Fossil fuels produce terrible waste we store in the air that we breathe.
So nuclear plants of the future won’t be run by companies who cut important corners on safety to maximize shareholder profits while offloading the consequences to the government and public?
I hear the argument being made that companies shouldn’t be allowed to run a nuclear power plant, or any infrastructure for that matter.
I mean that’s how things work in China with state owned companies. I don’t see why everybody shouldn’t be doing that.
Good news: America already does it too!
No they’ll be run by companies that own everything around them as well, and are naturally incentivized to avoid failures.
Government subsidizing this crap is why it’s built so cheap.
If nuclear stops getting outstripped by renewables on cost I might be more interested in it.
Only when you don’t include grid storage
Yeah that is problem. It did just make me think though: I read recently about a UK project to build a solar farm in the Moroccan desert the size of greater London and lay undersea cables all the way back to southwest England. They claim it will be half the cost of the new Hinkley C reactor, which is just up the road and that includes building from scratch the ship to lay the cables. Now, instead of having this solar farm to the south, in a similar timezone, what if it could be to the east or west? There is already an international grid in this part of the world, so perhaps if it was extended, there could be renewable energy coming in from wherever, whenever it was being produced. The sun is usually out and the wind blowing somewhere. That would reduce the burden of storage. It would also require a high level of cooperation and trust, which has its pros and cons.
If you think about it, the energy coming in from the sun and either heating the ground or stirring the air is constant. A big enough collection network would transmit that underlying steady signal eventually.
Where are these fast Reactors?
This comic is pretty bad. It oversimplifies both positions to the point of complete triviality, then uses it to mock a group of people. The comic is not insightful, or funny, or representative or any real people in any sense. It’s basically just a jab at some people that the author doesn’t like.
Nuclear power is still the most expensive way to produce electricity by a large margin.
It is not.
And there is no large margin.
Referencing several sources that consider a vast array of power generation technologies, from offshore wind to biomass, terrestrial wind, solar, gas, coal and nuclear, and nuclear energy has high start up costs and it’s also not the cheapest per megawatt of power. It’s basically middle of the road on most of the stats I’ve seen.
Solar, by comparison, has had a much higher LCOE as recently as 5-10 years ago. Most power construction projects take longer than that to plan and build, then operate for decades. Until the last few years, solar hasn’t even be a competitor compared to other options.
Beyond direct cost nuclear has been one of very few green energy sources, the nuclear materials are contained and safely disposed of. Unless there’s a serious disaster, it’s one of the most ecologically friendly forms of energy. The only sources better are hydroelectric, and geothermal. The only “waste” from nuclear is literal steam, and some limited nuclear waste product. A miniscule amount compared to the energy produced.
Last time I checked, all of the nuclear waste that’s ever been produced can fit in an area the size of a football field, with room to spare. For all the energy produced, it’s very small.
Yet, because of stuff like Chernobyl and Fukushima, everyone seems to hate it.
I live in Ontario, Canada, our entire power infrastructure is hydroelectric and nuclear. I’m proud of that.
Nuclear isn’t the demon that people believe it is.
LCOE of solar is lower than nuclear for eleven years now. Wind has had lower LCOE than nuclear for 14 years now. See figure 52.
Building a new nuclear power plant takes 9-12 years on average. Hinkley Point C in southeast England was announced in 2008 (16 years ago) and is projected to be finished in 2028, with costs now being estimated around $40 billion. These long realisation times are not a european issue alone, as Korea’s Shin-Hanul-1-2 faces similar problems.
Safely storing nuclear waste is expensive, too.
Maybe I shouldn’t step in this but here it goes. My personal opinion is that nuclear isn’t good or bad, it’s an option that’s available. I have never heard a nuclear activist say that nuclear energy is superior to renewables. It’s not black and white, it’s all a complex mix of demands and limitations that dictate if renewables are better for an area or nuclear. It’s a whole lot of gray, but nuclear energy isn’t as dangerous as some make it out to be.
Your comment is valid, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
I wouldn’t say that nuclear is the best option, nor cleanest, nor safest. Like anything, it’s all circumstantial. Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes other options are simply better.
From what I’ve seen, nuclear is the best for base load on a grid scale. Basically: the load that the grid continually has, is well served by nuclear. To my understanding, most nuclear generation is fairly slow to ramp up and down, compared to other technologies, so keeping it at a relatively steady level, with minor adjustments and changes through the day as required, is the best use case for it. It’s stable and consistent, which is to say it doesn’t vary based on external factors, like the weather, where solar/wind are heavily influenced by external factors.
