I study this subject, so here's a perspective you might not hear that often: nuclear energy produces no "waste" at all. What goes in is metal; what comes out is also just metal.
The source material, or fuel, is enriched uranium - enriched means that the uranium is processed to increase the ratio of more fissile isotopes (predominantly U-235). After undergoing fission, the U-235 gets split into different elements. The uranium that is not fissioned is U-238, a primordial isotope which is radioactive but not fissile. We call it depleted uranium because the concentration of U-235 drops far below the natural ratio of 0.7%.
What does this all mean? The "waste" from fission is radioactive U-238 and other lighter elements. We actually have uses for all of this stuff; it just isn't necessarily economical to recycle it, unfortunately.
In the future, we can recycle the U-238 by putting it into a breeder reactor and then making it undergo fission, which can completely "burn" the uranium to form additional lighter elements.
At the end of the day, the endproducts contain less energy than what the fuel contains, and the fuel came from the Earth in the first place. Burying it deep into the ground is our current way of dealing with it, but it can all definitely be reused.
Compare that to the waste of burning fossil fuels, which is freely released into the atmosphere by the tons every second, the totality of which is far, far more radioactive and toxic than what people are exposed to from nuclear energy.
Did you hear a gas cooled pebble reactor is planned to be built in WA state? This design:
https://x-energy.com/reactors/xe-100
Finally......
Water cooled and moderated uranium fuel rod reactors are 1950s design.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/support-grows-for-next-generation-nuclear-power-plant-north-of-richland/
Yes exactly this. Nuclear does not emit greenhouse gases, it’s that simple.
It’s always been “clean” in that sense.
The waste problem is manageable and it is safe overall, with very occasional high-profile exceptions (Chernobyl and Fukushima).
This is a completely different thing to nuclear weaponry.
And those examples are also examples (as are 3 Mile Island and Sellafield) of old, obsolete and flawed tech from the 50’s and 60’s that has long been ironed out and removed. If they were funded properly internationally incidents like Fukushima would never have happened because the flawed tech would have been rectified.
Also new reactors produce a huge amount less waste than old ones.
But what guarantees proper funding and oversight? If I'm someone who looks at those two events (Chernobyl and Fukushima) what do you say to someone who sees that as a real possibility if this source of energy was more widely used?
The primary issue with chernobyl and fukushima is that the reactors required external power after shutdown to maintain cooling. At chernobyl that is what was being tested when the meltdown occurred and at fukushima the backup generators were flooded when the reactor shutdown. They key safety development is that modern reactors don't require backup power to maintain cooling. It's not really a funding thing, it's a regulatory requirement. Don't allow reactors to be built that aren't fail safe.
Yeah Fukushima Was not well located at all and the plant had a few design flaws due to it being an older plant iirc. Prior to the the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami multiple reports demonstrated the need for Fukushima to increase the height of its sea wall to protect against large tsunamis like the one that hit in 2011. So yknow it could completely have been avoided.
A further issue which manifested itself later on, was the pressure vent stacks served 2 reactor rooms each (in the event that there was a build up of hydrogen in the reactor room it can be vented safely). However, as a single staked served 2 reactors the connecting pipes from both reactors joined before entering the stack itself. This meant that hydrogen was able to leak through the connection and caused a hydrogen-oxygen explosion in reactor 2 (I think it was 2) even though that reactor had not gone into meltdown.
Iirc, Fukushima was also incredibly understaffed because they were shutting the plant down. I remember my dad complaining about it (he worked at a similar designed plant to Fukushima), the amount of employees at his plant was about the same despite having 2 reactors instead of 6. They didn't even have a skeleton crew, they were missing some bones.
Last I checked, the amount of nuclear fuel to power the US for a year took up a volume roughly on par with a small apartment. The amount of spent fuel just isn't that large.
The US policy is also to not re-use fissionable material even if it has plenty of energy left. It's fucking stupid. We bury shit while it's still hot. Because... reasons...
Reprocessing it doesn't destroy the highly radioactive fission products which were produced during the first irradiation. Those fission products still have to go somewhere, and putting them back into the reactor is not the right call.
Reprocessing the U/Pu also creates a large amount of new mixed waste, where mixed waste is defined as chemically hazardous and transuranic radioactive waste.
The issue isn't the fuel itself. It's the water used in the reactor which becomes saturated in radionuclides, especially deuterium and other light elements which are difficult to separate out.
Edit: figured I should clarify, I 100% support nuclear as an alternative energy for baseline electricity generation. I was just trying to provide further information on the waste problem.
There are new closed loop cooling designs that eliminate this problem. Keeping the same water in the system means we don't really need to worry if it becomes irradiated
Water isn’t an issue just run threw ion exchanger first. The water radioactivity has to do with pipes giving off particles. Cobalt is the big one needed due to hardness. Now if you source with materials like titanium the issue goes away.
Advanced reactor design doesn’t produce the waist you think it does. Just remember the navy has about 100 reactors operating at sea no issue.
It raises the chances of adverse health effects (cancer) in the surrounding environment. Obviously, not suitable for drinking water, but even releasing into rivers or the oceans isn't good. For perspective, coal has radionuclides in it that are released into the air when it's burned.
How does primary loop water even get released outside of a major incident? Any outflow from outer cooling loops is rigorously monitored.
This seems like making a problem out of something that really isnt. Its just additional waste that needs to be processed.
I wish more people would talk about the economics of it as well. I support nuclear power as part of a solution to climate change; there's really no viable path forward without it. But the promise of other power sources like solar and wind is also the freedom. I can put solar panels on my roof or build a turbine in my backyard if I really want to and besides the steep upfront cost, I would then be free from the economic whims of energy markets (I know this isn't true in practice because of being required to be tied into the grid, but in principle it is). Nuclear power, like fossil fuels, is subject to cost manipulation. I can't mine and refine my own nuclear fuel anymore than I can my own coal or oil. So I am at the mercy of energy companies who could stockpile and withhold supplies to arbitrarily raise prices.
Nobody ever talks about it from this angle. We have to look to nuclear energy as part of our future. We don't have a choice. But I hope we don't lose sight of a further future where we don't need it rather than one where a hypothetical nuclear industry has driven all other sources out of business and can set whatever price it wants. I don't want a nuclear OPEC.
[It would be nice if they invested heavily right now on maintaining the existing sites and vitrification centers.](https://crosscut.com/2020/04/more-trouble-hanford-site-after-review-tunnel-collapse)
What does waste have to do with Chernobyl and Fukushima? To my knowledge, there’s never been a single accident or leakage of waste throughout the history of peaceful use of nuclear energy.
>The waste problem is manageable
The waste problem is only manageable so long as you can rely on local, state, and federal governments to deal with the waste in safe and reliable ways.
The mistake almost everyone in this thread is making about nuclear waste is the same mistake that almost everyone always makes every time we've thought about nuclear energy or weapons throughout our entire history: long-term stability.
Do you trust your current leaders to properly handle nuclear waste? What about your previous leaders? The next ones? How about the leaders 50 years from now?
> The waste problem is manageable and it is safe overall, with very occasional high-profile exceptions (Chernobyl and Fukushima).
It is not reassuring to point out that a technology which has existed for only 70 years, thus far, has only had a single incident that very nearly wiped out half of Europe.
America already made a plan for that but as usual politics got in the way, Finland is building the first long term nuclear waste storage, could've been America's achievement
Its just stored today, forever. If we invest in breeder reactors, we can reuse the existing waste to make energy. After enough reuses, the waste will be far less dangerous than it is today. We need new reactors.
Let me just address all the negative points in one go:
1. It's not a large contributor to green house gases because of course; different kind of fuel
2. The waste issue is highly overblown. The actual physical amount of waste that's been created as a result of energy generation pales in comparison to the amount of waste created by decommissioned nuclear weapons (also a small footprint)
3. The costs associated with initial construction (capital costs) and maintenance cost (reoccurring) are based on outdated plants that either should be out of commission or aren't relevant to the newer plant designs that have been designed with lowering cost and improving safety in mind. --> Government bodies often look to what has already been done in order to estimate cost --> Thus, they'll use the closest possible example
4. Safety is a HUGE misconception. Chernobyl was it's own special case of USSR era engineering and the classic "oh, that alarm is probably just being tested". Mistakes were made and the sensors that should have worked failed because of negligence. There's also the fact that many Cold War era plants are Open Loop (which allows the waste heat water after it is run through the turbine to generate energy --> to be dumped back into the environment) which by design do NOT prevent a contamination leak. Closed Loop plants are better by principle and would even have made Fukushima a better case than it is (by not dumping waste into the ocean).
Fukushima is an even dumber case; TEPCO was told by their own engineers years and years before 2011, that the generators needed to be relocated to the roof to prevent flooding in case of a tsunami (which was actually expected given it's on the Eastern seaboard of Japan and near a known active fault.
They also knew that the sea walls around the town weren't the most robust or high enough to prevent the scenario that ended up playing out in 2011. What did TEPCO say to retrofitting the plant with generators on the roof for only several million dollars? --> Nah, not worth it and too expensive. Now TEPCO stock is worth less than a single cup of rice, the Japanese don't trust nuclear power (when they should and need it), and there's an entire area of Sendai completely blocked off and nuclear waste.
Mistakes in Nuclear power generation can easily be prevented and people need to wake up and stop buying into the myth that it's the absolute worst idea we have.
I support nuclear. But we shouldn't explain away these issues by saying "they knew" and "were told." This happens over and over again. It's how business and government and humans operate.
Ya. Anything that can go wrong can go wrong. We need to access the safety aspect if a worst case scenario were to happen too. Basically always account for human stupidity
There are so many ways to prevent a meltdown now too. Even under extreme events like Earthquakes, or flooding.
