[HN Gopher] Nuclear reactors a mile underground promise safe, ch...
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Nuclear reactors a mile underground promise safe, cheap power
Author : geox
Score : 135 points
Date : 2024-08-27 11:36 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newatlas.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newatlas.com)
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Nice! Just not sure how cheap a mile deep bore hole is....
| martijnarts wrote:
| Somewhere up to $5 million, according to this r/AskEngineering
| thread:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/1dfzwxd/estim...
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Not as high as I thought it might be, as long as it is less
| costly than the containment vessel that they are looking to
| replace it would be a net.
| daneel_w wrote:
| Which as with everything else in construction these days
| ultimately ends up taking twice as long and costing thrice
| the initial estimate. Also, this is the cost for a _bore
| hole_. The cost for something with enough diameter to house a
| reactor will be some orders of magnitude higher.
| martijnarts wrote:
| The article mentions 76 cm width for the reactor they're
| designing, and oil wells can be up to a meter wide[0], so
| that price estimate would probably be similar then.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_well#Drilling
| defrost wrote:
| 1,600 m vertical depth through hard rock at hydrocarbon
| extraction bore widths is likely 120 days, onshore @ $15,000 US
| per day (perhaps) + casing costs + everything else.
|
| YMMV - figure pulled from
|
| _Drilling Costs Estimation for Hydrocarbon Wells_ (2015)
| https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7569/jsee.2014.629...
|
| that's a rough $2 million _basement_ estimation (sans casing +
| headwork) with _many_ complicating factors that can easily blow
| it up.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Given Hinkley Point C is currently at US$58bn estimated and
| still not open, a mere $2m for a hole sounds very affordable.
| Could very quickly spend more than that in meetings.
| api wrote:
| If you can drill that deep, go deeper and use the free planet-
| mass fission reactor in the Earth's core.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| Yes, and considering the cost of a nuclear plant a mile beneath
| the earth, just spending on geothermal would probably be
| cheaper, but "go deeper" isn't quite so simple either. Even in
| places with above average volcanism or a thinner barrier
| between the surface and mantle, you'd need to drill at least a
| couple miles down unless you're very lucky, and that extra mile
| (as a likely minimum) makes a big difference on cost and
| effort.
|
| The plasticity, or ductility, of rock increases at higher
| pressures and temperatures, making it harder to drill through
| it, thus making it rapidly more expensive for additional units
| of depth beyond a certain point.
| froh wrote:
| like so?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| We don't seem to have even made it through the crust to the
| mantle (after which ~2'900km to the core) yet:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohorovicic_discontinuity#Expl...
| pfdietz wrote:
| There is no significant fission reactor in the Earth's core. If
| there were, we could detect the antineutrinos from fission
| product decay.
|
| I'm not sure where this idea came from. Perhaps from the
| mistaken notion that uranium, being heavy, sinks into the core?
| Uranium is actually highly enriched in the Earth's continental
| crust, by a factor of about 1000 vs. the planet as a whole.
| geod_of_ix wrote:
| Where to even begin. 1. Temperature - The higher the temperature
| difference, the faster the loss of heat. How will the steam
| maintain it's energy (temp) in that long pipe. 2. Drilling each
| borehole is no small feat, and uses lots of energy and materials,
| all of which have associated embodied energy costs. Is is really
| worth it once all that work is done? 3. Geothermal. Interesting
| analogy, why not just use that instead. Boom, no additional
| radioactivity required. This whole things sounds very Rube
| Goldberg machine like.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| 1. We currently produce steam using geothermal in similar
| situations. This is not a lot of information on depth on
| Wikipedia but I did see there was an abandoned plan to drill
| down 2mi at The Geysers and Reykjanes is 8,900 ft deep(1.6 mi)
| so I wouldn't worry about the ability to minimize heat loss.
|
| 2. The idea is to use the earth as a substitute for the
| containment building, so as long as the cost of drilling are
| less than those costs, it would be a net.
|
| 3. Geothermal is not readily available at shallow depths
| everywhere. The deeper you go, the higher the costs. Also with
| some types of geothermal you run the risk of earthquakes, as
| they use the same process as fracking to develop the wells.
| j-a-a-p wrote:
| And, supply of coolant versus the delivery of steam is
| constructed in a mile long heat exchanger. Perhaps this can be
| solved by high pressure, high flow - but if it for some reason
| halts for just a minute OP's little reactor is already in the
| China syndrome mode.
| dirthacker wrote:
| Geothermal - just want to plug https://www.quaise.energy/
|
| Millimeter wave drilling should help make this more broadly
| useful
| teqsun wrote:
| Drilling deep into the planet for power just reminds me of Doom.
| hammock wrote:
| For those curious, for all of history, mankind has probably only
| dug a few dozen or so holes a mile deep or deeper. It's not easy
| yxhuvud wrote:
| Keeping things cool at that depth also seems like a challenge.
| shagie wrote:
| Which would then suggest the _alternate_ approach of just
| push down cold water and get back hot water without any
| nuclear reactor at the bottom of the hole. We 're not talking
| _hot_ hot everywhere, but possibly still useful.
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-average-
| temperature-...
|
| > The average temperature gradient for planet Earth is 20
| degC per kilometre. In many areas around the world the
| gradient is higher, and the temperature increases at a faster
| rate with depth below the ground. With a temperature gradient
| of between 50 and 100 degC geothermal resources are more
| readily accessible. Above 20 degC geothermal waters can be
| used for direct uses like greenhouses, aquaculture and
| district heating applying heat pumps. Above 75 degC the water
| is hot enough to be used for electricity generation using
| binary cycle technology. Above 160 degC flash steam
| generation can be used to produce clean, renewable
| electricity. Source: Geothermal Resources Council
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| This data suggests that 1 mile is common for oil wells:
| https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_crd_welldep_s1_a.htm
|
| Obviously, that's not a meter wide hole, but it's clearly
| possible.
| n1b0m wrote:
| What are the challenges involved which makes it so difficult?
| batch12 wrote:
| Off the top of my head: rocks, water, debris, inconsistent
| medium, length of the drill bit needed, tool breakage
| Bedon292 wrote:
| Are you separating digging holes from drilling holes? Digging
| out something like a mine for people to be in to that depth is
| definitely hard and you are right there is a very limited
| number of those.
|
| That is not really what the article is discussing though. They
| are talking about putting it down a drilled hole, and a mile is
| a very common depth for drilling. In a USGS publication
| summarizing deep wells in the US through 1998 [1], it talks
| about a dataset of more than 20,000 wells over 15,000ft (4,572
| m), more than 1,000 wells over 20,000ft (6,096 m), and 52 over
| 25,000ft (7,620 m).
|
| [1] https://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-067/CHB.pdf
| yobbo wrote:
| For a normal reactor, the energy for pumping/lifting that amount
| of cooling water consumes too much of the energy output.
|
| It's not too dissimilar from running a hydro energy turbine
| backwards.
| GardenLetter27 wrote:
| Or just use reactor designs that have a negative void coefficient
| and won't end up in a positive feedback loop.
|
| There are many to choose from now.
|
| The high cost of nuclear fission plants comes from deliberate
| government, petro-corporation and environmentalist attempts to
| kill it off (usually funded by petrostate interests like Russia,
| Qatar or oil corporations directly).
| hilbert42 wrote:
| Right. We have to bite the bullet on nuclear power sometime,
| and it may as well be now.
|
| I've nothing against green renewable energy and welcome it but
| we not only need reliable base load energy but lots more of it
| than we have now--and that base load will continue to increase
| at an exponential rate into the future (especially so with
| conversion to EVs).
|
| Making a move to nuclear has almost become a necessity whether
| we like it or not. We've now three-quarters of a century of
| nuclear engineering experience behind us and it's pretty much
| sorted. It's not without risk but it's now about as safe as any
| of our other major engineering infrastructure.
| cesarb wrote:
| > but we not only need reliable base load energy but lots
| more of it than we have now--and that base load will continue
| to increase
|
| The term "base load" is not that useful; it's just the amount
| of load which can be supplied by generators which cannot vary
| their output quickly, like coal power plants. An increase on
| "base load" only means you _can_ use more of these slow power
| plants (coal, nuclear), instead of requiring more flexible
| power plants (gas peakers, hydroelectric, solar, wind,
| batteries); but you don 't _have_ to.
| energy123 wrote:
| > we not only need reliable base load energy but lots more of
| it than we have now
|
| The simulation studies I've read show that the US can get to
| 90%+ clean energy with existing renewables and storage
| solutions quite "easily", and likely at a far cheaper price
| tag and much faster than if new nuclear was part of that mix
| at all. So what are you basing your views on that new nuclear
| has to or should be part of the mix?
|
| We should deregulate and clear the way for fission startups,
| but I don't expect them to be able to compete with
| renewables+storage on either a cost or time basis.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" So what are you basing your views on that new nuclear
| has to or should be part of the mix?"_
|
| My position is that nuclear energy should be part of the
| mix.
|
| That said, I've struggled for years before arriving at that
| position. I say that as someone who once worked on the
| surveillance side of nuclear energy, my job was (as part of
| a team) to ensure that nuclear power plants/industry were
| safe and that nuclear materials were safely secured and not
| diverted for nefarious purposes.
|
| It is just not possible for me to fully justify my position
| here as it would require a full-length blog to do so. I
| will say however that my above comment was based on a
| number of factors, the first is that despite some recent
| progress in fusion it won't be a viable option for decades.
| Second, the demand for power is increasing exponentially,
| as I've mentioned elsewhere _(_ph_),_ we 've been
| perpetually on the edge of just having enough power with
| precious little in reserve for many decades when in fact we
| really need much more energy than we have now
| (unfortunately, again, I cannot do full justice to that
| point here).
|
| Third, this story--at least at face value--shows how
| nuclear reactors could be installed safety and quickly and
| at a significantly lower cost than traditional above-ground
| ones.
|
| I'd suggest you watch Sabine Hossenfelder's YouTube post on
| the problems and high costs of constructing of nuclear
| power plants in the present political climate. Essentially,
| I agree with her position but I'd point out that her video
| was made before this 'underground' proposal (personally,
| I've held the view for years that deeply-buried nuclear
| plants--if constructed property and with safety in mind--
| would be a pretty good solution in respect of all three key
| factors: cost, safety and speed of construction:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5EsBiC9HjyQ.
| _ph_ wrote:
| No. As nuclear power cannot compete price-wise with
| renewables and is also a bad companion to renewables, it is
| already internationally on a retreat. As mentioned by the
| sibling comment, "base load" isn't the relative term.
| "residual load" is what counts in the day of plentiful
| renewables - and nuclear is exceptionally bad there. One
| needs gas or fast storage like hydro and more and more
| batteries here.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| Residual or base load - leave the semantics out of it. The
| fact is the world has been stuggling to just keep ahead of
| its energy requirements for the last century or so--and
| it's still in that situation. One would have to be
| blindfolded not to have noticed the Texas Power Crisis, and
| it's not alone by any stretch.
|
| We need much, much more energy than we have now for
| advanced industrial processes--many hundreds of percent
| more energy per capita and its growth will be exponential.
| That's what will happen, like it or not--or it will in some
| places.
|
| Society has a choice, tread water and keep its head just
| above to stop drowning as it's been doing for years or swim
| with the flow. On indications it seems the swimmers won't
| be the US or the West. I'm putting my money on newly
| developing countries who've no cultural baggage about such
| matters.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > Or just use reactor designs that have a negative void
| coefficient and won't end up in a positive feedback loop.
|
| Positive feedback loop isn't needed for a nuclear accident to
| happen. Sure it's what happened in Chornobyl, but not in TMI or
| Fukushima. And from an engineering perspective Chornobyl isn't
| that interesting as an accident example because it's mostly a
| product of brainwashed egotic manager who had all the power
| over the engineers.
|
| Also it's not always entirely straightforward to keep the void
| coefficient negative at every point of the operating cycle,
| especially if things go wrong: PWR have a negative void
| coefficient most of the time but not 100% of the time: when the
| reactor is cold you put tons of boric acid into the water to
| counteract the reactivity and avoid divergence, but at this
| particular time the void coefficient is positive because of the
| high level of Boron. Of course in regular events it doesn't
| matter because the reactor is off, but that's something that
| can also happen during an emergency situation where you inject
| a massive amount of boron in the water (there are scenarios
| where you do that).
|
| But again, the reactor's power getting out of control isn't the
| biggest risk anyway, the biggest problem comes from the fact
| that residual power is still annoyingly high even when you've
| shut down your reactor and you need to deal with it. The fact
| that you can't just shut it down and everything's OK when
| something is wrong is the real pain of working with a nuclear
| reactor.
|
| Source: I have a nuclear engineer specialized in immediate
| response to incidents and accidents at home.
|
| And the high cost mostly comes out of the fact that we don't
| build nuclear reactors as series + the fact that we finance it
| at insane rates. Antinuclear activists have their
| responsibilities in that, but even without them I suspect most
| states wouldn't be doing the right thing either: nuclear isn't
| a good fit for neoliberal thinking anyway.
| lesuorac wrote:
| > And from an engineering perspective Chornobyl isn't that
| interesting as an accident example because it's mostly a
| product of brainwashed egotic manager who had all the power
| over the engineers.
|
| Pretty sure it's actually extremely interesting.
|
| The test was considered such a non-risk that it required next
| to no oversight [1] [2]. If something that doesn't require
| oversight results in a nuclear disaster then something is
| wildly wrong with your regulations and design.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Safety_test
|
| [2]: https://www-
| pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub913e_web.p...
