Safe, sure. Efficient? Not even close.
It’s far, far more expensive than renewable energy. It also takes far, far longer to build a plant. Too long to meet 2030 targets even if you started building today. And in most western democracies you wouldn’t even be able to get anything done by 2040 if you also add in political processes, consultation, and design of the plant.
There’s a reason the current biggest proponents of nuclear energy are people and parties who previously were open climate change deniers. Deciding to go to nuclear will give fossil fuel companies maximum time to keep doing their thing. Companies which made their existence on the back of fossil fuels, like mining companies and plant operators also love it, because it doesn’t require much of a change from their current business model.
Australian politicians have been arguing about nuclear energy for decades, and with whats going on now, petty distracting squabbling while state governments are gutting public infrastructure
The most frustrating thing is the antinuclear party is obviously fine with nuclear power, and nuclear armaments, just look at the aukus submarines
labors cries about the dangers to our communities and the environment are obviously disingenuous, or they wouldnt be setting a green light for the billionaire robber barons to continue tearing oil and minerals out of the ground (they promise to restore the land for real-sies this time)
Anyway, a nuclear power plant runs a steam turbine and will never be more than what, 30% efficient?
Photovoltaic cells are even less efficient, I think they’re somewhere between 10-20% efficient. I think the way to go would be a solar collector, like the Archimedes death ray, but much much bigger.
That is already a thing and it’s called concentrated solar power. Basically aim a shit load of mirrors at a target to heat it, run some working fluid through the target and use that to make steam to turn a turbine. There are a few power plants that use it but in general it has been more finicky and disruptive to the local environment than traditional PV panels would be.
The fantastic thing about renewables is how much they lend themselves to a less centralised model. Solar collector? Sure, why not‽ Rooftop solar on people’s houses? You bet! Geothermal? If local conditions are favourable to it, absolutely!
Instead of a small number of massive power plants that only governments or really large corporations can operate individuals can generate the power for themselves, or companies can offset their costs by generating a little power, or cities can operate a smaller plant to power what operations in their city aren’t handled by other means. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.
This contrasts with nuclear. SMRs could theoretically do the same thing, but haven’t yet proven viable. And traditional plants just put out way too much power. They’re one-size-fits-all by definition, and only have the ability to operate alongside other modes with the other modes filling in a small amount around the edges.
Huh. So those of us that have always advocated for a nuclear baseline with wind/solar topping off until we have adequate storage solutions are climate change deniers? That’s new.
First, no, that’s not what I said. If you’re only going to be arguing in bad faith like that this will be the last time I engage with you.
Second, baseload power is in fact a myth. And it becomes even worse when you consider the fact that nuclear doesn’t scale up and down in response to demand very well. In places with large amounts of rooftop solar and other distributed renewables, nuclear is especially bad, because you can’t just tell everyone who has their own generation to stop doing that, but you also don’t want to be generating more than is used.
Third, even if you did consider it necessary to have baseload “until we have adequate storage”, the extremely long timelines it takes to get from today to using renewables in places that don’t already have it, spending money designing and building nuclear would just delay the building of that storage, and it would still end up coming online too late.
I used to be a fan of nuclear. In 2010 I’d have said yeah, we should do it. But every time I’ve looked into it over the last 10 years especially, I’ve had to reckon with the simple fact that all the data tells us we shouldn’t be building nuclear; it’s just an inferior option to renewables.
Aaaw, someone doesn’t like the tone used? Well that’s unfortunate. How about you start with leaving dem bad faith arguments?
Renewables will not cover your usage. Period. You will need something to cover what renewables won’t be able to deliver. Your options are limited. Nuclear is the only sustainable option for many places. Sure you got hydro (ecological disasters) or geothermal in some places, but most do not have those options.
It’s not an XOR problem.
Renewables will not cover your usage.
False. Multiple countries are already able to run on 100% renewables for prolonged periods of time. The bigger issue is what to do with excess power. Battery solutions can cover moments where renewables produce a bit less power.
100% renew
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable_electricity_production
All the countries that manage 100% renewable power use high levels of hydropower. Which is not an option for many countries and has it’s own ecological problems associated with it.
Also, these 100% renewable countries have very little electricity requirements.
The United States produces at least produces four million Gigawatt hours of electricity per year. Compare that to some of these “100% renewable” countries.
But how do we produce enough batteries for renewable energy?
Pumped hydro? Or one of the many other non battery storage options, or just over production
How viable is pumped hydro? It would be good if feasible, but last I checked, there were not enough places where you can install them.
No, you’re right. It’s not an option for everyone. Which is why I mentioned that there are many other solutions which are similar and over production which is simpler and cheaper
Which options, can you specify?
