
Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize - jseliger
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/opinion/sunday/climate-change-nuclear-power.html
======
scarygliders
Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power
plant?

Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was
because of one design flaw...

Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the
backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor
buildings. DERP.

Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not survive the
tsunami because said tsunami overcame the tidal wall in front of it, and then
the backup generators got flooded. But for that one event, if the generators
were placed up on higher ground, the outcome would have been so much
different.

I have first-hand knowledge, due to..

1) Knowing the area. I lived in my Japanese father-in-law's mountain house,
situated 1.5km out of Miyakoji-machi, Tamura-shi. That town was just inside
the 20km evacuation zone from the power plant, the mountain house was just
outside at 21km - myself and my family lived in our own house in the outskirts
of Koriyama city.

2) My (now deceased) Japanese father-in-law was president of the Hitachi
subsiduary company which built Fukushima Dai-ich No.4 reactor, which wasn't
operating at the time of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami but did suffer
an explosion thought due to hydrogen gas from the spent fuel situated in the
Spent Fuel Pool in its upper level.

3) Mentioned in point (1) above, I owned a house in Tobu New Town on the
Eastern outskirts of Koriyama city, and I was working at Flextronics in
Koriyama at the time the M9 quake occurred - things got a tad 'exciting' at
the time. I should write a book.

My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are
taken into account - in Fukushima Dai-ichi's case, for some reason (possibly
financial?), it was decided that the tsunami barrier was sufficient (it
wasn't) for the job, and at some point in time it was decided that placing
backup generators underneath the buildings was sufficient - that unfortunately
did not turn out to be the case :/

And lastly, I still fully support the idea of nuclear power.

~~~
dirkt
> My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios
> are taken into account

I don't know if you are old enough to remember it, but that's exactly what
nuclear energy proponents said in the 70s.

Since then, actual experience showed that about every 20 years, there has been
a big incident with global impact, and it will take decades if not centuries
until the affected area is usable again. And the latter is something that
might be tolerable in less densely populated countries or locations
(Chernobyl), but in very densely populated ones it would be a major
catastrophe.

And so far we've only seen disaster scenarios caused by human error and force
of nature, and there's a third one (human malice), which thankfully hasn't
happened yet, but which is impossible to guard against.

So my conclusion from reality is that no, we can't make nuclear power
completely safe: The consequences of a disaster are too great, the monetary
incentives are all wrong (it's not the nuclear companies which pay in case of
the disaster, the state takes over; and the costs of the risk are not factored
in into the actual running costs; and safety measures are expensive, so
economics will always lead to, say, putting the backup generators NOT on the
hill, because that would have cost more).

And then there's the problem that in some countries using nuclear energy and
producing nuclear waste, the problem of actually storing that waste safely for
the next few centuries is still not solved. Even after 50 years of producing
it. And that is just insane.

I wish we could make nuclear safe. It would be a great way to reduce carbon
emissions. Looking at reality, I can only conclude that we can't, and it's
wishful thinking. (Yes, I know, that opinion is not popular, and the nuclear
fanboys will be all over me, but so be it).

~~~
masonic
Are you unaware that more nuclear waste enters the environment from burning
coal than from all nuclear plant incidents combined?

~~~
raz32dust
I think the debate is now shifting from nuclear vs. coal to nuclear vs.
solar/wind. In that context, this argument doesn't help. Especially recently,
people have been really bullish about solar and wind power, and I think that
has lead to weakening of the support for nuclear power.

~~~
jfnixon
You need to tell China and India that.

~~~
peterashford
China is extraordinarily bullish on renewables. From wikipedia: "China's
renewable energy sector is growing faster than its fossil fuels and nuclear
power capacity. ... In 2017, renewable energy comprised 36.6% of China's total
installed electric power capacity, and 26.4% of total power generation, the
vast majority from hydroelectric sources."

~~~
jfnixon
China's CO2 emissions are growing, not declining.

------
Gondolin
I am flabbergasted that some commenters here argue against nuclear because of
waste and accidents, while ignoring that

\- coal produce radioactive waste too

\- it kills a lot more persons (without taking into account global warning)
due to air pollution

\- the economic cost of nuclear may be underestimated, but this is nothing
compared to the economic cost of global warming.

Renewable (wind and solar) are extremely important, but nuclear replace coal
and gas. Renewable alone are not enough, especially since we will need a lot
more electric energy for transport and to decarbonise the atmosphere; so both
are needed.

It boggles my mind that Germany made a great effort on renewable, and used
this extra energy to close nuclear plants rather than coals ones. (At the
beginning they even had to open more coal plants!) This means that Fukushima
(which made Germany close its nuclear plants) killed a lot more people in
Germany than in Japan.

People's priority are wrongly aligned: first close coals and gas plants using
renewable, and then think about reducing nuclear plants once we have good
storage technology.

Recall that coal is 1000 times more deadly than nuclear per unit of energy
(including the nuclear accidents). Taking global warming into account, this is
way worse; if nothing is done we are talking about billions of death to total
collapse of human civilisation.

Compared to that, the human and economic cost of nuclear waste and a few
potential large nuclear explosions due to accident/malice is trivial.

Nuclear energy is a vital tool against global warming, and I am very concerned
for the future of my children that even well educated people (I have these
same arguments with my university colleagues) don't realise that.

~~~
lispm
I find it puzzling that proponents of nuclear technology make various claims
without any calculations to back that up.

'a vital tool agains global warming'? What does that mean in numbers? How many
nuclear power plants of what types for what amount of effort would be built in
what timeframe for to make any sizeable contribution? How would it work?

A single reactor in the west is >10bn $ and takes a decade or more to build,
while not being able to be financed on the market (see the UK).

~~~
pytester
Yep, Hinkley point is ~£95 per MWh while renewables are ~£45. It makes no
sense to complain about how polluting coal plants are in relation to nuclear.
It isn't the main source of competition.

Germany has been taking _both_ nuclear and coal offline and renewables have
been plugging the gap for _both_ for some years now and will likely continue
to do so.

It boggles my mind that the nuclear industry itself demands that all disaster
cleanup costs over $300 million be shouldered by the government yet it is
trying to project an image of how it is the "safe" option. If they don't have
enough faith in their own safety to raise the cap why should we?

~~~
ElBarto
Calculate how many wind generators you need to guarantee the same production
as Hinkley point and you'll see that it is not really realistic.

Then, take into account the goal of making of vehicles electric in the next 20
years.

There is no viable alternative to nuclear as of today even if renewables
should of course be pushed as much as possible.

Germany is emitting heavily because most of its electricity comes from fossil
fuel and it decided to kill nuclear power of purely ideological reasons. (wood
fired plants are counted as renewables in the EU, by the way)

The absolute priority should be to get rid of emissions, i.e. fossil fuels.
Germany decided to get rid of nuclear energy first.

They are not a good example to follow.

