A Decade After Fukushima Disaster, Foes of Nuclear Power Reconsider (msn.com) 257
The war in Ukraine has "reshaped" energy markets, reports the Washington Post, with gas and oil shortages driving up the price of fossil fuels.
The end result? "From Japan to Germany to Britain to the United States, leaders of countries that had stopped investing in nuclear power are now considering building new power plants or delaying the closure of existing ones." The shift is especially notable in Japan and Germany, where both turned decisively against nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima disaster.... This week, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced that his government is considering constructing next-generation nuclear power plants with the goal of making them commercially operational in the 2030s. The government may also extend the operational life of its current nuclear power plants. German policymakers, meanwhile, are considering prolonging the life of three final nuclear power plants that had been scheduled to go offline at the end of the year. The reprieve would be temporary — just a year or two to get through the current energy crisis — but it would still mark a significant policy reversal that has been a major focus of Germany political life for the last decade...
Any decision in Germany would have to be approved by [German Economy Minister Robert] Habeck and his Green party — which was founded decades ago to focus on abolishing nuclear power. It remains a core policy position of the party — but so is opposition to Russia's war in Ukraine and a desire to be as strong as possible against the Kremlin. "We are in really special times," said Dennis Tänzler, a director of Adelphi, a Berlin-based climate think tank. "The bottom line is that German climate and energy policy has been shaped since Fukushima by a cross-party consensus that overall the technological risks, the security risks, are just too great."
Even some prominent nuclear critics appear open to keeping existing plants online for longer, though they oppose building any new ones. "There's no connection between building nuclear power plants and dealing with the price spike caused by the loss of Russian gas," since they take at least a decade to construct, said Tom Burke, the chairman of E3G, a London-based climate think tank. But, he said, extending the life of existing reactors could make sense. "If you can do it safely, and it's worthwhile economically to do it, I don't see any good reason not to extend the life of nuclear reactors," he said.
The end result? "From Japan to Germany to Britain to the United States, leaders of countries that had stopped investing in nuclear power are now considering building new power plants or delaying the closure of existing ones." The shift is especially notable in Japan and Germany, where both turned decisively against nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima disaster.... This week, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced that his government is considering constructing next-generation nuclear power plants with the goal of making them commercially operational in the 2030s. The government may also extend the operational life of its current nuclear power plants. German policymakers, meanwhile, are considering prolonging the life of three final nuclear power plants that had been scheduled to go offline at the end of the year. The reprieve would be temporary — just a year or two to get through the current energy crisis — but it would still mark a significant policy reversal that has been a major focus of Germany political life for the last decade...
Any decision in Germany would have to be approved by [German Economy Minister Robert] Habeck and his Green party — which was founded decades ago to focus on abolishing nuclear power. It remains a core policy position of the party — but so is opposition to Russia's war in Ukraine and a desire to be as strong as possible against the Kremlin. "We are in really special times," said Dennis Tänzler, a director of Adelphi, a Berlin-based climate think tank. "The bottom line is that German climate and energy policy has been shaped since Fukushima by a cross-party consensus that overall the technological risks, the security risks, are just too great."
Even some prominent nuclear critics appear open to keeping existing plants online for longer, though they oppose building any new ones. "There's no connection between building nuclear power plants and dealing with the price spike caused by the loss of Russian gas," since they take at least a decade to construct, said Tom Burke, the chairman of E3G, a London-based climate think tank. But, he said, extending the life of existing reactors could make sense. "If you can do it safely, and it's worthwhile economically to do it, I don't see any good reason not to extend the life of nuclear reactors," he said.
Nuclear power is required (Score:4, Informative)
It is fact that politicians are just starting to realize. That is why the worlds top climate scientists support new nuclear energy.
Just a reminder that coal kills more people every hour than non soviet nuclear has ever.
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...and a second reminder that burning coal releases much more radioactivity into the atmosphere than nuclear.
No, it doesn't. Almost all radioactivity in coal is thorium, which ends up in the ash, not in the atmosphere.
Coal only releases more radioactivity than nuclear in "normal operation", so excluding events such as Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Re:Nuclear power is required (Score:4, Interesting)
Coal ash is a real pain in the ass. Various groups are gaining traction suing utilities throughout the Southeast United States over coal ash storage and disposal. There's really nothing anyone can do with it other than dewater it and throw it in lined pits in the ground. Then they hope the liner holds up to prevent leakage of heavy metals into the water table.
Ash pond storage became the big thing after the EPA et al pushed plant operators to implement scrubbers. Those ash ponds filled up over time. Now nobody really wants to deal with the increasing volume of coal ash that's difficult to store safely over the long term. Nobody wants another Roane County disaster.
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The IT "Cloud" and nuclear power are in a similar boat. The average numbers of failures/breaches are probably lower than the traditional approaches, but when failures happen they make news, and politicians hate bad news under their reign. Thus, it's politically more palatable to fail incrementally, below the news radar even if the total average damage is greater than spiky failure curves. Asthma and lung cancer from fossil fuels kills and harms many, we just don't hear about much. (We've yet to see any real
Nuclear Required Only For Bombs (Score:2, Troll)
Nuclear power is economically obsolete in the civilian space. It costs 5x more per kWh to make electricity.
