Climate Change Goals Bring New Embrace of Nuclear Power (and Gas in EU) (seattletimes.com) 189
"Lawmakers in the European Union voted to include nuclear power and natural gas in the bloc's list of investments deemed sustainable," reports the Wall Street Journal, in a move the EU hopes leads to greater funding for a transition away from coal:
Burning natural gas produces about half the carbon dioxide that is generated by coal, and nuclear-power plants don't produce carbon dioxide when they are operating. But environmentalists, lawmakers and some investors have argued the plan risks diluting investments in other projects such as renewable energy.
More U.S. political leaders are also warming to nuclear power, reports the New York Times, "driven by the difficulty of meeting clean energy goals and by surging electricity demands." The Biden administration has established a $6 billion fund to help troubled nuclear plant operators keep their reactors running and make them more economically competitive against cheaper resources like solar and wind power.... In addition to the $6 billion fund, the administration is providing $2.5 billion for two projects meant to demonstrate new nuclear technology, in Washington State and Wyoming. A separate bipartisan measure introduced last year is aimed at preserving and expanding nuclear energy in the United States. The bill, whose backers include Senators Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, and Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, would provide financial assistance like tax credits, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit tax policy organization....
The rising costs of other sources of power have made nuclear energy more competitive around the world, including in the United States, which has the largest fleet of nuclear plants of any country. They produce about 20 percent of the nation's electricity and 50 percent of the clean energy. The United States maintains 92 reactors, though a dozen have closed over the last decade — including, a month ago, the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan, about 55 miles southwest of Grand Rapids.... Industry leaders recognize that the age of new large-scale nuclear plants in the United States has passed, chiefly because of runaway costs... But many in the industry say smaller reactors that can be expanded over time offer promise of avoiding long delays and high cost. These reactors, they say, can be built in factories and delivered to approved sites. And the reactors' high-temperature steam could also yield significant amounts of hydrogen, a carbon-free alternative fuel to natural gas.
The project locations can plan for as many as a dozen units but start with just one. But a plant with 12 units would produce half the electricity or even a little less than many other large nuclear facilities.
None of the smaller reactors have been certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which approves licenses and operations of the nation's nuclear power plants. But NuScale Power, a company that designs and markets small reactors in Oregon, expects to receive certification of its design by the end of the summer. A developer then would need approval for a license to build and operate the unit. Thomas Mundy, chief commercial officer for NuScale Power, said his company's product could be built and put into use in about three years, a fraction of the time it takes to build larger reactor units. And the cost, Mr. Mundy said, is competitive with new natural gas facilities at a levelized cost — the electricity price needed to break even at the end of the plant's life — of $45 to $65 a megawatt-hour.
More U.S. political leaders are also warming to nuclear power, reports the New York Times, "driven by the difficulty of meeting clean energy goals and by surging electricity demands." The Biden administration has established a $6 billion fund to help troubled nuclear plant operators keep their reactors running and make them more economically competitive against cheaper resources like solar and wind power.... In addition to the $6 billion fund, the administration is providing $2.5 billion for two projects meant to demonstrate new nuclear technology, in Washington State and Wyoming. A separate bipartisan measure introduced last year is aimed at preserving and expanding nuclear energy in the United States. The bill, whose backers include Senators Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, and Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, would provide financial assistance like tax credits, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit tax policy organization....
The rising costs of other sources of power have made nuclear energy more competitive around the world, including in the United States, which has the largest fleet of nuclear plants of any country. They produce about 20 percent of the nation's electricity and 50 percent of the clean energy. The United States maintains 92 reactors, though a dozen have closed over the last decade — including, a month ago, the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan, about 55 miles southwest of Grand Rapids.... Industry leaders recognize that the age of new large-scale nuclear plants in the United States has passed, chiefly because of runaway costs... But many in the industry say smaller reactors that can be expanded over time offer promise of avoiding long delays and high cost. These reactors, they say, can be built in factories and delivered to approved sites. And the reactors' high-temperature steam could also yield significant amounts of hydrogen, a carbon-free alternative fuel to natural gas.
