
A new generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power - peterkshultz
https://www.hcn.org/issues/50.21/nuclear-energy-a-new-generation-of-environmentalists-is-learning-to-stop-worrying-and-love-nuclear-power
======
imtringued
With a new projected cost of 25 billion USD the cost overruns of the Vogtle
Plant are worse than I thought. There is a reason why nuclear is losing to
natural gas and coal. It's too damn expensive and takes too long. If this
money was instead spent on building more storage capacity we'd have solved our
energy problems a long time ago and even if we started today we'd be done long
before the nuclear plant is online.

The nuclear plant consists of two units each with 1200MW production capacity.
Let's be pessimistic and assume that we need 24 hours of storage or roughly
57600MWh. A modern redox flow or lithium ion battery can cost as little as
$100 per kWh but Tesla's grid battery with 129MWh cost 66 million which is
around $500 per kWh so we will use that.

Well it turns out 57600MWh * 500$/kWH is exactly 28.8 billion USD. No power
grid on earth needs a 24 hour battery but even with this crazy assumption grid
storage isn't significantly more expensive than nuclear power.

~~~
thatcat
Your cost analysis neglects replacement, disposal costs for batteries, long
term costs of carbon emission, and coal flyash disposal. The only reason
nuclear is losing to gas and coal is because the externalities of the mess
they make are dumped on the public, whereas nuclear pollution and waste
processing is heavily regulated.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Batteries can be recycled, nuclear waste is stockpiled with no permanent
disposal or recycling plan in sight.

Solar and wind, unsubsidized, with storage, are already cheaper than nuclear.
Those costs will continue to plummet, especially as EV battery demand ramps
(rapidly expanding battery manufacturing capacity).

Nuclear lost because it’s too expensive, and has its own externalities to
ignore (decommissioning, waste disposal, liability insurance).

~~~
beaconstudios
this might sound silly (and it probably is), but I don't understand why we
don't build a hulking great cannon and shoot our nuclear waste into space.

~~~
ben-schaaf
I know others have addressed the dangers of this, but I had a little fun
looking at the logistics. The UK alone produces 2Mt of radioactive waste[0]
per year, ~9% is of "intermediate" level. Just sending those 18Mt into LEO
would take 129,000 Saturn V launches per year. That's about one launch every 4
minutes. And LEO is _not_ where we want to send anything. Lets assume a Trans-
Lunar Injection is enough, bringing that number up to 370,000, almost one
launch per minute.

Just the RP-1 & LH2 fuel cost would be around $600,000 per launch[1], so about
222 billion USD per year (The fuel is the cheapest part of the launch). Each
launch releases around 440,000 kg of CO2[2] into the atmosphere. That's 163Mt,
an increase of 44% of the UK's current CO2 pollution from the launches alone.

Just for fun, if we wanted to send all nuclear waste all the way to pluto
using only Falcon Heavies we'd have to launch around 1.8 per second. Going off
the 80 million USD price tag for these launches, that's 4.5 quadrillion USD.
That's about 60 times the Gross World Product to cover the UK alone.

[0] [https://nda.blog.gov.uk/2017/04/03/how-much-radioactive-
wast...](https://nda.blog.gov.uk/2017/04/03/how-much-radioactive-waste-is-
there/) [1] [https://www.quora.com/How-much-fuel-does-it-take-to-
travel-t...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-fuel-does-it-take-to-travel-to-
the-moon?redirected_qid=38695501) [2]
[https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/13082/calculate-
fa...](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/13082/calculate-
falcon-9-co2-emissions)

~~~
chongli
Launching waste into space with a rocket is a silly idea. We don't really care
if the waste gets damaged as long as it doesn't break up and make a mess. Why
not build a giant railgun to launch it?

~~~
ben-schaaf
I'd consider them equally as silly, considering we're actually capable of
launching rockets into space yet the closest we've gotten with a space gun is
a measly 180km apogee @ 3.6km/s[0]. The original question was why we don't
send our nuclear waste into space. We can't send our nuclear waste into space
using a rail gun because we can't currently send anything into space with a
rail gun.

Otherwise here's a good discussion on the viability of space guns:
[https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/2370/what-
technolo...](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/2370/what-
technological-hurdles-prevent-the-development-of-a-space-gun).

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP)

