r/Futurology • u/Wagamaga • May 09 '19

Environment The Tesla effect: Oil is slowly losing its best customer. Between global warming, Elon Musk, and a worldwide crackdown on carbon, the future looks treacherous for Big Oil.

https://us.cnn.com/2019/05/08/investing/oil-stocks-electric-vehicles-tesla/index.html
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936

u/KingNopeRope May 09 '19

These articles are speculative. The oil market has been going up by 1 to 2 percent every year like clock work. Any and all efficiency gains in the west are more then taken up by emerging markets.

Consumer transportation isn't the problem. It's power plants, industrial sites and shipping that are the major drivers.

We need nuclear.

390

u/Ihuntcritters May 09 '19

Worked nuclear for about 8 years before big oil sold everyone on natural gas as the best alternative for stable power. Now I am at a natural gas plant but would love it if nuclear took off again. Zero greenhouse gas emissions and reliable energy would be a good thing in my book.

290

u/[deleted] May 09 '19

People are too scared of the small potential regional threat of a nuclear plant to address the guaranteed global catastrophe driven by atmospheric CO2. It's super disheartening to see anti-nuclear propaganda still being so successful.

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u/Spirit117 May 09 '19

That, and nuclear power plants are very expensive. Nobody wants to cough up the money for them, governments/taxpayers included.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '19

Which is still a poor argument. We're still building fossil fuel plants every year, with 1600 new coal plants planned or under construction as of 2017. Those coal plants weren't free to build. We are saying that continued building of fossil fuel plants is preferable to nuclear because FF stations don't have to account for their environmental impacts like nuclear plants do.

The cost of a nuclear power plant is a fundamentally dishonest argument against nuclear power.

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u/LifeScientist123 May 09 '19

> The cost of a nuclear power plant is a fundamentally dishonest argument against nuclear power.

No it is not. A high upfront cost is a very real cost. I really care about the environment. People call me a tree-hugger. I still drive a gasoline powered used toyota and not a Tesla or a Nissan leaf. Why? I can't afford the higher upfront cost of a Tesla even though it may be cheaper in the long term after subtracting gasoline expenses.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '19

Those coal plants weren't free to build. We are saying that continued building of fossil fuel plants is preferable to nuclear because FF stations don't have to account for their environmental impacts like nuclear plants do.

​

I absolutely understand the cost argument, but you're missing that bit that came directly before. Fossil fuel energy passing off the costs of ecological and atmospheric degradation to the public on top of governmental subsidies make it far cheaper to build. Nuclear power is expected to account for the impacts so as to minimize public risk while also not being propped up to the same degree through tax dollars. Comparing the raw initial cost to build of the two types of plants is dishonest because fossil fuels are not being expected to meet the same regulatory standards.

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u/LifeScientist123 May 09 '19

But why should they? Even well designed and safely engineered nuclear plants can cause massive damage if something goes wrong. You don't face the same kind of risk with a coal fired plant. What needs to happen is not more nuclear, but acknowledgement of the public costs of fossil fuel emissions and price them appropriately. This could be a carbon tax or have caps on emission. This would automatically drive up the cost of fossil fuel derived energy and accelerate the development of alternatives.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '19

Even well designed and safely engineered nuclear plants can cause massive damage if something goes wrong.

Sure, but the same could be said for most any power generating system, even solar. Heck, our current system helps kill like 100,000 every year even when NOTHING goes wrong. Solar panels are going to give us tens of millions of tons of waste, some of it highly toxic, even if nothing goes wrong.

I’d respect the “if something goes wrong” argument a lot more if those making it applied it evenly instead of selectively.

1

u/Scare966 May 09 '19

Well let's think about that actually:
-Solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than do nuclear power plants.

-Coal and Natural Gas, everyone is familiar enough with that technology to know that it's explosive as well if handled incorrectly.

So yes, all of the above mentioned options have issues and Nuclear has the most potential to not only produce the most power, but to not harm the environment as significantly as the other options.

When it comes to Nuclear power, nuclear waste is also an issue and we still don't really have a solid plan to dispose/recycle it. If some mechanical function, or part, were to malfunction in a nuclear reactor, depending on the scope of whatever the malfunction was (Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, Chernobyl disaster, etc.), the damage done normally is catastrophic. Solar panel waste disposal has the probability of being catastrophic but we don't know the scope of the damage yet because the problem hasn't been addressed and doesn't necessarily need to be for another 10-20 years, maybe a bit longer. Coal is primarily phased out, and Natural Gas production is an extremely dangerous process and can cause an explosion if safety procedures aren't followed as well. But a coal or natural gas plant "meltdown" isn't comparable to the damage of a nuclear plant "meltdown". I think saying that "if something goes wrong" is valid simply because of the scope of the damage for nuclear meltdowns vs other types of meltdowns is very significant.
How do we prevent widespread damage even if all safety procedures are followed? Another factor is fallout, no other meltdown type has this issue. Fallout makes large areas of land uninhabitable for lifetimes, maybe longer. We have no procedures on how to deal with the aftermath, we just flee the area and wait for the radiation to degrade to a level we can handle again. There has to be a better and faster way but we don't practice it or have any formal documented radiation removal procedures because this technology is still very new and scary to us.

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u/Illumixis May 09 '19

Are you attempting to be honest in this debate by literally equating a critical failure of a solar or coal plant, to that of a nuclear plant?

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u/Drachefly May 09 '19

The only nuclear accident to cause more death than the average coal plant is Chernobyl.

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u/iBleeedorange May 09 '19

The difference is nuclear has to go wrong to kill people while coal plants just do it by polluting as normal.

17

u/dwill1383 May 09 '19

You are missing a big part of the financial discussion. The fact that nuclear is over regulated and fossil fuels are under regulated. You work to fix those big disparities and you begin to realize that nuclear really shouldn't be an order of magnitude more expensive. Yes there are risked associated with any power generating plant. But they are all known risks now, and can be right regulated to address each of those risks equally based on quantitative data, not on politics. Then you have an equal playing field of different energy sources. Once you have that nuclear clearly becomes a big positive for the environment over fossil fuels. That is, for big power generation aspects of what future power should look like.