The project locations can plan for as many as a dozen units but start with just one. But a plant with 12 units would produce half the electricity or even a little less than many other large nuclear facilities.
None of the smaller reactors have been certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which approves licenses and operations of the nation's nuclear power plants. But NuScale Power, a company that designs and markets small reactors in Oregon, expects to receive certification of its design by the end of the summer. A developer then would need approval for a license to build and operate the unit. Thomas Mundy, chief commercial officer for NuScale Power, said his company's product could be built and put into use in about three years, a fraction of the time it takes to build larger reactor units. And the cost, Mr. Mundy said, is competitive with new natural gas facilities at a levelized cost — the electricity price needed to break even at the end of the plant's life — of $45 to $65 a megawatt-hour.
How the mighty has fallen (Score:2)
How dare you! %-)
Well, shit (Score:2)
If we are pinning our hopes on nuclear we have already lost. Too slow, too expensive, accident waiting to happen.
Even gas is expensive now. This week off shore wind contracts were sold at auction for one quarter the cost of gas based electricity. One quarter.
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My take is that this is just some nuclear assholes trying to get even richer. No nuclear that matters will be built anytime soon in the EU. Far, far too expensive and far, far too slow to establish.
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> No nuclear that matters will be built anytime soon > far too slow to establish.
Yeah, thanks for that. It's people like you that have been saying this for 25+ years. I think you're part of the problem.
People who have been whining about nuclear power for decades but are now telling us climate change is an emergency are basically a joke.
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Nope. You're the joke.
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Excuse me for not caring. You got what you deserve.
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Widespread use of fossil fuels is due to people protesting Hydro ?
Yeah. Nice story bro.
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That is just pure refined BS.
Widespread use of fossil fuels predates hydro electricity, and is due to availability, and cheap scaling.
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That is just pure refined BS. Widespread use of fossil fuels predates hydro electricity, and is due to availability, and cheap scaling.
Hydro was an example, not the example. The people protesting hydro and nuclear are exactly the same. Some so called environmentalists even protest wind and solar and tidal (bad for birds and fish). Even high voltage transmission lines have their own share of brain dead demonstrators.
But in the end they are all exactly the same. They shape the system we have through their actions and pretend they have no blame. Sorry, world does not work that way.
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Nothing of that is actually true. France plans 2-4 reactors. That is to keep their nuclear arsenal maintained, that is not their power strategy. May come online in 20-30 years if Flamville (which is _still_ not running) is any indication. "Preparing to build" means absolutely nothing. Germany _cannot_ "restart" reactors. Absolutely impossible. That is not how it works. Germany cannot even extend the running-time of the 3 still online.
Seriously. You are the one advocating species-suicide here and you have z
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You wonder why nuclear, the cleanest, least radioactive, lowest CO2, most environmentally friendly, least deaths / kwh is so scary? I'm sure the fossil fuel lobby has nothing to do with this at all, nope, nothing. We wouldn't be in this mess if we had kept going in 70's and 80's and innovate better nuclear plants.
Also fuck you, and your dimwitted opinion.
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Nope. Nuclear is at the end of it's technology evolution.
And it's dangerous and dirty also.
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Actually, there are estimates that nuclear is about half that of NatGas, CO2 wise. There are other estimates it produces about as much as wind-power, but these ignore that there is only nuclear fuel for 50-70 years (at present consumption) and that poorer grade ore will have to be used pretty if nuclear is extended, which drives up the CO2 footprint.
Things are nowhere near as clear-cut as you people make them out to be. Funny, how fanatics are both stupid and liars and the nuke-morons are no different.
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Correct. Germany cannot realistically restart any of the old junk.
Even extending the 3 last remaining running reactors is a near impossible and probably very costly feat...
