26
votes
Going nuclear might be the best way to combat climate change
Link information
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- Title
- To Fight Climate Change, We're Going to Need a Lot More Nuclear
- Authors
- Sharon Zhang
- Published
- May 28 2019
- Word count
- 820 words
I disagree. The construction of new nuclear plants is not a viable way to mitigate climate change for a two main reasons:
It takes at least a decade to build a new plant and several billion dollars. Renewable energy sources will be very close, if not ready, to meet all electricity needs in a decade or two. If this is true, then building new nuclear plants would be pointless.
We're using up cheap uranium. We have approximately 90 years of uranium that costs less than 3x the current uranium price. Let's not let a few massive corporations/billionaires extract more wealth from our society. We're doing this already with oil and gas, we don't need to set up a similar supply chain around uranium.
Also, I'm wondering why there are so many pro-nuclear articles that ignore these facts, particularly on Reddit. It seems like very wealthy people like Bill Gates are interested in nuclear, which makes me suspicious. Is this some kind of AstroTurf campaign or is nuclear just "in" right now?
So basically as far as I can tell, it's a great technology, but in a strictly economic sense, I don't see Thorium becoming popular before cheap wind & solar basically flood the planet, by which time the financial and economic case for nuclear reactors of any sort becomes permanently closed. So, it's all kind of moot.
i would love to hear you say this to someone whose island is going to literally disappear or become uninhabitable in 50 years, or to the people whose homes will be inundated in 50 years because of sea level rise spurned by antarctic sea melt. maybe it's overstated to you, a singular individual, but i very much doubt someone from kiribati or nauru or fiji or the maldives or another tiny island nation, or the people in alaska and lousiana and tangier island being displaced by sea-level rise would agree with this sentiment.
[citation needed]
if anything, the overwhelming consensus is that we are underestimating climate change and how it will progress in the future because climate models do not accurately reflect feedback loops which feed into and intensify climate change. the current speed at which global warming is occurring is in-line with the projection of 1.5C of total warming being achieved between 2030 and 2052, most likely in the middle of that time-frame. that also assumes literally no increase in the speed of the trend, which is something that is also happening and has been happening since 1990, which could potentially lead to an earlier achievement time of that threshold.
who claims this? the issue of sea level rise has always been and will always be with respect to the massive melt of greenlandic and antarctic ice, which is accelerating. arctic sea ice is just significant because it's a major indicator of the progression of warming at the poles, which is occurring much more rapidly than any other part of the planet. i have never seen someone act like it has significant bearing on sea level rise beyond a select few disingenuous right wingers.
by 'warmer acidic oceans that corals don't like' do you mean oceans that literally kill coral reefs and the habitats around them and fuck up plankton which are major producers of oxygen? because yeah, that's a bit of a big deal. so are the radical changes in weather patterns, because those will lead to significant changes in things like farming yields, rainfall patterns, the occurrence of natural disasters, processes like desertification... it's also kinda a big deal and stupid and patently reductivist to act like that's not some sort of significant thing.
no, i think what @vivaria is saying here is "don't act like you know better than the collective scientific community on an intensely complicated, global, major issue which has been studied for over a century and has decades worth of literature and research behind it done by tens of thousands of people and multiple supranational bodies like the UN who know their shit just because you've read a few papers on the subject". nobody is asking you to have a PhD in climate science; what people are asking is that you not present this idea that the scientists are wrong because you're writing a book whose premise involves climate change or whatever and have seen a few things which go against the overwhelming scientific consensus and theorized around those things accordingly. keep in mind i don't have a PhD in climate science either--i just defer to the people who do have those and what they are saying, what they are observing in their modeling, and what their literature is projecting because they've presumably spent their entire lives in that field of study and know a whole hell of a lot better what's going on than you or i do. and as it happens, their literature pretty much completely rejects the notions you've put forward in this thread.
if your intent isn't true scientific understanding then, please for the love of god in the future, do not present your statements like this and potentially mislead tons of people into believing something that is not the scientific consensus on this kinda important matter:
nobody can read your mind, so until you said "i don't intend for this to be an effort in true scientific understanding" all the way down here, all people have to go off of are your statements and whatever sourcing you give unless they want to assume bad faith which is explicitly discouraged in the ToS, and your statements in this thread do not present as science fiction theorizing, they present as an effort to downplay the extent and progression of climate change by arguing that the media is overhyping its extent and that the scientific community's projections on its progressions have been off significantly.
