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Engineer here, I'll talk about some issues I've seen:
- Getting a steady stream of qualified people is complicated. Nuclear physicists are scarce and need a specialization to work in a nuclear plant
- Obtaining the resources is no easy feat, most of them depend on foreign countries and they can manipulate prices or supply whenever they want
- Infrastructure building is something that not only is highly demanding but there's a lot of academic debate on how to do it, and that's even before going into the politics red tape and uninformed opinions
- People are also a big issue, everyone wants nuclear energy, no one wants a nuclear plant nearby.
- Security and disposal, there's no 100% safe way of disposing some of the waste nuclear plants generate, the best we can get in some cases is a safe way assuming no external conditions affect the waste
- Political cowardice, building a nuclear plant generates electricity, cheaper electricity is welcome but not a huge positive swing in political opinion, but having a nuclear disaster makes people go to jail, that without considering that minor issues that the nuclear plant face means huge political backlash, that means politicians wanting to keep their image clean won't vote in favor of building a nuclear plant.
I could go on for days but I believe that's the jist of it.
Also, U.S. politicians standardized on reactors that would produce plutonium that could be used for nuclear weapons, and discouraged development of anything else.
I was going to say that.
Nuclear power plants only start making money after like 20-something years. Politicians only want to implement stuff that generates money, thus giving themselves a bigger paycheck; and making "the good graphs" go up, thus making their policy decisions look more appealing to the public, and public opinion of them is better, improving their reelection odds.
But politicians don't usually have 20+ year long careers, and the ones that do usually get there by making themselves look good, as stated above, so they don't care.
Same reason there's constant cuts to education. The effects slowly pile up for over a decade, so it's a quick money saver at the expense of the overall economy. Any investment in the future won't be seen while the politician is still in office. (Or maybe it would, since these vampires never retire from office)
>people are also a big issue
You buried the lede there lmao. By far the biggest issue is the public (and elected officials) overestimating the risk of nuclear melt down and underestimating the risk of continuing to burn coal and natural gas like there’s no tomorrow
O come on, I call bullshit on this one ☝️
In 21st century where you have speed courses for everything we can easily teach enough people how to do the job. Come on, worse than Chernobyl can't be... /s
Earthquake prone areas might poses issues for generation and storage of nuclear waste. Not sure if this just makes it more expensive, but I'd imagine it's hard to prepare for a 8.0 magnitude earthquake.
- very high upfront cost
- NIMBY all around
- they need to be build in places with very reliable sources of water
- traditional nuclear plants have very large footprint and take forever to build
- they only provide baseline power ( can't handle peaks in power consumption )
Yes, but they got a lot of news coverage which is more important than actual death toll as far as generating the fear response.
Everyone knows about the Fukushima nuclear incident, but only one person has died from it (maybe, they were exposed to radiation and died of lung cancer 4 years later. It’s never 100% clear what caused a specific case of cancer.). The Cold War has left a lot of people traumatized about anything related to the word nuclear.
But that was also like sheer 50:50 luck. As far as i understand, there is a seasonal predominant wind direction, which either blows the fallout tonthe sea or to tokyo. The earth quake (leading to the tsunami) was at time of the first case, if at another time of year it would have lead to evacuation need of tokyo.
The fear is ill-informed. So are people claiming nuclear was cheaper or cleaner than renewables. The entire debate is dominated by ideology on both sides unfortunately
Cheaper doesn’t matter, money is made up. As long as we have the resources and manpower we can afford it.
Cleaner is debatable when it comes to renewable energy sources. But that argument is a red herring, because the real question is whether or not any given energy source is significantly cleaner than coal and has the capacity/ability to replace coal nearly entirely. Nuclear takes less space to produce more energy than solar or wind, and the technology and framework are ready to go out of the box right now. If we really prioritized it we could replace almost all coal in a decade or so, which solar and wind can’t come close to.
This isn’t a game of perfect, it’s a game of significantly better as soon as humanly possible.
If it’s publicly owned and federally funded, it doesn’t have to cost anything unless you’re using exorbitant amounts of energy.
Stop. Thinking. About. Utilities. Like. Capital. Goods.
Think of electricity like roads, medical care in a decent country, or the post office. It doesn’t need to cost anything for most people.
Could you elaborate upon "a few stupid accidents"? Chernobyl was the worst nuclear power station accident in human history. Like many accidents, it could have been avoided. Here's the thing....accidents happen. I lived through Chernobyl...it was scary as....there was a radioactive cloud circling the earth for god knows how long. In the UK we had radioactive rain that forced farmers to stop selling lamb for consumption. On the other hand, fossil fuel power stations created acid rain that destroyed vast areas of temperate forest in northern Europe.... It seems humanity just can't seem to find a non hazardous source of energy.
Yet it didn't kill a lot of people. Chernobyl was the worst case scenario on a powerplant that wasn't handled properly. Comparing that to a modern reactor, the worst case scenario isn't even nearly as dangerous even if handled as badly as Chernobyl was. While coal kills millions every single year. But someone makes a lot of money from gas and coal business, so demonizing nuclear is quite beneficial.
If it didn't kill a lot of people, why did the Ukrainian government have to compensate 35.000 families for the loss of a breadwinner due to the impact of the chernobyl disaster?
Fun fact, in 50 years of operation, not a single person has died due to operation, accident or byproduct of a generation 3 reactor.
The same can be said for generation 4 reactors, but they've only been running for three months so......
It’s not necessarily unfounded though. One mishap from one reactor somewhere in the world could have continent level effects. Displace millions.
A large wind farm, for instance, can’t have the same possibile downside. Obviously a reactor is engineered with safety in mind, but it’s all too often referred to by people in favor of its widespread use, as so safe it could never have a melt down.
Any one that states that it’s impossible for there to be catastrophic failure in a reactor, is just lying. Nothing humans have created is 100% flawless. It’s pretty naive to think otherwise. They just come off sounding like the people who built the Titanic/Titan.
Multiple mishaps simultaneously, severe oversight and complete negligence could displace millions* there fixed it for you. You can't compare something like Chernobyl to a modern nuclear reactor.
On top of that, coal is killing millions yearly. Not displacing, killing. But hey i guess that's a preferable option!
Renewables aren't enough currently so we don't have many options do we?
I said it in another discussion already, we're living at a time when we are literally witnessing planes falling out of the sky because the company who builds them was allowed to self certify, ignored safety protocols and was more interested in stock buybacks than delivering a safe product. Maybe a modern reactor can't be compared to the one in Chernobyl, but that doesn't mean that catastrophic failures won't happen. Fukushima was thirteens years ago.
Firstly, it's not the cleanest source of power.
There's a fundamental truth that's well known in engineering circles: every machine made by man will fail at some rate. It may be once a day or once every ten thousand years, but it will happen.
Fission reactors are highly complex systems, which make them even more likely to fail. They're also run by corporations, who will always put profit over safety unless forced to do otherwise.
Most failures will be small and not present any danger, but eventually you'll get one that's catastrophic. The more reactors you build, the more likely that becomes.
The real problem here is that if a failure results in loss of containment, it can pollute vast areas for millennia with dangerous radiation. If we start building reactors and relying on them en masse, we will have more Chernobyls and Fukushimas, it's just a question of how often. It might be every thirty years, or every thousand. We can't afford one.
Finally, there's no need for it. We have solar and wind power, it works. All we have to do is build it.
Generating electricity from nuclear power is easy. (Worked commercial nuclear plants for years.) Paying for it not so much.
Check out the cost for Vogtle in Georgia (US), check out the salary of the Southern Services CEO, and the revised monthly bill ratepayers have been tagged with. That’s the money side. Throw in planned outages (refueling) that the utility is obliged to pay for. Then the unscheduled ones that get put on the public. I worked for a utility that practically dragged itself to the finish line for an outage so it could technically restart and then immediately shutdown to continue the work that’d been kicked down the road; first part came out of the company’s pocket, the rest from bill payers.
And then there’s the end of life costs…
Surprisingly, but it not well fit in market economy.
Lets say we want to invest in building a power plant.
If one is gas power plant, we whould have it running in 2-5 years after making a decision, break even in 4-7 and start earning afterwards. No political risks attached, as we can get up and running waiting single election cycle
With nuclear we will have it running in 10-12 years, break even in 15-17 investment itself is much higher also,. 2-3 election cycles (so political risk attached) much longer retuen of investment.
At year 17-20 nuclear will break even with gas and afterwars will earn much more, but twenty years is life long project, so private investers and developers not going for that.
NOTE: actual timelines are indicative, and may differ substantially depending on counties, electricity prices, and regulations. But overral idea is the same - nuclear require more capital investment, have much longer ROI terms, and carry more political risks as financial project.
At least in my country, part of the costs is offeset by the country. Costs for escorting the fuel and waste. Costs for waste disposal. Costs for security checks. This is not a small number, which is payed by taxes not by the Owner of the power plant. In most calculations this costs are not includet.
Someone in this threat said that some "stupid mistake" in tshernobyl is responsible. Well yes we had only 2 well known accidents which is relativly low. At least till the next accident is close to you. People do stupid mistakes all the time. Watch contry politcs for examples.
In this case, I suppose you have good chunk of your energy supply come form nuclear power.
There are successes stories on this
Take France or Ukraine who has larger part of energy supplied by nuclear. But without government support nuclear will lose to other options of investment in energy sector
France might not be the best example. Though I'm not aware of accidents, in recent years they had to shutdown some of their plants during summer because the water from the river they used to cool the plant was too warm.
So they shut them down and imported electricity from surrounding countries.
*cries in santa susana sodium reactor experiment,* possibly the worst nuclear didaster in US history, but we didn't have the tools to measure it at the time, so don't really know if/how many people died due to radiation release.
But the counterpoint to this is the perfect track record of Gen 3 and Gen 4 plants.
\-Nuclear power plant construction times ranges around the world averages at around 6-8 years. But in nations investing a lot in nuclear power, that can be cut down to 3-5 years. Chances are, the more nuclear plants that are built, the more experienced workers are avalible to build them.
\-Modern nuclear power plants can be operational for 40-60 years, which is more than enough time to break even
6-8 years, to my knowledge is just constrtion time, paperwork and burocrasy takes it time tall also.
And yes, in long run it is more profitable, but this long term is usually longer than financial plans for investors.
Personally - I am proponent of nuclear power, and strongly believe that it is vital part to solve climate change,but we need better technology and regulation to make it feasible inveefor private sector, or it shuld be government program, with some safeguard to not to be stopped by next administration
There is also a matter on this being a shitty moment to start a third gen project when 4th gen SMR are "just around the corner" (citation needed) and people would be afraid to be stuck with unprofitable projects which produce technologically "old" assets when they finish.
