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Comment by acidburnNSA | Hacker News Reader

> The perfect is the enemy of the good.

In this case, high-carbon (coal and gas) is the enemy of low-carbon (wind/solar/tidal/hydro/nuclear/geo).

I said this in another thread, but switching from terrible to awful is not something we should take as what we can get. The starting point and the end point are unacceptable in a coal to gas transition. No point celebrating that.

For example, fracked gas is so cheap that it's starting to cause near zero-carbon nuclear plants to close early. Unlike gas, nuclear plants are actually low carbon (12 gCO2-eq/kWe vs. 490 for gas). Thus, fracked gas being cheap and not considered the high-carbon fuel it is is preventing us from reaching our climate goals.

This is really serious stuff.

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> This is really serious stuff.

Yes, we're in agreement on that. And "celebrating" gas is a million miles away from my perspective. Every reduction in CO2 emissions today saves lives not just today but a century from now.

Suppose we could instantaneously replace coal with natural gas, today. And we also have a choice of replacing all coal with low-carbon sources, but at some point in N years in the future. How long does it take to break even? 2N years in the future. So even assuming we could fully decarbonize the world economy in 25 years, it'd be a half century before we even get to the break even point in terms of accummulated emissions.

And that doesn't even account for a significant part of the carbon emissions from the first 25 years being absorbed by various processes, or the ability to simultaneously push for low carbon and natural gas energy. Even if natural gas pushes the timeline for full decarbonization from 25 to 35 years out, it's still a clear win.

That scenario I acknowledge is bleak, but bleak is better than... really fucking bleak, which is what we're headed for with coal.

What you say makes perfect sense but when you transpose to the real world the story changes. See how the most vocal and powerful climate activists work day and night to stifle nuclear energy as a perfectly good solution to fight climate change, by far the best solution out there to reduce emissions. Maybe gas is the second best solution to reduce emissions while we develop other solutions in the meantime.

> See how the most vocal and powerful climate activists work day and night to stifle nuclear energy as a perfectly good solution to fight climate change

I don't think that conforms with reality. Off the top of my head, I looked up McKibben and Greta, and both see a role for nuclear power in decarbonization.

The bigger issue is that it's not prioritized because it'd split the environmental movement, but that's a far cry from "work day and night to stifle nuclear energy."

Greta is irrelevant in the US, which is what we are talking about. In the US you need to look at people like AOC and other GND advocates. You’ll find a stark lack of support for nuclear.

Check out this tool created by MIT to see how big of an impact nuclear power has on CO2 emissions. https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=2.7.... (hint, it ain't much).

The enthusiasm behind nuclear as a climate solution seems pretty misplaced. With heavy subsidies, it can play a tiny tiny tiny role in solving the problem.

That seems to assume that it's physically impossible to make cost effective, widely popular nuclear power plant that can be built quickly.

In the USA, more than half of the carbon-free electricity comes from 100 GW if nuclear. Globally it has prevented more than 70 GT of carbon emissions. Is there any other low carbon energy source that has approached this yet? I don't think so. Maybe hydro, but it's somewhat hard to wholesale expand.

> That seems to assume that it's physically impossible to make cost effective, widely popular nuclear power plant that can be built quickly.

That is the experience so far. As well as waste that must be stored for generations. Not a lot of waste but even a little bit of some thing that must be stored for more than 10,000 years is a impossible prospect

The US nuclear industry had a chance at coming back from the dead but blew it. Both Bush and Obama signed subsidies and loan guarantees and plants were ordered by two utilities in the South. One project was abandoned after spending $9B the other is 2x over budget in money and time. The manufacturer, Westinghouse, was forced into bankruptcy over it.

How did AOC cause that?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_...

They don't have to work that hard to stifle nuclear because that battle was largely fought and won 3 decades ago. By and large it has remained 'won.' Without splitting hairs the point remains that nuclear was scapegoated sufficiently that even if environmentalist could agree on nuclear and worked day and night to fight FOR it, we're at least a generation away from any new installations much less meaningful adoption within the grid. In the meantime, I think an objective person might say that natural gas -- on balance -- is a preferred alternative to coal (excepting any other viable substitutes).

> we're at least a generation away from any new installations much less meaningful adoption within the grid.

That's just not the case, if sanity prevails at all. We could have much safer Gen IV plants online within 10 years easily. It just takes the will to do it.

