I say this because the cost of building a new nuclear plant is more expensive than wind and solar.
Nuclear might still be a good solution for northern and southern habitats. But, at this point, where most pollution is produced, solar and wind are viable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
With all that said, the real viability of renewables is partially going to be determined by storage costs. Nuclear doesn't really solve the storage problem though (it is a base load only power source). Eventually in order to hit a 7.6% reduction goal we'll have to phase out natural gas peaker plants. To do that, we need storage.
We certainly shouldn't be decommissioning nuclear plants in favor of renewables. I just don't think the time to build new nuclear is here. The cheaper and faster solution is new renewables.
Storage is quite a bit more expensive than nuclear, and while the cost is dropping it has a long way to go. At the same time, new nuclear technologies like molten salt reactors could well drop the price of nuclear. For that to be a factor, we'd likely have to get more aggressive with licensing new nuclear technologies; i.e. we'd have to treat climate change with the urgency it deserves.
Here's a Lazard report on levelized cost of storage: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019
Regulatory decisions seem to be made on the basis of hysteria moreso than scientific merit. For instance, that in the US secondary waste is treated equally as dangerous as primary waste, leading to ludicrous disposal costs. And nuclear 'waste' isn't even an issue with many modern reactor designs.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that the _current_ cost of bringing a new nuclear plant online is astronomical, but that doesn't mean that the cost can't be brought down tremendously with sane regulation and modern designs. In many ways, the nuclear industry is still in its infancy (how many of the reactors operating worldwide right now are boiling water reactors, literally the oldest and most dangerous design??). No one expects nascent technologies to be cheap, you look to the future.
And beyond that, nuclear and solar/wind are not directly comparable. Solar/wind cannot provide the base load that nuclear is so apt at. What you really need to be comparing is a nuclear plant vs renewable PLUS energy storage. And last time I checked, grid-level energy storage is still extremely expensive.
I don't think you can dismiss nuclear so easily. Not by a longshot.
It still blows my mind that we found an almost magical solution to use of fossil fuels over 60 years ago and fumbled it so hard. Shame on big oil, shame on our regulatory agencies and politicians.
thanks to their knee jerk reaction to nuclear one of the technologies (note that I say "one of", there is a range of choices, not an either/or black/white choice, as is so often case on internet discussions nowadays)
we ended up with more coal/oil power plants contributing towards climate change
nuclear could have been the bridging technology buying us decades to build up real renewables (and/or fusion) and provide base load, but no cant have that, ideology trumps pragmatism
The same attitude applies in engineering -- post-mortems aren't about assigning blame, they are about understanding the current state and how you'll address or mitigate any failures so they don't happen again.
If you want to be backwards looking, at least focus on what the lesson is and how you will turn that lesson into concrete actions that prevent the same failure case in the future.
Also, there really is something off-putting about leaving behind waste that lasts longer than civilisation has.
Gut instinct is that they were sponsored by shell corporations / charities to go after nuclear et. al. and leave other vested interests alone.
But, well, today is not 30 years ago, and the same way that nuclear power never could be the complete solution to carbon based fuels, today it is too late for them to even be a large component of it. So, today pushing for nuclear does more harm than good.
Outside of IPCC reports (which for all their process issues are generally fairly comprehensive and well written) and a small number of other scientific publications, there are few serious attempts to conduct objective cost/benefit analysis, rank order policy measures, etc. Instead, we have people who pretend science doesn't exist on one side and many of the same "environmentalists" who are, by virtue of their ideological stupidity, just as culpable for this mess as their opponents on the other. Given this state of affairs, I see no reasonable prospect of prevention. Instead, we will simply have more or less local mitigation solutions, which will work fairly well in the rich parts of the world and probably fail miserably in many of the poorer parts. The only silver lining here is that localized measures are far easier to implement as they require cooperation on a much smaller scale and, for the most part, will happen to avert dangers that will by then have become obvious to all.
You made the case for why you don't think nuclear can do any good (because it's too late), but what's the case for harm?
My understanding is that with any type of nuclear plant, in a non trustworthy country, it would still be dependent on importing the fuel from a nuclear state, making it quite unappealing and a security risk for the purchasing state.
That sounds to me, that every country should do its best to cut CO2 and not wait for others to lead first.
Edit: I suppose I should include a source. From the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location...
At the same time, you could replace all nuclear in the US currently operating in around three years (even compensating for capacity factor), solely from PV manufacturing capacity in the US. It is plainly obvious why nuclear is not included when renewables and at grid parity and the cost of utility scale storage is rapidly declining. Even if the cost decline of storage takes longer than expected, you can compensate with overbuilding, curtailment, transmission and demand response.
