[XogGyux]

Practical and economic fusion power is now twenty years away. In the 1950s fusion was twenty years away. Fifty years from now fusion will be twenty years away.

The simple fact is that any form of nuclear power is politically impossible. The right is striving mightily to make solar and wind politically impossible as well. They will succeed unless we concentrate all our efforts in pushing this technology forward. Any political capital expended on nuclear power is a dangerous and ill-advised distraction.

I like your optimism. But even if you were "partly" right. Fusion is possible (thats what the sun does) and that is the most likely "clean" reliable source of energy we will have in the foreseeable future. Neither wind nor solar could supply the worlds need without SIGNIFICANT drawbacks of their own. Contrary to what tree huggers would like you to believe they are not as green as most people think. They also damage the ecosystem (perhaps not climate change) but definitely have big impact in wildlife as well as contamination (or you think the production of billions and billions of batteries will be a clean enterprise?)

In any event. Scientist are fairly certain that this time its for real. In fact there is already a reactor being constructed that it is expected to generate more energy than it is spent.

[mikema63]

The environmental damage done by simply mining nuclear material isn't particularly different than the mining damage done by rare earths or the chemicals used to produced solar panels and batteries. Just thought I'd throw that in there since someone mentioned it.

Dealing with nuclear waste would be easier if we used breeder reactors which produce about a hundreth of the waste be using up all the actinides.

Things like shell casings or materials exposed to radiation do not pose a significant threat, since they don't produce heat as they aren't in and of themselves undergoing radioactive decay you can just toss them into a thick iron casing and is often disposed of by simply encasing it in concrete.

High level nuclear wastes like spent fuels are generally stored in water in a sealed cask. Current wastes do indeed last a very long time. Though without actinides which can be removed by using the fuel in a breeder reactor (or a burner reactor which is designed to simply remove the actinides) you can reduce the time to 10,000 years.

This is still dangerous but the clean air taskforce estimates about 13,000 people in the US died due to particulate pollution created by coal burning powerplants.

Storage casks can simply be built on site since there is an enourmous amount of hostility to the idea of shipping the material anywhere.

We face a dire crisis that will not be solved overnight or by any one thing, even if you think nuclear power is dangerous it is less dangerous than the continual degradation of our climate and the food shortages, droughts, and rising sea levels it brings. We face hundreds of millions of people being displaced or dying.

If you do not take nuclear power seriously as a stopgap between where we are now and a "green" energy infrastructure then you simply aren't taking climate change as seriously as you should.

Fusion would be a fantastic way to stop this ridiculous argument from going on and would save our asses in the near term quite nicely, but we cannot simply wait and hope for a technological breakthrough. If it doesn't materialized we are screwed if we do nothing.

[XogGyux]

If you do not take nuclear power seriously as a stopgap between where we are now and a "green" energy infrastructure then you simply aren't taking climate change as seriously as you should.

Pretty much this.
I'm not a fan of any one of the current energy generations. They all have their drawbacks and benefits but a significant part of the problem we face is the half the country wants to remain stuck in burning shit up for energy and the other half wont consider more reasonable step wise move towards a REAL solution.

[Suntzu]

Dispersed generation could cut our power needs in half.

[quetzalcoatl]

Dispersed generation could cut our power needs in half.

It is also a necessary component of reversing fragility in the electric distribution system.

[mikema63]

There are a lot of things we can do to improve energy infrastructure to be sure, but you also face significant issues. It's simply more profitable to have centralized energy generation since it reduces operating costs. Which means that government would have to subsidize or outright build dispersed generation and update the grid.

That doesn't seem likely to be politically viable in the near future in the US.

[Suntzu]

Small, sealed nukes capable of powering a small town or subdivision are part of the answer. Conventional nukes to power major metropolitan center are another. Reprocessing spent fuel rods is another. It is insane to just store spent rods. Even the French has figured this out. A reactor can produce more fuel than it uses.

[mikema63]

You still have to store waste no matter what kind of reactor you use, since people don't want to allow centralized storage or transport waste anywhere you have to centralize and build big stations and store waste on site.

[Suntzu]

Reprocessing reduces "waste" by more than 90%. What is left is much less radioactive for a much shorter time.

[mikema63]

Yes, by orders of magnitude. Which is great except that it means 10,000 years rather than a million. It still posses a health hazard and is better kept sealed in casks on site. Along with the low level and mid level wastes.