And how long before the regulations change to allow it? And how much longer before local zoning allows it? And how much before a utility clears all the build and commissioning hurdles and plant trials? And how long before sufficient quantities are in place to supplant natural gas? I hardly think one should say “if sanity prevails” and “easily” when talking about reviving nuclear. We’ll be on mars before we see meaningful levels of nuclear power.

Until there is a nuclear process that does not produce waste (both spent fuel and the reactor components) that must be stored for tens of thousands of years it is irresponsible to build them.

AFAICT Gen IV is basically the same technology in a brighter wrapper.

There is some hope thorium energy amplifiers (? correct term?) might fit the bill, but I do not know of one that has been built.

Also as the English are finding it is a very expensive way to generate electricity.

We can do better.

Thorium may be a solution. There are also molten salt reactors that are very promising. Unfortunately, when you look at nuclear energy policy, the two people most likely to be willing/capable to create positive policies supporting these new technologies also seem to be against any nuclear development at all [1]. They are talking in terms of 2030 timelines for elimination of nuclear - thus, my comment that we can't expect any new substantial contributions in a 'generation.' If US policy makers are already making plans that go out into the 2030s that do not include nuclear, it will take at least as long to bring it back to the table. How would one even build a test reactor in the US if the energy policies disallow it at commercial scale?

1. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-10/elizab...

The problem is how much this is a zero sum game. The $2B invested in the "second best solution" isn't invested in the "third best solution". The arguments above include:

A) What metric are we ordering "second best" by. If it's Carbon and/or Methane (and it should be in discussion of climate impact), natural gas is never our "second best solution" and absolutely a red herring or distraction.

B) This is especially true on the longer time horizon in both cases in both directions as being a worryingly zero-sum game, because 1) today's billion dollar investment is tomorrow's entrenched sunk costs, and 2) without some huge advances in carbon and/or methane capture we can't "take back" emissions and in long term climate control every molecule of carbon/methane we don't produce matters (not even just ASAP, but starting four decades ago when scientists first started warning everyone about this stuff).

The problem is not a zero sum game.

There is no reason to believe that private capital used to convert coal to gas would be spent instead on renewables.

Additionally, 100% renewables is not viable today outside of specific locations with concentrated hydroelectric power.

I didn't say it was exactly a zero sum game, I said it resembles one, especially in the long term planning horizon.

There are many problems with using Game Theory terms in real world/pragmatic discussion, but yes, clearly among them is that I anticipated this pedantic a response. You are right, it is not exactly a textbook example of a zero sum game and we can't prove it is one. I use the terminology metaphorically and not mathematically.

The question I pointed out is "how much does it resemble one?"

I think that it is much closer to one than not, and I do think there is plenty of reason to suggest that many actors in private capital would prefer money be spent on natural gas over renewables due to vested interests. Vested interests by themselves are something that I have seen modeled as a zero sum game, in theory and divorced from greater context. As just one part of the whole mess of motivations, politics, and sociology in trying to address climate change and energy industry spending, does it mean the entire thing is reducible to zero sum? Of course it doesn't. Does it add evidence that are enough zero sum games and zero sum-equivalent games in play that we can worry metaphorically that the entire thing is one giant zero sum game? Yes, it does, and that's all I was saying.

Given the state of world and history of war in the 20th and 21st centuries, I’m honestly surprised anyone would suggest a centralized energy system that requires the maintenance of a stable state formation for 1-10,000 years. You think the US (or any country) is going to exist at that level for a thousand more years? We’re better off leaving around a bunch of abandoned solar panels than nuclear materials.

If it's really serious then the USA should be emphasizing expanding fracking operations further since that's been their most effective emissions reducer. Most of the country's emissions progress has been due to a mix of increased efficiency across particular consumption mediums (like cars) and natural gas replacing dirtier energy generation methods.

The problem with that is, when you build a gas plant, that's infrastructure that you now have an economic incentive to run for decades. So while switching to these plants might make a small improvement now, it will cause greater pain in the future.

It's not a small improvement though, it's the primary source of the USA's emissions gains. And it comes with the side bonus of promoting energy independence while also creating exportable products.

It's undercutting and killing what makes over 50% of our carbon free energy: our 100 GWe nuclear fleet. Gas is not an ok end point. Nuclear is. Killing an ok endpoint to make small gains while approaching a not-ok endpoint is unwise.

I mean, the reason natural gas makes a difference is because the USA isn't actually trying the cheapest and most effective way: just reducing emissions.

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