4935

The Middle East. They have the wealth and means to do it and will be among the earliest and hardest hit. And the technology is not difficult enough to require a steady state to support it.

Interesting. I wonder what the effects will be. I wonder if it will be effective enough, and the consequences manageable enough, to avoid societal collapse. Invest in breathing masks and indoor agriculture I guess!

4936

I initially had Dubai in here instead of the Bahamas, for that reason. But it was thematically more cohesive to do all Island tourist destinations.

4937

There are a few measures that are money making, or at the very least, right people money making. Stuff like taking carbon from the air and making fuel with it, using hydrogen as fuel, a few more.

At the very least they’ll allow people who currently can’t produce their fuel to produce it, so, Germany might be all on board with it, France, Japan, maybe China, pretty much any country that doesn’t have oil.

But I doubt these technologies will be enough to revert the damage, maybe enough to minimize it, keep it in the current “Maybe it’s us, maybe it isn’t, I’ll believe whatever allows me to keep my living standard”…

4938

The radically moderate solution:

To go big on Nuclear.

It is interesting that going Nuclear has a smaller carbon footprint than setting up renewables.

4939

It may be a good idea, I honestly don’t know, but Sullivan’s endorsement makes it seem less likely. He seems to corner the market in wrong.

I mean, this article is typical Sullivan. He says this:

Focus on a non-carbon energy source that is already proven to be technologically feasible, can be quickly scaled up, and can potentially meet all our energy demands.

And then he suggest nuclear, and then says of nuclear this:

The plants take a long time to build, and they’re difficult to site.

In other words, nuclear can both be scaled up quickly and take a long time to scale up.

On costs, he compares nuclear to the Green New Deal (which is not a fair comparing because there’s much New Deal in the GND that isn’t in nuclear) and then uses a bogus estimate for the GND that has been thoroughly debunked without even mentioning that fact. And he imagines we’ll build 61 reactors per year.

4940

Sullivan needs to read a book:

4941

This was an interesting study:

4942

To be fair, safer nuclear power methods exist, but because they are so expensive to research and refine, nobody is doing it. If any future legislation to combat climate change were to help fund research and development of nuclear alternatives, it might have a shot at becoming reality. I haven’t read that book, but based on the excerpt, it seemed like the issue is the industry as it is now, and I think that any future nuclear development would involve a massive restructuring of the entire industry around safety, including better regulation, and investment in new technology and infrastructure around generation IV reactor types.

I watched a PBS special about this, I think it was an episode of Nova, dealing with nuclear incidents and the next generation of nuclear power. It is all exciting, as a lot of the research has been designing the systems to be much more safe, and a massive reduction in waste, as well as waste with half-lifes of a few centuries, rather than a few millenia.

But the problem they brought up, is that there is basically no funding for this. Nobody wants to touch nuclear power because oil and gas are so cheap, and the regulations around nuclear power are in so much flux that nobody wants to invest in it right now, as it is a big gamble.

It is a big ask, but I think to save the planet, we are going to need to do something big.

4943

Nuclear is just not likely to happen. The waste, the cost, and the expertise that goes hand-in-hand with nuclear weapons. And security.

Some studies put natural gas power with carbon capture at or lower cost than nuclear.

I personally benefit as Ontario, Canada is 60% nuclear base-load, and 30% hydro - a great non-CO2 base of electricity. But it’s hard to see nuclear gaining much ground.

4944

I’ve gotten my power from nuclear reactors for most of my life.

4945

Yeah, me too (well since moving to Ontario where there is nuclear). But there’s little appetite for the high cost and long procurement, unfortunately. I wish there were, along with some guts to address the waste issue.

@MrGrumpy posted the vox article, please read it. I quote below:

Is nuclear power going to help the United States decarbonize its energy supply and fight climate change?

Probably not.

That is the conclusion of a remarkable new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in early July — remarkable because it is not written by opponents of nuclear power, as one might expect given the conclusion. The authors are in fact extremely supportive of nuclear and view its loss as a matter of “profound concern”:

Achieving deep decarbonization of the energy system will require a portfolio of every available technology and strategy we can muster. It should be a source of profound concern for all who care about climate change that, for entirely predictable and resolvable reasons, the United States appears set to virtually lose nuclear power, and thus a wedge of reliable and low-carbon energy, over the next few decades.

Still, despite their evident belief in the need for nuclear power, the researchers are unable to construct a plausible scenario in which it thrives. And it’s not for lack of looking — the paper is a methodical walk through the possibilities for both existing and new nuclear technology. The researchers really want it to work. They just can’t see it happening.

4946

If it costs less than say a certain wall, it seems like we can figure out how to fund it. If we are talking about substantial safety improvements, large reductions in waste and a regulation, real regulation, I might even be on bored with considering it as a viable option. We can certainly afford it, and if private won’t do it, public can.

4947

Part of the problem of cost isn’t nuclear itself… We already built a ton of reactors. The cost was not prohibitive.

In China, they built the first AP1000, and it cost about $6B. The one we tried to build in Georgia was cancelled after spending about $9B, and only achieved 40% completion.

There are problems holding us back which are not technological.

4948

The cost isn’t coming down much, if at all. It’ll probably continue to rise. It was looked at as part of the article linked.

In fact, you might think nuclear is expensive because you get a clinically efficient clean and endless supply of power for ever. It’s not like that. It’s so expensive that there is cost cutting at every step of the way, from the toilets to the Chinese steel to the ventilation system in the attic. There has to be, the public and political leadership are already screaming at the insane cost and criticizing every dollar over. Multiple contracts always to the lowest bidder. Look into Hinkley and it’s a legacy of inadequate consultation and contractor shoddiness and rework and skipped environmental remediation and poor record keeping all in the name of cost savings… and it was $23 billion?

