One thing I found out recently found out about nuclear that really shuts down home "great" it is as a fix for climate change is how limited fuel is for it.
Some numbers
Nuclear currently uses about 60,000 tonnes per year of uranium [1]
Nuclear is about 10% of electricity, 4% of energy as a whole [2]
There is about 8,000,000 tonnes of uranium reserves world wide [3]
For a 100% of current electricity demand by nuclear that's 13 years of fuel,
For 100% of energy (e.g. gas heaters replaced by electric powered by nuclear) that's 5 years of fuel.
As everyone mentioned there is no much prospection, and we are only scratching the surface.
And this is only counting with the old nuclear power plant designs. The current Gen3 and coming Gen4 do not need nearly as much as the previous generations. They squeeze more juice out. (source: https://www.amacad.org/sites/default/files/academy/pdfs/nucl...)
We might unfortunately (because of the chaos that it will create) ran out of oil before uranium.
Fossil fuel crunch will eventually happen, and it would not be pretty, unless we electrify most of our economies (source: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2023-10/U...) and replace all the fossil fuel based production... This is the national security issue that every country should put as a priority.
The need to electrify the economy is why nuclear is so bad, it simply can't compete on cost even.
This article is about a power plant that cost £46Billion and nameplate of 3260 MW
Assuming 100% load factor for the plant (looks like 70-80% is more common but I'll be generous) that's 28,557,600MWh per year. Or a cost of £1610 per MWh per year.
Taking just one of the latest wind farm in UK South Kyle Wind Farm, Cost £38Million with a nameplate of 240MW.
Assuming 10% load factor (30% is common but I'll be pessimistic for this case).
That's 210,240MWh per year,(2400.1 24 * 365) that's £180 per MWh per year,
(Life span differences of wind(30 year expected) vs nuclear(40-60) could increase the cost of the wind by up to double if you took the worst case but I've already given a 3x disadvantage on load factor)
Even with the deck stacked in nuclear's favour it's 10x more expensive than wind, you will simply never migrate a factory using thermal gas with the cost of electricity made by nuclear.
Edit: also Flamanville 3 in france costs are better but still so much worse than wind, 13billion Euro(~11Billion GBP) for 1600MW nameplate, comes out for 713gbp per MWh per year, still 3x worse than wind.
There is some premium to be paid to choose when you get the electricity and when you decide it is a convenient time to shut down for maintenance.
If the alternative is having no lights and no industry operating the extra cost of dispatchable power pales in comparison to the losses due to blackouts.
The need to electrify the economy has more to do with peak fossil fuel or level of CO2 in atmosphere, than nuclear.
Comparing nuclear and wind is a bit apples and oranges. One is intermetent and one is not. The lifespans are different too, as nuclear usually last 60 to 80 years, when wind farm is 30 years. As mentioned in the article the cost of nuclear is artificially inflated, like for redundant safety measures, and specifically in UK by the financing used (most of the cost come from interest).
We need to build cheaper and more nuclear power plants, and more wind farms too.
Fun fact: the estimated cost of extracting uranium from seawater is $1000/kg [1] (the link shows a lower number, but I'm making it round and higher to account for inflation), which is about 7 times higher than the current market price. If we were to use this, it would increase the price of nuclear generated electricity by ¢0.83/kWh. For comparison the average price of electricity in the US in February 2024 (last month published) was ¢ 16.1 / kWh.
Here's the math, for those curious: modern nuclear power plants produce about 50 GWd per ton of uranium fuel. It takes about 10 tons of mined uranium to produce one reactor grade ton (because of the enrichment). So, that's about 5 GWd per ton, or 120000 MWh/T, or 120000 kWh/kg. If one kg of Uranium is $1000, you get 120000 kWh out of that, which comes at $1/120 = ¢0.83 per kWh.
The equipment for recycling used-up fuel rods is the same for creating nuclear weapon payloads. Governments struggle stomaching proliferation risk in the name of fuel efficiency.
That's mostly just fear mongering because mitigating that risk with organization and a little bit of planning is trivial. Just put the reactors and the fuel reprocessing in different sites under control of different organizations. To produce plutonium usable for nuclear weapons you need to pull the fuel out of the reactor way ahead of schedule for power generation. The longer you keep the fuel in the reactor, the more Pu-240 you produce alongside the Pu-239 and you can't make nuclear weapons with that.
Weapons grade plutonium requires very low concentrations of Pu-240 and that requires running the reactor specifically for this. If the reactor and fuel reprocessing are done by different organizations, then neither can make nuclear weapons without the cooperation of the other.
Managing risk with organization structure is a technique well known to virtually all governments, from western democracies to the worst dictatorships, so this isn't breaking any new ground.