~~~
gdpgreg
Cause someone murdered the leading scientist in the field. Also there's
concerns that it'd be too easy to turn it essentially into a very long range,
highly effective weapon that could lob nuclear or conventional projectiles at
countries on the other side of the planet with little to no warning.

~~~
ben-schaaf
We already have highly effective weapons that can lob nuclear or conventional
projectiles at countries on the other side of the planet with little to no
warning: ballistic missile subs.

------
lucb1e
I see so many people against nuclear but I wonder if they read books such as
Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air. As I understand it, either we kill
ourselves fast, or we use this as a stop-gap until we can figure it out for
real. With newer reactors being much better, maybe another generation (helped
by more implementations) will even be good enough not to have to be a stop-gap
solution.

~~~
crdoconnor
Three questions that I have never had satisfactorily answered by nuclear
advocates:

* If nuclear is that safe, why don't we eliminate or at least, _significantly_ raise the nuclear liability cap? The nuclear industry keeps trying to sell us (this article included) on the idea that disasters are now close to impossible. It'd be an easier sell if they voluntarily increased their liability, to, say $150-400 billion and found private insurers willing to take a risk on their safety, no?

* Did you personally consider Japan's nuclear plants unsafe before Fukushima? (as far as I can tell it took most of us by surprise)

* If the strike price for Hinkley point electricity is 1.5x-2x renewable strike price _today_ (never mind in 10 years when renewable prices have plunged again), what exactly _was_ so great about building a "next gen" nuclear plant?

~~~
WalterBright
Give me a billion and I'll write you a policy for $400b. No problemo!

~~~
onetimemanytime
Is this you
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_R._Greenberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_R._Greenberg)
:) ?

------
kartan
I'm writing this from Japan. I do not have the numbers, but as I cross the
country in the Shinkansen I see a sea of solar panels.

Fukushima has been a lesson here. Strategically, Japan has to import it's
energy, except for solar energy. With a float of trains electricity is already
at the core of their transportation system.

Here, at least, nuclear doesn't look like it's the future.

~~~
charlesju
I was interested in your statement, and a brief search on wikipedia says that
Japan has slowly been restarting their nuclear power plants and is planning on
growing nuclear power as a total percentage of power over the next several
decades.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Japan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Japan)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan)

I don't think the sentiment on nuclear power, even after Fukushima, is as
clear cut as you're presenting.

~~~
roenxi
Can you pick out a particular section?

I'm about as pro-nuclear as they get, but the Wikipedia articles seem to
support a story of the Japanese government shutting down nuclear and being
very tentative restarting the existing reactors [0].

It is difficult to guess what is going on in a country that doesn't report in
English, but the info in Wikipedia (mostly a little dated) seems to support a
rollback of nuclear. Reduced generation, limited new developments. Either they
are using less energy or something else is filling the void left by nuclear
plant shutdowns.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan#Nuclear...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan#Nuclear_power_plants)

~~~
charlesju
"In June 2015, the Japanese government released an energy proposal that
includes the revival of nuclear power to account for Japan's energy needs. The
proposal calls for an increase of about 20% in nuclear energy by 2030.[2] This
reverses a decision by the previous Democratic Party, the government will re-
open nuclear plants, aiming for "a realistic and balanced energy structure"."

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

------
ouid
Just a nitpick, neutrons aren't _blasted_ into the nuclei of fissile isotopes.
The faster a neutron is going, the less likely it is to cause fission. You
want slow neutrons.

~~~
acidburnNSA
Depends what you're going for. If you have the fissile concentration to
support it a fast-neutron chain reaction has lots of benefits: more neutrons
per absorption in fuel leads to the ability to breed fuel for millennia or
alternatively get lots more energy out of nuclear waste. Fission product
poisons don't affect fast neutrons that much so you can get way more energy
out of the fuel in fast reactors.

------
SubiculumCode
The thesis, _A new generation of environmentalists is learning to stop
worrying and love atomic power_ is unsupported by the text if the article.