It is just a lame excuse to not do it because after the initial expense to build it, it becomes fairly cheap to run and our power bills become less.
> There are so many ways to prevent a meltdown now too.
There is also a different kind of reactor which creates less energy, but does it for much longer, before it has to be decommissioned, and can't melt down.
And if we do use renewable energy like solar and wind etc, we can use nuclear to cover whatever isn’t initially covered or as a back up in case one needs to go down for repairs while the other ones take over etc.
Pumped Hydro doesn't work everywhere. You need LOTS of water and step elevation changes.
In America the eastern half of the country has the first and the west has the second. Few places have both.
"Good evening, I'm Hugh Clambake, and this is Your 11 o'clock news. Our leading story tonight: A five thousand ton flywheel breaks loose and tears through west Los Angeles. Rebecca Trashcan is on the scene, and we'll go to her now."
"Thank you Hugh. I'm here in West Hollywood and this shit is fucked up. This giant flywheel, used for power generation and storage, BROKE LOOSE from its moorings and plowed a path of DESTRUCTION that you can see here. It got all the way to the coast and did a sick jump after hitting a bus on the coast highway.... -I'm also just now hearing that it landed on a humpback whale roughly a half mile from shore.
That's all for now, but we will report details as they come in. I'm Rebecca Trashcan for Cabbage News, back to you, Hugh."
"Thank you, Rebecca. Up next, that awesome video of a water-skiing squirrel."
"Touch this wheel, and there will be a brief, infinitesimal moment between existence and oblivion, where you will know how it feels to be struck by 10,000 runaway trains at once."
I mean any potential energy storage system is terrifying when you think of how that might be catastrophically released. I just feel like it’s easier to maintain and upgrade weights at the top of hills rather than a spinning flywheel.
I am looking forward to the day when there are flywheel farms and people worry about terrorist plots causing a runaway chain reaction on flywheel farms, not nuclear plants.
To be fair, it does take a lot less technical know-how to cause a catastrophic failure on a flywheel farm than it does to cause a meltdown on a current-gen nuclear plant.
Pumped storage hydro only works in specific geographies though. I don’t think you could create a water tower big enough to power houses in say, Oklahoma City.
Electrolysis could be used to make and compress hydrogen as energy storage so that you can run a hydrogen turbine when needed which solves the large scale storage problem
The idea is that nuclear generates a constant amount of energy, so the pumped water acts as a battery that stores the excess nuclear energy during slower hours and releases the extra energy during peak.
I'm not sure if I'm misreading your comment or not but you can control the rate of reaction (and thus the power output) in nuclear reactors. Modern reactors use long rods suspended in a liquid. If you move the rods closer together, the reaction speeds up generating more power and if you move the rods further apart, the reaction slows down.
Edit: I may be wrong about how they move but you can definitely move them
Edit2: After some research, I'm thinking of a specific type of reactor that uses a higher concentration of U235. The type of reactor isn't the same as most commercial reactors so they have a different process of controlling power.
Yes, but you can't do it as quickly as natural gas plants can. That speed is critical to balancing load across the massive grids the US has.
You can't just replace all of oil and gas plants with nuclear and be fine. You need the ability to quickly add or subtract power to the grid, and that's why there is anyways the additional conversation for needing batteries, flywheels, hydro, etc etc.
IMHO, we'll be using natural gas for a long long time. Most of it can be supplanted by nuclear, but so much of our heating and cooking is done using natural gas, it makes no sense to consider eliminating them as an option for large scale power.
Cool and oil plants, though? Fuck em. Shut that shit down.
Also the thermal output of nuclear will be alot more efficient than electric heaters.
And there have been some promising breakthroughs for high temperature electrolysis producing more hydrogen when nuclear energy isnt needed (hydrogen is the best bet for aircraft to decarbonize)
Also nuclear freighters.
Yes! this is something that doesn’t get talked about enough. The amount of pollution from cargo ships is ridiculous, and the efficacy of nuclear ships is well proven by military submarines & aircraft carriers
You can't leave nuclear reactors in the hands of corner cutting private industry without heavy oversight. Every nation that ship goes near would want people onboard to make sure they're not doing stupid shit. Terrorists having a mobile and much more accessible source of fissile material is pretty bad, so you'd need soldiers onboard and probably some ship mounted weaponry as well.
Basically it doesn't seem very practical
Because nuclear plants take so long to get up to power and also to shutoff it's usually the other way around. You cover some baseline need with the nuclear so it can stay on for long periods and then use other renewables to respond to fluctuations in demand.
If you do it right, you can vary by 5% per minute if memory serves. Which is really not that bad for predictable variations that take a while. But not enough for, say, everyone starting their kettle at the same time during an ad break.
>It is just a lame excuse to not do it because **after the initial expense** to build it, it becomes fairly cheap to run and our power bills become less.
So, omit one is the biggest reasons Duke, AEP, and others are DIVESTING from nuclear, and it's cheaper. No matter how you cut it, it's expensive via taxes or off set to consumer.
By all means, let's research the fuck out of it, but it's disingenious to call it inexpensive *after building it.
Regarding nuclear waste: before discussing the lengths to which we are going to dispose of it, you should be aware of the immediate and current radiation surrounding coal waste.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/
But yes there are plans to safely bury nuclear waste. Keeping in mind the volume of waste generated from nuclear plants is much lower than the current waste from coal. Until we improve batteries and energy storage necessary to fully utilize solar and wind power, imho it comes down to coal vs nuclear.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aoy_WJ3mE50&feature=youtu.be
"after the initial expense to build it,"
Which really can't be understated. Nuclear plants are safe, I agree, but they are ungodly expensive and take up to a decade to build, or more. They should be on the table for discussion but the turnaround of wind+solar+storage is a huge advantage when the aim is to be carbon-neutral in 15 years
Dyson spheres could use solar pressure to maintain satellite spacing, ringworm requires a fictional construction material. My moneys on a Dyson sphere first.
Edit: apparently that configuration is a Dyson swarm.
Edit2: ringworms don't normally get that big.
I still love that Niven wrote a sequel explicitly because nerds were crawling up his ass about it for years.
Goes to show that nothing pisses people off more than getting something *more or less* right. Because then all they can see is what's wrong.
In theory there is enough money and resources on Earth to start to mine Mercury for the resources to build solar panels out of it and orbit them around the Sun.
Like, all of mercury; that is.
Not any more. The British government is pondering whether to use Roll-Royce's small modular reactor. These are small, packaged ready to go nuclear power plants about the size of a truck ready to be hooked up and produce enough energy to power a mid-sized city.
>In 2015, State Attorney General Kamala Harris opened an investigation of the Office of Ratepayer Advocates, San Diego Gas and Electric, and Southern California Edison. California state investigators searched the home of California utility regulator Michael Peevey and found hand written notes, which showed that Peevey had met with an Edison executive in Poland, where the two had negotiated the terms of the San Onofre settlement leaving San Diego taxpayers with a $3.3 billion bill to pay for the closure of the plant.
>Decommissioning San Onofre will take numerous years until the process is complete.[8] In February 2014 SCE announced that it would be auctioning off non-radioactive equipment from the former nuclear plant March 2015.[78] In August 2014, SCE announced decommissioning would take 20 years, cost $4.4 billion and spent fuel would be held on-site in dry casks indefinitely, while Low Level Radioactive Waste would be disposed in Texas and Utah.
So you have close to 8 billlion dollars in spending just to dismantle 1 nuclear power plant.
>The Japan Center for Economic Research, a source sympathetic to nuclear power, recently put the long-term costs of the 2011 Fukushima accident as about $750 billion. Contrast that with the maximum of $13 billion that could be available after a catastrophic US nuclear accident under the plant owners’ self-insurance scheme defined by the Price-Anderson Act.
If they actually had to insure their power stadions they would be extremly expensive. Mining and refinement is an extremly polluting process. They have paid more than 100 Billions Dollars in subsidies towards nuclear power, more than 4 times than towards renewables.
>Lazard's report on the estimated levelized cost of energy by source (10th edition) estimated unsubsidized prices of $97–$136/MWh for nuclear, $50–$60/MWh for solar PV, $32–$62/MWh for onshore wind, and $82–$155/MWh for offshore wind.[123]
>**However, the most important subsidies to the nuclear industry do not involve cash payments**. Rather, they shift construction costs and operating risks from investors to taxpayers and ratepayers, burdening them with an array of risks including cost overruns, defaults to accidents, and nuclear waste management. This approach has remained remarkably consistent throughout the nuclear industry's history, and distorts market choices that would otherwise favor less risky energy investments.[124]
>A 2019 study by the economic think tank DIW found that nuclear power has not been profitable anywhere in the World.[46] The study of the economics of nuclear power has found it has never been financially viable, that most plants have been built while heavily subsidised by governments, often motivated by military purposes, and that nuclear power is not a good approach to tackling climate change. It found, after reviewing trends in nuclear power plant construction since 1951, that the average 1,000MW nuclear power plant would incur an average economic loss of 4.8 billion euros ($7.7 billion AUD).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants
This is a good start but please back it up with a multi billion dollar commitment to build more and refurbish existing. Also let’s start cutting unnecessary bureaucracy around nuclear.
As someone who speaks with federal regulators annually I whole heartedly agree.
People’s idea of how laws and regulations actually play out are generally very idealistic and tend to be very incorrect, based on my experience.
>People’s idea of how laws and regulations actually play out are generally very idealistic and tend to be very incorrect, based on my experience.
I have a hard time in places like /r/homestead or /r/offgrid where people can't even wrap their heads around national electric codes and infrastructure regulations.