Re:Well, shit (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is Fukushima (Score:5, Interesting)
If I was an engineer and I was paying attention you couldn't pay me enough to work on a nuclear reactor after that. A businessman will come in, cut my budget and then when there's inevitably a disaster shift the blame to me and get out smelling like roses. Meanwhile you have billions of dollars of property damage.
I'm well aware that the problems with nuclear aren't technical their social but that doesn't mean those problems aren't real. Nerds like to pretend social problems aren't real problems and that we can just tech our way out of everything. Doesn't work that way in the real world..
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It doesn't matter, nuclear still wins.
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it's winning under the table bonus for corrupt officials, nothing else, nothing useful.
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Tell that to the victims of Fukushima and Chernobyl. They might not be dead, but that doesn't mean they didn't have their lives ruined.
They are also economic disasters. Japan is still paying for Fukushima, with the cost looking to be around half a trillion Euros/USD. Worse still last month a court ruled that the government's free insurance against this kind of thing is actually worthless as they are not liable, and TEPCO doesn't have the money.
Re: Well, shit (Score:2)
A similar point can be made about global warming. Because it is slow onset doesn't make it less of a catastrophe, even though quantifying the damages is less straightforward. Still, I assume everyone agrees that the damages of global warming are significantly more of a concern than those of nuclear catastrophes. So if facing the choice between global warming and nuclear power, well the choice is pretty easy. The question is, is there a viable third option.
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But that's a false choice. It's actually between nuclear and renewables.
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Renewables are the third option I am referring to. However it is still unclear to me whether it is viable. What I have read seems to indicate that emissions incurred by renewables are not that great compared to nuclear, but I find it hard to determine what is a reliable source of information on this topic. France wants nuclear, Germany wants gas, some countries are anti-nuclear or pro-nuclear, lots of articles are in fact partisan. If you have information that you find reliable, I am happy to know about it.
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No it's not.
the only choice is between renewables and more renewables
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Renewable energy just lost.
Everyone but power companies and their shareholders (both of whom profit from building nuclear) loses if we build more nuclear power.
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Right, this is all the fault of the meltdown at Fukushima. The tsunami had nothing to do with the trillions of dollars that will be spent on the cleanup.
Of the hundreds of civil nuclear power reactors in operation all over the world all the anti-science anti-nuclear anti-logic people have against nuclear power are a handful of second generation nuclear power plants to point to as examples of how bad nuclear power must be. That's like saying we should not build new passenger jetliners because the de Havila
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So far, we've had three nuclear "disasters"
More than three.
Collectively, the three killed almost as many people as die in traffic on any given morning in the US, much less the world.
That's the logic that people playing Russian roulette use to play another round.
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Should compare it with gun deaths in the land of the free-to-be-an-idiot, that will stir something up.
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If every nuclear reactor on the world went full chernobyl, with the worst accident numbers given, it would kill as many people as 7 years of coal and oil operating normally.
It is very slow and expensive to build as a solution for global warming, but it costs nothing to not turn off the existing ones that are still fine, like germany is doing.
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Godzilla is not that lethal.
He comes, he smash like 20 buildings then he goes away.
That's what? 10.000 people on the worst, worst case.
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You mean the full lifetime of waste that is simply stored on site in a swimming pool sized area? Which is so harmless that they can just shoot a documentary showing you where and how it is stored without protective clothing?
You wonder why nuclear waste is such a problem, but it's absolutely okay to pollute neighborhoods with car exhausts (and tire rubber particles), oil/coal power plant exhausts, airplane exhausts, all of which are FAR FAR more damaging to our health then the measly insignificant little bit
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Well it's not surprising that gas is expensive, with the world's largest exporter of natural gas embargoed.
People prefer simple ideas, even if they aren't very good. A more realistic approach to something as big as climate change involves lots of alternatives going forward *in parallel*, including newer, more economically attractive forms of nuclear energy, but also conservation and renewable energy.