The only thing requiring nuclear is creating and maintaining nuclear bombs.
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5x more than what?
The latest nuclear power plants under construction (Vogtle and Hinkley) will produce power at about 5 times the cost of wind turbines. The previous nuclear project in America (Virgil Summer plant in SC) was discontinued after squandering $3B because it was way over budget and behind schedule.
Nuclear has been one financial debacle after another, and there is no reason to believe that "next time will be different."
Vogtle nuclear expansion price tag tops $30 billion [powermag.com]
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More than 5x. The guaranteed price they get goes up with inflation, and inflation is very high. By the time they open, many years from now, the price will be even more ridiculous.
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Just curious - how many lawsuits did that nuclear project have to fend off before they gave up? Generally, in the USA, if you announce building a new nuclear plant, you can count on a lawsuit with injunction to prevent any work on building same before you get home from the office that afternoon.
And another one after that. Repeat till you give up on
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Just curious - how many lawsuits did that nuclear project have to fend off before they gave up?
Once construction began, there were no delays due to lawsuits.
The bankruptcy of Westinghouse due to cost overruns on other nuke projects, including Vogtle, was a factor in the decision to pull the plug.
Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Units 2 and 3 [wikipedia.org]
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https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
Tell it to the Germans whose powerbills are now 300+ percent more than a year ago.
You keep trotting out this five times figure, but right now, in reality, Germany is right back in the Weimar era -- prisoners to inflexible political thinking with inflation numbers that make mine here in the US look tame.
And I just spent 100% more on medicine, just today, compared to the same medicine a year ago.
Take your enviro bullshit and shove it. The world tires of your kind.
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And I just spent 100% more on medicine, just today, compared to the same medicine a year ago.
You can't seriously be somehow blaming that on renewable power.
Re:Nuclear Required Only For Bombs (Score:4)
No, I'm blaming it on stupid politicians elected by an even stupider populace -- these problems are all intertwined and related. Doesn't matter if it's here or there, EU or US or UK or whatever -- if people constantly put people in power who disregard the best possible outcomes for cheap votes, or cheap favors, then by golly, you deserve it. But in doing so, you're dragging down the world entire into this hell.
They all have a common root cause tho, but people refuse to look in the mirror and accept their part in that root cause.
Keep electing what you're electing, obviously it's worked so well for the past 5 decades.. yep. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result IS the very definition of insanity.
And again, that applies here, there and everywhere, it's not a USA-only problem. it's world-wide. The dumb keep electing the rulers, and now we're ALL paying for it. Some more than others, but soon I think we'll all gonna feel it real hard.
Say Hello to WWIII.
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Well, it's not like I'm going to argue that a stupid populace doesn't elect stupid politicians. I think we might disagree in a number of cases about which politicians and policies are stupid, however.
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What's the old joke? More people have died in Teddy Kennedy's car than in nuclear power accidents in the USA?
That said, in the USA, the estimated deaths from burning coal are about 8000 per year.
Nuclear power, even including Chernobyl, is still single-digit deaths per year on average over the last three quarter century...
Re:Nuclear power is required (Score:4, Informative)
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One reason is that Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, China, and Ukraine supply 60% of nuclear fuel. If we scaled up like so many wanted, we would be political hostage as we are with fossil fuel. Friendly countries like Canada and Australia only supple 25%.
Countries like Germany are resource poor, which is
Re:Nuclear power is required (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Nuclear power is required (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, and Putin celebrates. Because, you know, 50% of the world supply of nuclear fuel comes from Russia. Incidentally, the top climate people are not experts on nuclear and all they do is say that it could be part of the mix. Those know a bit more will also say that it will take too long for the first wave of things that need to be done _now_.
Maybe in 30 years. Maybe not even then. Fucking nuclear liars.
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As I said before, "lies, lies and more lies". You should be ashamed of yourself.
France, incidentally, is currently polluting with coal, because if their nukes were not down, there would be no reason to bring coal online again. And if more of Europe had gone the same way France did with their nuclear insanity, we would now be sitting in the dark.
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all things in moderation (Score:5, Interesting)
Optimal solutions are not binary, but are linear combinations that optimize risk/reward. Politics is full of idiots who jump on the latest monomania bandwagon, with everything being black and white and binary.
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We're really not (Score:3, Insightful)
That keeps the industry on life support, but it doesn't change the fact that per kilowatt wind/solar are not only cheaper but that project costs don't go out of control. And no, we can't just pull all that "bureaucratic" stuff. Nuclear reactors as they exist today are incredibly dangerous if shoddily built. That "bureaucracy" is what it takes to make sure corners aren't cut, because otherwise they'll use the wrong concrete, cheap metals and whatever else it takes for the contractor to afford a new beach house.