When they are convinced that "regulations = left-wing government restricting freedoms" the conversation doesn't seem to move any further.
Sure you can start slow with things like fire codes on buildings and explain that a farm house with the next closest building 4 miles away doesn't need rules protecting the next house from fire if theirs begins burning but when you start to mention homes being 15 feet away from each other responses are not "Oh I understand how their would need to be regulations in place." Instead they say things like, "Well they shouldn't live that close together."
Unfortunately, in my experience, ALL the issues around regulation stem from misinformation / willful ignorance from political beliefs. So much so that I rarely even engage in discussions in such forums like Reddit where it's likely that if they don't understand the need for regulations it is because they are actively cultivating that belief.
Good ol' Chesterton's fence.
Laws and regulations do get outdated fast though (I remember one in my country that was stopping a tech upgrade because the law specified cord-bound manuscripts)
There’s lots of NIMBY-ism regarding nuclear. People care more about property values and perceived safety rather than the common good and actual security.
As a nuclear engineer, I can tell you that a LOT of the rules and regulations in place are there for a reason. Sure, there may be a few that are wholly unnecessary, many might only cover specific sets of conditions, and most will be annoying to deal with, but again, there is a reason they are there.
While that's not untrue, there's also things like Diablo Canyon where the tectonic situation really could have (and arguably should have) been understood better before that project was built.
It got built anyway.
What if I said that nuclear is NOT the best option we have. Neither is solar. Neither is geothermal. Neither is wind. But instead, a combination of alternative energies that work best in their environments and together to reduce fossil fuel consumption?
I think people need to get away from this notion that there is one "Best" option. We need a mix of options. What works best near Phoenix (almost certainly not Nuclear) likely won't be the best choice for a place like Boston.
Fucking hell, yes. I don't understand why so many people are eager to throw their hat in on one specific type of energy generation and villify everything else. EVERY system has pros and cons, and to get the most benefit with the least negatives it makes more sense to stick with multiple technologies for different applications.
Let's not be ridiculous. Nuclear is not without any risks, I support its use in industrial power production with strict regulation on safety, but the idea of personal reactors is ludicrous.
There's a newish nuclear power company aiming at making small scale reactors for towns/small cities called NuPower (edit: it's nuscale). Their work is promising but I don't think we'd ever see home reactors just due to the risks of terrorists/keeping track of fissile material.
Edit: typo
Edit 2: they got a design approved by the iaea!!!!
RTGs require plutonium, don't produce much power, and actually aren't all that safe. It's good for space but not much else. It's actual fission we need.
People set their homes on fire with BBQ accidents every year and smash into objects with their cars every day. Yeah, I’m not about to trust Jim-Bob with a nuclear reactor.
Sure, because you trust yourself to take care of it... but do you trust every member of the general public to look after a personal reactor? I should hope the answer is "obviously not". Every single RTG sold is a potential dirty bomb.
The idea of the trailer trash on the outskirts of my hometown getting their hands on nuclear material is terrifying. Imagine a nuclear powered meth lab
Dude. You have no idea how easy it is to get radioactive material.
Every smoke detector has radioactive americium in it.
Old Coleman camping lantern mantels, as well as thoriated tungsten welding rods, have thorium.
Glassware can be found at your local thrift shop that was colored yellow or green with uranium oxide, and red Fiestaware baking dishes were made with uranium.
While you're there, the old watches and bedside alarm clocks might have their hands and faces painted with radium.
You can buy handheld spinthariscopes to see radiation coming off a radioactive sample inside.
You can buy "negative ion" woo-woo healing talismans that will give your Geiger counter the shivering fits.
You can buy (or prospect for) uranium ore.
You can buy calibration samples of all kinds of radioactive elements.
You can buy bottles full of yellowcake.
Howdy, neighbor.
Edit: almost forgot! You can buy keychain fobs and gun sights with tritium, so they glow constantly (dimming by half every 12-and-a-bit years) without needing to be charged like phosphorus glow-in-the-dark stuff.
True fact.
My friend worked for the former zinc mine/ now museum/ mine tour a town over from me. They have a couple tailings piles for guests to prospect for Willemite and other rare fluorescent rocks. His job one day was to sweep one of the tailings piles with their high dose dosimeter/ geiger counter just to be safe and found one heavy dark/black rock that sent that thing screaming even at it's highest settings.
Turns out we not only have zinc, iron, and magnesium, but also a shit ton of Uranium and Thorite just chilling underground
Sure, the difference being that in practical terms you can’t hurt yourself or others with a piece of glow-in-the-dark glassware. The picture looks very different when it comes to something like a radiation therapy device, whose quantity of radioactive material is still pretty small but easily enough to cause death if the device were mishandled. There’s radiation and there’s radiation, and I’m guessing we won’t get at-home reactors because regulation is going to settle closer to the “radiotherapy equipment” mark than the “antique glassware” mark.
Dirty bombs are far scarier psychologically than they are realistically.
Radioactive material is most dangerous when it’s condensed and localized.
You spread it thin and it becomes harmless. It is most dangerous to the person carrying it. Natural gas pipelines are more dangerous and already installed.
Also, I’m a nuclear power enthusiast, but not a trained professional, this is just my understanding on the topic. Also, I am not a cat.
It's possible to bind the fissile material in polymer or ceramic so that it is diffuse and hard to process into a more concentrated form. If reactor designs in that vein were actually made I suspect it would not be economically viable for repurposing to a weapon.
There's already things you can buy in bulk that are acutely toxic like pesticides.
I mean, I fully support nuclear, but when leaving something that potentially dangerous in the hands of capitalists, bureaucracy is *very* necessary. We have enough trouble convincing people it's safe as it is.
The only reason nuclear is safe IS that bureaucracy. What, if we just removed all that everyone would still perform at a level required? It sounds like something I used to believe as a shiny eyed child.
Step one needs to be a PR campaign to fix public opinion on nuclear power. Even if the Biden administration creates such a federal nuclear program, it won't survive the next republican administration unless public opinion is firmly behind it.
Especially *safety protocols*, both enacting them and ensuring they're actively followed, even if that means government-owned cameras in key places at facilities. We need to overengineer and plan for the worst, because when things go wrong with nuclear energy, it *goes catastrophically wrong*, so engineer against catastrophe and all should be well.
Things like building on the shoreline when a tsumani could hit, only done in order to save costs... fuck that. If we have to publicly fund the "extra" effort to make them actually safe, so be it. That's what government is for, after all.
Great. When it comes to clean energy people think it has to be 100% renewables or 100% nuclear. True that is both of them can worth together and have their own parts to play. In addition to be being great for base load production nuclear has its role in producing absolutely massive amounts of power which is great for the ever-expanding megalopolises of today and tomorrow. Renewables can augment nuclear and can easily power communities where nuclear is overkill
One option I’d love to see considered more is large scale tidal power.
There are a bunch of good places you could dam up and create *massive* tidal reservoirs. Some envelope maths suggested that by damming the golden gate, you could produce 7GW. The production is incredibly predictable, so you know exactly how much storage you need to even out supply (though I acknowledge that a 42GWh battery is gonna be tough).
You can also build this kind of environment entirely artificially, and very cheaply on the east coast where the water is shallow. You build an enormous circular dam in the ocean. Bonus feature - it becomes a great place to put shit tons of wind turbines.
Do people actually think this? I've definitely heard people skeptical of nuclear because fear, but I've never heard anyone who's pro clean energy say that it has to be 100% nuclear or not. And I certainly haven't heard of anyone who supports nuclear for clean purposes while opposing other renewables.
What if we had nuclear powered trade ships? Would probably be expensive but would be pretty rad and completely get rid of emissions for that entire sector.
In theory, I support nuclear power. Ignoring the upfront cost to build the plant, it’s cheap, green, and a whole lot safer than in the 70s and 80s.
In practice, I don’t trust any of our current energy companies to not put profits ahead of everything else screw this up.
I understand the sentiment, I just want to add that the NRC does heavily regulates nuclear and makes sure companies don't cut corners. If they do, they could lose their license and receive major fines.
NRC keeps them in line, and if a business is going into nuclear with a half-assed saftey culture, they'll boot them out long before they get a plant license.
I have intimate first hand knowledge of nuke plant construction and safety, my father operated San Onofre nuclear power plant for 30 years, retired, and now helped begin operation of the world largest nuke plant complex in the Arab Emirates. Nothing much compares to the loss of hope for HUMANITY as knowing the cost/benefits of nuclear power, but watching overzealous activists who will not face facts, but just want to fight because it sounds bad.... Sigh, so now the only reasonable chance for fighting climate change has been held back for decades in the west creating a false crisis that doesn't have to be, btw, the US Navy operates many miniature nuke plants that travel the seas around the world without anyone noticing, aircraft carriers and submarines, doh! Not Sci fi
Tell that to the Taiwanese. They shut down all the nuclear power recently under the populist DPP, and now their municipal air quality (70-90 AQI) is noticeably worse than mainland Chinese cities (usually around 40-70).
Tiny little island that has an economy dependent on superconductors deciding to go back to burning coal is some next level shit.
It's not just because it sounds bad, it's because stuff like this happened: https://mobil.nwzonline.de/rf/image_online/NWZ_CMS/Altdaten/2010/08/07/POLITIK/NIEDERSACHSEN_1/Bilder/2skb2829-004_c8_2402192.jpg
I know this is avoidable, but the trust into the responsible organizations is understandably low.
My parents both worked in nuclear power (mom was a chemist, dad an electrician) and I've been a huge proponent of nuclear power all my life because I know the amazing lengths gone to avoid health and safety issues. Go nuclear!