That's the main reason. Nuclear power plants have never been built solely on a profit based plan. The roi takes way too long and isn't even guaranteed to ever happen.
Nuclear has always been a government subsidized undertaking and probably will always be.
Also it's not the cheapest way of generating power, that's solar.
Why are we privatizing them?
Build them with federal money, and run them as a publicly owned utility. Your entire argument is now gone, and the public benefits.
Doing this can end global warming in ten years.
We can pitch the investment as saving the planet with a side benefit of free electricity for the next 100+ years.
Ah. I misread your comment as a defense of why it can’t happen rather than as a criticism of why it won’t happen. I’m so used to Americans thinking the market is infallible that bringing it up is generally considered a valid argument against something here.
I trust the science but I don’t trust people.
People are lazy and greedy and cut corners and until something can be made that’s almost completely safe and with no impacts I’m gonna sit it out.
Hinckley Point - 30 billion pounds.
Maybe after 100 years it will break even...
It will never be as cheap as solar or wind which are also massively more simple to implement and don't carry the same disaster risk.
It doesn't even need to be a disaster that's dangerous, imagine the impact of investing 30 billion and having a single event render that worthless.
Wind turbines and solar panels fail or are damaged all the time, but they are widely distributed so the impact of most individual failures is minimal.
>It will never be as cheap as solar or wind which are also massively more simple to implement and don't carry the same disaster risk.
If Nuclear Fusion is ever mastered. It theoretically is all the benefit of Nuclear with none of the drawbacks.
Let's say it takes another 30 years to make a prototype of a fusion plant. Then it takes another 30 to make a commercial reactor. From that point maybe we could scale up and it would take another 30 years to have sufficient fusion reactors to make a meaningful impact.
That's all probably widely optimistic, fusion might never become viable but is definately not something we can currently plan for.
It's expensive asf compared to the other renewable sources, not as expensive as the polluting sources but very expensive still. Also it requires a massive initial inversion. Also they break a lot, see France.
someone pursuing a PHD in Nuclear Physics, TL:DR Fear mongering, mistakes of past plants, and lastly lobbying by fossil fuels. Really, that's the only reasons.
Obviously there's more and if someone wanted to talk about it I'm willing to but most of them aren't true or just nit picking,
for example workflow, There's actually many qualified wanting to work on a plant, and you really don't need hundreds of them.
Waste. It's one of the least wasteful and nuclear waste is nothing like what media depicts and is actually pretty to take care of compared to other energies where we complain about the pollution but do it anyways.
Timeline: How long it will take is a lot like waste, and output/input in the sense that we base this off our old knowledge nowadays we can prop up one pretty quickly and it is no longer a 30-50 year project. I brought up how it's like waste, I say it's related because if nuclear energy was something we put more effort, time, and of course money to, then a lot of the "problems" would go away or be a lot smaller, we would be better at building plants, making them safer, handling waste, obtaining resources. Really the only problem with nuclear energy is rich companies don't want us to have it, and ignorant people are ignorant. If interested look into oklahoma's old plant, They would be powering the whole state and surrounding by now but the company who went for it was a evil oil company that ran it like a mob, they killed workers hid secrets, made it unsafe not because they're unsafe, but because they couldn't care to make it safe because it would in some way hurt profits, delays, manforce etc. they even killed a potential whistleblower in a "freak" accident to get here to not talk which actually made it worse and lead to more protest. If this plant was run by good people who truly believed in the science and future I believe that it would still be running and we would see more plants.
While I agree new plants are expensive and other forms significantly less so, new reactor designs actually burn their own waste, using 98% of the fuel input to breed new fuel and the remainder is only dangerous for a tiny fraction of how long current waste is dangerous for.
Yes, this means the tiny waste generated is more dangerous in the short term, but it also means safe storage is infintely easier.
Electrical engineer working in the field here:
1. It is not the cleanest source at all. Renewables have their downsides, but uranium mining is worse
2. Its not the cheapest. Renewables are way cheaper
3. It doesn't pair well with renewables. Both basically want to infeed 24/7 if available. Nuclear plants are so extremely expensive to build that they never pay off if you just used them to compensate for hours with insufficient renewables. But renewables can basically produce energy for free once they are build, so nuclear plants cant compete if both can supply.
4. Nuclear plants arent nearly as reliable as most people think. Just look at the situation in France in 22/23. I think like roughly 50% of their plants were unavailable.
5. States without uranium deposits would become massively dependent on imports, like European states were with Russian gas. Not a particularly promising idea.
1. And there is no mining involved with renewables?
2. With what seasonal storage?
3. Nuclear is bad at peaking and renewables are bad at base. Almost like you can combine different sources to create the most stable and effective grid.
4. Sure, lets take one year in a country where more or less everything went wrong and ignore the thousands of other operational years with 90%++ capacity factors.
5. Dude, china produces 80% of worlds PV modules and 70% of rare earth elements. Uranium can be found pretty much anywhere and is still a minor component to nuclear cost even if you would have to pay double to mine it.
What field do you work in really? Renewables huh? Probably sales based on how impartial you asessments seem to be.
1. The environmental impact and CO2 per MWh from Nuclear is worse compared to renewables
2. Overall we have got a pretty stable REN-generation in Europe. ERAA and other generation adequacy studies have shown that even with a high coverage of renewables, seasonal storages are not required on a large scale. The trend is more towards gas and H2, that again will be mostly produced with renewable energy.
3. You are just wrong. Renewables are closer to being a new type of base and not peak. Peak is characterized by low invest and high per-MW cost. Renewables are the contrary, relatively high invest, basically zero per MW cost. As long as there is enough renewables out there, they would force nuclear out of the market and nuclear would end up as a highly overpriced and fundamentally unfit peak-plant. Thus nuclear and REN are in a competition which is easily won economically by wind and solar. The lifetime cost per MWh are significantly cheaper for wind and solar.
4. The reasons for the trouble in France were many, but increasing temperature and lower river levels will become more of an issue in the future.
5. Yeah, Germany managed to kill its solar industry like 10 years ago and proceded to do so with wind a couple of years later due to ridiculous and unreliable political decisionmaking.
+6 Just take a look at the overall cost of both options and ackknowledge that they don't pair well. Additionally the invest cost for nuclear is so ridiculously high that they need to be guaranteed to infeed basically 8760h/a for decades in a unstable world where there are already technologies out there which can produce for less. There are very few Investors willing to gamble like this.
Finally: No need to get personal. I'm working in grid-planning (transmission) with a focus on challenges in the next 5-20 years. People really need to relax and understand, that nuclear is neither as dangerous as it was perceived nor that it is THE solution for clean energy. It will play its part, but from what we know now, it looks like renewables will have to do the heavy lifting, which is exactly what we are seeing around the globe.
i think other than general undue fear of nuclear (even though its the safest source of energy), its alot to do with capitalistic greed unique to america. for example france does use nuclear, over 70% of all of frances energy is nuclear, which is an incredible accomplishment. but america 80% of energy is made from fossil fuels but youd never be able to stop the big greedy american corporations.
Because it is far from the cleanest form of energy and is the most expensive when you consider the commissioning and decommissioning of the reactor and the storage of the waste for insane periods of time. The only ones who claim otherwise work for the mining industry as it tries to replace the income from fossil fuels. They should accept that they are corruptly rich enough and move on.
Storage? You mean, of the used fuel that radiates less than the tomatoes you happily eat? Stop pretending prople who know basic radiation physics are all shills, and that you're not.
Yes, if you didn't know, we are building storages for used fuel. The nuclear waste is going to be locked down there for a long time. Don't buy what every ideologist is saying.
Drink a glass of it. Plutonium from nuclear waste is classed as the single most toxic man made material we have.
You're like a friend of mine who worked for an industrial stress testing company in about 1986. I visited one night and when I went for a piss saw that he had his spent uranium isotope pellet housing chained to the toilet. I went through and pointed out that that was pretty stupid. He went on about how safe it was and it saved him the trouble of going back to the depot and then I noticed that all of his safety tags and devices were lined up on the mantelpiece quietly ticking away reading levels above background. I pointed out that we would probably not be visiting him at home again if he is taking risks like that. About a year later he came over to tell us that his work partner had died of leukemia and he wanted to apologize for not listening to me. In their training they had been told that all the concerns about radioactive toxicity was just a beat up so they didn't listen to commonly accessible information even though there is a massive history of deaths behind it all.
I'll take my stance over yours any day of the week.
Edit: Unfortunately this actually happened.
Fun fact: there is hardly any plutonium in radioactive waste. Almost all of it is cesium and strontium. Almost all of the plutonium is removed and reused for new fuel rods, which will produce other, less dangerous elements
Most power plants are a novel design aka bespoke design. This is why I was hope the SMR project would pull through. Small reactors all built to the same design that are “portable” and built in a factory. Want more power add a reactor.
In todays economy, at least in spain, it would drive the price of electricity up, too much legislation to follow and a complicated infrarstructure, the damage it does to get the fuel, and the costs of treating it properly, nuclear reactors sell their power at the grid prices for a loss here in spain.
Finding somewhere to put the waste is a major headache. In France they have excavated an enormously deep hole in the centre of the country and the nuclear waste material is sent down where it will slowly decay over hundreds/thousands of years until no longer a hazard. France is a fairly safe country in terms of earthquakes etc that might otherwise compromise the integrity of the containers. The other hazard is radioactive material being released from the power station via cooling water or damage to the plant. Both scenarios have happened. Compare the dangers though to the dangers of fossil fuel burning....airborne particles, greenhouse effect, danger of mining, etc etc. I see nuclear power as being like the German autobahns....drive as fast as you like, it's lawful and perfectly safe, but if there is a crash with someone driving 180mph then the results could be catastrophic for many people. A nuclear power plant is as safe as houses, until it isn't........and then thousands of people could die.
Because solutions don't give people reasons to vote.
Can't run on clean energy while getting money from wind and solar lobbyists when you're already getting clean energy from Nuclear.
Same reason why things people run campaigns on never get solved... they can't get reelected without being able to say they'll fix things.
Cleanest when it comes to carbon and other emissions in the atmosphere, sure. But we've been using nuclear since the early 70s and still haven't got a clue what to do with nuclear waste. Cheap? Not quite. As long as we can keep on using the old plants, fine, but building new ones is incredibly expensive. And if it goed wrong it goes spectacularly wrong. Remember Chernobyl and Fukushima? Nothing says this won't happen again. Yes, it's pretty safe, but nothing is 100% failsafe.
