Normally I’m not a “lesser of two evils” type, but nuclear is such an immensely lesser evil compared to coal and oil that it’s insane people are still against it.
Especially when you start counting the number of people that have died either directly or indirectly from coal, oil and every fossil fuel.
If your extrapolate the data into the next hundred years … fossil fuels will have responsible for the deaths of billions.
Compared to nuclear energy … fossil fuels is killing us slowly and will kill us all if we don’t stop using them.
Coal plants gives more radiation through radioactive mercury as a left over from processign
I think you’re misreading the room. People are against nuclear because they’re for renewables, not because they’re for fossil fuels.
I spoke with a far left friend of mine about this. His position essentially boiled down to the risk of a massive nuclear disaster outweighed the benefits. I said what about the known disastrous consequences of coal and oil? Didn’t really have a response to that. It doesn’t make sense to me. I’ll roll those dice and take the .00001% chance risk or whatever.
I’ve heard some people worry that it can be used for weapons. idk.
Ironic argument for someone in a country where you can buy actual assault weapons over the counter, isn’t it?
No new assault weapons have been manufactured for sale to civilians since the 80’s.
I researched and it turns out no fully automatic weapons have been available for a few decades now. Tightly controlled. Semi automatic is just as lethal though. Also apparently the las vegas shooter in 2018 use bump stocks on his semi automatics which makes it pseudo automatic if you’ll pardon the pun. Notably, the DOJ announced this bump stock reg in 2018, under the Trump administration. Interesting, but not surprising, that the insane right didn’t lose their shit about “muh gunz” when it happened under Trump’s reign.
Nah the reason people didn’t make much noise about bump stocks is because they’re terrible. They are purely something you might do for entertainment rather than any serious attempt to shoot; they really hurt accuracy and comfort.
Nuclear is fantastic and would have been even more fantastic 30 years ago. But it’s 2023 and renewables are getting better every day. There’s just no real reason to not invest primarily in green energy sources, especially when the track record on nuclear waste management is abysmal. People will say “oh but the resources, oh but the storage, oh but the blah blah blah”. We act like these things can’t be done, but they are being done all over the place. While the US argues about whether solar is viable, China has almost produced more solar panels in a year than the US has ever produced. And they are planning to try and deliver to other countries with less productive capacity as well.
I love the nuclear waste storage argument. Wouldn’t it be grand if we could just stick it in the atmosphere like we do with coal and oil? Smh…
Thing is bad, therefore other things that’s not as bad is good. Yo your brain is fucking melted lmao
8 day old account, second post is to be an asshole to me for no reason. Classy. You’re either a bot or another shitty lemming. You’ll fit right in here with all the other insufferable shitheads in this forum.
Yeah, nuclear is to fossil fuels as planes are to cars, safety wise. Sure it’s a huge deal when an accident occurs, but that’s because accidents are drastically more rare.
I am not sure when the narrative around nuclear power became nuclear energy vs renewables when it should be nuclear and renewables vs fossil fuels.
We need both nuclear and renewable energy where we try to use and develop renewables as much as possible while using nuclear energy to plug the gaps in the renewable energy supply
Easy, by paying people to spread misinformation.
That’s the “how”. The other commenter was unsure about “when”.
This is the product of a couple of cultural movements in previous generations.
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People who conflated their Cold War-era opposition to nuclear weapons with opposition to nuclear energy. The Venn diagram with early environmental movements has considerable overlap.
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A more general and mostly-irrational fear of nuclear energy mostly stoked in the U.S. by Three Mile Island, which is a case study in good nuclear accident management with piss-poor public relations. (See: the first few seasons of the Simpsons many gags about the dangers of the power plant.)
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The current environmental movement’s general unwillingness to acknowledge nuclear energy as a very advantageous tool in the push to eliminate fossil fuels. Why? Over-optimism about where renewables are now and continued influence of the Boomers from #1 who taught all of their university classes.
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Over-reaction to Fukushima, particularly in the EU (other than France). And then doubling down until Ukraine forced their hands when Russian gas became an embarrassment.
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A decade ago I’d agree with you. But given the amount of time needed to get a nuclear power plant online, if we tried to use nuclear to replace fossil fuels, it’ll probably be too late. Add to that the fact that the cost of wind and solar has dropped significantly and the fact we’d be trading dependency on resources from a group of unstable countries to a dependency on resources from another group of unstable countries, it just seems like nuclear just isn’t a very good option any more.
Of course there could be a tech change (like fusion) which alters this, but the days of fission are past. Keep the plants that are currently operational going, and if there’s construction near completion, then sure. But I feel like fission has become a bad option for new developments. Takes too long and there’s better solutions available that don’t depend on resources from other countries.
Fusion is still decades away from being commercially viable, so while continued funding for RnD for it should be important, it still has a long way to go before we can even start making plans for power plants operating on it.
As for Nuclear having long set up time… that’s not a reason to not use it. That’s a reason to hammer out plans and start finding ideal sites for it to service high density and high demand areas as soon as possible. The other half of this coin is that activists and legislatures need to take a serious look at Nuclear Regulations and cut the things that are simply not needed. Nuclear continues to be a viable option in spite of the severe restrictions placed upon it, restrictions that no other form of energy production could even be viable much less profitable. If we equalized these limitations and restrictions, you can pretty much guarantee that Nuclear would suddenly become #1 choice and still maintain the highest safety rating per watt produced.