Fine then, I'll give you what you've asked for - a dead thread, with no answers, and no discussion, and silly climate despair fantasies. I've scrubbed my comments on these topics from here and from past threads.... close to 100 of them.
I was just proving a point. If Tildes isn't to be the place for those discussions, I've got many other places to have those conversations, including some with a high population of scientists. I've been active in those forums for years, and those conversations have informed all of the material that I shared here.
If you want to feel sorry for someone, save the sympathy for the scientists who will end up being asked to refute or comment on my climate plans in every interview for the ten years after I publish the novels. I was trying to do my diligence so they had something constructive to talk about in those interviews. I'm not writing this to be a pulp scifi story. I'd rather write one or two good books that last a generation and change the direction of the world than dozens of light entertainment novels - I have other series for the light entertainment in mind. The scifi project is the serious one.
:( I had bookmarked a couple of those comment threads.
I'm still a bit worried that the clathrate gun hypothesis might turn out to be true, with melting permafrost releasing a huge amount of methane.
This is incorrect, and seems to underpin the rest of your post. The 1/r2 relationship applies where the energy is radiated omnidirectionally (it's literally just showing proportionality to the surface area of a sphere, where A = 4πr2), and isn't relevant to power line losses.
I don't mean to be overly blunt, but it worries me to see something that seriously flawed said with an air of authority.
You absolutely can, with percentage losses in the low-double digits. It would be a significant project, of course, but there are already several HVDC transmission systems in China & India running distances greater than 1000km.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I see nuclear as the only baseload power available to supplement renewables. The wind varies and the sun goes down, and solar doesn't meet the evening peak demand. Geothermal, while a consistent baseload, is limited by geography. Hydro is even more limited by geography, is extremely destructive to some environments, and typically has low yields compared to other facility types. Solar + wind just aren't ready to meet existing energy demands.
If the main goal is total removal of fossil fuels, where does that leave us? Natural gas, while better than coal and oil, is still a fossil fuel. If I have to choose between gas or nuclear as a baseload power supplier, I'm going to choose nuclear every single time. Small footprint, negligible carbon costs, neatly shores up the weaknesses of existing renewables. Solar + wind + nuclear could replace our existing energy infrastructure right now and help massively reduce our carbon emissions. We wouldn't have to wait for new technology to replace gas or coal.
You didn't address my previous points.
Batteries are being developed to smooth out inconsistencies.
Current costs of cheap solar and batteries are just as expensive to reach the same capacity as nuclear does; it's directly addressed in the video I linked. As is the massive cost of batteries. In addition, it requires an absolutely massive area of land to build on.
Newer reactor designs can just recycle old fuel.
So if they're equal in price, then why not go with renewables? They're going to get cheaper as time goes on, likely faster than nuclear will. They also don't rely on uranium, which, while technically abundant, gets more and more expensive to extract as time goes on.
I don't really like videos, I find them inefficient and annoying, but yes, newer reactors can recycle fuel. However, the process isn't infinite and new plants will need to be built, which each one costing several billion.
At best, I'll concede that nuclear may be just as good as renewables when considering expenses. However, there's also the little nuclear proliferation/melt down risk issue that we've been ignoring. Thus I'd rather have renewable plants built over nuclear.
But the problem with solar is the change in output between the summer and winter months, and having to account for enough battery storage to overcome poor output from successive poor weather days.
And keep in mind this is all in sunny California, one of the best states geographically for solar. It only gets more and more expensive as you move elsewhere in North America. Renewables are highly variable, and this is their main problem. Nuclear is a perfect compliment to to the problems renewables have, all while still keeping our energy grid with negligible carbon costs to fight climate change.
Potential for wind and solar are both poor East of the Mississippi River, almost 60% of the US population. What do these areas do when solar output is third less than California, and where space is at a larger premium?
Don't take this as me not advocating for solar and wind. We should be doing everything we can to replace coal and gas plants with it ASAP. But closing nuclear while renewables still have these problems, all while expanding gas and leaving coal plants open, is one of the dumbest moves we could make.
Germany is doing great with solar and wind. They're shutting down both fossil fuel and nuclear plants, and they're somehow able to do this while being much less sunny than California or Arizona.
You're also ignoring tidal energy. That is consistent and would likely be great for a good portion of the 60% you mentioned. Biomass is also an option. Again, Germany and solar.
I think your arguments are dated and need to be updated. Nuclear isn't the best option in the majority of cases. I'm not saying that we shouldn't use it, but there are usually better options unless you're on the moon.