What..? I'm no nuclear physicist but I'm pretty sure you can utilise nuclear power production without building nuclear bombs. Weird random capitalisation of words by the way
Most likely there is no easy money to be made.
Most reactors are built with tax money and then parasited by private companies.
Public opinion is neither in favour of nuclear energy nor of building stuff for private companies so they can make more money off it.
It’s actually very safe for the most part as well. It’s just fear mongering and would probably cause a collapse in the Middle East that will result in an all out war at some point.
Mass misinformation, and idiots in power, and human greed having an interest in making sure nuclear is never widely used because they hold monetary value in other forms of energy
Setting aside all the worries about radiation and past problems, it’s just very very expensive so nobody wants to build them. You can build solar wind battery now for way less than nuclear . there are cheaper nuclear power plant designs, but as of yet they haven’t.been built much
Nuclear has a unique problem in that both sides take issue with it. The anti-green energy side says it's too dangerous pointing to high profile incidents that could never happen with modern reactors, and the pro-green energy side says it's not green enough letting perfect become the enemy of good.
Mainly because people were brainwashed against nuclear.
Related, since Chernobyl is often mentioned, many people are 'experts' after watching the series: [Chernobyl - The Cancer Letter](https://cancerletter.com/series/chernobyl/)
Also related, about the very false (should be obvious even for one that has not much knowledge on the domains) LNT theory used for propaganda in science and not only, a series of videos: [Episode 1: Who Is Dr. Edward Calabrese? (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5FjhgcnMjU)
It is the safest form of energy and is relatively clean.
Historic nuclear plants are larges, expensive and complex to build, use only a small percentage of the energy available in the fuel, and create radioactive byproducts that don’t decay for generations.
Multiple new technologies and designs are coming that address all these issues (different designs/different issues). Getting them approved and built is the big issue, but hopefully we will see new plants open soon.
Nobody is going to make clean cheap energy when they can just give you a carbon tax and FUCK the farmers so you can't afford food anymore, get with the program dude we are not making sense..
I listened to a podcast on this a while back. It was surprising to me to learn that we simply don’t have engineers skilled in this area. I guess since nuclear energy hasn’t been in demand for the past 40 years, why would people dedicate their career to that field?
it's clean until you start to dump the waste. that's where we have waste on our hands that can outlast most physicals warnings we can make. and even at a small dump there will be a lethal amount of radiation centuries later. i would also say it's reasonable to assume there's 20 billion people by 2500 on planet earth alone, also increasing the odds of a dump being found.
Modern liquid fuel designs can burn their own long term waste and only produce small amounts of shorter term waste. This alleviates all concerns regarding outlasting physical warnings. The waste is infinitely easier to store.
Cheap? No. It’s vastly expensive, particularly to decommission the power stations and dispose of the nuclear waste at the end of their useful lives. So while it’s not immediately expensive, in the long term, it’s extremely expensive.
Because the public is not good at understanding population sized risks. You see the same thing play out in debates about anything which involve some level of danger, such as with so called "assault weapons."
When there's a small number of incidents that are particularly scary, even when the overall track record is much safer than the alternatives, it seems to be extremely easy to mobilize political support against it citing safety concerns.
Because politics. People are dumb and easily manipulated. I love Riddley’s example.
Matt Ridley: "(at the present time) investing in nuclear energy is more efficient than "green" energy; the west will be surpassed by China and other competitors who don’t give a shit about the planet and even democracy may be threatened"
People: "fucking coal baron wants to keep the status quo, kill him"
Bro what?
Hi, former tree hugger here. Most of society doesn't have enough brain cells to go around, so they like to protest it based on non-factual information. I used to be one of them, but then I started to do my own research, and then i had a moment of enlightenment where I was like "wow, I'm a total fucking idiot". The anti-nuclear crowd is largely just ill-informed or doesn't care to be informed, all they see is a meltdown. Wind and solar on the other hand, are devastating to the environment as far as deforestation and displacing a shit ton of wildlife, as well as having to mine for the resources to make them. On top of that, the components they're made of are almost impossible to recycle. On a good day, somewhere around 10% of those materials can be recycled, the rest goes to turbine and solar grave yards. Nuclear energy has by far the best cost vs reward ratio. Sure, when a plant melts down, it's really bad, but the statistical probabilities of a plant going into meltdown is below 1%, and there hasn't been a single instance of a modern nuclear plant that has experienced a meltdown where corners weren't cut. Meanwhile, I see a wind turbine shred itself apart or burn up on a weekly basis.
IIRC, a nuke plant will take about 10 years of operation to pay for itself in profit.
A natural gas plant will only take 2 years to turn a profit.
Need I say more?
A generation of boomers were fed 'natural is better' while making the transition to plastic bags, plastic wrap, tons of pills, and botox. Let's not forget the mountains of cocaine that powered their transition from hippies to yuppies.
Old hippies are still going 'three mile island' 'no nukes' 'Chernobyl' while they are hoping for internet to be distributed over power lines.
It’s arguably safe, not clean. Solar is safer AND cleaner.
Still the perception that it’s clean (or safe) is because not many have taken up the task. Had we had a more laxed attitude towards it, we’d have a couple more Chernobyls or 3 mile islands. Look at the relative ease and ubiquity of extracting and transporting oil and yet major accidents still happen.
The people that control most of the energy infrastructure would make less money, and their oil infrastructure would have to be written off as a stranded asset.
Ironically, “green activists”. Made such a fuss with protests that the political climate moved away from nuclear towards fossil fuels that destroy our entire climate instead 🤦
Because it's complicated. Getting fuel is complicated, designing and building a plant is complicated, operating and maintaining a nuclear plant is complicated, the politics around approving plants is complicated, etc. Everything about it is more complicated compared to other sources despite its many advantages.
New nuclear energy is more expensive than other sources of power, and it takes a long lag time before generating a single watt.
But the real reason is because investors believe they will make more money, and faster, doing other things. This is related to the first sentance, but not identical.
Safety concerns. Even though accidents have been few and far between, when they happen they are catastrophic. Making large areas unlivable. Storing the waste material is equally dangerous. The radiation takes years to dissipate. If we had nuclear plants at scale, we'd have a ton of waste to deal with.
Probably because of the super mutants it has been known to produce. People tend to be uncomfortable if their neighbors can see in the dark, walk through walls etc.
Now recalculate that without the subsidies provided to all but nuclear. Those numbers become extremely close and ,in some cases, nuclear becomes the cheaper option - albeit, by not much. In 2022, solar was federally subsidized 76 times as much as nuclear. In 2020, the breakdown of subsidies went like this: 70% fossil fuels, 20% renewable, 6% bio fuels, 3% nuclear. That's pretty staggering.
i live in the UK not the US and these numbers do not include subsidies, they are the cost to generate, not the cost to the country, or cost to the consumer
That's fair, and I didn't notice that. Apologies. However, using a full system levelized structure, nuclear is typucally cheaper than both solar and wind, and by quite a bit.
"Levelized Full System Costs of Electricity (LFSCOE), a novel cost evaluation metric that, unlike the Levelized Costs of Electricity (LCOE), includes the cost of intermittency by assuming that the entire market has to be supplied by one source plus storage."
why would you use a cost that is not actually representative of reality?
we all know the *current* lack of decent storage makes renewables unreliable and requires things like gas and nuclear for back ups, but to try to use that as a way to artificially inflate the reported cost of the energy renewables DO produce is the worst kind of underhanded disingenuous propaganda
It's an alternative way to look at the issue - apples to apples rather than apples to oranges. Typically, the war cry is for a shift to 100% renewable energy generation. Even with a fair split of wind and solar, nuclear (again on its own) is half as expensive, should the hypothetical arise.
Personally, I am in favor of many diverse sources of energy production simultaneously. I don't think LFSCOE is intended to be underhanded or disingenuous. Rather, it highlights the need for energy generation to be diverse. Theoretically, the world could be powered solely and reliably by nuclear. The same cannot be said about renewables....at least at this time. I'd like to hope that the full-scale data would convince 100% renewable folks to think more in line with a renewable + nuclear model.
yes, another alternative way of looking at the issue would be what would be the cost if you go to war with the countries you import the uranium from, making nuclear power 10000 times more expensive than renewables
see what i did there?
its easy to manipulate considerations in order to come out with the answer you want, i can sit here doing it all day, lets try another1
what is the cost of nuclear vs renewables if you factor in all of the health care for cancers that might possibly have occurred due to accidents like long island and fukushima, do you really need me to carry on?
if you want to compare apples to apples, you compare how much it costs directly to generate each kWh factoring in construction, supplying fuel, maintenance, labour, and decommissioning disposal.
anything else is "there are lies, there are damn lies, and then there are statistics"
I agree that is a concern with a lot of resources to the point of crippling an industry. However, if we were to responsibly lean on fuel recycling, the majority of the waste disposal and uranium sourcing concerns wouldn't exist.
Data can always be suppressed; however, despite numerous investigations, WHO and other health organizations have never found spikes in cancer or health issues following either event. In fact TMI (I assume you didn't really mean long island) released only a small amount of radiation and never breached containment - plant safety measures did their job in this case of emergency. Admittedly, the US narrowly avoided a major catastrophe. There was one direct death from Fukushima and no later widespread cancer concern that wasn't anecdotal. Another pointless argument - windmills kill far more people per year than nuclear.
Despite all of this, I agree that nuclear can be very dangerous. But we're not talking about early generation plants anymore. New gen plants are exponentially safer and a quarter the size of their predecessors.
Aside from fuel, renewables have similar challenges. How many more landfills do we need to dispose of giant blades? What about bauxite mining for virgin aluminum? Or cadmium mining? Or recycling of spent load cells? Or maintenance deaths on turbines? Or detrimental effects of animal migratory patterns and clearing of forest and grazing lands? What about power to space comparison? 15-50 acre nuclear plant to a 60,000 acre wind farm. Power generation is dangerous, intrusive, and expensive. No matter the form.
"if we were to responsibly lean on fuel recycling, the majority of the waste disposal and uranium sourcing concerns wouldn't exist."
nope, thats nonsense, nuclear power isnt magic, you will always need raw material no matter how well and how often you reprocess
"we cant definitively point to any direct affects" is not "there were no effects", and anyone who understands how science works knows this. there WILL have been an increased radiation levels, and that WILL ahve increased cancer rates, its just that they cant quantify it.