[ThirdTerm]

We have a simplistic view that global warming is mostly caused by fossil fuel power stations which burn fossil fuel such as coal, natural gas or petroleum to produce electricity. But the agricultural sector also accounts for 17% of carbon dioxide emissions and Russia and the Middle East are hot spots of carbon flaring BC emissions from gas flaring. Replacing fossil fuel power stations with nuclear power stations does't solve the problem and it would increase the risk of a nuclear disaster.

Global flaring of associated petroleum gas is a potential emission source of particulate matters (PM) and could be notable in some specific regions that are in urgent need of mitigation. PM emitted from gas flaring is mainly in the form of black carbon (BC), which is a strong short-lived climate forcer. However, BC from gas flaring has been neglected in most global/regional emission inventories and is rarely considered in climate modeling. Here we present a global gas flaring BC emission rate dataset for the period 1994–2012 in a machine-readable format. We develop a region-dependent gas flaring BC emission factor database based on the chemical compositions of associated petroleum gas at various oil fields. Gas flaring BC emission rates are estimated using this emission factor database and flaring volumes retrieved from satellite imagery. Evaluation using a chemical transport model suggests that consideration of gas flaring emissions can improve model performance. This dataset will benefit and inform a broad range of research topics, e.g., carbon budget, air quality/climate modeling, and environmental/human exposure.
http://www.nature.com/articles/sdata2016104

[mikema63]

25% of greenhouse gas emissions are due to electrical generation according to the EPA.

Regardless we shouldn't ignore a large contributor just because of overblown safety fear mongering. The particulate pollution of coal fired pants kills more than 10,000 Americans a year. The comparative risk of nuclear power is tiny. Cognitive biases make people see one large disaster like chernobyl and remember that far more than the much larger but dispersed death toll of fossil fuel use.

[Truth To Power]

Neither wind nor solar could supply the worlds need without SIGNIFICANT drawbacks of their own.

Wrong. Every form of energy has costs and drawbacks, but solar is going to replace most other energy sources within the next 50 years. More solar energy falls on the earth in one day than all the energy we have ever got from oil, or ever will.

Contrary to what tree huggers would like you to believe they are not as green as most people think. They also damage the ecosystem (perhaps not climate change) but definitely have big impact in wildlife

Um, not to put too fine a point on it, but so what?

as well as contamination (or you think the production of billions and billions of batteries will be a clean enterprise?)

Battery technology can be, and is being, improved.

In any event. Scientist are fairly certain that this time its for real. In fact there is already a reactor being constructed that it is expected to generate more energy than it is spent.

Just in time to be made obsolete by paint-on solar...

[JohnRawls]

Good post mike. And i fully agree on you on this one. The fear of large disasters is more remember-able than small ones. A good example of this effect is Flying vs Driving a car. People are afraid of flying using planes but in reality it is much safer to fly than drive.

The national safety council calculated the odds of dying in a motor vehicle accident to be 1 in 98 for a lifetime. For air and space transport (including air taxis and private flights), the odds were 1 in 7,178 for a lifetime, according to the table.

Link: http://traveltips.usatoday.com/air-trav ... -1581.html

The major issue with nuclear energy is that it is quite costly depending on the country. Some countries build cheaper and some countries build pricier. This price is usually related at how long the countries have been building the plants and how well their infrastructure is designed to accommodate the transportation of people/materials/products to build one. The actual safety measures are more or less same for most power plants nowadays that are built. So the French, Russians and the US to some degree can build them relatively cheaply compared to other countries. (Not sure about China) Germany and the UK are on the other side of things. Since their nuclear sector has been crippled, they need a lot more capital investment to build one.

[Suntzu]

Nuclear power plants are like early automobiles, ever one a one off. We need to standardize a design. I think the French have done this to some extent. Environmentalist are trying to eliminate nukes by regulating it to death.

[Pants-of-dog]

..... The particulate pollution of coal fired pants kills more than 10,000 Americans a year. ....

Pants of dog skin are far safer.

[JohnRawls]

Nuclear power plants are like early automobiles, ever one a one off. We need to standardize a design. I think the French have done this to some extent. Environmentalist are trying to eliminate nukes by regulating it to death.

Not necessarily. Russians build one of the most cheapest nuclear power plants and their standards security/safety wise are one of the highest if not the highest. I am not sure if this is related to low labour cost etc but probably not. Highly likely they just have the experience and the industry since they have been doing it for quite some time. French are in a similar position it seems.

[Suntzu]

Somebody needs to get the U.S. on the right page.

