do not let “perfect” be the enemy of “good enough”
edit: quick addendum, I really cannot stress this enough, everyone who says nuclear is an imperfect solution and just kicks the can down the road – yes, it does, it kicks it a couple thousand years away as opposed to within the next hundred years. We can use all that time to perfect solar and wind, but unless we get really lucky and get everyone on board with solar and wind right now, the next best thing we can hope for is more time.
I completely agree with everything you said except for ONE little thing:
You are grossly misrepresenting how far that can is kicked down, for the worse. It doesn’t kick it down a couple thousand years, it kicks it down for if DOZENS of millennia assuming we stay at the current energy capacity. Even if we doubled or tripled it, it would still be dozens of millennia. First we could use the uranium, then when that is gone, we could use thorium and breed it with plutonium, which would last an incomprehensibly longer time than the uranium did. By that point, we could hopefully have figured out fusion and supplement that with renewable sources of energy.
The only issue that would stem from this would be having TOO much energy, which itself would create a new problem which is heat from electrical usage.
Buying time isn’t a great argument for nuclear when it takes so much longer than wind or solar to build a plant - median time of 88 months to build a nuclear plant compared to 8-14 for solar.
People will get on board when they see the cost per kwh.
Which isn’t unusual for large construction projects. Nuclear is biggest cost problem is that each power plant is essentially a mega civil engineering project. They require cooling ponds, cooling towers, huge reactors, turbines, and radiation shields.
All of which are fairly large structures that have to be built to pretty high tolerances and have little room for construction defects which are very common in the industry. I work in construction and I can tell you that the majority of construction projects, whether they are an office building, a highway or a bridge run over budget.
There are always going to be factors outside of the control of the design team and the developer. Contractors may run out of labor, supply chains may have many years to complete some of the equipment and these issues compound the schedule which is already very complicated. Do we have an even discussed the expanded and politicized planning and safety rules and certifications that a new nuclear plant is going to need to follow.
I think the solution for micro reactors is pretty intriguing, except we need lots of power not small amounts of power. But a mass-produced reactor that rules off of an assembly line in a factory is likely to be on time and on budget because they can correct for for the problem of building things in the field. It’s really hard for people to fabricate complicated machines when they’re being rained on in the middle of winter during a storm.
But this is my argument against those who complain about Solar and Wind – those won’t kill you or destroy a location for hundreds of years if they break down and once they’re installed they don’t have to be fed by more mining, or anything else. Just wind and sun.
The problem with Nuclear’s “good enough” is that Nuclear is currently worse than other technology we have in almost every way.
Higher total lifetime cost per kwh than solar or land-based wind (and hydro, but that’s niche), even after factoring in capacitors for weather and time of day/year
Awkwardly front-loaded TCO. You basically pay a huge percent of that ugly TCO up front, making Nuclear more prohibitively expensive than its modest total lifetime cost would imply.
Long life. This is a terrible thing. TCO’s of solar and wind plants are predicated upon a 20 year obsolescence. That means, the TCO includes the cost to build, tear down, and make way for the inevitable better tech in 20 years. Nuclear plants are priced at 50+ year lifetimes. You can’t easily retrofit a nuclear plant with better technology if/when it starts to catch up.
It is absolutely true that solar and wind are better because more money has gone into their research. But because of that, they are better options in almost all real world power situations.
The problem with focusing on nuclear is… why waste all that political capital just to spend 100x the money or more that you could spend to be 100% renewbles in the short term? The front-loaded TCO is the real issue with that one. If you wanna hit 0 emissions tomorrow with Solar/Wind, you’re just paying the up-front costs, knowing there are per-year costs (still cheaper than fossil fuels) to keep it going. If you want to do the same with nuclear, you’re paying for almost all of it out of the gate for 50 years worth. Suffice to say, that’s a budgeting nightmare.
And what’s left is space. Nuclear creates a lot of power in a small area. But wind and solar are both far more easily/efficiently integrated into the space we are already using.
This attitude is about a decade out of date. It made sense around 2010 when wind and solar weren’t widely deployed and cost more than nuclear per megawatt hour. Now we have more wind and solar deployed than nuclear, and they’re significantly cheaper and faster to construct and make better economic sense than nuclear.
I fail to understand how managing wastes remotely toxic to all forms of life for 500K years would be economicaly viable. This just calls for increasingly more power demand. It is hard to sell when there are alternatives that are cheaper, cleaner, more scalable, easier to build (eg offshore wind).
Look up the Finland deep geologic repository, it’s meant to be as passive as possible. Also nuclear waste isn’t nearly as dangerous as most people imagine it to be.
There are no available technologies safer than nuclear, unless you’re talking about the construction. You’re literally more likely to fall and hit your head on a solar panel. Which can be serious electrical hazards for firefighters if you’re ever unlucky enough to get caught in a house fire.
do not let “perfect” be the enemy of “good enough”
edit: quick addendum, I really cannot stress this enough, everyone who says nuclear is an imperfect solution and just kicks the can down the road – yes, it does, it kicks it a couple thousand years away as opposed to within the next hundred years. We can use all that time to perfect solar and wind, but unless we get really lucky and get everyone on board with solar and wind right now, the next best thing we can hope for is more time.