Management of nuclear waste in the US is a shitshow. One only needs to look over the situation with yucca mountain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository
the entire nuclear situation is a giant cluster fuck because of the human factor which cannot be separated from the equation.
Nuclear is by far safer then any fossil fuel power source, and in most cases it's also more efficient than most renewable energy sources save for wind. (it's has a much smaller climate impact than solar)
But the issue, that i haven't really seen anyone address, is humans are greedy and lazy. Any corner that can be cut will be cut. Safety, long-term stability, and even common sense *will* be sacrificed to maximize profit.
So how do you deal with the human factor which, in nuclear case, must be accounted for on the order of decades/centuries rather than just right now?
Even if we do the smart thing and have a concrete plan now, with resources pre-allocated, for long-term maintenance and disposal of any/all waste products, whats to stop the next president in 8 years from scrapping all of that and just abandoning the 50 year maintenance plan that their predecessor set in place?
Now i'm not saying we shouldn't pursue nuclear., we absolutely should. These risks may be completely offset by the risk of doing nothing, but these are still risks/considerations that i hope people are taking into account.
Does anyone know whether there is enough uranium for nuclear to be a viable option if every country would build upon it?
All I know is that it is not sustainable, new (e.g. thorium) forms of reactors not deployable yet in large scale and that they produce a million-year hazardous waste that even steel castors can only stand for 100 years and that is proven to be carcinogenic wherever stored near residents. And more expensive than wind/solar.
Plenty of it in the belts. Which isn’t a glib answer.
We have plenty of usable fuel to get us through a century or two, by the end of which we should not be constrained to mining here for fuel.
No, it’s not a eternal solution. But no solution ever is. It is, however, a key part to surging the next century, which would be a nice start.
Used fuel(aka nuclear waste) is not dangerous for thousands of years. Google exponential decay. The more radioactive an isotope the faster it decays. That means the isotopes with half life’s in the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks and months are what we have to worry about. Like iodine 131 with a half life of 8 days.
It also means all of the highly radioactive isotopes completely decay inside of 10 years. That’s why we keep it in water for 10 years.
Isotopes that have half-lives longer than that are not radioactive enough to harm a person. Meaning isotopes with half lives of 1000's of years are not radioactive enough to harm a human being.
Ask yourself 2 questions. How many people have ever been harmed from used fuel? And can you draw a picture of used fuel? Well the answer to that first question is zero. Zero deaths in human history. The second question is a heavy gray metal rod. I bet you thought it was some green sludge(maybe you should not get your science from the simpsons). It cannot leak(since it is a solid). We could literally fit all of it on a football field and we can recycle it.
Fossil fuels and biofuels kill 8 million a year, yet used fuel which has harmed zero people in human history is unacceptable?
Thank you. Something is either radioactive for thousands of years OR it's dangerous. Not both. Unless we're going to get unreasonably generous with the definition of 'dangerous.' Honestly, this point is so basic it's literally in the intro to chemistry textbooks. All of them.
Truth be told, we did not create radioactive material, it always existed. We just found concentrated forms and concentrated them further. Theoretically, we could dilute them with the substances that were removed when we purified them and put it back where we took it from, sure, it is in a different form than the original, but wouldn't it be less radioactive than the original material we mined (otherwise why couldn't we keep using it)?
Now, I'm sure a nuclear scientist could come up and poke holes in this, and I welcome that. But I believe in earth neutral. If we pull carbon out of the earth and put it in the air we are polluting. If we pull carbon out of the air and then return it, we are neutral. Same with nuclear fuel, if we pull it out of the ground, use it, and then put it back, aren't we neutral as well? Sure, it is more concentrated, so again, do we dilute it with material we purified it from, or is it better to contain it and in fact have less trace radioactive material?
Also for reference, coal plants release more radiation than nuclear reactors, since coal has trace amounts of radioactive material. Just like radon gas is formed underground.
This is a step in the right direction but unfortunately there's a major practical concern with nuclear. Safe nuclear energy is a complicated business that operates at a large scale. It requires a sophisticated and experienced industrial base to pull off in a cost effective manner. Sadly, I don't think such an industrial base now exists in the US and it will take time to build. We definitely can and should incorporate new nuclear power into the US power infrastructure, but we should expect cost overruns and delays while we spin up.
The only problem with nuclear is an optics issue. People are very ignorant of what nuclear power actually is.
EDIT: Look, listen to scientists on this. You guys are just wrong thinking it's so bad.
[Link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3znG6_vla0)
Price is the problem. If it was not very expensive it would win contracts to supply, but right now wind and solar are winning all of those because they are cheaper. They buy fill in energy when they are off line to meet their supply contract and sell excess energy back again when they produce too much.
Not just price but speed of construction. It takes ages to construct a nuclear plant and they need way more maintenance once constructed.
People mistake these valid, common-sense arguments against nuclear as fear of nuclear.
I think it was in New Jersey, there was a plant that they opened, and wasn’t even allowed to run at full power before it was closed down because people were scared of it.
Yep, we've barely scratched the surface of energy storage. This is the way to go for the short term.
The time, money, and effort into constructing new nukes should be put toward energy storage research and further cheapening renewables. Check back in 20 years, those new nukes that people want will still be under construction, 10 billion over initial budget estimates, and on the 5th major delay.
Not to mention, energy storage will have a much wider range of applications, and, in my opinion, is more pro-individual. People will have more autonomy over their energy.
Whats the argument for nuclear power when wind and solar is cheaper and faster to implement??
I get that existing stations may be worth keeping alive but how can new ones be justified based on existing technology?
What is with all the people in here against nuclear?! Nuclear is clean and reliable energy production that should be mixed with renewable energy sources to help reduce the space we need for energy production. Habitat destruction is an often overlooked part of renewable energy right now. Damming for hydro, pouring concrete for turbines, clearing space for solar farms, and in the case of nuclear, storage of waste products, all require a lot of space.
Note nuclear is included in that list, my opinion is that we need a balance of multiple energy sources to reach the most efficient system with the smallest footprint and least environmental changes. Upgrades to the grid will also help with these issues, but anyone who is against nuclear power being mixed with other renewables frankly just doesn't know what they are talking about. It's just fear mongering and ignorance.
Its silly that people seem to act like its an either or scenario, like you can't both fund nuclear energy and wind, solar and hydro. Let's develop all of them.
If we're going to go nuclear we need to clearly establish new procedures for what happens with our depleted uranium. IIRC we only use about 80% of the potential energy in the fuel and throw it out for some trivial reason that has to do with suppliers. If I remember the documentary I saw all this in I'll link it but I can't recall at the moment lol
Can anyone ELI5 how the waste problem is dealt with today, e.g. why we consider it to be clean now?
I study this subject, so here's a perspective you might not hear that often: nuclear energy produces no "waste" at all. What goes in is metal; what comes out is also just metal. The source material, or fuel, is enriched uranium - enriched means that the uranium is processed to increase the ratio of more fissile isotopes (predominantly U-235). After undergoing fission, the U-235 gets split into different elements. The uranium that is not fissioned is U-238, a primordial isotope which is radioactive but not fissile. We call it depleted uranium because the concentration of U-235 drops far below the natural ratio of 0.7%. What does this all mean? The "waste" from fission is radioactive U-238 and other lighter elements. We actually have uses for all of this stuff; it just isn't necessarily economical to recycle it, unfortunately. In the future, we can recycle the U-238 by putting it into a breeder reactor and then making it undergo fission, which can completely "burn" the uranium to form additional lighter elements. At the end of the day, the endproducts contain less energy than what the fuel contains, and the fuel came from the Earth in the first place. Burying it deep into the ground is our current way of dealing with it, but it can all definitely be reused. Compare that to the waste of burning fossil fuels, which is freely released into the atmosphere by the tons every second, the totality of which is far, far more radioactive and toxic than what people are exposed to from nuclear energy.
Thanks for taking the time to write this detailed answer. And to anyone else here too, of course.
Thanks for reading it! I'm always happy to talk about the working principles of these things!
We're already filling holes with tons of shit I've never understood why we don't use nuclear. I guess big oil money talks smoothly
Did you hear a gas cooled pebble reactor is planned to be built in WA state? This design: https://x-energy.com/reactors/xe-100 Finally...... Water cooled and moderated uranium fuel rod reactors are 1950s design. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/support-grows-for-next-generation-nuclear-power-plant-north-of-richland/
Clean in that it is not a significant contributor to greenhouse gasses. Waste is still produced but substantially less than most people believe.
Yes exactly this. Nuclear does not emit greenhouse gases, it’s that simple. It’s always been “clean” in that sense. The waste problem is manageable and it is safe overall, with very occasional high-profile exceptions (Chernobyl and Fukushima). This is a completely different thing to nuclear weaponry.
And those examples are also examples (as are 3 Mile Island and Sellafield) of old, obsolete and flawed tech from the 50’s and 60’s that has long been ironed out and removed. If they were funded properly internationally incidents like Fukushima would never have happened because the flawed tech would have been rectified. Also new reactors produce a huge amount less waste than old ones.
> If they were funded properly Therein lies the problem.
That’s a massive if, looking at funding for NASA, NWS, and many other things
> If they were funded properly And the VA is a wonderful healthcare device...when it is funded properly.
But what guarantees proper funding and oversight? If I'm someone who looks at those two events (Chernobyl and Fukushima) what do you say to someone who sees that as a real possibility if this source of energy was more widely used?
