Nuclear Energy is incredibly expensive and has a lot of other issues like long term waste storage. It's arguably better than Coal and Gas but the KEY to decarbonisation is and always will be renewables. The Headline is rather misleading in that regard.
So you want to create a completely new industry. From the ground. With all existing experts having retired. Demanding high quality, no-fault tolerance production. Dependent on resources not found in Europe.
Look, I love nuclear technology. But time has moved on. The costs to rebuild this industry is astronomical and means we lose out on key-future technology like batteries.
Edit: But then there are bombs. And especially French love their nukes due national security. This is the only reason to keep pushing for nuclear, since Russia, the US and China are not gonna change direction on this either. But the very least we could do is be honest about it.
Edit 2: Changed from "World has moved on" to "time has moved on", since evidently China has invested for a good 2 decades to build their own fully functional nuclear-industry. Proving my point that it takes dedicated investment, network effects and scale to rebuild this industry. After all, they too want to mass produce nukes.
There's a German documentary called "Yellow Cake". It is about the cost of mining uranium. It really was eye opening and I have seen it like ten years ago when I was about thirty. It took thirty years for someone to show me how incredibly devastating the mining of Uranium is to the environment. That's how good of kept secret it is. Because once you see it, you would never ever want nuclear energy ever again. And you finally understand how bad people are lying when they say, it is clean energy. It destroys entire landscapes for generations to come! It is extremely expensive and it is very finite.
I think Fukushima rather than Chernobyl looms over us as a more realistic disaster that could happen again.
When you look at the data though, its political fallout was much worse than the actual toll on human life, etc. Fukushima released a small about of radiation into the environment. But modern reactors don’t have the same runaway reactivity flaws that Chernobyl did.
Not zero risk. But not the level of risk resulting in half a continent potentially being uninhabitable.
Here in Ontario, residentially we pay about 0.09 USD per kWh at night and 0.18 USD with demand peak pricing on weekday afternoons. Or if you have flat rate it's about 0.13 USD per kWh. This is considered very expensive by Canadian standards and it's due to our nuclear power program where about 55% of electricity is from nuclear, the rest from a mix of wind/hydro/solar/biofuel and gas. The increased price during the day is due to the need to burn a bit of gas at peak demand. The grid is otherwise nearly carbon neutral, and the long-term plan is to phase out the gas with a mix of wind, nuclear and pumped storage.
We pay less in practice than the rates given above for power, because the government also subsidizes it. But even without that I understand such rates would be relatively cheap in most European countries.
Modern energi consumption confuses me. There has never been more wind and solar, coal fired plants are almost a thing of the past. Everything is becoming increasingly energy efficient, yet we produce more CO2?
CO2 per kWh is steadily going down, but kWhs consumed is still going up, especially in developing nations like China and India where _a lot_ of people live.
1) Countries have major political interest in whether other countries have nuclear reactors
2) Countries are already, at large scale, manipulating discourse across the internet to achieve their political goals
Then of course it follows that any comment thread on a semi-popular or higher site about whether a country should build more nuclear reactors is going to be heavily manipulated by said countries. That's where (most) of the insane people in such threads are probably coming from.
How are we supposed to survive as a civilization with such corrupted channels of communication?
Does this apply also to fossil energy threads? Countries have a major political interest whether other countries use fossil energy, to mitigate the climate catastrophe and ramp down fossils use.
I am a former nuclear opponent. I used to think that nuclear waste was glowing green like they show in the Simpsons and in the Doom 1 game. Once I had access to the Internet in this century, I learned better.
Here are some sources of information that helped me understand the two oft-cited nuclear disasters better.
One regular complaint is the costs of nuclear energy. This is likely true in the US due to regulations that have not been revised for newer technology, but such high costs are cited around the world.
Likewise, the amount of waste and the danger of the waste is not well understood either, and certainly lots of education is needed here. For e.g., most people do not know that the volume of waste is limited and that the same waste can be reused in reactors of other designs.
I do believe that national ego issues get in the way of fixes. I believe that such ego issues got in the way of honest repairs (Fukushima) and timely action (Chernobyl). Certainly, nuclear inspections are still treated with suspicion and hostility, but in fact full transparency and integrity should be the norm.
Corruption and profit-centric thinking are two other problems that plague the nuclear industry. South Korea has had lots of corruption and shortcuts (https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/04/22/136020/how-greed...). One of the accusations in India against France was that France licenses outdated nuclear reactor technology despite having newer technology. I am unable to locate a link supporting this accusation.
