Is nuclear power our best bet against climate change?(bostonreview.net)
bostonreview.net
Is nuclear power our best bet against climate change?
https://bostonreview.net/science-nature/samuel-miller-mcdonald-nuclear-power-our-best-bet-against-climate-change
604 comments
Nothing really is the "best bet" in this. The correct solution is to hedge your bets by betting on just about every possible solution. The local resources available dictate just too much what is the "best" solution but even then one should not put all the eggs in one basket.
But solving the electricity problem is just solving one part (~25%) of the equation. There is still a lot of greenhouse gasses being released from cars, construction (concrete), farming and various industrial processes. But the electricity seems to be the easiest problem to solve and once we have that on track to being fixed we can move more resources into the other issues.
But solving the electricity problem is just solving one part (~25%) of the equation. There is still a lot of greenhouse gasses being released from cars, construction (concrete), farming and various industrial processes. But the electricity seems to be the easiest problem to solve and once we have that on track to being fixed we can move more resources into the other issues.
Imagine if the United States had gotten 80% of its electricity from nuclear over the past 4 decades.
China might have adopted it instead of coal.
We’d been talking about the danger of climate change in 2150.
China might have adopted it instead of coal.
We’d been talking about the danger of climate change in 2150.
Regarding reserves, the article makes the usual mistake of taking currently known and cheap sources as definite. But consider how Mad Max came out in the late 1970s, when the fear of completely running out of oil was evident to everyone. And yet, we have now found so much more oil that we have to force ourselves to stop using it.
We haven't been looking for more uranium simply because there is no need for it. The known _cheap_ reserves are barely tapped. And there are many known sites that are simply not tapped yet because the aforementioned ones are just so cheap. If there was a need for more, prospecting would be profitable and would be done.
(As an aside, taking uranium out of sea water is almost certainly never going to be worth it.)
And the same applies to thorium or fast breeder reactors. They're just not worth the effort at this time. But again, if the demand was there, it would take just 10 years to build them.
We haven't been looking for more uranium simply because there is no need for it. The known _cheap_ reserves are barely tapped. And there are many known sites that are simply not tapped yet because the aforementioned ones are just so cheap. If there was a need for more, prospecting would be profitable and would be done.
(As an aside, taking uranium out of sea water is almost certainly never going to be worth it.)
And the same applies to thorium or fast breeder reactors. They're just not worth the effort at this time. But again, if the demand was there, it would take just 10 years to build them.
Last I calculated all USA energy need can be fullfilled by about ~800 ( + 150% to cover all kind of storage and transmission ) Billion USD investment in solar.
On the other hand, do we have any idea about how long Nuclear power will last, If we produce lets say, 50 percent of all our energy needs from it ?
On the other hand, do we have any idea about how long Nuclear power will last, If we produce lets say, 50 percent of all our energy needs from it ?
This forbes article from 2 years ago (https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2019/09/30/net-zero...) explains that, to replace the world's fossil fuel consumption with nuclear power consumption by 2050, a new nuclear power station would have to be brought online every day between now and then.
I intuit (perhaps wrongly) that even one per 10 days is extremely far fetched.
So, if 2050 is the deadline by which we must become carbon neutral in order to prevent catastrophic levels of climate change, I guess nuclear power cannot amount to as much as 10% of the solution.
I intuit (perhaps wrongly) that even one per 10 days is extremely far fetched.
So, if 2050 is the deadline by which we must become carbon neutral in order to prevent catastrophic levels of climate change, I guess nuclear power cannot amount to as much as 10% of the solution.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it a truism that, in the 20th century st least, civilian nuclear power plants were simply a wheeze for the actual grand plan: weapons manufacturing? The two are coupled in a way that doesn’t feel comfortable.
Imagine a different timeline in which something called an Apricot bomb became the ultimate must-have weapon of mass destruction to ensure a seat at the big boys diplomatic table. E.g. you smash apricot stones together to produce annihilation.