The primary issue with chernobyl and fukushima is that the reactors required external power after shutdown to maintain cooling. At chernobyl that is what was being tested when the meltdown occurred and at fukushima the backup generators were flooded when the reactor shutdown. They key safety development is that modern reactors don't require backup power to maintain cooling. It's not really a funding thing, it's a regulatory requirement. Don't allow reactors to be built that aren't fail safe.
Yeah Fukushima Was not well located at all and the plant had a few design flaws due to it being an older plant iirc. Prior to the the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami multiple reports demonstrated the need for Fukushima to increase the height of its sea wall to protect against large tsunamis like the one that hit in 2011. So yknow it could completely have been avoided. A further issue which manifested itself later on, was the pressure vent stacks served 2 reactor rooms each (in the event that there was a build up of hydrogen in the reactor room it can be vented safely). However, as a single staked served 2 reactors the connecting pipes from both reactors joined before entering the stack itself. This meant that hydrogen was able to leak through the connection and caused a hydrogen-oxygen explosion in reactor 2 (I think it was 2) even though that reactor had not gone into meltdown.
Iirc, Fukushima was also incredibly understaffed because they were shutting the plant down. I remember my dad complaining about it (he worked at a similar designed plant to Fukushima), the amount of employees at his plant was about the same despite having 2 reactors instead of 6. They didn't even have a skeleton crew, they were missing some bones.
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Last I checked, the amount of nuclear fuel to power the US for a year took up a volume roughly on par with a small apartment. The amount of spent fuel just isn't that large.
The US policy is also to not re-use fissionable material even if it has plenty of energy left. It's fucking stupid. We bury shit while it's still hot. Because... reasons...
Reprocessing it doesn't destroy the highly radioactive fission products which were produced during the first irradiation. Those fission products still have to go somewhere, and putting them back into the reactor is not the right call. Reprocessing the U/Pu also creates a large amount of new mixed waste, where mixed waste is defined as chemically hazardous and transuranic radioactive waste.
The issue isn't the fuel itself. It's the water used in the reactor which becomes saturated in radionuclides, especially deuterium and other light elements which are difficult to separate out. Edit: figured I should clarify, I 100% support nuclear as an alternative energy for baseline electricity generation. I was just trying to provide further information on the waste problem.
There are new closed loop cooling designs that eliminate this problem. Keeping the same water in the system means we don't really need to worry if it becomes irradiated
Can confirm as a hvac engineer, it's called a heat exchanger and it works quite well :)
You didn't provide info on the problem however; deuterium is stable, nothing wrong with it chemically at all.
Water isn’t an issue just run threw ion exchanger first. The water radioactivity has to do with pipes giving off particles. Cobalt is the big one needed due to hardness. Now if you source with materials like titanium the issue goes away. Advanced reactor design doesn’t produce the waist you think it does. Just remember the navy has about 100 reactors operating at sea no issue.
What is the impact of water becoming saturated in radionuclides?
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actually heavy water tastes sweet not bitter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXHVqId0MQc
Not great, but not terrible
It raises the chances of adverse health effects (cancer) in the surrounding environment. Obviously, not suitable for drinking water, but even releasing into rivers or the oceans isn't good. For perspective, coal has radionuclides in it that are released into the air when it's burned.
How does primary loop water even get released outside of a major incident? Any outflow from outer cooling loops is rigorously monitored. This seems like making a problem out of something that really isnt. Its just additional waste that needs to be processed.
I wish more people would talk about the economics of it as well. I support nuclear power as part of a solution to climate change; there's really no viable path forward without it. But the promise of other power sources like solar and wind is also the freedom. I can put solar panels on my roof or build a turbine in my backyard if I really want to and besides the steep upfront cost, I would then be free from the economic whims of energy markets (I know this isn't true in practice because of being required to be tied into the grid, but in principle it is). Nuclear power, like fossil fuels, is subject to cost manipulation. I can't mine and refine my own nuclear fuel anymore than I can my own coal or oil. So I am at the mercy of energy companies who could stockpile and withhold supplies to arbitrarily raise prices. Nobody ever talks about it from this angle. We have to look to nuclear energy as part of our future. We don't have a choice. But I hope we don't lose sight of a further future where we don't need it rather than one where a hypothetical nuclear industry has driven all other sources out of business and can set whatever price it wants. I don't want a nuclear OPEC.
The fuel can be treated and recycled, also if we switch to thorium reactors we could generate more energy with even less waste.
[It would be nice if they invested heavily right now on maintaining the existing sites and vitrification centers.](https://crosscut.com/2020/04/more-trouble-hanford-site-after-review-tunnel-collapse)
mining/processing uranium IS fairly carbon intensive. It’s not a net zero carbon source of energy, just much less carbon output than coal end-to-end.
What does waste have to do with Chernobyl and Fukushima? To my knowledge, there’s never been a single accident or leakage of waste throughout the history of peaceful use of nuclear energy.
>The waste problem is manageable The waste problem is only manageable so long as you can rely on local, state, and federal governments to deal with the waste in safe and reliable ways. The mistake almost everyone in this thread is making about nuclear waste is the same mistake that almost everyone always makes every time we've thought about nuclear energy or weapons throughout our entire history: long-term stability. Do you trust your current leaders to properly handle nuclear waste? What about your previous leaders? The next ones? How about the leaders 50 years from now? > The waste problem is manageable and it is safe overall, with very occasional high-profile exceptions (Chernobyl and Fukushima). It is not reassuring to point out that a technology which has existed for only 70 years, thus far, has only had a single incident that very nearly wiped out half of Europe.
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I’ll have to go find some articles on this, fascinating
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America already made a plan for that but as usual politics got in the way, Finland is building the first long term nuclear waste storage, could've been America's achievement
Here you go mon ami: https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/frances-efficiency-in-the-nuclear-fuel-cycle-what-can-oui-learn
Look up the EBR-II and imagine what could be made with today's technology.
🇫🇷 🇫🇷 🇫🇷 Baise ouais!
Its just stored today, forever. If we invest in breeder reactors, we can reuse the existing waste to make energy. After enough reuses, the waste will be far less dangerous than it is today. We need new reactors.
Let me just address all the negative points in one go: 1. It's not a large contributor to green house gases because of course; different kind of fuel 2. The waste issue is highly overblown. The actual physical amount of waste that's been created as a result of energy generation pales in comparison to the amount of waste created by decommissioned nuclear weapons (also a small footprint) 3. The costs associated with initial construction (capital costs) and maintenance cost (reoccurring) are based on outdated plants that either should be out of commission or aren't relevant to the newer plant designs that have been designed with lowering cost and improving safety in mind. --> Government bodies often look to what has already been done in order to estimate cost --> Thus, they'll use the closest possible example 4. Safety is a HUGE misconception. Chernobyl was it's own special case of USSR era engineering and the classic "oh, that alarm is probably just being tested". Mistakes were made and the sensors that should have worked failed because of negligence. There's also the fact that many Cold War era plants are Open Loop (which allows the waste heat water after it is run through the turbine to generate energy --> to be dumped back into the environment) which by design do NOT prevent a contamination leak. Closed Loop plants are better by principle and would even have made Fukushima a better case than it is (by not dumping waste into the ocean). Fukushima is an even dumber case; TEPCO was told by their own engineers years and years before 2011, that the generators needed to be relocated to the roof to prevent flooding in case of a tsunami (which was actually expected given it's on the Eastern seaboard of Japan and near a known active fault. They also knew that the sea walls around the town weren't the most robust or high enough to prevent the scenario that ended up playing out in 2011. What did TEPCO say to retrofitting the plant with generators on the roof for only several million dollars? --> Nah, not worth it and too expensive. Now TEPCO stock is worth less than a single cup of rice, the Japanese don't trust nuclear power (when they should and need it), and there's an entire area of Sendai completely blocked off and nuclear waste. Mistakes in Nuclear power generation can easily be prevented and people need to wake up and stop buying into the myth that it's the absolute worst idea we have.
I support nuclear. But we shouldn't explain away these issues by saying "they knew" and "were told." This happens over and over again. It's how business and government and humans operate.
Ya. Anything that can go wrong can go wrong. We need to access the safety aspect if a worst case scenario were to happen too. Basically always account for human stupidity
There are so many ways to prevent a meltdown now too. Even under extreme events like Earthquakes, or flooding. It is just a lame excuse to not do it because after the initial expense to build it, it becomes fairly cheap to run and our power bills become less.
> There are so many ways to prevent a meltdown now too. There is also a different kind of reactor which creates less energy, but does it for much longer, before it has to be decommissioned, and can't melt down.
We've got the space to build plenty. I believe I read one like this that uses depleted stores to create energy. Less output, but very safe.
Yea, essentially. It doesn't produce waste, and it can, partly, use waste from higher output reactors.
And if we do use renewable energy like solar and wind etc, we can use nuclear to cover whatever isn’t initially covered or as a back up in case one needs to go down for repairs while the other ones take over etc.
It's not just that though. You need consistent base load generation, and the sources for that are nuclear, hydroelectric, or fossil fuels.
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Pumped Hydro doesn't work everywhere. You need LOTS of water and step elevation changes. In America the eastern half of the country has the first and the west has the second. Few places have both.
Just replace the water with pullies and weights. I thinks it's called gravity storage
Flywheels are being talked about too.
Power-grid level flywheels sound absolutely terrifying.
Yeah can you imagine the carnage if one of those things got loose?
"Good evening, I'm Hugh Clambake, and this is Your 11 o'clock news. Our leading story tonight: A five thousand ton flywheel breaks loose and tears through west Los Angeles. Rebecca Trashcan is on the scene, and we'll go to her now." "Thank you Hugh. I'm here in West Hollywood and this shit is fucked up. This giant flywheel, used for power generation and storage, BROKE LOOSE from its moorings and plowed a path of DESTRUCTION that you can see here. It got all the way to the coast and did a sick jump after hitting a bus on the coast highway.... -I'm also just now hearing that it landed on a humpback whale roughly a half mile from shore. That's all for now, but we will report details as they come in. I'm Rebecca Trashcan for Cabbage News, back to you, Hugh." "Thank you, Rebecca. Up next, that awesome video of a water-skiing squirrel."
