Hacker News Reader

Comment by stickfigure | Hacker News Reader

1) Fatality statistics are the best measurement we have. Sure, there's a long tail of lesser impacts for nuclear power; there's also a long tail of disabilities and reduced life expectancies for pollution too.

2) How about "it's better than other power sources that can consistently service base load"?

View on HN

When it comes to base load, nuclear is pretty interesting. I remember reading that some plants sell electricity at below cost during low periods (nighttime in some locations), since they can't ramp the reactor up or down quickly.

It's a situation where both intermittent renewable sources and nuclear plants would benefit from a way to store excess produced energy

Love the base load argument… if only there was a way to store electricity, we’d stop hearing these ridiculous “base load” arguments

You mean, if only there was an economically viable way to store electricity. Still waiting on that one.

Batteries. Economic viability is the next argument when you externalise the true cost (carbon).

Carbon is not the only possible cost to the environment. Building batteries is not exactly easy on the planet either.

You mine a resource (lithium), that can be recycled endlessly with very little loss.

You are right about Cobalt, but it is already being reduced/removed.

It's not even comparable to fossil fuel mining (even though technically it is fossil fuel mining). Because it's recyclable, so we aren't "losing" any material, in the form of converting it to an unproductive/hazardous byproduct.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com