Solar, Wind and Nuclear all complement each other very well, with the downsides of each generation being easily offset by the other two forms of power generation. Wind and Solar take a lot of space to make farms that produce enough power to feed a large city, where as a nuclear plant can produce the same amount of power with considerably less space. And the two can be interwoven together, with most nuclear plants already having ‘no go’ areas or restricted zones around them that could easily be filled in with Solar and Wind.
Solar will give you a set amount of power each day the shines, varying throughout the year but works as a good baseline. Initiatives could be pushed to add rooftop solar to most homes, businesses and other buildings or infrastructure that people don’t need to walk across or stand upon, increasing the base line here in a relatively cheap and low cost way, though of course these panels do need to be cleaned regularly so just plastering them to the sides of skyscrapers isn’t quite as viable as people like to think it would be.
Nuclear is a very efficient form of power generation with variable output. While it is true that Nuclear plants need some time to vary their output, this isn’t nearly as big of deal as people make it out to be given the rate of power generation can be changed in a matter of minutes, not hours, and using historical data of power usage year over year and monitoring current conditions, a properly built and managed nuclear plant can easily adjust on a schedule to raise and lower it’s output ahead of rising and falling demands throughout the day. And using modern reactor designs, these advantages become more pronounced with faster reaction times in generation and more thorough use of fuel leaving considerably less waste.
And Wind power acts as a great back up and buffer for all other forms of power generation, in rural areas wind power can easily provide 100% of the power needs and more to rural and suburban communities, and when combined with other forms of power wind can easily and rapidly bring turbines online or shut them off to follow the demand of the power grid and bridge the gap during any anomalous spikes and valleys in usage. Wind turbines do take a lot of space per gigawatthour produced, but in rural areas with farming or livestock where lots of land isn’t really being used and developed for other reasons, wind turbines make sense, and with good a good power grid that can transmit power over hundreds of miles, can incorporate large areas of empty land into high density area in the same region to meet power needs with minimal pollution and carbon footprint.
Of course each power generation has it’s problems, Solar only works when the sun shines obviously, requiring large scale power storage which isn’t exactly feasible with the technology we have today. Wind turbines seem great on the surface, but their blades are made of carbon fibre in most instances, and have 7 year life spans at most, with no current programs or policies in place to break down these turbine blades that will not decay naturally, meaning roughly every seven years landfills and dumps get thousands more semi-trailer sized blades dumped into them with no long term plan on how to recycle or reuse them. And Nuclear power has the waste issue, and more importantly a PR issue. With older 60s and 70s designs, these reactors did generate notable amounts of waste, but this is less a problem with more modern reactors that can even run previously ‘depleted’ waste fuel through them to generate power while also reducing the amount of radioactive material left over. And of course the longer setup times, which addressed above is not actually something they should need, given the absurdly high standards placed upon Nuclear by skeptics and detractors decades ago mean many other power plants, factories and even government buildings would immediately be disqualified and turned into exclusion zones due the natural radioactivity of the building materials such as granite which we know to be harmless to humans.
Nuclear plus renewables is the path we need. Add in power storage technologies to smooth out fluctuations and we’re fully covered.
It’s going to take decades to decarbonize, the current Paris accord 2030 goal will not be met at all. Biden has set a target date for the US for 2050 to achieve net zero. That’s 37 years away.
Currently we’re going in the opposite direction:
“The Production Gap 2021 report states that world governments still plan to produce 110% more fossil fuels in 2030 (including 240% more coal, 57% more oil and 71% more gas) than the 1.5 degree limit.[118]”
People are talking about solving climate change as a sprint, but really it’s a marathon. In fact, we don’t even have the technology to fully decarbonize all sectors. It’s going to take an “all hands on deck” approach and yes, will cost trillions of $$$ to achieve.
I’m pretty doubtful that we will achieve net zero energy and zero carbon before the end of the century. The first 50% of emissions reductions will be the easiest of the low hanging fruit; each successive % reduction will be that much harder and more expensive to achieve.
Tying back to your comment, each nuke plant permanently displaces millions of tons of CO2 emissions per year.
the fact we’d be trading dependency on resources from a group of unstable countries to a dependency on resources from another group of unstable countries
I’m not sure calling Canada (up until 2019 the largest exporter and miner of uranium) an unstable country. Unless you want to talk about our looming housing crash.
He is talking about Kazakhstan, which produces ~46% of the supply (compared to Canada’s ~15% of which they export even less). Other top producers includes Namibia and Uzbekistan, not terribly stable countries.
And on top of that, the Stans have a big neighbour that would be willing to conquer them to secure these resources, to strengthen its geopolitical position.
Also not sure what your source is for Canada being the largest exporter, as they have exported less than Kazakhstan since at least 2013 (according to what I can find, but please prove me wrong if that isn’t the case). They definitely weren’t the largest miner of it since 2009 I believe.
Canada also produces oil. So why does what fuckheads in places like Russia and Saudi Arabia affect oil prices in Canada?
Seems like in a capitalist world, markets are global and instability anywhere in the world affects the prices of resources that are traded globally. Being dependent on those resources means wars need to be fought to secure those resources to keep the prices stable.
Nuclear energy can not be used to “plug gaps”. The power that it produces can not be varied very quickly. The goal should be to only have renewable in the end.
Solar panels aren’t truly renewable since they degrade over time and need to be replaced after around 20-30 years. Yes they can be recycled, but so can (and is) nuclear waste.