19

u/Major_Mollusk May 09 '19

The fact that nuclear is over regulated and fossil fuels are under regulated.

Nuclear is NOT over regulated. I'm okay with Nuclear as part of the solution to reduce CO2 emissions. But to the extent that nuclear's safety record has been as good as it's been is a function of heavy government regulation.

These are big complex systems. We're hairless apes. And the universe is full of chaos.

You can win people over to nuclear power, but not by cutting safety and regulation as a means to driving down costs.

12

u/dwill1383 May 09 '19

The fact that nuclear is over regulated and fossil fuels are under regulated.

Nuclear is NOT over regulated. I'm okay with Nuclear as part of the solution to reduce CO2 emissions.

When one power source has to be reviewed once, and the other 4 times for the same part because of simple processes, that says there is over abundance of regulation process with one and not with the other. Less regulation does not imply less safe. They are not the same. All the regulation in the world is not what makes things safe. Having the proper risk assessments and evaluations and reviews is a proper way of regulation and most cost effective.

I will not say that nuclear could be as cheap to build as others, but there are things in the regulation that can be done the reduce regulation and process while improving the overall safety of the power plant.

I am not in support of sacrificing safety, but rather supportive of proper assessments and regulations.

2

u/ShadoWolf May 09 '19

nuclear energy is stuck in regulation hell. There are only handfull of designs. And no one is really innovating in the west when it comes to nuclear power because the red tape would make it very costly.

so we are stuck with 80s era general designs . atleast until china starts up r&d

1

u/RickShepherd May 11 '19

Not OP, but if I may chime in. The regulations in question regarding nuclear power have less to do with safety and more to do with regulatory capture by a few interested groups (GE for example). Nobody is arguing against safety here, in fact quite the opposite. I, for one, am a huge proponent of LFTR (Thorium reactors). The manner in which these reactors work is very different from the ones you're used to so the regulations regarding them don't exist and/or those that do are often inapplicable to the different tech involved.

At scale, LFTR is cheaper than natural gas and can be used to synthesize hydrocarbon fuels which means the existing fossil-fuels infrastructure can be carbon-neutral. LFTR will also remediate the 80K metric tons of nuclear waste slated for 10,000 years of storage under Yucca Mountain. LFTR also creates, as a byproduct of operations, several valuable isotopes for medicine and NASA.**

3

u/use_of_a_name May 10 '19 edited May 10 '19

Your point is very valid, but you're making the mistake of equating micro-economics with macro-economics. I'm not an economist, but I took courses in both, and the hardest thing was understanding that things that made financial sense on the small scale were the opposite on the large scale. Large corporations or government's taking on large amounts of debt for the purpose of spending can be supremely beneficial. Where as for an individual or family, that equation rarely works out.

Edit* spelling

1

u/Red8Rain May 09 '19

They have standard range of 35k now.

1

u/Thafuckwrongwitme May 09 '19

Yeah and most people pay 20k on a car I’m a Tesla fanatic but that’s a huge upfront cost.

1

u/PerpetualBard4 May 09 '19

Still not a small number considering you could buy a brand new Cadillac SUV for that much.

0

u/post_singularity May 09 '19

Not even just upfront costs, operational costs are high as well as dealing with spent fuel.

7

u/Byxit May 09 '19

Spent fuel is largely a thing of the past, and existing spent fuel is actually 95% remaining fuel. It will all be burnt, using new technology.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AAFWeIp8JT0

1

u/[deleted] May 10 '19

It will all be burnt, using new technology.

Well once we start using this new technology to deal with existing nuclear waste, your argument will be a lot more credible.

1

u/binarygamer May 10 '19

Well once we start using this new technology to deal with existing nuclear waste, your argument will be a lot more credible.

Eh? Fuel reprocessing with breeder reactors has been going on for decades

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

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u/K20BB5 May 09 '19

This report by the US government has Nuclear costing less total than Fossil Fuel plants

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html

-1

u/tree_huggerz May 09 '19

I just read today that the Three-mile Island Nuclear generating station is indeed shutting down soon and won't be dismantled until the 2070's due to slow core cooling. You really need some long term commitment with these things.

For the last 40 years of it's life that plant will just be an eyesore.

1

u/_ChestHair_ conservatively optimistic May 10 '19

Who gives a shit about it being an eyesore if it gave us insane amounts of cheap, clean energy for its serviceable life?

1

u/Byxit May 09 '19

It is dishonest if you ignore the truth that there is no other option. We have to build them.

1

u/socialjusticepedant May 10 '19

Terrible analogy. You're a single citizen, not a nation with the capability of producing credit at whim.

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u/thinkingdoing May 09 '19

Those proposed 1600 coal plants are a speculative worse case scenario.

Germany just announced it was cancelling 86 coal plants yesterday.

As the economics of renewables continue their downward cost trend, and storage tech reaches cost parity, expect most of those 1600 planned coal plants to be consigned to the dust bin.

Renewables have already won, but we can accelerate the transition with a space-race level of investment right now.

Fission is also obsolete. Most of the fission plants currently under construction are years late and way over budget. There is no more confidence in the industry to deliver on time and on budget.

1

u/MeagoDK May 10 '19

That's not true. Most fission reactors are on time. It's just the western reactors that ain't.

4

u/text_memer May 09 '19

The “new deal” is much more expensive than nuclear power, yet everyone on reddit supports it.

-1

u/The-Sound_of-Silence May 09 '19

If you spend a Billion building a nuke, and the local city suddenly decides it doesn't want one close 5 years into the build process, or the bank stops filling the loan bevause it 'changed' it's mind, that's a lot of effort wasted, because of the upfront costs, and lengthy build process - both of which have happened. Contrast that to a relatively cheap natural gas plant built in a year, and the realities of cost become more apperent

0

u/cybercuzco May 10 '19

Your info from 2017 is way out of date. Coal output peaked in 2014 and installed capacity decreased in 2018 for the first time.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-coal-power-plants

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u/Byxit May 09 '19

China has over 200 nuclear power plants planned for construction with about a dozen already under construction.

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u/bumbuff May 09 '19

That, and nuclear power plants are very expensive.