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > Pretty sure it's actually extremely interesting.
|
| You missed the _from an engineering perspective_ part at
| the begining of this sentence.
| pjc50 wrote:
| People keep forgetting about weapons proliferation.
| ElectronCharge wrote:
| Sure, the terrorists will dive right down the mile deep shaft
| to get non-weapons-grade material. /s
|
| Nation-states don't have any problem getting uranium...and
| weapons proliferation isn't a concern with any nuclear power.
| In other words, these could be installed widely in suitable
| US, British, French, Israeli, Russian and Chinese locations
| with no concern at all.
| foxyv wrote:
| That cat has been out of the bag for half a century. There
| are currently over 11 thousand warheads in existence. Enough
| to turn every major city in the world into a smoke plume that
| will blanket the earth for years to come. In addition,
| countries don't really use commercial reactors for breeding
| weapons grade materials anymore. Usually they will provision
| reactors specifically for that job. Like the Los Alamos
| Savana River facility.
|
| https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4510010-plutonium-pits-
| us....
|
| Also, there are a lot more ways to produce weapons grade
| nuclear materials now than there were in the 1970s when most
| of these weapons were created. The invention of lasers, high
| temperature superconducting magnets, higher quality
| centrifuge materials, and better particle accelerators have
| made the creation of weapons grade material way easier.
|
| In other words, when it comes to weapons proliferation, we
| are so utterly screwed. Only political change will ever
| reduce the number of weapons in existence. Commercial power
| production isn't even a factor.
| honestjohn wrote:
| There aren't very many nuclear-weaponized countries in the
| world right now. Otherwise, the whole Iran Nuclear Deal
| issue would've been moot. Even Russia won't hand over nukes
| to Iran.
| foxyv wrote:
| We aren't building these reactors in Iran. In fact, Iran
| maintains the capability to produce weapons using it's
| own reactors and centrifuges. It has it's own stockpiles
| of Uranium.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/iaea-iran-nuclear-enrichment-
| stoc...
| foxyv wrote:
| While this is mostly true. There is also a lot of truth in the
| argument that nuclear reactors are somewhat dangerous. I often
| find that the danger is exaggerated, but it does still exist.
| For instance, how much less stressful would the Russian attack
| on Zaporizhzhia have been if the reactor vessel was a mile
| underneath the area instead of on the surface. How much less of
| an issue would Fukushima have had if the spent fuel pool had
| been a mile under sea level?
|
| If running reactors under the surface isn't significantly more
| expensive than surface containment then I think it's a
| wonderful idea.
| honestjohn wrote:
| Positive feedback loop isn't the only risk of nuclear power.
| Fukushima had a negative void coefficient too, right? Rather
| than pretending there's negligible risk, I'd rather say it's
| there but the alternatives are worse.
| fulafel wrote:
| Is this the beef?
|
| > Since the water column is a mile high, it would pressurize the
| reactor by its sheer weight, much like sticking it a mile under
| the sea, so no need for a pressurizer and the cooling system
| would be entirely passive.
|
| > In addition, being encased in solid rock far below any water
| table removes any need for a containment system. If things get
| really bad, fill in the shaft and cap it.
|
| Why is it cheaper to have this with a ready to activate shaft
| filling sarcophagus (and the redundant backup systems for that)
| vs doing it on the sea floor or land + a 0.1 mile deep hole?
| foxyv wrote:
| The sea floor is not a contained environment. Also it is far
| harder to access.
| moogly wrote:
| If drilling were cheap (it most definitely is not), geothermal
| would be the better option.
| willvarfar wrote:
| Drilling has to be extremely cheap and the geothermal heat
| extremely high to be economical, which is why it makes sense in
| iceland but not mainstream.
|
| Drilling and putting a nuclear reactor underground, much
| shallower than the deepest coal mines, can be quite expensive
| and still be cheap as a part of the total cost of the nuclear
| power station?
| swader999 wrote:
| Yet they go for oil at these depths even at the risk of a dry
| well.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| On average, the Earth's crust is over 10 miles thick. There's a
| pretty big difference between drilling 1 mile and 10 miles -
| literally an order of magnitude.
| _ph_ wrote:
| You don't need to drill through the crust. A mile down the
| temperature will already be significantly up.
| foxyv wrote:
| In places where Geothermal is cheaper than this you will in
| fact see a lot of Geothermal wells. Geothermal works great in
| geologically active regions. This option works best in
| geologically inactive regions. The two options complement each
| other in my opinion.
| edelbitter wrote:
| Not depending on industry specialists that have to retain
| talent & tools for a 15 year gap in their order books probably
| helps competing with complex containment structures. They can
| buy some fairly premium drill bits and still be the lowest bid,
| if only they can be trusted to promise more realistic service
| entry date than contemporary "13 years behind schedule"
| designs.
| floatrock wrote:
| The groundwater contamination angle seems a bit... hand-wavey?
|
| > In addition, being encased in solid rock far below any water
| table removes any need for a containment system. If things get
| really bad, fill in the shaft and cap it.
|
| "Solid rock" feels like there's a lot of geological asterisks
| there. How about the casing around that mile-deep hole? Where do
| you pump all the inevitable leaks?
|
| 9 out of 10 startups go bankrupt, what happens to the hole if the
| company (or the project-specific LLC) goes belly-up? "Just fill
| it up" is a bit disingenuous and ignores how groundwater tends to
| seep into everything given enough dozens of years... Texas is
| littered with half-capped polluting shale wells that were just
| kinda left there when the wells stopped being productive and the
| project-specific drilling LLC was dissolved when it hit the
| bankruptcy-by-design phase of the corporate lifecycle.
|
| Centuries of potential contamination feels like a risk that
| should have more than 2 sentences.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Are there a lot of places where there's any ground water at all
| at this depth?
| Arubis wrote:
| > Nuclear fuel, even with all the processing costs included, only
| comes to about US$1,663 per kilogram (2.2 lb). Because nuclear
| fuel has such an incredible energy density, that's about 0.46
| C//kWh - and the fuel costs keep dropping as the technology
| becomes more efficient.
|
| That's...not actually cheap? As a consumer, I pay less than half
| that per kWh delivered at peak hours.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I suspect you pay less than half of 0.46 $/kWh but not less
| than half of 0.46 C//kWh.
| Arubis wrote:
| Ah, you're correct; I misread this as fractions of a dollar,
| not cents.
| eliaspro wrote:
| You might mix up Cent and Euro/Dollar here.
|
| Even the cheapest way to produce electricity nowadays (PV)
| isn't below 1 cent/kWh (production, not end-user costs) yet and
| your quote refers to only the costs of the fuel itself.
| jijijijij wrote:
| I think you misread, or do you really pay less than half _a
| cent_ per kWh?
| titzer wrote:
| Yes, the fuel costs less than half a cent per kWh. All the
| other costs dominate.
| j-a-a-p wrote:
| At peak hours (as in peak wind) energy cost is regularly
| negative. Looking at it this way will kill any energy business
| case.
| rickydroll wrote:
| If your wind/solar energy pricing goes negative, you're not
| using enough storage. Build more batteries, suck up that
| excess energy, and maximize feeding back to the grid when on-
| demand prices are high.
| j-a-a-p wrote:
| Is already happening for over a year. PV sales is down by
| 90%, last year there was a sellout of PV companies on
| brookz.nl and this year they are going mostly bankrupt.
|
| Consumers are now having a PV problem because they have to
| pay for their panels (I was asked to pay 800 euro per
| year). So, there is the incentive for many consumers
| willing to purchase a battery.
|
| An alternative solution is the position of the panels. It
| is useless to have panels facing south, and don't use the
| roof, use the facade to improve the off season performance.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Are consumers being asked to pay for their panels, or for
| their connection to the grid?
|
| Either way you have to buy the panels. What am I missing
| here?
| bilekas wrote:
| As others have said it seems that digging isn't cheap. My
| question is, is it even safe ? Surely if there is an accident or
| incident, there are the same issues if not more, groundwater
| pollution for example, risk of explosion, potentially causing
| further natural events such as earthquakes ?
|
| >so if it does manage to overheat, the nuclear reaction will
| automatically dampen itself down.
|
| This seems extremely blase. "it will fix itself". By radiating
| the surrounding environment ?
|
| I am a believer in nuclear power. It can already be done safe and
| is being done safe in most cases. This isn't solving any real
| problem.
| francisofascii wrote:
| According to the article, it is "encased in solid rock far
| below any water table", so maybe groundwater pollution isn't a
| concern.
| foobarian wrote:
| It seems that digging cost is pretty minor when compared to the
| usual cost of these projects.
|
| As far as safety, I would expect this depth to be below and
| away from any groundwater, so even with a meltdown there would
| be no effect on water sources. Presumably if something like
| Chernobyl happened they would bury the hole and the fuel would
| just melt its way further down without ill effect. There were
| plenty of underground nuclear tests already so some of the
| effects might be understood in practice as well.
| senectus1 wrote:
| As someone that works in the mining industry... digging is
| not cheap. not cheap at all.
| itishappy wrote:
| How do you think it compares to construction of a plane-
| proof bunker?
| pjc50 wrote:
| HS2 estimating PS33 million per kilometer, in the absolute
| best case of a horizontal fairly shallow tunnel through
| earth and clay. A 1km hole straight down? I suspect that's
| going to start at 100m and go up unforseeably from there.
|
| https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a819fe740f0
| b...
|
| But! What's not apparent until you read the article is that
| the planned reactor is .. 76cm across. That is, it's
| designed to fit down an oil well. Effectively you get
| "artificial high temperature geothermal", a hot object
| buried deep underground that you circulate water past.