Everything has a cost and you can’t escape entropy.
Minimum warranty for good solar panels at 90% is 30 years , they will last 60 (no one knows exactly) albeit not as efficient.
I just had some installed.
Guaranteed 80% efficiency for 20 years.I heavily doubt they will last 60 years.Had energy storage installed as well. Only guaranteed 90% (~4500 cycles) for 10 years.
EDIT: double checked the data sheet. They are actually 86% for 25 years with a rated 0.5% per year degradation rate.
Quite sure mine had 30 years at 90 % . But it was the really good mono ones. Storage is a completely different story. But hey even if they are down to 25% I would keep them and just add new ones.
0.5 would mean 30 for 60 years also…
This is true; nothing is sustainable at geological time scales. Human technological civilization even less so. Just look at how badly North Africa, the Middle East and China’s environment has been degraded through thousands of years of organic (!) farming. The Middle East used to have enormous cypress forests, and North Africa was full of wetlands where the Qattara Depression now resides.
Let’s not forget about nuclear fusion, which will be way more efficient and have less waste if we can figure it out!!!😉
What I meant by gaps was that nuclear can be used in areas where solar or wind is not feasible yet or in areas where solar or wind cannot fulfill the energy demands.
Also we have very good control over nuclear power generation. There are a variety of methods using which we can control the reaction rate of the fission process
Uhhhhh
Don’t get scared off by the N Word
Nuclear isn’t the monster it’s made out to be by oil and coal propagands.
I never saw nuclear as a bad idea.
It always perplexes me how it’s next to impossible to discuss nuclear energy without it turning into a discussion about politics.
Crazy how effective the ruling class has been at getting the masses to squabble over dumb shit.
The oil and coal lobby is pushing nuclear in markets it’s losing - both to slow the transition to renewables with endless debate, and because nuclear takes so damn long to build.
So does hydro, solar and wind energy generation.
Hydro is the better option but requires changes to water supply, solar requires massive fields of empty land, wind generation is loud and disturbs local wildlife while at the same time has the largest fail rate.
Nuclear is the best option. It’s the cheapest when considering the energy output, most environmentally friendly, and takes up the least amount of space.
The largest radioactive disaster was misuse of medical equipment.
Average time to build a nuclear plant is 88 months. The high end for solar is 24 months - it’s generally a fraction of that. The cost per kwh for solar is also a quarter of the cost of nuclear at worst - and that’s factoring the cost of batteries.
Hydro is about the most situational power source their is - making the blanket statement that it’s the better option a suspicious one.
Chernobyl would have turned a good portion of Europe into a radioactive wasteland if people hadn’t resigned themselves to one of the most unpleasant deaths imaginable. 37 years later, it’s still uninhabitable, with no change to that in sight.
Fukushima, which is still being actively cleaned up over a decade later, had the potential to do functionally destroy to Tokyo, displacing over 30 million people while doing untold economic damage.
Quicker to build, cheaper power, less dangerous, less environmental damage, no nuclear waste to manage, no supply chain issues with nuclear material. Last I checked, the US isn’t running out of space, so remind me - why would we want nuclear?
Chernobyl disaster was a one off caused by old tech and user error and more people have died from wind turbine accidents than they have due to nuclear reactor accidents.
The cost per kWh for solar is 7 times higher than that of modern nuclear power plants.
You failed to address Fukushima - and wind turbines don’t have the potential to render a continent uninhabitable.
The cost per kWh for solar is 7 times higher than that of modern nuclear power plants.
Bullshit - solar costs a fraction of nuclear. this isn’t a remotely controversial statement.
Roof of chernobyl was literally made out of wood
Fukushima’s too? Can you guarantee that things will be better managed in say… The US?
Lost us nuclear weapons - the crumbling silo infrastructure is also well documented. I’m sure that the Department of Energy will be able to afford better controls with it’s ~$30bn budget compared with the ~$700bn budget of the Department of Defence. It’s not as though the hundreds of nuclear weapons that have been lost nuclear are more dangerous than nuclear generators or anything.
Slower to build, more expensive, needs fuel dug out of the ground, potentially continent-destroying… Why?
Fukushima did not a fundemantel design flaw. Its was literally next to sea. Also renewables can never replace oil if they cant even store excess energy yet lmao
The plant wasn’t poorly designed, it just wasn’t designed to be where it was and nearly wiped out Tokyo as a consequence? This is an argument in favour of nuclear?
A lot of renewables don’t need storage - including geothermal, wind, tidal, salt solar, hydro… But photovoltaics with batteries is still a fraction of the cost of nuclear, takes a fraction of the time to build, is far safer, and is orders of magnitude more relisient against demand spikes.
…so why nuclear?
Nuclear is the best option. It’s the cheapest when considering the energy output, most environmentally friendly, and takes up the least amount of space.
It’s the most environmentally friendly, if you don’t consider that it is not renewable and that there are no waste management solutions for the highly radioactive waste.
Nuclear power is exactly as renewable as solar power; and ‘highly’ radioactive waste is a fraction of a fraction of the waste generated, with most waste being less harmful than living within 50 miles of a coal mine, or 100 miles of a coal power plant. It’s also entirely defeated by a relatively small amount of one of the most common metals on Earth. Additionally, if we were to power the entire world with just nuclear power, the amount of unusable waste generated per year globally would be smaller than a compact sedan, requiring a little less than a box-truck sized container to store it safely anywhere on the planet. It would take several tens of billions of years to accumulate to a problematic size for safe storage.