You ask why nuclear isn't being talked about. I can't fathom anyone thinking it's a real option compared to solar, wind, and battery storage, all of which are cheaper unsubsidized than nuclear today, can be manufactured and shipped where ever needed, and scaling up production is trivial (in comparison).
https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019 (Lazard Levelized Cost of Energy and Levelized Cost of Storage 2019)
If Climate Change is so important, declare a total war against it like during WW2 against the Axis. With most production geared toward nuclear energy, you should have generator up and running a lot faster.
That's with only four hours storage. That's a convenient amount since it's the excess typically generated by solar installations during the day, but to actually get through a windless night we might need more storage. Lazard's retail cost for storage alone is 48 to 104 cents/kWh. Plus you'll need extra solar dedicated to charging it.
At this point people often bring up long-distance transmission. The report happens to include that too, with a cost starting at $2.35/kWh wholesale and going way up from there.
None of this includes the overcapacity we'd need, to get through cloudy winter weeks.
Lazard puts nuclear's cost at 12 to 19 cents/kWh but it's unclear whether that's retail cost; I suspect so since I only pay 12 cents/kWh on a grid that's heavy on nuclear.
Wind/solar is very cheap when the grid is still mostly fossil, but to run a reliable carbon-free grid in areas without abundant hydro, nuclear is still cheaper. The cheapest combination is probably nuclear to the level of minimum nighttime load, and renewables for everything beyond that, without just enough storage to even out remaining discrepancies with demand.
I think that you may have confused PV manufacturing capacity in the US with global PV manufacturing capacity.
The US generated 807 TWh from nuclear power in 2018 [1]. If solar farms achieve a good-but-realistic capacity factor of 25%, you need 368 gigawatts of modules [2] to produce 807 TWh per year. That's about 3 years' worth of global module production at 2019 production rates. US domestic module production is currently below 10 GW per year.
[1] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...
[2] (807000 / (24*365)) / 0.25 = 368. Actually you need a bit more because most solar farms report capacity factor on an AC basis, and the inverter loading ratio is greater than 1.0. But close enough for a quick estimate.
If you could replace it all in 3 years, wouldn’t we be better off replacing 20% of coal power over 3 years and wait a little longer on the nuclear power?
If your math is right, half the grid would be zero carbon in 5 years.
Maybe capitalism isn't the right model for energy? Or, if you are a die hard capitalist, maybe we aren't costing externalities correctly and we should get some folks in power who will ensure that the right options are also the cost competitive options?
I'd love it if I were wrong, or if someone can change my mind, but in a world where we have never had as much access to information, large swaths of the population don't even believe global warming is _real_, let alone something we should do something about.
We should just start planning for the worst case scenarios, because they are going to happen regardless.
To give an example, I personally hate commuting and believe that spending hours sitting in traffic every day is a major waste of time. However, if a politician came by and promised to raise gasoline prices by 50% in order to invest $X billion into WeWork so that they could solve the commute problem once and for all, I would never have voted for them. Not because I love commuting, but because I don't believe this will solve the problem at all, given the track record of WeWork. Of course, people with a financial interest in WeWork would gladly label me a commutist and would try to make sure my arguments are not heard.
There are plenty of ways to reduce the emissions that are much easier to quantify and implement: making nuclear power safer, improving biodiesel, even a national standard for replaceable EV batteries so you could switch one out not much slower than filling in a gas tank. But instead we keep hearing the original sin [0] rhetoric on how we should eat less, not buy a big house and give up on having kids.
Climate change denial denial. Very meta.
https://www.wired.com/story/americans-trust-scientists-until...
Than you should like carbon fee and dividend scheme[1]. Tax emissions, divide equally between all citizens. The end result is unchanged populations spending power, but redistributed towards less carbon-intensive products.
It's hard for people to work out what information is true, what information is denial, and what information is hyperbole. Unfortunately the warnings we are getting via the media are inconsistent, alarmist, and don't put things into useful human terms that you can use to make decisions by. There needs to be a concerted effort to do better on the messaging front. I don't have any hope that the news media will do better while Western society puts little value on honor and doing the right thing, and puts high value on making as much money as possible.
Given the inconsistent messaging, people cannot rationally work out the answer to the following question: Which is worse? Giving up meat, my SUV, and air travel... or dealing with a +1.5C temperature shift? Most people think the former is worse, and quite rationally keep living as they have been at carbon footprints well in excess of 10 mton-co2e/year. Alarmist messaging doesn't fix that situation because people aren't dumb and can tell what is alarmist and what is a statement of solid facts. In fact, I've yet to hear a statement of solid facts that lays out the case why I should give up my (meat + SUV + air travel) that isn't highly speculative. Personally I am giving up these things and planting trees, but only because I bothered to deeply research the situation. The messaging is still really bad.. especially in the US where people apparently have no will to listen to each other anymore.