What? You don’t have Google? Options I know of (other than batteries and pumped hydro) : Compressed Air Energy Storage, Thermal Energy Storage, Fly wheels, Hydrogen, Supercapacitors, Gravitational Storage
The fact that you descend into complete science fiction should give you pause for thought. I doubt it will, but please think about how fantastical your proposed solutions are - “a massive lake of molten salt under every city” (I actually like that one!)…
- It’s not easy to go over all options.
- Many of these are largely theoretical, or for temporary storage. For instance, I don’t think fluwheels can store energy for months.
Agreed, building a nuclear facility takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money. However… This doesn’t need to be the case at all.
A lot of the costs go into design, planning and legal work. The amount of red tape to build a nuclear plant is huge. Plus all of the parties that fight any plans to build, with a heavy not in my backyard component.
If however a country would be prepared to cut through the red tape and have a standard design developed for say 10 plants at the same time, the price and construction time would be decreased greatly. Back in the day we could build them faster and cheaper. And these days we build far more complex installations quicker and cheaper than nuclear power plants.
The anti-nuclear movement has done so much to hold humanity back on this front. And the weird part is most people do think nuclear fusion plants are a good thing and can solve stuff. But they have almost all of the downsides nuclear fission plants have in terms of red tape, complexity and cost.
You can’t cut the red tape. The red tape is why we’re able to say nuclear is safe.
the weird part is most people do think nuclear fusion plants are a good thing and can solve stuff. But they have almost all of the downsides nuclear fission plants have in terms of red tape, complexity and cost
Huh? Nuclear fusion doesn’t have any downsides or upsides. Because it doesn’t exist. We’ve never been able to generate net power with fusion. (No, not even that story from a couple of years ago, which only counted as ‘input’ a small fraction of the total energy used overall. It was a good development, but just one small step on the long journey to it being practical.)
Being anti-nuclear was a poor stance to have 20, 30 years ago. At that time, renewables weren’t cost effective enough to be a big portion of our energy generation mix, and we should have been building alternatives to fossil fuels since back then if not earlier. But today, all the analysis tells us that renewables are far cheaper and more effective than nuclear. Today, being pro-nuclear is the wrong stance to take. It’s the anti-science stance, which is why it has seen a recent rise among right-wing political parties and media organisations.
I have never heard being pro-nuclear is the anti science stance and it being on the rise among right wing political parties. All the right wing is talking about it more coal and less things to be done about the climate.
The people who I talk to who are pro nuclear seem very well informed and not anti science at all.
I believe nuclear can help us get to the future we want and we should have done it a lot sooner. Nuclear doesn’t mean anti-renewable, both can exist.
Nuclear is a possible solution to more power.
However as long as we can’t use the old nuclear waste as fuel we are not going to have to way to get uranium in way that is human and affordable.
Also nuclear power plants are expensive as fuck. You will pay several billions of euros in order to build one. You will have at least 10 years of building time. In that time the power demand may already have been doubled tripled or quadrupled. So are you ready to build 4 times as much of hundreds billions worth of power plants in the hope you finish them on time or don’t over build?
Or do you want to build a solar plant or a wind farm in several months once demand has increased? For a fraction of the costs?
Nuclear doesn’t mean anti-renewable, both can exist.
Not easily, for the reasons explained in my reply to @Frokke@lemmings.world.
The people who I talk to who are pro nuclear seem very well informed
I doubt it, because the science itself is against nuclear. Evidence says it would be too expensive and take too long to deliver compared to renewables.
Very well, let’s agree to disagree. Perhaps I am wrong. But I am in no way right wing or spreading misinformation.
The people I’ve spoken who work in the nuclear field bitch about unneeded red tape all the time. Some of it is important for sure, but a lot of it can be cut if we wanted to without safety becoming an issue. The price of nuclear has gone way up the past 20 years, whilst the knowledge and tools have become better. This makes no sense to me. We should be able to build them cheaper and faster, not slower and more expensive. And there are countries in the world, that can get it done cheaper, so why can’t we?
I’m all for renewables, I have solar panels. But I’m not 100% convinced we have grid storage figured out. And in the meanwhile we keep burning fossils in huge amounts. If we can have something that produces energy, without fucking up the atmosphere, even at a price that’s more expensive than other sources (within reason) I’m all for that. Because with the price of energy from coal, the money for fixing the atmosphere isn’t included.
Thank you for answering in a respectful manner.
We’re not gonna make any of those targets. Make peace with that and prepare accordingly. Pick a shitty future. Mad Max at worst, Elysium at best.
AMOC collapse, Carbon Sinks failing. We’re boned. Cooked. Soon to be roasted. If our Govt’s ever react at all, it’ll be far too little far too late by the time they do.
The irony of Homer Simpson representing safe nuclear energy…
Hi, I work in waste handling, and I would like to tell you about dangerous materials and what we do with them.
There are whole hosts of chemicals that are extremely dangerous, but let’s stick with just cyanide, which comes from coal coking, steel making, gold mining and a dozen chemical synthesis processes.
