Are wind and solar and batteries the future for US electricity? | Hacker News Reader

Are wind and solar and batteries the future for US electricity?

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16 pointsstevemillburg54 comments

I think we're designing for the wrong thing.

We should have nuclear going at 120% of demand and use the exess power to support electricity based carbon capture devices.

If one does not mind maintaining a fund to compensate for the losses incurred should a nuclear reactor melt down or a spent fuel storage should explode in an accident or a terrorist attack.

More people die from air pollution than Nuclear, its much safer than all technologies.

That might be true even considering a large scale nuclear accident (think Chernobyl).

Still, if we ignore the deaths for a moment and focus on the monetary damages - I don't think the nuclear industry is ready to compensate New York inhabitants in case of Indian Point, for example. What is the combined value of all the real estate in Manhattan?

this may sound controversial but does it matter?

status quo is that potable water, etc. are going to become issues of certainty by 2050. that's likely to affect hundreds of millions-billions of people (10x-100x NYC metro area)

that there may be a nuclear accident has to be weighed alongside the fact that there is certain catastrophe ahead, not on its own.

I agree, this has to be weighed alongside with other factors.

One big difference is that other factors are gradual, and will come with characteristic times of decades, so we will have (some) time to adjust. A nuclear accident will be immediate, on the time scale of hours.

I think we should keep in mind that nuclear power came about from the military need, so the desire to keep these plants operating might also come from the same source.

On top of that, I personally think there is absolutely no excuse not to develop solar+battery solutions. Should we decide to put as much money as we did in nuclear into solar, and cover let's say Arizona in solar panels, we could shut down all the nuclear power plants and export excess electricity to Canada. This should be a national priority.

There's a lot of irrational talk on nuclear (which one could even be tempted to suspect was the result of astro-turfing campaigns by oil companies), I find this is a pretty decent starting point to question mainstream opinions and beliefs: https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/nuclear/discussin... Also, regarding accidents, it is not solely a property of nuclear power, see for instance the Banqiao dam catastrophe.

Now think of the alternative - what happens to Manhattan when the sea level rises?

A very valid point, but a change of topic. Let's cover Arizona in solar panels and we won't need nuclear.

Right, and to continue... Maybe Manhattan would be willing to (partly) pay to cover Arizona in solar panels.

if history were to teach us...

a good joke, anyway.

Is that what "safer" means? Fewer people died?

Nuclear reactors have the (demonstrated) potential to make a large swath of earth uninhabitable for thousands of years. "Air pollution" doesn't.

I hope we do build more nuclear. But I think you're understating the risks. And no, I'm not convinced by the "modern designs can't fail" argument. No system is immune to human stupidity (or human maliciousness).

I think you might need to read what people are writing about climate science then... They're talking about the end of days from air pollution.

The CO2 we’re putting in the atmosphere from the combustion of fossil fuels will be there for 10000 years. Current nuclear waste is essentially harmless in a few centuries.

This. It's not that nuclear has zero consequences—far from it, in fact—it's that other methods of power generation have even larger consequences! Nuclear is the least-worst option by far.

I'd love if solar could power 100% of our society. It can't, at least not right now.

It's too late. Solar and wind have the popularity and the momentum. They won. The base cost to solar is also much, much cheaper than nuclear, making it easier to practically implement. And solar/wind is a better long term solution anyway in that we don't have to worry about waste management, safety, maintenance, etc. It can also be extremely decentralized.

Germany has already been raked over the coals for going un-nuclear. I think we'll see the opinion of solar/etc change as we realize its actually much more expensive.

That's one of the stupidiest thing that has ever been done. Just because people can't design safe (enough) nuclear reactor in the 70s, it means that it's politically expedient to shut off all nuclear power station inside a country.

I would be super happy, if they'd only shut down the nuclear reactors of the 70s, for starters!

How is solar/wind + batteries cheaper than nuclear? Any numbers I saw omits batteries which would be an unfair comparison.