The large swath of population that doesn't believe in global warming is far less important than the large swath that is anti-nuclear. China, India, etc will need substantial energy to improve their quality of life and their populations are so large relatively to that of the West that marginal improvements in the Wests consumption will have little effect.
Except that even the minimum reactor size (for technical, security and proliferation reasons) mandates extremely large investment in terms of capital and space, which in turn leads to ownership by large intransparent conglomerates, bickering by NIMBYs, clearances, costly audits and years of planning and validation.
Renewables plus storage on the other hand just get cheaper by automation and are relatively affordable. Any larger company can afford cash and space for solar on the roof plus a PowerPack in the backyard.
Knowledge and learning rate for that track advances at an order of magnitude faster rate than for fission or fusion.
In terms of scaling up as quickly as needed, nuclear is dead in the water.
I completely agree. In this age of broadband internet, social media where information is at your disposal, we are not matured enough to handle this, speaking from micro-evolutionary perspective. And where we can not digest/process/retain information, we conveniently convince overselves that it might not be real. Sadly, we are doomed.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/most-americans-suppo...
The actual roadblocks to action are: (1) lack of a realistic plan (not like "we're going to subsidize renewables" but "we expect to reduce solar radiation by 0.25%, reduce emissions from power productions by 25%, ..." where the numbers add up to a real change) and (2) the conspicuous inability of the government to demand sacrifices from Elites (Macron's tax cuts), and (3) ordinary people feeling overwhelmed and that any sacrifice is the "last straw" (e.g. Yellow Shirts riot when they try to raise the price of gas)
(2) and (3) are linked because the government needs legitimacy to demand sacrifices and if it can't get them from those that have, how can it get them from anybody else?
If you want something to happen start a Kickstarter to rent a plane and seed the upper atmosphere with SO2 -- that avoids the 'collective action' problem.
Who is "we" here? If by "we" you mean those humans that are incapable of coordinated political action, then I don't see us planning for the worst at the moment. You just replaced one unattainable goal with another. If by "we" you mean everyone individually should start building bunkers for themselves, then that's a perfect recipe for extinction.
Like you, I would love to be wrong about this but I have not seen any convincing argument against it.
In the United States, for instance, a majority wants significant action to avert climate change. Some of the obstacles to this actually happening are the electoral college, the filibuster, gerrymandering, first-past-the-post elections, the Citizens United decision, regulatory capture, and so on. We don't need to fix all of those things in order to act decisively, but if we reformed at least some of them it would make progress much easier.
You're the one sitting here on the internet claiming defeat.
How many people have you told to cut back on consumption and fuel use this month?
Yea. That's what I thought.
Don't act like it's impossible to change behavior it's not.
Smoking, drunk driving, domestic violence, racism, homophobia, and a bunch of other social issues have all been largely tackled the last few decades.
In WW2 we repurposed car factories to make tanks in a matter of weeks.
Please, don't act like we're a bunch of invilids incapable of change.
Speak for yourself.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
Governments are not moving quickly enough on climate change with small incremental changes over time. However, people and organizations who champion these efforts can pressure governments to drive faster change.
Climate Pledge
To protect humanity now and for the future of our posterity I am committing to the following.
- I pledge to limit eating red meat. I will restrict intake of cows and lambs etc.
- If I choose to have children, I will have 2 or less.
- I will try to use cycling or mass transit options whenever possible and to participate in efforts to expand transit.
- I will restrict flying to only when necessary and try to limit flying to only when no other choice is available. If I do fly I will try to offset all emissions.
- I will try my utmost to conserve energy and minimize use of heating and cooling appliances.
- I will try my best to limit energy use to renewable sources when I have the choice. When I cannot choose I will fight for the ability to have this choice.
- I will try to help those close to me understand these choices and the need for those able, to also join the pledge.
- I will only consume what I need. I will not perpetuate extravagance and will only support companies who champion sustainable efforts.
- I will do my best to strive for and support sustainable and minimalist technology.
- I will stay involved in the public discourse on environmental issues and stay engaged on efforts to mitigate climate change.
I'm not fully convinced. When you know better, you do better. And we now know better.
"A did a stupid thing to achieve X result, therefore B must be allowed to do the same stupid thing" is not a great argument.
There's more than one way to create economic value.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wynes_Nicholas_CO2_emissi...
Is the argument to have less kids to save the planet not just population control propaganda?
Cratering energy prices makes it more affordable for developing nations to rapidly industrialize which is a one way street towards massive emissions until a sustainable solution is realized.