Nuclear = Obsolete (Score:2)
New nuclear power plants are economically obsolete.
They cost 4x more per kWh than any other alternative.
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It would make more sense to just rely on gas for the few days a year we might actually need it. Concentrate on building up renewable energy and taking advantage of it being incredibly cheap.
There's a cost of living crisis. We can't afford this.
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Governments are going to have to be involved if we are going to meet our climate goals. We can't rely on capitalism to get us there.
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Governments are going to have to be involved if we are going to meet our climate goals. We can't rely on capitalism to get us there.
Governments are all capitalist today, all governments of size are now operated by and for corporations. So we can't rely on governments to get us there.
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Natural gas still needs cooling water, it's the deltaT that make the turbines spin the alternator to generate the electricity.
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Already, nuclear plants around the world are being run at reduced capacity during the summer because there isn't enough cool water.
The reactor can run just fine with the warmer water. The reason why some are run at reduced capacity in the summer is to avoid heating the lake or river water too much and hurting the fish.
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Some nuke plants have had to shut down when the "fish" were made of jelly.
https://www.vice.com/en/articl... [vice.com]
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Why not built a power plant net to a big lake or something? Also, it's not like all of the water evaporates. Some probably does, but most of it is returned to the lake, but warmer.
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it's pointless and dumb, because it just costs 4x more per kWh produced than all available alternatives, fossil or renewable alike.
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There's a fix [ametsoc.org] for that. As a bonus, it can also help solve the problem of heat waves shutting off nuclear power plants [slashdot.org].
Of course solar is even better for heat waves because PV generation coincides with A/C usage.
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It's funny how the last section in your link proves your claim false!
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No, I don't doubt that the heat lingers after the sun sets. I only doubt the claim that "Solar PV is a terrible idea for providing power to air conditioning in a heat wave. [slashdot.org]" Because most of the electrical demand on a hot day coincides when the sun is up and PV panels are producing power.
And as the Anonymous Coward in this thread explains, there are low-tech ways to time-shift the evening cooling demand to the daylight hours [slashdot.org].
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Because linking enough wind farms together to provide baseload power is going to take more time and coordination between countries.
Are you lying? Because this study [plos.org] says powering Europe with wind and solar alone would require only 2% of the continent's land area.
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And if nuclear were so affordable, then they'd be building nuclear power plants all over Europe instead of just one that is a decade behind schedule and many billions of euros over budget [wikipedia.org]. So the omission is not a lie, it's just that nuclear power is no longer relevant.
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Well, your user name is an epic fail, because you seem to have overlooked the blatantly obvious fact that you cannot only generate power with wind and that you can _store_ power large-scale. Well, places you just, say, > 100 years in the past regarding knowledge of the tech state-of-the-art, but who is counting.
Well, this will be done and working despite complete morons like you claiming it cannot.
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Ah, so the cost of wind and solar is not just wind and solar, but also storage. I wonder how that changes the equation. Let's just ignore the fact that there is "large-scale" storage as of yet. There are small scale experiments, that's about it.
And for the record, your username is the stupidest one I ever seen.
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Grid interconnects. Solved problem really.
There is ALWAYS wind somewhere.
Same with solar.
We seem to alternate.. (Score:2)
We seem to alternate to various kinds of power.
Nuclear is our salvation...until Fukishima or Three Mile Island...
The "future of power" seems more faddish than factual. :(
JoshK.
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I think the main issue with nuclear power is it really should be zoned and regulated up the wazoo, which has significant ongoing costs that is anathema to people of a certain political bent. Who, I might mention, also seem to believe wind and solar power were directly inspired by Satan.
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Indeed. Technology has progressed since Three Mile Island and the movie "The China Syndrome."
JoshK.
Natural gas isn't sustainable (Score:5, Interesting)
A ton of methane is dumped in the process of natural gas production and natural gas produces CO2.
