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Comment by hueving | Hacker News Reader

>in an era where solar is competitively priced

We're not in that era though. Solar is only competitive if you don't account for storage, which is required if it's going to replace any large percentage of generation.

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Nuclear waste storage is subsidized and nuclear liability is too (capped near $12billion; plausible accident scenarios can go over $1trillion).

Nuclear waste recycling is heavily restricted in the US. It only makes sense to subsidize storage if recycling is restricted.

>plausible accident scenarios can go over $1trillion

Citation? Something like Chernobyl isn't even plausible with newer reactors and it wasn't $1t.

Fukushima is up to $200bn and rising.

Here's a recent source that puts it close to that figure ($180 billion) http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38131248

If you took AGW seriously, you would laugh as such a pitiful expense.

Fukushima is not a "newer reactor." It was built in the 70s.

Yeah, and I still remember when Chernobyl happened in 1986 and they told us that it was all due to shitty Russian design and that it could never happen to a reactor like Fukushima.

Those goal posts keep conveniently moving.

Today's brand new reactors eventually become the 30 or 40 year old reactors that are allowed to have meltdowns that "could never happen with new reactor design".

Fukushima was commissioned in 1971, Chernobyl was commissioned in 1977. That said Fukushima was a better design, and as a result was a much less significant event. Reactors built today will be 30-40 years old one day, but we also have 30 years more knowledge about nuclear power than when either of those reactors were built.

>Something like Chernobyl isn't even plausible with newer reactors

That's what they said for Chernobyl too.

It really isn't. Also, no one still builds reactors out of graphite, or without containment vessels. So there's that.

>Also, no one still builds reactors out of graphite, or without containment vessels. So there's that.

At the point they were built, Chernobyl, Fukushima etc were thought OK to be built in that way.

Which doesn't give much credence to "this time it's different, we've finally nailed this security thing", so there's that too.

Except in the sense that "technology always progress". Which while generally true, is a moot point for first-generation new approaches.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-safe-are-old-...

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/nuc...

Did any Non-Soviet scientists and engineers say this?

No, but Non-Soviet scientists said the same things for other reactors that ended in disasters.

Which reactors? And which had disasters anywhere close to the scale of Chernobyl? And of those, which of those reactors were newer than Chernobyl?

Nuclear waste storage is only a problem because we want it to be a problem.

Once we actually need alternative energy, we'll figure out that out real quick.

Yeah. Because we didn't already have 60+ years of time with actual smart people trying to find a solution.

I am all in for nuclear and much more so for doing ground work and heavily investing in research on nuclear recyclability. But doing the math this will not get as anywhere.

We would non the less need to add 1GW of power to the grid nearly every day to fulfill projected demand over the next generation. So this would mean to add ~1 plant every day somewhere on this planet.

I am not sure on how much nuclear fuel would be needed to even do this. Then estimate the costs - and the amount of storage needed for the radwaste (not only the fuel, but also the material plants are build of and such.

So even being pro nuclear the math tells me, that this is at best a in between solution to buy us some more time until we figure out a better, longterm solution.

And no - I do not believe in the fusion singularity to come in my lifetime.

> Yeah. Because we didn't already have 60+ years of time with actual smart people trying to find a solution.

My point is that it's an artificial problem, not a technical problem.

Storage and recycling of spend fuel rods are not a problem. We have not all that much waste, and plenty of places to put it. And breeder reactors seems to be able to convert part of it into usable fuel again.

I agree that it is a temporary solution, but it's the best we got until we figure out how to store energy efficiently, and generate truly renewable energy.

I'm sceptical of wind, because it produce a large amount of waste (rotorblade composite) that is only recently started to be recycled, and the question of what to do with the recycled material have to my knowledge not been answered yet.

Solar is still dependend on a few rare earth minerals, but some promesing alternatives are actively being researched.

I studied in a lot of detail the waste generated by dismantling wind turbine blades while working for a wind manufacturer.

If we were to recycle today all the blades of all the turbines in the world reaching 20 years of age, the weight would be equivalent to a few hours of household waste generated only in the UK. So the amount of waste is completely trivial (at this point), and it can be down-cycled easily (some companies turn it into plastics, cement, etc).

That sounds like appeles to oranges. The issue with rotorblades is that they're made of a composite that we at best can turn into a building material. We cannot currently break it down to it's components, nor can we do that with the down cycled material. That is in sharp contrast to the vast majority of household waste which we can break down and recycle, or just safely burn it.

It would be cool if someone could certify an MSR design that burns nuclear waste.

On your point about storage, if more renewable electricity is generated than is needed in a particular area, it's much cheaper to transport it than to store it.

For example, this happens on a continental scale in Europe where there are interconnectors between countries that form a Europe-wide grid.

The losses for transmission of electricity are about 3.5% per 1,000 km. The losses for storage are at least 15%.

We've got these things you know, batteries. And they don't need to be stored somewhere safe for hundreds of years while they cool off. And they decrease in cost as you make more, which nuclear doesn't.