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| HS2 is more about NIMBYs and inefficiency than actual
| technical issues.
| foobarian wrote:
| Not cheap, but may be small compared to nuclear plant
| construction.
| Bedon292 wrote:
| I don't think they were meaning to say digging is cheap,
| just that the cost would be minor when compared to the
| total costs of other nuclear power projects. It cost
| something like $34B to add two reactors to Plant Vogtle in
| Georgia [1]. And cost overruns at a project in South
| Carolina ended up with an estimate of $25B before the
| company filed for bankruptcy and the project never got
| finished. Whereas most of the estimates I have seen are in
| the single digit millions per mile for drilling. But even
| $100M in drilling would be minor compared to $25B.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generatin
| g_Pla...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nukegate_scandal
| euroderf wrote:
| FWIW... Finland has built a deep geological nukewaste repo.
| Wikipedia's numbers are: 520m (1700 feet) deep for 818
| MEUR. Source of the money: "The State Nuclear Waste
| Management Fund has approximately EUR1.4 billion from
| charges for generated electricity."
| swader999 wrote:
| This is drilling.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| As far as safety, I would expect this depth to be
| below and away from any groundwater,
|
| Nuclear power needs lots of water for cooling and this is no
| exception.
|
| Can you realistically have a nuclear power plant far enough
| away from groundwater that this isn't a concern?
|
| Not a rhetorical question. Maybe you can!
| phkahler wrote:
| >> groundwater pollution for example
|
| Just put these in areas where the water is already contaminated
| from fracking. Then when the stuff starts bubbling up it can be
| toxic AND radioactive!
| jerf wrote:
| ""it will fix itself". By radiating the surrounding environment
| ?"
|
| We humans have a bias. We live in the biosphere, and from our
| perspective, we are surrounded by it. Everywhere we go from
| day-to-day, life abounds.
|
| But this is a very deceptive bias. Most of the universe is not
| the biosphere. Outside of the biosphere, the universe is rather
| nasty. High levels of radiation are the norm. Extreme
| temperatures (or what _we_ consider extreme temperatures) are
| the norm. Very life-unfriendly chemical regimes are the norm,
| either by being full of nasty chemicals (Venusian sulpheric
| acid) or, more commonly, being so full of _boring_ chemicals
| that life is very very difficult (Mars).
|
| This comes up most often in space exploration, when I see
| someone being concerned about putting nuclear power on the
| moon, whatever will we do with the waste, and the answer is
| that the lunar surface is already a radiation hell-hole. If you
| dump something like that on the surface, yeah, we humans will
| want to stay away from it, but it's a lot less material change
| than our intuition thinks. Our intuition wants to say "but what
| about all the wonderful life that will be affected", because
| everywhere we go, there is life. But there isn't any on the
| moon. Nothing will die because we dumped a couple hundred
| pounds of waste on the surface.
|
| Similarly, the subsurface of Earth below the biosphere... and I
| include the bacteria living in rocks and the water table and
| everything like that as part of the "biosphere", we know it
| goes deep but it doesn't go down forever... is already an
| incredibly harsh place. The chemistry is already nasty. It's
| already full of chemicals either too "interesting" or too
| "boring" to be useful for life.
|
| I'd like to see a good analysis to make sure this isn't going
| to work its way back up into the biosphere, yes, but your
| intuition that anywhere we put something, some life is going to
| be affected, does not necessarily apply to a mile under the
| surface. "Radiating its surrounding environment" is definitely
| not an issue in the slightest. There is no "environment" there,
| in the sense you mean. I'm more worried about what might
| physically migrate around into something that _does_ have an
| "environment", but a mile is a long way for anything to travel
| through solid rock, and it needs to move pretty quickly too to
| get up into the biosphere while it's still a danger.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I think there's some valid concerns about a meltdown
| contaminating groundwater, etc.
|
| But I agree that "radiation" is something we should be
| thinking about more pragmatically. For decades it's been a
| scary buzzword that the public completely misunderstands and
| fears. We should be having more rational discussions about
| it.
|
| Nuclear power has unfairly suffered attacks from "both"
| "sides" here in the US. The "left" has tended to be generally
| anti-nuke in what I consider to be very blind ways. And the
| "right" has closer ties to the fossil fuel industry and has
| always had a vested interest in torpedoing nuclear. These are
| vast generalizations with plenty of exceptions, but that's
| the big picture and I hate it.
| gipp wrote:
| A mile down is, as already stated in the article, way below
| any water table. There is no groundwater there to
| contaminate.
| danbruc wrote:
| Not an expert, just searched for it, but this article
| suggests - just skimmed it - that while most groundwater
| is indeed not that deep, there is groundwater several
| miles down and the interaction between deep and shallow
| ground water is not well understood.
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-00697-6
| xienze wrote:
| > And the "right" has closer ties to the fossil fuel
| industry and has always had a vested interest in torpedoing
| nuclear.
|
| Do they really? You might want to check out just how
| concentrated US nuclear plants are in southern, deeply red
| states: https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/map-power-
| reactors.ht...
| JohnBooty wrote:
| - I said it was a vast generalization
|
| - I explicitly said _both_ "sides" dislike nuclear, and
| made no proclamations about which "side" was more anti-
| nuclear, so pointing out that "red states have nuclear
| plants" is a non sequitur
|
| - There are quite a few party-independent factors at work
| as well, obviously, such as the need for plants to be
| near running water, and the fact that NIMBY anti-nuclear
| pressure is higher in more populous areas which tend to
| skew blue
|
| - Red/blue maps at the state level are nearly useless for
| anything but discussing electoral politics; all states
| have individual counties that are intensely red or
| intensely blue, so this level of detail tells us nothing
| of use
| donny2018 wrote:
| The article says it will be in rocky grounds, and deep enough
| to be below any water tables.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| If we can construct nuclear reactors a mile down, doesn't that
| mean we can more easily drill for essentially unlimited
| geothermal power? I realize this is an "obvious" question but
| it isn't addressed by TFA.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| I'd imagine if it was cost competitive with existing power
| generation methods people would be doing that already?
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Well, I saw this a few months ago [1]. So I think maybe
| people are? But the key words in this article are "put a
| nuclear reactor one mile down" and I'm not sure we have the
| tech to do that either.
|
| [1] https://blog.google/outreach-
| initiatives/sustainability/goog...
| cwong430 wrote:
| Erik Townsend talks about repurposing oil drilling technology
| to geothermal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CwdchfjtR4
| thayne wrote:
| > groundwater pollution for example
|
| It is well below the water table
|
| > risk of explosion
|
| According to the article it is "self limiting" so that risk is
| very small, and an explosion a mile underground is a lot less
| threatening than an explosion in a facility on the surface. A
| mile of rock is going to provide a lot more protection than any
| amount of concrete and steel.
|
| > potentially causing further natural events such as
| earthquakes
|
| From what I can tell (see for example
| https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/can-nuclear-explosions-cause-
| earth...), underground nuclear weapons tests, which have larger
| explosions than this could possibly create have a rather
| limited risk for earthquakes.
|
| I'm not a seismologist, but I think the risk there is less than
| the risk of an explosion in a reactor on the surface.
|
| > digging isn't cheap
|
| No. But it might be cheaper than building a large facility
| above-ground that meets all the necessary safety regulations
| for a nuclear reactor. And probably produces less carbon
| emissions in the process as well.
| foxyv wrote:
| "A Mile Underground" is way below most ground water deposits.
| Most wells are less than 1000 feet deep. The world's deepest
| aquifer is less than 2 miles deep. You would not bury a nuclear
| reactor in such a place. Also, nature has multiple buried
| natural fission reactors just like this.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...
|
| Essentially what is being proposed here is an artificial
| geothermal well. The cost of the drilling is offset by not
| having to pay for the construction of huge concrete buildings
| and disposal of secondary nuclear waste. Disposal of waste on-
| site would essentially be filling the well with concrete. You
| are killing two birds with one stone.
|
| In addition, ground water is usually filtered through miles of
| sand, coal, and limestone. Well water is often radioactive and
| needs to be tested regularly because it has been filtered
| through uranium and thorium decay products. If such a reactor
| were to be breached, it's waste would not reach the surface
| unless it were placed in a mile deep spring that no one knew
| about somehow.
|
| https://www.epa.gov/radtown/natural-radionuclides-private-we...
|
| https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/departments-and-agencies/dph/d...
| bilekas wrote:
| Okay that is a bit more less concerning then and makes a bit
| more sense to a layman like myself.
| butlike wrote:
| From that article, it appears to have been a singular fission
| reactor that happened 1.7 billion years ago, which would make
| study of the ramifications to the surrounding area impossible
| now, right?
| foxyv wrote:
| The best part about studying radioactivity is how
| predictable it is and how easy it is to detect. It's part
| of how we are able to date the age of earth using Uranium
| isotope ratios. Decay occurs at predictable rates. The
| entire earth's crust is contaminated with nuclear
| byproducts which allow us to learn a great deal about it's
| formation even a couple billion years later.
|
| Fossil reactors are just an example of the nuclear world we
| live on. There are also countless other nuclear materials
| in the earth's crust. It's part of why we have to test for
| nuclear contamination of our wells.
|
| The destruction of one of these reactors a mile deep would
| be a blip on the radioactive material being unearthed. We
| would have to be careful not to place them next to existing
| aquifers, but they would be way more safe than surface
| plants which already have an amazing track record.
| fweimer wrote:
| As far as I can tell from the article, the primary coolant
| loop extends to the surface, and that's a key aspect of the
| proposal. Obviously not everything is very far down. The idea
| certainly is cute, but potential failure modes look more like
| What If? scenarios than anything else.
| foxyv wrote:
| I don't see where this is mentioned. I would think they
| would use a hydraulic cylinder and a heat exchanger to
| separate the primary loop from the secondary loop.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > As others have said it seems that digging isn't cheap. My
| question is, is it even safe ? Surely if there is an accident
| or incident, there are the same issues if not more, groundwater
| pollution for example, risk of explosion, potentially causing
| further natural events such as earthquakes ?
|
| Digging isn't cheap if you wanted to drill a gas well for
| yourself. A mile would cost tens or hundreds of thousands of
| dollars. Maybe even a million. A million is chump change when
| talking about a nuclear plant, which are priced either in the
| tens of billions or possibly even in the low hundreds of
| billions.
|
| Groundwater is not a mile down.
|
| Nuclear reactors cannot explode in the same way that nuclear
| weapons explode. But if they somehow could, a mile down isn't
| going to hurt anyone.
|
| > This seems extremely blase. "it will fix itself". By
| radiating the surrounding environment ?
|
| Did you read the same article as the rest of us?
| danbruc wrote:
| _According to the company, if the reactor needs inspection or
| servicing, it can be hauled to the surface by cables in about an
| hour or two._
|
| What happens to the two one mile long pipes attached to the
| reactor?
| swader999 wrote:
| They would be painted red and white so planes could see and
| avoid them.
| pojzon wrote:
| I dont know how to make cheap nuclear reactors.
|
| But molten salt ones are literally impossible to cause any harm.
|
| Cant explode, cant cause uncontrolled pollution, can be safely
| decomissioned whenever.
|
| But they are not cheap.
| tiku wrote:
| Seems a lot like the molten salt solution, in case of overheating
| melting a plug, allowing the nuclear material to flow to a safe
| container.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Existing nuclear reactors are already extremely safe, and they
| still can't be built because of safety concerns.
|
| The "you can't be 100% sure" argument is impossible to defeat,
| and I don't think this design will move the needle.
|
| It also provides the argument that wanting to bury reactors 1
| mile deep shows how incredibly dangerous nuclear power really is.
| manvillej wrote:
| there is pretty strong evidence that Nuclear energy is
| significantly safer than most energy production with the
| exception of wind & solar which are similarly as safe.
| https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
| jayd16 wrote:
| Well ok, they're as safe as long as we're extremely vigilant
| but does it then follow that we should be more relaxed about
| safety concerns? I don't think showing the stats is all that
| convincing to people when the worst case scenario is so
| impactful.
|
| My guess is we'll need to see newer safer designs before
| public options shift.
| foxyv wrote:
| I would not describe the current nuclear power regulatory
| system as "Extremely Vigilant." More like "Extremely
| Litigious." I think lawyers have made more on nuclear power
| than concrete companies and nuclear engineers combined.