Oh, and yes, you can run a grid off solar & wind in Seattle. Cloud cover isn't an issue anymore. Bringing this up since it always comes up in every reply...
And yes, I know there are modern designs that are theoretically 100% safe. They're still way, way more expensive than wind/solar, the ones that might actually go into production aren't 100% safe and the ones that *are* 100% safe are still largely theoretical. Yes, I've seen the small reactor designs that can be made in a factory. I'm not impressed.
What turned me off from nuke wasn't just Fukushima being evacuated for 10 years (and the utter economic devastation that cause, I'm American and we have no safety net, if I'm forced to leave my home with the close on my back I spend the rest of my life in abject poverty). No, what got me was Japan's response.
They blamed the engineers. Not the CEOs who caused the disaster by cutting corners. The engineers. I don't mean the gov't blamed the engineers, I mean the public blamed them. They blamed the guys who stayed behind and got radiation poisoning trying to fix the CEO's mess and save the city.
If I was an engineer you couldn't pay me enough to work on a nuclear power plant after seeing that. Knowing that when my boss cuts my maintenance budget and I risk my life to save the city I'll be villified and blamed while the ones responsible get off scott free. Fuck that.
Re: We're really not (Score:3)
I don't believe just solar and wind solve this either.
We need intelligent thought into alternative ways to produce energy. We need to distribute the energy load across as many sources as possible.
Meaning we need solar panels on all roofs. We need small windmills where we can. Rivers with hydro, that don't block the whole river and destroy the ecosystem. Tidal generation on the coasts. And new tractors to try and consume all the waste from the older plants.
Only when I see a balanced plan would I believe that
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We're constantly researching new sources of power, new ways to improve efficiency, etc. That's happening right now. But what's also happening right now is that wind and solar are cheapest, right now. At the same time it's worth considering that nuclear power has never been cheapest. Another thing that's happening right now is climate change. We need to be shutting down fossil fuel plants right now as a result. So what we have right now, that we can build right now, to respond to the crisis of right now, is
Nothing changes the FACT that solar alone fails (Score:5, Insightful)
it doesn't change the fact that per kilowatt wind/solar are not only cheaper but that project costs don't go out of control.
If you have countries building SMRs (small modular reactors) in factories to be shipped all around the world, how do costs get out of control?
And the materials used are in great abundance, unlike solar panels or windmills. We are basically already capped in solar panel production due to both manufacturing capacity, and the fundamental materials used in production [pv-magazine.com]
Solar is important to keep working on expanding but it cannot be expanded in any timeframe that actually produces significant replacement power for coal and gas plants. Only massive expansion of nuclear plants can accomplish that goal within ten years or less.
Do you actually want to reduce CO2? Or do you just hate nuclear so much you are willing to utterly fail at the goal of CO2 reduction, simply to prevent nuclear power use? Because those are the two choices you have, no matter how much you want to believe otherwise.
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Even those SMRs need maintenance and the problem is nobody wants to pay for it. And inevitably falls on the government to pay for that maintenance but the problem with that is taxpayers are always demanding more tax cuts because their wages aren't keeping up and haven't been since the seventies so they're trying to make up the difference through tax breaks. The end result is maintenance doesn't get done and something that should be perfectl
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Costs get out of control as soon as maintenance comes into play.
That has not been true for a very long time now.
This is untrue. It is imaginary thinking.
You're conflating a hypothesis that you believe in for a history that happened. Except, it hasn't happened.
That's not even bull shit. It is horse shit.
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Only massive expansion of nuclear plants can accomplish that goal within ten years or less.
There is absolutely no frick'n way that even a single new nuke can be built in less than ten years.
Vogtle has been under construction for more than two decades and still isn't operational, and it used all the expertise available.
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Indeed. More like 10...20 years from start of planning to start of construction and then another 10 - 30 years. That is for exiting, proven designs. SMRs add another 20-50 years until the design is ready and industrialized. If we really want to commit species suicide, then nuclear is the way to go.
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it doesn't change the fact that per kilowatt wind/solar are not only cheaper but that project costs don't go out of control.
If you have countries building SMRs (small modular reactors) in factories to be shipped all around the world, how do costs get out of control?
Well, that may or may not work. It is at the very least 30 and more likely 50 years away, i.e. far, far too late.
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SMRs need refuelling every couple of years. Countries won't want to be dependent on a constant supply of nuclear fuel, and the associated maintenance contracts.
And I'm pretty sure the US won't be shipping SMRs to Iran and North Korea, and many other countries they don't trust to have nukes.
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I'm pretty sure the US won't be shipping much of anything to Iran and North Korea. I recall news reports of cooking fuel, fertilizers, and plumbing parts being shipped to the Gaza Strip with them only to be used to make improvised bombs and rockets to be used against Israel. These people demand humane treatment but when any aid is supplied the materials end up as weapons used against the people that provided the materials.
