[HN Gopher] Nuclear Energy Is Clean
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Nuclear Energy Is Clean
Author : mpweiher
Score : 105 points
Date : 2022-07-31 21:25 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.collectifission.nl)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.collectifission.nl)
| JanisErdmanis wrote:
| I find it asonishing that only now I learn that radioactive waste
| stays much longer radioactive than being dangerous. Also other
| good arguments are put forward by normalizing material costs VS
| expected energy production capacity.
| p1esk wrote:
| _radioactive waste stays much longer radioactive than being
| dangerous_
|
| If it's radioactive it's dangerous. The article points out that
| radioactive waste doesn't stay radioactive for very long,
| contrary to what is commonly believed.
| epistasis wrote:
| > But the amount of concrete and steel for sun and wind is
| striking. This has to do with the low energy density of these
| two.
|
| No, it's not striking at all, and this is just as BS argument as
| the people arguing that nuclear isn't clean. As far as the energy
| density, include all the steel and concrete used outside of the
| reaction chamber, and you will find that nuclear and solar are
| pretty much on the same order of magnitude, and that's using the
| numbers from newer reactor designs that have consciously tried to
| reduce the amount of concrete by a factor of two.
|
| But of course, all this is misdirection from the real challenges
| of nuclear, which is finding somebody who can build it and
| somebody who is willing to take the financial risk of nuclear,
| when it looks like a terribles mis allocation of capital, if
| one's goal is to decarbonize energy.
| ggm wrote:
| To me, it's about the shape of the logistic curve from
| planning, through construction to supply, and it's lifetime.
|
| We should start nuclear construction now, but for supply in 8+
| years time. And therefore we should start increasing
| construction of wind, solar, pumped hydro and battery now, to
| supply lower watts, but useful watts inside the 8 year window.
| As supply matches demand we can remove coal and gas, and when
| the nuclear comes on line, increase the pace of their removal
| and repurpose surplus wind and solar to hydrogen production for
| ammonia, and hydrogen fuel cells, and domestic gas replacement.
| losteric wrote:
| > all this is misdirection from the real challenges of nuclear,
| which is finding somebody who can build it and somebody who is
| willing to take the financial risk of nuclear, when it looks
| like a terribles mis allocation of capital, if one's goal is to
| decarbonize energy.
|
| I have read that there is much more nuance in nuclear pricing.
| Past projects were bespoke and subject to changing bureaucratic
| requirements. There are numerous startups working to bring down
| cost.
|
| https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla...
| elietoubi wrote:
| Super interesting how there is a big push for nuclear in the tech
| world right now. To play the devils advocate, there are some
| pretty solid reasons why Nuclear is not ideal.The biggest one to
| me is the risk or nuclear material proliferation: Iran for
| instance is hiding their military nuclear program behind a
| civilian nuclear goal.
|
| Nuclear is probably net better than coal but it's not the (only)
| solution to climate change.
| tehsauce wrote:
| If the US built more clean nuclear plants that would somehow
| help Iran develop nuclear weapons faster? Surely the slope
| cannot be that slippery.
| tehsauce wrote:
| I'm curious what caused those 0.02 deaths per terawatt for solar.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Roof installers (no cap).
| zbrozek wrote:
| At a guess, accidents during installation or maintenance, e.g.,
| falling off a roof or grabbing live high voltage DC.
| [deleted]
| tus666 wrote:
| > The argument is well known: nuclear power causes pollution
|
| It does? News to me.
| bad_alloc wrote:
| We saw another downside of nuclear power in Ukraine: When Russian
| troops attacked towards Enerhodar and there was shelling in the
| area the safety of the reactor could not be guaranteed. In the
| end, containment can be guaranteed w.r.t to internal accidents
| but no facility can ever be safe from outside issues like war,
| natural disaster or politics.
|
| Solar has less single points of failure and if it fails not much
| happens, like in the case of the stolen solar power plant
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokmak_Solar_Energy).
| peppertree wrote:
| Nuclear energy is safe but humans are not.
| anonporridge wrote:
| This is one of the few good arguments against nuclear,
| especially large installations that produce a huge percentage
| of a region's power.
|
| Even if you can design it in such a way that an external attack
| is very unlikely to cause a meltdown, it's a juicy and easy
| target for an adversary to cripple your electricity production.
| A few dozen well placed missiles might be all you need to take
| an entire nation that's heavily nuclear dependent to its knees.
|
| On the other hand, solar and wind are hugely distributed,
| making an attack that destroys these productive assets
| drastically more expensive. An adversary might still be able to
| take out the grid by targeting transmission infrastructure, but
| recovering from it should be relatively quick because the
| electricity generators are all still intact.
| tern wrote:
| Potentially we can't build nuclear fast enough to replace fossil
| fuels https://youtu.be/O0pt3ioQuNc 22:19
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| I think nuclear power plants aren't worth the risk. I often hear
| arguments such as that modern reactors don't have the issues old
| ones had etc.. As long as it can't be guaranteed to me that e.g.
| a terror attack doesn't cause a 1000 km2 area around the plant to
| be unlivable for 100 years, I most likely won't change my
| opinion.
|
| I think living in the stone age is better than taking the risk.
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