Nuclear energy is in fact better than renewables (for us and the environment) | Hacker News Reader

Nuclear energy is in fact better than renewables (for us and the environment)

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44 pointsfsflover26 comments

One of the largest problems with nuclear, even bigger than the scientific illiteracy about it which facilitates the spread of anti-nuclear hysteria, is the red tape the industry faces. Another problem is the lack of standardization among nuclear facilities. Both could be solved by adopting SMR (small modular reactor) base nuclear. The cores are small enough that in a power-down scenario they can passively cool themselves so there's zero chance of a Fukushima-type primary loop rupture due to the cooling loop power being lost. Also, if facilities are standardized, the cost to install a cluster of ten 150MWe SMRs would cost HALF of what it would cost to install a single 1.5GWe large reactor. Also with standardization we can achieve economies of scale driving the prices down further. For folks who live off the grid or have a fondness for solar cells and wind turbines they can still use those but nuclear fission for the base load can provide more than enough cheap electricity for today and tomorrow -- even a tomorrow where everyone drives an electric car.

But by having multiple small reactors you loose thermal efficiency and generate more waste/killowathour. Whatever the technical issues involved nuclear waste is such a political hot potato that all reasonable attempts to deal with it have been dead in the water for the past half century. Increasing that problem substantially is going to make a politically toxic problem worse.

Can you please not make up bullshit arguments? The size of a reactor has virtually no impact on thermal efficiency, especially not if we're comparing large (100MW) to very large (1GW). Even if there was a direct connection, a few percent difference (something like 33% vs. 36%) is not increasing the waste problem (which is not a problem to begin with) "substantially".

I think he meant waste as in Radioactive waste.

Of course he did. 10% more or less of it for the same amount of electricity doesn't make the difference between a manageable problem and an insurmountable one. (It's a manageable problem, obviously.)

Don't know the details but consider even if it were 10% more of it, what if it currently (directly and indirectly) is 80% of nuclear energy's cost. You would be talking about an almost 50% hit to the profitability of such a proposal.

Yeah, what if thing were totally unlike what they are.

The cost of current nuclear power is almost entirely capital cost and operations. Handling the tiny amount of radwaste is cheap (something like 0.1ct/kWh). It's much more expensive than it needs to be, because the governments declared that they would take care of the waste and then acted the way governments always do.

And then there are people like you, who talk about mysterious unquantifiable "indirect" costs that are tacitly assumed to be approximately infinite. But that's just FUD, a glass log on the sea floor doesn't cause any cost. (If it's so easy, why aren't we doing it? See above.)

>The cost of current nuclear power is almost entirely capital cost and operations.

Missing the point: how do the capital and operational costs scale with plant size in MW? It is ridiculous to assume they scale linearly throughout a big range so certain plant sizes will be more economical. It's all good, few people develop this kind of thought or are in a position requiring them to do so

What? That isn't even remotely related to the point you tried (and failed) to make!

At no reactor size is waste management a significant fraction of the cost. It may become a larger fraction with future developments, but never a large fraction.

I think we can check it by comparing large reactors with nuclear powered submarine or warship

It can be solved if we've interconnected grid all over the world and then we can setup very large reactors at some safe Island away from people.

Today, we've Ultra High Voltage DC transmission technology which can cover whole planet.

I think the only concern is the US has no high-yield disposal plan like other nations. Since yucca mountain got NIMBY'ed we had had reactors pumping out waste only to be stockpiled on the surface in casks that were not designed for long term exposure.

This is only something I know from watching docmentiries so if you know more on the lifecycle of waste in the US please let me know how much of this is true.

What is the disposal plan for all the radioactive waste that natural gas fracking causes?

I used to live in vegas, when did yucca mountain get NIMBY'ed?

>The project was approved in 2002 by the 107th United States Congress, but federal funding for the site ended in 2011 under the Obama Administration via amendment to the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, passed on April 14, 2011

The mid term plan is that generation 5 reactors should be producing much less waste that is less radioactive for less time. They do this by closing the cycle and reusing waste again and again.

The end result is expected to be waste with a half life of around 100 years. This means a feasible option is to just stick it in a warehouse for 300 years. The danger isn’t proximity to the waste, a concrete container is plenty, the danger is a 100,000 year half life meaning we need to solve for geological time scales. With modern reactors that will no longer be the case.

We’re not quite there yet, but research was getting there until much investment stopped in the last 10 years due to public dislike of nuclear power. Renewables are doing really well in some countries now which is great, but I do think this would be a good, feasible, safe backup plan.

Why talk about future reactors that are not yet available? Why not talk about existing designs that could solve this problem? I always hear this hyper optimistic talk about how the next generation is going to solve all the problems and every time someone talks about a completely different design. If there is no consensus on which design to build then how is it possible to rely on a new generation of reactors to solve problems that need to be dealt with now? What if I don't want to wait that long? What if I want to start building 100-1000 reactors tomorrow? That is probably the only way to convince India and China to stop using coal in the short term.

Investment stopped because giant monolith plants are difficult build and operate profitably. You need to find a way for private companies to be able to afford construction and operation themselves. It should also be economical to shut down reactors that have critical design flaws, botched maintenance or simply don't follow modern regulations.

I personally can't believe that people still use "public dislike of nuclear power" as the main argument why nuclear power failed. If it were that simple then some "evil corporation" would find a way to keep operating nuclear plants the same way we are stuck with coal. What you really need to do is discover an existing nuclear technology that is safe, economical and so attractive that people want to get rid of their old nuclear reactors and replace them with the new model.

> Investment stopped because giant monolith plants are difficult build and operate profitably.

They are highly profitable, they just require long-term investment to be profitable. They typically won't turn a profit for 10-20 years, but on a lifetime of 40-50 years that should be acceptable.

> I personally can't believe that people still use "public dislike of nuclear power" as the main argument why nuclear power failed.

I'm not trying to call it a conspiracy. It's well known that most early anti-nuclear-power activism was from anti-nuclear-weapons proponents. It's also clear that several big economies rolled back nuclear power investment directly due to the public perception of what happened at Fukushima. Germany was the best example of this.

Give Elon a contract to launch the nuclear waste into space, and hurl it into the heart of the sun.

And what happens in the unlikely case of failure of the shuttle?

Nun Soup? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOUFdQmLVR8

So what's going on with travelling wave reactors? There was a lof of hype around them a few years ago, and then nothing?

Have yet to receive a solid response to this comment the last 5 times I've posted it, but, I think Fukushima residents would disagree.

Yeah, and I’d rather not fly on a DC10.

Nuclear reactor technology has come a long way since the 60s. It’s much safer. Fukushima had multiple reactors, it was only the oldest that had any problems, the rest were fine.

The thing is with the huge clean-up cost of Fukushima and Tchernobyl somehow I doubt that nuclear energy cost can be economical..

Plus in France we're not able to build a nuclear central for the projected cost, yet we price energy as if we are able to dismantle them for the projected cost, mmmh.

Not to be cynical (who am I kidding. this is HN), but I'm sure when the water level will start rising and Fukushima will be wiped out entirely due to sea level rise the whole event might seem insignificant to them.

IIRC more people in Fukushima died due to the evacuation than were expected to die from the radiation dose over the course of the next few decades.

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