My readthrough of the article failed to reveal supporting evidence that there
is widespread change in opinion about nuclear in younger generations, much
less that a pro-nuclear movement is growing.

------
tpkj
Another factor to consider with nuclear is how it perpetuates complete
dependence upon the grid, a single point of failure model. Perspective
articulated here by Sunnova CEO John Berger.

[https://youtu.be/6Dx0U2y-YgU?t=2922](https://youtu.be/6Dx0U2y-YgU?t=2922)

~~~
intopieces
Nuclear doesn’t perpetuate complete dependence, because it has never been
intended to be the sole provider of energy to its customers. Even the most
ardent nuclear cheerleaders pose it as a single component in an energy mix.

~~~
tpkj
"...a single component in an energy mix". And that mix relies on the grid?
With nuclear or other centralized power source, yes.

~~~
intopieces
From your link, solar doesn't rely on the grid, and in fact it acts
independently of it on some islands.

~~~
justtopost
For the network effects and efficencies, solar absolutly needs a grid. If not
a grid, you need local storage, another inefficiency.

~~~
jabl
IIRC there was some article linked to on hn some time ago where it was
explained that most rooftop solar installations actually don't work at all
without a grid. If the grid goes down, so does the solar. It's of course
technically possible to fix, but costs more.

~~~
cesarb
The article you're thinking of was probably this one:
[https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2018/05/why-typical-home-
solar-s...](https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2018/05/why-typical-home-solar-setup-
does-not-work-off-grid.html)

~~~
jabl
Yes, exactly! I briefly tried to search for it, but failed. Thanks for digging
it up!

------
8bitsrule
Now there'a title that Ed Bernays would be proud of. 'A new generation
approves.' So, where's this new generation? What demonstrates their love? Show
me pictures of a dozen, or it didn't happen. Then, show how that scales with
full knowledge of history, not just free jelly babies.

Fantasy fiction isn't going to solve our dilemma. Advanced, less toxic
technology will. Nuclear has had its chance.

~~~
ThomPete
Nuclear is the safest, most scaleable, greenest most reliable power source we
know of bar none and blows every other alternative energy out of the water at
1000w per m2.

Far less people have because of nuclear power in all its time than gets killed
by nature in a year.

The environmentalist not rationality kille nuclear.

~~~
8bitsrule
No! Even the 'new' ones are killing it? Too slow, too expensive, too toxic.

Hmmm, let's see: how many years before the residents of the San Onofre region
finish paying for its recent failed upgrade ? Then how much more will they pay
for decommissioning it?

That 'clean, safe, too cheap to meter' line is from the 1950s. Before longer
we'll have a decentralized, more secure power source that actually lives up to
those lies. And best of all? The fuel supply will never be exhausted ... never
need to be decommmissioned ... and lives a nice safe 90M miles away.

~~~
ThomPete
Thats not because of the technology but legislation around it. Most of the
pricing will go down once more gets put up so yes and its a hell more
effective than wind snd solar which arent even supporting 1% of the worlds
supply and not even close to a realistic solution to them beeing unreliable
and frankly inferior even with a 300% improvement which isnt possible.

------
lando2319
Question, why do people talk so pessimistically about the potential for solar?
I see lots of comments like, "there is not enough land for solar panels".
People seem to have a fixed view about how much power can be drawn. Sure right
now the payoff might be underwhelming in relation to the size requirements,
but with more development wouldn't the technology improve?

I imagine a future where the technology improves to the point where people who
live in cloudy areas can still generate plenty of power. Is that unrealistic?

~~~
Twisell
The point is that climat change is real and it’s coming fast. So from a purely
pragmatic standpoint it seems more reasonable to deploy solutions as soon as
possible with available technologies than to wait for a plausible technology
improvements.

Otherwise you risk being almost as inactive in the required efforts than an
average climat change denier.

~~~
marcosdumay
Hum... Do you have any actual solution? One that does solve carbon emissions,
can be deployed in reasonable time, and does not involve people getting
poorer?

The most pragmatic thing to do is to improve solar generation and all kinds of
storage. Those can actually solve the problem. Nuclear can't be here on time
(nor on budget), and everything else just won't happen.

