system safety perspective that it's not
| just about how to prevent the accident, but also how to limit
| the consequences once it does happen.
|
| From what I remember of the Fukushima accident, one of the
| quick remedies they could have started with immediately is pump
| sea water in as a coolant. The management didn't want to do
| that, because sea water corrodes equipment and makes it more
| expensive to restore afterwards.
|
| This is a natural thing for management to say -- they're
| sitting there in Tokyo not fully experiencing the severity of
| the problem.
|
| The problem is that Japanese culture puts an emphasis on
| obeying your superiors, so it took a long time until people
| disregarded those orders and started cooling with sea water
| anyway. That sort of obedience culture is not really compatible
| with systems designed to suffer rare but potentially
| catastrophic failures.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| > _they 're sitting there in Tokyo..._
|
| I wonder if that had been the case if the wind had blown in
| another direction at the time, towards Tokyo, instead of
| mostly the open sea.
|
| I also think it's difficult to come to conclusions in seeing
| this in an isolated way. Everything was in chaos and much
| destroyed because of the tsunami, surely that delayed
| communications, and assessment of the 'real' situation?
|
| Sometimes when I read about the history of all that, and all
| the talking about, I get the feeling like the commentariat
| views this like a clean room laboratory exercise. Like in a
| model, this happened, what to do now?
|
| Chaotic reality doesn't work like that.
| kqr wrote:
| The reason I brought that specific thing up is that it's
| not an isolated thing. It happens over and over in complex
| situations when the system is top-heavy in its steering. In
| any complex situation, you need to have people on the
| ground with the trust and authority and safety to do what
| they think is best, precisely because of the reasons you
| mention with the chaos and delayed communications, and so
| on.
| walnutclosefarm wrote:
| > From what I remember of the Fukushima accident, one of the
| quick remedies they could have started with immediately is
| pump sea water in as a coolant. The management didn't want to
| do that, because sea water corrodes equipment and makes it
| more expensive to restore afterwards.
|
| Well, not really. Some of the early damage might have been
| prevented by this (at the cost of destroying the reactors),
| but Fukushima really had no way to reliably cool their
| reactors without auxiliary power. Once that was gone, there
| was going to be serious trouble, and likely destruction of
| some of the reactors.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The Fukushima design was a textbook example of the zipper
| effect. One failure led to another to another to another until
| it melted down. At every point in that chain, simple (and
| cheap) design changes would have prevented it from propagating.
|
| For example, if the diesel generators had simply been put up on
| a platform (so they weren't drowned when the seawall was
| topped), nothing further bad would have happened. If the
| hydrogen relief values vented outside rather than inside, the
| reactor buildings would not have blown up. Etc.
|
| The same goes for the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
|
| The designers of both should have consulted some airplane
| engineers. At Boeing a lot of effort was expended preventing
| cascading zipper effects.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| There is no safer time to invest in nuclear power than after a
| nuclear disaster.
| s_dev wrote:
| Seems pretty counter-intuitive -- care to elaborate?
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| Because "safety regulations are written in blood". Disaster
| happens, reactive preventative measures help keep the
| disaster from reoccurring in that specific manner.
|
| ...in fields governed by science and stricture, anyway,
| like nuclear power or aviation.
| winReInstall wrote:
| You can actually predict by that metric how safety aware
| your current surroundings are in production facilties.
|
| Time of last incident, average promotion time (over time
| reduces safety awareness again), calculating that, one
| can behave acyclic until the next accident.
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| Sure. I noticed this at a hardwood flooring warehouse, in
| another life. In fields governed by science and
| stricture, however, the safety increase is effectively
| permanent.
| robjan wrote:
| It's the same after any accident. presumably lessons have
| been learned, procedures improved and people more vigilant.