So we build more Nuclear Power Plants, because the highly toxic waste is not “enough” to care? Where are keeping it then?
Literally in any of the hundreds of current underground sites? It’s also not highly toxic, it’s radioactive. There’s a pretty huge difference. Nuclear waste doesn’t leech into the water cycle like the run off of broken solar panels or turbine arms.
I am in the EU. There is literally no storage for highly radioactive waste. There has been talk for years that one will be available, but so far… nothing.
Nuclear waste doesn’t leech into the water cycle
That’s not true. Nuclear waste can also contaminate ground water, if stored incorrectly. And as we discussed: we have no storage solution for the highly radioactive waste and thus can’t store it correctly.
It not being renewable doesn’t really matter when talking about its CO2 emissions. And the neat thing is, radioactive waste decays on its own so the “waste management” needed is to bury it somewhere and leave it there. It ain’t that complicated.
It’s a bit more complicated. Where are you gonna bury it? It has to be somewhere, where normally nobody is. Also you have to keep the waste containers safe (and in one piece) for a very, very long time. How are you gonna mark it that people thousands of years in the future still know that it is dangerous?
There is a giant hole in a mountain specifically for the purpose of waste disposal.
Anti-nuclear people in here arguing about disasters that killed a few k people in 50 years. Also deeply worried about nuclear waste that won’t have an impact on humans for thousands of years, but ignoring climate change is having an impact and might end our way of life as we know it before 2100.
They’re bike-shedding and blocking a major stepping stone to a coal, petrol and gas free future for the sake of idealism.
The biggest enemy of the left is the left
A lot of the anti-nuclear sentiment comes from the 80s when the concerns were a lot more valid (and likely before half the pro-nuclear people in this thread were born).
But blaming people on social media for blocking progress on it is a stretch. They’re multi-billion dollar projects. Have any major governments or businesses actually proposed building more but then buckled to public pressure?
Anyway, I’m glad this conversation has made it to Lemmy because I’ve long suspected the conspicuous popularly and regularity of posts like this on Reddit was the work of a mining lobby that can’t deny climate change anymore, but won’t tolerate profits falling.
My parents, who are boomers, are vocally anti nuclear because when they were children through young adulthood, had weekly nuclear drills. Stop, drop and roll. They thought it was ridiculous, and believe that all nuclear technology should be destroyed as it leads to nuclear weapons. They also strongly believe that the human race will make itself extinct in a nuclear war any moment now.
Mining lobby? You realize that most of what is mined are the roughly 2 billion tons of iron ore annually. While uranium mining is what… 50,000 tons a year?
There is no version of Earth where mining executives say “It’s fine, our profits are already profitable enough”.
Astro-turf is cheap and uranium is expensive – something you conviently left out to focus purely on tonnage, which bears little relation to profitability.
At least part of the billion dollar cost is the endless court fights and environmental impact reports before you can even break ground.
Like every other piece of infrastructure. Are you actually advocating that people should just be able to build power plants wherever they want?
No, I’m saying the opposition to nuclear plants is uniquely strident. It’s almost easier to get a new coal plant built. And it shouldn’t be.
The biggest enemy of the left is the right, it’s just that everyone on the left can agree that they’re terrible so it doesn’t come up in discourse too much, whereas the people who are on your side but want to do things a different way will take up much more of your attention.
If socialists and liberals worked together in Germany, the Nazis would not have come to power. It’s their bickering that led to liberals giving Hitler power in a coalition and socialists famously saying “after Hitler, us”.
Even when there’s a fascist takeover, it’s enabled by the left of center arguing with itself.
Firstly, liberals are not left of centre, they are the original capitalists, the ideology that socialism was built in opposition to.
Secondly, Liberals will always side with fascists when push comes to shove. To liberals, Fascists are distasteful, bigots and extremists, however, fascism does not threaten the liberal system. It does not threaten the liberal ruling class, at least inherently, whereas socialism is an existential threat to that class. To a liberal economy, to a liberal nation.
And to Germany’s communist party, fascists were also distasteful, bigots, and extremists, and they would lead to the collapse of capitalism.
“As late as June 1933 the Central Committee of the [KPD] was proclaiming that the Hitler government would soon collapse under the weight of its internal contradictions, to be followed immediately by the victory of Bolshevism in Germany.” - The Coming if the Third Reich, Richard Evans
I’m not going to make some ridiculous statement however that leftists will always side with fascists when push comes to shove. German liberals tolerated fascists to get political power, and German communists tolerated fascists to get political power. They were both fucking idiots for doing so.
You’re correct that on the entire spectrum of political theory that liberals are on the right. However, on that grand spectrum, liberals are also authoritarian, and communists are also authoritarian – because the entire notion of having a centralized government is authoritarian. It’s pointless to look at the spectrum from an objective, academic position, because it’s totally incongruous with the actual reality of things. When it comes to the scope of Western politics, liberals are left of center, and most tend towards positions of complete civil equality for everyone, which is libertarian in Western scope.
Arguing that liberals are actually on the right is like arguing that we never actually have negative temperatures in winters because Kelvin is always positive and it’s impossible to have negative Kelvin. You’re technically correct, but for realistic purposes it’s utterly meaningless.
And to Germany’s communist party, fascists were also distasteful, bigots, and extremists, and they would lead to the collapse of capitalism.
