9 ms·

Perhaps the bottleneck is public perception after the accident at Three Mile Island, and then everyone wasting time on alternate (insufficient) renewables. But

by windows2020 1y ago

Perhaps the bottleneck is public perception after the accident at Three Mile Island, and then everyone wasting time on alternate (insufficient) renewables. But now it's not about migrating from dirty to clean energy (which nuclear is), it's we need more power and it's time to get serious. Welcome back, nuclear. Microsoft entering an agreement with Three Mile Island nicely concludes a period in energy history. The next one should be most exciting.

destitude 1y ago
And yet we still have no place to put that "clean" energy when it is depleted.
- maroonblazer 1y ago
  I'd rather it be stored neatly in canisters underground than floating up into the atmosphere.
- protocolture 1y ago
  God I hate this argument. Casks. The answer is casks. The short term solution turns out to be a fantastic long term solution. If that isnt good enough, demand it be reprocessed with thorium or something. There. No more silly anti nuke gotcha. You can give up on that one permanently.
  - zekrioca 1y ago
    Nuclear proliferation.
    - protocolture 1y ago
      I am steelmanning this, and assuming you are making a hilarious joke at the expense of anti nuke activists. Instead of defending the storage issue, this is just a pivot to another unrelated and already well resolved issue. Thats exactly what the silly anti nuke folk get up to. Well played, solid joke, 10/10.
- zamadatix 1y ago
  You can bury the casks in my (literal) backyard if you'd like (please put the grass back). It's an overhyped issue much less impactful than the pollution we've had waiting for an idealized answer to arrive.
  - triceratops 1y ago
    > than the pollution we've had waiting for an idealized answer to arrive. As I'm fond of saying, environmentalists didn't kill nuclear. I'm not denying they had motive. But they lacked means. They can't stop anything else they've set their minds to: fossil fuels, automobiles, deforestation, industrial livestock farming. Even whaling is alive ffs. No, there was another party with both motive (competition) and means (lots of cash and political influence) to do the deed: the fossil fuel industry. And nuclear didn't help itself with accidents (and ensuing costly clean ups, one of which helped take down the Soviet Union), and budget overruns even when things went smoothly. Both found a convenient fall guy: the green movement. Tl;dr nuclear hasn't grown because of money. It cost too much, and the competition had the cash to slander its reputation.
- loeg 1y ago
  It can be left in canisters on site. It could be dumped in the ocean. It really doesn't matter.
  - triceratops 1y ago
    > It could be dumped in the ocean FFS no. This is the reason environmentalists don't trust the nuclear industry.
    - loeg 1y ago
      This is a "no" purely for optics; it would be perfectly safe.
      - triceratops 1y ago
        Citation needed.
        loeg 1y ago
        There's approximately 1.4 * 10^21 kg of water in the ocean. There's about 2.3 * 10^6 kg of waste per year. 10^-15 is a really small number. (Hell, seawater is already ~3.3 * 10^-9 uranium.)
        triceratops 1y ago
        Why is heavy metal concentration such a problem in fish right now?
        loeg 1y ago
        It isn't. And unlike heavy metals, nuclear waste becomes safer over time.
        triceratops 1y ago
triceratops 1y ago
Nuclear is great but we can do without bashing renewables as "insufficient". Solar + batteries are here right now and they're cheaper than nuclear.
- idiotsecant 1y ago
  Solar is very, very cheap and almost totally worthless without storage. Storage is extremely expensive. Nuke is extremely cheap to generate -once its built. The cost of nuke energy is not because the technology is complex or because resources are scarce. It's because we have very, very burdensome regulations around nuclear reactors (for good reason!) and each nuke plant is a bespoke effort which gets recertified each time. This is enormously expensive. There is reason to believe that small modular nuke plants will vastly reduce this cost. That means we might have a path to cheap nuke, but there is no immediate path to cheap storage barring a technological revolution (not just incremental improvements) in battery tech. In the long run solar power will kill fossil fuels, but we desperately need a bridge to get us there and not destroy the carbon balance in the atmosphere. Nuke is that bridge.
  - ericd 1y ago
    Are you so sure that storage is so expensive? It’s been coming down the cost curve extremely quickly, such that opinions formed even an year ago are severely outdated, and it’s now solar+storage that’s being favorably compared to replacing nat gas plants, not just solar itself.
    - johncolanduoni 1y ago
      Storage that is good enough to replace peaker plants, and storage that is good enough to handle seasonal variations in insolation are completely different ballgames. The lithium battery chemistry in your phone will self-discharge on the order of a month - there are alternate chemistries but they have other problems right now.
      - ViewTrick1002 1y ago

destitude 1y ago

And yet we still have no place to put that "clean" energy when it is depleted.

