Shutting down nuclear power could increase air pollution: study
news.mit.edu
news.mit.edu
They assume they'll be replaced with fossil fuels. So really the title should be "burning more fossil fuels will increase air pollution".
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
With regulators looking to tip the scales against non-renewables for emissions reasons, there is a huge push on to rehabilitate nuclear as a pragmatic solution to the forecast storage and base load issues over the next 50 (ish) years while we build out renewables. Proponents say modern nuclear reactors are net-better than coal and opponents point to the tail risk. Personally, I am pro nuclear but I certainly see the opposing viewpoint. I think it’s a tricky issue because humans are wired for identification of harms like tigers or 3000 people suddenly dying in a catastrophe. It’s much harder to grasp tail risk harms like 5200 excess deaths from pollution and harder still to turn that into action.
Here's a chart of net energy generation in the US by source: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/
The last couple of years are noisy (gas actually went down and coal bounced back up one year) but the long term trend is for wind and solar to continue to extend their lead.
edit: to be clear, because this is a little ambigous
> Natural gas is by far the fastest growing energy source in the US by total output.
Gas is still the biggest energy source for electricity in the US by far, but it's not the fastest growing by far. Definitely not in percentage terms but also recently, not in absolute change either.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-production-by...
Natural gas increased 62,675 from 1,626,790 to 1,689,465.
Wind increased 96,874 from 337,938 to 434,812.
Utility-scale Solar increased 56,399 from 89,199 to 145,598
And the deployment of solar seems to be rapidly picking up speed.
Specifically, it looks like they're using the grid makeup as of 2015 to calculate what would be used if nuclear disappeared overnight.
You can't just put solar or wind power generation anywhere you want, because solar needs sun and wind needs wind.
Yes, I know, it's a wild concept.
So, in order to shut down Nuclear, looks like the best alternative is to replace them with fossil fuels because there's no good alternative with renewables.
Because probably those nuclear plants are in places where the sun doesn't shine and wind doesn't blow?
https://www.naml.org/policy/documents/2022-12-12%20Position%...
(US) National Association of Marine Laboratories: https://insidestory.org.au/water-water-everywhere/
No disclosure needed for something as minor as this.
How much lower should the reporting limit be? "Someone brought a banana for lunch!"? You can certainly measure "elevated levels of radioactivity at 5123456mBq!" there and then claim a coverup because nobody reported it...
In trying to understand energy transition I have come to the conclusion that neither grid-scale solar nor nuclear are the answer. Wind, however, seems to be. It isn't hard for people to understand why wind is likely a better idea than nuclear. I won't waste any time exploring that comparison.
Wind, I have learned, seems to be massively better than solar across many vectors. BTW, I am not talking about offshore wind. Not sure that compares well at all.
Energy production per installed GW:
Wind: 3.07 TWh/GW
Solar: 1.33 TWh/GW (solar is reliably off half the time)
Land use per GW:
Wind: 750 acres/GW
Solar: 3,900 acres/GW
Land use to provide all Tesla Master Plan solar + wind:
Wind: 1 Hawaii (area of all islands)
Solar: 12 Hawaii's
or,
Wind: 2.5% of California
Solar: 30% of California
Annual Operations and Maintenance costs :
Wind: 1.00
Solar: 1.33 times wind O&M
Initial investment in factories:
Wind: $212 billion
Solar: $ 11 billion
Storage required for 95% reliability:
Wind: 3 hours
Solar: >12 hours
Wind requires 4x less batteries, with all the cost,
recycling and ecological advantages this delivers.
Build supply chain origin:
Wind: Diverse
Solar: Heavy reliance on China
Long term supply chain (maintenance, parts, etc.) origin:
Wind: Diverse
Solar: Heavy reliance on China (forever)
This is where I disagree with Tesla's Master Plan 3. I don't think that grid-scale solar is a good idea at all.
Wind and solar are negatively correlated. Adding both reduces storage and makes the system more robust https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_relationship
We don't need to think regionally. We can move power thousands of miles. Yes, of course, it's easier over the ocean, however, we have the means to do so over land as well. For reference, a project from UK is moving power from approximately 4000 km away (Morocco).
In other words, if wind --as I believe is the case-- has significant advantages over solar, we can locate wind wherever it makes sense and then move the power as far and wide as needed. We could spider out to various storage facilities and distribute to towns and cities.
The point is, power is easy to move. We already do it.
> Now compare wind and solar and existing hydro and 2-5% w2e to just wind instead of just wind vs. just solar
I don't understand why you are asking for this comparison. My point is that grid-scale solar is a bad idea, by itself or mixed with something else, including wind. I gave most of the reasons in support of this conclusion in the comment you responded to.
With solar we are starting with a technology that does not produce any power half the time, every day, forever. Tesla's Master Plan Part 3 (MPP3) figure 12 shows a close-up chart of a few days in July in the US. I reproduce it here for convenience:
https://i.imgur.com/HTxWL6o.png
The variability of solar over time is massive. Not so for wind. particularly if located optimally and geographically distributed.
In the US you cannot do any better with solar than that picture. Clouds, rain, snow and dirt will turn this:
https://i.imgur.com/aNnbmDp.png
Into this nightmare:
https://i.imgur.com/breTHQd.png
And so, reliability, capacity factor, availability, or whatever measure or term one might care to use for solar is always significantly inferior to that of wind. There's data on this.
My question is rooted in optimization at many levels (list is not exaustive):
- Energy production per installed GW
- Land utilization
- Ecological impact
- Operation and maintenance costs
- Storage requirements
- Strategic supply chain factors
- Scale of future waste/recycling problem
How much installed grid-sale capacity do we have to build?
My question is simple:
We have to build 5,087 GW generation capacity.
Given the optimization criteria list presented above.
What combination of solar and wind would be optimal?
Let me give you a simple example of this...
Solar requires at least four times more storage than wind to reach the same or similar reliability.
I'll assume batteries.