~~~
pytester
>Calculate how many wind generators you need to guarantee the same production
as Hinkley point

Hinkley Point = 3200 MW Average wind turbine generates = 3 MW

That's about 1,100 wind turbines at current tech. GE is working on a 12 MW
wind turbine - it would take 270 of them would replace Hinkley point.

~~~
joss82
3MW is the peak power when the wind is blowing constantly at the maximum speed
the wind turbine was designed to operate (and not over, at which point the
turbine enters safe mode and stops to prevent damage).

Load factors for wind turbines are rarely over 40%. Nuclear's is 80%. So you'd
need 2200 turbines to replace one Hinkley point. And all the gas power plants
to make the energy when the wind is not blowing...

~~~
logifail
> Nuclear's is 80%

Why is that?

I'm sure we're all broadly in favour of free markets. Do electricity consumers
buy nuclear because it's good value?[0]

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/21/hinkley-
point-c...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/21/hinkley-point-c-
dreadful-deal-behind-worlds-most-expensive-power-plant)

~~~
joss82
Because the nuclear reaction is not dependant on the wind blowing to produce
energy.

It's not 100% because you need to do maintenance at times.

~~~
logifail
> the nuclear reaction is not dependant on the wind blowing to produce energy

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough, I was alluding to the lively debate about how
the selling price for electricity is set, and how it should vary depending on
market conditions.

I see no reason to lock-in minimum pricing for any kind of electricity
generation many decades in advance. Why is that necessary for new nuclear
plants?

In other words: do we need to guarantee a minimum market price 30 years in
advance in order to make it look like building a nuclear plant makes economic
sense?

------
wiggler00m
Renewable energy is cheaper than nuclear, or will be imminently.

Proponents of nuclear tend to ignore the long-run costs associated with
nuclear (eg. waste transport and storage), and the potential for cost blowouts
due to acute disasters like Fukushima (estimated cost to taxpayers: USD $100
Billion).

The fact tax money is going towards Fukushima highlights another problem with
nuclear power: the agency problem. The individuals and organizations that
planned and built Fukushima are not directly shouldering the full cost of the
problem it created. You can extrapolate from this to many other problems and
risks associated with nuclear power, because the timeframe is long relative to
the life of a human. If the average human lifespan was 200 years or more,
maybe this would be less of an issue, but as it is now, profits now will
inevitably trump responsibility tomorrow (and by tomorrow, I mean 30+ years
from now).

There's also the risk of weaponization, which increases as the number of
plants increase, particularly if those plants are built in countries which
currently do not possess much technical nous. It's not a technology that
should be disseminated, because the risks are real, and catastrophic in their
consequences. If this sounds paranoid, Warren Buffett had this to say about
the threat of cyber, biological, nuclear, or chemical attack on in the US:

"“What’s a small probability in a short period approaches certainty in the
longer run. (If there is only one chance in thirty of an event occurring in a
given year, the likelihood of it occurring at least once in a century is
96.6%.) The added bad news is that there will forever be people and
organizations and perhaps even nations that would like to inflict maximum
damage on our country. Their means of doing so have increased exponentially
during my lifetime. “Innovation” has its dark side.

There is no way for American corporations or their investors to shed this
risk. If an event occurs in the U.S. that leads to mass devastation, the value
of all equity investments will almost certainly be decimated.

No one knows what “the day after” will look like. I think, however, that
Einstein’s 1949 appraisal remains apt: “I know not with what weapons World War
III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”"

[Source: 2016 annual letter to Berkshire shareholders]

~~~
BluSyn
Somebody gets it!

It makes absolutely no sense to start building nuclear now. Even if you could
guarantee 10 year build time at a fixed cost today (which you can't), by the
time it is operational solar+storage will be even more economical than it is
today. The cost curves are simply too favorable for any private market to
favor nuclear over solar currently. Everyone in this thread keeps talking
about the technology, but it's purely about the economics. Solar+storage at
grid-scale will be cheaper than basically all other forms of power generation
within 5 years based on current cost curves. Within 10 years the cost of _new_
solar+battery will be cheaper than the _operational_ cost of nuclear, not even
accounting for the billions in construction costs over decades.

If the billions spent on nuclear plants now was instantly diverted to solar,
we'd have way more clean energy in the grid on a way shorter timeline. That's
the reality today. It's time to stop arguing and stop wasting money. Nuclear
is dead.

~~~
rocqua
Is storage a solved problem yet? Afaik, dams are the only viable option, and
not universally available.

I thought batteries just weren't there yet. Especially if you take wear cycles
into account.

~~~
BluSyn
Batteries are much farther along than most realize, and decreasing in cost
rapidly. 2019 will see the first GWh-scale battery installations (plural, as
in multiple of them). Grid-scale lithium-ion battery storage is at the
beginning of an exponential growth curve.

~~~
jki275
What is the environmental cost of mining that lithium?

How much lithium is there, actually?

------
addicted
Nuclear power can save the world....

If the US can build reactors at 1/10th the cost they do right now.

That’s the solution. Not the much cheaper clean energy sources that already
exist and are being built out in record numbers...

Nuclear is great. It just loses out because it’s too expensive and worse, it
gets more expensive with time.

If the reasoning behind that is based on irrational human fears then first
propose a solution for irrational community fears. You’ll also be able to
solve the SF housing and homelessness crisis at one go then.

~~~
istjohn
FTA:

 _New nuclear power plants are hugely expensive to build in the United States
today. This is why so few are being built. But they don’t need to be so
costly. The key to recovering our lost ability to build affordable nuclear
plants is standardization and repetition._

...

 _Currently, as M.I.T.’s Richard Lester, a nuclear engineer, has written, a
company proposing a new reactor design faces “the prospect of having to spend
a billion dollars or more on an open- ended, all‑or‑nothing licensing process
without any certainty of outcomes.” We need government on the side of this
clean-energy transformation, with supportive regulation, streamlined approval,
investment in research and incentives that tilt producers and consumers away
from carbon._

...

 _[I]n 60 years of nuclear power, only three accidents have raised public
alarm: Three Mile Island in 1979, which killed no one; Fukushima in 2011,
which killed no one (many deaths resulted from the tsunami and some from a
panicked evacuation near the plant); and Chernobyl in 1986, the result of
extraordinary Soviet bungling, which killed 31 in the accident and perhaps
several thousand from cancer, around the same number killed by coal emissions
every day._

~~~
ianai
“Chernobyl in 1986, the result of extraordinary Soviet bungling, which killed
31 in the accident and perhaps several thousand from cancer, around the same
number killed by coal emissions every day.” just that is all I need to know to
prefer nuclear to coal.

~~~
est31
You shouldn't just count deaths and conclude that a nuclear catastrophy isn't
that bad. Far more people had to evacuate their home, having to leave most of
their belongings behind. And most times with no or too little compensation.
Sure, nuclear is prefferable to coal but that doesn't mean that both shouldn't
be gotten rid of.