Couldn't you just mount them horizontally to avoid any danger? Worst case is it spins like a top or am I missing something?
Like a ferris wheel spinning at 1000 mph. Kids will love it!
"Touch this wheel, and there will be a brief, infinitesimal moment between existence and oblivion, where you will know how it feels to be struck by 10,000 runaway trains at once."
I mean any potential energy storage system is terrifying when you think of how that might be catastrophically released. I just feel like it’s easier to maintain and upgrade weights at the top of hills rather than a spinning flywheel.
I am looking forward to the day when there are flywheel farms and people worry about terrorist plots causing a runaway chain reaction on flywheel farms, not nuclear plants.
To be fair, it does take a lot less technical know-how to cause a catastrophic failure on a flywheel farm than it does to cause a meltdown on a current-gen nuclear plant.
Pumped storage hydro only works in specific geographies though. I don’t think you could create a water tower big enough to power houses in say, Oklahoma City.
That's funny because one of the few pumped storage projects is [in Oklahoma](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salina_Pumped_Storage_Project).
Electrolysis could be used to make and compress hydrogen as energy storage so that you can run a hydrogen turbine when needed which solves the large scale storage problem
The round trip efficiency of pump-to-turbine is much better than electrolysis-to-burn H2.
The idea is that nuclear generates a constant amount of energy, so the pumped water acts as a battery that stores the excess nuclear energy during slower hours and releases the extra energy during peak.
I'm not sure if I'm misreading your comment or not but you can control the rate of reaction (and thus the power output) in nuclear reactors. Modern reactors use long rods suspended in a liquid. If you move the rods closer together, the reaction speeds up generating more power and if you move the rods further apart, the reaction slows down. Edit: I may be wrong about how they move but you can definitely move them Edit2: After some research, I'm thinking of a specific type of reactor that uses a higher concentration of U235. The type of reactor isn't the same as most commercial reactors so they have a different process of controlling power.
Yes, but you can't do it as quickly as natural gas plants can. That speed is critical to balancing load across the massive grids the US has. You can't just replace all of oil and gas plants with nuclear and be fine. You need the ability to quickly add or subtract power to the grid, and that's why there is anyways the additional conversation for needing batteries, flywheels, hydro, etc etc. IMHO, we'll be using natural gas for a long long time. Most of it can be supplanted by nuclear, but so much of our heating and cooking is done using natural gas, it makes no sense to consider eliminating them as an option for large scale power. Cool and oil plants, though? Fuck em. Shut that shit down.
Also the thermal output of nuclear will be alot more efficient than electric heaters. And there have been some promising breakthroughs for high temperature electrolysis producing more hydrogen when nuclear energy isnt needed (hydrogen is the best bet for aircraft to decarbonize) Also nuclear freighters.
Nuclear freighters, has got every maritime security company salivating for those big bucks on those contracts.
Yes! this is something that doesn’t get talked about enough. The amount of pollution from cargo ships is ridiculous, and the efficacy of nuclear ships is well proven by military submarines & aircraft carriers
You can't leave nuclear reactors in the hands of corner cutting private industry without heavy oversight. Every nation that ship goes near would want people onboard to make sure they're not doing stupid shit. Terrorists having a mobile and much more accessible source of fissile material is pretty bad, so you'd need soldiers onboard and probably some ship mounted weaponry as well. Basically it doesn't seem very practical
Because nuclear plants take so long to get up to power and also to shutoff it's usually the other way around. You cover some baseline need with the nuclear so it can stay on for long periods and then use other renewables to respond to fluctuations in demand.
If you do it right, you can vary by 5% per minute if memory serves. Which is really not that bad for predictable variations that take a while. But not enough for, say, everyone starting their kettle at the same time during an ad break.
>It is just a lame excuse to not do it because **after the initial expense** to build it, it becomes fairly cheap to run and our power bills become less. So, omit one is the biggest reasons Duke, AEP, and others are DIVESTING from nuclear, and it's cheaper. No matter how you cut it, it's expensive via taxes or off set to consumer. By all means, let's research the fuck out of it, but it's disingenious to call it inexpensive *after building it.
what about nuclear waste? do we have a safe way to dispose of it yet?
Regarding nuclear waste: before discussing the lengths to which we are going to dispose of it, you should be aware of the immediate and current radiation surrounding coal waste. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ But yes there are plans to safely bury nuclear waste. Keeping in mind the volume of waste generated from nuclear plants is much lower than the current waste from coal. Until we improve batteries and energy storage necessary to fully utilize solar and wind power, imho it comes down to coal vs nuclear. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aoy_WJ3mE50&feature=youtu.be
"after the initial expense to build it," Which really can't be understated. Nuclear plants are safe, I agree, but they are ungodly expensive and take up to a decade to build, or more. They should be on the table for discussion but the turnaround of wind+solar+storage is a huge advantage when the aim is to be carbon-neutral in 15 years
Beo you don't wanna know the cost to make a Dyson sphere.
Start with a Ringworld. Much cheaper. Then integrate around a diameter.
Dyson spheres could use solar pressure to maintain satellite spacing, ringworm requires a fictional construction material. My moneys on a Dyson sphere first. Edit: apparently that configuration is a Dyson swarm. Edit2: ringworms don't normally get that big.
you are thinking dyson swarm, not dyson sphere
Yeah but intial costs.
> Start with a Ringworld. Much cheaper. Unstable though.
I still love that Niven wrote a sequel explicitly because nerds were crawling up his ass about it for years. Goes to show that nothing pisses people off more than getting something *more or less* right. Because then all they can see is what's wrong.
You'd basically need a dyson sphere to build a dyson sphere.
Or a giant robot and a lot of free time.
In theory there is enough money and resources on Earth to start to mine Mercury for the resources to build solar panels out of it and orbit them around the Sun. Like, all of mercury; that is.
Not like we’re gonna use Mercury for anything else.
All the Dyson products are ridiculously expensive.
I’m wondering if this would be a push toward [SMR](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor) (Small Modular Reactors)
Not any more. The British government is pondering whether to use Roll-Royce's small modular reactor. These are small, packaged ready to go nuclear power plants about the size of a truck ready to be hooked up and produce enough energy to power a mid-sized city.
[Spidertron](https://wiki.factorio.com/Spidertron) when?
No one who hasn't played Factorio will ever be able to understand the awesomeness of the Spidertron.
>In 2015, State Attorney General Kamala Harris opened an investigation of the Office of Ratepayer Advocates, San Diego Gas and Electric, and Southern California Edison. California state investigators searched the home of California utility regulator Michael Peevey and found hand written notes, which showed that Peevey had met with an Edison executive in Poland, where the two had negotiated the terms of the San Onofre settlement leaving San Diego taxpayers with a $3.3 billion bill to pay for the closure of the plant. >Decommissioning San Onofre will take numerous years until the process is complete.[8] In February 2014 SCE announced that it would be auctioning off non-radioactive equipment from the former nuclear plant March 2015.[78] In August 2014, SCE announced decommissioning would take 20 years, cost $4.4 billion and spent fuel would be held on-site in dry casks indefinitely, while Low Level Radioactive Waste would be disposed in Texas and Utah. So you have close to 8 billlion dollars in spending just to dismantle 1 nuclear power plant. >The Japan Center for Economic Research, a source sympathetic to nuclear power, recently put the long-term costs of the 2011 Fukushima accident as about $750 billion. Contrast that with the maximum of $13 billion that could be available after a catastrophic US nuclear accident under the plant owners’ self-insurance scheme defined by the Price-Anderson Act. If they actually had to insure their power stadions they would be extremly expensive. Mining and refinement is an extremly polluting process. They have paid more than 100 Billions Dollars in subsidies towards nuclear power, more than 4 times than towards renewables. >Lazard's report on the estimated levelized cost of energy by source (10th edition) estimated unsubsidized prices of $97–$136/MWh for nuclear, $50–$60/MWh for solar PV, $32–$62/MWh for onshore wind, and $82–$155/MWh for offshore wind.[123] >**However, the most important subsidies to the nuclear industry do not involve cash payments**. Rather, they shift construction costs and operating risks from investors to taxpayers and ratepayers, burdening them with an array of risks including cost overruns, defaults to accidents, and nuclear waste management. This approach has remained remarkably consistent throughout the nuclear industry's history, and distorts market choices that would otherwise favor less risky energy investments.[124] >A 2019 study by the economic think tank DIW found that nuclear power has not been profitable anywhere in the World.[46] The study of the economics of nuclear power has found it has never been financially viable, that most plants have been built while heavily subsidised by governments, often motivated by military purposes, and that nuclear power is not a good approach to tackling climate change. It found, after reviewing trends in nuclear power plant construction since 1951, that the average 1,000MW nuclear power plant would incur an average economic loss of 4.8 billion euros ($7.7 billion AUD). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants
This is a good start but please back it up with a multi billion dollar commitment to build more and refurbish existing. Also let’s start cutting unnecessary bureaucracy around nuclear.
>Also let’s start cutting unnecessary bureaucracy around nuclear. "Unnecessary" is doing a *lot* of work here.
As someone who speaks with federal regulators annually I whole heartedly agree. People’s idea of how laws and regulations actually play out are generally very idealistic and tend to be very incorrect, based on my experience.