This would be a good mirroring response if it had any amount of truth to it. To the Communists in Germany, the fascists were their mortal enemy. The two parties were fighting in the streets. The Communists saw the fascists as a capitalist system, they certainly were not under the impression that fascism would bring about the end of capitalism.
A declaration by the Communists that the Fascists would collapse under their own contradictions is not evidence to the contrary, or evidence that the German communists tolerated the fascists.
Liberal and libertarian are not the same thing and cannot be conflated, and authoritarianism isn’t anything with a state.
I swear, the political compass has rotted people’s brains.
But that’s kind of part of the problem though… By resorting to violence they destroyed democracy in Germany by the legitimizing the authority of the state.
As cited by the University of Cambridge:
“Smash the Fascists…” German Communist Efforts to Counter the Nazis, 1930–31 Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2008
By James J. Ward
“For most historians in the West, the German Communist Party (KPD) belongs among the gravediggers of the Weimar Republic. Other culprits certainly abounded; still, the Communists are held to have made a major contribution to the fall of Weimar by preaching violence, promoting civil disorder and economic disruption, and deliberately trying to weaken the republic’s chief supporters, the Social Democrats (SPD). With such policies, Western scholars have charged, the Communists in effect collaborated with the Nazis and their allies on the right to bring about the destruction of Germany’s first parliamentary democracy.”
They’re bike-shedding and blocking a major stepping stone to a coal, petrol and gas free future for the sake of idealism.
I really don’t get this “nuclear as stepping stone” argument. Nuclear power plants take up to ten years to build. Also (at least here in Germany) nuclear power was expensive as hell and was heavily subsidized.
We have technology to replace coal and gas: Wind, solar, geothermal, etc. Why bother with nuclear and the waste we can’t store properly…?
Because none of those (except hydro and geothermal, but those are both extremely location dependent) will deal with the baseload power generation we need. And don’t just say we will make more batteries, lithium is already getting more expensive, and there may be global shortages in the next few years.
Because none of those (except hydro and geothermal, but those are both extremely location dependent) will deal with the baseload power generation we need.
Is this the problem though? I mean: The sun is shining somewhere at all times and the wind is blowing somewhere at all times. Energy is being produced. The problem is either storing it (okay, batteries are expensive, I get it) or better: distributing it.
In Germany we have the problem that we are producing a surplus of wind energy in the north but currently we are not able to distribute the energy into the south of Germany which results in needing gas power plants in the south while at the same time shutting down wind generators in the north. This is obviously bad.
Upgrading our grid would solve this problem and would vastly reduce our need for gas energy. This is costly but is far from impossible.
Until we got a worldwide grid and cheap superconductor distribution, there will be gaps in coverage if you rely on just solar and wind. Of course there are many times when we have too much supply, but it’s not all the time.
I swear you lot saw one 15 minute video made by some 17 year old about how nuclear is safe and now you just spout the same 3 or points over and over again without any critical understanding.
I love how this person made a good argument about energy storage and you just responded with speculation and an insult, not actually addressing the point. If it’s the same 3 points, you should be able to perfectly counter their argument without resorting to an ad hominem attack.
and ive made that response dozens of time before. Hence why im making that comment.
Or you don’t actually have an argument and are posturing.
Well for one he’s implying chemical batteries are the only way to store energy, which is disingenuous and not a good argument, pumped storage is a proven, relatively cheap and widely known technology. and then the whole “BaSeLoAd” argument which is just literally just a bullshit buzzword the fossil fuel industry uses to try and make renewables seem less reliable.
So please wont you forgive me for not engaging the guy spewing bad faith arguments and ff propaganda.
How do you plan to reach 80% non-carbon-based energy by 2030? That’s the current stated goal by the Biden Admin, and it’s arguably not aggressive enough. Nuclear plants take a minimum of 5 years to build, but that’s laughably optimistic. It’s more like 10.
SMR development projects, even if they succeed, won’t be reaching mass production before 2030.
The clock has run out; it has nothing to do with waste or disasters. Greenpeace won.
Greenpeace won
And in doing so, helped doom us all together with big oil, gas and coal.
This is why I’m very wary of groups that are environmentalists vs groups of scientists. I have strong distaste for the former as woo woo people who only follow the science when it’s convenient.
10 years from now, you might be in a situation where the grid is unstable and capacity is insufficient in front of demand. You will also be facing potential renewal of existing solar panels, wind farms, batteries storage, etc.
If you lack capacity, any attempt at industry relocation locally will be a pipe-dream.
And at that time, you’ll say either “it’s too late to rely on nuclear now” or “fortunately we’re about to get these new power plants running”. You’re not building any nuclear power plan for immediate needs, you’re building for the next decades.
Meanwhile, one country will be ready to take on “clean production” and be very attractive to industrial projects because it already planned all of that years ago and companies will be able to claim “green manufacturing”. That country is… China!
People tend to overrate the harms from potential changes, while simultaneously vastly underrating the harms that already exist that they’ve gotten used to.
This is the most wise thing I’ve read today. We all know it, but it needs to be said more.
The biggest enemy of the left is the left
That’s a little out of nowhere and I don’t get what you’re saying, but I totally agree with the rest
but ignoring climate change is having an impact and might end our way of life as we know it before 2100.