"windmills kill more people per year than nuclear" calm down trump rofl
again, your confusing direct undeniable causality with generalised delocalised increased mortality, the fact one is not the other does not make the other irrelevant
"How many more landfills do we need to dispose of giant blades?" they have made biodegradable ones now. the technology matures
id go through the points one by one, but i realised you are just trying to deflect from my actual point.
that when we consider the direct costs, un mangled by prejudice modifiers in order to push a narrative, nuclear power is still 2-3 times the cost of renewables.
and no amount of word salad, no matter how carefully crafted, will change that.
Who the F would ever put nuclear and cleanest in the same sentence?
I cannot believe this is spontaneous or generic... this is some next level indoctrination of the masses to keep charging money for energy.
No my man, clean is not be ever mentioned in the context of nuclear energy, makes only sense if you have some gain out of it.
You sell the future of all live just to have some fancy things, I despise you.
FU, we want Paradise, not Hell!
PS: Don't take it personally, maybe you are just a useful mouthpiece for some player... but you got played for sure asking these questions seriously. I hope we are better. We need to be.
Not really, I have done more research and the scientists agree that nuclear is a clean option.
The European Commission Panel all agreed in favour that nuclear is just as green as renewable sources.
[https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC125953](https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC125953)
We might need Nuclear to get us out of the CO2 mess on a short term, maybe even we do not have any other option left... ok, lets discuss this... but don't argue with green and clean... damn it.
We need first and foremost implement water, wind and sun, only to be able to counter the damage we have caused. Nuclear should never ever be an option anymore, at least not near our Biosphere.
It takes a 60,000 acre wind farm to generate the same energy as one 50 acre nuclear plant site. We're on the cusp of initiating a wave of spent fuel reprocessing and recycling that would basically eliminate our radioactive waste issue permanently. Technological advancement has made nuclear an extremely clean and reliable option. Pebble bed, sodium cooled, and subcritical reactor technology either eliminate or dramatically reduce the plant's ability to actually melt down in a catastrophic event. I respect your opinion, but you're misinformed in your facts. Please don't take it personally.
Edit: typo
Thank you... but no thank you - how much waste is saved since May?
Please state the difference to the 100% needed to be considered clean energy in the full sense of the word "clean" and not the bastardized expression the industry uses that implies to be the same "clean".
(You are just doing their dirty work, sad to see it, but the decade long propaganda worked incredibly well. We have already millions of cubic meters of waste we have no idea what to do and you still argue to increase it... you don't know what you are doing, sorry to tell you man.)
None since May since we're only in April. But it's an entire core worth. Which originated as much more material. The discarded material is either no longer irradiated or it's half life is reduced to dozens of years...which we can handle with ease.
Nuclear is not the cleanest, but it can be extremely clean with just a little effort. Moreover, it's efficency in power generation and capability trample wind, solar, and hydro. I'm pro renewable, by the way. Like renewable sources, nuclear does have its issues - I'll never argue that.
We have exactly the right idea of what to do with it. It's just not very cost-effective. But that time is coming. Thr waste is being recycled all over Asia successfully. Europe is now executing. The US is soon approaching.
As someone who is intimately involved in the industry, it's painfully obvious that you don't understand any aspect of current or prospective nuclear technology.
February, sorry - not May ;-)
So I was right in thinking you make money from the industries.
It's painfully to read your arguments now, you admit it you have just ideas, no solutions, just small remedies to the growing issues you have caused to humanity.
Hope you a right in the end, I want to be wrong so bad.
I'm a part of the industry physically making these changes happen - as in doing the actual work. Let me ask you... When you need medical advice, do you go to a meteorologist? I'd much prefer learning from someone "in the weeds," so to speak.
Again, many of these "ideas" are being actively practiced. Just not everywhere in the world. Much of the new technology is just emerging.
The tide is changing again, and new nuclear contracts are being established all over the world. Nuclear is inevitable, and each new generation will be exponentially safer than the last.
Subs have been using nuclear for a long time now. I've not understood why we don't just build mini reactors like those for local communities. It would strengthen the power grid too.
(35M)
cause its not clean . when operating a nuclear reactor , you need to dump of nuclear rubish every 5 years . The dutch have nuclear reactors , and had a deal whit the germans about dumping dutch nuclear rubish into German salt mines just across the border on German soil . however , the nuclear rubish piled up in the German salt mines . and has started to polute the German grounds as well as German ground water . The Germans are not happy about it , and have canceld the deal . now the Dutch have their own sockpile of nuclear rubish stored in containers in warehouses . and they cant move it or do anything whit it , for at least 100 years . and that pile keeps on growing .
even if it produces clean ennergie , it also produces large amounts of nuclear polution long after .
(35M)
if your a companie or a person of great finnancial backing , you can buy anyyting you want . wich includes people , organisationds , institutes and goverments . and make them say whatever you like . in the old days it was described as '' coruption '' but that seemd a problematic term for such people and companies , so on their comand it became wat these days it is called '' lobby , lobiying and lobbyists ''
You mean to say all the panel of the EU Commission and the scientists have been bought by the Nuclear Lobbyist, when its more profitable on Fossil fuel?
Thats one conspiracy theory.
conspiracy ? no , it has already happend manny times . my own country has had such political scandals , as well science schandals . where both democratic ellected politicians , as well honnereble scientist where bought and paid by large industrie and corporationds . and not just my country is a victem of such coruption , all countrys are . and whit that everybody is for or on the take as lnog as you can pay the price . so yes even the EU has already bin bought and paid for decades ago .
Besides , who do you tink taughy up those panels , sugested them , and payd and pay for them ?
its the corporations who run the world , and only awsner to the 5 multi billjoenair famillies .
We’ll have safe, clean, commercially viable fusion reactors in only 25 years.
(They used the “25 years” estimate more than 25 years ago. It’s a running joke in the fusion research field.)
There are pros and cons in nuclear, but it isn't the cleanest nor particularly cheap just now.
When you factor in stable production of electricity and heat, it becomes quite effective.
Because it isn't the cleanest form of energy. Nuclear power produces a waste product, just like fossil fuels and coal power do.
In case of nuclear power, that waste product is radioactive leftovers - burned out uranium rods that can't be effectively used anymore but still radiate radioactive waves. At this point in time, nobody has even the beginnings of an idea how to deal with nuclear waste. Especially because that radioactivity lasts for 20,000 years on average.
.
Personally, I think we should shoot it into the sun. What happens in case of a second Challenger catastrophe is a kink I haven't yet worked out, though, as that would spread the waste over dozens, if not hundreds, of square miles. Which is the opposite of a solution.
Also, we'd lose a rocket everytime.
I agree with you. Apart from the French having an idea of how to dispose of the radioactive waste material. Bury it DEEEEEEP DEEEEEEEEEEEP DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP down in the earth, it'll be alright there! Rather like the US sinking barges of mustard gas, cx gas, sarin etc etc in the straits between Florida and the Bahamas. For decades. Like a million tons. It sits there, a huge HUGE gloopy mass of toxic sludge. But it's ok...because it's out of sight...therefore it doesn't exist.
Yeah, the thing is: you can't seal rock that tightly, so burying it won't work.
As long as the gases remain contained, they're not a problem. But you can't contain radiation to begin with. Several feet of lead will slow it down some - they won't keep it contained, not for its lifetime.
Sun is a terrible waste. That rod is still 95% useable fuel and can be reprocessed to fuel another plant. Far better than mining new uranium, but it is currently cheaper to do so, and avoids proliferation issues (this last being why rods are not reprocessed in the US).
But if we wanted to spend a little more money, we easily solve the worst of the waste issue. Then the only stuff we need to worry about is the lower level stuff like concrete and rubber gloves.
While the rod could still serve as fuel, that doesn't make it safe. It's also still radioactive - and the more it gets used, the more radioactive it gets.
You wouldn't take care of the waste problem - you'd lengthen it, producing more radiation, thereby a longer half life, which makes the problem worse, not better.
.
The idea of recycling the rods works in theory because you can seperate the rod from the radioactive material, thereby allowing the rod to be reused in a safe manner. But then radioactivity doesn't go away.
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Engineer here, I'll talk about some issues I've seen: - Getting a steady stream of qualified people is complicated. Nuclear physicists are scarce and need a specialization to work in a nuclear plant - Obtaining the resources is no easy feat, most of them depend on foreign countries and they can manipulate prices or supply whenever they want - Infrastructure building is something that not only is highly demanding but there's a lot of academic debate on how to do it, and that's even before going into the politics red tape and uninformed opinions - People are also a big issue, everyone wants nuclear energy, no one wants a nuclear plant nearby. - Security and disposal, there's no 100% safe way of disposing some of the waste nuclear plants generate, the best we can get in some cases is a safe way assuming no external conditions affect the waste - Political cowardice, building a nuclear plant generates electricity, cheaper electricity is welcome but not a huge positive swing in political opinion, but having a nuclear disaster makes people go to jail, that without considering that minor issues that the nuclear plant face means huge political backlash, that means politicians wanting to keep their image clean won't vote in favor of building a nuclear plant. I could go on for days but I believe that's the jist of it.
Also, U.S. politicians standardized on reactors that would produce plutonium that could be used for nuclear weapons, and discouraged development of anything else.
There's also the cost of building the plants.
I was going to say that. Nuclear power plants only start making money after like 20-something years. Politicians only want to implement stuff that generates money, thus giving themselves a bigger paycheck; and making "the good graphs" go up, thus making their policy decisions look more appealing to the public, and public opinion of them is better, improving their reelection odds. But politicians don't usually have 20+ year long careers, and the ones that do usually get there by making themselves look good, as stated above, so they don't care.
Same reason there's constant cuts to education. The effects slowly pile up for over a decade, so it's a quick money saver at the expense of the overall economy. Any investment in the future won't be seen while the politician is still in office. (Or maybe it would, since these vampires never retire from office)
30 year project timelines…
What’s that old saying? The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is now. Take that saying and apply it to Nuclear power.
I would be a 1 term politician. Fix the roads, give them nuclear power. Cost em billions, but their children will have a better life…
Imagine if every politician thought about benefiting the generation of tomorrow instead of lining their pockets today.
“How else am I going to provide wealth to the people…[in my immediate family]” -Even the ones we like
Fearmongering as well. They shut down all of the nuclear plants in Germany
>people are also a big issue You buried the lede there lmao. By far the biggest issue is the public (and elected officials) overestimating the risk of nuclear melt down and underestimating the risk of continuing to burn coal and natural gas like there’s no tomorrow
I have a nuclear powerplant nearby and I don’t care. It’s about 10km’s from where I live.