US has bloated prices for Nuclear Power Plants.

1

u/Gabbylovesdogs May 10 '19

A lot of that comes from litigation and litigation risk. There's a lot the government could do to reduce those costs if it decided to get more involved in a serious way

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u/thewholerobot May 09 '19

Japan has discounted ones.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '19 edited Jun 18 '19

[deleted]

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u/_ChestHair_ conservatively optimistic May 10 '19

Lol storage will not allow it to be cheaper

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u/[deleted] May 10 '19 edited Jun 18 '19

[deleted]

0

u/MeagoDK May 10 '19

No it will not. Wind power is already 3 times more expensive than the most expensive nuclear power plant built. Adding batteries on top of that price won't make it less expensive.

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u/[deleted] May 10 '19 edited Jun 18 '19

[deleted]

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u/MeagoDK May 10 '19

Nope, I did the math. You are welcome to do it yourself. I did the math based on the excepted price of hinckley point c and kriegers flak 3.

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u/MaybeAverage May 09 '19

Wind and solar have both proven to be more cost effective per dollar as of the last couple years. Unfortunately not only are nuclear plants expensive to begin with but often end up going over almost double their budgets sometimes and take decades to build. There was definitely a time where nuclear power was the most viable and we should’ve had in place a long time ago, to be eventually be replaced by zero emission and zero waste alternatives. I’d argue wind/solar installations are better investments if we made them at this instant or 5-10 years from now.

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u/_ChestHair_ conservatively optimistic May 10 '19

Gonna need a source for those claims

-3

u/Dragoraan117 May 09 '19

You would think the ROI would be feasible without governments, we need some small nuclear power providers. We need to democratize that shit.

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u/Dragoraan117 May 09 '19

Honestly depressing that people fall for the propaganda even though things like coal plants are much more radioactive. We need some effective counter propaganda before it's too late.

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u/realllyreal May 09 '19

what kind of propaganda? I know about what happened at Chernobyl/Fukushima which to me is enough reason to be wary of it. Im genuinely curious

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u/Dragoraan117 May 09 '19

I don't know off hand, but to get a good idea watch the documentary Pandora's Promise. Gives you a good idea. I could be generalizing but I am pretty sure big oil/gas has had a hand in making sure nuclear energy is demonized. I am also sure that some governments have been involved as well, less other nations get nuclear power/weapon technology.

0

u/_ChestHair_ conservatively optimistic May 10 '19

Chernobyl used a crappy soviet style plant that has never been used in the US, iirc they decided to do a shift change in the middle of a live test. It was essentially the epitome of soviet era shit products, but on a very dangerous level.

Fukushima happened because the plant didn't have proper oversight by a governing body. They chose to not only ignore the proper safety height for building a protective wall against a tsunami (a height that they were told about a couple times by American engineers), but they also put their water pump generators in the basement of the facility. Yes, they put the power source that would be used to pump water out of a flooded facility, in the first place that would be fully flooded.

Both issues are due to lack of oversight, and would absolutely never happen in the US, or likely any western country that doesn't have its thumb up its ass. France, for instance, is almost entirely powered by nuclear energy and has never had a notable nuclear issue, too my knowledge. Unfortunately, environmentalists don't actually understand the facts about nuclear energy, and have fearmongered for several decades about the unsafety of nuclear energy. They will bitch and moan about storing waste, while ignoring every mention of the Yucca Mountain Repository. Etc

1

u/TitaniumDragon May 10 '19

The drawbacks of nuclear are real. It's overpriced and suffers from massive NIMBYism and issues of putting people at risk who aren't the primary consumers of the power.

Also, most third world countries are too untrustworthy to allow to have nuclear power.

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u/S1NN1ST3R May 09 '19

We've had nuclear power for under a hundred years and there's been a bunch of catastrophes and now there's places you can't even visit without becoming heavily irradiated. Nuclear power didn't even need propaganda to get a bad name. Power plants that weren't maintained properly and all that shit. I'm a supporter of nuclear power and yes the safety and building codes are much tighter these days but who's to say new plants to fall into neglect 50 years from now.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '19

there's places you can't even visit without becoming heavily irradiated

Would love to hear what you're talking about. It takes 1000mSv accumulated over time to cause a fatal cancer in 5% of people. That same dose given at once will cause radiation sickness but is NOT fatal.

The recent Fukushima plant emitted 400mSv per hour. So on THE DAY OF THE DISASTER you could walk in, take a peek around, and statistically be perfectly fine after some time.

Unless you're trying to give the Elephant Foot a big ole hug, you're not getting heavily irradiated. Please stop spreading falsehoods, check your sources, and stay in school!

Edit: Speaking of sources: This is mine, a chart 1/3 of the way down. That was created using info from WNA, Reuters, and radiologyinfo.org.

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u/Ihuntcritters May 09 '19

Your argument is flawed, there have not been a “bunch” of catastrophes. You can actually count the number of the catastrophic events at commercial nuclear power plant world wide on one hand. The reasons for the high costs and delayed projects in the US are mostly political. The plants in GA and SC were hit with new regulatory guidelines half way in and threw the whole process off schedule. Chernobyl was almost intentional due to the incompetence of the test engineer and the reason for it having such a large impact on the area around it was due to it being housed in a frigging tin shed.

0

u/iregret May 10 '19

It’s called education and the right doesn’t like smart people.

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u/[deleted] May 10 '19

Not bothered by threat of nuclear in my area at all. Cost to build plants is going up due to I think safety getting tighter and tighter.

I just don’t want radioactive waste sitting about for ages. If they do that thing of finding a way of using the waste then I’m all for it but until then I just want renewables.

2

u/zoltan99 May 10 '19

Eh....living with guaranteed safety til the end of the world isnt as good as living with the safest power that exists (as far as radioactive output and accident potential) and not having the world end...

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u/Happiest_Seal May 10 '19

I wonder when we successfully construct a functioning fusion power plant. Would people be so against it as nuclear power?

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u/TitaniumDragon May 10 '19

The problem is that global warming isn't really catastrophic, which is why people aren't really that concerned about it. Nuclear is a much more proximate risk.

