bayesian_horse

I just tried deleting my account. Which isn't possible, counter to best practice and even many data privacy laws (not in california I guess). But I'm logging out and using a new account from now on (if at all). Congratulations.

No more dissent. Got it. I would encourage a ban. I will just make another account. I get that I should reduce some of the "flame war" stuff but I think this is one-sided.

Bullshit argument. How would such a cleanup even work? The claim that the Fukushima clean up is excessive is completely pulled out of someones ass. What would be the rationale? You DO understand that exposure to radiation is cumulative, and having radioactive dirt lying around or distributing through wind and whatever else is a problem, right? And we don't even perfectly know what damage that would do long term, if you just leave it alone. There is an exclusion zone around Tschernobyl for a reason. Japan can't afford such an exclusion zone.

Cleaning up "harmful emissions from burning lignite" is complete bullshit. How would that even work? For one thing those emissions or whatever is not radioactive, which is a big plus. For another, those emissions are continously reduced and once they are sufficiently reduced, the planet as a whole will actually clean it up by itself. This will take a long time, of course. Not as long as leaving nuclear waste and radioactive dirt alone and hoping it won't get blown around and harm anyone.

The Chinese ramp up in nuclear power is fairly decent. Give them time. Unfortunately I don't think they will have more luck in terms of safety, rather the opposite...

The Fukushima incident was a result of regulations being too weak or ignored and the government not keeping good enough tabs on the operator. I really don't think the Chinese government does a better job. They suck at regulating and enforcing plenty of things they care about.

And most of them are not a commercial reality or viable option for at least a decade or so...

The group-think around nuclear power on HN is indistinguishable from religious fervor and doesn't agree with average public opinions in any countries I know of. Certainly not Germany...

That "minor nuclear incident" required a clean up that still isn't finished and already ran up a tab of about a trillion Dollars.

Pro-nuclear propaganda tries to focus on "only" one direct fatality, and conveniently ignores all the cost associated with not running up that number.

"Flexible generation" also means coal and gas... So it is not an elusive technology. Neither are hydro power plants which can be varied in their output.

Nuclear power projects are not just over-budget, they start off with a budget of a couple of billions, whereas individual solar or wind power projects are way smaller and therefor carry less of a risk. Nuclear power requires a huge financial backing from a single entity (even it is "fed" by multiple sources). Almost always, the risk is carried by society, the profit, if any is gobbled up by some corporation.

There is no need to "overbuild" wind or solar. There has never been any illusion those sources will produce at 100% capacity all the time. There will eventually be energy storage to level out the peaks, but most countries still have years to build up to the point where this is necessary.

To be in favor of nuclear power you need to ignore the fat tail risk structure.

And nuclear power proponents are using plenty of lies. Like the one where the only alternative to nuclear power is coal power.

What you claim to be "reality" and "science" is just a convenient selection of either. It is entirely rational to claim that the risk of nuclear power is not calculable, and to not have enough appetite to carry that risk.

Once you do any of the sort, nuclear power loses the rest of its cost advantage (if there is any to begin with).

Most dams carry way more risk and way higher benefits.

Because nuclear power projects are never finished on time and within budget. Partly for political reasons (as in: People really don't like it), partly because engineers suck at estimating large projects.

Bullshit. Germany is still a decade or two away from needing energy storage to even out renewable power peaks. Until then, all the capacity provided by renewable sources reduces the overall emissions, which is the reason we are doing this at all.

The purpose of building up renewable energy sources right now is NOT to sustain peak loads entirely from renewables. But such simplifications are convenient, right?

Of course running below maximum output drives up cost. Are you disagreeing with basic math? Consumption of fuel is not the main cost of a nuclear power plant, and even if you shut it down completely, it still needs external power for the cooling.

How is it immaterial to build twice as many nuclear power plants as necessary instead of using energy storage? You'd have to believe battery storage is way more expensive than an idle nuclear plant. But that's just not the case. The real killer in that comparison is that people really don't want to live near a nuclear plant and in any case, regulation and such politics makes it hard or impossible to scale up nuclear power in that way.

You can't prove a long term trend via short term observation. That's kindergarden level...

My point is actually that the risk of coal is calculable and the risk of nuclear is not. And if you provide any estimate, it is most certainly wrong, because it is based on false and dangerous assumptions.

Yet you repeat the lie that coal power is the only alternative to nuclear. That convenient lie is the core assumption between most or all your arguments.

I don't believe people are special.

You're still lying about the alternatives to nuclear power. You are still underestimating the impact of a nuclear disaster. You are still underestimating the risk of a nuclear disaster. These things have always occurred more frequently than expected, and we haven't seen anyone intentionally blow up a nuclear facility yet. The possibility for someone to actually make that happen intentionally (as supposed to the also criminal but less intentional neglect in the case of Fukushima) makes the risk calculations around nuclear impossible.

Those voices just weren't there and it is plenty easy and convenient to say "I was concerned way before everybody else knew of the problem."

Your arguments are fueled by a lack of understanding.

Ramping down renewables is lots faster and easier. The stability argument is just populistic bullshit. Plausible on the surface, not a concern in actual practice. You are acting like those who plan and build this renewable capacity never thought of that.

The goal with renewables is to reduce the total emissions. There are still plenty of years left in that process before you even need any storage to cover capacity fluctuation. Because even when covering SOME extra capacity with fossil fuels SOME of the times, total emissions are still getting reduced. Is it that some people just want to ignore that a coal plant that doesn't produce energy also doesn't produce emissions?

In practice you don't. Nobody wants to transition to renewables over night. And so far it works quite well.

You don't get the fact that nuclear power requires just as much storage, right

France has this problem in a hidden way: They have to import power in the summer, because they DONT have that peak capacity, nuclear or otherwise. To provide that with nuclear, they would either need storage or increase the number of their nuclear plants, and probably like 50%.

That's not how it works. I don't know the actual numbers, but what if peak load is 50% higher than average load? You need quite a lot of battery storage to make that work, especially if the peak load lasts longer than a few minutes (it usually does).

And that's true even assuming instant capacity adaptation. It's just not efficient to keep nuclear power at a capacity lower than their peak capacity.

You still don't understand. A coal power plant that doesn't run doesn't produce harmful emissions. And at lower capacity they produce less emissions, proportionately.

And you are still lying about coal being the only replacement for nuclear.

Which isn't what you and others said at the time, I'd guess. Hardly anyone was advocating for this. None of the major parties for certain. Nobody wanted more expensive energy.

You are still assuming that the only alternative to nuclear power is coal power.

That right there is a big fat lie and makes all your arguments worthless.

I'd like to see some sources for the claim that this death toll is so much higher - on a per kW basis. And even that assumes that scaling up the number of nuclear plants scales the risk up linearly, which is probably impossible because regulations, standards and democratic participation would have to be lowered.

Those coal plants aren't operating at peak capacity, or at all, in some case. The suggestion they are replacing nuclear power 1:1 is a highly convenient lie.

The idea that coal power is less safe is bullshit. Nuclear power carries tail-heavy risk, coal plants have much more predictable risk. Nuclear power is only safer if you assume nothing happens that didn't happen in the past few decades and nobody actually deliberately blows up a nuclear power plant. Once you can't assume both, all risk calculations for nuclear power are meaningless.