I refuse to buy into this talk of nuclear bad vs. renewables good (or the other way). Nuclear plants SHOULD take a long time to build and SHOULD be crazy expensive and built with safety factors and for 1 in 5000 year weather occurrences, that make us engineers hurt when doing the risk analysis.
They will still be needed eventually to provide base loads on dark, cold, still days if net 0 really is the plan and replace all the coal and gas and trash burners.
Nuclear plants SHOULD take a long time to build and SHOULD be crazy expensive and built with safety factors and for 1 in 5000 year weather occurrences
This is why it is, in fact, bad compared to renewables. The same money spent on renewables would start producing energy much sooner without the still-unsolved problem of disposing of nuclear waste.
I do agree that existing nuclear should be retained but it’s very hard to see how new investment in it can be justified, given how much more the same investment in renewables and storage would deliver.
All of the nuclear waste ever produced by the entire 70+ year history of the civilian nuclear industry in the US can be fit safely into dry casks and placed one layer high onto 3 football fields.
99+% of that waste by mass is Transuranics, which are unburned fuel. Reprocess that out and of the other 1%, half of it can be separated out in 50 years, and the rest will decay to background in about 300. It’s not a short period of time, but it’s a human manageable period of time. We have human institutions that have lasted 300 years.
We haven’t “solved” nuclear waste because it’s simply not a pressing issue technically, and there’s no institutional will to, mostly due to politics.
You’re right that there is no institutional will, nothing happens unless it suits Money (see also: climate change). But I think you’re downplaying the problems.
I’m not. I’m not saying it’s easy. Just that it is possible. I used to (but no longer) work at the Savannah River Site as a nuclear engineer involved in Plutonium Disposition. I am well aware of the danger and challenges. But I’m also aware that these problems are solvable if we put people onto the problem.
Right now high level nuclear waste from civilian nuclear power plants is not a pressing issue. It needs to be solved eventually, but eventually can easily be more than 100 years. Climate change is a far more pressing issue, and it needs to be solved ASAP. Turning down nuclear power, which is already working and ready to go, to focus on storage, which is still technology that is not quite there yet, strikes me as counterproductive. We should be reaching for anything and everything to get us off of coal and oil.
We don’t have to choose between solar now and nuclear later. We can do both. Perhaps it’s the case that the best time to build a fleet of new nuclear power plants was 15 years ago. But the second best time is now.
Fifteen years ago we would never have dreamed that renewables would work so well. Fifteen years ago we would not have known what to spend the money on instead. Now we do and more renewables make much more sense.
Can you honestly tell me, in your heart of hearts, that you truly think by 2039 the US will be supermajority solar and wind power and that the nuclear power plants coming online won’t be useful to displace the remaining coal plants?
I sortof agree, but nuclear is used by technopositivists as a mirage to push global warming under the rug. Sure, we can use nuclear for essential stuff if there’s no other way, but the priority is to decrease consumption and consume smarter. I am all for nuclear if it powers ambulances. I don’t want nuclear to power the tenth plastic-shit plant building the next thing nobody needs or a billion SUVs.
We gave nuclear plants to private companies, but no private companies are crazy enough to insure them. We taxpayers are doing that. This is essentially a huge subsidy.
The anti-greens are always reminding us about how Germany tried to get rid of nuclear and ended up opening coal plants, as in Germany was a monolithic bloc. No. The german public wanted no nuclear and the German private sector opened coal mine. Their only flaw is not to have impose quotas on their industry.
Coal use in Germany has actually continued to decrease since the nuclear plants were turned off. Germany just tends to import a bit more energy (mostly hydro from Scandinavia/Austria/Switzerland, wind from Denmark or solar/nuclear from France) from its neighbors because that’s cheaper than running gas or coal plants in Germany. (And of course there are also the economic woes which have led to slowing demand for energy.)
I am all for nuclear if it powers ambulances. I don’t want nuclear to power the tenth plastic-shit plant building the next thing nobody needs or a billion SUVs.
How is this different from Solar and Wind exactly? Wind and Solar can be used to power shitty consumer garbage factories just as easily as nuclear can?
Renewables don’t work well together with “base generation”. And nuclear only runs remotely profitably (and, in many cases, safely) if it runs continuously at full steam. Nuclear and renewables are a terrible match.
Renewables even out across larger geographical areas and they can be paired with other flexible on-demand generation: fossil gas, hydrogen, batteries.
“In many cases” in this case means that safe parameters depend on the specific reactor model. Most reactors are made to safely scale output down to a certain degree, within certain timeframes. However, you can’t use reactors like you would use gas plants – powering them up from 0 to 100% output within a half hour. You also can’t use them like batteries that can switch between charging and discharging in sub-second increments. Rather, e.g. here in Germany, many reactors (now defunct) could, with some planning, scale between 60-100% within about a week. And e.g. the proposed SMR from Terrapower was supposed to just run full steam but be able to buffer energy as heat, so electricity output could still be modulated (Terrapower’s first SMR build was cancelled iirc, because of massive cost overruns). But in any case, that still means the Terrapower SMR would not provide “base load”; it would augment what’s needed (you know, if it had actually worked out).
Last I heard (seminar in Summer 2018) NuScale’s SMR was supposed to be able to do load following, but still needed some work analysis and design work to handle the effects of shadowing from control rods to prove they were safe for any power output history. I haven’t followed up since then, but I imagine that’s a bit of a complicated thing to simulate.
