Capt.Whorebags posted:

There is clearly a lot of love for nuclear power in this forum and it's feasible in some jurisdictions and not others. The reality is that decarbonising the global grid is going to require trade-offs all over the planet, some will be greenwashing, some will be attempting to gain popular acceptance, some will be economic reality.

CommieGIR posted:

Sounds like France is doubling down on Nuclear and focusing on developing native designed SMRs both to provide power and produce green hydrogen

https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/macron-says-france-have-mini-nuclear-reactor-green-hydrogen-plants-by-2030-2021-10-12/

bou posted:

That said, how realistic is it that i can built my own little NPP in my basement by 2040 for my household needs?

CommieGIR posted:

The problem was everything Germany did was largely predictable, including their deal with Russia supplying Natural Gas to go south. Fast. The reality is, which climate change as bad as it is, we cannot afford to release any more carbon and need to sequester as much of it as we can, which means not burning forests. And even then, its not a 1:1 relationship, you release more carbon from burning the wood than will likely be captured. The accounting is not balanced and its always a huge stretch to call it carbon neutral.

Wibla posted:

Burning things containing carbon to generate power is bad, full stop. No amount of greenwashing will make it not bad.

Capt.Whorebags posted:

Yeah it's not great, it's what it is. Like the new gas peaking plant being built in the Hunter Valley, Australia. It can run on 15% hydrogen blend, so that's nice but it's still 85% LNG and the hydrogen will probably be blue hydrogen (which is such a bullshit name like clean coal) anyway. We'd be better off not building it, but that was a political decision to save votes in a coal mining electorate, so it's going to happen and I'll take the 15% over not taking it.

Incrementalism is better than nothing and certainly better than going backwards, but it's probably worse than everything else and won't stop the planet from cooking.

e: as a sign of goodwill, here's a picture of a little girl who asked for a Transformer Halloween costume.

Potato Salad posted:

"But it grows again, it's renewwwwaaabbllleee"

*continues converting forests into deserts*

GABA ghoul posted:

suck my woke dick posted:

Now you can say that Germans are too anti nuclear to do the latter option, but in the interest of European integration and also taking our poo poo country's ego on green issues down a peg I'm totally fine putting all the required nuclear reactors a few km across the western and eastern borders.

quote:

Administration Sets Plan for 7 Offshore Wind Farms by 2025

If approved and built, the projects could avoid about 78 million metric tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions, officials said

The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it will help develop up to seven offshore wind farms on the East and West coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico as it moves to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030 — generating enough electricity to power more than 10 million homes.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said at a wind power conference in Boston that her department hopes to hold lease sales by 2025 for projects off the coasts of Maine, New York and the mid-Atlantic, as well as the Carolinas, California, Oregon and the Gulf of Mexico.

If approved and built, the projects could avoid about 78 million metric tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions, officials said.

“The Interior Department is laying out an ambitious road map as we advance the administration’s plans to confront climate change, create good-paying jobs and accelerate the nation’s transition to a cleaner energy future,” Haaland said. “We have big goals to achieve a clean energy economy and Interior is meeting the moment.”

In addition to offshore wind, the Interior Department is working with other federal agencies to increase renewable energy production on public lands, Haaland said, with a goal of at least 25 gigawatts of onshore renewable energy from wind and solar power by 2025.

Haaland and Amanda Lefton, director of department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said officials hope to reduce potential conflicts with fishing groups and other ocean users as much as possible. “This means we will engage early and often with all stakeholders prior to identifying any new wind energy areas,” Lefton said in a statement.

President Joe Biden has set a goal to deploy 30 gigawatts, or 30,000 megawatts, of offshore wind power in the United States by 2030. Meeting the target could mean jobs for more than 44,000 workers and for 33,000 others in related employment, the White House said.

The bureau completed its review of a construction and operations plan for the Vineyard Wind project off the Massachusetts coast earlier this year. The agency is reviewing nine additional projects, including the South Fork wind farm near New York's Long Island and the Ocean Wind project off New Jersey.

Vineyard Wind is expected to produce about 800 megawatts of power and South Fork about 132 megawatts. Ocean Wind, the largest project, has a total capacity of 1,100 megawatts, enough energy to power 500,000 homes across New Jersey.

The administration has committed to processing the 13 other projects currently under federal review by 2025.

The ocean energy agency has said it is targeting offshore wind projects in shallow waters near Long Island and New Jersey. A recent study shows the area can support up to 25,000 development and construction jobs by 2030, the Interior Department said.

Heather Zichal, a former climate adviser to President Barack Obama who now leads the American Clean Power Association, a renewable energy group, said Biden’s goal for offshore wind was “ambitious but achievable″ and an essential part of the goal to reach 100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035.

