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425 points nixass | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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kragen ◴[] No.26674832[source]
Nuclear energy is the Amiga of energy sources.

Ahead of its time, it was unjustly rejected and persecuted by the ignorant masses. Its advocates are bonded by the quiet pride that at least they weren't unthinkingly siding with those masses. (And they're right!) Meanwhile, as the Amiga stagnated for terribly unfair reasons, other, scrappier technologies like the i386 and UMG-Si grew from being worthless boondoggles (except in special circumstances, like spaceflight) to being actually far better and cheaper. But the Amiga advocates keep the faith, sharing their suffering and resentment. They inevitably try the alternatives a little and perhaps even start to like them. Gradually their denial recedes, decade by decade.

But they know that however much fab costs go down and leave their beloved Amiga behind in the dust, you'll never be able to run nuclear submarines and Antarctic research stations on solar panels.

— ⁂ —

Wind, where available, undercut the cost of steam power (including nuclear and coal) a decade ago, and PV undercut it in equatorial parts of the world about four years ago, or in even more of the world if you don't include storage. As a result, last year, China, whose electrical consumption has doubled in the last decade, built 48.2 gigawatts† of new photovoltaic capacity last year https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-energy-climatechang... but only has, I think, something like 10 GW of nuclear plants under construction, scheduled to come online over the next several years. PV installed capacity in China is growing by 23% per year, the same rate it has been growing worldwide for the last few years; with some luck that will return to the 39%-yearly-worldwide-growth trend that has been the fairly consistent average over the last 28 years.‡

(A previous version was posted at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26218673.)

______

† China's PV capacity factor seems to be only about 13%, so those 48 GWp probably work out to only about 6 GW average. It would be nice if China managed to site its new PV plants in places that could provide a capacity factor like California's 28%.

‡ Why 28? Because I haven't found figures yet on what worldwide installed capacity was in 01992 or earlier.

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legulere ◴[] No.26675650[source]
Your opponents of course seem ignorant if you turn them into straw-men.

There are legitimate concerns against nuclear:

Lack of a proper handling of nuclear waste, which is pretty much impossible given the timeframe.

Weakness to improper handling. Human error is very common and should not be able to lead to catastrophic events.

Weakness to unknown unknowns. Chernobyl and Fukushima haven’t been predicted, we’re not able to see all failure modes.

Usefulness of civilian technology in the spread of nuclear weapons. Just think of why the US keeps Iran from building up a civilian nuclear industry.

Expensiveness. Cost is mostly bound by construction costs, which rose faster than inflation.

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sir_bearington ◴[] No.26676766[source]
Waste is easily the biggest straw-man concern there is against nuclear. The entirety of the nuclear waste produced by US nuclear grid electric power generation fits in a volume the footprint of a football field and 10 yards high [1]. We test waster supplies for uranium already because naturally occurring uranium sometimes gets into drinking water and it has to be filtered out [2].

Burying spent nuclear fuel in bedrock, with no aquifer poses zero risk. The only way it's getting out is by deliberate human intervention. Any nefarious group that has the capability of doing this could inflict far more harm by conventional means. And even if it somehow, by some mysterious force, leaks into the water supply we have infrastructure to detect it and filter it.

We dispose of materials far more toxic than nuclear waste on a regular basis.

1. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...

2. https://www.kqed.org/stateofhealth/120396/uranium-contaminat...

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Blackthorn ◴[] No.26678116[source]
> The entirety of the nuclear waste produced by US nuclear grid electric power generation fits in a volume the footprint of a football field and 10 yards high

No, this is just spent fuel. There's a lot more to nuclear waste than spent fuel.

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1. sargun ◴[] No.26678892{3}[source]
How dangerous is low level waste? Based on what I’ve read, it doesn’t seem super radioactive in itself, but it sounds like some of it may have a lot of “problematic” material like dust.