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Comment by the_duke | Hacker News Reader

What is it with nuclear power plant fanboys trying to hijacki almost every renewables thread?

Because the main reason for using renewables is to reduce CO2 emissions and Nuclear is a great way to reduce CO2 emissions and it is the safest technology around. (yes, even when accounting for Chernobyl, Three Miles Island and Fukushima).

I think it's no longer great; it takes too long to build, costs too much, presents a decomissioning problem, and still never quite dealt with weapons proliferation.

The weapons proliferation part has already been dealt with, since it depends on the type of nuclear reactor you build. Thorium salt reactors, are non-proliferation by design.

> costs too much

because we haven't invested in any experimentation in most markets. The US has stopped building new reactors for decades. There's no reason why nuclear reactors can't be made to be cheaper.

> I think it's no longer great;

This needs a benchmark. Nothing is great in absolute. It's still great vs all the other energy productions methods. Solar need huge surfaces to produce large quantities of energy, and solar panels require very toxic materials for manufacture... nothing's perfect unfortunately.

I love how there's always someone citing some future reactor design in response to criticism. Of course it's different future designs for each specific argument against nuclear technology.

For thorium, the wikipedia page lists 22 disadvantages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reacto.... It may well be the longest list of arguments against I've seen on Wikipedia, including, by the way, proliferation risks.

> The weapons proliferation part has already been dealt with, since it depends on the type of nuclear reactor you build. Thorium salt reactors, are non-proliferation by design.

It's interesting how you say "has been dealt with" and then point to a technology that barely exists in reality. Thorium reactors have been promised as a solution since a long time, people have predicted that many of them will be built really soon. It hasn't happened.

> Thorium salt reactors, are non-proliferation by design.

No. In some ways they're much worse, in fact.

> Nothing is great in absolute. It's still great vs all the other energy productions methods. Solar need huge surfaces to produce large quantities of energy, and solar panels require very toxic materials for manufacture... nothing's perfect unfortunately.

Indeed, by many metrics (deaths per kWh, environmental footprint) nuclear is the best option we have.

Which parts of solar panels are super toxic and how does them getting into the environment rank against radiating waste?

The manufacture is indeed the usual silicon process which involves toxic chemicals, but they don't have to end up in the environment.

The cells themselves are pretty inert, although CdTe (rarely used but once popular) is quite toxic. And of course none of this stuff radiates.

People don't think about solar like lego. Once you connect the first panel your pumping out energy. Then you just keep going.

Nuclear has such a complex set of technologies and industry that needs to be developed and maintained. The buildings themselves take years to develop and construct.

Then there's the stigma around them etc etc.

Renewables just make more sense these days.

The real problem with nuclear is that when it fails, it fails hard and damages the environment for decades if not more. Wind and solar have the smallest impact even when they fail as far as I am aware. It is about more than just CO2 reduction.

> and damages the environment for decades if not more

Though apparently radiation is not as bad for the flora and fauna as people are:

“Wildlife is thriving around Chernobyl since the people left”

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28281-wildlife-is-thr...

Animals and plants don't care as much about higher infant mortality, cancers or lower lifespans as humans do. Plus the cumulative effects of radiation are less deadly than human predation and habitat destruction.

Depends on what you value more. Nuclear causes fewer deaths by a magnitude than solar and wind. And what is worse, dead birds from turbines and land covered in panels so that vegetation can't grow and support the native wildlife, or some giant stable old salt mine filled with nuclear waste and closed off from the world?

That assumes the land was available for wildlife before the site was constructed. In the UK our solar sites are on farmland, and provide a far superior habitat to intense agriculture. Wildflowers can grow under the solar panels which is fantastic for bees and butterflys. Also, it is common to do surveys to model the risk to birds and avoid important populations and migrating species.

Also, deaths during construction tend to be workers who have signed up to the risk. That isn't OK, but it is a lot less bad than risk to random members of the public who have not consented. And it is a vast improvement on the deaths caused by fossil fuels.

> Nuclear causes fewer deaths by a magnitude than solar and wind

Source?

https://www.energycentral.com/c/ec/deaths-nuclear-energy-com...

and

https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/magazi...

Currently nuclear loses on price and opportunity cost with gas + wind, given that it takes 7 years on average to build such a plant.

Also it only functions as baseload - it's a great alternative to coal, but that's about it.

That baseload argument cuts both ways. Solar and wind can only serve as a baseload from 10-2, but only on sunny days, or when the wind blows (but not too hard). There's a reason every country moving to wind and solar is still burning more and more coal. Not everyone is as lucky as N. America to have a near limitless supply of natgas to make up for renewable's huge shortcomings.

> There's a reason every country moving to wind and solar is still burning more and more coal.

Not the case for the UK.

How is nuclear safer than solar/wind etc. Who has solar power ever killed?

People falling from rooves installing panels, mostly. Probably a few people poisoned by chemical pollution from manufacturing/disposal of panels as well.

The main reason that plants are actually built is to generate energy and the resulting revenue. Other issues like CO2, safety, emissions are the responsibility of regulators. If an investor can't get a return on a nuclear power station then arn't going to build it.

Not everywhere in the world has the land area to do wind and solar. In fact pretty much everywhere other than Russia, Australia, Canada, the US and Brazil.

There the energy density per head of population is too high for renewables.

Good video by the late David Mackay on that point here.

https://youtu.be/E0W1ZZYIV8o

Nuclear takes a lot of space for security etc. In terms of power production vs lost land area wind is orders of magnitude butter if you have farming. And solar can be placed on other structures making it’s land cost approach zero.

You can also send power under water quite a ways cheaply. So, it’s hard to find a location which needs extreme power production density.

Nonsense: "Specifically, this report finds that coal, natural gas, and nuclear power all feature the smallest physical footprint of about 12 acres per megawatt produced. Solar and wind are much more land intensive technologies using 43.5 and 70.6 acres per megawatt, respectively."

https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/footprints-full.pdf

Multi megawatt wind turbines take up about around 1/4 of an acre. The rest of the land around them can be used for agriculture. https://www.awea.org/wind-101/benefits-of-wind/wind-in-my-co.... That’s several times more space efficient than nuclear as long as you also need farms which most countries do.

As to solar, clearly you have seen them on roofs which have no other real use.

Can you not put solar on rooftops? Is the technology for solar windows available yet?

The inverse happens on almost every nuclear thread.

What is it with renewables fanbois not understanding nuclear fission reactors?

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