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| They will be less likely to compromise on safety to cut
| costs?
| macksd wrote:
| Much like cybersecurity, the safety of nuclear at this
| point pretty much comes down to people, and whether or not
| they choose to invest in the best practices or if they get
| too lax. Right after a nuclear accident, the math suddenly
| looks different to the bureaucrats and investing in safe,
| reliable operation suddenly becomes worth it again.
| foxyv wrote:
| The valuations will be cheap, but they will have gained
| extremely valuable insights that will hopefully lead to new
| and better designs? Personally, I think there is more
| likely to be a period of culls and bankruptcies.
| taylorius wrote:
| Apart from waiting until after the next disaster. :-)
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| You're glossing over the fact that Fukushima happened because
| the power company never should have been allowed to construct
| or operate a plant in such a location.
|
| When they were allowed to build the plant, emergency systems
| were not protected from tsunami damage/flooding. If the
| infrastructure around emergency cooling had been protected,
| then none of this would have happened.
|
| When the tsunami happened, both the power company and
| government appeared to have no emergency action plans or
| preparedness for the obvious scenario of the emergency cooling
| system failing.
|
| When they were caught with no plans and an unfolding
| catastrophe, instead of being open and seeking assistance from
| anyone they could, they clammed up and hid as much as possible.
|
| It was a disaster predicated on incompetence and arrogance at
| every step by every organization involved, up to and including
| the most senior Japanese government officials who sat by and
| let the TEPCO bungle everything.
|
| So yes, given such a systemic failure - much of it enabled by
| too-cozy relationships, incompetence, and (likely) corruption -
| I think it's quite wise to say "well, we're not qualified to do
| more of this."
|
| Solar and wind don't have anywhere near the operating expenses,
| supply chain requirements, or dangers nuclear power has.
| They're highly distributed. And nuclear power is increasingly
| unreliable due to (cough cough) extreme weather events from
| climate change, though usually this is more inane stuff like
| cooling water sources drying up, or becoming too hot, or
| clogging up from invasive species that are able to survive
| where they weren't before.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| Solar are wind are also increasingly unreliable due to the
| same extreme weather events. It is truly mind boggling how
| easily all legitimate criticism of wind and solar are brushed
| aside by the belief that they are the future.
|
| With changing weather patterns, wind turbines are exposed to
| more ice events - events during cold weather that cause the
| shutdown of hundreds of wind farms. And no, i am not
| referring to wind turbines being affected by the cold, this
| is specifically wind turbines being affected by temperatures
| around freezing where ice forms. And what of long periods
| where winds speeds are too low across half a continent - a la
| the UK and western europe very recently? Same with solar -
| the world's largest power grids are mostly not tropical.
|
| There will likely come a future where continents are powered
| by wind and solar, but that future is not tomorrow nor is it
| in ten years time. In the meantime, we continue to hurtle
| towards a climate disaster while quibbling about the problems
| of nuclear power - a technology that has the potential to get
| us to that sustainable future.
| throw10920 wrote:
| This is a really good point - what measure of assurance do we
| (or, rather, the Japanese public) have that Japanese
| government officials and power company execs won't make the
| same mistakes again? Have _any_ of the responsible parties
| been penalized at all?
|
| _Even if the technology advances, if the problem was the
| people last time, technology alone won 't be enough._
| lkbm wrote:
| I don't know about individuals in the government, but the
| government was held liable for some amount (seemingly
| <$10MM)[0][1] and top company executives were fined tens of
| billions[2].
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/17/japanese-
| gover...
|
| [1] https://archive.vn/UnavD
|
| [2] https://www.hazardexonthenet.net/article/191735/Former-
| Fukus...
| jchw wrote:
| Fair point. I hope they can resolve the systemic issues.
|
| Just so we're clear though, the location itself isn't
| _inherently_ a problem as far as I know. There was in fact a
| power plant closer to the epicenter of the disaster that
| survived just fine, which is pretty impressive given how
| cataclysmic of an event it was.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| That one survived solely because one man put his career on
| the line, over and over, ensuring that it would. Depending
| on such devotion is not sustainable.
|
| There is no possibility that any new construction would
| observe the same standards as that engineer. It might try,
| but management would overrule it.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Your first two paragraphs seem to contradict each other. I
| guess I disagree with the first and agree with the second.
|
| If you're going to build a plant that requires active backup
| cooling in a tsunami zone then you should protect your backup
| cooling system from tsunamis.
|
| It's ok to build nuclear fission reactors in challenging
| locations. We have many that run underwater and a few dozen
| that run in outer space. We ran one under the ice sheet of
| Greenland and one in Antarctica. As you say, you just gotta
| build the necessary infrastructure.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| There have been no nuke reactors in space. (RTG does not
| count.) The ones in Antarctica and Greenland were notable
| failures.