Just like nuclear waste, there is no solution for this. We can’t make it go away, and unlike nuclear waste, it doesn’t get less dangerous with time. So, why isn’t anyone constantly bringing up cyanide waste when talking about gold or steel or Radiopharmaceuticals? Well, that’s because we already have a solution, just not “forever”.
Cyanide waste, and massive amounts of other hazardous materials, are simply stored in monitored facilities. Imagine a landfill wrapped in plastic and drainage, or a building or cellar with similar measures and someone just watches it. Forever. You can even do stuff like build a golfcourse on it, or malls, or whatever.
There are tens of thousands of these facilities worldwide, and nobody gives a solitary fuck about them. It’s a system that works fine, but the second someone suggests we do the same with nuclear waste, which is actually less dangerous than a great many types of chemical waste, people freak out about it not lasting forever.
As a friend once said “benzene is what anti-nuclear people think nuclear waste is.”
I mean, spent fuel is actually quite lethal when not packaged, but you get something like 300-400MWh out of a kilo of fuel. And that’s significantly more than I’ll use in my lifetime.
I’d gladly keep a kilo of dry-casked spent fuel in my house. It’d make an excellent coffee table or something, if a bit hard to move. I would absolutely not put a lifetime supply of benzene anywhere near my house.
Edit: it would make a shitty coffee table. 1 kilo of uranium oxide is just under 100ml
The density of uranium always fucks with me. How can something that takes up so little volume weigh so much?
It’s thicc.
Cyanide is used extensively in precious metal recycling too. So even reclaiming resources has a harsh chemical cost. Meeting workers from there I was surprised to say the least about how ‘casually’ they work with Cyanide. Clearly they have safty protocall but nothing like what I imagined something like Cyanide would call for.
In addition to hazardous materials regulations, I also do workplace safety, and this doesn’t surprise me at aaaaall. People get really casual around stuff that kills you slowly.
https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxguides/toxguide-8.pdf
I didn’t know that before but it appears cyanide does have a half-life that is a fraction of nuclear waste.
That doesn’t make it or the other compounds less dangerous, of course.
That’s uhh, not what that says. One of the two mentions of half life are your body converting cyanide into thiocyanate, which will kill you and depending on your last bowel movement, make your corpse into hazardous waste itself.
The other mention is hydrogen cyanide in air, which is lighter than air and will decompose back into cyanide eventually, scattering it over a large area. Which will technically make it go away from your site, but spreading toxic waste over the countryside is illegal for a reason.
No, it’s not the best we have. Solar and wind are way safer, cost less and don’t produce waste.
Sure, nuclear power is safe until it isn’t. Fukushima and Chernobyl are examples of that. Nuclear plants in Ukraine were at risk during Russian attacks. Even if you have a modern plant, you don’t really think that under capitalism there is an incentive to care properly for them in the long run. Corners will be cut.
Besides that they produce so much waste that has to be: a) being transported b) stored somewhere
Looking at the US railroad system and how it is pushed beyond it’s capacity right now and seeing how nuclear waste sites are literally rotting and contaminating everything around them I’d say it’s one of the least safe energies. Especially if you have clean alternatives that don’t produce waste.
You cannot make a solar panel without waste. Is it better, remains to be seen… But saying solar and wind is zero waste is not the view to have.
They can also be made in ways that cut cost and harm the environment.
The Simpsons shows it’s safe and efficient 😅
Thats not even funny. It’s not even a meme. It’s just straight outright corporate propaganda. F off with that, Pinkerton!
ITT: ignorant people with 20+ years old knowledge.
Nuclear energy has been safe for a long time. Radioactive waste disposal is better than ever now.
Also you can separate fuel waste from useful part. So even less waste.
Radioactive waste disposal is better than ever now.
But is it good enough?
Breeder reactors reuse the waste as fuel until there’s a significantly smaller amount of actual waste.
I imagine if we actually committed to funding nuclear tech, we’d get even better at disposing of it.
Shit, why not send it into space with Elon’s rockets? Only half joking.
Because we can dump the waste down deeper mine shafts, making it easier for us to pretend it doesn’t exist?
It’s unsafe, not renewable, not independent from natural resources (which might not be present in your country, so you need to buy from dictators) and last but not least crazy expensive.
Need to buy from dictators?
I didn’t realize Australia and Canada who has highest uranium reserves are dictators. Canada also used to be highest uranium producer until relatively recently.
There is no need. Though Kazakhstan and Russia may be cheapest if you’re near there.
There are downsides to nuclear these days. Incredibly high cost with a massive delay before they’re functioning. Solar + wind + pumped hydro + district heating is where it’s at in 2024.
Wait, I’m seeing a lot of people being very against nuclear. From what I’ve gathered, I see no downsides compared to fossil fuels