Every time an article about nuclear hits HN or Reddit, everyone chicken littles "Nuclear! Won't someone think of the atom!", while solar is on track to have ~80GW installed this year and next year in the US alone.

Its over. Nuclear lost. Its never coming back. (10+ years to build a new nuclear generator and billions of dollars? With solar and wind getting cheaper every 6 months? What patsy is going to pay for nuclear?) Now go get some solar panels on your roof and a Powerwall in your garage. Or buy some renewables from your utility if they have a program where you choose your supplier.

Even the Union of Concerned Scientists agrees: http://blog.ucsusa.org/steve-clemmer/renewable-energy-to-sur...

What happens to batteries that leak and no longer work?

Recycling batteries, especially large ones, is very cost effective.

What darkmont and mikeyouse said (Tesla warranties their batteries for 10 years).

And fires?

https://electrek.co/2016/12/19/tesla-fire-powerpack-test-saf...

10 years? That's pathetic considering the cost. Tesla's powerwalls still aren't even close to economical.[1]

"Even at Tesla’s low wholesale price, a 500-cycle battery just doesn’t pencil out against the alternatives, especially once the inverter and other system costs are included. "

1. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Tesla-Discontin...

Please note that you are referring to the first version of PW. The newer version was unveiled recently, and here's some info on PW 2: https://electrek.co/2016/10/28/tesla-powerwall-2-game-change...

You can recycle almost all of the Lithium and other metals in modern batteries.

How much energy does that require?

Much less than digging it out of the ground.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265158823_Paper_No_...

> Further, the recycling of Li-ion battery materials potentially reduces the material production energy by as much as 50%. If battery active materials can be recycled in forms suitable for reuse with minimal processing, this percentage reduction could be even higher, as considerable energy is committed to making them from raw materials.

If cost-effectiveness is a factor, unless Tesla manage to reap some pretty massive economies of scale, realistically we should be talking about recycling lead-acid batteries (like the one in your car). They are, by a pretty large margin, the cheapest method of storing energy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_battery_types#Co...

If the proposed solution is to scatter a zillion tons of lead around the place, I suggest we go back to burning coal instead. It would be less environmentally damaging.

"We've got these things you know, batteries."

Batteries are expensive, low-capacity, and absolutely horrendous from an environmental perspective.

"Nuclear lost. Its never coming back."

There are currently 55 new power reactors under construction and scheduled to be in operation by 2020. China alone has 20 in active construction, with many more planned.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and...

> Batteries are expensive, low-capacity, and absolutely horrendous from an environmental perspective.

Compared to nuclear? That very few nations recycle or reprocesses? And where all the waste ends up in cooling pools forever? Don't be disingenuous.

> There are currently 55 new power reactors under construction and scheduled to be in operation by 2020. China alone has 20 in active construction, with many more planned.

I wish those generators luck. Even if wind and solar doesn't have the capacity factor, it being under 1 cent/kwh when generating will drive nuclear right of business (which is why Exelon is closing two generators this year in Illinois; the wind, its too damn cheap!)

EDIT:

> No country keeps waste "in cooling pools forever".

https://www.wired.com/2015/07/plan-storing-us-nuclear-waste-...

"But radioactive waste doesn’t disappear if you ignore it. The US has 75,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste—spent reactor fuel and the byproducts of processing it—that now sit in pools or dry casks at nuclear power plants, facilities never intended for long-term storage. The risk of leaks is high. Because the stuff stays radioactive for millennia, the safest course of action is supposed to be entomb ingit in rock like at Yucca Mountain, where it can remain inaccessible to future humans."

"Now, Yucca Mountain plans have dragged on so long that all the high-level radioactive waste in the country exceeds its storage capacity. The Department of Energy hasn’t even built the repository yet, and the country already needs a second."

"Nobody wants radioactive waste to be their problem, and it ends up being, well, everyone’s problem. The federal government has paid $4.5 billion to keep high-level waste at nuclear power plants, and it’s on track to spend another $22.6 billion. At the same time, the plans for Yucca Mountain are all drawn up and and even its initial tunnels have been drilled. “The technical solutions are ready to be implemented when the political will reasserts itself,” says Lanthrum."

Sure sure, let's keep building nuclear reactors instead of renewables and batteries /s

"Compared to nuclear?"

Yes. Compared to nuclear.

"That very few nations recycle or reprocesses?"

Way wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing#List_of_s...

I count ten countries on that list.

" And where all the waste ends up in cooling pools forever?"

No country keeps waste "in cooling pools forever".

There are plants of various ages beacause it was an area of active research in late 1900s, and a handful of industrial scale plants that are operating. But it's not generally happening or growing. For most used fuel there is no plan, or going to be buried underground.

All the ones shown in green are still operating.

It hasn't been in high demand because virgin uranium is still cheap. That won't be the case forever, and the used fuel pellets will be waiting when that occurs.

The list has 6 active ones with > 100t/year capacity, more are being decommissioned than built.

