7 ms·

If only the "systems" we were considering were meant to provide limitless and virtually free electricity (nuclear), which is congruence with the "systems" of re

If only the "systems" we were considering were meant to provide limitless and virtually free electricity (nuclear), which is congruence with the "systems" of reducing poverty.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Enough sunlight lands on the Earth every 2 minutes to power humanity for a year [1]. ~500-600GW of solar will be deployed in 2024 globally, and we are accelerating to 1TW deployed annually [2]. Commerical nuclear fission is unviable at this point [3], even at nimble startups [4] [5], but proponents are free to argue in support of it to anyone who will still listen. Renewables and batteries have reached an escape velocity trajectory [6]. This global energy system will eliminate energy poverty in our lifetime, and like bankruptcy, it'll happen slowly, and then all of a sudden. [1] https://www.ku.ac.ae/two-minutes-of-sun-enough-to-power-a-year-s-usage-of-humanity-gulf-news https://www.ku.ac.ae/two-minutes-of-sun-enough-to-power-a-ye... [2] https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/12/25/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-one-terawatt-of-solar-deployed-annually/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/12/25/all-i-want-for-christ... [3] https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april... [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38894631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38894631 [5] https://neutronbytes.com/2023/01/24/nuscales-smr-costs-hit-hard-by-inflation/ https://neutronbytes.com/2023/01/24/nuscales-smr-costs-hit-h... [6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37502924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37502924
- IMTDb 3y ago
  > Enough sunlight lands on the Earth every 2 minutes to power humanity for a year [1]. ~500-600GW of solar will be deployed in 2024 globally, and we are accelerating to 1TW deployed annually [2]. Enough sunlights lands on earth every two minutes to power humanity if the whole surface of the planet including ocean was fully covered by 100% efficient solar panels. How is this even remotely relevant when we don't have close to the material needed to achieve that coverage and the efficiency of panels is famously extremely low. The deployment in 2024 is - as usual - expressed in "theoretical max power". Which is nowhere near the actual throughput, and of course orders of magnitude higher than the "when I need it" actually delivery. Again; big numbers don't mean big results; real life scenario matter here, theoretical best is far less relevant. Additionally, quoting "pv-magazine-usa.com" on this subject must be some kind of silly joke considering that it could as well be named "lobby-webiste-with-a-clear-political-agenda-to-push-for-photovoltaic-and-prove-it-also-cures-cancer.com" and no-one wold bat an eye. Similarly, other HN comment written by yourself usually don't count as "sources" for statements.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/77565 https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/77565 is all the land that is needed to reach net zero. Certainly, we don’t need the entire earth covered. Replacing just the ~40 million acres of corn ag in the US used to produce ethanol for vehicles would provide 1.5x annual electrical needs of the country, including all light vehicles assuming they’re EVs (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38856518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38856518) (solar panels produce roughly 200 times more energy per acre than corn). The thought exercise is to demonstrate how cheap renewables are, their growth trajectory, and to guess how soon this impairs all other non renewable generation sources economically speaking. Clearly, the impairment is coming, as this post demonstrates. We’re simply arguing the time horizon. The links to my other comments are comments that contain citations supporting the thesis, versus an unnecessary wall of text. No facts I put forth are uncited.
- cplusplusfellow 3y ago
  We have enough fissile material to support the planet for 10s of thousands of years, so the nuclear proponents can speak in theoretical maximums and still beat you. You don't have enough raw materials on planet earth to continue making solar panels for the next 10s of 1000s of years, given that you need to replace the panels every 10-20 years (optimistically). Commercial nuclear fission is completely viable for anyone not allowing it to become unviable with lawsuits. See: China. Downvote me all you want, but you'll live in poverty when there are no factories in your town because the lights turn off during a snowstorm.
shkkmo 3y ago
Electricity from nuclear is neither limitless nor free. While we would have been much better off (in terms of global warming) if we had not hobbled nuclear power generation decades ago, at this point it's cheaper and faster to build out solar and wind than nuclear.
- doublespanner 3y ago
  The part I hate about the math used in this argument, is that really we should be working with a goal of much cheaper energy production, to enable other green technology. Yeah, if you use standard new construction capacity planning in some cases solar + wind wins. If you target a much lower average/maximum cost per GW (and higher consumption) nuclear wins. Things like EVs, electric furnaces for recycling, greener chemical plants and carbon capture mechanisms all become more viable with consistently cheap electricity.
  - shkkmo 3y ago
    > Yeah, if you use standard new construction capacity planning in some cases solar + wind wins. If you target a much lower average/maximum cost per GW (and higher consumption) nuclear wins. I'd love to see your sources for this. To the best of my knowledge it isn't even close and solar is several times cheaper that nuclear. They used to be more comparable a decade or two ago, but solar costs have dropped dramatically since then.
    - doublespanner 3y ago
      Mostly the viability studies in the French reactor program. It heaviy depends on how you set up the comparison. If you look at most current energy markets and say "how can I make money with these rules" the answer is almost always build a small amount of renewables. If you say, how should a government invest to retire coal power and achieve a low and stable energy cost, then nuclear can be viable (in some places).
      - shkkmo 3y ago
adrianN 3y ago
The fifties want their nuclear advertising back… Nuclear is rather expensive and, with current technology, not „limitless“ in any sense of the word
- throwawayqqq11 3y ago
  If just the nuclear power plant companies had to fully handle their waste products from the get go, there wouldnt be the delusion today that nuclear energy is free or cheap.
  - concordDance 3y ago
    If said companies were allowed to operate and dispose of waste in a way that had sane risk numbers (say, less than a hundred million dollars per life) then it could be cheap. Heck, can literally glass the waste and dump it on the abyssal plane, job done. (You can do the maths on this easily enough, essentially zero life is effected and the radioactivity of the ocean increases negligibly)
    - lupusreal 3y ago
      There is so much uranium/etc dissolved in sea water already, you can skip the vitrification and just dump nuclear waste straight into the ocean without any problems. Pick a deep spot just to stop people from messing with it.
shash 3y ago
Nuclear is definitely part of the mix we need, but we can easily do multiple things. For one thing, it's neither limitless nor free - the limit is the amount of radioactive ore we mine, and the cost is the cost of setting up a plant, running it, mining the ore, purifying it, transporting it,... The cost of nuclear is actually pretty high. I'm not talking about safety except that the cost factors in both passive and active safety mechanisms. And, they take _forever_ to build and bring to operation. On the other hand, the price of solar (even without subsidy) is already cost competitive with _coal_ leave alone nuclear.[1] But it's intermittent, and batteries like the article are expensive. So, the question is not either this or that, but what's the right mix... [1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Electricity_costs_in_dollars_according_to_data_from_Lazard.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Electric...
- pfdietz 3y ago
  I'm having a hard time seeing much use for new nuclear power plants at the costs they would realistically have (vs. sales pitch costs you hear from nuclear vendors before they confront reality and fail.)