The old stuff Human created fakes have always drawn criticism but the amount and distribution was so limited that it was easy for people not directly affected to ignore or not know about it.
Now the new Generated stuff is to prevalent and easy to produce it's too hard to ignore.
Being against Carbon Capture and geo-engineering is just following the science.
Carbon capture has constantly been shown to just not work at any scale. and geo-engineering causes so many extra problems and will absolutely lead to termination shock at some point.
> geo-engineering causes so many extra problems and will absolutely lead to termination shock at some point.
This doesn't sound like a terribly scientific assessment.
Climate change is either an environmental disaster and geoengineering would be a huge risk - or climate change is an existential threat to humanity in which case we have nothing to lose. Which is it?
Existential threat means things can’t get worse (you just stop existing).
Ignoring the potential of geoengineering implies you are sure that we have a better solution which will work. I hope we don’t have to use geoengineering but I am certain the status quo of hoping renewables and batteries in the 1st world will save us is not going to work.
Threat is not certainty. If somebody is out there to kill you, you are under an existential threat, until they are caught. It's not a reason to start playing Russian roulette, saying "I'm already in danger, cannot get worse than that!"
>The same logic applies to shutting down oil and gas production: if we are not certain, then why risk the downsides?
You are conflating the cost of not extracting a fraction of a fraction of current production capacity with the risk ending human existence through changing systems we do not have anything close to a full understanding of nor precise control over.
Degrees of risk matter, in fact they are the whole point of GPs logic.
How can something be worse than an existential threat?
If you knew you were going to die next week, what's to stop you from picking up smoking right now?
The truth is we don't need geoengineering because the truth is that it's not an existential threat for humanity, it's just the future is going to suck really hard for a lot of people if we don't get off our our collective asses.
Going around moaning "we're all doomed and there's no use trying" is exactly the opposite of what we need right now.
There can be multiple existential threats at a time. And on top of that, there can be actions that also increase the chances of succumbing to said existential threat.
Look at it this way. Someone who is bitten by a rattlesnake is at risk of dying (an existential threat). Certain medical care, like giving the patient Advil or any other form of blood thinning pain killers could actually end up making matters worse which in turn could increase the chances of the patient dying.
No one here is saying we’re all doomed and there’s no use in trying. What they are doing is pointing out that carbon capture and geo-engineering may not be the most fitting solutions to this existential threat, and that these solutions could even potentially make matters worse.
>“How can something be worse than an existential threat?”
If something you do makes your chances of surviving an existential threat worse, the consequences of your actions could make the initial existential threat harder to manage and in turn make it more likely to succumb to said threat.
Carbon capture is being successfully used all around the world. It’s in its infancy, but so were solar panels decades ago, and we didn’t give up on them.
We don’t have enough data on geoengineering to judge yet, there is no real science to follow.
Also I don’t understand this attitude of rejecting potential solutions outright. Science doesn’t “prove” things, we can’t ‘follow’ it due to the problem of induction. So we should stay open minded and support all potential solutions, not just those we like best.
The closest we have are emissions reductions on power generation and other highly polluting facilities. Carbon capture of CO2 from the atmosphere is not being used successfully, anywhere. There are plenty of feel good articles about trials and test sites and experimental facilities, none of which are within multiple orders of magnitude of being capable of scaled out to the amounts needed. They all require such vast amounts of electricity that it would be better using that electricity to not emit the carbon in the first place. There are no technologies on the horizon that could even put a dent in our current yearly emissions, let alone clean up past excess. Yet it is used time and time again to sell carbon neutral plans and policies to the public, which will never reach their targets.
Saying CCS isn’t currently successful is like saying utility grade solar wasn’t successful in the 70s. We’re on the start of an exponential curve and the tech will only get better.
I don’t understand why people think this is “used” to sell carbon neutral plans: why wouldn’t you count carbon sequestered using CCS? It’s no different to assuming batteries will get a lot cheaper: it’s not a certainty but it’s heading in the right direction.
Let’s put it this way: if we could use CCS to produce carbon neutral power from natural gas, would you reflexively oppose it? Or would you be thankful that we now have another carbon neutral power source?
I separate emissions reductions tech, such as fitted to power stations, from atmospheric carbon capture. Filtering emissions at source makes sense, and is nothing new. Lets do more of that and better, and I will have no problem with carbon neutral natural gas power if someone can get that to work. Trying to suck carbon out of the atmosphere though is a fools errand, and I do reflexively oppose that, because it has always been lies and propaganda. Large chunks of climate policy assume magic will happen, because technology will save us. But math and physics disagree.
What’s the maths and physics that make it impossible?
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I’m interested in the limits.