Well, that means at least four times more mining, processing, factories, CO2 emissions, damage to the ecosystem, transportation, installation and maintenance costs, mean time between failure, waste, recycling costs and effects, etc.
And that's just one of my comparison vectors. Isn't that enough to at least question the decision?
No?
OK. The land-use ratio isn't something that can be ignored. The same 5,087 GW capacity would use about 2.5% of California if it was wind. Solar would require 30% of the State. Just think about what that implies in terms of every single factor that goes into building and maintaining such systems.
This is why I argue grid-scale solar isn't making sense to me. Why use 12 times the land and over four times the batteries when you don't have to?
You are willfully failing to understand the concept of correlation. Sun and wind are anticorrelated in most regions. Adding both reduces the storage needed. It doesn't increase it. Condescendingly stating that solar alone requires 12 hours of batteries does not make it any less true that solar + wind is superior to wind.
Transmission costs money and raw materials and depending on it entirely (as an all wind or all nuclear solution would) makes the whole system brittle.
Seeing as you are positing zero cost for transmission you can just put all of the solar in the least cloudy areas with 30% capacity factor and uncorrelated weather.
Given the assumption of no transmission costs, try this tool:
Using real costs for real projects that actually exist, and "dispatchable 1" to model existing hydro, you can solve for the optimal mix:
https://model.energy/?results=3491f4124100114a1c3ba169663903...
It almost always involves solar, because PV is the cheapest energy source by at least a factor of two over about 70% of the inhabited world.
The smaller the region and the less long distance transmission, the more correlated the wind and the more solar is optimal.
https://model.energy/?results=732e5306df0bde74aa22f57433e588...
https://model.energy/?results=e0560182e98eef88fa715ec2a0b118...
Plus tilting solar (which this tool does not model) in some regions matches the CF of wind.
Some transmission, some solar, some wind, and some other/hydro will always be a better toolbox to have than just wind and transmission.
Throwing solar away entirely because of an irrational response to the isolated results of a specific residential install with no transmission is just as crazy as trying to shoe-horn more LWRs than it is possible to fuel even once into the solution.
Also you're not putting enough constraints on your land use estimates to make the numbers comparable in any coherent way. A high coverage fixed tilt system at low latitude has a coverage ratio of about 90% or 180W (nameplate) per m^2. A single axis system has a lower coverage ratio around 100W/m^2 but a higher capacity factor. You can't go using median CF if you're assuming transmission is free (what was that about how stupid people who assume averages for everything are?), you'd be putting all your solar in the southwest where capacity factors are 30% for 50% coverage ratios and the *net* energy per unit area would be higher than what you're assuming for nameplate. In either case your figures for land use are not consistent with your assumptions.
Finally wind isn't infinite. You can't just go and find another TW of world class wind resource. There is plenty if used sensibly, but you can't magic more out of nothing.
No, I am not.
I am saying that this correlation is irrelevant because wind has overwhelming advantages over solar.
> A single axis system has a lower coverage ratio around 100W/m^2 but a higher capacity factor.
Tilting/tracking systems are a nightmare that is horribly expensive to maintain long term. It makes no sense to consider them at grid scale.
> irrational response to the isolated results of a specific residential install
These conclusions have nothing to do with a residential installation. Pretty much all the data comes from Tesla's plan, the references they provide and other reputable references.
> what was that about how stupid people who assume averages for everything are?
You can't control yourself, can you? I have tried, time and time again, to have a conversation with you over multiple threads. You simply cannot do this without resorting to insults. How sad.
I am curious: What is your solution and how do you justify it?
Do you agree with the findings and plan from Tesla's Master Plan Part 3?
No?
Why?
Don't post a wall of links. Do the work and post a cogent argument people can attempt to follow and discuss.
And stop insulting people in every thread you participate in. It makes it very difficult to develop any level of respect for what you are saying.
If you disagree with the findings from the tesla plan (such as by blindly asserting that changing all the solar to wind will work without reference) then it's on you to back it up.
That’s a lie!
Provide a link and a quote from a comment where I do that.
And you did say “repeatedly”, this should be easy.
You cannot, because I don’t do that.
Single axis tilting bifacial is overwhelmingly the cheapest, lowest maintenance cost per energy, lowest LCOE energy in any location with good solar resource.
https://list.solar/news/single-axis-bifacial/
https://emp.lbl.gov/utility-scale-solar/
It makes no sense to build out $30/MWh 35% CF wind resource which you will curtail 30% of or $60/MWh offshore wind when there is $20/MWh 30% CF solar available that produces during the lulls (thus decreasing your storage and curtailment needs).
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has already shown this is a bad idea.
The summary reads (emphasis mine):
"Annual energy simulations were updated to evaluate the kWh/m2 boost achieved in single-axis tracking systems using bifacial modules. Measured bifacial energy gains of 7%-9% and rear irradiance gains of 11% were recorded, agreeing with modeled expectation within 1%-2% absolute, and matching global average expectation. Additional system energy gains of 0.5%-1.5% are predicted to be achieved by optimizing tracker behavior, adapting to cloudy conditions."
- single-axis tracking
- bifacial modules
- gains of 7%-9%
Why?
Because, among other things, if you tilt panels you can't pack them in so tightly. That's basic geometry. In fact, if you do the math, it is better to reduce the geographically-dictated optimal tilt angle and fix it at a lower angle in favor of tighter packing. Put simply, rows of panels will cast a shadow on the panels behind the row.
Also, ground-bounce inside the array is seriously curtailed by shading. Bifacial is interesting for some types of installations, not necessarily for grid-scale, where they gains could be in the order of 1% or less.
Wait! How did we go from 9% gains to 1% annual energy gains? What?
Because SOLAR PANELS DO NOT PRODUCE ANY ENERGY FOR 50% OF THE DAY. And, SOLAR PANELS ARE DEEPLY AFFECTED BY CLOUDS, WEATHER AND DIRT. Which means that a 9% power generation gain measured while operating ends-up translating into 1% or less in energy collection gains in a year.
Don't agree?