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| And unlike wind and solar can be used on-demand akin to coal,
| making it an extremely attractive option to run alongside
| renewables, especially year round. Solar panels are literally
| useless 75% of the year in at least 1/3rd of the US and we
| still rely on coal because of that. Sure, batteries may exist
| in the _future_ that can handle solar, and maybe panels will
| exist in the _future_ that will be more efficient, but we
| have technology _now_ that can outpace renewables
| consistently and on-demand.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Which means nuclear and renewables are the worst possible
| companions imaginable.
|
| Nuclear and renewables compete for the same slice of the
| grid. The cheapest most inflexible where all other power
| generation has to adapt to their demands. They are
| fundamentally incompatible.
|
| For every passing year more existing reactors will spend
| more time turned off because the power they produce is too
| expensive.
|
| Let alone insanely expensive new builds.
|
| https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/energy
| -...
|
| Batteries are here now, and delivering nuclear scale energy
| day in and day out in California.
|
| https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-batteries-apr-2024/
| exe34 wrote:
| do you happen to know why we can't dump the energy into
| something like smelting, desalination or other heavy
| industry?
| amonon wrote:
| I am uniformed on this, but those industries likely take
| time to scale up. A large scale desalination plant
| requires a significant amount of infrastructure.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| The question is also: Where are you building it?
|
| No one will want anything from your desalination plant in
| Norway, and shipping water is not a thing because it
| becomes too expensive.
|
| The next problem is energy cost vs. duty cycle. The less
| you run due to only utilizing cheap prices the higher the
| impact of fixed costs on your business.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >shipping water is not a thing because it becomes too
| expensive.
|
| Except for a significant portion of the GDP of Fiji
| MisterTea wrote:
| Smelting cant base their production on when excess energy
| might be available. They need that energy now.
| Desalination might be a good sink but again, if water is
| needed now and there's no excess then what? That's why we
| have base load.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Because every industry has capital costs that you want to
| repay by using it as much as you can.
|
| There is a very small amount of people working on low-
| capital industries (normally with higher operational
| costs), and they seem to be close to some gain here or
| there. But almost all of our knowledge is biased against
| turning things off.
| 7952 wrote:
| Or it will be used for interconnector exports, to power
| battery storage, hydrogen production and synthetic fuel
| production.
| dawnerd wrote:
| Solar panels can still generate year round even when
| cloudy. It's not as efficient sure but it's not useless.
| That's why you have a blend of renewables.
| modo_mario wrote:
| What renewable starts to produce more towards the winter
| to compensate for this especially since that's when
| energy consumption also rises?
| butlike wrote:
| Could it be possible to harness the weight of the
| snowfall, ice, or something else to power a turbine?
| layer8 wrote:
| Luckily it's summer in one hemisphere when it's winter in
| the other. Unfortunately a global grid seems infeasible
| in the foreseeable future.
| iSnow wrote:
| That basically means nuclear is the main competitor to
| renewables. Nuclear has extremely high Capex, so want to
| run as much as possible. Renewables are dependent on the
| weather and want to produce when the sun is out or the wind
| is blowing.
|
| I believe both have their uses, but I don't buy they go
| together well.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| The difference is who gets harmed. For solar and wind the
| general public generally can't be affected by any accidents
| because the deaths are general work place hazards coming from
| working aloft with heavy equipment.
|
| For nuclear power the public is on the hook for cleanup fees
| from hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars and the
| large scale accidents we have seen caused hundreds of
| thousands to get evacuated.
|
| It is not even comparable. If I chose to not work in the
| solar and wind industry my chance of harm is as near zero as
| it gets. Meanwhile about all consequences from nuclear power
| afflicts the general public. Both in terms of costs, injuries
| and life changing evacuations.
| mgfist wrote:
| Better to compare to fossil fuels, which kill far more
| people and animals both directly (eg. explosions) and
| indirectly (emissions).
| mythrwy wrote:
| 100,000 people dying one at a time over the course of a
| decade seems to have a lower public relations impact then
| 1000 people dying in a once-in-a-century spectacularly
| tragic accident. Even though the total casualties are
| higher.
|
| Fentanyl is a prime example. I believe (from memory) over
| 100,000 people die of it each year in the in the US.
| Everyone knows it's a problem. We should "do something".
| But, we don't. Nobody cares enough (except as a platitude
| come election time). However if 1000 people died in a
| bomb attack (or similar) it would be top news for weeks
| and they would be scrambling the military and make us
| take our wedding rings off for scanning at airports.
| wordpad25 wrote:
| It's also who is impacted, right, Fentanyl deaths are
| self inflicted
| mythrwy wrote:
| True. Maybe substitute car accidents.
|
| If 10% of people who died in auto accidents each year
| were to perish in one horrible spectacular event it
| probably would be "transformative" as far as public
| policy.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Fentanyl is an issue because they are preventable deaths.
|
| (Never mind that cracking down actually increases the
| death rate. And the fentanyl problem came about because
| of cracking down on heroin. Fentanyl is far cheaper to
| make and far easier to smuggle due to being much smaller.
| But it has a tendency to clump and thus when handled by
| street dealers they can't produce a uniform product.)
| rtkwe wrote:
| The evidence of safety isn't the issue it's that nuclear
| accidents however rare have huge implications so stick in
| people's minds. We're bad, mentally, at appreciating low
| level dangers that are diffuse like minor pollutants which
| kill slowly or degrade people's health over time. What does
| stick in our minds well are singular big events like terror
| attacks, Chernobyl or Deep Water Horizon.
|
| Even our legal systems address singular events better than
| low level harms because it's harder to deflect blame because
| the damages are so immediately identifiable; Fukushima and
| Chernobyl destroyed their closest cities and areas overnight
| in ways that they'll likely never recover from and the
| effects of their poisons are rapidly identifiable.
| Kon5ole wrote:
| This is a common argument in discussions about nuclear power
| but it doesn't work. You can't claim that nuclear is safe
| based on history, you have to consider the potential.
|
| A gun is dangerous even if it hasn't killed anyone yet. We
| know that if you point the gun at someone and pull the
| trigger they die, hence it is considered dangerous. We knew
| this even before the first gun killed the first human.
|
| Similarly, we know that nuclear power plants can cause
| immense disasters in a worst case scenario, even though it
| hasn't happened yet.
| foxyv wrote:
| I think the biggest advantage to such a reactor is that it
| solves two major issues in nuclear power. Containment costs and
| disposal costs. Containment is solved by the thousands of feet
| of rock and disposal is just filling in the hole with concrete
| and dirt.
|
| You are right though that you will never win the safety
| argument. Nuclear has become entrenched in our culture as a
| world ending bugbear. Meanwhile the actual possibility of world
| ending climate change is just scooting along while people
| picket nuclear facilities and wind turbines.
| matrix2003 wrote:
| It's not quite that simple, though. Yucca Mountain was
| supposed to be extremely geologically stable, and people
| still couldn't swallow that pill.
|
| You still need some level of containment along with
| environmental studies and the additional complexity of
| excavating a large underground cavern. Even then, someone
| will be concerned (possibly rightfully so) about groundwater
| contamination. Fracking is a prime example of how connected
| that all can be.
| foxyv wrote:
| The problem with Yucca Mountain wasn't just the fact that
| they were storing waste there so much as the transportation
| of the waste through towns and cities. In this case, once
| the waste is created it is already in place to dispose of a
| mile underground solving another issue.
| blueant wrote:
| Mostly NIMBY problems that apply for the repository apply
| for transportation, but in lesser scale. Yucca was not as
| dry or geological stable as initially thought, and the
| requirements for "permanent" disposal are very stringent,
| so Yucca is not considered anymore for long-term storage.
| foxyv wrote:
| I think the closer comparison would not be Yucca Mountain
| so much as deep bore hole research. You could essentially
| use the same equipment for boring your reactor hole to
| create disposal pits.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal#:~:t
| ext....
| nine_k wrote:
| Maybe a breeder reactor would still be built to burn all
| this "waste" which is 90% fuel. Nuclear fission energy
| can become way cleaner when the political logjam around
| extracting and burning plutonium is unclogged.
| matrix2003 wrote:
| I never really bought this tbh. Those transportation
| casks are _insanely_ strong!
| foxyv wrote:
| New Mexico recently had one explode due to improper
| materials used for absorption of liquid waste. To be
| frank I don't think it's worse than the chemical spills
| that happen routinely like the train in Ohio, but it
| isn't a small deal either.
|
| https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-new-mexico-nuclear-
| dump...
| mgfist wrote:
| I don't think either of those things need to cost much.
| Concrete casts are totally fine for long-term containment.
| foxyv wrote:
| The cost isn't so much the materials themselves as the
| regulatory burden imposed by them. You need to guard them
| indefinitely even after the plant is shut down. You need to
| inspect them regularly. If the waste is a mile underground
| under a couple megatons of rock and concrete then it's not
| a lasting cost to the company that built it.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > The cost isn't so much the materials themselves as the
| regulatory burden imposed by them. You need to guard them
| indefinitely even after the plant is shut down.
|
| These are all issues for fossil fuel extraction as well,
| and I have bad news for you about how this problem is
| currently handled.
| foxyv wrote:
| In my opinion, the biggest problem with fossil fuel
| extraction is that it is slowly destroying our biosphere.
| lokar wrote:
| Exactly. Tons of abandoned oil wells left for the
| taxpayers to clean up. But of course we can't demand that
| all new wells post bonds for the cleanup costs in
| advance, that would make them unprofitable.
| blueant wrote:
| It depends on what you define as long-term. For a few
| decades, with proper inspections, sure. For the geological
| time frames needed for nuclear waste disposal, definitely
| not.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Containment costs and disposal costs. Containment is solved
| by the thousands of feet of rock and disposal is just filling
| in the hole with concrete and dirt.
|
| Containment and disposal is largely a red herring. It's
| actually more or less a solved problem, from a safety
| perspective, because it turns out that the laws of
| exponential decay mean that you can just store it with proper
| shielding and it's safe for storage pretty much anywhere. I'm
| oversimplfying, but only a little bit - the public's
| perception of "nuclear waste" is extremely untethered to the
| actual reality.
|
| The whole fiasco with Yucca Mountain was driven not by
| science, but by a desire to appease objectors by adhering to
| an arbitrary and unscientific perception of safety, not an
| actual assessment of the risks.
|
| > while people picket nuclear facilities and wind turbines
|
| Where are you seeing this? Nuclear energy has lost a lot of
| energy for active support, but active protest ("picket") of
| nuclear facilities is exceedingly rare these days. Wind
| turbines are a different matter: they're sustainable, but
| they're opposed by monied individuals/groups who don't want
| their beachfront views "ruined".
| blueant wrote:
| I agree with you that the requirements for permanent safe
| storage are very high - thousands of years with no leak,
| besides others - but nonetheless, even with simpler
| requirements, Yucca - or any other georep - was not deemed
| safe.
| foxyv wrote:
| It wasn't so much deemed unsafe as not safe enough.
| Pretty much everyone involved threw up their hands and
| said screw it we'll store on-site which is WAY less safe
| than Yucca or deep bore sites. Meanwhile we have casks
| exploding in New Mexico which should have been buried 3
| miles underground decades ago.
| foxyv wrote:
| Current nuclear disposal methods may be acceptable, but
| they are also sub-optimal.
|
| https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-new-mexico-nuclear-
| dump...
| Teknomancer wrote:
| Wow. A perfect example of Silicon Valley's detachment from
| reality. Burn ass loads of VC to solve problems that don't
| exist while creating a host of new ones? Awesome.
|
| A leak or accident in one of these deep-buried reactors could
| contaminate vast underground water reserves, rendering them
| unusable for generations. The environmental and human cost
| would be catastrophic and irreversible.
|
| This should never be attempted.
| foxyv wrote:
| I'm curious how you reached this conclusion. The same
| method for storing these reactors during operation is the
| best method for disposal of waste. Unless you are storing
| your reactor in an aquifer, a containment breach would be
| bolstered by thousands of feet of rock and concrete well
| casing. This is infinitely preferable to a vessel breach on
| the surface which will contaminate both air and water
| sources.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal#:~:tex
| t....
| TrexArms wrote:
| We don't build nukes because of cost. Anything else is
| propaganda.
| matrix2003 wrote:
| It may be slightly different that other forms of energy,
| because a large part of nuclear's cost is regulatory
| compliance and political buy-in.
| jltsiren wrote:
| The costs are not really due to regulations. They are
| because the construction industry is not exactly known for
| quality.
|
| We know how to design safe nuclear reactors. We just can't
| build them cost-effectively, because there is always some
| subsubsubsubcontractor that doesn't bother doing things by
| the book. Then an inspector notices that something is wrong
| and orders it dismantled and rebuilt. And this will be
| iterated until everyone manages to do the right thing at
| the same time.
| matrix2003 wrote:
| Yeah, I guess that's a large part of what I meant.
|
| It's a space where you _can't_ cut corners.
| exe34 wrote:
| the cost is because of the never ending redtape and
| legislation around safety. every design is obsolete by the
| time it's built because there's a new regulation that must be
| observed - so we never achieved economies of scale.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Not true, at least not in Germany and Japan.
| datadeft wrote:
| Why do we close down working nuclear power plants?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Almost always because they are so old they are close to
| failing.
| jhayward wrote:
| Because it costs too much to keep them running safely.
| loeg wrote:
| This is a propaganda talking point from anti-nuclear
| activists that is misleading and/or false. There are several
| misleading or incorrect levers used to justify this
| statement. The first sleight of hand is looking at the cost
| of headline capacity of intermittent sources. The second
| sleight of hand is the assumption that our current (insane)
| energy market pricing structure is reasonable. There's also
| the significant caveat that intermittent generation will
| depend on backstopping by carbon-emitting sources like
| natural gas. Finally, even reducing "capacity factor" to a
| single number is garbage. The minimum production really
| matters, and for intermittent sources, the minimum is _zero_.
|
| Which is all to say -- it is not clearly and obviously
| correct to say that nuclear generation is cost prohibitive,
| and repeating it as if it were is a signal of bad faith.
| 7952 wrote:
| And it is not really about "cost" anyway. It all hinges on
| the willingness of people with access to capital to take a
| risk. That could be a bank, large company, government etc.
| Renewables has managed to do that convincingly. Nuclear
| less so. And there are many good reasons for that.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Why are you calling nuclear power plants 'nukes' ?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| And this one may cheaper than what we are used to. What is
| the important part.
|
| (I still think it won't compete with solar+batteries. It
| still needs valves, turbines, and moving generators. Those
| things used to be considered cheap, but are becoming
| incapable of competing nowadays.)