Suddenly we have government programmes researching the health benefits of apricot juice, a system of distribution of apricot juice to all elementary schools, university departments funded specifically to produce generation after generation or stone fruit experts, oh and sure, a bomb or two, but trust our top men: that’s not the main focus, silly citizen!
Imagine a different timeline in which something called an Apricot bomb became the ultimate must-have weapon of mass destruction to ensure a seat at the big boys diplomatic table. E.g. you smash apricot stones together to produce annihilation.
Suddenly we have government programmes researching the health benefits of apricot juice, a system of distribution of apricot juice to all elementary schools, university departments funded specifically to produce generation after generation or stone fruit experts, oh and sure, a bomb or two, but trust our top men: that’s not the main focus, silly citizen!
The most enduring product of any nuclear power project is not radioactive waste, but corruption. Nuclear power construction projects, at least in the western world, invariably become conduits for wholly legal, long-term corruption, making nukes about the most expensive kind of power (ignoring externalities from coal). This is a common feature of big-ticket public-works projects, particularly also including tunnel projects and military procurement.
Nukes take so long to build not because it is so hard to do -- it is mostly just concrete and plumbing -- but because nobody actually involved wants the construction money ever to stop flowing. No output is even promised for years, which is easily stretched out, often beyond a decade. Sunk-cost fallacy helps this process: once a few $B are burned, it is easy to unlock more against the prospect of admitting what was already spent bought nothing.
As bad as is the corruption around fission, fusion has been and must be much worse. A fission plant is expected to produce power eventually, or the plug will finally be pulled. One recent fission failure has cost $30B, so far, which seems like a lot, but fusion has burned more already without even breaking ground on a plant. ITER, even if 100% successful, will generate zero watts: no turbines are in the site plan. A plant built after it would cost, conservatively, >$50B and take decades to finish. (The most likely outcome would be that it is never finished.) Meanwhile, the costs of solar, wind, and storage are still plummeting, with no hint of a lower limit.
Thus far wind and solar have mostly avoided becoming conduits for corruption, probably because it is easy to see how the money is spent, and maybe because of the high fraction of idealists involved. (The exception is solar thermal.) Power can begin flowing almost immediately, after a small fraction of the whole installation is done, which can then fund further construction. Thus, the up-front capital needed is small, and costs are constrained by immediate revenue.
Thus, every penny diverted to fission and fusion (not to mention feeding and maintaining coal) from solar and wind brings climate catastrophe ever nearer.
Nukes take so long to build not because it is so hard to do -- it is mostly just concrete and plumbing -- but because nobody actually involved wants the construction money ever to stop flowing. No output is even promised for years, which is easily stretched out, often beyond a decade. Sunk-cost fallacy helps this process: once a few $B are burned, it is easy to unlock more against the prospect of admitting what was already spent bought nothing.
As bad as is the corruption around fission, fusion has been and must be much worse. A fission plant is expected to produce power eventually, or the plug will finally be pulled. One recent fission failure has cost $30B, so far, which seems like a lot, but fusion has burned more already without even breaking ground on a plant. ITER, even if 100% successful, will generate zero watts: no turbines are in the site plan. A plant built after it would cost, conservatively, >$50B and take decades to finish. (The most likely outcome would be that it is never finished.) Meanwhile, the costs of solar, wind, and storage are still plummeting, with no hint of a lower limit.
Thus far wind and solar have mostly avoided becoming conduits for corruption, probably because it is easy to see how the money is spent, and maybe because of the high fraction of idealists involved. (The exception is solar thermal.) Power can begin flowing almost immediately, after a small fraction of the whole installation is done, which can then fund further construction. Thus, the up-front capital needed is small, and costs are constrained by immediate revenue.
Thus, every penny diverted to fission and fusion (not to mention feeding and maintaining coal) from solar and wind brings climate catastrophe ever nearer.