Yes, so we need change FAST. Not in 15 years when the nuclear plant is finally built, not in 20 years when it starts producing commercial power, not in 25 years when it finally offsets the carbon cost of the concrete to build it, not in 30 years when it breaks even on the cost and the company can think about building another, not in 35 years when it offsets the cost in money and carbon to decommission the thing in the future. Now, so we should be building windfarms, that are MASSIVELY cheaper per MW than nuclear and can be built in 6 months and have less of a carbon impact.
Any way you run the numbers, any metric you look at wind beats nuclear.
I used to be very very pro nuclear, then one day I tried to argue against someone and did the calculations myself.
There is no conceivable way that we can reach NetZero carbon-free worldwide global economy in 15 years. This isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. And it’s a marathon that will last hundreds and thousands of years if human technological civilization is to continue to exist.
Therefore, it would be prudent to invest in every carbon neutral and zero carbon technology that we can right now to achieve those goals. This is not a one technology solution. It’s an all hands on deck response to the climate crisis, and we will be lucky if we achieve this by the year 2100.
It is very much a sprint. We are hurtling towards societal collapse (currently estimated to accoure between 2040 and 2050) and already can’t stop the worst effects of climate change, all we can do is scramble to reduce the harm as much as possible, and then means acting as a fast as possible.
Isn’t the main worry the “side product” of weapons grade nuclear materials?
There are nuclear plants in operation today that do not use or create any fuel that is capable of being weaponized. In fact, coal plants emit more radiation than a modern nuclear power plant.
There’s about 100 years of uranium ressource available actually, double the production and you got only 50 years… that’s mainly the problem with nuclear. Extraction from the ocean is economically not viable.
None of them is ignoring climate change, Actually you are more than anyone else since you are promoting an energy source that isn’t green. Many other nuclear accidents happened over the past years but you sound like the kind of person that doesn’t care much about the environment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste_dumping_by_'Ndrangheta
“Nuclear energy isn’t green” lol. You sound like an anti-vaxxer.
Nuclear is not green https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_energy
I think you’re confusing terminologies here. Nuclear is not renewable since it requires using a finite resource that has to be mined from the earth to create energy, however it is a nearly zero emission form of energy since it’s basically a giant tea kettle who’s steam spins a turbine to generate energy. That steam is just water vapor, the by products and spent fuel rods can be safely stored and processes or reprocessed. Wind, Solar, Geothermal and hydroelectric are renewable since they require no fuel to operate. All of the above could be considered green since they emit zero emissions unlike Coal and Liquid Natural Gas plants
You do realise that the article you just shared lists nuclear energy as sustainable, right?
It doesn’t, learn how to read
LMAO are you daft? Such an obvious troll.
Why yes lets build 150 fission plants every year for 30 years so we can checks notes generate 1/5 of the current demand. By all means research fussion. But to think that humans are competent enough to manage that many plants at once and to ignore the permanent issue of the waste is crazy to me. In addition nuclear is more carbon intensive than renewables and the more plants you make the quicker you will run out of optimal uranium deposits. “But what about fast breeders?!?!” why yes lets make tons of plutonium and have our plant constantly catch on fire so we can pursue a decades old dead end technology. We could be building massive floating wind farms off coasts around the world but nah lets whine about a pipe dream that nuclear will save the day instead. This activist is misled as many are sadly.
For the love of everything, at least let’s stop decommissioning serviceable nuclear plants.
Looking at you, Germany…
My understanding is that they eventually become unserviceable as they age, because of mechanical/structular reasons, or because the costs of servicing them is so prohibitive that they are unserviceable economically.
That they definitely have a begin, middle, and end, life cycle.
Well other countries have and are doing done so. I really doubt that the reason is anything that politics.
Buildings and machinery fatigue and wear out over time.
And highly critical uptime devices and buildings need extra maintenance and upkeep.
Old sites need to be decommissioned. Even if you ignore the financial costs in the upkeep at some point they just fatigue to the point of needing to be replaced.
I’m not anti-nuclear, all I’m saying is if you want nuclear you have to build new sites, you can’t keep the old sites going forever.
Rotating equipment are replaceable is not that much of an issue they operate on regular steam.
Buildings are reinforced concrete unlikely to be a concern not in a reasonable timeframe unless rebars corrode for some reason.
Issue would be items operating with water directly in contact with the reactor, so critical piping, heat exchangers and reactor vessels, which I can’t say I am an expert specifically for nuclear plants.
I imagine the main concern would be the reactor itself as all reat can be replaced.
Disproven by Russia. Maybe sometimes core is replaced because it uses unsafe design by current standards like in St. Petesburg.
Cause once again no one can see the potential advancements nuclear technology can have if it had proper investment. Everyone see’s Chernobyl and Fukushima and then they switch off.
Yes Renewables are better than nuclear for the moment but to demonize and not even discuss it is just burying your head in the sand
I live less than 2 miles from the last remaining coal power station in England.
I would much rather have nuclear instead of a chimney chucking god knows what into the air (and subsequently into me) for my entire life.
Fun fact, coal plants produce more radiation into their environment than nuclear plants
Modern reactor designs are so damn safe it’s insane
That wasn’t fun at all.
If they are so damn safe why i can’t build one in my backyard?
Because the radioactive bits need to be handled by trained and trusted personnel because if those bits fall into the wrong hands they can be used for some horrible shit
so are you saying that it is not safe?
Have you ever been in a coal fired plant? Or even easier, been around a coal furnace for home heating? What about industrial environments?
That shit isn’t safe.