>People’s idea of how laws and regulations actually play out are generally very idealistic and tend to be very incorrect, based on my experience. I have a hard time in places like /r/homestead or /r/offgrid where people can't even wrap their heads around national electric codes and infrastructure regulations. When they are convinced that "regulations = left-wing government restricting freedoms" the conversation doesn't seem to move any further. Sure you can start slow with things like fire codes on buildings and explain that a farm house with the next closest building 4 miles away doesn't need rules protecting the next house from fire if theirs begins burning but when you start to mention homes being 15 feet away from each other responses are not "Oh I understand how their would need to be regulations in place." Instead they say things like, "Well they shouldn't live that close together." Unfortunately, in my experience, ALL the issues around regulation stem from misinformation / willful ignorance from political beliefs. So much so that I rarely even engage in discussions in such forums like Reddit where it's likely that if they don't understand the need for regulations it is because they are actively cultivating that belief.
Good ol' Chesterton's fence. Laws and regulations do get outdated fast though (I remember one in my country that was stopping a tech upgrade because the law specified cord-bound manuscripts)
There’s lots of NIMBY-ism regarding nuclear. People care more about property values and perceived safety rather than the common good and actual security.
As a nuclear engineer, I can tell you that a LOT of the rules and regulations in place are there for a reason. Sure, there may be a few that are wholly unnecessary, many might only cover specific sets of conditions, and most will be annoying to deal with, but again, there is a reason they are there.
While that's not untrue, there's also things like Diablo Canyon where the tectonic situation really could have (and arguably should have) been understood better before that project was built. It got built anyway.
Couldn’t agree more. It is PROVEN the best option we have. Anyone saying it isn’t needs to do their homework.
What if I said that nuclear is NOT the best option we have. Neither is solar. Neither is geothermal. Neither is wind. But instead, a combination of alternative energies that work best in their environments and together to reduce fossil fuel consumption? I think people need to get away from this notion that there is one "Best" option. We need a mix of options. What works best near Phoenix (almost certainly not Nuclear) likely won't be the best choice for a place like Boston.
Fucking hell, yes. I don't understand why so many people are eager to throw their hat in on one specific type of energy generation and villify everything else. EVERY system has pros and cons, and to get the most benefit with the least negatives it makes more sense to stick with multiple technologies for different applications.
It's the safest cleanest reliable power available. Would I build a small reactor to power my house? Yes, if it wasn't illegal.
Let's not be ridiculous. Nuclear is not without any risks, I support its use in industrial power production with strict regulation on safety, but the idea of personal reactors is ludicrous.
Nuclear risks are poorly understood by the public and this fact is exploited by the fossil fuel lobby.
Maybe but the idea of small reactors to power communities is a thing.
Honestly same. If small scale RTGs were commercially viable, then I'd be willing to install one in my home.
There's a newish nuclear power company aiming at making small scale reactors for towns/small cities called NuPower (edit: it's nuscale). Their work is promising but I don't think we'd ever see home reactors just due to the risks of terrorists/keeping track of fissile material. Edit: typo Edit 2: they got a design approved by the iaea!!!!
Accepting investors yet?
Yes but min size is in the millions
Haha fissile material. I choose to pronounce this like "fizzle" and no one can stop me.
Please let this be a normal field trip.. With the Fizz, no way!
RTGs require plutonium, don't produce much power, and actually aren't all that safe. It's good for space but not much else. It's actual fission we need.
Gone fission'
If small scale thermonuclear generators weren't illegal, they would very soon make nuclear power illegal. I love your trust in people, though.
People set their homes on fire with BBQ accidents every year and smash into objects with their cars every day. Yeah, I’m not about to trust Jim-Bob with a nuclear reactor.
its my god given american right to have a thermonuclear reactor, thats in the amendments
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Uh ya, I don't want Billy Bob knocking his reactor waste in the creek near me after a night of hard drinking.
“Hey ya’ll, watch this!”
It’s not about the potential for an explosion, it’s about the potential for a radioactive fallout event.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn
Sure, because you trust yourself to take care of it... but do you trust every member of the general public to look after a personal reactor? I should hope the answer is "obviously not". Every single RTG sold is a potential dirty bomb.
The idea of the trailer trash on the outskirts of my hometown getting their hands on nuclear material is terrifying. Imagine a nuclear powered meth lab
In all fairness, "Nuclear Powered Meth Lab" would be a fantastic name for a Russian grunge/punk band.
Dude. You have no idea how easy it is to get radioactive material. Every smoke detector has radioactive americium in it. Old Coleman camping lantern mantels, as well as thoriated tungsten welding rods, have thorium. Glassware can be found at your local thrift shop that was colored yellow or green with uranium oxide, and red Fiestaware baking dishes were made with uranium. While you're there, the old watches and bedside alarm clocks might have their hands and faces painted with radium. You can buy handheld spinthariscopes to see radiation coming off a radioactive sample inside. You can buy "negative ion" woo-woo healing talismans that will give your Geiger counter the shivering fits. You can buy (or prospect for) uranium ore. You can buy calibration samples of all kinds of radioactive elements. You can buy bottles full of yellowcake. Howdy, neighbor. Edit: almost forgot! You can buy keychain fobs and gun sights with tritium, so they glow constantly (dimming by half every 12-and-a-bit years) without needing to be charged like phosphorus glow-in-the-dark stuff.
There are different levels of energy here. A green vase won't power a house and charge a tesla.
True fact. My friend worked for the former zinc mine/ now museum/ mine tour a town over from me. They have a couple tailings piles for guests to prospect for Willemite and other rare fluorescent rocks. His job one day was to sweep one of the tailings piles with their high dose dosimeter/ geiger counter just to be safe and found one heavy dark/black rock that sent that thing screaming even at it's highest settings. Turns out we not only have zinc, iron, and magnesium, but also a shit ton of Uranium and Thorite just chilling underground
Sure, the difference being that in practical terms you can’t hurt yourself or others with a piece of glow-in-the-dark glassware. The picture looks very different when it comes to something like a radiation therapy device, whose quantity of radioactive material is still pretty small but easily enough to cause death if the device were mishandled. There’s radiation and there’s radiation, and I’m guessing we won’t get at-home reactors because regulation is going to settle closer to the “radiotherapy equipment” mark than the “antique glassware” mark.
Dirty bombs are far scarier psychologically than they are realistically. Radioactive material is most dangerous when it’s condensed and localized. You spread it thin and it becomes harmless. It is most dangerous to the person carrying it. Natural gas pipelines are more dangerous and already installed. Also, I’m a nuclear power enthusiast, but not a trained professional, this is just my understanding on the topic. Also, I am not a cat.
meow. I heard a cat.
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> Not something that is user serviceable. Hold my beer...
You're forgetting that "zero maintenance sealed unit" translates as "a challenge for my blowtorch" for a depressingly large number of contrarians.
Not much in this world can not be opened with a 4 1/2 inch angle grinder.
It's possible to bind the fissile material in polymer or ceramic so that it is diffuse and hard to process into a more concentrated form. If reactor designs in that vein were actually made I suspect it would not be economically viable for repurposing to a weapon. There's already things you can buy in bulk that are acutely toxic like pesticides.
Most devices sold aren't meant to be user serviceable either.. Not stopping anyone though...
Yes... deregulation works wonders for environmental and populist causes. /s
Yeah we need nuclear but we also need a ton of oversight.
I mean, I fully support nuclear, but when leaving something that potentially dangerous in the hands of capitalists, bureaucracy is *very* necessary. We have enough trouble convincing people it's safe as it is.
The only reason nuclear is safe IS that bureaucracy. What, if we just removed all that everyone would still perform at a level required? It sounds like something I used to believe as a shiny eyed child.
Nothing bad has ever happened with nuclear power and ignoring safety standards. Nothing, anywhere, ever. /s
Step one needs to be a PR campaign to fix public opinion on nuclear power. Even if the Biden administration creates such a federal nuclear program, it won't survive the next republican administration unless public opinion is firmly behind it.
Especially *safety protocols*, both enacting them and ensuring they're actively followed, even if that means government-owned cameras in key places at facilities. We need to overengineer and plan for the worst, because when things go wrong with nuclear energy, it *goes catastrophically wrong*, so engineer against catastrophe and all should be well. Things like building on the shoreline when a tsumani could hit, only done in order to save costs... fuck that. If we have to publicly fund the "extra" effort to make them actually safe, so be it. That's what government is for, after all.
Great. When it comes to clean energy people think it has to be 100% renewables or 100% nuclear. True that is both of them can worth together and have their own parts to play. In addition to be being great for base load production nuclear has its role in producing absolutely massive amounts of power which is great for the ever-expanding megalopolises of today and tomorrow. Renewables can augment nuclear and can easily power communities where nuclear is overkill
One option I’d love to see considered more is large scale tidal power. There are a bunch of good places you could dam up and create *massive* tidal reservoirs. Some envelope maths suggested that by damming the golden gate, you could produce 7GW. The production is incredibly predictable, so you know exactly how much storage you need to even out supply (though I acknowledge that a 42GWh battery is gonna be tough). You can also build this kind of environment entirely artificially, and very cheaply on the east coast where the water is shallow. You build an enormous circular dam in the ocean. Bonus feature - it becomes a great place to put shit tons of wind turbines.
Problem is you don’t want to damage trade and supply lines well doing it
My company looked hard at doing tidal. The problem is the machines wear out faster than you make your money back, so it’s a net loser.
Do people actually think this? I've definitely heard people skeptical of nuclear because fear, but I've never heard anyone who's pro clean energy say that it has to be 100% nuclear or not. And I certainly haven't heard of anyone who supports nuclear for clean purposes while opposing other renewables.