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| Maybe when the "cold war generation" starts dying and is no
| longer the majority of politicians and voter bases, we'll get
| nuclear power
| layer8 wrote:
| Unless and until someone starts to use nuclear weapons again.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Yeah, the safety is so well engineered that accidents like
| Fukushima literally can't happen.
| DrBazza wrote:
| > The "you can't be 100% sure" argument is impossible to
| defeat, and I don't think this design will move the needle.
|
| You can thank Greenpeace and CND and their misinformed
| campaigns for that.
|
| Meanwhile fossil fuels have killed tens of millions of people,
| billions of animals, and changed the climate. All directly or
| indirectly.
|
| Somehow, it's a version of the quote "Kill one man, and you're
| a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you're a conqueror", a
| few deaths due to Chernobyl, and people are focused on it.
|
| But those dead miners? Or those old people with lung disease?
| Or those thousands of miles of bleached, dead coral?
|
| Where's the outrage for that?
| cm2187 wrote:
| The energy that killed the most directly is hydro
| electricity. When a dam fails, it kills thousands to hundreds
| of thousands.
| DrBazza wrote:
| "Directly", perhaps. But hydro is still responsible for far
| fewer deaths than gas, oil, or coal:
| https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
| butlike wrote:
| While that's horrifying, the dam doesn't bleed radioactive
| particles into the atmosphere or water which sparks
| conversations about global catastrophic disaster
| troupo wrote:
| > the dam doesn't bleed radioactive particles into the
| atmosphere
|
| Why are we still building coal plants then?
| cesarb wrote:
| > While that's horrifying, the dam doesn't bleed
| radioactive particles
|
| Another way to put it: if the worst case happens, and a
| dam breaks and floods a large area, you can immediately
| go there and walk all over the damaged area with little
| more protection than a pair of sturdy boots. The worst
| you'd find would be things like transformer oil and some
| generator lubricants.
| Vecr wrote:
| You know, and all the dead people. Or the people who die
| in the evacuation.
| shagie wrote:
| > the dam doesn't bleed radioactive particles into the
| atmosphere
|
| I would urge you to look at https://xkcd.com/radiation/
| and compare the lines: Living within 50
| miles of a nuclear power plant for a year (0.09 uSv)
| Living within 50 miles of a coal power plant for a year
| (0.3 uSv)
|
| https://isnap.nd.edu/assets/255639/radioactivity_lecture_
| 18....
|
| https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Publ
| ic/... (which concludes with "Thus, Malaysia needs to
| consider the possible future study of radiological impact
| from airborne routine discharges of coal-fired power
| plant.")
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09
| 698... - "Detailed studies on naturally occuring
| radionuclide emissions due to a 2420 MW coal-fired power
| plant in Malaysia."
|
| ---
|
| I'm personally much less worried about the radioactive
| materials from a uranium nuclear power plant than I am
| from coal or bad decisions on how to dispose of
| radioactive waste products.
|
| We'd likely lower our radioactive footprint by completely
| switching from coal power to uranium.
| cesarb wrote:
| The parent comment is not comparing coal and nuclear. The
| parent comment is comparing hydroelectric dam failures
| with nuclear power plant failures (on normal operation,
| neither nuclear power plants nor hydroelectric power
| plants leak any significant amount of radiation into the
| atmosphere).
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| But coal most certainly does.
|
| A nuclear plant that emitted like a coal plant would be
| shut down pronto.
|
| And consider the Palo Verde nuclear plant. They had to
| get an NRC exemption on radioactivity of their discharge
| water. They had a little problem: their intake water
| didn't meet the discharge water requirements. They're
| using reclaimed sewage water--and getting the
| radioactivity that goes down the toilet from nuclear
| medicine patients.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Actually that's completely backwards. Hydro is the only
| source that has saved thousands of lives (beyond the
| production of electricity element) by preventing flooding
| and providing a secure water supply.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Great that the alternative today is renewables then. No need
| to compare against fossil fuels.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Renewables don't provide base load capacity, though. What
| do you do when it's dark and the wind isn't blowing? You
| either burn some carbon or split some atoms. Those are
| currently the options available.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Why is using stored renewable energy (e.g., chemical,
| physical) not an option?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| I don't know. Why aren't they? We could be using them now
| at scale, if they were, but we're not.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| I guess, fair amount of NIMBY there (if you don't like
| wind power next to you, you also don't like storage next
| to you in a lot of cases), some subsidies might also have
| had some effects on storage vs production built. Not
| everything is capital efficient in all places, too, of
| course.
| oezi wrote:
| But we are. The world is moving rapidly there. 66% of
| daily electricity in Germany is renewable.
|
| California is building batteries at neck breaking speeds:
|
| https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/04/25/california-achieves-
| major-...
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The point is, removing the remaining 1/3rd of fossil fuel
| production becomes a lot harder. The issue is that
| renewables other than hydro and geothermal are all
| intermittent. Build as many solar panels as you want,
| you're not going to satisfy nighttime demand without
| massive storage facilities.
|
| 10 GWh of storage is peanuts. That's what one nuclear
| plant produces in about 5 hours. The USA uses 500 GWh of
| electricity per hour.
| oezi wrote:
| The first step is just to build enough renewables and
| enough battery to last one average day. That gets you to
| 95% of reducing CO2. Then you can think about if it even
| makes sense to replace those cloudy yet/windless days.
|
| We just need to spend on the most economic places to save
| CO2.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| World electricity consumption is 60,000 GWh per day.
| "Last one average day" is much greater than existing
| battery production can satisfy - it's around 40x annual
| battery production to achieve just 12 hours of storage.
| And that's ignoring the fact that electric vehicles are
| consuming the vast majority of battery production. Making
| any serious efforts towards grid-storage would set back
| EV adoption.
| godelski wrote:
| It is. But the issue is that storage systems are quite
| expensive and not nearly as green as what feeds them.
|
| Interestingly when you include these nuclear is much more
| competitive. But this depends on the studies and you
| should pay very close to the assumptions those studies
| make. Regardless, these are always in aggregate. So even
| with biases the case always is made that when considering
| the heterogenous nature of environment that some places
| will favor nuclear and others will favor renewables
| (which is again nonhomogeneous as wind and solar aren't
| always strongly coupled and certainly hydro isn't
| available everywhere). This is true for the studies that
| show the best results for nuclear and the studies that
| show the worst. A major problem with these discussions is
| people are operating on aggregate assumptions and acting
| as if it's one or the other.
|
| One interesting part that people might not be aware of is
| hydrogen production. Nuclear is often argued as a base
| load so the question is what to do when the sun is
| shining and wind is strong? You can throttle nuclear but
| this is not cost effective. But you can in turn produce
| hydrogen, which can even be used to cheapen and make
| renewable storage more green. One of the biggest concerns
| here though is that hydrogen production might be so
| valuable that nuclear producers might favor that over
| providing base load.
|
| So as everything, the reality is much more complicated
| than our general conversations reveal. It's even far more
| complicated than what can be included in a HN reply. But
| I hope I gave a sufficient response than can also point
| to more information.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Hydropower storage is geographically limited. Chemical
| storage is not available at the scale required. Plus most
| batteries produced are going to EVs. Remember, the world
| uses ~60 TWh of energy per day. And it's not not the day
| and night cycle that needs to be smoothed out, it's also
| seasonal fluctuations that can last for weeks.
|
| All the other options haven't been built at scale.
| Hydrogen storage, giant flywheels, compressed air have
| all been suggested, but aren't deployed widely enough to
| prove viability.
| pydry wrote:
| 1) Pump water uphill and let it run downhill. There is a
| massive amount of viable geography for this all over the
| world.
|
| 2) Batteries
|
| 3) Charge more money for electricity so people shift
| their demand.
|
| 4) Make hydrogen, store it and burn it to make the
| electricity.
|
| Surprisingly, if you only did 4 (which is the most
| expensive) all of the time for every watt of power
| generated from solar and wind it would be very expensive,
| but would _still_ be a bit cheaper than nuclear power.
| Nuclear power is just _that_ expensive.
|
| And the price only gets more horrendous if you try to use
| it as a peaker.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > There is a massive amount of viable geography for this
| all over the world
|
| Massive? Where in Germany would you store 1,000 GWh of
| energy, to run the country for half a day or so?
| olddustytrail wrote:
| That amount of storage would not be built because it
| would literally never be required.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| You need more than that. My memory is that solar needs
| something like 16 hours of storage assuming perfect
| weather. And it gets much worse if you don't have perfect
| weather.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| No you don't need more than that because electricity
| grids do not consist entirely of a single form of
| generation. Have you considered learning something about
| this topic before commenting?
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| 1) Pump what water up what hill? You need vast quantities
| of water and terrain capable of being dammed at
| reasonable cost. Few sources of water can be pumped at
| that rate without causing considerable trouble. And
| places with lots of water tend to be rather sparse in
| suitable hills. (If the terrain isn't pretty flat the
| water runs fast and doesn't stick around to be vast
| quantities of water.)
|
| 2) Not even in the ballpark of economic.
|
| 3) You'll really crater our economy, you'll get lynched
| and people will go back to the old way.
|
| 4) You realize the low efficiency of the loop you are
| proposing and big storage headaches it causes?
|
| And nuclear power isn't "just that expensive". Rather, US
| nuclear power is by regulation defined as too expensive.
| There is a horrible provision in the nuclear world: "as
| low as reasonably achievable." Sounds good, and probably
| is good in the medical side. But on the power side it
| inherently defines nuclear as too expensive because if it
| wasn't too expensive then additional "safety" (which I
| find questionable, there comes a point where additional
| "safety" means more to break and thus doesn't really
| work) would be reasonably achievable.
|
| The Republicans keep crusading about "too much
| regulation" but because they're not actually interested
| in the best possible outcome they miss the biggie: We
| should define that which is say 2x as safe as the status
| quo is deemed safe enough. And the flip side of this,
| that which is 2x as dangerous as the status quo is deemed
| unsafe. (I'd be open to different ratios, I just need to
| put something down.)
|
| Let's look at the reality.
|
| Nuclear safety? It's about 10x as good as natural gas.
| (5x if you count Fukushima--but all of those deaths are
| from the evacuation. Staying put had an expected death
| toll of zero.)
|
| Natural gas is about 10x as safe as oil.
|
| Oil is about 10x as safe as coal.
|
| Yes--coal is 1000x as dangerous as nuclear.
|
| (And note that these numbers do not include any harms
| from climate effects and thus are actually an
| understatement.)
|
| Waste? There are two basic types:
|
| Low-level: stuff that might have been contaminated.
| Compare it to ambient (things which aren't hotter than
| ambient shouldn't be treated as nuclear waste) to see if
| you need to care, usually you don't.
|
| High-level: Yeah, it's hot. Very hot. But we are handling
| it wrong. The problem is that in the name of preventing
| proliferation we made reprocessing a dirty word.
| Plutonium is plutonium, isn't it? No. Bombs need Pu-239
| with low amounts of Pu-240. It's extremely hard to make a
| bomb from reactor plutonium because it's got gobs of
| Pu-240. Yes, they can be separated--but anybody who can
| separate them can also separate U-235 from U-238. Pretty
| much the same thing, it's just the plutonium is 3x harder
| to separate.
|
| Reprocess the spent fuel. 90% of it goes back into the
| reactor, even more if you're using a breeder design. Of
| what's left there are some commercially useful isotopes.
| Cobalt-60 would be pretty nasty spread over the
| environment but it's pretty darn good at killing things
| you really want dead. Say, to make shelf stable meat and
| dairy products. Once you get done with that you have some
| actual waste. Which will decay to ambient in 10,000 years
| and note that most of that decay is in the early part.
| You simply don't need elaborate precautions.
| philwelch wrote:
| Even renewables are less safe than nuclear if you count the
| roofing accidents associated with rooftop solar
| installations.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Nuclear can be made renewable.
| lawlessone wrote:
| Some of it was Kremlin propaganda.
|
| They supported anti nuclear stuff , anti renewables stuff and
| anti fossil fuel extraction stuff.
|
| The end effect being people in Europe would be dependent on
| buying natural gas from Russia.
| pydry wrote:
| That quite the conspiracy theory.
| zweifuss wrote:
| Sergei Tretyakov made such claims. https://en.m.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/Sergei_Tretyakov_(intelligen...
|
| Stasi and green activist contacts are also documented.
| (Most funding came from fossile fuel orgs/persons, not
| eastern block.) https://www.dw.com/en/study-confirms-
| that-stasi-infiltrated-...
