Environmentalist Says Only Nuclear Power Can Save Us Now | Hacker News Reader

Environmentalist Says Only Nuclear Power Can Save Us Now

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36 pointsdarepublic13 comments

In the video Shellenberger says that he's not against a carbon tax, but that it's too unpopular and therefore not realistic.

Weird that he doesn't realize that the same applies to nuclear. Probably even more so.

I wonder what the Venn diagram looks like of people for/opposed to each of those two things.

Without Nuclear power the US is going to move backwards on greenhouse gas goals. Right now nuclear makes up 18% of US electricity generation and renewables make up 6%. Almost all those nuclear plants are scheduled for decommission in the next 15 years. So even if we quadruple renewable energy generation greenhouse gas emissions won’t go down.

According to a professor a few years ago, nuclear power has a maintainability problem: a reactor is only good for x (50?) years, so you have to rebuild them perpetually. Since the construction and cleanup are very complex, it isn’t feasible to power the earth with nuclear. Only solar seems able to scale enough, iirc

Huh, can anyone confirm the 50 year number?

I think powering the earth via nuclear reactors in perpetuity has problems, but what we really need is a power source for the next century or so. Hopefully by then, we'll have more efficient solar panels, or fission, or something else.

What we desperately need is time.

50 years is actually pretty good. Most coal and natural gas power generating facilities last about 30 years. Solar plants are closer to 20 years.

Nuclear's problem in the US isn't so much the lifetime of a plant as the difficulty in constructing new plants and consignment of waste. There isn't much political will in either major US political party to allow these problems to be solved. As a result getting a new plant approved and constructed within a reasonable budget is close to impossible. Oil/natural gas companies hate them and environmentalist organizations hate them.

The only real support nuclear has is the military because it's so useful for ships and submarines.

Do solar panels not have a limited lifespan just as well? And is there a reason we could not build reactors with lifespans greater than 50 years? It seems the claim that only solar is scalable is premature, I'd say.

An important difference is that solar panels and battery cells can be replaced in far smaller units on a rolling basis if desired. E.g., "we'll replace another row of roof shingles this month" vs. "reactor unit 2 will be down (not producing power, but still requiring active management) for two years for refueling".

on the long term probably, the idea (I have heard from diverse sources) is that only nuclear power can ensure the transition from carbon to sustainable energy in order to avoid to avoid a catastrophic++ climate change

And what, large scale battery grids don’t need to be replaced with even more regularity?

It's not clear from their recent stories on the topic whether Reason actually would admit to believing in Climate Change.

They certainly don't recommend doing anything crazy, like a Republican backed carbon tax. And they're very sure that oil companies shouldn't be held financially responsible.

But apparently nuclear is the solution to this non-problem?

That kind of suggests to me that they know nuclear isn't the solution.

https://reason.com/tag/climate-change/

Just finished watching Chernobyl, all I can say is that if what some environmentalists say about nuclear being the only option is true, we are completely screwed.

"Some environmentalists".

Others, not so much.

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