kravietz 🦇 @kravietz@social.privacytools.io

@pro

I think what @sheogorath means is that coal or gas plant can respond pretty quickly (minutes) to a falling or rising output from wind or solar, while nuclear can change its output much slower (hours).

This is obviously a "problem" created by the very intermittent nature of wind and solar, but needs to be dealt with on the grid level.

In any case, CO2 emissions are much larger and long-term danger than benefits from fast power switching.

@kirschwipfel

@sheogorath

But I think I've provided enough evidence so far that you can't just "do things properly with renewables" due to 1) intermittency, 2) physical constraints?

If and only if we can increase rare earth supplies by 3000% (how?) and occupy all available space, then we can maybe go 80% renewable and we would still need to add TWh of storage per year.

You seem to accept gas for base load, I don't. It's CO2.

@kirschwipfel @pro

@sheogorath

So with 3rd gen reactors like EPR - that are currently built in UK, France, China, Finland etc - which have been built specifically with safety in mind, you can expect 1 on 10-100'000 reactor years failures.

And this is more than necessary, because we don't want fission-based nuclear energy forever - we need it perhaps for the next 30-50 years to kick-off renewables, fusion and other low-carbon energy sources.

@kirschwipfel @pro

@sheogorath

Page 114:

"from 1962 to 2010 the probability of aminor or severe accident at a reactor decreased by afactor of 2.5"

With 3rd and 4th gen reactors you can expect even further reduction.

Also:

"Three calculations resulted in 1 accident in more than 200,000 reactor years, and a further three resulted in 1 accidentin 11,000–25,000 reactor year"

@kirschwipfel @pro

@sheogorath

Ok, I missed that one and this article makes perfect sense. So page 113:

"the best estimate is 1 in 3704 reactor years"

But this is based on data from 1962 to 2010 so 1st and 2nd generation reactors. Nobody is building these anymore, quite the contrary.

Then if you look at page 114 there's a number of important points there.

@kirschwipfel
@pro

@sheogorath

But what is it? A quote? From where? What does it talk about? It's not in the article you linked.

@kirschwipfel @pro

@sheogorath

IAEA has no "NDA with member states" and surely not for accidents. Quite the opposite, all countries must not only report even slightest accidents to IAEA but also allow periodic inspections.

And yes, there were two more workers killed in an accident in Japan in 1999. At the same time thousands of workers died in accidents in coal mines, power plants and while installing solar panels and wind turbines. So why are you singling out nuclear industry specifically?

@kirschwipfel @pro

@kirschwipfel

Number of fatalities in nuclear plants in USA - zero.

In Japan - one.

In Russia - zero.

Russia is not USSR and since 1986 there was no single accident in any of their ~200 nuclear power plants.

@sheogorath @pro

@kirschwipfel

12 days ago.

Never heard of it? Neither me. But if a nuclear plant worker drops his sandwich on a floor Greenpeace will be first to tell you about it.

Last large dam disaster? One year ago in Brazil, 200 dead. Before that 2009 in Russia, 70 dead.

Ever heard about these?

@sheogorath @pro

@kirschwipfel

But the point is you can't put *more* wind turbines there. You built 400MW nominal power and occupied 70 km². For 4GW you need 700 km² etc, for 40GW - 7000 km² etc. And you will only get 30-40% of that on average.

This is why DESERTEC planned to build solar panels in Sahara which was good idea in theory... but it failed.

@sheogorath @pro

@sheogorath @pro

Fossil gas results in CO2 emissions so it's exactly the opposite thing to do when you're trying to prevent climate change.

@sheogorath

Are you sure you looked at the right country? First, Sweden runs on nuclear. Second, it has a lot of hydro because of *low* population density that lives mostly in the south and thus has plenty of free space.

Mainland European countries have high population density and limited land. This is precisely why they have been investing in energy sources that occupy little space - coal, gas and nuclear.

And this is also reason why Germany faces opposition against wind farms.

@pro

@sheogorath @pro

What happened in Fukushima was 14 meter tsunami that went over walls that were designed for 10 meter tsunami maximum.

@sheogorath @pro And if you are for wind and solar, the primary "work" involving rare earth metals is to increase their supply: from ~180 my/year to 5400 mt. Amount of waste will grow proportionally.