If only the "systems" we were considering were meant to provide limitless and virtually free electricity (nuclear), which is congruence with the "systems" of reducing poverty.

toomuchtodo 3y ago

Enough sunlight lands on the Earth every 2 minutes to power humanity for a year [1]. ~500-600GW of solar will be deployed in 2024 globally, and we are accelerating to 1TW deployed annually [2]. Commerical nuclear fission is unviable at this point [3], even at nimble startups [4] [5], but proponents are free to argue in support of it to anyone who will still listen. Renewables and batteries have reached an escape velocity trajectory [6]. This global energy system will eliminate energy poverty in our lifetime, and like bankruptcy, it'll happen slowly, and then all of a sudden. [1] https://www.ku.ac.ae/two-minutes-of-sun-enough-to-power-a-year-s-usage-of-humanity-gulf-news https://www.ku.ac.ae/two-minutes-of-sun-enough-to-power-a-ye... [2] https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/12/25/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-one-terawatt-of-solar-deployed-annually/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/12/25/all-i-want-for-christ... [3] https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april... [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38894631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38894631 [5] https://neutronbytes.com/2023/01/24/nuscales-smr-costs-hit-hard-by-inflation/ https://neutronbytes.com/2023/01/24/nuscales-smr-costs-hit-h... [6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37502924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37502924