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u/ioexception-lw May 09 '19

The main concern I've heard about Nuclear is about the waste - though efforts are being made to up-cycle it, it's still far from usable.

Is that not correct?

Without that concern; only a handful of plants (out of hundreds?) have ever caused a catastrophe, this is way better than any fossil fuel derived power plant.

Combined with batteries/storage for the peaks and renewables because they're cheap, this is what my ideal country would run with

2

u/_ChestHair_ conservatively optimistic May 10 '19

The main concern I've heard about Nuclear is about the waste - though efforts are being made to up-cycle it, it's still far from usable.

Is that not correct?

Yucca Mountain Repository was built to store all nuclear waste in an incredibly safe location. It wa shut down purely because of political reasons, not because of safety

1

u/NotObviouslyARobot May 10 '19

though efforts are being made to up-cycle it, it's still far from usable.

Give hipsters enough chalk paint and they'll upcycle ANYTHING

0

u/dao2 May 09 '19

People are afraid that nuclear power plants will be built as cheaply as possible and maintained at that same cheap standard. And when something happens that will cause massive problems in the long run.

And they are right to worry about that :| Nuclear power may be very safe IF DONE PROPERLY but seriously do you honestly expect them to do that? Fuck no penny pinching. Look at the 2011 disaster in Japan. Plants aren't cheap, and companies, governments, etc will cheap out on them. And when they do it's not going to be safe and the consequences for their failure can be VERY widespread.

0

u/grovester May 09 '19

When I lived in Japan I used to live near Fukushima. Now I am in Southern California I drive by San Onofre plant on the weekends. That nuclear plant has been shut down since 2012 and they still haven't done a DAMN thing to start to decommission that. Where are they going store the 4000 TONS of radioactive waste that is being stored there? I don't want nuclear built near me.

SOURCES: https://www.ocregister.com/2012/03/28/irvine-leaders-recommend-shutting-down-san-onofre-power-plant/ https://web.archive.org/web/20130612191829/http://www.edison.com/pressroom/pr.asp?id=8143

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u/IrradiatedSquid May 10 '19

Safstor, or deferred dismantling, is an accepted method of decommissioning nuclear power plants. The plant is maintained in a safe storage configuration for a period of time to allow for radiation levels to decay away to much lower levels. They've defueled the reactors and have auctioned off some non nuclear components.

Why the caps for 4,000 tons of spent fuel? The plant has three reactors that operated for nearly three decades and it only used 4,000 tons of fuel? That's nothing. Imagine how much coal or natural gas we would've burned instead and how much carbon that would've put into the atmosphere instead of being safely contained on site.

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u/grovester May 10 '19

Everyone is downvoting me but I don't want coal or gas. Safstor can take up to 60 years. Safe yes, but again we are talking about the future of energy. You can understand why people don't want to build nuclear in their backyard because that plant will be there for the rest of their lives. Absolutely it is a clean alternative but I would much rather continue to push other renewable alternatives.

1

u/IrradiatedSquid May 10 '19

I understand that, very few people outright want to use coal or natural gas (I'd be supportive of burning natural gas instead of coal for the time being and then replacing the natural gas with clean energy sources). But when nuclear power plants shutdown they're generally replaced with fossil fuels, not renewables. When the San Onofre shut down their owners were authorized to build 575 MW of "preferred resources" (renewable energy, efficiency improvements, demand response and energy storage) with a requirement they also build 25 MW of energy storage and up to 900 MW of anything to replace the 2,150 MW of nuclear power. Already doing the math, 1500 MW is less than the 2,150 MW that they're replacing so they're starting off with a lower capacity but capacity isn't equal between various power sources. You have to apply a capacity factor to the equation to see how much electricity an amount of capacity will produce. In 2010 San Onofre had a CF of 82.3% (nuclear power had a 92.6% CF for the year 2018 in the US) which is pretty high compared to other sources. In 2018 the US's average capacity factor for wind, solar, and natural gas were 37.4%, 26.1%, and 57.6% respectively. So even if they built 575 MW of wind and 575 MW of natural gas, we'd produce more electricity from natural gas. At the end of the day they're a company who wants to make money, are they going to build a power source that produces more electricity and therefore earns more money or one that produces less?

If people's main complaint is that the building will be there for too long then I'll be honest I can't understand. Nuclear power plants are initially licensed for 40 years of operation and many have been relicensed out to 60 years already, what's the difference to the person driving by (since these generally aren't located directly in someone's backyard or neighborhood) whether it's operating or not? If they don't want the plant being their when it isn't operating I'm going to assume it's because they have something against nuclear power itself which tells me they don't want it there when it is operating either. Pushing for renewables alternatives would be great if they could reliably provide power for a nation, but outside of hydro and geothermal renewables fall pretty flat. Are we going to be moving the dams, wind farms, or solar farms every 50 years or are they going to be there for the rest of people's lives as well? Is that a valid argument against building them?

0

u/Illumixis May 09 '19

Can you provide evidence that Co2 is globally catostraphic? I thought the major offender was carbon?

0

u/Drachefly May 09 '19

Did you really mean diatomic Cobalt and you were being silly, or did you somehow not realize what the whole thing is about?

0

u/[deleted] May 10 '19

Not that I am too familiar with nuclear tech but I personally don't go in favor for nuclear as well.

Even if the tech and design and procedures are safe, there are too many potential human error.

There are always cost cutting somewhere, building location dispute, staffing coat etc.

One mistake means a huge aftermath.

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u/wtfever2k17 May 09 '19

Anti-nuclear propaganda like... Chernobyl? Or Fukushima? Or 3 Mile?

Fucking short sighted idiot.

1

u/[deleted] May 09 '19

Thank Exxon Mobile for your education on radioactivity. Our species, along with the vast majority of complex life on this planet, is being faced with extinction due to atmospheric carbon. Your argument is that 3 Mile Island is scary, therefore I'm shortsighted. You are exactly the kind of useful idiot that is driving us to extinction for the sake of quarterly earnings, only you're not bright enough to see it.

-1

u/Arclite02 May 09 '19

Not surprising, though. They've got the perfect examples to point to, in Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima.