I still think reflexively opposing a potential solution is stupid. Skepticism is healthy, automatic rejection is a waste. I wholeheartedly agree politicians spout a lot of nonsense, and that the solutions are closer than we think, we just need to get the bad policy out of the way.
What is currently the largest carbon dioxide sequestration operation in the world is pretty much a running joke, not the least for being some years past the initial starting date, accounting for a tiny tiny fraction of the CO2 emitted by the larger gas project, and essentially being little more than a distraction from ongoing CO2 from oil and gas operations as usual.
I hate Gorgon too, they tarnished the name of CCS for commercial gain. Their system is throttled for economic reasons though, not technological. Even worse: the government funded it!
If the Australian Government held their feet to the fire they would have sequestered the promised amount. However they didn’t, and Chevron has no incentive to fix it properly.
That list is a bunch of pilot projects and commitments AFAICT. One of the projects is burning methane from oil production to produce hydrogen to recapture carbon. That’s not really gonna save the world.
I couldn’t find much evidence in there that carbon capture is being done at scale or in a way that isn’t using energy in ways that it would be more efficient to just not do it, since it is pulling from a grid that is partially carbon powered.
Can you point to a promising project from the link you posted? Like I said, it lists a lot of funding, but not a lot of actual carbon sequestration.
Your rebuttal doesn’t actually provide evidence that carbon sequestration is a technology that is on its way to working on the small scale. All of those projects are sequestering carbon by consuming massive amounts of energy from sources that are partially or completely carbon powered.
It’s early stage tech, they’re all promising in that _they are trying to develop tech to help_. How can I prove a developing tech will scale? How can you prove it won’t? It started at 0 and is now at millions of tonnes scale. If that isn’t good enough progress then I have nothing for you.
Imagine using the same logic in the 80s “solar panels produce hardly any power and use lots of fossil fuels for production, why are we wasting resources developing them?”
Or the internet in the 90s “it will have less impact than the fax machine.”
It’s just emotional nonsense. We should support the people working on solutions, not complain from the sidelines.
Why not? If we burn gas using CCS and develop a lot of nuclear, we wouldn’t even need renewable energy. I’m not saying it’s bad, just that it’s not essential (and may actually be a distraction in e.g. Germany where it has displaced nuclear development and resulted in coal plants being reopened).
Ideologues won’t accept it because they are waiting for a technology solution and these are the best they’ve seen offered so far. Their optimism is predicated on market driven technology solutions saving us quickly enough. Negativity toward their favorite technology solutions is interpreted as pessimism toward their ideology.
Trying to capture carbon out of the air makes zero sense besides as anti climate change propaganda. Why wouldn't you capture the carbon at the source of the emission where it is much more concentrated? I'll tell you why, because then the cost is born by the emitter but they'd rather shift that cost onto society as a whole.
It takes orders of magnitude more power to capture the carbon from the atmosphere than was gained putting it there in the first place.
It requires sucking in and processing inconceivable quantities of air requiring inconceivable amounts of land for the facilities, because the carbon we need to capture has been released and distributed into the earths atmosphere.
The engineering required to scale out any existing or envisioned technology to put a meaningful dent just on our yearly emissions is more than simply replacing the worlds energy production with zero emissions generation and storage.
Whether you can conceive the amounts of air and energy it requires is not really scientific arguments.
A scientific argument transcends personal beliefs.
You might believe that such a feat is inconceivable, but lets agree not to pollute the language any more by using the word "scientific" when we mean "believe".
Carbon capture technologies produce more carbon emissions than they can capture if you account for the resource use for production and construction. Even when they do slightly better than breaking even the margin is so low that scaling it up is not a meaningful contribution relative to the amount of emissions we would need to counteract. This is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
Geo engineering to the degree necessary to revert climate change is bad sci-fi, not science, no matter what billionaires selling personal EVs are telling you.
On the other hand we know that we are seeing an immense problem of overproduction which is incentivized by the economic system and impossible to tackle by blaming consumers for bad choices and asking the industry nicely to reduce waste or letting them get away with greenwashing by planting trees and raising honey bees. We could change that but it would require significant market intervention, which we (most Western nations at least) have been ideologically opposed to for decades.
It isn't if you aren't a scientist in that field. As you're not qualified to do otherwise.
As a physicist in quantum sensing. I follow the science (opinion) of climate scientists as they're the experts of that field. And that opinion is constantly evolving, but I follow that.
Anything else is just being an armchair scientist.
That's called gatekeeping. Wonderful opinions can come for anyone.
A scientist is someone who found someone to pay them. Nothing more, nothing less.