Uranium is going to stay sufficiently cheap to our best current knowledge (we'll probably keep find new deposits, or it can be extracted from seawater for much cheaper than reprocessing spent fuel)

The UK reprocessing plants at least are environmental disasters with a history of large-scale radioactive discharges into the surrounding environment. (Russia's were even worse, apparently.) They also lost their foreign customers for falsifying data on fuel shipments. They're due to shut down altogether in the next few years as their existing contracts come to an end. Unfortunately, the Sellafield site is probably impossible to decommission safely due to massive contamination and poorly-designed containments with no documentation of the contents.

Also, most of the big reprocessing plants out there were originally constructed as part of nuclear weapons programs, including the UK, US, French and Russian ones. They're just not economically viable otherwise.

You quoted this yourself!

"The technical solutions are ready to be implemented when the political will reasserts itself"

There is no technical reason not to move forward, the issues are all ignorant political stances based on FUD much like the stuff you are espousing here.

Where did I ever say the problem was technical? It might as well be; the political climate will not change. Nuclear will die a slow death while renewables and battery storage continue to have their tax credits for another five years.

Nuclear is a mess. You either are left with a waste problem that doesn't go away or a proliferation risk. The US government or successors will be subsidizing 20th century waste for hundreds of years.

Energy storage is a problem, but a transient problem that can be addressed with a variety of storage techniques and backed up by natural gas.

Bingo, renewables plus natural gas is the (current) answer.

Not all reactors result in long term storage of waste, I believe some designs can use existing spent fuel even.

I would really like to see investment in other types of reactors such as pebblebed, molten salt etc. If we don't build the stations to create nuclear missiles, we can make them much more 'friendly'.

> Not all reactors result in long term storage of waste, I believe some designs can use existing spent fuel even.

Yes, those are the ones that have proliferation problems.

I'd hope that these obstacles could be battled with research and funding. All countries require affordable and carbon-free power, if we jointly took on research I strongly feel we could engineer out or around some of the issues.

Perhaps It's just an idealistic layman's perspective, either way I think more research in the nuclear power provision would be sensible.

The spent fuel ones produce plutonium as a byproduct -- not good.

I'm all for new technology, but the lobbying/PR effort that produced this article is 100% based on existing technology that makes big engineering firms/government contractors billions of dollars.

Batteries are expensive, low-capacity, and absolutely horrendous from an environmental perspective.

Flow batteries[1] aren't especially dense storage, but nor are they expensive or environmentally horrible.

They make a lot of sense in distributed power generation scenarios (ie, rooftop solar) .

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery

There's also pumped hydro - and possibly ARES, if that turns out to be cost effective.

>Batteries are expensive, low-capacity, and absolutely horrendous from an environmental perspective.

not even close. To store energy melt potassium oxide using that energy - low melting temperature allows for low losses. To produce the energy back "burn" that potassium in a very simple metal-air fuel cell (organic electrolyte, carbon electrodes - nothing "horrendous from an environmental perspective"). Storage by melting isn't suitable for a car or a phone battery, yet there is no issues with it when we talking scale of even a small power plant.

Mainland China has 35 nuclear power reactors in operation, 20 under construction, and more about to start construction. Additional reactors are planned, including some of the world's most advanced, to give a doubling of nuclear capacity to at least 58 GWe by 2020-21, then up to 150 GWe by 2030, and much more by 2050.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pro...

China’s policy is to ‘go global’ with exporting nuclear technology including heavy components in the supply chain. - implying there will be a world market, and some 'patsy's' are going to be willing to buy.

Until fusion comes online

That may be a decade from now or a century from now, but either way fusion power will have very little in common with the nuclear fission power that we have now. Different fuels, different waste products, different tech, different facilities. It's kind of pathetic, that today's nuclear technology attempts to bask in the PR glow of something that doesn't exist and which won't resemble it when it does exist. You don't hear solar advocates bragging about how great the Dyson sphere of solar-microwave satellites will be, five hundred years from now.

You're reading your own biases and preconceptions into your source material. The Union of Concerned Scientists post doesn't state that nuclear has lost and renewables have won. All it states is that, as a percentage of net electricity production, renewables are projected to increase, nuclear is largely staying flat, coal is declining, and natural gas has gone through the roof.

Renewables are going to be a huge part of future energy production, but you're deluding yourself if you think that they'll be able to manage 100% in most regions. As renewables displace fossil fuels, they place more and more pressure on storage demands. And just buying PowerWalls and millions of batteries isn't going to cut it without creating other problems elsewhere. The cost analyses that you're referring to do not include storage.

That's where nuclear energy is eventually going to come into play, ensuring that there's a consistent base load available that's not subject to weather conditions. Rolling blackouts are very much an undesirable side effect.

Sass, citing reddit. This comment is emotional hyperbole, little more. Even the union of concerned scientists! Stop the press!

I don't necessarily disagree with your argument, it's just poorly constructed.

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