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Doesn't need to be a big conspiracy. Find groups that are
| saying what you want said, help them along.
|
| Simple test. Look for issues which aren't really green
| but which benefit Moscow (and these days, Beijing.) Where
| do the "green" groups stand? I haven't been paying
| attention for quite a while because I spotted too many
| such things long ago and figured Moscow was pulling the
| strings.
| aguaviva wrote:
| _Some of it was Kremlin propaganda._
|
| Care to cite some examples? You know, the factual kind?
| lainga wrote:
| Vladimir Bukovsky charged the Western disarmament
| movement (in particular the CND) with taking Soviet
| funding in the 1980s. YMMV up to your credence in him.
|
| https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-
| RDP85T00153R0003000...
| aguaviva wrote:
| The concern here was _nuclear power_ , not arms.
| lainga wrote:
| "Our external strategic objectives, as decided by
| delegates at our annual conference, are: ... 4) The
| closure of the Nuclear Power Industry."
|
| Nuclear power is not, as a photograph of a banner on the
| CND's website tells me, the answer to climate chaos.
|
| https://cnduk.org/about/aims-and-objectives/
| aguaviva wrote:
| Noted, but to the extent the Soviets may have aided the
| CND -- their interest seems to have been in its pro-
| disarmament, rather than its anti-nuclear industry
| stance.
|
| If we go by the article you provided (and I am skimming
| it properly) - it doesn't mention nuclear power at all.
| wewxjfq wrote:
| The nuclear disarmament movement achieved nothing and
| just because the Soviets supported something and maybe
| groomed some members doesn't mean they were pulling the
| strings. Having read about the KGB in London makes it
| seem like it was a pretty amateurish organization that
| never recovered from Operation FOOT. There are
| allegations that a leader of the Labour Party was a KGB
| agent, and still no one would insinuate that the Labour
| Party was a front of the KGB.
| xattt wrote:
| Some of the things in the world may never be known for
| certain. The layman can look at the constellation of
| factors that lead up to an event.
|
| The NKVD/KGB/FSB was and continues to be known to engage
| in kneecapping actions in enemy states. Many Northern
| nations were kindled into taking an anti-nuclear stance.
| It is taking a lot of initiative for Northern Europe to
| extricate itself from dependence on Russian natural gas.
| Russia used natural gas control as retaliation following
| sanctions.
|
| Occam's Razor would suggest these things are linked.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I think it is more productive to examine our failures
| than to blame all faults on a distant enemy
| nosianu wrote:
| That is inconvenient. You could change your own
| organization, and nobody wants that. Much better to
| defend each and every problem on your own side as a
| distraction and that acknowledging your side's issues
| would only help the other side, and to concentrate on
| pointing out what others do wrong. That way you have zero
| responsibility to actually change anything.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The Soviets were pretty big on "nuclear all the things",
| given their expertise in it. (Chernobyl being more of an
| economic and operational/communication fuckup)
|
| And also, it was a better solution to their particular set
| of challenges: powering remote installations far from the
| nearest urban center (and powerplant).
|
| Anti-nuclear sentiment in Europe seems to have hardened as
| a consequence of (a) Chernobyl, (b) Germany realizing
| they'd be on the front lines in any war, & (c) various
| other nuclear incidents (US and UK).
| philwelch wrote:
| There's nothing inconsistent about the Soviets favoring
| nuclear energy for their own country while promoting
| anti-nuclear propaganda in the West.
| Arrath wrote:
| In fact its self serving, in that reducing your own
| reliance on oil frees up more of your production for
| sale. Lets not forget that the latter Soviet Union was in
| large part propped up by the proceeds from its oil sales.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| That feels like disempowering Western European
| environmental movements excessively.
|
| They weren't Soviet puppets: they formed their own
| positions and advocated for them.
|
| (Another reason I missed above: the conflation of nuclear
| power with nuclear weapons)
| philwelch wrote:
| I would say that "useful idiots" is a better term than
| "puppets".
| ethbr1 wrote:
| It's a shortcut to an argument to remove agency and
| substitute in a foreign hand, but it rarely captures the
| reality of a situation.
|
| There's usually far too much squabbling inside a given
| volunteer group for any external pressure to be able to
| redirect their will.
| aguaviva wrote:
| Actually it is obviously inconsistent. (I think you meant
| to say, "It may seem inconsistent on the surface, but if
| it serves their overall agenda it can still make sense
| for them", or something like that). But that's not the
| concern here.
|
| Which is simply: even after several iterations on this
| topic -- no one seems to be able to point to any actual
| indications of the Soviets having promoted such
| propaganda in the West.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Some of it was Kremlin propaganda.
|
| Last month a bus caught fire in some random village in
| Czech Republic and apparently that was Putin's fault too.
|
| This is getting to the point where I have to check if he is
| hiding in the closet before I leave the house
|
| Meanwhile we have dozens of official think tanks
| influencing our politics and their sources of funding are
| not disclosed. Could be oil companies, could be China,
| could be the devil himself!
| teachrdan wrote:
| > You can thank Greenpeace and CND and their misinformed
| campaigns for that.
|
| I always think it's funny when HN thinks that Greenpeace is
| omnipotent. Their very first campaign in 1971 was against
| commercial whaling, which still hasn't stopped more than 50
| years later. Greenpeace also has a decade-long campaign
| against oil, which has not exactly succeeded.
|
| Why are HN readers so quick to think that Greenpeace is all
| powerful? Or is Greenpeace just a convenient boogeyman to
| trot out whenever anyone is critical of nuclear power?
| rockemsockem wrote:
| True, the Sierra Club has done much more to twist the
| opinions of green-minded folks.
|
| I think it's because Green Peace's stunts against whaling
| got them lots of press and made them the most famous of the
| green organizations.
| teachrdan wrote:
| This still fails to address the fundamental question: Why
| do so many HNers think that environmental groups have
| infinite power to shape public policy around nuclear
| energy, while they have failed to succeed in any number
| of other campaigns, including ones that are more serious
| (climate change) and/or self-contained (commercial
| whaling)?
| kimixa wrote:
| I'd suggest it's because the public discourse around
| these things are _dominated_ by the talking points pushed
| by those same groups.
|
| They may not be the only driver of that discourse, or
| even the primary origin, but they're arguably the face of
| that viewpoint.
| realusername wrote:
| Because being against nuclear was and still is to some
| extent the core idea that unites all green parties.
| There's nothing else they all agree on and nothing else
| that defines better the green vote.
|
| Because of that, the green parties in most countries sold
| their votes in exchange of policies against nuclear as a
| first priority.
| DrBazza wrote:
| As someone that grew up in the UK in the 1970s and 80s with
| 3 TV channels that reached the majority of the UK,
| Greenpeace were a fixture on mainstream news. The past was
| somewhat different to today.
| nosianu wrote:
| That does not address the comment you reply to, which
| looks at actual results. All the things the comment
| mentioned are from that same time period too. That shows
| that all that exposure and "awareness" still being chased
| today apparently did not help to achieve an actual
| result. That means that you attempting to show that
| awareness was achieved does not contradict the parent
| comment.
| damiankennedy wrote:
| As a New Zealander born in the 70s I very much remember
| Greenpeace protesting against the testing of the nuclear
| weapons, the snap election in 1984, the 1985 bombing of
| the Rainbow Warrior and then becoming nuclear free in
| 1987. Nuclear power was never going to get of the ground
| in that environment. In NZ, being nuclear free is like
| the 2nd amendment in the US.
| pydry wrote:
| >Why are HN readers so quick to think that Greenpeace is
| all powerful?
|
| The nuclear lobby cant exactly blame the exhorbitant cost
| of nuclear power for their problems. They need a more
| exciting scapegoat that isnt "it's 5x the cost of the
| competition".
| nomel wrote:
| Imagine if all the governments of the world came up with
| a mass produced, cookie cutter, plant, rather than
| starting all fabrication and design from scratch for each
| plant?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Theoretically stuff like EPR is supposed to be a cookie
| cutter design.
|
| Actual implementation of said design has had a lot of
| issues, hence the escalation of costs. And it's not easy
| to iron out and iterate on something that is billions of
| dollars a piece when a solar panel is in the thousands
| and a wind turbine is in the millions.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| It's just that solar panels can be imported from China
| without needing a skilled specialist workforce. Yey free
| market
|
| But nuclear has to be built here, and we in the west suck
| (especially UK/US, France still holding out) at building
| any big infrastructure without cost overruns. 'Free
| market' doesn't like the risks of large, hard to finance,
| one off projects. And our governments have decided that
| if central planning doesn't work, then they don't need to
| plan anything at all.
|
| Combine that with lack of skilled staff workforce as all
| the people who built previous nuclear powerplants have
| already retired and the western firms wage war against
| their own skilled engineers, and you have a toxic
| cocktail.
|
| TL SR: the only reason Small Module Reactors are
| interesting is because they could be made in China and
| imported by our lazy system
| bobthepanda wrote:
| no, SMRs are interesting because they represent smaller
| units of power. Nuclear reactors are huge things
| generating power in one specific location, so they're a
| large point of failure. In addition they have the
| opposite coin problem of solar and wind; whereas solar
| and wind don't generate enough power sometimes, nuclear
| often generates _too much_ power for the grid, and can 't
| easily be turned up or down. A lot of the pumped hydro we
| have was not developed for solar and wind storage, but
| for excess nuclear storage. Most hydro in Japan is pumped
| hydro for nuclear plants:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity_in_Japan
|
| If you are going to wind up with the same energy storage
| problems with nuclear or newer renewables then you may as
| well go with the cheaper option.
| realusername wrote:
| Renewables have the problem on both sides though, they
| overproduce and underproduce. And the variability of this
| overproduction and underproduction is much greater than
| any nuclear plant.
| oezi wrote:
| You mean the solar panel?
|
| + it is decentralized, cheap, low tech, low waste, easy
| to scale.
| fsflover wrote:
| > low waste
|
| Did I miss some big news about easy recycling solar
| panels?
| oezi wrote:
| Solar waste is similar to Nuclear per energy created:
|
| https://ars.els-
| cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S09596526220213...
|
| Much lower than fossils. Magnitudes lower than municipal
| waste or other e-waste.
|
| From https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0
| 95965262...
| Retric wrote:
| Construction costs really aren't the issue, they are just
| harder to hide. If you could get someone to build you an
| absolutely free nuclear power plant it still wouldn't be
| cheap power. Just fuel itself which is generally assumed
| to be 'free' runs nearly half the cost of solar power per
| kWh by the time you're dealing with actual fuel rods you
| can stick in a reactor not just ore or 99.3% U235 0.7%
| U235 metal.
|
| Then with that leftover margin, you need to cover
| everything from land costs to new equipment as thing
| break over 50+ years. Manned 24/7 operations take ~500
| people per GW over the plants full lifetime, as are less
| obvious expenses like insurance and mandatory downtime
| for weeks at a time requires something to pick up the
| slack, etc.
|
| Nuclear just ends up expensive even without any safety
| concerns.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Isn't that a chicken and egg problem? These small designs
| are supposed to be (more) automated, so they wouldn't
| need huge teams of people 24/7. My main response to the
| idea of sticking one so far underground is that you might
| as well just make a geothermal plant.
| Retric wrote:
| Hard to say, but this could need a larger staff.
|
| The physical bit of reactor where the fission happens is
| left alone in operation. All the pipes, steam turbines,
| pumps, plumbing, cooling towers, etc etc do and this
| wants all of that on the surface.
| slightwinder wrote:
| France did that, didn't work out that well. Sure, it was
| cheaper, but still f**ing expensive.
| godelski wrote:
| Failure in one endeavour doesn't predict failure in
| another.
