“Stop Letting Your Ridiculous Fears Of Nuclear Waste Kill The Planet”
<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/06/19/stop-letting-your-ridiculous-fears-of-nuclear-waste-kill-the-planet/" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/06/19...</a><p>> By letting go of our nutty fears of nuclear waste we can save nuclear power. America’s nuclear waste fund — which is comprised of money paid into it by the operators of nuclear plants — still has $46 billion in it. It should be used to subsidize the continued operation of economically distressed nuclear plants, and subsidize the building of new ones.<p>> If such a fund paid out five percent interest per year — an amount the IRS requires philanthropic foundations to give away annually — then $2.3 billion could flow to the distressed or new nuclear plants. That amount would be enough to keep uneconomical nuclear plants operating while creating an incentive to build new reactors.
The Duck Curve [0] is the enemy of grid reliability. Until the electric system figures out what to do with the useless energy generated in the middle of the day, we'll be chained to natural gas plants for surge generation.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/confronting-duck-curve-how-address-over-generation-solar-energy" rel="nofollow">https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/confronting-duck-curve-...</a><p>Perhaps blowing bubbles in the ocean dead zones [1] would be a productive use of excess power? The bubblers would be turned on and off to bleed off extra electrons from the grid.<p>[1] <i>How big is the Ocean Dead Zone off the Coast of California?</i> - <a href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010AGUFMOS33D1492H/abstract" rel="nofollow">https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010AGUFMOS33D1492H/abstra...</a><p>From the cnbc submission:<p>> Finally, once the wheels are in motion to shut a nuclear plant down, it's expensive and complicated process to reverse.
>
> Diablo was set on the path to be decommissioned in 2016 and will operate until 2025. Then, the fuel has to be removed from the site.<p>If the next two winters are excessively cold [2], a real leader might arise to tell the anti-nuclear activists, 'you mean well, but we do actually need these thing for the next 20 years.' This leader would point out that the alternative is for all the Californians who are priced out of expensive electricity/natural gas to use coal from the Navajo Nation/etc to heat their homes [3].<p>[2] <i>South Pole posts most severe cold season on record (seattletimes.com)</i> (2021) - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28734308" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28734308</a><p>[3] <i>Coal Heating in the United States</i> - <a href="https://forgreenheat.blogspot.com/2017/06/trends-in-heating-with-coal-in-united.html" rel="nofollow">https://forgreenheat.blogspot.com/2017/06/trends-in-heating-...</a>
Had a family member that worked at the plant for several years, and this article nails it - despite there being an energy shortage (enough) people don't want nuclear power so it's not profitable.<p>No for-profit company that wants to stay in business is going to produce something that its customers won't buy.
On one hand, the retirement of the prior generation of nuclear power plants opens the door for deployment of next-generation reactor designs. On the other, we are at real risk of losing the on-the-ground technical expertise required to run one. I think nuclear remains a valuable technology for power generation in a carbon-free manner, providing the steady production that can offer stability to back up the more volatile types such as wind and solar. Small footprint from a square-foot standpoint too. Should be an ongoing engineering project. Yes there are waste downsides but those are not insurmountable in the grand scheme of things.