Well, go argue with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory then. You must know more than they do. Here:
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/72039.pdf
You are still missing the most important point: The advantages for wind are very large and across a range of parameters. You are talking about 1% gains by adding complex and costly-to-maintain tracking systems. I am talking about achieving 95% reliability with 1/4 the storage requirements, with 1/12 the land, 33% lower maintenance cost, etc. Not even close.
The 1% is the additional gain for smart tracking algorithms (such as going to 0 degree tilt during diffuse light) on top of the bifacial gain of 5-15% which is on top of the tilting gain of 15-25%. This is stated clearly in the paper.
Take this EIA report as an example (california utility installations have a high share of single axis): https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
The amount of overprovision needed to provide a consistent monthly output is lower with wind and solar than with either alone. Wind outperforms solar watt for watt significantly in winter. Solar outperforms wind marginally in summer, but at $0.7-1.1/W for a 2022 tilting system vs $1.10-1.30/W for wind. This trend is echoed on a day to day and hour to hour basis as well.
Repeating unsubstantiated statistics based on comparing an all wind system to an all solar system also doesn't add anything to the discussion.
You are correct in that bifacial tilting systems don't magically increase GHI, but they do provably gather the valuable off-noon energy much more cost effectively (whilst leaving 30-40% of the noon energy on the table). More importantly they gather a much larger proportion of diffuse light, so the minima aren't as low during cloudy weather.
The energy produced by 100 acres of wind requires 1200 acres of solar...and you are going on and on about a purported 5%, 10%, 25% gain.
Who gives a fuck?
Any accountant would take a 100 acre solution over a 1200 acre nightmare.
You seem to be exquisitely capable of attempting to derail conversations with irrelevant noise.
Energy production per installed GW:
Wind: 3.07 TWh/GW
Solar: 1.33 TWh/GW (solar is reliably off half the time)
Land use per GW:
Wind: 750 acres/GW
Solar: 3,900 acres/GW
Land use to provide all Tesla Master Plan solar + wind:
Wind: 1 Hawaii (area of all islands)
Solar: 12 Hawaii's
or,
Wind: 2.5% of California
Solar: 30% of California
Annual Operations and Maintenance costs :
Wind: 1.00
Solar: 1.33 times wind O&M
Initial investment in factories:
Wind: $212 billion
Solar: $ 11 billion
Storage required for 95% reliability:
Wind: 3 hours
Solar: >12 hours
Wind requires 4x less batteries, with all the cost,
recycling and ecological advantages this delivers.
Build supply chain origin:
Wind: Diverse
Solar: Heavy reliance on China
Long term supply chain (maintenance, parts, etc.) origin:
Wind: Diverse
Solar: Heavy reliance on China (forever)
And you are arguing over an imaginary 25% gain? Even if you are right, the comparison isn't even close.
If you want to invalidate my ideas about wind, attack the list I just reprinted above --which means, attack the data and sources provided by Tesla.
BTW, operation and maintenance costs on a fixed solar system --per MPP3-- is already 33% greater than solar. Tracking solar is even more expensive. I don't have a clue how much. I'll guess 50% (and I'll be I am right).
You are missing the forest for the trees.
Have a good life.
The choice to go on a tangent where you ranted about the improvement of a smart tilting algorithm being 1% was yours.
Also I'm not arguing against the tesla master plan. It's founded on the assumption of roughly doubling final energy in the US rather than putting any effort into efficiency (such as by spending one of those trillions on transit, insulation and missing middle housing), but this is to be expected from a car and battery company asking for handouts. It also has a few slightly pessimistic generalisations and assumes the regulatory hurdles for solar will stay, but the inflation driven costs for wind will not. But over all it is fine, and is a broad overview related to reality.
It does not anywhere contain the conclusion that a country can be run on land based wind energy alone, nor does it say anything about solar (which is the current US mix that has a high share of single axis) costing more in O&M.
Nor does it contain the assumption that one power source can be subbed for another without taking into account *when* each power source produces. You cannot substitute them one for one. And you cannot assume transmission is unbouded and free.
You made all of that up and then proceded to try and use other people's words as an argument from authority.
Nobody anywhere is suggesting an all wind grid. It would be incredibly brittle.
Similarly nobody is suggesting an all solar one.
I guess this bizarre rant isn't harmful like the nuclear one though, so I'll leave you to keep raving,
Power is easy to move using transmission lines. For example, the Pacific DC Intertie is over 846 miles (1,361 km) long. It moves 3.1 GW.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie
Path 27 is 488 miles (785 km) and carries 2.4 GW.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_27
Wind farms can be located as optimally as possible and the power transported where needed.
Storage, both at the plant and along the transmission path if necessary.
Not only does storage make power availability more constant, it can act as an aggregator and repeater. Bring in power from a thousand miles away to a storage station. Do so from multiple wind farms. Store the power and deliver it another thousand miles away to wherever it might be needed.
I think the concerns about optimal wind farm location have been obsolete for a very long time, particularly as storage options improve in cost and performance.
Power isn't "easy" to move with transmission lines: there are significant losses for long lengths. 3.1GW is nice, but the US's current generation capacity is roughly 3 orders of magnitude greater than this. The cost for Path 27 alone was $5.5B. Building just the transmission lines for what you describe would cost trillions, and that doesn't include the wind turbines.
What you describe isn't feasible.
That's not true. We haven't built it yet. That does not mean it is fiction. We don't need it today.
> Power isn't "easy" to move with transmission lines: there are significant losses for long lengths.
Except for the few people who live off-grid, every single person on this planet is getting their power through transmission lines. Of course there's loss. So what? That's the way physics works.
> 3.1GW is nice, but the US's current generation capacity is roughly 3 orders of magnitude greater than this
No. Current generation capacity is 1,200 GW. Don't hand-wave to add drama. There's a huge difference between "rough" and "way off".
> Building just the transmission lines for what you describe would cost trillions
Well, yes. And that's what those proposing a transition to full electrification have to contend with and justify.
I am not justifying any of it. I am simply proposing that grid-scale solar does not seem to compare well with grid-scale wind. That's all. Don't go somewhere I am not going.