In a related announcement, the Energy Department said it is spending $11.5 million to study risks that offshore wind development may pose to birds, bats, and marine mammals, and survey changes in commercial fish and marine invertebrate populations at an offshore wind site on the East Coast.

The department will spend $2 million on visual surveys and acoustic monitoring of marine mammals and seabirds at potential wind sites on the West Coast.

“In order for Americans living in coastal areas to see the benefits of offshore wind, we must ensure that it’s done with care for the surrounding ecosystem by coexisting with fisheries and marine life – and that’s exactly what this investment will do,'' Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a news release.

https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/new...25/2990422/?amp

Wibla posted:

I love how "Green"peace is arguing against it

Capt.Whorebags posted:

One of our Green party politicians recently referred to nuclear powered submarines as "floating Chernobyls" so you can see how much fact is in the debate, at least here down-under.

The greens party platform also opposes the reactor based manufacture of radioisotopes. My understanding is that the early greens movement had a large contingent of nuclear disarmament types so anything nuclear is considered a no-no.

Capt.Whorebags posted:

The greens party platform also opposes the reactor based manufacture of radioisotopes. My understanding is that the early greens movement had a large contingent of nuclear disarmament types so anything nuclear is considered a no-no.

CommieGIR posted:

Neat graphic comparing Germany and Ontario's energy generation

https://twitter.com/gordonmcdowell/status/1448732667915112448?s=20

mediaphage posted:

cool graph. also:

https://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html

i’m sure the average numbers in your chart work out but you can see the fluctuations close to real time here

also i wonder what the relative installation of fossil heating is in both places

Aethernet posted:

In fairness to the Germans, the new Government looks to be taking things a little further forward:

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/new...k_content=title

An end to coal power by 2030... by replacing their coal fleet with gas. This will at least bring their power emissions in line with the US in the present day. They want their gas turbines to be hydrogen ready, and do have big ambitions for production, so might deliver more rapid decarbonisation if they can make the economics work.

Kaal posted:

In Germany at least thermal heating is about 90 percent fossil fuels, with the remaining 10 percent mostly being biomass (maize methane biogas, rapeseed biodiesel, and solid wood pellets).

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germanys-geothermal-sector-struggling-take

mediaphage posted:

i'd be mildly interested in this if they remotely had a plan for green production of hydrogen

Aethernet posted:

https://www.wfw.com/articles/the-german-hydrogen-strategy/

In fairness, they do have a plan. No legislation yet, but I assume this will come in within the next few years.

quote:

6) The majority of respondents were in favour of cause-related charges that are largely free of incentive mechanisms to control the demand for hydrogen. In particular, network operators advocated a joint pricing of natural gas and hydrogen infrastructure on the basis of the existing regulatory regime.

Kaal posted:

It's interesting to check out, though I certainly was immediately focused on point six, which as far as I can tell indicates that the stakeholders want to treat the aforementioned "green hydrogen" "turquoise hydrogen" "blue hydrogen" and "grey hydrogen" as being equivalent to "natural gas" in every way.

quote:

The fact that the advocates are starting to talk about hydrogen for electrical power should be fairly concerning for the project as a whole, since that would effectively be admitting that green hydrogen was a failure (wind mills making power to produce hydrogen to burn for power is obviously inefficient and won't happen).

Freezer posted:

Hydrogen - ready gas turbines? well that's incredibly dumb and naive.

Hydrogen could have its uses (industrial high-heat applications, fertilizer, possibly air and sea freights) but burning it to create electricity in a gas turbine is terrible idea as the energetic round trip efficiency (assuming green H2) would be below 30%. There are MUCH better alternatives for energy storage than hydrogen.

E: and if you're going to be turning hydrogen into electricity you use a fuel cell, not a gas turbine!

Freezer posted:

Hydrogen - ready gas turbines? well that's incredibly dumb and naive.

Hydrogen could have its uses (industrial high-heat applications, fertilizer, possibly air and sea freights) but burning it to create electricity in a gas turbine is terrible idea as the energetic round trip efficiency (assuming green H2) would be below 30%. There are MUCH better alternatives for energy storage than hydrogen.

E: and if you're going to be turning hydrogen into electricity you use a fuel cell, not a gas turbine!

CommieGIR posted:

Neat graphic comparing Germany and Ontario's energy generation

https://twitter.com/gordonmcdowell/status/1448732667915112448?s=20

quote:

Japan’s energy sources became significantly more carbon-intensive after 2011, bucking the global trend toward cleaner power (as well as significantly more expensive, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration).

In an effort to meet its goal of being carbon neutral by 2050, Japan has now given utility company Kansai Electric Power permission to restart three nuclear reactors that were built in the 1970s and were taken offline in 2011.

One of the reactors (the Mihama Nuclear Power Plant’s No. 3 reactor) resumed operations in June. The other two reactors (the Takahama Nuclear Power Plant’s No. 1 and No. 2 reactors) are expected to restart in 2023.