People might think it safe to provide bags of flour to make bread but even that has
yay facts are trolling (Score:2)
please mod this down too, I might write some comments I care about later and I don't want those modded down. But I'll always get more karma with my facts
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No need to waste mod points, at this point your posts are self-moderating - everyone sees your name, subtracts ten points and just skips over what you wrote.
At this point, I hope that everyone recognizes you disgusting moderation abusers for what you are. If it wasn't clear that you don't have a sense of shame, I would ask you if you're ashamed of yourself. The fact that you're posting AC, even though Slashdot requires a login to post now, just shows that you're trying to hide the name of one of your (probably numerous) accounts while you make a mockery of the system.
Re:Nothing changes the FACT that solar alone fails (Score:4, Interesting)
Define "viable SMR". It appears to me that the US Navy has been getting viable SMRs for decades.
The usual reply to this is that military nuclear power plants are different than civilian nuclear power plants. That's true, but they don't have to be. It appears that the US Navy can get SMRs built in about two years, not two decades.
For people that are so concerned about global warming it seems odd that these same people are opposed to nuclear power. What is the bigger threat? Global warming? Or nuclear power? That's where the debate has landed because we ran out of other options. If we could know for certain that wind and solar power could meet all of our energy needs then we would not be having this discussion. So, we have to pick the lesser evil, global warming or nuclear power. If anyone replies with claims that wind and solar power will save us then that's just telling me global warming is no longer a threat. If anyone insists global warming is still a threat then we should do everything in our power to stop it. That is unless that thing we'd do would do more harm than global warming, and it appears that nuclear power qualifies as a greater threat. So, if nuclear power is a greater threat than global warming then just how bad can global warming be? If stopping global warming means nuclear power accidents on the level of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima every decade or so then perhaps that is worth not seeing coastal cities flooded, global crop failures, and all the other things that come with rising global temperatures.
Tell me which is worse, global warming or nuclear fission power. I'll go along with whichever you choose. If global warming is preferred to the safest energy source humanity has ever created then I would guess that global warming can't be all that bad. If it is true that solar power will prove to be cheaper than nuclear power, as well as being faster to build, then you have nothing to worry about. We will see solar power come online and solve our energy needs, then every nuclear power plant under construction would be abandoned for costing too much and taking too long to build.
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Define "viable SMR". It appears to me that the US Navy has been getting viable SMRs for decades.
How about defining it as "economically viable". You're talking about the military. They think nothing of spending tens or even hundreds of times as much for power and they also don't have many of the regulatory and safety concerns of a civilian power plant. Also, SMRs are supposed to be maintenance free. Navy nuclear reactors have whole teams of technicians managing them.
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How about defining it as "economically viable".
That's not helpful, we'd need some quantifiable means by which to calculate that. Even if "economically viable" means "cheaper than solar power" then we'd still have people debating on how to make those calculations.
You're talking about the military. They think nothing of spending tens or even hundreds of times as much for power and they also don't have many of the regulatory and safety concerns of a civilian power plant.
The military thinks plenty of costs and safety. The military wants more nuclear powered surface ships, especially icebreakers and guided missile destroyers. Congress hasn't approved the extra build costs because they believe oil fired ships to be cheaper to run. Okay then, what of the "exter
The US Navy doesn't worry about budgets (Score:2, Informative)
You're presenting nuke as the only solution to global warming. Facts not in evidence.
Also, it's easy to say it's OK to have those disasters if you're not personally afraid of them, which you're not. I am. I've seen what it's like to be homeless in America and it terrifies me. The prospect of having to flee my city for 10+ years exceeds my fear of global warming.
We can easily build enough wind/s
Economic suicide. (Score:2)
This.
In 2022, building new nuclear power stations is clear Economic suicide.
It costs 5x more per each and every kWh that will be generated over the whole lifetime of the plant.
Also, the investment period is horribly long, and you need to continue to invest up to 1000 years after decommissioning, just to avoid polluting irreversably all the soil by constant leaks....
It's just so bad economically it's just incredible.
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The other options.
If you can't figure out what they are... why are you even talking?
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Nuclear power is economic suicide? It would appear that there are many people in government all over the world that disagree. Can you explain why you believe yourself to be correct and the people in government are wrong? It would seem to me that these government regulators, legislators, and so on have access to the information required to determine economic viability. Access to more information than some rando on the internet. I am also a rando on the internet, which means my opinion has as much value
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Russia's attack on Ukraine has forced a few reactors to be kept online because we dragged our feet on wind/solar (it's been able to provide baseload power for about 10 years but oil industry interests have blocked it). [...]Oh, and yes, you can run a grid off solar & wind in Seattle. Cloud cover isn't an issue anymore. Bringing this up since it always comes up in every reply...
I call BS. There is no way for solar and wind to provide baseload anywhere on Earth UNLESS there is a giant energy storage system attached (like a giant battery bank or a pumped hydro plant or something).
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Radiation poisoning? At Fukushima? I believe you are mistaken on what radiation poisoning means. How many people got radiation poisoning? What are their names? Can you provide even a single name? Someone with an actual diagnosis of radiation poisoning and not just someone that got sick afterwards because people get sick from all kinds of things.