With thorium reactors and Small Module Reactors, there are many modern solutions to safety.
We need to stop citing and quoting US-based costs and problems that are linked to outdated US regulations. There are other countries that have more modern regulations and modern technologies.
Because it's technical and an advanced form of technology which appeals to tech people and where normal people have an "irrational" fear of it. And also IT and conversely HN is full of people who have trouble fitting in and pride themselves on being rational, and have made it a career and lifestyle of going the other way as everyone else.
Which is fine, except putting hopes into a technology that has failed repeatedly for 60 years is in itself irrational.
HN would do itself a favor if it learned the lessons of "worse is better" and applied it to, well, almost anything. In this case, a moonshot to advance nuclear globally might bring realistic results in 10-15 years. By that time the world will already be decarbonized by renewables as it's already happening. At best nuclear might be that last missing piece to get to 100%, but even this I would no longer bet on. There is already insane growth in undeveloped countries which will push demand even further. Renewables are ridiculously cheap.
It's hard to see how non-dispatchable generation like nuclear can be competitive in Northern European markets dominated by intermittent wind power. So much wind capacity has already been built in Denmark that it sometimes meets 100% of electricity demand. Britain will be there soon, certainly long before substantial numbers of new nuclear reactors could conceivably be built.
I suspect the UK will only build the nuclear capacity required to keep the industry around on national security grounds.
Note that Denmark would have to keep deploying more wind capacity as the country would need more electricity over time (electrification of the transportation, heat, industry, etc.).
So, even if some days wind capacity does meets 100% of the electricity demand nowadays, we would need add more capacity.
Australia, for instance, powers 40% of its electricity with renewables.
However, electricity makes up ~20% of _total_ energy consumption which means renewables made up 9% of _total_ energy production.
As the electrification of transport, industry, manufacturing, etc proceeds, the demand for electricity will increase (in the case of Australia, we need to 5x our electricity production).
Ironically, legislators are disincentivized from stimulating electrification as getting to 100% renewable electricity production is easier when electricity is only 20% of our energy usage.
I think nuclear has parallel to mainframes. Capital intensive, long lead time, expensive to operate/maintain/dispose and practically irrelevant in the day of distributed (computing) generation and storage.
It’s uncanny how the narrative rhymes: we have insanely capable portable computing devices at price points that are accessible to every person across the planet. Similarly, distributed generation (and storage) are already bringing electricity to people who have no real chance of being on the grid ever.
I see no way the economics working out for nuclear, except for niche uses.
I can even imagine the grid being something relegated for long range / high intensity applications (instead of household distribution) in a few hundred years
>... composed of representatives from employers' associations, workers' unions (trade unions) and civil society organisations.
I'm not sure how up they are on technical issues like the rapid progress in batteries and solar and the like.
Hinkley C in the UK was approved in 2016 and probably will be producing in 2031 so 15 years on. (cost ~£40bn). In the last 15 years the cost of battery storage and of solar panels have both fallen about 10x. If that goes on they will be much cheaper but the time nuclear comes online.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 53.5 ms ] threadAnyways, solar is also cheaper
Look, I love nuclear technology. But time has moved on. The costs to rebuild this industry is astronomical and means we lose out on key-future technology like batteries.
Edit: But then there are bombs. And especially French love their nukes due national security. This is the only reason to keep pushing for nuclear, since Russia, the US and China are not gonna change direction on this either. But the very least we could do is be honest about it.
Edit 2: Changed from "World has moved on" to "time has moved on", since evidently China has invested for a good 2 decades to build their own fully functional nuclear-industry. Proving my point that it takes dedicated investment, network effects and scale to rebuild this industry. After all, they too want to mass produce nukes.
When you look at the data though, its political fallout was much worse than the actual toll on human life, etc. Fukushima released a small about of radiation into the environment. But modern reactors don’t have the same runaway reactivity flaws that Chernobyl did.
Not zero risk. But not the level of risk resulting in half a continent potentially being uninhabitable.
We pay less in practice than the rates given above for power, because the government also subsidizes it. But even without that I understand such rates would be relatively cheap in most European countries.
Where is the fossile fuel being burnt?