[XogGyux]

Wrong. Every form of energy has costs and drawbacks, but solar is going to replace most other energy sources within the next 50 years. More solar energy falls on the earth in one day than all the energy we have ever got from oil, or ever will.

Um, not to put too fine a point on it, but so what?

Battery technology can be, and is being, improved.

Just in time to be made obsolete by paint-on solar...

You are wrong. Solar technology has existed since the 50's. In fact is almost as old as nuclear yet less than 1% of US electricity is produced by this means, and far less for the rest of the word. The idea that a technology that has existed for 70 years and is not even close to 1% will become the majority in years i assume you mean either 51% of the us, or at least the single largest market share (at the moment i believe its coal at ~30%) its preposterous. Specially since we are far away from the battery technologies we would need to make the system viable.

Look I am not opposed of solar as a bridge or as possible alternative specially in isolated parts where access to centralized power is a problem. But consider this, the VAST majority of home installed solar cells are not currently using batteries to store that energy for the night. How do they manage to power their homes during the nighttime? Well because they are not 100% off the grid. During the day those solar panels supply the electricity to the house and and "extra" electricity is pumped into the plant (basically sold to the plant). Which is cool but if you wanted to use this system you could not get rid of a single oil/coal/nuclear plant in the word, best you could hope for is that you wouldn't have to run those plants during the daylight (which would be very inefficient and and unrealistic specially in the case of nuclear plants.)
Now to really really get rid of solar you would need massive batteries on every single one of the 120million + in the US, all business and buildings, etc. And i'm not talking about a car battery here, i'am talking about massive batteries or batteries array.
That is a lot batteries which lets be honest it is not the greenest of all objects you can fabricate.

Now what you said about energy hitting earth is true. There is a lot of energy. There is also a lot of energy in our planets core, there is a lot of energy in the supernova 100 million light years up. Not because there is a lot of energy somewhere means that we can EFFICIENTLY, safely and more important to our topic, green, recovered. One gram of any substance (lets say water) has enough energy to power a single light bulb for 30,000 years! but until we figure out how (or if its even possible) that we can exploit that we cannot even consider that as a reasonable alternative.

Now it is true battery technology is improving. In 20 years we might have carbon nanotube batteries half the size and twice the capacity for a fraction of the cost and weight of current batteries. But EVEN if that were true.... there are still drawbacks to solar OTHER than batteries. For one, the sun changes throught the day and throught the seasons, so you either need a massively overkill system (so that it has enough reserves to last you through those months) or you cannot use those system in particular areas of the country. Dirt, shadow from trees, all of that reduces the efficiency so you need an additional layer of maintenance and/or reserve to meet those problems. And lets not forget about the most obvious issue here. Nuclear fusion is literally the same process that our sun uses (and it is just as clean) why would you go through the middle man of panels, 100 million miles of space and 10km of earth atmosphere when you can go straight to the source and produce it? Yes you might say well this technology doesn't exist just yet... but hey! remember those amazing batteries you were talking about? they don't exist either!. In fact with current technology, even if we say lets do it no matter the cost, we wouldn't even get close to implement such a system in the US simply because there is not enough lithium in the whole world to put the necessary batteries in every single US home, car and business. Now, there are other technologies being researched, but the same is true for fusion!

I think solar will play a major role for sure. I think in the next 10-20 years more and more houses are going to even include some with its construction. I think someone will come up great roof tiles that work as photocells (actually i think elon musk showed some not too long ago) and this will be great. However with less than 1% of the electricity produced in this country produced by photo voltaic cells and with virtually 0% of the households with the necessary battery storage needs met solar energy is as far from being viable as it is recovering the power of the lightning!

Nuclear fusion is the future. Although realistically, even if we ignore politics and decide to work towards that goal i don't think we will get there before the last quarter of this century for any significant part of the US energy be produced by clean sources.

[Truth To Power]

You are wrong. Solar technology has existed since the 50's.

Ah, so has artificial intelligence. It's the combination of declining cost and increasing effectiveness that leads to widespread use.

In fact is almost as old as nuclear yet less than 1% of US electricity is produced by this means, and far less for the rest of the word.

But the cost per installed watt has declined by two orders of magnitude since the 50s, and will continue to decline.

The idea that a technology that has existed for 70 years and is not even close to 1% will become the majority in years i assume you mean either 51% of the us, or at least the single largest market share (at the moment i believe its coal at ~30%) its preposterous.

Really? In 1975, electronic computers had existed for over 30 years, but far less than 1% of households had one. Within 20 years, over 90% of households had one.

