@kravietz
Even if someone cut down the trees in their yard, PV is still one of the best sources of energy:
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/12/16/mediocrity-is-the-enemy-of-the-solution/
@mithrandir @kravietz
Definitely worth investigating to some extent. Scaling properties on solar are hard to beat, but small self-contained nuclear batteries could be competitive.
@mithrandir @kravietz
Per the link I dropped, problem with NEW nuclear is it takes like 15 years to bring it to completion. So shutting down nuclear prematurely is probably a bad plan, but spinning it up right now is kind of a case of too-little-too-late. New solar deployment is up within a year.
Also scaling properties. Every solar panel built makes building the next one cheaper. True too of reactors but not many of them are (ever) made so scale doesn't happen.
>New solar deployment is up within a year.
Indeed, it is quicker to build the plant, but the plant also takes up more space (with exceptions -- those towers outside Vegas are wonderfully compact, idk how much power they put out though), and you have to build it somewhere where you get sunlight/wind reliably enough that the plant is worth building. For a lot of cities that means the plant has to be far away, which leads to high line loss.
OTOH solar and wind are eminently the best strategy for power in rural and low-density urban areas, where the cost of land is cheaper and also it makes more sense to spread out power production. A small town would probably be better served by nearby solar and wind farms than a faraway nuclear plant.
The article you linked seems to be making an argument that *nothing* besides wind, solar, and waves should be invested in. That just seems shortsighted to me, especially when so many proposed power sources are still in their infancy.
>Every solar panel built makes building the next one cheaper.
Huh? You mean that it's easy to mass produce them, right? There is not an infinite supply of silicon, and the fixed marginal cost of the production process remains the same until you change the production process.
@mithrandir @kravietz
1. "Naive" economies of scale, bigger more efficient factories, better processes.
2. R&D-based economies of scale: more people buy PV, more competition, more R&D investment --> higher efficiency, longer lasting PV made with cheaper materials and processes.
Same story as batteries. It's not govt research that's driving these curves, it's competition.
~
@lain @mithrandir @kravietz
Batteries. Buy a phone, buy a Tesla, push dat curve.
Because PV is actually made mostly of mined resources, as this friendly ad from Australian Mining (!) demonstrates
I don't think anybody supports fossil fuels in this thread, so this argument is irrelevant.
The problem with PV is specifically what you described - it runs 10 years, and then you need a new one.
Per 1 W of energy mining requirements are much higher for PV than other sources.
Then you need a whole lot of them due to low surface power density.
Then you need even more due to low capacity factor.
And then you need storage.
Not true. Rare earth metal mining is just as environmentally intensive as uranium. As a matter of fact, uranium and rare earth metals are sometimes mined together.
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/rare-earth-mining-china-social-environmental-costs
But then, due to very low surface power density of PV and wind, you need whole lot of rare earth metals. Just scroll to the table...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421518302726
Because the cost that we are usually discussing is not actual cost ("how much I pay per kWh") but LCOE (levelized cost of energy), an indicator that models a cost from a very specific perspective - today investor's one, rather than from consumer or CO2 emissions. LCOE doesn't take into account that PV does *not* produce energy overnight, nor storage or smart grid. All the externalities are just left out here.
They are required in small amounts but also mined in small amounts. The whole global output is like 150'000 tons. Per this paper for PV alone we would need to increase this by 3000%.
@mithrandir @lain @kravietz
Love how they have this little black sliver "Geological repository". Cost of storing the waste 100,000 years is way higher than that, but I guess that's close to the cost of giving it to the Mafia to dump off the coast of Somalia.
@lain @mithrandir @kravietz
I know this is supposed to work with thorium reactor designs, didn't think anything in production now does it.
Most true fission products are either extremely radioactive and degrade in a few hours or days, or are not very radioactive and are in low enough quantities that they become benign within a couple hundred years. Most nuclear waste is actually just fuel that didn't get converted into fission products.
> nuclear waste needs to be stored so long is that there is *a lot*
Quite the opposite. These containers on photo are the whole nuclear waste from Switzerland for the last ~50 years.
And whole UK's nuclear waste for the last 60 years is ~2200 m3 which is about the amount a coal plant outputs in a few days of operations.
So no, nuclear waste is absolutely tiny amounts.
IMO it makes the most sense to just dump them down a mineshaft that's deep enough and desolate enough that it will take thousands of years for any leakage to make it to the surface.
storing nuclear waste is definitely more of a political problem than an engineering one, though. Nobody wants it in their territory.
> Nobody wants it in their territory.
Yes, and this is why we are mining rare earth metals for PV in China or some other "foreign" places, rather than in Germany where we only show nice and shiny end product.
What I'm trying to say eventually, as I need to go to sleep, is that all engineering is to some extent dirty. Some is more, some is less, but all produces some kind of harmful waste. PV may contaminate ground with cobalt, wind turbines with gearbox oil etc etc.