All three of the nuclear reactors are cleared for another 20 years of operation.

quote:

US coal-fired generation is expected to surge by 22% in 2021, the US Energy Information Administration said Monday. That would mark the first annual increase in coal-fired electric power generation since 2014, the EIA said.
Coal was long the main fuel source for the US power grid — even though its environmental footprint is the largest.

In recent years, utilities ditched coal because of concerns about the climate crisis and due to the abundance of very cheap natural gas. US coal consumption fell in 2019 for the sixth straight year, dropping to the lowest level since 1964, as natural gas prices fell to record lows.

Forbes posted:

Stop Letting Your Ridiculous Fears Of Nuclear Waste Kill The Planet

Everybody wants to do something about nuclear waste. Nuclear plant operators and most House members want to bury it in Nevada. A bipartisan group of senators wants states to compete for it. And Bill Gates and other entrepreneurs want to reuse it as fuel in next generation reactors.

Almost everybody is wrong to do so. Nuclear waste has never been a real problem. In fact, it’s the best solution to the environmental impacts from energy production.

Consider:

Every year, the lives of seven million people are cut short by waste products in the form of air pollution from burning biomass and fossil fuels;

No nation in the world has a serious plan to prevent toxic solar panel and wind turbine waste from entering the global electronic waste stream;

No way of making electricity other than nuclear power safely manages and pays for any its waste.

In other words, nuclear power’s waste by-products aren‘t a mark against the technology, they are its key selling point.

By contrast, it is precisely those efforts to “solve” the nuclear waste non-problem that are creating real world problems. Such efforts are expensive, unnecessary, and — because they fuel support for non-nuclear energies that produce huge quantities of uncontained waste — dangerous.

Your Concerns About Nuclear Waste Are Ridiculous

What is usually referred to as nuclear waste is used nuclear fuel in the shape of rods about 12 feet long. For four and a half years, the uranium atoms that comprise the fuel rods are split apart to give off the heat that turns water into steam to spin turbines to make electricity. After that, nuclear plant workers move the used fuel rods into pools of water to cool.

Four to six years later, nuclear plant workers move the used fuel rods into 15-foot tall canisters known as “dry casks” that weigh 100 tons or more. These cans of used fuel sit undramatically on an area about the size of a basketball court. Thanks to “The Simpsons,” people tend to think nuclear waste is fluorescent green or even liquid. It’s not. It is boring gray metal.

How much is there? If all the nuclear waste from U.S. power plants were put on a football field, it would stack up just 50 feet high. In comparison to the waste produced by every other kind of electricity production, that quantity is close to zero.

Our paranoia about nuclear waste isn’t natural. There’s nothing in our evolutionary past that would lead us to fear drab cans of metal. Rather, for 50 years there has been a well-financed, psychologically sophisticated, and coordinated effort to frighten the public:

Starting in the early 1960s, anti-nuclear leaders including Ralph Nader and Jane Fonda targeted women and mothers with pseudoscientific claims about the supposedly harmful impact of nuclear plants and their waste;
Today, anti-nuclear journalists like Fred Pearce mislead the public into believing that the dangerous waste from atomic weapons production at places like the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in the state of Washington is the same as the old fuel rods from power plants;
Anti-nuclear groups like Greenpeace and the Union of Concerned Scientists claim that nuclear waste could somehow be stolen or used by terrorists and turned into bombs.
To appreciate just how ridiculous the latter idea is, imagine, for a moment, that you are an elite terrorist commando like the kind depicted in “Mission Impossible” or a James Bond flick

First, you must break into a nuclear plant, which is guarded by heavily armed security guards who are often — at least in the U.S. — former special forces officers. Next, you must kill, incarcerate, or otherwise incapacitate the 700 to 1,000 people who work at the plant.

After that you’re going to need to quickly hoist a can of old nuclear fuel onto the back of a truck. It can’t be a pick-up truck, which would be crushed under its weight. It will have to be an industrial-sized truck capable of hauling over 100 tons.

Next, you have to escape. This will require driving for hours on freeways while escaping law enforcement officers who will inevitably be scrambled in response to your plant invasion.

But all of that’s just the beginning. In order to turn the nuclear waste into a nuclear bomb, you’ll need to reprocess it in a highly specialized facility, preferably underground, so as to not be detected. Inside your mountain lair, which you spent months constructing without anyone noticing, you’ll use a crane to pull the heavy metal rods out of the cans and reprocess them for so long that…

Well, at this point, even Michael Bay would say the scenario was too unrealistic.

What about a “dirty bomb”? Couldn’t a terrorist break into the plant and pull some nuclear waste out of a can and attach it to a homemade explosive?