| m4rtink wrote:
| We don't have any currently operating nuclear reactors in
| space _right now_ but there were quite a few in the past
| - a couple test satellites from the US and a couple dozen
| active radar satellites for ship hunting from the USSR:
|
| https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/us-a.htm
|
| While none are operational right now, the highly
| radioactive reactors cores that didn't burn up over
| Canada by accident do remain a reasonably stable disposal
| orbit today. :-)
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Conceded, a few were operated by USSR. The one that
| crashed in Canada generated quite a fuss, for reasons.
|
| The film safe from Skylab that crashed in Australia made
| less.
| Julesman wrote:
| This is not intellectually honest in any way. You might as well
| be parroting nuclear industry talking points. I could get
| ChatGDP to make your argument better than you.
| andrewla wrote:
| > it was absolutely preventable, and they had the means to do
| so.
|
| This is not that interesting an observation by itself. For
| example, they could have shut down and decommissioned the
| reactor.
|
| What I believe you're trying to imply is that they were aware
| of problems and they could have fixed them in advance of the
| tsunami, and fixing them would not have been prohibitively
| expensive. But more important is the implication that the
| reactor was known to be particularly vulnerable in comparison
| to all the other nuclear power stations in Japan, and the cost
| of fixing all issues of comparable a priori severity was within
| the capacity of the funding of the system.
|
| The last bit is critical here; and it's why I disregard the
| narrative of Fukushima Daichi being "preventable". There are no
| current nuclear designs that are naturally fail-safe; all of
| them rely on active measures to ensure safety in the event of
| system failures. When the next disaster strikes, it will
| hopefully has as small an impact as Fukushima, but what I can
| guarantee is that afterwards we will have a laundry list of all
| the reasons why it was completely preventable based on the
| knowledge we had at the time.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Japan's renewable resources are actually quite poor. Unless
| tidal takes off or deep offshore wind gets a lot cheaper it
| makes a lot of sense to restart existing nuclear.
| greenthrow wrote:
| Offshore wind is already extremely cheap. Way, way cheaper
| than nuclear and can get online much faster.
| krona wrote:
| In the north sea it is, relatively. Now factor in typhoons,
| cyclones, tsunamis and other local weather phenomena like
| very low average wind speeds, plus unfavourable geological
| conditions, and it makes many of the economic assumptions
| invalid when applied to the Asia pacific.
| Mrdarknezz wrote:
| Not if you count auxilary costs, it's also intermittent so
| it really isn't interchangeable with nuclear.
| rcstank wrote:
| Do you have more info on this? I'd like to read up on it.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Behold, the Haliade X - 14MW offshore turbine which costs
| a little bit more than $14mln, but boasts a capacity
| factor of 60%+:
|
| https://www.offshorewind.biz/2020/09/21/rystad-energy-
| less-i...
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| https://www.irena.org/Publications/2022/Jul/Renewable-
| Power-...
|
| It's coming down. Though massive supply shortages and
| failure of a bunch of companies to hedge against
| commodity prices needed to fulfil budgets are going to be
| pretty rough for anyone who isn't China for a few years.
| Note how much more Japan's renewables cost than world
| median. The reasons aren't just policy -- Japan has ben
| dealt a uniquely terrible hand for renewables matched
| maybe by Slovak Republic (which at least has close allies
| to trade with).
| hannob wrote:
| Just a few starting points: https://www.theguardian.com/e
| nvironment/2022/jul/08/price-of...
| https://www.offshorewind.biz/2022/09/29/vattenfall-steps-
| in-... https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/orsted-first-to-
| give-finan...
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| None of these are in the oceans i believe. Instead
| they're using a sea that's between UK and mainland europe
|
| It shouldn't be a deal breaker, but doing the same on
| oceanic water will have it's own challenges with
| significantly higher wind variance and more flotsam
| dangers
| eldaisfish wrote:
| You claim of offshore wind being "cheap" relies on data
| from the north sea.
|
| A region of:
|
| - no freezing water, no icebergs
|
| - few, low intensity storms
|
| - shallow seas (often less than 100 m)
|
| - surrounded by wealthy nations with large population
| centres
|
| The argument does not hold and does not transfer well.
| [deleted]
| tjansen wrote:
| Yes, but it either needs storage or fossil backup.
| Otherwise you can't compare wind, even offshore wind, with
| a reliable source of energy.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Storage is a solved problem. Pumped hydro has been in use
| for decades around the world, and battery systems are
| becoming commonplace as lithium ion battery prices have
| plunged and alternative battery technologies have
| matured. Several Iron-flow chemistries are now
| commercially deployed.