There are different levels of safety, personal reactors are on the other side of a cultural shift.
Everything can be unsafe if in the wrong hands
There are different degrees of safety associated with all things and we as a society have deemed nuclear power plants and their fuel as something that should only be in the hands of those trained and trusted in how to use it
If I install solar panels and the inverters incorrectly I could potentially harm or kill myself and others. Therefore solar isn’t safe.
But then why you can build these in your garden and not nuclear?
with the risk of feeding the troll, maybe this will sway some fence sitters from adopting this argument
because we allow people to shave (some even do it with straight razors, too - dangerous shite) themselves and others with little to no oversight but we don’t let them perform surgery without proper training that takes a decade or so to master. should that make surgery illegal?
also, if you want to talk safety for home implements just look at the number of people that die due to carbon monoxide poisoning (or sometimes explosions) because of improperly set up heating at home. did you know it’s illegal to operate on your own gas pipes without proper permits? yup, you need to be qualified for that so you don’t rig your house into an IED
or if you want to have some fun, play around with some improperly discharged fridge capacitors, and see what that gets you. yet, you still have a fridge, I’d wager. by your logic, if it’s allowed in a home, it’s safe, right?
Such a dumb question.
Building a nuclear power plant requires the collaboration of physicists, nuclear + electrical + civil engineers, etc…
Solar requires a certified electrician.
We know how to build nuclear safely, it just requires a lot more effort and oversight, therefore is not something you can build at home.
Because crayon eaters like you would open them up.
If planes are safer than cars, why can’t I fly a Boeing 797-9 Dreamliner?
Chew on that for a while.
If planes are safer than cars, why can’t I fly a Boeing 797-9 Dreamliner?
Because perhaps they are not
I lived less than 2 miles from a coal power station (until they pulled it down). By the owners own admission, when it was running, it released about 60kg of radioactive material a year from stuff that was in the coal.
I would rather have a gun pointed at me than a bazooka, that doesn’t mean i should have a weapon pointed at me.
We can solve a problem without generating another one. There are better alternatives to nuclear.
I find it fascinating how few people remember the time when Greenpeace was literally selling Russian gas.
From the Wikipedia Page
In “Climate and Energy”
Green Planet Energy
In 1999 Greenpeace Germany (NGO) founded Greenpeace Energy, a renewable electricity cooperative that supplied customers with fossil gas starting from 2011. After a 2021 media outcry about an entity associated with Greenpeace selling fossil fuel which has been described as greenwashing,[89] the cooperative changed its name to Green Planet Energy.[90] The Greenpeace Germany NGO retains one share in the cooperative, which has been criticized for “greenwashing” Russian gas.[89]
Link to article 89 Link to article 90
I am Kyoyeou, just a curious person. Not Bip Boop
Could you expand on that please? (I sound a bit snarky but don’t mean to!)
I’ve made a comment to the parent one with a link to the wiki article!
@Kyoyeou@slrpnk.net seems to have given all the background info :)
I made it in response to this comment but wanted it to be a bit less hidden!
Reminds me of PETA throwing lobsters in fresh water.
If the Great Filter theory is correct, climate change will most likely be our Great Filter.
Our species is simply not equipped with the ability to deal with the problems it created. Many people can, but they’re not powerful to do anything, and there’s too many uneducated people for the masses to rise up about this problem.
We think so short term, it’s impossible for some people to think about the future and accept that we’ll need to change the way we live now so that we can keep living then. They’re hung up on Chernobyl because it was a big bang that killed lots of people at once and it was televised everywhere that has a society and TVs, but they are unable to see that in the long term coal and gas have killed and are still killing way more people than nuclear accidents, because it’s a process that’s continuous and kills people in indirect ways instead of a big blast.
This thread: nuclear is far better than fossil fuels
Everyone else: nuclear is not as good as renewables
This thread: nuclear is far better than fossil fuels
Crickets
Wind and solar > nuclear > fossil fuels
Nothing really against nuclear except how it is being weilded as a distraction from better, cleaner, energy. We need to be going all in on converting everything to wind and solar, with batteries and other power storage like water pumping facilities filling the gaps.
Nuclear needs a few more issues figured out, like how to actually cheaply build and get power from all those touted newer cleaner reactor styles.
Not sure why you people think it’s one or the other.
We can’t meet our energy needs with just wind and solar.
This isn’t true. We very much can.
Have you considered that the sun is a gigantic self sustaining ball of fusion that bathes our entire planet in an amount of power you cannot comprehend in its scale, every single day? Because that is a big part of it.
Maybe I’m wrong.
That would be nice, but I don’t think it’s the case.
To those of you who propose 100% renewables + storage. In cases with no access to hydro power. How much energy storage do you need? How does it scale with production/consumption? What about a system with 100TWh yearly production/consumption?
I wonder what Greta’s take on nuclear is.
The same as the experts she regularly refers to.
So in favour of nuclear as long as we are in the process of switching to renewables.
Which means she opposes what Ia Anstoot is saying. Thunberg does not view nuclear as a renewable in and of itself, and thus, like Greenpeace, she opposes EU Commission’s decision to include nuclear power in its classification system for sustainable finance (link).
Greta is very scientifically minded and rational, unlike how the media likes to portray her. They use the emotional sound bites and almost never show her referring to paper after paper.
I hate it that sometimes women are portrayed like that just because they’re women.
Me to, but in this case, I think it’s because of politics.