Climate Policy is a classic example of how the prisoner's dilemma can cause a tragedy of the commons. I personally don't see how it can be solved in a world where there is intense competition.
I think if everyone was doing their best to conserve, they would be a lot more upset when they see others and corporations undoing their good work. Right now it's hard to judge others for doing the same thing we do but on a bigger scale.
Start by not using the internet. Thank you in the name of 7bn humans.
Fair, but in my mind this is why globalism is a thing -- because it doesn't account for the exploitation of human labor and lack of regulation. If it did, there would be no reason to ship a few dollars of plastic from China to the USA.
So it might be more efficient to make a large investment in the American railroad network and start removing trucks from the road, than to start making toothbrushes in the US.
Some back of the envelope math:
- Distance China to US East Coast ≈ 10 000 km
- Weight of 1 toothbrush = 10 gram = 0.0001 tonne
30 g * 10 000 km * 0.0001 tonne = 30 gram of Co2
30 gram of Co2 is the amount of Co2 emissions from ≈ 100 meter of travel with an average car.
Of course there is secondary land transport from the port etc. But even though the sea shipping industry is one of the biggest Co2 emitters (not to speak of other nasty stuff [0]), it's still incredibly energy efficient.
[0]: You saying the ships are "diesel-spewing" is actually doing the ships a favour, it's usually heavy fuel oil.
> Who is going to pay to build the local factories for everything your local drug store stocks
The manufacturer is going to pay for it by selling their products to drug stores.
> Wont all of those thousands of local toothbrush factories worldwide pollute even more than a single toothbrush factory worldwide?
How so? Even if there was a single manufactory in Oklahoma it could serve the entire country at a fraction of the environmental cost.
I understand that price doesn't take externalities into effect. That said price is the best way we have to allocate resources - it conveys that information better then any other tool we have. If price indicates to people that toothbrushes should be made in China and shipped to the U.S. then I tend to think that's probably the most efficient way to do it.
When the developed world can gradually reduce CO2 emissions, China, India and the rest of the developing world will continue to increase emissions.
Since that won't happen - we are royally screwed.
If we could go back in time and the US had the option at the time of using today's technology, and they chose not to, we would condemn them.
Just citing spot price in price/kwh is not telling the truth about total cost. You need to build energy storage, grids and extra capacity to fix the fluctuation of renewable availability.
Chunks of brown coal to used in heating and cooking will be cheaper than renewables for as long as I can see. Only infrastructure cost is a road for the truck to deliver coal.
Also, looking at which countries _are_ having the most success (if any), would help to show which strategies work better than others (e.g. the nuclear debate).
The first state to do it will see its economy shrink, and it will be bought by other who do not.
We cut down trees and burned fuels. Planting trees only undoes one of those two.
This kind of facile response radically underestimates the magnitude of what we have to reverse.
After the apocalypse a new civilization might find them again as coal and to start the cycle again.
https://www.pnas.org/content/110/4/1209
Coastal cities are going to move.
The +9m to +31m isn't from simulations. It's from ice core sample and sediment analysis.
https://theshiftproject.org/en/home/
It's a think tank working on handling the climate crisis with excellent, pragmatic, efficiency-focused studies, without ideologies or dogma. They have recently been known to put some numbers on the CO2 emissions caused by the digital industry, that is less visible but very real (4 percent of total emissions, 4x more than air travel!)
They have Jean-Marc Jancovici in the management, who also founded Carbone 4 - a consulting firm working on enabling companies to make their transition to a carbon-neutral world. He's an original figure among ecologists in France because he pleads in favor of nuclear energy in France, to avoid emitting CO2 (it's mainly thanks to nuclear energy that France emits 7 times less CO2 for the same amount of electricity produced compared to the OECD). I highly recommend his conferences.
Elites don't want to stop global warming, they've spent billions of dollars trying to stop a response to global warming.
Ordinary people say they want to do something about global warming but if it inconveniences them such as an increase in gas taxes, they will riot in the streets. (See the Yellow Shirts in France.)
The conspicuous inability of governments to make elites feel a little pain (Macron and the wealth tax) means that governments have no legitimacy with which to demand sacrifices from anybody else. Thus you see "last straw" rebellions just about anywhere when there is an unpopular change, say a 4% increase in subway fares.
With geoengineering you only need to scrape together a few billion a year which could be done by a small group of elites or governments (if Bloomberg didn't waste his time and money and reputation running for pres he could do it...)
The best part of it is that a credible threat to Geoengineer might solve the collective action problem for other interventions:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-011-0102-0
As for all the reasons why geoengineering is seen as a "cop-out" note that if it's really an extinction worth rebelling about, then we have to use "all means necessary" and that includes solar radiation management.
The US can do better, but China and much of the developing world isn’t exactly helping.
