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Comment by more_corn | Hacker News Reader

I mean it is clean to operate. I think there’s an argument for it being a clean energy source. It’s not so clean to decommission.

And it’s unclear we can build and operate nuclear power plants in a safe and cost effective way. They cost billions, take decades to build, create perverse incentives to operate longer and leaner than is safe and leave a clean-up nightmare.

Perhaps we should prioritize incentives for rooftop solar + batteries. That is a distributed investment, pays dividends instantly, leaves no terrible cleanup, increases grid stability.

Once we reach a point of diminishing returns there perhaps we could explore small nuclear power plants to generate remaining baseline loads.

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Will be interesting to see how Australia goes. They have extensive rooftop solar already, and one of the major parties in the current election is proposing to build nuclear power plants rather than go farther with renewables.

FWIW I think the nuclear plan as proposed would be a flop, but given that there are currently zero nuclear power plants there and Australia has a strong track record of opposing nuclear power, it's interesting to note that the idea has even been brought up without becoming instant electoral poison.

The secret ingredient is millions of dollars from fossil fuel lobbyists, and the Murdoch media running a heavy propaganda/misinformation over the past year. Their only goal is to divert public funds away from solar/wind projects.

If voters choose to go down this path it'll be an absolute tragedy for the country and a huge missed opportunity.

I say this as an Australian realist living abroad who always was relatively pro-nuclear.

The more insidious will be if the government starts putting roadblocks in the way of solar expansion, like the UK government basically banning onshore wind turbine development (which is much cheaper than offshore wind). Absent government interference, solar already has good enough economics it's going to dominate without public funding (which may still waste a lot of time and effort on nuclear plants).

(I also see a big trend of objections to grid-scale solar deployments, which is nuts to me: why on earth do you care about living next to a solar farm? It's about the most inoffensive local development that could possibly happen)

Various state governments are already blocking solar projects.

I'm continually shilling Saul Griffith's work on here, I can't remember the particular piece but he calculated that by delaying the solar/wind transition, fossil fuel businesses would profit on the order of 100 trillion dollars.

My conspiracy theory is that Chinese development and proliferation of fossil fuel disrupting technologies is the root source of all of the current global instability. Only a matter of time until the petrodollar becomes obsolete.

I agree that the current nuclear proposal seems intended principally to extend the life of the coal and gas plants. It's likely born from a cynical attitude of 'who cares about how much the nuclear plants will cost when/if they do get built, just kick the carbon-neutrality can down the road another decade and let the next generation of politicians deal with it.'

I do wonder if there'll ever be a desire to build nuclear plants for baseload firming, though. What amount of excess capacity has to be built in to an all-renewables + storage grid to give the the same reliability as the current grid? Could nuclear power ever be cheap enough to compete on ROI with the marginal providers, the last ~5 gigawatts of wind or solar needed?

David Osmond work is interesting. He wrote last week: "Each week I run a simulation of Australia’s main electricity grid using rescaled generation data to show that it can get very close to 100% renewable electricity with 24GW/120GWh of storage (5 hrs at av demand) Results: Last week: 98.6% RE Last 187 weeks: 98.7% RE (1/5)"

You dont really have a waste problem when full year of "waste" from a 1 GW plant fits inside single tractor trailer with room to spare.

Great, how my trailers per year is that given existing plants. How many will it be if they start building more plants. How many hundreds of thousands of years will that need to be safely stored and guarded before it is safe? How many trailers will need to be stored by then?

How do the batteries not require some kind of hazardous waste removal/cleanup process?

Because they aren’t very hazardous. They’re slightly flammable due to their stored energy, and may contain toxic fire retardants like other electronics. But they’re completely benign compared with nuclear waste.

Set aside the cleanup for a second: for pure power generation, nuclear is the ultimate clean energy source. Massive amounts of power, extremely cheap when amortized, liked by all political factions (except old-school '70s-era environmentalist liberals), a great source of jobs from blue to white collar, and no pollution or greenhouse gas emissions.

Turning back to nuclear waste: it's a solved problem. At least, very good solutions already exist. For example, see WIPP in New Mexico [0].

As with all energy sources, there is no perfect, one-size-fits-all solution: use a diverse set of energy sources based on what makes sense for the specific locale you're targeting. Nuclear will make sense for some areas (perhaps dense metros), while solar would make sense in others. Geothermal and natural gas as well.

We live in the future. Act like it!