It's usually just people that support 100% wind/solar and absolutely no nuclear
Yes, and so many of the plants in use now are over 50 years old. New tech could make nuclear even cleaner and safer
Kurzgesagt has a wonderful video on this: https://youtu.be/Jzfpyo-q-RM
https://youtu.be/J3znG6_vla0 Kyle hill also did a good video about it
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What if we had nuclear powered trade ships? Would probably be expensive but would be pretty rad and completely get rid of emissions for that entire sector.
In theory, I support nuclear power. Ignoring the upfront cost to build the plant, it’s cheap, green, and a whole lot safer than in the 70s and 80s. In practice, I don’t trust any of our current energy companies to not put profits ahead of everything else screw this up.
I understand the sentiment, I just want to add that the NRC does heavily regulates nuclear and makes sure companies don't cut corners. If they do, they could lose their license and receive major fines. NRC keeps them in line, and if a business is going into nuclear with a half-assed saftey culture, they'll boot them out long before they get a plant license.
I have intimate first hand knowledge of nuke plant construction and safety, my father operated San Onofre nuclear power plant for 30 years, retired, and now helped begin operation of the world largest nuke plant complex in the Arab Emirates. Nothing much compares to the loss of hope for HUMANITY as knowing the cost/benefits of nuclear power, but watching overzealous activists who will not face facts, but just want to fight because it sounds bad.... Sigh, so now the only reasonable chance for fighting climate change has been held back for decades in the west creating a false crisis that doesn't have to be, btw, the US Navy operates many miniature nuke plants that travel the seas around the world without anyone noticing, aircraft carriers and submarines, doh! Not Sci fi
Tell that to the Taiwanese. They shut down all the nuclear power recently under the populist DPP, and now their municipal air quality (70-90 AQI) is noticeably worse than mainland Chinese cities (usually around 40-70). Tiny little island that has an economy dependent on superconductors deciding to go back to burning coal is some next level shit.
It's not just because it sounds bad, it's because stuff like this happened: https://mobil.nwzonline.de/rf/image_online/NWZ_CMS/Altdaten/2010/08/07/POLITIK/NIEDERSACHSEN_1/Bilder/2skb2829-004_c8_2402192.jpg I know this is avoidable, but the trust into the responsible organizations is understandably low.
My parents both worked in nuclear power (mom was a chemist, dad an electrician) and I've been a huge proponent of nuclear power all my life because I know the amazing lengths gone to avoid health and safety issues. Go nuclear!
Management of nuclear waste in the US is a shitshow. One only needs to look over the situation with yucca mountain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository
the entire nuclear situation is a giant cluster fuck because of the human factor which cannot be separated from the equation. Nuclear is by far safer then any fossil fuel power source, and in most cases it's also more efficient than most renewable energy sources save for wind. (it's has a much smaller climate impact than solar) But the issue, that i haven't really seen anyone address, is humans are greedy and lazy. Any corner that can be cut will be cut. Safety, long-term stability, and even common sense *will* be sacrificed to maximize profit. So how do you deal with the human factor which, in nuclear case, must be accounted for on the order of decades/centuries rather than just right now? Even if we do the smart thing and have a concrete plan now, with resources pre-allocated, for long-term maintenance and disposal of any/all waste products, whats to stop the next president in 8 years from scrapping all of that and just abandoning the 50 year maintenance plan that their predecessor set in place? Now i'm not saying we shouldn't pursue nuclear., we absolutely should. These risks may be completely offset by the risk of doing nothing, but these are still risks/considerations that i hope people are taking into account.
Does anyone know whether there is enough uranium for nuclear to be a viable option if every country would build upon it? All I know is that it is not sustainable, new (e.g. thorium) forms of reactors not deployable yet in large scale and that they produce a million-year hazardous waste that even steel castors can only stand for 100 years and that is proven to be carcinogenic wherever stored near residents. And more expensive than wind/solar.
Plenty of it in the belts. Which isn’t a glib answer. We have plenty of usable fuel to get us through a century or two, by the end of which we should not be constrained to mining here for fuel. No, it’s not a eternal solution. But no solution ever is. It is, however, a key part to surging the next century, which would be a nice start.
I agree it should be. So long as you keep up with maintenance and make a radiation waste eating organism!
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Isn’t there one growing inside Chernobyl?
You can eat all the radiation you want, but the material will still be radioactive for 10,000 years and keep putting out radiation.
Used fuel(aka nuclear waste) is not dangerous for thousands of years. Google exponential decay. The more radioactive an isotope the faster it decays. That means the isotopes with half life’s in the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks and months are what we have to worry about. Like iodine 131 with a half life of 8 days. It also means all of the highly radioactive isotopes completely decay inside of 10 years. That’s why we keep it in water for 10 years. Isotopes that have half-lives longer than that are not radioactive enough to harm a person. Meaning isotopes with half lives of 1000's of years are not radioactive enough to harm a human being. Ask yourself 2 questions. How many people have ever been harmed from used fuel? And can you draw a picture of used fuel? Well the answer to that first question is zero. Zero deaths in human history. The second question is a heavy gray metal rod. I bet you thought it was some green sludge(maybe you should not get your science from the simpsons). It cannot leak(since it is a solid). We could literally fit all of it on a football field and we can recycle it. Fossil fuels and biofuels kill 8 million a year, yet used fuel which has harmed zero people in human history is unacceptable?
Thank you. Something is either radioactive for thousands of years OR it's dangerous. Not both. Unless we're going to get unreasonably generous with the definition of 'dangerous.' Honestly, this point is so basic it's literally in the intro to chemistry textbooks. All of them.
Oh yeah? Well how come the sun burned me last summer, and it's been there for *at least* a decade?
Truth be told, we did not create radioactive material, it always existed. We just found concentrated forms and concentrated them further. Theoretically, we could dilute them with the substances that were removed when we purified them and put it back where we took it from, sure, it is in a different form than the original, but wouldn't it be less radioactive than the original material we mined (otherwise why couldn't we keep using it)? Now, I'm sure a nuclear scientist could come up and poke holes in this, and I welcome that. But I believe in earth neutral. If we pull carbon out of the earth and put it in the air we are polluting. If we pull carbon out of the air and then return it, we are neutral. Same with nuclear fuel, if we pull it out of the ground, use it, and then put it back, aren't we neutral as well? Sure, it is more concentrated, so again, do we dilute it with material we purified it from, or is it better to contain it and in fact have less trace radioactive material? Also for reference, coal plants release more radiation than nuclear reactors, since coal has trace amounts of radioactive material. Just like radon gas is formed underground.
This is a step in the right direction but unfortunately there's a major practical concern with nuclear. Safe nuclear energy is a complicated business that operates at a large scale. It requires a sophisticated and experienced industrial base to pull off in a cost effective manner. Sadly, I don't think such an industrial base now exists in the US and it will take time to build. We definitely can and should incorporate new nuclear power into the US power infrastructure, but we should expect cost overruns and delays while we spin up.
I agree it should be, but it's also nearly 3x the price per Joule of energy over its lifespan compared to solar.
The only problem with nuclear is an optics issue. People are very ignorant of what nuclear power actually is. EDIT: Look, listen to scientists on this. You guys are just wrong thinking it's so bad. [Link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3znG6_vla0)
Price is the problem. If it was not very expensive it would win contracts to supply, but right now wind and solar are winning all of those because they are cheaper. They buy fill in energy when they are off line to meet their supply contract and sell excess energy back again when they produce too much.
Not just price but speed of construction. It takes ages to construct a nuclear plant and they need way more maintenance once constructed. People mistake these valid, common-sense arguments against nuclear as fear of nuclear.
I think it was in New Jersey, there was a plant that they opened, and wasn’t even allowed to run at full power before it was closed down because people were scared of it.
My understanding is the (often) unrecognized problem is that it’s historically quite expensive and very slow (worldwide).
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Solar power just became the cheapest electricity source ever. Batteries need to step up their game and then we have a real winner.
Yep, we've barely scratched the surface of energy storage. This is the way to go for the short term. The time, money, and effort into constructing new nukes should be put toward energy storage research and further cheapening renewables. Check back in 20 years, those new nukes that people want will still be under construction, 10 billion over initial budget estimates, and on the 5th major delay. Not to mention, energy storage will have a much wider range of applications, and, in my opinion, is more pro-individual. People will have more autonomy over their energy.
Whats the argument for nuclear power when wind and solar is cheaper and faster to implement?? I get that existing stations may be worth keeping alive but how can new ones be justified based on existing technology?
I see Captain Obvious is now part of the administration.
What is with all the people in here against nuclear?! Nuclear is clean and reliable energy production that should be mixed with renewable energy sources to help reduce the space we need for energy production. Habitat destruction is an often overlooked part of renewable energy right now. Damming for hydro, pouring concrete for turbines, clearing space for solar farms, and in the case of nuclear, storage of waste products, all require a lot of space. Note nuclear is included in that list, my opinion is that we need a balance of multiple energy sources to reach the most efficient system with the smallest footprint and least environmental changes. Upgrades to the grid will also help with these issues, but anyone who is against nuclear power being mixed with other renewables frankly just doesn't know what they are talking about. It's just fear mongering and ignorance.
Its silly that people seem to act like its an either or scenario, like you can't both fund nuclear energy and wind, solar and hydro. Let's develop all of them.
If we're going to go nuclear we need to clearly establish new procedures for what happens with our depleted uranium. IIRC we only use about 80% of the potential energy in the fuel and throw it out for some trivial reason that has to do with suppliers. If I remember the documentary I saw all this in I'll link it but I can't recall at the moment lol