> What you describe isn't feasible.
Technically, it is absolutely feasible. I am even suggesting the wind-only option might be far more realizable than the wind + solar version of Tesla's Master Plan 3.
Financially? Well, Tesla's plan claims we need about ten trillion. You are welcome to argue against that plan if you'd like. I am not making a financial argument here other than to point out that I think wind would cost significantly less.
Here's a beautiful map of current wind generation resources. We could do a lot more than this:
https://eerscmap.usgs.gov/uswtdb/viewer/#3.94/38.94/-93.1
BTW, here are wind resources across the US according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory:
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/wind/images/US_wind_reso...
Interesting thing is that power is proportional to the cube of wind velocity. A little more wind makes a lot more power.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/wind/where-wind-power-is...
I understand the public as a whole is afraid because they remember events like Chernobyl and Fukushima, but those were pre-Generation-III reactors (Chernobyl was generation 1, Fukushima was generation 2). Modern designs are far safer. We've learned so much since the mid-20th century.
Micro-reactors in particular could become a huge boon to society. All US submarines and aircraft carriers have been nuclear-powered for decades; and it's been decades without any military reactor-related incidents.
The conspiracy theorist in my head wants to blame it on *someone* in the US government/industrial complex who stands to make a lot of money from selling other energy sources. :-/
https://www.engineering.com/story/why-is-fusion-power-is-alw...
It… really doesn't. Even someone with full control of a modern plant, who actively wanted to cause as terrible an accident as possible, would not be able to cause nearly that much damage. Meanwhile, fossil fuels are poisoning people right now
Maybe just me, but I would gladly take that risk vs the whole world becoming uninhabitable due to global warming, not to mention the possible nuclear fallout from WW3 due to global unrest.
The greatest political disappointment I've felt in recent years was when the Merkele government decided to shut down a bunch of Nuclear power-plants. It made up for it by burning coal.
She (and Schroeder) wasn't some puppet put there by Putin, the German people voted for her, several times over actually. It's their fault and their responsibility for the choices they made. That's how democracy works.
Next time choose your leaders more wisely, but sadly, I feel like no lessons have been learned in Germany and the voters will double down on their flawed ideology over reality.
So no matter what you vote for, it won't change anything.
The only country I know where there's a way to vote for particular issues is Switzerland.
Then Fukushima happened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#Closu...
The coal replaced the gas and french nuclear.
Just extrapolating the sequence, the next disaster will take place in a generation 3 reactor.
The gen 1 disaster left land uninhabitable, the gen 2 disaster just took some cleanup, therefore the gen 3 disaster will be a non-issue.
So at this point, we are concerned if the remains of people who would be killed by the asteroid, would also be slightly radioactive? An the 'remains' are being probably like finely pulverised ashes?
Like the containment building is basically a bunker, and the reactor vessel is like a thousand tons of steel. If any asteroid gets through that, the neighbourhood is already gone.
So many people pointed out Fukushima to me, and most of them did not know that the tsunami killed 10,000 people and radiation killed zero.
1) It's ridiculously expensive. LCOE is 5x the cost of solar and wind: https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/wind/st...
2) Yes, still a lot more expensive once you take storage into account. Even for the most inefficient forms of storage: https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-chea...
3) It takes about 12-20 years to build new plants. Solar/wind is 1-4 years.
4) 5x is an understatement. It's even more expensive if you properly account for insurance. Dealing with Fukushima cost $800 billion. This is unaccounted for in LCOE and taxpayers will be fully on the hook for whatever the next Fukushima.
5) New power plants aren't being built because it's too expensive. So, old ones are having their lives extended (the latest law in congress was about this). Older plants = more danger. Fukushima happened in large part because it was old.
6) Despite this many countries still build nuclear power. Why? Two reasons: 1) it shares nuclear military costs 2) it lets you build a bomb quickly.
China will probably make it cheap given the pace they're going building out nuclear plants.
What nations who currently invest into solar and wind are doing is to also invest in a lot of fossil fuel reserve energy, like natural gas. This is the official strategy of Germany, and is also the primary strategy of UK. In combination this is what caused the insane energy prices that Europe suffered this winter.
This is why I want a EU ban against building new fossil fuel capacity, especially natural gas. Solar and wind is great, but not if they are combined with natural gas, oil or coal. I loose a lot of trust in politics when green party politicians are advocating to maintain programs to subsidizes fossil fueled power plants while at the same time advocating to shut down nuclear power plants.
In term of insurance for accidents, here I would also advocate for a law that is technology independent. Any damaged suffered to third-parties because of a commercially operated power plant should be covered by insurance. Hydroelectric plants, nuclear power and all plants emitting green house gases would be impossible to cover but the symbolic gesture of such law would be interesting.
Unlike Poland, who quietly powers itself with 80% coal and attracts very little flak because 1) it didn't make the nuclear industry look unnecessary 2) it preferred to burn coal over gas from America's main geopolitical rival.
Decarbonised? They still have the worst CO2/KWh in Western Europe, and among the worst in Europe:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electric...
After literally decades of massive renewables investments and subsidies.
That's literally bullshit. Main import sources of uranium in France are Kzakhstan, Australia, and Canada. Please stop spouting Russian and/or Greenpeace propaganda.
What Poland really does now is quite different: https://notesfrompoland.com/2023/02/03/polands-second-larges...
There is also a huge loss of public trust when green party politicians are advocating to keep subsidizing fossil fuel plants. If environmentalist want to keep oil and natural gas plants, then how will the public be convinced of climate change? The strategy need to be clear and fossil fuel free, and if that solution is wind, solar and storage then that plan need to be up front and part of the budget discussions. It should not be the argument from environmentalists that we should be using natural gas because it happen to be cheaper that nuclear.
It seems like you already know why it's not realistic. Fossil fuels fulfill the role of a marginal power source very well, neither renewables nor nuclear can replace that role as of yet. There are still plenty of issues that need to be solved towards electrification, lets not make it unrealistically difficult for ourselves.