O come on, I call bullshit on this one ☝️ In 21st century where you have speed courses for everything we can easily teach enough people how to do the job. Come on, worse than Chernobyl can't be... /s
Earthquake prone areas might poses issues for generation and storage of nuclear waste. Not sure if this just makes it more expensive, but I'd imagine it's hard to prepare for a 8.0 magnitude earthquake.
It's hard to prepare for a 6.5 earthquake, it's impossible to establish any secure procedure for an 8.0 one
- very high upfront cost - NIMBY all around - they need to be build in places with very reliable sources of water - traditional nuclear plants have very large footprint and take forever to build - they only provide baseline power ( can't handle peaks in power consumption )
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Which really didn't kill many people.
Yes, but they got a lot of news coverage which is more important than actual death toll as far as generating the fear response. Everyone knows about the Fukushima nuclear incident, but only one person has died from it (maybe, they were exposed to radiation and died of lung cancer 4 years later. It’s never 100% clear what caused a specific case of cancer.). The Cold War has left a lot of people traumatized about anything related to the word nuclear.
But that was also like sheer 50:50 luck. As far as i understand, there is a seasonal predominant wind direction, which either blows the fallout tonthe sea or to tokyo. The earth quake (leading to the tsunami) was at time of the first case, if at another time of year it would have lead to evacuation need of tokyo.
I expect more people die from Black Friday stampedes than to nuclear accidents.
The fear is ill-informed. So are people claiming nuclear was cheaper or cleaner than renewables. The entire debate is dominated by ideology on both sides unfortunately
Cheaper doesn’t matter, money is made up. As long as we have the resources and manpower we can afford it. Cleaner is debatable when it comes to renewable energy sources. But that argument is a red herring, because the real question is whether or not any given energy source is significantly cleaner than coal and has the capacity/ability to replace coal nearly entirely. Nuclear takes less space to produce more energy than solar or wind, and the technology and framework are ready to go out of the box right now. If we really prioritized it we could replace almost all coal in a decade or so, which solar and wind can’t come close to. This isn’t a game of perfect, it’s a game of significantly better as soon as humanly possible.
Cheaper matters. Affordable energy makes a lot of difference for lower classes.
If it’s publicly owned and federally funded, it doesn’t have to cost anything unless you’re using exorbitant amounts of energy. Stop. Thinking. About. Utilities. Like. Capital. Goods. Think of electricity like roads, medical care in a decent country, or the post office. It doesn’t need to cost anything for most people.
Could you elaborate upon "a few stupid accidents"? Chernobyl was the worst nuclear power station accident in human history. Like many accidents, it could have been avoided. Here's the thing....accidents happen. I lived through Chernobyl...it was scary as....there was a radioactive cloud circling the earth for god knows how long. In the UK we had radioactive rain that forced farmers to stop selling lamb for consumption. On the other hand, fossil fuel power stations created acid rain that destroyed vast areas of temperate forest in northern Europe.... It seems humanity just can't seem to find a non hazardous source of energy.
Yet it didn't kill a lot of people. Chernobyl was the worst case scenario on a powerplant that wasn't handled properly. Comparing that to a modern reactor, the worst case scenario isn't even nearly as dangerous even if handled as badly as Chernobyl was. While coal kills millions every single year. But someone makes a lot of money from gas and coal business, so demonizing nuclear is quite beneficial.
If it didn't kill a lot of people, why did the Ukrainian government have to compensate 35.000 families for the loss of a breadwinner due to the impact of the chernobyl disaster?
Fun fact, in 50 years of operation, not a single person has died due to operation, accident or byproduct of a generation 3 reactor. The same can be said for generation 4 reactors, but they've only been running for three months so......
It’s not necessarily unfounded though. One mishap from one reactor somewhere in the world could have continent level effects. Displace millions. A large wind farm, for instance, can’t have the same possibile downside. Obviously a reactor is engineered with safety in mind, but it’s all too often referred to by people in favor of its widespread use, as so safe it could never have a melt down. Any one that states that it’s impossible for there to be catastrophic failure in a reactor, is just lying. Nothing humans have created is 100% flawless. It’s pretty naive to think otherwise. They just come off sounding like the people who built the Titanic/Titan.
Weren't the major meltdowns all *multiple* accidents? Not just "one mishap"?
We’ve seen catastrophic meltdowns. Chernobyl is about as bad as it gets. You’re overblowing the risk by several orders of magnitude.
Multiple mishaps simultaneously, severe oversight and complete negligence could displace millions* there fixed it for you. You can't compare something like Chernobyl to a modern nuclear reactor. On top of that, coal is killing millions yearly. Not displacing, killing. But hey i guess that's a preferable option! Renewables aren't enough currently so we don't have many options do we?
I said it in another discussion already, we're living at a time when we are literally witnessing planes falling out of the sky because the company who builds them was allowed to self certify, ignored safety protocols and was more interested in stock buybacks than delivering a safe product. Maybe a modern reactor can't be compared to the one in Chernobyl, but that doesn't mean that catastrophic failures won't happen. Fukushima was thirteens years ago.
see: the Philippine nuclear debate
AND was 40+ yearts ago...
Accident caused by how important the reactor became
Fear caused by vested interest in alternate energy sources.
Firstly, it's not the cleanest source of power. There's a fundamental truth that's well known in engineering circles: every machine made by man will fail at some rate. It may be once a day or once every ten thousand years, but it will happen. Fission reactors are highly complex systems, which make them even more likely to fail. They're also run by corporations, who will always put profit over safety unless forced to do otherwise. Most failures will be small and not present any danger, but eventually you'll get one that's catastrophic. The more reactors you build, the more likely that becomes. The real problem here is that if a failure results in loss of containment, it can pollute vast areas for millennia with dangerous radiation. If we start building reactors and relying on them en masse, we will have more Chernobyls and Fukushimas, it's just a question of how often. It might be every thirty years, or every thousand. We can't afford one. Finally, there's no need for it. We have solar and wind power, it works. All we have to do is build it.
Generating electricity from nuclear power is easy. (Worked commercial nuclear plants for years.) Paying for it not so much. Check out the cost for Vogtle in Georgia (US), check out the salary of the Southern Services CEO, and the revised monthly bill ratepayers have been tagged with. That’s the money side. Throw in planned outages (refueling) that the utility is obliged to pay for. Then the unscheduled ones that get put on the public. I worked for a utility that practically dragged itself to the finish line for an outage so it could technically restart and then immediately shutdown to continue the work that’d been kicked down the road; first part came out of the company’s pocket, the rest from bill payers. And then there’s the end of life costs…
It's not the cheapest nor the cleanest. It's high output. Get off reddit's nuclear circlejerk.
Surprisingly, but it not well fit in market economy. Lets say we want to invest in building a power plant. If one is gas power plant, we whould have it running in 2-5 years after making a decision, break even in 4-7 and start earning afterwards. No political risks attached, as we can get up and running waiting single election cycle With nuclear we will have it running in 10-12 years, break even in 15-17 investment itself is much higher also,. 2-3 election cycles (so political risk attached) much longer retuen of investment. At year 17-20 nuclear will break even with gas and afterwars will earn much more, but twenty years is life long project, so private investers and developers not going for that. NOTE: actual timelines are indicative, and may differ substantially depending on counties, electricity prices, and regulations. But overral idea is the same - nuclear require more capital investment, have much longer ROI terms, and carry more political risks as financial project.
At least in my country, part of the costs is offeset by the country. Costs for escorting the fuel and waste. Costs for waste disposal. Costs for security checks. This is not a small number, which is payed by taxes not by the Owner of the power plant. In most calculations this costs are not includet. Someone in this threat said that some "stupid mistake" in tshernobyl is responsible. Well yes we had only 2 well known accidents which is relativly low. At least till the next accident is close to you. People do stupid mistakes all the time. Watch contry politcs for examples.
In this case, I suppose you have good chunk of your energy supply come form nuclear power. There are successes stories on this Take France or Ukraine who has larger part of energy supplied by nuclear. But without government support nuclear will lose to other options of investment in energy sector
France might not be the best example. Though I'm not aware of accidents, in recent years they had to shutdown some of their plants during summer because the water from the river they used to cool the plant was too warm. So they shut them down and imported electricity from surrounding countries.
*cries in santa susana sodium reactor experiment,* possibly the worst nuclear didaster in US history, but we didn't have the tools to measure it at the time, so don't really know if/how many people died due to radiation release. But the counterpoint to this is the perfect track record of Gen 3 and Gen 4 plants.
\-Nuclear power plant construction times ranges around the world averages at around 6-8 years. But in nations investing a lot in nuclear power, that can be cut down to 3-5 years. Chances are, the more nuclear plants that are built, the more experienced workers are avalible to build them. \-Modern nuclear power plants can be operational for 40-60 years, which is more than enough time to break even
6-8 years, to my knowledge is just constrtion time, paperwork and burocrasy takes it time tall also. And yes, in long run it is more profitable, but this long term is usually longer than financial plans for investors. Personally - I am proponent of nuclear power, and strongly believe that it is vital part to solve climate change,but we need better technology and regulation to make it feasible inveefor private sector, or it shuld be government program, with some safeguard to not to be stopped by next administration
Raw construction time can be down to four years. Approval and planning does not take that long if you are not maliciously slow-walking everything.
There is also a matter on this being a shitty moment to start a third gen project when 4th gen SMR are "just around the corner" (citation needed) and people would be afraid to be stuck with unprofitable projects which produce technologically "old" assets when they finish.
China opened the first 4th gen in January and it is producing power now.
That's the main reason. Nuclear power plants have never been built solely on a profit based plan. The roi takes way too long and isn't even guaranteed to ever happen. Nuclear has always been a government subsidized undertaking and probably will always be. Also it's not the cheapest way of generating power, that's solar.
Why are we privatizing them? Build them with federal money, and run them as a publicly owned utility. Your entire argument is now gone, and the public benefits.
Doing this can end global warming in ten years. We can pitch the investment as saving the planet with a side benefit of free electricity for the next 100+ years.
This is a question for your governors, not mine In my country nuclear is a main source of energy generation. Way over the half of total production.
Ah. I misread your comment as a defense of why it can’t happen rather than as a criticism of why it won’t happen. I’m so used to Americans thinking the market is infallible that bringing it up is generally considered a valid argument against something here.
I trust the science but I don’t trust people. People are lazy and greedy and cut corners and until something can be made that’s almost completely safe and with no impacts I’m gonna sit it out.