One of the few good things to come out of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the fact that it will accelerate the move off of fossil fuels.
Sad thing is, I have thought for 8 years that it was too late. And current CO2 release (over 40 gigatons per year) is now 16 gigatons per year over what the promised/projected release levels were back then (we were going to supposedly be down to 24 gigatons).
5C is *baked* in at this point. The rain bands will move away from current croplands. Large regions will become essentially uninhabitable as the wet bulb temperature goes over 35C. The coastal cities will be flooded. There will be large forced migration/displacement of people all over the world. Many tropical diseases and insects will spread up to between 50 and 60 degrees lattitude. And the permafrost will melt.
And if the locked up methane starts to sublimate, then things get bad.
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Add to that that while natural gas emits less CO2 when burnt, when transported as liquefied over an ocean and counting the whole supply chain, it is reportedly in the same emission ballpark as if we burned coal directly. (Jean Baptiste Fressoz mentioned it in an interview, no other sources as of now)
> 5C is *baked* in at this point.
I thought 3C was still physically possible, if we crashed the global economy within 10 years...
Ukraine war is about natural gas (Score:3)
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Ukrainian natural gas reserves are off the table for at least 5 years now.
I think that's long enough to help foster more alternative energy and nuclear.
It isn't. It takes at least twice that long to get a reactor built, even without any big mean green protesters getting in the way.
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I won't deny it's a stretch (are gas-burning cars "sustainable" because of synfuel?). But it does not cement the investment into natural gas for the life of the plant.
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Well, there's no such thing as green hydrogen, nor infrastructure to even attempt it (which is difficult, as hydrogen is a bitch to work with) so there's that.
The idea is just a distraction.
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it's just B.S.
Those plants are not sustainable.
Green H2 is a myth, the same as fusion power.
They are finally reading their own studies. (Score:5, Informative)
Nuclear power and natural gas as energy sources to lower CO2 emissions are not new. The United Kingdom department of energy hired Dr. David MacKay to do a study on what options they had for energy. From that study came a number of presentations, interviews, and a book, all of which were readily available to anyone looking.
Book: http://www.withouthotair.com/ [withouthotair.com]
Interview (which is quite short): https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/davi... [ted.com]
Dr. MacKay went through the numbers on our energy options in a way that anyone with a high school education should be able to understand. We are not going to get enough energy without nuclear fission as an energy source. There may be a handful of exceptions but even then these nations would want to develop nuclear power for military defense, civil cargo ships, and space exploration.
Every nation has had access to these studies, not just those created by Dr. MacKay, that tell them that nuclear fission and natural gas would lower CO2 emissions while lowering energy costs. The EU has been avoiding these clear facts for far too long. Now that they recognize the uncomfortable truth means we may finally see real and sustained gains on improving human civilization and protections of the natural environment.
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Orbital solar mirrors could work. Unlike fusion sources, which some propose, it requires engineering rather than new physics. NASA has been studying this and doing small scale, pilot projects for years, and it does seem feasible. The idea of using a stable, already exising fusion generator does upset advocates of developing fusion poer on earth, but they've been trying a long time with very little sign of producing any working systems.
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There's no way to scale it economically. With Falcon, launch costs are about $2400/kg and satellite solar panels work out to about 20kg / kW so for launch costs alone you are looking at $4800 / kW or about 48 Billion / GW. With starship, that might be $100/kg, or $2B per GW which looks a lot better, but this is only considering launch cost, not the rest of the plant, and not including ground stations to receive the power, or the fact that these are going to need to be refuelled or replaced often if in low e
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The traditional idea is to mine the moon and near-Earth asteroids with low delta v requirements so as to not have to obtain materials or fuel (even if for fairly inefficient aluminum-oxygen rockets) from Earth, and to build and assemble as much as possible purely in space.