|
| You're making the same logical error you're accusing others
| of. But if you'd like to know, it's because there's a
| frequent association between the two. But truthfully I
| think people use "Greenpeace" as a stand in for any
| environmentally focused organization because it's the one
| they're most familiar with. There is direct connection with
| the nuclear case, but as another user points out the Sierra
| Nevada Club has uncontestable bias given that there are
| records showing that they took money from natural gas
| companies to support their anti nuclear campaigns. (I'm
| unsure if there's as clear evidence for GP. Maybe someone
| could link. I'm aware of indirect evidence but if someone
| has financial statements -- like we have with SNC -- I'd
| appreciate that)
|
| As for why might success in whaling be different than
| nuclear? For one, whaling was already a huge established
| industry, while nuclear was budding. I think that's a key
| difference you can't ignore. Not to mention that whaling
| doesn't have a direct connection to bombs, not to mention
| that biggest bombs we've ever made.... Importantly, I think
| you're also undermining the success of their anti whaling
| campaigns. Synthetic oils almost certainly had a larger
| impact but it wouldn't be surprising if their efforts
| helped accelerate the adoption. Whaling might not have
| "stopped" but it has as a global industry.
|
| As for oil, well, again, harder to take down a well
| established large industry. Especially when so much is
| dependent upon it and ethics gets complicated when you get
| into nuance (you want to shut down hospitals?). It's also a
| not harder to do when you fight against alternatives
| because they don't pass a purity test, even if they are
| strictly better (and by a lot).
| teachrdan wrote:
| I think we agree on more than we don't. You're listing
| very reasonable reasons why Greenpeace has failed to,
| say, reduce our fossil fuel use to meet the Paris
| Accords, and why whaling hasn't been completely
| eradicated. (FWIW my family just got back from Norway,
| and there were _many_ restaurants and stores that sold
| whale products for food.)
|
| Having said that, your reasons for the campaign against
| nuclear power include the fact that it's related to
| bombs, which has nothing to do with Greenpeace. You also
| reasonably said that "Greenpeace" is short for
| "environmental groups at large". To me this means that
| civil society in general came out against nuclear power,
| which lead to nuclear power being curtailed, which is...
| how civil society is supposed to work?
|
| If the underlying argument is "I wish people in the 1980s
| had a better understanding of the benefits of nuclear
| power plants and we had continued to build them, albeit
| with better safeguards" then I would 100% agree with you.
|
| But every time there is a discussion of nuclear power on
| HN there is a top comment blaming the current lack of it
| on Greenpeace. It's lazy and intellectually bankrupt.
|
| To say that civil society came out against nuclear power
| after two high profile disasters, due in part to
| mainstream environmental groups' campaigning, but also
| due to high construction and electricity costs, low trust
| in the industry, and the availability of (imperfect!)
| alternatives, would be much more accurate, if less
| exciting to upvote.
| bjourne wrote:
| > You're making the same logical error you're accusing
| others of.
|
| His complaint is that GP stopping nuclear is BS with no
| evidence. Your comment can be summarized as "I don't see
| why it couldn't be true" without presenting any evidence
| that it is true.
| philistine wrote:
| Greenpeace has become this wholly inelegant shortcut to
| mean _the inefficient outrage-based left-leaning movement
| focused on problems with small impacts on our world-ending
| climate problems_.
| gruturo wrote:
| People are not afraid of a whale dying in the middle of the
| ocean. Concerned, yes (maybe), but that's it.
|
| People are _very_ much afraid of radiation thanks to a lot
| of misinformation, crappy movies, and yes, also to the fact
| that radiation _is_ damn scary and dangerous.
|
| Greenpeace and the green parties, while meaning absolutely
| well, have been useful idiots who helped shape the public
| opinion against nuclear and effectively doom an incredibly
| clean competitor of coal, oil and gas.
|
| Doesn't matter - time's up. Wind and solar are now a viable
| alternative for generation, for a small fraction of the
| cost of nuclear, and if the Lithium and Sodium chemistries
| actually hit the implausibly low costs they are thought to
| be destined to, storage will also be solved before a single
| new nuclear plant can be built in the West. Pity, we would
| have a substantially less fucked planet by now.
| datatrashfire wrote:
| It's a convenient scape goat. The incredible impracticality
| of nuclear power is easily reducible to its immense cost vs
| other sources of energy. But that goes against the nerd
| creed of nukes smart. The marketplace long ago abandoned
| nuclear in favor of things that actually work.
| captainkrtek wrote:
| Spot on. I think as humans we respond to acute pains (ie:
| natural disasters, nuclear reactor meltdown) cause we can
| observe extremes in real time. But the heat cranking up year
| over year, wildfires getting worse year over year, its
| gradual but far more lethal. We are numb and ineffective at
| responding to the slow threats I fear,
| government/corporations are also not incentivized to care it
| seems.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| > You can thank Greenpeace and CND and their misinformed
| campaigns for that.
|
| You can thank the USA and the war against Japan for that.
| It's pointless to try to ignore that Hiroshima and Nagasaki
| did happen.
|
| That's the paradox. Nuclear fission probably would never have
| become viable without the massive investment in its
| weaponisation but the same weaponisation made it unpalatable
| as a source of energy.
|
| I think there remains a deep seated association between
| nuclear energy, the nuclear weapon armed powers and
| imperialism amongst the members of most green parties, which
| are all historically alter-mondialist.
| preisschild wrote:
| No you can't. Nuclear power plants werent very connected to
| nuclear weapons and the public didnt think of nuclear
| weapons when thinking of power reactors.
|
| Only after anti-nuclear misinformation got huge starting in
| the 70s.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| The key to understand what started in the 70s is
| obviously the Vietnam War.
|
| The fact remains that nuclear opposition is rooted
| neither in safety concerns nor in environmental impacts.
| If you ignore that, you are condemned to always miss the
| point - which is often happening when people discuss the
| nuclear question to be fair.
|
| This is not a battle of reason but a confrontation
| between two incompatible moral frameworks.
| Kon5ole wrote:
| >Existing nuclear reactors are already extremely safe
|
| The perceived safety is the result of being operated by highly
| trained and vetted personnel 24/7/365 for decades on end.
|
| In actual fact nuclear reactors are extremely dangerous.
| 7952 wrote:
| And those personnel are really expensive.
| lnwlebjel wrote:
| On thing I never see in these discussions is the toll on
| workers via radiation exposure. I worked at a nuclear plant
| in the 1990s and the exposure allowed to outage workers who
| worked six months a year was something like 5 REM, or 50yrs
| off radiation in 6 months. Are these deaths included in the
| statistics? It appears not - part of the issue undoubtedly is
| causal attribution to a cancer that occurs many years later.
| A cursory search of the literature suggests that not a lot of
| work has been done on this.
| Vecr wrote:
| Are you calculating under LNT (Linear No Threshold)?
| Otherwise unless the rate is spiky it might be fine.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Define "safe". We've built less than a thousand commercial
| reactors ever and we've had multiple incidents where the impact
| will be felt for decades if not centuries.
|
| Nuclear advocates hand-wave away Chernobyl ("because Soviets")
| like they're the only ones who can cause an industrial
| accident. But what about Fukushima? Over $100 billion has been
| spent on the clean up and compensation so far, with the
| ultimate cost to approach $1 trillion, require tech that hasn't
| been invented yet and will take decades if not a century or
| more [1]
|
| And for what? The highest LCOE of any power source used for
| mass power generation.
|
| Now this idea (Deep Fission) is an interesting one. It's
| basically a take on geothermal where instead of relying on
| natural heating (eg from lava) you basically just use a small
| reactor. If anything goes wrong, you just bury the whole thing.
| This requires some more thought about what the failure modes
| look like and some analysis on what the cost of power is. It is
| an interesting idea though.
|
| [1]: https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Fukushima-
| Anniversary/Fuku...
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > like they're the only ones who can cause an industrial
| accident. But what about Fukushima?
|
| One is an accident, the other is a natural disaster. Most
| countries don't have earthquakes and tsunamis, so it's not
| relevant.
|
| But more to your point, if we paid fair compensation to
| everyone harmed by fossil fuels, I doubt would it cost any
| less.
| darby_nine wrote:
| > It also provides the argument that wanting to bury reactors 1
| mile deep shows how incredibly dangerous nuclear power really
| is.
|
| If this were true we would have buried coal plants decades ago
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It's "funny" how much nuclear has to plan and prepare and
| care about its waste while Petrochemical companies get to
| just pump most of their waste, including radioactivity and
| mercury, directly into the air you breathe.
|
| Ain't it funny how only the companies who aren't already rich
| have to do the stuff that protects people.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Sorry, can't make that argument after Fukushima unless there is
| foolproof passive safety like a LFTR plug.
|
| A problem with organizationally managed safety is just the
| human error problem, and two that human organizations come to
| resent and undermine regulations, particularly at the
| management level. This attitude is rite in the nuclear industry
| in America, and similarly from what I can tell from tepco
| management of Fukushima.
|
| Nuclear needs a scalable price competitive meltdown proof full
| fuel usage reactor. I think LFTR, materials issues aside, is
| the solution, but possibly even that won't be able to compete
| long term with solar wind even with miraculous materials
| engineering.
| thmsths wrote:
| Seriously this! Nuclear is held to the impossible standard of
| proving that no one will be harmed by it for the next 4000
| years, as evidenced by some pointless bike shedding exercises
| like designing warning signs that can outlast civilization.
| troebr wrote:
| I think it's interesting to read people voicing concerns and
| limitations of the projects in the comments (that's why I came to
| read them), but I was hoping more people would be excited about
| the idea. Even if it doesn't work out, I root for people who try
| out ideas like this.
|
| Every once in a while some crazy idea like breaking down atoms to
| generate electricity works out and we're all better off thanks to
| it.
| cesaref wrote:
| It sounds like geothermal without using the earth as the heat
| source. What benefits does this have over geothermal, which is
| proven and safe, and also ticks the 'non-nuclear' box which makes
| it considerably easier to convince a population to live next door
| to?
| criddell wrote:
| Just guessing here, but I think it would have a much smaller
| footprint.
|
| Google tells me the largest geothermal power plant is in
| California and it's gigawatt scale and takes up something like
| 45 sq miles of space.
|
| The other factor might be location flexibility. You can
| probably dig a mile down just about anywhere but geothermal
| needs access to magma chambers. Are those everywhere?
| iSnow wrote:
| >but geothermal needs access to magma chambers.
|
| No, not really. Geothermal can work wherever there's a big
| enough positive temperature anomaly in the ground. Rift
| systems with hydrothermal heat can work as well as regions
| over a deeper magma plume.
|
| Exploiting shallow magma chambers is only possible in a
| couple regions like Iceland.
| criddell wrote:
| > can work wherever there's a big enough positive
| temperature anomaly in the ground
|
| And is that in as many places as you can dig a mile down?
| IS the temperature delta in those places on the same order
| of magnitude as when magma chambers are tapped? If not,
| gigawatt scale plants would take even more space, no?
| Bilal_io wrote:
| I would imagine the scale. This would provide much more power
| compared to geothermal installed in the same square footage.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I read once upon a time that when they attempted to do deep-
| drilling geothermal, they discovered that the surrounding rock
| loses too much temperature over a course of just a couple years
| to be useful. At least at the depths that can be drilled.
| foxyv wrote:
| Two main advantages exist. One is that geothermal is not
| available everywhere. In some places, wells have to be absurdly
| deep. (The deepest one in finland is 4 miles deep) Second, the
| temperature of the nuclear reactor is much higher than the
| geothermal well, allowing you to get much more energy out of a
| single bore hole.
| stevage wrote:
| Another issue not mentioned by others is that in some regions,
| geothermal plants have triggered earthquakes frequently enough
| to become unviable.
| NwtnsMthd wrote:
| There could be a few benefits to what is proposed in the
| article, here are my semi-educated guesses.
|
| 1. Less dependent on local geology. Geothermal wells are well
| suited for hot, non-pourous (?) geology.
|
| 2. Might be cheaper. It can take years to drill the wells for a
| closed loop system (e.g. Eavor), less for a fracked geothermal
| well (e.g. Fervo). I imagine drilling a single borehole for
| this is way simpler.
|
| 3. Less water loss. Fracked geothermal well wells can be pretty
| lossy (20%?). If water supply is an issue your options may be
| limited.
| emsign wrote:
| You get more dumb money for a _new_ idea, especially if it 's
| something nuclear.
| poikroequ wrote:
| I'm not commenting on the practicality or viability of this.