|
| I don't understand why every time wind/solar are
| mentioned on HN, someone feels the need to say "tHe WiND
| doEsn'T alWAys BloW" while utilities are actively
| deploying storage, and not just for "when the sun isn't
| shining", but to help smooth peak usage to avoid
| transmission upgrades, provide resiliency from
| infrastructure failure during weather events, and
| increase flexibility for service/maintenance that doesn't
| require outages.
|
| Also, it's being deployed commercially for resiliency and
| off-peak rate utilization. It's integrated into an
| increasing number of EV charge stations because one of
| the biggest barriers to DCFC system deployment is getting
| a beefy enough feed from the utility to handle peak
| usage.
|
| Also, it's being deployed at the residential level, for
| many of the same reasons.
| Herz wrote:
| [dead]
| tjansen wrote:
| The issue is the amount of storage required. It depends a
| lot on the country, but here in Germany I think everybody
| agrees that we need to store enough energy to power the
| whole country for at least 2 weeks before we can get rid
| of fossil fuels. That's a lot of batteries. And currently
| there's not enough storage for a single hour...
|
| In these dimensions, resource availability becomes a
| limiting factor. Pumped hydro requires a lot of space and
| geography that many countries can't provide. It may be an
| option for Norway or Austria, but not for Germany. And
| even if Germany would buy the planned world production of
| lithium batteries for the next 10 years, we still
| wouldn't have enough. The math just doesn't work out for
| both. Hydrogen looks more realistic, but is not a mature
| technology at the required scale.
| nthj wrote:
| > we need to store enough energy to power the whole
| country for at least 2 weeks before we can get rid of
| fossil fuels.
|
| Maybe this is self-obvious, but "get rid of" seems to be
| carrying a lot of weight in that statement. I personally
| am not offended or concerned by keeping natural gas
| generators around for decades, even, as insurance for
| catastrophic disasters, if in practice they're unused 99%
| of the time because storage infrastructure has reached 24
| hour capacity. We reach diminishing returns on increased
| storage.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| There is, _in fact_ , no need to "get rid of fossil
| fuels", and no plan or desire to do so. So all the
| remaining claims are irrelevant. NG backup for renewables
| will remain. More storage mean burning less frequently,
| which is a pure good.
|
| Pumped hydro storage does not, _in fact_ , require "lot
| of space". Hydro power generation needs a watershed.
| Pumped hydro _can_ reuse existing hydro infrastructure,
| but does not depend on it, and does not suffer its
| failings. Pumped hydro needs only a hill.
|
| There will be no need to repeat the cited falsehoods.
|
| Finally, a multitude of practical storage methods are
| being deployed. Batteries are the most expensive, so are
| only ever used for very short-term storage. NG backup for
| renewables works and will continue working; storage
| forestalls need to use it, decreasing opex.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Where is Japan going to build the reservoirs to support
| pumped storage? They would literally need to blow up some
| mountains to do it.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Or build it at the top of said mountains?
| m4rtink wrote:
| Well, usually you have many dams in sequence on a river
| and you can often turn them to pumped hydro by pumping
| the water from the lower dam back up when you need to
| store some power.
|
| And Japan has a lot of such cascades - even just in
| Kurobe there are at least 4 major dams one after another.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| But all that capacity is built out. Japan has about the
| same as the USA in pumped storage capacity...which is a
| bit amazing considering Japan is just the size of
| California.
| xienze wrote:
| > Storage is a solved problem.
|
| And yet, the presumably intelligent people in charge of
| Japan's energy policy still think nuclear is the way to
| go. Do you know something they don't?
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I do think hydrogen is the answer, and I think it will be
| economical. Not just for energy, but for ammonia for
| fertilizer.
| belorn wrote:
| > Pumped hydro has been in use for decades around the
| world
|
| They were used last time in Europe when there were an
| energy shortage. Almost all was decommissioned quite
| quickly afterward when they became economical
| unsustainable.
|
| They are generally expensive. They are generally located
| in places where there already exist a lot of hydro power.
| They generally need a lot of land and connecting power
| infrastructure. They generally tend to compete with hydro
| power. They generally need a lot of subsidies.
|
| With energy prices skyrocketing in eu there is some
| lukewarm interest to restart those old pumped hydro
| (those that still exist and with existing power
| infrastructure in place). They are however not a drop in
| replacement for existing nuclear power plants nor
| existing natural gas power plants. There is however a
| energy shortage and so any source might be economical
| viable if used correctly.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Storage is a solved problem.