It’s entirely on a case by case basis.
You’re right, you shouldn’t have stepped in. At least,you shouldn’t have stepped in and build a strawman. The discussion you entered is about costs, not dangers.
You’re wrong, I didn’t talk about dangers and I didn’t put up a strawman. If you wanted to pin a logical fallacy on my argument you should have said I made a generalization fallacy or an informally fallacy because I was so vague. It’s actually pretty telling that you’re attributing a lot of intention where there was none. I am not going to spend the time or energy to make a legitimate argument with some random jerk on the internet that ultimately just gets us Internet points. I have more important things to do with my time.
And honestly my only reason for posting is to make the comment number go up one tick to keep these communities going. I really don’t care about what you think and unless you’re in a position of power no one else does either.
Edit: I’ll downvote myself, I don’t approve of anyone behaving like either of us.
Your one and only fact-related statement was literally
but nuclear energy isn’t as dangerous as some make it out to be.
But sure, you weren’t talking about dangers lol.
You’re right, I was careless. It wasn’t a strawman though. It’s still a generalization or informality fallacy. If you’re going to head in so hot at least have use the right terms.
No. And pretending it is longer for solar is false too. https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf
Thanks, that LCOE reference shows that nuclear is on par with several other technologies.
It thoroughly disproves the point that it is more expensive “by a large margin”. At most it’s a bit more costly than some things, but it’s also not far off from some other options, so it’s definitely not expensive… At least not by a large margin.
Ralph Nader interview goes into details on nuclear power
KPFA - The Ralph Nader Radio Hour: America, Stop With the Nuclear Power. It’s Not Going to Happen.
Episode webpage: https://kpfa.org/program/the-ralph-nader-radio-hour/
Media file: https://archives.kpfa.org/data/20240318-Mon1100.mp3
then why aren’t we already doing that? Probably it’s not as cost-effective? nuclear power is already crazy expensive.
That being said a very small amount of nuclear I’m fine with, just to make up for renewable fluctuation until we figure out power storage
China is doing it, but I can’t tell you why the west is so backwards.
Here’s some reading material: https://www.bmk.gv.at/en/topics/climate-environment/nuclear-coordination/fairy-tales.html
here’s some more reading material from a country that actually knows what it’s talking about https://www.caea.gov.cn/english/n6759365/n6759369/c6792804/content.html
This meme is nonsense. Fast reactors do not alleviate the problem; if that were the case, waste would not accumulate around the world, to the point that no one knows what to do with it. There are no geologically safe storages for millennia.
A nuclear power plant has a useful life of about 40, at most 50 years, after which there remains a ruin that must be eliminated, a deconstruction that can last decades to eliminate thousands of tons of debris with medium and high radioactivity. This, adding to the storage problems, is a tremendously expensive process that is also carried out with public money, not by the owner company. In the event of an accident, see Harrisbourg, Chernobyl, Fukushima and some more, large areas of the country remain contaminated for many years.
The statement spread by nuclear companies that nuclear power plants do not pollute during their operation is a lie. They produce almost as much CO2 as carbon plants, since they require transportation from third countries, if they do not have a Uranium mine nearby, apart from the energy requirements in the enrichment processes in centrifuge plants. The warming of surrounding aquifers due to cooling, with important impacts on local fauna due to the proliferation of algae and lack of oxygen in them. Not to mention the risk of a meltdown due to lack of refrigeration, when the aquifer disappears due to a drought, which precisely now with global warming is a real risk.
The promotion of nuclear power plants has pure economic reasons for certain companies and in some cases weapons reasons to justify the production of the necessary Uranium and Plutonium.
Nuclear energy is only acceptable in medical applications with short half-life isotopes and in space probes. A nuclear alternative will only exist with fusion plants, the current fission plants are not an option.
The reason for rejection is not hate, but rather knowledge of the cause and consequences.
You might need to back up some of your statements with a source there. Lots of words, none of which make sense.
Do they actually produce as much CO2 as carbon plants? Do you have a source for that claim?
In terms of nuclear waste storage, the IAEA claims 390,000 tonnes were generated between 1954 and 2016, and a third has been recycled.
The US EPA claims the US generated 6,340 million metric tons of CO2, and 25% were for the electric power economic sector.
The nuclear waste is stored on site, but I imagine carbon waste is stored mostly in our atmosphere…
The narrative I have heard is that nuclear energy waste is much more manageable than fossil fuel waste, but if nuclear energy has emissions or scaling problems I’m not aware of, I’d be happy to revise my preconceptions about it.
