- cross-posted to:
- nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
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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.
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 (which means grid upgrades are useful) and they can be paired with other flexible on-demand generation: fossil gas, hydrogen, batteries.
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.
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.
Climate change is a far more pressing issue, and it needs to be solved ASAP
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.
Renewables are way, way cheaper. Nuclear is finished. I’m sick of hearing its supporters never ending excuses.
I’m sick of hearing its supporters never ending excuses.
Don’t be so naive about nuclear just because it’s expensive and takes a long time to build does not mean that it isn’t a good system. We need the base load what else are you going to use fossil fuels or you just hoping it will always be windy and always be sunny?