Let me arrogantly simplify the problem a bit and offer a solution:
1) bet everything on renewables - solar and wind. more scale means lower and lower production/maintenance costs over time.
2) bet on the cheapest, most effective, least polluting energy storage solution, and add huge scale to it, hence vastly reducing costs over time.
Cheap and clean energy storage makes the intermittent production problem of most renewables go away.
No nuclear meltdowns. No waste disposal.
And no coal, no gas, no pollution from burning that stuff.
Ok, end of arrogant rant.
1) bet everything on renewables - solar and wind. more scale means lower and lower production/maintenance costs over time.
2) bet on the cheapest, most effective, least polluting energy storage solution, and add huge scale to it, hence vastly reducing costs over time.
Cheap and clean energy storage makes the intermittent production problem of most renewables go away.
No nuclear meltdowns. No waste disposal.
And no coal, no gas, no pollution from burning that stuff.
Ok, end of arrogant rant.
I think we are past the point of being so picky that we think we can afford to ignore all non “perfect” solutions. We have to recognize that to engineer our way out of climate disaster we will have to employ solutions that create new problems (e.g., nuclear waste) that we will have to solve in the future. As long as these problems can be solved later (which to an extent is true with nuclear waste), then we must proceed.
It's a bit cheeky but I like to point out that the Sun is nuclear power. It's a maintenance-free fusion reactor so powerful that it can blind you from 150 million km away.
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Anyway, Robert Bussard believed that he was on to something with his polywell fusion plant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhL5VO2NStU
He claimed that it would only take about $200M of engineering development to become viable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell
- - - -
Anyway, Robert Bussard believed that he was on to something with his polywell fusion plant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhL5VO2NStU
He claimed that it would only take about $200M of engineering development to become viable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell
Nuclear in the short term, Fusion or Thorium reactors long term should be the goal. Get MIT's Spark reactor funded and built and lets hurry up and finish ITER, while we prototype Thorium in some medium sized cities.
High density power generation is the key. Look at all the problems that come with wind and solar: land usage, transmission lines, loss of energy when weather becomes unfavorable, the amount of battery storage you need to manufacture.
High density power generation is the key. Look at all the problems that come with wind and solar: land usage, transmission lines, loss of energy when weather becomes unfavorable, the amount of battery storage you need to manufacture.
Put simply: Yes. Nuclear Power is (part of) our Best Bet Against Climate Change.
I don't even think this requires further arguments, in 2021. This fact has been known for like 20 years, by anyone having a clue about orders of magnitude and energy.
I don't even think this requires further arguments, in 2021. This fact has been known for like 20 years, by anyone having a clue about orders of magnitude and energy.
The first part of this piece seems weird because this is not anymore about developing "nuclear vs fossil" but about developing "renewable sources or/xor nuclear".
I guess there are two types: 1) those who oppose nuclear because they fear science and don’t grasp the logistics involved in solar, 2) those who might have been able to prevent climate change if they had more political sway many decades ago.
I think the first group will win, because it will always be the larger group. It will always be a smaller group that have greater intelligence and foresight. For this reason I think discussion and public debate about climate change is counter productive. Trying to involve more people in a solution will just bring more mediocre minds to the discussion and hinder our best attempts to solve the problem with their innumeracy, ego and lack of scientific understanding.
I think the first group will win, because it will always be the larger group. It will always be a smaller group that have greater intelligence and foresight. For this reason I think discussion and public debate about climate change is counter productive. Trying to involve more people in a solution will just bring more mediocre minds to the discussion and hinder our best attempts to solve the problem with their innumeracy, ego and lack of scientific understanding.
History of accidents, design flaws, shortcuts taken during construction show that we are not ready for Nuclear Power.
How could it be our best bet? I hope not.
It does nothing to reduce the consumption frenzy, and it does nothing to remove CO2 / CH4 from the atmosphere, and it does nothing to reduce insolation.
Something like the MEER:ReflEction project[1] seems to be more appropriate to me.