I completely agree with everything you said except for ONE little thing:
You are grossly misrepresenting how far that can is kicked down, for the worse. It doesn’t kick it down a couple thousand years, it kicks it down for if DOZENS of millennia assuming we stay at the current energy capacity. Even if we doubled or tripled it, it would still be dozens of millennia. First we could use the uranium, then when that is gone, we could use thorium and breed it with plutonium, which would last an incomprehensibly longer time than the uranium did. By that point, we could hopefully have figured out fusion and supplement that with renewable sources of energy.
The only issue that would stem from this would be having TOO much energy, which itself would create a new problem which is heat from electrical usage.
Then you just move the planet slightly further away from the sun! Problem solved!
Some of the biggest blunders of all time come across because too many people let perfect be the Nemesis of good
Buying time isn’t a great argument for nuclear when it takes so much longer than wind or solar to build a plant - median time of 88 months to build a nuclear plant compared to 8-14 for solar.
People will get on board when they see the cost per kwh.
Nuclear is most of the time over budget and planning. That’s a fact.
Over budget and over planning is bad.
…but also irrelevant - I gave the average real world delivery times.
Which isn’t unusual for large construction projects. Nuclear is biggest cost problem is that each power plant is essentially a mega civil engineering project. They require cooling ponds, cooling towers, huge reactors, turbines, and radiation shields.
All of which are fairly large structures that have to be built to pretty high tolerances and have little room for construction defects which are very common in the industry. I work in construction and I can tell you that the majority of construction projects, whether they are an office building, a highway or a bridge run over budget.
There are always going to be factors outside of the control of the design team and the developer. Contractors may run out of labor, supply chains may have many years to complete some of the equipment and these issues compound the schedule which is already very complicated. Do we have an even discussed the expanded and politicized planning and safety rules and certifications that a new nuclear plant is going to need to follow.
I think the solution for micro reactors is pretty intriguing, except we need lots of power not small amounts of power. But a mass-produced reactor that rules off of an assembly line in a factory is likely to be on time and on budget because they can correct for for the problem of building things in the field. It’s really hard for people to fabricate complicated machines when they’re being rained on in the middle of winter during a storm.
But this is my argument against those who complain about Solar and Wind – those won’t kill you or destroy a location for hundreds of years if they break down and once they’re installed they don’t have to be fed by more mining, or anything else. Just wind and sun.
The problem with Nuclear’s “good enough” is that Nuclear is currently worse than other technology we have in almost every way.
It is absolutely true that solar and wind are better because more money has gone into their research. But because of that, they are better options in almost all real world power situations.
The problem with focusing on nuclear is… why waste all that political capital just to spend 100x the money or more that you could spend to be 100% renewbles in the short term? The front-loaded TCO is the real issue with that one. If you wanna hit 0 emissions tomorrow with Solar/Wind, you’re just paying the up-front costs, knowing there are per-year costs (still cheaper than fossil fuels) to keep it going. If you want to do the same with nuclear, you’re paying for almost all of it out of the gate for 50 years worth. Suffice to say, that’s a budgeting nightmare.
And what’s left is space. Nuclear creates a lot of power in a small area. But wind and solar are both far more easily/efficiently integrated into the space we are already using.
This attitude is about a decade out of date. It made sense around 2010 when wind and solar weren’t widely deployed and cost more than nuclear per megawatt hour. Now we have more wind and solar deployed than nuclear, and they’re significantly cheaper and faster to construct and make better economic sense than nuclear.
I fail to understand how managing wastes remotely toxic to all forms of life for 500K years would be economicaly viable. This just calls for increasingly more power demand. It is hard to sell when there are alternatives that are cheaper, cleaner, more scalable, easier to build (eg offshore wind).
Well you see we store this nuclear waste in what we call breeder reactors and continue generating power
Ironically nuclear waste is more of a problem if you don’t build these.
Last time I checked, they were actually spending energy to cool wastes during several years.
By realising that what we now call waste will be the fuel source of the future. And also understanding that the renewables require a lot more area, material and energy to build than nuclear: https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/the-iron-law-of-power-density-part
Look up the Finland deep geologic repository, it’s meant to be as passive as possible. Also nuclear waste isn’t nearly as dangerous as most people imagine it to be.
There are plenty of safer, quicker technologies available. Repairing the US grid would give us 20% more power.
There are no available technologies safer than nuclear, unless you’re talking about the construction. You’re literally more likely to fall and hit your head on a solar panel. Which can be serious electrical hazards for firefighters if you’re ever unlucky enough to get caught in a house fire.
Well it’s a good thing this is only an issue in the states then…
Is the USA doing anything to block other countries from going nuclear?
Not what I’m implying