Nuclear isn’t expensive because “bureaucracy and regulations”. It’s expensive because planning, design, site selection, environmental impacts, finance, procurement, construction, materials, insurance, commissioning, maintenance, operations, security, waste management, and decommissioning are all incredibly expensive. Feel free to pick a few of those to sacrifice I suppose :). Also there isn’t a single long-term solution to the waste problem, anywhere, despite 100’s of billions spent.

4949

And how could that be? We built tons of nuclear power plants more than half a century ago. There’s no reasonable explanation for how it could suddenly need prohibitively expensive now, but was somehow affordable 70 years ago.

We already did it, 70 years ago. And since, we had… one? nuclear accident? Which had litterally no measurable impact on the environment? And the plant is still functional today?

Hell, France’s entire energy supply was basically nuclear.

That’s just no reasonable way that it could somehow be prohibitively expensive now, but wasn’t 70 years ago. The materials haven’t become more scarce. Production of things becomes cheaper over time, not more expensive. We are better at making nuclear reactors now than we were 70 years ago. So why are they more expensive? Nothing else works like that.

The reality is that we have overregulated the process… And I’m not saying that without cause. In saying it because we built so many under simpler regulations, and didn’t have problems.

4950

Other technologies like gas and solar have gotten cheaper. And when you build a nuclear plant the costs are up front so you’re competing against the future cost of those technologies as well, and they still seem to be dropping. Obviously nuclear would look better with a strong carbon tax though.

4951

But that’s not it… Because nuclear plants that we built in the 50’s didn’t cost the equivalent of $25 billion dollars. It wasn’t even close.

It’s not simply that competing technology has become cheaper. It’s that something else has made building nuclear plant more expensive. Dramatically so.

And yet those old Reactors are still running, safely, decades after they were created… So it’s not like we did a crappy job.

And really, nuclear technology has advanced hugely since then… Because we built tons of reactors since then. Hell, we put them on boats now.

4952

Sorry but things cost more now. Take any element of dozens that need to be worked out to build a nuclear power station - say initial site selection. That was a $30K study in 1950, translating to say $900K today?

A site selection study today would probably be $10-30 million. It’s because the site selection today needs to look at:
-Forestry, wildlife, endangered species, plant, marine, land, insect, migratory patterns, water effluent impacts, downwind impacts. Find an endangered slug and it can delay the whole project four years (seriously)
-Air, noise, traffic, security, haulage routes
-Land values, social impact, housing, retail impact, sight impact, shadow impact
-Fluvial geomorphology (I like that one), hydrology, soil, groundwater
-Community consultation, open houses, design charettes, workshops, stakeholder consultation, First Nations, agencies, public health, conservation authorities, active transportation committees, business improvement associations, community groups

Do you want me to keep going? Ok I will…

-local municipal councils, state government, a dozen federal agencies
-evacuation routes, catchment areas, highway capacity analysis of evacuation scenarios
-emergency services (fire, police, ambulance), travel times, hospitals
-archaeology, cultural heritage
-site drainage, contaminated soils

Again, feel free to pick through a half dozen of these to sacrifice, then enjoy your 10-year delay in court for inadequate consultation and appeals.

China doesn’t deal with these things - so move to China, where the government gives you a check for $200 and then builds a nuclear power plant on top of your house.

We haven’t even hired a design consultant yet, by the way…

4953

I felt this was a good read, with a pertinent clip quoted below
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx

An insight into the magnitude of different elements of capital cost was provided by testimony to a Georgia Public Service Commission hearing concerning the Vogtle 3&4 project in June 2014. Here, for Georgia Power’s 45.7% share, the EPC cost was $3.8 billion, owner cost $0.6 billion, and financing cost $1.7 billion (if completed by 2016-17). The cost of possible delayed completion was put at $1.2 million per day. The total cost of the project was expected to be about $14 billion.

The 2016 edition of the World Nuclear Association’s World Nuclear Supply Chain report tabulated two breakdowns in capital costs, by activity and in terms of labour, goods and materials:

Design, architecture, engineering and licensing 5%
Project engineering, procurement and construction management 7%
Construction and installation works:
Nuclear island 28%
Conventional island 15%
Balance of plant 18%
Site development and civil works 20%
Transportation 2%
Commissioning and first fuel loading 5%
Total 100%
Equipment
Nuclear steam supply system 12%
Electrical and generating equipment 12%
Mechanical equipment 16%
Instrumentation and control system (including software) 8%
Construction materials 12%
Labour onsite 25%
Project management services 10%
Other services 2%
First fuel load 3%
Total 100%
4954

Dude, you realize that the list you just posted indicates exactly my point. A ton of that is stuff you don’t actually NEED to do. Its stuff that we didn’t do in the past. I mean, ok, so the land is more expensive, but that’s a trivial chunk.

I mean, look at the stuff in the site survey… Archeology and cultural heritage? In the grand scheme of shit, that ain’t really that important.

I mean, sure, maybe you think that stuff is more important than making carbon free energy fast. But that’s the choice you are making.

Because you absolutely could just say, “you know what? We’re not gonna really sorry about that crap. This is a serious problem, and there isn’t really anything that big that’s gonna happen from taking a tiny plot of land to build a nuclear plant on.”

Because, again, we did this before… More than half a century ago. And apparently, it worked out fine.