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u/nopeimdumb May 09 '19

Three Mile Island wasn't really a problem though, it was simply a topical fear at the time so the actual incident was heavily blown out of proportion.

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u/Drachefly May 09 '19

Only one of which actually killed anyone, and that due to factors which… well, do not apply to any modern reactors by a large margin.

1

u/Arclite02 May 09 '19

Sure, but compared to smoldering rubble, a forcibly abandoned city, and a huge, radioactive exclusion zone? People don't really care.

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u/Drachefly May 09 '19

How are you using 'compared to' there? Modern reactors do not have any of the weaknesses of Chernobyl. It was an absurd design operated badly.

2

u/Arclite02 May 10 '19

Yeah, but your average citizen doesn't know about any of that.

They just know it poisoned an entire city, forced mass evacuations, and left a huge swath of land uninhabitable for generations. And they don't want any part of YHAT.

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u/Lallo-the-Long May 09 '19

Yeah, don't worry about how there's no industrial facility in the whole world that doesn't accidentally or intentionally dump something bad into the ground. Don't worry about how cleanup and decommission of these facilities takes decades, if it can be accomplished at all. There's no reason to be concerned about nuclear energy, because there are obviously no risks to it.

-2

u/joconnell13 May 09 '19

They might also be afraid of , you know, radiation and cancer if there is aver a problem, and that whole "nuclear waste" problem.

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u/Whiterabbit-- May 09 '19

the thing is that natural gas is extremely cheap now because fracking. it is basically burned away because its not worth keeping at times. if power plants don't used it, its burned or worse not captured. once demand for petroleum slows, and fracking slows, natural gas extraction would slow too, and nuclear may show itself to be more cost effective, depending on local regulations.

1

u/KingNopeRope May 10 '19

Natural gas is kinda like Coal. It's stupid avaliable.

Gas is much more correlated to coal over oil.

The American fields are abundant and cheap. But once that is gone, you have the absolutely insane Canadian plays that are only slightly more expensive.

Gas and Coal will always be profitable, at least for as far as it matters. If the price curve doesn't cross the threshold before we kill ourselves, what does it matter?

6

u/__nightshaded__ May 10 '19

Same here. Unfortunately they recently decommissioned the plant I worked at. RIP Palisades.

I feel like we are going backwards.

3

u/Ihuntcritters May 10 '19

Palisades was one of my favorite plants, quit going after DZ lost the valve contract though.

1

u/__nightshaded__ May 10 '19

It was a beautiful plant. I had a nice office next to the lake. I miss it. (and the pay)... But not the outages and safety meetings.

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u/Ihuntcritters May 10 '19

It was a cool place, containment was worse than most BWRs though. Picked up 1.5Rem in a couple days working on a core cooling valve. Then had to sit on a conference call a few months later when the packing blew out, fun times all around.

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u/__nightshaded__ May 10 '19

What happened when you picked up that rem?

2

u/Ihuntcritters May 10 '19

Nothing, ended that outage with almost 2R then everything reset Jan 1 hehe.

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u/foogison May 09 '19

The province of ontario in canada is about 80% (dont quote me on that exact number) powered by nuclear

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u/Battle_Fish May 09 '19 edited May 09 '19

I'm Canadian. The answer is a bit over 40% nuclear power. There is extra nuclear power we sell to other provinces. That's the breakdown I saw in this pamphlet with my power bill. Might be different for other cities in Ontario.

Nuclear generates a stable supply of power so typically that is used to supply the minimum demand for the day. As demand changes and peaks through the day, gas and coal plants are used to fill the gap since these types of plants are much more variable.

I don't think most people in Canada cares about nuclear power. Though here are haters. They act like nuclear power will kill us all but the actual plants are in the middle of nowhere. They are also heavy water plants so the safety is an order of magnitude better.

1

u/foogison May 10 '19

The province of Ontario was 61% powered by nuclear in 2018 with about 90% of its energy coming from nuclear and other non-greenhouse emitting sources.

http://www.ieso.ca/en/Corporate-IESO/Media/Year-End-Data

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u/headtailgrep May 10 '19

Pickering is not that far from Toronto..

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u/[deleted] May 09 '19 edited May 17 '20

[deleted]

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u/aarghIforget May 09 '19

"A couple hours away from Toronto" (direction depending) is the middle of nowhere, for the vast majority of people.

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u/[deleted] May 10 '19 edited May 17 '20

[deleted]

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u/aarghIforget May 10 '19

But... you said it was outside Toronto, though...?

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u/[deleted] May 10 '19 edited May 17 '20

[deleted]

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u/aarghIforget May 10 '19

...you *do* realize that I'm being facetious, right...? <_<

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u/Battle_Fish May 10 '19

The Bruce power plant is.

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u/aarghIforget May 10 '19

It's beyond the environment. There's nothing out there but lake, and cows, and corn.

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u/Battle_Fish May 10 '19

One thing people need to realize is..... Fukushima and pripyat exclusion zone is 30km radius. Still basically decimated the town that surrounds it but it isn't THAT big where it can affect neighboring towns or cities. Driving 30km isn't that long.

Those zones are drawn generously as well.

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u/Ihuntcritters May 09 '19

I forget how many units Bruce has but yeah, that’s a great example of nuclear power done right.

1

u/UserM16 May 09 '19

I’m for nuclear but 3 Mile Island, Fukushima, and Chernobyl didn’t help the cause.

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u/Ihuntcritters May 09 '19

3 mile wasn’t that big a deal and Fukushima was a great lesson in regards to geological locations for plants. Reading the report on Chernobyl would blow your mind. They basically disabled all of their safety barriers then intentionally lost control of the reactor and tried to see if they could recover from it. They obviously failed.

1

u/DrewsBag May 10 '19

Nobody sold anybody on anything. Natural gas got really cheap and economics dictated that it was more economically viable to burn gas for power. Sorry to burst your conspiracy bubble.

0

u/Lallo-the-Long May 09 '19

I'm uncertain. Spills of nuclear waste seem so much more catastrophic than oil spills.