~~~
TomMarius
But that kind of reactor is never going to be built again - its design was
very outdated and outright bad. Today we can build reactors where any failure
that would result in an explosion of any kind is physically nearly impossible.

~~~
Tomte
That exact same argument was made back then.

You need to accept that all trust is lost. You cannot take backsies every few
decades and expect people to trust you that this time you really know what
you#re talking about.

~~~
DennisP
Do you have a source for that? Because I seriously doubt that anyone made that
argument for Chernobyl's reactor design.

------
jjordan
Generation III+ reactors are orders of magnitude safer than everything else
that was built before the turn of the century. China is actually leading the
charge right now, with AP1000 reactors under construction. One of the plants
just went live last year:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanmen_Nuclear_Power_Station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanmen_Nuclear_Power_Station)

The US needs to find a way to make building reactors affordable.

~~~
ajross
> The US needs to find a way to make building reactors affordable.

Early reactors were hailed as paragons of safety too. Fukushima, remember, had
a triply-redundant (or whatever) power supply to ensure that cooling power
could be provided even in the event of a simultaneous meltdown and grid
failure. Oops.

I mean, look. It's... fine. Go nuclear. I agree with you, that these are
probably safe designs and are probably not going to poison anyone due to
misanalyzed failure modes. Nuclear is carbon free power and preferable to coal
and gas for sure.

But in a world where we can build out solar and wind as cheaply as we can gas
plants and handle the grid buffering with batteries, I just don't care much
anymore. If we run out of ridgeline real estate and still need more power,
we'll call you.

The US doesn't "need" to do anything with nuclear, at all. The nuclear
industry (and its geek proponents here on HN) needs to find a way to make
itself worthwhile on a balance sheet.

~~~
icelancer
> Fukushima, remember, had a triply-redundant (or whatever) power supply to
> ensure that cooling power could be provided even in the event of a
> simultaneous meltdown and grid failure. Oops.

Yeah, and then they installed the backups below where the main plant was,
rendering them completely useless. Oops.

This was a human failure. Not a technological one.

~~~
rorykoehler
If it happened once what's to stop it happening again. Think about the type of
people who design nuclear power plants. These are some of the smartest people
on the planet and they still managed to make this terrible error.

------
jinfiesto
Nuclear is a political non-starter. No one wants to live near a nuclear power
plant, and people tend to fight tooth and nail to fight the placement of
nuclear power anywhere near them. The result of this is that nuclear power
plants get foisted onto communities that don't have the political clout to
fight them, or get thrown where there isn't anyone to fight. What ends up
happening is that power plants get placed by politics instead of by science
and engineering.

Further, it appears (at least to me) that proponents of nuclear underestimate
the degree to which we (as a species) underpredict the likelihood of
catastrophic events. In general, we're pretty bad at assessing the risk of so-
called "black swans," but when the downside is so high, I understand why
people are skeptical.

I personally am pro-nuclear, for many of the reasons described in the article,
though I don't think the case is as clear cut as most nuclear proponents. On a
rational level, I can understand that the likelihood of disaster is
vanishingly small. I still don't want to live anywhere close to a nuclear
power plant.

------
fakwandi_priv
>Germany’s rate of adding clean energy relative to gross domestic product, it
would take the world more than a century to decarbonize, even if the country
wasn’t also retiring nuclear plants early.

Why doesn't the article explain why the Germans are retiring their plants? I
think these articles should go more in-depth regarding the pro's and con's.
From what I read and hear Nuclear power is a great source of energy but I feel
when convincing other people of this you need to portray the good and the bad.

~~~
cm2187
Pretty much because Merkel decided so in the days following Fukushima. Not
exactly the result of long term strategy.

~~~
hugi
Fukushima was an excellent demonstration of what can happen. You devastate
huge areas of land and make them unlivable for generations. This is especially
applicable to the United States that has proven entirely unable to handle it's
own nuclear waste and just accumulates it at the sites where it's generated,
waiting for disaster to happen.

~~~
cm2187
I always thought that nuclear waste was a non problem. It is a minuscule
amount of confined hazardous material. Even if you don't recycle it, the
impact on the environment is negligible.

But I agree that the devastation of huge areas of land is a problem, but let's
also keep in mind that the reactors that blew up where early generations
reactors. More modern design do not present those risks [1]. Judging nuclear
energy based on 1960s design is like judging aviation based on the safety
records of 1930s planes.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor)

~~~
hannob
> But I agree that the devastation of huge areas of land is a problem, but
> let's also keep in mind that the reactors that blew up where early
> generations reactors.

With "early generation reactors" you mean all the ones that exist. The whole
"next generation reactor" / "generation 4 reactor" thing is at this point
nothing more than vague plans for what could be.

~~~
DennisP
That's overstating things. Fukushima was built in the 70s. A nearby reactor
faced the same challenges but was built a decade later, and it was fine.
That's just a GenII, still not as safe as the GenIII+ we're building now.

Chernobyl, of course, was a horrific design that didn't even have a
containment dome. Nobody builds reactors like that anymore.

And GenIV is a little more than vague plans; e.g. Terrestrial Energy's molten
salt reactor has already gotten through the hardest part of Canada's licensing
process, which puts them on track for a demo reactor by 2025 or so.

~~~
hairytrog
They have to secure a few B$ in funding. lol.

------
jseliger
It is always interesting when the NYT and WSJ agree:
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-climate-needs-nuclear-
power...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-climate-needs-nuclear-
power-11554420097)

~~~
danso
Both the OP and the WSJ article are op-eds, written by people who are not paid
by the publications. Op-Eds get their name from the phrase, “opposing/opposite
the editorial page”, so it’s not particularly accurate to think of this as the
NYT and WSJ stating a position.

~~~
lstodd
Decision to publish is always with the editor/board/sponsors.

------
yk
Well, the nuclear renaissance since 2010 is marked by a decline in the number
of reactors [0] and we just do not the capacity to build more, because the
production of pressure vessels is severely limited. Plus most nuclear reactors
are around 30 years old [1], so many will be decommissioned over the next 20
years.

Therefore it is simply not possible to build up the share of nuclear in the
power generation mix, except with extending the operation time of light water
reactors (from a design lifetime of 30 years), or build reactors without a
pressure vessel, that is something akin to an RMBK.

Right now, over the next 20 years the clean alternatives are solar, wind and
hydro. Nuclear power can at the earliest be expanded in the late 2030, at
which point it has to compete with fusion, and hopefully orbiting solar.

[0] [http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/facts-
and-f...](http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/facts-and-
figures/reactor-database.aspx) (has actually just the total electricity
number,

[1] [http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/n/nuclear-
power...](http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/n/nuclear-power-plant-
world-wide.htm)

~~~
pfdietz
It will not have to compete with fusion in the late 2030s. It will likely
never have to compete with fusion. Fusion is just ridiculously bad from a
practical point of view.