So? I find your response to be somewhat disingenuous, being a cherry picked number. Let's put it in a broader context. That's down from 45% in 2013. If you compare coal+gas percentage to the US, Germany is way lower. In 2016 the US generated 64% of their power from coal and gas, while Germany was at 52%.
The share generated by renewables is rising and there is a plan to close all coal plants by 2038. Who knows if they'll stick to it, but there's a plan and they are closing plants. Things appear to be going in the correct direction in Germany and faster than other places.
Germany plans to shut down all coal plants by 2038, hardly an expedient time frame. Prior to 2011, Germany's nuclear power generation was around 20 GW, while coal production is around 28 GW. They could have reduced carbon emissions from coal by 71% had they shuttered coal plants immediately instead of shutting down their nuclear plants, and then gradually replaced nuclear with better renewable technology.
Tidal energy is practically non-existent right now, with the largest plant only producing 254 MW. It's nowhere near ready to replace main power sources. Biomass still emits carbon. It may be renewable but it's the least desirable option in the face of climate change.
Okay, there are so many assumptions built into your argument I don't even know where to start. I'm trying to seek the truth in these engagements, while it appears that you are simply trying to win the argument by any means. I encourage you to be more critical of your own points before posting.
I'd like to add that I don't know if I'm right about nuclear power, but no one on this site has sufficiently addressed, IMO, the initial points made in my first post. Everyone has responded with renewable whataboutisms or described future technologies that are not ready for mass deployment.
Please try? Climate change is the #1 reason to fight down fossil fuels, right? If my goal is to reduce and eliminate use of fossil fuels ASAP (which it is, and IMHO it should be everyone else's too!), I see nuclear as part of that picture to help shore up where renewables are weak. Do you think that is an incorrect approach to the problem?
I didn't really think those were whataboutisms. The article posted here directly discusses renewables. Why do you think they are whataboutisms?
If we go back to your first questions, I am definitely skeptical of the claim that "Renewable energy sources will be very close, if not ready, to meet all electricity needs in a decade or two." Do you have a source for this? Your following sentences make it seem you are unsure about this point. Why argue for this point if you are unsure if it is even true?
For #2:
To me, this is a non-issue, and why I never directly addressed it. 90 years is a long time to figure out problems and to develop new technologies, both in resource generation and in extraction techniques. If you are truly concerned about this point, how are other methods of large scale energy generation and storage different? Battery technology uses a lot of rare earth elements. Don't these have the exact same concerns? See here and here.
@Dogyote are you going to respond to this? I was hoping you would, despite the topic's age.
You mean
But even then... I haven't seen a convincing case being made that that will indeed be possible. The amount of engineering challenges involved in taming that mess of substances makes me sceptical. IMO the technology seems a lot less ready than fusion power.
France has been recycling fuel for decades. With 72% of their power generation from nuclear. This isn't some fantasy. It's doable right now.
Oh, that. Yeah, sure. But they're just recycling the simple parts. (U, Pt) I keep hearing about chucking all the waste into thorium reactors and I'm not buying it. (Sorry I misread your original point)
Also my other reply to the sibling of your comment:
To make a gross analogy - the uranium solid fuel is lightly toasted. It's like if you only burned the bark off your campfire logs, then tossed them in a pile after putting them out. There's plenty left to burn there, but that particular campfire only knows how to burn the bark as a consequence of the reactor design, and it costs too much to reprocess the leftovers back into something bark-like.
Then you have a new kind of campfire that's more like a kiln, starts where the other one's heat tops out, and can go a thousand degrees up beyond that without breaking a sweat. It doesn't need fancy reprocessing, it's an incinerator, and once you're done burning the fuel, all you get out is ashes, instead of scorched logs. It's a massive size reduction in waste, much more efficient, and the leftovers aren't as nasty - because the nasty was all burned up.
I'm well aware. I just don't see how the kilns in your analogy are feasible. Yes, they're theoretically plausible. But whether you talk about next-gen uranium reactors or LFTR-as-a-trashcan, I don't see how they're any more feasible than fusion, where at least we have lab-scale prototypes. Don't get me wrong, I don't want LFTR-as-a-trashcan to fail, but I don't think it's going to be a viable choice in the timeframe we need it to be; hence why I'm not excited about it (as seemingly everyone else). Nevermind the fact that fission reactors (for all I know) always involve controlling an unstable system that tends to transition to a dangerous state.
I'm quite aware of how this is supposed to work in theory; I'm only sceptical of our capability of doing it in practice.