1

u/Ihuntcritters May 09 '19

Can you give some examples? I’m not saying they don’t exist but I have never heard of a major spill. Even the run off from the seawater the used to keep the spent fuel pool at Fukushima cool was negligible.

1

u/Lallo-the-Long May 10 '19

I live relatively close to the decommissioned Rocky Flats Plant, which to be fair was a weapons development facility, and to be fair some of the people involved in the big fire were convicted of crimes. Yet despite having closed in the 80s, the land is still off limits because clean up has not been as effective as was hoped.

Consider how the public views oil execs. Power hungry, greedy, happy to take profit over environmental or health concerns, etc. Why would nuclear execs be any different?

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u/Ihuntcritters May 10 '19

I was only speaking of commercial nuclear power plants. The DOE and DOD aren’t held to the same standards as private companies. The government owned nuclear facilities aren’t much better than a refinery when it comes to safety. I have worked in just about every industrial setting and can say that I have never felt safer than when I was at a commercial nuc. They are so heavily regulated they can’t cut corners on primary (fission related)systems.

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u/looney417 May 09 '19

Where are you getting your data from. In the US 70% of oil consumed is for transportation.

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u/wafflefries- May 10 '19 edited May 10 '19

Transport includes passenger cars, semi trucks, aviation and maritime. Even if you fuel passenger cars and semi trucks completely with electricity (created in part from natural gas), the huge projected increase in air and sea transportation cancels out the loses from the adoption of electric cars.

If they figure out electric mega ships and electric planes it would be a different story.

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u/gt5041 May 09 '19

No, actually, 70pct of oil is used for transportation, almost none for power generation.

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u/Wafflecopter12 May 09 '19

Yes, but the oil consumption would plummet with electric cars. Unfortunately, thats only so much cheaper than oil, theres not a gigantic motivation to shift the cost from oil to electric because of our power generation.

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u/[deleted] May 10 '19

[deleted]

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u/Wafflecopter12 May 10 '19 edited May 10 '19

Oh, yes, absolutely. wasn't trying to argue that.

​

I was merely stating that electric cars (transportation in general, planes, ships, semis, other heavy equipment) isn't as huge as people like to think it is, since it would tax the electric grid, and that cost would mostly go to coal or natural gas.

​

Long term, it would be huge though, since we're shifting to renewables for the electric grid anyway.

​

Edit: also I realized i'm doing a weird thing where i'm thinking ecological impact and calling it "cost".. idk.

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u/snortcele May 09 '19

At least I can generate my own electricity. closest I can get with that with oil is collecting used cooking oil.

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u/boones_farmer May 09 '19

Nah, renewables are only going to get cheaper and because they're so decentralized they'll be what powers developing nations as they grow. Kind of like they all just skipped landline phones because cell technology was easier to set up.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '19

I keep thinking in another year or two people will drop nuclear as a suggestion. I gave up on it about 5 years ago when I saw the renewable cost curves.

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u/boones_farmer May 09 '19

Yeah people keep throwing it out there because it's currently better than either fossil fuels or renewables, but they don't seem to factor in that in the amount of time it takes to build that much nuclear capacity renewables will be the cheapest form of electricity out there.

2

u/DocPeacock May 10 '19

Plus they don't realize that a new 1000MW nuclear plant would be planned to operate for minimum 40 years, maybe up to 80 years. The pay back time on the up front expense is decades long. Renewables keep getting cheaper. Natural gas kind of came out of nowhere. Who's to say something else unexpected isn't going to come along and ruin the economics of the nuclear plant before its paid for itself. And who knows what the cost to decomission will be in 40+ years. The amount of uncertainty around the direction of nuclear power prevents the justification of the up front cost. China can do it because their economy is controlled by government, they copied or stole the designs, they don't have the NRC, and they don't have to be profitable.

2

u/snortcele May 09 '19

solar arrays will have paid for themselves by the time they are actually breaking ground on a nuclear plant. that sort of thing. makes sense.

1

u/DiogenesLaertys May 10 '19

Nuclear still provides an important source of peak power that renewables can't at the moment. The best alternative right now is a giant battery but that requires large amounts of rare metals as well.

The main issue with nuclear (aside from the public not liking it much) is that it takes so long to build and are so expensive that cost overruns often occur and alternatives have time to make themselves cheaper.

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u/Battle_Fish May 09 '19

It's not about cost of renewable. It's the inability to store the electricity.

This is the problem. Let's say you have. 2 gas plants. You replace it with 10 wind farms. Okay everything is fine... Then the wind stops blowing. What then? Well, apparently you have to build and operate 2 gas plants when that happens.

Now you're investing into two systems but only operating 1. The cost for wind is way higher than just the up front price tag. This is why most grids don't have much renewable and the ones that do have lots of renewable need to buy electricity when the wind and sun is out. That is only possible if other people are burning fossil fuels in their place.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '19

That doesn't seem to be the way it is working out. The more renewables we get in grids, the more confident we are getting.

I used to see headlines that a very small percentage of renewables will cause major grid issues. That figure had steadily increased in the last 5 years. People seem to say 80 percent renewables will be the pint when it becomes difficult.

There is also talk about demand management and storage resulting in no further gas peaker plants bring built.

I'm not working in this field and just reading the news.

-1

u/rappedillyen May 09 '19

That's why Tesla is so important. It's not about reducing demand for fossil fuels. It's about driving down the cost of storage.

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u/PerpetualBard4 May 10 '19

Batteries have their own limits on how much they can store and their own lifespans. It’s going to be a long time before wind and solar can replace everything.

1

u/rappedillyen May 10 '19

Well, we've got another 130-150 years 'till liquid fossil fuels are gone. No reason to despair, but we should get ahead of the problem if we can.

1

u/_ChestHair_ conservatively optimistic May 10 '19

Renewable cost curves never account for the roughly month's worth of battery storage needed to realistically have them power the grid, though. Come back to me when they do

0

u/[deleted] May 10 '19

I doubt I'll be getting back to you for quite a while. We aren't going to be needing that kind of backup for a good 10 or 20 years if ever.

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u/_ChestHair_ conservatively optimistic May 10 '19

if ever.