There's been one, maybe two, people that died of cancer after working at Fukushima but correlation is not causation. We can't disprove the connection but we c
Japan news is more significant than summary says (Score:4, Interesting)
The summary mentioned Japan building new nuclear reactors, and also extending operational life...
However it did not mention an increase in the number of reactors that had been shut down, being restarted. And that the extending operation life is actually even beyond the original design life, 60 years.
Beyond all that though, what I think is being downplayed is the fact that the very root of governments shunning nuclear, is now going all-in on nuclear. That has got to have a follow on effect in countries all around the world, making them embrace nuclear to a huge extent not seen before. Germany may or may not be an exception if they insist on nuclear closures, but they are one of a handful.
You can see why - nuclear opponents often bring up costs of nuclear. Never mind that in most countries the costs are primarily regulatory in nature. Even if that were not the case, all you have to do is look how much money is being spent in other areas - like conversion of cars to all-electric in a pretty much impossibly short timeframe - and you realize the costs simply no longer matter, all that matters to most governments in bringing down CO2 numbers as fast as possible, and nuclear plants are the only way to accomplish this. There is no way you can produce solar panels and windmills (from a material supply standpoint alone) to get rid of all carbon based power now, whereas you can with nuclear - if you start building more plants now, as many as possible.
So lets see how serious the world is about CO2 reduction, will they keep leaning only on solar and wind, or will the get serious like Japan, and start throwing extremely strong nuclear power into the mix to significantly reduce CO2?
Don't extend, builld new safe ones (Score:2)
" If you can do it safely, and it's worthwhile economically to do it, I don't see any good reason not to extend the life of nuclear reactors,"
Last thing you'd want is to extend the life of already very old very worn out reactors that came with safety problems right from the design board. What you'd want is to replace old tech with new safer one.
Nuclear power is in a dead end. (Score:2)
New ones are much too expensive. kWh costs 5x more than any other generation method, it's not viable in any sane economy.
Nuclear power is in a dead end.
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Yet cheaper than renewables+storage or renewables+fossil fuels.
That, sir, is a deliberate and direct lie. Solar+storage is now cheaper than coal [science.org], let alone nuclear, and you know this because it's been pointed out to you before.
Nuclear power can only be sold with lies.
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Bullshit. Or rather, you need storage and reserve capacity in the size of several nukes if you run nuclear, because they may SCRAM without warning. No other tech has that problem. Also, nuclear is so bad at adjusting to the load that a grid must never be more than 70% nuclear or it becomes too unstable. In actual reality, you do not need to plan for a whole continent being under thick clouds and with no wind, because that does not happen.
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We call it "kalte dunkelflaute" (Score:2)
Are you even reading what you write? We know what happens when a big power plant is knocked offline when there is grid storage available, we saw this in Australia. They had a gigawatt size coal plant taken offline and that big Tesla battery out by that big windmill farm kept the grid stable until backup power was brought online. Every tech has unexpected failures. If we have the batteries to make up for losing many gigawatts of solar power every evening then we have the batteries to make up for losses o
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Yet cheaper than renewables+storage or renewables+fossil fuels.
That, sir, is a deliberate and direct lie.
The standard modus for the nuclear fanatics. Their fetish tech is now so obviously and drastically the absolute worst option for delaying climate change that they lie, lie and lie some more. Not that they were really operating much differently before.
They were just waiting for an excuse. (Score:2)
Have you submitted an application? (Score:2, Interesting)
Plenty of armchair proponents of nuclear power in this thread. Which is great, because every nuclear power plant in the US is experiencing general personnel shortages and extreme shortages of technical personnel. I suggest you head over to the Duke Power, Exelon Nuclear, etc web sites and submit your application for 30 years careers of 60 hour standard weeks (they used to be up to 110 hour weeks with overtime but I think the NRC limits that to 80 hours/week now) in remote rural locations with minimal amen
Re:Have you submitted an application? (Score:4, Insightful)
Interesting you'd mention Duke Energy, since two of their six nuclear sites are a 20 minute drive from Charlotte NC and another one is about the same distance from Raleigh NC. Off the top of my head I'm aware of several other facilities, like Prairie Island not far from Minneapolis, Braidwood and Dresden that are just about in Chicago proper at this point, and Turkey point that's just about engulfed by Miami. Sure there's others in rural areas, that's pretty typical of all industrial facilities, but there's plenty by cities too. And I think you'd find the communities they're hosted in are very prosperous, usually the tax revenues are gigantic. To the point that it's not unusual for groups like the Greenpeace to accuse energy companies of bribing the locals, since surveys of people that actually live by nuclear facilities tend to be extremely supportive of them.