Even if media agencies are not setting out to portray someone like a caraciture they can not help it. That is just how the media is organized nowadays. If Greta shouts something angry in a microphone and they have 7 seconds for a segment about her, then they will use that outburst.
Neurotic men projecting their bullshit into other people.
That’s great to hear. 😊
She’s probably going nuclear on Greenpeace.
Kyoto was in 1997. 2030 is 33 years, you can’t seriously consider 1.5 generations is a sprint.
Which, by the way, there is almost no conceivable way we are going to meet the 2030 deadline to maintain 1.5C. We have to think longer term.
There still is no zero emissions technology for long haul airlines, shipping, or pouring concrete for infrastructure. Those are all huge emitters.
I don’t think we should shutter existing nuclear plants, but renewables are a better idea than new nuclear plants
That’s a great plan to never actually decarbonize
No. Not at all. We can roll out renewables faster than nuclear.
Let me know when renewables reach the stage where they don’t have to be backed up by coal and gas plants.
That’s now
Amazing, somebody should tell Germany about it.
Germany is not the whole world. JFC
Give me an example of an industrialized country which runs on wind and solar without gas or coal backup plants.
I think we should do whatever decarbonizes us faster
Absolutely
Nuclear still has a much smaller footprint for power generation than renewables, at least solar and wind. I think “engineered safe” micro reactors can still play a part but as others have said those have been “20 years out” like Fusion for decades.
Solar can co-exist in the same space as other activities. It can exist in the same space at sheep in fields. It can exist atop rivers. Wind can exist out in the ocean. Those spaces are not available to Nuclear and some of those effectively take up no new space at all.
Very good point. I saw a you tube that talked about Germany exploring putting Solar shading over berry crops that typically use other types of shading and the rigid aspect of the solar panels actually had a better yield one season due to hail.
I’m all for new nuclear but we have to become more mature about waste management - and until then, no, keep the remaining units running, but focus all other effort into renweables.
I’m sure that there is some use for the waste, like it can be recycled.
tiny, teeny fractions of it have been experimented with, both for re-enrichment and also as raw fuel for other reactor types. No one’s running a waste-powered reactor atm.
"Approximately 97% – the vast majority (~94%) being uranium – of it could be used as fuel in certain types of reactor. "
could be. after processing that itself results in waste. and note that other caveat - in certain types of reactor. as in reactors specifically configured to run on recycled fuel. this is not the panacea you assume.
I didn’t assume anything, and I didn’t say it was perfect. I’ve just read up on it and said it’s a possibility. If that 97% turns out to be accurate, that’s good. Hugely better than coal or gas, and makes it a possible alternative to other green energy production methods. Which also arent perfect.
I’ve spent a lot of time around the nuclear industry. I think it’s better baseband power than fossil fuels. if I could flip a switch tomorrow and all the plants that had been built through the 90s were still going, sure, I’d love that route. Too many of those are gone. But thankfully solar and wind have become so ridiculously cheap at scale and deployable ready that arguing for a new investment in nuclear plants is hard to justify, especially conventional steam powered setups we’ve become used to. Bring in SMRs, but know those smaller setups can serve less and still generate the same kind of waste. Bring on breeder reactors that can run off other reactor’s waste output! But again know there will be radioisotope waste in some part of the pipeline. Molten salt closed loop setups for sure. But at six billion plus per unit, no, build solar and wind on gigantic scales please. Refurb and keep the old plants running, but don’t pursue a large nuclear component moving forward.
YMMV. We’ll need everyone to work together if we’re going to get our asses out of this shit. World wide, and coordinated.
lol looks like the right wingers finally got the one-world government they always feared… if they had only listened to Al Gore lol…
Actually that was really well written. Cheers.
One question though, something else I keep reading is that the blades for wind power can’t be recycled. Is this just bollocks being pushed by people that want nuclear power?
Renewables generate more toxic waste per mWh than any nuclear reactor design.
Your statement is specious at best and you need a full breakdown spelling out how you expect me to believe it with citations and evidence.
The Union of Concerned Scientists disagree, stating:
Despite these environmental impacts, renewable energy technologies compare extremely favorably to fossil fuels, and remain a core part of the solution to climate change.
Think it over: renewables produce industrial construction waste - carbon fiber, aluminum, composites etc., ONCE. during construction and erection (hehe). Then they run for decades. At the end of their lifecycle, especially for solar, there’s already tremendous effort going into recycling.
Your nuclear reactor is producing it 24/7/365 every day it’s in operation, for decades hopefully. But it also requires thousands of tons of concrete (huge emissions creator), a water supply that won’t ever be interrupted, and hardening against terrorist attack etc. Represents a shitton of material costs alone, before you get to processed fuel rods.
https://www.oneearth.org/the-7-reasons-why-nuclear-energy-is-not-the-answer-to-solve-climate-change/
Retaining the investment already made makes sense; crashing a program of nuclear plant production to meet the need - no. The enormous amount of time and energy used to create these plants, and the humongous regulatory hurdles in the way, with STILL NO CLEAR PATH FOR THE HORRIFIC NUCLEAR WASTE THEY PRODUCE, don’t justify it.
Finally, consider lifetime operational safety in a wildly changing climate: are we going to have more wildfires and hurricanes in the future? YES. Which is better to burn or tsunami - a coastal nuclear power station, or a wind farm? Drought is going to become a constant thing. How many wind farms melt down without water? Try that with a steam powered nuclear station.