It is however not a policy I would advocate or vote for. I rather oppose fossil fuels especially when they are being subsidized through taxes. Europe can also not really handle an other winter, especially if the weather would not be exceptional mild. Bailouts can only be paid so many times before it becomes unrealistic.
This winter and perhaps the one after that as well will be interesting for sure, after that the major natural gas risk should be mitigated by having enough LNG terminals and supply. There is still quite a bit of leeway to reduce taxes on electricity, but when you're short on supply you might not want to incentivize electricity use.
Trying to disincentivize electricity use during periods of low supply do not work. Governments feel forced to step in if factories has to shut down or people can't heat their homes. Those not willing gets voted out, as was also demonstrated this winter.
All this is a local maximum where every action is rational but the result is terrible for everyone involved. Paying through taxes does not actually make the energy price low, and the massive cost to the environment will have to be paid at some point in the future.
More LNG terminals and more fossil fuel plants will not make the situation better. Demand through electrification is growing faster than the economic savings from using even more fossil fuels, and when winter comes the same scenario as last will occur. The only ones who will profit is those countries that export fossil fuels.
Why would you want this? Fossil fuels are very important for a working electricity grid. Natural gas is flexible and it outcompetes worse energy sources like coal or oil so it actually reduces the CO2 output compared to what it was before. Your suggestion would give us high electricity prices.
That's actually an interesting point. Japan etc. can raise that magnitude of funds, but the whole world benefits from countries that run on nuclear instead of coal and gas. Should we not all pay for that? For already-built reactors that's a bit late, but:
If there were a global standard for new reactors (which would obviously have to meet the minimum requirements of the most stringent participating country), multinationals could build to that spec without a lot of reinventing the wheel per regulatory environment as we do today, everyone would agree it's safe enough (presuming a safe environment; I don't know if a place like Afghanistan can provide that today), and everyone is equally (by GDP or so? TBD) on the hook for helping out if one of them has an incident.
Based on Fukshima being the only INES level >=5 incident in the past 30 years, and one of four since nuclear energy tech became somewhat established in the 1950s, on the hundreds of nuclear power plants that are still in service around the world (I don't know how many have been cumulatively, probably around 1-2k?), that would be stupidly cheap insurance per kWh produced.
I'm not anti-nuclear, but using decades to measure substances with half lifes on the order of tens or hundreds of millenia isn't very helpful.
The (legitimate) concern is that even low frequency accidents are frequent enough on the timescale of human civlization that they could present semi-permanent damage to the biosphere.
Burning coal, gas or oil present immediate, virtually permanent (at least on a human time scale) damages to the biosphere; hydro electric power already killed at least two more orders of magnitude people than even the most delirious casualty estimations of nuclear power accidents; and air pollution is estimated killing millions of people per year.
At some point, people should start learning to count.
(not saying that hydro is a bad choice; it looks to be the best when possible thanks to load following and ability to double as storage)
For example, how much methane compared to one cow?
All relevant points. I didn't mean to suggest that nuclear power is less safe than alternatives, just that the risk profile is different. The risks of nuclear power are in a long tail of infrequent but potentially large accidents so we can only understand its risks properly by looking at a long timeframe.
If you're accusing people of not learning to count, maybe you should look at the cost of solar, wind, and energy storage systems - and realize that nuclear is being phased out because it's too expensive, and that's despite nearly a century of heavy government subsidization.
It is, in fact, getting more expensive, while wind and solar get less expensive.
That's not a false choice, there is also hydro (unfortunately my country is more or less saturated there), solar (OK if you're a really sunny country and only need electricity during the day, not so great otherwise) and wind (30% average load factor, risible cost efficiency, huge surface required, needs to be rebuilt every ~10 years).
> maybe you should look at the cost of solar, wind, and energy storage systems - and realize that nuclear is being phased out because it's too expensive,
Tell me then, is that why Germany, after sinking dozens of billions over dozens of billions of euros in renewable, is still producing electricity with carbonation level closer to Bulgaria & Poland than France or Belgium, AND has to buy them electricity whenever there is no wind, and sell it at low price when there is too much wind?
But yes, please, show me these numbers.
Offshore is way better, up to .6
> risible cost efficiency
This is not true, see the LCOE:
> huge surface required
Offshore solves this and also offers quasi-sanctuaries to our over-exploited seas.
> needs to be rebuilt every ~10 years
https://www.tvindkraft.dk/en/history/the-first-40-years
Moreover the are more and more efficiently recycled.
Germany nowadays reduces its emissions faster than France, while losing its industry at a way slower pace. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...
With an average at 560 gCO2/kWh vs. 47 gCO2/kWh, the opposite would be surprising.
CO2 emissions per capita: France 5.82t Germany 10.14t
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/prod-cons-co2-per-capita?...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/prod-cons-co2-per-capita?...
Comparing derivative doesn't make much sense if the starting point is wildly different.
When do you think Germany's emissions per capita will be lower than France?
Indeed, however this is commonly done and I only state that upon this criteria things aren't exactly what they seem.
Moreover this is heavy industry: there is quite an inertia, therefore Germany (starting later with an immature approach (renewables) while dumping existing equipment (nuclear)) is facing an ordeal.
> When do you think Germany's emissions per capita will be lower than France?
This is difficult to predict because it is tied to future decisions and their results, however if France bets 100% on new reactors (either deliberately or because building new reactors continue to sucks too much money while not delivering) and doesn't tackle its current industrial crash it may be done by 2040.
As it stands, I would leave the markets, since apparently they're sooo effective, choose what power source would fill in the gaps.
The "Cultural Revolution" began in 1966.
In such a context an otherwise avoidable catastrophe may happen.
This Revolution followed the "Great Leap Forward" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward ), with famines. "In the subsequent famines of the early 1960s popularly attributed to the Great Leap Forward, Henan was one of the hardest hit and millions of lives were lost." Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henan#Modern_Era .
Moreover all this came after a civil war and a violent Japanese invasion, during which dams were bombed, causing "massive flooding in Henan" (same source).