Even better transmission line helps renewables provide baseline load. It’s sunny in Nevada when it’s dark in Maine and vice versa.
Serious high power transmission lines can work as a “battery” as the earth spins. Connecting east coast to west coast would give each time zone a 3hr buffer of working renewables.
I refuse to buy into this talk of nuclear bad vs. renewables good (or the other way). Nuclear plants SHOULD take a long time to build and SHOULD be crazy expensive and built with safety factors and for 1 in 5000 year weather occurrences, that make us engineers hurt when doing the risk analysis.
They will still be needed eventually to provide base loads on dark, cold, still days if net 0 really is the plan and replace all the coal and gas and trash burners.
This is why it is, in fact, bad compared to renewables. The same money spent on renewables would start producing energy much sooner without the still-unsolved problem of disposing of nuclear waste.
I do agree that existing nuclear should be retained but it’s very hard to see how new investment in it can be justified, given how much more the same investment in renewables and storage would deliver.
All of the nuclear waste ever produced by the entire 70+ year history of the civilian nuclear industry in the US can be fit safely into dry casks and placed one layer high onto 3 football fields.
99+% of that waste by mass is Transuranics, which are unburned fuel. Reprocess that out and of the other 1%, half of it can be separated out in 50 years, and the rest will decay to background in about 300. It’s not a short period of time, but it’s a human manageable period of time. We have human institutions that have lasted 300 years.
We haven’t “solved” nuclear waste because it’s simply not a pressing issue technically, and there’s no institutional will to, mostly due to politics.
You’re right that there is no institutional will, nothing happens unless it suits Money (see also: climate change). But I think you’re downplaying the problems.
I’m not. I’m not saying it’s easy. Just that it is possible. I used to (but no longer) work at the Savannah River Site as a nuclear engineer involved in Plutonium Disposition. I am well aware of the danger and challenges. But I’m also aware that these problems are solvable if we put people onto the problem.
Right now high level nuclear waste from civilian nuclear power plants is not a pressing issue. It needs to be solved eventually, but eventually can easily be more than 100 years. Climate change is a far more pressing issue, and it needs to be solved ASAP. Turning down nuclear power, which is already working and ready to go, to focus on storage, which is still technology that is not quite there yet, strikes me as counterproductive. We should be reaching for anything and everything to get us off of coal and oil.
Exactly. We don’t have decades to wait for new nuclear to start generating power.
We don’t have to choose between solar now and nuclear later. We can do both. Perhaps it’s the case that the best time to build a fleet of new nuclear power plants was 15 years ago. But the second best time is now.
Fifteen years ago we would never have dreamed that renewables would work so well. Fifteen years ago we would not have known what to spend the money on instead. Now we do and more renewables make much more sense.
Can you honestly tell me, in your heart of hearts, that you truly think by 2039 the US will be supermajority solar and wind power and that the nuclear power plants coming online won’t be useful to displace the remaining coal plants?
I sortof agree, but nuclear is used by technopositivists as a mirage to push global warming under the rug. Sure, we can use nuclear for essential stuff if there’s no other way, but the priority is to decrease consumption and consume smarter. I am all for nuclear if it powers ambulances. I don’t want nuclear to power the tenth plastic-shit plant building the next thing nobody needs or a billion SUVs.
Coal use in Germany has actually continued to decrease since the nuclear plants were turned off. Germany just tends to import a bit more energy (mostly hydro from Scandinavia/Austria/Switzerland, wind from Denmark or solar/nuclear from France) from its neighbors because that’s cheaper than running gas or coal plants in Germany. (And of course there are also the economic woes which have led to slowing demand for energy.)
How is this different from Solar and Wind exactly? Wind and Solar can be used to power shitty consumer garbage factories just as easily as nuclear can?
Renewables don’t work well together with “base generation”. And nuclear only runs remotely profitably (and, in many cases, safely) if it runs continuously at full steam. Nuclear and renewables are a terrible match.
Renewables even out across larger geographical areas and they can be paired with other flexible on-demand generation: fossil gas, hydrogen, batteries.
ah yes, “in many case”, very reassuring.
“In many cases” in this case means that safe parameters depend on the specific reactor model. Most reactors are made to safely scale output down to a certain degree, within certain timeframes. However, you can’t use reactors like you would use gas plants – powering them up from 0 to 100% output within a half hour. You also can’t use them like batteries that can switch between charging and discharging in sub-second increments. Rather, e.g. here in Germany, many reactors (now defunct) could, with some planning, scale between 60-100% within about a week. And e.g. the proposed SMR from Terrapower was supposed to just run full steam but be able to buffer energy as heat, so electricity output could still be modulated (Terrapower’s first SMR build was cancelled iirc, because of massive cost overruns). But in any case, that still means the Terrapower SMR would not provide “base load”; it would augment what’s needed (you know, if it had actually worked out).
Last I heard (seminar in Summer 2018) NuScale’s SMR was supposed to be able to do load following, but still needed some work analysis and design work to handle the effects of shadowing from control rods to prove they were safe for any power output history. I haven’t followed up since then, but I imagine that’s a bit of a complicated thing to simulate.
Even better transmission line helps renewables provide baseline load. It’s sunny in Nevada when it’s dark in Maine and vice versa.
Serious high power transmission lines can work as a “battery” as the earth spins. Connecting east coast to west coast would give each time zone a 3hr buffer of working renewables.