[1]: https://www.meerreflection.com/home
It does nothing to reduce the consumption frenzy, and it does nothing to remove CO2 / CH4 from the atmosphere, and it does nothing to reduce insolation.
Something like the MEER:ReflEction project[1] seems to be more appropriate to me.
[1]: https://www.meerreflection.com/home
Is the practise of Love our best defense against our own carelessness?
What about fusion? Is it still a pipe dream?
No, by virtue of Betteridge's law of headlines.
Also by virtue that nuclear plants are too expensive, take far too long to plan, authorize and build, only make sense in stable developed countries where the dirtiest and fastest growing carbon emissions are generally in more unstable third-world countries. Oh and they aren't fairing well against solar and wind plus storage in terms of price: It will probably be less than a decade before wind and solar + storage are cheaper than nuclear.
Also by virtue that nuclear plants are too expensive, take far too long to plan, authorize and build, only make sense in stable developed countries where the dirtiest and fastest growing carbon emissions are generally in more unstable third-world countries. Oh and they aren't fairing well against solar and wind plus storage in terms of price: It will probably be less than a decade before wind and solar + storage are cheaper than nuclear.
It's too late to fight emissions. It's time to build flood defenses and irrigation systems and move cities north...
Yes, it is.
Nuclear power not renewable.
There is a very finite supply of uranium. The same as with coal, natural gas, oil etc.
If we build a substantial number of nuclear power plants all across the world, that resource may run out within 200 years.
We have then left our future generations with several hundred new sites that cant be used for anything productive for 100s of years or a lot more.
A ton of nuclear waste nobody knows what to do with.
Transporting highly dangerous uranium from where they dig it up, to the power plants and then from there to somewhere safe is risky. It would be the top mission of terrorist groups to capture.
They dont have to make a bomb, or anything very advanced. Just spreading it over a city like NYC would be bad.
Some say we reached peak uranium in the 80s, some say in 30 years ahead. All agree that it is going to happen.
The usual retort from nuclear lobbyists is that we will have nuclear power that is new and advanced so there won't be any nuclear waste left that we must worry about.
And that new nuclear powerplants will not have the errors the hold ones did, so Fukushima, Chernobyl could never happen.
These new advanced nuclear reactors do not exist in any numbers and a lot of them do not exist period. They are ideas on a drawing board.
Thorium reactors would have access to fuel that is a lot more plentiful and easier to extract. Nobody has yet built a proper Thorium reactor that is reproducible and affordable. Waste would also be less dangerous. Yet some of the transitions the thorium reactor process would have would be extremely dangerous. Hopefully, they would not stay in that state awfully long.
Breeder reactors would extend the uranium supply for an extremely long time. There are two reactors that are in part based on this concept.
If we were to start investing in nuclear power, then we need to finance building one these new reactors and observe it over 10 to 30 years. That should be enough time to learn about most bugs, dangers, faults, and problems.
If it looks good, we build a few more and see what happens.
Over several hundred years we could have enough new reactors running.
Planning to construct a lot of untested reactors in parallel around the world is to me an exceptionally bad idea. We need to test learn, fail and learn in an iterative process
IMHO Focus of financing and building sources for electricity should be focused on renewable energy that can keep going for a long time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
There is a very finite supply of uranium. The same as with coal, natural gas, oil etc.
If we build a substantial number of nuclear power plants all across the world, that resource may run out within 200 years.
We have then left our future generations with several hundred new sites that cant be used for anything productive for 100s of years or a lot more.
A ton of nuclear waste nobody knows what to do with.
Transporting highly dangerous uranium from where they dig it up, to the power plants and then from there to somewhere safe is risky. It would be the top mission of terrorist groups to capture.
They dont have to make a bomb, or anything very advanced. Just spreading it over a city like NYC would be bad.
Some say we reached peak uranium in the 80s, some say in 30 years ahead. All agree that it is going to happen.