------
natch
A key overlooked aspect of Nuclear is that it is the big government,
centralized, big industry, big bureaucracy, anti-freedom, anti-self-
determination option.

Renewables like solar and wind can be local, scaled down to the needs of a
single family property, and kept under the sole control, if desired, of an
individual owner. Nuclear is fundamentally not that way.

If this article isn't it already, expect to see in the near future that the
powerful elite subset of climate deniers will pivot to accept climate change
while advocating for nuclear as a solution, all because their cronies stand to
benefit from massive construction projects and associated safety, security,
and control projects.

~~~
lispm
That was one of the main reasons here in Germany to quit that type of
industry. There were people from the industry which had exposed this.

------
skrap
Strong public policy can save the world. Nuclear can help. But, without public
policy, nothing will happen. So call it cap-and-trade, or green new deal, or
cap-and-dividend, but we need it now.

------
jlebar
Coal is literally 1000x more dangerous than nuclear power.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities)

Humanity's inability to understand basic math will be our downfall -- perhaps
already has sealed our fate.

~~~
devwastaken
Though it's the most amount of deaths by year currently, their argument
generally is about if a nuclear plant close to population pops off. A single
city would be 1000x what coals killed.

~~~
YjSe2GMQ
It would not.

1\. The grandparent's source quotes the coal death rate of ~100k/PWh.

2\. Global coal processing is at ~50 PWh/year:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption)

3\. This means ~5M people die to coal each year.

------
walkingolof
Nuclear power is nothing that can be trusted with private companies, the long
term nature is directly incompatible with an entity that can go bankrupt and
"die". Renewables connected with battery/pumped/hydrogen storage is by far our
best bet.

------
nabla9
The question is _What is the fastest way?_ , not what is possible in the
future. People disagreeing in this thread fail to address the reasons stated
in the article why renewables alone are not complete solution and why nuclear
is good choice to compensate.

Germans made attempt to increase renewables only but ended up increasing coal
use because rationing electricity was not an politically feasible option when
renewable electricity production was low.

Without nuclear energy you can increase renewable usage up to 50% economically
if you build better grid and add some overcapacity and recharge car batteries
at night, but you must fire up coal or natural gas electricity plants for the
nighttimes and exceptionally cold or hot time periods.

If you build nuclear plants they will not throttle down for days or when
renewable energy is plenty and electricity price goes negative. This decreases
the profitability of both renewables and nuclear.

In some time in future, it's possible to go full renewables but you need very
robust smart grid, large scale energy storage (not lithium-ion) etc. That's
possible but it's not the fastest way. Building more nuclear power is the
fastest way to drive down CO2 in addition with renewables.

------
warabe
I am Japanese, who was in Japan and experienced Fukushima melt down in
2011(although I was not in Fukushima, Tokyo). From my perspective, people in
HN village are missing a very crucial point. Nuclear power is not a problem of
engineering or math, it is a problem of human nature. Yeah, I can understand
the technology can control nuclear reaction 100% well, but who operate
reactors? Who decide how reactors should be operated? Who develop software to
control reactors? The answer is people! People in HN are so smart and very
rational, so they cannot see sometimes irrational decisions are made(as
happened in Fukushima) and they cannot understand some idiots do terribly
stupid things(as happened in Tokaimura JOC accident). As long as human beings
are involved, nothing can be perfect and safe.

Also, I see in some comments people think impacts of nuclear accidents and
wastes can be limited and localized. In Japan, as of 18/08, 60000 people still
live in temporary housing due to Fukushima incident. We still struggle to
remove debris out of nuclear power plants, and it's said it will take around
30-40 years.

For me, the impact of this disaster is anything but "trivial".

*edit: grammer

------
Gravityloss
The 1.6 gigawatt Olkiluoto 3 EPR has cost 5.5 billion and the building has
taken 14 years so far (it's not ready yet). And this is happening in a high
functioning low corruption country.

The lightbulb wasn't the real invention - it was the lightbulb making machine
that had the real impact on the world.

The same way, we need a way to safely, quickly and cheaply build and operate
nuclear power plants. The way might be small modular reactors, something like
200 megawatt sized. They can be built in well controlled circumstances in a
factory. Installation on site should be fast. Currently, a nuclear power plant
construction requires lots of welding and concrete casting. In these projects
it is slow and expensive because of extra safety needs and regulations. On
site construction should be minimized instead.

One could run multiple smaller reactors in one site so safety areas would not
be greatly increased. Emergency and maintenance shutdowns would have smaller
impact on the grid than currently with multiple gigawatt sizes.

With smaller reactors, innovation and experimentation should also be a lot
faster. If you build one reactor every 20 years, you don't get a lot of
incremental innovation.

------
desuyone
How about we put the reactors in the middle of the desert, then there is no
danget of killing a city and no risk of nuclear material leaking into the sea.
You really don't need that many people to staff a reactor and if you really
do, you can always build a train so people don't need to live close. I know
power transmission is an issue. But we have gotten a lot better at that as
well, with things like that big DC underwater powerline from scandinavia to
the middle of europe.

~~~
djakjxnanjak
Is the resistance to nuclear power mostly at the state/local level or is there
also a lot of federal opposition? I wonder if some western state with
unpopulated land could make a lot of money by doing a huge nuclear project and
sell the power to California with UHV lines.

The politics seem kind of similar to pipeline projects, but the ultimate goal
would be to save the earth rather than burn it down so maybe there would be
less opposition. Maybe you could even generate enough energy and wealth to
convert some legacy fossil fuel businesses (and the politicians they own).

~~~
pfdietz
The resistance is from those being asked to pay for it.

~~~
djakjxnanjak
Seems like many of the costs are design and management overhead that would
probably be less of an issue at larger scale?

------
dav43
Renewables total cost of ownership is significantly lower. Nuclear is not
required anymore.

------
cx42net
A few things annoy me on this article.

About deaths: The author says nuclear causes fewer deaths than the rest. Maybe
that's true, but he (voluntarily?) omits to take into consideration long term
health issues related to incidents. The Tchernobyl accident released
radioactve cloud that affected many people that died of cancer or are having
health issues related to it. Worse than that, it's almost impossible to track
who got sick because of those clouds. So yeah, maybe just a "small set" of
people died DIRECTLY following nuclear incidents, but long term effects cannot
be ignored just for the sake of the argument.

Next, the waste. "stored in a walmart, that degrade over time". Again, the
author omits to say the duration ... over time is an understatement here, you
will be long gone before that "waste" is not dangerous for environment.

I stopped reading after that. The post is written in a way to force you to
accept his arguments by omiting half of the true story. That's not journalism.