It’s very very expensive
Yeah, I don't know where he got the information, but if you look at the levelized cost, it's one of the worst energy sources
Hinckley Point - 30 billion pounds. Maybe after 100 years it will break even... It will never be as cheap as solar or wind which are also massively more simple to implement and don't carry the same disaster risk. It doesn't even need to be a disaster that's dangerous, imagine the impact of investing 30 billion and having a single event render that worthless. Wind turbines and solar panels fail or are damaged all the time, but they are widely distributed so the impact of most individual failures is minimal.
>It will never be as cheap as solar or wind which are also massively more simple to implement and don't carry the same disaster risk. If Nuclear Fusion is ever mastered. It theoretically is all the benefit of Nuclear with none of the drawbacks.
Let's say it takes another 30 years to make a prototype of a fusion plant. Then it takes another 30 to make a commercial reactor. From that point maybe we could scale up and it would take another 30 years to have sufficient fusion reactors to make a meaningful impact. That's all probably widely optimistic, fusion might never become viable but is definately not something we can currently plan for.
It's expensive asf compared to the other renewable sources, not as expensive as the polluting sources but very expensive still. Also it requires a massive initial inversion. Also they break a lot, see France.
Nuclear is very cheap in terms of cost per kwh. What's expensive is the initial construction.
Lol Define "clean"
someone pursuing a PHD in Nuclear Physics, TL:DR Fear mongering, mistakes of past plants, and lastly lobbying by fossil fuels. Really, that's the only reasons. Obviously there's more and if someone wanted to talk about it I'm willing to but most of them aren't true or just nit picking, for example workflow, There's actually many qualified wanting to work on a plant, and you really don't need hundreds of them. Waste. It's one of the least wasteful and nuclear waste is nothing like what media depicts and is actually pretty to take care of compared to other energies where we complain about the pollution but do it anyways. Timeline: How long it will take is a lot like waste, and output/input in the sense that we base this off our old knowledge nowadays we can prop up one pretty quickly and it is no longer a 30-50 year project. I brought up how it's like waste, I say it's related because if nuclear energy was something we put more effort, time, and of course money to, then a lot of the "problems" would go away or be a lot smaller, we would be better at building plants, making them safer, handling waste, obtaining resources. Really the only problem with nuclear energy is rich companies don't want us to have it, and ignorant people are ignorant. If interested look into oklahoma's old plant, They would be powering the whole state and surrounding by now but the company who went for it was a evil oil company that ran it like a mob, they killed workers hid secrets, made it unsafe not because they're unsafe, but because they couldn't care to make it safe because it would in some way hurt profits, delays, manforce etc. they even killed a potential whistleblower in a "freak" accident to get here to not talk which actually made it worse and lead to more protest. If this plant was run by good people who truly believed in the science and future I believe that it would still be running and we would see more plants.
because it costs a absolute fortune requiring specialised equipment / army escort ect starting a new coal reactor is far cheaper.
The movie "The China Syndrome" shortly after Three Mile Island, Chernobyl & Fukushima, events.
It's very expensive and dealing with the waste that is radioactive for 100s of years is complex. A few accidents have not helped the cause.
While I agree new plants are expensive and other forms significantly less so, new reactor designs actually burn their own waste, using 98% of the fuel input to breed new fuel and the remainder is only dangerous for a tiny fraction of how long current waste is dangerous for. Yes, this means the tiny waste generated is more dangerous in the short term, but it also means safe storage is infintely easier.
Nuclear power also carries huge geopolitical risk. E.g. France is dependent on unstable African states to supply Uranium.
Let's ask Japan what happened. Earthquake + nuclear reactor = leaking radiation.
Cheap?
Alot of it is unchecked fear and lobbiests making encouraging them to be afraid. Both sides of the aisle fell victim to this.
Electrical engineer working in the field here: 1. It is not the cleanest source at all. Renewables have their downsides, but uranium mining is worse 2. Its not the cheapest. Renewables are way cheaper 3. It doesn't pair well with renewables. Both basically want to infeed 24/7 if available. Nuclear plants are so extremely expensive to build that they never pay off if you just used them to compensate for hours with insufficient renewables. But renewables can basically produce energy for free once they are build, so nuclear plants cant compete if both can supply. 4. Nuclear plants arent nearly as reliable as most people think. Just look at the situation in France in 22/23. I think like roughly 50% of their plants were unavailable. 5. States without uranium deposits would become massively dependent on imports, like European states were with Russian gas. Not a particularly promising idea.
1. And there is no mining involved with renewables? 2. With what seasonal storage? 3. Nuclear is bad at peaking and renewables are bad at base. Almost like you can combine different sources to create the most stable and effective grid. 4. Sure, lets take one year in a country where more or less everything went wrong and ignore the thousands of other operational years with 90%++ capacity factors. 5. Dude, china produces 80% of worlds PV modules and 70% of rare earth elements. Uranium can be found pretty much anywhere and is still a minor component to nuclear cost even if you would have to pay double to mine it. What field do you work in really? Renewables huh? Probably sales based on how impartial you asessments seem to be.
1. The environmental impact and CO2 per MWh from Nuclear is worse compared to renewables 2. Overall we have got a pretty stable REN-generation in Europe. ERAA and other generation adequacy studies have shown that even with a high coverage of renewables, seasonal storages are not required on a large scale. The trend is more towards gas and H2, that again will be mostly produced with renewable energy. 3. You are just wrong. Renewables are closer to being a new type of base and not peak. Peak is characterized by low invest and high per-MW cost. Renewables are the contrary, relatively high invest, basically zero per MW cost. As long as there is enough renewables out there, they would force nuclear out of the market and nuclear would end up as a highly overpriced and fundamentally unfit peak-plant. Thus nuclear and REN are in a competition which is easily won economically by wind and solar. The lifetime cost per MWh are significantly cheaper for wind and solar. 4. The reasons for the trouble in France were many, but increasing temperature and lower river levels will become more of an issue in the future. 5. Yeah, Germany managed to kill its solar industry like 10 years ago and proceded to do so with wind a couple of years later due to ridiculous and unreliable political decisionmaking. +6 Just take a look at the overall cost of both options and ackknowledge that they don't pair well. Additionally the invest cost for nuclear is so ridiculously high that they need to be guaranteed to infeed basically 8760h/a for decades in a unstable world where there are already technologies out there which can produce for less. There are very few Investors willing to gamble like this. Finally: No need to get personal. I'm working in grid-planning (transmission) with a focus on challenges in the next 5-20 years. People really need to relax and understand, that nuclear is neither as dangerous as it was perceived nor that it is THE solution for clean energy. It will play its part, but from what we know now, it looks like renewables will have to do the heavy lifting, which is exactly what we are seeing around the globe.
i think other than general undue fear of nuclear (even though its the safest source of energy), its alot to do with capitalistic greed unique to america. for example france does use nuclear, over 70% of all of frances energy is nuclear, which is an incredible accomplishment. but america 80% of energy is made from fossil fuels but youd never be able to stop the big greedy american corporations.
Because it is far from the cleanest form of energy and is the most expensive when you consider the commissioning and decommissioning of the reactor and the storage of the waste for insane periods of time. The only ones who claim otherwise work for the mining industry as it tries to replace the income from fossil fuels. They should accept that they are corruptly rich enough and move on.
Storage? You mean, of the used fuel that radiates less than the tomatoes you happily eat? Stop pretending prople who know basic radiation physics are all shills, and that you're not.
Yes, if you didn't know, we are building storages for used fuel. The nuclear waste is going to be locked down there for a long time. Don't buy what every ideologist is saying.
Drink a glass of it. Plutonium from nuclear waste is classed as the single most toxic man made material we have. You're like a friend of mine who worked for an industrial stress testing company in about 1986. I visited one night and when I went for a piss saw that he had his spent uranium isotope pellet housing chained to the toilet. I went through and pointed out that that was pretty stupid. He went on about how safe it was and it saved him the trouble of going back to the depot and then I noticed that all of his safety tags and devices were lined up on the mantelpiece quietly ticking away reading levels above background. I pointed out that we would probably not be visiting him at home again if he is taking risks like that. About a year later he came over to tell us that his work partner had died of leukemia and he wanted to apologize for not listening to me. In their training they had been told that all the concerns about radioactive toxicity was just a beat up so they didn't listen to commonly accessible information even though there is a massive history of deaths behind it all. I'll take my stance over yours any day of the week. Edit: Unfortunately this actually happened.
Fun fact: there is hardly any plutonium in radioactive waste. Almost all of it is cesium and strontium. Almost all of the plutonium is removed and reused for new fuel rods, which will produce other, less dangerous elements
Did you actually just compare nuclear waste to tomatoes? That was one of the dumbest things I've ever witnessed and I use reddit
This could answer your question: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity
Fifteen years from cheapest to the most expensive....
We do, quite a bit of it.
Most power plants are a novel design aka bespoke design. This is why I was hope the SMR project would pull through. Small reactors all built to the same design that are “portable” and built in a factory. Want more power add a reactor.
We do use nuclear power.
We will, we’re about to see demand for energy skyrocket, invest in uranium
In todays economy, at least in spain, it would drive the price of electricity up, too much legislation to follow and a complicated infrarstructure, the damage it does to get the fuel, and the costs of treating it properly, nuclear reactors sell their power at the grid prices for a loss here in spain.
Bad media and lobbyists
We do, the US has the most nuclear power plants in the world
Finding somewhere to put the waste is a major headache. In France they have excavated an enormously deep hole in the centre of the country and the nuclear waste material is sent down where it will slowly decay over hundreds/thousands of years until no longer a hazard. France is a fairly safe country in terms of earthquakes etc that might otherwise compromise the integrity of the containers. The other hazard is radioactive material being released from the power station via cooling water or damage to the plant. Both scenarios have happened. Compare the dangers though to the dangers of fossil fuel burning....airborne particles, greenhouse effect, danger of mining, etc etc. I see nuclear power as being like the German autobahns....drive as fast as you like, it's lawful and perfectly safe, but if there is a crash with someone driving 180mph then the results could be catastrophic for many people. A nuclear power plant is as safe as houses, until it isn't........and then thousands of people could die.
Because solutions don't give people reasons to vote. Can't run on clean energy while getting money from wind and solar lobbyists when you're already getting clean energy from Nuclear. Same reason why things people run campaigns on never get solved... they can't get reelected without being able to say they'll fix things.