EDIT: I had asked the opposite question of what I intended.

You don't need batteries with nuclear, at all. There's also less habitat destruction, less issue with bird strikes, less people falling off towers, less issues with "view obstruction".

I think he meant including the batteries in the solar/wind costs, which would make nuclear (relatively) cheaper.

This is what I meant indeed. Edited original question.

there's no time to ramp up on solar unfortunately. solar requires a massive amount of area and should ideally also be built for purposes of reuse, as they do expire and need to be replaced.

there's not enough solar and batteries that exist today to capture the needed electricity. and we need energy today - not "sort of in the future" - or else there are likely to be mass deaths starting in 2050 or so when clean water is due to become an issue, assuming status quo until then (which is highly unlikely as well)

"solar requires a massive amount of area"

The US, for instance, has massive amounts of undeveloped land. The majority of the population live in cities, which only make up a tiny fraction of the land mass (as you can see if you've ever flown across the US).

Its undeveloped for a reason, its wildlife habitat. Nuclear needs no such wide footprint.

"solar requires a massive amount of area"

This areas could be used, maybe(?):

http://projects.wsj.com/waste-lands/

(Has anyone ever calculated the size of radioactive contaminated areas in the US and how much power that areas could produce in solar?)

Surely a ramp up of solar would be a lot faster than a ramp up of nuclear? We might not have the battery capacity now but we could build a lot of factories in five years if the demand was there.

OTOH I doubt we have the specialists available to build more than a few nuclear plants simultaneously, and each plant appears to be a 30 year process...

Can we mine enough uranium to produce this much electricity?

Yes. Reactor technologies have advanced, we just haven't built enough. We can actually reprocess the tons of old fuel we have for trillions of MWh.

> Reactor technologies have advanced

Can you give any link to anything that is actually implemented?

Edit: regarding the answer below "French do it" it's a plant that existed as a military plant in sixties and is in a civil use since 1976, so it is more than 50 years old. It spends 1.4 GW of electricity per day to operate. Only a few years ago, after all these years, France achieved the possibility to have just 10% of its nuclear power production fueled by the products of the plant (as they fulfill cca 75% of all electricity needs from nuclear plants, that means that they can reach "whole" 7% of the France's electricity needs -- it was less before!). So I still ask, what it that has been "advanced" since long ago and is really implemented?

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usine_de_retraitement_de_la_Ha...

https://www.heritage.org/environment/commentary/recycling-nu...

Well, the french reactors are not processing old fuel. Spent fuel is taken out, brought to some other place (La Hague), replenished and then transferred back to the nuclear plant. This stretches the effectiveness of the nuclear fuel by a few percent but does not at all solve the problem of final storage of nuclear waste.

If this is, what the original poster meant with - "Reactor technologies have advanced, we just haven't built enough. We can actually reprocess the tons of old fuel we have for trillions of MWh." - I am a little disappointed.

By the way: La Hague had nuclear accidents, including exposure of Iodium-131 and Caesium-137, explosions, tritium contaminations of the ocean, leaks, a catastrophic fire in the storage facilities of graphite elements and uranium parts, continuous contamination with Strontium-90 and others from 1968 until 2013.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usine_de_retraitement_de_la_Ha...

I just mentioned this because of:

"Anti-nuclear fear mongering has proved baseless. The French have recycled fuel like this for 30 years without incident: no terrorist attack, no bad guys stealing uranium, no contribution toward nuclear weapons proliferaton, and o accidental explosions."

in the linked article of the parent post.

www.heritage.org:

"The mission of The Heritage Foundation is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense."

OK, now I get it. Sorry, my mistake. Didn't check that before and wondered about downvotes and how they could – completely wrongly – state "The French have recycled fuel like this for 30 years without incident".