|
| Lol no, it really isn't.
|
| > Pumped hydro has been in use for decades around the
| world,
|
| Pumped hydro works if you have mountains, valleys you can
| flood, and dams. It works great in the Alps; good luck
| doing that in the UK or in the Netherlands.
|
| > battery systems are becoming commonplace as lithium ion
| battery prices have plunged
|
| They are nowhere near the right scale. Bear in mind, in
| Europe they'd need to store energy over several weeks or
| months. The continent is prone to winter anti cyclonic
| conditions that go on for weeks, with no wind and no sun
| light. It's quite different from, say, most of Australia.
|
| > alternative battery technologies have matured
|
| I'd like to know which one, because as far as I know none
| of the alternative are anywhere near maturity. Progress
| is being made, but you're overselling it.
|
| > Several Iron-flow chemistries are now commercially
| deployed.
|
| These are no silver bullets and have several drawbacks,
| including the "flow" bit, which requires pumps and
| valves. Efficiency is also not that great. There are
| sulphides, lithium-air, and Na-ion designs that are more
| promising. But again, none of that is mature, or even
| really produced at scale.
|
| > I don't understand why every time wind/solar are
| mentioned on HN, someone feels the need to say "tHe WiND
| doEsn'T alWAys BloW" while utilities are actively
| deploying storage, and not just for "when the sun isn't
| shining", but to help smooth peak usage to avoid
| transmission upgrades, provide resiliency from
| infrastructure failure during weather events, and
| increase flexibility for service/maintenance that doesn't
| require outages.
|
| It's the counterpoint of all these "lol renewables all
| the way" posts that crop up any time we discuss energy
| policy.
|
| Most people would say that there are very good use cases
| for renewables. But they won't be enough. If you read
| analyses at the grid level (some of that is in the IPCC
| reports), constant base production is very much required,
| otherwise you need to vastly overbuild and your grid has
| one huge point of failure (yes, freak meteorological
| events do happen).
| moloch-hai wrote:
| > Pumped hydro works if you have mountains, valleys you
| can flood, and dams.
|
| This falsehood has been corrected numerous times on HN.
| It need not be repeated.
|
| Pumped hydro is in no wise dependent on any of those. All
| it needs is a hill. Even England has hills. Even
| _Australia_ has hills. The Netherlands are in Europe,
| which has hills.
|
| Another falsehood is that "you need to vastly overbuild".
| This too has been frequently corrected. We use, today, NG
| for backup. We will have no need to demolish any of that
| infrastructure, even after storage is built. Overbuilding
| renewables to charge storage makes compelling economic
| sense, just because it is so cheap, but the NG backup
| remains. Eventually, synthetic fuels will be cheaper, for
| such occasions, imported from solar farms in the tropics.
|
| So, renewables have no such "single point of failure".
| This falsehood need not be repeated.
|
| Finally, pumped hydro and batteries are just two of
| _numerous_ practical storage technologies being deployed.
| Their round-trip efficiency is of minimal importance when
| they are charged from free surplus. Storage with NG
| backup provides fully ample 100% service with exactly
| zero "constant base production" needed or wanted.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| My I-think-conservative WAG for the cost and land-area-
| use differences between England and Switzerland, for this
| kind of storage, would be about 50x and 5-10x,
| respectively, for similar amounts of stored energy. Both
| elevation and grade of the surrounding land matter a lot
| for how much energy you can reclaim per stored liter, and
| having two or three sides of your reservoir provided by
| nature in the form of steep-walled valleys has to provide
| serious cost savings.
|
| Like of course any water you push up a hill is gonna gain
| potential energy, but I think a reasonable reading of
| "works" in that post was "works _efficiently enough that
| it 's actually worth doing_", not "is technically
| possible".