------
peterashford
I find the view that nuclear is the only clean option very odd when we have
countries which are 100% renewable right now. And a number of countries which
are very nearly there already. I see people raising issues about batteries but
I'm not sure that a lot of the countries doing 100% or nearly so are using
batteries at all. That looks like a straw-man to me

~~~
samhain
I think you'll find that the majority of those countries are 100% "on certain
days." Meaning that they still need to be supported by natural gas plants at
the renewable site, or by nearby countries who do not have 100% renewable.

Hydro power is the most efficient way of storing the extra energy right now.
So people talking about batteries would be talking on a much smaller scale, or
don't know what they are talking about.

A large portion of the energy currently consumed is by oil tankers that burn
crude directly during transport of goods across the ocean. The benefit is for
transportation of the energy and fueling costs. I suspect that we will need to
make energy so cheap on land and for cities that it is more cost effective to
create burnable fuel for ships than to extract the oil from the ground.

We are currently struggling to get our cities even at parity with renewable,
but maybe with the surplus renewable energy on good days, we could convert
that energy to some kind of liquid fuel that could eventually be used on these
tanker ships and in planes.

The only counter argument that I've seen that seems to make any sense is that
we could use up too many resources trying to reach parity with the current
energy consumption. Think like we run out of neodymium for all of the electric
engines for both our cars and wind turbines, or run out of materials that go
into making all of the solar panels. If that's actually a problem, then it
seems like we would need more resource efficient ways to generate more power.
So it might take a combination of renewables to power our cities, then a
nuclear process heat from maybe one of the next generation reactors to
efficiently create the liquid fuel for ships and planes.

------
beders
Can we get something straight about nuclear power?

A 1% failure rate is not acceptable.

We don't need nuclear power. Renewables are cheaper, storage solutions are
available and there are whole countries on close to 100% renewable power.

There are still radioactive boars running around in Bavaria as a result of the
Chernobyl incident.

It is still unclear how many billions of dollars of cleanup costs for
Fukushima the Japanese tax payer has to spend. And how many will die of the
aftereffects.

Why would anyone sane invest in a power technology with such a destructive
potential? Especially if the alternative are far safer, easier to produce and
easier to decommission. (another dirty secret of the nuclear industry: Who is
going to pay for the decommissioning of old power plants and the cleanup: Yup,
it's you, because the funds allocated for it are not sufficient). The $500m
spent on decommissioning the Brennilis Nuclear Reactore in France could buy
how many wind turbines and solar cells?

Keep it in the ground. Not just the oil, but also the uranium.

------
onetimemanytime
seems like air travel, a crash in Siberia with 57 victims makes world news.
1200 car crashes and deaths at the same period don't. (made the numbers up but
air travel is much safer)

~~~
acidburnNSA
It's exactly like air travel. We use that analogy in the industry all the
time. The question for me is, OK so how did the airline industry make most
people ok with it? And does that work for nuclear public education too? It's
funny, people who live near nuclear plants are very significantly more
supportive of nuclear plants. Anecdotally, I grew up 9 miles from an operating
plant and love them.

------
dillonjeff
I am pro-Nuclear power as long as we keep the power plant as well as the spent
fuel in your backyard.

------
OisinMoran
If this interests you, I would highly recommend reading this article on molten
salt reactors [0].

TL;DR: Molten salt reactors are safer (can't have a meltdown if it's already
melted), smaller (could fit on the back of a truck), able to run on more
abundant materials like Thorium (which in turn come from more politically
stable regions), and to top it all off: not only do they leave much less
nuclear waste, they can actually use up current nuclear waste, turning it into
much less harmful and shorter lived stuff in the process!

Also, Mike Shellenberger [1] is a great proponent of nuclear power and has
some great points on why the current focus on renewables is damaging. Well
worth the follow on Twitter.

[0]
[https://www.knowablemagazine.org/article/technology/2019/nuc...](https://www.knowablemagazine.org/article/technology/2019/nuclear-
goes-retro-much-greener-outlook)

[1] [https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD](https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD)

~~~
pfdietz
The advantage of MSRs is not that they can't melt down (or that they could use
thorium; that's vastly overhyped), it's that there's no volatile material in
the containment building.

The containment of a LWR has to be large because it fills with radioactive
steam in an accident. It has to be able to contain this steam, which means at
least a certain amount of structure to withstand its pressure.

But MSRs don't use water as a coolant. They circulate salt in and out of the
building. They can be designed to remain at low pressure even in a bad
accident, just from heat transfer that occurs from thermal radiation at
elevated temperature. As a result, the cost of the containment could be as
much as 1/5th that of a LWR.

Unfortunately, MSRs are not available today, and likely will not be for
decades (especially if new materials must be qualified; no one will buy an MSR
if there is any question about the materials not lasting their projected
lifespans.) By that time, renewables will have marched down their experience
curves to an economic position that will likely be unassailable.

~~~
acidburnNSA
I'm pretty convinced that they're worth working on today because in 20 years
when we have vast renewable deployment we'll either have solved the
storage/intermittency problem with no unexpected environmental or economic
costs, or we'll desperately need advanced nuclear. It's kind of a Pascal's
Wager type of thing: worst case if you work on advanced reactors is that you
learn new things about reactors and maybe they'll be useful in deep space (far
from the sun). Worse case if you don't work on advanced reactors is you get
screwed by climate change when running into logistical issues with renewable
intermittency.

~~~
pfdietz
Yes. MSRs are an insurance policy in case renewables suddenly stop getting
cheaper. They might have niche uses (very high latitudes, actinide
destruction), but that won't be earthshattering if we don't have it.

------
pdevine
Can we talk about the waste that’s cast off when the reactor has finished its
use of it? I understand the material will remain radioactive for centuries.
Nobody wants that in their backyard.

~~~
Lramseyer
Not to downplay the issue, but global warming is a much more urgent issue.
It's expected to cause far more disasters a lot sooner than any potential
disaster from our nuclear waste.

To answer your question more practically though, our nuclear waste would fit
into a building the size of a football field. There's even a proposal to put
it in some mine/cave in the western United States.

~~~
ern
I would be pro-nuclear except for the waste problem. I don’t trust humanity to
be able to confine the waste for centuries. For all we know it could be seen
as some sort of “treasure” by future, ignorant, civilizations, dug up, and
spread around in trinkets. If there is a way of permanently and completely
removing them from the biosphere, I’d change my mind.

