Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Do you think we, generally as humans and perhaps more specifically in first world locations, should be building new nuclear power plants?
Nuclear Power?
- Thread starter Hygro
- Start date
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
We should have Nuclear Powered Cars
Lexicus
Deity
I don't see much reason to hurry and shut down existing plants, but there's no good reason any resources invested in nuclear shouldn't be invested in renewables instead.
Only when we've worked out where we are going to safely store the waste and with waste storage factored into the costs. So probably never.
Thorgalaeg
Deity
We should have Nuclear Powered Cars
Ford Nucleon - Wikipedia
Never built because obvious reasons, but the fact it was even considered shows how crazy the 50s were.
It ain't the answer to the world's electricity decarbonisation.
Nuclear as a share of world electricity production has never gone above the like 10 or 15 percent mark, only about 30 countries have any nuclear generation at all, and of those nuclear-generating countries only 3 have more than 50% nuclear generation (and one of those is Ukraine). It's a niche tech which was often developed for security reasons rather than economic, and has no prospect of rapid growth.
The main question for electricity policy now is getting new build for rapid decarbonisation of electricity supply. For that purpose it's pretty simply not suitable. Not when you compare it to the existing and ongoing rapid rollout of renewable electricity generation, which has seen non-hydro renewables, ie wind and solar, shoot past nuclear's share from a small base in about 15 years (hydro was already bigger but also isn't really growing much).
One big factor limiting it is the high construction and operating costs and long lag time and the tendency of those things to blow out, countries building nuclear plants now need to commit to very heavy subsidies and would be better off using that money on renewables. The contexts it works in are limited - it often doesn't have much social license which makes it tough to make happen politically, it does need political and institutional stability to be safe, and it needs extensive support infrastructure including expertise which is hard for new countries to develop from scratch. If you're proposing it as a solution to decarbonisation, you're asking dozens of countries to start from scratch. Finally, it likely doesn't really play super nicely in a market with predominantly intermittent/variable generation because it's premised on very high capacity factors, which are hard to maintain in a variable renewable centric market.
Nuclear as a share of world electricity production has never gone above the like 10 or 15 percent mark, only about 30 countries have any nuclear generation at all, and of those nuclear-generating countries only 3 have more than 50% nuclear generation (and one of those is Ukraine). It's a niche tech which was often developed for security reasons rather than economic, and has no prospect of rapid growth.
The main question for electricity policy now is getting new build for rapid decarbonisation of electricity supply. For that purpose it's pretty simply not suitable. Not when you compare it to the existing and ongoing rapid rollout of renewable electricity generation, which has seen non-hydro renewables, ie wind and solar, shoot past nuclear's share from a small base in about 15 years (hydro was already bigger but also isn't really growing much).
One big factor limiting it is the high construction and operating costs and long lag time and the tendency of those things to blow out, countries building nuclear plants now need to commit to very heavy subsidies and would be better off using that money on renewables. The contexts it works in are limited - it often doesn't have much social license which makes it tough to make happen politically, it does need political and institutional stability to be safe, and it needs extensive support infrastructure including expertise which is hard for new countries to develop from scratch. If you're proposing it as a solution to decarbonisation, you're asking dozens of countries to start from scratch. Finally, it likely doesn't really play super nicely in a market with predominantly intermittent/variable generation because it's premised on very high capacity factors, which are hard to maintain in a variable renewable centric market.
Last edited:
PhroX
Deity
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- Jan 12, 2009
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- 2,801
Feels like it's too late for new nuclear plants, at least here in the UK. The cost and lead time is just too high for them to be practical, particularly when combined with the lack of institutional knowledge in the country regarding the design and construction of them, instead of investing in renewables. Had we got going heavily on it 15 or so years ago, then maybe it would've been worth it as part of the solution, but now doing more than maintaining what we've go makes little sense.
Angst
Rambling and inconsistent
yes
but sidenote, and not what hygro was asking about:
can we stop pretending it'll naturaly solve the climate crisis
i'm all for nuclear, because it's good. but the material situation is that nuclear takes to long to set up. i'm tired of people sidelining the climate issue with "with should just go nuclear!", not practically dealing with it not working, and then, by the way, not actually following up by building nuclear plants.
but sidenote, and not what hygro was asking about:
can we stop pretending it'll naturaly solve the climate crisis
i'm all for nuclear, because it's good. but the material situation is that nuclear takes to long to set up. i'm tired of people sidelining the climate issue with "with should just go nuclear!", not practically dealing with it not working, and then, by the way, not actually following up by building nuclear plants.