The work can be hard though, no doubt. Staffing shortages are a bit of a perpetual problem, largely because there's very strict drug testing and criminal checks to work at the facilities. It's hard to find competent people to fill the positions. But the compensation for blue collar workers in particular is very good. With the overtime factored in I've known a many blue collar guys that have claimed they were making 100-150K with excellent benefits, a lot of times more than the white collar workers are. It's one of the few jobs I'm aware of that's equivalent to the old factory union jobs, with pay and benefits good enough to support a whole family on a single income and stable enough not to worry you'll be in a bread line.
deeply disingenuous (Score:2)
...to leave out of the discussion the *ahem* close relationship the German left - specifically the greens - had/have with the Soviets, err, Russia. To omit that as a major reason they received secret east German funding is to suggest it had no impact on their position vis a vis a technology which would ostensibly reduce Russian influence in EU policy.
Sure.
Energy is Dangerous (Score:2)
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That is probably the only reason nuclear ever got a chance in democratic countries at all. The threat is too abstract and too severe for normal people to grasp. Also, the extreme cost got hidden.
You don't say (Score:2)
They have a simple problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Governments have a simple problem. They can either reactivate coal and build new supercritical coal plants. Or they can build nuclear.
Wind and solar are not fit for purpose for providing power to a modern industrial economy because they are either intermittent, unreliable, or both. Consequently countries deploying large amounts of wind and solar have to back them up with gas, the only backup which is proven to work on a scale which will make the supply from wind and solar usable.
The effect of the effort to move to wind and solar is to raise dependence on gas. You can see this in the UK. The program is sold as a move to renewables, but in fact its a move to gas supplemented by renewables.
But their problem is, they have to get away from gas, which has turned out to be both insecure in supply and too expensive. This is why more wind is not the answer, it will just increase dependence on gas.
If you have to choose between coal and nuclear, coal is probably the rational choice, but its probably politically impossible in view of the hysteria about CO2 emissions. Its the rational choice because it can be deployed with quite short lead times, and the crisis in supply and pricing is now.
So they are quite rationally looking seriously at the only realistic alternative they have, long term, which is nuclear.
Lots of people here and in the US, UK and Australia will throw up their hands in horror at this. There is large scale denial of the nature of the product which wind and solar deliver. But if you doubt it, just look at the numbers of UK wind generation which are helpfully shown in graphical form here:
https://gridwatch.co.uk/WIND [gridwatch.co.uk]
How do you think this is made to work? By burning gas to fill in the fluctuations. Look at solar while you're at it. In January it will deliver nothing after 4pm, and during the day will be down to a few percent of summer output. What makes up the shortfall? Gas.
Lots of the political class in lots of countries are now staring at each other in dismay as they realize where the Net Zero push has landed them. Between a U-turn and a landslide throwing them out of power for generations. Probably most will U-turn, but hesitantly and too late to save themselves or their country, as is now happening in Germany. But watch the next UK government attentively. The probable next PM is capable of turning, and is readying a cabinet that is more than capable.
This winter and the next are going to be very painful in Europe. The Chinese of course never bought into it all in the first place; they will be fine. But the Europeans who closed their perfectly good nuclear and coal plants without having any fit for purpose replacement, in denial about intermittency, they are going to suffer until they get coal installed again. Or until their nukes arrive, which will probably be ten years.
Re: No actually not (Score:3)
Does it make sense to build newer reactors to burn out the old waste down to the 200 year safety mark then decom the reactor?
I think this should in the plans to get the waste into a safer situation.
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Bombs (Score:2)
Yep. It's just hype made to hide the fact that said recycling makes plutonium for nuclear bombs.
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Nobody has been able to demonstrate a commercially viable design. At this point we will just bury the nuclear waste and call it a mistake. Move on to clean power.
Catch 22 (Score:2)
We can't prove nuclear power is economically viable until we build them. We can't build a nuclear power plant until we prove them economically viable. That's practically the definition of a catch 22.
What is going to happen with this catch 22 is energy prices will rise until nuclear power is economically viable. Then once we start developing the technology, get people trained and experienced in building nuclear power plants, then costs will come down. We avoided this same catch 22 with wind and solar pow
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Except both solar and wind would require storage. The same storage that could/would be used in electric cars. We don't have enough rare earth materials to product the batteries for the EV push as it is. The solution isn't to then try and spin up solar and wind that would then also compete for the same raw materials.
Pretty sure that dissipating huge amounts of heat could be used for good purpose if we wanted. Like desalination of water.
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Sell we don't have enough materials to do storage based on lithium, that's true.
However we have enough sodium to do this with sodium. The energy density is lower, but that's hardly relevant for grid storage.
Plus if you have enough installed wind and solar power, you can still generate enough power during the winter and the night.
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How much would it cost to build all this wind, solar, and storage? How does that compare to nuclear power?
I've seen plenty of "studies" that make the case that we could get the energy we need from wind and solar but rarely do they make any comparison to the costs of having nuclear power in the energy plan. Why is that? I know why, it is because in the studies that do include costs we find that by including nuclear power the costs would be lower.