At the end of the day we must always deal with that waste. We know how to do it in environmentally safe way, which is why we know both arsenic and radioactive waste is safe there.
Salt or granite chambers in geologically stable structures have survived millions of years already and will survive the same in future.
You are absolutely right.
And Mountain Pass rare earth metals mine in USA leaked over a million of liters of radioactive waste between 1980-90's. If we want to continue producing PV, we need to deal with radioactive waste.
Not to mention massive prisms of coal ash are leaking radioactive elements to the ground all the time but, more importantly, they release 100x more radioactive elements than any nuclear power plant with fly ash.
@kravietz @mithrandir @lain @cjd You're confusing high level waste from the reactor core with all the waste generated in operating a nuclear plant. Low level waste absolutely has to be dealt with and handling it properly is a significant cost.
Just like *any* other industrial, residential or industrial waste.
@kravietz @mithrandir @lain @cjd rad waste in my experience had a higher cost to deal with. engineer to plan the work, special containment set up to perform work, special receptacles to hold waste, special transportation requirements, and separate final destination.
Haz mat was similar but different, and irradiated hazmat was the worst worse. Significantly higher cost than waste disposal of residential or construction industry.
maybe overkill? result good safety record and happy regulators.
@cjd That’s the problem most people have with nuclear power, after the elephant in the room, dirty bombs all over your country. It’s hard to convince a people who couldn’t hold their country together for 300 years that there’s a good plan for the next 10,000 years. (Did you write 100,000 on purpose?) @mithrandir @lain @kravietz
But it's based on three fundamental misconceptions:
1) that only nuclear reactors produce radioactive waste
2) that it needs storing for 100'000 or 10'000 years
3) that radioactive waste is the *only* one that needs safe storage for a long time
@kravietz I have spoken before with people in the industry whose job was to push nuclear power, which is nothing but a solution of what to do with the existing waste we have now.
1) that only nuclear reactors produce radioactive waste I’ve not heard of anything producing nuclear waste in the massive amounts that nuclear power or weapons do. Do you mean small amounts like for medical purposes?
2) that it needs storing for 100’000 or 10’000 years Those proponents never said that long-term storage wasn’t necessary, never was the thousands of years contested. Their solution was it would be encased in concrete and stored at the reactor sites themselves. I found that silly because those sites won’t last that long either and it would be even harder to get people to accept a reactor near their home. (And check the comma key on your keyboard. I think it’s on upside down)
3) that radioactive waste is the only one that needs safe storage for a long time I’ve heard the big problem with solar power is its disposal too. Not crazy toxic like nuclear waste, but must be disposed of in dumps lined with rubber or similar, like you would batteries or computer parts. What else needs long-term storage in figures like thousands of years (which was not denied by the people selling it).
> mean small amounts like for medical purposes
This is the funny part: nuclear industry is so regulated, that anything anything used anywhere in a nuclear plant or X-ray machine is "nuclear waste". Most of these drums shown in scary German movies about leaky storages are filled with old gloves, clothes, tools, parts of machinery and all that crap that is "radioactive" only by legal definition. In terms of volume it's a lot, but in terms of emissions, it's nothing.
@kravietz There’s a mountain in Idaho with tunnels full of drums of nuclear waste. After a few decades, the drums were leaking and the tunnels were caving in on top of them. They can’t get anyone to go in there to fix it, and they can’t get anyone to let them dump it anywhere near where they are. It ain’t old gloves. @lain @cjd @mithrandir
@epic @lain @mithrandir @kravietz
I grew up nearby to the Rowe Yankee powerplant which was in decommissioning all through my childhood. I remember when they pulled the reactor and drove it out of there, lots of people protested for some reason but allowed the truck to pass, my parents took me to see the spectacle.
They're still keeping some waste on-site because they judged it safer than transporting it.
@epic @lain @mithrandir @kravietz
That was in decommissioning from 1992 until 2007, and there were a good number of people employed there. It's hard for me to imagine how a nuclear power project posts a bond big enough to pay that kind of bill since they're very likely to be bankrupt when they have to clean up...
@epic @lain @mithrandir @kravietz
If you want to drill oil, you need to post a bond large enough to plug the well if you disappear or go bankrupt. I have a hard time imagining how you would conceivably post a bond big enough to pay for taking a nuclear plant apart.
The other thing is if you've got an old powerplant which *should* be shut down, if you're a business you have a perverse incentive to keep it running as long as possible.
Keep running -> make money
Shut down -> massive cost
@epic @lain @mithrandir @kravietz
The other thing is insurance... How do you insure against the risk of everything 30 miles in every direction becoming uninhabitable.
What kind of insurance company is going to offer that?