| Rather, I see a lot of commenters talking about cost. I
| understand some projects or technologies would literally be too
| expensive, but realistically, we _need_ to move away from fossil
| fuels. We can 't just keep polluting the Earth because it's
| cheaper than clean energy.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > With its promise of limitless energy by breaking down matter
| itself, nuclear power has long held a utopian promise for
| humanity
|
| What a strange, science fictional way to describe fission! Surely
| it's not breaking down matter itself any more than burning wood
| or coal is. Would you say, about eating a sandwich, that it
| 'offers the promise of limitless energy by breaking down matter
| itself'?
| foxyv wrote:
| This is in fact how it works. You are taking a fraction of the
| mass of the Uranium and turning it into energy. Although
| limitless is a stretch. Maybe 100,000 years or so of energy
| with known deposits of thorium and uranium. Solar is a bit
| closer to "Limitless."
| hinkley wrote:
| By the time solar becomes a problem we have bigger issues.
| Namely the sun trying to eat the planet.
| foxyv wrote:
| Exactly! But at time scales over 10k years you may as well
| say limitless I suppose. By that point you are either
| extinct or living in O'Neill cylinders at Lagrange points
| throughout the Solar system and mining asteroids. If not
| already traveling to other solar systems. I think the safe
| bet is extinct, given how things are going right now.
| ElectronCharge wrote:
| Those "known deposits" don't include seawater, which is
| another giant source.
|
| It shouldn't matter anyways, surely fusion will be here
| sooner rather than later...and possibly LENR.
| foxyv wrote:
| No kidding, and far before that point we will be having to
| build giant radiators to expel excess thermal energy or
| risk cooking our planet. The future is going to be
| absolutely nuts if we don't end up killing everyone.
| ElectronCharge wrote:
| Nuclear fission is a fundamentally different process from
| oxidation (burning). It produces a much higher proportional
| power output.
|
| The usual figure given is fission fuel is about 1 million times
| as power dense as chemical fuels like gasoline.
| perlgeek wrote:
| I cannot decide if this is ingenious, incredible dumb, or maybe
| both at the same time.
|
| Where does the "1 mile down" come from? That seems more like
| based on emotion than on science / engineering. If it isn't, I'd
| like to see some of the tradeoffs of different depths.
|
| I could imagine that drilling this deep might be the most
| expensive part, so if you could get away with, say, half of the
| depth, that would be quite the advantage.
|
| What do we know about the safety tradeoffs of putting a reactor
| that far underground?
|
| I'm not trying to shoot down the idea, it's just so unexpected
| that I feel I haven't even begun to think of the right questions
| yet.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| > Where does the "1 mile down" come from?
|
| The general idea is probably "if anything bad happens", nobody
| will really care, we'll just seal the shaft.
| foxyv wrote:
| I believe that the 1 mile down comes from the current proposed
| methods of disposing of nuclear waste. Essentially, you place
| the reactor in it's final resting place, removing the need to
| transport it to a disposal site. Depending on the site you
| would bury either deeper or shallower depending on the
| geological stability of the region.
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/finland-built-tomb-s...
| schiffern wrote:
| >the pressure of water at a mile deep is 160 atmospheres, the
| same as that found in the thick pressure vessel of the standard
| PWR.
|
| Technically it's about 1.03 miles, but they round to 1 mile.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=160+atmospheres+%2F+%281+kg%...
| loeg wrote:
| It's just dumb.
| cwassert wrote:
| And what about the cost of safely storing nuclear waste for
| thousands of years?
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Humans haven't figured out how to economically build something
| watertight and structurally sound for 30000 years... most
| structures will rarely last over 65 years without constant
| maintenance.
|
| Anything around water, acid rain, or anaerobic bacteria will
| fall apart in time.
|
| All mines eventually fill with water, and collapse in time.
|
| Putting the PR BS in a hole in the ground does not make it
| safer. lol =3
| bunderbunder wrote:
| The practical arguments in favor of nuclear seem to assume that
| new nuclear technology only needs to compete with old nuclear
| technology.
|
| Let's set aside the safety argument. They're claiming $0.46 per
| kilowatt-hour for a technology they haven't developed yet. I
| believe that's about an order of magnitude more expensive than
| what wind can do right now. Heck, right now my local utility's
| website is reporting a retail spot price of seven cents per
| kilowatt-hour. Maybe paying six times as much is worthwhile for
| the reduced carbon footprint relative to fossil fuels, but if
| that's the argument then just say that rather than weakening your
| position by calling it "cheap" when it's easy to see that it
| isn't.
| elil17 wrote:
| The article quotes that number as the cost of the actual
| nuclear fuel. That number makes no sense - I'm sure it's a
| typo. They probably meant to say 4/10ths of a cent per megawatt
| hour. Of course, most of the actual costs come from
| capital/operations.
| Bedon292 wrote:
| They say 0.46 C//kWh. Its a cent sign rather than a dollar
| sign. It is less than half a cent per kWh for the fuel.
|
| I also found this [1] chart from 2022 which has nuclear fuel
| costs around 0.6 C//kWh and fossil fuel costs around 3.2
| C//kWh. So the 0.46 would be 1/7 rather than 6x.
|
| [1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > They're claiming $0.46 per kilowatt-hour
|
| No they're not, they're claiming 0.46 _C/ /kWh_, as in
| $0.0046/kWh. That is _insanely_ cheap. You could completely
| charge an EV for under 50 cents.
|
| My electricity is $0.11/kWh and ranges from $100-300/month
| depending on season. At $0.0046/kWh, that would reduce to
| $4-12/month.
| emsign wrote:
| This only works in geologically inactive regions. It's like Solar
| Roadways but for nuclear.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Perhaps a safer approach would be to keep the steam cycle closed
| and only have power cables coming up the shaft. The module would
| need to be much taller, but size is still neglectable in relation
| to the depth of the well itself.
| rappatic wrote:
| Great, I'd love our groundwater polluted with nuclear waste.
| Seriously, let's not overthink this. Nuclear power is very safe,
| even aboveground, if the necessary precautions are taken. This
| has been known for a while now.
| hinkley wrote:
| Chernobyl nearly contaminated all the wells in Eastern Europe
| for tens of thousands of years.
|
| To go a mile down you have to go past the aquifers and then
| anything that happens to the shaft after an accident causes the
| same problems.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Every kid born after the 1960's has slightly radioactive eye
| lens, and their parents did not.
|
| Peoples hubris is very dangerous, but maybe Fusion will solve
| all our problems one day. lol =3
| Dig1t wrote:
| Even if it's unnecessary I still think this is a great idea. It's
| obvious that the people who are scared of nuclear power are not
| interested in the actual safety data, it's that radiation is
| scary and has bad connotations.
|
| If it will put people at ease, then just do it so we can finally
| have nuclear energy.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Putting this underground does not make it safer, but rather
| complicates maintenance of holding back the ever encroaching
| water.
| honestjohn wrote:
| "A mile underground" and "cheap" don't seem to go together.
| hinkley wrote:
| Has everyone forgotten when we had an oil well leaking .8 miles
| underwater and we couldn't do shit to stop it?
| honestjohn wrote:
| Are you talking about me or the article?
| hinkley wrote:
| The article. Working a mile down is at the limits of our
| capabilities. In an emergency situation it's nearly
| unobtanium. Like Kernighan's Law for engineering.
| honestjohn wrote:
| Yeah, it seems nuts. Nuclear submarines have proven our
| ability to operate a small reactor a _km_ underwater, but
| under land is much harder.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Nuclear needs to deal with the cost issue first. It is woefully
| uncompetitive.
|
| I failed to see how one mile deep shaft is going to help that,
| standard boring or not
|
| If you're wanted to dig a mile down for a massive piece of
| infrastructure, wouldn't geothermal be more price competitive at
| that point?
|
| I mean part of the problem with meltdowns is the pollution of
| groundwater. "It's beneath the water table" yeah sure, there's no
| way fission products can go up a shaft. No way.
|
| So what safety does this really address besides paranoia? I mean
| I guess if you have a runaway solid rod fuel reaction, you can
| just drop a bomb down there and blow the fuel rods apart.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| It is a loss leader non-renewable technology.
|
| Initially the $/kWh is actually one of the lowest cost
| services, but this hides the $9B subsidy the public pays for
| construction and the 30000 year waste stewardship.
|
| Some people think easy solutions are without tradeoffs. Yet
| fission power only makes sense for remote regions and space
| missions.
|
| Renewables overtook coal this year in some regions. As the
| economics are an unstoppable force, that will silence the
| hubris of those that like dangerous fission toys.
|
| My bet is on goat carts for our future =3
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Which is why MSRs that use allegedly almost all the fuel
| seems like such a potential to feasible cost effective
| nuclear. It's not just the economic cost of waste, it's the
| publicity/politics around waste transport and storage.
| preisschild wrote:
| Nuclear reactors in a bunker (like most are built) are also
| relatively safe and it doesn't need that much tunneling. Nuclear
| power plant capital costs are already high, tunneling up an area
| a mile underground would be stupid for most cases.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Surely digging a reactor-sized cave a mile below the surface is
| the exact opposite of "cheap".
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| This seems of a piece with trying to directly address the
| concerns of those who are opposed to nuclear power. This does not
| work, because most of those folks actually are not interested in
| nuclear power at all, and they will never lack for reasons not to
| do it. This is true of almost anything: It's always pretty easy
| to come up with reasons not to do something.
|
| Those who oppose will simply keep coming up with new reasons not
| to do it. They will only accept a reduction in usage. Anything
| that allows us to maintain our existing level of energy
| consumption will not be tolerated.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Fission power is a loss leader non-renewable technology.
|
| Initially the $/kWh is actually one of the lowest cost
| services, but this hides the $9B subsidy the public pays for
| construction and the 30000 year waste stewardship.
|
| Some people think easy solutions are without tradeoffs. Yet
| fission power only makes sense for remote regions and space
| missions.
|
| Renewables overtook coal this year in some regions. As the
| economics are an unstoppable force, that will silence the
| hubris of those that like dangerous toys.
|
| My bet is on goat carts for our future =3
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| I think you're making my point for me. 30000 year
| stewardship? 20 years ago it was only a 10000 year
| stewardship. Either way, it doesn't make much sense.
|
| For one thing, radioactivity is related to half-life.
| Basically the more radioactive something is, the shorter the
| half-life and therefore the less time you have to deal with
| it. When something has a long half-life, that is almost by
| definition less radioactive. And it's not so hard. Water
| blocks most of the worst radiation anyway.
|
| More importantly, 10,000 or 30,000 years or whatever is just
| a really, really long time. Storing and "stewarding" the
| waste is already a sufficiently solved problem. All of the
| material your family would use in your entire life would fit
| in a shoebox, and can be stored in a few gallons of water
| safely. Borrowing hypothetical problems from that far into
| the future is an example of exactly what I'm talking about:
| an effectively un-addressable concern that serves only as a
| placeholder for "I don't want to. Use less energy."
|
| The reason that solar and wind haven't fallen victim to this
| is that they don't scale well enough, and would force us to
| reduce consumption. If they were on track to increase our
| overall energy production and use, they would lose support.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| In general, Uranium fission processes are relatively less
| nasty than the material mixed with decommissioned weapons
| grade Plutonium. You would need to model the probabilistic
| decay chains to figure out at which point the hot material
| is below inhalation hazard levels.
|
| "The reason that solar and wind haven't fallen victim to
| this is that they don't scale well enough"
|
| That is a dumb lie, these have already exceeded non-
| renewable facilities in many jurisdictions last year. While
| not perfect in every locale, I like distributed
| solar+battery as they are resilient to localized disasters.
| Note, many in TX and FL have already shifted over due to
| faster <8yr payoff periods (i.e. an 18 year service life
| means near $0/kWh for 10 years).
|
| Fission is a nonrenewable loss leader technology, and
| should be reserved for remote areas or space missions. =3
| jcgrillo wrote:
| Naively it seems like a ridiculous idea to put your boiler 1+mi
| away from your turbine.. am I wrong?
|
| EDIT: There's also the fact that your steam is fighting a 1mi
| vertical column worth of pressure.. If your steam at the boiler
| is limited to 600degF that seems counterproductive to put it 1mi
| underground?
| tra3 wrote:
| What is the story for spent fission fuel? I believe that was
| always a huge issue.
| johnea wrote:
| Or, place them 150M kilometers out in space and orbit the planet
| around them...
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| This was called the "Deep Well Reactor" concept back in 1984.
| https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012182435&se...
|
| You have serious constraints in neutronics when constrained to a
| drillable borehole diameter and low-enriched uranium. The radial
| peaking will be high. May still be an ok tradeoff.
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