←back to thread

Nuclear should be considered part of clean energy standard, White House says

(arstechnica.com)
425 points nixass | 8 comments | 02 Apr 21 18:00 UTC | HN request time: 1.14s | source | bottom
Show context
DangitBobby ◴[02 Apr 21 18:38 UTC] No.26674437[source]▶
What happens to reactors after 50 or 100 years of global/national decline due to environmental and geopolitical circumstances?
replies(6): >>26674489 #>>26674509 #>>26674528 #>>26674531 #>>26674716 #>>26675607 #
pc86 ◴[02 Apr 21 18:59 UTC] No.26674716[source]▶
What happens after another century of dumping 45+ billion tons of CO2 and other GHGs into the air?

The question is whether it's better to use nuclear power or fossil fuel power. There's little difference, practically speaking, between hemming and hawing about statistically small events happening re: nuclear power, or what we do a lifetime from now, and actively advocating for increased fossil fuel usage.

If nuclear can be replaced with something even cleaner and even safer then I'm all for it. But it's short sighted in the extreme to actively tear nuclear down when the only realistic alternative at that scale is fossil fuel.

replies(2): >>26674760 #>>26674789 #
1. Daho0n ◴[02 Apr 21 19:05 UTC] No.26674789[source]▶
>the only realistic alternative at that scale is fossil fuel.

Are the alternatives widespread in places like Denmark not realistic (wind from 50% in 2020 to 84% by 2035)? 4th best energy architecture performance and the second best energy security in the world. Is it not realistic elsewhere?

replies(1): >>26674868 #
2. politician ◴[02 Apr 21 19:12 UTC] No.26674868[source]▶
Correct, wind energy is not present in the same amounts everywhere. There are places where wind energy is more available and places where it's not available or marginal. You can't run your AC off of a gentle breeze.

Finding the best places to install wind farms is surprisingly difficult.

replies(1): >>26675082 #
3. Daho0n ◴[02 Apr 21 19:29 UTC] No.26675082[source]▶
With enough wind energy couldn't energy transfer between countries and energy storage help? After all it is always windy somewhere. I know energy storage is hard and not enough alone but couldn't for example Sweden and Denmark transfer energy back and forth and only use other energy sources as backup?
replies(2): >>26675446 #>>26681125 #
4. politician ◴[02 Apr 21 20:13 UTC] No.26675446{3}[source]▶
There's a lot of power loss in transmission over long distances. China is attempting to move power from solar fields from the eastern deserts to its major cities using Ultra High Voltage (UHV) power lines [1], but not without problems.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-voltage_electricity...

replies(3): >>26675729 #>>26675838 #>>26676542 #
5. jhayward ◴[02 Apr 21 20:38 UTC] No.26675729{4}[source]▶
> There's a lot of power loss in transmission over long distances.

No, there's not. If one were to build new transmission today one would expect low-single-digits percentage loss per 1,000 miles of distance. It's not enough for anyone to worry about.

6. gehsty ◴[02 Apr 21 20:51 UTC] No.26675838{4}[source]▶
HVAC has significant losses, HVDC has less losses and allows power to be transmitted efficiently enough over long distances (guess it depends on what you mean by long).

A good example is North Sea link, linking the north of England to the abundant hydropower in Norway, which should come online this year I think. HVDC links connecting European countries of the length 400-600km are becoming quite common, unfortunately subsea cables are prone to failures and can cause a lot of outages etc.

7. effie ◴[02 Apr 21 22:17 UTC] No.26676542{4}[source]▶
Long distance transmission losses are pretty low. Most of energy losses happens in the "last mile" networks.
8. stjohnswarts ◴[03 Apr 21 14:03 UTC] No.26681125{3}[source]▶
I'm sure in smaller less populated countries that will work, but in denser, much much larger countries it won't. Think USA, Brazil, China, India, Russia....