If you are in a rich country, yes. That is because of political expedience. There are political cohorts that prefer nuclear, and regions where it makes sense. It's vital to get those people off of fossil fuels.
Absolution
King
I would describe myself as an extreme and active environmentalist.
But I still fear very much the unwanted developments that civil nuclear ability can promote in some questionable countries.
Would you feel comfortable if countries like Iraq or Ethiopia had a civilian nuclear program?
Hell, what about Iran?
We've seen what it can lead to.
The knowledge, the facilities, the system - can all be abused.
Promoting it in countries that already have nuclear ability is better. Theoretically they can export their energy to other countures. But if thua they become the world's top energy exporters - then many other regimes would envy it, and here's our problem once again.
I don't know for certain, but I do know that we are far from trying our best at non-nuclear green energies, so better focus on that for the near future.
But I still fear very much the unwanted developments that civil nuclear ability can promote in some questionable countries.
Would you feel comfortable if countries like Iraq or Ethiopia had a civilian nuclear program?
Hell, what about Iran?
We've seen what it can lead to.
The knowledge, the facilities, the system - can all be abused.
Promoting it in countries that already have nuclear ability is better. Theoretically they can export their energy to other countures. But if thua they become the world's top energy exporters - then many other regimes would envy it, and here's our problem once again.
I don't know for certain, but I do know that we are far from trying our best at non-nuclear green energies, so better focus on that for the near future.
Senethro
Overlord
I do think it a bit of a scam that oil companies funded anti-nuclear green groups in the '90s.
Its both too late for nuclear and it should be done anyway, because our leaders are lying about timelines. Nuclear won't stop us from hitting +2 warming, but it might help stop us from hitting +3.
Its both too late for nuclear and it should be done anyway, because our leaders are lying about timelines. Nuclear won't stop us from hitting +2 warming, but it might help stop us from hitting +3.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
I think we want nuclear scientists and there needs to be something for them to do.
I think if we need rather than want people with a specific skill set we don't need to find things for them to do.
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- 952
we could have done something about having more nuclear power plants years ago just as we could have done something about climate change in general many years ago too.
I imagine you could say the same for anything which was not given much thought when it first arrived on the scene.
Like Stirling Engines, or something: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine
saying ''it's too little too late so let's put everything into renewables''...sort of misses the point of having a system built on "redundancy". many different components depending on the situation. which is what energy issues should discuss. and not one-sized solutions.
I imagine you could say the same for anything which was not given much thought when it first arrived on the scene.
Like Stirling Engines, or something: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine
saying ''it's too little too late so let's put everything into renewables''...sort of misses the point of having a system built on "redundancy". many different components depending on the situation. which is what energy issues should discuss. and not one-sized solutions.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Ok Milton Friedman
Yes, the free market will keep certain skills fresh and primed. On the other hand, democracies really should consider maintaining skills and technologies outside of what the free market prefers, because of longer-term planning
The calculations are harder than people think, but my belief is that the delay is more expensive than failing to find the most cost-effective alternative. But of course, expensive for somebody else who's much poorer than the people delaying the transition
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/nuclear-revival-column-don-pittis-1.6615356?__vfz=medium%3Dsharebar
The calculations are harder than people think, but my belief is that the delay is more expensive than failing to find the most cost-effective alternative. But of course, expensive for somebody else who's much poorer than the people delaying the transition
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
In board games we call this "turn economy"
GoodEnoughForMe
n.m.s.s.
Ideally we’d invent a Time Machine to go back in time and prevent widespread decommissioning of them in places like Germany, but global warming needs to be an all hands on deck mobilization, and plenty of places are a long ways off from 100% renewables, so building more should absolutely be on the table.
I don't think there's likely to be anywhere in the world that has the institutional capacity and tens of billions of dollars in public funds to drop on a new nuclear power plant starting in 2022, who wouldn't get more electricity and sooner by spending the same amount of money on some combination of solar and wind. The gulf these days is pretty stark.