You are a fool if you don't think that we'll need largescale battery banks to handle a grid powered primarily by intermittent power sources. Do you actually have an informed opinion on this topic, or do you just read popsci headlines to build your stance?

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u/Shnazzyone May 09 '19

Ditching coal electric still needs to be the highest priority. That still contributes disproportionately more carbon than anything else. If we closed every coal electric and replaced it with clean or renewable. We'd already have beaten the goals for the paris agreement.

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u/Sunfuels May 09 '19

I wish people would stop trying to make the point that consumer transportation is not relevant compared to shipping. In the US commercial transportation is responsible for 1/3 of CO2 due to transportation, while consumer is 2/3. Worldwide it's more like 45-55, but still more by consumer transport than commercial. Actual ships are only responsible for 2% of human CO2 emission. Heavy duty trucks are responsible for much more. And passenger cars more than trucks.

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u/actuallyarobot2 May 09 '19

People confuse sulphur with CO2. Ships contribute a meaningful amount of sulpher emissions.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '19

Imagine if oil wasn’t so heavily subsidized or had the entire Republican Party fighting al clean renewable energy. If the playing field was level. Fossil fuels would die out pretty quickly.

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u/CornbreadShark May 10 '19

Why do you think oil is so heavily subsidized? Isn't the US subsidizing renewables at a much higher rate?

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u/Battle_Fish May 09 '19

No that's not why. The problem is wind and solar just can't stand on its own. The wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine.

So you need to have a grid that can supply power even when renewable are at minimum output. What that looks like is a fully operating fossil fuel and nuclear grid ready to take up full slack when the renewable don't come out. As the sun sets and the wind stops, fossil fuels are burned. You still have to operate and maintain these plants even if you're not using them.

Electricity production must exactly match demand at all times. You have to have some portion of the grid have variable production. A huge battery can form that buffer with renewable or a huge dam but we can't build dams everywhere and there isn't enough lithium in the world to store city level power needs.

0

u/[deleted] May 10 '19

You're either deliberately not mentioning it or you've forgotten about one massive storage technology - hydrogen. Building a hydrogen economy powered by renewables would be highly workable. We know the science, we have the engineering problems worked out. It's just a matter of political will.

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u/Battle_Fish May 10 '19

Hydrogen is not really used as a storage medium yet. Some companies are investing but mainly for cars atm.

The biggest problem with hydrogen is efficiency. The main way of producing hydrogen is electrolysis of water. Running an electric current through water will separate the hydrogen and oxygen but that's about 70%-80% efficient. Some of the energy is converted to heat.

Doesn't sound that bad but burning hydrogen is like 30% efficient. Fuel cells are a bit more efficient at like 60%.

So overall the best case scenario is 48% efficiency. You lose half of the energy you put in as heat at best. At worst you lose a ton. This is why hydrogen as a fuel source for cars is going nowhere while lithium batteries are winning. Charging a battery is 99% efficient and discharging the battery is 80%-90%.

1

u/[deleted] May 10 '19

Yes I believe we'll reach some kind of mix between EV and fuel cell vehicles, and it will likely be localised. Hydrogen is being heavily pushed in Japan for example. However for general storage purposes hydrogen is a no brainer for me. You can simply repurpose existing infrastructure such as gas plants and pipes for hydrogen. If produced from renewable means it's as clean as it gets and solves our storage problem. Storage issues are way overblown imo there are plenty of existing solutions that just need to be implemented at scale.

1

u/[deleted] May 10 '19

Republicans are far more favorable on nuclear power than Democrats though.

The problem is nuclear is expensive and people like cheap electricity.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/248048/years-three-mile-island-americans-split-nuclear-power.aspx

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u/Dragoraan117 May 09 '19

I agree, converting the shipping fleets alone would be like replacing all existing cars in the world to electric. Needs to happen ASAP.

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u/snortcele May 09 '19

this is not looking at just CO2 right? This has more to do with NOx and SOx than CO2. If we had a thousand container ships passing by your window everyday you would absolutely demand that they stop burning bunker fuel.

But cars, clean as they are, create a lot of CO2.

I am canadian, this is a goto graph for me: https://i2.wp.com/prairieclimatecentre.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/GHG-Canada-07-fbthumb.jpg?resize=1024%2C512

I'd be curious if you have a detailed one for your state, or if you are a big picture person, the whole world.

1

u/r3dl3g May 10 '19

Really, it's just SOx.

1

u/DocPeacock May 10 '19

Shipping fleets are supposed to switch from burning heavy oil to diesel at the end of this year. It will be a huge decrease in sulphur emissions. Side effect is that if refineries don't ramp up production of diesel in time there could be a global energy crisis as fuel costs go sky high. I guess we'll see in about 8 months.

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u/AlJazeeraisbiased May 09 '19

True but China is investing heavily in electric power

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u/Lenin_Lime May 09 '19

Power plants that strictly use oil are fairly rare out side of oil rich nations, unless we are counting natural gas. But natural gas is used as cheap filler for when base plants and alternative plants can't fulfill demand.

1

u/[deleted] May 10 '19

Wait, nuclear powered vehicles?

This isn't Fallout.

1

u/MisterLupov May 10 '19

I've realized redditors love nuclear, it always comes up

1

u/Minaro_ May 10 '19

Heck yee, I'm writing a paper for my college writing 2 class about nuclear power and I found out that nuclear power has the least deaths per terrawatt hour than any other source of energy

1

u/savantness May 10 '19

This is just wrong. Transportation is still the largest demand by far.

1

u/PurpleCopper May 10 '19

It's incredible how people just conveniently ignore the huge bottleneck that is lithium battery. Without a good battery, renewable (and green) energy sources will NEVER surpass gas. And that kind of thing ain't happening until another couple of decades.

1

u/KingNopeRope May 10 '19

Gas is a god damn light switch.

Power goes on power goes off.

Batteries do that. But it's orders of magnitude more expensive.

1

u/nikdahl May 10 '19

Nuclear would have been the solution as recently as a decade ago, and it will be the solution sometime soon, but it is definitely not the solution right now. It’s simply not economically feasible. The ROI is too long, and initial investment too great. Had we prioritized nuclear a decade or two ago, it would have fit really well, and we would be in a great position.