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Your "wild-ass guesses" for costs are worth as much as
| you say. Grade, less: it affects mainly how long the
| penstock must be, but pipe is cheap.
|
| An earthen berm is a very cheap construction project.
| Classically those were achieved with _hand labor_
| worldwide, for millennia, eventually augmented with
| wheelbarrows starting in China, and oxcarts. They cost
| less today.
|
| Nature providing one, two, three, or four walls
| (steepness _optional_ ) reduces construction cost, but
| the turbines and pumps are a substantial part of the
| total.
|
| Opex is of course extremely low. Bonus points for solar
| farms floating on the reservoirs. Round-trip efficiency
| of pumped hydro is near the top of all alternatives,
| although efficiency is relatively unimportant when the
| power being stored was free.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Not seeing how the physics can possibly work out for the
| real costs and land-area-use being _too_ much lower than
| my guesses to achieve the same total stored energy, but
| sure, maybe there 's some engineering magic I'm not aware
| of. Could be. In particular, maybe I'm overestimating how
| much more energy one can efficiently extract from, say, a
| liter of water dropping 5,000 feet over three miles,
| versus a liter of water dropping 600 feet over three
| miles.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Anywhere pumped hydro would cost more than another of
| many storage alternatives, the other alternative will
| reliably be chosen. England is, e.g., preparing hydrogen
| storage in depleted NG cavities. Pumped hydro will be
| built in the places where it is cheapest, favoring high
| hills and variable topography.
|
| Costs for many storage alternatives are falling fast, and
| it is unclear which choices will win. Adding pumps to
| existing dams has lately been cheapest, by far. Future
| people will choose according to local conditions without
| asking us.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Right, I get that there are alternatives that would be
| used instead, what I was surprised at was characterizing
| "hydro only works in mountainous areas" as flatly false,
| if we take "works" to mean "is worth doing", which is a
| common usage and I think a fair reading of it, and since
| it seemed to me like there _would_ be large differences
| in the economics of it, depending on local geography.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Low hills, where the hilltops are not otherwise in use,
| may suffice. Some places have very deep gullies or
| underground cavities that would serve in place of or
| augment hills.
|
| The point is that whether a storage medium is practical
| in an area depends more on the landscape of choices than
| on the physical topography. Even Nebraska might have deep
| cavities that would serve in place of hills. But the
| extrema are extreme.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| Just a minor nit -- and some links for those who might
| not know where to find them. I of course agree with you.
|
| > Pumped hydro works if you have mountains, valleys you
| can flood, and dams. It works great in the Alps; good
| luck doing that in the UK or in the Netherlands.
|
| It works in Wales and Scotland -- but not in England
| where it is needed the most.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity_in_the_Uni
| ted...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-
| storage_hydroel...
| concordDance wrote:
| > Storage is a solved problem
|
| Why do people just assert things rather than spending
| five minutes actually looking up some numbers doing
| arithmetic?
|
| Storage systems and theirs costs, discharge rates, cycle
| endurance, etc: https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/file
| s/2019/07/f65/Stora...
|
| What the wind power production rate over time looks like
| for a country: https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
|
| Then you can look up country power consumption and wind
| cost per KWh and half life.
|
| Then it's just some arithmetic.
|
| You're not helpless consumers of data, you CAN look this
| up and figure it out.
|
| To save you some trouble, the bottom line is that for
| countries like the UK pure renewables would triple
| electricity costs. Is that an acceptable price? Maybe.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Nobody expects, demands, or plans "UK pure renewables".
| So all of the above, conditioned on it, is specious.
|
| Renewables are the cheapest power generation the world
| has ever seen, by a large and growing margin. Storage in
| many practical forms is being deployed.
|
| Everything that has always worked still works, and will
| be abandoned only when it is not needed anymore.
| Herz wrote:
| Renewables are cheap when they produce. The problem is when
| they don't produce. Wind cannot be predicted, and the sun
| disappears for several hours during the day.
|
| How much does some renewable energy cost me at night when
| there is no wind, +infinity?
|
| Just look at the average capacity factor of renewables, on
| average it is as if 60-70% of the time they produce nothing
| during the course of a year.
|
| In contrast, a nuclear plant can easily reach 90+% capacity
| factor, which makes it very reliable as a power source.
|
| I am not saying that renewables suck, but to say that they
| cost little and are the solution to all problems is simply
| false. Some countries may go 100% renewable, but to claim
| that everyone must adopt renewables is ideological
| propaganda.
|
| P.S. It is useless to talk about batteries and storage
| systems, which do not exist on a large scale, except
| through dams, whose existence is highly dependent on the
| geology of the country. (By the way, these would be
| projects that would greatly increase the price of renewable
| energy, but they are always omitted for idology)
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Wind cannot be predicted"
|
| I can predict you, that the wind on the sea is way
| stronger and stable, than on land, so your base
| assumption might be wrong.
|
| (Offshore windparks are still not _the_ solution of
| course.)
| Herz wrote:
| I generalized. Over a broad time period (like a year),
| you can predict the wind production of a wind farm, but
| on a daily basis you cannot consider wind a reliable
| source of energy. You can't make predictions today about
| the next day, and that makes wind a not very reliable
| source of energy if you have to run a country on it....
| The only solution to this problem are seasonal storage,
| which is a lot of lithium, or energy mix with nuclear
| (imho, the most logical rational and economical way).