You don't believe me? Fine, provide a study that shows we'd
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Indeed. The pro-nuke people are pretty much on the same page as anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers and other morions at this time. The sheer level of ignorance to be pro-nuke at this time is staggering.
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They prevented or delayed many of the construction projects for new high voltage lines from the windy North to the industrial South for NIMBY reasons.
Things is, if you want a highly distributed renewable grid, because "the sun is always shining or the wind is always blowing somewhere", you are going to need a shit ton of new transmission lines to move that power around, and transmission lines are just as hard to build as pipelines or nuclear plants because of exactly the same sort of NIMBYism.
https://financialpost.com/comm... [financialpost.com]
https://www.abc.net.au/news/ru... [abc.net.au]
https://lasvegassun.com/news/2... [lasvegassun.com]
https://www.euractiv.com/secti... [euractiv.com]
https://globalnew [globalnews.ca]
Uhm no (Score:2)
Germany stopped putting up solar because the incentive structures for it were killed by the previous government. Before that we built solar at a pace that would have gotten us much further than we are now. Materials are not the problem, idiotic policies are. The same parties who prevented solar power also regularly prevent wind power from being installed.
Name me one nuclear power plant project that was even remotely on time and within budget.
France, a nation dedicated to nuclear power, is probably the best
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turns out that only so many solar panels can be produced a year, so there is literally no price you can buy them at that can cover the cost of power when you shut down existing nuclear reactors
This is just insane rambling, though.
At some base level you have to be able to provide constant power to a modern day civilization
All you have to do to understand the alternatives is to shut your trap, listen to the other solutions, then enter the discussion after you've heard a range of ideas.
You're just sticking your fingers in your ears shouting, "LA LA LA" and then pretending there are ideas others than the ones you agree with. It's really lame. And stupid.
You have to accept no punishment (Score:2, Interesting)
So we know these bastards are gonna get away with it, and we have to take that into account when designing systems. That goes for e
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Funny how someone who constantly stumps for policies that come from (and favor) elitists complains about global elitists.
Why punish for an outlier? (Score:2)
If we're going all in on nuclear power, what would you suggest the punishments for a catastrophe like Fukushima should be?
Since no-one died, and the plants failure was a result of unforeseen natural disasters and bad luck, what do you think the "punishment" should be?
Doens't it say a lot when the result years after "a catastrophe like Fukushima" and carefully analyzing the failure, is that Japan is restarting most of its reactors like Fukushima, even going to far as to extend the life of the plants, and th
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The risk of a nuclear catastrophe, while exceedingly rare, are so out of proportion with any other things we deal with that it creates an unrepairable fault that the market can't deal with. The respoinsbility should be burdened publically as then it is subject to democratic processes and it can be self insured. Basically like France, the operation has to be a majority publically owned one.
Private markets are doing well for renewables, it works for fossil fuels but it doesn't work for nuclear. The pitch o
Stupidity is ignoring Reality (Score:4, Insightful)
The EV mandate makes sense. It is over a period of 13 years, which is a lot of time. It's totally doable.
Is 13 years enough time for all automakers to sell only EV cars in CA? Nope. Look up shortages in battery materials.
Is 13 years enough time for the CA power grid to be able to handle every car being an EV? Again no, they already have rolling blackouts through the year. It wouldn't even take every car being EV, just 40% alone would collapse the grid.
EV is the future.
EV is the future for sure, But that timeframe is physically not possible, so I can tell you right now it will not happen. Am I predicting the future? No, I am simply extrapolating from the present, something governments all over seem unable to do.
Re:Stupidity is ignoring Reality (Score:4, Informative)
What rolling blackouts? When? Dude, that was like 20 years ago. I live in the SF Bay Area, I have not had a power outage in like 20 years due to electricity shortage. If I recall correctly there might have been a brief outage that affected some friends homes a couple years ago due to strong winds increasing fire dangers. Who cares about the grid? Every new house being built will be getting solar. In 2018, California mandated that new single-family homes, as well as multi-family dwellings up to three stories high, must include solar panels starting in 2020. A second mandate was also voted into law, requiring new commercial buildings to have solar panels and battery storage as well. This mandate will be enforced at the beginning of 2023. The California Building Standards Commission (CBSC) still needs to approve the mandate, which is expected to happen by the end of the year.
You don't read the news for your own state? (Score:3, Interesting)
What rolling blackouts? When?
Doesnn't speak well of you that you apparently do not know of recent blackouts in your own state [scientificamerican.com]. Even just this year, they were unable to fully meet demand [theguardian.com] and had to do "blackout lite" of telling people to use less power.
Of course it's no less than I'd expect from an elitist from SF, isolated from reality as you are and thus free to ignore it until it comes rapping at your door. It will be SF's turn soon enough, especially if they more rapidly shift to EV use.
Re:You don't read the news for your own state? (Score:4, Informative)
You are false. First, that was 2 years ago for a few hours and affected .1% of people in the state. Second, the cause was because .. AS I STATED BEFORE .. due to a main transmission line having to be put out of commision because of wildfire risk and high winds. If that temporary fire danger didn't exist the outage would not have occurred.