~~~
icelancer
...if the alternative is climate change continuing to worsen until renewable
technologies (particularly energy storage and transmission) are up to par and
scale, which one do you prefer?

~~~
ern
That's a tough call, but I'd prefer pushing harder on renewable research or
finding a permanent solution to the nuclear waste problem, because, as bad as
humans are at dealing with medium term consequences of our activities (see
climate change), we have no track record of dealing with the long term, and
ultra-long term consequences of what we do.

------
perfunctory
It's paramount we expand nuclear power. Despite potential risks. We absolutely
need all that electricity to... do what exactly? Mine bitcoins?

------
Gatsky
With nuclear energy, the cost and hazards of waste are explicit and priced
into running costs. This is as it should be. Fossil fuels get a free ride by
comparison.

The more I look I see there are two types of industries out there... those
that profit by creating value, and those that profit by shifting the cost onto
someone else.

~~~
hairytrog
It doesn't stop there. I don't think solar and wind have decommissioning and
waste costs built in.

------
trickstra
nuclear power is also a local maxima. It won't be enough in the long run and
it comes with it's own set of problems that are way too similar to our current
fossil fuel problems. Do you want to get stuck at this local maxima? It will
be extremely hard to get out of it once it's needed.

------
mariushn
Selecting such a photo for an article aiming to promote nuclear power defeats
the purpose. I actually thought that was a coal plant, until reading the fine
print.

Maybe the content was written by some folks, and media selection was made by
others against nuclear?

------
moonbug
[https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/](https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/) for
a comprehensive overview of the current worldwide state of the nuclear
industry.

------
z3t4
I think this can be a win/win. Higher levels of carbon dioxide mean more
plants, and more oxygen, which leads to bigger animals. And nuclear waste
leads to mutations ...

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
If you want to see if an environmentalist really believes that climate change
is as bad as scientists say it will be, look at their stance on nuclear power.
If they are against it, they are basically denying the seriousness did climate
change.

There is no way you are going to convince voters that they need to cut their
energy usage, especially before the worst of the climate change effects are
felt. You need to provide steady, stable carbon free power. Nuclear power is
the only current technology that can provide it. If you really care about
slowing down climate change, you need to be all in on nuclear power.

~~~
madhadron
> There is no way you are going to convince voters that they need to cut their
> energy usage

Indeed. Thus the question is what _undemocratic_ institutions, can we use? Can
we put in treaties that reduce national sovereignty like the TPP? Can we make
it a second order or third order effect of regulations on how insurance works
so that most people can't follow the chain back to the source?

------
simonCGN
Possibly the most expensive one if you count in disposal costs of radioactive
elements after the useful live ended

------
daveheq
Countries other than America are just going to have to prove to the US that
their safe nuclear works long-term.

------
euske
In 2011, a week after the Japan's earthquake, NYTimes wrote an article that
was rather critical of nuclear energy. I wonder when the flip flop happened.

"Living With a Nuclear Question Mark in the Backyard"
[https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/nyregion/17towns.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/nyregion/17towns.html)

~~~
grzm
> _" NYTimes wrote an article that was rather critical of nuclear energy. I
> wonder when the flip flop happened."_

The New York Times, like most newspapers, is not a single, unified voice it
its articles, and much less in editorials published under Opinion sections,
such as this submission.

------
Bombthecat
Still no answer to the question : what do we with nuclear waste...

Only answer I get is : more money will solve it or one day...

~~~
akvadrako
It's just a non-issue. All of the world's nuclear waste could fit in one
warehouse and isn't that dangerous. You can either put all of it in a building
somewhere or keep it in smaller buildings on-site.

~~~
Bombthecat
And putting it in a warehouse solves the problem?...

I excepted more from hackernews... I'm disappointed.

------
theshrike79
"But but the ACCIDENTS and the WASTE".

France has FIFTY THREE (53) nuclear reactors, how many incidents have they
had? Without googling, name one?

The problem isn't nuclear reactors, it is the superstitious levels of fear
people have of them. Somehow people believe that a reactor produces mountains
and mountains of "toxic waste" every year. When in reality it's nowhere near
that.

------
baybal2
Is the author related in any way to Justin J Goldstein? That one used to be a
big lobbyist.

------
externalreality
So there are problems. Its also the fastest way to the destroy the world. If
you dot the world with these things we become one climate disaster or earth
quake away from having written a check that our collective asses can't cash.

~~~
fastball
Not if you use a molten salt design.

------
kmlx
please correct me if i'm wrong, but doesn't the climate have so much inertia
that NYC will be underwater no matter what we do?

i mean, we could go all renewable at this very moment, and NYC will still be
submerged, along with most of humanity.

at least that's my understanding from this paper:

Consequences of twenty-first-century policy for multi-millennial climate and
sea-level change

[https://www2.bc.edu/jeremy-
shakun/Clark-2016-NCC.pdf](https://www2.bc.edu/jeremy-
shakun/Clark-2016-NCC.pdf)

so what's the point of these discussions? shouldn't we start building-out Mars
or something?

------
kjar
This falsehood gets rolled out regularly. New reactors take a decade to
manufacture, have nearly zero private investment, and the icing on the turd
cake produce waste lasting for centuries.

------
ozborn
Nuclear fission is a compact, high powered energy source. It is a practical
and cost effective energy source for energy generation on submarines, warships
and spaceships. In 2019 however, it is not any longer worth advocating as a
source of power for civilization on Earth (or any of the Inner Planets in this
Solar System) given the last decade of cost reductions in solar and wind power
coupled with low cost battery development. This is well understood by the
market, politicians and the general public, even if the nuclear lobby hasn't
come to terms with this reality. Even if plants could be built 6 times cheaper
as this article suggests - which is both unlikely (given the track record of
the industry) and unwise for ratepayers (given the history of cost offloading
on the public) nuclear is unlikely to compete with renewables for the
foreseeable future.

The entire article is written as a polemic (which is fine) but it argues
against various straw-men and obfuscates the problems with nuclear power
today. Some examples include:

Caiming it is "fantasy" that renewables alone can power the transition to a
carbon free economy. Their argument? "Wind and solar power are becoming
cheaper, but they are not available around the clock, rain or shine, and
batteries that could power entire cities for days or weeks". This confused
statement doesn't actually address the best argument of renewable energy
advocates - that renewables could power entire cities if given sufficient
generation and storage capacity. An argument indicating the limits of
renewable power generation and battery production is required, but the article
makes no such argument because it would not hold water. Also, if there is no
daylight for weeks (nuclear winter?) there may be bigger problems to address
than carbon emissions.

Also, the article does itself no favors by comparing itself to coal. This is a
dying energy source (especially in the US) - the fact that nuclear is better
than coal impresses no one.

Another trick used is sentences like this "By contrast, in 60 years of nuclear
power, only three accidents have raised public alarm". It is quite likely that
most nuclear incidents raised no alarm because they weren't reported. The
public incidents cited were simply too large to go unnoticed. Does anybody
believe the only lethal accident or cancer causing radioactive lease in the
Soviet Union was Chernobyl?

Another crazy claim is "Nuclear waste is compact — America’s total from 60
years would fit in a Walmart — and is safely stored in concrete casks and
pools, becoming less radioactive over time.". This is simply not correct as
written. If America's waste was well managed it might fit into a Walmart (I
didn't do the math), but it is isn't. It is a poorly manged mess, even leaking
into groundwater like at Hanford. Hanford's cleanup wouldn't cost $113+
billion to clean up if nuclear waste sat in well organized casks in a Walmart
sized warehouse. And Hanford is is just one (large) site
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site)).

Finally, the article deals with nuclear proliferation with this paragraph:
"Nuclear power plants cannot explode like nuclear bombs, and they have not
contributed to weapons proliferation, thanks to robust international controls:
24 countries have nuclear power but not weapons, while Israel and North Korea
have nuclear weapons but not power." Again, no one is claiming that that
nuclear plants explode like nuclear bombs (straw man). However, claiming they
have no contributed to weapons proliferation requires a special reading of the
paragraph where proliferation counts only as documented cases of nuclear
material migrating across borders to be incorporated in nuclear weapons. The
fact that nuclear plants _produce_ material for nuclear weapons (whether it
crosses a border or not) means nuclear power can (and does) contribute to
weapon development. Israel may not have nuclear power plants, but it has
"research" nuclear plants (Dimona) that probably produced the material for its
bombs.

It's unclear to me if this is a good faith opinion piece.

------
moonlet
Nuclear power can save the world if we can prevent any more Fukushimas. It
requires so much more responsibility than wind or solar seem to on the part of
plant operators.

------
ftr45
hope people will listen this obvious article , nuclear is cheaper, safer and
need less resource's than any other type of energy

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-
deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#658c4855709b)

[https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/09/frances-nuclear-
clean-...](https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/09/frances-nuclear-clean-energy-
is-over-three-times-faster-and-cheaper-than-germanys-solar-and-wind.html)

[https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2015/7057-proj-costs-
elect...](https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2015/7057-proj-costs-
electricity-2015.pdf#p60)

------
ekianjo
For folks who think solar/wind/other sources are just as good or better, why
not invest in all energy sources anyway? In most cases anyway this will be
private investment and there is no reason not to experiment with all types of
energies (including new types of nuclear reactors) instead of waiting and see
if renewables can achieve their promise.

If you are going to make bets, take as many bets as you can.