I think the key technology when looking at extending supplies is fissile breeding, so you probably want to look at fast neutron reactors, and since you quote the french wikipedia, I will follow suit: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superphénix If you are curious about these subjects and a french speaker, there's a series on energy with many aspects of Nuclear on the french speaking youtube channel "Le Réveilleur". Jean-Marc Jancovici has also written and talked a fair bit about Nuclear in the context of energy and climate.

Thank you for the link, interesting read! The article is available in english as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix

My executive summary: construction began in 1976 and the plant was decomissioned in 1997. It never operated satisfactorily and had a couple of incidents. It produced electricity in the value of about 1,85 billion francs, at the expense of about 60 billion francs until today (producing even more costs until its ultimate deconstruction until 2027), leaving 650 fuel rods in temporary storage pools. It was the last reactor of this type (fissile breeding?) that was built in Europe.

I do not believe, this is the type of "reactor with advanced technology, that can actually reprocess tons of old fuel", that user "bifrost" mentioned above?

ITER will most likely be a big net negative, and the cost is much higher. Should we cancel it without trying then? If you consider Superphenix as a prototype shut down prematurely for political and ideological reasons, the numbers aren’t that bad. Pretty sad that this wasn’t the last one built in Europe, long term thinking has gone out the window decades ago...

We are loosing the leitmotif in this subthread and I would like to bring us back on track. The logical structure of this discourse is:

1. "[...]We should have nuclear going at 120% of demand and use the exess power to support electricity based carbon capture devices."

2. "Can we mine enough uranium to produce this much electricity?"

3. "Yes. Reactor technologies have advanced, we just haven't built enough. We can actually reprocess the tons of old fuel we have for trillions of MWh."

4. "[...]Can you give any link to anything that is actually implemented?[...]"

In 3., user "bifrost" makes the factual claim, that there was an existing technology that could reprocess old fuel and produce trillions (sic!) of MWh, if built in sufficient quantity.

In the remainder of the thread, me and others ask user "bifrost" to provide some source for the claim, but user "bifrost" was unfortunately not elaborating. Other users stepped in and linked to

- the nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at La Hague, which is, well, not a reactor

- the fast breeder Superphoenix, which was decommissioned (and with it the technology) 22 years ago

- an article of the Heritage Foundation, which refers to French nuclear fuel reprocessing (with false claims)

- and the ITER-technology, which is completely experimental and will use real fuel for experimental purposes not before 2035, being away from commercial usability at least 20 years from now. It will also not burn old fuel.

So none of this (well appreciated) contributions matches the description of the claim in 3.

I will admit at this point, that I am not interested in a public discourse of my opinions about the pros and cons of nuclear energy, as I have made up my mind and don't feel the wish to proselytize anyone.

I simply would like to have user "bifrost" substantiate his claim. Because, if true, this could potentially change my mind about nuclear energy. And because, if false, it would confirm my suspicion about fake exertion of influence by pro-nuclear lobbyists.

Oh, this is so cool news! We actually have tons of old fuel here in Germany, as we are bailing out of nuclear power. Would you mind, if we send it to you? It would be free, including shipping!

Doesn't mind at all, just hold until we built the next generation power station and send it all. Thanks for the free shipping by the way.

"Thanks for the free shipping by the way."

You are welcome!

Just out of curiosity, as I do not know much about nuclear power: could you give some example of an existing reactor with advanced technologies you just haven't built enough yet and which can reprocess old fuel?

I just googled a bit. The most modern nuclear plant, which is going into operation by the end of 2019, seems to be Olkiluoto 3 in finland. Building time (without planning and licensing procedure) was 14 years and that building time and the actual costs missed the forecasts by pretty exactly the factor pi. This plant is NOT processing old fuel. The current calculations says, if the plant runs for 60 years under full load without interruption, the price of the generated electric power will be equivalent to the price of offshore windpower as it is today. China hasn't started new nuclear power plants since 2016, as the produced electricity would be 20% more than solar and wind. https://www.heise.de/tr/artikel/Atomkraft-Die-letzten-ihrer-...