Then a typhoon hit and many dams collapsed ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure#The_c... )
During decades predicting and adverting this catastrophe was possible, even when it unfolded people had days to react... but given such a context nobody was able to do so. One may wonder what an active nuclear reactor will become in such a context.
Estimations of nuclear power disasters are highly disputed, and some claims are very high ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the... )
Also: you compare nuclear to fossil fuels, neglecting renewables.
The longer the half-life, the less radioactive something is. By definition.
Something with a half-life of "tens or hundreds of millenia" is not very radioactive.
Something with a half-life of infinity is not radioactive at all.
The really dangerous stuff tends to be isotopes like iodine-131 (half-life 8 days, accumulates in the thyroid gland), strontium-90 (half-life of about 29 years, accumulates in the bones).
Any such concern, if legitimate, should at least be fleshed out with some basic assumptions and numbers. What is the (rough, estimate) probability distribution of the number of deaths that this will cause? Then we can compare it with the danger of fossil fuels. Otherwise we're left with hand-wavy expressions like "accidents" and "frequent enough". What are we to do with such statements?
Nuclear power plants take decades to build and turn on.
Nuclear power has a non-zero risk of very, very bad things happening.
We have no long term strategy for storing nuclear waste.
And in the time it would take to build a single new nuclear reactor we're going to add a massive, massive amount of large scale storage. It's already well underway.
How far along is the next nuclear reactor?
No it's not. Maybe for the first plant of its kind.
Solar is already CHEEEEEAP and getting cheaper. Nuclear is expensive and not getting any cheaper, in fact quite the opposite.
Market forces are already making this apparent (money talks), but there are still pro nuclear lobbies DESPERATE to hold on.
> there are still pro nuclear lobbies DESPERATE to hold on.
First, caps don't make right. I believe NREs help in getting emissions down to a point, but since you need backup power I am not seeing it working at 80% production share. In order to emissions to get to zero I believe nuclear makes sense on the longer term.
An "international market" doesn't help with electricity: you can't transport electricity feasibly across oceans.
Underwater electricity links do exist, and many are planned. https://eepublicdownloads.entsoe.eu/clean-documents/Publicat...
However some existing links are encouraging: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NorNed
Projects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_power_cable#Proposed...
The underlying approach is not new and is rather rather quickly adopted and improved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects
There are more than a few countries nobody in their right mind would ever want to tie their power grid to.
That’s all. Nothing else.
Revealed preferences today show that it is a solution, given countries are currently happy to be dependent on other nations for the energy source via oil and gas imports. If importing oil and gas is acceptable, then importing solar should be equally acceptable, if not even more acceptable given you can import from more reliable allies instead of authoritarian rogue states that will engage in energy blackmail.
Your point of view seems to be that of wealthy or semi-wealthy and relatively stable nations, without massive rampant corruption. And sure, for those, it may very well work. Who am I to even have an opinion on that?
But who will accept to connect their power grid to that of those countries who are still having weekly, if not daily, blackouts?
The kind of country where corrupt officials accept being paid to get chemical waste dumped into their laps, and consider it a grand idea to dump those into their country’s power plants crude oil?
The kind of country where people just randomly plug themselves into power lines, without any consideration for safety, and regularly burn down a whole block because of it, and shut down power for an entire city in the process?
The kind of country currently facing a war, civil or otherwise, and who’s grid’s instability would affect anybody connected to them?
Nobody in their right mind would willingly expose themselves to such risks.
So sure, like you so eagerly anticipate, rich and stable countries will happily link their power grids together in some grand international energy market, and maybe it will, as you surmise, solve all their problems. I really have no opinion whatsoever on that.
But where do the others fit?
I'm with you except for this. Fear mongering about nuclear ("incredible risk") is inaccurate and isn't the way forward. We should save the fear mongering for fossil fuels where it belongs. Renewables are better than nuclear due to the lower cost, and that's mostly it, there aren't other differentiating factors that matter all that much.
If there were, I don't think they'd tell anyone. So maybe it's a trust thing. People know for sure that a wind turbine can't poison nearby communities to death no matter what goes wrong. Personally I'd prefer nuclear, but also this kind of distrust is the only way we can get more transparency.
Excuse me, what? There are quite literally ongoing military nuclear reactor incidents at this very moment. The fact that they started decades ago is hardly a consolation.
This kind of wool-pulling makes it very hard to trust the pro-nuclear crowd. Maybe if we could manage to contain the waste we've already created (or at the very least if pro-nucs would admit we can't), I might have some faith in our ability to contain the waste we make in the future.
> This kind of wool-pulling makes it very hard to trust the pro-nuclear crowd. Maybe if we could manage to contain the waste we've already created (or at the very least if pro-nucs would admit we can't), I might have some faith in our ability to contain the waste we make in the future.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site
GP specifically referenced "submarines and aircraft carriers"; Hanford is neither.
There is a cleanup at Hanford, which is understandable for one of the earliest reactors. I think calling it "ongoing military nuclear reactor incidents" is misleading, since it was the normal operation.
Again, GP:
"We've learned so much since the mid-20th century."
Nothing is going to be perfect. All the data I've seen is that nuclear power is safer and has fewer casualties. Picking one of the earliest sites from 70 years ago ignores everything since, as well as comparison to fatalities due to other forms of power generation.
To paraphrase you, "This kind of wool-pulling makes it very hard to trust the _anti_-nuclear crowd."
> calling it "ongoing military nuclear reactor incidents" is misleading, since it was the normal operation.
I can't tell what you mean by "it was the normal operation". I can assure you that the plant was not designed to be in a state of constant leakage and need billions of dollars of continuous investment per year to facilitate its cleanup process for decades without end.
Well, that's a bit of a lie. The plant was designed to leak radioactive waste into the Columbia River under normal operation. But that was considered safe, at that time. Just as many nuclear things are now considered safe, at this time. For instance the Monticello leak less than 6 months ago, which was covered up for months before the news finally got out. Perfectly safe, at this time.