The usual retort from nuclear lobbyists is that we will have nuclear power that is new and advanced so there won't be any nuclear waste left that we must worry about.
And that new nuclear powerplants will not have the errors the hold ones did, so Fukushima, Chernobyl could never happen.
These new advanced nuclear reactors do not exist in any numbers and a lot of them do not exist period. They are ideas on a drawing board.
Thorium reactors would have access to fuel that is a lot more plentiful and easier to extract. Nobody has yet built a proper Thorium reactor that is reproducible and affordable. Waste would also be less dangerous. Yet some of the transitions the thorium reactor process would have would be extremely dangerous. Hopefully, they would not stay in that state awfully long.
Breeder reactors would extend the uranium supply for an extremely long time. There are two reactors that are in part based on this concept.
If we were to start investing in nuclear power, then we need to finance building one these new reactors and observe it over 10 to 30 years. That should be enough time to learn about most bugs, dangers, faults, and problems.
If it looks good, we build a few more and see what happens.
Over several hundred years we could have enough new reactors running.
Planning to construct a lot of untested reactors in parallel around the world is to me an exceptionally bad idea. We need to test learn, fail and learn in an iterative process
IMHO Focus of financing and building sources for electricity should be focused on renewable energy that can keep going for a long time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
[deleted]
Oh, thank God, finally a counterfactual to Betteridge's law of headlines.
Just gonna be that guy on this thread who is not convinced anthropogenic climate change is a thing, or that if it is a thing that it is more significant than natural variations of climate. The economic and political consequences of the proposed solutions to this alleged crisis (enrich these corporations and these nations at the expense of these corporations and these nations) are too glaringly one sided to suggest empirical impartiality.
It also continues to astound me that proponents of the “climate crisis” narrative never make any mention whatsoever of the fact that the most valuable energy company/car company in the world makes solar panels, batteries, and electric cars. Instead climate crisis actors demonize Tesla for not being unionized (eg, Tesla excluded from the White House American Electric Car Summit) and are lining up at the piggie trough for exclusive Biden bucks that will fund infrastructure investments that will help Ford and GM catch up to Tesla.
To wit: our best bet to speed the transition to sustainable energy is to get out of the way of the capitalists who have already solved this problem with superior transportation and energy products.
It also continues to astound me that proponents of the “climate crisis” narrative never make any mention whatsoever of the fact that the most valuable energy company/car company in the world makes solar panels, batteries, and electric cars. Instead climate crisis actors demonize Tesla for not being unionized (eg, Tesla excluded from the White House American Electric Car Summit) and are lining up at the piggie trough for exclusive Biden bucks that will fund infrastructure investments that will help Ford and GM catch up to Tesla.
To wit: our best bet to speed the transition to sustainable energy is to get out of the way of the capitalists who have already solved this problem with superior transportation and energy products.
The standard concerns apply:
1. We have no long term solution for the storage and disposal of enrichment byproducts. There is reprocessing but the results are simply less toxic (eg UF6 -> UF4) and are, to date, expensive;
2. We have no long term solution on the storage and disposal of fission waste products;
3. The failure modes are huge. Most notably, the Cheernobyl Absolute Exclusion Zone stands at 1000 square miles 35 years after the fact; and
4. This it he big one for me: I just don't trust governments or corporations to maintain, inspect, manage and operate nuclear power plants at scale.
> Researchers have estimated that about 1 in 5 deaths globally can be attributed to fossil fuels through air pollution alone
From the linked post [2]:
Also worth noting:
> The study shows that more than 8 million people around the globe die each year as a result of breathing in air containing particles from burning fuels like coal, petrol and diesel, ...
So it's including vehicles. You could be 100% nuclear power generation and that part wouldn't change. The counterpoint is electric vehicles. While these are generally a positive, they have more limited utility, higher cost (a significant issue in much of the world) and you have to factor in the externalities of the power used to charge them.
[1]: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
[2]: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2021/feb/fossil-fuel-air-pollutio...