We could have avoided a lot of problems on the last few decades if the nuclear
countries decided to push for safer reactors with no proliferation problems.
They didn't. They all kept going for more weapons. Now we have to live with
those problems, and the nuclear economical window passed away, it does not
make sense anymore.

~~~
Twisell
>and the nuclear economical window passed away, it does not make sense
anymore.

Say’s who?

Because laws of physics say it’s the more efficient solution yet (not the
cleanest thought) to tackle climat change problem. You have to put serious
study out to counter that, not hearsay’s by coal lobby or anti-nuclear
activists.

------
simoneau
I recommend Whole Earth Disciple by Stewart Brand. One of the founders of the
environmental movement explains why he was wrong about nuclear power and other
issues.

“We are as gods, and have to get good at it.”

~~~
erikpukinskis
I am idly curious whether the environmentalist movement was deliberately
seeded with anti-nuclear sentiment by the fossil fuel industry.

Could be coincidence, but it seems awfully convenient.

------
mothsonasloth
The Russians have been building floating nuclear power plants to deploy to
remote areas that need power.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power_station)

------
throw2016
The recent piece by HCN on our nuclear past stands in sharp contrast. [1]
Anyone reading that, environmentalists or not, will have reason for extreme
concern and skepticism about a single generations ability to manage
consequences that can last thousands of years.

[1] [https://www.hcn.org/issues/50.21/nuclear-energy-theres-no-
ea...](https://www.hcn.org/issues/50.21/nuclear-energy-theres-no-easy-fix-for-
our-nuclear-past)

~~~
erikpukinskis
The consequences of not using nuclear alternatives will last 1000s of years
too. There’s no way out of consequences.

------
mimixco
No. Nuclear power creates the most dangerous waste known to mankind and we
have no way of mitigating or eliminating it. Nuclear isn't cost effective on
an ongoing operating basis (compared with natural gas). When you add the costs
of closing and "cleaning up" a plant site, which run into the billions of
dollars for each plant, nuclear just doesn't make sense. Nuclear is far from
"carbon neutral." The process of extracting uranium from the earth uses
tremendous amounts of heavy equipment, but the carbon outputs from mining (and
cleanup) are never mentioned anywhere in order to sustain the "clean power"
myth.

~~~
mikestew
_Nuclear power creates the most dangerous waste known to mankind_

From what I've been reading, seems CO2 tops that list. One can bury nuclear
waste in the Nevada desert, keep everyone a few hundred miles away, and it'll
be fine. From what I learned in high school chemistry class, a gas wants to
expand to fill its container, so the CO2 produced by Chinese coal-fired plants
eventually makes its way to me.

 _The process of extracting uranium from the earth uses tremendous amounts of
heavy equipment_

How much compared to, say, coal mining? Mining rare earth metals for solar
panels and wind turbines?

Yeah, nuclear power has some downsides. But I'm not hearing the "versus" part
in your argument.

~~~
v_lisivka
We can build one CO2 capture factory in Nevada desert to capture excessive CO2
and bury it there. I see no difference.

~~~
saagarjha
The amount of CO2 is orders of magnitude more than the amount of radioactive
waste; you cannot just build “one factory in Nevada” and sequester all the
carbon dioxide produced.

~~~
v_lisivka
We need to capture about 1 trillion of tons of CO2 to return to sane levels,
and then capture about 25 billion tons of CO2 annually. It looks doable.

See [http://www.climatecentral.org/news/first-commercial-
co2-capt...](http://www.climatecentral.org/news/first-commercial-co2-capture-
plant-live-21494) .

~~~
Graham67
That process absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere at low concentrations (400 ppm)
onto stones coated with X-material. Later the stones are heated (using more
fuel) to release CO2 at much higher concentrations (more than 75%). Then what?
It is a gas. You need to bury the carbon. They suggest feeding it to
greenhouses, to grow food, which re-releases it later.

------
vertline3
These are hard problems that I am not sure about: decommissioning, spent fuel
storage.