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant

>extremely cheap when amortized

Doesn't seem like that in practice. Nuclear's generally one of the most expensive per-kwh sources of energy on the grid. And nuclear-renewable diversity doesn't favor nuclear either: renewables absolutely destroy any margins nuclear might have, and both want to share the grid with storage or dispatchable fossil fuel generation like gas turbines.

Interesting, looks like I was out of date on that. Wikipedia shows the LCOE of different energy sources [0] and, while nuclear was at parity with natural gas & wind as the cheapest energy circa 2011, it has since become one of the most expensive (~2.5x solar).

Why did this happen? Why has the cost of nuclear doubled in the past decade?

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricit...

I generate most of the power my house needs right ON my house. I’m perfectly happy sleeping , eating and living there. The rain that runs off the generators waters my vegetable garden.

Do you want to live a few meters from a nuke?

Yeah if you're into that it's pretty cool, I am too. I don't think nor trust the average joe with maintaining XX kW of batteries next door.

> Do you want to live a few meters from a nuke?

You probably don't know what a nuke is. Anyways, the worst nuclear reactor catastrophe killed ~30 people directly and ~5000 indirectly. Pollution kills ~250k people par year in Europe alone (coal related pollution is ~30k), cars kill about ~4k people in France, per year.

Why do we accept car deaths as an acceptable cost of transportation but not (the extremely few) nuclear related deaths as an acceptable cost of energy production ? Why do we accept 30k deaths per year due to coal pollution but not 5k death, once, because of nuclear ?

It sounds a lot like "dumb apes scared big boom" more than rational reasoning. That or the proverbial boiled frog

> the worst nuclear reactor catastrophe killed ~30 people directly and ~5000 indirectly.

This is highly debatable.

A glimpse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the...

> Why do we accept car deaths

Because those who refuse to be exposed to induced risks can prevent most of it, while those who refuse to be exposed to nuclear's induced risks (for them and their children, and their children, and their children... thanks to nuclear waste) are out of practical and realistic options.

> This is highly debatable.

Even at 10x you're still a far cry from fossils related deaths, every single year

> Because those who refuse to be exposed to induced risks can prevent most of it

??? In cities the bulk of deaths are cyclists/pedestrians, not even talking about air pollution due to exhaust fumes being produces en masse right in front of people's flats. 1/5 of road deaths in EU are pedestrians

> thanks to nuclear waste

Coal power plants are literally generating more radioactive ematerial than nuclear power plants lmao: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

The entire french nuclear waste, since the 70s, would fit in a cube with a side length of 15m... The one that matter: <3% of the total waste, the rest is low radioactivity/short half life waste

> still a far cry from fossils related deaths

The question is not "which amount of fossil fuel, which amount of nuclear?" but about renewables and nuclear.

>> Because those who refuse to be exposed to induced risks can prevent most of it

> ??? In cities the bulk of deaths are cyclists/pedestrians

Being ultra-alert, or avoiding crossing any street or even avoiding any area where motorized vehicles zoom around is possible. Avoiding most of the effects of a major nuclear accident or of some wandering "hot" nuclear waste (during the upcoming 100000 years or so...) is way, way more difficult.

> Coal power plants are literally generating more radioactive ematerial

This is not about preferring coal to nuclear but about preferring renewables to nuclear.

> The entire french nuclear waste

(I'm French. ) Our "solution", named "Cigéo" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cig%C3%A9o ), isn't even ready (more than 60 years after the first industrial reactor diverged) and is officially imperfect (there are risks, French ahead: section «Déchets» in https://sites.google.com/view/avenirdunucleraire/#h.e4d4cdh3... ).

Better avoiding producing such stuff, IMHO. Renewables...

BTW check the trend: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewa...

> I generate most of the power my house needs right ON my house. The rain that runs off the generators waters my vegetable garden.

Very cool. Sounds like a great setup.

> Do you want to live a few meters from a nuke?

Yes, I have no problem with this at all. The risk of anything happening, catastrophic or otherwise, is extremely low.

^I hope this comment gets framed because it is the perfect embodiment of the "fuck you, I got mine" mentality.

“This” style comments don't translate well on sites where the comments are not chronologically ordered.

How does residential solar increase grid stability?

The “Stability” of a power system would relate to the ability to withstand changes in load conditions. I don’t see how residential solar contributes positively to that.

I read it as solar + batteries, not solar alone.

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