By the way: all of this calculations do not at all include costs for storing wasted fuel for a couple of thousands years (which is ok, because, as you say, there won't be any, as it can be reused in your reactors).

So any hints where I can find more information about the new reactors that burn old fuel??

You can send it to France right now, AFAIK they can even sell the power back to you.

They actually don't accept everything "sent" and they have a law to send back to the originating country all the remains of the whole process that aren't the newly replenished usable fuel.

I would think solar and wind for opportunistic CCS would be a lot cheaper.

Having a way to use excess energy for carbon capture would make it easier to expand solar and wind and further undermine the economic case for nuclear.

I think orders of magnitude are in different leagues, a quick indication being the relative shares of fossil fuels and wind/solar in global final energy. Our best bet for carbon capture is probably to be found in the plant kingdom.

In April on phys.org:

"The growing demand for minerals and metals to build the electric vehicles, solar arrays, wind turbines and other renewable energy infrastructure necessary to meet the ambitious goals of the Paris Climate Agreement could outstrip current production rates for key metals by as early as 2022, according to new research by the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures.

The study, commissioned and funded by U.S. non-profit organisation EarthWorks, shows that as demand for minerals such as lithium and rare earths skyrockets, the already significant environmental and human impacts of hardrock mining are likely to rise steeply as well."

https://phys.org/news/2019-04-exposes-extent-mineral-demand-...

More renewable infrastructure = more mining. I don't know if this is an example of the laws of thermodynamics, but nothing comes for free. I think it's relevant when comparing turbine, solar array and tide capture equipment to nuclear. Also relevant to policy decisions about domestic mining - preventing mining doesn't mean demand drops, it means we source minerals from other nations that may or may not respect clean and responsible mining techniques.

Just because we do less fossil fuel extraction doesn't mean we get away from natural resource development. It's a question of which is preferable, why, and how to do it in the most responsible fashion; but acknowledging the link between messy, ground-dwelling resource extraction and our electronics is not one that captures much public attention today.

And so I think more and more about nuclear power.

Yes, but one can make the same argument about nearly anything since nothing comes in to existence without some set of inputs. It's not some unique attribute of renewable energy infrastructure that it requires resources to build. That's just an attribute of anything, be it houses or cars or medical equipment or toilet paper. There is, however, a unique characteristic of renewable energy infrastructure that separates it from all the other crap we build on an global scale, and that is that if we don't built it we are essentially doomed.

Right, that's why I'm suggesting it's an element of comparison between nuclear and "renewables". I really don't know which has a greater burden of resource extraction. You need a lot of electronics to build a nuclear plant, but you need a lot of discrete electronic devices to build wind farms, solar arrays and the like. That's an interesting question of environmental cost to me, but either tech there is still resource extraction going on and I just think it's frequently a missing element of the discussion in the context of environmental policy. For instance, people protesting the approval of new mining projects in the US - okay, but where are you going to get the minerals that are in demand? A place where the regulatory oversight is lessened? Is that really the most responsible approach to resource development or just a NIMBY attitude?

"More renewable infrastructure = more mining. I don't know if this is an example of the laws of thermodynamics, but nothing comes for free. I think it's relevant when comparing turbine, solar array and tide capture equipment to nuclear."

Uranium also has to be mined out of the earth.

Nuclear power has the additional problems of waste disposal and storage, nuclear weapons proliferation, and risks of massive accidents.

> Uranium also has to be mined out of the earth.

not if this is to be believed: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-s...

Very interesting. But it sounds like the technology is still in the research phase and there not yet commercially available (especially not on a large enough scale to make a dent in the demand for uranium mining at the moment).

Contrast that with wind, solar and other renewable technologies which are widely available on large commercial scales right now.

95% of it according to John Deutch

https://youtu.be/PA8OzmiP9_4

Nice to see a Birmingham based startup - let’s hope they’re hiring soon!

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