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "The only solution to this problem are seasonal storage,
| which is a lot of lithium"
|
| You are maybe not aware, that for stationary batteries,
| there are way more options than lithium based. Natrium
| for example, is quite common, so you can make literal
| saltwater batteries.
| Herz wrote:
| It is not all perfect, salt (molten) batteries have an
| operating range of about 300 degrees. In addition to
| having very long preparation times after discharge. If
| you don't use them in daily use they tend to discharge
| over time. And they have very low energy densities.
|
| We can wait for some scientific advances, but it is
| whishful thinking to hope that in a few decades they will
| invent the ultimate solution.
|
| Hydroelectric plants are the only large-scale storage,
| but they are highly dependent on the geology of the
| country.
|
| They are not a solution to seasonal storage.
|
| For me it is useless to go on all these big trips, the
| solution is very simple: mix of nuclear for base load,
| and renewable for peak.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Hydroelectric plants are _not_ , in fact, "the only
| large-scale storage". Numerous practical storage methods
| are being fielded, many suitable at any scale.
|
| Pumped hydro is _not_ , in fact, "highly dependent on the
| geology of the country". It needs a hill. Hills are very,
| very common. I can see them in every direction, here.
| Maybe you can, too.
|
| A "solution to seasonal storage" is _not_ , in fact,
| needed or useful. NG backup works and will continue
| working into the indefinite future.
|
| Renewables + some storage are good for baseline. NG is
| good to fill in lulls longer than storage covers. Nukes
| cost so many times more than all other alternatives,
| there is no legitimate place for it.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| > The only solution to this problem are seasonal storage
|
| No one will deploy seasonal storage, so the point is
| moot. NG backup works today, and will continue working
| into the indefinite future.
|
| Chemical batteries are the most expensive of many storage
| alternatives, with advantages for very short-term use.
| Lithium is a poor choice for utility requirements, so its
| supply is irrelevant.
|
| There is no place for nukes, which cost radically more
| than all other alternatives, most especially for only
| intermittent use.
| kergonath wrote:
| It's one thing to build wind farms in the flat and shallow
| North Sea. It's quite another to do that on the Japanese
| coasts, where the sea floor is really not flat at all.
|
| Really, the North Sea is the ideal case for offshore wind.
| It is very windy but easily accessible and with a nice
| topology. Almost any other location is worse or much worse.
|
| > Way, way cheaper than nuclear and can get online much
| faster.
|
| It is not way, way cheaper. It is cheaper than nuclear if
| you consider only nameplate capacity. Once you account for
| the load factor it becomes worse. The capital cost for the
| wind turbines EDF is building in the UK is broadly
| comparable with the nuclear equivalent. And if you include
| the storage that will become more and more necessary as the
| share of renewables increases, it is much more expensive.
|
| It can get online faster, true, and it does not have the
| same issues regarding waste. They are also more modular,
| because you can build only 5 of them, whereas you cannot
| build a half reactor.
|
| That being said, it still has issues with waste because we
| cannot really do anything with the turbines once we
| decommission them. Also, whilst they are operating, each
| single turbine consumes several tonnes of aluminium each
| year.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Japan has quite different geology to western europe or USA
| off their coast where the wind resources are. The only
| option is floating and that's still very much under
| development.
|
| Plus offshore wind isn't that cheap. It's still on the
| order of $5000/kW of net generation for shallow water, and
| Japan hasn't had a lot of success breaking $8000/kW as yet.
| Plus their utility solar market is also a bit borked.
|
| There are countless reasons not to build a new nuclear
| plant, but the costs and risks of using old ones are less
| than not using them in this case. Especially given that
| they're also pulling the renewable encouraging levers
| pretty hard without much success.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| In Japan's case, I expect they have strategic reasons for
| wanting to maintain the domestic expertise and equipment to
| rapidly develop nuclear weapons, which AFAIK still means
| they need reactors (unless they want to have an outright
| disconnected-from-peaceful-use nuclear program, which they
| currently do not want to do).
