Comment by nickik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nickik | Hacker News Reader

If people on the left had the same obsession with nuclear that they have with solar climate change would be solved.

Honestly it seems to me like 'liberals' (lack of a better term) are closing their eyes on this. This eternal year on year constant media bombardment about the successes of solar energy and in the last couple of years batteries is totally out of proportion with any realistic view of the current energy system or any energy system that could realistically exist in the next 10 years.

What is ironic in this whole discussion is that while liberals can never stop pointing out how France is so much better in terms of health care system and child care and whatever else. The fact that France has abolished carbon in their energy production 40 years ago is somehow ignored.

A modern industrial nation abolished carbon in 1970 with technology that is essentially from the 50/60. This success if it had been done with solar and wind would fly on every flag of every news paper and environmentalist poster.

This could easily be repeated today in any other industrialized country. Switzerland and Sweden currently work like that (just with more water).

What is really sad is that the carbon industry has discovered this in the 70s already. Carbon based energy producers have long supported anti-nuclear campaigns because they know it will be incredibly difficult for solar/wind to remove goal/gas as baseload powers and thus they are only a very, very long term thread to them. While a nuclear plant could be plopped down right next to every coal plant.

I think to say this is a "liberal" problem is to miss the fact that more than a majority of independents, and nearly a majority of Republicans oppose nuclear energy http://news.gallup.com/poll/190064/first-time-majority-oppos... To put those numbers in context, it is important to contrast it with support for the competitors, solar and wind (http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/10/04/the-politics-of-climat... but it doesn't break it down by party affiliation), which have 80%+ support.

I guess 'liberal' is the wrong word. I mean the popular media and popular discourse in general.

One thing has to be admitted, the environmentalist campaign nuclear energy must have been one of the most successful ever.

The amount of Anti-Scientific nonsense that is populated and believed by large part of the population is even worse then climate change or anti-GMO. However Greenpeace and other organisation that spread these Anti-Scientific organisations never get called out on their Anti-Nuclear propaganda because to few people care.

Essentially a whole branch of technology has eliminated by these narrow minded propaganda campaigns.

Other technologies could have thrived even with this opposition but nuclear is to political and the regulation to restrictive. Its so sad given the mountain of different technologies we are missing out on.

Nuclear is too expensive (billions of dollars per facility) and takes too long to build (10+ years), full stop. This doesn't even address the waste storage issue.

France is going to need to address its expensive, aging nuclear generators at some point. By then, of course, solar will be much cheaper than it is today, and there will be more HVDC transmission lines shuttling power between EU countries.

Nuclear plants may be expensive, but it's still the cheapest energy out there. It's kind of misleading when you talk only about the cost of nuclear facilities and not about the efficiency in the long run. There are lots of legit arguments against nuclear energy, yet you chose to complain about the cost of the facilities or the time it takes to build them. Your only real point was the waste storage issue (the aging reactors problem is essentially the same as the cost problem).

An airplane is also more expensive than a bike, and takes longer to assemble. This doesn't mean it has no use.

Nuclear power is one of the most expensive sources around.

See Lazard's 2017 numbers[1], which put the low price of nuclear power at $112/MWh. Only rooftop residential is more expensive ($187/MWh), Diesel generators ($197/MWh) and gas peaking ($156/MWh) are more expensive.

Utility solar is as low as $43/MWh, wind is $30/MWh

If you think there is going to be some magical world where people get rid of safety regulations for nuclear power, after the Fukushima nuclear accident I think you need to reconsider. Nuclear power advocate's excuse for that one was that they had lax safety standards, so dropping them further seems unlikely.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...

In 80s 100 reactors were in planning and the price was lower then a coal plant.

Many of those are still running and they are safe.

Understanding why the cost has gone up 10x can not be explained simply by 'slightly higher security regulation'.

Something else went wrong in the whole process and the regulated utility market.

> If you think there is going to be some magical world where people get rid of safety regulations for nuclear power, after the Fukushima nuclear accident I think you need to reconsider.

Nobody wants to 'get rid' of safety regulation. However talk to any expert on nuclear energy and you will see that the current way to to regulation is highly ineffective and damages the industry.

Nuclear is expensive in the US NOW because of insane amounts of regulation, constant law-suits and the fact that almost no new plants were build in the last 30 years.

Back before 3 Mile Island a nuclear plant was cheaper to produce then coal plant and had 2x the amount of live time with 10x cheaper fuel cost.

> France is going to need to address its expensive, aging nuclear generators at some point. By then, of course, solar will be much cheaper than it is today, and there will be more HVDC transmission lines shuttling power between EU countries.

France has the lowest electricity prices in Europe had them for quite a long time.

Nuclear is not expensive if you are building many of them, just like everything else.

One of the major problems with nuclear is that it is extremely national and most western nations don't have a demand for scale.

Back before 3 Mile Island

And then the 3 Mile Island disaster happened, and people tighten up regulations. That seems reasonable, no?

And Chernobyl. And Fukishima. Yes, nuclear disasters are rare, but when they do happen it takes extraordinary resources and time to remediate. Solar panels and batteries fail more gracefully.

Even that is overestimated.

Solar panels create mountains of waste, much of it being disassembled by kids in Africa who then get sick because of it.

Solar production facility can have chemical spills that are comparable to Three Mile Island in terms of effect.

Compare a nuclear civilization against a solar one and you will see that waste management of nuclear is far smaller.

Overall less then 2000 people died from these 3 disasters and essentially all of them because Chernobyl that uses a technology that we don't use in the west.

"Solar panels create mountains of waste, much of it being disassembled by kids in Africa who then get sick because of it."

Source? Electronics associated with solar panels might be an issue but modern inverters use less and less toxic elements (and are definitely RoHS compliant).

As for solar panels themselves, 99% by weight consists of glass (75%), plastics (10%), aluminum (9%) and silicon (5%) which can all be recycled.

I don't want solar to be the enemy. I just wanted to point out that its not quite so simple and that 'nuclear waste' is a far smaller problem then people realize.

http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/6/21/are-we-h...

Nobody in the nuclear industry was against some of the changes and more regulation.

The problem was that it turned into an absolute shitshow from a regulator perspective, process perspective, utility regulation perspective, political perspective and so on that. There were 100 plants in construction and all of them go canceled.

Large part of the nuclear industry when bankrupt and so on.

Since then regulation has prevented most progress on any of these issues. Nuclear startups all move to Canada, China or some other place because the US is simply not good place to work on nuclear.

The actual changes that would have been needed after Three Mile Island were mostly about the human to reactor interaction, ie. UI. Why that should destroy and industry make the cost 10x higher is quite hard to understand.

Your reaction underscores the point that fears over nuclear power stem from widespread lack of education about nuclear energy as a whole. TMI was blown ridiculously out of proportion. A pressure valve got stuck resulting in a leak that was... wait for it... undetectable compared to background! Does shutting down a comparatively clean energy supply and driving an entire industry effectively out of business seem like a rational response to that?

Umm...so who pays for cleanups and other damage in situations like Fukushima? Perhaps you should read this article before trying to promote something like this: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the-radi...

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