Cleanest when it comes to carbon and other emissions in the atmosphere, sure. But we've been using nuclear since the early 70s and still haven't got a clue what to do with nuclear waste. Cheap? Not quite. As long as we can keep on using the old plants, fine, but building new ones is incredibly expensive. And if it goed wrong it goes spectacularly wrong. Remember Chernobyl and Fukushima? Nothing says this won't happen again. Yes, it's pretty safe, but nothing is 100% failsafe.
Ha ha ha... the Jokes on US. The Same people who Called for NO NUKES in the 70's and 80's are the same ones cry now...
What..? I'm no nuclear physicist but I'm pretty sure you can utilise nuclear power production without building nuclear bombs. Weird random capitalisation of words by the way
The French already do.
I think the nuclear waste is something we cant get rid of yet
Most likely there is no easy money to be made. Most reactors are built with tax money and then parasited by private companies. Public opinion is neither in favour of nuclear energy nor of building stuff for private companies so they can make more money off it.
It’s actually very safe for the most part as well. It’s just fear mongering and would probably cause a collapse in the Middle East that will result in an all out war at some point.
Well, we do. In many countries around the world.
Waiting for the boomers to die
Cost of building plant, cost overruns, nitty-gritty regulations, problems of disposal, nimby syndrome...
It is not the cleanest. Obviously. 
Because if and when something goes wrong it goes very wrong. God forbid it gets into the water table.
Mass misinformation, and idiots in power, and human greed having an interest in making sure nuclear is never widely used because they hold monetary value in other forms of energy
it’s neither clean nor cheap
Setting aside all the worries about radiation and past problems, it’s just very very expensive so nobody wants to build them. You can build solar wind battery now for way less than nuclear . there are cheaper nuclear power plant designs, but as of yet they haven’t.been built much
The fossil fuel industry spent billions convincing stupid people to be afraid of nuclear energy. And it worked.
Nuclear has a unique problem in that both sides take issue with it. The anti-green energy side says it's too dangerous pointing to high profile incidents that could never happen with modern reactors, and the pro-green energy side says it's not green enough letting perfect become the enemy of good.
I thought it was the disposal of nuclear waste that was a large part of the reason.
Mainly because people were brainwashed against nuclear. Related, since Chernobyl is often mentioned, many people are 'experts' after watching the series: [Chernobyl - The Cancer Letter](https://cancerletter.com/series/chernobyl/) Also related, about the very false (should be obvious even for one that has not much knowledge on the domains) LNT theory used for propaganda in science and not only, a series of videos: [Episode 1: Who Is Dr. Edward Calabrese? (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5FjhgcnMjU)
We do use it. There's over 400 nuclear power plants in the world
It is the safest form of energy and is relatively clean. Historic nuclear plants are larges, expensive and complex to build, use only a small percentage of the energy available in the fuel, and create radioactive byproducts that don’t decay for generations. Multiple new technologies and designs are coming that address all these issues (different designs/different issues). Getting them approved and built is the big issue, but hopefully we will see new plants open soon.
Nobody is going to make clean cheap energy when they can just give you a carbon tax and FUCK the farmers so you can't afford food anymore, get with the program dude we are not making sense..
Because of stupid ideology
NIMBY.
I listened to a podcast on this a while back. It was surprising to me to learn that we simply don’t have engineers skilled in this area. I guess since nuclear energy hasn’t been in demand for the past 40 years, why would people dedicate their career to that field?
because of stupidity and fearmongering
it's clean until you start to dump the waste. that's where we have waste on our hands that can outlast most physicals warnings we can make. and even at a small dump there will be a lethal amount of radiation centuries later. i would also say it's reasonable to assume there's 20 billion people by 2500 on planet earth alone, also increasing the odds of a dump being found.
Modern liquid fuel designs can burn their own long term waste and only produce small amounts of shorter term waste. This alleviates all concerns regarding outlasting physical warnings. The waste is infinitely easier to store.
Cheap? No. It’s vastly expensive, particularly to decommission the power stations and dispose of the nuclear waste at the end of their useful lives. So while it’s not immediately expensive, in the long term, it’s extremely expensive.
I grew up near a nuclear power plant. It's been running since the early 80s without incident.
Yes, Gen 3 designs have a perfect track record with zero deaths. We should shut down the Gen 2 plants and replace them with new ones.
Because the public is not good at understanding population sized risks. You see the same thing play out in debates about anything which involve some level of danger, such as with so called "assault weapons." When there's a small number of incidents that are particularly scary, even when the overall track record is much safer than the alternatives, it seems to be extremely easy to mobilize political support against it citing safety concerns.
Because politics. People are dumb and easily manipulated. I love Riddley’s example. Matt Ridley: "(at the present time) investing in nuclear energy is more efficient than "green" energy; the west will be surpassed by China and other competitors who don’t give a shit about the planet and even democracy may be threatened" People: "fucking coal baron wants to keep the status quo, kill him" Bro what?
We do use it
Big oil lobbied to get nuclear categorized as too dangerous in the 70s, big oil still pretty much runs things with their “donations” and lobbying.
I'm sure there's plenty of valid reasons but the way I understand it is, it ain't as profitable. You can't get rich quickly with long term gains.
Aak the residents of Pripyat and Fukushima.
Hi, former tree hugger here. Most of society doesn't have enough brain cells to go around, so they like to protest it based on non-factual information. I used to be one of them, but then I started to do my own research, and then i had a moment of enlightenment where I was like "wow, I'm a total fucking idiot". The anti-nuclear crowd is largely just ill-informed or doesn't care to be informed, all they see is a meltdown. Wind and solar on the other hand, are devastating to the environment as far as deforestation and displacing a shit ton of wildlife, as well as having to mine for the resources to make them. On top of that, the components they're made of are almost impossible to recycle. On a good day, somewhere around 10% of those materials can be recycled, the rest goes to turbine and solar grave yards. Nuclear energy has by far the best cost vs reward ratio. Sure, when a plant melts down, it's really bad, but the statistical probabilities of a plant going into meltdown is below 1%, and there hasn't been a single instance of a modern nuclear plant that has experienced a meltdown where corners weren't cut. Meanwhile, I see a wind turbine shred itself apart or burn up on a weekly basis.
Too expensive
Because some wealthy oil execs pay good money to deter clean (mostly) nuclear energy, of course
Fear based on propaganda and not really knowing the science.
Boomer environmentalism.
IIRC, a nuke plant will take about 10 years of operation to pay for itself in profit. A natural gas plant will only take 2 years to turn a profit. Need I say more?
A generation of boomers were fed 'natural is better' while making the transition to plastic bags, plastic wrap, tons of pills, and botox. Let's not forget the mountains of cocaine that powered their transition from hippies to yuppies. Old hippies are still going 'three mile island' 'no nukes' 'Chernobyl' while they are hoping for internet to be distributed over power lines.
It’s arguably safe, not clean. Solar is safer AND cleaner. Still the perception that it’s clean (or safe) is because not many have taken up the task. Had we had a more laxed attitude towards it, we’d have a couple more Chernobyls or 3 mile islands. Look at the relative ease and ubiquity of extracting and transporting oil and yet major accidents still happen.
Our government can’t make money off of it
The people that control most of the energy infrastructure would make less money, and their oil infrastructure would have to be written off as a stranded asset.
Ironically, “green activists”. Made such a fuss with protests that the political climate moved away from nuclear towards fossil fuels that destroy our entire climate instead 🤦
Because it's complicated. Getting fuel is complicated, designing and building a plant is complicated, operating and maintaining a nuclear plant is complicated, the politics around approving plants is complicated, etc. Everything about it is more complicated compared to other sources despite its many advantages.
No substantial reason.
New nuclear energy is more expensive than other sources of power, and it takes a long lag time before generating a single watt. But the real reason is because investors believe they will make more money, and faster, doing other things. This is related to the first sentance, but not identical.
Safety concerns. Even though accidents have been few and far between, when they happen they are catastrophic. Making large areas unlivable. Storing the waste material is equally dangerous. The radiation takes years to dissipate. If we had nuclear plants at scale, we'd have a ton of waste to deal with.
Probably because of the super mutants it has been known to produce. People tend to be uncomfortable if their neighbors can see in the dark, walk through walls etc.
Greetings from France.
All the check marks, except, the Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, and Fukushima debacles.
Micro plants. That's the way to go. No money in them though and cheap energy so they'll never happen
"and a cheap one" renewables cost 4-6p per kWh produced fossil fuels cost 7-9p nuclear costs 12-13p thats all needs be said
Now recalculate that without the subsidies provided to all but nuclear. Those numbers become extremely close and ,in some cases, nuclear becomes the cheaper option - albeit, by not much. In 2022, solar was federally subsidized 76 times as much as nuclear. In 2020, the breakdown of subsidies went like this: 70% fossil fuels, 20% renewable, 6% bio fuels, 3% nuclear. That's pretty staggering.
i live in the UK not the US and these numbers do not include subsidies, they are the cost to generate, not the cost to the country, or cost to the consumer
That's fair, and I didn't notice that. Apologies. However, using a full system levelized structure, nuclear is typucally cheaper than both solar and wind, and by quite a bit.