Photovoltaic panels are probably a long way off, but aluminum mirrors concentrating light on a small boiler that is built and launched from Earth, and the structure to keep it all connected, would be more plausible.
But it would take a long
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Solar sails can provide arbitrary amounts of delta V. The plentiful water for other space projects could, in theory fund other projects like solar mirrors. The very low thrust of solar sails is offset by the free fuel and the constant propulsion of solar wind and light pressure. There is effective ongoing research in progress:
https://www.nasa.gov/press-rel... [nasa.gov]
It's not particularly suitable for short-term, manned missions, but for longer term missions like asteroid mining or retr
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The start-up costs for solar mirrors are large. Expect launch costs/kg to drop as the number of launches increase. And if solar sails continue to advance, they can be used to bring in asteroids or ring material from gas giants such as Jupiter to provide bulk metals and most especially, water. The solar mirrors do not require near as much up front investment in new technology or facilities as numerous fission plants, or most especially fusion power.
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You really need to find a new source. McKay has been widely and repeatedly debunked, and being dead is now unable to respond to criticism.
In any case, European nuclear is not going to work. Currently in France 50% of reactors are offline, and even on a good day their capacity factor rarely gets above 70%. It's actually quite comparable to offshore wind, only less predictable because you can't forecast nuclear reactor failures as well as you can forecast the weather.
Plus, we can't afford it.
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Obsolete numbers.
Cost for new nuclear plants went up 200% since those figures.
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It has been debunked by the nuclear industry themselves :
"World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR)"
"The cost of generating solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per megawatt hour (MWh), the WNISR said, while onshore wind power comes in at $29–$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189."
LCOE is the most important factor for reducing fossil use.
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It has been debunked by the nuclear industry themselves :
"World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR)"
You don't know who is writing this so called "report", do you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The World Nuclear Industry Status Report is a yearly report on the nuclear power industry. It is produced by Mycle Schneider, an anti-nuclear activist and a founding member of WISE-Paris, which he directed from 1983 to 2003.
The "report" is a bunch of bullshit. It took only a look at Wikipedia to prove it so.
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No they aren't. They are appeasing the nuclear lobby making use of the gas problems.
If they'd read their studies they'd see nuclear is a hinderance, not a solution to the "Climate change goals". It's a long term good thing to invest in, but not a solution that has even the tiniest impact on our CO2 ambitions.
There are two goals. One sub 20 years, the other in 28. It is completely impossible to have a single nuclear power project go live before the first goal, and the second goal assumes a steady ramp down i
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I noticed a lack of any links to sources. You can't find anyone that put something on the web that can back up your point?
What sources? The 2035 targets, or the 2050 targets? You can find those on the EC website, as well as any green activist website links (extinction rebellion, Greenpeace). Hell go to the original IPCC papers if you want, or just look up the agreements and discussions at the last G20 (not the current one, that's all about Russia Russia and more Russia), or the last G7 conference.
Or the other point that we can't build it? Honestly for that you can just take your pick of any western reactor project started in t
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Wasn't MacKay they guy that computed that you would need more land for solar and wind to power the UK than the size of the UK?
But look, Germany already produces 16% of its primary energy (and ca. 50% of electricity) using renewables with just a tiny fraction of the land used. So something was off...
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If things are so great with wind power in Germany then why is Germany looking to reopen nuclear power plants they recently shuttered?
Coal plants too. Germany makes great cars, but as an example of managing an electric grid they are more of a cautionary tale to the world.
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
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16% of primary energy in Germany is from renewables. But Germany does not use more than 1/6th of its land for renewables. In fact, it uses much less. That already shows the argument that one needs more land than is available (assuming UK is similar to Germany) can not be true.
It is currently discussed to make 2% available for wind power which would be a massive expansion (and the land could still simultaneously be used for other things). Solar should be less than 0.1%. Biomass may use more land, but it doe
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Off like factor 200x. Or 20 000 %.
It's difficult to even be that wrong.