IMTDb 3y ago
> Enough sunlight lands on the Earth every 2 minutes to power humanity for a year [1]. ~500-600GW of solar will be deployed in 2024 globally, and we are accelerating to 1TW deployed annually [2]. Enough sunlights lands on earth every two minutes to power humanity if the whole surface of the planet including ocean was fully covered by 100% efficient solar panels. How is this even remotely relevant when we don't have close to the material needed to achieve that coverage and the efficiency of panels is famously extremely low. The deployment in 2024 is - as usual - expressed in "theoretical max power". Which is nowhere near the actual throughput, and of course orders of magnitude higher than the "when I need it" actually delivery. Again; big numbers don't mean big results; real life scenario matter here, theoretical best is far less relevant. Additionally, quoting "pv-magazine-usa.com" on this subject must be some kind of silly joke considering that it could as well be named "lobby-webiste-with-a-clear-political-agenda-to-push-for-photovoltaic-and-prove-it-also-cures-cancer.com" and no-one wold bat an eye. Similarly, other HN comment written by yourself usually don't count as "sources" for statements.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/77565 https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/77565 is all the land that is needed to reach net zero. Certainly, we don’t need the entire earth covered. Replacing just the ~40 million acres of corn ag in the US used to produce ethanol for vehicles would provide 1.5x annual electrical needs of the country, including all light vehicles assuming they’re EVs (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38856518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38856518) (solar panels produce roughly 200 times more energy per acre than corn). The thought exercise is to demonstrate how cheap renewables are, their growth trajectory, and to guess how soon this impairs all other non renewable generation sources economically speaking. Clearly, the impairment is coming, as this post demonstrates. We’re simply arguing the time horizon. The links to my other comments are comments that contain citations supporting the thesis, versus an unnecessary wall of text. No facts I put forth are uncited.
cplusplusfellow 3y ago
We have enough fissile material to support the planet for 10s of thousands of years, so the nuclear proponents can speak in theoretical maximums and still beat you. You don't have enough raw materials on planet earth to continue making solar panels for the next 10s of 1000s of years, given that you need to replace the panels every 10-20 years (optimistically). Commercial nuclear fission is completely viable for anyone not allowing it to become unviable with lawsuits. See: China. Downvote me all you want, but you'll live in poverty when there are no factories in your town because the lights turn off during a snowstorm.

shkkmo 3y ago

Electricity from nuclear is neither limitless nor free. While we would have been much better off (in terms of global warming) if we had not hobbled nuclear power generation decades ago, at this point it's cheaper and faster to build out solar and wind than nuclear.

doublespanner 3y ago
The part I hate about the math used in this argument, is that really we should be working with a goal of much cheaper energy production, to enable other green technology. Yeah, if you use standard new construction capacity planning in some cases solar + wind wins. If you target a much lower average/maximum cost per GW (and higher consumption) nuclear wins. Things like EVs, electric furnaces for recycling, greener chemical plants and carbon capture mechanisms all become more viable with consistently cheap electricity.
- shkkmo 3y ago
  > Yeah, if you use standard new construction capacity planning in some cases solar + wind wins. If you target a much lower average/maximum cost per GW (and higher consumption) nuclear wins. I'd love to see your sources for this. To the best of my knowledge it isn't even close and solar is several times cheaper that nuclear. They used to be more comparable a decade or two ago, but solar costs have dropped dramatically since then.
  - doublespanner 3y ago
    Mostly the viability studies in the French reactor program. It heaviy depends on how you set up the comparison. If you look at most current energy markets and say "how can I make money with these rules" the answer is almost always build a small amount of renewables. If you say, how should a government invest to retire coal power and achieve a low and stable energy cost, then nuclear can be viable (in some places).
    - shkkmo 3y ago

adrianN 3y ago

The fifties want their nuclear advertising back… Nuclear is rather expensive and, with current technology, not „limitless“ in any sense of the word

throwawayqqq11 3y ago
If just the nuclear power plant companies had to fully handle their waste products from the get go, there wouldnt be the delusion today that nuclear energy is free or cheap.
- concordDance 3y ago
  If said companies were allowed to operate and dispose of waste in a way that had sane risk numbers (say, less than a hundred million dollars per life) then it could be cheap. Heck, can literally glass the waste and dump it on the abyssal plane, job done. (You can do the maths on this easily enough, essentially zero life is effected and the radioactivity of the ocean increases negligibly)
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    There is so much uranium/etc dissolved in sea water already, you can skip the vitrification and just dump nuclear waste straight into the ocean without any problems. Pick a deep spot just to stop people from messing with it.

shash 3y ago

Nuclear is definitely part of the mix we need, but we can easily do multiple things. For one thing, it's neither limitless nor free - the limit is the amount of radioactive ore we mine, and the cost is the cost of setting up a plant, running it, mining the ore, purifying it, transporting it,... The cost of nuclear is actually pretty high. I'm not talking about safety except that the cost factors in both passive and active safety mechanisms. And, they take _forever_ to build and bring to operation. On the other hand, the price of solar (even without subsidy) is already cost competitive with _coal_ leave alone nuclear.[1] But it's intermittent, and batteries like the article are expensive. So, the question is not either this or that, but what's the right mix... [1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Electricity_costs_in_dollars_according_to_data_from_Lazard.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Electric...

pfdietz 3y ago
I'm having a hard time seeing much use for new nuclear power plants at the costs they would realistically have (vs. sales pitch costs you hear from nuclear vendors before they confront reality and fail.)