|
| They've long been regarded as a "technically non-nuclear...
| but only if on short notice" state, ready to join the Big
| Boy Club quickly if confidence in their position under
| America's nuclear umbrella wavers. I doubt they want to
| lose that, so they're going to want _some amount_ of
| nuclear power as a plausibly-deniable way to keep up some
| of the equipment, material, and know-how they 'll need to
| maintain that latent threat, even if it's not the most
| economical option.
| ginko wrote:
| How about geothermal energy? Japan has tons of that.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| That is a better choice than nukes, for Japan.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I think deep offshore wind has a real shot.
| needle0 wrote:
| Looking at social media in Japan, I tend to see strong enmity
| towards solar -- eg large solar farms destroy the surrounding
| environment, they don't fit in with Japan's mountainous terrain
| and are prone to breakage during storms and landslides, failure
| to generate after snow, processing of obsolete units, etc. While
| there seems to be merit to many of the arguments made, the
| overall hostile attitude towards solar in general comes off as
| surprising; it's as if they think solar is by default evil.
| Wondering what shaped this attitude.
| t_tsonev wrote:
| Yet Tokyo is mandating rooftop solar for new buildings. The
| good thing is that solar can be adapted to the environment to
| the point where it just doesn't make sense not to use it.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| I think there are three major reasons why japan is doing this:
|
| - technological. There are new, safety-focused designs that japan
| is going to relaunch their nuclear program with. They're enough
| to satisfy the japanese regulators
|
| - geopolitical. Don't want to rely on russian fuel sources, don't
| want to fight against china for the end of a very long supply
| chain to get middle east petro.
|
| - crony. Honda and toyota made long term plans to ignore EV in
| favor of hydrogen, hydrogen battery economy is basically
| nonsensical unless you have nuclear power plants churning out the
| stuff as demand bleedoff.
| dsq wrote:
| Japan has generally always had a very sober attitude in most
| policy decisions, so this decision to reinvest in nuclear is more
| important than it seems. If the Japanses are doing it, it means
| its been thought through and found to be optimal.
| dncornholio wrote:
| Mixed feelings. Nuclear is a necessary evil in the energy-
| transition.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Expensive yes. But evil? Why?
| acdha wrote:
| Nuclear fission has uniquely long-term risks for mistakes or
| natural disasters. That doesn't mean we don't need to use it
| but there's a lot of extra precautions needed around how fuel
| is refined, transported, used, and disposed of which nothing
| else has.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Radiation is a little out of the ordinary, sure. But it is
| not uniquely hazardous or long term. Particulate air
| pollution from normally operating fossil and biofuel
| combustion kills 8 million people per year according to the
| WHO. Climate change from CO2 causes long term ecosystem
| damage.
|
| Radioactive waste uniquely becomes less hazardous with
| time, unlike forever non-decaying thing like mercury. It's
| also small and easy to place into 500m of crystalline
| bedrock or massive salt where it will not impact anything.
| acdha wrote:
| Well, fossil fuels aren't the clean technology we're
| talking about but again the thing I was referring to is
| timeframe: coal plants are nasty but the air pollution
| stops as soon as you shut them down and ecosystems
| recover. Not good, but beats the situation around, say,
| Chernobyl for coming centuries.
|
| And, yes, I've heard all of the boosters' claims. Easy is
| not an accurate description but possible is and as I said
| before we're going to need it. We just need to fully
| accept the responsibility that entails.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Wont some of the heavy metals and radioactive particles
| from burned coal stick around for quite a while in the
| environment? All thy fly ash is also nasty to handle and
| store.
| acdha wrote:
| Sure, again, I'm not saying everything else is perfect
| but note that this thread is about the clean energy
| transition -- nuclear is better than burning coal but
| when you're comparing it to wind/solr/hydro/geothermal
| none of those have anything like the same need for long-
| term planning.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Nuclear waste can be cleaned up Fukushima was cleaned up
| 11 years after the incident. Since Pripyat and the area
| around Chernobyl was only built to support the nuclear
| plant, there was no incentive to clean it up.
| acdha wrote:
| Yes, cleanup is possible. Note that I said it wasn't
| easy. I don't think anyone would describe the Fukushima
| cleanup as easy.
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