The Iron Law (Score:2)
Its what Roger Pielke calls the Iron Law. When faced with the real world consequences of their emission reduction policies on jobs, welfare, cost of living, governments will blink.
What we see here is the EU starting to reverse. The last thing to go will be the top line story. So there will still be lots of statements that global warming is the greatest threat to humanity since.... And they will still publicly continue to claim that moving to wind and solar and electrifying everything will both be possib
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In the climate case, maybe nuclear and gas are really much greener than we had thought. Maybe trying to scare everyone with prophecies of imminent doom isn't all that smart, isn't doing what we hoped it would.
Eventually it dies down, but the remarkable thing is that the belief of the followers does not fade, it intensifies. They become more vituperative, more devout believers, more extreme. Their denunciations of the unfaithful increase in intensity. Their behavior becomes more and more erratic.
And so we have the Branch Dravidians, or Extinction Rebellion gluing themselves to railings, trains or paintings. Blocking highwys, picketing gas stations.
It will die out in the end, but more slowly, painfully and violently than one might have expected. And the rule is, stay out of the way of those who have come down from the mountain the morning after, not having been Raptured. They will be looking for someone to take it out on. Don't let it be you.
^ VERY Insightful
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Yes, they are large economies. But the important ones who have no intention of changing are the largest and fastest growing emitters. Starting with China.
The alarmed nations account for under 25% of global emissions, and falling. The conclusion is inescapable: emissions will rise. They will be north of 40 billion tons by 2030, and probably will hit 45 billion by 2040.
Regardless of what the West does.
To late for climate change goals (Score:3)
There are no current climate change goals within EU policy that nuclear power could possibly contribute to. The first set of goals are due before we would even get a single plant powered up (if we signed agreements to start building nuclear plants today). The second goal would be impacted but ... critically all climate goals assume a model of a steady ramp down in emissions to the goal point, not turning on a magic wundermachine the day before we're supposed to be CO2 neutral. As a result the 2050 goals would suddenly look like 2036, and the 2035 goals more like 2029. To say nothing of the wundermachine contributing a shitton of CO2 emissions during construction that will take a couple of years to offset itself.
We should absolutely build nuclear plants.
We should absolutely ignore nuclear plants when talking about our CO2 ambitions and goals as its is yet another distraction contributing to yet another missed deadline.
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The fundamental issue is nuclear cannot be an immediate goal since there's nothing immediate about it. We simply cannot build it in time.
Analogy: You're standing on a train track and there's an oncoming train. Do you
a) hope that the government will enact a project for analysing and rerouting the train tracks around you, award the civil contract, and execute the works to move the train tracks so the train doesn't hit you all within the next 15 seconds.
b) realise that there's nothing you can do to reroute sai
Gas (Score:2)
Gas is better than nuclear.
No Clear energy policy (Score:2)
Unless we have high inflation. Also, we overreacted to co2 emissions, they're not that bad
With a username like that, I'm not surprised you support No Clear energy policy.
As for me, my only objection to Nuclear is the lack of reactors that can be economically deployed at the small town level. Nuclear power seems to be all about centralization, since that's where they're safest and easiest to secure in case of who knows what natural or human-induced disaster.
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Really the biggest problem with nuclear energy is that it is competing with an energy source (fossil fuels) where the major cost (pollution) is externalized. Now if we insisted that fossil fuel plants contain their byproducts the way we insist nuclear plants do, nuclear would be a lot cheaper.
The second biggest problem is that nuclear plants are expensive to run, even when they're not generating power. Large scale grid storage projects aren't just good for solar and wind; they'll greatly improve the econo
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Really the biggest problem with nuclear energy is that it is competing with an energy source (fossil fuels) where the major cost (pollution) is externalized. Now if we insisted that fossil fuel plants contain their byproducts the way we insist nuclear plants do, nuclear would be a lot cheaper.