But why would any terrorist do this? Any terrorist who wants to make a dirty bomb could just just break into the local hospital where radioactive waste (from x-rays and other medical devices) is available at far lower levels of security.

Save The Nukes, Don’t Move The Waste

After 60 years of civilian nuclear power we can finally declare that the top prize in the contest to safely and cheaply contain used nuclear fuel rods goes to… the cans the rods are currently stored in!

How do we know the cans are the best solution? Because they have proven 100 percent effective. The used nuclear fuel rods stored in cans have never hurt a fly much less killed a person.

By contrast, transporting cans of used nuclear waste would increase the threat to the continued operation of our life-saving nuclear plants. Anti-nuclear groups like Greenpeace and their PR agents have long planned a campaign of harassment and fear-mongering which would result in more unnecessary and expensive security guards.

Congress has repeatedly tried and failed to move the nuclear waste. Why, after $15 billion and 35 years of effort, are the cans still on-site? Because of fears that the cans would… leak, or “spill,” or be stolen by ISIS. Or something. Nobody’s quite sure.

Trying to solve this non-problem would cost an astonishing $65 billion, according to the NRC — an amount that doesn’t include the additional half billion more to operate the facility annually, or the quarter-billion more for monitoring after filling it up with spent fuel. By contrast, each canister costs just $500,000 to $1 million — a pittance for a plant that needs a few dozen maximum.

But how long will the canisters last? ”I have a difficult time imagining any reason why the [current waste can storage] system cannot work for decades to centuries,” wrote the dean of nuclear energy bloggers, Rod Adams, in 2005.

[T]he space taken up by [waste cans from] even a 60 year plant life is less than is needed for a Wal-Mart — even without any efforts to efficiently stack the containers. All of the plants in the US have dozens to hundreds of acres of available free space. The size of the work force needed to monitor this storage area is rather small; they provide security and occasional inspections of the containers but have few additional duties.

The real threat to public safety comes from the risk that America’s nuclear plants will be replaced by fossil fuels. Whenever that happens, air pollution and carbon emissions rise and people die.

By letting go of our nutty fears of nuclear waste we can save nuclear power. America’s nuclear waste fund — which is comprised of money paid into it by the operators of nuclear plants — still has $46 billion in it. It should be used to subsidize the continued operation of economically distressed nuclear plants, and subsidize the building of new ones.

If such a fund paid out five percent interest per year — an amount the IRS requires philanthropic foundations to give away annually — then $2.3 billion could flow to the distressed or new nuclear plants. That amount would be enough to keep uneconomical nuclear plants operating while creating an incentive to build new reactors.

When spread across the 200 terawatt-hours of energy produced by the quarter of U.S. nuclear plants in the U.S. fleet Bloomberg says are in danger of closure, $2.3 billion would provide a stipend of $11.50/MWh, enough to keep the plants alive.)

A change in our view of nuclear waste must come alongside a changed view of nuclear plants generally. We need to stop seeing nuclear plants as temporary fixtures and start seeing them as the permanent backbone to our future clean energy system

Nuclear plants are functionally immortal. Existing plants can operate for 60, 80, 100 years or longer because everything inside the plant from the control panels to the steam generators and even the reactor vessel itself can be replaced, if needed.

Will the cans of old nuclear fuel stick around forever? Probably not. Sometime between 2050 and 2100, new nuclear plants — like the kind being developed by Bill Gates — will likely be able to use the so-called “waste” as fuel.

But achieving that future will first require that we abandon our ridiculous fears and start seeing nuclear waste as the environmental blessing that it is.

silence_kit posted:

Nuclear energy cannot fail. It can only be failed. All of the drawbacks to the technology are external to the technology and can be blamed on The Greenpeace Conspiracy and malicious actors inside of government nuclear regulatory agencies.

edit: Also, world governments are colossally stupid for not rapidly building out nuclear power plants and consist of brain dead morons. At the same time, countries all over the world need to start programs immediately nationalizing the world's nuclear power plants and building more of them.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

QuarkJets posted:

No but seriously, nuclear power is the greenest and safest energy source that we are currently able to build, and efforts to move away from nuclear power are largely buoyed by the fossil fuel industry.

And since the fossil fuel industry has so thoroughly hosed the regulatory process in the US, we are totally hosed unless we can basically build a national grid of nuclear power plants. Or in other words, we're totally hosed.

QuarkJets posted:

No but seriously, nuclear power is the greenest and safest energy source that we are currently able to build, and efforts to move away from nuclear power are largely buoyed by the fossil fuel industry.

And since the fossil fuel industry has so thoroughly hosed the regulatory process in the US, we are totally hosed unless we can basically build a national grid of nuclear power plants. Or in other words, we're totally hosed.

Capt.Whorebags posted:

I'm also genuinely surprised that nuclear is considered greener than wind and solar, I assume this is just a pure energy density and capacity factor thing?