~~~
rorykoehler
People don't want to invest in nuclear because nuclear disasters scare the
shit out of them.

~~~
ekianjo
We are talking about new nuclear reactor designs, not like the ones from the
50s. And frankly nuclear plants, even with their disasters, have killed very
few people compared to all other sources of energy.

------
samstave
Serious question I have thought about previously:

Why is there not a singular global body that includes all nations to build
out, manage and secure ALL nuclear power plants. Basically a single body,
comprised of all the top minds and efforts of every nation's nuclear SMEs -
which will create a grid of nuclear power all over the world and every country
contributes based on their draw from the system?

------
viach
Nope. If we build 100x reactors, there will be new reasons why it's not enough
already and we need 1000x more.

There are unspoken and unpopular things that could really work - limiting
consumerism, and decreasing population.

~~~
icelancer
> limiting consumerism

If you solve this problem, you'll solve a problem much greater than energy
consumption. This is not unspoken and unpopular, it is thought to be
impossible given the human condition.

> decreasing population

Good luck with that one.

------
quelsolaar
Nuclear is not a viable solution, due to public opinion.

A nuclear reactor has an incident once every 10.000 years. If we divide that
with the number of reactors we get an accident every 30 or so years.
(Harrisburg, Chernobyl, Fukusima, ligns up well with that)

Every time there is an accident, the public turns against nuclear for 5-10
years. Add to that that it takes a decade to plan and build a reactor, and you
realize that once we double or triple the number of reactors, accidents will
be so frequent, that the public wont stand for additional expansion within the
time it takes to build more reactors.

We need 10x nuclear to solve global warming. Thats a major accident every 3
years or so. Yes, Nuclear can be made safer, but probably not by as much as
needed. Even a country like Japan, who has high safety standards, and a
historical heritage of nuclear fallout, has had an accident, and most new
reactors are likely to be built by China who has less then stellar safety
record.

~~~
pfdietz
No, nuclear is sadly not a viable solution, due to cost. If nuclear were
affordable it would be pushed through regardless of opposition. But it has
just not worked out.

The people with the money saw what happened at Vogtle and Summer (and also at
Flamanville, Olkiluoto, Hinkley Point). Those efforts to make nuclear
affordable failed spectacularly, even with public and government support.
Westinghouse and Areva were just unable to execute.

This failure should not have been a surprise, as it mirrored what happened in
the last big nuclear construction boom. That didn't stop because of accidents;
it stopped because the nuclear plants in that boom experienced substantial
cost overruns (i.e., the nuclear vendors were not honest about what the
technology would actually cost.)

~~~
DennisP
Half the article was about the reasons costs are so much higher in the U.S.
than South Korea, and how to fix it.

~~~
godelski
I never buy the cost problem. I mean look at France. That's another great
example. Has some of the cheapest electricity and is 75% nuclear.

~~~
natmaka
Electricity in France is not "one of the cheapest", it is average in Europe
and quickly rising. Moreover part of the total related costs (R&D...) was
historically paid by the taxpayer. Future decommission and waste-management
costs may lead to a financial disaster (take a look at decommission costs in
the UK).

[https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php...](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php/Electricity_price_statistics)

------
jplayer01
The biggest problem with nuclear power is how unacceptable mistakes or
failures are for anybody who's the slightest bit anti-nuclear. It means that
failures are concealed and not dealt with adequately and safety culture as
would be necessary isn't sufficiently implemented. The process of improvement
is stifled by this cultural need to cry "shut it all down" the moment an
accident happens. Imagine if people reacted the same way to aviation - it
never would have become as safe as it is now (and yet still hundreds of people
died this year alone, 3 months in). Nuclear power can't become safer (and it
already is pretty damn safe) in modern cultural contexts. That's not the fault
of the technology, it's the fault of everybody here, the media and everybody
claiming how unsafe nuclear is and how we should stop using it (and screw the
consequences of not using and refining such an amazing technology).

------
mempko
Nuclear could have saved the world 30 years ago. I'm afraid it's just too
risky now. Nuclear is not dangerous if we have organized human life managing
it. However, the risks are such that there may not be the know-how or
organization in the future to keep the plants going or have an organized
decommissioning of the existing plants.

The technology change would also need to be drastic because we cannot rely on
cold ocean waters to cool the plants.

In other words, we should have done it 30 years ago when the risk of societal
collapse wasn't so great and we had the confidence that we can maintain this
technology.