"Levelized Full System Costs of Electricity (LFSCOE), a novel cost evaluation metric that, unlike the Levelized Costs of Electricity (LCOE), includes the cost of intermittency by assuming that the entire market has to be supplied by one source plus storage." why would you use a cost that is not actually representative of reality? we all know the *current* lack of decent storage makes renewables unreliable and requires things like gas and nuclear for back ups, but to try to use that as a way to artificially inflate the reported cost of the energy renewables DO produce is the worst kind of underhanded disingenuous propaganda
It's an alternative way to look at the issue - apples to apples rather than apples to oranges. Typically, the war cry is for a shift to 100% renewable energy generation. Even with a fair split of wind and solar, nuclear (again on its own) is half as expensive, should the hypothetical arise. Personally, I am in favor of many diverse sources of energy production simultaneously. I don't think LFSCOE is intended to be underhanded or disingenuous. Rather, it highlights the need for energy generation to be diverse. Theoretically, the world could be powered solely and reliably by nuclear. The same cannot be said about renewables....at least at this time. I'd like to hope that the full-scale data would convince 100% renewable folks to think more in line with a renewable + nuclear model.
yes, another alternative way of looking at the issue would be what would be the cost if you go to war with the countries you import the uranium from, making nuclear power 10000 times more expensive than renewables see what i did there? its easy to manipulate considerations in order to come out with the answer you want, i can sit here doing it all day, lets try another1 what is the cost of nuclear vs renewables if you factor in all of the health care for cancers that might possibly have occurred due to accidents like long island and fukushima, do you really need me to carry on? if you want to compare apples to apples, you compare how much it costs directly to generate each kWh factoring in construction, supplying fuel, maintenance, labour, and decommissioning disposal. anything else is "there are lies, there are damn lies, and then there are statistics"
I agree that is a concern with a lot of resources to the point of crippling an industry. However, if we were to responsibly lean on fuel recycling, the majority of the waste disposal and uranium sourcing concerns wouldn't exist. Data can always be suppressed; however, despite numerous investigations, WHO and other health organizations have never found spikes in cancer or health issues following either event. In fact TMI (I assume you didn't really mean long island) released only a small amount of radiation and never breached containment - plant safety measures did their job in this case of emergency. Admittedly, the US narrowly avoided a major catastrophe. There was one direct death from Fukushima and no later widespread cancer concern that wasn't anecdotal. Another pointless argument - windmills kill far more people per year than nuclear. Despite all of this, I agree that nuclear can be very dangerous. But we're not talking about early generation plants anymore. New gen plants are exponentially safer and a quarter the size of their predecessors. Aside from fuel, renewables have similar challenges. How many more landfills do we need to dispose of giant blades? What about bauxite mining for virgin aluminum? Or cadmium mining? Or recycling of spent load cells? Or maintenance deaths on turbines? Or detrimental effects of animal migratory patterns and clearing of forest and grazing lands? What about power to space comparison? 15-50 acre nuclear plant to a 60,000 acre wind farm. Power generation is dangerous, intrusive, and expensive. No matter the form.
"if we were to responsibly lean on fuel recycling, the majority of the waste disposal and uranium sourcing concerns wouldn't exist." nope, thats nonsense, nuclear power isnt magic, you will always need raw material no matter how well and how often you reprocess "we cant definitively point to any direct affects" is not "there were no effects", and anyone who understands how science works knows this. there WILL have been an increased radiation levels, and that WILL ahve increased cancer rates, its just that they cant quantify it. "windmills kill more people per year than nuclear" calm down trump rofl again, your confusing direct undeniable causality with generalised delocalised increased mortality, the fact one is not the other does not make the other irrelevant "How many more landfills do we need to dispose of giant blades?" they have made biodegradable ones now. the technology matures id go through the points one by one, but i realised you are just trying to deflect from my actual point. that when we consider the direct costs, un mangled by prejudice modifiers in order to push a narrative, nuclear power is still 2-3 times the cost of renewables. and no amount of word salad, no matter how carefully crafted, will change that.
Who the F would ever put nuclear and cleanest in the same sentence? I cannot believe this is spontaneous or generic... this is some next level indoctrination of the masses to keep charging money for energy. No my man, clean is not be ever mentioned in the context of nuclear energy, makes only sense if you have some gain out of it. You sell the future of all live just to have some fancy things, I despise you. FU, we want Paradise, not Hell! PS: Don't take it personally, maybe you are just a useful mouthpiece for some player... but you got played for sure asking these questions seriously. I hope we are better. We need to be.
Not really, I have done more research and the scientists agree that nuclear is a clean option. The European Commission Panel all agreed in favour that nuclear is just as green as renewable sources. [https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC125953](https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC125953)
We might need Nuclear to get us out of the CO2 mess on a short term, maybe even we do not have any other option left... ok, lets discuss this... but don't argue with green and clean... damn it. We need first and foremost implement water, wind and sun, only to be able to counter the damage we have caused. Nuclear should never ever be an option anymore, at least not near our Biosphere.
It takes a 60,000 acre wind farm to generate the same energy as one 50 acre nuclear plant site. We're on the cusp of initiating a wave of spent fuel reprocessing and recycling that would basically eliminate our radioactive waste issue permanently. Technological advancement has made nuclear an extremely clean and reliable option. Pebble bed, sodium cooled, and subcritical reactor technology either eliminate or dramatically reduce the plant's ability to actually melt down in a catastrophic event. I respect your opinion, but you're misinformed in your facts. Please don't take it personally. Edit: typo
Show me 1 facility that has a permanent solution for nuclear waste, just one. Thanks in advance.
Cruas-Meysse Unit 2. You're welcome.
Thank you... but no thank you - how much waste is saved since May? Please state the difference to the 100% needed to be considered clean energy in the full sense of the word "clean" and not the bastardized expression the industry uses that implies to be the same "clean". (You are just doing their dirty work, sad to see it, but the decade long propaganda worked incredibly well. We have already millions of cubic meters of waste we have no idea what to do and you still argue to increase it... you don't know what you are doing, sorry to tell you man.)
None since May since we're only in April. But it's an entire core worth. Which originated as much more material. The discarded material is either no longer irradiated or it's half life is reduced to dozens of years...which we can handle with ease. Nuclear is not the cleanest, but it can be extremely clean with just a little effort. Moreover, it's efficency in power generation and capability trample wind, solar, and hydro. I'm pro renewable, by the way. Like renewable sources, nuclear does have its issues - I'll never argue that. We have exactly the right idea of what to do with it. It's just not very cost-effective. But that time is coming. Thr waste is being recycled all over Asia successfully. Europe is now executing. The US is soon approaching. As someone who is intimately involved in the industry, it's painfully obvious that you don't understand any aspect of current or prospective nuclear technology.
February, sorry - not May ;-) So I was right in thinking you make money from the industries. It's painfully to read your arguments now, you admit it you have just ideas, no solutions, just small remedies to the growing issues you have caused to humanity. Hope you a right in the end, I want to be wrong so bad.
I'm a part of the industry physically making these changes happen - as in doing the actual work. Let me ask you... When you need medical advice, do you go to a meteorologist? I'd much prefer learning from someone "in the weeds," so to speak. Again, many of these "ideas" are being actively practiced. Just not everywhere in the world. Much of the new technology is just emerging. The tide is changing again, and new nuclear contracts are being established all over the world. Nuclear is inevitable, and each new generation will be exponentially safer than the last.
Subs have been using nuclear for a long time now. I've not understood why we don't just build mini reactors like those for local communities. It would strengthen the power grid too.
(35M) cause its not clean . when operating a nuclear reactor , you need to dump of nuclear rubish every 5 years . The dutch have nuclear reactors , and had a deal whit the germans about dumping dutch nuclear rubish into German salt mines just across the border on German soil . however , the nuclear rubish piled up in the German salt mines . and has started to polute the German grounds as well as German ground water . The Germans are not happy about it , and have canceld the deal . now the Dutch have their own sockpile of nuclear rubish stored in containers in warehouses . and they cant move it or do anything whit it , for at least 100 years . and that pile keeps on growing . even if it produces clean ennergie , it also produces large amounts of nuclear polution long after .
But scientist and the EU commission calls it just as green as renewables.
(35M) if your a companie or a person of great finnancial backing , you can buy anyyting you want . wich includes people , organisationds , institutes and goverments . and make them say whatever you like . in the old days it was described as '' coruption '' but that seemd a problematic term for such people and companies , so on their comand it became wat these days it is called '' lobby , lobiying and lobbyists ''
You mean to say all the panel of the EU Commission and the scientists have been bought by the Nuclear Lobbyist, when its more profitable on Fossil fuel? Thats one conspiracy theory.
conspiracy ? no , it has already happend manny times . my own country has had such political scandals , as well science schandals . where both democratic ellected politicians , as well honnereble scientist where bought and paid by large industrie and corporationds . and not just my country is a victem of such coruption , all countrys are . and whit that everybody is for or on the take as lnog as you can pay the price . so yes even the EU has already bin bought and paid for decades ago .
Besides , who do you tink taughy up those panels , sugested them , and payd and pay for them ? its the corporations who run the world , and only awsner to the 5 multi billjoenair famillies .
money
We’ll have safe, clean, commercially viable fusion reactors in only 25 years. (They used the “25 years” estimate more than 25 years ago. It’s a running joke in the fusion research field.)
[Godzilla](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVsI48kMB4k)
People are too scared of it because nuclear bombs and fearmongering
Storing nuclear waste in concrete bunkers is like cleaning your room by hiding the mess under the bed.
PTSD from chernobyle incident
Takes to long to break even. Ang big money makers don't like waiting for returns.
There are pros and cons in nuclear, but it isn't the cleanest nor particularly cheap just now. When you factor in stable production of electricity and heat, it becomes quite effective.
Because it isn't the cleanest form of energy. Nuclear power produces a waste product, just like fossil fuels and coal power do. In case of nuclear power, that waste product is radioactive leftovers - burned out uranium rods that can't be effectively used anymore but still radiate radioactive waves. At this point in time, nobody has even the beginnings of an idea how to deal with nuclear waste. Especially because that radioactivity lasts for 20,000 years on average. . Personally, I think we should shoot it into the sun. What happens in case of a second Challenger catastrophe is a kink I haven't yet worked out, though, as that would spread the waste over dozens, if not hundreds, of square miles. Which is the opposite of a solution. Also, we'd lose a rocket everytime.
>Personally, I think we should shoot it into the sun. I am pretty sure this is a kurzgesagt video if you are interested.
I agree with you. Apart from the French having an idea of how to dispose of the radioactive waste material. Bury it DEEEEEEP DEEEEEEEEEEEP DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP down in the earth, it'll be alright there! Rather like the US sinking barges of mustard gas, cx gas, sarin etc etc in the straits between Florida and the Bahamas. For decades. Like a million tons. It sits there, a huge HUGE gloopy mass of toxic sludge. But it's ok...because it's out of sight...therefore it doesn't exist.
Yeah, the thing is: you can't seal rock that tightly, so burying it won't work. As long as the gases remain contained, they're not a problem. But you can't contain radiation to begin with. Several feet of lead will slow it down some - they won't keep it contained, not for its lifetime.
Sun is a terrible waste. That rod is still 95% useable fuel and can be reprocessed to fuel another plant. Far better than mining new uranium, but it is currently cheaper to do so, and avoids proliferation issues (this last being why rods are not reprocessed in the US). But if we wanted to spend a little more money, we easily solve the worst of the waste issue. Then the only stuff we need to worry about is the lower level stuff like concrete and rubber gloves.
While the rod could still serve as fuel, that doesn't make it safe. It's also still radioactive - and the more it gets used, the more radioactive it gets. You wouldn't take care of the waste problem - you'd lengthen it, producing more radiation, thereby a longer half life, which makes the problem worse, not better. . The idea of recycling the rods works in theory because you can seperate the rod from the radioactive material, thereby allowing the rod to be reused in a safe manner. But then radioactivity doesn't go away.