I think the answer is they don't actually have the coverage to pay the cost of a meltdown and if it happens they walk away and make it the state's problem. Clean energy until it isn't.
How do we exactly insure today against the actual deaths of hundreds of thousands of people of air pollution caused by burning coal and biomass? How do we insure about catastrophic effects of climate change causes by burning fossil gas?
@kravietz @cjd @epic @lain @mithrandir
"I don't think anybody supports fossil fuels in this thread, so this argument is irrelevant."
> stored at the reactor sites themselves
I explained above. After 60 years of nuclear power plants operations there's not enough actual nuclear waste to economically justify long-term geologic repository. This is the only reason why it's now being stored in plants. Storages are being built in France, Finland etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository
> check the comma key on your keyboard
This is the 1000's separator in Europe :)
@kravietz Probably the fastest word with nine characters I can type on my keyboard is wikipedia. I haven’t figured out how to get Duck-Duck-Go to add -wikipedia to my searches and I don’t want to even pollute my mind with their synopses on the search page, much less click on it. Might just as well ask the nuclear salesmen or CNN.
You’d be surprised, if you do that, what a dearth of information there is on the web. They are a monopoly with all the validity of google, twitter, facebook, etc. @lain @cjd @mithrandir
> the big problem with solar power is its disposal too
Yes, some types of PV panels on abandoned solar farms have contaminated ground with cadmium.
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/solar/the-mounting-solar-panel-waste-problem/
But it's not a disaster or reason to cancel all PV projects, stupid people contaminate environment with stuff all the time and we just need to deal with it.
@kravietz That article says what I’ve heard. Doesn’t sound very much like clean energy to me at all. As for recycling it, the article says, “Solar panels can be recycled but the cost of recycling is generally more than the economic value of the material recovered,” so it’s toxic trash when done with. I don’t know why everyone thinks it’s the cat’s meow. @lain @cjd @mithrandir
> crazy toxic like nuclear waste
Nuclear waste is not "crazy toxic". There are plenty of much more toxic things around and we are literally bathing in ionizing radiation every day, we evolved in an irradiated world. Here's a good scientific explainer on that:
@kravietz @epic @lain @mithrandir
Not really worth arguing about. Nuclear power is dead everywhere except China, and when China melts down it'll be dead there too.
Dead?! Are you living on the Moon? Because in Europe there's a whole lot of operational reactors and new in constructions. As of today nuclear power provides 25% of all EU electricity and 50% of low-carbon.
@kravietz @epic @lain @mithrandir
New projects, or just old ones from the 80s ?
Finland 2005, France 2007, UK 2018, Russia 2010, Belarus 2014 - and these are only those under construction (actually Belarus went into production this year)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors
Also worth mentioning ITER that goes first plasma in 2025
@kravietz @epic @lain @mithrandir
Looks like all of Germany's reactors were 60s and 70s era, France's are all 70s and 80s and are still being operated -- though questionable how dangerous these old beasts become.
Also worth noting these timelines. Every year of construction is a year of additional debt you take on, this is probably one reason why solar projects are able to raise money easier than nuclear.
It's not "questionable" at all. They are inspected and their licenses extended for another 20 years. A boiling water reactor can safely operate for 80+ years. That's hell of a return on investment, especially if you count CO2 emissions avoided.
@kravietz @cjd @epic @lain @mithrandir Operating for 80 years isn't sufficient information to determine ROI. You also need to include initial capex, opex, profit, etc.
@mlg @cjd @epic @lain @mithrandir
Assuming you're doing it for profit.
@kravietz @cjd @epic @lain @mithrandir every generation project would like to assume it operates at a profit for the full lifecycle. Energy market can change, more cost effective generation can come online, demand can be reduced (customers trade their 100w incandenscent for 5w led, their 500w desktop + CRT for a 50w laptop + LED monitor etc). everything about the grid is evolving, the history of energy policy walks a balance between overregulation and underregulation failures
So you probably understand why I'm a bit surprised when you say "dead" about a single source that provides *half* of all low-carbon and non-intermittent energy in EU, so the same amount as all solar, wind, hydro.
And this should be even more surprising when you compare CO2 emissions of "renewable" Germany with France or Sweden (both largely nuclear):
@kravietz Carbon schmarbon. We’re carbon-based life forms. The root of the carbon scare is control and taxation. @cjd @lain @mithrandir
@kravietz Oh, I don’t want to watch an hour and a half about how everything’s bombarding us with rays. I’d probably get sick and think I had the Rona. I’ll save it though, in case I ever wish I’d watched it. Thanks. @lain @cjd @mithrandir
@kravietz @lain @mithrandir
A PV cell is mined and then runs 10 years. A cm3 of gas is mined and then burned within a couple of hours.
Also I prefer the Australians, they don't try to invade Europe every chance they get.