------
Graham67
We have the opportunity now, to decide to not kill everything bigger than
bacteria. We could shutdown nukes, and store the waste. Or we could go for
broke - if we go extinct - everything goes extinct.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Seems like an exaggeration. I like your point but I don’t understand why you
draw a line at bacteria.

------
Jodlenisse
It helps to be born after 1986.

~~~
DennisP
I lived in Germany in 1986. For over half a year we were told to avoid fresh
milk and produce and avoid walking barefoot on grass.

But now I know that Chernobyl was a ridiculously poor design that lacked a
containment dome. If you want to build another Chernobyl I'll fight you, but
if you want to build a modern plant or research MSRs I'm all for it, because
climate change is set to do way worse than anything nuclear has ever done,
Chernobyl included.

------
Jedd
Yet another article about the complex subject of power generation that
wilfully conflates fusion with fission. (Usually it's 'nuclear power' \- here
it's 'atomic power'.

That's assuming we're happy to think we have a power problem, not an an energy
problem. Anti-solar types (who similarly conflate PVC with solar thermal) like
to mix or muddle those. Fission apologists who think that because Lithium is
mined, then mining Uranium should be just fine, also seem keen to blunt some
semantic nuances.

Nuclear fission's time has been and gone - it's great for bombs, and was an
interesting experiment, but the costs are way higher than anyone should
reasonably expect to pass onto future generations.

(Plus they snuck in that nasty 'metric ton' construct. 1000kg is a tonne.)

------
treya
This is a ridiculous and fundamentally flawed proposition. The obvious
omissions and lack of consideration of other factors threatening the planet
belies this author's bias/naivete/stupidity/other motivations.

First, the demand for energy is only a small fraction of numerous ways the
planet is being compromised - irrevocably. Satisfying all energy demands
worldwide cleanly will not "save the planet".

Second, carbon-free is completely different than being clean energy. The
byproducts (generally leaking radioactive waste) are significant, highly
toxic, and long-lasting. While the emissions of fossil fuels is considered,
other cleaner alternatives are not.

Third, the demand for energy is, for the most part, contrived. We are sold on
the ideas of the need for one car for each person, the need for cars to travel
in the first place, whole house heating and cooling, electrical solutions to
simple manual tasks, etc ad infinitum. We could massively reduce energy needs
by using low-power and no-power solutions.

~~~
nickik
> The byproducts (generally leaking radioactive waste)

The idea that nuclear waste 'leaks' anything is absurd and defiantly not
generally true.

While of course the output is toxic, its also highly controlled and does not
come into contact with anything.

Its long lasting but it also contains lots of useful stuff that, if we
continue to use nuclear power and other nuclear byproducts will turn very
valuable.

> Third, the demand for energy is, for the most part, contrived. We are sold
> on the ideas of the need for one car for each person, the need for cars to
> travel in the first place, whole house heating and cooling, electrical
> solutions to simple manual tasks, etc ad infinitum. We could massively
> reduce energy needs by using low-power and no-power solutions.

Sure if you forced everybody how you would like to live then we could do a
lot. The idea that we should artificially restrict peoples energy needs as a
way to save the plant just so we can avoid the very minor issue of nuclear
waste is absurd.

~~~
saagarjha
> The idea that nuclear waste 'leaks' anything is absurd and defiantly not
> generally true. While of course the output is toxic, its also highly
> controlled and does not come into contact with anything. Its long lasting
> but it also contains lots of useful stuff that, if we continue to use
> nuclear power and other nuclear byproducts will turn very valuable.

While I view nuclear power relatively favorably, this is an extremely rose-
tinted view of the situation. Nuclear waste can and does leak.

~~~
acidburnNSA
Hanford waste is radionuclides dissolved in acid to get pure plutonium out. It
leaks. It's from the Cold War nuclear weapons program. [1]

Commercial nuclear waste is solid ceramic Uranium/fission product-oxide. It
does not leak.

[1]
[https://whatisnuclear.com/hanford.html](https://whatisnuclear.com/hanford.html)

~~~
nickik
That's a weapons production cite. In most post I tried to separate civilian
power waste from that.

If we look at civilian power production in the last 40 years its basically a
non issue.