Specially since we are far away from the battery technologies we would need to make the system viable.

But probably a lot closer than we are to practical fusion power.

Look I am not opposed of solar as a bridge or as possible alternative specially in isolated parts where access to centralized power is a problem. But consider this, the VAST majority of home installed solar cells are not currently using batteries to store that energy for the night. How do they manage to power their homes during the nighttime? Well because they are not 100% off the grid. During the day those solar panels supply the electricity to the house and and "extra" electricity is pumped into the plant (basically sold to the plant). Which is cool but if you wanted to use this system you could not get rid of a single oil/coal/nuclear plant in the word, best you could hope for is that you wouldn't have to run those plants during the daylight (which would be very inefficient and and unrealistic specially in the case of nuclear plants.)

But practical, low-cost, high-capacity electrical energy storage is coming.

Now to really really get rid of solar you would need massive batteries on every single one of the 120million + in the US, all business and buildings, etc. And i'm not talking about a car battery here, i'am talking about massive batteries or batteries array.
That is a lot batteries which lets be honest it is not the greenest of all objects you can fabricate.

There are lots of alternatives in the pipe, like flywheel storage, which has been proposed for cars, and capacitors.

Now what you said about energy hitting earth is true. There is a lot of energy. There is also a lot of energy in our planets core, there is a lot of energy in the supernova 100 million light years up. Not because there is a lot of energy somewhere means that we can EFFICIENTLY, safely and more important to our topic, green, recovered.

But unlike those, solar energy is available right here and right now, at the earth's surface, in vast quantities.

One gram of any substance (lets say water) has enough energy to power a single light bulb for 30,000 years! but until we figure out how (or if its even possible) that we can exploit that we cannot even consider that as a reasonable alternative.

But solar is already reasonable, and has been for hundreds of millions of years: plants use it, and animals extract it from plants. What's really preposterous is thinking we can't make major advances on nature's system within the next few decades.

Now it is true battery technology is improving. In 20 years we might have carbon nanotube batteries half the size and twice the capacity for a fraction of the cost and weight of current batteries. But EVEN if that were true.... there are still drawbacks to solar OTHER than batteries. For one, the sun changes throught the day and throught the seasons, so you either need a massively overkill system (so that it has enough reserves to last you through those months) or you cannot use those system in particular areas of the country.

"Overkill" more aptly describes the amount of solar energy available to be tapped. Night is the only serious difficulty, and it is solved by better storage. Even on a cloudy winter day, the solar energy falling on a typical house in a day is far more than that household's energy consumption needs.

Dirt, shadow from trees, all of that reduces the efficiency so you need an additional layer of maintenance and/or reserve to meet those problems. And lets not forget about the most obvious issue here. Nuclear fusion is literally the same process that our sun uses (and it is just as clean) why would you go through the middle man of panels, 100 million miles of space and 10km of earth atmosphere when you can go straight to the source and produce it?

Maybe because we aren't in the middle of a frickin' STAR?

Yes you might say well this technology doesn't exist just yet... but hey! remember those amazing batteries you were talking about? they don't exist either!. In fact with current technology, even if we say lets do it no matter the cost, we wouldn't even get close to implement such a system in the US simply because there is not enough lithium in the whole world to put the necessary batteries in every single US home, car and business. Now, there are other technologies being researched, but the same is true for fusion!

Fusion is inherently very, very difficult to pull off. Batteries are not, and storage need not be batteries.

I think solar will play a major role for sure. I think in the next 10-20 years more and more houses are going to even include some with its construction. I think someone will come up great roof tiles that work as photocells (actually i think elon musk showed some not too long ago) and this will be great. However with less than 1% of the electricity produced in this country produced by photo voltaic cells and with virtually 0% of the households with the necessary battery storage needs met solar energy is as far from being viable as it is recovering the power of the lightning!

The cost per installed watt of solar power has fallen by two orders of magnitude just in the last 50 years. And there is a positive feedback criticality waiting to happen: as costs decline, more people will want to go solar. More people going solar enables greater economies of mass production, further reducing costs, resulting in even more people going solar, etc.

Nuclear fusion is the future.

I'll bet you that solar accounts for a larger fraction of all human energy use than fusion as far into the future as it makes sense to speak of human energy use.

Although realistically, even if we ignore politics and decide to work towards that goal i don't think we will get there before the last quarter of this century for any significant part of the US energy be produced by clean sources.

IMO most will be clean by 2050.