If we've really learned so much since whenever, let's use that knowledge to clean up all the messes we made along the way first. Once we know we can do that well, perhaps we can take on more projects. Until then we're the Junior Dev hopping from greenfield project to greenfield project leaving giant steaming piles of shit behind at every stop and telling ourselves "welp, I definitely learned from that experience! no way I'm doing that again!"
> This kind of wool-pulling makes it very hard to trust the _anti_-nuclear crowd.
I'm not asking anyone to trust me, I'm not an energy expert and never claimed to be. I'm just asking them to not lie in order to push a nuclear agenda. In general, if a concept is truly with pursuing, it should be able to be presented via a convincing argument without lies.
Or you don't understand why people wouldn't want to be left holding the cleanup bill after the company running a power station or mine or mill declared bankruptcy before finishing decomissioning?
Or you don't understand why people wouldn't support ecocide, corruption and worker exploitation in Niger or Uzbekistan to line the pockets of a uranium mining oligopoly?
The article is a bit light on numbers and facts, unfortunately. Hard to tell if this is a serious study or paid "study" by some lobby with an agenda. I suspect the latter. It certainly seems to be very selective in what it talks about. And it would explain the hand waviness of the reported "findings".
It kind of makes a big point of avoiding talking about investments in renewables because "In 1985, the closure of reactors in Tennessee Valley prompted a spike in coal use". That's nearly four decades ago. Most of those coal plants have probably been closed by now. And conveniently, wind and solar investments were not a thing at the time.
Have we? There is a nuclear plant being shelled in Ukraine and the US is still arguing over where to dump its waste. Japan is looking to release a million tons of radioactive water into the sea. Those are the ones I can think of that are happening right now. There are plenty more in and out of the news.
I don’t think knowledge is cumulative, it has to be re-learned ever so often.
In relation to the US navy - here is an accident that was covered up 16 years ago. I do not believe there have been none since.
Understood about the concern that if they tried to hide a problem once, they’ll probably try to hide one again. But 16 years ago isn’t accurate with the link you shared.
That’s an understatement, good catch.
In the US, nuclear power is being replaced at several times the rate it is being decommissioned...by solar and wind, both of which are significantly cheaper. Those plants are being shut down because they don't make economic sense.
The biggest problem we have right now is that bitcoin mining operators are chewing up massive amounts of power, in many areas causing coal fired power plants to come back into service because of how much demand they're placing on the grid...and states are encouraging this, because it's helping prop up demand for coal.
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and...
You have 3 power generation systems adjacent to each other. One is a massive solar power field. One is a massive wind turbine field. And one is a nuclear power plant. In the ideal conditions, all 3 generate an equivalent amount of power.
Suddenly, the sun goes down and all the wind stops. Which one is now generating the most power?
Unless you somehow solved storage at a low enough price for it to be viable, we need nuclear or fossil fuels up here - biofuels won't be enough.
Fixing this with trans-European energy transfers is a neat idea, but if you want to send power from i.e. a solar panel on a roof in Spain to my house in Finland, or wind energy from Denmark to Poland, then we'll require infrastructure upgrades at scales that haven't been seen in much of Europe since the early 50's.
Fossil fuels aren't a solution, and nuclear energy only a smaller part of it. You can see that if you look at the cost and potential in the IPCC report.
There is no way around a massive build out of renewable energy.
PS: I just checked energy charts, and saw that Poland has more wind in the winter as well
Alas, at least in Northern Europe, the grids are largely in private hands, and investments are kept down to the legal minimum. There's no way we go all-renewable until someone kicks that hornet's nest.
https://theconversation.com/what-europes-exceptionally-low-w...
You know what also produces air pollution? Manufacturing and transport of wind turbines. Construction of hydro power dams. Manufacturing and distribution of solar panels. Mining, manufacturing and distribution of grid batteries. By your logic, no grid-scale source of energy is good enough. I hope you're browsing Hacker News using landfill-diverted computer hardware powered by a landfill-diverted off-grid solar power array, because otherwise your objections to nuclear power apply equally to your own life.
Just as an aside and a reasonable data point, I can't be the only person with a majority of formerly commercial refabbed EOL equipment (more than just computers + solar panels).
As a non urban Australian in a sparse area scoring and repurposing other people's "crap" has been a way of life for six decades .. nine for my father who is still actively trawling auction sites, curb dumps, and local tip sites.
If you use your own 'crap' for long enough, it's has the same impact: you just skip the step of switching ownership.
What artificially inflated prices? And...No? Nice strawman, though? Nuclear power plants have a massively expensive supply chain - their capex and opex expenses are huge, the highest of any form of generation. Every worker the plant requires, every manager, every gauge, every piece of pipe - all has a carbon footprint. And because it's for nuclear, all those parts are a lot more expensive because of all the documentation, engineering and reliability, and that means a higher carbon footprint.
> You know what also produces air pollution? Manufacturing and transport of wind turbines. Construction of hydro power dams. Manufacturing and distribution of solar panels. Mining, manufacturing and distribution of grid batteries.
All the things you name immediately start paying back 'dividends', solar/wind have a fraction of the opex, and produce electricity at a far lower cost than nuclear and are dropping in cost per GWhr, whereas nuclear plants take decades to "break even", only do so if you ignore the carbon footprint of their supply chain, and the cost of electricity from nuclear is going up.
> I hope you're browsing Hacker News using landfill-diverted computer hardware powered by a landfill-diverted off-grid solar power array, because otherwise your objections to nuclear power apply equally to your own life.
So cliche a response it's literally a meme.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...
So what then? Are you still contending that constructing nuclear is a bad idea because the supply chain of a nontrivial endeavour has a non-zero carbon footprint?
And yes, memes are a meme for a reason. It seems strange that you think that an idea achieving meme status invalidates it? Are you trying to offer a response, or are you only interested in feeling like you want an Internet debate? I suppose if it’s the latter then… umm… well done? Well done on dodging the actual discussion at hand.