------
Sam_PFS
Hi Everyone,

My name is Sam Samida-Pugh, and I am the CEO and Founder of Progressive Fusion
Solutions (PFS), a fusion energy research company I started when I was 16.
I've been operating PFS for 2 years now, and so far, our team has constructed
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TRIUMF, Canadas National Lab for Particle Physics. Our fusion area of focus is
that of the Polywell, a method of fusion which is commercially viable on a
small, and inexpensive scale in relation to other fusion projects. We have 3
patents on the Polywell, and it is our goal to demonstrate energy extraction
from one of our models by 2025. Currently, we are looking to raise $2 million
to advance our company to its 3rd stage this year. If anyone is interested in
learning more, or is aware of anyone who may be interested, then I kindly
invite you to visit our website:
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or send me an email through progressivefusionsolutions@gmail.com.

Cheers, Sam

------
Creationer
The problem isn't cost of power generated, its the ability to respond to rapid
volatility - when clouds obscure solar panels, and when the wind stops
blowing.

Nuclear cannot do this so it is useless. Batteries and gas power plants can
which is why they are being rolled out.

Wind, Solar, Gas, Batteries and Electric Vehicles are existing solutions to
the climate problem. The market will implement them slowly, since they are
cheaper and superior to legacy solutions, but we need political effort to do
it more quickly.

~~~
plasticchris
A certain baseline power requirement must be met.

It's also interesting to see the volatility of solar and wind be used as an
argument against baseline generation, as this has traditionally been an
argument against renewables.

~~~
pfdietz
It's an argument against renewables only when the renewables are expensive.
When renewables are cheap, then nuclear is placed in an impossible situation,
as nuclear either displaces the renewables when they ARE available (incurring
a large marginal cost), or only runs when they aren't (forcing nuclear's large
fixed costs to be amortized over much less output).

It's likely that a cost optimized grid will have little or no nuclear in it.

~~~
DennisP
Unless you do solar and mostly skip wind, in which case you can build enough
nuclear to run the nighttime load and solar for just the extra daytime load,
then you can run the nukes 24/7\. That minimizes both nuclear downtime and
storage requirements.

But if we're going to build a lot of wind, that still doesn't necessarily doom
nuclear, if we can lower the capital cost of nuclear. The article describes
some fairly simple ways to go about that; a recent study at MIT had the same
recommendations.

Down the road a decade or so, molten salt reactors will start to be available,
and those look to have much lower capital costs and good load-balancing.

~~~
pfdietz
Running nuclear plants just at night would double the cost of that power. This
would be insane.

Using nuclear instead of solar when solar was available would increase the
cost of that power by a factor of 3 or more. That would also be insane.

Nuclear just doesn't have a place on a grid with a large renewable supply.

EDIT: You wrote:

"I agree that would be insane, which is why I said to run the nuclear 24/7 and
build enough solar for the extra demand during the day."

This is case #2, using nuclear power during the day when you could have used
cheap solar. It makes no sense economically at current nuclear costs.

~~~
DennisP
I agree that would be insane, which is why I said to run the nuclear 24/7 and
build enough solar for the _extra_ demand during the day.

Wind/solar is only that much cheaper if you ignore storage.

Stop ignoring the possibilities of much cheaper nuclear and things look
different anyway. South Korea is already 6X cheaper according to the article,
and some GenIV designs are likely to do even better.

~~~
pfdietz
South Korea's numbers lack transparency, and I believe they assume very low
interest rates (that is, they socialize the financial risk.)

Is there a POSSIBILITY of much cheaper nuclear? Sure, anything is POSSIBLE. Is
it LIKELY? Experience says "no". And surely it's not possible in the US right
now. Who is going to suddenly build these much cheaper nukes here, the Nuclear
Power Plant Fairy? The SMR companies are not in a position to deliver now; the
one that is closest, NuScale, is not promising the kind of cost reductions
that would be needed.

~~~
sanxiyn
> Who is going to suddenly build these much cheaper nukes here, the Nuclear
> Power Plant Fairy?

There actually is a simple solution: follow UAE and let Koreans build
standardized APR-1400.

~~~
pfdietz
"Robin Mills, CEO of Dubai-based energy consultancy Qamar Energy, has
projected that Barakah will supply energy at a cost of roughly 11 U.S. cents
per kilowatt-hour, assuming the startup delays are not substantial. (All four
reactors are scheduled to be operating by 2021.) Mills regards that as
inexpensive for low-carbon power that can be ramped up as demand increases.
But solar is now even cheaper in the Gulf region, where the same intense sun
that keeps the seawater hot puts solar power plants on steroids. “Solar has
become the lowest-cost source of electricity compared to pretty much
anything,” says Mills."

[https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/the-united-arab-
emi...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/the-united-arab-emirates-
nuclear-power-gambit)

At the same time, solar PPAs in the US are falling so fast it's hard to keep
track of the record holder. Here's one from last year for $0.023/kWh.

[https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/nevada-beat-
ari...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/nevada-beat-arizona-
record-low-solar-ppa-price)

------
jokoon
Greenpeace has been known to fight nuclear power, as have far left green
parties. It really saddens me.

Reaching good power output with renewable energies is laughable. I keep
hearing that germany generated a lot of power with wind, like 80%, but it
lasted one week, and it makes me really wonder about the accuracy of that
news. Wikipedia is moot about germany wind energy:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Germany)

The amount of solar panels, dams and wind turbine you need to reach the power
output of a nuclear plant is ridiculous. I wish we would consider the cost of
kWh for each non carbonized energy.

A french consultant showing cost graphs:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuzGG9W7obs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuzGG9W7obs)

~~~
Brakenshire
Nuclear is cheap if governments back the loans (all the cost is up front so a
2% or 5% interest rate has a massive impact on final project cost), and if the
projects can be delivered consistently on budget (conspicuously not the case
for any of the most recent designs with passive safety features).

~~~
jokoon
Not cheap, but probably still cheaper than renewables, per kWh.

Also the problem with renewables is the power output curve, which are
unpredictable because of sunlight and wind fluctuations, which will be
compensated with coal/gas energy. Less of a problem with nuclear.

~~~
Brakenshire
In the UK solar and onshore wind are about 5p/kWh, offshore wind about 7p/kWh,
nuclear about 7-10p/kWh, depending on generation of reactor and scale of
order, so more expensive per kWh. But you’re right that clearly once you
include the cost of grid integration, taking wind or solar above 30-50% will
incur significantly higher costs. I think in the UK it’s about 20p/kWh now for
solar or wind with four hours of battery firming for example. But the
difference is those costs are continually falling each year, whereas nuclear
has stayed the same or risen. I would still renew nuclear personally, to
provide maybe 15-25% of the grid, but it’s not enormously obvious. I think by
the time the nuclear stations are built renewables will probably be cheaper, I
just favour it as a hedge. Although in the UK we’ve had some nuclear
development companies pull out and ask for more money even after agreeing to
build at 10p/kWh, so that may not work out in reality.