Really the biggest problem with nuclear is that you can only make it look good with a false dichotomy, by comparing it to coal power. Coal, it might be noted, is actually superior to nuclear in every way but pollution. It's not good at load following, but it's still better than nuclear. It's cheaper, and faster to build. That's why we built so much of it.
Solar or Wind plus battery storage is literally cheaper than coal, let alone nuclear. The idea that we need, want, or can even benefit from nuclear power i
Re: it's not sustainable (Score:2)
It will never be viable because of regulation
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LOL, Nuclear has faced the problem of a populace that thinks it knows nuclear when it is mostly dumbfucks that only jump on an anti-nuclear bandwagon due to accidents. Sorry, don't mean to insult people, but my parents are on that bandwagon and I've tried to explain why new nuclear power is not like old nuclear power (even though it is). For example, meltdowns - literally can't happen when the fuel is already melted, as per some fast reactors. Still, having grown up with nuclear == light water reactors I ge
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Sorry, don't mean to insult people, but my parents are on that bandwagon and I've tried to explain why new nuclear power is not like old nuclear power (even though it is).
Freud was here, he slipped on your argument.
New nuclear power is like old nuclear power in that it has the same big problems. Even a meltdown is not necessarily that big a problem, with sufficient containment, compared to the waste problem. To wit, processing the waste makes nuclear, already the most expensive form of generation, even more expensive. In a world run by capitalism, it doesn't make sense to build nuclear power. People want to build large nuclear power projects because they are large capital pr
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Forget it. Maybe in 40 or 50 years.
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SMRs - A good fit for US DoD [...]
Every US military base of the appropriate size should have at least one of these.
Sure, because military bases aren't already typically superfund sites every time we close one. Wait, yes, yes they are. In that regard, yes, scads of untested SMRs and military bases are ideal matches.
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I understand you can get land real cheap around Chernobyl
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I understand you can get land real cheap around Chernobyl
Yes you can, and people actually live there [wikipedia.org]. The greens have spent *millions* in research trying to find any negative health consequences of that, to no avail.
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Yes you can, and people actually live there.
Yes, old people who have been failed by their nation and have nowhere else to go.
The greens have spent *millions* in research trying to find any negative health consequences of that, to no avail.
What? You are a liar, and a shitty one at that. The negative health consequence is elevated cancer risk. But they are old, and the only child who was born there doesn't live there any more because it's hazardous. For them there is no drawback to living there, but only because the alternative is dying in the street. Since we have people dying in the street here in the USA, we don't have any moral high ground there. I bet we have
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Yes you can, and people actually live there.
Yes, old people who have been failed by their nation and have nowhere else to go.
The greens have spent *millions* in research trying to find any negative health consequences of that, to no avail.
What? You are a liar, and a shitty one at that. The negative health consequence is elevated cancer risk. But they are old, and the only child who was born there doesn't live there any more because it's hazardous. For them there is no drawback to living there, but only because the alternative is dying in the street. Since we have people dying in the street here in the USA, we don't have any moral high ground there. I bet we have people living in secret in radioactive superfund sites, too.
No, you're the liar, and the greens. There has never been any actual study that managed to prove any actual, statistically significant increase in cancer rates among samosely attributable to radiation (especially while compensating for otherwise shitty living conditions they experience, rampant alcoholism and smoking, lack of healthcare, etc.). You use big words, like liar, so I dare you to find one such study. Here's a hint: the only "studies" that "prove" bigger incidence of cancer are green-produced bull
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Nope.
We won't punish you, even if you ask for it.
You little Masochist...
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LFTRs in 5 seconds — nobody has ever demonstrated a commercially viable one, but we're all supposed to accept their immediate proliferation in the name of salvation.
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20 years ago I was shouting about how we should have started installing solar 30 years prior. Now I'm shouting about how we should have started installing solar 50 years prior. Only the lawn has changed.
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You ascribe far more logical thinking than is actually present in this issue.