maroonblazer 1y ago
I'd rather it be stored neatly in canisters underground than floating up into the atmosphere.
protocolture 1y ago
God I hate this argument. Casks. The answer is casks. The short term solution turns out to be a fantastic long term solution. If that isnt good enough, demand it be reprocessed with thorium or something. There. No more silly anti nuke gotcha. You can give up on that one permanently.
- zekrioca 1y ago
  Nuclear proliferation.
  - protocolture 1y ago
    I am steelmanning this, and assuming you are making a hilarious joke at the expense of anti nuke activists. Instead of defending the storage issue, this is just a pivot to another unrelated and already well resolved issue. Thats exactly what the silly anti nuke folk get up to. Well played, solid joke, 10/10.
zamadatix 1y ago
You can bury the casks in my (literal) backyard if you'd like (please put the grass back). It's an overhyped issue much less impactful than the pollution we've had waiting for an idealized answer to arrive.
- triceratops 1y ago
  > than the pollution we've had waiting for an idealized answer to arrive. As I'm fond of saying, environmentalists didn't kill nuclear. I'm not denying they had motive. But they lacked means. They can't stop anything else they've set their minds to: fossil fuels, automobiles, deforestation, industrial livestock farming. Even whaling is alive ffs. No, there was another party with both motive (competition) and means (lots of cash and political influence) to do the deed: the fossil fuel industry. And nuclear didn't help itself with accidents (and ensuing costly clean ups, one of which helped take down the Soviet Union), and budget overruns even when things went smoothly. Both found a convenient fall guy: the green movement. Tl;dr nuclear hasn't grown because of money. It cost too much, and the competition had the cash to slander its reputation.
loeg 1y ago
It can be left in canisters on site. It could be dumped in the ocean. It really doesn't matter.
- triceratops 1y ago
  > It could be dumped in the ocean FFS no. This is the reason environmentalists don't trust the nuclear industry.
  - loeg 1y ago
    This is a "no" purely for optics; it would be perfectly safe.
    - triceratops 1y ago
      Citation needed.
      - loeg 1y ago
        There's approximately 1.4 * 10^21 kg of water in the ocean. There's about 2.3 * 10^6 kg of waste per year. 10^-15 is a really small number. (Hell, seawater is already ~3.3 * 10^-9 uranium.)
        triceratops 1y ago
        Why is heavy metal concentration such a problem in fish right now?
        loeg 1y ago
        It isn't. And unlike heavy metals, nuclear waste becomes safer over time.
        triceratops 1y ago

triceratops 1y ago

Nuclear is great but we can do without bashing renewables as "insufficient". Solar + batteries are here right now and they're cheaper than nuclear.

idiotsecant 1y ago
Solar is very, very cheap and almost totally worthless without storage. Storage is extremely expensive. Nuke is extremely cheap to generate -once its built. The cost of nuke energy is not because the technology is complex or because resources are scarce. It's because we have very, very burdensome regulations around nuclear reactors (for good reason!) and each nuke plant is a bespoke effort which gets recertified each time. This is enormously expensive. There is reason to believe that small modular nuke plants will vastly reduce this cost. That means we might have a path to cheap nuke, but there is no immediate path to cheap storage barring a technological revolution (not just incremental improvements) in battery tech. In the long run solar power will kill fossil fuels, but we desperately need a bridge to get us there and not destroy the carbon balance in the atmosphere. Nuke is that bridge.
- ericd 1y ago
  Are you so sure that storage is so expensive? It’s been coming down the cost curve extremely quickly, such that opinions formed even an year ago are severely outdated, and it’s now solar+storage that’s being favorably compared to replacing nat gas plants, not just solar itself.
  - johncolanduoni 1y ago
    Storage that is good enough to replace peaker plants, and storage that is good enough to handle seasonal variations in insolation are completely different ballgames. The lithium battery chemistry in your phone will self-discharge on the order of a month - there are alternate chemistries but they have other problems right now.
    - ViewTrick1002 1y ago