If you take as axioms:
1) Countries have major political interest in whether other countries have nuclear reactors
2) Countries are already, at large scale, manipulating discourse across the internet to achieve their political goals
Then of course it follows that any comment thread on a semi-popular or higher site about whether a country should build more nuclear reactors is going to be heavily manipulated by said countries. That's where (most) of the insane people in such threads are probably coming from.
How are we supposed to survive as a civilization with such corrupted channels of communication?
Here are some sources of information that helped me understand the two oft-cited nuclear disasters better.
The World Nuclear Energy write up on the Fukushima incident: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-sec...
Some information on the Chernobyl incident: The infographics show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uJhjqBz5Tk
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-sec...
A lecture in the MIT Courseware on the incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijst4g5KFN0
This lecture is way more informative where the professor explains how the workers took the system beyond the rated capacity as part of a test.
There have been many lessons learned, and the World Nuclear article linked above shares some of these.
Here is a writeup of the Three Mile Island incident: https://world-nuclear.org/Information-Library/Safety-and-Sec...
One regular complaint is the costs of nuclear energy. This is likely true in the US due to regulations that have not been revised for newer technology, but such high costs are cited around the world.
Likewise, the amount of waste and the danger of the waste is not well understood either, and certainly lots of education is needed here. For e.g., most people do not know that the volume of waste is limited and that the same waste can be reused in reactors of other designs.
I do believe that national ego issues get in the way of fixes. I believe that such ego issues got in the way of honest repairs (Fukushima) and timely action (Chernobyl). Certainly, nuclear inspections are still treated with suspicion and hostility, but in fact full transparency and integrity should be the norm.
Corruption and profit-centric thinking are two other problems that plague the nuclear industry. South Korea has had lots of corruption and shortcuts (https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/04/22/136020/how-greed...). One of the accusations in India against France was that France licenses outdated nuclear reactor technology despite having newer technology. I am unable to locate a link supporting this accusation.
With thorium reactors and Small Module Reactors, there are many modern solutions to safety.
ThorCon's Thorium Converter Reactor - Lars Jorgensen in Bali https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB1IrzDDI9g
Here is the full training by Thorcon on their reactors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkvEXm-rMW4&list=PLuGiwaUJYE...
We need to stop citing and quoting US-based costs and problems that are linked to outdated US regulations. There are other countries that have more modern regulations and modern technologies.
Which is fine, except putting hopes into a technology that has failed repeatedly for 60 years is in itself irrational.
HN would do itself a favor if it learned the lessons of "worse is better" and applied it to, well, almost anything. In this case, a moonshot to advance nuclear globally might bring realistic results in 10-15 years. By that time the world will already be decarbonized by renewables as it's already happening. At best nuclear might be that last missing piece to get to 100%, but even this I would no longer bet on. There is already insane growth in undeveloped countries which will push demand even further. Renewables are ridiculously cheap.
I suspect the UK will only build the nuclear capacity required to keep the industry around on national security grounds.
Australia, for instance, powers 40% of its electricity with renewables.
However, electricity makes up ~20% of _total_ energy consumption which means renewables made up 9% of _total_ energy production.
As the electrification of transport, industry, manufacturing, etc proceeds, the demand for electricity will increase (in the case of Australia, we need to 5x our electricity production).
Ironically, legislators are disincentivized from stimulating electrification as getting to 100% renewable electricity production is easier when electricity is only 20% of our energy usage.
It’s uncanny how the narrative rhymes: we have insanely capable portable computing devices at price points that are accessible to every person across the planet. Similarly, distributed generation (and storage) are already bringing electricity to people who have no real chance of being on the grid ever.
I see no way the economics working out for nuclear, except for niche uses.
I can even imagine the grid being something relegated for long range / high intensity applications (instead of household distribution) in a few hundred years
Honestly the main part about nuclear energy is dependence.
In Germany we saw how well that played out in 2022 when Russian gas stopped flowing.
There is a shit ton of innovation around battery technologies, extending the grid and behind the meter micro-grids.
A more diversified, autonomous (as in, wind, solar) energy supply beats Nuclear in terms of national security and long term viability any day.
>... composed of representatives from employers' associations, workers' unions (trade unions) and civil society organisations.
I'm not sure how up they are on technical issues like the rapid progress in batteries and solar and the like.
Hinkley C in the UK was approved in 2016 and probably will be producing in 2031 so 15 years on. (cost ~£40bn). In the last 15 years the cost of battery storage and of solar panels have both fallen about 10x. If that goes on they will be much cheaper but the time nuclear comes online.