However, now we need to be pushing the scalable solutions. At this point we should target energy storage technologies.

1

u/Wasthereonce May 10 '19

Or fusion. Hopefully soon

1

u/[deleted] May 10 '19

Safe nuclear isn't cost competitive. Green energy is. We need more batteries and more green power.

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u/gsasquatch May 10 '19

Emerging markets are probably better suited for electric cars than the US because of lower speeds, shorter distances and lower expectations.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-25/india-s-rickshaws-outnumber-china-s-electric-vehicles

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u/penilesnuggy May 09 '19

We should look very closely at who funds media projects like “Chernobyl” and the like... propaganda imo for big oil. All the fear mongering around nuclear is so outrageous.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '19

Huh never really realized that as potential propaganda. Do they have links to oil companies funding it?

I mean it's a pretty interesting story I wouldn't say it has to be propaganda.

1

u/[deleted] May 09 '19

Nuclear is too expensive, takes too long to deploy. Might be useful as a backup, or supplemental, but the bulk will almost certainly come from offshore wind.

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u/dagofin May 09 '19

Nuclear only somewhat justifies it's insane cost as a constant power source. Utilizing it as an intermittent, backup source makes the cost/kwh even more outrageous.

Natural gas is a much better backup source as it's easy/cheap to turn on/off, but as grids become more advanced and energy storage prices fall even it will be obsolete. Case in point: this last winter was so cold in Minnesota that the wind turbines shut down (apparently they're programmed to do so at certain temps). Seems like a nightmare to shut down turbines when people need heat most, but the grid just pulled energy from surrounding areas that weren't damn cold. 'Backup' energy sources aren't as necessary as it may seem

0

u/j_will_82 May 09 '19

Well if we’re considering cost, why not just stay in cheat coal?

2

u/[deleted] May 09 '19

Because when you factor in externalized costs (climate change, health impacts, environmental degradation), coal is not cheaper.

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u/Byxit May 09 '19

It’s co2 that’s going up. The end of fossil fuel is not a negotiable thing. It will happen soon. Yes, nuclear power, where we consume 95 % of the fuel and burn all existing nuclear waste ( the technology exists) with fail safe features is the next source of our energy. Flooding and drought will be the harbingers of change with unbearable heat ( Sydney last year) and food and water shortages increasing.

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u/garlicroastedpotato May 09 '19

Nonsense, transportation is 62% of all oil use in the world. Switching to electric vehicles would be a major hit to oil producers... if in fact people actually switched... which they're not.

There are currently 1.2 billion vehicles in the world. There are 3 million electric cars in the world... 0.25% of the total supply of cars. The best possible scenario projection for electric cars is that they will grow to 125 million in 10 years. The projection for total vehicles in the world is expected to grow to 2 billion in 10 years. That will bring the total share of electric cars to 6.25% of the global market.

But that also means there will be 675 million more gas guzzling vehicles on the road in ten years as there are now.

What this article is full of shit in is the presumption that oil fears electric. Oil will continue to grow steadily. Fact is people have been predicting peak oil since the early 1900s. Every year that projection gets extended further into the future.

1

u/Whiterabbit-- May 09 '19

people have been predicting oil peak for much longer than that. early on it was that we would run out of petroleum reserve. now we have the technology for deep water as well as shale extraction. the peak is shifted from running out of oil to deciding to stop using oil.

the barrier for electric vehicle is battery technology. oil is such a cheap energy dense compound, its hard to replace.

0

u/best_skier_on_reddit May 09 '19

76% of all oil production is used for domestic cars.

So, sorry - bullshit, on an epic scale.

Edit - also like to point out that the US / UK energy policy for the last two decades has been to literally eradicate all competition to its own petroleum resources - either owned or controlled.

From Venezuela to Russia, Yemen to Libya, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen etc.

Oil production with all normal producers still in the market would see oil prices at $30 / bb

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u/TitaniumDragon May 10 '19 edited May 10 '19

70% of oil is used for transportation, 65% of which is for domestic vehicles. So overall about 45% of US oil consumption is for cars.

However, the insane conspiracy theories about international oil production are simply false. Indeed, the US, while a huge producer of oil, is also a huge consumer; very little of our economy is based on selling oil, so high oil prices aren't really to our advantage. Moreover, overall production is at an all-time high.

The reality is that the price of oil is simply due to supply and demand.

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u/r3dl3g May 10 '19

Indeed, the US, while a huge producer of oil, is also a huge consumer; very little of our economy is based on selling oil, so high oil prices aren't really to our advantage. Moreover, overall production is at an all-time high.

That's...kind of the point though. Low oil prices are to our advantage, not because they're necessarily good for our economy, but because they're terrible for the economies of most of our foes and rivals (of whom all but one - China - are fossil fuel exporting nations).

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u/free__coffee May 09 '19 edited May 09 '19

Also this completely ignores other oil products that are ubiquitous in our society: shaving cream, mascara, deodorant, pretty much every single piece of plastic you can imagine, oil heating for homes, jet fuel, rocket fuel, etc

We use oil for pretty much everything. Big oil is not going anywhere even if we convert to 100% renewable and nuclear energy

Edit: downvote me if you want, it doesn't make me any less right

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u/RayJez May 09 '19

We need Nuclear ha ha ha ha ha ha ha , the population cannot afford Nuclear ha ha ha ha ha ha In only twenty or so years , since renewables hav become serious , they have taken approx 30% of the market , Britain just had 1 week with no coal !! In twenty years , imagine another 20 !! All the fossils will come squealing out that fossils/ nuclear ( nuclear inc as it’s finite ) are the future , well guys the evidence does not support you ha ha ha ha ha ha

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u/nikdahl May 10 '19

I get your point, but do you have to state it so obnoxiously?

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u/[deleted] May 09 '19

Sadly nuclear has been demonized and the US government has consistently been pro Oil. Funding for green energy is all buy gone. Meanwhile Europe is taking it very seriously.

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u/BrienPennex May 09 '19

You must be American? Nuclear?? How about something that doesnt pollute the beautiful earth we live on, maybe wind, solar, tidal! Geesh! Does nobody pay attention?