Ignoring ideas unless they came from a brand is the opposite of science. Then you drop your brand (physicist) and expect others to judge your opinion as more important. It didn't work. As a senior physicist in quantum sensing I'm invalidating your brand.
Are these scientifically founded opinions. Not necessarily, hence why "following the science" is valid if you are following experts in their field.
If you're a software consultant, would you take on the opinions from a marketing client on the best algorithm to implement for their solution? Probably not.
If someone put in the effort and time to throughly research the topic and draw an opinion from that. Regardless of their title or their funding, then why would you discount it?
If it was a better algorithm - then of couse. You wouldn't be a very good software engineer (or scientist) if you couldn't recognise that.
This has veered off from my original point. In that saying "follow the science" is not a issue - there is nothing wrong with following the opinion of experts in their field.
Climate models are fundamentally physical, but I don't have the insight in the field to have the deep insight to make qualified opinions.
I could after significant research as suggested. But that is a significant endeavour, hence following the opinion of the field is typically sufficient.
It's like a fronted developer making comments on kernel development and vice versa. It's both fundamentally code, but different fields.
I think if you’ve looked at numerical models then you have enough knowledge to at least judge the underlying assumptions: boundary conditions, numerical stability, discretisation methods, validation methods and results.
In the same way that I can verify a SAT solution, I don’t need to know how to code a sat solver.
Unfortunately there are fundamental disagreements about most of the critical parts of climate science, so going by the opinion of the field isn’t foolproof (who to choose? How to choose?). Many fields have had false consensus beliefs before, and most of their problems weren’t 1000th the difficulty of climate modelling.
This is true, but there are no biological simulations in the mainstream models, just various correction factors with their own uncertainty. I wish they had biological data because then we would have more domains in which to measure their accuracy.
“Follow science” and ‘follow “the” science’ are two different things, and we just need to go back in history to understand that humans did some horrible stuff because of “the” science.
Your intuition of scientists updating views is wrong, see Kuhns scientific revolutions for more examples. Scientists generally stick to preconceived notions long after there is data to refute them.
E.g. heliocentrism, germ theory, cigarettes being unhealthy, lobotomies being optimal
What we call ‘truth’ is just the beliefs we think are most accurate. ‘Just follow the science’ is silly because it essentially means following beliefs on faith without questioning whether they are the best theory. In many cases the better theory goes against the consensus.
E.g. mothers who ‘just followed the science’ and took Thalidomide caused their children untold suffering. They could have been skeptical but instead they had faith in science, which was unfortunately done badly.
I agree, we should limit flight to exclusively across large oceans. And replace flights over land with more practical low carbon options like high speed trains.
Simply not realistic for major routes in the US for the foreseeable future. Los Angeles and New York are 2500+ miles apart across over 10 states that would need to properly coordinate and invest to make this a reality.
> Today roads are narrow, you have to turn, and most governments frown at ground travel over Mach2. With endless blacktop in every direction, there will be no restriction to your movement, and rocket powered hypercars will whiz in all directions. We will be able to amuse ourselves with endless driving at incredible speeds while drinking beer and eating wonderfully juicy burgers.
That's not true. Heat pumps are cheaper to run than gas heating, I removed my old single room gas heater for a ducted split system total cost reduction was 30% even before Russian invasion caused gas prices to spike. And house is much warmer.
Gas boilers generally produce much hotter water, so the radiators they use tend to be small.
Heat pumps gain more efficiency if you can reduce the output temperature. So running a heat pump at max efficiency through radiators designed for a gas system, won't put out as much heat into the room.
So you have two options, increase the size of the radiators or increase the insulation.
It's better to increase the insulation as you gain the benefit of both warmer room and less energy required to heat a room.
I can assure you it is true, but for transparency’s sake I will say that I have no idea what a single room gas heater is.. I’m pretty sure it isn’t what we are talking about here. Neither do I no what a ducted split system is.
I find Sam a little too dismissive sometimes. He has relatively wealthy parents who let him convert a garage into a home fab, and talks about dropping $30k on a second hand ESM like it's no big deal.
Don't get me wrong, he's a genius, but everytime he transitions into "anyone can do this stuff!" It rubs me the wrong way
Your comment reminds me of those woodshop youtubers with clickbait titles like "diy your own coffee table for only $50", only to find they are using about 10K or more of shop equipment.
> He has relatively wealthy parents who let him convert a garage into a home fab, and talks about dropping $30k on a second hand ESM like it's no big deal.
The envy I feel when I see these guys with such equipment is enormous. I really would love so much to have a loaded electronics work bench especially oscilloscopes, LAs etc. and of course the time to actually play with it. :-(
Check if you've got a local hackerspace! There are a lot of good ones out there. By and large you will find excellent people who want to enable you to do amazing things.