Other than the single time a mining group bought an old coal plant in NY, is there a single other example of this happening?
While I'm sure some folks would jump on that because it was using Fossil Fuels, I look at as it's profitable for crypto miners to use _excess_ energy where it's produced and would otherwise be wasted, which will happen regardless of how energy is sourced.
Scientific studies are clear: M. Lenzen ("between 10 and 130 g CO2-e/kWhel, with an average of 65 g") and E. Warner et G. Heath ("9 to 110 g CO‐eq/kWh by 2050")...
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/eus-ageing-nucl...
Seek better sources.
There is a sibling comment to this one which is flagged and "dead". It was inflammatory in tone but something I would vouch for in substance. My advice to its author is to not give censcorious people an excuse to mob away your views. Avoid the hyperbole.
Greenpeace, for one reason or another, has been obsessed with nuclear power to the objective net detriment of the environment. Their activism has directly resulted in a strengthening of legacy fossil fuel industries and the increased reliance on fossil fuel consumption. Absent the campaigning by Greenpeace there would certainly be more, newer, safer nuclear energy reactors in Europe today. This would directly result in offsetting need for coal power — especially if Greenpeace had applied as much effort to opposing coal as they did nuclear power.
Apologies to everyone for the upcoming tangential rant.
Am I the only person who is exhausted with news outlets disingenuously comparing the US to all other individual countries as if that is a fair comparison? A quick google search shows there are 108 reactors operating in the European Union, which is 16 more than in the US. Yes, this also means that the US has more reactors operating per person than the EU.
But why can't news outlets just say that? Why do we default to comparing the absolute number of most things in the United States to individual western countries? This was at its worst during COVID but it seems to have stuck. It makes for a completely misleading narrative.
It’s also quite rare that a news story spends time talking positively about a subject, unless it is something emotionally charged (marine vet surprises family by coming home early) or is part of a submarine PR push by the subject of the piece (university researcher finds curse for cancer).
The fact we are reading English news probably accounts for a good part of that bias.
my dream is to have the main reactors give a lot of the power and then have smaller reactors that use those waste products to turn them into shorter half-lived materials. if i recall correctly liquid salt thorium was something that was trying to do that and it also had the feature that it failed safe instead of a meltdown.
The problem is, we can see and measure it. If anything went wrong, it’d be clear who messed up, so it requires actual time and effort to do it right. That’s yucky. People like it more when the waste is invisible and airborne, for the wind and their children to deal with instead of them. This provides a better level of blame dispersion.
As they say, out of sight out of mind.
The total amount (from the beginning of France's nuclear energy production 50+y ago) of highly radioactive, non-reusable waste fits in a cube not bigger than the Eiffel tower, and the goal is to bury that in geological storage, but dumb politics are opposing this (for dumb reasons that were debunked a thousand times).
France is also in the middle of experiencing a huge amount of maintenance costs due to many of their reactors coming up to critical age milestones. But it's often hidden under the massive layers of obfuscation due to being masked under the total French energy budget.
Partially true. In geographies like New England that aren’t very sunny or windy nuclear makes more economic sense, and in all geographies as a hedge against long bouts of unusual weather.
You need your baseload to come from a steady, highly available, weather independent source. Nuclear is basically this only carbon free solution ticking the boxes.
For that last 20%, building more grid connections towards the equator is again still cheaper than nuclear.
It is likely better to use gas peaker plants for rare times without renewables and extract the CO2 later when sun is shining.
https://www.ge.com/gas-power/future-of-energy/hydrogen-fuele...
All the money wasted on nuclear can then be put towards electrification of emissions sources which are vastly more important than that last 0.5% of emissions (which will further increase the flexibility as it does so).
I guess you don't realize that much of New England's power already comes from renewables. Remember they get hydro power from Quebec. Maine gets 2/3 of its power from renewables.
Which leads to my second point: your power generation doesn't need to be right next to you.
And in any case, off shore wind is plentiful, and New England isn't the Arctic, it still gets plenty of sun year round.
https://sponsored.bostonglobe.com/future-forward/the-gradual...
EDF already went bankrupt like, last week.
Even despite all of this France is expecting the % of electricity sourced from nuclear power to decline - new plants aren't being built fast enough to replace those aging out.
Because the costs thet sell at are capped, regardless of what it costs them to generate (and those costs exploded in some areas due to the war and the common European power market), which was the right choice to protect consumers from energy poverty.
57% and trending rather sharply downward.
You're also thinking of Uruguay for that CO2 thing, or maybe Sweden.
They do this tirelessly with health, education, etc... They do it because this is how some people understand the world; a series of orthogonal comparisons thought of as one through false comparison. It's an exercise of marginalizing the readers understanding of competing arguments. Instead of thinking analytically about the arguments and the situation at hand, the reader is invited to think, "This problem is solved, and thus so should be yours."
It's certainly a fair comparison: they're comparing countries to countries. It may not be a helpful comparison, because no two countries are equivalent in all ways other than the number of nuclear reactors they have.
But, if the point they're making is that no other country would have as much of an effect on air quality by shutting down nuclear power at the national policy level, I think it's fine. Your statistic is also useful, but since air pollution crosses borders, I think talking about absolute rather than per capita is also fine.
I guess what I'm saying is that this didn't bother me.
First, the sentence itself doesn't strike me as lending itself to the idea that "the point they're making is that no other country would have as much of an effect on air quality by shutting down nuclear power at the national policy level". If the author wants to portray this point, why don't they actually say so in the article, instead of indirectly alluding to it? The sentence in question strikes me more as an exaggerated fun fact to grab the reader's attention and make them gasp, than as a way to set the context of the situation.
Second, the nuclear reactors are shutting down due to rate-setting policy issues on the *state* level, not the at the federal policy level. So it becomes again a disingenuous comparison, because each state can take their own individual course of action to prevent shutdown (or not). The "US" as a whole, that is to say the federal govt, is likely powerless in this situation unless they can get a bipartisan bill passed which is unlikely. Even if passed it's just kicking the can until the rates issues are fixed.