Re:You don't read the news for your own state? (Score:5, Informative)
A variety of factors contributed, but the situation was a one-off, and it occurred 2 years ago. SuperKendall's statement "they already have rolling blackouts through the year" is not just grossly exaggerated but false. He was trying to use a one-off incident, that occurred due to a variety of rare circumstances as being the normal year-round situation. He obviously stated that to paint a false narrative. Of course, CA can use more power generation, that is being worked on and will meet the EV demand. Nobody complained about Texas when it had a widespread major weeks-long blackout last year. The CA blackout was not even a thousandth of that in terms of people affected and duration. It's the same right-wing BS where they try to paint CA is full of violent crime by focussing on one-off incidents. Fact is right-wing owned states like Florida have a higher murder rate than California, but somehow people assume California is more dangerous than Florida.
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And that's exactly what prediction is, just as when climate scientists predict rising ocean levels in years to come. What you're not doing is prophesying, or claiming divine inspiration for your expectations.
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Is 13 years enough time for the CA power grid to be able to handle every car being an EV? Again no,
Just because every new car sold will be an EV doesn't immediately make every car on the road an EV.
The average age of a car on the road is 12 years, so it will take a lot longer for most cars to be EV.
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Re:Reality wins over Stupidity (Score:5, Informative)
We also have the highest gas prices in the continental US, so the energy prices are irrelevant. There's plenty of power available at night, and grid capacity too, it's during the daytime that we have problems. We really do need to get some politicians who don't suck corporate cock like Gavin does, and who will give the CPUC some teeth so they can go after PG&E. Those monsters have literally been knowingly murdering people for profit for decades. Not just because there are literally cases of them skipping maintenance for a century, but in lots of other ways too, and in each case they knew they were killing people.
So yeah, we have energy problems, but none of them preclude "ending" the sale of new ICEVs in the state by 2035. No doubt there will be numerous exceptions for commercial uses. I could also see them permitting LPG, CNG and LNG ICEVs, which by the way have something like 60% of the fuel costs in CA right now. They still have emissions, but any way we can burn up methane is positive. Fueling is a problem for CNG and LNG, but there's lots of places to get LPG as a motor fuel (with the taxes paid and such.) Since I live in the sticks, I have one just up the road from me, but I've seen them in cities too. LPG is a very easy conversion for many vehicles, as well. If your vehicle is a MY1996 or later then you probably have to have an expensive PCM that will do OBD-II, but otherwise it's also ridiculously cheap. Tanks with good capacity can be a problem for vehicles which don't have a full frame, though.
Re:Reality wins over Stupidity (Score:4, Informative)
If California wants to take the lead on promoting the purchase and use of EV then it should do the following:
- Develop and implement a SANE plan for clearing brush and trees away from all power lines, the cause of some brush fires in California's past.
- Develop and support a SANE plan for maintaining & upgrading power transmission equipment by it's electric providers, and that means rates that support that sort of investment. And lack of maintenance ("deferred maintenance" is the fancy word) has caused some brush fires in Cali.
- Develop and support a SANE plan for developing and improving the electricity distribution infrastructure needed to support EV and GREEN power generation technologies. Currently the CPUC makes it darn near impossible to implement new transmission lines to support distribution of power from GREEN power generation locations, so those plants tend to cluster near existing (and possibly near-overloaded) transmission lines.
CPUC is the utility regulator in Cali, so they should be able to gain access to the costs and capital investment plans (and whatever else) of those that they regulate. How else can they make intelligent decisions on the various ratepaying structures that they oversee? But that presumes they truly understand those numbers and what they mean. I doubt those electric companies "cook the books" they show the CPUC, not when they are also subject to SEC (these are publicly traded companies after all) & The Taxman (State & Federal) scrutiny, and we all know how vicous the US IRS can really be if you owe them money or messed up your maths.
According to a friend who works for a large electricity provider in California, the California PUC and the lawmakers in Sakrament0 only make life more and more difficult for electricity providers instead of encouraging long-term distribution system improvements & investments. It is just another example of Cali being a VERY UNFRIENDLY PLACE TO DO BUSINESS.
If California lawmakers want to help make EV a reality, then they need to step up and help support the entire process of making that dream happen; legislation only goes so far. In other words, are Cali politicians simply talkers that spew hot air? Or are they true leaders that are willing to walk the tough walk to actually help make it happen?
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There are huge chunks of people still clinging to words of "wisdom" from Bronze Age goat herders! These words are considered to be literal unerring TRUTH. How will these people adjust their worldview?
Stone-age goat-herding sci-fi isn't the only religion being practiced by modern people, as evidenced by the kind of leaders that supposedly intelligent and educated people keep making.
The 20th Century is full of retarded political bullshit, especially since Kennedy was shot, and now people have not only doubled down, but quadrupled down on this retarded political bend.
I'm not enjoying watching the world crumble. 'tis filling me with anxiety, and I already have entirely too much of that.